Third siege of Missolonghi, 1825 to 1826: the siege and the Exodus

Few places mean as much in modern Greek memory as Missolonghi. The small lagoon town was besieged three times during the War of Independence, and the last siege ended with the Exodus, a breakout by thousands of starving people on the night before Palm Sunday 1826. Greece today calls it the Sacred City.²

A stronghold on the lagoon

Missolonghi was the first town in western Greece to join the revolution of 1821. Its position let it control western Central Greece and the approach to the Gulf of Patras, and under the politician Alexandros Mavrokordatos and the local leader Athanasios Razis-Kotsikas it was fortified and became the center of the struggle in the region. Philhellenes came from many countries, among them the Swiss printer Johann Jakob Meyer, who published a newspaper in the town; in 1824 Lord Byron arrived, gave money to the cause and revived international interest, and died there that year.³

The Ottomans had already failed twice. In 1822 Reşid Mehmed Pasha, called Kioutachis by the Greeks, and Omer Vryonis besieged the town for two months and withdrew with heavy losses; a second attempt followed in 1823. Greek News Agenda calls the siege that began in 1825 the second; Greek Herald, which counts the 1823 campaign aimed at the area, calls it the third, as does our calendar.⁴

The siege of 1825

On 15 April 1825 Kioutachis returned on the Sultan's orders, his campaign coordinated with Ibrahim Pasha's invasion of the Peloponnese. Greek Herald puts his army at 20,000 men. The Ottomans dug trenches and raised earthen mounds around the walls.⁵

Late in 1825 Muhammad Ali of Egypt sent a fleet of 135 ships to join Ibrahim's forces, and in December Ibrahim himself arrived at Missolonghi and took over the siege. The blockade was now organized far more systematically and became suffocating. Famine wore down the roughly 10,000 inhabitants and fighters, who still rejected Kioutachis's repeated offers of surrender.⁶

The Exodus

When the food ran out, the leaders met in the church of Saint Spyridon. The Souliot captains Notis Botsaris and Kitsos Tzavelas and the chieftain Dimitrios Makris agreed to lead a breakout, each at the head of a column, with between three and four thousand men of fighting age. The Exodus was set for the night of Lazarus Saturday into Palm Sunday, 10 April 1826.⁷

The Ottomans were waiting. A traitor had warned them of the plan, and the columns were met by heavy fire as they left the walls. Thousands were killed in the dark; many were captured and sold into slavery. Those who stayed behind, the old, the wounded and many women and children, were killed when the enemy entered the town. Some chose to die by their own hand. The local notable Christos Kapsalis blew up the powder store with the people sheltering there rather than let them fall into Ottoman hands. Nikolaos Kasomoulis, secretary to one of the captains, remembered that "the town was like a roaring furnace".⁸

How many died

No exact count exists. Greek Herald and other accounts say that only about 1,000 of the 7,000 people who took part in the Exodus reached safety. Greek News Agenda cites a grimmer kind of evidence: the Austrian consul at Patras, Vincenzo Micarelli, reported 3,100 ears collected by the Ottomans as trophies, a practice that horrified European opinion.⁹

Missolonghi and Europe

The fall of Missolonghi was a military defeat that turned into a political victory. The news caused an outcry in Paris and across Europe, strengthened the philhellenic movement and pushed the Great Powers toward intervention, leading in 1827 to the destruction of the Ottoman and Egyptian fleet at Navarino. Eugène Delacroix painted Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi within months, and the poet Dionysios Solomos made the siege the subject of The Free Besieged. The Exodus is commemorated every year, and Missolonghi still carries the title of Sacred City. For other wars of the Ottoman Empire, see the greatest battles of the Ottoman Empire.¹⁰