nd its inhabitants, after a long period of oblivion, have at length become objects of profound and general interest to the most enlightened nations of Europe. It was singular, indeed, that whilst classical scholars were immersed in the study of its poets, orators, and historians, the country that gave birth to so many literary treasures, though neither distant nor inaccessible, seemed to have been as completely forgotten, as if it had been blotted from the map of Europe. The learned contented themselves with supposing that the modern country was inhabited by rude and unknown tribes, governed by fanatical Turks, whose barbarous rule exposed travellers to continual insults and pillage, and had swept away all traces and memorials of the ancient glory of Greece. Besides, the country was not known to be distinguished by its natural beauties; and being confounded with the torpid mass of the Ottoman empire, its political importance was reduced to nothing.
Till a very late period, the only intelligible accounts we had of the country were drawn from Strabo and Pausanias. The inquiries of Spow and Wheler, Le Roy, and Stuart, which at length brought some of its precious antiquities to light, were chiefly addressed to artists and scholars. Chandler's Travels were not much better adapted for general use. But the work which, more than any other, contributed to render all subjects connected with Greece and its antiquities popular, was the Travels of Anacharis. Previous to the appearance of this work, however, various circumstances had contributed to bring the Greeks more conspicuously forward on the theatre of European affairs. While the general diffusion of education was increasing the number of those who felt an interest in classical subjects, the rise of the power of Russia, the connection she endeavoured to form with the Greeks, and her projects against Turkey, held out a probability that Greece might speedily regain some share of political importance. The Greeks themselves, by the desperate efforts they made in 1770, and again in 1790, gave a proof to the world, that their existence as a people, and their national feelings, had survived those destructive revolutions which were supposed to have overwhelmed them. When the political enthusiasm created by the French Revolution made the most gigantic plans of political change appear easy, the emancipation of this long neglected country from the Turkish yoke was looked to as one of the most certain and gratifying triumphs of the new principles. Before the interest arising from this state of things had expired, circumstances of a different kind directed public attention more immediately to Greece. The host of English travellers who had been accustomed to roam over the Continent, shut out from their usual routes by an extraordinary combination of events, were forced into less frequented tracts, and numbers of them visited Greece. By these, and by a few individuals from other parts of Europe, a great part of the country has been explored, and a vast mass of information given to the public. Its topography and statistics are now better known than those of many of the nearer and more accessible parts of Europe; the classical interest of the country has been augmented tenfold, by vivid descriptions of its monuments and its scenery; and the stirring events of the revolution lately completed, have greatly strengthened its claims to the attention and the sympathies of western Europe. It is now found that the modern Greeks, instead of being the mixed progeny of obscure and barbarous tribes, possess a respectable degree of civilization, and great capacities of improvement; that they have preserved the features and national character of their ancestors with surprising distinctness; and that their dialect does not deviate much farther from the language of Plato and Demosthenes, than that of Chaucer does from the English of the present day. Independently, too, of its other attractions, Greece surpasses Italy, and perhaps every other country in the world, in the beauty of its scenery. Its antiquities are not, like those of the latter country, accumulated chiefly upon a single spot. They are scattered over a wide surface, associated with a variety of scenery, and present memorials of many separate communities, distinguished by differences of character, habits, and civilization. Its monuments, compared with those of Rome, breathe a purer taste, a finer moral spirit, and bespeak a sublimer genius; they tell of brighter and better times, of characters and actions more surprising, generous, and romantic. Some of them transport the mind back to those remote times when truth and fable are blended,—to those delightful fictions which bear the impress of the genius of the people more distinctly than the real events of their history. No country, in short, presents greater attractions to a well-informed traveller; and as, in future, it will certainly be included in every classical tour, we may reasonably expect that, in a short time, every part of it will be completely explored.
In this article we shall first describe Greece in its full extent, according to the boundaries recognised in ancient times by the Greeks and Romans. We shall then give a brief sketch of the history of the late revolution; and conclude by a statistical view of the new state, which forms only a portion of ancient Greece.
The reader is therefore to understand, that this article consists of two parts. The first applies to the portion of Greece still ruled by the Turks, but alludes occasionally to the districts forming the new state, as they existed before the revolution. The second relates exclusively to the latter districts, that is, to Independent Greece, of which Otho is now king. The arrangement is inconvenient, but unavoidable, as the new state comprises only one third of the country, and the condition of the people is so much alike in both parts, that in the description of arts, manners, &c., they could not be properly separated. The history of the several ancient states will be found in other parts of this work, under their respective heads.
The name of Greece was originally restricted to a small territory northward of the Gulf of Corinth, called also Hellas. Afterwards it included Attica, Euboea, Peloponnesus, Epirus, and Thessaly; and ultimately Macedonia and Crete. In the brilliant periods of Grecian history, the extent of the country might be considered as coincident with the limits of those states which sent deputies to the Amphictyonic Council, and in this sense Aetolia and Acarnania, as well as Epirus, Macedonia, and Crete, ought to be excluded. But, though we shall notice these divisions, our object at present is rather to take the appellation in its most extensive sense, and to follow what may be considered the natural limits of the country; because the territories included within these limits are associated by certain political relations; and because many of the most interesting subjects of inquiry and discussion relating to the ancient, and still more to the modern state of Greece, connect themselves most naturally with this arrangement.
The continent of Greece, including Albania and Mace-
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1 Cellarii Geog. Antig. lib. ii. cap. 18; Strabo, lib. viii.; Potter's Antig. b. i. chap. 16. Greece is nearly shut in on the north by a chain of mountains known anciently by the names of Rhodope, Scomius, and Orbelus; it is bounded on the west by the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, on the south by the Mediterranean, and on the east by the Ægean Sea, or Archipelago. It extends from 36° 10' to 42° 40' of north latitude; and from 19° 45' to 24° 40' of east longitude from London. Its length, from Cape Matapan to Mount Orbelus, or Argentaro, is 450 English miles; its greatest breadth, from Durazzo to Calais, at the foot of Mount Pangaeus (a branch of Rhodope), 35 miles; and it embraces an area of 57,750 square miles, exclusive of all its islands except Euboea. But, as our ideas of the extent of the country have always a reference to those ancient states which comprised but very minute portions of its surface, it is necessary that its dimensions should be described more in detail.
The country recognised as Greece before the rise of the Macedonian power, comprehended the Morea or Peloponnesus, Attica, Euboea, Boeotia, Phocis, Doris, Ætolia, Arcadia, Thessaly, and Magnesia; and even several of these states included within these limits had little or no share in those splendid actions which have shed so much glory over the country. The surface of Peloponnesus, which included seven different states, is about 8950 square English miles in Danville's map; that of the countries just named, without the peninsula, including Euboea, is 14,800; and both together amount to 23,750 square miles; an extent of surface not exceeding two fifths of England, or nine fifths of the British isles. If to this we add 16,000 square miles for Albania or Epirus (including the basin of the Drino), 18,000 for Macedonia, and 1000 for the Cyclades, the whole surface of Greece and its islands will be 8,750 square miles, which is almost exactly the area of England. While Greece preserved its independence, however, all these territories were never united into one body politic, nor was their confederated force ever applied to the prosecution of any common enterprise. The communities whose warlike achievements and brilliant career in arts and philosophy raised the Grecian name so high, occupied but very minute portions of the country; as the following table, deduced from measurements on D'Anville's map, will show:
| Eng. Sq. Miles | |----------------| | Attica, including Megaris and Salamis, but not Euboea | 1190 | | Arcadia | 1530 | | Aetolia (without Messenia) | 1720 | | Cyclades (the twelve cities with their territories) | 1140 |
These states, therefore, were in general about equal in extent to middle-sized English counties. None of them was so large as Norfolk or Devonshire; and the two adjoining counties of York and Lancaster were nearly equal to the whole seven states of the ancient Peloponnesus. Attica, indeed, besides possessing at one period Euboea, and many colonies in the Cyclades, Thrace, and other parts; and Sparta held Messenia long in subjection; but, in great struggles, these colonies and dependencies often shook off their allegiance, and the parent state was obliged to rely on its own resources. Such was the energy of these small communities, that Attica, which scarcely supports, at present, a miserable population of 20,000 souls, sent out sometimes colonies of 10,000 men at once (Diod. Sic. lib. ii.) and Sparta furnished 50,000 soldiers to fight the Persians at Platea. The territories of Corinth, when she formed a separate state, were much smaller than any of these; her wealth and power depending chiefly on commerce.
Greece forms a long and rather narrow peninsula, sin-Gulfs and gulily indented on three sides by arms of the sea, and mountains having a greater proportion of its surface occupied by mountains than any other country in Europe of equal extent, except Switzerland. It has been justly observed, that those physical features which distinguish Europe from the other quarters of the world belong in a peculiar manner to Greece, and distinguish it in the same proportion from the other parts of Europe. Of these arms of the sea, the most considerable are the Gulfs of Contessa, Salonica, Volo, Ægina, and Nauplia, on the east; those of Kolokythia and Coron on the south; and those of Lepanto and Arta on the west. Of the mountains, the first in order are those which pass along the northern frontier. Mount Argentaro, the ancient Orbelus, placed at the northern extremity of Greece, near the forty-third degree of latitude, may be considered as the centre of the whole system of mountains in European Turkey. From this nucleus an elevated chain, bearing the names of Scomius and Rhodope anciently, passes south-eastward, and sends off branches on both sides, one of which, Pangaeus, advances southward to the Ægean Sea, nearly opposite to the Isle of Thasus, and shuts in Greece on the east. From the same central nucleus another great chain passes south and south-eastward, under the ancient names of Scardus, Pindus, Citheron, and Parnes, and terminates at Cape Colonna, the southmost point of Attica. This chain, which includes the celebrated mountains of Parnassus and Helicon, divides the northern continent of Greece into two parts of nearly equal breadth, and gives birth to all the most considerable rivers, which flow off on its opposite sides, but in no instance cross it. On the east side, besides many small lateral ridges, it sends off two principal branches, which enclose Thessaly on the north and south; these are the Cambunian Mountains, which, connecting the central ridge of Pindus with the lofty group of Olympus, separate Macedonia from Thessaly; and Mount Oeta, which, running eastward to the Maliac Gulf, forms, at its termination, the famed pass of Thermopylae. Mount Othrys, a little farther north, may be considered as a subordinate chain to Oeta. Mount Olympus is separated only by a narrow ravine from Ossa and Pelion, which enclose Thessaly on the east. On the western side of the central chain, the whole country to the Ionian Sea, northward of the Gulf of Arta, is covered by a series of ridges, not running off laterally, but disposed in lines nearly parallel to the central chain, and separated by deep valleys. One of these ridges, nearest the coast, and terminating in a promontory, in latitude 40° 30', was known anciently by the name of Acroceramus; another farther north, and more inland, was Mount Tomarus. A long and narrow ridge occupies the Island of Euboea, and is evidently continued in the outermost chain of islands included under the name of the Cyclades. Another chain of these islands may be considered as a prolongation of the great central ridge from the promontory of Samium or Colonna.
The mountains in the Morea or Peloponnesus, which are as numerous as in the north of Greece, present rather a singular configuration. A long ridge, bent into a circular form, encloses the central plateau or basin of Arcadia; and five spurs, or subordinate ridges, run off from the different sides of this circular chain to the five prominent points of the peninsula.
Throughout this article we use the ancient or the modern names, according as either happen to be better known than the other. In general, the ancient divisions of the country, being more minute and more accurately defined than the modern, serve better for the purposes of description. The greater number of modern travellers have felt it necessary to adopt this practice.
In the maps of Barbie du Bocage, Laconia is considerably larger, and Attica and Achaea considerably smaller, than here stated. But we have followed D'Anville, as his maps are pronounced, by a very competent judge (Sir William Gell), to be much more accurate than any others since constructed. The elevation of some of the Grecian mountains has been estimated, but not accurately measured. Mount Orebis, the northern boundary of the country, has its summit covered with snow all the year; and must therefore exceed 8000 feet in height; but none of the other mountains seems to reach the circle of perpetual congelation. The elevation of the great central chain of Pindus is loosely estimated by Dr Holland at 7000 feet. That of Olympus, one of the loftiest summits in Greece, was computed by the ancient philosopher Xenagoras to be ten stadia and a plethrum, an elevation not materially different from that of 1017 toises, or 6500 feet, assigned to it by Bernoulli. The famed Parnassus seems to be considered by Dr Clarke and Dr Holland as rising above most of the other Grecian mountains; but as its summit is destitute of snow during a part of the year, its height cannot exceed 9500 feet, and is probably much less. This mountain is still called Parnassus by the peasants residing on it; but in the low country of Livadia it bears the name of Lakura. The celebrated Athos, which is now the seat of twenty-two monasteries, rises to the height of 713 toises, or 4350 feet. (Walpole, p. 204.) Several of the Albanian mountains are estimated by Dr Holland to be from 3000 to 4000 feet high. The mean height of the mountains of the Morea is estimated at 1200 feet; on the west side they attain a height of from 3000 to 4500 feet; Mount Cyllene rises to the height of 4500 feet, and Mount Oleno to 6000; Mount Taygetus, in its range from Cape Matapan to Arcadia, varies from 3000 to 7200 feet. The plain of Tripolizza, in Arcadia, is about 2000 feet above the sea, and the insulated rock of the Acro-Corinthus about 1900. (Boblaye, Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Feb. 1831.)
A great part of the surface of Greece is occupied by a formation of compact limestone, of a whitish or bluish grey colour, approaching at times to the nature of chalk. It forms in some places long sharp continuous ridges, in others round or craggy summits, and it presents strata highly inclined. It contains a few organic remains, with many flint nodules, and some beds of gypsum on the western side; and occasionally masses or beds of a calcareous conglomerate. The Acropolis of Athens consists of the last-mentioned rock. The compact limestone, which forms the entire mass of Parnassus and Helicon, rests on mica slate near Athens. The hills of Attica consist generally of primitive limestone; and the same species of rock, with clay slate, serpentine, sienite, porphyry, abound in Negropont, the central parts of Pindus, Olympus, and Athos, and all round the Gulf of Salonica. Farther north, in Mounts Scamnus and Rhodope, granite and gneiss are found. In general, primitive rocks are most abundant on the east side of Greece, and the secondary on the west. Tertiary deposits are found in Elis, Laconia, and Argolis; and trachytes and other igneous rocks exist in Eginia, Milo, Santorin, and on the continent at Methana in Argolis. M. Boblaye states that four, and in some cases five, successive terraces of shingle are seen at many parts on the shores of the Morea, each of which had once formed the sea beach, indicating that the land had been elevated by a corresponding number of sudden movements upwards. (Boblaye, Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Feb. 1831; Holland's Travels, p. 89, 319, &c.) It is to the peculiar constitution of the great limestone formation that Greece owes those physical features which so remarkably distinguish the country; the numerous caverns, fountains, subterraneous river courses, hot springs, and gaseous exhalations, which gave birth to so many of the popular superstitions of the ancients.
The rivers of Greece, flowing within a narrow territory, are much inferior in size even to the larger branches of the Danube. They may be fairly compared with those of Great Britain for the length of their courses and the quantity of water they convey. The classical rivers, however, which are chiefly in the south, are generally mere brooks, such as would find a place only in a county map. The largest rivers in Greece are the Axios, now the Vardar, in Macedonia; the Drinius, now the Drino, in North Albania; the Peneus, now the Salympria, in Thessaly; the Achelous, now the Aspropotamo, in Aetolia; the Alpheus, now the Roufia, and Eurotas, now Vasilipotamo, in the Morea. These and some others have permanent streams; but the greater number are mere mountain torrents, short, but rapid in their courses, and dry in summer.
The general aspect of Greece is characterized by a very singular distribution of its mountains. These are usually neither placed in parallel chains nor in massive groups, but are so disposed as to enclose extensive tracts of land, which assume the appearance of large basins or circular hollows. The bottom of these basins consists of an alluvial plain of the richest soil, and level as the ocean, through which sometimes rise steep insulated rocks, like the summits of vast natural columns. Nature had thus marked out the country into a number of distinct districts, admirably calculated to become the seats of small communities. The plain, with its rich alluvial soil, furnished subsistence for a dense population; the insulated rock became the Acropolis or citadel of the chief town, a place of refuge in war; and the surrounding mountains were barriers against invasion. In proportion as access from without was difficult, internal communication was rapid and easy. A crowded population, dispersed over the sides and the area of this natural amphitheatre, lived as it were in the continual presence of one another. Their country, a word of undefined import in large empires, conveyed to them as distinct an idea as that of their own homes. Its whole landscape, with its trophies, temples, monuments, and fields of renown, were constantly under their eyes. Their patriotism, concentrated within this narrow sphere,—attached to visible objects by early and habitual associations,—kept alive by frequent struggles with neighbouring communities, for independence or glory, and still more by the proud sense of individual importance, inspired by their republican institutions,—was not, as in larger empires, a vague and languid feeling, but an ardent and steady passion, of which nothing in the modern world can give us an adequate idea. The same circumstances had an influence on their political condition. Conquest, which forces nations of different habits, characters, and languages, into combination, is the great parent of slavery. In such heterogeneous masses union becomes impossible. The despot, glittering in barbaric pomp, and surrounded by foreign guards, appears in his subject provinces like a being of another order, not to collect the sentiments or redress the wrongs of the people, but to silence all complaints, and enforce obedience to his own lordly will. Though hated by all his subjects, he can still employ the wealth and the physical force of one nation to trample on the rights of another, and is thus able to hold the whole in slavery. But the small Greek communities, protected by the barriers of their gulf and mountains, escaped this evil destiny. The people, united by identity of manners and language, by common interests and con-
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1. Travels in the Morea, Albania, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire. By F. C. Bouqueville, M. D. (translation), London, 1813, p. 443. 2. Travels in the Ionian Isles, Albania, Thrace, Macedonia, &c. during 1812 and 1813. By Henry Holland, M. D. 1815, p. 207. 3. Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey, edited by the Reverend Robert Walpole, A. M. 1817, p. 721. Clarke's Travels, 4th edition, 8vo, 1818, vol. vii. p. 200; Holland's Travels, p. 304. Article CLIMATE in this work. timual communication, could combine with the utmost facility to resist the first encroachments of their rulers. They were able to apply freely the lights of reason to all their common concerns, to model their government according to their circumstances and their views of common interest, and to make the end for which it existed the measure of the powers bestowed upon it. The forms of government they adopted, though not contrived by absolute wisdom, were probably in principle better adapted to their situation than any other that could have been suggested. And never did the powers of the human mind display themselves with such energy and grandeur under any other system in the history of the human race.
Of the plains we have mentioned, some terminate in the ocean, and seem to owe their existence to the retiring of the waters. Such are those of Macedonia, Athens, Argos, Laconia, Messenia, and Ambracia. Others are completely surrounded by a rampart of mountains or high grounds, except at a single point where the waters have found or forced a passage. Of this description are the three remarkable valleys of Thessaly, Boeotia, and Arcadia. Each of these forcibly suggests the idea of a vast inland lake, where the waters, accumulating for a long period, had at length burst through the barrier that confined them, and left the bottom dry. There is also an analogy between these valleys and some of the inland seas of Greece, such as the Gulfs of Corinth, Arta, Volo, and the channel of Nergopont, which are marine lakes completely land-locked, and communicating with the Mediterranean by a single passage, which may at one period have been closed. It may even be conceived that the Archipelago itself, at one period, was completely shut in by a barrier of high lands, of which Cerigo, Crete, Scarpanto, and Rhodes, are portions or fragments; and that its numerous isles are either the summits of mountains which then diversified its surface, or of detached rocks like those of Meteora in Thessaly, which have resisted the incessant action of the waters.
The valley of Macedonia, which extends in a semicircle round the head of the Gulf of Salonica, is the largest and most fertile district in Greece. Its produce has been supposed to be nearly equal to that of all the rest of the country. The rivers in the lower parts, which overflow annually, render the country marshy, and subject to the malaria. It contains a considerable number of ancient remains, but they have only been partially examined. A large tumulus still marks the site of the battle of Pydna, which reduced Macedonia to a Roman province. Thessaly, separated from Macedonia by Olympus and the Cambrian Mountains, is a vast circular basin, of fifty or sixty miles diameter, enclosed on all sides by mountains, and next in fertility to Macedonia. The whole of its waters flow off by the river Peneus. The celebrated Vale of Tempe, a deep ravine, formed by precipitous cliffs six or eight hundred feet high, and separating Mount Olympus from Ossa, affords a passage for this river to the sea on the east. The vale is about five miles long, and so narrow, that the river in some parts occupies the whole breadth of its bottom; the scenery is more striking by its grandeur than its beauty. The rocks, which are of bluish-grey marble, have a shattered appearance, and, wherever the surface admits of it, are covered with trees and shrubs. Some of the ancients believed that this defile was formed by an earthquake. Were any natural convulsion to close it up, Thessaly would again be converted into a lake; and Xerxes, when he invaded Greece, threatened the Thessalians with this catastrophe if they opposed him. The rocks of Meteora, at the upper side of the Thessalian plain, are objects of a very remarkable kind. They rise from the level surface of the country near the Peneus, and cover a triangular space of two miles each way. They consist of a great collection of lofty rocks, in the various shapes of cones, pillars, rhomboids, and irregular masses, all standing detached from one another, with faces generally as perpendicular as a wall. Their height varies from one to three or four hundred feet, and the deep winding intervals between them are filled with trees and brushwood. On the summits of some of these rocks monasteries are suspended in mid air, as it were on the tops of very tall pillars. Some of the monasteries occupy the whole surface of the rock they rest on, and persons ascending to them are swung in a basket or net, and dragged up by a rope passing over a pulley. The rocks are composed of a conglomerate, consisting of fragments of granite, gneiss, and other primitive substances, disposed in horizontal strata. The narrow district on the eastern side of Mounts Ossa and Pelion is the ancient Magnesia, and is now called Zagora. At the south extremity of Thessaly lies the famed Pass of Thermopylæ, which is merely the narrow space between the flank of Mount Oeta and the sea. The part of this space nearest the sea is occupied by a marsh, between which and the cliffs the breadth of firm land is still about sixty paces, as stated by Livy. The hot springs mentioned by Herodotus, the remains of the wall built by the Phocceans, and a tumulus, believed with good reason to be that of the Spartans, are all yet to be seen. The length of the pass is about five miles. The country of Phocis, which lies immediately south of the pass, is one of the most rugged in Greece, being occupied almost entirely by the branches and declivities of Mounts Oeta, Parnassus, and Helicon. Boeotia is a large circular valley, enclosed by Parnassus on the west, Helicon on the south, Citheron on the east, and a range of high lands on the north. A low ridge running north and south divides it in two. The lake Copais, which occupies the bottom of the western and larger division, and receives all its rivers, sends off its waters by subterraneous passages to the sea on the north-east. In summer this lake has the appearance of a green meadow covered with reeds. Boeotia has more than once been inundated by obstructions in these subterraneous channels. The country is very fertile, but is higher and colder than Attica. It is often covered with thick fogs, as described by the ancients; and, from the abundance of its marshes, is very subject to malaria. Attica, which adjoins to Boeotia on the east, is comparatively arid and barren, hilly rather than mountainous, but distinguished peculiarly by the dryness and elasticity of its atmosphere, and the beauty and serenity of its climate. The isthmus of Corinth, which connects Attica with the Morea, is occupied towards the north by high rocky hills, which render it strong as a military post; but in the south, where its breadth is about four miles, the surface is low, seldom exceeding a hundred and fifty feet. The remains of the ancient wall, and of the canal begun by Nero, are yet visible. The Morea consists of an elevated central plateau or valley, namely, Arcadia, and of five separate districts, formed by the exterior declivities of the mountains which surround the central plateau, and by spurs or branches which run off from these mountains. The central valley of Arcadia, so famed for its pastoral character by the ancients, is, like the inland districts of Thessaly and Boeotia, high and cold, often covered with fogs, arising from the moisture of its soil, and hence also subject to malaria. All its running waters escape by the single channel of the Alpheus; and it has sometimes suffered from partial inundations. Its scenery, in the opinion of Lord Byron, is by no means deserving of its ancient celebrity. Argolis, lying in a semicircle round the Gulf of Nauplia, embraces but a small portion of level country, which, however, is remarkably rich, but very unhealthy. The city of Argos still exists in its ancient plain, and, till ruined by the revolution, was one of the best built towns in the Morea. The ancient Laconia, consisting of the long open valley of the Eurotas, is very thinly peopled. The ruins of Sparta, four miles south-west from the village of Mistra, are extensive, but afford no fine specimens of architecture; the spot is entirely deserted. Messenia, which lies round the head of a gulf, has a pretty large plain, of a very rich soil. Elis, on the west, and Achaia, on the north of the Morea, are in general hilly, and rather dry. In general, the west of Greece has a different physical character from the east. Ætolia, Acarnania, and Epirus (the modern Albania), present none of those circular basins so characteristic of the east and south sides of the country, except the valley surrounding the Gulf of Arta. Ætolia and Acarnania consist of long valleys open to the south, and rising into mountains in the north. Albania has the same features on a larger scale. Its mountains, which are more numerous than those of any other district of Greece, cover the country in long parallel ridges, and are separated by deep valleys, some of which open to the south, and others to the west, but none to the north. The Cyclades, and other islands in the Ægean Sea, are almost all steep and rocky.
The mountains of Greece, which cover so large a proportion of its area, are partly wooded and partly naked, and the woods abound more on the west side than the east. The low country susceptible of tillage probably does not amount to more than two fifths of the whole surface, and of these two fifths, judging from the corn, olives, cotton, tobacco, &c., required for the population, one twelfth or fifteenth part may be actually in cultivation. It is generally bare of wood, and, from the want of enclosures, the profusion of weeds and brushwood, the thinness of the population, and the ruinous condition of the few cottages, combined with the crumbling remains of the noble structures of the ancients, has a desolate, melancholy, and deserted aspect, which harmonizes well with the fallen fortunes of the country. In the end of summer, from the excessive heat which dries up the streams, the hills and fields appear parched. In many quarters of the country, however, there are copious perennial springs, which gush out suddenly from the limestone rock. Greece combines in the highest degree every feature essential to the finest beauties of landscape, except large rivers, which are perhaps incompatible with the general character of its scenery. Travellers of taste have wanted words to describe the magnificence of the views it affords. Its mountains encircled with zones of wood, and capped with snow, though much below the Alps in absolute height, perhaps are as imposing from the suddenness of their elevation. Rich sheltered plains lie at their feet, which want nothing but an industrious population to fill the mind with images of prosperity, tranquillity, and happiness. But it is in the combination of these more common features, with so many spacious and beautiful inland bays and seas, broken by headlands, enclosed by mountains, and speckled and studded with islands, in every variety of magnitude, form, and distance, that Greece surpasses every other country in Europe, and perhaps in the world. The effect of such scenery, aided by a serene sky and delicious climate, on the character of the Greeks, cannot be doubted. "Under the influence of so many sublime objects, the human mind becomes gifted as by inspiration, and is by nature filled with poetical ideas." Greece became the birth-place of taste, science, and eloquence, the chosen sanctuary of the muses, the prototype of all that is graceful, dignified, and grand, in sentiment or action. The poetry of the north, nursed amidst bleak mountains, amidst oceans covered with fogs and agitated by storms, is austere and gloomy; but the muses of Greece, awakened into life in a rich and beautiful land, amidst bright and tranquil seas, are gay, joyous, and luxuriant. You almost conceive (says Chateaubriand), as it were by intuition, why the architecture of the Parthenon has such fine proportions, why ancient sculpture is so unaffected, so simple, so tranquil, when you behold the pure sky and delicious scenery of Athens, of Corinth, and of Ionia. In this native land of the muses, nature suggests no wild deviations: she tends, on the contrary, to dispose the mind to the love of the uniform and the harmonious.
The climate of Greece seems to be distinguished from that of Spain and Italy in the corresponding latitudes, chiefly by having the characteristics of an inland region in a higher degree; that is, the extremes of summer and winter are more severe. In Attica, which has a drier atmosphere and more uniform temperature than the rest of the country, the average rain is about twenty-one or twenty-two inches, and the greatest heat, in each of the four years ending with 1807, was 104, 99, 93, 94. The greatest cold was from 28 to 32 of Fahrenheit. The mean deduced from all these extremes is 63°5. This agrees very nearly with the temperature of a spring in the isthmus of Corinth, observed by Dr Clarke to be 64, and with the temperature given in Professor Leslie's table, which is 64°4. At the southern extremity the annual temperature, according to the same authority, is 65°3, and at the northern extremity about 60. But local diversities have a greater effect than mere difference of latitude, on the distribution of the seasons. In Attica, which, being freely exposed to the sea, has in some measure an insular climate, the winter sets in about the beginning of January. About the middle of that month snow falls, but is seldom seen for more than a few days, though it lies for a month on the summits of the mountains. Gentle rains fall about the middle of February, after which spring commences; and the corn, which is a considerable height in March, is cut in May. In the beginning of March, the vines and olives bud, and the almonds are in blossom. In the great interior plains and valleys, which are girt with mountains, and cut off from the direct influence of the sea, the winters are much colder, and the summers, making allowance for the difference of height, are warmer. At Tripolizza, in Arcadia, the snow has been found eighteen inches thick in January, with the thermometer at sixteen degrees Fahrenheit; and it sometimes lies on the ground six weeks. Dr Clarke was informed, that in the winter preceding his visit, the peasants at the foot of Mount Citheron in Boeotia were confined to their houses for several weeks by the snow. At Yanina, situated in an inland plain, 1000 or 1200 feet above the sea, the snow lies to a considerable depth in the winter, and sometimes falls as late as April. The neighbouring lake was so firmly frozen over in 1818, that it was everywhere crossed on the ice. The summits of the central chain of Pindus, and most of the Albanian mountains, are covered with snow from the beginning of November to the end of March. These various facts show that the winter in Albania, though shorter than in England, is as severe; but that the summer is a vast deal hotter, the extreme summer temperature being fifteen or eighteen degrees higher at Athens than London; while Boeotia and Thessaly are probably still hotter than Attica. Though we have no accurate data to establish a comparison between the climate of Greece and those of Spain and Italy, yet the
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1 Beaujour, let. 1-4; Holland, p. 230, 291, 234, 376, 420; Clarke, vii. 562, vii. 303; Hobhouse, let. 14, 15, 16; Walpole, 60, 203, 306, 335, 522; Byron's notes to canto 2d of Childe Harold; Tournesort, let. 4-5. 2 Holland, 248, 302, 401, 254, 413; Hobhouse, 83, 461, 201; Clarke, vii. 260; Beaujour, let. 4; Chateaubriand's Travels (translation), vol. i. p. 55, 187; Williams' Travels, let. 54, 55, 68, 72, 74. act of cotton being successfully cultivated, on a large scale, in Macedonia, as far north as the latitude of Rome and Valadolid, where it does not succeed in the two last countries, is a proof that the summer temperature in Greece is higher than either in Spain or Italy. The coldest weather in all parts of Greece is accompanied with a north-east wind. The north and north-west winds are distinguished by their serenity and dryness. The zephyr or west wind is famed for its balmy softness; the south-east, south, and south-west winds are all humid, and the east wind still retains the character of a morning breeze, as described by Aristotle. The sirocco is felt in Greece. It blows from the south-east, and produces its usual effects on the human constitution; a sense of oppression, a dull headache, with insatiable uneasiness in the limbs. Earthquakes are very frequent in Greece, but they are seldom very destructive.
Modern travellers afford us but scanty information respecting the mines of Greece; but, from its geological structure, we may conclude that it is, like Italy, rather poor in metals. The working of the veins which do exist is neglected by the Turks, from want of skill, or abandoned in consequence of the oppressive exactions of the government. It is chiefly on the east side of Greece, where the older rocks protrude through the superincumbent limestone, that metalliferous veins have been found. The silver mines of Laurium, in Attica, which were extensive enough to employ 10,000 slaves, and supported the Athenian navy at one period, are now entirely abandoned. Copper also was anciently found in Attica. Ores of iron, gold, silver, lead, alum, were wrought in Euboea and Melos, Naxos, Siphnos, and others of the Cyclades. The gold and silver mines of Macedonia yielded Philip 1000 talents a year. At Nisoro, in this country, there is still worked a silver mine, which affords a scanty produce of from fifty to 400 okes of silver, and 4000 or 5000 okes of lead annually. Marbles of many varieties are abundant in Greece. Those of Paros and Mount Pentelicus, which are both highly crystalline, were employed in the finest works of sculpture and architecture. At Selinissa, in North Albania, there is a very extensive mine of asphaltum, or compact mineral pitch. The bed, seventy or eighty feet thick, and near the surface, is supposed to extend over a span of four miles in circumference. Carburetted hydrogen gas issues from several crevices of the ground near it, and inflames spontaneously; a phenomenon distinctly alluded to by ancient authors, and connected in this and other instances with the superstitions of the Greek mythology.
There are few or no diseases peculiar to Greece. Like all the countries on the shores of the Mediterranean, it suffers greatly from malaria. This prevails chiefly in the months of August and September, and produces remittent or intermittent fevers, which attack those who reside in low situations, near the mouths of rivers, or in the neighbourhood of lakes, marshes, or rice grounds. The ancients were aware that fevers of this description affected certain districts; but, undoubtedly, the sphere of their influence has been vastly extended by the neglected state of the country. Attica, though one of the driest districts of Greece, is not entirely exempted from them. These fevers, recurring frequently, vitiate the system, and produce catarrhs and scrofulous complaints. Coughs, catarrhs, and apoplexies, are prevalent in some districts; and elephantiasis, and leprous affections, arising probably from deficient and unwholesome nourishment, are more common than in other countries. The plague occurs at irregular periods, and makes great ravages, but is generally believed to be imported from Constantinople, Smyrna, or Egypt. The first appearance of this dreadful scourge spreads alarm and terror through the whole community. The affrighted imaginations of the people represent to them nocturnal concerts of music, voices murmuring amidst the silence of night, spectres wandering about on the roofs of houses, covered with funereal rags, and calling out the names of those who are to be cut off from the number of the living.
A rapacious and tyrannical government, like the Turk-Agricultish, depresses every species of industry, but is particularly fatal to agriculture, which requires the investment of large capitals, with the prospect of only distant returns, and which yields products that cannot be concealed. The Turkish landlords and farmers are too sluggish and ignorant to attempt the smallest improvement; the other classes are too much exposed to pillage; and all must be affected by the insecure tenure of their lands. In Greece, as in other parts of Turkey, all lands hold immediately of the sultan, and on the demise of the incumbent, vest anew in him. When the Turks conquered the territories they now occupy, the lands were taken from the native proprietors, and a part of them distributed among Turkish colonists in zains and timars (the one exceeding 500 acres in extent, the other from 300 to 500), on condition that the possessors, with a stipulated number of followers, should serve in the armies during war. Any of these properties which fell vacant during active service were bestowed upon the volunteers who had signalized their valour in the hope of obtaining such rewards; and there are instances of the same lordship having been eight times disposed of in the course of one campaign. Another part of the land was appropriated for the support of mosques, or as appanages to the great officers of state, the mother and mistresses of the sultan, and the children of the imperial family. The residue, burdened with a territorial impost or land-tax, was left, by an undefined tenure, to the ancient inhabitants. (Thornton, 164.) In general, both Greeks and Turks pay a quit rent to the aga or local governor, besides the land-tax of one tenth to the sultan. We do not find it anywhere stated what proportions these different species of property bear to one another; but it is obvious that a great part of the land is held by persons who have but a different interest in it; and though custom may temper a rule so pernicious, and the right of resumption may not be rigorously exercised at the demise of each incumbent, it will still be made a ground for vexatious demands, and render the transmission of property dependent on the caprices of provincial governors. To this must be added the farther insecurity arising from bad laws badly administered; from the extortions practised by every class of public functionaries, civil and religious; and, last of all, from the depredations of bands of robbers, who descend from the mountains, sometimes in parties of five or six hundred, to dispute with the local rulers the right of plundering the unhappy husbandman. Ali, the late pasha of Albania, permitted no sale or transfer of lands within his dominions without his special consent. He held great quantities of
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1 Holland, 47, 137, 411, 426; Hobbes, let. 24; Pouqueville, p. 29, chap. xv.; Clarke, vi. 585, vii. 102; Arist., Meteor. i. 2, c. 2. 2 The oke is equal to 21 pounds avoirdupois; Dr Holland says 21; but Beaupour, the best authority on this subject, makes the ke equal to 40 Paris ounces, which are equal to 43-3 English ounces. The cantar or quintal is generally 44 okes = 121 pounds. 3 Treatise of Anacharis, Eng. edition, 1791, ii. 424, v. 34; Holland, 416, 518; Walpole, 228; Clarke, vi. 348, vii. 462; Tournefort, let. 1, 2. 4 Pouqueville, chap. xvi.; Clarke, vii. 470; Walpole, p. 13. 5 The number of these feudal lordships is variously stated. Olivier says there are 914 zains, and 8356 timars, in European Turkey. If these are estimated at 500 acres each, they will not amount to more than 1-20th or 1-25th of the whole lands, including mountains. land himself; and, not content with buying it from those who were disposed to sell, he compelled others, by quartering soldiers on them, and harassing them by vexatious demands, to part with their lands for an inadequate price. He was believed to be the proprietor of one third of the whole cultivated country under his government. In such circumstances, it need not surprise us that cultivation is badly conducted, the peasants poor and wretched, and the country a wide waste, affording a miserable subsistence to two millions and a half of inhabitants, where three or four times as many lived in comfort and prosperity in the days of Xenophon.
The most considerable proprietors, both Turks and Greeks, live generally in towns, and the land is let to the peasants on a system resembling that of the metayers in France. The farms are let from year to year; the landlord furnishes cottages, cattle, and seed; the tenant labours the ground; and after a tenth of the produce is set aside for the public tax, the remainder is divided into three parts, of which the tenant gets one and the proprietor two. When the tenant has cattle and a house of his own, he gets one half. In the chifields or farms belonging to Ali, who was a rigorous landlord, two thirds were taken when the peasant found stock and seed, and five sixths, it is said, when he furnished nothing but labour. Enclosures are extremely uncommon, and scattered hamlets or cottages are scarcely anywhere seen, the peasants living in villages for the sake of security. Both the husbandman and shepherd, when employed in the fields, has always a musket slung over his back, besides a pistol and sword at his side. Their cottages are hovels built of mud, straw, and boards, generally without an opening to let the smoke escape. Sometimes they are without walls, and consist merely of wooden poles laid together in the form of a tent, and covered with turf, like the huts of savages. Women are employed in the labours of the field in Albania and Maina, but rarely in other parts. The cultivation of corn land is generally rude and slovenly; but in some districts, where, from local circumstances, the people are well protected, it is neat and clean, though not skilful. Cotton and olive grounds and vineyards, which are laboured chiefly with the hands, are managed with more care; and, in general, that part of the cultivation which depends on manual labour, and requires neither capital nor good implements, is best executed. The management of sheep and goats is also better conducted than that of arable land, doubtless because store farms are generally in situations more capable of defence, and their stock is easily removed. In gardening, the Greeks turn up the soil with a mattock, being unacquainted with so common an instrument as a spade. The implements of agriculture are few and simple. In light lands like those of Messenia, the plough consists merely of a share pointed with iron, without any other parts attached to it. It is dragged by one horse or two asses. In stronger soils the share is fixed into a plough with one handle and two mould boards, and in some cases with block wheels. In Albania the plough consists of a pole, a share, and one handle, all of wood except the share, which is pointed with iron. In Boeotia, Thessaly, and Albania, and in Greece generally, the plough is drawn by two oxen, sometimes by asses or buffaloes, very seldom by horses. A hundred stremata of land require four oxen if the soil is light, or eight oxen if heavy. The strema is stated to be forty square spaces; if yards are meant, it will be very nearly one third of an acre. The corn, cut with a sickle, is separated from the straw in the ancient mode, by treading it under the feet of oxen or horses. Fallowing is practised, and manures are used, though the small quantity of ground in tillage will, of course, render it unnecessary to cultivate poor soils, which require much artificial nourishment. In some few parts of Macedonia and Thessaly a sort of clumsy car with solid wooden wheels is used, but everywhere else wheel-carriages seem to be unknown, produce and goods of all kinds being carried on the backs of horses, mules, or camels.
The most common crops are wheat, barley, maize, and rye; besides these, oats in very small quantity; rice in marshy spots, millet, peas, beans, taros, sesamum, and anise, with cotton and tobacco. Turnips, if raised at all, are confined to gardens, and potatoes seem to be entirely unknown. The corn, sown in November or February, is high in the beginning of March, and is cut in May. It is sometimes sown as late as April, and reaped in two months. After a crop of barley, cotton is sometimes sown and reaped the same season. The soil of Attica is too light for wheat; and hence barley, as in ancient times, is still the prevailing crop. In the Ionian Isles, and probably in the moister parts of Greece, wheat is protected from the effects of heavy dews by two persons dragging a long rope over the field, so as to shake the husks. In the rich soils of Macedon, to save the wheat from being injured by superabundant nourishment, it is usual to let it be eaten by sheep early in the season, a practice familiar to the ancient Greeks. Notwithstanding the wretched system of culture, the produce is large. The most fertile parts are the plains of Thessaly, Boeotia, Sicyon, Argos, Messenia, Arcadia, and Macedonia. The soil of the latter, in the opinion of Beaujour, is superior even to that of Sicily. An arpent of this soil usually produces from twenty-five to thirty quintals (hundredweights) of wheat. In the Arcadian plains wheat of several kinds yields twelve for one; in those of Argos ten for one; in Eleusis, the primitive seat of agriculture, and in Thessaly, twelve for one. The produce of good soils, generally in favourable seasons, is estimated by Mr Hawkins at ten or twelve for one; and of the best soils, in very favourable seasons, at from fifteen to eighteen for one. If these estimates are well founded, considering the rude system of cultivation, they are proofs of a very great degree of fertility. In England, the average return from the seed, notwithstanding its highly improved agriculture, is believed not to exceed nine for one. The very best soils yield from six to seven quarters of wheat per acre, weighing from twenty-four to twenty-eight hundredweight; but from ordinary soils, the average produce per acre is only about twenty or twenty-one bushels, weighing from ten to eleven hundredweight. Greece exports corn to a considerable extent.
Greece, abounding in mountains covered with herbage, is eminently a pastoral country; and the management of sheep is better understood than the other branches of rural economy. The modern breeds, however, have declined much from the ancient in beauty and value. The flesh is but indifferent, the wool of inferior quality, and the weight of the sheep is only from thirty to fifty pounds. The flocks of Arcadia and Livadia, especially those which feed upon Parnassus, are considered superior to the others. A black-woollen breed is very common. In Greece, as in Spain, the flocks migrate from the inland mountains to the low valleys near the sea at the approach of winter. Attended by the owners, with their servants, they come down in October in
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1 Thornton, chap. iii. v.; Beaujour, i. p. 3; Travels in Sicily, Greece, and Albania, by the Rev. T. H. Hughes, 1820, p. 62. 2 An arpent is nearly equal to 14 English acre. 3 Beaujour, i. 6; Pouqueville, chap. xvii. p. 45; Walpole, p. 60, 290, 226, 150, 146; Holland, 36, 594, 246, 482; Hobbes, p. 138, 135, 227, 354; Eaton's Survey, p. 220; Williams, ii. p. 334, 411; Clarke, vi. 546, vii. 339; Hughes, ii. 81; Wiser (ed. 1662), p. 330; Travels of Assel, chap. lix. Tobacco, though introduced into Turkey only about the middle of the seventeenth century, is now a luxury in universal use. It is cultivated on a very narrow scale in the south of Greece, but to a considerable extent in Albania and Macedonia, and of a quality much esteemed. The Turkish plant is not however so pungent as that of America, and latterly the produce seems to be diminishing. The quantity annually raised in Macedonia was estimated by Beaujour (between 1787 and 1797) at 100,000 bales, or 10,000,000 okes, valued at 4,000,000 piastres. It occupied about one eighth of the cultivated soil, and afforded support to 20,000 Turkish families. One half of the quantity raised was exported to Egypt, Barbary, and Italy. In 1812, the annual produce, as stated to Dr Holland, was only from 35,000 to 40,000 bales. (Beaujour, let. 3; Holland, 329; Hohhouse, 15.)
The olive is cultivated throughout Greece generally, but Olives that of Attica is still distinguished, as in ancient times, by its superior excellence. It requires a dry soil, a sheltered situation, and a warm exposure; and is therefore not adapted to the rich, moist plains of Bœotia and Thessaly. The tree gives fruit the twelfth year, arrives at full vigour about the twentieth, and, when not exposed to frost, is so durable, that the present olives of Palestine are believed to date from the Crusades. An arpent of ordinary olive ground will nourish a hundred and twenty trees, each of which yields in good years twenty, but in average years ten, French pounds of oil, and as this sells at six or eight paras the pound, the whole value of the produce is about L12 sterling. Before the revolution, Attica yielded annually of this oil 2,400,000 pounds, of which three fourths were exported. It is at present, as it was in ancient times, the staple produce of the country; the tree was indeed considered as a special gift from the gods; and its cultivation was favoured by peculiar protection and encouragement, as far back as the reign of Cecrops. The Morea, according to Pouqueville, yielded 5,570,000 pounds of oil. The amount of the produce of Albania and other districts is not known. If the opinion of the ancients is well founded, that the olive does not thrive at a great distance from the sea, it may be presumed that the plantations in the interior of the country are less numerous than on the coast.
Vines are cultivated on a small scale in Attica, Albania, Thessaly, and in most of the districts of Greece, but without the skill and refinement which the ancients had introduced into this branch of rural economy. Dr Clarke, however, observed some vineyards on Parnassus, which were managed with much care and neatness, and afforded excellent wines. In general, the Greek wine, owing to the resin and lime mixed with it, has an unpalatable harshness. Pouqueville estimated the produce of the Morea, in wine and brandy, at 32,300 barrels, of fifty okes each, or about 550,000 gallons. If the vineyards are not more extensive in other quarters, the whole produce of the country must be inconsiderable.
The species of grape called the Corinthian grape, or the currants of commerce, is almost peculiar to the Morea and the Ionian Isles, though believed not to be indigenous in these
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1. The piastre is equal to 40 paras, and the para is equal to 3 aspers. The value of the piastre, from the progressive debasement of the Turkish coin, has been continually sinking; and it is besides liable to fluctuations from variations in the rate of exchange. Dr. Holland, in his time (1764), reckoned the piastre worth 2s. 6d. English. Beaujour says, that in his time (1787 to 1797), its intrinsic value was 25 sous (ts. 2½). But its value in exchange was, on an average, about 37 sous (ts. 1½). Dr Clarke (1800) represents it as worth ts. 4½. Mr Hohhouse (1839) says, that when the exchange is at par, 17½ piastres are equal to one pound, which gives ts. 4½ for its value. Dr Holland (1812) generally reckons the piastre about ts. 1½. Mr Williams (1817) makes it worth 3½d. in exchange; and in 1832, Mr Urquhart estimates the piastre at the 70th part of a pound, or 3½d. (Turkey and its Resources, 1833.) In the calculations in this article, the piastres are generally turned into English money, at the value assigned them by the author from whom the facts are taken.
2. Beaujour, let. 2; Pouqueville, 462; Holland, 227, 243.
3. The French pound is to the English pound avoirdupois as 100 to 92.
4. Beaujour, let. 7; Pouqueville, 462; Trans. of Acad. chap. lix.; Theophr. Hist. Plant. vi.
5. Clarke, vii. 254; Holland, 212; Hohhouse, 91; Pouqueville, 462; Trans. of Acad. chap. lix. countries. It is found in the greatest perfection along the southern shores of the Corinthian Gulf; on some points of the opposite coast; and in Cephalonia, Ithaca, and Zante. Beaujour thinks it was brought from Naxos about 1580; and it must therefore have been unknown to the ancients on the continent. It succeeds best in plains near the sea, with a western exposure, and prefers a dry, light soil. The mean annual produce of the Morea before the revolution was estimated at 10,000,000 pounds, of which 8,000,000 were exported to the western parts of Europe, chiefly to Britain. They were sold at eighty piastres the thousand pounds, including duties and expenses, which add sixty or seventy per cent. to the first cost. Patras is the centre of this trade. (Beaujour, let. 8.)
Madder. Madder grows wild in abundance, but is an object of cultivation in the moist plains of Bucotia, where 1200 sacks (of 275 lbs. each) are raised, of which 700 are consumed in Greece in dyeing spun cotton, and the other 500 are exported. The produce of vermillion from the kermes insect is considerable. The canton of Livadia furnished 6000 okes, and the Morea 22,000 okes, valued at from six to eight piastres the oke. A part is exported.
Silk. The mulberry tree is becoming an object of increasing importance in Greece, and the produce of silk is considerable. The districts that take the lead in this branch of industry are Elis, Thessaly, and Magnesia, now Zagora. It is chiefly conducted by the women. The annual produce of the Morea in silk was about 79,000 okes; that of Zagora 25,000 okes; which sold at fifteen or eighteen piastres the oke. A part of the silk of Thessaly is sent across the mountains to Albania.
Honey. The management of bees is an object of considerable attention. This branch of industry is even so far favoured by the Turks, that hives, under a regulation of Soliman II., are not seizable in payment of taxes. Honey is abundant in every part of Greece and Albania, but that of Mount Hymettus still maintains its ancient pre-eminence. It is remarkably transparent, and, in the opinion of Beaujour, is superior to the best honey in France. There were about 3000 hives on this mountain, and 12,000 in the whole of Attica, which yielded 360,000 pounds of honey and 24,000 pounds of wax. About one tenth was consumed within the country, the rest was exported. The honey sold before the revolution at eight or ten paras the pound, the wax at a piastre. The produce of the Morea in honey, judging from Pouqueville's table, does not much exceed one half of that of Attica.
Fruit trees. The fruit trees which grow in the fields or gardens of Greece, besides the vine and the olive, are, the almond, pomegranate, orange, lemon, citron, banana, fig, with the peach, apricot, quince, plum, and others of a more common kind. The date grows, but does not bear fruit. The process of caprification, or exposing the fig to be punctured by insects, which is minutely described by Pliny, is still in use, and is thought to improve the fruit greatly. The gardening of the Greeks is badly conducted, and many of their fruits want the rich flavour which might be given them by the art of engratting. Their melons, water melons, and gourds, are excellent, and form a considerable part of the subsistence of the inhabitants. Their culinary vegetables, of which they have no great variety, are spinach, artichokes, cabbages, cauliflowers, carrots, beans, lettuce, celery. The forests produce the oak, kermes-oak, cork-tree, pine, larch, ash, plane, aloe, wild olive, the sweet chestnut, whose fruit is the temporary food of the people in many parts, the Fraxinus ornus, or ash which yields manna, the turpentine pine, various trees and plants which yield dyes; and a vast variety of flowers and aromatics.
The wild animals of Greece are, the bear, wolf, lynx, wild cat, wild boar, stag, roebuck, wild goat, badger, mart-ten, fox, hare, jackal, weasel, and hedgehog. The bears are rarely seen; but the wolves are numerous; and to guard the flocks and cattle from their ravages, great numbers of dogs, of a powerful and fierce breed, are kept all over the country. The peasant who kills a wolf is rewarded, not, as in the time of Solon, out of the public funds, but by a small voluntary contribution. Hares are very abundant, but they are not much hunted, except by the Greeks. The method of calling hares, or causing them approach the hunter by a particular cry, and then shooting them, is practised.
Of birds, there are very large vultures, various species of falcons and owls, the cuckoo, roller, king's fisher, ducks of several kinds, the domestic goose and turkey, the stork, which arrives at Athens in March and departs in August, partridges numerous, wild pigeons, quails, snipes, teal, black-birds, the goldfinch, nightingale, the beccafica, a very small bird, the swallow, martin, &c.
The seas, lakes, and rivers, abound with a variety of fish, and the phoca is found on the coast.
The mechanic arts are necessarily in a rude state in Greece, though the vices of the government do not operate so injuriously upon them as upon agriculture. Numbers and union give a certain degree of security to the artisans of towns, which the rural inhabitants cannot possess. But, on the other hand, these arts can only flourish when they are bottomed on knowledge generally diffused; and when entirely separated from scientific principles, they unavoidably degenerate into empirical processes, which are continued by servile imitation. Accidental circumstances may improve some, and prevent others from retrograding; but they are not so connected as to advance equally, or carry forward each other. This is obviously the case in Greece. Some of the ruder mechanic arts have been created or preserved by the indispensable wants of society; others have been imported to minister to the luxury of the great; and a few seem to be fragments saved from the wreck of former knowledge. Hence trades and professions equally necessary are exercised with very different degrees of skill, and seem to belong to different stages of social life. On the other hand, travellers sometimes mislead us, by not sufficiently attending to the fact, that the household furniture of the Turks or Greeks, and the implements and accommodations required for every situation and employment, are few and simple compared with ours. Works, however, are executed requiring much more skill than many others, the want of which is sometimes referred to as a mark of barbarism. The agents of the British ambassador could not procure a wheeled cart or a ladder in Athens; but it ought to be recollected, that the Greeks, who inhabit a mountainous country, with steep unpaved roads, have some reason for employing pack-horses instead of wheel carriages, as we did in Scotland sixty or seventy years ago; and if the tradesmen who construct the mosques, the baths, and the palaces of the pashas, would not or could not make a cart or a ladder, it was certainly not from want of skill, but want of practice.
It would be absurd to compare the manufactures and mechanic arts of Greece with those of England or France:
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1 Beaujour, let. 9, 10; Pouqueville, 462. 2 Beaujour, let. 11; Pouqueville, 200, 462; Holland, 245. 3 Beaujour, let. 6; Pouqueville, 203, 462; Holland, 510. 4 Pouqueville, chap. xvii.; Hobhouse, 69, 227. For an account of the plants of Greece, see a paper by Dr Sibthorpe in Walpole's Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey, p. 235. 5 Walpole, 73-77; Chandler, 126; Pouqueville, chap. xvii. but they are probably little, if at all, inferior to those of Hungary or Poland. In the villages and small towns, carpenters use no other instruments than a saw, a hammer, and a hatchet; and it is only in large cities that gouges and chisels for making mortices are employed. Artists, however, and tradesmen, are found capable of constructing water and wind mills, and building bridges. The churches and mosques are often substantially built and well finished, though designed in bad taste. The palaces of the pashas are generally executed in a very sumptuous style; they are beautifully wainscotted, have marble floors sometimes inlaid, are adorned with good carved work and gilding, with paintings not at all despicable, and with various decorations, which would be thought handsome even in the west of Europe. The baths, fountains, and sepulchral monuments, also display some good architecture. In some few cases it is probable these works are executed by foreign artists. Ships of considerable burden are built at Hydra and Spezzia. There are goldsmiths among the Greeks and Turks, who can combine the metals, and execute devices neatly enough upon sword-belts and scabbards, though their workmanship is inferior, in taste of design and delicacy of execution, to that of English and French artists. Knives and forks are made at Athens, daggers and other articles of armoury at Mistra. Good pottery, resembling the ancient in purity, brightness, and elegance, is made at Larissa. The saddles, bridles, and housings of the Turks, are well made, according to their fashion, and elegantly embroidered. The Greeks paint in fresco, by a peculiar process, and are possessed of a method of painting in wax, and fixing the colours with heat, which has been thought to be substantially the same with the ancient encaustic painting. The fabrication of images of saints is a considerable branch of manufacture. They are formed mechanically from a model or prototype, which is handed down from father to son; and hence the remarkable uniformity of feature in these images. The Greeks of Yanina and other places embroider well on stuffs of various kinds; and the artisans of Larissa, Yanina, and Salonica, have long excelled in the preparation of Turkey leather. Soap is made at Tripolizza; the art of dyeing is practised in many places with much skill, and in particular the secret of giving a fast red colour to cotton was long confined to the Greeks of Thessaly, though now known both in France and England. The cloth manufactures of Greece are chiefly of a coarse kind, for home consumption; but they embrace also some articles of a finer description for exportation. A silken robe, of very delicate net-work, made in Greece, is believed by Beaujour to be the same sort of fabric as the ancient gauze of Coa, or cloth of air, except that the latter was made of linen. Ten thousand of these are annually exported from Salonica to other parts of Turkey. Shawls for turbans, serges, velvets, satins, and various silk and cotton stuffs, are made at Tornavos in Thessaly, at Tripolizza in the Morea, or other places. The carpets of Salonica, though inferior to those of Smyrna in brilliance of colour, are equal in quality, and are much esteemed in the west of Europe. Of woollens, the principal manufactures consist of coarse fabrics, called abats, used for clothing by the peasantry, and of carpets or cloaks, an article in universal use among the Albanians, and also in great demand among the mariners of the Levant. These are chiefly made by the Wallachians, and other inhabitants of the mountainous parts of Albania, Thessaly, and Macedonia. But the species of manufacture which probably employs the greatest number of hands is the spinning and dyeing of cotton yarn. In Thessaly and Macedonia, 20,000 bales, or 5,500,000 pounds, of cotton were spun annually. The large village of Ampelakia, which overhangs the defile of Tempe, containing 4000 inhabitants, was entirely supported by this manufacture; and it forms the most considerable branch of industry in Tornavos, Larissa, Pharsalus, and in all the villages on the declivities of Ossa and Pelion. Of the yarn, a large proportion is sent to Germany. In general, the manufactures of Greece are carried on by mere manual labour, without combination, and without the aid of machinery; and, considering the disadvantages they labour under from these circumstances, it is rather matter of surprise that they are so extensive. The most industrious provinces are Thessaly, Macedonia, Albania, the Morea, Attica, and Livadia. The western part of Boeotia, with Phocis, Locris, Etolia, and Acarnania, are totally destitute of manufactures.
Physic is practised partly by Greeks who have received some education in Italy, and partly by Italians. Many of them, however, have received no education at all, but are adventurers, who, having failed in trade, put on the Frank habit, which all the physicians wear, and commence practitioners. With a few exceptions, they are extremely ignorant and prejudiced; and their practice is limited to the use of bleeding, and a very few remedies. If the disease does not yield to these, the papas is called in, and recourse is had to exorcism. Surgery is chiefly in the hands of the Albanians, who have skill enough to reduce fractures and dislocations, but never attempt amputations, or other operations of any difficulty.
Greece, deeply indented on three sides by arms of the sea, encircled by numerous islands, and having its inland communications obstructed by mountains, has a natural tendency to become a commercial country; and, from various causes, its foreign trade has suffered less from the wretched policy of its government than either its agriculture or manufactures. The foreign merchant always assumes, in a certain degree, the character of a citizen of the world: Having his capital scattered over many countries, only a small part is within the grasp of tyrannical rulers at one spot; and, when oppressed or disturbed, he can, with greater ease than any other person, transfer his wealth and industry to some other place where they will be more secure. Originally, the commerce of Greece was carried on almost entirely by foreigners, whom the Turkish government found itself compelled to treat with some degree of respect; and the Greeks, who latterly engaged in it, partly by procuring protections from foreign powers, and partly by the force of custom, insensibly acquired a share of the consideration and the privileges enjoyed by the class to which they belong. What contributed perhaps still more to their security was, that they were exempted from any immediate collision of interest with the Turks, who, from their aversion to foreigners, arising out of their religious bigotry, almost entirely abandoned commercial pursuits. The only exception to this was, that the beys and pashas, with the usual short-sighted cupidity of despotic power, monopolized in many cases the sale of the most considerable articles of export, such as corn and oil; and they of course greatly cramped the growth of these branches of trade. The Greeks are gifted in a peculiar degree with the practical sagacity and address required for conducting mercantile transactions; and finding the paths to distinction, and the pursuit of national objects, closed against them, their activity and enterprise flowed more abundantly into the channel of commerce. The ruin brought upon many foreign
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1 Beaujour, let. 1, 2, 14, 15, 16; Thornton, 16-28; Clarke, vi. 273, 289, vii. 344; Hobhouse, 75, 69; Eton, 232; Holland, 123, 133, 265, 288; Pouqueville, chap. xvii.
2 Pouqueville, 194; Hobhouse, 355; Holland, 164. houses engaged in the trade of Greece, by the fluctuations and revolutions in the west of Europe during the last thirty years, threw a great portion of it into the hands of the Greeks themselves. And the annihilation of the commerce of France, Spain, and Italy, for a long period, by the ascendency of the British marine, gave the Greek traders a new and extraordinary importance as neutrals. Before the revolution, there were individual houses of this nation who had branches established in three or four of the chief commercial towns of Europe, and their ships made voyages as far as America. Within this period, too, the small barren rocks of Hydra and Spetza, off the coast of Argolis, became the seats of an extensive and flourishing commerce, and rose suddenly to extraordinary wealth. In 1812, the former had 25,000 inhabitants entirely supported by trade, with about three hundred trading vessels, some of them as large as 500 tons. The larger vessels were generally built at Fiume. Funds were supplied for fitting them out by capitalists residing in the island, who had acquired fortunes in trade, and lent out their money at ten, fifteen, or twenty per cent. The captain was generally a principal owner, and every person on board, down to the cabin boy, had a share in the speculation. (Holland, 424.) The Hydriotes purchased the right of electing their own magistrates from the porte, and they some years ago expended ten thousand pounds in building their town-house. (Hobhouse, p. 599.) Spezza approached to Hydra in commercial importance, and Payra had also acquired consideration by trade. The same cause which raised these places to consequence created a new trade of a very singular kind at the port of Salonica. Colonial goods, when the usual channels by which they were admitted to the Continent were closed in 1810, 1811, and 1812, were sent to Salonica by sea, and thence forwarded overland to Vienna by a route of 700 miles in length. The goods were transported on horseback; the journey generally occupied thirty-five days, and the expense was supposed to add about 100 per cent. to the import price of the articles at Salonica. In 1812, thirty cargoes came direct from England to Salonica, besides a still greater number from Malta and Gibraltar, and cavalcades of a thousand horses sometimes set out at once for Germany. (Holland, p. 323.) The Greek vessels were found trading in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Marmora; and a vast number of small craft plied among the islands of the Archipelago, and between these islands and the Continent. Thiersch estimates, that the internal and coasting trade of Greece employs 2000 small vessels, and 40,000 mules and asses. (Etat actuel de la Grèce, 1833, ii. p. 72.)
The commerce of Greece with the other parts of the world is chiefly carried on by sea; but with Germany a considerable traffic is maintained by land. The town of Salonica, which is situated in the centre of the most fertile, populous, and industrious districts, Macedonia and Thessaly, is the principal seat of this commerce. As a trading city it rivals Smyrna, and is probably inferior only to the capital. The other most considerable ports in Greece are Orphano, at the head of the Gulf of Contessa, Volo in Thessaly, Athens, Nauplia in Argolis, Calamata, Coron, and Patras in the south and west sides of the Morea, Salona on the north side of the Corinthian Gulf, Arta, Butrinto, Avlona, and Durazzo in Albania. The exports, which consist principally of raw produce, are corn, cotton, tobacco, olive oil, timber, wool, silk, honey, currants, figs, hides, dyestuffs, drugs, with some wine, cheese, butter, live cattle, spun and dyed cotton, some capots or cloaks, carpets, coarse woollens, and a few slight fabrics of silk and cotton. The manufactured articles go chiefly to the other provinces of Turkey. The imports from western Europe consist of manufactured goods, colonial produce, and peltry; those from other parts of Turkey, of coffee, flax, timber, rice, drugs, and some manufactured articles; those from Barbary, bonnets and slaves. Both imports and exports pay a duty of three per cent. if the merchant is a foreigner; but by a strange inversion of ordinary rules, the duty is from five to ten per cent. if he is a native. The goods imported are circulated through the country by fairs held in the great towns, and are transported from place to place on the backs of horses, mules, and sometimes camels. The prices are of course greatly enhanced by the risks attending carriage, and by the high rate of interest paid on capital, which is generally twelve per cent. in commercial transactions, and twenty per cent. in other cases. (Beaujour, let. 23, 24; Holland, 227, 326.)
In the ten years from 1787 to 1797, about one half of the foreign trade of Greece was with Germany. It was chiefly conducted by Greeks, and Vienna and Salonica were the principal entrepôts. The Germans took cotton, raw and spun, from Greece, and returned light woollens, linens, muslins, glass, cutlery, &c., to the value of one third of their imports, and the other two thirds in specie. The Italian commerce, which is next in importance to the German, is carried on chiefly with the ports of Leghorn and Venice. It supplied Greece with fire-arms, glass, paper, silks, &c.; Russia sent silks and peltry; France, woollens, bonnets, gold lace, sugar, coffee, and indigo; Holland, cloth and spiceries; and England, woollens, muslins, linens, metal wrought and unwrought, watches, trinkets, jewellery, and colonial produce. (Beaujour, let. 17, 23.) Except Russia and England, all those states make a part of their returns in specie. The late long wars, however, have made a considerable change in the distribution of this trade. The new establishments of Britain in Malta and the Ionian Islands must have transferred to her a part of what was formerly in the hands of the French and Italians.
Cotton, according to Beaujour, ranks first among the staple exports of Greece, and four fifths of the trade in this article is conducted at Salonica. On an average of the ten years ending 1797, the district of Seres in Macedon, where the most extensive cotton plantations in Greece are, furnished 50,000 bales, or 5,000,000 okes, for exportation, of which three fifths went to Germany. The price varied from 80 to 160 aspers the oke, or averaged about a piastre. But in 1809 the export of cotton from Salonica amounted to 110,000 bales, or 11,000,000 okes, and the price having risen to sixty, eighty-five, and even ninety paras, must have averaged nearly two piastres the oke. The export of the Morea, which, according to Pouqueville, consisted, about 1800, of two cargoes, probably 400,000 okes, must have increased from the same causes, and might be estimated at 600,000 okes. About 72,000 okes were shipped from Salona in 1805. Considerable quantities of cotton are raised in Albania, and more in Thessaly; and though a great proportion of these is consumed within the country, a part is exported by the ports of Volo, Arta, and probably also by Butrinto and Avlona. If we add for the exportation of these districts a quantity double of that of the Morea, or 1,200,000 okes, we may form a loose estimate of the whole export of cotton from Greece, which would thus amount, about 1809, to 12,872,000 okes, or 35,398,000 pounds—a quantity nearly equal to what was exported by the United States in 1805. The value of this, estimated at one and three fourth piastre the oke, would be 22,526,000 piastres, or about L1,200,000 sterling (taking the piastre at Is. ld., the value given by Dr Holland, from whom most
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1 Holland, 424. Mr Hobhouse, who travelled in 1809, says, that Hydra could furnish men for 80 vessels of 300 tons, Spezza for 60 (p. 600). With a small allowance for increase in the intervening period, perhaps the two statements are not inconsistent. The opening of the Continent, however, in 1813, for the admission of West Indian and American cottons, produced a great diminution in this branch of trade; but the details are interesting, as showing the commercial spirit of the people, and indicating the strides their trade may be expected to make under more favourable circumstances.
The trade in tobacco, of which Salonica is also the chief seat, seems to have latterly declined. Beaujour estimates the annual export of this article, between 1787 and 1797, at 60,000 bales, which went chiefly to Egypt, Barbary, Italy, and Germany; but Dr Holland, who travelled in 1812, estimates it only at 30,000 bales, or 3,000,000 of okes. The Morea, and the southern parts of Greece, generally raise little tobacco, but import a great part of what they use from Macedonia and Anatolia. Albania and Thessaly, however, yield a large produce, and export to some extent. We have no account of the precise quantity, but if we suppose it to be one fifth of what is shipped at Salonica, the whole export of this article would amount to 3,600,000 okes, which, valued at thirty-six aspers the oke (about £1.4d. the pound), including custom-house duties, would amount to 1,080,000 piastres, or L.67,500.
The exportation of corn to foreign countries is prohibited in Turkey, but is carried on to a great extent clandestinely, by the beys and pashas themselves, or by merchants, to whom they sell, for a large sum, the privilege of violating the law. During the unsettled state of the west of Europe, the trade of Greece in corn seems to have increased rapidly. According to Beaujour, the export from the fertile provinces of Thessaly and Macedonia, by the ports of Salonica, Orphano, and Volo, consisted annually of eighty cargoes to other parts of Turkey, and forty to France and Italy, making in all 1,200,000 kilos. In 1809 Dr Holland estimates the export from Salonica alone at 1,000,000 kilos of wheat, 500,000 barley, and 100,000 maize, altogether equal to about 200,000 quarters. About fifty cargoes of wheat and maize were sent from Arta to Sicily, Malta, and the Ionian Isles; 100,000 kilos from Salonica, and 250,000 from Livadia. The Morea, according to Pouqueville, sent out eight cargoes, or, according to Scrofani, about 240,000 kilos. If we put these quantities together, taking the cargo, according to Beaujour's valuation, at 10,000 kilos, and allow for the exports of Thessaly by the Gulf of Volo (which are not included in Dr Holland's statement), and of North Albania by Avlona, Durazzo, and other ports, a quantity equal to what is shipped at Arta, we shall have the whole export of continental Greece in corn before the revolution 3,190,000 kilos, or 400,000 quarters. The greater part of this consisted of wheat, the price of which was latterly from five and a half to six and a half piastres the kilo. Beaujour states the value of bread corn in his time at two and a half piastres; and Scrofani reckons the grain of all kinds exported from the Gulf of Arta worth three piastres the kilo. If we assume the average in 1809 to be four and a half piastres, the value of the whole exportation would be about 14,950,000 piastres, or L.809,700 sterling.
This may be considered as the true value of the grain, only a small share of which, however, goes into the pocket of the grower, imposts and exactions by the public officers absorbing the greater part. Considered in reference to the extent and circumstances of the country, the exportation now stated is very large. Estimating the whole population at 2,500,000, and allowing a septier of corn (about four and a half bushels) to each, according to Beaujour's calculation, the whole consumption will only amount to 1,400,000 quarters; and the corn exported will form nearly one fourth of the entire produce.
It has been stated that only a small proportion of the wool of Greece is wrought up in the country; but the amount of the export does not seem to warrant this assertion. From Salonica, according to Beaujour, the quantity exported is about 500,000 okes annually; from Salonica, in 1805, it was 140,000 okes; from the Morea, according to Pouqueville, two cargoes, or, according to Scrofani, 340,000 okes. As sheep-farming is a leading occupation in Thessaly, and still more in Albania, the quantity exported from these countries (independently of what is carried inland to Salonica), and from Epirus and Attica, cannot be less than from Macedonia and the Morea together; and, on these data, the whole export of wool may be loosely estimated at 1,800,000 okes (4,950,000 pounds), which, at the average price of twenty paras the oke, is worth about L.56,000 sterling. Considering the reputed number of flocks in Greece, and the small proportion of the wool said to be used in domestic manufactures, this estimate is probably below the truth. The Jews of Salonica, who were refugees from Spain two centuries ago, obtained from the Ottoman government the privilege of buying up one fifth of the wools grown in Macedonia, at four paras the pound; and this oppressive privilege they were permitted to retain and abuse to a late period.
The exports of Attica in olive oil, according to Beaujour, were 150,000 measures (of twelve pounds each), or about 14,000 barrels, at forty-eight okes to the barrel. Those of the Morea, according to Scrofani, were 21,000 barrels; Salonica, in 1815, shipped 5000 barrels; and large quantities were sent out from the Gulfs of Volo and Arta, from Avlona, and probably from Salonica and Orphano. Considering the extent to which this tree is cultivated over all Greece, the annual produce for exportation would certainly be moderately estimated at twice the amount of the quantities above enumerated, or 80,000 barrels. The value of this, at twenty piastres the barrel, is L.100,000 sterling.
The commerce in currants centres chiefly in Patras, from which, according to Beaujour, 8,000,000 pounds were annually exported, the total value of which, at eighty piastres the thousand pounds, is L.40,000 sterling. Dr Holland states the export from Patras at 5,000,000 pounds, Scrofani at 6,000,000. (Beaujour, let. 8; Holland, 433.)
The only exportable commodity worth naming possessed Miscellanae by Attica, besides oil, is its honey, which is famed over all neons ar-Turkey. Of this article and wax it exported to the value of 100,000 piastres. Twenty or thirty cargoes of timber were sent from the Gulf of Arta, besides large quantities from Macedonia and Thessaly; and from one or other of these districts were also exported silk, wine, hare-skins, honey, opium, drugs, bees-wax, carpets, and some capots, and other coarse woollen cloths. Vermilion and madder are exported from Livadia. Of the nature and extent of this trade we can only form a judgment by referring to that of the Morea. Besides the produce of corn, oil, currants, cotton, and wool, formerly mentioned, the Morea exported on an average, according to Scrofani, silk, to the value of 407,000 piastres; cheese, 459,000 piastres; cattle, 240,000; fruits, 139,000; dye-stuffs, 202,000; wax and honey, 140,000. These, with smaller articles, to the
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1 Beaujour, let. 2; Holland, p. 84, 389; Pouqueville, p. 206. 2 Beaujour, let. 4 and 23; Holland, p. 84, 389, 395, 517; Pouqueville, 206; Walpole, p. 226. 3 The consumption of each individual in England is computed to be about 1 or 1 quarter of grain; and though the inhabitants of Greece live much on gourds, melons, chestnuts, and other substances of that kind, the estimate of Beaujour is certainly rather low. 4 Beaujour, let. 5; Holland, 369, 84, 517, 429; Pouqueville, 206. 5 Beaujour, let. 6; Holland, p. 84, 349, 389, 517; Pouqueville, 411. 6 Beaujour, let. 3; Holland, 84, 151, 349; Pouqueville, 411. value of 238,000 piastres, make a total of 1,725,000 piastres. From this must be deducted the value of goods sent to other parts of Greece, supposing it to equal the imports of the same description, viz. 316,000 piastres, which leaves 1,409,000 piastres. If we suppose the trade of the north of Greece in these miscellaneous articles to be three times as great as that of the Morea (the ratio of the population is about five to one), or 4,227,000 piastres, we have a sum of 5,950,000 piastres, or L377,000; to add to the value of the exports of Greece, in the great articles formerly enumerated, and the whole will stand thus:
- Cotton, raw and spun ........................................... L1,200,000 - Tobacco ........................................................................ 56,000 - Corn .............................................................................. 809,700 - Wool ............................................................................. 67,000 - Olive oil ......................................................................... 100,000 - Currants ....................................................................... 40,000 - Miscellaneous articles .................................................. 377,000
Total exports of continental Greece before the revolution ................................................................. L2,549,700
We are sensible that so many uncertain elements enter into this table as to detract greatly from its authority; but the reader is aware of the data from which it is compiled, and can judge for himself. The multitude of particular facts, given by different travellers, seem to be of little value, except as materials for some such general estimate; and the writer of an article of this kind is evidently in a better situation to form such an estimate than an ordinary reader.
With regard to this amount, it is proper to observe, that it refers to the period of 1809, when the commerce of Greece was forced up to an unnatural magnitude by the singular state of western Europe. The peace of 1814 reduced both the quantity and value of the cotton and grain exported, probably to the extent of a third or more, and the trade of Southern Greece was almost annihilated by the revolution. We may remark farther, that the sum expresses the value of the articles to the foreign purchaser at the place of export, which includes duties and charges, amounting, in some cases, to one third of the value; and, with regard to the article of corn, a considerable part is carried away without payment, as the produce of a tax; another part is forced from the grower, at a fifth or sixth part of its value, for the supply of the capital; while the sale of the remainder is either monopolized by the beys, or subjected to an arbitrary impost, paid as a bribe for permitting the exportation, in violation of the law. (Beaujour, vol. i. p. 119.) So great a proportion of the value is diverted into the pockets of the various classes of public functionaries, that the effect of the exportation, in stimulating domestic industry and production, is infinitely less than the aggregate amount would lead us to suppose. But when the extent and population of the country is considered, and the multiplied discouragements to industry, arising out of the government and state of society, the trade was surprisingly great, and shows what a high rank Greece may attain, as a commercial state, when her industry is unfettered, and enjoys security under a good government.
Though still proceeding on conjectural grounds, we may venture a step further, in order to get at some idea of the naval resources of the Greeks. If we take the imports of the Morea (given by Scrofani) as a basis for the whole country, we should conclude that the trade of Greece, with other parts of Turkey and Barbary, is to her trade with foreign nations nearly as five to four. And, in a period of war (1809), when the Greeks appeared in the character of neutrals, it is probable that the whole of the former trade, and two thirds of the latter, would be carried on in Grecian bottoms. In this and other particulars the commerce of Greece bore a general analogy to that of America, both countries exporting raw produce of the same kind, and importing manufactures, and both acting in the character of neutrals. On the ground of this resemblance, we will suppose the coasting trade of Greece and its islands to employ about half the tonnage of its other trade. In 1810 we find the whole tonnage of the United States (foreign and coasting) was, to its exports, in the proportion nearly of one ton to forty-eight dollars; but, allowing for the inferior efficiency of Greek shipping, and the difference in the value of money, although their voyages are shorter, we may assign one ton to thirty-six dollars, as the proportion in the latter. This gives about 340,000 tons of shipping, of all sizes; and since the danger from pirates, as well as their own want of nautical skill, oblige the Greeks to employ an extra number of hands in their vessels, we may allow one man to ten or twelve tons, which will give 30,000 seamen. If we add half as many more for the Greek mariners employed at Constantinople, Smyrna, and other ports beyond the limits of Greece, the whole number of mariners of this nation, in 1809, may be estimated at 45,000, which does not fall greatly short of the number mentioned by Mr Hohhouse. More than one half of this commercial marine must have disappeared during the troubles of the revolution; but more prosperous times may recall it to existence.
The proportion between the rate of wages and the price of commodities in Greece affords an illustration of the dependence of the former on the habits of the population. The numerous fasts of the Greek church keep the peasant idle a great part of the year; and the consequence is, that, as he must have the means of subsistence, his wages, during the time he labours, are so much higher. Thus, Beaujour tells us, that, in his time (from 1787 to 1792), the wages of a peasant were from twenty to twenty-five paras a day, and of an artisan, thirty to forty paras; and, at the same period, beef was sold at six, mutton at twelve, and bread at four paras the oke (two and three-fourth pounds); and corn was two and a half piastres the kilo or bushel. Supposing a full-aged labourer to consume six or seven kilos of corn in the year, he observes, that such a person could earn bread for himself, for a whole year, in thirty-six or forty days, and food of all kinds in eighty; that he could provide subsistence for himself and his wife in a hundred and sixty days; and for a child besides in forty days more. The vast number of fasts, as he remarks, are the chief cause of these high wages, which do not enable the labourer to live well, but to live idle, and indulge his superstitious feelings. (Beaujour, ii. 168.)
The provincial governments of Greece bear the different denominations of pashalik, mousselimlik, agalik, voivodlik, according as they are administered by pashas, mousselims, agas, or voivodes. The pashas are the first of these functionaries in rank, and govern the largest districts; the others follow in the order in which they are named. The agas often take the title of Bey, though that belongs properly to military commanders one degree higher. The most essential distinction between them regards the extent of the districts they govern; for they are all independent of one another, and accountable separately to the general government. Each, as vicegerent of the sultan, exercises the full powers of sovereignty within his own district. This seems to be the theory of the government; but as theory and practice seldom coincide in Turkey, we find that in some districts the beys or agas are, to a certain extent, dependent on the pashas. The limits and the numbers of these provincial governments are often in a state of fluctuation, in consequence of the hostilities which the beys and pashas carry on against one another. The enter-
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1 Beaujour, let. 6, 9-11; Holland, 84, 389; Clarke, vil. 465-8; Pouqueville, 411. prising ambition of Ali, the late pasha of Albania, nearly obliterated all the ancient political divisions of Northern Greece. In 1812, the provincial governments consisted of five pashaliks, two voivodaliks, and a number of smaller districts, governed by beys, or officers of inferior rank. These were, 1. The pashalik of Albania, comprehending the territories which formerly constituted the pashaliks of Lepanto, Arta, Yanina, Delvino, Ocrida, Avlona, with the mousselimlik of Larissa, and several towns and small districts governed by beys, agas, or voivodes; the whole comprehending the ancient Epirus, Acarnania, Ætolia, Phocis, the greater part of Thessaly, the southern division of Illyricum, and the western divisions of Macedonia and Boeotia. 2. The pashalik of Scutari, consisting of the country watered by the Drino, a part of the ancient Illyricum. 3. The pashalik of Salonica, including all the lower part of Macedonia, except the districts belonging to the pasha of Albania. 4. The pashalik of Negropont, consisting of the eastern part of Boeotia, and the island of Euboea or Negropont. 5. The pashalik of Tripolizza, comprehending all the Morea, except some maritime towns and districts. The pasha had under him twenty-four officers, governing the different cantons, some named beys, and others bodja-bashées or elders. 6. Attica and Livadia were each governed by a voivode. 7. The high country of Macedonia is divided among a number of beys or agas. 8. The small territory of Zagora, the ancient Magnesia, was under the government of the Greek primate of the country. 9. The district of Maina, in the Morea, was disjoined from the pashalik of Tripolizza, and though nominally subject to the capitán pasha, actually enjoyed a great degree of independence under the sway of its own beys, who are twelve in number, and live much in the condition of feudal barons. 10. All the Greek islands, with some maritime districts on the mainland, were under the authority of the capitán pasha. This enumeration of the provincial governments is not very complete, but may give an idea of its interior government before the revolution.
The civil polity of the Turks is in substance the discipline and arrangements of a Tartar camp applied to the government of a nation. The pasha, like the commander-in-chief, determines every matter, civil, military, and judicial, with summary dispatch, and without reference to any other rule than his own untutored conceptions of right and wrong. Questions not of a criminal nature, however, between subject and subject, are decided by the mollah or judge, whose jurisdiction extends over both Turks and Christians. In the tribunals of these functionaries, bribery is almost open and avowed, and false witnesses form something like a regular profession. The gainer of a suit pays the whole expenses. The Turks themselves, aware of the notorious corruption of the courts, rather submit to injustice than seek legal redress. Avanies, or vexatious prosecutions instituted against Christians, for the purpose of compelling them to pay a sum of money as the price of abandoning the suit, are a regular source of revenue to the Turkish inhabitants of towns. The police of the Turks is as rude as their judicial system. An officer accompanied by soldiers traverses the markets in the great towns, and if he detects any person selling with false weights, the defaulter receives the bastinado for the first offence, is nailed by the ear to the door of his own shop for the second, and hanged for the third. Their attempts to correct evils often produce others of much worse description. If a complaint is made by some person of consequence, of a robbery committed, an enormous fine is levied on the district where it happened; or, what is still worse, a party of soldiers is sent out, who, under the pretext of searching for the robbers, oppress and plunder the peasants without mercy. An officer, named dervedjî-pasha, charged with the inspection of the roads and bridges, makes an annual tour through the country, accompanied by a party of soldiers; but his inspection serves no other purpose than to extract money, under the name of fines, from the people, to fill his own pockets, while the roads and bridges are utterly neglected. Indeed all classes of public officers practise extortion, and Turks, Greeks, and Jews, are almost equally sufferers. Public offices are regularly sold to the highest bidder, and those who buy them of course reimburse themselves by one means or another. As the appointments are annual, the price is paid over again every year; and the only method of redress which is open to a city or district that is oppressed, is to offer a greater sum for the removal of its governor than he gives to obtain the renewal of his office. Very often, after an aga has amassed great riches, the Porte allures him into some large town, by the bait of a splendid employment, and there strips him of his wealth, and perhaps awards him the bowstring. The pashas live surrounded with a degree of pomp and splendour, which contrasts strangely with the squalid wretchedness of the people they govern. They are approached with prostrations, like eastern monarchs. Their places of residence are vast buildings, forts without, and palaces within, capable of containing a thousand or twelve hundred men. Besides a strong body of soldiers, they are filled with an immense retinue of servants, including menials, tradesmen, and artists; such as coffeemakers, sherbetmakers, confectioners, bathers, tailors, barbers, dwarf pages, black slaves, buffoons, musicians, puppet-showmen, wrestlers, conjurors, dancers, an imam (or priest), and, lastly, the executioner, the pasha's confidential servant, without whom he never stirs abroad, and who is the only person privileged to sit in his presence. In addition to all this, the harem, or women's apartments, forms a separate establishment, with its own train of servants. A pasha of Salonica, not peculiarly profuse in his habits, has been known to expend £24,000 per annum on his domestic establishment. The mousselims, agas, and beys, support the same state in proportion to their circumstances. Wars are as common among these petty rulers as among the old feudal barons, and as destructive in their effects. The Porte, by a miserable policy, foments their quarrels, to weaken them individually, and increase their dependence on itself. The people, ruined by exactions, or the ravages of the military, abandon their homes, and fly to the mountains and forests, where they commence robbers. In some places the rural inhabitants live in houses which are built like small forts with draw-bridges and battlements. In addition to all the evils common to them with the Turks, the Greeks have many peculiar to themselves. They are made to feel their degradation by the most opprobrious distinctions. They are marked out by a peculiar costume, and are not allowed to wear certain articles of dress, or clothes or slippers of a light colour, or to paint their houses of those colours which the Turks use. It is death for a Greek to marry a Turkish woman, or to strike a Mahomedan even in self-defence. One of the lowest Turks will dismount from his horse, force a Greek from his shop, load him with his baggage, and compel him to follow him, without the poor Greek daring to utter a complaint. The wealthiest individuals of this nation are exposed to the most galling insults in their own houses. Dr Holland mentions, that while he was sitting with the Archbishop of Larissa, the most considerable Greek in Thessaly, a Turk of a surly and forbidding aspect, and evidently of
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1 Beaujour, let. i.; Pouqueville, chap. x.; Thornton, p. 122; Hobhouse, let. 14, 17. the lowest class, entered the room, seated himself unceremoniously on the sofa, filled his pipe, and took coffee from the attendants. The archbishop was evidently embarrassed, but made no comment. After a short interval, he took a coin from his purse, and put it silently into the hand of the Turk, who immediately disappeared. In general, the inhabitants of the districts which are appanages of the great officers of state, of the timars or fiefs held under the sultan, and of the lands belonging to the church, are less oppressed than the others. The islands of the Archipelago, where Turkish governors do not reside, are also less disturbed; and mountainous districts, such as Maina, which are capable of being defended, are sometimes nearly in a state of independence. Local differences, indeed, in the political condition of the people, are numerous in Greece. Where the Christian inhabitants have wrested certain privileges from the Turks, they generally enjoy them undisturbed, from the mechanical adherence of the latter to habits once formed. Very often the degree of freedom and security which the Greeks enjoy depends on their numbers. In towns where they form a large part of the population, as in Athens, their numbers and union give them consequence, and their superior knowledge and address enables them successfully to elude or oppose the sluggish tyranny of the Turks.
The redeeming feature in the civil polity of the Turks was their municipal institutions, which, growing out of the anarchy of the government, proved to some extent a compensation for its oppressions. The conquering nation, too proud and indolent to concern itself much about the local and domestic concerns of the subject race, or to resort to disguised and indirect taxation, was content to fix the amount of tribute which each district should pay, leaving the rayahs to raise it in what manner they pleased, and to adjust such disputes as arose among them by the laws or usages to which they were accustomed. Hence every considerable Greek village, or every three or four where they were small, form a municipality, the inhabitants of which meet and choose, by open suffrage, magistrates under the name of primates or elders. They consist generally of the richest men in the district; sometimes they are chosen annually; sometimes for no definite period; but if they misbehave, they are deposed by the votes of the people, without regard to any term. Their functions are numerous and important. They apportion the tax imposed upon the whole community to each individual according to his property, and for this purpose they make it their business to ascertain each man's means of living, his industry and profits. It is their duty, by admonition or reproof, to prevent the negligence or misconduct of any individual from adding to the burdens of the rest. They assess and collect the poll-tax, house-tax, land-tax, and other imposts, which, in their mode of collection and repartition, vary in almost every village, but always depend on a scale of property. They manage the municipal funds raised for indemnifying families upon whom Turks have been billeted, for supplying provisions to troops passing through the place, and for defraying the expenses of the local administration. They borrow money on their own responsibility to discharge occasional demands of the government, or unexpected emergencies. They distribute lands left uncultivated or without heirs; they legalise contracts by affixing their signatures to them; and, jointly with the priests (also popularly chosen), they adjust quarrels, settle civil disputes, and exercise in some degree the powers of police judges. The village communities in Turkey, in short, resemble those in India. They are small associations framed on a republican model, paying a fixed annual tribute to a superior ruler, but possessing the power of regulating their internal affairs, almost uncontrolled. Such institutions, as they unite the people, by a sense of common interest, in furthering the good of each other, operate strongly to secure property and develop industry; and such was no doubt the secret of the wonderful prosperity exhibited by Hydra, Spezzia, Ampelakia in Thessaly, Seres in Macedonia, and other villages in Greece. Though Mr Urquhart, who first brought the nature of these municipalities fully to light, has perhaps overrated their advantages, there is no doubt that they contributed greatly to counteract the evils springing from the ignorance and rapacity of the Turkish government.
The Turkish government being purely military, the privilege of carrying arms is considered a mark of distinction, and is reserved entirely to the Turks. Nearly the whole of this part of the population belongs either to the top-rakli (feudal militia) or to the corps of janizaries. A Mahommedan unconnected with any military corps is, equally with Christians, liable to capitation-tax and other imposts; and this law, though not rigorously enforced, induced most of the Turks to enrol their children in their infancy. Hence in the cities every Turk was a janizary. But only a very small number of these were embodied; the whole corps of janizaries in actual pay in the empire having been only about forty thousand, according to Mr Thornton. They served in garrisons, and generally followed some trade. Their pay was originally about one shilling a day, and, though it continued nominally the same, was ultimately, from the depreciation of the coin, reduced to a fractional part of this sum. Small companies of topgias or artillerymen were also placed in the garrisons, but they were totally ignorant of gunnery; and very often the guns were without carriages. The yamachs or unembodied janizaries, and spahis, served merely to fill vacancies in the standing corps, and furnish extraordinary levies in time of war. These levies were made at the rate of one man out of ten persons of the families attached to the military bodies. When called upon for active service, they marched without uniforms, armed with fowling-pieces, pistols, lances, or such weapons as they could find. The Albanians, from greater practice in war, were better organized, though destitute of what would be considered discipline in regular armies. Many of the pashas, indeed, keep in their service a corps of Albanians, who have become the principal and far the most efficient part of the Turkish military in Greece. We do not find any accurate account of the amount of the military force actually kept on foot in Greece, or of the contingent furnished by it for the general service of the empire. But the pashalik of Salonica, with the mousselimlik of Larissa, which have a population of 500,000 souls, Greeks, Jews, and Turks, supplied, in time of foreign war, 15,000 men; and as the proportion of Mahommedans is much greater in these districts than anywhere else, perhaps the contingent for the whole country, including Albania, would not exceed three times this number. But so inefficient was the military administration, that generally not more than one half of the individuals called upon actually joined the army. The late pasha of Albania, the most formidable military power in Greece, had seldom more than 8000 men in pay, according to Mr Hobhouse. But Dr Holland, who wrote at a later period, when Ali's dominions were much more extended, estimates his standing army at 15,000, and thinks he could, for a short time, maintain 30,000 men in arms. As nearly one half of the peninsula of Greece was, at the latter period, subject to Ali, containing a population of
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1 *Turkey and its Resources*, by D. Urquhart, chap. ii. 1833. 200,000 or 1,000,000 souls, the estimate seems extremely moderate; and the whole military force of the country applicable to any emergency, calculated on the same scale, would be 60,000 men, or one tenth of the males able to bear arms. The Albanians of all classes possess arms. Those in active service use a sabre in addition to the gun, pistols, and poniard which the peasantry carry. Pouqueville speaks of them as being formed in chilads or bodies of a thousand men each, which are subdivided into companies; but these companies do not consist of a fixed number. They have few cavalry; and their infantry is without tactics, discipline, or regular order. But they have the military virtues in a degree not surpassed by any nation in Europe; and their impetuous courage has often matched victory from an enemy superior in numbers and technical skill. They are strong, hardy, active, and enterprising; they delight in combats; are daring in action, even to rashness, and firm in the midst of dangers.
Such was the composition of the Turkish military force in Greece previous to 1826, when the reigning sultan suppressed the formidable corps of janizaries, and organized an army on the principles adopted in Western Europe.
The public revenues of Greece, like those of other rude countries, consist of a number of imports, raised in a very simple plan, and often so much the more oppressive for this simplicity. The expedients adopted in other states to lighten and equalize the pressure of taxes, and to mitigate their injurious effects on industry, are totally unknown in Turkey. Most of the taxes were imposed in rude times by men skilled in nothing but the use of the sword; and the paramount authority of custom, which in Turkey controls equally subject and sovereign, will not allow of any material alteration. There are, however, local variations, both in the amount of the taxes, and in the mode of their imposition. 1. The first of the Turkish taxes is the miri or land-tax, which affects equally Turks and Greeks, and consists of one tenth of the gross produce of the soil. Beaujour estimates its actual amount at one twelfth. Vineyards and gardens, with ground under cotton, madder, and mulberries, generally pay a composition. 2. A tax on moveables, that is, shops, houses, furniture, &c., affecting all other classes but Turks; is assessed in a very arbitrary manner, varying much in different towns, and is estimated by the Greeks to absorb a fourth part of their gains. 3. A tax on consumable commodities, cattle, provisions, fire-wood, liquors, &c., levied at the gates of towns, at rates probably not uniform. Sheep and goats pay one para, an ox one piastre, wine two, and rarely four paras the oke; compositions are accepted for other articles. 4. The kratich or capitulation-tax, imposed on all males not Mahommedans, who are above twelve years of age according to some, above five or eight according to others. The rate varies from two to ten piastres, according to the supposed wealth of the person, and may vary to a still greater extent, as it is levied on the basis of an ancient roll or census, and, when the population of a district diminishes, the rate is raised in order to afford the same annual amount. The officers judge of child's age by putting a cord round its head. The person paying receives a ticket, which he is obliged to produce at the gates of towns, and if he fails, he is compelled to pay anew, perhaps with the addition of the bastinado. 5. A duty on exports and imports, amounting generally to three per cent. when the merchant is a foreigner, and five or six per cent. when he is a native subject. 6. The property of all public officers at their death, and of all persons who die without heirs, devolves to the pasha, on behalf of the grand seignior. By a composition, however, the heirs of a public officer are sometimes allowed to retain his property. 7. Each pasha has generally a number of farms and villages attached to his place, of which he draws the rents. Ali, pasha of Albania, was reported to be the proprietor of four hundred villages, which yielded him L200,000 per annum. Mr Hughes thinks that one third of the whole cultivated territory belonged to him. 8. The arbitrary requisitions made of horses, forage, and provisions, for the public service, are a productive source of revenue. 9. Large sums are drawn from the sale of public offices, including those of the dignitaries of the Greek church. The inferior clergy are also compelled to pay a sum at their installation. 10. In some provinces, perhaps in all, there is a duty on legal proceedings, amounting to one tenth of the value of the disputed property. 11. Acquisities, or vexatious prosecutions, and fines levied on districts for crimes committed within their bounds, on the ground that they might have prevented them. This last practice is made a pretext for many grievous acts of extortion and cruelty, the inhabitants being subjected to military execution when they are unable to pay. 12. Sums are wrung from the tributary classes as a composition for working at the highways and fortifications; but the money passes wholly into the pockets of the public officers. 13. A considerable revenue is derived from escheats, forfeitures, and confiscations; and a trifling amount from the produce of the mines, all mines being regarded as the grand seignior's property. Lastly, the istira, or regulation by which the cultivators are compelled to furnish corn for the supply of the capital, at one fourth or one fifth of its market value, operates as a tax on the husbandman, though it bring little into the treasury of the prince. Many of these taxes are farmed; but certain districts, as Maina, and certain bodies of men, as the Jews of Salonica, are allowed to make a composition with the government, under which they assess or collect taxes, wholly or in part, themselves. Were we to judge of these taxes by the amount paid in to the government, we should pronounce them extremely light. But the unequal and often arbitrary mode of apportioning and collecting them is sufficient to render the lightest impost oppressive; and the numberless fraudulent demands for which they afford a cover on the part of the revenue officers greatly aggravate their pressure. From isolated facts stated by various writers, we are warranted to believe that the gross revenue, or the money drawn from the people, is generally double, sometimes triple, of what is paid even to the provincial governments. To the credit of the present sultan it must be said, that since 1824 he has done a great deal to regulate the finances, and remedy the evils of the old system.
We have no account on which the smallest reliance can be placed, of the whole produce of the taxes of Greece; and the statements with regard to those of particular districts are too contradictory to be received without suspicion. Mr Hobhouse heard the revenues of Ali estimated at six millions of piastres, exclusively of casual levies, a very comprehensive head. Attica has been said to remit annually to Constantinople 700 or 750 purses, of 500 piastres each. According to Pouqueville, two millions of piastres were raised in the Morea, of which only one half was paid in to the pasha. There is very little consistency in these statements. If we take the first as a basis, and assume that Ali's territories comprehended one third of Greece at the period alluded to, the revenue of the
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1 Thornton, chap. v.; Beaujour, let. 4; Hobhouse, let. 12, 13; Pouqueville, chap. x. xxxiii.; Holland, p. 111. 2 Thornton, chap. vi.; Beaujour, let. 1; Pouqueville, chap. x.; Holland, p. 115; Hobhouse, p. 296; Hughes's Travels, vol. ii. whole peninsula might be estimated at eighteen millions of piastres, or L1,100,000 sterling, exclusive of what are called casual levies. But, from the vigour of Ali's government, his revenue was probably greater in proportional amount, and collected at a less expense, than that of any other provincial ruler. A different mode of calculation would conduct us to a similar result. In the least advanced countries of Europe, such as Spain, Portugal, Austria, Russia, and Sweden, the public revenue, compared with the population, is generally at a rate varying from 8s. to 15s. sterling per annum for each inhabitant; and as Greece is certainly near the bottom of the scale in point of productive industry, her revenue can scarcely exceed the lowest of these rates. Calculating on this principle, and supposing the population to be two millions and a half, the net revenue before the revolution would be L1,000,000 sterling, and this sum doubled may represent the gross amount extracted from the pockets of the people.
Of the various estimates given of the population of Greece, that of Beaujour has been most generally followed. This writer assigned a population of 700,000 souls to Macedonia, 300,000 to Thessaly, 400,000 to Epirus, 200,000 to Ætolia, Phocis, and Boeotia, 300,000 to the Morea, and 20,000 to Attica, making a total of 1,920,000. We speak of the country as it existed before the revolution. The population of the new kingdom of Greece will be afterwards given. In two particulars this statement seems to require correction. The population of the Morea, since the desultory war of 1770, appears to have been gradually increasing. Scrofani and Pouqueville, who had good means of information, estimate it at 400,000 Greeks, 15,000 Turks, and 4000 Jews. Again, Beaujour appears not to have included under the name of Epirus the district watered by the Drino, or even Northern Albania; and the researches of Mr Hobhouse and Dr Holland have shown that the parts of this country he did include are more populous than he imagined. Perhaps on these grounds we may raise the entire population to 2,400,000. Probably the number of inhabitants was not greater in Strabo's time, if we may judge from the account he gives of the deserted state of the country (lib. vii. p. 322); and the government of the Turks, with all its train of abuses, is probably not more destructive to Greece than that of the Romans was. This population is very unequally distributed. It is densest in the southern parts of Macedonia, in the eastern parts of Thessaly, and in the central and northern districts of Albania. Acaarnania is almost a desert; Ætolia is thinly peopled; Attica, including the city, has not more than twenty-five or thirty inhabitants to the square mile. The plain of Argos, and the hilly region of Maina, are the most populous parts of the Morea. As might be expected from the insecure state of the country, single cottages or scattered hamlets are scarcely anywhere to be seen. The inhabitants are always collected into villages or cities; and those who are engaged in husbandry waste a great part of their time and labour in travelling to and from their lands. Hence, in the agricultural districts, the proportion of the inhabitants who live in towns seems unusually large, considering the small resources that trade and manufactures afford. Of 500,000 persons inhabiting the phalik of Salonica, and the mousselemlik of Larissa, one third, according to Beaujour, live in the large towns. The most fertile districts are not uniformly the most populous. A barren soil in mountainous parts, which afford the means of defence, is often laboriously cultivated, while the rich plains below are neglected.
It would be interesting to compare the modern with the ancient population of Greece in point of numbers. But inquiries with regard to the latter seem to lead into a labyrinth of difficulties, partly from the want of sufficient data, partly from the multitude of errors that have crept into the numerical expressions in the text of ancient authors, and partly from the civil distinctions of citizens, slaves, and strangers, which render the application of particular statements uncertain. It would baffle human sagacity to build any satisfactory conclusion on the mass of discordant details collected by Hume. We shall proceed more securely, if we ground our reasonings on some single statement that is pretty well established. From a variety of circumstances which elucidate and fortify each other, Hume deduces that Athens contained at one period 284,000 inhabitants. Let us suppose this to include also the rural population. Attica was comparatively a barren district; and, exclusively of Eleusis, Megara, and Salamis, did not occupy more than one sixtieth part of the countries to which our statements apply in this article. Its commerce and colonies, however, more than compensated for the inferiority of its soil. Now, if we suppose the other and more fertile, but less improved parts of Greece, to have been peopled only to one fourth of the density of Attica, this would give a population of eight millions and a half for the whole country. Mannert, a German writer, whose opinion is entitled to great weight, estimates the entire population of Attica at 550,000, chiefly on the authority of Athenæus. Without relying much on these calculations, we may observe, that if one amidst a multitude of small states had such a mass of population, her neighbours and rivals must have possessed something like a proportionate strength to preserve their independence. And, considering the strong feeling of emulation which pervaded these small republics, we may be certain that, before the arts of industry could be so far advanced in Attica as to enable such a mass of people to subsist on so small a surface, the neighbouring states must have been considerably improved.
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1 The ancient Athenian revenues consisted of, 1. Contributions from the allies, which amounted to 600 talents in the time of Alcibiades; 2. Customs at the rate of two per cent. on imports and exports, which yielded about thirty-six talents; 3. Confiscations of the property of individuals; 4. Rents and produce of mines and marble quarries; 5. Capitation tax on the Metoecos, or strangers permanently resident in the city. Xenophon estimates the whole at 1000 talents, or L250,000. (Walpole's Memoirs relating to Turkey, p. 435.)
2 Beaujour, let. i.; Holland, p. 113, 251, 290; Hobhouse, p. 176, 201, 487; Pouqueville, chap. x.
3 This conclusion is not without its difficulties. But if it involves any errors, they are errors of defect, and not of excess; for any different construction of the text of Athenæus would give a larger number. (See Hume's Essay on the Populousness of Ancient Nations.) We may adopt another mode of calculation. The Spartans were the only power who regularly employed their slaves (hectos) in their armies, and whose military force may therefore be taken as a criterion of their whole population. They sent, of Lacedemonians and helots together, 50,000 to fight the Persians at Platæa. The men were collected and sent off within the space of a day or two, and as the Messenians were shortly after in a state of revolt, it may be presumed that none of that nation were in the army. (Herodotus, lib. ix. c. 15.) If we suppose that this army contained one half of the males of a military age (and probably no country ever sent a larger proportion beyond its own confines), the whole population of Laconia would be 400,000; and that of Peloponnesus, in the same ratio, would be 2,000,000. Supposing the parts beyond the isthmus to be peopled only to three fifths of the density of Peloponnesus, the whole population of Greece would be 6,500,000, an amount not materially different from the other. After all, it must be confessed that so general a conclusion, based on so narrow a basis, is scarcely better than a confession of total ignorance. It may be observed, that the greatest army which England ever sent beyond her own frontier, previous to the present times, was that with which Edward II. invaded Scotland, consisting of 100,000 men.
4 Geographie der Griechen und Roemer, achter Thiel, p. 294. We have stated that a small proportion of the inhabitants of Greece live scattered through the country. Were this circumstance not attended to, the number of large towns mentioned by travellers would lead us to conclude that the country is more populous than it really is. We abjoin the names of some of the most considerable towns, with the estimated population:
**ALBANIA.**
| Town | Population | |---------------|------------| | Yanina | 35,000 | | Argyro Castro | 20,000 | | Berat | 15,000 | | Scutari | 12,000 |
**MACEDONIA.**
| Town | Population | |---------------|------------| | Salonica | 70,000 | | Seres | 30,000 |
**THESSALY.**
| Town | Population | |---------------|------------| | Larissa | 20,000 | | Vodina | 12,000 | | Trikala | 11,000 |
**ATTICA AND BEOTIA.**
| Town | Population | |---------------|------------| | Athens | 15,000 | | Livadia | 10,000 |
**MOREA.**
| Town | Population | |---------------|------------| | Patras | 10,000 | | Argos | 8,000 | | Tripolizza | 15,000 | | Misitra | 16,000 | | Hydra (Island)| 25,000 |
The towns of Greece contrast strikingly with those of Western Europe in their general appearance. Founded rather as places of security, than with a view to commercial advantage, their sites are generally elevated and picturesque. Instead of the long and uniform lines of buildings seen in our cities, the houses often stand detached, and appear irregularly scattered over the ground. The tall, airy minarets also, which break the outline in an agreeable and fanciful manner, and the groups of cypresses surrounding the mosques, which are seen blended with the buildings, give them a character of repose and softness, combined with richness, and even magnificence, which has a fine effect in the landscape. On a near inspection, however, their beauty vanishes. The mean buildings, the streets narrow and dark, seldom paved, and covered with offal and filth of every kind, grievously offend both the senses of sight and smell. The houses of the poorer classes are miserable hovels, built of mud and straw; those of the peasants in the country are often formed, like the huts of savages, of wooden poles rudely put together in the shape of a tent, and covered with turf. The houses of the better classes in towns are of wood, sometimes with a foundation of stone. They are pretty generally of two storeys; the upper storey sometimes projecting beyond the lower, in the manner of the old wooden buildings in Edinburgh, and the roof again extending far beyond the face of the upper wall, apparently for the purpose of giving shade and shelter to the streets below. The style of building is extremely uniform. The larger houses are built round a square area; the under storey, used as stables and warehouses, has seldom any windows on the side towards the street, or it is shut in on that side by a wall, so as to give the house the appearance of a jail. The upper storey presents in front an open gallery, with small windows, latticed with cross bars of wood, and serves chiefly to communicate with the apartments behind. The furniture consists of a very few articles, of a rich, or rather gaudy description: a divan or raised seat, from ten to fifteen inches in height, stuffed and covered with silk, and cushioned behind for the back, extends round three sides of the room. A handsome carpet covers the rest of the floor. These, with a table of very plain construction, and two or three large mirrors in the corners, are generally all that a well-furnished Turkish room contains. The walls are sometimes wainscotted, and adorned with landscapes, or purely ornamental paintings. The roofs exhibit gilding and carved work. Many of the houses of the rich have gardens attached to them, inclosing fountains. The dwellings of the wealthy Greeks are in no respect different from those of the Turks. There is a total absence, in the Greek towns, of that noise, bustle, and activity which give such an animated character to our cities. There are no wheel-carriges of any kind seen, but loaded camels or horses are passing to and fro, through the dust or mud. Hawks and storks are flying about the trees, mosques, and houses; and great numbers of gaunt and half-wild dogs, which have no owners, are prowling about, picking up the offal thrown into the streets. One of the most interesting objects in a Greek town is always the bazar or market. This consists of one, two, or more streets, filled entirely with shops or wooden booths. The dealers in the same class of articles are all ranged together. One street is occupied by those who deal in jewellery; another by those who deal in pelisses and shawls; a third by the retailers of common cotton goods; a fourth by the dealers in groceries, tobacco, &c.; a fifth by those who sell pipes, amber, mouth-pieces, &c.; and so on. These bazars are often shaded by wooden trellises interlaced with vines, or by branches of trees laid across from the roofs of the opposite shops or booths.
The population of Greece is composed chiefly of three different races, not more distinct in their origin than in races, their manners and character. These are the Turks, the Greeks, and the Albanians, with whom are intermixed a smaller number of Jews, Armenians, and Wallachians. It is extremely difficult to estimate, with any accuracy, in what proportions these different races are combined. The scanty information given by travellers on this subject is often rendered ambiguous by the indiscriminate application of the name of Greeks to persons attached to the Greek church, whether they are of that nation or Albanians. Except in some towns and very limited districts, Turks, the Turks nowhere appear to constitute the majority of the population. They are most numerous in Thessaly, Macedonia, and Negropont, are thinly diffused through the rest of Greece and Albania, and are scarcely seen at all in the islands. In the districts of Salonica and Larissa, where they most abound, they scarcely exceed, according to Beaujour, one third of the inhabitants (180,000 out of 500,000); in Athens, according to Dr Holland, they amounted to one fifth before the revolution; in the Morea, they formed one twenty-eighth part by Pouqueville's enumeration; in Livadia, there were few of them; in Acarnania and Ætolia, still fewer. In Yanina, they are less numerous than the Greeks; and throughout Greece generally, except in Thessaly and Macedonia, there were very few Turks among the rural population. Since the revolution, the Turkish inhabitants have almost disappeared from the country south of Mount Oeta. If there are any exceptions, they must be trifling. Without pretending to accuracy on a point where accuracy is unattainable, we may state that the population of Livadia is computed from the number of houses, reckoning five persons to a house. tainable, we may perhaps estimate the Turks on these grounds at one fourth of the inhabitants in Thessaly and Macedonia, and at one tenth in the other parts of Greece and Albania, on an average. The whole number of Turks computed on this principle would be 450,000, which is between one fifth and one sixth of the entire population.
It is more difficult to form any satisfactory conclusions as to the respective numbers of the Greeks and Albanians. Colonies or parties of the latter people have, from time to time, settled in various districts of Greece. Nearly all of these belong to the Greek church; and they have, with very few exceptions, preserved their native manners, dress, and language, though many of them are also able to express themselves in Greek. Colonel Gordon informs us that Attica, Boeotia, Phocis, Argolis, with the isles of Hydra, Spetsia, Salamis, and Andros, are inhabited by Albanians. They have also several villages in Arcadia, Achaia, and Messenia. In the rest of the Peloponnesus, in all the other islands, in Ætolia, Acarnania, a great part of Thessaly, and Lower Macedonia, the population is exclusively Greek.
Mr Urquhart gives an estimate of the different races inhabiting European Turkey, which we subjoin, though his rash and precipitate mode of judging divests it of any high claims to authority.
Osmanlis, Turkish race and language, all Mussulmen .................................................. 700,000
Greeks, Hellenic race and language, all Christians .......................................................... 2,050,000
Albanians, Skiptar race and language, two thirds Mussulmen ........................................... 1,600,000
Slavonic race and dialects (Bosniacs, Tulemans, Servians, Bulgarians, Mirdites, and Croats), one third Mussulmen, two thirds Christians .................................................. 6,000,000
Vlachi, or Wallachians, Greek church ................................................................................. 600,000
Gypsies 200,000, Jews 250,000, Armenians 100,000, Franks 50,000 ..................................... 600,000
Wallachia and Moldavia ...................................................................................................... 1,500,000
We are satisfied that the entire population of European Turkey does not exceed nine or ten millions; and in the above table the proportional number of the Slavonic race seems to be much exaggerated.
The Vlaki, or Wallachians, are next in numbers to the Greeks, Albanians, and Turks. Like the Albanians, they first appear in the history of Greece about the eleventh century. They are a tribe of mountaineers, chiefly employed as shepherds, living permanently on the great ridges of Pindus and Olympus, and their branches; but, like the Albanians, descending into the plains of Thessaly, Macedonia, and Southern Greece, during the winter, with their flocks. They have a language of their own, which, from the great proportion of Latin words it contains, has led to a belief that they are the descendants of the Roman colonies planted in Moesia and Dacia by the emperor Trajan and his successors. The rugged country they inhabit has kept them unmixed with other tribes, and enabled them to maintain a considerable degree of independence. They are hardy, but less ferocious than the Albanians, sober, industrious, cleanly, and in high repute as shepherds throughout Greece, both for their fidelity and skill. Some of the higher classes go abroad as merchants; and the lower classes furnish some of the best artisans in Greece and Turkey at large; but wherever their occupations carry them, a strong national spirit recalls them ultimately to their native mountains. Within their own country they have considerable manufactures of coarse woollens. They are of the Greek church, and the men generally speak Romaic, or modern Greek, besides their own language; but the women know only the latter.
The mountainous districts in the north of Macedonia are inhabited by Bulgarians, who occupy the whole region, from these parts to the Danube, and the neighborhood of Constantinople. They are a people of Slavonic origin, profess the Christian religion, and have a language distinct from that of the other people settled in Greece. They live chiefly by their flocks, are rude and ignorant, but brave. They possess only a small portion of the country at present; but for a considerable period between the eighth and eleventh centuries, they were masters of nearly the whole of Greece, and have left traces of their establishment there in the language, and in the names of places.
Small bodies of Jews are found in most of the considerable trading towns of Greece, engaged as usual in the lower branches of commerce. There are none in Athens, and this fact is accounted for, as in some other places, by the supposition that the native Athenians outdo them in their favourite profession of usury. There is a considerable number in Yanina; but they are nowhere so numerous as in Salonica, where they have been settled for some centuries. Their number in this city is estimated at 12,000; the peculiar privileges they enjoy, however, have not raised their character; for they are proverbially distinguished throughout Greece for chicanery, dishonesty, and immorality. Considered as a branch of the general population of the country, they are too inconsiderable to be of the least importance. Armenians are also found in some of the towns, but in a still smaller proportion than the Jews.
Bands of Tcheganies, Zingances, or gipsies, distinguished by the habits and occupations peculiar to them in other countries, wander over Greece. They are subjected, however, to the capitation tax. Some of them make a profession of Mahommedanism, but they are held in great contempt by the Turks. Some of the more wealthy Turks keep negro slaves, who are imported from Barbary and Egypt.
The Greek church appears at the present day covered with the accumulated abuses of ten or twelve centuries. It was founded in an age of theological casuistry and dogmatism; it has never felt the benign influence of general knowledge, or the salutary control of rival sects; but the bigotry or crooked policy of Christian princes, the barbarism of Mahommedan conquerors, the pious frauds of monks or fanatical priests, the credulity and superstition of an ignorant populace operating uncontrolled, have been continually loading it with new errors, new absurdities, and new corruptions. Though its priests are more numerous than in any other church, its rites and forms infinitely complicated, and its fasts absorb about two thirds of the year, it is scarcely possible to trace one genuine idea of Christianity in the minds either of the clergy or laity, or one trait of its influence in their conduct. The subtlety of understanding by which the Greeks are distinguished, and still more their proneness to superstition, have made them hold fast by their national faith amidst all the calamities they have suffered. And their barb- The Greek clergy are of two classes, the caloyers or monks, and the papas or priests. Monasteries, which are very numerous throughout Greece, are generally built in rocky and inaccessible situations for the sake of defense. They are supported partly by farms cultivated by lay brothers, partly by donations and perquisites received from the pious, partly by the exercise of mechanical trades, and the fabrication and sale of crosses, pictures of saints, psalters, &c. Their cells and prisons are universally dirty, as their minds are overrun with ignorance and superstition. In the vast establishment of Mount Athos, however, where before the revolution five or six thousand monks were assembled, and in the monastery of the Apocalypse, in Patmos, there are seminaries where some slight theological studies are pursued. The Patriarch of Constantinople, and all the superior Greek clergy, are generally taken from these places. Novices are admitted into monasteries as early as ten or twelve years of age. The noviciate lasts two years, in the most regular monasteries; after which the novice changes his habit, and becomes one of the professed. The monks who distinguish themselves by superior sanctity may be advanced to a still higher class, called Megaloschemoi, who are thought worthy of being compared to angels. Their general diet is fish, pulse, roots, olives, and wine; during their fasts, which occupy nearly the whole year, pulse, roots, and water only. But notwithstanding this mortified style of living, they are the sleekest and best fed people among the Greeks. Convents for women are rare. There are some anchorites, who live three or four together, in houses depending on convents; and a few ascetics, who live solitarily in caves in the mountains. Convents of all kinds are under the superintendence of the bishop of the diocese. The expectations, long indulged, of finding some of the lost classics in the libraries of these establishments, have been at last entirely dissipated. Professor Carlyle examined the libraries of the whole twenty-two monasteries on Mount Athos, containing altogether 13,000 manuscripts, a greater number, certainly, than exists in all the other monasteries in Greece, and found not a single unedited fragment of any classical author. (Walpole, p. 196, 220).
The officiating clergy consist of two classes, the patriarch, archbishops, and bishops, and papades or parish clergy, priests. All those of the first class are taken from the monasteries, and are not allowed to marry. The papades are allowed to marry once only previous to their consecration, but not afterwards. Hence, before entering into orders, they are generally careful to choose healthy partners, who are likely to live many years. The superior clergy have some little learning, are generally decent in their characters, and attentive to the duties of their stations, which are numerous and difficult; as, besides having to control the licentious and fanatical priests, they are umpires in all disputes among those of their communion, and exercise an extensive civil authority under the Turks. They enjoy the title of διάκονος, or lord, and are treated with extraordinary reverence. They are, in fact, the princes of the Greeks at the present day; and hence the first families send their children to the monasteries of Athos or Patmos, on purpose to qualify them for these dignities. The Turks having reserved to themselves the investiture of the prelates, openly put the offices to sale, and hence the most indecent broils arise among the candidates. The Patriarch of Constantinople, who ruled the whole Greek church in European Turkey, and nominated all its inferior dignitaries, was said to pay sixty thousand crowns for his office. His income does not exceed L3000 per annum; and that of bishops in general L300. Dr Holland, however, was informed that the Archbishop of Larissa had a revenue of L9000, but he doubts whether the amount was not exaggerated. The patriarch draws his revenue from contributions... upon the archbishops and bishops, who are supported by a tax on each house within the dioceses inhabited by Greeks.
The inferior clergy are appointed papas, or parish priests, by a species of parochial election; and before arriving at this office, they pass successively through the subordinate stations of reader, chanter, subdeacon, and deacon. No farther promotion, however, awaits them. Their means of living depend as much on their knavery as on their diligence in pastoral duty. They are supported chiefly by perquisites derived from absolutions, benedictions, exorcisms, sanctifying water, administering sacraments, selling amulets, sprinkling the streets and tombs, blessing the sea, granting divorces, for most of which a certain price is fixed. The profits of excommunications, which are large in proportion to the terror they inspire among all classes, belong to the superior clergy, who alone have the power to issue them. By a shocking abuse of religious functions, the priests, when well paid, grant divorces at the instance of one party on the slightest pretence, and break the most sacred ties for a paltry bribe. Nearly all authors who have alluded to the Greek priests agree in describing them as the most depraved part of the population. They are coarse in their manners and dirty in their persons, ignorant, greedy, and corrupt, and instead of cherishing virtuous habits in the people, they enervate and debase them, by practising on their credulity, and filling their minds with wretched superstitions, and perverted ideas of duty. It is not uncommon for them to lay aside the sacerdotal character, and become menial servants or public dancers, or to join bands of pirates or robbers. They are besides excessively numerous; and the people, who are extremely credulous and superstitious, are entirely under their influence. Athens, with 7000 or 8000 Christian inhabitants, had formerly 200 churches, of which about fifty were used every Sunday, and the rest occasionally. (Wheeler, p. 350.) In Albania the priests are much less numerous, and much less respected. In a word, the swarm of worthless priests is the moral pest of the country, and contributes more, perhaps, to keep the people in a state of ignorance and degradation than all the other evils in their condition.
The antiquities of Greece open so wide a field, that, in an article of this kind, we can do nothing more than allude to the various classes of objects comprised under the title. Among these we may, without much impropriety, rank many of the cities themselves, which not only exist on the very spots they anciently occupied, and bear the same names, but, deriving their most striking characters from natural objects, which remain unchanged, they still present to the eye, at a distance, the same general aspect and outlines. With regard to the interior of the cities, also, though the august temples of the gods have disappeared, and filth and meanness meet the eye everywhere, little doubt will remain with those who have read what the ancients have left us on the subject of their private houses, and what modern travellers have told us respecting the disinterred buildings of Pompeii, that the houses at the present day, with their square enclosed courts, their projecting roofs, and dead walls, and all that is most peculiar in their plan and interior arrangements, are copies, though miserable copies, of those of the ancient Greeks; and it is probable that some of the modern dark and narrow streets of Athens come much nearer in appearance to what they were in the age of Pericles than the admirers of antiquity are willing to allow. Among the cities which occupy their ancient sites, and bear their ancient names with little alteration, may be mentioned, Athens, Thebes, Livadia, Larissa, Pharalisa, Salonica, Corinth, Argos, Nauplia, Patre; and a great number of others of less note, might be added. The ancient buildings of which remains now exist belong to three different eras: 1. The very ancient structures to which the name of Cyclopian has been given, consisting of vast masses of unhewn stone, put together without cement. They are not numerous. The ruins of the citadels of Tyrrins and Mycenæ, which are of this description, have remained in their present state for 3000 years, and present the most perfect specimen in existence of the military architecture of the heroic ages. 2. The works of the classical ages, consisting of temples, baths, porticoes, theatres, columns, stadia, fountains, which are extremely numerous and executed in a great variety of styles, exemplifying the infancy, progress, perfection, and decline of the arts. Of the two or three hundred temples enumerated by Pausanias, many of which were models of the most exquisite beauty and symmetry, that of Theseus at Athens was the only one tolerably entire; and it was destroyed by the Turks in 1827. Others are found in various stages of dilapidation; and the far greater part have vanished from their sites, and only left traces of their existence in their innumerable fragments of inscribed and sculptured marbles scattered over the fields, or stuck into the walls of forts, churches, and clay-built cottages. 3. A number of square towers, of a rude construction, built on the tops of hills, for military purposes, are the only memorials left by the Latin princes who ruled Greece for two or three centuries before the Mahommedan conquest. 4. Next in importance to the remains of ancient edifices we may rank the statues, bas-reliefs, and inscribed marbles; a great number of which, generally somewhat mutilated, have been brought from Greece to enrich the museums of Western Europe; and a much greater number, no doubt, lie buried under the soil. 5. Vessels of terra cotta, or ancient pottery, consisting of vases, amphoræ, lamps, &c., of exquisite workmanship, adorned with coloured designs illustrative of the arts, habits, and mythology of the ancients, and often in high preservation. The quantity of those found among the ruins of ancient cities is incredibly great. 6. Coins of gold, silver, and copper, which are great in number and variety, every considerable town having its separate coinage. 7. Amongst the most interesting remains are the tumuli, erected to commemorate great victories. These simple but expressive monuments, formed of conical mounds of earth, but long since divested of their sculptured ornaments, still mark the fields of Marathon, Lenctra, Platæa, Cheroneæ, Thermopylæ, Pharsalus, and Pydna. 8. We ought also to class among the antiquities of Greece a vast number of fountains, caves, rocks, and other natural objects, which owe their interest, not to any beauty or importance they possess in themselves, but to the legends associated with them in the history and mythology of the ancient Greeks. With regard to the antiquities of Greece in general, it may be observed, that the finest, the best preserved, and the most numerous specimens of ancient art are found at Athens. Salonica, it is said, ranks next to it in this respect; but its monuments are deficient in the interest derived from classical associations. In general the southern and eastern parts of Greece, and the islands, abound most in antiquities. Albania and Ætolia contain but few, and these not of much interest.
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1 Tournefort, let. 3; Constantiople, Ancient and Modern, by James Dallaway, sect. xxiv.; Pouqueville, chap. xlii.; Hobhouse, let. 32. 2 In Sir William Gell's Itinerary of Argolis, a good account of these remarkable ruins is given, illustrated by excellent drawings. 3 On the subject of the Antiquities of Greece, the reader may consult the following works: Les Ruines des plus beaux Monumens de la Grèce, par M. Le Roy, fol. 1758; The Antiquities of Athens, by Stuart and Revett, 4 vols. fol. 1762-1816; The Ionian Antiquities, There are five languages spoken in Greece at the present day: 1. The Turkish, which is in use among a few of the Turks, but the great majority speak Romaic. 2. The Bulgarian, a dialect of Slavonic, spoken by the tribes of Bulgarians who inhabit the northern parts of Macedonia. 3. The Wallachian, in use amongst the Vlaki, who occupy the branches of Pindus and Olympus; a language of uncertain root, but containing a large mixture of Latin, and some Italian. 4. The Albanian or Skipetaric, spoken by the natives of Albania, and by some of the colonies of this people in the south of Greece. It is an unwritten tongue, and abounds in nasal sounds. Its basis is supposed to be the ancient Illyrian, with which is intermixed a large proportion of Latin, and smaller proportions of Romaic, Slavonic, Italian, and Turkish. 5. The Romaic (Ραγκάκι) or modern Greek, spoken by all the Greeks, by most of the Turks, and by a part of the Albanians. This is the name given to the language by the Greeks, who call themselves Ραγκάκι, or Romans, a denomination derived from the establishment of the Roman empire for so many ages at Constantinople, which they consider as the capital of Greece. The Romaic bears a much closer resemblance to the Hellenic than the Italian to the Latin. Indeed we have been informed by one of the best modern Greek scholars in Europe, that if we take the Attic as a standard, the ancient Doric differs as much from it as the present living dialect. The peculiarities which distinguish the Romaic from the ancient Greek cannot be fully explained without many details; we shall, therefore, only notice some of the most prominent. These are, 1. The disuse of the aspirates in speaking, though they are retained in writing. 2. The adoption of the first numeral ἀπό με το, for an indefinite article, as in the French. 3. In substantives it discards the dual number, and the dative case; makes some alterations in the oblique cases; marks cases sometimes by prepositions; and often changes the Hellenic masculine and feminine into neuter. 4. The degrees of comparison are formed as of old, by adding -τερος and -τέρων, but sometimes by πλέον, plus, as in the French. 5. Diminutives are much used, as in the Italian. 6. Considerable changes and substitutions have been made in the tenses of the verbs; the infinitive and the middle voice have been suppressed, and two auxiliary verbs introduced, ἂλα, I will, and ἐγὼ, I here. 7. The Hellenic pronouns are retained, but with many modifications. 8. Some new words have been adopted from the Turkish, Latin, and Italian; others have been formed from Hellenic roots; and many old Hellenic words have changed their meaning, attributives being used as substantives, and vice versa. The pronunciation of the Romaic deviates widely from that of the ancient Greek as taught in our schools. The B is sounded like our V, whilst the place of B is supplied by με. The Δ is sounded like th in that, and θ like our th in think. The vowels η, ι, υ, and the diphthongs ου, αυ, ευ, are all pronounced like the Italian i. Great liberties are also taken with the orthography of the Romaic. Vowels are substituted for one another, and letters or syllables suppressed or added, according to the fancy of the writer, at the beginning or end of words. In addition to all this, there is a perplexing diversity in the style and construction. Those who write in Romaic, having no good models before them, readily fall into provincial vulgarisms; and as they often derive their ideas of composition from works in Hellenic, Italian, or French, they adopt, to a greater or less extent, the idioms of these languages. It is said, however, that the dialects of the spoken Romaic in Greece have not so marked a difference as those of the distant provinces of France or England. The purest dialects, or those which approach nearest to the Hellenic, are found in some of the least frequented islands of the Archipelago, in the mountainous parts of Greece, at Yanina, and among the well-educated Greeks of Constantinople. The Romaic of Athens is full of corruptions derived from the Italian and French; and the Athenians of modern times, though still distinguished for quickness and subtlety of understanding, are reproached by their countrymen with an indolence or want of capacity for literary pursuits. A great number of books, chiefly translations, have been printed in Romaic within the last fifty years; and even previously to the revolution there was not a Greek community, in a moderate state of opulence, which did not support a school for instructing their children in the ancient Greek, and often in other branches of polite education. Since tranquillity was restored, the cultivation of the modern tongue has not been overlooked; and the object of their best scholars now is to bring it back as near to the standard of the ancient as may be practicable. The name of Romaic is going into disuse; the modern language being denominated Greek, and the ancient, for the sake of distinction, Hellenic.
There is a national likeness observable in all the Greeks, Physiologically, upon the whole, the islanders are darker and of a stronger make than those on the mainland. They have a larger facial angle than the other nations in the south of Europe, to whom they are manifestly superior both in countenance and form. Their faces are just such as served for models to the ancient sculptors, and their young men, in particular, are of that perfect beauty, which we should perhaps consider as too soft and effeminate in those of the same age in our northern climate. Their eyes are large and dark, their eye-brows arched; their complexions are rather brown, but quite clear; and their cheeks and lips are tinged with a bright vermilion. The oval of their faces is regular, and all their features in perfect proportion. Their hair, which is dark and long, is shaven off on the fore part of the crown and side of the face, and they wear a thin long mustachio on the upper lip. Beards are worn by the clergy, the codja-bashies, and other men in authority. Their necks are long, but broad and firmly set, their chests wide and expanded, and their waists rather slender. Their legs are strong and well made; their stature above the middling size; and they are muscular, but not brawny, nor inclined to corpulency. Both the face and form of the women are very inferior to those of the men. Though they have the same kind of features, their eyes are too languid, and their complexions too pale, and, even from the age of twelve, they have a flaccidity and looseness of person which is far from agreeable. They are generally rather below the middle size, and when between twenty-five and thirty, are commonly rather fat and unwieldy.
The dress of Greeks of the wealthier classes closely resembles that of the Turks. A cotton shirt made like a woman's chemise, cotton drawers, a vest and jacket of silk or stuff, a pair of large loose trousers drawn up a little above the ankle, and a short sock, make the inner part of their dress. Next above this is a long shawl wrapped in wide folds round the loins; and a large gown or pelisse, with loose sleeves, forms the outer garment. The head is covered with a calpac instead of a turban. They wear slippers or quarter boots, which the privileged
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by Chandler, Revett, and Pars, 2 vols. fol. 1760-1797; The Unedited Antiquities of Attica, by the Society of Dilettanti, fol. 1817; Chandler and Clarke's Travels, already referred to; and Mr Edward Dodwell's Classical and Topographical Tour in Greece, 2 vols. 4to, 1819.
Leake's Researches, chap. I. The works published in Romaic have been chiefly printed at Vienna and Venice; a few at Moscow, Buda, Paris, and other towns. See a list of these works in Hobhouse's Travels, chap. xxxiii., and Leake's Researches, p. 77. Greeks may have of a yellow colour, but even they are not permitted to wear robes of green, the favourite colour of Mahommed. The common people have their trousers descending but a little below the knee, with bare legs, and a slipper pointed and turned up at the toe. Above this they have a jacket, and on their heads the little red Albanian skull-cap.
The dress of the females approaches much nearer to that of the Frank ladies, and need not here be particularly described. That of the richer females is profusely ornamented with gold and silver trimmings. They wear bracelets of precious stones, and strings of gold coins round their arms and necks. They colour the inside of the eye-lashes with a composition, and use washes and paints to improve their complexion. With the young women it is a prevailing fashion to dye the hair of an auburn colour. When abroad, the Greek ladies are muffled up in a wrapping cloak, and wear a long veil, which, however, they frequently throw aside when not in the presence of the Turks. They live almost as much secluded as the Turkish ladies. Indeed before marriage they are rarely seen by any male, except of their own family; and even the lover rarely sees his mistress till she become his bride. But afterwards the ladies enjoy the privilege of being introduced to people of their own nation, and to travellers. When in the interior apartments, a young woman divests herself of her outer robes; and, in the summer season, may sometimes be surprised reclined on a rich carpet or sofa, with her feet bare, and her whole form rather shaded than concealed by trousers of gauze, and a muslin eyemask.
Women.
The women can seldom read or write, but are all of them able to embroider very tastefully; and they can generally play on the Greek lute or rebeck. Their dancing they learn without a master, from their companions; and their favourite national dance, the Romaika, is thought to bear a striking resemblance to the ancient Cretan dance, invented in the time of Theseus. Most of them are acquainted with a great number of songs or recitatives, accompanied with tales, which are combined and taken up by different individuals in succession for hours together. The Greek women evince a great quickness of understanding, and much aptitude for the acquisition of languages and other branches of education, when an opportunity offers. But their early marriages (for they are sometimes married at thirteen or fourteen) are prejudicial to their mental improvement. They are, however, assiduous housewives and tender mothers, and, notwithstanding the scandalous imputations of some travellers, generally chaste. The state of bondage and seclusion in which they are kept naturally enfeebles their characters, and they are excessively credulous, weak, and superstitious, slaves to a thousand vain apprehensions, believing in sorcery and witchcraft, and receiving implicitly the dogmas and fables of their church. They are much guided by ominous dreams and celestial revelations; and at births, marriages, and other memorable domestic events, they have recourse to many spells and superstitious rites, to guard against fairies or wicked spirits. The evil eye is particularly dreaded; and the herb garlic is in high repute as a charm against this and other imaginary misfortunes. At funerals, women hired for the purpose accompany the bier, howling in a manner rather ludicrous than mournful, proclaiming the virtues of the deceased, and calling aloud to the corpse, "Why did you die? You had money, you had friends, you had a fair wife and children; why did you die?" On the ninth day after the funeral, the nearest relation gives a feast, with music, dancing, and every other sort of merriment. Many of the rites and ceremonies now in use, and not a few of the observances connected with religion, have evidently been transmitted unaltered from pagan antiquity. (Hobhouse, let. 31.)
The Greeks affect a great deal of parade in their style of living. Those who are in office are addressed by pompous titles, keep great numbers of servants, dignified with the names of secretaries, physicians, couriers, &c. and have large houses, which are in general shabbily furnished, and very dirty. Both Greeks and Turks contrive to support a respectable appearance by very slender means. The Greeks, like the Turks also, are all smokers, and addicted to the use of the hot bath. The men generally bathe once a week, the women at least once a month. Their diet, when not restricted by their fasts, consists, amongst the poorer classes, of bread made of barley, wheat, or Indian corn, pilau, or boiled rice mixed with butter, eggs, sheep's milk curdled, cheese made of sheep or goat's milk, dried fish, olives, gourds, melons, and various other vegetables. On holydays, lamb, mutton, kids' flesh, or fowls, are served up. The rich have a greater variety in their dishes and cookery. The mutton, which is the kind of animal food most in use, is seldom good, and is generally roasted or stewed, rarely boiled. Pastry is common, but is very indigestible, being sweetened with honey, and not well baked. Boutranga, caviar, and macaroni, are generally met with on the table, and a dish of snails is not uncommon. The bread is coarse and under baked. Salted olives are a standing dish, and gourds and melons in their season. Great quantities of vegetables are consumed, such as cabbages, cauliflowers, spinach, artichokes, &c. which are generally prepared with oil or butter, and seasoned with pepper, mint, marjoram. Oranges, pears, olives, citrons, medlars, pomegranates, are served up as a dessert. During dinner the Greeks drink wine, and a spirit made from barley, resembling whisky; but they rarely indulge to excess. Coffee is much in use, but is taken rather as a refreshment than as a part of diet. In general, says Dr Holland, the Greeks have an appearance of comfort in their dwellings, clothing, and in the various habits of life, not much inferior to that of other nations in the south of Europe.
Travellers seem now to be nearly agreed as to the intellectual and moral qualities of the Greeks. It is allowed that they have much acuteness of understanding, polished and agreeable manners, a sprightly wit, and great natural eloquence; but, on the other hand, their apologists cannot deny that, though strict in their fasts, they are lax in their morals; that their vanity forms a lamentable contrast with their humbled condition; and that they have more than an ordinary share of duplicity, meanness, and bigotry.
A great proportion of the Greeks are engaged in foreign or domestic trade; and as merchants they are reported to be vigilant and dexterous, but overreaching and deceitful. Those who get into power, as archons or codja-bashées, are as rapacious and tyrannical as the Turks. All classes are devoutly attached to the doctrines of the church, and hold other sects in such contempt that they regard themselves and the Russians as the only Christians. The few well-informed men among them are generally sceptical, as will always happen where religion is debased by absurdities which shock the understanding. One of the best features in their character is the strong national spirit which animates them, and the lively interest they take in the fate of their country. The Greeks settled in Russia and Italy, and some of those at Constantinople, have expended a considerable part of their fortunes in supporting schools, and in printing works designed to enlighten their country-
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1 Hobhouse, 226; Pouqueville, chap. xv.; Holland, 268. Greece.
In the course of last century, the Greeks made two unsuccessful attempts to liberate themselves. The first was in 1770, during a war between Russia and the Porte. The Russians, in pursuance of a plan previously concerted, landed a small force of 2000 men at various points in the Morea. The Mainotes and other Greeks instantaneously rose in arms, and got possession of the open towns, butchering the Turks with every circumstance of cruelty. Before they had mastered any of the fortified places, however, a great force of Albanians pouring in, defeated them, and retaliated, with dreadful severity, the cruelties committed on the Turks. The inhabitants of some entire towns and villages were massacred, and the country was almost desolated. Though the Greeks acted with much vigour at the outset, it was observed that their spirits sank at the first check they received. But it is impossible to reprobate too strongly the cruelty and perfidy of the Russian government, which, by sending such an inadequate force, exposed the Greeks to certain destruction, for the sake of operating a paltry diversion in its own favour; and, at the conclusion of a peace, took no effectual means to protect them from the rage of their enemies.
In 1790, the Greeks of Suli, in Albania, rose in arms, upon an understanding that assistance was to be received from Russia. A deputation went to Petersburg to offer the crown of Greece to Prince Constantine, brother of the present emperor, whom they saluted Βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων. They were to collect their various troops from Suli, Livadia, Attica, and the Morea; to march through Thessaly and Macedonia, where they were to be joined by other reinforcements; and to meet the Russians at Adrianople with 300,000 men (as they gave out), after which the combined army was to proceed to Constantinople, and drive the Turks out of Europe. But in the end little was done. The Russians sent a trifling sum of money, which was chiefly embezzled by their own agents, and soon made peace. without concerning themselves about the peril into which they had brought the Greeks. The Suliotes defeated the Pasha of Yanina; and, aided by their rocks, defended themselves, performing prodigies of valour against the Albanian Turks. A squadron of twelve small vessels, which they had fitted out at Trieste, signalized itself in the Archipelago, and after spreading terror amongst the Turks, was overpowered and destroyed by a greatly superior force. This second enterprise, in short, ended like the first, without any other effect than that of exposing the Greeks to renewed outrages from the Turks. The brave tribe of the Suliotes, on whom the Greeks placed great reliance, as the best soldiers of their faith, were reduced to a remnant by Ali in 1803, after a contest of many years.
Though the hopes of the Greeks were cast down for a time by this event, various causes were silently operating a change in their situation, and preparing the way for a more successful effort. Amidst all the hardships of their lot, knowledge had been steadily increasing. The influence of Russia over the Porte was visibly extending, and promised them sooner or later the means of exchanging Mahommedan for Christian rulers. But what was of more immediate importance, the establishment of Russian ports on the Black Sea, and the destruction of the French shipping by the wars of the revolution, created a trade in corn between Odessa, Marseilles, Leghorn, and Trieste, which falling into the hands of the Greeks, had raised up a class of capitalists amongst them, and given them possession of a commercial navy. From a few small bark engaged in coasting traffic, a short period saw them in possession of some hundred large well-rigged merchantmen, making long voyages. Greek houses were established at the ports mentioned, as well as at Smyrna, Salonica, and Constantinople. As patriotic feelings were universally diffused, a part of the wealth thus acquired was expended in founding schools and libraries, and the number of Greek youths sent to the universities of Western Europe was greatly increased. The ancient classic writers of the country were studied with new ardour, and lessons of freedom, magnanimity, and patriotic devotion, eagerly imbibed from their pages. Amongst the educated Greeks, those especially who had studied in France, Russia, and Germany, a more just idea was acquired of the relative weakness of the Porte, and the advantages which any people contending with it might derive from those arts and improvements, the growth of an advanced civilization, which the Turks despised. The conviction thus gained strength, that nothing more was necessary to accomplish the liberation of the Greeks, than a combined and organized effort by themselves, aided if possible by the countenance of some great Christian power. This idea gave birth to the Hetairia, a secret association, which is supposed to have originated about the beginning of the present century, but remained obscure and feeble till 1815. About that time Count Capo d'Istria, a Greek by birth, who enjoyed a considerable rank in the Russian service, established a Philomuse Society, ostensibly to promote Greek literature, but really to serve as a cloak for the Hetairia. In a little time he withdrew from its apparent guidance, but without ceasing to promote its objects privately. The Hetairia had a complex and artful organization. It was divided into five orders: those of the first or lowest receiving merely a general intimation that a scheme was in contemplation to regenerate Greece; and the information communicated of the society's designs becoming more special and distinct through the other grades, to the fifth or highest, called the Grand Arch, which was composed of sixteen members, and alone possessed a full knowledge of the society's plans, the power of issuing general orders, and fixing the time and mode of execution. All the members were sworn to secrecy on their knees, at the dead of night, and bound to kill any one of their brother members who should be guilty of treachery. The grand arch had its seat at Moscow, from which it corresponded with persons in all parts of Europe. The society spread its ramifications through the southern parts of Russia, had numerous members in Odessa, Yassy, Bucharest, and in Greece Proper, and some at Vienna, Paris, and Leghorn. Most of the primate of the Morea joined it in 1819. This conspiracy had been spreading its roots through European Turkey for five years before the Ottoman government knew of its existence; and when at length apprised of the fact by an accidental circumstance, its usual apathy, and its contempt of the Greeks, prevented it from taking any precautions to avert the threatened danger. It has been said that the Hetairists had fixed upon the year 1825 for beginning the revolution; but the statement rests on no good authority. Whatever might be their intentions, the rebellion of Ali Pasha, by embarrassing the Porte, and neutralizing one who would have been a formidable enemy, presented an opportunity too favourable to be lost, and precipitated the commencement of hostilities.
In the autumn of 1820 a Turkish army advanced into Albania. Most of Ali's officers and armies having deserted his standard and joined the enemy, he shut himself up in a fortress at Yanina, after destroying the town, and prepared to stand a vigorous siege. Aware of the designs of the Hetairists, he stimulated them to take up arms, by a promise of money and assistance; and though they did not confide in it, they resolved to embrace the advantage which the position of affairs held out. The first movement was in a distant quarter. By previous concert a number of Greeks assembled at Yassy in Moldavia in the end of February 1821, and on the 6th of March Prince Ipsilanti, who held the rank of major-general in the Russian service, crossed the Pruth, and joined them. After proclaiming the independence of Greece, he left that town on the 13th with eight hundred horsemen, proceeding towards Bucharest, but lost time foolishly on the road, and did not enter the capital of Wallachia till the 9th of April. Dissensions in the mean time broke out in his small army; and though the spirit of the people was good, and the lethargy of the Turks left him a clear space for action, his incapacity and indecision rendered him unable to improve these advantages; and a proclamation issued by the Russian consul, in which the insurrection was strongly condemned by the emperor, on whose assistance they had relied, completely disheartened the insurgents. About the end of April, a body of Turks put themselves in motion from Silistra, occupied Bucharest, and followed the insurgents northward. Some trifling skirmishes took place in the neighbourhood of Tergovisht, rather to the disadvantage of the Greeks; and a rash and unsuccessful attack made by one of their officers at Pitesti caused a panic in the army, followed by a disastrous retreat. In this action the greater part of the Sacred Battalion, composed of Greek youths from various parts of Europe, was destroyed, after a brave resistance. Ipsilanti shortly afterwards stole away from his troops, and sought refuge within the Austrian boundary. A partisan warfare was continued a little longer. One small corps retreated to Yassy, and thence to Skuleni on the Pruth, where, under Athanasius of Agrapha, they sustained an attack from a body of Turks six times more numerous, refusing to fly, though the means of retreat were open to them, till three fourths of their number were destroyed. Another small party under Yorgaki, or George the Olympian, shut themselves up in the monastery of Seckia, where they resisted the Turks for six and thirty hours. At length, when the enemy got into their rear, and success was hopeless, the gallant chief, having refused the safe retreat which the Turks offered him, called his followers together, and exhorted them to seek a glorious death sword in hand. finding that instead of seconding his heroic resolution, he was preparing to fly, he retired to the chamber where his powder was deposited, and uttering a short prayer, sew himself up, with four of his attendants. George was native of Mount Olympus, and in his conduct during his short campaign showed a prudence and courage which would have fitted him admirably for heading the insurrection; but the Greeks are slaves to titles and family names, and George, who had no pretensions to rank, held only a subordinate situation. Quiet, modest, averse to intrigue, it seems, says Mr Gordon, to have been a real hero, inspired with sincere devotion, sublime courage, and an enthusiastic love of his country. With his death, on the 26th of August, all resistance ceased in the principalities. The attention of the insurgents was to erect European Turkey into a province for Prince Ipsilanti.
From the beginning of 1821 secret conferences were held by the more zealous Hetairists of the Morea, and a spirit of insubordination began to appear amongst the people. At length, on the 2d of April, the standard of independence was hoisted at Kalavrita, a town about thirty miles south-east from Patras, by Germanos, archbishop of Tripolizza, and Andreas Londos. Two days afterwards the fighting began at Patras, where the Christian inhabitants rose against the Turks, and, during a bloody struggle of some hours, a part of the town was burned. The Turks, however, retained the citadel, from which the Greeks had no means of expelling them; and Yusuf Pasha crossing the straits of Leptanto, the armed insurgents suddenly fled, leaving their brethren in the town to be butchered by the Turks. The insurrection spread with such rapidity over the Morea, that seven days after the first shot was fired, a Greek senate assembled at Calamata in Messina, under the presidency of Petras Mavromichalis, bey of Maina. A partisan warfare was carried on for some time against the small bodies of Mahommedan settlers living in the country, most of whom ultimately sought refuge in Tripolizza, the capital of the Morea. Meanwhile three thousand Albanians coming from the north, victualled the Acrocorinthus, and advancing to Argos, routed a body of Greeks posted there, killing even hundred of them, and afterwards burned the town. The Kihaya Bey then proceeded to Tripolizza, and seemed resolved to act with vigour. The Greeks, who had now assembled a considerable force, were divided as to the mode of acting; but it was finally determined to fight, and accordingly posted themselves at Valtzeza, near the enemy. The Kihaya Bey, leaving Tripolizza with five thousand troops, attacked them on the 27th of May, but was repulsed in several attacks made on the village in that and the following day, and finally fled to Tripolizza, with the loss of two pieces of cannon and four hundred men. This victory, though small, had a great moral effect in raising the courage of the Greeks. The three great seats of Greek commerce, Hydra, Spezzia, and Psyrta, entered into the revolutionary cause about the same time with the towns on the mainland. A small fleet of Hydriot and Spezziot vessels visited the other isles of the Aegean, proclaiming the independence of Greece, and was everywhere received with enthusiasm; whilst light-armed ships scoured the seas, and captured every Ottoman trader.
In Rumelia the insurrection broke out a few days later. The Armatolis, a sort of stationary Christian militia, in the mountains of Arcanania, Eotolia, and Thessaly, kept up the Turkish government for the purposes of police, were unwilling to risk the loss of their pay. The peasants of Attica and Bocota, however, took the field in the beginning of May; and on the 7th of that month, scaling the wall which surrounds Athens, took possession of the town, and drove the Turkish inhabitants into the citadel. In Epirus, the remnant of the brave Suliotes, reinforced by other Greeks, and encouraged by Ali Pasha, harassed the Seraskier Kourschid Pasha, by cutting off his convoys of provisions. The scene of these hostilities was chiefly in the ancient Thesprotia, and it was carried on with great activity in May by Marco Bozzaris. From this district it spread into Arcanania and Eotolia; the independent flag was hoisted in Messalonghi in June, by several of the Armatoli chiefs; Vrakhori, a Mahommedan town twenty miles north of Messalonghi, was carried very gallantly, and some weeks afterwards Zarpanidi in the same district; Salona was next taken; and the Turks in three months were deprived of a large proportion of the posts which they had occupied south of Mount Oeta. Kourschid Pasha, however, made a vigorous opposition, and success often changed sides. In this desultory warfare the summer passed away. The Rumelets, in the various actions fought, showed themselves much better soldiers than the Moreots, and this reputation they continued to maintain during the war. Whilst these events were passing, Mavrocordato arrived at Messalonghi from Leghorn, and, after conferring with the primate, went to Tripolizza, where the Moreot leaders were assembled for the siege. Finding he was an object of jealousy to Demetrius Ipsilanti, he returned to Messalonghi in September, and laboured to organize the insurrection in Rumelia. In the mean time the Pasha Omar, with a body of four thousand Turkish troops, marched from Thessaly, routed a party of seven hundred Greeks at Thermopylae, a second larger party under Odysseus at Scripu, and destroyed Livadia, the most flourishing town of Rumelia. He then advanced to Athens, and on the 30th of July relieved the citadel, in which sixteen hundred Turks had been blockaded for eighty-three days, by a motley army consisting of Attic peasants, Eginetans, and other islanders. The armed Greeks retired to Salamis and Eginna, and the Albanians of the pasha's army plundered and wasted the country. The Greeks now collected in small corps in the hilly districts of Beotia and Phocis, straitening the communications of the Turks, and cutting off their supplies. A strong reinforcement coming to the latter from Thessaly, was routed at Thermopylae by Odysseus, with the loss of eight hundred men. The pasha shortly afterwards withdrew from Attica and Beotia, and the Athenians from Salamis re-occupied the town, and resumed the blockade of the citadel in November. In the extreme north the insurrection had been unfortunate. The Macedonian Greeks, who had taken refuge in the peninsula of Pallene, had their line of defence at Isthmus forced by Aboulaboud, and, except a portion who escaped by sea, were either killed or made prisoners. The monks of Athos capitulated to the same pasha, after two thousand of them had left the mountain. The people of Magnesia, when dividing the booty they had taken from the Mahommedans, were surprised and routed by the Pasha of Drama. A part sought shelter in the forests of Pelion, and part fortified themselves in the peninsula of Trikeri, or fled to the neighbouring isles of Scopelos and Skiathos. The thirty-five neat and flourishing villages of the district were mostly burned by the Turks. The Olympians, or Greeks of Pieria, also rose in arms, but at too late a period. The Pasha Aboulaboud had previously subdued the Christians of Athos and Macedonia, and being able to bring his whole force against them, routed them, and burned the 120 villages they possessed in the valleys of Olympus.
The Greeks of Macedonia, cruelly used by the Pasha of Salonica, were driven by despair to take up arms. Unable, however, to make head in the plain country against the Ottoman cavalry, they retreated to the peninsula of Cassandra, abandoning seventy villages, which the Turks burned. We must explain, however, that the rage of the Turks was excited to fury by the discovery of a plot formed by a Hydriot captain, to fire the arsenal at Constantinople, kill the sultan, and raise the Greek population. The government, alarmed by this event, seized and executed the leading individuals of the Fanariot families, whilst some thousands of the other Christian inhabitants were massacred in their houses, without the least regard to legal forms. The death of the patriarch, a very old man, much esteemed for his virtues, and of a number of the other high clergy, created a great sensation. Salonica, Adrianople, and Smyrna, were the scene of similar barbarities. The last of these towns, in particular, was consigned to a general sack, like a city stormed. Kydonia, a Greek town with thirty thousand inhabitants, which had grown up in a few years, and was renowned for its college, where three hundred students received a superior education, falling under the suspicion of the Turks, was burned to the ground, and its people were forced to seek refuge in Psyrta and other isles. The Greek ships, which were merely merchant vessels, carrying from twelve to twenty-four guns, would have been impotent against any navy but the Turkish; but by their superior seamanship, and a bold and skilful use of brulots or fire-ships, they often baffled or defeated strong squadrons of large men of war. Their first exploit of this kind was the burning of a Turkish seventy-four on the coast of Mytilene in June. This paralysed the operations of the capitán-bey for a little; but setting forward again, he arrived at Samos, the poor but brave inhabitants of which, forty thousand in number, had slain their Ottoman rulers, and now harassed the Turks of the neighbouring continent by frequent descents upon the coast. A large land force was collected to subdue them, and the capitán-bey attended with the fleet to co-operate. But the Turks were defeated with great loss in an attempt to land a thousand men, and a second armament was intercepted by the Greek fleet, who burned ten transports, whilst the soldiers escaped to the shore. The troops after this refused to embark. The Greek and Turkish fleets manoeuvred in presence of each other, but parted without fighting, after the former had burned several fire-ships without effect.
Demetrius Ipsilanti, second brother of Alexander, travelling in disguise from Russia, landed at Hydra in June, and thence sailed over to the continent, where he was welcomed with extraordinary demonstrations of joy. He brought a small supply of money and arms, and a commission from his brother, investing him with the supreme command of the army. Patriotic, upright, brave, and accomplished, he unfortunately wanted the energy necessary for the post he assumed, and soon found himself thwarted in his views, and rendered incapable of effecting anything, by the jealousy of the bishops and military chiefs. Prince Mavrocordato, another Greek of noble descent and considerable talents, arrived in the Morea a few weeks later. The Turks at this time were driven out of the open country, but held nine fortresses in the Morea, Patras, the castle at the adjoining straits, Navarin, Coron, Modon, Nauplia, Acrocorinthus, Monemvasia, and Tripolizza. The Greeks wanted both materials and skill for conducting regular sieges, and merely kept most of these places blockaded less or more strictly. Monemvasia, and afterwards Navarin, surrendered in August, in consequence of famine. The one capitulation was pretty faithfully kept; the other was most disgracefully violated by the massacre of the Turks, to whom a safe retreat had been guaranteed. The siege of Tripolizza was pressed with a little more vigour, as it was the capital of the peninsula, and contained a number of wealthy Turks, whose property was looked to as the prize of conquest. The city was defended by a wall fourteen feet high and two miles in circuit, flanked by a few towers with cannon, and its population was increased by refugees to 25,000 souls. The besieging army amounted to about 4500 men, which was less than the number of adults within the walls; it gradually swelled, however, as the increasing scarcity in the town multiplied the chances of a surrender. The contest was carried on by trifling skirmishes, till the Turkish cavalry, which was the only force dreaded by the Greeks, being entirely ruined, the besiegers were enabled to invest the place more closely. Famine was now doing its work upon the unhappy Moalims, who were negotiating for a capitulation on the 5th of October, when some Greeks mounting a part of the wall which had been neglected (there was no truce), entered the town, and were immediately followed by the rest of the army. The place was completely sacked, and of ten or twelve thousand inhabitants, young and old, of both sexes, still remaining in it, about eight thousand are supposed to have been slain. A number of women were carried off as captives, and a few officers were spared for the sake of the ransom expected for them. Some Turks sold their lives dearly, and a party of forty cut their way through the Greeks, and escaped to Nauplia. The booty in money, shawls, jewels, dresses, pistols, sabres, and other articles, was very great, and led to petty contests amongst the victors. The town presented the aspect of a ruin. As a small counterpoise to this loss, the capitán-bey destroyed the village of Galixidi, near Salona, and carried off thirty-four small trading vessels, the property of its industrious inhabitants. The Ottoman fleet at the same time revictualled Modon, Coron, and Patras. The Greeks made an attempt to surprise Nauplia, which would have succeeded but for the cowardice of the Moreots; and a large body blockading the castle of Patras were, owing to their gross carelessness, surprised and routed by a party of Turks who crossed at Lepanto. Thus terminated the year 1821.
The Turks of Crete, inspired with alarm by the appearance of Greek cruisers in the adjacent seas, began to strip the Christian inhabitants of their arms, and to butcher many of them in cold blood. A number of the latter, comprehending the brave and hardy mountaineers of Sphakia, were driven by this cruel usage to fight for their lives. In July, August, and September 1821, the insurgents, about twelve hundred in number, repeatedly defeated large bodies of Turks; but the pasha at length collecting an army of ten thousand men, overpowered them, and burned most of their villages.
A national assembly convoked by Prince Ipsilanti had met at Argos about the end of 1821, but finding that position insecure, it removed to Pinda, near the ancient Epi- daurus, in January 1822. The assembly chose Mavrocordato president, and adopted an organic law or constitution, framed on republican principles. The government was to consist of a senate of seventy members elected annually by the people, and an executive council of five persons. The constitution enacted equality of rights, the freedom of the press, and toleration in religion. The government was then organized. The executive council consisted of Mavrocordato, president; Kanakaris, Logotheti, Delhyani, and Orlando, members; and Theodore Negris, secretary. Seven ministers were also appointed for finance, foreign affairs, war, &c., whose names it is unnecessary to give. After passing a decree for a loan of 5,000,000 of piastres, the assembly closed its session on the 20th of January. The government thus erected proved a mere phantom. It had no means of coercing the military chiefs, who set its powers at defiance, and disdained even to pay it marks of outward respect.
The citadel of Corinth, a post of great importance, surrendered on the 26th of January 1822, when the Turks were inhumanly slaughtered, in violation of a compact to convey them away in safety. The Greek government fixed itself here for some months, and issued a variety of decrees, which were very little attended to. The death of Ali, pasha of Yanina, who was shot by the Turks in February, after giving himself up on a promise of personal safety, made a considerable change in the position of the Greeks. Kourshid Pasha shortly after sent an army of 17,000 men to attack the Suliotes, who, though numbering only 4000 warriors, including Epirots, made so obstinate a resistance with the aid of their rocks and woods, that the Turks were finally compelled to retreat with a heavy loss, and the pasha had no resource but to turn his active hostilities into a blockade. Mavrocordato arrived at Messaloni in June, commissioned to act as captain-general of Western Greece. Anxious to accost the Suliotes, he marched northward with 3000 men near Arta. Here he was attacked by 10,000 Turks, and in consequence of the treachery of Gogos, one of the Armatoli chiefs, his little army was overpowered, and lost four hundred men, including two thirds of the small corps of disciplined Philhellenes. He made his way back to Messaloni; and the Suliotes, reduced to extremity, signed a capitulation with the pasha, by which the existing remnant of three hundred and twenty men, and nine hundred women and children, were transported to Cephalonia, with their arms and baggage, at the pasha's expense, with a douceur of two hundred thousand piastres superadded. Released from this troublesome enemy, Omar Pasha approached Messaloni in October with ten thousand men. The town had scarce any defences, and the garrison being under four hundred men, he might have carried it by a coup-de-main. He spent some weeks, however, in a state of inaction, or trifling negotiations, and this interval Mavrocordato diligently improved, by raising new works, whilst a reinforcement of men from the Morea increased the garrison to upwards of 2000 men, and the Greek fleet brought supplies of ammunition and arms. The rainy season too having set in, spread sickness through the Turkish camp; and the pasha, now aware of his error, and anxious to retrieve it, attempted to carry the works by escalade before daylight on Christmas morning, when he supposed the Greeks would be at their devotions. They had previous information, however, and beat back the Albanians at every point, with the loss of six hundred men. The pasha now began his retreat, obstructed by the swollen rivers, and harassed at every step by the Acarnanians, who where up in arms; he reached Previs with the wrecks of his army in February 1823.
In the Aegean Sea the spring of 1823 was marked by the most unfortunate and tragic event which distinguished the revolution; the entire destruction of the happy and prosperous Greek community of Scio. This island contained 100,000 Christian inhabitants, whose peaceful habits, intelligence, industry, and wealth, exhibited a picture of civilization unrivalled in the other parts of the Turkish empire. They were unwary, but being mildly governed, they desired no change. When the Hydriot fleet appeared, they entreated the admiral to leave their coast, and not compromise them with the Porte. Two adventurers, however, one of them a Sciot by birth, who had spent his life abroad, the other a Samian, in an evil hour, planned an expedition to dislodge the Turks, which was too feeble and ill supported to accomplish its object; but strong enough to alarm the Porte, and bring ruin on the unhappy landers. Leaving Samos in March 1822, with a flotilla of eight brigs and thirty launches, filled with one or two thousand men, the two adventurers, Bourmia and Logotheti, disembarked near Scio, and entered the town without experiencing any resistance. They were coolly received by the inhabitants, who dreaded the vengeance of the Turks; but the citadel with a stout garrison held out against them, and disturbed them by frequent sallies. A month passed away thus, when the Ottoman fleet suddenly appeared before the town, and driving off the few Greek ships stationed there, convoyed over a part of an army of thirty thousand men collected on the opposite Asiatic coast, which is only ten miles distant. The Turks carried the town by assault on the 15th of April, putting to death the men, young and old, without mercy; and not even sparing women and children. A part of the town was burned, and what escaped the fire was destroyed otherwise. For a month crowds of armed barbarians wandered over the island, wasting and plundering. It was calculated that 25,000 of the Scioti were slaughtered, and 45,000 dragged into slavery; 15,000 were saved at first in the Mastic villages, the property of the sultan, but were afterwards massacred; the rest escaped, or were absent when the catastrophe occurred; but those who saved their lives lost everything else, and the most opulent families of which Greece could boast were thus reduced in an instant to beggary. In August the island did not contain above 1800 Greeks, out of the 100,000 who peopled it in March. If the Hydriot fleet had appeared in proper time, the Turks could have been prevented from disembarking, and, with moderate diligence, the town might have been secured against a sudden assault. But the insurrection was no less rashly planned than ill conducted, and the horrors in which it terminated filled all Greece with unavailing lamentations. A strong fleet sailed from Hydra when it was too late; but it achieved nothing except burning the Turkish admiral's ship, in which more than 2000 men perished. This exploit was accomplished in a very gallant manner, by Canaris, a high-spirited patriot, whose name, and that of Miaulis, are associated with the most brilliant achievements of the Greek navy in the history of the war.
In Eastern Greece a desultory warfare was carried on in the spring of 1822. The Greeks of Mount Oeta, Othrys, and Pelion, harassed the Turks in the south-eastern plains of Thessaly, but without gaining any advantage. An attempt was made to dispossess the Mahommedans of Euboea, but it miscarried. The Athenians had tried to bombard their citadel, but they wanted skill and an adequate supply of projectiles; they then mined parts of the wall, but could not produce a practicable breach. At length, however, famine did their work. The Turks capitulated on the 22nd of June, and though their personal safety was guaranteed, a large number of them were, as usual, massacred in cold blood, and the rest were saved with difficulty by the Frank consuls.
Kourschid Pasha had been collecting a large force in Thessaly, but the Greeks, with their usual negligence and want of foresight, though apprised of the fact, made no defensive arrangements till the enemy was in the heart of their country. The Turkish army, twenty or thirty thousand strong, chiefly cavalry, with a small body of infantry and artillery, crossed the Sperchius, seized the defiles of Mount Oeta, and entered Beotia in the beginning of July. Odysseus, who had charge of the Pass of Thermopyle with 4000 men, either from weakness or treachery, offered no resistance. The Pasha Dramali, the commander of this army, burned Thebes, passed Cytharoon and the Dervend of the isthmus unopposed; and the impregnable castle of Corinth, though victualled for three months, fell into his hands by the pusillanimity of the garrison, without firing a shot. From Corinth he pushed on to Nauplia, the Greeks everywhere leaving their houses and flying in the utmost consternation at his approach. No one thought of fighting, till Demetrius Ispilanti threw himself with a small party into the ruined castle of Argos, not with the hope of making an effectual resistance, but in order to gain time, and induce the fugitives to rally. The manoeuvre succeeded. A pause took place in Dramali's operations, during which Colocotroni arrived from the interior with a considerable force, which he drew up between the mountains and the sea near Lerna, strengthening his position with some hasty works calculated to render useless the cavalry, which was the pasha's right arm. After skirmishing for one day, with little success, the Greeks wisely resolved to wait the effect of scarcity upon their enemies, having previously burned all the standing corn. The Turks soon exhausted their stock of provisions by their wasteful habits, and Dramali had neglected to secure his communications with Corinth and Northern Greece, by guarding the passes. The insubriety of the soil, and the inconsiderate use of unripe fruit at the same time, gave birth to fevers, which cut off numbers of his men; whilst the cattle brought for food, and the cavalry horses, died in thousands from want of fodder. Pressed by these evils, and unable to force the entrenchments in his front, he began his retreat on the 6th of August. The Greeks, however, who had divined his purpose, stationed some thousand men in the mountainous defiles, who assailed him in his flight, and, besides killing 2000 of his soldiers, captured all his treasure and baggage, with a vast number of horses, mules, and camels. Many more of the Turks died at Corinth, where marsh fevers prevailed, and amongst these the commander, Mahmoud Dramali. A great number of the survivors were destroyed in an attempt to reach Patras by land; and at the commencement of winter only a small remnant was in existence of the formidable army which, three months before, seemed powerful enough to overwhelm Greece.
The Palamede, or castle of Nauplia, pressed by famine, capitulated in the end of December; and for once the Turkish prisoners were allowed to depart in safety. The Greeks who held the citadel of Athens gave up the command of it to the crafty and treacherous Odysseus, a choice of which they had reason to repent. The Turkish fleet, instead of supporting the army, sailed round the Morea to Patras, and on its way back to the Hellespont a ship of the line was burned by the intrepid Canaris.
In February 1823 a second Greek congress assembled at Astros in Argolis, and was attended by 260 deputies. Feuds ran so high between the parties that it was difficult to prevent bloodshed. It broke up at the end of April, having appointed Petro Bey president of the executive council, and fixed Tripolizza as the seat of the government. Its decrees, however, were treated with contempt by the military chiefs, who soon compelled the executive to seek refuge in Salamis. The transient gleam of prosperity caused by the retreat of the Turks had kindled a violent spirit of disunion; and the nation was now rent into factions, headed by men like Colocotroni, Petro Bey, Londos, Delhyani, Odysseus, Ghouras, and Panourias, who, having been originally klephts or robbers, retained the craft, ferocity, and rapacious habits of their primitive vocation, and, when the enemy was no longer present, thought of nothing but plundering the people, and assassinating one another. The men of better principles, Mavrocordato, Ispilanti, and Condurioti, armed only with resolutions of the national congress, had no power to awe these ruffians and their military bands into obedience. The country, in fact, was everywhere a prey to anarchy, and as early as 1823 the wiser part of the people began to broach the scheme of inviting a foreign prince to accept the sovereignty of Greece.
In the early part of the year 1823 the Turks of Euboea made predatory incursions into Attica and Boeotia; whilst the Greek mariners of Psyrta and Samos made descents on the coasts of Asia Minor, plundering the towns, and carrying off wealthy Mahommedans prisoners for the sake of the ransom obtained for their liberation. In June, however, a Turkish army of 6000 men broke into Phocis and Doris, and advanced to the neighbourhood of Athens. The Greeks, as before, avoided battles, but encamping on the heights, cut off detachments and foraging parties; and ultimately this force melted away by casualties or desertion, without accomplishing any thing of importance. An expedition undertaken by Odysseus to drive the Turks from Euboea miscarried; and the Christians of that isle having risen in arms, were vanquished, and compelled to seek refuge in the isles of the Aegean, after witnessing the destruction of the 150 villages they possessed. The principal effort of the Turks, however, was made in Western Greece. The Pasha of Scodra led an army of 5000 Mirdites or Albanian Christians into Acarnania. Messaloniqhi at that time was without men or arms, and almost defenceless. Marco Bozzaris, a brave Suliot, with a small corps of his countrymen, finding himself unable to arrest the pasha in his march, conceived the bold idea of surprising him in his camp. The attack was made in the night time; but of the three parties of Souliotes, two slunk back; and the third, led by Bozzaris, consisting of only 350 men, after storming several tambourines, and making a horrible slaughter of the enemy, finding itself unsupported, retired with the loss of one third of its number, including its intrepid commander. The Pasha of Scodra now joined Omar Vrioni, and the two approached Messaloniqhi; but the town was by this time garrisoned and provisioned; and the Ottoman commanders having an extravagant idea of its strength, turned aside to besiege Anatolico, a paltry village a few miles distant. They bombarded it for some weeks, till the rains setting in, and spreading sickness amongst their troops, forced them to retire in November. No solicitations could induce the Pasha of Scodra to engage in the invasion of Greece a second time.
In Crete the insurrection opened in 1823 with a promise of success, which was not realized. Affendouli, the former chief of the insurgents, having lost his influence, resigned; and Tombazi, a Hydriot, and an able but rapacious man, was elected leader in his place, and dignified with the Lacedemonian title of Harmost. He arrived in Crete with 1200 Rumelits and Moreots, and a few small armed vessels, early in the summer, and being joined by the Sphakiots, gained several advantages over the Turks. Kissamos, a fortified post, fell into his hands by capitulation, but his troops were routed at Khadeno, and failed in an attack upon the Mahommedans of Selino. The sea being in the mean time open, the Pasha of Egypt disembarked two successive bodies of disciplined troops. The last of these, which landed at Canea in September, routed the insurgents in the neighbourhood of that town, and carrying fire and sword throughout Sphakia and the other disaffected districts, completely extinguished the insurrection. In the course of the year the capitan-pasha sailed as far as Patras, and afterwards paraded his fleet about the Aegean; but the whole extent of his achievements consisted in relieving Carysto, and reducing the Magnessians of Trikeri; whilst some of his smaller vessels were run ashore and destroyed by the Greeks. The citadel of Corinth, after a blockade of nine months, surrendered in November to Nikitas, who, in terms of the contract, faithfully secured the unmolested retreat of the Mahommedans. Whilst the Greeks thus prospered externally, there was nothing but dissensions among themselves. "The members of the executive," says Mr Gordon, "with the exception of Zaimis, were no better than public robbers... Every corner of the Morea was torn to pieces by obscure civil contests, and hardly any revenue came into the treasury."
The efforts of the Greeks to liberate themselves from the Turkish yoke had from the first excited the sympathies of Western Europe; and in 1823, when their resistance began to rise above the character of a transient rebellion, these sympathies produced small succours in men and money. In England, France, Germany, and Switzerland, subscriptions were raised, the value of which was generally sent out in ammunition or military stores. Small corps of volunteers, actuated by a fine enthusiasm, also went from Western Europe, and though universally disgusted with the treatment which they received, they always fought bravely, and often rendered very important ser- Amongst these foreigners, who received the appropriate name of Philhellene, no one was the object of such universal interest as Lord Byron. His lordship disembarked at Messalonghi with 8000 dollars in specie, on the 16th of January 1824, and was received with the most extravagant marks of joy. Shortly afterwards Lieutenant Parry arrived with some small field-pieces, supplies of powder, not, and tools, sent by the Greek committee in London. His lordship took into his pay a corps of 500 Suliotes, whose insolence and rapacity rendered it soon necessary to expel them from the town, or rather to purchase their absence with a sum of money. The Rumelioti who replaced them were not much better; and Byron found himself so incessantly teased for money, so distracted by the turbulence of the military, the intrigues and dissensions of the different parties, that his mental anxiety preying on his frame, produced a shock of apoplexy, by which his health was seriously injured. A fever followed some time afterwards, and carried off this gifted man, on the 19th of April, amidst the lamentations of the Greeks, who joined in some degree for the vexation they had caused him, by the sincere homage which they paid, and still pay, his memory. After his death the mutual jealousies of the chiefs became more violent than ever, and the summer passed away in a state of comparative inaction. Mavrodoro advanced with 2000 men to the Gulf of Arta in August, and skirmished with the Turks, till the rains in November forced him to retire. In the east a body of Turks, who penetrated into Boeotia and threatened Athens, tired without effecting anything. Ghouras, who held the citadel of that town for Odysseus, having quarrelled with the latter, got him into his power, and put him to death.
The naval campaign of 1824 was signalized by two unfortunate events. The small and prosperous isle of Kasos, of which Savary gives so interesting a description, was invaded by an Egyptian force, and entirely ruined, 900 of its inhabitants being sold into slavery. The Porte, greatly exasperated by the active hostilities of the Psyrts, whose ships preyed on the Ottoman trading vessels, and insulted the coasts of Asia Minor, sent a powerful fleet against them under the capitain-pasha, with 14,000 troops on board. The island of Psyrta is small and barren; its rocky coasts render disembarkation difficult; and its inhabitants, whose numbers had been increased to fifteen or twenty thousand by emigration from Scio, trusting to their courage and the natural strength of their territory, had taken no pains to secure themselves by artificial works. The small Greek fleet stationed off the harbour fled at the approach of the Moslemains, who, under cover of a false attack, landed a strong force at the north extremity of the isle, and gained possession of the hill which rises above the town. This unexpected success produced a panic among the timid refugees, which spread from them to the Psyrts; men and women threw themselves into the boats and attempted to escape, whilst the Turks entered the town unresisted, and laid it waste with fire and sword. In the midst of this miserable rout, a band of 600 fugitives from Mount Olympus and other parts of Macedonia distinguished themselves by a feat of heroism worthy of ancient Greece. Throwing themselves into the convent of St Nicholas, where they had placed their wives and children, they resisted the attacks of the whole Turkish army, till two thirds of their number were killed. All hopes of relief being at an end, they resolved to blow up the convent. Their fire having accordingly ceased, the Turks scaled the walls on every side, when, suddenly, says Gordon, the Hellenic flag was lowered, a white banner inscribed with the words Liberty or Death waved in the air, a single gun gave the signal, and a tremendous explosion, shaking the isle, and felt far out at sea, buried in the ruins of St Nicholas thousands of the conquerors and the remnant of the conquered. This happened on the 5th of July. Only two of the Greeks were taken alive. The loss of life was great in Psyrta; and the island, which might have been saved by a little foresight and exertion, was completely ruined. After the deed was done the Greek fleet appeared, took some Turkish vessels, and destroyed a small corps of Janizaries left on the island. From Psyrta the capitain-pasha proceeded to Samos, but here all his movements were watched by the Greek fleet; and his attempts to convey over an army from the mainland were not only defeated, but he lost three ships of war and a thousand men, and at last retired from the shores of Samos completely baffled.
The sultan, made sensible, by the failure of three campaigns, of the inefficiency of his own fleets and armies, delegated the task of re-conquering Greece to the Pasha of Egypt, whose ambitious views made him listen readily to the request of his nominal superior. In the beginning of August, Ibrahim, the pasha's adopted son, sailed from Alexandria with a powerful fleet of ships of war and transports, amounting altogether to 400 sail, with 17,000 men on board, 2000 horses, and a strong train of artillery. He put into the bay of Macri, the ancient Telmessus, to water, and shortly afterwards was met by the Greek fleet of seventy sail, carrying 700 guns. For more than three months Ibrahim manoeuvred amongst the gulfs and isles on the coast of Caria, endeavouring to beat off the Greeks, and proceed on his voyage; but though he counted six guns and six men for every one his enemies could muster, his mariners were so wretchedly deficient in skill, that he was continually baffled, and at last thought himself fortunate in escaping to Crete in the beginning of December, with the loss of two fine frigates and four brigs of war blown up, fifty transports taken or sunk, and 4000 soldiers and seamen slain or drowned, exclusively of some thousands who died of disease.
The first Greek loan was negotiated in London in February 1824. The nominal amount was L800,000, of which all that was available, after deducting interest, commission, sinking fund, &c., was L280,000. It served to quicken the operations of the government, and no doubt contributed materially to the success of the fleet, and the defeat of Ibrahim. In the Morea fierce civil war raged, Colocotroni, Londor, Sissini, and other robber chiefs, setting the government at defiance. They were crushed, however, by the vigorous efforts of Colletti, the secretary; but the Rumelioti, by whose agency he put them down, proved a scourge to the country by their rapacity.
Ibrahim having procured reinforcements from Egypt during the winter, set sail from Suda in February 1825, and landed with 4000 men at Modon on the 24th, a day pregnant with sorrow to the Greeks. The success of their naval efforts in the preceding year showed that, with common activity, they might have prevented the disembarkation; but no precautions were thought of, partly from want of foresight, partly from a feeling of false security, which led them to think that the Egyptians would be as feeble adversaries as the Turks. Ibrahim attempted nothing till he had brought over additional corps, and raised his army to 11,000, and afterwards to 15,000 men. He then commenced the siege of Navarin, defeated 7000 palikars who tried to relieve it, breached the walls, carried some outworks after hard fighting, and gained possession of the place by capitulation on the 18th of May. Thence he advanced into the interior, burning the villages, which the Greeks deserted on his approach. Colocotroni endeavoured to arrest his progress in the mountainous defiles, but without success; Tripolizza was burned by its inhabitants; and Argos shared the same fate at the hands of the Egyptians. Nauplia was threatened, but Ibrahim had no battering artillery; and dreading the want of provisions, he retreated towards Messenia. The Greeks, who had assembled to the number of 7000, attacked him near Tripolizza, but were beaten so completely that they gave up all further thoughts of resistance in the open field. In August and September the pasha ravaged the valleys of the Alpheus and the Eurotas, destroying the town of Mistra and a number of villages, and then returned to Modon. One or two gallant feats were performed by the Greeks during this unfortunate campaign. A small body of 300 men under Papa Flessas, surrounded by many thousand Egyptians, defended themselves with the bayonet and the butt-ends of their muskets, till the whole perished except two, who lay hid under the slain; and at the Mills of Lerna, Ipsilanti, with a few hundred men, baffled the main body of the pasha's army.
In Northern Greece, Redschid Pasha, the most energetic of all the sultan's officers, had been intrusted with the conduct of the war. Leaving Yanina, he arrived in May before Messaloni, which contained about 5000 of the bravest Greek soldiers, and opened trenches. The works were carried on with vigour, in the face of a most determined resistance. Elevated mounds were raised to command the batteries of the besieged, and mines were sunk; the Franklin bastion, the most exposed part of the defences, was laid open by breaching, and repeated attempts were made by the Turks to take it by assault, in one of which they at length succeeded; but the Greeks, no way daunted, sprung a small mine, and rushing upon their enemies sword in hand, dispossessed them, and following the Turks into their lines, destroyed some of their batteries. Fresh efforts were made by the pasha, and still frustrated by the courage of the Greeks, till the winter rains in October compelled Redschid to suspend his operations, and coop himself up within a fortified camp near the town. Ibrahim, who had received a great accession of force in November, now determined to try a winter campaign, and gratify the Porte by conquering Messaloni. Marching northward, he burned the villages of Elis, and crossing the Straits of Lepanto, encamped before Messaloni in January 1826. He began by offering terms to the besieged, which were proudly rejected. His batteries were more skilfully constructed than those of the Turks, and his artillery better served; but after he had ruined part of the town's defences, his attempts to storm were constantly defeated by the Greeks, who, in fighting hand to hand, with sword or bayonet, were vastly superior both to the Turks and Egyptians. The siege would indeed have ended in total failure, if he had not succeeded, at a great expense of life, in reducing various outworks commanding the channels of the lagoon by which the besieged communicated with the sea, and received supplies of provisions. Starvation now accomplished what arms could not achieve. After every thing edible, whether wholesome or unwholesome, was consumed, the remainder of the gallant garrison adopted the resolution of cutting their way through the enemy's lines. A deserter betrayed their plan to the pasha, who was fully prepared to receive them. Formed into two bodies, they issued from the town by moon-light on the 22d of April; a false alarm induced the one to return: the other, raising a simultaneous shout, "On, on, death to the barbarians," rushed forward with their muskets in their hands, and their sabres slung to their wrists. "Neither ditch nor breastwork," says Gordon, "neither the flashing peals of cannon and small arms, nor the bayonets of the Arabs, could arrest the tremendous shock; in a few minutes the trenches were cleared, the infantry broken, the batteries silenced, and the artillerymen slaughtered at their guns." Of the other body which returned to the town, some escaped in boats, some by wading through the lagoon, some voluntarily blew themselves up with a number of the enemy, when the latter entered the powder magazine, and not a few of the survivors died of fatigue and exhaustion before they reached Salona. The heavy loss of the Turks and Egyptians during the siege attested the superior valour of their enemies; and the heroic defence of Messaloni may well vie with the proudest achievements of ancient Greece.
In Eastern Greece, Colonel Fabvier, a brave and zealous French officer, formed a corps of regulars or tactics, and carrying them over to Euboea, made an attempt on Crysot, which failed. No drilling, in fact, could induce the palikars, or Greek irregulars, who had been accustomed to rely entirely upon their strength, agility, and adroitness, to meet a steady fire when drawn up in line. Another national assembly was held at Piada in Argolis, but it effected nothing. After the fall of Messaloni, Redschid Pasha invaded Attica, and took Athens, but failed in his attempts upon the citadel, into which, when its garrison was greatly reduced, Colonel Fabvier introduced 600 men, with a supply of powder. The glorious fall of Messaloni had awakened an enthusiasm in Western Europe in favour of the Greek cause, and contributions to the amount of not less than £70,000 were raised in 1826. The royal families of Bavaria, Prussia, and Sweden, and the present king of France, were amongst the contributors.
In May 1827 Ibrahim invaded the country of the Manots, but was defeated in all his attempts to penetrate their mountain fastnesses. The rest of the summer was spent in ravaging the open country, and burning the villages, the inhabitants of which took refuge in woods and caverns. To his great mortification, none of the people made their submission, and parties of irregulars watched his movements, cutting off stragglers, and intercepting convoys. Lord Cochrane arrived in Greece in March 1827 with a steam-frigate. A very splendid frigate, built in America, also reached Ægina this year, but proved of no great use, the Hydriot mariners being unaccustomed to manage vessels of such a size. These two frigates were nearly all that the Greeks derived from a second loan of £2,000,000 negotiated in London in February 1825.
General Church, an Englishman who had served in a Greek corps formerly kept in English pay in the Ionian Isles, arrived by invitation about the same time. They found the Greeks rent into factions furiously hostile to each other. It is a memorable fact, that whilst Ibrahim was wasting the Morea, there were no less than seven petty civil contests raging in different parts of Greece! By the influence of Church, Cochrane, and Captain Hamilton of the Cambrian, a temporary reconciliation was effected between the adverse parties, and the necessity of having a foreign chief being generally acknowledged, a congress assembled at Trozena in April, and elected Count Capo d'Istria president for seven years. Church was appointed general of the land forces, and Cochrane admiral of the fleet. The fortunes of Greece were now at a very low ebb; but what power remained in the country was summoned up in an expiring effort. From the Morea, the isles, and Western Greece, a force of nearly 10,000 men was collected at Salamis and the Piraeus. After carrying on a war of posts, chiefly at Port Phalerus, for some time, General Church was persuaded to risk a battle with the Turks in the plain of Athens, the object being to relieve the citadel. The result was a disastrous defeat on the 5th May, in which the Greeks lost 1500 men. The remaining troops dispersed, and the citadel capitulated. The only fortified posts now in the hands of the insurgents were Nauplia and Acrocorinthus.
Relief was, however, approaching from another quarter. From circumstances which it would be tedious explain here, the policy of the great Christian powers had undergone a change. A protocol had been signed at Petersburg in April 1826, by the Russian and British ministers, the object of which was to effect an accommodation between the Porte and the insurgents, by erecting Greece into a dependency of the Porte, paying a fixed tribute, but having the entire regulation of its own affairs. On the 6th July 1827 a treaty of intervention was signed between France, Russia, and Britain, on the same basis. The sultan firmly denied their right of interference, for which, however, the piracy practised by the Greeks gave them a good pretext. A naval force was sent into the Mediterranean to enforce the provisions of the treaty, and the belligerent parties in Greece were enjoined to suspend hostilities. The Greeks joyfully agreed; but Ibrahim hesitated, as the measure was not sanctioned by the sultan; and the capitán pasha, who was lying in the harbour of Navarin with a strong Turkish fleet, having similar scruples, the warlike movements were partially continued. The combined fleets of England, France, and Russia, stood to the Bay of Navarin in order of battle on the 20th October. Though the intention of the admirals was to treat, the Turks believed they came to fight, and were anchored in smooth water to receive them, and supported by batteries on shore. Who began the battle is uncertain; but it was obstinate and bloody, and most destructive to the vanquished party. About 6000 Turks were slain, and of 1200 men of war and transports, all were sunk or destroyed except twenty or thirty brigs and corvettes. The killed and wounded on the side of the allies amounted to 626. The victory produced unbounded joy among the Greeks, and excited them to make a new attempt upon Scio, by an expedition under Colonel Fabvier, which, though conducted with great courage and skill, ultimately failed. Ibrahim, seeing his communications with Egypt now cut off, obtained his father's authority, and agreed to evacuate the Morea. He sailed in the beginning of October 1828, leaving, according to stipulation, about 8000 troops in Patras, Modon, Koron, Navarin, and Castle Tornese, of whom 1200 were Egyptians. To avoid renewed hostilities between the Greeks and Turks, a French army was sent to the Morea in the autumn, and took possession of these five fortresses, the last being only the one that offered any resistance.
Count Capo d'Istria passed from Petersburg to London and Paris in the end of 1827, and after conferring with the British and French ministers, he set sail from Toulon, and landed at Nauplia on the 18th of January 1828. The people received him with great joy, hoping to find repose and security under his government; and his authority was acknowledged at once by the military chiefs and other functionaries of all descriptions. He was a clever and dexterous diplomatist, but his conduct as president seems not to have been judicious. Anxious to copy the centralising system which prevails in absolute monarchies, he dissolved the municipalities, and nominated prefects, judges, and other officers, deriving their authority entirely from himself. Many of his appointments also gave offence: among others, the nomination of his brother Augustin, a person of no ability, to the command of Western Greece, led to the resignation of General Church in 1829, after that officer had recovered all the country south of the Gulf of Arta from the Turks. The French troops, it is to be observed, confined themselves to the Morea, such being their instructions, and left the Greeks to carry on hostilities in the north with their own means.
The Porte obstinately rejected the arrangement proposed by the three powers in 1827, till it was humbled by numerous defeats in 1828 and 1829, and saw the Russian army within a few leagues of its capital. The stipulations in behalf of Greece made by Nicholas were, however, set aside by the governments of France and Britain, and it was settled that the affairs of that country should be discussed in London. The conference held there, after much deliberation finally resolved that Greece should be erected into a monarchy entirely independent of the sultan, and ruled by a Christian prince. The crown was offered, in the end of 1829, to Prince John of Saxony, who refused it; and then to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg, who agreed to accept it; but having corresponded with Capo d'Istria, the latter artfully infused so many doubts and apprehensions into the prince's mind, that he resiled from his engagement. This was in May 1830. Other princes, it is said, were proposed, but nothing was decided; and in the mean time Greece was again falling into a state of anarchy. The popularity of Capo d'Istria's government was of short duration. Visibly the partisan of Russia, he showed a devotion to her interests which offended all the more independent Greeks. He extinguished the freedom of the press, which the people were perhaps more eager to possess than fitted to enjoy; established a council, called the Panhellenion, which was intended to supersede the elective senate; refused to publish any account of the national finances, and threw many popular leaders into prison. These and other measures produced violent discontents, which at last broke out into open rebellion. The Mainots, whose prince he had placed in durance, were the first to throw off his authority. They were followed by the people of Hydra, who established a provisional government, at the head of which were Miaulis and Condourioti, assisted by Mavrocordato. The French and English ships of war in the Archipelago stood neuter; but the Russian admiral, Ricord, eagerly took part in the contest, on the side of the president. With this aid he attacked Poros, where the Greek fleet lay; but the islanders had anticipated his design, and, when the loss of their ships of war became inevitable, blew them up to prevent them falling into his hands. Whilst this contest was going on, the son and brother of Mavromichaeli, the captive bey of Maina, instigated by a feeling of revenge, came to Nauplia and assassinated the president at the door of a church, on the 9th of October 1831. One of the assassins was seized, tried, and executed, but the other escaped. A new commission of government was then appointed, consisting of Augustin Capo d'Istria, with Colletti and Colocotroni, who thought it prudent to convolve a national assembly. Loud complaints were made that the free choice of the people was defeated by force and fraud; and when the assembly met in December, it speedily separated into two hostile bodies, one of which remained at Argos, while the other seated itself at Megira, and thence fulminated decrees against Augustin and his associates. The Moreots generally adhered to the former, the Rumeliots to the latter. Civil war now raged furiously in the country, and the peaceful cultivators were driven, as in the time of the revolutionary struggle, to desert their homes, and seek refuge in the woods and caverns. This lamentable state of things probably quickened the languid proceedings of the conference in London, who in May 1832 fixed upon Otho, second son of the king of Bavaria, as the sovereign of Greece. The prince was born in 1815, and was of course a minor; but the defect was supplied as far as possible by a council of regency. The three powers, parties to the conference, obtained an extension of territory and a better frontier for the new state, including the province of Arcanania, for which, however, a price was to be paid to the sultan; and, in order to put Otho in a condition to meet initiatory difficulties, they guaranteed a loan of £2,400,000 for him, to be paid in three equal annual instalments. Otho landed at Nauplia on the 31st January 1833, attended by 3600 Bavarian soldiers, and was warmly welcomed by the people. The French troops had been gradually reduced, and were now entirely withdrawn. The regency commenced the work of organizing the go- Greece. vernment, made a new division of the country, disbanded the palikars, formed a small body of Greek regulars, and took some steps towards the establishment of tribunals. As might have been expected, its endeavours to introduce order soon awakened the factious spirit of the klephts or military chiefs, some of whom, including the arch-anarchist Colocotroni, were tried for plotting the overthrow of the government, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment or exile. These are only the beginning of troubles, springing from the natural levity and turbulence of the people, and which it will require a firm government to control. The last act of the regency of which accounts have reached us was the removal of the government to Athens, which took place in December 1834.
In the whole course of the war, the Greeks never had any regular army; for the attempts to form a corps of disciplined troops, and keep them in pay, always failed. Their soldiers, with the exception of some small bands of Armatoles, consisted of peasants who took up arms for a few months, when the enemy made an irruption, and fought till he was expelled, or driven into the fortresses. They made war as irregulars, seldom encountering the Turks in the field, but posting themselves in defiles, and on mountains, taking advantage of rocks, inequalities of the ground, villages, or ruined buildings; and where these were wanting, covering themselves by small temporary parapets of earth or stones, called Tambourins. The Ruanelliots were excellent marksmen, and admirable at defending a post. A hundred of them planted in a ruined monastery, seldom failed to beat off one or two thousand Turks. Their defeats were chiefly owing to three circumstances: first, their entire want of cavalry, for as infantry they were superior to their enemies; secondly, their deficiency in artillery, both for service in the field, and for battering fortified posts; thirdly, their incorrigible neglect of order and discipline, in consequence of which they were often surprised and routed by a contemptibly inferior force. As obstacles to their success, we must also mention their mutual animosities, the rapacity and selfishness of their chiefs, and their habit of neglecting all advantages for the acquisition of spoil. Their fleet was better managed than their army, but its operations failed on many occasions, from the mutinous spirit of the sailors, and the habit, which they could scarcely ever be persuaded to abandon, of returning to port to see their families at the end of every month, however pressing might be the occasion for their services. With all their faults and errors, it is impossible to read the history of the revolution without feeling respect for their courage, and for the unconquerable spirit which bore them up under the most dreadful privations and reverses.
STATISTICAL VIEW OF INDEPENDENT GREECE.
It was settled by the conference of London in March 1829, that the northern or inland frontier of Greece should extend from the Gulf of Arta to the Gulf of Malia; but this was coupled with two conditions, that the sultan should be acknowledged as sovereign, and receive an annual tribute. In the following year it was resolved that Greece should enjoy entire independence; and, as an indemnity to the sultan for the loss of the tribute and titular sovereignty, the limits of the new state were contracted, so as to extend from Thermopylae to the mouth of the Achelous, excluding Acarnania and part of Ætolia. By a later arrangement, made after Otho received the crown, the original boundary was again restored, with the consent of the Porte, which agreed to accept a sum of money for the ceded districts. This boundary commences at the northeast angle of the Gulf of Arta, passes eastward to the sources of the Sperchius, and thence follows the line of Mount Othrys to the Maliac Gulf at Zeïtouni. The isle of Eubœa, the Northern Sporades, viz. Skiathos, Scopelos, Heliodromia, and Skyros; the Cyclades; and the isles in the Gulfs of Ægina and Nauplia, also belong to Greece. There are four provinces, Eastern Hellas, Western Hellas, the Morea, and the Isles; and each of these is divided into eparchias or departments. Thiersch gives the following estimate of the population, which is chiefly founded on an enumeration of towns and villages, which are assumed to have a certain mean number of inhabitants each.
Eastern Hellas; comprehending eleven eparchias or departments, which contain eleven towns and 585 villages.
| Eparchias | Towns | Villages | |--------------------|-------|---------| | Megara | | | | Attica | | | | Thebes | | | | Livadia | | | | Talanti | | | | Boudenizza (at Thermopylae) | | | | Zeïtouni (at the Maliac Gulf) | | | | Neapatas (on the Sperchius) | | | | Malandrinos | | | | Lidoriiki (ancient Doris) | | | | Salona (Locri-Ozola) | | |
The towns are assumed to have 300, the villages fifty houses or families each; and reckoning four persons to a family, the population of Eastern Greece is computed to consist of 32,550 families, or 130,000 individuals.
Eastern Hellas contains 1,886,000 stremas of cultivated soil, of which 720,000 belong to the nation, and 1,166,000 to individuals. Of this, 75,000 stremas are in vines, and 3700 in gardens. In 1829, there were computed to be 210,000 olive trees in the eparchias of Attica, Megara, and Salona, and a very few in other places. The cultivated soil, according to the above account, seems to form about one fifth of the whole surface, a result which we suspect contains some considerable error in excess.
Western Hellas.
This province comprehends Ætolia, Acarnania, and a part of the country of the Locri-Ozola. It forms twelve eparchias, containing nineteen towns and 265 villages.
| Eparchias | Towns | Villages | |--------------------|-------|---------| | Messaloni | | | | Anatolico | | | | Zygos | | | | Lepanto, with Galixidi | | | | Beneticon | | |
The preceding narrative, as far as the end of 1827, is abridged from Mr Gordon's History of the Greek Revolution, Edinburgh, 1832, an able, impartial, and instructive work, which should be read by all who wish to understand the moral and social condition of the Greeks. The part of the narrative subsequent to 1827 is derived from various sources.
The terms most in use among English and French writers are Eastern Greece and Western Greece; but these, when applied exclusively to the districts beyond the Morea, are evidently improper, and we have therefore preferred the denominations which, as we find from Thiersch, the Greeks themselves use. In the preceding part of the article we have followed Gordon in employing the more usual terms.
The cultivated land is measured by the strema, which, according to Thiersch, is a square of forty paces (pas). By the pace he seems to mean a full step of three feet; and the strema, on this supposition, will be a fraction under one third of an English acre, which agrees pretty well with the statements of other writers.
Thiersch says there are eleven eparchias, but enumerates twelve, and his aggregate numbers seldom agree with his details. The population, estimated hypothetically as before, amounts, he says, to 19,000 families, and 76,000 individuals.
The cultivated land in Western Hellas amounts to 93,000 stremas, of which 179,000 belong to the nation, and 818,000 to individuals. Of these lands, 65,000 stremas are in vines, and 3650 in Corinthian grapes.
The Morea or Peloponnesus, comprehending thirty-five eparchias.
| Eparchia | Towns | Villages | |----------|-------|----------| | Nauplia | | | | Low Nachare | | | | Argos | | | | St Petros| | | | Prastos | | | | Corinth | | | | Tripoliza| | | | Leontari | | | | Kalavrita| | | | Carytene | | | | Phanari | | | | Androussa| | | | Vostizza | | | | Patras | | | | Gastouni | | | | Pyrgos | | | | New Arcadia | | | | Navarin | | | | Modon | | | | Coron | | | | Nisi | | | | Calamata | | | | Micromani| | | | Embelakia| | | | Lacedemon| | | | Monemvasia| | | | Kolokynthia| | | | Trigonas | | | | Malembris| | | | Phocusa | | | | Stauropogos| | | | Androbysta| | | | Zygos | | | | Myles | | | | Maina | | |
The Morea has eighty-six towns and boroughs (villes et bourgs), 1335 villages, and 92,550 families, exclusive of the country of the Spartiates. Adding 15,400 families of Spartiates, the population will consist of 107,900 families, or 429,000 inhabitants. The statistical commission employed under Otho's government had received more correct returns for nine eparchias; and, taking these as a basis, the population should be 308,800 inhabitants, exclusive of the Mainots, an estimate which falls short of the former by 61,000 persons.
The returns of land in cultivation are extremely incorrect as to the Morea, exhibiting only a total of 1,776,000 stremas, of which rather more than two thirds are national property. "In general," says Thiersch, "we may reckon fifty stremas of cultivated soil for each family, which gives an aggregate of ten millions of stremas for the 400,000 inhabitants of the Morea." The real quantity of labouried land is thus presumed to exceed sixfold the returns made to the government, a circumstance proving that little authority is due to the other statements.
The Greek Islands.
The inhabited isles are thirty-three in number, exclusive of Euboea. No eparchias are named in reference to these.
| Inhabitants | |-------------| | Hydra | 20,000 | | Spezzia | 8,000 | | Poros | 4,464 | | Ægina | 5,572 | | Augistria | 1,552 | | Salamis | 1,124 | | Scopelos | 6,515 | | Helidomia | 240 | | Skiathos | 1,532 | | Skyros | 1,578 | | Syra | 30,000 | | Tinos | 22,000 | | Miconos | 4,012 | | Andros | 5,000 | | Cea | 3,112 |
The entire number of inhabitants in the islands amounts to 176,000; and adding 429,000 for the Morea, and 206,000 for Eastern and Western Hellas, we have 811,000 for the population of the kingdom of Greece. Thiersch thinks that prior to the revolution the number of inhabitants in Continental Greece was nearly double of what it now is; but though this may be true as regards the more exposed districts, namely, Eastern and Western Hellas, the accounts given by Pouqueville would lead us to believe that the Morea is nearly as populous at present as before the war. The islands have suffered much less in the struggle than the continental districts, except Euboea and Hydra, the latter from the decline of its trade, the former from the expulsion, first of the Christians, and latterly of the Turks, who composed a larger proportion of the population here than anywhere south of Mount Æta.
Independent Greece comprises, including the islands, according to our measurements, an area of 20,000 or 21,000 square English miles. Thiersch's estimate is 1100 square German, which is equal to 23,000 English miles; but this appears to us an exaggeration. Otho's kingdom is therefore... nearly of the same extent with Denmark, or Belgium and Holland united. But in the nature of its surface it resembles Switzerland or Bavaria more than any other country in Europe; and if we suppose its population, favoured by peace and good institutions, to multiply till it rivals the most densely peopled of these states, Greece might then support about three millions of inhabitants. Commerce and manufactures, however, which enable a small spot to draw subsistence from the whole globe, may extend its capacity to nourish a large population much beyond the limits which circumscribe the powers of inland countries.
The revenues of the present kingdom of Greece under the grand seignior were supposed, says Thiersch, to yield 15,000,000 of francs, or L.600,000, of which more than a half remained in the hands of the local authorities. The imposts consisted of the carat or capitation tax, the tithe or land-tax, the customs, the duties on salines, fisheries, mills, olives, &c. The first of these was abolished as a badge of slavery, and the productiveness of the others has in general greatly declined. The financial statements published by Capo d'Istrias were delusive, and offered no information worthy of confidence. Thiersch gives the following approximate amount of receipts and disbursements for the fourteen months ending 30th April 1831, from estimates published in October 1830, for the accuracy of which, however, he does not vouch.
| Phoenix | |------------------| | Land-tax (dimes) | 2,500,000 | | Customs | 1,200,000 | | Tax on vines and currants | 36,000 | | Tax on pasturage | 300,000 | | Local imposts | 50,000 | | Tax on olives | 110,000 |
4,196,000
The phoenix was a coin introduced by Capo d'Istrias, and was meant to be equal to one sixth part of the crown of commerce (œu de convention). It has been replaced by the drachma, which is nearly of the same value, or about equal to the French franc. The 4,000,000 phoenixes, reckoned at 9d. each, would be equal to L.150,000. The expenditure for the same period was estimated at 8,500,000 phoenixes. Thiersch thinks that the revenue may be raised to 8,200,000 phoenixes, assuming the land-tax to yield 5,000,000 and the customs 2,200,000. It would serve no purpose to indulge in general speculations on statements like these, which are almost purely hypothetical.
Of the actual expenditure, the same author gives the following estimate.
| Drachmas | |------------------| | Council of state | 300,000 | | Public instruction and churches | 900,000 | | Interior | 809,000 | | Finances and public works | 1,300,000 | | Justice | 200,000 | | Army | 3,500,000 | | Marine | 1,200,000 | | King and court | 1,000,000 |
9,209,000
Probable receipts 8,000,000
Deficit 1,209,000
No provision is made here for the interest of the loan of L.2,400,000 guaranteed by the three powers, or the sinking fund to be established for its liquidation. But a resource applicable to these objects may probably be found in the sale of the national lands, which are expected to yield L.12,000,000 in thirty years.
Mr Urquhart gives an estimate of the national domains of independent Greece, which makes their value L.11,833,000. The population, according to his table, is 868,000, viz. the Morea 400,000, Eastern Greece 150,000, Western Greece 100,000, and the islands 218,000.
Thiersch has gone into great detail upon the subject of primary and normal schools, academies, and a Greek university; but the whole are merely as yet plans on paper, and do not require particular notice here.
As a European power, the Greek state, though it should even by and by embrace Thessaly, Macedonia, and Albania, must remain insignificant. Its chief value lies in the basis it offers for spreading civilization over the East, a work for which the people are eminently fitted, by their enterprising spirit of commerce, and extraordinary mental activity.
Now that Greece," says Mr Urquhart, "has assumed a definite and substantial form, she can afford to discard the sympathies and the classical associations that have contributed so much to her importance. It is no longer her soil, her costume, her language, and her ruins, that interest; it is not even the emancipation of the clusters of the Ægean or the mountains of Peloponnesus, that is the reward of one of the most noble and disinterested of diplomatic achievements; it is the political regeneration of the East that we have commenced—it is the emancipation of eastern commerce that we have effected. Greece owes herself to the furtherance of these two grand and philanthropic objects.
"The political independence of the Greeks will elevate the raya of Turkey, and force the re-organization of that country. The light craft of Greece will frequent every creek of the Levant and the Euxine; her merchants, combining local experience and information with European connection and knowledge, and endowed now with political independence, will spread themselves over the whole surface of Turkey, supply their wants, excite their taste, take off their surplus produce, and, increasing their prosperity, augment their demands. Greece will become one great mart, where the manufactures of England will be distributed to the surrounding districts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and to which the returns from those countries will be directed; she will be one free port, to link together the commerce of the East and of the West."
Greece needs repose greatly, to heal the wounds inflicted, first by the revolution, and next by the destructive civil wars which have raged in the country since the Ottomans were expelled; and if Otho's government, though a simple monarchy, succeeds in maintaining internal peace, and in securing protection to persons and property, it will be an incalculable blessing to the people. The country, ravaged by so many different parties, presents everywhere scenes of misery and desolation. Most of the villages have been burnt; the mills destroyed; the olive trees cut down; the canals for irrigation have fallen to ruin; the trade of Hydra and Spezzia is but a remnant of what it was; and a large part of the farming stock, the black cattle, horses, mules, asses, and sheep, have been carried off or slaughtered. Perhaps a greater evil than any of these is the demoralization of the people, from the habits of rapine and violence contracted in the course of their hard struggle, superadded to the vices engendered by ages of oppression under the Turks. A government enlightened and prudent, sufficiently strong to control the different factions, and the robber chiefs who head them, is the first want of the country; and under such a government, the energetic, active character of the people would soon bring back prosperity.
1 Turkey and its Resources, p. 281.