Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule From the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence

by David Brewer

  What eventually tipped Canning into action on Greece was information he received in October 1825 about Ibrahim’s plans for the Peloponnese. It reached him in an unorthodox way, at a private meeting with Princess de Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador to London, who had recently returned from St Petersburg. The information had been entrusted to her because it was too sensitive to be sent through normal government channels. Princess de Lieven brought Russia’s agreement to cooperate with Britain over Greece, in spite of their recent differences, and a startling revelation that in the Peloponnese Ibrahim intended, with the approval of the Sultan’s court, ‘to remove the whole Greek population, carrying them off into slavery in Egypt or elsewhere, and to re-people the country with Egyptians and others of the Mohammedan religion.’14 This would obviously lead to intervention by Russia on behalf of her fellow Orthodox, and Canning, besides being personally horrified by what he called the barbarisation project, was determined that Russia should not intervene alone. This could mean Russia becoming the new ruler of Greece, becoming dominant in the eastern Mediterranean, and even taking over a crumbling Ottoman Empire.

  Canning now set about organising a joint intervention in Greece, with Russia and if possible with other members of the Quintuple Alliance. Austria refused to become involved, distant Prussia was little concerned with Greece, but after a year of patient diplomacy Canning won French agreement to participate with Britain and Russia. The three powers were acting completely independently of the Quintuple Alliance, whose influence as such was now at an end.

  This agreement was formalised in the Treaty of London of 6 July 1827, by which time Canning had become prime minister. The treaty stated that an armistice would be proposed to both sides, and if either or both rejected it the three powers would intervene. The Greeks accepted it – they had nothing to lose – and the Turks predictably did not.

  Intervention was in the hands of the admirals of the three signatory powers: Codrington for Britain, who was accepted as overall commander of the joint fleet, de Rigny for France and Heiden for Russia. The instructions to the admirals were hopelessly contradictory: they were to use force if necessary but without hostilities. Codrington eventually got clear advice from Britain’s minister at Constantinople, Stratford Canning, who in a letter of 1 September to Codrington told him that his orders were ‘ultimately to be enforced, if necessary, and when all other means are exhausted, by cannon shot’.15

  On 20 October 1827 the British, French and Russian ships under Codrington moved into the Bay of Navarino to confront a combined Ottoman fleet of Egyptian, Turkish and Tunisian vessels. The battle began almost accidentally: in the early afternoon the captain of a British frigate saw an enemy fireship being prepared and sent a lieutenant in a pinnace to persuade the fireship crew to desist, but shots from the fireship killed several of the pinnace crew and the engagement quickly became general. It had been started by what may have been an accident, but one that was almost bound to happen, given the tense nature of the confrontation.

  Four hours later the battle ended in complete victory for Codrington’s fleet, which had not lost a single ship and whose casualties were relatively light. But the Ottoman fleet had lost 60 of its 89 fighting ships, some 6,000 men killed and 4,000 wounded. Greek independence in some form was assured.

  But the last and upward curve of Greek fortunes was still an enormously difficult struggle. Kapodhístrias landed at Navplion in January 1828 as Greece’s first president. He immediately persuaded the Senate to suspend the Constitution for a period and grant him full powers, assisted only by a 27-member council appointed by himself. Kapodhístrias was a man of contradictions. Outwardly he was the smooth and sophisticated international diplomat, but the private man was very different: an ascetic bachelor, constantly in poor health, far from rich, and solitary despite his many acquaintances in the worlds of politics, literature and the arts. Under the suave exterior was a driven man, involving himself personally with every detail of his massive task. Greece was in a terrible state, and the list of his concerns is amazing: it included the planting of potatoes, the construction of ploughs, the enclosure of pigs, the naming of streets, the building of fortifications and schools and clock-towers, the ordering of printing presses, the revision of the calendar and the prayer book and the translation of textbooks. He also conducted the complicated negotiations with Britain, France and Russia over the extent of an independent Greece and the appointment of a king from abroad.

  Inevitably Kapodhistrias made enemies, among those who like Koraḯs believed that he should not have suspended the Constitution and resented his autocratic rule, and among the previous leaders of the revolution – many of whom he treated with contempt. In October 1831 he was assassinated as he entered church in Navplion for the Sunday service. So he did not live to see the fruition of his diplomatic efforts: the settlement of Greece’s northern border on a line from Árta to Vólos, and the arrival on a glorious spring morning in February 1833 of Otho of Bavaria as first King of independent Greece.

  23

  One Man’s War – Nikólaos Kasomoúlis

  Many of the memoirs of the war by Greek participants are by leading figures, and are mainly concerned with great military and political events. But some memoirs give an insight into what it was like to live through the war, and describe the sufferings and successes of daily life and show how some behaved well and some badly. One of the most revealing of these is the account by Nikólaos Kasomoúlis in his Enthimímata Stratiotiká (Military Reminiscences).

  Kasomoúlis was born in 1797, the son of a prosperous merchant of Siátista in the far north-west of Greece. In 1820 his father sent him on business to Egypt, where he took the opportunity to visit the pyramids, and to Smyrna. There he became a member of the Philikí Etería, though somewhat doubtfully: ‘All my fellow members seemed to me a feeble lot, in spite of their high aspirations.’1 Nevertheless he enrolled his own father in the association.

  In the first year of the war Kasomoúlis went to Argos and attached himself to Dhimítrios Ipsilántis, whose brother Alexander had been the first head of the Etería and was now a prisoner of the Austrians after his failure in the Danube principalities. Dhimítrios had come to Greece expecting to succeed his brother and lead the revolution, but his colleagues had other ideas. ‘Day by day’, wrote Kasomoúlis, ‘they undermined him, and it was obvious that they wanted a different system of government.’2

  In a remarkable anecdote Kasomoúlis describes a dinner given by Dhimítrios Ipsilántis after the fall of Tripolis to the Greeks in October 1821. The guests included, besides Greek leaders, some of the distinguished Turks captured at Tripolis and now being held for ransom, among them the bey of Corinth. The bey addressed the gathering in Greek, calling himself their friend even though he was a Turk, and advised them to cease their quarrels and accept a single leader. This mattered to the bey, of course, because he needed one person with whom to negotiate his ransom. Finally he thanked them for sparing his life and for treating him as their fellow countryman. The Greeks, says Kasomoúlis, recognised their mistake and thanked him for his advice. Thus we find not implacable hatred between Greeks and Turks but a Turk being entertained as an equal, and his advice, even if self-interested, being accepted by his captors and hosts.

  Dhimítrios Ipsilántis then sent Kasomoúlis on a mission to encourage the leaders of the revolt in the Mt Olympus region in the north-east. On the way Kasomoúlis shipped to Hydra four cannon taken from the ramparts of Tripolis, which was now in Greek hands. The cannon were carried the seven miles from Tripolis down the steep road to the harbour on makeshift carts, dragged by 150 Turkish prisoners who were not receiving the privileged treatment of their more important compatriots. When Kasomoúlis went on from Hydra to Náxos he was involved in what was effectively police work, pursuing a party of Cretans who had needlessly shot a Turkish prisoner in the foot, and a Greek villager who had murdered a man in a quarrel over a woman.

  However, life had its diversions for the young
Kasomoúlis. On Náxos he rapturously described a beautiful girl whom he greatly admired for looking after her widowed father and her brothers and sisters – but he assures us that his relations with women were platonic until he married in 1830. He also attended a big party held by the local notables. Kasomoúlis joined in the Greek dances, but some were European dances that he did not know, and he reluctantly sat them out. The whole night was spent in dancing, and in singing romantic and patriotic ballads.

  Kasomoúlis reached the Olympus region in February 1822, but within weeks the rising there was effectively over. Even the monasteries of Mt Athos, seen as a potential centre for resistance, had reached agreement with the Turks. As Kasomoúlis prepared to leave, the símantra, the blocks of wood suspended outside the churches, were being beaten to the traditional Easter rhythm of ‘Tou Adhám, tou Adhám, tou Adhám – Adhám – Adhám’.

  Kasomoúlis travelled south with a few companions, dependent for food and shelter on others and especially on monasteries. He describes his ascent to the Metéora monastery of Ayía Triádha, which is perched on one of the area’s precipitous needles of rock. He was by then exhausted from a week with little food or sleep, and when he saw what he had to climb his heart failed him, but he knew he had to do it. First there was a 300-foot fixed wooden ladder, and then after a small gap a hanging rope ladder. Kasomoúlis climbed the first part and then froze, not daring to launch himself into the air to grab the hanging section, but his guide, who had followed him, beat him on the feet and urged him on until he made the leap. After the hanging ladder there was a small ledge and then stone steps leading to the monastery, where a relieved Kasomoúlis was welcomed and given food by the abbot. That night, says Kasomoúlis, we slept as if in Paradise.3

  The friendly abbot passed Kasomoúlis on to Nikólaos Stournáris, the captain of the nearby mountainous region of Aspropótamos, which lay across the upper reaches of the Aspropótamos river, now called the Achelos. Kasomoúlis remained in Stournáris’ service for the next four years, in a trusted position combining secretary, aide de camp, emissary and adviser even on family matters. Kasomoúlis now became aware of the realities of the war as it was being fought in the central areas of Greece, and especially of its confusions and uncertainties.

  The Greek forces would not always fight. Kasomoúlis spent a whole night waiting for promised reinforcements with his increasingly disgruntled troops, only to learn next day that the reinforcements had gone home to look after their families. On another occasion most of Stournáris’ forces melted away before a threatened Turkish attack, again to look after their families. Only captains had the resources to send their families for safety to the Ionian islands, and many – including Stournáris – did so. The rest had to make difficult choices between family and patriotism.

  Discipline among the Greek troops was a recurring problem. The commonest breach was theft. Kasomoúlis’ group had two mules, one of which was stolen by another group during the night. On another occasion troops stole all the sheep from a village near Mt Tsoumérka. The villagers complained to the captain, and Greeks fought Greeks in the battle to get the sheep back.

  The most serious breach of discipline was rape, and though rare anyone found guilty of it was expelled from the troop, and might be hunted down and shot. But restraint in behaviour did not mean restraint in language. One captain, considered by others a windbag, urged the people of Náousa, in a rabble-rousing speech in the church, to advance on the Turks shouting ‘I fuck your mother, I fuck your faith.’4 One of Stournáris’ fellow captains, Georgios Karaïskákis, irritated him with a crude joke, saying to Stournáris in front of his troops ‘I hear your wife has been unfaithful to you in the Ionian islands so why don’t you marry the daughter of your friend?’ naming Stournáris’ inveterate enemy, and opening a little leather case showed him a picture of the girl. Stournáris did not take it as a joke, and angrily hurled the picture in its case among the soldiers, yelling ‘Anyone who wants her can have her. I shit on that tart.’5

  Support for the Greek cause could not be taken for granted. One of Kasomoúlis’ tasks as aide to Stournáris was to discover who in the area was pro-Greek, who pro-Turk, and who neutral. Villagers were divided in their loyalties, but the leading citizens of Tríkala were all on the side of the Turks. Some Greeks were simply out for plunder for themselves. The worst offenders were the troops from the mountainous area of Váltos, which adjoined the Aspropótamos region of Stournáris. In 1823 men from one Váltos family raided Aspropótamos and others quickly followed, plundering, raping and seizing everything – mules, farm animals, furniture, money and even the women’s clothes. The captain of the Váltos region, Andhréas Ískos, sent troops to stop the mayhem, but they simply joined in, saying to the victims ‘We’ll be back next year.’6 Eventually Stournáris and other captains moved in and restored order, but they did not think they could bring charges against Ískos; this was not the time to start a civil war. But Stournáris was disgusted, cursing the day when he had taken over the Aspropótamos region and saying to Kasomoúlis ‘You see, my boy, what allies we have in the fight for freedom.’7

  A captain was not only a military leader. He was in effect the governor of his area, his capitanlik, and the capitanliks broadly coincided with the armatoliks that in the past the captains had controlled as leaders of armatolí appointed by the Turks. In his capitanlik he alone was called captain rather than plain kírios or mister, and he alone made appointments. One captain devised a ceremony for his installation: he sat down on his cloak, which was laid out on the ground, his attendants wrapped it round him, and then lifted him three times into the air to volleys of gunfire and shouts of ‘Hail, hail, hail to our captain.’8 But other captains thought this ridiculous, and thereafter pointedly addressed him as kírios and not captain. Captains amassed great wealth. Stournáris as captain of the Aspropótamos area controlled some 120 villages with a total population of around 25,000, and benefited from their products, mainly coarse woollen cloth. Stournáris himself owned 7,000 to 8,000 head of sheep, goats, horses and cattle, and his family many more. It was vital for a captain to retain his area. Without it he had no status, no secure base, and no means of paying his troops, whether they were used for his own ends or in the Greek cause against the Turks.

  One way for a captain to safeguard his position was to arrange a dynastic marriage with the family of another captain, but this was no straightforward matter. Stournáris was approached by a neighbouring captain, Yannákis Rángos, with the proposal that Rángos’ brother Konstantínos should marry Stournáris’ daughter Irene. After initial discussions between Kasomoúlis, as Stournáris’ emissary, and Rángos, the two principals met and Stournáris agreed to the idea, but reluctantly since he did not trust Rángos. They then discussed whether the engagement should be publicly announced, and Kasomoúlis advised them that their wives should be consulted first. However, the Rángos family began open celebrations of the alliance, forcing Stournáris to confirm or deny it.

  Stournáris’ daughter Irene was now, for the first time, asked for her views, and replied firmly that she would rather die than marry Konstantínos Rángos, and her mother supported her. Stournáris was racked with indecision between alienating Rángos and overruling his wife and daughter, and took to his bed with the unromantic complaint of haemorrhoids, refusing to see any of the Rángos family. Eventually Kasomoúlis was charged with telling Rángos that the arrangement was off, for the good reason, suggested by Kasomoúlis, that if the couple married and were unhappy the two families would become enemies, not allies. Stournáris’ clumsy and indecisive negotiations had made relations with Rángos worse and not better, he had been successfully challenged by his wife and daughter – who were obviously quite ready to dispute the father’s authority – and incidentally he had forfeited some of the respect of Kasomoúlis, who ended his account of the affair with the ironic remark ‘Just look at the spirit of the man.’9

  Kasomoúlis thought that the system of dynastic marriages would be
a bar to his own prospects. He and another of Stournáris’ daughters, Photinís, had fallen in love, and she said to him light-heartedly ‘We love each other, so why don’t we get married, since we agree even on silly things?’10 Kasomoúlis could not answer, imagining that Photinís would have to marry into some powerful family. But it was to Photinís that Kasomoúlis was eventually married in 1830.

  The other main step that a captain could take to safeguard his area was to make an arrangement, a kapáki, with the Turks. Both Stournáris and his fellow captain Karaïskákis made such arrangements, by which they undertook not to support Greek forces or allow them to enter their districts, and the Turks undertook to keep out their own forces and gave the captains the right to collect the area’s taxes. There were other less complete forms of cooperation with the enemy: mere withdrawal from the Greek camp, keeping open lines of communication with the enemy, or acquiescence in Turkish control if it was re-established. Some captains claimed that their submissions were only pretended, and that their object was to get provisions from the Turks or to lead them into a trap. Others pointed to the need to protect their people: ‘I made a pretended kapáki with the Turks’, said one, ‘and brought my poor people back to their huts.’11 It would be misleading to label such arrangements as collaboration, with that term’s twentieth-century connotations of criminal and despicable treachery.