From Ashes to Nationhood: Greece’s Long Road from Ottoman Chains to Independence

From Ashes to Nationhood: Greece’s Long Road from Ottoman Chains to Independence

The lives of the Greek generals aptly illustrate these striking contrasts. Kolokotronis, the most distinguished of the captains, was of an old family of clefts, of whom not many men died in their beds. He is said to have killed half a thousand Turks. He was a mighty, tall man, handsome in bearing, with an old-fashioned helmet on his head, which concealed his thick black curls. By his strength, determination, and cunning, Kolokotronis had acquired unlimited influence in the mountains of the Peloponnesus. While he was a most excellent military leader, he was greedy and cunning, and his chief cause was that shameful war among the rebels themselves.

Even more colorful was the life and character of the Ithacian Odysseus, whose classical name and home delighted Europa. He was educated at the court of Ali Pasha in Ioannina, where he learned all the evil qualities of his powerful patron: his charm, cruelty, and deceit. He was treacherous and vindictive like a shipwright, cunning and pretentious like a Greek. With his handsome figure, powerful physique, cool-headedness, and sharp intellect, he was well-suited for a military leader. Ali Pasha appointed him commander of his guard, but Odysseus nevertheless betrayed the Pasha. He took part in the Greek War of Liberation with incredible bravery, but his selfishness and greed were as great as his leadership abilities. Odysseus filled a fortified cave on Parnassus with riches and married his daughter to the Englishman Trelayney, a friend of Lord Byron, who was allowed to guard this cave fortress with its treasures while the ape was on military expeditions. Odysseus was allowed to kill the envoys of the provisional government with impunity. In the end, however, due to his treachery and selfishness, he angered even his guards, and when they gradually began to abandon him, the freedom fighter fled to the side of his blood enemies, the Turks. With the help of a Turkish army, he extorted a ransom from Athena and threatened to cut down all her olive groves, but was finally captured, strangled, and thrown from the steep Acropolis near the temple of Nike Aptera.

Alongside these variegated characters, we meet others, noble, pure as antiquity. Such were the brave sailors Miaulis and Kanaris, the former from Hydra and the latter from the island of Psara. By their brilliant heroic deeds, they established the rule of the Greeks at sea. The most valiant of all was that captain of the sloops, Markos Botzaris, who, by his heroic death at Karpenis, has achieved eternal fame in Greek history. With a few hundred men, he crept into the midst of the Turkish army at night and would have torn it to pieces if he had received the agreed help from the other Greeks. Demetrios Ypsilantis was not made to be a leader, but as an officer and a man, he was incomparable.

[Image: Heracles and the Nemean Lion.]

Among the foreigners who arrived to help the Hellenes, there were also lucky fishermen. Still, a noble hobby animated the majority, and they gave the struggle for freedom its most ideal colors. Finland also had its fighters there who achieved fame. Myhrberg’s heroic deeds are familiar to us all. Many volunteers were bitterly disappointed when they arrived and turned their backs on Hellas in hostility. However, on the other hand, the struggle for freedom offered numerous features that kept enthusiasm alive until the end. Even the most bitter experiences could not dampen Lord Byron’s hobby and enthusiasm. Through both his poems and his sacrifice, he has perhaps had the most significant influence on the Greeks in their favor. His death, which occurred in Mesolongio amidst the siege and gloom, was an irreparable loss to the Greeks. The noblest Western blood was shed to the last on the Greek battlefield. The Philhellenes aided the fighters both with their weapons and, even more significantly, with their moral influence, which helped restrain the ever-smoldering dissension among the Greeks. They made the rebels capable leaders, and through their sacrifice, they inspired their fellow citizens at home to provide material support to the fighters.

In alliance with Ali Pasha, the Greeks fought on land with varying success, while at sea, they achieved brilliant success. The rebellion spread to all the islands of the Aegean Sea, which equipped their merchant ships as warships. Several islands had become wealthy from the flour trade, which they carried on in the Black Sea under the protection of the Russian flag, and these riches were now not spared. The Psarians risked their entire existence. The millionaires of Hydra and Spetses lost all their property for the rebirth of Greece. When the metropolitan celebrated mass in the Psarian church on Easter night: “Christ is risen!” the people responded with joy: “Hellas is risen!”

Greek ships blocked the transport of troops and military supplies to Hellas from the Turks. The Turks were fought with incendiary vessels in the same way as torpedo boats in our time. The most famous was the heroic deed of Kanarii when he sank the flagship of Kara-Ali and three thousand men with it with an incendiary ship. Under the leadership of Miaulii, they learned to resist the Turkish fleets even in open battle.

The Sultan was so pressed that he was finally obliged to call upon Mehmed Ali from Egypt for help, although he had deep suspicions of the mighty Pasha. Ali’s son Ibrahim appeared on the scene with a large fleet and a well-trained army, and his battalions of Negroes and Moors conquered almost the whole of the Peloponnese. The Greeks couldn’t hold their ground against such overwhelming superiority; they were increasingly pressed on every side, but they continued to fight with the tenacity of despair. Their cause seemed already lost when the little town of Messolongio, by its gallant eleven-month defense and surrender, saved it. This defense was the most dramatic of all the dramatic incidents with which the War of Independence is so endlessly rich. It was a widely resounding cry of despair, which roused the whole Western world. The rulers, who had watched the slaughter that had lasted for almost a decade from behind the thick wall of their “interests,” had finally had to adapt and extend a helping hand to Greece. England, Russia, and France destroyed the great Egyptian fleet at Navarino. Russia declared war on Turkey in 1828, and when the French brought troops to the Peloponnese in the same year, Ibrahim Pasha and his Egyptians had to leave. Russia finally forced Turkey to recognize Greece as an independent kingdom in the Peace of Adrianople.

If anyone, Hellas has certainly paid the full price for its independence. It can look back with pride on its fight for freedom, but the public of Europe can also remember with equal satisfaction the part it played in that fight.

[Image: Euzoni soldier.]GREECE AND TURKEY. The Hellenes were not at all satisfied with the small kingdom that had been carved out of the body of the Turk. Millions of their fellow tribe members were still languishing in the same misery from which they had escaped. They promised not to rest until the whole nation had been united and perhaps Byzantium had been conquered.

Thus, Turkey got a David from little Greece, who is always ready to hurl a deadly stone at it. Even more harmful than her war plans, Greece became by her constant blundering in the negotiations of the great powers. The Greeks are even better diplomats than soldiers, and with their tongue, not their sword, they wrested Thessaly and part of Epirus from the Turks.

The immediate goal of the Hellenes was then the liberation of Crete, Macedonia, and Epirus, which, as Turkey weakened, did not seem hopeless. The more the sick man became entangled in his bad financial affairs, the more Greece became preoccupied, spending hundreds of millions of money borrowed from abroad on military equipment. It began to become a constant “element of unrest” in the East, as diplomats say, and its demands did not at all agree with their prescription that Turkey should be allowed to rot until the pieces fell off into the arms of those who waited.

[Photo: Dr. EJ Dillon in the costume of a Cretan monk.]

Undoubtedly, politicians had reason to move cautiously in the Balkan Peninsula, where they could so suddenly get involved in war because of their mutual jealousy. Still, Greece also had reason to expedite the process. Despite their fine speeches, diplomats would not get far if men of action did not force them forward by force of events. Crete, with its constant rebellions, has practiced this policy of action. Still, when prolonged bloodshed and destruction did not yet appear to be a sufficient purchase price for the island’s freedom, the Greek government finally intervened in the matter to give it momentum and sent Colonel Vassos with his battalion to Crete.

This act gave impetus to events. A general enthusiasm arose among the Hellenes, both in Greece and in the Turkish provinces and elsewhere in Europe; the moment had come for the realization of their national aspirations. Greek volunteers from near and far flocked to Athens to await and even hasten the arrival of the coming events. The danger of war had taken a giant step forward; it gave the diplomats a rush. Greece was blackmailed with threats and promises, but when these did not yield any results, mutual negotiations were arranged, through which the war was to be limited. Greece would be allowed to start it with its flesh.

[Image: Greek priest]

The excitement among the European public was significant due to these incidents, which thousands of newspapers continued to exaggerate. No one could have guessed how close they would be to the danger of a general war. But although Turkey, with its bloody massacres amid the century of steam and electricity, reminded the world of the quality of its existence, the Greeks received scant support, almost only from the free-thinkers of England and Italy. In Germany, they were despised when they failed to pay their debts. In France, on the other hand, they had ceased to think independently. People had no desire for war, and they did not want to remember the misery of the East, which it is the duty of the civilized world to put an end to, and which justified the frivolous affairs of Greece.