Population transfers would nip nationalism in the bud, tho not sure if it’s too late for that to be acceptable to anyone.
The New Order: A Successful Selim III
- Thread starter Vinization
- Start date
Here's hoping the Serbians will come in to save the situation for the Ottomans. Since I suspect that a Greek state will be just as resource stricken as OTL.
Maybe Ali Pasha will have the Serbian knezes move in to deal with the rebellion
Let's just say that while Philhellenism is impossible to avoid, the Ottomans also gave a lot of free PR for their enemies IOTL. I mean, seriously, besides all the massacres, they executed the Patriarch of Constantinople after he excommunicated the rebels. That was probably Mahmud II's dumbest decision by far.
This. Keeping the Greek Orthodox upper clergy on the side of the Sultanate is, if not the only way to end this mess without depopulating the Morea, certainly makes things orders of magnitude easier.
I am curious to see what will happen to Lord Byron in the event of a Greek Revolution that is excommunicated by the Orthodox Clergy and crushed. Certainly break his romanticist mindset surely.
The Ottoman forces being visibly more measured than the rebels in reprisals/massacres/ethnic cleansing might help. Might.
Wasnt it standard practice by revolting Christian’s to slaughter Muslims at onset of revolt leading to such reprisals?
Not at all. No one really cared about millions of exterminated Muslims from Balkans. But I’m just saying that it’s gonna be super duper ultra hard to contain the troops to professional behavior following that, and secondly that even a revolt that is put down but all your local supporters eliminated only means a successful revolt later.
Part 15: Papers and Muskets
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Part 15: Papers and Muskets
With the memory of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars still very fresh in the minds of Europe and the Western world in general, word of the initial success of the Filiki Eteria's uprising in spread like wildfire almost as soon as it began. People from all political alignments got their hands on as many news of the events unfolding in Greece as they could, some reacting to the information they received with excitement and others with mounting dread. None were happier than the philhellenes, whose infatuation with Ancient Greece made them unconditional allies to the rebel cause, and blinded them to the fact the Greeks they supported weren't the ancient heroes they grew up idealizing (1).
This was a reality which made itself clearest in the Peloponnese, whose longtime status as a hotbed of anti-Ottoman sentiment made it the rebels' nerve center. Their definition of who was or wasn't a Greek turned out to be very exclusive, as the region's Muslim and Jewish inhabitants found out immediately after the war's outbreak - at Navarino, one of the cities whose Ottoman garrison fought the hardest before capitulating, the rebel victory was followed by a massacre of its non Christian population, the few survivors escaping by sea while most were killed on the shore (2). Albanians were also subjected to attacks, due to decades of ethnic tensions between them and the Greeks: the forces which suppressed the Orlov Revolt in the 1770s were made up primarily of them.
Atrocities like these were common in virtually every area taken over by the rebels, and the few Ottoman holdouts in southern Greece became magnets for refugees. This put the garrisons in places like Tripolitsa and the Acropolis under even more strain, since they had to deal with more and more mouths to feed with every day that went by. The inhabitants of the rest of the empire reacted to the news they received with fury, and they took out their anger on their Greek neighbors. Almost every Ottoman city with a noteworthy Greek community saw some kind of pogrom against them, the perpetrators using the massacres of Muslims in Greece as an excuse to settle old scores or engage in looting.
Part 15: Papers and Muskets
With the memory of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars still very fresh in the minds of Europe and the Western world in general, word of the initial success of the Filiki Eteria's uprising in spread like wildfire almost as soon as it began. People from all political alignments got their hands on as many news of the events unfolding in Greece as they could, some reacting to the information they received with excitement and others with mounting dread. None were happier than the philhellenes, whose infatuation with Ancient Greece made them unconditional allies to the rebel cause, and blinded them to the fact the Greeks they supported weren't the ancient heroes they grew up idealizing (1).
This was a reality which made itself clearest in the Peloponnese, whose longtime status as a hotbed of anti-Ottoman sentiment made it the rebels' nerve center. Their definition of who was or wasn't a Greek turned out to be very exclusive, as the region's Muslim and Jewish inhabitants found out immediately after the war's outbreak - at Navarino, one of the cities whose Ottoman garrison fought the hardest before capitulating, the rebel victory was followed by a massacre of its non Christian population, the few survivors escaping by sea while most were killed on the shore (2). Albanians were also subjected to attacks, due to decades of ethnic tensions between them and the Greeks: the forces which suppressed the Orlov Revolt in the 1770s were made up primarily of them.
Atrocities like these were common in virtually every area taken over by the rebels, and the few Ottoman holdouts in southern Greece became magnets for refugees. This put the garrisons in places like Tripolitsa and the Acropolis under even more strain, since they had to deal with more and more mouths to feed with every day that went by. The inhabitants of the rest of the empire reacted to the news they received with fury, and they took out their anger on their Greek neighbors. Almost every Ottoman city with a noteworthy Greek community saw some kind of pogrom against them, the perpetrators using the massacres of Muslims in Greece as an excuse to settle old scores or engage in looting.
Rioters attacking Phanar, a neighborhood home to many of Constantinople's Greeks.
The severity of the persecution varied with the authorities' willingness to suppress it: in Salonica, for example, the local governor took advantage of the situation to begin a brutal crackdown of the Greeks under his jurisdiction, executing hundreds of people and confiscating the properties of many others without bothering to investigate how guilty they were of aiding the rebel cause. In Constantinople, meanwhile, the rioting was only kept from escalating into an all out massacre because of the intervention of the imperial army, which publicly executed dozens of looters and built gallows all over the city as a warning against any further unrest (3). Desperate to spare his people from further repression, the ecumenical patriarch, Cyril VI, issued a lengthy proclamation excommunicating everyone who rebelled against the sultan's rule, decrying them as "godless agitators" who, though masquerading as pious Christians for the time being, would eventually turn against everything the Orthodox Church held dear (4).
Cyril's proclamation, together with the massacres of civilians committed by rebel and Ottoman forces, became the subject of a fierce propaganda war just as critical as the one fought on the ground. Those who supported the Sublime Porte used the patriarch's words as proof that the rebels were nothing more than a collection of radicals and bandits, while the people who supported their cause argued Cyril's message was written under duress and thus worthless. Most countries' governments stayed neutral for the time being, not recognizing the Greek provisional government but also not stopping their citizens from aiding it in any way they could, Austria being the main exception due to its good relationship with the Sublime Porte. Only Haiti, whose rulers saw the Greeks as a kindred people due to how their own country acquired its independence, recognized the rebel government outright (5).
On the military front, the Ottomans' consternation with how quickly the uprising spread went away, the higher ups in Constantinople realizing the situation was far from irreversible. While the rebels had momentum on their side for the moment, the amount of manpower and money available to them was nothing compared to the resources the Sublime Porte could summon if it so desired. And they already had a sizable force nearby: Hurshid Pasha's 30.000 men, currently busy besieging Yanina. He was reluctant to disengage, however - he had spent too much time and money on this campaign to abandon it right when he had Ali Pasha's back to the wall.
Still, he did authorize the detachment of 8.000 troops from his army, which was, at least on paper, more than enough to vanquish most rebel forces. Led by Omer Vrioni, this contingent marched eastward, towards Thessaly, recapturing Trikala and many smaller settlements before reaching Larissa on July 6. After a few days of rest and waiting for reinforcements that increased the number of men under his command to 10.000 after their arrival, Vrioni's army moved south, with the objective of relieving the Acropolis and Tripolitsa. Unfortunately, his ruthless approach to any form of dissent from the Greek peasantry drove the locals straight into the arms of the rebels (6), and by the time the Ottomans reached the city of Lamia, on the edge of the territory still under their control, the revolutionaries were well aware of their plans and how to counter them.
Vrioni's march ground to a halt on July 20, as his scouts reported the presence of 3.000 rebel soldiers entrenched at Amfikleia. Led by Athanasios Diakos, a former klepht, the Greeks had ample time to fortify their position with redoubts and trenches, thanks to help from the very peasants Vrioni sought to terrify into submission. To make matters worse for the Ottomans, they left most of their artillery at Lamia so as to march at a faster pace, so blasting the rebels out of their earthworks wasn't an option. Fearing the revolutionaries would slip away in the time it would take for his cannons to arrive, Vrioni ordered a series of frontal assaults that accomplished nothing, since his men were met again and again with a hail of bullets from the rebel positions long before they could return fire. Having squandered hundreds of lives with nothing to show for it, Vrioni finally ordered his army to withdraw to Lamia, where they would rest, get their artillery and try again.
The Battle of Amfikleia.
Diakos had no intention of letting that happen, and he ordered an attack right as the Ottoman troops were about to begin their retreat. What was supposed to be an orderly withdrawal turned into a rout, and when the ragged remnants of the imperial army reached the safety of Lamia, it was clear they were in no shape to engage in any operations for a very long time. The first pitched battle of the war between the Ottoman Empire and the Filiki Eteria, the Battle of Amfikleia was a disaster for the former, who suffered at least 4.000 casualties while the rebels, despite being outnumbered by more than three to one, lost just 237 men. This was an immense victory for the revolutionary cause, and it bought critical time for them to consolidate their gains.
Down south, in the Peloponnese, news of the victory at Amfikleia convinced Theodoros Kolokotronis to maintain his efforts to tighten up the siege of Tripolitsa, which by this point was still more of a loose blockade. Fortified bases were set up at multiple strategic locations in the Morean capital's outskirts to fight any attempt by the Ottoman garrison to sally from their defenses in search of supplies, and now Kolokotronis sought to increase the pressure on the defenders by setting up a new strongpoint at Silimna, just west of Tripolitsa itself. This was a major risk, since Silimna was significantly closer to the Ottoman forces than the other rebels strongpoints, and thus more vulnerable to attack. The old Greek general gambled that his enemies, surely demoralized after getting word of the disaster that engulfed Omer Vrioni's attempt to relieve them, wouldn't attack before Silimna's defenses were completed.
He was wrong, as he found out on August 2. The commander of Tripolitsa's garrison, Kâhya Mustafa Bey, knew he had to keep the rebels at bay whenever possible if he was to have any hope of rescue, so he ordered his 4.000 soldiers to attack as soon as he learned of what was going on at Silimna. With only 2.500 troops at his disposal, Kolokotronis tried to hold his position until help arrived, but his men, though not lacking in courage, did not have the earthworks their compatriots used to great effect at Amfikleia, and so they were overwhelmed after hours of hard fighting. Kolokotronis himself was badly wounded and only barely escaped capture, while any Greeks unfortunate enough to be taken prisoner were impaled on Mustafa's orders as punishment for the massacre of Navarino.
Emboldened by this victory, and believing the revolutionary command structure to be in disarray due to Kolokotronis' temporary incapacitation, Kâhya Mustafa struck again, this time at Valtetsi, on August 7. The rebels there were in a much more formidable position this time, being on top of a hill and surrounded by rocky slopes that made the Ottoman cavalry useless. These natural defenses were reinforced with three redoubts, but unlike Vrioni at Amflikeia, Kâhya Mustafa could count on five cannons to support his men on what would clearly be a very bloody battle.
After a short bombardment, the Ottoman infantry attacked Valtetsi from the north and the south simultaneously, coming under withering fire from the entrenched Greeks before falling back with heavy losses. The second assault was more successful, the troops tasked with taking the southern redoubt charging up the slope and engaging in fierce close quarters fighting with the defenders for control of the earthworks. The attack stalled, but the imperial soldiers held their ground long enough for reinforcements to arrive and turn the tide of the battle. The rebel position began to crumble, their casualties piling up at an unsustainable rate, and it was only the timely arrival of some 500 men from a nearby village that gave them an opening to retreat (7).
The storming of the rebel camp at Valtetsi.
With two swift blows one after the other, Kâhya Mustafa bought valuable time for Tripolitsa and restored Ottoman morale in the aftermath of the Battle of Amfikleia. For all the glory earned by him and his men, however, they could not end the siege of the Morean capital all by themselves: while the rebels could receive additional troops from other fronts and foreign volunteers, the Ottomans, surrounded by a hostile countryside, could not. The fact Tripolitsa was the only place in the Peloponnese still under the Sublime Porte's control complicated matters further, since it meant the Ottoman navy had no place where it could easily land troops behind most rebel armies - they'd need to force their way through Boeotia and Attica.
But this approach would have to wait until next year to be implemented, since, as one could expect from the Year Without a Summer, the winter of 1816 came in force earlier than usual - the first heavy snowfall was reported in early September, and soon enough most mountain passes in Greece became too hazardous to be crossed. The mettle of the defenders of Tripolitsa and the Acropolis would be put through the ultimate test.
As would that of Hurshid Pasha's men, still slowly chipping away at Yanina's defenses.
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Notes:
(1) As Lord Byron found out after he set foot in Missolonghi.
(2) This happened IOTL.
(3) IOTL the authorities not only let the rioters run wild, but they executed dozens of prominent Greeks, including the ecumenical patriarch.
(4) Gregory V, patriarch during the opening stages of the OTL Greek War of Independence, condemned the rebels as well, but Ottoman sultan Mahmud II had him executed anyway. Predictably, this act sparked outrage throughout Europe, and was a huge propaganda coup for the Greek cause.
(5) Haiti was the first country to recognize Greece's independence IOTL.
(6) The Ottoman military had a knack for killing and enslaving people indiscriminately in the Greek War of Independence, and I doubt the extra discipline from a successful implementation of the Nizam-i Cedid would change things that much. Plus, many Ottoman soldiers and commanders are Albanians, and they're pissed.
(7) Valtetsi was a stinging defeat for the Ottomans IOTL. Butterflies and a successful reform of the army means Kâra Mustafa Pasha has better troops at his disposal, rather than a bunch of irregulars.
Good chapter as always, while the Ottomans have gotten a bloody nose as long as they can restrain themselves from more massacres and slowly wipe out the rebels, they're sure to win.
Speaking of Haiti, how are they faring ITTL? Better or worse than OTL?
Speaking of Haiti, how are they faring ITTL? Better or worse than OTL?
Probably worse, considering Napoleon is now in charge of France and he hated Haiti. He might launch another invasion to reclaim part of the old royal French colonial empire.