In the early stages of the war on land the Greeks had three immediate objectives. The first was to prove that Greek resistance would not crumble under the first counter-attack by the Turks; this was achieved in May 1821 by Kolokotrónis at the battle of Valtétsi, in the foothills five miles south-west of Tripolis. The second objective was to show that the Greeks were capable of capturing a stronghold held by the Turks; this was demonstrated by the Greek siege, successfully completed in early August 1821, of Monemvasía, perhaps the most impregnable fortress in the whole Peloponnese. The third aim was to block the two routes by which Turkish troops could march south to the Gulf of Corinth, one in the west through the mountainous country of the Makrinóros, and the other in the east past ancient Thermopylae. In this third aim the Greeks had only temporary success.
In the heady early days of the revolution Kolokotrónis had marched triumphantly into Kalamáta through cheering crowds, but in the weeks immediately following few things went right for him. On the day after the taking of Kalamáta Kolokotrónis headed north to Karítena, an isolated village on a rocky outcrop in the central Peloponnese some twenty miles west of Tripolis, where a group of Turks was besieged in the village’s small fortress. The Turks in Tripolis learnt that their compatriots were under siege in Karítena and sent out a force of 3,000 infantry and cavalry to relieve them.
Kolokotrónis stationed himself on a hill with his telescope, which he would let nobody else use, to warn of the approach of the Turkish forces, but when he gave the signal the Greeks, instead of mustering to oppose them, turned and fled. Kolokotrónis was left alone, and had to hide in the trees as a Turkish unit passed. When he rejoined his fellow captains they were for moving away to besiege the south-western fortresses of Methóni, Koróni and Navarino, but Kolokotrónis, who consistently argued for the capture of Tripolis first, refused. ‘I shall stay here on these hills,’ he said, ‘where the very birds know me; better that they, my neighbours, should eat me than any others.’ His account continues:
I was left alone, I and my horse at Chrysovitsi. But Phlessas turned back and said to a boy, ‘Stop with him lest the wolves devour him.’ I sat down until they had disappeared with their flags. After some time I descended the hill until I came to a church on the road, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin (the Panagia at Chrysovitsi), and there, where I threw myself down, I wept for Hellas. ‘Holy Virgin!’ I cried, ‘help us now, that the Greeks may take heart once more.’1
Thus it was to the double invocation, fundamental to the Greek cause, of ancient Greece, Hellas, and of the Orthodox faith that Kolokotrónis turned in his darkest hour.
Kolokotrónis’ despair was short lived, and he was soon back with Greek forces round Tripolis. His first task was to rebuild the army of the central Peloponnese, on a sounder basis so that it did not vanish at the first threat. The forces which had gathered around Karítena and had now dispersed had been chaotic. The assembly was like a village carnival, said one observer. The men stayed with their own family or group, under no overall authority. Their weapons were knives, spits and anything else which could be used as a weapon. They relied on their womenfolk to bring them food and drink. The captains had no agreement on a common objective. Kolokotrónis now began to introduce some system into the disorder. Officers were appointed formally, with written commissions. A central commissariat was developed. Recruiting methods became harsher; Kolokotrónis’ son Pános was sent out with orders to burn the houses of those who would not rise, and to distribute their possessions to the revolutionary forces. Kolokotrónis also insisted on a proper count of the numbers in each band, an unpopular move since it now became more difficult for captains to draw excess rations and weapons, and for men to desert to other groups or simply to their own homes.
Such attempts to establish military structures were almost wholly unfamiliar to the Greeks. A few, like Kolokotrónis, had served as mercenaries for foreign powers in the Ionian islands, while for the rest any experience of fighting was as armatolós or as klepht. Armatoli had for centuries been hired by the local Turkish authorities, initially to guard the mountain passes and later for the general maintenance of law and order. The main threat to law and order came from armed bands of klephts, who lived by brigandage in the mountains. Their numbers were constantly swelled by Greeks fleeing injustice, others fleeing justice, many simply seeking a more rewarding and adventurous life than that of a villager under a feudal Turkish overlord. However, there was no simple pattern of opposition between law-breaking klephts and law-enforcing armatoli. The armatoli were often recruited from klephtic leaders: who else had the necessary experience? Armatoli as well as klephts would rob rich and poor alike. Armatoli and klephts would sometimes join forces in campaigns of brigandage and jointly resist Turkish forces sent against them. The captain of either klephts or armatoli would be the leader of a band from his own extended family or at least from his own village. The favoured method of attack was to trap the enemy in a narrow pass or when crossing a river, create havoc by firing from above, and finally charge into the confusion. Defence was from the safety of rocks, stone walls or buildings from which scatological insults were hurled as often as bullets. Despite all the later attempts by a central government of insurgent Greece to establish a regular army on west European lines, this was the form of warfare, klephtopólemos, which the Greeks traditionally and instinctively favoured, and the only way most of them trusted to defeat the Turks. But to succeed by this means the bands needed something of the order, discipline and co-ordination which Kolokotrónis was now trying to impose.
During April of 1821 the Greek forces in the area round Tripolis were slowly augmented by men from the nearby villages and by the return of many of the captains who had earlier headed south. Kolokotrónis was now recognised as the man for overall command, and in early May he was formally appointed archistrátigos. Armed camps of Greeks were established in a rough semi-circle of villages to the west of Tripolis, where the mountains come down to the plain: at Levídhi, Piána, Chrisovítsi, Vérvena and, closest of all to Tripolis, Valtétsi. The Greek reorganisation had come only just in time. In mid-May Mustafa Bey, the newly appointed lieutenant-governor of the Morea, reached Tripolis from Epirus, standing in for Khurshid, who was still away besieging Iánnina. This new pasha of the Morea was a warlike and able man, in Kolokotrónis’ view, and was the most formidable opponent the Greeks of the Peloponnese had yet had to meet.
It was clear to the Greeks that Mustafa was going to waste no time in moving to crush them decisively. The Greeks therefore prepared to make a stand at Valtétsi. This village was in the centre of the semi-circle of the Greek-held posts west of Tripolis, it was on a defensible hill in the plain, and it was much closer to Tripolis than the other villages, so that if the Greeks held it they would be a step nearer to the capture of Tripolis itself. The village church of Valtétsi was now fortified, and three tamboúria were built, redoubts of stone wall about three feet high, with apertures for firing and a ditch running round the inside so that the defenders’ heads were below the parapet. The captains who had returned from the south were ready to give support from nearby villages. Two members of Kolokotrónis’ family, his nephew Nikítas and his son Yennéos, were away in Árgos collecting lead from roofs for use as shot. Kolokotrónis himself was everywhere: ‘I slept at Valtetsi, dined at Piana, and supped in Chrysovitsi.’2
Mustafa planned a pincer movement on Valtétsi, attacking from north and south while a smaller third force was to move behind Valtétsi to cut off the Greeks’ expected flight. At dawn on the morning of 24 May Kolokotrónis’ watchers on the hills immediately above Tripolis lit their signal fires to show that Mustafa’s forces had set out, and two hours later they attacked the Valtétsi fortifications.
Against Turkish expectations, the Greeks did not flee but maintained their positions. Kolokotrónis joined the battle from Chrisovítsi and harried and divided the Turkish forces. The Turkish cavalry were useless when trying to attack up a rocky slope against a fortified position, and the Turkish gunners were not skilful enough to lob cannon shot into the fortifications. The battle continued all day, and at nightfall both sides remained in position, each hoping that the other would have retreated by daybreak, but at dawn both sides were still in place. After an hour of further ineffectual cannon shot Mustafa began to withdraw his forces and their retreat soon degenerated into a rout, in which the Turks lost some 600 to 800 killed or wounded, while the Greeks, though claiming a far smaller number, probably lost about 150.
If Kolokotrónis had not established some degree of system in the Greek fighting units, the battle of Valtétsi would have been lost. Had that happened, it is quite possible that the rest of the Peloponnese would have succumbed, and that the revolution of 1821 would have gone the way of the failed Orlov rebellion of fifty years earlier. Kolokotrónis was thus well justified in claiming that ‘this battle established the good fortunes of our country; if we had lost it we might never have made another stand’. He said as much in his speech to his men at the end of the battle: ‘We must all fast, and render up thanksgivings for this day, which should be kept holy for ever, as the day upon which the people made a stand, whereby our country achieved her freedom.’3
For centuries the castles which ringed the Peloponnese had been crucial to control of it as it was occupied successively by the Byzantines, the Venetians, Franks diverted from the Crusades, and the Turks. Their importance was recognised as early as the fourteenth century, when the Franks held the Peloponnese: it was said that if they had lost the Morea, the possession of one fortress only would have sufficed to reconquer the whole peninsula.4 Some of the fortresses remained in Turkish hands throughout the war, others were taken by the Greeks and then retaken by the Turks. One Greek capture which they never relinquished was the first, of Monemvasía.
This spectacular citadel lies just off the east coast of the southern Peloponnese, linked to the mainland by a causeway, the single entrance (móni émvasis) which gives the place its name. The rock is about a mile long on its east–west axis and something under half a mile wide. A fifteenth-century Byzantine book described it as an island high, oblong and abrupt, on all sides surrounded by sheer and impassable cliffs, and commanding the sea as if competing with the sky itself.5
The lower town on the south side has been a busy commercial centre since the twelfth century, and Monemvasía gave its name to Malmsey, the wine shipped from the harbour beneath the lower town but produced in Tínos and other Aegean islands. From the lower town a single steep path of worn and uneven stones leads to the upper town, whose ruins are now half hidden by thistles, wild garlic and gorse, but in 1666 a Turkish visitor, Evlija Chelebi, described it in glowing terms. There were, he said, 500 well-built houses, each like a castle, with red-tiled roofs; they had gardens and courtyards, albeit small, though no vineyards; and each was of such beauty as to merit worldwide recognition. White as swans, he concluded, all the houses were rich and elegant, worthy of a king.6
At the outbreak of the revolution the Greeks immediately laid siege to Monemvasía with what troops they could muster, but this amounted only to about 1,400 men, largely inexperienced in fighting, and enough to blockade but not to capture the rock. As some went away to fetch food and others drifted back to their villages the original force was at times halved to 700, and the Greeks fell back on the stage-army technique of sending men away at night to return next day as, in Turkish eyes, fresh reinforcements. The Greeks had some support from the island of Spétses, forty miles or so to the north, but as with the Greek land forces the number of ships from Spétses, sometimes five, sometimes twelve, was enough to contain but not to capture. The Turks at Monemvasía eventually tried a sortie. On one night at the beginning of June they sent men by boat to the shore to the north, intending that this party should attack the besieging Greeks in the rear while a force from the rock attacked them in front across the causeway. But the plan was betrayed, and when the Turks landed on the north shore they were killed or captured. The siege of Monemvasía had by then lasted for two months, and no end was yet in sight.
Hunger now became the dominant factor in the siege, and with it the swirl of report, rumour and fantasy that accompanies starvation conditions. It was said that the Turks were eating century-old maize, left behind by the Venetians, and rationing even that, that they were eating animals which were unclean to them – donkeys, dogs, rats and mice – and after that roots and berries, and finally that they were practising cannibalism. As starvation became worse among the Turks they began to allow individuals to surrender. The Greeks treated them well, but soon stopped accepting such surrenders in order to increase the pressure of starvation. Some Turks tried to reach the mainland by jumping from the cliffs and swimming with the help of planks or inflated wine-skins. Finally, the leading fifty Turkish families moved into the upper town, the fortress on top of the rock, closing the gate of the single path to it, taking the remaining food with them and leaving the others in the lower town to survive as they might.
Finally, in early June the Turks offered terms for surrender of the fortress, but because they were afraid of being slaughtered by the besieging Greek forces they insisted on submitting to Dhimítrios Ipsilántis, brother of Alexander and his successor as head of the Philikí Etería, who had recently arrived in the Peloponnese. The besiegers were outraged. It was the Peloponnesians, they said, who had used their resources and spilt their blood in the siege of Monemvasía, and the surrender of the fortress should therefore be to the Greek people, to ellinikón éthnos. The Turks however replied that they did not know of any such thing as ‘the Greek people’. The Turks got their way over this, and Ipsilántis and his deputy Prince Alexander Kantakouzinós remained in control of the negotiations, which dragged on for another month. There were arguments over what weapons and other possessions the Turks could keep, where they might be shipped to and at whose expense, and what reparations they should pay. Ultimately, Kantakouzinós offered final terms, to be withdrawn if not accepted within twenty-four hours. On 2 August the instrument of surrender was signed, the keys of the fortress were ceremonially handed over on a silver dish to the besiegers, and two days later they took possession of Monemvasía. Throughout its history Monemvasía had been the last fortress to fall in the successive attempts to take control of the Peloponnese; in this war it was the first.
Of all the strongholds in the Peloponnese, Monemvasía probably offered the least military gain, and certainly far less than the twin fortresses above the Bay of Navarino which fell to the Greeks a few weeks later. Monemvasía, thought Gordon, because of its restricted harbour and its isolation by the surrounding mountains, was of minor consequence as a military post, and in fact little was heard of it for the rest of the war. It was a token objective, and the significance of its capture was almost wholly psychological. Of its fall a contemporary wrote: ‘For all Greeks, and especially those living abroad, the news of the capture of the castle was astounding, like something from legend.’7
Of the two main routes through Greece by which Turkish forces could come down from the north, the eastern route followed the coast, roughly on the line of the main Thessalonika–Athens road today, and led into the Peloponnese across the isthmus of Corinth. The natural point at which to block this road was where it squeezed between two mountains near Thermopylae, about ninety miles north-west of Athens. It was at Thermopylae that in 480 BC Leonidas and his 300 Spartans died heroically resisting the Persian advance under Xerxes, and it was near here that, a century after the war of independence and in action against another occupier, Greek resistance forces with British help cut the country’s main railway line by blowing up the Gorgopótamos bridge. The western route ran from Iánnina to Árta and then to Mesolongi, leading to the Peloponnese by a short sea crossing of the Gulf of Corinth. The dangerous part of this route was the five miles of mountainous country east and south of Árta along the slopes of the Makrinóros. To block these two routes was strategically a great deal more important to the Greek cause than a quick morale-boosting victory or the capture of a symbolic objective.
In the previous January, when a Greek rising was clearly imminent, superior Greek commanders for East and West Roumeli had been appointed by a meeting of military leaders on Levkás: for Eastern Roumeli Odysseus Andhroútsos, who as Ali Pasha’s lieutenant had held Livadhiá for him the previous summer, and for Western Roumeli Iannis Varnakiótis, who had also served Ali Pasha. The reputations of both Varnakiótis and Andhroútsos were later tainted by accusations of treachery, for which Varnakiótis lived to make amends but Andhroútsos did not.
By the end of April 1821 Turkish troops from Lamía under Omer Vrionis were already trying to clear the Greek forces from the area of the eastern route. One of the first clashes ended in a Greek defeat. A Greek captain, Athanásios Dhiákos, found himself with a handful of men trying to hold the bridge over the river at Alamána, a few miles south-east of Lamía. Most of Dhiákos’ party were killed, including the bishop of Sálona who was fighting with them, and Dhiákos himself was captured and, on the orders of Omer Vrionis, impaled. The sickening reality of impalement was that the victim was spreadeagled face down, and held in place by ropes attached to each leg while a man with a heavy mallet drove a long sharpened pole into his anus. The pole was then set upright and he was left to die of his internal injuries. Dhiákos’ service to the Greek cause was short, but his memory as a proto-martyr is still honoured.
The Alamána bridge was now open to the Turks, and in August a Turkish force, variously estimated at 5,000 or 8,000 strong, crossed it on its way to the Peloponnese to relieve their countrymen besieged in Tripolis. The Greeks concentrated their forces at the deserted village of Vasiliká, where the road was wooded and ran through a long narrow pass.
In the first days of September the Turkish forces entered the pass. The Greeks were led by Iannis Goúras, lieutenant of Odysseus Andhroútsos, who was later to play a part in his leader’s downfall, while Odysseus himself was away further south in his territory. The Greeks first poured down heavy fire on their enemies in the pass and then attacked, emboldened, it was said, by a rumour that Odysseus had arrived. The Turks were forced back to Lamía, destroying the Alamána bridge behind them to block pursuit, and abandoning wagons, animals, military stores and seven cannon, all of which fell into Greek hands. Here at last was a significant Greek success, which came at an opportune moment, since it was too late in the season for the Turks to make another attempt to reinforce the Peloponnese by that route before winter. ‘Thus was Thermopylae once more the theatre of a battle most important to Greece,’ wrote Gordon, ‘inasmuch as it ruined the enemy’s plan of campaign’8 – but only, of course, until the next year’s campaigning season.
The western route south from Árta through the Makrinóros is now made easy by a modern road, but until that was built the journey presented formidable obstacles. A Greek writer in the 1940s described in vivid terms its grandeur and impenetrability: ‘The gigantic mountains are ranged one behind the other in endless ranks, separated by dramatic valleys, deep gorges and narrow hollows: their jagged ridges leap upwards, and their sharp peaks seem to touch and pierce the blue dome of the sky. The narrow tracks, dangerous paths, deep ravines, waterless canyons, and the rivers and their tributaries, the streams and the springs make the valleys a highly complicated spider’s web.’9 This was ideal terrain, of course, for the guerrilla ambushes at which the Greeks were so adept. It was also, for those who could find their way through it, a place to take refuge, or indeed to rob refugees. Makriyánnis, then a young captain, took charge of a group of refugees from Árta – more than 500 families, he claims – and led them into the Makrinóros in a pitiable condition, without food or proper footwear. ‘There was one woman with four young children, the oldest seven years old. She had abandoned two of them and I took pity on them. I tied them together, took them on my shoulder and saved them.’ The refugees were in danger not only from the Turks but also from fellow Greeks: Makriyánnis rescued a woman who had been stripped of all her belongings and wounded in the foot by men he described with heavy irony as ‘some sterling patriots’. She had only with difficulty persuaded her attackers to break the ring on her finger rather than cut off the finger. Makriyánnis was horrified: ‘When I saw this glorious deed, I became disgusted with the Greek cause, because we were a lot of cannibals.’10
Although in terrain such as the Makrinóros the ambushers had the advantage, their task was by no means easy. It involved hours and often days of patient waiting, with minimal sound or movement and enduring thirst and hunger, until the chance came to attack. It was proverbially said that ambushing was the test of a true warrior. Panic was never far away. ‘More than once’, commented Raybaud, ‘I have seen in these circumstances – a night sortie, a bivouac, some confusion on the march – a frightened man, or even a joker, say the word “Turk” with tragic consequences.’11 All would be thrown into confusion, with wild firing and total loss of discipline.
A Turkish attempt in June to force a passage to the south was repulsed. In the next few weeks Khurshid Pasha, still at Iánnina, sent reinforcements for another attempt, and in July a force of 1,800 Turkish troops moved against some 200 entrenched Greeks. ‘The Ottoman troops’, wrote Gordon, ‘… made repeated attacks upon the Greeks without success; their horsemen could not act among thick woods … and the insurgents having blocked up the paths with large stones and trunks of trees, poured on them a heavy fire of musketry. Entirely baffled, the Turks retired with a loss of near 150 killed … neither did they for the fifteen subsequent months make any further attempt upon Makrynoros.’12 By the time the next attempt was made in the following year matters were very different. The area commander Varnakiótis and other Greek captains had made their accommodations with the Turks, and Ali Pasha was dead, so Turkish forces were no longer tied down at Iánnina. Thus when in late 1822 Omer Vrionis marched south with 6,000 men, he found the Makrinóros unguarded, and at the end of the year was able to besiege Mesolongi, the first in a series of sieges which was to end with the town’s fall to the Turks in the spring of 1826.