Ypsilantis Proclaims Revolution: Greece Rises

Alexander Ypsilantis crossed the Prut River into Ottoman-controlled Moldavia with a small band of fighters and a colossal bluff, proclaiming that he had "the support of a great power" — meaning Russia — when no such support had been formally promised. His proclamation at Iasi on February 24, 1821, launched the Greek War of Independence, a decade-long struggle that would redraw the map of southeastern Europe and establish the first independent nation-state born from Ottoman rule. Ypsilantis was a Greek officer in the Russian Imperial Army, an aide-de-camp to Tsar Alexander I, and head of the Filiki Eteria, a secret revolutionary society dedicated to Greek independence. The society had spent years building networks among Greek merchants, intellectuals, and diaspora communities across Europe. Ypsilantis believed that a military incursion into the Ottoman provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia would trigger a general Christian uprising in the Balkans, supported by Russian intervention. He was wrong on both counts. His force of roughly four thousand men, including Greek students, Moldavian boyars, and members of the Sacred Band, marched south from Iasi but found little local support. The Romanian population had no interest in trading Ottoman overlords for Greek ones. The Ottomans crushed Ypsilantis's army at the Battle of Dragasani in June 1821, and he fled to Austrian territory, where he was imprisoned for seven years. Russia, wary of destabilizing the European balance of power established at Vienna, publicly disavowed him. But the spark he struck could not be extinguished. Simultaneous revolts erupted across the Peloponnese in March 1821, and these proved far more durable. The Greek cause attracted volunteers and funding from across Europe, including Lord Byron, who died at Missolonghi in 1824. By 1827, Britain, France, and Russia intervened militarily, destroying the Ottoman fleet at Navarino. Greece won formal independence in 1830, establishing a precedent for national self-determination that would echo through the Balkans and beyond for the rest of the century.