INTERFERENCE OF THE GREAT POWERS.
In the campaign of 1824, while the Greeks lost Candia and the strongly fortified rocky isle of Ip'sara, a Turkish fleet was repulsed off Samos, and a large Egyptian fleet, sent to attack the Morea, was frustrated in all its designs. The campaign of 1825, however, was opened by the landing, in the Morea, of a large Egyptian army, under Ibrahim Päsha, son of the Viceroy of Egypt. Navarï'no soon fell into his power; and at the time of the fall of Missolonghi, in the following year, be was in possession of most of southern Greece, and many of the islands of the Archipelago. The foundation of an Egyptian military and slave-holding state now seemed to be laid in Europe; and this danger, combined with the noble defence and sufferings at Missolonghi and elsewhere, attracted the serious attention of the European governments and people; numerous philanthropic societies were formed to aid the Greeks, and finally three of the great European powers were moved to interfere in their behalf. On the 6th of July, 1827, a treaty was concluded at London between England, Russia, and France, stipulating that the Greeks should govern themselves, but that they should pay tribute to the Porte.
To enforce this treaty a combined English, French, and Russian squadron sailed to the Grecian Archipelago; but the Turkish Sultan haughtily rejected the intervention of the three powers, and the troops of Ibrahim Pasha continued their devastations in the Morea. On the 20th of October the allied squadron, under the command of the English admiral, Edward Codrington, entered the harbor of Navarino, where the Turkish-Egyptian fleet lay at anchor; and a sanguinary naval battle followed, in which the allies nearly destroyed the fleet of the enemy. Although this action was spoken of by the British government as an "untoward event," Admiral Codrington was rewarded both by England and Russia; and the poet CAMPBELL, in the following lines on the battle, naturally praises him for planning and striking this decisive blow for Grecian liberty:
The Battle of Nava'rino.
Hearts of Oak, that have bravely delivered the brave,
And uplifted old Greece from the brink of the grave!
'Twas the helpless to help, and the hopeless to save,
That your thunderbolts swept o'er the brine;
And as long as yon sun shall look down on the wave
The light of your glory shall shine.
For the guerdon ye sought with your bloodshed and toil,
Was it slaves, or dominion, or rapine, or spoil?
No! your lofty emprise was to fetter and foil
The uprooter of Greece's domain,
When he tore the last remnant of food from her soil,
Till her famished sank pale as the slain!
Yet, Navarï'no's heroes! does Christendom breed
The base hearts that will question the fame of your deed?
Are they men?—let ineffable scorn be their meed,
And oblivion shadow their graves!
Are they women?—to Turkish sérails let them speed,
And be mothers of Mussulmen slaves!
Abettors of massacre! dare ye deplore
That the death-shriek is silenced on Hellas' shore?
That the mother aghast sees her offspring no more
By the hand of Infanticide grasped?
And that stretched on yon billows distained by their gore
Missolonghi's assassins have gasped?
Prouder scene never hallowed war's pomp to the mind
Than when Christendom's pennons wooed social the wind,
And the flower of her brave for the combat combined—
Their watchword, humanity's vow:
Not a sea-boy that fought in that cause but mankind
Owes a garland to bon or his brow!
No grudge, by our side, that to conquer or fall
Came the hardy, rude Russ, and the high-mettled Gaul:
For whose was the genius that planned, at its call,
When the whirlwind of battle should roll?
All were brave! but the star of success over all
Was the light of our Codrington's soul.
That star of thy day-spring, regenerate Greek!
Dimmed the Saracen's moon, and struck pallid his cheek:
In its fast flushing morning thy Muses shall speak,
When their love and their lutes they reclaim;
And the first of their songs from Parnassus's peak
Shall be "Glory to Codrington's name!"