The massacre in Chios
What happened on the Chios surrounding the events of the revolution were horrific. Waves of shock reaction to the fate of Chios spread throughout Europe. The innocent slaughter of women children and the elderly was just an another example of Turkish ruthlessness against the Greeks, but Chios faced the worst of the wrath of the Turks during the revolution. On March 22 1822 a Greek fleet under Logothetis and Bournias, carrying some 1,500 armed men ,anchored off Ayia Eleni a few miles south of the islands capital. When they landed the local Turks retreated into the citadel, where the garrison had been increased to 4,500. Battle was now joined, with the exchange of cannon fire between the Turks in the citadel and the Greeks from the shore below the citadel, and from the hills Trouloti and Asomati above it. The Sultan's reaction was prompt and decisive. Seven wealthy Chians in Constantinople were taken hostage, in addition to the three already sent from Chios itself, to make sure the Greeks of the island behaved. The Capitan pasha, Kara Ali, was ordered to Chios with a powerful fleet and with orders to convey 15,000 men to Chios from Chesme, where 30,000 had now gathered. Many were volunteers including so called Muslim clergy holy man. Strangford Britain's consulate in Constantinople , was worried about the control of such large numbers of unruly troops.
On April 11 1822 which was the Thursday before Easter, Kara Ali's fleet reached Chios. There was short lived resistance from the Greeks and minor success when a Turkish ship with eighty men on board stuck on a shoal, and most of its complement were killed by Greek musket fire. Otherwise the Greeks were powerless against the incursion of troops from Kara Ali's ships, which was combined with a sally of the Turkish garrison from the citadel. Logothetis and his Samian followers fled, and after a brief resistance at Ayios Georgios, a hilltop town six miles south west of Chora, were taken off by Psarian ships from the west coast. Chios was now abandoned to its fate. The scenes that followed were as appalling as any that had yet occurred in the bloody annals of the revolution. " The horrors of civil war were never more fearfully displayed than at Scio" wrote Strangford. Gordon wrote " Mercy was out of the question, the victors butchering indiscriminately all who came in their way, shrieks rent the air, and the streets were strewed with the dead bodies of old men, women, and children; event he inmates of the hospital, the madhouse, and the deaf and dumb institution, were inhumanly slaughtered". When after a few days there were no more inhabitants in Chora to be attacked or goods to be looted, the terror spread to the countryside, augmented by the Turkish troops who continued to pour across to the island from Chesme. Within a week two grisly consignments from the governor of Chios had reached Constantinople. They contained the heads and ears of rebels who had been killed or, worse still, the ears of some who had been taken alive, and a notice to this effect was posted outside the Seraglio.
At Nea Moni, in a beautiful setting in the hills near the center of the island, 2,000 refugees gathered in the walled complex of monastery buildings, all were killed when Turkish bands broke through the outer wall. Even more Chians lost their lives at Ayios Minas, on hilltop south of Chora from which the 3,000 huddled asylum seekers could see the boats carrying their predators crossing from Chesme. On Easter Sunday 14 April the monastery, packed with Chians families, was set on fire by the Turks. It burnt to the ground and all the refugees inside perished. Ayios Minas has been rebuild on the former site, and the dark strains on the original stone floor are said to be from burnt human flesh. In the chapel are glass cases containing the neatly stacked skulls and boned of those who died. Fortunately for the catholic Christians Kara Ali had agreed to respect the French consulate which sheltered some 1,200 and almost the whole Catholic population was protected by the Austrian consulate but they would not let and Greeks in. Other Greek villagers went into hidings, but a continuous worry was about crying babies who might reveal hiding places. One account "The Turks who were roaming the mountains took up positions above the caves and fired at anyone they saw. At the first gunshot the baby started to cry and so they were revealed. The wife, who was beautiful, was taken into slavery with the child, and the husband was shot dead". Sometimes the child was sacrificed. One was thrown down a ravine. Another , a girl of eighteen months, was left outside a cave, ignored by the Turks surprisingly, who were looking for adults and covertly watched by her anxious father, after three days the danger passed, she was brought in a revived and, says the teller of the tale, " she grew up, got married and has as many children as me".
The Chians put up what resistance they could. Near Kardhamila in the north-east a priest, who had the only gun left in the village, came across a Turk dragging off a women and her children, and from ambush shot him dead. A father and son were found hiding under a fig tree by a Turk on his own, the father knocked down the Turk with a branch of the tree and killed him with a stone. Women resisted too. A Turk was leading to Chora a group of captive women, among them the narrator's aunt Amilia. The Turk stopped at a well, and sat on the edge of smoking his pipe. " The women then thought of drowning him, but were to frightened. Then my aunt Amilia called on the Mother of God to give her strength. She gave the Turk a great shove and pushed him into the well. Afterwards they took to the hills and reached Lithi, where a ship from Psara rescued them."
While the countryside presented this picture of fear and flight, destruction and disorder, seventy seven of the eighty Chian hostages were still being held in Chora, forty nine of them in the citadel. They had been in captivity since the visit of Tombazis fleet in March 1821, on an alternating basis until all were called in on the landing of the Samians in March 1822. Only the Catholics had been released, through the combined effort of the French vice consul on Chios, consul general at Smyrna and the French ambassador in Constantinople. On 5 May on orders from the sultan, Kara Ali took out the forty nine hostages held in the citadel and hanged eight from the yards of his flagship and the remainder from the trees in the road which runs below the west wall of the citadel, now named the Street of Martyrs. The Turks on Chios soon turned from slaughter to slavery. 45,000 Chians had been taken as slaves, among them women and children of the leading families. Whole cargos where shipped off Constantinople, Egypt and Barbary.
The Greek fleet now moved into action, its failure to do so earlier being attributed by some to lack of supplies and by other to dissension between the three main naval islands. It was too late to help Chios, their present object was to stop Kara Ali's fleet from joining up with another Ottoman fleet from Egypt , a combination of which the Greeks feared would give the Turks complete dominance at sea. On 10 May1822 a combined Greek fleet ships of Hydra, Spetses and Psara, consisting of fifty six warships and eight fire ships, under the command of Andreas Miaoulis of Hydra, set out from Psara to attack the Turks in the channel between Chios and the mainland. For some weeks thereafter only skirmishes took place, the Turks trying ineffectually to sink Greek ships by cannon fire, the Greeks trying to use their fire ships with equally little success. The Greek opportunity at last came on the night of 18 June when the Turkish fleet, anchored outside the harbor of Chora, was celebrating the end of Ramada. The wind was from the north that day, and two Greek ships spent the daylight hours beating northwards against it up the Turkish coast, giving the impression that they were trying to round the cape. The two vessels were fire ships, one commanded by Andreas Pipinos of Hydra and one by Konstatinos Kanaris of Psara. At midnight Kanaris bored down on the Capitan pasha's flagship, ramming his bowsprit into an open port near the flagship's prow. The fuse was lit. Kanaris and his men were taken off and witching minutes flames driven by the wind were sweeping over the flagship. The other fire ship under Pipinos damaged but failed to destroy the vice admiral's ship, being cut loose before the flames fully caught, and it drifted on shore to burn away without during further harm. Kara Ali entered a life boat, where he was struck on the head by a spar falling from the blazing rigging. He died the next day. After three quarters of an hour the flames on the flagship reach the powder store, and the ship exploded. Of the 2,286 reportedly on board, only some 180 survived.
Within a year the British government led the way in recognizing the Greeks as belligerents, but its acknowledgement that the Greek blockade of the Turkish coast was legal. Britain took the first steps down the path of involvement in the Greek revolution, and involvement which was to culminate Navarino. Their is not doubt the reason for the British government involvement was for financial reasons and worries that if Russia or France stepped in and Britain didn't they would lose financially. Waves of shocked reaction to the fate of Chios and her people spread throughout Europe. The execution of the innocent Chian hostages in Constantinople particularly concerned both Londonderry and the King, and , though Britain could not regard the Chian hostages as in any sense under her protection, some of the government officials did feel pity and disgust. Their is a price to pay for freedom, and the Chians who were living peacefully eventually and involuntarily paid the price for freedom.
Source:
http://helleniclife.com/massacre_in_chios.htm 
08-30-2006, 07:39 PM
Massacre in Chios G.W.O.Independence 
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