In the 15th century the Ottoman Turks brought a violent end to Christian rule in Southern Europe, and their empire’s expansion was only halted at the Gates of Vienna in 1683. However, by the 19th century the Ottoman Empire was known as “the sick man of Europe”, and its territories were ripe for nationalist uprisings. The avatar of this channel, celebrated poet George Gordon, known by his noble title Lord Byron, sacrificed his life in the first of these wars of Liberation, the Greek war of Independence. This is his story.
When Byron visited Greece for the first time in 1809, he had not reached much fame, being a youth of 21 and only publishing a handful of writings, some anonymous. An aristocratic son of an accomplished naval officer, he, like most young men of means, took a Grand Tour to the Mediterranean, for worldly knowledge and exotic love. In Turkish ruled Greece he fell in love with the savage beauty of the land and the people. In 1812 his path to fame advanced with his love poem to Greece, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
And long accustomed bondage uncreate?
For Byron, a young romantic man with an addiction to adventure, the answer to this question was of course, himself. A life peer by right of his birth, he used his membership in the House of Lords to advocate for the rights of the lower born, attacking in speeches and satirical poems the protectionist, anti-catholic and statist Tory party. To quote a work against the state granted ‘Landed Interest’ and the Corn Laws that fellow Liberal Richard Cobden would finally overthrow after his death:
For fear that plenty should attain the poor.
Up, up again, ye rents! exalt your notes,
Or else the ministry will lose their votes,
And patriotism, so delicately nice,
Her loaves will lower to the market price
Though abroad, Byron was shocked by the 1819 “Battle of Peterloo” when British army regulars opened fire on a protesting crowd of radical reformers, killing or wounding hundreds. He hoped outrage would overthrow the Tory government in his home country, but his hoped for revolution never materialized.
After the great revolutions of Continental Europe and the Americas, liberal nationalism and the belief that peoples had a right to their own polities convinced Greeks at home and abroad to form a secret nationalist society, the Philike Hetaireia in 1810, and in 1821 they decided the time was right to strike, starting and supporting revolutions all over the balkans with the help of nationalist Romanians and Serbians (also at that time subjugated by the Ottomans). Byron, at that time living in Italy to flee from the political and romantic scandals he created in his homeland, watched with sympathy as the Greek people fought for their freedom. The war was brutal, the Patriarch of Constantiople was lynched by the Sultan on easter sunday, thousands of greek civilians in Anatolia were slaughtered and sold into slavery and whole villages were wiped out, but the Greeks were still able to cling on, using the rugged terrain of Greece to conduct guerilla warfare. The savagery of the Ottomans drew hundreds of so-called Philhellenes from Europe to fight them. Germans, Poles, Italians, Brits, even Americans (the Michigan town of Ypsilanti was named after a Greek general as a show of solidarity). In 1823 Lord Byron finally felt compelled to join the fight and return to the land that had enchanted him
.Byron has been characterized as a silly rich fool who threw his life away playing soldier. But while not a military man, he was an excellent shot, a skill he learned and practiced during many of the duels his political and literary rivals would challenge him to. And far from an idealist (of which there were many in the Philhellenes’ ranks), he understood the Greece of 1823 was not the Greece of Homer or a beautiful pristine Arcadia of Mythology. He fell in love with the Greece he had known for 2 years and with the Greeks he loved there. The Greeks needed guns, swords and most of all pay for their soldiers, and Byron liquidated his estate for it all, coming to millions of dollars today. The country’s independence would not be secured until the Great Powers intervened later, but Byron helped keep the Greeks kicking during his time spent in the central port city of Messolonghi, a vital base for the nationalists that the Turks were anxious to capture. Much of Byron’s time and remaining money was spent trying to coax the Albanian Souliotes [SOO-lee-OAT-ays], a fiercely independent tribe of orthodox Christian brigands, to join the fractious Greek army, which ultimately was not successful. Instead he managed to equip his own Byron Brigade of fellow Philhellenes of about 200 men and officers. Byron’s brigade, with native Greek support, planned to raid the strategic Turkish port at Lepanto (the same port from the decisive Christian naval victory in 1571). However, before the raid was to take place, he fell seriously ill.
George Gordon Byron died on the 19th of April 1824. He never led troops into battle for Greece, but Greeks today venerate him as a great man who helped the rebirth of their country. In 1827 the Great Powers of Europe (Britain, France and Russia) finally decided to act in support of the Greeks who had captured so many of their people’s imagination, and crushed a large Ottoman fleet that was threatening the very survival of the Greek cause. By 1829 Greek independence had been secured, and since then Greece has been an independent country. Byron, a class traitor, a Lord who hated lordship, is rightfully our champion. The book we gained much of our insight on Byron from is called “On a Voiceless Shore”. The Greek people suffered greatly under a government that was not their own, as all free people suffer from an occupying force. Nationalism is not the end goal of libertarianism, but the path against giant cosmopolitan empires will always include the nation-state, an ideal not conceived by the violently bigoted, but by liberals, like Lord Byron, who sought to create a society governed by consent. We are their heirs, and we have taken their beliefs to their logical conclusion. Long live Greece, God rest Lord Byron, and May 1000 flowers bloom!