Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule From the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence (47 page)

By the end of the year there were two bodies claiming to be the government of Greece. One, dominated by the politicians and representing the Senate, was based at Kranídhi, south-east of Navplion, and the other, mainly composed of the military led by Kolokotrónis and representing the Executive, was at Tripolis. It was the Senate that had the better title to being the legal government and its opponents were in effect rebels.

The year 1824 was consumed in civil war between government and rebels, and the downward curve began. Byron reached Mesolongi in early January, and one of his projects was to attend a unifying congress of Greek leaders at Sálona near Delphi, but bad weather prevented him going. After little more than 100 days in Mesolongi Byron was dead, and we shall never know whether a combination of his charm, his perspicacity and his money might have mitigated or even resolved the civil strife.

Money in fact reached the government in July 1824 from another source: the first English loan. Much of it was wasted. At the seat of government, wrote Thomas Gordon, there was ‘a continual bustle, civil and military adventurers, scribes, and parasites flocking thither, heaping adulation on the men in office, and gaping to catch some drops of the golden shower that was at their disposal’.
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But this new money strengthened the government’s hand, and in particular enabled it to induce captains in Roumeli to come to the Peloponnese in its support. By the beginning of 1825 the government was victorious and Kolokotrónis, with other leaders of the rebels, was in prison on Hydra.

In 1824, while the Greeks were racked by internal conflict, the Turks had devised a much more coherent strategy. The Sultan called on the aid of his most powerful viceroy Mehmed Ali, pasha of Egypt, who in a twenty-year reform programme had transformed his country, in particular by the creation of an army and navy on European lines, trained
by foreign military experts, particularly from France. The strategy was for Egyptian forces to destroy the three Greek naval islands of Hydra, Spétses and Psará and then, secure from attack by them, to invade the Peloponnese by sea from the south. The inducement to the Egyptians was that Mehmed Ali’s son Ibrahim, who was to lead the expedition, would be given the pashalik of the Peloponnese – once he had conquered it.

The Egyptian fleet began this operation in the summer of 1824, and successfully took the smallest of the naval islands, Psará, but harassment by Greek ships prevented them doing more, and the onset of winter drove them back to Alexandria, where they intended to wait for spring before resuming operations. But this plan was brought forward: a French officer advised Ibrahim to forget about Hydra and Spétses for the moment, and not to wait for the spring. If Ibrahim crossed to the Peloponnese in the winter the winds would be too strong for the lighter Greek ships but would give his own larger vessels better manoeuvrability than in summer calms. Also the Greeks would not be expecting a winter invasion. Ibrahim took the advice.

Thus at the end of February 1825 the first contingent of Ibrahim’s troops landed at Methóni, and the downward curve of the Greeks’ fortunes became steeper. The invasion did surprise the Greeks, who had made no preparations to resist it, and in any case they despised the Egyptians: ‘We will dig their graves with their own bayonets,’
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said the Greek soldiers. Greek confidence was wildly misplaced. By the end of May Ibrahim was master of the fortresses of Methóni, Koróni and Old and New Navarino, and by the end of 1825 of all the major towns of the Peloponnese except Navplion and the rocky stronghold of Monemvasía. Kolokotrónis, released from prison and appointed commander-in-chief of the Greek forces, could do little more than skirmish with Ibrahim’s troops on land. At sea a fleet from Hydra under Andhréas Miaoúlis used fireships to destroy seven Egyptian warships and a dozen other vessels at Methóni, and a Greek fleet under Konstantínos Kanáris even got into the Egyptians’ home port of Alexandria but did little damage. Neither of these exploits interrupted Ibrahim’s operations.

During 1826 and 1827 Turkish gains continued. The last siege of Mesolongi had been begun in April 1825 by Reshid Pasha with troops from Árta in the north. At the beginning of 1826, with the Greeks still holding out, Reshid was joined by Ibrahim with troops brought in from the Peloponnese, and in April 1826 their combined forces took the town after a final and dramatic exodus by the Greeks.

In June 1826 Reshid, after his success at Mesolongi, began a siege of Athens, which had been in Greek hands since 1822. Greek forces were
assembled to support the beleaguered garrison of the Akropolis, under British commanders recently appointed in response to the crisis in Greek fortunes: General Sir Richard Church to command on land, and at sea Admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane. At Athens, Church and Cochrane were expected to coordinate not only their own actions on land and sea but also the operations of the Greek captains under their nominal command. In neither were they successful, and in May 1827 a massive but disorganised attack on the Turkish forces besieging Athens was heavily defeated. The Greek forces and their British commanders withdrew, and a month later the Akropolis garrison surrendered.

The Greek reaction to the Turkish successes following Ibrahim’s invasion was twofold: to seek help from abroad, and to reform the system of government. One form of help from abroad was already on its way: a second English loan was floated in London in February 1825, the same month as Ibrahim’s first landing in the Peloponnese. The money from this loan was not to be passed directly to the Greeks, to be wasted as much of the first loan money had been, but disbursed to help the Greek war effort by a board of control in London. The controllers used part of the loan to secure the services of Cochrane as commander of Greek naval forces, who demanded substantial pay for himself and a fleet of six expensive steamships to be built in England. One of these, after many engine breakdowns, reached Greece in September 1826, two more arrived later when the fighting was virtually over, one blew up during trials and two were never completed but left to rot in the Thames. The plan to build two frigates in the United States fared little better: in spite of help from the American government only one was completed, at a disastrously high cost.

The Greeks sought political as well as financial help from abroad. In September 1825 a Greek delegation to London presented to George Canning, now Britain’s foreign secretary, an Act of Submission. This remarkable document stated; ‘In virtue of the present act, the Greek nation (
éthnos
) places the sacred deposit of its liberty, independence, and political existence under the absolute protection of Great Britain.’
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Canning, of course, had to reject it. It would have meant war with Turkey, a step that Canning was not yet ready to risk.

The reform of the Greek government was prompted by the realisation that the present system was too cumbersome for these dangerous times. In particular the Executive could not be effective because it was hobbled by its dependence on the Senate. In April 1826 both were abolished and replaced by two temporary bodies: an eleven-man Government Commission to conduct the war, its edicts to have the force
of law, and a thirteen-strong Assembly Commission to negotiate with foreign powers. In April of the following year a further step was taken: under a new constitution Kapodhístrias was appointed first president of Greece, though his powers were designed to be tightly restricted by the Senate. Kapodhístrias did not reach Greece until early 1828, and meanwhile the president’s duties were to be carried out by a three-man Vice-Presidential Commission, derisively described as a boy, a sailor and a cuckold.

Thus by the summer of 1827 the Greeks were in utter disarray. They were heavily defeated on land, and their fleets could achieve little. Money from abroad was controlled by others, and much of it was misspent, while political support from abroad was refused. Their own government was ineffective, and attempts to reform it made it worse. It was the low point in the downward curve of Greek fortunes. They were not going to win without outside help.

Appeals for such help had been made from the very beginning of the war. When the Greeks took the town of Kalamáta in March 1821 they immediately issued a call to the powers of Europe: ‘Greece, our mother, was the lamp that illuminated you and she now reckons on your active philanthropy.’
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Money arrived from abroad through the two English loans of 1824 and 1825, though in neither case was the money effectively used. Individual philhellenes came to Greece to support their cause, but governments were not prepared to move. The Quintuple Alliance of Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia and France was committed to maintaining the peace of Europe, and in any case all of them had at the time peaceful if wary relations with Turkey.

The arbiters of Britain’s relations with Greece from the beginning of the war of independence were Castlereagh, foreign secretary until his death in September 1822, and Canning, foreign secretary from then until April 1827, when he briefly became prime minister until his own death in August. The two are often contrasted in character, Castlereagh as a cold fish and Canning as a charmer, and in 1809 they had actually fought a duel with pistols at dawn on Putney Heath (Canning was wounded in the thigh, Castlereagh was unscathed). Their policies too are often seen as contrasting, Castlereagh as champion of authority and Canning as champion of liberty, but this is a mistake. Neither wanted to be dragged into decisions by the Quintuple Alliance, and Castlereagh explicitly rejected the idea that the alliance should support established authority, however much that authority was abused. Castlereagh was if anything more sympathetic than Canning to the Greeks. ‘Ought the Turkish yoke’, Castlereagh asked, ‘to be for ever riveted upon the necks of the suffering
Greeks? It is impossible not to feel the appeal.’
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Canning, however, wrote of the Greeks: ‘There is no denying they are the most rascally set.’
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What eventually tipped Canning into action on Greece was information he received in October 1825 about Ibrahim’s plans for the Peloponnese. It reached him in an unorthodox way, at a private meeting with Princess de Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador to London, who had recently returned from St Petersburg. The information had been entrusted to her because it was too sensitive to be sent through normal government channels. Princess de Lieven brought Russia’s agreement to cooperate with Britain over Greece, in spite of their recent differences, and a startling revelation that in the Peloponnese Ibrahim intended, with the approval of the Sultan’s court, ‘to remove the whole Greek population, carrying them off into slavery in Egypt or elsewhere, and to re-people the country with Egyptians and others of the Mohammedan religion.’
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This would obviously lead to intervention by Russia on behalf of her fellow Orthodox, and Canning, besides being personally horrified by what he called the barbarisation project, was determined that Russia should not intervene alone. This could mean Russia becoming the new ruler of Greece, becoming dominant in the eastern Mediterranean, and even taking over a crumbling Ottoman Empire.

Canning now set about organising a joint intervention in Greece, with Russia and if possible with other members of the Quintuple Alliance. Austria refused to become involved, distant Prussia was little concerned with Greece, but after a year of patient diplomacy Canning won French agreement to participate with Britain and Russia. The three powers were acting completely independently of the Quintuple Alliance, whose influence as such was now at an end.

This agreement was formalised in the Treaty of London of 6 July 1827, by which time Canning had become prime minister. The treaty stated that an armistice would be proposed to both sides, and if either or both rejected it the three powers would intervene. The Greeks accepted it – they had nothing to lose – and the Turks predictably did not.

Intervention was in the hands of the admirals of the three signatory powers: Codrington for Britain, who was accepted as overall commander of the joint fleet, de Rigny for France and Heiden for Russia. The instructions to the admirals were hopelessly contradictory: they were to use force if necessary but without hostilities. Codrington eventually got clear advice from Britain’s minister at Constantinople, Stratford Canning, who in a letter of 1 September to Codrington told him that his orders were ‘ultimately to be enforced, if necessary, and when all other means are exhausted, by cannon shot’.
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On 20 October 1827 the British, French and Russian ships under Codrington moved into the Bay of Navarino to confront a combined Ottoman fleet of Egyptian, Turkish and Tunisian vessels. The battle began almost accidentally: in the early afternoon the captain of a British frigate saw an enemy fireship being prepared and sent a lieutenant in a pinnace to persuade the fireship crew to desist, but shots from the fireship killed several of the pinnace crew and the engagement quickly became general. It had been started by what may have been an accident, but one that was almost bound to happen, given the tense nature of the confrontation.

Four hours later the battle ended in complete victory for Codrington’s fleet, which had not lost a single ship and whose casualties were relatively light. But the Ottoman fleet had lost 60 of its 89 fighting ships, some 6,000 men killed and 4,000 wounded. Greek independence in some form was assured.

But the last and upward curve of Greek fortunes was still an enormously difficult struggle. Kapodhístrias landed at Navplion in January 1828 as Greece’s first president. He immediately persuaded the Senate to suspend the Constitution for a period and grant him full powers, assisted only by a 27-member council appointed by himself. Kapodhístrias was a man of contradictions. Outwardly he was the smooth and sophisticated international diplomat, but the private man was very different: an ascetic bachelor, constantly in poor health, far from rich, and solitary despite his many acquaintances in the worlds of politics, literature and the arts. Under the suave exterior was a driven man, involving himself personally with every detail of his massive task. Greece was in a terrible state, and the list of his concerns is amazing: it included the planting of potatoes, the construction of ploughs, the enclosure of pigs, the naming of streets, the building of fortifications and schools and clock-towers, the ordering of printing presses, the revision of the calendar and the prayer book and the translation of textbooks. He also conducted the complicated negotiations with Britain, France and Russia over the extent of an independent Greece and the appointment of a king from abroad.