m. I implore you, in the name of Greece, to assist
me as soon as possible with the means of destroying him and of saving
Athens."

That letter, and the advice of all in office, whether military or civil,
to the same effect, altered Lord Cochrane's plans. "As he," said Gordon,
who afterwards blamed him on this account, "unacquainted with the
country and the language, could not form a correct judgment on the
innumerable reports transmitted to him, it is not surprising that he was
deceived by letters written from the Acropolis, and entrusted to
soldiers who, disguised as Turks or Albanians, slipped from time to time
through the enemy's lines. In these epistles, Fabvier and the other
chiefs painted their situation in the blackest colours, carefully
concealing the fact of their having provisions for many months."[3] By
them native Greeks and foreigners long resident in the country were
deceived. Lord Cochrane, still clinging to his project for injuring the
Turks by cutting off their supplies, was constrained to defer it for the
present, and in compliance with the requests of the Government, of
General Church, and of Karaiskakes, to co-operate in the direct attack
upon the enemy in the Piraeus. "I now agree with you," he wrote to the
latter, on the 14th of April, "that the time is past when a movement in
the rear of the Turks, and the cutting off of their provisions, could
have the effect of saving the Acropolis, and I see clearly the justice
of your observation that a decisive blow must be struck at once against
the enemy. The eyes of Europe are turned towards Greece, and on the
success or failure of the measures now to be adopted depends the support
of your glorious cause, or its abandonment in despair."

[3] Gordon, vol. ii., p. 386. As Gordon was with Lord Cochrane at the
time, and on intimate relations with him, it is strange, unless he
himself, with far less excuse, shared the error for which he blamed him,
that he did not advise him to pursue his former plan. Compare Trikoupes,
vol. iv., p. 137, who blames and involuntarily acquits Lord Cochrane
almost in the same breath.

Something was done by Lord Cochrane at once, however, towards the
fulfilment of his first design. He despatched Captain Abney Hastings,
with the _Karteria_ and five other vessels, to the Gulf of Volo and the
Channel of Negropont, with orders to seize as many Turkish
provision-ships as he could there find within the next fourteen days.