The Greek revolution broke out in a number of different places during the latter part of March 1821, in some places by the raising of a Greek flag and the swearing-in of armed men, in others with concerted attacks by Turks on Greeks or by Greeks on Turks. There are four towns which can claim to be the place where the revolution began, claims that are disputed to this day: Areópolis in the southern Peloponnese, and hereditary stronghold of the Mavromichális family; Kalamáta in the outer Mani, where Petrobey and other leaders soon assembled; Vostítsa on the Gulf of Corinth, where the important pre-revolutionary meeting had been held; and Kalávrita in the hills high above Vostítsa, close to the monastery of Ayía Lávra where Pouqueville set his dramatic story.
The sequence of events can become confused because at this period there were two different sets of dates, the Julian or Old Style, and the Gregorian or New Style which ran twelve days later, the New Style resulting from calendar reforms initiated by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. British and other European writers used the New Style of dating, while Greek writers used the Old Style or, as in proclamations addressed to a foreign audience, gave both. The event officially recognised as the start of the war of independence is the legendary raising of the standard at Ayía Lávra on 25 March Old Style, which is 6 April New Style. But the occasion is commemorated nationally on 25 March in the New Style, which Greece adopted later; so the annual celebrations are, strictly speaking, always twelve days early. As 25 March is such a key date in the Greek calendar, dates in this chapter are Old Style, while elsewhere in this book dates are New Style unless otherwise specified.
In Areópolis, in a little square the size of a tennis court, stands the church of Áyios Michaíl, with whitewashed walls and a terracotta Byzantine roof. Set into the wall opposite the church is a twentieth-century plaque depicting a mansize Archangel Michael holding aloft a laurel wreath ready to crown the victor. The inscription reads: ‘From this historic square was launched the great uprising under the leadership of Petrobey, 17 March 1821’. Areópolis immediately emphasised its warlike credentials by changing the town’s name, previously Tsímova, to its modern version, the City of Ares. Thus Areópolis claims primacy.
Outside Kalamáta armed Greeks began to assemble from 20 March onwards, a force under Papaphléssas on one side of the town, and on the other 2,000 men under the command of Kolokotrónis and the heads of the Mani’s leading families. Kolokotrónis described their progress: ‘As we went along all the Greeks showed the greatest enthusiasm; they came out and met us everywhere, carrying the sacred eikons, with the priests chanting supplications and thanks givings to God. Once I could not forbear weeping, on account of the ardour which I beheld. So we went on, followed by crowds. When we came to the bridge of Kalamáta we exchanged greetings, and I marched forward.’1 On 23 March the Turks of Kalamáta, faced with these overwhelming forces, surrendered on the promise that their lives would be spared, but not many survived; in the chilling phrase of a contemporary, ‘the moon devoured them’. The capitulation was followed by a great celebration at Kalamáta’s main church, which Finlay, for once unrestrained, described in these words: ‘Twenty-four priests officiated, and five thousand armed men stood round. Never was a solemn service of the Orthodox Church celebrated with greater fervour, never did hearts overflow with sincerer devotion to Heaven, nor with warmer gratitude to their church and their God. Patriotic tears poured down the cheeks of rude warriors, and ruthless brigands sobbed like children. All present felt that the event formed an era in the history of their nation.’2
The victorious Greek leaders immediately set up a so-called Senate of Messinía (that is, of the south-west Peloponnese), and Petrobey was proclaimed both leader of this senate and ‘commander-in-chief of the Spartan forces’. It was in this dual capacity that Petrobey issued on the day of the Turks’ surrender a call to the nations of Europe which wove together a number of themes that were repeated continually in the course of the struggle. The Greeks were now united, Petrobey’s document claimed – ‘All our intestine discord is plunged into oblivion’ – and were determined – ‘We have resolved to be free or perish.’ Their cause was ‘a just and sacred enterprise’, and Europe owed them a debt – ‘Greece, our mother, was the lamp that illuminated you and she now reckons on your active philanthropy.’3
What of the other claims to have led the revolution? At Vostítsa the Turks, hearing rumours of insurrection, fled across the Gulf of Corinth and took refuge in the inland town of Sálona, modern Ámphissa. The Greeks under Andréas Lóndos did not hinder them, and on a date which was probably no later than 23 March, when Kalamáta fell, Lóndos raised over the town a Greek flag of a black cross on a red background (a design soon to be superseded). Thus Vostítsa was one of the first towns to be liberated from Ottoman control. At Kalávrita matters were resolved with equal despatch. On 21 March a force of 600 Greeks compelled the Turks to take refuge in their fortified buildings, and on the 26th the Turks surrendered. In the following August, when the French philhellene Maxime Raybaud visited the town they were still alive in captivity, but, reports Raybaud sadly, ‘ils périrent peu de temps après’.4 The Greek losses at Kalávrita were reported as two killed and three wounded, including one of their commanders, while their gain was a hundred or so guns to swell their own arsenal.
Thus, in summary, the chronology of the first days of the revolution seems to have been: on 17 March, revolution proclaimed in Areópolis; on 20 March, Greek forces move on Kalamáta, and on 23 March the town surrenders; about 23 March Turks abandon Vostítsa; on 21 March, Turks are attacked at Kalávrita, and are taken captive on 26 March. But, whatever the exact sequence of events, Ayia Lávra is likely to remain, thanks to Pouqueville, the defining venue of the start of the revolution.
In these four towns the Greeks were successful against limited or no resistance. The rising at Patras in the last days of March was a different matter. Patras was the leading commercial town of the Peloponnese, described by Gordon as ‘the most flourishing and populous city of the peninsula of Pelops, the emporium of its trade, and residence of the foreign consuls and merchants; seated in a delightful plain of the Achaian shore, at the foot of lofty hills, surrounded by a fertile country, and containing 18,000 inhabitants, two-thirds of whom were Greeks’.5 There had been a fortress on the high ground north-east of Patras for over a thousand years, a mark of its persisting strategic and commercial importance, and Byzantines, Venetians and Turks had all contributed to its massive defences. Patras was immediately opposite the Ionian islands, which were under British control, and ships carrying passengers and goods regularly crossed the intervening stretch of water. Thus disturbances at Patras immediately raised the question of whether Britain would support the Turks, a friendly power, or the Greeks, for whom there was considerable sympathy, or would maintain some form of neutrality.
At the beginning of 1821, there were eight European consulates in the town: those of the five major powers – Britain, France, Russia, Prussia and Austria – plus Holland, Spain and Sweden. The two consuls who played the most important roles in Patras were those of France and Britain. The French consul was Hugues Pouqueville, younger brother of the historian François, whom he had succeeded as France’s representative at the court of Ali Pasha. After his years in that difficult post Hugues Pouqueville had had enough of Greece, but on returning to France found to his dismay that he was immediately sent back as consul at Patras. Long extracts from Hugues’ diary are quoted by François, to support his case that the English were primarily responsible for the calamities of the Greeks at Patras.
The British consul was Philip Green, with his brother Richard as vice-consul, and their combined record was published in 1827 as Sketches of the War in Greece. In his preface Philip Green makes a scathing attack on François Pouqueville, accusing him of using his 1824 history ‘to give credit to falsehoods the most daring, to a distortion of facts the most ingenious and in every falsehood, in every mis-statement to pursue the grand object of blackening the English name…. Myself and my brother are the individuals in whose persons he has most frequently sought to pander to the vitiated taste for such abuse that unhappily exists among our Gallic neighbours.’6 Green also includes a vigorous rebuttal of other allegations against him, but nevertheless he is still regularly castigated by Greek historians as pro-Turk and anti-Greek.
‘There are many rumours of war afloat,’ reported Philip Green from Patras in early January 1821, adding that Greek resentment of the Turks had been heightened by the ‘unlooked for and arbitrary exaction’ of a levy to pay for the war against Ali Pasha.7 By the middle of March the Turks living in the town were moving their families and possessions into the citadel, and the Greeks were hiding their property or shipping it off to the Ionian islands. The many Ionian residents of Patras were at first forbidden by the Turks to leave, but Green managed to get this order rescinded. The Greeks were also arming themselves, and by mid-March there was no powder or shot to be bought in the Patras bazaar.
The spark that ignited the revolt came, as it were, from a burning house. On 23 March the Turks tried to search the house of a leading Greek citizen of Patras on suspicion that he was hiding weapons, and finding the doors barred set the building on fire. The flames spread quickly, destroying some 200 houses in the next twelve hours, and street fighting broke out between Turks and Greeks. Many Greeks who had withdrawn to the surrounding hills for safety could see the conflagration and poured back. Hugues Pouqueville described his feelings on the following morning:
A terrifying night has been followed at last by a day such as I never hope to see again…. A consuming heat, combined with the brilliance of a burning sun, and with the force of the sirocco, would be enough to destroy us if the danger of each minute did not give us supernatural strength. The flames roar; explosions are heard every moment; sometimes I can feel the ground shake beneath my feet; beams and sections of wall, collapsing into the heart of the conflagration, send columns of flame bursting upwards.
And Pouqueville adds, in a rare criticism of the Greeks: ‘Great God! Those who incite revolution have much to answer for!’8
The street fighting quickly gave way to siege warfare. The Turks barricaded themselves in the fortress, from which they commanded the town, and the Greeks brought up six small-calibre guns to a house some forty yards from the castle walls. Neither side’s fire had much effect. Many of the Turkish heavy cannon had no carriages and so could be aimed only by being manhandled into position and propped up with pieces of wood, while the Greek four- and six-pounders, even if accurately aimed, made no impression on a fortress which had been strengthened over the centuries. Thus the exchange of shot produced, Richard Green wrote, ‘a constant noise with little execution’.9 Sharpshooting was more effective, and the Greeks lost their best gunner, an Italian, to a single shot from a sniper on the Turkish ramparts.
Both sides were anxiously awaiting reinforcements, and help for the Greeks arrived first. On the evening of 25 March, Bishop Yermanós, having put behind him the doubts expressed at the Vostítsa conference, arrived on the plain outside Patras with a party including Andréas Lóndos and a force of 200 men, and next morning entered the town. The new arrivals, with leading Greeks of Patras, formed what Philip Green called ‘a sort of council for the general direction of affairs’. On the first day they recognised the importance of international support, as Petrobey had done at Kalamáta two days earlier, and addressed to the foreign consuls an appeal similar to Petrobey’s: ‘We are firmly persuaded that all the Christian Powers will recognize the justice of our Cause, and far from opposing obstacles, will assist and succour us, in calling to mind how useful our ancestors were to humanity. In acquainting you with this, we beg you will be pleased to procure us the protection of your August Court.’10 Four days later a discouraging British response reached Patras, a proclamation by the Ionian governor Maitland which forbade Ionian subjects from taking part in the disturbances on either the Greek or Turkish side, under pain of losing Ionian government protection. Not surprisingly, the copy of the proclamation which Green put up opposite his consulate was immediately torn down by the infuriated Greeks.
The Turks were now shut up in the citadel of Patras, while the town was held by some 5,000 armed Greeks. The Greeks were digging a mine under the walls of the citadel, whose reserves of water were fast running out, the pipes having been cut on the first day of the siege. The Castle of Patras would very probably have fallen to the Greeks within a few more days if Turkish reinforcements under Yussuf Pasha had not come to their aid. Yussuf had left the forces besieging Iánnina to take up a new appointment as pasha of Évvia, the large island off the east coast of Greece. Learning of the disturbances at Patras when he reached Mesolongi, he directed his troops, variously reported as between 300 and 1,000 men, across the narrows of the Gulf of Corinth. While Yussuf was still at the Castle of the Morea on the southern shore, Green sent a deputation to assure him of British neutrality, as demonstrated by Maitland’s proclamation, and to ask for British and Ionian property in Patras to be respected if Yussuf attacked. Yussuf promised to give strict orders to his troops about British property, and intimated that he would have to await reinforcements before trying to relieve Patras. The deputation was taken in by this indication of delay and therefore, as Philip Green wrote, ‘You may imagine their surprise and our consternation, when at day-break this morning [3 April] we were alarmed by the news that the Turks were entering the place.’11 The Greeks too were taken by surprise. Yermanós had earlier sent a detachment of 400 troops to guard the road between the Castle of the Morea and Patras and to give warning of Yussuf’s approach, but to his disgust they had stayed at their posts for only a day before returning to Patras to join in the looting of Turkish houses.
The events in Patras in the ten days or so between the outbreak of revolt and the arrival of Yussuf Pasha gave rise to several allegations against Philip Green, all vigorously rejected by him. First, he was accused of sending Captain Hunter to Préveza to warn the Turkish commander there of the plight of the Patras Turks. Not so: Hunter sailed to Corfu, to give warning to the Ionian government, not to the Turks. Second, Green was accused of sending a letter to Yussuf at Iánnina urging him to come to Patras; this is most unlikely. Third, Green was accused of helping Yussuf by showing him the way into the Castle of Patras (how could Yussuf have missed it?) and by sending to Yussuf standards of two colours and a cross as carried by the Greeks, so that he could deceive his opponents. Gordon, even though no supporter of Green, rejected this as ridiculous: ‘The idea of a single pacific individual’s introducing a body of troops into a fortress blockaded by five or six thousand men, is so absurd, that it needs no refutation.’12
The day that Yussuf entered Patras, 3 April, was Palm Sunday, and the Greeks had been preparing to celebrate their religious festival. Instead, surprised in their beds by Yussuf’s dawn arrival, all who could took flight, some 8,000 souls by Green’s reckoning, of whom 6,000 were men capable of fighting and so greatly outnumbered the Turks. With the Greeks in retreat, Yussuf gave orders, on the day after his arrival, for the houses of the Greek leaders to be set on fire, thus restarting the conflagration of ten days before. This time, with the sirocco still blowing, some 700 houses were burnt down, and Green saved his consulate only with the help of the crew of a British ship and of Yussuf in person with his troops, who pulled down a dozen houses to create a fire-break. No such consideration, of course, was shown to the Greeks. The Turkish troops went on the rampage, and about forty Greeks were beheaded and their bodies thrown into the street, though Green says he managed to save nine or ten captives, for one of whom the order for decapitation had already been given.
The consulates were now the only places of refuge for Greeks who could not yet board ship for the Ionian islands or had no hope of doing so, and of the eight consulates only the English, French and Spanish remained standing. Green recorded his own humanitarian efforts: ‘Numbers of Greeks, chiefly old men, women, and children, took refuge in the Consulates: the French Consulate, from its extent, accommodated the largest number: I received as many as I possibly could. The Greeks in their flight abandoned the wounded in the hospital…. I have persuaded a Zantiot, practising as a surgeon, to remain here and attend the wounded: I have superintended the dressing of their wounds, but fear no skill can save them.’13 Meanwhile the larger French consulate was sheltering 300 to 350 on Green’s reckoning, though Hugues Pouqueville quadrupled the number to 1,500 and his brother doubled it again to 3,000.
These events led to a further accusation against Green, that he had turned away refugees from his consulate. ‘For the sake of plunder,’ wrote Yermanós, ‘and because of his basic ill-will towards the Greeks, Green showed every sort of inhumanity in this situation, and when defenceless women with infant children sought refuge in his consulate, turned them away and shut them out.’14 Pouqueville predictably repeated this charge. It is quite possible that Green did turn people away but only because he had to. His consulate, smaller than the French, could shelter only so many asylum seekers, and by Green’s own account he did all that he could for those whom he could accept.
Philip Green was no simple altruist. He later, as agent of the Levant Company, defied the English naval blockade to sell supplies to both sides in the war, and was accused in England of doing so for personal rather than company profit. These later activities do not generally contribute to the Greek animus against Green – after all, they helped Greeks as well as Turks – and it is his conduct at Patras in the early days of the war which is condemned by Greek writers, then and now. The main reason seems to be that the Greeks expected him to support their cause openly, but Green was English, not a Greek national like some of the other consuls, and was accredited to the Ottoman government with which his own country had good relations. In any case he was under instructions from Maitland, Britain’s governor in the Ionian islands. François Pouqueville’s book hurt Green’s reputation further, reckless as it was in repeating and often embroidering any rumour to Green’s discredit that circulated in the fevered atmosphere of embattled Patras. Finally, the Green brothers’ book cannot have endeared them to the Greeks. It not only belittled Greek efforts but also ridiculed the actions of the Turks, and where was the glory for the Greeks if their foe was not regarded as formidable? Also Richard Green, though not his brother, wrote all too often in a tone of supercilious mockery of what he called the ‘warfare between these two semi-barbarian people’.15 It was a style which might make gentlemen chortle in their London clubs, but was bound to antagonise men battling for a cause in which they profoundly believed. So the animus against Green is understandable, but the accusations against him do not stand up, and it cannot be right still to apply to Green in cavalier fashion the derogatory epithets of philótourkos and miséllinas.16
As for poor Patras, the struggle continued, the Greeks periodically reoccupying the town and trying to capture the fortress, the Turks periodically being reinforced and holding out. By the end of 1821 the town was a wasteland, with only ten or twelve houses of the original 4,000 still undamaged. The citadel of Patras remained in Turkish hands throughout the war, as did the Castles of Roumeli and the Morea, and the three strongholds formed a compact triangular bridgehead which gave the Turkish troops vital access to the heartland of Greek resistance.