Introduction
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.
ON October 22nd, 1822, the people of Mykonos drove the occupying Ottoman Turks from their island. The locals were led by Manto Mavrogenous, a strikingly beautiful young woman.*
Manto was from a well-to-do family – her great-uncle had been a somewhat controversial Romanian prince* – and was brought up and expensively educated in Trieste before accompanying her father Nikolaos and her mother Zacharati to Paros in 1809.* After Nikolaos died in 1818, mother and daughter moved to Tinos and Mykonos to carry on his work in support of the Greeks’ Declaration of Independence in 1821, ploughing all their property, jewellery and savings into buying guns, raising and training troops, and fitting out ships.
Manto, who followed her father into the revolutionary ‘Filiki Eteria’,* supplied charismatic commander Nikitarás* with fifty of the 2,300 men who defeated 30,000 Turks at Dervenakia in July 1822, a month after Manto had personally accompanied men and ships to the siege of Karystos.
Her name is difficult for English speakers, being pronounced in Greek ma-do (like ‘dot’ without the t) mavro-yen-oos. She signed herself Madalena Mavrojenes when she wrote An Appeal to the Ladies of England in 1824. In Greek mythology, Manto was a prophetess, and the daughter of Tiresias.
Nikolaos Mavrogenes, a Greek from the island of Paros who served in the Ottoman navy and found favour with Sultan Abdul Hamid I, was crowned Prince of Wallachia, now part of Romania, in 1786. His rule was a strange mixture of liberalism and despotism, making him an enduringly controversial figure.
The Filikí Etería, or ‘Friendly Society’, was a secret association of Greek revolutionaries, whose leading members by 1821 included Alexander Ypsilantis and his brother Dimitrios, Theodoros Kolokotronis, and Bishop Germanos of Patras. Politically, it looked towards Russia and also towards Serbia and Romania (then Moldavia and Wallachia), where Greek influence had been strong since Roman times and where similar anti-Ottoman movements were stirring.
The Italian port of Trieste lies on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, next to Slovenia. In 1796 it was part of the realm of the Habsburg monarch Francis II (r. 1792–1835), who in 1804 proclaimed himself Francis I of the Austrian Empire. Trieste was annexed to Italy after Austria’s defeat in the Great War.
The nom de guerre of Nikítas Stamatelópoulos. See The Most Unkindest Cut of All.
Précis
Manto Mavrogenous was a young woman from a wealthy family, who in 1822 joined the Greek campaign for independence from the Ottoman Empire. After leading the people of Mykonos in driving the Turks from their island, Manto went on to use her talents and family money to raise troops and equip the rebels’ small navy. (55 / 60 words)
Manto Mavrogenous was a young woman from a wealthy family, who in 1822 joined the Greek campaign for independence from the Ottoman Empire. After leading the people of Mykonos in driving the Turks from their island, Manto went on to use her talents and family money to raise troops and equip the rebels’ small navy.
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Why was Manto dubbed ‘the heroine of Mykonos’?
Suggestion
She helped expel the Turks in 1822. (6 words)
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