"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[1] 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 had 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.[1] 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."]