Mohamed Aly there the Turks perpetrated a massacre which became the subject of a romantic picture by Delacroix The Sultan's naval weakness, intensified by the desertion of many of his Greek sailors, caused him to appeal once to Aly and in August 1821 squadron joined the Turkish fleet at Rhodes, By the following year the revolt had spread to Crete and Cyprusand the Sultan commissioned Greek Mohamed Aly to suppress it. Egyptian troops under saleh Bey accordingly landed in Cyprus and others under Hassan Pasha in Crete. By the spring of 1823 the rebellions in those islands had been mastered. But meanwhile the Greek revolt in the Morea had scored spectacular success. By the end of 1823 the Turks only held Patras on the Gulf of Corinth and two or three ports at the extreme south-west of the peninsula. A further appeal came to Mohamed Aly from the Sultan and in 1824 Ibrahim was appointed Serasker (Commander in Chief) in the Morea. The Egyptian expeditionary force sailed from Alexandria in July, but because of Greek naval superiority it was not until Feburary 182s that Ibrahim was able to make the port of Modon. He recaptured Navarino after hard fighting, thus establishing a firm base in the westernmost of the three peninsulas which make up the southern coast of Morea. He then marched on Tripolitza, the capital of the province, and took it in June. By the end of 1825 his forces controlled most of the Morea. The Turkish forces were less successful north of the Gulf of Corinth. There the long Turkish siege of Missolonghi was making no progress and in December Reshid Pasha appealed to Ibrahim for help. Evading the Greek Aeet, he crossed the Gulfin the spring of 1826 and Missolonghi fell to the Turks in April European opinion, brought up on the Greek classics, was strongly pro- Greek and volunteers included the poet Lord Byron. At first the conserva- tive Austrian and Russian governments were less enthusiastic. Fearing the revolution', the Austrian government was pro-Turkish while the Russian government hesitated between its hope of exploiting the revolt to further its policy