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

THE INSURGENT ARMY 35
while the Turks, thoroughly alarmed at last, made
vigorous preparations for crushing the revolt. At
length he marched southward, and, on the 9th of April,
fixed his headquarters
at Bucharest. The forces of
the insurrection were of the most motley description.
Hypsilanti himself, though nominally commander-inchief,
had at his personal orders only a band of some
two thousand undisciplined ruffians, more skilled in the
art of plundering defenceless peasants than in that of
war. The so-called ( Sacred Legion/ a regiment of
five hundred Greek youths, whose courage was greater
than their experience or physical powers, formed a
nobler element; and besides these he could also depend
upon a small but well-trained force of cavalry,
under Georgaki of Olympus, the only one of the Greek
leaders who displayed courage, skill, and disinterestedness.
The garrison of Bucharest consisted of a thousand
veteran troops, under the practically independent
command of the Greek Savas;
and Theodore Yladimiresco,
a Roumanian boyard, who had joined the
Hetairists for his own ends, attached himself to Hypsilanti's
fortunes with a force of some two thousand
Pandours, or "VYallach cavalry.
To weld these heterogeneous
elements into an effective force needed a
stronger hand than that of Prince Alexander Hypsilanti.