A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 34

[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 h.e.l.lenic 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 ma.s.sacred; 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 pa.s.sive, 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 circ.u.mstance 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 aegaean, 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 Hetaerist 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 aegaean Islands.]

The settlements of the aegaean 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 cla.s.ses 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 Hetaerist 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 h.e.l.lenic 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 sanct.i.ties 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 ma.s.sacred. 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 ma.s.sacre 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 Ma.s.sacre 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 ma.s.sacre 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 pa.s.sions 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 ma.s.sacre. 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 sh.o.r.es, 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 ma.s.sacre 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 ma.s.sacre, 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 un.o.bserved 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 ma.s.s 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 aegaean 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 Pilh.e.l.lenes 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 h.e.l.lenic 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 h.e.l.lenes 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 ma.s.s. One of these regiments, called the corps of Philh.e.l.lenes, 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 Philh.e.l.lenes 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 a.s.sault. 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.ses 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 a.s.semblage of a considerable force, and the Ottoman general now discovered the ruinous effect of his neglect to garrison the pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage of supplies and reinforcements from these to the ports of the Morea.

Strenuous as Mahmud had hitherto shown himself in crushing his va.s.sals 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 a.s.sistance. 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 va.s.sal'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 aggrandis.e.m.e.nt--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 a.s.sume 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 h.e.l.lenic 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 princ.i.p.al islands of the aegaean; and that after the capture of these strongholds and the destruction of the maritime resources of the Greeks, Ibrahim's troops should pa.s.s over the narrow sea between Crete and the Morea, and complete their work by the reduction of the mainland, thus left dest.i.tute of all chance of succour from without. Crete, like Sicily, is a natural stepping-stone between Europe and Africa; and when once the a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.s the Dardanelles un.o.bserved, 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 aegaean, 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 hara.s.sed 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.]

The snowy heights of Taygetus are visible on a clear winter's day from the Cretan coast; yet, with their enemy actually in view of them, the Greeks neglected to guard the pa.s.sage to the Morea. On the 22nd of February, 1825, Ibrahim crossed the sea unopposed and landed five thousand men at Modon. He was even able to return to Crete and bring over a second contingent of superior strength before any steps were taken to hinder his movements. The fate of the mainland was now settled. Ibrahim marched from Modon upon Navarino, defeated the Greek forces on the way, and captured the garrison placed in the Island of Sphakteria--the scene of the first famous surrender of the Spartans--before the Greek fleet could arrive to relieve it. The forts of Navarino then capitulated, and Ibrahim pushed on his victorious march towards the centre of the Morea. It was in vain that the old chief Kolokotrones was brought from his prison at Hydra to take supreme command.

The conqueror of Dramali was unable to resist the onslaught of Ibrahim's regiments, recruited from the fierce races of the Soudan, and fighting with the same arms and under the same discipline as the best troops in Europe. Kolokotrones was driven back through Tripolitza, and retired as the Russians had retired from Moscow, leaving a deserted capital behind him.

Ibrahim gave his troops no rest; he hurried onwards against Nauplia, and on the 24th of June reached the summit of the mountain-pa.s.s that looks down upon the Argolic Gulf. "Ah, little island," he cried, as he saw the rock of Hydra stretched below him, "how long wilt thou escape me?" At Nauplia itself the Egyptian commander rode up to the very gates and scanned the defences, which he hoped to carry at the first a.s.sault. Here, however, a check awaited him. In the midst of general flight and panic, Demetrius Hypsilanti was again the undaunted soldier. He threw himself with some few hundreds of men into the mills of Lerna, and there beat back Ibrahim's vanguard when it attempted to carry this post by storm. The Egyptian recognised that with men like these in front of him Nauplia could be reduced only by a regular siege. He retired for a while upon Tripolitza, and thence sent out his harrying columns, slaughtering and devastating in every direction. It seemed to be his design not merely to exhaust the resources of his enemy but to render the Morea a desert, and to exterminate its population. In the very birthplace of European civilisation, it was said, this savage, who had already been nominated Pasha of the Morea, intended to extinguish the European race and name, and to found for himself upon the ashes of Greece a new barbaric state composed of African negroes and fellaheen. That such design had actually been formed was denied by the Turkish government in answer to official inquiries, and its existence was not capable of proof. But the brutality of one age is the stupidity of the next, and Ibrahim's violence recoiled upon himself. Nothing in the whole struggle between the Sultan and the Greeks gave so irresistible an argument to the Philh.e.l.lenes throughout Europe, or so directly overcame the scruples of Governments in regard to an armed intervention in favour of Greece, as Ibrahim's alleged policy of extermination and re-settlement. The days were past when Europe could permit its weakest member to be torn from it and added to the Mohammedan world.

[Siege of Missolongi, April, 1825-April, 1826.]

One episode of the deepest tragic interest yet remained in the Turko-h.e.l.lenic conflict before the Powers of Europe stepped in and struck with weapons stronger than those which had fallen from dying hands. The town of Missolonghi was now beleaguered by the Turks, who had invaded Western Greece while Ibrahim was overrunning the Morea. Missolonghi had already once been besieged without success; and, as in the case of Saragossa, the first deliverance appears to have inspired the townspeople with the resolution, maintained even more heroically at Missolonghi than at the Spanish city, to die rather than capitulate. From the time when Reschid, the Turkish commander, opened the second attack by land and sea in the spring of 1825, the garrison and the inhabitants met every movement of the enemy with the most obstinate resistance. It was in vain that Reschid broke through the defences with his artillery, and threw ma.s.s after ma.s.s upon the breaches which he made. For month after month the a.s.saults of the Turks were uniformly repelled, until at length the arrival of a Hydriote squadron forced the Turkish fleet to retire from its position, and made the situation of Reschid himself one of considerable danger. And now, as winter approached, and the guerilla bands in the rear of the besiegers grew more and more active, the Egyptian army with its leader was called from the Morea to carry out the task in which the Turks had failed. The Hydriote sea-captains had departed, believing their presence to be no longer needed; and although they subsequently returned for a short time, their services were grudgingly rendered and ineffective. Ibrahim, settling down to his work at the beginning of 1826, conducted his operations with the utmost vigour, boasting that he would accomplish in fourteen days what the Turks could not effect in nine months. But his veteran soldiers were thoroughly defeated when they met the Greeks hand to hand; and the Egyptian, furious with his enemy, his allies, and his own officers, confessed that Missolonghi could only be taken by blockade. He now ordered a fleet of flat-bottomed boats to be constructed and launched upon the lagoons that lie between Missolonghi and the open sea. Missolonghi was thus completely surrounded; and when the Greek admirals appeared for the last time and endeavoured to force an entrance through the shallows, they found the besieger in full command of waters inaccessible to themselves, and after one unsuccessful effort abandoned Missolonghi to its fate. In the third week of April, 1826, exactly a year after the commencement of the siege, the supply of food was exhausted. The resolution, long made, that the entire population, men, women, and children, should fall by the enemy's sword rather than surrender, was now actually carried out. On the night of the 22nd of April all the Missolonghiots, with the exception of those whom age, exhaustion, or illness made unable to leave their homes, were drawn up in bands at the city gates, the women armed and dressed as men, the children carrying pistols. Preceded by a body of soldiers, they crossed the moat under Turkish fire. The attack of the vanguard carried everything before it, and a way was cut through the Turkish lines. But at this moment some cry of confusion was mistaken by those who were still on the bridges for an order to retreat. A portion of the non-combatants returned into the town, and with them the rearguard of the military escort. The leading divisions, however, continued their march forward, and would have escaped with the loss of some of the women and children, had not treachery already made the Turkish commander acquainted with the routes which they intended to follow. They had cleared the Turkish camp, and were expecting to meet the bands of Greek armatoli, who had promised to fall upon the enemy's rear, when, instead of friends, they encountered troop after troop of Ottoman cavalry and of Albanians placed in ambush along the road between Missolonghi and the mountains. Here, exhausted and surprised, they were cut down without mercy, and out of a body numbering several thousand not more than fifteen hundred men, with a few women and children, ultimately reached places of safety. Missolonghi itself was entered by the Turks during the sortie. The soldiers who had fallen back during the confusion on the bridges, proved that they had not acted from cowardice. They fought unflinchingly to the last, and three bands, establishing themselves in the three powder magazines of the town, set fire to them when surrounded by the Turks, and perished in the explosion Some thousands of women and children were captured around and within the town, or wandering on the mountains; but the Turks had few other prisoners. The men were dead or free.

[Fall of the Acropolis of Athens, June 5, 1827.]

From Missolonghi the tide of Ottoman conquest rolled eastward, and the Acropolis of Athens was in its turn the object of a long and arduous siege.

The Government, which now held scarcely any territory on the mainland except Nauplia, where it was itself threatened by Ibrahim, made the most vigorous efforts to prevent the Acropolis from falling into Reschid's hands. All, however, was in vain. The English officers, Church and Cochrane, who were now placed at the head of the military and naval forces of Greece, failed ignominiously in the attacks which they made on Reschid's besieging army; and the garrison capitulated on June 5, 1827. But the time was past when the liberation of Greece could be prevented by any Ottoman victory. The heroic defence of the Missolonghiots had achieved its end.

Greece had fought long enough to enlist the Powers of Europe on its side; and in the same month that Missolonghi fell the policy of non-intervention was definitely abandoned by those Governments which were best able to carry their intentions into effect. If the struggle had ended during the first three years of the insurrection, no hand would have been raised to prevent the restoration of the Sultan's rule. Russia then lay as if spell-bound beneath the diplomacy of the Holy Alliance; and although in the second year of the war the death of Castlereagh and the accession of Canning to power had given Greece a powerful friend instead of a powerful foe within the British Ministry, it was long before England stirred from its neutrality.

Canning indeed made no secret of his sympathies for Greece, and of his desire to give the weaker belligerent such help as a neutral might afford; but when he took up office the time had not come when intervention would have been useful or possible. Changes in the policy of other great Powers and in the situation of the belligerents themselves were, he considered, necessary before the influence of England could be successfully employed in establishing peace in the East.

[First Russian project of joint intervention, 12 Jan., 1824.]

A vigorous movement of public opinion in favour of Greece made itself felt throughout Western Europe as the struggle continued; and the vivid and romantic interest excited over the whole civilised world by the death of Lord Byron in 1823, among the people whom he had come to free, probably served the Greek cause better than all that Byron could have achieved had his life been prolonged. In France and England, where public opinion had great influence on the action of the Government, as well as in Germany, where it had none whatever, societies were formed for a.s.sisting the Greeks with arms, stores, and money. The first proposal, however, for a joint intervention in favour of Greece came from St. Petersburg. The undisguised good-will of Canning towards the insurgents led the Czar's Government to antic.i.p.ate that England itself might soon a.s.sume that championship of the Greek cause which Russia, at the bidding of Metternich and of Canning's predecessor, had up to that time declined. If the Greeks were to be befriended, it was intolerable that others should play the part of the patron. Accordingly, on the 12th of January, 1824, a note was submitted in the Czar's name to all the Courts of Europe, containing a plan for a settlement of the Greek question, which it was proposed that the great Powers of Europe should enforce upon Turkey either by means of an armed demonstration or by the threat of breaking off all diplomatic relations.

According to this scheme, Greece, apart from the islands, was to be divided into three Princ.i.p.alities, each tributary to the Sultan and garrisoned by Turkish troops, but in other respects autonomous, like the Princ.i.p.alities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The islands were to retain their munic.i.p.al organisation as before. In one respect this scheme was superior to all that have succeeded it, for it included in the territory of the Greeks both Crete and Epirus; in all other respects it was framed in the interest of Russia alone. Its object was simply to create a second group of provinces, like those on the Danube, which should afford Russia a constant opportunity for interfering with the Ottoman Empire, and which at the same time should prevent the Greeks from establishing an independent and self-supporting State. The design cannot be called insidious, for its object was so palpable that not a single politician in Europe was deceived by it; and a very simple ruse of Metternich's was enough to draw from the Russian Government an explicit declaration against the independence of Greece, which was described by the Czar as a mere chimera. But of all the parties concerned, the Greeks themselves were loudest in denounciation of the Russian plan. Their Government sent a protest against it to London, and was a.s.sured by Canning in reply that the support of this country should never be given to any scheme for disposing of the Greeks without their own consent. Elsewhere the Czar's note was received with expressions of politeness due to a Court which it might be dangerous to contradict; and a series of conferences was opened at St. Petersburg for the purpose of discussing propositions which no one intended to carry into execution.

Though Canning ordered the British amba.s.sador at St. Petersburg to dissociate himself from these proceedings, the conferences dragged on, with long adjournments, from the spring of 1824 to the summer of the following year. [371]

[Discontent and conspiracies in Russia.]

In the meantime a strong spirit of discontent was rising in the Russian army and nation. The religious feeling no less than the pride of the people was deeply wounded by Alexander's refusal to aid the Greeks in their struggle, and by the pitiful results of his attempted diplomatic concert.