Among them were thirteen foreigners, of whom only one escaped. One of the most distinguished was Meyer, a young Swiss, who entered as a volunteer at the beginning of the revolution, became attached to a beautiful Missilonghiote girl, married her, and, when the final sortie was made, his wife being sick, he remained with her, and was blown up with the others. A letter written a few days before his death, and brought away by one who escaped in the sortie, records the condition of the garrison.
"A wound which I have received in my shoulder, while I am in daily expectation of one which will be my passport to eternity, has prevented me till now from bidding you a last adieu. We are reduced to feed upon the most disgusting animals. We are suffering horribly with hunger and thirst. Sickness adds much to the calamities which overwhelm us. Seventeen hundred and forty of our brothers are dead; more than a hundred thousand bombs and balls thrown by the enemy have destroyed our bastions and our homes. We have been terribly distressed by the cold, for we have suffered great want of food. Notwithstanding so many privations, it is a great and noble spectacle to behold the ardour and devotedness of the garrison. A few days more, and these brave men will be angelic spirits, who will accuse before God the indifference of Christendom. In the name of all our brave men, among whom are Notho Bozzaris, *** I announce to you the resolution sworn to before Heaven, to defend, foot by foot, the land of Missilonghi, and to bury ourselves, without listening to any capitulation, under the ruins of this city. We are drawing near our final hour. History will render us justice. I am proud to think that the blood of a Swiss, of a child of William Tell, is about to mingle with that of the heroes of Greece."
But Missilonghi is a subject of still greater interest than this, for the reader will remember it as the place where Byron died. Almost the first questions I asked were about the poet, and it added to the dreary interest which the place inspired, to listen to the manner in which the Greeks spoke of him. It might be thought that here, on the spot where he breathed his last, malignity would have held her accursed tongue; but it was not so. He had committed the fault, unpardonable in the eyes of political opponents, of attaching himself to one of the great parties that then divided Greece; and though he had given her all that man could give, in his own dying words, "his time, his means, his health, and, lastly, his life," the Greeks spoke of him with all the rancour and bitterness of party spirit. Even death had not won oblivion for his political offences; and I heard those who saw him die in her cause affirm that Byron was no friend to Greece.
His body, the reader will remember, was transported to England and interred in the family sepulchre. The church where it lay in state is a heap of ruins, and there is no stone or monument recording his death, but, wishing to see some memorial connected with his residence here, we followed our guide to the house in which he died. It was a large square building of stone, one of the walls still standing, black with smoke, the rest a confused and shapeless mass of ruins. After his death it was converted into a hospital and magazine; and, when the Turks entered the city, they set fire to the powder; the sick and dying were blown into the air, and we saw the ruins lying as they fell after the explosion. It was a melancholy spectacle, but it seemed to have a sort of moral fitness with the life and fortunes of the poet. It was as if the same wild destiny, the same wreck of hopes and fortunes that attended him through life, were hovering over his grave. Living and dead, his actions and his character have been the subject of obloquy and reproach, perhaps justly; but it would have softened the heart of his bitterest enemy to see the place in which he died.
It was in this house that, on his last birthday, he came from his bedroom and produced to his friends the last notes of his dying muse, breathing a spirit of sad foreboding and melancholy recollections; of devotion to the noble cause in which he had embarked, and a prophetic consciousness of his approaching end.
"My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone.
"If thou regret'st thy youth, why live?
The land of honourable death
Is here: up to the field, and give
Away thy breath!
"Seek out—less often sought than found—
A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest."
Moving on beyond the range of ruined houses, though still within the line of crumbling walls, we came to a spot perhaps as interesting as any that Greece in her best days could show. It was the tomb of Marco Bozzaris! No monumental marble emblazoned his deeds and fame; a few round stones piled over his head, which, but for our guide, we should have passed without noticing, were all that marked his grave. I would not disturb a proper reverence for the past; time covers with its dim and twilight glories both distant scenes and the men who acted in them, but, to my mind, Miltiades was not more of a hero at Marathon or Leonidas at Thermopylæ than Marco Bozzaris at Missilonghi. When they went out against the hosts of Persia, Athens and Sparta were great and free, and they had the prospect of glory and the praise of men, to the Greeks always dearer than life. But when the Suliote chief drew his sword, his country lay bleeding at the feet of a giant, and all Europe condemned the Greek revolution as foolhardy and desperate. For two months, with but a few hundred men, protected only by a ditch and slight parapet of earth, he defended the town where his body now rests against the whole Egyptian army. In stormy weather, living upon bad and unwholesome bread, with no covering but his cloak, he passed his days and nights in constant vigil; in every assault his sword cut down the foremost assailant, and his voice, rising above the din of battle, struck terror into the hearts of the enemy. In the struggle which ended with his life, with two thousand men he proposed to attack the whole army of Mustapha Pacha, and called upon all who were willing to die for their country to stand forward. The whole band advanced to a man. Unwilling to sacrifice so many brave men in a death-struggle, he chose three hundred, the sacred number of the Spartan band, his tried and trusty Suliotes. At midnight he placed himself at their head, directing that not a shot should be fired till he sounded his bugle; and his last command was, "If you lose sight of me, seek me in the pacha's tent." In the moment of victory he ordered the pacha to be seized, and received a ball in the loins; his voice still rose above the din of battle, cheering his men until he was struck by another ball in the head, and borne dead from the field of his glory.