Professor Jack Davis donated to the Gennadius Library a manuscript by Colonel Antoine-Charles-Félix Hecquet who headed a battalion of the 54th infantry regiment during the Morea expedition.

The manuscript recounts activities at Navarino in the summer and fall of 1828, and the siege and capture of the Castle of Patras.

The text is structured as a military diary, describing the significant facts of the military campaign day-by-day. 

The diary consists of two different manuscripts bound together and is an account of the French military expedition to the Peloponnese during the Greek War of Independence. The French army arrived at the Peloponnese in August 1828 and by November of the same year it had expelled the Ottoman troops and all “non-Greeks” from the area. By April 1829 the French troops started to leave Greece, although some troops remained until the arrival of the King Otto in 1833. 

The first manuscript is a diary of the siege of the “Morea Fortress,” i.e. the fortress of Patras, and the second manuscript is a report of the activities of the French army from the beginning of the expedition (August 1828) until January 1829.