23 The Coming of the Arabs

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At the end of 1823 it seemed to many observers that the Greek war was over; that Greek independence was secure; and that all that remained was for the facts to be internationally recognized and the appropriate treaties drawn up to regularize the new situation. Sultan Mahmoud had twice attempted to put down the Greek rebellion without success. In 1822 two huge armies had been sent down either side of Greece only to be destroyed when they reached the end of their journey. In 1823, owing partly to the fire in the arsenal at Constantinople, the attempt at reconquest from the north had been ill-prepared and half-hearted. It was true that the Turks still held a few important fortresses in Greece; that there was still a good deal of fighting and disputed sovereignty in the area north of the Corinthian Gulf; and that the Turks still had a large and undefeated fleet. Yet, on balance, it seemed reasonable to assume that the Turks would never again attempt a full-scale invasion. Several histories of the war were published in Western Europe at this time to coincide with the end of the war.

In reality, Sultan Mahmoud had not abandoned his hope of reconquest. The Ottoman Empire, despite the common view that it was on the point of breaking up, still had immense resources. Mahmoud, one of the most effective rulers that the Empire had endured for generations, realized this. The weakness arose not from lack of resources but from lack of organization, from disorder, and from incompetence. This was a weakness which a determined ruler could put right and Mahmoud devoted himself—with no small success—to the attempt. But by its nature reorganization took time. It took time to bring to an end the war with Persia which always seemed to break out when there was trouble in the west of the Empire. It took time to restore relations with Russia, whose armies had menaced the northern borders since the outbreak of the Greek Revolution. It took time to reform the administration and the finances of the Empire. In particular, it took time to build up an army on the modern European model. Mahmoud realized that he would have to wait for an opportunity when he would be strong enough to impose modernization on the janissaries.

The situation in Greece could not wait. If the Ottoman Empire was obliged to recognize the independence of Free Greece, however unimportant and small the geographical area might be, then the way would be open for all the other nationalities of European Turkey to attempt revolt, to say nothing of the many people of Asiatic Turkey. An example had to be made of the Greeks. The dangerous Western European idea of nationalism could not be permitted to implant itself in the Ottoman lands. Mahmoud needed an army and at once.

There was no question of finding allies. No Christian power, whatever the secret wishes of its government, would have dared to help the Sultan to crush his rebellious Christian subjects. There was only one man in a position to help.

Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, was among the most remarkable men of the early nineteenth century. By birth an Albanian, born the son of a peasant in Thrace, his career was a supreme example of one of the great strengths of the Ottoman Empire. The Empire was a meritocracy right up to the highest positions, the merits being chiefly survivability and ruthlessness. Mehemet Ali had first made his mark in the Turkish army in the campaigns against Bonaparte in Egypt. He stayed in Egypt after the war and in 1805 became Pasha. Thereafter, his career went from success to success. In 1807 he inflicted a severe and humiliating defeat upon an invading British force. In 1811 he organized a systematic massacre of the Mamelukes who had ruled Egypt for some hundreds of years, and thereafter until 1849 he was the sole ruler of the country. With the help of his son, Ibrahim, who was equally effective, Mehemet imposed his will on long-suffering Egypt with tenacious ferocity. The country was beaten and cowed into order and discipline. Tens of thousands of men died in carrying out his grandiose works and the rate of tax on the fellaheen was raised by between 600 and 1,000 per cent. In Europe, Mehemet won a reputation as a benevolent reformer by the simple device, much employed by dictators, of being polite to foreign visitors and by making the public services appear to work efficiently. Modern European methods were systematically imposed on all walks of life and, for a few brief and intensely uncomfortable years, Egypt ceased to be a backward country. If the great powers of Europe had not become alarmed in the 1830s, then the whole Ottoman Empire might have been resuscitated under an Albanian dynasty; the technological and military gap between Europe and the rest of the world which had been widening since the seventeenth century might have been closed; and the Turks and their allies might again have become a terror to Europe.

Mehemet’s first priority was the efficiency of his armed forces. The army was raised from 20,000 to 100,000 but it was unlike any other army in the East. From his experience in fighting Bonaparte, Mehemet had conceived a profound admiration for French military methods. His troops were therefore trained in the most modern European system, as regular troops in uniform with close discipline, ready as necessary to stand in line or charge with the bayonet. They were supplied with the best types of arms imported from France. French and other European officers were attracted by high pay to serve as instructors and as officers in the field. The navy too was rebuilt to modern standards with the help of French constructors. Orders were placed for naval vessels to be built in France and many a Philhellene had remarked on Mehemet’s frigates building in the shipyard at Marseilles. Another of his best ships was built at Deptford near London. Mehemet’s armies did not lack experience. Between 1811 and 1818 Ibrahim subdued the provinces of Arabia in a series of ferocious campaigns; and between 1821 and 1823 another of Mehemet’s sons, Ismael, conquered and annexed the Sudan. It was clear that a formidable power was growing up in the East.

At the beginning of 1824, at about the same time as the Greek deputies Orlandos and Louriottis arrived in London, the Sultan put a proposal to Mehemet. Mehemet was still nominally the subject of the Sultan, and Egypt was still nominally a part of the Ottoman Empire, but neither party was much interested in appearances. The fact was that the Pasha was as powerful a man as the Sultan, and Mahmoud only turned to Mehemet out of desperation. It was agreed that the two should co-operate to crush the Greek rebellion. In return for the help of the Egyptians, the Sultan promised that Crete would be put under Mehemet’s control and that Ibrahim would be made Pasha of the Morea. Mahmoud could have had little confidence that Greece would ever return to his control. If it was reconquered, Mehemet would be even more powerful, even more of a threat to the Sultan’s own position. Not only would he have a large and underpopulated province on which to impose his accustomed methods of development but, more importantly, he would have a direct link with Albania and therefore an inexhaustible supply of cheap undiscriminating soldiers. Mahmoud’s best hope was that he would buy time, that if the Greek Revolution could be extinguished, then something might have turned up or his own reforms might have borne fruit before he had himself to face a confrontation with the Pasha.

For the time being, thoughts of the future were put aside as the two rulers mobilized their strength against the Greeks. From the beginning of 1824 the dockyards at Constantinople were busy fitting out new warships and the Sultan himself made several visits to encourage the workers. Instructions were sent to all the provinces ordering levies of troops and armed gangs roamed the streets of the capital impressing men for the fleet. The Ottoman Government took out contracts for the hire of foreign merchant ships to act as transport vessels. In Egypt too the preparations were intense. Alexandria, hitherto a commercial port, was transformed into a vast naval dockyard. Thousands of trained soldiers, mainly Egyptians and Albanians, were collected and billeted in cantonments nearby in readiness to form the invading forces. And Mehemet too, by offering lucrative rates and squeezing normal trade, hired a fleet of foreign merchant ships—flying the flags of most European countries—to help transport his armies.

The signs were clear for all to see. Soon they became unmistakable. Crete was the first to feel the change. By the spring of 1824 Hussein, Mehemet’s son-in-law, had extinguished all but a few mountain enclaves of resistance. An expedition was then mounted against the island of Casos whose inhabitants had since the outbreak of the Revolution and earlier earned their living by the murder, pillage, and piracy of Greeks, Turks, and Franks. One night of killing and burning put an end to the Casiote menace. Shortly afterwards, a similar scene was enacted at Psara, one of the three islands that provided the warships on which Free Greece depended. At the beginning of July the Ottoman fleet effected a landing and destroyed everything they found. During these months in 1824 the war again burst into life. It was the kind of war—if war it can be called—that had not been seen since the destruction of Chios in 1822. It is impossible to estimate how many tens of thousands of men, women and children were systematically and haphazardly butchered and left to die of exposure, wounds, starvation, and disease. Again the slave markets of the Empire were glutted and a ghastly cargo of trophies, including 500 heads and 1,200 ears was sent to Constantinople for exhibition at the Seraglio Gate.

Meanwhile, the Greeks were behaving as if the war was already over. After the defeat of the invasion from the north in 1823 the country had split into numerous fragments as the original contradictions in the aims of the revolutionaries could no longer be concealed. For a few months from the end of 1823 till the spring of 1824 the country was in the grip of the first civil war. This name, however, gives a false picture of what was actually occurring. Sporadic acts of violence were committed between various groups in several areas of Greece but the casualties were small. The chief opponents were, on the one hand, a coalition of the islanders, some of the chieftains of Roumeli, the area north of the gulf of Corinth, and the remnants of the Westernized party which still hoped to build a unitary European state, and, on the other hand, Colocotrones and some of the other captains of the Morea. Some chieftains—notably Odysseus—remained neutral or indifferent.

The island party had some claim to be regarded as the legitimate Government—in so far as such terms have validity in a revolutionary situation—as the direct successor of the Government proclaimed at Epidaurus in 1822. The rich Hydriote ship-owner, Conduriottis, held the title of President of Greece. He was an Albanian, unable to speak Greek. And so the leaders of both armies in the war came—as did many of the fighting men—from a community who had not yet learned to prefer nationalism to other loyalties.

The chief aim of Conduriottis’ Government was to assert its authority over Colocotrones and in particular to compel him to hand over Nauplia which his men had held since its fall. The Government brought armed men from Roumeli and by the spring of 1824 Colocotrones’ son Panos was under siege at Nauplia. At the same time fighting between rival chieftains had broken out in Western Greece.

This was the situation at the end of June 1824 when, in quick succession, two pieces of news arrived which immediately transformed the politics of Greece. First of all it was learned that £40,000 worth of English gold intended for Greece had arrived at Zante. Then, soon afterwards, came the terrifying stories of the destruction of Casos and Psara. When the news of Psara reached Zante, Samuel Barff decided to send the money immediately to the Greek Government despite the prohibition of its export by the Ionian Government.

In war, so it has often been said, three things are required above all else, money, money, and more money. This had been the view of all intelligent observers of the Greek scene. Demetrius Hypsilantes had apparently failed because of lack of money to command national loyalty; the Regiment Baleste had failed for lack of money to pay and recruit its men; the German Legion had failed through lack of money to buy food; the Byron Brigade had failed when the poet paymaster died. Most important of all, successive attempts at imposing national unity on Greece had failed because the so-called governments had never had enough money to break local and personal loyalties buttressed by money. Now for the first time in the history of the war, money was available.

To any outsider used to Western European methods of thought there could be no doubt about the right policy in these circumstances. Greece lay under the imminent threat of invasion by a large, disciplined, well-tried army. The first priority must surely be to put aside the internal political divisions and unite against the common enemy. The British gold, judiciously dispensed, would act as the cement to keep the various groups together.

This policy was in fact attempted and eventually it can be said to have succeeded but only at enormous cost after two civil wars. The economic consequences of introducing a large amount of precious metal into Greece were not foreseen. It was simply assumed that the effects would be beneficial, that because in earlier phases of the war things might have been different if there had been a little more money available, then these situations could be repeated and the benefits multiplied by injecting larger sums. The arrival of the gold had a drastic effect not only on the economy of Greece but also on its political structure. Power in revolutionary Greece depended (more than it normally does in more settled countries) on the possession of money. Anyone with money could hire armed men and there was a large pool of underemployed armed men who felt no compunction about moving about offering their services from market to market.

The arrival at Nauplia in quick succession of three shiploads of gold caused a sensation throughout Greece. The Reverend Sheridan Wilson, who was present when the first ship arrived, records that ‘the sight of beautiful English gold almost threw the poor penniless natives into extacies’. He describes how he met a party of Greeks on his travels shortly afterwards. ‘“Sir,” they enquired, “is the loan arrived?” “Yes,” said I, “the brig lies at Nauplia.” Not a word more did the poor fellows utter; but, seizing each others’ hands, they formed a circle, danced for a few moments on the green sward, and then, bidding me farewell … they set off for the golden fleece’.¹ At Nauplia itself each successive shipload was greeted with shouts of ‘Long Live England!’² After the first three instalments were paid over in the autumn of 1824, further consignments continued to arrive at roughly two-monthly intervals far into 1825.

The exact amount of gold that was shipped to Greece from the proceeds of the two loans is unknown. It was probably in the range £400,000 to £500,000, and all in the form of fine gold or silver. In the context of the Greek economy at the time it was an enormous sum of money. Figures about the value of the products and about the revenues of Greece are sketchy and in any case comparisons based on exchange rates are notoriously difficult. Nevertheless, since there was a complete absence of exchange controls and English sovereigns and Spanish dollars, being made of fine metal, were eagerly accepted all over the Eastern Mediterranean in preference to the Ottoman coinage, it is possible to give a few indications of the value of the loan. In 1825 a gold sovereign (£1) was reckoned to be worth 50 piastres. A piastre and a half could hire a man’s labour for a day. The total value of all marketed goods of the Morea in the peaceful prosperous conditions before the war was estimated at between 30,000,000 and 40,000,000 piastres taxed roughly at ten per cent. Since the war, that had probably been reduced by at least a half. In addition, the Government was unable to raise taxes in any systematic way over the whole area of Free Greece. Large regions were preserved for their own purposes by independent chiefs, and often the only method of raising revenue was to send armed bands into the country to seize a proportion of any assets they could find. In the most successful year for the Government, 1825, the revenue collected was about five and a half million piastres (about £90,000). It was hardly surprising therefore that the loan appeared to virtually all Greeks to be wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.

There seemed to be more than enough for everyone. The first civil war was quickly brought to an end by the simple expedient of paying 50,000 piastres to Colocotrones in exchange for his giving up the possession of Nauplia. All the public debts, real or imaginary, that had been built up since the outbreak of the Revolution were paid off, and all members of the Government helped themselves to large sums in payment for their own services. Corruption is the wrong word to describe the process. It was more a kind of financial anarchy.

Soon afterwards, all the leaders of revolutionary Greece began to arrive at Nauplia determined to have their share of the gold. Colocotrones was there, and Odysseus, and the great primates of the Morea, and dozens of lesser chieftains with a few men at their command, all eager to proclaim that they must have money to continue the war against the Turks which had, in fact, in mainland Greece largely ceased many months before.

Conduriottis and his Government hesitated, but political debts must be paid. The Government had been kept in power by the islanders, the shipowners of Hydra and Spetsae of whom Conduriottis was one of the richest. They must have first claim. And it so happened that the policy of partisan selfishness could also be represented as the best policy for Greece as a whole. The news from Crete, Casos, and Psara made the threat all too clear; it was a maritime threat. What more statesmanlike strategy than to spend the money on the men whose ships provided Greece’s only maritime power? And so the money was not distributed among the various factions but paid over to the shipowners with instructions to look to the naval strength of the country and to send a maritime force to avenge Psara.

The sudden availability of money, however, did not have the intended effect. In the early days of the war the sailors of Hydra and Spetsae had won a European-wide reputation for seamanship, daring, and bravery. Their light manoeuvrable ships had on several occasions confused and frightened the ponderous Turkish fleets and there had been a few striking successes particularly with the use of fire ships. But these vessels in no sense constituted a national navy; they remained privately owned, with either an individual owner paying his crew of the ship being owned and controlled by a kind of co-operative consisting of all the members of the crew. When everyone was poor and plunder was the main source of money, there was a clear incentive to daring. But now matters were different. Money was available simply for going to sea. The incentive for attacking the enemy had greatly diminished, and in any case, the sailors suspected with justice that the enemy was superior to the enemy they had known in 1821 and 1822. Besides, the ship itself now became a far more valuable object. To possess a ship was equivalent to having a certificate on which gold would be paid regularly into the foreseeable future. Old hulks were hastily recommissioned and sent to sea in order that they might earn a share. Ships that were beyond repair were fitted out as fire-ships and the Government was sent inflated bills for compensation. A sea-going ship was now a valuable investment and there was a severe disincentive to hazard it by approaching too near the enemy.

European friends of Greece, in their moments of disenchantment with Colocotrones, Mavrocordato, and the rest, had always been able to console themselves with the belief that the Greek fleet at least was sound. Here at least—despite the unfortunate fact that they were undeniably Albanians—were the worthy descendants of Themistocles and Artemisia. Of all the ways of spending the Greek loan which had been suggested, the strengthening of the Greek fleet had always seemed the most fair and the most statesmanlike. In the event, however, the arrival of the English gold had the opposite effect. The bravery and daring of the Greek fleet was now alloyed with a fatal overcaution. During 1824 and 1825 the Greek fleet had several opportunities of engaging the Ottoman and Egyptian fleets but their success was limited. They now lost as many ships as they sunk. The enemy, despite their acknowledged inferiority in equipment and seamanship, survived several attacks by fire ships and direct actions. They began to grow in confidence and in skill.

The decision of the Government to pay huge salaries to the shipowners caused the fragile unity of Greece to break up again. Odysseus was one of the first to leave Nauplia to try to consolidate his own position in Eastern Greece by means that will be noted later. But Colocotrones and the primates of the Morea came out in open rebellion. And so, for the second time within a few months, Greece was thrown into a civil war—this time mainly of the islanders against the Moreotes. Colocotrones and the primates of the Morea, who had fought on opposite sides in the first civil war, were now allied.

During the second civil war the full political value of the English gold was demonstrated. The Government hired 3,000 armed men from Roumeli with promises of plentiful reward to crush the rebellion in the Morea. This they did in a few weeks, with unnecessary thoroughness, harrying, burning, and laying waste the last few areas of Greece that had not already been devastated. More damage to the country was done by the wars and depredations of the undisciplined Greeks than had been done since the outbreak of the Revolution by the enemy.

Casualties were slight as was usual in the Greek irregular engagements when both sides fired their crude weapons from behind cover and felt no shame at running back if danger appeared imminent. Among the dead was Colocotrones’ son, killed in a skirmish near Tripolitsa. Colocotrones himself who had unconcernedly caused the deaths of so many people was struck with grief and surrendered to the Government, He was imprisoned in Hydra where, unwashed and unshaven, he prophesied moodily to his visitors that the day was not far distant when Greece would again be begging for his assistance.

Gradually, more and more Greeks found ways of getting themselves on the Government’s pay roll. The money was never accounted for in detail. A captain would simply contract to provide a number of armed men and draw pay for that number. Again, the opportunities for embezzlement were eagerly seized. Anyone who could muster any pretensions to a military status appeared in Nauplia demanding pay. It was probably at this time that the Albanian dress made its decisive step towards being regarded as the national dress of Greece. The Government party, being largely Albanians themselves, favoured the dress and a version of it was common among the Greek klephts and armatoli. Now it seemed that anyone who donned an Albanian dress could claim to be a soldier and share in the bonanza.

Yet despite the spending of hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of fine gold and silver in Nauplia and Hydra there was remarkably little to show. Visitors at the time were constantly surprised to discover how few English coins were actually to be found in Greece. No sooner had the money arrived and been spent, than it disappeared from circulation.

Various explanations were suggested at the time. Some observers were of the opinion that the Greeks were secretly burying the gold and some of it may have passed out of circulation in this way.³ In fact, however, many of the economic consequences of the Greek loan on Greece were exactly as modern economic theory would expect when a large amount of a strong convertible currency is injected into a backward economy.

Much of the money fell into the hands of the richest members of society who had no need to spend it. They simply paid the money straight into personal accounts with western bankers—a phenomenon well-known to modern aid-giving agencies. The money was not allowed to filter down into society.

Many poorer Greeks who found themselves the unexpected possessors of a few gold sovereigns simply hoarded them, usually hiding them in their belt. In the later battles the Arab soldiers were to be surprised and delighted at the splendid booty with which the enemy corpses were laden.

The Hydriotes took a commission of one hundred per cent for converting English gold into local currency. It was estimated that in Hydra alone there were between ten and twenty factories in which English sovereigns were melted down to re-emerge as denominations of Turkish piastres.⁴ The new coins were then taken to Syra (which preserved a lucrative commercial neutrality) and exchanged for Spanish dollars. False Spanish dollars were also manufactured locally at Hydra. It was explained to one curious visitor that ‘The Ottomans are buying up your English gold and sending in its stead their own base coin. So we have set up a mint to manufacture coin still baser and have agents at Constantinople to dispose of it’.⁵ Whatever the truth of this complex explanation, it seems undeniable that the Greek Government was attempting to enlarge its resources by debasing the coins used in home circulation.

The sudden injection of gold stimulated such few local manufacturing industries as Greece had; it encouraged the rich to look for new ways of spending their money; and it led to a flood of imports. George Finlay, who witnessed the result of the spending of the money, described the scene at Nauplia in a vivid passage:

Meanwhile Greece was threatened by the greatest menace to its existence that had yet occurred. The Arabs were on their way, gathering their strength and preparing their plans largely undisturbed by the Greeks. In February 1825 Ibrahim disembarked at Modon, the small fortress in the Southern Peloponnese which the Greeks had never managed to capture. He brought 4,000 infantry and 500 cavalry. His fleet immediately returned to Crete and brought a further 6,000 infantry, 500 cavalry, and a strong corps of artillery. With hardly any interference from the Greeks he established a strong base on shore and a secure line of communications to Egypt for supplies and reinforcements. At the end of March the Egyptian army marched out to lay siege to the important fortress of Navarino. Among their troops was a unit of Turkish Moreotes, survivors of the 1821 massacres, determined to play their part in reconquering the land of their birth.

The Egyptian camp presented a sight such as had never before been seen in Greece. The troops were clothed in a simple uniform and all had the same weapons. The army was in two watches so that one division was always on guard or exercising while the other was resting. Everywhere there was order and discipline and quiet efficiency. The troops were mainly Arab Egyptians apparently in poor physical condition. Many of them had eye diseases. There were also units of Albanians and of black Africans, although many of these had died of cold during the campaign in Crete. They were all instantly obedient to the commands of their officers, conscious that life was cheap and that they could instantly be subjected to arbitrary and cruel punishments. There could be no doubt that they were professional and experienced soldiers.

Here and there European officers could be seen instructing their men.^* They were almost entirely French and Italians, veterans of the armies of the great Napoleon. The leader of the Europeans, Soleiman Bey, clearly enjoyed the confidence and respect of Ibrahim, and there can have been few men even in that violent age with more experience of war. Joseph-Anthelme Sève was put in the French navy at the age of ten and had already experienced seven years of war when he was wounded at Trafalgar in 1805. Two years later he was dismissed from the navy for striking an officer, but he promptly joined the army, and gradually worked his way through the non-commissioned ranks. In 1809 he was left on the battlefield with a gunshot wound and three sabre cuts and spent several months as a prisoner in Hungary, but in 1812 he was back with the Grand Army in Russia and was wounded yet again at Posen in 1813. In the campaigns of 1814 he distinguished himself so prominently that he was raised to officer rank and given the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Shortly after Waterloo, at which he was present as a Captain, Sève was retired from the army to join the ranks of the discontented Bonapartist unemployed. He joined Mehemet Ali’s service in 1819, changed his name to Soleiman, became a Moslem, amassed a large fortune, and spent the next twenty years of his life—as he had spent the previous twenty—in almost continuous fighting. He was a coarse, drunken, cruel soldier, exulting in violence, but he played an important part in building up and extending the short-lived empire of Mehemet Ali. In background, Sève and the other officers resembled the Philhellenes, against whom they were ready to fight, some of whom were their old comrades. The Europeans of Ibrahim’s army were happy to declare that Greece had been their first love and some had even changed over from the Greek side. Gubernatis, the former Philhellene, commander of the Regiment Tarella after the battle of Peta, had asked to be excused and had remained in Egypt. But those with long memories might have recognized the flamboyant Bekir Aga as the Corsican Drum-Major Mari who had come to Greece from Marseilles in 1822 and had been a member of the Battalion of Philhellenes. Doctor St. André,⁸ another Frenchman who had come in an early expedition from Marseilles, now enjoying 8,000 francs a year, claimed to have changed sides in disgust at Greek untrustworthiness.

In war success is the only standard. Ever since the battle of Peta in July 1822, the Greeks had despised European regular military tactics. The other events of 1822 appeared to confirm their judgement. Whereas the Regiment Tarella and the Battalion of Philhellenes, using regular tactics, had been slaughtered by the Turks at Peta, Colocotrones with the old-fashioned irregular tactics of the klephts had destroyed a whole Turkish army near Corinth. When the Regiment was disbanded in 1823 Greece had no regular forces. The Byron Brigade had lasted as an organized force for only a few weeks. At the beginning of 1825 few Greeks felt any sense of military inadequacy. Since the success of 1822 they had come to despise the Moslems, foolishly relying on them to be incompetent as they had been on previous occasions.

With great ceremony and much glitter the chieftains of Greece decided to lead their men against the Egyptians and so relieve Navarino. The first few skirmishing encounters shook the confidence of the Greeks who took part in them but the general view was still highly optimistic. In the middle of April 1825 sixteen Greek and Albanian chieftains with their men took up their position opposite Ibrahim’s lines. They included men both from the Morea and from Roumeli who were generally regarded as the best in Greece as well as the far-famed Suliotes. The position was prepared in accordance with the usual system with small barricades and trenches to provide cover. It was probably the most effective force that Greece was capable of putting in the field, installed on ground of their own choosing, and fully prepared to fight the kind of battle they knew best.

Ibrahim quickly appreciated how events were moving and decided to seize the initiative. He led his men out to the attack. After a short halt which was spent in reconnoitring the Greek position, he ordered the first regiment of Arabs to advance. The Arabs fixed bayonets and began a steady march to the beat of drums towards the Greek position. Although many fell from the fire of the Greeks they kept their ranks and marched straight towards the Greek barricades without wavering. Then as they approached close, the officers gave the order, they lowered their bayonets, started to cheer, broke into a run and charged. The Greeks were thunderstruck—this was not the enemy they knew. They scattered and ran, strewing their jewelled weapons in all directions. Ibrahim’s cavalry was, according to the best regular tactics, waiting in the rear to appear round the flank and cut down the fleeing disorganized enemy.

Probably only about 600 Greeks were killed at this battle, but it was one of the most important engagements of the war. It proved dramatically and decisively a point which had always been true, that a small body of regular disciplined troops would prove superior to a large horde of individualists. The unanimous view of the Philhellenes from Baleste onwards was now vindicated. The thoughts of the Greeks again turned to the possibility of setting up a regular army.

Ibrahim went from success to success. The Greeks stiffened their resistance but time and again they proved incapable of withstanding the attacks by the Arab regulars. In May, Navarino was forced to capitulate and here again the value of regular disciplined troops was revealed. The besieged Greeks in Navarino were offered the opportunity of leaving the place in safety on specially chartered vessels. They accepted, although many must have had their doubts when they remembered how the Greeks had treated the Turks who had capitulated to them in the early years of the Revolution. The corps of Moreote Turks attached to Ibrahim’s army, survivors of the massacres of 1821, were ready to take their revenge as the defenceless Greeks opened the gates but the disciplined Arab troops acted as escort and the terms of the capitulation were scrupulously honoured. Ibrahim’s magnanimity was as much dictated by policy as by humanity. He hoped that his rule would be more readily accepted by the population and that other fortresses still on his path would be more willing to come to terms if he could establish a reputation for honesty and justice as well as for military effectiveness. In this respect, as in many others, Ibrahim’s behaviour and outlook were more akin to the Europeans than to the Greeks. Several Philhellenes were captured at Navarino and had the opportunity of meeting Ibrahim before they were released. They were treated like gentlemen throughout their short capture and they must have felt more at home in the officers’ messes than they were among the Greeks. Ibrahim was interested in his reputation in Europe. ‘At least do me justice,’ he explained to one Philhellene, ‘when you read in your newspapers that I drink blood and eat human flesh to say what you have seen’. To another Philhellene who remarked that Ibrahim had shown the generosity that Napoleon would have shown, he declared ‘Napoleon! I know that I will never be worthy to kiss his shoes’.⁹ Ibrahim offered a high salary to any Philhellenes who would join his service. On this occasion the only one to accept was Lord Byron’s physician, Millingen, who later settled in Constantinople where, as doctor to successive Sultans, he was a well-known figure for many years.

After his success at Navarino, Ibrahim now had a secure base in Greece from which to conquer the country. At last the Greek Government began to realize that Greece was facing its biggest challenge. The archimandrite Dikaios was given the command of a new force of 3,000 men and left Nauplia in May, but by the time he reached the vicinity of the Arab camp half his men had deserted. The battle which took place on 1 June 1825 was one of the most contested during the war. The Greeks attempted to stand their ground behind their barricades but again the Arab regulars, who greatly outnumbered them, stormed their position with the bayonet.

The cry was now raised in Nauplia that there was only one man in Greece who could save the situation. The old brigand Colocotrones, who had been imprisoned at Hydra following the second civil war, was released and appointed Commander-in-Chief, but he could do nothing. The irregular Greek troops were simply not good enough. Even on rough ground where they had won their best successes in the past they were consistently defeated. The disciplined Arabs, sometimes without the help of their cavalry and artillery, always proved superior. Throughout the summer of 1825, until the campaigning season ended in October, Ibrahim captured town after town in the Morea. Tripolitsa, Argos, and Calamata—the three largest towns—were all recaptured and sacked.

At the end of June 1825 Ibrahim’s army appeared outside Nauplia, the provisional capital of Greece, and it looked as if the Greek Revolution would soon be over. Ibrahim retired since he had no equipment for a siege but no one doubted that he would be back. In their desperation the Greek Government offered to put the country under the rule of Great Britain, in exchange for British protection—the so-called Act of Submission. The British Government had neither the wish nor the ability to accept responsibility for Greece and the offer was rejected. But this apparent attempt to confirm the British influence in Greece which was thought to derive from the loan was to have important repercussions later.

Ibrahim’s methods became steadily more cruel. At first he had thought to reconcile the Greeks by a policy of clemency but in this he misjudged his enemy. The majority of the Greeks continued to regard the war as one of religious or racial extermination. The Hydriote ships continued to exterminate their prisoners and on one occasion in June 1825 about 250 were systematically butchered in the streets of Hydra itself. Attempts by the Greek Government to prohibit the worst barbarities had some success but they always tended to break down in emergency. It was commonly thought that Ibrahim intended to exterminate the Greeks of the Morea and settle the territory with Arabs from Egypt. This rumour, although probably unfounded, made compromise unthinkable. Ibrahim, while maintaining his European military methods, reverted to Ottoman military ethics. His troops were permitted and encouraged to burn all the Greek towns and villages through which they passed. Europeans who called on him now heard him declare that he ‘would burn and destroy the whole Morea’.¹⁰ Crops and beasts were seized and destroyed wherever he went, although (as if remembering the rules of warfare of Classical Greece) he took care not to destroy the olive trees. The local population of the Morea, which had already suffered from the depredations of the civil war and from the general anarchy which existed during much of the war, was now reduced to near destitution. A slave market was opened at Modon where human beings were branded, loaded with chains, and used in labour gangs. From Modon, as opportunity arose, they were shipped to Egypt to be employed as galley-slaves for the rest of their life.

Meanwhile, at the time when the Arabs were laying waste the Peloponnese, the Turks were bestirring themselves further north. In the northwest, under a vigorous new pasha, the Albanians were again persuaded to join the Turkish cause and to take part in a Turkish expedition south against Free Greece. Without difficulty the new Ottoman army crossed the Makrinoros, as its predecessor had done in 1822 after the battle of Peta, and proceeded to lay siege to Missolonghi. By the summer of 1825, Missolonghi was invested by land and sea and it was clear that this time the Ottoman forces were not going to allow themselves to be destroyed by bad organization or lack of preparedness. Throughout the second half of 1825 a long battle for Missolonghi was fought out near the town with first one side then the other appearing to have the upper hand. The Greek ships attacked the Ottoman fleet and succeeded in replenishing the town with supplies, but as winter approached Missolonghi was still under close siege. Then in November Ibrahim was invited to lead his Arabs to assist the Turks before Missolonghi and spent the winter months with his accustomed vigour in bringing up supplies and preparing for a renewed offensive in the spring.

As 1825 advanced and everywhere the Greeks were clearly losing the war it was remembered that there was another possible method of salvation. In the uncertain military situation of 1822 numerous chieftains in Roumeli had succeeded in keeping their options open, joining first the Greeks then the Turks, then the Greeks again. A broad band of Central Greece south of Thermopylae remained determinedly undecided whether it was Greece or Turkey. These chieftains were often called traitors and, in a sense, so they were. But few of them felt any sense of shame or betrayal. The concept of loyalty to a ‘nation’ was alien, or at best novel, to most Greeks. They preferred their traditional loyalties, to their religion, to their district, to their leader; and since the Ottoman Government had as yet little idea of nationality they were content to do business with local leaders on their terms—to build up their loyalties on a solid basis of self-interest reinforced, if possible, by fear.

The great Odysseus who ruled eastern Greece with a firm hand had made a pact with the Turks in 1822. Now that the Greek cause was again in danger, he once more decided to bend with the wind. He opened negotiations with his old friends, the neighbouring Turkish authorities, but his power was slipping away from him. Since the Greek Government had apparently unlimited gold at its disposal and was prepared to dispense it to anyone who could claim to be the leader of a military force, many of the armed Greeks who had previously looked to Odysseus for their leadership and support were moving to other masters. Odysseus now began to make overtures to the Turks, on the basis that he would recognize Ottoman sovereignty in exchange for a promise to be confirmed in his position of local leadership. The Turks were prepared to accept his offer, although they had already sufficient experience of the man to insist that he should openly join their army before the deal was confirmed.

The attempt of Odysseus to defect resulted in a curious episode which illustrated the difficulties with which the Philhellenes were struggling in attempting to understand the Greek political scene. Odysseus never had any higher ambition than to be a local chieftain and certainly cared nothing for any notion of Hellas or regeneration or the usual Greek and philhellenic myths. In this respect he was a typical Greek of the time, but his outlook was totally incomprehensible to many Philhellenes. To them Odysseus was a colourful and powerful figure with an eminently Greek sounding name. He had to be fitted into some philhellenic preconception. To Stanhope Odysseus represented the hope of turning Greece into a constitutional republic with free and representative institutions—perhaps the most misconceived of all views of his character. But Odysseus was also the cynosure of the type of Philhellenes whom I have called the romantic Byronists, the men who, unlike Byron himself, came to Greece in search of the exoticism of Byron’s Grecian and Turkish tales. Odysseus, to such men, was a true Greek, a Greek who lived among mountains and wore colourful clothes.

The most extreme of the romantic Byronists was Edward John Trelawny, who had come to Greece with Byron in 1823. To the historian or bio grapher, Trelawny is an irritating figure because of his uncomfortable habit of telling lies about everything he did. But Trelawny’s fault was simply to exaggerate for the sake of effect, to stretch truth at the edges to make a better story. As a Philhellene he had no ideas of his own. He parted from Byron because Byron was not Byronic enough for him, Byron was too cautious, too balanced, too interested in discovering the facts of the situation. Trelawny’s aim was mainly to swagger about Greece in exotic dress and to enjoy the sensation of being a Byronic hero, a Lara or a Conrad. He hated the Europeanized Greeks like Mavrocordato who interfered with his image of the situation. As a rationalization of his preconceptions he seized eagerly on Colonel Stanhope’s belief that Odysseus could become the Washington of Greece. After Byron’s death for a time he had hopes that he might be regarded as his spiritual heir. He was surrounded by a group of volunteers, mostly British, of the same cast of mind as himself, all proclaiming how they alone had found a Greek worthy of the name. Trelawny seemed a useful ally.¹¹

Odysseus charmed Trelawny as he had charmed Stanhope by appealing to his preconceptions of himself. He installed him in a huge cavern in Mount Parnassus which he had fortified as a retreat safe from Greek or Turk. The cavern could only be approached by long ladders let down from above. It was guarded by the cannon which Gordon had given to the London Greek Committee and Stanhope had transferred to Odysseus. It was capacious enough to hold a military force of some hundreds and was provisioned for a long siege. It had every comfort, even a set of Waverley novels on which the Byronists could feed their romantic imaginations. Odysseus and Trelawny became warm friends and in accordance with local tradition the friendship was cemented by marriage. Trelawny was married to a half-sister of Odysseus, Tersitsa, a girl with whom he had no language in common and who was then aged about thirteen or fourteen. Trelawny was immensely flattered.

The attachment to the unreliable Odysseus of Trelawny and other apparently influential Philhellenes was seen as an intolerable threat by the Greeks who realized what was really happening. It was decided to kill Odysseus as had been planned in 1822 in similar circumstances. As a first step Trelawny too was to be killed and the cave seized from Odysseus’ power. The details of the scheme are not fully known but it is certain that Mavrocordato was one of the instigators along with several Philhellenes. Two of Trelawny’s companions, Fenton and Whitcombe, were bribed by money and promises to try to assassinate him in the cave. The attempt was made in June 1825. Fenton fired a shot which severely wounded Trelawny, but he was at once himself shot dead by another of Trelawny’s companions. Whitcombe was allowed to survive.¹²

Trelawny, after recovering from his wounds, was eventually taken down from the cave and left Greece in a British warship, apparently unaware to the end that he had chosen the least philhellenic of all Greeks as his hero. Odysseus himself had not long to live. Various attempts were made by the Greek Government to kill him and at last he was persuaded to surrender. One day in October 1825 his body was found suspended from the walls of the Acropolis of Athens, murdered by Greeks as he had himself murdered so many. And so Greece was saved the humiliation of having its most famous hero rejoin the Turks, one of the few scraps of comfort in the black year of 1825, and indirectly one of the beneficial consequences of the supply of English gold.

Early in 1826 the attack on Missolonghi was renewed. Ibrahim was anxious to show that his Arabs were superior to the Turks who had been conducting the siege before he arrived. He committed his troops to a series of murderous assaults on Missolonghi’s puny defences. For the first time the bayonet failed. The desperate inhabitants of the town repulsed attack after attack from behind their mounds, but there was no relief. The Turks and their allies at great cost captured the islands in the lagoon and succeeded in cutting off Missolonghi completely by sea as well as by land. A squadron of Hydriote ships was paid a large sum by the Greek Government to attempt to break the ring but their operations were half-hearted and ineffective. It could no longer be concealed that the Greeks were losing their superiority at sea. The English gold had sapped their daring and, unlike the Turks and Egyptians, they had not improved their naval technology and tactics during the course of the war.

By April the people of Missolonghi had supplies for only a few days. They contemptuously rejected proposals for a capitulation and prepared to make a last desperate effort. It was decided to attempt a sortie en masse and to break through the enemy lines to the mountains beyond. The night of 22 April 1826 was set for this exodus and an arrangement was made for a body of armed Greeks to attack the besiegers’ rear as a diversion. Of the total population of the besieged town of about 9,000 there were about 2,000 persons of all ages who were too weak or ill to join in the exodus: these were to be left behind to their fate along with some of their friends and relatives who could not bear to leave them. The others, including many women and children, made breaches in the mounds and prepared bridges by which to cross the great ditch that separated them from their enemies.

At nine o’clock the exodus began and at first all seemed to be well. Some thousands crossed the bridges and the vanguard had charged through the Turkish lines before they appreciated what was happening. But soon confusion broke out. The Turks began to fire on the jostling crowds and several people fell off the bridges into the ditch. There was a momentary panic and then the crowds fell back into Missolonghi. Their fate was now certain. Ibrahim immediately ordered an attack on the weakened defences and captured all the walls. The next morning at dawn, his officers gave permission to the troops to enter the town and the whole place was given over to slaughter and plunder. Several groups of Greeks blew themselves up in their powder magazines when surrounded by their enemies rather than surrender. Within a few hours the town of Missolonghi was a smoking lifeless ruin.

As usual the statistics cannot be ascertained. Ibrahim boasted that his men collected 3,000 heads, and ten barrels of salted human ears were dispatched to Constantinople to gratify the Sultan. Between 3,000 and 4,000 women and boys were taken as slaves. Even the party which had escaped through the Turkish lines was largely destroyed since they had the misfortune to fall in with a party of Albanian horsemen. Hundreds died of starvation.

Most of the Philhellenes who had taken part in the defence of Missolonghi perished among the ruins. Among the dead were von Dittmar, the Prussian officer who had struggled with Kephalas for the loyalty of the German Legion; Bellier de Launay, the impostor who had so impressed Stanhope and the members of the London Greek Committee; Adolph von Lübtow, thought to be one of the Germans who called on Byron at Genoa in April 1823 to beg money and who had subsequently returned to Greece; and Stitzelberger, the officer from Baden who had commanded the Byron Brigade for a short time after Byron’s death. The Swiss Johann Jacob Meyer, who had come in one of the early expeditions from Marseilles and had later become editor of Stanhope’s newspaper, the Greek Chronicle, managed to send a letter out of the town shortly before the sortie: ‘I declare to you,’ he wrote, ‘that we have sworn to defend Mesolonghi foot by foot, to listen to no capitulation, and to bury ourselves in its ruins. Our last hour approaches. History will do us justice and posterity weep over our misfortunes’.¹³ Meyer was cut to pieces by Turkish horsemen and his Greek wife and child taken into slavery.

By Sultan Mahmoud in Constantinople and Mehemet Ali in Cairo, the news of the fall of Missolonghi was greeted with jubilation. Here, it appeared, was yet further evidence of the success of their policy. Another important Greek town had been captured and the Greeks had been taught a salutary lesson about the folly of prolonging their resistance. In reality, the fall of Missolonghi had a far greater significance. It was one of the most decisive events of the war.

The Turks never succeeded in understanding why European public opinion moved as it did. They were vaguely aware that the Greek Revolution had some ideological content beyond the easily comprehensible motives of religious hostility and hatred of Turks. But they never had much interest in the history or culture of other peoples and their attempts to combat the ideological enemy were heavy-handed, belated, and ineffective. It was decreed about this time, for example, that the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire who were still under Turkish rule should no longer be permitted to call their sons ‘Constantine’ because of the political implications of that name, but there was no official concern when they changed their names to ‘Pericles’ or ‘Miltiades’.¹⁴ The Turks also threatened, if Athens should again fall into their hands, to destroy the Parthenon, because of its symbolic unifying effect on Greeks and Philhellenes—another lunge at the curiously elusive idea.¹⁵ But it was totally incomprehensible that the capture of a small fishing town in Western Greece should have ideological significance. Missolonghi had no classical associations. It even had an Italian name. True, the siege had been hard fought and the Greeks in their desperation had resisted more strongly than in recent battles, but that was a normal phenomenon of war. If the Greeks of Missolonghi had perished that was their own fault for not accepting the terms of capitulation. Ibrahim had done little more than often occurred when a city was taken by assault even under European military ethics.

One of Ibrahim’s European doctors remarked when he entered the ruins of Missolonghi that on the wall of one of the houses someone had written ‘Hic e vita decessit Lord Byron’.¹⁶ Here was a clue to a factor which no Turk could have been expected to understand. In the two years since the death of Lord Byron, Missolonghi had become the most famous town in Modern Greece, the symbol of the Greek War of Independence, the focus of all philhellenic feeling. The name of Missolonghi now carried a host of associations all over Western Europe soon to be marvellously illustrated in Delacroix’s huge painting of ‘Greece expiring on the ruins of Missolonghi’.

The heroism of the Greeks at Missolonghi swept away years of disillusion and disappointment with Greek actions since 1821. The way was open to a resurgence of philhellenic feeling in Western Europe which was to play an important part in the outcome of the war. As one of the Turkish generals remarked, ‘We are no longer fighting the Greeks but all Europe’.¹⁷

Footnote

*   The number of Europeans in Ibrahim’s army was often exaggerated, some accounts referring to hundreds. In fact, there seem to have been less than twenty