In April 1820 the Philikí Etería had at last found a leader in Alexander Ipsilántis, the dashing soldier not yet 30 with impressive credentials both as a staff officer – he had been ADC to the Tsar – and on the battlefield, where he had lost his right arm. However, Ipsilántis’ mandate was only the very general one that he should ‘supervise and command [the society] in every respect’.1 He had to decide what to make of his new position.
The first step was to discover what support he might expect from Russia, that is from Kapodhístrias and from the Tsar. Ipsilántis was later to claim that Kapodhístrias had encouraged him, and Kapodhístrias to deny it. Kapodhístrias by his own account urged extreme caution, saying, ‘Those drawing up such plans are most guilty and it is they who are driving Greece to calamity. They are wretched hucksters destroyed by their own evil conduct and now taking money from simple souls in the name of the fatherland they do not possess. They want you in their conspiracy to inspire trust in their operations. I repeat: be on your guard against these men.’2 Kapodhístrias also refused to allow Ipsilántis an interview with the Tsar, and Ipsilántis had to contrive the meeting himself, coming across the Tsar as if by chance while he was walking in the garden of the summer palace at Tsarskoe Selo. Ipsilántis tried to talk to him about the plight of the Greeks, but the Tsar would go no further than to say: ‘You are young and eager, as always, my friend, but you can see that Europe is at peace.’3 The tone was genial, but the message was clear: do nothing to disturb the peace of Europe.
For the next year of preparation Ipsilántis, unrestrained it seems by the cautions of Kapodhístrias and the Tsar, embarked on a hectic programme of travel, mainly in the company of Xánthos, the man who had brought him to the leadership of the Philikí Etería. He went for a few days to Moscow, from there to Kiev, Ipsilántis’ family home, in early August to Odessa and finally to the town of Izmail, no more than twenty-five miles from the Wallachian border, where many leaders of the society were now assembled. From Izmail on 8 October Ipsilántis issued a proclamation calling on all Greeks to prepare for the coming struggle, in words which betrayed a dangerous incoherence in his thinking. He first dismissed the idea that the Greeks needed foreign help to achieve their independence, claiming that they still had the military prowess of their classical ancestors: ‘Cast your eyes toward the seas, which are covered by our seafaring cousins, ready to follow the example of Salamís. Look to the land, and everywhere you will see Leonidas at the head of patriotic Spartans.’ By contrast, he said, the Turks were flabby, weak and disunited, so the Greeks could easily defeat them alone. Moreover, foreigners always exacted a price for their aid. Let the Greeks therefore first shake off the tyrants’ yoke by their own efforts, and then the great powers would be forced to make alliances with them.4 But the reality was that foreign support was vital to the success of a Greek revolution, and Ipsilántis knew it. Indeed his whole strategy was based on the assumption that his venture would have Russian support.
Ipsilántis had from the first envisaged a revolt beginning in the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, but by October 1820, at the time of the Izmail proclamation, he had changed his mind and announced that the revolution should be launched in the Peloponnese before the end of the year. However, his contacts in the Peloponnese told him that the Peloponnese was not yet ready, information which Ipsilántis should have sought before publicising his plan rather than after. Ipsilántis therefore reverted to the original idea of beginning the revolt in Moldavia and Wallachia, a decision for which there had always been a number of compelling reasons.
Ipsilántis knew the region, as his father had been governor of Wallachia until deposed in 1806. More importantly, Ipsilántis’ forces, if gathered in south-west Russia, were only the width of a river from Moldavia, but would need complex and risky transport to reach the Peloponnese. Ipsilántis also hoped that the immediate neighbours of the principalities, the Serbs and the Bulgarians, would join the rising – hopes which came to nothing. Another factor, cynically suggested at the time, was that Ipsilántis wanted his campaign near a frontier across which he could escape if things went wrong: either the Russian frontier on the east of the principalities or, if necessary, the less welcoming Austrian frontier to the north. Furthermore, Russia had a basis for intervention in the principalities which she did not have elsewhere in Ottoman territory. Moldavia and Wallachia were technically only vassal states of Turkey, not part of the empire, and the Sultan was forbidden by treaty to send troops into the area without Russian agreement. Thus Russia might, it was hoped, prevent by her veto the use of Turkish forces against Ipsilántis, or, if the veto was disregarded, drive the Turks back, or, at worst, occupy the principalities jointly with Turkey, which could be regarded as a step towards their freedom. Crucial to all these calculations, of course, was the assumption that once Ipsilántis crossed the border and raised the banner of freedom the people of the principalities would flock to it and help him to establish their independence.
Moldavia comprised the eastern part of present-day Romania, and Wallachia the southern, both being separated by the Carpathian mountains from Transylvania, then part of Austria’s empire. The river Pruth marked Moldavia’s eastern frontier with Russia, and the Danube Wallachia’s southern border with present-day Bulgaria. The plains of the principalities formed one of the most fertile and productive parts of the Ottoman domains and were Constantinople’s main providers of food. Since 1716 the principalities had been governed by phanariot Greeks, that is Greeks from the prosperous Phanar district of Constantinople who formed the upper ranks of the Ottoman civil service, and it was thanks to their initiatives in agriculture that the region had become Constantinople’s main granary. They also introduced schools, printing presses and a theatre in Bucharest which put on tragedies and comedies in French and plays translated into Greek. With wealth and culture came decadence. Neroulós, first minister to the governor of Moldavia when Ipsilántis invaded, wrote: ‘On remarquait dans ces provinces la frivolité à côté de la politesse, et le relâchement des moeurs à côté de l’urbanité.’5 The principalities were thus ripe for exploitation by a succession of Turkish-appointed hospodars or governors. ‘As the fiscal agent of the sultan,’ wrote Finlay, ‘[the hospodar] was terrible to his subjects, and as an extortioner, for his own profit, he was hateful. The hospodars themselves amassed large fortunes in a few years, and every new hospodar came attended by a crowd of hungry and rapacious Greeks, who usually arrived loaded with debts, but who expected, like their master, to enrich themselves during a short tenure of office.’ Thus the inhabitants of the principalities ‘were the wretched slaves of a race of rapacious oppressors, who were also themselves slaves’.6
It was therefore unlikely, on any realistic view, that Ipsilántis would receive support for the Greek cause from the people of the principalities; the poor had every reason to hate their Greek overlords and the rich had no inclination to change their comfortable and cultivated lives. He could however expect support from some of the leaders, at least so long as he was useful to them in their own pursuit of increased power. One supporter was the governor of Moldavia, Michael Soútsos, ruling from the capital Iaşi. He seemed an enthusiastic member of the Philikí Etería and offered the society substantial sums of money, but he may not have been as committed to Ipsilántis’ cause as he appeared. Neroulós, his first minister, recorded that Soútsos warned the Turkish foreign minister of Ipsilántis’ imminent entry into Moldavia and asked for instructions. This was a prudent move, since if Ipsilántis succeeded Soútsos could ignore the instructions, and if Ipsilántis failed Soútsos could claim to have been a loyal servant of the Porte throughout.
In Wallachia intrigue was rife. The governor, Alexander Soútsos (no relation of the Moldavian governor), was gravely ill, some said poisoned by agents of the Etería, and in January 1821 on his deathbed set up a caretaker government of native nobles or boyars. These saw this interregnum as an opportunity to establish Wallachian rights, in particular the right to be governed by a native prince rather than a phanariot Greek. To this end they sent at the end of January one of the government’s military commanders, Theodore Vladimirescu, into western Wallachia, ostensibly to put down disturbances there, but in fact with instructions to create a disturbance of his own, aimed at inciting the local inhabitants and boyars against the phanariot Greeks. Vladimirescu’s private motive, however, was to make himself prince of an independent Wallachia. His game was thus a double one from the start, and its increasing deceptions finally undid him. Of a different stamp was another of the Bucharest commanders, Iorgáki Olimpiótis. Thomas Gordon, historian of the Greek revolution and participant in it, described Iorgáki as ‘distinguished for prudence, valour, and patriotism, and enthusiastically wedded to the principles of the Hetoeria [Etería]. He would have been the most proper man to take the direction of the war beyond the Danube, but … Ypsilanti reserved that task to himself.’7 Initially Vladimirescu and Iorgáki were on the same side, both apparently devoted to the Philikí Etería, and they had even signed an agreement to support each other in its cause. Vladimirescu was a political animal, Iorgáki quite the opposite: Neroulós wrote that ‘le capitaine Georgaky, intrépide en face des armées ennemies, montrait de la timidité devant les prétendus politiques, qui fourmillaient dans le camp d’Ypsilanty’.8 The co-operation between Iorgáki and Vladimirescu was not to last.
We left Ipsilántis at the Russian town of Izmail on the Danube in October 1820, having decided that the rising should after all begin in Moldavia and Wallachia, not in the Peloponnese. In December 1820 he moved his headquarters north to Kishinev, the Russian town closest to the Moldavian capital Iaşi, and on 6 March 1821 crossed the river Pruth at the border settlement of Skulyany. He was accompanied only by two of his younger brothers, by Georgios Kantakouzinós, a Russian colonel from an old Wallachian family who was shortly to be appointed Ipsilántis’ chief of staff, and a handful of others including servants, about ten people in all; but 70,000 Russian troops, he claimed, would soon follow. On the same day that they crossed the Pruth Ipsilántis and his party, with a troop of 200 cavalry sent out from Iaşi to escort them, entered the city half an hour after sunset.
Ipsilántis’ first proclamation from Iaşi expressed no doubts about the success of his venture. Running to well over a thousand words, it recalled again the heroes of antiquity and claimed that the descendants of Athens’ ancient enemy Persia, the barbarous and inhuman Turks, ‘we today, with very little effort, are about to annihilate completely’. Perhaps no effort at all would be needed: if the Greeks united, they would ‘see those old giants of despotism fall of their own accord’. Ipsilántis no longer spurned foreign assistance, as in his proclamation of the previous October, but now looked to the enlightened peoples of Europe and hoped that ‘we will achieve their support and help’. In a clear reference to Russia, he said: ‘Move, O friends, and you will see a mighty Empire defend our rights.’9 But however confident Ipsilántis appeared in his public pronouncements, privately he nursed doubts. On the same day that he issued the proclamation from Iaşi he sent a letter to the Tsar in a final attempt to turn his hopes of Russian support into reality: ‘Will you, Sire, abandon the Greeks to their fate, when a single word from you can deliver them from the most monstrous tyranny and save them from the horrors of a long and terrible struggle?’10 He was proclaiming that aid from the ‘mighty Empire’ was certain, but he knew that it was far from being guaranteed.
The confident tone of the proclamation was soon belied, since Ipsilántis’ campaign could hardly have got off to a worse start. At Galatz, some 120 miles south of Iaşi, supporters of Ipsilántis, led by Vasílios Karavías, killed the local Turkish commander and his men, and murdered the Turkish merchants in the town. Karavías was rewarded with appointment as one of Ipsilántis’ two battalion commanders, and was to prove nothing but trouble throughout the campaign. A second massacre took place at Iaşi, where the governor Michael Soútsos persuaded the Turkish guard of about fifty men to disarm, promising them security of life and property. When the news of the Galatz slaughter arrived, the promise was disregarded and these Turks too were killed, without either Soútsos or Ipsilántis intervening at the time or condemning the action afterwards. Furthermore Ipsilántis found far less money available to him in Iaşi than he had expected. He tried to remedy this by extortion from the rich, extracting large sums from one Greek banker on the ground that he had concealed Etería funds. Because there was not enough money to pay the troops which Ipsilántis was beginning to assemble, they took to plundering the region. Thus within days of Ipsilántis’ arrival he or his subordinates had provoked the Turks to retaliation, had alienated potential supporters among the rich and had shown the inhabitants of Moldavia that they could expect nothing but disorder from his expedition.
What strategies were now open to Ipsilántis? The most aggressive would have been to seize the three Turkish fortresses on the southern side of the Danube, the approach favoured with hindsight by Finlay, who was ever ready to revise the strategy of past campaigns from his study. A less aggressive but more realistic approach would have been to move quickly to Bucharest, thus becoming master of the capital of Wallachia as well as of Moldavia. Ipsilántis did move towards Bucharest but not quickly enough, and it was a full month before he reached the outskirts of the city in early April. He was accompanied by a force of about 2,000, including 800 horsemen and a body of 500 young Greeks from outside the principalities, designated the Sacred Battalion in memory of the picked troops of fourth-century BC Thebes. These young men, with their black uniforms and death’s-head cap badges, formed a spectacular but wholly inexperienced part of Ipsilántis’ forces, the greater part of them, said Gordon, having just quitted colleges or counting-houses in Russia, Germany and Italy. It was during Ipsilántis’ leisurely progress to Bucharest that the Greeks of the Peloponnese rose against the Turks, though it was some time before Ipsilántis had news of it. When he reached Bucharest he found that Vladimirescu had seized control of the city ahead of him.
It was by now clear that Vladimirescu was not going to play the part simply of a servant of the Philikí Etería and a subordinate of Ipsilántis. He had left Bucharest at the end of January, ostensibly to restore order in the west of Wallachia. Before he had gone far he learnt that the ailing governor, Alexander Soútsos, had died, which emboldened him to issue a proclamation to all Wallachians. This called on them to assemble, at a place to be announced, with whatever weapons they had, and stated that his movement was against the government of the phanariot Greeks (‘the dragons who swallow us alive’) and not against the Turks. A petition that he sent to Constantinople at the same time, assuring the Sultan of his loyalty and asking only for a commissioner to investigate complaints, made his conciliatory attitude to the Turks even clearer. A break with Ipsilántis was becoming inevitable.
At the beginning of March Vladimirescu began his march on Bucharest, sending ahead among others Iorgáki Olympiótis, who was still at this stage his ally. A panic-stricken exodus from the city began, and by 23 March the Prussian consul reported that everyone who could leave had fled and that the lower classes were left without work. By the end of the month Vladimirescu was installed in a monastery on the edge of the city, of which he was effectively in control. Thus when Ipsilántis arrived a week later a British despatch reported: ‘Theodore has succeeded in preventing the entry of the army of Ypsilandi into Buccarest (his capital), but treats Ypsilandi himself with great respect, has given him a superb house for his residence, and offered him all necessary supplies, upon payment of ready money.’11 However, the manoeuvres for power within the principalities were now to be disrupted by two almost simultaneous interventions from outside.
One intervention was the announcement of the Orthodox church’s anathema against Ipsilántis’ revolt, signed by the patriarch and twenty-two other bishops. The anathema specifically named Ipsilántis and Michael Soútsos, and was in savage terms. The powers that be were ordained by God, it declared, and whoever objected to this empire, which was vouchsafed to them by God, rebelled against God’s command. Ipsilántis and Soútsos were therefore guilty of ‘a foul, impious and foolish work’, which had provoked ‘the exasperation of our benevolent powerful Empire against our compatriots and fellow subjects, hastening to bring common and general ruin on the whole nation’. All church and secular leaders were to shun the rebels and do all they could to undermine the rebellion. As for the rebels themselves, ‘may they be excommunicated and be cursed and be not forgiven and be anathematised after death and suffer for all eternity’.12
The patriarch’s anathema predictably followed the lines of the Paternal Exhortation of 1798. The other intervention, which preceded it by a few days, was wholly unexpected. The previous year had seen an outbreak of revolutionary activity in several different parts of Europe. There had been a military insurrection in Spain, followed by a rising in Portugal, and an army mutiny in Naples prompted by the Carbonari, and there were fears of similar risings in Germany and France. Some, including Tsar Alexander, believed that all these movements were controlled by a directing committee in Paris. Towards the end of 1820 therefore the Tsar called a conference of the Quintuple Alliance – Russia, Austria, Prussia, Britain and France – which met first at Troppau (modern Opava, in the Czech Republic) and in early 1821 moved to Laibach (modern Ljubljana, in Slovenia). The conference, in both locations on Austrian territory, was dominated by the Austrian chancellor Metternich, whose determination to suppress revolt and refuse demands for reform finally swayed the Tsar against his previously held liberal convictions. These had long been weakening and had received a further blow when news reached the conference in November 1820 of the mutiny of the elite Semeonovsky Regiment in St Petersburg. By February 1821 Metternich was able to write of the Tsar: ‘His innermost thoughts have undergone a profound change, and I believe I have contributed a good deal to it.’13 Metternich’s antagonist in the struggle for the Tsar’s soul was Kapodhístrias, still Russia’s joint foreign minister, who although firmly for the restoration of order (‘there is no doubt that what exists in Naples must be destroyed’) continued to press for mediation in disputes and readiness to grant constitutional rights. ‘One cannot’, he wrote, ‘reform the mind with bayonets.’14
When news of Ipsilántis’ rising reached the conference Kapodhístrias was said to have been ‘like a man struck by a thunderbolt’, probably because he realised that the Tsar would now disown Ipsilántis’ rising explicitly and publicly, and that he as foreign minister would have to help the Tsar to do so. Thus it fell to Kapodhístrias to draft the Tsar’s severe response. This expressed the Tsar’s sorrow at Ipsilántis’ abandonment of ‘the precepts of religion and morality’, condemned Ipsilántis’ ‘obscure devices and shady plots’, especially his implication of Russian support, and ordered him to withdraw at once from the principalities, where the Tsar would give him no support and would in no circumstances intervene. Ipsilántis himself was dismissed from the Tsar’s army, and would never be allowed to return to Russia.15 The Tsar’s denunciation was published by the Russian consuls and vice-consuls throughout the principalities.
Ipsilántis’ venture was now doomed; and, as well as the blows inflicted by denunciations from the church and the Tsar, the Turks were preparing to move against him from their fortresses on the southern bank of the Danube. Michael Soútsos was under pressure both from his subjects, now thoroughly disillusioned about Ipsilántis’ enterprise, and from the threat of Turkish invasion, and fled with his family across the Pruth into Bessarabia. It is hard to see him as anything more than a fairweather friend of the Etería. A further problem was the questionable conduct of Vladimirescu, who, as Ipsilántis learnt from intercepted despatches, was now negotiating with the Turks, offering them military help in return for the coveted governorship of Wallachia. Ipsilántis, now banned from Russian soil, could escape only northwards to the hardly more welcoming territory of Austria, and feared that Vladimirescu’s forces would cut off his northern route while the Turks pressed him from the south.
Vladimirescu’s harsh discipline had made him increasingly unpopular with his officers and men alike. Some of these officers, sympathetic to the Etería and outraged by their commander’s execution of one of their own number, engineered a public confrontation between Vladimirescu and Iorgáki Olimpiótis, who was now firmly in Ipsilántis’ camp and intent on preventing Vladimirescu blocking the route to the north. At this meeting Iorgáki produced and read out to the assembled company both the original agreement between the two men, in which Vladimirescu promised support for the Etería, and Vladimirescu’s later compromising letters to the Turks. Vladimirescu was seized and taken to Ipsilántis’ camp, and two nights later was butchered by the sabres of two of Ipsilántis’ officers, one of them Karavías, who had in the first days of the rising demonstrated his brutality at Galatz.
Ipsilántis’ escape route to the north was now open and by mid-June he had reached Rîmnicu, about twenty miles south of the pass of Turnul Roşu, the only significant gap in the western Carpathians. His forces, now augmented by Vladimirescu’s disaffected men, were considerable: about 2,500 cavalry, and an infantry of some 3,000 to 4,000 local militia plus the 500 youths of the Sacred Battalion. There now seemed an opportunity for some military success at last against the advancing Turks. On 19 June a force under the command of Iorgáki, and including the Sacred Battalion under Ipsilántis’ younger brother Nicholas and a body of 500 cavalry under Karavías, moved south from Rîmnicu and trapped 800 Turkish soldiers in the village of Drăgăşani. Rain had been incessant that day, and as Iorgáki’s men were exhausted by a long march over sodden ground he postponed the attack on the heavily outnumbered Turks until next day. Karavías however, eager to secure glory for himself, and reportedly drunk at the time, persuaded Nicholas Ipsilántis to lead the Sacred Battalion into battle at once, promising support from his cavalry. The young men of the Battalion, exhausted by their march, stiff from a short rest and totally inexperienced in battle, stumbled forward and the Turkish cavalry, charging out from their cover in the buildings of Drăgăşani, fell upon them before they had time to form squares. Karavías and his cavalry turned and fled. Iorgáki led a counter-attack in the course of which his horse was shot from under him, and rescued the standard of the Sacred Battalion and a hundred of their number. The remaining 400 lay dead in a muddy field, cut to pieces in a few minutes, and the single direct engagement of Ipsilántis’ forces with the Turks had ended in a crushing defeat. Among the dead was Tsakálov, one of the founders of the Philikí Etería. The whole army was thrown into confusion, as a contemporary recorded: ‘In vain did Ipsilántis rush into the middle of the road in an attempt to block further flight, reform his forces and renew the battle. Officers and men, seized by a great terror, fled helter-skelter, deaf to all commands, exhortations, entreaties and supplications. The army had fallen apart.’16
Ipsilántis was now concerned solely with his own escape into Austrian territory, fearing not only capture by the Turks but the possibility of arrest by some of his followers, who would then use him as a bargaining counter in negotiation for their own safety. Most of his companions left him, some to carry on the fight as best they could in the principalities, some to escape to friendly territory. Ipsilántis, after a three-day wait within half an hour’s march of the frontier for permission to cross into Austria, finally made his way through the pass of Turnul Roşu to Sibiu with his two brothers, four other officers, and seven of his closest friends disguised as servants.
There he issued a final proclamation, antedated to before his flight so that it could be read as if he was still in command of his troops and prepared to fight and die with them. Ipsilántis praised the dead of the Sacred Battalion, and ‘those friends who have shown me loyalty and honesty to the last’. On the other hand he consigned six of his commanders to ‘the hatred of humanity, the justice of the laws and the curses of their countrymen’. A seventh commander, the infamous Karavías, he stripped of his rank. The most searing condemnation, however, was for his troops:
Soldiers! No! I will no longer pollute that sacred and honourable name by applying it to you. You are a cowardly rabble…. You have broken your oaths, you have betrayed God and your country, you have betrayed me too at the moment when I hoped either to conquer or to die with honour among you…. Run off to the Turks, who alone are worthy of your support … run off to the Turks, and kiss their hands from which still drips the blood of those they have inhumanly slaughtered. Yes! Run off to them, buy slavery with your lives and with the honour of your wives and children.17
It was a disgraceful outburst by a failed commander against the men he had undertaken to lead.
Ipsilántis was arrested on crossing the frontier and imprisoned by the Austrians at Munkács, then reputedly one of the unhealthiest places in Hungary. He remained in prison until 1827, when he was released with his health broken, and he died in the following year. For the rest of the summer of 1821 Ipsilántis’ former troops, now dispersed under individual commanders, were harried by the Turkish forces. Kantakouzinós escaped to Russia across the river Pruth at Skulyany, where the ill-fated venture had begun. Iorgáki was eventually cornered at the monastery of Sekou in the north-west corner of Moldavia, with about a hundred companions. The belfry where his ammunition was stored caught fire, possibly ignited by Iorgáki himself, and he died in the explosion. Thus in a few months between the spring and autumn of 1821 Ipsilántis’ venture was launched, sputtered uncertainly into life, and came to a bloody end.
Ipsilántis and his expedition are usually given a place of honour in Greek histories, Ipsilántis as one of the first martyrs in the cause of independence and his expedition as the first step towards achieving it. Other commentators view the matter very differently. Gordon speaks of Ipsilántis’ mistaken ideas and want of sound judgement, his dilatory and vacillating movements, his indulgence in vain pomp and frivolous amusements; and, after recounting the quarrels between Ipsilántis’ commanders, asks in exasperation: ‘What could be expected from an army so constituted and so commanded?’18 Neroulós comments: ‘Tout était désordre dans le conseil d’Ypsilanty: point de plan systématique, point d’organisation, ni prévoyance ni mesure efficace.’19 George Finlay, who described himself as alternately English traveller and volunteer in the Greek war, is even more forthright and crushingly concludes that ‘the public career of Prince Alexander Hypsilantes offers not one single virtuous or courageous deed on which the historian can dwell with satisfaction. He was a contemptible leader, and a worthless man.’20
In Ipsilántis’ defence it must be said that the Philikí Etería, in its desperate search for a leader, had settled on a man both too young and too inexperienced for the task. He was quite unfitted to deal with the multiple manoeuvres of supposed supporters of the Etería, the slippery allegiances of his captains and the uncertain adherence of his allies. His empty right sleeve was a mark of his courage in battle, but was no guarantee of his grasp as a commander. It must also be said that Ipsilántis’ gamble on support from Russia was not totally naive. The Tsar’s actions were profoundly influenced by his devout religious beliefs and his sympathy for fellow Orthodox Greeks, and in the battle for his soul Metternich was far from winning the complete victory which he claimed. It was Ipsilántis’ tragedy that, at the moment when he most needed the Tsar’s support, the Tsar was under the combined pressures of fear of widespread revolt in Europe, alarm at mutiny in his own army, and the influence of Metternich rather than Kapodhístrias.
All that Ipsilántis’ expedition had achieved was proof of certain uncomfortable facts: that there would be no pan-Balkan rising against the Ottoman empire, as Rígas had dreamed; that to win independence the Greeks were going to need the help of outside powers; and that this help would not easily be forthcoming. These were very small gains for all the blood and treasure expended. But when all the expedition’s bunglings and disasters have been listed, its story yet reveals gleams of the heroic idealism that was to attract so many foreign philhellenes to the cause. There is no better example than the letter written by a young officer of the Sacred Battalion a few days before it was destroyed at Drăgăşani:
I no longer have any boots, and my feet are cut to pieces. I sleep in the middle of dangerous swamps. I live on wild fruit, and can scarcely find a broken crust of bread. But these privations are sweet to me, and my life is a delight. From a child I have dreamt of nothing else but the day of our uprising. I now find myself for the first time at the head of free men, who do not load me with empty titles but give me the sweet name of brother…. When and where are we to see each other again? Only God can know.21