il to accompany him, composed of the most experienced Chieftains
of the army, with Nota Bozzari, the uncle of the famous warrior, at
their head.

It had been expected that, among the stores sent with Parry, there
would be a supply of Congreve rockets,--an instrument of warfare of
which such wonders had been related to the Greeks as filled their
imaginations with the most absurd ideas of its powers. Their
disappointment, therefore, on finding that the engineer had come
unprovided with these missiles was excessive. Another hope,
too,--that of being enabled to complete an artillery corps by the
accession of those Germans who had been sent for into the Morea,--was
found almost equally fallacious; that body of men having, from the
death or retirement of those who originally composed it, nearly
dwindled away; and the few officers that now came to serve being,
from their fantastic notions of rank and etiquette, far more
troublesome than useful. In addition to these discouraging
circumstances, the five Speziot ships of war which had for some time
formed the sole protection of Missolonghi were now returned to their
home, and had left their places to be filled by the enemy's squadron.

Perplexing as were all these difficulties in the way of the
expedition, a still more formidable embarrassment presented itself in
the turbulent and almost mutinous disposition of those Suliote troops
on whom he mainly depended for success in his undertaking. Presuming
as well upon his wealth and generosity as upon their own military
importance, these unruly warriors had never ceased to rise in the
extravagance of their demands upon him;--the wholly destitute and
homeless state of their families at this moment affording but too
well founded a pretext both for their exaction and discontent. Nor
were their leaders much more amenable to management than themselves.
"There were," says Count Gamba, "six heads of families among them,
all of whom had equal pretensions both by their birth and their
exploits; and none of whom would obey any one of his comrades."

A serious riot to which, about the middle of January, these Suliotes
had given rise, and in which some lives were lost, had been a source
of much irritation and anxiety to Lord Byron, as well from the
ill-blood it was likely to engender between his troops and the
citizens, as from the little dependence it gave him encouragement to
place upon materials so unmanageable. Notwithstanding all this,
ho