The provisional Greek government established at Epídhavros had been intended to last only for a year, until the end of 1822, when local elections were to be held for members of a new assembly. This assembly would revise the constitution and set up a new government. It is no surprise, given the ravaged condition of much of Greece, that these elections were not completed in time, and that the second national assembly was not ready to meet until early April 1823. It is a credit to the Greeks that they held elections at all, which are commonly suspended by nations at war. Nor is it surprising that the electoral rules were not always observed. Officially the members of the new assembly were to be chosen in secret ballot by the whole male adult population. In practice some delegates were elected by acclamation rather than by secret ballot, some were chosen only by the soldiers rather than the whole population, some simply appointed themselves, and some districts sent two delegates representing different parties. Members of the outgoing Senate were also entitled to attend. As a result the numbers at the second national assembly were vastly increased, to some 260 compared with the 59 at Epídhavros. Representatives came from as far away as Crete in the far south and Tríkeri near Vólos in the north. The largest regional group were the 113 from the Peloponnese, nearly half the total. Forty-six members attended as military captains, who had not been represented at all at Epídhavros a year earlier, but had by now realised that the government exercised significant power and that they must have a voice in it. At this second assembly, said Trikoúpis, everything was irregular, disorderly and alarming, and it was as rowdy as the first was tranquil.1
There had been debate about where the new assembly was to be held. Navplion was an obvious choice, but since its surrender to Kolokotrónis in the previous December it had been under the control of his son Yennéos, who refused the government entry on the ground that its mandate had now expired. The assembly was therefore held near Ástros, about twenty miles by road south of Navplion on the east coast of the Peloponnese.
Here the delegates assembled on 10 April 1823 but as two distinct bodies rather than one. The larger element, broadly the supporters of the politicians grouped round Mavrokordhátos, occupied a village near Ástros, while the backers of the military, headed by Kolokotrónis, took up position in an adjacent village, the two being separated by a deep ditch. Both camps contained armed men: 800 on the military side and three times as many with the politicians. The conflicting objectives of the two groups were obvious: the politicians wanted to control the military, while the role of the politicians, in Kolokotrónis’ view, was simply to provide the military with supplies. However the membership of the groups had become far less clear-cut than before. Some of the politicians, notably Dhimítrios Ipsilántis, had allied themselves with the military, while a number of captains had joined the politicians. Some of these captains were from West Roumeli, where they were under the influence of Mavrokordhátos, others were from the Peloponnese, including Iatrákos who was obviously out of favour in the military camp after failing Kolokotrónis at the battle of Dhervenákia. But for the revolution to survive the two groups needed each other: the military depended upon the politicians’ skills, especially on the international scene, while the politicians were nothing without the captains. Thus the dispositions in the twin villages outside Ástros exactly mirrored the aims and needs of the two sides: they had to stick together, partly for mutual support and partly from mutual suspicion, but between the two was a deep rift.
The main deliberations of the assembly took place on the more numerous and politically sophisticated side of the divide. President of the assembly was Petrobey Mavromichális of the Mani, the position held at Epídhavros by Mavrokordhátos, but Mavrokordhátos now had the less prominent but more influential post of president of the committee overseeing the revision of the Epídhavros constitution. This committee declared first that the fundamental principles of the constitution should be retained unchanged, since ‘they had demonstrably saved the people’, though the people had in fact been saved by the captains and principally by Kolokotrónis. The principles of the constitution were therefore not altered but a number of changes were made to it, most of which looked like minor adjustments but which in fact had far-reaching implications. First, it was decided that the members of the Executive should be chosen by the Senate, not as before by the members of the constitutional assembly, and that the Executive could no longer veto, but only delay, acts of the Senate. Both moves strengthened the Senate against the Executive. Second, responsibility for foreign affairs was transferred from a minister, hitherto Négris of East Roumeli, to the Executive as a whole; relations with other countries were becoming far too important to be left in the hands of one man. Similarly, in a third change, the war minister, previously Koléttis, was replaced by a three-man committee, like the three-man committee controlling the navy, and in a transparent move to rein in Kolokotrónis the position of commander-in-chief was eliminated. Fourth, the regional governments of East and West Roumeli and the Peloponnese were abolished, thus cutting the Gordian knot of their tangled relationships with the central government.
As well as revising the constitution, the assembly at Ástros passed two resolutions which were highly contentious. First, the whole of insurgent Greece including the Aegean islands was divided into sixty districts, each under the control of an official directly appointed by the central government. The alternative was to let the country become a mere patchwork of fiefdoms under virtually independent captains and primates, or in Gordon’s words ‘to subject Greece to more than thirty companies of robbers, who would have been constantly fighting with each other’.2 However this proposal was flatly rejected by the islanders of Hydra and Spétses as giving them less autonomy than they had enjoyed under the Turks. Second, there was a proposal to raise money for the war by selling off the so-called national property, the ethniká ktímata, that is the property previously owned by departed Turks. What exactly did ‘property’ mean? Many suspected that it included not only the vacated buildings but also the land on which they stood. Disposal of this land was regarded as a sale of the people’s birthright, probably at knock-down prices due to favouritism, and a mechanism for the already rich to enrich themselves still further by selling at a profit later. There was a further reason for not selling the national lands: they were going to be needed as collateral, of a rather artificial sort, for the loans raised abroad. To show their displeasure at the scheme the troops in the military camp wrote ‘Land sell-off’ on a piece of card and used it for target practice. In the face of this opposition the proposal was withdrawn.
The next step was for the Senate to elect holders to the new offices. The presidency of the Senate itself went, in a surprise move, to Iánnis Orlándos, a primate of little personal repute, brother-in-law of the leading primate of Hydra, Georgios Kondouriótis, and therefore seen as representing Hydra’s interests. This enraged the representatives of Spétses and Psará, and Orlándos’ presidency of the Senate lasted only a few weeks. In making appointments to the Executive, the Senate tried to placate Kolokotrónis and exert some indirect control over him by giving office to his friends. Thus the Executive was made up of Petrobey Mavromichális as president, and three further members: Andréas Zaímis and Charalámvis, both primates with a military following from the northern Peloponnese but from rival factions, and Metaxás of Kephaloniá, who had brought a contingent of Ionian islanders to join the revolution. These three were all firm allies of Kolokotrónis, and Petrobey was broadly sympathetic to him. The fifth member of the Executive was to be chosen by the islanders. These appointments clearly reflected the dominance of the Peloponnese, the growing influence of the islands and the virtual exclusion of East and West Roumeli.
There was no post in the new government for two important figures from the previous administration: Négris and Dhimítrios Ipsilántis. Mavrokordhátos was appointed to a position of no great prominence but of potentially great influence: general secretary of the Executive. As such he was charged with processing and presenting to the Executive the foreign affairs issues which were now its responsibility. Mavrokordhátos could probably foresee more clearly than anyone that Greek success would depend upon these issues: on foreign diplomatic support, on foreign loans and ultimately on foreign intervention.
Its work completed, the assembly at Ástros dispersed and the new government, both Senate and Executive, moved to Tripolis, which was now clear of the plague that had followed the Greek capture of the town eighteen months earlier. But the shakiness of the government’s foundations quickly became apparent. Those disappointed of office or influence, led by the infuriated Négris and supported by Kolokotrónis, who was not appeased by the appointment of his friends to the Executive, moved to Karítena, some twenty miles west of Tripolis, where Kolokotrónis’ influence had always been strong. There they declared their intention of holding a new assembly. The only way left for the Senate to bring Kolokotrónis under its control was to persuade him to become a member of the Executive himself, and thus the Senate at the beginning of June offered him the vacant Executive position, which had initially been reserved for the islands, coupled with the Executive vice-presidency. The offer was couched in extraordinary terms:
If you do not accept this offer which the people and the government are making, and if you do not instruct your supporters to cease all action against the government, then the two government bodies will be in the unpleasant position of denouncing you and your fellows as rebels and pursuing you as defectors and enemies of the people; and if in the ensuing struggle you are victorious (which we cannot believe possible) … then the Greeks of Roumeli and the islands will be compelled to make an honourable peace with the Turks, which they desire and have offered us … and then you in the Peloponnese can have rebellion and licence and anarchy and anything else you like.3
Kolokotrónis accepted and the Senate, with an olive branch in one hand and a cudgel in the other, had asserted its authority.
A month later in July another dispute arose which revealed the differences not only between the government and its opponents but also between the government’s two bodies, the Senate and the Executive. In the face of widespread opposition to his appointment Orlándos resigned as president of the Senate. Who was to succeed him? Anagnóstis Dheliyánnis put himself forward, a member of the powerful Dheliyánnis clan from Karítena and supporter of Kolokotrónis. To keep him out the Senate almost unanimously elected Mavrokordhátos as its president, even though he was currently general secretary of the Executive. Mavrokordhátos, under pressure from the Senate, initially accepted, but within days he resigned from the post in a long letter explaining the dissension his appointment would cause, and withdrew as he had done before to Hydra. However, the Senate refused to accept his resignation, though it was repeatedly offered, until August of the following year, and throughout that time Mavrokordhátos was regularly referred to as the president of the Senate even in his absence. But there was no avoiding the breach which his resignation was designed to heal: the Kolokotrónis–Dheliyánnis faction was angry at the defeat of its candidate, and the Executive regarded the Senate’s choice of Mavrokordhátos as an attempt to poach one of its key officers. Probably the only thing that would have prevented these rifts widening further would have been the need for unity against a major Turkish attack, but for a number of reasons this failed to materialise during the campaigning season of 1823.
The final phase of Dramali’s expedition completed this Turkish disaster. As we have seen, the remnant of his army had withdrawn in the autumn of 1822 to the citadel of Corinth, where before the end of the year Dramali himself died. Navplion had by now fallen to the Greeks and the only hope for the Turks in Corinth was to escape west to their fellow countrymen in Patras. Thus at the end of January a garrison of 800 was left to hold the Corinth citadel, 1,000 sick and wounded were sent by sea along the Gulf of Corinth to Patras, and the remaining 3,500 set off for Patras along the gulf’s southern shore. With half their journey completed, at the point where the road narrows at Akráta to bridge a river, they found themselves trapped by Greek forces in front and behind. Yussuf Pasha sent ships from Patras to rescue them, but a storm wrecked the attempt. The Turks held out for six weeks, eating first their horses and then, it is said, the bodies of their dead comrades. Finally in mid-March a second flotilla from Patras, accompanied by three European ships, succeeded in reaching the trapped remnant of Dramali’s army. The surviving 2,000, ‘more resembling blackened skeletons than men’, said Gordon, reached Patras, where they died at the rate of twenty a day.
In early 1823 therefore the Turkish forces were back to where they had started a year earlier. Nevertheless, the Sultan persisted in a similar plan of campaign for 1823: to march troops down from the north to subdue the Peloponnese. This time, however, the main army was to cross into the Peloponnese not by the isthmus of Corinth but by the narrow stretch of water near Patras, thus exploiting the one major Turkish stronghold in the northern Peloponnese. Meanwhile separate forces were to crush the revolt in East Roumeli, both operations to be supported by the Turkish fleet.
This main army was assembled at Ohrid, in the south-west corner of modern Yugoslavia, by Mustafa Pasha, governor of Shkoder in northern Albania. His troops were Albanian mercenaries and said to number about 10,000. In July they moved south, and to avoid the dangers of the Makrinóros on the west coast moved first to Tríkala, halfway between the two coasts, and continuted south across the Píndos mountains to Karpenísi, which at 3,000 feet is the highest provincial capital in Greece. Here they met their first opposition. Márkos Bótsaris, leader of the Souliot contingent at Péta the year before, had survived that battle and had remained with Mavrokordhátos at Mesolongi. Bótsaris now moved out against Mustafa’s army with 350 men under his own command, but on the way from Mesolongi to Karpenísi persuaded other captains to join him, making a total force of 1,200. This was still far too small for any pitched battle with Mustafa’s 10,000, but Bótsaris persuaded his fellow captains to make a surprise night attack. As men of Bótsaris’ force were Albanian-speakers like their opponents and were dressed similarly, a reconnoitring party from Bótsaris’ camp was able to enter the enemy lines two nights before the planned assault and spy out their dispositions undetected. On 21 August the attack was launched in the middle of the night, and Bótsaris’ men at first created total panic and confusion among the enemy, though his fellow captains largely failed to support him. Bótsaris continued leading his troops in spite of a wound in the groin, but when he incautiously raised his head above one of the enemy’s defensive walls a single shot killed him. His companions concealed his death, and his men continued fighting till dawn, and they then retreated. They had not halted Mustafa’s advance, but they took away a rich haul of booty: nearly 700 pistols, a thousand muskets and many horses, mules and sheep. In Finlay’s description: ‘Horsehair sacks filled with silver-mounted pistols, yataghans [curved swords], and cartridge-cases, were fastened over pack-saddles like bags of meal, and long Albanian muskets were tied up in bundles like fagots of firewood.’4 The body of Márkos Bótsaris was taken back to Mesolongi for a magnificent funeral, and his name has ever after been revered as a patriot whose loyalty was never in doubt, and as a heroic commander who died in battle at the head of his men.
A surprising aspect of the battle of Karpenísi was that it was fought solely between Albanians. No Greek or Turk took part in it, and in fact very few Turks fought in the whole land campaign of 1823. That the Sultan now had to rely almost wholly on Albanian mercenaries against the revolt in Greece points to one of his major difficulties: manpower. The campaign in Greece was not the only call on the Sultan’s army. Relations with Russia were still uneasy, and Turkish forces had to be maintained on the Russian borders in case of an attack from that quarter. Also the Sultan was at war with Persia from October 1820 until July 1823, so the Persian war ended too late to release men for that year’s Greek campaign. The Sultan’s manpower problem was further exacerbated in early March 1823 by a massive fire in the capital’s military complex at Tophana on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus. This destroyed the arsenal with its store of ammunition and the cannon foundry containing artillery for the army and navy, as well as fifty mosques and thousands of houses. Without military supplies, the still unruly janissaries could not leave the capital, and popular rumour held them responsible for the fire.
It is therefore not surprising that the Sultan, with his own troops stretched, insubordinate or immobilised, turned increasingly to the use of mercenaries, but this brought its own problems. Whereas regular troops could be kept in the field for some time on reduced pay or no pay at all, mercenaries generally had to be paid promptly and in full or they left. The solution was to debase the Ottoman coinage by progressively reducing its precious metal content, with the result that in a few years of the early 1820s the Turkish piastre lost over half its international value. Thus the Sultan’s difficulties in mounting a campaign against the Greeks in 1823 were compounded of demoralisation after the failures of 1822; the distractions of the Russian threat and the Persian war; the fire at Tophana, due to accident or arson; reliance on mercenaries; financial difficulties and a debased coinage; and as in previous years the dissension between Ottoman commanders who temporarily joined forces as independent pashas and never easily accepted the commands of one of their number or co-operated with each other.
Nevertheless a Turkish fleet, as well as land forces, was made ready in early 1823 under a new kapitan pasha, Khosref. For operations against the Greeks the Turks had now stopped using line-of-battle ships, which were impressive but unwieldy, and highly vulnerable to attack by fireships. So when Khosref sailed out of the Dardanelles at the end of May 1823 his fleet was made up of smaller ships: fifteen frigates, thirteen corvettes, twelve brigs and forty transports, supported by a squadron from Algiers.
The fleet first sailed to Évvia, without hindrance from the Greeks, and disembarked troops to reinforce the Turks in the stronghold of Káristos. It then sailed on round the Peloponnese, supplying the fortresses of Methóni and Koróni, and towards the end of June reached Patras, where it stayed for two months, achieving little. Khosref landed some troops in an attempt to take Mesolongi, but they succeeded only in burning two coastal villages before they were driven back. Khosref also tried to send provisions by sea to the garrison still holding out in the citadel of Corinth, but the citadel is a good three miles from the shore and as soon as the stores were landed a Greek band of 2,000 came down from the neighbouring hills where they had been lying in wait, drove off the Turks and seized the supplies. Starvation finally led the garrison of the Corinth citadel to surrender to the Greeks in the following November.
Gordon described Khosref as ‘an old lame man, addicted to pleasure’, and believed that he had little interest in naval or military success: ‘The business he really applied himself to was the sale of permissions to Austrian, Maltese, and Ionian vessels to enter the gulf and trade with the insurgents, who exchanged their currants for arms and ammunition.’5 Leaving Patras at the end of August, Khosref’s fleet spent the rest of the year patrolling the Aegean, without opposition until a combined Greek squadron of forty armed ships and six fireships put to sea under Miaoúlis of Hydra. The Greeks were unable to exploit their fireships; to this extent the new Turkish naval policy of using smaller vessels was effective. The Greeks’ major success came at the end of October, when Miaoúlis’ fleet captured a particularly elegant twenty-eight-gun corvette, bought in England, and four brigs. Thus when Khosref sailed back into Constantinople in early December he had this loss to report and to balance it the capture of only a few small Greek ships and virtually no useful contribution to the year’s campaign.
After the death of Márkos Bótsaris at Karpenísi the Souliot bands, now numbering some 2,000 men, made another attempt to hold up Mustafa’s army a few miles further on in the ravines of Mount Kaliakoúdha, but without success. The Turks pushed on to Agrínion, where they were joined by an army under Omer Vrionis, and in mid-October the combined force moved towards Mesolongi. The Turkish commanders decided that they must first capture the islet of Anatolikó, modern Etolikó, in Mesolongi’s lagoon. The Turks mounted a large battery to bombard it but the Greeks held out, and at the end of November after six weeks of unavailing siege the Turkish armies again withdrew, Mustafa to his base in faraway Shkoder. Within days of the Ottoman withdrawal Mavrokordhátos returned to Mesolongi as once again governor-general of West Roumeli, and was ready to receive Byron.
In East Roumeli the Turks’ campaign of 1823 had done no more than their other efforts to take the war to the heart of the rebellion in the Peloponnese. They strengthened their hold on Évvia and on some of the major towns of the region – Sálona, Aráchova near Delphi, Livadhiá and Thebes – but made no serious attempt on Athens. Resistance from Odysseus Andhroútsos, combined with memories of Dramali’s fate, deterred them from any attempt to cross the isthmus of Corinth. Thus in the course of 1823 not a single additional soldier from the Ottoman army entered the Peloponnese, and the opposing Greek factions there were left undisturbed to pursue their self-destructive rivalry.
From the summer of 1823 until the end of the year the broad division among the Greeks was between those who supported the Executive and those who backed the Senate. Support for the Executive meant in effect support for Kolokotrónis, who had joined it under duress in June. Of the other four members of the Executive, two – Charalámvis and Metaxás – sided with Kolokotrónis; its president Petrobey Mavromichális was regarded as a supine figurehead, and only Andréas Zaímis opposed his Executive colleagues. Kolokotrónis was backed by a number of powerful Peloponnesian clans. Ranged against the Kolokotrónis faction and broadly supporting the Senate were Andréas Zaímis, Executive member and primate of Kalávrita, and his ally Andréas Lóndos, primate of Vostítsa, the pair being often referred to as the two Andréases. Gordon gives contrasting portraits of them.
Zaimis was endowed with political talents, gravity of manners, sound sense, and brilliant eloquence; he was upright in his dealings, kind and generous to his inferiors, beloved by the people of his province, and respected by all men, because he respected himself: his faults were pride, ambition, and timidity in the field. Londos possessed abundance of courage, but he was drunken, debauched, rapacious, and oppressive. There was the same contrast in their personal appearance, the first being tall and handsome, the second dwarfish, and almost deformed.6
Also supporting the Senate were Mavrokordhátos, the islanders (especially those from Hydra), and a number of the captains. Other splits cut across this broad division between Executive and Senate. The Executive itself was divided, and so was the Senate, eleven of its members ultimately aligning themselves with the opposition to it. There was antipathy between regions, especially between the Peloponnese and the islands, and divisions within regions, notably between the Peloponnesian leaders. There were also the shifting allegiances and disputes between individuals and families. In short, it was as if the mirror of the Greek body politic was now not merely cracked but splintered and about to disintegrate.
This disintegration is demonstrated by the moves from place to place by the two branches of the government during 1823. After the assembly at Ástros in April both branches moved to Tripolis, and in August to Salamís. However in October they split, the Senate remaining at Salamís while the Executive moved to Navplion, where it was under the wing of Kolokotrónis since Navplion was still garrisoned by his forces. In November the Senate moved away from Salamís and closer to its supporters in the naval islands, going first to Árgos and then to Kranídhi, which is within twenty miles of both Hydra and Spétses. But Kranídhi is also only twenty-five miles from Navplion. Thus by the end of the year the Senate and the Executive, having for some time circled each other like fighters in a ring, had taken up positions for confrontation.
A string of incidents had brought this confrontation closer. Kolokotrónis had joined the Executive in June only under threats from the Senate, and from the start had acted as member and vice-president simply for the advantages it might bring him. He made no secret of this. ‘Cease singing,’ he told his Executive colleagues, ‘and my dance ceases.’7 ‘Dancing’ here is co-operating and ‘singing’ is offering inducements. As time went on the inducements for Kolokotrónis to co-operate with the Executive became less. His position on the Executive had not strengthened his hand as a military leader and if anything had weakened it. The soldiers and the common people were coming to regard him less as a great general, the hero of Dhervenákia, and more as just another politician. At the end of October 1823 Kolokotrónis resigned from the Executive. He was thus no longer the puppet of the Senate, and was free to follow his original line of opposing it.
Further disputes between the Senate and the Executive arose over the legality of each other’s actions. Iánnis Peroúkas the finance minister, who was answerable to the Executive, imposed a government monopoly on salt. Every family in the land needed salt and would be hurt by a price rise imposed by a monopolistic government. The measure was one of those tax-raising schemes which governments have so often blithely introduced without reckoning on the resultant outcry. The minister had acted without Senate approval, which the law required, and on this ground the Senate dismissed him. But could the Senate legally do so? The Executive pointed out that a Senate vote needed a quorum of two-thirds, that is forty-seven of its seventy members; but eleven members had defected to the Executive side and another score had simply departed, so that only forty or so senators were present at votes. However this argument could be used by the Senate too. The Executive also needed a quorum of three of its five members, and with absences for various reasons was often reduced to two.
Matters came to a head at the end of the year. On 7 December the Senate dismissed from their posts both the erring finance minister and one of the Executive’s members, Kolokotrónis’ supporter Metaxás, saying it was his absence which had left the Executive without a quorum and so inoperative. In place of Metaxás the Senate appointed its own man, Koléttis. This provoked Kolokotrónis’ supporters to action, and on the following day 200 troops from Navplion under its garrison commander Pános Kolokotrónis burst into the Senate while it was in session in Árgos, seized the Senate’s records and dispersed the senators with threats and blows, later ransacking their houses. Pános Kolokotrónis failed however in his main object, which was to arrest the senators and carry them off bodily to Navplion. Instead the senators escaped to Kranídhi, where they could rely on the protection of Hydra and Spétses.
In Kranídhi the Senate dismissed its two remaining opponents on the Executive, Petrobey Mavromichális and Charalámvis, and accepted the resignation of the pro-Senate Andréas Zaímis. The way was now clear for the Senate to appoint an Executive of its own persuasion: the new president was Georgios Koundouriótis of Hydra, vice-president was Panayiótis Bótasis of Spétses, and of the other three members one was a supporter of Koundouriótis, one was a member of the Lóndos clan representing the Peloponnese, and the other was Koléttis, already appointed. Mavrokordhátos held no office, but played a crucial role in the background. According to Howe, Koundouriótis said to Mavrokordhátos, ‘ “Mavrokordhátos, you know I am ignorant of politics: how can I serve if I accept?” “Never mind – never mind,” replied the shrewd manager, “you shall be the ship, and I will be the rudder.”’8
The Senate now called for new elections to replace those senators who had defected to the other side or who had left for other reasons. Meanwhile in Navplion the members of the old Executive refused to accept their dismissal, and the senators who had joined them also called for new elections to replace their rivals in Kranídhi. At the end of January the old ousted Executive and the senators who supported it moved from Navplion to Tripolis, leaving Navplion still in the hands of Pános Kolokotrónis. Thus at the beginning of 1824 Greece had two governments. One was at Kranídhi, consisting of most of the senators and the new Executive which it had appointed. The other at Tripolis comprised the old Executive and the few senators who supported it, and had the military backing of Kolokotrónis. Both bodies claimed legality, and each tried to outmanoeuvre the other. Both of course were also keen to secure for themselves the proceeds of the long-hoped-for English loan, and the support of the newly arrived Lord Byron.