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

188 THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
mediately recaptured, and the labour of three weeks
destroyed. On the 21st of September and the 13th of
October two vigorous sorties were made by the garrison.
The troops were followed by crowds of the inhabitants
with spades and pickaxes, who proceeded,
while the soldiers drove back the Turks, to demolish
the Ottoman earthworks. What the Greeks left unfinished
the autumn rains completed, and Reshid saw
the whole labour of the year destroyed. Under present
conditions any further effort against the town was
By death and desertion his army
out of the question.
was now reduced to some three thousand men; and
it was necessary to wait for help. He determined,
therefore, to withdraw from the immediate neighbourhood
of the town, which the malarial swamps rendered
extremely unhealthy, and, entrenching himself at the
foot of Mount Zygos, to act strictly on the defensive.
The position of the Ottomans was now extremely
critical, and nothing but the fatuousness of the Greeks
saved them from utter ruin.
In their rear the mountain
passes were held by strong bands of Greek Armatoli;
in front was Missolonghi. Had the garrison of
the latter combined with the mountaineers in a simultaneous
attack on the Turkish camp, the Ottoman army
would have been annihilated. But the chiefs of Armatoli
were too much occupied with their own quarrels;