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

DEATH OF BYRON 145
had died an exalted martyr to his faith in the future
of Hellas;
died quite in vain.
and no martyr, however humble, ever yet
By the Greeks the news of the death of Byron,
which took place on the 19th of April, was received
with a becoming regret, which was, however, speedily
swallowed up by anxiety as to the fate of the loan of
which he had been the trustee. It was, in fact, the
prospect of the arrival of this loan which had done
more than anything else to secure the victory of the
Government in the first civil war; for the contending
factions had hastened to make peace, so as not to be
absent from the expected division of the spoil. Only
Odysseus, planning deep schemes of his own, had
held aloof. The presence of Byron at Missolonghi
had inspired the wily Klepht with the idea of getting
the English poet into his hands, and securing, by an
astute diplomacy, the lion's share of the loan for himself.
He was enthusiastically seconded by Colonel
Stanhope (Earl of Harrington), whose fanatical Philhellenism
made him the blind instrument of the Greek
hero's unscrupulous intrigues. A 1
meeting had acti
For Colonel Stanhope's benefit Odysseus affected to be
'
an ardent partisan of liberty. His conversation was of
newspapers and schools, the rights of the people, and a
museum of antiquities.' One morning, while the Colonel
and Odysseus were sitting together in the latter's quarters,
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