Beacon Lights of History, Vol 9: European Statesmen — The Greek Revolution, Part 1

1820-1828. When Napoleon was sent to St. Helena, the European nations breathed more freely, and it was the general expectation and desire that there would be no more wars.

The civilized world was weary of strife and battlefields, and in the reaction which followed the general peace of 1815, the various States settled down into a state of dreamy repose.

Not only were they weary of war, but they hated the agitation of those ideas which led to discontent and revolution.

The policy of the governments of England, France, Germany, and Russia was pacific and conservative.

There was a universal desire to recover wasted energies and develop national resources.

Visions of military glory passed away for a time with the enjoyment of peace.

Nations reflected on their follies, and resolved to beat their swords into ploughshares.

Then began a period of philanthropy as well as of rest and reaction.

Societies were organized, especially in England, to spread the Bible in all lands, to send missionaries to the heathen, and proclaim peace and good-will to all mankind, A new era seemed to dawn upon the world, marked by a desire to cultivate the arts, sciences, and literature; to develop industries, and improve social conditions.

War was seen to be barbaric, demoralizing, and exhausting.

Peace was hailed with an enthusiasm scarcely less than that which for twenty years had created military heroes.

The Holy Alliance was not hypocritical.

Although a political compact made under a religious pretext, it was formed by monarchs deeply impressed by the horrors of war, and by the necessity of establishing a new basis for the happiness of mankind on the principles of Christianity, when peace should be the law of nations; at the same time it was formed no less to suppress those ideas which it was supposed led logically to rebellions and revolutions, and to disturb the reign of law, the security of established institutions, and the peaceful pursuit of ordinary avocations.

This was the view taken by the Czar Alexander, by Frederick William of Prussia, by Francis I. of Austria, by Louis XVIII.

of France, as well as by leading statesmen like Talleyrand, Nesselrode, Hardenberg, Chateaubriand, Metternich, Wellington, and Castlereagh.

But these views were delusive.

The world was simply weary of fighting;

it was not impressed with a sense of the wickedness, but only of the inexpediency of war, except in case of great national dangers, or to gain what is dearest to enlightened people,--personal liberty and constitutional government.

Consequently, scarcely five years passed away after the fall of Napoleon before Europe was again disturbed by revolutionary passions.

There were no international wars.

On the whole, England, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria put aside ambitious designs of further aggrandizement, and were disposed to keep peace with one another; and this desire lasted for a whole generation.

But there were other countries in which the flames of insurrection broke out.

The Spanish colonies of South America were impatient of the yoke of the mother country, and sought national independence, which they gained after a severe struggle.

The disaffection in view of royal despotism reached Spain itself, and a revolution in that country dethroned the Bourbon king, and was suppressed only by the aid of France.

All Italy was convulsed by revolutionary ideas and passions growing out of the cruel despotism exercised by the various potentates who ruled that fair but unhappy country.

Insurrections were violent in Naples, in Piedmont, and in the papal territories, and were put down not by Italian princes, but by Austrian bayonets.

As it is my design to present these in another lecture, I simply allude to them in this connection.

But the most important revolution which occurred at this period, taking into view its ultimate consequences and its various complications, was that of Greece.

It was different from those of Spain and Italy in this respect, that it was a struggle not to gain political rights from oppressive rulers, but to secure national independence.

As such, it is invested with great interest.

Moreover, it was glorious, since it was ultimately successful, after a dreadful contest with Turkey for seven years, during which half of the population was swept away.

Greece probably would have succumbed to a powerful empire but for the aid tardily rendered her by foreign Powers,--united in this instance, not to suppress rebellion, but to rescue a noble and gallant people from a cruel despotism.

Had the armed intervention of Russia, England, and France taken place at an earlier period, much suffering and bloodshed might have been averted.

But Russia was fettered by the Holy Alliance to suppress all insurrection and attempts at constitutional liberty wherever they might take place, and could not, consistently with the promises given to Austria and Prussia, join in an armed intervention, even in a matter dear to the heart of Alexander, whose religion was that of Greece.

The Czar was placed in an awkward position.

If he gave assistance to the Greeks, whose religious faith was the same as his own and whose foe was also the traditionary enemy of Russia, he would violate his promises, which he always held sacred, and give umbrage to Austria.

The intolerant hatred of Alexander for all insurrections whatever induced him to stand aloof from a contest which jeoparded the stability of thrones, and with which in a political view, as an absolute sovereign, he had no sympathy.

On the other hand, if Alexander remained neutral, his faith would be trodden under foot, and that by a power which he detested both politically and religiously,--a power, too, with which Russia had often been at war.

If Turkey triumphed in the contest, rebels against a long-constituted authority might indeed be put down; but a hostile power would be strengthened, dangerous to all schemes of Russian aggrandizement.

Consequently Alexander was undecided in his policy; yet his indecision tore his mind with anguish, and probably shortened his days.

He was, on the whole, a good man; but he was a despot, and did not really know what to do.

England and France, again, were weakened by the long wars of Napoleon, and wanted repose.

Their sympathies were with the Greeks; but they shielded themselves behind the principles of non-intervention, which were the public law of Europe.

So the poor Greeks were left for six years to struggle alone and unaided against the whole force of the Turkish empire before relief came, when they were on the verge of annihilation.

It was the struggle of a little country about half the size of Scotland against an empire four times as large as Great Britain and France combined; of a population less than a million against twenty-five millions.

It was more than this: it was, in many important respects, a war between Asia and Europe, kindred in spirit with the old Crusades.

It was a war of races and religions, rather than of political principles; and hence it was marked by inhuman atrocities on both sides, reminding us of the old wars between Jews and Syrians.

It was a tragedy at which the whole civilized world gazed with blended interest and horror.

It was infinitely more fierce than any contest which has taken place in Europe for three hundred years.

To the Greeks themselves it was, after the first successes, the most discouraging contest that I know of in human history; and yet it had all those elements of heroism which marked the insurrection of the Hollanders under William the Silent against the combined forces of Austria and Spain.

It was grand in its ideas, like our own Revolutionary War; and the liberty which was finally gained was purchased by greater sacrifices than any recorded in any war, either ancient or modern.

The war of Italian independence was a mere holiday demonstration in comparison with it.

Even the Polish wars against Russia were nothing to it, in the sufferings which were endured and the gallant feats which were performed.

But as Greece was a small and distant country, its memorable contest was not invested with the interest felt for battles on a larger scale, and which more directly affected the interests of other nations.

It was not till its complications involved Turkey and Russia in war, and affected the whole "Eastern Question," that its historical importance was seen.

It was perhaps only the beginning of a series of wars which may drive the Ottoman Turks out of Europe, and make Constantinople a great prize for future conquerors.

That is unquestionably what Russia wants and covets to-day, and what the other great Powers are determined she shall not have.

Possibly Greece may yet be the renewed seat of a Greek empire, under the protection of the Western nations, as a barrier to Russian encroachments around the Black Sea.

There is sympathy for the Greeks; none for the Turks.

England, France, and Austria can form no lasting alliance with Mohammedans, who may be driven back into Asia,--not by Russians, but by a coalition of the Latin and Gothic races.

It is useless, however, to speculate on the future wars of the world.

We only know that offences must needs come so long as nations and rulers are governed more by interests and passions than by reason or philanthropy.

When will passions and interests cease to be dominant or disturbing forces?

To these most of the wars which history records are to be traced.

And yet, whatever may be the origin or character of wars, those who stimulate or engage in them find plausible excuses,--necessity, patriotism, expediency, self-defence, even religion and liberty.

So long then as men are blinded by their passions and interests, and palliate or justify their wars by either truth or sophistry, there is but little hope that they will cease, even with the advance of civilization.

When has there been a long period unmarked by war?

When have wars been more destructive and terrible than within the memory of this generation?

It would indeed seem that when nations shall learn that their real interests are not antagonistic, that they cannot afford to go to war with one another, peace would then prevail as a policy not less than as a principle.

This is the hopeful view to take;

but unfortunately it is not the lesson taught by history, nor by that philosophy which has been generally accepted by Christendom for eighteen hundred years,--which is that men will not be governed by the loftiest principles until the religion of Jesus shall have conquered and changed the heart of the world, or at least of those who rule the world.

The chapter I am about to present is one of war,--cruel, merciless, relentless war; therefore repulsive, and only interesting from the magnitude of the issues, fought out, indeed, on a narrow strip of territory.

What matter, whether the battlefield is large or small?

There was as much heroism in the struggles of the Dutch republic as in the wars of Napoleon; as much in our warfare for independence as in the suppression of the Southern rebellion; as much among Cromwell's soldiers as in the Crimean war; as much at Thermopylae as at Plataea.

It is the greatness of a cause which gives to war its only justification.

A cause is sacred from the dignity of its principles.

Men are nothing;

principles are everything.

Men must die.

It is of comparatively little moment whether they fall like autumn leaves or perish in a storm,--they are alike forgotten; but their ideas and virtues are imperishable, --eternal lessons for successive generations.

History is a record not merely of human sufferings,--these are inevitable,--but also of the stepping-stones of progress, which indicate both the permanent welfare of men and the Divine hand which mysteriously but really guides and governs.

When the Greek revolution broke out, in 1820, there were about seven hundred thousand people inhabiting a little over twenty-one thousand square miles of territory, with a revenue of about fifteen millions of dollars,--large for such a country of mountains and valleys.

But the soil is fertile and the climate propitious, favorable for grapes, olives, and maize.

It is a country easily defended, with its steep mountains, its deep ravines, and rugged cliffs, and when as at that time roads were almost impassable for carriages and artillery.

Its people have always been celebrated for bravery, industry, and frugality (like the Swiss), but prone to jealousies and party feuds.

It had in 1820 no central government, no great capital, and no regular army.

It owed allegiance to the Sultan at Constantinople, the Turks having conquered Greece soon after that city was taken by them in 1453. Amid all the severities of Turkish rule for four centuries the Greeks maintained their religion, their language, and distinctive manners.

In some places they were highly prosperous from commerce, which they engrossed along the whole coast of the Levant and among the islands of the Archipelago.

They had six hundred vessels, bearing six thousand guns, and manned by eighteen thousand seamen.

In their beautiful islands,-- "Where burning Sappho loved and sung,"-- abodes of industry and freedom, the Turkish pashas never set their foot, satisfied with the tribute which was punctually paid to the Sultan.

Moreover, these islands were nurseries of seamen for the Turkish navy;

and as these seamen were indispensable to the Sultan, the country that produced them was kindly treated.

The Turks were indifferent to commerce, and allowed the Greek merchants to get rich, provided they paid their tribute.

The Turks cared only for war and pleasure, and spent their time in alternate excitement and lazy repose.

They disdained labor, which they bought with tribute-money or secured from slaves taken in war.

Like the Romans, they were warriors and conquerors, but became enervated by luxury.

They were hard masters, but their conquered subjects throve by commerce and industry.

The Greeks, as to character, were not religious like the Turks, but quicker witted.

What religion they had was made up of the ceremonies and pomps of a corrupted Christianity, but kept alive by traditions.

Their patriarch was a great personage,--practically appointed, however, by the Sultan, and resident in Constantinople.

Their clergy were married, and were more humane and liberal than the Roman Catholic priests of Italy, and about on a par with them in morals and influence.

The Greeks were always inquisitive and fond of knowledge, but their love of liberty has been one of their strongest peculiarities, kept alive amid all the oppressions to which they have been subjected.

Nevertheless, unarmed, at least on the mainland, and without fortresses, few in numbers, with overwhelming foes, they had not, up to 1820, dared to risk a general rebellion, for fear that they should be mercilessly slaughtered.

So long as they remained at peace their condition as a conquered people was not so bad as it might have been, although the oppressions of tax-gatherers and the brutality of Turkish officials had been growing more and more intolerable.

In 1770 and 1790 there had been local and unsuccessful attempts at revolt, but nothing of importance.

Amid the political agitations which threw Spain and Italy into revolution, however, the spirit of liberty revived among the hardy Greek mountaineers of the mainland.

Secret societies were formed, with a view of shaking off the Turkish yoke.

The aspiring and the discontented naturally cast their eyes to Russia for aid, since there was a religious bond between the Russians and the Greeks, and since the Russians and Turks were mortal enemies, and since, moreover, they were encouraged to hope for such aid by a great Russian nobleman, by birth a Greek, who was private secretary and minister, as well as an intimate, of the Emperor Alexander,--Count Capo d'Istrias.

They were also exasperated by the cession of Parga (a town on the mainland opposite the Ionian Islands) to the Turks, by the treaty of 1815, which the allies carelessly overlooked.

The flame of insurrection in 1820 did not, however, first break out in the territory of Greece, but in Wallachia,--a Turkish province on the north of the Danube, governed by a Greek hospodar, the capital of which was Bucharest.

This was followed by the revolt of another Turkish province, Moldavia, bordering on Russia, from which it was separated by the River Pruth.

At Jassy, the capital, Prince Ypsilanti, a distinguished Russian general descended from an illustrious Greek family, raised the standard of insurrection, to which flocked the whole Christian population of the province, who fell upon the Turkish soldiers and massacred them.

Ypsilanti had twenty thousand soldiers under his command, against which the six hundred armed Turks could make but feeble resistance.

This apparently successful revolt produced an immense enthusiasm throughout Greece, the inhabitants of which now eagerly took up arms.

The Greeks had been assured of the aid of Russia by Ypsilanti, who counted without his host, however; for the Czar, then at the Congress of Laibach, convened to put down revolutionary ideas, was extremely angry at the conduct of Ypsilanti, and, against all expectation, stood aloof.

This was the time for him to attack Turkey, then weakened and dilapidated; but he was tired of war.

Among the Greeks the wildest enthusiasm prevailed, especially throughout the Morea, the ancient Peloponnesus.

The peasants everywhere gathered around their chieftains, and drove away the Turkish soldiers, inflicting on them the grossest barbarities.

In a few days the Turks possessed nothing in the Morea but their fortresses.

The Turkish garrison of Athens shut itself up in the Acropolis.

Most of the islands of the Archipelago hoisted the standard of the Cross; and the strongest of them armed and sent out cruisers to prey on the commerce of the enemy.

At Constantinople the news of the insurrection excited both consternation and rage.

Instant death to the Christians was the universal cry.

The Mussulmans seized the Greek patriarch, an old man of eighty, while he was performing a religious service on Easter Sunday, hanged him, and delivered his body to the Jews.

The Sultan Mahmoud was intensely exasperated, and ordered a levy of troops throughout his empire to suppress the insurrection and to punish the Christians.

The atrocities which the Turks now inflicted have scarcely ever been equalled in horror.

The Christian churches were entered and sacked.

At Adrianople the Patriarch was beheaded, with eight other ecclesiastical dignitaries.

In ten days thousands of Christians in that city were butchered, and their wives and daughters sold into slavery; while five archbishops and three bishops were hanged in the streets, without trial.

There was scarcely a town in the empire where atrocities of the most repulsive kind were not perpetrated on innocent and helpless people.

In Asia Minor the fanatical spirit raged with more ferocity than in European Turkey.

At Smyrna a general massacre of the Christians took place under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and fifteen thousand were obliged to flee to the islands of the Archipelago to save their lives.

The Island of Cyprus, which once had a population of more than a million, reduced at the breaking out of the insurrection to seventy thousand, was nearly depopulated; the archbishop and five other bishops were ruthlessly murdered.

The whole island, one hundred and forty-six miles long and sixty-three wide, was converted into a theatre of rapine, violation, and bloodshed.

All now saw that no hope remained for Greece but in the most determined resistance, which was nobly made.

Six thousand men were soon in arms in Thessaly.

The mountaineers of Macedonia gathered into armed bands.

Thirty thousand rose in the peninsula of Cassandra and laid siege to Salonica, a city of eighty thousand inhabitants, but were repulsed, and fled to the mountains,--not, however, until thousands of Mussulmans were slain.

It had become "war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt."

No quarter was asked or given.

All Greece was now aroused to what was universally felt to be a death struggle.

The people eagerly responded to all patriotic influences, and especially to war songs, some of which had been sung for more than two thousand years.

Certain of these were reproduced by the English poet Byron, who, leaving his native land, entered heart and soul into the desperate contest, and urged the Greeks to heroic action in memory of their fathers.

"Then manfully despising The Turkish tyrant's yoke, Let your country see you rising, And all her chains are broke.

Brave shades of chiefs and sages, Behold the coming strife!

Hellenes of past ages Oh, start again to life!

At the sound of trumpet, breaking Your sleep, oh, join with me!

And the seven-hilled city seeking, Fight, conquer, till we're free!"

Success now seemed to mark the uprising in Southern Greece; but in the Danubian provinces, without the expected aid of Russia, it was far otherwise.

Prince Ypsilanti, who had taken an active part in the insurrection, was dismissed from the Russian service and summoned back to Russia; but he was not discouraged, and advanced to Bucharest with ten thousand men.

In the mean time ten thousand Turks entered the Principalities and regained Moldavia.

Ypsilanti fled before the conquering enemy, abandoned Bucharest, and was totally defeated at Dragaschan, with the loss of all his baggage and ammunition.

Only twenty-five of his hastily collected band escaped into Transylvania.