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 Ottoman domination, and for whom ‘Greece’ was merely an idea that had
to be won in war. Welcome to our new series on the Greek War of Independence. In this first episode,
we will explore the lives of Greek peoples during 500 years of Ottoman rule, before examining the
lead-up to revolt, and the first stages of the revolution that birthed modern Greece.
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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.
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. 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. 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. 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, 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. 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, 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.
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 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. 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. 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. 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, 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. 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. 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. 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. Control over the
Peloponnesian countryside was further secured when a 3,000 strong revolutionary force under
former Klepht bandit-lord Theodoros Kolokotronis defeated an Ottoman force nearly twice its size
at the battle of Valtetsi on May 24th. Things were going comparatively worse in central Greece,
where the capable Ottoman-Albanian general Omer Vrioni won a victory against a promising young
revolutionary commander Athanasios Diakos, who he had executed by impalement. However, Vrioni’s
army was contained by the heroics of one Odysseas Androutsos, who, while outnumbered 120 to 8,000,
defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Gravia Inn while losing only six of his own men. Ultimately,
this allowed the revolutionaries to secure a tenuous hold on central Greece.
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. 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.
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.
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, 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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
Despite a new constitution binding them, the rivalries between the Greek revolutionaries would
soon stretch to their breaking point, resulting in a series of civil wars at the worst possible time.
For, on the other end of the Mediterranean, the invading armada of the invincible governor of
Egypt, threatened to smother the idea of a free Greece in its crib. Our series on the Greek War
of Independence will continue, so make sure you are subscribed and have pressed the bell button
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