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

BEGINNING OF THE REVOLT 47
country to all appearance peaceful and settled; and,
when the Sultan ordered him to take over from the
hands of the incompetent Ismael the task of blockading
Ali Pasha in Janina, he left the Government,
without misgiving, in the hands of the Kaimakani
Salik Aga.
His absence, however, was the signal for
renewed activity on the part of the conspirators ;
at last,
and,
the Turkish governor, alarmed at the increasing
agitation, issued a proclamation ordering the Christians
to surrender their arms, and summoning the bishops
and primates to Tripolitza. By some the invitation
was obeyed, though with misgiving;
others, and
among them the Archbishop Germanos, started on the
journey, but made one excuse or another for arresting
it half way.
The proclamation of the Kaimakani had,
indeed, only hastened the crisis it had been intended to
avert ;
and the leaders of the revolt seemed on the
brink of a decision, when it was taken out of their
hands by the furious impatience of the common people.
The War of Greek Independence was, in fact, from
the first a people's war, a revolt of peasants and Klephts
against an intolerable subjection; and it succeeded
only because of this irresistible popular impulse, and in
spite
of the general corruption and incapacity of its
so-called leaders. It began, characteristically enough,
with isolated acts of violence which could hardly be