Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [145]
The bloody hands of the Greeks were an uncomfortable fact for the Western supporters of Hellenism. No one epitomized this acute dilemma better than the courageous soldier and fine writer Thomas Gordon. In his preface to the History of the Greek Revolution, published in 1832, he apologized for writing on a “hackneyed and apparently exhausted subject.”42 Forty writers, he said, had published on the topic, of whom he judged only three or four worthy of attention. His own book was a model work of history: Gordon had researched it thoroughly, with the added advantage of knowing the ground and many of the participants. He wrote while the events were still fresh in his mind. The Turks disgusted him but not to the point of obsession.43 The “grand causes” of the revolt in Gordon’s eyes were “religious zeal, patriotism, and national pride, deeply wounded by insult and injury.”44 He recorded how in 1821 the Greeks were shipping arms and gunpowder into the Peloponnese and rebellion was in the air. To some later historians it seemed as though the rising had been planned.
Everywhere, as though at a preconceived signal, the peasantry rose and massacred all the Turks—men, women and children—on whom they could lay hands.
In the Morea [Peloponnese] shall not Turk be left,
Nor in the whole wide world.
Thus rang the song, which from mouth to mouth, announced the beginning of a war of extermination.45
It was neither planned nor organized. Once Bishop Germanos and the leaders of the Orthodox Church had “raised the standard of the cross” in April 1821, the insurrection
gained ground with wonderful rapidity, and from mountain to mountain, and village to village, propagated itself to the farthest corners of the Peloponessus. Every where the peasants flew to arms, and those Turks who resided in the countryside or in unfortified towns, were either cut to pieces or forced to fly into strongholds.46
Gordon made rather more of Greek deaths. Several Greek hostages were, by order of the Turkish general, “led forth and beheaded; their blood tinged the threshold of his residence, and their bones were long allowed to bleach in the court.”47 Others they threw “naked and headless” over the battlements of the Acropolis in Athens.
But Gordon was horrified at what he saw of Greek barbarity. At the city of Tripolitsa, crammed with Muslim refugees from the surrounding countryside, he watched as the Greeks stormed the walls.
The conquerors, mad with vindictive rage, spared neither age nor sex—the streets and houses were inundated with blood, and obstructed with heaps of dead bodies. Some Mohammedans fought bravely and sold their lives dearly, but the majority was slaughtered without resistance … Flames blazing out from the palace and many houses lighted up after a night spent in rapine and carnage.48
Gordon, as a soldier, could understand the bloodlust of the first moment of victory, but vengeance went far beyond that.49
It was the image of Tripolitsa—of 2,000 women and children “massacred in a defile of Mount Maenalion,” where their bloated corpses filled a vast open grave—that filled Gordon’s mind when he described the subsequent Ottoman atrocities on Chios. He wrote of an idyllic island, seven miles off the coast of Asia Minor, with sixty-eight villages, 300 convents, 700 churches. Chios had a population of 100,000 Greeks, 6,000 Turks, and a few Catholics and Jews. It was notable for its fine climate, the mutual tolerance among its various communities, and (Westerners averred) the easy morals of its women. It was also a center of Greek education and literature, with a college, library, printing presses, and a museum.
A small raiding party of Hellenic revolutionaries from Samos had briefly brought the insurrection to the island. They had burned buildings and looted all the movable property they could find. Then they left. But a few weeks later, a larger invading force