occurred about the same time, was an order issued by the British government to their officers in the Mediterranean acknowledging the right of the Greeks to blockade the ports of Greece which remained in possession of the Turks. Though adopted in conformity with the observance on the part of Great Britain of a strict neutrality between the two contending parties, it was regarded by the Greeks as a first step to the recognition of their independence in the most important of all quarters, at the same time that, by giving them a prospect of depriving the Turkish garrisons of a great part of those supplies which had been a very profitable object of speculation to some persons in the Ionian islands and elsewhere, it afforded them a hope of effecting such a blockade as might lead to the reduction of the enemy's fortresses in the Peloponnesus, in the only manner which the want of military resources seemed as yet to admit of.

The remaining operations of the Turkish fleet in the campaign of 1822 were still more inglorious than those which have been related. The Porte entertained hopes that, notwithstanding the long detention of the fleet on the coast of Asia, its cooperation might still be useful in the Moréa. Without making any attempt to relieve Nauplia,

the fleet proceeded to Patræ, took on board at that place the officer who was appointed to fill the post of Capitan Pasha, disembarked a small body of troops, but entirely failed in the main object of the expedition. The insurrection in Western Greece, although not very successful, had been sufficient to occupy all the Albanian and Ottoman forces collected in that quarter. The new admiral was unable even to effect a communication through Achaia with the army of Eastern Greece in the Argolis; and that army was defeated, and its remains, in two separate bodies, had taken shelter under the guns of Nauplia and Corinth, before the admiral had sailed from Patræ for the eastern coast of the peninsula. It is obvious that the march of the army ought to have been arrested so soon as it was known that a delay had occurred in the departure of the fleet from the Asiatic coast: but once set in motion its progress could no longer be stopt; the troops had been carried forward by the necessity of seeking new supplies, until they were collected in the Argolis without the power of advancing, and long before the fleet, destined as it was to make a previous visit to Patræ, could possibly reach the Argolic gulf. It was not until September, when little was left for the fleet to perform but the

relief of Nauplia, that it arrived near Spetzia at the entrance of the Argolic gulf, where it was met by a great number of the insurgent vessels. The Greeks, unable to use their fire-ships in the open sea, did not venture to approach the heavy artillery of the Turks, who, on their part, would not expose themselves to the Greek fire-ships in the narrow extremity of the gulf near Nauplia. Instead of entering it, therefore, the Turkish admiral sent in two vessels, which were intercepted by the enemy before they could reach Nauplia: he then sailed to Crete, and from thence to Tenedos, where in the middle of November he was attacked at anchor by the same enterprising Psarian, Constantine Kanáris, who had burnt the former Capitan Pasha's ship at Chios, and with similar success. On this occasion, however, it was the Capitan Pasha who escaped and his comrade who suffered. After some further losses from the weather, the remaining Turkish vessels sought safety in the Dardanelles, and thus ignominiously closed the naval campaign of 1822.

The second congress which met at Astró; in the ancient Thyreatis, on the maritime frontier of Argolis and Laconia, in the month of April, 1823, found that a year had made a great increase in

public confidence and in the extent of the insurrection, while the recent advantages obtained over the enemy gave the best hopes for the future. Their military position in general, however, was nearly the same as in the preceding year. The Turks were still in possession of all the fortresses of the Moréa except two, with just so much of the level country of Northern Greece as their posts at Larissa, Lamia, and the Euripus could command. In other respects their embarrassments were increasing: the Porte found great difficulty in equipping its fleet, and had resorted to such violent measures for sustaining its finances, that the piastre, which not many years before had been equivalent to an English shilling, was now reduced to the forty-fifth part of the pound sterling.

But, on the other hand, the wealth of the commercial islands and towns of Greece were equally exhausted by the exertions which had been made since the beginning of the contest; some of the powers of continental Europe continued to regard the insurrection as part of a general conspiracy against established governments; the others refused all countenance to the insurgents; and individual charity was very inadequate to supply the wants of a people in the situation of the Greeks.

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Hence they were unable to retain in their service or to satisfy even the most moderate expectations of the numerous military men of experience, who had been left in idleness in every part of Europe by the general peace, and who were anxious for employment in Greece. They were unable even to take into the service of government their own private ships by which all their naval efforts had been made, or to execute the repairs of a two years war for them: so that the number of those ships in a state to oppose the enemy was considerably diminished. Still less could they organize an artillery or create a corps of infantry under the orders and in the pay of the executive, without which it was impossible for the government to follow any improved plan of military operations, or even to establish a national treasury, collect the taxes, and administer, for the benefit of the revenue, all that large portion of the property of the insurgent districts, which, having formerly belonged to the Turks or their government, was now confiscated to the

state.

A government without a treasury, a marine, or an army, was of course little better than a cypher: nor was it in the power of the deputies assembled at Astró to confer the authority that was wanted.