Page 229 - Beholding Liberty!

Resit, pasha Kioutachis, already since
April 1825, has laid siege to the city with about 15.000 men.
The abandonment of guarding the city from the sea in the early November 1825 by the squadron under admiral Andreas Miaoulis, due to the lack of supplies, deteriorates
the situation of the besieged. The besiegers demand the surrender of the city, receiving the brave refusal of the Free Besieged. After the failure of yet another attempt
by Miaoulis to provide the city with supplies on the 1st of April, the garrison takes
the decision of armed exodus, in the evening of the 10th to the 11th of April.
The plan, which envolved two fighters’ units to precede, a third with the women and children and a fourth one as rearguard under Kitsos Tzavelas, is described in
the Declaration of the Missolonghi Inhabitants (10 April 1826), as this was dictated by the bishop of Rhoges, Iosif,
and recorded by N. Kasomoulis in «Ενθυμήματα Στρατιωτικά της Επαναστάσεως των Ελλήνων, 1821-1833 [Military Memoirs of the Revolution of the Greeks, 1821-1833]» (Athens, 1841, vol. II, pp. 259-262): «Seeing ourselves, the troops and the citizens in
«What if we are few before the crowd of Ibrahim, we console ourselves in some way, that fate has had the Greeks always few»
Ioannis Makrygiannis, Memoirs, reply to the French admiral de Rigny (June 1825)
general, young and old, without hope, deprived of all the absolutely necessary
for life already since 40 days, and having fulfilled our debt as faithful soldiers to the country under this tight siege if we keep up for one day more, we shall all die standing in the streets; considering, in any case, that for us, all hope has been extinguished for help and supplies, as much from the sea as from land, which would enable us to endure, although we are in the position of victors against the enemy, we unanimously decided: Our exodus will take place in the evening
at two hours of the night, 10 April, Saturday and dawning Palm Sunday [...]».
The plan was detected by the Turks
or betrayed to them and the besieged sustained an organized attack.
More than 1.700 were lost in the battlefield, others preferred to be blasted than fall
in the hands of the Turks, children were slaughtered, women captured, buildings levelled to the ground by gunfire.
With their heroic Exodus from the walls
of the city, the Inhabitants of Missolonghi conquered through their death immortality.
IΙ.4
Crucial turning points
Η ΑΦΥΠΝΙΣΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΣΜΟΥ Από την αρχαιολατρία στον Φιλελληνισμό 229