province, Moldavia, bordering on Russia, from which it was separated by
the River Pruth. At Jassy, the capital, Prince Ypsilanti, a
distinguished Russian general descended from an illustrious Greek
family, raised the standard of insurrection, to which flocked the whole
Christian population of the province, who fell upon the Turkish soldiers
and massacred them. Ypsilanti had twenty thousand soldiers under his
command, against which the six hundred armed Turks could make but feeble
resistance. This apparently successful revolt produced an immense
enthusiasm throughout Greece, the inhabitants of which now eagerly took
up arms. The Greeks had been assured of the aid of Russia by Ypsilanti,
who counted without his host, however; for the Czar, then at the
Congress of Laibach, convened to put down revolutionary ideas, was
extremely angry at the conduct of Ypsilanti, and, against all
expectation, stood aloof. This was the time for him to attack Turkey,
then weakened and dilapidated; but he was tired of war. Among the Greeks
the wildest enthusiasm prevailed, especially throughout the Morea, the
ancient Peloponnesus. The peasants everywhere gathered around their
chieftains, and drove away the Turkish soldiers, inflicting on them the
grossest barbarities. In a few days the Turks possessed nothing in the
Morea but their fortresses. The Turkish garrison of Athens shut itself
up in the Acropolis. Most of the islands of the Archipelago hoisted the
standard of the Cross; and the strongest of them armed and sent out
cruisers to prey on the commerce of the enemy.

At Constantinople the news of the insurrection excited both
consternation and rage. Instant death to the Christians was the
universal cry. The Mussulmans seized the Greek patriarch, an old man of
eighty, while he was performing a religious service on Easter Sunday,
hanged him, and delivered his body to the Jews. The Sultan Mahmoud was
intensely exasperated, and ordered a levy of troops throughout his
empire to suppress the insurrection and to punish the Christians. The
atrocities which the Turks now inflicted have scarcely ever been
equalled in horror. The Christian churches were entered and sacked. At
Adrianople the Patriarch was beheaded, with eight other ecclesiastical
dignitaries. In ten days thousands of Christians in that city were
butchered, and their wives and daughters sold into slavery; while five
archbishops and three bishops were hanged in the streets, without tria