Alexander Ypsilantis (12 December 1792-31 January 1828) was a Greek nationalist politician who led the Greek patriotic movement on the eve of the Greek War of Independence.
Biography[]
Alexander Ypsilantis was born in Constantinople, Ottoman Turkey in 1792 to a Greek family, the son of Constantine Ypsilantis and the brother of Demetrios Ypsilantis. In 1805, his family fled to the Russian Empire, and Alexander was raised at the Russian court and served in the Imperial Russian Army during the Napoleonic Wars, losing his right arm at the Battle of Dresden in 1813. In 1816, he became aide-de-camp to Czar Alexander I of Russia, and he became a Major-General in 1817 at the age of 25.
In 1820, Ypsilantis became the leader of the Odessa-based Filiki Eteria ("Society of Friends") nationalist secret society, and he hastened the outbreak of an anti-Ottoman revolt in Wallachia in 1821, crossing the Prut river to join the rebels. The rebellion was crushed, and Ypsilantis blamed his soldiers for the defeat, to their consternation. From 1823 to 1827, Ypsilantis was detained in Austria, whose reactionary government refused to support nationalist movements in their struggles. He died in extreme poverty in Vienna in 1828.