to conciliate rival clamants for pension or place,
and carefully watching the tide of war. Numerous
anecdotes of the period relate to acts of public or
private benevolence, which endeared him to the population
of the island; but he was on the alert against being
fleeced or robbed. “The bulk of the English,”
writes Colonel Napier, “came expecting to find
the Peloponnesus filled with Plutarch’s men,
and returned thinking the inhabitants of Newgate more
moral. Lord Byron judged the Greeks fairly, and
knew that allowance must be made for emancipated slaves.”
Among other incidents we hear of his passing a group,
who were “shrieking and howling as in Ireland”
over some men buried in the fall of a bank; he snatched
a spade, began to dig, and threatened to horsewhip
the peasants unless they followed his example.
On November 30th he despatched to the central government
a remarkable state paper, in which he dwells on the
fatal calamity of a civil war, and says that unless
union and order are established all hopes of a loan—which
being every day more urgent, he was in letters to
England constantly pressing—are at an end.
“I desire,” he concluded, “the well
being of Greece, and nothing else. I will do all
I can to secure it; but I will never consent that
the English public be deceived as to the real state
of affairs. You have fought gloriously; act honourably
towards your fellow-citizens and the world, and it
will then no more be said, as has been repeated for
two thousand years, with the Roman historians, that
Philopoemen was the last of the Grecians.”
Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos—the most
prominent of the practical patriotic leaders—having
been deposed from the presidency, was sent to regulate
the affairs of Western Greece, and was now on his way
with a fleet to relieve Mesolonghi, in attempting
which the brave Marco Bozzaris had previously fallen.
In a letter, opening communication with a man for
whom he always entertained a high esteem, Byron writes,
“Colonel Stanhope has arrived from London, charged
by our committee to act in concert with me....
Greece is at present placed between three measures—either
to reconquer her liberty, to become a dependence of
the sovereigns of Europe, or to return to a Turkish
province. She has the choice only of these three
alternatives. Civil war is but a road that leads
to the two latter.”
At length the long looked-for fleet arrived, and the
Turkish squadron, with the loss of a treasure-ship,
retired up the Gulf of Lepanto. Mavrocordatos
on entering Mesolonghi lost no time in inviting the
poet to join him, and placed a brig at his disposal,
adding, “I need not tell you to what a pitch
your presence is desired by everybody, or what a prosperous
direction it will give to all our affairs. Your
counsels will be listened to like oracles.”