Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule From the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence (35 page)

On the face of it, this Turkish decision to go to war was an extraordinary one. Turkey had no immediate interests in Poland. Also she had previously rejected appeals for intervention from the Polish government, but now responded to an appeal from a dissident group of Polish nobles who lacked leadership and had no clear programme. Possibly the main reason for the Ottoman decision was the belief that this was an opportune moment to provoke a war with Russia. In 1768 the Ottoman Empire had been at peace on all its borders for over twenty years, the longest period of peace in its history. The war parties, ever present at the Sultan’s court, were suffering from what might be called peace-weariness. Moreover the last conflict with the Russians had ended in 1739 with Russian defeats and treaty concessions. But the reality was that the Russian army and navy were more powerful than they had been 30 years earlier, while the Ottoman Empire as a whole was weak – as both the Sultan and his grand vizier recognised – due to the old problems of inflation, plagues, food shortages, unemployment, bandits and insubordinate factions. Moreover, Mehmed Emin Pasha, the grand vizier and commander-in-chief, was a military incompetent who, it is believed, advised against war with Russia. It was against this background that in 1768 Turkey launched what was arguably the most disastrous war in its history.

The Russian forces moved on three fronts against Ottoman territory round the Black Sea, towards the Caucasus in the east, towards the
Crimea in the centre and towards the southern Ukraine in the west. In the first years of the war the Russians were overwhelmingly successful, especially in the western sector, where they captured the Dniester town of Khotin in 1769, and pushed across the river into the Ottoman principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in today’s Romania. In February 1770 they occupied Bucharest, the same month as the Russian force under Theodore Orlov landed in the Peloponnese.

Preparation for the Orlov revolt in Greece as part of a general insurrection against the Turks had begun many years before. It was proposed in 1762, immediately after Catherine came to the throne, by Georgios Papazólis, a Greek from Macedonia who was an officer in the Russian artillery. The idea was enthusiastically taken up by the two Orlov brothers, Alexis and Theodore, who already knew Papazólis from his involvement with them in the brutal removal of Catherine’s husband Peter III. Papazólis was given leave from the Russian army and in 1763 arrived in Venice to start establishing contacts and finding recruits for the task of raising the revolt.

Of the two Orlov brothers the older, Alexis, was described as uneducated, rough and lacking in personal courage. Theodore, who reached Greece before his brother, was considered more intelligent, more affable and an admirer of Greece who hoped to win glory for Russia there.
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Unfortunately neither brother’s qualities were sufficient for the situation in which they found themselves.

Originally the Orlov plan had been for a rising of all the Balkan subjects of the Turks, but Papazólis, a Greek himself, soon concentrated on the Greeks. He left Venice in 1766 and moved down through Greece, ultimately reaching the little harbour of Ítilo in the Mani, where the first Russian troops would later land. From there he travelled round the southern Peloponnese, disguised as a Turk with a Turkish pseudonym and speaking Turkish.

His promises to the Greeks and his reports of the support they would give to a revolt became wildly optimistic. He assured the Greeks that Turkish rule would be overthrown and the Byzantine Empire re-established. He reputedly claimed to his Russian masters that the Greeks of the Peloponnese would raise 100,000 fighting men, whereas according to one historian’s estimate only 6,000 to 7,000 was the maximum possible.
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Nor was Papazólis deterred by the caution of the Mavromichális brothers of the Mani, whom he saw as leading the revolt there. They pointed out that the clans of the Mani were riven by disagreements and that in any case the Mani fighters, though excellent in defence, were wholly unsuitable as an attacking force.

With the outbreak in 1768 of war between Russia and Turkey, the Orlov brothers and the Russian court became directly involved in the Greek venture. In the summer of that year Alexis and Theodore Orlov, both Russian officers, were given leave of absence, ostensibly on grounds of ill health. They went first as Papazólis had done to Venice, and made contact with prominent Greeks in the city through whom they raised loans to support the enterprise, since presumably they lacked enough funds from Russia. But the Venetians had no wish to antagonise Turkey and banned the recruitment of volunteers, so the Orlovs had to leave, first to Genoa and then to Livorno. In January 1769, while the Orlovs were still in Venice, Catherine appointed the older brother Alexis as commander of the Greek rising. In the same month Count Nikita Panin, Russia’s First Minister, sent to Georgákis Mavromichális, one of the Mani leaders, a letter full of encouragement. Panin promised, on behalf of Catherine, that the Greeks would enjoy her ‘total support, unsparing compassion, protection and championship’ and assured them that they would be freed ‘once and for all from the oppressive yoke of their unjust infidel enemies’.
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Three Russian fleets were intended to sail from the Baltic to the Aegean to support the Greeks, but only the first played any part in the rising. The second fleet arrived off the Peloponnese when the fighting was virtually over, and the third did not even sail from the Baltic until after the Russians had abandoned Greece.

The first fleet left Russia at the end of July 1769, but was struck by accumulating disasters. Many of the sailors were raw recruits from mainland Russia who had never seen the sea before; many of them fell ill and some died on the voyage. The ships were old and constantly damaged by storms, and had to stop in England for repairs. It was not until late January 1770 that the fleet, by now reduced from nineteen to nine ships, assembled at the Minorca harbour of Mahon. There Theodore Orlov joined them from Livorno and was keen to press on at once, so with a few ships he led the way and reached Ítilo in the Mani on 28 February, to be greeted by a whole day of celebratory Greek gunfire. On the next day the rest of the fleet arrived.

The euphoria that attended the arrival of the Russians did not last long. The number of Russian troops, 600 at the most, was far lower than the Greeks had expected. Only Theodore Orlov had arrived in Greece, while his brother Alexis, overall commander of the expedition, stayed in Livorno, where he was to remain for many weeks longer. The Greek fighters were required to take an oath of allegiance to Catherine, and were put under the command of Russian officers. The Greeks were also
given Russian uniforms to wear, and however galling this was to the Greeks it was initially effective. The Turks of the Mani fled at the sight of them with a cry of ‘They’re not Greeks, they’re Russians,’ but only a few weeks later the Turks besieged in Pátras spotted the deception and said scathingly ‘Show us one real Russian and we’ll open the gates.’
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Despite their disagreements the Russians and the Greeks had some early successes. Two legions were formed, both with Greek captains but under the command of a Russian officer. The Eastern Legion, formed of 1,200 Greeks and 20 Russians, moved to besiege Mistrás, which contained few Turkish troops but a large number of non-combatant local Turks. The siege began at dawn on 10 March 1770 and the town’s outnumbered defenders surrendered nine days later. An appalling orgy of slaughter followed, much of it due to the uncontrolled bands from the Mani who followed the legion in the hope of plunder, and would fire on Russian troops in pursuit of it. The metropolitan bishop, in full episcopal robes and accompanied by his clergy, went out in an attempt to control the Mani bands, and the Russian commander tried to restrain them, sending Turks to Christian households for protection, but soon gave up. Probably 1,000 Turks were killed and another 1,000 taken captive, while many more fled. This episode worked against future Russian and Greek successes, since any Turkish garrison would resist to the last to avoid such a fate. Also the success at Mistrás was not followed up: eighteen days were lost in plundering and making dilatory repairs to the town’s defensive walls.

Only one significant development followed the fall of Mistrás: a provisional Greek government was set up, under the leading Greek captain of the Eastern Legion, Antónios Psarós. Its two main aims were first to recruit more Greeks to the cause, in which it was successful to the tune of some 8,000 men, and second to control them, which it was wholly unable to do. But short-lived and ineffective as this provisional government was, it was the first recognition by the Greeks that the overthrow of Turkish rule would require a political structure as well as battlefield success, something well understood by the Greeks of the war of independence.

The other legion, the Western, was smaller, composed of 200 Greeks and 12 Russians. Its main task was to join the Russian ships in besieging Koróni. This fortress is on a commanding rocky height at the far south-western tip of the Peloponnese, and the Russians saw the harbour below it as a suitable base for their fleet. This Western Legion left Ítilo on 9 March, and in the course of their march to Koróni drove the Turks from the towns of Andhroúsa and Leondári, killing, it was said, Greeks
as well as Turks in the process. By 12 March both the Russian fleet and the Western Legion were in position under the walls of Koróni and the siege began, personally commanded by Theodore Orlov.

However, all attempts by the attackers failed. Bombardment from the ships was ineffective, a mine intended to bring down part of the wall was put out of action by a Turkish counter-mine, and the Turks refused a demand to surrender. The Russians were already coming to see that Navarino, with its fine harbour in an enclosed bay, would be a better base for their fleet than Koróni, but the Mani troops insisted that the fortress could still be taken. So the Russian and Greek forces remained for six weeks under the walls of Koróni, achieving nothing.

The Koróni siege was a failure but the Orlov venture in its first weeks was successful elsewhere. The Eastern Legion had taken Mistrás, Greeks rose in revolt in Corinth, besieged Navplion, shut up the Turks in the citadel at Monemvasía and took Kiparissía in three days with the slaughter of 1,000 Turks. Volunteers from the Ionian islands were brought into the north-west Peloponnese on Russian transports, 2,000 from Zákinthos and 3,000 from Kephaloniá, in defiance of their Venetian masters. They drove the Turks from Gastoúni and besieged Pátras, though with no more success than at Koróni. Further north there were risings in the towns around Mesolongi and Návpaktos, and in distant Crete there was a sympathetic revolt in the always lawless region of Sphakiá.

At the beginning of April Theodore Orlov sent to Catherine an exaggerated report of his victories. He gave little credit to the Greeks, saying that they were deceitful flatterers, reckless but cowardly, interested only in plunder and with no trace of Christian virtue. But he claimed that apart from Tripolis, Corinth and Pátras he was master of the whole Peloponnese and only needed more Russian troops to complete his conquest.

Now, however, the tide turned. The Turks had been completely unprepared for the rising, and could not believe that Russian warships would sail all the way from the Baltic to the eastern Mediterranean. Their own troops were fully engaged against the Russians on other fronts, so their solution was to bring in Albanian mercenaries. In early April 1770 one Albanian band crossed the Corinth isthmus and relieved the siege of Corinth, and another, of 500 foot soldiers and 500 cavalry, crossed the narrow channel near Mesolongi and drove off the besiegers of Pátras. From there they moved on to reinforce the garrison of Tripolis, which was now under siege by the Russians and Greeks of the Eastern Legion who were ranged on the hills overlooking the town.

The Turks and Albanians of Tripolis were not content to defend but attacked, and at the first onslaught the Greeks threw away their weapons
and fled. They had come for plunder, even bringing sacks in which to carry it away; now they were cut down by the pursuing horsemen. Though the Russians stood firm they were soon overwhelmed. The Albanians then turned on the Greek inhabitants of Tripolis. The metropolitan bishop and five of his clergy met a horrible death by impalement, and it is claimed that within a few hours around 3,000 Greeks were slaughtered.

Before the Albanians could reach the far south of the Peloponnese the Russians achieved one last military success: the capture of Navarino, which had become the preferred base for their fleet. A few days later, on 22 April 1770, Alexis Orlov, the commander-in-chief of the expedition, finally reached the Peloponnese, nearly eight weeks after the arrival of his younger brother Theodore and the first Russian troops. Alexis immediately ordered the fruitless siege of Koróni to be abandoned, leaving the local Greeks to the revenge of the Turks. For most of the Greeks of Koróni the only escape was to make the twenty-mile journey to the protection of Navarino, on foot and carrying their belongings with them.

Alexis’ first priority was to win back the support of the Greeks after the catastrophe at Tripolis and the ignominious withdrawal from Koróni. Accordingly he sent letters to the leading Greek captains, urging cooperation and promising rewards for victory from Catherine’s abundant treasury. He also issued a general appeal to the Greeks at a symbolic ceremony in Navarino celebrating the conversion of a Turkish mosque to a Christian church. The appeal spoke to the Greeks as if they were a united body, which was far from the case, and was framed in religious terms, being addressed to ‘all orthodox Christian Greeks who are subject to the tyranny of the Turks’, and proclaiming that ‘all the world knows how our fellow Christians are tormented by the infidel Turks.’ It claimed that the Russians in the present war had annihilated 600,000 Turks. It also promised that the Russians would do everything necessary to support the Greeks, and that Catherine wished the Greeks ‘to remain always under her care and protection’.
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This last statement may have been counterproductive, reviving fears that liberation from the Turks might lead only to subservience to Russia.