2,000 Greeks, and taken on April 4. Next day a solemn service
of the Greek Church was performed on the banks of the torrent that flows
by Kalamata, as a thanksgiving for the success of the Greek arms.
Patriotic tears poured down the cheeks of rude warriors, and ruthless
brigands sobbed like children. All present felt that the event formed an
era in Greek history. The rising spread to every part of Greece, and to
some of the islands.

Sultan Mahmud II. believed that he could paralyse the movements of the
Greeks by terrific cruelty. On Easter Sunday, April 22, the Patriarch
Gregorios and three other bishops were executed in Constantinople--a
deed which caused a thrill of horror from the Moslem capital to the
mountains of Greece, and the palaces of St. Petersburg. The sultan next
strengthened his authority in Thrace and in Macedonia, and extinguished
the flames of rebellion from Mount Athos to Olympus.

In Greece itself the patriots were triumphant. Local senates were formed
for the different districts, and a National Assembly met at Piada, three
miles to the west of the site of the ancient Epidaurus, which formulated
a constitution and proclaimed it on January 13, 1822. This constitution
established a central government consisting of a legislative assembly
and an executive body of five members, with Prince Alexander
Mavrocordato as President of Greece.

It is impossible here to go into the details of the war of independence
which was carried on from 1822 to 1827. The outstanding incidents were
the triple siege and capitulation of the Acropolis at Athens; the
campaigns of Ibrahim Pasha and his Egyptian army in the Morea; the
defence of Mesolonghi by the Greeks with a courage and endurance, an
energy and constancy which will awaken the sympathy of free men in every
country as long as Grecian history endures; the two civil wars, for one
of which the Primates were especially blamable; the dishonesty of the
government, the rapacity of the military, the indiscipline of the navy;
and the assistance given to the revolutionaries by Lord Byron and other
English sympathisers. Lord Byron arrived at Mesolonghi on January 5,
1824. His short career in Greece was unconnected with any important
military event, for he died on April 19; but the enthusiasm he awakened
perhaps served Greece more than his personal exertions would have done
had his life been prolonged, because it resulted in the provision of a
fleet for the Greek nation by th