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.
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.’*
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 (11).
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.
Précis
At the Siege of Missolonghi in 1826, part of the Greek Revolution, Nikitas Stamatelopoulos broke through to the citadel with supplies. Once inside, however, he found the resistance complaining about their wages. Angrily, he tossed them his sole possession, an expensive sword, saying that if it was the price of his country’s liberty he was happy to pay. (57 / 60 words)
