Beacon Lights of History, Volume 09: European Statesmen

by John Lord

Then began the memorable siege of Missolonghi under Reschid Pasha. It was probably the strongest town in Greece,--by reason not of its fortifications but of the surrounding marshes and lagoons which made it inaccessible. Into this town the armed peasantry threw themselves, with five thousand troops under Niketas, while Miaulis with his fleet raised the blockade by sea and supplied the town with provisions. Reschid Pasha determined on an assault, but was driven back. Thrice he advanced with his troops, only to be repulsed. His forces at the end of October were reduced to three thousand men. The Sultan, irritated by successive disasters, brought the whole disposable force of his empire to bear on the doomed city. Ibrahim, powerfully reinforced with twenty-five thousand men, by sea and land stormed battery after battery; yet the Greeks held out, contending with famine and pestilence, as well as with troops ten times their number.

At last they were unable to offer further resistance, and they resolved on a general sortie to break through the enemy's line to a place of safety. The women of the town put on male attire, and armed themselves with pistols and daggers. The whole population,--men, women, and children,--on the night of the 22d of April, 1826, issued from their defences, crossed the moat in silence, passed the ditches and trenches, and made their way through an opening of the besiegers' lines. For a while the sortie seemed to be successful; but mistakes were made, a panic ensued, and most of the flying crowd retreated back to the deserted town, only to be massacred by Turkish scimitars. Some made their escape. A column of nearly two thousand, after incredible hardships, succeeded in reaching Salonica in safety; but Missolonghi fell, with the loss of nearly ten thousand, killed, wounded, and prisoners.

It was a great disaster, but proved in the end the foundation of Greek independence, by creating a general burst of blended enthusiasm and indignation throughout Europe. The heroic defence of this stronghold against such overwhelming forces opened the eyes of European statesmen. Public sentiment in England in favor of the struggling nation could no longer be disregarded. Mr. Canning took up the cause, both from enthusiasm and policy. The English ambassador at Constantinople had a secret interview with Mavrokordatos on an island near Hydra, and promised him the intervention of England. The death of the Czar Alexander gave a new aspect to affairs; for his successor, Nicholas, made up his mind to raise his standard in Turkey. The national voice of Russia was now for war. The Duke of Wellington was sent to St. Petersburg, nominally to congratulate the Czar on his accession, but really to arrange for an armed intervention for the protection of Greece. The Hellenic government ordered a general conscription; for Ibrahim Pasha was organizing new forces for the subjection of the Morea and the reduction of Napoli di Romania and Hydra, while a powerful fleet put to sea from Alexandria. No sooner did this fleet appear, however, than Canaris and Miaulis attacked it with their dreaded fire-ships, and the forty ships of Egypt fled from fourteen small Greek vessels, and re-entered the Dardanelles. But the Turks, always more fortunate on land than by sea, pressed now the siege of the Acropolis, and Athens fell into their hands early in 1827.

For six or seven years the Greeks had struggled heroically; but relief was now at hand. Russia and England signed a protocol on the 6th of July, and France soon after joined, to put an end to the sanguinary contest. The terms proposed to the Sultan by the three great Powers were moderate,--that he should still retain a nominal sovereignty over the revolted provinces and receive an annual tribute; but the haughty and exasperated Sultan indignantly rejected them, and made renewed preparations to continue the contest. Ibrahim landed his forces on the Morea and renewed his depredations. Once more the ambassadors of the allied Powers presented their final note to the Turkish government, and again it was insultingly disregarded. The allied admirals then entered the port of Navarino, where the Turkish and Egyptian fleets were at anchor, with ten ships-of-the-line, ten frigates, with other vessels, altogether carrying thirteen hundred and twenty-four guns. The Ottoman force consisted of seventy-nine vessels, armed with twenty-two hundred and forty guns. Strict orders were given not to fire while negotiations were going on; but an accidental shot from a Turkish vessel brought on a general action, and the combined Turkish and Egyptian fleet was literally annihilated Oct. 20, 1827. This was the greatest disaster which the Ottoman Turks had yet experienced; indeed, it practically ended the whole contest. Christendom at last had come to the rescue, when Greece unaided was incapable of further resistance.

The battle of Navarino excited, of course, the wildest enthusiasm throughout Greece, and a corresponding joy throughout Europe. Never since the battle of Lepanto was there such a general exultation among Christian nations. This single battle decided the fate of Greece. The admirals of the allied fleet were doubtless "the aggressors in the battle; but the Turks were the aggressors in the war."

Canning of England did not live to enjoy the triumph of the cause which he had come to have so much at heart. He was the inspiring genius who induced both Russia and France (now under Charles X.) to intervene. Chateaubriand, the minister of Charles X., was in perfect accord with Canning from poetical and sentimental reasons. Politically his policy was that of Metternich, who could see no distinction between the insurrection of Naples and that of Greece. In the great Austrian's eyes, all people alike who aspired to gain popular liberty or constitutional government were rebels to be crushed. Canning, however, sympathized in his latter days with all people striving for independence, whether in South America or Greece. But his opinion was not shared by English statesmen of the Tory school, and he had the greatest difficulty in bringing his colleagues over to his views. When he died, England again relapsed into neutrality and inaction, under the government of Wellington. Charles X. in France had no natural liking for the Greek cause, and wanted only to be undisturbed in his schemes of despotism. Russia, under Nicholas, determined to fight Turkey, unfettered by allies. She sought but a pretext for a declaration of war. Turkey furnished to Russia that pretext, right in the stress of her own military weakness, when she was exhausted by a war of seven years, and by the destruction of the Janizaries,--which the Sultan had long meditated, and concealed in his own bosom with the craft which formed one of the peculiarities of this cruel yet able sovereign, but which he finally executed with characteristic savagery. Concerning this Russian war we shall speak presently.

The battle of Navarino, although it made the restoration of the Turkish power impossible in Greece, still left Ibrahim master of the fortresses, and it was two years before the Turkish troops were finally expelled. But independence was now assured, and the Greeks set about establishing their government with some permanency. Before the end of that year Capo d'Istrias was elected president for seven years, and in January, 1828, he entered upon his office. His ideas of government were arbitrary, for he had been the minister and favorite of Alexander. He wished to rule like an absolute sovereign. His short reign was a sort of dictatorship. His council was composed entirely of his creatures, and he sought at once to destroy provincial and municipal authority. He limited the freedom of the Press and violated the secrecy of the mails. "In Plato's home, Plato's Gorgias could not be read because it spoke too strongly against tyrants."

Capo d'Istrias found it hard to organize and govern amid the hostilities of rival chieftains and the general anarchy which prevailed. Local self-government lay at the root of Greek nationality; but this he ignored, and set himself to organize an administrative system modelled after that of France during the reign of Napoleon. Intellectually he stood at the head of the nation, and was a man of great integrity of character, as austere and upright as Guizot, having no toleration for freebooters and peculators. He became unpopular among the sailors and merchants, who had been so effective in the warfare with the Turks. "A dark shadow fell over his government" as it became more harsh and intolerant, and he was assassinated the 9th of October, 1831.

The allied sovereigns who had taken the Greeks under their protection now felt the need of a stronger and more stable government for them than a republic, and determined to establish an hereditary but constitutional monarchy. The crown was offered to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who at first accepted it; but when that prince began to look into the real state of the country,--curtailed in its limits by the jealousies of the English government, rent with anarchy and dissension, containing a people so long enslaved that they could not make orderly use of freedom,--he declined the proffered crown. It was then (1832) offered to and accepted by Prince Otho of Bavaria, a minor; and thirty-five hundred Bavarian soldiers maintained order during the three years of the regency, which, though it developed great activity, was divided in itself, and conspiracies took place to overthrow it. The year 1835 saw the majority of the king, who then assumed the government. In the same year the capital was transferred to Athens, which was nothing but a heap of rubbish; but the city soon after had a university, and also became an important port. In 1843, after a military revolution against the German elements of Otho's government, which had increased from year to year, the Greeks obtained from the king a representative constitution, to which he took an oath in 1844.

But the limits of the kingdom were small, and neither Crete, Thessaly, Epirus, nor the Ionian Islands were included in it. In 1846 these islands were ceded by Great Britain to Greece, which was also strengthened by the annexation of Thessaly. Since then the progress of the country in material wealth and in education has been rapid. Otho reigned till 1862, although amid occasional outbreaks of impatience and revolt against the reactionary tendencies of his rule. In that year he fled with his queen from a formidable uprising; and in 1863 Prince William, son of Christian IX. King of Denmark, was elected monarch, under the title of George I. King of the Hellenes.