These inauspicious beginnings, indeed, set the whole tone of the war, which was frankly one of mutual extermination. On both sides the combatants were barbarians, without discipline or competent organization. At sea the General character of the war. Greeks rapidly developed into mere pirates, and even Miaoulis, for all his high character and courage, was often unable to prevent his captains from sailing home at critical moments, when pay or booty failed. On land the presence of a few educated Phanariots, such as Demetrios Ypsilanti or Alexander Mavrocordato, was powerless to inspire the rude hordes with any sense of order or of humanity in warfare; while every lull in the fighting, due to a temporary check to the Turks, was the signal for internecine conflicts due to the rivalry of leaders who, with rare exceptions, thought more of their personal power and profit than of the cause of Greece.
This cause, indeed, was helped more by the impolitic reprisals of the Turks than by the heroism of the insurgents. All Europe stood aghast at the news of the execution of Turkish reprisals. the Patriarch Gregorios of Constantinople (April 22, 1821) and the wholesale massacres that followed, culminating as these did in the extermination of the prosperous community of Scio (Chios) in March 1822. The cause of Greece was now that of Christendom, of the Catholic and Protestant West, as of the Orthodox East. European Liberalism, too, gagged and fettered under Metternich’s Europe and the rising Philhellenism. “system,” recognized in the Greeks the champions of its own cause; while even conservative statesmen, schooled in the memories of ancient Hellas, saw in the struggle a fight of civilization against barbarism. This latter belief, which was, moreover, flattering to their vanity, the Greek leaders were astute enough to foster; the propaganda of Adamantios Coraës (q.v.) had done its work; and wily brigands, like Odysseus of Ithaka, assuming the style and trappings of antiquity, posed as the champions of classic culture against the barbarian. All Europe, then, hailed with joy the exploit of Constantine Kanaris, who on the night of June 18-19 succeeded in steering a fire-ship among the Turkish squadron off Scio, and burned the flag-ship of the capudan-pasha with 3000 souls on board.
Meanwhile Sultan Mahmud, now wide awake to the danger, had been preparing for a systematic effort to suppress the rising. The threatened breach with Russia had been avoided by Metternich’s influence on the tsar Alexander; the death of Ali of Iannina had set free the army of Khurshid Pasha, who now, as seraskier of Rumelia, was charged with the task of reducing the Morea. In the spring of 1822 two Turkish armies advanced southwards: one, under Omar Vrioni, along the coast of Western Hellas, the other, under Ali, pasha of Drama (Dramali), through Boeotia and Attica. Omar was held in check by the mud Expedition of Dramali, 1822. ramparts of Missolonghi; but Dramali, after exacting fearful vengeance for the massacre of the Turkish garrison of the Acropolis at Athens, crossed the Isthmus and with the over-confidence of a conquering barbarian advanced to the relief of the hard-pressed garrison of Nauplia. He crossed the perilous defile of Dervenaki unopposed; and at the news of his approach most of the members of the Greek government assembled at Argos fled in panic terror. Demetrios Ypsilanti, however, with a few hundred men joined the Mainote Karayanni in the castle of Larissa, which crowns the acropolis of ancient Argos. This held Dramali in check, and gave Kolokotrones time to collect an army. The Turks, in the absence of the fleet which was to have brought them supplies, were forced to retreat (August 6); the Greeks, inspired with new courage, awaited them in the pass of Dervenaki, where the undisciplined Ottoman host, thrown into confusion by an avalanche of boulders hurled upon them, was annihilated. In Western Greece the campaign had an outcome scarcely less disastrous for the Turks. The death of Ali of Iannina had been followed by the suppression of the insurgent Suliotes and the advance of Omar Vrioni southwards to Missolonghi; but the town held out gallantly, a Turkish surprise attack, on the 6th of January 1823, was beaten off, and Omar Vrioni had to abandon the siege and retire northwards over the pass of Makrynoros.
The victorious outcome of the year’s fighting had a disastrous effect upon the Greeks. Their victories had been due mainly to the guerilla tactics of the leaders of the type of Kolokotrones; Mavrocordato, whose character and Civil war among the Greeks. antecedents had marked him out as the natural head of the new Greek state, in spite of his successful defence of Missolonghi, had been discredited by failures elsewhere; and the Greeks thus learned to despise their civilized advisers and to underrate the importance of discipline. The temporary removal of the common peril, moreover, let loose all the sectional and personal jealousies, which even in face of the enemy had been with difficulty restrained, and the year 1823 witnessed the first civil war between the Greek parties. These internecine feuds might easily have proved fatal to the cause of Greece. In the Archipelago Hydriotes and Spetsiotes were at daggers drawn; the men of Psara were at open war with those of Samos; all semblance of discipline and cohesion had vanished from the Greek fleet. Had Khosrev, the new Ottoman admiral, been a man of enterprise, he might have regained the command of the sea and, with it, that of the whole situation. But the fate of his predecessor had filled him with a lively terror of Kanaris and his fire-ships; he contented himself with a Campaign of 1823. cruise round the coasts of Greece, and was happy to return to safety under the guns of the Dardanelles without having accomplished anything beyond throwing supplies and troops into Coron, Modon and Patras. On land, meanwhile, the events of the year before practically repeated themselves. In the west an army of Mussulman and Catholic Albanians, under Mustai Pasha, advanced southwards. On the night of the 21st of August occurred the celebrated exploit of Marko Botzaris and his Suliotes: a successful surprise attack on the camp of the Ottoman vanguard, in which the Suliote leader fell. The jealousy of the Aetolian militia for the Suliotes, however, prevented the victory being decisive; and Mustai advanced to the siege of Anatoliko, a little town in the lagoons near Missolonghi. Here he was detained until, on the 11th of December, he was forced to raise the siege and retire northwards. His colleague, Yussuf Pasha, in East Hellas fared no better; here, too, the Turks gained some initial successes, but in the end the harassing tactics of Kolokotrones and his guerilla bands forced them back into the plain of the Kephissos. At the end of the year the Greeks were once more free to renew their internecine feuds.
Just when these feuds were at their height, in the autumn of 1823, the most famous of the Philhellenes who sacrificed themselves for the cause of Greece, Lord Byron, arrived in Greece.
The year 1824 was destined to be a fateful one for the Greek cause. The large loans raised in Europe, the first instalment of which Byron had himself brought over, while providing the Greeks with the sinews of war, provided Second civil war, 1824. them also with fresh material for strife. To the struggle for power was added a struggle for a share of this booty, and a second civil war broke out, Kolokotrones leading the attack on the forces of the government. Early in 1825 the government was victorious; Kolokotrones was in prison; and Odysseus, the hero of so many exploits and so many crimes, who had ended by turning traitor and selling his services to the Turks, had been captured, imprisoned in the Acropolis, and finally assassinated by his former lieutenant Gouras (July 16, 1824). But a new and more terrible danger now threatened Greece. Sultan Mahmud, despairing of suppressing the insurrection by his own power, had reluctantly summoned to his aid Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, whose Intervention of Mehemet Ali. well-equipped fleet and disciplined army were now thrown into the scale against the Greeks. Already, in June 1823, the pasha’s son-in-law Hussein Bey had landed in Crete, and by April of the following year had reduced the insurgent islanders to submission. Crete now became the base of operations against the Greeks. On the 19th of June Hussein appeared before Kasos, a nest of pirates of evil reputation, which he captured and destroyed. The same day the Egyptian fleet, under Ibrahim Pasha, sailed from Alexandria. Khosrev, too, emboldened by this new sense of support, ventured to sea, surprised and destroyed Psara (July 2), and planned an attack on Samos, which was defeated by Miaoulis and his fire-ships (August 16, 17). On the 1st of September, however, Khosrev succeeded in effecting a junction with Ibrahim off Budrun, and two indecisive engagements followed with the united Greek fleet on the 5th and 10th. The object of Ibrahim was to reach Suda Bay with his transports, which the Greeks should at all costs have prevented. A first attempt was defeated by Miaoulis on the 16th of November, and Ibrahim was compelled to retire and anchor off Rhodes; but the Greek admiral was unable to keep his fleet together, the season was far advanced, his captains were clamouring for arrears of pay, and the Greek fleet sailed for Nauplia, leaving the sea unguarded. On the 5th of December Ibrahim again set sail, and reached Suda without striking a blow. Here he completed his preparations, and, on the 24th of February 1825, landed at Modon in the Morea with a force of 4000 regular infantry and 500 cavalry. The rest followed, without the Greeks making any effort to intercept them.
The conditions of the war were now completely changed. The Greeks, who had been squandering the money provided by the loans in every sort of senseless extravagance, affected to despise the Egyptian invaders, but they Ibrahim in the Morea. were soon undeceived. On the 21st of March Ibrahim had laid siege to Navarino, and after some delay a Greek force under Skourti, a Hydriote sea-captain, was sent to its relief. The Greeks had in all some 7000 men, Suliotes, Albanians, armatoli from Rumelia, and some irregular Bulgarian and Vlach cavalry. On the 19th of April they were met by Ibrahim at Krommydi with 2000 regular infantry, 400 cavalry and four guns. The Greek entrenchments were stormed at the point of the bayonet by Ibrahim’s fellahin at the first onset; the defenders broke and fled, leaving 600 dead on the field. The news of this disaster, and of the fall of Pylos and Navarino that followed, struck terror into the Greek government; and in answer to popular clamour Kolokotrones was taken from prison and placed at the head of the army. But the guerilla tactics of the wily klepht were powerless against Ibrahim, who marched northward, and, avoiding Nauplia for the present, seized Tripolitsa, and made this the base from which his columns marched to devastate the country far and wide.
Meanwhile from the north the Ottomans were making another supreme effort. The command of the army that was to operate in west Hellas had been given to Reshid “Kutahia,” pasha of Iannina, an able general and a man of determined Reshid “Kutahia” besieges Missolonghi. character. On the 6th of April, after bribing the Albanian clansmen to neutrality, he passed the defile of Makrynoros, which the Greeks had left undefended, and on the 7th of May opened the second siege of Missolonghi. For twelve months the population held out, repulsing the attacks of the enemy, refusing every offer of honourable capitulation. This resistance was rendered possible by the Greek command of the sea, Miaoulis from time to time entering the lagoons with supplies; it came to an end when this command was lost. In September 1825 Ibrahim, at the order of the sultan, had joined Reshid before the town; piecemeal the outlying forts and defences now fell, until the garrison, reduced by starvation and disease, determined to hazard all on a final sortie. This took place on the night of the 22nd of April 1826; but a mistaken order threw the ranks of the Greeks into disorder, and the Turks entered the town pell-mell with the retreating crowd. Only a remnant of the defenders succeeded in gaining the forests of Mount Zygos, where most of them perished.
The fall of Missolonghi, followed as this was by the submission of many of the more notable chiefs, left Reshid free to turn his attention to East Hellas, where Gouras had been ruling as a practically independent chief and in the spirit Karaiskakis. of a brigand. The peasants of the open country welcomed the Turks as deliverers, and Reshid’s conciliatory policy facilitated his march to Athens, which fell at the first assault on the 25th of August, siege being at once laid to the Acropolis, where Gouras and his troops had taken refuge. Round this the war now centred; for all recognized that its fall would involve that of the cause of Greece. In these straits the Greek government entrusted the supreme command of the troops to Karaiskakis, an old retainer of Ali of Iannina, a master of the art of guerilla war, and, above all, a man of dauntless courage and devoted patriotism. A first attempt to relieve the Acropolis, with the assistance of some disciplined troops under the French Colonel Fabvier, was defeated at Chaidari by the Turks. The garrison of the Acropolis was hard pressed, and the death of Gouras (October 13th) would have ended all, had not his heroic wife taken over the command and inspired the defenders with new courage. For months the siege dragged on, while Karaiskakis fought with varying success in the mountains, a final victory at Distomo (February 1827) over Omar Vrioni securing the restoration to the Greek cause of all continental Greece, except the towns actually held by the Turks.
It was at this juncture that the Greek government, reinforced by a fresh loan from Europe, handed over the chief command at sea to Lord Cochrane (earl of Dundonald, q.v.), and that of the land forces to General (afterwards Sir Cochrane and Church. Richard) Church, both Miaoulis and Karaiskakis consenting without demur to serve under them. Cochrane and Church at once concentrated their energies on the task of relieving the Acropolis. Already, on the 5th of February, General Gordon had landed and entrenched himself on the hill of Munychia, near the ancient Piraeus, and the efforts of the Turks to dislodge him had failed, mainly owing to the fire of the steamer “Karteria” commanded by Captain Hastings. When Church and Cochrane arrived, a general assault on the Ottoman camp was decided on. This was preceded, on the 25th of April, by an attack, headed by Cochrane, on the Turkish troops established near the monastery of St Spiridion, the result of which was to establish communications between the Greeks at Munychia and Phalerum and isolate Reshid’s vanguard on the promontory of the Piraeus. The monastery held out for two days longer, when the Albanian garrison surrendered on terms, but were massacred by the Greeks as they were marching away under escort. For this miserable crime Church has, by some historians, been held responsible by default; it is clear, however, from his own account that no blame rests upon him (see his MS. Narrative, vol. i. chap. ii. p. 34). The assault on the Turkish main camp was fixed for the 6th of May; but, unfortunately, a chance skirmish brought on an engagement the day before, in the course of which Karaiskakis was killed, an irreparable loss in view of his prestige with the wild armatoli. The assault on the following day was a disastrous failure. The Greek defeat at Athens. Greeks, advancing prematurely over broken ground and in no sort of order, were fallen upon in flank by Reshid’s horsemen, and fled in panic terror. The English officers, who in vain tried to rally them, themselves only just escaped by scrambling into their boats and putting off to the war-vessels, whose guns checked the pursuit and enabled a remnant of the fugitives to escape. Church held Munychia till the 27th, when he sent instructions for the garrison of the Acropolis to surrender. On the 5th of June the remnant of the defenders marched out with the honours of war, and continental Greece was once more in the power of the Turks. Had Reshid at once advanced over the Isthmus, the Morea also must have been subdued; but he was jealous of Ibrahim, and preferred to return to Iannina to consolidate his conquests.