The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane - Earl of Dundonald Thomas Barnes Cochrane (guided reading books TXT) 📗

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 surpassed 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-balls 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' breasts and dashed them against the rocks. Children, three and four years old, were hurled, living, into the sea, and left to drown. When the massacre was ended, the dead bodies washed ashore, 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 proësti 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 assumed the powers of a commander-in-chief. The Revolution, before six months had passed, 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 circumstances 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, constituted 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 assumed 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, constitutions were drawn up, national assemblies met, orators debated, and laws were passed 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 constitutions were framed to remain a dead letter. The national assemblies were nothing but conferences of parties, and the laws passed 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 assumed 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 assuming 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 associates, those associates 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 Shelley writing his "Hellas," and dedicating the poem to Mavrocordatos, as "a token of admiration, sympathy, and friendship."

Mavrocordatos was named President of Greece in the Constitution 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 illustrations, 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, class prejudice, and individual jealousy that have been already referred to. The mass 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 assemblage 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 principal 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.

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. Shelley and Byron, and many others of less note, had sung their virtues and their sufferings in