1821-6] Causes of the Greek success 181

The few educated Phanariot Greeks, like Demetrios Ypsilanti or Prince Mavrocordato, who at the first news of the outbreak had hastened to place themselves at the head of the national cause, proved quite incompetent as leaders in irregular warfare and powerless to control the barbarous spirit of cruelty which they deplored. Their well-meant efforts to provide the nascent Hellenic State with a Liberal Constitution on the most approved western model were not more successful; and the real leaders of the people during the earlier stages of the war were the brigand chiefs and the primates and demogeronts whose traditional local authority saved the structure of Greek society from dissolving into utter anarchy.

Two main factors contributed to the success of the Greeks. The detention of the flower of the Ottoman forces, under Kurshid Pasha, the ablest of the Sultan's generals, before Ali's island stronghold of Janina, enabled the revolt to make uninterrupted headway during the first critical months. The revolt of the islands, by cutting off from the Ottoman Government its only reserves of good seamen, assured to the insurgents the command of the sea. In size of ships and weight of metal the Turks were superior; but, when their line-of-battle ships at last put to sea, manned by motley and untrained crews of Algerine pirates, Genoese mercenaries, and Constantinopolitan quay-porters, they fell an easy prey to the swift-sailing brigs and fire-ships of the Greeks. " The Greeks," wrote Wellington, "have the superiority at sea; and those who have this superiority must be successful." This truth was abundantly illustrated in the course of the war. The great expedition of Ali, Pasha of Drama, which in the summer of 1823 threatened to crush the insurrection in the Morea, was forced to retire owing to the failure of the Ottoman fleet to come to its support, and, taken at a disadvantage in the defile of Devernaki, was exterminated on August 6. The heroic defence of Missolonghi (May 7, 1825-April 22, 1826) was rendered possible only by the fact that the Greek admiral Miaoulis could enter the lagoons and throw supplies into the town. The appearance in the summer of 1824 of the well-equipped fleet of Mehemet Ali of Egypt changed the fortune of the war at sea, just as, in the following year, Ibrahim's disciplined troops turned it on land. Against the barbaric hordes of Dramali or of Reshid, the Greek klephts and peasants had more than held their own; they were powerless against the modern armament and modern tactics of the Egyptian leader. From the moment of Ibrahim's landing in the Morea it was realised that, if the Greeks were to be saved from practical extermination, they must oppose western methods to western methods; which meant, in effect, that those of the European Powers which desired their preservation must intervene.

The attitude of the Powers at the outset of the revolt has already been described. So long as it was merely a question of an internal revolt against the Ottoman Government, none of them was disposed

182 Sympathy of Europe. Byron [1821-4

to suggest an intervention which would have carried with it incalculable consequences and placed in jeopardy the whole international structure so painfully established by the European Alliance. But the rapid march of events soon stultified the policy of aloofness which had triumphed at Verona. The hopes of Metternich were dashed by the initial triumphs of the insurgents, and the policy of leaving the revolt to burn itself out " beyond the pale of civilisation " was frustrated by the refusal of the western peoples to follow the lead of their Governments. In Europe at large the news of the " resurrection of Greece " had been received with an outburst of unbounded enthusiasm, which grew with each new victory of the insurgent arms.

Everything in the temper and conditions of the times tended to encourage this Philhellenic ardour. Of the actual conditions obtaining in the Levant the western world was then even more completely ignorant than now; but all Christendom sympathised with this revolt of Christians against infidel oppression; continental Liberals, gagged by Metternich's police, found a voice for their own grievances in championing the cause of a nation struggling to be free; and the cultured classes, educated almost exclusively in the lore of classical antiquity, forgot the long centuries of corruption and degradation, and saw in the rough peasants of the Morea and mariners of the islands only the descendants of Leonidas and Odysseus. Philhellenic societies, of which the members were drawn from all classes, sprang up all over western Europe; and within a few months of the outbreak of the revolt money and volunteers were pouring in to the assistance of the Greeks. Veterans of Napoleon's disbanded armies, like Colonel Fabvier, English officers, like Colonel Thomas Gordon and Sir Richard Church, brought to the insurgents the invaluable aid of their military experience. In the autumn of 1823 Byron, the most celebrated and romantic figure of the age, himself came, prepared to give his life for the cause which he had already illustrated by his genius. In spite of the ostentatious neutrality of the Powers, the Reis Effendi could justly complain that the Ottoman Government was fighting not the Greeks only, but all Europe.

For this fact the Porte was itself largely to blame. The news of the massacre of Mussulmans in the Morea was received in Constantinople with one of those outbursts of blood-lust, inspired at once by panic and by fanaticism, to which the usually easy-natured Turks are liable. A wild cry for retaliation went up; and Sultan Mahmud, though a man of moderate and comparatively enlightened views, allowed himself to be carried away by a paroxysm of rage into cruelties which were as impolitic as they were horrible. Though preparations for suppressing the rising were hurried on with feverish haste, nothing was ready; and the Sultan thought to strike terror into the insurgents by an example which none could fail to understand. By the law of the Ottoman empire the Patriarch of Constantinople was responsible for the good

1821] Execution of Gregorios. Attitude of Russia 183

behaviour of his flock. By the Sultan's orders, then, on the morning of Easter Eve (April 22, 1821) the venerable Gregorios was seized, immediately after the morning Eucharist, and, with two of his Bishops, all three in their sacerdotal vestments, hanged before the gate of the patriarchal palace. The bodies, after remaining for a few days, were cut down, dragged by a Jewish rabble through the streets, and thrown into the Bosphorus. The effect of this outrage was immense. Even the Emperor Francis was roused to protest against this ignominious doing to death of a Christian prelate ; while Metternich deplored the barbarous folly which had introduced a new and more perilous element of discord into a situation already sufficiently delicate. In Russia public indignation knew no bounds. The body of Gregorios had been picked up by a passing Greek merchant-vessel and carried to Odessa, where it was buried with the honours of a martyr; and throughout Russia a cry arose for a crusade against the infidel, to avenge the head of the Orthodox Church and purge the metropolitan see of Orthodox Christendom of the pollution of the Mussulman occupation. For a moment Alexander wavered, but the news found him, not in Russia, but at Laiback, where Metternich was at hand to persuade him that the revolt in Greece was but the work of the same " sects " whose evil machinations it was his glorious mission to have frustrated in other parts of Europe, and to point out that a war with Turkey would imperil the whole fabric of that Confederation of Europe which it had been the Tsar's life-mission to build up. This reasoning was sufficient to convince the Emperor, who had no desire for war ; his will prevailed over that of his people; and the immediate peril was over-past.

The situation, however, quite apart from the continued successes of the Greeks, remained extremely critical. Though peace was preserved, Russia replied to the gage of defiance flung down by the execution of the Patriarch by withdrawing her representative from Constantinople and concentrating 100,000 men on the frontiers of the Principalities. Diplomatic relations, she declared, could not be resumed until Turkey had satisfied her just demands in respect of outstanding grievances, and given guarantees for the cessation of further outrages on the Christian population, placed, by treaty, under the protection of the Orthodox Tsar. The Emperor Alexander, indeed, maintained that the withdrawal of his Minister made for peace ; for, had he remained, he would have had to report the outrages passing under his eyes. Moreover, the Porte in a moment of temper might have put him into the Seven Towers. " This proves," wrote Lebzeltern to Metternich on September 16, " that the Emperor does not know how narrowly the Minister escaped this fate, and those who do know are careful not to tell him." As for Alexander's personal attitude, Lebzeltern reported him as saying: " I have no ambition ; my Empire is already too big for me — I am not bloodthirsty, everyone knows it —- and this war would not be to Rsssia's interests."

The whole energies of the Powers interested in the maintenance of

18-i Attitude of other Powers. Canning [1821-2

the status quo in the East were now directed to restoring diplomatic relations between Russia and Turkey and so removing the peril of war. In this matter Metternich and Castlereagh, since Troppau poles apart in their general policy, found themselves once more united. The conferences at Hanover, in October, which to the world seemed but one more conspiracy against popular liberties, were devoted to the discussion of the attitude of'the two Powers towards the Turkish crisis, and the policy determined upon was perfectly simple and straightforward. Austria and Great Britain agreed to bring pressure to bear upon the Porte to remove the just causes of grievance which Russia had against it, by satisfying those of her claims which were based upon undoubted treaty stipulations, and by guaranteeing to the Christian rayahs a tolerable measure of civil and political rights. To the success of this policy two obstacles presented themselves : the stubborn pride of the Ottoman Government, and the Greek sympathies of Capodistrias, who was " trying to serve one master and two causes," and using " Russian power for Greek ends." Capodistrias was, however, since Laibach, a diminishing quantity; and Metternich left no stone unturned in order to complete the overthrow of his influence. Before the assembling of the Congress of Verona, the Austrian Minister was free from a dangerous rival who latterly had only maintained his office by his " suppleness " and " the want of a man to take his place."

The death of Castlereagh made no alteration in the policy of Great Britain towards the Eastern Question; for George Canning took up the matter where his predecessor had dropped it and developed it on the lines which he had laid down. In a dispatch of September 27, 1822, to the Duke of Wellington at Verona he made his attitude perfectly clear. British action in the Greek Question must be decided according to the general course of British policy since the conclusion of the war. " Our object in common with our allies has been to maintain peace, aware that a new war, in whatever quarter it might be kindled, might presently involve all Europe in its flames. Our object, as with respect to ourselves, has been to avoid all interference in the internal concerns of any nation — an interference not authorised in our case, by the positive rights or obligations of Treaty, nor justified, as we think (except when a Treaty, or some very special circumstances may authorise it) by the principles of International Law." The Turkish Question had a double aspect. In the struggle between the Porte and its Greek subjects England " had neither the right to interfere nor the means of effectual interference" ; and, whatever her sympathies, she was bound to respect in the case of Turkey that national independence which she demanded that others should respect in herself. In the outstanding issues between Russia and Turkey on the other hand, it was the duty and the right of England to mediate ; though " the rights which treaties give, treaties must be held to limit."

1822-3] Massacre of Scio. — Dramali in the Morea 185

Apart from the old standing grievance of the non-execution of the secret clauses of the Treaty of Bucharest, the main causes of complaint which Russia had against the Porte were two. Though the northern revolt had been completely suppressed, the Principalities were still — contrary to distinct treaty arrangements with Russia — occupied and devastated by Turkish troops; and, equally contrary to the letter of existing treaties, certain Greek brigs sailing under the Russian flag having been seized in the Dardanelles, the Porte had claimed the right to search all ships passing the Straits. To persuade the Porte to yield on these points became the immediate object of Great Britain and Austria alike; and at Constantinople their representatives worked assiduously to this end. But, in the first half of the year 1822, the events of the war were hardly calculated to produce a yielding temper in the Ottoman Government. On the eve of the Congress of Verona, indeed, it seemed as though the Eastern Question would be settled for the time by the swift collapse of the revolt. On April 22 the hideous reprisals of the Ottomans culminated in the awful massacre of Scio, by which the most flourishing community of the Greek archipelago was wiped out of existence ; and a few months later the unopposed march of the Pasha of Drama into the Morea promised to place insurgent Greece at the mercy of the Sultan. The news of the massacre of Scio, as was natural, roused intense feeling in England; and public opinion was loud in favour of intervention to rescue the Greeks from the annihilation which seemed to be impending. Canning, though his evident desire " to take the part of the Greeks" excited the anxiety of his colleagues in the Cabinet, set his face resolutely against this agitation. He denied that Great Britain was under any obligation, or possessed the right, to interfere. As for demanding from the Porte guarantees for good government, by whose sanction were these guarantees to be made effective ? If by that of Russia, the war, which it had been the main object of the Powers to avoid, would become a certainty; if by that of the European Alliance, either its dignity would be compromised in the event of the Ottoman Government refusing to accept its dictation, or a war would result " of which no human foresight could anticipate the issue " — a dilemma which has been ever since the essence of the Near Eastern Question.

The situation was again profoundly modified by the events of the autumn and winter of 1822. The disastrous retreat of the Pasha of Drama had left the Greeks masters of the Morea, and in December Nauplia fell; while, in western Hellas, the stubborn defence of the Suliots had saved the Greeks from the destruction threatened by the parallel march planned by Kurshid. When Omar Vrioni, his lieutenant, at last marched southward, the army of Dramali was already destroyed; Petrobey, chief of the Maina, was able to hurry to the assistance of the defenders of Missolonghi with a thousand men; and on January 23,