Greek History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Greek History’
During the Orlov Revolt of 1769, Greek islanders get their hands on a copy of Homer’s epic tale of Troy.
During the Greek Revolution of 1821-1829, against the Ottoman Empire, Irishman Edward Blaquière found his fund-raising in London hampered by doubts over whether today’s Greeks were worthy of their ancient forebears. Blaquiere showed them that the spirit of Achilles, wrathful hero of the Trojan War, lived on.
Manto Mavrogenous hoped that her fellow women might show more solidarity with Greece than many men had done.
On August 12th, 1824, Manto Mavrogenous wrote an open letter to the Ladies of England, soliciting donations to the cause of Greek independence from Ottoman rule. Above all, she needed funds to take Euboia, and make it into a safe island for children and women displaced by the fighting.
In 1822, a rich and beautiful young woman took the cause of Greek independence into her capable hands.
The Greek war of independence lasted from 1821 to 1827, and resulted in a partial liberation from the oppressive rule of the Ottoman Turks which had begun with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Manto Mavrogenous (1796-1848) was one of the struggle’s most romantic and most tragic figures.
Greek revolutionary Nikitarás gives his ungrateful men a sharp reminder of what really matters.
In 1821, Greeks living under the irksome rule of the Ottoman Empire declared independence, and a bitter struggle ensued which excited the sympathy of many in Britain, such as poet Lord Byron and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs George Canning. Irishman Richard Church (1784-1873) helped train many of the revolutionaries, among them Nikítas Stamatelópoulos (?1784-1849).
Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens took his wartime protest straight to the top.
In 1941, the Germans invaded Greece, plunging the country into a four-year nightmare of fear, persecution and famine. As elsewhere in Europe, Jews were targeted, but even in the midst of starvation and suspicion the Greeks hid them, found them food, and tried to frustrate the deportations to the camps of Germany and Poland.
On October 28th, 1940, the Kingdom of Greece surprised everyone by refusing to become part of the German war machine.
By the Autumn of 1940, British forces fighting the Second World War were dangerously overstretched: Paris had fallen, Benito Mussolini had pledged Italy’s support to Germany, and Greece was under a state of emergency, with fascist sympathies.