The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean

by John Julius Norwich

  Only at this point did the government realise that it had on its hands not a localised rising, but a second civil war which must be stamped out while there was still time. In the existing circumstances Peloponnesian troops would clearly be untrustworthy; the government accordingly approached the Roumeliots, offering them not only money from the loan but–most irresponsibly–the possibility of the wholesale plunder of the Peloponnese. By the end of the year the Roumeliot captains, each with his own small army behind him, were swarming across the Gulf of Corinth to take full advantage of their opportunity.

  The rebels, though now hopelessly outnumbered, fought on until February 1825, when Kolokotronis surrendered, followed by twelve of his principal captains. All were imprisoned in the fortified monastery of the Prophet Elijah in the hills of Hydra. The government had won–but at a heavy price. The Roumeliots had pillaged and plundered wherever they had gone, looting indiscriminately from government supporters and neutrals as well as rebels, from rich and poor, landowner and peasant alike. Makriyannis, who seems to have had a higher sense of morality than most of his colleagues, was appalled–not only by the violence but also by the realisation that his country was more dangerously split than ever before: the people of the Peloponnese would not easily forgive their northern neighbours.

  He was not to know how soon national unity was to be enforced, when the Ottoman Empire was to fling its forces once more into the fray.

  Even in 1824, the Turks had not been completely idle. Although their impact had scarcely been felt in the Greek mainland, in July the little Aegean island of Psarà–the principal eastern base of the Greek navy–had been sacked by a Turkish fleet, which was soon afterwards threatening the two other key naval centres, the offshore islands of Hydra and Spetsai. But the most formidable Islamic enemy that Greece now had to face was not Turkish; it was Egyptian.

  The impressive figure of Mohammed Ali has already made an appearance in these pages, when we saw him appointed imperial viceroy in Egypt in 1805, at the age of thirty-six. Nineteen years later, in what would then have been thought of as late middle age, he was at the height of his powers. He had already transformed the country; in particular, he had given it for the first time an efficient army and navy, trained on European lines by European officers. To the Sultan Mahmoud II it was now plain that these must be swiftly employed if Greece were to remain part of his empire. An incentive was easy enough to find: if Mohammed Ali would help him to recover the Peloponnese, his son Ibrahim could take over as its pasha.

  The fleet which Mohammed Ali and Ibrahim now prepared consisted of no less than fifty-five ships of the line and well over 300 transport vessels, carrying some 14,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry with their horses, and 150 cannon in the charge of 500 artillerymen. It sailed from Alexandria on 19 July 1824 and met the Turkish fleet at Bodrum (the ancient Halicarnassus) on the western coast of Asia Minor; but the Greeks were waiting, with a fleet of about seventy ships from Hydra, Spetsai and Psarà. A battle followed almost immediately–off Cape Yeronda, a mile or so to the north of the Bodrum peninsula–which, though inconclusive, was enough to persuade Ibrahim that his expedition would have to be postponed until the following year. He withdrew his ships to Crete–which had already been for over a century and a half under Ottoman rule–while the Turks returned to Constantinople for the winter.

  So, at least, they intended; but in December a French captain gave Ibrahim valuable advice. There were three fortresses in the Peloponnese still in Turkish hands: Patras, and the former Venetian colonies of Methoni and Koroni.226 Ibrahim, the captain suggested, should concentrate on pouring as many troops as possible into one of these–Methoni, with its direct access to the shore, would be best–and should do so immediately, without waiting for the Turks or for the spring, so that his heavy ships could still take advantage of the winter winds. And so Ibrahim sailed on 23 February 1825, and the next day disembarked his infantry and cavalry at Methoni, where they dug themselves in. A few days later they entered Koroni. Meanwhile, the Egyptian army fanned out to the northeast, to subjugate the rest of the Peloponnese.

  If it was to have any chance at all of checking Ibrahim’s advance, the Greek government now needed every man it could lay its hands on. Kolokotronis was quickly released with his fellow captains from their prison on Hydra and once again given supreme command of the Greek forces, while another decree required each district in the country to provide one conscript for every hundred of its population. But it was too late; the Egyptians were spreading rapidly across the whole peninsula. Kolokotronis, believing that Tripolis was the key to the entire Peloponnese, decided to destroy the city before their arrival, but once again he was unlucky: Ibrahim’s troops arrived before much damage was done and soon had the fires under control before first setting about the plunder and destruction and then relighting them. Once again the barbarity was appalling. Dr Samuel Gridley Howe,227 an American surgeon who had arrived in Greece earlier in the year, wrote in his journal:

  I went on shore at sunrise and…went over the little ground, where still lay the dead, horseman and horse, which the enemy had not been able to carry off. They were all beheaded, and bodies savagely mangled by the Greeks, who committed on them every possible indignity. It was not enough to leave their bodies unburied, but they must show towards them a brutality the most savage.

  Only two days later, on 28 June, he added:

  But what is poor Greece to do? Ibrahim Pasha, with his army, has traversed the whole Morea from Modon to Napoli [Nauplia]. He has passed unharmed through defiles where five hundred resolute men might keep at bay his whole army. He has burnt Argos, Tripolitza, and Kalamata, the three largest towns in the Morea. It is not so much the loss of these places, and the immense property which they have ruined in their route, but it shows lamentably the weakness of the country that cannot resist an army which is not the fifth part of what the enemy can bring.

  Dr Howe spoke no more than the truth. He could not know that the most dramatic disaster of all was still to come.

  In the whole story of the Greek War of Independence, the name of Missolonghi stands out above all others. This is not only because of its resistance to two concerted attacks, in 1822 and 1823, thanks to which it was the only town north of the Gulf of Corinth to have remained in Greek hands since the beginning of hostilities; nor is it altogether due to the death there of Lord Byron in 1824, though this did much to make it celebrated throughout Europe. Missolonghi became a symbol above all as a result of the unique experience which it suffered on the eve of Palm Sunday 1825, and which captured the horrified imagination of the world.

  The Turkish army that marched south from Arta early that year under the command of Reshid Pasha drew up outside the town at the end of April. It numbered some 8,000 fighting soldiers, as opposed to the Missolonghi garrison of less than half that number. Unlike the unified Turkish force, however, this garrison was characteristically composed of about a dozen different groups, each under its own captain. Concerted action was hard to achieve until one natural leader emerged above the others, a Souliot captain named Notis Botsaris. Thanks in large measure to him, in that first phase of the siege the defenders successfully withstood everything that Reshid could hurl against them. They knew too that they could not be starved out, since they still had a supply line from Zakynthos and the other Ionian islands across their lagoon, whose waters were too shallow to allow the passage of the heavy Turkish ships. When the October rains began and the Turks withdrew from the walls for the winter, there was high optimism among the Greek leaders.

  But they were reckoning without the Egyptians. Since Ibrahim’s departure from Alexandria his father had built up a whole new fleet: some 135 vessels of all sizes, including a further squadron from Turkey and others from Algiers and Tunis. Ibrahim had returned to take command, and in the first days of 1826 this new armada, carrying 10,000 troops and a quantity of heavy artillery, cast anchor in the waters outside Missolonghi. After a few weeks of preparation, at dawn on 24 February the
cannon opened fire, and it has been calculated that over the next three days more than 8,500 cannonballs and mortar shells were fired into the town. The destruction was appalling–but somehow the defences held.

  Ibrahim–who had taken over the supreme command, making no secret of his contempt for his Turkish colleague–now turned his attention to the lagoon. Once he had gained control of those shallow waters the people of Missolonghi could be starved into submission, but the task was not an easy one. Reshid had tried it the year before, when he had launched thirty-six shallow-draft boats to attack the town by sea; but they had been turned back by heavy fire from the little island of Vasiladi. Ibrahim now tried something a good deal more powerful: a fleet of eighty-two even shallower vessels, together with five huge rafts carrying thirty-six-pounder cannon. Once again the gunners of Vasiladi put up a magnificent performance, but towards evening there was an explosion in their powder magazine and their resistance came to an end. After that the other lagoon islands quickly surrendered until only one remained: the island of Klisova, half a mile southeast of the town. Here, the attackers were obliged to disembark several yards from the shore and wade through the mud; they made easy targets, of which the island’s defenders took full advantage. Both Reshid and Ibrahim himself were wounded and the attempt on the island failed, but it made little difference. The Turks had gained control of the lagoon. Missolonghi’s lifeline was cut. Henceforth its surrender would be only a matter of time.

  Unless, that is, its entire population broke out and made a bid for liberty across the plain to the northeast of the town; and this is precisely what the people of Missolonghi resolved to do. They numbered some 9,000 all told, men, women and children; it was decided that when night fell on 22 April, every able-bodied adult and adolescent would scramble over the walls, carrying the younger children who would be drugged with laudanum. They would cross the defensive ditch on makeshift bridges, and then take shelter and wait behind the outer rampart until they heard firing: this would come from a party of troops under one of the captains, George Karaiskakis, staging a diversionary attack to keep the besiegers busy. Then they would all move forward together. Those too old, too sick or too weak to leave would be gathered into a few neighbouring houses, with an explosive charge beneath them which they would ignite when the Turks approached.

  It was a desperate plan, which could hardly have been expected to succeed even as well as it did. There was none of the long-awaited firing from Karaiskakis; after standing for an hour behind the rampart the refugees lost patience and burst out on to the plain. Then, suddenly, there were cries of ‘Opiso! Opiso!’ – ‘Back! Back!’–and all was confusion. Some continued forward, others retreated. Such was the crowding and jostling on the bridges that many fell into the ditch; those who got back into the town were made short work of by the Turkish troops who, seeing the walls undefended, had lost no time in smashing their way in. Those still hurrying across the plain were attacked first by Turkish cavalry and, later, by Albanian soldiery; the men were killed, the women and children taken prisoner. Behind them, meanwhile, Missolonghi was a blazing inferno. Dr Howe could not contain his feelings. He wrote on 30 April:

  Missolonghi has fallen! Her brave warriors have thrown themselves in desperation upon the bayonets of their enemies; her women and children have perished in the flames of their own dwellings, kindled by their own hands; and their scorched and mangled carcasses lie a damning proof of the selfish indifference of the Christian world…For ten months have the eyes of Christian Europe been turned upon Missolonghi. They have seen her inhabitants struggling at enormous odds against the horrors of war and famine; her men worn out, bleeding and dying; her women gnawing the bones of dead horses and mules; her walls surrounded by Arabs, yelling for the blood of her warriors, and to glut their hellish lusts upon her women and children. All this they have seen, and not raised a finger for their defence…

  As for the casualties, it is impossible to give an exact figure; by the end of that ghastly night, however, it seems likely that nearly half the population of Missolonghi–perhaps 4,000–were dead and some 3,000, mostly women and children, captive. Less than a quarter–2,000 at the most–had made their way to safety.

  Even more than the tragedy of Chios, the fate of Missolonghi was mourned throughout Europe. Once again an outraged Delacroix seized his brush in protest: his tremendous painting, La Grèce sur les ruines de Missolonghi, did much to focus the prevailing indignation, and across Europe his contemporaries–painters and sculptors, writers and poets–enthusiastically followed his lead. The western powers could no longer sit on their hands in the name of neutrality; the time had come to gird on their swords and hasten to Greece’s aid.

  The disaster of Missolonghi left all Greece demoralised; and it was soon afterwards followed by another, greater still. In June 1826 Reshid Pasha launched, with an army of 7,000 men, a concerted attack on Athens. The city, because of its position, had never been the Greek capital; it was exceptional, however, for two reasons. The first was the obvious one: it had been the scene of the greatest achievements of classical antiquity and still, for all its long dégringolade, remained a symbol of the artistic, cultural and intellectual distinction of which the Greeks had once been capable and, it was hoped, might one day be capable again. The second, less romantic, had still greater relevance to the present situation. After the fall of Missolonghi it was the only city in Greek hands north of the Gulf of Corinth. Despite recent Turkish and Egyptian successes, it now seemed likely that the continuing struggle, together with the increasing sympathy for it among the powers of western Europe, would result in at least some degree of Greek autonomy. With Athens back in Muslim hands, that autonomy might well be limited to the Peloponnese; if, on the other hand, the Greeks were able to hold the city, the frontier would have to be a good deal further north.

  By mid-August Reshid was in control of the whole city except the Acropolis, where a Greek garrison of 500 held out through the following winter–during which time the Greek government, such as it was, fell victim to yet another outbreak of factional strife. Once again, Kolokotronis seems to have been largely to blame, and by the summer of 1827 there were no less than seven separate conflicts in progress. Oddly enough, it was two Britons who managed to impose some degree of calm, though both failed ultimately to distinguish themselves. The first was General Sir Richard Church, who had raised the Anglo-Greek regiment on Zakynthos sixteen years before. In the interim he had served in the army of the King of Naples, but his heart had remained in Greece. He returned there in March 1827, having been offered the supreme command of the Greek land forces–only a foreigner, it seemed, could hope to establish order over so chaotic a country–but he had refused to take up his post until the two rival governments had settled their differences.

  Church was followed a week later by a still more remarkable figure. Thomas, Lord Cochrane–later 10th Earl of Dundonald–had early in his career been court-martialled for insubordination, and in 1814 had been put on trial for fraud on the Stock Exchange. In the first instance he had been acquitted, in the second found guilty.228 Nonetheless, he was generally accounted England’s greatest admiral since Nelson. He had spent seven years in South America, where he had fought for the independence of Chile, Peru and Brazil, and as early as November 1825 he had been offered the command, such as it was, of the Greek navy. The delay had been occasioned by his insistence, as a condition of his employment, on the provision of six steamships and two frigates, to be designed by another British aristocrat, Frank Abney Hastings, who had served as a ship’s boy at Trafalgar and had reached the rank of captain before being dismissed from the service.

  Steamships were still in their infancy. Even they were still normally propelled by sail, using their primitive engines only in calm or in battle. Cochrane’s order was to be paid for by a second loan, organised in London, of £566,000, but it was never fulfilled. One of the two frigates had to be sold to the American government to pay for the other, and only two of the six steam
ships ever reached Greece, neither of them–thanks to design failings, poor construction, corruption and the activities of Egyptian agents–to be trusted an inch. When he eventually arrived in Greece–on his yacht–in the spring of 1827, Cochrane took an even stronger line than Church. How, he demanded, could the Greek leaders make such fools of themselves, squabbling about where to hold their next assembly, when they should have been attacking the Turks and Egyptians, driving them out of the country before it was totally destroyed? His words had their effect: the two sides were forced into an agreement, according to which a new Assembly should meet at Trizini, the ancient Troezen. By the end of March both Church and Cochrane had withdrawn their objections and assumed their posts, and only a week or two later the Assembly resolved to offer the presidency of Greece to Capodistria, who had now left the Russian service and was living quietly in Geneva.

  Meanwhile, in Athens, the Acropolis was still under siege. In an attempt to break the deadlock, it was decided early in 1827 to despatch a force of 2,300, under the English philhellene commander Thomas Gordon. Gordon was soon joined by Karaiskakis with several detachments of local troops, so that his numbers were probably not far short of 10,000 by the time Cochrane arrived at Piraeus in his flagship, the Hellas, shortly to be followed by Church in a commandeered schooner. Various plans of action were now put forward, but Cochrane had determined on a direct march on Athens and, as usual, rode roughshod over any opposition. ‘Where I command,’ he is quoted as saying, ‘all other authority ceases.’ Karaiskakis, realising that such an advance would involve a dangerous crossing of an open plain almost certainly surrounded by Turkish cavalry, did not immediately accept this view, but a day or two later he was shot by a Turkish musketeer and there were no more objections. So it was agreed that at midnight on 5 May 1827 a force of 2,500 should disembark from the near side of Phaleron Bay and march on Athens, while the remainder–almost three times as many–should remain at Piraeus to await further orders.