Danube imbue their Ruman subjects with a sound Hellenic sentiment?  In fact, the prophets of Hellenism did not so much desire to extricate the Greek nation from the Ottoman Empire as to make it the ruling element in the empire itself by ejecting the Moslem Turks from their privileged position and assimilating all populations of Orthodox faith.  These dreams took shape in the foundation of a secret society—­the ‘Philiki Hetairia’ or ’League of Friends’—­which established itself at Odessa in 1814 with the connivence of the Russian police, and opened a campaign of propaganda in anticipation of an opportunity to strike.

The initiative came from the Ottoman Government itself.  At the weakest moment in its history the empire found in Sultan Mahmud a ruler of peculiar strength, who saw that the only hope of overcoming his dangers lay in meeting them half-way.  The national movement of Hellenism was gathering momentum in the background, but it was screened by the personal ambitions of Ali of Yannina, and Mahmud reckoned to forestall both enemies by quickly striking Ali down.

In the winter of 1819-20 Ali was outlawed, and in the spring the invasion of his territories began.  Both the Moslem combatants enlisted Christian Armatoli, and all continental Greece was under arms.  By the end of the summer Ali’s outlying strongholds had fallen, his armies were driven in, and he himself was closely invested in Yannina; but with autumn a deadlock set in, and the sultan’s reckoning was thrown out.  In November 1820 the veteran soldier Khurshid was appointed to the pashalik of Peloponnesos to hold the Greeks in check and close accounts with Ali.  In March 1821, after five months spent in organizing his province, Khurshid felt secure enough to leave it for the Yannina lines.  But he was mistaken; for within a month of his departure Peloponnesos was ablaze.

The ‘Philiki Hetairia’ had decided to act, and the Peloponnesians responded enthusiastically to the signal.  In the north Germanos, metropolitan bishop of Patras, rallied the insurgents at the monastery of Megaspelaion, and unfurled the monastic altar-cloth as a national standard.  In the south the peninsula of Maina, which had been the latest refuge of ancient Hellenism, was now the first to welcome the new, and to throw off the shadowy allegiance it had paid for a thousand years to Romaic archonts and Ottoman capitan-pashas.  Led by Petros Mavromichalis, the chief of the leading clan, the Mainates issued from their mountains.  This was in April, and by the middle of May all the open country had been swept clear, and the hosts joined hands before Tripolitza, which was the seat of Ottoman government at the central point of the province.  The Turkish garrison attacked, but was heavily defeated at Valtetzi by the tactical skill of Theodore Kolokotronis the ‘klepht’, who had become experienced in guerrilla warfare through his alternate professions of brigand and gendarme—­a career that had