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READING HALLDOORS OF WISDOM |
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THE GREEK REVOLUTION.BOOK FIRST.
EVENTS PRECEDING THE REVOLUTION.
CHAPTER I.
THE CONDITION OF THE MODERN GREEKS.
This History records the events which established the independence of
Greece. As long as the literature and taste of the ancient Greeks continue to
nurture scholars and inspire artists, Greece must be an object of interest to
cultivated minds. Nor is the political history of the modern Greeks unworthy of
attention. The importance of the Greek race to the progress of European
civilization 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 so wide an extent of sea-coast, 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 educated classes
among 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 limit of the Greek language was supposed to be not
much greater than a million. 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 Romanian race was not less than four millions; the
Sclavonian, including the Bulgarian, which speaks the Sclavonic language,
exceeded five millions
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, 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 Dervenokhoria, embracing the
whole of 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 voivodes
appointed annually by the Sublime Porte. Athens was a provincial town belonging
to the fief or avpalik of the kislar-aga, who named its voivode, 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. 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. But before the Greek Revolution broke out the reforms of Selim III
had 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 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.
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, Khania, 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 voivode.
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 Othoman
government was the absence of a regular administration bound by fixed rules of
law and a settled form of judicial procedure.
The treaty of Kainardji, in the year 1774, made a great change in the
condition of the Greeks:- (signed on 21 July 1774, in Küçük Kaynarca (today Kaynardzha, Bulgaria) between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, ending the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74 with many concessions to Russia. The treaty was a milestone in the history of the decline of the Ottoman Empire, as for the first time a foreign power had a say in the governance of the Porte in assuming direct responsibility for the fate of the Empire's Orthodox Christian subjects).- 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 recognized species of
foreign protection. At the same time, the advantages which were conceded to the
Greeks in the southern ports of Russia, added to the protection granted to them
in Turkey, enabled them to extend their commerce and to acquire considerable
wealth. 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 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; Greeks exercised sovereign power in Vallachia and Moldavia, and derived
great profits from 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 Yassi, a despotic tyrant; at Chios, a happy
subject; and at Psara, and in the villages of Mount Pelion, a free citizen.
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 Moreots 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 rebaptize the spouse.
The tendency to forget everything but orthodoxy was cherished by the
political privileges which the sultans 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 union geography, language, and manners presented almost
insurmountable obstacles. The people confounded orthodoxy and nationality, and
the priests and the learned class 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 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 recognized 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 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, for the majority of the middle class consists of Greeks 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 their hands,
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.
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, 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.
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 Chalcidice of Macedonia they
formed the majority of the agricultural population.
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 civilization 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.
From the time Sultan Mohammed II reorganized the Greek Church under the
Patriarch Gennadios, 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 kept the Greek language alive,
and perhaps prevented the dissolution of all national union. Yet this opinion
may be questioned, for, by inducing the educated classes to study an imperfect
and pedantic imitation of the classic language they 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 vas 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.
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 th 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 Kodja-bashis, or
primates, in Greece. The moral and politicaf position of this class has been
well described by calling them ‘a kind of Christian Turks.’ A voivode or a bey
purchased the taxes of a district as farmergeneral. He then sublet the
different branches of revenue o Greek primates, who again usually relet their
portions in mailer 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.
Among the Greeks, as among every other people in the last, 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 civilization. Their
condition in society is more strongly characterized 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, though 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.
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.
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 denationalizing 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 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 Abdul-meshid, or of King Otho,
for they rival one another in the disastrous effects of their fiscal
administration (A.D. 1859).
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 and other taxes on
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
should have been preserved by tradition. History tells us that every trace of
Hellenic institutions was swept away by the Roman empire and the Christian
church. The Greek city was supplanted by the Roman municipality. The provincial
administration and the civil laws of Rome efface 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 centralizing
despotism of the Byzantine emperors, an in the ninth century it was formally
abrogated by Leo the Philosopher.
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 part of the sum to be paid by the Christians was left to the
clergy and the primates. In some places the person intrusted with this power
were named by the Porte; in others they were elected by the people. The
authority the created was greater in the rural districts than in the town And
in those parts of Greece in which there were the resident Turks, a popular
election gave the institution national character. But this municipal system was
to 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.
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 Mohammedan sultan or a Christian emperor can
revoke the mandate granted by the people when the local magistrate has violated
no law and neglected no duty, and can replace that local magistrate by a person
of his own nomination, 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 modem 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 organization, which enabled them to call the whole strength and resources
of the agricultural population simultaneously into action.
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
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 more
profound 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 among the missionaries themselves, and between
the missionaries and their choolmasters.
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
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.
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 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 under-secretary 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
recognized agent at Constantinople, and other Greek communities had recognized
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 were also
desirous of redressing them.
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; 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.
The Christians regarded the haratch, or capitation tax, as the
most 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.
So anomalous was the condition of different portions of the Greek
population, that the inhabitants of some mountain districts in Romelia 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 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 by 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 were 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 patronized them, wealthy merchants treated them
with respect and confidence; they were favoured by Mussulman beys and Greek
primates, and 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.
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 Palaeologoi
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 Kleisourarchs 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 great road between Larissa and
Monastir or Bitolia (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.
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 organization 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 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.
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 the
privileges of the armatoli of this district by a 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 colonization 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.
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”.
The ordinary life of the klepht was as little distinguished by mercy to
the poor as it was ennobled by national patriotism. There is very rarely
anything to eulogize 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 klephs 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-Janni, 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.
The people furnished the true type of the Greek race in Romelia; but in
the Morea, the nation was represented by the proesti 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.
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
hot 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 well-being 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 peasantproprietor. Indeed, no condition
of 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 organization 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 Proesti, and
the proesti elected the primate of the province. The primates resided at
Tripolitza (Tripoli), to transact the business relating to the whole Christian population
of the pashalik. The proesti 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
characterized them in the fourteenth century. 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 recognized; 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 ungrateful than any
other Greek.
The primates generally maintained a few armed guards, partly to enforce
their authority and collect taxes, and partly to defend their property from the
klephts. But no regular armatoli ever existed in the Morea. Even the klephts of
the Morea, who were mere brigands, were not numerous until after the social
disorganization caused by the Russian invasion and the insurrectionary
movements of 1770. The exploits of Zacharias and of Kolokotroni, though
celebrated in unpoetic verses and in bombastical prose, were only the deeds of
highwaymen and sheep-stealers. They lived habitually at the expense of the poor
Christian peasants, and rarely ventured to waylay a rich Greek primate, still
more rarely to plunder a Turkish aga. The song of Zacharias celebrates the
destruction of Greek villages, the plunder of Greek priests, the insult of
Greek women, the murder of one Greek child, and the ransom of another. Dodwell
mentions the readiness with which the Greek peasantry joined in hunting down
the band of Kolokotroni, and with which the Greek bishops excommunicated the klephts.
Kolokotroni’s own account of the events witnessed by Dodwell has been
published, and it proves that nothing can have been more brutal than the life
of a Moreot klepht. They were crafty and cruel, and if the trade was ever
nobler, it must have been long before the days of Kolokotroni.
The Mainates and the Tzakonians must be excepted from the general
description of the Moreot character. The former were remarkable for their love
of violence and plunder, but also for their frankness and independence. The latter
were distinguished by their peaceful habits, their honesty, and their industry.
Both were considered brave. The Tzakonians kept provision-shops in almost every
seaport on the Aegean. The Mainates carried on piracy in every gulf.
The Greek inhabitants of the islands exhibited a great variety of
character, for they lived under a diversity of social influences. The maritime
population of Psara, Kasos, Kalymnos, and Patmos, was active, intelligent, and
brave; the Sciots were industrious and honest; the inhabitants of Tinos and
Syra, whether orthodox or Catholic, were timid and well-behaved—formed by
nature and art to make excellent cooks and nurses. The characteristic of the
islanders of the Archipelago was supposed to be timidity. The Turks who visited
them only to collect tribute, and who saw them scamper off to the mountains
when the tax-gatherers arrived, nicknamed them taoshan or hares. Little
did the Turks think that these hares were about to turn on the greyhounds and
drive them back into their kennel.
THE ALBANIANS
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