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

SIEGE OF ANATOLIKO 129
was garrisoned by some six hundred men, and entirelyunfortified.
It had, however, a small battery
of six
old-fashioned cannon, commanded by William Martin,
an English seaman, who had deserted from some ship
of war, and who succeeded with these in dismounting
the only Turkish gun. The pashas now could do nothing
but bombard the place with a couple of mortars,
which did but little
damage, the garrison, in fact, suffering
much more from thirst than from the Ottoman
shells. In this strait, the angel Michael came to their
assistance. A bomb from the Turkish mortars fell
into the church of the archangel, shattering the pavement;
and lo! from the hole thus made there bubbled
up a plentiful spring of pure water. 1
Encouraged
by this miracle, the Greeks made so stout a resistance,
that on the llth of December Mustai raised the siege.
The second half of the Ottoman plan of campaign had
thus also broken down ;
for the Greeks.
]S"o
and the year closed in triumph
sooner was the danger from the Turks at an
which the common peril had interrupted.
end than the Greeks resumed the internecine struggle
Mavrocordatos,
supported by the party of the primates, and by
the islands, determined to make another effort to break
the power of Kolokotrones.
i
Gordon, ii. 36.
The executive committee