We grew up and were nurtured to believe in an idealized image of the Greek War of Independence, the 1821 Revolution and its heroes. We were trained to believe that our Greek Struggle was the noble war of us, the good and faithful Christians, against the bad and oppressing Muslim Ottomans.
When we were children in school we had to learn one by one the battles that were decisive for the outcome of the liberation of the Greeks from the 400-year-old Turkish yoke.
Important legacies we had to carry in our hearts until the end of the days were the Heroic Exit of Messologio, the Souliotisses who fell from the high rocks into the sea to escape the savage Turks, the Secret School where the children back then used to be taught “letters” by skinny and oppressed priests or monks in hidden caves.
The Secret School – Painting by Nikiforos Lytras
We had to know by heart all about the revolution leaders and warlords Georgios Karaiskakis, Theodoros Kolokotronis, Rigas Feraios, Odysseas Androustos, Athanasios Diakos, Grigorios Papaflessas, just to mention a few.
These heroes were portrayed with huge mustaches and long hair, were grim and stern and wearing …”skirts”. Most of them seemed wild and very old even older than my grandfathers who had no mustache or long hair and definitely never wore a “skirt”, the pleated skirt founstanella, but they wore long pants.
In our children eyes, the old men were not just heroes. They were superheroes.
Did these superheroes had a role model for our own future? I can’t remember. But for sure glorifying the War of Independence year in, year out, put the seed of “hating the Turks” inside our young hearts.
And that the Greeks were always united and loved each other and therefore with these virtues managed to get their independence. Glory! and Hurrah!
Reality was a taboo
For decades, the bitter realities about the War of Independence and the fate of the true heroes were taboo. Since the 1990’s things changes and nowadays, historians and researchers do not hesitate to even speak of “traitors” of the Greek Revolution
If you take the time and read the several articles or books, you will now understand that back then, while you thought they were “united in one fist”, in reality it was petty interests and rifles, stabbing in the back and the abdomen, personal vanities and ambitions, local hatreds, struggle for power and bowing to “foreign’ interests”, read Russia, France and Great Britain promising power and wealth.
Few, counted on the fingers, are those who resisted pressure and dedicated themselves to one goal, one purpose: the liberation of the Greeks and the creation of an independent state.
Faction and rivalry dictated by geographical locations.
Author and judge by profession, Theodoros Panagopoulos, writes in his book “The Small Print of History”:
“Those from Moria underestimated those from Roumeli and the Roumeliotes hated the Moraites. Those from Hydra and Spetses despised those from Moria and the Moraites envied the islanders. Those in Mani were hostile to everyone and received the same feelings from everyone else.” And amidst such a riot of emotions, the Banner of Revolution was raised… And the Civil Wars followed.
Traitors from within
While the Revolution started quite well, it was often betrayed from within by the prelates and the elite, who opposed the Revolution because they were having a good time under Turkish rule. They had acquired very significant political power, because they had control of the economy, collecting taxes on behalf of the sultan, keeping a huge share for themselves.
The Church also played a negative role. It had excommunicated Rigas and Kolokotronis, whom it hunted down to exterminate him. The Church called the sultan king and spread the word that he loved us. This began in the time of Gennadius, who had said after the fall of Constantinople that God punished us because we had strayed from his path.
While the humble soldiers, inspired by the idea of the Revolution and the Independence and the re-establishment of Greece were dying on the battle-fields, some men would promote their own ambitions to become a king, when the Independence War would be over.
One of them was Petro-bey Mavromichalis from a wealthy family in Mani.
Petrobey Mavromichalis had not hidden his ambitions to become ruler of Greece when it was liberated; he was even ready to claim the royal throne in the new state.
Petrobey did not see positive the arrival of Ioannis Kapodistrias in
“The throne you offered to Kapodistrias belongs to me,” he said everywhere and did not hesitate to proclaim it in front of the Governor of Greece: “The place where he sat belongs to me”!
He would not accept anyone other than himself as the master of the Greeks, when they would acquire a national identity, writes Panagopoulos.
Petrobey’s son and brother assassinated Kapodistrias who died in Nafplio in 1831.
Georgios Kountouriotis a shipowner from Hydra and prime minister of Greece in 1848 also envisioned himself as King of Greece.
The same ambitions had been expressed by Alexandros Mavrokordatos from a wealthy family of Phanariotes and Ioannis Kolettis from Epirus.
Under Kountouriotis his leadership the Civil War broke out, for which Mavrokordatos and his lackeys worked methodically from behind the scenes. Kountouriotis was a bitter enemy of Kapodistrias and stubbornly resisted his election as Governor.
Lord Byron: the poet to be king, a Independence hero by mistake?
Theodoros Panagopoulos writes in his book:
“No matter how much I searched, I could not find why this Englishman, a patriot who came to Greece and stayed only three months, was heroized and mythologized so much that he is considered one of our national heroes, whose (non-existent) actions we are taught since the first grade of elementary school. We have erected busts of him everywhere and dedicated squares and streets to his name! The English lord did not die fighting for the freedom of the Greeks. He simply died, like so many people every day, from an illness.
He was not injured, nor did he even participate in any battle against the Turks, did not prevent any national disaster, nor did he actually help the Struggle in any other way. Unless it is considered help to the struggling nation that he lent Mavrokordatos, with interest, 4,000 British poundsand the latter used them in the Civil War, to suppress the Morea rebellion. ”
“This spoiled, selfish, frivolous, imaginative, megalomaniac, stubborn, alcoholic and eccentric aristocrat, came to Greece with the vanity and ambition of becoming its King, or President of the Republic, or at least a General. He had confessed to his friends that, if the Greeks, after their liberation, offered him the throne of Greece, he would not refuse it.”
True Independence Heroes died bitter arm or assassinated
The murder of the warlord Odysseus Androutsos is a historical fact. The hero of Gravia and other battles had a sworn enemy, Ioannis Kolettis, who in his proclamation (13/10/1822), characterized him as: “nationally cursed” with “pernicious ideologies” and “an enemy of the fatherland.” Later, Kolettis accused Androutsos of “collusion with the enemy” and sent a (former) co-fighter later serving as of chief guard at the Acropolis. Androutsos was arrested, brutally tortured and thrown from the rock of the Acropolis.
Nikitaras, the Turks-eater (Nikitas Stamatelopoulos), the warlord in Dervenakia and Tripolitsa, experienced the indifference of the newly established Greek State, which denied him a pension so that he and his family could live decently. He was granted a “begging permit”, instead, and thus Fridays only. He was falsely accused of activities against King Otto, was tried and – acquitted, However, he was confined to the prison of Aegina for a year and two months! After eight years, Nikitaras blind, ragged and penniless, died in Piraeus.
Manto Mavrogenous, the captain of Mykonos. She too died destitute and persecuted, aided by the compassion of her relatives. Manto had spent all her fortune on the Independence War and her name was a legend in Europe. She managed to move to Paros, where, forgotten and with only one plate of food to live on, she died at the age of 44 from typhoid fever.
Andreas Londos, the wealthy provost of Aigio, took his own life “unable to tolerate his poverty.” He has spent his wealth to the Struggle had once said: “My wealth is my homeland, my fields are Greece”!
The Elder of Morea, Theodoros Kolokotronis, was imprisoned in Nafplio during the civil war of 1824, as a “villain, grabber and dishonorable” after Kountrouriotis had chased him
Kolokotronis was thrown into a “secret prison” in solitary sentence for six months. He was tried for “conspiracy with the intention of disturbing the public peace and causing civil war and abolishing the regime”. He was sentenced to death, “guilty of high treason”. His sentence changed to life imprisonment and transferred to Nafplio prison, was ultimately pardoned and released after 11 months. He died of a stroke 8 years after his imprisonment, at the age of 73.
Lekkas Matrozos, a provost in Spetses, a shipowner, who spent his belongings on the Revolution, died penniless, almost a beggar!
Alexandros Ypsilantis, one of the inspirers of the Greek Revolution and leader of Filiki Etaireia, died at the age of 35 in Vienna in conditions of extreme poverty and destitution.
Laskarina Bouboulina, the heroine-captain of the Revolution, was murdered in her home in Spetses by “patriots” for she had “insulted their honor”.
Antonis Economou, the Hydra native who incited the island. He was murdered by Hydra nobles in 1821.
Dimitrios Plapoutas, Dimitrakis, the hero of Valtetsi, of Patras of Dervenakia, was persecuted by the Bavarians, imprisoned, sentenced to death but was given amnesty, suffered badly and died forgotten.
Legendary Mitropetrovas, who fought the Turks at the age of 76 and at the age of 89 was sentenced to death by the Bavarians. He was to have been beheaded, if someone had not reminded them that it would be inappropriate to execute an old man who in a few months would be carrying the weight of 90 years on his shoulders! Mitropetrovas died at 93, poor and forgotten by everyone.
PS As one friend said: the War of Independence was carried out by kleftes and armatoloi (bandits/thieves and armed/irregular soldiers). After the Independence the regime killed all armatoli and behind were left in Greece the kleftes.”
Sounds a bit like modern day Greece 😉 Perhaps that is where all the division and bickering comes from.
Same for modern day Serbia. Or the whole Balkans for that matter.
The Ottomans were smart. They appointed local leaders and gave them riches in order to “keep the peace”. In Serbia and Bosnia, they kidnapped local sons, raised them as Ottomans and Muslims and send they back to their native countries. All this to give these place their own ‘local leaders’ but often they were crueler than the Turks themselves.
It is hard to stamp out and change long learnt behaviour.
kidnapping of to train local soldiers was common.
For centuries the Ottomans used the strategy of enriching some Christians so they will become their “representatives” and spies that would undermine any effort by local populations to rise up. They are still doing it. They have agents in Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, North Macedonia and now they have inserted themselves in the alliance of Bosnia, Kosovo, Croatia and Albania. The Croats are making a historical mistake allying themselves with the jihadis. They will lose!!!
Lets keep jihadis out of Europe. It took a lot of blood to send them back to Anatolia.