means of the political crisis, he hoped to establish in Wallachia,
under Russian protection. With that view, in March 1821, he led the
first crude army of Greek and other Christian rebels into Moldavia.
There and in Wallachia he stirred up a brief revolt, attended by
military blunders and lawless atrocities which soon brought vengeance
upon himself and made a false beginning of the revolutionary work.
Moldavia and Wallachia were quickly restored to Turkish rule, and
Hypsilantes had in June to fly for safety into Austria. But the bad
example that he set, and the evil influence that he and his promoters
and followers of the Friendly Society exerted, initiated a false
policy and encouraged a pernicious course of action, by which the
cause of the Greeks was injured for years.

The real Greek revolution began in the Morea. There the Friendly
Society did good work in showing the people that the hour for action
had come; but its direction of that action was for the most part
mischievous. The worst Greeks were the leaders, and, under their
guidance, the play of evil passions--inevitable in all efforts of the
oppressed to overturn their oppressors--was developed to a grievous
extent. Turkish blood was first shed on the 25th of March, 1821, and
within a week the whole of the Morea was in a ferment of rebellion. By
the 22nd of April, which was Easter Sunday, it is reckoned that from
ten to fifteen thousand Mahometans had been slaughtered in cold blood,
and about three thousand Turkish homes destroyed.

The promoters of all that wanton atrocity were the directors of the
Friendly Society, among whom the Archimandrate Gregorios Dikaios,
nicknamed Pappa Phlesas, and Petros Mavromichales, or Petro-Bey, were
the most conspicuous. Its principal agents were the klepht or brigand
chieftains, best represented by Theodore Kolokotrones.

Born about 1770, of a family devoted to the use of arms in predatory
ways, Kolokotrones had led a lawless life until 1806, when the Greek
peasantry called in the assistance of their Turkish rulers in hunting
down their persecutors of their own race, and when, several of his
family being slain, he himself had to seek refuge in Zante. There he
maintained himself, partly by piracy, partly by cattle-dealing.
In 1810 the English annexation of the Ionian Islands led to his
employment, first as captain and afterwards as major, in the Greek
contingent of the British army. He had amassed much wealth, and was
in th