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

pour combiner avec elle sur les moyens à mettre à sa disposition, afin d'utiliser le plutôt possible votre noble décision et accélérer l'heureux moment que la Grèce reconnaissante et enthousiasmée vous verra combattre pour la cause de sa liberté.

"Je profite de cette occasion pour prier votre seigneurie de vouloir bien agréer l'assurance de mon respect et de la plus haute estime avec laquelle j'ai l'honneur d'être, milord, de votre seigneurie le très humble et très obéissant serviteur,

"A. Mavrocordatos,

"Naples de Romanie,

"Secre-genl d'Etat.

"le 20 Août, —————- 1825 1er 7bre

"A Sa Seigneurie le très Honorable Lord Cochrane, à 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 ingratitude 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 classes 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 harassing and ungrateful service," wrote Sir Francis Burdett on the 20th of August, "and, I trust, will be the liberator of Greece. What a glorious title!"

It is needless to say that Sir Francis Burdett, always the noble 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 illustrious members than any of the others—of Philhellenic associations 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 Philhellenic 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 sexagenarian 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 Hellenic 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 masses, and the consequent weakness and embarrassment 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 ingratitude that he had lately experienced in Chili and Brazil, however, bringing upon him much present embarrassment 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 assembled 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