The Greek War of Independence.

[Prokomenos]

Tripoli

From the first days of the revolution Kolokotronis had insisted that the Greeks concentrated their effort on the taking of Tripolis in the central Peloponnesus. Tripolis was landlocked, so the Turks could not support it from the sea. It was thus not only a desirable objective for the Greeks, from its central position andbecause it contained many Turks, and it should of been a easy taking. The total population of Tripolis, including the armed garrison, was estimated at about 30,000, roughly double the pre-war numbers, since though most Greeks had left from their ancestral land in fear of Turkish reprisals. As the months of 1821 passed the Greek forces around Tripolis steadily increased from the two or three thousand who had been present in May to about 6,000. By late summer they were drawn up along the Triopian foothills, to the north and west of the town and just out of Turk's cannon range, in four main groups, Kolokotronis was on the left of the line and subordinate to him were Anagostaras in the center and Iatrakos on the right. On the higher slopes above them was a reserve force under Petrobey Mavromichalis.

In July 1821 a newcomer arrived at the Greek camp, Demetrios Ypsilantes, whose brother Alexander Ypsilantes had led the disastrous revolt in Moldavia and Wallachia earlier in the year. On his way from Russia to Greece, Demetrios Ypsilantes came across a Frenchman named Baleste, a veteran of Napoleon's armies who had lived in Crete and so knew the language and conditions of Greece, and engaged him to organize the first regular Greek army, the earliest of many attempts. Ypsilantes came expecting to be given the leadership of the revolution in the Peloponnesus because of his brother Alexander, which Alexander had written before his surrender to the Austrians, grandiloquently naming Demetrios as plenipotentiary of the General Committee of the Council of the society. Demetrios Ypsilantes knew nothing of soldiering his military experience was only short lived as a young captain on the Russian general staff at the end of the Napoleonic wars.

As the summer sun blazed down on the dry plain of Tripolis, one of the first act of the Greeks by attacking Tripolis, was to deprive the Turks of drinking water. Kolokotronis men supposedly either poisoned the water, our cut off the channel which supplied water from the outside to the towns fountains. That did not really do much because the town wasn't heavily relied on outside water. As the siege progressed the Albanian troops of Elmez Aga took possesion of the best wells and demanded payment for their use. For a time the Turkish cavalry provided protection for foraging parties, but this came to an end in late August when Greek forced under Kolokotronis and Anagnostaras surprised and escorted group that had gone to fetch grain from a village a few miles north of Tripolis. The Turks were driven back into the town. A hundred or more Turks were killed, and Kolokotronis had the pleasure of reversing the tables by beheading them( something Turks were accustomed to doing specifically to infidels non Muslims) and carried them with him as he returned to the Greek camp.

The numbers to the Greeks increased by the arrival of a philhellene by the name of Thomas Gordon, who arrived at Tripolis in earlySeptember, also bringing with him troops and weapons, and five small cannons. Within days of the arrival of Demetrios Ypsilantes, he offered the Turks a surrender, but the Turks rejected. In the following months the Turks were in a worse position. The Greek forces had been steadily increased to number variously estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000. At the end of August a major blow to Turkish hopes of resistance came with the news that the Greeks had successfully blocked the advance of the Turkish army from the north down the Thermopylae route on the east coast, this meant that Tripolis could not be relieved that year. Because of the Turks began to get nervous. Kihaya Bey Mustafa a Turkish general proposed that he and his men fight they were out. The Albanians of course under Elmez Aga looked for the outcome most profitable to them. The third group, which consisted mostly of eminent Turks trapped in the town, supported a negotiated surrender.

After weeks of long negotiations an agreement was finally reached with the Albanians under Elmez Aga, that were to be allowed to leave for Epirus, with their weapons and possessions. The Turks from the town of Vardouni in the Mani surrendered en masse to their former neighbors, and were allowed trough the Greek lines to herd miserably behind the camp with other such refugees. Bouboulina, the renowned lady ship's captain who commanded a ship of the Spetse fleet after her husbands death, arrived at Tripolis with her ships and entered the town and she started to spit at the Turkish women out of anger recorded an Italian journalist. Fighting was virtually halted while these various negotiations were being carried on. On one morning when negotiations were continuing and a truce had been orally agreed, the tower near the gate to Navplion in the south east wall of the town, and so on the far side from the main Greek encampment, was left unguarded.

The few Turkish sentinels on the walls allowed a party of Greeks to approach to sell them grapes and these seized their opportunity, scrambled over the walls and opened the main gate to their compatriots. The Greek poured in by the thousands, intent on slaughtering the Turks. The corpses of those who had died of starvation and disease and which lay unburied and half eaten by their Turkish compatriots, were now covered with new bodies. Women and children were thrown threw the windows ( that was generous, the Turks were known for beheading children and women). Packs of stray dogs followed the victorious Greeks to tear apart and eat their victims. Fires from burning houses intensified the heat of the day, and a pall of smoke hung over the town in the windless air. The town resounded with fearsome Greek war cry which took on a deeper animal growl in the act of killing. Those Greeks had so much anger and frustration build in them , because for over 4 centuries their people had been through hell from the hands of the Turks and finally they got a chance to do what was done to them throughout the illegal occupation of the Turks.

It was doubtful that anything else would of been expected by the Greeks during the sack of Tripolis against the Turks. Kolokotronis who wielded the greatest authority, and Raybaud reports that he and his fellow commander Iatrakos entered the town soon after the sack began, and tried unsuccessfully to get the rampaging soldiers to leave, so they can spare the Turkish live and not stoop to their level but it did not work at the time as he recalled. Revenge was flowing the Greeks an oppressed people under the harshest life for 400 years. Kolokotronis in his memoirs only speaks, laconically and impersonally, of the conclusion of the sack, " The end came, a proclamation was issued that the slaughter must cease." Kolokotronis went on to further and less tarnished military successes, until he fell foul of the government and his fortunes were reversed.

[Prokomenos]

The massacre in Chios

What happened on the Chios surrounding the events of the revolution were horrific. Waves of shock reaction to the fate of Chios spread throughout Europe. The innocent slaughter of women children and the elderly was just an another example of Turkish ruthlessness against the Greeks, but Chios faced the worst of the wrath of the Turks during the revolution. On March 22 1822 a Greek fleet under Logothetis and Bournias, carrying some 1,500 armed men ,anchored off Ayia Eleni a few miles south of the islands capital. When they landed the local Turks retreated into the citadel, where the garrison had been increased to 4,500. Battle was now joined, with the exchange of cannon fire between the Turks in the citadel and the Greeks from the shore below the citadel, and from the hills Trouloti and Asomati above it. The Sultan's reaction was prompt and decisive. Seven wealthy Chians in Constantinople were taken hostage, in addition to the three already sent from Chios itself, to make sure the Greeks of the island behaved. The Capitan pasha, Kara Ali, was ordered to Chios with a powerful fleet and with orders to convey 15,000 men to Chios from Chesme, where 30,000 had now gathered. Many were volunteers including so called Muslim clergy holy man. Strangford Britain's consulate in Constantinople , was worried about the control of such large numbers of unruly troops.

On April 11 1822 which was the Thursday before Easter, Kara Ali's fleet reached Chios. There was short lived resistance from the Greeks and minor success when a Turkish ship with eighty men on board stuck on a shoal, and most of its complement were killed by Greek musket fire. Otherwise the Greeks were powerless against the incursion of troops from Kara Ali's ships, which was combined with a sally of the Turkish garrison from the citadel. Logothetis and his Samian followers fled, and after a brief resistance at Ayios Georgios, a hilltop town six miles south west of Chora, were taken off by Psarian ships from the west coast. Chios was now abandoned to its fate. The scenes that followed were as appalling as any that had yet occurred in the bloody annals of the revolution. " The horrors of civil war were never more fearfully displayed than at Scio" wrote Strangford. Gordon wrote " Mercy was out of the question, the victors butchering indiscriminately all who came in their way, shrieks rent the air, and the streets were strewed with the dead bodies of old men, women, and children; event he inmates of the hospital, the madhouse, and the deaf and dumb institution, were inhumanly slaughtered". When after a few days there were no more inhabitants in Chora to be attacked or goods to be looted, the terror spread to the countryside, augmented by the Turkish troops who continued to pour across to the island from Chesme. Within a week two grisly consignments from the governor of Chios had reached Constantinople. They contained the heads and ears of rebels who had been killed or, worse still, the ears of some who had been taken alive, and a notice to this effect was posted outside the Seraglio.

At Nea Moni, in a beautiful setting in the hills near the center of the island, 2,000 refugees gathered in the walled complex of monastery buildings, all were killed when Turkish bands broke through the outer wall. Even more Chians lost their lives at Ayios Minas, on hilltop south of Chora from which the 3,000 huddled asylum seekers could see the boats carrying their predators crossing from Chesme. On Easter Sunday 14 April the monastery, packed with Chians families, was set on fire by the Turks. It burnt to the ground and all the refugees inside perished. Ayios Minas has been rebuild on the former site, and the dark strains on the original stone floor are said to be from burnt human flesh. In the chapel are glass cases containing the neatly stacked skulls and boned of those who died. Fortunately for the catholic Christians Kara Ali had agreed to respect the French consulate which sheltered some 1,200 and almost the whole Catholic population was protected by the Austrian consulate but they would not let and Greeks in. Other Greek villagers went into hidings, but a continuous worry was about crying babies who might reveal hiding places.

One account "The Turks who were roaming the mountains took up positions above the caves and fired at anyone they saw. At the first gunshot the baby started to cry and so they were revealed. The wife, who was beautiful, was taken into slavery with the child, and the husband was shot dead". Sometimes the child was sacrificed. One was thrown down a ravine. Another , a girl of eighteen months, was left outside a cave, ignored by the Turks surprisingly, who were looking for adults and covertly watched by her anxious father, after three days the danger passed, she was brought in a revived and, says the teller of the tale, " she grew up, got married and has as many children as me".

The Chians put up what resistance they could. Near Kardhamila in the north-east a priest, who had the only gun left in the village, came across a Turk dragging off a women and her children, and from ambush shot him dead. A father and son were found hiding under a fig tree by a Turk on his own, the father knocked down the Turk with a branch of the tree and killed him with a stone. Women resisted too. A Turk was leading to Chora a group of captive women, among them the narrator's aunt Amilia. The Turk stopped at a well, and sat on the edge of smoking his pipe. " The women then thought of drowning him, but were to frightened. Then my aunt Amilia called on the Mother of God to give her strength. She gave the Turk a great shove and pushed him into the well. Afterwards they took to the hills and reached Lithi, where a ship from Psara rescued them."

While the countryside presented this picture of fear and flight, destruction and disorder, seventy seven of the eighty Chian hostages were still being held in Chora, forty nine of them in the citadel. They had been in captivity since the visit of Tombazis fleet in March 1821, on an alternating basis until all were called in on the landing of the Samians in March 1822. Only the Catholics had been released, through the combined effort of the French vice consul on Chios, consul general at Smyrna and the French ambassador in Constantinople. On 5 May on orders from the sultan, Kara Ali took out the forty nine hostages held in the citadel and hanged eight from the yards of his flagship and the remainder from the trees in the road which runs below the west wall of the citadel, now named the Street of Martyrs. The Turks on Chios soon turned from slaughter to slavery. 45,000 Chians had been taken as slaves, among them women and children of the leading families. Whole cargos where shipped off Constantinople, Egypt and Barbary.

The Greek fleet now moved into action, its failure to do so earlier being attributed by some to lack of supplies and by other to dissension between the three main naval islands. It was too late to help Chios, their present object was to stop Kara Ali's fleet from joining up with another Ottoman fleet from Egypt , a combination of which the Greeks feared would give the Turks complete dominance at sea. On 10 May1822 a combined Greek fleet ships of Hydra, Spetses and Psara, consisting of fifty six warships and eight fire ships, under the command of Andreas Miaoulis of Hydra, set out from Psara to attack the Turks in the channel between Chios and the mainland.

For some weeks thereafter only skirmishes took place, the Turks trying ineffectually to sink Greek ships by cannon fire, the Greeks trying to use their fire ships with equally little success. The Greek opportunity at last came on the night of 18 June when the Turkish fleet, anchored outside the harbor of Chora, was celebrating the end of Ramada. The wind was from the north that day, and two Greek ships spent the daylight hours beating northwards against it up the Turkish coast, giving the impression that they were trying to round the cape. The two vessels were fire ships, one commanded by Andreas Pipinos of Hydra and one by Konstatinos Kanaris of Psara. At midnight Kanaris bored down on the Capitan pasha's flagship, ramming his bowsprit into an open port near the flagship's prow. The fuse was lit. Kanaris and his men were taken off and witching minutes flames driven by the wind were sweeping over the flagship. The other fire ship under Pipinos damaged but failed to destroy the vice admiral's ship, being cut loose before the flames fully caught, and it drifted on shore to burn away without during further harm. Kara Ali entered a life boat, where he was struck on the head by a spar falling from the blazing rigging. He died the next day. After three quarters of an hour the flames on the flagship reach the powder store, and the ship exploded. Of the 2,286 reportedly on board, only some 180 survived.

Within a year the British government led the way in recognizing the Greeks as belligerents, but its acknowledgement that the Greek blockade of the Turkish coast was legal. Britain took the first steps down the path of involvement in the Greek revolution, and involvement which was to culminate Navarino. Their is not doubt the reason for the British government involvement was for financial reasons and worries that if Russia or France stepped in and Britain didn't they would lose financially. Waves of shocked reaction to the fate of Chios and her people spread throughout Europe. The execution of the innocent Chian hostages in Constantinople particularly concerned both Londonderry and the King, and , though Britain could not regard the Chian hostages as in any sense under her protection, some of the government officials did feel pity and disgust. Their is a price to pay for freedom, and the Chians who were living peacefully eventually and involuntarily paid the price for it.

[Prokomenos]

Blockade of the Acropolis

In the summer of 1821 the Greeks had successfully blocked the Turkish army's progress down the eastern route to the Peloponnesus by a victory at Vasilika near Thermopylae. By the summer of 1822 the Turks were preparing for another attempt, and were in a much stronger position to do so. Ali Pasha's death had released the Turkish forces besieging Iannina, and the Turkish command Khurshid Pasha was able to assemble at Larissa, halfway between Athens and Thessalonica, a force estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000 men, many times the size of the army which had been defeated at Vasilika. The man directly appointed by the Sultan to lead this massive force into the Peloponnesus was Mahmud pasha he was also referred to as Dramali.


In Athens, the outbreak of the revolution cause many Athenians flee for safety to the island of Salamis. Returning after a few months they began a blockade of the Turks in the Acropolis, but this was interrupted by the arrival of Omer Vrionis in July 1821 to relive the siege. Omer Vrionis was responsible for his infamous Greek hunts, which Howe described: " One of his favorite amusements was a Greek hunt, what the Turks called it. They would go out in parties of from fifty to a hundred, mounted on fleet horses, and scour the open country in search of the Greek peasantry, who might from necessity or hardihood have ventured down upon the plains. After capturing some, they would give the poor Greeks 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. Those brought in alive were tortured to death or impaled." This appalling sport came to an end when Omer Vrionis left in November 1821 to command the Turkish forces in West Roumeli and the Greek blockade of the Turks in the Acropolis was resumed.

Within a few weeks the Greeks made an assault on the west end of the Acropolis at its main gate. The attack failed, but the Greeks were able crucially to seize the well outside the walls on the southern slope, the source of healing waters for the ancient worship of the god Asklepios and the only supply, apart from collected rain, of drinking water for the Turks in the garrison. They were later repulsed, the Greeks polluted the well by throwing into it the bodies of dead Turks and Albanians. In the spring of the following year the Greeks resumed their efforts to capture the Acropolis. In early March 1822 the minister of war, Kolettis, supplied the besiegers with two mortars and ammunition, to be supervised by the Frenchman Olivier Voutier, one of the philhellenes who now joined the operation, but his bombardment was completely in affective. Where the mortars, mines and manpower failed, thirst and the accompanying disease was now doing its work. By the early summer the Turks could last out no longer and on 22 June capitulated on terms distinctly favorable to them. The life and honor of all would be safe, they could keep half of their money, plate and jewels, and they would be provided at Greek expense with passage to Asia Minor in foreign ships. Agreeing to favorable terms was one thing, sticking to them was quite another as all in authority realized. The Greek were not going to let the Turks get off that easy, the mood of the people of Athens was one of post liberation bloodlust. The previous years Greek hunts of Omer Vrionis had not bee forgotten. The Turks of the garrison which he left behind had further infuriated the Athenians by killing the ten Greek heads of families whom they had taken as hostages, and hanging their bodies over the Acropolis wall. Present in Athens were the refugees from the Turkish destruction of Chios and of Kidhonies. Also Greek casualties during the siege of the Acropolis some 300 reported dead. Reprisals began almost immediately. On the day after the capitulation ten Turks were abducted and killed on the same spot where the ten Greeks hostages had been murdered. Two days later two women and children were slaughtered. By mid July and the arrival in Piraeus of the first two French transport vessels, nearly half the 1,150 Turks who came down from the Acropolis had been massacred by the Athenian soldiery.

On July 5 1822 Mahmud's army which had been assembled at Lamia crossed the river Sperchios on its way south. Its objectives were to cross into the Peloponnesus by the isthmus of Corinth and recapture the citadel of Corinth, the Akrokorinthos, which had been taken by the Greeks in the previous January, to relieve the Turks who were still being besieged at Navplion, though close to surrender, and finally to recapture Tripolis. Mahmud commanded the larges force seen in Greece since 1715, when the Turks had finally driven out the Venetians. Initially all went well for Mahmud. Within a week of crossing the Sperchios he had taken and burnt Thebes, sixty five miles to the south. Odysseus Androutsos and his small force were no force for the Turks. His next objectives were to occupy Argos and to relieve the Turks besieged in Navplion. The Turks in Navplion had held out since the beginning of the revolution, but by June 1822 their provisions were exhausted. Although a surrender was in the process the Turks in the fortress delayed. Meanwhile a contingent of Turkish cavalry galloped through to Navplion, assured the Turks there that help was at hand, and returned without meeting opposition.

While Mahmoud pasha established himself in the fortress of Akrokorinthos which he had secured so easily, the Greeks started to take steps to counter his lightning incursion. First, they burnt the crops in the path of his advance, including the stores of grain hoping that the Turks would come out by starvation. Second they occupied the citadel of Argos. The initial Argos garrison was only a handful of men, but their numbers were soon increased to about 700 by the arrival of a body of troops under Demetrios Ypsilantes, who had refused to flee with the other members of the national government and gained great deal of credit for undertaking this dangerous duty. Third, the might Kolokotronis was appointed commander of the forces resisting Mahmoud, and appointment made by the Peloponnesus Senate now that the national government had left the scene and abandoned its responsibilities. While the Turks problem was how to deploy their strength, Kolokotronis job was how to find the Turks weakness. He did that adding seven to eight thousand troops to his 2,000 manned force. His plan was to block the Turkish advance from Argos to Tripolis, to cut off their retreat by placing troops in the narrow passes between Argos and the isthmus of Corinth, and then to bottle the Turks up in the plain of Argos. Valuable time for making these dispositions was gained by the resolute defense of the citadel of Argos by Ypsilantes and his few hundred men, since the Turks were unwilling to leave at their back an enemy garrison in such a strong position. Ypsilantes managed to give the impression of much greater strength that he had. But the citadel of Argos had no water supply, and its surrender was could only be a matter of time.

In the last days of July Ypsilantes profited from a diversionary attack by the Greeks to lead out a part of the garrison, and the fortress was finally abandoned on the night of 3 August. As the last defenders left, the captain of the garrison, Kariyannis, who had been in the citadel since it was first occupied, was deep in an exhausted sleep, and woke to find the Turks already beginning to plunder the fortress. In a fine display of the panache which the Greeks call levendia, he seized a cooking pot, put it over his head to avoid recognition, and walked out in the guise of just another Turk with his booty. Meanwhile Mahmoud's difficulties were multiplying. The army's source of meat, the live cattle which it had brought with it, was finished. The grain crops have been burnt by the Greeks, and Turkish commanders quarreled over what scanty provisions were available, the troops were forced to rely on unripe fruit and many contracted dysentery. Water too was short as it was a particularly dry summer.

At Navplion the armistice during surrender negotiations had ended, and the Greeks were once again besieging the Turkish garrison, so Mahmud could have
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no hope capturing the town quickly. Kolokotronis' forces blocked the way to Tripolis. The only course for Mahmud was to lead his army back to Corinth. However Mahmud, with amazing lack of foresight, had failed to leave guards on the narrow passes through which his retreating army would have to move. Kolokotronis now made his dispositions. He himself took his stand with 1,000 men near the far end of the western route. The central and eastern routes were covered by Papaphlessas', Kolokotronis nephew Nikitaras, and Ypsilantes, with some 3,000 men. Iatrakos, one of the captains at the previous year's siege of Tripolis, was stationed between Argos and the passes, to fall on the Turkish rearguard and prevent the army's retreat back to the plain of Argos.

On the 5 August came the first break out of Mahmud's troops. His Albanian infantry passed to the west of the Dhervanakia, not following the western road but keeping to the mountains avoiding the obvious paths, and they reach Corinth with the loss of only three men. But cavalry and trains of pack animals had to follow well beaten roads not mountain tracks, and on the following day Mahmoud sent his advance party forward through the Dhervenakia. The Greeks under Nikitaras and Ypsilantes had slowed their passage by felling trees and heaping up stones, and waited till the Turkish column was well inside the defile before opening fire from the rocks above with devastating effect. Hand to hand combat followed, in which Nikitaras took the lead, and it was from his exploits on that day that he earned the name of " Tourkophagos" ( Turk eater). Some of the Turks got through after abandoning their mounts, some retreated towards Argos, but the ravine was left strewn with abandoned weapons, dead horses and human corpses. Mahmoud himself had not moved, but two day later on August 8 he led the remainder of his army northwards along the eastern route. When they were caught there by forces of Papaphlessas, Nikitaras and Ypsilantes, the slaughter in the Dhervenakia was repeated at Ayion Oros. Mahmoud escaped by the protection of his bodyguards. The booty seized by the Greek was immense which was well needed.

The western Turkish army under Omer Vrionis advanced through West Roumeli to the outskirt of Mesolongi, but was unable to achieve any thing and withdrew. Khurshid, the over all commander of Turkish forces north of the Gulf of Corinth, confronted with the failure of both arms of his on the Peloponnesus, committed suicide by poison. Mahmoud died of fever at Corinth before the end of the year. Now with the death of Kara Ali off Chios in the previous summer, the Sultan had lost three of his most senior commanders in the space of six months. At Navplion the Turks in the twin fortresses of Palamidi and Akronavplion continued to hold out , but by early December they were starving. On 12 December, appropriately the feast day of Andreas, patron saint of the Peloponnesus, the Greeks entered Palamidi unopposed and few days later the Turks surrendered on terms and left unharmed. Thus the Greeks took control of Navplion, which was to become the first capital of independence Greece. The key contributor to the victory against Mahmud ( Dramali ) was Kolokotronis.

[Prokomenos]

Egyptians

For four years the Turks achieved absolutely nothing against Greece, and it was clear to them the only way to change their situation was to involve their key ally Mehmed Ali, pasha of Egypt. The Egyptians troops had already demonstrated their effectiveness against the Cretans in Crete, and by April 1824 had crushed the rebellion there. The Sultan's new plan required not just the subjection of Crete as a stepping stone between Egypt and the Peloponnesus but command of the whole Aegean. The Egyptians agreed to help the Turks. The created one of the largest fleets ever seen through out the war. It consisted of fifty four fighting ships and a vast assembly of transports vessels carrying 14,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry with their horses, and 500 gunners in charge of 150 canons, the whole fleet amounting to nearly 400 ships. In command was the Egyptian viceroy's son Ibrahim Pasha, and subordinate to him Ismael Gibraltar and Hussein Bey, the victors of Kasos. The fleet left Alexandria on July 19, and its task was to join up with the Turkish fleet and invade the Peloponnese by sea that summer.

At the end of August the Turkish and Egyptian fleets met at Bodrum as planned, but got no further. The combined Greek fleet, now seventy ships and some 5,000 men, was waiting for them. On September 10 the major sea battle of the year was fought in the open waters north of the Bodrum peninsula off Cape Yerondas. Though the battle was a decisive draw it was enough to persuade Ibrahim Pasha that he could not invade Peloponnesus that year. On the 23 and 24 of February 1825, days pregnant with sorrow to the Peloponnese , Ibraham Pasha's fleet of over fifty fight ships and transports completed its crossing from Crete to Methoni. Some 4,000 infantry and 400 cavalry disembarked and moved into the citadel or into the camp of 400 tents that was set up on the level ground under the protection of its walls. Three weeks after the first landing another 7,000 troops reached Methoni from Crete, and by the end of March Ibrahim Pasha's forces were ready to move against the two Greek held fortresses of Old and New Navarino.

The Greeks suspected that Ibrahim would launch the invasion in the winter and the Greek soldiers said " We will dig their grave with their own bayonets", and their friends jokingly asked them to bring back one Arab slave. On March 28 a full month after Ibrahim's first landing, Koundouriotis, the presidents of the Executive, set out from Navplion to take command of the troops sent to the Navarino area. Reaching Tripolis after a leisurely three day journey, Koundouriotis fell sick, and it was not until 17 April that he arrived within thirty mile of Navarino, which was as close as he got to the enemy. Mavrokordatos came with Koundouriotis and he did proceed to the scene of the action. Ibrahim's first aim was possesion of the Bay of Navarino, only ten miles from Methoni and the finest harbor in the Peloponnese. Ibrahim first eliminated the threat from the Greek land forces which had come south to oppose him. Some six or seven thousand under the inexperienced Skourtis had taken up defensive positions in the hills above the village of Kremmidia a few mile inland from Navarino Bay, and on the morning of April 19 Ibrahim attacked with half that number but supported by 400 cavalry. The Greeks held out for some time, but eventually their center broke and Ibrahim's cavalry, galloping up a ravine thought to be impassable, attacked form the rear. Over 500 Greeks were killed and many were taken prisoner.

Ibrahim's second objective was the island of Sphaktiria. It was held by some 800 Greeks and defended by eight Greek fighting ships in the bay, and to tackle these Ibrahim had to wait for his own fleet to return from its third voyage bringing troops from Crete to Methoni. On the morning of May 8 Mavrokordatos was on board one of the Greek ships, the Ares, breakfasting with its captain, when an Egyptian fleet of thirty four fighting ships plus troop transports was seen approaching the entrance to the bay. The Ares quickly crossed to Sphaktiria, where its captain and Mavrokordatos landed, and the Egyptians immediately began a bombardment under cover of which fifty launches ferried their troops from the ships to the island. The Greek defenders were overwhelmed and with an hour Sphaktiria was in Egyptian hands. On the day of Ibrahim's capture of Spaktiria his troops made an assault on old Navarino, bombarding it from ships in the bay, from Sphaktiria and from the landward side. The Greek defenders could no longer rely on the water and bread which had previously been ferried over from Sphaktiria, and they now lost possesion of their one spring of fresh water. On the 10 of May the garrison surrendered and, Ibrahim being in clement vein, they suffered no worse fate than being sent away without money or weapons.

The Greeks last outpost was New Navarino, the fortress at the mouth of the bay next to the town. Among the defenders was Markiyiannis and his troop of a hundred or so men, and Makriyiannis found New Navarino in scarcely better shape than Old Navarino, the fort was rotten and falling to bits. New Navarino had a garrison of about 1,500 men, most of them rushed in after Ibrahim's landing, and forty pieces of artillery, but gunpowder was short and water was the most pressing problem. Makriyiannis was furious that his compatriots, only ten miles away and with , he believed 16,000 men, did nothing to help the defenders of New Navarino. The garrison's situation was hopeless, and on 18 May only a week after the fall of Old Navarino, Makriyiannis and two other captains were in Ibrahim's tent negotiating a surrender. With a fortnight Ibrahim had taken Sphaktiria and Old and New Navarino, the Greek had paid dearly for their failure to reinforce and provision them. On the Greek side, the most distinguished of the Italian philhellenes Santa Rosa, disappointed of high rank or office in Greece, served as a common soldier on Spaktiria and was killed there. The American George Jarvis, now every inch a captain of the Greek irregulars, helped garrison Old Navarino, and proudly rejected Ibrahim's offer of service after the fortress fell.

On the 30 of May , Kolokotronis and his men who were imprisoned were released by the Greek government who Kolokotronis had fought against it in the civil war. Kolokotronis was immediately appointed commander in chief of the Greek forces. Kolokotronis and the other amnestied captains and their men could to little more to help the Greek war effort than harass Ibrahim's troops as they advanced from their secure bases at Methoni, Koroni and Navarino. Kolokotronis strategic aim was to deny Ibrahim possesion of Tripolis, which he still regarded as the key to control of the Peloponnesus. It was clear that the Greeks could not hold it so Kolokotronis proposed to destroy it. If they destroyed Tripolis, Kolokotronis said the government, Ibrahim will find no other nest, and I with my armies will drive him out of the Peloponnese. But he got no support, and when in June on his own initiative he ordered the burning of the town, but it was just too late. Ibrahim's troops arrived in time to extinguish the first flames, found the walls and the citadel intact, and occupied the town.

While on land the Greeks reeled back under Ibrahim's attack, at sea they took the initiative. In May Miaoulis sailed into the thick of Ibrahim's fleet at Methoni with six fire ships, and proved that they were still effective by burning seven of the Egyptian warships and a dozen other vessels. Another attempt was made to destroy by fire ship the Egyptian fleet in its own home port of Alexandria under Kanaris, but it failed. But it did show to the Egyptians that the Greeks are capable of attacking them at their own land. In the land war the Greeks did achieve one success against Ibrahim which was probably crucial to their survival. This was in June at Mili, or Mills, on the bay opposite of Navplio, known as the Mills of Lerna. The Mills were vital because the held the main stores of grain and ammunition of Navplion, and because the stream that turned the mill wheels also supplied Navplion with water, its own cisterns having been allowed to deteriorate.

The Greek captains defending the Mills were a son of Petrobey Mavromichalis, Demetrios Ypsilantes who honorably joined the defense on his initiative, and Makriyiannis who was determined to compensate for the Greek failure at New Navarino. The Egyptian attack came on the evening of 25 June when the midday heat was over, and was watched by Ibrahim himself from an old fort on the heights above. The Egyptians on their charge got into the enclosure and a fierce gun battle followed, the smoke from the muskets was like a mist fog, wrote Makriyiannis. Finally the Greeks hit on the tactic of concentrating their fire on the officers. The enemy morale slumped, and the Greeks rushed on them with their swords, one of the war's rare examples of hand to hand combat. The Egyptians withdrew, leaving perhaps fifty dead. Greek loses were very few, but among the wounded was Markiyiannis, shot in the arm in the last stages of the battle. He was taken for treatment aboard a French admiral at Navarino. Ibrahim's troops did much damage in the Peloponnese, and some observers were convinced that he intended to make it into a wasteland. But before the end of year their was even more alarming report that Ibrahim intended to remove the whole Greek population and replace it with Egyptians. Britain's foreign secretary Cannins was horrified at what he described Ibrahim's barbarization project, and wrote to the prime minister Lord Liverpool: " I begin to think that time approaches when something must be done." From now on he actively sought, with other powers, for ways to intervene in the Greek conflict. Ibrahim had defeated the Greeks in the field, but his successes had secured for them allies with huge resources who would ultimately prove too powerful for him.

[Prokomenos]

Involvement Of the Powers

Captain Rowan Hamilton was ebullient Irishman in command of the British frigate Cambrian. He was in Greek waters for most of the war, and his friendship for the Greeks stretched British official neutrality to the limits. In the summer of 1825, as Ibrahim's invasion pursued its destructive way, he gave the Greek government some advice: " While there is a spark of hope, fight on! And when all is desperate, then think of foreign assistance".

Ibrahim's barbarization project was figured out, and England and Russia reached an agreement that something had to be done about the Greek situation, enough is enough , but what how would they intervene? The powers had figured out that Ibrahim intended to send the Greeks off to slavery and repopulate the are with Egyptians. The barbarization project made Russia intervention almost inevitable. Also Britain intended to prevent if necessary by force the accomplishment of the plan imposed by Ibrahim Pasha.

The Fall Of Mesolongi

By 1825 Mesolongi had withstood two assaults, had become linked worldwide with the fame of the philhellene Lord Byron, and seemed to be under divine protection. Mesolongi was also the only town north of the Gulf of Corinth to have remained in Greek hands since the beginning of the war. Mesolongi had become a symbolic pride for the Greeks but also for the Turks. Mesolongi was very difficult to capture. The town was build on a spit of land projecting into the eastern edge of a huge lagoon, which was only two or three feet apart from a few slightly more navigable channels. The lagoon was dotted with small islands rising just above the water level. which were to play an important part in the defense of Mesolongi. The best attack on Mesolongi would be from the landward side. Even here the besiegers task was not easy. To the east of the town lies a wide plain, much of it is marshy, stretching away to the foothills of Mount Zigos, a marsh is place to pitch a large military camp, and the open plain offered no protection against Greek fire from the town walls. These walls were about a mile along, with a deep ditch on the outside as a first obstacle to attackers. At the initial siege in 1822 the walls were about four feet high, but from the suggestion of Lord Byron and the initiative of Mavrokordhatos the walls had been raised, broadened and fortified under the direction of an engineer from Chios, Michael Kokkinis, though they were still largely build of earth. Along the walls Kokkinis had built seven bastions facing north and east, as emplacements for the town's forty eight guns and four mortars. The most important bastion formed triangular projections, so that defenders could fire along the walls and support each other against attack.

A Turkish army commanded by Reshid reached Mesolongi at the beginning of the summer in 1825. His laborers were immediately put to work digging a network of trenches and mounds under the fire of the garrison to bring his troops closer to the town. Reshid did not have enough artillery or shot to blow a breach in the walls. When a temporary breach was made in the walls, the Greek defenders drove the attackers back in hand to hand fighting, which had been rare in the war up till then. Also breaches could easily be filled. The Greek miners detonated a small mine under the Turkish earthworks and simultaneously opened fire on the spot, the Turkish forces, expecting a sortie by the garrison, gathered in force to repel it, like a swarm of wasps, said Kasomoulis, when you hit their nest with a stick. Two hours later the Greeks detonated a second, much larger mine under their massed enemies. The whole rampart shook, legs, feet, heads, half bodies, thighs, hand and entrails fell on the us and on the enemy said Kasomoulis.

Now Reshid began building a mound towards the north facing Franklin battery, at a thirty degree angle towards the west so that it was as far as possible from the formidable bastions which flanked it to the east. Within a night the mound was 160 yards long and five to fifteen yards wide, and overtopped the Franklin battery, on which the Turks could now fire downwards from behind the screens. The Greek were forced back from Franklin, but twelve yards inside the walls dug a ditch with a rampart behind it. That attackers were now inside the town but trapped between the walls and the inner ditch, and under fire from the battery on their left, so had become the besieged rather than the besiegers. The Turks started to build a second mound inside the walls to overtop the inner ditch and rampart. But by the end of August the Greeks had detonated a mine under the Turks second mound, and driven them back outside the walls again by an attack in which even stone throwing Mesolongi boys joined. Finally in a fierce battle the Greeks drove the Turks back from the remains of the original mound, and at the beginning of September, after a month of hectic resistance destroyed it with a mine. Reshid, with his army weakened by casualties, disease and desertion and disappointed by the failure of all three of his methods of attack, pulled back eastwards to the foothills of Mount Zigos.

By early January 1826 Ibrahim's army was encamped beside Reshid's outside Mesolongi, having brought his stores of artillery, ammunition and provisions into Krioneri on the neighboring coast. By the end of February Ibrahim started the attack on Mesonlongi. Some forty Turkish cannon and mortars had been set up in three emplacements. From a range of only 400 yards, some 8,000 projectiles were poured into the town in the three days. Though many houses in the town were wrecked, the inhabitants took cover in cellars and ditches and casualties were light. The wall were not breached, and the Greeks fiercely drove off the three enemy assaults in hand to hand combat. The Arab troops did not live up to their fearsome reputation, they were well disciplined, said Trikoupis, but not brave fighters. It was not clear to Ibrahim that the only way to win was to starve the Greeks. Through the combined efforts of the Turkish and Egyptian troops, they were now masters of the Mesolongi's life line of food the lagoon. The Greeks decided to escape the city since they had no other choice. Ibrahim knew of the planned exodus, and its timing, a day or two before it happened, and could have prevented it if he had wished.

The Greek's initial move forward did apparently meet light opposition. Trouble came later. The Turkish cavalry attacked the fleeing columns, and Makri's group in particular suffered heavy losses. In the foothills of Mount Zigos the Greeks were surprised by a body of Albanian troops who killed many of the men and took the women and children captive. This was were Karaiskakis' troops should have been in position to help them, but only fifty or so under two captains were there. The fugitives struggled on, and before the mountain slopes hid Mesolongi from view Kasomoulis looked back at the town, now only in flames. Many had died, including some of the leading captains, Kokkinis the engineer, six German philhellenes, and Meyer the newspaper editor, who perished with his wife and child in the foothills of Mount Zigos. The total number of Greek casualties in the exodus is impossible to determine, many recorded figures are what Finlay calls' " rhetorical arithmetic". Finlay's own careful estimate is probably the most reliable, 4,000 dead, 3,000 captured, mainly women and children, and only 2,000 escaped.

When the Mesolongi spread it evoked first a gasp of stunned horror as at some unimaginably awful catastrophe, then blame, then a determination to try to retrieve the situation. Kolokotronis was at the National Assembly meeting to appoint a new government. Kolokotronis said: "The news came to us that Mesolongi was lost. We were all plunged in great grief, for half an hour there was so complete silence that no one would have thought that there was a living soul present, each of us knowing was revolving in his mind how great was our misfortune." In France, Germany and Switzerland the drama of Mesolongi had stimulated, by the end of the year, a flood of poems, songs, musical plays, essays and sermons. A frequent symbol for Mesolongi's fall was the death of an innocent Greek maiden, and common explicit theme, as for Howe, was that the Christian powers of Europe had shamefully neglected the Greek cause.

[Prokomenos]

[center]Change in Greece's Government

"Greeks should only free Greece,"[/font][/i] wrote Lord Byron in The Age of Bronze. This was a fine aspiration from the early heady period of the revolution, but by the time of the fall of Mesolongi in April 1826 was obviously wishful thinking. Kolokotronis on land and Miaoulis at see could now do no more than harass the Ottoman forces, the Greeks had no commander capable of a decisive victory in either sphere. They needed to fix the problems within before they can think about attacking the Turks again. The first priority was to reform the government structure. The government headed by Koundouriotis, with Mavrokordatos as general secretary of the Executive, had taken office for a year in October 1825 as it emerged victorious from that year's civil wars. But in October 1825, when elections for a new government should have been held, Ibrahim was ravaging the Peloponnesus and Mesolongi was under siege.[/color]

The Assembly of Commission responsible for foreign relations took one important step. It sent an appeal to Stratford Canning, Britain's ambassador in Constantinople and cousin of Prime Minister George Canning, to negotiate peace between Greece and Turkey. This was a new approach to the problem of involving Britain on the side of the Greece. In 1825 Greeks of all parties had signed the Act of Submission to Great Britain, but Britain had rejected it. General Sir Richard Church of Britain, who had long been a friend and a favorite of the Greeks was first to appear to solve Greece's problems of change. As a young major serving in the Ionian islands during the Napoleonic wars he had raised a regiment of Greeks, the Duke of York's Greek Light Infantry, in which Kolokotronis and other later revolutionary leaders had served. In 1811 the regiment took part in the capture of Levkas from the French, when Church was seriously wounded, and in 1814 helped retake Paxos.

In the summer of 1826 the interim government offered Church the supreme command of the Greek land forces, which he immediately accepted. With hindsight it was easy to see that Church, though a popular choice, was not an ideal one. Church landed in early March 1827 at Portocheli, ten miles from Kolokotronis' base at Ermioni, and received a hero's welcome from his old comrades in arms. Church refused to accept any office until the two factions united. Captain Hamilton of the Royal Navy, Greece's wise friend throughout the war, conveyed Church to Eyina to negotiate a settlement, and Hamilton too urged the Greeks to settle their differences, threatening that unless they did so he would tell Stratford Canning that " Greece, was in too disorganized a state to be worthy the care of Europe". Then Cochrane arrived in his yacht, a week after Church, and took a yet stronger line. He refused even to land, and in forceful quarterdeck style told the delegates that he was disgusted to find the bravest and most famous Greek commanders squabbling over where to hold an assembly while the enemy was destroying the whole country. He was right how can the Greek's expect to free Greece when they can't settle their own differences? Without unity their is no hope for the future of Greece and her children. But a compromise was reached, and it was agreed that all the delegates from both parties, whether legally appointed or not , should meet as a single Assembly at Trizini, Troezen to classical scholars, a few miles inland from Ermioni.

On the 31 March 1827 the Trizini Assembly began its sessions, technically a continuation of the Assembly at Epidavros a year before but in fact a completely different body with a new agenda. A new constitution was produced. Both Church and Cochrane had by now agreed to serve and arrived in Greece. Within a fortnight both had been formally appointed and had taken the oath of office. A third resolution with far reaching consequences was also passed at Trizini, to offer the presidency of Greece to Kapodistrias. Kapodistrias had finally resigned as joint foreign secretary to Tsar Alexander I in August 1822 and settled in Geneva. Like many a leader in waiting, he was in constant contact with his countrymen while insisting that he must stand aside from their troubles. " The more I tried", he wrote, " to make the Greeks understand that the events of the year 1821 shut me off henceforth from any possibility of existing for them, the less my words and the evidence of my conduct carried a conviction with them." Though no longer Russia's foreign secretary he was still technically in the Russian diplomatic service, and in February 1826 took the oath of allegiance to the new Tsar Nicholas I. After his nomination as Greece's president in April 1827 Kapodistrias spent the rest of the year preparing for his new role, though he did not formally accept his appointment until he reached Greece at the beginning of 1828.

Preparation meant assessing the support he could expect form the powers of Europe. In March 1827 he was in Paris and from April to June in St Petersburg, where Tsar Nicholas finally accepted his resignation from the Russian service offered six months earlier. In August he was in Prussia's capital Berlin and London, and in September in Paris again before returning in October to Switzerland. By the end of his travels he had secured the assent of Britain, Russia and France to his presidency, without which he said he could not accept it, but his requests for practical help, foreign troops, subsidies and loans had produced no firm commitment. The Greeks had chosen as their first president a man of contradictions. His reputations was international and he had access to the highest levels of government in Europe. His appearance and manner were perfectly fitted to such a role. Once the presidency of Greece was offered to him and he dropped the pretence of wanting to be forgotten, he worked tirelessly for the Greek cause without every accepting reward. In the year of his travels in Europe before reaching Greece this work was primarily a matter of handling his copious correspondence with the governments and his influential friends in Europe, with Greece's provisional government and with his supporters there.

[Prokomenos]

Athens, The Last Ottoman Success

One of Austria's consuls met Ibrahim at Mesolongi in February 1826 and reported on Ibrahim's plans for the future. The seize the last Greek strongholds in the Peloponnesus was the obvious step for Ibrahim to complete his conquest. He didn't do it because he lacked the resources. Within the weeks of the fall of Mesolongi the Egyptian ships of the fleet that had supported the besiegers were recalled by Mehmed Ali to their base in Alexandria, where they remained for the rest of the year, and because of the growing threat from Russia the Turkish contingent under kapitan pasha Khosref went back to Constantinople.

There was no naval attack on Hydra, and in fact no incentive for the Turkish fleet to make one. Ibrahim had been promised the Peloponnesus if he could conquer it, and it was up to him to do so by his own efforts. Ibrahim was also much weaker on land. Some 5,000 of his troops had been slaughtered at Mesolongi, and by the end of 1826 the 24,000 who had been brought over from Egypt were reduced to 8,000 of whom 1,500 were in the hospital. During the summer of 1826 Ibrahim and his forces roamed the Peloponnesus, from Corinth in the north to the Mani in the south and from Astros on the east coast to Pirgos on the west, destroying villages and carrying off grain and livestock. Battles were usually little more than skirmishes, in which Ibrahim was successful on the plains, but could no penetrate the hills where his men were at the mercy of the Greek sharpshooters and where the Arabs lost their footing in the slippery rocks.

There was still one prize left in Greece which the Turkish sultan could still try to secure, the capture of Athens. Athens had been at the hands of the Greeks since their seizure of the Acropolis in 1822, and after the fall of Mesolongi it was the only remaining Greek stronghold north of the Gulf of Corinth. Athens was enormously prestigious prize, as the birthplace of the glorious achievements of classical Greece , but it also had an immediate practical value. Some form of autonomy for Greece was by now probable, since the Greek struggle was still alive and the powers of Europe were clearly moving towards imposing a settlement.

If the Turks held the whole of Roumeli any new Greek state would probably be limited to the Peloponnese, as Stratford Canning, Britain's ambassador to Constantinople, made clear to the Greeks. Conversely, if the Greeks held Athens they could lay claim to a border further north. Reshid Pasha had had to concede the honor of capturing Mesolongi to Ibrahim, or at least share it with him, and was now anxious for an unqualified success of his own. By the end of January 1826, only two months after the fall of Mesolongi, Reshid had brought an army of some 7,000 men, including 800 cavalry, to Athens and had established his headquarters at Patissia, north of the Acropolis. By the end of July his artillery was in place on the hill of Philopappos to bombard the south west flank of the Acropolis. By mid August Reshid was master of the town of Athens, though not of the Acropolis itself, which was held by a garrison of about 500 men under Gouras, now defending the place where he had encompassed the murder of his old rival Odysseus.


The Greeks first attempt to dislodge Reshid was an attack from the west by a combined force of Karaiskakis irregular troops and Fabvier's regulars, numbering about 3,500 men. Karaiskakis the calculation guerrilla leader and Fabvier the correct French officer now met for the first time. On 18 August 1826 their substantial combined force reached Chaidari, five miles west of the Acropolis, but were driven back Reshid's troops and lost some 300 men. Karaiskakis and Fabvier each blamed each other's conduct with acrimony, wrote Gordon. Any future cooperation became impossible, it was the first of many disputes which were to bedevil the Greeks campaign in Athens. For the rest of the year the Acropolis remained under close heavy siege and heavy bombardment. On 13 October the garrison commander Gouras was killed by a single sniper shot, and a week later Makriyiannis, serving with the garrison, was wounded three times on the same day, the last wound an ugly cut on the back of his head, the shreds of his cap went into the bone to the skin over his brain. He fell down like one dead. However a month later Makriyiannis was sufficiently recovered to get out with five horsemen through the enemy lines to government at Eyina with a plea for help, especially for a supply of gunpowder. As a result Fabvier in mid December landed at Piraeus with 500 of his regular troops, and under cover of darkness got past the Turkish guards and into the Acropolis, each man including Fabvier carrying some 26lb of powder, a total amount of about six tons.

In deciding their strategy for Athens the Greeks had two main options. One was to cut off Reshid's supplies by attacking the chain of posts which he had prudently setup as links to Evvia in the north and the Gulf of Corinth to the west. This was favored by Gordon, who was absent for last five years, but was rejected in favor of the alternative, a direct attack on Reshid's forces from the coast of Piraeus. Gordon was put in charge of this expedition, which was to be supported by a body of Greeks who were to attack from Elevis in the west, and by Captain Hastings in the newly arrived steamship Karteria with two supporting ships. Gordon did not agree with the venture, which was as much opposed to the rules of strategy as the dictates of good sense. Nevertheless he accepted the command of it. Gordons force of 2,300 men landed just east of Piraeus at midnight on 5 February 1827 and quickly occupied the high ground. The Turks meanwhile strengthened their defenses and increased the Turkish and Albanian garrison of the monastery of Ayios Spiridom immediately above the main harbor of Piraeus. This stronghold became the linchpin of their resistance, withstanding repeated cannonades from the Karteria at sea and the Greek artillery on land. Reshid prevented the Greeks from advancing on Athens. This stalemate persisted, and the monastery of Ayios Spiridom was still holding out, when at the end of April 1827 Cochrane and Church arrived on the scene.

The Greek soldiers now numbered about 10,000. But with the arrival of Cochrane and Church counsels became even more divided. Cochrane was for marching straight to the Acropolis, accused the Greeks of cowardice for not doing so, and threatened to leave unless his wishes were met. Karaiskakis, stung by the accusation of cowardice, refused to move while the Turks still held Ayios Spiridom. Eventually an agreement was made, and Karaiskakis with other Greek captains, had marched in the middle of the Turkish and Albanian column as security for its safety, and only he came out of the affair with credit. According to Gordon Karaiskaki strove at the hazard of his own life to stop the slaughter, and when he perceived it was no purpose, cried to the Muslims, "Forgive me, as I forgive you; I can do nothing more for you." With the obstacle of Ayios Spiridom removed, Cochrane resumed his pressure for march on Athens. Karaiskakis was still opposed to a march on Athens, especially across the open plain where the Greeks would be at the mercy of the Turkish cavalry, but Cochrane insisted. The last opposition to Cochrane's plan vanished when , in a skirmish two days before the proposed venture, Turkish horseman shot Karaiskakis in the stomach he died the day after.

On the evening of 5 May 1827 the attacking force of 2,500 men was shipped east from Piraeus across the Bay of Phaliron, and disembarked at midnight. " Tomorrow" claimed Cochrane, " we will dine in the Acropolis." But from then on everything went wrong. When daylight revealed the scattered Greek forces Reshid attacked. The leading contingent stood firm, but those who behind fell back towards the sea and soon the rout became general. The reserve force of 7,000 Greek irregulars did nothing to help and withdrew to the west. When Cochrane and Church finally landed from their ships in the bay they were caught up in the fleeing melee and only just escaped to the small boats offshore. The Greek losses were the worst of any single day in the whole war, 1,500 were killed including 240 prisoners who were beheaded. Of the twenty six philhellenes in the action only four escaped. Another philhellene, an English surgeon on Cochrane's ship, gave the next day a concise label in his poem The Athenia, simply calling it "The sixth of May, the awful sixth of May."

Despite the disastrous defeat the expedition's base at Phalirion had been held by a determined last minute resistance, and Church hung on there with a reduced force for three more weeks. Heat and thirst got the better of them and eventually left on 27 May. Within a week surrender terms were agreed through the mediation of the French admiral de Rigny. On 5 June the Acropolis garrison of some 2,000 marched out, escorted by Reshid himself and a body of cavalry to ensure that there was no retaliation for the massacre of surrendered Turks at Ayios Spiridom.