Outbreak of the revolution Danubian principalities crosses the Pruth'', by
Peter von Hess (Benaki Museum, Athens)
Alexander Ypsilantis was elected as the head of the Filiki Eteria in April 1820 and took upon himself the task of planning the insurrection. His intention was to raise all the Christians of the Balkans in rebellion and perhaps force Russia to intervene on their behalf. On 22 February , he crossed the river
Prut with his followers, entering the
Danubian Principalities. In order to encourage the local
Romanian Christians to join him, he announced that he had "the support of a Great Power", implying Russia. Two days after crossing the Prut, at
Three Holy Hierarchs Monastery in
Iași (Jassy), the capital of
Moldavia, Ypsilantis issued a proclamation calling all Greeks and Christians to rise up against the Ottomans:
Michael Soutzos, then
Prince of Moldavia and a member of Filiki Etaireia, set his guard at Ypsilantis' disposal. In the meanwhile,
Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople and the Synod had anathematized and excommunicated both Ypsilantis and Soutzos issuing many encyclicals, an explicit denunciation of the Revolution in line with the Orthodox Church's policy. Instead of directly advancing on
Brăila, where he arguably could have prevented Ottoman armies from entering the Principalities, and where he might have forced Russia to accept a
fait accompli, Ypsilantis remained in Iaşi and ordered the executions of several pro-Ottoman Moldavians. In
Bucharest, where he arrived in early April after some weeks delay, he decided that he could not rely on the
Wallachian
Pandurs to continue their
Oltenian-based
revolt and assist the Greek cause. The Pandur leader was
Tudor Vladimirescu, who had already reached the outskirts of Bucharest on 16 March . In Bucharest, the relations of the two men deteriorated dramatically; Vladimirescu's first priority was to assert his authority against the newly appointed prince
Scarlat Callimachi, trying to maintain relations with both Russia and the Ottomans. Alexander Ypsilantis, accompanied by his brother Nicholas and a remnant of his followers, retreated to
Râmnicu Vâlcea, where he spent some days negotiating with the Austrian authorities for permission to cross the frontier. Fearing that his followers might surrender him to the Turks, he gave out that Austria had declared war on Turkey, caused a
Te Deum to be sung in
Cozia Monastery, and on pretext of arranging measures with the Austrian commander-in-chief, he crossed the frontier. However, the reactionary policies of the
Holy Alliance were enforced by
Francis II and the country refused to give asylum for leaders of revolts in neighboring countries. Ypsilantis was kept in close confinement for seven years. In Moldavia, the struggle continued for a while, under
Giorgakis Olympios and
Yiannis Pharmakis, but by the end of the year the provinces had been pacified by the Ottomans. The outbreak of the war was met by mass executions, pogrom-style attacks, the destruction of churches, and looting of Greek properties throughout the Empire. The most severe atrocities occurred in Constantinople, in what became known as the
Constantinople Massacre of 1821. The Orthodox Patriarch
Gregory V was executed on 22 April 1821 on the orders of the Sultan despite his opposition to the revolt, which caused outrage throughout Europe and resulted in increased support for the Greek rebels.
Peloponnese ; engraved on a stele in the city '') by
Peter von Hess. The
Peloponnese, with its long tradition of resistance to the Ottomans, was to become the heartland of the revolt. In the early months of 1821, with the absence of the Ottoman governor of the
Morea (
Mora valesi)
Hursid Pasha and many of his troops, the situation was favourable for the Greeks to rise against Ottoman occupation. The crucial meeting was held at Vostitsa (modern
Aigion), where chieftains and prelates from all over the Peloponnese assembled on 26 January. There,
Papaflessas, a pro-revolution priest who presented himself as representative of
Filiki Eteria, clashed with most of the civil leaders and members of the senior clergy, such as
Metropolitan Germanos of Patras, who were sceptical and demanded guarantees about a Russian intervention. during the
Battle of Valtetsi'' by Peter von Hess. As news came of Ypsilantis' march into the Danubian Principalities, the atmosphere in the Peloponnese was tense, and by mid-March, sporadic incidents against Muslims occurred, heralding the start of the uprising. According to oral tradition, the Revolution was declared on 25 March 1821 (
N.S. 6 April) by Metropolitan Germanos of Patras, who raised the banner with the cross in the
Monastery of
Agia Lavra (near
Kalavryta,
Achaea) although some historians question the historicity of the event. Some claim that the story first appears in 1824 in a book written by a French diplomat François Pouqueville, whose book is full of inventions. Historian David Brewer noted that Pouqueville was an
Anglophobe, and in his account of the speech by Germanos in his book, Pouqueville has the Metropolitan express Anglophobic sentiments similar to those commonly expressed in France, and has him praise France as Greece's one true friend in the world, which led Brewer to conclude that Pouqueville had made the entire story up. Also, some European newspapers of June and July 1821 published the news of declaration of revolution by Germanos either in Patras on 6 April/25 March 1821 or in the "Monastery of Velia Mountain" (Agia Lavra) on a non-specified date. ,
Nafplio On 17 March 1821, war was declared on the Turks by the
Maniots in
Areopoli. The same day, a force of 2,000 Maniots under the command of
Petros Mavromichalis advanced on the
Messenian town of
Kalamata, where they united with troops under
Theodoros Kolokotronis,
Nikitaras and
Papaflessas; Kalamata fell to the Greeks on 23 March. In
Achaia, the town of
Kalavryta was besieged on 21 March, and in
Patras conflicts lasted for many days. The Ottomans launched sporadic attacks towards the city while the revolutionaries, led by
Panagiotis Karatzas, drove them back to the fortress. By the end of March, the Greeks effectively controlled the countryside, while the Turks were confined to the fortresses, most notably those of Patras (recaptured by the Turks on 3 April by Yussuf Pasha),
Rio,
Acrocorinth,
Monemvasia,
Nafplion and the provincial capital,
Tripolitsa, where many Muslims had fled with their families at the beginning of the uprising. All these were loosely besieged by local irregular forces under their own captains, since the Greeks lacked artillery. With the exception of Tripolitsa, all cities had access to the sea and could be resupplied and reinforced by the Ottoman fleet. Since May, Kolokotronis organized the siege of Tripolitsa, and, in the meantime, Greek forces twice defeated the Turks, who unsuccessfully tried to repulse the besiegers. Finally,
Tripolitsa was seized by the Greeks on 23 September , and the city was given over to the mob for two days. After lengthy negotiations, the Turkish forces surrendered Acrocorinth on 14 January 1822.
Central Greece The first regions to revolt in
Central Greece (then known as Roumeli) were
Phocis on 24 March and
Salona on 27 March. In
Boeotia,
Livadeia was captured by
Athanasios Diakos on 31 March, followed by
Thebes two days later. When the revolution began, most of the Christian population of
Athens fled to
Salamis.
Missolonghi revolted on 25 May, and the revolution soon spread to other cities of western Central Greece. The Ottoman commander in the Roumeli was the Albanian general
Omer Vrioni who become infamous for his "Greek hunts" in
Attica, which was described thus: "One of his favourite amusements was a 'Greek hunt' as the Turks called it. They would go out in parties of fifty to a hundred, mounted on fleet horses, and scour the open country in search of Greek peasantry, who might from necessity or hardihood have ventured down upon the plains. After capturing some, they would give the poor creatures a certain distance to start ahead, hoping to escape, and then try the speed of their horses in overtaking them, the accuracy of their pistols in firing at them as they ran, or the keenness of their sabres' edge in cutting off their heads". Those not cut down or shot down during the "Greek hunts" were impaled afterwards when captured. The initial Greek successes were soon put in peril after two subsequent defeats at the battles of
Alamana and Eleftherohori against the army of
Omer Vrioni. Another significant loss for the Greeks was the death of Diakos, a promising military leader, who was captured in Alamana and executed by the Turks when he refused to declare allegiance to the Sultan. The Greeks managed to halt the Turkish advance at the
Battle of Gravia under the leadership of
Odysseas Androutsos, who, with a handful of men, inflicted heavy casualties upon the Turkish army. After his defeat and the successful retreat of Androutsos' force, Omer Vrioni postponed his advance towards Peloponnese awaiting reinforcements; instead, he invaded Livadeia, which he captured on 10 June, and Athens, where he lifted the
siege of the Acropolis. After a Greek force of 2,000 men managed to destroy at
Vassilika a Turkish relief army on its way to Vrioni, the latter abandoned Attica in September and retreated to
Ioannina. By the end of 1821, the revolutionaries had managed to temporarily secure their positions in Central Greece.
The Ottoman reaction against the Greek population of Constantinople, April 1821.
Patriarch Gregory V was executed by the Ottoman authorities. The news that the Greeks had revolted sparked murderous fury all over the Ottoman Empire. In
Constantinople, on
Easter Sunday, the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church,
Gregory V, was publicly hanged although he had condemned the revolution and preached obedience to the Sultan in his sermons. Since the revolution began in March, the
Sublime Porte had executed at random various prominent Greeks living in Constantinople, such as the serving
Dragoman of the Porte and two retired dragomans, a number of wealthy bankers and merchants, including a member of the ultra-rich
Mavrokordatos family, three monks and a priest of the Orthodox church, and three ordinary Greeks accused of planning to poison the city's water supply. In the city of
Smyrna (modern
İzmir, Turkey), which until 1922 was a mostly Greek city, Ottoman soldiers drawn from the interior of
Anatolia on their way to fight in either Greece or Moldavia/Wallachia, staged a pogrom in June 1821 against the Greeks, leading
Gordon to write: "3,000 ruffians assailed the Greek quarter, plundered the houses and slaughtered the people; Smyrna resembled a place taken by assault, neither age or sex being respected". When a local
mullah was asked to give a
fatwa justifying the murder of Christians by Muslims and refused, he too was promptly killed. After the execution of the Patriarch Gregory V, the Russian Emperor Alexander I broke off diplomatic relations with the Sublime Porte after his foreign minister Count
Ioannis Kapodistrias sent an ultimatum demanding promises from the Ottomans to stop executing Orthodox priests, which the Porte did not see fit to answer. In the summer of 1821, various young men from all over Europe began to gather in the French port of
Marseille to book a passage to Greece and join the revolution. The French philhellene
Jean-François-Maxime Raybaud wrote when he heard of the revolution in March 1821, "I learnt with a thrill that Greece was shaking off her chains" and in July 1821 boarded a ship going to Greece. The largest contingents came from the German states, France and the Italian states. In
Nafplio, a monument to honor the philhellenes who died fighting in the war listed 274 names, of which 100 are from Germany, forty each from France and Italy, and the rest from Britain, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Portugal and Denmark. '' by
Theodoros Vryzakis In Germany, Italy and France many clergymen and university professors gave speeches saying all of Europe owed a huge debt to ancient Greece, that the modern Greeks were entitled to call upon the classical heritage as a reason for support, and that Greece would only achieve progress with freedom from the Ottoman Empire. A young medical student in
Mannheim wrote that hearing his professor lecture on the need for Greek freedom went through him like an electric shock, inspiring him to drop his studies and head to Greece, while a Danish student wrote: "How could a man inclined to fight for freedom and justice find a better place than next to the oppressed Greeks?". In France, Britain, Spain, Russia, the United States, and many other places "Greek committees" were established to raise funds and supplies for the revolution. Citizens of the United States, from elite as well as modest socioeconomic backgrounds, supported the Greek cause, donating money and supplies to numerous philhellenic groups in both the northern and southern United States. The classicist
Edward Everett, a professor of Ancient Greek literature at
Harvard University, was active in championing the Greek cause in the United States and in November 1821 published an appeal from
Adamantios Korais reading "To the Citizens of the United States, it is your land that Liberty has fixed her abode, so you will not assuredly imitate the culpable indifference or rather the long ingratitude of the Europeans", going on to call for American intervention, in several American newspapers. In 1821, the Greek committee in
Charleston, South Carolina sent the Greeks 50 barrels of salted meat while the Greek Committee in
Springfield, Massachusetts sent supplies of salted meat, sugar, fish and flour. Newspapers in the United States gave the war much coverage and were overwhelmingly pro-Greek in their stance, which explains why American public opinion was so supportive. In New York City, one ball put on by the Greek committee raised $8,000 (~$180,000 in 2021). In Russia, the St. Petersburg Greek committee under Prince
Alexander Golitsyn had raised 973,500 roubles by August 1822. By the end of the war, millions of roubles had been raised in Russia for the relief of refugees and to buy enslaved Greeks freedom (though the government forbade buying arms for the Greeks), but no Russian is known to have gone to fight with the Greeks. The first independent state to recognise Greek independence was
Haiti.
Jean-Pierre Boyer, President of Haiti, wrote a letter on 15 January 1822 to four Greek expatriates living in France who had assembled themselves into a committee to seek international support for the Greek revolution. Boyer expressed sympathy for the Greek cause, though said that he was unable to provide financial or military support.
First administrative and political institutions with symbols of faith, charity (heart), and hope (anchor) After the fall of
Kalamata, the
Messenian Senate, the first of the Greeks' local governing councils, held its inaugural session. At almost the same time, the Achean Directorate was summoned in
Patras, but its members were soon forced to flee to
Kalavryta. With the initiative of the Messenian Senate, a Peloponnesian assembly convened, and elected a Senate on 26 May. Most of the members of the
Peloponnesian Senate were local notables (lay and ecclesiastical) or persons controlled by them. The three major social groups that provided the leadership of the revolution were the primates (wealthy landowners who controlled about a third of the arable land in the Peloponnese), the captains drawn from the
klephts and/or
armatoles (
klepts and
armatoles tended to alternate), and the wealthy merchants, who were the most Westernised elements in Greek society. One of the more prominent leaders of the merchants and a "Westerniser" was the Phanariot
Alexandros Mavrokordatos who was living with the poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife
Mary Shelley in
Pisa when the revolution began, and upon hearing of the revolution, purchased supplies and a ship in Marseille and then set sail for Greece. Mavrokordatos's wealth, education (he was fluent in seven languages) and his experience as an Ottoman official ruling Wallachia led many to look towards him as a leader. When
Demetrios Ypsilantis arrived in Peloponnese as official representative of
Filiki Eteria, he tried to assume control of the Revolution's affairs, and he thus proposed a new system of electing the members of the Senate, which was supported by the military leaders, but opposed by the notables. Assemblies convened also in Central Greece (November 1821) under the leadership of two Phanariots:
Alexandros Mavrokordatos in the western part, and
Theodoros Negris in the eastern part. These assemblies adopted two local statutes, the Charter of Western Continental Greece and the Legal Order of Eastern Continental Greece, drafted mainly by Mavrokordatos and Negris respectively. The statutes provided for the creation of two local administrative organs in Central Greece, an
Areopagus in the east, and a
Senate in the west. The three local statutes were recognized by the
First National Assembly, but the respective administrative institutions were turned into administrative branches of the central government. They were later dissolved by the
Second National Assembly.
Revolutionary activity in Crete, Macedonia and Cyprus Crete , commander of the campaign to Crete, was killed in Frangokastello in 1828. Cretan participation in the revolution was extensive, but it failed to achieve liberation from Turkish rule because of Egyptian intervention.
Crete had a long history of resisting Turkish rule, exemplified by the folk hero
Daskalogiannis, who was killed while fighting the Turks. Despite the Turkish reaction the rebellion persisted, and thus Sultan
Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839) was forced to seek the aid of
Muhammad Ali of Egypt, trying to lure him with the
pashalik of Crete. led a well-organised and well-armed joint Turkish-Egyptian force of 12,000 soldiers with the support of artillery and cavalry. On 22 June 1823,
Emmanouil Tombazis, appointed Commissioner of Crete by the Greek revolutionary government, held the Convention of Arcoudaina in an attempt to reconcile the factions of local captains and unite them against the common threat. He then gathered 3,000 men in
Gergeri to face Hussein, but the Cretans were defeated by the much larger and better-organised force, and lost 300 men at the battle of Amourgelles on 20 August 1823. By the spring of 1824, Hussein had managed to limit the Cretan resistance to just a few mountain enclaves. Towards the summer of 1825, a body of three to four hundred Cretans, who had fought with other Greeks in the Peloponnese, arrived in Crete and revitalized the Cretan insurgency (the so-called "Gramvousa period"). On 9 August 1825, led by
Dimitrios Kallergis and Emmanouil Antoniadis, this group of Cretans captured the fort at
Gramvousa and other insurgents captured the fort at
Kissamos, and attempted to spread the insurgency further afield. Although the Ottomans did not manage to retake the forts, they were successful in blocking the spread of the insurgency to the island's western provinces. The insurgents were besieged in Gramvousa for more than two years and they had to resort to piracy to survive. Gramvousa became a hive of piratical activity that greatly affected Turkish–Egyptian and European shipping in the region. During that period the population of Gramvousa became organised and built a school and a church dedicated to the
Panagia i Kleftrina ("Our Lady the piratess")—St Mary as the patron of the
klephts. In January 1828, the Greek
Epirote Hatzimichalis Dalianis landed in Crete with 700 men and in the following March took possession of
Frangokastello, a castle in the
Sfakia region. Soon the local Ottoman ruler,
Mustafa Naili Pasha, attacked Frangokastello with an army of 8,000 men. The castle's defence was doomed after a seven-day siege and Dalianis perished along with 385 men. During 1828, Kapodistrias sent Mavrocordatos with British and French fleets to Crete to deal with the klephts and the pirates. This expedition resulted in the destruction of all pirate ships at Gramvousa and the fort came under British command. Following the instructions of Alexander Ypsilantis, that is to prepare the ground and to rouse the inhabitants of Macedonia to rebellion, Pappas loaded arms and munitions from Constantinople on a ship on 23 March and proceeded to
Mount Athos, considering that this would be the most suitable spring-board for starting the insurrection. As
Vacalopoulos notes, however, "adequate preparations for rebellion had not been made, nor were revolutionary ideals to be reconciled with the ideological world of the monks within the Athonite regime". On 8 May, the Turks, infuriated by the landing of sailors from
Psara at
Tsayezi, by the capture of Turkish merchants and the seizure of their goods, rampaged through the streets of
Serres, searched the houses of the notables for arms, imprisoned the Metropolitan and 150 merchants, and seized their goods as a reprisal for the plundering by the Psarians. In
Thessaloniki, governor Yusuf Bey (the son of Ismail Bey) imprisoned in his headquarters more than 400 hostages, of whom more than 100 were monks from the monastic estates. He also wished to seize the powerful notables of
Polygyros, who got wind of his intentions and fled. On 17 May, the Greeks of Polygyros took up arms, killed the local governor and 14 of his men, and wounded three others; they also repulsed two Turkish detachments. On 18 May, when Yusuf learned of the incidents at Polygyros and the spreading of the insurrection to the villages of
Chalkidiki, he ordered half of his hostages to be slaughtered before his eyes. The Mulla of Thessalonica, Hayrıülah, gives the following description of Yusuf's retaliations: in
Athens. It would take until the end of the century for the city's Greek community to recover. The revolt, however, gained momentum in Mount Athos and
Kassandra, and the island of
Thasos joined it. Meanwhile, the revolt in Chalkidiki was progressing slowly and unsystematically. In June 1821 the insurgents tried to cut communications between
Thrace and the south, attempting to prevent the
serasker Haji Muhammad Bayram Pasha from transferring forces from Asia Minor to southern Greece. Even though the rebels delayed him, they were ultimately defeated at the pass of
Rentina. The insurrection in Chalkidiki was, from then on, confined to the peninsulas of Mount Athos and Kassandra. On 30 October 1821, an offensive led by the new Pasha of Thessaloniki, Muhammad Emin Abulubud, resulted in a decisive Ottoman victory at Kassandra. The survivors, among them Pappas, were rescued by the Psarian fleet, which took them mainly to
Skiathos,
Skopelos and
Skyros. However, Pappas died en route to join the revolution at
Hydra.
Sithonia, Mount Athos and Thasos subsequently surrendered on terms. Nevertheless, the revolt spread from
Central to
Western Macedonia, from
Olympus to
Pieria and
Vermion. In the autumn of 1821,
Nikolaos Kasomoulis was sent to southern Greece as the "representative of South-East Macedonia", and met
Demetrios Ypsilantis. He then wrote to Papas from Hydra, asking him to visit Olympus to meet the captains there and to "fire them with the required patriotic enthusiasm". At the beginning of 1822,
Anastasios Karatasos and
Aggelis Gatsos arranged a meeting with other
armatoloi; they decided that the insurrection should be based on three towns:
Naoussa,
Kastania, and
Siatista. In March 1822, Mehmed Emin secured decisive victories at
Kolindros and Kastania. Further north, in the vicinity of Naousa,
Zafeirakis Theodosiou, Karatasos and Gatsos organized the city's defense, and the first clashes resulted in a victory for the Greeks. Mehmed Emin then appeared before the town with 10,000 regular troops and 10,600 irregulars. Failing to get the insurgents to surrender, Mehmed Emin launched a number of attacks pushing them further back and finally captured Naousa in April, helped by the enemies of Zafeirakis, who had revealed an unguarded spot, the "Alonia". Reprisals and executions ensued, and women are reported to have flung themselves over the Arapitsa waterfall to avoid dishonor and being sold in slavery. Those who broke through the siege of Naousa fell back in
Kozani, Siatista and
Aspropotamos River, or were carried by the Psarian fleet to the
northern Aegean islands.
Cyprus during the Revolution On 9 June 1821, 3 ships sailed to Cyprus with
Konstantinos Kanaris. They landed at Asprovrisi of Lapithou. Kanaris brought with him papers from the Filiki Etaireia and the ships were welcomed with rapturous applause and patriotic cries from the local Greeks of the area, who helped Kanaris and the soldiers from Cyprus as much as they could. Kanaris brought with him to mainland Greece, Cypriots who created the "Column of Cypriots" («Φάλαγγα των Κυπρίων»), led by General Chatzipetros, which fought with extraordinary heroism in Greece. In total, over 1000 Cypriots fought in the War of Independence, many of whom died. At Missolonghi many were killed, and at the Battle of Athens in 1827, around 130 were killed. General Chatzipetros, showing military decorations declared "These were given to me by the heroism and braveness of the Column of Cypriots". In the National Library, there is a list of 580 names of Cypriots who fought in the War between 1821 and 1829. The Cypriot battalion brought with them their own distinctive war banner, consisting of a white flag with a large blue cross, and the words
GREEK FLAG OF THE MOTHERLAND CYPRUS emblazoned in the top left corner. The flag was hoisted on a wooden mast, carved and pointed at the end to act as a lance in battle. It is currently stored at the National Historical Museum of Athens. Throughout the War of Independence, supplies were brought from Cyprus by the Filiki Etairia to aid the Greek struggle. The Greeks of Cyprus underwent great risk to provide these supplies, and secretly load them onto boats arriving at intervals from Greece, as the Ottoman rulers in Cyprus at the time were very wary of Cypriot insurgency and sentenced to death any Greek Cypriots found aiding the Greek cause. Incidences of these secret loading trips from Cyprus were recorded by the French consul to Cyprus, Mechain. Back in Cyprus during the war, the local population suffered greatly at the hands of the Ottoman rulers of the islands, who were quick to act with great severity at any act of patriotism and sympathy of the Greeks of Cyprus to the Revolution, fearing a similar uprising in Cyprus. The religious leader of the Greeks of the island at the time,
Archbishop Kyprianos was initiated into the Filiki Etairia in 1818 and had promised to aid the cause of the Greek Helladites with food and money. In early July 1821, the Cypriot
Archimandrite Theofylaktos Thiseas arrived in
Larnaca as a messenger of the Filiki Etairia, bringing orders to Kyprianos, while proclamations were distributed in every corner of the island. However, the local pasha, Küçük Pasha, intercepted these messages and reacted with fury, calling in reinforcements, confiscating weapons and arresting several prominent Cypriots. Archbishop Kyprianos was urged (by his friends) to leave the island as the situation worsened, but refused to do so. On 9 July 1821, Pasha had the gates to the walled city of Nicosia closed and executed, by beheading or hanging, 470 important Cypriots amongst them Chrysanthos (bishop of Paphos), Meletios (bishop of Kition) and Lavrentios (bishop of Kyrenia). The next day, all abbots and monks of monasteries in Cyprus were executed. In addition, the Ottomans arrested all the Greek leaders of the villages and imprisoned them before executing them, as they were suspected of inspiring patriotism in their local population. In total, it is estimated that over 2,000 Greeks of Cyprus were slaughtered as an act of revenge for participating in the revolution. This was a very significant proportion of the total population of the island at the time. Küçük pasha had declared
"I have in my mind to slaughter the Greeks in Cyprus, to hang them, to not leave a soul..." before undertaking these massacres. From 9 to 14 July, the Ottomans killed all prisoners on the list of the pasha, and in the next 30 days, looting and massacres spread throughout Cyprus as 4,000 Turkish soldiers from Syria arrived on the island. Archbishop Kyprianos was defiant in his death. He was aware of his fate and impending death, yet stood by the Greek cause. He is revered throughout Cyprus as a noble patriot and defender of the Orthodox faith and Hellenic cause. An English explorer by the name of Carne spoke to the Archbishop before the events of 9 July, who was quoted as saying: "My death is not far away. I know they [the Ottoman] are waiting for an opportunity to kill me". Kyprianos chose to stay, despite these fears, and provide protection and counsel for the people of Cyprus as their leader. He was publicly hanged from a tree opposite the former palace of the Lusignan Kings of Cyprus on 19 July 1821. The events leading up to his execution were documented in an epic poem written in the Cypriot dialect by
Vassilis Michaelides.
War at sea of
Anastasios Tsamados' famous brig
Aris, today in the
National Historical Museum, Athens. From the early stages of the revolution, success at sea was vital for the Greeks. When they failed to counter the
Ottoman Navy, it was able to resupply the isolated Ottoman garrisons and land reinforcements from the
Ottoman Empire's provinces, threatening to crush the rebellion; likewise the failure of the Greek fleet to break the naval blockade of Messolonghi (as it did several times earlier) in 1826 led to the fall of the city. The Greek fleet was primarily outfitted by prosperous Aegean islanders, principally from the islands of
Hydra and
Spetses, as well as from
Psara. The Albanian-speaking seamen of Hydra and Spetses provided the core of the Greek fleet and leading members of the Greek government, among them a one wartime president. They in some cases used Albanian with each other to prevent others on their side from reading their correspondence. Each island equipped, manned and maintained its own squadron, under its own admiral. complemented by squadrons from the Maghrebi vassal states (
Algiers,
Tripoli and
Tunis) and Egypt. " by
Konstantinos Volanakis In the face of this situation, the Greeks decided to use
fire ships (), which had proven themselves effective for the Psarians during the
Orlov Revolt in 1770. The first test was made at
Eresos on 27 May 1821, when an Ottoman frigate was successfully destroyed by a fire ship under
Dimitrios Papanikolis. In the fire ships, the Greeks found an effective weapon against the Ottoman vessels. In subsequent years, the successes of the Greek fire ships would increase their reputation, with acts such as the
destruction of the Ottoman flagship by
Konstantinos Kanaris at
Chios, after the
massacre of the island's population in June 1822, acquiring international fame. At the same time, conventional naval actions were also fought, at which naval commanders like
Andreas Miaoulis distinguished themselves. The early successes of the Greek fleet in direct confrontations with the Ottomans at Patras and Spetses gave the crews confidence and contributed greatly to the survival and success of the uprising in the Peloponnese. Later, however, as Greece became embroiled in a civil war, the Sultan called upon his strongest subject,
Muhammad Ali of Egypt, for aid. Plagued by internal strife and financial difficulties in keeping the fleet in constant readiness, the Greeks failed to prevent the capture and destruction of
Kasos and
Psara in 1824, or the landing of the Egyptian army at
Methoni. Despite victories at
Samos and Gerontas, the Revolution was threatened with collapse until the intervention of the Great Powers in the
Battle of Navarino in 1827.
1822–1824 , president of the Executive,
defends Missolonghi" by
Peter von Hess. wrote the
Hymn to Liberty, which later became the National Greek anthem, in 1823. Revolutionary activity was fragmented because of the lack of strong central leadership and guidance. However, the Greek side withstood the Turkish attacks because the Ottoman military campaigns were periodic and the Ottoman presence in the rebel areas was uncoordinated due to logistical problems. The cash-strapped Ottoman state's relations with Russia, always difficult, had been made worse by the hanging of Patriarch Grigorios, and the Sublime Porte needed to concentrate substantial forces on the Russian border in case war broke out. From October 1820 to July 1823, the Ottomans were at war with
Persia, and in March 1823 a huge fire at the Tophana military arsenal in Constantinople destroyed much of the Ottoman state's supplies of ammunition and its main cannon foundry. Short of men and money, the Ottoman state turned to hiring Albanian tribesmen to fight the Greeks, and by 1823, the bulk of the Ottoman forces in Greece were Albanian mercenaries hired for a campaigning season rather than the Ottoman Army. The Albanian tribesmen, whose style of war was very similar to the Greeks, fought only for money and were liable to go home when not paid or able to plunder in lieu of pay. The Greek military leaders preferred battlefields where they could annihilate the numerical superiority of the opponent, and, at the same time, the lack of artillery hampered Ottoman military efforts. On 11 April 1822, the Ottoman fleet, under the Kapitan Pasha,
Kara Ali, arrived on the island of
Chios. The Ottoman sailors and soldiers promptly went on a rampage, killing and raping without mercy, as one contemporary recalled: "Mercy was out of the question, the victors butchering indiscriminately all who came in their way; shrieks rent the air, and the streets were strewn with the dead bodies of old men, women, and children; even the inmates of the hospital, the madhouse and deaf and dumb institution, were inhumanely slaughtered". Before Kara Ali's fleet had arrived, Chios had between 100,000 and 120,000 Greeks living there, of which some 25,000 were killed in the massacre, with another 45,000 (mostly women and children) sold into slavery. " by
Nikiforos Lytras. The
Chios massacre shocked all of Europe and further increased public sympathy for the Greek cause. The Greeks avenged the massacre on the night of 18 June 1822, when the Ottoman fleet were busy celebrating the end of the sacred Muslim holiday of Ramadan, which the Greek fleet under Admiral
Konstantinos Kanaris and
Andreas Pipinos took advantage of to launch a fire ship attack. As Kara Ali's ship was brightly lit as befitting the Kapitan Pasha, a fire ship under Kanaris was able to strike his ship, causing the Ottoman flagship to blow up. Of the 2,286 or so aboard the flagship, only 180 survived, but many of the dead were Chians enslaved by Kara Ali, who was planning on selling them on the slave markets when he reached Constantinople. The battle ended in an Ottoman victory, and with most of the philhellenes killed. The successive military campaigns of the Ottomans in Western and Eastern Greece were repulsed: in 1822, Ottoman Albanian
Mahmud Dramali Pasha crossed Roumeli and invaded Morea, but suffered a serious defeat in the
Dervenakia.
Theodoros Kolokotronis, who annihilated Dramali Pasha's army at Dervenakia, became the hero of the hour, attracting much praise all over Greece. during the
Battle of Karpenisi" by Marsigli Filippo. The Greek government had been desperately short of money since the start of the revolution, and in February 1823, the banker Andréas Louriótis arrived in London, seeking a loan from the city. Assisted by the London Greek Committee, which included several MPs and intellectuals, Louriótis began to lobby the city for a loan. British philhellene Edward Blaquiere issued a report in September 1823 which grossly exaggerated Greece's economic prosperity and claimed that once independent, Greece would easily become "one of the most opulent nations of Europe". The 1823 campaign in Western Greece was led by Northern Albanian forces under
Mustafa Reshit Pasha from the
Pashalik of Scutari, and Southern Albanian forces under Omer Vrioni from the former
Pashalik of Yanina. During the summer the
Souliot Markos Botsaris was shot dead at the
Battle of Karpenisi in his attempt to stop the advance of Ottoman Albanian forces; the announcement of his death in Europe generated a wave of sympathy for the Greek cause. The campaign ended after the
Second Siege of Missolonghi in December 1823. In February 1824, the loan for Greece was floated in the city, attracting some £472, 000 pounds sterling (~$17.4 million in 2021), which was money that the Greeks badly needed.
Revolution in peril and infighting The First National Assembly was formed at
Epidaurus in late December 1821, consisting almost exclusively of Peloponnesian notables. The Assembly drafted the
first Greek Constitution and appointed the members of an executive and a legislative body that were to govern the liberated territories. Mavrokordatos saved the office of president of the executive for himself, while Ypsilantis, who had called for the Assembly, was elected president of the legislative body, a place of limited significance. Military leaders and representatives of Filiki Eteria were marginalized, but gradually Kolokotronis' political influence grew, and he soon managed to control, along with the captains he influenced, the Peloponnesian Senate. The central administration tried to marginalize Kolokotronis, who also had under his control the fort of
Nafplion. In November 1822, the central administration decided that the new National Assembly would take place in Nafplion, and asked Kolokotronis to return the fort to the government. Kolokotronis refused, and the Assembly was finally gathered in March 1823 in
Astros. Central governance was strengthened at the expense of regional bodies, a
new constitution was voted, and new members were elected for the executive and the legislative bodies. Trying to coax the military leaders, the central administration proposed to Kolokotronis that he participate in the executive body as vice-president. Kolokotronis accepted, but he caused a serious crisis when he prevented Mavrokordatos, who had been elected president of the legislative body, from assuming his position. His attitude towards Mavrokordatos caused outrage amongst the members of the legislative body. The crisis culminated when the legislature, which was controlled by the Roumeliotes and the Hydriots, overturned the executive, and fired its president, Petros Mavromichalis. Kolokotronis and most of the Peloponnesian notables and captains supported Mavromichalis, who remained president of his executive in Tripolitsa. However, a second executive, supported by the islanders, the Roumeliotes, and some Achaean notables—
Andreas Zaimis and
Andreas Londos were the most prominent—was formed at
Kranidi with
Kountouriotis as president. In March 1824, the forces of the new executive besieged Nafplion and Tripolitsa. After one month of fighting and negotiations, an agreement was reached between Kolokotronis, from one side, and Londos and Zaimis, from the other side. On 22 May, the first phase of the civil war officially ended, but most of the members of the new executive were displeased by the moderate terms of the agreement that Londos and Zaimis brokered. The government regrouped its armies, which now consisted mainly of Roumeliotes and
Orthodox Christian Albanian Souliotes, Egyptian intervention was initially limited to Crete and Cyprus. However, the success of Muhammad Ali's troops in both places settled the Turks on the horns of a very difficult dilemma, since they were afraid of their
wāli's
expansionist ambitions. Muhammad Ali finally agreed to send his son
Ibrahim Pasha to Greece in exchange not only for Crete and Cyprus, but for the Peloponnese and
Syria as well. On 7 February 1825, a second loan to Greece was floated in the City of London. Although the Greek government had squandered the money from the first loan, the second loan was oversubscribed and raised some £1.1 million (~$404 million in 2021). Unlike the first loan, the second loan from the city was to be managed by a Board of Control in London, consisting of the banker Samson Ricardo, two MPs, Edward Ellice and Sir Francis Burdett and John Cam Hobhouse of the London Greek Committee, who were to use the money to buy warships and other supplies, which would then be handed over to the Greeks. After the Greek government had wasted most of the money from the first loan, the City did not trust them to spend the money from the second loan wisely. One of the British philhellenes,
Frank Abney Hastings believed that the use of mechanised warships powered by steam and using red-hot shot would allow the Greeks to overpower the Ottoman navy, powered as it was by sail. Hastings persuaded the Board of Control to invest in the revolutionary technology of the steamship, making the first use of a mechanised warship in a war. The two loans from the City caused significant financial difficulties for the young nation, and in 1878 a deal was struck between the creditors and the Greek government to reduce the loans, now worth £10 million, with unpaid interest down to 1.5 million pounds sterling. Ibrahim Pasha landed at
Methoni on 24 February 1825, and a month later he was joined by his army of 10,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry. The Greeks had not expected Ibrahim Pasha to land during the stormy winter weather, and were taken by surprise. The Greeks initially laughed at the Egyptian soldiers, who were short, skinny
fallāḥīn (peasant) conscripts, many of them blind in one eye owing to the prevalence of parasitic worms that attacked the eye in the Nile, wearing cheap red uniforms comprising a jacket, trousers and a skull-cap. However, the Greeks soon learned that the Egyptians, who were trained by French officers recruited by Mohammed Ali, were tough and hardy soldiers who, unlike the Turkish and Albanian units that the Greeks had been fighting until then, stood their ground in combat. With the Greeks in disarray, Ibrahim ravaged the Western Peloponnese and killed
Papaflessas at the
Battle of Maniaki. To try to stop Ibrahim, Kanaris led the
raid on Alexandria, an attempt to destroy the Egyptian fleet that failed due to a sudden change of the wind. The British traveller and Church of England minister, Reverend Charles Swan, reported Ibrahim Pasha as saying to him that he "would burn and destroy the whole Morea". Popular opinion in both Greece and the rest of Europe, soon credited Ibrahim Pasha with the so-called "barbarisation project", where it was alleged that Ibrahim planned to deport the entire Christian Greek population to Egypt as slaves and replace them with Egyptian peasants. It is not clear even today if the "barbarisation project" was a real plan or not, but the possibility that it was created strong demands for humanitarian intervention in Europe. The Porte and Mohammed Ali both denied having plans for the "barbarisation project", but pointedly refused to put their denials into writing. Russia warned that if the "barbarisation project" was a real plan, then such an egregious violation of the
Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, under which Russia had a vague claim to be the protector of all the Orthodox peoples of the Ottoman Empire, would lead to Russia going to war against the Ottomans. In early autumn, the Greek navy, under the command of
Miaoulis forced the Turkish fleet in the
Gulf of Corinth to retreat, after attacking it with fire ships. The Turks were joined by Ibrahim in mid-winter, but his army had no more luck in penetrating Missolonghi's defences. In the spring of 1826, Ibrahim managed to capture the marshes around the city, although not without heavy losses. He thus cut the Greeks off from the sea and blocked off their supply route. Although the Egyptians and the Turks offered them terms to stop the attacks, the Greeks refused, and continued to fight. On 22 April, the Greeks decided to sail from the city during the night, with 3,000 men, to cut a path through the Egyptian lines and allow 6,000 women, children and non-combatants to follow. The news that the
Third Siege of Missolonghi had ended in an Ottoman victory sparked horror all over Greece; at the National Assembly, Kolokotronis was giving a speech when the news of Missolonghi's fall reached him, leaving him to remember: "the news came to us that Missolonghi was lost. We were all plunged into great grief; for half an hour there was so complete a silence that no one would have thought there was a living soul present; each of us was revolving in his mind how great was our misfortune". The American philhellene
Samuel Gridley Howe, serving as a doctor with the Greeks, wrote back to America: "I write you with an almost breaking heart. Missolonghi has fallen!", which he called "damning proof of the selfish indifference of the Christian world. You may talk to me of national policy and the necessity of neutrality, but I say, a curse upon such a policy!". In May 1826, Hastings arrived in Greece with a British-built steamship, the
Karteria (Perseverance), which astonished the Greeks to see a ship powered by steam and did not move either via sail or oars. The
Karteria suffered from constant engine breakdowns, but Hastings was able to use the ship successfully twice over the course of the next two years, at Volos and in the Gulf of Corinth. The losses Ibrahim Pasha had taken at Missolonghi had greatly reduced his army, and he spent the rest of 1826 chasing the Greek guerillas up and down the mountains. In late June 1826, Reshid Pasha had arrived outside of Athens and laid siege to the city, marking the beginning of the
siege of the Acropolis. By the middle of August, only the Acropolis still held out under
Yannis Gouras. To break the siege, an attack was launched on Reshid Pasha on 18 August 1826 led by the guerrilla leader
Georgios Karaiskakis and the French philhellene Colonel
Charles Nicolas Fabvier but were driven off with the loss of some 300 dead. On 13 October 1826, Gouras was killed by an Ottoman sniper and a week later,
Yannis Makriyannis was wounded three times in a single day. In December, Febvier was able to infiltrate a force of some 500 men into the Akropolis, bringing in much needed supplies of gunpowder, through he was much offended when the garrison started firing to wake up the Turks, trapping him and his men. In the summer of 1826, the Greek government gave command of its army to the British General Sir
Richard Church. The British historian George Finlay wrote: "Church was of a small, well-made, active frame, and of a healthy constitution. His manner was agreeable and easy, with the polish of a great social experience, and the goodness of his disposition was admitted by his enemies, but the strength of his mind was not the quality of which his friends boasted...Both Church and the Greeks misunderstood one another. The Greeks expected Church to prove a Wellington, with a military chest well supplied from the British treasury. Church expected the irregulars of Greece to execute his strategy like regiments of guards". Church landed in Greece in March 1827, and was welcomed by his old friend Kolokotronis. A week later, Lord Cochrane arrived to take command of the Greek Navy and refused to leave his yacht until the Greeks agreed to form a united government. On 31 March 1827 the Trizina Assembly began its work, drafting a new constitution and offered the presidency of Greece to the former Russian foreign minister, Count
Ioannis Kapodistrias. In the meantime, the siege of Athens continued. On 5 February 1827, a force of 2,300 Greeks under the command of Colonel Thomas Gordon landed at Piraeus, and laid siege to the monastery of Ayios Spiridhon, held by Turkish and Albanian troops. In April 1827, Church and Cochrane arrived at Athens and immediately clashed over strategy. When the Ottoman garrison at Ayios Spiridhon surrendered, they were promised safe conduct, but as they were marching out, a shot went off and most of the Ottoman soldiers were killed. On 5 June 1827, the Acropolis surrendered in the last Ottoman victory of the war. Kapodistrias arrived in Greece to become the Governor on 28 January 1828. The first task of Greece's new leader was to create a state and a civil society, which the workaholic Kapodistrias toiled at mightily, working from 5 am until 10 pm every night. Kapodistrias alienated many with his haughty, high-handed manner and his open contempt for most of the Greek elite, but he attracted support from several of the captains, such as
Theodoros Kolokotronis and
Yannis Makriyannis who provided the necessary military force to back up Kapodistrias's decisions. As a former Russian foreign minister, Kapodistrias was well connected to the European elite and he attempted to use his connections to secure loans for the new Greek state and to achieve the most favorable borders for Greece, which was being debated by Russian, French and British diplomats.
Foreign intervention against the Ottomans Initial hostility When the news of the Greek Revolution was first received, the reaction of the European powers was uniformly hostile. They recognized the degeneration of the
Ottoman Empire, but they did not know how to handle this situation (a problem known as the "Eastern Question"). Afraid of the complications the partition of the empire might raise, the British foreign minister
Viscount Castlereagh, Austrian foreign minister Prince
Metternich, and the Tsar of Russia
Alexander I shared the same view concerning the necessity of preserving the
status quo and the peace of Europe. They also pleaded that they maintain the
Concert of Europe. Metternich also tried to undermine the Russian foreign minister,
Ioannis Kapodistrias, who was of Greek origin. Kapodistrias demanded that Alexander declare war on the Ottomans in order to liberate Greece and increase the greatness of Russia. Metternich persuaded Alexander that Kapodistrias was in league with the Italian
Carbonari (an Italian revolutionary group), leading Alexander to disavow him. As a result of the Russian reaction to Alexander Ypsilantis, Kapodistrias resigned as foreign minister and moved to
Switzerland. Nevertheless, Alexander's position was ambivalent, since he regarded himself as the protector of the Orthodox Church, and his subjects were deeply moved by the hanging of the Patriarch. These factors explain why, after denouncing the Greek Revolution, Alexander dispatched an ultimatum to Constantinople on 27 July 1821, after the Greek massacres in the city and the hanging of the Patriarch. However, the danger of war passed temporarily, after Metternich and Castlereagh persuaded the Sultan to make some concessions to the Tsar. On 14 December 1822, the Holy Alliance denounced the Greek Revolution, considering it audacious.
Change of stance In August 1822,
George Canning was appointed by the British government as Foreign Secretary, succeeding Castlereagh. Canning was influenced by the mounting popular agitation against the Ottomans, and believed that a settlement could no longer be postponed. He also feared that Russia might undertake unilateral action against the Ottoman Empire. In March 1823, Canning declared that "when a whole nation revolts against its conqueror, the nation cannot be considered as piratical but as a nation in a state of war". In February 1823 he notified the Ottoman Empire that Britain would maintain friendly relations with the Turks only under the condition that the latter respected the Christian subjects of the Empire. The Commissioner of the
Ionian Islands, which were a British colony, was ordered to consider the Greeks in a state of war and give them the right to cut off certain areas from which the Turks could get provisions. When Tsar
Nicholas I succeeded Alexander in December 1825, Canning decided to act immediately: he sent the
Duke of Wellington to Russia, and the outcome was the
Protocol of St Petersburg of 4 April 1826. According to the protocol, the two powers agreed to mediate between the Ottomans and the Greeks on the basis of complete autonomy of Greece under Turkish sovereignty. Prussia, whose king Frederich Wilhelm was close to Metternich, chose to follow the Austrian lead. The Greeks formally applied for the mediation provided in the Petersburg Protocol, while the Turks and the Egyptians showed no willingness to stop fighting. France, which initially backed its client Muhammad Ali the Great with weapons and officers to train his army, changed its stance, partly because of the pro-Greek feelings of the French people, and partly because King
Charles X saw the offer to impose mediation as a way of assuring French influence in Greece. Since Britain and Russia were going ahead with their plans to impose mediation with or without France, if the French declined the offer to impose mediation, Greece would be in the Anglo-Russian sphere of influence, while if the French did take part, then Greece would also be in the French sphere of influence. Canning therefore prepared for action by negotiating the
Treaty of London (6 July 1827) with France and Russia. This provided that the Allies should again offer negotiations, and if the Sultan rejected it, they would exert all the means which circumstances would allow to force the cessation of hostilities. Meanwhile, news reached Greece in late July 1827 that Muhammad Ali's new fleet was completed in
Alexandria and sailing towards
Navarino to join the rest of the Egyptian-Turkish fleet. The aim of this fleet was to attack Hydra and knock the island's fleet out of the war. On 29 August, the Porte formally rejected the Treaty of London's stipulations, and, subsequently, the commanders-in-chief of the
British and
French Mediterranean fleets, Admiral
Edward Codrington and Admiral
Henri de Rigny, sailed into the Gulf of Argos and requested to meet with Greek representatives on board .
Battle of Navarino (1827) (by
Auguste Couder, 1841,
Palace of Versailles), whose expedition to the Peloponnese precipitated European intervention in the Greek conflict. After the Greek delegation, led by Mavrocordatos, accepted the terms of the treaty, the Allies prepared to insist upon the armistice, and their fleets were instructed to intercept supplies destined for Ibrahim's forces. When Muhammad Ali's fleet, which had been warned by the British and French to stay away from Greece, left Alexandria and joined other Ottoman/Egyptian units at Navarino on 8 September, Codrington arrived with his squadron off Navarino on 12 September. On 13 October, Codrington was joined, off Navarino, by his allied support, a French squadron under De Rigny and a Russian squadron under
Login Geiden. Upon their arrival at Navarino, Codgrinton and de Rigny tried to negotiate with Ibrahim, but Ibrahim insisted that by the Sultan's order he must destroy Hydra. Codrington responded by saying that if Ibrahim's fleets attempted to go anywhere but home, he would have to destroy them. Ibrahim agreed to write to the Sultan to see if he would change his orders, but he also complained about the Greeks being able to continue their attacks. Codrington promised that he would stop the Greeks and Philhellenes from attacking the Turks and Egyptians. After doing this, he disbanded most of his fleet, which returned to Malta, while the French went to the Aegean. '' by
Ambroise Louis Garneray (1827). On 20 October 1827, as the weather got worse, the British, Russian and French fleets entered the Bay of Navarino in peaceful formation to shelter themselves and to make sure that the Egyptian-Turkish fleet did not slip off and attack Hydra. When a British
frigate sent a boat to request the Egyptians to move their fire ships, the officer on board was shot by the Egyptians. The frigate responded with musket fire in retaliation and an Egyptian ship fired a cannon shot at the French flagship, the Sirene, which returned fire. A full engagement was begun which ended in a complete victory for the Allies and in the annihilation of the Egyptian-Turkish fleet. Of the 89 Egyptian-Turkish ships that took part in the battle, only 14 made it back to Alexandria and their dead amounted to over 8,000. The Allies did not lose a ship and suffered only 181 deaths. The Porte demanded compensation from the Allies for the ships, but his demand was refused on the grounds that the Turks had acted as the aggressors. The three countries' ambassadors also left Constantinople. In Britain, the battle received a mixed reception. The British public, many of them
Philhellenes, were overjoyed at the outcome of the battle which all but confirmed the
independence of Greece. But in
Whitehall, senior naval and diplomatic echelons were appalled by the outcome of his campaign. It was considered that Codrington had grossly exceeded his instructions by provoking a showdown with the
Ottoman fleet, and that his actions had gravely compromised the Ottoman ability to resist Russian encroachment. At a social event, King
George IV was reported as referring to the battle as "this untoward event". In France, the news of the battle was greeted with great enthusiasm and the government had an unexpected surge in popularity. Russia formally took the opportunity to declare war on the Turks (April 1828). The French troops, whose military engineers also helped rebuild the Peloponnese, were accompanied by seventeen distinguished scientists of the
scientific expedition of Morea (botany, zoology, geology, geography, archaeology, architecture and sculpture), whose work was of major importance for the building of the new independent State. The French troops definitely left Greece after five years, in 1833. The final major engagement of the war was the
Battle of Petra, which occurred north of
Attica. Greek forces under
Demetrios Ypsilantis, for the first time trained to fight as a regular European army rather than as guerrilla bands, advanced against Aslan Bey's forces and defeated them. The Turks surrendered all lands from
Livadeia to the
Spercheios River in exchange for safe passage out of
Central Greece. As
George Finlay stresses: "Thus Prince
Demetrios Ypsilantis had the honor of terminating the war which his brother had commenced on the banks of the Pruth."
Autonomy to independence as laid down in the Treaty of 1832 (in dark blue) In September 1828, the
Conference of Poros opened to discuss what should be the borders of Greece. Under
pressure from Russia, the Porte finally agreed on the terms of the Treaty of London of 6 July 1827 and of the Protocol of 22 March 1829. Soon afterward, Britain and France conceived the idea of an independent Greek state, trying to limit the influence of Russia on the new state. Russia disliked the idea but could not reject it, and consequently the three powers finally agreed to create an independent Greek state under their joint protection, concluding the
protocols of 3 February 1830. By one of the protocols, the Greek throne was initially offered to
Leopold, Prince of
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and the future
King of Belgium. Discouraged by the gloomy picture painted by Kapodistrias, and unsatisfied with the Aspropotamos-Zitouni borderline, which replaced the more favorable line running from Arta to Volos considered by the Great Powers earlier, he refused. Negotiations temporarily stalled after Kapodistrias was assassinated in 1831 in
Nafplion by the
Mavromichalis clan, after having demanded that they unconditionally submit to his authority. When they refused, Kapodistrias put
Petrobey in jail, sparking vows of vengeance from his clan. The withdrawal of Leopold as a candidate for the throne of Greece and the
July Revolution in France further delayed the final settlement of the new kingdom's frontiers until a new government was formed in Britain.
Lord Palmerston, who took over as British Foreign Secretary, agreed to the Arta–Volos borderline. However, the secret note on Crete, which the Bavarian plenipotentiary communicated to Britain, France and Russia, bore no fruit. In May 1832, Palmerston convened the
London Conference. The three Great Powers, Britain,
France and Russia, offered the throne to the
Bavarian prince,
Otto of Wittelsbach; meanwhile, the
Fifth National Assembly at Nafplion had approved the choice of Otto, and passed the Constitution of 1832 (which would come to be known as the "Hegemonic Constitution"). As co-guarantors of the monarchy, the Great Powers also agreed to guarantee a loan of 60 million francs to the new king, empowering their ambassadors in the Ottoman capital to secure the end of the war. Under the protocol signed on 7 May 1832 between Bavaria and the protecting powers, Greece was defined as a "monarchical and independent state" but was to pay an indemnity to the Porte. The protocol outlined the way in which the Regency was to be managed until Otto reached his majority, while also concluding the second Greek loan for a sum of £2.4 million. On 21 July 1832,
British Ambassador to the Sublime Porte Sir Stratford Canning and the other representatives of the Great Powers signed the
Treaty of Constantinople, which defined the boundaries of the new Greek Kingdom at the Arta–Volos line. The borders of the kingdom were reiterated in the
London Protocol of 30 August 1832, also signed by the Great Powers, which ratified the terms of the Constantinople arrangement.
Massacres 's
Massacre of Chios (1824, oil on canvas,
Louvre, Paris) Almost as soon as the revolution began, there were
several massacres of civilians by both Greek revolutionaries and Ottoman forces. The revolutionaries massacred Jews, Muslims and Christians alike suspected of pro-Ottoman sympathies, mainly in the Peloponnese and Attica, where ethnic Greeks were dominant. Ottoman forces massacred Greeks suspected of supporting the revolutionaries, especially in Anatolia, Crete, Cyprus, Macedonia and the Aegean islands. They also massacred Greeks in areas which did not revolt, as in
Smyrna and in
Constantinople. Some of the more infamous atrocities include the massacres at Chios and Constantinople, the
destruction of Psara,
massacre of Samothrace,
Kasos Massacre,
Naousa massacre,
third siege of Missolonghi,
Tripolitsa Massacre and
Navarino Massacre. There is debate among scholars over whether the massacres committed by the Greeks should be regarded as a response to prior events (such as the massacre of the Greeks of Tripoli, after the failed
Orlov Revolt of 1770 and the destruction of the
Sacred Band) or as separate atrocities, which started simultaneously with the outbreak of the revolt. During the war, tens of thousands of Greek civilians were killed, left to die or taken into slavery. Most of the Greeks in the Greek quarter of Constantinople were massacred. A large number of Christian clergymen were also killed, including the Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory V. Sometimes marked as allies of the Turks in the Peloponnese, Jewish settlements were also massacred by Greek revolutionaries; Steve Bowman argues that the tragedy may have been more a side-effect of the butchering of the Turks of Tripolis, the last Ottoman stronghold in the South, where the Jews had taken refuge from the fighting, than a specific action against Jews as such. Many Jews around Greece and throughout Europe were supporters of the Greek revolt, using their resources to loan substantial amounts to the newly formed Greek government. In turn, the success of the Greek Revolution was to stimulate the incipient stirrings of Jewish nationalism, later called
Zionism. According to historian Yanni Kotsonis, the revolution was demographic in nature—"novel and shocking violence" was visited throughout the area and "destroyed an entire category of population", which was "not an unintended consequence; it was the goal of the warfare". ==Aftermath==