Mackey – Encyclopedia Of Freemasonry Vol. 1

152 SECRET SOCIETIESfor eight days a vastly superior enemy, and by their heroicconduct threw a final halo round the Moldavian insurrection .Athanasius met with the death of a patriot. Nearly a thousandTurks had fallen ; three hundred Greeks perished in thefight or in the waters of the Pruth, the remnant took refugeon the opposite bank .535 . Ipsilanti's Dijleulties.-Moldavia was lost ; in themeantime the Pasha of Silistria bad entered Bucharest onthe 29th May ; Ipsilanti, perfectly helpless, was encampedat Tergovist . His troops, even the Sacred Battalion, werethoroughly demoralised ; his dissensions with Savas andVladimiresko continued . The former had readily surrenderedBucharest to the Turks, and had followed Ipsilanti,whom on the first favourable opportunity he intended totake prisoner to give him up to the Turks . Vladimireskoprepared to withdraw to Little Wallachia, there to await theresult of his negotiations with the Turks ; he had proposedto the Pasha of Silistria to have Ipsilanti and Georgakisassassinated . But his treachery became known to his intendedvictims ; Georgakis suddenly appeared in his camp,took him prisoner in the midst of his officers, and carriedhim to Tergovist. On being taken before Ipsilanti he protestedhis innocence, declaring that he had only been tryingto draw the Turks into a snare ; but Ipsilanti ordered him atonce to be shot .536 . Ipsilanti's Fall .-Ipsilanti intended to occupy thestrategically important village of Dragatschau, but therapid advance from Bucharest of the Turkish vanguard lefthim no time to do so . On the 8th June it encountered aGreek division under Anastasius of Argyrokastro ; anotherdivision, sent for the support of the Greeks from Tergovist,under the command of Dukas, betook themselves to theirheels, with their leader at their head, and spread such consternationin the camp at Tergovist, that Ipsilanti's troops,leaving their baggage behind, took to flight . Ipsilanti thereuponwith great difficulty made his way to Ribnik, with aview of being near the Austrian frontier, which he intendedto cross, if necessary . In spite of the losses he had sustained,he still commanded 7500 men, with four guns . Georgakisconsidered the opportunity favourable by an attack onDragatschau, which the Turks had occupied with two thousandmen, to raise the sinking courage of his troops . Hisdispositions were skilfully arranged to surround the enemy,inferior in numbers, and on the 19th June 1821, five thousandinsurgents were concentred on the heights surrounding