The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald Volume I Part 11

That failure of the Greeks at Chios, quickly followed by their defeat on land at Petta, greatly disheartened the revolutionists.

Mavrocordatos virtually resigned his presidentship, and there was anarchy in Greece till 1828. Athens, captured from the Turks in June, 1822, became the centre of jealous rivalry and visionary scheming, mismanagement, and government that was worse than no government at all. Odysseus, the vilest of the vile men whom the Revolution brought to the surface, was its master for some time; and, when he played traitor to the Turks, he was succeeded by others hardly better than himself.

In spite of some heavy disasters, however, the Greeks were so far successful during 1822 that in 1823 they were able to hold their newly-acquired territory and to wrest some more fortresses from their enemies. The real heroism that they had displayed, moreover--the foul cruelties of which they were guilty and the selfish courses which they pursued being hardly reported to their friends, and, when reported, hardly believed--awakened keen sympathy on their behalf. Sh.e.l.ley and Byron, and many others of less note, had sung their virtues and their sufferings in n.o.ble verse and enlarged upon them in eloquent prose, and in England and France, in Switzerland, Germany, and the united States, a strong party of Philh.e.l.lenes was organized to collect money and send recruits for their a.s.sistance.

The two Philh.e.l.lenes of greatest note who served in Greece during the earlier years of the Revolution were Thomas Gordon and Frank Abney Hastings. Gordon, who attained the rank of general in the army of independence, had the advantage of a long previous and thorough acquaintance with the character of both Turks and Greeks and with the languages that they spoke. He watched all the revolutionary movements from the beginning, and took part in many of them. In the "History of the Greek Revolution," which he published in 1832, he gave such a vivid and, in the main, so accurate an account of them that his narrative has formed the basis of the more ambitious work of the native historian, Mr. Trikoupes. Of the vices and errors of the people on whose behalf he fought and wrote he spoke boldly. "Whatever national or individual wrong the Greeks may have endured," he said in one place, "it is impossible to justify the ferocity of their vengeance or to deny that a comparison inst.i.tuted between them and the Ottoman generals, Mehemet Aboulaboud, Omer Vrioni, and the Kehaya Bey of Kurshid, would give to the latter the palm of humanity. Humanity, however, is a word quite out of place when applied either to them or to their opponents." In another page, further denouncing the Greek leaders, he wrote: "Panourias was the worst of these local despots, whom some writers have elevated into heroes. He was, in fact, an ign.o.ble robber, hardened in evil. He enriched himself with the spoils of the Mahometans; yet he and his retinue of brigands compelled the people to maintain them at free quarters, in idleness and luxury, exacting not only bread, meat, wine, and forage, but also sugar and coffee. Hence springs the reflection that the Greeks had cause to repent their early predilection for the klephts, who were almost all, beginning with Kolokotrones, infamous for the sordid perversity of their dispositions."[A] Gordon's disinterested and brave efforts to bring about a better state of things and to help on the cause of real patriotism in Greece were highly praiseworthy; but, as another historian has truly said, "he did not possess the activity and decision of character necessary to obtain commanding influence in council, or to initiate daring measures in the field."[B]

[Footnote A: Gordon, vol. i., pp. 313, 400.]

[Footnote B: Finlay, vol. ii., p. 129.]

Frank Abney Hastings was an abler man. Born in 1794, he was started in the naval profession when only eleven years old. Six months after the commencement of his midshipman's life he was present, on board the _Neptune_, at the battle of Trafalgar, and during the ensuing fourteen years he served in nearly every quarter of the globe. His independent spirit, however--something akin to Lord Cochrane's--brought him into disfavour, and, in 1819, for challenging a superior officer who had insulted him, he was dismissed from the British navy. Disheartened and disgusted, he resided in France for about three years. At length he resolved to go and fight for the Greeks, partly out of sympathy for their cause, partly as a relief from the misery of forced idleness, partly with the view of developing a plan which he had been devising for extending the use of steamships in naval warfare,--to which last excellent improvement he greatly contributed. He arrived at Hydra in April, 1822, just in time to take part in the fighting off Chios.

One of his ingenious suggestions, made to Andreas Miaoulis, and its reception, have been described by himself. "I proposed to direct a fireship and three other vessels upon the frigate, and, when near the enemy, to set fire to certain combustibles which should throw out a great flame. The enemy would naturally conclude they were all fireships. The vessels were then to attach themselves to the frigate, fire broadsides, double-shotted, throwing on board the enemy at the same time combustible b.a.l.l.s which gave a great smoke without flame.

This would doubtless induce him to believe he was on fire, and give a most favourable opportunity for boarding him. However, the admiral returned my plan, saying only [Greek: kalo], without asking a single question, or wishing me to explain its details; and I observed a kind of insolent contempt in his manner. This interview with the admiral disgusted me. They place you in a position in which it is impossible to render any service, and then they boast of their own superiority, and of the uselessness of the Franks, as they call us, in Turkish warfare." Miaoulis, however, soon gained wisdom and made good use of Captain Hastings, who spent more than 7000_l._--all his patrimony--in serving the Greeks. He was almost the only officer in their employ who, during the earlier years of the Revolution, succeeded in establishing any sort of discipline or good management.

Lord Byron, the most ill.u.s.trious of all the early Philh.e.l.lenes, used to say, shortly before his death, that with Napier at the head of the army and Hastings in command of a fleet the triumph of Greece might be insured. Byron was then at Missolonghi, whither he had gone in January, 1824, to die in April. Long before, while stirring up the sympathy of all lovers of liberty for the cause of regeneration in Greece, he had shown that regeneration could be by no means a short or easy work, and now he had to report that the real work was hardly yet begun--nay, that it seemed almost further off than ever. "Of the Greeks," he wrote, "I can't say much good hitherto, and I do not like to speak ill of them, though they do of one another."

It was chiefly at Byron's instigation that the first Greek loan was contracted, in London, early in 1824. Its proceeds, 300,000_l._, were spent partly in unprofitable outlay upon ships, ammunition, and the like, of which the people were in no position to make good use, but mostly in civil war and in pandering to the greed and vanity of the members of the Government and their subordinate officials. "Phanariots and doctors in medicine," says an eye-witness, "who, in the month of April, 1824, were clad in ragged coats, and who lived on scanty rations, threw off that patriotic chrysalis before summer was past, and emerged in all the splendour of brigand life, fluttering about in rich Albanian habiliments, refulgent with brilliant and unused arms, and followed by diminutive pipe-bearers and tall henchmen."[A]

[Footnote A: Finky, vol. ii. p. 39.]

Even the scanty allowance made by the Greek Government out of its newly-acquired wealth for fighting purposes was for the most part squandered almost as frivolously. One general who drew pay and rations for seven hundred soldiers went to fight and die at Sphakteria at the head of seventeen armed peasants.[A] And that is only a glaring instance of peculations that were all but universal.

[Footnote A: Trikoupes, vol. iii., p. 206.]

That being the degradation to which the leaders of the Greek Revolution had sunk, it is not strange that its gains in previous years should have begun in 1824 to be followed by heavy losses. The Greek people--the peasants and burghers--were still patriots, though ill-trained and misdirected. They could defend their own homesteads with unsurpa.s.sed heroism, and hold their own mountains and valleys with fierce persistency. But they were unfit for distant fighting, even when their chiefs consented to employ them in it. Sultan Mahmud, therefore, who had been profiting by the hard experience of former years, and whose strength had been steadily growing while the power of the insurgents had been rapidly weakening, entered on a new and successful policy. He left the Greeks to waste their energies in their own possessions, and resolved to recapture, one after another, the outposts and ill-protected islands. For this he took especial care in augmenting his navy, and, besides developing his own resources, induced his powerful and turbulent va.s.sal, Mohammed Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, to equip a formidable fleet and entrust it to his son Ibrahim, on whom was conferred the t.i.tle of Vizier of the Morea.

Even without that aid Mahmud was able to do much in furtherance of his purpose. The island of Kasos was easily recovered, and full vengeance was wreaked on its Greek inhabitants on the 20th of June. Soon afterwards Psara was seized and punished yet more hardly.

On the 19th of July Ibrahim left Alexandria with a naval force which swept the southern seas of Greek pirates or privateers. On the 1st of September he effected a junction with the Turkish fleet at Budrun.

Their united strength comprised forty-six ships, frigates, and corvettes, and about three hundred transports, large and small. The Greek fleet, between seventy and eighty sail, would have been strong enough to withstand it under any sort of good management; but good management was wanting, and the crews were quite beyond the control of their masters. The result was that in a series of small battles during the autumn of 1824 the Mahometans were generally successful, and their enemies found themselves at the close of the year terribly discomfited The little organization previously existing was destroyed, and the revolutionists felt that they had no prospect of advantageously carrying on their strife at sea without a.s.sistance and guidance that could not be looked for among themselves.

Their troubles were increased in the following year. In February and March, 1825, Ibrahim landed a formidable army in the Morea, and began a course of operations in which the land forces and the fleet combined to dispossess the Greeks of their chief strongholds. The strongly-fortified island of Sphakteria, the portal of Navarino and Pylos, was taken on the 8th of May. Pylos capitulated on the 11th, and Navarino on the 21st of the same month. Other citadels, one after another, were surrendered; and Ibrahim and his army spent the summer in scouring the Morea and punishing its inhabitants, with the utmost severity, for the lawless brigandage and the devoted patriotism of which they had been guilty during the past four years.

The result was altogether disheartening to the Greeks. They saw that their condition was indeed desperate. George Konduriottes, a Hydriot merchant, an Albanian who could not speak Greek, and who was alike unable to govern himself or others, had, in June, 1824, been named president of the republic, and since then the rival interests of the primates, the priests, and the military leaders had been steadily causing the decay of all that was left of patriotism and increase of the selfishness that had so long been rampant.

There was one consequence of this degradation, however, which promised to be very beneficial. Seeing that their cause was being rapidly weakened, and that their hard-fought battle for liberty was in danger of speedy and ignominious reversal by their own divisions, by the stealthy encroachments of the Ottomans in the north, and by the more energetic advances of the Egyptians in the south, the Greeks resolved to abandon some of their jealousies and greeds, to look for a saviour from without, and, on his coming, to try and submit themselves honestly and heartily to his leadership. The issue of that resolution was the following letter, written by Mavrocordatos, then Secretary to the National a.s.sembly:--

"Milord,--Tandis que vos rares talens etaient consacres a procurer le bonheur d'un pays separe par un es.p.a.ce immense de la Grece, celle-ci ne voyait pas sans admiration, sans interet, sans une espece de jalousie secrete meme, les succes brillants qui ont toujours couronne vos n.o.bles efforts, et rendu a l'independance un des plus beaux, des plus riches pays du monde. Votre retour en Angleterre a excite la plus vive joie dans le coeur du citoyen Grec et de ses representans par l'espoir flattereur qu'ils commencent a concevoir que, celui qui s'est si n.o.blement dedie a procurer le bonheur d'une nation, ne refusera pas d'en faire autant pour celui d'une autre, qui ne lui offre pas une carriere moins brillante et moins digne de lui et par son nom historique, et par ses malheurs pa.s.ses et par ses efforts actuels pour reconquerir sa liberte et son independance. Les mers qui rappellent les victoires des Themistocles et des Timon, ne seront pas un theatre indifferent pour celui qui sait apprecier les grands hommes, et un des premiers amiraux de notre siecle ne verra qu' avec plaisir qu'il est appelle a renouveler les beaux jours de Salamine et de Mycale a la tete des Miaoulis, des Sachtouris et des Kanaris.

"C'est avec la plus grande satisfaction, milord, que je me vois charge de faire, au nom du Gouvernement, a votre seigneurie, la proposition du commandement general des forces navales de la Grece. Si votre seigneurie est disposee a l'accepter, Messieurs les Deputes du Gouvernement Grec a Londres ont toute l'autorisation et les instructions necessaires pour combiner avec elle sur les moyens a mettre a sa disposition, afin d'utiliser le plutot possible votre n.o.ble decision et accelerer l'heureux moment que la Grece reconnaissante et enthousiasmee vous verra combattre pour la cause de sa liberte.

"Je profite de cette occasion pour prier votre seigneurie de vouloir bien agreer l'a.s.surance de mon respect et de la plus haute estime avec laquelle j'ai l'honneur d'etre, milord, de votre seigneurie le tres humble et tres obeissant serviteur,

"A. Mavrocordatos,

"Naples de Romanie,

"Secre-genl d'Etat.

"_le 20 Aout_, ----------- 1825 1er 7bre

"A Sa Seigneurie le tres Honorable Lord Cochrane, a Londres."

CHAPTER XIV.

LORD COCHRANE's DISMISSAL FROM BRAZILIAN SERVICE, AND HIS ACCEPTANCE OF EMPLOYMENT AS CHIEF ADMIRAL OF THE GREEKS.--THE GREEK COMMITTEE AND THE GREEK DEPUTIES IN LONDON--THE TERMS OF LORD COCHRANE's AGREEMENT, AND THE CONSEQUENT PREPARATIONS.--HIS VISIT TO SCOTLAND--SIR WALTER SCOTT'S VERSES ON LADY COCHRANE.--LORD COCHRANE'S FORCED RETIREMENT TO BOULOGNE, AND THENCE TO BRUSSELS.--THE DELAYS IN FITTING OUT THE GREEK ARMAMENT.--CAPTAIN HASTINGS, MR. HOBHOUSE, AND SIR FRANCES BURDETT.--CAPTAIN HASTINGS'S MEMOIR ON THE GREEK LEADERS AND THEIR CHARACTERS.--THE FIRST CONSEQUENCE OF LORD COCHRANE's NEW ENTERPRISE.--THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S INDIRECT MESSAGE TO LORD COCHRANE.--THE GREEK DEPUTIES' PROPOSAL TO LORD COCHRANE AND HIS ANSWER.--THE FINAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR HIS DEPARTURE.--THE MESSIAH OF THE GREEKS.

[1825-1826.]

The letter from Mavrocordatos quoted in the last chapter was only part of a series of negotiations that had been long pending. Lord Cochrane, as we have seen, had arrived at Portsmouth on the 26th of June, 1825, in command of a Brazilian war-ship and still holding office as First Admiral of the Empire of Brazil. His intention in visiting England had been only to effect the necessary repairs in his ship before going back to Rio de Janeiro. He had no sooner arrived, however, than it was clear to him, from the vague and insolent language of the Brazilian envoy in London, that it was designed by that official, if not by the authorities in Rio de Janeiro, to oust him from his command. During four months he remained in uncertainty, determined not willingly to retire from his Brazilian service, but gradually convinced by the increasing insolence of the envoy's treatment of him that it would be inexpedient for him hastily to return to Brazil, where, before his departure, he had experienced the grossest ingrat.i.tude for his brilliant achievements and neglect and abuse of all sorts. At length, in November, upon learning that his captain and crew had been formally instructed to "cast off all subordination" to him, he deemed that he had no alternative but to consider himself dismissed from Brazilian employment and free to enter upon a new engagement.

That engagement had been urged upon him even while he was in South America by his friends in England, who were also devoted friends to the cause of Greek independence, and the proposal had been renewed very soon after his arrival at Portsmouth. It was so freely talked of among all cla.s.ses of the English public and so openly discussed in the newspapers before the middle of August that by it Lord Cochrane's last relations with the Brazilian envoy were seriously complicated. "Lord Cochrane is looking very well, after eight years of hara.s.sing and ungrateful service," wrote Sir Francis Burdett on the 20th of August, "and, I trust, will be the liberator of Greece. What a glorious t.i.tle!"

It is needless to say that Sir Francis Burdett, always the n.o.ble and disinterested champion of the oppressed, and the far-seeing and fearless advocate of liberty both at home and abroad, was a leading member of the Greek Committee in London. This committee was a counterpart--though composed of more ill.u.s.trious members than any of the others--of Philh.e.l.lenic a.s.sociations that had been organized in nearly every capital of Europe and in the chief towns of the United States. Everywhere a keen sympathy was aroused on behalf of the down-trodden Greeks; and the sympathy only showed itself more zealously when it appeared that the Greeks were still burdened with the moral degradation of their long centuries of slavery, and needed the guidance and support of men more fortunately trained than they had been in ways of freedom. Such a man, and foremost among such men, always generous, wise, and earnest, was Sir Francis Burdett, Lord Cochrane's oldest and best political friend, his readiest adviser and stoutest defender all through the weary time of his subjection to unmerited disgrace and heartless contumely. Another leading member of the Greek Committee was Mr. John Cam Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Broughton, Lord Byron's friend and fellow-traveller, now Sir Francis Burdett's colleague in the representation of Westminster as successor to Lord Cochrane. Another of high note was Mr. Edward Ellice, eminent alike as a merchant and as a statesman. Another, no less eminent, was Joseph Hume. Another was Mr. (afterwards Sir) John Bowring, secretary to the Greek Committee. By them and many others the progress of the Greek Revolution was carefully watched and its best interests were strenuously advocated, and by all the return of Lord Cochrane to England and the prospect of his enlistment in the Philh.e.l.lenic enterprise afforded hearty satisfaction. To them the real liberty of Greece was a cherished object; and one and all united in welcoming the great promoter of Chilian and Brazilian independence as the liberator of Greece.

Other honest friends of Greece were less sanguine, and more disposed to urge caution upon Lord Cochrane. "My very dear friend," wrote one of them, Dr. William Porter, from Bristol on the 25th of August, "I will not suffer you to be longer in England without welcoming you; for your health, happiness, and fame are all dear to me. I have followed you in your Transatlantic career with deep feelings of anxiety for your life, but none for your glory: I know you too well to entertain a fear for that. I had hoped that you would repose on your laurels and enjoy the evening of life in peace, but am told that you are about to launch a thunderbolt against the Grand Seignior on behalf of Greece.

I wish to see Greece free; but could also wish you to rest from your labours. For a s.e.xagenarian to command a fleet in ordinary war is an easy task, and even threescore and ten might do it; but fifty years are too many to conduct a naval war for a people whose pretensions to nautical skill you will find on a thousand occasions to give rise to jealousies against you. You will also find that on some important day they will withhold their co-operation, in order to rob you of your glory. The cause of Greece is, nevertheless, a glorious cause. Our remembrance of what their ancestors did at Salamis, at Marathon, at Thermopylae, gives an additional interest to all that concerns them.

But, to say the truth of them, they are a race of tigers, and their ancestors were the same. I shall be glad to see them fall upon their aigretted keeper and his pashas; but, confound them! I would not answer for their destroying the man that would break their fetters and set them loose in all the power of recognised freedom."

There was much truth in those opinions, and Lord Cochrane was not blind to it. That he, though now in his fiftieth year, was too old for any difficult seamanship or daring warfare that came in his way he certainly was not inclined to admit; but he was not quite as enthusiastic as Sir Francis Burdett and many of his other friends regarding the immediate purposes and the ultimate issue of the Greek Revolution. He was now as hearty a lover of liberty, and as willing to employ all his great experience and his excellent ability in its service, as he had been eight years before when he went to aid the cause of South American independence. But both in Chili and in Brazil he had suffered much himself, and, what was yet more galling to one of his generous disposition, had seen how grievously his disinterested efforts for the benefit of others had been stultified, by the selfishness and imprudence, the meanness and treachery of those whom he had done his utmost to direct in a sure and rapid way of freedom.

He feared, and had good reason for fearing, like disappointments in any relations into which he might enter with Greece. Therefore, though he readily consented to work for the h.e.l.lenic revolutionists, as he had worked for the Chilians and Brazilians, he did so with something of a forlorn hope, with a fear--which in the end was fully justified--that thereby his own troubles might only be augmented, and that his philanthropic plans might in great measure be frustrated.

Coming newly to England, where the real state of affairs in Greece, the selfishness of the leaders, the want of discipline among the ma.s.ses, and the consequent weakness and embarra.s.sment to the revolutionary cause, were not thoroughly understood, and where this understanding was especially difficult for him without previous acquaintance even with all the details that were known and apprehended by his friends, he yet saw enough to lead him to the belief that the work they wished him to do in Greece would be harder and more thankless than they supposed.

This must be remembered as an answer to the first of the misstatements--misstatements that will have to be controverted at every stage of the ensuing narrative--which were carefully disseminated, and have been persistently recorded by political opponents and jealous rivals of Lord Cochrane. It has been alleged that he was induced by mercenary motives, and by them alone, to enter the service of the Greeks. His sole inducements were a desire to do his best on all occasions towards the punishment of oppressors and the relief of the oppressed, and a desire, hardly less strong, to seek relief in the naval enterprise that was always very dear to him from the oppression under which he himself suffered so heavily.

The ingrat.i.tude that he had lately experienced in Chili and Brazil, however, bringing upon him much present embarra.s.sment in lawsuits and other troubles, led him to use what was only common prudence in his negotiations with the Greek Committee and with the Greek deputies, John Orlando and Andreas Luriottis, who were in London at the time, and on whom devolved the formal arrangements for employing him and providing him with suitable equipments for his work.

These were done with help of a second Greek loan, contracted in London in 1825, for 2,000,000_l._ Out of this sum it was agreed that Lord Cochrane was to receive 37,000_l._ at starting, and a further sum of 20,000_l._ on the completion of his services; and that he was to be provided with a suitable squadron, for which purpose 150,000_l._ were to be expended in the construction of six steamships in England, and a like sum on the building and fitting out of two sixty-gun frigates in the United States. With the disappointments that he had experienced in Chili and Brazil fresh in his mind, he refused to enter on this new engagement without a formidable little fleet, manned by English and American seamen, and under his exclusive direction; and he further stipulated that the entire Greek fleet should be at his sole command, and that he should have full power to carry out his views independently of the Greek Government.

These arrangements were completed on the 16th of August, except that Lord Cochrane, not having yet been actually dismissed by the Brazilian envoy, refused formally to pledge himself to his new employers. In conjunction with Sir Francis Burdett, Mr. Hobhouse, Mr. Ellice, and the Ricardos, as contractors, however, he made all the preliminary arrangements, and before the end of August he went for a two months'

visit to his native county and other parts of Scotland, from which he had been absent more than twenty years.

One incident in that visit was noteworthy. On the 3rd of October, Lord and Lady Cochrane, being in Edinburgh, went to the theatre, where an eager crowd a.s.sembled to do them honour. Into the after-piece an allusion to South America was specially introduced. Upon that the whole audience rose and, turning to the seats occupied by the visitors, showed their admiration by plaudits so long and so vehement that Lady Cochrane, overpowered by her feelings, burst into tears.

Thereupon Sir Walter Scott, who was in the theatre, wrote the following verses:--

"I knew thee, lady, by that glorious eye, By that pure brow and those dark locks of thine, I knew thee for a soldier's bride, and high My full heart bounded: for the golden mine Of heavenly thought kindled at sight of thee, Radiant with all the stars of memory.

"I knew thee, and, albeit, myself unknown, I called on Heaven to bless thee for thy love, The strength, the constancy thou long hast shown, Each selfish aim, each womanish fear above: And, lady, Heaven is with thee; thou art blest, Blest in whatever thy immortal soul loves best.

"Thy name, ask Brazil, for she knows it well; It is a name a hero gave to thee; In every letter lurks there not a spell,-- The mighty spell of immortality?

Ye sail together down time's glittering stream; Around your heads two glittering haloes gleam.

"Even now, as through the air the plaudits rung, I marked the smiles that in her features came; She caught the word that fell from every tongue, And her eye brightened at her Cochrane's name; And brighter yet became her bright eyes' blaze; It was his country, and she felt the praise,--

"Ay, even as a woman, and his bride, should feel, With all the warmth of an o'erflowing soul: Unshaken she had seen the ensanguined steel, Unshaken she had heard war's thunders roll, But now her n.o.ble heart could find relief In tears alone, though not the tears of grief.