History - The Rough Guide to Greece - page 772

the Greek peasantry it was primarily their religion that opposed them to their Muslim
neighbours - as much as one-fifth of the population - and to their Ottoman overlords.
Muslim leaders had long preached hatred of the infidel, a view reciprocated by the
priests and bishops of the Orthodox Church.

The War of Independence: 1821-32
he ideology behind the War of Independence came from the Greeks of the diaspora,
particularly those merchant colonies in France, Italy, Austria and Russia who had
absorbed new European ideas of nationalism and revolution. Around 1814, assorted
such Greeks formed a secret society, the Filikí Etería (Friendly Society). Their
sophisticated political concepts went uncomprehended by the peasantry, who assumed
the point of an uprising was to exterminate their religious adversaries. And so when
war finally broke out in spring 1821 , almost the entire settled Muslim population of
Greece - farmers, merchants and officials - was slaughtered within weeks by roaming
bands of Greek peasants armed with swords, guns, scythes and clubs. They were often
led by Orthodox priests, and some of the earliest Greek revolutionary flags portrayed a
cross over a severed Turkish head.

The war
While the Greeks fought to rid themselves of the Ottomans, their further aims differed
widely. Landowners sought to reinforce their traditional privileges; the peasantry saw
the struggle as a means towards land redistribution; and westernized Greeks were
fighting for a modern nation-state. Remarkably, by the end of 1823 the Greeks
appeared to have won their independence. Twice the sultan had sent armies into
Greece; twice they had met with defeat. Greek guerrilla leaders, above all Theodoros
Kolokotronis from the Peloponnese, had gained significant military victories early in
the rebellion, which was joined by a thousand or so European Philhellenes , almost half
of them German, though the most important was the English poet, Lord Byron .
But the situation was reversed in 1825, when the Peloponnese was invaded by
formidable Egyptian forces loyal to the sultan. Thus far, aid for the Greek struggle had
come neither from Orthodox Russia, nor from the Western powers of France and
Britain, both wearied by the Napoleonic Wars and suspicious of a potentially anarchic
new state. But the death of Lord Byron from a fever while training Greek forces at
Mesolóngi in 1824 galvanized European public opinion. When Mesolóngi fell to the
Ottomans in 1826, Britain, France and Russia finally agreed to seek autonomy for
certain parts of Greece, and sent a combined fleet to put pressure on the sultan's army
in the Peloponnese and the Turkish-Egyptian fleet harboured in Navaríno Bay. Events
took over, and an accidental naval battle at Navaríno in October 1827 resulted in the
destruction of almost the entire Ottoman fleet. The following spring, Russia itself
declared war on the Ottomans, and Sultan Mahmud II was forced to accept the
existence of an autonomous Greece.
At a series of conferences from 1830 to 1832, Greek independence was confirmed by
the Western powers, and borders were drawn in 1832. These included just 800,000 of
the six million Greeks living within the Ottoman Empire, and territories that were
largely the poorest of the classical and Byzantine lands: Attica , the Peloponnese and the

1821 1824 1827

Rebellion breaks out
in various parts of the
Empire; much of Greece
liberated.

Lord Byron dies, becoming a Greek
national hero in the process.

Ottoman fleet destroyed at the Battle
of Navaríno, encouraging Great Power
intervention.