THE GREEK REVOLUTION.

 

BOOK THIRD.

THE SUCCESSES OF THE GREEKS.

 

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF GREECE AS AN INDEPENDENT STATE.

 

                           “ Echoes which have slept

Since Athens, Lacedaemon, were themselves,

Since men invoked, By those in Marathon,

Awake along the Egean.”

 

 

The numbers of the Christians who had taken up arms in Greece, enabled them immediately to blockade all  the fortresses occupied by the Turks. And the insurgents endeavoured to gain possession of them by military operations as rude as those by which the Dorians invested the Achaian cities in the heroic ages. Strong positions were taken up in the nearest mountains, and all the defiles by which supplies could be obtained from a distance were closely watched, while, in the mean time, the country under the walls was laid waste by nocturnal forays. The improvidence of the besieged soon rendered this mode of attack effectual. Famine and sickness made terrible ravages in the ranks of the Mohammedans, crowded together without preparation and without precaution.

The first decisive victory of the insurgents was gained at Valtetzi, one of the blockading positions held by the Greeks to watch Tripolitza, but about eight miles distant from that city, and situated on the hills that overlook the south-western corner of the great Arcadian plain. The kehaya of Khurshid Pasha, Achmet Bey, had recently arrived at Tripolitza with a reinforcement of eight hundred cavalry and fifteen hundred infantry. He had marched from Patras along the southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, penetrated through the Dervenaki to Argos, and crossed Mount Parthen ius in defiance of the Greek troops. But when he reached Tripolitza he found the Turks in want of everything, and he saw that unless he could break up the blockade and open up regular communications with Messenia, the place would soon be untenable.

On the 24th of May 1821 he made a vigorous attack on the Greek post at Valtetzi, which was fortified with more than ordinary care. The Turkish force was supported by two guns, but the engagement in reality was nothing more than a severe skirmish of irregulars. The chief strength of the Turks consisted in a body of twelve hundred cavalry, and the rocky eminence on which the Greeks were intrenched rendered this force useless. The Albanian infantry was not much more numerous than the Greek troops they attacked, but they attempted to mount the hill crowned by the stone walls behind which the Greeks were posted, with courage. A well-directed fire from marks­men, who fired coolly from their well-covered positions, compelled the Albanians to fall back with severe loss. The whole day was consumed in partial and desultory attacks, for the Albanians could not approach near enough to make any general attempt to carry the place by storm. The Turks were at last compelled to commence their retreat to Tripolitza. The Greeks, who had anticipated this movement, hastened to profit by it. They cut off the baggage from the cavalry, and hung on the flanks and rear of the infantry for some time.

In this affair about five thousand Turks and three thousand Greeks were engaged, and four hundred Turks and one hundred and fifty Greeks were killed. But the victory was so decidedly in favour of the Greeks that the battle of Valtetzi destroyed the military reputation of the Turks in the Morea, and broke the spirit of the garrison of Tripolitza. Soon after the Greeks followed up their success by occupying the rocky eminences called Trikorpha, which overlook Tripolitza, within rifle-shot of the western wall.

Monemvasia was the first fortress that capitulated to the Greeks. The place was to them impregnable; but want caused dissensions among its defenders. The Turks made proposals for a capitulation, and Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes (a younger brother of the great Hetairist), who had been appointed on his arrival in the Morea commander-in-chief of the Greek army, but who persisted in acting as lieutenant-governor of Greece in the name of his brother, the unfortunate and  incapable Alexander, appointed Prince Gregorios Cantacuzenos to take possession of Monemvasia in his own name. To this order the Peloponnesian Senate objected with justice. A blockade of four months had been carried on entirely at the expense of the people. Neither Prince Alexander Hypsilantes and the Hetairists, nor Prince Demetrius and the other princes who had arrived in Greece, had assisted in reducing the place. Monemvasia consequently must be occupied in the name of the Greek government, and must be surrendered to the leaders of the blockading force conjointly with the officer deputed by Demetrius Hypsilantes. Such was the decision of the Peloponnesian Senate, and to it Hypsilantes was compelled to yield; but he did not lay aside his viceregal pretensions and his foolish vanity. In this case his injudicious conduct caused a feeling of distrust among the leaders of the blockading force before Monemvasia, which produced very unfortunate consequences.

Monemvasia was given up to the Greeks on the 5th of August 1821. The Turks surrendered their arms, and were allowed to retain their movable property. The Greeks engaged to transport them to Asia Minor in three Spetziot vessels, which had maintained the blockade by sea. The Turks were bound to pay a fixed sum for their passage. In virtue of this capitulation, about five hundred souls were conveyed to Scalanova. But a body of Greek soldiers, principally Maniats, opposed the execution of the capitulation to the utmost of their power. They murdered several Turks who were on the point of embarking, and they plundered the property of families who had already embarked. Prince Gregorios Cantacuzenos and many officers present did everything in their power to put a stop to this violation of the first military convention concluded by the Greeks, but their interference was viewed with jealousy, and was only partially successful.

The surrender of Navarin followed soon after, and was attended with far greater atrocities. Hypsilantes sent a Cephaloniot civilian in his suite to act as his deputy. The Peloponnesian Senate sent Nikolas Poniropoulos. The agent of Hypsilantes was an honourable man, without ability or experience. Poniropoulos was an unprincipled intriguer—a type of the worst class of Moreot officials. He boasted some years later to General Gordon “of his address in purloining and destroying a copy of the capitulation given to the Turks, that no proof might remain of any such transaction having been concluded.”

Before Navarin capitulated, many Turkish families had been compelled by hunger to escape out of the place, and throw themselves on the mercy of the Greeks of the neighbourhood, with whom they had once been connected by ties of mutual kindness. Sad tales are told concerning their fate.

On the 19 th of August 1821, starvation compelled those who remained in the fortress to capitulate. They gave up all the public property in the fortress, and all the money, plate, and jewels belonging to private individuals. They were allowed to retain their wearing apparel and household furniture. The Greeks engaged to transport them either to Egypt or to Tunis. When the capitulation was concluded, the agent of Hypsilantes left the Greek camp to procure vessels; Poniropoulos remained to take advantage of his absence. A Greek ship engaged in the blockade anchored in the harbour, and the money and valuable property of the Turks were carried on board. While this was going on, disputes arose concerning the manner in which the persons of females were searched for gold and jewels. A general massacre ensued; and, in the space of an hour, almost every man, woman, and child, who was not already on board ship, was murdered.

A Greek ecclesiastic, Phrantzes, who has left valuable memoirs of the events in the Morea during the first years of the Revolution, was present, and has given a description of the scenes he witnessed. Women, wounded with musket-balls and sabre-cuts, rushed to the sea, seeking to escape, and were deliberately shot. Mothers robbed of their clothes, with infants in their arms, plunged into the water to conceal themselves from shame, and they were then made a mark for inhuman riflemen. Greeks seized infants from their mothers’ breasts and dashed them against the rocks. Children, three and four years old, were hurled living into the sea and left to drown. When the massacre was ended, the dead bodies washed ashore, or piled on the beach, threatened to cause a pestilence. Phrantzes, who records these atrocities of his countrymen with shame and indignation, himself hired men in the Greek camp, and burned the bodies of the victims with the wrecks of some vessels in the harbour, in order to save the place from the effects of so many putrid bodies remaining exposed to an autumn sun.

The Greeks having deliberately deceived the Turks by a treacherous treaty, immediately set to work to cheat one another out of a share in the booty. It had been stipulated that the spoil was to be divided into three equal parts; one-third for the national treasury, one-third for the troops, and one-third for the ships employed in the blockade. Both the government and the soldiers were defrauded of their shares. Two Spetziot vessels, belonging to Botases and Kolandrutzos, as soon as they had embarked the valuables of the Turks and a few of the wealthiest families, sailed off, and never gave any account of the greater part of the booty in their possession. This conduct caused much recrimination between the Greek soldiers and the Albanian sailors; but it was asserted that the Spetziots bribed the primates and the captains to abandon the cause of the national treasury and of the poor soldiers. This base conduct of their leaders damped the enthusiasm of the people of Messenia, who became so lukewarm in the cause of the Revolution, that they neglected to concert any effectual measures for blockading Modon and Coron, of which the Turks retained possession.

The surrender of Tripolitza was retarded by the measures which the chiefs of the blockading army adopted to get possession of the money and jewels of the Turks without being obliged to share the booty with the national treasury and the private soldiers. Their first speculation was to establish a trade in provisions, which they sold to the starving Turks at exorbitant prices, while they prolonged the negotiations for a capitulation. Kyriakuli Mavromichales, a brave and patriotic officer, put an end to these scandalous proceedings by bringing on a severe skirmish, and threatening to storm the walls. The soldiers also began to perceive the object of their leaders, and to clamour at their avarice.

If Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes had been present at the surrender of Tripolitza, as commander-in-chief of the Greek army, he would have gained the honour of the conquest, and his disinterestedness would, in all probability, have enabled him to protect the cause of order. He had some personal virtues which all men respected, and which would have obtained for him the support of the best Greek soldiers at this important time. But, most unfortunately for the cause of Greece, Hypsilantes allowed himself to be persuaded to quit the camp before Tripolitza by the selfish Moreot leaders; just at the moment it became certain that the place could not hold out for many days. The object of Hypsilantes was to prevent the Turks landing within the Gulf of Corinth on the northern coast of the Morea. Most of the foreign officers in Greece accompanied him; and as soon as he departed, Kolokotrones and the greedy chieftains commenced negotiations with the Albanians, who formed part of the garrison of Tripolitza, and struck private bargains for selling their protection to wealthy Turks.

Petrobey became nominally the commander-in-chief of the besieging army after Hypsilantes’s departure, but he possessed no authority. It was now known over all Greece that the fall of Tripolitza was inevitable, and crowds of armed peasants hurried to the camp to share in the plunder of the Turks. The booty gained at Monemvasia and Navarin had demoralised the whole population. On the 27th of September, a conference was held to treat concerning a capitulation. The Greek chiefs offered to allow the Turks to retire with their families to Asia Minor on receiving forty millions of piastres, a sum then equal to £1,500,000 sterling. There was no possibility of collecting so large a sum; and as the Greeks demanded, moreover, that the Turks should deliver up their arms, the besieged had no guarantee that they would escape the fate of their country­men at Monemvasia and Navarin, for they could neither trust the promises of the chiefs nor the humanity of the troops. The Turks therefore made a counter-proposition. They offered to give up everything they possessed, except their arms, and a small fixed sum in money, and demanded permission to occupy the passes of Mount Parthenius, in order to secure their safe retreat to Nauplia. The Greek chiefs refused these terms, as every hour of the increasing famine within the walls  increased their profits. The kehaya bey proposed to  the garrison to cut its way through the besiegers and gain Nauplia; but the Moreot Mussulmans had no longer horses to carry off their families, and without their knowledge of the country the other troops feared to make the attempt.

The Greeks now concluded a separate capitulation with the Albanian Mussulmans under the command of Elmas Bey. These mercenaries were fifteen hundred strong, and they had suffered so little during the blockade that they were still fit for the severest service. The Greeks regarded them as dangerous enemies. They were experienced in mountain warfare, and would have preferred fighting their way home against any odds rather than surrendering their arms, or a single gold piece from the treasure they carried in their belts. To them the misery of the Turks was a matter of indifference. The great business of their lives was to amass money abroad, and to carry it back safely to their native villages in Albania.

While the negotiations with the Albanians were going on, the Greek chiefs employed the time in concluding separate bargains with wealthy Mussulmans, who delivered to them money and jewels on receiving promises of protection, ratified by the most solemn oaths. The widow of a Spetziot shipowner, named Bobolina, gained notoriety by her conduct in these bargains. She had displayed both energy and patriotism at the commencement of the Revolution; and a ship, of which she was the proprietor, was engaged in blockading Nauplia. She now came up to the camp before Tripolitza, to obtain a share of the booty at the surrender of the place. Petrobey and Kolokotrones allowed her to enter the city, in order to persuade the Turkish women to deliver up their money and jewels, as the only means of purchasing security for their lives and their honour. In the mean time the Greek chiefs treated with the Mussulmans from their respective districts, and the Maniats concluded private bargains with the Barduniots.

The Greek soldiers at last became aware that their chiefs were engaged in a conspiracy to defraud them of the booty which had been held out to them as a lure to prosecute the blockade for six months without pay. A feeling of indignation spread through the camp, and it was resolved by tacit consent to put an end to the treacherous proceedings of the chiefs by entering the place either by surprise or storm. An opportunity occurred on the 5th of October 1821. A few soldiers contrived to gain an entrance at the Argos gate, and to seize one of the adjoining towers, from which they displayed the Greek flag.

In a few minutes the whole Greek army rushed to the walls, which were scaled in several places and the gates thrown open. A scene of fighting, murder, and pillage then commenced, unexampled in duration and atrocity even in the annals of this bloody warfare. Human beings can rarely have perpetrated so many deeds of cruelty on an equal number of their fellow­creatures as were perpetrated by the conquerors on this occasion. Before the Greek chiefs could enter the place, the whole city was a scene of anarchy, and the misconduct of the Greek chiefs had rendered them powerless to restore order or to arrest the diabolical passions which their own avarice and dishonourable proceedings had awakened in the breasts of their followers.

When the tumult commenced, the Albanians under Elmas Bey formed under arms in the immense courtyard of the pasha’s palace. Their warlike attitude alarmed the Greek chiefs, who succeeded in preventing their falling on the dispersed Greeks, and persuaded them to march out of the place and take up their quarters at Trikorpha, in the strong position occupied by Kolokotrones during the blockade. They were supplied with provisions, and on the 7th October they commenced their march to Vostitza, where they crossed the gulf to Lepanto, and, hastening through Etolia, reached Arta in safety.

The citadel of Tripolitza surrendered from want of water on the 8th of October, and Kolokotrones gained possession of all the treasure it contained. The official return of the artillery and ammunition found in the town and the citadel gives a contemptible idea of the military operations of this long siege. Of thirteen brass guns only two 6-pounders remained serviceable; and of seventeen iron guns, only three 9-pounders. There were found in the place only 855 shot of all calibres, and ten packets of grape; and the powder­magazines were entirely empty.

Colonel Raybaud, a young French officer of talent and candour, who commanded the Greek artillery during the siege, and who was the only foreigner of rank and character who was present when the Greek troops entered the place, has recounted the scenes of horror and disorder which prevailed for three days. In a plain narrative he describes the acts of barbarity of which he was an eyewitness. Women and children were frequently tortured before they were murdered. After the Greeks had been in possession of the city for forty-eight hours, they deliberately collected together about two thousand persons of every age and sex, but principally women and children, and led them to a ravine in the nearest mountain, where they murdered every soul.

Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes returned to Tripolitza nine days after the capture of the place. The Turks had made no attempt to effect a landing on the northern coast of the Morea, so that his absence had been unnecessary. He was laughed at for being out of the way by those who had profited by his absence, and his troops were discontented at being deprived of all share in the booty made at Tripolitza. His authority as commander-in-chief had been destroyed by his absence, and nobody henceforward would obey his orders, unless when they themselves thought fit to do so.

General Gordon, who returned to Tripolitza with Hypsilantes, and whose familiarity with the Turkish language enabled him to converse with those who were spared, estimates the number of Mussulmans murdered during the sack of the town at eight thousand souls. Many young women and girls were carried off as slaves by the volunteers who returned to their native places, but few male children were spared.

The women of Khurshid Pasha's harem, and a few Turks of rank, were spared, in expectation of a high ransom. A few of the garrison, with some Moreot Turks, availing themselves of the confusion that prevailed among the Greeks, kept together under the kehaya bey, and, cutting their way through the conquerors, gained one of the gates, and marched off to Nauplia without being pursued.

The loss of the Greeks was estimated at three hundred slain in casual encounters. Many Turks surrendered on receiving a promise that their lives should be spared, but those who were capable of bearing arms  were sent out of the city, under the pretence of quartering them in the neighbourhood, where greater facilities existed for obtaining provisions, and they were murdered during the night. Some prisoners were spared for a short time in order to bury the bodies of their slaughtered countrymen, which were putrefying by thousands, exposed in almost every house and garden. Even this precaution was too long neglected. The air was already tainted with deadly miasma, and a terrible epidemic soon broke out among the Greeks. The disease, generated by similar causes in other towns and villages, spread over all Greece; and, before the end of the year 1821, it is said to have carried off more Christians than fell by the hands of the Turks in the whole Othoman empire.

The circumstances which accompanied the taking of Tripolitza neutralised all the advantages which might have resulted from the conquest of the capital of the Morea. Anarchy prevailed both in the civil and military affairs of the country. All respect for superiors, and all self-respect, ceased. Hypsilantes lost his personal influence as well as his military authority. During his short absence from the army, he had witnessed the destruction of the flourishing town of Galaxidhi from his camp on the Achaian hills without being able to succour the sufferers or avenge their losses. The troops lost all confidence both in his judgment and his good fortune. Kolokotrones, who, before the exhibition he made of his avarice and dishonesty in cheating the troops of the booty at Tripolitza, had a fair chance of becoming the leader of the Revolution, lost the moral influence he had accidentally gained, and relapsed into a klephtic captain and party chief. Most of the other leaders forfeited the confidence of the soldiers by similar conduct. When they defrauded their own followers, it is not astonishing that they were faithless to the Turks, to whom they sold promises of protection. The plunder obtained was very great, and some Moreot captains became chieftains by their success in appropriating to their own use the property of murdered Mussulmans. Mustapha Bey of Patras, and other opulent men, were known to have been murdered, after large sums had been extorted from them as a ransom for their lives. The retribution for these crimes was immediate. Those who had despised every obligation of duty, morality, and religion, could no longer appeal to law and reason. Anarchy directed the future career of the Greek Revolution. The struggle which a minority of honest men and sincere patriots sustained in order to establish order, proved ineffectual; yet the mass of the people, though misguided and misgoverned, continued to defend their religious and political independence without faltering.

The Othoman fleet made a successful expedition during the summer of 1821. The Albanian islanders allowed their ships to return to Hydra and Spetzas in the month of August. This season is considered by the Turks as the most favourable for naval operations, as the winds in the archipelago are fresh without being violent. The capitan-bey, Kara Ali, sailed from the Dardanelles with three line-of-battle ships, five frigates, and about twenty corvettes and brigs, but his force was soon increased by the junction of the Egyptian and Algerine squadrons. After throwing supplies of provisions and ammunition into the fortresses of Coron and Modon, which saved them from falling into the hands of the Greeks, he reached Patras on the 18th of September. The reinforcements with which he strengthened the garrison, enabled Yussuf Pasha to reduce the Lalliots to some degree of subordination, and to break up the blockade which the Greeks had formed.

On the 1st of October, Ismael Gibraltar, the commander of the Egyptian squadron, was sent into the Gulf of Corinth to destroy the vessels at Galaxidhi. It has been already mentioned that Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes witnessed this catastrophe. The inhabitants of Galaxidhi were the principal shipowners on the western coast of Greece. They possessed about sixty vessels of various sizes, of which forty were brigs or schooners. At this time almost the whole Galaxidhiot navy was in port; and, with the strange improvidence which characterised the proceedings of both Greeks and Turks in this war, no measures had been adopted to defend the town or the anchorage. The contempt which the Greeks entertained for the Turkish fleet, was not abated by the terrible disasters it inflicted on them. Their ignorance of the first elements of the art of war made them place far too much confidence in their knowledge of seamanship and naval manoeuvres as a means of baffling the operations of the Othoman navy. They consequently neglected to defend their ports, and the Turks, profiting by their neglect, destroyed their fleets at Galaxidhi, Kasos, and Psara. Ismael Gibraltar possessed sufficient naval skill to take advantage of the superiority of his artillery. He silenced the Galaxidhiot battery, and cannonaded the town without coming within the range of the Greek artillery, and his fire was on this account more than usually accurate. The soldiers whom the Galaxidhiots had hired to assist them in defending the beach, fled during the night, and the inhabitants were obliged to follow their example. The Algerines landed in the morning, plundered the houses, massacred most of those who had remained behind, and carried off a few prisoners. The town, the boats on the beach, and the vessels which were aground, were burned. But thirty-four brigs and schooners were found ready for sea, and were carried off by the Turks.

The season was now so far advanced that Kara Ali resolved to return to Constantinople in order to enjoy his triumph and exhibit his spoil. He quitted Patras and put into Zante for news, where he learned to his dismay that a Greek fleet of thirty-five sail had put to sea under Miaoulis, to attack him on his return. He made the best arrangements in his power to prevent the Greeks retaking his Galaxidhiot prizes, and sailed with a firm determination to decline an engagement if possible.

On the 12th of October, an Algerine brig, having separated from the fleet, was surrounded by eighteen Greek brigs; but it refused to surrender, and made such a gallant resistance that the Hydriots did not venture to run alongside and attempt to carry her by boarding. The Algerines, aware that, if their ship became unmanageable, she would be burned and they would all perish, ran her ashore near the southern cape of Zante. The fight between the gallant Algerine and his numerous assailants had been witnessed by thousands of refugee Moreots and Zantiot peasants, who, when the Mussulmans landed, began to fire on them. Two English officers, with a guard of twenty men, had been sent from the town to enforce obedience to the quarantine regulations, which were then observed with great strictness by all the Christian powers in the Mediterranean. The Greeks were ordered to retire; but they refused, and, continuing to attack the Turks, they soon came into collision with the English. The officer commanding, hoping to intimidate the people, ordered his men to fire over the heads of the crowd.

The Zantiots immediately replied by firing on the troops. The English were compelled to retire to a neighbouring house, leaving one man dead behind. The house was besieged, and a skirmish was kept up until fresh troops arrived. The Zantiots had two killed as the soldiers were forcing their way to the house, and they mangled the body of the English soldier which fell into their hands, with frightful ferocity, to revenge this loss.

The Algerines said that they had been pursued by the Greek fleet, and that they had several men wounded after their vessel was ashore. The pursuit, however, did not prevent their landing a number of wounded men on a raft, which they constructed from spars and planks; and the violation of neutrality on the part of the Greek fleet was a trifling matter, and would have passed unnoticed had the Ionians not fired on the Turks.

The death of the two Ionians caused great animosity between the Greeks and the English in the Ionian Islands. The Ionians pretended that the neutrality which the English observed ought to have prevented their interfering in the combat between Greeks and Turks. For several years the conduct of the English government and of the English military was systematically calumniated by what was called the Philhellenic press over the whole continent of Europe, and most of the calumnies found a ready credence. The pride of English Philhellenes prevented their replying to the false accusations brought against their country and their countrymen. But it would have been impossible for the authorities in the Ionian Islands to have preserved order among a Greek population, inflamed with national enthusiasm, eager for revolution, and ready to resist the law, unless they had punished severely the death of an English soldier in the execution of his duty, and the wanton attack on the subjects of aA. d. 1821. friendly sovereign seeking protection on neutral territory. Martial law was proclaimed; five Zantiots were tried for firing on the English troops, convicted, and executed; a proclamation was issued by the Lord High Commissioner, forbidding the entry of either Othoman or Greek men-of-war into any Ionian port, unless driven in by stress of weather.

A day or two after the loss of the Algerine brig, the Greeks lost a brig which they were compelled to run ashore at Katakolo, and which the Turks succeeded in getting afloat and carrying off as a prize. The Turkish and Greek fleets engaged, and a great deal of ineffective cannonading ensued. Kara Ali, who would not risk losing any of his prizes, was driven back to Zante, where he embarked the survivors of the crew of the Algerine brig, and at last sailed with a favourable wind, which carried him safely through the Archipelago. He entered the port of Constantinople in triumph, towing his thirty-five Galaxidhiot prizes, and displaying thirty prisoners hanging from the yard-arm of his flag-ship. The sultan considered the results of this naval campaign as extremely satisfactory, though, when he compared the force of the capitan-bey with that under Miaoulis, he could not consider it as honourable to the Othoman navy. Kara Ali, who had hitherto only held the rank of capitan-bey, was rewarded with that of capitan-pasha.

Kolokotrones was the only man in the Morea who possessed the talent and energy to take advantage of the fall of Tripolitza for the national advantage ; but his selfishness had destroyed his influence over the great body of the troops. Had his countrymen felt any confidence in his honour at this moment, he would have been raised to the chief command. Unfortunately, the trust was considered too great for his honesty, whatever it might be with reference to his capacity. He himself perceived that he had lost the public esteem, and he was anxious to regain his reputation. He claimed some credit for having persuaded the Albanians under Elmas Bey to desert the Turks. He asserted that he would be able to induce the Lalliots, with whom he had amicable relations, to abandon Yussuf Pasha, and perhaps to surrender the castle of Patras. He proposed, therefore, marching immediately to besiege that fortress. It is not improbable that, had Kolokotrones received proper support, his plan would have been successful, for the Lalliots were at open feud with Yussuf Pasha.

Kolokotrones marched from Tripolitza to invest Patras, which had been relieved from blockade by the arrival of the fleet under Kara Ali. His force, which consisted at first of only his personal followers, amounting to about a hundred men, was increased as he moved westward, until he mustered about two thousand in the plain of Elis. A report was spread that Patras was on the eve of capitulating to Kolokotrones, and crowds of armed men hastened to share the expected plunder. The selfishness of the primates and capitans, who had hitherto ineffectually attempted to blockade Patras, now thwarted him in all his projects. His own selfishness at Tripolitza was avenged by that of his rivals. He might have repeated the words of Macbeth—

“ This even-handed justice

Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice

To our own lips.”

The intrigues of Germanos, the Archbishop of Patras, and Andreas Zaimes, induced the Greek government to recall Kolokotrones, under the pretext that his services were more necessary elsewhere; and thus the only man who could have induced the Turks in Patras to capitulate was compelled to retire, precisely because it was supposed that he had sufficient influence to cause a capitulation to be respected. The Achaians were soon punished for their selfishness. The Greek troops were defeated in an attempt to establish themselves amidst the ruined houses of the town, and the besieged were enabled to strengthen their position by completing the destruction of all the buildings in the vicinity of the castle which afford any cover to the Greeks, or could interrupt the communications of the garrison with the sea.

The fortress of Corinth capitulated on the 22d of January 1822. The Albanians of the garrison, who were only a hundred and fifty, had previously concluded a separate convention with the Greeks, which permitted them to retire from the place with their arms and baggage. They hired four vessels to transport them over the gulf, but they were plundered of their property by the Greeks, and many were murdered. The Turks who remained in the Acrocorinth gave up their arms and property to their besiegers on condition of being allowed to retain a small sum of money, and to hire neutral vessels to transport them to Asia Minor. On the 26th of January the Greek troops took possession of the Acrocorinth, and the Turks encamped at Kenchries to wait for shipping. Before neutral vessels arrived, they were attacked by the Greeks and murdered. The conquerors had expected to find a considerable treasure in the Acrocorinth. Kiamil Bey, who was the wealthiest Turkish landlord in Greece, was supposed to have laid up there a fabulous amount of money. They were disappointed. If Kiamil Bey had ever possessed any very considerable hoard of ready money, it had been expended during the sieges of Tripolitza and Corinth. The Greeks, however, would not believe the word of the bey, and they tortured him in the cruelest manner.

The repeated examples of treachery on the part of the Greeks caused the Turks in the remaining fortresses to defend themselves with incredible fortitude. Convinced that no promises of the Christians would be kept, they determined to endure every privation rather than capitulate, and they now began to display unusual energy and sagacity in obtaining supplies of provisions.

In the Morea the Othomans still possessed the fortresses of Nauplia, Coron, Modon, and Patras, with the castle of Rhion.

The Greeks, from an insurgent populace, had now become an independent nation. They had assembled large bodies of armed men, and blockaded simultaneously a number of Othoman fortresses. The manner in which they were supplied with the resources necessary to keep a large force in the field, deserves to be described. In the first place, the improvidence of the Othoman authorities allowed an immense amount of public property to fall into the hands of the insurgents. A great part of this property was easily converted into money, and a large fund was thus placed at the disposal of those local leaders who assumed the command in different districts. In spite of the confusion that prevailed in Greece during the year 1821, the exports were considerably increased. The sums expended for military purposes escape the attention of the historian, from not being collected in a central treasury, or systematically employed on a general and preconcerted plan. Each locality collected and expended its own resources; and either from ignorance or selfishness, the local primates, proesti, and captains, took no steps to lay the foundation of an organised administration for that portion of civil, financial, and military business which requires a central direction. It was undoubtedlymore from want of capacity and honesty in the clergy, the primates, and the military chiefs, than from any deficiency in a supply of men and money on the part of the people, that order, publicity, and responsibility were not introduced in the conduct of national business. The peasantry everywhere displayed zeal and disinterestedness in giving up all the Turkish property to be employed for the public service. Both peasants and private soldiers served for some months without pay; and both were for some time eager to see the public money collected by the civil and military leaders employed in forming a corps of regular troops, and in purchasing a train of artillery. The terrible effects of Russian discipline and Russian artillery on the Othman armies had been witnessed by many Greeks, and was the theme of many fabulous narratives in every Greek cottage. Had any man of ability and honesty succeeded in forming a corps of regular troops before the primates and captains succeeded in appropriating the revenues of their respective districts to their own purposes, such weak and ill-provided fortresses as Patras, Lepanto, Coron, and Athens, could not have held out many weeks, and must have fallen long before the end of the year 1821.

Unfortunately, the position in which the local authorities of the Greek population was placed at the first outbreak of the Revolution, rendered them averse to the formation of a central government. They feared that the direction of any general government that could then have been established would fall into the hands of the Hetairists, and in the Hetairists they had lost all confidence. The local authorities, trusting perhaps too much both to their abilities and good principles, wished to command the armed men and administer the finances of their districts. The result was, that the necessities of the Revolution enabled most of them very soon to become little dictators. They either commanded the armed force themselves, or appointed its officers and directed its movements without paying much attention to the orders of the central government which was at last constituted, and they collected the public and local revenues from the people, and expended them as they thought fit, without giving any account either to the government or the nation.

The rapid success of the Greeks during the first weeks of the Revolution threw the management of much civil and financial business into the hands of the proesti and demogeronts in office. The primates, who already exercised great official authority, instantly appropriated that which had been hitherto exercised by murdered voevodes and beys. Every primate strove to make himself a little independent potentate, and every captain of a district assumed the powers of a commander-in-chief. The Revolution, before six months had passed, seemed to have peopled Greece with a host of little Ali Pashas.1 When the primate and the captain acted in concert—supposing they were not, as sometimes happened, the same person—they collected the public revenues; administered the Turkish property, which was declared national; enrolled, paid, and provisioned as many troops as circumstances required, or as they thought fit ; named officers; formed a local guard for the primate of the best soldiers in the place, who were thus often withdrawn from the public service; and organised a local police and a local treasury. This system of local self-government, costituted in a very self-willed manner, and relieved from almost all responsibility, was soon established as a. a natural result of the Revolution over all Greece. The sultan's authority, which had been the only link that bound together Christians and Mussulmans in the Othoman administration, having ceased, every primate assumed the prerogatives of the sultan. For a few weeks this state of things was unavoidable, and to an able and honest chief or government it would have facilitated the establishment of a strong central authority; but by the vices of Greek society it was perptuated into an organised anarchy.

In the midst of this political anarchy, the communal institutions of Greece, which the Othoman government had used as an administrative engine for financial purposes, while they supported the power of the oligarchs, contributed also to preserve order among the people. There is, perhaps, no feature more remarkable in the Greek Revolution, and none so conclusive in proving that religious, more than political feeling, impelled the people to take up arms, than the fact that, during the whole period of the war with the sultan, the administrative organisation of civil and financial business remained practically the same in free Greece as in Turkey. No improvement was made in financial arrangements, nor in the system of taxation; no measures were adopted for rendering property more secure; no attempt was made to create an equitable administration of justice; no courts of law were established; and no financial accounts were published. Governments were formed, constitutions were drawn up, national assemblies met, orators debated, and laws were passed according to the political fashion, patronised by the liberals of the day. But no effort was made to prevent the government being virtually absolute, unless it was by rendering it absolutely powerless. The constitutions were framed to remain a dead letter. The national assemblies werenothing but conferences of parties, and the laws passed were intended to fascinate Western Europe, not to operate with effect in Greece.

The first administrative exigency of the Revolution was to supply the bodies of armed men who assembled to blockade the Turkish fortresses with regular rations and abundant stores of ammunition. The success of the Revolution would have been nearly impossible, unless an effective commissariat had arisen conjointly with the concentration of the blockading forces. This commissariat was found existing in the municipal authorities; its magazines consisted of an abundant provision of grain and other produce which was found in the public and private storehouses of the Turks all over the country. Ammunition was obtained by selling a portion of this produce. The waste that took place under this system of commissariat was incredible and unavoidable. During the first two months of the war, thousands of rations were issued to men where the presence of troops was useless,merely because a well-filled magazine of provisions existed in the district; and millions of cartridges were fired off at the public expense, where no Turk could hear the noise of these patriotic demonstrations.

But whatever may have been the inconveniences and abuses of the communal system, there can be no doubt that the existence of a local Christian magistracy prevented the Greeks from being at first quite helpless, and it concentrated the strength of the population in countless energetic attacks on the dispersed Mussulmans. The attachment of the inhabitants, whether of the Greek or the Albanian race, to their native district, is the element of patriotism in Greece. The associations of family and tribe are strong; but unless orthodoxy coincides with nationality, the feelings of general patriotism are weak. The connection of the individual with his municipal chiefs was strongly marked and clearly defined. The reciprocal obligations and duties were felt and performed. Under this aspect, the conduct of the population of Greece during the early period of the Revolution is worthy of admiration; it displays great perseverance and unflinching patriotism. In the wider sphere of political and military action, the influence of the people unfortunately ceased, and we see ignorance, presumption, and selfishness in statesmen and generals rendering the energy of the people nugatory. From some circumstance which hardly admits of explanation, and which we must therefore refer reverentially to the will of God, the Greek Revolution produced no man of real greatness, no statesman of unblemished honour, no general of commanding talent. Fortunately, the people derived from the framework of their existing usages the means of continuing their desperate struggle for independence, in spite of the incapacity and dishonesty of the civil and military leaders who directed the central government. The true glory of the Greek Revolution lies in the indomitable energy and unwearied perseverance of the mass of the people. But perseverance, unfortunately, like most popular virtues, supplies historians only with commonplace details, while readers expect the annals of revolutions to be filled with pathetic incidents, surprising events, and heroic exploits.

The active energy of the communal system, and the great authority it exercised over the people, offered an obstacle to the consolidation of any imperfect and defective scheme of governmental centralisati but these very circumstances would have increased the power of any central government which acquired the respect and confidence of the nation. Men of ability and honesty would have sought to lay the foundation of a central administration on the existing communal institutions. They would have embodied these into the fabric of the state, and would not, as Greek states­men did, have sought to construct a powerful central authority by annihilating the influence of every communal magistracy.

Another disadvantage resulted from the communal institutions of Greece, which must, however, be attributed to the character of the Greeks who administered the system, and not to the system itself. The Greeks are ambitious, intriguing, and presumptuous, and few are restrained by any moral principle in seeking self­glory and self-advancement. No men are, consequently, less adapted to bear sudden elevation, or to be intrusted with great power. When the Revolution, therefore, suddenly invested local magistrates with extraordinary powers, many communes became a scene of waste, peculation, and oppression. Civil contests arose, and open hostilities ensued. The low morality and unbounded ambition of political adventurers from Constantinople and other cities in Turkey increased these disorders. Bishops, primates, and captains began to imitate the pride and display the injustice of cadis, voevodes, and beys. The national revenues were diverted from carrying on the war, and expended in maintaining the households or the personal followers of these oligarchs. No petty archont could walk the streets of Tripolitza without being followed by a band of armed men.

The primates and higher clergy flattered themselves that the expulsion of the Turks would constitute them the heirs of the sultan's power. Their conduct soon isolated them from popular sympathy, and they saw the military officers, whom they had expected to employ as tools, invested with the greater part of the power they were desirous of seizing. They forgot that the Othoman empire was a military government. The people became early clamorous for a legal government. Bold demagogues and intelligent patriots called for the creation of a responsible executive. The oligarchs were forced to yield. On the 7th of June 1821 a Peloponnesian Senate was constituted, and invested with dictatorial powers, which were to continue until the taking of Tripolitza. This Senate was nothing more than a committee of the oligarchs ; it was appointed by a few of the most influential among the clergy and primates, with the co-operation of several of the most powerful military chiefs, at a meeting held in . the monastery of Kaltetzi. No meeting of deputies popularly elected took place. The people who had taken up arms to conquer their independence were excluded from a share in electing their rulers. The consequence was, that the feelings of the people were deeply wounded, and the wound festered far more than politicians generally supposed. Nevertheless, even strangers who visited Greece in 1823 could observe that the central government of Greece was then generally regarded by the agricultural population as alien in sentiment, and unworthy of the nation's confidence.

The arrival of two Greeks of rank modified in some degree the consequences of the proceedings at Kaltetzi. On the 22d of June, Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes arrived at the Greek camp before Tripolitza, where he was welcomed as commander-in-chief by the whole army. Demetrius formed a favourable contrast to his brother Alexander, in his moral and military conduct; but he was inferior to him in personal accomplishments and almost as deficient in judgment and political discrimination. His stature was small, his appearance insignificant, his voice discordant, his manner awkward, and his health weak; yet with these physical defects he had manly sentiments, undaunted courage, and sincere patriotism. His principles were those of an honourable man, and his feelings were those of a gentleman. Un­fortunately, he had neither experience nor tact in conducting public business.

Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes laid claim to the authority of a viceroy in Greece. He assumed that his brother Prince Alexander, as supreme head of the Hetairia, had been appointed Prince of Greece, and he pretended to be empowered to act as lieutenant­governor of the country for his brother. The pretension was foolish, and it was put forward in a foolish way. Nevertheless, as he was supposed, when he arrived, to be the herald of Russian aid, he received an enthusiastic reception from the people and the troops. His inexperience and incapacity prevented his availing himself of that enthusiasm, either to consolidate his own power or to benefit the cause of Greece. He might easily have employed the authority it gave him with the people to compel the soldiers to receive some elementary organisation, and the power it gave him over the soldiers to restrain the disorders of the captains. Power was conferred on him, which, if wisely used, might have rendered him the Washington of Greece. Since “ vanquished Persia’s despot fled,” no Greek had stepped into an easier path to true glory. But like a weak despot, instead of using the authority in his hands, he demanded additional powers, of which circumstances rendered it impossible for him to make any use, and of which in no circumstances could he have made a good use. He required that the Peloponnesian Senate should be formally abolished, and that the whole executive power should be placed in his hands as lieutenant-governor until the arrival of his brother. The Senate and the primates opposed these demands, which were supported by the military.

Much intriguing ensued ; the blockade of Tripolitza and the general interests of Greece were neglected by both parties. Men took to wrangling with so much goodwill, that they neglected the subject of the contest in the pleasures of the dispute, and the business seemed every day farther from any termination. At last, Hypsilantes made a bold move to rouse the soldiers and the people to declare that his cause was theirs, and thus put an end to all opposition. He suddenly quitted the camp before Tripolitza, declaring that all his efforts to serve Greece were useless, for they were paralysed by the ambition and the selfishness of the senators and the primates. His departure, as he had foreseen, made the soldiers take up arms. Some of the primates were in considerable personal danger, and would have been murdered had they not been protected by the captains. The Senate yielded. A deputation was sent to invite Hypsilantes to return, and he was brought back in triumph from Leondari.

Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes was now in possession of all the power which could be conferred on him, but it soon became apparent that neither he nor those about him knew how to employ it. He made no attempt to give the troops any organisation even with regard to their commissariat. He did not even create a central civil administration, which would have enabled him to keep the military power he had acquired over the captains in his own hands. At this moment the formation of a regiment of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and a battery of light guns, would have enabled him to organise Greece, for he had the people and the soldiers devoted to his person, and eager to be ruled by a single chief. Everywhere he was saluted as the Aphendi, or lord of the country. The supreme authority of the Hetairia still exercised a magic influence over men’s minds, and he was universally regarded as an agent of Russia ; for it was argued that, unless the Russian government wished to support the Revolution, the Russian police would never have allowed him to pass the frontiers. Both Petrobey and Kolokotrones were disposed to act under his orders, and they might easily have been rendered most efficient, and at the same time responsible, supporters of his administration. But Hypsilantes was bewildered with the power he had assumed, and Kolokotrones, who soon discovered his incapacity, could not resist the temptation of profiting by it.

The advisers of Hypsilantes were men as destitute of practical experience as he was himself. The self­government which existed among the Greeks of the Morea was at variance with what they had heard and seen of administration in France and Russia. They excited dissatisfaction by openly expressing their contempt for what they called the Turkish system. Yet they were utterly incompetent to create a central system complete enough to supplant, or powerful enough to override, this despised system.

When Hypsilantes returned to the camp before Tripolitza, he was so imprudent as to allow the Peloponnesian senators to remain at Vervena. They soon recovered their previous authority, and, with the assistance of the other primates, began to undermine the power of the prince, who, with inexplicable ignorance, left all their agents and partisans in office over the whole country, and consequently permitted them to remain practically the only central executive authority. Partly by their intrigues, and partly by his ignorance of the duties of a supreme ruler, before Hypsilantes had been six weeks at the head of the government, the camp was more than once without provisions. Hypsilantes could neither form nor execute any project to relieve himself from his difficulties. He waited for others to perform the duties of his station. Instead of acting himself, he wrangled with Germanos, the archbishop of Patras, Delyiannes, and Charalambes, for infringing his authority. The military chieftains profited by his neglect. They acted in his name, and employed it to establish their own influence in different municipalities, from which they contrived to secure regular supplies to their own followers. Brigand chiefs and ignorant captains became in this way the possessors of those powers of which Hypsilantes had deprived the Senate and the primates, and which escaped from his own hands, from his incompetency to create a central administration. The original usurpation of the Peloponnesian Senate and this incapacity of Hypsilantes added strength to the causes of discord and internal anarchy which soon became a prominent feature of the Revolution. The thoughts of public men received a vicious direction, and public business was conducted in a secret and underhand manner.

An instructive comparison might be made between the prudence of Washington in his camp before Boston in 1775, and the ineptness of Hypsilantes in his camp before Tripoli tza in 1821. The first requisite for military success is military discipline; and the man who cannot introduce and maintain this sufficiently to secure order, is unfit to command armies. The difficulty of converting a national militia into a regular army is great; but enough has been said to show that many circumstances were favourable to the enterprise in the Morea. Washington flogged the citizens of the United States who infringed the laws of military order; Hypsilantes might have hanged primates and captains who disobeyed his orders : and had he known, like Washington, how to temper severity with justice and command the respect of his soldiers, he might have formed a Greek army, and saved Greece from anarchy.

Disorder and dissension were gaining ground when Alexander Mavrocordatos, then called Prince Mavrocordatos both by himself and others, arrived at the camp of Trikorphas on the 8th of August 1821. His long political career has rendered him the most celebrated statesman of the Greek Revolution. When he joined the Greeks, it required no great discrimination to observe that both Hypsilantes and the primates were acting unwisely, and advancing into false positions from which it would be difficult for them to retreat with honour. In such a complication Mavrocordatos would not act a subordinate part; and to escape from factions, whose errors he could not rectify, he obtained the political direction of the Revolution in Western Greece, and quitted the camp on the 9th of September. About the same time Theodore Negris, an active, able, intriguing, ambitious, and unprincipled phanariot, was charged with the political organisation of Eastern Greece.

When Mavrocordatos reached Mesolonghi, he convoked a meeting of deputies from the provinces of Acarnania, Etolia, Western Locris, and that part of Epirus which had joined the Revolution. Negris held a similar meeting of deputies from Attica, Boeotia, Megaris, Phocis, and Eastern Locris, at Salona. At Mesolonghi a senate was constituted to conduct the executive government; at Salona a corresponding assembly was called the Areopagos. Both assemblies were under the guidance and direction of civilians, who knew very little of the existing institutions and first wants of the country they attempted to organise. Instead of strengthening the municipalities and disciplining the municipal authorities, they created new officers to represent tlie central power, vainly expect ing to use the military chiefs as their subordinate agents. Several of the members of these senates were Greeks, educated in the universities of Western Europe; others were phanariots, educated in the sultan's service. All placed more confidence in their own scientific maxims than in the practical experience of the local magistrates and captains. They were fond of talking, fond of writing, stiff in their opinions, and dilatory in their actions. Both demogeronts and captains soon perceived that they were eloquent in ignorance, that they carried on a mass of unnecessary and unintelligible correspondence, and that, when once they went wrong, they could never be set right.

In so far, however, as these assemblies were steps towards national union, and to the formation of a central government, they were useful. But their immediate tendency was to weaken the authority of any general government; for in both the constitutions which they adopted, provisions were inserted, encroaching on its necessary powers. Nor was this done on any systematic plan by which Greece might have been formed into a federal state. In the constitution of Western Greece, Mavrocordatos attempted to conceal his ambition, by an article which declared in vague terms that the Senate, and the administrative arrangements it created, should cease as soon as a permanent general government was established. But in Eastern Greece the constitution boldrity of the Greek government even in military matters. Both these constitutions were crude scholastic productions, ill suited to the temper of the people, to the actual state of civilisation, to the existing institutions, and to the exigencies of the time. The enemies of Mavrocordatos and Negris justly blamed their legislation as a phanariot manoeuvre to gain political power, and as  positively injurious to the liberties of the people, in so far as it elevated barriers between the municipal insti­tutions of the country and the central executive.

In Western Greece the prudence of Mavrocordatos gained him many personal friends, and created a political party in his favour; but in Eastern Greece the restless ambition of Negris caused him to lose the support of his political associates. The invasion of the Turks also threw absolute power into the hands of unprincipled and rapacious military chiefs, like Panouria and Odysseus, and reduced the Areopagos to perform the duties of paymaster and commissary.

The four great divisions of liberated Greece—the Morea,the islands, the eastern and the western provinces of the continent—were compelled to meet the first demands of the Revolution by local arrangements. But the events of the year 1821 convinced all alike of the necessity of establishing a central government. The conquest of Tripolitza was the term fixed for the disolution of the Peloponnesian Senate. But the weakness of Hypsilantes, the ambition of the primates and captains, and a general spirit of party, perpetuated the evils which had been fostered by the senators. The administration of the public revenues remained in the same hands, and they were diverted from carrying on the war against the Turks. Large bodies of men were kept under arms, but these men were engaged in supporting local governors and tax-gatherers.

  In autumn, however, the Greeks demanded that a national assembly should be convoked, in a tone that enforced attention. Party intrigues absorbed the whole activity of the oligarchs, who were beginning to enjoy the fruits of partial success in the midst of serious danger. Germanos, the archbishop of Patras, made himself conspicuous by his luxury and pride. He strove to form a league of Moreot primates, who expected to rule the Peloponnesus by means of its own a. d. i82i. provincial administration.

Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes, seeing himself forsaken by the military chiefs, as well as opposed by the primates, now for the first time recognised the right of the people to a voice in the formation of their own government and laws. He supposed that the popular enthusiasm with which he had been welcomed, still existed. He forgot all that he had done to forfeit the people’s confidence. In virtue of the supreme authority he possessed, he issued a proclamation summoning a national assembly to meet at Tripolitza in November. But even in performing this popular act, he neutralised the favourable impression it might have produced, by signing the document as the lieutenant-general of his brother Alexander, instead of issuing it as the elected chief of the Greek nation. The military misconduct and the disgraceful flight of his brother were already the theme of universal reprobation. But in spite of the strange perverseness of Demetrius Hypsilantes, the object of his proclamation coincided so completely with the wishes of the nation, that deputies were everywhere elected. Tripolitza was infested by the fearful epidemic which has been already mentioned. The meeting of the national assembly was transferred to Argos, where it took place in December 1821. But Argos was soon so crowded by the armed bands who followed the Peloponnesian oligarchs, that it was deemed an unfit place for a national assembly, which was transferred again to Piada, a small town about three miles west of the site of Epidaurus. In consequence of the fashion adopted by the modern Greeks, of acting history with great names, instead of making it by noble deeds, this first national assembly is called the assembly of Epidaurus.

The primates and captains of the Morea were resolved to yield as little of the power they enjoyed to a central government as possible. They took their measures with promptitude, and carried them into effect with decision. Before the national assembly published the constitution of Greece, and elected an executive government, the oligarchs of the Morea reconstituted the Peloponnesian Senate, and enacted a local constitution, which invested it with a direct control over the financial and military resources of the Peloponnesus. They took a lesson from the proceedings of Mavrocor- datos and Negris, who had created political influence by means of provincial constitutions; but their superior knowledge of the administrative machinery then in action, enabled them to draw up a more practical constitution, and establish a more efficient senate. Among other unconstitutional powers with which this senate was invested, it was authorised to name the deputies who were to represent the people of the Peloponnesus in the national assembly. It deserves to be noticed that the members from the rest of Greece did not protest against this violation of the principles of popular freedom.

It may, however, be doubted, whether the Penesian oligarchs would have succeeded in this illegal proceeding had Demetrius Hypsilantes not deserted the popular cause. His jealousy of Mavrocordatos at this time appears completely to have obscured the small portion of judgment he ever possessed, and to have concealed from him the iniquity of coalescing with men whom, in a public proclamation, he had recently accused of being eager to oppress the Greek people and to govern as Turkish officials. His conduct strengthened the Moreot primates and captains, but it entirely destroyed his own political influence,jured his personal reputation.

The organisation of the Peloponnesian Senate forms an important and interesting feature in the history of the Greek Revolution. It was the principal cause of the failure of the constitution of Epidaurus, and of the nullity of the executive government of Greece which that constitution created. The members of this Senate were really self-elected, and it circumscribed the legal powers of the central government under cover of arrangements to protect local liberties. The provincial constitution of the Peloponnesus pretended to create a subordinate provincial administration, but it really organised an independent executive government. It assumed an absolute control over the municipalities, and rendered all local authorities responsible for their financial and fiscal acts to the Peloponnesian Senate, not to the Greek government. This Senate was allowed to arrogate to itself the right of judging traitors, dismissing officials, ratifying the election of captains of the militia, whom the people were allowed to elect, and of appointing generals to command the troops of the Peloponnesus. With the concurrence of the captains and general thus named, it claimed the right of naming an archistrategos or commander-in-chief of the whole Peloponnesian forces, which in this way were kept as a distinct army, separated from the Romeliat armatoli, who formed the real military strength of liberated Greece. The ambition of Kolokotrones appears to have suggested this most unmilitary arrangement. It contributed, with other causes, to prevent the Peloponnesian armed bands from bearing almost any share in the warlike operations in continental Greece. The Senate also fixed the pay of the soldiers and officers of the Peloponnesian army, thus securing their obedience. It is true that the constitution required the nomination of the archistrategos to be submitted to the approval of the legislative assembly, but the consent of a legislative assembly to the appointment could only be regarded as a formal ratification. It could never be refused without the risk of a civil war.

Many of the objectionable provisions of the constitution of the Peloponnesian Senate were verbally transcribed from the constitution which Mavrocordatos had introduced in Western Greece, but the oligarchs of the Morea carried them into effect in a different spirit from that in which they had been drawn up. In Western Greece, it was expressly stipulated that they were to cease when a central government was established; in the Peloponnesus, on the contrary, they were to operate as a check on the authority of the central government.

The worst feature of these local constitutions was common to all. They all authorised provincial authorities to maintain armed bands to enforce their orders and defend their power. This provision perpetuated and legalised a state of anarchy. The Peloponnesian Senate carried this abuse to the greatest extent. It was empowered to keep up a guard of a thousand men at a moment when every man in Greece capable of bearing arms ought to have been sent to the banks of the Sperchius, or the passes of Makrynoros.

It is not necessary to enter into further details to explain how the Moreots paralysed the national assembly at Piada, and rendered the constitution of Epi- daurus and the executive government of Greece ineffectual. The primates and military chiefs, by their coalition with Demetrius Hypsilantes, were enabled to retain a complete command over the fiscal resources of the Morea, which then formed the great bulk of the national revenues. The executive government was comparatively powerless. Men of sagacity must have seen that the constitution of Epidaurus was a dead letter as long as the constitution of the Peloponnesus existed; yet Mavrocordatos and other men of talent allowed their ambition to blind them to the evil effects of promulgating a political constitution merely to witness its violation, and of acting as an executive body without exercising the powers of a national government. If they feared to make an appeal to the people in favour of representative institutions, lest the appeal should prove a signal for commencing a civil war, it was their duty to lay aside their ambitious schemes, to convert the Peloponnesian Senate into a national executive, by compelling it to undertake the conduct of the central executive of all Greece, and thus concentrate public attention on its proceedings. By taking a different course, they created two antagonistic administrations of nearly equal force.

Accidental circumstances diminished the personal influence of Mavrocordatos at the first assembly of the deputies of Greece, by bringing him on the scene under disadvantageous circumstances. He had just made himself ridiculous by an attempt to play the general. On quitting Mesolonghi to attend the national assembly, he crossed the gulf to the Greek camp before Patras. He arrived with a good deal of mili­tary parade, bringing with him some pieces of artillery and fifteen hundred stand of small-arms. He was attended by another phanariot, Prince Constantine Caradja. The Achaians had already been successful in several skirmishes with the garrison of Patras, but Mavrocordatos, who knew nothing of military matters, did not know how to profit by these successes. The consequence was, that they rendered both him and the besiegers extremely negligent, and by alarming the Turks rendered them extremely vigilant. Suddenly, while Mavrocordatos was pluming himself on the favourable effect which his success in Western Greece had produced on the Moreots, the garrison of Patras made a general attack on the positions of the besiegers. The whole blockading army fled, and Mavromies, who attributed his disaster to his misplaced vanity in attempting to rival the military reputation of Hypsilantes.

The constitution of Epidaurus was proclaimed on the 13th of January 1822, the new year’s day of Eastern Christians. It was the work of Mavrocordatos and Negris, who were assisted by an Italian refugee, named Gallina. It must be looked upon rather as a statement of the political principles, ratified by national consent, than as a practical organic law of the new Greek state. Its provisions are excellent, but they are the enunciation of vague maxims. It does nothing to connect the existing institutions of the country with the central administration it created. Those who framed it probably thought more of its effect in Western Europe than of its operation in Greece. For practical government they trusted, with their national self-confidence, to their own talents. It has, however, the merit of proclaiming religious liberty, of abolishing slavery, and declaring that judicial torture was illegal. But it adopted no arrangements for enforcing financial responsibility on the municipal authorities who fingered public money, nor for restraining the fiscal rapacity of the proesti and the military exactions of the captains. No attempt was made to improve the morality of the rulers of the country, by furnishing the people with some information concerning the enormous amount of Turkish property which had become national, nor concerning the manner in which it was expended or administered.

The central government of Greece, established by the constitution of Epidaurus, consisted of a legislative assembly and an executive body. The names of several distinguished men appear neither in the one nor the other; there can be no doubt, therefore, that this National Assembly was employed to throw the power of which it could dispose into the hands of a party.

The executive body consisted of five members. Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos, after acting as president of the National Assembly, was named President of Greece. The executive was authorised to appoint eight ministers. The power of naming officials to civil, military, and financial employments was vaguely expressed in order to avoid a conflict of competency with the provincial senates and the government of the naval islands. A good deal was done by the Greeks at Epidaurus to deceive Europe; very little to organise Greece.

 

CHAPTER IX.

THE PRESIDENCY OF MAVROCORDATOS.