n, were spent by Ibrahim and his companions in
preparation for future work. The invaders were now well provided
with every requisite. The besieged were in want of nearly everything.
"Invested for ten months," says the contemporary historian,
"frequently on the verge of starvation, thinned by fatigue, watching,
and wounds, they had already buried fifteen hundred soldiers. The
town was in ruins, and they lived amongst the mire and water of their
ditches, exposed to the inclemency of a rigorous season, without shoes
and in tattered clothing. As far as their vision stretched over the
waves they beheld only Turkish flags. The plain was studded with
Mussulman tents and standards; and the gradual appearance of new
batteries more skilfully disposed, the field days of the Arabs, and
the noise of saws and hammers, gave fearful warning. Yet these gallant
Acarnanians, Etolians, and Epirots never flinched for an instant."[A]

[Footnote A: Gordon, vol. ii., p. 253.]

On the 13th of January, Ibrahim Pasha sent to say that he was willing
to treat with them for an honourable surrender if they would convey
their terms by deputies who could speak Albanian, Turkish, and French.
"We are illiterate, and do not understand so many languages," was
their blunt reply; "pashas we do not recognize; but we know how to
handle the sword and gun."[A]

[Footnote A: Ibid.]

Sword and gun were handled with desperate prowess during February and
March and the early part of April. In April, offers of capitulation
were renewed by Ibrahim, and more disinterested attempts to avert
the worst calamity were made by Sir Frederick Adam, the Lord High
Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. Both proposals were stoutly
rejected. The Missolonghiotes declared that they would defend their
town to the last, and trust only in God and in their own strong arms.
But on the 1st of April the last scanty distribution of public rations
was exhausted. For three weeks the inhabitants subsisted upon nothing
but cats, rats, hides, seaweed, and whatever other refuse and vermin
they could collect. At length, on the 22nd of April, finding it
impossible to hold out for a day longer, they resolved to evacuate the
town in a body, and, cutting their way through the enemy, to try to
join Karaiskakes and his small force, who, hiding among the mountain
fastnesses, were vainly seeking for some way of assisting them, and to
whom they now despatched a message, asking them to advance and help to