Cochrane

by Donald Thomas

  Wellington, "it is, generally speaking, a mob; and a chief can only calculate upon keeping it together as long as he has provisions to give it or the prospect of plunder without danger." Ponsonby had no doubt of their courage, yet he saw no portent of victory so long as there was "nothing to oppose the Egyptian army but a mob".24

  In practical terms, Cochrane suffered from interminable delays on the part of the engineer who was to supply boilers for the steamships. There were accusations and counter-accusations over alleged sharp practice by the New York builders of the two heavy frigates. Finally, as a means of preventing him ever taking up his command, he heard that he was about to be prosecuted under the Foreign Enlistment Act for his service in Chile and Brazil. Brougham warned him that "if he stayed many days longer in England, he would be arrested". On 9 November 1825, with Kitty and his children, he crossed the Channel and took up residence at Boulogne. While he waited impatiently for news of his steamships, he received another warning. He was about to be arrested by the French for having illegally detained a French brig, the Gazelle, during his blockade of Spanish ports on the Chilean coast. In the case of the Foreign Enlistment Act, the threat to him had not been a specific gesture of support for the Turkish cause. In France, however, he was given to understand that matters were otherwise and that there had been an understanding with Mohammed Ali of Egypt. He packed his possessions once more, and took the road from Boulogne to the sanctuary of Brussels.25

  Then followed more sinister delays over the completion of the first steamship at Greenwich, she was the Perseverance of 42 horse-power. It was hinted that the contractor had been bribed by Turkish representatives in London to frustrate Cochrane's plans for naval victory. In New York, the first of the two frigates was completed but the builder, who had agreed to build both ships for £150,000, now demanded payment of £200,000 for the first one alone.26

  Yet Cochrane's intention of commanding the Greek navy, whatever the obstacles, had a salutary effect on British diplomacy. In March 1826, the Duke of Wellington passed through Brussels on his way from London to St Petersburg. In December 1825, Czar Alexander had died and Wellington was to begin the difficult task of negotiating a satisfactory conclusion to the Greek war with his successor, Nicholas I. Britain would mediate between the Turks and the Russians to prevent war between them. She would also mediate between the Turks and Greeks to bring about a degree of independence which would satisfy Mavrocordatos and his colleagues while not being unacceptable to Sultan Mahmoud. Neither act of mediation would be made more credible if a powerful fleet under a British mercenary admiral were to enter Greek waters on the side of the rebels. An interview with Cochrane was something which Wellington could not bring himself to ask for. Instead, he left a carefully phrased message with the keeper of his hotel to the effect that he was not available to see anyone, "except Lord Cochrane’. The hotelier, having no idea of what the message signified, took no action. Wellington travelled on to St Petersburg and Cochrane was spared the trouble of refusing to abandon the Greek cause.27

  By the following month, it was clear that Cochrane would have to go ahead of the steamships and frigates if they were not ready. Despite his dream of arriving with a new and powerful fleet, the military situation had deteriorated so far that his presence in command of a single vessel would be welcome. On 13 April, the Greek deputies in London assured him: "We may with truth assert that your lordship is regarded by all classes of our countrymen as a Messiah, who is to come to their deliverance." Nine days later, Missolonghi fell to Ibrahim's army after a siege which had lasted twelve months. Cochrane put to sea from Flushing in his little schooner, the Unicorn, and slipped across the Channel to Weymouth. He went to London and spent a day inspecting the steamships. The Perseverance was virtually completed. The contractor promised that the Enterprise and the Irresistible would be ready in a fortnight and the three remaining ships within a month.28

  On this understanding, Cochrane sailed at once in the Unicorn, waiting in Bantry Bay only until he received a message that his second-in-command, Captain Frank Abney Hastings, had set sail with the Perseverance. Hastings had served on the Neptune at Trafalgar, was dismissed the service in 1819 for challenging a superior officer to a duel, and had joined the Greeks in 1822. Following the arrangements which had been made, Cochrane sailed to Messina, which he reached on 12 July, and waited there for the rest of his fleet. He waited in vain. In place of the ships he received a letter from the contractors for the Greek loan. The builder, whom they now described as "the evil genius that pursues us everywhere", had still not completed the vessels, "his presumption is only equalled by his incompetency".29

  Cochrane was dismayed by this. He protested that with the ships which had been ordered he would win the war for Greece within six months. Without them, he could do little. The Turks were now assisted not only by the Egyptian fleet but by other naval forces from Algiers. Cochrane and his schooner were becoming an object of derision even to English chroniclers of the war, notably to the contemporary historian George Finlay.

  He had been wandering about the Mediterranean in a fine English yacht, purchased for him out of the proceeds of the loan in order to accelerate his arrival in Greece, ever since the month of June 1826.30

  In fact, he retraced his steps as far as Marseille, where he superintended the purchase and fitting out of a French corvette, the Sauveur his one and only warship. With this and with his schooner he arrived at the island of Poros on 19 March 1827. It was not until October that the first of his steamships, the Perseverance, arrived in Greek waters. Yet even during the months of frustration, he had not been entirely idle. Among the letters he wrote was one addressed to his new enemy, Mohammed Ali of Egypt, in which, with sublime impudence, he denounced the Pasha for "employing foreigners in your military and naval service" and for keeping his barbarian subjects in "wretched hovels" compared with the noble buildings of Greece. But among the insults, Cochrane also offered a hope of political salvation. Predictably in advance of his time, on this occasion by a mere half century, Cochrane suggested that Mohammed Ali might earn the thanks of all men by abandoning his system of slavery and building a Suez canal. The world would stand in grateful awe, while "distant oceans would unite, and the extremities of the globe approach at your command".31

  But as Cochrane passed the picturesque islands and caught his first distant view of the Acropolis, now besieged by Ibrahim's army, he faced sterner and more immediate realities. The major fortresses of Greece had fallen and though the situation might be turned to advantage by cutting the sea routes to Alexandria and Constantinople, the odds were against him. The Perseverance had at last arrived from England, to be renamed the Karteria. The first of the two 60-gun frigates from America, the Hellas, had also arrived, though with the departure of the American crew which had brought her from New York, Cochrane was hard pressed to man the powerful ship. In general, he calculated that Admiral Miaoulis's fleet of some fifty coasting brigs and similar vessels faced a Turco-Egyptian battle squadron 135 strong. The object of steamships, as Cochrane had explained, was the speed with which they could intercept one after another of the enemy's supply convoys, and their use in "towing fire-vessels and explosion-vessels by night into ports and places where the hostile squadrons anchor on the shores of Greece". With his steamships and a few small gun-boats he offered to clear the Turks and Egyptians from the Peloponnese "in a few weeks". It was not to be. Instead, it was the Egyptians who were "purchasing steam-vessels and hiring transports under neutral flags". The ships brought provisions to Ibrahim, and returned to Alexandria laden with cargoes of women and children taken as slaves.32

  The unity of the Greeks themselves had been further shaken by the emergence of new factions, including a "French" party led by Colonel Fabvier, now defending the Acropolis, and an "English" faction under Mavrocordatos which regarded Britain as its protector. Sir Richard Church greeted Cochrane with a brief but trenchant note.

  This unhappy country is now divided by absurd and crimin
al dissensions. I hope, however, that your lordship's arrival will have a happy effect, and that they will do everything in their power to be worthy of such a leader.33

  Cochrane certainly intended that this should be the case. From Hydra on 21 March he issued a challenge to the entire nation, by quoting to them the example arid words of Demosthenes, since "it would be unpardonable presumption in me to address to you other than his own words". The stern call to duty, though in the improbable intonation of a Scottish aristocrat, rang with perfect aptness on the occasion.

  If you will become your own masters, and cease each expecting to do nothing himself while his neighbour does everything for him, you will then, with God's permission, get back your own, and recover what has been lost, and punish your enemy.34

  The manner of Cochrane's arrival had a salutary effect on the factions. Admiral Miaoulis, who scorned the type of uniform worn by most European naval officers and appeared in the red cap and voluminous blue clothes of his islanders, set the example. Deferring to Cochrane's authority at once, he volunteered to serve under his command as captain of the Hellas. Cochrane had already intimated that he would not take up his own command so long as the factions fought one another rather than the army of Ibrahim. This, too, had a sobering influence. On 25 March, he was able to write to Sir Richard Church, "The union of the parties is, I think, now effected."35

  The factions met on neutral ground at Damala, on the coast opposite Poros on 7 April, as a united National Assembly. Having no building large enough for the purpose, the deputies met in the open air, choosing a lemon grove as their site. Enmities among them were not forgotten but they were, at least, suspended sufficiently long for Count Capodistrias, born in Corfu and experienced in the service of Russia, to be elected President of Greece for seven years. He had been offered the leadership of the revolution at its beginning but had mistrusted the factions and, to that extent, was an independent figure.

  Capodistrias's election was the sign of unity for which Cochrane had hoped. He withdrew all reservations and, in the same lemon grove, was installed as First Admiral of Greece on 18 April. His speech and his subsequent proclamations promised that, while Greece should be free, he had every intention of "carrying the war into the enemy's country". By land, this would have been impossible but when his fleet was ready, Cochrane proposed to blockade the Dardanelles and put an end to virtually all Turkish maritime trade. It was uncertain just how far he proposed to take the war but there must have been alarm in several European capitals at the size of the conflict he envisaged in prophesying that, "The sacred banner of the Cross" should "once more wave on the dome of Saint Sophia".36

  For the time being, it hardly seemed that the inhabitants of Constantinople needed to concern themselves over these threats. Even before Cochrane could begin naval operations with the ships available to him, his attention was taken up by the most desperate struggle of the war: the siege of Athens. The attack had begun ten months before, in June 1826. By July, the city was under siege and on 14 August it was stormed by the Arab troops. Defenders and citizens alike withdrew to the Acropolis and held out for four months. Then, in December, Fabvier and Karaiskakes had broken through Ibrahim's besiegers and reinforced the garrison. Fabvier found himself defending the hill with about a thousand troops and several hundred women and children. The Arab force amounted to 7000, including cavalry and artillery.

  Strategy and psychology required equally that the siege should be raised. "The eyes of Europe are turned towards Greece," wrote Cochrane on 14 April 1827, "and on the success or failure of the measures now to be adopted depends the support of your glorious cause, or its abandonment in despair."37

  To the south of Athens, the Greeks were still in position on either side of the Piraeus. But their intended advance to relieve the Acropolis was blocked by the hill-top convent of Saint Spiridion, which overlooked both camps. Karaiskakes, who now commanded the Greek troops outside Athens, insisted that it must first be taken. He proposed to starve the Turkish defenders into submission but this plan was abandoned when messages were smuggled from Fabvier, warning the relief force that the garrison in the Acropolis could hold out only for a few more days.

  By 25 April nothing had been done towards taking Saint Spiridion except for assembling more and more Greek soldiers who seemed to break up rapidly into independent groups, each acknowledging no authority but that of its leader. Cochrane decided that his best expedient was to embark troops by night and land them in the rear of Saint Spiridion so that the strongpoint would be bypassed and the way to Athens would lie open. That afternoon, he was superintending the disembarkation of thirty more soldiers close to the Greek position. The Turks on Saint Spiridion saw this and at once began to hurry down the slope to drive the landing party back into the sea.

  The marines under Cochrane's command included a thousand Hydriots who were now led by Major Gordon Urquhart, the detachment being camped on the adjoining shore. At the first sign of the Turkish threat, they hurried to Cochrane's assistance. Instinctively, he chose to turn defence into attack. Waving a telescope as his only weapon, he gathered his men together, formed them up into an orderly detachment, shouted "encouraging words" to them, and then led the assault on the Turkish troops who now stood exposed on the hillside of Saint Spiridion.

  The effect of this well-coordinated and resolute attack on the Turks was spectacular. They had experienced nothing like it before at the hands of the Greeks, and their advance guard scattered and fled. At the head of the assault, Cochrane led his men into the earthworks with which the defenders of Saint Spiridion had fortified their position, over-running them with little difficulty. He lost eight men in the course of an hour's engagement. When it was over, there were sixty Turkish bodies on the hillside and the majority of the garrison was in full flight towards Athens. No more than 200 or 300 men held the building of Saint Spiridion itself against an army of almost 10,000 Greeks.38

  His little fleet was anchored below in the bay of Phalerum. Cochrane at once ordered the Hellas, captained by Admiral Miaoulis, to open a bombardment of the convent. The powerful guns of the frigate delivered one broadside after another, the smoke drifting across the sunlit waters of the bay of Phalerum, stone and debris erupting from the hillside as the shells landed, until Saint Spiridion seemed to be "only a mass of ruins' But the few remaining defenders beat off three Greek infantry assaults. Karaiskakes's men were not keen to try again, their commander writing privately, "We shall not go well with these English. I fear they will ruin us by their impatience."39

  On 28 April, however, the two hundred or so remaining Turkish troops in Saint Spiridion had had enough of the continuing bombardment by the heavy guns of the Hellas. Having no hope of escape, they began to negotiate a surrender. Karaiskakes agreed that they should be allowed to march out with their arms and all the honours of war, passing through the Greek lines unmolested and returning to their own army. Cochrane withdrew the 1500 men under his own immediate command to lessen the danger of any violence between the two sides. He was standing on the deck of his schooner, the Unicom, which he had armed with two carronades, when the type of scene which was all too familiar in the war was repeated once again. A Greek soldier pushed forward and snatched at the sword of one of the Turks who were marching past. The Turk resisted him and there was a struggle. Two or three of the outnumbered Turks, fearing that they were about to be lynched, fired their muskets. The Greek soldiers were already angry "at finding no prizes in the deserted convent", and at this new provocation, they opened a murderous fire upon the Turkish column. When the volleys died away, there were two hundred Turkish bodies on the plain and fewer than seventy survivors. Cochrane was relieved that he had withdrawn his own men and prevented them from joining the massacre but he condemned the atrocity as "the most horrid scene I ever beheld - a scene which freezes my blood, and which cannot be palliated by any barbarities which the Turks have committed on you".40

  For all Cochrane's triumphs in war, they had been won with an asto
nishingly low casualty rate, not on his own side alone but on that of the enemy as well. Most recently, his victory over the Portuguese army and navy in Brazil was one of the most bloodless campaigns that could have been devised. It was not in his character to desert a cause at the moment of its greatest need, but after the massacre of Saint Spiridion he wrote bitterly of "the mob denominated falsely the army of Greece".41

  Had they been pugnacious and determined, that would have been some recompense. Yet one excuse after another was produced for not pressing on to the relief of the Acropolis. Karaiskakes announced that they lacked food, or ammunition, or trenching tools. To make matters worse, on 4 May, Karaiskakes was fatally wounded in a skirmish. As he lay dying, the Greek commander left a message for Cochrane, urging him to carry troops across the water from the camp to Cape Colias, closer to Athens, and make the attack from there. Cochrane and Sir Richard Church had a plan in mind, whereby about 3000 men would be landed there at night, advancing in darkness to seize a height near the Temple of Zeus Olympus, close to the Acropolis. By dark, there would be less danger from the Turkish cavalry as they crossed the plain between Colias and Athens. Once they were in position on the height, they would either relieve the Acropolis or assist its evacuation.