At the same time the Ottoman army of the west moved south again under a new commander, Rashid Pasha of Yannina, and laid final siege on April 27 to Mesolonghi, just a year after Byron had died of fever within its walls.  The Greeks were magnificent in their defence of these frail mud-bastions, and they more than held their own in the amphibious warfare of the lagoons.  The struggle was chequered by the continual coming and going of the Greek and Ottoman fleets.  They were indeed the decisive factor; for without the supporting squadron Rashid would have found himself in the same straits as his predecessors at the approach of autumn, while the slackness of the islanders in keeping the sea allowed Mesolonghi to be isolated in January 1826.  The rest was accomplished by the arrival of Ibrahim on the scene.  His heavy batteries opened fire in February; his gunboats secured command of the lagoons, and forced Anatolikon to capitulate in March.  In April provisions in Mesolonghi itself gave out, and, scorning surrender, the garrison—­men, women, and children together—­ made a general sortie on the night of April 22.  Four thousand fell, three thousand were taken, and two thousand won through.  It was a glorious end for Mesolonghi, but it left the enemy in possession of all north-western Greece.

The situation was going from bad to worse.  Ibrahim returned to Peloponnesos, and steadily pushed forward his front, ravaging as steadily as he went.  Rashid, after pacifying the north-west, moved on to the north-eastern districts, where the national cause had been shaken by the final treachery and speedy assassination of Odhyssevs.  Siege was laid to Athens in June, and the Greek Government enlisted in vain the military experience of its Philhellenes.  Fabvier held the Akropolis, but Generalissimo Sir Richard Church was heavily defeated in the spring of 1827 in an attempt to relieve him from the Attic coast; Grand Admiral Cochrane saw his fleet sail home for want of payment in advance, when he summoned it for review at Poros; and Karaiskakis, the Greek captain of Armatoli, was killed in a skirmish during his more successful efforts to harass Rashid’s communications by land.  On June 5, 1827, the Greek garrison of the Akropolis marched out on terms.

It looked as if the Greek effort after independence would be completely crushed, and as if Sultan Mahmud would succeed in getting his empire under control.  In September 1826 he had rid it at last of the mischief at its centre by blowing up the janissaries in their barracks at Constantinople.  Turkey seemed almost to have weathered the storm when she was suddenly overborne by further intervention on the other side.