The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (71 page)

Missolonghi has fallen! Her brave warriors have thrown themselves in desperation upon the bayonets of their enemies; her women and children have perished in the flames of their own dwellings, kindled by their own hands; and their scorched and mangled carcasses lie a damning proof of the selfish indifference of the Christian world…For ten months have the eyes of Christian Europe been turned upon Missolonghi. They have seen her inhabitants struggling at enormous odds against the horrors of war and famine; her men worn out, bleeding and dying; her women gnawing the bones of dead horses and mules; her walls surrounded by Arabs, yelling for the blood of her warriors, and to glut their hellish lusts upon her women and children. All this they have seen, and not raised a finger for their defence…

As for the casualties, it is impossible to give an exact figure; by the end of that ghastly night, however, it seems likely that nearly half the population of Missolonghi–perhaps 4,000–were dead and some 3,000, mostly women and children, captive. Less than a quarter–2,000 at the most–had made their way to safety.

Even more than the tragedy of Chios, the fate of Missolonghi was mourned throughout Europe. Once again an outraged Delacroix seized his brush in protest: his tremendous painting,
La Grèce sur les ruines de Missolonghi
, did much to focus the prevailing indignation, and across Europe his contemporaries–painters and sculptors, writers and poets–enthusiastically followed his lead. The western powers could no longer sit on their hands in the name of neutrality; the time had come to gird on their swords and hasten to Greece’s aid.

The disaster of Missolonghi left all Greece demoralised; and it was soon afterwards followed by another, greater still. In June 1826 Reshid Pasha launched, with an army of 7,000 men, a concerted attack on Athens. The city, because of its position, had never been the Greek capital; it was exceptional, however, for two reasons. The first was the obvious one: it had been the scene of the greatest achievements of classical antiquity and still, for all its long
dégringolade
, remained a symbol of the artistic, cultural and intellectual distinction of which the Greeks had once been capable and, it was hoped, might one day be capable again. The second, less romantic, had still greater relevance to the present situation. After the fall of Missolonghi it was the only city in Greek hands north of the Gulf of Corinth. Despite recent Turkish and Egyptian successes, it now seemed likely that the continuing struggle, together with the increasing sympathy for it among the powers of western Europe, would result in at least some degree of Greek autonomy. With Athens back in Muslim hands, that autonomy might well be limited to the Peloponnese; if, on the other hand, the Greeks were able to hold the city, the frontier would have to be a good deal further north.

By mid-August Reshid was in control of the whole city except the Acropolis, where a Greek garrison of 500 held out through the following winter–during which time the Greek government, such as it was, fell victim to yet another outbreak of factional strife. Once again, Kolokotronis seems to have been largely to blame, and by the summer of 1827 there were no less than seven separate conflicts in progress. Oddly enough, it was two Britons who managed to impose some degree of calm, though both failed ultimately to distinguish themselves. The first was General Sir Richard Church, who had raised the Anglo-Greek regiment on Zakynthos sixteen years before. In the interim he had served in the army of the King of Naples, but his heart had remained in Greece. He returned there in March 1827, having been offered the supreme command of the Greek land forces–only a foreigner, it seemed, could hope to establish order over so chaotic a country–but he had refused to take up his post until the two rival governments had settled their differences.

Church was followed a week later by a still more remarkable figure. Thomas, Lord Cochrane–later 10th Earl of Dundonald–had early in his career been court-martialled for insubordination, and in 1814 had been put on trial for fraud on the Stock Exchange. In the first instance he had been acquitted, in the second found guilty.
²²⁸
Nonetheless, he was generally accounted England’s greatest admiral since Nelson. He had spent seven years in South America, where he had fought for the independence of Chile, Peru and Brazil, and as early as November 1825 he had been offered the command, such as it was, of the Greek navy. The delay had been occasioned by his insistence, as a condition of his employment, on the provision of six steamships and two frigates, to be designed by another British aristocrat, Frank Abney Hastings, who had served as a ship’s boy at Trafalgar and had reached the rank of captain before being dismissed from the service.

Steamships were still in their infancy. Even they were still normally propelled by sail, using their primitive engines only in calm or in battle. Cochrane’s order was to be paid for by a second loan, organised in London, of £566,000, but it was never fulfilled. One of the two frigates had to be sold to the American government to pay for the other, and only two of the six steamships ever reached Greece, neither of them–thanks to design failings, poor construction, corruption and the activities of Egyptian agents–to be trusted an inch. When he eventually arrived in Greece–on his yacht–in the spring of 1827, Cochrane took an even stronger line than Church. How, he demanded, could the Greek leaders make such fools of themselves, squabbling about where to hold their next assembly, when they should have been attacking the Turks and Egyptians, driving them out of the country before it was totally destroyed? His words had their effect: the two sides were forced into an agreement, according to which a new Assembly should meet at Trizini, the ancient Troezen. By the end of March both Church and Cochrane had withdrawn their objections and assumed their posts, and only a week or two later the Assembly resolved to offer the presidency of Greece to Capodistria, who had now left the Russian service and was living quietly in Geneva.

Meanwhile, in Athens, the Acropolis was still under siege. In an attempt to break the deadlock, it was decided early in 1827 to despatch a force of 2,300, under the English philhellene commander Thomas Gordon. Gordon was soon joined by Karaiskakis with several detachments of local troops, so that his numbers were probably not far short of 10,000 by the time Cochrane arrived at Piraeus in his flagship, the
Hellas
, shortly to be followed by Church in a commandeered schooner. Various plans of action were now put forward, but Cochrane had determined on a direct march on Athens and, as usual, rode roughshod over any opposition. ‘Where I command,’ he is quoted as saying, ‘all other authority ceases.’ Karaiskakis, realising that such an advance would involve a dangerous crossing of an open plain almost certainly surrounded by Turkish cavalry, did not immediately accept this view, but a day or two later he was shot by a Turkish musketeer and there were no more objections. So it was agreed that at midnight on 5 May 1827 a force of 2,500 should disembark from the near side of Phaleron Bay and march on Athens, while the remainder–almost three times as many–should remain at Piraeus to await further orders.

Karaiskakis had, of course, been perfectly right. But if the plan was foolhardy, its execution was little short of shameful. Gordon commented afterwards:

As the Admiral had nothing to do with the motions of the troops when once ashore, and the General [Church], satisfied with having sketched a disposition, staid in his vessel till daylight, the captains, all on a footing of equality, acted independently, halting where they chose; so that the column was scattered over a space of four miles, the front within cannon-shot of Athens, the rear close to the sea, and the soldiers, unprovided with spades and pickaxes, dug the earth with their daggers, in order to cover themselves from the charge of horse.

Reshid attacked at dawn, with all too foreseeable results. The Greeks lost 1,500 men, more than on any single day since the beginning of the war. When, after a comfortable night’s rest, Cochrane and Church disembarked from their respective ships, it was to find the survivors, exhausted and terrified, dragging themselves back to the shore and clambering into the small boats in which they hoped to escape to safety. Church, in an attempt to restore his reputation, held out heroically with a handful of men at Phaleron for three more weeks, but by the end of the month heat and thirst had compelled him to surrender. The garrison on the Acropolis gave in a few days later.

Who was to blame? In one way or another, just about everyone: Cochrane for his overweening arrogance and refusal to listen to other, wiser men; Church for not standing up to him; both of them for staying on board their ships when they should have been with their men; the Greek captains for demonstrating once again their hopeless lack of discipline and inability to agree on a supreme commander. Their failure proved a tragedy, and it served them right.

Meanwhile, the question of European intervention dragged on, as ambassadors shuttled between London, Paris and St Petersburg. British interests were in the capable hands of the Foreign Secretary, George Canning, who in April 1827 succeeded Lord Liverpool as Prime Minister; it was largely through his efforts that the Treaty of London was signed by Britain, France and Russia on 6 July. By its terms Greece would enjoy autonomy, theoretically as a dependency of Turkey (in that she would pay an annual tribute) but effectively independent, as the three powers would recognise by establishing commercial relations with her. She and Turkey must conclude an armistice within a month–Canning later shortened this to a fortnight–after which, if they had failed to do so, the powers would intervene. For the Greeks this was good news indeed. Turkey, they knew, would reject any idea of an armistice, so intervention was virtually certain.

Events were to prove them right. Some months before, the Sultan had appointed Mohammed Ali titular supreme commander of all land and sea forces in Greece, Turkish as well as Egyptian; Mohammed Ali had thereupon raised a new army of nearly 15,000, and a new fleet consisting of three Turkish ships of the line, sixty smaller vessels–five of them French-built–forty transports and six fireships. All told, they carried some 3,500 guns. This was the force which dropped anchor on 7 September in the Bay of Navarino, where Ibrahim was waiting.

The three allied navies hastened to Navarino; but their respective admirals had strict orders not to go directly into battle. They were first to do everything in their power to ‘encourage’ all Turkish and Egyptian warships to return peaceably to Constantinople or Alexandria, though Canning made it clear that, if they persisted in remaining in Greece, the orders of the British admiral, Sir Edward Codrington, ‘were to be enforced, if necessary and when all other means are exhausted, by cannon shot’. Codrington–another veteran of Trafalgar, where he had commanded HMS
Orion
–had been appointed Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean, the previous December. He was the first to reach Navarino, where he was joined by his French colleague, the Comte de Rigny, a few days later. The Russians having not yet arrived, on 25 September the two admirals, accompanied by a few of their senior officers and by Codrington’s son Henry, a midshipman on his father’s ship, had an interview with Ibrahim in his tent just outside the neighbouring town of Pylos.

The conversation, as recorded by Henry Codrington, was polite and cordial, accompanied by quantities of coffee and the smoking of enormous jewel-studded chibouks. It went very much as might have been imagined, with Codrington issuing his courteous warning and Ibrahim agreeing to take no action until he received new instructions from Alexandria and Constantinople. All the same it is a pity that no minutes were taken, for it soon became clear that the two sides had very different ideas of the conclusions. Ibrahim apparently believed that the Greeks as well as the Turks were bound by the temporary armistice; he also assumed that there would be no allied objection to his taking supplies and provisions to the Turkish garrison at Patras.

The Greeks for their part saw no reason to call a halt. They after all had accepted the terms of the Treaty of London; it was the Turks who had rejected them. Thus it was that in the last days of September, while Church was leading an expedition against Patras, Ibrahim sailed for the city with a fleet of no less than forty-eight ships–far more than could have been needed for a simple supply drop. But he never reached it: Codrington was there to block him, and ferocious equinoctial gales did the rest. Ibrahim then changed his tactics. The admirals might frustrate him by sea, but they were powerless to check him on land. Very well, he would continue with the devastation of the Peloponnese.

With the agreement of 25 September now little more than a dead letter, the three admirals–Codrington and de Rigny had now been joined by the Russian, the Dutch-born Rear-Admiral Count Heiden–decided on a show of strength. The ten French naval officers on board the Egyptian ships as advisers were summoned back at once, and in the late morning of 20 October Codrington–in his flagship, the
Asia
–led the three fleets, together numbering eleven ships of the line, eight large frigates and eight smaller vessels, through the narrow entrance to the Bay of Navarino.

Both sides were still under orders not to begin hostilities, but in so tense a situation it was impossible to tell whether any individual action was merely provocative or actually aggressive. Moreover, unlike the allied admirals, the Turkish and Egyptian commanders had agreed on no overall plan to guide them. Sooner or later, battle was inevitable. It began at about two o’clock in the afternoon, and continued until about six. Those four hours saw the last naval battle ever fought in which no steamship took part. More remarkable still was the fact that the ships were all lying at anchor, at close quarters in a small bay; they could manoeuvre only by swinging round on the anchor cables so that the guns along their broadsides could face their chosen target. Dr Howe unforgettably described the scene: