THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 1821 TO 1833 BY W.ALISON PHILLIPS 1897

120 THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
After a sharp fight, the Greeks were routed, and Odysseus
himself only with difficulty escaped. In terror
lest the Ottomans should now advance into Attica, and
lest, in the presence of this danger, the Athenians
should elect a new commander-in-chief, he concluded
an armistice with the Turks, at the same time offering
to make his submission to the Porte, and to secure that
of the other captains of East Hellas, on condition of
his being continued in his position
as a chief of Armatoli.
Though
the Turks did not believe in his offers of
submission, they accepted the armistice, for their own
purposes, and retired to Zeituni for the winter. The
peasants of Boeotia and Attica, relieved from immediate
danger, and able now to sow their fields in peace,
gave Odysseus all the credit for saving them from the
Turks, and, knowing nothing of the terms of the armistice,
began to regard him as an ideal hero.
It was, however, the power of Kolokotrones that
most excited the jealous apprehensions of the other
parties. In the Morea, the possession of Nauplia,
which, since its surrender by the Turks, had been held
for him by his son-in-law Koliopulos, rendered him
supreme; and to break his power became the main
object of primates and islanders alike. The Government
in vain demanded admission into Nauplia; and,
when it became plain that Kolokotrones had no inten-