Beacon Lights of History, Volume 09: European Statesmen

But as Greece was a small and distant country, its memorable contest was not invested with the interest felt for battles on a larger scale, and which more directly affected the interests of other nations. It was not till its complications involved Turkey and Russia in war, and affected the whole "Eastern Question," that its historical importance was seen. It was perhaps only the beginning of a series of wars which may drive the Ottoman Turks out of Europe, and make Constantinople a great prize for future conquerors.

That is unquestionably what Russia wants and covets to-day, and what the other great Powers are determined she shall not have. Possibly Greece may yet be the renewed seat of a Greek empire, under the protection of the Western nations, as a barrier to Russian encroachments around the Black Sea. There is sympathy for the Greeks; none for the Turks. England, France, and Austria can form no lasting alliance with Mohammedans, who may be driven back into Asia,–not by Russians, but by a coalition of the Latin and Gothic races.

It is useless, however, to speculate on the future wars of the world. We only know that offences must needs come so long as nations and rulers are governed more by interests and passions than by reason or philanthropy. When will passions and interests cease to be dominant or disturbing forces? To these most of the wars which history records are to be traced. And yet, whatever may be the origin or character of wars, those who stimulate or engage in them find plausible excuses,–necessity, patriotism, expediency, self-defence, even religion and liberty. So long then as men are blinded by their passions and interests, and palliate or justify their wars by either truth or sophistry, there is but little hope that they will cease, even with the advance of civilization. When has there been a long period unmarked by war? When have wars been more destructive and terrible than within the memory of this generation? It would indeed seem that when nations shall learn that their real interests are not antagonistic, that they cannot afford to go to war with one another, peace would then prevail as a policy not less than as a principle. This is the hopeful view to take; but unfortunately it is not the lesson taught by history, nor by that philosophy which has been generally accepted by Christendom for eighteen hundred years,–which is that men will not be governed by the loftiest principles until the religion of Jesus shall have conquered and changed the heart of the world, or at least of those who rule the world.

The chapter I am about to present is one of war,–cruel, merciless, relentless war; therefore repulsive, and only interesting from the magnitude of the issues, fought out, indeed, on a narrow strip of territory. What matter, whether the battlefield is large or small? There was as much heroism in the struggles of the Dutch republic as in the wars of Napoleon; as much in our warfare for independence as in the suppression of the Southern rebellion; as much among Cromwell's soldiers as in the Crimean war; as much at Thermopylae as at Plataea. It is the greatness of a cause which gives to war its only justification. A cause is sacred from the dignity of its principles. Men are nothing; principles are everything. Men must die. It is of comparatively little moment whether they fall like autumn leaves or perish in a storm,–they are alike forgotten; but their ideas and virtues are imperishable, –eternal lessons for successive generations. History is a record not merely of human sufferings,–these are inevitable,–but also of the stepping-stones of progress, which indicate both the permanent welfare of men and the Divine hand which mysteriously but really guides and governs.

When the Greek revolution broke out, in 1820, there were about seven hundred thousand people inhabiting a little over twenty-one thousand square miles of territory, with a revenue of about fifteen millions of dollars,–large for such a country of mountains and valleys. But the soil is fertile and the climate propitious, favorable for grapes, olives, and maize. It is a country easily defended, with its steep mountains, its deep ravines, and rugged cliffs, and when as at that time roads were almost impassable for carriages and artillery. Its people have always been celebrated for bravery, industry, and frugality (like the Swiss), but prone to jealousies and party feuds. It had in 1820 no central government, no great capital, and no regular army. It owed allegiance to the Sultan at Constantinople, the Turks having conquered Greece soon after that city was taken by them in 1453.

Amid all the severities of Turkish rule for four centuries the Greeks maintained their religion, their language, and distinctive manners. In some places they were highly prosperous from commerce, which they engrossed along the whole coast of the Levant and among the islands of the Archipelago. They had six hundred vessels, bearing six thousand guns, and manned by eighteen thousand seamen. In their beautiful islands,–

"Where burning Sappho loved and sung,"–

abodes of industry and freedom, the Turkish pashas never set their foot, satisfied with the tribute which was punctually paid to the Sultan. Moreover, these islands were nurseries of seamen for the Turkish navy; and as these seamen were indispensable to the Sultan, the country that produced them was kindly treated. The Turks were indifferent to commerce, and allowed the Greek merchants to get rich, provided they paid their tribute. The Turks cared only for war and pleasure, and spent their time in alternate excitement and lazy repose. They disdained labor, which they bought with tribute-money or secured from slaves taken in war. Like the Romans, they were warriors and conquerors, but became enervated by luxury. They were hard masters, but their conquered subjects throve by commerce and industry.

The Greeks, as to character, were not religious like the Turks, but quicker witted. What religion they had was made up of the ceremonies and pomps of a corrupted Christianity, but kept alive by traditions. Their patriarch was a great personage,–practically appointed, however, by the Sultan, and resident in Constantinople. Their clergy were married, and were more humane and liberal than the Roman Catholic priests of Italy, and about on a par with them in morals and influence. The Greeks were always inquisitive and fond of knowledge, but their love of liberty has been one of their strongest peculiarities, kept alive amid all the oppressions to which they have been subjected. Nevertheless, unarmed, at least on the mainland, and without fortresses, few in numbers, with overwhelming foes, they had not, up to 1820, dared to risk a general rebellion, for fear that they should be mercilessly slaughtered. So long as they remained at peace their condition as a conquered people was not so bad as it might have been, although the oppressions of tax-gatherers and the brutality of Turkish officials had been growing more and more intolerable. In 1770 and 1790 there had been local and unsuccessful attempts at revolt, but nothing of importance.

Amid the political agitations which threw Spain and Italy into revolution, however, the spirit of liberty revived among the hardy Greek mountaineers of the mainland. Secret societies were formed, with a view of shaking off the Turkish yoke. The aspiring and the discontented naturally cast their eyes to Russia for aid, since there was a religious bond between the Russians and the Greeks, and since the Russians and Turks were mortal enemies, and since, moreover, they were encouraged to hope for such aid by a great Russian nobleman, by birth a Greek, who was private secretary and minister, as well as an intimate, of the Emperor Alexander,–Count Capo d'Istrias. They were also exasperated by the cession of Parga (a town on the mainland opposite the Ionian Islands) to the Turks, by the treaty of 1815, which the allies carelessly overlooked.

The flame of insurrection in 1820 did not, however, first break out in the territory of Greece, but in Wallachia,–a Turkish province on the north of the Danube, governed by a Greek hospodar, the capital of which was Bucharest. This was followed by the revolt of another Turkish province, Moldavia, bordering on Russia, from which it was separated by the River Pruth. At Jassy, the capital, Prince Ypsilanti, a distinguished Russian general descended from an illustrious Greek family, raised the standard of insurrection, to which flocked the whole Christian population of the province, who fell upon the Turkish soldiers and massacred them. Ypsilanti had twenty thousand soldiers under his command, against which the six hundred armed Turks could make but feeble resistance. This apparently successful revolt produced an immense enthusiasm throughout Greece, the inhabitants of which now eagerly took up arms. The Greeks had been assured of the aid of Russia by Ypsilanti, who counted without his host, however; for the Czar, then at the Congress of Laibach, convened to put down revolutionary ideas, was extremely angry at the conduct of Ypsilanti, and, against all expectation, stood aloof. This was the time for him to attack Turkey, then weakened and dilapidated; but he was tired of war. Among the Greeks the wildest enthusiasm prevailed, especially throughout the Morea, the ancient Peloponnesus. The peasants everywhere gathered around their chieftains, and drove away the Turkish soldiers, inflicting on them the grossest barbarities. In a few days the Turks possessed nothing in the Morea but their fortresses. The Turkish garrison of Athens shut itself up in the Acropolis. Most of the islands of the Archipelago hoisted the standard of the Cross; and the strongest of them armed and sent out cruisers to prey on the commerce of the enemy.

At Constantinople the news of the insurrection excited both consternation and rage. Instant death to the Christians was the universal cry. The Mussulmans seized the Greek patriarch, an old man of eighty, while he was performing a religious service on Easter Sunday, hanged him, and delivered his body to the Jews. The Sultan Mahmoud was intensely exasperated, and ordered a levy of troops throughout his empire to suppress the insurrection and to punish the Christians. The atrocities which the Turks now inflicted have scarcely ever been equalled in horror. The Christian churches were entered and sacked. At Adrianople the Patriarch was beheaded, with eight other ecclesiastical dignitaries. In ten days thousands of Christians in that city were butchered, and their wives and daughters sold into slavery; while five archbishops and three bishops were hanged in the streets, without trial. There was scarcely a town in the empire where atrocities of the most repulsive kind were not perpetrated on innocent and helpless people. In Asia Minor the fanatical spirit raged with more ferocity than in European Turkey. At Smyrna a general massacre of the Christians took place under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and fifteen thousand were obliged to flee to the islands of the Archipelago to save their lives. The Island of Cyprus, which once had a population of more than a million, reduced at the breaking out of the insurrection to seventy thousand, was nearly depopulated; the archbishop and five other bishops were ruthlessly murdered. The whole island, one hundred and forty-six miles long and sixty-three wide, was converted into a theatre of rapine, violation, and bloodshed.

All now saw that no hope remained for Greece but in the most determined resistance, which was nobly made. Six thousand men were soon in arms in Thessaly. The mountaineers of Macedonia gathered into armed bands. Thirty thousand rose in the peninsula of Cassandra and laid siege to Salonica, a city of eighty thousand inhabitants, but were repulsed, and fled to the mountains,–not, however, until thousands of Mussulmans were slain. It had become "war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt." No quarter was asked or given.

All Greece was now aroused to what was universally felt to be a death struggle. The people eagerly responded to all patriotic influences, and especially to war songs, some of which had been sung for more than two thousand years. Certain of these were reproduced by the English poet Byron, who, leaving his native land, entered heart and soul into the desperate contest, and urged the Greeks to heroic action in memory of their fathers.

     "Then manfully despising        The Turkish tyrant's yoke,      Let your country see you rising,        And all her chains are broke.      Brave shades of chiefs and sages,        Behold the coming strife!      Hellenes of past ages        Oh, start again to life!      At the sound of trumpet, breaking        Your sleep, oh, join with me!      And the seven-hilled city seeking,        Fight, conquer, till we're free!"

Success now seemed to mark the uprising in Southern Greece; but in the Danubian provinces, without the expected aid of Russia, it was far otherwise. Prince Ypsilanti, who had taken an active part in the insurrection, was dismissed from the Russian service and summoned back to Russia; but he was not discouraged, and advanced to Bucharest with ten thousand men. In the mean time ten thousand Turks entered the Principalities and regained Moldavia. Ypsilanti fled before the conquering enemy, abandoned Bucharest, and was totally defeated at Dragaschan, with the loss of all his baggage and ammunition. Only twenty-five of his hastily collected band escaped into Transylvania.

The intelligence of this disaster would have disheartened the Greeks but for their naval successes among the islands of the Archipelago. Hydra, Ipsara, and Samos equipped a flotilla which drove the Turkish fleet back to the Dardanelles with immense losses. The Greeks having now the command of the sea, made successful incursions, and hoisted their flag at Missolonghi, which they easily fortified, it being situated in the midst of lagoons, like Venice, which large ships could not penetrate. But on the mainland they suffered severe reverses. Fifteen thousand Greeks perished at Patras; but the patriots were successful at Valtezza, where five thousand men repulsed fifteen thousand Turks, and drove them to seek shelter in the strong fortress of Tripolitza. The Greeks avoiding action in the open field, succeeded in taking Navarino and Napoli di Malvasia, and rivalled their enemies in the atrocities they committed. They lost Athens, whose citadel they had besieged, but defeated the Turks in Thermopylae with great slaughter, which enabled them to reoccupy Athens and blockade the Acropolis.

Then followed the siege of Tripolitza, in the centre of the Morea, the seat of the Pasha, where the Turks were strongly intrenched. It was soon taken by Kolokotronis, who commanded the Greeks. The fall of this fortress was followed by the usual massacre, in which neither age nor sex was spared. The Greek chiefs attempted to suppress the fury and cruelty of their followers; but their efforts were in vain, and their cause was stained with blood needlessly shed. Yet when one remembers the centuries during which the Turks had been slaying the men, carrying off the women to their harems, and making slaves of the children of the Greeks, there is less to wonder at in such an access of blind fury and vengeance. Nine thousand Turks were massacred, or slain in the attack. The capture of this important fortress was of immense advantage to the Greeks, who obtained great treasures and a large amount of ammunition, with a valuable train of artillery.

But this great success was balanced by the failure of the Greeks, under Ypsilanti, to capture Napoli di Romania,–another strong fortress, defended by eight hundred guns, regarded as nearly impregnable, situated, like Gibraltar, on a great rock eight hundred feet high, the base of which was washed by the sea. It was a rash enterprise, but came near being successful on account of the negligence of the garrison, which numbered only fifteen hundred men. An escalade was attempted by Mavrokordatos, one of the heroic chieftains of the Greeks; but it was successfully repulsed, and the attacking generals with difficulty escaped to Argos. The Greeks also met with a reverse on the peninsula of Cassandra, near Salonica, which proved another massacre. Three thousand perished from Turkish scimitars, and ten thousand women and children were sold into slavery.

Thus ended the campaign of 1821, with mutual successes and losses, disgraced on both sides by treachery and massacres; but the Greeks were sufficiently emboldened to declare their independence, and form a constitution under Prince Mavrokordatos as president,–a Chian by birth, who had been physician to the Sultan. The seat of government was fixed at Corinth, whose fortress had been recovered from the Turks. Seven hundred thousand people threw down the gauntlet to twenty-five millions, and defied their power.

The following year the Greek cause indirectly suffered a great blow by the capture and death of Ali Pasha. This ambitious and daring rebel, from humble origin, had arisen, by energy, ability, and fraud, to a high command under the Sultan. He became pasha of Thessaly; and having accumulated great riches by extortion and oppression, he bought the pashalic of Jannina, in one of the richest and most beautiful valleys of Epirus. In the centre of a lake he built an impregnable fortress, collected a large body of Albanian troops, and soon became master of the whole province. He preserved an apparent neutrality between the Sultan and the rebellious Greeks, whom, however, he secretly encouraged. In his castle at Jannina he meditated extensive conquests and independence of the Porte. At one time he had eighty thousand half-disciplined Albanians under his command. The Sultan, at last suspecting his treachery, summoned him to Constantinople, and on his refusal to appear, denounced him as a rebel, and sent Chourchid Pasha, one of his ablest generals, with forty thousand troops, to subdue him. This was no easy task; and for two years, before the Greek revolution broke out, Ali had maintained his independence. At last he found himself besieged in his island castle, impregnable against assault, but short of provisions. From this retreat he was decoyed by consummate art to the mainland, to meet the Turkish general, who promised an important command and a high rank in the Turkish service. In the power now of the Turks, he was at once beheaded, and his head sent to Constantinople.

Ali's death set free the large army of Chourchid Pasha to be employed against the Greeks. Aided too by the enthusiasm which the suppression of a dangerous enemy created, the Sultan made great preparations for a renewed attack on the Morea. The contest now assumed greater proportions, and the reconquest of Greece seemed extremely probable. Sixty thousand Turks, under the command of the ablest general of the Sultan, prepared to invade the Morea. In addition, a powerful squadron, with eight thousand troops, sailed from the Dardanelles to reinforce the Turkish fortresses and furnish provisions. In the meantime the insurrection extended to Chios, or Scio, an opulent and fertile island opposite Smyrna. It had eighty thousand inhabitants, who drove the Turks to their citadel. The Sultan, enraged at the loss of this prosperous island, sent thirty thousand fanatical Asiatic Mussulmans, and a fleet consisting of six ships-of-the-line, ten frigates, and twelve brigs, to reconquer what was regarded as the garden of the Archipelago. Resistance was impossible against such an overwhelming array of forces, who massacred nearly the whole of the male population, and sold their wives and children as slaves. The consuls of France and Austria remonstrated against this unheard-of cruelty; but nothing could appease the fanatical fury of the conquerors. The massacre has no parallel in history since the storming of Syracuse or the sack of Bagdad, Not only were the inhabitants swept away, but the churches, the fine villas, the scattered houses, and the villages were burned to the ground. When the slaughter ceased, it was found that twenty-five thousand men had been slain, and forty-five thousand women and children had become slaves to glut the markets of Constantinople and Egypt, while fifteen thousand had fled to the mainland.

This great calamity, however, was partially avenged by the sailors and chiefs of Hydra, a neighboring island, under the command of one of the greatest heroes that the war produced,–the intrepid and fearless Andreas Miaulis, who with fire-ships destroyed nearly the whole of the Turkish fleet. He was aided by Constantine Canaris and George Pepinis, equal to him in courage, who succeeded in grappling the ships of the enemy and setting them on fire. The Turks, with the remnant of their magnificent fleet, took refuge in the harbor of Mitylene, while the victors returned in triumph to Ipsara, and became the masters of the Archipelago.

The Greek operations were not so fortunate at first on the land as they were on the sea. Mavrokordatos led in person an expedition into Epirus; but he was no general, and failed disastrously. Even the brave Marco Bozzaris was unable to cut his way to the relief of his countrymen, shut up in their fortresses without an adequate supply of provisions; and all that the Greeks could do in their great discouragement was to supply Missolonghi with provisions and a few defenders, in anticipation of a siege.

Epirus was now fallen, and nothing remained but a guerilla warfare. Indeed, a striking feature of the whole revolution was "the absence of any one great leader to concentrate the Greek forces and utilize the splendid heroism of people and chieftains in permanent strategic successes. The war was a succession of sporadic fights,–successes and failures,–with small apparent mutual relations and effects." In Macedonia, which had joined the insurrection, there were six thousand brave mountaineers in arms; but they had to contend with fifteen thousand regular troops under the command of the pashas of Salonica and Thessaly, who forced the passes of the Vale of Tempe, and slew all before them. Chourchid Pasha, having his rear provided for, with thirty thousand men now passed through the defile of Thermopylae, appeared before Corinth, took its citadel, advanced to Argos, dispersed the government which had established itself there, and then pursued his victorious career to Napoli di Romania, whose garrison he reinforced. But the summer sun dried up the surrounding plains; there was nothing left on which his cavalry could feed, or his men either, and he found himself in a perilous position in the midst of victory.

The defeated Greeks now rallied under Ypsilanti and Kolokotronis, who raised the siege of Corinth, and advanced against their foes with twelve thousand men. The Turkish army, decimated and in fear of starvation, resolved to cut their way through the guarded defiles, and succeeded only by the loss of seven thousand men, with all their baggage and military stores. The Morea was delivered from the oppressor, and the Turkish army of thirty thousand was destroyed. Chourchid Pasha was soon after seized with dysentery, brought about by fatigue and anxiety, to which he succumbed; and the ablest general yet sent against the Greeks failed disastrously, to the joy of the nation.

This great success was followed by others. The Acropolis of Athens capitulated to the victorious Greeks, not without the usual atrocities, and Attica, was recovered. But the mountains of Epirus were still filled with Turkish troops, who advanced to lay siege to Missolonghi, defended by a small garrison of four hundred men under Marco Bozzaris. Mavrokordatos contrived to come to his relief, and the town soon had three thousand defenders. Six times did the Turks attempt an assault under Omar Vrione; but each time they were repulsed with great slaughter, and compelled to retreat. The Turkish general lost three quarters of his army, and with difficulty escaped himself in an open boat. Altogether twelve thousand Turks perished in this disastrous siege, with the loss of their artillery.

As the insurrection had now assumed formidable proportions in Cyprus and Candia, a general appeal was made to Mussulmans of those islands, whose numbers greatly exceeded the rebels. Twenty-five thousand men rallied around the standards of the Moslems; but they were driven into their fortresses, leaving both plains and mountains in the hands of the Greeks.

These brave insurgents gained still another great success in this memorable campaign. They carried the important fortress of Napoli di Romania by escalade December 12, under Kolokotronis, with ten thousand men, and the garrison, weakened by famine, capitulated. Four hundred pieces of cannon, with large stores of ammunition, were the reward of the victors. This conquest was the more remarkable since a large Turkish fleet was sent to the relief of the fortress; but fearing the fire-ships of the Greeks, the Turkish admiral sailed away without doing anything, and cast anchor in the bay of Tenedos. Here he was attacked by the Greek fire-ships, commanded by Canaris, and his fleet were obliged to cut their cables and sail back to the Dardanelles, with the loss of their largest ships. The conqueror was crowned with laurel at Ipsara by his grateful countrymen, and the campaign of 1822 closed, leaving the Greeks masters of the sea and of nearly the whole of their territory.