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The Governor of Prevesa thanked his Lordship, and assured him that he would take care that equal attention should be in future paid to the Greeks, who might fall into his hands. Proceedings at Missolonghi Byron's Suliote Brigade Their Insubordination Difference with Colonel Stanhope Imbecility of the Plans for the Independence of Greece
The same feelings which governed them soon spread to the provinces of Etolia and Acarnania; or rather, perhaps, being previously ripe for revolt, these provinces resolved to avail themselves of the same occasion. Missolonghi now became the centre of rebellion; and Kourshid's difficulties were daily augmenting.
But the mountains of Epirus were still filled with Turkish troops, who advanced to lay siege to Missolonghi, defended by a small garrison of four hundred men under Marco Bozzaris. Mavrokordatos contrived to come to his relief, and the town soon had three thousand defenders.
Then the Greek Insurrection attracted him, he raised what money he could, set out for Greece, showed in the distracted counsels of the insurgents much more practical and untheatrical heroism than he had hitherto been credited with, and died of fever at Missolonghi on the 19th of April 1824.
In his Crescent and the Cross; or, Romance and Realities of Eastern Travel, the English author WARBURTON thus tells the story of the well-known deed that saved Missolonghi to the Greeks and hastened the delivery of their country: "When Missolonghi was beleaguered by the Turkish forces, Marco Bozzaris commanded a garrison of about twelve hundred men, who had barely fortifications enough to form breastworks.
'What peril? we are not now in Albania, nor in the passes to Ephesus, Missolonghi, or Lepanto; there are plenty of us well armed, and the Choriotes have not courage to be thieves. 'True, Affendi; but, nevertheless, the shot is ringing in my ears. 'The shot! not a tophaike has been fired this morning. 'I hear it, notwithstanding bom bom as plainly as I hear your voice. 'Bah. 'As you please, Affendi; if it is written, so will it be.
Byron was then at Missolonghi, whither he had gone in January, 1824, to die in April. Long before, while stirring up the sympathy of all lovers of liberty for the cause of regeneration in Greece, he had shown that regeneration could be by no means a short or easy work, and now he had to report that the real work was hardly yet begun nay, that it seemed almost further off than ever.
Among those who volunteered with a chivalrous sympathy to aid them in their combat was Lord Byron, who died at Missolonghi . Nicholas I. of Russia, who in 1825 succeeded Alexander I., was more inclined to take an active part in the Greek contest, as he considered himself the head of all Christians of the Greek faith.
Goethe and Schiller were in the prime of early manhood; Kant and Klopstock elderly, but with years yet to live; Scott was just laying down his poet's pen and preparing to take up the immortal quill with which he wrote his first "Waverley;" Moore was singing his sweet melodies; Wordsworth had yet to lay the foundations of the "Lake Poetry;" and the fair boy, Byron, was chanting his early songs, not yet for many a year to die at Missolonghi.
The offer is to be made to the Turks of an independent Greece, from the Gulf of Volo to Missolonghi, or of a Greece under Suzeraineté, with Negropont, and the line from Volo to the Gulf of Arta. As to the really important matter, the remonstrance to Russia, nothing was done.
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