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  Byron's War

  Roderick Beaton re-examines Lord Byron's life and writing through the long trajectory of his relationship with Greece. Beginning with the poet's youthful travels in 1809–11, Byron's War traces his years of fame in London and self-imposed exile in Italy that culminated in the decision to devote himself to the cause of Greek independence. Then comes Byron's dramatic self-transformation while in Cephalonia, from Romantic rebel to ‘new statesman’, subordinating himself for the first time to a defined, political cause in order to begin laying the foundations during his ‘hundred days’ at Missolonghi for a new kind of polity in Europe – that of the nation state as we know it today. Byron's War draws extensively on Greek historical sources and other unpublished documents to tell an individual story that also offers a new understanding of the significance that Greece had for Byron and of Byron's contribution to the origin of the present-day Greek state.

  Roderick Beaton is Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature in the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College London.

  Frontispiece. Theodoros Vryzakis (1819–78), The Reception of Lord Byron at Missolonghi, 1861, oil on canvas, 155 × 213 cm (Athens, National Gallery–Alexandros Soutzos Museum, inv. 1298, donated by the University of Athens. Photo: Stavros Psiroukis)

  Byron's War

  Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution

  Roderick Beaton

  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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  Cambridge University Press

  The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

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  Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107033085

  © Roderick Beaton 2013

  This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

  First published 2013

  Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group

  A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

  Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

  Beaton, Roderick.

  Byron's War : Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution / Roderick Beaton.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-107-03308-5 (hardback)

  1. Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788–1824 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788–1824 – Knowledge – Greece. 3. Greece – Civilization – Influence.4. Greece – In literature. I. Title.

  PR4392.G65B43 2013

  821′.7 – dc23 2012048501

  ISBN 978-1-107-03308-5 Hardback

  Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

  For what is poesy but to create

  From overfeeling good or ill; and aim

  At an external life beyond our fate,

  And be the new Prometheus of new men,

  Bestowing fire from heaven…

  Lord Byron, The Prophecy of Dante (June–July 1819)

  And I will war, at least in words (and – should

  My chance so happen – deeds) with all who war

  With Thought; – and of Thought's foes by far most rude,

  Tyrants and Sycophants have been and are.

  I know not who may conquer: if I could

  Have such a prescience, it should be no bar

  To this my plain, sworn, downright detestation

  Of every despotism in every nation.

  It is not that I adulate the people:

  Without me, there are Demagogues enough

  …I wish men to be free

  As much from mobs as kings – from you as me.

  Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto IX (August 1822)

  Contents

  List of plates and maps

  Acknowledgements

  Names, dates, references

  Maps

  Prologue

  Part I The rebel imagination (1809–1816)

  1 Land of lost gods…

  2 …and modern monsters

  Part II The road to revolution (1816–1823)

  3 Reluctant radical

  4 ‘Prophet of a noble contest’

  5 Death by water, transfiguration by fire

  6 The deformed transformed

  Part III Greece: ‘’Tis the cause makes all’ (July–December 1823)

  7 Preparations for battle

  8 Wavering

  9 The new statesman

  Part IV Missolonghi: the hundred days (January–April 1824)

  10 ‘Political economy’

  11 Confronting the warlords

  12 Pyrrhic victory

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Plates and maps

  Plates

  1a. ‘View of the Parthenon’, showing the Acropolis as Byron and Hobhouse would have seen it in 1810, lithograph published in Edward Dodwell, Views in Greece (London, 1821) (National Library of Scotland)

  1b. Athens ‘lives in the inspiration of the poet’, perhaps illustrating CHP II 82–92, lithograph published in Christopher Wordsworth, Greece Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical (London, 1839) (National Library of Scotland)

  2. Portrait of a Greek Wearing a Fustanela, Louis Dupre, c.1830, oil on canvas, thought to depict Andreas Londos (Athens: Benaki Museum, Collection of Paintings, Drawings, and Prints)

  3. The Defeat of the Pasha, Antoine Charles H. Vernet, 1827, oil on canvas, based on Byron's poem The Giaour (Athens: Benaki Museum, Collection of Paintings, Drawings, and Prints)

  4. Prometheus Creating Man in the Presence of Athena, Jean-Simon Berthélemy, 1802, detail, repainted 1826 (Louvre)

  5a. Teresa Guiccioli, by E. C. Wood, lithograph published in The Byron Gallery, London, 1838 (National Library of Scotland)

  5b. Byron in Genoa, May 1823, at the time when he was making up his mind to take part in the Greek Revolution, sketch by Alfred d’Orsay (John Murray)

  6a. Alexandros Mavrokordatos in Geneva, 1819, lithograph published in Taschenbuch für Freunde der Geschichte des griechischen Volkes älterer und neuerer Zeit (Heidelberg, 1824) (Athens: Gennadius Library)

  6b. Metropolitan Ignatios of Hungary and Wallachia, Pisa, 1816, lithograph by Lassinus Carolus (Athens: Gennadius Library, Scrapbook no. 026,v. 4, p. 9)

  7a. Alexandros Mavrokordatos, pencil sketch by Karl Krazeisen, dated 21 May 1827 (Athens: National Gallery–Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, published in the catalogue: Karl Krazeisen, Οι αυθεντικές μορφές των ηρώων του ’21 [Authentic Likenesses of the Heroes of 1821], curated by Marilena Z. Cassimatis, 2005–6)

  7b. Theodoros Kolokotronis, pencil sketch by Karl Krazeisen, dated 14 May 1827 (Athens: National Gallery–Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, published in the catalogue: Karl Krazeisen, Οι αυθεντικές μορφές των ηρώων του ’21 [Authentic Likenesses of the Heroes of 1821], curated by Marilena Z. Cassimatis, 2005–6)

  8a. Georgios Sisinis, lithograph published in Karl Krazeisen, Bildnisse ausgezeichneter Griechen und Philhellenen, Munich, 1828–31 (Athens: Gennadius Library)

  8b. Georgios Karaiskakis, by an unknown artist, oil on canva
s (Athens: Benaki Museum, Collection of Paintings, Drawings, and Prints)Images are reproduced by kind permission of the following: the National Gallery–Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens; the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland; the Benaki Museum, Athens; RMN (Musée du Louvre), Paris; Mr John R. Murray; the Gennadius Library, American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

  Maps

  1. Byron's Greece

  2. Cephalonia, Missolonghi, and environs

  Acknowledgements

  The research on which this book is based was carried out thanks to the award of a Major Leverhulme Fellowship from 2009 to 2012. Work in Greece was based upon the British School at Athens, where I had the privilege of being elected Visiting Fellow from October to December 2010. I wish to record a sincere debt of gratitude to those two institutions, and to the following that also greatly assisted my research: the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford; the Centre for Hellenic Studies and Maughan Library, King's College London; General State Archives, Athens; Gennadius Library, Athens; Benaki Museum, Athens; Messolonghi Byron Research Center; National Historical Museum, Athens; National Library of Greece; National Library of Scotland; Templeman Library, University of Kent; University of London Library. Debts to individuals are numerous, and particularly to: Peter Cochran, Melvin Dalgarno, Angelos Delivorrias, Rosa Florou, Elena Frangakis-Syrett, Amalia Kakissi, Chris Kenyon-Jones, Paschalis Kitromilides, David McClay, Giorgos Mavrogordatos, Margarita Miliori, Catherine Morgan, Evangelia Panou, Argyros Protopapas, David Roessel, and Maria Schoina.

  Unpublished material from the Abinger papers and from the Murray archive is reproduced by kind permission, respectively, of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, and the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

  Names, dates, references

  Greek names in the non-Greek sources for the period usually appear phonetically rendered into Italian. Thus ‘Karaiskakis’ becomes ‘Caraiscachi’. Where these forms occur in quotations I have retained them. Elsewhere I have regularised them in a manner more readily recognisable in English today, preserving so far as possible a balance between phonology and orthography.

  The calendar in use in the Ottoman empire and Greece during the nineteenth century (known as Old Style) was twelve days behind the western European (New Style). Byron went ashore at Missolonghi on 5 January 1824, but in the Greek calendar this was 24 December 1823. Conventionally, dates at the period were written in the form ‘Old Style/New Style’, but this double system is rarely used in the sources drawn on in this book. In the main text I have harmonised all dates to New Style, occasionally adding a reminder of the local date. In the notes, the dates of documents are cited first as they appear in the document. In the case of Old Style dates, the New Style equivalent has been added in the form ‘[/New Style]’. Where it has not been possible to determine which style applies, a ‘?’ has been added.

  In the notes, frequently cited primary sources are indicated by the abbreviations listed on pages 273–6, all others by author's name and short title. Full bibliographical references are listed at the end of the book.

  Maps

  Map 1. Byron's Greece

  Map 2. Cephalonia, Missolonghi, and environs

  Prologue

  Late in the evening of Wednesday, 16 July 1823, an English coal brig named Hercules sailed from the port of Genoa. Aboard were a British peer of the realm, who happened also to be one of the most famous writers of his day, a Cornish adventurer, an Italian count, a Greek count, a doctor and a secretary (both Italian), half a dozen servants of several nationalities, five horses, two dogs, and a prodigious amount of money in silver coin and bills of exchange. Their destination was Greece. Revolution against Ottoman Turkish rule had broken out there two years before. Since then, horrific stories had been reaching Europe about extreme violence on both sides. None of those aboard the Hercules knew very much about the details of the conflict, not even who was in charge or what their policies were, except for the overriding one of liberation from tyranny. None had the least inkling of the political storm that was slowly breaking over Greece as they sailed, and would prove to be the last testing-ground for George Gordon Noel, the sixth Baron Byron, whose story this is.

  Byron, by the summer of 1823, ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’, had single-handedly invented the modern cult of celebrity. He was adored and reviled throughout Europe, and as far away as America, as one of the defining spirits of the Romantic movement in poetry and the arts. He had just received the highest praise possible for a writer at the time, a letter expressing warm admiration for his work from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the revered poet and intellectual of the age. So, what made Byron decide at the age of thirty-five to risk everything by going to join the revolution in Greece? What impact did his coming have on the course of Greece's modern history? Why does it matter today?

  The answers to these questions make a compelling story. It is a story that has never been told in full before. This may seem extraordinary when something over 200 biographies of Byron are already in existence. Since Harold Nicolson published Byron: The Last Journey in 1924, to mark the centenary of its subject's death, almost every conceivable aspect of Byron's life and work has been turned over by scholars, travel writers, and celebrity hunters. The Greek ‘adventure’ has proved no exception, and important studies published over the last forty years have brought more modern perspectives to bear.1 But only Stephen Minta, in three important articles so far, has begun to explore the rich resources of the Greek historical archives which provide an essential understanding of the political context in which Byron found himself in Greece in 1823 and 1824.2

  Nicolson began his tale in the spring of 1823, on the eve of the departure of the Hercules from Genoa. But Byron's decision for Greece was not the result of the whims and pressures of the moment. The ground had been laid years earlier, during his ‘Grand Tour’ to the eastern Mediterranean from 1809 to 1811 and its aftermath. The traces of this story are there: in letters, in records of conversations, above all in the poetry – once memorably described by Byron as ‘the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earth-quake’.3 Many of the moments and characters that make up this story will be familiar in themselves. But they have never before been joined up to reveal the course of Byron's long and often unexpected trajectory that would take him from the Romantic rebelliousness of his most famous poems to political action in the cause of a revolution, in Greece.

  That is the first part of the story. The second tells what Byron actually did once he got there, how his high-profile involvement was understood at the time by the people he had gone to help, and the effect he had on the outcome of the Greek Revolution. Much new primary material is now available, particularly in Greek. New interpretations by Greek historians, during the last ten years or so, have largely overturned many of the stereotypes of the past – including the conspiracy theory that Byron and other philhellenes went to Greece as the baleful agents of foreign powers – and opened the way to a much more nuanced understanding of the political forces at work during the crucial years of the Revolution when Byron was there.4 Byron himself does not yet figure as largely in this revisionist thinking as he probably deserves to. To that extent, the second part of this book offers a modest contribution to the revision of history going on in Greece today.

  Seen from this perspective, the story of Byron in Greece turns out to be much more than the familiar set of anecdotes reported by those who were with him at the time. Pietro Gamba, Leicester Stanhope, William Parry, Dr Julius Millingen, and later Edward Trelawny, all published blow-by-blow accounts of Byron's last months. But none of them had much idea of the internal dynamics of the revolution they were there to serve. George Finlay, who did, and who would go on to write one of its most authoritative histories, mostly kept his private recollections to himself. Much of the material that makes up the second half of this book has never been available in English before. A good deal of it remains unpublished. Taken together with the landmarks familiar f
rom the biographies, it adds up to a quite different understanding of the political maelstrom into which Byron found himself catapulted, and his own, tragically uncompleted, contribution to the eventual outcome of the conflict.

  This is the story of Byron's remarkable achievement in inventing and reinventing himself – first in imagination as the rebellious Childe Harold and the doomed heroes of the ‘oriental tales’, then as the ‘new Prometheus of new men’, who would eventually settle on the revolution in Greece as the cause to which he would devote his final transformation – into the embryonic statesman and political leader of his last months in Cephalonia and Missolonghi. But it is not the story of one man only. Others – notably his fellow-poet Shelley – played a crucial part in bringing Byron to commit himself to Greece. The role of the Greek aristocrat from Constantinople, Alexandros Mavrokordatos, with whom Byron would forge a crucial alliance in Greece, has not been fully appreciated until now. Finally, thanks to that alliance and the effect that Byron had on the internal politics of the Greek Revolution, the story of this ‘new Prometheus’ forms part of the story of how Europe, including liberated Greece, became modern.

  Part 1 The rebel imagination (1809–1816)

  Chapter 1 Land of lost gods…

  A Childe is born

  Byron was only twenty-one years old when he set out on his version of the Grand Tour in the summer of 1809. The wars against France were in their second decade. Towards the end of the previous century, an improving itinerary had been becoming standard for young British aristocrats. But the overland route to Italy, and Italy itself, were out of the question. The entire continent was controlled by Napoleon. So Byron set out instead, by sea, for Portugal. With him went his friend from student days at Cambridge, John Cam Hobhouse. From Portugal, their journey took them through southern Spain and then to the British naval outpost of Malta, which they reached in September. The plan at this time was to continue by sea to Smyrna (Izmir) and on to Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman empire, seeing something of the ancient sites of Greece on the way.1