The Life of Lord Byron
Chapter XLV
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CHAPTER XLV.
Proceedings at Missolonghi.—Byron’s Suliote
brigade.—Their insubordination.—Difference with Colonel
Stanhope.—Imbecility of the plans for the independence of Greece.
The arrival of Lord Byron at
Missolonghi was not only hailed as a new era in the history of Greece, but as the beginning of
a new cycle in his own extraordinary life. His natural indolence disappeared; the Sardanapalian
sloth was thrown off, and he took a station in the van of her efforts that bespoke heroic
achievement.
After paying the fleet, which indeed had only come out in the expectation of
receiving the arrears from the loan he had promised to Mavrocordato, he resolved to form a brigade of Suliotes. Five hundred of the
remains of Marco Botzaris’s gallant followers were
accordingly taken into his pay. “He burns with military ardour and chivalry,”
says Colonel Stanhope, “and will proceed with the
expedition to Lepanto.” But the expedition was delayed by causes which ought to
have been foreseen.
The Suliotes, conceiving that in his Lordship they had found a patron whose
wealth and generosity were equally boundless, refused to quit Missolonghi till their arrears
were paid. Savage in the field, and untamable in the city, they became insubordinate and
mercenary; nor was their conduct without excuse. They had long defended the town with untired
bravery; ![]()
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their families had been driven into it in the most destitute
condition; and all the hopes that had led them to take up arms were still distant and
prospective. Besides, Mavrocordato, unlike the other
Grecian captains, having no troops of his own, affected to regard these mercenaries as allies,
and was indulgent to their excesses. The town was overawed by their turbulence, conflicts took
place in the street; riot and controversy everywhere prevailed, and blood was shed.
Lord Byron’s undisciplined spirit could ill brook
delay; he partook of the general vehemence, and lost the power of discerning the comparative
importance both of measures and things. He was out of his element; confusion thickened around
him; his irritability grew into passion; and there was the rush and haste, the oblivion and
alarm of fatality in all he undertook and suggested.
One day, a party of German adventurers reached the fortress so demoralized by
hardships, that few of them were fit for service. It was intended to form a corps of artillery,
and these men were destined for that branch of the service; but their condition was such, that
Stanhope doubted the practicability of carrying the
measure into effect at that time. He had promised to contribute a hundred pounds to their
equipment. Byron attributed the Colonel’s objections
to reluctance to pay the money; and threatened him if it were refused, with a punishment, new
in Grecian war——to libel him in the Greek Chronicle! a
newspaper which Stanhope had recently established.
It is, however, not easy to give a correct view of the state of affairs at
that epoch in Missolonghi. All parties seem to have been deplorably incompetent to understand
the circumstances in which they were placed;—the condition of the Greeks, and that their
exigencies required only physical and military means. ![]()
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They talked of
newspapers, and types,* and libels, as if the moral instruments of civil exhortation were
adequate to wrench the independence of Greece from the bloody grasp of the Ottoman. No wonder
that Byron, accustomed to the management only of his own
fancies, was fluttered amid the conflicts of such riot and controversy.
His situation at this period was indeed calculated to inspire pity. Had he
survived, it might, instead of awakening the derision of history, have supplied to himself
materials for another canto of Don Juan. I shall
select one instance of his afflictions.
The captain of a British gun-brig came to Missolonghi to demand an equivalent
for an Ionian boat,
* It is amusing to see what a piece of insane work was made about
the printing press.
“The press will be at work next Monday. Its first production will be a
prospectus. On the first day of the year 1824, the Greek
Chronicle will be issued.—It will be printed in Greek and Italian;
it will come out twice a-week. Pray endeavour to assist its circulation in England.
(!) I hope to establish presses in other parts.”—18th December,
1823. Page 46.
“Your agent has now been at Missolonghi one week; during that period a free
press has been established.”—20th December, 1823. Page 50.
“The press is not yet in motion; I will explain to you the
cause.”—23d December, 1823. Page 54.
“The Greek Chronicle published with a passage from
Bentham on the liberty of the
press.”—2d January, 1824. Page 63.
“The English Committee has sent hither several presses, for the purpose of
spreading the light of the nineteenth century.”—7th January, 1824.
Page 74.
“The Press is exciting general interest—all our party are working for
it; some translate, and some write original articles. As yet we have not a
compositor to arrange our Italian types.”—7th January, 1824. Page
82.
“I have no one to work the lithographic press.”—7th February,
1824. Page 108.
“I am going to take the three presses round to the
Morea.”—11th February, 1824. Page 112
These extracts will help the reader to form some idea of the
inordinate attention which was paid to “the press,” as an engine of war against the Turks; but the following extract
is
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which had been taken in the act of going out of the Gulf of Lepanto, with
provisions and arms. The Greek fleet at that time blockading the port consisted of five brigs,
and the Turks had fourteen vessels of war in the gulf. The captain maintained that the British
Government recognised no blockade which was not efficient, and that the efficiency depended on
the numerical superiority of cannon. On this principle he demanded restitution of the property.
Mavrocordato offered to submit the case to the
decision of the British Government, but the captain would only give him four hours to consider.
The indemnification was granted.
Lord Byron conducted the business in behalf of the captain.
In the evening, conversing with Stanhope
more immediately applicable to my object in
noticing the thing so contemptuously:
“Your Lordship stated, yesterday evening, that you had said to
Prince Mavrocordato, that ‘were you in his
place, you would have placed the press under a censor;’ and that he replied,
‘No, the liberty of the press is guaranteed by the constitution.’ Now,
I wish to know whether your Lordship was serious when you made the observation, or
whether you only said so to provoke me. If your Lordship was serious, I shall
consider it my duty to communicate this affair to the Committee in England, in
order to show them how difficult a task I have to fulfil, in promoting the
liberties of Greece, if your Lordship is to throw the weight of your vast talents
into the opposite scale in a question of such vital importance.’
“After
Lord Byron had read this paper, he
said that he was an ardent friend of publicity and the press; but he feared it was
not applicable to this Society in its present combustible state. I answered that I
thought it applicable to all countries, and essential here in order to put an end
to the state of anarchy which at present prevailed. Lord Byron
feared libels and licentiousness. I said the object of a free press was to check
public licentiousness, and to expose libelers to odium, &c.
&c.”—24th January, 1824. Page 91.
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on the subject, the colonel said the affair was conducted in a bullying
manner. His Lordship started into a passion and contended that law, justice, and equity had
nothing to do with politics. “That may be,” replied Stanhope,
“but I will never lend myself to injustice.”
His Lordship then began to attack Jeremy
Bentham. The colonel complained of such illiberality, as to make personal
attacks on that gentleman before a friend who held him in high estimation.
“I only attack his public principles,” replied Byron, “which are mere theories, but dangerous,—injurious to
Spain, and calculated to do great mischief in Greece.”
Stanhope vindicated Bentham, and said, “He possesses a truly British heart; but your
Lordship, after professing liberal principles from boyhood, have, when called upon to act,
proved yourself a Turk.”
“What proofs have you of this?”
“Your conduct in endeavouring to crush the press by declaiming against it to
Mavrocordato, and your general abuse of liberal
principles.”
“If I had held up my finger,” retorted his Lordship, “I could have
crushed the press.”
“With all this power,” said Stanhope,
“which by the way you never possessed, you went to the prince, and poisoned his
ear.”
Lord Byron then disclaimed against the liberals.
“What liberals?” cried Stanhope.
“Did you borrow your notions of freemen from the Italians?”
“No: from the Hunts, Cartwrights, and
such.”
“And yet your Lordship presented Cartwright’s Reform Bill, and aided Hunt by praising his poetry and giving him the sale of your works.”
“You are worse than Wilson,” exclaimed Byron, “and
should quit the army.”
“I am a mere soldier,” replied Stanhope,
“but never will I abandon my principles. Our principles ![]()
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are
diametrically opposite, so let us avoid the subject. If Lord
Byron acts up to his professions, he will be the greatest, if not, the
meanest of mankind.”
“My character,” said his Lordship, “I hope, does not depend on your
assertions.”
“No: your genius has immortalized you. The worst will not deprive you of fame.”
Lord Byron then rejoined, “Well; you shall see:
judge of me by my acts.” And, bidding the colonel good night, who took up the
light to conduct him to the passage, he added, “What! hold up a light to a
Turk!”
Such were the Franklins, the
Washingtons, and the Hamiltons who undertook the regeneration of Greece.
Leigh Hunt,
Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries (London: Henry Colburn, 1828)
An article was
written in “The Westminster
Review” (Medwin says
by Mr. Hobhouse) to show that the Conversations were altogether unworthy of
credit. There are doubtless many inaccuracies in the latter; but the spirit remains
undoubted; and the author of the criticism was only vexed, that such was the fact. He
assumes, that Lord Byron could not have made this or that statement to
Captain Medwin, because the statement was erroneous or untrue; but
an anonymous author has no right to be believed in preference to one who speaks in his own
name: there is nothing to show that Mr. Hobhouse might not have been
as mistaken about a date or an epigram as Mr. Medwin; and when we find
him giving us his own version of a fact, and Mr. Medwin asserting that
Lord Byron gave him another, the only impression left upon the
mind of any body who knew his Lordship is, that the fault most probably lay in the loose
corners of the noble Poet’s vivacity. Such is the impression made upon the author of
an unpublished Letter to Mr.
Hobhouse, which has been shown me in print; and he had a right to it. The
reviewer, to my knowledge, is mistaken upon some points, as well as the person he reviews.
The assumption, that nobody can know any thing about Lord Byron but
two or three persons who were conversant with him for a certain space of time, and whom he
spoke of with as little ceremony, and would hardly treat with more confidence than he did a
hundred others, is ludicrous; and can only end, as the criticism has done, in doing no good
either to him or them. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
“Dear Sir;—Amongst the
agreeable things which you say of me in your life of Lord Byron, you conjecture that I
‘condemned’
Childe Harold
previously to its publication. There is not the slightest foundation for this
supposition—nor is it true as you state, ‘that I was the only person
who had seen the poem in manuscript, as I was with Lord
Byron whilst he was writing it.’ I had left
Lord Byron before he had finished the two cantos, and,
excepting a few fragments, I had never seen them until they were printed. My own
persuasion is, that the story told in Dallas’s Recollections of some
person, name unknown, having dissuaded Lord Byron from
publishing Childe Harold, is a
mere fabrication, for it is at complete variance with all Lord
Byron himself told me on the subject. At any rate, I was not that
person; if I had been, it is not very likely that the poem which I had endeavoured
to stifle in its birth, should, in its complete, or, as Lord
Byron says, in its ‘concluded state,’ be dedicated to
me. I must, therefore, request you will take the earliest opportunity of relieving
me from this imputation, which, so far as a man can be written down by any other
author than himself, cannot fail to produce a very prejudicial effect, and to give
me more uneasiness than I think it can be your wish to inflict on any man who has
never given you provocation or excuse for injustice. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
I am glad to find my college
stories administered relief to your nerves, when we were together in the Malta
packet some one and twenty years ago; and I am not sorry that my wearing a red
coat at Cagliari, and cutting my finger in the quarries of Pentelicus, should
have furnished materials for your present volume; but to repay me for having
supplied these timely episodes, as well as for your copious extracts from my
travels in Albania, and also for inserting my note about Madame Guiccioli without my leave, you must
positively cancel the passage respecting Childe Harold
in page 161 of your little volume. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
I wonder that even common policy did not induce you to be
more cautious in making statements which might be so easily disproved, and
which have, indeed, been already incontrovertibly refuted. The very
conversation, which you have judiciously selected from Medwin, as one of those parts of his trumpery book to the truth of which you
can speak, I know to be a lie; for I never went the tour of the lake of Geneva
with Lord Byron. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
You tell me that your wish has
been to give only an outline of his intellectual character. I am at a loss to
understand how your gossip about him and me, and the silly anecdotes you have
copied from very discreditable authorities, can be said to be fairly comprised
in such an outline. But your plan ought certainly to have compelled you to make
yourself thoroughly acquainted with his poetry, and to quote him just as he
wrote. Nevertheless, you have misrepresented him at least nine times in the ten
stanzas of that poem which you call the last, and which was not the last, he
ever wrote. Oh, for shame! stick to your acknowledged fictions—there you
are safe—you may deal with Leddy
Grippy and Laurie Todd as
you please, but not with those who have really lived, or who are still
alive. . . .
[John Wilson et. al.],
“Noctes Ambrosianae XVII” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
Vol. 16
No. 94 (November 1824)
And there was another funny thing o’ his, till a queer looking lad, one
Mr. Skeffington, that wrote a tragedy, that was called
“The Mysterious Bride,” the whilk
thing made the Times newspaper for once witty—for it
said no more o’t, than just “Last night a play called The Mysterious
Bride, by the Honorable Mr. Skeffington, was performed at Drury Lane.
The piece was damned.” Weel, ye see it happened that there was a masquerade some nights after,
and Mr. Cam Hobhouse gaed till’t in the disguise
o’ a Spanish nun, that had been ravished by the French army— . . .
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
The founder of Utilitarianism; author of
Principles of Morals and
Legislation (1789).
Markos Botsaris [Μαρκος Βοτσαρις] (1790-1823)
Greek leader in the War of Independence who died heroically at the Battle of Karpenisi.
He was the brother of Kostas (Constantine) Botzaries.
John Cartwright (1740-1824)
Political reformer who advocated the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of Greece;
he was the brother of the poet and inventor Edmund Cartwright.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
American printer, scientist, writer, and statesman; author of
Poor
Richard's Almanack (1732-57).
Alexander Hamilton (1755 c.-1804)
American statesman and first secretary of the treasury; he was killed in a duel in 1804
by his political foe Aaron Burr.
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
English poet, journalist, and man of letters; editor of
The
Examiner and
The Liberal; friend of Byron, Keats, and
Shelley.
Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos [Αλεξανδρος Μαβροκορδατος] (1791-1865)
Greek statesman and diplomat with Byron at Missolonghi; after study at the University of
Padua he joined the Greek Revolution in 1821 and in 1822 was elected by the National
Assembly at Epidaurus. He commanded forces in western Central Greece and retired in 1826
after the Fall of Messolonghi.
Leicester Fitzgerald Charles Stanhope, fifth earl of Harrington (1784-1862)
The third son of the third earl; in 1823 he traveled to Greece as the Commissioner of the
London Greek Committee; there he served with Byron, whom he criticizes in
Greece in 1823 and 1824 (1824). He inherited the earldom from his brother in
1851.
George Washington (1732-1799)
Revolutionary general and first president of the United States.
John Wilson [Christopher North] (1785-1854)
Scottish poet and Tory essayist, the chief writer for the “Noctes Ambrosianae” in
Blackwood's Magazine and professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh
University (1820).
George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)
Don Juan. (London: 1819-1824). A burlesque poem in ottava rima published in installments: Cantos I and II published in
1819, III, IV and V in 1821, VI, VII, and VIII in 1823, IX, X, and XI in 1823, XII, XIII,
and XIV in 1823, and XV and XVI in 1824.
