m. But the
scene on which he had now entered was one that precluded all thoughts
of repose. He on whom the eyes and hopes of all others were centred,
could but little dream of indulging any care for himself. There were,
at this particular moment, too, collected within the precincts of
that town as great an abundance of the materials of unquiet and
misrule as had been ever brought together in so small a space. In
every quarter; both public and private, disorganisation and
dissatisfaction presented themselves. Of the fourteen brigs of war
which had come to the succour of Missolonghi, and which had for some
time actually protected it against a Turkish fleet double its number,
nine had already, hopeless of pay, returned to Hydra, while the
sailors of the remaining five, from the same cause of complaint, had
just quitted their ships, and were murmuring idly on shore. The
inhabitants, seeing themselves thus deserted or preyed upon by their
defenders, with a scarcity of provisions threatening them, and the
Turkish fleet before their eyes, were no less ready to break forth
into riot and revolt; while, at the same moment, to complete the
confusion, a General Assembly was on the point of being held in the
town, for the purpose of organising the forces of Western Greece, and
to this meeting all the wild mountain chiefs of the province, ripe,
of course, for dissension, were now flocking with their followers.
Mavrocordato himself, the President of the intended Congress, had
brought in his train no less than 5000 armed men, who were at this
moment in the town. Ill provided, too, with either pay or food by the
Government, this large military mob were but little less discontented
and destitute than the sailors; and in short, in every direction, the
entire population seems to have presented such a fermenting mass of
insubordination and discord as was far more likely to produce warfare
among themselves than with the enemy.

Such was the state of affairs when Lord Byron arrived at
Missolonghi;--such the evils he had now to encounter, with the
formidable consciousness that to him, and him alone, all looked for
the removal of them.

Of his proceedings during the first weeks after his arrival, the
following letters to Mr. Hancock (which by the great kindness of that
gentleman I am enabled to give) will, assisted by a few explanatory
notes, supply a sufficiently ample account.

LETTER 537. TO MR. CHARLES HANCOCK.

"Missolonghi, Januar