Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1De Quincey, Thomas
General
Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
Hoods of Greece.]
On the sixth of April, the insurrection had spread to the narrow
territory of Megaris, situated to the north of the isthmus. The Albanian
population of this country, amounting to about ten thousand, and
employed by the Porte to guard the defiles of the entrance into
Peloponnesus, raised the standard of revolt, and marched to invest the
Acrocorinthus. In the Messenian territory, the Bishop of Modon, having
made his guard of Janissaries drunk, cut the whole of them to pieces;
and then encamping on the heights of Navarin, his lordship blockaded
that fortress. The abruptness of these movements, and their almost
simultaneous origin at distances so considerable, sufficiently prove how
ripe the Greeks were for this revolt as respected temper; and in other
modes of preparation they never _could_ have been ripe whilst overlooked
by Turkish masters. That haughty race now retreated from all parts of
the Morea, within the ramparts of Tripolizza.
In the first action which occurred, the Arcadian Greeks did not behave
well; they fled at the very sound of the Moslem tread. Colocotroni
commanded; and he rallied them again; but again they deserted him at the
sight of their oppressors; "and I," said Colocotroni afterwards, when
relating the circumstances of this early affair, "having with me only
ten companions including my horse, sat down in a bush and wept."
Meantime, affairs went ill at Patrass. Yussuf Pacha, having been
detached from Epirus to Euba by the Scrasker, heard on his route of the
insurrection in Peloponnesus. Upon which, altering his course, he sailed
to Patrass, and reached it on the fifteenth of April. This was Palm
Sunday, and it dawned upon the Greeks with evil omens. First came a
smart shock of earthquake; next a cannonade announcing the approach of
the Pacha; and, lastly, an Ottoman brig of war, which saluted the fort
and cast anchor before the town.
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