a "pre-fabricated trial". According to Vidal-Naquet, the prosecution brought up false testimonies and false evidence. Furthermore, the president of the tribunal, Kitsos Tzavelas, was a personal enemy of Makriyannis. Five out of the six judges voted for the death sentence, and requested the King to extend royal clemency. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the King, but he only spent 18 months in prison. King Otho reduced the sentence first to twenty, and later to ten years. He was finally pardoned and released on 2 September 1854, thanks to the Crimean War. The blockade of Peiraeus by the French and British fleets also led to the imposition of Kallergis as Minister of War, despite his previous attempts at overthrowing the King. Thus, Kallergis used his newly acquired influence to have Makriyannis released. Makriyannis suffered greatly in prison, and after his release suffered from hallucinations. His condition did not improve with the death of one of his younger sons in the cholera epidemic that struck Athens. On 10 October 1862 a revolution broke out, which led to the eviction of King Otho I from the country. Makriyannis's son, the future general Othon Makriyannis, reportedly presented his father with the King's golden crown. Makriyannis was restored to the ranks he had been stripped of as a result of his trial, and was re-elected as a representative of Athens to the new National (Constitutional) Assembly of 1864. He was promoted to the rank of general on 20 April 1864, and died on 27 April. Literary work Assessment and significance Makriyannis concluded work on his Memoirs in the years before his imprisonment; the last entries seem to be from September or October 1850, as evinced by his references to the events of that period. In the text of the Memoirs, one can see not only the personal adventures and disappointments of his long public career, but, more significantly, his views on people, situations and events, phrased clearly and quite often passionately. They were first published in 1907 by Yannis Vlahogiannis, while some fragments of them had earlier been published in the newspaper Acropolis in 1904. Spyridon Lambros, in 1908, noted his straightforwardness and slight egotism, along with his holding firm to his own opinion (as quoted by Sphyroeras). Kostis Palamas, in 1911, called his work "incomparable in its kind, a masterpiece of his illiterate, but strong and autonomous mind" (ibid). Makriyannis had