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

REVOLT OF KOLOKOTRONES 387
tlie 30th of April, in spite of the opposition of the
Powers, who thought that it would have been better to
have postponed its meeting, in view of the approaching
arrival of the King. Deputies, elected or self -chosen,
streamed from all sides to the appointed place. It was
like the heaping together of highly inflammable materials
for a conflagration. The suppressed anger of the
fallen party was fed by an increasing suspicion of the
encroachments of the French, which the Government
seemed to favour; and the growing hatred of the Peloponnesians
for the .Rumeliots would alone have been
sufficient to feed the flames of civil war. This was
not long delayed.
Kolokotrones, refusing to have anything to do with
the Congress, held himself, like a modern Achilles,
moodily aloof in the stronghold of Karytaena.
Kolettes,
mistrusting his attitude, sent Grivas, with his Rumeliot
bands, from Argos into the districts of Leondari
and Phanari in the interior of the Morea. Kolokotrones
well understood that this move was directed
against himself.
The bands of Grivas, largely composed
of Mussulman Albanians, were the most ruthless
and bloodthirsty of all the hordes of mercenaries
by which the country was overrun; and, when they
occupied Tripolitza, from all Arcadia rose up a wail of
terror and despair.
Kolokotrones, with characteristic