The War of Greek independence (1821 - 1830), or Greek Revolution , is the conflict thanks to which them Greek, finally supported by the great powers (France, Great Britain, Russia), succeeded in obtaining their independence of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1821, the orthodoxe Greeks, Chrétiens revolted vis-a-vis the domination of the Ottoman Empire. This revolt succeeds, and the independence in fact was proclaimed at the time of the National Assembly of Épidaure in 1822. The European public opinion was rather favorable to the movement, the image of Chateaubriand, Jean-Gabriel Eynard, Lord Byron or the Colonel Fabvier some of many the philhellenes. The Russia, as for it, was interested in the fate of the Greek Orthodoxes. However, no country, the such France of Villèle, moved, because of the political and diplomatic weight of the the Holy Alliance, and particularly of the Austria of Metternich, partisan keen of the order and balance. Greeks living out of the Ottoman Empire, for example the elite of Constantinople (the Phanariotes) or of the inhabitants of the Ionian Islands such as Ioannis Kapodistrias or Spiridon Trikoupis came quickly helps some with the revolutionists.

During two years, the Greeks multiplied the victories. However, they started to tear. The Sublime Door called for the aid its powerful vassal Egyptian Méhémet Ali. For the Greeks, a phase of repressions started. However, the Russians more and more ardently wished to intervene. The British , as for them, wished to limit the Russian influence in the area. A naval forwarding of demonstration was suggested in 1827 by the Convention of London (1827). A Russian, French and British fleet joint met and destroyed, without to have really sought it the fleet turquo-Egyptian woman at the time of the Bataille of Navarin. France intervened, in a spirit of Croisade by the French forwarding in Morée (Peloponnese) in 1828. Russia declared the war with the Turks the same year. Its victory was ratified by the treated of Andrinopole, in 1829, which increased its regional influence.

These European interventions precipitated the creation of the Greek State. The Conférence of London (1830), where met British representatives, French and Russian, the assertion of Greek independence allowed indeed that Prussia and Austria authorized. France, Russia and the United Kingdom kept then a notable influence on the young kingdom.

Othoman occupation

See also: Othoman Greece

A favorable context

Influence of Russia

Catherine II of Russia had made the same Greek dream as Pierre Large the. She did not only wish to extend the Russian influence more to the south, in the search of a free sea (which would not freeze the winter like the other Russian seas). She wished to replace the Ottoman Empire by a “Empire of the Balkans”, protected by Russia, even controlled by a Russian. One of its grandsons had been fore-mentioned Constantin, in homage to the last Byzantine Emperor Constantin XI Paleologist of which it could have taken the continuation. Catherine, in order to achieve this goal, deployed a whole rhetoric in Balkans and in Greece, affirming for example the “historical rights” of the hellenism to direct the area. Its envoys made also many contacts with the notable ones, the ecclesiastics and the chiefs of the Klephte S in Grèce.
The Russian intervention was also more direct. The Russo-Turkish war of 1769 - 1774 had ended in a Russian victory, in spite of an unloading missed in the Peloponnese (countryside of Orloff). The Traité of Küchük-Kaïnardji of 1774 had made of the Tsar of Russia the Guard of the Orthodoxes (and thus of the Greeks) in the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, the Greeks had obtained the right to make trade under Russian house freely. The treaty had been supplemented in 1782: the Greeks had the right to settle in the Crimea.

Economic development

The Treaty of Küchük-Kaïnardji made that under Russian house, the Greek fleet became in thirty years the first fleet commercial of the Mediterranean, of Odessa to Barcelona. The islands of ship-owners, Hydra at the head, made fortune. There were Greeks of the Diaspora in all the large ports of the the Mediterranean: Trieste, Marseilles, Leghorn, etc Those became aware of the duties which they had with respect to their fatherland and engaged in the cause of Independence, mainly by offering a financing, as did it for example the Zossimas brothers of Leghorn.

Cultural alarm clock

Rigas and Coraïs

Parallel to this economic development, there was a cultural alarm clock. Thus, Rigas Féréos Velestinlis (1757-1798), the poet of country origin multiplied the literary and political works. He wrote even a constitutional project for the Greece and a Balkan confederation. Freemason, it had the idea to create a secret society to work for Greek independence.

Philiki Etairia

This idea was then taken up by the Hétairie. In Greece, the echoes of the French revolution raised the enthusiasm of the intellectuals and woke up the desire of independence. The poet Rigas counted on the intervention of Bonaparte after his victories in Italy. He even tried to contact it in Venice in 1797, right before being stopped and carried out. Its secret society took again its activity only after the Congrès of Vienna, under the name of Hétairie of the friends. This friendly Company or Friendly Company or Company of the Companions or also Hétairie were created in 1814 with Odessa by three members of the Greek commercial class of the city: Nicolas Scoufas (1779-1819), Athanase Tsacalof (1788-1851) of Épire and Emmanuel Xanthos (1772-1852) of Patmos. This Company did not have at the beginning of precise program. She knew hard beginnings, then a strong development after 1818. She recruited in all the Greece and all the Diaspora. 60% of the members were merchants or bankers. Very few people resulted however from the modest milieus.

Phanariotes

Moreover, since the 17th century, several important stations in the important administration of the Ottoman Empire were occupied by Greeks. The majority of them lived in the district of Phanar with Constantinople and were called the Phanariotes. With 18th, Phanariotes were named with the head of the Rumanian or Danubian provinces of Moldavie and Valachie, with respectively for capital Jassy and Bucharest. There, enjoying an important autonomy with respect to the Sublime Door, their courses “princely” became centers of intense mental activity, very influenced by the France of the Encyclopédie. They remained however more reformists that revolutionists because member of the Othoman administration.

The rising of Ali Pasha

The war in the Danubian provinces

Objectives

The Hétairie turned to the orthodoxe “big brother” : the Russia. Ioannis Kapodistrias then formed part of the advisers of the Tsar, just like Alexandre Ypsilántis was one of its generals. In 1820, after having contacted Kapodistrias and in front of its refusal, the Hétairie chooses as military chief the Greek general of the Russian army Ypsilántis. It was charged to implement the project of generalized insurrection planned for the end 1820. This project was simple. It envisaged two hearths of rising: Moldo-Valachie initially, under the direction of the prince Ypsilántis with for objectives Jassy and Bucharest, then a descent towards the Macedonia. There, the troops would make their junction with the second nucleus of revolt: the Morée whose insurrectionists would have gone up towards North. The idea was to push all the Christian provinces under Othoman domination in the Balkans to be raised. One would raise oneself against the Turks with Bucharest, in Macedonia, Thrace, in Greece, in the islands and even with Constantinople. One would seize the Sultan to make him accept the independence of all his European provinces. At the same time, a fast victory would put the the Holy Alliance vis-a-vis the accomplished fact. It could only accept this independence of the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The Rumanian provinces were also since Pierre Large the one of the military and diplomatic main objectives of Saint-Pétersbourg. A conquest of the area by one of its generals, even in the name of insurgent Greece was not badly seen by the Tsar Alexandre Ier. The insurrection would allow an armed intervention with the Russia. The Russia would then have achieved its goal. The Traité of Küchük-Kaïnardji authorized it to intervene in the Rumanian provinces to protect the Orthodoxes. Thus, it would be established definitively in the area of Balkans. The European provinces of the Ottoman Empire would certainly become independent, but would turn to Saint-Pétersbourg on which their survival would depend.

Failure

February 22nd (Julien) /March 6th (Gregorian) 1821, Alexandre Ypsilántis crosses the Prout, entering in Moldavie, where it started to convince the population to raise itself. Thus the insurrection started It took Jassy, without encumbers, the very same day. March 8th, 1821 it made public a proclamation which is regarded as the declaration of War of Greek Independence. But, the Balkan populations did not answer the call, Ypsilántis was beaten by the Ottoman Empire in Moldavie and Valachie after nine months of rough combat. Isolated, the various parts of its army were massacred the ones after the others by the Turks: thus heroic two hundred students of the " battalion sacré" in June 1821 with Dragatsani. Alexandre Ypsilántis passed by again the border and took refuge in Austria, but it was immediately imprisoned there. There remained locked up almost until its death. Greece, where the population had been raised was found only vis-a-vis the Ottoman Empire.

Insurrection in Greece

Rising

The moment was favorable. Ali Pasha had just revolted against the Sultan who had had to mobilize much his forces around Ioannina. There were thus potentially less soldiers Turkish available to repress Greek rising. The Sultan had sent Khursit Pasha and his troops against Ali Pasha. Khursit Pasha controlled the Peloponnese then. Theodoros Kolokotronis had also furrowed the Peloponnese at the beginning of 1821 in order to advance the cause of Independence. Theodoros Kolokotronis had started from Zante which with Corfou was one of the nucleuses of revolt. In these islands occupied by the the United Kingdom, it had been useful in the British army and had learned there the tactics which was going to be used to him during the War as Independence.

March 25th, 1821, the archbishop of Patras, Germanos, proclaimed the national liberation war. This date is that which will be retained and by the history and the memory. It remains symbolic system, because it corresponds to the Annunciation (Evangelismos). It is more probable than rising started between the 15 and on March 20th, on all the Northern coast of the Peloponnese (Patras, Vostitsa, Kalavryta) and in the Magne.

There were immediately Turk massacres in Morée (as at the time of the head office of Tripolizza), followed massacres of Greeks to Constantinople. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregoire V, thus arbitrarily was condemned and hung on April 10th, 1821. It was left hung three days, before it is delivered to the crowd of the city.

One had initially witnessed a Greek victory (1821-1822) partly because the Turks had been surprised and were occupied by Ali Pasha. The Klephte S and the Armatole S on ground and the troops at sea succeeded in releasing the Peloponnese, central Greece and the major part of the islands. The Turkish fleet could not leave any more its shelter of Propontide, while the Ottoman Empire always had a considerable force mobilized or immobilized in the Balkans.

January 12th, 1822, with Épidaure, the assembled Greek deputies proclaimed the independence of Greece, voted a constitution and chooses like chair Aléxandros Mavrokordátos. The wind was not however to be long in turning for the Greek national insurrection. In April occurred the Massacre of Tap-holes and a little later Ali Pasha having died, the Turks re-occupied the Épire. However, the Greeks accepted the assistance of many foreign volunteers (the Philhellènes), in particular of the British liberals like Lord Byron and French the such colonel Fabvier, and gained successes over the troops of the sultan. Byron unloaded with weapons provided by the committees European philhellenes on January 4th, 1824 to Missolonghi. Its death, in April, were important turning signal of awakening of the situation through all Europe.

The Diplomacy of Metternich

To preserve intact the work of the Congress of Vienna, to protect themselves from interior revolutions and to preserve geopolitical balance places from there to Europe, the victorious powers of the France, had organized themselves within the the Holy Alliance. This one, thanks to the policy known as of the Congresses, took care in a very fastidious way of the evolutions of interior policy of the European countries. The Austrian Chancellor, the Prince of Metternich was the principal craftsman. He had made adopt with the Congress of Troppau at the end of 1820 right of intervention of the legitimate powers in a country threatened by any revolutionary movement (liberal or national). These movements could break the political stability of Europe. He went from there thus from the creation of independent Greece which would weaken the Ottoman Empire, worsens which could possibly imploser and to parcel out itself. European balance would be then in danger, and Europe would again be likely to know a conflict of the width of the Napoleonean wars.

In 1822, Alexandre {{Ier}} was increasingly inclined to follow the way which Kapodistrias suggested to him and to help insurgent Greece. He complained not to find with Vienna and in the the Holy Alliance all the support which he could have discounted, whereas he had, brought to him his assistance at the time of the businesses of Italy a few months earlier. He sent the Tatistchev general to plead his cause. It wished which was definitively recognized its quality of Guard of orthodoxe in the Ottoman Empire. It wished also the insurance of a support, at least moral, in the event of military action of its share against the Turks. But, the Tatistchev general was a personal political enemy of Kapodistrias. He did not support the influence that a Greek could have on his Russian Tsar. Alexandre could obtain Metternich only the insurance that, if the Sultan refused the legitimate applications of Saint-Pétersbourg, then the François Emperor would break any diplomatic relation with the Sublime Door, in the most solemn way and brightest possible, provided that all the others combined made some in the same way. The Russians thus did not have the unconditional support of the Empire of Austria and did not dare to engage too front.

Alexandre {{Ier}} accepted that the Greek problem was discussed at the time of a ministerial conference with Vienna. The decisions taken by this conference would be then proposed, for agreement, at the time of the following congress of the the Holy Alliance. To accept a conference with Vienna amounted accepting an Austrian payment of the crisis. The Tsar indicated Tatistchev like representative with the conference. The memories and notes which it sent to the Tsar would have been written by Metternich itself. At the end of June 1822, the triumph of Austria was total. Alexandre {{Ier}} suggested with Kapodistrias taking an indefinite leave. This last left for Greece.

In October, with the Congress of Vérone, the Question of the East seemed regulated. Alexandre {{Ier}} was satisfied with this moral support in its recriminations against the Sublime Door. It did not raise any objection when one refused to receive the delegation which the Greek insurrectionists had sent to plead their cause. The businesses of Spain were then much more urgent to regulate. The Tsar was then put vis-a-vis a contradiction. How could it accept the French intervention against the Spanish liberals in revolt against their legitimate sovereign and suggest a Russian intervention in favor of the Greek liberals against their legitimate sovereign?

The French triumphed very quickly over the Spanish insurrectionists thanks to the battle of Trocadéro. Alexandre {{Ier}} did not have then any more to worry about the Spanish revolution and deferred its attention on Greece. The Tsar accepted at the time of a meeting at in October 1823 all that Metternich proposed since more than one year: to separate the conflicts. There was then side the conflict Russo-Turkish in connection with the Rumanian provinces. Alexandre agreed that this disagreement could be regulated by the joint mediation of the Austria and of the the United Kingdom. Other side, there were the Greek problem and mainly the way in which the Sublime Door subjected an area which belonged to him. Alexandre accepted the principle of conferences " grecques" with Saint-Pétersbourg. There, the representatives diplomatic Prussian, British, French and Austrian did not have decision-making power and were obliged with each stage to refer about it to their respective government, which, being given the distances, promised infinite times. Thus, the Greek insurrection would have largely had time to be choked by the Turks, without need for an external mediation.

The conferences trailed in length, as envisaged. With the autumn of 1824, Alexandre {{Ier}} proposed the creation of three more or less autonomous Christian principalities in Greece, a little on the model of the Moldavie and the Valachie. The project does not succeed. One separated to begin again at the beginning of 1825.

Civil wars

The Greek insurrectionists then seemed to facilitate the task with the the Holy Alliance. They had gained at the time of the first two years of the conflict. But, very quickly, they ceased fighting against the Turks, to fight between them mainly to share the capacity. There was indeed a strong opposition between two categories of potential leaders, with two types of legitimacy quite as valid. On a side, were the notable merchants resulting from the Othoman administration of the continent and the maritime middle-class of the islands. Other, there were the war leaders resulting from the class " para-sociale" klephtes, armatoles and brigands, often makes some really resulting from the farming community like Kolokotronis and hoping to give a more important political role to the peasants. One then attended two civil wars in 1823-1825. The first had been caused by the notable ones which wanted to take again the control of the revolution and to give it in the way which it defended by drawing aside the war leaders of the capacity. The second opposed the continent to the islands. On a side, one found notable Peloponnese helped of Kolokotronis and other, the tradesmen of the islands (Hydra mainly with Georgios Koundouriotis and Mavrokordátos) supported by the liberals, the majority of the popular class and the soldiers of central Greece.

Multiple reversals of situation

The situation of the Peloponnese at the time of the war is one of the examples more speaking about the military difficulties encountered by the Greeks. It was of this peninsula that the insurrection left, with Germanos with Patras, in March - April 1821 and Kanelos Deliyannis on May 23rd with Langadia. Immediately, the Maniotes of Petrobey Mavromichalis which had always resisted to the Othomans and had ever been conquered, left to the combat. They were imitated by Kolokotronis and its men. The town of Tripoli was taken as of October 1821. In 1822, Kolokotronis demolished the Dramani Turk with the procession of Dervenaki and took the way of Corinthe, then of Nauplie which fell in 1823. At this point in time the Turkish counter-attack with Ibrahim Pasha took place which reconquered all the Peloponnese with its Egyptian army. It is only into 1828 that the battle of Navarin and the unloading of the French Forwarding of Morée obliged the Othomans to evacuate the peninsula.

The Sultan asked for the assistance of his vassal Egyptian Mehemet Ali. This one was directly given the responsability to repress the revolution in Crete, with Cassos and Psara. Ibrahim, the son of Mehemet Ali unloaded in the Peloponnese. The Greek fleet had not been able to prevent the unloading because the sailors who had not been paid for a long time refused to take the sea. The Egyptian troops obtained in Morée proven victories. The Greek defeats multiplied of 1824 to 1827, in spite of the strong resistance of Kolokotronis in the Peloponnese, of Karaïskákis in central Greece, of Miaoulis and Sachtouris on sea. Ibrahim Pasha then undertook to off-set Greeks in Egypt, which alienated the sympathy of the French to him and caused the reinforcement of the activity of the committees philhellenes.

The European will more largely to intervene became extensive then. The Russia continued its policy aiming at weakening the Ottoman Empire. She insisted on orthodoxe solidarity to be established in the Balkan areas. The the United Kingdom felt that there could not remain neutral if there wished diplomatically to remain present in the area. The France which had obeyed Metternich a long time because it sought to make forget the Révolution and Napoleon, changed policy now. Charles X, heir to the crown of France, regarded the intervention in Greece as a moral obligation to come to help the Greek Christians.

The new tsar of Russia, Nicolas Ier, decided to take the initiative; he addressed to Mahmud II an ultimatum in March 1826. The Sultan yielded. The treaty of Akkerman (October 1826) granted to the Russians commercial advantages in all the Empire, and especially the right of protection on the Moldavie, the Valachie and the Serbia. This Russian success caused the reaction of the United Kingdom which suggested in July 1827 a British, Russian mediation and Frenchwoman between Greeks and Turks. The Greeks were not any more in position to refuse: they controlled nothing any more but Nauplie and Hydra. The Sultan, on the other hand, rejected it. The three powers then threatened to intervene militarily. They concentrated their fleets with Navarin where an incident involved the destruction of the fleet turco-Egyptian woman (October 1827).
In parallel, a task force French unloaded in Morée and obtained the departure of Ibrahim Pasha. Russian troops invaded the Rumanian provinces and seized Erzurum, in the East of Turkey, and of Andrinople in the West (August 1829). To avoid a catch of Constantinople by the Russian troops, the United Kingdom obtained a diplomatic payment. The Sultan already had yielded and signed the treaty of Andrinople (September 14th, 1829) with Russia. This treaty was supplemented in February 1830 by the conference of London: the independence of Greece was proclaimed and guaranteed by the great powers. The new State included/understood the Peloponnese, the South of Roumélie (the border went from Arta to Volos) and of the islands.

In May 1827, the Parliament of Trézène had written a third constitution and elected official Ioannis Kapodistrias president. He controlled January 1828 until his assassination with Nauplie, on October 9th, 1831. The three powers proposed the throne of Greece with Léopold of Saxony-Cobourg. This one, near to Kapodistrias which had described the difficulties to him of controlling the young State, refused. One chooses then the young person Othon de Wittelsbach, the second wire, then 17 years old, King of Bavaria, Louis Ist.

References

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