by Thomas Moore
“February 9. 1824.
“P.S. 2d or 3d. I have reason to expect a person from England directed with papers (on business) for me to sign, somewhere in the Islands, by and by: if such should arrive, would you forward him to me by a safe conveyance, as the papers regard a transaction with regard to the adjustment of a lawsuit, and a sum of several thousand pounds, which I, or my bankers and trustees for me, may have to receive (in England) in consequence. The time of the probable arrival I cannot state, but the date of my letters is the 2d Nov. and I suppose that he ought to arrive soon.”
How strong were the hopes which even those who watched him most observingly conceived from the whole tenor of his conduct since his arrival at Missolonghi, will appear from the following words of Colonel Stanhope, in one of his letters to the Greek Committee: —
“Lord Byron possesses all the means of playing a great part in the glorious revolution of Greece. He has talent; he professes liberal principles; he has money, and is inspired with fervent and chivalrous feelings. He has commenced his career by two good measures: 1st, by recommending union, and declaring himself of no party; and, 2dly, by taking five hundred Suliotes into pay, and acting as their chief. These acts cannot fail to render his Lordship universally popular, and proportionally powerful. Thus advantageously circumstanced, his Lordship will have an opportunity of realising all his professions.”
That the inspirer, however, of these hopes was himself far from participating in them is a fact manifest from all he said and wrote on the subject, and but adds painfully to the interest which his position at this moment excites. Too well, indeed, did he both understand and feel the difficulties into which he was plunged to deceive himself into any such sanguine delusions. In one only of the objects to which he had looked forward with any hope, — that of endeavouring to humanise, by his example, the system of warfare on both sides, — had he yet been able to gratify himself. Not many days after his arrival an opportunity, as we have seen, had been afforded him of rescuing an unfortunate Turk out of the hands of some Greek sailors; and, towards the end of the month, having learned that there were a few Turkish prisoners in confinement at Missolonghi, he requested of the Government to place them at his disposal, that he might send them to Yussuff Pacha. In performing this act of humane policy, he transmitted with the rescued captives the following letter: —
LETTER 541. TO HIS HIGHNESS YUSSUFF PACHA.
“Missolonghi, January 23. 1824.
“Highness!
“A vessel, in which a friend and some domestics of mine were embarked, was detained a few days ago, and released by order of your Highness. I have now to thank you; not for liberating the vessel, which, as carrying a neutral flag, and being under British protection, no one had a right to detain; but for having treated my friends with so much kindness while they were in your hands.
“In the hope, therefore, that it may not be altogether displeasing to your Highness, I have requested the governor of this place to release four Turkish prisoners, and he has humanely consented to do so. I lose no time, therefore, in sending them back, in order to make as early a return as I could for your courtesy on the late occasion. These prisoners are liberated without any conditions: but should the circumstance find a place in your recollection, I venture to beg, that your Highness will treat such Greeks as may henceforth fall into your hands with humanity; more especially since the horrors of war are sufficiently great in themselves, without being aggravated by wanton cruelties on either side. NOEL BYRON.”
Another favourite and, as it appeared for some time, practicable object, on which he had most ardently set his heart, was the intended attack upon Lepanto — a fortified town which, from its command of the navigation of the Gulf of Corinth, is a position of the first importance. “Lord Byron,” says Colonel Stanhope, in a letter dated January 14., “burns with military ardour and chivalry, and will accompany the expedition to Lepanto.” The delay of Parry, the engineer, who had been for some months anxiously expected with the supplies necessary for the formation of a brigade of artillery, had hitherto paralysed the preparations for this important enterprise; though, in the mean time, whatever little could be effected, without his aid, had been put in progress both by the appointment of a brigade of Suliotes to act under Lord Byron, and by the formation, at the joint expense of his Lordship and Colonel Stanhope, of a small corps of artillery.
[Footnote 1: The ancient Naupactus, called Epacto by the modern Greeks, and Lepauto by the Italians.]
It was towards the latter end of January, as we have seen, that Lord Byron received his regular commission from the Government, as Commander of the expedition. In conferring upon him full powers, both civil and military, they appointed, at the same time, a Military Council to accompany him, composed of the most experienced Chieftains of the army, with Nota Bozzari, the uncle of the famous warrior, at their head.
It had been expected that, among the stores sent with Parry, there would be a supply of Congreve rockets, — an instrument of warfare of which such wonders had been related to the Greeks as filled their imaginations with the most absurd ideas of its powers. Their disappointment, therefore, on finding that the engineer had come unprovided with these missiles was excessive. Another hope, too, — that of being enabled to complete an artillery corps by the accession of those Germans who had been sent for into the Morea, — was found almost equally fallacious; that body of men having, from the death or retirement of those who originally composed it, nearly dwindled away; and the few officers that now came to serve being, from their fantastic notions of rank and etiquette, far more troublesome than useful. In addition to these discouraging circumstances, the five Speziot ships of war which had for some time formed the sole protection of Missolonghi were now returned to their home, and had left their places to be filled by the enemy’s squadron.
Perplexing as were all these difficulties in the way of the expedition, a still more formidable embarrassment presented itself in the turbulent and almost mutinous disposition of those Suliote troops on whom he mainly depended for success in his undertaking. Presuming as well upon his wealth and generosity as upon their own military importance, these unruly warriors had never ceased to rise in the extravagance of their demands upon him; — the wholly destitute and homeless state of their families at this moment affording but too well founded a pretext both for their exaction and discontent. Nor were their leaders much more amenable to management than themselves. “There were,” says Count Gamba, “six heads of families among them, all of whom had equal pretensions both by their birth and their exploits; and none of whom would obey any one of his comrades.”
A serious riot to which, about the middle of January, these Suliotes had given rise, and in which some lives were lost, had been a source of much irritation and anxiety to Lord Byron, as well from the ill-blood it was likely to engender between his troops and the citizens, as from the little dependence it gave him encouragement to place upon materials so unmanageable. Notwithstanding all this, however, neither his eagerness nor his efforts for the accomplishment of this sole personal object of his ambition ever relaxed a single instant. To whatever little glory was to be won by the attack upon Lepanto, he looked forward as his only reward for all the sacrifices he was making. In his conversations with Count Gamba on the subject, “though he joked a good deal,” says this gentleman, “about his post of ‘Archistrategos,’ or Commander in Chief, it was plain that the romance and the peril of the undertaking were great allurements to him.” When we combine, indeed, his determination to stand, at all hazards, by the cause, with the very faint hopes his sagacious mind would let him indulge as to his power of serving it, I have little doubt that the “soldier’s grave” which, in his own beautiful verses, he marked out for himself, was no idle dream of poetry; but that, on the contrary, his “wish was father to the thought,” and that to an honourable death, in some such achievement as that of storming Lepanto, he looked forward, not only as the sole means of redeeming worthily the great pledge he h
ad now given, but as the most signal and lasting service that a name like his, — echoed, as it would then be, among the watch-words of Liberty, from age to age, — could bequeath to her cause.
In the midst of these cares he was much gratified by the receipt of a letter from an old friend of his, Andrea Londo, whom he had made acquaintance with in his early travels in 1809, and who was at that period a rich proprietor, under the Turks, in the Morca. This patriotic Greek was one of the foremost to raise the standard of the Cross; and at the present moment stood distinguished among the supporters of the Legislative Body and of the new national Government. The following is a translation of Lord Byron’s answer to his letter.
[Footnote 1: This brave Moriote, when Lord Byron first knew him, was particularly boyish in his aspect and manners, but still cherished, under this exterior, a mature spirit of patriotism which occasionally broke forth; and the noble poet used to relate that, one day, while they were playing at draughts together, on the name of Riga being pronounced, Londo leaped from the table, and clapping violently his hands, began singing the famous song of that ill-fated patriot: —
“Sons of the Greeks, arise!
The glorious hour’s gone forth.”]
LETTER 542. TO LONDO.
“Dear Friend,
“The sight of your handwriting gave me the greatest pleasure. Greece has ever been for me, as it must be for all men of any feeling or education, the promised land of valour, of the arts, and of liberty; nor did the time I passed in my youth in travelling among her ruins at all chill my affection for the birthplace of heroes. In addition to this, I am bound to yourself by ties of friendship and gratitude for the hospitality which I experienced from you during my stay in that country, of which you are now become one of the first defenders and ornaments. To see myself serving, by your side and under your eyes, in the cause of Greece, will be to me one of the happiest events of my life. In the mean time, with the hope of our again meeting,
“I am, as ever,” &c.
Among the less serious embarrassments of his position at this period, may be mentioned the struggle maintained against him by his colleague, Colonel Stanhope, — with a degree of conscientious perseverance which, even while thwarted by it, he could not but respect, on the subject of a Free Press, which it was one of the favourite objects of his fellow-agent to bring instantly into operation in all parts of Greece. On this important point their opinions differed considerably; and the following report, by Colonel Stanhope, of one of their many conversations on the subject, may be taken as a fair and concise statement of their respective views:— “Lord Byron said that he was an ardent friend of publicity and the press: but that he feared it was not applicable to this society in its present combustible state. I answered that I thought it applicable to all countries, and essential here, in order to put an end to the state of anarchy which at present prevailed. Lord B. feared libels and licentiousness. I said that the object of a free press was to check public licentiousness, and to expose libellers to odium. Lord B. had mentioned his conversation with Mavrocordato to show that the Prince was not hostile to the press. I declared that I knew him to be an enemy to the press, although he dared not openly to avow it. His Lordship then said that he had not made up his mind about the liberty of the press in Greece, but that he thought the experiment worth trying.”
[Footnote 1: Lord Byron had, it seems, acknowledged, on the preceding evening, his having remarked to Prince Blavrocordato that “if he were in his situation, he would have placed the press under a censor;” to which the Prince had replied, “No; the liberty of the press is guaranteed by the Constitution.”]
That between two men, both eager in the service of one common cause, there should arise a difference of opinion as to the means of serving it is but a natural result of the varieties of human judgment, and detracts nothing from the zeal or sincerity of either. But by those who do not suffer themselves to be carried away by a theory, it will be conceded, I think, that the scruples professed by Lord Byron, with respect to the expedience or safety of introducing what is called a Free Press into a country so little advanced in civilisation as Greece, were founded on just views of human nature and practical good sense. To endeavour to force upon a state of society, so unprepared for them, such full grown institutions; to think of engrafting, at once, on an ignorant people the fruits of long knowledge and cultivation, — of importing among them, ready made, those advantages and blessings which no nation ever attained but by its own working out, nor ever was fitted to enjoy but by having first struggled for them; to harbour even a dream of the success of such an experiment, implies a sanguineness almost incredible, and such as, though, in the present instance, indulged by the political economist and soldier, was, as we have seen, beyond the poet.
The enthusiastic and, in many respects, well founded confidence with which Colonel Stanhope appealed to the authority of Mr. Bentham on most of the points at issue between himself and Lord Byron, was, from that natural antipathy which seems to exist between political economists and poets, but little sympathised in by the latter; — such appeals being always met by him with those sallies of ridicule, which he found the best-humoured vent for his impatience under argument, and to which, notwithstanding the venerable name and services of Mr. Bentham himself, the quackery of much that is promulgated by his followers presented, it must be owned, ample scope. Romantic, indeed, as was Lord Byron’s sacrifice of himself to the cause of Greece, there was in the views he took of the means of serving her not a tinge of the unsubstantial or speculative. The grand practical task of freeing her from her tyrants was his first and main object. He knew that slavery was the great bar to knowledge, and must be broken through before her light could come; that the work of the sword must therefore precede that of the pen, and camps be the first schools of freedom.
With such sound and manly views of the true exigencies of the crisis, it is not wonderful that he should view with impatience, and something, perhaps, of contempt, all that premature apparatus of printing-presses, pedagogues, &c. with which the Philhellenes of the London Committee were, in their rage for “utilitarianism,” encumbering him. Nor were some of the correspondents of this body much more solid in their speculations than themselves; one intelligent gentleman having suggested, as a means of conferring signal advantages on the cause, an alteration of the Greek alphabet.
Though feeling, as strongly, perhaps, as Lord Byron, the importance of the great object of their mission, — that of rousing and, what was far more difficult, combining against the common foe the energies of the country, — Colonel Stanhope was also one of those who thought that the lights of their great master, Bentham, and the operations of a press unrestrictedly free, were no less essential instruments towards the advancement of the struggle; and in this opinion, as we have seen, the poet and man of literature differed from the soldier. But it was such a difference as, between men of frank and fair minds, may arise without either reproach to themselves, or danger to their cause, — a strife of opinion which; though maintained with heat, may be remembered without bitterness, and which, in the present instance, neither prevented Byron, at the close of one of their warmest altercations, from exclaiming generously to his opponent, “Give me that honest right hand,” nor withheld the other from pouring forth, at the grave of his colleague, a strain of eulogy not the less cordial for being discriminatingly shaded with censure, nor less honourable to the illustrious dead for being the tribute of one who had once manfully differed with him.
[Footnote 1: Sketch of Lord Byron. — See Colonel Stanhope’s “Greece in 1823, 1824,” &c.]
Towards the middle of February, the indefatigable activity of Mr. Parry having brought the artillery brigade into such a state of forwardness as to be almost ready for service, an inspection of the Suliote corps took place, preparatory to the expedition; and after much of the usual deception and unmanageableness on their part, every obstacle appeared to be at length surmounted. It was agreed that they should receive a month’s pay in
advance; — Count Gamba, with of their corps, as a vanguard, was to march next day and take up a position under Lepanto, and Lord Byron with the main body and the artillery was speedily to follow.
New difficulties, however, were soon started by these untractable mercenaries; and under the instigation, as was discovered afterwards, of the great rival of Mavrocordato, Colocotroni, who had sent emissaries into Missolonghi for the purpose of seducing them, they now put forward their exactions in a new shape, by requiring of the Government to appoint, out of their number, two generals, two colonels, two captains, and inferior officers in the same proportion:— “in short,” says Count Gamba, “that, out of three or four hundred actual Suliotes, there should be about one hundred and fifty above the rank of common soldiers.” The audacious dishonesty of this demand, — beyond what he could have expected even from Greeks, — roused all Lord Byron’s rage, and he at once signified to the whole body, through Count Gamba, that all negotiation between them and himself was at an end; that he could no longer have any confidence in persons so little true to their engagements; and that though the relief which he had afforded to their families should still be continued, all his agreements with them, as a body, must be thenceforward void.
It was on the 14th of February that this rupture with the Suliotes took place; and though, on the following day, in consequence of the full submission of their Chiefs, they were again received into his Lordship’s service on his own terms, the whole affair, combined with the various other difficulties that now beset him, agitated his mind considerably. He saw with pain that he should but place in peril both the cause of Greece and his own character, by at all relying, in such an enterprise, upon troops whom any intriguer could thus seduce from their duty; and that, till some more regular force could be organised, the expedition against Lepanto must be suspended.