Greek War of Independence

At issue: Greek independence from Ottoman rule

Date: 1821–1832

Location: Danubian principalities, Peloponnese, Ionian Sea

Combatants: Greeks, English, French, and Russians vs. Turks

Principal commanders:Russian, Prince Alexander Ypsilantis (1792–1828); Demetrios Ypsilantis (1793–1832); English, Sir Edward Codrington (1770–1851); Turkish, Ibrāhīm Pasha (1789–1848)

Principal battles: Dragatsani, Navarino Bay

Result: Greek (and allied) victory; formation of an independent Greek state

Background

The Greeks were under Ottoman rule from 1453 to 1832. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were acts of resistance to Ottoman rule, but these were unplanned, sporadic revolts unable to achieve any permanent success. The French Revolution of 1789 and the wars of liberation of Napoleon I inspired the Greek intelligentsia to prepare for an armed struggle against the Ottomans. Rigas Velestinlis was the first Greek prophet of armed revolution. In addition to the many articles he wrote on constitutional matters, he wrote a military manual detailing how Greeks should carry on an armed struggle. He was betrayed by a Greek merchant and sentenced to death.

Action

In June, 1798, Napoleon launched his invasion of Egypt, thus threatening the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. By 1814, all the Ionian Islands had been captured by the British. In 1814, the Greeks founded the secret organization Philikí Etaireía, or Friendly Brotherhood, with the objective of liberating Greece through armed revolt. The Greeks were also encouraged by the successful revolt of the Serbs against Ottoman rule in 1815.

In 1821, supreme leadership of the Friendly Brotherhood was offered to Prince Alexander Ypsilantis, member of a well-known Phanariot family, who was himself an officer in the Russian army. In March, 1821, he launched an invasion of the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Walachia, hoping that this would encourage the Ottoman Turks to despatch troops to the principalities and thus provoke Russian intervention. Ypsilantis’s small army of 4,500 men, four cannons, and very few cavalry met with one disaster after another. The organized help he had expected from the inhabitants of the principalities did not materialize. Moreover, Czar Alexander I agreed to the despatch of Ottoman troops to the principalities. After a short campaign, Ypsilantis’s forces were crushed in the Battle of Dragatsani, in June, 1821. Ypsilantis was then imprisoned until his death in 1828.

There were also a number of nearly simultaneous uprisings in the Peloponnese, where the insurgents were initially quite successful, but the Turks eventually managed to strike back, taking reprisals against the Greek population, which included the hanging of Gregory V on Easter. The news of Gregory’s martyrdom provoked outrage in the West and encouraged volunteers from Europe and the United States to come to Greece to support the insurgents. This support energized the Greeks in the Peloponnese to continue their campaign against the Ottomans in a terrain ideally suited for guerrilla tactics. In the newly liberated areas, the Greeks began to exercise political authority and drafted a provisional constitution. However, factional divisions among the Greeks, bordering on civil war, led to the formation in 1823 of two rival governments, each claiming to be the legitimate representative of the insurgents. These divisions were over the kind of governmental institutions that would be appropriate to a liberated Greece and over how the war was to be prosecuted. The “military” party preferred irregular warfare, or guerrilla tactics, whereas the “civilian” party preferred the use of a regular army fighting pitched battles. This division hindered the cause of Greek liberation.

Fortunately for the Greeks, however, by 1825, the position of the Western powers had changed from an attitude of nonintervention to an interventionist position against the Ottomans. With the signing of the Treaty of London in July, 1827, the Greeks agreed to mediation by England, France, and Russia. When the large Ottoman fleet, led by Ibrāhīm Pasha, refused to renounce hostilities, the British admiral, Sir Edward Codrington, who was the commander of the combined British, Russian, and French fleet, effectively destroyed it as a fighting force at Navarino Bay (1827), in the last great battle of the age of sail. The Ottomans lost sixty out of eighty-nine vessels and 8,000 men. In the following spring, the Russo-Turkish War erupted. The last battle with the Turks occurred between Thebes and Livadia (1829), when Demetrios Ypsilantis, the brother of Alexander Ypsilantis, defeated a retiring Turkish force. In the same month, the Treaty of Adrianople was concluded between Russia and Turkey, in which the sultan accepted the Treaty of London of July, 1827, together with any settlement of the Greek question that the powers might impose under the treaty.

Aftermath

In a series of conferences at London, beginning in March, 1829, and ending with the issuing of a protocol on February 3, 1832, the allied powers discussed the establishment of the new state. The new Greece was restricted to the Peloponnese, central Greece, and islands of the Cyclades, the northern frontier being drawn from the Gulf of Arta to the Gulf of Volo. It thus excluded much territory that the Greeks viewed as Greek, in particular Thessaly, Crete, Samos, and the Ionian Islands. It was, however, a beginning, the nucleus of an independent Greek state.

Bibliography

Clogg, Richard. A Short History of Modern Greece. London: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Dakin, Douglas. The Greek Struggle for Independence, 1821–1833. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Unification of Greece, 1770–1923. London: Ernest Benn, 1972.