up to 1820, dared to risk a general rebellion, for fear that they should be mercilessly slaughtered.  So long as they remained at peace their condition as a conquered people was not so bad as it might have been, although the oppressions of tax-gatherers and the brutality of Turkish officials had been growing more and more intolerable.  In 1770 and 1790 there had been local and unsuccessful attempts at revolt, but nothing of importance.

Amid the political agitations which threw Spain and Italy into revolution, however, the spirit of liberty revived among the hardy Greek mountaineers of the mainland.  Secret societies were formed, with a view of shaking off the Turkish yoke.  The aspiring and the discontented naturally cast their eyes to Russia for aid, since there was a religious bond between the Russians and the Greeks, and since the Russians and Turks were mortal enemies, and since, moreover, they were encouraged to hope for such aid by a great Russian nobleman, by birth a Greek, who was private secretary and minister, as well as an intimate, of the Emperor Alexander,—­Count Capo d’Istrias.  They were also exasperated by the cession of Parga (a town on the mainland opposite the Ionian Islands) to the Turks, by the treaty of 1815, which the allies carelessly overlooked.

The flame of insurrection in 1820 did not, however, first break out in the territory of Greece, but in Wallachia,—­a Turkish province on the north of the Danube, governed by a Greek hospodar, the capital of which was Bucharest.  This was followed by the revolt of another Turkish province, Moldavia, bordering on Russia, from which it was separated by the River Pruth.  At Jassy, the capital, Prince Ypsilanti, a distinguished Russian general descended from an illustrious Greek family, raised the standard of insurrection, to which flocked the whole Christian population of the province, who fell upon the Turkish soldiers and massacred them.  Ypsilanti had twenty thousand soldiers under his command, against which the six hundred armed Turks could make but feeble resistance.  This apparently successful revolt produced an immense enthusiasm throughout Greece, the inhabitants of which now eagerly took up arms.  The Greeks had been assured of the aid of Russia by Ypsilanti, who counted without his host, however; for the Czar, then at the Congress of Laibach, convened to put down revolutionary ideas, was extremely angry at the conduct of Ypsilanti, and, against all expectation, stood aloof.  This was the time for him to attack Turkey, then weakened and dilapidated; but he was tired of war.  Among the Greeks the wildest enthusiasm prevailed, especially throughout the Morea, the ancient Peloponnesus.  The peasants everywhere gathered around their chieftains, and drove away the Turkish soldiers, inflicting on them the grossest barbarities.  In a few days the Turks possessed nothing in the Morea but their fortresses.  The Turkish garrison of Athens shut itself up in the Acropolis.  Most of the islands of the Archipelago hoisted the standard of the Cross; and the strongest of them armed and sent out cruisers to prey on the commerce of the enemy.