A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year Part 6

[Sidenote: Silvio Pellico]

The victory of absolutism in Italy was complete. Courts-martial sat all over Italy. Morelli, the officer who had led out the so-called sacred band of Nola, was shot. His followers were expressly excluded from all amnesty acts. An attempted insurrection in Sicily cost the conspirators their lives. Hundreds of persons were cast into prison, or were marched off to distant fortresses in Austria. It was at this time that Silvio Pellico, the author of the famous "Prison Records," was sent to the dungeon of Spielberg. Then began that long stream of fugitives to England and America.

[Sidenote: Revolt in Brazil]

[Sidenote: Mexican independence]

[Sidenote: San Martin's Campaign]

The Holy Alliance, sitting at Leibach, thought the time was ripe to p.r.o.nounce its anathema against all peoples seeking their liberties elsewhere than in the grace of their legitimate sovereigns. Yet the spirit of revolt was abroad, and its flames continued to flicker up at widely separated points. On February 26, the Portuguese troops in Brazil rose in revolt. The king, still residing at Rio Janeiro, was compelled to appoint a new Ministry pledged to give to both Portugal and Brazil a new representative system. In Mexico, General Iturbide, at the same time, issued a p.r.o.nunciamiento, containing his so-called "Plan of Iguala," which proposed independence for Mexico under a Spanish Bourbon prince. Several rebel leaders acquiesced in this, and forced the Spanish viceroy to resign.

Juan O'Donoju became acting-viceroy. He signed a treaty with Iturbide virtually accepting the plan. The people of Buenos Ayres profited by the military troubles in Brazil to throw in their lot with that of the Argentine Republic. Their popular idol, San Martin, meanwhile was leading his victorious troops from Chile into Peru. Lima, one of the greatest Spanish strongholds in South America, was threatened by the revolutionists.

[Sidenote: War in Annam]

[Sidenote: Taouk-w.a.n.g]

At the other end of the earth, the new force of national feeling showed itself in popular uprisings. In distant Annam the death of Emperor Gia-Long, followed by a b.l.o.o.d.y struggle for the succession between his sons, incited the people to a national demonstration against the encroachments of the French in Tonquin. In China the new Emperor Taouk-w.a.n.g was enthroned. He was the first to throw his whole personal influence against the evils of the opium trade inflicted upon China by English merchants since 1800.

[Sidenote: Philike Hetairia]

[Sidenote: Ypsilanti]

[Sidenote: Vladimiresco]

In Greece and in the Balkans the people rose against the yoke of Turkey.

The plan of the Philike Hetairia--_i.e._ Patriotic a.s.sociation--was to begin their revolution on the Danube, so as to induce Russia to take a hand in their favor. They believed that Capodistrias, the Prime Minister of Russia, himself a Greek, would win the Czar to their cause. Unfortunately for them, Metternich's influence proved stronger than that of the Greek Minister. Capodistrias deemed it advisable to publish a pamphlet warning his countrymen against any rash step. Failing to win the open support of Capodistrias, the Hetairists turned to Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek exile serving in the Russian army. Ypsilanti agreed to raise the standard of revolt in Moldavia. It was arranged that Theodore Vladimiresco, a Roumanian who had served in the Russian army, was to call his countrymen to arms against the Turk. Then the Greeks were to step in, and the help of Russia was to be invoked.

[Sidenote: Rising of Roumania]

In February, Vladimiresco proclaimed the abolition of feudal servitude in Roumania, and marched with a horde of peasants upon Bucharest. Early in March, the Greek troops at Galatz, let loose by their commander, Karavias, ma.s.sacred the Turkish population of that town.

Ypsilanti, waiting on the Russian frontier, crossed the Pruth and appeared at Ja.s.see with a few hundred followers. A proclamation was issued, calling upon all Christians to rise against the Crescent. Ypsilanti went so far as to declare that "a great European power," meaning Russia, was "pledged to support him." The Greek Hospodar of Ja.s.see immediately surrendered the government, and supplied a large sum of money. Troops to the number of 2,000 gathered around Ypsilanti. The road to the Danube lay open.

[Sidenote: Ypsilanti repudiated]

[Sidenote: Death of Vladimiresco]

[Sidenote: Georgakis]

Ypsilanti wasted valuable time loitering at Ja.s.see. A month was lost before he reached Bucharest. He delayed partly on account of his expectations of Russian help in response to a letter he had written to the Czar. The delay proved fatal to him. The Czar, now wholly under the influence of Metternich, sent a stern answer from Leibach. Ypsilanti was dismissed from the Russian service. The Russian consul at Ja.s.see issued a manifesto that Russia repudiated and condemned Ypsilanti's enterprise. The Patriarch of Constantinople was made to issue a ban of excommunication against the rebels. In an official note of the Powers, the Congress of Leibach branded the Greek revolt as a token of the same spirit which had produced the revolution of Italy and Spain. Turkish troops crossed the Danube. The Roumanian peasants, seeing no help from Russia, held aloof. Vladimiresco plotted against the Greeks. It was in vain that brave Georgakis captured the traitor at his own headquarters and carried him to his death in the Greek camp. Ypsilanti was defeated in his first encounter with the Turks.

He retired before them toward the Austrian frontier. In the end he fled across the border and was promptly made a prisoner in Austria. His followers dearly sold their lives. At Skuleni, 400 of them under Georgakis made a last stand on the Pruth. They were surrounded by ten times their number. Georgakis refused to surrender. Bidding his followers flee, at the moment when the Turks broke in the doors, he blew himself up in the monastery of Skuleni.

[Sidenote: Revolt of Morea]

[Sidenote: Gregorios hanged]

At the news of Ypsilanti's uprising in Moldavia the entire Greek population of the Morea rose against the Turk. From the outset, the Moreotes waged a war of extermination. They ma.s.sacred all Turks, men, women and children.

Within a few weeks the open country was swept clear of its Mohammedan population. The fugitive Turks were invested within the walls of Tripolitza, Patras, and other strong towns. Sultan Mahmud took prompt vengeance. A number of innocent Greeks at Constantinople were strangled by his executioners. The fury of the Moslem was let loose on the Infidel. All Greek settlements along the Bosphorus were burned. But the crowning stroke came on Easter Sunday, the most sacred day of the Greek Church. The Patriarch of Constantinople, while he was celebrating service, was summoned away by the dragoman of the Porte. At the order of the Sultan he was haled before a hastily a.s.sembled synod and there degraded from his office as a traitor. The synod was commanded to elect his successor. While the trembling prelates did their bidding, Patriarch Gregorios was led out in his sacred robes and hanged at the gate of his palace. His body remained hanging throughout the Easter celebration, and was then given to the Jews to be dragged through the streets and cast into the Bosphorus. A similar fate befell the Greek archbishops of Salonica, Tirnovo, and Adrianople. The body of Gregorios floating in the sea was picked up by a Greek s.h.i.+p and carried to Odessa. This return to Christian soil of the remains of the Patriarch was hailed as a miracle in Russia. Gregorios was solemnly buried by the Russian Government as a martyr.

[Sidenote: Russia aroused]

[Sidenote: The Czar found wanting]

If the will of the Russian people had been carried out, the Russian army and nation would have avenged the murder of their high-priest by an immediate war upon the Turks. Strogonov, the Russian Amba.s.sador at Constantinople, at once proposed to his diplomatic colleagues to join him in calling for wars.h.i.+ps to protect the Christians there. Lord Stranford, the British Amba.s.sador, refused to accede to this proposition.

Single-handed, Strogonov presented an ultimatum to the Sultan demanding the restoration of Christian churches and the Porte's protection for Christian wors.h.i.+p. A written answer was exacted within eight days. Encouraged by England's att.i.tude, the Sultan ignored Strogonov's requests. On July 27, the Russian Amba.s.sador left Constantinople. To the amazement of his moujiks, the Czar did not declare war. The councils of Prince Metternich prevailed. With the help of the representatives of England, Metternich persuaded the Czar to view the rebellion of Greece as a mere unfortunate disturbance. Any countenance of it, he argued, would imperil the peace of Europe.

[Sidenote: Rising of the Greeks]

[Sidenote: Ali Pasha]

[Sidenote: Moreote campaign]

[Sidenote: Petrobei]

[Sidenote: Kolokotrones]

[Sidenote: Maurokordatos]

[Sidenote: Ma.s.sacre of Navarino]

[Sidenote: Sack of Tripolitza]

The murder of the Greek Patriarch was followed by risings of the Greeks throughout continental Greece and the Archipelago. Here, as in the Morea, the cause of Greek freedom was disgraced by ma.s.sacres, and indignities to Turkish women. The Sultan's troops, led by able commanders, retaliated in kind. Khurs.h.i.+d, with a large Turkish army, besieged Janina. He held firmly to his task, even after his whole household fell into the hands of the Moreotes. The Greeks in Thessaly failed to rise, and thus the border provinces were saved for the Ottoman Empire. The risings in remoter districts were soon quelled. In Epirus, Ali Pasha, the Albanian chieftain, was surrounded by overwhelming numbers and lost his life. On the Macedonian coast the Hetairist revolt, in which the monks of Mount Athos took part, proved abortive. Moreover, the desultory warfare on water carried on by the islanders of Hydra, Spetza, and Psara served only to annoy the Turks. The real campaign was waged in the Morea, where Tripolitza, the seat of the Turkish Government, was besieged by the insurgents. Demetrios Ypsilanti, Prince Alexander's brother, landed on the coast and was welcomed as a leader by the peasants in arms. Three other leaders rose to prominence.

First, in the eyes of the people, came Petrobei, chief of the family of Mauromichalis. Surrounded by his nine sons, this st.u.r.dy chieftain appeared like one of the old Homeric kings. Second in popular favor was Kolokotrones, a typical modern Clepht, cunning and treacherous, but a born soldier. The ablest political leader was Maurokordatos, a man of some breadth of view and foresight, but over-cautious as a general. The early insurgent successes were marred by bad faith and gross savagery. On the surrender of Navarino, in August, a formal capitulation was signed, safeguarding the lives of the Turkish inhabitants. In the face of this compact the victorious Greeks put men, women and children to the sword. Two months later the Turkish garrison of Tripolitza, after sustaining a siege of six months, began negotiations for surrender. In the midst of the truce, the Greek soldiery got wind of a secret bargain of their leaders to extend protection for private gain. In defiance of the officers, the peasant soldiers stormed Tripolitza and scaled the walls. Then followed three days of indiscriminate looting and carnage. By thousands, the Turks, with their women and children, were slaughtered. Kolokotrones himself records how he rode from the gateway to the citadel of Tripolitza, his horse's hoofs touching nothing but human bodies.

[Sidenote: Philh.e.l.lenism]

The Greek struggle for independence aroused conflicting emotions in Europe.

The pa.s.sionate sympathy of the Russians rested wholly on their religious bonds. The more enlightened Philh.e.l.lenes of France and Germany affected to see in this struggle a revival of the ancient Greek spirit that blazed forth at Thermopylae and Marathon. For this same reason, perhaps, Metternich and his colleagues in the Holy Alliance looked upon the Greek revolution with an evil eye. Any cause espoused by the hot-headed liberals at the universities in those days of itself became obnoxious to the reactionary rulers of the German and Austrian states.

[Sidenote: Lord Byron's Greek lyrics]

The sympathy with the Greeks was most p.r.o.nounced in England. There the stirring lyrics of Lord Byron had reached the height of their popularity.

His songs of Greece and Greek freedom were justly regarded as among his best. It was but a short time before this that the poet, to use his own phrase, had awakened one morning to find himself famous. Now his Greek songs were hailed by the whole world as cla.s.sics. Notable among them were the "Isles of Greece," embodied in the third canto of his "Don Juan" with the famous stanza:

The mountains look on Marathon-- And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

And the equally celebrated lines from "The Bride of Abydos":

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?

Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!

[Sidenote: Death of Keats]

[Sidenote: Byron's satire]

[Sidenote: Keats's work]