The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (67 page)

Ali Pasha did not live long to enjoy his new acquisition. An attempt in February 1820 to assassinate one of his relations, a certain Ismail Pasha who had incurred his displeasure and fled to Constantinople, was traced back to him and gave Sultan Mahmoud II the opportunity he had long been seeking. He thereupon appointed Ismail governor of Iannina in Ali’s place, gave him a small army and ordered him to do the rest. That same autumn, with Ismail’s troops closing in, Ali set fire to the city and retreated to his citadel, which stood on a promontory projecting into the lake and was additionally protected by a broad moat. Here he seemed likely to hold out indefinitely, but in January 1821, with a stalemate still persisting, Mahmoud dismissed Ismail and replaced him with the infinitely more capable Khurshid Pasha, governor of the Morea. Khurshid, seeing that nothing could be expected of Ismail’s motley army–which consisted of a number of separate forces each going its own way under the command of its own pasha–spent the next year putting it into shape; then, at the beginning of 1822, he smashed his way into the citadel. There were various stories about how Ali met his end; a few days later his severed head was exhibited on a pike in Iannina before being borne back in triumph to Constantinople.

CHAPTER XXV

Freedom for Greece

The beginning of the Greek struggle for independence from Turkish rule can be dated to September 1814, when three young Greeks in Odessa founded a secret society. To avoid suspicion, they called it by the deliberately noncommittal name of the
Philiki Eteria
, the Friendly Association. None of the three had so far acquired any distinction: Nikolaos Skouphas was a hatter, Emmanuel Xanthos was a bankrupt dealer in olive oil, Athanasios Tsakalov had no settled occupation. They got off to a slow start. Although they had all three been born in Greece, as expatriates they were unable to tap into the resources of the mainland, while even among the Greek diaspora around the Black Sea they were too insignificant to be taken seriously by the rich merchants whose support they needed.

Little by little, however, the Association’s numbers increased. Its founders moved their base to Constantinople, where in those days there were almost as many Greeks as Turks, and whence they sent emissaries into Greece itself: one to Macedonia and Thessaly, one to the Peloponnese and the wealthy islands of Hydra and Spetsai, and two to the Mani (the central of the three promontories of the southern Peloponnese). The Mani had been the focus of an earlier, unsuccessful uprising instigated in 1770 by Catherine the Great through her lover, Count Gregory Orlov.
²¹⁷
As a somewhat paradoxical result of this incident, the Ottoman authorities had removed it from the jurisdiction of the governor of the Peloponnese and subjected it directly to the Capitan Pasha, head of the Turkish armed forces and overlord of the Aegean, and he in his turn had devolved his power to the head of one of the local families, with the title of bey. The eighth of these beys,
²¹⁸
appointed in 1815, was to be one of the heroes of the Greek Revolution–of whose family no fewer than forty-nine were to fall in battle during the coming struggle. His name was Petrobey Mavromichalis.

Petrobey was, like all his family, outstandingly handsome–only to be expected, perhaps, his ancestor George having reputedly married a mermaid. This quality he combined with graciousness of manner, high intelligence and, as he was later to show, indomitable courage. Like any tribal leader, he was capable of cruelty when he believed it to be justified, but he was also generous and–in his own territory–a man of peace, settling blood feuds wherever he could and doing his utmost to create the solidarity which he knew would be necessary in the years ahead. When approached by the Association, he instantly gave it his support.

Before there could be any question of taking up arms, however, the movement had to find a leader. The most distinguished Greek living at that time–and the obvious first choice–was Iannis Kapodistrias, more usually known outside Greece as Capodistria. Born in Corfu, he came from an ancient family which had emigrated to the Ionian Islands from Italy in the fourteenth century. In his youth he had been active in local political life, so impressing the occupying Russians that he had been invited to join the administration in St Petersburg. In normal circumstances his status as a civil servant of the Russian Empire might not have prevented his accepting the presidency of the Association; unfortunately, however, in 1815 Tsar Alexander had appointed him joint Foreign Minister, so that when in 1820 Emmanuel Xanthos requested an audience and extended the invitation, he was turned down flat.

The Association’s eye next fell on a dashing imperial aide-de-camp named Alexander Ipsilantis, who though still in his twenties had already lost his right arm in the service of the Tsar. Two of his brothers were already members, and he accepted without hesitation. There was still a long way to go: total membership numbered only 1,000 or so. But Ipsilantis was impatient, and on 8 October 1820 issued a proclamation calling upon all Greeks to prepare themselves for the struggle ahead. The revolution, he declared, must be unleashed in the Peloponnese before the end of the year. Characteristically, he had failed to consult his contacts on the spot, who were now obliged to inform him that the Peloponnese was not yet ready; he therefore decided to begin in the north rather than the south: in the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia.

It was in many ways a surprising choice. Neither of these regions–both of them lying in present-day Romania–formed part of Greece. Nor, technically, were they part of the Ottoman Empire; their legal status was that of vassal states, into which the Sultan was forbidden by treaty to send troops without Russian consent. This meant that the Tsar, in the interests of his Orthodox co-religionists, might be persuaded to prevent Turkish forces from opposing the insurgents. An additional advantage was that for the past century the two regions had been governed by Greeks from Constantinople, who could be expected to give whatever support they could. Encouraged by such considerations, on 6 March 1821 Ipsilantis, with two of his younger brothers and a few companions, crossed the border into Moldavia. That same evening they entered the capital, Iasi, where another proclamation was issued, promising ‘with very little effort’ to annihilate the Turks completely, ‘while a mighty empire defends our rights’.

There was in fact every indication that the mighty empire would do no such thing, both Capodistria and the Tsar himself having made it clear to Ipsilantis that they disapproved of the whole project and would have nothing whatever to do with it, and from that moment on the campaign–if so it could be called–was an unmitigated disaster. In Galatz, a town some 100 miles south of Iasi, the rebels massacred the Turkish garrison and all the Turkish merchants, and when the news reached Iasi the Turkish guard there of some fifty men, who had already disarmed on the promise that their lives and property would be spared, was also put to the sword. Moreover, when Ipsilantis realised that the funds which he had confidently expected in Iasi were not forthcoming, he had resorted to extortion from rich bankers. Meanwhile, the unpaid troops that he had assembled were looting the local villages. Now seriously alarmed, Ipsilantis marched on Bucharest–only to find that a local adventurer, Theodore Vladimirescu, had got there before him and occupied the city, summoning the local Wallachians to rise up, not against the Turks, but against the Phanariot Greeks,
²¹⁹
‘dragons that swallow us alive’.

But the two greatest blows were yet to fall. First, the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, supported by twenty-two bishops, sentenced Ipsilantis and the other leading rebels to be ‘excommunicated and cursed, and not forgiven, and anathematised after death, and to suffer for all eternity’. Then the rising was formally denounced by the Tsar himself. In a statement drafted by Capodistria, Ipsilantis was cashiered from the army on the grounds that he had abandoned ‘all the precepts of religion and morality’. He and his colleagues would receive absolutely no support from Russia, to which he was forbidden ever to return.

Fortunately Vladimirescu was soon captured and taken to Ipsilantis’s camp, where he was quickly despatched. Their numbers swelled by Vladimirescu’s disaffected followers, the rebels then decided to tackle the Turks head-on, and on 19 June they encountered a considerable Ottoman force in the village of Dragasani. In the ensuing battle half of them were cut to pieces; the other half fled. Ipsilantis escaped into Austria, but was arrested as he crossed the border. He was imprisoned at Mohacs until 1827, and died the following year. In Greek popular legend he is usually seen as a hero and a martyr, and so in a way he was; but he possessed neither the intelligence nor the experience required to lead a successful rebellion, and it was due as much to his sheer incompetence as to anything else that the first campaign of the Greek War of Independence ended in fiasco.

In the Peloponnese the prospects for the coming revolt looked somewhat brighter, particularly after the departure in January 1821 of Khurshid Pasha, governor of the Morea, to deal with Ali Pasha of Iannina. Khurshid had been a considerable force in the region, and his replacement by a young and ineffectual deputy led to an immediate slackening of Turkish authority. Only days later there arrived from Zante the boisterous, black-moustachioed, fifty-year-old ex-brigand who was, more than anyone else, to personify the Greek War of Independence: Theodore Kolokotronis. With his commanding presence, his resounding laughter and his terrifying rages he was a born leader of men; within days of his arrival he had impressed his personality on all around him.

The fuse had already been laid, but it was Kolokotronis who lit the match, fixing the day of the rising as 25 March.
²²⁰
Even then, a few communities jumped the gun. In the little town of Areopolis a plaque in the square of St Michael’s church reads: ‘From this historic square was launched the great uprising under the leadership of Petrobey, 17 March 1821’. To Mavromichalis, therefore, belongs the honour of being first in the field. But Kolokotronis was not far behind, marshalling on the 20th some 2,000 armed men who marched through Kalamata amid cheering crowds. Three days later they accepted the surrender of the Turkish garrison, having promised them that their lives would be spared. (Alas, they were not; as a contemporary writer put it, ‘the moon devoured them’.)
²²¹
In little more than a week, the entire Peloponnese was in revolt.

Not everywhere, however, did the rebels have it all their own way. In Patras, the chief city and port, the rising in the last days of March met with serious opposition, the Turks barricading themselves in the citadel and firing their cannon down on the besiegers below. And within a few days there was further disappointment. Bishop Germanos–who not only held the see of Patras but was also the leading churchman and figurehead of the whole revolution–had appealed to all the Christian powers for support, and on 29 March received a reply from Sir Thomas Maitland in Corfu. Ionian subjects, wrote Maitland, were forbidden to involve themselves in the struggle on either side; were they to do so, they would instantly lose their government’s protection.

Then on Palm Sunday, 3 March, a Turkish force of several hundred men reached Patras under the command of a certain Yussuf Pasha. Yussuf had recently left the siege of Iannina to take up a new appointment as governor of Euboea; calling en route at Missolonghi (now Mesolongion), he had heard of the disturbances and had hurried at once to the city’s relief. He and his men entered Patras at dawn, surprising the Greek population in their beds. Most of them rose, panic-stricken, and fled for their lives, while Yussuf ordered the houses of all the leading citizens to be burned to the ground. With a strong
scirocco
blowing to fan the flames, some 700 buildings were destroyed. Meanwhile, the streets filled with rampaging Turks, all of them out for Greek blood. Of those Greeks who had stayed behind, forty were beheaded in the next few hours.

Patras was to remain a battleground until the end of the war, with Greeks and Turks alternately getting the upper hand but never so decisively as to bring the fighting to an end. Despite constant battering from the Greek guns, the Turks never lost control of the citadel, nor were they ever driven from the two other great castles, of Roumeli and the Morea, which face each other across the Gulf of Corinth at the point where the straits are at their narrowest. Without this invaluable bridgehead–for the Greeks were firmly ensconced at Corinth–the vast peninsula would have been impenetrable to them from the north, their seat of government at Tripolis dangerously isolated; with it, they were able to make life for the rebels difficult indeed.

There was no doubt now that the Peloponnese was to be the heart-land of the struggle. It was there that Kolokotronis–now officially
archistrategos
, commander-in-chief–won his first pitched battle, at Valtetsi only five miles from the seat of the Turkish government at Tripolis. The Turks lost some 700 killed or wounded, the Greeks perhaps 150. It was there too that the Greeks captured from the Turks their first great stronghold: Monemvasia in the southeast corner, whose immense outcrop of rock many had thought impregnable. In Roumeli, on the other hand–which is to say, all Greece to the north of the Gulf of Corinth–the occasional outbreaks of fighting were largely directed towards stopping the Turks from advancing southward. There was, for example, a significant Greek victory at Vasilika, the road running through a long and narrow pass, very similar to–and not far from–the pass of Thermopylae, where King Leonidas of Sparta and his army had perished in their heroic stand against the Persians twenty-three centuries before.
²²²

The sea also saw its share of battles. The opposing forces were hopelessly unequal. Greek ships were essentially merchantmen, though they normally carried a number of guns to defend themselves from the pirates who still infested the eastern Mediterranean. The Turks, on the other hand, had a navy. This, on the face of it, should have made the whole concept of naval warfare between the two unequal in the extreme, but the Greeks had one immense advantage: they were seamen to their fingertips, while the Turks–originating as they had in landlocked Central Asia–were anything but. This meant that while the fighting men on board a Turkish warship were almost certainly Turks, for seamanship and navigation they tended to rely on Greeks–which, after the outbreak of the revolution, they were unable to do. Moreover, the smaller size of the Greek vessels made them faster and more manoeuvrable, just as were the victorious English ships that, two and a half centuries before, had sailed out against the Spanish Armada.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, to read that of the three separate Turkish naval expeditions despatched from Constantinople in 1821–with the dual purpose of reimposing Turkish control over the Greek islands in revolt and of bringing reinforcements and provisions to the Turkish garrisons around the Peloponnese–two were hopeless failures. The first retired after its second largest vessel was destroyed by a Greek fireship, the flames of which reached its powder magazine and blew the whole thing to smithereens with the loss of over 500 lives. The second, which was intended to subdue the island of Samos just off the Anatolian coast, was driven back having achieved nothing. Only the third succeeded, having sailed around the Peloponnese and into the Ionian Sea, where the British authorities still allowed the Turks to use the island harbours. Here it took on provisions at Zante and continued with an attack, by a largely Egyptian flotilla, on the port of Galaxidi on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth. Thirty-four Greek ships with thirty sailors were captured, the town burned to the ground. The fleet then returned to the Bosphorus by the way it had come, anchoring in the Golden Horn with the prize ships behind it, the bodies of the dead captives swinging from their yardarms.