"Accordingly," the narrative proceeds, "I shifted my flag into the _Piranga_, despatched the _Pedro Primiero_ to Rio, and, leaving Captain Manson, of the _Cacique_, in charge of the naval department at Maranham, put to sea on the 18th of May. On the 21st we crossed the Equator, and, meeting with a succession of easterly winds, were carried to the northward of the Azores, pa.s.sing St. Michael"s on the 11th of June. It had been my intention to sail into the lat.i.tude of the Azores, and then to return to Rio de Janeiro. But, strong gales coming on, we made the unpleasant discovery that the frigate"s main-topmast was sprung, and, when putting her about, the main and main-topsail yards were discovered to be unserviceable. For the condition of the ship"s spars I had depended on others, not deeming it necessary to take upon myself such investigation. It was, however, possible that we might have patched these up, had not the running rigging been as rotten as the masts, and we had no spare cordage on board. A still worse disaster was that the salt provisions shipped at Maranham were reported bad, mercantile ingenuity having resorted to the device of placing good meat at the top and bottom of the barrels, whilst the middle, being composed of unsound articles, had tainted the whole, thereby rendering it not only unpalatable but positively dangerous to health. The good provisions on board being little more than sufficient for a week"s subsistence, a direct return to Rio de Janeiro was out of the question."
It was therefore absolutely necessary to seek some nearer harbour; but Lord Cochrane was considerably embarra.s.sed in his choice of a port. Portugal was an enemy"s country, and Spain, by reason of his achievements in Chili and Peru, was no less hostile to him. France had not yet recognised the independence of Brazil, and therefore a stay on any part of its coast might lead to difficulties. England afforded the only safe halting-place, though there Lord Cochrane was uncertain as to the way in which, in consequence of the Foreign Enlistment Act, he might be received. To England, however, he resolved to go; and, sighting its coast on the 25th of June, he anch.o.r.ed at Spithead on the following day. Salutes were exchanged with a British ship lying in harbour, and in the afternoon he landed at Portsmouth, to be enthusiastically welcomed by nearly all cla.s.ses of his countrymen, whose admiration for his personal character and his excellence as a naval officer was heightened by the renown of his exploits in South America during an absence of six years and a half.
His subsequent relations with Brazil can be briefly told. His unavoidable return to England afforded just the excuse which his enemies in Brazil had been seeking for ousting him from his command.
They and the Chevalier Manoel Rodriguez Gameiro Pessoa, the Brazilian Envoy in London, who altogether sympathised with them, chose to regard this occurrence as an act of desertion. Lord Cochrane lost no time in reporting his arrival and requesting to be provided with the necessary means for refitting the _Piranga_ and preparing for a speedy return to Rio de Janeiro. To expedite matters, he even advanced 2000_l._ out of his own property--which was never repaid to him--for this purpose. His repeated applications for instructions were either unheeded or only answered with insult. He was ordered to return to Brazil at once, towards which no a.s.sistance was given to him; and at the same time his officers and crew were ordered to repudiate his authority and to return without him.
Lord Cochrane had no room to doubt that by going back to Brazil he should only expose himself to yet worse treatment than that from which he had been suffering during nearly two years; but at the same time he was resolved to do nothing at variance with his duty to the Emperor from whom he had received his commission, and nothing invalidating his claims to the recompense which was clearly due to him. At length he was relieved from some of his perplexities, after they had lasted more than three months. On the 3rd of November, 1825, peace was declared between Brazil and Portugal; and thereby his relations with his employers were materially altered. The work which he had pledged himself to do was completed, and he was justified in resigning his command, or at any rate in declining to resume it until the causes of his recent troubles were removed.
This he did in a letter addressed to the Emperor Pedro I., from London, on the 10th of November. "The gracious condescension which I experienced from your Imperial Majesty, from the first moment of my arrival in the Brazils, the honorary distinctions which I received from your Majesty, and the attention with which you were pleased to listen to all my personal representations relating to the promotion of the naval power of your empire," he wrote, "have impressed upon my mind a high sense of the honour which your Majesty conferred, and forbid my entertaining any other sentiments than those of attachment to your Majesty and devotion to your true interests. But, whilst I express these my unfeigned sentiments towards your Imperial Majesty, it is with infinite pain and regret that I recall to my recollection the conduct that has been pursued towards the naval service, and to myself personally, since the members of the Brazilian administration of Jose Bonifacio de Andrade were superseded by persons devoted to the views and interests of Portugal,--views and interests which are directly opposed to the adoption of that line of conduct which can alone promote and secure the true interests and glory of your Imperial Majesty, founded on the tranquillity and happiness of the Brazilian people. Without imputing to such ministers as Severiano, Gomez, and Barboza disaffection to the person of your Imperial Majesty, it is sufficient to know that they are men bigoted to the unenlightened opinions of their ancestors of four centuries ago, that they are men who, from their limited intercourse with the world, from the paucity of the literature of their native language, and from their want of all rational instruction in the service of government and political economy, have no conception of governing Brazil by any other than the same wretched and crooked policy to which the nation had been so long subjected in its condition as a colony. Nothing further need be said, while we acquit them of treason, to convict them of unfitness to be the counsellors of your Imperial Majesty.
"None but such ministers as these could have endeavoured to impress upon the mind of your Imperial Majesty that the refugee Portuguese from the provinces and many thousands from Europe, collected in Rio de Janeiro, were the only true friends and supporters of the imperial crown of Brazil. None but such ministers would have endeavoured to impress your Imperial Majesty with a belief that the Brazilian people were inimical to your person and the imperial crown, merely because they were hostile to the system pursued by those ministers. None but such ministers would have placed in important offices of trust the natives of a nation with which your Imperial Majesty was at war. None but such ministers would have endeavoured to induce your Imperial Majesty to believe that officers who had abandoned their King and native country for their own private interests could be depended on as faithful servants to a hostile Government and a foreign land. None but such ministers could have induced your Imperial Majesty to place in the command of your fortresses, regiments, and ships of war such individuals as these. None but such ministers would have attempted to excite in the breast of your Imperial Majesty suspicions with respect to the fidelity of myself and of those other officers who, by the most zealous exertions, had proved our devotion to the best interests of your Imperial Majesty and your Brazilian people. None but such ministers would have endeavoured by insults and acts of the grossest injustice, to drive us from the service of your Imperial Majesty and to place Portuguese officers in our stead. And, above all, none but such ministers could have suggested to your Imperial Majesty that extraordinary proceeding which was projected to take place on the night of the 3rd of June, 1824, a proceeding which, had it not been averted by a timely discovery and prompt interposition on my part, would have tarnished for ever the glory of your Imperial Majesty, and which, if it had failed to prove fatal to myself and officers, must inevitably have driven us from your imperial service. When placed in compet.i.tion with this plot of these ministers and the false insinuations by which they induced your Imperial Majesty to listen to their insidious counsel, all their previous intrigues, and those of the whole Portuguese faction, to ruin the naval power of Brazil, sink into insignificance. But for the advancement of Portuguese interests there was nothing too treacherous or malignant for such ministers and such men as these to insinuate to your Imperial Majesty, especially when they had discovered that it was not possible by their unjust conduct to provoke me to abandon the service of Brazil so long as my exertions could be useful to secure its independence, which I believed to be alike the object of your Imperial Majesty and the interest of the Brazilian people.
"If the counsels of such persons should prove fatal to the interests of your Imperial Majesty, no one will regret the event more sincerely than myself. My only consolation will be the knowledge that your Imperial Majesty cannot but be conscious that I, individually, have discharged my duty, both in a military and in a private capacity, towards your Majesty, whose true interest, I may venture to add, I have held in greater regard than my own; for, had I connived at the views of the Portuguese faction, even without dereliction of my duty as an officer, I might have shared amply in the honours and emoluments which such influence has enabled these persons to obtain, instead of being deprived, by their means, of even the ordinary rewards of my labours in the cause of independence which your Imperial Majesty had engaged me to maintain,--which cause I neither have abandoned nor will abandon, if ever it should be in my power successfully to renew my exertions for the true interests of your Imperial Majesty and those of the Brazilian people.
"Meanwhile my office as Commander-in-Chief of your Imperial Majesty"s Naval Forces having terminated by the conclusion of peace and by the decree promulgated on the 28th of February, 1824, I have notified to your Imperial Majesty"s Envoy, the Chevalier de Gameiro, that I have directed my flag to be struck this day. Praying that the war now terminated abroad may be accompanied by tranquillity at home, I respectfully take leave of your Imperial Majesty."
All Lord Cochrane"s subsequent correspondence with Brazil had for its object the recovery of the payments due to him and to his officers and crews for the great services done by them to the empire. Lord Cochrane had saved that empire from being brought back to the position of a Portuguese colony, and had enabled it to enter on a career of independence. In return for it he was subjected to more than two years of galling insult, was deprived of his proper share of the prizes taken by him and his squadron, was refused the estate in Maranham which the Emperor, more grateful than his ministers, had bestowed upon him, and was mulcted of a portion of his pay and of all the pension to which he was ent.i.tled by imperial decree and the ordinances of the Government. His services to Brazil, like his services to Chili, adding much to his renown as a disinterested champion of liberty and an unrivalled seaman and warrior, brought upon him personally little but trouble and misfortune. Only near the end of his life, when a worthy Emperor and honest ministers succeeded to power, was any recompence accorded to him.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE GREEK REVOLUTION AND ITS ANTECEDENTS.--THE MODERN GREEKS.--THE FRIENDLY SOCIETY.--SULTAN MAHMUD AND ALI PASHA"S REBELLION.--THE BEGINNING OF THE GREEK INSURRECTION.--COUNT JOHN CAPODISTRIAS.--PRINCE ALEXANDER HYPSILANTES.--THE REVOLUTION IN THE MOREA.--THEODORE KOLKOTRONES.--THE REVOLUTION IN THE ISLANDS.--THE GREEK NAVY AND ITS CHARACTER.--THE EXCESSES OF THE GREEKS.--THEIR BAD GOVERNMENT.--PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATOS.--THE PROGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION.--THE SPOLIATION OF THE CHIOS.--ENGLISH PHILh.e.l.lENES; THOMAS GORDON, FRANK ABNEY HASTINGS, LORD BYRON.--THE FIRST GREEK LOAN, AND THE BAD USES TO WHICH IT WAS PUT.--REVERSES OF THE GREEKS.--IBRAHIM AND HIS SUCCESSES.--MAVROCORDATOS"S LETTER TO LORD COCHRANE.
[1820-1825.]
While Lord Cochrane was rendering efficient service to the cause of freedom in South America, another war of independence was being waged in Europe; and he had hardly been at home a week before solicitations pressed upon him from all quarters that he should lend his great name and great abilities to this war also. As he consented to do so, and almost from the moment of his arrival was intimately connected with the Greek Revolution, the previous stages of this memorable episode, the incidents that occurred during his absence in Chili and Brazil, need to be here reviewed and recapitulated.
The Greek Revolution began openly in 1821. But there had been long previous forebodings of it. The dwellers in the land once peopled by the n.o.ble race which planned and perfected the arts and graces, the true refinements and the solid virtues that are the basis of our modern civilization, had been for four centuries and more the slaves of the Turks. They were hardly Greeks, if by that name is implied descent from the inhabitants of cla.s.sic Greece. With the old stock had been blended, from generation to generation, so many foreign elements that nearly all trace of the original blood had disappeared, and the modern Greeks had nothing but their residence and their language to justify them in maintaining the old t.i.tle. But their slavery was only too real. Oppressed by the Ottomans on account of their race and their religion, the oppression was none the less in that it induced many of them to cast off the last shreds of freedom and deck themselves in the coa.r.s.er, but, to slavish minds, the pleasanter bondage of trickery and meanness. During the eighteenth century, many Greeks rose to eminence in the Turkish service, and proved harder task-masters to their brethren than the Turks themselves generally were. The hope of further aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, however, led them to scheme the overthrow of their Ottoman employers, and their projects were greatly aided by the truer, albeit short-sighted, patriotism that animated the greater number of their kinsmen. They groaned under Turkish thraldom, and yearned to be freed from it, in the temper so well described and so worthily denounced by Lord Byron in 1811:--
"And many dream withal the hour is nigh That gives them back their fathers" heritage: For foreign arms and aid they loudly sigh, Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage.
Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
By their right arm the conquest must be wrought.
Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye?--No!
True, they may lay your proud despoilers low, But not for you will Freedom"s altars flame."
The Greeks, all but a few genuine patriots, thought otherwise. They sought deliverance at the hands of Gauls and Muscovites; and, as the Muscovites had good reason for desiring the overthrow of Turkey, they listened to their prayers, and other ties than that of community in religion bound the persecuted Greeks to Russia. The Philike Hetaira, or Friendly Society, chief representative of a very general movement, was founded at Odessa in 1814. It was a secret society, which speedily had ramifications among the Greek Christians in every part of Turkey, encouraging them to prepare for insurrection as soon as the Czar Alexander I. deemed it expedient to aid them by open invasion of Turkey, or as soon as they themselves could take the initiative, trusting to Russia to complete the work of revolution. The Friendly Society increased its influence and multiplied its visionary schemes during many years previous to 1821.
Its strength was augmented by the political condition of Turkey at the time. The Sultan Mahmud--a true type of the Ottoman sovereign at his worst--had attempted to perfect his power by a long train of cruelties, of which murder was the lightest. Defeating his own purpose thereby, he aroused the opposition of Mahometan as well as Christian subjects, and induced the rebellious schemes of Ali Pasha of Joannina, the boldest of his va.s.sals. In Albania Ali ruled with a cruelty that was hardly inferior to Mahmud"s. Byron tells how his
"dread command Is lawless law; for with a b.l.o.o.d.y hand He sways a nation turbulent and told."
The cruelty could be tolerated; but not opposition to Mahmud"s will. Long and growing jealousy existed between the Sultan and his tributary. At length, in 1820, there was an open rupture. Ali was denounced as a traitor, and ordered to surrender his pashalik. Instead of so doing, he organized his army for prompt rebellion, trusting for success partly to the support of the Greeks. Most of the Greeks held aloof; but the Suliots, a race of Christian marauders, the fiercest of the fierce community of Albanians, sided with him, and for more than a year rendered him valuable aid by reason of their hereditary skill in lawless warfare. Not till January, 1822, was Ali forced to surrender, and then only, perhaps, through the defection of the Suliots.
The Suliots, dissatisfied with Ali"s recompense for their services, had gone over to the Greeks, who, not caring to serve under Ali in his rebellion, had welcomed that rebellion as a Heaven-sent opportunity for realising their long-cherished hopes. The Turkish garrisons in Greece being half unmanned in order that the strongest possible force might be used in subduing Ali, and Turkish government in the peninsula being at a standstill, the Greeks found themselves in an excellent position for a.s.serting their freedom. Had they been less degraded than they were by their long centuries of slavery, or had there been some better organization than that which the purposes and the methods of the Friendly Society afforded for developing the latent patriotism which was honest and wide-spread, they might have achieved a triumph worthy of the cla.s.sic name they bore and the heroic ancestry that they claimed.
Unfortunately, the Friendly Society, already degenerated from the unworthy aim with which it started, now an elaborate machinery of personal ambition, private greed, and local spite, the willing tool of Russia, was master of the situation. The mastery, however, was by no means thorough. The society had dispossessed all other organizations, but had no organization of its own adequate to the working out of a successful rebellion. Its machinery was tolerably perfect, but efficient motive-power was wanting. Its exchequer was empty; its counsels were divided; above all, it had alienated the sympathies of the worthiest patriots of Greece. Finding itself suddenly in the way of triumph, it was incapable of rightly progressing in that way.
Obstacles of its own raising, and obstacles raised by others, stood in the path, and only a very wise man had the chance of successfully removing them.
The wise man did not exist, or was not to be obtained. Perhaps the wisest, though, as later history proved, not very wise, was Count John Capodistrias, a native of Corfu. Born in 1777, he had gone to Italy to study and practise medicine. There also he studied, afterwards to put in practice, the effete Machiavellianism then in vogue. In 1803 he entered political life as secretary to the lately-founded republic of the Ionian Islands. Napoleon"s annexation of the Ionian Islands in 1807 drove him into the service of Russia, and, as Russian agent, he advocated, at the Vienna Conference of 1815, the reconstruction of the Ionian republic. The partial concession of Great Britain towards that project, by which the Ionian Islands were established as a sort of commonwealth, dependent upon England, enabled him to live and work in Corfu, awaiting the realization of his own patriotic schemes, and watching the patriotic movement in Greece. Italian in his education, and Russian in his sympathies, he was still an honest Greek, worthier and abler than most other influential Greeks. "He had many virtues and great abilities," says a competent critic. "His conduct was firm and disinterested, his manners simple and dignified. His personal feelings were warm, and, as a consequence of this virtue, they were sometimes so strong as to warp his judgment. He wanted the equanimity and impartiality of mind, and the elevation of soul necessary to make a great man."[A] In spite of his defects, he might have done good service to the Greek Revolution, had he accepted the offer of its leadership, shrewdly tendered to him by the Friendly Society. But this he declined, having no liking for the society, and no trust in its methods and designs.
[Footnote A: Finlay, "History of the Greek Revolution" (1861), vol.
ii., p. 196. Mr. Finlay served as a volunteer in Greece under Captain Abney Hastings. His work is certainly the best on the subject, though we shall have in later pages to differ widely from its strictures on Lord Cochrane"s motives and action. But our complaints will be less against his history than against the two other leading ones--General Gordon"s "History of the Greek Revolution" (1832), and M. Trikoupes"s "[Greek: Historia tes h.e.l.lenikes Epanastaseos]" (1853-6), which is not very much more than a paraphrase of Gordon"s work.]
The Friendly Society then sought and found a leader, far inferior to Count Capodistrias, in Prince Alexander Hypsilantes, the son of a Hospodar of Wallachia who had been deposed in 1806. Hypsilantes had been educated in Russia, and had there risen to some rank, high enough at any rate to quicken his ambition and vanity, both as a soldier and as a courtier. He was not without virtues; but he was utterly unfit for the duties imposed upon him as leader of the Greek Revolution.
Not a Greek himself, his purpose in accepting the office seems to have been to make Greece an appendage of the despotic monarchy, which, by means of the political crisis, he hoped to establish in Wallachia, under Russian protection. With that view, in March 1821, he led the first crude army of Greek and other Christian rebels into Moldavia.
There and in Wallachia he stirred up a brief revolt, attended by military blunders and lawless atrocities which soon brought vengeance upon himself and made a false beginning of the revolutionary work.
Moldavia and Wallachia were quickly restored to Turkish rule, and Hypsilantes had in June to fly for safety into Austria. But the bad example that he set, and the evil influence that he and his promoters and followers of the Friendly Society exerted, initiated a false policy and encouraged a pernicious course of action, by which the cause of the Greeks was injured for years.
The real Greek revolution began in the Morea. There the Friendly Society did good work in showing the people that the hour for action had come; but its direction of that action was for the most part mischievous. The worst Greeks were the leaders, and, under their guidance, the play of evil pa.s.sions--inevitable in all efforts of the oppressed to overturn their oppressors--was developed to a grievous extent. Turkish blood was first shed on the 25th of March, 1821, and within a week the whole of the Morea was in a ferment of rebellion. By the 22nd of April, which was Easter Sunday, it is reckoned that from ten to fifteen thousand Mahometans had been slaughtered in cold blood, and about three thousand Turkish homes destroyed.
The promoters of all that wanton atrocity were the directors of the Friendly Society, among whom the Archimandrate Gregorios Dikaios, nicknamed Pappa Phlesas, and Petros Mavromichales, or Petro-Bey, were the most conspicuous. Its princ.i.p.al agents were the klepht or brigand chieftains, best represented by Theodore Kolokotrones.
Born about 1770, of a family devoted to the use of arms in predatory ways, Kolokotrones had led a lawless life until 1806, when the Greek peasantry called in the a.s.sistance of their Turkish rulers in hunting down their persecutors of their own race, and when, several of his family being slain, he himself had to seek refuge in Zante. There he maintained himself, partly by piracy, partly by cattle-dealing.
In 1810 the English annexation of the Ionian Islands led to his employment, first as captain and afterwards as major, in the Greek contingent of the British army. He had ama.s.sed much wealth, and was in the prime of life when, in January, 1821, he returned to his early home, to revive his old brigand life under the name of legitimate warfare. His thorough knowledge of the country, its pa.s.ses and its strongholds, and his familiarity with the modes of fighting proper to them, his handsome person and agreeable deportment, his shrewd wit and persuasive oratory, made him one of the most influential agents of the Revolution at its commencement, and his influence grew during the ensuing years.
The flame of rebellion, having spread through the Morea during the early weeks of April, extended rapidly over the adjoining districts of the mainland. By the end of June the insurgents were masters of nearly all the country now possessed by modern Greece. Their cause was heartily espoused by the Suliots of Albania and other fellow-Christians in the various Turkish provinces, and their kinsmen of the outlying islands were eager to join in the work of national regeneration, and to contribute largely to the completion of that work by their naval prowess.
It was naval prowess, as our later pages will abundantly show, of a very barbarous and undeveloped sort. Besides the two princ.i.p.al seaports on the mainland, Tricheri on Mount Pelion and Galaxidhi on the Gulf of Corinth, there were famous colonies of Greek seamen in the islands of Psara and Kasos, and similar colonies of Albanians in Hydra and Spetzas. These and the other islands had long practised irregular commerce, and protected that commerce by irregular fighting with the Turks. At the first sound of revolution they threw in their lot with the insurgents of the mainland, and thus a nondescript navy of some four hundred brigs and schooners, of from sixty to four hundred tons"
burthen, and manned by about twelve thousand sailors, adepts alike in trade and piracy, but very unskilled in orderly warfare, and very feebly inspired by anything like disinterested patriotism, was ready to use and abuse its powers during the ensuing seven years" fight for Greek independence.
During the summer of 1821, while the continental Greeks were rushing to arms, murdering the Turkish residents among them by thousands, and thus bringing down upon themselves, or upon those of their own race who, as peasants and burghers, took no important share in actual fighting, the murderous vengeance of the Turkish troops sent to attempt the suppression of the revolt, these sailors were pursuing an easier and more profitable game. The Turkish ports were not warlike, and the Turkish trading ships were not prepared for fighting. In May, a formidable crowd of vessels left the islands on a cruise, from which they soon returned with an immense store of booty. Early in June, the best Turkish fleet that could be brought together, consisting of two line-of-battle ships, three frigates, and three sloops, went out to hara.s.s, if not to destroy, the swarm of smaller enemies. Jakomaki Tombazes, with thirty-seven of these smaller enemies, set off to meet them, and falling in with one of the ships, gave her chase, till, in the roads of Eripos, she was attacked on the 8th of June, and, with the help of a fireship, destroyed with a loss of nearly four hundred men. That victory caused the flight of the other Turkish vessels, and was the beginning of much cruel work at sea and with ships, which, not often daring to meet in open fight, wrought terrible mischief to unprotected ports and islands.
The mischief wrought upon the land was yet more terrible. A seething tide of Greek and Moslem blood heaved to and fro, as, during the second half of 1821, each party in turn gained temporary ascendency in one district after another. Greeks murdered Turks, and Turks murdered Greeks, with equal ferocity; or perhaps the ferocity of the Greeks, stirred by bad leaders to revenge themselves for all their previous sufferings, even surpa.s.sed that of the Turks. Of their cruelty a glaring instance occurred in their capture of Navarino. The Turkish inhabitants having held out as long as a mouthful of food was left in the town, were forced to capitulate on the 19th of August. It was promised that, upon their surrendering, the Greek vessels were to convey them, their wearing apparel, and their household furniture, either to Egypt or to Tunis. No sooner were the gates opened than a wholesale plunder and slaughter ensued. A Greek ecclesiastic has described the scene. "Women wounded with musket-b.a.l.l.s and sabre-cuts rushed to the sea, seeking to escape, and were deliberately shot.
Mothers robbed of their clothes, with infants in their arms, plunged into the water to conceal themselves from shame, and they were then made a mark for inhuman riflemen. Greeks seized infants from their mothers" b.r.e.a.s.t.s and dashed them against the rocks. Children, three and four years old, were hurled, living, into the sea, and left to drown. When the ma.s.sacre was ended, the dead bodies washed ash.o.r.e, or piled on the beach, threatened to cause a pestilence."[A] At the sack of Tripolitza, on the 8th of October, about eight thousand Moslems were murdered, the last two thousand, chiefly women and children, being taken into a neighbouring ravine, there to be slaughtered at leisure. Two years afterwards a ghastly heap of bones attested the inhuman deed.
[Footnote A: Finlay, vol. i.; p. 263, citing Phrantzes.]
In ways like these the first stage of the Greek Revolution was achieved. Before the close of 1821, it appeared to the Greeks themselves, to their Moslem enemies, and to their many friends in England, France, and other countries, that the triumph was complete.
Unfortunately, the same bad motives and the same bad methods that had so grievously polluted the torrent of patriotism continued to poison and disturb the stream which might otherwise have been henceforth clear, steady, and health-giving. Greece was free, but, unless another and a much harder revolution could be effected in the temper and conduct of its own people, unfit to put its freedom to good use or even to maintain it. "The rapid success of the Greeks during the first few weeks of the revolution," says their ablest historian, "threw the management of much civil and financial business into the hands of the proesti and demogeronts in office. The primates, who already exercised great official authority, instantly appropriated that which had been hitherto exercised by murdered voivodes and beys. Every primate strove to make himself a little independent potentate, and every captain of a district a.s.sumed the powers of a commander-in-chief. The Revolution, before six months had pa.s.sed, seemed to have peopled Greece with a host of little Ali Pashas. When the primate and the captain acted in concert, they collected the public revenues; administered the Turkish property, which was declared national; enrolled, paid, and provisioned as many troops as circ.u.mstances required, or as they thought fit; named officers; formed a local guard for the primate of the best soldiers in the place, who were thus often withdrawn from the public service; and organised a local police and a local treasury. This I system of local self-government, const.i.tuted in a very self-willed manner, and relieved from almost all responsibility, was soon established as a natural result of the Revolution over all Greece.
The Sultan"s authority having ceased, every primate a.s.sumed the prerogatives of the Sultan. For a few weeks this state of things was unavoidable, and, to an able and honest chief or government, it would have facilitated the establishment of a strong central authority; but by the vices of Greek society it was perpetuated into an organised anarchy. No improvement was made in financial arrangements, or in the system of taxation; no measures were adopted for rendering property more secure; no attempt was made to create an equitable administration of justice; no courts of law were established; and no financial accounts were published. Governments were formed, const.i.tutions were drawn up, national a.s.semblies met, orators debated, and laws were pa.s.sed according to the political fashion patronised by the liberals of the day. But no effort was made to prevent the Government being virtually absolute, unless it was by rendering it absolutely powerless. The const.i.tutions were framed to remain a dead letter. The national a.s.semblies were nothing but conferences of parties, and the laws pa.s.sed were intended to fascinate Western Europe, not to operate with effect in Greece."[A]
[Footnote A: Finlay, vol. i., pp. 280, 281.]
The supreme government of Greece had been a.s.sumed in June by Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes, a worthier man than his brother Alexander, but by no means equal to the task he took in hand. At first the brigand chiefs and local potentates, not willing to surrender any of the power they had acquired, were disposed to render to him nominal submission, believing that his name and his Russian influence would be serviceable to the cause of Greece. But Hypsilantes showed himself utterly incompetent, and it was soon apparent that his sympathies were wholly alien to those both of the Greek people and of their military and civil leaders. Therefore another master had to be chosen. Kolokotrones might have succeeded to the dignity, and he certainly had vigour enough of disposition, and enough honesty and dishonesty combined, to make the position one of power as well as of dignity. For that very reason, however, his comrades and rivals were unwilling to place him in it. They desired a president skilful enough to hold the reins of government with a very loose hand, yet so as to keep them from getting hopelessly entangled--one who should be a smart secretary and adviser, without a.s.suming the functions of a director.
Such a man they found in Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos, then about thirty-two years old. He was a kinsman of a Hospodar of Wallachia, by whom he had in his youth been employed in political matters. After that he had resided in France, where he acquired much fresh knowledge, and where his popularity helped to quicken sympathy on behalf of the Greek Revolution at its first outburst. He had lately come to Missolonghi with a ship-load of ammunition and other material, procured and brought at his own expense, and soon attained considerable influence. Always courteous in his manners, only ungenerous in his actions where the interests of others came into collision with his own, less strong-willed and less ambitious than most of his a.s.sociates, those a.s.sociates were hardly jealous of his popularity at home, and wholly pleased with his popularity among foreigners. It was a clear gain to their cause to have Sh.e.l.ley writing his "h.e.l.las," and dedicating the poem to Mavrocordatos, as "a token of admiration, sympathy, and friendship."
Mavrocordatos was named President of Greece in the Const.i.tution of Epidaurus, chiefly his own workmanship, which was proclaimed on the 13th of January--New Year"s Day, according to the reckoning of the Greek Church--1822. It is not necessary here to detail his own acts or those of his real or professing subordinates. All we have to do is to furnish a general account, and a few characteristic ill.u.s.trations, of the course of events during the Greek Revolution, in explanation of the state of parties and of politics at the time of Lord Cochrane"s advent among them. These events were marked by continuance of the same selfish policy, divided interests, cla.s.s prejudice, and individual jealousy that have been already referred to. The ma.s.s of the Greek people were, as they had been from the first, zealous in their desire for freedom, and, having won it, they were not unwilling to use it honestly. For their faults their leaders are chiefly to be blamed; and in apology for those leaders, it must be remembered that they were an a.s.semblage of soldiers who had been schooled in oriental brigandage, of priests whose education had been in a corrupt form of Christianity made more corrupt by persecution, of merchants who had found it hard to trade without trickery, and of seamen who had been taught to regard piracy as an honourable vocation. Perhaps we have less cause to condemn them for the errors and vices that they exhibited during their fight for freedom, than to wonder that those errors and vices were not more reprehensible in themselves and disastrous in their issues.
For about six years the fight was maintained without foreign aid, save that given by private volunteers and generous champions in Western Europe, against a state numerically nearly twenty times as strong as the little community of revolutionists. In it, along with much wanton cruelty, was displayed much excellent heroism. But the heroism was reckless and undisciplined, and therefore often worse than useless.
Memorable instances both of recklessness and of want of discipline appeared in the attempts made to wrest Chios from the Turks in 1822.
The Greek inhabitants of this island, on whom the Turkish yoke pressed lightly, had refused to join in the insurgent movement of their brethren on the mainland and in the neighbouring islands. But it was considered that a little coercion would induce them to share in the Revolution and convert their prosperous island into a Greek possession. Therefore, in March, a small force of two thousand five hundred men crossed the archipelago, took possession of Koutari, the princ.i.p.al town, and proceeded to invest the Turkish citadel.
The Chiots, though perhaps not very willingly, took part in the enterprise; but the invading party was quite unequal to the work it had undertaken. In April a formidable Turkish squadron arrived, and by it Chios was easily recovered, to become the scene of vindictive atrocities, which brought all the terrified inhabitants who were not slaughtered, or who could not escape, into abject submission.
Thereupon, on the 10th of May, a Greek fleet of fifty-six vessels was despatched by Mavrocordatos to attempt a more thorough capture of the island. Its commander was Andreas Miaoulis, a Hydriot merchant, who proved himself the best sea-captain among the Greeks. Had Miaoulis been able, as he wished, to start sooner and meet the Turkish squadron on its way to Chios, a brilliant victory might have resulted, instead of one of the saddest catastrophes in the whole Greek war. Being deterred therefrom by the vacillation of Mavrocordatos and the insubordination of his captains and their crews, he was only able to reach the island when it was again in the hands of the enemy, and when all was ready for withstanding him. There was useless fighting on the 31st of May and the two following days. On the 18th of June, Miaoulis made another attack; but he was only able to destroy the Turkish flag-ship, and nearly all on board, by means of a fire-vessel. His fleet was unmanageable, and he had to abandon the enterprise and to leave the unfortunate Chiots to endure further punishment for offences that were not their own. This punishment was so terrible that, in six months, the population of Chios was reduced from one hundred thousand to thirty thousand. Twenty thousand managed to escape. Fifty thousand were either put to death or sold as slaves in Asia Minor.