Petrobey appeared to be absorbed in writing, and he did not look up, but handed Yanni a paper.
"Go at once to the captains whose names I have written here, Yanni," he said, "and tell them to come immediately to consult about the terms of capitulation. I thought," he added, "that I heard a slight disturbance outside. Can you account for it?"
"It seemed to be the settlement of some private difference, sir," said Yanni. "It is all over."
"Is the difference settled?"
"There is a very sore man," said Yanni.
The conference among the captains lasted only a short time, and in a couple of hours the terms were despatched to Mehemet. The Turks were to give up their arms and were to be allowed, or rather compelled, to leave the Morea. They were further to pay the indemnity of forty million piastres, that being approximately the cost of the war, including the provisions and pay of all the men, from the time of its outbreak. In less than an hour the answer came back. The demand was preposterous, for it was impossible to collect the money, but in return they made a counter-proposition. They would give up the whole of their property within the town, renounce all rights of land, retaining only sufficient means to enable them to reach some port on the Asia Minor coast, but demanding leave to retain their arms in order to secure themselves from massacre on the way to Nauplia. They also insisted on occupying the pass over Mount Parthenius, between the Argive plain and Tripoli, until the women and children had been embarked in safety. This precaution, they added, was due to themselves, for they had no guarantee that without their arms the Greeks would not violate the terms of the capitulation as they had violated them at Navarin.
The Greek chiefs refused to consider the proposal, for if the Turks distrusted them, they at least had no reason to trust the Turks; and if the regiments in the town occupied Parthenius, what was to hinder them from marching on to Nauplia and remaining there? Nauplia still held communication with the sea, and they had not spent six months in reducing Tripoli only at the end to let the besieged go out in peace to another and better-equipped fortress.
Once more affairs were at a deadlock, and at this point Petrobey made an inexcusable mistake. He ought, without doubt, to have stormed the place and have done with it; but when, in a moment of weakness, he put the proposal to the captains, the majority of them were for waiting. The reason was unhappily but too plain. They knew that famine prevailed in the town, they knew, too, that its capitulation was inevitable, but they saw for themselves a rich harvest gained in a few days by secretly supplying the besieged with provisions, and for the next week Germanos's bitter words were terribly true. This was no siege of Tripoli; it was the market of Tripoli.
On the 28th came another proposal from the town, this time not from the Turks, but from the Albanian mercenaries who had formed the attack on the post at Valtetzi in May. They were fifteen hundred strong, and good soldiers, but as mercenaries they had no feelings of obligation or honor to their employers, and did not in the least desire a fierce engagement with the Greeks; and now that all idea of capitulation was over, for neither side would accept the ultimatum of the other, it was clearly to their advantage to get away, if they could, with their lives and their pay. The town would, without doubt, fall by storm, their employers would be massacred, and their best chance was to stand well with the besiegers. They, therefore, offered to go back to Albania, and never again to enlist in the Turkish service, provided they might retire with their arms. The Greeks, on their side, had no quarrel with them; many were related to them by ties of friendship and blood; they had no desire to gain a bloody and hard-won victory if there was a chance of detaching the mainstay of their foes, and they agreed to their terms.