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MAUROCORDATO AND COLOCOTRONI.*

He was the primary mover in our glorious cause since the power of the Venetians was broken by the common enemy. Enriched by commerce, he left it early, and collecting about him the few literary men + whom our unfortunate nation at

journal. His inoffensive manners, his charity, his liberality, conciliated the hearts of all. The government felt and acknowledged the utility of his labours: its new subjects were better disposed toward it, and others were more ready to become so. Above all, the Servians, then under Paswan Oglou, read with avidity the evangile of their freedom. The divan of Constantinople was informed of it: a demand was made that Rhigas be delivered up, and was at once acceded to. He and eight of his friends were seized by the police of Vienna, chained, thrown into a boat on the Danube, and committed to a Turkish guard.

Maurocordato. Pope Clement the ninth died of vexation at being unable to succour the island of Crete. It is true, the Venetians, who were expelled from it, were of his church: we are separated from it only by a syllable. Is there neither Pope nor King who can step over a syllable in our defence? that time produced, went to Vienna and edited a Systematically have we been persecuted, regularly have we been abandoned; and I know not which despot is most deserving of our abhorrence and execration, whether he whose intolerable chains we have wrenched and cast away from us, or the colder barbarian the most forward to promise and the most able to afford us succour. Superseding this picture, and covering it as with a black crape, let us present another to our country worthy to be placed on the next panel to that which represents the heroic Hofer, the last and truest defender of Austria, delivered up by her to his murderers. No crime of despotism, however enormous, is without a parallel. When we fancy we have reached that point of congelation above which it is impossible to breathe, we see another such hanging with all its horrors over our heads. The calm, intelligent, and virtuous Giannone, a century ago, edited his elaborate and faithful History of Naples, in which a few among the usurpations and frauds of the Popedom were exposed. Inquisitors and assassins were employed against him and he was forced to abandon his profession of advocate, to leave his family, his friends, his country, and to seek protection, where lately Hofer first and vainly sought it, in Vienna. The friendship of Prince Eugene could not defend him against the malice of the Pope, working on the pusillanimity of the Emperor. He was driven from Austria, and took refuge in Venice. Here also was a kind of Inquisition. Giannone was seized by night, and was cast before sunrise on the shores of the papal territory. He found means however of escaping to Geneva. After a residence of several months in that city, he was invited by an emissary of the Sardinian king to a villa on the opposite side of the lake here he was arrested. For vindicating the privileges of the king against the pretensions of the pope, his reward was a strict and solitary confinement, first in a fortress of Savoy, then in the citadel of Turin, where, after twelve years of imprisonment, he died.

Colocotroni. Say no more of the dead. The curses of good men are barren in our days, whatever they were formerly, and wither the heart they rise from, not the head they fall on. Why revert to Giannone? Why to Hofer ? Is not Rhigas nearer !

Maurocordato. Yes. Rhigas, we know, was born at Velestinos in Thessaly, about the year 1753.

* The elder; the younger was less faithful to his country.

In vain was the torture inflicted on them to extort the names of their accomplices. At the sight of Widdin, “O strong and beauteous city!" cried Rhigas, "residence of a wise and valiant prince! never hast thou seen him abandoning his defenders, nor intimidated by an enemy, far or near." The animated tone, the look of exultation in our protomartyr of resuscitated freedom, was the signal of death to his countrymen and himself. Apprehensive that it denoted the proximity of a rescue, the captain of the guard ordered the larger stones in the ballast to be fastened about their necks. During this operation they sang the hymn of Liberty which Rhigas composed, and, when they had begun the louder chorus, were cast into the river.

Colocotroni. O Rhigas! who among the blessed sits nearer to thy God than thou? Hear me ! look down on our country! the eyes of every angel will follow thine, and weep at its abandonment by the Christian Princes.

Can no appeal be made to Humanity by Learning?

Maurocordato. In Austria no books are read but cookery-books, missals, and lives of the saints. Russia contains only one man of erudition, the archimandrite Hyacinthos, who has collected and translated the most valuable portion of Chinese literature. On suspicion of being a thinker, he has been banished to Archangel, and is dying by an affection of the lungs.

Colocotroni. In France, in England, is there none who will speak aloud for us?

Maurocordato. The literary men of France have a censor over them: upon which some have become missionaries and jesuits, and some Mahometans: others write odes on the triumphs of the

† Zabira, a Greek of Sialista, is reported to have left behind him a catalogue and biography of the Greek writers since the capture of Constantinople: he died in the year 1804.

Duc d'Angoulême, and on the Trocodero in the | is done by open force, to which nothing is prenursery of the Duchess de Berri. England has cursory or subsidiary. Our enemies the Turks partymen in profusion. If a solitary sedate repub- are somewhat of this character. Now I lay it lican should rise up in that country, they would down as a maxim, that the weaker of two powers, unite and tear him to pieces; just as the beggars at variance, should never employ the same of two streets against a stranger at the corner who weapons as the stronger: when it can not find (they suspect) may beg. better, at least it should look for what are different and unexpected. If we Greeks at present form our regiments on the model of the English, we shall lose half our strength. By good fortune, our troops are composed of men united by blood or neighbourhood, and partly put into motion by the spirit of love and concord, partly by emulation: for the different regions of Greece, you know, are just as much rivals now as they were anciently. In no other part of Europe is there in the military establishment the least consideration of moral force: vices and virtues are equally compressed: men are filed and packeted like pins and needles, according to their length: an inch in stature divides two brothers, two friends, two rivals in the affections of the same mistress, leaving room for the union of the brave man and the coward. Nothing that is ridiculous, absurd, injurious, or offensive, is omitted in the modern practice: and if your English commentator draws his conclusions from it, and recommends it to our imitation, we have only to thank him for his kind intent.

Colocotroni. The English have no need of a republic, none of their habits or imaginations resting on it, and enjoying as they do what liberty they desire. Yet I can not see why, when I myself am shaven, I should break the razor, or hinder the use of one in those who want it; as they do in regard to freedom, from an imperfect and erroneous calculation in the ledger-book. Nearly all the writers may indeed be hired by the government, and the few of them who are not hired may live in expectancy of place and profit; yet the public is much interested in our cause, and has borne toward us that liberality for which nothing short of eternal gratitude can be an adequate return.

Maurocordato. General, I have received from an Englishman, who resides at Florence, a military map of Greece, in which all those places are accurately marked where great battles have been fought, and to which a topographical description is added, wherever it was to be found either in ancient historians or modern travellers.

Colocotroni. The ancients, who excelled us in most things of importance, excelled us principally in the variety of expedients for attack and defence. Every great general was a great inventor. Within the memory of man, I believe, not a stratagem has been thought of by any in Europe, be it old or new, original or borrowed. Campaigns are formed as much by a receipt as custards, and sieges as cheesecakes. I know the better part of Greece perfectly, and only wish your English friend could devise the means for me of bringing my enemy where beaten enemies were brought formerly.

The Greeks have performed, in the last three years, as many arduous actions as their ancestors ever performed within the same period, and have evinced a constancy such as they have never exhibited since the days of Pericles. The British force is composed of three nations, each striving for precedency in valour. Hence whenever a large body of troops is assembled, there must be a portion of each, and vigour is exerted by all: but when smaller detachments of one nation are sent out on what they call diversions, we generally find them fail: there being no such spirit of rivalry and emulation. It can not be dissembled that the victories of the English, in the last fifty years, have been gained by the high courage and steady discipline of the soldier; and the most remarkable, where the prudence and skill of the commander were altogether wanting. Place any distinguished general of theirs where Murillo was placed in America, Mina in Spain, and then inform me what are your hopes, and whether you expect from him the same activity and the same expedients. Whatever is done by the English

Greece has much to do, much not to do. God, who hath restored her miraculously to her enthusiastic and vigorous youth, will guide and protect her in it, and will open by degrees before her all the sources of knowledge, and all the means of improvement and prosperity.

Maurocordato. The paper I hold in my hand recommends the thing on which you particularly insist, the diversity of weapon; nor does the author quote an English authority, but the authority of an American, who suggested it to his country when she was about to contend with a military force to which hers was disproportionate, both in numbers and in discipline. The interest, says my correspondent, I feel and have always felt, in the fortune of those who struggle to be free, persuades me to submit some reflections, perhaps not unimportant, to your country. If they were entirely my own, adds he, I might hesitate more to offer them, although of late years I have studied these matters with some attention, and have examined them with some industry. Franklin proposed to the consideration of the Anglo-Americans, whether the bow be not a more effectual weapon than the musket. Its lightness, the ease with which it may be kept dry, with which it may be concealed and recovered, with which it may be loaded and discharged, with which it may be preserved in order or replaced, are not its only advantages.

Patriotic as are the Greeks, there are many who, on receiving a musket from the government, would be induced to return home, that they might rather employ it at the chase than in battle. The bow, at least in the beginning, would not serve the

purpose, would never hold forth such an induce- | If any considerable body of archers, well supment, and nobody would buy it if offered for sale. ported, drew upon an unprepared enemy (and all When munition is exhausted in the villages and at this day are so) they would gain, if not the in the mountains, where we fight most frequently, battle, the advantage. No fire could produce such the soldier can find no more, and is no longer a destruction, such confusion, or leave effects so soldier for some days; while every wood and immediately visible, so generally appalling. thicket, every house and shed, produces the material of arrows. Youths, from their tender age or from their idle habits, incapable of carrying heavy arms, would carry a bow, it being no impediment either in attack or flight, and if thrown away, it is little loss to them, and no advantage to the enemy.

The advice of Franklin was not rejected because it was irrational or reprehensible, but because the Anglo-Americans were nearly all well exercised in the management of fire-arms, and because they found in the cities a superabundance of powder and shot. Far different in Greece: the choice is yet to be made; and you will surely make it, says our friend, of that material which is at once the most plentiful and the most easy to work, that in which the exercise is the least laborious, and the attainment of skill the least difficult. Suppose two kinds of arms, or, if you please, two kinds of tactics, equally good: if either of these be unexpected by the enemy, that is preferable. Even the worse, the first time it is practised, will give the advantage to those who employ it, unless its defects be too evident.

The ancients, he thinks with you, reasoned much more and much better on this business than the moderns; and they always used a great diversity of weapons in the same army; the advantage of which is demonstrated by Folard in his commentary on Polybius.

The arrow acts in three manners; rectilinearly, curvilinearly, and perpendicularly; the musketball in one only, the rectilinear. Twelve arrows are discharged before the musket can be discharged the third time, even supposing that it is always clean, and that it never misses fire. The musket without bayonet, as are many of ours, is very inconvenient; for we must often draw the sword, and then what becomes of it? while the bow, thrown in a moment across the shoulder, leaves the right hand at liberty, and the body unencumbered, for the other ways of defence or of attack.

The Turks fight in close array; so that every arrow strikes either man or horse; and it is remarkable that a moderate puncture makes the horse intractable, while to a severe musket-shot he often seems for a time insensible. The report of fire-arms by night or in ambuscade betrays the soldier; the arrow not. Even by day it sometimes is expedient that Death come veiled. The lock of fire-arms is the most important part of them, and is the most liable to injury, from a blow, from a fall, or from service. The musket is composed of many parts, each subject to be detached or loosened, some to be lost, as the rod and the flint, and the loss may not be perceived until it is fatal.

He who carries a bow instead of a musket, may also carry provisions for five entire days; an incalculable advantage in a country laid waste on every side, and which will enable him in most situations to choose and change his encampment as he pleases. When a foot-soldier thus armed has taken the horse of an enemy, he may mount and use him, should circumstances require it, which he could not do with musket and bayonet, even in case of necessity.

The bow has no need of cleaning; the musket has need of it every day; and after a march or an engagement, when it may want it most, the soldier feels little inclination to this surcharge of labour, and often has not tow, sometimes not water, as ours experienced on the mountains last summer, when even in the plains there was barely a sufficiency to quench their thirst. By the lightness of this weapon, and the little danger there is of its sounding loud in striking against anything, munition-waggons and stores may be set on fire, applying to the arrow inflammable substances.

The Turks are still masters of cities and fortresses which you must take. No nation defends a place so obstinately and courageously as they do and you have some which they will soon attack. Here the bow is greatly a better weapon than the musket. For in the hurry of firing on those who mount to the assault, few balls are well rammed; hence they fall out or fall inoffensively; and nothing is more difficult than to hit a man, aiming at him perpendicularly. The arrow on this occasion would seldom miss. You may have reason then to be glad that they no longer use the bow, in which formerly lay their strength.

Colocotroni. These observations are worth attention. What have you beside?

Maurocordato. The observations on defensive armour are original and important. Even so late as the reign of Louis XIV. the officer wore it. In the battle of Waterloo, more glorious to the victor than any since that of Leuctra, if perhaps you except four others won by the same nation, at Cressy, at Agincourt, at Poictiers, and at Blenheim, three regiments of light cavalry in succession were ordered to attack the French cuirassiers. Each made several charges, and lost the greater part of its men in killed or wounded. If, adds my correspondent, these English regiments had been defended by the armour I am about to propose for yours, they would have lost much fewer, and, although no troops are braver, more expert, or better disciplined, than the French cuirassiers, would probably have repulsed them: for the English horses were fresher, not having surmounted such acclivities, nor having toiled so long over a deep tenacious clay.

Suppose it possible to discover a substance on which the seasons have little or no effect; which resists heat, cold, moisture: iron does not. Suppose it possible to discover a substance which leaves every limb its elasticity, its full play and action iron does not. Suppose it possible to discover a substance in which the soldier, if necessary, may sleep: in iron he can not.

In fact, general, he recommends the use of cork armour; the usual thickness of which material is sufficient to resist the bayonet, and which a musket-ball will rarely penetrate. By employing this, the soldier who cannot swim has all the advantages of him who can: he may be knocked down in it, but he will not be killed nor badly wounded: seldom will a particle of it enter the flesh; and in case it should, no substance whatever is so easily extracted: nor will there ever be those contusions which are often mortal in the head: for although the sabre does not penetrate the metal, it indents it so deeply as to produce the same effect. We have experienced the dizziness that the helmet occasions in a few hours of exertion: this destroys both activity and strength. Nothing is so cool to the head as cork, or presents so equal and wholesome a temperature in all seasons. Its additional weight is imperceptible to the horse; nor is the dismounted soldier lost, as the steel-cased cuirassier is. This armour is cheap and durable; it occupies no time in cleaning, none in putting on; everyone can mend or replace it.

Some of the other projects must be left to the discretion of our Government: they are political rather than military: they are calculated to act instantaneously and effectually: and the author says of them, 'There are circumstances in which Themistocles should be heard before Aristides, and indeed without him.'

He recommends that the Acro-corinthos, and some other positions, should be flanked with strong Martello towers, and gives an account of an English ship of seventy-four guns, utterly ruined off Corsica by such a tower, mounting one only. Here is also a proposal to construct, or rather to employ, for we have them in many of our ports, gunboats similar to those used by the Russians in the battle of Tchesme.

Colocotroni. I hope we are not yet reduced to imitate the Russians in anything. The least inventive of the human race, and the most hostile to inventions and improvements, can hardly be presented to Greeks for a model, by one who appears well acquainted with our history, with our capacities, and with our wants.

Maurocordato. He informs me that the invention of this is due to his countryman and friend, General Bentham, a man equally distinguished for courage, humanity, and science.

Colocotroni. I know almost as little of English inventors as the Emperor of Turkey, or Morocco, or Austria. War is my pursuit; come to the point; let me see his project. I may recommend it; for the wisest men and most useful things want recommendation; and the tongue

of the fool is often requisite to the inventions of the wise.

Maurocordato. General Bentham commanded the naval armament of Russia at the battle of Tchesme, under (where princes are entrusted with command this word usually means over) Prince Potemkin. Gunboats had always been built solidly, with strong traverses, to prevent the recoil of the gun. Hence, after every fire, the motion of the vessel was so violent and of so long continuance, that the discharges were intermitted and uncertain. One would imagine that little experience was requisite to demonstrate how, leaving the cannon to its recoil, and the vessel to its own action upon the water, no violent shock could be given, and how the succeeding charges would be more rapid and more easily directed. Instead of the old gunboat, constructed at much expense and soon ruined, he placed heavy cannon upon barks deemed before incapable of bearing them: but it was soon apparent that, on still water, they were adequate to destroy the most formidable ships of the line. The general showed the troops and mariners that the water itself gives the proper degree both of recession and of resistance, without danger to the gunner or detriment to the boat. The advantages of the invention are these: that the boats, if they are to be built, do not cost a fifth of the others: that worse timber and a smaller quantity of it will serve: and that merchant-ships taken from the enemy may be converted into them.

Colocotroni. Do the English use them constantly? for in these matters they have more authority with me than in others.

Maurocordato. They do not: because they have no need of gun-boats on their coasts, commanding, as they do, the ocean: because too their seas are tempestuous, and their expeditions for the greater part distant: and because they are reluctant that their enemies should acquire from them the benefit of an invention, by which they themselves could not profit in the same degree. The small gun-boat not presenting a broadside to an enemy, the Turk, the worst of gunners, would hardly ever strike it; while it would rarely miss him, and would never fail to discourage where it might not disable.

My correspondent is urgent that every mariner and soldier on board should be armed with a bow, and with a longer and heavier pike than any in common use. Recurring to actions by land, he observes that the length of the pike gave the victory to the Greeks in the first battle against Xerxes, when the Immortals of that autocrat were repulsed by the Lacedæmonians, according to Herodotus, from this cause only. The bow is recommended at sea more earnestly, and in our gun-boats and small boats most particularly, from the necessity of loading them lightly.

Colocotroni. Should any of these suggestions be introduced, it must be done suddenly, secretly, and diffusively.

Maurocordato. The political reflections of my correspondent will be the subject of some future

MAUROCORDATO AND COLOCOTRONI.

consideration. To obtain our independence, he | Spain or Portugal had any, that ally would model would propose to the Turk the same annual sub- the adopted form of government; in other words, sidy as comes into the treasury at present, which would change the features without diminishing is little more than a fifth of what is levied; he the weight of slavery. Providence, I trust, will would engage that we should admit into our ports favour our exertions: I would propose then to no vessel of a potentate at war with Turkey, and leave a wide space between us and the dominions that we should sign no treaty of alliance with of a government more systematically and more anyone upon her confines; he would consent that degradedly tyrannical. Indignant as we justly the Greeks in Asia and other parts should be are at the unworthy treatment we have received, united in the territory bounded on the north by and conscious, as we can not but be, that we are Olympus and the Ceraunians, on the east by the undegenerate descendants of a people which Pro- never since the foundation of the world hath the Egæan Sea, and including Crete. perty should be exchanged by Turkish and beheld a rival in glory, we must acknowledge that Greek commissioners, aided by the consuls of no conqueror is milder than the Turkish, no reliFrance, England, and Sweden, and the contract gion more tolerant, no judge more dispassionate, should be carried into execution in three years' no law more equitable. He informs me that many Christian and Jewish families have records of places in Crete, where the treasures of houses, of churches, and of monasteries, were deposited on its subjugation. Turkey does not derive one hundred and eighty thousand zecchins annually from the conquest. She would readily compromise in a few years, probably on the breaking out of the first war, for the tax stipulated, and accept ten or twelve years' purchase. Indeed on her expressing any doubt of security of our faith, we might offer as much, with no fear of a refusal, and could obtain it by a loan from England. So moderate a debt would rather be a bond to unite us than a burden.

Colocotroni. A society of Englishmen, no less patriotic, has kindly sent to me three hundred bibles, in readiness for the next campaign; with an exhortation to prohibit dancing in private houses, unless among persons of a certain age and rank; a remonstrance against what is usual at the corners of streets, or lanes, or stable-doors; and a form of prayer to be offered up in our churches. Instead of this, our patriarch may be requested to insert in the Litany a petition to the Almighty, that, in the bowels of his compassion, it may please him to retain in the government of the Seven Isles his Excellency Sir Thomas Maitland, so that the people shall never cease to sigh for union with us; and that likewise in his infinite mercy he may remove all impediment to his Excellency, by removing for ever Lord Guildford, in whose presence Learning would almost forget her losses, and dismembered Greece her sufferings.

Maurocordato. Yes, Greece shall arise again, like Ulysses from under the wand of Pallas, when his wrinkles were smoothened, and his tattered garment cast away from him.

Colocotroni. Nevertheless, whatever arms she takes up, she may look forward to years of agony, and to more enemies than the Turk. All the old governments in Europe will attempt to increase our difficulties, and, when they have augmented them to the utmost in their power, will point them out as the natural fruits of insubordination, for such they call resistance, which is the more criminal in their eyes, the longer and the more patiently you have borne oppression. Happily we have no ally: we have an oppressor the less. If

Maurocordato. But many countries, once Grecian, lie desolate: Crete can hardly discover the traces of five amid her hundred cities. True; islands, which when free are the happiest of countries, are the most miserable when they are For the subjection endured under subjected. modern governments is far different in its effects from that endured under our ancestors and the Towns, harbours, and marts, arose Romans. upon it. Be my witnesses on one side, Cyprus, Lesbos, Chios, and ye starry host of Cyclades ! stand on the other, Sicily, Sardinia, Ireland, with your herds of mendicants, your bands of robbers, your pestiferous marshes, and your deserted ports. What countries are naturally more fertile? what more wretched? Wild theories have not renThe towns of the dered them so; yet the only mischiefs to be extirpated are wild theories. Valtellina under the protection of Switzerland, the cities of Ragusa and Genoa and Venice, had enjoyed a long prosperity, all several hundred years, some above a thousand; and one had arrived by its prudence and industry at an age which appeared forbidden to human institutions; when suddenly a sage, too autocratical to be taught anything by sages of another class, draws around his shoulders a cat-skin hung with saints, and is informed, as he swallows his morning draught of brandy, that if they really were happy, they were happy from wild theories, and must be corrected. Let us, O Colocotroni, cast our eyes a little way into the wilds of these theories; no such wilds as Siberia can open to us, nor the Ukraine, nor the Chersonese, nor the plains of Hungary, nor the Campania of the Popes and Bourbons, each by nature so fertile, each by despotism so corroded and exhausted; but such wilds as our Attica and our Thessaly and our Boeotia once rejoiced in ; wilds of equality; wilds where the heart of man in full expansion heaved high and freely through the course of ages; where the human form possessed such dignity as none other than a native of this country could represent or could imagine. Wild theories! that unite men in justice and amity! Wild theories! that gave birth and nurture to every art and every science; that even taught reason and humanity to the despot who lashed the sea!

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