So in 1453 the city of Constantinople, capital of the once-great Byzantine Empire (which,
culturally was a Greek state) was seized by the Ottoman Turkish Sultan, Mehmed the Conqueror.
With the Byzantines gone, the Ottomans were free to create an empire of their
own by conquering the rest of Greece (bar the Ionian islands which were ruled
by Venice) and then by expanding farther into Europe, Africa, and the Middle-East.
But the Greek people, as you probably know,
didn’t just go away after the Ottoman conquest; they weren’t supplanted by the Turks.
Instead they lived for centuries under Ottoman control, continuing to speak their own language,
maintaining their own cultural practices and following their own religion, Orthodox
Christianity. And at least to some extent, the Muslim Ottomans left them to their own devices.
Yet nearly four centuries later in the early 1800’s, a new Greek State,
the First Hellenic Republic arose out of a revolution. But, why did the Greeks take
so long to regain their independence after the fall of Constantinople, and how did they do it?
Well, in the direct aftermath of Constantinople’s fall the Greek people,
on the whole, accepted their lot as Ottoman subjects. The Byzantine Empire had been on
it’s way out for about two centuries at that point. Greeks also saw economic success as a
part of the empire as Ottoman domination of the Eastern Mediterrean allowed for trade to flourish,
and many Greeks, notably ones from the Phanar district of Constantinople,
were able to achieve high-ranking positions within the Ottoman government.
That government, like most at the time, actually didn’t divide up its citizens
by nationality though. Instead they were put into groups, called Millets, based on religion.
The Millet system was hierarchical with Islam (the religion of the Turks)
at the top. The Greeks belonged to the Greek Millet, which was 2nd in importance
only behind the Muslims, all though that name is something of a misnomer
because it included all Orthodox Christian subjects of the Ottomans, not just Greeks.
They were led by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the head Orthodox priest. The
Patriarch held both civil and religious authority over the Greek Millet but more importantly,
certainly from the Ottoman perspective, he was responsible for ensuring that Orthodox
Christains remained loyal, and paid taxes, to the Ottoman Sultan. Which was frankly not an
easy job and more than one Patriarch suffered at the hands of the Turks after Orthodox revolts.
And there were definitely revolts. Sure, the Greek Millet had some autonomy from the
Ottomans but at the end of the day the Greeks were still being ruled over by a foreign power.
Orthodox Christians within the Empire paid more taxes than their Muslim counterparts,
their word counted for less than a Muslim’s in a court of law, and anyone who renounced
Islam after converting (as many Greeks, for a variety of reasons, did) was put to death by the
Ottomans. So, at no point during the centuries of Ottoman rule was Greece ever fully pacified.
The main culprits behind that were two groups; the Klephts and Armatoloi. You see,
when the Ottomans conquered Greece they easily controlled the country’s plains regions,
mostly near the coasts, but they had a much harder time ruling the mountains inland.
The Klephts were basically Greek mountain brigands who defied the Ottoman state but preyed upon both
Muslims and Christians alike. The Armatoloi on the hand, were actually the same group of people,
mountain Greeks, the only difference being that instead of stealing, the Armatoloi were paid by
the Ottomans to fight off the Klephts. Which sort of worked, but one day’s Armatolos could easily be
the next day’s Klepht or vice versa, depending on whether there was more money to be made
in robbery or by taking a paycheck from the Turks. The key things to keep in mind are that
both the Klephts and the Armatoloi were warriors and neither were all that loyal to the Ottomans.
To the Greek people though, especially towards the end of Ottoman rule in Greece,
the Klephts in particular became heroes for their attacks against symbols of the Ottoman state.
So, the first major Greek revolt took place in 1770. Two years earlier the Ottoman Empire
and Russia had gone to war (not, by the way, for the first or last time) and the Russians,
looking for a way to gain an advantage over the Turks, turned to the Ottoman Empire’s Orthodox
Christian population, including the Greeks. The Russians were also Orthodox and they were
increasingly acting as the protector of Orthodox Christians living under Ottoman rule. Of course,
one could argue that their interest was just a mask for their own imperialistic ambitions in
the Balkans and elsewhere, but either way as the 18th century drew to a close and the 19th began,
Russia became a major player in the affairs of Greece.
So they sent a fleet under Admiral Alexy Orlov as well as an expeditionary force of a few hundred
soldiers, to instigate a Greek revolt in Morea, southern Greece. Revolution also broke out on
Crete, but the Cretan revolutionaries were mostly left to fend for themselves by the Russians and
they were eventually put down by a much larger Ottoman force. Back on the mainland the Greeks,
with their Russian allies, did have some initial success and they took over Laconia,
near the ancient city of Sparta. But they failed to take over the more fortified north and east
including the region’s administrative center, Tripolitsa. At sea, Orlov’s Russian fleet won
several battles against a much larger Turkish one. Notably they won the Battle of Çeşme in
July of 1770 and burnt over 60 Ottoman ships, while losing only five of their own. However,
while they dominated on the water, on land, Russia failed to live up to its commitments to the
Greeks. Their expeditionary force was much, much smaller than what was promised to Greek leaders.
And without that support, few Greek’s rose up and the Orlov revolt was crushed by mid 1771.
Still Russia, got what they wanted out of it. Come 1774 a treaty ended their war with
the Ottomans. Russia gained territory on the Black Sea coast, in the Caucuses and Ukraine,
they forced the Ottomans to relinquish control of the Crimean Khanate (which
Russia would later annex) and secured their position as protector of the Orthodox faith.
The Greeks on the other hand suffered immensely. Besides still lacking a state,
across the Ottoman Empire anti-Greek massacres left cities in ruins and
resulted in the deaths of thousands. Orthodox bishops were killed left,
right, and center for not preventing the revolt. Remember that the Greek Millet, led by the clergy,
was meant to keep Orthodox Christians loyal. The Patriarch himself, Meletius II,
escaped execution but was removed from his position and banished. The next generation of
Greek revolutionary leaders would not be so quick to rely on Russia and instead turned to the west.
However, the revolutionaries in Laconia and for a short time on Crete as well, had established
their own local Greek administrations, free from Turkish rule, for the first time in centuries. And
that brief taste of independence whetted their appetite. Over the next 50 years Hellenism,
a sense of Greek national identity, gained considerable strength and by the 1820’s it
had penetrated every level of Greek society, including many in the clergy. This time around
the Greek people both wanted independence, and many more were ready to fight for it.
In 1814 the Filiki Eteria, or the Friendly Brotherhood,
the secret society that planned the Greek War of Independence was founded in Odessa,
then a part of the Russian Empire, today in Ukraine. It was led by Alexandros Ypsilantis,
a Phanariot Greek who had fought for Russia during the Napoleonic Wars. The Brotherhood’s
plan called for Revolution in mid-March 1821, but after Turkish authorities discovered the plot,
Ypsilantis launched an invasion of Ottoman Moldavia early. His force was quickly put down
by the Turks and Ypsilantis was forced to flee to Austria and he died there in 1828, but the plan he
had put into motion continued without him. Revolts broke out in Morea and central Greece in March,
1821. Within just over a year, the Greeks had control over all of Morea, the land around the
city of Athens and Crete. Tripolitsa had fallen to the Klepht leader Theodoros Kolokotronis in
October. The Klephts and Armatoloi made up the backbone of Greek Revolutionary forces.
In January, 1822, the rebels officially declared Greece’s independence. However
there were still some issues. For one, the Ottomans had no intention of just accepting
Greek independence. Just like in the aftermath of the Orlov revolt, Greeks were slaughtered
across the Ottoman Empire in retaliation for the revolutionaries’ actions. This time Patriarch,
Gregorios V, was hanged in Constantinople for failing to prevent the revolt, despite having
preached against it in his sermons. And in the summer of 1822, the Ottomans counterattacked.
They regained a foothold on Crete and attempted to push south from central Greece to put down
the rebellion once and for all. And they did manage to briefly seize Athens, but the Greeks,
under Kolokotronis’ command, repelled them and retook the city by the end of the year.
The Greek struggle drew a great amount of sympathy, and aid, from Western Europe,
but at least at first that support only came from individuals, notably the English romantic
poet Lord Byron, not governments. Byron, by the way, would die in the city of Missolonghi
in 1824. His death in Greece helped sway public opinion in Europe to the Greek cause.
Europeans who supported the Hellenic Republic, called Philhellenes, essentially saw the
Greek war against the Turks as an attempt at reviving the ideals of Ancient Greece. Ideals,
like democracy, that they themselves either had or sought to have in their own lives. In short,
many in Europe felt that they owed a great cultural debt to the Greeks.
Governments on the other hand, specifically those of the United Kingdom, and France, were
much more interested in preserving the balance of power in Europe that had been established in 1815
after the defeat of Napoleonic France. Something that a considerably weakened
Ottoman Empire would’ve threatened, because Russia was still eager to take control of the Balkans.
Public opinion and a need to prevent Russia from acting unilaterally would eventually change
the Anglo-French position, but still European powers wouldn't interfere in Greece until 1827.
Unfortunately, the Greeks really could've used that help earlier. Not one, but two civil wars
between the newly established Hellenic government and the forces of Theodoros Kolokotronis (who had
gone a bit rogue) left the revolutionaries vulnerable to attack. A vulnerability that
was exploited by the Egyptians (Egypt was an Ottoman vassal) who invaded Morea in 1825.
By October, 1827 Missolonghi had been retaken for the Ottomans as well as almost all Greek
territory outside of Crete and Morea. But in that year, Europe acted. A combined British,
French and Russian fleet devastated the Ottoman-Egyptain one at the battle of Navarino.
At the same time, the Greeks, later with the aid of a French expeditionary force,
took Athens several Aegean Islands, and then pushed north. They also fully conquered Crete.
By the end of 1828 the Hellenic Republic and the Ottomans reached a territorial stalemate,
in no small part because that year Russia invaded the Ottoman Empire and by August 1829
they had cut off Greece, and all of the Ottoman Empire’s European territories, from the capital.
In 1832 the London Conference, a negotiation between the Great Powers and the Ottomans,
produced the Treaty of Constantinople which defined Greece as an independent Kingdom with
these borders, notably they lost Crete. A Bavarian Prince, Otto von Wittelsbach, was selected by the
Great Powers and accepted by the Greek National Assembly as King Otto I of an independent Greece.
If you enjoyed this video don’t forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell
below so you don’t miss the next one. I’ll be putting out more Greek history content
in the near future which you’ll be able to see by clicking on a thumbnail to the left,
or if I haven’t gotten to that yet you can check out another great video in the same place.
And as always, I’ve been James and thank you for watching Look Back History.