Chapter XIII: Part XX (7)

The importance of preventing so distinguished a Philhellene from quitting Greece so shortly after his own arrival, struck Count Capo d'Istrias very forcibly, and he resolved to do every thing in his power to retain Captain Hastings in his service. To effect this, he invited him to a personal interview at Poros, in order, as he said, to avail himself of the valuable experience of so tried a friend to the cause of his country. When they met, it was easy for Capo d'Istrias to persuade Hastings to resume the command of the naval division in the Gulf of Corinth; particularly as the president promised to adopt the principles which Hastings laid down as necessary for the formation of a national navy, and engaged to follow his advice in organizing this force. Nothing, indeed, could have gratified the ambition of Captain Hastings so much as being employed in this way, since he could thus hope to raise a durable monument of his naval skill, and a lasting memorial of his service in Greece.

After commencing the formation of a naval arsenal at Poros, and laying the foundation for some superstructure of order in the naval administration, Hastings again assumed the command of the Karteria; and on the 9th of May 1828, anchored off Vasiladhi, in order to co-operate with the troops under General Church. The united forces had been directed by the president to act against Anatolikon and Missolonghi, which, it was hoped, would easily be compelled to surrender. After reconnoitring the approaches to Anatolikon, which General Church had resolved to attack first, Captain Hastings, with his usual activity, prepared rocket-frames, and brought all his boats into the lagoons. On the 15th, an attempt was made to set fire to the town by the discharge of a number of six and twelve-pound rockets; but, though many entered the place, no conflagration ensued, and the attack failed. It was then determined to bombard Anatolikon; and, under the cover of a heavy fire of shells from the batteries, and grenades from the gun-boats, to make an attempt to carry the place by storm.

The 25th of May was fixed for the assault; and Captain Hastings, who felt the necessity of enforcing order, and setting an example of courage in so important a crisis, determined to direct the attack of the naval forces in person. Unfortunately, a division of the land forces, which were totally destitute of all discipline, and not even officered in a regular manner, had been embarked in the boats of some Greek privateers, for the purpose of assisting in the attack. The real object of these troops was to try to get first into the place in order to pillage. Before the artillery had produced any effect, and before Captain Hastings had made all the necessary dispositions for the assault, these irregular troops advanced to the attack. Two officers of the marine, who commanded the gun-boats at the greatest distance from the boats of the Karteria, seeing the attack commencing, and supposing that the signal had been given by Captain Hastings, pushed forward. No alternative now remained between carrying the place, or witnessing a total defeat of a considerable part of the force under his command; Hastings, therefore, without a moment's hesitation, endeavoured to repair the error already committed, by rendering the attack as general as possible. Making the signal of attack, he led the boats of the Karteria to the assault.

The ardour of the troops who rashly commenced the attack abated, as soon as they found that the Turks received them with a well-directed fire of musketry. After some feeble attempts to approach the enemy, in which they sustained no loss, they kept their boats stationary far out of musket-shot of Anatolikon. On the other side, the boats of the Greek squadron advanced with great gallantry and steadiness; but the Turks had assembled a powerful force, which was posted in a well-protected position, and opened a severe fire on the assailants. The shallow water, and intricate channel through the lagoon, retarded the progress of the two gun-boats; and Captain Andrea, who commanded that in advance, having been killed, and some of his men wounded, his crew was thrown into disorder. Captain Hastings, pushing forward in his gig to repair this loss, was almost immediately after struck by a rifle-ball in the left arm, and fell down. His fall was the signal for a general retreat.

When the boats returned to the Karteria, the wound of Captain Hastings was examined and bandaged. By a most unfortunate accident, there was no surgeon attached to the ship at the time; one surgeon having left a few days before, and his successor not having arrived. A medical man had, however, without any loss of time, been procured from the camp on shore; and after he had dressed the wound, he declared that it was not alarming, and that the arm was in no danger. Though he suffered great pain, Captain Hastings soon began to turn his attention to repairing the loss the Greek arms had sustained. On the 28th of May, he wrote a report of the proceedings before Anatolikon, addressed to the minister of the marine; and in it he expressed the hope, that in a few days his wound would be so far healed as to allow him again to assume the direction of the operations against Anatolikon in person.

But, in spite of the favourable opinion expressed by the surgeon of the troops, it became evident that the wound was rapidly becoming worse; and it was decided that amputation was necessary. In order to entrust the operation to a more skilful surgeon than the one who had hitherto attended him, it was necessary that Captain Hastings should proceed to Zante. This decision had unfortunately been delayed too long. Tetanus had ensued before the Karteria reached the port; and, on the 1st of June, Frank Abney Hastings expired at Zante, on board the Karteria, which he had so gloriously commanded.

The moment his death was known in Greece, the great value of his services was universally felt. All hope of organizing the Greek navy perished with him; and notwithstanding the advice and assistance of the European powers, and the adoption of many plans prepared by the allies of Greece, the naval force of that country is in a much worse condition to-day than it was at the time of Captain Hastings' death in 1828. Every honour was paid to his memory. The president of Greece, Count Capo d'Istrias, decreed that his remains should receive a public funeral; and by an ordinance addressed to Mr Alexander Maurocordatos, the minister of the marine, and Mr George Finlay and Mr Nicholas Kalergy, the personal friends of the deceased, he charged these gentlemen with this sacred duty. Mr Tricoupi pronounced the funeral oration when the interment took place at Poros; and he concluded his discourse with the following words, as the prayer of the assembled clergy in the name of the whole Greek nation:--"O LORD! IN THY HEAVENLY KINGDOM REMEMBER FRANK ABNEY HASTINGS, WHO DIED IN DEFENCE OF HIS SUFFERING FELLOW-CREATURES."

But nations are proverbially ungrateful. Nearly seventeen years have now elapsed since the death of Hastings, the best and ablest Englishman who, even to the present hour, has been connected in any way with the public affairs of Greece; yet neither the Greek government nor the Greek people, though often revelling in millions rashly furnished them by their injudicious friends, have ever thought of paying their debt of gratitude to the memory of Frank Abney Hastings. While stars and ribands have been lavishly conferred on those whose power was supposed to influence the arrival of expected millions, the heirs of Hastings were forgotten. We are bound, however, to absolve a considerable portion of the nation from the charge of ingratitude and avarice, which we only thereby concentrate against the government, and the leading statesmen of the country.

When the numerous Greek sailors who had served under the orders of Hastings heard of his death, many of them happened to be at Egina. They immediately collected a sum of money among themselves, and engaged the clergy at Egina to celebrate the funeral service in the principal church, with all the pomp and ceremony possible in those troubled times. Never probably was a braver man more sincerely mourned by a veteran band of strangers, who, in a foreign land, grieved more deeply for his untimely loss.

It may appear surprising to many of our readers that we should give to the name of Hastings so very prominent a position in the history of the latter days of the Greek Revolution, when that name is comparatively unknown at home. To make this apparent, we shall endeavour to explain the manner in which the Greeks carried on their warfare with the Turks; and it will then appear that European officers were not generally likely to form either a correct or a favourable opinion of the military affairs of the country. It is not, therefore, surprising that false ideas of the state of Greece have prevailed, or indeed that they still continue to prevail, even among the foreigners long resident in the new Greek kingdom. The military operations of the Greeks, both at sea and on shore, were remarkable, not only for a total want of all scientific knowledge, but also for the absence of every shadow of discipline, and the first elements of order and subordination. The troops consisted of a number of separate corps, each under its own captain, who regulated the movements, and provided for the supply of his men, from day to day. Every soldier joined his standard, and left it, when he thought fit, unless when it happened that he had received some pay in advance; in which case, he was bound in honour to remain in the camp for the term he was engaged. With such an army, any systematic plan of campaign, and all strategetical combinations, were clearly impossible; and when they have been attempted by the different European officers who have commanded the Greeks, they have invariably ended in the most complete defeats the Greeks have ever sustained. So entirely were the operations of the war an affair of chance, that the mountain skirmishes, in which the Greek troops excelled, were usually brought on by accident.

In such an army, it is evident that the services of many an able officer would be useless. A Greek general could only acquire and maintain a due influence over his troops by taking a rifle in his hand, and bounding over the rocks in advance of his soldiers. The best general, therefore, in the estimation of the soldiers, was the officer who could run fastest, see furthest, and fire with truest aim from behind the smallest possible projection of a rock. In cases where it became absolutely necessary to enforce obedience to an order, the captain required to be both able and willing to knock down the first man who dared to show any signs of dissatisfaction with the butt of his pistol. Many excellent European generals were not competent to emulate the fame to be gained in such a service.

Matters were very little better in the fleet. The sailors were always paid in advance, or they refused to embark; if on a cruise, when the term for which they had been paid expired, they always returned home, unless prevented by an additional payment. While at sea, they frequently held councils to discuss the movements of their ships, and repeatedly compelled their captains to alter the plans adopted by the admiral; and sometimes they have been known to carry their ships home in defiance of their officers. Even the brilliant exploits of the fire-ships which destroyed the Turkish three-deckers, were entirely performed by volunteers, and are rather due to the daring courage of Kanaris, and a few other individuals, than to the naval skill of the Greek fleet. In the latter years of the war, when the Turks and Egyptians had, by the exertions of Sultan Mahmoud and Mohammed Ali, made some small progress in naval affairs, the fire-ships of the Greeks failed to produce any important results.

Captain Hastings, observing the total difference between Greek and European warfare, avoided the error into which foreigners generally fell, of allowing their authority to be mixed up with that of others, over whose actions they could not exercise any efficient control. Instead of seeking a command, the imposing title of which might flatter his vanity, and impose on the rest of Europe, Hastings steadily refused to accept any rank, or place himself in any command, where he would have been unable to enforce obedience to his orders. By this means, and by the sacrifice of very large sums of money from his private fortune, in paying not only the men, but even all the officers who bore commissions on board the Karteria, he was enabled to maintain some order and discipline in that vessel. Though he was at the head of the smallest detached force commanded by a foreigner in Greece, there can be no doubt that, of all the foreigners who have visited Greece, he rendered the greatest service to the cause of her independence. At the same time, it is not wonderful that all other foreigners have felt but little inclined to give the due meed of praise to a line of conduct which they have never had strength of mind to imitate.

It may be observed here, that the naval operations of Captain Hastings possess considerable interest in connexion with the modern history of maritime warfare in Europe. The Karteria was the first steam-vessel armed with long sixty-eight pounders; she was the first vessel from which eight-inch shells and hot shot were used as ordinary projectiles. And this great change in the employment of destructive elements of warfare was introduced by Captain Hastings among a people where he had to teach the first principles of military discipline. Yet he overcame every difficulty; and with very little assistance, either from the Greek government, or the officers who were his superiors in the Greek navy, he succeeded in giving all the naval powers of Europe a valuable practical lesson in marine artillery. Great Britain is especially called upon to acknowledge her obligations to Captain Hastings. She has imitated the armament of the Greek steam-frigate Karteria in several vessels; and though the admiralty have doubtless added many improvements in our ships, we are only the more explicitly bound to recognise the debt of gratitude we owe. By rendering naval warfare not only more destructive, but at the same time making it more dependent on a combination of good gunnery and mechanical knowledge with profound naval skill, he has increased the naval power of Great Britain, where all these qualities are cultivated in the highest degree. At the same time, the civilized world is indebted to him for rendering battles so terrible as to be henceforth less frequent; and for putting an end to naval warfare as a means of amusing kings, and gratifying the ambition of princely admirals, or vain-glorious states.

In concluding this sketch of the biography of Hastings, we regret that we have to record the death of Colonel Hane of the Greek army, so long his companion during the war, and who is so often and so honourably mentioned in his despatches as Captain Hane of the artillery. His death is another blot on Greece, and on what is called the English party in Greece, by whom he was treated with the greatest neglect. Colonel Hane was removed from active employment in 1842, when King Otho placed many Philhellenes and Greeks on a trifling pittance of half-pay, in order to retain a number of Bavarian officers in his service, who were richly endowed with staff-appointments. As a Philhellene, a constitutionalist, and an Englishman, it was natural that Colonel Hane should be treated with the utmost severity by the court and the Bavarian administration.

The adoption of the constitution on the 15th September (3d O.S.) 1843, caused all the Bavarians to be dismissed from the Greek service; but there were so many Greeks more eager in their solicitations for appointments than Colonel Hane, and ministers are always so much more ready to listen to the claims of their party than their country, that the title of a stranger to the gratitude of Greece was easily forgotten. When Mr Alexander Maurocordatos, however, became prime-minister, his subserviency to English diplomacy was supposed by many to indicate a feeling of attachment to English views, and an esteem for the English character. Under this impression, Mr Bracebridge, Dr Howe, and Mr George Finlay, solicited Sir Edmund Lyons to exert his influence to prevent an Englishman, who, for twenty-three years, had served Greece with courage and fidelity, from dying of absolute want. Mr Maurocordatos gave Sir Edmund Lyons some promises, but those promises were never fulfilled; and Colonel Hane died of a broken heart at Athens, on the 18th of September 1844, leaving a young wife and three children in the most destitute condition.

It was well known to every body in Athens, from King Otho to the youngest soldiers in the army, that Colonel Hane had for some time suffered the severest privations of poverty, which he had vainly endeavoured to conceal. That his last hours were soothed by the possession of the necessaries of life, was owing to the delicacy with which Dr Howe and Mr Bracebridge contrived to make the assistance they supplied as soothing to his mind, as it was indispensable for the comfort of his declining health.

Frank Abney Hastings, the hero who commanded the Karteria, and John Hane, the gallant officer who fought by his side, now rest in peace. Two volunteers, their friends and companions in many a checkered scene of life, still survive to cherish the memory of the days spent together on board the Karteria. One has acquired a wide-extended reputation in America and Europe, by the intelligence, activity, and we may truly say genius, with which he has laboured to alleviate the sufferings of humanity. But for an account of Dr Howe's exertions to extend the blessings of education to the blind, the deaf, and the dumb, we must refer to Dickens' _American Notes_. The other still watches the slow progress of the Greeks towards that free and independent condition of which these friends of their cause once fancied they beheld the approaching dawn. We may, therefore, allow the names of Hastings, Hane, Howe, and Finlay, to stand united on our page--

"As in this glorious and well foughten field
They stood together in their chivalry."

_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._

Footnotes:

[1] An offspring created without a mother.

[2] "There is no one now thinks of reading Montesquieu," said the Marquis of Mirabeau, author of _L'Ami des Hommes_, and a distinguished economist, to the King of Sweden, in 1772, at Paris.--See _Biog. Univ._ xxix. 89.

[3] This is still the case in some parts of England, according to the custom called Borough-English, Blackstone, ii. 93. Duhalde mentions that a similar rule of descent prevails among some of the Tartar tribes whom he visited on the frontiers of China: a curious indication of the justice of Montesquieu's speculation as to its origin.

[4] We were once told by Mr West, the president, that the reading of Richardson, (to use his own words,) "lighted up a fire in his breast that had never been extinguished; and that he had in consequence, and contrary to the wishes of his friends and relatives, who were Quakers at Philadelphia, resolved to become a painter." By a very curious circumstance, this identical volume is now in our possession, the legacy of the very man, whose history is worth relating, who lent it to Mr West when a boy.

[5] Fuseli objects that the principal figures and chief action in the _Raising of Lazarus_, by Sebastian del Piombo, are crowded into a corner. He would have had them "pyramid;" so does received quackery overpower the judgment of men of sense, and acute reasoning.

[6] CHANT.

The Theatines' commandments ten
Have less to do with saints than men.

_Chorus_.--Tra lara, tra lara.

1--Of money make sure. Tra lara, &c.
2--Entrap rich and poor.
3--Always get a good dinner.
4--In all bargains be winner.
5--Cool your red wine with white.
6--Turn day into night.
7--Give the bailiff the slip.
8--Make the world fill your scrip.
9--Make your convert a slave.
10--To your king play the knave.

_Chorus._--Those ten commandments make but _two_--
All things for _me_, and none for _you_.
Tra lara, tra lara.

[7]

Breeders of all foreign wars,
Breeders of all household jars,
Snugly 'scaping all the scars.

Worshipp'd, like the saints they make;
Tyrants, forcing fools to quake;
Grasping all we brew or bake.

All our souls and bodies ruling,
All our passions hotly schooling,
All our wit and wisdom fooling.

Lords of all our goods and chattels,
Firebrands of our bigot battles.
When you see them, spring your rattles.

Shun them, as you'd shun the Pest;
Shun them, teacher, friend, and guest;
Shun them, north, south, east, and west.

France, her true disease has hit;
France has made the vagrants flit;
France has swamp'd the Jesuit.

[8] _The Discovery of the Science of Languages._ By MORGAN KAVANAGH. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. 1844.

[9] The poets are a little at variance, and do not all celebrate the _same_ wine--(as some of us like Port, and some Madeira)--some, doubtless, dealt with better wine-merchants than others. Poets have the privilege of celebrating plain women, and wine that nobody else can drink. Redi talks of Monte Fiascone and Monte Pulciano--both _raisin_ wines to English or French stomachs. _Florence_ had no fame in those days, and _now_ makes by far the best wine in Italy--give _us_ good _Chianti_, and none of your Aleatico or Vino Santo. At Rome, there is not a flask of any thing fit to drink; and we recollect when bad _Spanish wine_ was brought up the Tiber to meet the deficiency. _Orvieto_ is far from wholesome; yet, in Juvenal's time, _Albano_ furnished a wine of superlative quality.

"_Albani_ veteris pretiosa senectus;"

the same passage denouncing _Falernian_ by the epithet of _acris_--a wine, he says, to _make faces at_. Again, _Cuma_ and _Gaurus_--the privilege of drinking those wines was for the _rich only_--are now the common drink of the peasants who cultivate them.

"_Te_ Trifolinus ager _fecundis vitibus_ implet,
Suspectumque jugum _Cumis_, et _Gaurus inanis_."

The _vinum Setinum_, wine fit for patriots to drink "on the birthdays of Brutus and Cassius," was never heard of by a subject of the _Pope_, nor would be worth above a _paul_ a flask. But the day is far off when Italy will quaff a generous goblet on any such solemnity, or pour out a cup

"Quale coronati Thrasca, Helvidiusque bibebant,
Brut rum et Cassî natablibus."

[10] During the dissensions of the Regency and the _corps diplomatique_, old Kolocotroni, who was then confined in the fortress above the town of Nauplia, once remarked--"These Franks abuse us for quarrelling, but"--and here he threw out his right hand with the fingers wide apart towards the town of Nauplia below him, exclaiming, [Greek: na], with true Greek energy--"they worry one another like dogs--to unshame us." [Greek: Trôgountai san schulia dia na mas exentropiasan.]

[11] Published by RIDGWAY. 1828.

[12] In a description of the engagement, forwarded by the Austrian consul at Patras to the consul-general in the Ionian islands, which was captured by the Greeks, the following is the account given by the Austrians:--"Il commandante della flottiglia Ottomana con terzo del Vapore andò per aria, avendogli questo gettato una granata in Santa Barbara."

Transcriber's Note:
The original text included Greek characters. For this text version these
letters have been replaced with transliterations set off by [Greek: ]
tags.

Misprints corrected:
"Lairisse" corrected to "Lairesse" (page 429)
"sb ject" corrected to "subject" (page 464)
unnecessary leading "ac-" removed (page 466)
"head" to "heard" (page 480)
"ruler" corrected to "rule" (page 497)

Additional spacing after some of the poetry and block quotes is
intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning
of a new paragraph as is in the original text.