Influenced by the Age of Enlightenment and the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian national movement developed in the early 1860s. Its emergence was similar to that of movements in the Balkan nations, especially the Greek revolutionaries who fought the Greek War of Independence. The Armenian élite and various militant groups sought to defend the mostly rural Armenian population of the eastern Ottoman Empire from the Muslims, being Christian, but the ultimate goal was to push for reforms in the Six vilayets at first and after this failed, the creation of an Armenian state in the Armenian-populated areas controlled at the time by the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire.