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

308 THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
Captain Hastings had transported a small body of
troops, under General Church, to Dragomesti on the
coast of Acarnania; and subsequently another force
crossed the Gulf of Corinth and occupied the site of a
Greek fort on the mainland, opposite the island of
Trisognia. But the troops were utterly demoralised;
the peasants were in general hostile to them; and
nothing was done. Captain Hastings had, on December
29, 1827, bombarded and captured the fort
of Vasiladi;
but, not long afterwards, he had retired
in dudgeon from active operations, owing to the fact,
which Church was powerless to prevent,
that the
Greek chiefs were carrying on a brisk trade with the
Turks at Patras in the rations supplied to
them by
the Philhellenes !
After the arrival of Capodistrias,
he had indeed again allowed himself to be persuaded
to resume operations; but an attack which, on the 25th
of May, he made on Anatoliko was repulsed; and he
himself, to the great sorrow of the Greeks, whom he
had served with such unselfish courage and devotion,
was mortally wounded.
A month later, on the 27th of June, Capodistrias
himself arrived off the coast of Acarnania on board
the War spite, and proceeded to visit the camp of Sir
Richard Church. He found the troops in an even
worse condition than those he had reviewed not long