Greek War of Independence
The Greek War of Independence began in the spring of 1821 and produced the first new state carved out of the Ottoman Empire. The rising was prepared by the Filiki Eteria, a secret society founded at Odessa in 1814 among Greek merchants of the diaspora, whose members believed — wrongly — that Russia would come in. It opened in two places. Alexandros Ypsilantis crossed the Pruth into the Danubian principalities in March with a small force and was disowned by the Tsar and destroyed within months. The Peloponnese rose almost simultaneously and was far more successful, taking Tripolitsa in September with a massacre of its Muslim and Jewish population. Reprisals ran the other way with equal ferocity — the Patriarch of Constantinople was hanged in his vestments, and the massacre on Chios in 1822 killed or enslaved most of an island of 100,000. The Greeks then fought each other in two civil wars while the war was still running. The Ottomans brought in Muhammad Ali of Egypt, whose son Ibrahim reconquered the Peloponnese with a modern army by 1826, and Missolonghi fell after a year's siege. What saved the revolt was philhellenism. Educated Europe had been raised on classical texts and read the war as Greece against Asia; Byron went and died at Missolonghi in 1824; Delacroix painted Chios; and public pressure moved the governments. A British, French and Russian fleet destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet at Navarino in October 1827, largely by accident. Independence was recognised in 1832 under a Bavarian king.
- Year: 1821 CE
- Category: Military
