Missolonghi is a town in southern Aetolia-Acarnania in western Continental Greece, located on a promontory jutting into a lagoon at the entrance of the namesake gulf.

[4] When the Greek War of Independence broke out in spring 1821, Missolonghi was the first place in western Greece to join the uprising, on 20 May 1822, led by the town elders, such as Athanasios Razikotsikas.

[2] The Ottoman commander Reşid Mehmed Pasha was informed "Either Missolonghi falls or your head" as the Sultan would not tolerate a third failed siege.

[2] The location of Missolonghi was on a long spit of land surrounded by a lagoon full of islands, giving it a strong defensive position.

[10] The town was surrounded by earthen walls, but their defences had been strengthened by a military engineer from Chios, Michael Kokkinis who had built a series of 17 bastions containing 48 guns and 4 mortars, forming triangular projections so the defender could bring interlocking fire on any attacker.

[15] From the mound, the Greeks were forced out of the Franklin battery, but dug a ditch with a rampart behind, which stopped the Ottomans from advancing too deep into Missolonghi.

[18] In October 1825, the heavy rains turned the Ottoman lines into a quagmire and, feeling confident of victory, the women and children whom Admiral Miaoulis had taken to the island of Kalamos for their safety returned in the fall.

[18] During the truce to celebrate the wedding, the engineer Kokkinis was allowed to visit the Ottoman camp, which he described “as earthworks with no coherence, constructions with no logic, and in short by any reckoning a muddle and a hotchpotch…The whole thing is unbelievable-but it’s Turkish”.

[19] The High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, Sir Frederick Adam, tried to make both forces sign a treaty, but his efforts were unsuccessful.

[20] On 9 March 1826, the island of Vasiladhi commanded by the Italian philhellene Pasquale Iacommuzzi consisting of 34 artillerymen and 27 infantry was attacked by 1,000 Egyptians under Hussein Bey.

[21] Ibrahim Pasha tried to motivate his soldiers by screaming in Arabic that this was a jihad, so the Egyptians should not fear "martyrdom" for Allah, and that they were free to rape any Greek Christian who crossed their path.

[21] One Greek Nikolaos Kasomoulis, serving as a secretary to one of the captains described the scene the next day: ”The lagoon was covered with corpses a gunshot distance away, and they were drifting like rubbish by the shore…one could see bodies floating all round, about 2,500 of them, apart from those our boatman had captured and killed at dawn when they cried out for help.

But the clothes were worthless, apart from those of a few officers; the Greeks got no booty from these and were much displeased”[22] However, with the Ottomans guarding the islands in the entrance to the lagoon, Admiral Miaoulis could not longer bring in supplies of food and soon the people were starving.

[23] To stay alive, the people were forced to eat seaweed washed ashore, but it failed to provide sufficient nutrients, leaving many to suffer from ulcers, scurvy, diarrhoea, and swelling from the joints.

[23] After around a year of holding out, the leaders of the Greeks, Notis Botsaris, Kitsos Tzavelas and Makris made a plan to escape the city in a conference held at the church of Ayios Spiridhon.

[25] When all food supplies had run out and there was no hope of relief, the besieged Greeks decided that some of the menfolk of fighting age should burst out of the gates and attempt to lead the women and children to safety, while the rest would remain to defend the town to the death on 10 April [N.S.

[25] The plan was that, on the night of 10 April, the people were to charge over the eastern section of the walls, use wooden bridges they carried to cross the Ottoman ditches and then wait for Karaiskakis to come.

[27] The Ottomans and Egyptians set the city on fire, leading Kasomoulis to remember: “The torch that was Missolonghi shed its light as far as Vasiladhi and Klisova and over the whole plain, and even reached us.

From Missolonghi we heard the shrieks of women, the sound of gunfire, the explosion of powder magazines and mines, all combined in an indescribably fearful noise.

[27] In the morning, the Ottoman cavalry set off in pursuit of the refugees while, where Karaiskakis was supposed to be, a party of Albanians were waiting to kill the men and to take the women and children to sell into slavery.

The rest were slaughtered or sold into slavery, with the majority of the surviving Greek Christian women becoming sex slaves to Egyptian soldiers.

Though a military disaster, the siege and its aftermath proved a victory for the Greek cause, and the Ottomans paid dearly for their harsh treatment of Missolonghi.

After this incident, many people from Western Europe felt increased sympathy for the Greek cause, as manifested for example in the famous Delacroix painting Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi (1827).

[citation needed] Missolonghi is considered a 'sacred city' (ἱερὰ πόλις) in modern Greece for its role and sacrifice in the Greek War of Independence.