Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824 -- Last years; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
1st. To-morrow morning at daylight, 37 minute-guns shall be fired from
the grand battery, being the number which corresponds with the age of
the illustrious deceased.
2nd. All the public offices, even to the tribunals, are to remain
closed for three successive days.
3rd. All the shops, except those in which provisions or medicines are
sold, will also be shut; and it is strictly enjoined, that every
species of public amusement and other demonstrations of festivity at
Easter may be suspended.
4th. A general mourning will be observed for twenty-one days.
5th. Prayers and a funeral service are to be offered up in all the
churches.
(_Signed_) A. MAVROCORDATO.
GIORGIUS PRAIDIS,
_Secretary_.
Given at Missolonghi,
this 19th day of April, 1824.
At sunrise, on the day following Byron's death, thirty-seven minute-guns
were fired from the principal battery; and one of the batteries belonging
to the corps immediately under his orders fired a gun every half-hour
during the day. We take the following from Gamba's journal:
'_April 21._--For the remainder of this day and the next, a silence,
like that of the grave, prevailed over the city. We had intended to
perform the funeral ceremony on the 21st, but the continued rain
prevented us. On the 22nd, however, we acquitted ourselves of that sad
duty, so far as our humble means would permit. In the midst of his own
brigade, of the Government troops, and of the whole population, on
the shoulders of his own officers, the most precious portion of his
honoured remains was carried to the church, where lie the bodies of
Marco Bozzari and of General Normann. There we laid them down. The
coffin was a rude, ill-constructed chest of wood; a black mantle
served for a pall; and over it we placed a helmet and sword, with a
crown of laurels. No funeral pomp could have left the impression, nor
spoken the feelings, of this simple ceremony. The wretchedness and
desolation of the place itself; the wild, half-civilized warriors
around us; their deep, unaffected grief; the fond recollections and
disappointed hopes; the anxieties and sad presentiments depicted on
every countenance, contributed to form a scene more moving, more truly
affecting, than perhaps was ever before witnessed round the coffin of
a great man.'
Spiridion Tricoupi, a son of one of the Primates of Missolonghi,
pronounced the funeral oration in the following words, translated from the
modern Greek by an inhabitant of Missolonghi:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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