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independence, that, neither discouraged by the abandonment of the Russians, nor deterred by the apprehension of again incurring the dreadful vengeance of the Turks, as soon as a fresh war broke out between those powers they again took up arms.

"A fleet was fitted out at Cronstad, and sailed for the Archipela go, under the command of a brave, prudent, and experienced officer, admiral Greig, an Englishman, who had served in the former war, and greatly distinguished himself under Count Orlow; who, from an officer in the guards, where he saw no other honourable service than quelling a riot at a brandy shop, was raised to the supreme command of a fleet and an army, and entrusted with an expedition which required the greatest experience and talents. The king of Sweden rendered to the empress the essential service of detaining her fleet in the Baltic, by attacking it in that sea, and thereby putting into her hand the naval superiority which, by its absence, would have passed into his. This ill-timed diversion of the king of Sweden retarded the fate of Turkey, and the interference of other courts saved it for this time; at least they obliged the empress to make peace; but that peace would have been but of a few months' du ration, had not the death of prince Potemkin and some other circumstances intervened, which shall be spoken of in this place.

In the mean time the empress sent manifestoes to all parts of Greece, as she had done in the former war, inviting the inhabitants 'to take up arms, and co-operate with her in expelling the enemies ' of Christianity from the countries they had usurped, and regaining 'them their ancient liberty and na'tional independence.'.

"A Greek of the name of Sottiri, was sent to Epirus and Albania, to distribute manifestoes, and com bine an insurrection with the chiefs. An army was soon raised; their head-quarters were at Sulli. They marched against the Pasha of Yánina (Janina) and completely defeated his army in a pitched battle, in which his son was killed, and despoiled of his rich armour, which they sent to the empress.

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They collected a sum of money by voluntary subscription of individuals, and fitted out at Trieste an armament of twelve small ships, under the command of Lambro Canziani, a Greek, with which they sailed to the Archipelago. They were every where victorious, and the impression was so great and alarming to the porte, that it had nearly drawn the whole Turkish navy out of the Black Sea, and left the capital exposed to the attack of a formidable Russian fleet, then in the ports of the Crim.

"The empress had sent a captain Psaro to Sicily, to establish magazines for the fleet coming out under admiral Greig, and several other persons, to furnish the Greeks with money and ammunition, and to remove the difficulties the Venetians, still unwilling to offend the porte, had thrown in their way, and the obstructions they had put to their communication by means of their port Prevasi, the nearest to Sulli. In this state of things the Greeks sent three deputies to St. Petersburgh, with complaints against the persons commissioned to this service by the empress. They presented the rich armour of the pasha of Yanina's son to her imperial majesty; but were prevented, by the intrigues of those who feared an inquiry into their scandalous peculations, for several months from presenting their petition, and explain

ing the business of their mission; at length they succeeded in obtaining a private audience of the empress, to which they were conducted by Mr. Zoubov the favourite. They presented a memorial in Greek, with a translation in French, of which the following is an English translation:

"Madam,

"It was not until we had long solicited in vain your imperial majesty's ministers for an answer to the memorial, which we had the honour of presenting to them; it was not until, driven to the utmost despair by the reflection of the dreadful evils which this delay might produce to our countrymen, who (invited by the manifestoes of your imperial majesty) have taken arms against the enemy of the Christian name, and deputed us to lay the offer of their lives and their fortunes at the foot of your imperial throne; it was not till we had lost all hopes of otherwise obtaining a speedy answer to stop those streams of the blood of our brethren which doubtless flow already through this delay, that we have at length dared to prostrate ourselves at your feet, and to present our humble memorial to your imperial majesty in per

son.

"Another duty equally sacred, and which was a principal object of our mission, induced us to take this daring step it was to undeceive Y. I. M. whom (as well as your ministers) there have been people audacious enough to mislead. We have learned with indignation, that the chevalier Psaro now erects himself into a chief and conductor of our people; a man abhorred by our nation, out of the dregs of which he rose, and where he would have remained, if he had not, with an unheard-of audaciousness, deceived your imperial majesty's ministers

and assumed a reputation by attributing to himself exploits he never performed. If no ill consequences would ensue but to himself, we should patiently await his appearance in our country, a boast however which he never will perform but in his writings. How he has acted towards us, Y.I. M. will see in our memorial. We hear that he has received immense sums, which he pretends to have expanded for us. We assure Y. I. M. that neither he, nor any of your officers sent to us, ever paid us a single rouble. The flotilla, and the other armaments of Lambro, were equipped at our own expence. One of us (deputies) abandoning his peaceful home, fitted out two vessels at his own expence, and expended in armaments 12,000 zechins, whilst the Turks massacred his mother and his brother, levelled with the ground his possessions, and desolated his lands.

"We never asked for your treasures; we do not ask for them now; we only ask for powder and balls (which we cannot purchase), and to be led to battle. We are come to offer our lives and fortunes, not to ask for your treasures.

"Deign, O great empress! glory of the Greek faith! deign to read our memorial. Heaven has reserved our deliverance for the glorious reign of Y. 1. M. It is under your auspices that we hope to deliver from the hands of barbarous Mahomedans our empire, which they have usurped, and our patriarchat and our holy religion, which they have insulted; to free the descendants of Athens and Lacedemon from the tyrannic yoke of ignorant savages, under which groans a nation whose genius is not extinguished; a nation which glows with the love of liberty; which the iron yoke of barbarism has not vi

lified;

lified; which has constantly before its eyes the images of its ancient heroes, and whose example animates its warriors even to this day. "Our superb ruins speak to our eyes, and tell us of our ancient grandeur; our innumerable ports, our beautiful country, the heavens which smile on us all the year, the ardour of our youth, and even of our decrepid elders, tell us that nature is not less propitious to us than it was to our fore-fathers. Give us for a sovereign your grandson Constantine: it is the wish of our nation (the family of our emperors is extinct), and we shall become what our ancestors were.

"We are not persons who have dared to impose on the most magnanimous of sovereigns: we are the deputies of the people of Greece, furnished with full powers and other documents, and as such prostrated before the throne of Her, whom, next to God, we look on as our saviour; we declare that we shall be till our latest breath,

your imperial majesty's most faithful and most devoted servants, (L. s.) PANO KIRI. (L. s.) CHRISTO LAZZOTTI. (L. s.) NICCOLO PANGOLO. St. Petersburgh,

April, 1790."

"As these people are out of the reach of Turkish vengeance, I have not scrupled naming them.

"The empress received them very graciously, and promised them the assistance they asked. They were then conducted to the apartments of her grandsons, and offering to kiss the hand of the eldest grand duke, Alexander, he pointed to his brother Constantine, telling them, it was to him that they were to address themselves; they represented to him in Greek the object

of their mission, and concluded by doing homage to him as their emperor (Badev TWY 'HλAEYWY.) He answered them in the same language, Go, and let every thing be according to your wishes.'

"With this memorial they presented a plan of operation, from which I shall extract only a few particulars :-They proposed, after the empress had furnished them with cannon, and enabled them to augment the squadron under Lambro Canziani, and sent them engineers to conduct the siege of strong places, to begin their first operations by marching from Sulli, where the congress was held, and whence they had a correspondence with all Greece. Their route was to be first to Livadia and to Athens, dividing into two corps. In their march they were to be joined at appointed places by troops from the Morea and Negroponte. To this island the fleet of Lambro was to sail. They were then to proceed in one body to Thessalia and to the city of Salonichi, where they would. receive large reinforcements from Macedonia. The whole army being then assembled, they were to march to the plains of Adrianople, with (as they calculated) three hundred thousand men, to meet the Russians, and proceed to Constantinople, where they hoped the Russian fleet would be arrived from the Crim; if not, they esteemed their own force sufficient to take that city, and drive the Turks out of Europe and their islands.

"In this plan the establishment and the disposition of magazines, and retreats in cases of disaster, were provided for. The force of the Turks in different parts, and the different movements to oppose them, were calculated. All their resources, and the amount of the

troops

troops each place had engaged to furnish, were plainly stated, as well as the means they had adopted to carry on a secret, correspondence with all parts of the country, both with respect to their own allies and the movements of the Turks. To enter more into particulars would not be justifiable in me.

"The empress sent them to the army in Moldavia, to prince Potemkin, giving them 1,000 ducats for their journey thither. They left Petersburgh the May 1790. In August they were sent to Greece by the way of Vienna, and major general Tamara with them, to su perintend the whole expedition, and furnish them with the assistance they required.

"It merits attention, that the king of Prussia had posted an army of 150,000 men, in June 1790, on the frontier of Bohemia; that the convention of Reichenbach was signed the 27th of July. The sentiments of the court of London respecting the war, and its probable interference in as serious a way as Prussia had done, were known at St. Petersburgh. It is to these circumstances we must attribute the slowness with which the projects of the Greeks were seconded. They were assured that they should have every succour they required, and much more: money was sent, but not much of it disbursed; they were enjoined to prepare every thing, but to undertake nothing, till the proper moment should arrive for their acting, which, they were told, depended on many circumstances of which they were ignorant. Lambro in the mean time acted by himself, but could undertake nothing of any consequence. Things remained thus till after the campaign was ended, and prince Potemkin came to St. Petersburgh.

"The fate of the armament commanded by the gallant Lambro deserves to be mentioned.

"The Greeks proved on this occasion their love of liberty, their passion for glory, and a perseverance in. toils, obedience to discipline, and contempt of danger and death, worthy of the brightest pages of their history; they fought with, and conquered very superior numbers; and when at last they were attacked with an inequality of force, as great as Leonidas had to encounter, they fought till their whole fleet was sunk, and a few only saved themselves in boats.

"Lambro had only resources left to fit out one single ship; the news of a peace arrived; but boiling with indignation at the neglect he had experienced from the Russian agents, and thirsting for revenge, he sailed notwithstanding, and attacked and defeated several Turkish vessels: he was declared a pirate, and disavowed by Russiabut he was not intimidated-at length he was again overpowered; he disdained to strike; his vessel sunk under him, and he again escaped in his boat, and took refuge in the mountains of Albania.

"The conduct of the Russian agents to him was the most scanda. lous. The peculation of all those entrusted at a distance with the empress's money was become so glaring and common, that they looked on it as their own property. Lambro was suffered to be imprisoned for debts contracted for his armaments, and was only released by the contributions of his countrymen:

"In the spring of 1791, an armament was prepared in England to sail for the Baltic, to force the empress to make peace. The king of Prussia was ready to co-operate

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by land. Instead of the fleet, Mr. Fawkener arrived at Petersburgh. It was still undetermined by the empress, whether she should brave England and Prassia (though from the turn affairs had taken in England, and the arrival of another ambassador, she was assured she had little to fear from our fleet, and consequently, little from the Prussian army), or make peace with the Turks on the conditions she had consented to, when she was more seriously alarmed.

"In this uncertainty a courier was kept ready to depart with instructions to general Tamara. The king's envoy was informed of this circumstance, and would have learnt immediately the contents of the dispatch, which would have made him acquainted with the empress's resolution respecting the prosecution of the war, or consenting to peace. The courier, however, was not dispatched. The business was terminated with the king's joint envoys. Prince Potemkin departed for the army, and on his road learnt the victory gained by Repnin over the vizir's army, and the signing the preliminaries of peace. Secret orders had been sent to Repnin, as soon as the empress had resolved to conclude a peace, which he fortunately executed; and it is certain that he received a copy of the arrangement made with the king's ministers, before he signed the preliminaries. Impediments were thrown in the way of the departure of the messenger dispatched to Constantinople, so that he did not arrive till any interference of our ambassador could be of no effect.

"It is plainly to be seen, that though the empress pretended she had of her own accord (and before the arrangement with his majesty 1798.

was known to her general) concluded a peace, the interference of his majesty in bringing about that event had a weighty effect.

"When the news of the signing the preliminaries reached the Rus sian fleet, it had beaten the Turks in the Black Sea, and was pursuing them into the channel of Constantinople, where they must inevitably have been destroyed. Had the Russian admiral been a man of more experience, they might all have been taken in the engagement.

"Thus ended a war, which, had it not been for the interference of Great Britain and Prussia, would have placed the empress's grandson on the throne of Constantinople; and, had not circumstances imperiously prescribed to them the part they acted, we should have had, in Russia and Greece, allies which would, long ago, have enabled his majesty and the emperor, in all human probability, to have humbled a foe, which now threatens all Eu.` rope with total subversion, and even to become the instrument of emancipating Greece from the Turkish tyranny, not to become an independent people, but to be oppressed by a worse tyranny, under the name of liberty.

"The Suliotes still maintain their independence: they were often attacked by the Turks, but were as often successful; they fought seventeen battles or skirmishes, the last of which had nearly been fatal to them, as appears by the following paper, communicated to me by a drogoman, now in the British service, which will throw much light on the character of the inhabitants of Epirus; and it contains, besides, very curious and interesting matter. The authenticity of what he relates cannot be called in question, as it very exact

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