The Greek Revolution of 1821 . On this day, March 25, in 1821, a few brave Greek men started a revolution against the Ottoman Empire that ultimately resulted in the state of Greece. Full story
The Ottoman forces, with the assistance of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, managed to significantly limit the revolution, but the fall of Messolonghi in 1826, combined with the Philhellenism movement, contributed to the change in the diplomatic attitude of the European great powers, who had faced with displeasure the outbreak of revolution.
The diplomatic involvement of England, France and Russia and their armed intervention with the naval battle of Navarino and the Russo-Turkish war contributed to the successful outcome of the Greek struggle, forcing the Porte to withdraw its forces first from the Peloponnese and then from Central Greece. After a series of international treaties from 1827 onwards, Greek independence was recognized in 1830 and the borders of the new state were finalized in 1832. The slogan of the revolution, "Freedom or Death", became the national motto of Greece.
Europe After the Napoleonic Wars
For more than two decades (1792-1815) Europe was shaken by a generalized conflict. In this war in which states and systems collided (according to the expression of the historian EJ Hobsbawm) the winners were the so-called old regimes. On the side of the losers were not only Napoleon's France but much more the democratic ideas and the liberal movements inspired by the tradition of the Enlightenment and especially the French Revolution.
However, the victory and the Restoration of the old regimes did not mean the elimination of revolutionary ideas. The seeds of the French Revolution had taken root on the European continent and revolutionary ferments were still taking place through secret societies. The need to deal with them led to the formation of a system of security and stability that was oriented towards a double goal: The prevention of a new war and at the same time some new revolutions on the French model, which would probably lead to the collapse of the old regimes.
To achieve these goals, the so-called Holy, Pentaple or European Alliance was established from 1815 onwards, in which the powerful countries of Europe, the Great Powers, participated. The Holy Alliance was for England, Russia, Austria, Prussia and France the diplomatic framework within which they exercised their foreign policy, promoting the stability of the old regimes on the one hand and their special and conflicting economic and geopolitical interests on the other.
A minimum common foreign policy agreement between these states was therefore required to deal with all those issues that could develop into a threat to stability in Europe. For this purpose, meetings and conferences were often organized in which the rulers of these states and political leaders such as Prince Metternich, Chancellor of Austria and a devotee of stability par excellence, participated. Political stability, however, could not be achieved in a period of rapid and radical social and economic change, which 19th century Europe had already entered.
Revolutionary ferments led in the early 1820s to a series of uprisings and revolutions that took place in the Balkans and the European south. The Holy Alliance did not limit itself to condemning these revolutions. France suppressed the Revolution in the Iberian Peninsula and Austria in Italy. The Greek Revolution was instead left to be dealt with by the Ottoman Empire itself. The endurance shown by the Greek revolutionaries on the battlefields and the stabilization of the revolution in the Peloponnese, Roumeli and the Aegean islands at least until 1825, tested the cohesion of the Holy Alliance.
Even more, it led some of the Great Powers, especially England and Russia, to revise their attitude and favor the effort to create a Greek state. Thus, the Greek Revolution which was a source of inspiration and hope in the spaces of European liberals was the only example of a revolution with a happy ending throughout the period of the Palinorthos (1815-1830).
European Diplomacy and the Greek Question at the Laibach Conference
News of the Greek Revolution came at a time when the Great Powers were busy suppressing rebellions in the Italian and Iberian peninsulas. The negative treatment of revolutionary movements is linked to the so-called Principle of Legitimacy that had prevailed in the diplomatic field since 1815, when the winners of the Napoleonic wars imposed the Restoration of the old regimes on the European Continent.
Thus, the maintenance of peace was directly linked to the maintenance of regimes, a purpose for which the cooperation of the Great Powers was required. Russia, France, Austria, Prussia and England, states with different and often competing economic and geopolitical interests, would have to move together to deal with a new revolutionary upsurge in Europe. In other words, the promotion of the particular interests of each country should not put political stability in the Old Continent to the test.
This required the agreement of the five powerful states, and this agreement was the result of exhaustive diplomatic consultations and conferences. The decisions of the conferences were balanced between the main axes of a rudimentary common foreign policy and the special interests of the Great Powers, which in no case gave up trying to dominate one another.
The Ottoman Empire was a focus of tensions, rivalries and conflicts that turned it into a destabilizing factor. The once mighty competitor of the European powers had fallen into an ever-increasing decline, due to which the Great Sickness was invoked. From the end of the 18th century, the separatist tendencies cultivated in the Christian populations of the European possessions became apparent. These tendencies were reinforced by Russia's aggressive policy.
The news of the Greek Revolution became known in the European courts in mid-March 1821, when a letter from Alexander Ypsilantis to the Russian emperor Alexander I arrived in Laibach (Lubiana). The emperors of Austria and Russia, the king of Prussia and diplomatic delegations from England and France were there since January of the same year, looking for ways to deal with the revolutions that had broken out in Italy and Spain.
Ypsilanti's position in the Russian army and the Russian-instigated Christian uprisings in the southern Balkans in the past put Russia at a disadvantage against the other Powers. Thus, the disapproval of the Greek revolution, which was expressed by the deletion of Ypsilantis from the list of Russian officers and a letter written by Kapodistrias, meant first of all the harmonization of Russia with the overall attitude of the Great Powers towards any revolutionary movement.
The Dynamics of the Revolution and the Opening of Greek Society to Modernity
The declaration of the Revolution, the long war and its happy ending with the establishment of an independent state initiate processes of change that introduce Greek society to the rhythms of the modern era, of modernity. These changes occur in all areas of social, political and economic life, and they gradually take effect in different ways and at different times.
These changes that characterize Greek society in the 19th century as a whole become more evident in the years of the revolution. From the First National Assembly and the Provisional Government of Epidaurus, processes of political integration and homogenization are initiated on the basis of modern institutions and mechanisms: formation of a constitution, separation of powers and establishment of central administration mechanisms. Of course, the operation of modern political institutions was often accompanied by practices that are inscribed in a different -"traditional"- political culture (local kinship networks, factions).
Similarly, the persons involved in political matters often - but no longer exclusively - came from the leading groups of the pre-revolutionary period (prominent, armed, hierarchs). However, this is something different, something new. It is about a society that recognizes itself and its future in a different way than in the past and consequently rebels in search of new ways of being.
The openness of Greek society to modernity constitutes an intersection of time and people's experience. The social protagonists of the revolution managed in a historically original way a juncture of changes and ruptures with the past that they themselves caused, even if they were unable to control and much less determine the results of their actions. The innovations brought about by the revolution involve total changes concerning the constitution of the political field and are expressed on three different levels.
Firstly, changes concerning the institutions, through which the project of political autonomy of the Greek nation is defined. Secondly, changes that have to do with the formation of political hierarchies, that is, with the social origin and composition of the political personnel that staff and move the new institutions. Finally, there are changes in the procedures for highlighting the political hierarchies.
These profound changes that pervade Greek society as a whole overturn the pre-revolutionary order of things (institutions, hierarchies, procedures) that had been formed in the context of the Ottoman conquest. In other words, the modernization of Greek society tested and dynamized many of its foundations. The destruction of one world and the construction of a new one caused social upheavals and produced rivalries which, in the conditions of the multi-year liberation struggle, often took the form of conspiracies, assassinations and armed conflicts.
The civil wars of 1824, the stances against Kapodistrias and his murder, as well as the new armed conflicts until the arrival of Othon, are perhaps the top of these incidents. However, even if these conflicts are to some extent reminiscent of socio-political rivalries that go back to the Ottoman past (conflict of former-armed, Roumeliotes-Peloponnesians), they did not constitute a brake on the consolidation of the new institutions and procedures. Through these conflicts, the new institutions strengthened, giving priority to the dynamics of unification and modernization of the socio-political field that was inaugurated with the revolution.
Neopagis Political Agents
The Greek Revolution broke out almost simultaneously in the Peloponnese, E. Sterea, the Aegean islands and W. Sterea, areas that formed the first Greek territory. In each of these regions the local leadership groups of the pre-revolutionary period found themselves at the head of the revolutionary movements in their provinces. In the months that followed, a number of prominent Greeks arrived in the rebel regions, leaders of volunteers and bearers of money and supplies, to join the revolution; most of them, to join the revolutionary leadership.
They were usually people who came from Phanariot families, while most of them had studied in some European country and had acquired administrative and political experience. The formation of a central administration and the predominance of its institutions and bodies over the local power centers favored the emergence of these people, who had neither the local foundations nor the traditionally legitimized leadership presence of the pre-revolutionary ruling groups.
They had, however, acquired political and organizational skills, equally rare and useful in a society in revolution. Their upward trajectory is connected with the adoption of Western-style, modern political institutions and with the strengthening of the mechanisms of the central administration. Their involvement in these bodies helped some to gain significant social footholds and gradually form personal political factions.
Kolettis and Mavrokordatos, politicians who starred in the political life of the Greek state for most of the reign of Otto, are perhaps the most typical examples of newcomers who "exploited" the dynamics of the liberation of the political field produced during the years of the revolution. Similar was the course of Theodoros Kolokotronis, a Peloponnesian general who scored several military successes, which were the springboard for his economic and socio-political rise.
Speaking generally, we would say that in the period of the revolution as well as in the first post-revolutionary years, radical upheavals were caused, especially at the level of institutions, hierarchies and political groupings. Even more, the political scene was unified in terms of national territory (central administration, national assemblies) and consequently freed from traditional barriers (heredity, social and religious authority).
Thus, the social mobility that characterizes every revolutionary period also led in the Greek case to the gradual weakening of traditional leadership groups and the renewal of political actors. The leading presence of neophyte actors during the years of the revolution, such as Mavrokordatos, Kolettis and Kolokotronis, is an expression of the rupture and at the same time of the reconstitution/reorganization that took place during the years of the revolution in the field of politics.
The Economics of the Revolution (1821 – 1827)
The organization and coordination of war operations imposed from the beginnings of the Revolution the need to set up logistics in order to ensure weapons, munitions, food and salaries for the armed men. Initially, these needs were met at the provincial level, but soon the procedures for organizing the finances of the central Administration were initiated through standard functions (revenue-expenditure budget, accounting system, collection and resource management mechanisms, etc.).
The beginning was made in the First National Assembly (1822), however, the central control of financial resources and their management in a rational way does not seem to happen until the Kapodistrian period (1828-31). The sums of money that had been initially collected by Filiki Etairia, the sporadic contributions of the philhellenic committees as well as money collected in the Greek parishes were certainly significant, but they could only cover a small part of the money needed for the continuation of the revolution.
Thus, the financial needs were met in particular with resources from the rebel regions. The contributions of the ancient families in the Peloponnese and the Aegean islands were significant. The same families that in the Ottoman period were responsible for the collection of taxes in their regions and their performance to the Ottoman authorities and were also involved in the subletting mechanisms of these taxes continued their activity during the first years of the revolution.
Thus, economic institutions and mechanisms of the Ottoman period were preserved during the years of the revolution, such as the tithe tax and the tax subletting system. At the same time, an effort was made to collect customs taxes. These revenues, which came primarily from the Peloponnese and secondarily from the Aegean islands, were the main source for financing the revolution, especially until 1824.
However, the resources from direct and indirect taxation were low, since the war did not allow much development of agricultural production and trade. At the same time, the collection and delivery of these taxes relied rather on the good will of the tenants and subtenants than on the efficiency of the collection mechanisms of the central administration. Supplementary income was also a percentage of the spoils of war, the distribution of which was often the subject of conflict between the various leaders.
From 1824 onwards the most important development in economic matters was the conclusion of two external loans by financial circles in England. The terms of their repayment were extremely negative, while at the same time the National Estates, that is the Ottoman properties that passed into the hands of the revolutionaries, were mortgaged, thus limiting the possibility to restore the fighters and in general the landless farmers. However, the most important point regarding foreign loans is not so much related to economic issues but to foreign policy.
The unofficial condescension of the English government in the granting of the loans meant the de facto recognition of the political existence of the Greeks and their possibility of forming a state in the future, which could repay these loans.
PRE-REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
In general
In the aftermath of the American and French Revolutions and the Napoleonic wars, which had no impact on the now regressive structures of the vast Ottoman Empire of Mahmut II (1808-1839), the National Movement of the Greeks was created, the main characteristics of which were the projection of an independent national identity of the Greeks in the ancient past, the denouncing of the Ottoman power as illegal and arbitrary and the expression of the will to establish an independent and favored Greek state.
Among the Greeks in the diaspora, but also in the Greek lands, societies were initially founded with cultural and educational purposes, i.e. the dissemination of education to the enslaved Greeks, such as the Greek-Language Hotel in 1809 in Paris and the Philanthropic Society of Athens in 1813 and the Vienna in 1814, which formed the anteroom for the creation of a liberal political organization.
In 1814, three radical middle-class merchants, Nikolaos Skoufas, Athanasios Tsakalov and Emmanuel Xanthos, founded in Odessa, Russia, the Friendly Society, a secret and illegal organization that operated on the model of Masonic lodges and aimed to gather resources and the creation of structures to declare a revolution to establish an independent national state.
Unlike the many revolts that had taken place during the Ottoman rule in the conquered Greek territory, which were linked to the political plans of major European powers, the revolution planned by the Philiki was to be an independent revolution of the Greeks. After the end of the Napoleonic wars and the pacification of the Mediterranean, the European fleets regained their position in trade and the crisis of the Greek merchant shipping, which had started in 1812, assumed great dimensions.
The disruption of trade and shipping activities that had flourished in the previous period affected both the Greeks of the patricians and the empire, as the crisis extended to the economic activities linked to merchant shipping, leading entire social groups to a standstill: accumulated ship capital remained inactive, while sailors, craftsmen and artisans were left unemployed or forced to seek employment in agricultural production as colligians.
After some initial difficulties, many scholars, students, merchants and financially powerful Greeks not only from the diaspora, but also from the empire were introduced to the Society, especially after the transfer of its headquarters to Constantinople in 1818. Taking advantage of a centuries-old tradition of oracles and the dissemination of Medieval concepts in the traditional orthodox communities of the Greek countries, the Philiki gave the impression that they had the support of Russia.
Thus, the development of a liberating ethos among the traditionally orthodox strata, such as the provosts, the kleftarmatoli, the clergy and the peasants, and their adoption of the classicist myth of descent from the ancient Greeks and the modern revolutionary program, was facilitated. Filiki Etairia was particularly successful among the kleftarmatoulos who were in the Ionian Islands and Russia.
Thieves chased from the Peloponnese, such as Theodoros Kolokotronis, and charioteers expelled by Ali Pasha had found refuge there in the first decade of the 19th century. Not knowing other professions than those of warrior and shepherd, they had been recruited into European armies, an occupation which, however, disappeared with the end of the Napoleonic wars.
During this period they came into contact with the Friends, who propagated revolutionary ideas, organized themselves into the Society and contributed significantly to the preparation of the Revolution; some converted many others to the cause of the Revolution by acting as "Apostles" of the Society. After the refusal of the minister of foreign affairs of the Tsar of Russia, Ioannis Kapodistrias, to take over the leadership of the Company, the Phanariot prince Alexandros Ypsilantis, a high-ranking officer of the Russian army, was appointed General Commissioner of the Authority in April 1820.
Souli and the Uprising
Leafing through the illustrious history of our nation, one could refer to many events and 'heroic figures of the Struggle for Independence'. Among these fighters, the thousand-sung Souliotes have a special place, who with their heroic struggles prepared the ground and determined the outcome of the National Rebellion. The Souliotes were originally settled in Tetrahori, a confederation of four villages - Souli, Kiafa, Avariko and Samoniva - inhabited by 450 families divided into lighthouses.
These villages were built on the rocky and steep slopes of the Cassiopeia mountains, surrounded by impassable natural fortifications and accessed only by a path. On the uneven uphill parts of this path there were fortified towers, which ensured absolute protection and security in the area. Later, seven more villages were created on the lower slopes of the mountain – Tsikouri, Perihati, Vilia, Alsochori, Kontates, Gioniala and Tsefliki – which collectively called them Eptachori.
The Souliot Commonwealth operated autonomously, with its own laws, army, legislative and executive body. The Souliotes gradually came under the control of another sixty or so villages of Parasouli, which they took from the agades of Margaritiou and Paramythia and the pasades of Ioannina. Thus, the inhabitants of Parasouli were freed from Turkish slavery. However, they paid tribute to the Souliotian Commonwealth, within which they operated freely in Turkish-occupied Greece under conditions of direct democracy.
The basis of their culture was the forty-seven faras, which were made up of families that had a common ancestor. Each fara was represented in the Parliament, "the Criterion of the Fatherland" as they called it, by the head of the oldest and most honored family. The Church of the Municipality also functioned in Souli, which was convened in order to discuss and decide mainly on war issues.
The Souliotes were unique in terms of their attitude, habits and way of life. They were oligarchs, extremely hardy, accustomed to physical hardship and a hard life, characteristics not at all unrelated to the nature of their inaccessible and barren land. Homeland and freedom were for the Souliots a basic rule and condition of their lives and their struggles against those who tried to deprive them of these goods were permanent. They distinguished themselves for keeping their agreements and promises, considering the word of honor, the well-known "besa", as sacred.
From young children they learned to handle weapons, "which walking, sitting, eating and sleeping do not neglect". Always surrounded by enemies and oligarchs, they learned to use idiosyncratic war tactics, which arose from the particular circumstances of their lives. While their enemies were accustomed to fight by daylight, the Suliotes not only did not avoid night operations, but pursued them and were renowned night fighters. They also used to fight in a straight line of fire, spaced thinly apart.
By following these techniques, they gave the impression to the enemy that they were many times larger than they actually were. It goes without saying that their chiefs fought at the head of their men "always first in the fire," exposed more than all to the enemy's fire. In this way, they ensured the esteem and respect of their men and caused fear in their opponents, many of whom often retreated when they saw on the opposing side one of the well-known Souliot warlords.
The Souliotesses held a special position and enjoyed honor and respect in the Souliot society. When differences arose between the men, they themselves mediated and settled them. Also trained in weapons, they fought alongside their men with unparalleled courage and self-sacrifice, as is stated by the abundance of relevant references in most folk songs. At other times, when they were not needed in battle, they carried munitions, food and other supplies to their fighting men and cheered them up.
Like the ancient Spartan women, they abhorred and rejected as a husband the man who was followed by the rumor that at some point in the battle he cowered or fled. Tzavellaina, Leno Botsari, Despo, whose exploits were followed step by step and glorified by the unadulterated municipal Muse, became synonymous with female competitiveness and the special dynamics developed by women in the rugged mountains of Souli.
In the 18th century, the rule of the Souliots had been consolidated in the southwestern part of Epirus and, naturally, the Turkish Agades of the region could not tolerate an independent Christian hearth, which had even emerged as a center of power in the wider region. Eight wars of Turks and Turkalvans against the Souliots (1731, 1754, 1759, 1762, 1772, 1774, 1780, 1780-1790) are presented by Christoforos Perraivos, who remains the main source of information for this period.
These profound changes that pervade Greek society as a whole overturn the pre-revolutionary order of things (institutions, hierarchies, procedures) that had been formed in the context of the Ottoman conquest. In other words, the modernization of Greek society tested and dynamized many of its foundations. The destruction of one world and the construction of a new one caused social upheavals and produced rivalries which, in the conditions of the multi-year liberation struggle, often took the form of conspiracies, assassinations and armed conflicts.
The civil wars of 1824, the stances against Kapodistrias and his murder, as well as the new armed conflicts until the arrival of Othon, are perhaps the top of these incidents. However, even if these conflicts are to some extent reminiscent of socio-political rivalries that go back to the Ottoman past (conflict of former-armed, Roumeliotes-Peloponnesians), they did not constitute a brake on the consolidation of the new institutions and procedures. Through these conflicts, the new institutions strengthened, giving priority to the dynamics of unification and modernization of the socio-political field that was inaugurated with the revolution.
Neopagis Political Agents
The Greek Revolution broke out almost simultaneously in the Peloponnese, E. Sterea, the Aegean islands and W. Sterea, areas that formed the first Greek territory. In each of these regions the local leadership groups of the pre-revolutionary period found themselves at the head of the revolutionary movements in their provinces. In the months that followed, a number of prominent Greeks arrived in the rebel regions, leaders of volunteers and bearers of money and supplies, to join the revolution; most of them, to join the revolutionary leadership.
They were usually people who came from Phanariot families, while most of them had studied in some European country and had acquired administrative and political experience. The formation of a central administration and the predominance of its institutions and bodies over the local power centers favored the emergence of these people, who had neither the local foundations nor the traditionally legitimized leadership presence of the pre-revolutionary ruling groups.
They had, however, acquired political and organizational skills, equally rare and useful in a society in revolution. Their upward trajectory is connected with the adoption of Western-style, modern political institutions and with the strengthening of the mechanisms of the central administration. Their involvement in these bodies helped some to gain significant social footholds and gradually form personal political factions.
Kolettis and Mavrokordatos, politicians who starred in the political life of the Greek state for most of the reign of Otto, are perhaps the most typical examples of newcomers who "exploited" the dynamics of the liberation of the political field produced during the years of the revolution. Similar was the course of Theodoros Kolokotronis, a Peloponnesian general who scored several military successes, which were the springboard for his economic and socio-political rise.
Thus, the social mobility that characterizes every revolutionary period also led in the Greek case to the gradual weakening of traditional leadership groups and the renewal of political actors. The leading presence of neophyte actors during the years of the revolution, such as Mavrokordatos, Kolettis and Kolokotronis, is an expression of the rupture and at the same time of the reconstitution/reorganization that took place during the years of the revolution in the field of politics.
The Economics of the Revolution (1821 – 1827)
The organization and coordination of war operations imposed from the beginnings of the Revolution the need to set up logistics in order to ensure weapons, munitions, food and salaries for the armed men. Initially, these needs were met at the provincial level, but soon the procedures for organizing the finances of the central Administration were initiated through standard functions (revenue-expenditure budget, accounting system, collection and resource management mechanisms, etc.).
The beginning was made in the First National Assembly (1822), however, the central control of financial resources and their management in a rational way does not seem to happen until the Kapodistrian period (1828-31). The sums of money that had been initially collected by Filiki Etairia, the sporadic contributions of the philhellenic committees as well as money collected in the Greek parishes were certainly significant, but they could only cover a small part of the money needed for the continuation of the revolution.
Thus, the financial needs were met in particular with resources from the rebel regions. The contributions of the ancient families in the Peloponnese and the Aegean islands were significant. The same families that in the Ottoman period were responsible for the collection of taxes in their regions and their performance to the Ottoman authorities and were also involved in the subletting mechanisms of these taxes continued their activity during the first years of the revolution.
Thus, economic institutions and mechanisms of the Ottoman period were preserved during the years of the revolution, such as the tithe tax and the tax subletting system. At the same time, an effort was made to collect customs taxes. These revenues, which came primarily from the Peloponnese and secondarily from the Aegean islands, were the main source for financing the revolution, especially until 1824.
However, the resources from direct and indirect taxation were low, since the war did not allow much development of agricultural production and trade. At the same time, the collection and delivery of these taxes relied rather on the good will of the tenants and subtenants than on the efficiency of the collection mechanisms of the central administration. Supplementary income was also a percentage of the spoils of war, the distribution of which was often the subject of conflict between the various leaders.
The unofficial condescension of the English government in the granting of the loans meant the de facto recognition of the political existence of the Greeks and their possibility of forming a state in the future, which could repay these loans.
PRE-REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
In general
In the aftermath of the American and French Revolutions and the Napoleonic wars, which had no impact on the now regressive structures of the vast Ottoman Empire of Mahmut II (1808-1839), the National Movement of the Greeks was created, the main characteristics of which were the projection of an independent national identity of the Greeks in the ancient past, the denouncing of the Ottoman power as illegal and arbitrary and the expression of the will to establish an independent and favored Greek state.
Among the Greeks in the diaspora, but also in the Greek lands, societies were initially founded with cultural and educational purposes, i.e. the dissemination of education to the enslaved Greeks, such as the Greek-Language Hotel in 1809 in Paris and the Philanthropic Society of Athens in 1813 and the Vienna in 1814, which formed the anteroom for the creation of a liberal political organization.
In 1814, three radical middle-class merchants, Nikolaos Skoufas, Athanasios Tsakalov and Emmanuel Xanthos, founded in Odessa, Russia, the Friendly Society, a secret and illegal organization that operated on the model of Masonic lodges and aimed to gather resources and the creation of structures to declare a revolution to establish an independent national state.
Unlike the many revolts that had taken place during the Ottoman rule in the conquered Greek territory, which were linked to the political plans of major European powers, the revolution planned by the Philiki was to be an independent revolution of the Greeks. After the end of the Napoleonic wars and the pacification of the Mediterranean, the European fleets regained their position in trade and the crisis of the Greek merchant shipping, which had started in 1812, assumed great dimensions.
The disruption of trade and shipping activities that had flourished in the previous period affected both the Greeks of the patricians and the empire, as the crisis extended to the economic activities linked to merchant shipping, leading entire social groups to a standstill: accumulated ship capital remained inactive, while sailors, craftsmen and artisans were left unemployed or forced to seek employment in agricultural production as colligians.
Thus, the development of a liberating ethos among the traditionally orthodox strata, such as the provosts, the kleftarmatoli, the clergy and the peasants, and their adoption of the classicist myth of descent from the ancient Greeks and the modern revolutionary program, was facilitated. Filiki Etairia was particularly successful among the kleftarmatoulos who were in the Ionian Islands and Russia.
Thieves chased from the Peloponnese, such as Theodoros Kolokotronis, and charioteers expelled by Ali Pasha had found refuge there in the first decade of the 19th century. Not knowing other professions than those of warrior and shepherd, they had been recruited into European armies, an occupation which, however, disappeared with the end of the Napoleonic wars.
During this period they came into contact with the Friends, who propagated revolutionary ideas, organized themselves into the Society and contributed significantly to the preparation of the Revolution; some converted many others to the cause of the Revolution by acting as "Apostles" of the Society. After the refusal of the minister of foreign affairs of the Tsar of Russia, Ioannis Kapodistrias, to take over the leadership of the Company, the Phanariot prince Alexandros Ypsilantis, a high-ranking officer of the Russian army, was appointed General Commissioner of the Authority in April 1820.
Souli and the Uprising
Leafing through the illustrious history of our nation, one could refer to many events and 'heroic figures of the Struggle for Independence'. Among these fighters, the thousand-sung Souliotes have a special place, who with their heroic struggles prepared the ground and determined the outcome of the National Rebellion. The Souliotes were originally settled in Tetrahori, a confederation of four villages - Souli, Kiafa, Avariko and Samoniva - inhabited by 450 families divided into lighthouses.
These villages were built on the rocky and steep slopes of the Cassiopeia mountains, surrounded by impassable natural fortifications and accessed only by a path. On the uneven uphill parts of this path there were fortified towers, which ensured absolute protection and security in the area. Later, seven more villages were created on the lower slopes of the mountain – Tsikouri, Perihati, Vilia, Alsochori, Kontates, Gioniala and Tsefliki – which collectively called them Eptachori.
The Souliot Commonwealth operated autonomously, with its own laws, army, legislative and executive body. The Souliotes gradually came under the control of another sixty or so villages of Parasouli, which they took from the agades of Margaritiou and Paramythia and the pasades of Ioannina. Thus, the inhabitants of Parasouli were freed from Turkish slavery. However, they paid tribute to the Souliotian Commonwealth, within which they operated freely in Turkish-occupied Greece under conditions of direct democracy.
The Souliotes were unique in terms of their attitude, habits and way of life. They were oligarchs, extremely hardy, accustomed to physical hardship and a hard life, characteristics not at all unrelated to the nature of their inaccessible and barren land. Homeland and freedom were for the Souliots a basic rule and condition of their lives and their struggles against those who tried to deprive them of these goods were permanent. They distinguished themselves for keeping their agreements and promises, considering the word of honor, the well-known "besa", as sacred.
From young children they learned to handle weapons, "which walking, sitting, eating and sleeping do not neglect". Always surrounded by enemies and oligarchs, they learned to use idiosyncratic war tactics, which arose from the particular circumstances of their lives. While their enemies were accustomed to fight by daylight, the Suliotes not only did not avoid night operations, but pursued them and were renowned night fighters. They also used to fight in a straight line of fire, spaced thinly apart.
By following these techniques, they gave the impression to the enemy that they were many times larger than they actually were. It goes without saying that their chiefs fought at the head of their men "always first in the fire," exposed more than all to the enemy's fire. In this way, they ensured the esteem and respect of their men and caused fear in their opponents, many of whom often retreated when they saw on the opposing side one of the well-known Souliot warlords.
The Souliotesses held a special position and enjoyed honor and respect in the Souliot society. When differences arose between the men, they themselves mediated and settled them. Also trained in weapons, they fought alongside their men with unparalleled courage and self-sacrifice, as is stated by the abundance of relevant references in most folk songs. At other times, when they were not needed in battle, they carried munitions, food and other supplies to their fighting men and cheered them up.
Like the ancient Spartan women, they abhorred and rejected as a husband the man who was followed by the rumor that at some point in the battle he cowered or fled. Tzavellaina, Leno Botsari, Despo, whose exploits were followed step by step and glorified by the unadulterated municipal Muse, became synonymous with female competitiveness and the special dynamics developed by women in the rugged mountains of Souli.
In the 18th century, the rule of the Souliots had been consolidated in the southwestern part of Epirus and, naturally, the Turkish Agades of the region could not tolerate an independent Christian hearth, which had even emerged as a center of power in the wider region. Eight wars of Turks and Turkalvans against the Souliots (1731, 1754, 1759, 1762, 1772, 1774, 1780, 1780-1790) are presented by Christoforos Perraivos, who remains the main source of information for this period.
However, the great opponent of the Souliots, after 1787, was Ali Pasha, who, unable to tolerate their resistance in the heart of his territory, launched a merciless attack against them. In 1792, he treacherously captures Lambros Tzavella and attacks Souliotes, who, however, strongly resist. Then the crafty Pasha sends Lambro Xavella to Suli, to negotiate with his own people the surrender of their region.
As a guarantee for the fulfillment of his mission, Ali Pasha holds as a hostage the son of Lambros Xavella, Photo. The Souliotis warlord, however, acts contrary to the wishes and orders of Ali, and not only does not negotiate the surrender of Soulios, but sends a harsh message to the pasha, stating unequivocally that in the name of the freedom of his country, his son must be sacrificed . Among other things, he mentions the following:
Ali Pasha, ... some Turks, like you, want to say that I am a merciless father by sacrificing my son ... if my son, young as he is, is not happy to die for his country, he is not worthy to life, and be known as my son; therefore go forth faithless, I am impatient to be avenged. I, your sworn enemy Captain Lampros Tzavellas. After this negative development, Ali, seeing that the Souliotes were determined to keep their parts at any cost, attacked them again.
On the 20th, and according to others on the 27th, of July 1792, the battle began, in which the troops of Ali were defeated and forced to retreat with serious losses in dead and wounded. In this battle, the heroic figure of Moschos Javela, wife of Lambros and mother of the prisoner Photos, stood out, who led a body of women made the final attack and put the terrified Turkalvans to flight.
Such is the shame of Ali, who, returning to Ioannina, gave an order that "any citizen who dares to take his head out through a door or hole in his house in order to see the soldiers, should be killed indiscriminately". Afterwards, he signed a forced peace treaty with the Souliotes and released the Photo Tzavela as part of the exchange of prisoners.
The scheming Pasha, realizing the difficulty of conquering Souli, decides to break the unity of the Souliots. He comes to an agreement with Giorgos Botsaris, who withdraws from the heroic lands of Souli and takes over the chariotry of the Tzoumerkas. Also, Ali builds twelve towers in relevant places around the mountains of Souli, with the ultimate goal of forcing the Souliites to surrender, due to a lack of food and munitions.
And in 1801 he comes back with a peace proposal, "promising to give them two thousand talents, ten years of dehydration and any other location they choose in Greece for residence". The Souliotes again refused any agreement with him and answered him with harsh language:
Vizier Ali Pasha greets you. Our country is infinitely sweeter than your white and happy lands, where you promise to give us; whence you toil in vain, because our freedom is not sold or bought with almost all the treasures of the earth, but with blood and death until the late Souliot. All Soulios, young and old.
Indeed, how fitting their signature "all young and old" with the shocking "unanimously" of the resolution of the Free Besiegers, written a few years later in our historic place. Once again the Souliotes, although few and exhausted by deprivation and hunger, took fate into their own hands, acting on the whims of their moral conscience.
And while the pressure of Ali and the fight continued relentlessly, the letters of the Souliots to the Russian and French governments and the authorities of the Iptani State, with their appeals to supply them with food and munitions had no effect, as their former allies , wishing at that juncture to maintain friendly relations with the Gate, refused to get involved in the affair of Soulius. The only moral support for the indomitable heroes and ardent freedom fighters came from Adamantios Korais, who in his letter, in April 1803, from distant Paris urged them not to betray their freedom.
Thus, despite the unfavorable conditions that had been created by the tightening of the siege line, the Souliotes continued to defend their homeland with unparalleled bravery, as a result of which many Turks deserted, "preaching everywhere that neither they nor their successors would be able to to take over Sullion, and that Turkish blood is being shed unjustly and uselessly".
Ali's associates developed secret contacts with leaders of Souliot lighthouses, whom they believed they could buy off, in order to undermine the front of Souliot forces with the power of money. In September 1803, two Souli leaders, Koutsonikas and Pelios Goussis, presented themselves to Veli Pasha, son of Ali, asking for "the release of a son-in-law in custody after the twenty-four hostages and a reward of nine thousand grosci for the gain of Souli" .
Veli accepted their proposals, and on the night of September 25, Pelios Goussis, as another Nightmare, secretly led 200 Turkalvan soldiers to his house, who the next morning occupied Souli. All four villages of Souli fell into the hands of Veli Pasha. As the last focus of resistance remained the walled castle of the church of Agia Paraskevi on Kougi hill and the heights of Kiafa. Throughout October, Veli Pasha's systematic efforts to capture the last strongholds failed.
However, the complete lack of food, the close siege and the impossibility of receiving any external aid forced even the last Souliotes who were stranded in Kougi to accept capitulation on December 12, 1803. And while the Souliotes were leaving their ancestral homes, in December 16, the monk Samuel was burned in Koogi.
The monk, together with five other Souliotes, had stayed in Kougi, to deliver to the envoys of Velis the munitions that were kept there. Enraged, however, by the insulting words of the Turkish envoys, he set fire to the gunpowder warehouse. And so the pasha's troops "took the wicked Kiapha, the notorious Kugi / and burned the monk with four nomads".
Ali then put the last part of his plan into action. He himself may now have in his possession the mountainous massifs of Souli, but the Souliotes, who in all the previous years challenged his authority and came into direct confrontation with him, were still armed and constituted a threat to the imposition of centralized power of.
Thus, first the families of Nikos Koutsonikas and Koletsis Photomaras who had taken refuge in Zalogos, received the surprise attack of 3,000 Turkalvans. During the battle "women of up to sixty, almost all of them widows, saw the danger as inevitable, courageously, despite the long-suffering and despondent captivity, the heroic and instantaneous death of suicide; they climbed onto a winged height, their tender and cherished children fell first, therefore, one after the other, they were also spontaneously thrown from the cliff".
As other Free Besiegers, the Souliotisses refused to become slaves of the Turks and, as our national poet characteristically mentions, "He drew them to the place / Of Zalongos the acronis / Of Liberty the love / And inspired them to dance". Of the 500 Souliots, only 150 were able to be rescued and go to Parga.
This perhaps the greatest event of women's sacrifice in world history, as they choose the honorable death "without grumbling and protest", the school of deconstruction tried to present it as another crowding of Greeks, which before that in the port of Smyrna, may perhaps " precipitated being pushed to the edge of the cliff by the retreating fighters.' And of course, the questioning of events that were a turning point in Souliot history is not limited to Zalogos, as the satellites of the deconstructive school express doubts about the burning of Samuel in Kougi and the blowing up of Despos in the tower of Dimoula.
Then, on December 23, the Turkish-Albanian troops moved to Riniasa, where twenty Souliot families from the lineage of Giorgaki Botsi had settled. His wife, the legendary Despo, locked up with her daughters, daughters-in-law and grandchildren in the tower of Dimoulas, chose a glorious and free death and "grabbed a thunderbolt in her hand, daughters and daughters-in-law are crying / Turkish slaves let us not live, children, come with me / And he lit the firecrackers, and they all caught fire."
Finally, Kitsos Botsaris, fled with 1,200 Souliots to Agrafa, near the village of Seltso, to the naturally fortified site of the Dormition Monastery. There, in January 1804, he was attacked by Turkish-Albanian troops. After a three-month siege, on April 7, 1804, the monastery was captured and only 50 Souliotes, among them Kitsos and his son Markos, managed to escape and find refuge in Parga.
Leno Botsari, daughter of Kitsos, fighting bravely near the Acheloos river, was surrounded by the enemy troops and in order not to be captured, she fell into the river and drowned. The Souliotes, expelled from their homeland, then settled in the Iptane Islands and mainly in Corfu, where they enlisted and served in military corps under the orders, first of all, of the Russians and then of the French and the English.
The opportunity to recapture the mountains of Souli was given to them in 1820, when they benefited from Ali Pasha's conflict with the Sultanate forces. Thus, on December 12, 1820, Souli was free again, and indeed the first Greek region to be freed from the Turkish yoke. Afterwards, the Souliotes, acting according to the diplomatic plans of the Friendly Society, which sought to maintain the state of war between the Turks and Ali, and guided by the Friends Christoforos Perraivos and Nikolaos Fotomaras, continued to fight against the Turks.
At the dawn of 1821, they dedicated themselves to the cause of the Greek Revolution and now united with the forces of fighting Hellenism they fought against the common enemy, displaying unparalleled bravery and shedding their blood lavishly throughout the Holy Struggle. After the death of Ali Pasha, the Sultanate troops turned against the Souliots and in August 1822 led them to their final departure from their ancestral homes, soaked in the blood of their many years of struggle.
From that moment on they will distinguish themselves in all the important conflicts of the Struggle of National Rebellion and will emerge as an armed vanguard of the Revolution of 182132. With their bravery, their high spirit and their deep belief in the value of freedom they will also honor the our holy lands, in the most crucial act in the history of modern Hellenism.
The unadorned Souliotes belong to those who fought for the freedom of their homeland, long before the sirens of the Revolution were heard, reacting to the logic of the rule of the all-powerful Turkish dynast. Their bravery and the Love of Freedom, according to Dionysius Solomon, made up what the ancient Greeks called cheerfulness. This hard-to-find virtue in our time became a song in the mouth of the people, who were inspired by their exploits and with particular pride presented their sacrifices for the motherland.
The municipal muse, incomparably rich in glorifying the Souliots, Dionysios Solomos, Lord Byron, Andreas Kalvos, Aristotle Valaoritis and a multitude of other writers sang of their lives and acts of self-transcendence, thanks to which the National Rebellion was kept alive. Many foreign travelers and painters spoke through their art about their struggles throughout the Games.
Genuine children of Hellenism and the Greek tradition, with their way of thinking and life, they expressed all the antinomies of the Greek race, the faults and virtues that characterize our race. Doubtless educated to regard as "national what is true" as Solomon admonished, and enjoined on ridding our history of fictions without historical counterpoint, we cannot maintain that there were only bright pages in their long activity in the wild mountains of Epirus and later in the Struggle of National Rebellion.
At the same time, however, no one can dispute that, like most Greek fighters throughout the centuries, "against their egoism they rectified a self-denial so great that it amazed and intoxicated everyone, even those who were the living proofs of it. ». Zaloggo, Souli, Despo and the tower of Dimoula, the Tzavellai and the Botsarai, are identified in the subconscious of the Greeks with the struggle for the freedom of the homeland and for human dignity.
And no one can doubt that the Souliotes occupy a central role in modern Greek history as a leading symbol of all those values that constitute our national dignity. Giorgos Karabelias in the last excellent impression of Crowded in Zalogos. The Souliotes, Ali Pasha and the deconstruction of history, a response to the devotees of the revisionist school, he characteristically points out:
"The fact that we live in an anti-heroic age and have relativized everything does not allow us to see with the lens of the late demystifying twentieth century actions and acts of heroism, with which, because we cannot contend, we put them on the bed of Procrustes.'
The Souliotes created their legend themselves, with their struggle in the name of the homeland and freedom, as they fought on the front line, putting aside their personal differences and scorning death. And because according to the contemplative Laocratis Vassi "the people in difficult times hold on to their souls", the modern generations listen to them, in a Greece that sees everything from the beginning.
The Pre-Revolutionary Leadership Groups (Provosts and Hierarchs)
In the areas that formed the core of the Revolution the provosts, the clergy and the men of arms were the leading groups during the pre-revolutionary period. The conditions of communal self-government, more or less expanded on a case-by-case basis, ensured by the Ottoman administrative system led to areas where the Greek/Christian element overwhelmingly outnumbered the Greek/Christian element in terms of economic strength and the socio-political prominence of the communal leadership.
The community rulers handled the financial obligations of the communities and mediated their communication with the Ottoman administration. The most powerful of them, the provosts, the prefects, the preeminents or the kojabasides as they were called, participated in provincial administrative bodies with a consultative character. Their role allowed them to participate in tax mechanisms (tax subletting), an activity that brought them great profits.
In some cases such as in the Peloponnese they participated in advisory bodies of the regional administration (pasaliki), acquiring property (usually land), social influence and political power. Such were the Sisini families from Gastouni, Londos from Aigios, Zaimis and Charalambis from Kalavryta and Deligiannis from Karytaina, who found themselves at the beginning of the revolution at the head of their regions and were protagonists in political disputes and conflicts until 1833.
Co-protagonists of the Moraite rulers, sometimes as allies and sometimes as opponents, were the powerful families of rulers of the Argosaronic and Cyclades islands. The special privileges and the extended system of community self-government in relation to other regions allowed the community leadership of the islands to acquire socio-political power similar to that of the Peloponnese. They were also involved in the tax mechanisms, but their profits were not invested in land but in ships.
Shipping and trade were profitable activities during the 18th century, especially for islands such as Hydra and Spetses, where the Kountouriotis and Botasis families respectively dominated. The Napoleonic wars and the blockade imposed by England on the sea lanes of the Eastern Mediterranean proved to be favorable conditions for the island nobles and shipowners. Their ships included the lifting of the naval blockade and piracy in their normal shipping and trading activities, led by bold captains such as Miaoulis.
The presence of the higher clergy was also a leader. The secular powers with which the Patriarch was surrounded, who in the Ottoman system functioned as the leader of the conquered Orthodox Christians, also reached the level of the provincial administration with the participation of high priests in provincial and regional advisory bodies. High priests such as Germanos of Old Patron or Bresthenis Theodoritos played a political role, especially in the first two or three years of the revolution.
The political importance of the clergy gradually diminished, especially after the separation of the Church of Greece from the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its coming under the control of state power.
Thieves and Wreckers
In the mountainous regions of Roumeli, a peculiar system of local security was formed during the Ottoman conquest. The protection of the communities from the illegal activity of armed groups, the thieves, was assigned by the local Ottoman authorities to the charioteers. These were armed groups that were hired by the communities and acquired privileges (carrying weapons, exemption from taxes), through which they emerged as local leadership groups.
To maintain their position, the charioteers would have to suppress the activity of the thieves. If this did not happen, replacement mechanisms were activated. In the place of the relegated group of charioteers, the strongest group of thieves usually emerged who, through their illegal activity (looting, destruction, illegal taxation), had proven their ability to use violence. In the course of its action, a group of armed men often moved from legality (armatoler, pursuer) to illegality (thief, pursued).
Since the 18th century, the economic and socio-political power of the armatoli families had eclipsed that of the ancestors in most of the mountainous provinces of Roumeli. At the beginning of the revolution, armed groups such as Varnakiotis and Androutsos seemed to dominate Central Greece, but soon they were neutralized, exterminated or controlled by new political actors who emerged during the revolution (Alexandros Mavrokordatos, Ioannis Kolettis).
Armatolism did not develop in the Peloponnese. There, the treatment of thieves by the Ottoman authorities and the dignitaries was more effective. Powerful families of thieves like the Kolokotronae were once leased by the wealthy and functioned as a private army. The kapos, as they were called, by no means acquired the pre-revolutionary economic wealth, socio-political power and prestige of the captains of Roumeli and the other regions where the armatolism system developed (Epis, Thessaly, Western Macedonia).
During the revolution, those who did not follow Kolokotronis, supporting his emergence as a leading political actor, continued to be on the side of the predecessors.
Philhellenism
From its beginnings the Greek Revolution was fortunate to receive the help of a dynamic stream of support that developed in the most important cities of Europe. Philhellenism, as this current was called, offered significant help to the Greek cause. First, by sending money, supplies and volunteers. Second, by putting pressure on the European governments to proceed with a favorable arrangement for the Greek revolutionaries.
This current, despite the recession it experienced for some years, attracted the interest of some of the most important personalities of the time. Intellectuals, academics, people of arts and letters worked voluntarily propagandizing in favor of the Greek cause. In addition, a significant number of volunteers came to the rebel regions to fight for the creation of an independent Greek state. Among them were well-known soldiers from the time of the Napoleonic wars, students, hunted revolutionaries and even adventurers or opportunists, for whom the Greek revolution seemed like an adventure and even a profitable one.
Regardless of the many reasons, the different ways and the sometimes incompatible expectations that supported the Greek cause, all of them contributed to keeping alive the interest of the European public opinion in the Greek revolution, especially in the important urban centers of Europe.
The spread of interest in ancient Greece in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was one of the two main reasons for the development of philhellenism. The idea of creating a Greek state in the lands that flourished in Greek Antiquity seemed attractive, especially to the educated and economically strong urban strata of European societies. The political situation in Europe after the end of the Napoleonic wars was the second source of fuel for Philhellenism.
The restoration of the old regimes, the pressure and persecution experienced by the liberal, radical and revolutionary elements after 1815 did not give much room for expression and much more for the promotion of the political and social demands that had been raised since the time of the French Revolution. Moreover, revolutionary movements were quickly suppressed one after the other. In these circumstances, the Greek revolution was a source of inspiration and expectations that, although it was destined to be denied in the end, were capable of mobilizing many for its happy conclusion.
Philhellenism was expressed in two main ways in European countries. Committees were set up, committees for propaganda and support of the Greek Revolution, while several missions of volunteers were organized, who rushed to fight on the side of the Greek revolutionaries. Although their number is not precisely known, it is estimated that more than a thousand flocked to the rebel areas. About one third of them did not return.
Most arrived in the first two years of the revolution, while a second wave of volunteers was prompted by the settlement and death of Lord Byron at Messolonghi (1824). Among them were people with different social, political, educational and ethnic characteristics. In the majority of them, however, they were veteran soldiers and officers of the Napoleonic wars who sought glory and wealth in regional conflicts either because from 1815 onwards they found themselves without employment or because they had fallen out of favor because of their political ideas.
The Scottish colonel Gordon (T. Gordon) and the naval officer Astigx (Fr. Hastings) are some of them. Many died, others left disappointed, some returned. There was no shortage of those who changed camps and returned to the rebel areas with different purposes but for the same reasons. Alongside the war professionals there were others whose motives were completely different. They were people fighting for a socially and politically fairer world.
From people like Lord Byron and Stanhope who shared the ideas of the social philosopher J. Bentham (Bentham) to the infamous Italian Carbonaro Count Santarosa (Santarosa), the whole spectrum of liberal and radical ideas and subversive movements of the establishment in Europe gave its presence in the Greek revolution.
Taught to operate in differently organized armed forces and follow other war tactics, the European volunteers probably did not fare so well on the battlefields. Although they did not lack heroism, they often found themselves exposed, unable to react to the advancing Ottoman armed forces. In the battle of Peta in July 1822, one of the most serious defeats of the Greek side, the corps of volunteers as well as the Iptanisians were the only ones that suffered overwhelming losses.
They underestimated the abilities of the local armed men, they did not know stealth warfare and did not wish to fight in this way. On the other hand, they experienced the mistrust and sometimes hostility of the local armed forces, who did not want others to determine how they would fight, nor did they want foreigners to reap the glory and rich spoils of a victory. The climate of mistrust of one side towards the other becomes apparent, often with scathing remarks, in the memoirs published by fighters of the Greek revolution, local and foreign.
The current of philhellenism in the countries of Western Europe was expressed through committees, the so-called committees that undertook the promotion and strengthening of the struggle of the revolutionary Greeks. The first movements appeared in German cities and in mainly German-speaking areas of Switzerland. The initiative came from people of letters, usually sensitive receivers of liberal ideas and admirers of classical Greek Antiquity.
In August 1821, the philhellenic committee of Stuttgart was founded, followed by the establishment of corresponding committees in several German cities. In the autumn of the same year, the committees of Switzerland were organized, first in Zurich and then in Lausanne and Geneva. All these movements were initially aimed at humanitarian aid and support for civilians, especially after the news about the atrocities and massacres of the Ottomans in Polis, Smyrna and later in Xios.
In addition to humanitarian aid, for which several Christian organizations were also mobilized, the main concern of the committees was the sending of war supplies, propaganda material, and the transition of war-experienced European volunteers to the rebel regions. At the same time, emphasis was also placed on educational aid, with scholarships for studies in French and English educational institutions, but also on the sending of educational material to the rebel regions.
The numerical superiority of volunteers from the German-speaking regions, especially during the first years of the revolution, reflects to a certain extent the dynamics of the Philhellenic movement in these regions. The most active activity of the English and French Philhellenes is observed after the second-third year of the revolution, following the change in the foreign policy of their states. Of course, Korai's circle in Paris tried quite early on to take philhellenic initiatives.
But only after 1823 did this action take on a substantial character, with the collection of a significant amount, while at the same time the Philhellenic Committee of Marseilles began to function. Important help in the organization of the philhellenic movement in France and Switzerland was offered by the Swiss banker Einardos, who was a personal friend of Kapodistrias and spearheaded the creation of the Paris and Geneva committees.
Especially the Philanthropic Society for the support of the Greeks in Paris became the center of coordination of the actions of the committees of all Europe. In England, the Philhellenic Committee of London was founded in 1823, with which the political philosopher Bentham (J. Bentham) was in contact. This committee played an essential role in the contact of the Greek revolutionaries with official British bodies, especially in matters concerning the granting of foreign loans.
The establishment of central political institutions, and indeed of a modern, western type, was perhaps the greatest stake of the Revolution, as was of course that of political independence.
The formation of a central political scene - the Provisional Administration or Administration as it is usually referred to - and the concentration of political processes in it meant, first and foremost, the disorganization of the local and regional centers of power and the political administrative organizations that were established in all the revolutionary regions by in the first months of the beginning of the revolution.
Such organizations functioned in the Peloponnese (Achaean Directorate, Messinian Senate, Chancellery of Argolis, etc. which were soon unified into the Peloponnesian Senate), the West (Organization of the Western Continent of Greece) and the A. Sterea (Legal Order of the Eastern Continent of Greece-Areios) Pagos) and Crete (Politema of the Island of Crete).
In the islands, which pre-revolution enjoyed a regime of more or less expanded communal self-government, the pre-existing forms of community organization were followed. An exception was Samos, with the local government established there by Lykourgos Logothetis.
Some of the regional political formations that functioned in the early years of the revolution are reminiscent of communal institutions formed from the era of Ottoman rule. The Peloponnesian Senate, for example, revoked the regular gathering of the most important Moravian prefects in the late days of the Ottoman conquest.
In Roumeli, again, where the strong pre-revolutionary presence of the armatolis stood in the way of a similar institutional development of the community institutions, the political and administrative organizations that were established after the revolution were the work of Phanariotes and other prominent heterochthons. By establishing and controlling these organizations, people like Alexandros Mavrokordatos and Theodoros Negris tried and largely succeeded in supporting their political presence among the revolutionaries.
Despite the establishment of central political bodies from the first year of the revolution (National Assembly: The Polity of Epidaurus) the local organizations were not abolished or subordinated to the Administration. Conversely, the weak organs of the central administration failed to impose their own authority on the various regions. Central political institutions seem to have come into force only after 1824 and after several months of fierce civil strife.
And while the revolution steadily descended from 1825 onwards on the battlefields, the strengthening of the institutions of the central administration against the local centers of power was inversely proportional. The assassination of Kapodistrias, during whose rule (1828-31) the foundations for the establishment of a modern centralized state were laid for the first time in a systematic way, was not able to reverse the dynamics of developments. The process of unifying the political field with a strong central authority as the main axis of reference was completed in the first decades of Otto's reign (1833-62).
The Neohellenic Enlightenment is an ideological, philological, linguistic and philosophical current that attempted to transfer the ideas and values of the European Enlightenment to the area of the subjugated generation.
By the term Enlightenment is meant the intellectual movement that occurred in Western Europe at the end of the 17th century, with the main goals of liberating the human spirit from prejudices, superstitions, the authority of the state and the church and the prevalence of right reason, spiritual freedom, secularism and respect for human dignity. The ideas of the Enlightenment spread to the Greek area, when the appropriate conditions were formed at the beginning of the 18th century with the delegation of the power of the Danubian hegemonies to Greek rulers and later with the treaty of Kyutsuk Kainartzis, in 1774.
The main bearers of the modern Greek enlightenment are the Greeks living in the west. They follow closely all the changes that take place in thought, they follow the discoveries on new techniques, they discover the ideological principles on which the French revolution takes place. This social and political event lends its origins to the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment.
At that time, Europe discovered liberalism and the need for peoples' self-determination. The Greeks of the West realize that only with the spiritual rebirth of the slaves will the idea of revolution be able to mature. Within these circumstances, many educated Greeks participated in the dissemination of the ideas of the Enlightenment, which were adapted to the needs of the enslaved people.
The English industrial revolution spread to France and the Netherlands, leading the bourgeoisie on an upward trajectory. However, in central, southern and eastern Europe, the aristocracy ruled in this period. The popular classes, mostly peasants, suffered because of the economic instability and the resulting rise in prices. The result was the differentiation of northwestern Europe, which began to modernize, and the rest of the continent, which was left on the sidelines.
The English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century, the French revolution of the 18th and the American War of Independence. they turned against a now decadent feudal system, which was an obstacle to urban development. The industrial revolution radically changed productive capacity in many fields and sectors of human activity, radically changing the shape of the traditional societies and economies of the European world.
Then the French Revolution provided the ideological background of a different political and social outlook and became the inspiration for an almost universal uprising aimed at national self-determination. The term ecumenical is justified if one looks at world history maps and sees how many liberation movements took place between 1811 and 1840, alongside global British economic penetration – penetration which drew its power from the industrial revolution.
The Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment - a product of cultural diffusion - could be valued as a branch of the European Enlightenment. The term itself comes from the translation of the corresponding terms in the English, German and Italian languages. It is therefore appropriate to know what European thinkers meant by the term enlightenment.
Enlightenment ideology could be characterized as the ideas and values shaped by the education of northwestern Europe during the 18th century, before the French Revolution. The starting point of this new ideology is found in ancient Greek thought, which its representatives studied in depth, but it was mainly based on modern scientific discoveries, with typical representatives being Galileo and Newton.
The pursuit of the European Enlightenment was the supremacy of the modern spirit at the expense of established ideas of religious intolerance, dogmatism, ignorance and prejudice. The radical questioning of established authorities, reflection on the nature, sources and limits of knowledge, faith in the human ability to produce knowledge, reason and free thought are the main elements that shaped the ideological framework of the Enlightenment movement . As is perhaps natural, the neo-Greek enlightenment started in areas where the Greek element flourished in various fields of activity.
The existing means of education, namely schools, academies and Greek printing houses, helped the processes of assimilation and possibly mutation of ideas. In the same areas there was economic development, as a result of which education experienced a particular flourishing. Greek merchants and scholars came into contact with the European spirit and in a short time the works of Locke, Descartes, Rousseau, Leibniz and Voltaire were translated into Greek.
The Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment, like the Western European Enlightenment, opposes the political, social and religious establishment of its time. He calls for education for all and the liberation of man from prevention and superstition. However, it presents two important differences. As an ideological trend, it was addressed to slaves and therefore its main request was the liberation of the Nation.
The Greeks - especially Korais - placed a large part of their hopes for liberation in education. On the other hand, the production of the ideology of the Greek Enlightenment seems to have been the work of individual personalities, in contrast to what was happening in the rest of Europe.
· Methodios Anthrakitis 1660-1736
Priest at the church of Agios Georgios in Venice and proofreader of texts initially at the publishing house in Venice of the Glykids from Ioannina and from 1710-1722 Director at the Kyritzi School in Kastoria and then at Siatista and Balaneio School of Ioannina.
· Evgenios Voulgaris 1716-1806
He is an important representative of the modern Greek enlightenment. He was an admirer of Voltaire and his most ardent supporter. He wrote many scientific, philosophical and theological works.
· Iosepos Moisiodax 1730-1800
He dealt with pedagogy and natural sciences. In the language problem, in which language the nation would be enlightened, he sided with the Common.
· Dimitris Katartzis-Fotiadis 1730-1800
Progressive personality influenced by the French Enlightenment. His philosophical views are found in the essay Gnothi sauton.
· Adamantios Korais 1748-1833
The personality of Korais marked Greece both from an educational and a political point of view. His knowledge and his presence in Greece and abroad rank him among the leading philologists in the European area.
· Rigas Feraios 1757-1798
He was born in Velestino, Thessaly, in 1757. He studied in Greece and abroad, where he began his political efforts. Riga's works have a political, ideological and revolutionary content and he is influenced by the French spirit. In addition to his writing and political activity, he was interested in the education of the Greeks, he knew that through the renaissance of education would come the renaissance of the nation. His vision is the liberation of the peoples of the Balkans and the creation of a single political unity.
In addition to the reference to the protagonists of the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment, we must also refer to some texts of the time. The Greek Prefecture, the Anonymous of 1789 and the Anglo-French. These texts have a political content, criticize the bearers of conservative ideas and those who are indifferent to the freedom of the race and refer to the theory and thinking that the Greeks must have in order to organize their armed struggle.
Various periodicals of the time were also exponents of the ideas of the Enlightenment, among which Hermes the Scholar stands out and the Philological Society of Bucharest with the support of which it was published. The Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment as an intellectual movement derives its origin from the European Enlightenment. It presents, however, peculiarities due to the particular social, political and historical conditions that characterized Hellenism of that period.
The Greek scholars, despite the fact that they opposed the Greek cultural wealth formed over centuries, succeeded to some extent in passing the ideologies of the European Enlightenment to Greek society. To a large extent, they succeeded in creating admiration for the ancient Greek culture, mainly exploiting the lack of self-confidence and feelings of inferiority that the Greeks had in relation to the European peoples.
Of course, this admiration, cut off from the lived tradition of the Greek race, was similar to that which the Europeans had for classical antiquity as they had acquired it from written texts, without having the conditions to understand it. Thus began a vicious cycle of alienation of the popular opinion, which would grow more and more over the years. However, on the basis of the principles of the Enlightenment, the legitimacy of the request to recreate the national state was claimed, mainly later.
The struggle of the Greeks for liberation could become the continuation of the struggle against "Asian barbarism". In the course of the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment, issues and problems that plagued Greek education for a long time were also raised, new knowledge and discoveries of the time were transmitted, while hundreds of original books and translations were printed.
The philological controversy of the time centered on the language problem partly reflects the intellectual quests and the dynamism with which the Greek scholars faced the intellectual issues, but also a struggle between the traditional and the modern currents of the Greek society.
Education in the Ottoman Empire (17th & 18th century)
In the middle of the 17th century things change in education. The development of foreign trade and closer communication with the West, not only with Italy, but later with Central Europe as well as with Russia, will contribute to the development of secondary schools as we would say today. These are the schools of the "Circular Education" or high schools or tutoring schools or high schools or Greek museums or academies.
The Greeks, during the Turkish occupation, who wanted to do further studies, to become e.g. doctors or lawyers, they went to Europe. The new era, and until the influx of the ideas of the European Enlightenment in the middle of the 18th century, will be marked by the presence of the neo-Aristotelian Theophilos Korydallea student, as well as the patriarch Kyrillos Loukaris, of Cremonini in Padua, the first modern Greek philosopher who separated the philosophy from theology.
At the invitation of Patriarch Kyrillos Loukaris, he will direct the Patriarchal School in Constantinople, where he will teach from 1624 to 1628 and from 1636 to 1640, after which he will be expelled. This effort by Loukaris and Korydaleos is the first serious educational project, the first serious Western influence on Greek education. Korydalleas, with philosophy as the focus of his teaching, raised the level of the school, and as it is written, gave it a university character.
His interpretive notes on Aristotle's works will be taught in all schools of the "Encyclical of Education". In 1662, thanks to the financial sponsorship of the businessman Manolakis of Kastoria, the Patriarchal School was reorganized. It now operates with three cycles of study: one for "common letters", the second for "cyclopedia" (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and the third, the upper one, for theology and philosophy.
However, it could not be further modernized, despite the efforts that were made from time to time, and so it did not play a role in the spiritual renaissance of Hellenism in the last years before the Revolution. During this time, schools will multiply. The disciple of Korydalleas, Eugenios Giannoulis or Eugenios the Aitolos, will establish schools in the mountainous region of Agrafa (Karpenissi, Vrangiana) and in the remote areas of Aetolia. More generally, he will become the pedagogue of Western Central Greece.
Merchants mainly, with their sponsorships and bequests, will help to establish schools or elsewhere to renew the educational tradition, such as e.g. in Chios. Kon/nos Gordatos or Lilas (1713-1738), the instructor of the teaching of mathematics and physics in the schools of the East, will also teach there. Schools can be found in Aitoliko, Arta, Athens, Patmos (the "Patmiada School"), western Macedonia, Epirus, Thessaly and elsewhere.
In Moschopolis, one of the best schools of the period was founded, the "New Academy", whose director, Theodoros Kavaliotis, published a Greek-Blach-Albanian dictionary in 1770. This is the first attempt at writing, in fact, in print, the Kotsovlach and Albanian language. Later, the school's teacher, Daniil Moschopolitis, published a four-language dictionary of Greek, Koutsovlach, Albanian and Bulgarian.
And the other teacher, the hieromonk Grigorios Konstantinidis, set up a printing press in Moschopolis, shortly before 1731. It is the second printing house that operated during Turkish rule. It was preceded by the printing house of Nikodimos Metaxas in Constantinople in 1627 during the patriarchate of Kirillos Loukaris. In the Peloponnese, the remarkable School of Dimitsana dates back to 1764. From 1715-1821 schools of various scopes functioned in Morea, the number of which varies according to authors (41 or about 50).
Undoubtedly, however, the most important was that of Dimitsana. And in Messinia, during the immediately above period, schools are mentioned in Kalamata, Mani, Mele Alagonias, Nissi (Messina), Poliani, Kyparissia, Gargalianou. The period from the 17th to the end of the 18th century is characterized, not only by the increase in schools and students, but also by the existence of organized schools with special pedagogies, with a curriculum that also included higher level courses, but with the core of the courses which focused on learning ancient Greek and the doctrines of the Orthodox Church.
Scholars now became active as professors and directors of established schools, as well as the printing and circulation of more and more original or translated school textbooks in Greek. From the beginning of the 17th century, the first educated women appeared, daughters of prominent Phanariotes, who learned letters at home and were mainly involved in theater and book translation.
There were no shortage of problems in the operation of schools during the period we are referring to. With the overthrow of the Venetian Republic by Napoleon in 1797 and the confiscation of the bank deposits and endowments on the basis of which the schools operated, the schools of Athens and Ioannina went through a crisis. According to the Orlovics (1770) and the barbarities of the Albanians that followed, among the schools that were closed was Dimitsana, which reopened after about ten years, in 1779.
In the Turkish-occupied Greek area, the best schools appeared in certain urban centers, mainly in the periphery (Ioannina, Moschopolis, Smyrna, Trebizond, etc.) and not in the center, Constantinople. This is because they were under a privileged status of internal autonomy, they prospered economically and the enlightened teachers of the time had more freedom of action, away from the conservative circles of the City. Ioannina in particular was at the forefront of education from the middle of the 17th to the middle of the 18th century.
However, the most brilliant educational institutions of this period with the most perfect organization functioned in the rich Greek provinces of Italy and in the Hegemony (Wallachia and Moldavia). In the Hegemony it is mainly due to the presence of Greek parishioners and the Phanariotes, who, due to the positions they held in the Ecumenical Patriarchate and especially in the Ottoman Administrative Mechanism, had realized the value of education.
In Padua in 1653, the Hellenic Museum of Padua was founded by Ioannis Kotunios, which definitively ceased operations in 1797 when M. Napoleon overthrew the Venetian Republic. However, the most important educational institution of parochial Hellenism was the Flaggini College of Venice, which was founded by Thomas Flaggini and began operating in 1665.
Until 1797, when it was closed due to the above actions of Napoleon, in addition to the non-boarding students, about 600 boarders studied at the school, mainly from the Venetian-occupied, but also the Turkish-occupied regions of Greece. The studies lasted six years and the students were taught in the first cycle of studies grammar, philology, rhetoric and letter writing courses, while in the second cycle logic, philosophy, theology, mathematics and geography.
After its closure in 1797, the school reopened from 1823 to 1905, but without the glamor of the first period. The above educational institutions of Padua and Venice, in addition to the educated Greeks they produced, were also a counterweight to the Catholic propaganda carried out through the Hellenic College of Agios Athanasios in Rome. In Moldavia and Wallachia the first attempts to establish higher schools were made in the 16th and 17th centuries.
In the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th, the most important schools of subjugated Hellenism existed in the Dominions. Among the educational institutions established in the various cities, the Hegemonic Academy of Bucharest and the Hegemonic Academy of Iasi stand out. In 1690, the school that existed in Bucharest was reorganized and named the Academy. A milestone in its upward trajectory was the placement on the throne of Wallachia of Phanariotis Alexandros Ypsilantis in 1774.
A decree of 1776 regulated the school's courses and scholarships, but excluded the children of free peasants and serfs. The Hegemonic Academy of Iasi was founded in 1707 and in 1714 the first Phanariot ruler of Moldavia, Nikolaos Mavrokordatos, reorganized it. In this Academy probably from 1728 the teaching of the new Greek language began, which Joseph Moisiodakas established as the language of instruction in 1776.
From 1764, with Nikiforos Theotokis as headmaster, it emerged as one of the best schools of subjugated Hellenism and in 1766 the headmaster Nik. Zerzoulis taught philosophy according to the philosophical currents of the time, abandoning the neo-Aristotelian method of Theophilos Korydaleos. The Academy continued its course with fluctuations and in 1821, with the outbreak of the Greek Revolution, it was closed by order of the sultan, as was the Bucharest Academy, because it was considered that, instead of educating the young, they were nurturing revolutionaries.
From the middle and later of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment, despite the reactions of the Church, will begin to influence education as well.
THE ORIGINS OF THE REVOLUTION
National, Class and Religious Revolution
The Revolution of 1821 was not a local event, but it had global significance. There was an early national revolution, inspired by the French model, against Islamic domination in the Eastern space.
It was a revolution whose birth date was February 22nd, 1821, when Alexander Ypsilantis crossed Pruthos, raised the flag of the Revolution and two days later issued the proclamation-call "Fight for faith and country". This was the event that triggered the Greek revolts in various parts of the Ottoman Empire, with the most successful of all being that of the Morea.
The Revolution of 1821 was a leading event, which had mainly anti-absolutist features, and as content was:
- National, as having a leadership inspired by the French Revolution, which managed to evolve into a dominant ideology the concept from the time of the Fall, limited until then to intellectual circles - of the Diaspora but also of the Fanario - that "we are national Greeks". A view that in the times before the Alosis had led to a paradoxical appearance of the Greeks as a nation, in the modern meaning of the term (that is, with a clear political program) centuries before modernity. This fact, along with some other equally paradoxical for historians and social scientists dealing with the nation phenomenon, led E. Gelner himself to talk about exceptions to the rule.
- Religious, of the Christians against the dominant Muslims, because they were second and third class citizens, subject to most of the discrimination due to their religion.
- Class, of the outcasts, diverse in terms of Roman origin, because the Romans were the economically empowered through the simplistic Muslim structure that defined intra-Ottoman relations.
This multiple significance will be expressed through the pan-Hellenic mobilization. In every part of the Greek world there will be revolutionary movements, while the Ottoman repression will be cruel. Massacres, persecutions and blind violence will be the response of a cruel, religious and absolutist power against the Roman populations throughout the Ottoman Empire.
The Society of Friendship was the most important of the secret organizations formed to prepare a revolution for the liberation of the Greeks from the Ottoman Empire. It was founded in 1814 in Odessa, and according to the oldest historians, by Emmanuel Xanthos, Nikolaos Skoufas, Athanasios Tsakalov. Its fourth member was Antonios Komizopoulos from Philippoupolis.
Also among the first members to be initiated was Panagiotis Anagnostopoulos (and indeed according to some sources a co-founder, before Xanthos who was initiated later). After being initiated into the Society, the Friends took an oath of loyalty and communicated with codes, nicknames and watchwords. In mid-September 1814 in Odessa, three Greek merchants, two from Epirota and one from Patmos, decided to prepare the ground for the "timely" revolution of the Greek populations of the Ottoman Empire.
This decision very soon led to the establishment of the Society of Friends or Friendly Society. The latter is part of a wider process of ethnogenesis and revolutionary ferments that have been taking place since the end of the 18th century, especially among scholars and merchants in the Greek districts. Its founders were Nikolaos Skoufas, Athanasios Tsakalov and Emmanuel Xanthos, who in the past had participated in other secret revolutionary societies as well as in masonic lodges.
Their experience was useful in terms of the organization and conspiratorial way of acting of the Company. Until 1818, the year in which the three founders settled in Constantinople, the Friendly Society was an oligarchic organization with complicated initiation procedures, conspiratorial rules and a multitude of secret symbols. It is believed that up to that time the number of members who were initiated did not exceed thirty, while as members they were mainly chosen prominent
Greeks from Prussia and the Danubian hegemonies. During this period (1814-18) the leading core of the Company, the Authority as it was called, included, among others, Anthimos Gazis, a priest and scholar of recognized prestige. The relocation of the organization to Constantinople coincided with the death of N. Skoufas and the expansion of the leadership group, which included, among others, Metropolitan Ignatios of Oygrovalachia, Phanariotis Alexandros Mavrokordatos and Archimandrite Grigorios Dikaios (Papaflessas).
Even more, in this period (1818-20) the Society proceeds with organizational changes, expanding the circle of its members and concretizing a plan for the manifestation of the revolution. In terms of organizational changes, the so-called system of the twelve apostles is adopted. According to this, twelve reputable members of the Society were sent to an equal number of areas where Greek populations lived. Their aim was to approach socio-politically and economically powerful local actors.
At this time, the most important dignitaries and hierarchs of the Peloponnese became members of the Society, as well as several Roumeliot thieves. At the same time, the four ranks of members that operated under the Authority are converted into six, while the initiation ritual is greatly simplified. At the same time, Ioannis Kapodistrias was approached in order to take over the leadership. After his refusal, the Friends approached Alexandros Ypsilantis, who accepted in April 1820.
Foundation of the Philiki Etairia
In the context of the burning desire to throw off the Turkish yoke and with the clear influence of the secret societies of Europe, in 1814 three Greeks met in Odessa and decided to set up a strictly secret organization, which would prepare the uprising of all Greeks. They are Nikolaos Skoufas, 35 years old, from Komoti in Arta, Emmanuel Xanthos, 42 years old, from Patmos and Athanasios Tsakalov, 26 years old, from Ioannina. All three have already become communicants of revolutionary ideas and partnership.
Skoufas had special contacts with Konstantinos Rados, who was initiated into Carbonarism. Xanthos had been initiated into a Masonic Lodge of Lefkada ("Society of Free Masons", of Agia Mavra), while Tsakalov had been a founding member of the Greek-speaking Hotel. The purpose of the Friendly Society is the general revolution of the Greeks for the "upliftment and liberation of the Greek Nation and our Homeland", as Xanthos himself informs us.
And he notes in his "Memoirs: ..in order to act alone for those who had hoped in vain for a long time from the charity of Christian kings". Filiki's development path is impressive. In the period 1814-1816, its members number about 20. Until the middle of 1817, it develops mainly among the Greeks of Russia and Moldo-Wallachia, but again its members do not exceed 30. However, since 1818, there have been numerous initiations.
During 1820 it spread to almost all regions of Greece and most Greek districts abroad. The initiates are counted in the thousands, although only 1096 names are known. In the first months of 1821 its members numbered tens of thousands. The organization had overstepped its own bounds.
In its ranks gathered mainly merchants and petty bourgeois, but also Phanariotes and Kotzabasis and clergy, persons who will play a competitive role (positive or negative) in the struggle for independence, such as the chieftains Theodoros Kolokotronis, Odysseas Androutsos, Anagnostaras, the archimandrite Grigorios Dikaios ( Papaflessas), the Phanariots Alexandros Mavrokordatos and Negris, the mega-caravans Kountouriotis, the mega-tumblers Zaimis, Londos, Notaras, the metropolitan of Old Patras Germanos and others.
The entire structure of the Society was based on the organizational standards of the Carbonari and the Freemasons. Its leadership group was called "the Invisible Authority" and was surrounded from the first moment with such secret glamor that many important personalities, not only Greeks but also foreigners, such as Tsar Alexander I of Russia, were believed to have participated in it. In fact, at first it was only the three founders. Then, from 1815 to 1818, five more were added, and after Skoufa's death, three more were added.
In 1818 the Invisible Authority was renamed the "Authority of the Twelve Apostles" and each Apostle shouldered the responsibility of a large district. The Apostles of the Friendly Society were twelve and were appointed by Skoufas when he went to Constantinople in the spring of 1818. They were the following:
As a guarantee for the fulfillment of his mission, Ali Pasha holds as a hostage the son of Lambros Xavella, Photo. The Souliotis warlord, however, acts contrary to the wishes and orders of Ali, and not only does not negotiate the surrender of Soulios, but sends a harsh message to the pasha, stating unequivocally that in the name of the freedom of his country, his son must be sacrificed . Among other things, he mentions the following:
Ali Pasha, ... some Turks, like you, want to say that I am a merciless father by sacrificing my son ... if my son, young as he is, is not happy to die for his country, he is not worthy to life, and be known as my son; therefore go forth faithless, I am impatient to be avenged. I, your sworn enemy Captain Lampros Tzavellas. After this negative development, Ali, seeing that the Souliotes were determined to keep their parts at any cost, attacked them again.
On the 20th, and according to others on the 27th, of July 1792, the battle began, in which the troops of Ali were defeated and forced to retreat with serious losses in dead and wounded. In this battle, the heroic figure of Moschos Javela, wife of Lambros and mother of the prisoner Photos, stood out, who led a body of women made the final attack and put the terrified Turkalvans to flight.
Such is the shame of Ali, who, returning to Ioannina, gave an order that "any citizen who dares to take his head out through a door or hole in his house in order to see the soldiers, should be killed indiscriminately". Afterwards, he signed a forced peace treaty with the Souliotes and released the Photo Tzavela as part of the exchange of prisoners.
The scheming Pasha, realizing the difficulty of conquering Souli, decides to break the unity of the Souliots. He comes to an agreement with Giorgos Botsaris, who withdraws from the heroic lands of Souli and takes over the chariotry of the Tzoumerkas. Also, Ali builds twelve towers in relevant places around the mountains of Souli, with the ultimate goal of forcing the Souliites to surrender, due to a lack of food and munitions.
Vizier Ali Pasha greets you. Our country is infinitely sweeter than your white and happy lands, where you promise to give us; whence you toil in vain, because our freedom is not sold or bought with almost all the treasures of the earth, but with blood and death until the late Souliot. All Soulios, young and old.
Indeed, how fitting their signature "all young and old" with the shocking "unanimously" of the resolution of the Free Besiegers, written a few years later in our historic place. Once again the Souliotes, although few and exhausted by deprivation and hunger, took fate into their own hands, acting on the whims of their moral conscience.
And while the pressure of Ali and the fight continued relentlessly, the letters of the Souliots to the Russian and French governments and the authorities of the Iptani State, with their appeals to supply them with food and munitions had no effect, as their former allies , wishing at that juncture to maintain friendly relations with the Gate, refused to get involved in the affair of Soulius. The only moral support for the indomitable heroes and ardent freedom fighters came from Adamantios Korais, who in his letter, in April 1803, from distant Paris urged them not to betray their freedom.
Thus, despite the unfavorable conditions that had been created by the tightening of the siege line, the Souliotes continued to defend their homeland with unparalleled bravery, as a result of which many Turks deserted, "preaching everywhere that neither they nor their successors would be able to to take over Sullion, and that Turkish blood is being shed unjustly and uselessly".
Ali's associates developed secret contacts with leaders of Souliot lighthouses, whom they believed they could buy off, in order to undermine the front of Souliot forces with the power of money. In September 1803, two Souli leaders, Koutsonikas and Pelios Goussis, presented themselves to Veli Pasha, son of Ali, asking for "the release of a son-in-law in custody after the twenty-four hostages and a reward of nine thousand grosci for the gain of Souli" .
Veli accepted their proposals, and on the night of September 25, Pelios Goussis, as another Nightmare, secretly led 200 Turkalvan soldiers to his house, who the next morning occupied Souli. All four villages of Souli fell into the hands of Veli Pasha. As the last focus of resistance remained the walled castle of the church of Agia Paraskevi on Kougi hill and the heights of Kiafa. Throughout October, Veli Pasha's systematic efforts to capture the last strongholds failed.
The monk, together with five other Souliotes, had stayed in Kougi, to deliver to the envoys of Velis the munitions that were kept there. Enraged, however, by the insulting words of the Turkish envoys, he set fire to the gunpowder warehouse. And so the pasha's troops "took the wicked Kiapha, the notorious Kugi / and burned the monk with four nomads".
Ali then put the last part of his plan into action. He himself may now have in his possession the mountainous massifs of Souli, but the Souliotes, who in all the previous years challenged his authority and came into direct confrontation with him, were still armed and constituted a threat to the imposition of centralized power of.
Thus, first the families of Nikos Koutsonikas and Koletsis Photomaras who had taken refuge in Zalogos, received the surprise attack of 3,000 Turkalvans. During the battle "women of up to sixty, almost all of them widows, saw the danger as inevitable, courageously, despite the long-suffering and despondent captivity, the heroic and instantaneous death of suicide; they climbed onto a winged height, their tender and cherished children fell first, therefore, one after the other, they were also spontaneously thrown from the cliff".
As other Free Besiegers, the Souliotisses refused to become slaves of the Turks and, as our national poet characteristically mentions, "He drew them to the place / Of Zalongos the acronis / Of Liberty the love / And inspired them to dance". Of the 500 Souliots, only 150 were able to be rescued and go to Parga.
This perhaps the greatest event of women's sacrifice in world history, as they choose the honorable death "without grumbling and protest", the school of deconstruction tried to present it as another crowding of Greeks, which before that in the port of Smyrna, may perhaps " precipitated being pushed to the edge of the cliff by the retreating fighters.' And of course, the questioning of events that were a turning point in Souliot history is not limited to Zalogos, as the satellites of the deconstructive school express doubts about the burning of Samuel in Kougi and the blowing up of Despos in the tower of Dimoula.
Then, on December 23, the Turkish-Albanian troops moved to Riniasa, where twenty Souliot families from the lineage of Giorgaki Botsi had settled. His wife, the legendary Despo, locked up with her daughters, daughters-in-law and grandchildren in the tower of Dimoulas, chose a glorious and free death and "grabbed a thunderbolt in her hand, daughters and daughters-in-law are crying / Turkish slaves let us not live, children, come with me / And he lit the firecrackers, and they all caught fire."
Leno Botsari, daughter of Kitsos, fighting bravely near the Acheloos river, was surrounded by the enemy troops and in order not to be captured, she fell into the river and drowned. The Souliotes, expelled from their homeland, then settled in the Iptane Islands and mainly in Corfu, where they enlisted and served in military corps under the orders, first of all, of the Russians and then of the French and the English.
The opportunity to recapture the mountains of Souli was given to them in 1820, when they benefited from Ali Pasha's conflict with the Sultanate forces. Thus, on December 12, 1820, Souli was free again, and indeed the first Greek region to be freed from the Turkish yoke. Afterwards, the Souliotes, acting according to the diplomatic plans of the Friendly Society, which sought to maintain the state of war between the Turks and Ali, and guided by the Friends Christoforos Perraivos and Nikolaos Fotomaras, continued to fight against the Turks.
At the dawn of 1821, they dedicated themselves to the cause of the Greek Revolution and now united with the forces of fighting Hellenism they fought against the common enemy, displaying unparalleled bravery and shedding their blood lavishly throughout the Holy Struggle. After the death of Ali Pasha, the Sultanate troops turned against the Souliots and in August 1822 led them to their final departure from their ancestral homes, soaked in the blood of their many years of struggle.
From that moment on they will distinguish themselves in all the important conflicts of the Struggle of National Rebellion and will emerge as an armed vanguard of the Revolution of 182132. With their bravery, their high spirit and their deep belief in the value of freedom they will also honor the our holy lands, in the most crucial act in the history of modern Hellenism.
The unadorned Souliotes belong to those who fought for the freedom of their homeland, long before the sirens of the Revolution were heard, reacting to the logic of the rule of the all-powerful Turkish dynast. Their bravery and the Love of Freedom, according to Dionysius Solomon, made up what the ancient Greeks called cheerfulness. This hard-to-find virtue in our time became a song in the mouth of the people, who were inspired by their exploits and with particular pride presented their sacrifices for the motherland.
The municipal muse, incomparably rich in glorifying the Souliots, Dionysios Solomos, Lord Byron, Andreas Kalvos, Aristotle Valaoritis and a multitude of other writers sang of their lives and acts of self-transcendence, thanks to which the National Rebellion was kept alive. Many foreign travelers and painters spoke through their art about their struggles throughout the Games.
At the same time, however, no one can dispute that, like most Greek fighters throughout the centuries, "against their egoism they rectified a self-denial so great that it amazed and intoxicated everyone, even those who were the living proofs of it. ». Zaloggo, Souli, Despo and the tower of Dimoula, the Tzavellai and the Botsarai, are identified in the subconscious of the Greeks with the struggle for the freedom of the homeland and for human dignity.
And no one can doubt that the Souliotes occupy a central role in modern Greek history as a leading symbol of all those values that constitute our national dignity. Giorgos Karabelias in the last excellent impression of Crowded in Zalogos. The Souliotes, Ali Pasha and the deconstruction of history, a response to the devotees of the revisionist school, he characteristically points out:
"The fact that we live in an anti-heroic age and have relativized everything does not allow us to see with the lens of the late demystifying twentieth century actions and acts of heroism, with which, because we cannot contend, we put them on the bed of Procrustes.'
The Souliotes created their legend themselves, with their struggle in the name of the homeland and freedom, as they fought on the front line, putting aside their personal differences and scorning death. And because according to the contemplative Laocratis Vassi "the people in difficult times hold on to their souls", the modern generations listen to them, in a Greece that sees everything from the beginning.
The Pre-Revolutionary Leadership Groups (Provosts and Hierarchs)
In the areas that formed the core of the Revolution the provosts, the clergy and the men of arms were the leading groups during the pre-revolutionary period. The conditions of communal self-government, more or less expanded on a case-by-case basis, ensured by the Ottoman administrative system led to areas where the Greek/Christian element overwhelmingly outnumbered the Greek/Christian element in terms of economic strength and the socio-political prominence of the communal leadership.
The community rulers handled the financial obligations of the communities and mediated their communication with the Ottoman administration. The most powerful of them, the provosts, the prefects, the preeminents or the kojabasides as they were called, participated in provincial administrative bodies with a consultative character. Their role allowed them to participate in tax mechanisms (tax subletting), an activity that brought them great profits.
Co-protagonists of the Moraite rulers, sometimes as allies and sometimes as opponents, were the powerful families of rulers of the Argosaronic and Cyclades islands. The special privileges and the extended system of community self-government in relation to other regions allowed the community leadership of the islands to acquire socio-political power similar to that of the Peloponnese. They were also involved in the tax mechanisms, but their profits were not invested in land but in ships.
Shipping and trade were profitable activities during the 18th century, especially for islands such as Hydra and Spetses, where the Kountouriotis and Botasis families respectively dominated. The Napoleonic wars and the blockade imposed by England on the sea lanes of the Eastern Mediterranean proved to be favorable conditions for the island nobles and shipowners. Their ships included the lifting of the naval blockade and piracy in their normal shipping and trading activities, led by bold captains such as Miaoulis.
The presence of the higher clergy was also a leader. The secular powers with which the Patriarch was surrounded, who in the Ottoman system functioned as the leader of the conquered Orthodox Christians, also reached the level of the provincial administration with the participation of high priests in provincial and regional advisory bodies. High priests such as Germanos of Old Patron or Bresthenis Theodoritos played a political role, especially in the first two or three years of the revolution.
The political importance of the clergy gradually diminished, especially after the separation of the Church of Greece from the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its coming under the control of state power.
Thieves and Wreckers
In the mountainous regions of Roumeli, a peculiar system of local security was formed during the Ottoman conquest. The protection of the communities from the illegal activity of armed groups, the thieves, was assigned by the local Ottoman authorities to the charioteers. These were armed groups that were hired by the communities and acquired privileges (carrying weapons, exemption from taxes), through which they emerged as local leadership groups.
To maintain their position, the charioteers would have to suppress the activity of the thieves. If this did not happen, replacement mechanisms were activated. In the place of the relegated group of charioteers, the strongest group of thieves usually emerged who, through their illegal activity (looting, destruction, illegal taxation), had proven their ability to use violence. In the course of its action, a group of armed men often moved from legality (armatoler, pursuer) to illegality (thief, pursued).
Since the 18th century, the economic and socio-political power of the armatoli families had eclipsed that of the ancestors in most of the mountainous provinces of Roumeli. At the beginning of the revolution, armed groups such as Varnakiotis and Androutsos seemed to dominate Central Greece, but soon they were neutralized, exterminated or controlled by new political actors who emerged during the revolution (Alexandros Mavrokordatos, Ioannis Kolettis).
During the revolution, those who did not follow Kolokotronis, supporting his emergence as a leading political actor, continued to be on the side of the predecessors.
Philhellenism
From its beginnings the Greek Revolution was fortunate to receive the help of a dynamic stream of support that developed in the most important cities of Europe. Philhellenism, as this current was called, offered significant help to the Greek cause. First, by sending money, supplies and volunteers. Second, by putting pressure on the European governments to proceed with a favorable arrangement for the Greek revolutionaries.
This current, despite the recession it experienced for some years, attracted the interest of some of the most important personalities of the time. Intellectuals, academics, people of arts and letters worked voluntarily propagandizing in favor of the Greek cause. In addition, a significant number of volunteers came to the rebel regions to fight for the creation of an independent Greek state. Among them were well-known soldiers from the time of the Napoleonic wars, students, hunted revolutionaries and even adventurers or opportunists, for whom the Greek revolution seemed like an adventure and even a profitable one.
Regardless of the many reasons, the different ways and the sometimes incompatible expectations that supported the Greek cause, all of them contributed to keeping alive the interest of the European public opinion in the Greek revolution, especially in the important urban centers of Europe.
The spread of interest in ancient Greece in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was one of the two main reasons for the development of philhellenism. The idea of creating a Greek state in the lands that flourished in Greek Antiquity seemed attractive, especially to the educated and economically strong urban strata of European societies. The political situation in Europe after the end of the Napoleonic wars was the second source of fuel for Philhellenism.
The restoration of the old regimes, the pressure and persecution experienced by the liberal, radical and revolutionary elements after 1815 did not give much room for expression and much more for the promotion of the political and social demands that had been raised since the time of the French Revolution. Moreover, revolutionary movements were quickly suppressed one after the other. In these circumstances, the Greek revolution was a source of inspiration and expectations that, although it was destined to be denied in the end, were capable of mobilizing many for its happy conclusion.
The Volunteers
Philhellenism was expressed in two main ways in European countries. Committees were set up, committees for propaganda and support of the Greek Revolution, while several missions of volunteers were organized, who rushed to fight on the side of the Greek revolutionaries. Although their number is not precisely known, it is estimated that more than a thousand flocked to the rebel areas. About one third of them did not return.
Most arrived in the first two years of the revolution, while a second wave of volunteers was prompted by the settlement and death of Lord Byron at Messolonghi (1824). Among them were people with different social, political, educational and ethnic characteristics. In the majority of them, however, they were veteran soldiers and officers of the Napoleonic wars who sought glory and wealth in regional conflicts either because from 1815 onwards they found themselves without employment or because they had fallen out of favor because of their political ideas.
The Scottish colonel Gordon (T. Gordon) and the naval officer Astigx (Fr. Hastings) are some of them. Many died, others left disappointed, some returned. There was no shortage of those who changed camps and returned to the rebel areas with different purposes but for the same reasons. Alongside the war professionals there were others whose motives were completely different. They were people fighting for a socially and politically fairer world.
From people like Lord Byron and Stanhope who shared the ideas of the social philosopher J. Bentham (Bentham) to the infamous Italian Carbonaro Count Santarosa (Santarosa), the whole spectrum of liberal and radical ideas and subversive movements of the establishment in Europe gave its presence in the Greek revolution.
Taught to operate in differently organized armed forces and follow other war tactics, the European volunteers probably did not fare so well on the battlefields. Although they did not lack heroism, they often found themselves exposed, unable to react to the advancing Ottoman armed forces. In the battle of Peta in July 1822, one of the most serious defeats of the Greek side, the corps of volunteers as well as the Iptanisians were the only ones that suffered overwhelming losses.
They underestimated the abilities of the local armed men, they did not know stealth warfare and did not wish to fight in this way. On the other hand, they experienced the mistrust and sometimes hostility of the local armed forces, who did not want others to determine how they would fight, nor did they want foreigners to reap the glory and rich spoils of a victory. The climate of mistrust of one side towards the other becomes apparent, often with scathing remarks, in the memoirs published by fighters of the Greek revolution, local and foreign.
The Committees
The current of philhellenism in the countries of Western Europe was expressed through committees, the so-called committees that undertook the promotion and strengthening of the struggle of the revolutionary Greeks. The first movements appeared in German cities and in mainly German-speaking areas of Switzerland. The initiative came from people of letters, usually sensitive receivers of liberal ideas and admirers of classical Greek Antiquity.
In August 1821, the philhellenic committee of Stuttgart was founded, followed by the establishment of corresponding committees in several German cities. In the autumn of the same year, the committees of Switzerland were organized, first in Zurich and then in Lausanne and Geneva. All these movements were initially aimed at humanitarian aid and support for civilians, especially after the news about the atrocities and massacres of the Ottomans in Polis, Smyrna and later in Xios.
In addition to humanitarian aid, for which several Christian organizations were also mobilized, the main concern of the committees was the sending of war supplies, propaganda material, and the transition of war-experienced European volunteers to the rebel regions. At the same time, emphasis was also placed on educational aid, with scholarships for studies in French and English educational institutions, but also on the sending of educational material to the rebel regions.
The numerical superiority of volunteers from the German-speaking regions, especially during the first years of the revolution, reflects to a certain extent the dynamics of the Philhellenic movement in these regions. The most active activity of the English and French Philhellenes is observed after the second-third year of the revolution, following the change in the foreign policy of their states. Of course, Korai's circle in Paris tried quite early on to take philhellenic initiatives.
But only after 1823 did this action take on a substantial character, with the collection of a significant amount, while at the same time the Philhellenic Committee of Marseilles began to function. Important help in the organization of the philhellenic movement in France and Switzerland was offered by the Swiss banker Einardos, who was a personal friend of Kapodistrias and spearheaded the creation of the Paris and Geneva committees.
Especially the Philanthropic Society for the support of the Greeks in Paris became the center of coordination of the actions of the committees of all Europe. In England, the Philhellenic Committee of London was founded in 1823, with which the political philosopher Bentham (J. Bentham) was in contact. This committee played an essential role in the contact of the Greek revolutionaries with official British bodies, especially in matters concerning the granting of foreign loans.
Local Organizations and Central Administration
The establishment of central political institutions, and indeed of a modern, western type, was perhaps the greatest stake of the Revolution, as was of course that of political independence.
The formation of a central political scene - the Provisional Administration or Administration as it is usually referred to - and the concentration of political processes in it meant, first and foremost, the disorganization of the local and regional centers of power and the political administrative organizations that were established in all the revolutionary regions by in the first months of the beginning of the revolution.
Such organizations functioned in the Peloponnese (Achaean Directorate, Messinian Senate, Chancellery of Argolis, etc. which were soon unified into the Peloponnesian Senate), the West (Organization of the Western Continent of Greece) and the A. Sterea (Legal Order of the Eastern Continent of Greece-Areios) Pagos) and Crete (Politema of the Island of Crete).
In the islands, which pre-revolution enjoyed a regime of more or less expanded communal self-government, the pre-existing forms of community organization were followed. An exception was Samos, with the local government established there by Lykourgos Logothetis.
Some of the regional political formations that functioned in the early years of the revolution are reminiscent of communal institutions formed from the era of Ottoman rule. The Peloponnesian Senate, for example, revoked the regular gathering of the most important Moravian prefects in the late days of the Ottoman conquest.
In Roumeli, again, where the strong pre-revolutionary presence of the armatolis stood in the way of a similar institutional development of the community institutions, the political and administrative organizations that were established after the revolution were the work of Phanariotes and other prominent heterochthons. By establishing and controlling these organizations, people like Alexandros Mavrokordatos and Theodoros Negris tried and largely succeeded in supporting their political presence among the revolutionaries.
Despite the establishment of central political bodies from the first year of the revolution (National Assembly: The Polity of Epidaurus) the local organizations were not abolished or subordinated to the Administration. Conversely, the weak organs of the central administration failed to impose their own authority on the various regions. Central political institutions seem to have come into force only after 1824 and after several months of fierce civil strife.
And while the revolution steadily descended from 1825 onwards on the battlefields, the strengthening of the institutions of the central administration against the local centers of power was inversely proportional. The assassination of Kapodistrias, during whose rule (1828-31) the foundations for the establishment of a modern centralized state were laid for the first time in a systematic way, was not able to reverse the dynamics of developments. The process of unifying the political field with a strong central authority as the main axis of reference was completed in the first decades of Otto's reign (1833-62).
Neohellenic Enlightenment
The Neohellenic Enlightenment is an ideological, philological, linguistic and philosophical current that attempted to transfer the ideas and values of the European Enlightenment to the area of the subjugated generation.
By the term Enlightenment is meant the intellectual movement that occurred in Western Europe at the end of the 17th century, with the main goals of liberating the human spirit from prejudices, superstitions, the authority of the state and the church and the prevalence of right reason, spiritual freedom, secularism and respect for human dignity. The ideas of the Enlightenment spread to the Greek area, when the appropriate conditions were formed at the beginning of the 18th century with the delegation of the power of the Danubian hegemonies to Greek rulers and later with the treaty of Kyutsuk Kainartzis, in 1774.
The main bearers of the modern Greek enlightenment are the Greeks living in the west. They follow closely all the changes that take place in thought, they follow the discoveries on new techniques, they discover the ideological principles on which the French revolution takes place. This social and political event lends its origins to the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment.
At that time, Europe discovered liberalism and the need for peoples' self-determination. The Greeks of the West realize that only with the spiritual rebirth of the slaves will the idea of revolution be able to mature. Within these circumstances, many educated Greeks participated in the dissemination of the ideas of the Enlightenment, which were adapted to the needs of the enslaved people.
The English industrial revolution spread to France and the Netherlands, leading the bourgeoisie on an upward trajectory. However, in central, southern and eastern Europe, the aristocracy ruled in this period. The popular classes, mostly peasants, suffered because of the economic instability and the resulting rise in prices. The result was the differentiation of northwestern Europe, which began to modernize, and the rest of the continent, which was left on the sidelines.
The English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century, the French revolution of the 18th and the American War of Independence. they turned against a now decadent feudal system, which was an obstacle to urban development. The industrial revolution radically changed productive capacity in many fields and sectors of human activity, radically changing the shape of the traditional societies and economies of the European world.
Then the French Revolution provided the ideological background of a different political and social outlook and became the inspiration for an almost universal uprising aimed at national self-determination. The term ecumenical is justified if one looks at world history maps and sees how many liberation movements took place between 1811 and 1840, alongside global British economic penetration – penetration which drew its power from the industrial revolution.
Enlightenment ideology could be characterized as the ideas and values shaped by the education of northwestern Europe during the 18th century, before the French Revolution. The starting point of this new ideology is found in ancient Greek thought, which its representatives studied in depth, but it was mainly based on modern scientific discoveries, with typical representatives being Galileo and Newton.
The pursuit of the European Enlightenment was the supremacy of the modern spirit at the expense of established ideas of religious intolerance, dogmatism, ignorance and prejudice. The radical questioning of established authorities, reflection on the nature, sources and limits of knowledge, faith in the human ability to produce knowledge, reason and free thought are the main elements that shaped the ideological framework of the Enlightenment movement . As is perhaps natural, the neo-Greek enlightenment started in areas where the Greek element flourished in various fields of activity.
The existing means of education, namely schools, academies and Greek printing houses, helped the processes of assimilation and possibly mutation of ideas. In the same areas there was economic development, as a result of which education experienced a particular flourishing. Greek merchants and scholars came into contact with the European spirit and in a short time the works of Locke, Descartes, Rousseau, Leibniz and Voltaire were translated into Greek.
The Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment, like the Western European Enlightenment, opposes the political, social and religious establishment of its time. He calls for education for all and the liberation of man from prevention and superstition. However, it presents two important differences. As an ideological trend, it was addressed to slaves and therefore its main request was the liberation of the Nation.
The Greeks - especially Korais - placed a large part of their hopes for liberation in education. On the other hand, the production of the ideology of the Greek Enlightenment seems to have been the work of individual personalities, in contrast to what was happening in the rest of Europe.
Among the many important figures of the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment are:
· Methodios Anthrakitis 1660-1736
Priest at the church of Agios Georgios in Venice and proofreader of texts initially at the publishing house in Venice of the Glykids from Ioannina and from 1710-1722 Director at the Kyritzi School in Kastoria and then at Siatista and Balaneio School of Ioannina.
· Evgenios Voulgaris 1716-1806
He is an important representative of the modern Greek enlightenment. He was an admirer of Voltaire and his most ardent supporter. He wrote many scientific, philosophical and theological works.
· Iosepos Moisiodax 1730-1800
He dealt with pedagogy and natural sciences. In the language problem, in which language the nation would be enlightened, he sided with the Common.
· Dimitris Katartzis-Fotiadis 1730-1800
Progressive personality influenced by the French Enlightenment. His philosophical views are found in the essay Gnothi sauton.
· Adamantios Korais 1748-1833
The personality of Korais marked Greece both from an educational and a political point of view. His knowledge and his presence in Greece and abroad rank him among the leading philologists in the European area.
· Rigas Feraios 1757-1798
He was born in Velestino, Thessaly, in 1757. He studied in Greece and abroad, where he began his political efforts. Riga's works have a political, ideological and revolutionary content and he is influenced by the French spirit. In addition to his writing and political activity, he was interested in the education of the Greeks, he knew that through the renaissance of education would come the renaissance of the nation. His vision is the liberation of the peoples of the Balkans and the creation of a single political unity.
In addition to the reference to the protagonists of the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment, we must also refer to some texts of the time. The Greek Prefecture, the Anonymous of 1789 and the Anglo-French. These texts have a political content, criticize the bearers of conservative ideas and those who are indifferent to the freedom of the race and refer to the theory and thinking that the Greeks must have in order to organize their armed struggle.
Various periodicals of the time were also exponents of the ideas of the Enlightenment, among which Hermes the Scholar stands out and the Philological Society of Bucharest with the support of which it was published. The Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment as an intellectual movement derives its origin from the European Enlightenment. It presents, however, peculiarities due to the particular social, political and historical conditions that characterized Hellenism of that period.
The Greek scholars, despite the fact that they opposed the Greek cultural wealth formed over centuries, succeeded to some extent in passing the ideologies of the European Enlightenment to Greek society. To a large extent, they succeeded in creating admiration for the ancient Greek culture, mainly exploiting the lack of self-confidence and feelings of inferiority that the Greeks had in relation to the European peoples.
The struggle of the Greeks for liberation could become the continuation of the struggle against "Asian barbarism". In the course of the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment, issues and problems that plagued Greek education for a long time were also raised, new knowledge and discoveries of the time were transmitted, while hundreds of original books and translations were printed.
The philological controversy of the time centered on the language problem partly reflects the intellectual quests and the dynamism with which the Greek scholars faced the intellectual issues, but also a struggle between the traditional and the modern currents of the Greek society.
Education in the Ottoman Empire (17th & 18th century)
In the middle of the 17th century things change in education. The development of foreign trade and closer communication with the West, not only with Italy, but later with Central Europe as well as with Russia, will contribute to the development of secondary schools as we would say today. These are the schools of the "Circular Education" or high schools or tutoring schools or high schools or Greek museums or academies.
The Greeks, during the Turkish occupation, who wanted to do further studies, to become e.g. doctors or lawyers, they went to Europe. The new era, and until the influx of the ideas of the European Enlightenment in the middle of the 18th century, will be marked by the presence of the neo-Aristotelian Theophilos Korydallea student, as well as the patriarch Kyrillos Loukaris, of Cremonini in Padua, the first modern Greek philosopher who separated the philosophy from theology.
At the invitation of Patriarch Kyrillos Loukaris, he will direct the Patriarchal School in Constantinople, where he will teach from 1624 to 1628 and from 1636 to 1640, after which he will be expelled. This effort by Loukaris and Korydaleos is the first serious educational project, the first serious Western influence on Greek education. Korydalleas, with philosophy as the focus of his teaching, raised the level of the school, and as it is written, gave it a university character.
His interpretive notes on Aristotle's works will be taught in all schools of the "Encyclical of Education". In 1662, thanks to the financial sponsorship of the businessman Manolakis of Kastoria, the Patriarchal School was reorganized. It now operates with three cycles of study: one for "common letters", the second for "cyclopedia" (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and the third, the upper one, for theology and philosophy.
However, it could not be further modernized, despite the efforts that were made from time to time, and so it did not play a role in the spiritual renaissance of Hellenism in the last years before the Revolution. During this time, schools will multiply. The disciple of Korydalleas, Eugenios Giannoulis or Eugenios the Aitolos, will establish schools in the mountainous region of Agrafa (Karpenissi, Vrangiana) and in the remote areas of Aetolia. More generally, he will become the pedagogue of Western Central Greece.
Merchants mainly, with their sponsorships and bequests, will help to establish schools or elsewhere to renew the educational tradition, such as e.g. in Chios. Kon/nos Gordatos or Lilas (1713-1738), the instructor of the teaching of mathematics and physics in the schools of the East, will also teach there. Schools can be found in Aitoliko, Arta, Athens, Patmos (the "Patmiada School"), western Macedonia, Epirus, Thessaly and elsewhere.
In Moschopolis, one of the best schools of the period was founded, the "New Academy", whose director, Theodoros Kavaliotis, published a Greek-Blach-Albanian dictionary in 1770. This is the first attempt at writing, in fact, in print, the Kotsovlach and Albanian language. Later, the school's teacher, Daniil Moschopolitis, published a four-language dictionary of Greek, Koutsovlach, Albanian and Bulgarian.
And the other teacher, the hieromonk Grigorios Konstantinidis, set up a printing press in Moschopolis, shortly before 1731. It is the second printing house that operated during Turkish rule. It was preceded by the printing house of Nikodimos Metaxas in Constantinople in 1627 during the patriarchate of Kirillos Loukaris. In the Peloponnese, the remarkable School of Dimitsana dates back to 1764. From 1715-1821 schools of various scopes functioned in Morea, the number of which varies according to authors (41 or about 50).
Undoubtedly, however, the most important was that of Dimitsana. And in Messinia, during the immediately above period, schools are mentioned in Kalamata, Mani, Mele Alagonias, Nissi (Messina), Poliani, Kyparissia, Gargalianou. The period from the 17th to the end of the 18th century is characterized, not only by the increase in schools and students, but also by the existence of organized schools with special pedagogies, with a curriculum that also included higher level courses, but with the core of the courses which focused on learning ancient Greek and the doctrines of the Orthodox Church.
Scholars now became active as professors and directors of established schools, as well as the printing and circulation of more and more original or translated school textbooks in Greek. From the beginning of the 17th century, the first educated women appeared, daughters of prominent Phanariotes, who learned letters at home and were mainly involved in theater and book translation.
There were no shortage of problems in the operation of schools during the period we are referring to. With the overthrow of the Venetian Republic by Napoleon in 1797 and the confiscation of the bank deposits and endowments on the basis of which the schools operated, the schools of Athens and Ioannina went through a crisis. According to the Orlovics (1770) and the barbarities of the Albanians that followed, among the schools that were closed was Dimitsana, which reopened after about ten years, in 1779.
In the Turkish-occupied Greek area, the best schools appeared in certain urban centers, mainly in the periphery (Ioannina, Moschopolis, Smyrna, Trebizond, etc.) and not in the center, Constantinople. This is because they were under a privileged status of internal autonomy, they prospered economically and the enlightened teachers of the time had more freedom of action, away from the conservative circles of the City. Ioannina in particular was at the forefront of education from the middle of the 17th to the middle of the 18th century.
However, the most brilliant educational institutions of this period with the most perfect organization functioned in the rich Greek provinces of Italy and in the Hegemony (Wallachia and Moldavia). In the Hegemony it is mainly due to the presence of Greek parishioners and the Phanariotes, who, due to the positions they held in the Ecumenical Patriarchate and especially in the Ottoman Administrative Mechanism, had realized the value of education.
In Padua in 1653, the Hellenic Museum of Padua was founded by Ioannis Kotunios, which definitively ceased operations in 1797 when M. Napoleon overthrew the Venetian Republic. However, the most important educational institution of parochial Hellenism was the Flaggini College of Venice, which was founded by Thomas Flaggini and began operating in 1665.
Until 1797, when it was closed due to the above actions of Napoleon, in addition to the non-boarding students, about 600 boarders studied at the school, mainly from the Venetian-occupied, but also the Turkish-occupied regions of Greece. The studies lasted six years and the students were taught in the first cycle of studies grammar, philology, rhetoric and letter writing courses, while in the second cycle logic, philosophy, theology, mathematics and geography.
After its closure in 1797, the school reopened from 1823 to 1905, but without the glamor of the first period. The above educational institutions of Padua and Venice, in addition to the educated Greeks they produced, were also a counterweight to the Catholic propaganda carried out through the Hellenic College of Agios Athanasios in Rome. In Moldavia and Wallachia the first attempts to establish higher schools were made in the 16th and 17th centuries.
In the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th, the most important schools of subjugated Hellenism existed in the Dominions. Among the educational institutions established in the various cities, the Hegemonic Academy of Bucharest and the Hegemonic Academy of Iasi stand out. In 1690, the school that existed in Bucharest was reorganized and named the Academy. A milestone in its upward trajectory was the placement on the throne of Wallachia of Phanariotis Alexandros Ypsilantis in 1774.
A decree of 1776 regulated the school's courses and scholarships, but excluded the children of free peasants and serfs. The Hegemonic Academy of Iasi was founded in 1707 and in 1714 the first Phanariot ruler of Moldavia, Nikolaos Mavrokordatos, reorganized it. In this Academy probably from 1728 the teaching of the new Greek language began, which Joseph Moisiodakas established as the language of instruction in 1776.
From 1764, with Nikiforos Theotokis as headmaster, it emerged as one of the best schools of subjugated Hellenism and in 1766 the headmaster Nik. Zerzoulis taught philosophy according to the philosophical currents of the time, abandoning the neo-Aristotelian method of Theophilos Korydaleos. The Academy continued its course with fluctuations and in 1821, with the outbreak of the Greek Revolution, it was closed by order of the sultan, as was the Bucharest Academy, because it was considered that, instead of educating the young, they were nurturing revolutionaries.
From the middle and later of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment, despite the reactions of the Church, will begin to influence education as well.
THE ORIGINS OF THE REVOLUTION
National, Class and Religious Revolution
The Revolution of 1821 was not a local event, but it had global significance. There was an early national revolution, inspired by the French model, against Islamic domination in the Eastern space.
It was a revolution whose birth date was February 22nd, 1821, when Alexander Ypsilantis crossed Pruthos, raised the flag of the Revolution and two days later issued the proclamation-call "Fight for faith and country". This was the event that triggered the Greek revolts in various parts of the Ottoman Empire, with the most successful of all being that of the Morea.
The Revolution of 1821 was a leading event, which had mainly anti-absolutist features, and as content was:
- National, as having a leadership inspired by the French Revolution, which managed to evolve into a dominant ideology the concept from the time of the Fall, limited until then to intellectual circles - of the Diaspora but also of the Fanario - that "we are national Greeks". A view that in the times before the Alosis had led to a paradoxical appearance of the Greeks as a nation, in the modern meaning of the term (that is, with a clear political program) centuries before modernity. This fact, along with some other equally paradoxical for historians and social scientists dealing with the nation phenomenon, led E. Gelner himself to talk about exceptions to the rule.
- Religious, of the Christians against the dominant Muslims, because they were second and third class citizens, subject to most of the discrimination due to their religion.
- Class, of the outcasts, diverse in terms of Roman origin, because the Romans were the economically empowered through the simplistic Muslim structure that defined intra-Ottoman relations.
This multiple significance will be expressed through the pan-Hellenic mobilization. In every part of the Greek world there will be revolutionary movements, while the Ottoman repression will be cruel. Massacres, persecutions and blind violence will be the response of a cruel, religious and absolutist power against the Roman populations throughout the Ottoman Empire.
Friendly Society
The Society of Friendship was the most important of the secret organizations formed to prepare a revolution for the liberation of the Greeks from the Ottoman Empire. It was founded in 1814 in Odessa, and according to the oldest historians, by Emmanuel Xanthos, Nikolaos Skoufas, Athanasios Tsakalov. Its fourth member was Antonios Komizopoulos from Philippoupolis.
Also among the first members to be initiated was Panagiotis Anagnostopoulos (and indeed according to some sources a co-founder, before Xanthos who was initiated later). After being initiated into the Society, the Friends took an oath of loyalty and communicated with codes, nicknames and watchwords. In mid-September 1814 in Odessa, three Greek merchants, two from Epirota and one from Patmos, decided to prepare the ground for the "timely" revolution of the Greek populations of the Ottoman Empire.
This decision very soon led to the establishment of the Society of Friends or Friendly Society. The latter is part of a wider process of ethnogenesis and revolutionary ferments that have been taking place since the end of the 18th century, especially among scholars and merchants in the Greek districts. Its founders were Nikolaos Skoufas, Athanasios Tsakalov and Emmanuel Xanthos, who in the past had participated in other secret revolutionary societies as well as in masonic lodges.
Their experience was useful in terms of the organization and conspiratorial way of acting of the Company. Until 1818, the year in which the three founders settled in Constantinople, the Friendly Society was an oligarchic organization with complicated initiation procedures, conspiratorial rules and a multitude of secret symbols. It is believed that up to that time the number of members who were initiated did not exceed thirty, while as members they were mainly chosen prominent
Greeks from Prussia and the Danubian hegemonies. During this period (1814-18) the leading core of the Company, the Authority as it was called, included, among others, Anthimos Gazis, a priest and scholar of recognized prestige. The relocation of the organization to Constantinople coincided with the death of N. Skoufas and the expansion of the leadership group, which included, among others, Metropolitan Ignatios of Oygrovalachia, Phanariotis Alexandros Mavrokordatos and Archimandrite Grigorios Dikaios (Papaflessas).
Even more, in this period (1818-20) the Society proceeds with organizational changes, expanding the circle of its members and concretizing a plan for the manifestation of the revolution. In terms of organizational changes, the so-called system of the twelve apostles is adopted. According to this, twelve reputable members of the Society were sent to an equal number of areas where Greek populations lived. Their aim was to approach socio-politically and economically powerful local actors.
Foundation of the Philiki Etairia
In the context of the burning desire to throw off the Turkish yoke and with the clear influence of the secret societies of Europe, in 1814 three Greeks met in Odessa and decided to set up a strictly secret organization, which would prepare the uprising of all Greeks. They are Nikolaos Skoufas, 35 years old, from Komoti in Arta, Emmanuel Xanthos, 42 years old, from Patmos and Athanasios Tsakalov, 26 years old, from Ioannina. All three have already become communicants of revolutionary ideas and partnership.
Skoufas had special contacts with Konstantinos Rados, who was initiated into Carbonarism. Xanthos had been initiated into a Masonic Lodge of Lefkada ("Society of Free Masons", of Agia Mavra), while Tsakalov had been a founding member of the Greek-speaking Hotel. The purpose of the Friendly Society is the general revolution of the Greeks for the "upliftment and liberation of the Greek Nation and our Homeland", as Xanthos himself informs us.
And he notes in his "Memoirs: ..in order to act alone for those who had hoped in vain for a long time from the charity of Christian kings". Filiki's development path is impressive. In the period 1814-1816, its members number about 20. Until the middle of 1817, it develops mainly among the Greeks of Russia and Moldo-Wallachia, but again its members do not exceed 30. However, since 1818, there have been numerous initiations.
During 1820 it spread to almost all regions of Greece and most Greek districts abroad. The initiates are counted in the thousands, although only 1096 names are known. In the first months of 1821 its members numbered tens of thousands. The organization had overstepped its own bounds.
In its ranks gathered mainly merchants and petty bourgeois, but also Phanariotes and Kotzabasis and clergy, persons who will play a competitive role (positive or negative) in the struggle for independence, such as the chieftains Theodoros Kolokotronis, Odysseas Androutsos, Anagnostaras, the archimandrite Grigorios Dikaios ( Papaflessas), the Phanariots Alexandros Mavrokordatos and Negris, the mega-caravans Kountouriotis, the mega-tumblers Zaimis, Londos, Notaras, the metropolitan of Old Patras Germanos and others.
The entire structure of the Society was based on the organizational standards of the Carbonari and the Freemasons. Its leadership group was called "the Invisible Authority" and was surrounded from the first moment with such secret glamor that many important personalities, not only Greeks but also foreigners, such as Tsar Alexander I of Russia, were believed to have participated in it. In fact, at first it was only the three founders. Then, from 1815 to 1818, five more were added, and after Skoufa's death, three more were added.
- Georgakis Olympios for Serbia,
- Vatikiotis for Bulgaria,
- Pentecost for Romania,
- Louriotis for Italy,
- Anagnostaras for the Saronic Islands,
- Chrysospathis for Messinia,
- Farmakis for Macedonia and Thrace,
- Krokidas for Epirus,
- Pelopidas for the Peloponnese,
- Ipatros for Egypt,
- Katakazis for South Russia and
- Mr. Kamarinos for Petrobei of Mani.
All of them, after the death of Skoufas, dispersed to the regions assigned to them and began to introduce the Greeks to the purposes of the Philiki Etairia. Among them enlightened scholars and scientists of the time, but also provosts such as Baron Ioannis Kefalas from Epirus and other prominent men.
The entire structure was pyramidal and at the top was ruled by the "Invisible Authority". No one knew or had the right to ask who made it up. Its orders were carried out without discussion, while the members had no right to make decisions. The Society was called "Temple" and originally had four levels of initiation:
a) the brothers or vlamides,
b) the initiates,
c) the priests and
d) the shepherds. When in 1818 the company moved its headquarters to Constantinople, two more degrees were created
e) the dedicated and
f) the leaders of the dedicated, which were given exclusively to military personnel. Later the ranks were completed by
g) the apostles and
h) the General Commissioner of the Authority, a title given to Alex. Ypsilanti, when he accepted the leadership of the Friendly Society (1820)
The Priests were charged with the work of initiation into the first two degrees. When the Priest approached someone, he made sure of his patriotism and indoctrinated him obliquely into the purposes of the company, whereupon the last stage was to take an oath. Then he would take him to a clergyman—not an easy thing if the priest was not already initiated. He would go and find the priest and tell him that he wanted to swear someone in their personal case, in order to see that he was telling the truth.
From then on, the initiate was considered a newly enlightened member of the Society, i.e. he was a Vlamis, with all the rights and obligations. Philicus with the rank of Priest was immediately obliged to show him all the marks of recognition among the Vlamids. Both the Vlamides and the Systemites were unaware of the organization's revolutionary aims.
They only knew that there was a Society that strives for the general good of the nation, which included important persons in its bosom. This kind of thing was deliberately spread, to boost the morale of the members on the one hand and on the other hand to make conversion easier.
The Action Plan of Philiki Etairia
The assumption of leadership by Alexandros Ypsilantis is connected with the formation of a plan for the start of the Revolution. During 1820 the plan was modified several times to a great extent, because the expansion of the Society and the recruitment of volunteers had created suspicions about its activity and some members had been arrested. Thus, at the beginning of 1821, the start of the Revolution was hastened, which seems to have been predicted to start almost simultaneously in three different areas: in the Danubian dominions, in the Morea and in Constantinople.
At the beginning of October 1820 in the city of Ismailio in the Russian province of Bessarabia, a gathering of members of the Society was held following the initiative of Al. Ypsilantis. Among those who gathered in order to determine the date of the revolution and the concretization of the plan were Emmanuel Xanthos, Xr. Peraivos and Grigorios Dikaios (Papaflessas).
Regarding the time of the revolution, it was decided that it would break out at the end of November and the beginning of December in the Peloponnese, to which Al. Ypsilantis by boat from Trieste. A few days earlier, there would have been a movement in Moldova as well. It was a counter-distraction move that was, however, expected to be reinforced by Prussia and also by a simultaneous revolutionary uprising by the Serbs. Thus, the Revolution in the Peloponnese would occur at a time of more general revolutionary upheaval throughout the Ottoman-occupied Balkan Peninsula.
The war between Ali Pasha and the Sultan's troops also helped in this planning, while a positive possibility would be the provocation of another Russian-Ottoman war. However, the manifestation of the revolution was postponed until the spring of 1821, as the messages from the Peloponnese did not it was encouraging. Then it was decided that Al. Ypsilantis of the movement in the Danubian hegemonies, from where he would cross the Balkan peninsula fighting and end up in the Peloponnese.
It was also foreseen that the Greek crews would stop at the Constantinople naval station, set fire to the Ottoman fleet and arrest the Sultan in the general chaos that would be caused in the capital of the Empire. Finally, in the middle of February, it was decided in Kisnovo, Bessarabia, that Ypsilantis should cross into Moldavia and proclaim the beginning of the revolution on February 27, 1821, a day that coincided with Orthodoxy Sunday.
The factors that led to the manifestation of the revolution in the Danubian hegemonies were largely related to the special status enjoyed by the provinces of the Ottoman Empire neighboring Prussia. Moldavia and Wallachia were governed by Phanariots appointed by the Sultan, and although these areas formally belonged to the Empire, Ottoman troops could not enter them without the consent of Russia.
The few garrisons were not able to defend the area, while there was hope that Prussia would not allow the entry of Ottoman troops. In addition, the ruler of Moldavia was the Friendly Michael Sootsos who maintained a force of armed men, while the leaders of the military corps in Blachia were the also Friendly Georgakis Olympios and Yiannis Farmakis. Although the Greek populations were small, concentrated in the cities and employed in administrative positions, they hoped that they could take the local populations with them.
Cooperation with the Vlach revolutionary Bladimirescu, who at that time led a movement of poor rural populations, would also work in this direction. None of these calculations have been confirmed. The local populations did not take kindly to a move involving the Phanariot rulers. The reticence of Bladimirescu, who was also in contact with the Ottomans, led the Friends to arrest and execute him.
Finally, the hasty preparations and inadequate equipment of the relatively few Balkan volunteers who made up the Ypsilanti army could not be equated with whatever heroism they displayed during the battles. Finally, the inaction of the Friends in Constantinople and especially the condemnation of the Ypsilanti movement by the Russian emperor denied the last hopes for a positive outcome of the movement in the Danubian hegemonies.
The Oath of Friends
"I swear before the true God, that I will be faithful to the Society in all things for the rest of my life. To reveal the smallest of its signs and reasons, not to stand for any reason or occasion for others to ever understand that I know anything about these, not to my relatives, not to my spiritual or friend.
I swear that from now on I will not enter into any company, whatever it may be, nor into any binding obligation. And in fact, whatever bond I may have had, even the most indifferent one with regard to the Company, I want him to think of it as nothing.
I swear that I will cherish in my heart an intransigent hatred against the tyrants of my country, their followers and like-minded people, I will act in every way to their harm and this complete destruction of them, when the occasion allows it.
I swear never to use violence to identify myself with any colleague, taking care on the contrary with the greatest care not to be mistaken in this, becoming the cause of an incident, with any colleague.
I swear to run together, wherever I find my colleague, with all my strength and condition. To offer him respect and obedience, if he is greater in rank and if he happened to be my enemy before, so much the more to love him and help him, inasmuch as my enmity is greater.
I swear that as I was admitted to the Society, I will similarly admit another brother, always treating him in a manner and all the arranged time, until I know him as a true Greek, a fervent defender of the country, a virtuous man and worthy not only to keep the secret, but also to teach others right mind.
I swear not to benefit in any way from the Company's money, considering it as a sacred thing and a pledge belonging to all my Nation. To similarly guard against received sealed letters.
I swear not to inquire of any of the Friends with curiosity, to know who received him into the Company. For this reason I must not show, or give occasion to him to understand, who admitted me. To answer in ignorance, if I know the point in the supply chain.
I swear to always be careful in my conduct, to be virtuous. To respect my religion, without scorning foreign ones. To always set a good example. To advise and support the sick, the unhappy and the weak. To respect the administration, the customs, the criteria and the administrators of the place where I am doing my thesis.
Anyway, I swear to You, O holy but trishy Patris! I swear by Your long sufferings. I swear by the bitter tears that Your suffering children have shed and are shedding for so many centuries, by my own tears, shed at this moment, and by the future freedom of my compatriots that I dedicate myself completely to You. Henceforth you will be the cause and purpose of my meditations. Thy name the guide of my actions, and Thy happiness the reward of my toils.
May divine justice exhaust all its thunderbolts upon my head, may my name be an abomination, and my subject the object of the curse and anathema of my fellow-men, if perhaps I forget for a moment their miseries and do not fulfill my debt Finally, let my death be the inevitable punishment of my sin, so that I do not forget the purity of the Society with my participation.
Before the invisible and omnipresent true God,. of the law as such, of the one who avenges transgression and chastises wickedness, according to the rules of the Friendly Society, I establish (name) from country (place of origin), years (age) and profession (such and such) and I accept this priest, as he accepted this in the Society of Friends".
The March to Rebellion
In 1818, the seat of the Filiki was moved from Odessa to Constantinople, i.e. in the heart of the Ottoman power, which testified "the self-confidence of the Filiki in their conspiratorial organizational abilities" while the death of Skoufas was a serious loss. On the occasion of this fact and given its rapid spread, the rest of the founders tried to find a great personality to take the reins, wanting to give it greater prestige and prestige.
At the beginning of 1818 there was a meeting with Ioannis Kapodistrias who not only refused, but later wrote that he believed that the Philiki were to blame for the doom that was foreshadowed in Greece. Finally, after several contacts, in April 1820, Alexandros Ypsilantis took over the leadership of the Philiki Etairia. Conditions now seemed ripe enough for rebellion to break out, and a grand plan was drawn up. The plan was originally to have a simultaneous Serb and Montenegrin revolution, as well as in Moldova.
At the same time, they should burn the Turkish fleet in Constantinople, while Ypsilanti should lead the revolution in the Peloponnese. After various dichotomies and after some of the plans had already been betrayed, the revolution was declared in February 1821 in Iași, the capital of Moldavia. On February 24, Ypsilanti's famous proclamation, "FIGHT FOR FAITH AND FATHERLAND", was released, to which many Greeks, including young people, responded. But Russia does not come as the expected helper, while the Patriarchate officially excommunicates Alexandros Ypsilantis and Michael Soutsos, along with all the revolutionaries, on March 23:
"[...] wanting (the rebels) to disturb the comfort and peace of our compatriots, faithful ragiads of the strong kingdom which they enjoy under its dim shadow with so many privileges of freedom, which no other vassal and subject nation enjoys... to proclaim the fraud of the chosen evil-doers and evil-minded people and prove them and ennoble them everywhere as a common lymeon and vainglorious... and handing over even those simpler ones, who wanted to be clothed, that they are acting impiously of the ragiadic character [...]".
The battle of Dragatsani (June 1821) may have led to the massacre of the youth of the Holy Society and the collapse of the movement in the Transdanubian Hegemonies, but it was the ideal distraction to proclaim the Revolution in Greece and to overcome the objections of the candidates. This was the beginning of the superhuman struggle that, after years of hard fighting, forced the "Allies" to turn their eyes to Greece and for liberation to come.
The Friendly Society for about seven years fought against defeatism, organized the masses, collected money and prepared the armed struggle. Its existence and action constitute a brilliant page in our history. It proves that many times the seemingly utopian and impossible can become reality, because reality does not always oppose the vision and the vision may well surpass it.
The Proclamation of Alexander Ypsilanti
"to raise the sign by which we always win, the Cross!"
The time has come, Greek men!
Our brothers and friends are everywhere ready; the Serbs, the Suliotes, and the whole of Epirus await us in arms; let us therefore unite with enthusiasm! The Motherland invites us!
Europe, fixing her eyes on us, is astonished by our immobility; let all the mountains of Greece resound with the sound of our trumpets of war and the valleys with the terrible clanging of our chariots. Europe will admire our deeds, but our tyrants will flee from our presence, trembling and black. The enlightened peoples of Europe are engaged in the enjoyment of their own bliss and full of gratitude for the benefactions of our forefathers, desiring the freedom of Greece.
We, the apparent worthy of the ancestral virtue and of the present century, are hopeful that we will succeed in their defense and many of these liberals will come to our aid, in order to compete with us. Move, friends, and you want to see a strong force to defend our rights! Do you want to see many of these enemies of ours who, motivated by our just cause, will turn their backs on the enemy and unite with us; let them pray with a sincere attitude, the Fatherland wants to conquer them! Who then hinders your manly arms? Our cowardly enemy is weak and weak.
Our experienced generals, and all the compatriots are full of enthusiasm! So unite, brave and magnanimous Greeks! Let national phalanxes be formed, let patriotic legions appear, and you want to see those old colossuses of despotism fall of their own accord, in front of our triumphant flags. To the sound of our trumpet all the shores of the Ionian and Aegean seas will resound; the Greek ships, which in times of peace knew how to trade and fight, will sow in all the ports of the tyrant with fire and fury. death.
What Greek soul wants to be indifferent to the invitation of the Motherland? In Rome, one of Caesar's friends, the bloody chlamys of the tyrant, raises up the people. What do you want to do, O Greeks, to whom the Motherland bares her wounds and with a broken voice invokes the help of her children?
The divine providence, my fellow countrymen, now having mercy on our miseries, blessed things in this way, so that with a little effort we want to enjoy all the bliss with freedom. If, therefore, we are indifferent to the worthy indolence, the tyrant, becoming more ferocious, will multiply our sufferings, and we will become the most miserable of all nations.
Turn your eyes, my countrymen! and you see our pitiful state; you see here the temples captured; there our children seized, to be used as substitutes for the insolent philandering of our barbarian tyrants; our houses stripped bare; our fields plundered, and we, pitifully, poor men.
It is time to throw off this unbearable yoke, to liberate the Motherland, to drop the crescent moon from the clouds, in order to raise the sign by which we always win, I say the Cross, and thus to avenge the Motherland, and our Orthodox Pistin from the impiety of the impious and ignorance.
The noblest among us is the one who most courageously defends the rights of the Fatherland and most beneficially works for it. The assembled nation will elect its electors, and all our actions will be subject to this supreme will. So let us move with a common mind, let the rich pay part of their own property, let the holy pastors inspire the people with their own example, and let the educated advise the beneficial.
As for the military and political compatriots serving in foreign courts, giving thanks to which each one serves with power, let them all rush to the grand and brilliant stadium that is already opening, and let them contribute to the country the tribute owed, and as brave men in arms, even if unarmed. time with the irresistible weapon of courage and I promise victory in a short time and with it all good things. Which hired and lost slaves dare to oppose the people, fighting for their own independence? Witness the heroic struggles of our forefathers; Witness Spain, which was the first and only to overthrow the invincible phalanxes of a tyrant.
* * *
With unity, fellow citizens, with respect for the sacred religion, with submission to the laws and generals, with boldness and steadfastness, our victory is certain and inevitable; this will crown our heroic struggle with laurels and greens; this, with an indelible character, will engrave our names in the temple of immortality, by the example of the coming generations.
The Motherland will reward her obedient and genuine children with the prizes of glory and honor; but those who are unfaithful and deaf to her present invitation, she will denounce as spurious and Asian seeds, and will deliver their names, like other traitors, to the anathema and curse of posterity. Let us call again, O brave and generous Greeks, for freedom in the classical land of Greece. Let us set up a battle between Marathon and Thermopylae. Let us fight in the graves of our Fathers, who fought and died there to leave us free.
The blood of tyrants is accepted in the shade of Epaminondas of Thebes, and of Thrasyvoulos of Athens, who overthrew the thirty tyrants; in that of Armodius and Aristogeiton, who crushed the Peisistratic yoke; Timus in that of Coeste-leon who spared the last year and Syracuse, in fact in that of Miltiades and Themistocles of Leonidas and the Three Hundred, who thus cut down the innumerable armies of the barbarian Persians, whose most barbarous and unmanly descendants we are to-day with very little effort to completely annihilate.
So, to arms, friends, the Motherland invites us!
Alexandros Ypsilantis
February 24, 1821
In the general camp of Iasios
The Revolution in Moldowallachia
On February 22, 1821, Alexander Ypsilantis with a small escort of five people crossed the Pruthos River, the border between Russia and the Transdanubian hegemonies (Moldova and Wallachia) belonging to the Ottoman Empire. On the territory of Moldavia he was welcomed by the guard of the ruler Michael Soutsou and accompanied him to Iasi. There, on February 24, he issued the Battle for Faith and Fatherland proclamation, which is considered the official declaration of the Revolution. Two days later a ceremony was held during which the revolutionary flag was blessed.
The flag had on one side the palm tree, the central symbol of Philiki Etairia, and the phrase From my staktis I am reborn, while on the other side the equal apostles Constantine and Helen, the cross and the phrase En Tuto Nika. During his short stay in Iasi, the first preparations were made for the collection of money and the formation of an army from Balkan volunteers who gathered there, while other letters were also issued, among them the one addressed to the Russian emperor.
Ypsilantis left Iasio on March 1st, crossed Moldavia, crossed into Wallachia and towards the end of the month he found himself outside Bucharest, where the armed forces of Georgakis Olympiou were already located. The small Ottoman garrisons were unable to block his march. However, problems were beginning to emerge. The war preparations were insufficient. The army was formed along the way depending on the attendance of volunteers, while many were unarmed or poorly armed.
The expatriates of these regions seemed reluctant for the most part to help actively and effectively, while the local populations were also rather hostile, largely due to the looting and plundering that had taken place by parts of the Ypsilanti army. In addition, it had become clear that there was no hope of a Serbian revolution, communication with Ali Pasha had not been possible, and only Vladimirescu, head of the peasant movement in Wallachia who was also heading for Bucharest at the same time, could become an ally.
At the end of March the prospect of a positive outcome weakened even more after the excommunication of Ypsilanti by the Patriarch and especially after the condemnation of the revolution by the Emperor of Russia, who would allow the entry of Ottoman troops into the dominions. Indeed, numerous Ottoman troops were assembled by the end of April and were ready to face Ypsilanti's army.
At the same time, Vladimirescu was also in contact with the Ottomans and was more interested in negotiating than in conflict with them. In Moldavia again, the local lords (Boyars), when they saw that Russia was not behind Ypsilanti's movement, now openly expressed themselves against him and asked the Ottomans for their contribution, a development that forced Michael Sutso and many other expatriates to flee in neighboring Bessarabia.
It is known that the Greek uprising began in the Transdanubian Hegemonies of Wallachia and Moldavia (Ottoman vassals) on February 22, 1821, thanks to the actions of the relatively forgotten patriot Alexandros Ypsilantis and his fellow fighters. The rebellion failed due to internal and external factors and was suppressed by September, but the flame of the Revolution had already been ignited in the Peloponnese, Roumeli and the islands.
The failure of the Greek Struggle in Moldowallachia was certainly a negative event for the Revolution, but it did not negatively affect its course in southern Greece. If Ypsilantis managed to win some decisive battles, his struggle would be stifled due to the unwillingness of the Russians, Serbs or even Vlach-Moldavians to fight alongside him, and the former's final decision to allow Ottoman military intervention in the Hegemony.
We remind you that after a relative treaty with the Russian Empire, the Turks did not maintain forces in Moldova, except for a few with police duties, and they could not operate on their territory without the permission of the respective Russian Tsar. The then Tsar Alexander gave the relevant permission to the Ottomans to invade the Hegemonies and thus crush the Ypsilanti movement. However, blaming the Russians, Serbs, Vlachs and Moldovans for their reluctance – as is sometimes the case – is probably wrong for the following reasons.
The Russians have always taken care of the protection of the Orthodox in the Ottoman territory, but the movement of Ypsilanti appeared at the time of a negative diplomatic situation for it. Russia had undertaken the commitment vis-à-vis the other four European Powers, not to strengthen any revolutionary movement throughout Europe. The rebellion in the Transdanubian Hegemonies coincided with the revolutionary movement of Piedmont while the revolutions of Spain and Naples preceded it and the rebellion of the Simeonovsky regiment in St. Petersburg which had shaken Tsar Alexander.
Thus the Austrian Metternich, a tireless opponent of every revolutionary movement, did not take long to convince the monarchs of the Powers that the new revolutions in Piedmont and Moldo-Wallachia belonged to a common and coordinated movement of rebellions that threatened the security and tranquility of the entire European continent. The cooperation of the Vlach "social" revolutionary Vladimirescus with Ypsilantis, strengthened this claim of his.
Besides, the attempt of Ypsilantis and the Friends to "blackmail" the Russian leadership in support of the rebellion in Moldova, was essentially senseless, because such strategies do not lead to positive results. The able diplomat Ioannis Kapodistrias alluded to this reality in a famous letter to Ypsilantis. Ypsilantis, although a pure and ardent patriot, had exposed the Tsar and the Russian leadership when during his campaign sermon in Moldavia he hinted that they supported him.
In addition, he carried the rank of general of the Russian army. Ypsilantis and most of the Friends hoped that Russia would support them in some way (even by barring the advance of Ottoman forces into the Dominions) following its steady eastern expansionist policy against the Turks, but St. Petersburg had suspended this policy for a long time.
Later, the Russians contributed the most to the liberation of Greece, both with their broad cooperation in the naval battle of Navarino, and with the invasion of an army of theirs in the Ottoman territory at that critical phase of the Hellenic Struggle, even though they were acting to protect their interests (as well as the British and the French).
The Friends had some limited contacts with the Serbian ruler Obrenovic and some other Serbian leaders, but the possibility of a new Serbian revolution at the same time as the Greek one was very little or none, despite the various "assurances" from the Friends that the Serbs would revolt together with the Greek women. The said "assurances" belonged to the wider effort of mutual encouragement between the fighters.
The Serbs did not revolt, mainly because of their exhaustion from the losses and sufferings they had suffered during their recent years-long rebellion against the Turks (1804-1816) and because of the change in Russia's eastern policy, which they looked to in order to regain independence them as a great Slavic and Orthodox "mother". The Serbs and Montenegrins of Serbian origin had one more decisive reason not to revolt in 1821: the war between the semi-independent Albanian Ali Pasha and the Ottomans (1820 onwards).
Serbian leaders had been worried for years by the rapid rise of the wily Ali Pasha, who intended to establish his own hegemony in the western part of the Balkans that would include all Greek, Albanian, Serbian and Montenegrin lands. The Serbs loathed the Turks but equally loathed the Muslim Albanians, and possibly preferred Turkish rule (temporary in their view) to the Alipasalid yoke.
Besides, they believed that in any case the Sultanate supremacy in their country would be annihilated, even with the Russian intervention. The gradual Albanian settlement in the holy Serbian land of Kosovo (modern Kosovo) and in the sanjak of Novi Pazar, was one of the main reasons (among several others) of Serbo-Albanian opposition. The Albanian Muslims were outnumbered compared to the Orthodox of the western Balkans, but they were the most important political and military factor in the region. After all, they were its most experienced and best armed fighters.
If Ali Pasha defeated the Ottoman army, he would annex the Kosovar and Skodran Albanians to the north of his hegemony. Thus all the Albanians would be united under a competent ruler and very quickly they would be strengthened with the Slavo-Muslims of Novi Pazar and especially of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because they would no longer have territorial contact with the Ottoman lands. Besides, the Slavo-Muslims (Bosnians, etc.) felt the threat of the encirclement of the Serbs of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and eastern Slavonia.
If the Serbs and Montenegrins revolted together with the Greeks, the Alipasalid victory over the Sultan would probably be certain. But then the Serbs would face the Albanian-Bosnian threat, which was perhaps stronger than the Ottoman one because they would be between the two Muslim powers: between the war-experienced Bosniaks to their northwest and the Alipsalid Albanians to the south. The anti-Sultan movement of Ali Pasha gave a great advantage to the Hellenic Struggle because it occupied the Sultan's army, but for the Serbs, exhausted by the revolution of 1804-1816, it was the greatest threat.
The Sultan's recognition of the autonomous hegemony of northern Serbia in 1815/1816 was a decisive "political conquest" of the Serbian fighters for the liberation of their country, which they did not want to lose with an untimely revolution. Moreover, despite the title of hegemony, Serbia remained vassal to the Turks, with Belgrade and other urban centers occupied by Turkish garrisons. And the ruler Obrenovic was more like a simple Slavic "philarch".
Additionally, the Greeks and the Serbs were suspicious of each other: in 1820, in a written draft of the Greek revolt drawn up in Bucharest, Leventis, Papaflessas and other Peloponnesian leaders appeal to the Friendly readers of the text, the need to be the Serbs who will revolt first and then the Greeks of Morea, so that the Sultan's military effort will be concentrated in Serbia and thus the Moraites will have an easier war mission.
In the opposite case, it is pointed out the danger that the Serbian fighters will not meet appreciable Turkish resistance and will march to Macedonia and Thrace, which were watching over them. In conclusion, the competition between Serbs and Greeks for the acquisition of as much territory as possible, which manifested itself during the Balkan Wars at the beginning of the 20th century, already existed a century earlier.
Probably the Serbian leadership also made calculations similar to those of Papaflessas and his competitors, and wanted to prevent the expansion of an independent Greece to Macedonia and Thrace. After all, he had never forgotten the spread of Stefanos Dusan's Serbian hegemony during the Late Middle Ages, as far as Thrace and the Corinthian Gulf. This is probably another reason for Serbian inaction-neutrality in 1821.
Despite this, the Serbs inadvertently strengthened the Hellenic Struggle by significantly wearing down the Sultanate army during 1804-1816, while a number of Serbo-Montenegrin fighters arrived in Greece in 1821 to reinforce the orthodox Greek rebels. And for the other Christian peoples of the Aemos peninsula it has been estimated that they should have revolted together with the Greeks, but this possibility was negligible.
Vlachs and Moldavians (note) had no significant reasons to support the Ypsilanti movement, because Turkish rule was not particularly pressing for them. Earlier, they had not substantially supported the Serbian movements either. In Moldowallachia, the Ottomans did not easily manifest their brutality, also due to Russian protection. The Vlach-Moldavians faced Christian oppressors: they lived under an antiquated, almost feudal socio-political regime, in which their overlords were not so much the Ottomans as the native and Greek landowners and nobles, and the senior native clergy and bishops.
The Bulgarians occupied the most difficult geopolitical position (for an uprising against the Turks), residing in the eastern and central Balkans, between Albania, the Danube border and Thrace, i.e. between areas with numerous Turkish and Albanian troops. Also, the Bulgarians (Christians) were surrounded by the lands of the Bulgarian Muslims and the Tatar refugees (Bujak, Nogai, Crimean, etc.) of eastern Bulgaria and Dobrudja, the Pomaks of the Rhodopes, and the Albanians.
These were war-experienced Muslim peoples who could crush them due to Bulgaria's geostrategic encirclement if they rebelled. Eastern Bulgaria in particular would receive the devastating attack of the Ottoman naval squadrons of Constantinople, Dobrudja and Sinop, which could land multitudes of wild "Bashi-bazuk" (Bashi-bazuk) and other miscreants on its coast. The Bulgarians did not have a navy, like the Greek revolutionaries.
The entire structure was pyramidal and at the top was ruled by the "Invisible Authority". No one knew or had the right to ask who made it up. Its orders were carried out without discussion, while the members had no right to make decisions. The Society was called "Temple" and originally had four levels of initiation:
a) the brothers or vlamides,
b) the initiates,
c) the priests and
d) the shepherds. When in 1818 the company moved its headquarters to Constantinople, two more degrees were created
e) the dedicated and
f) the leaders of the dedicated, which were given exclusively to military personnel. Later the ranks were completed by
g) the apostles and
h) the General Commissioner of the Authority, a title given to Alex. Ypsilanti, when he accepted the leadership of the Friendly Society (1820)
The Priests were charged with the work of initiation into the first two degrees. When the Priest approached someone, he made sure of his patriotism and indoctrinated him obliquely into the purposes of the company, whereupon the last stage was to take an oath. Then he would take him to a clergyman—not an easy thing if the priest was not already initiated. He would go and find the priest and tell him that he wanted to swear someone in their personal case, in order to see that he was telling the truth.
They only knew that there was a Society that strives for the general good of the nation, which included important persons in its bosom. This kind of thing was deliberately spread, to boost the morale of the members on the one hand and on the other hand to make conversion easier.
The Action Plan of Philiki Etairia
The assumption of leadership by Alexandros Ypsilantis is connected with the formation of a plan for the start of the Revolution. During 1820 the plan was modified several times to a great extent, because the expansion of the Society and the recruitment of volunteers had created suspicions about its activity and some members had been arrested. Thus, at the beginning of 1821, the start of the Revolution was hastened, which seems to have been predicted to start almost simultaneously in three different areas: in the Danubian dominions, in the Morea and in Constantinople.
At the beginning of October 1820 in the city of Ismailio in the Russian province of Bessarabia, a gathering of members of the Society was held following the initiative of Al. Ypsilantis. Among those who gathered in order to determine the date of the revolution and the concretization of the plan were Emmanuel Xanthos, Xr. Peraivos and Grigorios Dikaios (Papaflessas).
Regarding the time of the revolution, it was decided that it would break out at the end of November and the beginning of December in the Peloponnese, to which Al. Ypsilantis by boat from Trieste. A few days earlier, there would have been a movement in Moldova as well. It was a counter-distraction move that was, however, expected to be reinforced by Prussia and also by a simultaneous revolutionary uprising by the Serbs. Thus, the Revolution in the Peloponnese would occur at a time of more general revolutionary upheaval throughout the Ottoman-occupied Balkan Peninsula.
The war between Ali Pasha and the Sultan's troops also helped in this planning, while a positive possibility would be the provocation of another Russian-Ottoman war. However, the manifestation of the revolution was postponed until the spring of 1821, as the messages from the Peloponnese did not it was encouraging. Then it was decided that Al. Ypsilantis of the movement in the Danubian hegemonies, from where he would cross the Balkan peninsula fighting and end up in the Peloponnese.
It was also foreseen that the Greek crews would stop at the Constantinople naval station, set fire to the Ottoman fleet and arrest the Sultan in the general chaos that would be caused in the capital of the Empire. Finally, in the middle of February, it was decided in Kisnovo, Bessarabia, that Ypsilantis should cross into Moldavia and proclaim the beginning of the revolution on February 27, 1821, a day that coincided with Orthodoxy Sunday.
The few garrisons were not able to defend the area, while there was hope that Prussia would not allow the entry of Ottoman troops. In addition, the ruler of Moldavia was the Friendly Michael Sootsos who maintained a force of armed men, while the leaders of the military corps in Blachia were the also Friendly Georgakis Olympios and Yiannis Farmakis. Although the Greek populations were small, concentrated in the cities and employed in administrative positions, they hoped that they could take the local populations with them.
Cooperation with the Vlach revolutionary Bladimirescu, who at that time led a movement of poor rural populations, would also work in this direction. None of these calculations have been confirmed. The local populations did not take kindly to a move involving the Phanariot rulers. The reticence of Bladimirescu, who was also in contact with the Ottomans, led the Friends to arrest and execute him.
Finally, the hasty preparations and inadequate equipment of the relatively few Balkan volunteers who made up the Ypsilanti army could not be equated with whatever heroism they displayed during the battles. Finally, the inaction of the Friends in Constantinople and especially the condemnation of the Ypsilanti movement by the Russian emperor denied the last hopes for a positive outcome of the movement in the Danubian hegemonies.
The Oath of Friends
"I swear before the true God, that I will be faithful to the Society in all things for the rest of my life. To reveal the smallest of its signs and reasons, not to stand for any reason or occasion for others to ever understand that I know anything about these, not to my relatives, not to my spiritual or friend.
I swear that from now on I will not enter into any company, whatever it may be, nor into any binding obligation. And in fact, whatever bond I may have had, even the most indifferent one with regard to the Company, I want him to think of it as nothing.
I swear never to use violence to identify myself with any colleague, taking care on the contrary with the greatest care not to be mistaken in this, becoming the cause of an incident, with any colleague.
I swear to run together, wherever I find my colleague, with all my strength and condition. To offer him respect and obedience, if he is greater in rank and if he happened to be my enemy before, so much the more to love him and help him, inasmuch as my enmity is greater.
I swear that as I was admitted to the Society, I will similarly admit another brother, always treating him in a manner and all the arranged time, until I know him as a true Greek, a fervent defender of the country, a virtuous man and worthy not only to keep the secret, but also to teach others right mind.
I swear not to benefit in any way from the Company's money, considering it as a sacred thing and a pledge belonging to all my Nation. To similarly guard against received sealed letters.
I swear not to inquire of any of the Friends with curiosity, to know who received him into the Company. For this reason I must not show, or give occasion to him to understand, who admitted me. To answer in ignorance, if I know the point in the supply chain.
I swear to always be careful in my conduct, to be virtuous. To respect my religion, without scorning foreign ones. To always set a good example. To advise and support the sick, the unhappy and the weak. To respect the administration, the customs, the criteria and the administrators of the place where I am doing my thesis.
Anyway, I swear to You, O holy but trishy Patris! I swear by Your long sufferings. I swear by the bitter tears that Your suffering children have shed and are shedding for so many centuries, by my own tears, shed at this moment, and by the future freedom of my compatriots that I dedicate myself completely to You. Henceforth you will be the cause and purpose of my meditations. Thy name the guide of my actions, and Thy happiness the reward of my toils.
Before the invisible and omnipresent true God,. of the law as such, of the one who avenges transgression and chastises wickedness, according to the rules of the Friendly Society, I establish (name) from country (place of origin), years (age) and profession (such and such) and I accept this priest, as he accepted this in the Society of Friends".
The March to Rebellion
In 1818, the seat of the Filiki was moved from Odessa to Constantinople, i.e. in the heart of the Ottoman power, which testified "the self-confidence of the Filiki in their conspiratorial organizational abilities" while the death of Skoufas was a serious loss. On the occasion of this fact and given its rapid spread, the rest of the founders tried to find a great personality to take the reins, wanting to give it greater prestige and prestige.
At the beginning of 1818 there was a meeting with Ioannis Kapodistrias who not only refused, but later wrote that he believed that the Philiki were to blame for the doom that was foreshadowed in Greece. Finally, after several contacts, in April 1820, Alexandros Ypsilantis took over the leadership of the Philiki Etairia. Conditions now seemed ripe enough for rebellion to break out, and a grand plan was drawn up. The plan was originally to have a simultaneous Serb and Montenegrin revolution, as well as in Moldova.
At the same time, they should burn the Turkish fleet in Constantinople, while Ypsilanti should lead the revolution in the Peloponnese. After various dichotomies and after some of the plans had already been betrayed, the revolution was declared in February 1821 in Iași, the capital of Moldavia. On February 24, Ypsilanti's famous proclamation, "FIGHT FOR FAITH AND FATHERLAND", was released, to which many Greeks, including young people, responded. But Russia does not come as the expected helper, while the Patriarchate officially excommunicates Alexandros Ypsilantis and Michael Soutsos, along with all the revolutionaries, on March 23:
"[...] wanting (the rebels) to disturb the comfort and peace of our compatriots, faithful ragiads of the strong kingdom which they enjoy under its dim shadow with so many privileges of freedom, which no other vassal and subject nation enjoys... to proclaim the fraud of the chosen evil-doers and evil-minded people and prove them and ennoble them everywhere as a common lymeon and vainglorious... and handing over even those simpler ones, who wanted to be clothed, that they are acting impiously of the ragiadic character [...]".
The battle of Dragatsani (June 1821) may have led to the massacre of the youth of the Holy Society and the collapse of the movement in the Transdanubian Hegemonies, but it was the ideal distraction to proclaim the Revolution in Greece and to overcome the objections of the candidates. This was the beginning of the superhuman struggle that, after years of hard fighting, forced the "Allies" to turn their eyes to Greece and for liberation to come.
The Proclamation of Alexander Ypsilanti
"to raise the sign by which we always win, the Cross!"
The time has come, Greek men!
Our brothers and friends are everywhere ready; the Serbs, the Suliotes, and the whole of Epirus await us in arms; let us therefore unite with enthusiasm! The Motherland invites us!
Europe, fixing her eyes on us, is astonished by our immobility; let all the mountains of Greece resound with the sound of our trumpets of war and the valleys with the terrible clanging of our chariots. Europe will admire our deeds, but our tyrants will flee from our presence, trembling and black. The enlightened peoples of Europe are engaged in the enjoyment of their own bliss and full of gratitude for the benefactions of our forefathers, desiring the freedom of Greece.
We, the apparent worthy of the ancestral virtue and of the present century, are hopeful that we will succeed in their defense and many of these liberals will come to our aid, in order to compete with us. Move, friends, and you want to see a strong force to defend our rights! Do you want to see many of these enemies of ours who, motivated by our just cause, will turn their backs on the enemy and unite with us; let them pray with a sincere attitude, the Fatherland wants to conquer them! Who then hinders your manly arms? Our cowardly enemy is weak and weak.
Our experienced generals, and all the compatriots are full of enthusiasm! So unite, brave and magnanimous Greeks! Let national phalanxes be formed, let patriotic legions appear, and you want to see those old colossuses of despotism fall of their own accord, in front of our triumphant flags. To the sound of our trumpet all the shores of the Ionian and Aegean seas will resound; the Greek ships, which in times of peace knew how to trade and fight, will sow in all the ports of the tyrant with fire and fury. death.
What Greek soul wants to be indifferent to the invitation of the Motherland? In Rome, one of Caesar's friends, the bloody chlamys of the tyrant, raises up the people. What do you want to do, O Greeks, to whom the Motherland bares her wounds and with a broken voice invokes the help of her children?
The divine providence, my fellow countrymen, now having mercy on our miseries, blessed things in this way, so that with a little effort we want to enjoy all the bliss with freedom. If, therefore, we are indifferent to the worthy indolence, the tyrant, becoming more ferocious, will multiply our sufferings, and we will become the most miserable of all nations.
It is time to throw off this unbearable yoke, to liberate the Motherland, to drop the crescent moon from the clouds, in order to raise the sign by which we always win, I say the Cross, and thus to avenge the Motherland, and our Orthodox Pistin from the impiety of the impious and ignorance.
The noblest among us is the one who most courageously defends the rights of the Fatherland and most beneficially works for it. The assembled nation will elect its electors, and all our actions will be subject to this supreme will. So let us move with a common mind, let the rich pay part of their own property, let the holy pastors inspire the people with their own example, and let the educated advise the beneficial.
As for the military and political compatriots serving in foreign courts, giving thanks to which each one serves with power, let them all rush to the grand and brilliant stadium that is already opening, and let them contribute to the country the tribute owed, and as brave men in arms, even if unarmed. time with the irresistible weapon of courage and I promise victory in a short time and with it all good things. Which hired and lost slaves dare to oppose the people, fighting for their own independence? Witness the heroic struggles of our forefathers; Witness Spain, which was the first and only to overthrow the invincible phalanxes of a tyrant.
* * *
With unity, fellow citizens, with respect for the sacred religion, with submission to the laws and generals, with boldness and steadfastness, our victory is certain and inevitable; this will crown our heroic struggle with laurels and greens; this, with an indelible character, will engrave our names in the temple of immortality, by the example of the coming generations.
The Motherland will reward her obedient and genuine children with the prizes of glory and honor; but those who are unfaithful and deaf to her present invitation, she will denounce as spurious and Asian seeds, and will deliver their names, like other traitors, to the anathema and curse of posterity. Let us call again, O brave and generous Greeks, for freedom in the classical land of Greece. Let us set up a battle between Marathon and Thermopylae. Let us fight in the graves of our Fathers, who fought and died there to leave us free.
The blood of tyrants is accepted in the shade of Epaminondas of Thebes, and of Thrasyvoulos of Athens, who overthrew the thirty tyrants; in that of Armodius and Aristogeiton, who crushed the Peisistratic yoke; Timus in that of Coeste-leon who spared the last year and Syracuse, in fact in that of Miltiades and Themistocles of Leonidas and the Three Hundred, who thus cut down the innumerable armies of the barbarian Persians, whose most barbarous and unmanly descendants we are to-day with very little effort to completely annihilate.
So, to arms, friends, the Motherland invites us!
Alexandros Ypsilantis
February 24, 1821
In the general camp of Iasios
The Revolution in Moldowallachia
On February 22, 1821, Alexander Ypsilantis with a small escort of five people crossed the Pruthos River, the border between Russia and the Transdanubian hegemonies (Moldova and Wallachia) belonging to the Ottoman Empire. On the territory of Moldavia he was welcomed by the guard of the ruler Michael Soutsou and accompanied him to Iasi. There, on February 24, he issued the Battle for Faith and Fatherland proclamation, which is considered the official declaration of the Revolution. Two days later a ceremony was held during which the revolutionary flag was blessed.
The flag had on one side the palm tree, the central symbol of Philiki Etairia, and the phrase From my staktis I am reborn, while on the other side the equal apostles Constantine and Helen, the cross and the phrase En Tuto Nika. During his short stay in Iasi, the first preparations were made for the collection of money and the formation of an army from Balkan volunteers who gathered there, while other letters were also issued, among them the one addressed to the Russian emperor.
Ypsilantis left Iasio on March 1st, crossed Moldavia, crossed into Wallachia and towards the end of the month he found himself outside Bucharest, where the armed forces of Georgakis Olympiou were already located. The small Ottoman garrisons were unable to block his march. However, problems were beginning to emerge. The war preparations were insufficient. The army was formed along the way depending on the attendance of volunteers, while many were unarmed or poorly armed.
The expatriates of these regions seemed reluctant for the most part to help actively and effectively, while the local populations were also rather hostile, largely due to the looting and plundering that had taken place by parts of the Ypsilanti army. In addition, it had become clear that there was no hope of a Serbian revolution, communication with Ali Pasha had not been possible, and only Vladimirescu, head of the peasant movement in Wallachia who was also heading for Bucharest at the same time, could become an ally.
At the end of March the prospect of a positive outcome weakened even more after the excommunication of Ypsilanti by the Patriarch and especially after the condemnation of the revolution by the Emperor of Russia, who would allow the entry of Ottoman troops into the dominions. Indeed, numerous Ottoman troops were assembled by the end of April and were ready to face Ypsilanti's army.
At the same time, Vladimirescu was also in contact with the Ottomans and was more interested in negotiating than in conflict with them. In Moldavia again, the local lords (Boyars), when they saw that Russia was not behind Ypsilanti's movement, now openly expressed themselves against him and asked the Ottomans for their contribution, a development that forced Michael Sutso and many other expatriates to flee in neighboring Bessarabia.
It is known that the Greek uprising began in the Transdanubian Hegemonies of Wallachia and Moldavia (Ottoman vassals) on February 22, 1821, thanks to the actions of the relatively forgotten patriot Alexandros Ypsilantis and his fellow fighters. The rebellion failed due to internal and external factors and was suppressed by September, but the flame of the Revolution had already been ignited in the Peloponnese, Roumeli and the islands.
We remind you that after a relative treaty with the Russian Empire, the Turks did not maintain forces in Moldova, except for a few with police duties, and they could not operate on their territory without the permission of the respective Russian Tsar. The then Tsar Alexander gave the relevant permission to the Ottomans to invade the Hegemonies and thus crush the Ypsilanti movement. However, blaming the Russians, Serbs, Vlachs and Moldovans for their reluctance – as is sometimes the case – is probably wrong for the following reasons.
The Russians have always taken care of the protection of the Orthodox in the Ottoman territory, but the movement of Ypsilanti appeared at the time of a negative diplomatic situation for it. Russia had undertaken the commitment vis-à-vis the other four European Powers, not to strengthen any revolutionary movement throughout Europe. The rebellion in the Transdanubian Hegemonies coincided with the revolutionary movement of Piedmont while the revolutions of Spain and Naples preceded it and the rebellion of the Simeonovsky regiment in St. Petersburg which had shaken Tsar Alexander.
Thus the Austrian Metternich, a tireless opponent of every revolutionary movement, did not take long to convince the monarchs of the Powers that the new revolutions in Piedmont and Moldo-Wallachia belonged to a common and coordinated movement of rebellions that threatened the security and tranquility of the entire European continent. The cooperation of the Vlach "social" revolutionary Vladimirescus with Ypsilantis, strengthened this claim of his.
Besides, the attempt of Ypsilantis and the Friends to "blackmail" the Russian leadership in support of the rebellion in Moldova, was essentially senseless, because such strategies do not lead to positive results. The able diplomat Ioannis Kapodistrias alluded to this reality in a famous letter to Ypsilantis. Ypsilantis, although a pure and ardent patriot, had exposed the Tsar and the Russian leadership when during his campaign sermon in Moldavia he hinted that they supported him.
In addition, he carried the rank of general of the Russian army. Ypsilantis and most of the Friends hoped that Russia would support them in some way (even by barring the advance of Ottoman forces into the Dominions) following its steady eastern expansionist policy against the Turks, but St. Petersburg had suspended this policy for a long time.
Later, the Russians contributed the most to the liberation of Greece, both with their broad cooperation in the naval battle of Navarino, and with the invasion of an army of theirs in the Ottoman territory at that critical phase of the Hellenic Struggle, even though they were acting to protect their interests (as well as the British and the French).
The Serbs did not revolt, mainly because of their exhaustion from the losses and sufferings they had suffered during their recent years-long rebellion against the Turks (1804-1816) and because of the change in Russia's eastern policy, which they looked to in order to regain independence them as a great Slavic and Orthodox "mother". The Serbs and Montenegrins of Serbian origin had one more decisive reason not to revolt in 1821: the war between the semi-independent Albanian Ali Pasha and the Ottomans (1820 onwards).
Serbian leaders had been worried for years by the rapid rise of the wily Ali Pasha, who intended to establish his own hegemony in the western part of the Balkans that would include all Greek, Albanian, Serbian and Montenegrin lands. The Serbs loathed the Turks but equally loathed the Muslim Albanians, and possibly preferred Turkish rule (temporary in their view) to the Alipasalid yoke.
Besides, they believed that in any case the Sultanate supremacy in their country would be annihilated, even with the Russian intervention. The gradual Albanian settlement in the holy Serbian land of Kosovo (modern Kosovo) and in the sanjak of Novi Pazar, was one of the main reasons (among several others) of Serbo-Albanian opposition. The Albanian Muslims were outnumbered compared to the Orthodox of the western Balkans, but they were the most important political and military factor in the region. After all, they were its most experienced and best armed fighters.
If Ali Pasha defeated the Ottoman army, he would annex the Kosovar and Skodran Albanians to the north of his hegemony. Thus all the Albanians would be united under a competent ruler and very quickly they would be strengthened with the Slavo-Muslims of Novi Pazar and especially of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because they would no longer have territorial contact with the Ottoman lands. Besides, the Slavo-Muslims (Bosnians, etc.) felt the threat of the encirclement of the Serbs of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and eastern Slavonia.
If the Serbs and Montenegrins revolted together with the Greeks, the Alipasalid victory over the Sultan would probably be certain. But then the Serbs would face the Albanian-Bosnian threat, which was perhaps stronger than the Ottoman one because they would be between the two Muslim powers: between the war-experienced Bosniaks to their northwest and the Alipsalid Albanians to the south. The anti-Sultan movement of Ali Pasha gave a great advantage to the Hellenic Struggle because it occupied the Sultan's army, but for the Serbs, exhausted by the revolution of 1804-1816, it was the greatest threat.
The Sultan's recognition of the autonomous hegemony of northern Serbia in 1815/1816 was a decisive "political conquest" of the Serbian fighters for the liberation of their country, which they did not want to lose with an untimely revolution. Moreover, despite the title of hegemony, Serbia remained vassal to the Turks, with Belgrade and other urban centers occupied by Turkish garrisons. And the ruler Obrenovic was more like a simple Slavic "philarch".
In the opposite case, it is pointed out the danger that the Serbian fighters will not meet appreciable Turkish resistance and will march to Macedonia and Thrace, which were watching over them. In conclusion, the competition between Serbs and Greeks for the acquisition of as much territory as possible, which manifested itself during the Balkan Wars at the beginning of the 20th century, already existed a century earlier.
Probably the Serbian leadership also made calculations similar to those of Papaflessas and his competitors, and wanted to prevent the expansion of an independent Greece to Macedonia and Thrace. After all, he had never forgotten the spread of Stefanos Dusan's Serbian hegemony during the Late Middle Ages, as far as Thrace and the Corinthian Gulf. This is probably another reason for Serbian inaction-neutrality in 1821.
Despite this, the Serbs inadvertently strengthened the Hellenic Struggle by significantly wearing down the Sultanate army during 1804-1816, while a number of Serbo-Montenegrin fighters arrived in Greece in 1821 to reinforce the orthodox Greek rebels. And for the other Christian peoples of the Aemos peninsula it has been estimated that they should have revolted together with the Greeks, but this possibility was negligible.
Vlachs and Moldavians (note) had no significant reasons to support the Ypsilanti movement, because Turkish rule was not particularly pressing for them. Earlier, they had not substantially supported the Serbian movements either. In Moldowallachia, the Ottomans did not easily manifest their brutality, also due to Russian protection. The Vlach-Moldavians faced Christian oppressors: they lived under an antiquated, almost feudal socio-political regime, in which their overlords were not so much the Ottomans as the native and Greek landowners and nobles, and the senior native clergy and bishops.
The Bulgarians occupied the most difficult geopolitical position (for an uprising against the Turks), residing in the eastern and central Balkans, between Albania, the Danube border and Thrace, i.e. between areas with numerous Turkish and Albanian troops. Also, the Bulgarians (Christians) were surrounded by the lands of the Bulgarian Muslims and the Tatar refugees (Bujak, Nogai, Crimean, etc.) of eastern Bulgaria and Dobrudja, the Pomaks of the Rhodopes, and the Albanians.
These were war-experienced Muslim peoples who could crush them due to Bulgaria's geostrategic encirclement if they rebelled. Eastern Bulgaria in particular would receive the devastating attack of the Ottoman naval squadrons of Constantinople, Dobrudja and Sinop, which could land multitudes of wild "Bashi-bazuk" (Bashi-bazuk) and other miscreants on its coast. The Bulgarians did not have a navy, like the Greek revolutionaries.
The Bulgarians were able to effectively fight for their liberation only after the territorial expansion of the Greek and Serbian states and the independence of Romania, because the hinterland "behind" their country was now their ally. Despite the reduction of Turkish forces in Bulgarian lands due to the war with Ali Pasha, those who remained there were numerous due to the Russian threat.
Also, the Bulgarians lacked the national cohesion, effective organization and military training of the Serbs and Greeks. Several of them preferred to identify themselves as Greeks or Serbs rather than as Bulgarians.
In general, the Hegemonies of Moldavia were not geopolitically favorable for the success of the rebellion, sandwiched between the reinforced Turkish forces in Bulgaria, the Habsburg (Austrian) Empire which was opposing the pro-Russian movements of the Heim Peninsula (by maligning it), and Russia for which we saw that he could not support them. The revolution in the Hegemonies could prevail only with tsarist help or with a simultaneous new Serbian revolution, possibly also with an uprising of Western Bulgarians.
The latter were the Slavs of Skopje, modern-day FYROM, who called themselves "Bugari" (a corruption of "Bulgarians") and were friendly to the Serbs because of their common Slavic origin and their dislike for the Albanians of Kosovo and Albania. If the Serbs and the western Bulgarians revolted, or even only the Serbs, the territorial contact of the Greek militants of Moldowallachia with the revolted Macedonia and southern Greece would be achieved. However, bad times did not allow Macedonia to revolt either, because the Serbian and Bulgarian hinterland to its north remained under Turkish control.
Under these conditions, the rebellion was limited to the Greeks of the Transdanubian Hegemonies and to southern Greece, that is to say, to two regions very distant from each other, in the northeast and the south of the Aemos peninsula respectively. The expectations of the Philicians for a mass revolution of the Balkan Christians were denied and the Greeks were left with the only ally of the already outnumbered Albanians of Ali Pasha.
Fatefully the movement of Ypsilanti in the unsuitable geopolitically-geostrategically Moldavia was suppressed, but during it the Peloponnese, Central Greece and the maritime islands revolted. The revolution in Moldavia created a serious distraction in favor of the struggle in Greece, because because of it numerous Ottoman forces were moved and "fixed" in Thrace, Constantinople, Aeolian Islands, Ionia, the coasts of the Hellespont and the Black Sea and in the fortresses of the Danube, because of the fear of it revolution of the Greeks of these regions and a possible invasion of the Russians.
The Sultan did not trust the Russians, despite their assurances. Thus the revolution in Greece was founded and managed to survive. There the rebellion was "embraced" by the common people and geostrategically assisted: its base was Moria, which was protected from the sea side by the Trinesian (Greek) fleet, while the impenetrable volume and the experienced kleptarmatoli of Roumeli protected it from the North.
In this way, the Struggle in Greece managed, after many dramatic fluctuations, victories and defeats, expansions and contractions, to establish itself, to provoke the dynamic intervention of the European Powers against the Ottomans and the Egyptians at Navarino ("dehydrated" by the impasse of the Greek-Ottoman war that threatened the lucrative trade and political and social stability in the wider region), and finally to end up with the liberation of Greece.
In 1821, the Vlachs, Vlachs or Volochians), the Moldavians and the Romance-speakers of Transylvania, i.e. overall the ancestors of the Romanians, had not sufficiently developed the consciousness of their common origin (probably from Latin-speaking Illyrian refugees and not from the ancient Dacians as claimed the modern Romanians). The relationship between the Vlachs of Wallachia and the Vlachs of Pindos remains to this day the subject of study and controversy.
The arguments in favor of their common origin are strong, but equally strong are those arguing that they are not ethnologically related: the pre-Latin linguistic background of the Vlachs of Romania is Thracilerian, while that of the Vlachs of Pindus is Greek. Also, the two mentioned Vlach groups do not even have a relative anthropological uniformity: the Vlachs of Pindos mainly belong to the Mediterranean morphological type, while those of Wallachia belong to the Adriatic-Dinaric type.
The Vlachs of Pindos have always been characterized by their pastoral mountain life and their Neo-Latin-Romance dialect, which is extremely similar to the Vlach of Romania. In general, during the early 19th century, the Oresivian herders of the Greek area belonged to three linguistic groups: the Greek-speaking Sarakatsans, the Latin-speaking Vlachs and the Albanian-speaking Phrasariotes. The latter were named after their birthplace, Frasaris, near the springs of Apsos.
The Battles of Galatsiou Dragatsaniou and the End of the Revolution in Moldovan Wallachia
By the end of April, when Ottoman forces entered the dominions by crossing the Danube, only minor skirmishes had taken place between the rebels and the few Ottoman garrisons charged with police duties. The first large-scale conflict took place on April 30 in the city of Galatsi, which was defended by military units led by Athanasios Karpenisiotis.
Galatsi is located near the borders of Moldova and Wallachia with Bessarabia (Russia). There, after fierce battles, the Ottomans occupied the city, expelling the few saved rebels to Russian territory. As a consequence of the strong resistance put up by the men of Karpenisiotis, there were the massacres of locals and Epilians and the looting of the city. At the same time, quarrels, jealousies, disagreements and indiscipline made the situation more and more difficult in the rebel camp, while many began to desert.
In these circumstances, Alexander Ypsilantis decided to put himself at the head of a conflict, the outcome of which he hoped would change the situation favorably. So he gathered the remaining armed forces in the area of Dragatsani. One of them was the Holy Company, which was founded by enthusiastic but inexperienced young volunteers from Odessa and other Greek villages.
However, indiscipline and lack of coordination did not allow the implementation of the war plan that had been decided upon. The battle began a day earlier on the initiative of some officer and while the entire army had not yet been placed in the intended positions. Despite the self-sacrifice of the hierolohites, the outcome of the battle was tragic. The losses were enormous, almost universal, while the panic caused by the unexpectedness of the conflict led to a disorderly flight and the final dissolution of the Ypsilanti camp.
He himself, who did not have time to be at the front, managed to cross the Austrian border in mid-June, where, despite the initial agreement with the authorities, he was arrested and remained imprisoned until November 1827. A few months later, at the beginning of 1828, he died in Vienna. After the disaster at Dragatsani only two small bodies managed to remain organized. One, led by Georgakis Olympios and Ioannis Farmakis, moved further north, towards Moldavia, constantly fighting hard but desperate battles.
Their goal was to cross into Russian Bessarabia and from there move by ship to the Peloponnese. Finally, after a two-and-a-half-month march through mountainous regions and after several battles in which the body of the rebels was gradually decimated by its pursuers, they were trapped in the Sekou Monastery located in northern Moldavia near the border with Austria. There, after a siege of more than two weeks, during which G. Olympios and G. Farmakis were killed, he surrendered with his few companions and met a torturous death.
The second corps numbered approximately 250 armed men and was led by the brother of Theodoros Kolokotronis, Ioannis. He followed a path different from Olympios and Farmakis. He moved to the south and crossing the Balkans he sought to reach the Peloponnese. The daring venture was crowned with success. Ioannis Kolokotronis arrived in August in the Peloponnese with about a hundred armed men and took part in the siege of Tripolitsa, led by his brother.
Battle of Galatsi
The Battle of Galatsi was the first real battle in Moldova between the forces of the Friendly Society, Prince Alexander Ypsilanti and the troops of the Ottoman Empire, in the wider context of the Greek revolution of 1821. It took place on May 1, 1821 in Galatsi (Galatsi ) of Moldova-Wallachia. The leader of the Greeks, Cretan by origin, was Athanasios Karpenisiotis, and of the Turks Yusuf Pasha Perkoftsalis, Hatzi Kara Ahmet Efentis and Selim Mehmet Efentis.
Tsar Alexander I of Russia, under pressure from Metternich, gave permission to the Porte for the Turkish armies to enter Moldavia to deal with the revolutionaries. The leadership of the Turkish army was assumed by Valis of Silistria Selim Mehmet, who at the end of April 1821 ordered the Pasha of Braila Castle, Yusuf Perkoftsali, to recapture Galatsi.
Perkoftsalis started with 2,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and cannons. The leader of Galatsi's defense was Thanasis Karpenisiotis, who organized a force of 600 fighters. He repaired the Russian bastions of the Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812) and erected 19 cannons of those sent by the Greeks of Odessa and Bessarabia for Ypsilanti's army. Leaving 400 of his men inside the city, he moves the remaining 200 and distributes them to the three bastions.
On April 30 the Turkish vanguard crossed the Danube tributary, the Seretis, and 18 Turkish barges with cannons descended the Danube to strike the Greeks from the river. Karpenisiotis held the central drum. The others were held by the Magleroi brothers from Cephalonia, George Papas from Adrianople, Damianakos from Sfakia and the priest Petros Monik, who left Ismail "and received the cross and weapons, and came to join this cause of faith and homeland's holy struggle".
At Haramata on May 1, the Turks began the attack by putting the infantry in the middle and supporting it on both sides with the cavalry. The Greeks repulsed all the attacks but after 4 hours of fighting the defenders of the right and left tambourias buckled and retreated, except for Kotiras and his 32 lads, who fought without losing even "a volume without enemy blood" After the ammunition ran
out with their swords they opened a way between the Turks and entered Galatsi which, however, had already been occupied by the Turks. They all fight and die. In the central drum, Karpenisiotis continued to fight with 45 other fighters, repelling with their cannons and rifles thousands of Turks who left 700 dead there. When darkness fell the battle stopped.
For the few surviving fighters there was no longer any hope of salvation. At dawn they threw out their cloaks into which the Turks emptied their rifles, and before the Turks could reload they broke through the cordon. 20 fighters, including Karpenisiotis, managed to escape alive. As Xodilos writes "This battle of May 1st in Galazios, although it seems harmful for the Greeks, was for them quite glorious and a harbinger of the victory of the Greeks against the Turks".
Battle of Dragatsani
The Battle of Dragatsani was a military conflict between the forces of the Friendly Society and troops of the Ottoman Empire, in the wider context of the Greek revolution of 1821. It took place on June 6, 1821 in Dragatsani, Wallachia.
On April 30, 1821, with the consent of Russia, the entry of Ottoman troops into Moldavia took place. Under the commander-in-chief of Silistria Selim Mehmet, the Ottomans crossed the border from the region of Braila and the first major conflict took place on May 1, 1821 in Galatsi - in which the Greek flag had been raised on February 21, 1821 by the Kingdom of Karavia - which the Turks recaptured with heavy casualties among the civilian population.
Throughout May 1821, other clashes between the Turkish army and the Greeks took place, without Ypsilanti's forces having any success. The Greeks gathered in Rimniko, which was 8 hours away from Dragatsani, while the Turks, whose strength amounted to 2,600 men, occupied the monasteries of Sherbanesti, Stancesti, Strazesti and Mamul, closing the entrance to the Carpathian valley. At the same time, 800 Turks moved to Dragatsani.
Also, the Bulgarians lacked the national cohesion, effective organization and military training of the Serbs and Greeks. Several of them preferred to identify themselves as Greeks or Serbs rather than as Bulgarians.
In general, the Hegemonies of Moldavia were not geopolitically favorable for the success of the rebellion, sandwiched between the reinforced Turkish forces in Bulgaria, the Habsburg (Austrian) Empire which was opposing the pro-Russian movements of the Heim Peninsula (by maligning it), and Russia for which we saw that he could not support them. The revolution in the Hegemonies could prevail only with tsarist help or with a simultaneous new Serbian revolution, possibly also with an uprising of Western Bulgarians.
The latter were the Slavs of Skopje, modern-day FYROM, who called themselves "Bugari" (a corruption of "Bulgarians") and were friendly to the Serbs because of their common Slavic origin and their dislike for the Albanians of Kosovo and Albania. If the Serbs and the western Bulgarians revolted, or even only the Serbs, the territorial contact of the Greek militants of Moldowallachia with the revolted Macedonia and southern Greece would be achieved. However, bad times did not allow Macedonia to revolt either, because the Serbian and Bulgarian hinterland to its north remained under Turkish control.
Under these conditions, the rebellion was limited to the Greeks of the Transdanubian Hegemonies and to southern Greece, that is to say, to two regions very distant from each other, in the northeast and the south of the Aemos peninsula respectively. The expectations of the Philicians for a mass revolution of the Balkan Christians were denied and the Greeks were left with the only ally of the already outnumbered Albanians of Ali Pasha.
Fatefully the movement of Ypsilanti in the unsuitable geopolitically-geostrategically Moldavia was suppressed, but during it the Peloponnese, Central Greece and the maritime islands revolted. The revolution in Moldavia created a serious distraction in favor of the struggle in Greece, because because of it numerous Ottoman forces were moved and "fixed" in Thrace, Constantinople, Aeolian Islands, Ionia, the coasts of the Hellespont and the Black Sea and in the fortresses of the Danube, because of the fear of it revolution of the Greeks of these regions and a possible invasion of the Russians.
The Sultan did not trust the Russians, despite their assurances. Thus the revolution in Greece was founded and managed to survive. There the rebellion was "embraced" by the common people and geostrategically assisted: its base was Moria, which was protected from the sea side by the Trinesian (Greek) fleet, while the impenetrable volume and the experienced kleptarmatoli of Roumeli protected it from the North.
In 1821, the Vlachs, Vlachs or Volochians), the Moldavians and the Romance-speakers of Transylvania, i.e. overall the ancestors of the Romanians, had not sufficiently developed the consciousness of their common origin (probably from Latin-speaking Illyrian refugees and not from the ancient Dacians as claimed the modern Romanians). The relationship between the Vlachs of Wallachia and the Vlachs of Pindos remains to this day the subject of study and controversy.
The arguments in favor of their common origin are strong, but equally strong are those arguing that they are not ethnologically related: the pre-Latin linguistic background of the Vlachs of Romania is Thracilerian, while that of the Vlachs of Pindus is Greek. Also, the two mentioned Vlach groups do not even have a relative anthropological uniformity: the Vlachs of Pindos mainly belong to the Mediterranean morphological type, while those of Wallachia belong to the Adriatic-Dinaric type.
The Vlachs of Pindos have always been characterized by their pastoral mountain life and their Neo-Latin-Romance dialect, which is extremely similar to the Vlach of Romania. In general, during the early 19th century, the Oresivian herders of the Greek area belonged to three linguistic groups: the Greek-speaking Sarakatsans, the Latin-speaking Vlachs and the Albanian-speaking Phrasariotes. The latter were named after their birthplace, Frasaris, near the springs of Apsos.
The Battles of Galatsiou Dragatsaniou and the End of the Revolution in Moldovan Wallachia
By the end of April, when Ottoman forces entered the dominions by crossing the Danube, only minor skirmishes had taken place between the rebels and the few Ottoman garrisons charged with police duties. The first large-scale conflict took place on April 30 in the city of Galatsi, which was defended by military units led by Athanasios Karpenisiotis.
Galatsi is located near the borders of Moldova and Wallachia with Bessarabia (Russia). There, after fierce battles, the Ottomans occupied the city, expelling the few saved rebels to Russian territory. As a consequence of the strong resistance put up by the men of Karpenisiotis, there were the massacres of locals and Epilians and the looting of the city. At the same time, quarrels, jealousies, disagreements and indiscipline made the situation more and more difficult in the rebel camp, while many began to desert.
In these circumstances, Alexander Ypsilantis decided to put himself at the head of a conflict, the outcome of which he hoped would change the situation favorably. So he gathered the remaining armed forces in the area of Dragatsani. One of them was the Holy Company, which was founded by enthusiastic but inexperienced young volunteers from Odessa and other Greek villages.
He himself, who did not have time to be at the front, managed to cross the Austrian border in mid-June, where, despite the initial agreement with the authorities, he was arrested and remained imprisoned until November 1827. A few months later, at the beginning of 1828, he died in Vienna. After the disaster at Dragatsani only two small bodies managed to remain organized. One, led by Georgakis Olympios and Ioannis Farmakis, moved further north, towards Moldavia, constantly fighting hard but desperate battles.
Their goal was to cross into Russian Bessarabia and from there move by ship to the Peloponnese. Finally, after a two-and-a-half-month march through mountainous regions and after several battles in which the body of the rebels was gradually decimated by its pursuers, they were trapped in the Sekou Monastery located in northern Moldavia near the border with Austria. There, after a siege of more than two weeks, during which G. Olympios and G. Farmakis were killed, he surrendered with his few companions and met a torturous death.
The second corps numbered approximately 250 armed men and was led by the brother of Theodoros Kolokotronis, Ioannis. He followed a path different from Olympios and Farmakis. He moved to the south and crossing the Balkans he sought to reach the Peloponnese. The daring venture was crowned with success. Ioannis Kolokotronis arrived in August in the Peloponnese with about a hundred armed men and took part in the siege of Tripolitsa, led by his brother.
Battle of Galatsi
The Battle of Galatsi was the first real battle in Moldova between the forces of the Friendly Society, Prince Alexander Ypsilanti and the troops of the Ottoman Empire, in the wider context of the Greek revolution of 1821. It took place on May 1, 1821 in Galatsi (Galatsi ) of Moldova-Wallachia. The leader of the Greeks, Cretan by origin, was Athanasios Karpenisiotis, and of the Turks Yusuf Pasha Perkoftsalis, Hatzi Kara Ahmet Efentis and Selim Mehmet Efentis.
Tsar Alexander I of Russia, under pressure from Metternich, gave permission to the Porte for the Turkish armies to enter Moldavia to deal with the revolutionaries. The leadership of the Turkish army was assumed by Valis of Silistria Selim Mehmet, who at the end of April 1821 ordered the Pasha of Braila Castle, Yusuf Perkoftsali, to recapture Galatsi.
Perkoftsalis started with 2,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and cannons. The leader of Galatsi's defense was Thanasis Karpenisiotis, who organized a force of 600 fighters. He repaired the Russian bastions of the Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812) and erected 19 cannons of those sent by the Greeks of Odessa and Bessarabia for Ypsilanti's army. Leaving 400 of his men inside the city, he moves the remaining 200 and distributes them to the three bastions.
At Haramata on May 1, the Turks began the attack by putting the infantry in the middle and supporting it on both sides with the cavalry. The Greeks repulsed all the attacks but after 4 hours of fighting the defenders of the right and left tambourias buckled and retreated, except for Kotiras and his 32 lads, who fought without losing even "a volume without enemy blood" After the ammunition ran
out with their swords they opened a way between the Turks and entered Galatsi which, however, had already been occupied by the Turks. They all fight and die. In the central drum, Karpenisiotis continued to fight with 45 other fighters, repelling with their cannons and rifles thousands of Turks who left 700 dead there. When darkness fell the battle stopped.
For the few surviving fighters there was no longer any hope of salvation. At dawn they threw out their cloaks into which the Turks emptied their rifles, and before the Turks could reload they broke through the cordon. 20 fighters, including Karpenisiotis, managed to escape alive. As Xodilos writes "This battle of May 1st in Galazios, although it seems harmful for the Greeks, was for them quite glorious and a harbinger of the victory of the Greeks against the Turks".
Battle of Dragatsani
The Battle of Dragatsani was a military conflict between the forces of the Friendly Society and troops of the Ottoman Empire, in the wider context of the Greek revolution of 1821. It took place on June 6, 1821 in Dragatsani, Wallachia.
On April 30, 1821, with the consent of Russia, the entry of Ottoman troops into Moldavia took place. Under the commander-in-chief of Silistria Selim Mehmet, the Ottomans crossed the border from the region of Braila and the first major conflict took place on May 1, 1821 in Galatsi - in which the Greek flag had been raised on February 21, 1821 by the Kingdom of Karavia - which the Turks recaptured with heavy casualties among the civilian population.
Throughout May 1821, other clashes between the Turkish army and the Greeks took place, without Ypsilanti's forces having any success. The Greeks gathered in Rimniko, which was 8 hours away from Dragatsani, while the Turks, whose strength amounted to 2,600 men, occupied the monasteries of Sherbanesti, Stancesti, Strazesti and Mamul, closing the entrance to the Carpathian valley. At the same time, 800 Turks moved to Dragatsani.
Finally, Alexandros Ypsilantis decided to face the Turks on the plain of Dragatsani with his entire army, consisting of 5,000 infantry, 2,500 cavalry and 4 cannons. The first Greek divisions started in the direction of Dragatsani on June 3, 1821, with bad weather conditions and reached the area on June 6. The positions occupied by the Greeks at the foot of the surrounding mountains provided advantages, and the leader of the Turkish forces of Dragatsani, Kara Feiz, to face the Greek divisions, began to build fortifications and at the same time set fire to part of the village.
But while Ypsilantis, which was at a distance of three hours from the site of the battle, was conspiring with Georgakis Olympios, the centurion Vasilios Karavias, on June 7, 1821 and despite orders to the contrary for any Greek movement before June 8, attacked with 800 horsemen against the monastery of Serbanesti, where Ottoman forces had fortified themselves. However, the attack failed and many of the horsemen abandoned the fight and fled to the neighboring forest.
Nikolaos Ypsilantis, head of the Holy Company, hastened to help with 375 officers and men-at-arms, but the withdrawal of Caravia's division forced the Hierolohites to fight alone without cavalry support. Thus the Holy Company was attacked by the Turkish cavalry, refusing the call to surrender, and as a result suffered heavy losses. The standard bearer of the company, 25 officers and 180 soldiers fell dead, while 37 Hierolochites were captured.
At the critical moment of the battle, Georgakis Olympios arrived and rescued the rest, 136 in total, including the leader Nikolaos Ypsilantis and the adjutant of the Holy Company Athanasios Tsakalov, co-founder of the Society. After the disaster at Dragatsani, the revolution in Moldavia was now decided. The volunteers deserted and the army of Ypsilanti was disbanded. Ypsilantis fled to Rimnico, where on June 8, 1821 he drafted his last order, with which he condemned the betrayal of his civil and military staff and praised the self-sacrifice of the Holy Company:
"And to the shadows of the true Greeks and the Holy Society, those who were betrayed and became victims for the happiness of the homeland, accept for me the thanks of your expatriates! A little time and a column will be erected to perpetuate your names. In fiery letters are engraved in the filters of my heart, the names of those who showed me faith and sincerity until the end. The memory of them will always be the only refreshing drink of my soul''.
The battle was also the essential end of the Friendly Society. Tsakalov went down to Roumeli in order to help the revolution that had just broken out. Ypsilantis was captured and imprisoned in Austria where he escaped with the remaining troops, while Olympios was blown up with his men and enemy forces in the monastery of Sekou in Moldavia, where he had been blockaded by the Ottoman troops.
Sacred Society
The Holy Company was a military body founded by Alexander Ypsilantis in Foxani, a city on the borders of Moldavia and Wallachia, in mid-March 1821 and was formed by volunteer students from the Greek parishes of Moldovlachia and Odessa, mainly. It was the first organized military unit of the Greek Revolution of 1821 and of the Greek army in general. Ypsilantis believed that these young men could be the soul of his army. That's why he named them after the classical name of the Sacred League of Thebes.
In Foksani, after the completion of the training of the Hierolohites, a magnificent swearing-in ceremony was organized, according to tsarist etiquette. Immediately after the swearing-in, Alexandros Ypsilantis spoke with particular enthusiasm and handed over the Flag of the Holy Society to the leader of the Society, Georgios Kandakouzinos. Then the Hierolokhites marched with a military step singing a war song written 20 years ago by Adamantios Korais for Bonaparte's "Brigade of the Acrobolists of the East" who was fighting in Egypt and in which brigade Greeks participated.
To the first 120 Hierolochites, others were added later, reaching 400, while the organization of this body was completed in Tirgovici. The men of the Holy Company were infantry and cavalry equipped with carbines and bayonets. They wore uniforms, as the historian Philemon writes in his history, which was a mixture of Greek and European uniforms, made of black cloth, hence called black-bearers or black-bearers, also wearing a tricolor plume (as a coat of arms) in the black portion, under which there was the phrase Freedom or Death and the skull and crossbones sign as a symbol of victory over death.
The flag of the Holy Society was tricolor, red symbolizing patriotism, white brotherhood and black sacrifice. On one side of the flag was written EN TUTO NIKA and there was the image of Saints Constantine and Helen. On the other side was the image of the Phoenix reborn from the flames and it read FROM MY ASHES I AM REBORN.
Georgios Kandakouzinos, a former senior officer of the Tsarist army - who was soon sidelined by Ypsilantis - and Athanasios Tsakalov, co-founder of the Friendship Society, was appointed commander of the Holy Company. Centurions of the Holy Society were Spyridon Drakoulis, a dramatic actor, from Ithaca, Dimitrios Tsoutsos from Constantinople, brother of the poet Alexandros Soutsos, Loukas Valsamakis from Kefalonia, Andronikos from Peloponnese, Alexandros Rizos from Phanariot, son of the Prime Minister of Moldavia Iakovos Rizo Nerulos, Rizos from Ioannina and Ioannis Krokias from Chios.
However, in addition to the Infantry division, a Cavalry was created with Hussar and Cossack uniforms. And for the organization of the Cavalry, significant amounts of money were also allocated by the ruler of Moldavia, Michael Sootsos.
Orkos I.L.
In Phoxani, students who had no military experience began to train and train in the use of weapons and lances. They were sworn in at the city's church:
"As an Orthodox Christian and a son of the Catholic Church, I swear in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity to remain faithful to my Country and my Religion. I swear to unite with all my Christian brothers for the freedom of our Fatherland. I swear to shed this last drop of my blood in favor of my religion and my country. To die after my brothers in favor of the Freedom of my Country and my Religion.
To kill this very brother of mine, if I find him a traitor to our Fatherland. To submit to the leader in favor of my Country, Not to look at my trusts, if I do not expel the enemy of my Country and Religion. To take up arms on every occasion, as soon as I hear that my Chief is campaigning against the tyrants, and to induce all my friends and acquaintances to follow me. To always look upon my enemies with hatred and contempt. Not to lay down my arms before I see my Homeland freed and her enemies exterminated.
To shed my blood, to defeat the enemies of my religion or to die as a martyr for Jesus Christ. Finally, I swear in the awesome Mystery of the Divine Assumption that I will miss Holy Communion in my last hour, if I do not immediately fulfill the promises I made before the image of our Lord Jesus Christ"
Thurios I.L.
The thuria adopted and sung by the Hierolochites was written 20 years ago by Adamantios Korais.
My friends, fellow countrymen,
slaves, how long shall I wait?
of the savage Muslims
of the Homeland of the tyrants.
O friends, now
the time of revenge has arrived.
The common patrician cries
out with our tears!
Are we becoming Greek brave?
dramat' men and young people
and you said loudly
You all said in agreement
And we embraced each other
with great enthusiasm
how long will tyranny last?
Long live freedom!
The first major battle (apart from various small skirmishes) that Ypsilantis chooses to fight is in the town of Dragatsani, where a strong garrison of Turkish cavalry is stationed. After a three-day difficult march under very bad weather conditions, the Sacred Group will arrive opposite Dragatsani where they will camp.
The Sacrifice of the Student Priests in 1821
At its inception, the Greek Revolution of 1821 resurrected a new Spartan model of sacrifice. The Greek students of the universities of Europe, already prepared by great Greek and philhellenic university teachers, were waiting for the revolutionary slogan.
The students on Ypsilanti's side
From the first days when Ypsilantis settled in the Danubian hegemonies, raising the flag of the Greek revolution, the message reached the universities and schools of Europe. In Bucharest, the student groups of the professor and friend Georgios Gennadios, had long been waiting for the time of the uprising.
When a messenger rushed into the room where he was teaching, carrying the message of Ypsilanti's invasion of Moldo-Wallachia, Gennadius in his excitement threw the books on the stove and began to spread the flame of revolution to his students: "The time has come! Patrice, after blessing you by giving birth to you Greeks, now provides you with another greater blessing, to fight and die, as Greeks, for her. After giving you life, he now offers you immortality."
Student volunteers will emerge from dozens of Eastern and Western European universities. In addition to Bucharest, dozens of volunteers will come from the Engineering School of Iasi. From Odessa, Kiev, Moscow, Petersburg, but also from Pisa, Trieste, the schools of France, Germany and Austria-Hungary.
With the conference of the Holy Alliance completed two months before (January 1821), which found the great powers agreeing to suppress any revolutionary activity that would threaten the established status, the police of European countries sounded the alarm about the mobility of Greek students.
We read from the archives of the Vienna Police in those days: "Yesterday morning, 13 students from Leipzig and Göttingen arrived in Prague, as extracted from the attached reports of the city gate guard. The arrival of this significant number of students, all of whom without exception come from Greece, forced the Military Administration of the city to immediately investigate the purpose of their trip".
While Sedlnitzky writes from Vienna to the general commander of Venice: "From your Excellency's letter, I have seen the reassuring news that the police authorities have been alerted to the young Greeks, who leave the University of Padua, to return via from Trieste to their homeland, to take part in the Revolution of the Greeks against the Gate".
The Greek students by any means, and trying to avoid the many entanglements with the authorities, try to reach the rebel areas. In the letter of the student Nik. Gika to a French fellow student we read: "I was hoping to reach Odessa through the Danube and I am in Trieste, from where I am embarking the day after tomorrow with 20 of my patriots. I studied with many of them in Germany. All this happened because my passport was not recognized by the Austrian ambassador, and instead of turning back, I gave up everything and came from Passau to here on foot, with a cane in my hand and my fist in my pocket! What a miracle!
I must confess to you my weakness, I myself admire myself. I have been here since the 27th of last month. All the time we spent it to supply ourselves with uniforms and with armament. Our uniform is black. On our hat we have the silver plaque with the inscription: "Freedom or Death". The excitement is universal and has reached its peak."
Hierolochites: the pride of Ypsilanti
In the army of Ypsilanti, approximately 700 students will eventually arrive (against 400 others) who will form the Holy Company, the most enthusiastic and purest part of the army. Of an army that included from pure Captains with their lads, to groups of skilled mercenaries. The students will be provided by the Friendly Society with the insignia of the Company and their armament: black uniform, black cap or helmet, the words "Liberty or Death" on the chest or helmet and the emblem of the company: a skull with two crossbones . Armament a lance carbine and a bayonet.
“Only the Hierolochites, the Russian agent Liprandi will confess, have high morals and long to face the enemy. Their steps sound rhythmically, as they pass in formation through the streets of the town of Rimnikos singing Patriotic songs and above all his favorite thourio.
Ypsilantis will often meet them at his headquarters and talk with them, while he will personally attend their exercises many times. The young Hierolochites, inexperienced in warfare but enthusiastic, will fall flat on their faces in the gymnasiums. The Chief presents them everywhere as the rebel elite.
"Everywhere the Hierolochites passed, they were admired for their appearance and behavior, among the villagers and wherever else they happened to be associated with citizens. They impressed the world with their songs, theatrical performances, the excitement and the thrill they gave to Greeks and foreigners, to the young Greek girls."
Betrayal and sacrifice
As the brilliant model of the revolutionary army, however, they will enter the eyes of the agents and the cunning, who were even among high-ranking officers, who were eating each other and who, out of vanity or craftiness, ambushed Ypsilantis. Backhanded slanders will not take hold, but treachery will ensnare them. The first major battle (apart from various small skirmishes) that Ypsilantis chooses to fight is in the town of Dragatsani, where a strong garrison of Turkish cavalry is stationed.
After a three-day difficult march under very bad weather conditions, they will arrive opposite Dragatsani where they will camp. The next day the skirmishes will begin, before the whole army arrives. In front and on a wide plain is the Sacred Fort, while on its flanks Caravias is appointed to protect it with his cavalry. In the first clashes, the cavalry of Karavia is trapped and the Holy Company, with fighting spirit and discipline, manages to free them and make the Turks flee towards the houses of Dragatsani.
Units of the Turkish cavalry cover the retreat by fighting one side of the Holy Company, while the rest, counting on the regrouping and counterattack of the Karavia cavalry, prepare to leave Dragatsani.
At that critical moment Caravias with his cavalry turns to the opposite side and plunges into the woods, leaving the Holy Company on the plain, and heading towards the Austrian border. The Hierolochi foot soldiers, without cavalry to support them and with the rest of the army several hours away, are now an easy target for the numerous Turkish cavalry who immediately take advantage of the gift of Karabia.
About 1,000 Turkish horsemen charge from Dragatsani against the Hierolohites who are resisting strongly in the middle of the plain, united, with their flags high as they are decimated by the Cavalry that has surrounded them. The battle will last for some time, with many losses on the part of the Turks, but also with the destruction of the Holy Company. The last 170 Hierolochites will be saved by the Cavalry of Giorgakis Olympios who will arrive an hour later, chasing the Turks.
The Hierolochi students were an example of heroes whose reference always moved and revolted the enslaved Greeks. They will be the trigger for the uprising of thousands more Greek students who came as volunteers to the Peloponnese and the other rebel regions. These students did not fight in some "class revolution" as various internationalist professors want to portray the revolution of 1821.
They were children of wealthy families, with the whole future ahead of them, with open career paths, who gave up everything and came back to sacrifice for the freedom of the Motherland. Dimitrios Soutsos, brother of the poet Alexandros Soutsos, was the first centurion in the hierarchy of the Holy Company.
He fell heroically at Dragatsani. We read in a letter he had sent a few days before: “I have no more shoes. My legs were seized. I sleep in deadly swamps. I live on fruit, I rarely find a dry piece of bread. But these deprivations are sweet to me. I like this life. Since I was a child I dreamed of nothing but our independence day. I find myself for the first time at the head of free men, who do not burden me with vain titles, who give me the sweet name of brother. Hello. Will we see each other? Where; God knows it."
While elsewhere he prophetically points out: "From all parts of the old Greek empire, three hundred yesterday's high school students and today's freedom fighters gathered at its last moments. Is our blood destined to draw the HIV-positive line of the future of the Greek state? But if we are destined to die on this earth, you wrote on our tombstone: "There lie three hundred of the new Sparta without caring to tell us even their names".
MAPS
AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL
1821. THE MARCH TO THE GREAT MOMENT
THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF THE STRUGGLE (I) 1821-1827
PHOTOGRAPHIC MATERIAL
But while Ypsilantis, which was at a distance of three hours from the site of the battle, was conspiring with Georgakis Olympios, the centurion Vasilios Karavias, on June 7, 1821 and despite orders to the contrary for any Greek movement before June 8, attacked with 800 horsemen against the monastery of Serbanesti, where Ottoman forces had fortified themselves. However, the attack failed and many of the horsemen abandoned the fight and fled to the neighboring forest.
Nikolaos Ypsilantis, head of the Holy Company, hastened to help with 375 officers and men-at-arms, but the withdrawal of Caravia's division forced the Hierolohites to fight alone without cavalry support. Thus the Holy Company was attacked by the Turkish cavalry, refusing the call to surrender, and as a result suffered heavy losses. The standard bearer of the company, 25 officers and 180 soldiers fell dead, while 37 Hierolochites were captured.
At the critical moment of the battle, Georgakis Olympios arrived and rescued the rest, 136 in total, including the leader Nikolaos Ypsilantis and the adjutant of the Holy Company Athanasios Tsakalov, co-founder of the Society. After the disaster at Dragatsani, the revolution in Moldavia was now decided. The volunteers deserted and the army of Ypsilanti was disbanded. Ypsilantis fled to Rimnico, where on June 8, 1821 he drafted his last order, with which he condemned the betrayal of his civil and military staff and praised the self-sacrifice of the Holy Company:
"And to the shadows of the true Greeks and the Holy Society, those who were betrayed and became victims for the happiness of the homeland, accept for me the thanks of your expatriates! A little time and a column will be erected to perpetuate your names. In fiery letters are engraved in the filters of my heart, the names of those who showed me faith and sincerity until the end. The memory of them will always be the only refreshing drink of my soul''.
The battle was also the essential end of the Friendly Society. Tsakalov went down to Roumeli in order to help the revolution that had just broken out. Ypsilantis was captured and imprisoned in Austria where he escaped with the remaining troops, while Olympios was blown up with his men and enemy forces in the monastery of Sekou in Moldavia, where he had been blockaded by the Ottoman troops.
Sacred Society
The Holy Company was a military body founded by Alexander Ypsilantis in Foxani, a city on the borders of Moldavia and Wallachia, in mid-March 1821 and was formed by volunteer students from the Greek parishes of Moldovlachia and Odessa, mainly. It was the first organized military unit of the Greek Revolution of 1821 and of the Greek army in general. Ypsilantis believed that these young men could be the soul of his army. That's why he named them after the classical name of the Sacred League of Thebes.
To the first 120 Hierolochites, others were added later, reaching 400, while the organization of this body was completed in Tirgovici. The men of the Holy Company were infantry and cavalry equipped with carbines and bayonets. They wore uniforms, as the historian Philemon writes in his history, which was a mixture of Greek and European uniforms, made of black cloth, hence called black-bearers or black-bearers, also wearing a tricolor plume (as a coat of arms) in the black portion, under which there was the phrase Freedom or Death and the skull and crossbones sign as a symbol of victory over death.
The flag of the Holy Society was tricolor, red symbolizing patriotism, white brotherhood and black sacrifice. On one side of the flag was written EN TUTO NIKA and there was the image of Saints Constantine and Helen. On the other side was the image of the Phoenix reborn from the flames and it read FROM MY ASHES I AM REBORN.
Georgios Kandakouzinos, a former senior officer of the Tsarist army - who was soon sidelined by Ypsilantis - and Athanasios Tsakalov, co-founder of the Friendship Society, was appointed commander of the Holy Company. Centurions of the Holy Society were Spyridon Drakoulis, a dramatic actor, from Ithaca, Dimitrios Tsoutsos from Constantinople, brother of the poet Alexandros Soutsos, Loukas Valsamakis from Kefalonia, Andronikos from Peloponnese, Alexandros Rizos from Phanariot, son of the Prime Minister of Moldavia Iakovos Rizo Nerulos, Rizos from Ioannina and Ioannis Krokias from Chios.
However, in addition to the Infantry division, a Cavalry was created with Hussar and Cossack uniforms. And for the organization of the Cavalry, significant amounts of money were also allocated by the ruler of Moldavia, Michael Sootsos.
Orkos I.L.
In Phoxani, students who had no military experience began to train and train in the use of weapons and lances. They were sworn in at the city's church:
"As an Orthodox Christian and a son of the Catholic Church, I swear in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity to remain faithful to my Country and my Religion. I swear to unite with all my Christian brothers for the freedom of our Fatherland. I swear to shed this last drop of my blood in favor of my religion and my country. To die after my brothers in favor of the Freedom of my Country and my Religion.
To kill this very brother of mine, if I find him a traitor to our Fatherland. To submit to the leader in favor of my Country, Not to look at my trusts, if I do not expel the enemy of my Country and Religion. To take up arms on every occasion, as soon as I hear that my Chief is campaigning against the tyrants, and to induce all my friends and acquaintances to follow me. To always look upon my enemies with hatred and contempt. Not to lay down my arms before I see my Homeland freed and her enemies exterminated.
To shed my blood, to defeat the enemies of my religion or to die as a martyr for Jesus Christ. Finally, I swear in the awesome Mystery of the Divine Assumption that I will miss Holy Communion in my last hour, if I do not immediately fulfill the promises I made before the image of our Lord Jesus Christ"
The thuria adopted and sung by the Hierolochites was written 20 years ago by Adamantios Korais.
My friends, fellow countrymen,
slaves, how long shall I wait?
of the savage Muslims
of the Homeland of the tyrants.
O friends, now
the time of revenge has arrived.
The common patrician cries
out with our tears!
Are we becoming Greek brave?
dramat' men and young people
and you said loudly
You all said in agreement
And we embraced each other
with great enthusiasm
how long will tyranny last?
Long live freedom!
The first major battle (apart from various small skirmishes) that Ypsilantis chooses to fight is in the town of Dragatsani, where a strong garrison of Turkish cavalry is stationed. After a three-day difficult march under very bad weather conditions, the Sacred Group will arrive opposite Dragatsani where they will camp.
The Sacrifice of the Student Priests in 1821
At its inception, the Greek Revolution of 1821 resurrected a new Spartan model of sacrifice. The Greek students of the universities of Europe, already prepared by great Greek and philhellenic university teachers, were waiting for the revolutionary slogan.
The students on Ypsilanti's side
From the first days when Ypsilantis settled in the Danubian hegemonies, raising the flag of the Greek revolution, the message reached the universities and schools of Europe. In Bucharest, the student groups of the professor and friend Georgios Gennadios, had long been waiting for the time of the uprising.
When a messenger rushed into the room where he was teaching, carrying the message of Ypsilanti's invasion of Moldo-Wallachia, Gennadius in his excitement threw the books on the stove and began to spread the flame of revolution to his students: "The time has come! Patrice, after blessing you by giving birth to you Greeks, now provides you with another greater blessing, to fight and die, as Greeks, for her. After giving you life, he now offers you immortality."
Student volunteers will emerge from dozens of Eastern and Western European universities. In addition to Bucharest, dozens of volunteers will come from the Engineering School of Iasi. From Odessa, Kiev, Moscow, Petersburg, but also from Pisa, Trieste, the schools of France, Germany and Austria-Hungary.
The police are on the trail of the students
With the conference of the Holy Alliance completed two months before (January 1821), which found the great powers agreeing to suppress any revolutionary activity that would threaten the established status, the police of European countries sounded the alarm about the mobility of Greek students.
We read from the archives of the Vienna Police in those days: "Yesterday morning, 13 students from Leipzig and Göttingen arrived in Prague, as extracted from the attached reports of the city gate guard. The arrival of this significant number of students, all of whom without exception come from Greece, forced the Military Administration of the city to immediately investigate the purpose of their trip".
While Sedlnitzky writes from Vienna to the general commander of Venice: "From your Excellency's letter, I have seen the reassuring news that the police authorities have been alerted to the young Greeks, who leave the University of Padua, to return via from Trieste to their homeland, to take part in the Revolution of the Greeks against the Gate".
The Greek students by any means, and trying to avoid the many entanglements with the authorities, try to reach the rebel areas. In the letter of the student Nik. Gika to a French fellow student we read: "I was hoping to reach Odessa through the Danube and I am in Trieste, from where I am embarking the day after tomorrow with 20 of my patriots. I studied with many of them in Germany. All this happened because my passport was not recognized by the Austrian ambassador, and instead of turning back, I gave up everything and came from Passau to here on foot, with a cane in my hand and my fist in my pocket! What a miracle!
I must confess to you my weakness, I myself admire myself. I have been here since the 27th of last month. All the time we spent it to supply ourselves with uniforms and with armament. Our uniform is black. On our hat we have the silver plaque with the inscription: "Freedom or Death". The excitement is universal and has reached its peak."
Hierolochites: the pride of Ypsilanti
In the army of Ypsilanti, approximately 700 students will eventually arrive (against 400 others) who will form the Holy Company, the most enthusiastic and purest part of the army. Of an army that included from pure Captains with their lads, to groups of skilled mercenaries. The students will be provided by the Friendly Society with the insignia of the Company and their armament: black uniform, black cap or helmet, the words "Liberty or Death" on the chest or helmet and the emblem of the company: a skull with two crossbones . Armament a lance carbine and a bayonet.
“Only the Hierolochites, the Russian agent Liprandi will confess, have high morals and long to face the enemy. Their steps sound rhythmically, as they pass in formation through the streets of the town of Rimnikos singing Patriotic songs and above all his favorite thourio.
"Everywhere the Hierolochites passed, they were admired for their appearance and behavior, among the villagers and wherever else they happened to be associated with citizens. They impressed the world with their songs, theatrical performances, the excitement and the thrill they gave to Greeks and foreigners, to the young Greek girls."
Betrayal and sacrifice
As the brilliant model of the revolutionary army, however, they will enter the eyes of the agents and the cunning, who were even among high-ranking officers, who were eating each other and who, out of vanity or craftiness, ambushed Ypsilantis. Backhanded slanders will not take hold, but treachery will ensnare them. The first major battle (apart from various small skirmishes) that Ypsilantis chooses to fight is in the town of Dragatsani, where a strong garrison of Turkish cavalry is stationed.
After a three-day difficult march under very bad weather conditions, they will arrive opposite Dragatsani where they will camp. The next day the skirmishes will begin, before the whole army arrives. In front and on a wide plain is the Sacred Fort, while on its flanks Caravias is appointed to protect it with his cavalry. In the first clashes, the cavalry of Karavia is trapped and the Holy Company, with fighting spirit and discipline, manages to free them and make the Turks flee towards the houses of Dragatsani.
Units of the Turkish cavalry cover the retreat by fighting one side of the Holy Company, while the rest, counting on the regrouping and counterattack of the Karavia cavalry, prepare to leave Dragatsani.
At that critical moment Caravias with his cavalry turns to the opposite side and plunges into the woods, leaving the Holy Company on the plain, and heading towards the Austrian border. The Hierolochi foot soldiers, without cavalry to support them and with the rest of the army several hours away, are now an easy target for the numerous Turkish cavalry who immediately take advantage of the gift of Karabia.
About 1,000 Turkish horsemen charge from Dragatsani against the Hierolohites who are resisting strongly in the middle of the plain, united, with their flags high as they are decimated by the Cavalry that has surrounded them. The battle will last for some time, with many losses on the part of the Turks, but also with the destruction of the Holy Company. The last 170 Hierolochites will be saved by the Cavalry of Giorgakis Olympios who will arrive an hour later, chasing the Turks.
Hero template
The Hierolochi students were an example of heroes whose reference always moved and revolted the enslaved Greeks. They will be the trigger for the uprising of thousands more Greek students who came as volunteers to the Peloponnese and the other rebel regions. These students did not fight in some "class revolution" as various internationalist professors want to portray the revolution of 1821.
They were children of wealthy families, with the whole future ahead of them, with open career paths, who gave up everything and came back to sacrifice for the freedom of the Motherland. Dimitrios Soutsos, brother of the poet Alexandros Soutsos, was the first centurion in the hierarchy of the Holy Company.
He fell heroically at Dragatsani. We read in a letter he had sent a few days before: “I have no more shoes. My legs were seized. I sleep in deadly swamps. I live on fruit, I rarely find a dry piece of bread. But these deprivations are sweet to me. I like this life. Since I was a child I dreamed of nothing but our independence day. I find myself for the first time at the head of free men, who do not burden me with vain titles, who give me the sweet name of brother. Hello. Will we see each other? Where; God knows it."
While elsewhere he prophetically points out: "From all parts of the old Greek empire, three hundred yesterday's high school students and today's freedom fighters gathered at its last moments. Is our blood destined to draw the HIV-positive line of the future of the Greek state? But if we are destined to die on this earth, you wrote on our tombstone: "There lie three hundred of the new Sparta without caring to tell us even their names".
MAPS
AUDIOVISUAL MATERIAL
1821. THE MARCH TO THE GREAT MOMENT
THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF THE STRUGGLE (I) 1821-1827
PHOTOGRAPHIC MATERIAL
Reblog/Linls
http://greekworldhistory.blogspot.com
http://www.fhw.gr/chronos
http://www.e-yliko.gr
http://www.arnos.gr
http://el.wikipedia.org/ wiki
http://www.enet.gr
http://www.themata4all.com
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http://www.metopo.gr
http://arcadia .ceid.upatras.gr
http://www.alexiptoto.com
http://www.argonafplia.gr
http://www.ce.teiep.gr
http://www.tovima.gr
http://www. tovima.gr
http://el.wikipedia.org
http://kleftouria.blogspot.gr
http://averoph.wordpress.com
http://olympia.gr
http://fourtounis.gr
http://rea.teimes.gr
http://users.uoa.gr
http://anthoulaki.blogspot.gr
http://www.antibaro.gr
http://www.istorikathemata.com
http://olympia.gr
http://www.patriotaki.net
http://www.tovima.gr/relatedarticles
http://www.aya.com.gr/omilies1.htm
http://www.istorikathemata.com
https://averoph.wordpress.com
ΜΕΡΟΣ Α' : http://greekworldhistory.blogspot.gr/2014/03/1821.html
ΜΕΡΟΣ Β' : http://greekworldhistory.blogspot.gr/2014/03/2-1821.html
ΜΕΡΟΣ Γ' : http://greekworldhistory.blogspot.gr/2014/03/1821_23.html
http://www.fhw.gr/chronos
http://www.e-yliko.gr
http://www.arnos.gr
http://el.wikipedia.org/ wiki
http://www.enet.gr
http://www.themata4all.com
http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki
http://users.uoa.gr/~nectar/history
http://www. historythemes.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
http://www.metopo.gr
http://arcadia .ceid.upatras.gr
http://www.alexiptoto.com
http://www.argonafplia.gr
http://www.ce.teiep.gr
http://www.tovima.gr
http://www. tovima.gr
http://el.wikipedia.org
http://kleftouria.blogspot.gr
http://averoph.wordpress.com
http://olympia.gr
http://fourtounis.gr
http://rea.teimes.gr
http://users.uoa.gr
http://anthoulaki.blogspot.gr
http://www.antibaro.gr
http://www.istorikathemata.com
http://olympia.gr
http://www.patriotaki.net
http://www.tovima.gr/relatedarticles
http://www.aya.com.gr/omilies1.htm
http://www.istorikathemata.com
https://averoph.wordpress.com
ΜΕΡΟΣ Α' : http://greekworldhistory.blogspot.gr/2014/03/1821.html
ΜΕΡΟΣ Β' : http://greekworldhistory.blogspot.gr/2014/03/2-1821.html
ΜΕΡΟΣ Γ' : http://greekworldhistory.blogspot.gr/2014/03/1821_23.html
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