The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of IndependenceBenson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
History
The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence
Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
Greece -- History -- War of Independence, 1821-1829 -- Fiction
Here and there in their passage up the town a house was shut and barred
against them, but for the most part the inhabitants streamed out like
ants when their hill is disturbed. Once only was resistance offered,
when from the upper window of a house a Turk fired upon the soldiers,
killing one man; and Petrobey, heading a charge himself, burst in the
door, and a couple of shots were heard from inside. Then, without a
word, he and the three others who had gone in with him took their
places again, and the column moved forward up the street.
The square of the lower town stood just at the base of the rising
ground leading up to the citadel, and on its north side was built a row
of big silk-mills, all of which had been deserted by their owners on
the first alarm, and in these the Maina division took up its quarters.
As soon as they and the Argives had made their passage through the
town, driving the inhabitants up into the citadel, or down to the
harbor, where they were taken by the Messenian division, Petrobey sent
to the Laconian corps, who had been acting as a "stop" on the east to
prevent the people escaping into the country, and brought them up on
the right to complete the line which they had drawn along the south
front of the citadel. The Argive corps, meantime, had been divided
into two, one-half of which blockaded the picket-gate on the north,
while the other was drawn up on the left of the Mainats, between them
and the river. This done, the blockade of the citadel was complete; on
the west the besieged were hemmed in by their own impregnable rock,
below which ran the current; on the south and southeast by the Greek
army; on the east again by the precipitous crags; and on the north
their escape through the picket-gate was impracticable, owing to the
detachment of Argives guarding it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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