The Battle of Navarino
A.D. 1827
HARRIET MARTINEAU
At Navarino Turkish sea power was destroyed. The Greeks, who for six years had been struggling to free themselves from the Ottoman yoke, were soon enabled to establish their independence. The Battle of Navarino was the turning-point of the Greek revolution, and Is fairly numbered among the decisive battles of the world, although other events subsequently contributed to the liberation of Greece.
Navarino is a small seaport on the bay of the same name in the present Grecian nomarchy or district government of Messenia. It was captured in May, 1825, by Ibrahim Pacha, the Egyptian vassal of the Turks. Greek affairs were now in a precarious condition, which soon became more critical, and foreign aid was invoked.
In July, 1827, a treaty was made by England, Russia, and France whereby they agreed to mediate between Greece and Turkey. Mediation was refused by the Sultan, Mahmud II, who at once made thorough preparations for a new campaign. The allied powers were equally prepared to meet this move, and the ensuing operations are described by Miss Martineau. Her account also embraces preceding events, including operations in which two British officers, Admiral Cochrane and Sir Richard Church, respectively commanded the naval and land forces of the Greeks.
In 1828 and 1829 Russia alone, for her own purposes, warred success fully against Turkey, and in the Peace of Adrianople (September 14, 1829), that ended this conflict, the Sultan recognized the independence of Greece, and the resurrected state has ever since maintained its place in the family of nations.
BY the end of 1826 the whole of Western Greece was recovered by the Turks; and the Greek Government had transferred itself to the islands. Men who find it at all times difficult to agree, are sure to fall out under the provocations of adversity, and the dissensions of the Greek leaders ran higher now than ever. It was this quarrelling which prevented the Greeks from taking advantage of some successes of their brave General Caraiscaci to attempt the relief of Athens, closely pressed by the Turks. The Turkish force was soon to be strengthened by troops already on their march; and now, before their arrival, was the time to at tempt to relieve Athens. Some aid was sent, and some fighting went on, on the whole with advantage to the Greeks; but nothing decisive was done till Lord Cochrane arrived among them, rated them soundly for their quarrels, and took the command of their vessels, the Greek Admiral Miaulis being the first and most willing to put himself under the command of the British officer. In a little while Count Capo d’Istria, an official esteemed by the Russian Government, was appointed President of Greece for seven years.
The Turkish reenforcements had arrived, absolutely unopposed, before Athens, and this rendered necessary the strongest effort that could be made for the deliverance of the place. General Church brought up forces by land, and Lord Cochrane by sea; and by May 1st the flower of the Greek troops, to the number of ten thousand, were assembled before the walls of Athens. It was soon too clear to the British commanders that nothing was to be done with forces so undisciplined and in every way unreliable. The troops of Caraiscaci lost their leader, and incurred disaster by fighting without orders, and then through a series of mistakes and follies the issue became hopeless.
Between eight and ten o’clock in the morning of the 6th all was ruined. The killed and wounded of the Greeks amounted to two thousand five hundred, and the rest were dispersed like chaff before the wind. Of those who escaped, the greater number took refuge in the mountains. Lord Cochrane was compelled to throw himself into the sea and swim to his ship. General Church strove hard to maintain his fortified camp at the Phalerus, with three thousand men whom he had collected; but when he found that some of the Greek officers were selling his provisions to the enemy, he gave up and retired to Aegina, sorely grieved, but not in despair. Lord Cochrane kept the sea, generally with his single frigate, the Hellas, contributed to the cause by the United States, and now and then with a few Greek vessels when their commanders had nothing better to do than to obey orders. He was alone when he took his station off Navarino to watch the fleet of the Egyptian Ibrahim; and he had better have been alone when he went on to Alexandria to look after the fleet which the Pacha was preparing there, for when the Egyptians came out to offer battle the Greeks made all sail homeward.
The Turks now supposed they had everything in their own hands. On the intervention of the French Admiral de Rigny they spared the lives of the garrison of the Acropolis, permitting them to march out with their arms and go whither they would. Then all seemed to be over. The Greeks held no strong places but Corinth and Napoli, and had no army; while the Turks held all the strong places but Corinth and Napoli, and had two armies at liberty—that of the Egyptian leader in the West, and of the Turkish seraskier in the East—to put down any attempted rising within the bounds of Greece. But at this moment of extreme humiliation for Greece aid was preparing, and hope was soon to arise out of despair. While Canning was fighting his own battles in Parliament, he had his eye on what was passing in Greece; and the fall of Athens and the dispersion of the Greek forces only strengthened his resolution that the powers of Europe should hasten the interposition he had planned long before.
It was important to Russia that Turkey should be weakened in every possible way; and Russia was therefore on the side of the Greeks. The sympathies of France and England were on the side of the Greeks, but they must also see that Greece should be freed in reality, and that Turkey should not be destroyed; so they were willing to enter into alliance with Russia to part the combatants, preserve both, impose terms on both, and see that the terms were observed. The Duke of Wellington had gone to St. Petersburg to settle all this; and the ministers of the three courts laid before the Government of the Porte at Constantinople the requisition of the allies. The great object was to separate the Turks and the Greeks—the faithful and the infidels—who could never meet without fighting; and it was proposed—or we may rather say ordained—by the allies, that all the Turks should leave Greece, receiving compensation—in some way to be devised—for the property they must forsake. The Greeks were to pay a tribute to the Porte, and to be nominally its subjects, and the Turkish Government was to have some sort of veto on the appointment of officials, but substantially the choice of officers and the enjoyment of their own mode of living were to be left to the Greeks.
As might be expected, the victorious Turk was amazed at this interference between himself and his rebellious subjects; and if he would not listen to dictation before the fall of Athens, much less would he afterward. There was threat as well as dictation—threat of enforcing the prescribed conditions; but the Porte treated the threat as loftily as it rejected the interference.
The rejection was too natural and reasonable not to be received as final; and the three powers proceeded therefore to their acts of enforcement. Canning, ill and wearied after the close of the session, exerted himself to transact some public business. The chief item of this business was causing to be signed the treaty with France and Russia concerning the affairs of Greece, which was finished off in London and immediately despatched to Constantinople. In this treaty the alliance and its purposes were justified on the ground of "the necessity of putting an end to the sanguinary contests which, by delivering up the Greek provinces and the isles of the Archipelago to the disorders of anarchy, produce daily fresh impediments to the commerce of the European States and give occasion to piracies which not only expose the subjects of the contracting powers to considerable losses, but render necessary burdensome measures of suppression and protection." England and France, moreover, pleaded the appeals they had received from the Greeks. The treaty concluded with a declaration and pledge of disinterestedness—of desiring nothing which the whole world beside was not at liberty to obtain.
A month from the date of the arrival of the instructions to the ambassadors at Constantinople was the time allowed to the Porte for consideration. If the terms of the three powers were not by that time acceded to, they must proceed to the threatened enforcement, with every intention to preserve their own pacific relations with Turkey. The work of mediation was to be carried on by force in such a case under the plea that such a proceeding would be best for the interests of the contending powers, and necessary for the peace and comfort of the rest of the world. There were squadrons of all the three powers ready in the Levant—that of Russia being commanded by Admiral Heiden; that of France by Admiral de Rigny; and that of England by Sir Edward Codrington.
The formal note of the ambassadors at Constantinople was delivered in on August 16th, with a notification that an answer would be expected in fifteen days. On August 30th, no reply having been volunteered, it was asked for, and given only verbally. Again the Porte declined recognizing any interference between itself and its rebellious subjects; and when the consequent notice of enforcement was given, the Turkish Government became, as any other government would, in like circumstances, bolder in its declaration of persistence in its own rights. Then began a season of activity at Constantinople such as had seldom been witnessed there; horses and provisions pouring in from the country, and sent off, with ammunition, arms, and stores, to occupy the ports along the Bosporus and Dardanelles. There was an incessant training of troops under the eye of the Sultan or his vizier, and the capital seemed in a way to be turned into a camp. There is something striking in the only words the Turkish minister would utter, in the final interview of September 14th. "God and my right," said he, in the calmest manner; "such is the motto of England. What better answer can we give when you intend to attack us?"
Meantime the Egyptian fleet, strongly reenforced, had arrived in the Morea, and the English commander had no right to inter pose any obstacle, the time being the end of August, and the answer of the Porte not being yet delivered. Sir Edward Codrington, however, hailed Ibrahim, informed him of what was going on at Constantinople, and offered him a safe-conduct if he wished to return to Egypt. But if he chose to enter the harbor of Navarino, to join the Turkish fleet there, he must clearly understand that any of his vessels attempting to get out would be driven back. Ibrahim chose to enter. There now lay the ninety two Egyptian vessels and the Turkish fleet crowded in the harbor; and off its mouth lay the British squadron on the watch.
For some time Ibrahim occupied himself in preparing his troops for action against the Greeks; but on September 19th he determined to try an experiment. He sent out a division of the Turkish fleet to see if the English would let them pass. Sir Edward Codrington warned them back, but the Turkish commander replied that he was under no other orders than those of Ibrahim. The Egyptian Prince—being referred to by both parties and afterward by the French Admiral, who had come up with his squadron, and the danger of the case amply explained to him—declared that he would recall the Turkish ships, and wait the return of couriers whom he would send to Constantinople and to Alexandria; but that as soon as he received orders to sail, his whole combined fleet would come out and brave all opposition.
A sort of armistice was agreed on, verbally, for twenty days, during a long conference between the Egyptian, French, and English commanders, on September 25th. The two latter trusted to Ibrahim’s word that his ships would not leave the harbor for the twenty days—ample facilities having been allowed by them for the victualling of his troops; and they sailed for Zante to obtain fresh provisions for their fleet. As soon as they were gone, only five days after the conference, Ibrahim put out to sea, to sail to Patras. On October 2d an armed brig brought notice to Sir Edward Codrington of this violation of the treaty. The Admiral immediately returned with a very small force, met successively two divisions of the Turkish fleet, and turned them back to Navarino. In his wrath Ibrahim carried war inland, slaughtering and burning, and driving the people to starvation, and even uprooting the trees wherever he went, that no resources might be left to the wretched inhabitants.
As the spirit of the Treaty of London was thus broken through, the three admirals concluded to compel an adherence to the terms agreed upon at the conference, by entering the harbor and placing themselves, ship by ship, in guard over the imprisoned fleets. The strictest orders were given that not a musket should be fired unless firing should begin on the other side. They were permitted to pass the batteries and take up their position; but a boat was fired upon by the Turks, probably under the impression that she was sent to board one of their vessels. A lieutenant and several of the crew were killed. There was a discharge of musketry in return by an English and a French vessel; and then a cannon shot was received by the French Admiral’s ship, which was answered by a broadside.
The action, probably intended by none of the parties, was now fairly begun; and when it ended, there was nothing left of the Turkish and Egyptian fleets but fragments of wrecks strewing the waters. As the crews left their disabled vessels they set them on fire; and among the dangers of the day to the allied squadrons, not the least was from these floating furnaces drifting about among a crowd of ships. The battle, which took place on October 20th, lasted four hours. The Turkish and Egyptian forces suffered cruelly. Of the allies the English suffered the most, but with them the loss was only seventy-five killed, and the wounded were fewer than two hundred. The three British line-of-battle ships had to be sent home after being patched up at Malta for the voyage.
The anxiety of mind of the three admirals is said to have been great—both on account of the calamity itself, and the doubt about how their conduct of the affair would be viewed at home. One reasonable apprehension was that there would be a slaughter of the Christians at Constantinople. But things were now conducted there in a more cautious and deliberate manner than of old. An embargo was laid on all the vessels in the harbor; but the mob of the faithful were kept in check. There were curious negotiations between the Government and the ambassadors, while each party was in possession of the news and wanted to learn how much the other knew. The Sultan himself wished to declare war at once, but his counsellors desired to gain time; and there were doubts, fluctuations, and bootless negotiations, in which neither party would concede anything for several weeks. The Turks would yield nothing about Greece, and the allies would yield neither compensation nor apology for the affair of Navarino.
On December 8th, however, it being clear that nothing could be gained by negotiation, the ambassadors left Constantinople. The Christian merchants might have embarked with them, but they must have left their property behind; and some preferred remaining. The Turkish authorities went to great lengths in encouraging them to do so; but whether this was from pacific inclinations, or from a sense of their value as hostages, could not be certainly known; and the greater number did not relish trusting themselves to conjecture in such a case. The day before the ambassadors left, an offer was made of a general amnesty to the Greeks. But this was not what was required. As they sailed out of the harbor, the Sultan must have felt that he was left deprived of his fleet, at war with Russia, England, and France. But the coolness and ability shown by his Government in circumstance so extremely embarrassing as those of this autumn, were evidence that there were minds about him very well able to see that if Russia desired to crush him, England and France would take care that she did not succeed.
As for the Greeks, their Government was thankful to accept the mediation of the allies, but so weak as to be unable to enforce any of their requisitions. Piracy under the Greek flag reached such a pass in the Levant that Great Britain had to take the matter into her own hands. In the month of November it was decreed, by an order in council, that the British ships in the Mediterranean should seize every vessel they saw under the Greek flag or armed and fitted out at a Greek port, except such as were under the immediate orders of the Greek Government.
Thus the British carried matters with a high hand in regard to both parties concerned in the unhappy Greek war. It is a case on which so much is to be said on every side that it is impossible to help sympathizing with all parties in the transactions preceding and following the Battle of Navarino—with the Greeks, for reasons which the heart apprehends more rapidly than tongue or pen can state them; with the Porte, under the provocation of the interference of strangers between her and her rebellious subjects; with the Egyptians, in their duty of vassalage—however wrongly it might be performed; and with the allied powers in their sense of the intolerableness of a warfare so cruel and so hopeless going on amid the haunts of commerce, and to the disturbance of a world otherwise at peace; and with two of those three allies in their apprehension of Turkey being destroyed, and Greece probably once more enslaved by the power and arts of the third.