nemies by people who
were not themselves criminals, that all who defied them have been sure of a
measure of sympathy. Then and there it was that brigandage has flourished,
and has been difficult to extirpate. Schinder-Hannes, Jack the Skinner,
whose real name was Johann Buckler, and who was born at Muklen on the
Rhine, flourished from 1797 to 1802 because there was no proper police to
stop him; it is also true that as he chiefly plundered the Jews he had a
good deal of Christian sympathy. When caught and beheaded he had no
successors.

The brigandage of Greece, southern Italy, Corsica and Spain had deeper
roots, and has never been quite suppressed. All four countries are well
provided with hiding-places in forest and mountain. In all the
administration has been bad, the law and its officers have been regarded as
dangers, if not as deliberate enemies, so that they have found little
native help, and, what is not the least important cause of the persistence
of brigandage, there have generally been local potentates who found it to
their interest to protect the brigand. The case of Greece under Turkish
rule need not be dealt with. Whoever was not a klepht was the victim of
some official extortioner. It would be grossly unfair to apply the name
brigand to the Mainotes and similar clans, who had to choose between being
flayed by the Turks or living by the sword under their own law. When it
became independent Greece was extremely ill administered under a nominal
parliamentary government by politicians who made use of the brigands for
their own purposes. The result was the state of things described with only
pardonable exaggeration in Edmond About's amusing _Roi de la montagne_. An
authentic and most interesting picture of the Greek brigands will be found
in the story of the captivity of S. Soteropoulos, an ex-minister who fell
into their hands. It was translated into English under the title of _The
Brigands of the Morea_, by the Rev. J.O. Bagdon (London, 1868). The
misfortunes of Soteropoulos led to the adoption of strong measures which
cleared the Morea, where the peasantry gave active support to the troops
when they saw that the government was in earnest. But brigandage was not
yet extinct in Greece. In 1870 an English party, consisting of Lord and
Lady Muncaster, Mr Vyner, Mr Lloyd, Mr Herbert, and Count de Boyl, was
captured at Oropos, near Marathon, and a ransom of L25,000 was demanded.
Lord and Lady Muncaster were set at l