tone of the letter was in perfect accordance with the former friendly relations between their French governor and the pacha, they were convinced of the former’s treachery.  But the result was not as Ali had hoped:  the Parganiotes resumed their former negotiations with the English, preferring to place their freedom in the hands of a Christian nation rather than to fall under the rule of a Mohammedan satrap....  The English immediately sent a messenger to Colonel Nicole, offering honourable conditions of capitulation.  The colonel returned a decided refusal, and threatened to blow up the place if the inhabitants, whose intentions he guessed, made the slightest hostile movement.  However, a few days later, the citadel was taken at night, owing to the treachery of a woman who admitted an English detachment; and the next day, to the general astonishment, the British standard floated over the Acropolis of Parga.

All Greece was then profoundly stirred by a faint gleam of the dawn of liberty, and shaken by a suppressed agitation.  The Bourbons again reigned in France, and the Greeks built a thousand hopes on an event which changed the basis of the whole European policy.  Above all, they reckoned on powerful assistance from Russia.  But England had already begun to dread anything which could increase either the possessions or the influence of this formidable power.  Above all, she was determined that the Ottoman Empire should remain intact, and that the Greek navy, beginning to be formidable, must be destroyed.  With these objects in view, negotiations with Ali Pacha were resumed.  The latter was still smarting under his recent disappointment, and to all overtures answered only, “Parga!  I must have Parga.”—­And the English were compelled to yield it!

Trusting to the word of General Campbell, who had formally promised, on its surrender, that Parga should be classed along with the seven Ionian Isles; its grateful inhabitants were enjoying a delicious rest after the storm, when a letter from the Lord High Commissioner, addressed to Lieutenant-Colonel de Bosset, undeceived them, and gave warning of the evils which were to burst on the unhappy town.

On the 25th of March, 1817, notwithstanding the solemn promise made to the Parganiotes, when they admitted the British troops, that they should always be on the same footing as the Ionian Isles, a treaty was signed at Constantinople by the British Plenipotentiary, which stipulated the complete and stipulated cession of Parga and all its territory to the Ottoman Empire.  Soon there arrived at Janina Sir John Cartwright, the English Consul at Patras, to arrange for the sale of the lands of the Parganiotes and discuss the conditions of their emigration.  Never before had any such compact disgraced European diplomacy, accustomed hitherto to regard Turkish encroachments as simple sacrilege.  But Ali Pacha fascinated the English agents, overwhelming them with favours, honours, and feasts, carefully