The War of Independence

A Thumbnail Sketch of the Greek War of Independence

The Greek War of Independence began in 1821 and ended in 1830 although the dust did not settle until 1832. It was a long war characterized by confusion as well as patriotic fervor. What would be the status of the new state, what would be its borders, and how would it be governed?  

The Greeks were assisted by Russia, Great Britain, and France to whatever degree their own designs of the moment or public opinion demanded. The Ottomans were aided by their vassals, Egypt in particular. 

The Players in the Build Up to 1821

The Greeks Themselves

The Greeks under the Ottomans were second class citizens, or worse. Some areas fared better than others and, in Constantinople, many Greeks would become rich and prominent. They became known as Phanariots after the Pharnar district in Constantinople where the Greek community resided. Some members of Phanariot families would become princes (hospodars) in Ottoman controlled Wallachia and Moldavia – still under the thumb of the sultan, but relatively free to acquire wealth and education.

The 18th century witnessed the ascendancy to prosperity (and relative autonomy in their home areas) of two other merchant groups:

 1. Greek sailors based on islands, such as Hydra, Andros, Spetses, and Psara became affluent maritime merchants. 

2. Muleteers in central and north western Greece in particular benefitted. Some were of Slav or Vlach origin. Together they morphed from teamsters and peddlers into independent merchants and bankers.  

As commerce expanded in the Balkans, these groups generated the necessary wealth to found schools, libraries and pay for young Greeks to study at the universities of Western Europe. There they came into contact with the radical ideas of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and romantic nationalism, - ideas that they began to disseminate back home.

 Peloponnesians and those in central Greece were far less lucky. Their ‘freedom fighters” tended to coalesce into armed bands, as either Klephts or Armatoloi and plunder was on their minds as well as freedom and a burning resentment of the Occupation and its oppression.  Liberal ideas did filter into their consciousness in the late 1700s because of their proximity to the Ionian Islands (which were successively Venetian, independent, French, then British, never Ottoman).

The Mani’s flag: freedom or Death, Under that the famous Spartan exhortation which loosely means: Return either with our shield – or on it.

The Philhellenes

The Greek cause began to draw support not only from the large Greek merchant diaspora in both Western Europe and Russia  but also from Europeans imbued with the new ideas of the Enlightenment and an educated class who recognized and believed in the tremendous debt European culture owed to Greece. Included in this group were poets like Byron and Shelley and their set who, not only believed in the cause, but made it romantically and intellectually appealing.

 Russia, as an Orthodox country, leaned towards helping their co-religionists, - at least when it was expedient. And then there were many Philhellenes from Europe who also saw the war as a battle between infidel Ottomans and oppressed Christians and, with missionary fervor, decided to help. 

The Filiki Etairia

 In 1814, a secret organization called the Filiki Etairia (the Friendly Society) was founded in Odessa by three Greeks with the aim of liberating Greece. The organization was a secret one, freemason style.  It started small but grew. Massive initiations began in 1818 and by 1821, its membership numbered in the thousands. Members included primary instigators of the revolution such as Theodoros Kolokotronis, Odysseas Androutsos, and bishop Germanos of Patras.  It was the Filiki Etairia which initiated the War of Independence.

Flag of the Filiki Etairia

The War

In 1821 the Filiki Etairia launched simultaneous revolts in the Peloponnese, Wallachia and Moldavia, and in Constantinople itself.  It did not go well anywhere but in the Peloponnese whose home grown fighters did succeed, and by October 1821 they had even captured Tripolitisa, the Turkish capital in the Peloponnese.  Revolts in Crete and elsewhere met with difficulties although Greek sea captains had some initial victories. Central Greece, or Roumeli, had successes and failures in a push me-pull me series of bloody encounters where no one seemed able to get the upper hand.

The Ottoman Reaction

The outbreak of the war was met by mass executions, pogrom-style attacks, the destruction of churches, and looting of Greek properties throughout the Ottoman Empire. Severe atrocities occurred in Constantinople and on April 22, 1821 the Orthodox Patriarch Gregory V was executed on the orders of the Sultan despite his opposition to the revolt. This caused outrage throughout Europe, most especially in Russia, and resulted in increased support for the Greek rebels. A similar massacre of the inhabitants of Chios in 1822 also roused European support. There were Greek atrocities too.

 

The Greek Sea Captains 1821 - 1825

The entire Greek merchant navy comprised about 500 ships (some say more) when the war broke out. They were ably captained and the sailors were used to fighting pirates, but they were not war ships by any means. Each island rose individually to the occasion and each equipped, manned and maintained its own squadron under its own admiral, - this against a well trained, well armed Ottoman navy. The Greek’s naval weapons of choice were, therefore, not cannons, but fire ships. They would attach their explosive filled ships to the larger Turkish ones and light the fuse. It was dangerous but successful about two thirds of the time. The destruction of the Ottoman flagship by Constantinos Kanaris in 1822, in retaliation for the massacre of Chios, was one of the great moments of the war for the Greek side.

Kanaris’ ship immortalized on a coin

The Civil War inside The War

In the midst of all this fighting, tensions developed among the different Greek factions; this led to two consecutive civil wars. It is a complicated story.
 Suffice it to say that it was an epic battle between more regionally minded elements over those who wanted a stronger central government. The trouble with even this analysis is that alliances among the major players sometimes shifted. Conferences were called and constitutions made and amended. By 1824, those favouring a strong central government had made strides, partly because they had control of a loan from England. Kolokotronis, a hero of the Peloponnesian struggle, was such a thorn in the government’s side because of his popularity and stubbornness that he was eventually arrested and imprisoned. What would have happened next was pre-empted by the Ottomans’ next move.

 Ibrahim Pasha arrived  in the Peloponnese with ships and a large army. (The Greeks knew they were coming. They had tried but failed to firebomb the ships that would bring these troops when they were still at anchor in Egypt).This was the Porte’s last massive effort to subdue the Greeks once and for all and that terrible threat brought the warring Greek factions together. Kolokotronis was released to become Commander in Chief of the Greek forces in the Peloponnese.

1825 -7 Ibrahim Pasha Ravages Greece

Ibrahim cut a wide swath of destruction in the Aegean before landing on the Peloponnese in February 1825. By the end of the year he held most of the Peloponnese and then went on to regain Missolonghi in western Roumeli and Athens for the Ottomans.

The situation was grim and the great powers dithered, giving the Ottomans ultimatums but not necessarily enforcing them – until the Battle of Navarino in 1827 when, almost by accident, the combined ships of Russia, England and France ended a standoff in the Bay of Navarino by attacking the Turkish fleet which was at anchor there prior to an attack on Hydra. The Turkish fleet was annihilated. That changed everything.
 Greece’s allies would claim that the Ottomans fired the first shot.

Navarino depicted on the one hundred drachma note

Another Try for a Government

In January 1828, the Greeks formed a new republican government under Ioannis Kapodistrias, a well respected Greek Corfiot who had served the Tsar of Russia as foreign minister and who had long supported the Greek push for independence.  At the same time, the Greeks advanced to seize as much territory as possible, before the Western powers imposed a ceasefire. (Remember that the actual borders of the new state had not been established.)   Meanwhile, France sent an army corps led by Nicholas Maison to the Peloponnese to expel Ibrahim's remaining land forces. 
  
The final major engagement of the war was the Battle of Petra in central Greece (Boeotia) on September 1829. Greek forces under Demetrios Ypsilantis, fighting for the first time as a regular European-style  army, advanced against the Ottomans and defeated them. The Turks surrendered all the land from Livadeia to the Spercheios River in exchange for safe passage home. 

1830 -   Under Russian pressure, the Porte had agreed to the terms of the Treaty of London of 6 July 1827, and another Protocol of 22 March 1829. It was the beginning of the end.  Britain and France wanted an independent Greek state to limit Russian influence.  The three powers finally agreed on independent Greek state under their joint protection.
 

1831 -  Kapodistrias  had, from the beginning of his tenure,  tried to undermine the authority of the traditional clans in the Peloponnese, mainland Greece, and on islands like Hydra. He rightly considered them an impediment to a modern state. They, of course, felt differently. Things came to a head in Nauplio when he was assassinated by members of the Mavromichalis clan after having jailed one of their members and demanding that the powerful war lords unconditionally submit to his authority.

 It seemed as if there would be yet another round of endless infighting among Greek factions. What to do?

A European style monarchy had always looked like a good solution to the Big Powers – and to the Greeks too at this critical point.

1832 -   On May 7, 1832 Greece was officially defined as a "monarchical and independent state" (but was to pay an indemnity to the Porte). The protocol outlined the way in which the Regency was to be managed until the young Otto of Bavaria (a compromise candidate if ever there was one) reached his majority, while also concluding the deal for a loan of £2.4 million.  

On 21 July 1832, the boundaries of the Greek Kingdom were set at the Arta–Volos line.
 The borders of the kingdom were reiterated in the London Protocol of August 30, 1832.

 

The Outcome

Greece got an underage compromise king, was heavily indebted to and dependent upon the good will of Russia, France, and England, and did not gain  all of the territory it wanted. 
But it was a start…