THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1 79 flourished. The Chiotes took no part in the struggle, but in April, 1822, Moslem fanaticism let loose upon them the hounds of hell. Fire, sword, and the still more deadly passions of fa- naticism and lust ravaged the island for three months. Of one hundred thousand inhabitants not five thousand were left alive upon the island ; forty thousand of both sexes were sold into slavery, and the harems of Turkey, Asia, and Africa are still (fifteen years after the massacre, when Richard Cobden wrote this, while he visited the stricken island) filled with victims. Gladstone has characterized it as " that horror, that indescribable enormity, that appalling monument of barbarian cruelty, a scene from which human nature shrinks shuddering away." Such was the massacre of Chios, unparalleled in modern history, a tragedy compared by the British consul, an eye-witness, to the destruction of Jerusalem, which thrilled Europe and Amer- ica with horror. After the Congress of Verona war went on, a butchery sanctioned by Christian Europe in the interest of toppling thrones and a balance of power. "During the last twenty-five years," says Bikelas, " a number of new states have been ad-
