Byron's War

His Life and Death as a Greek Revolutionary

by Joel Van Valin

Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory.
- Byron

By 1823 George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron, was feeling that the best years of his life were behind him. Separated from his wife Anabella amid scandal, he was living in voluntary exile in Italy. His friend Shelley had just drowned in a boating accident, and now he had Shelley's widow Mary on his hands, as well as the obnoxious Leigh Hunt with his wife and mob of children. Even the Gambas, the family of his mistress Contessa Teresa Guiccioli, were dependants, having gotten themselves into political dustup in Ravenna. To add tragedy to trouble Allegra, his four-year-old illegitimate daughter by the hysterical Claire Clairmont, had died in the convent where he sent her the previous year.

Teresa was a young, dramatic Italian beauty married to a man twice her age. Byron was her cavalier servente, or accepted lover, but the acceptance did not include his British friends, nor the Count Guiccioli. Of all Byron's women, the Contessa had been his longest, and perhaps happiest love, and he'd begun what would be his greatest work, Don Juan. But even this relationship had begun to turn bland, and the domestic responsibilities were wearing him out. Lady Blessington, who visited Casa Saluzzo, Byron's villa in Geneva, in March 1823, wrote in her diary that "his hair has already much of silver among its dark brown curls." He felt old too. What he really wanted was a change, both of scene and people. He talked of a voyage to America, or perhaps returning to England briefly to see his daughter Ada. In April, however, he received a fateful letter that was to turn his life in another direction.

The dispatch was from Edward Blaquiere, representing the London Greek Committee. This was an organization set up to help the Greek cause in the country's recent uprisings against the Ottoman Turks. Blaquiere was going to Greece to gather information on the fighting, and would be passing through Genoa. His old friend Hobhouse had mentioned that Byron would likely be sympathetic to the cause. He was right. "I saw Capt. Blaquiere, and the Greek Companion of his mission, on Saturday," Byron wrote back. "Of course I entered very sincerely into the object of their journey, and have even offered to go up to the Levant in July, if the Greek provisional Government think that I could be of any use." The days of his youth were past, but he was not yet ready to part with the days of his glory.

Those in favor of an independent Greece had reason for optimism. The Ottoman Turks had built one of history's great empires, but Europe had overtaken them both economically and technologically. After failing to win the siege of Vienna in 1683 (in honor of which a French pastry chef designed the croissant, in the shape of the Turkish crescent) they had lost territories to Poland, Austria, Venice and (especially) Russia. The empire, however, was to survive until World War I, and at the dawn of the 19th century Greece was still under the Ottoman yoke.

In 1814, the covert Philiki Etaireia (Friendly Society) was founded, and drew support from Greek exile communities in Britain and America, as well as "philhellenes" like Byron and his friends. This laid the groundwork for the revolt of 1821. In March, leaders of the Philiki Etaireia, among them John Capodistria, Alexander Ypsilanti, Theodoros Kolokotronis and Alexander Mavrocordatos, launched a rebellion throughout Greece, Crete and Cyprus. At first the insurgents had great success-a National Assembly was convened at Epidauros, and independence was declared in January 1822. Missolonghi, Athens and Thebes were all captured that summer. The Ottomans were preoccupied with deposing Ali Pasha, the ruthless vizier of Ioannina who had dazzled Byron on his first visit to the Balkans in 1809. Openly defying Constantinople, the pasha had expanded his one-man kingdom to include Albania and much of western Greece. But in 1822 he was assassinated, his head sent to the Sultan. The Ottoman armies turned their attention to the Greek rebellion, which, with the rebel leaders now feuding among themselves, had lost momentum.

By 1823 the war of independence had drawn to a stalemate. The new provisional government was broke and unable to unite its various factions, while the chieftains were jockeying to procure the funds and armaments they would need to take the Turkish fortresses. When word came that a famous-and wealthy-English poet was coming in person to aid their cause, the Greeks declared him their savior.

For his own part, Byron felt all the excitement of a new adventure, and the satisfaction that he was putting his hereto pleasure-seeking life to some good use. He was not hostile to the Ottomans or Islam-indeed he had romanticized the Turks in The Bride of Abydos and a canto of Don Juan-but he did believe deeply in justice, personal liberties, and the self-rule of all nations. He was now seriously taking up the call he had half-mockingly proclaimed in these anapestic stanzas of 1820:

To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And if not shot or hang'd, you'll get knighted.

Teresa's brother Pietro Gamba, a hot-headed revolutionary, was to go with him on the expedition-Byron was fond of calling him a `Liberty boy'. He also recruited Edward Trelawny, a friend and rakish adventurer who had been in the Royal Navy, and engaged a physician, Francesco Bruno, fresh from medical school. And a ship, the Hercules, was chartered to take Byron and his entourage to the Ionian Islands.

The departure was delayed for weeks while Byron packed up Casa Saluzzo and made sure the Hunts and Mary Shelly were provided for. But the main sticking point remained Teresa-the Countess Guiccioli was not going to part lightly with her cavalier servente. Her father had been recalled from exile to Ravenna, on condition that she join him, but Byron's lover wouldn't budge. "I have all kinds of obstacles thrown in my way by the `absurd womankind'," he wrote to his banker, Douglas Kinnaird. And he went on, in an altogether exasperated tone:

She wants to go up to Greece too! forsooth, a precious place to go at present! Of course the idea is ridiculous, as everything must there be sacrificed to seeing her out of harm's way. It is a case too, in which interest does not enter, and therefore hard to deal with; for I have no kind of control in that way, and if she makes a scene (and she has a turn that way) we shall have another romance, and tale of ill-usage, and abandonment, and Lady Carolining, and Lady Byroning, and Glenarvoning, all cut and dry. There never was a man who gave up so much to women, and all I have gained by it has been the character of treating them harshly.

In the meantime, he ordered uniforms for himself and a staff of scarlet and gold for a landing in Greece. He also had three helmets made: one for Pietro with figure of Athene on the front, and two of Homeric design for himself and Trelawny, with his coat of arms and motto "Crede Byron". With Napoleon still a living memory, the poet seemed to be dazzled by the role of the glorious conqueror. But at other times he mocked the venture, or became fatalistic about it. "You will think me more superstitious than ever," he told Lady Blessington, "when I tell you, that I have a presentiment that I shall die in Greece. I hope it may be in action, for that would be a good finish to a very triste existence, and I have a horror to death-bed scenes."

At last, on June 16, 1823, the Hercules set sail from Genoa. On board were Trelawny, Pietro Gamba, Dr. Bruno, Byron's bodyguard Tita (a former Venetian gondolier), and his valet Fletcher. But not Contessa Teresa Guiccioli. "I hoped to have the strength to bear this misfortune without dying," she wrote in her notebook, on the day of parting, "but the pain grows every moment and I feel as though I were dying. Send after me Byron-if you would still see me in life-Oh that I might flee madly and come at whatever risk."

Childe Harold was on pilgrimage again.

On August 2nd they anchored near Argostoli, the capital of Cephalonia, one of the Ionian Islands. Once ruled by Venice, the islands had been won by France during the Napoleonic wars, and were currently a British protectorate with a senate and legislative assembly. Byron became fast friends with the governor of Cephalonia, Colonel Napier. Though an ardent philhellene, Napier's duties prohibited him from lending active support to the Hercules-Britain was remaining stubbornly neutral during the war on the mainland. This was due in part to the mood of exhaustion and non-interventionism that prevailed after Waterloo, and in part to Britain's suspicions that the Greek uprising was a Russian plot to seize more Ottoman lands.

Byron stayed in Argostoli some time, living on the ship and going out riding during the day. He made a sensation in the town, which was nothing new. Though he was supposedly `in exile' after leading a black and scandalous life, everywhere he traveled the Englishmen he met welcomed him-he was the Regency equivalent of a rock star.

One of the acquaintances he made was James Kennedy, the physician of the British garrison. A fervent Methodist, he was fond of preaching Christian doctrine to the other officers. The latter arranged, perhaps as a joke, to have a meeting between the religious Kennedy and Lord Byron, world-class scoffer and author of Cain. After hearing the good doctor read from "Horne's Critical Introduction to the Scriptures" and similar uplifting books, Byron said he wanted to hear Kennedy's own opinions, not the opinions of others. "His lordship asked me," Kennedy recalled, "if I thought that there had been fewer wars and persecutions, and less slaughter, misery, and wretchedness in the world since the introduction of Christianity than before." In spite of this scepticism, Kennedy liked Byron for his honesty and courtly manners.

The poet also made friends in other quarters. There were at the time a number of Suliote warriors on Cephalonia, refugees from southern Albania. Christians who had fled Ottoman rule in Epirus in the 16th century, they had been independent until 1803, when Ali Pasha finally drove them from the Suli mountains. Byron had met Suliotes on his first Balkan journey in 1809, and he enthusiastically hired the whole mob for his bodyguard. The others on board the Hercules were less than keen on this development. "The instinct that enables the vulture to detect carrion afar off," Trelawny wrote, "is surpassed by the marvelous acuteness of the Greeks in scenting money."

Meanwhile, Byron was receiving contradictory reports from the Morea (as the Peloponnesus was called at the time). The Turkish fleet was apparently blockading the mainland, while the Greek fleet was bottled up in islands off the east coast. Georgios Karaiskakis, president of the provisional government, was in a power struggle with the guerilla leader Theodoros Kolokotronis, the "old man of the Morea"; Alexander Mavrocordatos-the only Greek leader Byron trusted to any degree-had been dismissed by the National Assembly. With this news, he decided to stay put on Cephalonia for the time being. Colonel Napier wrote in a letter: "Lord Byron still here. He is going to Greece, but it is hard to get there, harder to get back; and if the Turks catch him off goes his poetical nob!"

In want of diversion, he took his company on a trip to Ithaca, another of the Ionian islands and, according to Homer, the home of the hero Odysseus. A visit to a local monastery provided the backdrop for some Byronic behavior. "Outside the walls of the building there were some open sarcophagi," Thomas Smith, an Englishman visiting Ithaca who had been invited along on the party, recounted. "I walked with his lordship and count Gamba to examine them, speculating philosophically on their quondam contents. Something to our surprise, Lord Byron clambered over into the deepest, and lay in the bottom at full length on his back, muttering some English lines." Smith recognized some "unconnected fragments of the scene in `Hamlet', where he moralizes with Horatio on the skull."

Returning to Argostoli, Byron found that his Suliote guards had invaded the Hercules looking for him, much to the horror of the ship's master, Captain Scott. He determined to free himself of the unruly Albanians by offering them another month's pay and the price of a passage to Acarnania. Scott, however, had decided to sail the Hercules back to England. The company was growing restless for action, but Byron, with his responsibilities to the Greek Committee, was still for caution. It was unclear how best he could aid Greece, as every letter he received from the Greeks contained lies, accusations, and calumnies against rival chieftains. "As I did not come here to join a faction but a nation," he wrote in his journal, "...it will require much circumspection to avoid the character of a partizan... The worst of them is that (to use a coarse but the only expression that will not fall short of the truth) they are such damned liars."

At length he decided to move into a small villa on Cephalonia, in the village of Metaxata. Meanwhile, Trelawny left for the Morea to reconnoiter, chancing his luck in dodging the Turkish fleet. Byron was never to see him again. "I was a fool to come here," he wrote Teresa, "but, being here, I must see what is to be done."

Thinking, perhaps, of the inspiration Byron could lend the soldiers, but probably with more thought towards his purse, Mavrocordatos wrote a flattering letter begging the poet to come to Missolonghi in person and command soldiers in a planned assault on Lepanto. "Be assured, My Lord, that it depends only on yourself to secure the destiny of Greece..." Byron trusted Mavrocordatos' aristocratic pedigree, and had referred to him as "the only Washington or Kosciusko among them." He felt, too, that it was time to either play the soldier for real or go home. He chose to continue on.

On December 29, Byron and his company set sail for the mainland in two small hired boats. Colonel Leicester Stanhope, in Missolonghi as a representative of the Greek Committee, described the excitement that went though the town when word was received of the poet's arrival: "There was universal rejoicing. All are looking forward to Lord Byron's arrival as they would the coming of a Messiah." The boats approached Missolonghi two days later under the cover of darkness; this was fortunate, as several Turkish vessels had sailed near the town, and the Greek ships anchored there had fled. Byron's boat, a shallow-bottomed "mystico", had a narrow escape, running from creek bed to creek bed. The other boat, with Pietro Gamba aboard, was overtaken by an Ottoman frigate, but as it was flying the flag of the neutral Ionian Islands, they were allowed on their way after briefly being detained in in Patras.

A cheering crowd and a twenty one gun salvo greeted Byron in Missolonghi on the 4th of January, 1824. "Crowds of soldiery, and citizens of every rank, sex, and age, were assembled on the shore to testify their delight," Pietro Gamba recalled. "Hope and content were pictured in every countenance. His Lordship landed in a Speziot boat, dressed in a red uniform. He was in excellent health, and appeared moved by the scene. I could scarcely refrain from tears..." Here was a `name great in story', a visionary hero of liberty. But more than that, he was their paymaster, and the man who might, possibly, succeed in uniting the quarrelsome Greek factions. It was now Byron's war.

There were about five thousand soldiers from all over Greece in Missolonghi, as well as a small company of foreign fighters from Germany, England, Switzerland, Sweden, and even America. In coming to Greece as freedom fighters, they were starting a tradition that was to continue through the American and Spanish civil wars. Byron took these foreigners, along with six hundred Suliotes, under his command, and mostly at his own expense. Indeed, the troops seemed more willing to enlist under his banner than any of the Greek chieftains, though he had no military experience. Action was delayed, however, as they were still awaiting the arrival of the Anne, a ship dispatched by the Greek Committee in London. On board was William Parry, the firemaster, and material and men for manufacturing Congreve rockets and other modern devices of war. They would need these if the Turks were serious about defending Lepanto.

In the meantime Byron and his ensemble settled in a large house at the edge of the lagoon, with a courtyard and open space behind where he would drill his personal guard. On rainy days it was muddy and dreary, but on clear ones he could see the Morea, and even Cephalonia in the distance. Byron lived on the second floor, while Colonel Stanhope and the others occupied the first. Stanhope was a curious eccentric who believed the war could be won with a printing press. His small newspaper, Hellenica Chronica, appeared twice weekly starting in January, filled with news and propaganda about the revolution. Byron affectionately dubbed him the "typographical Colonel", and remarked: "It is odd enough that Stanhope, the soldier, is all for writing down the Turks; and I, the writer, am all for fighting them down." Byron himself had sworn off poetry, claiming it was now beneath him. But on his thirty-seventh birthday, he handed some verses to Colonel Stanhope, saying: "You were complaining, the other day, that I never wrote any poetry now. This is my birthday, and I have just finished something, which, I think, is better than what I usually write." He recorded them later in his journal under the heading: "On this day I complete my thirty sixth year":

My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!

The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some Volcanic isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze-
A funeral pile.

The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of love, I cannot share
But wear the chain.

But `tis not thus-and `tis not here-
Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now
Where Glory decks the hero's bier
Or binds his brow.

The Sword, the Banner, and the Field
Glory and Greece, around me see!
The Spartan, borne upon his shield,
Was not more free.

Awake! (not Greece-she is awake!)
Awake, my spirit! Think through whom
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,
And then strike home!

Tread those reviving passions down,
Unworthy manhood!-unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of Beauty be.

If thou regret'st thy youth, why live?
The land of honorable death
Is here:-up to the Field, and give
Away thy breath!

Seek out-less often sought than found-
A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy Rest.

Byron is a figure, like Yeats, whose poetry is married to his life; we cannot understand the one without the other. The broken-heartedness of the first stanzas may refer to Lady Byron, who was never far from his thoughts. But it is more likely an allusion to his feelings for his page, Loukas Chalandritsanos, a fifteen-year-old Greek boy whom the poet had taken under his wing in Cephalonia. A bisexual, Byron had had intense relationships with young men since his Harrow days. His affection for the boy, which now would be scandalous enough to defrock a priest or bring down a congressman, was not given a second thought in that more permissive place and time. But while Loukas delighted in bearing his master's arms and spending his money, he was apparently cold to the man himself. He was the only one in Missolonghi to be so-Byron was petitioned daily for assistance in various projects. It seemed that while his money lasted, the Greek government and the rich townsmen were perpetually broke.

Byron also undertook to protect some Turkish women and children who were refugees in the town, arranging for them to be sent to the English Consul in Prevesa, and from there to Turkish territories. One of the girls, Hatadje, he was particularly taken with, and decided to adopt her, thinking perhaps to send her to England to be a companion to his own daughter, Ada. "Do not shudder at the idea of changing your religion," he assured her, "for I insist on your professing no other but the Musulman." He also took the part of a Turkish prisoner who, fallen overboard from his ship, had swum to a Greek privateer that was pursing it. With the permission of the governor of the town, Byron kept him safe in his house; when two of the sailors from the privateer came and demanded their prisoner, he drove them back at gunpoint. Soon after, he arranged for the Turk and two other prisoners to be sent to Yussuf Pasha, the Ottoman commander at Patras, urging him to treat Greeks with the same compassion. As biographer Leslie A. Marchand notes: "Individual humanity always had a stronger power to move him than general principles."

In early February the Anne arrived with Parry. Byron and Mavrocordatos were disappointed to find they had brought no Congreve rockets, but the industrious firemaster instantly began work on them, constructing an arsenal in the old palace Seraglio. Stubborn and irascible, Parry nonetheless won Byron's trust with his energy and good judgement. He quickly observed "not only that Lord Byron had no friend in Greece, but that he was surrounded by persons whom he neither loved nor trusted."

While Parry and his men worked away, the situation in Missolonghi was tense. The soldiers had begun oppressing the townspeople, and the foreign fighters distrusted the Suliotes. There was a near riot one night when drunken German officers mistakenly reported that Suliotes were attacking the gunpowder and stores in the Serraglio. On another occasion, a fight broke out at the arsenal between a Suliote and a Swedish officer, who was killed in the affray. Byron was concerned enough to have cannon drawn up and pointed at the gates of the Serraglio. There was also, as in most military camps, much swaggering, drinking, and high-jinks. On observing that Parry had been quite affrighted by a recent earthquake, Byron had fifty of his Suliote guards shake the house where he was staying, mimicking a quake, and watched laughing as the firemaster rushed downstairs trembling. The poet also found an escape riding (on fair days) or (on rainy ones) walking in his house with his Newfoundland dog Lyon. He would often talk to the dog, Parry records, saying things like "Thou art more faithful than men, Lyon; I trust thee more."

But there were signs of encouragement as well. An English loan, which would put the Greek government on sound financial footing, was being concluded, and the rumor was Byron would be asked to act as an administrator. He also received an invitation from the Greek government to come for personal visits to Salona and Krandi, and offering him the position of governor-general of mainland Greece. Byron himself envisioned that, once the Turks were driven out for good, he would serve the Greek government as ambassador to America.

For the time being, though, he was stuck in Missolonghi-the Turkish fleet was once again blockading the town. To make matters worse, a feud erupted as a result of a quarrel between some boatmen from Missolonghi and the nephew of the chieftain George Karaiskakis in nearby Anatolica. Karaiskakis sent 150 soldiers to seek vengeance, and they roamed the streets of Missolonghi. Byron saw it as a private quarrel, but then word reached him that factions in the government were scheming against him and Mavrocordatos. That night two Primates were seized as hostages, and Karaiskakis's soldiers took possession of the fortress of Vasiladi, on an island in the mouth of the harbor that was Missolonghi's only protection from the Ottoman fleet. Suspecting that Karaiskakis would betray them to the Turks, hysteria broke out in town. Mavrocordatos was indecisive, but Byron kept a cool head and ordered gunboats to approach Vasiladi and the cannon pointed at the shore in case the soldiers tried to enter the town again. His intimidation tactic worked-Karaiskakis's men gave up the Primates, and felt themselves lucky at being allowed to return to Anatolica unscathed. It was to be Byron's first and last act of generalship.

When he was a boy, a famous fortune teller in Scotland had told young George Gordon "Beware your thirty-seventh year." Her words were prophetic. It was the death bed he had feared-Greece was indeed Byron's "land of honorable death", but not in the way he had imagined. Still, he was composed to the end, and continued reading letters and giving instructions for his troops and his estate. "Eternity and space are before me," he told Parry, "but on this subject, thank God, I am happy and at ease. The thought of living eternally, of again reviving, is a great pleasure." And to his valet Fletcher, to whom he spoke his last words, he said "Io lascio qualche cosa di caro nel mondo [There are things which make the world dear to me]; for the rest, I am content to die." On April 19, 1824, after lying comatose for a day, Byron opened his eyes and shut them again. Then he was gone.

What exactly Byron died of can only be conjectured at, given the vague reports made by his physicians, but it was probably some kind of cerebral inflammation, which may have also been responsible for his earlier `epileptic' attacks. Whatever the cause, the news of the poet's death was received in Europe with shock and despair. In Missolonghi, Prince Mavrocordatos had the guns fired every half hour-when Trelawny arrived in town to summon Byron to the conference in Salona, he found it silent with grief. Most of the towns in Greece had memorial services, and the government declared May 5th to be a day of mourning. In England, the tragedy was front page news. "Byron is dead!" Thomas Carlyle's sweetheart, Jane Welsh, wrote to him. "I was told it all at once in a roomful of people. My God, if they had said the sun and moon had gone out of the heavens, it would not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in the creation..." Alfred Tennyson, then a lad of fifteen, recalled wandering disconsolately from his house, and writing on a rock: "Byron is dead." Perhaps the one most affected was the Contessa Guiccioli; Pietro had not the heart to even give his sister the news. Even as an old woman, in Paris, Teresa was known to keep a sort of altar in memory of her lost lover.

The Greeks wanted Byron to be buried in Missolonghi, but in the end only his heart was kept; the body was returned to England, where his publisher Murray wanted him buried in Westminster Abbey. The dean of Westminster refused. Instead Byron was interred in his family vault at Hucknall Torkard Church, in Nottinghamshire. It was not until 1969 that a memorial to the man who was perhaps England's greatest poet was allowed on the floor of the Abbey.

In 1825, the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II called upon his most powerful vassal, Pasha Muhammad Ali of Egypt, for help in quelling Greece. Ali's son Ibrahim arrived with a large navy and modern army. He quickly took control of the islands, Athens, and most of the Morea. Missolonghi held out for a year, but, facing starvation, the townspeople rode out in secret in what became known as "the Sorty". The exodus was betrayed to the Turks, and few of the ten thousand inhabitants survived. In honor of this sacrifice, Missolonghi was given the title "Hiera Polis" (sacred city) by the Greeks.

By 1827, the Ottomans had largely put down the revolution. Ibrahim's devastation of Missolonghi, however, along with broad support for the Greeks among the public, pushed England, France and Russia to stage a joint demonstration of their navies. In 1827, the naval officers determined (without the consent of their respective governments) to engage the Ottoman navy in Navarin Bay, and Ibrahim's fleet was destroyed in the ensuing Battle of Navarino. In 1828 France landed troops in the Morea. Afterwards, the Greek leaders regrouped and retook Athens and other towns, forming a republican government under John Capodistria.

Greece was recognized as an independent country in 1832, as part of the treaty of Constantinople. The Ottoman Empire received 40 million piastres in compensation for lost territory, and Greece had to accept Otto of Wittlesbach, the Prince of Bavaria and a descendant of the Byzantine ruler Comnenus, as king. But it was an independent nation at last, and Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos was named Premier.

The Greeks have never forgotten the heroes of their war of independence, and in the cities you will find many streets named after leaders like Capodistria and Kolokotronis. And of course many streets-even a suburb in Athens-bear the name "Byron". In Missolonghi there is a cenotaph and statue to the famous English poet who arrived in their hour of need. Beneath it is buried Lord Byron's heart.

© 2006 by Joel Van Valin.