THE GREEK REVOLUTION.

BOOK THIRD.

THE SUCCESSES OF THE GREEKS.

CHAPTER XI.

THE CONDITION OF GREECE AS AN INDEPENDENT STATE.

 

 

Not to mention other defects, no Greek who is intrusted with public money can refrain from peculation, even if ten commissioners be appointed to watch over the expenditure, and though ten bonds be signed with twice as many witnesses as a security for his honesty.

 

 

The successes of the Greeks during the year 1822 established Greece as ail independent state, and even those who were hostile to the Revolution to acknowledge that the war was no longer a struggle of the Porte with a few rebellious rayahs. The importance of the Greek nation could no longer be denied, whatever might be the failings of the Greek government. The war was now the battle of an oppressed people against a powerful sovereign. The inhabitants of Greece, whether of the Hellenic or the Albanian race, fought to secure their religious liberty and the independence of their country. Sultan Mahmud fought to maintain Othoman supremacy and the divine right of tyranny. Both were supported by strong feelings of religious and national antipathy; but the strength of the Greek cause lay in the hearts of the people, and that of the Turkish in the energy of the sovereign. Between such enemies there could neither be peace nor truce.

To the friends of civil and religious liberty the cause of Greece seemed sure of victory. A nation in arms is not easily conquered. Holland established her independence, under greater difficulties, against a far greater power than the Othoman empire in the present time. Switzerland was another example of the success of patriotism when the people are determined to be free. The people in Greece had adopted that determination, and they neither counted the cost of their struggle, nor shrank from encountering any hardships to gain their end.

The noble resolution of the Greeks and of the Christian Albanians in Greece to live or die free, encountered a firm determination on the part of Sultan Mahmud to re-establish his authority even by the extermination of the inhabitants of liberated Greece. When his fleets were defeated and his armies destroyed; when Russia threatened his northern frontier, and Persia invaded his eastern provinces; when, to  meet his expenditure, he was cheating his subjects by debasing his coinage; when the janissaries revolted in his capita], and the timariots and spahis refused to march against the rebellious infidels; when rival pashas fought with one another instead of marching against the Greeks; and when all Turkey appeared to be a scene of anarchy, the inflexible sultan pursued steadily his great object of preserving the integrity of the Othoman empire. When European statesmen treated him as a frantic tyrant, he was revealing to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe the sagacious policy which raised that skilful diplomatist to his profound mastery of Eastern questions. The shattered fabric of the falling empire was for some years upheld by the profound administrative views, the unwearied perseverance, and the iron character of Sultan Mahmud. He was an energetic, if not a great man, and his calm melancholy look was an index to his sagacious and saturnine intellect.

The spectacle of a duel between such a sovereign and the resuscitated Demos of Greece, was a spectacle that deservedly excited the attention of civilised nations. Mohammedanism and Christianity, tyranny and liberty, despotism and law, were all deeply compromised in the result. The massacres at Chios and the defeat of Dramali were considered proofs that the sultan could not reconquer the Greeks, and Christendom could not allow him to exterminate a Christian people. Public opinion—the watch-dog whose bark sounds as an evil omen in the ear of monarchs—began to growl a warning to Christian kings not longer to neglect the rights of Christian nations, and statesmen began to feel that the sympathies of the people in Western Europe were at last fairly interested in the cause of Greece. But the friends of the holy alliance still argued that anarchy was inflicting hourly more misery in Greece than the sultan’s government inflicted annually on the Greeks in Turkey; that the extortions of Kolokotrones and Odysseus, and the misgovernment of Mavrocordatos, produced greater evils than the faults of pashas and the errors of Sultan Mahmud; and that the power and resources of the Othoman empire rendered the success of the Greek Revolution hopeless. The friends of Greece, on the other hand, replied, that if the Greek chiefs were worthless, and the Greek government weak, the will of the people was strong, and the nation would prove unconquerable. The Greeks, they said, might yet find a government worthy of their cause, and the liberties of Greece might find a champion like William of Orange or Washington; or, if liberty produced no champion, war might give the nation a chief like Cromwell or Napoleon.

The animosity of the belligerents was never more violent than at the commencement of 1823, but the resources of both were for the time exhausted. The sultan, finding that his indiscriminate cruelty had only strengthened the Greeks in their determination to oppose his power, changed his policy, and began to treat them with mildness. Many who had been thrown into prison merely as hostages, were released, and the Greek communities generally were allowed to enjoy their old municipal privileges, and manage their own financial affairs. Strict orders were transmitted to all pashas to act equitably to the Greek subjects of the Porte. Some slight concessions were also made in order to conciliate Russia, and negotiations were opened with Persia, which eventually terminated the war with that power. (The treaty of peace between Turkey and Persia was signed on the 28th July 1823, but it was not published at Constantinople until the month of October, and not ratified by the Shah of Persia until January 1824). Even the sympathy of Western nations in the Greek cause was not overlooked. Sultan Mahmud knew little of public opinion, but he was not ignorant of the power of popular feeling. The early events of his life, and the state of his capital, had taught him to fear insurrections. He was persuaded by his own judgment, as well as by foreign ambassadors and his own ministers, that Christian nations might force kings and emperors to defend the Greeks, and that it would be wise to avert a combination of the Christian powers for such a purpose. He therefore ordered the new capitan-pasha, Khosref Mehemet, called Topal, to assure the English ambassador and the Austrian internuncio, that the Othoman fleet would not lay waste the defenceless islands of the Archipelago, and that terms of submission would be offered to all Christians who had taken up arms.

The sultan’s preparations for the campaign of 1823 were suddenly paralysed by a great disaster. The arsenal and cannon foundery at Tophana were destroyed by fire. An immense train of artillery had been prepared for the army of Thessaly; twelve hundred brass guns were ready to arm new ships in the port; an extraordinary supply of ammunition and military stores was packed up for service : all these materials were destroyed by one of the most terrible conflagrations ever witnessed, even by the inhabitants of Constantinople. Besides the artillery arsenal, fifty mosques and about six thousand houses were destroyed. A large part of Pera was reduced to ashes.

This fire was attributed by public rumour to the malevolence of the janissaries, and that rumour was believed by Sultan Mahmud. Fifteen ortas were under orders to march against the Greeks. They dared not refuse marchins: against infidels, but without the materials of war, destroyed by this conflagration, their departure was useless. They had now gained time to organise an insurrection, and their discontent alarmed the sultan to such, a degree that, contrary to the established usage of the empire, he did not appear in public on several occasions. But neither his personal danger, nor the destruction of his artillery, abated his energy. A small fleet was fitted out, and, instead of making a decisive attack on the Greeks, it was resolved to harass them with desultory operations. The capitan-pasha hoisted his flag in a frigate, and his fleet was unencumbered by a single line-of-battle ship. The financial difficulties of the Turkish government were met by a new issue of debased money, which was at that time the substitute for a loan. By the old plan of debasing the coinage, the loss fell on the sultan’s own subjects; by the new plan of borrowing money, it is sure to fall on strangers, and in all probability on the subjects of Queen Victoria.

The sultan’s plan of campaign was as usual well devised. An army was destined to invade the Morea. Instead of entering the peninsula by the Isthmus of Corinth, it was to cross the gulf at Lepanto, and establish its headquarters at Patras. The garrison of Corinth was to be provisioned and strengthened by the Othoman fleet. Elis and Messenia offered facilities for the employment of the Turkish cavalry. Abundant supplies of all kinds might be obtained from the Ionian Islands to fill the magazines of the army at Patras, Modon, and Ceron.

Yussuf Berkoftzalee, who was well known to the Greeks by his exploits in Moldavia, was ordered to advance from Thessaly through Eastern Greece, with a strong body of cavalry. The main army, consisting of Guegs under Mustai Pasha of Scodra, and Tosks under Omer Vrioni, pasha of Joannina, was ordered to advance through Western Greece. A junction was to be effected either at Lepanto or at Patras, where the Othoman fleet was to meet the army.

Mavrocordatos had been driven from office by his a own mismanagement. His successors at the head of the Greek government were too ignorant to adopt measures for retarding the advance of the Turks, and too selfish to think of anything but their personal interests. The people stood ready to do their duty, but the popular energy was left without guidance. The captains and best soldiers were far from the frontier, collecting and consuming the national revenues. The Morea was filled with well-paid troops; but few were disposed to quit the flesh-pots of the districts in which they had taken up their quarters; so that, when the campaign opened, Greece had no army in the field.

Reshid Pasha (Kiutayhé) commenced the military operations of the year 1823, by treading out the ashes of the Revolution that still smouldered on Mount Pelion. He subdued Trikheri in conjunction with the capitan-pasha, and drove the Olympian armatoli from their last retreat in Thessaly.

The Olympian armatoli escaped to Skiathos and Skopelos, where they maintained themselves by plundering the inhabitants, while Yussuf Berkoftzalee was laying waste Eastern Greece. In the month of July, the inhabitants of Skiathos were driven from their houses by these Greek troops, who took possession of the town, and consumed the grain, oil, and wine which they found stored up in the magazines. Parties of soldiers scoured the island, and seized the sheep and goats as if they had been in an enemy’s country. The inhabitants fled to an ancient castle about five miles from the town, with as much of their property as they could save, and defended this strong position against their intrusive countrymen. The armatoli were so much pleased with their idle life, varied with goat hunts and skirmishes with the natives, that they refused to obey the orders they received from the Greek government, to join a body of troops in Euboea. Admiral Miaoulis visited Skiathos on the 11t of Ohctober, and found the inhabitants in a state of destitution and distress. They were shut up in the castle, and their supplies were exhausted, while the soldiers were consuming the last remains of their property in the town. The authority, the solicitations, and the reproaches of Miaoulis, were employed in vain to expel the armatoli from the island, and the lawless soldiery did not quit Skiathos until they had consumed everything on which they could lay their hands.

While the Olympian armatoli were ruining Skiathos and plundering Skopelos, Yussuf Berkoftzalee was laying waste Phocis and Boeotia. Many villages, and several monasteries on Parnassus and Helicon, which had hitherto escaped devastation, were plundered and burned. Kastri, the village which occupies the site of Delphi, was pillaged; but instead of establishing himself at Salona, opening communications with Lepanto, and co-operating with the army of Mustai Pasha, Berkoftzalee fixed his headquarters at Thebes, sent his infantry to Negrepont, and pushed forward his foraging parties into the plain of Athens.

Kolettes, like Mavrocordatos, was eager for military glory, and even more unfit for military command. He now persuaded the other members of the government to appoint him commander-in-chief of a Greek army which he was to assemble in Euboea. He had no military qualifications but a portly frame and the Albanian dress; but these physical and artificial advantages induced the stout Zinzar Vallachian to despise the moral courage and the patriotic disinterestedness of his phanariot rival, whose frame, though smaller, was far more active. When the Turks appeared, Kolettes fled and abandoned Euboea to its fate.

Odysseus, however, who commanded the Greek force in the southern part of the island, defeated the Mussulmans in a skirmish near Kanystos. As a trophy of his victory, he sent fifty heads and three living Turks to Athens. The modern Athenians deliberately stoned these three unfortunate prisoners to death.

Mustai Pasha assembled his army at Ochrida. It consisted of five thousand Mohammedan Guegs, and three thousand Catholic Miridits. These Catholics, who speak the Guegh dialect of the Albanian language, boast of their descent from the Christians who fought against the Turks under their national hero Skanderbeg, or George Castriot. But their hatred of the orthodox Greeks has long since bound them in a closer alliance with the Mussulman tribes in their neighbourhood, than with any body of Christians. On the present occasion, the Miridits formed the advanced guard of Mustai’s army. They upheld the military glory of their race, and ridiculed the vanity of the Greeks, who attempted to filch from them the glory of Skanderbeg.

The Greeks made no preparations to oppose Mustai. Mavrocordatos had quitted Mesolonghi. While he remained there, he concentrated in his own person the three offices of President of Greece, Governor-General of the Western Provinces, and Commander-in-Chief of the Etolian army; but when he departed he left three persons to execute the duties of commander-in-chief. This absurd arrangement would doubtless have created anarchy had it not already existed, and it tended to increase the disorders that already prevailed. Almost every chief, both in Etolia and Acarnania, engaged in quarrels with his neighbours. Sometimes they fought in order to decide who should march to encounter Mustai’s army, and the prize of victory was liberty to stay at home and plunder the peasantry. In most cases their proceedings were an inexplicable enigma; and their most intelligent countrymen could only tell strangers, what indeed was very evident without their communication, that the conduct of the captains and primates was ruining the people.

The advance of Mustai’s army was signalised by one of the most brilliant exploits of the war. The first division of the Othoman force consisted of four thousand men, Catholics and Mussulmans, under the command of Djelaleddin Bey. It encamped in the valley of Karpenisi, near an abundant fountain of pure water, which forms a brook as it flows from its basin, shaded by a fine old willow-tree.

At midnight on the 21st of August 1823 the orthodox Tosks surprised the camp of the Catholic and Mussulman Guegs. Marco Botzares, at the head of three hundred and fifty Suliots, broke into the midst of their enemies and rushed forward to slay the bey. The Othoman troops, roused from sleep, fled with precipitation, leaving their arms behind. Had the Greek captains descended with the armatoli of Etolia and Acarnania from the villages in which they were idly watching the flashes of the Suliot arms, they might have annihilated the Turkish force. But Greek envy sacrificed the Albanian hero. The bey of Ochrida had pitched his tent in a mandra or walled enclosure, built to protect beehives or young lambs from badgers and foxes. Botzares reached this wall, and, not finding the entrance, raised his head to look over it, in order to discover a means of entering it with his followers. The alarm had now roused Djelaleddin’s veterans, who were familiar with nocturnal surprises. Several were on the watch when the head of Botzares rose above the wall, and showed itself marked on the grey sky; a ball immediately pierced his brain, and the Suliots took up his body. Even then a few hand-grenades would have driven Djelaleddin’s guard from the enclosure, and completed the defeat of the Turkish force; but the Suliots had learned nothing of the art of war during their long intercourse with the Russians, French, and English in the Ionian Islands. Like most warlike savages, they despised the improvements of science; and the consequence was, that their victorious career was now stopped by a rough wall, built as a defence against foxes and badgers. But before retiring with the body of their leader, they collected and carried off their booty. No attempt was made to interrupt their retreat to Mikrokherio, where they arrived accompanied by a train of mules caught in the camp, and laden with spoil. Horse-hair sacks filled with silver-mounted pistols, yataghans, and cartridge-cases, were fastened over pack-saddles like bags of meal, and long Albanian muskets were tied up in bundles like fagots of fire­wood. The booty was very great, but the death of Marco Botzares cast a gloom over their spirits. The Greek soldiers in the neighbouring villages of Tranakhorio and Nostimo, when it was too late, became ashamed of their inactivity, and reproached their captains for causing the death of the bravest chief in the Greek army. As the news of the loss spread, the whole nation grieved over the noble Suliot.

The affair at Karpenisi is one of the examples of the secondary part which the rival dominant races of Othomans and Greeks often bore in the war of the Greek Revolution. The Othomans who accompanied the army of Mustai were still in the plain of Thessaly. The Greeks were encamped idly on the hills. The battle was fought between the Catholic Guegs and the orthodox Tosks.

The troops of Djelaleddin remained in possession of the field of battle, and buried their dead on the spot. Two English travellers who passed the place during the following summer saw a number of small wooden crosses fixed over the graves of the Miridits.

The Suliots who bore a part in this memorable exploit near the fountain and the old willow-tree, were long distinguished by the richly ornamented and strangely mounted arms they wore; but many regretted their dearly-purchased splendour, and thought the night accursed on which it was obtained, saying, that it had been better for them and for Greece had Markos still lived, and they had continued to carry the plain rifles of their fathers.

The success of the Suliots did not retard the advance of Mustai. His Guegs pressed on, eager to avenge their losses and wipe off the stain on their military reputation. The Greeks abandoned their positions at Tranokhorio, and made an unsuccessful attempt to defend the valley between the two precipitous mountains of Khelidoni and Kaliakudi.

The road from Karpenisi to Vrachori runs through a succession of frightful passes and giant rocks. It may be compared with the most difficult footpaths over the Alps. The great mountain Kaliakudi closes the entrance by a wall of precipices, broken by one chasm, through which the river of Karpenisi forces its passage to join the Achelous. In this pass a skirmish took place, and the Greeks boast of an imaginary victory at Kaliakudi. To any one who has visited the monastery of Bruso, it must be evident that three hundred men, inspired with the spirit of Markos Botzares, might have stopped an army as numerous as that of Xerxes or of Brennus. But the Albanians of Mustai drove the Greek armatoli before them through the sublime valleys which diverge from Bruso. It has been said that Mustai sowed distrust among the Greek chiefs, by promising capitanliks to some venal leaders. He could hardly have ventured to march through the pass of Bruso had he not been assured that he should find no enemy to oppose him.

At Vrachori Mustai found Omer Vrioni with an army of Mussulman Tosks. The dialects of the Guegs and Tosks do not afford a better means of communicating than those of the Irish and the Welsh. The dress of the two tribes is as dissimilar as their speech. The white kilt of the Tosk forms as strong a contrast with the red tunic of the Gueg, as the grey top-coat of Paddy with Sandy’s checkered plaid. The followers of the two pashas quarrelled, and the pashas did not agree.

In October 1823 their united force attacked Anatolikon, a small town in the Etolian lagoons, about five miles west of Mesolonghi. The Greeks had only a mud battery, mounting six guns, to defend the place. In the hour of need they allowed William Martin, who had deserted with another seaman from an English ship, to constitute himself captain of a gun. He dismounted the only piece of artillery the Turks placed in battery. The pashas found it impossible to do anything but bombard the place from a couple of mortars, which they planted out of reach of the fire of the Greeks. Their shells did little damage, and only about twenty persons were killed and wounded. On the 11th of December Mustai raised the siege, and retired to Epirus, through the unguarded pass of Markynoros. Before commencing his retreat, he buried some guns which arrived too late to be of any use, and in order to conceal them from the Greeks, he surrounded them with a low wall of masonry, and ornamented the place like a Turkish cemetery. The Greeks showed the spot with pride, boasting of the beys who had fallen under their deadly fire; but when Kiutayhé besieged Mesolonghi in 1825, he commenced operations by digging up the brass guns in the tombs of the beys.

The new Othoman admiral Khosref, called Topal or the lame pasha, was a man of a courteous disposition and considerable ability—far better suited to be minister of foreign affairs than capitan-pasha. He was not more of a sailor, and quite as great a coward, as his unworthy predecessor Kara Mehemet, but he knew better how to make the officers of the fleet obey his orders. He issued from the Dardanelles at the end of May with a fine fleet, composed of fourteen frigates and twenty corvettes and brigs, attended by forty transports. On the 4th of June he landed three thousand Asiatic troops at Kargstos, and sent several transports laden with military stores to Negrepont. He then sailed past Hydra, threw supplies into Coron and Modon, and landed a body of troops and a large sum of money at Patras on the 20th of the same month. Instead, however, of remaining on the western coast of Greece, to support the operations of Mustai, who was still at Ochrida, he hastened back to the Dardanelles.

The Albanians of Hydra and Spetzas displayed neither activity nor zeal during the year 1823. The Greeks of Psara, Kasos, and Samos, on the contrary, were never more active and enterprising. The Psarians made a descent on the Asiatic coast at Tchanderlik, on the site of Pitane in Aeolis, where they stormed a battery, burned the town, and carried off the harem of a bey belonging to the great house of Kara Osman Oglou of Magnesia. The booty gained by plundering the town was increased by the receipt of ten thousand dollars as ransom for the bey’s family. The shores of the gulf of Adrymetti were then plundered, and contributions were levied on the Greeks of Mytilene.

The ravages committed on the coast of Asia Minor caused the Mussulman population to break out into open revolt. The sultan was accused of sparing the Giaours to please the Christian ambassadors at Constantinople, and the people called on all true believers to avenge the slaughter of the Turks at Tchanderlik and other places by murdering the Greeks. In many towns the Christians were attacked by fanatical mobs, and at Pergamus several hundred Greeks perished before the Othoman authorities could restore order.

During the autumn Miaoulis sailed from Hydra with a small fleet. On his return he complained bitterly of the misconduct of those under his command. Some of the ships of Hydra delayed joining him. At Psara quarrels occurred between the Albanian and Greek sailors: and on the 5th of October the Psarians, in defiance of Miaoulis, seized some Turkish prisoners on board a Hydriot brig, and carried them on shore. Several were publicly tortured before the town hall of Psara, and the rest were murdered in the streets. When the fleet reached Skiathos fresh disorders broke out. The efforts of the admiral to expel the Olympian armatoli, who were plundering the island, proved ineffectual, as has been already mentioned, partly in consequence of the misconduct of the Albanian sailors. A fight took place on shore between the Hydriots and Spetziots, in which three Spetziots were killed and eight wounded. These dissensions rendered all co-operation between the ships of the three islands impossible, and Miaoulis returned to Hydra on the 16th of October almost in a state of despair.

The conduct of the sailors had been insolent and mutinous during the whole cruise. They landed at Lithi, on the west coast of Chios, without orders, robbed the poor Greek peasants of their oxen, plundered the men of their money, and violated the women. Complaints of these acts were laid before Miaoulis, but he was unable to punish the offenders.

Admiral Miaoulis and six brigs were exposed to great danger off Mount Athos on the 27th of September. A Turkish squadron, consisting of five frigates and four sloops-of-war, gained the wind of the Greeks while their ships lay in a calm. A cannonade of three hours and a half ensued, in which several thousand shot were fired; but as the Turks declined engaging their enemy at close quarters, the Hydriots escaped through the Turkish line with the loss of only eight men killed. The Turks declared that they did not lose a single man; and it is not improbable that they never ventured within range of the smaller guns of the Greek ships.

A romantic event during this cruise deserves to be recorded : On the 1st of October the Psarian admiral picked up a boat with eight of his countrymen on board, who were drifting about in the Archipelago without either provisions or water. They had encountered strange vicissitudes during the previous fortnight. An Austrian schooner had seized them in the gulf of Smyrna, where they were looking out for prizes without papers from the Greek government. They were delivered to the Turkish authorities as pirates, and put on board a small vessel bound for the Dardanelles. At the lower castles they were transferred to a boat manned by fifteen Turks, which was to convey them to the bagnio at Constantinople. They proceeded to Tchanek-skelessi, where most of the Turkish boatmen slept ashore. The Psarians contrived to kill those who remained on board without noise, and, casting loose the moorings, they were carried by the current beyond the lower castles before day­break. There they were met by a contrary wind, without provisions and with only one jar of water. In this difficulty they were forced to put into a secluded creek in Tenedos, and two of their number, who were dressed like the Greek sailors who serve in the Turkish fleet, walked to the town to purchase bread and carry back two jars of water. One of them had fortunately succeeded in concealing a small gold coin in the upper leather of his slippers before he was searched by the lynx-eyed janissaries of Smyrna. The two Psarians remained all day in a Greek wine-shop kept by an Ionian, as the safest place of concealment, bought bread, and procured water. In the evening they walked back to their companions, who had found water, but were famished with hunger. At midnight they left Tenedos; but before they could reach any Greek island the wind became calm or contrary, and they had been rowing incessantly for thirty-six hours, endeavouring to reach Psara, when they were picked up by Admiral Apostoles.

A Greek squadron was sent to relieve Anatolikon, when it was besieged by Mustai Pasha. Before the Hydriot and Spetziot sailors would embark they insisted on receiving a month’s pay in advance. The primates made their mutinous behaviour during the previous cruise a pretext for refusing to make any advance. The Greeks of Psara, with more patriotism, immediately sent a few brigs and a fire-ship to Hydra, where their promptitude to serve the cause of their country was regarded as an offence. The Hydriots, who were intent only on the question of pay, attacked the Psarian sailors, in order to punish them for giving a bad example to the rest of the Greek navy. Several Psarians were cruelly beaten, and a civil war was on the point of breaking out. Shame, and the expectation of being speedily repaid by Lord Byron, at last induced the Hydriot primates to advance the sum required to fit out seven vessels and two fire-ships.

The fire-ships of Hydra were generally prepared as jobs, and were rarely of any service. One of these could not go farther than Navarin. The Hydriot squadron was joined by five Spetziot brigs and a fire­ship. Miaoulis, disgusted with the insubordination displayed in the preceding cruise, remained on shore, and the command was given to Captain Pinotzi, who hoisted a broad pennant, for the Greeks mimicked the external signs of naval organisation, though they neglected the essentials of discipline and tactics. Mavrocordatos embarked to resume his dictatorship in Western Greece, expecting to find a firm support in the influence of Lord Byron, who had recently arrived at Cephalonia.

On the 11th of December 1823 this squadron fell in with a Turkish brig off the Skrophes. Five Greek ships came up with her, and raked her with their broadsides until she was in a sinking state. None of these vessels ventured to run alongside and carry her by boarding, so that she was enabled to reach Ithaca, where the Turks expected to find protection under the English flag. This brig mounted twenty-two six-pounders, and carried a crew of eighty men, besides twenty passengers. She had sailed from Previsa the day before with a large sum of money for the garrison of Patras.

The Greeks had too often violated their most solemn treaties to care much about violating Ionian neutrality, when it appeared that they could do so with impunity. The sailors landed on Ithaca, and murdered the Turks who attempted to defend their ship. The brig was seized as soon as she was abandoned by her crew, and the treasure on board was transferred to the Greek ships. The captain, who refused to quit the deck, was slain. The brig presented a terrible spectacle to her captors. Upwards of forty  Turks had been killed during the action, and their dead bodies were found piled up between decks, in order that they might be taken ashore for burial. While some of the Greek sailors were plundering the stranded vessel, others were shooting down the Turks on shore, whose flight was impeded by the people of the island. The arrival of a company of English soldiers saved thirty-five men, who were carried to the lazaretto. Every one of these had received severe wounds.

The English government was justly indignant at this conduct on the part of a Greek claiming the rights of an organised force, and sailing under a broad pennant. It seemed intolerable that a navy which pretended to enjoy all the advantages accorded to Christian governments, should commit atrocities that would have disgraced Algerine pirates. The behaviour of the Greeks was on this occasion peculiarly offensive, for the neutrality of the Ionian Islands had been rendered by the British government extremely advantageous to Greece. Kalamos was at that very time serving as a refuge to the population of Acarnania and Etolia, which had fled from the armies of Omer Vrioni and Mustai. Karaiskaki, a distinguished captain, was receiving not only protection, but also medical assistance gratis, and hundreds of families of Greek armatoli were then fed by the British government; yet the newspapers of the Continent afford evidence that at this time the Greeks were calumniating England over all Europe from Marseilles to St Petersburg.

Among the wounded Turks who were carried into the lazaretto of Ithaca, there was one man of a noble aspect and of dignified manners, who had been left for dead all night on the beach. In the morning he was found breathing, and carried to the lazaretto to die. But after his wounds were dressed, his face and hands washed, and his green turban arranged on his head, he muttered a few words of thankfulness in Greek, and made signs for a pipe. He smoked one or two pipes, and the two English surgeons who were attending him thought it not improbable that he would die smoking. The pipes, however, appeared to restore him, and he gradually recovered. His convalescence was long; and during the time he remained in Ithaca, the fluency with which he spoke Greek, and the good sense he displayed in his conversation, made him a favourite. He had been cadi of Tripolitza just before the Revolution broke out, but had accompanied Khurshid’s army to Thessaly. This man considered the Othoman empire on the verge of ruin; but he ridiculed the idea of its being replaced by a Greek kingdom. He feared a coalition of the Christian powers.

The Greek vessels returned to Mesolonghi with their booty, and quarrelled about the division of the spoil. A schooner, with several chests of treasure on board, attempted to escape, but was brought back by force, and anchored in the midst of the Hydriot brigs. Mavrocordatos, who was an involuntary spectator of these disgraceful scenes, attempted in vain to persuade the Hydriots to make an honourable division of their dishonest gains. On the 17th of December a scheme of division, modelled on the system of shares in the mercantile operations of the islanders, was adopted. The share of one of the Hydriot ships, which had sailed shamefully undermanned, with only forty-eight seamen on board, but which drew shares for seventy-one, amounted to 77 okas of paras, measured by weight, and 267 gold mahmudies in coin, besides other plunder, estimated at 770 piastres.

No sooner was the division of the treasure terminated than the crews demanded pay for a second month in advance. Application was made to Lord Byron, but he considered it impolitic to purchase the service of such ill-manned ships, and hopeless to expect honourable service from such disorderly and mutinous crews. The Hydriots quitted Mesolonghi, and they so timed their voyage that they made Hydra on the 29th December, the very day on which the month paid in advance ended.

The Ionian government forgot its dignity in avenging the injury it had received. The Lord High Commissioner issued a violent proclamation, upbraiding Mavrocordatos in rather unseemly terms for calling himself a prince, which certainly was no violation of Ionian neutrality. The sultan called upon the Ionian government for indemnification for the loss he had sustained in consequence of their neglect to enforce neutrality, and his demand was immediately recognised. The Greek government foolishly refused to refund the money, until the British government, losing patience, ordered Captain Pechell in H.M.S. Sybille to enforce the claim. Several Greek ships were then seized, and not released until an indemnity of forty thousand dollars was refunded.

The Greeks had regained possession of the Acrocorinth before the Albanian pashas had raised the siege of Anatolikon. The Turks capitulated on the 7th November 1823. On this occasion the firmness and honourable conduct of Niketas, supported by the soldiers under his immediate orders, prevented Greece from being stained by another infamous massacre. But all the energy and activity of Niketas could not prevent four or five Turks from being murdered on the way from Corinth to Kenchries. The indifference shown by Kolokotrones to the disorderly conduct of the Greek troops under Ins command on tins occasion, induced many to believe that he would have willingly seen a repetition of the massacres of Tripolitza.

In the autumn of 1823 Lord Byron directed the attention of all Europe to the affairs of Greece by joining the cause. He arrived at Mesolonghi on the 5th of January 1824. His short career in Greece was unconnected with any important military event, for he died on the 19th of April; but the enthusiasm he awakened perhaps served Greece more than his personal exertions would have done, had his life been prolonged. Wherever the English language was known, an electric shock was felt when it was heard that

“ The pilgrim of eternity, whose fame

Over his living head like heaven was bent,

An early but enduring monument,”

had died “where his young mind first caught ethereal fire.”

The genius of Lord Byron would in all probability never have unfolded either political or military talent. He was not disposed to assume an active part in public affairs. He regarded politics as the art of cheating the people, by concealing one-half of the truth and misrepresenting the other; and whatever abstract enthusiasm he might feel for military glory was joined to an innate detestation of the trade of war. Both his character and his conduct presented unceasing contradictions. It seemed as if two different souls occupied his body alternately. One was feminine, and full of sympathy; the other masculine, and characterised by clear judgment. When one arrived the other departed. In company, his sympathetic soul was his tyrant. Alone, or with a single person, his masculine prudence displayed itself as his friend. No man could then arrange facts, investigate their causes, or examine their consequences, with more logical accuracy, or in a more practical spirit. Yet, in his most sagacious moment,  the entrance of a third person would derange the order of his ideas, judgment fled, and sympathy, generally laughing, took its place. Hence he appeared in his conduct extremely capricious, while in his opinions he had really great firmness. He often, however, displayed a feminine turn for deception in trifles, while at the same time he possessed a feminine candour of soul, and a natural love of truth, which made him often despise himself quite as much as he despised English fashionable society for what he called its brazen hypocrisy. He felt his want of self-command; and there can be no doubt that his strongest reason for withdrawing from society, and shunning public affairs, was the conviction of his inability to compress the sympathies which were in opposition to his judgment.

No stranger estimated the character of the Greeks more correctly than Lord Byron. At Cephalonia he sometimes smiled at the enthusiasm of Sir Charles Napier, and pointed out where the soldier’s ardour appeared to mislead his judgment. It may, however, be observed, that to nobody did the Greeks ever unmask their selfishness and self-deceit so candidly. Almost every distinguished statesman and general sent him letters soliciting his favour, his influence, or his money. Kolokotrones invited him to a national assembly at Salamis. Mavrocordatos informed him that he would be of no use anywhere but at Hydra, for Mavrocordatos was then in that island. Constantine Metaxa, who was then governor of Mesolonghi, wrote, saying that Greece would be ruined unless Lord Byron visited that fortress. Petrobey used plainer words. He informed Lord Byron that the true way to save Greece was to lend him, the bey, a thousand pounds. With that sum not three hundred but three thousand Spartans would be put in motion to the frontier, and the fall of the Othoman empire would be certain. Every Greek chief celebrated his own praises and Lord Byron’s liberality, but most of them injured their own cause by dilating too eloquently on the vices and crimes of some friend or rival. Lord Byron made many sagacious and satirical comments on the chiaroscuro of these communications. He wrote: “Of the Greeks I can’t say much good hitherto, and I do not like to speak ill of them, though they do of one another.” He knew his own character so well, that he remained some time at Cephalonia, not venturing to trust himself among such a cunning and scheming set, fearing lest unworthy persons should exercise too much influence over his conduct. This feeling induced him to avoid familiarity with the Greeks, even after his arrival at Mesolonghi, and with Mavrocordatos his intercourse was not intimate. Business and ceremony alone brought them together. Their social and mental characteristics were not of a nature to create reciprocal confidence, and they felt no mutual esteem.

Lord Byron did not overlook the vices of the Greek leaders, but at the same time he did not underrate the virtues of the people. The determined spirit with, which they asserted their independence received his sincere praise, even while the rapacity, cruelty, and dissensions of the military weighed heavily on his mind. Nothing, during his residence at Mesolonghi, distressed him more than the conduct of the Suliots whom he had taken into his pay. He saw that he had degraded himself into the chief of a band of personal followers, who thought of nothing but extorting money from their foreign leader. Three hundred Suliots were enrolled in his band; of these upwards of one hundred demanded double pay and triple rations, pretending to be officers, whose dignity would not allow them to lounge about the coffee-houses of Mesolonghi unless they were attended by a henchman or pipebearer. Lord Byron, annoyed by their absurd pretensions, remembered Napier’s plans for the formation of a small regular military force, and lamented his own inability to carry them into execution. Colonel Leicester Stanhope (the Earl of Harrington) increased his irritation by appearing as the agent of the Greek committee, and giving in to all the pedantic delusions of the literati. The typographical colonel, as Lord Byron sarcastically termed him, seemed to think that news­papers would be more effectual in driving back the Othoman armies than well-drilled troops and military tactics.

The political information which Lord Byron extracted from Mavrocordatos in their personal interviews, and the proceedings of that statesman in the conduct of the public administration, revealed the thousand obstacles to the establishment of an honest government in Greece. A mist fell from Lord Byron’s eyes. He owned that his sagacity was at fault, and he abandoned all hope of being able to guide the Greeks, or to assist them in improving their administration. Not long before his death, he frequently repeated, that with Napier to command and form regular troops, with Hastings to arm and command a steamer, and with an able financier, Greece would be sure of victory. Then, too, he began to express doubts whether circumstances had authorised him to recommend the Greek loan to his friends in England. He was struck by the fact that a majority of the Moreot captains and primates opposed pledging the confiscated Turkish property as a security to the lenders. He feared that the proceeds of a loan might be misspent by one party, and the loan itself disowned by another. Bowring and the bankers, he said, would secure their commissions and their gains, but he feared many honest English families might lose their money by his Philhellenism.

Lord Byron’s knowledge of the prominent defects of the Greek character, his personal experience of their rapacity, and his conviction that selfishness was the principal cause of a civil war in Argolis which broke out about the time of his arrival at Mesolonghi, made him an advocate for the formation of a strong central government. Order was, in his opinion, the first step to liberty. The Earl of Harrington talked as if he considered Lord Byron’s desire for order a proof of his indifference to liberty. Lord Byron was, however, a far wiser counsellor than the typographical colonel, and, had he lived, might have done much to arrest the factious madness and shameless expenditure which rendered the English loans the prize and the aliment of two civil wars.

The first Greek loan was contracted early in 1824. The Greeks received about £300,000, and they engaged to pay annually £40,000 as interest, as the capital of the debt created was £800,000 at five per cent. The lenders risked their money to deliver Greece, and they have never received a shilling of interest or a syllable of gratitude from the thousands whom their money enriched. Indeed, the Greeks generally appear to have considered the loan as a small payment for the debt due by civilised society to the country that produced Homer and Plato. The modern Greek habit of reducing everything to a pecuniary standard, made Homer, Plato, & Co. creditors for a large capital and an enormous accumulation of unpaid interest.

A worse speculation, in a financial point of view, than the Greek loan, could not have been undertaken. Both the loan contractors and the members of the Greek committee knew that the revenues of Greece in 1823 fell short of £80,000. Yet with this knowledge they placed the absolute control of a sum equal to nearly four years’ revenue of the country in the hands of a faction engaged in civil war. Foreigners were amazed at this display of financial insanity on the London Stock Exchange. Future years have proved that the disease returns in periodical fits, which can only be cured by copious bleeding.

Though the contractors of the Greek loan, when they paid over the money to a government engaged in civil war, could not be ignorant that the money would be diverted from carrying on hostilities against the Turks, in order to be employed in warring with domestic rivals, various attempts were made to check its wasteful expenditure during the year 1824. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, now her Majesty’s ambassador at Constantinople, visited Greece, by request of the contractors of the loan, “to see if the nature of the Greek government warranted the payment of the portion not yet advanced”. Sir Henry stated the following observations for the benefit of his countrymen, as the result of his experience: “We (the English) have generally busied ourselves about the government of Greece, which really was no business of ours; while the management of our money, in which we might be thought concerned, has been left entirely in the hands of the Greeks.” General Gordon was subsequently invited to return to Greece, which he had left shortly after the fall of Tripolitza, in order to watch over the expenditure of the second loan; but he wisely refused to have anything to do with the business when he read the instructions on which he was to act. He has recorded his deliberate opinion of the men who were intrusted with the expenditure of the English loans in very strong terms: “ ith, perhaps, the exception of Zaimes, the members of the executive are no better than public robbers.” The internal history of Greece, from the defeat of Dramali to the arrival of King Otho, attests the truth of this severe sentence. The country was ruined by intestine broils, originating in private rapacity. Amidst these disorders, two civil wars stand out with disgraceful prominence, as having consumed the proceeds of the English loans, abandoned Psara and Kasos to be conquered by the Turks, and prepared the Morea to be subdued by Ibrahim Pasha.

The first of these civil wars was called the war of Kolokotrones, because that old chieftain was its principal author. It commenced in November 1823, and finished in June 1824. It was concluded as soon as the news reached the belligerents that an instalment of the first English loan had arrived at Zante. Panos, the eldest son of Kolokotrones, who held possession of Nauplia, immediately surrendered it to the executive body on receiving a share of the English money. This transaction took place on the 5^th of June 1824.

While the Greeks were fighting among themselves, Sultan Mahmud was smoothing away the obstacles which impeded the co-operation of his powerful vassal, Mohammed Ali, pasha of Egypt, in attacking them. By his prudent arrangements he secured the zealous support of the Egyptian pasha. Mohammed Ali was already disposed to chastise the Greeks for the losses he had sustained from their cruisers. He also feared that a prolonged contest with the insurgent Christians might end in bringing a Russian fleet into the Mediterranean. He therefore received the proposals made to his political agent at Constantinople in the most conciliatory spirit. The sultan invested his son Ibrahim with the rank of vizier of the Morea, and wrote a flattering letter to the great pasha himself, calling him the champion of Islam. Mohammed Ali received this letter with the warmest expressions of pleasure, and engaged to send a powerful fleet and army to attack the Greeks. He had not yet been inspired by French intrigue with delusive visions of making himself the founder of an Arab empire.

The Greeks heard with indifference of the preparations which were going on at the dockyards of Constantinople and Alexandria. They treated the rumoured co-operation of the sultan and the pasha as impossible. They insisted on supposing that Mohammed Ali reasoned like themselves. They thought that the pasha must want his own money for his own schemes, and deluded themselves with the idea that he was more likely to act against the sultan than for him. They argued that he must be more anxious to establish his own independence than to destroy theirs. Their whole souls were absorbed in party contests for wealth and power, until they were awakened from their delusive dreams by a series of terrible calamities.

It has been mentioned that the Kolokotrones’s civil war embittered the last months of Lord Byron’s life, by doubts of the propriety of intrusting the Greeks with large sums of money. He foresaw that selfishness would find more nutriment in foreign loans than patriotism.

The executive government which defeated the rebellion of Kolokotrones was supported by a majority in the legislative assembly. It cannot be said that the members of this assembly were freely chosen by the people; yet, on the whole, its feelings represented those of the best portion of the Greek population. Many were well-meaning men, who could clothe their thoughts in energetic and eloquent language, but few had any experience in legislation and politics. Their deliberations rarely conducted them to practical rcsolutions, and their incapacity prevented their exercising any control over the financial affairs of their country. The consequence of this inaptitude for business was, that George Konduriottes and Kolettes exercised absolute power in the name of the executive body.

The government which vanquished the faction of Kolokotrones was formed by a coalition of three parties : the Albanian shipowners of Hydra and Spetzas; the Greek primates of the Morea; and the Romeliot captains of armatoli. The chief authority was conceded to the Albanian shipowners; George Konduriottes of Hydra was elected president of Greece, and Botasses of Spetzas, vice-president. It is necessary to record the sad truth, that two more ignorant and incapable persons were never intrusted with the direction of a nation’s affairs. The Greeks are the most prejudiced of all Europeans when there is a question of the purity of the Hellenic race, and no people regards education with more favour; yet with all this nationality and pedantry they intrusted their public affairs, in a period of great difficulty, to two men who could not address them in the Greek language, and whose intellectual deficiencies prevented them from expressing their thoughts with clearness even in the corrupt Tosk dialect which they habitually used. The descendants of Pericles and Demosthenes submitted tamely to these aliens in civilisation and race, because they were orthodox and wealthy.

The interest of the president and vice-president was identical with that of the shipowners of Hydra and Spetzas, and it was directly opposed to the formation of a national navy. The money placed at their disposal was wasted in paying inefficient ships, and hiring the support of mutinous sailors; and they refused to purchase and arm a single steamer at the recommendation of Captain Hastings, when such a vessel might have frustrated the operations of Mohammed Ali, and prevented Ibrahim Pasha from landing in the Morea. Had they possessed a very little naval knowledge and a small share of patriotism, they might have obtained the glory of initiating the change in naval warfare which is in progress throughout all maritime nations.

The party of the Moreot primates was next in importance to that of the naval islanders; but this party soon forfeited its influence and fell into contempt, by the unprincipled selfishness of its leading members. Had the Moreot primates supported the just demands of the people for a system of publicity in financial business, they might have become the guardians of the liberties of Greece, and the founders of their country’s constitution. They were, perhaps, the only persons capable, from their administrative experience, of placing the existing municipal institutions in harmony with the action of the central government.

The Romeliot captains of armatoli, though they already possessed great territorial and political influence when the government of Konduriottes entered on office, had not yet constituted themselves into a distinct party in the state. Kolettes now succeeded by his schemes in uniting them together, and allying them with himself by the ties of a common interest. He purchased their services by securing to them a large share of the English loans; and he taught them to maintain themselves in provincial commands, in imitation of the old system of armatoliks. Kolettes acted as their agent and representative in the executive body. That astute Vallach was the first to perceive how their political influence might be rendered supreme in liberated Greece, by imitating the administrative practice of Ali of Joannina, with which he was well acquainted. He conducted their bargains for pay and rations with the central government; he assisted them in obtaining contracts for farming the taxes of the provinces of which they had obtained the military command; and he regulated with them the number of the personal followers they were to be permitted to charge on the public revenues as national troops.

The position which Kolettes created for himself by these arrangements rendered him the most influential politician in the government, and nothing but his want of personal courage and honesty prevented him from being the first man in Greece. It has been already said that he was a Zinzar Vallachian, and not a Greek, and all the moral and physical peculiarities of that race were strongly marked both in his mind and his personal appearance. Both contrasted with those of the Greeks and Albanians by whom be was surrounded. He exhibited neither the boorish pride of the Albanian islanders, nor the loquacious self-sufficiency of the Greek logiotati. With patience and stolid silence he profited by the blunders of his colleagues, always himself doing and saying as little as possible. He trusted that others, by their restless intrigues and precipitate ambition, would ruin their own position, and leave the field open for him. His policy was crowned with success. Hypsilantes, Mavrocordatos, Konduriottes, and Zaimes, all ruined their own personal position by exhibiting more ambition than capacity.

The second civil war, called the War of the Primates, constituted Kolettes the leader of the Romeliot military faction, and victory rendered that faction the most powerful party in Greece. During the period of Bavarian despotism, Kolettes was sent as minister to the court of Louis Philippe, and those who saw and conversed with him in Paris were surprised at the political reputation he had enjoyed in Greece. When they listened to the grave and portly Vallach, in his Albanian habiliments, uttering platitudes with an oracular air, they felt inclined to apply to him Fox’s observation on Lord Thurlow’s first appearance on the woolsack: “That fellow is a humbug; no man can be as wise as he looks.” Kolettes, however, only acted a wise look, though it must be owned that he was not a bad actor.

In England, Mavrocordatos was supposed to be at the head of a powerful constitutional party. If this had ever been possible, he had destroyed that possibility by abandoning the presidency of Greece to play the commander-in-chief at Petta. The testimony of English Philhellenes and well-informed foreigners was, however, unavailing to undeceive the British public. The delusion appears to have originated among the Greeks settled in Western Europe, who believed that Mavrocordatos was the most disinterested statesman in Greece, and that a strong constitutional party ought to exist in a free country. But Mavrocordatos, by his grasping ambition, his schemes for governmental centralisation, his personal mismanagement, and his political indecision, had ruined his influence before the year 1824. Feeling his position changed, and ill satisfied unless he was the first man at the seat of government, he lingered at Mesolonghi during the whole of the important year 1824, and allowed all parties to learn that public business could go on perfectly well without him.

In Western Greece his administration, after Lord Byron’s death, was neither honourable to himself nor advantageous to the country. A civil war broke out in the district of Vlochos between two rival captains, Staikos and Vlachopulos. Its continuance was ascribed to his imprudence and indecision. His civil administration was unpopular. He gave his support to John Soutzos, the eparch of Venetico, who was stigmatised as the most corrupt and rapacious phanariot in Greece.

Before quitting Mesolonghi to return to the seat of government, Mavrocordatos convoked an assembly of captains and eparchs, to concert measures for defending the country against the incursions of the Turks, and for reforming internal abuses. His dictatorial authority authorised him to take this step, but he ought to have perceived its imprudence. Its effect was to legalise the system of capitanliks, which had been tacitly revived, and to consolidate the personal independence of the military chiefs, who learned to act in concert whenever it was their interest to resist the central government. The peasants were not blind to the effect of Mavrocordatos’s conduct. They saw that it would perpetuate a state of anarchy, and many were so alarmed that they fled to Kalamos, declaring that the prince, as they still called their governor-general, had assembled a pack of wolves to debate how the sheep could be preserved from the eagles and reserved for their own eating.

The second civil war, or war of the primates, was not of long duration. Zaimes was the principal author of this iniquitous movement, and his object was to deprive Konduriottes and those who supported his government of the wealth and influence they enjoyed, by disposing of the proceeds of the English loans.

In appearance and manners Andreas Zaimes was a perfect gentleman. His disposition was generous, and his private conduct upright; but his position as a hereditary primate made him ambitious, while nature had made him neither energetic nor courageous. He thrust himself forward as a statesman and military  chief, but he was too weak for a political leader, and utterly unfit for a soldier.

Andreas Lonclos was next in rank and influence among the conspirators. He was a warm personal friend of Zaimes, and the constant affection which the two Andreas showed to one another in prosperity and adversity was most honourable to both. It proved that they had virtuous stuff in their hearts. Londos was brave and active. His personal courage, however, proved of no use to his party, for, instead of establishing order and enforcing discipline among his followers, he allowed them to commit as great depredations on the property of the Moreot peasants, as were committed by the most lawless chief of Romeliot armatoli. Londos was at this time addicted to riotous debauchery.

Both Zaimes and Londos had assumed the position of Turkish beys, and the Greek government allowed them to collect the taxes and administer the greater part of the public affairs of their respective districts. They pre­tended to employ the revenues for the public service, and in maintaining troops to blockade Patras. But it was too evident that they surrounded themselves with bands of personal followers withdrawn from the armies of Greece, and that Patras was hardly blockaded at all.

Sessini of Gastuni was another influential man in the party of the primates. He was descended from a Venetian family, and had studied medicine in his youth. Shortly after the retreat of the Mussulmans from Lalla, lie contrived to assume a position in Elis between that of a voevode and a pasha. He became receiver-general of taxes, paymaster of troops, and farmer-general of confiscated Turkish estates. He adopted the pride and many other vices of the Osmanlees. His household was maintained with considerable pomp. The courtyard was filled with well-caparisoned horses : the galleries were crowded with armed followers. He never quitted his dwelling without a suite of horsemen, armed guards on foot, and grooms leading Persian greyhounds. His sons were addressed as beys; and Ibrahim Pasha, when he occupied Gastuni, was much amused by the tales he heard from the peasantry, who said they had been compelled to fall down on their knees whenever they addressed a word to the medical primate, even in reply to the simplest question.

Many stories were current concerning the manner in which Sesaini had collected his wealth; one may be mentioned, relating to the loss of a part of his ill-gotten riches. Whether true or false, it excited much amusement at Zante. Madame Sessini resided in that island, and acted as her husband’s agent. Before the war of the primates commenced, he wished to place some of his treasure where it would be secure against the Greek government in case of defeat. He wished, however, to do this with great secrecy, for many valuable jewels had been deposited with him by Turkish families who had been obliged to escape in a hurry to Patras at the outbreak of the Revolution. His enemies accused him of intending to declare that these deposits were lost in the civil war. Sessini wrote to inform his wife that he would send the most valuable jewels in his possession to her in a cheese and skin of butter, with peculiar marks. The letter miscarried; and when the cheese and the skin of butter arrived, the lady, having a large supply of both, sold them to a bakal or grocer, who had often purchased previous consignments which she had received from old Sessini. A few days passed before the lost letter arrived. When it reached the lady she hastened to the bakal, but he denied all knowledge of the jewellery. He showed her a cheese with the mark for which she sought untouched, and a skin of butter unopened. The accounts of the customhouse showed that she had only imported cheese and butter. Lawyers and justice could not aid her. The bakal kept the treasure, and the world laughed at Madame Sessini and her rapacious husband. But it was said that the bakal proved himself a better man than the primate, and that he restored a valuable jewel to a Turkish family who had intrusted it to the keeping of Sessini, when that family passed by Zante on its way to Alexandria. The whole story may be the creation of an idle brain, but it deserves notice as a specimen of popular rumour.

Notaras, Deliyannes, and Kolokotrones, all joined the war of the primates, which broke out in November 1824.

Kolettes was at this time the most active member of a Konduriottes’s government. In six weeks he marched an overwhelming force of Romeliot armatoli into the Morea, and crushed the rebels. Had the Greek government displayed similar energy in arraying the forces against the Turks during the years 1823 and 1824, the war might have changed its aspect. Panos Kolokotrones, the eldest son of the old klepht, after plundering the peasants of Arcadia like a brigand, was slain in a trifling skirmish. Old Kolokotrones and Deliyannes were made prisoners, and confined in a monastery at Hydra. Sessini sought safety at Zante; but the English government was determined to discountenance the unprincipled civil broils of the Greeks, and refused him permission to land. He had no resource but to submit to the clemency of the executive body, and join Kolokotrones in prison. Zaimes, Londos, and Niketas fled to Acarnania, where Mavrocordatos allowed them to hide themselves, and where they were protected by Zongas.

Konduriottes and Kolettes used their victory with impolitic barbarity. Their troops plundered innumerable Greek families who had taken no part in the civil war of everything they possessed. The working oxen of the peasantry were carried off, and in many villages the land remained unsown. The sheep and goats having been also devoured by the armatoli, the people were left to starve. The progress of Ibrahim Pasha in the following year was greatly facilitated by the misgovernment of Konduriottes, the barbarity of Kolettes, and the inhuman ravages of the Romeliot troops.

The two civil wars are black spots in the history of the Greek Revolution. No apology can be offered for those who took up arms against the government in either case, but in the second civil war the conduct of the primates was peculiarly blamable. Patriotism had certainly nothing to do with a contest in which Zaimes and Londos were acting in concert with Kolokotrones. Ambition and avidity were the only motives of action. The coalition of the primates and military chiefs was based on a tacit pretension which they entertained of forming a territorial aristocracy in the Korea. The leaders of the rebels knew that the great body of the people were discontented, and eager to constitute a national representation capable of controlling the executive body and enforcing financial responsibility. Zaimes and Kolokotrones attempted to make this patriotism of the people a means of binding them with fresh fetters. Had the primates given a thought to the interests of their country, they would have supported the demands of the people in a legal way, and there can be no doubt that they would have soon secured a majority in the legislative assembly, even as it was then constituted. Their rebellion inaugurated a long period of administrative anarchy, wasted the resources of Greece, and created a new race of tyrants as despotic as, and far meaner than, the hated Turks.

The victors in the civil wars were as corrupt as the vanquished had been rapacious. The members of the executive wasted the proceeds of the loans with dishonesty as well as extravagance; and the anomalous condition to which Greece was reduced by the stupidity of its government, cannot be exhibited in a clearer light than by tracing the way in which the money was consumed.

The first sums which arrived from England in 1824 were absorbed by arrears due on public and private debts. The payments made had no reference to the necessities of the public service, they were determined by the influence of individual members of the government. The greater part of the first loan (was paid over to the shipowners and sailors of what was called the Greek fleet; and the lion’s share was appropriated to the Albanians of Hydra and Spetzas. The civil wars engulfed considerable sums. Romeliot captains and soldiers received large bribes to attack their country­men. No inconsiderable amount was divided among the members of the legislative assembly, and among a large body of useless partisans, who were characterised as public officials. Every man of any consideration in his own imagination wanted to place himself at the head of a band of armed men, and hundreds of civilians paraded the streets of Nauplia with trains of kilted followers, like Scottish chieftains. Phanariots and doctors in medicine, who, in the month of April 1824, were clad in ragged coats, and who lived on scanty rations, threw off that patriotic chrysalis before summer was past, and emerged in all the splendour of brigand life, fluttering about in rich Albanian habiliments, refulgent with brilliant and unused arms, and followed by diminutive pipe-bearers and tall henchmen. The small stature, voluble tongues, turnspit legs, and Hebrew physiognomies of these Byzantine emigrants, excited the contempt, as much as their sudden and superfluous splendour awakened the envy, of the native Hellenes. Nauplia certainly offered a splendid spectacle to anyone who could forget that it was the capital of an impoverished nation struggling through starvation to establish its liberty. The streets were for many months crowded with thousands of gallant young men in picturesque dresses and richly ornamented arms, who ought to have been on the frontiers of Greece.

To the stranger who saw only the fortress of Nauplia filled with troops, Greece appeared to be well prepared to resist the whole force of the Othoman empire. Veteran soldiers and enthusiastic volunteers were numerous. Military commands were distributed with a bountiful hand. Rhodios, the Secretary of State, who had studied medicine, was made colonel of the regular troops. It is needless to say that the appointment soon made them as irregular as any other troops in Greece. Military chiefs were allowed to enrol under their private banners upwards of thirty thousand men, and pay was actually issued for this number of troops from the proceeds of the English loans. But over these troops the Greek government exercised no direct control. No measure was taken even to verify the numbers of the men for whom pay and rations were furnished. Everything was left to the chiefs, who contracted to furnish a certain number of men for a certain amount of pay and a fixed number of daily rations. Amidst this lavish military expenditure, Modon, Coron, Patras, and Lepanto were left almost unwatched, and without any force to keep up a regular blockade.

The illegal gains made by drawing pay and rations for troops who were never mustered, quite as much as the commissions of colonel given to apothecaries, and of captain to grooms and pipe-bearers, demoralised the military forces of Greece. The war with the sultan seemed to be forgotten by the soldiers, who thought only of indulging in the luxury of embroidered dresses and splendid arms. This is the dominant passion of every military class in Turkey, whether Greeks, Albanians, or Turks. The money poured into Greece by the loans suddenly created a demand for Albanian equipments. The bazaars of Tripolitza, Nauplia, Mesolonghi, and Athens were filled with gold-embroidered jackets, gilded yataghans, and silver-mounted pistols. Tailors came flocking to Greece from Joannina and Saloniki. Sabres, pistols, and long guns, richly mounted, were constantly passing through the Ionian Islands as articles of trade between Albania and the Morea. The arms and dress of an ordinary palikari, made in imitation of the garb of the Tosks of Southern  Albania, often cost £50. Those of a chiliarch or a strategos, with the showy trappings for his horse, generally exceeded £300. These sums were obtained from the loans, and were abstracted from the service of the country. The complaint that Greece was in danger of being ruined by this extravagant expenditure was general, yet everybody seemed to do his utmost to increase the evil by spending as much money as possible in idle parade. Strange stories were current at the time concerning the large sums of money which individuals contrived to amass. The Arabs, who took Sphakteria and slew the henchman of Mavrocordatos, were said to have found about £300 in his belt, in English sovereigns and Venetian sequins. This man had been appointed an officer in the Greek army, though he knew nothing of military service, and had only learned to carry a gun, as a municipal guard, when it was his duty to protect the vineyards of Vrachori from the hostilities of the dogs of the Turkish quarter and the invasions of the foxes of the neighbouring hills.

Makrys was for a time the hero of Mesolonghi, and the captain of the neighbouring district, Zygos. He was a brave man, but a lawless, and, consequently, a bad soldier. His early years were passed as a brigand, and he often recounted how he had lived for many days on the unbaked dough he had prepared from pounded Indian-corn. He first gained wealth by participating in the plunder and massacre of the Jews and Turks of Vrachori. The English loans increased his treasures, which the exaggerations of the people of Mesolonghi swelled to a fabulous amount. Yet, with all his wealth, he was in the habit of drawing pay and rations for five hundred men, when he had only fifty under arms.

Amongst the literary Greeks it has been the fashion to talk and write much concerning the patriotic spirit and the extraordinary military exploits of the klephts, as if these robbers had been the champions of Greek liberty. But the truth is, that these men were mere brigands, who, both before the Revolution, during the revolutionary war, and under the government of King Otho, have plundered the Greeks more than they were ever plundered by the Turks.

It is not to be supposed that military anarchy was established without some opposition on the part of many patriotic Greeks. But its opponents were civilians, and men generally without either practical experience or local influence. The treatment which the few who ventured to make any efforts to put some restraint on the frauds and peculations of the military chiefs received at the hands of the soldiery, prevented this kind of patriotism from finding imitators. Before the siege of Mesolonghi by the army of Reshid Pasha, a patriotic commissary made an attempt to force the chiefs in the Greek camp to muster their followers, in order that no more rations might be issued than were really required, as he found that a large sum was expended by the Greek government in transporting provisions to the camp, while the chiefs who received these provisions as rations for their soldiers compelled the peasants to carry them back to Mesolonghi. The soldiers of Makrys, instigated by their leader, declared that to muster troops was an arbitrary and despotic act, and pronounced that the reforming commissary was an enemy to constitutional liberty. The troops resolved that the rights of the military should not be violated by this undue assumption of power on the part of the central government, and they carried their resolution into effect by beating the patriotic commissary, and plundering the public magazine. The unfortunate man was confined to his bed for several days, and, if his patriotism was not diminished, we may be sure that he was more prudent and reserved in exhibiting a virtue which had proved so distasteful to the defenders of his country, and so calamitous to himself. His friends gave him no consolation during his convalescence. They reproached him with not commencing his reforms by cutting off the extra rations which were issued to Katzaro, the captain of the body-guard of Mavrocordatos, who drew fifty rations, and did duty with only seven armed followers; or with General Vlachopulos, who pretended to be the leader of four hundred soldiers, but who was said to be unable to muster more than about eighty. These abuses were universal. Mr Tricoupi informs the world that the veteran Anagnostaras, who fell at Sphakteria, marched against the enemy with only seventeen armed peasants, though he was paid by the Greek government to enrol seven hundred men. Ghoura subsequently drew twelve thousand rations, when he commanded only from three to four thousand men. It is vain for historians and orators to tell us that true patriotism existed in the hearts of men so wanting in common honesty. Men who combine heroism and fraud ought to be praised only in French novels.

The waste of money on the navy was even greater than on the army. Ill-equipped and dull-sailing vessels were hired to take their place in the Greek fleet, because their owners belonged to the faction of Konduriottes and Botasses. Fire-ships were purchased and fitted out at an unnecessary expense, because their proprietors wished to dispose of useless vessels. The great number of fire-ships belonging to the island of Hydra, which were consumed during the years 1824 and 1825 without inflicting any loss on the Turkish fleet, attest the maladministration which took place in this department of the naval service. The sailors, who were spectators of the jobs of the primates and captains, became every month more insolent and disorderly. During one cruise they landed at Santorini, and, not content with carrying off large supplies of grapes and figs, they deliberately plundered the cotton plantations, and sent boat-loads of cotton on board their ships, as if they had conquered a lawful prize in an enemy’s territory.

Yet all these disorders, abuses, waste, and extravagance seem hardly sufficient to explain the rapidity with which the proceeds of the loans disappeared; and indeed it required the assistance of equal extravagance and similar jobbing in London and New York to empty the Greek treasury. But the thing was done quickly and effectually. Early in the year 1826, the government at Nauplia had spent every farthing it could obtain, and made a vain attempt to raise a loan of £800,000 among the Greeks themselves, which was to be immediately repaid from the proceeds of sales of national lands. This property had been pledged only a short time before by the same government to the English bondholders as a security for the second loan. The Greeks, who were better in­formed concerning the proceedings and bad faith of their countrymen than strangers, would not advance a single dollar. The dishonesty of the government, the rapacity of the military, and the indiscipline of the navy, were forerunners of the misfortunes of the nation.

 

 

BOOK FOURTH

THE SUCCESSES OF THE TURKS.

 

CHAPTER XII.

NAVAL SUCCESSES—IBRAHIM IN THE MOREA.