Crete massacre is just the latest bout of bloodletting

The mass murder on Crete is just the latest bloodletting in the Greeks’ war to secure independence from the Ottoman Empire, with massacres of noncombatants committed by both sides. These are the main bloody episodes:

April 1821: With the war barely underway, most of the residents of the Greek quarter of the Ottoman capital, Constantinople were slaughtered. Patriarch Gregory V was hanged for not stopping the drive for independence. A number of senior clerics were also executed in April and May. Property was looted and churches destroyed.

Spring-Summer 1821: Over 20,000 Turkish residents of the Peloponnese are said to have been killed. Greek mobs with clubs, scythes and firearms killed, plundered and burned. “The Turks of Greece left few traces, one observer wrote. “They disappeared suddenly and finally...unmourned and unnoticed by the rest of the world.” о IN HIS MEMORY, THE GATE (RIGHT) WAS WELDED SHUT AND IT HAS REMAINED CLOSED EVER SINCE. о Fresh developments just reported from Spain have the king being forced to move to Seville, 300 miles south, 600 miles from the French border. French troops, perhaps numbering as many as 100,000, are said to be positioned just across the border, waiting for a command to invade and restore Ferdinand to full authority.

ABOVE: THIS GERMAN ENGRAVING DEPICTS THE MASSACRE IN CONSTANTINOPLE IN APRIL 1821. IT SHOWS GREGORY V BEING HANGED. HIS BODY REMAINED FOR THREE DAYS SUSPENDED FROM THE GATE OF THE PATRIARCHATE.

This included massacres at Navarino and Tripolitsa. Up to 3,000 Muslims died at Navarino in August 1821. A promise of safe conduct is reported not to have been honoured by Greek commanders. Children were left to drown, with babies smashed against the rocks.

September 1821: At least eight thousand Muslim civilians are said to have been massacred following the end of the siege of Tripolitsa, along with Jews. Men whose limbs had been cut off were roasted over fires, and pregnant women butchered and decapitated.

July-October 1821: The head of the Orthodox Church in Cyprus was executed in Nicosia, and 500 were hanged or beheaded, despite orders to end the killing. A mob murdered church leaders in Larnaca in October, and many villages were de-populated.

April-August 1822: About four-fifths of the Greek population of 100,000 on Chios, near the Ottoman mainland, were killed, enslaved, or had to flee the island. Ottoman forces carried out reprisals after Greek irregular forces landed on Chios to seek support.

Infurther dramatic developments in crisisridden Spain, the country’s king has sacked his liberal ministers, only to be forced to re-instate them after street protests.

King Ferdinand has long been at loggerheads with his government in a political clash of direction and policies. There are widespread expectations that this will lead to armed intervention at any moment by neighbouring France on the side of the ultra-conservative head of state in Madrid.

Relations between king and ministers deteriorated further last July when the royal guard staged a revolt that was quickly put down by troops loyal to the government.

The sacking by King Ferdinand VII of Evaristo Fernández de San Miguel’s military-backed government in February was soon reversed after what was immediately dubbed the ‘regency riots’.

Crowds, gathered outside the royal palace, called for the king to be deposed and replaced by a regency, protests that the authorities appear to have done little or nothing to stop.

The Irish journalist Michael Joseph Quin witnessed the dramatic events that led to King Ferdinand being forced to take back the ministers he had sacked only hours earlier.

Mr Quin says news that the liberals had been dismissed spread fast.

As many as 500 protesters gathered outside the palace and, with their numbers swelled to four figures, they were able to position themselves under the king’s drawing room window, although they failed to get into the building. Troops intervened, but only to make the protesters retreat, back just ten paces from the palace.

The crowds shouted that the king was a tyrant, chanting ‘Depose him from the throne’, ‘Kill him’, and ‘Citizens, is this man fit to be our king?’.

It is understood that Ferdinand had reacted in violent and ‘ungentlemanlike’ terms when ministers asked him to leave Madrid.

Read Michael Joseph Quin’s despatch from Madrid here o