A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3)

by Edwin Emerson

Rising of the Greeks

The murder of the Greek Patriarch was followed by risings of the Greeks throughout continental Greece and the Archipelago. Here, as in the Morea, the cause of Greek freedom was disgraced by massacres, and indignities to Turkish women. The Sultan's troops, led by able commanders, retaliated in kind. Khurshid, with a large Turkish army, besieged Janina. He held firmly to his task, even after his whole household fell into the hands of the Moreotes. The Greeks in Thessaly failed to rise, and thus the border Ali Pasha provinces were saved for the Ottoman Empire. The risings in remoter districts were soon quelled. In Epirus, Ali Pasha, the Albanian chieftain, was surrounded by overwhelming numbers and lost his life. On the Macedonian coast the Hetairist revolt, in which the monks of Mount Athos took part, proved abortive. Moreover, the desultory warfare on water carried on by the Moreote campaign islanders of Hydra, Spetza, and Psara served only to annoy the Turks. The real campaign was waged in the Morea, where Tripolitza, the seat of the Turkish Government, was besieged by the insurgents. Demetrios Ypsilanti, Prince Alexander's brother, landed on the coast and was welcomed as a leader by the peasants in arms. Three other leaders rose to prominence. Petrobei First, in the eyes of the people, came Petrobei, chief of the family of Mauromichalis. Surrounded by his nine sons, this sturdy chieftain appeared like one of the old Homeric kings. Second in popular favor was Kolokotrones Kolokotrones, a typical modern Clepht, cunning and treacherous, but a born soldier. The ablest political leader was Maurokordatos, a man of some breadth of view and foresight, but over-cautious as a general. The early Maurokordatos insurgent successes were marred by bad faith and gross savagery. On the surrender of Navarino, in August, a formal capitulation was signed, safeguarding the lives of the Turkish inhabitants. In the face of this Massacre of Navarino compact the victorious Greeks put men, women and children to the sword. Two months later the Turkish garrison of Tripolitza, after sustaining a siege of six months, began negotiations for surrender. In the midst of the truce, the Greek soldiery got wind of a secret bargain of their leaders to extend protection for private gain. In defiance of the officers, the peasant soldiers stormed Tripolitza and scaled the walls. Then followed three days Sack of Tripolitza of indiscriminate looting and carnage. By thousands, the Turks, with their women and children, were slaughtered. Kolokotrones himself records how he rode from the gateway to the citadel of Tripolitza, his horse's hoofs touching nothing but human bodies.

The Greek struggle for independence aroused conflicting emotions in Europe. The passionate sympathy of the Russians rested wholly on their religious bonds. The more enlightened Philhellenes of France and Germany affected to Philhellenism see in this struggle a revival of the ancient Greek spirit that blazed forth at Thermopylæ and Marathon. For this same reason, perhaps, Metternich and his colleagues in the Holy Alliance looked upon the Greek revolution with an evil eye. Any cause espoused by the hot-headed liberals at the universities in those days of itself became obnoxious to the reactionary rulers of the German and Austrian states.

The sympathy with the Greeks was most pronounced in England. There the stirring lyrics of Lord Byron had reached the height of their popularity. Lord Byron's Greek lyrics His songs of Greece and Greek freedom were justly regarded as among his best. It was but a short time before this that the poet, to use his own phrase, had awakened one morning to find himself famous. Now his Greek songs were hailed by the whole world as classics. Notable among them were the "Isles of Greece," embodied in the third canto of his "Don Juan" with the famous stanza:

The mountains look on Marathon— And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

And the equally celebrated lines from "The Bride of Abydos":

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!

In English literary annals this year was marked furthermore by the death of Death of Keats John Keats. He was but twenty-five, still in the first flush of his genius. Keats was buried in Rome, where he died. On his gravestone is the epitaph composed by himself: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." It was generally assumed in England that the poet's death was caused by his anguish over the merciless criticisms of "Blackwood's Magazine" and the "Quarterly Review." Lord Byron was unkind enough to exploit this notion in his "Don Juan":

John Keats, who was killed off by one critique, Byron's satire Just as he really promised something great If not intelligible, without Greek Contrived to talk about the gods of late Much as they might have been supposed to speak. Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate; 'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.