The Most Unkindest Cut of All
Greek revolutionary Nikitarás gives his ungrateful men a sharp reminder of what really matters.
1825
King George III 1760-1820 to Queen Victoria 1837-1901
From Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Nikítas Stamatelópoulos (?1784-1849), alias Nikitarás. A man of remarkable honour, he amassed no personal fortune in the War of Independence, unlike some of his fellow revolutionaries, because he would not loot, and he reacted angrily when asked to participate in the murderous infighting that followed. After King Otto, a Bavarian, was foisted onto the Greeks by European powers, Nikitarás stood obstinately opposed, and was given a spell in jail for his pains. Released in 1841, he never truly recovered, and died in 1849.
Introduction
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).
SEVERAL of the heroes of the Greek Revolution were trained in combat by Irishman Richard Church, as members of the British Army regiment he raised in the Ionian Islands.* Among them was Nikítas Stamatelópoulos, nephew of another of Church’s recruits, Theódoros Kolokotrónis. Nikítas, or Nikitarás as he was popularly known, distinguished himself first at the Siege of Tripolitsá in 1821, where he refused to take part in the massacre that followed, and during the long Siege of Missolonghi that began four years later.*
The tragic siege had been going on for some time when Nikitarás fought his way through Turkish lines to the starving citadel, and delivered vital supplies. The rebels within, however, only grumbled mutinously that he had not also brought them their wages. Nikitarás threw down his sword - rather a nice one, recently liberated post mortem from a Turkish officer – and ‘Take it,’ he told them contemptuously. ‘It is all I possess. But I gladly give it for my country.’*
Based on Νικήτας Σταματελόπουλος at SanSimera, and Nikitarás at the blog of the Hellenic Academy of Historical European Martial Arts.
See To Make Greece a Nation. For George Gordon Byron’s dramatic intervention, see Byron and Hercules. On the Greek revolution generally, see posts tagged Greek War of Independence.
See The Third Siege of Missolonghi. In the short term, the siege ended in disaster for the Greeks, but soon afterwards the tale of Ottoman cruelty turned the tide of European opinion in the Greeks’ favour.
The title of this post is taken from ‘Julius Caesar’, by William Shakespeare, when Marc Antony speaks of Brutus’s assassination of Julius Caesar:
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms,
Quite vanquish’d him: then burst his mighty
heart.
