Chapter XV (2)

The Hetærist invasion of the Principalities had ended in total failure, and with it there passed away for ever the dream of re-establishing the Eastern Empire under Greek ascendancy. But while this enterprise, planned in vain reliance upon foreign aid and in blind assumption of leadership over an alien race, collapsed through the indifference of a people to whom the Greeks were known only as oppressors, that genuine uprising of the Greek nation, which, in spite of the nullity of its leaders, in spite of the crimes, the disunion, the perversity of a race awaking from centuries of servitude, was to add one more to the free peoples of Europe, broke out in the real home of the Hellenes, in the Morea and the islands of the Ægæan. Soon after Hypsilanti's appearance in Moldavia the Turkish governor of the Morea, anticipating a general rebellion of the Greeks, had summoned the Primates of his province to Tripolitza, with the view of seizing them as hostages. The Primates of the northern district set out, but halted on their way, debating whether they should raise the standard of insurrection or wait for events. While they lingered irresolutely at Kalavryta the decision passed out of their hands, and the people rose throughout the Morea. The revolt of the Moreot Greeks against their oppressors was from the first, and with set purpose, a war of extermination. "The Turk," they sang in their war-songs, "shall live no longer, neither in Morea nor in the whole earth." This terrible resolution was, during the first weeks of the revolt, carried into literal effect. The Turks who did not fly from their country-houses to the towns where there were garrisons or citadels to defend them, were attacked and murdered with their entire families, men, women and children. This was the first act of the revolution; and within a few weeks after the 2nd of April, on which the first outbreaks occurred, the open country was swept clear of its Ottoman population, which had numbered about 25,000, and the residue of the lately dominant race was collected within the walls of Patras, Tripolitza, and other towns, which the Greeks forthwith began to beleaguer. [364]

[Terrorism at Constantinople.]

[Execution of the Patriarch, April 22.]

The news of the revolt of the Morea and of the massacre of Mohammedans reached Constantinople, striking terror into the politicians of the Turkish capital, and rousing the Sultan Mahmud to a vengeance tiger-like in its ferocity, but deliberate and calculated like every bloody deed of this resolute and able sovereign. Reprisals had already been made upon the Greeks at Constantinople for the acts of Hypsilanti, and a number of innocent persons had been put to death by the executioner, but no general attack upon the Christians had been suggested, nor had the work of punishment passed out of the hands of the government itself. Now, however, the fury of the Mohammedan populace was let loose upon the infidel. The Sultan called upon his subjects to arm themselves in defence of their faith. Executions were redoubled; soldiers and mobs devastated Greek settlements on the Bosphorus; and on the most sacred day of the Greek Church a blow was struck which sent a thrill over Eastern Europe. The Patriarch of Constantinople had celebrated the service which ushers in the dawn of Easter Sunday, when he was summoned by the Dragoman of the Porte to appear before a Synod hastily assembled. There an order of the Sultan was read declaring Gregorius IV. a traitor, and degrading him from his office. The Synod was commanded to elect his successor. It did so. While the new Archbishop was receiving his investiture, Gregorius was led out, and was hanged, still wearing his sacred robes, at the gate of his palace. His body remained during Easter Sunday and the two following days at the place of execution. It was then given to the Jews to be insulted, dragged through the streets, and cast into the sea. The Archbishops of Adrianople, Salonica, and Tirnovo suffered death on the same Easter Sunday. The body of Gregorius, floating in the waves, was picked up by a Greek ship and carried to Odessa. Brought, as it was believed, by a miracle to Christian soil, the relics of the Patriarch received at the hands of the Russian government the funeral honours of a martyr. Gregorius had no doubt had dealings with the Hetærists; but he was put to death untried; and whatever may have been the real extent of his offence, he was executed not for this but in order to strike terror into the Sultan's Christian subjects.

[Massacre of Christians, April-October.]

[Effect on Russia.]

[Russian ambassador leaves Constantinople, July 27.]

During the succeeding months, in Asia Minor as well as in Macedonia and at Constantinople itself, there were wholesale massacres of the Christians, and the churches of the Greeks were pillaged or destroyed by their enemies, both Jews and Turks. Smyrna, Adrianople, and Salonica, in so far as these towns were Greek, were put to the sack; thousands of the inhabitants were slain by the armed mobs who held command, or were sold into slavery. It was only the fear of a war with Russia which at length forced Sultan Mahmud to stop these deeds of outrage and to restore some of the conditions of civilised life in the part of his dominions which was not in revolt. The Russian army and nation would have avenged the execution of the Patriarch by immediate war if popular instincts had governed its ruler. Strogonoff, the ambassador at Constantinople, at once proposed to the envoys of the other Powers to unite in calling up war-ships for the protection of the Christians. Joint action was, however, declined by Lord Strangford, the representative of England, and the Porte was encouraged by the attitude of this politician to treat the threats of Strogonoff with indifference. There was an interval during which the destiny of a great part of Eastern Europe depended upon the fluctuations of a single infirm will. The Czar had thoroughly identified himself while at Laibach with the principles and the policy of European conservatism, and had assented to the declaration in which Metternich placed the Greek rebellion, together with the Spanish and Italian insurrections, under the ban of Europe. Returning to St. Petersburg, Alexander, in spite of the veil that intercepts from every sovereign the real thoughts and utterances of his people, found himself within the range of widely different influences. Russian passions were not roused by what might pass in Italy or Spain. The Russian priest, the soldier, the peasant understood nothing of theories of federal intervention, and of the connection between Neapolitan despotism and the treaties of 1815: but his blood boiled when he heard that the chief priest of his Church had been murdered by the Sultan, and that a handful of his brethren were fighting for their faith unhelped. Alexander felt to some extent the throb of national spirit. There had been a time in his life when a single hour of strong emotion or of overpowering persuasion had made him renounce every obligation and unite with Napoleon against his own allies; and there were those who in 1821 believed that the Czar would as suddenly break loose from his engagements with Metternich and throw himself, with a fanatical army and nation, into a crusade against the Turk. Sultan Mahmud had himself given to the Russian party of action a ground for denouncing him in the name of Russian honour and interests independently of all that related to Greece. In order to prevent the escape of suspected persons, the Porte had ordered Russian vessels to be searched at Constantinople, and it had forced all corn-ships coming from the Euxine to discharge their cargoes at the Bosphorus, under the apprehension that the corn-supplies of the capital would be cut off by Greek vessels in command of the Ægæan. Further, Russia had by treaty the right to insist that the Danubian Principalities should be governed by their civil authorities, the Hospodars, and not by Turkish Pashas, insurrection in Wallachia had been put down, but the rule of Hospodars had not been restored; Turkish generals, at the head of their forces, still administered their provinces under military law. On all these points Russia had at least the semblance of grievances of its own. The outrages which shocked all Europe were not the only wrong which Russian pride called upon the Czar to redress. The influence of Capodistrias revived at St. Petersburg. A despatch was sent to Constantinople declaring that the Porte had begun a war for life or death with the Christian religion, and that its continued existence among the Powers of Europe must depend upon its undertaking to restore the churches which had been destroyed, to guarantee the inviolability of Christian worship in the future, and to discriminate in its punishments between the innocent and the guilty. Presenting ultimatum from his master, Strogonoff, in accordance with his instructions, demanded a written answer within eight days. No such answer came. On the 27th of July the ambassador quitted Constantinople. War seemed to be on the point of breaking out.

[Eastern policy of Austria.]

The capital where these events were watched with the greatest apprehension was Vienna. The fortunes of the Ottoman Empire have always been most intimately connected with those of Austria; and although the long struggle of the House of Hapsburg with Napoleon and its wars in recent times with Prussia and with Italy have made the western aspect of Austrian policy more prominent and more familiar than its eastern one, the eastern interests of the monarchy have always been at least as important in the eyes of its actual rulers. Before the year 1720 Austria, not Russia, was the great enemy of Turkey and the aggressive Power of the east of Europe. After 1780 the Emperor Joseph had united with Catherine of Russia in a plan for dividing the Sultan's dominions in Europe, and actually waged a war for this purpose. In 1795 the alliance, with the same object, had been prospectively revived by Thugut; in 1809, after the Treaty of Tilsit, Metternich had determined in the last resort to combine with Napoleon and Alexander in dismembering Turkey, if all diplomatic means should fail to prevent a joint attack on the Porte by France and Russia. But this resolution had been adopted by Metternich only as a matter of necessity, and in view of a combination which threatened to reduce Austria to the position of a vassal State. Metternich's own definite and consistent policy after 1814 was the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire. His statesmanship was, as a rule, governed by fear; and his fear of Alexander was second only to his old fear of Napoleon. Times were changed since Joseph and Thugut could hope to enter upon a game of aggression with Russia upon equal terms. The Austrian army had been beaten in every battle that it had fought during nearly twenty years. Province after province had been severed from it, without, except in the Tyrol, raising a hand in its support; and when in 1821 the Minister compared Austria's actual Empire and position in Europe, won and maintained in great part by his own diplomacy, with the ruin to which a series of wars had brought it ten years before, he might well thank Heaven that international Congresses were still so much in favour with the Courts, and tremble at the clash of arms which from the remote Morea threatened to call Napoleon's northern conquerors once more into the field [365]

[Eastern policy of England.]

England was not, like Austria, exposed to actual danger by the advance of Russia towards the Ægæan; but the growth of Russian power had been viewed with alarm by English politicians since 1788, when Pitt had formed a triple alliance with Prussia and Holland for the purpose of defending the Porte against the attacks of Catherine and Joseph. The interest of Great Britain in the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire had not been laid down as a principle before that date, nor was it then acknowledged by the Whig party. It was asserted by Pitt from considerations relating to the European balance of power, not, as in our own times, with a direct reference to England's position in India. The course of events from 1792 to 1807 made England and Russia for awhile natural allies; but this friendship was turned into hostility by the Treaty of Tilsit; and although after a few years Alexander was again fighting for the same cause as Great Britain, and the public opinion of this country enthusiastically hailed the issue of the Moscow campaign, English statesmen never forgot the interview upon the Niemen, and never, in the brightest moments of victory, regarded Alexander without some secret misgivings. During the campaign of 1814 in France, Castlereagh's willingness to negotiate with Bonaparte was due in great part to the fear that Alexander's high-wrought resolutions would collapse before Napoleon could be thoroughly crushed, and that reaction would carry him into a worse peace than that which he then disdained. [366] The negotiations at the Congress of Vienna brought Great Britain and Russia, as it has been seen, into an antagonism which threatened to end in the resort to arms; and the tension which then and for some time afterwards existed between the two governments led English Ministers to speak, certainly in exaggerated and misleading language, of the mutual hostility of the English and the Russian nations. From 1815 to 1821 the Czar had been jealously watched. It had been rumoured over and over again that he was preparing to invade the Ottoman Empire; and when the rebellion of the Greeks broke out, the one thought of Castlereagh and his colleagues was that Russia must be prevented from throwing itself into the fray, and that the interests of Great Britain required that the authority of the Sultan should as soon as possible be restored throughout his dominions.

[Fears of new period of warfare.]

[Metternich and the Greeks.]

Both at London therefore and at Vienna the rebellion of Greece was viewed by governments only as an unfortunate disturbance which was likely to excite war between Russia and its neighbours, and to imperil the peace of Europe at large. It may seem strange that the spectacle of a nation rising to assert its independence should not even have aroused the question whether its claims deserved to be considered. But to do justice at least to the English Ministers of 1821, it must be remembered how terrible, how overpowering, were the memories left by the twenty years of European war that had closed in 1815, and at how vast a cost to mankind the regeneration of Greece would have been effected, if, as then seemed probable, it had ranged the Great Powers again in arms against one another, and re-kindled the spirit of military aggression which for a whole generation had made Europe the prey of rival coalitions. It is impossible to read the letter in which Castlereagh pleaded with the Czar to sacrifice his own glory and popularity to the preservation of European peace, without perceiving in what profound earnestness the English statesman sought to avert the renewal of an epoch of conflict, and how much the apprehension of coming calamity predominated in his own mind over the mere jealousy of an extension of Russian power. [367] If Castlereagh had no thought for Greece itself, it was because the larger interests of Europe wholly absorbed him, and because he lacked the imagination and the insight to conceive of a better adjustment of European affairs under the widening recognition of national rights. The Minister of Austria, to whom at this crisis Castlereagh looked as his natural ally, had no doubt the same dread of a renewed convulsion of Europe, but in his case it was mingled with considerations of a much narrower kind. It is not correct to say that Metternich was indifferent to the Greek cause; he actually hated it, because it gave a stimulus to the liberal movement of Germany. In his empty and pedantic philosophy of human action, Metternich linked together every form of national aspiration and unrest as something presumptuous and wanton. He understood nothing of the debt that mankind owes to the spirit of freedom. He was just as ready to dogmatise upon the wickedness of the English Reform Bill as he was to trace the hand of Capodistrias in every tumult in Servia or the Morea: and even if there had been no fear of Russian aggression in the background, he would instinctively have condemned the Greek revolt when he saw that the light-headed professors in the German Universities were beginning to agitate in its favour, and that the recalcitrant minor Courts regarded it with some degree of sympathy.

[Alexander adheres to policy of peace.]

[Capdostrias retires, Aug 1822.]

The policy of Metternich in the Eastern Question had for its object the maintenance of the existing order of things; and as it was certain that some satisfaction or other must be given to Russian pride, Metternich's counsel was that the grievances of the Czar which were specifically Russian should be clearly distinguished from questions relating to the independence of Greece; and that on the former the Porte should be recommended to agree with its adversary quickly, the good offices of Europe being employed within given limits on the Czar's behalf; so that, the Russian causes of complaint being removed, Alexander might without loss of honour leave the Greeks to be subdued, and resume the diplomatic relations with Constantinople which had been so perilously severed by Strogonoff's departure. It remained for the Czar to decide whether, as head of Russia and protector of the Christians of the East, he would solve the Eastern Question by his own sword, or whether, constant to the principle and ideal of international action to which he had devoted himself since 1815, he would commit his cause to the joint mediation of Europe, and accept such solution of the problem as his allies might attain. In the latter case it was clear that no blow would be struck on behalf of Greece. For a year or more the balance wavered; at length the note of triumph sounded in the Austrian Cabinet. Capodistrias, the representative of the Greek cause at St. Petersburg, rightly measured the force of the opposing impulses in the Czar's mind. He saw that Alexander, interested as he was in Italy and Spain, would never break with that federation of the Courts which he had himself created, nor shake off the influences of legitimism which had dominated him since the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. Submitting when contention had become hopeless, and anticipating his inevitable fall by a voluntary retirement from public affairs, Capodistrias, still high in credit and reputation, quitted St. Petersburg under the form leave of absence, and withdrew to Geneva, there to await events, and to enjoy the distinction of a patriot whom love for Greece had constrained to abandon one of the most splendid positions in Europe. Grave, melancholy, and austere, as one who suffered with his country, Capodistrias remained in private life till the vanquished cause had become the victorious one, and the liberated Greek nation called him to place himself at its head.

[Extension of the Greek revolt.]

[Central Greece.]

[Fall of Ali Pasha, Feb., 1822.]

[Chalcidice.]

An international diplomatic campaign of vast activity and duration began in the year 1821, but the contest of arms was left, as Metternich desired, to the Greeks and the Turks alone. The first act of the war was the insurrection of the Morea: the second was the extension of this insurrection over parts of Continental Greece and the Archipelago, and its summary extinction by the Turk in certain districts, which in consequence remained for the future outside the area of hostilities, and so were not ultimately included in the Hellenic Kingdom. Central Greece, that is, the country lying immediately north of the Corinthian Gulf, broke into revolt a few weeks later than the Morea. The rising against the Mohammedans was distinguished by the same merciless spirit: the men were generally massacred; the women, if not killed, were for the most part sold into slavery; and when, after an interval of three years, Lord Byron came to Missolonghi, he found that a miserable band of twenty-three captive women formed the sole remnant of the Turkish population of that town. Thessaly, with some exceptions, remained passive, and its inaction was of the utmost service to the Turkish cause; for Ali Pasha in Epirus was now being besieged by the Sultan's armies, and if Thessaly had risen in the rear of these troops, they could scarcely have escaped destruction. Khurshid, the Ottoman commander conducting the siege of Janina, held firmly to his task, in spite of the danger which threatened his communications, and in spite of the circumstance that his whole household had fallen into the hands of the Moreot insurgents. His tenacity saved the border-provinces for the Ottoman Empire. No combination was effected between Ali and the Greeks, and at the beginning of 1822 the Albanian chieftain lost both his stronghold and his life. In the remoter district of Chalcidice, on the Macedonian coast, where the promontory of Athos and the two parallel peninsulas run out into the Ægæan, and a Greek population, clearly severed from the Slavic inhabitants of the mainland, maintained its own communal and religious organisation, the national revolt broke out under Hetærist leaders. The monks of Mount Athos, like their neighbours, took up arms. But there was little sympathy between the privileged chiefs of these abbeys and the desperate men who had come to head the revolt. The struggle was soon abandoned; and, partly by force of arms, partly by negotiation, the authority of the Sultan was restored without much difficulty throughout this region.

[The Ægæan Islands.]

The settlements of the Ægæan which first raised the flag of Greek independence were the so-called Nautical Islands, Hydra, Spetza, and Psara, where the absence of a Turkish population and the enjoyment of a century of self-government had allowed the bold qualities of an energetic maritime race to grow to their full vigour. Hydra and Spetza were close to the Greek coast, Psara was on the farther side of the archipelago, almost within view of Asia Minor; so that in joining the insurrection its inhabitants showed great heroism, for they were exposed to the first attack of any Turkish force that could maintain itself for a few hours at sea, and the whole adjacent mainland was the recruiting-ground of the Sultan. At Hydra the revolt against the Ottoman was connected with the internal struggles of the little community, and these in their turn were connected with the great economical changes of Europe which, at the opposite end of the continent, and in a widely different society, led to the enactment of the English Corn Laws, and to the strife of classes which resulted from them. During Napoleon's wars the carrying-trade of most nations had become extinct; little corn reached England, and few besides Greek ships navigated the Euxine and Mediterranean. When peace opened the markets and the ports of all nations, just as the renewed importation of foreign corn threatened to lower the profits of English farmers and the rents of English landlords, so the reviving freedom of navigation made an end of the monopoly of the Hydriote and Psarian merchantmen. The shipowners formed an oligarchy in Hydra; the captains and crews of their ships, though they shared the profits of each voyage, were excluded from any share in the government of the island. Failure of trade, want and inactivity, hence led to a political opposition. The shipowners, wealthy and privileged men, had no inclination to break with the Turk; the captains and sailors, who had now nothing to lose, declared for Greek independence. There was a struggle in which for awhile nothing but the commonest impulses of need and rapacity came into play; but the greater cause proved its power: Hydra threw in its lot with Greece; and although private greed and ill-faith, as well as great cruelty, too often disgraced both the Hydriote crews and those of the other islands, the nucleus of a naval force was now formed which made the achievement of Greek independence possible. The three islands which led the way were soon followed by the wealthier and more populous Samos and by the greater part of the Archipelago. Crete, inhabited by a mixed Greek and Turkish population, also took up arms, and was for years to come the scene of a bloody and destructive warfare.

[The Greek leaders.]

Within the Morea the first shock of the revolt had made the Greeks masters of everything outside the fortified towns. The reduction of these places was at once undertaken by the insurgents. Tripolitza, lately the seat of the Turkish government, was the centre of operations, and in the neighbourhood of this town the first provisional government of the Greeks, called the Senate of Kaltesti, was established. Demetrius Hypsilanti, a brother of the Hetærist leader, whose failure in Roumania was not yet known, landed in the Morea and claimed supreme power. He was tumultuously welcomed by the peasant-soldiers, though the Primates, who had hitherto held undisputed sway, bore him no good will. Two other men became prominent at this time as leaders in the Greek war of liberation. These were Maurokordatos, a descendant of the Hospodars of Wallachia--a politician superior to all his rivals in knowledge and breadth of view, but wanting in the faculty of action required by the times--and Kolokotrones, a type of the rough fighting Klepht; a mere savage in attainments, scarcely able to read or write, cunning, grossly avaricious and faithless, incapable of appreciating either military or moral discipline, but a born soldier in his own irregular way, and a hero among peasants as ignorant as himself. There was yet another, who, if his character had been equal to his station, would have been placed at the head of the government of the Morea. This was Petrobei, chief of the family of Mauromichalis, ruler of the rugged district of Maina, in the south-west of Peloponnesus, where the Turk had never established more than nominal sovereignty. A jovial, princely person, exercising among his clansmen a mild Homeric sway, Petrobei, surrounded by his nine vigorous sons, was the most picturesque figure in Greece. But he had no genius for great things. A sovereignty, which in other hands might have expanded to national dominion, remained with Petrobei a mere ornament and curiosity; and the power of the deeply-rooted clan-spirit of the Maina only made itself felt when, at a later period, the organisation of a united Hellenic State demanded its sacrifice.

[Fall of Tripolitza, Oct. 5, 1821.]

Anarchy, egotism, and ill-faith disgraced the Greek insurrection from its beginning to its close. There were, indeed, some men of unblemished honour among the leaders, and the peasantry in the ranks fought with the most determined courage year after year; but the action of most of those who figured as representatives of the people brought discredit upon the national cause. Their first successes were accompanied by gross treachery and cruelty. Had the Greek leaders been Bourbon kings, nurtured in all the sanctities of divine right, instead of tax-gatherers and cattle-lifters, truants from the wild school of Turkish violence and deceit, they could not have perjured themselves with lighter hearts. On the surrender of Navarino, in August, 1821, after a formal capitulation providing for the safety of its Turkish inhabitants, men, women, and children were indiscriminately massacred. The capture of Tripolitza, which took place two months later, was changed from a peaceful triumph into a scene of frightful slaughter by the avarice of individual chiefs, who, while negotiations were pending, made their way into the town, and bargained with rich inhabitants to give them protection in return for their money and jewels. The soldiery, who had undergone the labours of the siege for six months, saw that their reward was being pilfered from them. Defying all orders, and in the absence of Demetrius Hypsilanti, the commander-in-chief, they rushed upon the fortifications of Tripolitza, and carried them by storm. A general massacre of the inhabitants followed. For three days the work of carnage was continued in the streets and houses, until few out of a population of many thousands remained living. According to the testimony of Kolokotrones himself, the roads were so choked with the dead, that as he rode from the gateway to the citadel his horse's hoofs never touched the ground. [368]

[The Massacre of Chios, April-June, 1822.]

In the opening scenes of the Greek insurrection the barbarity of Christians and of Ottomans was perhaps on a level. The Greek revenged himself with the ferocity of the slave who breaks his fetters; the Turk resorted to wholesale massacre and extermination as the normal means of government in troubled times. And as experience has shown that the savagery of the European yields in one generation to the influences of civilised rule, while the Turk remains as inhuman to-day as he was under Mahmud II., so the history of 1822 proved that the most devilish passions of the Greek were in the end but a poor match for disciplined Turkish prowess in the work of butchery. It was no easy matter for the Sultan to requite himself for the sack of Tripolitza upon Kolokotrones and his victorious soldiers; but there was a peaceful and inoffensive population elsewhere, which offered all the conditions for free, unstinted, and unimperilled vengeance which the Turk desires. A body of Samian troops had landed in Chios, and endeavoured, but with little success, to excite the inhabitants to revolt, the absence of the Greek fleet rendering them an almost certain prey to the Sultan's troops on the mainland. The Samian leader nevertheless refused to abandon the enterprise, and laid siege to the citadel, in which there was a Turkish garrison. Before this fortress could be reduced, a relieving army of seven thousand Turks, with hosts of fanatical volunteers, landed on the island. The Samians fled; the miserable population of Chios was given up to massacre. For week after week the soldiery and the roving hordes of Ottomans slew, pillaged, and sold into slavery at their pleasure. In parts of the island where the inhabitants took refuge in the monasteries, they were slaughtered by thousands together; others, tempted back to their homes by the promulgation of an amnesty, perished family by family. The lot of those who were spared was almost more pitiable than of those who died. The slave-markets of Egypt and Tunis were glutted with Chian captives. The gentleness, the culture, the moral worth of the Chian community made its fate the more tragical. No district in Europe had exhibited a civilisation more free from the vices of its type: on no community had there fallen in modern times so terrible a catastrophe. The estimates of the destruction of life at Chios are loosely framed; among the lowest is that which sets the number of the slain and the enslaved at thirty thousand. The island, lately thronging with life and activity, became a thinly-populated place. After a long period of depression and the slow return of some fraction of its former prosperity, convulsions of nature have in our own day again made Chios a ruin. A new life may arise when the Turk is no longer master of its shores, but the old history of Chios is closed for ever.

[Exploit of Kanaris, June 18th, 1822.]

The impression made upon public opinion in Europe by the massacre of 1822 was a deep and lasting one, although it caused no immediate change in the action of Governments. The general feeling of sympathy for the Greeks and hatred for the Turks, which ultimately forced the Governments to take up a different policy, was intensified by a brilliant deed of daring by which a Greek captain avenged the Chians upon their devastor, and by the unexpected success gained by the insurgents on the mainland against powerful armies of the Sultan. The Greek executive, which was now headed by Maurokordatos, had been guilty of gross neglect in not sending over the fleet in time to prevent the Turks from landing in Chios. When once this landing had been effected, the ships which afterwards arrived were powerless to prevent the massacre, and nothing could be attempted except against the Turkish fleet itself. The instrument of destruction employed by the Greeks was the fire-ship, which had been used with success against the Turk in these same waters in the war of 1770. The sacred month of the Ramazan was closing, and on the night of June 18, Kara Ali, the Turkish commander, celebrated the festival of Bairam with above a thousand men on board his flag-ship. The vessel was illuminated with coloured lanterns. In the midst of the festivities, Constantine Kanaris, a Psarian captain, brought his fire-ship unobserved right up to the Turkish man-of-war, and drove his bowsprit firmly into one of her portholes; then, after setting fire to the combustibles, he stepped quietly into a row-boat, and made away. A breeze was blowing, and in a moment the Turkish crew were enveloped in a mass of flames. The powder on board exploded; the boats were sunk; and the vessel, with its doomed crew, burned to the water-edge, its companions sheering off to save themselves from the shower of blazing fragments that fell all around. Kara Ali was killed by a broken mast; a few of his men saved their lives by swimming or were picked up by rescuers; the rest perished. Such was the consternation caused by the deed of Kanaris, that the Ottoman fleet forthwith quitted the Ægæan waters, and took refuge under the guns of the Dardanelles. Kanaris, unknown before, became from this exploit a famous man in Europe. It was to no stroke of fortune or mere audacity that he owed his success, but to the finest combination of nerve and nautical skill. His feat, which others were constantly attempting, but with little success, to imitate, was repeated by him in the same year. He was the most brilliant of Greek seamen, a simple and modest hero; and after his splendid achievements in the war of liberation, he served his country well in a political career. Down to his death in a hale old age, he was with justice the idol and pride of the Greek nation.

[Double invasion of Greece 1822.]

[Destruction of the Philhellenes near Arta, July 16.]

[Unsuccessful siege of Missolonghi, Nov., 1822.]

The fall of the Albanian rebel, Ali Pasha, in the spring of 1822 made it possible for Sultan Mahmud, who had hitherto been crippled by the resistance of Janina, to throw his whole land-force against the Hellenic revolt; and the Greeks of the mainland, who had as yet had to deal only with scattered detachments or isolated garrisons, now found themselves exposed to the attack of two powerful armies. Kurshid, the conqueror of Ali Pasha, took up his headquarters at Larissa in Thessaly, and from this base the two invading armies marched southwards on diverging lines. The first, under Omer Brionis, was ordered to make its way through Southern Epirus to the western entrance of the Corinthian Gulf, and there to cross into the Morea; the second, under Dramali, to reduce Central Greece, and enter the Morea by the isthmus of Corinth; the conquest of Tripolitza and the relief of the Turkish coast-fortresses which were still uncaptured being the ultimate end to be accomplished by the two armies in combination with one another and with the Ottoman fleet. Not less than fifty thousand men were under the orders of the Turkish commanders, the division of Dramali being by far the larger of the two. Against this formidable enemy the Greeks possessed poor means of defence, nor were their prospects improved when Maurokordatos, the President, determined to take a military command, and to place himself at the head of the troops in Western Greece. There were indeed urgent reasons for striking with all possible force in this quarter. The Suliotes, after seventeen years of exile in Corfu, had returned to their mountains, and were now making common cause with Greece. They were both the military outwork of the insurrection, and the political link between the Hellenes and the Christian communities of Albania, whose action might become of decisive importance in the struggle against the Turks. Maurokordatos rightly judged the relief of Suli to be the first and most pressing duty of the Government. Under a capable leader this effort would not have been beyond the power of the Greeks; directed by a politician who knew nothing of military affairs, it was perilous in the highest degree. Maurokordatos, taking the command out of abler hands, pushed his troops forward to the neighbourhood of Arta, mismanaged everything, and after committing a most important post to Botzares, an Albanian chieftain of doubtful fidelity, left two small regiments exposed to the attack of the Turks in mass. One of these regiments, called the corps of Philhellenes, was composed of foreign officers who had volunteered to serve in the Greek cause as common soldiers. Its discipline was far superior to anything that existed among the Greeks themselves; and at its head were men who had fought in Napoleon's campaigns. But this corps, which might have become the nucleus of a regular army, was sacrificed to the incapacity of the general and the treachery of his confederate. Betrayed and abandoned by the Albanian, the Philhellenes met the attack of the Turks gallantly, and almost all perished. Maurokordatos and the remnant of the Greek troops now retired to Missolonghi. The Suliotes, left to their own resources, were once more compelled to quit their mountain home, and to take refuge in Corfu. Their resistance, however, delayed the Turks for some months, and it was not until the beginning of November that the army of Omer Brionis, after conquering the intermediate territory, appeared in front of Missolonghi. Here the presence of Maurokordatos produced a better effect than in the field. He declared that he would never leave the town as long as a man remained to fight the Turks. Defences were erected, and the besiegers kept at bay for two months. On the 6th of January, 1823, Brionis ordered an assault. It was beaten back with heavy loss; and the Ottoman commander, hopeless of maintaining his position throughout the winter, abandoned his artillery, and retired into the interior of the country. [369]

[Dramali passes the Isthmus of Corinth, July 1822.]

[His retreat and destruction, Aug., 1822.]

In the meantime Dramali had advanced from Thessaly with twenty-four thousand infantry and six thousand cavalry, the most formidable armament that had been seen in Greece since the final struggle between the Turks and Venetians in 1715. At the terror of his approach all hopes of resistance vanished. He marched through Boeotia and Attica, devastating the country, and reached the isthmus of Corinth in July, 1822. The mountain passes were abandoned by the Greeks; the Government, whose seat was at Argos, dispersed; and Dramali moved on to Nauplia, where the Turkish garrison was on the point of surrendering to the Greeks. The entrance to the Morea had been won; the very shadow of a Greek government had disappeared, and the definite suppression of the revolt seemed now to be close at hand. But two fatal errors of the enemy saved the Greek cause. Dramali neglected to garrison the passes through which he had advanced; and the commander of the Ottoman fleet, which ought to have met the land-force at Nauplia, disobeyed his instructions and sailed on to Patras. Two Greeks, at this crisis of their country's history, proved themselves equal to the call of events. Demetrius Hypsilanti, now President of the Legislature, refused to fly with his colleagues, and threw himself, with a few hundred men, into the Acropolis of Argos. Kolokotrones, hastening to Tripolitza, called out every man capable of bearing arms, and hurried back to Argos, where the Turks were still held at bay by the defenders of the citadel. Dramali could no longer think of marching into the interior of the Morea. The gallantry of Demetrius had given time for the assemblage of a considerable force, and the Ottoman general now discovered the ruinous effect of his neglect to garrison the passes in his rear. These were seized by Kolokotrones. The summer-drought threatened the Turkish army with famine; the fleet which would have rendered them independent of land-supplies was a hundred miles away; and Dramali, who had lately seen all Greece at his feet, now found himself compelled to force his way back through the enemy to the isthmus of Corinth. The measures taken by Kolokotrones to intercept his retreat were skilfully planned, and had they been adequately executed not a man of the Ottoman army would have escaped. It was only through the disorder and the cupidity of the Greeks themselves that a portion of Dramali's force succeeded in cutting its way back to Corinth. Baggage was plundered while the retreating enemy ought to have been annihilated, and divisions which ought to have co-operated in the main attack sought trifling successes of their own. But the losses and the demoralisation of the Turkish army were as ruinous to it as total destruction. Dramali himself fell ill and died; and the remnant of his troops which had escaped from the enemy's hands perished in the neighbourhood of Corinth from sickness and want.

[Greek Civil Wars, 1824.]

The decisive events of 1822 opened the eyes of European Governments to the real character of the Greek national rising, and to the probability of its ultimate success. The forces of Turkey were exhausted for the moment, and during the succeeding year no military operations could be undertaken by the Sultan on anything like the same scale. It would perhaps have been better for the Greeks themselves if the struggle had been more continuously sustained. Nothing but foreign pressure could give unity to the efforts of a race distracted by so many local rivalries, and so many personal ambitions and animosities. Scarcely was the extremity of danger passed when civil war began among the Greeks themselves. Kolokotrones set himself up in opposition to the Legislature, and seized on some of the strong places in the Morea. This first outbreak of the so-called military party against the civil authorities was, however, of no great importance. The Primates of the Morea took part with the representatives of the islands and of Central Greece against the disturber of the peace, and an accommodation was soon arranged. Konduriottes, a rich ship-owner of Hydra, was made President, with Kolettes, a politician of great influence in Central Greece, as his Minister. But in place of the earlier antagonism between soldier and civilian, a new and more dangerous antagonism, that of district against district, now threatened the existence of Greece. The tendency of the new government to sacrifice everything to the interest of the islands at once became evident. Konduriottes was a thoroughly incompetent man, and made himself ridiculous by appointing his friends, the Hydriote sea-captains, to the highest military and civil posts. Rebellion again broke out, and Kolokotrones was joined by his old antagonists, the Primates of the Morea. A serious struggle ensued, and the government, which was really conducted by Kolettes, displayed an energy that surprised both its friends and its foes. The Morea was invaded by a powerful force from Hydra. No mercy was shown to the districts which supported the rebels. Kolokotrones was thoroughly defeated, and compelled to give himself up to the Government. He was carried to Hydra and thrown into prison, where he remained until new peril again rendered his services indispensable to Greece.

[Mahmud calls for the help of Egypt.]

After the destruction of Dramali's army and the failure of the Ottoman navy to effect any result whatever, the Sultan appears to have conceived a doubt whether the subjugation of Greece might not in fact be a task beyond his own unaided power. Even if the mainland were conquered, it was certain that the Turkish fleet could never reduce the islands, nor prevent the passage of supplies and reinforcements from these to the ports of the Morea. Strenuous as Mahmud had hitherto shown himself in crushing his vassals who, like Ali Pasha, attempted to establish an authority independent of the central government, he now found himself compelled to apply to the most dangerous of them all for assistance. Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, had risen to power in the disturbed time that followed the expulsion of Napoleon's forces from Egypt. His fleet was more powerful than that of Turkey. He had organised an army composed of Arabs, negroes, and fellahs, and had introduced into it, by means of French officers, the military system and discipline of Europe. The same reform had been attempted in Turkey seventeen years before by Mahmud's predecessor, Selim III., but it had been successfully resisted by the soldiery of Constantinople, and Selim had paid for his innovations with his life. Mahmud, silent and tenacious, had long been planning the destruction of the Janissaries, the mutinous and degraded representatives of a once irresistible force, who would now neither fight themselves nor permit their rulers to organise any more effective body of troops in their stead. It is possible that the Sultan may have believed that a victory won over the enemies of Islam by the re-modelled forces of Egypt would facilitate the execution of his own plans of military reform; it is also possible that he may not have been unwilling to see his vassal's resources dissipated by a distant and hazardous enterprise. Not without some profound conviction of the urgency of the present need, not without some sinister calculation as to the means of dealing with an eventual rival in the future, was the offer of aggrandisement--if we may judge from the whole tenor of Sultan Mahmud's career and policy--made to the Pasha of Egypt by his jealous and far-seeing master. The Pasha was invited to assume the supreme command of the Ottoman forces by land and sea, and was promised the island of Crete in return for his co-operation against the Hellenic revolt. Messages to this effect reached Alexandria at the beginning of 1824. Mehemet, whose ambition had no limits, welcomed the proposals of his sovereign with ardour, and, while declining the command for himself, accepted it on behalf of Ibrahim, his adopted son.

[Turkish-Egyptian plans.]

[Egyptians conquer Crete, April, 1824.]

[Destruction of Psara, July, 1824.]

The most vigorous preparations for war were now made at Alexandria. The army was raised to 90,000 men, and new ships were added to the navy from English dockyards. A scheme was framed for the combined operation of the Egyptian and the Turkish forces which appeared to render the ultimate conquest of Greece certain. It was agreed that the island of Crete, which is not sixty miles distant from the southern extremity of the Morea, should be occupied by Ibrahim, and employed as his place of arms; that simultaneous or joint attacks should then be made upon the principal islands of the Ægæan; and that after the capture of these strongholds and the destruction of the maritime resources of the Greeks, Ibrahim's troops should pass over the narrow sea between Crete and the Morea, and complete their work by the reduction of the mainland, thus left destitute of all chance of succour from without. Crete, like Sicily, is a natural stepping-stone between Europe and Africa; and when once the assistance of Egypt was invoked by the Sultan, it was obvious that Crete became the position which above all others it was necessary for the Greeks to watch and to defend. But the wretched Government of Konduriottes was occupied with its domestic struggles. The appeal of the Cretans for protection remained unanswered, and in the spring of 1824 a strong Egyptian force landed on this island, captured its fortresses, and suppressed the resistance of the inhabitants with the most frightful cruelty. The base of operations had been won, and the combined attacks of the Egyptian and Turkish fleets upon the smaller islands followed. Casos, about thirty miles east of Crete, was surprised by the Egyptians, and its population exterminated. Psara was selected for the attack of the Turkish fleet. Since the beginning of the insurrection the Psariotes had been the scourge and terror of the Ottoman coasts. The services that they had rendered in the Greek navy had been priceless; and if there was one spot of Greek soil which ought to have been protected as long as a single boat's crew remained afloat, it was the little rock of Psara. Yet, in spite of repeated warnings, the Greek Government allowed the Turkish fleet to pass the Dardanelles unobserved, and some clumsy feints were enough to blind it to the real object of an expedition whose aim was known to all Europe. There were ample means for succouring the islanders, as subsequent events proved; but when the Turkish admiral, Khosrew, with 10,000 men on board, appeared before Psara, the Greek fleet was far away. The Psariotes themselves were over-confident. They trusted to their batteries on land, and believed their rocks to be impregnable. They were soon undeceived. While a corps of Albanians scaled the cliffs behind the town, the Turks gained a footing in front, and overwhelmed their gallant enemy by weight of numbers. No mercy was asked or given. Eight thousand of the Psarians were slain or carried away as slaves. Not more than one-third of the population succeeded in escaping to the neighbouring islands. [370]

[Greek successes off the coast of Asia Minor, September, 1824.]

[Ibrahim reaches Crete. December, 1824.]

The first part of the Turko-Egyptian plan had thus been successfully accomplished, and if Khosrew had attacked Samos immediately after his first victory, this island would probably have fallen before help could arrive. But, like other Turkish commanders, Khosrew loved intervals of repose, and he now sailed off to Mytilene to celebrate the festival of Bairam. In the meantime the catastrophe of Psara had aroused the Hydriote Government to a sense of its danger. A strong fleet was sent across the Ægæan, and adequate measures were taken to defend Samos both by land and sea. The Turkish fleet was attacked with some success, and though Ibrahim with the Egyptian contingent now reached the coast of Asia Minor, the Greeks proved themselves superior to their adversaries combined. The operations of the Mussulman commanders led to no result; they were harassed and terrified by the Greek fireships; and when at length all hope of a joint conquest of Samos had been abandoned, and Ibrahim set sail for Crete to carry out his own final enterprise alone, he was met on the high seas by the Greeks, and driven back to the coast of Asia Minor. During the autumn of 1824 the disasters of the preceding months were to some extent retrieved, and the situation of the Egyptian fleet would have become one of some peril if the Greeks had maintained their guard throughout the winter. But they underrated the energy of Ibrahim, and surrendered themselves to the belief that he would not repeat the attempt to reach Crete until the following spring. Careless, or deluded by false information, they returned to Hydra, and left the seas unwatched. Ibrahim saw his opportunity, and, setting sail for Crete at the beginning of December, he reached it without falling in with the enemy.

[Ibrahim in the Morea, Feb., 1825.]