He was a kinsman of a Hospodar of Wallachia,
by whom he had in his youth been employed in political matters. After
that he had resided in France, where he acquired much fresh knowledge,
and where his popularity helped to quicken sympathy on behalf of
the Greek Revolution at its first outburst. He had lately come
to Missolonghi with a ship-load of ammunition and other material,
procured and brought at his own expense, and soon attained
considerable influence. Always courteous in his manners, only
ungenerous in his actions where the interests of others came into
collision with his own, less strong-willed and less ambitious than
most of his associates, those associates were hardly jealous of his
popularity at home, and wholly pleased with his popularity among
foreigners. It was a clear gain to their cause to have Shelley writing
his "Hellas," and dedicating the poem to Mavrocordatos, as "a token of
admiration, sympathy, and friendship."

Mavrocordatos was named President of Greece in the Constitution of
Epidaurus, chiefly his own workmanship, which was proclaimed on the
13th of January--New Year's Day, according to the reckoning of the
Greek Church--1822. It is not necessary here to detail his own acts or
those of his real or professing subordinates. All we have to do is to
furnish a general account, and a few characteristic illustrations, of
the course of events during the Greek Revolution, in explanation of
the state of parties and of politics at the time of Lord Cochrane's
advent among them. These events were marked by continuance of the same
selfish policy, divided interests, class prejudice, and individual
jealousy that have been already referred to. The mass of the Greek
people were, as they had been from the first, zealous in their desire
for freedom, and, having won it, they were not unwilling to use it
honestly. For their faults their leaders are chiefly to be blamed; and
in apology for those leaders, it must be remembered that they were an
assemblage of soldiers who had been schooled in oriental brigandage,
of priests whose education had been in a corrupt form of Christianity
made more corrupt by persecution, of merchants who had found it hard
to trade without trickery, and of seamen who had been taught to
regard piracy as an honourable vocation. Perhaps we have less cause to
condemn them for the errors and vices that they exhibited during their
fight for freedom, than to wonder that those errors and vices were