Siege of Tripolitsa | |||||||
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Part of the Greek War of Independence | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Greek revolutionaries | Ottoman Empire | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Theodoros Kolokotronis | Kâhya Mustafa Bey | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
About 10,000 - 15,000 troops | 8,000 Turkish and 3,000 Albanian troops | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
100 rebels according to the accounts of Theodoros Kolokotronis. |
35,000 Turkish civilians[1][2][3][4] beside Turkish troops and 5,000 Jews The siege of Tripoli was a major turning point in the war by capturing the Ottoman capital of the Peleponnese and obliterating the Turkish, Jewish and Albanian residents of the region. | ||||||
1According to J. M. Wagstaff the civilian victims in the Ottoman-held city of Tripolitsa were between 10000 and 15000[5], 8,000 according to Encyclopedia Americana[6], 6,000 according to The London Encyclopaedia [7] |
The Siege of Tripolitsa or the Fall of Tripolitsa (Greek: Άλωση της Τριπολιτσάς) to Greek rebels in the summer of 1821 marked one of the first victories in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire, which had begun earlier in that year.
It is notorious for the massacre of its Turkish and Jewish population - the Massacre of Tripolitsa, which occurred after the city's fall to the Greeks. As historian of the war W. Alison Phillips noted, "the other atrocities of Greeks paled before the awful scenes which followed the storming of Tripolitza".[8]
Background
Tripolitsa (also Tripolitza, Tripolizza, Tripolis and Tripoliça in Turkish), now Tripoli, was the administrative centre for Ottoman rule in the Peloponnese, making it an important target for the Greek revolutionaries who wished to capture it. It was also a potent symbol for revenge, its Greek population having been repeatedly massacred by the Ottomans in the past: the latest such event, a few months earlier, followed after the failed rebellion at Moldavia in early 1821; previous massacres of the town's Greeks occurred in 1715 (during the Ottoman reconquest of the Morea) and on Holy Monday, 29 March 1770, after the failed Orlov Revolt.[9][10]
Situated in the middle of Peloponnese, Tripolitsa was the biggest town in southern Greece. Many rich Turks and Jews lived there, together with other Ottomans who had taken refuge there at the outbreak of the Revolution, escaping from massacres in the country's southern districts.[11]
The rebels' decisive victory in the Battle of Valtetsi, plus other victorious clashes in Doliana and Vervaina, meant that the Greek revolutionaries had the effective control over the majority of the areas in the Central and Southern Peloponnese.
Aware of this, Theodoros Kolokotronis had in mind to consolidate his prior achievements. Immediately, he started to set up fortified camps in the surrounding places, establishing several headquarters under the command of his captain Anagnostaras in the nearby villages, notably Zarachova, Piana, Dimitsana and Stemnitsa where local peasants provided his men with food and supplies.[12]
Plus, a new, fresh, and compact force of Maniot troops under Petros Mavromichalis, the de facto Bey of Mani, arrived and camped at Valtetsi so as to take part in the final assault to the Ottoman capital of Morea.[13]
In the Turk-Albanian garrison, morale was already low before it received word about the Greek rebels' capture of Ottoman fortifications in Corinth and Argos. The news significantly reduced the garrison's hope for the arrival of Hursid Pasha's reinforcements from the north, and for Kehayabey Mustafa's skillful cavalry along with his experienced though exhausted infantry troops.
Siege
Although the siege had been going on for several months, its progress was slow as the Greeks were unable to maintain a continuous blockade and were often scattered by sorties of Turkish cavalry.[14] Even though conditions were worsening inside the walls because of the lack of food and clear water.
Taking advantage of this, Kolokotronis began to negotiate with the Turks for a capitulation. He convinced the Albanians to make a separate agreement and to be allowed to leave to Argos, thus greatly reducing the strength of the defenders. The deal was guaranteed by Dimitrios Plapoutas, the famous Koliopoulos of Arvanite stock, giving some 2,500 Turks and Albanians a safe passage out of the Peloponnese.[15]
Greek leaders were constantly in contact with the Turks for negotiations. The successive demands of the remaining Ottoman defenders for a truce were in the end considered by the besiegers as a trick from the besieged in order to delay the events for a hopeless arrival of Ottoman reinforcements. This developed that on September 23 the Greek army broke in by a blind spot in the walls and the town was completely overrun.[16]
The days that followed, the whole non-Christian population of the Tripolitsa was completely butchered. Only the women of the harem were saved, and Kolokotronis' effort to set order was useless. The rebels were fully committed to revengefully massacre every infidel and the looting of the Turkish and Jewish properties was total. The Greek commander Nikitaras, whose nom de guerre was coincidentally Turkofagos (Turk-eater), refused to take part in those atrocities.[17][18]
Massacre of civilians
Describing the massacres that occurred following the capture of Tripolitsa, W. Alison Phillips noted that:
"For three days the miserable inhabitants were given over to lust and cruelty of a mob of savages. Neither sex nor age was spared. Women and children were tortured before being put to death. So great was the slaughter that Kolokotronis himself says that, from the gate to the citadel his horse’s hoofs never touched the ground. His path of triumph was carpeted with corpses. At the end of two days, the wretched remnant of the Mussulmans were deliberately collected, to the number of some two thousand souls, of every age and sex, but principally women and children, were led out to a ravine in the neighboring mountains and there butchered like cattle."[19]
There were about a hundred European officers who were present at the scenes of atrocities committed in Tripolitsa. Based on the eye witness accounts and descriptions provided by these officers, William St. Clair wrote:
"Upwards of ten thousand Turks were put to death. Prisoners who were suspected of having concealed their money were tortured. Their arms and legs were cut off and they were slowly roasted over fires. Pregnant women were cut open, their heads cut off, and dogs' heads stuck between their legs. From Friday to Sunday the air was filled with the sound of screams... One Greek boasted that he personally killed ninety people. The Jewish colony was systematically tortured... For weeks afterwards starving Turkish children running helplessly about the ruins were being cut down and shot at by exultant Greeks... The wells were poisoned by the bodies that had been thrown in..."[14]
According to another historian of the Greek revolt, William St. Clair, upwards of twenty thousand Turkish men, women and children were killed by their Greek neighbors in a few weeks of slaughter.[20] William St. Clair also argued that: "with the beginning of the revolt, the bishops and priests exhorted their parishioners to exterminate infidel Moslems."[21] St. Clair wrote:
The Turks of Greece left few traces. They disappeared suddenly and finally in the spring of 1821 unmourned and unnoticed by the rest of the world....It was hard to believe then that Greece once contained a large population of Turkish descent, living in small communities all over the country, prosperous farmers, merchants, and officials, whose families had known no other home for hundreds of years...They were killed deliberately, without qualm or scruple, and there was no regrets either then or later.[22]
About 30,000 Turks were killed in Tripolitsa, including the entire Jewish population.[23][24][25][26] Steven Bowman claims that despite the fact that the Jews were murdered, they were not targeted specifically: "Such a tragedy seems to be more a side-effect of the butchering of the Turks of Tripolis, the last Ottoman stronghold in the South where the Jews had taken refuge from the fighting, than a specific action against Jews per se."[27]
Aftermath
The capture of the city of Tripolis had a tremendous effect in the morale of the rebel troops so as to pursue their main objective of getting rid of Turks. In fact, after this decisive action, Greeks saw that their way towards self government of a country of their own was becoming possible since the whole Peloponnese became virtually "liberated".
On the other hand, it also marked the first strong spot of disunion in a prior apparent cohesive force. The atrocities committed during the siege were at the moment strongly opposed and criticized by figures of the Greek War of Independence such as Dimitrios Ypsilantis[13] and Alexandros Mavrokordatos,[28] thus pointing the beginning of different perspectives between the Peloponessian chieftains (military faction) and the intellectual mentors of the uprising (political faction), that would develop in an internal conflict and later civil wars, within the same struggle for independence.
See also
References
- ^ McCarthy, Justin (1996). Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922. Darwin Press, Incorporated
- ^ Cité par Hercules Millas, « History Textbooks in Greece and Turkey », History Workshop, n°31, 1991.
- ^ W. Alison Phillips, The War of Greek Independence, 1821 to 1833, p. 61.
- ^ Bouboulina Museum, Spetses Greece (Publisher: Greek Island Spetses; accessed: 2007-04-18).
- ^ J. M. Wagstaff, War and Settlement Desertion in the Morea, 1685-1830, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 3, No. 3, Settlement and Conflict in the Mediterranean World. (1978), p. 301.
- ^ Thomas Gamaliel Bradford, Encyclopedia Americana, Desilver, Thomas, & Co Encyclopedias and dictionaries, (1835), p. 20.
- ^ Thomas Curtis, The London encyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Science, Art, Literature and Practical Mechanicsm, (1839) p. 646.
- ^ Phillips, p. 59.
- ^ Brewer David, The Greek War of Independence. The Struggle for Freedom from Ottoman Oppression and the Birth of the Modern Greek Nation, The Overlook Press, New York, (2001), p.111-112 (ISBN 1-58567-395-1).
- ^ Brunet de Presle et Alexandre Blanchet, Grèce depuis la conquête romaine jusqu’à nos jours, Firmin Didot (1860) p. 387-388
- ^ St. Clair, p. 45.
- ^ Kolokotronis, p. 82.
- ^ a b Stratiki, p. 83.
- ^ a b St. Clair, p. 43.
- ^ Kolokotronis, p. 89.
- ^ Stratiki, pp. 84-86.
- ^ Stratiki, p. 88.
- ^ Raybaud, Louis Maxime, Mémoires sur la Grèce pour servir à l'histoire de la guerre de l'Independance, Paris Tournachon-Molin, Libraire (1824-5), p. 459
- ^ Phillips, p. 61.
- ^ William St. Clair (1972) p. 1.
- ^ William St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free - The Philhellenes in the War of Independence, p.12
- ^ William St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free - The Philhellenes in the War of Independence
- ^ McCarthy, Justin (1996). Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922. Darwin Press, Incorporated
- ^ Cité par Hercules Millas, « History Textbooks in Greece and Turkey », History Workshop, n°31, 1991.
- ^ W. Alison Phillips, The War of Greek Independence, 1821 to 1833, p. 61.
- ^ Bouboulina Museum, Spetses Greece (Publisher: Greek Island Spetses; Accessed: 2007-04-18).
- ^ Bowman, Steven, "History of the Jews in Greece". University of Massachusetts
- ^ Diamatouros, pp. 224-228.
Sources
- Phillips, Alison W. The War of Greek Independence, 1821 to 1833. London, 1897.
- General Makriyannis, Απομνημονευματα (Memoirs). Athens, 1907
- William St. Clair. That Greece Might Still Be Free The Philhellenes in the War of Independence. London: Oxford University Press, 1972. ISBN 0192151940
- Stratiki Poti. To Athanato 1821. Ekdosis Stratiki Bros. Athens, 1990.
- Kolokotronis, Theodoros. Memoirs. Ekdosis Vergina. Athens, 2002.
- Diamantouros, Nikiforos. The beginning of the constitution of the modern state of Greece. Athens, 2002.