eir ecclesiastical colleagues at Constantinople; in the
islands of the Aegean and the Ionian chain, and upon the mountains of Suli
and Agrapha. But the ambitions this national revival aroused were even
greater than the reality itself. The leaders of the movement did not
merely aspire to liberate the Greek nation from the Turkish yoke. They
were conscious of the assimilative power their nationality possessed. The
Suliots, for example, were an immigrant Albanian tribe, who had learnt to
speak Greek from the Greek peasants over whom they tyrannized. The
Hydhriot and Spetziot islanders were Albanians too, who had even clung to
their primitive language during the two generations since they took up
their present abode, but had become none the less firmly linked to their
Greek-speaking neighbours in Peloponnesos by their common fellowship in
the Orthodox Church. The numerous Albanian colonies settled up and down
the Greek continent were at least as Greek in feeling as they. And why
should not the same prove true of the Bulgarian population, in the
Balkans, who had belonged from the beginning to the Orthodox Church, and
had latterly been brought by improvident Ottoman policy within the Greek
patriarch's fold? Or why should not the Greek administrators beyond the
Danube imbue their Ruman subjects with a sound Hellenic sentiment? In
fact, the prophets of Hellenism did not so much desire to extricate the
Greek nation from the Ottoman Empire as to make it the ruling element in
the empire itself by ejecting the Moslem Turks from their privileged
position and assimilating all populations of Orthodox faith. These dreams
took shape in the foundation of a secret society--the 'Philiki Hetairia'
or 'League of Friends'--which established itself at Odessa in 1814 with
the connivence of the Russian police, and opened a campaign of propaganda
in anticipation of an opportunity to strike.

The initiative came from the Ottoman Government itself. At the weakest
moment in its history the empire found in Sultan Mahmud a ruler of
peculiar strength, who saw that the only hope of overcoming his dangers
lay in meeting them half-way. The national movement of Hellenism was
gathering momentum in the background, but it was screened by the personal
ambitions of Ali of Yannina, and Mahmud reckoned to forestall both enemies
by quickly striking Ali down.

In the winter of 1819-20 Ali was outlawed, and in the spring the invasion
of his territories began. Both t