poils,
and the Primates were worsted in turn by the islanders and the Armatoli.
The nonentity Kondouriottis of Hydhra finally emerged as President of
Greece, with the sharp-witted Kolettis as his principal wire-puller, but
the disturbances did not cease till the last instalment of the loan had
been received and squandered and there was no more spoil to fight for.

Meanwhile, Sultan Mahmud had been better employed. Resolved to avert
stalemate by the only possible means, he had applied in the course of 1823
to Mohammed Ali Pasha of Egypt, a more formidable, though more distant,
satrap than Ali of Yannina himself. Mohammed Ali had a standing army and
navy organized on the European model. He had also a son Ibrahim, who knew
how to manoeuvre them, and was ambitious of a kingdom. Mahmud hired the
father's troops and the son's generalship for the re-conquest of
Peloponnesos, under engagement to invest Ibrahim with the pashalik as soon
as he should effectively make it his own. By this stroke of diplomacy a
potential rebel was turned into a willing ally, and the preparations for
the Egyptian expedition went forward busily through the winter of 1823-4.

The plan of campaign was systematically carried out. During the season of
respite the Greek islanders had harried the coasts and commerce of
Anatolia and Syria at will. The first task was to deprive them of their
outposts in the Aegean, and an advanced squadron of the Egyptian fleet
accordingly destroyed the community of Kasos in June 1824, while the
Ottoman squadron sallied out of the Dardanelles a month later and dealt
out equal measure to Psara. The two main flotillas then effected a
junction off Rhodes; and, though the crippled Greek fleet still ventured
pluckily to confront them, it could not prevent Ibrahim from casting
anchor safely in Soudha Bay and landing his army to winter in Krete. In
February 1825 he transferred these troops with equal impunity to the
fortress of Modhon, which was still held for the sultan by an Ottoman
garrison. The fire-ships of Hydhra came to harry his fleet too late, and
on land the Greek forces were impotent against his trained soldiers. The
Government in vain promoted Kolokotronis from captivity to
commandership-in-chief. The whole south-western half of Peloponnesos
passed into Ibrahim's hands, and in June 1825 he even penetrated as far as
the mills of Lerna on the eastern coast, a few miles south of Argos
itself.

At the same time the Ottoman