The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II

The second letter was more brief. "The discrimination of your Highness," Lord Cochrane now wrote, "enables you to judge between those who offer advice to promote personal objects and those who disinterestedly desire the welfare of mankind. Egypt may become great by the attention of her rulers to her internal concerns, but not by war and foreign conquest, and assuredly not by the conquest of that people with whom your Highness is now engaged in hostilities, not only on account of the impossibility of reducing them to subjection but because the whole of Europe is directly or indirectly engaged in their support. I beg your Highness to be assured that, if I present myself to your consideration in a more conspicuous point of view than others, it is only because the habits of my life have enabled me to be openly instrumental in the protection of a Christian people whom you attack, and not because I feel animosity against your Highness, nor because I desire the overthrow of the lawful power of your Highness. Should your Highness, however, listen to interested counsellors, or to those who hope to gain by adulation, and continue the present unjust and sanguinary contest, I take leave once more to warn you that the first visit I have had the honour of paying you shall not be the last, and that it is not in the power of your Highness to prevent the destruction of your ships destined for the invasion of Greece, nor to defeat my intention to block up the port of Alexandria. I had the honour to address your Highness twelve months ago; but have thought proper to repeat once more the honest advice I then expressed, in order that your Highness may acquit me when, in the hour of adversity, you have to regret that you have not listened to the voice of truth."

Lord Cochrane's threats could not be enforced. Off the coast of Asia Minor and among the southern islands of the Archipelago he waited for more than a week. But no adequate reinforcements or supplies of provisions arrived. The disorganised fleet became more and more unmanageable. One vessel after another deserted, and those that remained in nominal attendance on the flag-ship could not be brought under control. Lord Cochrane, who had made skilful sailors and brave warriors of enervated Chilians and Brazilians, found the Greeks utterly unmanageable. Up to the 2nd of July he tried vainly to bring them into order, and only succeeded in pursuing them from island to island until, on that day, they had drawn him back to the neighbourhood of Hydra. There they all dispersed, and with a heavy heart he anchored at Poros on the 4th. The Hellas was immediately deserted by her crew. Another month had been wasted and another bold project for the assistance of Greece had been spoiled by the want of patriotism which, exhibited first and most flagrantly by the leaders, was now rapidly pervading all classes of the Greeks.

An amusing instance of the worthlessness of the Greek sailors, whom, from first to last, he tried to make useful, may here be given. On one occasion, following his invariable habit of taking every possible occasion of trying to win the confidence and friendship of those under him, he was exhibiting a magic lantern to the crew of the Hellas. At many of the dissolving views they manifested a childish delight, but at length one unfortunate picture was brought before them. It depicted a Greek running from the pursuit of a Turk, and then melted into a view of the Turk cutting off his captive's head. At that sight every Greek on board took fright. Some ran into the hold of the ship, others jumped overboard, and many hours had to be spent in bringing them together again and dispelling their frivolous and superstitious fears.

Lord Cochrane, however, though disheartened, still sought, with unabated zeal, to render to Greece such help as became his name and character. But he saw that this could not be done without a thorough reform in naval affairs; and this, often urged by him before, he lost no time in urging again. "The crew of the Hellas," he wrote to the effete Government on the very day of his return, "having, according to their usual practice, abandoned the vessel on her arrival in port, it is essential that others should be enlisted to serve in the frigate without delay. It is further essential that the individuals so enlisted shall engage to serve during a period of not less than six months, and that they shall be young men who will conform to the rules and regulations by which the ships-of-war of other states are governed. It is quite impossible to conduct a large ship-of-war amidst the noise and confusion which I have witnessed during the two months that have elapsed since my flag was hoisted on board this ship, and equally impossible to induce monthly crews to conform to habits of order and regularity. Under these circumstances, I enclose you a proclamation, stating the pay and advantages which will accrue to such individuals. I should prefer that the enlistment should take place under such respectable young men as propose to obtain rank in the national marine, and who can be in some degree responsible for the good conduct of the individuals who accompany them, each individual qualified for, and aspiring to, the rank of lieutenant being accompanied by sixty young seamen, the second lieutenants to be each accompanied by thirty. For this ship five of the first class and eight of the second are required." The proclamation which Lord Cochrane submitted to the Government detailed his plan for ensuring, or at any rate making possible, honest and hearty service in seafaring.

"I wish I could inform your excellencies," he said in another letter written two days later, "that the obstacles, however great, which presented themselves in the course of the naval service were all I had to contend with. The jealousies among the islanders, even the most enlightened, embarrassed me exceedingly; and these, I regret to say, cannot be alleviated by having recourse to your advice or authority, at the distance at which you are placed, without a correspondence so voluminous that I should occupy too much of your attention. I must, therefore, act according to my own responsibility; and in so doing I am aware that some may be displeased, and probably no one will be satisfied."

Nearly all the month of July, indeed, was spent by Lord Cochrane in zealous efforts to render the Greek navy more efficient. For this two things were needed – that the officers and crews should be honest and intelligent, and that there should be money enough in hand for paying their wages, for fitting out proper vessels, and for supplying the requisite stores and provisions. For the first object proclamations were issued, letters were written, and agents were sent into various parts of Greece and her islands. For the second, Lord Cochrane went personally to the assistance of Dr. Gosse, who, as Commissary-General of the Fleet, had been attempting to collect the revenues of the islands which, by order of the Government, had been assigned to naval uses. He succeeded to some extent in this, and also in quickening the latent patriotism of the people whom he visited.

His most important visit was to Syra, where, as will be seen from the letter which he addressed to the Government on the 13th of July, he was obliged to resort to strong measures for securing the good end he had in view. "I have the honour to inform your excellencies," he wrote, "that, a new crew having been procured for the Hellas with less delay than I anticipated, by reason of the pay having been increased one-third in amount, I proceeded to Syra, taking with me several of the principal inhabitants of the three maritime islands, who expressed to me, by letter, their anxiety to have an opportunity of promoting a loan on the credit of the revenues of the islands, which your excellencies had authorised me, jointly with others, to collect. I have now the pleasure to inform you that when I left Syra yesterday everything seemed to promise a favourable result; but in order to attain this important object it became necessary that I should take upon myself the responsibility of intimating to the prefect of police, who had assumed despotic authority, that it was essential to the public good that the magistrates should resume the functions that they exercised previous to his arrival. I am convinced that your excellencies will perceive as clearly as I do, that it will be impossible to preserve harmony amongst the islanders, if strangers are sent to exercise over the natives an authority that is not acceptable to them. Indeed, the character of these natives demands at all times prudence and circumspection on the part of the Government."

Unfortunately, the miserable triumvirate to which the direction of Greek affairs had been assigned until the arrival of Count Capodistrias was wholly wanting in prudence and circumspection. After vainly trying to maintain a show of authority, and to use it to their own aggrandisement at Damala and at Poros, they had, on the 4th of July, removed to Nauplia. There, however, they only found themselves more embarrassed than ever. While the last hopes of Greek independence, to be secured and maintained by Greeks themselves, were rapidly dying out, the leaders were amusing themselves and gratifying their petty jealousies and ambitions by conduct more despicable than ever. Nauplia was the seat of civil war between two military factions, whose joint contempt of the worthless Government would have been, at any rate, excusable, had not the interests of the whole nation been thereby injured. The triumvirate was driven from the town, and taking refuge in a little island in the Bay of Nauplia, wrote in despair to Lord Cochrane, asking him to come to its aid and devise some means of preserving, or rather of constructing, its authority.

To Nauplia he accordingly went on the 19th of July. "I am now at the anchorage of this place," he wrote thence to Dr. Gosse on the 22nd. "The town is evacuated by the inhabitants and abandoned by the Government. The latter are in the little island in the bay in the most deplorable condition, trembling like Sancho when invaded in his dominions of Barataria, and not knowing which way to turn, whether to avoid or meet the enemy. No words can depict the state of things. I have had correspondence with the Government and all the chiefs, but have waited on none, because I am determined to keep myself clear of faction, and go straightforward in what I consider to be my duty." "We are now weighing anchor," he added, in a postscript written in the evening of the same day, "and the Austrian commodore is coming into the bay – an evil omen. He is watching, like a vulture, the agonies of the expiring authorities of Greece."

"As you have done me the honour," said Lord Cochrane, in a letter to the Government, "to request my opinion regarding the manner of settling the disputes between the contending chiefs who hold the higher and lower fortresses of Nauplia, it becomes a sacred duty to give that opinion without the slightest reserve, because the consequences of any half measure will be entirely destructive of the influence of your excellencies throughout Greece, and eventually may frustrate the endeavours of the European powers to promote a settlement with the Porte. Your excellencies, then, must at once remove from the situation in which you are now placed, or, more properly speaking, to which you have fled, and where you are still under the cannon of the disputing chiefs, or both these chiefs must be caused to abandon the fortresses they hold. To suffer one to remain and to expel the other would be voluntarily to surrender your authority, and through Greece and throughout the world you would be considered in no other light than as instruments for giving the semblance of legality to the dictates of a military chief."

Lord Cochrane did not wait to see the end of this dispute between the mock Government and its nominal subjects. He left Nauplia on the 22nd of July to complete the arrangements he had made for another attempt in defence of Greece. He had already sent Admiral Saktoures and a small force to maintain a show of blockading Alexandria, in order that thereby neutral vessels, at any rate, might be deterred from giving aid to the Turkish cause. He had sent vessels to blockade the Gulf of Patras in the same way. He had also issued a vigorous proclamation to the inhabitants of Western Greece, urging them to rise against their oppressors, and he was eager to go thither himself and encourage the work, for which he hoped that his fleet and his naval arrangements were now better fitted. One important auxiliary to this work he hoped to have in a corps of marines, to the number of a thousand, which Colonel Gordon Urquhart was now trying, under his directions, to organise. "I have several things in view which even this small force could accomplish," he wrote to Dr. Gosse, "and amongst the rest will be the rooting out of the pirates from the islands."

More important, however, than the restraint of piracy, was the resistance, if possible, of the Turkish forces. Several of the Egyptian ships which Lord Cochrane had hoped to destroy in the harbour of Alexandria had now come out and joined the Ottoman fleet, which had Navarino for its head-quarters. He determined, without loss of time, to go and see what injury could be done to them; and accordingly, after a brief visit to Poros, where he took on board some stores and provisions, and where he left Dr. Gosse to use the scanty supply of money which he had collected in completing the equipment of the other vessels, he started in the Hellas, on the 28th of July, for the western side of the Morea.

On the 29th, when near Cape St. Angelo, he fell in with the Sauveur, returning from a cruise in the Gulf of Patras, and the two vessels proceeded with all haste to Navarino. They reached that port, and had sight of the Turkish fleet on the evening of the 30th. With French colours flying, Lord Cochrane reconnoitred its position, and then watched for an opportunity of attacking some part of it.

The opportunity occurred on the 1st of August. A corvette, carrying twenty-eight fine guns, and a crew of three hundred and forty, with two brigs and two schooners, had passed out on the previous day, apparently with the intention of conveying reinforcements to the Gulf of Patras. Lord Cochrane immediately gave them chase, and drove them backwards and forwards between Zante and the shore north of Navarino all through the night and till nearly noon on the 1st. Then suddenly tacking, he closed upon the corvette, and there was hard fighting – the first in which he had been able to persuade his Greeks to join – between the two vessels, for fifty minutes. At about one o'clock, after fifty of their number had been killed and thirty wounded, the Turks surrendered.10 Lord Cochrane found on board twenty Greek women and several children, who had been subjected to the vilest treatment. In the meanwhile, Captain Thomas, of the Sauveur, had engaged with one of the brigs, carrying twelve guns, and captured her with a loss of fifteen killed and wounded to the Turks, but none to the Greeks. The other vessels escaped, but an Ionian vessel, laden with provisions for the Ottoman army at Patras, was seized in the afternoon, and her cargo put to good use.

Lord Cochrane waited off Navarino for two days, hoping that some of the enemy's fleet would come out to attack him. They, however, locked themselves carefully in the harbour until he had set sail for the south, when they feebly attempted to pursue him. He thereupon, after releasing the Turkish prisoners at Candia, returned to Poros, there to leave his prizes and endeavour to take back a larger force with which worthily to supplement his recent successes.

CHAPTER XX

THE ACTION OF GREAT BRITAIN AND RUSSIA ON BEHALF OF HELLENIC INDEPENDENCE. – THE DEGRADATION OF GREECE. – LORD COCHRANE'S RENEWED EFFORTS TO ORGANISE A FLEET. – PRINCE PAUL BUONAPARTE, AND HIS DEATH. – AN ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE LORD COCHRANE. – HIS INTENDED EXPEDITION TO WESTERN GREECE. – ITS PREVENTION BY SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON. – LORD COCHRANE'S RETURN TO THE ARCHIPELAGO. – THE INTERFERENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND RUSSIA. – THE CAUSES OF THE BATTLE OF NAVARINO. – THE BATTLE.

[1827.]

The Duke of Wellington's mission to St. Petersburg in the spring of 1826, which has been already referred to, was part of a policy by which the British Government materially contributed to the ultimate independence of Greece. Its first result was the protocol of the 4th of April, in which England and Russia recognized the right of the Greeks to claim from the Porte a recognition of their freedom. At about the same time our Government had sent Mr. Stratford Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford de Redclyffe, as ambassador to Constantinople, with special instructions to use every endeavour to bring about a cessation of the war which should be favourable to Greece; and on the 24th of April the National Assembly at Epidaurus had authorized him to treat with Turkey on its behalf, agreeing, if no more favourable terms could be obtained, to a recognition of the Sultan's supremacy and the payment of tribute to him, on condition that Greece should be independent in all its internal government. Those terms, however, were rejected by the Porte; and after a delay of a year and a half it was forced by the Great Powers, slowly awakening from their long lethargy, to accede to arrangements far more favourable to Greece.

These negotiations, however, proceeded very slowly, and before the dawn of Greek independence there was a time of almost utter darkness, the darkest time of all being the few months following Lord Cochrane's arrival. "Vanquished Greece," says her historian, "lay writhing in convulsive throes. In herself there was neither hope nor help, and the question to be solved was merely whether the Mahometans would have time to subdue her before the mediating powers made up their minds to use force. That the former, if not checked from abroad, must speedily overrun the country did not admit of the least doubt. But it was equally certain that they could not pacify it; for, while the rich and timid prepared to emigrate, the poorer and hardier portion of the insurgents formed themselves into bands of robbers and pirates, which would have long infested the mountains and the Levant seas, deriding the efforts of the Porte to suppress them. The only branch of the Hellenic confederacy that still presented a menacing aspect was the navy under Lord Cochrane. Every other department was a heap of confusion. No government existed, since it would be idle to dignify with that name the three puppets set up by the Congress of Damala. None ever thought of obeying them, and they sealed their own degradation by carrying on an infamous traffic in selling letters of marque to freebooters. There was no army, because there was no revenue. After the fall of Athens, Roumelia was entirely lost, and the captains either renewed their act of submission to Reshid Pasha or fled to the Morea. It was not, however, with an intention of defending the peninsula that they retreated into it. Their purpose was to seize the fortresses, and thereby be enabled to make a good bargain with the Turks, or any other party that should remain in final possession. Nauplia and the Acrocorinthus were already garrisoned by Roumeliotes. Monemvasia, the third Peloponnesian stronghold yet held by the Greeks, was in the hands of Petro-Bey's brother, John Mavromikales, who, fitting out from thence predatory craft, converted it into a den of thieves."11

It is not strange that, amid all this confusion, cowardice, and treachery, Lord Cochrane should have found it almost impossible to achieve anything worthy of his abilities or of the cause which he desired so earnestly to serve. Yet he continued, in spite of all obstacles, to do all that lay in his power, in fulfilment of his duty, and even in excess of that duty. He had engaged to act as First Admiral of the Greek Fleet. Finding that there was no fleet for him to direct, he laboured with unwearied zeal not only to construct one and to turn his unmannerly subordinates into disciplined sailors and brave warriors, but also to persuade the landsmen to co-operate with him in trying to withstand, if not to drive back, the advancing force of the enemy. One day when he was at Poros, Dr. Gosse came on board the Hellas to visit him. "See, my friend," said Lord Cochrane, taking a loaded pistol from the inner pocket of his waistcoat, "see what it is to be a Greek admiral." He found it necessary to be always provided with a weapon with which he could defend himself from his indolent, unpatriotic seamen.

Having returned to Poros with his prizes on the 14th of August, he was obliged to wait there for twelve days. There were no funds to be had for the requisite repairs and other expenses in paying and feeding his crews. All he could do was to repeat his former arguments and entreaties for assistance from the miserable Government at Nauplia, and the more active, but still half-hearted primates of the islands. He also made all the other arrangements in his power for improving his fleet and for carrying on some sort of naval warfare among the southern isles, especially on the coast of Candia, and for fomenting an insurrection of the inhabitants of Western Greece, who, held in awe by the Turks ever since the fall of Missolonghi, had hitherto done little in aid of the national strife, but to whose support he now looked with some hope.

On the 24th he obtained a little further assistance. Mr. George Cochrane, whom he had sent to Marseilles in the Unicorn, to ask for fresh supplies of money and stores from the Philhellenes of Western Europe, but whose return had been long delayed, now arrived with a cargo of provisions, and with a sum of 5000l., which, though altogether inadequate to the work to be done, made possible some work at any rate.

In the Unicorn also came a new volunteer on behalf of Greek independence. The schooner having called at Zante on her way back, Mr. Cochrane there met Prince Paul Buonaparte, nephew of the great Napoleon who asked to be taken on board in order that he might serve under Lord Cochrane. This was agreed to, and the Prince, a youth about eighteen years old, and six feet high, became, immediately after his arrival at Poros, a favourite with Lord Cochrane and all his staff and crew. He was remarkable, said Dr. Grosse, for "his good-will, his amiability of character, his solidity of judgment, his intelligence, and the moderation of his principles."

His stay in Greece, however, was very brief. On the morning of the 6th of September, all on board the Hellas were startled by a shriek and the exclamation, "Ah, mon Dieu! je suis mort!" Lord Cochrane and several officers rushed to the Prince's cabin, there to find him lying in a pool of blood, and writhing in agony. His servant had been cleaning his pistols, and he had just loaded one of them to hang it on a nail, when, the trigger being accidentally struck, the weapon discharged and a ball entered his body and settled in the groin. Dr. Howe, an American surgeon, famous for his services to Greece and for later philanthropic labours, being at hand, came to his relief until Dr. Gosse could be sent for. All that could be done, however, was to lessen the pain, which he bore with great heroism through two-and-twenty hours. Lord Cochrane had him placed in his own cabin, and carefully tended him with his own hands. At seven o'clock in the following morning he cried out, "Ah, quel douleur!" and died immediately.

That melancholy accident had a sequel which must be told in illustration of the greed of the Greeks. The Prince's body was placed in a hogshead of spirits and conveyed to Spetzas, there to be deposited in a convent until the wishes of the father, Prince Lucien Buonaparte, could be ascertained as to its interment. A few months afterwards, some natives entering the convent and smelling the spirits, but apparently in ignorance of the use to which they had been applied, could not resist the temptation of tapping the hogshead and drinking a part of its contents.

Prince Paul Buonaparte died while Lord Cochrane was again making a tour of the islands, vainly trying to induce the inhabitants to provide him with adequate means for a formidable attack on the enemy. "In the port of Spetzas," wrote one of his officers, on the 29th of August, "there are now nearly forty vessels – none of them ready, not a man on board. All the men are out in cruisers, notwithstanding his excellency's order to fit out their vessels to meet the enemy's fleet. But such are the Greeks; they have no foresight, and until they see the enemy they will make no preparations, nor will they, unless the money is in their hands, expend a dollar to prepare a single fireship to defend their country. It is now twenty-eight days since Lord Cochrane ordered the vessels from Hydra, Spetzas, and Egina to be prepared, and they are not yet ready."