l.
There was scarcely a town in the empire where atrocities of the most
repulsive kind were not perpetrated on innocent and helpless people. In
Asia Minor the fanatical spirit raged with more ferocity than in
European Turkey. At Smyrna a general massacre of the Christians took
place under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and fifteen thousand
were obliged to flee to the islands of the Archipelago to save their
lives. The Island of Cyprus, which once had a population of more than a
million, reduced at the breaking out of the insurrection to seventy
thousand, was nearly depopulated; the archbishop and five other bishops
were ruthlessly murdered. The whole island, one hundred and forty-six
miles long and sixty-three wide, was converted into a theatre of rapine,
violation, and bloodshed.

All now saw that no hope remained for Greece but in the most determined
resistance, which was nobly made. Six thousand men were soon in arms in
Thessaly. The mountaineers of Macedonia gathered into armed bands.
Thirty thousand rose in the peninsula of Cassandra and laid siege to
Salonica, a city of eighty thousand inhabitants, but were repulsed, and
fled to the mountains,--not, however, until thousands of Mussulmans were
slain. It had become "war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt." No
quarter was asked or given.

All Greece was now aroused to what was universally felt to be a death
struggle. The people eagerly responded to all patriotic influences, and
especially to war songs, some of which had been sung for more than two
thousand years. Certain of these were reproduced by the English poet
Byron, who, leaving his native land, entered heart and soul into the
desperate contest, and urged the Greeks to heroic action in memory of
their fathers.

"Then manfully despising
The Turkish tyrant's yoke,
Let your country see you rising,
And all her chains are broke.
Brave shades of chiefs and sages,
Behold the coming strife!
Hellenes of past ages
Oh, start again to life!
At the sound of trumpet, breaking
Your sleep, oh, join with me!
And the seven-hilled city seeking,
Fight, conquer, till we're free!"

Success now seemed to mark the uprising in Southern Greece; but in the
Danubian provinces, without the expected aid of Russia, it was far
otherwise. Prince Ypsilanti, who had taken an active part in the
insurrection, was dismissed from the Russian servic