Greek War of Independence

[e] From the early 18th century and onwards, members of prominent Greek families in Constantinople, known as Phanariotes (after the Phanar district of the city), gained considerable control over Ottoman foreign policy and eventually over the bureaucracy as a whole.

Influenced by the Italian Carbonari and profiting from their own experience as members of Freemasonic organizations, they founded in 1814 the secret Filiki Eteria ("Friendly Society") in Odessa, an important center of the Greek mercantile diaspora in Russia.

Two days after crossing the Prut, at Three Holy Hierarchs Monastery in Iași (Jassy), the capital of Moldavia, Ypsilantis issued a proclamation calling all Greeks and Christians to rise up against the Ottomans:[58][59][60][61] Fight for Faith and Fatherland!

[63] Instead of directly advancing on Brăila, where he arguably could have prevented Ottoman armies from entering the Principalities, and where he might have forced Russia to accept a fait accompli, Ypsilantis remained in Iaşi and ordered the executions of several pro-Ottoman Moldavians.

The loss of their Romanian allies, followed by an Ottoman intervention on Wallachian soil, sealed defeat for the Greek exiles and culminated in the disastrous Battle of Dragashani and the destruction of the Sacred Band on 7 June [N.S.

Fearing that his followers might surrender him to the Turks, he gave out that Austria had declared war on Turkey, caused a Te Deum to be sung in Cozia Monastery, and on pretext of arranging measures with the Austrian commander-in-chief, he crossed the frontier.

There, Papaflessas, a pro-revolution priest who presented himself as representative of Filiki Eteria, clashed with most of the civil leaders and members of the senior clergy, such as Metropolitan Germanos of Patras, who were sceptical and demanded guarantees about a Russian intervention.

After capturing some, they would give the poor creatures a certain distance to start ahead, hoping to escape, and then try the speed of their horses in overtaking them, the accuracy of their pistols in firing at them as they ran, or the keenness of their sabres' edge in cutting off their heads".

After his defeat and the successful retreat of Androutsos' force, Omer Vrioni postponed his advance towards Peloponnese awaiting reinforcements; instead, he invaded Livadeia, which he captured on 10 June, and Athens, where he lifted the siege of the Acropolis.

[88] In Nafplio, a monument to honor the philhellenes who died fighting in the war listed 274 names, of which 100 are from Germany, forty each from France and Italy, and the rest from Britain, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Portugal and Denmark.

[99] When Demetrios Ypsilantis arrived in Peloponnese as official representative of Filiki Eteria, he tried to assume control of the Revolution's affairs, and he thus proposed a new system of electing the members of the Senate, which was supported by the military leaders, but opposed by the notables.

[103] On 28 May 1822, an Egyptian fleet of 30 warships and 84 transports arrived at Souda Bay led by Hasan Pasha, Muhammad Ali's son-in-law; he was tasked with ending the rebellion and did not waste any time in the burning of villages throughout Crete.

[103] After Hasan's accidental death in February 1823, another son-in-law of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, Hussein Bey,[105] led a well-organised and well-armed joint Turkish-Egyptian force of 12,000 soldiers with the support of artillery and cavalry.

On 22 June 1823, Emmanouil Tombazis, appointed Commissioner of Crete by the Greek revolutionary government, held the Convention of Arcoudaina in an attempt to reconcile the factions of local captains and unite them against the common threat.

[112] Following the instructions of Alexander Ypsilantis, that is to prepare the ground and to rouse the inhabitants of Macedonia to rebellion, Pappas loaded arms and munitions from Constantinople on a ship on 23 March and proceeded to Mount Athos, considering that this would be the most suitable spring-board for starting the insurrection.

In June 1821 the insurgents tried to cut communications between Thrace and the south, attempting to prevent the serasker Haji Muhammad Bayram Pasha from transferring forces from Asia Minor to southern Greece.

Failing to get the insurgents to surrender, Mehmed Emin launched a number of attacks pushing them further back and finally captured Naousa in April, helped by the enemies of Zafeirakis, who had revealed an unguarded spot, the "Alonia".

In subsequent years, the successes of the Greek fire ships would increase their reputation, with acts such as the destruction of the Ottoman flagship by Konstantinos Kanaris at Chios, after the massacre of the island's population in June 1822, acquiring international fame.

Plagued by internal strife and financial difficulties in keeping the fleet in constant readiness, the Greeks failed to prevent the capture and destruction of Kasos and Psara in 1824, or the landing of the Egyptian army at Methoni.

The cash-strapped Ottoman state's relations with Russia, always difficult, had been made worse by the hanging of Patriarch Grigorios, and the Sublime Porte needed to concentrate substantial forces on the Russian border in case war broke out.

During the summer the Souliot Markos Botsaris was shot dead at the Battle of Karpenisi in his attempt to stop the advance of Ottoman Albanian forces;[146] the announcement of his death in Europe generated a wave of sympathy for the Greek cause.

[152] On 19 July 1824, the largest fleet seen in the Mediterranean since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 set sail from Alexandria, consisting of 54 warships and 400 transports carrying 14,000 French-trained infantry, 2,000 cavalry and 500 artillerymen, with some 150 cannons.

The city was saved by Makriyannis and Dimitrios Ypsilantis who successfully defended Miloi at the outskirts of Nafplion, making the mills outside the town a fortress causing damage to Ibrahim's far superior forces who were unable to take the position and eventually left for Tripolitsa.

[181] To break the siege, an attack was launched on Reshid Pasha on 18 August 1826 led by the guerrilla leader Georgios Karaiskakis and the French philhellene Colonel Charles Nicolas Fabvier but were driven off with the loss of some 300 dead.

His manner was agreeable and easy, with the polish of a great social experience, and the goodness of his disposition was admitted by his enemies, but the strength of his mind was not the quality of which his friends boasted...Both Church and the Greeks misunderstood one another.

[206] The French troops, whose military engineers also helped rebuild the Peloponnese, were accompanied by seventeen distinguished scientists of the scientific expedition of Morea (botany, zoology, geology, geography, archaeology, architecture and sculpture), whose work was of major importance for the building of the new independent State.

[190] On 21 December 1828, the ambassadors of Britain, Russia, and France met on the island of Poros and prepared a protocol, which provided for the creation of an autonomous state ruled by a monarch, whose authority should be confirmed by a firman of the Sultan.

Discouraged by the gloomy picture painted by Kapodistrias, and unsatisfied with the Aspropotamos-Zitouni borderline, which replaced the more favorable line running from Arta to Volos considered by the Great Powers earlier, he refused.

[215] On 21 July 1832, British Ambassador to the Sublime Porte Sir Stratford Canning and the other representatives of the Great Powers signed the Treaty of Constantinople, which defined the boundaries of the new Greek Kingdom at the Arta–Volos line.

'Ολα Τα Έθνη πολεμούν Ρήγας Φεραιός & Χρήστος Λεοντής Ο Θούριος Του Ρήγα Νίκος Ξυλούρης Σαράντα Παλικάρια Στέλιος Καζαντζίδης Της δικαιοσύνης Ήλιε Νοητέ[229] Γρηγόρης Μπιθικώτσης Περήφανοι ΄Ολοι Πασχάλης Αρβανιτίδης Να'τανε Το 21 Γιώργος Νταλάρας Κλέφτικη Ζωή Λουκιάνος Κηλαηδόνης

Portrait of a Greek armatolos by Richard Parkes Bonington (oil painting, 1825–1826, Benaki Museum)
Cover of "Thourios" by Rigas Feraios ; intellectual, revolutionary and forerunner of the Greek Revolution.
Alexander Ypsilantis crosses the Pruth , by Peter von Hess (Benaki Museum, Athens)
Important events of the first year of the war
Declaration of the revolutionaries of Patras ; engraved on a stele in the city
"Commander Kephalas plants the flag of Liberty upon the walls of Tripolizza" ( Siege of Tripolitsa ) by Peter von Hess .
Anagnostaras during the Battle of Valtetsi by Peter von Hess.
Atrocities against the Greek population of Constantinople, April 1821. Patriarch Gregory V was executed by the Ottoman authorities.
Jean-Pierre Boyer , President of Haiti . Haiti was the first state to recognise the Greek independence.
The flag of the Areopagus of Eastern Continental Greece with symbols of faith, charity (heart), and hope (anchor)
Hatzimichalis Dalianis , commander of the campaign to Crete, was killed in Frangokastello in 1828.
View of the Frangokastello
Letter of Alexander Ypsilantis to Emmanouel Pappas , dated 8 October 1820
Konstantinos Kanaris during the Revolution
Painting of the Archbishop Kyprianos of Cyprus
"The burning of the Ottoman frigate at Eressos by Dimitrios Papanikolis " by Konstantinos Volanakis
Dionysios Solomos wrote the Hymn to Liberty , which later became the National Greek anthem, in 1823.
"The death of Markos Botsaris during the Battle of Karpenisi " by Marsigli Filippo.
Ibrahim attacks Missolonghi by Giuseppe Pietro Mazzola
The sortie of Missolonghi by Theodoros Vryzakis (1855, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Athens ).
Portrait of Muhammad Ali Pasha (by Auguste Couder , 1841, Palace of Versailles ), whose expedition to the Peloponnese precipitated European intervention in the Greek conflict.
Map showing the original territory of the Kingdom of Greece as laid down in the Treaty of 1832 (in dark blue)
Eugène Delacroix 's Massacre of Chios (1824, oil on canvas, Louvre , Paris)
"Grateful Hellas" by Theodoros Vryzakis
Flags used by various admirals of the Revolutionary Navy from an 1823 manuscript.
Nikolaos Mantzaros ' most popular work is the music for Hymn to Liberty , whose first and second stanzas became the national anthem in 1865
Band in a parade on 25 March