The "Free Besieged" with its original title "Mesolongi" or "Poem of Duty" was written after the Exodus of Mesolongi, which took place in April 1826. 

The work in the three forms in which it is preserved in the "Autographs" (Sketches A, B, C, according to the terminology of Polylas), is essentially the same. The view that it is three different works is not convincing.

In Sketch A, the "Free Besieged" took the form of a lyrical poem in octastich stanzas; each one consists of two connected tetrameter-pentameter quatrains with interwoven rhymes. There is an introductory stanza that begins with the famous "At dawn I took / the path of the sun...". We will see it in the section "Excerpts and individual verses" of the "Free Besieged".