but also by the formation of regular military bands, composed from the armatoli, or local Christian militia, who, in the strange and anomalous condition of the Turkish empire, had been allowed to exercise great power in parts of the peninsula, until in later times the centralizing operations of the sultans, endeavoring to circumscribe their action, threw them into an attitude of resistance to the government, and sometimes into habits of absolute rapine. From the materials thus supplied, several regular corps had been constructed in connection with various governments. On the sea, there had been formed a race of hardy mariners, who manned the Greek trading ships, and knew how to work the guns, that they carried for defence against the piracy still infesting their coasts. All these separate materials were brought into the possibility of combination by the Philikè Hetairia;[1] a secret society of considerable value, in whose bosom lay the seeds of the revolution, waiting the day when they should burst from the surface. This combination grew out of or replaced a literary institution called the Philomuse Society, which, like the agricultural gatherings at a more recent period in Italy, appears to have cloaked its aims under a title calculated to avert suspicion. The Hetairia had a decided relation to Russian influence, as well as to Greek independence, but to influence of a popular kind, such as we have witnessed in very energetic operation during the present year. All the European governments were alike hostile at the time. Still in the case of Russia there was this difference, that the Hellenes might not irrationally regard her as the natural enemy of their enemy. The ramifications of this society were wide, and its uses, at least its preliminary uses, would seem to have been considerable.[2]
It was not, however, by the advised counsel of the conspirators that the time of the outbreak was finally determined; but by the war between Sultan Mahmoud and his formidable vassal, Ali Pacha of Joannina in Albania, which appeared to offer an opportunity for action too tempting to be slighted. It was in the year 1821, and in the region of the principalities, that the movement began; but it was essentially Greek,[3] and could only live and thrive on its own soil. In southern Greece it commenced, with fatal energy, in a widespread massacre of the dispersed Mussulman population. It rose to nobler efforts, and to great exploits; but I am not required to attempt, for the present purpose, the details of military history. It offers in detail a chequered picture of patriotism and corruption, desperate valor and weak irresolution, honor and treachery, resistance to the Turk and feud one with another. Its records are stained with many acts of cruelty. And yet who can doubt that it was upon the whole a noble stroke, struck for freedom and for justice, by a people who, feeble in numbers and resources, were casting off the vile slough of servitude, who derived their strength from right, and whose worst acts were really in the main due to the masters, who had saddled them not only with a cruel, but with a most demoralizing yoke?[4] Among the propositions, which seem to be applicable to the facts collectively, are these: first, that it lay beyond the power of Turkey to put down the rebellion, without the aid of Ibrahim's ability and of the Egyptian forces:[5] secondly, that gratitude for what Greece had once been and done produced much foreign aid, especially in the noble forms of individual devotion, as from Byron, Church, Gordon, Hastings, and others: thirdly, that the efforts made would have been ineffectual to achieve a complete deliverance, without foreign assistance of another sort.
Every traveller in Greece and its islands will speedily learn that upon the list of virtues obliterated from, or rather impaired in, the general Hellenic mind, the sense of gratitude is not included. Nowhere is it more lively.
One of the most brilliant names of our political history is also one of the names dearest to the heart of Greece. It is the name of George Canning. Let us now see by what wise and bold action that place in the fond and tenacious memory of a country and a race was obtained.
The war of the revolution reached at first very widely over the range of territories inhabited by the Hellenic race, from Macedonia to Crete; but after a time came to be contracted, as far as land operations were concerned, within limits narrower than those of the historical Greek peninsula. The moderate capacity and indifferent morality, but too observable among the Greek leaders, convinced the
- ↑ Gordon, i. 42 ; Finlay, i. 120.
- ↑ Finlay and Gordon seem to differ much in their estimates of the efficiency of the Hetairia.
- ↑ Finlay, i. 169.
- ↑ See, on this subject, a noble passage from Lord Russell's "Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe," which is cited by the Bulgarian deputies at p. 25 of their recent pamphlet.
- ↑ Gordon, ii. 171.
