572 TflE FEANK DOCTOR IN GEEECE. 



stead of making for the hills, were seized with a panic and fled back 

 to the town, so much less dreadful is death in perspective, though 

 it be certain and the road wretched, than an easy and immediate end. 

 The Turks entered the town with the fugitives. Some of the women 

 finding all hope gone, and preferring death to slavery and dishonour, 

 retired into one of the magazines, and being closely followed by some 

 Turks, blew themselves, their children, and their pursuers into the 

 air together. Not a soul escaped either death or slavery. The women 

 and children, to the number of two thousand, were made prisoners, 

 but the men, according to the Mussulman policy,, were put to the 

 sword. Of thirteen Franks who were in the town, one only, a Pied- 

 montese officer, escaped. It is impossible to convey an idea of the 

 panic with which the inhabitants of Napoli were seized when the 

 news of this disaster arrived; and rumours that Ibrahim and his 

 Arabs were on their way to invest the city, added to the general con- 

 fusion. Many families made preparations to quit ; others began to 

 lay up a stock of provisions ; all the shops, coffee-houses, &c., were 

 closed, and nothing was to be heard but doleful lamentations. But 

 the Greeks are a people of most elastic spirit, easily depressed but 

 still more easily elevated; press them down ever so vigorously, 

 the rebound is sure to carry them beyond their former elevation. 

 Rumours gradually arose that many of the Turkish cavalry had been 

 slain ; by-and-bye Ibrahim himself was asserted to have been killed, 

 and as a crowning grace and glory, the heads of three famine-wasted 

 Arabs, who had been caught outside Trippolitza cutting wild herbs 

 for their sustenance, were brought in and nailed to the plane-tree in 

 the midst of the square, where these barbarous people blushed not to 

 commit every kind of indignity upon them. In short, there was as 

 much rejoicing over this miserable trophy, as if they had gained a 

 great victory, instead of having done an act of kindness to three 

 miserable Fellahs, who had been torn from their native soil to carry 

 arms and starve in the service of a prince they hated. 



In the mean time the National Assembly, which was then sitting 

 at Epidafcirus, had elected two commissions of government, one for the 

 executive department having for its head Andrea Zaimis ; the other 

 for finance and foreign correspondence with the Corinthian chieftain, 

 Notaras, as president. It was confidently, and perhaps designedly, 

 asserted that the existing government would oppose their entrance 

 into Napoli ; but the people, ever disposed to change, seemed inclined 

 to favour the new comers. Koletti ordered the town gates to be shut 

 on the morning of the appointed day, and placed a guard there of 

 his personal adherents ; however, on seeing the new officers approach, 

 escorted by Colocotroni and his Moreotes, and finding himself unsup- 

 ported by the people, he opened the gates and admitted them. After 

 having partaken of the Sacrament, and kissed the Archbishop, they 

 were considered fully installed , and in the evening Colocotroni who 

 acted a sort of Warwick upon the occasion the new government being 

 almost of his own choosing reviewed the regulars under Colonel 

 Rhodios, consisting of about four hundred and sixty raw boys scarcely 

 able to carry their musquets. 



The first act of the new government was a most meritorious one, 



