Page:Decisive Battles Since Waterloo.djvu/65

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BATTLE OF NAVARINO.
35

phatically denouncing the movement, but in spite of this assurance and proclamation the insurrection went on.

Count Nesselrode declared officially that Ipsilanti's name would be stricken from the Russian army list, and that his act was one for which he alone was responsible. This announcement was the death-blow of the insurrection in Moldavia and Wallachia, as the forces of Theodore and Ipsilanti were suppressed, after some sharp fighting, by the hordes of Moslems that were brought against them. The Russians on the Pruth and the Black Sea were ordered to observe the strictest neutrality, and made no interference whatever with the movements of the Turks. Nearly the whole of Greece was in full insurrection in a few months, and with far better prospects than had the insurrection on the Danube. Turks and Greeks were embittered against each other; the war-cry of the Turk was, "Death to the Christian!" while that of the Christian was, "Death to the Turk!" The example was set by the Turks, and, to the eternal disgrace of the Turkish government, slaughter in cold blood was made official.

It was by the order and authority of the Porte that Gregory, Patriarch of Constantinople, a revered prelate, eighty years of age, was seized on Easter Sunday, as he was decending from the altar where he had been celebrating divine service, and hanged at the gate of his archiepiscopal palace, amid the shouts and howls of a Moslem mob. After hanging three hours, the body was cut down and delivered to some Jews, who dragged it about the streets and threw it into the sea, whence it was recovered the same night by some Christian fishermen.

Some weeks later it was taken to Odessa and buried with great ceremony. This act of murder was the more atrocious on the part of the Turks, since the patriarch had denounced the insurrection in a public proclamation, and his life and character were most blameless and exemplary.

It is safe to say that this barbarity had more to do with