es and receive an annual tribute; but the haughty and
exasperated Sultan indignantly rejected them, and made renewed
preparations to continue the contest. Ibrahim landed his forces on the
Morea and renewed his depredations. Once more the ambassadors of the
allied Powers presented their final note to the Turkish government, and
again it was insultingly disregarded. The allied admirals then entered
the port of Navarino, where the Turkish and Egyptian fleets were at
anchor, with ten ships-of-the-line, ten frigates, with other vessels,
altogether carrying thirteen hundred and twenty-four guns. The Ottoman
force consisted of seventy-nine vessels, armed with twenty-two hundred
and forty guns. Strict orders were given not to fire while negotiations
were going on; but an accidental shot from a Turkish vessel brought on a
general action, and the combined Turkish and Egyptian fleet was
literally annihilated Oct. 20, 1827. This was the greatest disaster
which the Ottoman Turks had yet experienced; indeed, it practically
ended the whole contest. Christendom at last had come to the rescue,
when Greece unaided was incapable of further resistance.

The battle of Navarino excited, of course, the wildest enthusiasm
throughout Greece, and a corresponding joy throughout Europe. Never
since the battle of Lepanto was there such a general exultation among
Christian nations. This single battle decided the fate of Greece. The
admirals of the allied fleet were doubtless "the aggressors in the
battle; but the Turks were the aggressors in the war."

Canning of England did not live to enjoy the triumph of the cause which
he had come to have so much at heart. He was the inspiring genius who
induced both Russia and France (now under Charles X.) to intervene.
Chateaubriand, the minister of Charles X., was in perfect accord with
Canning from poetical and sentimental reasons. Politically his policy
was that of Metternich, who could see no distinction between the
insurrection of Naples and that of Greece. In the great Austrian's eyes,
all people alike who aspired to gain popular liberty or constitutional
government were rebels to be crushed. Canning, however, sympathized in
his latter days with all people striving for independence, whether in
South America or Greece. But his opinion was not shared by English
statesmen of the Tory school, and he had the greatest difficulty in
bringing his colleagues over to his views. When he died, England again
relapse