WHILE campaigning in 1823, Manto fell in love with revolutionary leader Dimitrios Ypsilantis. They were due to be married, but Ypsilantis’s rival Ioannis Kolettis could not allow that. He wanted Greece to ally with France whereas Ypsilantis preferred Russia, and with Manto for his wife Ypsilantis would have been unstoppable.
So Kolettis spread the rumour that Manto had been carrying on with captain Edward Blaquiere, a friend of Byron.* Manto demanded proof or an apology from Kolettis, but received neither, and to her lasting grief Dimitrios angrily ended the engagement. As Kolettis hoped, Manto’s influence now waned.
The leader of Greece’s first independent government from 1827, Ioannis Kapodistrias, recognised her worth, raising her to the rank of Lieutenant General and giving her a house in Nafplion; but after his assassination in 1831 Manto’s grace-and-favour home was taken from her, and in 1840 she retired to Mykonos and then Paros, where she died, penniless and largely forgotten, in 1848.
Edward Blaquière (1779-1832) was an Irishman and a Royal Navy captain, who founded the London Philhellenic Committee in 1823 with John Bowring, Jeremy Bentham and Lord Byron. Its chief purpose was to raise funds for the revolutionaries and to bankroll any new Greek government that would arise. For George Gordon Byron’s dramatic intervention, see Byron and Hercules.