The Greek War of Independence was a successful war of independence by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire from 1821 to 1829. The Greek nationalist cause was weakened by internecine fighting and was nearly destroyed by the Ottomans and their Egyptian allies by 1826; however, in 1827, the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire intervened in the conflict on the side of the Greeks. The Battle of Navarino in 1827, the withdrawal of the Egyptians from Greece due to France's Morea expedition in 1828, and Russia's invasion of Ottoman territories in both the Balkans and Anatolia turned the tide of the conflict, which was concluded with the Treaty of Adrianople. The treaty created an autonomous Greece which was recognized as independent under the London Protocol of February 1830, and, in 1832, the Treaty of Constantinople defined the borders of the new Kingdom of Greece and named Prince Otto of Bavaria as its first ruler.
Background[]
By the early 19th century the Ottoman Empire was in decline, neither able to exercise effective rule over its territories nor defend itself against external enemies. The Ottoman sultans governed domains stretching from Mesopotamia (Iraq) to Algeria, and from the Balkans to Egypt. Most of their provinces were controlled by local rulers, however, with little reference to Ottoman government. The Ottoman army fared poorly in a series of wars with Russia. Pressure from both Russia and Austria threatened Ottoman rule in southeastern Europe, encouraging resistance from the empire's Christian subjects. A revolt led by Karadjordje Petrovic broke out in Serbia in 1804. Ottoman rule in the Balkans was also contested by Muslim Albanian warlord Ali Pasha, based in Ioannina, who ruled over much of what is now Greece.
Sultan Selim III, who reigned from 1789 to 1807, tried to modernize his state but was overthrown by the Janissaries, the traditionalist elite corps of the army. Mahmud II, his successor, was similarly committed to reform, but pursued it with more caution. He suppressed the Serbian revolt in 1813, and in 1820 campaigned against Ali Pasha, whom he defeated in 1822.
War[]
About one in four subjects of the Ottoman Empire spoke Greek. They constituted a socially and ethnically diverse population, ranging from the wealthy Phanariot families of Constantinople, who were part of the ruling elite of the empire, to the klephts (bandits) and peasants of the mountain country of the Peloponnese. Some were what we would now call Romanians or Albanians. Through the centuries of Ottoman rule, a sense of Greek identity had been maintained chiefly through allegiance to the Greek Orthodox Church. In the early 19th century the tide of nationalism that swept through Europe in the wake of the French Revolution encouraged Greeks to aspire to national self-rule. In 1814 a secret Greek organization, the Philiki Eteria (Society of Friends), was founded. It sought support from Russia, which claimed to be a natural protector of Orthodox Christians and had many Greeks in its service. Alexander Ypsilantis, a Phanariot general in the Russian army, assumed the leadership.
Ottoman strength prevails[]
In February 1821, Ypsilantis attempted to begin a Greek revolt in the Ottoman principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (now part of Romania). Russia refused to back him, and his forces were swiftly crushed by the Ottoman Army. Scattered uprisings broke out in the Peloponnese and other parts of the empire. The Ottomans responded with ferocity. At Easter 1821, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, Gregory V, was dragged from church in Constantinople and hanged from a city gate. On the Aegean island of Chios in 1822 most of the population was either massacred or deported. The defeat of Ali Pasha that same year freed the best elements of the Ottoman army to focus on suppressing the Greek revolt, but the Peloponnesian klephts under leaders such as Markos Botsaris were fierce fighters who defied the sultan's forces. A kernel of resistance was also maintained at Missolonghi, in present-day western Greece, under the Phanariot Alexandros Mavrokordatos.
Well-publicized Turkish atrocities won widespread sympathy in Europe for the Greek cause. The British poet Lord Byron traveled to Missolonghi, aiming to join in the fighting, and died there amid a blaze of publicity in April 1824. Other military idealists followed Byron's example, including British Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane, later commander of the Greek naval forces.
A more effective foreign intervention came from elsewhere, however. Egypt, officially part of the Ottoman empire, was, in practice, an independent state under Muhammad Ali, a modernizing ruler who had succeeded in improving his armed forces in a way the Ottoman sultans had singularly failed to do. At Sultan Mahmud's request, Muhammad Ali sent his son, Ibrahim Pasha, with a large naval force and 10,000 drilled and disciplined soldiers to reduce the Greeks to submission. The forces landed in the southern Peloponnese in February 1825.
The Greek rebels had been weakened by internecine struggles between rival factions and were in poor shape to resist Ibrahim Pasha's onslaught. They were simultaneously attacked by a less efficient but still formidable Ottoman army under Reshid Pasha from the north. The Ottomans and Egyptians together took Missolonghi in 1826, and Athens fell the following year after a ten-month siege of the Acropolis.
Meanwhile, Sultan Mahmud took on the power of the janissaries, who had for so long blocked his military reforms. On resisting the imposition of Western-style drill and uniforms, in June 1826, the janissary corps was abolished and thousands of them killed to prevent a reaction. With the Greek revolt doomed and the path open for modernization, by 1827 the Ottoman empire looked in better shape than it had for many years.
Europe acts at last[]
European public opinion had been horrified by the depredations visited upon the Greeks by the Egyptian forces in response to the guerrilla warfare of the klephts. Governments were reluctant to intervene but felt under pressure to take some action. In July 1827, in the Treaty of London, Britain, France, and Russia agreed to support the creation of an autonomous Greek state and to send a fleet to the war zone to persuade the sultan to agree to a ceasefire.
In September, an Egyptian fleet sent from Alexandria joined Ottoman ships at anchor in the bay at Navarino (Pylos) on the west coast of the Peloponnese. They found themselves blockaded by the British ruler Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, subsequently joined by Russian and French squadrons. The Allied naval commanders did not have instructions to engage the enemy but decided to provoke a confrontation, rather than face a long winter blockade. On October 20, the Allied fleet sailed into Navarino harbor. Firing started almost immediately and many Ottoman and Egyptian vessels were destroyed.
The Battle of Navarino did not end the warfare. The sultan was defiant, so, in April 1828, the Russians seized the opportunity to pursue territorial gains by attacking the Ottomans in both the Balkans and eastern Anatolia. By the following September, Russian armies had reached Edirne (Adrianople), 150 miles from Constantinople. Reluctant to see Russia gain too much advantage, other Europeans intervened diplomatically to bring the fighting to an end. Meanwhile, a French expeditionary force landed in Greece to oversee the repatriation of Ibrahim Pasha's forces, and John Capodistrias, a former Russian foreign minister born in Corfu, arrived to head a Greek government.
Aftermath[]
In the aftermath of the war, the European powers dictated a settlement to the Ottoman empire, which entered a period of decline and would not survive another century. Under the terms of the 1829 Treaty of Edirne, the Ottomans were finally forced to accept the autonomy of Greece as well as that of Serbia, Moldavia, and Wallachia. In 1830 Britain, France, and Russia went a step further and decided that Greece should now be fully independent. The quarrelsome Greeks, however, continued to fight among themselves. In 1831, their head of state, John Capodistrias, was assassinated. The allied powers insisted that Greece become a monarchy and Prince Otto of Bavaria became king.
The European powers saw a need to keep the Ottoman Empire in existence, fearing the chaos its dissolution would bring. They intervened in 1833 and 1839 to defend the Ottomans against Egypt, which threatened to take over much of the empire. Britain and France defended the Ottomans once more, this time against Russia in the Crimean War of 1854-56.