perfidy of a considerable officer, in ruinous embarrassments. This unhappy campaign is circumstantially narrated by Mr. Gordon in his first book; but, as it never crossed over to the south bank of the Danube, and had no connexion with Greece except by its purposes, we shall simply rehearse the great outline of its course. The signal for insurrection was given in January 1821; and Prince Ypsilanti took the field, by crossing the Pruth in March. Early in April he received a communication from the Emperor of Russia, which at once prostrated his hopes before an enemy was seen. He was formally disavowed by that prince, erased from his army-list, and severely reproached for his “folly and ingratitude" in letters from two members of the Russian cabinet; and on the 9th of April this fact was publicly notified in Yassy, the capital of Moldavia, by the Russian consul-general. His army at this time consisted of 3000 men, which, however, was afterwards reinforced, but with no gunpowder except what was casually intercepted; and no lead, except some that had been stripped from the roof of an ancient cathedral.

On the 12th of May the Pasha of Ibrail opened the campaign. A few days after, the Turkish troops began to appear in considerable force; and on the 8th of June an alarm was suddenly given "that the white turbans were upon them." In the engagement which followed, the insurgent army gave way; and, though their loss was much smaller than that of the Turks, yet, from the many blunders committed, the consequences were disastrous, and had the Turks pursued there would on that day have been an end of the insurrection. But far worse and more decisive was the subsequent disaster of the 17th. Ypsilanti had been again reinforced, and his advanced guard had surprised & Turkish detachment of cavalrv in such a situation that

their escape seemed impossible. Yet all was ruined by one officer of rank, who got drunk and advanced with an air of bravado, followed, on a principle of honour, by a sacred cohort [hieros lochos], composed of 500 Greek volunteers of birth and education, the very élite of the insurgent infantry. The Turks gave themselves up for lost; but, happening to observe that this drunkard seemed unsupported by other parts of the army, they suddenly mounted, came down upon the noble young volunteers before they could even form in square, and nearly the whole disdaining to fly were cut to pieces on the ground. An officer of rank and a brave man, appalled by this hideous disaster, the affair of a few moments, rode up to the spot and did all he could to repair it. But the cowardly drunkard had fled at the first onset with all his Arnauts; panic spread rapidly, and the whole force of 5000 men fled before 800 Turks, leaving 400 men dead on the field, of whom 350 belonged to the sacred battalion.

The Turks, occupied with gathering a trophy of heads, neglected to pursue. But the work was done. The defeated advance fell back upon the main body; and that same night the whole army, panic-struck, ashamed, and bewildered, commenced a precipitate retreat. From this moment Prince Ypsilanti thought only of saving himself. This purpose he effected in a few days by retreating into Austria, from which territory he issued his final order of the day, taxing his army, in violent and unmeasured terms, with cowardice and disobedience. This was in a limited sense true; many distinctions, however, were called for in mere justice, and the capital defects after all were in himself. His plan was originally bad; and, had it been better, he was quite unequal to the execution of it. The

results were unfortunate to all concerned in it. Ypsilanti himself was arrested by Austria, and thrown into the unwholesome prison of Mongatz, where, after languishing for six years, he perished miserably. Some of the subordinate officers prolonged the struggle in a guerilla style for some little time, but all were finally suppressed. Many were put to death; many escaped into neutral ground; and it is gratifying to add, that of two traitors amongst the higher officers, one was detected and despatched in a summary way of vengeance by his own associates; the other, for some unexplained reason, was beheaded by his Turkish friends at the very moment when he had put himself into their power, in fearless obedience to their own summons, to come and receive his well-merited reward, and under an express assurance from the Pacha of Silistria, that he was impatiently waiting to invest him with a pelisse of honour. Such faith is kept with traitors; such faith be ever kept with the betrayers of nations and their holiest hopes! Though in this instance the particular motives of the Porte are still buried in mystery; and (buried or not buried) those motives could not have been other than detestably base let the Greek officers have been rotten with perfidy to their own compatriots, that was a crime which concerned God and their own brethren; to the Turks it brought no rights of vengeance. Them it did not in the remotest degree concern. And, supposing even that it had, perfidy is not the righteous instrument for chastising perfidy.

Thus terminated the first rash enterprise, which resulted from the too tempting invitation held out in the rebellion then agitating Epirus, locking up, as it did, and neutralizing so large a part of the disposable Turkish forces. To this we return. Kourshid Pacha quitted the Morea with a large body of troops in the first days of January 1821 and took

the command of the army already before Yannina. But, with all his great numerical superiority to the enemy with whom he contended, and now enjoying undisturbed union in his own camp, he found it impossible to make his advances rapidly. Though in hostility to the Porte, and though now connected with Christian allies, Ali Pacha was yet nominally a Mohammedan. Hence it had been found impossible as yet to give any colour of an anti-Christian character to the war; and the native Mohammedan chieftains had therefore no scruple in coalescing with the Christians of Epirus, and making joint cause with Ali. Gradually, from the inevitable vexations incident to the march and residence of a large army, the whole population became hostile to Kourshid; and their remembrance of Ali's former oppressions, if not effaced, was yet suspended in the presence of a nuisance so immediate and so generally diffused, so that eventually most of the Epirots turned their arms against the Porte. The same feelings which governed them soon spread to the provinces of Etolia and Acarnania; or rather, perhaps, being previously ripe for revolt, these provinces resolved to avail themselves of the same occasion. Missolonghi now became the centre of rebellion; and Kourshid's difficulties were daily augmenting. In July of this year (1821) these various insurgents, actively co-operating, defeated the Seraskier in several actions, and compelled a Pacha to lay down his arms on the road between Yannina and Souli. It was even proposed by the gallant partisan, Mark Bozzaris, that all should unite to hem in the Seraskier; but a wound received in a skirmish defeated this plan. In September following, however, the same Mark intercepted and routed Hassan Pacha in a defile on his march to Yannina; and in general the Turks were defeated everywhere, except at the head-quarters of the Seraskier,

and with losses in men enormously disproportioned to the occasions. This arose partly from the necessity under which they lay of attacking expert musketeers who were under cover of breastworks, and partly from their own precipitance and determination to carry everything by summary force : "Whereas," says Mr. Gordon, "a little patience would surely have caused them to succeed, and at least saved them much dishonour, and thousands of lives thrown away in mere wantonness." But, in spite of all blunders, and every sort of failure elsewhere, the Seraskier was still advancing slowly towards his main objects-the reduction of Ali Pacha. And by the end of October, on getting possession of an important part of Ali's works, he announced to the Sultan that he should soon be able to send him the head of that rebel, who was already reduced to 600 men. A little before this, however, the celebrated Maurocordato, with other persons of influence, had arrived at Missolonghi with the view of cementing a general union of Christian and Mohammedan forces against the Turks. In this he was so far successful, that in November a combined attack was made upon Ismael the old enemy of Ali, and three other Pachas, shut up in the town of Arta. This attack succeeded partially; but it was attempted at a moment dramatically critical, and with an effect ruinous to the whole campaign as well as that particular attack. The assailing party, about 3400 men, were composed in the proportion of two Christians to one Mohammedan. They had captured one half of the town; and Mark Bozzaris having set this on fire to prevent plundering, the four Pachas were on the point of retreating under cover of the smoke. At that moment arrived a Mohammedan of note, instigated by Kourshid, who was able to persuade those of his own faith that the Christians were not fighting with any sincere views