nfluence of
Russia over the whole of the Christian populations in Turkey. But Russia
never insisted on the execution of the articles of the treaty, and the
Greeks were everywhere subjected to increased oppression and cruelty.
During the war from 1783 to 1792, caused by Catherine II. of Russia
assuming sovereignty over the Crimea, Russia attempted to excite the
Christians in Greece to take up arms against the Turks, but they were
again abandoned to their fate on the conclusion of the Treaty of Yassi
in 1792, which decided the partition of Poland.

Meanwhile, the diverse ambitions of the higher clergy and the phanariots
at Constantinople taught the people of Greece that their interests as a
nation were not always identical with the policy of the leaders of the
Orthodox Church. A modern Greek literature sprang up and, under the
influence of the French Revolution, infused love of freedom into the
popular mind, while the sultan's administration every day grew weaker
under the operation of general corruption. Throughout the East it was
felt that the hour of a great struggle for independence on the part of
the Greeks had arrived.

_IV.--The Greek Revolution_

The Greek revolution began in 1821. Two societies are supposed to have
contributed to accelerating it, but they did not do much to ensure its
success. These were the Philomuse Society, founded at Athens in 1812,
and the Philike Hetaireia, established in Odessa in 1814. The former was
a literary club, the latter a political society whose schemes were wild
and visionary. The object of the inhabitants of Greece was definite and
patriotic.

The attempt of Alexander Hypsilantes, the son of the Greek Hospodar of
Wallachia, under the pretence that he was supported by Russia, to upset
the Turkish government in Moldavia and Wallachia was a miserable fiasco
distinguished for massacres, treachery, and cowardice, and it was
repudiated by the Tsar of Russia. Very different was the intensity of
the passion with which the inhabitants of modern Greece arose to destroy
the power of their Othoman masters. In the month of April 1821, a
Mussulman population, amounting to upwards of 20,000 souls, was living
dispersed in Greece employed in agriculture. Before two months had
elapsed the greater part--men, women, and children--were murdered
without mercy or remorse. The first insurrectional movement took place
in the Peloponnesus at the end of March. Kalamata was besieged by a
force of