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One man thought otherwise; this was Anagnostoras; he, by urging the desolations which would follow a retreat, brought over the rest to his opinion; and it was resolved to take up a position at Valtezza, a village three hours' march from Tripolizza.
On my rising to retire, his highness informed me, with more polite condescension than a Christian of a thousandth part of his authority would have done, that during my stay at Tripolizza horses were at my command, and guards who would accompany me to any part of the country I might choose to visit.
In carrying this arrangement into effect, I was induced to go aside from the direct route, and to visit Velhi Pasha, at Tripolizza, to whom I had letters. Returning by Argos and Corinth, I crossed the isthmus, and taking the road by Megara, reached Athens on the 20th of February.
Thither, on the twenty- seventh of May, the Kihaya arrived with five thousand men, in three columns, having left Tripolizza at dawn; and immediately raised redoubts opposite to those of the Greeks, and placed three heavy pieces of cannon in battery.
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.
His two emissaries or envoys proceeded to Tripolizza, where they found Colocotroni seated in the palace of the late vizier, Velhi Pasha, in great power; the court-yard and galleries filled with armed men in garrison, while there was no enemy at that time in the Morea able to come against them!
The ceremonies on such visits are similar all over Turkey, among personages of the same rank; and as Lord Byron has not described in verse the details of what took place with him, it will not be altogether obtrusive here to recapitulate what happened to myself during a visit to Velhi Pasha, the son of Ali: he was then Vizier of the Morea, and residing at Tripolizza.
At Athens he met an old fellow-collegian, the Marquis of Sligo, with whom he soon after travelled as far as Corinth; the Marquis turning off there for Tripolizza, while Byron went forward to Patras, where he had some needful business to transact with the consul.
Thus far the tide had turned against the Greeks; but now came a decisive reaction in their favor; and, as if forever to proclaim the folly of despair, just at the very crisis when it was least to have been expected, the Kihaya was at this point joined by the Turks of Tripolizza, and was now reputed to be fourteen thousand strong.
Gordon's absence from Greece, and with some surprise, as a fact at that time unexplained and mysterious; but the simple explanation of this mystery was, that Mr. Gordon had been brought to the very brink of the grave by a contagious fever, at Tripolizza, and that his native air was found essential to his restoration.
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