en I spoke to Miaoulis the following morning he told
me he had not lost a man in his fleet."[A]

[Footnote A: "Despatches of the Duke of Wellington," vol. iii., p.
338.]

During the summer and winter following the fall of Missolonghi a
series of small disasters, the aggregate of which was by no means
small, befel the Greeks. It was the opinion of all parties, and
admitted even by jealous rivals, that the tottering cause of
independence was only sustained by the constant and eager expectation
of the arrival of the powerful fleet which was supposed to be on its
way to the Archipelago, under the able leadership of Lord Cochrane,
the world-famous champion of Chilian and Brazilian freedom.

His approach was hardly more a cause of hope to the Greeks than a
subject of fear to the Turks. No sooner was it publicly known that he
had espoused the cause of the insurgents than angry complaints were
made by the Turkish Government to the British ministry, and Mr.
Canning, then Foreign Secretary, had more than once to avow that the
authorities in England knew nothing of his movements, and had done all
that the law rendered possible to restrain him. He had also to promise
that everything legal should be done to keep him in check on his
arrival in Greek waters. "We have heard," he wrote in August to his
cousin, Mr. Stratford Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe,
the ambassador at Constantinople, "that Lord Cochrane is gone to
the Mediterranean; whether it be really so, we know not." He then
proceeded to define the bearing of English and international law
in the existing circumstances. "Lord Cochrane may enter the Greek
service, and continue therein. He may even, as a Greek commander,
institute (as he did in Brazil) blockades which British officers will
respect, and exercise the belligerent rights of search on British
merchant-ships, without exposing himself to any other penalty than
that which the law will inflict upon him if ever hereafter he shall
again bring himself within its reach, and be duly convicted of the
offence for the punishment of which that law was enacted. If, indeed,
he should do any of such things without a commission he would become a
pirate, and liable to the summary justice to which, without reference
to the municipal laws of his country, he would, as an enemy of the
human race, be liable; and liable just as much from the officers of
any other country as of his own."[A]

[Footnote A: "Despatches of th