A mysterious voice, proceeding from the sanctuary, reminded them that the English had, in their iniquitous treaty, forgotten to include the ashes of those whom a happier fate had spared the sight of the ruin of Parga.

Instantly they rushed to the graveyards, tore open the tombs, and collected the bones and putrefying corpses.

The beautiful olive trees were felled, an enormous funeral pyre arose, and in the general excitement the orders of the English chief were defied.

With naked daggers in their hands, standing in the crimson light of the flames which were consuming the bones of their ancestors, the people of Parga vowed to slay their wives and children, and to kill themselves to the last man, if the infidels dared to set foot in the town before the appointed hour.

Xenocles, the last of the Greek poets, inspired by this sublime manifestation of despair, even as Jeremiah by the fall of Jerusalem, improvised a hymn which expresses all the grief of the exiles, and which the exiles interrupted by their tears and sobs.
A messenger, crossing the sea in all haste, informed the Lord High Commissioner of the terrible threat of the Parganiotes.