of Europe, as well as
in the camps of their enemies. The disunions and dissensions of the
rival Greek generals were of more advantage to the Turks than a force of
fifty thousand men.

These jealous chieftains, however, had reason to be startled in the
spring of 1823, when they heard that eighty thousand Mussulmans were to
be sent to attack the Isthmus of Corinth; that forty thousand more were
to undertake the siege of Missolonghi; that fifty thousand in addition
were to co-operate in Thessaly and Attica; while a grand fleet of one
hundred and twenty sail was to sweep the Aegean and reduce the revolted
islands. It was, however, the very magnitude of the hostile forces which
saved the Greeks from impending ruin; for these forces had to be fed in
dried-up and devastated plains, under scorching suns, in the defiles of
mountains, where artillery was of no use, and where hardy mountaineers,
behind rocks and precipices, could fire upon them unseen and without
danger. There was more loss from famine and pestilence than from
foes,--a lesson repeatedly taught for three thousand years, but one
which governments have ever been slow to learn. Alexander the Great had
learned it when he invaded Persia with a small army of veterans, rather
than with a mob of undisciplined allies. Huge armies are not to be
relied on, except when they form a vast mechanism directed by a master
hand, when they are sure of their supplies, and when they operate in a
wholesome country, with nothing to fear from malaria or inclemency of
weather. Then they can crush all before them like some terrible and
irresistible machine; but only then. This the old crusaders learned to
their cost, as well as the invading armies of Napoleon amid the snows of
Russia, and even the disciplined troops of France and England when they
marched to the siege of Sebastopol.

Hence, in spite of the divisions of the Greeks, which paralyzed their
best efforts, the Turkish armies effected but little, great as were
their numbers, in the campaign of 1823. The intrepid Marco Bozzaris,
with only five thousand men, kept the Turks at bay in Epirus, and chased
a large body of Albanians to the sea; while Odysseus defended the pass
of Thermopylae, and prevented the advance of the Turks into Southern
Greece. The grand army destined for the invasion of the Morea gradually
melted away in attacking fortresses, and under the desultory actions of
guerilla bands amidst rocks and thickets. Bozzaris su