e, or
piled on the beach, threatened to cause a pestilence."[A] At the sack
of Tripolitza, on the 8th of October, about eight thousand Moslems
were murdered, the last two thousand, chiefly women and children,
being taken into a neighbouring ravine, there to be slaughtered at
leisure. Two years afterwards a ghastly heap of bones attested the
inhuman deed.

[Footnote A: Finlay, vol. i.; p. 263, citing Phrantzes.]

In ways like these the first stage of the Greek Revolution was
achieved. Before the close of 1821, it appeared to the Greeks
themselves, to their Moslem enemies, and to their many friends in
England, France, and other countries, that the triumph was complete.
Unfortunately, the same bad motives and the same bad methods that had
so grievously polluted the torrent of patriotism continued to poison
and disturb the stream which might otherwise have been henceforth
clear, steady, and health-giving. Greece was free, but, unless another
and a much harder revolution could be effected in the temper and
conduct of its own people, unfit to put its freedom to good use or
even to maintain it. "The rapid success of the Greeks during the first
few weeks of the revolution," says their ablest historian, "threw the
management of much civil and financial business into the hands of the
proesti and demogeronts in office. The primates, who already exercised
great official authority, instantly appropriated that which had been
hitherto exercised by murdered voivodes and beys. Every primate strove
to make himself a little independent potentate, and every captain of
a district assumed the powers of a commander-in-chief. The Revolution,
before six months had passed, seemed to have peopled Greece with a
host of little Ali Pashas. When the primate and the captain acted in
concert, they collected the public revenues; administered the Turkish
property, which was declared national; enrolled, paid, and provisioned
as many troops as circumstances required, or as they thought fit;
named officers; formed a local guard for the primate of the best
soldiers in the place, who were thus often withdrawn from the public
service; and organised a local police and a local treasury. This I
system of local self-government, constituted in a very self-willed
manner, and relieved from almost all responsibility, was soon
established as a natural result of the Revolution over all Greece.
The Sultan's authority having ceased, every primate assumed the
prerogativ