George Gordon Byron, the Lion of Lepanto
George Gordon Byron, the Lion of Lepanto
Before agreeing to desist from his Greek adventure Achille had obtained from his father the assurance that the Kingdom would support the Greek cause as far as possible without risking an all out war with the Ottoman Empire. This support materialized itself in the form of a dozen decommissioned siege guns from the Neapolitan army that, instead of being scrapped, found their way to Greece, and in particular to Missolonghi, where Lord Byron, the famous British poet, and probably the most prominent Philhellene, had been organizing[1] an expedition to take the strategic coastal city of Naupaktos on the Gulf of Corinth[2].
Those plans had been up to that time severely hampered by the lack of appropriate artillery, but that problem had just been resolved.
The Liberation of Naupaktos
The campaign to take Naupaktos could thus start, and, after a winter in which the revolutionaries could only keep a loose siege of the city, frequently skirmishing with Ottoman troops in the hilly terrain, in March 1824 the heavy equipment was brought to the outskirts of the coastal town. The makeshift Hellenic navy managed to keep off the Turks at sea, especially because they didn’t want to risk encounters with fireships in the confined waters of the Gulf of Corinth. The city could thus be completely isolated, and after two months of siege, Naupaktos fell to the Greeks on the 4th of May 1824.
With control over that strategic town, the Greek situation improved notably, and they could stabilize their hold over Peloponnesus and Achaia. Also their financial position received a significant boost, in the form of a large loan provided by the Philhellenic Club in London.
Notwithstanding the sympathies enjoyed by the Greek cause both among the religious conservatives, who saw it as the struggle of Christians against Muslim oppression, and among the liberals, who saw it as a fight for freedom and national independence, the European Powers remained passive to its calls for help, when not downright hostile.
And, while European diplomacy exhausted itself in a series of Congresses on the Spanish and Greek questions without finding any common ground on their solution, the Sublime Porte moved and called to its Egyptian vassal for help in crushing the Greek revolt. Mehmet Alì Pasha, the powerful and almost independent Wali of Egypt, commanded a powerful and comparatively modern fleet, and an army trained in the western style. Seeing this as an occasion to further is influence on the Ottoman Empire, Mehmet Alì quickly answered to the call of the Porte and mobilized his forces. He was however too late to save Naupaktos, as he spent most of the 1824’s campaigning season on Crete, fighting its rebellious populace.
The Greek Civil War
Meanwhile the fractious and fragile nature of the Greek provisional government started to show itself.
In particular a strong rivalry had developed between Mavrokordatos, who was the head of the provisional government, and his supporters from Roumelia and Hydra, and the military leader Kolokotronis, who had his power base in the Peloponnesus. Soon armed clashes between supporters of the two factions started, and almost developed into a full-fledged civil war. However the Roumeliotes soon emerged victorious, especially because of the control that they exercised over the funds coming from western Philhellenes, that enabled them to pay off several groups who had initially been neutral or had supported the Peloponnesian faction.
Those developments were not well received by the Philhellene community: initially they had been mostly supportive of Mavrokordatos, as they saw the need for a strong and united central government, if there were to be hopes of attaining international support and victory against the Turks. However they became quickly disillusioned, as they saw the Roumeliotes not seeking a compromise with their opposers, but instead looking for a total victory and trying to exclude them from any position of power.
The misuse and often blatant theft of the common funds, that should have instead been used to train a better organized force, hopefully able to withstand the incoming threat of Mehmet Alì’s Egyptians was another key factor for the weakening of their initial enthusiasms: the defenders of Greek freedoms were disappointingly far from the idealized picture that the Philhellenes had of them before meeting them in person.
In this turbulent situation it is not clear what caused the definitive break between Byron and the Provisional Government: the most common interpretation, tough always rejected by Byron himself as almost libelous, goes that he tried to leverage his popularity as the hero of Naupaktos to enter the political scene and even plotted to get himself elected as King of the future Greek State.
Whether this had been really the case or not, it remains that, some months after the liberation of Naupaktos, Byron had become totally alienated from the Greek leadership, and, decided, (or was forced to) leave Greece after fruitlessly asking the recommisioning of Kolokotronis in the rebel army, as a show of unity after the civil war and in view of the probable Egyptian invasion.
Byron in Naples
In September 1824 Byron left Naupaktos, never to return, and repaired in Naples, where he would adapt rather well to the picturesque nature of the southern Italian capital, animating a very lively cultural circle, often attended by members of the Royal Family and finally completing his Magnum Opus, the Don Juan.
Byron would then die in Naples in January 1827, probably because of pneumonia contracted as the result of an aborted attempt at reaching the island of Capri by swimming in October 1826.
Konstantin I Pavlovich, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias
The Greeks would continue holding on their territories, but the menace of the fresh and ell equipped troops and navy from Egypt were making their perspectives rather dim, unless the European powers decided to lend them some decisive help.
This was however a far hope, as even the country that was most friendly to the Greek cause, Russia, kept refusing any help or endorsement to the “rebels”. This was all however to change radically when the Czar Alexander suddenly fell ill and died in December 1825[3], leaving as his successor his brother Konstantin, who in his childhood had been educated by Catharina the Great with the perspective of becoming Emperor not only of Russia, but of a reborn Byzantine Empire.
Even leaving aside the fantasies of Catharina, it became soon clear that Konstantin would take a different outlook on governing in general, leaving much of the administration of the Empire to his ministers and on the Greek question in particular, being much more hostile towards the Ottoman Empire.
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
Notes:
1- In OTL Byron was planning such an expedition before the illness that would cause his death. Here the illness is butterflied, and the limited support coming from Naples should be enough to capture Naupaktos, if the Greeks can hold it against Mehmet Ali’s troops is another story…
2- Also known by the name of Lepanto, on 7 October 1571 its waters were the theater of the historical naval battle between the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire.
3-Some rumors would long exist that the dead was actually faked by Alexander in order to leave the oppression of his duties as Autocrat and leave his last years in peace and mystical contemplation as a monk.
