THE GREEK REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER V.

The Operations of the Greek Hetairists beyond the Danube.

In the year 1820 the managers of the Philike Hetairia became sensible that they did not enjoy the confidence of the Greek nation. The ablest, the honestest, and the most influential men kept aloof from the society of the apostles, or, if they became members, expressed openly their distrust in the persons who represented the secret direction. To inspire general confidence, it was necessary that some person of character, experience, and talent should be known as the executive chief, though the names of his councillors might remain enveloped in mystery. The revolutionary projects of the Greeks were publicly discussed; the existence of a secret society was generally known, and the impossibility of delaying an insurrection was universally felt; yet the managers of the Hetairia were so destitute of practical capacity, that they had not prepared any depôts of arms and ammunition, and had not organized a single battalion. The revenues of the society had been spent by the apostles in travelling and in taverns, and the capacity of the managers exhausted in writing instructions and drawing plans remarkable only for vague patriotism and impracticable ambition. The storm was about to burst, and the magicians, who fancied they had raised it, felt themselves incapable of steering the vessel in which they were embarked with Greece and its fortunes. One man, by common consent, was deemed equal to the task of bringing Greece safe through the hurricane. That man was Count John Capodistrias. The supreme direction was offered to him, but he refused it without allowing the agents of the Hetairia to unfold their plans or explain the nature of their enterprise, and it remains still a question how much of their schemes was known to him. He was certainly not ignorant of the revolutionary projects of the society and of the Greeks generally; but he distrusted the capacity of the Hetairists, and he had no confidence in the energy and perseverance of the people: he was not without patriotism, but his patriotic feelings were not stronger than his personal ambition

Capodistrias having refused the supreme direction, it was offered to Prince Alexander Hypsilantes, who, though he knew nothing about the society previously, accepted it without hesitation, and immediately assumed an absolute command over the Hetairists, their plans and resources. Hypsilantes was the eldest son of the hospodar of Vallachia, whose deposition in 1806 had served Russia as a pretext for commencing war with Turkey. Bred at a despotic court, where the will of the sovereign conferred all social, political and military rank, he had lived only with men servile to those in power, and insolent to those who were their inferiors. He had risen to the rank of major-general in the Russian service, distinguished himself as an officer, and lost his right arm at the battle of Culm. His experience of life was gained in courts and camps; he possessed considerable abilities and many superficial accomplishments, but he was extremely ambitious, and his inordinate vanity, joined to the high value he set on the princely title which his father had obtained from the Othoman sultan, became a subject of ridicule to some of his Greek followers in the trans-Danubian principalities. The Greek Revolution could hardly have fallen under the direction of a man less suited to be a nation’s leader than Alexander Hypsilantes. He was so ignorant of the feelings of the Greek mountaineers and seamen, that he believed the whole people ready to hail him as their monarch. Still, it may be doubted whether he would have embarked in a contest with Turkey, had he not been persuaded that the Emperor Alexander I would support his enterprise. His education, moreover, taught him to overrate the power of Russia in the international system of Europe. He believed that it would find no serious difficulty in annexing Moldavia and Vallachia, and that to accomplish that annexation, and indemnify him for his services in creating the opportunity, a new state would be founded in Greece, of which he would be declared the sovereign.

The private character of Alexander Hypsilantes was respectable, his public conduct contemptible. He was a man of agreeable manners and a good disposition, possessing the instruction usually acquired in a well-conducted school-room, and the conversational eloquence familiar to courts. As a soldier he had displayed personal courage; he boasted of his patriotism as a Greek, but his visions of patriotism were blended with dreams of a principality or a throne. His personal good qualities were neutralized by great defects. Though active in words, he was sluggish in action. Though brave as a soldier, he was timid as a general; and when placed at the head of an enterprise which could only succeed by rapid and decisive movements, he was slow and irresolute. Deficient in the art of reading men’s characters, he collected round him a crowd of would-be courtiers, and disgusted his military and democratic partizans by the ill-timed princely airs he assumed. He was also ignorant of military tactics, negligent of discipline, and deficient in that sense of order which enforces obedience and replaces the want of administrative experience. Unfortunately, his character was tainted with a worse vice. He had no reverence for truth himself, nor did he appreciate its value in others. He began and ended his great enterprise with acts of deceit and falsehood.

Secret societies are usually hot-beds of internal intrigue. Men who throw off the restraint of those moral obligations which command their obedience in one case, are not likely to respect any laws that restrain their desires. It has been already mentioned that traitors were found among the Hetairists. Acts of misconduct or of treachery induced the superior direction of the society to order its apostles to be assassinated, and Hypsilantes is accused of being privy to these assassinations1.

The relations between the Russian and Turkish governments were almost hostile. The Greeks had some reason to expect assistance from the Emperor Alexander I, the Turks good grounds for distrusting him. The secret treaty which he had concluded with Napoleon I, after the conferences at Erfurt, for the incorporation of Moldavia and Vallachia in the Russian empire, was known to Sultan Mahmud, who saw little reason for placing any reliance in the assurances or the honour of Christian emperors after the treacherous conduct of Napoleon to the Porte on that occasion. The treaty of Bucharest had indeed restored the trans-Danubian principalities to Turkey, but several circumstances gave the sultan reason to suspect that Russia would seek an early opportunity of reconquering them. In order to facilitate an invasion of Turkey at a future period, the Emperor Alexander, when he saw that he would be compelled to make peace, issued an inhuman order to his generals in Bulgaria to destroy the towns of Nicopolis, Sistova, Rutshuk, and Silistria, before evacuating them, and to lay waste all the country south of the Danube before retiring beyond the river. These barbarous proceedings, and the falsehood and injustice of the Christian powers in many of their dealings with the Porte, made Sultan Mahmud extremely suspicious of the good faith of all Christian princes. The iniquitous invasion of Egypt by France in 1798; the unjust attempt to coerce the Porte by Great Britain in 1807; the violation of his engagements by Napoleon at Tilsit; the projected dismemberment of the Othoman empire at Erfurt, and the protection granted by Austria to fraudulent employes, who, like Karadja, the fugitive hospodar of Vallachia, decamped with large sums of public money, destroyed all confidence in the honesty of Christians and the honour of sovereigns.

On the other hand, it was impossible for Christian nations to view the treatment of their fellow-Christians in Turkey without indignation. The conduct of the officials in the Russian consulates was at variance with both justice and international law, but the conduct of the Othoman government was so unjust, that all means of protecting men from its abuses seemed equitable. Tyranny on one side and fraud on the other had, in the year 1830, produced a degree of mutual exasperation, which rendered an outbreak both inevitable and necessary. The sultan was forbidden by treaty to send Othoman troops into the Principalities without the consent of Russia, and Prince Hypsilantes believed with some ground that the Emperor Alexander would avail himself of his right to oppose their entry, or at least that he would insist on a joint occupation; and it is not improbable that, if the prince had acted with energy and capacity, and the Greek Hetairists with more courage and honesty, the one or the other must have happened. The ambition of Alexander was, however, counteracted by the principles of the Holy Alliance, and his policy was modified by the revolutionary movements of the Spaniards and Italians.

The government of the Greek hospodars in Vallachia and Moldavia was extremely oppressive, and the condition of the Rouman population under their government was more wretched than that of the Greeks under the Turkish pashas. The hospodars were men who had passed the best years of their lives in the dangerous but profitable offices of dragoman of the Porte or the fleet. From a position of servility they were suddenly invested with arbitrary power over a defenceless foreign population. They were aliens in the land they ruled, as the Turks were aliens in Greece. That, like Othoman pashas, they proved rapacious tyrants, was the natural consequence of their position and their education. Yet, while at Yassi and Bucharest they wasted the wealth of the provinces in the splendour of a court, and treated their Rouman subjects as a nation of slaves, they were regarded by their master and the divan only as tax-gatherers and policemen. The sole merit of a hospodar with the Othoman government consisted in the regularity with which he remitted his tribute, and the liberality with which he bribed the sultan’s favourites and the ministers of the Porte. As the fiscal agent of the sultan he was terrible to his subjects, and as an extortioner, for his own profit, he was hateful. The hospodars themselves amassed large fortunes in a few years and every new hospodar came attended by a crowd of hungry and rapacious Greeks, who usually arrived loaded with debts, but who expected, like their master, to enrich themselves during a short tenure of office. An army of Greek, Albanian, and Bulgarian policemen and soldiers alone enabled the hospodars to enforce their authority; and this force would not have sufficed without the support of the powerful suzerain at Constantinople, whose name was a shield to his vassal.

The trans-Danubian Principalities, like all the fertile provinces of the Othoman empire, were compelled to furnish the capital with supplies of provisions. The system of ancient Rome was revived by the Othoman sultans. A contribution of wheat, called istira, was exacted from the fertile plains of Macedonia, Thessaly, and Thrace. Originally the cultivator of the soil received a fair indemnification for his grain, but before the commencement of the Greek Revolution, the depreciation of the Othoman coinage rendered the price paid by the istiradji almost illusory. In Vallachia and Moldavia the export of almost every article of produce was monopolized by the administration for the benefit of the inhabitants of Constantinople and the profit of the hospodars. To fulfil this duty with exactitude, the hospodars were allowed a right of pre-emption for a certain quantity of grain and a fixed number of cattle, in addition to the tenth of the gross produce of the soil, which they received as the land-tax of the Othoman empire. The right of pre-emption gave rise to abuses and exactions, which formed a severe burden on the people, and a sure means of enriching the hospodars and their Phanariot followers. A large extra supply was always collected under the pretext of paying the expense of transport, and covering the losses that might take place among the cattle.

The hospodars themselves often became grain-merchants and cattle-dealers, and made large sums of money by evading the monopolies they rigorously enforced on others. The Othoman government sent annually to the Danube vessels capable of conveying 1,500,000 kilos of wheat to Constantinople; and when a greater quantity was required, the hospodars were allowed to provide for the purchase and transport of this extra quantity by a special tax on their provinces. After this notice of the principal burdens on the agricultural population of the Principalities, it is needless to attempt any description of their misery. They were the wretched slaves of a race of rapacious oppressors, who were also themselves slaves.

The native race in Vallachia and Moldavia claims a descent from the Roman colonies which settled in Dacia; but as the same language is spoken by a large part of the population in eastern Hungary, in Transylvania, in Bessarabia, on Mount Pindus, and in the valley of the Aspropotamos, it may be that this race represents a people which occupied the same countries before the coming of the Romans, but whose language had a considerable affinity with Latin, and who received the civilization of Rome, though they had resisted that of Greece. In 1821, the Rouman race numbered six millions of souls, and its lot was most unhappy. The boyards and the native nobility had been demoralized by the government of the Greek princes—they were tyrants of the peasants who cultivated the soil. The greater part of the land belonged either to large proprietors, who were like feudal lords, or to monasteries and ecclesiastical establishments. Though the cultivator was in reality a free colon, his condition was as degraded and helpless as that of a serf attached to the glebe. He was bound to work a certain number of days on a piece of land of which the whole produce belonged to the landlord. He had no prospect of ever improving his condition by his own industry, for his landlord had the power of sending him to cultivate land of an inferior quality at any time; and the landlord’s steward could exercise every power belonging to the landlord. The result was, that the Roumans were a sluggish race, nor had they, like the Greeks, the consolation of meeting with any sympathy among the Christians of happier countries. During the occupation of the Principalities by the Russians from 1808 to 1812, they had suffered severer exactions than the Greeks of the Peloponnesus had suffered at the same time from Veli Pasha. The subsequent extortions of Karadja and Kallimaki had prevented them from recovering from the exactions of the Russians. It is not, therefore, wonderful that the Rouman population regarded the Greeks with a deep-rooted hatred, and that the idea of Greek princes and Phanariot officials coming to them as the heralds of liberty appeared to be a bitter mockery.

Alexander Hypsilantes crossed the Pruth, attended by a few followers, on the 6th of March 1821. He had concerted his measures with Michael Soutzos, the reigning hospodar, and the leading Phanariot officials in the province who had been admitted members of the Hetairia. Hypsilantes believed that he was entering on a smooth and brilliant career; that Moldavia and Vallachia would submit to his government at his mere requisition; that the machinery of administration would move smoothly on as under the suzerainty of the sultan, with the advantage that he should be able to retain in his own hands the sultan’s tribute; that a European congress would relieve him from every difficulty, and the protection of the Emperor Alexander secure to him either a principality on the Danube or a throne in Greece.

The first acts of Hypsilantes betrayed his utter incapacity for the post into which he had thrust himself. Instead of endeavouring to gain possession of Ibrail, which alone could have enabled him to proceed in his enterprise with any prospect of success, he took up a position at Yassi, where his presence was unnecessary. The hospodar, Michael Soutzos, and the postelnik, Rizos Neroulos, were amiable, weak-minded, and ambitious men. They shared all Hypsilantes’ foolish hopes of Russian intervention; and, like him, they forgot that neither Providence nor Russia was likely to assist men who neglected their own affairs. Had Hypsilantes rendered it difficult for the Turks to enter the Principalities, Russia might have refused to allow them to make the attempt. To gain the support of the people it would have been necessary to promise the Roumans liberty, and to insure them some guarantee against the oppression of the Greeks and Russians rather than an imaginary relief from the Turkish yoke; for in the minds of the agricultural population in the Principalities, Turkish tyranny was regarded as a phrase for expressing Phanariot rapacity. But Hypsilantes as a Russian protégé, and Michael Soutzos as a Phanariot tax-gatherer, had no thought of increasing the liberties or lightening the burdens of the people. Hypsilantes therefore, as leader of the Greek Revolution, took his stand in Moldavia as the chief of a band of foreign mercenaries, striving to conquer the Rouman country in order to transfer the suzerainty from the Sultan of Constantinople to the Czar of Russia.

The invasion of the Hetairists overthrew the civil government, which derived its authority from the Porte; and Alexander Hypsilantes issued a proclamation as supreme head of a new order of things, in which, instead of marking his confidence in himself and his army, he boasted in enigmatic phrases that Russia protected his enterprise, and that her assistance would insure his triumph. His fatuity looked like a satire on revolutions. In action he was as destitute of energy as he was deficient of prudence in counsel. Instead of marching to surprise the enemy and secure a strong military position, he trifled away his time in idle ceremonies or absolute inaction.

The treason of Michael Soutzos and several of the Moldavian ministers placed the whole financial and military resources of the province at Hypsilantes’ disposal, and he was already in possession of a large sum of money. A considerable body of troops, consisting of soldiers who had served in the Russian and Servian wars, might have been assembled in a few days by an energetic leader with active lieutenants. The Hetairists had already secured the support of the ablest officers in the command of the troops under arms in both Principalities; and as Alexander Soutzos, the hospodar of Vallachia, died a few weeks before Hypsilantes crossed the Pruth, the whole military force in the two Principalities might have been concentrated on the banks of the Danube. The number of Greek sailors at Galatz would have enabled a man of promptitude to secure the command of the river by a fleet of gun-boats. The civil and military administration might have been more easily centred in the hands of the commander-in chief of the army in a camp before Ibrail, than at Yassi or Bucharest. By repealing every monopoly and commercial restriction, the good-will of the landed proprietors, as well as of the merchants and seamen, would have been gained. By rapid movements and vigorous attacks, the few Turkish troops then in the Dobrudsha might have been dispersed, and all the fortresses below Galatz taken. The whole course of the Danube from Orsova to the sea would, in all probability, have been in the possession of a daring soldier who had known how to conduct a national revolution, before the Othoman government had moved a single soldier; but Alexander Hypsilantes had neither the hand, the head, nor the heart capable of conducting a daring enterprise. He neither centralized the administration, nor concentrated the army, nor collected military stores, nor formed magazines. In short, he did nothing but play the prince and leave every matter of importance to chance.

The Hetairists were ready for vigorous action, and were looking anxiously for orders while Hypsilantes was preparing to cross the Pruth. Anarchy was the natural consequence of a band of conspirators being left without precise instructions and without any recognized chief. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first deeds of the Revolution brought dishonour on the cause. Galatz is the principal port of Moldavia; several Turkish merchants resided in the town, and some Turkish vessels lay in the port. As in the Othoman empire foreign sovereigns retain the sole civil and criminal jurisdiction over their subjects, it naturally followed that in the Principalities the sultan alone possessed any authority over the resident Mussulmans: a Turkish officer was therefore stationed at Galatz with a few guards, in order to enforce obedience to the police regulations and fiscal laws of Moldavia on the part of the Turks. A Greek named Karavia commanded the Christian troops in the service of the hospodar. Like Michael Soutzos and Rizos Neroulos, he was a member of the Hetairia, and being intrusted with the secrets of the conspirators, he availed himself of the vague communications and the negligence of Hypsilantes in omitting to issue precise orders, to make an infamous attempt to enrich himself by plundering the Turks. He was an Ionian by birth, and had acquired some military experience in the Russian service, and some property in the service of Karadja, the hospodar of Vallachia.

The night before Hypsilantes quitted the Russian territory, Karavia assembled the Hetairists and his band of mercenaries (called Amaouts in the Principalities, though composed of Greeks, Servians, and Bulgarians, as well as Albanians), and after informing them that a revolution was about to take place under Russian auspices, he led them to attack the Turkish officer and his men. Some of the Turks were surprised and murdered, but others succeeded in shutting themselves up in a house, which they defended for a short time. Karavia then authorized his men to capture or murder the Turkish merchants in the town, and began to break open and plunder their warehouses and take possession of their ships. Turks of every rank, merchants, soldiers, and sailors, were surprised and murdered in cold blood. The native population of Galatz took no part in this infamous transaction; they neither stained their hands with blood, nor disgraced themselves by robbing their guests. Indeed, the cruelty of Karavia and the licentiousness of his Amaouts terrified the Moldavians, who saw little prospect of enjoying either order or security under the government of the Hetairists1

The sanguinary and revengeful passions awakened by the assassination of the Mussulmans at Galatz spread rapidly over the whole province, in consequence of the misconduct of Hypsilantes and the timidity of Michael Soutzos. About fifty Othoman soldiers were stationed at Yassi as a guard of honour. They had no duty but to uphold the dignity of the suzerain by the mere fact of their presence at the court of the hospodar. Before Hypsilantes entered the city, Soutzos persuaded the bash-besli-aga to order his guards to lay down their arms, under a promise that their persons and property should be protected. The Turks were not inclined to resist the Hetairists, for they shared the general opinion that they formed the vanguard of a Russian army. The Othoman soldiers were then ordered to remain in their quarters and the Turkish merchants to be imprisoned, under the pretext that this measure was necessary to insure their safety. Yet as soon as the news of the murders at Galatz reached the capital, both the Othoman soldiers and the Turkish merchants were murdered in cold blood, under the eyes of Michael Soutzos and Alexander Hypsilantes, without these princes making an effort to save their lives, or uttering a word of reprobation at this disgraceful violation of a sacred promise. Hypsilantes had even the weakness and the wickedness to approve of the murders of Karavia at Galatz, and thus to ratify those which he had witnessed at Yassi.

The consequence of this misconduct was that similar assassinations were committed in other places, and the Albanian and Greek soldiers considered that they were authorized to rob and murder every Mussulman whose property excited their cupidity, or whose conduct afforded a pretext for revenge. Much disorder ensued, the difficulty of enforcing discipline was increased, and every captain of a company took the liberty of acting without orders.

The treasury of the Hetairia at Yassi contained a much smaller sum than Hypsilantes had expected to find in it. His own ignorance of financial administration rendered him helpless, and his counsellors could suggest nothing better than following the example of Karavia’s Amaouts, and plundering the rich. Hypsilantes, therefore, commenced his administrative operations by seizing a wealthy banker, whom he accused of being hostile to the Revolution, and of concealing funds belonging to the Hetairia. The first accusation was not a crime, and the second was false; but Paul Andreas was glad to pay the prince several thousand pounds to escape out of his hands. This act of extortion alarmed the native boyards and all the wealthy Roumans, who, afraid of being robbed by the Greeks, availed themselves of every opportunity of escaping into Russia and Austria.

The murders committed by Karavia, without securing any military advantage, inflicted a severe blow on the cause of the Hetairists. A panic terror seized the people in all the towns on the southern bank of the Danube, and the Turkish inhabitants and Othoman garrisons were roused from the apathy in which they were living and the state of neglect in which they had been left by the sultan’s government. As the news of the murders at Galatz and Yassi flew from one city to another, embellished with a hundred horrid exaggerations, the Mussulmans everywhere flew to arms; and it may be truly said that the most efficient support of Othoman domination at this crisis was the cruelty of the Greeks, not the energy of Sultan Mahmud. The wickedness of the Hetairists proclaimed the Revolution at its commencement to be a war of extermination. The Mohammedans accepted the decision of their enemies with ferocious joy, for they deemed that it made their cause the cause of justice and of God. They took up arms to avenge the murder of their brethren, and to defend their race and their religion from bloodthirsty aggressors.

While the Turks were preparing with unusual promptitude for war, Hypsilantes was trifling away his time at Yassi in the silliest manner. He conferred high military titles on his followers: captains at the head of a hundred men were made generals, and in this way acquired an opportunity of proving that they were equally unfit for both offices. Karavia was rewarded for bringing indelible disgrace on the enterprise by being named a general. The extreme folly of Hypsilantes in promoting the members of his suite was rendered more offensive by his omitting to confer any military distinction on the three ablest officers in the Principalities, who were actually at the head of considerable bodies of efficient troops. These men were Theodore Vladimiresko, a Vallachian boyard; Savas, a Greek of Patmos; and Georgaki, of Olympus. They were all Hetairists, and the neglect with which they were treated inspired Vladimiresko and Savas with suspicions that Hypsilantes and his Phanariot advisers wished to supersede them in their commands. So rapidly did the prince reveal the weakness of his character, that during his stay at Yassi not a single Moldavian of any rank joined his standard.

After allowing two months to pass unemployed, when every day ought to have been commemorated by exploits, Hypsilantes reached Bucharest on the 9th of April 1821.

The three military chiefs neglected by the commanderin-chief were the real men of action in this unfortunate revolution.

Georgaki of Olympus had been commandant of the Amaout guard in Vallachia at the death of the hospodar Alexander Soutzos. He was a man of courage and good sense, who had acquired some military experience in the Russian service, and who was enthusiastically devoted to the cause of Greece, without having formed any precise ideas concerning the means by which her liberty could be secured. Like most of his countrymen, his predominant idea was hatred of the Turks, and to secure a victory over his enemies he was ready to forge chains with which Russia might bind both Turks and Greeks. He was a sincere patriot, but no politician. His influence over the Greek and Albanian soldiers in the Principalities was great, for he was acknowledged to be their bravest leader; but he had no sympathy with the Rouman population, and he was not liked by the native boyards.

Savas of Patmos was a mere mercenary captain, but he was a man of cunning, courage, and ambition, who, under an able and energetic chief, might have been rendered an active and daring officer. He had been appointed commandant of the garrison of Bucharest by the regency which administered the government of Vallachia after the death of Alexander Soutzos. Savas’ confidence in the cause of the Hetairists had been greatly diminished by their proceedings from the time Hypsilantes crossed the Pruth until he arrived at Bucharest. He perceived that he was distrusted; and a new hospodar, Skarlatos Kallimakes, having been appointed by the Porte, he conceived hopes of advancing his interests better by allying himself with the Phanariot hospodar, who was sure of being supported by the sultan, than with the princely adventurer, who seemed by no means certain of receiving any effectual support from Russia.

Theodore Vladimiresko was a lesser boyard, who had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Russian service, and obtained the cross of St. Vladimir, from which he took his surname. He had as deep-rooted and as patriotic an aversion to Othoman domination as any Greek; but he had also a strong aversion to the Greeks as the agents of Turkish oppression in his county. He had joined the Philike Hetairia because it was a society of the orthodox, which he hoped might be useful in delivering his countrymen from the state of bondage in which they were living; but he had no intention of becoming a passive instrument of Greek intriguers. He was ambitious, cruel, and suspicious, without either the dashing courage of Georgaki or the plausible manners of Savas. His deceitful conduct warranted the Greeks in regarding him as a traitor to their cause; but if Vallachian historians had alone written the history of the enterprise of the Hetairists with the fixed purpose of lauding nationality as the first of political virtues, Vladimiresko would have been represented as a patriot and a hero.

Hypsilantes reached Bucharest with only two thousand troops under his immediate orders. But he was already surrounded by a court and a crowd of adventurers, seeking to advance their fortunes by crowding his antechamber, and by treating him with Oriental servility. There was no military system in his army; and at Bucharest the conduct of his troops persuaded even the unwarlike Roumans that he was utterly unfit for the task he had undertaken. A few days after his arrival, everybody inquired with alarm how the enterprise was likely to terminate. The infatuation of Hypsilantes still led him to expect success from the interference of Russia, and not from his own exertions; but many of his followers began to perceive that Russia, like Hercules, would in all probability be in no hurry to assist a lazy waggoner through the muddy road into which he had voluntarily plunged. In the meantime, while Hypsilantes was waiting to receive the gift of a throne, he amused himself and his mimic court by taking into his service a company of comedians, and plundering the treasury of the monastery of Maryeni to fit up a theatre.

The greatest disorder already reigned among the troops in both Principalities. The soldiers were left without pay, and at times without rations, so that they lived at free quarters among the peasantry; and all discipline was relaxed. A numerous staff of officers, in rich and fantastic dresses, hastened to and fro in the streets of Bucharest from morning to night, apparently intent on business, but without producing any result. Secretaries transmitted arbitrary requisitions for money and provisions to every district from which anything could be extracted; and Hypsilantes had himself the impudence to issue orders to prepare quarters for a Russian army, which he declared the emperor had placed under his command.

The only corps formed by the Hetairists, whose discipline and good conduct merits praise, was a corps of volunteers called the Sacred Battalion, composed of about five hundred young men of the higher and middle ranks, full of enthusiasm for the cause of liberty. They adopted a black uniform, and placed the effigy of a death’s-head on their caps as a sign of their oath that they would die or conquer. Theirs, however, was no vain boast.

“Rousing the vengeance blood alone can quell,

They rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell”.

Unfortunately, many of these young men were ill fitted to encounter the hardships of a campaign, by their extreme youth and their previous habits. Yet, though they suffered severe privations on the march, they behaved with spirit and order, and were everywhere praised by the peasantry for their discipline.

Georgaki of Olympus had also an efficient body of cavalry under his orders, but its numbers did not exceed two hundred well-mounted troopers.

The garrison of Bucharest, under the command of Savas, amounted to a thousand men, and composed an efficient corps of veteran mercenaries.

Vladimiresko was encamped at the monastery of Kotratzani, in the immediate vicinity of the capital, with three thousand pandours, or Vallachian light cavalry. His force was in good order, and he had adopted prudent arrangements for securing ample supplies of provisions and military stores. A good deal of intrigue was going on among all who possessed any share of civil or military power in Vallachia. Savas, as commandant of the garrison of Bucharest, had been ordered by the regency to defend the capital against Vladimiresko, who, at the instigation of the Hetairists, had commenced an insurrection in Little Vallachia immediately after the death of Alexander Soutzos, in order to distract the attention of the Othoman government. But the conduct of Hypsilantes in Moldavia having convinced Vladimiresko that the prince was too incompetent to have been selected by the Russian cabinet as the leader of a revolution, he advanced towards Bucharest, in order to watch the progress of events, and preserve his own position as an independent Vallachian chief. On the 29th of March, while Hypsilantes was trifling away his time on the road between Yassi and Bucharest, Vladimiresko encamped before the Vallachian capital, and published a proclamation to the inhabitants, breathing a spirit of Rouman patriotism, declaring that he came to aid them as the champion of his native land, and inviting them to send deputies in order to discuss with him the measures to be adopted for laying before the Porte a detailed statement of the evils they suffered from the rapacity of the Phanariots. It was evident that Vladimiresko had abandoned the cause of the Hetairists.

When Hypsilantes reached Bucharest, neither Vladimiresko nor Savas would acknowledge him as commander-in-chief. Both distrusted him, and both were aware of his incapacity; but as they distrusted and hated one another, both opened communications with him, hoping to render his influence subservient to the furtherance of their own projects.

The sultan had now assembled a considerable number of Turkish troops on the southern bank of the Danube. Hypsilantes had only one chance of terminating his enterprise with honour. He might still beat up the quarters of the enemy before they could concentrate a force sufficient to overwhelm the Principalities like an avalanche. Instead of taking the field, he commenced a series of intrigues with the boyard and the Patmian, in which each of the three negotiators endeavoured to cheat the other two. This wretched scene of cunning was brought to a termination by an event that would alone have sufficed to ruin the enterprise. The news arrived at Bucharest that the patriarch of Constantinople had issued an anathema against the Hetairia, and cursed Hypsilantes and his adherents. The enterprise of Hypsilantes was no longer the cause of orthodoxy, and the Roumans were eager to express their detestation of a scheme which they attributed to Greek ambition. The scandalous behaviour of persons in the prince’s suite, and the want of discipline among his troops, disgusted the Vallachians, who saw that the corps of Savas and Vladimiresko behaved in an orderly manner, and respected the property of the citizens.

While the feelings of the Rouman population were in this state, the news arrived that Russia disclaimed all complicity with the Hetairists, and that the Emperor Alexander reprobated the conduct of Hypsilantes. A congress of European sovereigns which met at Laybach declared that the members of the Holy Alliance were hostile to all revolutionary movements; and the Russian emperor gave the strongest proof of his reprobation of Hypsilantes’ conduct by announcing his determination to preserve peace with the sultan, and consenting to the entry of Othoman troops into the trans-Danubian Principalities for the purpose of suppressing the troubles caused by the prince’s insane project. At the same time he dismissed Hypsilantes from the Russian service.

The anathema of the patriarch and the policy of the Russian emperor awakened open opposition to the Hetairists on the part of the clergy and the natives, and encouraged Savas and Vladimiresko to treat the assumption of supreme power by Hypsilantes as an idle pretension, which they admitted only to advance their own private interests. They both opened secret communications with the sultan’s officers, though neither of them appears to have attached any importance to the fact that the sultan was, by the constitution of the orthodox church of Constantinople, the legal supporter of the patriarch’s authority. Many boyards, who had hitherto believed that the enterprise of Hypsilantes would eventually receive Russian support, now fled to Austria, and before quitting the Principalities, transmitted to the Porte strong declarations of devotion to the sultan’s government, and gave strict orders to their stewards to throw every obstacle in the way of the Hetairists, and afford every facility to the advance of the Othoman troops.

The decision of the Emperor Alexander was announced to the boyards of Moldavia at Yassi on the day Hypsilantes entered Bucharest; and he received the news of his own dismissal from the Russian service, and of the consent of the Russian government to the advance of the Othoman troops, a day or two later, by letters from Nesselrode and Capodistrias, written by order of the emperor. These letters upbraided him for his folly in commencing the Revolution, and for his falsehood in making use of the emperor’s name in a manner both unbecoming and untrue. He was ordered to lay down his arms immediately, as the only reparation he could make for the many evils he had created by his unreasonable ambition. From this moment it was evident that the Revolution was hopeless, and it was clearly the duty of Hypsilantes to terminate his military and political career as speedily, and with as little injury to the Principalities, as possible. Had he frankly communicated the contents of the documents transmitted to him by the Russian embassy at Constantinople to his principal officers, and concerted openly and honourably with Savas and Vladimiresko the measures necessary to be taken for preserving order and securing a general amnesty, he might still have saved thousands from ruin and death, and his own name from dishonour. But his vanity was so extravagant, his incapacity so deplorable, and his conscience so weak, that he persisted in his habit of deceit.

The policy of Russia was known to everybody in Bucharest a few hours after the prince had read his letters. Georgaki of Olympus and the principal officers waited on him to know the precise nature of the communications he had received, in order to decide on their future operations. They were received with the ceremonial of a royal court. Hypsilantes listened to their request with an affected air of condescension and self-satisfaction, but he could not prevent an expression of pettishness revealing itself in his reply; and he had the baseness to assure the officers that, though the Emperor Alexander deemed it necessary to disapprove his conduct openly, in order to preserve peace in Europe, his imperial majesty had privately ordered Capodistrias to assure him that the Hetairists were not to lay down their arms until they were informed of the issue of proposals in favour of the Greeks, which the Russian minister at Constantinople was instructed to lay before the Porte. He informed them also that, under the circumstances, he had no intention of attacking the Turks, and that he believed the Othoman troops at Rutshuk and Silistria would not invade the Principalities. When he made these statements, he knew that every word he uttered was false.

Hypsilantes was now at the head of a small and irregular army, almost entirely destitute of artillery, but with this force he took the field. Yet even then, instead of hastening to the Danube to cover Bucharest, and gain honour at least by some brilliant exploit, he crept away towards the Austrian frontier. His proceedings induced both Savas and Vladimiresko to suspect that he was playing some secret game for his own advantage, of which they were to be the dupes. They resolved to imitate the example, and turn the troubled aspect of public affairs to their own profit at his expense. Both of them carried on active negotiations with the Othoman commander at Rutshuk. Savas expected to obtain promotion by betraying the prince into the hands of the Turks. Vladimiresko is said to have believed that, by balancing between the different parties, he might at last succeed in inducing the Porte to name him hospodar of Vallachia. If this accusation be true, he must have been a worthy rival of Prince Alexander Hypsilantes in military diplomacy and political credulity.

The consent of Russia to the suppression of the Revolution by Othoman troops, made it necessary for Hypsilantes to fight immediately, or escape rapidly. He had so completely neglected military business while he was at the head of his army, that on entering on the campaign he was almost without ammunition, and to supply the want he commenced active operations by plundering the stores of Vladimiresko of six thousand pounds of powder. The troops behaved as ill as their leader: they plundered the baggage of the metropolitan bishop, and of several boyards, who were fleeing for safety to the Austrian territory.

The Turks, who had assembled considerable forces at Ibrail, Silistria, Giurgevo, and Widin, encountered no serious opposition in marching to Yassi and Bucharest. On the 37th of May they reached Bucharest, and the pasha of Silistria entered it on the 39th. Savas, though in negotiation with the Turkish authorities, followed the revolutionary army in hopes of finding an opportunity of making the prince prisoner, and delivering him into the hands of the pasha of Giurgevo. Vladimiresko also followed the movements of Hypsilantes; for by recognizing him as commander-in-chief, he had compromised his own position as an independent Vallachian leader. The movements of Hypsilantes indicate that his object in taking the field was to prevent the Othoman cavalry cutting off his retreat to the Austrian frontier. He formed a camp at Tergovisht, where he threw up intrenchments, and declared that he would await the attack of the Turks. But Vladimiresko, having resolved also to consult his own safety, and having made dispositions for marching into Little Vallachia, where he expected to maintain himself with advantage until he had brought his negotiations with the Othoman officers to a favourable termination, Hypsilantes became so alarmed lest his retreat should be cut off, that he ordered Vladimiresko to be arrested, or slain as a traitor. A conspiracy of Hetairists had been already formed among the officers in the Vallachian army, in consequence of the dissatisfaction felt at his communications with the Turks. A part of the correspondence of the Vallachian chief with the kehaya of the pasha of Giurgevo had been intercepted, and placed in Hypsilantes’ hands. The prince showed this correspondence to Georgaki, and upbraided him with having initiated Vladimiresko into the secrets of the Hetairia, telling him that it was his duty to remedy the evils produced by his imprudence, which could only be done by arresting the traitor. Georgaki, who was brave and loyal, undertook the task without hesitation. While at Piteshti, he was invited by a party in the Vallachian camp at Goleshti to assist them in putting an end to the authority of Vladimiresko; and on receiving this invitation, he hastened forward with a body of cavalry. He found a council of officers assembled to receive a communication of the greatest importance; and at this assembly, Georgaki boldly accused Vladimiresko of treachery, and declared that he was sent to summon the Vallachian leader to answer for his conduct before the commander-in-chief of the army. Vladimiresko, who despised Hypsilantes, and regarded Georgaki as his friend, did not consider that he exposed himself to much danger by submitting to the arrest and returning to Hypsilantes’ camp in company with Georgaki. He knew that many of his own officers were dissatisfied with his conduct, and he feared that, if he refused to justify himself voluntarily, they might have deserted his cause openly. He counted on the attachment of his soldiers and the inferior officers of the Vallachian army, as a sufficient guarantee for his personal safety. Though cruel and selfish, he was not an adept in treachery and falsehood, and his conscience reproached him for intriguing with the Turks, when he listened to the language of truth and honour, simply and frankly uttered by Georgaki, whom he had always admired and respected. He felt that he had violated his duty to his country, which probably affected him far more than any violation of his oath to the Hetairists.

Hypsilantes still lingered at Tergovisht when Vladimiresko was brought before him. Though himself meditating the treachery of abandoning his followers, he reproached the Vallachian chief for his treachery to the Hetairia in rude and opprobrious language. Vladimiresko retorted that he had served his country better than his accusers, and excused his correspondence with the Turks, by asserting that the intrigues of Savas had compelled him to countermine that officer. Instead of ordering Vladimiresko to be tried by court-martial, Hypsilantes pretended to pardon him; but two nights after he allowed some of his Greek partizans, who were the most determined enemies of Rouman nationality, to hurry the Vallachian chief out of the town, and to murder him with their swords and yataghans. The incapacity of Hypsilantes prevented his deriving any advantage from this assassination, though it increased his little army by an addition of four thousand men, four pieces of artillery, a considerable supply of ammunition, and a well-filled military chest.

Savas, alarmed at finding that all his dealings with the Turks were known, quitted Hypsilantes with his whole force, and joined the Othoman troops.

The Hetairists were now in danger of being surrounded by three divisions of the Turkish army advancing from Bucharest, Giurgevo, and Widin. On the 8th of June the advanced guard from Bucharest engaged a body of Hetairists near Tergovisht, and both parties claimed the victory. Hypsilantes, however, moved off to Piteshti with such precipitation that he lost twelve waggons, laden with biscuit, and part of the baggage of his army, in the river Dimbovitza; and one corps abandoned the line of march, and retreated to Kimpolunghi, The Othoman troops occupied Tergovisht, and the prince pursued his march northward to Rimnik. His movements were so evidently without any military object, that his followers became persuaded that his own personal safety alone occupied his thoughts. After remaining three days at Rimnik, on the Oita, he resolved to attack a body of Turkish cavalry which had advanced from Kraïova and taken post at the village of Dragashan, about thirty miles from his camp. The force under his command amounted to four thousand infantry, twenty-five hundred cavalry, and four guns.

On the 19th of June 1821, Prince Nicolas Hypsilantes, at the head of the sacred battalion, supported by Karavia, with five hundred cavalry and four guns, took up a position before the Turkish post at Dragashan. Georgaki sent forward a strong body of Vallachian infantry to occupy the road to Kraïova, and thus cut off the retreat of the Turks. The revolutionists required rest, for they had made a long march over heavy ground wet with rain. Georgaki, who was the superior officer, resolved to attack the enemy next morning; and to prevent the Turks from escaping to Kraïova, he strengthened the Vallachian infantry with a body of horse. As soon as these arrangements were completed, he despatched an orderly to the headquarters of Prince Alexander Hypsilantes, urging the commander-in-chief to hasten forward and secure the glory of the day. The envy of Karavia frustrated the prudence of Georgaki. He hated the Olympian, because in the hour of danger all men’s eyes were turned on that gallant soldier, and he now resolved to rob him of what seemed to the less experienced Cephalonian an easy victory. Karavia succeeded in persuading Nicolas Hypsilantes, who was as weak as his brother, to disobey the precise orders of their superior officer, and to advance with the sacred battalion and the artillery to attack the Turks, assuring him that, with the support of the cavalry, of which Karavia had five hundred in advance, it would be easy to storm Dragashan.

The Turkish force amounted to eight hundred men. Its officers were fully aware of their dangerous position, and were anxiously watching for an opportunity to escape, when they perceived the sacred battalion advance to attack them. They immediately saw that, if they could destroy it before it could receive succour, they might still succeed in effecting their retreat. The sacred battalion was composed of brave and enthusiastic youths, but their bodies were not hardened by active life, and they had not yet acquired the steady discipline of veterans. Wearied with a fatiguing march, and stiff with a short rest, they were suddenly formed, and led hurriedly forward to attack the enemy. The Turkish cavalry was drawn up, waiting an attack; but it was carefully concealed behind the buildings of the village, which covered it from the fire of the artillery. While the weary Greeks were moving slowly forward, the Turks darted on them from their hiding-places. Galloping furiously, with loud shouts, into the intervals between the companies, before the sacred battalion could form squares, they broke its order in a dozen places by a heavy fire of pistols and carbines. But though broken, the men behaved with courage; and, true to their oath, they fell bravely fighting round their standard. Very different was the conduct of Karavia and the cavalry; they fled without crossing sabres with the Turks, and spread terror among the troops in the rear, by the exaggerated accounts they gave of the Othoman forces, as an excuse for their cowardly behaviour.

Georgaki, after terminating all his arrangements for the morrow, was preparing to take some rest when he heard the sound of guns. Assembling a few officers, and placing himself at the head of his own veteran troopers, he galloped to the field, and, by an impetuous charge on the dispersed Turks, recaptured the standard of the sacred battalion and two guns. The Othoman cavalry soon rallied, and, securing two of the guns they had taken, and about forty prisoners, they prepared to attack Georgaki, who was obliged to retire, after saving about one hundred men of the sacred battalion, and forming a guard to protect the Greek army, which was seized with a panic. The Vallachians, on the road to Kraïova, dispersed, each man seeking his own home. This trifling engagement terminated the military career of Prince Alexander Hypsilantes. He was about nine miles in the rear when he received the news of his defeat, and he fled without delay to Rimnik, where he was soon followed by his brother Nicolas and the other fugitives.

Hypsilantes now began to fear that the Hetairists, and some of those who had followed his fortunes without being allowed to enter his apartments by the ‘sacred’ staircase, which he reserved for his friends and the dignitaries of his court, would detain him in Vallachia by force, in order to negotiate for their common safety. He had, however, resolved to make his escape with his own suite into Austria; and to effect this object, he resorted to his usual system of deceit and falsehood. It is even said that he forged letters, announcing that the Emperor of Austria had declared war with the sultan, and that the general commanding in Transylvania desired to hold a conference with Prince Hypsilantes on the frontier. It is certain that he communicated this news to those about him, and ordered public rejoicings in his camp to celebrate the event. He even carried his hypocrisy so far as to order a solemn service of thanksgiving to God to be celebrated in the church of Kosia, amidst repeated volleys of musketry. Under cover of this trick, he escaped with his two brothers and a few of his personal friends to the Austrian territory, on the 27th of June. With his usual fatuity and presumption, he promised the troops whom he abandoned, that he would send an aide-de-camp to conduct them to the quarters assigned to them in Austria, in virtue of the arrangements he had concluded. But as soon as this wretched adventurer found himself in safety, he issued an order of the day, to which he affixed a false date, as if it had been written at Rimnik. In this document he heaps insulting accusations on the Greeks and Roumans, who had supported his cause, naming several as fools, traitors, and cowards, and speaking of his own exploits with bombastic self-gratulation.

The flight of Hypsilantes was the last scene of the drama enacted by the Philike Hetairia in the Principalities, where the rash ambition of its supreme head and the utter incapacity of its members brought great calamities on the people, and laid the foundations of an anti-Greek feeling, which has ended in depriving the Greeks of all political power in those provinces, but which has not been entirely without some good effect, for it contributed to develope projects of national independence.

The fate of Hypsilantes hardly deserves to be recorded. Austria treated him as a Russian deserter, and would readily have surrendered him to be tried and shot by a Russian court-martial, had the Emperor Alexander felt the slightest wish to make a military example. But the emperor, having no wish to increase the punishment of one whom he considered sufficiently punished by the disgraceful issue of his enterprise, conveyed an intimation to the Austrian government, that the prince would be left at its disposal. Austria, always hostile to revolutions, and irritated by the reports which Hypsilantes had spread of her having declared war with the sultan, retained him as a prisoner until the year 1827. He was then released, and died at Vienna in the following year. The public career of Prince Alexander Hypsilantes offers not one single virtuous or courageous deed on which the historian can dwell with satisfaction. He was a contemptible leader, and a worthless man.

The traitor Savas was disappointed of his reward. He was invited to Bucharest by the pasha of Silistria, and when he waited to receive wealth and honour for his devotion to the sultan, he was beheaded for having connived at the treason of the Hetairists.

In Moldavia, the sultan’s authority was re-established without difficulty. As soon as the boyards heard that Russia disclaimed all connection with the Hetairists, they deposed Michael Soutzos, who fled to Russia, without making an effort to uphold the cause in which he had embarked. But a Greek named Pentedekas, who had been deputed by Hypsilantes to direct the administration and forward supplies to the army, arriving at Yassi shortly after the flight of the deposed hospodar, assembled a few troops, and took possession of the government in defiance of the boyards. Prince George Cantacuzenos, who came to Moldavia from Hypsilantes’ army, because he pretended to have it in his power to draw supplies of money and provisions from his estates in Bessarabia, acted as lieutenant-general. He stationed himself near the Russian frontier, and when the Othoman forces entered Yassi on the 25th of June, he deserted his troops, and placed his own person in security by crossing the Pruth.

The only military exploits which reflected any honour on the Greeks in the Principalities, were those performed after the commander-in-chief had escaped into Austria, and his lieutenant-general into Russia. The officers, who had retired to Skuleni with Cantacuzenos, refused to follow him in his flight over the Pruth. They declared that they had sworn to defend the cause to the last, and that they could not abandon it without a battle, in which there was always a chance of victory for brave men. They said that it was no disgrace for civilians to retire from the dangerous position they occupied, but military honour commanded soldiers to remain. The lieutenant-general paid no attention to their observations.

About four hundred men, Greeks, Albanians, and Servians, intrenched themselves, as well as the time and their means allowed, at Skuleni, on the banks of the Pruth, where they were attacked on the 29th of June by a strong body of Othoman troops, who brought up six guns to play on their camp. Nothing could surpass the valour with which the Christians defended their position. The Turks made several attempts to storm it under cover of the fire of their artillery, but were repulsed. Their grape-shot and rifles, however, gradually thinned the numbers of their enemies. Russian officers who viewed the engagement from the left bank of the Pruth, declared that the Greeks behaved like veteran troops. At last the number of the defenders became insufficient to man the intrenchments. The Othomans redoubled their assaults, the fire of their guns was concentrated on one point, and a body of cavalry, covered by a round of grape from the artillery and a heavy fire of musketry, charged over the earthworks into the midst of the camp. Those who were not killed on the spot plunged into the river, and many gained the Russian bank in safety. This gallant affair at Skuleni terminated the Revolution in Moldavia.

The Turks, after their victory at Dragashan, occupied all Little Vallachia, where order was easily established. Most of the Hetairists in the Principality escaped over the Austrian frontier, but a few bands of irregulars retreated eastward through Vallachia, attempting to reach Moldavia, from whence they expected to gain the Russian frontier. Georgaki was one of those who refused to follow the example of Hypsilantes. Collecting a number of determined men, who resolved neither to owe their lives to Austrian protection nor to Turkish mercy, he proposed to fight his way to the Russian frontier. Once in Russia, he had no doubt that he should soon be able to find means to transport himself and his companions to Greece, where he now learned that the battle of freedom could alone be fought. He was joined by a Macedonian captain, named Pharmaki, who was at the head of two hundred and fifty men.

The two chiefs were surrounded by the Turks long before they could gain the Moldavian frontier, for the indiscipline and misconduct of Hypsilantes’ troops, and the exactions of the Hetairists in levying contributions, had created a feeling of animosity in the breasts of the Rouman population. The consequence of this was that the Turkish officers were accurately informed by the peasantry of every movement of Georgaki and Pharmaki, while those leaders could obtain no information concerning the position and movements of the Turkish troops. After many almost incredible marches and hairbreadth escapes, the Greek chiefs were at last completely surrounded by their enemies, and blockaded in the monastery of Seko. All provisions were cut off; every road was barricaded, and no possibility of escape remained. The Turks offered terms of capitulation, which were rejected. Georgaki occupied a belfry, which stood at a short distance from the principal building. With a few soldiers he defended the approach to the monastery for some time; but the upper part of the belfry tower being of wood, was set on fire, and its garrison had no choice but to rush through a heavy fire of the enemy to gain the main building, to perish in the flames, or to surrender at discretion: what really occurred in the belfry is not known with certainty. Georgaki had repeatedly declared, as danger became more and more imminent, that he would never submit to the Turks, and it is certain that he threw open the door of the belfry, and invited all who wished to escape to run as quickly as possible to the monastery. Immediately after the powder-chest exploded. One man only escaped.

Pharmaki defended the monastery for a fortnight, until both his provisions and ammunition were exhausted. The Turks were extremely anxious to make a few prisoners, and after a long negotiation they persuaded Pharmaki to surrender with about twenty men on the 4th October. Thirty-three Greeks who refused to trust the promises of the Turkish officers, that their lives would be spared, escaped on the night previous to the surrender, and gained the Austrian frontier. Whatever promises were made by the Turkish officers, were as usual disclaimed by the sultan, when his enemies were in his power. The soldiers were put to death as soon as an order for their execution could arrive from Bucharest. Pharmaki was sent to Constantinople, where he was tortured and then beheaded.

Thus terminated this ill-judged attempt to make a Greek revolution in foreign provinces, without offering to the native population any guarantee for a better administration of justice, or any prospect of increasing the liberties of the nation. The Roumans, long oppressed by their Phanariot princes, had strong reasons for detesting the enterprise, which, if successful, seemed likely to render the Greek domination in the Principalities perpetual, by placing them under the powerful protection of Russia. Fortunately both for the Roumans and the Greeks, their nationalities escaped that strangulation which would have been the inevitable effect of the rapid extension of Russian power in European Turkey at this period. Unfortunately the conduct of Hypsilantes and the Hetairists sullied the national character of the Greeks with a deep stain, which was only partially effaced by the noble conduct of the troops at Skuleni and the patriotic devotion of Georgaki. It was reserved for the native land of the Hellenic race to prove that Greece could still arm heroes in her cause.

CHAPTER VI.

The Outbreak of the Revolution in Greece.

READING HALL

DOORS OF WISDOM

THE GREEK REVOLUTION.