Kolokotrones the klepht and the warrior : sixty years of peril and daring : an autobiography

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-AN

WARRIOR

THE LIBRARY of

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writings are concerned, one of the most successful apostles of the so-called “ demotic school ” in modern Greek literature ; the school namely of those who aimed at preserving, in the written tongue, the spoken vernacular, unchanged and unimproved, and who were opposed to all progress or epuration. *

* The chief service rendered by the advocates of the “ demotic ” tongue consisted in the proof they afforded of the futility of endeavouring to tie down to the thraldom of a restrained and unserviceable idiom the awakening conscience and the daily increasing requirement of a people able to fall back upon an immortal language in order to supply such requirements. Few words need here be wasted on the essayists and philosophers of the kind of the late Lord Strangford, who are either sufficiently naive to imagine, or ill-disposed enough to assert, that an entire nation have somehow conspired, at much personal inconvenience and loss of precious time, to make use of an unnatural and stilted idiom in order to vindicate a patrimony, of which, apparently, only such should be deemed the rightful heirs as choose to pronounce Greek in a manner which is as arbitrary as it is ludicrous. To quote Lord Strangford is to prosecute a post mortem research of an uninviting description. But many accept and to this day repeat his delusions as dogmas of an infallible faith ; and as his remains in literature have been mummified into a two-volume “ Selection,” it will be no fault of ours if his diatribes be shown to constitute but a sorry epitaph on his erudition :

“It must be owned that this word [ Hellene , Hellenic] does not read quite, comfortably and easily.” “ The nation is simply mad.” “The Greeks, one and all, write in an artificial language,” “ an extraordinary lingo ... to which they are sacrificing their own satisfactory vernacular bow-wow.” “This factitious language is the symbol of Hellenism,” which, “ with much rattening and house-burning,” is forced down the throats of “ the Bomaic-speaking Byzantine agriculturists of Thessaly. ... It [their education] teaches nothing of any kind except a barbarous and factitious literary jargon, made up out of the grammar and the words of a dead language, from which it is a point of honour to divorce the idiom of the true spoken language ; and this jargon is taken up and inculcated everywhere as the symbol of Hellenism and the uniting bond of the race. ... If I were a rich man I would set a premium on the head of any Greek in the kingdom who could be shown to have lived to the age of fifty without ever speaking a word of book-Greek, . . . just as you give a blue coat

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For many years Tertzetis was the librarian of the Greek Parliament (which, under King Otho, was still composed of two Chambers), and in that capacity he came into close contact and intimate and brass buttons to the virtuous labourer at home as a reward of merit.’,

It is to be feared that but few Greeks would have availed themselves of this tempting offer. Kolokotrones himself, at an age even more mature than fifty, appears so lost to a sense of the fitness of things as to use “ book-Greek ” the moment he finds himself confronted with the necessity of giving expression to any idea rising above the limited vocabulary of his “ vernacular bow-wow.” As for Tertzetis, he, in common with the rest of the now all but extinct vernacularists, failing to give adequate expression, in .the demotic idiom, to the subjects he had to treat, used at every step whole phrases from “ book-Greek,” and persuaded himself he was writing in the vernacular by simply dropping terminal v’s and by maiming harmless words. Lord Strangford might have endangered his pecuniary resources had he offered his prize of a blue coat and brass buttons to such Dorsetshire rustics as would not use the English of the Times even to the day of their death ; but in Greece his proffered munificence would have remained untouched. Those who for their own egotistical enjoyment advocate the continuance of a picturesque barbarity in language, remind one forcibly of that sickly school in art, who, little caring whether the people of Venice needed St. Mark’s as a useful place of worship, lamented and protested against the restoration of its contorted pavement, the upheavals of which, they boldly affirmed, had thus been originally fashioned, in order to represent the waves of the Adriatic ! The Greek people were guided in the progressive development of their language by practical and urgent needs. The movement which has made, within the last century, such rapid and giant strides, was not the result of scholastic pedantry or of political fanaticism ; it was not imposed or forced ; it was not mechanical. It was the result of the spread of education and of the gradual re-civilization of the country. It is a remarkable fact that it preceded political emancipation. The culture of the Greek language and the study of Greek literature have undoubtedly had, at all times and places, and still have, as an immediate result, the awakening of a sense of individual dignity and of national freedom. But that is one of the primary reasons why the study of Greek is advocated the world over as an indispensable adjunct to a liberal education. Such an influence may be esteemed, by some, a regrettable drawback ; but Lord Strangford’ s reprinted diatribes will not help to cure it.

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relations with all the great survivors of the "War of Independence. On the 25th of March (6th April) of each year, the anniversary of Greek Independence, coinciding as it does with the festival of the Annunciation, was celebrated in the Chamber by an oration which Tertzetis delivered, never failing to move his audience to enthusiasm and tears. It was on one of these occasions that he announced the forthcoming publication of the reminiscences of Kolokotrones, and related how he had succeeded in persuading the old warrior that he owed it to his country to leave a written record of his sufferings and of his deeds of valour in her cause. He had repeatedly begged him to do so, but Kolokotrones refused, pretexting his inability to write. He could read, in a fashion; but in the way of writing he could not do more than scratch his signature. At last one day Tertzetis said to him :

“ General, you will remain like a musical instrument, which brings forth sounds men listen to and enjoy, but which does not itself comprehend the value of its own voice. If you do not yourself record your deeds, they will hereafter appear as the play of chance, not as the works of your own wisdom and conscience. Deeds of heroism and acts of devotion are befitting a Greek; but they must be recorded in writing, as of old. You hesitate lest you should do injustice to others. Speak the truth, as you know it to be ; be not concerned lest you fall into errors ; you will not

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IX lead the world astray; truth will herself appear foremost. And if your memory fail you as to details, who will put it down to you as a sin? You object you are illiterate; you know enough and to spare. Speech is literature. Speak, and I will write; for there lived many a brave man before Agamemnon and Achilles, who, having chanced no chronicler, now lie forgotten, unpraised and unmourned. Do not trust the record of your own deeds to others than yourself; but fear the adventurer in literature as you have shunned him in other walks.”

“ He scrutinized me,” Tertzetis goes on to say, u with his glance, now wild, now soft and caressing, and then he said to me, ‘ Come to-morrow.’ ‘ Come early,’ he again cried out to me from the window as I was leaving.”

So the dictation began in the summer of 1836, and a part of these reminiscences was privately printed in 1846, three years after the death of Kolokotrones. The printing was continued in 1850, but the whole was not published till 1852.

Tertzetis noted down these memoirs, not in shorthand, with which he was unacquainted, but by writing as fast as he could follow Kolokotroijes, who did not precisely dictate, but narrated his tale as he usually talked. He was already bowed down, more by the terrible hardships which he had endured, than with years. Besides, his idiom and mode of expression was peculiar, and, as Tertzetis relates, often a gesture, the intonation of his voice,

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or the expression of his countenance, indicated and explained more than his rugged sentences. The original manuscript must therefore have been of a very fragmentary description ; and Tertzetis adds that he marked with dots many gaps which he had intended to request Kolokotrones to supplement, had he been spared to do so.

The fidelity with which Tertzetis accomplished his self-imposed task cannot be disputed. On the •contrary, the style used is only too faithful a representation of the idiom of Greek mountaineers of the times to which the narrative relates. It is an idiom as peculiar as the English of the Scottish highlanders, with a large admixture of barbarisms, and with many abbreviations and the suppression of such explanatory words or sentences as may be suggested by the context, or may be easily understood by one conversant with the habits of thought and life of the speaker, but which compel the ordinary reader to halt and consider at every sentence. Moreover, Kolokotrones was addressing his remarks to one already familiar with the general course of the events of which he was offering rather his own version, than a connected and systematic recital. For all these reasons, even to a Greek the perusal and thorough comprehension of this remarkable book is no smooth reading. It requires, in any case, some acquaintance with the general outlines of the history of the Greek War of Independence. The courage, therefore, with which Mrs. Edmonds has undertaken to grapple

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xi with difficulties, in many cases hopeless, is as admirable as the apparent shortcomings and hiatuses of the English version are conceivable and almost inevitable.

The narrative begins with the birth of Kolokotrones in 1770, and ends in 1836, when he was living peaceably at Athens. The first question which will present itself to one who has read it through is to what extent does it possess an historical value. Of its sincerity there can be no doubt. Kolokotrones dictated it when many of those concerned were still living. It was not addressed to the outer world ; while in Greece itself everything relating to the War of Independence is eagerly scanned and jealously criticised. Nevertheless, while supplementary statements or rectifications of unimportant incidents may have been offered, no material contradiction has appeared with respect to Kolokotrones’ narrative of his individual action in the war. It cannot, of course, be maintained that his narrative is absolutely impartial. He was an active participant in the events of that time ; he was mixed up, however involuntarily, in the intestine troubles and strifes which considerably reduced and almost crushed the great object of the Greek uprising. But on the whole his account of these events is dispassionate, fairly impartial, and singularly sober and unpretentious. In fact Kolokotrones’ countrymen esteem his deeds and the glorious part he took in the liberation of the country far higher than xii

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he himself appears to appraise them ; and the verdict of history will confirm their appreciation.

As regards their literary merit, these reminiscences can lay claim to no sort of artistic finish. There is no trace of scholarly ability or of careful composition. On the contrary, the style, as already stated, is rugged in the extreme, indicative not of the affected ruggedness of the professional philosopher, wearying and repellant in its too manifest effort, but of the unconcerned directness and unconscious force of a natural rhetoric. In one sense we have here the modern counterpart to the narratives of Homer and Herodotus. All three relate the same tale, each in the particular manner of his age — the secular struggle between Greece and Asia. Kolokotrones, however, had this advantage over his predecessors in the narration of this ever-recurring strife : that before consigning to writing the deeds he relates, he engraved them on the page of history with the point of his sword. His story may well be said to have been written not with ink, but with the blood which flowed in torrents for the freedom of Greece.

He was born and destined to this holy work. His family, which dates three centuries back, first appears in history as a living protest against foreign domination. They waged war against the Turk from their native crags and fastnesses, bequeathing from father to son the choice between blessing and curse, to continue or abandon the sacred tradition. Each succeeding generation is

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xm decimated in holocausts of martyrs; but it persists in the firm belief and inextinguishable hope of ultimate triumph.*

The abortive revolt of the Morea, in which his father, Constantine Kolokotrones, had taken a leading part, had just been suppressed, when on April 3rd, the Easter Monday of 1770, Theodore was born f under a tree on the hills of Kama, in Messenia,

* How deeply rooted this belief was in the traditions of the entire nation, how imbued Kolokotrones was with the conviction that the Turkish dominion, however powerful, was insecure, incomplete, and transitory, and that the nation, as a whole, had never been reconciled to it, and never recognized it, is conclusively shown by the following anecdote, which is given in his reminiscences, but which Kolokotrones himself related on another occasion in the following more detailed manner. In 182B, after the fall of Nauplia, three English warships anchored in the bay, and the commander of the squadron, whose name is given as Hamilton, after congratulating Kolokotrones on his victory of Dervenakia and the capture of Nauplia, urged upon him the opportuneness of appealing to the English Government, so that, through its mediation, Greece might be constituted into a principality, vassal to the Sultan. Kolokotrones replied that the Greeks had never recognized the Suzerainty of the Sultan ; and on the English commander expressing his surprise at this assertion, he added : “ The Turk has come upon us as a rapacious marauder; he has put to death some of us and has made slaves of others ; but when our king fell in battle he had made no treaty with the Turks, but left a will bidding his garrison carry on the war and free the nation. His garrison has never given up the struggle, and our two fortresses have never capitulated.” Hamilton again asked who were the garrison and which the fortresses ; and Kolokotrones replied : “ The garrison of our king are the so-called Klephts, and the two fortresses are Maina and Suli.” f Tertzetis points to certain parallel incidents in the lives of Washington, Napoleon, and Kolokotrones, all three having been contemporaries, great strategists, and leaders of nations. Kolokotrones was in his fifteenth year when Washington signed the treaty of peace with England; and in his thirtieth when Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor, whose junior he was by one year. The mothers of both were driven by war to mountain refuges in their pregnancy ; but Napoleon died an exile in his fifty-second year, while Kolokotrones attained the age of seventy after seeing his country free.

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where his clan had sought a refuge. The child of a struggle for freedom, he was reared up amidst the mountain songs of the Klephts and within echo of the wailings of the bondsmen of the plains.* His father having been, some years later, seized and put to death by the Turks, he was sent by

* It would have required a good-sized volume — one that might well have figured in this series— to set forth with adequate detail who the Klephts were, what their origin, their organization, the patriotic and religious motives of their desperate mode of life, and how the Porte entered into compacts and alliances with them at times, the more effectually to hunt them down at others. The interesting introduction in the following pages, offers some elucidation of the subject. But those who are desirous for more ample information, can find no better guide than the unrivalled historial retrospect with which C. Fauriel has prefaced his classic work, “Les Chants Populaires de la Grece Moderne : Paris, 1824.” Although inaccurate on some points of minor importance, it remains the best monograph on the subject ; and in perusing it, the reader may fancy himself carried back to the heroic times of ancient Greece. No doubt the Klephts degenerated in later years into bands of marauders and brigands. When the great chiefs, who served only Faith and Freedom, had disappeared, it was but natural that their following, having been persecuted into the conviction that the governing caste were their natural foes, should continue to regard a life of armed opposition to all government as the only one worth leading. The poisonous seed of secular slavery and misrule cannot be eradicated in a generation. Yet, whatever brigandage may have existed in Greece — and it was never a more rampant evil there than in other and more favoured countries, both of the old world and of the new — it existed mostly as the outcome of incursions from over the frontier, for which the government of the country could not well have been held answerable. The Klephts of old may have been guilty of acts of cruelty ; theirs was a life and death struggle, bequeathed from father to son. But their sense of chivalry can compare favourably with that of the muchvaunted knights of the West. They certainly never proved themselves capable — not even towards their Mussulman foes — of such acts as those of the later Crusaders, who, starting with the avowed object of freeing the tomb of Christ, ended by enthroning the harlots of their camps on the holy altar of Saint Sophia, by way of mockery of the Virgin of the “ Schismatics,” and who, for many centuries afterwards, infested and victimised the Levant as depredators and adventurers.

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his mother, now an orphan of twelve, to sell a load of wood in Tripolitza, and bring back flour and salt. On his way thither he was waylaid and beaten by a Turk — the usual reminder to a Christian that he was but a giaour and a slave. Kolokotrones managed to sell his firewood, but he brought back neither flour nor salt, but a sword, vowing vengeance to the tyrant. Who but his own stout heart would then have hoped that forty years later, on the memorable 22nd September, 1821, he was destined to enter Tripolitza as a conqueror !

Yet he seemed marked out by Providence to work out such a revenge. His whole life was typical of the sufferings, the struggles, and the resurrection of Greece. The influence, the prestige of the name of the Kolokotrones was so dreaded by the Turks, that the extirpation of the entire clan was ordered by the Porte in 1804. Thirty-six of Theodore’s brothers, cousins, and relatives, and one hundred and fifty of their followers, were butchered in the struggle that ensued. But he remained undaunted ; and after compelling the Turks to recognize him, at the age of sixteen, as chief of the Armatoles of Megalopolis, he found himself again the object of a perfidious conspiracy, intending to entrap him. He was thus forced to take refuge in Zante in 1805.

Once in safety, his first care was to organize amongst the Greek refugees in the Ionian Islands a memorial addressed to the Emperor of Russia, entreating him to intervene in favour of Greece.

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No answer was received, but the Russian Governor of the Islands urged Kolokotrones to recruit a Greek corps for service against Bonaparte. “ What wrong has Bonaparte done to us ? ” was the reply. “If you want men to fight for the freedom of Greece, I bind myself to muster a body of ten thousand.” For his inextinguishable hopes made him cling even from afar to his beloved mountains; and oft and again he would ascend with his young son the castle hill of Zante, and, pointing to the Morea, he would tell the boy that those were the fastnesses of their forefathers, which must again be free.

The English occupation of the Ionian Islands opened up for Kolokotrones a new and brilliant prospect. With that far-sighted sagacity which guided all his resolves, he seized the opportunity to lend brilliant services to the British Government during the siege of Santa Maura, and his bravery was rewarded with the grade of major. It was then he acquired tactical knowledge and experienced the advantages of regular warfare. It was then he became acquainted with, and conceived a devoted friendship for, General Sir Richard Church. It was there, in the Ionian Islands, that Lord Guilford and General Church laid the first germ of English philhellenism, the one by thejevival of learning in Greece, the other by his resolute endeavours for the liberty of Greece.

It was a long and dreary waiting. But at last

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XVII the day, which fourteen generations of Greeks had longed and prayed for, dawned with the spring of 1821, when the proclamation of Alexander Ypsilantis resounded throughout all Greece. “ When it reached my ears,” said Kolokotrones, “ when I heard ‘ the war-trumpet of the Fatherland calls you,’ I fancied that heaven and earth re-echoed the trumpet blast. I donned on my fez gallantly, I grasped the hilt of my sword with fervour, and I inscribed in my heart with letters of fire the immortal name of Alexander Ypsilantis ! ”

The long-expected hour had now arrived, and of the result he never doubted for an instant. “ Fear not,” he was wont to say; “ God has pledged His word for the liberty of Greece, and He will not retract.” He declared, “We have been baptized once with holy ointment; we shall again be baptized in blood for the freedom of the Fatherland!” The faith and piety of this rough and hardened warrior was that of an ascetic. In 1803, passing by a Convent of the Virgin, ruined and devastated during the last revolt, he halted there and prayed fervently, making a vow to rebuild the shrine in its pristine grandeur, if but the Blessed Virgin inspired him how to free the country. The second year of the war, after his heroic successes, he returned to the sacred spot and fulfilled his vow. And again, after his great victory at Valtetzi, it being a Friday, he ordered his troops to fast that day and offer up a thanksgiving prayer to God.

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But not these qualities alone endeared him to his men, over whom he exercised a magic influence’ The prestige of his name, his ardent patriotism, his consummate knowledge of the country, were powerful agencies in his favour. Above all, he was a born soldier and a great strategist. The troops which he led to battle were composed for the most part of raw recruits, badly armed, and inferior, always in numbers and often in physique, to the splendid armies which the Turks poured into the Morea from Asia and Egypt. Yet he gained one victory after another — never a more glorious one than over the dreaded force of Dram-Ali, whom he outwitted and outmanoeuvred. He was full of resource, especially in times of crisis and reverses. Memorable and most characteristic is the feat by which pretending, in the midst of a precipitate retreat, to have suddenly routed the Turks, he set up a cry of exultation, and he deceived his own men, whom he thus rallied and actually converted from fugitives into pursuers. On another occasion, during the siege of Tripolitza, one of his officers drew his attention to a body of Turkish troops lurking in the distance. Kolokotrones looked around unconcerned, and replied that they were only birds of prey who must have just feasted on the body of Hadji-KoulelA(a dreaded Turkish commander who had been killed), and they were now resting to digest him !

In fact, he was the Odysseus of the Greek War

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xix of Independence,* and he was befittingly nicknamed “ the old man of the Morea” (O' Tepwv rod Mcopea .), not on account of his age, which was not great at that date, but owing to his unrivalled experience, his unerring judgment, and his inexhaustible resource. In common with many great men, he was extremely superstitious, and, like all good Klephts, an adept in divining by the bones of sheep. He believed in the portents of dreams, so much so, that he often took military measures in accordance with the inferences he drew from his dreams. Yet he was full of dry humour, and many of his sayings remain fresh in the minds of men in Greece. It is related of him that, when suffering from an abscess on the back, he asked his men how it looked. One told him it was no bigger than a pea ; another, that it was the size of a cherry ; while a third assured him it was as large as an egg. “ Strange,” remarked Kolokotrones; “the distance is but from my head to my back, yet I cannot learn the truth ! ” And again, when the Bavarian Regency committed the fatal blunder of condemning Kolokotrones to death on a trumped-up charge of treason, on the sentence being commuted to twenty years’ imprisonment, the decree was read to him. “I shall cheat the Regency,” he said; “ for I shall not live the

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twenty years. ” Being himself a humorist, he knew well how to frustrate attempts at scorn. At Tripolitza, on a Sunday, a lampoon directed against him was found nailed to the door of the church, where a large crowd soon gathered. Kolokotrones going into mass, took down the placard and put it in his pocket ; but at the conclusion of the service he compelled the priest to read it aloud to the congregation, whom he then asked whether he had merited the insult. He was greeted with cheers, and returned to his house amid an ovation.

He was inexhaustible also in fables, by means of which he would convey much of his caustic and pregnant criticism. For he loved to examine the philosophical aspect of things, and he used to say that philosophy is observation. His rhetoric, rude and unadorned as it was, had great persuasive powers. His strategy would not have availed alone against Dram-Ali’s campaign. It was by haranguing his soldiers that he encouraged them to hold fast to their entrenchments and despise the onslaughts of the enemy. And when, after the establishment of peace and order, the rising generation were to be exhorted and urged to imitation of the deeds of their fathers, George Gennadius called upon Kolokotrones to address the young students of Athens. The scene was one never to be forgotten, when, on the feast of the Asomati in 1838, the grizzly old General stood up on the Pnyx and related to those, who were now fortunate enough to be educated as free

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xxi citizens, by what sacrifices the Fatherland had been redeemed and liberated. The voice of Greek liberty then re-echoed on those sacred rocks for the first time since the days of Demosthenes. The whole assembly was filled with enthusiasm, and was moved to tears when he told them, in conclusion, that he had but one regret, that he had always prayed to fall sword in hand in battle, but he was now condemned to end his days on his couch.

His own want of education made him even more eager that the rising generation should receive enlightenment. He often attended the lectures in the University and the Gymnasia, sitting himself on the benches by the side of the scholars, so as to excite pride in their studies. It was his wont to pace up and down the room while his son prepared his lessons ; and on one occasion, stopping short, he asked him suddenly : “ Kolinos, which do you take to be the great house of the nation?’5 “ The king’s palace,” answered the boy. “ No,” said he; “it is the University.” He had in him the innate love and admiration of the Greek for learning. He, however, knew well how to discern times and seasons. On the eve of the Revolution, while at Zante, he attended as usual the lectures of the Master, Nicolas Kalyva ; and, being filled with enthusiasm at the mention of a free Fatherland, he snatched the book from Kalyva’s hands, and, tearing it up, “ This you should now teach them,” he said, “how to make cartridges with the paper.”

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His whole mind and soul was indeed that of a soldier. His very appearance announced him as such. He was rather short in stature, of a thin, wiry frame, sunburnt and weather-beaten to a degree that he might well have been mistaken for a man of colour.* He had a stentorian voice, and an irresistibly piercing glance, to which his hooked nose lent the aspect of an eagle; and with the long hair, traditional to the Palikar, floating about him, he looked, as Pechio says, like one of those splendid rocks which project from the iEgean.