for aid. But on July 16 the
Greek advance was checked by a severe defeat at Petta in the plain of
Arta. In September the Suliots evacuated their impregnable fortresses in
return for a subsidy and a safe-conduct, and Omer Vrioni, the Ottoman
commander in the west,[1] was free to advance in turn towards the south.
On November 6 he actually laid siege to Mesolonghi, but here his
experiences were as discomfiting as Dramali's. He could not keep open his
communications, and after heavy losses retreated again to Arta in January
1823.

[Footnote 1: He was a renegade officer of Ali's.]

In 1823 the struggle seemed to be lapsing into stalemate. The liberated
Peloponnesos had failed to propagate the revolution through the remainder
of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman Government had equally failed to
reconquer the Peloponnesos by military invasion. This season's operations
only seemed to emphasize the deadlock. The Ottoman commander in the west
raised an auxiliary force of Moslem and Catholic clansmen from northern
Albania, and attempted to reach Mesolonghi once more. But he penetrated no
further than Anatolikon--the Mesolonghiots' outpost village at the head of
the lagoons--and the campaign was only memorable for the heroic death of
Marko Botzaris the Suliot in a night attack upon the Ottoman camp. At sea,
the two fleets indulged in desultory cruises without an encounter, for the
Turks were still timid and incompetent, while the growing insubordination
and dissension on the Greek ships made concerted action there, too,
impossible. By the end of the season it was clear that the struggle could
only definitively be decided by the intervention of a third party on one
side or the other--unless the Greeks brought their own ruin upon
themselves.

This indeed was not unlikely to happen; for the new house of Hellenism had
hardly arisen before it became desperately divided against itself. The
vitality of the national movement resided entirely in the local communes.
It was they that had found the fighting men, kept them armed and supplied,
and by spontaneous co-operation expelled the Turk from Peloponnesos. But
if the co-operation was to be permanent it must have a central
organization, and with the erection of this superstructure the troubles
began. As early as June 1821 a 'Peloponnesian Senate' was constituted and
at once monopolized by the 'Primates', the propertied class that had been
responsible for the communal taxes under the Romaic