troops, the flower of the army of Ab- and the inhabitants, preceded by men. bas Mirza, in all three thousand In the fortress were found thirty-five cannon, two howitzers, eight mortars, four standards, a great quantity of ammunition, and a considerable part of the treasures of the Sardar. The fall of Erivan, and, still more, the dismay which it excited, and the temptations which it held out to the wavering fidelity of disaffected chiefs, opened up to the Russians a passage into the heart of the Persian territories. Prince Eristoff, whom general Paskewitsch had sent forward in advance during the progress of the siege, was at Maranda, on the right bank of the Araxes, and not far from Tauris, on the 21st October. He there learned that the populace of Tauris, discontented at the oppressions of the government, and alarmed by the approach of a victorious enemy, were ready to receive the Russians with open arms; that the troops had refused to fight any longer; that Abbas Mirza, finding himself thus abandoned, had given orders to destroy the magazines of provisions and ammunition, and carry off the artillery which had been collected in that his hereditary residence. The prince therefore immediately marched upon Tauris to take advantage of the favourable conjuncture. Alair Khan, son-inlaw and first minister of the Shah, and the prime instigator of this foolish war, expended, in vain, menaces and entreaties, violence and rewards, to induce the inhabitants to fight. When prince Eristoff arrived on the 25th within a few versts of Tauris, and, having formed his troops on the right bank of the river Adjatchai, sent forward a detachment to take possession of the city, the Sarbasian troops fled, their Imauns, came out in a body to receive the Russians. At the moment when the Sarbasians were disbanding, the populace vented their discontent against the government by pillaging the palace of Abbas Mirza. Alair Khan, deserted by his soldiers, endeavoured to conceal himself. Being hunted out by the Cossacks, he attempted at first to defend himself; but, his carabine having missed fire, he surrendered. In Tauris the victors found thirty-one pieces of cannon, nine mortars, one thousand and sixteen muskets, and a large quantity of ammunition and provisions. These accumulated disasters inclined Persia to a peace which she had wantonly broken. In a few days after the surrender of Tauris, to which general Paskewitsch had moved with the main body of his army, immediately after the capture of Erivan, the Caimacan of Abbas Mirza, one of the principal personages in the Persian ministry, announced his arrival with authority to treat for peace. A Russian negociator having been named by the general, the preliminaries were speedily adjusted; the principal difficulty having occurred in bringing Persia to consent to the payment of a large sum of money, as an indemnification to Russia for the expenses of the war. These conditions were further confirmed by Abbas Mirza himself, and transmitted to Teheran for the ratification of the Schah. So soon as that ratification should arrive, the Russian troops were to evacuate the province of Adherbidjan, and retire to the left bank of the Araxes. After the Shah had expressed his assent to the conditions of the treaty, and part of the money was on its way to Tauris, his majesty, guided, as the Russians alleged, by the influence of Turkey, all at once changed his policy. Instead of forwarding the ratification and the money, he directed a special plenipotentiary, Mirza Aboul Hassan Khan, to repair to the place of conference, and declare, that unless the Russian army withdrew in the first place to the left bank of the Araxes, and evacuated the province of Adherbidjan with out delay, the Shah would not pay any indemnity, and would not ratify the peace, the conditions of which he had already accepted. The declaration which Mirza was to make, admitted but of one answer. As soon as, on his arrival at the camp of general Paskewitsch, he had communicated the new determination of the Shah, the commander-in-chief announced to him, that the conferences were broken off, and that military operations would be recommenced. Abbas Mirza was thunderstruck at this infatuated resolution: both he and the Persian plenipotentiary looked with alarm at the necessary consequences of the renewal of hostilities; and the latter was again despatched with all speed to Teheran, in order to induce his sovereign no longer to delay the conclusion of the peace, and the payment of the indemnity agreed discharge of the soldiers who had served the legal time, the dismissal of those who were disabled by age or sickness, and lastly, the discharge which had been granted to part of the soldiery in the preceding September, as a mark of imperial favour, had caused a very considerable diminution in the fleets and armies. In order to fill up these deficiencies, and to maintain the army at all times on a footing corresponding with the situation of the empire, it was judged indispensably necessary to order a levy of recruits in the present year. The conscription was to be enforced in the proportion of one man for every five hundred inhabitants. The levy was to commence on the 1st November, except in Georgia and Bessarabia, and was to be completed in two months. The recruits were not to be under eighteen, nor above thirty-five years of age. At the same time the relation in which the Jewish subjects of the empire stood as to military service, was altered. Hitherto the Jews had been exempted from personal service, and a pecuniary tax was imposed upon them in its stead. On the present occasion, that exemption was abolished, and they were ordered, like all the other subjects of the empire, to serve in person. The government assigned as one cause of this change, a desire to promote civilization among the descendants of Israel. "We are convinced," said the emperor, in the Ukase, "that the improvement and knowledge, which the Jews will acquire by their military service, will, on their return home, after their legal period has expired, be communicated to their families, and will greatly tend to accelerate the progress of their civil establishment and domestic life." CHAP. XII. GREECE. General State of Greece-Successes of Karaiskaki in Livadia-Operations in the Siege of Athens-Meeting of the National Assembly-Capo d'Istria named President, Lord Cochrane Commander of the Fleet, and Colonel Church Generalissimo of the Armies -Plan to raise the Siege of Athens-Karaiskaki killed-Total defeat of the Greek Army before Athens-The Acropolis surrenders-Military Events in Western Greece-Britain, France, and Russia interpose to put an end to the War-Manifesto of the Porte rejecting their Mediation-Treaty of London-The Porte refuses to accede to an Armistice Egyptian Fleet arrives at Navarino-Armistice with Ibrahim Pacha Negotiations at Constantinople-The Turkish Fleet attempts to sail for Patras, and is obliged to put back—Ibrahim ravages the Morea-Battle of Navarino-Proceedings at Constantinople-Demands of the Porte in consequence of the Battle of Navarino -They are refused, and the British, French, and Russian Ambassadors leave Constantinople-Proceedings of the Greeks-British Order in Council against the Greek Marine. THE HROUGHOUT the contest which the Greeks had so long maintained against the Ottoman empire, their real strength had been found in the weakness of their adversaries. The smallness of their numbers and the poverty of their resources, the jealousies which divided their leaders, and the want of discipline which distinguished their armed bands, would soon have rendered useless the natural strength of their country as well as the valour of their despair, if these sources of debility had not been counterbalanced by equally manifest disadvantages on the side of their opponents. The Turkish armies, which took the field during the first campaigns, were still more deficient than the Greeks in the knowledge of European warfare, and were infinitely more enamoured of their ignorance. The threatening position, which Russia had assumed, fixed the attention of the Porte on its northern frontier and Danubian dependencies. The revolt in Greece had been first disregarded: then, it had been inefficiently opposed, in the mistaken notion that it was merely an ordinary tumult : it had been allowed to acquire a strength which would have demanded for its suppression the utmost energy of the Turkish government, and that at the very moment when a war with Russia seemed a more probable event than ever. It was not till the power of a distant vassal of the Porte had been brought into play, that the fortunes of Greece began to decline. On the banks of the Nile, an ambitious and warlike Pacha had been gradually creating the most formidable native armies that had appeared for centuries beneath the standard of Mahomet; the sands of Africa sent forth the troops tan had been maintained in Greece for the last eighteen months. He had not been contented with one exertion, or a great, but solitary, sacrifice : men, provisions, and treasure, had been renewed during that period more than once. His fleets were fitted out for the use of the Porte, in the basins of Alexandria, with as much activity and regularity, as if their equipment had been going on in the Bosphorus under the eye of the Grand Seignior himself. From the first landing of his troops in the Morea, success had returned to wait upon the crescent, and every day since had seen the fortunes of Greece sinking nearer to their former servile and degraded estate. which revived in the vallies and defiles of Greece the sure triumphs of European discipline. It was still more strange to see a vassal, who, like the Pacha of Egypt, was fond of power, and little scrupulous about the means of attaining it, not merely submitting to his ostensible dependence on the Grand Seignior, but expending his wealth, and transporting his best armies to a distant province, to fight the battles of a master, whom it was his policy, and, one should think, would have been his inclination, to cripple and humiliate. Provided as he was with all the muniments of war in a much more effective state than they had ever been possessed by the Sultan, he would have had little to dread, even if. At the close of 1826, these forthe Divan had been occupied with tunes had assumed a gloomier asno other cares than to watch and pect, than they had hitherto disrestrain the progress of his ambi- played at any stage of the conflict. tion. The insurgents had lost the fruits of all their exertions in western Greece; the bravest of them had fallen in the vain defence of Missolonghi; Napoli de Romania was almost the only strong position which they still retained in the Morea; and the government itself had betrayed the sense of insecurity by transferring its seat to the Islands. Dissension and jealousy reigned among their leaders; for, where the seeds of these ruinous dispositions have once been sown, disaster and disappointment are sure to cherish their growth. Each laid on his rival the blame of the series of calamities which threatened to terminate in their speedy subjugation, or sought to turn them to the account of some private end. None set the example of cordial cooperation, of honest and determined unity of purpose. The members of the ostensible government were quarrelling among themselves about But, harassed and distracted as the Turkish government was, on every side-in Greece, by a growing rebellion which had swept her fleets from the sea and driven her armies from the field-in Wallachia, Servia, and Moldavia, by an illconcealed spirit of discontent which rendered these provinces a burthen on the monarchy-and around them, and along the shores of the Euxine, by the armies of Russia, whose policy was ever languishing for a feasible pretext to push its conquests beyond the Danube-the Sultan could have offered no successful resistance to the defection of his great vassal, or prevented Mohammed from easily converting his pachalick into an independent monarchy. But, hitherto, Mohammed, notwithstanding all the seductions of circumstances, had held fast his integrity. It was with his treasures, and with the blood of his armies, that the cause of the Sul the place of meeting, and threaten ing to set up a couple of rival congresses, while the scymitars of the Turks were flashing at their gates. The events, however, which occurred in the beginning of the year, were calculated for a time to excite hope rather than to encourage despair. The inactivity of Ibrahim during the latter part of 1826, had allowed them time at least to recover from their dismay. Advantage was taken of it to make considerable exertions to provision Napoli, which the committee of government abandoned for the island of Poros. The whole population of Spezzia, with their families and their vessels, were transported to Hydra; Hydra itself was strengthened by a garrison of irregular troops. Karaiskaki, how ever, was the only leader who kept the field efficiently. His band had been strengthened by the junction of the devoted men who made their escape from Missolonghi by cutting their way through the works and the ranks of the besiegers. He still maintained the ascendancy in the mountains of Livadia, and threatened to become so troublesome, that Redschid Pacha sent against him a body of Albanians, part of the troops with which he was pressing the siege of Athens. Karaiskaki met and defeated them at Debrena. Making good use, in his pursuit of them, of his knowledge of the country, he surrounded them in the neighbourhood of Arakova, completely cutting off their retreat. A desperate battle ensued, which lasted five hours. The Turks, after losing a great number of men, and the whole of their baggage, retired to a new position, whither Karaiskaki followed, and, without engaging, kept them shut up during five days. They then proposed to capitulate on condition of being allowed to retire; but the Greek commander answered, that they might now do with him as the Greeks had done with them at Missolonghi-make good their own way. He then dislodged them from their position, forced them toaction, and killed, according to his own despatch, one thousand three hundred of them, among whom were the Kiaya Bey, Moustapha Bey, and two other Beys. The shattered remains of the Albanian corps immediately evacuated Livadia. A few days afterwards, he defeated another body of Turks who were marching to Salona. These advantages were encouraging in themselves, and were of additional importance as holding out a hope, that the troops, who gained them, might march to the relief of Athens, the siege of which was still closely pressed by the Seraskier Redschid Pacha. Colonel Fabvier, after his unfortunate expedition to Negropont, had returned to Attica; and, taking advantage of the departure of part of Redschid's army for Livadia, he succeeded in throwing himself into the Acropolis with a body of three hundred men, and conveying to the garrison a supply of provisions. In the beginning of February, the Greeks prepared two expeditions, one by land, the other by sea, to raise the siege by a joint attack. The naval expedition, which consisted of two thousand men, set out from Salamis on the 5th of Febru ary, after sunset, and, landing at the Piræus the same night, carried several posts on the shore, which were feebly defended. Some days before, another Greek corps of two thousand five hundred men, under the order of Vasso and Bourbachi, had marched from |