History of the Greek Revolution E-Book

George Finlay

• Herausgeber: GogLiB
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The Greek War of Independence gathered the European youth who languished in the torpid atmosphere of the Restoration in their own countries. George Finlay, sent to Göttingen to improve his knowledge of Roman law, conversed much with everybody he met who had visited Greece, read all the works of modern travellers, and became a good acquaintance of the only Greek who was then studying at Göttingen.
He did not resist this pervasive call which mobilized the idealism of his generation, and he embarked for Greece in 1823. By participating in the War he became friend with Byron and with the renowned Captain Hasting, commander of the first steam frigate which fought effectively against the Turkish fleet, and accumulated a vast first-hand knowledge of the events of the revolution. After the birth of independent Greece, Finlay did not return to his homeland, but attempted to set up an innovative farm, losing all his money in the enterprise. Then he began studying the history of medieval and modern Greece, and wrote, among other essays, this History of the Greek Revolution,  in which the mass of first-hand testimonies and documentary data in his possession was reworked in a masterpiece of historiography attentive to the facts and their context.
The essay begins with a description of the Greek society at the dawn of the Independence War and extends up to the Constitutional Revolution of 1843. Each chapter proceeds first by qualifying the more general context, and then going into detail of the events: in this way today’s readers who have not specialist interest in minute details and the chronicles of war can read this book as a collection of monographs, of extreme interest for the image full of life that they return, of a society on the one hand pervaded by a powerful desire to shape its own political system, on the other hindered to realize  its potential from inexperience and inability to organize itself.

Leseprobe

George Finlay

History of the Greek Revolution

The Hellenic Kingdom and the Greek Nation

GogLiB ebooks

ISBN: 9788897527480

First electronic edition: February 2020

www.goglib.com

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Contents

Foreword and Author’s Biography

Note to the 2020 electronic edition

Original Title Page

BOOK FIRST. EVENTS PRECEDING THE REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I. THE CONDITION OF THE MODERN GREEKS.

CHAPTER II. THE ALBANIANS.

CHAPTER III. SULTAN MAHMUD AND ALI PASHA OF JOANNINA.

BOOK SECOND. THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I. THE CAUSES OF THE GREEK REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER II. THE OPERATIONS OF THE GREEK HETAIRISTS BEYOND THE DANUBE.

CHAPTER III. THE OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION IN GREECE.

CHAPTER IV. THE POLICY AND CONDUCT OF SULTAN MAHMUD II.

BOOK THIRD. THE SUCCESSES OF THE GREEKS.

CHAPTER I. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF GREECE AS AN INDEPENDENT STATE.

CHAPTER II. THE PRESIDENCY OF MAVROCORDATOS.

CHAPTER III. FALL OF ATHENS – DEFEAT OF DRAMALI – FALL OF NAUPLIA.

CHAPTER IV. THE CONDITION OF GREECE AS AN INDEPENDENT STATE.

BOOK FOURTH. THE SUCCESSES OF THE TURKS.

CHAPTER I. NAVAL SUCCESSES – IBRAHIM IN THE MOREA.

CHAPTER II. THE SIEGE OF MESOLONGHI.

CHAPTER III. THE SIEGE OF ATHENS.

BOOK FIFTH. FOUNDATION OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.

CHAPTER I. FOREIGN INTERVENTION – BATTLE OF NAVARIN.

CHAPTER II. PRESIDENCY OF COUNT CAPODISTRIAS. JANUARY 1828 TO OCTOBER 1831.

CHAPTER III. ANARCHY. 9TH OCTOBER 1831 TO 1ST FEBRUARY 1833.

CHAPTER IV. BAVARIAN DESPOTISM AND CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION. FEBRUARY 1833 TO SEPTEMBER 1843.

APPENDIX.

I. Memorandum by Frank Abney Hastings, Esq., on the use of Steamers armed with heavy guns against the Turkish Fleet. Communicated to Lord Byron in 1823, and laid before the Greek Government, with some modification, in 1824.

II. Memorandum by Sir Charles Napier, G.C.B., on Military Operations in the Morea against Ibrahim Pasha in 1826.

INDEX

The Hellenic Kingdom and the Greek Nation (1836)

Original Title Page

American Editor’s Introduction to the 1837 Edition.

Preface

Introduction

General Observations.

On the State of the Greek Population Prior to the Establishment of the Hellenic Kingdom.

View of the Proceedings of the Different Administrations in Greece Since 1832.

View of the Actual State of the Country, and the Means to Be Adopted for its Improvement.

Detailed Table of Contents

Back Cover

George Finlay

Foreword and Author’s Biography

This ebook contains the History of the Greek Revolution, of 1861, an as an appendix an earlier work of Finlay, The Hellenic Kingdom and the Greek Nation. The British Dictionary of National Biography, 1889volume 19 pp. 36-37[1], contains the following biography of George Finlay, which is reproduced here as a foreword to the History of the Greek Revolution.

George Finlay (1799–1875), historian, was son of Captain John Finlay, R.E., F.R.S., and brother of Kirkman Finlay (d. 1828). His grandfather, James Finlay, was a Glasgow merchant. He was born 21 Dec. 1799, at Faversham, Kent, where his father was inspector of the government powder mills. The latter died in 1802, and George was for some time instructed by his mother, to whose training he attributed his love of history. His education was continued at an English boarding-school, and in the family of his uncle, Kirkman Finlay of Glasgow, under private tutors. He subsequently studied law in Glasgow, and proceeded about 1821 to the university of Göttingen to acquaint himself with Roman jurisprudence. While there he began to doubt his vocation for law, and, partly influenced by his acquaintance with a Greek fellow-student, “resolved to visit Greece and judge for myself concerning the condition of the people and the chances of the war.” In November 1823 he met Byron at Cephalonia. “You are young and enthusiastic,” said Byron, “and therefore sure to be disappointed when you know the Greeks as well as I do.” The number of Hellenes and Philhellenes about Byron gave umbrage to the Ionian government, which was bound to remain neutral. Finlay quitted the island on a hint from Sir Charles Napier, and, after narrowly escaping shipwreck, made his way successively to Athens and Missolonghi, where for two months he spent nearly every evening with Byron, who, Parry says, “wasted much of his time” in conversation with the future historian and other such frivolous persons. Quitting Missolonghi before Byron’s death, Finlay joined Odysseus on an expedition into the Morea, but, disgusted with the general venality and rapacity, returned to the headquarters of the government, where things were no better. A malarious fever compelled him to return to Scotland, where he passed his examination in civil law, but was soon again in Greece at the invitation of his intimate friend Frank Abney Hastings, who had built a steamer in which Finlay took his passage. He continued fighting for Greece, or engaged in missions on her behalf, until the termination of the war, when he purchased an estate in Attica, “hoping to aid in putting Greece into the road that leads to a rapid increase of production, population, and material improvement.” “I lost my money and my labour, but I learned how the system of tenths has produced a state of society, and habits of cultivation, against which one man can do nothing. When I had wasted as much money as I possessed, I turned my attention to study.” His unfortunate investment had at least the good results of compelling his continual residence in the country, with which he became most thoroughly acquainted, and of stimulating his perception of the evils which, in the past as in the present, have deteriorated the Greek character and injured the credit and prosperity of the nation. The publication of his great series of histories commenced in 1844, and was completed in 1861, when he wrote the autobiographical fragment which is almost the sole authority for his life. His correspondence is lost or inaccessible, and, notwithstanding his courteous hospitality, acknowledged by many travellers, little more seems to be known of his life in Greece than his constant endeavours to benefit the country by good advice, sometimes expressed in language of excessive if excusable acerbity, but which, if little followed, was never resented by the objects of it. His most important effort was the series of letters he addressed to the “Times” from 1864 to 1870, which, being translated by the Greek newspapers, produced more effect than his earlier admonitions. He also contributed to “Blackwood’s Magazine,” the “Athenæum,” and the “Saturday Review,” and occasionally visited England, not later, however, than 1854. He wrote in Greek on the stone age in 1869, and in the following year published the French narrative of Benjamin Brue, the interpreter who accompanied the Vizier Ali on his expedition into the Morea in 1715. Among his other writings are an essay on the site of the holy sepulchre (1847), and pamphlets on Greek politics (1836) and finance (1844). His essays on classical topography, never collected by himself, were published in 1842 in a German translation by S. F. W. Hoffmann. He died at Athens 26 Jan. 1875; the date 1876 given in the Oxford edition of his history is an unaccountable mistake.

Finlay’s great work appeared in sections, as follows: “Greece under the Romans,” 1844; “Greece to its Conquest by the Turks,” 1851; “Greece under Ottoman and Venetian Domination,” 1856; “Greek Revolution,” 1861. After the author’s death the copyright of these several works was offered to the delegates of the Clarendon Press by his representatives, and in 1877 all were brought together under the title of “A History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to the present time, B.C. 146 to A.D. 1864,” and published in seven volumes under the able editorship of the Rev. H. F. Tozer. The whole had been thoroughly revised by Finlay himself, who, besides aiming throughout at a greater condensation of style, had added several new chapters, chiefly on economical subjects, entirely recast the section on Mediæval Greece and Trebizond, and appended a continuation from 1843 to the enactment of the constitution of 1864. The period covered by the history, therefore, is no less than two thousand and ten years.

Finlay is a great historian of the type of Polybius, Procopius, and Machiavelli, a man of affairs, who has qualified himself for treating of public transactions by sharing in them, a soldier, a statesman, and an economist. He is not picturesque or eloquent, or a master of the delineation of character, but a singular charm attaches to his pages from the perpetual consciousness of contact with a vigorous intelligence. In the latter portion of his work he speaks with the authority of an acute, though not entirely dispassionate, eye-witness; in the earlier and more extensive portion it is his great glory to have shown now interesting the history of an age of slavery may be made, and how much Gibbon had left undone. Gibbon, as his plan requires, exhibits the superficial aspects of the period in a grand panorama; Finlay plunges beneath the surface, and brings to light a wealth of social particulars of which the mere reader of Gibbon could have no notion. This being Finlay’s special department, it is the more to his praise that he has not smothered his story beneath his erudition. He may, indeed, even appear at a disadvantage beside the Germans as regards extent and profundity of research, but this inferiority is more than compensated by the advantages incidental to his prolonged residence in the country. His personal disappointments had indeed caused a censoriousness which somewhat defaces the latter part of his history, and is the more to be regretted as it affected his estimate of the value of his own work, and of its reception by the world. In character he was a frank, high-minded, public-spirited gentleman.

Note to the 2020 electronic edition

This e-book has been composed on the basis of the 1861 printed edition of History of the Greek Revolution and on the basis of the English (1836) and American (1837) editions of The Hellenic Kingdom and the Greek Nation, which differ slightly.

The scanned text was carefully controlled, in order to make available to the readers a good quality electronic version of this works. The page numbers of the original edition have been preserved in [square brackets].

To facilitate the reading of this electronic edition, the footnotes containing remarks that add some contents to the main discourse have been included in the text, and marked with letters within square brackets, e.g. [a]. The other footnotes contain references to the author’s sources. Where the footnotes contain some discussion about the sources, they have been marked with an asterisk ‘*’. Therefore the remaining notes should be consulted only by those who have an interest in identifying the author’s sources.

A detailed Table of Contents has been added at the end of this e-book.

Original Title Page

Καὶπαρῶνἐρῶ

Κουδὲνπαρήσωτῆςἀληθείαςἔπος

Τι γάρ σε μαλθάσσοιμ’ ἂν ὧν ἐς ὕστερον

ψεῦσται φαγούμεθ’; ὀρθὸν ἀλήθει’ ἀεί[2].

HISTORY OF THE GREEK REVOLUTION

BY GEORGE FINLAY, LL. D.

Hon. Member of the Royal Society of Literature, Member of the American Antiquarian Society, Corresponding Member of the Archaeological Institute at Rome.

Knight Gold Cross of the Greek Order of the Redeemer.

Author of the “History of Greece under Foreign Domination”, etc.

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.

VOL. II.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBURGH AND LONDON

MDCCCLXI

The Right of Translation is reserved

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BOOK FIRST. EVENTS PRECEDING THE REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I. THE CONDITION OF THE MODERN GREEKS.

“Countless generation of mankind

Depart, and leave no vestige where they trode”

–Wordsworth

[1] This History records the events which established the independence of Greece.

Numbers of the Greek and Turkish races in Europe

As long as the literature and the taste of the ancient Greeks continue to nurture scholars and inspire artists, modern Greece must be an object of interest to cultivated minds. Nor is the history of the modern Greeks [2] unworthy of attention. The importance of the Greek race to the progress of European civilisation is not to be measured by its numerical strength, but by its social and religious influence in the East. Yet, even geographically, the Greeks occupy a wide extent of seacoast, and the countries in which they dwell are so thinly peopled that they have ample room to multiply and form a populous nation. At present their influence extends far beyond the territories occupied by their race; for Greek priests and Greek teachers have transfused their language and their ideas into the greater part of the Christian population of European Turkey. They have thus constituted themselves the representatives of Eastern Christianity, and placed themselves in prominent opposition to their conquerors, the Othoman Turks, who invaded Europe as apostles of the religion of Mohammed. The Greeks, during their subjection to the yoke of a foreign nation and a hostile religion, never forgot that the land which they inhabited was the land of their fathers; and their antagonism to their alien and infidel masters, in the hour of their most abject servitude, presaged that their opposition must end in their destruction or deliverance.

The Greek Revolution came at last. It delivered a Christian nation from subjection to Mohammedanism, founded a new state in Europe, and extended the advantages of civil liberty to regions where despotism had for ages been indigenous. In order to unfold its causes, it is necessary to describe the condition of the Greek people and of the Othoman government during the early part of this century.

When the Greeks took up arms, the numbers of the Greek and Turkish races in Europe were in all probability nearly equal, and neither is supposed to have greatly exceeded, two millions. The population of continental Greece, from Cape Taenaron to the northernmost [3] limit of the Greek language, was supposed to be not much greater than a million.[3]* Another million may be added for the population of Crete, the Cyclades, the Ionian Islands, Constantinople, and the Greek maritime towns. If we add to this the Greek population of Asia Minor, the islands on the Asiatic coast, Cyprus, the trans-Danubian provinces, Russia, and other countries, the whole number of the Greek race cannot be estimated at more than three millions and a half.

Two Christian races in the sultan’s European dominions were more numerous: the Vallachian or Roman race was not less than four millions; the Sclavonian, including the Bulgarian, which speaks the Sclavonic language, exceeded five millions [a].

[a] Little dependence can be placed on the statistical accounts of the Othoman empire. Ubicini, one of the best authorities, in Lettres sur la Turquie (1853, p. 49), gives 60,000 as the population of Bassora. In the same year, the official registers at Constantinople were said to give only 5,000; and English officers who visited it shortly after, during the Persian war, did not suppose that it could contain a greater number. In 1820 the population was estimated at 12,000, and it has been declining ever since.

Pashaliks into which the country inhabited by the Greeks was divided

The provinces in which the Greeks formed a majority of the inhabitants were divided into six pashaliks of high rank, and many smaller districts, governed immediately by inferior pashas.

1. The most important of the great pashas who ruled the Greeks was the capitan-pasha. Besides being the minister of the marine, and the commander-in-chief of all the naval forces of the empire, he was governor-general of the islands, and of part of the coast of Greece. Inferior pashas administered the affairs of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Mytilene under his superintendence.

2. The pashalik of the Morea was regarded as one of the most valuable governments in European Turkey, [4] for it remitted a large surplus revenue annually to the sultan. It included the whole Peloponnesus, with the exception of Maina, which was under the jurisdiction of the capitan-pasha, and it extended beyond the Isthmus of Corinth, over the Derveno-khoria, embracing the whole of Megavis [sic; recte, Megaris] and a corner of Attica. The pasha of Naupaktos, or Lepanto, was also subordinate to the vizier of the Morea.

3. The pashalik of Egriboz included the whole island of Euboea and the adjoining provinces of Boeotia, Locris, and Attica. Thebes, Athens, Livadea, Salona, and Talanta, formed Kazas, whose revenues were administered by voevodes appointed annually by the Sublime Porte. Athens was a provincial town belonging to the fief or avpalik of the kislar-aga, who named its voevode, and this officer had an interest in protecting the inhabitants against the exactions of the pasha of Egriboz. In consequence of the great authority of the kislar-aga (the chief of the black eunuchs), the Christians of Athens enjoyed a considerable degree of local liberty. Tradition says that Athens owed this happiness to the beauty of one of her daughters, who proved as great a benefactress as the empresses Eudocia and Irene.[4] An Athenian slave named Vasiliké became the favourite of Sultan Achmet I., and in order to relieve her fellow-countrymen from the tyranny of the Mussulmans of Negrepont, she obtained as a boon from her imperial lover that the revenues of Athens should be administered by the kislar-aga. The reforms of Selim III. had, however, recently placed Athens under the jurisdiction of the Tchelebi-effendi.

4. Southern Albania formed a pashalik, which took its name from its capital, the city of Joannina. It had been long governed by Ali Pasha, who had annexed the [5] greater part of Thessaly and all Western Greece, except Naupaktos, to his pashalik.

5. The pashalik of Selanik, or Thessalonica, extended over the greater part of Macedonia; but in its northern part there were many semi-independent beys, who farmed the taxes and land revenues. Even in the vicinity of Thessalonica, the descendants of Evrenos, whom the Turks call Ghazi Gavrinos, retained the appanage which Murad II. had conferred on their ancestor. They still held in fief the istira, or monopoly of the corn annually remitted to Constantinople.[5]

6. The island of Crete formed a great pashalik, divided into three inferior military governments, under subordinate pashas, who resided in the fortresses of Candia, Canea, and Retymo. The district of Sphakia, which was inhabited by Christians alone, was governed by its own primates.

The wrongs of the subject Christians in Turkey have been loudly proclaimed, and the tyranny of the Othoman government has been justly condemned; yet for two centuries after the conquest of Greece, Christian subjects were as well treated by Turkish sultans as heretical subjects were by Christian kings. Indeed, the central government of the sultan, or the Sublime Porte, as it was termed, has generally treated its Mussulman subjects with as much cruelty and injustice as the conquered Christians. The sufferings of the Greeks were caused by the insolence and oppression of the ruling class, and the corruption that reigned in the Othoman administration, rather than by the direct exercise of the sultan’s power. In his private affairs, a Greek had a better chance of obtaining justice from his bishop and the elders of his district than a Turk from the cadi or the voevode.

[6] The government of the sultan was the administration of a despot whose cabinet was composed of household slaves. The feudal system, which for two centuries lightened the weight of Othoman power to the Turkish population, was an inheritance of the Seljouk empire. The inherent defect of the empire founded by Othman was the absence of a judicial administration, bound to observe fixed rules of justice and a settled form of judicial procedure.

Effect of the treaty of Kainardgi on the condition of the Greeks

The treaty of Kainardgi, in the year 1774, made a great change in the condition of the Greeks. It afforded Russia a pretext for interfering in their favour whenever they were treated with gross injustice; and the interference of Russia soon led to like interference on the part of the other European powers; so that, before the end of the eighteenth century, the Christians in many parts of the sultan’s dominions were beginning to acquire a recognised species of foreign protection. The pashas in large commercial cities often found it less dangerous to enrich themselves at the expense of the Turks than to venture on open exactions from the Greeks. A provincial Mussulman could rarely find an advocate at the Porte; an oppressed Greek could either bribe a dragoman or interest a consul to awaken the meddling spirit that rarely sleeps in the breast of a diplomatist, and thereby secure the protection of some ambassador at Constantinople. But as it was evident that the whole fabric of society among the Mussulman population of the Othoman empire presented an insurmountable barrier to the introduction of just laws and an equitable dispensation of justice, so experience at last proved that no foreign protection could secure the; lives and properties of the subject Christians from the tyranny of a government which paid no respect even to the lives of its Turkish and Mussulman subjects. The sultan’s government, like the government of the [7] Roman emperors, was a monarch’s household transformed into an imperial administration, and both destroyed the resources of their subjects and depopulated the regions they governed, without making any distinction between the conquerors and the conquered. A conviction that the Othoman empire was hastening to dissolution became prevalent both among the Christian and Mussulman inhabitants of European Turkey at the commencement of the present century.

In the year 1820 no Christian government, except that of Russia, considered itself entitled to interfere with the manner in which the sultan treated his subjects of the Greek Church. Any interference on the part of Great Britain, under the pretext that the king exercised a protectorate over the Ionian Islands, would have been treated as an unjustifiable assumption. The sultan would have considered himself as much entitled to suggest measures for governing the Mohammedans in India as the King of England to advise any changes in the treatment of the Christians in Turkey. All questions relating to the East were then beyond the domain of public opinion, and very little was known in England concerning the condition of the modern Greeks.

The testimony of travellers was singularly discordant: some represented the Greeks as suffering intolerable oppression, as living in hourly fear of their lives or of the confiscation of their property; others declared that no people in Europe was so lightly taxed, and subject to so few personal burdens. They were said to enjoy a degree of religious liberty which the Catholics of Ireland might envy; and that they had a more direct authority over their municipal affairs than was possessed by the citizens in French communes. The Greek Church was known to possess considerable wealth and great political influence over all Turkey. [8] Greeks were known to exercise sovereign power in Vallachia and Moldavia, and to profit by the corruption that existed in every branch of the Othoman administration at Constantinople. The primates of Greece collected the greater part of the sultan’s revenues in Europe; and the Greek municipalities were, in many districts, allowed to exercise an almost unlimited authority. It was evident that the condition of the Greeks presented many anomalies. At Constantinople, the Greek was a crouching slave; at Bucharest and Yassy, a despotic tyrant; at Chios, a happy subject; and at Psara, and in the villages of Mount Pelion, a free citizen.

Distinction between Greek orthodoxy and Greek nationality

A confusion of ideas has been produced by not distinguishing clearly between Greek orthodoxy and Greek nationality. The ancient Greeks paid great attention to purity of race; the modern Greeks have transferred their care to purity of doctrine. The Messenians preserved their manners and their dialect unchanged during centuries of exile; the Moreats have kept their orthodoxy untainted during ages of foreign domination. At present the Greeks are willing to intermarry with Vallachians, Russians, and Albanians of the Eastern Church; but to render a marriage lawful with a Catholic of the purest Hellenic descent, it would be necessary to rebaptise the spouse.

The tendency to forget everything but orthodoxy was cherished by the political privileges which the sultans had conferred on the Greek Church. Its adherents formed a great community in the Othoman empire, known to the Turks by the national designation of Roum. The immense orthodox population of European Turkey and Asia Minor, embracing many nationalities, was confounded with the small number of the Greek race. Yet these two bodies were composed of heterogeneous elements, influenced by divergent interests and feelings, and to whose political [9] union geography, language, and manners presented an almost insurmountable barrier. Even among the Greeks, though the people confounded orthodoxy and nationality, it was only the priests and the learned class who looked forward to a restoration of the Byzantine empire, and to the establishment of the Greeks as a dominant race, by rendering political power a consequence of ecclesiastical authority. They alone deluded themselves with the dream that the Albanians, the Servians, the Bulgarians, and the Vallachians would, submit to be ruled by Greek sovereigns and prefects because they prayed under the guidance of Greek patriarchs and bishops.

The sultan recognised the patriarch of Constantinople as the ecclesiastical chief of all the orthodox Christians in European Turkey, and supported him in the exercise of an extensive civil jurisdiction over several nations. Among these, the Greeks really occupied the position of a dominant race. To the Vallachian and the Bulgarian, the Greek was in some degree what the Turk was to the Greek. The Greek language was the language of the church and the law which ruled the whole assemblage of nations called by the Othoman administration, Roum meleti, or Roman nation. Indeed, the power and jurisdiction of the patriarch and synod of Constantinople, as it existed under the Othoman sultans, was an institution remodelled by Mohammed II.; and had the Othoman government found either Vallachians or Bulgarians fitter instruments to govern the orthodox community in accordance with Othoman interests, the patriarchs and the members of the synod of Constantinople would in all probability have ceased to be Greeks.

The great influence of the Greek race in the East is not, however, entirely derived from its priestly and literary superiority. It rests on a wide social basis, [10] for it forms the majority of the middle class in many districts where the cultivators of the soil and the mass of the people are of another race. A considerable part of the trade of Turkey was in the hands of the Greeks, and their communications were more frequent between the distant parts of the country than those of the other divisions of the population. All news was generally transmitted through a Greek medium, coloured with Greek hopes and prejudices, or perverted by Greek interests.

Yet, great as the ecclesiastical, literary, and commercial influence of the Greek race really was in European Turkey, the events of the Greek Revolution showed that the influence of Greek nationality had been greatly overrated by the Greeks themselves. Even in the Greek Church, ecclesiastical interest was more powerful than national feeling. A large part of the Greek nation made but feeble efforts to aid their countrymen when struggling for independence. The literary powers of the learned created a loud echo of patriotism; but thousands of wealthy Greeks continued to pursue their own schemes of interest and profit, under the protection, of the sultan’s government, during the whole period of the Greek Revolution.

Social divisions of the Greek race

The Greeks were divided into many classes, separated by social trammels as well as dispersed in distant provinces. It is not uncommon to find Constantinople spoken of as the capital of the Greek nation because it is the seat of the head of the orthodox church. This is a great error. The Greeks do not form one quarter of the population, and the agricultural population of the surrounding country consists chiefly of Bulgarians. The Turkish and Bulgarian languages are more extensively spoken than the Greek. The ancient Byzantium was a Greek colony, but the Constantinople founded by the great Constantine was a Roman city, [11] in which Latin long continued to be the language of the government and the principal families. Since the conquest of the city by Mohammed II., the Greek population has formed a foreign colony in a Mussulman city. Its numbers have been recruited by emigrants from every part of the Othoman empire. The phanariot families in the service of the sultan emigrated from different provinces. The merchants were generally Chiots, the shopkeepers Moreots, and the domestic servants natives of the islands of the Archipelago. The lower orders of the Christian population were recruited more extensively from the Sclavonians and Bulgarians in the northern provinces than from the Greeks. There was no permanent nucleus of a native Greek population in Constantinople as there was of a Turkish.

Greeks in Moldavia and Vallachia

In Vallachia and Moldavia the Greeks formed a dominant race. They held there a position very similar to what the Turks held in Greece. The most lucrative offices were in their possession; the greater part of the ecclesiastical and national property was occupied by them under various titles and pretexts. Like the Turks in Greece, too, they were detested by the natives as fiscal extortioners and cruel oppressors; and it was only by the support they derived from the sultan’s authority that they were able to maintain their position. That position was lost by the Greek Revolution.

The strength of the Greek race lay in the ancient seats of Greek liberty. In the Peloponnesus, in continental Greece, and in the Greek Islands, they not only formed the majority of the population, but they still possessed some municipal authority, and a considerable part of the landed property under cultivation. Even in Southern Epirus and in the Chalcidicé of Macedonia they formed the majority of the agricultural population.

Four general divisions of the Greek nation

[12] The Greeks were divided into four classes – the clergy, the primates, the urban population or townsmen, and the rural population or peasants. The marked separation of these classes deserves particular attention, as forming a characteristic feature of modern Greek civilisation at the outbreak of the Revolution. This division exerted a powerful influence on society, and modified the effects of every political event. Each of these classes was connected with the sultan’s government by different ties. Their religion, their language, and their hatred of Othoman domination, were their bonds of union.

Clergy

From the time Sultan Mohammed II. had reorganised the Greek Church under the Patriarch Gennadius, Greek bishops had acted in their dioceses as a kind of Othoman prefects over the orthodox population. Ecclesiastical rank in the orthodox church was oftener obtained by bribing a vizier than by theological learning or Christian piety. Every diocese was loaded with debt in consequence of the simony which prevailed. The most observant traveller who visited Greece before the Revolution declares, that it is a common sentiment among the laity, that the bishops have been a great cause of the present degraded condition of the Greek nation; nor have the Greeks in general any esteem for their higher clergy, or for the monastic order from which the prelates are promoted. But Colonel Leake thinks that this is in some degree an injustice; for although the clergy were often instruments of oppression, and a bishop could hardly avoid acting like a Turk in office, the regular clergy had kept the Greek language alive, and perhaps prevented the dissolution of all national union.[6]*

Yet this opinion may be questioned, for in cultivating an imperfect study of a [13] pedantic ecclesiastical imitation of the classic language they seem to have prevented the improvement of the modern dialect; and, on the whole, the Greek nation seems to have done more to support the patriarchal and synodal church of the Othoman empire than that ecclesiastical establishment did to protect and improve the Greek nation.

At the commencement of the present century, the Greek clergy, sharing the general opinion that the Othoman empire was on the eve of its dissolution, began to expect a speedy deliverance by the advance of the armies of Russia. The priests contemplated being called upon, before the lapse of many years, to transfer their allegiance to the Czar of Muscovy; but by them the independence of Greece was never supposed either to be possible or desirable. An orthodox emperor seated on the throne of Constantinople would of course confirm and extend all the privileges of the Greek clergy.

Primates

The primates in Greece formed a substitute for an aristocracy. The real aristocracy of the Greek nation was exterminated by the Othoman conquest. Its members were either slain by the Turks, driven into exile, or induced to embrace Mohammedanism. Several apostates of distinguished Greek families obtained high rank in the sultan’s service. Mohammed II. deliberately put to death every Greek who exercised any political influence, as the simplest mode of establishing tranquillity in Greece; and the torpid condition of Greek society for several generations attests the wisdom of his Satanic policy.

The patronage of the Othoman government gradually created a Greek aristocracy of administrative agents and tax-gatherers. This aristocracy consisted of the phanariots at Constantinople and the codgabashees, or primates, in Greece. The moral and [14] political position of this class has been well described by calling them “a kind of Christian Turks”. A voevode or a bey purchased the taxes of a district as farmer-general. He then sublet the different branches of revenue to Greek primates, who again usually relet their portions in smaller shares to the local magistrates of the communities within the district. In this way the public revenues of Greece maintained three distinct classes of fiscal officers at the expense of the people.

Urban population

Among the Greeks, as among every other people in the East, a broad line of distinction exists between the urban and the rural population. The citizen and the peasant occupy different grades in the scale of civilisation. Their condition in society is more strongly characterised by their place of dwelling and the nature of their occupation, than by their nationality. This distinction is an inheritance of the Roman empire which survived all the vicissitudes of the Byzantine administration, and resisted the endeavours of the crusaders to introduce feudality as an element of Greek society. The Mussulman conquest made no unfavourable change in the relative position of the citizen and the peasant; but it must be noted, that at the time of the Turkish conquest the citizen in Eastern towns generally occupied a higher social position than the citizen of Western Europe in a corresponding occupation, but they laboured under great moral disadvantages. The servile position of the Christian subjects of the sultan, and the corruption of the Othoman administration, rendered deceit the best defence against extortion. Truth and honesty were impediments to the acquisition of wealth; and consequently the prosperous Greek trader was very rarely a better man than his poorer countrymen. Falsehood and fraud became habitual, and were considered by strangers as national qualities rather than individual characteristics.

[15] The Christian population in the towns of Turkey was divided into corporate bodies, according to the trades exercised by individuals, in the same way as the Mussulman population; but the Mussulman corporations generally contrived to throw the burden of all local expenditure on the Christians. It was, therefore, only by counterfeiting poverty, or by bribing some powerful protector, that the Greek rayah could escape ruinous extortion; and it was only by simulating some bodily infirmity or chronic disease that he could evade being condemned to forced labour at inadequate wages.

Rural populations

A nation’s strength lies in its rural population. In Greece this class has for ages been poor and neglected, yet the Mohammedan conquest tended on the whole to better its condition, for it destroyed the predial serfdom inherited from the Byzantine empire, and enforced by the feudal principles of the Frank conquerors. It raised the peasants to the rank of free men, and converted them into the staple of Greek nationality. From their ranks the waste of city life was everywhere repaired, and the rural recruits transferred into the urban population an unadulterated supply of Greek feelings and traditions, which prevented the Othoman domination from denationalising the city traders, and reducing them to any identity of character with the dispersed Jews.

The agricultural population of Greece, as, indeed, the agricultural population throughout the East, from the Adriatic to the Bay of Bengal, was fixed in a stationary condition by fiscal laws. It was compelled to labour the land, and gather in the harvest, according to regulations framed, to protect the revenue of the sovereign, not to encourage or reward the labour of the cultivator. The sovereign was entitled to one-tenth of the fruits of the soil, and from the moment the crop began to ripen, he became a joint proprietor in the [16] whole. The property of the cultivator in nine-tenths of the crop was from that moment treated as a matter subsidiary to the arrangement relative to the disposal of the remaining tenth, which belonged to the sovereign. An industrious peasant could rarely make any profit by raising an early crop, or by improving the quality of his produce, for the farmer of the tenths mixed all qualities together, and was generally the principal dealer in produce in the district. No superiority of skill or increase of labour could, under such circumstances, secure a higher price where markets were distant and where no roads existed. The effects of this system of taxation on the condition of Greek agriculture may still be studied in the dominions of Sultan Abdulmeshid, or of King Otho, for they rival one another in the disastrous effects of their fiscal administration (A.D. 1859).

Municipal institutions

The municipal institutions of the Greeks under the Othoman government have been much vaunted. In reality they amounted to little more than arrangements for facilitating the collection of the tenth of the produce of the soil by the agency of the Greeks themselves, in order to prevent the extermination of the agricultural population. The Othoman sultans appear to have had a clearer insight into the effects of an intolerable land tax than the Roman emperors before the time of Diocletian.

The communal system in Greece has been sometimes considered to be a tradition of Hellenic liberty. Human institutions are rarely so durable; and it could not be expected that, in a land where the names of Sparta, Plataea, Olympia, and Delphi had fallen into oblivion, any relics of civil liberty had been preserved by tradition. History tells us that every trace of Hellenic institutions were swept away by the Roman empire and [17] the Christian church. The Greek city was supplanted by the Roman municipality. The provincial administration and the civil laws of Rome effaced every vestige of Hellenic freedom. The Christian religion and the laws of Justinian are the oldest social traditions of the modern Greeks.

Even the Roman municipal system was swept away by the centralising despotism of the Byzantine emperors, and in the ninth century it was formally abrogated by Leo the Philosopher.[7]

Oriental fiscality was the essence of the municipal institutions of the modern Greeks. Each district was assessed to pay a certain amount of taxes, and the repartition of a part of the sum to be paid by the Christians was left to the clergy and the primates. In some places the persons intrusted with this power were named by the Porte; in others they were elected by the people. The authority thus created was greater in the rural districts than in the towns. And in those parts of Greece in which there were few resident Turks, a popular election gave the institution a national character. But this municipal system was too intimately connected with bad principles of taxation to become a means of training a nation to freedom and justice. Like everything in the Othoman empire, it was full of anomalies. Some communities had the privilege of maintaining armed guards or Christian troops, called armatoli; some enjoyed their freedom under the guarantee of written charters from the sultans; some enjoyed great local privileges; and some were relieved entirely from the land-tax [a].

[a] The Greeks have forged many written charters. Mr Tricoupi publishes one as genuine in the second volume of his History of Greece which carries proofs of its forgery, even though the date is omitted in Tricoupi’s copy. Mr Argyropulos, in his work on the Municipal Administration of Greece, Δημοτική Διοίκησιςἐν Ἑλλαδι, p. 25, gives a copy of the document, with the date, year of the Hegira 1036 – i.e., a.d. 1626. It purports to be a ratification by Sultan Ibrahim of privileges granted by Suleiman the Magnificent to Naxos and other islands. Sultan Ibrahim ascended the throne in 1640. The document is full of historical and chronological blunders, and the part which is genuine is transcribed from a charter of a more modern date, or the blunders could not have been committed.

[18] Nothing partaking of real self-government could exist wherever the dominant class of Mohammedans dwelt, intermingled with the Greek population, in a despotism like that of the Othoman sultans, in which the power of life and death was intrusted to local governors. Municipal liberty can have no vitality, unless the local magistrates are directly elected by the people, and responsible to the law alone. If a sultan or a pasha can revoke the mandate granted by the people when the local magistrate has violated no law and neglected no duty, and replace the defender of the people by his own nominee, municipal institutions are nothing more than a convenience for assisting the central administration in ruling the people.

The slight hold which the municipal institutions of the modern Greeks had acquired in the affections of the people is demonstrated by the ease with which they were perverted by Capodistrias, and changed for a new system by the Bavarian Regency. Yet these institutions, though they did not possess the energy required for producing a national revolution, aided the Greeks in maintaining their struggle with the Othoman government, by supplying a system of local organisation, which enabled them to call the whole strength and resources of the agricultural population simultaneously into action.

State of education

It has been already stated that the position and character of the Greek clergy tended to weaken the power of the Greek Church, though ecclesiastical influence still remained the highest national authority. The next in importance was literary education, and those who dispensed it enjoyed a moral influence in [19] society second only to the clergy. More learning existed among the modern Greek laity under the Othoman rule than is generally supposed. Since the Revolution it has been more generally disseminated, but it does not appear to be deeper in those branches not immediately connected with profitable employment. The state of education explains the failure of the missionaries sent from Europe and America to improve the religious ideas of the Greeks. In theological learning these missionaries were always inferior to many of the Greek clergy; in classical knowledge they were as much inferior to many lay teachers. During the period of destitution which succeeded the cessation of hostilities with the Turks, they were welcomed as teachers of elementary schools, and they were popular for a time, because they gave both instruction and books gratis; but, in order to make their schools of any use, they were obliged to employ Greeks as teachers. Differences arose between the missionaries themselves, and between the missionaries and their schoolmasters. The clergy, taking advantage of these disputes to recover their authority, succeeded in closing the schools of all the missionaries who did not allow the Greek priesthood to control the religious instruction of the pupils. The principle that the religious instruction of the children of orthodox parents can only be directed by the orthodox, has been adopted by the government since the Revolution of 1843, and applied to missionary schools even more stringently than had been done previously. As might have been expected, religious bigotry has received a stronger impulse than religious education.

For more than three centuries after the Othoman conquest the literature of the modern Greeks was almost exclusively confined to ecclesiastical subjects; and its language was not the spoken dialect of the people, but a [20] pedantic imitation of the language of the fathers of the Church. The popular language, as written by merchants and traders, was disfigured by ignorance of grammar and orthography, to such a degree as to give it the appearance of a new tongue; but the popular songs and epistolary correspondence of this period, if written with a corrected orthography, prove their close connection with ancient Greek. Degraded as the condition of the Greeks was politically, it is probable that a larger proportion could read and write than among any other Christian race in Europe. The Greeks of every class have always set a higher value on a knowledge of letters than any other people. They have a national tendency to pedantism.

General Condition of the Greeks

At the commencement of this century the effects of the French Revolution were strongly felt in Greece. Classic history was studied; classic names were revived; Athenian liberty became a theme of conversation among men; Spartan virtue was spoken of by women; literature was cultivated with enthusiasm as a step to revolution.

On the eve of the Revolution the condition of the Greek race might be represented under two different aspects, and innumerable facts might be cited to prove that both were true; yet, under the one, the Greeks would appear as oppressed and degraded, and, under the other, as a happy and prosperous people, enjoying many valuable privileges. A comparison might be instituted between the condition of the Greek rayahs under the sultan, and the Russian serfs under the czar. The Christians who cultivated the soil in Turkey enjoyed a larger share of the fruits of their labours than the Christian peasantry in Poland and Hungary. The Greek citizen enjoyed a greater degree of liberty of speech, and possessed as much influence on the local affairs of his township, as the citizen of the [21] French empire under Napoleon I. Nor were the orthodox in the East more galled by the restrictions which their religion imposed on them than the Catholics of Ireland.

The Greeks were allowed a considerable share of authority in the executive administration of the Othoman government. The patriarch of Constantinople, as I have already mentioned, was a kind of undersecretary to the grand vizier for the affairs of the orthodox Christians. The dragoman of the Porte and the dragoman of the fleet, who were Greeks, were also virtually members of the sultan’s government. The Christians of the Morea had also a recognised agent at Constantinople, and other Greek communities had recognised official protectors, who controlled the fiscal oppression and the arbitrary injustice of the provincial pashas. This recognition, on the part of the Othoman government, that the Greeks required some defence against abuses of power on the part of their rulers, proves that the sultans not only perceived the evils inherent in the constitution of the Othoman empire, but they were also desirous of redressing them.

Land-tax or tenths

In some degree, and in several provinces of the empire, the agricultural population was always in the same condition, whether it was composed of Mussulmans or Christians. Both were oppressed by the same fiscal regulations, and both were retained in the same stationary condition. In the richest plains the peasant who cultivated the lands of a Mussulman aga or of a Christian primate, usually paid a seventh of the gross produce of the land to the sultan, and divided the remainder with his landlord. When the destruction of stock or a decline in the fertility of the soil rendered it impossible for the peasantry to perpetuate the race of cultivators on the proportion of the produce which fell to their share, they emigrated, or the race died out; [22] and the frequency of this event, both in Europe and Asia, was apparent to every traveller – abandoned villages and ruined mosques were met with in the richest provinces of the empire.

In addition to the land-tax paid in kind, the Othoman government compelled the cultivators of the soil to furnish a determinate quantity of grain for the supply of Constantinople. The loss incurred by this right of pre-emption was thrown on the peasantry.

Haratch or capitation-tax

The Christians regarded the haratch, or capitation tax, as the moat offensive badge of their subjection. It reduced them to the condition of rayahs or ransomed subjects. Yet it was in general more galling from the manner of its collection than from the amount which each individual was obliged to pay. Its collection was made a pretext for enforcing many vexatious police regulations, and it was doubly hated because Mohammedans of the lowest class were exempted from its burden.

The haratch was frequently farmed to the worst class of a pasha’s retinue; and in Greece it was often sublet in districts to the petty officers of the Albanian mercenaries. An insulting term was applied to these unpopular tax-gatherers, who were called gypsy-haratchers. The origin of the nickname was a popular opinion that gypsies were bound to pay double haratch, and the reproach conveyed was that the Albanians attempted to treat every man liable to the haratch as a gypsy.

Romeliots

So anomalous was the condition of different portions of the Greek population, that the inhabitants of some mountain districts in Rumelia lived like a free people. Those who dwelt in Agrapha and the mountain-ranges that extend from Pelion and Olympus northward as far as the Greek language was spoken in [23] Macedonia, enjoyed the right of bearing arms as armatoli. They elected their own primates or elders, and their local authorities collected the taxes due by the district. Their character was that of freemen, and was marked by a degree of courage and independence not to be found in other parts of Greece. Considerable numbers were engaged in commercial pursuits, which carried them into various parts of the sultan’s empire, and into many ports of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Many travelled far into Austria and Russia. These wanderings enlarged their minds, and when they settled in their native towns, they became local magistrates, and displayed some signs of that active spirit that usually pervades commercial republics.

In the rude condition of Greek society and trade, the muleteers engaged in the transport of produce formed a numerous class, for everything was transported on the backs of pack-horses or mules. The number of this class was much greater than the depopulated appearance of European Turkey would have led a stranger to suppose possible. Coarse woollen cloth of different kinds, and the cloaks which imitate sheep-skins, were manufactured in the interior of the continent, and these bulky goods employed thousands of horses to convey them to the sea-coast. The cheese and butter of the mountains was transported into the plains, and the grain of the plains was carried back into the mountains. Considerable quantities of money were also constantly in movement, partly for purposes of trade, and partly as remittances to provincial officers, or to the imperial treasury. Every class considered it good policy to conciliate the agoyiates, or muleteers. Powerful pashas patronised them, wealthy merchants treated them with respect and confidence; they were favoured by Mussulman beys and Greek primates, and [24] they were esteemed and trusted by the peasantry; their friendship was sought by armatoli, and their enmity was feared by klephts.

The shepherds were also a numerous class in Romelia. They were as independent, though not so influential, as the muleteers.

The peasants of the mountain districts, the muleteers, and the shepherds, formed the best representatives of the Greek nation; and it was from among them that the ranks of the armatoli were recruited.

Armatoli

The armatoli were a Christian local militia, which had existed in the Byzantine empire, and which had in some degree protected the Greek population against the Franks, the Servians, and the Albanians, during the anarchy that reigned in Greece and Macedonia, while the worthless race of the Paleologoi ruled at Constantinople. The Greeks in the mountain districts, fearing anarchy more than despotism, generally submitted to the sultans on the condition of being allowed to retain their local privileges. The institution of the armatoli was thus adopted into the scheme of the sultan’s administration. The Greek communities of the mountains collected their own taxes, and the Greek troops guarded the great roads through the mountain passes; but, as the sultans gradually increased the power and extended the authority of the central administration, the importance of the armatoli declined. The Dervendji-pasha, who represented the Kleisourarches of the Byzantine emperors, stationed Turkish troops to guard the principal dervends, or passes, and circumscribed the service of the armatoli as much as possible to that of rural guards. In some districts the military authority which had been vested in the Christians was entirely transferred to the Mussulmans before the end of the last century. The case of the town of Servia is an instance, which commands the [25] great road between Larissa and Monastir or Bitoglia (Pelagonia). The service of the armatoli was first rendered so burdensome, that the communities sought to purchase exemption from the obligation of furnishing additional armatoli. The money was employed to pay Albanian mercenaries.

The history of the armatoli, from the time of the Turkish conquest until the peace of Belgrade in 1739, has not met with the attention it deserves from the modern Greeks. The number of the armatoliks recognised by Othoman government is said to have been originally fourteen; but no correct list appears to exist. After the peace of Belgrade, the policy of diminishing the numbers of the armatoli was steadily and successfully pursued. To destroy the power of this Christian militia, the sultans, in the year 1740, departed from the ancient practice of the Porte, not to name an Albanian bey to the rank of pasha in his native country. Suleiman of Arghyrokastron, a man of activity and daring, was appointed pasha of Joannina and dervendji-pasha, with strict orders to watch the intrigues of the Greeks, who were suspected of being employed by Russia to prepare the Christians to rebel, and to circumscribe the power of the armatoli.

Suleiman fulfilled his instructions with much ability. He worked on the mutual jealousies which are the bane of Greek society. By tolerating the feuds of the captains, and then aiding the people who suffered from their hostilities, he gradually weakened the organisation of the ancient captainliks, and introduced Albanian Mussulmans into Christian districts. The venality of some captains enabled him to purchase the chief military power in their district.

Kurd Pasha, another Albanian bey, succeeded Suleiman, and held the office of dervendji-pasha for fifteen years; at first, in conjunction with the pashalik of [26] Joannina, and afterwards with that of Berat, Kurd acted under instructions similar to those given to Suleiman. His administration commenced about the time the Russians invaded the Morea; and this circumstance afforded him a reasonable pretext for diminishing the numbers of the armed Christians and reducing their pay. The severity of his measures against the armatoli, instead of being relaxed, was increased after the peace of Kainardji in 1774.

Ali of Tepelen became dervendji-pasha in the year 1787, with strict orders to pursue the same policy as Suleiman and Kurd. He destroyed the old system so completely, that the proud armatoli of earlier days were reduced to be local policemen in their native districts. Into every armatolik he introduced a number of Albanian Mussulman mercenaries. With the perfidy, cruelty, and vigour that formed his policy, he circumscribed the legal authority, and nullified the traditional privileges of the Christian militia, without openly abrogating their ancient charters. The jealousies of rival captains were encouraged and their hostilities overlooked until it served Ali’s purpose to interfere. The Greek clergy and primates were prompted to make complaints against the exactions of the soldiers and the feuds of the captains. Bands of robbers (klephts) were tolerated, and even encouraged, until a case was made out which served as a popular pretext for introducing Mussulman Albanians into a Christian armatolik. During the government of Ali most of the districts, which had from time immemorial enjoyed the right of electing their captains of armatoli, were forced to waive this privilege, and request Ali to appoint their captain.

Privileges of the province of Agrapha

The last blow was given to the ancient system of armatoli at Agrapha by Ali. Mohammed II. is said to have confirmed the municipal independence and [27] the privileges of the armatolik of this district by written charter. When the sultans became the lords and protectors of Agrapha, it had long been engaged in hostilities with the Frank dukes of Athens and with the despots of Epirus. Its relations with the Othoman government were friendly, and its armatoli guarded the passes of Mount Pindus between Thessaly and Epirus, as they had done for ages under the Byzantine emperors. The population of Agrapha is of the Greek race, without the admixture of Bulgarian, Albanian, and Vallachian blood which pervades the neighbouring districts. It appears, indeed, to have successfully resisted the great Sclavonian colonisation of Greece during the transformation of the Roman into the Byzantine empire, which implanted new geographical names on the rest of Greece. But though it resisted the social influence of the Sclavonians, it could not evade the policy of Ali: he succeeded in sowing dissensions among the population of this favoured district, and then, under the pretext of an anxiety to prevent hostilities between the rival factions, he persuaded the municipal authorities to reduce the number of the armatoli to two hundred men. Shortly after he found an opportunity of sending a Mussulman derven-aga, with three hundred Albanians, to remain as a permanent garrison in Agrapha.

Klephts

As the authority of the armatoli declined, the klephts, or brigands, grew up into political and social importance as a permanent class in the Greek nation. As long as the institution of the armatoli preserved its pristine energy, the klephts were repressed with a vigorous hand; but when the Porte began to reduce the numbers and curtail the privileges of the Christian militia, many discontented armatoli fled to the mountains, and lived by levying contributions on the [28] cultivators of the soil. Where the government shows no respect for justice, lawless men are often supported by the lower orders of the people, as a means of securing revenge or of redressing intolerable social evils. A life of independence, even when stained with crime, has always been found to throw a spell over the minds of oppressed nations. The Greeks make Robin Hoods, or demi-heroes, of their leading klephts; they magnify the exploits of the class, and antedate its existence. The patriotic brigands of modern Greek poetry are a creation of yesterday. Even at the commencement of the present century, several of the most numerous bands in Macedonia consisted of as many Mussulmans as Christians, and Albanians were always more numerous in their ranks than Greeks.

During the government of Ali Pasha, the districts of Verria and Niausta were infested by a celebrated Mussulman klepht, named Sulu Proshova, whose band amounted to several hundred men, the majority of which was said to consist of Christians. The popular songs of the Greeks have given fame to the klephts, and the language in which the songs are written has caused scholars to exaggerate their merit as poetical compositions. The habitual cruelty of the klephts would have rendered pathos satire. Their most glorious exploits were to murder Turkish agas in mountain passes, as Lord Byron describes the scene in his “Giaour” [a].

[a] The Greeks suffered far more than the Turks from the klephts. Rich primates were more defenceless than wealthy agas; and robbers must have food every day. Every traveller in the East could cite proofs of this from his own experience. Two examples will suffice. Colonel Leake says: “The master of the house in which I lodge (at Kalabaka), among his other misfortunes, has left an eye with the klephts.” – Travels in Northern Greece, iv. 262. Mr Dodwell says: “Our lodging at Livanatis was in the cottage of a poor Albanian woman, who was lamenting the loss of her husband, who had been killed by the klephts, while her infant son was taken prisoner, whom she had ransomed with the savings of several years.” – Classical Tour, ii. 59. Livanatis is a village peopled by Christian Albanians, near Talanta.

The ordinary life of the klepht was as little distinguished by mercy to the poor as it was ennobled by [29] national patriotism. There is very rarely anything to eulogise in the conduct of criminals. But the klephts after the treaty of Belgrade, became gradually more and more confounded with the armatoli in the ideas of the urban population of Greece, from the frequency with which Ali enrolled distinguished klephts among his Christian guards, and conferred on them commands of armatoli; while at the same time a constant desertion of discontented armatoli was recruiting the ranks of the klephts. This interchange of the members of the two corps at last created a certain community of feelings and interests. The existence of the klephts was necessary to render the services of the armatoli indispensable. Ali was often accused of neglecting to suppress the depredations of the klephts, in order to extend his power as dervendji-pasha. But when any individual klepht incurred his hatred, neither valour nor caution could elude his vengeance. The treachery with which he murdered Katziko-Jani, and the cruelty with which he inflicted the most horrible tortures on Katz-Antoni, are celebrated in Greek songs with feelings of mingled admiration and abhorrence.[8]

Moreots

The people furnished the true type of the Greek race in Romelia; but in the Morea, the nation was represented by the proësti and primates. The people were of little account, for the primates were rarely elected by popular suffrage. Almost every local authority derived its power from the central administration of the pasha, and acted as fiscal agents of the sultan. Their insolence to the poorer class of Christians, and their exactions from the Greek peasantry, were only exceeded by the Mussulman Albanians who collected the haratch. In manners and dress they imitated the Turks, and they were accused of leaguing with the higher clergy to keep the people in ignorance and subjection. [30] Before the Revolution, it was observed that education flourished more at Joannina, under the eye of the tyrant Ali, than at Patras or Tripolitza, under the care of Greek primates. Education owed its chief obligations to traders and monks.

The Greeks of all classes in the Morea lived in comparative ease and abundance, in spite of the exactions of Turks and primates. The very circumstance which made taxation arrest the progress of society, rendered its burden light on individuals. It was paid in kind at harvest-time. A part was taken from a heap. The population was thin, and no produce was raised that was not raised in abundance. At the time of harvest, therefore, the price was always low. The farmers of taxes were usually primates and large landholders; and whether they were Turks or Greeks, they had a virtual monopoly of the market. Merchants found it more advantageous to make their price with those who could furnish a whole cargo than to collect small quantities in detail, even at a lower price, but with the risk of not finding adequate means of transport to the port of embarkation, and of not being able to complete a cargo within a fixed period.

The wellbeing of the Moreot peasantry in many districts arose from a cause which was easily overlooked. They enjoyed the benefit of a large amount of capital vested in improvements in former days. Buildings, mills, watercourses, and cisterns, facilitated labour and increased profits. But every generation saw some portion of this vested capital disappear, and with it a portion of the population vanished. Plantations of olive, mulberry, fig, and other fruit-trees, and vineyards producing wine or currants, occasioned so, great a demand for agricultural labour, that the condition of the day-labourer was not inferior to that of the small peasant-proprietor. Indeed, no condition of [31] society could be more favourable to the individual labourer. The demand for labour was limited, but wages were high, and the price of provisions was low.

The municipal organisation of the Morea was more complete than in the other parts of Greece, but it was not so free. Each village elected its own Demogeront; the demogeronts and the people of the towns elected Proësti, and the proësti elected the primate of the province. The primates resided at Tripolitza, to transact the business relating to the whole Christian population of the pashalik. The proësti and primates, with the assistance of the bishops and abbots of the principal monasteries, elected a vekil or primate, who resided at Constantinople, as the official organ of communication with the sultan’s ministers, and whose duty it was to keep the dragoman of the Porte and the dragoman of the fleet accurately informed concerning the affairs of the Greeks, as far as related to their respective departments. This system invested the aristocracy of the Morea with a considerable share of political power, and rendered it a check on the authority of the pasha.

The character of the Moreots was not viewed with favour by the other Greeks. The primates were accused of retaining the intriguing, treacherous, and rancorous disposition which the imperial historian Cantacuzenos tells us characterised them in the fourteenth century.[9] Nor were either the citizens or the peasants supposed to be more imbued with the spirit of truth and justice. Their industry and intelligence were recognised; but their deficiency in candour, courage, and honesty was almost proverbial. A Moreot was supposed, as a matter of course, to be more inconsistent, envious, and ingrateful than any other Greek.

Moreot klefhts