[1821 - 1832] Greek War of Independence

The year is 1821. For nearly four centuries, the land we call Greece has been a ghost of its ancient self, a collection of provinces folded into the vast, sprawling fabric of the Ottoman Empire. To be a Greek is to be a *rayah*—a member of the flock, a non-Muslim subject of the Sultan in Constantinople. Your life is governed by Turkish officials, your faith tolerated but taxed. The call to prayer from the minarets punctuates your days more definitively than the bells of your Orthodox churches, which often ring with a cautious quietness. You pay the *jizya*, a poll tax for the privilege of not being a Muslim, a constant, galling reminder of your second-class status. Yet, something is stirring. It’s in the whispers exchanged over glasses of wine in the back rooms of taverns, in the coded letters passed between merchants in Patras and the Greek diaspora in Vienna and Odessa. It’s the spirit of revolution, fanned by the ideals of the American and French Revolutions that have drifted across the sea. A secret society, the *Filiki Eteria* or "Society of Friends," has been growing for years, its members bound by a sacred oath to liberate the homeland. Its ranks have swelled from a few dozen to tens of thousands, a clandestine network of hope and conspiracy. The spark ignites in the Peloponnese peninsula. The traditional story, the one that has become a national emblem, tells us that on March 25th, in the crisp mountain air at the Monastery of Agia Lavra, Bishop Germanos of Patras raised a banner—the first flag of a new rebellion—and administered an oath to a band of irregular fighters. The cry "Freedom or Death!"—*Eleftheria i Thanatos!*—echoed from the mountainsides, a promise and a threat. The men who answered this call were not a unified, disciplined army. They were a patchwork of hardened souls. There were the *klephts*, the mountain bandits who had resisted Ottoman authority for generations, living by their own code. Men like Theodoros Kolokotronis, a man whose face seemed carved from the very rocks he called home, a brilliant but ruthless guerrilla commander. He and his men, clad in the distinctive white, kilted *fustanella* and armed with ornate silver-hilted swords, or *yataghans*, and long-barreled flintlock rifles, knew every gorge and secret pass. They would strike Ottoman columns and then melt back into the landscape that had birthed them. They fought alongside the *armatoloi*, Christian militias once employed by the Ottomans to police the same mountains. It was a messy, complex alliance, often riddled with infighting over power and prestige. The war that followed was one of unspeakable brutality. It was a war of sieges and massacres, where quarter was rarely given. When the Greeks took the city of Tripolitsa, the seat of the Ottoman governor in the Peloponnese, in 1821, they exacted a terrible revenge for centuries of subjugation, slaughtering thousands of the city's Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. The Ottomans responded in kind. The massacre on the prosperous island of Chios in 1822 was a horror that shocked Europe. Ottoman forces killed or enslaved over 100,000 people, leaving the island a smoldering ruin. The French painter Eugène Delacroix would immortalize the event on a vast, heartbreaking canvas, turning the Greek struggle into a cause célèbre for romantics and intellectuals across the continent. This is when the *Philhellenes*—the lovers of Greece—entered the story. From across Europe and America, men inspired by the glory of Classical Athens and the vision of Christians fighting for freedom against a Muslim empire came to join the cause. The most famous, of course, was the English poet, Lord Byron. He brought not just his fame but his fortune, donating a staggering £4,000 of his own money to fund a naval fleet. He arrived in the besieged, malaria-ridden lagoon town of Missolonghi, a symbol of dogged Greek resistance. He found not glorious heroes, but squabbling, desperate warlords. Before he could ever see a major battle, Byron succumbed to a fever in 1824. His death there, however, did more for the cause than he ever could have in life. He became a martyr, and his sacrifice galvanized European support for the Greek struggle, which was by now faltering badly. By 1827, the revolution was on the verge of collapse. The Sultan had called upon his powerful vassal, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, whose modern, European-trained army was systematically crushing the rebellion. The great powers of Europe—Britain, France, and Russia—who had long watched with a mixture of sympathy and cynical self-interest, finally decided to act. They were driven less by pure love for Greece and more by a desire to manage the decline of the Ottoman Empire to their own advantage. A combined allied fleet was sent to the Bay of Navarino on the western coast of the Peloponnese, with instructions to enforce a ceasefire. There, they faced a massive Ottoman-Egyptian fleet at anchor. On October 20th, 1827, in a confrontation that was supposedly not pre-planned, a single shot triggered a cataclysm. For four hours, the bay was a maelstrom of smoke and fire, the thunder of over 2,000 cannons echoing off the hills. When the smoke cleared, the result was one of the most lopsided naval victories in history. The Ottoman-Egyptian fleet was annihilated, with over 60 ships sunk and 6,000 men killed. The allies lost not a single ship. The Battle of Navarino was the decisive moment. It broke the back of Ottoman naval power and guaranteed that Greece would not be reconquered. After more diplomacy and a brief war between Russia and the Ottomans, the Sultan finally relented. The London Protocol of 1830 formally recognized the existence of an independent Greek state. But the birth was a difficult one. The years of war had left the country in ruins and its leaders deeply divided. The first governor, the capable Ioannis Kapodistrias, was assassinated in 1831 by a rival clan, plunging the nascent state into civil war. The Great Powers, fearing instability, intervened again. They decided Greece should be a monarchy, and in 1832, they installed a 17-year-old Bavarian prince, Otto, as its first king. The Greeks had won their freedom, but their independence would begin under the tutelage of foreign powers and a king who did not speak their language. It was a bittersweet victory, a nation forged in a decade of fire, blood, and sacrifice, now facing the uncertain dawn of its modern existence.