HISTORY OF GREECE UNDER OTHOMAN AND VENETIAN DOMINATION. AD. 1453 — 1821

CHAPTER V.

The Causes and Events which prepared the Greeks for Independence.—a.d. 1718-1821.

 

After the treaty of Passarovitz, the material and political position of the Greek nation began to exhibit many signs of improvement. The cultivators of the soil obtained everywhere the rank of freemen, and emancipated themselves from the peculiar condition, partaking of slavery and serfage, which they had occupied until the complete extinction of the tribute of Christian children. About the same time the increasing importance of money as the representative of the value of all services, as well as of every kind of produce, introduced the system of commuting the personal labour of the rayah, whether it was due to the timariot or to the government, for a determinate portion of the produce of the land, or for a fixed pecuniary payment. The agricultural population of Greece, in consequence of these changes, became, in great part of the country, the legal as well as the real proprietors of the soil; and even where the Christians remained as labourers of land belonging to Mohammedan landlords, instead of working a fixed number of days on the land of the aga, they now hired the land, and paid rent, in deter­minate proportions of produce and money, according to agreement The pashas, also, instead of compelling the people, as formerly, to supply the materials for public works, and to labour in person at their construction, now exacted payment of a sum of money, and employed a contractor to execute the work. As the demoralization of the Othoman government increased, this manner of collecting and paying money became a means of enriching officials and impoverishing the people, while the public works of all kinds throughout the Othoman empire were allowed to fall into ruins. Mussulman landlords also began to find so great a difficulty in obtaining slaves, that slave-labour could no longer be profitably employed in agriculture. Before the end of the seventeenth century, predial slavery had disappeared in the European provinces of the Othoman empire south of the Danube. The Greek peasant was everywhere a free labourer, and began to feel the sentiments of a freeman. No power could now have long enforced the collection of a tribute of Greek children, for the lowest class of the Greek population had ascended so far in civilization, that, by enforcing such a tax, the Othoman government would have condemned the Greeks to apostasy, exile, or extermination. Those who remained true to their religion would either have ceased to perpetuate their race, or would have escaped from their native land, and Hellas would have no longer been the dwelling­place of the Greek race, any more than Palestine is that of the race of Israel. To preserve their national existence, the Greeks would have been compelled to become a people of exiles like the Jews.

The decline of the military system and the corruption of the civil administration in the Othoman empire fortunately coincided with the improvement in the condition of the Greek agricultural population. The conquest of the Morea by the Venetians, and the increasing power of the Christian states whose territories bordered on Turkey, forced the Othoman government to conciliate the good-will of the rayahs, and the sultan’s ministers began to recognize the necessity of granting the Christians a public guarantee for the security of their personal liberty, and for the protection of their property. But the practical concessions of the Porte were tardily granted, and were generally obtained by the force of accidental circumstances and of social changes, rather than by the progress of political intelligence and a sense of justice. They were, consequently, too restricted in their operation to remove many galling marks of subjection, or allay the national opposition which increased communications with western and northern Europe were spreading among the sultan’s Christian subjects. The opinion that the power of the sultan possessed a divine sanction, because he was the protector of the orthodox church, though taught by the Greek clergy, was no longer implicitly admitted by the people. The English Revolution of 1688 caused the people over all Europe to discuss their own rights. Other claims to political authority were recognized as more valid than the legitimacy of princes, and apostolical succession was no longer held to be an indispensable requisite in a teacher of Christianity. The doctrine of the supremacy of parliament invested the people with the right to make its own laws, while the principles of religious liberty flowing from Protestantism emancipated the human mind from ecclesiastical intolerance. In estimating the effect produced on the Greeks by the new doctrines which began to ferment in European society at the commencement of the eighteenth century, we must remember that they were placed in closest contact with those classes of society that had suffered most from feudal oppression and religious bigotry, and that were most inclined to question the authority of existing institutions.

The good intentions of the Porte towards its orthodox subjects were displayed in several measures tending to improve their material condition. The inhabitants of the Morea were exempt from the land-tax for two years after the conquest of that province; and as soon as peace was established, the Porte invited colonists to settle on the lands which still remained uncultivated, by exempting the settlers from taxation for three years.

The island of Chios had always retained the social superiority which it possessed under the prudent administration of the mercantile company of the Giustiniani. Until the peace of Passarovitz, its inhabitants preserved their old system of collecting their land-tax by the local authorities, and annually remitted to the Othoman government a fixed amount of tribute. But, after the peace, the grand-vizier Ibrahim modified this system, and subjected the island to most of the ordinary fiscal arrangements adopted with regard to the other Greek islands. In 1727 the haratch was extended to the twenty-one villages engaged in the cultivation of mastic, and three thousand and thirty-six additional tickets were added to the capitation-tax of Chios. Still the inhabitants were the portion of the Greek people which suffered the fewest evils from the Othoman domination during the eighteenth century. The causes of their happiness and prosperity during a long period, while the rest of their countrymen were poor and discontented, deserve to be examined with attention. The first fact to be observed is, that they were more honest and industrious than the other Greeks. It was their moral and social superiority which enabled them to secure to themselves the enjoyment of the fruits of their industry. Their island, it is true, possesses some remarkable physical advantages. Almost every article it produces is of superior quality, and when exported, obtained the highest price then paid for such commodities in foreign markets. In the town of Chios, and in the rich plain to the south, many remains of well-built houses may still be seen, which bear on their ruined walls dates proving that they were constructed during the eighteenth century, yet they rival in size and solidity the massive structures of the Genoese domination. The mastic, the almonds, the lemons, the preserved citrons, the conserve of roses, and the orange-flower water of Chios, were highly esteemed by the luxurious in every province of the East. The manu­factures of silk and cotton, of which large quantities were exported, as well as several rich varieties of lace, were produced by the labour of private families in their own dwellings, and embroidery of every kind was executed on scarfs and handkerchiefs by the same hands which had already dyed them of the richest colours.

The superior moral character of the Chiots was acknowledged throughout the Levant. They were alike destitute of the insolence and rapacity of the Phanariots, and of the meanness and fraudulency of the trading Greeks of the continent. The marked difference which existed between them and the rest of their countrymen was observed by every traveller and foreign merchant It was generally attributed to the great privileges they possessed. This explanation was suggested by the other Greeks, as an excuse for their own vices and dishonesty, and it was adopted by strangers without sufficient examination. It was said that Suleiman the Great, or rather his son Selim II, after the island had been subjected to the Othoman administration by Piali Pasha in 1566, had granted a charter to the Chiots, by which their previous local usages were confirmed. But this does not appear to have been the case. The supposed charter was nothing more than the toleration of the fiscal system of the Giustiniani, obtained by the payment of an augmented tribute. The true ex­planation of the moral superiority of the Chiots must be sought in their family education. The boasted privileges which they enjoyed from the time of Selim II, and which were so much envied by the other Greeks, were the permission to repair their churches, the right to carry the cross in procession through the town, and to perform many ecclesiastical ceremonies publicly, besides the highly-valued privilege, retained by the wealthy, of riding horses and wearing spurs. Their other privileges were the continuation of the fiscal arrangements established by the Giustiniani, and the election of the magistrates who conducted the local administration. Sultan Selim II. may have confirmed the existing system when he abolished the authority of the Giustiniani, and his successors appear to have frequently issued ordinances, on their accession to the throne, enumerating and guaranteeing these concessions. The oldest of these charters, which was preserved in the archives of the municipality of Chios previous to the Greek Revolution, was that of Suleiman II, the son of Ibrahim, who ascended the Othoman throne in 1687, and his name gave rise to the opinion that the privileges of Chios dated from the time of Suleiman the Great.

The civil advantages conceded to the Chiots applied rather to the city than to the agricultural population of the island: they were chiefly fiscal; and similar concessions were enjoyed by other Greek communities in the islands of the Archipelago, and on the continent of Europe, sometimes even in a higher degree. The following were the most important: The commutation of all taxes for a fixed sum of money, paid to the Othoman authorities by Greek magistrates, who partitioned the quota of each family and collected the amount. The right of electing these magis­trates by universal suffrage, and of electing in the same way native judges to decide all commercial questions. The municipal government of Chios consisted of five primates, of whom three were chosen by the Orthodox, and two by the Catholics; the commercial tribunal consisted of four judges, three of whom were Orthodox and one was a Catholic. But perhaps the practical usage most conducive towards perpetuating the mutual good faith of the Chiots, was the existence of notaries-public, whose acts were written in Greek, and were received as official documents by the Othoman government. The morality of the Chiots was not a consequence of these privileges; on the contrary, it was that morality which gave them their value. Other Greek communities enjoyed equal immunities. The Greeks of Constantinople, Rhodes, and many islands of the Archipelago, were never subjected to the tribute of Christian children; and the inhabitants of Tinos and Naxos were governed by their own laws and usages, like those of Chios, with the additional advantage of not having a body of Mussulman proprietors resident in their islands.

The condition of the people in Tinos and Naxos may be instructively compared with that of the Chiots. In the three islands a part of the inhabitants had joined the Catholic Church, and they had all three been long under Catholic domination. In Tinos, as in Chios, the Catholics were as remarkable for their industry and honesty as the Orthodox, but in Naxos they were distinguished by their idleness. Though the island of Tinos was destitute erf a good port, and far removed from any advantageous market for its produce, and though its inhabitants had been long cut off from many branches of trade with their immediate neighbours by the commercial monopoly of the Venetians, still they were industrious and contented. The soil of Tinos is not fertile, and the population was so great that many young persons of both sexes quitted the island annually to lighten the expenses of their family, and gain a small capital for them­selves by a few years of domestic service at Constantinople, Smyrna, and Saloniki, where their probity insured them liberal wages and kind treatment in the families of wealthy Christians. At home and abroad the Tiniots were remark­able for their good conduct, frugality, and industry.

Naxos offered a complete contrast to Tinos. Though it enjoyed all the advantages of a municipal government, the influence of a small number of privileged landed proprietors, remains of the ducal aristocracy, rendered the local admini­stration a scene of intrigue and dissension. The Catholic nobles were proud and luxurious; the Greek primates malicious and rapacious; the people of both churches lazy, superstitious, and false. This rich island only contained about two-thirds of the population of the smaller and more barren surface of Tinos; and it paid little more than half the amount of taxation to the Othoman government. The superiority of the Tiniots, like that of the Chiots, was evidently caused by the moral education they received in their earliest youth. The superiority was equally remarkable in the Catholic and the Orthodox population, when compared with the general mass of the Greek race.

Chios did not possess all the advantages of Tinos and Naxos, for it contained an Othoman fortress with its garrison, and a considerable Turkish population. The prosperity of Chios, under Othoman domination, must consequently be considered as entirely due to the excellent education the inhabitants received for many generations in the bosoms of their families, and not to any extraordinary fiscal privileges and immunities the island enjoyed, nor to any peculiar favour with which it was treated by the sultans. Had the Chiots displayed the same spirit of envy and dissension, and followed the same course of selfish intrigues as the greater part of the Greeks, their peculiar privileges would only have become an additional incitement to dispute, and would have entailed greater misery on them than the direct operation of Turkish oppression. It was by union in their municipality, and good faith in their private dealings, that the Chiots rendered their ancient usages a blessing to their island, and their fiscal system an advantage to the people, instead of converting them into a means of gratifying the ambition of the wealthy archonts, and of enriching a few primates, as was the case in most other Greek communities. Among the Chiots industry was honoured, and the honest and active citizen, whose personal exertions had gained him the respect of his fellow-countrymen, was selected to conduct the municipal affairs and to fill the local magistracies. Idleness was so universally despised that in Chios alone, of all the Greek cities, there was no class of young archonts who considered it ignoble to be usefully employed, and who spent their time in soliciting from the Turks the post of tax-collectors, or in intriguing to be named primates by the influence of a pasha, in order to obtain the means of enriching themselves by acting as the instruments of fiscal extortion. The superior morality of the Chiots in all the relations of life, their truth and honesty, rendered their island for several centuries the most flourishing and the happiest portion of Greece, alike under the Othoman as under the Genoese domination.

But the Chiots cannot be expected to have been free from the social errors of the age in which they lived. Religious sincerity was then too closely united with bigotry for any Greeks to have learned that toleration was a Christian virtue. In religious bigotry neither the Orthodox nor the Catholics of Chios yielded to other Greeks, and their mutual animosity was repeatedly shown in violent and unjust proceedings towards one another. But the fact that this bigotry was cherished and aggravated by foreign interference must not be overlooked. The Greek clergy were continually alarmed by the attempts of the French ambassador at Constantinople to extend the authority of the Catholics, and to obtain for them a superiority over the Greeks. In the year 1719, the intervention of Count Virmont obtained for the Catholics the restoration of the privileges which they had lost, after the expulsion of the Venetians in 1695. Sultan Achmet III issued a firman, recognizing the rights of the Catholics to participate in the privileges granted to all the inhabitants of the island by the firman of Suleiman II, and reinstating them in the possession of the church of St. Nicholas. This concession was undoubtedly an act of justice; but as it was conceded to the influence of a foreign power, whose object was to obtain indirect authority in the Othoman empire, through the instrumentality of the Catholics, and not to secure toleration for religious opinions, to which it was more decidedly hostile than the Greeks themselves, it was natural for the Orthodox to fear an invasion of their rights as a con­sequence of the success of the Catholics. The religious pre­tensions of the Papal Church, and the ambitious projects of the King of France, warned the Orthodox to prepare for defending themselves against political aggression. In 1724, the French ambassador obtained permission from the Porte to build a new chapel in the consulate at Chios; and under his protection the Catholic missionaries displayed a degree of activity which alarmed the bigotry of the Greeks, and roused their opposition. To counteract the eloquence of the missionaries and the political influence of France, the Greeks in 1728 succeeded in persuading the Othoman government to defend orthodoxy by prohibiting proselytism.

The restless activity of the French ambassadors at Constantinople sought to extend the influence of France by circumscribing the rights of the Greek Church at Jerusalem. The custody of the Sepulchre of Christ, and of the other holy places in and round Jerusalem, has been long a subject of dispute between the Catholics and the Orthodox; and from the time that both have been admitted to a share of this custody, by the toleration of their Mussulman conquerors, these two sects, instead of exercising their respective privileges in a Christian spirit, have made the toleration of the Othomans a ground for intrigues to encroach on each other’s rights. The aggression of the Catholics, being protected by France, was more open and daring than that of the Orthodox, until the Greeks obtained the protection of Russia. At the period of which we are treating, the proceedings of France created a feeling of fierce hostility against the Catholics among the Greeks, even more than among the other orthodox nations, and a contest of intrigue was commenced at the Porte, which tended greatly to lower the Christians in the opinion of the Mussulmans. Several French ambassadors, in order to obtain the credit of establishing a permanent influence in the Levant, induced the Porte to grant con­cessions to the Catholics, which were subsequently neglected, or were again abrogated by other concessions to the Orthodox. The court of France displayed little delicacy, and no sense of justice, in these intrigues. Constantinople, Jerusalem, Chios, Crete, Cyprus, and the islands of the Archipelago, were made the scenes of public tumults as well as of incessant discord At last, after the great diplomatic success which the Othoman government obtained over Austria and Russia, by the treaty of Belgrade, the sultan, to mark his satisfaction with the conduct of the Marquis of Villeneuve, the French ambassador who acted as mediator during the negotiations, inserted articles in the French capitulations, on their renewal in the following year, which were supposed to authorize the Catholics to take possession of several of the Holy Places previously in the custody of the Greeks. These concessions, whatever they were, appear never to have been carried into execution, and the Greeks were subsequently confirmed in their previous rights by more than one firman.

It is needless to observe that religious zeal was not the principal cause of the activity of French diplomacy, and it is evident that pecuniary interest, as well as ecclesiastical authority, urged the Orthodox to maintain rights which were extremely profitable to the church. The Orthodox, however, sincerely believed that the most sacred ties of religion bound them to resist what they deemed to be unjust attacks on their church by the Catholics. The rashness and levity with which French diplomacy has attempted to make the question re­lating to the custody of the Holy Places a criterion of political influence in the Othoman empire at different periods, and the utter neglect, and even contempt, with which it has treated the subject at other times, afford a just measure of the religious zeal of the French government. After treating the subject with scorn for a considerable time, in the year 1850 France thought fit again to open the question. The history of the negotiations which ensued is not more edifying than the record of earlier and equally futile pretensions; but on this occasion Russia, availing herself of the proceedings of France, mingled in the dispute as protector of the Orthodox. New complications were introduced into the discussion concerning the relations between the Porte and its orthodox subjects, and the Emperor Nicholas, deeming the moment favourable for a new encroachment on Turkey, plunged into a bloody war.

The ecclesiastical privileges which Mohammed II granted to the Greek Church, and to the Patriarch as the chief of the Greek nation, enabled the laity gradually to acquire a recognized position in the public administration of the Othoman empire. The importance of ruling their Greek subjects with justice as well as firmness, was felt by the most powerful sultans, and by the ablest grand-viziers; while the complicated fiscal relations of a numerous population widely dispersed, and possessing a monopoly of many necessary branches of industry, induced the Porte to employ Greeks as useful subordinate instruments in the fiscal administration. Soon after the conquest, Greek archonts and primates were employed by the Turks as collectors of the land-tax, and as custom-house officers. At length, during the seventeenth century, the increased importance of the diplomatic relations of the Porte with the Christian powers opened a new political career to the Greeks, and gave rise to the formation of a class of officials in the Othoman service called Phanariots, from their making the quarter of Constantinople around the Patriarchate, called the Phanar, their place of residence. The higher clergy and wealthy Greek primates had long dwelt in this quarter, in order to enjoy security under protection of the immunities granted to the Patriarch. The wealthiest and most influential Greeks generally acted as fiscal-agents of the church, as well as tax-gatherers for the Porte.

Before the administration of the celebrated grand-vizier Achmet Kueprili, the Greek officials employed as secretaries in the Othoman service were ranked as little better than literary menials. But after the conquest of Candia, Achmet conferred on his secretary, the Chiot Panayotaki, an official rank in the Othoman administration, by creating for him the post of Dragoman of the Porte. Panayotaki’s devotion to the grand-vizier, and his fidelity to the interests of the sultan, enabled him to render his place one of great political influence. The Porte subsequently created a second officer of a similar nature, attached to the capitan-pasha, called the Dragoman of the Fleet, who exercised direct authority over the Greeks employed in the naval service, and great influence in the islands and continental districts where the taxes were farmed under the capitan-pasha. The existence of these two offices laid the foundation of the power of the Phanariots in the Othoman empire.

The successor of Panayotaki was Alexander Mavrocordatos, also a Chiot. He distinguished himself by his able conduct during the conferences preceding the treaty of Carlovitz, and thereby added much to the influence of his office. These two Chiots gained the confidence of the grand-viziers they served by displaying more truth and honesty than the Othoman ministers had ever found in the false and intriguing Greek officials who were educated under the immediate influence of the patriarchate in the Phanar. The moral superiority, imbibed from the family education of Chios, did more to gain a political position for the Greeks in the Othoman administration than the learning of the Byzantine archonts and the privileges of the orthodox clergy. The servility and acuteness of the Constantinopolitans could not gain the authority readily conceded to the truth and fidelity of the Chiots.

The office of Dragoman of the Fleet became the first step towards obtaining the highest offices granted to Christians. His duty was to act as secretary to the capitan-pasha, and to see that the tribute of the Greek islands was regularly paid. His favour, and the extent of his political influence, depended on his activity and ability in obtaining large presents and illegitimate profits for the capitan-pasha, and in enforcing the regular payments due to the imperial treasury. His own interest, and even his personal security, made him the oppressor of the Christians, whom he might secretly wish to protect. Unless he accumulated money for himself, he could never hope to purchase the dignity of Voivode of Vallachia or Moldavia, where he could feel a greater degree of security. His power as agent of the capitan-pasha was almost absolute. His accusation was alone sufficient to send any Greek to the galleys without trial. Such power has never been possessed by a slave without being abused.

The extension of the power of Greek officials in the Othoman administration was attended with both good and bad consequences to the nation. The desire of literary instruction became more general, the sphere of Greek ideas was enlarged, and the bigotry cherished by the exclusive power of the higher clergy was diminished. But, on the other hand, the great profits gained by the illegal exercise of the power intrusted to the higher Greek officials increased the corruption of the class, and made the name of Phanariot a byword for the basest servility, corruption, and rapacity. A numerous body of Greeks became interested in supporting the Othoman domination, since, by acting as the instruments of Turkish oppression, they could live luxuriously and accumulate wealth.

In the year 1716 a new career of wealth, influence, and power was opened to the Phanariots. The Porte, in order to strengthen its authority in Vallachia, when it was about to commence war with Austria, determined to subject the native population to the domination of Greek officials, who were found to be servile instruments of Turkish tyranny. Nicolas Mavrocordatos, the eldest son of Alexander the dragoman, was appointed the first Phanariot voivode of Vallachia. He had already filled the office of voivode of Moldavia, to which he had been appointed in 1709. The government of Phanariot voivodes, or fiscal-agents of the Porte, in these two principalities, dates from this period. Like the Phanariot influence in the Othoman administration at Constantinople, it was founded by a Chiot family. Two sons of Alexander Mavrocordatos, Nicolas and John, and a grandson, Constantine, held at different times the offices of dragoman of the Porte, of voivode of Moldavia, and of voivode of Vallachia. The Greeks gained no honour and little permanent advantage by their power in the Transdanubian provinces. Their administration was more corrupt and oppressive than that of the Turks in the adjoining pashaliks. The Phanariots' intent only on accumulating money and enjoying their power rendered the native inhabitants of the Principalities the most wretched portion of the sultan’s subjects. No other Christian race in the Othoman dominions was exposed to such unmitigated extortion and cruelty. The Othoman Turks were better masters to the various races they conquered, than the Phanariot Greeks to the fellow-Christians committed to their care and protection. A detailed examination of the vices of the Greek administration in Vallachia and Moldavia does not lie within the sphere of this work; but it would form an important object of inquiry in any complete history of the political condition of the Greek race.

A considerable portion of the Greek population was drawn within the corrupting influence of official employments under the Turks. In this career, fraud and violence were short paths to wealth, and wealth generally secured impunity for crime. The four great Phanariot offices were those of Dragoman of the Fleet, Dragoman of the Porte, Voivode of Moldavia, and Voivode of Vallachia. Each of these officers was surrounded by a crowd of minor officials, who looked to him for protection and promotion. Many offices which insured large profits were always at their disposal. They appointed their dependents collectors of taxes, farmers of public revenues, fisheries, and salt-works, and secured to them the profits of many local monopolies and government con­tracts. To such an extent had the corruption nourished by this system proceeded, that, in the earliest years of the nineteenth century, the sums extorted by Phanariot officials from the Greek population illegally, were supposed to equal the whole haratch paid by the inhabitants of Greece. The profits of this iniquitous service invited the Greeks, from the most distant provinces, to enter the households of the leading Phanariots, who became virtually princes of the nation; for even their domestics might look forward to attaining the very highest honours conferred on Christians. In a government where purchased slaves were habitually elevated to the rank of grand-vizier, a Greek pipe-bearer, or household doctor, might, without presumption, aspire to become Bey of Vallachia. The Phanariot instruments of the Othoman administration extended their influence over all Greece, and connected the interests of a numerous class with their own, which was identified with the Turkish domination. Political feelings, hostile to Greek independence, and to all sympathy with the Christian powers of Europe, were thus created in a numerous class of civilians at the time when the ecclesiastical authority, which had previously propagated these dispositions, began to decline. This Greek official aristocracy, accidentally formed by the carelessness of the Turks, was quite as anti-national in its policy as the ecclesiastical hierarchy established by Mohammed II. While the Greeks continued to be dependent on the patriarchate in all matters relating to their ecclesiastical and religious rights, everything connected with the civil and fiscal administration was addressed either to the Dragoman of the Porte, or to the Dragoman of the Fleet: the first acting as a general secretary of state, and the second being especially charged with the business of the navy and the Greek islanders.

Though the influence of the Phanariots is acknowledged to have exercised a demoralizing effect on the character of the Greek nation, some persons have considered that the nation was fully indemnified for this evil by the impulse which it gave to education. They appear strangely to undervalue morality, and extravagantly to over-estimate the advantages of knowledge. Some degree of literary instruction was necessary to enable the dependents of a great Phanariot official to attain many offices in his gift The desire of learning was consequently extended among the people, but, unfortunately, the very object for which it was sought prevented its producing any moral improvement on the national character. Fortunately for the Greeks, other contemporary causes tended also to disseminate education from a purer source, and by revealing to the people some idea of the vicious nature of the society by which they were governed, whether Christian or Mohammedan, awakened a conviction that, until the national independence was established, no permanent improvement could be effected in the moral condition of the people.

The misfortunes which attended the wars of Sultan Achmet III against Austria and Persia, and the additional weight of taxation caused by the disorder that pervaded every branch of the administration during his reign, produced at last an insurrection of the janissaries and populace of Constantinople. The great successes over Russia and Venice, which had marked the early years of Achmet’s reign, were forgotten, and in the year 1730 he was compelled to cede the throne to his nephew, Mahmoud I. This revolution modified in some degree the government of the empire. The influence of the officers of the sultan’s household on the public administration became more direct, and was more openly exercised. The power of the grand-vizier was controlled by the authority of the Kislar-aga (chief of the black eunuchs). The decisions of experienced statesmen, and the guidance of traditional maxims of policy which moderated the action of arbitrary power, were set aside by the rash ignorance of slaves, whose secluded position deprived them of patriotic feelings, and whose nature and occupation rendered them insensible even to the ordinary sympathies of mankind. This change was not disadvantageous to the Christian subjects of the sultan. The Phanariots and the clergy found it easier to purchase the support of a menial in the serai than to gain the esteem of a pasha.

In the year 1739 the successes of the grand-vizier against Austria enabled the Porte to conclude the treaty of Belgrade, which restored that frontier fortress to the sultan. A treaty concluded with Russia at the same time obliged the Empress Anne to restore Chozim and destroy the fortifications of Azof. These treaties, concluded under the mediation of France, were followed by fiscal arrangements in Vallachia, established by Constantine Mavrocordatos, which greatly increased the influence of the Phanariots in Vallachia and Moldavia, added to the number of Greek officials in these provinces, and prepared the way for the corrupt influence of Russian diplomacy on the Greek population. From this period the court of St. Petersburg began to make use of Greek agents for thwarting the Othoman administration, and undermining the sultan’s power, in every province of his empire inhabited by the orthodox.

As early as the reign of Peter the Great, the statesmen of Russia employed the religious prejudices of the Greeks as a means of creating a political attachment to the Czar. The disastrous campaign of Peter on the Pruth checked for a time the extension of Russian influence; but the government of the empresses Anne and Elizabeth employed agents in various parts of European Turkey to prepare the Christians for taking up arms, should the court of St. Petersburg con­sider it advisable to carry into execution the plan of attack on the Othoman empire, which Marshal Munich recommended before the conclusion of the treaty of Belgrade, and to which he subsequently directed the attention of the Empress Catherine II.

The vanity and ambition of Catherine II, the hope of conquering Constantinople, and the wish to gratify her lover Gregory Orloff, who expected to gain a principality for himself in ancient Hellas, all operated to revive the projects of Russia in favour of a Greek insurrection. Agents were employed to examine the resources of the country, and to prepare the Greeks for acting in subserviency to the policy of the court of St. Petersbuig. Unfortunately for Greece, the intrigues of Catherine II, and the wild enthusiasm of a few adventurers, involved the nation in a course of conduct which has too often diverted it from the steady pursuit of its own advancement. The extension of the local privileges of the people, the development of a system of moral as well as literary education, and the improvement of agriculture and commerce, were neglected in order to pursue schemes of visionary sovereignty, which were to be attained by the conquests and to depend on the generosity of Russia. Much capital was diverted from profitable employment, many active citizens were turned away from occupations of honest industry, the attention of the provincial Greeks was distracted from the local spheres of action in which they were beginning to control the power of the Othoman administration, and an artificial national ambition was fostered with objects so vague, that it could only act as subservient to the more definite plans of Russian policy.

The intrigues of Russia, which have inflicted many misfortunes on the Greeks, were actively commenced in 1764. Chandler, who visited Greece in 1767, heard the people frequently talk of their approaching deliverance from the Othoman domination through the assistance they were to receive from Russia.

In order to render a successful revolution of the orthodox subjects of the sultan subservient to her project of transferring their allegiance to herself, Catherine II sent a large naval force to the Mediterranean. Her agents prepared the maritime population to take up arms when this fleet should appear in the Levant. The inhabitants of Montenegro, a Sclavonian tribe to the north of Albania, did not wait even for this support. A Greek captain of artillery in the Russian service, named Papasoglou, was sent by Gregory Orloff to establish relations with Maina in 1766. One of his agents, a young monk named Stephen, soon acted a conspicuous part in Montenegro, where he obtained extraordinary influence by his eloquence and enthusiastic demeanour, and contrived that a vague and mysterious report should be spread, which designated him as Peter III, the murdered husband of Catherine II. In consequence of his exhortations and promises, the Montenegrins took up arms against the Turks in 1767, but before any support arrived from Russia, they were assailed by the forces of all the neighbouring pashas, and the insurrection was suppressed. The monk Stephen, laying aside his imperial pretensions, succeeded in making his escape on board a Russian ship, which arrived too late to assist the insurrection.

The visit of Papasoglou to Maina had been productive of mutual promises only, for the Mainates had little to gain by taking up arms, unless Russia would pay them, or assist them to plunder the rest of the Morea. At Kalamata he had more success. He there drew into his plans Benaki, the richest Greek in the Morea, an influential kodja bashi or primate, who was habitually consulted by the pasha, and generally respected by the Mohammedans. Benaki also possessed considerable influence in Maina, from being one of the largest purchasers and exporters of its produce. Moved by ambitious hopes, and ignorant of the relative military power of the nations interested in the fate of the Othoman empire, his patriotism made him the dupe of his vanity. He persuaded himself that a primate of Messenia was a man of importance in the scale of nations. Through his influence several Greek primates were induced to form a conspiracy to aid the projects of Russia, and they were persuaded to sign, and place in the hands of Papasoglou, an engagement that, as soon as the Russian forces appeared in the Morea, they would call to arms one hundred thousand Greeks. The value of this engagement was magnified by Papasoglou in his communications to the cabinet of St. Petersburg, and active preparations were made for supporting the insurrection in Greece. Alexis Orloff, his brother Feodor, and Tamara, a young officer from the Ukraine, who had increased the Philhellenic enthusiasm he had imbibed with a classical education by a tour in Greece, were sent to Italy to direct the conspiracy, and prepare for the arrival of the Russian forces. Maruzzi, a Greek banker of Venice, was made a marquis, and intrusted with the monetary transactions in the Adriatic and Greece. The hopes of Catherine II rose so high in 1768, that even Voltaire contemplated the pro­bability of Constantinople soon becoming the capital of the Russian empire.

The Porte was aware of the rebellious disposition of its Greek subjects; nor was it entirely ignorant of the intrigues of Russia, though it obtained no knowledge of the conspiracy of Benaki. With its usual carelessness it neglected to take any precautions; partly from its contempt for the cowardice of the Greeks, and partly from a conviction that it was impossible for Russia to send any force from the Baltic into the Mediterranean. The Venetian senate understood the danger better; and when the Orloffs withdrew the veil from the Russian schemes, the republic recommended them to remove their residence from Venice, as the republic was determined to preserve its neutrality. Nothing but the insolence which characterized the intercourse of the Othoman government with Christian powers prevented it from obtaining proofs of the complicity of Russian agents in exciting the Greeks to rebellion, and even when its suspicions were awakened, it long allowed itself to be deceived by the assurances of the Russian court that the empress desired to maintain peace. But when the Russian armies openly violated the engagements contracted by the treaties of the Pruth and of Belgrade, the sultan perceived that the peace did not prevent the czarina from making conquests in Poland. The sultan declared war with Russia to defend the integrity of Poland; but the Christian population of his dominions felt that the question really at issue was the integrity of the Othoman empire.

The commencement of this war affords an example of the imprudence with which European diplomatists compromised their official character, and the political interests of' nations intrusted to their care, in order to indulge the prurient curiosity which is a common vice of their profession. The sandjak-sherif, or sacred standard of Mahomet, was unfolded at Constantinople on the 27th of March 1769. When this banner is displayed, the Mussulmans deem it unholy for a Christian to gaze on it; but the Austrian internuncio, Brognard, thinking that his impertinent curiosity would be protected by his diplomatic character, resolved to gratify it by a sight of this sacred banner of Islam. To effect his object, he placed himself, accompanied by his wife, four daughters, his secretaries, and interpreters, in a house which overlooked the line of the procession as it passed to the Top-Kapousi, by which the Othomans had stormed Constantinople. From this house the party was driven by the Imam of the quarter, but persisting in its object with Teutonic obstinacy, it retired into the house of an Armenian in the neighbourhood, hoping to secure a view of the procession by creeping from thence into a barber’s shop which overlooked the public street. The Turks watched the proceedings of the Austrians, for they were determined to prevent any Christian from seeing the sandjak-sherif unless flying in their face on the field of battle, and when the cry arose that the holy standard approached, their enthusiasm was inflamed with indignation. Superstition led many to fear that the Christians might use enchantments which would cause the defeat of the Othoman armies, and their bigotry persuaded them that it was a duty to punish the insolence and malice of the infidels. The tumult was commenced by the Turkish women, who had assembled in great numbers to see the procession pass. The populace of the quarter needed little excitement. The doors of the barber’s shop were burst open, the minister and his secretaries severely beaten, the veils and scarfs were torn from the necks of his wife and daughters, and the party, after being robbed of their jewels and gold lace, were allowed to escape with their clothes hanging about them in rags. All the shops belonging to Christians in the same street were broken open and plundered. The Othoman police had some difficulty in saving the inquisitive diplomatist from death, and his wife and children from being turned into the street without clothes. The internuncio informed the court of Vienna that one hundred and fifty innocent persons were killed, and one thousand wounded, in consequence of his foolish conduct; but his misplaced vanity is said to have exaggerated the results of his imprudence.

The first division of the Russian fleet under Spiritoff, a brave officer, but without much naval experience, arrived in the Mediterranean towards the end of 1769, and passed the winter at Port Mahon refitting and embarking stores and provisions. Early in 1770 one squadron of the fleet visited Leghorn, to embark a number of sailors collected by the Orloffs and their agents; while another, under the command of Feodor Orloff, having been refused entrance into the port of Malta, sailed on to Greece. This division, consisting of three ships of the line and two frigates, with five hundred troops on board, anchored at Port Vitylo in Maina. The Mainates, who expected to see ten thousand Russians open the campaign, were disconcerted on seeing the small corps which was disembarked to commence an invasion of the Othoman empire. The defective armament of the large ships, the absence of small vessels, the want of all means of transport, and the neglect to bring a supply of field artillery and ammunition proper for the wants of a Greek army, discouraged the Mainates so much that they displayed a decided aversion to take up arms. But a sum of money judiciously divided among the chiefs, the hopes of obtaining plunder in the rich plains of Messenia and Laconia, the distribution of a small supply of arms and ammunition to volunteers, the confidence that they could defend their mountains against the Turks whatever might happen, and the assurance that Alexis Orloff would soon arrive with a powerful fleet and numerous army, at last induced a body of Mainates to join the Russians, on condition that Feodor, following the example of Morosini, should immediately lay siege to Coron, which was not prepared to offer a long resistance.

The first acts of the Russians in Greece awakened feelings of distrust. Feodor Orloff would only subsidize and arm those who swore allegiance to the Empress of Russia and engaged to become subjects of Catherine II. The Greeks, who aspired at forming an independent state, perceived that even a successful insurrection would only make them the slaves of the czarina, instead of the rayahs of the sultan; and they knew that materially they would be no gainers by the change. The Othoman yoke was not so universally galling as to cause a revolution, and national feelings had not yet prepared the Greeks to make great sacrifices in the cause of liberty, so that those classes who took up arms were moved generally by local animosities or personal views. In Crete the Sphakiots flew to arms, and sent a body of men to Maina. Some recruits also joined Feodor from the Ionian Islands, but his army remained insignificant in number in spite of all his exertions and promises. The unarmed Moreots were overwhelmed with terror when they compared the force of the Russians with that which they knew the Turks were preparing to pour into the peninsula. Benaki crept secretly to the Russian camp, and when he had seen the force on which he was to rely for expelling the Turks from the Morea, returned to Kalamata in despair, and attempted to conceal the part he had taken in the conspiracy, at least until the arrival of the main body of the fleet.

The Russians had counted on the assistance of a Greek army, but they found some difficulty in collecting three thousand men. These recruits were divided into two legions. The command of the eastern or Spartan legion was conferred on Antonios Psaros, a young supercargo of Mykone, who showed some military aptitude. He marched to Passava, which he found deserted, plundered the Mussulman district of Bardunia, and took possession of Misithra, where the Mainates massacred numbers of the Turkish population, and plundered a part of the town, without respecting the houses of the Christians. Psaros succeeded with difficulty in establishing order; he protected the Mussulmans, and formed what he called a Spartan Senate, composed of the bishop and the primates, which acted as a governing commission. The legion was increased by enrolling three thousand La­conians, to whom he promised regular pay, and among whom he attempted to introduce regular discipline. A chosen body was clad in Russian uniforms, which had been brought to make the Turks believe that a Russian force had already arrived in the Morea.

The western or Messenian legion, under the command of Prince Dolgoruki, marched into Kalamata without opposition, and ravaged the property of the Turks in the plain of Messenia. All the Mohammedans who fell into the hands of the Greeks were put to death, and Dolgoruki advanced to the town of Arkadia, which was surrendered by the Turks, and made the head-quarters of this legion.

In the meantime Feodor Orloff, with his four hundred Russian troops and a motley army of Mainates, Sphakiots, Ionians, Montenegrins, and Sclavonians, besieged Coron. His operations offer a discreditable contrast with the exploits of the Venetians; but he was not a Morosini. The batteries were ill-constructed and inefficient. The fleet was anchored too far off to aid the attack, and the Othoman garrison, though consisting of only four hundred men, soon perceived that they could watch the proceedings of their besiegers and wait for succours without alarm. Two months were wasted in futile operations. Dissensions broke out between the Rus­sians and the Greeks. Feodor accused Mavromichalis, the leading Mainate chief, who had entered into the pay of Russia, of want of courage; Mavromichalis replied, by ridi­culing the pretensions of Feodor as a general, and exposing his ignorance of the art of war. Alexis Orloff arrived towards the end of April, and finding that his brother had made no progress in the siege, deemed it advisable to abandon this first enterprise of the Russians in Greece, and concentrate his forces at Navarin, which had capitulated to a Russian force under General Hannibal.

The war, so far, had only been remarkable for the inca­pacity with which the Russian officers had acted. Bands of armed Greeks from the Venetian islands had landed in the Morea, where their conduct had been that of robbers, not soldiers. Defenceless Turks had been murdered, villages had been plundered, but no battle had been fought. The first success obtained by the Greeks alone was at Mesolonghi, and it was not stained by any act of cruelty. A report reached the inhabitants that Coron had capitulated to the Russians. They immediately flew to arms, and the primates ordered the few Turks who resided in the place to retire to Patras. They then took possession of the small insular town of Anatolikon, and sent a deputation to Feodor Orloff, to place themselves under the protection of Russia, and request assistance. Feodor neglected their solicitations. In the mean time a band of Dulcigniot corsairs, hastening to the assistance of Patras, and observing the defenceless condition of Mesolonghi, attacked the place, massacred a part of the inhabitants after a desperate resistance, regained possession of both Mesolonghi and Anatolikon, and entered Patras in triumph. The greater part of the Mesolonghiots had embarked their families in small vessels, with which they escaped to the Venetian islands.

The operations of Alexis Orloff were planned on a more extensive scale than those of Feodor, but they were not carried into execution with greater vigour. He published a proclamation, calling upon the Greeks to take up arms in defence of their liberty and religion, yet he treated those only as friends who would swear allegiance to Russia; and he showed so much indifference to truth in his conduct, and so little humanity and judgment in performing his duty as a general, that he gained few friends. Prince Dolgoruki was ordered to besiege Modon, Psaros to march on Tripolitza, and a third corps was pushed forward from Messenia by Leondari, to join Psaros in the great Arcadian plain. The junction being effected, Psaros found himself at the head of an army of fifteen thousand men, and a single battle was expected to give the Russians possession of the centre of the Morea.

The Othoman government had been more active than the Russian generals, and the measures adopted for de­fending the Morea were better concerted than those for its conquest. The native Mussulmans were ordered to retreat on Tripolitza, where they formed, when united, a strong body of cavalry, which commanded all the communications. The vizier of the Morea was Mehemet Emin, who had been deprived of the office of grand-vizier for advising Sultan Mustapha to avoid war with Russia. He was now eager to prove that his wisdom in counsel did not diminish his energy in action; but as he was not a soldier, he could only direct the plan of operations, the execution of which he was compelled to intrust to others. He established his head-quarters at Nauplia, in order to facilitate the transmission of military stores to the interior of his province, and to hasten the arrival of succours, particularly of a powerful body of Albanians, which was rapidly advancing towards the Isthmus of Corinth, and for which he took care to prepare provisions at every station of their march, that they might reach Tripolitza without delay. On the western coast the corsairs of the Adriatic were ordered to transport troops from Albania direct to Patras, and then to cruise off the Ionian Islands to prevent the Russians receiving supplies from the Greeks under the Venetian flag. The tardy proceedings of the Orloffs allowed the vizier to complete all his arrangements before he was attacked. The vanguard of the Albanians, six thousand strong, entered Tripolitza about the time Psaros concentrated the Russo-Greek army to attack the place. He had lost much time in transporting across the mountains a few pieces of artillery, and the ammunition required to breach the feeble wall round Tripolitza. The whole force under his command was said to amount to fifteen thousand men; but it was dispersed over much ground, from the difficulty of supplying it with provisions. The greater part consisted of half-armed peasantry, and the only force on which any reliance could be placed in battle was a corps of four hundred Russians, and about four thousand Greek irregulars and half-disciplined recruits. The Albanians, supported by the native cavalry of the province, attacked his army as soon as it encamped. The Greeks offered little resistance: the greater part fled when they saw the Albanians rushing forward in spite of the first volley of musketry. The Russians alone defended themselves valiantly, and perished almost to a man in their ranks. Three thousand Greeks were slain in the pursuit, and the day after the battle the metropolitan of Tripolitza and several bishops, who had entered into correspondence with the Russians, were hanged by order of the pasha.

Another corps of Albanians advanced from the Isthmus of Corinth along the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, to relieve Patras from the attacks of the Ionian Greeks who had besieged it; but the enemy had been dispersed by the Dulcigniots before the arrival of the Albanians. Fresh reinforcements soon joined the main army at Tripolitza, which then advanced in two divisions. One descended into the plain of Laconia, retook Misithra, and drove Psaros and the relics of his army beyond Gytheion into the fastnesses of Taygetus. The other marched into the plain of Messenia, drove the Mainates back into their mountains, defeated the Russians before Modon, and cap­tured all their siege artillery and stores. The successes of the Albanians were marked by the greatest cruelty: the country was ravaged, the people massacred without mercy, often merely to find a pretext for carrying off the young women and children to be sold as slaves. The pasha of the Morea endeavoured in vain to put a stop to these atrocities. He proclaimed an amnesty; and, as far as his power extended, his humanity restored order and confidence; but the Albanian irregular bands remained for some years masters and tyrants of the greater part of the peninsula.

Towards the end of May another Russian squadron, under Admiral Elphinstone, an excellent naval officer, but a man of a violent character, arrived at Port Vitylo, where he landed six hundred troops to support Psaros. The news of the appearance of a Turkish fleet in the Archipelago, carrying supplies to Nauplia, made Elphinstone put to sea immediately, in order to thwart the operations of the Otho- man squadron that might enter the Gulf of Nauplia, or engage any ships separated from the main body of the capitan-pasha’s fleet. He despatched a courier to Alexis Orloff, as high admiral, informing him of his movements, and requesting his support. Orloff, despairing of any success by land after the recent disasters of his troops, abandoned Navarin with precipitation, and, embarking only Papasoglou, Benaki, and the bishops of Coron, Modon, and Kalamata, with a few primates of wealth, sailed away to join Elphinstone, leaving all the other Greeks who had taken up arms for the cause of Russia, and sworn allegiance to the Empress Catherine II., to procure the means of escape from others. In vain the Greeks, and their friends among the Russian officers of rank, urged Orloff to allow a small garrison to retain possession of Navarin until the issue of the expected naval engagement should be known. They pointed out that the island of Sphakteria was covered with refugees, that more than ten thousand Greeks of all ages were assembled round the walls of Navarin, that the fortress was strong enough to resist the attack of the Albanians for some months, and that the command of the port would enable the Greeks to distract the attention of the Turks, and keep up a mountain warfare, by furnishing supplies of provisions and ammunition to armed bands on every inaccessible mountain near the coast Alexis Orloff was deaf to entreaties and advice.

The Othoman fleet was commanded by Hosameddin, the grandson of Djanum Pasha, a man destitute of courage as well as of naval knowledge. On quitting the Dar­danelles, he sailed with ten line-of-battle ships to land reinforcements and stores at Nauplia. The vanguard of this squadron was led by Hassan the Algerine, and it encountered the squadron of Elphinstone at the entrance of the Gulf of Argolis. After some desultory fighting, which enabled the capitan-pasha to enter the gulf without loss, the whole Othoman fleet anchored under the cannon of Nauplia. Elphinstone was anxious to attack them in this position, but the Russian captains refused to engage in so desperate an enterprise before effecting a junction with Alexis Orloff, who was commander-in-chief. Elphinstone, therefore, returned to seek Orloff; but meeting four line-of-battle ships and a frigate under Spiritoff, it was determined to pursue the capitan-pasha, who had also quitted the Gulf of Argolis. Feodor Orloff persuaded Spiritoff to allow Elphinstone to retain the command of the united squadrons. The capitan-pasha was overtaken in the channel of Hydra; but the Russian captains paid so little attention to the admiral’s signals, that the Othoman fleet had no difficulty in avoiding an engagement.

On the 23rd of June 1770, Alexis Orloff and Admiral Greig joined Elphinstone, and Spiritoff was ordered to act as admiral of the fleet under Orloff. The capitan-pasha had selected the Bay of Tchesmé, in the Channel of Chios, as the position in which to await the attack of the Russians. His fleet consisted of fourteen sail of the line and several frigates, and was anchored in the form of a crescent, with one horn defended by rocks and shallows, and the other by the mainland. The capitan-pasha, and perhaps most of his captains, were too ignorant of naval tactics to perceive the great disadvantage of rendering his superior force stationary, and exposing its parts to be overwhelmed by a smaller movable force. Hassan the Algerine, the ablest officer in the Othoman fleet, who acted as flag-captain of the capitan-pasha’s ship, endeavoured in vain to point out the disadvantages of the position. His representations succeeded only in convincing Hosameddin that it would be safer for himself to land and issue his commands from a place of perfect security. He therefore went on shore, under the pretext of completing a battery, and remained there, leaving each captain to defend his own ship. The Russian fleet consisted of ten line-of-battle ships and five frigates; but one of the large ships had only her main-deck guns on board, and was therefore called a frigate. The battle was fought on the 7th of July 1770. Spiritoff led the vanguard; Alexis Orloff, in Greig’s ship, occupied the centre; and Elphinstone, in consequence of the jealousy of Orloff, was placed in the rear. About noon the engagement commenced. Spiritoff bore down on the ship bearing the capitan-pasha’s flag, which Hassan commanded; but as he was exposed to the fire of several ships during his advance, he lost nearly one hundred men, killed and wounded, before he could close with his enemy and open his own fire. His losses were replaced by boats from the other ships. When he was within musket-shot of his opponent, he poured his first broadside into the hull of the capitan-pasha, which was promptly returned. The firing of both ships was kept up with vigour, and the loss in both was great. At last a ball from a very large Turkish gun carried away the rudder of Spiritoff’s ship, and rendered it unmanageable. As he neglected dropping his anchor, he drifted close to his enemy and the Turks immediately rushed, sword in hand, on his deck. To repulse this attack of the Turkish boarders, the Russians made use of hand-grenades, threw combustibles into the enemy’s ship, and sent a party of marines to board it from the yards. The decks of both ships became the scene of pitched battles, and fresh combatants hastened from the other ships to aid both parties. Hassan, seeing that the riflemen in the tops of the Russian were thinning his men, ordered the sails, which the Russians had left hanging loosely from the yards, to be set on fire. In a moment the whole rigging was in flames, and before the Turks could cut their cable, their own ship took fire. Spiritoff, Feodor Orloff, and the Russian officers abandoned their ship, but Hassan suspended the combat to get all his boats afloat and save his crew. The two ships soon separated ; but both being driven into the line of the Othoman fleet, the Turkish captains cut their cables, one after another, and the line-of-battle ships crowded into the narrow harbour of Tchesmé, where their position rendered them defenceless. The blazing ships blew up. The gallant Hassan plunged into the sea, and, though severely wounded, succeeded in swimming until he was taken up by one of his boats. His first care was to send a message to the capitan-pasha, recommending him to seize the moment for ordering the fleet out to sea before the Russians could attack it in its defenceless position, where its guns were useless. Hosameddin was such a coward that he feared to embark, and as he did not venture to send the fleet to sea while he remained on shore himself, he pretended to believe that the ships were sufficiently protected by the batteries of Tchesmé.  

The Russian admirals immediately held a council of war, to decide on the manner in which they should attack the Turkish ships, and it was resolved to burn them before they could change their position. Three fireships were prepared without loss of time, and, shortly after midnight, everything being ready, several Russian line-of-battle ships stood in towards the port, and opened a heavy cannonade, under the cover of which the three polaccas fitted out as fireships were steered into the midst of the Turkish fleet. Two of the fireships were commanded by English officers, Dugdale and Mackenzie; the third was under the command of a Russian. The crews consisted chiefly of Greek and Sclavonian sailors. Dugdale, who led the way, was deserted by his crew, but he carried his ship alongside the enemy, fired the train himself, and then jumped into the sea and swam to the boat of one of the other ships. Mackenzie and the Russian were well supported, and the attack was completely successful. The three fireships drove into the midst of the enemy’s fleet, and the whole harbour was soon enveloped in flames. The Turkish line-of-battle ships blew up, one after another; and when the fire ceased, one only remained afloat. This was captured, and Alexis Orloff conferred the command of it on Dugdale, as a reward for his distinguished valour. Tchesmé was abandoned by the Turks and occupied by the Russians. The fugitives spread the news of the destruction of the fleet in every direction; and the Russians were expected to make their appearance before Constantinople. At Smyrna the Mussulmans, seized with frenzy, murdered all the Greeks they met in the streets. At Constantinople the foreign ministers were in danger; and perhaps the plague, which raged at the time with extraordinary violence, alone moderated the fury of the populace.

After the destruction of the Othoman fleet, Elphinstone urged Alexis Orloff to sail immediately to the Dardanelles, force the entrance, and either dictate terms of peace at Constantinople, or lay the capital of the Othoman empire in ashes. Orloff was incapable and selfish. He feared that Elphinstone would reap all the glory of an exploit which he felt that he could not himself direct; and, as a plausible reason for re­jecting so great an enterprise, he declared that his instructions directed him to support the Greeks, but did not warrant his venturing to treat for peace, consequently he did not feel himself authorized to risk the destruction of the fleet of the empress merely to have a chance of setting fire to Constantinople. Ten days were wasted in vain debates. The projects of attacking Chios and Smyrna were rejected; and at last it was determined to occupy Lemnos, as a station from which it would be easy to maintain a strict blockade of the Dardanelles. The castle of Lemnos offered an unex­pected resistance, and three months were consumed in fruitless endeavours to take it. In the meantime the Russian fleet was weakened by the recall of all the officers who held commissions in the British navy; and the dilatory proceedings of Orloff gave the Turks time to assemble fresh forces. Baron de Tott was employed to fortify the Dardanelles, and Hassan, as soon as he recovered from his wounds, was appointed capitan-bey, and intrusted with full power to collect a force to relieve Lemnos. Hassan assembled four thousand chosen troops at the Dardanelles, which he embarked in twenty-three small vessels. This flotilla, escorted by two line-of-battle ships, landed the troops on the east side of Lemnos on the 9th of October, and stormed the Russian camp sword in hand. The Russians escaped to their ships with the loss of all their artillery, military stores, and provisions. A naval engagement took place a few days later, in which Hassan manoeuvred so well as to keep the sea without any loss; and Alexis Orloff, finding that his vessels had need of repairs, sailed to Paros, leaving Hassan the highest personal honours of the campaign of 1770, in spite of the catastrophe of Tchesmé.

The Russian fleet remained in the Levant until peace was concluded in 1774, but it performed nothing further worthy of notice. The harbour of Naussa in Paros was its naval station; and the scale of the buildings constructed by the Russians induced the Greeks to believe that the empress had determined to retain permanent possession of the island. Batteries were erected to defend the port, extensive warehouses were built to contain naval stores, and the village of Naussa became a populous city; but the place was unhealthy, and the crews of the ships suffered severely from fever. After the con­clusion of the first campaign, Alexis Orloff hastened to St. Petersburg to enjoy his triumph as the victor of Tchesmé. Elphinstone soon followed, disgusted with the inactive service to which he was condemned; and the Russian navy ceased to display any activity.

The war in the Levant was now neglected by Catherine II, whose attention was absorbed by the project for partitioning Poland. Voltaire, who watched the changes in the sentiments of the empress, with prompt servility altered the tone of his correspondence concerning Greece. He began to defame the Greeks, in whose favour he had previously affected great enthusiasm. Perceiving that Catherine was no longer eager to support their cause, he now spoke of them as unworthy of freedom, which, he says, they might have gained had they possessed courage to support the enterprises of the Russians. The French philosopher, in the fervour of his adulation, declared that he no longer desired to read Sophocles, Homer, and Demosthenes. Voltaire expected the Greeks would fight like heroes to become serfs of a Russian favourite.

The Greeks who had been cajoled and bribed to rebel, were abandoned to their fate as soon as their services were useless to Russian interests. The Sphakiots of Crete were attacked by the Turks, pursued into their mountains and compelled to pay haratch, like the Christians in the plain. The Albanians who had entered the Morea formed themselves into local companies, and collected the taxes of the province on their own account, besides extorting large sums by cruel exactions, as arrears of pay due to them by the Porte.

The successes of the Russian armies on the Danube forced Sultan Abdukhamid, shortly after his accession to the throne, to sign the peace of Kainardji, on the 21st July 1774. This memorable treaty humbled the pride of the sultan, broke the strength of the Othoman empire, and established the moral influence of Russia over the whole Christian population in Turkey, which henceforth regarded the sovereign of Russia as the legal protector, if not as the legitimate emperor, of the orthodox. Yet in this treaty the Greeks of the Morea and the islands were sacrificed by Russia. The Porte, indeed, engaged by the seventh article to protect the orthodox Greek church; but Russia allowed the sultan to interpret the article as he pleased, until she deemed it for her interest, many years after, to make this engagement a pretext for claiming a right to watch over its fulfilment, in order to paralyse the government of Turkey and extend her own dominion. Though the seventeenth article contained the promise of an amnesty to the rebel Greeks, the court of St. Petersburg, even when it restored the islands of the Archipelago to the sultan, never gave itself any concern about the execution of this article. It is strange that the Greeks, who were saved from oppression and mildly treated by the Venetians, should always have hated and calumniated the republic, while, though they have been frequently deceived and generally despised by the Russians, they manifest the warmest devotion to the Czars. The bigotry of Orthodoxy is more powerful than the feeling of patriotism, and effectually stifles all gratitude to Catholics. Enthusiastic orthodoxy, and an eager desire of vengeance, rendered them the ready dupes of Russian policy; and though they were severely punished on this occasion, they have ever since been ready to serve the interests of Russia and sacrifice those of Greece, from the same motives, with similar blindness. The peace with Russia could not make the Turks forget the cruelty with which their countrymen had been massacred in the Morea; and for several years the Greeks were everywhere subjected to increased oppression. The cruelties of the Albanians were tolerated even after their rapacity became so great that many Turks as well as Greeks were ruined by their exactions, and compelled to abandon their property, and escape to other parts of the empire.

Policy at last induced Sultan Abdul-hamid to protect his Greek subjects. The reiterated complaints of the disorders perpetrated by the Albanians in the Morea, both on Mussul­mans and Christians, at length determined him to restore tranquillity to that valuable province. Hassan, whose victory over the Russians at Lemnos had gained him the title of Ghazi (the Victorious), had been raised to the rank of capitan-pasha. In the year 1779 he was ordered to reduce the Albanians to obedience, and re-establish order in the Morea. With his usual promptitude in action, he landed a considerable force at Nauplia, and marched with a body of four thousand chosen infantry, and the cavalry collected by the neighbouring pashas, to attack the Albanians, who had concentrated a large part of their troops at Tripolitza. The Albanians, confident in their numbers and valour, marched out to engage the little army of the capitan-pasha in the plain, and were completely defeated by the steady valour of the infantry and by the fire of the artillery. After this victory Hassan hunted down their dispersed bands over the whole peninsula, and exterminated them without mercy. The heads of the chieftains were sent to Constantinople, and exposed before the gate of the serai, while a pyramid was formed of those of the soldiers under the walls of Tripolitza, the remains of which were seen by travellers at the end of the last century. Hassan remained in the Morea for a few months, uniting the rank of pasha of the province with his office of capitan-pasha. His administration restored order and re­established justice in such a degree, that most of the fugitives returned from Roumelia, Asia Minor, and the Ionian Islands, and the greater part of the deserted lands were again cultivated. Mavroyeni, a Greek of Mykone, who was dragoman of the fleet, enjoyed the confidence of Hassan, and employed the influence he possessed to improve the position of the Greeks.

The Mainates, who feared the Albanians more than the Turks, had deputed Zanet Koutouphari, one of their chiefs, to wait on Hassan at Rhodes in 1777 to solicit an amnesty for the part they had taken in the Russian war, to assure the capitan-pasha of their devotion to the sultan’s govern­ment, and to claim his protection. Hassan, having received the sanction of the Porte for separating Maina from the sandjak of the Morea and placing it under the jurisdiction of the capitan-pasha, now organized the administration, and arranged the payment of its taxes, on the same plan as the other districts under his command. Zanet, as chief primate, was invested with the authority of governor and the title of bey. The bey was charged with the duty of collecting the tribute; and to facilitate the operation, where topographical difficulties and the feuds of hostile tribes rendered the task dangerous, he obtained a monopoly of the export of oil, silk, and valonia, which was easily enforced at the few points from which produce could be exported. In 1780 Hassan visited Maina with the Othoman fleet. He landed a body of Turkish troops, and arrested some of the chiefs who had plundered in Messenia or committed acts of piracy. Murzinos, who had distinguished himself both as a Russian partizan and a pirate, was taken after a vigorous defence, and hung in his Russian uniform from the mainyard of Hassan’s ship. Hassan then compelled the Mainates to compound for the arrears of tribute due to the Porte, and to give hostages for their ful­filment of the obligations into which he forced them to enter.

The favour which Mavroyeni enjoyed, and the influence of the Phanariots on the general policy of the Porte towards the rayahs, alleviated the oppression of the Othoman administration in Greece. The people enjoyed greater security for their lives and property, new paths were open to them of acquiring wealth, and their commercial intercourse with the Western nations became more frequent. Education, also, became more general, and less exclusively ecclesiastic. In the Morea, particularly, the government of Sultan Abdul-hamid was so much milder than that of his predecessors as to be ascribed by the Greeks to the influence of his favourite sultana, whom they imagined to be the daughter of a Moreote priest; but the fact is, that the same improvement in the manner of treating the Christian subjects of the Porte is observable in the other provinces of the empire. Had the Greeks been fortunate enough, at this period, to have passed a generation in the tranquil enjoyment of the commercial, political, and moral advantages which they began to enjoy in the year 1780, it is probable they would have succeeded in giving their local institutions such a development as would have placed a large part of the communal and provincial administration in their own hands, and served ultimately as the basis for the establishment of a Greek government on sound principles of civil liberty, which, while it secured the national independence of the Greeks where they form the majority of the population, might have enabled the different Christian races in the Othoman empire to combine in forming a powerful federal state.

The influence of Russia unfortunately withdrew the attention of the Greeks from local improvements to schemes of conquest. The court of St. Petersburg did not wish to see the Greeks in a condition to gain their independence by their own unassisted efforts. As discontented subjects of the sultan, they were useful instruments of Catherine’s policy; but, in possession of local privileges which, as in Chios, would enable them to improve their own condition, they might become useful subjects of the sultan, and ultimately the recognized heirs of the Othoman empire. At all events, they would be interested in opposing the progress of Russian despotism, and perhaps capable of making both the czarina and the sultan treat them with justice. In a few years the leading statesmen of Russia renewed their attacks on Turkey from motives of selfish ambition, and the Greeks again aided them from avarice and bigotry. Potemkin revived the projects of Marshal Munich; and the Greeks were urged to rebel merely to distract the attention of the Othoman government from the northern provinces of the empire, and facilitate the schemes of Catherine II. to extend her dominions on the shores of the Black Sea. The measures adopted by Potemkin with regard to Greece did not, however, originate so entirely from selfishness as those of Orloff. Men of talent were invited to Russia, employed, trusted, and promoted. A military school was formed, in which many young Greeks received their education. The pupils were selected from the principal families in Greece by the Russian consuls in the Levant; the expenses of their voyage to Russia, and of their maintenance in the establishment, were defrayed by the empress; and when their education was finished, they were employed in the army or navy, or as dragomans and consuls in Turkey. If want of talent or health rendered it advisable to send a pupil home, he was assured of Russian protection, and taught to consider himself a subject of Russia. The patronage of Potemkin drew considerable numbers of Greeks to Russia, where most of those who conducted themselves with prudence gained wealth, and some obtained high rank.

In 1783 Catherine II renewed her encroachments on the Othoman empire by assuming the absolute sovereignty of the Crimea. About the same time she obtained a treaty of commerce from the Porte, by which the Greeks of the Archipelago were allowed to make use of the Russian flag. The project of conquering Constantinople became again the ordinary subject of conversation at court; the Grand-duke Constantine was taught to speak Greek; and Catherine II seems to have expected that she would be able to place the Byzantine crown on his head, and thus gain for Russia a legitimate title to bear the double-headed eagle of Rome on its escutcheon. The proceedings of Russia forced Sultan Abdul-hamid to declare war in August 1787, which he commenced according to the established usage of the Othoman empire by sending the Russian minister to the Seven Towers. The military operations of the Turks were most disastrous. The fleet under Hassan Ghazi having entered the Liman at the mouths of the Bug and Dnieper, was defeated by the Russians with the loss of five line-of-battle ships, three frigates, and many smaller vessels. Hassan’s proud title of Ghazi was forfeited, but he lost neither his courage nor his energy; and when he collected the remains of the powerful fleet with which he had left Constantinople at Sinope, the greatness of his misfortune tended to increase his influence over the minds of his countrymen, and did not diminish his favour with Abdul-hamid. When Selim III. mounted the throne, his disgrace seemed inevitable, but the new sultan raised him to the post of grand-vizier, and intrusted him with the command of the army on the Danube. Before the opening of the campaign of 1790 death closed his long and brilliant career at Shumla.

As soon as war was declared, the agents of Russia scattered manifestoes in all parts of Greece, inviting the Christians to take up arms, and co-operate with the armies of the empress in expelling the Turks from Europe. Phrases concerning ancient liberty and national independence could not, however, entirely efface the memory of Orloff’s flight from Navarin. Catherine also was persuaded that the unwarlike Greeks of the Morea and the islands of the Archipelago could render no effectual assistance to her cause. Her agents were now instructed to rouse the warlike Albanian tribes in Epirus to attack their Mussulman neighbours. Their intrigues were successful with the Suliots, a Christian tribe which had always retained its arms, and preserved a degree of semi-independence, like the Sclavonians of Montenegro and the Greeks of Maina and Sphakia. instigated by Russian emissaries, the Albanians of Suli quitted their barren and almost inaccessible mountains, and invaded the plains, carrying off the cattle, and plundering the farms of the Mussulman landlords and of the Christian rayahs who lived peaceably in the plains* under Turkish domination. They defeated the attempts of Ali Pasha of Joannina to invade their mountains; but as it was soon evident to the court of St. Petersburg that their power was insufficient to produce any diversion of importance, they were abandoned by Russia, and left to carry on the war they had commenced by their own unassisted exertions. The Empress Catherine II had great reason to be dissatisfied with the results of her policy in Greece. She deceived the people of the country to serve her own political views; her Greek agents cheated her to serve their private interests. They embezzled large sums of money, and transmitted to her ministers exaggerated accounts of victories achieved by small bands of Suliots, and absurd projects for future campaigns. Convinced at last that there was no hope of extending the insurrection, either by the forays of the Christian Albanians, or by the intrigues of her Greek emissaries, Catherine ceased to nourish the war in the Levant. The Suliots, abandoned to their fate, were compelled to conclude a truce with Ali Pasha, which their activity and valour enabled them to do on favourable terms.

The naval operations of this war in the Grecian seas were every way dishonourable to Russia. Catherine II. had fitted out a fleet at Cronstadt, under Admiral Greig, which was destined to act in the Archipelago, but a declaration of war against Russia by the King of Sweden prevented its quitting the Baltic; and the maritime warfare in the Levant was confined to privateers under the Russian flag. Lambros Katzones, a Greek, who received the rank of major in the service of the empress, partly by the aid of Russia, but principally by the subscriptions of Greek merchants, fitted out an armament of twelve small vessels at Trieste. Lambros possessed more enthusiasm and valour than naval skill. He imprudently engaged an Algerine squadron, cruising off the coast of the Morea, and after a gallant but ineffectual fight, the greater part of the Greek ships were sunk, and he escaped with difficulty in the vessel he commanded (May 1790).

The system of privateering to which Russia lent her flag was carried on with great energy, and the crews engaged in it were collected from every European nation. The Cruisers being virtually released from all control, and being often manned by those who had long acted as pirates in the Levant, perpetrated the most horrible acts of cruelty. The unprotected and industrious Greek population of the islands and sea-coasts of the Othoman empire never suffered greater misery from the slave-dealing pirates, than were now inflicted on them by pretended friends under the orthodox banner of Russia. Greeks were on this occasion the principal agents in the sufferings of Greece, but those who have left us any memorials of this period were so ashamed of the barbarity of their countrymen, that they have sought to bury every record of these privateering expeditions in oblivion. Few accounts of the scenes of bloodshed enacted by the pirates have been preserved; the wail of the murdered has found no echo, while infatuated literati have deemed it patriotic to represent every privateersman as a Themistocles and every klepht as a Leonidas. The journal of an English sailor is among the few authentic records of the horrible exploits of these privateers.

In December 1788, William Davidson, a young seaman from the north of England, sailed from Leghorn in a privateer, under the Russian flag, mounting twenty-two guns, and carrying two hundred and fifteen men. This vessel returned to Leghorn in August 1789, and during a cruise of only eight months, it captured upwards of forty vessels, and about fifteen hundred men perished; a few were slain in battle, but far the greater part were murdered in cold blood on the deck of the privateer, after they had surrendered prisoners of war. Several Greek islands were plundered, the defenceless town of Castel Rosso was taken, all the Turks in the place were murdered, though they offered no resistance, and half the houses were wantonly burned. The plunder collected from the Greek inhabitants was very considerable, and even the churches were robbed of their gold and silver ornaments, images, and candlesticks. On some occasions the privateers spared Greek ships under the Turkish flag when they were the property of Greek merchants, but the cruelty with which they generally treated their prisoners requires to be described in the words of one of the murderers. The circumstances attending the capture of a Turkish galley with eighty-five men on board are thus narrated. The prisoners were con­fined all night in the hold. Many of them must have been Christians compelled to work at the oars. In the morning they were brought on deck one by one, and “their heads were cut off as ducks’ heads are cut off at home”, says the narrator, “and then we threw them overboard”. This was the first time the whole crew were obliged to take their turn in murdering the prisoners, and the English at first refused ; but when the captain told them they were cowards, and that he could not believe they were really Englishmen, they did the same as the rest, and afterwards were even worse than the others, for they, were always first when such work was going on. Yet even these privateers were not the worst robbers in the Grecian seas. On the coast of Maina piracy was openly carried on, and the pirates treated the Russian flag with no more respect than the Othoman, if they supposed it covered a rich prize. The privateer in which Davidson served fell in with a large ship to the west of Cerigo. It was pursued, and did not refuse to fight, for” to our misfortune”, as Davidson says, it proved to be a celebrated pirate with thirty-two guns and three hundred and seventy-eight men. A severe engage­ment took place, which lasted more than four hours, and when the pirate struck to the superior discipline and the heavier weight of metal of the privateer, it was found that he had lost fifty-four men killed and forty-three wounded. The success of the victor was in part attributed to the confusion which was caused on board the pirate by the variety of nations composing the crew. The wounded were immediately put to death. Next morning the prisoners were examined, and when they confessed that, like their captors, they were in the habit of killing the crews and sinking the ships they took, the captain of the Graeco-Russian privateer, forgetful of his own conduct, told them they should all die by the cruellest death. He was as brutal as his word; for next day he murdered them in so horrible a manner, that it is necessary to record the fact in the words of the eye­witness. His diary says: “August 5th.—We got whips on the mainstay, and made one leg fast to the whip, and the other to a ring-bolt in the deck, and so quartered them, and hove them overboard”. The lure which enticed the crews of the privateers to act these scenes of horror was the immense booty they obtained. Each of the English sailors received, as his share of prize-money after the eight months’ cruise, the sum of nine hundred and fifty dollars, about £200 sterling.

The infamous cruelties and open piracies committed under the Russian flag at last induced the court of St. Petersburg to refuse all further countenance to the privateers. Lambros, who had succeeded with the assistance of some Greek merchants at Trieste in fitting out a few vessels, was nevertheless allowed to carry the Russian flag until the end of the war; but when peace was concluded, he also was compelled to strike it. Though disavowed by the empress, he continued to cruise against the Turks. Peace had turned adrift a number of daring seamen, and as many of these joined him, he resolved to hold the sea as an independent cruiser. Unfortunately, he soon found it impossible to pay his men without committing acts of piracy on the flags of nations who had it in their power to punish his misdeeds, and vengeance quickly followed his piracies. He made Porto Quaglio in Maina his naval station; and having secured the assistance of the Kakovouliots, the poorest and most desperate portion of the population of Maina, he plundered the flag of every nation off Cape Matapan. Emboldened by a few months’ impunity, he had the audacity to attack two French ships near Nauplia, which he burned in May 179a. As soon as the French ambassador at Constantinople heard of this outrage, he sent information to a French squadron then cruising in the Levant, which immediately joined the fleet of Hussein, the capitan- pasha, and sailed in pursuit of Lambros. The Greek piratical squadron consisted of eleven vessels. It was found anchored at Porto Quaglio, under the protection of batteries, which Lambros supposed would be sufficient to keep the Turkish fleet at a distance. On the 19th of June, he was attacked by the Othoman fleet, assisted by the French frigate La Modeste. The batteries in which he had trusted were soon destroyed, and the pirate ships, abandoned by their crews, were all captured by the Turks, and conducted in triumph to Constantinople. Lambros escaped into the mountains, and reached the Ionian Islands.

Austria joined Russia in the war against Turkey, with the expectation of sharing in the spoils of the Othoman empire. The Emperor Joseph commenced the war unjustly; his brother Leopold terminated it disgracefully. He concluded a separate peace at Sistova in 1791, which, like that of Belgrade, was calculated to destroy the influence of Austria in the East. Russia was more successful. Her arms were crowned with victory, but the treaty she concluded with the sultan at Yassi in 1792 only extended the frontier of the empire to the banks of the Dniester. The partition of Poland arrested the fall of the Othoman empire.

The French Revolution now began to exert a direct influence on every nation in Europe, and to modify the position and policy of every government. France invited the people in every country to declare itself free and independent. These revolutionary principles found an echo in the breast of every Greek; but the different classes composing the Greek nation were not yet united by common feelings which could produce simultaneous action. The restless presumption and envious disposition of the Phanariots and archonts, the noisy cowardice of city mobs, and the lawless conduct of the armed mountaineers, afforded the Greeks little hope of being able to emulate the French in their devotion to liberty and equality. Rhiga of Velestinos was one of the warmest partizans of the new revolutionary ideas. His patriotic songs and his personal energy have made his name dear to his countrymen. His enthusiasm deluded him into the belief that he could guide the events of his time, and avail himself of the aid of France as an instrument for framing Hellenic republics, and gratifying the dreams of ambitious pedants. The confined sphere of his political vision made his schemes degenerate into mere conspiracies. The plots of Rhiga were betrayed to the Austrian police by one of his own countrymen, and the Austrian government delivered him up to the Turks, who put him to death at Belgrade in 1797.

The treaty of Campo Formio in 1797 placed the Ionian Islands under the dominion of France, and the Greeks became the ready instruments of French policy, as they had formerly been of Russian. Venice had protected her possessions in Epirus by forming alliances with the various tribes of Christian Albanians who preserved their independence; and the republic had systematically supported these tribes, particularly the Chimariots and Suliots, against the neighbouring pashas. The French adopted a different policy; they sought the alliance of Ali Pasha of Joannina, because he possessed a numerous army of hardy irregular troops, from which they hoped to derive assistance in their schemes of conquest. They allowed him, therefore, to consolidate his power by destroying the local independence of the dispersed and disunited tribes of armed Christians who had long successfully resisted the Othoman power. Ali, availing himself of these views, obtained permission from the general com­manding at Corfu to send troops by sea to Chimara, in order to reduce to obedience the inhabitants, whom he called rebel subjects of the Porte. The district, of which Novitza-Bouba and Aghio-Vasili were the principal villages, contained six thousand Christians, who enjoyed the same degree of partial independence as the Suliots. The young men were in the habit of entering the military service of Venice and Naples, and when they had saved a small sum of money, they returned to their native mountains and married. Their privileges had been protected by Venice. France allowed them to be exterminated by Ali Pasha, whose troops landed in the bay of Lukovo, surprised the population during the Easter festivals, and massacred most of those able to bear arms.

In 1798 the treacherous invasion of Egypt by Napoleon Buonaparte caused the sultan to declare war against the French republic. Ali Pasha availed himself of the opportunity to gain possession of the dependencies of the Ionian Islands on the continent. The French garrison at Prevesa was defeated. Vonitza, Gomenitza, and Butrinto surrendered, and Parga alone, of all the ancient Venetian possessions on the continent, repulsed the forces of the pasha and retained its local immunities. Even before the declaration of war the sultan obtained proof that the French government had sent emissaries into Roumelia, the Morea, and the islands of the Archipelago, to distribute publications inviting the inhabitants to revolt. Russia, as well as Turkey, became alarmed lest the fanaticism of liberty should overpower the bigotry of orthodoxy. A common fear of French influence in Greece united those apparently irreconcilable enemies, the czar and the sultan, in a close alliance. The first object was to expel the French from the Ionian Islands. In 1799 a combined Russian and Othoman force took possession of Corfu, and by a convention between the court of St. Petersburg and the Porte in 1800, the Ionian Islands were constituted a republic, while, as if to make the mockery of liberty more complete, this nominally independent republic was prepared to undergo the fate of Poland, by being placed under the joint protection of the two most despotic sovereigns in Europe.

By the same convention all the Venetian possessions on the continent were ceded to the Porte. It was stipulated that their Christian inhabitants were to enjoy every religious and judicial privilege possessed by the Christians of Vallachia and Moldavia; a vague stipulation, which was calculated chiefly to authorize Russian interference and to extend Russian influence, but which proved of no avail as a protection to the inhabitants of Prevesa. The Emperor of Russia, though the avowed champion of the orthodox, was thus the last Christian sovereign who voluntarily placed an orthodox population under Othoman domination. As the sultan was already, by the success of Ali Pasha, in possession of all the territory ceded by the convention, except Parga, Ali Pasha expected to gain possession of that place. But neither Russia nor the Porte wished to see that strong position fall into his hands. The people of Parga were encouraged to resist his attacks, while the combined fleet refused to blockade them, as they proclaimed their devotion to the sultan. Parga, from these circumstances, was allowed to retain its municipal inde­pendence, though it was regarded as henceforth forming a part of the Othoman empire. Russia did not take any trouble to exact the observance of the article in the convention which reserved their religious liberties to the inhabitants of the other Venetian possessions.

By the treaty of Tilsit in 1807, Russia ceded the Ionian republic to France, and though England conquered the other islands, the French retained possession of Corfu until the peace of 1814. In 1815 the Ionian republic was revived, and placed under the protection of the sovereign of Great Britain. The convention of 1800, relating to the continental possessions of Venice, including Parga, was regarded as part of the public law of Europe, for the jealousy of Russia and Austria feared to leave England in possession of a fortress which might serve as a key to Epirus and Greece.

When the French garrison of Corfu found that it would be necessary to deliver up Parga to the English, they resolved to prevent it falling into their hands by ceding it to Ali Pasha. But an English force from Zante arrived in time to occupy it before the arrival of Ali’s troops. The sultan, however, called on the British government to execute the Russian convention of 1800, and after much negotiation it was at last resolved in 1819 to deliver up Parga to the Turks. As the hated Ali would, however, become master of the place, the inhabitants declared they would rather emigrate than become subjects of the sultan. They asked to be indemnified for the full value of all the property they abandoned; and, by the persevering exertions of the English authorities, the Porte paid to them the sum of £150,000, which was divided among them according to the valuation of their property. There is no doubt that the pecuniary indemnity was most liberal, but many of the poorer classes, possessing no pro­perty, received no indemnity, and all who emigrated were loud in their complaints of English policy, which had condemned them to become exiles. In vain they enjoyed protection and the liberty of complaint in the Ionian Islands; every tongue in Europe was loud in reproaching England for consenting to fulfil the convention of 1800, and compelling the inhabitants of Parga to forsake the tombs of their ancestors, and change their municipal existence and ancestral name, for the rights and the name of citizens of the Ionian republic¹. Perhaps public opinion is not unjust when it blames the acts of a free government for violations of the principles of abstract justice, which it would praise as wise and politic measures if they were adopted by a despotic prince. Men habitually arraign the free before the tribunal of equity; slaves and despots they judge by the exigencies of expediency and policy. Truth and justice ought always to penetrate to the hearts of freemen, but they are not expected to find an echo in the breasts of princes and statesmen. The severe criticism of English policy is the eulogy of English liberty. The conduct of the English government in the Ionian Islands has, however, neither been wise nor liberal: though it has administered justice with equity and protected industry and commerce, it long opposed the liberty of the press. The chief ground of its unpopularity nevertheless is, that it has checked the movements of those who desired to cause an insurrection of the Greeks in Turkey. This duty has rendered it unpopular with every party in Eastern Europe. The Ionians themselves cared little for trade;but they were zealous partizans of Russian policy and of orthodox bigotry. But the inhabitants of the Ionian Islands have no good reason to complain, for if the English government has not performed its duty, the nobles and the people of the Ionian Islands have completely neglected theirs. They have not availed themselves of the liberty they have so long enjoyed for improving their moral condition, and for attaining a moral and intellectual superiority over the other Greeks who were subject to the sultan. All foreign domination appears to have exerted a baneful influence on Greek morality. It has always found them ready to become servile instruments and secret traitors. In the Ionian Islands the moral condition of the people, when they passed under the protection of the sovereign of Great Britain, was much worse than that of the Greeks under the Turkish domination. Their communal institutions were only administrative facilities modelled by a foreign central authority. When the islands were first occupied by the French, assassination was the commonest crime, and it was a popular saying that there was a murder for every day in the year.

A great improvement took place in the material condition of the Greek nation after the peace of Yassi. Great social changes were exerting their operation on the Othoman government as well as on the Greek people. The sultan was impelled, by the necessity of self-defence, even more than by the desire all sovereigns feel to centralize power in their own hands, to destroy the ancient fabric of the Othoman state institutions, which time and individual corruption had already undermined. The cruel use the pashas made of the absolute power delegated to them; the rapacity of the fiscal agents of government; the venality of the Ulema; the selfishness of the timariots, and the anarchical insolence of the janissaries, rendered these classes equally hateful to the sultan and to the people, and marked them out for destruction. The Othoman sultans had to attempt the double task of saving their empire from dis­memberment, and of destroying the institutions which had long formed the barriers against its dismemberment. The Greeks caught some of the enthusiasm in favour of liberty, independence, and the rights of man, propagated over Europe by the French Revolution. A reminiscence of Hellenic glory was revived; the educated classes taught the people that they were Greeks and not Romans, and began to inculcate the duty of laying aside the national appellation of Romaioi and resuming the name of Hellenes. The project of regaining their political independence was no longer circumscribed to a few thoughtful and aspiring men; it became the very object of existence to numbers engaged in the pursuits of active life, in every rank of society. The social position of the mass of the Greek population explains the facility with which it was influenced by the revolutionary ideas of the French. The Othoman government, though in some respects the most tyrannical in Europe, was in others the most tolerant. It fettered the body, but it left the mind free. The lower orders of its Christian subjects were in general possessed of more intellectual cultivation than the corresponding ranks of society in other parts of Europe. The Greeks were neither industrial slaves nor agricultural serfs; their labour was both more free and more valuable, and their civil rights were as great as those of the same class, even in France, before the Revolution. The Othoman government corrupted the higher classes of the Greeks more than it oppressed the lower. The cruelty and injustice of the Turks were irregularly exercised, and were more galling than oppressive. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the burden of the Othoman domi­nation was so much lightened that the Greeks became an improving nation. They possessed a numerous body of small peasant-proprietors of land, whom circumstances often enabled to better their condition; and in the towns an industrious population of labourers and traders was supported and protected by a body of wealthy merchants often enjoying foreign protection. A numerous maritime population of Christians, partly consisting of Greeks, and partly of Albanians, also tended to give the Greeks a considerable degree of personal independence. The Turkish peasant and trader suffered quite as much from fiscal exactions as the Greek, and the political obstacles to his rise in the social scale were generally greater. Few native Turks of the provinces ever acquired as much influence over the public administration as was systematically and permanently exercised by the Phanariots. The local authorities of the Mussulman population in the rural districts rarely possessed the same power of defending the people from injustice as, and they certainly possessed fewer rights and privileges than, the Greek communities. It is not, therefore, surprising that tlie Greeks were superior in social and political civilization to the Turks. The fact was generally perceived, and a Greek revolution was consequently regarded as an event which must occur at no very distant date, both by the Christian and Mussulman population of the Othoman empire, at the commencement of the nineteenth century. In the ordinary course of human affairs it was inevitable.

But unless some closer bonds had united the dispersed members of the Greek nation than those by which they had hitherto been connected, it may be questioned whether the revolutionary movement could have proved successful. Some spiritual tie was required to infuse a common feeling of national enthusiasm more powerful than the formal cere­monial of the orthodox church, or the ecclesiastical influence of the clergy, which had too long been an instrument of Othoman domination, and which seemed more inclined to transfer the allegiance of the people from the sultan to the czar, than to aid a struggle for liberty. The future prospects of a Greek Church in an independent State did not offer an inviting field for clerical ambition, compared with the magnificent vista opened to episcopal imaginations by an orthodox hierarchy under Russian domination. Various causes, however, tended to centralize those feelings of nationality which the church neglected to cultivate. We have already mentioned that the corrupting influence of the Phanariot system tended to this object. The hope of attaining the high rank to which the Chiot Mavrocordatos, and the Mykoniot Mavroyeni, had risen, drew aspirants for political employment to Constantinople from every corner of the empire where Greek was spoken. The direct dependence of a considerable portion of Greece on the capitan-pasha united a large population by common interests and ideas in administrative affairs. It is true that the centralization thus formed tended to corrupt the higher classes as much as to unite the people; but the influence of the Phanariots was not more demoralizing than that of the patriarchate, while the separation effected between the political and ecclesiastical classes caused collisions of interest and personal disputes, which awakened the attention and enlightened the minds of the many. The Greeks were thus taught to perceive that their interests as a nation were not always identical with the policy of their clergy.

The extension of Greek commerce tended also to develope the feelings of national union. The active trade which the Greeks and Albanians carried on over the whole surface of the Mediterranean, nourished a healthier spirit of centralization than the allurements of Phanariot protection, and the profits of office in the service of the sultan. This influence of Greek commerce dates from the conclusion of the commercial treaties between Russia and the Porte in 1779 and 1783, which enabled the orthodox subjects of the sultan to obtain the protection of the Russian flag. Even before the conclusion of the first of these treaties, ten Greek vessels, laden with wine from the islands of the Archipelago, had entered the Russian ports in the sea of Azof in one year. The treaty of Yassi enabled Russia to increase still further the number of her protected subjects in Turkey, and even to secure to Greek subjects of the sultan the fullest protection for their property under the Russian flag.

Fortunately for the commerce of the Greeks, the Othoman government was enabled to maintain its neutrality during the greater part of the wars in which the French Revolution involved the powers of Europe. Greek merchants visited ports in the Mediterranean closed against every flag but that of the sultan, and the profits of their commerce were immense. The manufacturers of Adrianople, and of the mountain village of Ambelakia on Mount Ossa, sent cotton fabrics, dyed with the rich colour called Turkey red, even to England. The Greeks of the island of Psara, and of the town of Galaxidhi in the Corinthian Gulf, and the Albanians of the islands of Hydra and Spetzas, carried on an extensive commerce in their own ships. Many of the sailors were part proprietors both of the ship and cargo, and united the occupations of capitalists and sailors. All shared in the profits of the voyage. Their extensive com­mercial enterprises exercised a direct influence on the great body of the Greek population, which dwells, in general, near the sea-coast Tales of distant lands visited, of dangers successfully encountered, and of wealth rapidly acquired, were repeated even in the secluded villages of the mountains. Examples of penniless adventurers becoming richer than pashas were daily witnessed. The ideas of the people were enlarged; they knew that order reigned in many countries; their hopes of improving their condition were awakened; they heard that security of property prevailed, and justice was impartially administered, in most Christian states; and the determination to vindicate for themselves these advantages was silently formed. Gradually the conviction was everywhere felt that this could only be effected by recovering their national independence.

The corruption of the Othoman government introduced many vices into the commercial system of the Levant, which nourished fraud, and invited the Greeks to degrade their character by habitual dishonesty. A Greek subject of the sultan was subjected to higher duties than a foreigner, or a Greek enjoying foreign protection. To carry on his business profitably, he was consequently compelled to find some means of cheating the Othoman government out of the differential duty imposed by its ignorance and injustice. The fiscal corruption of the Othoman administration introduced the practice of the sultan granting special exemptions from extraordinary taxes to many of his subjects. This privilege was conceded to Christians who enjoyed the favour of the sultan or his ministers, and was gradually extended until it placed them in fiscal matters in the same position as the subjects of Christian princes most favoured by their commercial treaties with the Porte. Firmans, in this sense, were granted to rayahs, called barrats. The abuse was carried so far that it became customary for the Turkish government to bestow forty of these barrats as a gift on every new ambassador when he arrived at Constantinople. The ministers of the sultan, and the Phanariots in high office, made a traffic of these immunities. The dragomans of foreign embassies, the consuls, and even the ambassadors themselves, were accused of selling these barrats to the Greeks. The Russian legation systematically extended its influence by availing itself of this corruption of the Othoman administration. It procured as many barrats as possible, it granted passports to Greek subjects of the sultan as if they were Russians, and it authorized Greek vessels to hoist the Russian flag.

The capitan-pasha, Hussein, who effected great reforms in the Othoman naval administration after the peace of Yassi, always protected the Greeks who sailed under the Turkish flag. During his long and liberal administration, the Albanians of Hydra and Spetzas found it more advantageous to sail under the Othoman flag than under the Russian. Hussein had two hundred Christian Albanian sailors from Hydra on board the three-decker which carried his flag in the year 1797. He was particularly attentive to the shipping of Hydra, which increased and prospered under his protection. After Hussein’s death, the disorder that prevailed in the naval administration revived the exactions of subordinates and local pashas, and the Christians in Turkey again endeavoured to protect their property under the Russian flag. It is needless to dwell on the evils of a political system in which corruption alone afforded the means of escape from oppression.

In the darkest periods of their national existence the Greeks continued to feel the influence of literature. The greatest of the Iconoclast emperors feared John Damascenus. Yet the influence of Greek literature was for ages unfavourable to the progress of society. It is reasonable to complain of its nature during many centuries, but it is an error to suppose that learning entirely failed among the Greeks at any period of their history. The Greek clergy always kept up a competent knowledge of the ancient language, though their schools conveyed very little instruction to the mass of the people. During the Othoman domination, it is probable that the proportion of Greeks who could read and write was as great as in any other European nation; and every Greek who could write had some faint knowledge of Hellenic literature. When the Greek mind, therefore, began to emancipate itself from ecclesiastical trammels, education became the purest and most powerful instrument of national centralization. Schools were very generally established, and the difficulties which both the founders and the scholars of these schools met with in their pursuit of knowledge increased their zeal. The progress of the modem Greeks in intellectual culture does not require to be traced in detail. A chronological enumera­tion of the schools established, and a list of the names of individuals who devoted their lives to teaching, would cause a grateful throb in the heart of every patriotic Greek, but the history of the nation only requires us to record the result. That result is attested by the formation of a common literary dialect of the modern language, which served as the means of uniting the ideas of the people. The literary progress of the modern Greeks must not be measured by a comparison with the standard of knowledge of Greek literature in Western Europe. The Greeks were unable to throw light on the topography of their native land, or to extend the interpreta­tion of the language of their ancestors; but they made their written language an instrument of national centralization distinct from all provincial dialects, yet intelligible and harmonious to every Greek.

Every fact relating to a language which has given its form and character to the literature of Europe and America, must be deeply interesting to the student of Greek political history; but the subject demands a chapter, not a paragraph. The great feature of the revival of modern literary cultivation was the emancipation of the Greek mind from ecclesiastical subjection. To effect this it was necessary to abandon the language of ecclesiastical literature, and give a literary character to the language used by the people. Two individuals, Eugenios and Koraes, distinguished themselves as active instruments in this great and noble undertaking. They united the Greeks by intellectual ties far stronger than the bonds which Turkish domination had laid on the clergy.

Eugenios Bulgares of Corfu was the first reformer of the ecclesiastical system of education, which had perpetuated Byzantine pedantry in the schools, and ecclesiastical servility in politics. He taught at Joannina, at Mount Athos, and at Constantinople; but his reforms in the ancient system of education, and his pleadings in favour of religious toleration, alarmed the clergy. He was silenced by the ecclesiastical and Phanariot influence, which supported the sultan’s authority. In 1775 he was invited to Russia, and raised to the bishopric of Sclavonia and Kherson. Eugenios was the first scholar who employed a style generally intelligible, in a serious work, addressed to all classes. His tract on religious toleration was considered a revolutionary production by the ecclesias­tical party, which maintained its supremacy at Constantinople under the sultan’s protection. Anthimus, the patriarch of Jerusalem, accordingly endeavoured to apply an antidote, and in 1798 he printed a work at the Greek press of Constantinople, in which he congratulated the Greeks on having escaped the artifices of the devil, who had enticed the Catholics, the Lutherans, the Calvinists, and various other sects, into the path of perdition. He told them, that when the last emperors of Constantinople began to subject the Oriental Church to papal thraldom, the particular favour of Heaven raised up the Othoman empire to protect the Greeks against heresy, to be a barrier against the political power of the Western nations, and to be the champion of the Orthodox Church.

Koraes, a native of Chios, but who fixed his abode at Paris, was the great popular reformer of the Greek system of instruction, the legislator of the modem Greek language, and the most distinguished apostle of religious toleration and national freedom. He was a firm opponent of the Orthodox bigotry which would have enslaved Greece to Russia, and of the Phanariot servility which supported the Othoman domination. His residence in France protected him from those whose interests he assailed, and he was personally endowed with all the qualities which gave authority to his teaching. He was indifferent to wealth, honest and independent, a sincere patriot, and a profound scholar. Unlike his countrymen, the Chiots, who are generally as remarkable for avidity as for industry, he passed his life in independent poverty, in order that he might consecrate his whole time, and the undivided strength of his mind, to improve the moral and political feelings of the Greeks. His efforts have not been fruitless. He methodized the literary language of his countrymen, while he infused into their minds principles of true liberty and pure morality. His influence on the men who participated in the Greek Revolution was so great, that no political history of Greece would be complete which omitted to name Adamantios Koraes as one of those who contributed to establish the national independence.

The fact that the Greeks have hitherto made greater progress in regenerating their language than in improving their moral condition, must be attributed to the superiority of the material on which they worked. The language retained its ancient structure and grammar; the people had lost their ancient virtues and institutions. Literary eminence may be attained in retirement, where feeble men can write under the guidance of reason alone; but moral superiority can only be displayed and acquired amidst the temptations and the duties of active life.

We have seen that the two earliest institutions tending to national centralization after the Othoman conquest—the patriarchate of Constantinople and the official aristocracy —were employed by the sultan’s government as instruments for enslaving the Greeks. Even the centralization effected by the cultivation of the language and the creation of a modem Greek literature might have been pressed into the service of bigotry and despotism, had the influence of the French Revolution not counterbalanced that of orthodox Russia, and infused the love of freedom into the popular mind. The Greek language was saved, by this alliance with mental liberty, from becoming an instrument of priests and princes, and perpetuating an existence, which, like a national dress or a national music, might form an interesting subject of study for an antiquary, but could add little to the strength, virtue, or political improvement of the people.

Indeed, had a large part of the Greek population not enjoyed municipal rights which enabled them to feel the spirit of independence, and to labour to better their own condition, the improvement of the language would have remained a barren fact. It was the municipal activity which displayed itself at Chios, at Ambelakia, at Galaxidhi and at Psara, that gave to the literary centralization of language its political power. The same municipal institutions and religious feelings drew the Albanian population of Hydra and Spetzas within the circle of Greek centralization, though they remained long without the sphere of Greek literary influence. The local energies and local patriotism of all the Christian municipalities in the Othoman empire could readily unite in opposition to Othoman oppression, whenever a connecting link to centralize their efforts could be created. In these local institutions the foundation was laid for a federal union of all the Orthodox races in European Turkey, which time may perhaps consolidate if they can escape from the bureaucratic power of Continental centralization. The vigorous Albanians of Hydra, the warlike Albanians of Suli, the persevering Bulgarians of Macedonia, and the laborious Vallachians on the banks of the Aspropotamos, embarked in the struggle for Greek independence as heartily as the posterity of the ancient inhabitants of the soil of Hellas. Ecclesiastical ties greatly facilitated this union, but they neither created the impulse towards independence, nor infused the enthusiasm which secured success. The first step to national liberty in modem Greece, as in every country which has made any considerable advance in improving the condition of the mass of the inhabitants, was made in the municipalities. They were the political soul of the nation.

Too great influence has been generally ascribed to the clergy and to ecclesiastical literature in preserving national feelings, and too great merit is attributed to the popular songs, as well as too much influence, in forming the character of the people. Ecclesiastical learning was so deeply tinctured with pedantry as to be generally unintelligible; it spoke in a language which few understood. The popular songs neither possessed the poetic feeling nor those general expressions of human sympathies which exert a strong and permanent influence on every rank of society. The Greeks had no poetry which the mother taught her child alike in the palace on the shores of the Bosphorus and in the cottage on the banks of the Alpheus.

In the meantime the most striking feature in the political state of Greece, at the opening of the nineteenth century, was the decline of the Othoman empire. The sultan’s administration was every day growing weaker and more exclusively fiscal. The Turks were dwindling away under the operation of social and political corruption. The primary object of the government appeared to be, to draw money to Constantinople without reference to the manner in which it was to be expended. The most oppressive exactions of pashas were winked at, in order to share the profits of their injustice. Yet while the authority of the sultan was weakened and the power of the empire declined, the influence of the central executive administration was absolutely augmented by the social changes which time had produced in the Mohammedan population. Every barrier which privilege and class had once opposed to the exercise of arbitrary power had vanished. The Ulema, by corruption and venality, had forfeited all influence over the people, and formed no longer a systematic check on the executive. The janissaries had ceased to be regular troops. They were a mere Mussulman city-guard, an ill-organized militia, without discipline or tactics. The old Turkish feudal militia, the provincial timariots, were too poor and dependent to oppose the pashas and the central government. They had fallen so completely from their ancient position, that they generally sought employment as farmers of the public revenues, or as mere tax-gatherers. The only manifestation of their former influence was displayed in their readiness to join any pasha or local leader in rebellion.

The increase of the power of the pashas is the characteristic of the period immediately preceding the Greek Revolution. The progress of society had swept away the mediaeval privileges of Mohammedanism, and the pashas intrusted with the sultan’s delegated power enjoyed the fruits of the change, and were absolute monarchs in their provinces. This phasis of administrative government repeats itself in all despotisms, and generally leads to the dismemberment of large empires. The caliphates of Damascus, Bagdad, and Cordova, the Seljouk empire of the Great Sultan, and the Seljouk empire of Roum, all fell to pieces from this cause. The weakness of the central authority enabled the governors of provinces to found independent States. The Othoman empire, towards the end of the eighteenth century, had reached this crisis of its existence. Many pashas seemed on the eve of founding independent dynasties. A succession of rebellions, though they were all eventually suppressed, seemed only to open a field for new and more powerful rebels. Not to speak of the deys of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers, who rendered their governments virtually independent, Pashvan Oglou at Vidin, Djezzar Pasha at Acre, Ali Bey in Egypt, long ruled almost as independent sovereigns. At a later period, Ali Pasha of Joannina was rather a tributary prince than a dependent pasha; and Mehemet Ali of Egypt at last became the founder of a dynasty.

This feature in the state of society must not be overlooked in examining the social and political causes which produced the Greek Revolution. The tendency to dismember the Othoman empire was shown by the Arab population in Syria and Egypt, and by the Albanians in Epirus, as well as by the Christians in Greece and Servia. The increased authority of the central government enabled the sultan ultimately to crush his rebellious pashas, and restore the integrity of the Othoman empire. But in Greece and Servia, where the struggle was one for national independence and religious liberty, the cause of the people was victorious, the Othoman empire was dismembered, and two new States were added to Christian Europe.

The career of the Othoman conquerors in Greece was now terminated. They were themselves involved in a struggle to maintain their national existence against political anarchy and external attacks. But their domination in Greece had not been without its use; it had accomplished a task which neither the Roman power nor the Orthodox Church had effected; it had nationalized the Greeks, and compressed their various communities into one body. A great cycle in the history of Greece was completed. The tribe of Othman had fulfilled its mission in Hellas, and it was now to depart from the land, like the Romans, the Crusaders, and the Venetians.

On the other hand, the desire of civil liberty had already germinated in the modem Greek nation which the Othoman rule had formed. Political institutions of a permanent character existed, and were rapidly giving a new organic form to Greek society. Communities and municipalities, governed by established laws and usages, secured a basis for popular self-government. Provincial assemblies for fiscal purposes, though used only as instruments of Othoman oppression, afforded the means of connecting local liberties with national centralization. Throughout the East it was felt that the hour of a great struggle for independence on the part of the Greeks had arrived. The Greek Revolution was a social and political necessity. National sovereignty is an inherent right of the people, as civil liberty is of the individual. Men know instinctively that there are conditions and times when the rebellion of subject nations and of disfranchised citizens becomes a duty. ‘The liberties of nations are from God and nature, not from kings and governments.’ The whole history of the Othoman domination in Greece attests that the Greeks were perpetually urged, by every feeling of religion and humanity, to take up arms against their tyrants. The dignity of man called upon them to efface the black stain of their long submission to the tribute of Christian children from the character of the Hellenic race by some act of self-sacrifice.

Though the Othoman government had relaxed its fetters on the minds and bodies of the Greeks at the commence­ment of the nineteenth century, it was still a powerful and dangerous enemy. The sultan was engaged in a struggle to centralize the administration of his empire; and if his endeavours had been crowned with success before the Greeks succeeded in establishing their independence, new bonds would have been imposed on them, which would have re­strained their movements as effectually as their former chains. The patriarch and the synod, the princes of the Phanar and the provincial primates, were always ready to serve as the agents of the sultan. It is therefore needless to justify the Greek Revolution. The time was well chosen. The act was the natural result of human sympathies. The growth of popular intelligence, and the development of moral, political, and religious feeling in every class of society, made the yoke of the Mohammedans insupportable. To others the increased strength of the slave might make the fetters which he wore appear light; but it was his growth that really rendered them the cause of intolerable torture. The Greeks arrogated to themselves the highest rank among the Christian races under Mohammedan domination. It was consequently their duty to stand forward as the champions of civil liberty and Christian philanthropy.