LETTER 541. TO HIS HIGHNESS YUSSUFF PACHA.

"Missolonghi, January 23. 1824.

"Highness!

"A vessel, in which a friend and some domestics of mine were embarked, was detained a few days ago, and released by order of your Highness. I have now to thank you; not for liberating the vessel, which, as carrying a neutral flag, and being under British protection, no one had a right to detain; but for having treated my friends with so much kindness while they were in your hands.

"In the hope, therefore, that it may not be altogether displeasing to your Highness, I have requested the governor of this place to release four Turkish prisoners, and he has humanely consented to do so. I lose no time, therefore, in sending them back, in order to make as early a return as I could for your courtesy on the late occasion. These prisoners are liberated without any conditions: but should the circumstance find a place in your recollection, I venture to beg, that your Highness will treat such Greeks as may henceforth fall into your hands with humanity; more especially since the horrors of war are sufficiently great in themselves, without being aggravated by wanton cruelties on either side. NOEL BYRON."

Another favourite and, as it appeared for some time, practicable object, on which he had most ardently set his heart, was the intended attack upon Lepanto—a fortified town[1] which, from its command of the navigation of the Gulf of Corinth, is a position of the first importance. "Lord Byron," says Colonel Stanhope, in a letter dated January 14., "burns with military ardour and chivalry, and will accompany the expedition to Lepanto." The delay of Parry, the engineer, who had been for some months anxiously expected with the supplies necessary for the formation of a brigade of artillery, had hitherto paralysed the preparations for this important enterprise; though, in the mean time, whatever little could be effected, without his aid, had been put in progress both by the appointment of a brigade of Suliotes to act under Lord Byron, and by the formation, at the joint expense of his Lordship and Colonel Stanhope, of a small corps of artillery.

[Footnote 1: The ancient Naupactus, called Epacto by the modern Greeks, and Lepauto by the Italians.]

It was towards the latter end of January, as we have seen, that Lord Byron received his regular commission from the Government, as Commander of the expedition. In conferring upon him full powers, both civil and military, they appointed, at the same time, a Military Council to accompany him, composed of the most experienced Chieftains of the army, with Nota Bozzari, the uncle of the famous warrior, at their head.

It had been expected that, among the stores sent with Parry, there would be a supply of Congreve rockets,—an instrument of warfare of which such wonders had been related to the Greeks as filled their imaginations with the most absurd ideas of its powers. Their disappointment, therefore, on finding that the engineer had come unprovided with these missiles was excessive. Another hope, too,—that of being enabled to complete an artillery corps by the accession of those Germans who had been sent for into the Morea,—was found almost equally fallacious; that body of men having, from the death or retirement of those who originally composed it, nearly dwindled away; and the few officers that now came to serve being, from their fantastic notions of rank and etiquette, far more troublesome than useful. In addition to these discouraging circumstances, the five Speziot ships of war which had for some time formed the sole protection of Missolonghi were now returned to their home, and had left their places to be filled by the enemy's squadron.

Perplexing as were all these difficulties in the way of the expedition, a still more formidable embarrassment presented itself in the turbulent and almost mutinous disposition of those Suliote troops on whom he mainly depended for success in his undertaking. Presuming as well upon his wealth and generosity as upon their own military importance, these unruly warriors had never ceased to rise in the extravagance of their demands upon him;—the wholly destitute and homeless state of their families at this moment affording but too well founded a pretext both for their exaction and discontent. Nor were their leaders much more amenable to management than themselves. "There were," says Count Gamba, "six heads of families among them, all of whom had equal pretensions both by their birth and their exploits; and none of whom would obey any one of his comrades."

A serious riot to which, about the middle of January, these Suliotes had given rise, and in which some lives were lost, had been a source of much irritation and anxiety to Lord Byron, as well from the ill-blood it was likely to engender between his troops and the citizens, as from the little dependence it gave him encouragement to place upon materials so unmanageable. Notwithstanding all this, however, neither his eagerness nor his efforts for the accomplishment of this sole personal object of his ambition ever relaxed a single instant. To whatever little glory was to be won by the attack upon Lepanto, he looked forward as his only reward for all the sacrifices he was making. In his conversations with Count Gamba on the subject, "though he joked a good deal," says this gentleman, "about his post of 'Archistrategos,' or Commander in Chief, it was plain that the romance and the peril of the undertaking were great allurements to him." When we combine, indeed, his determination to stand, at all hazards, by the cause, with the very faint hopes his sagacious mind would let him indulge as to his power of serving it, I have little doubt that the "soldier's grave" which, in his own beautiful verses, he marked out for himself, was no idle dream of poetry; but that, on the contrary, his "wish was father to the thought," and that to an honourable death, in some such achievement as that of storming Lepanto, he looked forward, not only as the sole means of redeeming worthily the great pledge he had now given, but as the most signal and lasting service that a name like his,—echoed, as it would then be, among the watch-words of Liberty, from age to age,—could bequeath to her cause.

In the midst of these cares he was much gratified by the receipt of a letter from an old friend of his, Andrea Londo, whom he had made acquaintance with in his early travels in 1809, and who was at that period a rich proprietor, under the Turks, in the Morca.[1] This patriotic Greek was one of the foremost to raise the standard of the Cross; and at the present moment stood distinguished among the supporters of the Legislative Body and of the new national Government. The following is a translation of Lord Byron's answer to his letter.

[Footnote 1: This brave Moriote, when Lord Byron first knew him, was particularly boyish in his aspect and manners, but still cherished, under this exterior, a mature spirit of patriotism which occasionally broke forth; and the noble poet used to relate that, one day, while they were playing at draughts together, on the name of Riga being pronounced, Londo leaped from the table, and clapping violently his hands, began singing the famous song of that ill-fated patriot:—

"Sons of the Greeks, arise!

The glorious hour's gone forth."]