Christians to arms, and promising them in not very ambiguous terms the support of Russia.

But the spirit of discontent in the two Dacian provinces having been chiefly directed against the oppression of the Boyars or native aristocracy, and against the Greek government itself in the exercise of its delegated power, was productive of little or no assistance to Ypsilanti's proceedings. The Servians were equally inefficient, and the Emperor Alexander, who was then at Laybach, having immediately disavowed the proceedings of Ypsilanti and Sutzo, the issue of the attempt could not long be doubtful; after some acts of cruelty perpetrated on both sides, the expedition ended in the evacuation of Yassy by Ypsilanti, and of Bukarest by Theodore, chief of the VlakhoMoldavian insurgents, whom Ypsilanti shortly afterwards seized, and put to death, he himself retreating after an action in which the Greeks. are stated to have conducted themselves gallantly, into the Austrian dominions, where he was immediately seized by the government and immured in a dungeon.

Transitory as were the effects of this rash and ill-conducted enterprise in the Dacian provinces, it had the greatest influence in exciting the insur

rection in Greece, properly so called, where the war in Epirus, and the hopes, the movements, and the designs which had been its consequence throughout Northern Greece, had already produced a corresponding ferment in the Moréa. The first open act of rebellion in the peninsula was caused by some tardy steps taken by the provincial government at Tripolitza to execute the decree of the Porte, customary in all cases of alarm, for disarming the Christians and for receiving hostages from the principal families and churchmen. The example of resistance was set in the end of March by Germanós, bishop of Patræ, who having been summoned to the capital, had proceeded as far as Kalávryta,* when finding the people, together with a body of Armatolí, well disposed to his views, he openly raised the standard of independence and of the Cross, which was immediately followed by a similar manifestation at Patræ. The Maniates, descending from Mount

* The ancient Cynætheia, an Arcadian city on the frontier of Achaia. We have preferred using the ancient names, wherever it can be done without ambiguity, because they are more defined and better known. The italic print has been employed to distinguish the modern names, whenever the distinction has appeared necessary.

This attempt had no other effect than to cause the de

Taygetum, speedily occupied the level districts of Laconia and Messenia. Before the end of April a senate had assembled at Kalamáta, in Messenia, on the borders of Máni, and the fleet of Ydra, raising the standard of the Cross, proceeded to Psará, which, strong in its fortified rock and numerous ships, had been among the first to set the example of insurrection, although situated on the advanced posts of the enemy.*

After such simultaneous movements of rebellion at the two extremities of European Turkey, it was impossible to persuade the Turks that Russia had not an extensive design against them by the agency of their Christian population, and it would hardly have been in the power of the Porte to prevent its Musulman subjects from persecuting the numerous defenceless Christians who inhabit

struction of the town; for the garrison of the castle, having been speedily reinforced by Yussuf Pasha from Naupactus, and by the Albanian colony of Lalla, which was obliged to retreat before the insurgents, has been able to hold out ever since.

* Psara (rà Yaçá), called i vugía in the Odyssey, was already approaching its modern form of denomination in the time of Strabo, who writes it rà vúga. Its harbour, and its position five miles from the north-west cape of Chios, in the main channel of the gaan, has in all times given some importance to this little island.

the capital, the towns and villages of Thrace, and the Western part of Asia Minor, even had the government been so disposed. But Sultan Mahmoud and his favourites, as if determined to provoke a general insurrection, themselves set the example of persecution, and by stamping it with the mark of religious hatred, were sure to find a ready instrument of their cruel vengeance in every Moslem of the empire. On the 22d April, being Easter-day, the greatest of the Greek festivals, Gregorios, Patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Greek church, acknowledged and appointed by the Porte, and who had recently issued his anathema against the insurgents, was seized and hanged before the patriarchal church in which he had been officiating; and as a consummation of ignominy in the eyes of the Greeks, his body was delivered to Jews to be dragged through the streets. And this murder was accompanied, or speedily followed, by that of several other ecclesiastics of the highest rank in the capital, or other parts of the empire, as well as by that of many other Greeks of every class.

The indignation and terror produced among the Greeks by these cruelties, were greatly heightened by the accompanying destruction of several

Greek churches, and a general conviction prevailed that they were but a prelude to an intended extermination of the whole people. The priesthood of the islands and of the Moréa, thinking themselves peculiarly marked out for destruction, hesitated not to increase the ferment by their spiritual influence; and while they represented the patriarch as a martyr, and inspired the rebellion with all the energy of religious warfare, the insurgents derived no small additional encouragement from the intimate persuasion that Russia was on the eve of a rupture with the Porte.

Ydra, Psarú, and Petza*, were able to enter upon the naval campaign with a force of eighty or ninety vessels, of the average bulk of 250 tons, and the average strength of 12 guns. Fifty or sixty others of a somewhat smaller class, and many others still smaller, were supplied by the other islands, among the foremost of which may be reckoned Andrus, Scopelus, Myconus, Patmus, Casus, and Megiste now Kastelóryzo, on the coast of Lycia. In the latter end of May, the inferiority of the Turkish commanders and seamen in skill and enterprise was shown in the loss of one of their two-decked ships of war, which, having

* Better known by the Italian appellation of Spetzia.