The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

Achmet Bey found Tripoli in a poorer state than the Greeks knew, for their incessant ravages on the plain, their destruction of crops and capture of flocks and herds, as well as the great influx of population, had even now begun to make themselves felt within the walls, for the town and the plain in which it stood were cut off from all assistance, and the plain lay barren and desolate. He saw at once that it was necessary to establish connection with Messenia, for the plain of Argos was occupied by bands of insurgent Greeks, and he had himself scarcely won his way through. Though its port, Nauplia, was still in the hands of the Turks, it also was isolated from connection with the main-land by the insurgents of the plain; and the newly created Greek fleet from the islands of Hydra and Spetzas kept it in a state of semi-blockade by sea, and all provisions were got in with difficulty and consumed in the town. But Achmet Bey, not knowing that Petrobey had established posts on the passes over Taygetus from Kalamata and into Arcadia, thought that a successful attack on Valtetzi would enable them to open regular communication with Messenia, and so with the sea.

It was early on the morning of the 24th of May that the attack was made. At dawn the sentries on the walls of Valtetzi saw a troop of cavalry issue from the southern gate of Tripoli, followed by long columns of infantry, and in a quarter of an hour the camp was humming like swarming bees. Petrobey had established a system of signals with the post on the other side of the valley, but he made no sign to them, for it seemed possible that Achmet, hoping to draw them into the plain, would try to seize the pass they held, which communicated with Argos.

It was a clear blue morning after a cold night, and the troops, defiling from the gate, looked at that distance like lines of bright-mailed insects. First, came the infantry marching in eight separate columns, each containing some five hundred men; next, a long line of baggage-mules, followed by horses pulling two guns; and last, the cavalry on black Syrian horses very gayly caparisoned. Nicholas had an excellent telescope, which he had been given by the captain of an English ship in return for some service, and he and Petrobey watched them until the gates closed again behind.

Petrobey shut up the glass with a happy little sigh.

"That will do very nicely," he said to Nicholas. "They will want to entice us and our post on the other side into the plain; but I think we will both of us just stay at home. I don't want to meet those gay cavalry just now, nor yet those two bright guns. We will have breakfast, dear cousin."

The bugle sounded for rations, and Petrobey told the men to eat well, "for," said he, "there will be no dinner to-day, I am thinking, but" – and his eye sparkled as he pointed to the enemy – "there will, perhaps, be a little supper."

The men grinned, and soon the light-blue smoke went up from a hundred fires where they were making their coffee. Two or three sentries only remained on the walls, who were told to report to Petrobey when the column left the road on which it was marching and turned off either westward towards Valtetzi or eastward towards the post on the opposite hills. He and Nicholas had hardly sat down to breakfast, however, when an orderly ran in saying that the post on the other side of the valley was signalling. Petrobey finished an egg beaten up with sugar and milk before replying.

"I am not of the signalling corps, my friend," he said; "let the message be read and brought to me. Some more coffee, Nicholas; it strikes me as particularly good this morning."

The message from the signalling body came back in a minute or two. They were merely asking for orders.

"Stop where you are," dictated Petrobey, "and watch to see if Turkish reinforcements are coming from Argos. If so, signal here at once. If the troops which have come out of Tripoli turn and attack you, run away, drawing them after you if possible. There will be fighting for us. Pray for your comrades."

"And now, dear cousin," he said to Nicholas, when they had finished breakfast, "we will talk, if you please."

An hour afterwards an orderly came in to say that the troops had left the road and were making straight towards Valtetzi, and Petrobey got up.

"Every one to his post on the walls," he said, "but let no one fire till the word is given. Yanni, take the order to all the captains of the companies."

The wall was pierced in all its length with narrow slits for firing, and in half an hour each of these was occupied by four men, two of whom could fire at the same time, while the two behind were employed in reloading their muskets. Outside, the walls were some nine feet high, built on ground which sloped rapidly away in some places at roof angle for two hundred feet, while inside it rose to within five feet of the top of the wall. There a man standing up could see over, and Petrobey took up his place over the gate, where he could watch the troops.

He observed that the infantry had separated into two parties, one of which had left the road and was marching away from them towards the post on the other side of the valley, while the other and larger half was advancing towards them. The cavalry followed the latter, but halted when the hills began to rise more steeply out of the plain. The smaller portion of the infantry was evidently going to try to draw the Greeks from the far post down into the plain, while the cavalry who stayed at the bottom of the pass below Valtetzi would hinder help being sent from there. This Petrobey noticed with a pleasant smile. The others knew exactly what to do, and meantime the force which would assault Valtetzi would be weakened by more than a quarter of its men. Most of it, however, consisted of Albanian mercenaries who were largely in Turkish pay, and who, as he well knew, earned their pay, for they were men of the hills and the open air, who could use a sword and were masters of their limbs.

Each hundred men in the Greek camp – that is to say, twenty-five of these groups of four – were under the orders of a captain, who in turn was under the direction of Petrobey, and in all about two thousand men lined the walls. Of the remainder, fifty were employed in distributing ammunition, and were in readiness to bring fresh supplies to the defenders; a hundred more were ready to take the place of any who might be killed at their posts; and the rest, some eight hundred men, were standing under arms on the small parade-ground in the centre of the camp, under command of Nicholas. They would not, however, according to the scheme he and Petrobey had devised, be required just yet, and he told them to pile arms and fall out, but not to leave the ground so that they could not be recalled in a moment if wanted. Mitsos was in attendance on Nicholas, and Yanni stood by Petrobey ready to take his orders to any part of the camp.

An hour elapsed before the Albanian infantry appeared above the ridge some five hundred yards off, and still in the Greek camp there was perfect silence. Then, opening out, they advanced at a double, intending evidently to try to storm the place. But they had clearly not known how completely it had been fortified, and while they were still about four hundred yards off they halted at a word of command and sheltered among the big bowlders that strewed the hill-side. Still, in the Greek camp there was no sound or movement, only Yanni ran across to Nicholas with the order "Be ready," and he called his men up and they stood in line with their arms. Then a word was shouted by the commander of the advancing troop, and Petrobey saw the Albanians all massing behind a small spur of hill about a quarter of a mile away, where they were hidden from sight.

There was a long pause; each individual man in the camp knew that the enemy was close, that in a few minutes the shot would be singing, but in the mean time they could not see any one. Two miles away on the plain stood the glittering mailed insects, the Turkish cavalry; and six miles off, a mere black speck, was the troop which had gone across to the east. The suspense was almost unbearable; every nerve was stretched to its highest tension, and every man exhibited his nervous discomfort in his own peculiar way. Christos, who was stationed at one of the loop-holes straight towards the enemy, merely turned cold and damp and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a flabby hand, expectorating rapidly; Yanni, on the other hand, at his post by Petrobey, had a mouth as dry as sirocco, got very red in the face, and swore gently and atrociously to himself; a young recruit from Megalopolis suddenly threw back his head and laughed, and the sergeant of his company vented his own tension by cuffing him over the ears, and yet the boy laughed on; Mitsos, standing by Nicholas, whistled the "Song of the Vine-diggers" between his teeth; Father Andréa, who had begged to be allowed to serve in some way, and was a loader for the two men next Petrobey, chanted over and over again gently below his breath the first verse of the "Te Deum," last sung at Kalamata; Nicholas stood still, his hawk eyes blazing; but most were quite silent, shifting uneasily at their posts, standing now on one leg, now on the other. Petrobey, perhaps alone, for he had to think for them all, was quite calm, and his mind fully occupied. The spur behind which the Albanians were massed was almost opposite the gate over which he stood. The chances were that they would try to storm it, perhaps try to storm both the gates together, the other of which was diagonally opposite to him.

At last round the shoulder of the hill poured the troops in two divisions, still four hundred yards distant. When the rear had come into the open, the first were about two hundred and seventy yards off, and Petrobey, glancing hastily at their numbers and disposition, spoke to Yanni without turning his head.

"They will make a double attack here and on the other gate," he said. "Run like hell there, and direct the fire yourself; you know the order."

Yanni rushed across the camp, and just as he got up to the other gate he heard a volley of musketry from Petrobey's side. The Albanians had separated into two columns, one of which, skirting round the camp out of musket-range, soon appeared opposite the second gate, at a distance of about two hundred and fifty yards. He waited till he saw the whites of their eyes, and then "Fire!" he cried.

They were moving in open file at first, but they closed as they got nearer, and a solid column of men advanced at a rapid double up the hundred yards incline. The first volley took them when the foremost were about sixty yards off, but it was rather wild, and the men for the most part shot over their heads. Two more volleys were delivered with greater precision before they got up to the gate, but they still pressed on. A party of men had halted on the hill behind, about a hundred and twenty yards off, and were returning the fire, but without effect, for the defenders were protected by the wall, and the bullets either struck that or whistled over the top.

Meantime the Greeks in the centre of the walls between the two gates were still unemployed, but before ten seconds were passed Petrobey saw that they would be wanted, and he sent a sergeant flying across to marshal them, the first rows kneeling, the others standing, opposite the gate on which he stood, which he saw was on the point of yielding to the assault. Nicholas, meantime, had drawn up his men by the gate opposite, and was prepared, in case it was forced, to receive them in the same manner.

Before five minutes had elapsed since the first appearance of the Albanians round the hill, Petrobey's gate burst in with a crash, but the assailants were met by a torrent of bullets from those in reserve inside, which fairly drove them off their feet, and next moment the gate was clear again. Then Nicholas knew his time had come. He divided his men into two parts, and, charging out at the wrecked gate, led them at a double's double, half to the right, half to the left, round the camp, and close under the walls, so that the Greeks' fire went over their heads, and they fell on both flanks of the Albanians who were attacking the opposite gate. At that moment, Yanni, seeing what was happening, stopped the fire from inside the walls, and at an order from Petrobey caused the gate to be opened, and a company of those who had been manning the walls hurled themselves onto the assailants. This triple attack was irresistible, and in a couple of minutes more the phalanx of Albanians was in full rout, and the hill-sides were covered with groups of men in individual combat. The party they had left on the hill, being no longer able to fire into the mêlée, rushed down to join in the scrimmage, and Petrobey, leaving only a small number of men inside, sufficient to defend both gates, called out all the rest and headed in person the charge on the first attacking party.

Up and down the stony hill-sides chased, and were chased, the Greeks. Now and then a party of Albanians would try to form in some sort of order to make a combined assault on the broken-down gate, and as often they were scattered again by knots of men who rushed wildly upon them from all sides. In point of numbers, the Albanians had had the advantage at the first attack, but that short-range fire from the walls had been of a decimating nature, and now the Greeks had the superiority.

Mitsos, who had gone out with Nicholas, found himself almost swept off his feet by the rush of his own countrymen from the gate, and for a few moments he was carried along helpless, neither striking nor being able to strike, but with a curious red happiness in his heart, singing the "Song of the Vine-diggers," though he knew not he was singing it. Then suddenly at his elbow appeared a glaring, fierce face, as crimson as sunset, and he found himself jammed shoulder to shoulder with Yanni, who was swearing as hard as he could lay tongue to it, not that he was angry, but because the madness of fighting was on him, and it happened to take him that way.

"Don't shout, you big pig," called he to Mitsos; "why, in the name of all the devils in the pit, don't you get out of my way?"

"Fat old Yanni!" shouted Mitsos. "Come on, little cousin.

"'Dig we deep among the vines.'

Eh, but there are fine grapes for the gathering!"

"Go to hell!" screamed Yanni. "Hullo, Mitsos, this is better."

They had squeezed themselves out into a backwater of the congested stream of men, and in full front stood a great hairy Albanian with his sword just raised to strike. But Mitsos, flying at him like a wild-cat, threw in the man's face the hand which grasped his short, dagger-like sword as you would throw a stone; the uplifted sword swung over his back harmlessly, while the blade of his own dagger made a great red rent in the man's face, and he fell back.

"Your mother won't know you now," sang out Mitsos, burying his knife in his throat. "'Dig we deep' – that's deep enough, Yanni – 'the summer's here.'"

There was little work for muskets, for no man had time or room to load, and Yanni went on his blasphemous way swinging his by the barrel, and dealing blows right and left with the butt, and in a few minutes he and Mitsos found themselves out of the crowd alone but for a dead Greek lying there, on a little hillock some fifty yards from the gate, while the fight flickered up and down on each side of them.

"Eh, but there's little breath left in this carcass," panted Yanni. "Why, Mitsos, your head's all covered with blood; there's a slice out of your forehead."

Mitsos' black curls, in fact, were dripping from a cut on his head, and what with the blood and the dust and the sweat, he was in a fine mess; but he himself had not known he was touched. Yanni bound it up for him with a strip of his shirt, and the two ran down again into the fight. There the tide was strongly setting in favor of the Greeks; but the Albanians were beginning to form again on a spur of rock, and stragglers from below kept joining them. Petrobey, thinking that this was preparatory to another attack on the gate, as an additional defence drew off some hundred men from the Mainats – who had stuck together, and were the only company who preserved even the semblance of order – when he saw that there was no such intention on the enemy's part, for the body suddenly wheeled and disappeared over the brow of the hill in the direction of the plain, followed by those who were fighting in other parts of the field. For the time they had had enough of this nest of hornets.

They retreated in good order, pursued by skirmishing parties from the Greeks, who followed them with derision, and bullets; but Petrobey's orders had been that they should not advance beyond the broken ground and expose themselves to an attack by the cavalry, and in half an hour more they had all come back to camp.

The skirmish had lasted about three hours; but Petrobey knew that the fighting was not over yet. The cavalry had been moved from the plain onto one of the lower foothills to which the routed Albanians retreated, while the detachment which had started as if to attack the Greek post on the hills to the east had evidently been recalled, for it had passed the road along which the troops had first come, and was now marching straight across the narrow strip of plain which separated it from the range on which Valtetzi stood; an hour afterwards it had joined the cavalry below, and half an eye could see that another assault was being planned. The long train of baggage mules was left on the plain, but between them and the Greeks was the whole body of Albanian and Turkish troops, which, so it had seemed, and not incautiously, to Achmet Bey, was protection enough. Soon it was seen that the troops were in motion again, and the whole body of infantry and cavalry together moved up the slope towards the camp. They were marching up one side of a long ravine which was cut in the mountain from top to bottom, and they had posted scouts along the two ridges to guard against any attack which might be contemplated from their flank. Half a mile farther up, however, the cavalry halted, for the ground was getting too steep and bowlder-sown to permit a farther advance; but in case of sudden retreat they could prevent pursuit being carried farther.

Petrobey saw what was coming, but he hesitated. His mouth watered after the baggage train below, but he feared to weaken the defence of the camp by sending men for that purpose. Nicholas, however, was clear. Guns and ammunition and baggage were fine things in their way, but not worth measurable risk; every hand was needed at Valtetzi, and, besides, any movement from the Greek camp, even if they sent the men round by a circuitous route down the next ravine, would be observed by the scouts; an opportunity, however, might come later.

For three hours more desultory and skirmishing attacks were made by the Albanians on the camp; four times they advanced a column right up to one or other gate, and as many times it was driven back – twice by a sortie from the inside, twice by the heavy firing from the walls; and at last, as the sun began to decline towards the west, they were called back, and retreated hurriedly towards the cavalry. Then Nicholas saw the opportunity; the scouts had been withdrawn from the ridges, for they no longer expected an attack from the flank, and he with a hundred Mainats set off down a parallel ravine hotfoot to the plain, while the rest of the men, under Petrobey's orders, followed the enemy at a distance, keeping their attention fixed on them in expectation of another attack. Achmet Bey at last thought that the Greeks had fallen into the trap he had baited so many times, and hoped to draw them down into the plain, where he would turn and crush them with his cavalry.

They were already approaching the last hill which bordered on the level ground when Petrobey, who kept his eye on the plain, saw Nicholas and his band wheel round the baggage animals, shooting down their drivers, and force them up the ravine down which they had come. On the moment he gave the order to fire, and the Greeks poured a volley into the rear of the infantry. The Turks were fairly caught. If Achmet sent the cavalry on to rescue the baggage, the Greeks, whose numbers were now far superior to the infantry, would in all probability annihilate them; if, on the other hand, he kept the cavalry to support the infantry, the baggage would be lost. He chose the lesser evil, and as the ground was now becoming smoother and more level, he directed the cavalry to charge on the Greeks, and Petrobey fairly laughed aloud.

"Run away, run away," he cried; "let not two men remain together."

The cavalry charged, but there was simply nothing to charge. Up the hill-sides in all directions fled the Greeks, choosing the stoniest and steepest places, and dispersing as they ran as a ball of quicksilver breaks and is spread to all parts of the compass.

Again the retreat of the Turks began, and once more the Greeks gathered and engaged their attention. In the growing dusk no attack could be made, for the horses were already beginning to stumble and pick their way carefully to avoid falling, while the Greeks still hung on their rear and flanks like a swarm of stinging insects. When the hills began to sink into the plain Petrobey, too, sounded the retreat, and the men, though tired and hungry, went singing up the hill-side. At first some sang the "Song of the Vine-diggers," others the "Fountain Mavromati," others the "Swallow Song," but by degrees the "Song of the Klepht" gained volume, and by the time they entered the camp again the men were all singing it, and it rang true to the deed they had wrought. And thus they sang:

"Mother, to the Turk
I will not be a slave,
That will I not endure.
Let me take my gun,
Let me be a Klepht,
Dwelling with the beasts
On the hills and rocks;
Snow shall be my coverlet,
Stones shall be my bed.
Weep not, mother; mother, mine,
Pray that many Turks