Codrington gave chase, and this second
squadron also was compelled by him to return to port. Ibrahim Pasha,
however, was not to be robbed of his revenge. He dared not leave
Navarino by sea, but he sent thence a land force, which marched up to
the northern side of the Morea, and did serious mischief to the wornout
fragment of an army which General Church was slowly conducting from
Corinth to Papas, there to be embarked for Albania. Only by the
unlooked-for valour of young Kolokotrones and his section was the rout
of the whole army averted. Nor was Ibrahim satisfied with this act of
retaliation. His troops scoured all the adjoining country, burning
villages and laying waste the olive-groves and fig-gardens which were
the only source of subsistence to the luckless natives.

Thereby Sir Edward Codrington and his allies were in turn incensed. They
decided that the time had come for direct interference in the struggle,
and for the expulsion of the Ottoman forces from the Morea. In the
afternoon of the 20th of October, five and twenty line-of-battle ships,
frigates, and sloops entered the Bay of Navarino. Ten of them were
English, seven were French, and eight were Russian, and they carried in
all 1172 guns. Twenty thousand Ottoman troops watched them from the
fortresses of Navarino and Sphakteria, and, as they entered the harbour,
they saw some eighty Turkish and Egyptian vessels, mounting about 2000
guns, drawn up in the shape of a horseshoe to receive them. They had
come only to threaten; but accident, or design on the part of the enemy,
brought about a most momentous battle.

A volley from the Ottomans began the fight, which was continued for four
hours with stolid energy on both sides. The English and French vessels,
being foremost, carried on the chief contest with the enemy's shipping;
the Russians had to silence the batteries before they could enter the
harbour, but then their Admiral, Count Heyden, did his full share of the
deadly work. The fighting lasted till sunset; but by that time many of
the enemy's hulks were in flames, and all through the night these flames
spread from one vessel to another till nearly all were destroyed. At
daybreak, only twenty-nine out of the eighty were afloat, and six
thousand or more Moslems had been slain, burnt, or drowned. Many of the
vessels of the allies were seriously damaged, and of their crews a
hundred and seventy-five men were killed, and four hundred and fifty
wounded.

That