Another cause of unrest in Greece was the constant changing of the ruling power in Morea. Mohammed II took this province, all but a number of towns which Venice retained till 1540 and then handed over to the Turks. But the Venetians wanted them back, and re-annexed them about a century later, during the reign of a weak Sultan, and held them until they were again accorded to the Turks by the Peace of Passarowitz, in 1718.
As may be supposed, Russia and Greece entered into some kind of private understanding, and Peter the Great was by no means disinclined to assist in any revolt which would tend to weaken Ottoman power and make it easier for him to acquire those outlying bits of the Sultan’s Empire upon which he had set his heart. But no advantage came to Greece through Peter the Great’s policy, nor through the influence of Russia during the first rising of the Hellenes, in 1770. Greece built firmly on Russian support, for Orloff, the favourite, had drawn Catherine’s attention to the state of affairs in that country, described to him by one Papadopoulo. However, something went wrong; the Greeks accused the Russians of treachery, the Russians the Greeks of cowardice, and in the end Greece got nothing and Russia the Crimea, which was probably the sole object of the manœuvre as far as the Northern Empire was concerned. The Turks, by way of admonition, let loose Albanian troops, with permission to plunder and ravage; fifty thousand Greeks were massacred and the country given over to desolation. The Albanians went out of hand so completely that they were beyond the control of the Porte for nine years after this unsuccessful Greek rising, and were not reduced to a semblance of submission until defeated by a Turkish army at Tripolitza. Nevertheless, when next Russia declared war on Turkey the latter at once let loose the Albanians over Greece again. In the meantime Klephts and Armatoles, united as wild men of the mountains, had become a formidable asset for purposes of revolt.
A number of islands were the first to throw off the Turkish yoke: Corfu, Paso, Zante, Ithaka, Kephalonia, and two others. These islands had belonged to Venice from the fifteenth century till the end of the eighteenth, when they were ceded to France, and after several changes became the United Republic of the Seven Ionian Islands, under Great Britain’s protection, until incorporated, without their consent, in the Kingdom of Greece, in 1863.
Assistance came to Greece in her struggle for freedom from a very unlikely quarter, from Ali Pasha of Janina, who, to further his ambition of becoming an independent ruler, used the Greeks for his purposes by inducing them to unite with him against the Sultan. Ali Pasha died before his plans could mature, but, what he probably did not intend, Greece remained united, and were urged on by patriotism to go to further lengths.
The first serious revolt of the Hellenes against the Turks was engineered by Alexander Ypsilanti, son of a Hospodar, in Moldavia and Wallachia, but met with little sympathy from the Roumanians; and as Russia disowned Ypsilanti, the movement was crushed by the Turks in a few months. The attempted rising provoked the Moslems to a general massacre of Christians; the sons of Islam were summoned to a jehad, and racial and religious passions were roused to frenzy. Massacres occurred on both sides, savage executions took place; for instance, the Patriarch was hanged at his own gate, and many bishops and nobles were executed the same day, simply because they were suspected of complicity in a fresh revolt in Morea.
While the Morean rebels were being exterminated, the Porte found time for organized massacres in Macedonia and Thrace; but still revolution held its own, even gained some successes, assisted largely by foreign gold. Revolt had been in full swing for three years, without any evidence of calming down, so the Sultan ordered Mehemet Ali of Egypt to despatch an army of invasion to Morea. This was done; the army of Ibrahim Pasha, son of Mehemet Ali, had fairly easy work with the insurgents, stamping out the revolt in the usual, time-honoured manner, by exterminating the Greek population. Athens fell, Missilonghi was besieged, and Europe, sickening at the sights and sounds of devastation in Morea, determined to interfere. The combined squadrons of Great Britain, France, and Russia met at Navarino, to make what has since become quite a popular method of dealing with Turkey, a naval demonstration. Ibrahim misunderstood the situation, and fired on a British boat, instead of advising the Sultan to make a number of promises he never would keep, and thus rid himself of those who interfered with his methods of government. This, of course, was too much; a battle ensued, after which there was no more Turkish fleet. Greece thereupon became independent.
As was only natural, there were no more high offices in the Ottoman Empire filled by Phanariots after Greece became an independent kingdom, and many of those patricians emigrated. This and other matters had a serious effect on Greek commerce, especially the carrying trade in the Levant, which has since passed into other hands. But the Hellenic culture has not fallen off, and the Greeks are probably among the best educated and most intelligent of the Sultan’s subjects.
There were a number of Greeks admitted into the Army under the regime of the Young Turks, and many of these took part in this Balkan war. I have heard that all work requiring skill and intelligence was left to them, that they formed the best engineers, pioneers, and were trusted as gunners rather than the simple souls who were hurried to the front from their Anatolian farms.
The Greeks are full of music too; you may hear their quaint, pathetic songs of an evening by the shores of the Bosphorus. To my mind they have a strange but attractive cadence. Some say that they are taken from the Italians, others that the Italians came here for them. I do not believe either version, but consider that these songs, like those of any other nation, are the natural expression of the soul of the people.
My readers may judge for themselves, as I include some Greek songs in this work. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a setting of the most interesting song I have ever heard in these parts, a song with a wistful beauty of its own, entirely spoilt by a travesty of it made by the Turks, who took it as their National Anthem or Hymn of Liberty—I forget which. All I know is that here, again, they had destroyed without rebuilding.