Battle of Navarino

The Sultan, in his extremity, called upon his vassal Mehmet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, who sent troops into the Peloponnesus and the Turkish and Egyptian ships lay in Navarino Bay, awaiting reinforcements from Alexandria.

To prevent this union, to check the atrocities then being perpetrated in the Peloponnesus and to compel the Egyptian troops to re-embark, the English admiral, Sir Edward Codrington, with the aid of a few Russian and French ships, attacked and destroyed the combined Turkish and Egyptian fleets in the Battle of Navarino on October 30, 1827.

But before Navarino had been fought, Canning, who on the death of Lord Liverpool, February 17, had become Prime Minister on April 10, 1827, was dead.

He had seen great improvements effected in commerce by the adoption of Mr. Huskisson's views.

The overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy and the establishment of Belgian independence may alike be attributed partly to the success of the Greeks, which had shown that the allies were divided and that a struggle for liberty was not always bound to fail.

Circumstances were indeed destined to bring the three eastern powers once more into close accord, but the Treaty of London and its counterpart, the Battle of Navarino, mark the first stage in the decline and fall of the Metternich system in Europe.

End of section 6.

Section 7 of From Metternich to Bismarck by Lionel Cecil Jane.

Their fierce explosive resistance at sea captured international attention, eventually convincing British, French, and Russian fleets to intervene on their behalf.

At the Battle of Navarino in 1827, this allied coalition annihilated the Ottoman Egyptian armada in a single afternoon.

That massive naval victory permanently severed the supply lines of the occupying forces and secured an independent Greek state.

As the modern state expanded, its navy remained a highly visible source of national pride and survival.

Was this not in consequence of the ill-omened influence of those whose interest it was not to lose sight of their millionaire relative? The struggle of the Greeks for independence was to end in the victory of that heroic nation.

After three years, during which they were inhumanly treated by Abraham's troops, the combined action of the allied fleets destroyed the Ottoman navy at the Battle of Navarino in 1827, and obliged the viceroy to recall his vessels and army to Egypt.

Abraham then returned to Cairo, followed by Murad, who had been through the Peloponnesian campaign.

From that day, Kamelich's position grew worse.

Many of the vessels of the Allies were seriously damaged, and of their crews a hundred and seventy-five men were killed and four hundred and fifty wounded.

That was the battle of Navarino.

Quote, I have the honour to inform you, wrote Sir Edward Codrington to the Greek government, that according to the decision of my colleagues, Count Hayden and Rear Admiral de Rigny and myself, the combined fleet entered this war at two o'clock on the twentieth, that some ships of the Turco-Egyptian fleet first began a fire of musketry and then fired cannon shot, which led very shortly to a general battle which lasted till dark, and that the consequence of this has been the destruction of the whole of the Turkish fleet, except a few corvettes and brigs.

Most of the ships of the Allied fleets have received so much injury that they must go into port, but if the Greek vessels of war are employed against their enemy instead of destroying the commerce of the Allies, they may henceforth easily obstruct the movements of any Turkish force by sea.

Chapter twenty-one of the life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, completing the autobiography of a seaman, Volume II, by Henry Richard Fox Bourne and others.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Timothy Ferguson.

1827-1828 Heartily rejoicing at the benefit conferred on Greece by the battle of Navarino, Lord Cochrane could not but be troubled to think that the overthrow of the Turkish and Egyptian fleet, which he had laboured so zealously to effect, and which, had he received any support from the government or the people, would have been a work as easy for him as the enterprises in which he had been so notably successful in former times and other countries, had to be done by the officers and ships of foreign nations instead of by him and the native fleet, of which, by name, he was commander-in-chief.

The battle being won, however, he tried with no flagging of his energy to complete the triumph that had been thus begun, and, if anything was easy to a people so wanting in patriotism, made easier.

Internal military shifts occurred when Sultan Mahmud II disbanded the Janissary Corps in 1826. which left the empire without a standing army in the short term.

In 1827, a combined fleet from Britain, France, and Russia destroyed the Ottoman navy at the Battle of Navarino.

By 1830, Greece had achieved independence, and the subsequent Treaty of Adrianople gave European merchant ships free passage through the Black Sea, while placing the Danubian principalities under Russian protection.

Taking advantage of this decline, France occupied Algeria in 1830 and Muhammad Ali of Egypt declared independence in 1831.

Dear, stupid old Bob, how could he understand my feelings? I went to the feast the next day to banish my regret, and I tried to obtain a temporary distraction from a blighted heart by visiting all the shows.

We, Bob and I, saw the Leicestershire Giant, the pink-eyed albino lady with the long white hair, the boa constrictor and the armadillo, the Battle of Navarino, and the Siege of Seringapatam, an Indian chieftain fresh from his native wilds, and a small circus with some capital tumbling by the professors Diavelini.

I thought the circus performance would have driven Bob mad.

He did nothing but tumble and stand on the bare back of our old pony for days after.

The overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy and the establishment of Belgian independence may alike be attributed partly to the success of the Greeks, which had shown that the allies were divided and that a struggle for liberty was not always bound to fail.

Circumstances were indeed destined to bring the three eastern powers once more into close accord, but the Treaty of London and its counterpart, the Battle of Navarino, mark the first stage in the decline and fall of the Metternich system in Europe.

End of section six.

Section seven of From Metternich to Bismarck by Lionel Cecil Jane.

Christendom had at last come to the rescue when Greece, unaided, was incapable of further resistance.

The Battle of Navarino excited, of course, the wildest enthusiasm throughout Greece and a corresponding joy throughout Europe.

Never since the Battle of Lepanto was there such a general exultation among Christian nations.

This single battle decided the fate of Greece.

Turkey furnished to Russia that pretext right in the stress of her own military weakness when she was exhausted by a war of seven years and by the destructions of the Janizaries, which the Sultan had long meditated and concealed in his own bosom with the craft which formed one of the peculiarities of this cruel yet able sovereign, but which he finally executed with characteristic savagery.

Concerning this Russian war, we shall speak presently.

The Battle of Navarino, although it made the restoration of the Turkish power impossible in Greece, still left Ibrahim master of the fortresses, and it was two years before the Turkish troops were finally expelled.

But independence was now assured, and the Greeks set about establishing their government with some permanency.