Original subtitles

In western historiography, the Greek peoples are the proverbial titans of antiquity.

Despite this, the modern Greek nation was born in the relatively recent 19th century,

forged by revolutionaries who knew only Turkish domination, and for whom ‘Greece’ was

merely an idea that had to be manifested with blood.

In this special longform video, we will cover the entire story of the Greek War of Independence,

from its origins in shady secret societies, to the years of brutal, harrowing struggle

against the Sultan and his vassals, to the final intervention of the Great Powers, as

Free Hellas becomes the first nation-state in history to achieve full and total independence

from the Ottoman Empire.

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On the 29th of May, 1453, the great bombards of Sultan Mehmed II brought an end to a millennia-old,

Greek-Speaking Eastern Roman Empire.

Henceforth, the overwhelming majority of Greeks were subjects to the Sultans of the house

of Osman. [1] Under the Ottoman regime, Greeks were grouped into the Rum Millet, a self-governing

religious community led by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, which included

all other Orthodox Christian ethnicities in the Empire.

Despite this, Greek-speakers maintained a distinct ethnic identity from their co-religionists,

calling themselves Romioi: Romans.

Indeed, the concept of a ‘Greek’ or ‘Hellenic’ identity, for the most part, had not existed

for centuries, and for early-modern Greek-speakers, the Heroes of Homer were mystical giants from

a distant pagan past, not their direct ancestors.

For over a millennia, the Greek language had been firmly associated with Byzantine Christianity,

so even under the Ottoman Empire, Greeks continued to be identified as ‘Romans’.

Life for Christians under the Ottoman Empire was complex.

On one hand, they were legally an inferior class to Muslims, often subject to arbitrary

prohibitions such as on baring arms and riding mounts, while their word counted for less

than a Muslim’s in most courts of law.

Additionally, they were beholden to the infamous devşirme system, in which Christian boys

were forcibly taken from their homes, and indoctrinated to become the Sultan’s loyal

slave soldiers.[2] On the other hand, Ottoman Christians had relative religious freedom,

while the Ecumenical Patriarchs of Constantinople became highly influential under Ottoman purview.

Osmanli overlordship also saw a rise in Greek merchants and landowners.

By the 18th century, a group of Greek merchants named the Phanariotes had emerged as among

the wealthiest magnates in the entire Mediterranean.[3] This even led to the Phanariotes being appointed

to govern the territories of Moldavia and Wallachia on the Sultan’s behalf.

All of this might give the impression that Ottoman Greece was a thoroughly tamed land,

which it certainly was not.

Indeed, while the cities and plains were pacified, the mountains remained a hotbed of natives

insurgents known as ‘Klephts’, who generally devoted their lives to banditry against the

local Ottoman institutions.[4] In response, the Ottomans hired native collaborators, known

as Armatoloi, to root out the Klephts.

However, loyalties were extremely precarious.

Yesterday’s Armatoloi could become tomorrow’s Klephts, and vice versa.

Another group that consistently defied Ottoman authority were the Maniots.

Living in unconquerable coastal fortress-villages of the titular Mani peninsula[5] , the Maniots

habitually preyed on Ottoman ships, that is, when their many clans weren’t engaged in

mafia-like blood feuds against one another.

Overall, the Klephts, Armatoloi and Maniots were little more than local bandidos. [6]

However, their existence proved that Ottoman Greece always had people perpetually ready

to resist the Ottoman yoke, but this would only snowball into open rebellion when the

time was right.

From the 18th century onwards, the Ottoman Empire was increasingly geopolitically contained

by the growing global influence of European colonial Empires.

The most dangerous of these European powers was Imperial Russia.

In 1768, Catherine the Great declared one of Russia’s many wars on the Turks, and

emerged victorious[7] , securing favorable terms in the 1774 treaty of Küçük Kaynarca,

which included a provision that recognized the Russian Tsars as the symbolic protectors

of all Orthodox Christians in Ottoman lands, this led to increased Russian influence over

Ottoman Greeks.[8] Indeed, at the congress of Vienna in 1815, as the great powers of

Europe met to decide the fate of their continent after Napoleon’s defeat, a young Russian

Ambassador in the service of Tsar Alexander I proved to be one of the single most influential

men in carving out the new world order.

His name was Ioannis Kapodistrias, an ethnic Greek, and while not immediately relevant

to our story right now, he will become exceedingly important later, so remember his name.

Meanwhile, the Imperial Russian port town of Odessa was home to one of the few thriving

Greek communities outside the Ottoman Empire.

It was there, in 1814, that the Filiki Etaireia[9] was formed.

The Etaireia was a secret society that sought to cultivate a new patriotic ethnogenesis

for the modern Greek people by promoting Hellenism: reviving their long-dormant ties to the ancient

Spartans and Athenians, while doing away with the ‘Roman’ label which had long become

associated with Ottoman servitude.

But Filiki Etaireia was more than just a cultural society, for it was also actively dedicated

to the military liberation of their homeland.

In 1817, the society propositioned Kapodistrias to be their leader, but the great diplomat

refused- this gang of radicals, he concluded, would only lead Greece to ruin.

Nevertheless, the Etaireia soon became a vast freemason organization with secret supporters

all across Ottoman Greece.

Agents within the influential Phanariote merchant class gave the society vast economic and social

reach, while initiates among the Klephts and Maniots provided the society with a military

backbone.

In 1820, Filiki Etaireia came under the leadership of one Alexander Ypsilantis, a wealthy aristocrat

of Phanariot stock.

Immediately, Ypsilantis concluded that now was the time to initiate open revolt.

[10] The Ottomans were distracted: the elderly Albanian governor of Epirus was rebelling

against the reigning Sultan Mahmud II, who was doubly distracted dealing with escalating

border tensions with Persia.

Initially, Ypsilantis meticulously drew out detailed war plans, which were to be carefully

orchestrated in the spring of 1821.[11] But, just after new years, a Filiki agent was captured

by Ottoman officials while in possession of compromising documents.

Meanwhile, the Phanariot Prince of Wallachia, Michael Soutsos, had been hedging his bets.

While officially a member of the Etaireia, he had also secretly sent correspondence to

the Sultan informing him of the society’s plans.

Secrecy was out the window, the revolution had to begin now.

Ironically, the first major campaign of the Greek war of independence began in Romania,

for Greek Phanariot ties ran deep there.[12] On February 22nd, 1821, Ypsilantis crossed

the Pruth river into Ottoman Wallachia at the head of a platoon of Greek volunteers

he dubbed the Sacred Band, an allusion to the Theban Hoplites of antiquity.

However, the Wallachian campaign was mired with problems from the start.

Ypsilantis continuously motivated his supporters by promising Russian aid which was never coming[13]

, was perpetually short on funds to pay his troops, and had a deeply dysfunctional relationship

with the local Romanians.

Ultimately, Ypsilantis and his Sacred Band would be crushed by an Ottoman cavalry force

at the Battle of Drăgășani on June 19th, 1821.

[14] The Greek revolution had seemingly stumbled out the gate, but while the northern expedition

had failed, rebellious tensions in Greece proper had boiled over.

Back on March 25th, at the Monastery of Agia Lavra, Gennadios, Archbishop of Patras, raised

the Christian banner of revolt, declaring a national uprising.

[15] The battle for Greece had begun.

In 1821, the Greeks had no regular army.

Most revolutionaries had almost no combat experience, as under Ottoman rule, Christians

had been largely forbidden to bare arms.

Those who were battle-hardened, namely the Maniots, Klephts, and Armatoles, were mostly

accustomed to irregular warfare.

Moreover, the rebels had little internal cohesion, with different cells of insurrectionists each

doing their own thing without any real central authority to guide them[16] . Nevertheless,

a cabal of charismatic commanders ensured that good leadership carried the Greek cause.

Be they Maniot sealords like Petros Mavromichalis, Klepht bandit chiefs like Theodoros Kolokotronis,

or Phanariot aristocrats like Dmitrios Ypsilantis, the younger brother of Alexander, who was

in the Austrian prison.

These men of drastically different social class and background led an unlikely band

of insurrectionists in the name of a common cause.

With that said, revolutionary leaders still clashed with one another as much as they did

with the Ottomans over issues of ideology, influence, or shared plunder.

Nevertheless, within just a week, virtually the entire Morea fell into Greek hands, save

for the cities of Patras and Tripolitsa and some walled fortresses.

While the flames of revolution consumed southern Greece, across the gulf of Corinth, the Christians

of Roúmeli also took up arms.

In these natal stages of the war, the resistance in this region was led by the young warlord

Athanasios Nikolaos Massavetas.

In the years leading up to the rebellion, Athanasios had lived the rugged life of a

Klepht, but before that, he had been a monk at the monastery of St. John the Baptist in

Artotina, which led to his men giving him the title of Diakos: meaning ‘Deacon’.

Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Diakos mustered up a band of some 1,500 rebel warriors.

On the 1st of April, 1821, attacked the town of Livadeia, and after three days of brutal

street battles, managed to expel the Ottoman garrison from the settlement and burn down

the home of Mir Aga, the local Turkish official.

Hursid Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Roumeli, responded swiftly and decisively by raising

an army of 8,000, and putting it in the charge of the Albanian general Omer Vrioni, a particularly

brutal man, who later in the war would be known for rounding up Greek peasants and hunting

them down like wild animals.

From Thessaly, Vrioni advanced south, with the aim of first crushing Diakos’ insurrection,

before crossing the Gulf of Corinth and stamping out the rebellion in the Peloponnese.

Upon learning of Vrioni’s approach, and knowing that the enemy army vastly outnumbered

his own, Diakos retreated to the hot gates immortalized by antiquity, a place none other

than Thermopylae.

There, he split his forces and had them take up defensive positions in the surrounding

area, charging one of his deputies, Dimitrios Panourgias, to hold the heights of Halkomata,

and another, Yiannis Dyovouniotis, to guard the bridge crossing over the steep valley

of Gorgopotamos.

Meanwhile, Diakos himself would make their stand at the Alamana bridge.

After setting up a forward camp near the outskirts of Lamia, Vrioni split his force into three,

and on the 22nd of April, fell upon each of the Roumeliot’s entrenchments.

Dyovouniotis’ force broke upon the initial salvo of gunfire, routing quickly.

At Halkomata, Panourgias held out for longer, but he was wounded in battle, causing his

men to lose heart and also flee.

With these two positions secured, Vrioni amassed his army back into one body, and descended

upon Diakos’ position at Alamana.

Knowing he was about to be hopelessly overrun, Diakos chose not to flee, but to make a final

stand.

As expected, his forces were overwhelmed and he was captured.

Diakos was taken before Vrioni, who, impressed by the Greek renegade’s fighting spirit,

offered to make him an officer in the Ottoman army if he converted to Islam.

Diakos immediately refused, declaring: “I was born a Greek, I shall die a Greek.”

Thus, Athanasios Nikolaos Massavetas was subject to the gruesome execution of impalement.

Although the Deacon’s contribution to the Greek revolution was short lived, his heroic

last stand, in Thermopylae of all places no less, turned him into a martyr, and hardened

the Hellenic resolve to continue the fight.

With Diakos’ rebel cell now crushed, Vrioni continued southwards towards the Peloponnese.

However, while marching down a road heading through the village of Gravia, they encountered

a roadblock, a small band of Greeks, led by a revolutionary captain named Odysseus Androutsos.

Despite only commanding 120 men, and facing an approaching force of nearly 8,000, the

ardent captain Odysseus, named for the Ithacan King of old, decided to fight.

To that end, he and his warriors barricaded themselves in an old roadside tavern, in which

they fortified themselves and prepared to make their stand.

Upon his approach, Vrioni stationed his men in the hills surrounding the building.

From there, he sent in a Sufi Dervish to negotiate with Androutsos, who was immediately shot

dead at the door.

The message was clear: no quarter was to be given or expected, and thus, the battle of

Gravia Inn began.

The contest began when a platoon of Albanian soldiers stormed the building.

In this fierce charge, they managed to break inside, but were immediately eviscerated by

a salvo of Greek bullets.

In his youth, Androutsos had been a member of the court of Ali Pasha, Ottoman Governor

of Ioannina.

There, he had received a formal military education.

Utilizing that experience, Androutsos had trained his men in European-style volley fire,

wherein two columns of riflemen would alternate between firing and reloading, allowing them

to maintain a near constant barrage of gunfire on their foes.

This strategy proved extremely effective, and as Vrioni continued assault after assault

on the Inn, he found his Albanian irregulars time and again repulsed by the constant sting

of bullets shot from behind windows and doorways by the well fortified Hellenes.

Simply shelling the tavern with artillery fire was not currently an option either, for

in the interest of marching faster, Vrioni had left his cannons in Lamia.

Furious at the lack of progress so far, Vrioni ordering his cannons to be brought in from

Lamia.

Androutsos, knowing that the inn could not stand long against artillery fire, and also

that his men’s ammo was finite, opted to withdraw.

Under the cover of night, while the majority of the Ottoman army was asleep, he and his

men slipped out of the inn, and disappeared into the hills, where they would become nigh

impossible to find.

In one day of fighting, 300 of Vrioni’s soldiers lay dead, with another 600 wounded.

Meanwhile, among the Greeks who had held out at Gravia Inn, only six had perished.

After the humiliation he suffered at the hands of a far smaller force, Vrioni’s confidence

was shattered, and he decided to abandon his southwards march and retreat to the island

of Euboea to resupply and reinforce his army.

While the general consensus is that the battle of Gravia Inn was a military stalemate, since

both sides were compelled to retreat, it is still considered a vital tactical victory

for the Greek cause, for by preventing Omer Vrioni’s forces from entering the Peloponnese,

the Hellenes in the south were afforded precious time to consolidate their gains in the region.

In early May of 1821, Theodoros Kolokotronis was appointed as archistrategos: commander

in chief of the Greek rebel forces in the Peloponnese.

The former Bandit Lord was among the few Greeks with actual experience serving in a formal

military, having served as a foreign auxiliary in both the Russian Navy and British Army

during his youth.

Setting his sights on the still Ottoman-held city of Tripolitsa, Kolokotronis positioned

himself to lay siege to the city by establishing troops in the nearby villages of Levidhi,

Piana, Chrysovitsi, Vervena and Valtetsi, effectively creating a semi-circular perimeter

along Tripolitsa’s western approach.

There, Kolokotronis set about establishing order and proper coordination among the rebels.

For the last four hundred years, the Greeks had been forbidden to bear arms, and those

who did fought as fairweather mountain desperados, not soldiers.

Nevertheless, by maintaining vigorous drilling and enforcing ruthless punishments for desertion,

Kolokotronis transformed his men into a coherent army with proper standards of discipline,

unit cohesion, and chain of command.

During this early stage of the rebellion, the Greeks in the Morea had yet to encounter

a significant counteroffensive from an Ottoman force of any significance size, but this was

about to change.

In mid-May, Kâhya Mustafa Bey, the Ottoman Lieutenant Governor of the Morea, arrived

in Tripolitsa with a force of some 1,200 elite cavalry, which was soon supplemented by some

4,000 Albanian infantry.

Believing that a swift and decisive Ottoman victory would nip this upstart peasant revolt

in the bud, Mustafa Bey immediately departed Tripolitsa with his troops, descending upon

the closest of the rebel-controlled villages: Valtetsi.

Defended by a garrison of around 2,300 revolutionaries, Valtetsi had been transformed into a fortress.

The village itself was positioned advantageously for the rebels, being situated on a highly

defensible hill and surrounded on all sides by steep rocky slopes.

Moreover, three ardent redoubts, known as tambouria, had been built at strategic points

along its perimeter.

These were stone walls about three feet high, with apertures for firing and a ditch running

around the inside, allowing the defenders to keep their heads below the parapet for

protection from oncoming gunfire.

Upon approaching Valtetsi, Mustafa split his force into three, with two main strike forces

positioned to the village’s north and south, and a third contingent positioned to the west,

to cut off any potential Greek attempt to escape.

On the 24th of May, the general assault commenced.

An initial attempt of the Albanian infantry to storm the Greek position was repulsed handily,

as the rebels, well hidden behind their tabouria, inflicted heavy losses on their exposed foe.

Meanwhile, the chief strength of Mustafa’s army, his cavalry, was useless, unable to

charge up a rocky slope to assail the fortified position.

Moreover, the Ottoman artillery corp, which some sources claim manned an anemic showing

of only two cannons, were not skilled enough to flush the Greeks from their stony shells.

Despite the futility of Mustafa’s struggle, he continued to order assault after assault,

but time and again his soldiers were repulsed, pinned down by Greek gunfire and unable to

get far enough up the hill to take the rebel positions by storm.

Having been in nearby Chrisovitsi when the contest began, Theodoros Kolokotronis soon

arrived with a band of 700 men, and began harassing the besieging army’s flanks in

a series of lightning raids from the nearby hills.

Recognizing his position was now wholly untenable, Kâhya Mustafa began preparing for a retreat

to Tripolitsa.

However, what began as an orderly withdrawal soon turned into a panicked rout when the

Greeks poured forth from their defensive positions and began openly harassing their demoralized

foes.

When the dust cleared, anywhere between 400 to 600 Ottoman soldiers lay dead, while only

150 Greek lives were lost.

The Battle of Valtetsi was a crucial watershed moment in the Hellenic struggle for independence.

Had the Greeks lost at Valtetsi, the revolution may well have been snuffed out in its crib.

But, largely due to Theodoros Kolokotronis’ military reforms, the Greeks had shown they

were a proper army capable of standing up to the Ottoman military war machine, rather

than a hoi polloi of peasants who could be easily cowed and dispersed.

In 1821, the Ottoman state was ill-prepared to deal with the Greek revolt.

For one thing, the imperial army was in the midst of an identity crisis.

Former Sultan Selim III had attempted to modernize his forces on a western European model, but

this had gotten him deposed by the Janissaries in 1806, who in the centuries since their

formation, had mutated from their original role as an elite corp of loyal slave-soldiers

into an armed special interests group, scheming against any Sultan who threatened their position

of privilege.

In addition to this, the Empire had become increasingly decentralized.

Since the 17th century, vast swaths of land had fallen under the control of the Ayans,

provincial notables, most of whom acted as de facto autonomous overlords of quasi-independent

fiefs[18] . Indeed, when the Greeks raised the banner of revolt, the majority of Ottoman

troops had been tied up putting down the apostasy of Ali Pasha, the 80-year old Albanian ayan

to the immediate north.

The declining effectiveness of the Ottoman army, and the inability of the Sultan to rally

his most powerful vassals were both general factors that led to their inability to quell

the Greek revolt.[19] While most of the Peloponnese and Central

Greece was secured, a cast of hardy islanders fought a fierce naval war upon the shimmering

seas of the Aegean.

In 1821, the Ottoman navy was a juggernaut of modern warships under the centralized leadership

of the Kapudan Pasha: Grand Admiral of the Empire.

In contrast, the Greeks had only an improvised fleet of lightly armed merchant ships.

Nevertheless, they knew the capricious currents of the Aegean better than anyone, so home-field

advantage was on their side.

At the onset of war, the Greek revolutionary fleet was outfitted principally by merchant

ship-owners from the islands of Hydra, Spetses, and Psara[20] . Despite lacking in heavy weaponry

or centralized leadership, the makeshift Greek flotilla was able to find quick success against

the Ottomans.

More often than not, the gulf in firepower was overcome through the use of fireships.

On the 27th of May, the Psariote corsair Dimitrios Papanikolis incinerated an Ottoman two-decker

frigate off the coast of Eressos[21] , the first of many infernos that would define the

revolutionary war at sea.

Greek maritime success was crucial, as it prevented the Ottomans from landing reinforcements

in mainland Greece, isolating the remaining Imperial garrisons there, and contributing

to the fall of Ottoman-controlled cities.

As the revolt raged on, things got very ugly, very quickly.

Throughout the Empire, Greek civilians were indiscriminately slaughtered, particularly

in the capital, where armed Janissaries roamed the streets, killing Christians in cold blood.

On April 10th, Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory V, the temporal leader of Orthodox Christianity,

was suddenly arrested, sentenced to death by the Sultan, and hanged.

Ironically, prior to his execution, Gregory had condemned the revolution, and his unceremonious

death shocked the Christian world.

In Russia, Kapodistrias wrote passionate letters condemning the Sultan, but despite this, no

aid from Russia or the west came.[22] Meanwhile, revolutionary hands were hardly clean either,

and Greek Rebels committed numerous exterminations against Muslim civilians.

On September 23rd, the city of Tripolitsa fell to the forces of Kolokotronis after a

months-long siege, and 8000 Muslim and Jewish civilians within its walls were butchered[23]

. Both Greek and Ottoman forces would continue to perpetuate mass slaughters as the war went

on.

In the first year of the rebellion, there was little to no central authority governing

the Greeks, as different regions operated under their own independent military leaders

and regional governing councils.

However, as the permanence of independence set in, it became necessary to establish the

proper pillars of government that would define the new Greek nation.

In December of 1821, revolutionary leaders of every region of Greece, be they landowners,

merchants, intellectuals, warlords, or archpriests, gathered at the town of Piada.

The architect of this grand conclave was one Alexandros Mavrokordatos, a young intellectual

of aristocratic Phanariote stock.

Educated in Switzerland and Italy, and reputedly able to speak ten languages, Mavrokordatos

was a purebred product of the European enlightenment.[24] As a result, rugged warlords like Kolokotronis

hated his guts.

To them, Mavrokordatos was little more than a milksop pen-pusher.

And, due to his preference towards western European clothing, a borderline foreigner.

Nevertheless, even the most rough-hewn of Klephts saw the necessity of Greek unity,

and so gathered at Piada under Mavrokordatos’ auspices.

For the next month, various chieftains and regional strongmen quarreled incessantly,

but in the end, the contours of nationhood began to form.

A national constitution was written, and a provisional government was established, divided

into a legislative and executive branch, presiding over eight federal ministries.[25] Mavrokordatos

would, of course, serve as the “President of the Executive'', making him the de facto

leader of this new administration.

On the 15th of January, 1822, the national assembly of natal Greek nation collectively

signed an official declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire: “The war we are

waging against the Turks, far from being founded in demagoguery, seditiousness, or the selfish

interest of any one part of the Greek nation, is a national and holy war, the object of

which is to reconquer our rights to individual liberty, property, and honour.”

The dawn of the new year had heralded the dawn of a new nation, the first Hellenic Republic

had been born.

In January of 1822, war with Persia, and rising tensions with Russia had forced the Ottomans

to deploy most of their standing army on their eastern and northern borders[1] , but that

did not mean Sultan Mahmud II had forgotten about his rebellious Greek vassals.

In 1822, the Aegean island of Chios had among the most prosperous maritime industries in

the Mediterranean.

Up until now, the Chiots had stayed out of the revolution, enjoying substantial autonomy

and privileges under the Sultan.

On March 9th, the Seawolf Lykourgos Logothetis claimed the island for the republic, but he

was met with a cold shoulder by the locals, who feared what violence his presence might

bring to their homes.

Unfortunately, they were right to be afraid.

Overstretched the Sultan may have been, but he could not allow the insurrection to spread

to an island so close to his heartland.

Within three weeks, a large fleet commanded by the Kapudan Pasha, Kara Ali, had arrived

on the isle, and what followed was genocide.

Beginning in April, Chios was subject to indiscriminate slaughter of man, woman, and child alike,

with approximately 50,000 killed, and as many enslaved.[2] While the Hellenes extracted

a degree of vengeance when their fireships burned down Kara Ali’s flagship on the night

of June 18th, it was a hollow victory.

The bloodbath at Chios inflamed the western sympathies for the Greek cause which had existed

since the beginning of the war.

Much like today, people in 19th century Europe and America were taught about the cultural

debt that western civilization owed to Greece, and were naturally sympathetic to the modern

Greek cause[3] . Western governments, however, were not so on board with Greek independence.

Still reeling from the French Revolution and its Napoleonic fallout, Europe’s leading

policy-makers were obsessed with maintaining continental stability by preserving the inviolable

authority of Europe’s monarchies, which unfortunately for the Greeks, also included

the Ottoman Sultan.

This however, did not stop many young adventurers from journeying east irrespective of their

governments’ wishes.

These Knights Errant came from all throughout Central and Western Europe and America[4]

, and were collectively known as Philhellenes: romantic lovers of Greek culture.

Of all the Philhellenes, by far the most famous was Lord Gordon Byron, an English aristocrat

and poet, who abandoned his luxurious life to fight directly alongside the Greeks while

donating a considerable amount of his vast family fortune to fund the Hellenic cause[5]

. Following the massacre at Chios, the provisional

president Alexandros Mavrokordatos went on the offensive, taking personal command of

an expeditionary force of 700 men and heading northwards to seize the city of Arta, and

through it, the entire region of Epirus.

This force was accompanied in consort by a small battalion of Philhellenes led by the

Swabian veteran, Karl von Normann-Ehrenfels.

During their northwards advance, Mavrokordatos’ armies made a stop in Missolonghi to secure

provisions for the journey ahead.

There, tensions within the Philhellene Battalion, which was made up of ethnicities across all

over Europe, began to bubble, as a German shot a Frenchman dead in a duel.

Nevertheless, Mavrokordatos’ advance continued unimpeded towards Arta, where his foe was

waiting for him.

After his humiliation at Gravia Inn, the Ottoman-Albanian general Omer Vrioni had returned to the warfront.

In the last few months, he had been campaigning against the Souliots, the war-like Greco-Albanian

Orthodox Christian tribes of the Souli region.

Mustering a force of some 10,000 Turkish and Albanian soldiers, consisting of footmen,

cavalry and artillery, Vrioni bivouacked himself outside of Arta and awaited Mavrokordatos’

approach.

Knowing his force of 700 was hopelessly outnumbered against Vrioni’s massive host, Mavrokordatos

sought to supplement his numbers by drawing men from the warlords in the region.

In the village of Kompoti, he successfully absorbed the guerillas of the local rebel

captain Georgios Varnakiotis, then, in the village of Peta, he recruited the seventy-year-old

lifetime Klepht and Armotolos, Gogos Bakolas.

Some days later, a contingent of the aforementioned Souliots, led by the hardened war captain

Marcos Botsaris, arrived on the scene.

After these supplements, Mavrokordatos’ army numbered around 2,000: larger than before,

but still outnumbered by Vrioni’s host five to one.

Moreover, the reliability of many of Mavrokordatos’ troops were soon brought into question, in

particular, the septuagenarian Gogos Bakolas.

The elderly Bakolas had spent many years working with the Ottoman regime as an Armotolos before

the revolution.

Even now, he was still openly engaging in talks with the Turks, and when confronted

about this, he declared he was simply trying to trick the enemy into providing his men

with food and supplies, and that he was totally devoted to the Greek cause.

Knowing that taking Arta itself was unrealistic given the gulf in manpower between himself

and Vrioni, Mavrokordatos opted instead to take up a defensive position and wait for

the enemy to come to him.

To that end, he chose to make his stand at the village of Peta, which was sandwiched

by steep ridges both behind and in front of it, giving the defenders the uncontested high

ground.

By the 15th of June, the revolutionary force was in position.

On the ridge behind the village, the right was occupied by Gogos Bakolas’ men, while

Varnakiotis and his lieutenants took up the center, and Markos Botsaris’ troops stationed

themselves on the left.

On the forward ridge, the center was occupied by Mavrokordatos’ Greek regulars, flanked

by Greek volunteers from the British-controlled Ionian islands to the right, and the Philhellenes

under Karl von Normann-Ehrenfells to the left.

On the dawn of July 16th, the Ottoman host appeared as an 8,000 line of soldiery along

the horizon, and the battle of Peta began.

Organizing his troops into a huge crescent formation, Vrioni ordered his men to advance

upon the revolutionaries’ position.

During the approach, 600 elite Ottoman cavalry on the right wing stormed towards the forward

ridge while raining a withering hail of bullet fire on their quarry.

Despite this, the Philhellenes and Greek regulars displayed remarkable discipline, holding their

ground against the oncoming salvo, and holding their fire until the Ottoman riders were barely

a hundred paces away, upon which time the Greeks and Philhellenes released a sequence

of deadly volleys which shredded through the enemy cavalry point blank, decimating them

and forcing them to retreat.

Many of the Italian, German and French Philhellenes were veterans of the Napoleonic wars, and

the tactics and discipline they learned on the battlefields of Austerlitz and Waterloo,

and subsequently taught to the Greeks, were proving their worth on the hills of Peta.

While the defenders on the forward ridge were using western European methods to repulse

their foe, the warlords on the back ridge employed traditional Greek tactics to do the

same.

Within the next two hours, an assault by the left wing of the Ottoman crescent was handily

repulsed by the Greek and Souliot irregulars on the back ridge, who had entrenched themselves

in earthen Tabouria, the same type of fortification which had won the day at Valtetsi.

Simultaneously, the Philhellene vanguard continued to repulse the Ottoman right’s attempts

to storm their position.

All was going well for the Greeks, but then the scales began to tip.

After yet another failed attempt to storm the back ridge, a small group of Ottoman-Albanian

foot soldiers did not retreat, but instead took cover in a hilly bluff overlooking Bakolas’

position.

Noticing that Bakolas had left a portion of his section of the ridge unguarded, the Albanians

scaled the hill, fiercely carving a foothold upon it.

Their positions compromised, Bakolas’ forces began to withdraw, and before long, a flood

of Ottoman soldiers followed the initial Albanian vanguard, rolling up the entire rear ridge

from the North, soon overrunning Varnakiotis’ and Botsaris’ positions, forcing them to

flee the field.

Now surrounded, the Philhellenes and Greek regulars on the forward ridge attempted a

disciplined and orderly withdrawal, but they were cut off by the Ottoman cavalry, and cut

down nearly to a man.

To this day, historians argue whether Gogos Bakolas was a traitor, and whether or not

he deliberately left his section of the ridge unguarded to sabotage the Greek cause.

Whatever the case, the result was the same: the Battle of Peta was a decisive defeat for

the revolution, a blow to the reputation of the provisional President Mavrokordatos, and

a significant roadblock to the natal Hellenic nation’s ambitions to liberate the northern

plains of Greece.

Expansion into Epirus was a failure, but in other theatres, the Greeks experienced more

success.

Athens had been under siege since the beginning of the war, but in June of 1822, the Ottoman

garrison holding out in the Acropolis surrendered.

The city was a far cry from the glory days of Pericles, having become something of a

squalid backwater in modern times, but its symbolic significance to the Hellenic nation

was not lost to those who fought to liberate it.

[8] The following month, a punitive Ottoman expedition

led by one Mahmud Dramali Pasha advanced into revolutionary Greece with a massive, 23,000

strong army at his back, aiming to bring the Peloponnese to heel.

Dramali’s campaign began promisingly when he scoured Thebes and captured Corinth, but

before long, his expedition would become one of the worst Ottoman military disasters in

history.

The following month, a punitive Ottoman expedition led by one Mahmud Dramali Pasha advanced into

revolutionary Greece with a massive, 23,000 strong army at his back, aiming to bring the

Peloponnese to heel.

Dramali’s campaign began promisingly when he scoured Thebes and captured Corinth, but

before long, his expedition would become one of the worst Ottoman military disasters in

history.

Thus far, every Greek warband in his path had scattered and fled, unwilling to take

on Dramali’s massive host, which was the largest army assembled in the Peloponnese

since the Ottomans had driven the Venetians out of the region in 1715.

Leaving a sizable garrison in Corinth, Dramali Pasha continued his southwards advance into

Argolis, where finally, he encountered some resistance.

All the crops in the hinterlands in the plains of Argolis had been burned, a scorched earth

tactic which complicated the already burdensome task of keeping his massive army, alongside

their thousands of horses, livestock and pack animals fed and watered.

Moreover, upon approaching the Argos Citadel itself, the Ottomans found it garrisoned by

a certain Dmitrios Ypsilantis, who despite commanding only a meagre 700 or so men, was

determined to make a stand.

Ypsilantis knew he could not hold Argos citadel indefinitely, as he lacked the manpower, and

the fortress had no water supply.

Nevertheless, when Dramali sent envoys to negotiate his surrender, Ypsilantis showered

them with gifts of luxurious foodstuffs to make it seem like his men were absolutely

confident in their ability to repel the enemy, being so well provisioned they could afford

to just give stuff away to their foes.

Of course, this was just a ruse, and after holding out against Dramali’s shelling for

twelve days, Ypsilantis was forced to withdraw.

On the 3rd of August, he deployed a small contingent of his men to sally out of the

citadel and harass Dramali’s warcamp, while the rest of his men used this distraction

to evacuate and retreat to the hills.

By playing for time, Ypsilantis had done his part, and with that, he passed the baton on

to Theodoros Kolokotronis, who would ultimately oversee the utter destruction of Dramali’s

army.

While Ypsilantis’ defenders were keeping the invaders at bay in Argos, Kolokotronis

had been busy.

Dramali’s massive army may have thrown most of the Peloponnese into a panic, but when

Kolokotronis, a fearless war hero, announced he had been put in charge of defeating it,

it stiffened the Greek’s resolve considerably.

After putting out a call to assemble, thousands of guerillas had poured out from the hills

and gathered at the village of Myloi, swelling his original force of 2,000 warriors to nearly

8,000.

While Ypsilantis had been bogging down Dramali’s army at the Argos Citadel, Kolokotronis had

been afforded precious time to get his troops into position, stationing contingents of loyal

sharpshooters in the narrow mountain passes between Argolis and the Isthmus of Corinth,

cutting off any Ottoman retreat.

Meanwhile, the majority of the old Klepht’s guerillas took up positions in the hills and

bluffs along the southern approach to Tripolitsa, which was presumed to be Dramali’s next

target.

From Argos citadel, the Ottoman host did indeed begin marching southwards to Tripolis, but

already, their problems were mounting.

At this point, the invaders had already eaten all their cattle, and the Greek’s scorched

earth policy meant living off the land was not an option.

Morale in the army plummeted, and Turkish officers began quarreling with one another

over increasingly dwindling supplies.

Moreover, the plains south of Argolis citadel were dense with vineyards, ditches and intersecting

water-courses which proved to be extremely unfavourable terrain for a large and cumbersome

army.

Inversely, such conditions were ideal for Greek guerrilla fighters, whose snipers began

taking a heavy toll on Dramali’s floundering force, picking off Ottoman foraging parties

as they attempted, in vain, to find food and water for themselves and their pack animals.

Eventually, Dramali concluded that any further southwards advance was futile, so he ordered

a withdrawal.

In early August, the Ottoman expedition began its march northwards, towards the mountains

which separated the plains of Argolis from the Isthmus of Corinth.

However, in his haste to carve southwards, Dramali had, through an incredible lack of

foresight, left these mountain passes unguarded, and due to this, Kolokotronis had since moved

his troops into position, cutting off Dramali’s only viable path of retreat into friendly

territory.

There were three main passages through the mountains, the first was a deep ravine known

as the Dervenakia, where Kolokotronis stationed himself with 1,000 men.

The other two consisted of two routes which bypassed the village of Agios Georgios and

the village of Agionori, which were guarded respectively by Kolokotronis’ cousin, Nikataras,

and a certain Dmitros Ypsilantis, both of whom commanded 3,000 men between them.

On the 5th of August, Dramali began his breakout by sending his Albanian infantry ahead.

These auxiliaries traveled fast and light, which allowed them to cut over the mountains

themselves, bypassing Kolokotronis’ bottlenecks.

As such, they arrived in Corinth safely, suffering virtually no losses.

Unfortunately for Dramali, the rest of his army consisted of cavalry, or was otherwise

burdened with camels and baggage wagons which had no choice but to travel through the exposed

mountain passes.

On August 6th, the Pasha sent about half of his remaining force, consisting predominantly

of his light cavalry, to sweep through the Dervenakia pass.

As they advanced upon Kolokotronis’ position, Nikitaras moved to intercept, pouring boulders

and felling trees into the ravine to halt the horsemen’s advance.

Then, when the cavalry came within sight, the Greek mountaineers released a withering

hail of fire from their elevated positions which shredded through horse and rider alike,

then charged down the hillsides, engaging their shocked enemy in a brutal melee.

Many of the Ottoman cavalry abandoned their mounts and attempted to flee up the ravine,

but they were all picked off by Greek snipers in concealed positions.

For this brutal and total victory, Nikitaras was later given the macabre epithet of Turkophagos:

the Turk Eater.

Two days later, Dramali himself, accompanied by what remained of his army, advanced up

the eastern path through the Agionori.

Here, they ran into the forces of Ypsilantis, who was no doubt eager to exact a measure

of revenge for Argos Citadel.

Meanwhile, the whirlwind Nikitaras force-marched his men back across the mountains to join

Ypsilantis in the fray.

A deadly salvo of gunfire rained down upon Dramali’s column from concealed positions

amidst elevated cliffs, sowing chaos and terror among the Ottomans, before the Greeks once

more charged down from the hills, shredding their foe in a one-sided hand to hand affair.

During this struggle, the rebels came mere inches within Dramali himself, who had to

discard his own sword and turban to escape with his life.

Indeed, the Pasha, alongside a handful of his men, managed to break through the Greek

trap and make it to Corinth, but it came at the cost of over 3/4ths of his own army.

Of the 23,000 men originally under Mahmud Dramali Pasha’s command, only 6,000 survived

his doomed expedition.

The annihilation of Dramali’s army was perhaps the single biggest and most one-sided military

triumph of the Greek revolution, and was so impactful to Greek morale that, to this day,

“Dramali’s disaster” is proverbial with ‘Great Defeat’ in the Greek language.

The victory at Dervenakia was a triumph for the Hellenic cause, but it cast a long shadow,

as thinly veiled rivalries began to boil to the surface.

After his defeat at the battle of Peta, President Mavrokordatos had lost prestige, while in

contrast, Kolokotronis star was ever rising after his annihilation of Dramali’s army.

This exacerbated a long-growing rivalry between the central government, led by Mavrokordatos,

and the military leaders, led by Kolokotronis, which stemmed from the central government's

attempts to rein in warlords who had been operating functionally independently without

any governmental oversight since the beginning of the revolution.

By the end of 1822, these tensions were threatening to come to a head.

Mavrokordatos’ one year term as provisional president of the Hellenic Republic was about

to expire, and the national assembly was overdue to meet, not just to elect a more permanent

president, but also to fill a sweeping array of legislative and executive governmental

positions.

On April 10th, 1823, both factions convened at the town of Astros for the voting.

Surprisingly, it went fairly smoothly.

While Mavrokordatos was not re-elected, he was appointed as head of the legislative body.

The Maniot sealord, Petros Mavromichalis, was elected president in his stead, and in

a deliberate effort to reign in Kolokotronis and his war captains, the old Klepht was offered

the position of vice-president of the National Assembly, which after some cajoling, he accepted[11]

. This was fortunate, for in the summer of 1823, the Greeks were reminded of their common

enemy as Mustafa Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Shkoder, advanced across the Pindos Mountains.

Mustafa’s advance was met by the Souliots- Orthodox Albanians from Epirus.

Their leader, Markos Botsaris, martyred himself at the battle of Karpenisi, while his Epirote

army, a tenth of the Ottomans’ in number, killed thousands of the invaders[12] . Nevertheless,

the Pasha’s advance continued, joining forces with the infamous Omer Vironi and laying siege

to the Greek stronghold of Missolonghi.

However, this encirclement would be broken when the Souliots, who had since joined in

the city's defence, managed to plunder the Ottoman food supply, forcing them to retreat.

The day belonged to the Greeks, but the triumph at Missolonghi was a victory that would bear

bitter fruit, for as Ottoman incursions into the Peloponnese had stopped for the time being,

the Hellenes no longer had a common enemy to unite them.

Theodoros Kolokotronis had initially joined the senate of the Hellenic Republic as Vice

President in order to help the central government control the independent warlords of the Peloponnese.

But soon, the old ex-bandits began to chafe in his new role, mainly because he was losing

the veneration of his men, who had now begun to see him less as a great warrior, and more

as just another politician, like that four-eyed, westernized pantywaist, Mavrokordatos.

In October 1823, Kolokotronis resigned from the Executive, officially severing his pretense

of cooperation with the central government.

Then, when the state finance minister, an open supporter of Kolokotronis, was dismissed

from his position for imposing an unconstitutional government monopoly on salt, the Greek body

politic finally broke.

In retaliation for this firing, Kolokotronis’ son, Panos, raided the Senate in Argos while

it was in session, forcing them to disperse with threats of beatings.[13] In retaliation

for this, Mavrokordatos, still the rudder behind the ship of state, oversaw the dismissal

of President Mavromichalis, who was Kolokotronis’ last major supporter in the central government.

Thus, while Mavrokordatos appointed a new puppet, Georgios Koundouriotis, to be his

president, Kolokotronis and Mavromichalis, the foremost military titans of the Greek

revolution, started a rogue government in Tripolis.

Amusingly, one way in which the two rival governments undermined one another was in

their competing attempts to win the affections of the regions’ biggest sugar daddy, Lord

Byron[14] . As Mavromichalis, Mavrokordatos and Kolokotronis each had letters written

to the British aristocrat, pleading for his money while persuading him not to donate to

their political rivals, Byron became utterly exasperated with the disunity of the Greek

cause.

This aggressive courtship would end when, some months after he personally joined the

defense of Missolonghi against the forces of Mustafa Pasha, the eccentric British tycoon

passed away after a long bout of violent fever.

Perhaps the best thing Byron could have done for the Greek cause was die[15] , for it gave

the young Hellenic nation a foreign martyr, and helped turn the needle of diplomacy among

the Great Powers of Europe further towards supporting the Hellenic cause.

Nevertheless, at the time of his death, the Hellenes were still a small, poor, and bitterly

divided people.

Indeed, the quasi-cold war between Kolokotronis and Mavrokordatos’ factions would soon turn

hot.

Initially, the central government was able to mostly bloodlessly seize the cities of

Argos, Corinth, and Tripolis.

Then, in June 1824, Panos Kolokotronis surrendered Navplion to the Koundouriotis regime.

This effectively ended the first civil war, but that following autumn, a minor revolt

broke out in Kiparissia over governmental taxes on local produce, which sparked a second

conflict[16] . This one was bloodier, resulting in the central government killing Panos Kolokotronis

and ultimately capturing Theodoros himself, imprisoning him in a fortified monastery on

Hydra Isle.

Following this, Mavrokordatos reassumed the presidency of an ostensibly reunited Hellenic

Republic, but his victory would be a pyrrhic one, for the young Greek state was weaker

and more impoverished than it had ever been, and on the other end of the Mediterranean

in Egypt, a vast armada was forming.

Back in 1798, when a certain Corsican artillery officer had launched an invasion of Egypt,

an ethnic Albanian Pasha named Mehmed Ali played a crucial role in repelling his Grande

Armée.

In subsequent years, Mehmed Ali would navigate treacherous political waters to become the

governor of the Ottoman Province he had helped liberate.

Like so many other provincial notables across the Empire, the Albanian lord would take advantage

of the declining power of the Sultanate to establish a quasi-independent fief in his

new realm, and by virtue of sitting on the richest breadbasket in the Mediterranean,

quickly became perhaps the most powerful ruler in the near east, an Ottoman vassal in name

alone.[17] Meanwhile in Istanbul, Sultan Mahmud II was

growing increasingly infuriated at his Greek quagmire, and he needed help.

It may have pricked his pride to plead a vassal for aid in putting down what was essentially

a small peasant rebellion in his poorest province, but at this rate, he had no choice.

However, Mehmed Ali’s aid wouldn’t come free.

So it was that the renegade Pasha was promised that whatever land he helped subdue would

be added to his already massive autonomous realm, and with that, Egypt entered the fray.

Mehmed Ali first intervened in the Greek insurrection in 1822, when the Sultan promised him Crete

in return for crushing the rebels on that island.

Although the Cretans put up a fierce resistance, they were ultimately smothered by the end

of 1823, and Crete was restored to nominal Ottoman control as a part of the Albanian

Pasha’s de facto Egyptian empire.

Buoyed by the first major success against the Greeks since the rebellion’s onset,

the Sultan leaned on Mehmed Ali further, promising him control over the Peloponnese in exchange

for the total annihilation of that nucleus of rebel activity.

On July 19th, 1824, 450 warships and transport vessels ferrying 14,000 European-trained infantrymen

and cavalry, perhaps the first truly modern army to be raised in Ottoman lands[18] , set

sail from Alexandria.

At its head was Ibrahim Pasha, the eldest son of Mehmed Ali, an experienced warrior

battle-hardened from putting down rebellions in Arabia.

Ibrahim navigated his armada into the Aegean, leaving a wake of Hellene blood behind him.

The islands of Kasos and Psara were subdued quickly, a devastating blow to the Greeks,

who relied heavily on them for naval power.

Nevertheless, the Hellenic republic, which was at the time still mired in the Kolokotronis-Mavrokordatos

civil war, did nothing to stop Ibrahim’s advance.[19]

On February 11th, 1825, the Egyptians finally made landfall in the Morea.

Seeing Ibrahim as no different than the likes of Dramali or Mustafa Pasha, both of whom

they’d handily repulsed, the Greeks arrogantly disregarded the threat.

A fatal mistake, for Ibrahim possessed a ruthless logistical and tactical genius the likes of

which the rebel nation had never seen.

Within a few weeks, Ibrahim had conquered the old Venetian Fortress of Methoni, while

the Hellenic Republic, still busy finishing up its second civil war, did little to resist.

The Egyptians then advanced on to take the twin fortresses of old and new Navarino.

Having finally subdued Kolokotronis by this point, the Hellenic government finally put

up a serious resistance, but their 7,500 strong army was crushed outside the village of Kremmydia

on April 19th.

The Fortresses of Navarino fell a month later[20] , forcing the Greeks to come to the bitter

realization that the Egyptian foes they had underestimated were, infact, far tougher and

more professional than the mostly Albanian mercenaries they had been fighting previously.

[21] After his initial success, Ibrahim pushed

deeper into the Peloponnese at a blitzkrieging rate.

Now in a panic, the central Hellenic government quickly released Kolokotronis from his imprisonment,

gave him full amnesty, and made him commander-in-chief of the Greek forces.

This was no time to keep the republic’s best general behind bars.

Now reconciled with his former political enemies, Kolokotronis managed to slow Ibrahim’s advance

through guerilla tactics, and even deter him from advancing on the provisional capital

of Nafplion.

However, the Egyptian advance could not be stopped entirely, and by the end of 1825,

most of Peloponnesus' major towns were back in Ottoman hands.

Meanwhile at sea, the formerly deadly Greek navy was becoming less effective as Ottoman

and Egyptian methods adapted to their fireship techniques.

By now, only a few strongholds remained in Hellenic hands, one of which would be the

stage of the most iconic battle of the entire war.

Twice had the town of Missolonghi repelled Ottoman siege attempts, the second time famously

resulting in the martyrdom of Lord Gordon Byron, English Greekaboo supreme.

When Ibrahim Pasha’s Egyptian regulars had landed in the south and began their fiery

march through the Peloponnese, they had bypassed Missolonghi, seeing it as strategically insignificant

compared to the fortresses at Methoni and Navarino.

However, while Sultan Mahmud II was mostly content to let his autonomous Egyptian vassals

spearhead this latest phase of the war effort, he would not have his own forces sit idly

by on the sidelines.

So it was that the sublime porte appointed one 45-year-old Kütahı Pasha as head of

all Ottoman land forces in Rumelia[1] , and told him in simple terms that either Missolonghi

would fall, or the head would from his shoulders.

Thus, while Ibrahim Pasha was conquering his way through Morea, Kütahı Pasha assembled

an army in Jannina [Ioannina] and crossed the Pindos mountains in Spring of 1825, arriving

before the walls of Missolonghi by April.

[2] The town was defended by a garrison of some

3,000 men.

It was under the loose overall command of the Souliot captain Notis Botsaris, and composed

mostly of Greek and Souliot Albanian warriors, alongside a small contingent of Italian and

German Philhellenes.

In comparison, Kütahı Pasha had some 20,000 men at his disposal, 8,000 of these were professional

soldiers, mostly of Turkish, Muslim Albanian or Bosnian stock, although some wild Cossack

mercenaries from the Danube region numbered among them.

The rest were labourers and slaves taken from the local Christian peasantry.

Soon, the battle was joined, but although Kütahı outnumbered his foe greatly, he would

find Missolonghi to be an extremely tough nut to crack.

The town was protected by 6,000 feet of thick earthworks prefaced with a large moat and

stationed with strategic gun emplacements.[3] By sea, it was protected by a shallow lagoon

and sandbanks which made it treacherous for Ottoman warships to directly approach.

Indeed, Kütahı’s initial attempts to breach the town on both fronts were thwarted.

Although Ottoman sappers were able to trigger a massive explosion underneath the earthworks

on August 2nd, the following charge to take the ramparts, led by the Cossack mercenaries,

was repelled by the Greeks.

Meanwhile, attempts by the Ottoman navy to blockade the town by sea also ended in failure

when the cowardly Kapudan Pasha, Khusrev, retreated at the sight of Greek fire ships,

fearing being caught in the shallows and trapped in the inferno.

This allowed Missolonghi to continue receiving fresh supplies by boat.

[4] Despite all this, Kütahı Pasha refused to back down, and since his head was on the

line, retreat was simply not an option.

However, help was needed, and so Kütahı opened communication with the other invader

in the Peloponnese who thus far had enjoyed far more success against the Greeks.[5] In

November of 1825, the Ibrahim Pasha’s Egyptians arrived at Missolonghi, renewing the naval

blockade by sea, and bringing in fresh professional infantry and artillery by land.

From here, the stubborn town’s days were numbered.

Within the next few months, the Greek ships resupplying and defending Missolonghi were

scattered or sunk by the modern Egyptian fleet, cutting off the town’s main lifeline.

Still, the defenders refused to surrender, but theirs was a futile struggle.

By March, they had begun to succumb to diseases born of malnutrition, and realized that the

walls that protected them were soon to be their tomb.

[6] Faced with no other option, Notis Botsaris

and the other Hellenic leaders made a plan to break through the Ottoman encirclement

and escape, abandoning the city itself, but allowing the men within to live to fight another

day.

This would amount to a dramatic, but ultimately disastrous final charge.

On the 10th of April, the defenders burst forth from the town and began carving their

way through the Egyptian-Ottoman lines, but they were ultimately overrun.

The Greeks and Souliots were slaughtered, and the invaders poured into the town, massacring

its civilian male population and enslaving the women.

For the Hellenic Republic, it was the single greatest military disaster of the war.

After Missolonghi, the Hellenes were hanging on by a thread, but they were hanging on,

for a handful of fortresses were still in revolutionary hands: like the provisional

capital of Nafplion, and the Acropolis at Athens.

But the pressure was still on.

Three months after Misslonghi’s fall, Kütahı Pasha’s army arrived at Athens and dug in

for a siege.

Ibrahim and his Egyptian land forces, meanwhile, roamed the Morea with impunity, burning villages

and carrying off grain and livestock.

However, the Egyptians had sustained heavy losses over the many battles he had won, rendering

them without the manpower to take the remaining Hellenic fortresses.[7] Consequently, the

old bandit Kolokotronis continued to be a thorn in Ibrahim’s side.

Indeed, beyond the plains and in the hills, rebel activity was still strong, and Ibrahim’s

Arab corps ventured into them at the peril of being picked off by snipers. [8]

This inability to take mountainous territory was put on full display in June of 1826, when

Ibrahim made the ill-fated decision to lead his armies into the Mani Peninsula.

Even before the revolution, Mani had never really been under Ottoman occupation, and

when Ibrahim sent an envoy who offered the Maniots death or surrender, the neo-Spartans

sent him back with a reply which would have made their ancestor King Leonidas proud: “From

the few Greeks of Mani and the rest of the Greeks who live there to Ibrahim Pasha.

We received your letter in which you try to frighten us, saying that if we don't surrender,

you'll kill the Maniots and plunder Mani.

That's why we are waiting for you and your army.

We, the inhabitants of Mani, sign and wait for you.”

Sure enough, the Egyptians found bitter weeds in Mani.

The fortified mountain towns defied him, and at the citadel of Vergas, his 7,000 strong

army was repulsed by 2,000 Maniot warriors and 500 assorted refugees from the rest of

the Morea.

More humiliating on his part was his attempt to pinsir Vergas by the bay of Diros, which

had no warrior garrison.

There, his soldiers were repulsed by a surprisingly fierce counter-charge by the local elders

and women, the latter of whom became honourifically known as the “Amazons of Diros”.

Thwarted once, Ibrahim launched a second invasion in August, but again he was pushed back, this

time at the town of Polyaravos, where the Maniots killed 400 Egyptians, losing only

nine men in the process.

The continued struggle of Kolokotronis and the resistance of the Maniots were ultimately

small victories compared to the loss of Missolonghi and most of the Peloponnese.

However, they were important nonetheless, for they proved that Ibrahim Pasha’s Egyptians,

who had been virtually undefeated up until this point, were not invincible.

Moreover, despite the heavy beating it had received, the revolution was still alive.

Although public opinion in Western Europe had always been sympathetic to the Greek cause,

the actual governments of those countries were extremely reluctant to get involved,

seeing the Hellenic rebels as a threat to the political security of the continent.

However, by 1826, factors both internal and external were increasingly pushing the great

colonial powers of Europe towards direct military intervention on the Greeks’ behalf.

By that point, public outcry against the slaughter of the Christians of Greece by Islamic soldiers

was becoming too hard to ignore.

This sentiment had snowballed after western Philhellenes like Lord Byron began martyring

themselves fighting for the Greek cause, and continued to do so after Missolonghi, as an

unprecedented outpouring of sympathy from the romantic, educated masses of enlightenment

Europe grew into a force which governments could not ignore.

Throughout the west, lobbyist societies began popping up to support the Greek cause, such

as the Société philanthropique en faveur des Grecs in France, which was patronized

by the powerful Duke of Orleans.

Concurrently, painters, composers and playwrights utilized their voices to engender sympathy

for the Greek cause.

[9] All over Europe, Philhellenism became a cultural phenomenon which unified diverse

swaths of European society, a factor which eventually helped push their governments to

action.

As Britain and France inched ever closer to sending armies into Greece, individual Briton

adventurers continued to go off to fight of their own accord, but no longer were these

philhellenes young students or romantic lordlings, but high-ranking, decorated war heroes.

Indeed, after Ibrahim’s devastating military invasion, Greek leadership was in disarray,

and as such, the struggling republic consented to allow members of the British military aristocracy

to lead the Hellenic army and navy.

Back in 1825, the London Greek Committee, the foremost Philhellene lobbyists in England,

secured the private services of one Lord Thomas Cochrane.

[10] Long time viewers of our channel will be intimately familiar with Lord Cochrane

and his antics: a Scottish madman who had perhaps the single deadliest sea captain of

the 19th century, having made mincemeat of Frances’ warships during the Napoleonic

wars, only to run afoul of the British government and then go into exile in South America where

he played a critical role in helping Chile, Peru and Brazil win their respective independence

wars.

[11] As Cochrane was sent to lead the Greeks by sea, so too was his counterpart, Richard

Church appointed to lead them by land.

Church was an Irishman with roots in the Greek community.

During the Napoleonic wars, he had led an auxiliary regiment of the British army, composed

of ethnic Greek light infantry, to take the French-occupied Ionian islands.[12] Serving

in Churches’ Greek regiment during this time was a younger Theodoros Kolokotronis.

Indeed, the old warlord had great respect for his former British commander, and when

Church arrived to command the Greek army, Kolokotronis is said to have remarked: “At

long last!

Our father is come.”

The two Britons immediately had a unifying impact on the Greek war effort.

After Ibrahim’s campaign of destruction, the Hellenic government had fallen back into

their old rivalries.

Mavrokordatos, the old ship of state, had gone into retirement after the fall of Missolonghi,

and in his absence, the national assembly he built then fought a civil war to unify

had split again into two rival factions of bickering politicians and warlords, based

in Aegina and Kastri, respectively.

When Church and Cochrane landed on Greek soil in March of 1827, they both refused to accept

office until the squabbling factions settled their differences, which they eventually did.

With the Greeks now about as unified as they were capable of being, the two Britons took

their respective positions as Admiral and Commander in Chief of the Hellenic Republic,

and went on the offensive.

Their first mission was to relieve the Acropolis at Athens, which for nearly a year had been

under siege by Kütahı Pasha’s forces.

This, however, would not go as planned.

Ironically, while Cochrane and Church were capable of unifying the Greek factions, they

could not stand one another, and were constantly butting heads.

Their utter inability to coordinate or cooperate led to Kütahı leading a successful sortie

against Cochrane’s advance force, which killed over 1,500 Greek soldiers.

Seeing their relief army annihilated, the small garrison holding out in the Acropolis

surrendered, and Athens fell back into Ottoman hands.

It was yet another heavy setback for the Greek cause, but this was still not the end, for

on the great stage on which the concert of Europe performed, the gears of geopolitics

had begun to turn.

[13] Where Britain’s best military minds had

failed the Greeks, their politicians would succeed.

As much as the eventual intervention of the Great Powers in the Greek war of Independence

was influenced by public sympathy, the core deciding factor was born of realpolitik.

By the 1820s, there was a Russian-sized elephant in the room.

The Tsar’s influence in Ottoman affairs had been increasing since the 1770s, and as

Western Europe watched Istanbul’s territory gradually shrink at St. Petersburgs’ expense,

an “Eastern Question” arose: what would happen to the Balance of Power in Europe if

the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and Russia doubled its territory as a result?

Fears of Russian expansionism had been one of the reasons western Europe operated on

a strict policy of non-intervention when the Greeks initially revolted, for they hoped

that if the Sultan crushed the rebellion quickly, then Russia would not take advantage of the

chaos to gain more land at the Ottomans’ expense.

However, the rebellion was now in year five, and every extra day it fought on increased

western fears that Russia would finally involve themselves, fears which were exacerbated when

the geopolitically conservative Tsar Alexander I died in 1825 and was replaced by his much

more ambitious brother, Nicholas I, who immediately started putting the screws on Sultan Mahmud,

forcing him to sign the convention of Akkerman in October of 1826, which greatly increased

Russian influence over the Ottoman-controlled Romanian principalities.[14]

This put the powers that be in Western Europe into political overdrive as they scrambled

to ensure that Greece would not ultimately become a Russian-dominated satellite, as all

Ottoman territories in Europe seemed on trajectory to be.

Thus, Britain launched itself into Greek affairs, on the subtext of containing Russia, and the

pretext of stopping the still-at-large Ibrahim Pasha from carrying out an alleged “Barbarization

project” in which he supposedly intended to enslave and deport the Peleponneses’

entire Christian population and replace them with Egyptian farmers.

[15] As it turned out, Britain and Russia would

not have to butt heads over Greece.

Largely due to the efforts of Foreign Secretary George Canning, the two superpowers came to

an agreement in which, for the sake of global stability, they would jointly mediate the

ongoing conflict between the Hellenes and the Sultan.

France, meanwhile, had been initially reluctant, but soon also joined in on the negotiations.

[16] The ultimate result was the Treaty of London, signed on July 6th, 1827.

In it, the three greatest powers in Europe finally declared their official support for

the Greek cause, sponsoring the creation of an internally autonomous Hellenic state, albeit

one that would still pay tribute to, and recognize as overlord, the Sultan in Istanbul.

The Treaty of London was engineered to be a conciliatory resolution for all parties

involved.

The Greeks would get their independence, albeit in a limited capacity, while the Ottomans

would nominally maintain their territorial integrity.

The Russians, who per the treaty of Küçük Kaynarca were the nominal protectors of all

Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, would still be able to sink the claws of influence

into this new Greek nation.

Meanwhile, the British and French had seemingly solved their “eastern question” by preventing

the Ottomans’ collapse and containing Russian expansion, all while appeasing their ravenous

philhellene citizenry by aiding the Christian Greeks.

There was only one problem, the Ottoman Sultan completely rejected the terms.

The bluff had been called, and the powers of Europe would now either have to drop the

matter, or enforce their demands by might.

They chose the latter, and so it was that in the summer of 1827, a joint Anglo-French

and Russian fleet, composed of the finest warships in the world, sailed for the Ionian

sea.

The Greek war of Independence was about to become an international war.

In the summer of 1827, Britain, France and Russia had signed a joint agreement to establish

Greece as an autonomous nation under the loose suzerainty of the Ottoman Sultan.

However, defiant in the face of outside nations interfering in internal civil unrest within

his Empire, Sultan Mahmud II unilaterally rejected this, and geared up to confront the

great powers.

On the 7th of September, 1827, the combined fleets of the Sublime Porte and Ibrahim’s

modern Egyptian armada anchored in the bay of Navarino in anticipation of the arrival

of their new foes.

Sure enough, less than a week later, a British fleet under one Admiral Edward Codrington

anchored a ways outside the harbour, with a French flotilla commanded by a Count de

Rigny joining it shortly after, and the Russian ships under the Dutch admiral Lodewijk van

Heiden en route.

[1] On the 25th of September, the Admirals Codrington

and de Rigny parlayed with Ibrahim Pasha on a beach north of Pylos.

The two sides were at an impasse.

Ibrahim was under orders from the Sultan to attack the Hellenic naval stronghold of Hydra

island, while the allied admirals were under orders to prevent any further ravaging of

Greek lands.

Codrington warned Ibrahim that if the Turko-Egyptian ships sailed for Hydra, the allies would have

to sink them all.

Ibrahim weighed his options- he was deeply outgunned, as the Europeans had ten ships-of-the-line,

the dreadnoughts of the era, while the Turko-Egyptian fleet only had three.

Thus, the Egyptian Pasha played for time, agreeing, for now, to keep his fleets in Navarino

harbour while he awaited new orders from the Porte.[2] Satisfied, the British and French

admirals sailed away to reprovision, leaving only two ships at Navarino Bay to report on

Ibrahim’s actions.

This uneasy ceasefire lasted about as long as one would imagine.

The Greeks, for their part, were still fighting on.

In the last days of September, Hellenic forces launched a campaign on Patras, and under the

leadership of Richard Church, who was kind of doing a redemption arc thing after the

debacle at Athens, destroyed a flotilla of seven Ottoman ships in the gulf of Corinth.

This enraged Ibrahim, who wondered why the Europeans imposed an armistice on him, but

allowed his enemies to continue waging war.

So, he weighed anchor and attempted to sail to reinforce the Ottoman garrison in Patras,

but Codrington caught wind of this, and British ships arrived in time to fire warning shots

at them, forcing the Turko-Egyptian fleet back into Navarino bay.

At sea, Ibrahim was hemmed in.

However on land, the allies had no forces, and the Egyptians still had a mostly unopposed

20,000 strong army.

So, leaving his ships, Ibrahim resumed command of his ground forces and began ravaging the

Peloponnese once more, albeit dogged by Kolokotronis and his guerilla fighters.[3] By now, Heiden’s

Russian fleet had joined the British and French squadrons, and it had become clear to all

the allied Admirals that neither Ibrahim nor the rulers in Alexandria and Istanbul who

enabled him would ever relent in their desire to grind the Greek rebellion to dust.

As the senior Admiral of the combined allied forces, Codrington realized that there was

only one recourse left to him.

On October 20th, 1827, the combined might of the British, French and Russian navies

sailed into Navarino bay with their gunports raised, and the battle was joined.

In the end, it was a completely one-sided affair.

Outgunned and outmatched, over 60 Egyptian and Ottoman ships were consigned to the bottom

of Navarino bay, condemning over 6,000 hands to drown with them.

In contrast, the allies suffered less than 200 fatal casualties, and lost no ships.

Mehmed Ali’s modern navy, the pride of invincible Egypt, had been obliterated, and as a result,

an absolutely crippling blow had been dealt to Sultan Mahmud II.

After the Battle of Navarino, the result of the Greek war of Independence was set in stone.

For six long years the fate of Hellas had been hanging in the balance.

But now, Greece would be free.

However, the Greek nation, if one could even call it that at this point, was in dire straits.

After the three year spree of Ibrahim’s marauding, the land was utterly desolate,

while factional squabbles between revolutionary warlords had resurfaced.[4] Even with freedom

secured, it seemed that the Greeks were destined to remain an impoverished, divided, and little

people.

That is, unless a true leader could take the reins and pull together the frayed threads

that was Hellas.

It is here that the statesman himself, Ioannis Kapodistrias, finally re-enters our story.

Back in the summer of 1827, the Greek National Assembly- or what was left of it anyways,

had met at Troezen.

With allies on the way, Hellas had a future once more, and it was time to put affairs

of state back in order.

There, they had ratified a new national constitution, an amendment to the one crafted by Mavrokordatos

at Epidaurus in 1822.

More importantly, they unanimously elected Ioannis Kapodistrias, by far the most accomplished

Greek-born politician in Europe, to serve as leader of the Hellenic state.

As one may recall from our first video, when the revolution first broke out in 1821, Kapodistrias

had been offered a leadership position on account of his vast experience as Russia’s

chief foreign minister.

However, he declined the role, condemning the insurrection as an unwinnable folly.

He had been wrong about that, but hindsight is 20-20.

The situation had changed, so when Kapodistrias was elected by the National Assembly, he accepted

what must have seemed like the role he was destined for.

On January 18th, 1828, Kapodistrias landed in Navplion.

Having been born in the Venetian-then-French-then-British controlled island of Corfu, and spent the

lion’s share of his adult life as a Russian statesman, it was the first time he had stepped

foot in mainland Greece.

[5] The first thing he did was persuade the Greek senate to suspend the constitution and

the national assembly and temporarily give him full powers.

Greece, he declared, was not yet ready for democracy.

He was wary of the various factions within the Hellenic body-politic who had spent the

duration of the war fighting one another more than they had actually fought the Ottomans,

and did not want to have to navigate around the capricious whims of squabbling magnates

and warlords just to get anything done.[6] Luckily for him, the national assembly willingly

gave him full control.

Kapodistrias was a civil servant in every sense of the word.

Working from 5 in the morning to 10 at night every day, he utilized his vast state-building

experience to rebuild the pillars of Greek society so thoroughly eviscerated by six years

of brutal war.

To that end, he involved himself in every theatre of national reconstruction, developing

the foundations of a standard currency, a method of taxation, a legal framework, courts

of justice, orphanages and schools, and even a modern quarantine system to fight the typhoid,

cholera and dysentery epidemics which had spread like wildfire during the worst years

of the war.[7] However, the titanic task of domestic reconstruction was but one Kapodistrias’

many challenges.

For one thing, there was still technically a war on.

Although Ibrahim Pasha’s navy had been destroyed, the man himself, alongside 20,000 ground troops,

were still active in the Peloponnese.

In the summer of 1828, a French expeditionary force landed in the Peloponnese to support

the Greeks, who having previously been on the ropes against against Ibrahim’s relentless

onslaught, were imbued with a renewed fighting spirit to finally crush the loathsome Egyptian

host which had terrorized their homeland so thoroughly.

However, Ibrahim knew that the conquest of the Peloponnese was no longer feasible.

Despite all the terrors he had inflicted on the Morea, he had not crushed the Greeks’

spirit, and now with the situation turned decidedly against him, it was time to make

a graceful exit.

Through the eloquent work of French diplomats in Alexandria, governor Mehmed Ali agreed

to order his son’s return home.

On the fourth of October, 1828, Ibrahim and his Egyptian legions departed the ancient

land of Hellas.

Over the last three years, Ibrahim Pasha had turned the Peloponnese into a barren wasteland.

However, in the end, he gained absolutely nothing out of it.

[8] After his departure, the bulk of Ottoman-aligned forces in Greece were gone, and the forts

in the Peloponnese which had been occupied by the Egyptians fell mainly into French hands.

Kapodistrias, meanwhile, had been busy doing away with the loose hodgepodge of bandit gangs

who had thus far carried the Greek cause, but also proven extremely prone to insubordination

and infighting.

To that end, he established the Hellenic Army Academy and a regular Greek army corp, which

he deployed into central Greece, hoping to take as much land as possible from the Ottomans

to strengthen the Hellenic State’s territorial claims when the time came to properly define

its borders.[9] Certain familiar faces were appointed to spearhead this campaign: in eastern

Roumeli, Dmitrios Ypsilantis began securing the hinterlands around Athens, while in the

west, the old goat Kolokotronis, fighting alongside his British bromance Richard Church,

liberated the gulf of Arta and its surrounding environs.

These advances were aided in part by the fact that, in April of 1828, Russia had finally

launched a full-scale invasion of the Ottoman Empire, which had stretched the Sublime Portes’

military capacity to its very limits.

However, Kapodistrias’ relations with his generals were strained, to say the least.

His predilection for micromanagement infuriated the military men who were perfectly capable

of leading an army without the constant nagging of this bookish civilian statesmen thank you

very much.

Kapodistrias’ quarrels with the likes of Ypsilantis and Church were ultimately indicative

of the great statesman’s deeply strained relationship with the Greek elites, a schism

which would eventually lead to his doom.[10] On December 21st, 1828, the ambassadors of

Britain, France and Russia met on the island of Poros to discuss the borders of the new

Greek nation.

Whether Kapodistrias liked it or not, the future of his people was now in the hands

of these three titans, so he had to play ball with them.

Kapodistrias himself argued that the Hellenic state’s borders should extend from Delvinë

to Thessaloniki, while representatives of the current British Prime Minister, the Duke

of Wellington, yes the Waterloo guy, wanted to confine the Greek state solely to the Peloponnese.[11]

In the end, the diplomats at Poros agreed to a border which ran from Arta to the Gulf

of Volos, which they argued would be the most practical and easily defendable frontier for

Young Hellas.

Notably not present at the Conference of Poros were any representatives of Sultan Mahmud

II, who was still clinging to the increasingly unrealistic prospect of re-conquering his

erstwhile Rumelian territories.

However, the Sublime Porte’s tune changed when in September of 1829, the ongoing Russo-Turkish

war ended in their defeat, resulting in the Russians’ annexing more of their Black Sea

territory, and taking their place as overlords of the Romanian principalities.

His position critically weakened, Sultan Mahmud II finally agreed to accept the terms of the

1827 Treaty of London, whereby Greece would become an autonomous state, but still his

tributary vassal.

However, for Britain and France, this was no longer good enough.

To them, Russia’s recent gains were threatening, and if Greece remained an Ottoman vassal,

no matter how nominally, then it would always remain under the predominant influence of

the Tsar in St. Petersburg.

So, the British and French, influenced in no small part by Kapodistrias’ political

maneuvering, conceived that Greece would not be an autonomous vassal, but a completely

independent nation-state under the equal “protection” of all three Great Powers.

This decision was ratified in the London Protocol of 1830, which the Russians only reluctantly

agreed to, and the Ottomans were in no position to refuse.

Thus, the international community welcomed the independent Hellenic nation-state into

the fold.

In the end, the Greek war of independence concluded in the same way much of it was carried

out: with bloody infighting.

That Ioannis Kapodistrias had done much for Greece was indisputable, but in his short

time in power, his complete mistrust of the Greek elites who had carried the revolution

caused him to make several powerful enemies.

Among these were the powerful maritime magnates of Hydra, and the Maniots under Petros Mavromichalis,

two areas of Greece deeply accustomed to localized self-rule.

When in the interest of centralizing the state, Kapodistrias forced stringent taxation policies

upon them, and tried to impose regional governors on them; he instead was faced with an uprising

on his hands.

In May 1831, the Hydriots convened their own national assembly in direct defiance of Kapodistrias’

government, and declared the Maniot Lord, Mavromichalis, to be their president.

Even a certain Alexandros Mavrokordatos came out of retirement to support this rival regime.

[12] However, Kapodistrias put down this rebellion, sinking the Hydriot frigate Hellas in the

process.

To prevent further insurrection, he had Mavromichalis arrested and imprisoned.

This would be his final mistake.

To the mafia-like Maniots, such an act was enough to trigger a blood-feud, and as such,

the Mavromichalis clan resolved to kill the great statesmen for the incarceration of their

patriarch.

On the 9th of October, 1831, as the first president of the Hellenic State walked up

the steps to the Church of Nafplion to attend the morning service, he found himself confronted

by Petros’ brother, Konstantis Mavromichalis, and his son, Georgios Mavromichalis.

Without due ceremony, they shot and stabbed Kapodistrias to death.

Immediately afterwards, Greece was plunged into chaos, and all that the Kapodistrias

had accomplished threatened to become undone.

In this, the Great Powers saw opportunity.

They had long preferred that Greece be a monarchy, rather than a republic- after all, in a still

revolutionarily-charged Europe, it set a better precedent for their own divinely appointed

monarchs.

So it was that, in May of 1832, a German Prince, Otto I, was imported from his native Bavaria

to Greece, and appointed the first Monarch of an re-augmented “Kingdom” of Greece,

stabilizing the country once more.

[13] When the Kingdom of Greece emerged onto the

world-stage in 1832, it was small, poor, and ruled by a foreign King, who was imposed upon

them by three great powers who held significant sway over the young nations’ internal politics.

Moreover, only a third of all ethnic Greeks in the Ottoman Empire had been liberated,

as Hellenes in Cyprus, Crete, Thrace, the Pontus and beyond remained under the rule

of the Sublime Porte.

Many Greeks who had once prospered under the Sultan, like the Phanariote merchants, were

now no longer able to do so, looked upon in suspicion and disdain.

Overall, it was not quite the freedom that Greece had hoped for, but it was freedom nonetheless.

No matter the circumstances, the Greeks were the first people to win full independence

from the Ottoman Empire, and the modern Greek nation-state they created is the very same

which, through trials and tribulations, endures to this day.

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