THE GRECO-TURKISH WAR. 682 On the two following days there wereriotous demonstrations at Athens. The mobplundered tlae gunmakers' shops and marched on the palace. It was with difficulty persuaded to disperse withoutproceeding to further violence.

Everythingpointed to a revolution,andEnglish, French,German,Italian, and Russian warships arrived at the Piræus to protect the interests of the foreign residents. On Thursday, ZQth, the King yielded to the popular clamour,and called uponM.Delyannis and bis colleagues to resign.

A newministry was formed, under the premiership of M. Ralli, the leader of the opposition.

The new ministry declared that the war must continue. It recalled Colonel Vassos and a number of his officers from Crete for service with the army, and made efforts to obtain considerablesuppliesof ammunitionfrom abroad. For the moment the agitation in the capital ceased. It was announced that the Greek army had taken up a line of impregnable positions, and that an attack upon them by the invaders must result in a glorious victory for Greece.

give an omen, the chances of a battle near Pharsala would bein favour of theinvader. If,instead of 25,000 or 30,000 men, theCrown Prince had had double the number at his command, he might have taken full advantage of the natural strength of the position. But it was much too extensive for his small force,in the presenceof the superior numbers that were on the side of the invader. The possession of the railway gave him the advantage of being able easily to bring up his supplies fromVolo. He could also use it to reinforce the right at Velestino from his mainbody atPharsala if the Turks made an attack on the junction. The protection of this important point was assigned to a strong detachmentunder Smolenski. The main position west of the Kara Dagh was covered by an outpost line along the high ground on the north bank of the Kanarli river.

The villages fromHadjibashi, on the river bank on the extreme left of this line,toKolaxizi, on the slope of KaraDagh on the right, were held by five battalions of Euzonoi, supported four batteries, and heavy guns were placed in entrenchments on the hillside near the town, south of the river. The village of Aivali, on therailway, was heldby a battalionof Euzonoi, inorder to protect the communicationsbetween theright of the mainbodyandthedetachedforce at Velestino. If attacked, the Crown Prince meant to fight on the highground south of the river, and the outposts in the villages to the north of it had orders to fall back as soon as they were seriously pressed by a Turkish advance.

The Greek army of Thessaly held a line of about thirty-two miles from left to right,along the railway thatruns fromVelestino by Pharsala to Trikhala. The railway leaves the line from Volo to Larissa at a point a little north of Velestino. It curves away to the south-west between tlaehillof Pilaf Tepe and tlae spurs of the Kara Dagh,and then runs westward along the valley of the Kanarli, a tributary of the Salamvria. The valley is bounded on the north by the low, flat-topped hills that connect the bold mass of the Kara Dagh with the border ridges near Zarkos. The hills on the south side of the valley are at first higher and steeper. They are really outlying spurs of the great Othrys range, which divides Thessaly from the rest of Greece. On the slope of one of these bold spurs stands the little town of Pharsala, with the terraced hillside rising above it, crownedby its castellatedcitadel. Westward or Pharsala tlae valley widens into a low-lying plain wateredby the Kanarli and its tributary, the Phersalitis.

The bold rocky mass of the Kara Dagh effectually coveredthe centre of the line held by the Greek army. Edhem Pasha must attack either their left or their right, unless indeed he chose to use his superior numbers to attackboth at once. A successful attack on the Greek right at Velestino wouldcut them off from their easy line of supply by Volo and the railway;an attack on the left would threaten their line of retreat by Donaoko and the passes of Mount Othrys. Reports brought to tlae Turkish headquarters at Larissa led the staff to believe that Velestino washeld only by a few hundred men, in a disorganised anddispirited condition. This actually was the case on April 25th and 26th, when tlaeimportant junction wasprotected only by a handful of fugitives. On these days the Turks could have seized the junction almost without a fight, if they had pushed forward by the Volo road. But on the 27th, when at last It was a battleground that wasalready famous in history. Pharsala is the Pharsalia of ancient days, which givesits name to the decisive battle in which Cæsar routed the army of Pompey. On the low hills to the northward in still earlier days the Roman consul Flaminius defeated Philip V. of Macedon. In both cases victory had fallen to tlae aggressor. If history could