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

STATUS OF THE CHRISTIAN EACES 9
system fell indeed on Christian and Moslem alike.
Far more intolerable was that pride of religion and
of race which gave to the Christian, in relation to his
Mohammedan conqueror, the status of a slave, whom
any good Mussulman might insult or outrage with impunity,
and who, for the mere right to exist, was compelled
to pay an annual poll-tax.
readily forgive an injury than a slight;
All men will more
and the most
intolerable of all tyrannies is that which expresses itself,
not in isolated acts of violence, but in a consistently
applied system of contemptuous toleration.
In dealing with a conquered people, Machiavelli
had said, one must either crush or conciliate. The
Turks had done neither.
They
had made their rule
as galling as possible to the pride of the subject race,
while they had neither destroyed its organisation nor
even, in some cases, deprived it of its weapons.
Under
the Byzantine Caesars, certain of the wild hillsmen of
the Thessalian border country had been enrolled in a
sort of irregular militia,
called Armatoli,
for the defence
of the passes and the protection of the roads.
This system was continued and extended by the sultans;
and the Greek mountaineers were thus, by the
deliberate policy of the Porte, accustomed for generations
to the use of arms, and trained in all the arts of
mountain warfare. From Armatole to brigand was