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

10 THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
but a short step;
and when, toward the end of the last
century, the sultans began to diminish the numbers of
the Christian militia, and to curtail the power of the
captains, these became the enemies of the order they
were no longer paid to defend; and, from this time,
the brigands, or Klephts, grew into social and political
importance as a permanent class. 1
Where the government
shows no respect for justice, lawless men are often
supported by the lower orders as a means for securing
revenge, or for redressing intolerable social evils.
There was as yet no organised effort to throw off the
Ottoman yoke; but the bolder and more reckless
spirits among the peasantry, weary of a galling subservience,
hurried to the mountains, and turned brigand.
To be a Klepht was, in the popular view, a glory
rather than a disgrace;
and for whole decades before
the war of independence the Klephts were, in the eyes
of their countrymen, the defenders of faith and fatherland
against the Turk; though, to tell the truth, they
plundered Christian and Mussulman with a commendable
impartiality. Owning ' no pasha save the naked
sword, no vizier save the gun/ they looked down upon
the Ottomans and their ' slaves ' with equal contempt.
A thousand tales were current of their reckless courage,
their cruelty, or their generosity;
their deeds of
i Finlay, i. 27. Fyffe, Modern Europe, i. 246.