Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6: With His Letters and JournalsMoore, Thomas
General
Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6: With His Letters and Journals
Moore, Thomas
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
"Since I last wrote to you, through the medium of Mr. Hobhouse, I
have received and forwarded a letter from Captain Blaquiere to me,
from Corfu, which will show how he gets on. Yesterday I fell in with
two young Germans, survivors of General Normann's band. They arrived
at Genoa in the most deplorable state--without food--without a
soul--without shoes. The Austrians had sent them out of their
territory on their landing at Trieste; and they had been forced to
come down to Florence, and had travelled from Leghorn here, with four
Tuscan _livres_ (about three francs) in their pockets. I have given
them twenty Genoese scudi (about a hundred and thirty-three livres,
French money,) and new shoes, which will enable them to get to
Switzerland, where they say that they have friends. All that they
could raise in Genoa, besides, was thirty _sous_. They do not
complain of the Greeks, but say that they have suffered more since
their landing in Italy.
"I tried their veracity, 1st, by their passports and papers; 2dly, by
topography, cross-questioning them about Arta, Argos, Athens,
Missolonghi, Corinth, c.; and, 3dly, in _Romaic_, of which I found
one of them, at least, knew more than I do. One of them (they are
both of good families) is a fine handsome young fellow of
three-and-twenty--a Wirtembergher, and has a look of _Sandt_ about
him--the other a Bavarian, older and flat-faced, and less ideal, but
a great, sturdy, soldier-like personage. The Wirtembergher was in the
action at Arta, where the Philhellenists were cut to pieces after
killing six hundred Turks, they themselves being only a hundred and
fifty in number, opposed to about six or seven thousand; only eight
escaped, and of them about three only survived; so that General
Normann 'posted his ragamuffins where they were well peppered--not
three of the hundred and fifty left alive--and they are for the
town's end for life.'
"These two left Greece by the direction of the Greeks. When Churschid
Pacha over-run the Morea, the Greeks seem to have behaved well, in
wishing to save their allies, when they thought that the game was up
with themselves. This was in September last (1822): they wandered
from island to island, and got from Milo to Smyrna, where the French
consul gave them a passport, and a charitable captain a passage to
Ancona, whence they got to Trieste, and were turned back by the
Austrians. They complain only of the minister (who has always been an
indifferent character); say that the Greeks fight very well in their
own way, but were at _first_ afraid to _fire_ their own cannon--but
mended with practice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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