To Nauplia he accordingly went on the 19th of July. "I am now at the anchorage of this place," he wrote thence to Dr. Gosse on the 22nd. "The town is evacuated by the inhabitants and abandoned by the Government. The latter are in the little island in the bay in the most deplorable condition, trembling like Sancho when invaded in his dominions of Barataria, and not knowing which way to turn, whether to avoid or meet the enemy. No words can depict the state of things. I have had correspondence with the Government and all the chiefs, but have waited on none, because I am determined to keep myself clear of faction, and go straightforward in what I consider to be my duty." "We are now weighing anchor," he added, in a postscript written in the evening of the same day, "and the Austrian commodore is coming into the bay—an evil omen. He is watching, like a vulture, the agonies of the expiring authorities of Greece."

"As you have done me the honour," said Lord Cochrane, in a letter to the Government, "to request my opinion regarding the manner of settling the disputes between the contending chiefs who hold the higher and lower fortresses of Nauplia, it becomes a sacred duty to give that opinion without the slightest reserve, because the consequences of any half measure will be entirely destructive of the influence of your excellencies throughout Greece, and eventually may frustrate the endeavours of the European powers to promote a settlement with the Porte. Your excellencies, then, must at once remove from the situation in which you are now placed, or, more properly speaking, to which you have fled, and where you are still under the cannon of the disputing chiefs, or both these chiefs must be caused to abandon the fortresses they hold. To suffer one to remain and to expel the other would be voluntarily to surrender your authority, and through Greece and throughout the world you would be considered in no other light than as instruments for giving the semblance of legality to the dictates of a military chief."

Lord Cochrane did not wait to see the end of this dispute between the mock Government and its nominal subjects. He left Nauplia on the 22nd of July to complete the arrangements he had made for another attempt in defence of Greece. He had already sent Admiral Saktoures and a small force to maintain a show of blockading Alexandria, in order that thereby neutral vessels, at any rate, might be deterred from giving aid to the Turkish cause. He had sent vessels to blockade the Gulf of Patras in the same way. He had also issued a vigorous proclamation to the inhabitants of Western Greece, urging them to rise against their oppressors, and he was eager to go thither himself and encourage the work, for which he hoped that his fleet and his naval arrangements were now better fitted. One important auxiliary to this work he hoped to have in a corps of marines, to the number of a thousand, which Colonel Gordon Urquhart was now trying, under his directions, to organise. "I have several things in view which even this small force could accomplish," he wrote to Dr. Gosse, "and amongst the rest will be the rooting out of the pirates from the islands."

More important, however, than the restraint of piracy, was the resistance, if possible, of the Turkish forces. Several of the Egyptian ships which Lord Cochrane had hoped to destroy in the harbour of Alexandria had now come out and joined the Ottoman fleet, which had Navarino for its head-quarters. He determined, without loss of time, to go and see what injury could be done to them; and accordingly, after a brief visit to Poros, where he took on board some stores and provisions, and where he left Dr. Gosse to use the scanty supply of money which he had collected in completing the equipment of the other vessels, he started in the Hellas, on the 28th of July, for the western side of the Morea.

On the 29th, when near Cape St. Angelo, he fell in with the Sauveur, returning from a cruise in the Gulf of Patras, and the two vessels proceeded with all haste to Navarino. They reached that port, and had sight of the Turkish fleet on the evening of the 30th. With French colours flying, Lord Cochrane reconnoitred its position, and then watched for an opportunity of attacking some part of it.

The opportunity occurred on the 1st of August. A corvette, carrying twenty-eight fine guns, and a crew of three hundred and forty, with two brigs and two schooners, had passed out on the previous day, apparently with the intention of conveying reinforcements to the Gulf of Patras. Lord Cochrane immediately gave them chase, and drove them backwards and forwards between Zante and the shore north of Navarino all through the night and till nearly noon on the 1st. Then suddenly tacking, he closed upon the corvette, and there was hard fighting—the first in which he had been able to persuade his Greeks to join—between the two vessels, for fifty minutes. At about one o'clock, after fifty of their number had been killed and thirty wounded, the Turks surrendered.[10] Lord Cochrane found on board twenty Greek women and several children, who had been subjected to the vilest treatment. In the meanwhile, Captain Thomas, of the Sauveur, had engaged with one of the brigs, carrying twelve guns, and captured her with a loss of fifteen killed and wounded to the Turks, but none to the Greeks. The other vessels escaped, but an Ionian vessel, laden with provisions for the Ottoman army at Patras, was seized in the afternoon, and her cargo put to good use.

Lord Cochrane waited off Navarino for two days, hoping that some of the enemy's fleet would come out to attack him. They, however, locked themselves carefully in the harbour until he had set sail for the south, when they feebly attempted to pursue him. He thereupon, after releasing the Turkish prisoners at Candia, returned to Poros, there to leave his prizes and endeavour to take back a larger force with which worthily to supplement his recent successes.

CHAPTER XX.

THE ACTION OF GREAT BRITAIN AND RUSSIA ON BEHALF OF HELLENIC INDEPENDENCE.—THE DEGRADATION OF GREECE.—LORD COCHRANE'S RENEWED EFFORTS TO ORGANISE A FLEET.—PRINCE PAUL BUONAPARTE, AND HIS DEATH.—AN ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE LORD COCHRANE.—HIS INTENDED EXPEDITION TO WESTERN GREECE.—ITS PREVENTION BY SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON.—LORD COCHRANE'S RETURN TO THE ARCHIPELAGO.—THE INTERFERENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND RUSSIA.—THE CAUSES OF THE BATTLE OF NAVARINO.—THE BATTLE.

[1827.]