Introduction to: Greece: Hellenism & heroism
Case 8 Revolution against Ottoman Turkish rule broke out in Greece in March 1821. But it was only after the death of Percy Shelley in a boating accident in July 1822, that Byron began to take seriously an idea that had perhaps begun with Shelley – that he should himself take ‘some part’ in the struggle for Greek independence.
The catalyst was an approach, in the spring of 1823, from the newlyformed London Greek Committee. The Committee asked no more of Byron than to lend his name and give moral support to the cause. But when two emissaries from the Committee arrived in Genoa on 5 April 1823, they found Byron already declaring his intention to go to Greece and take an active role. On 16 July 1823, Byron and his entourage sailed from Genoa with letters of introduction addressed to prominent individuals and institutions in Greece from the spiritual leader of the Greeks in Italy, Bishop Ignatios.
After leaving Italy, Byron wrote almost no more poetry. The poem written at Missolonghi on his 36th birthday is the only one that he finished in Greece. In taking up the Greek cause, Byron transformed himself from a Romantic poet into a statesman and man of action. Once in Greece, as we know from the accounts of William Parry and Colonel Leicester Stanhope, he quickly mastered the complex political realities of the revolution and began to promote a coherent programme to create a new kind of political organisation in free Greece, that of the self-governing nation-state.
While he was getting to grips with the politics of Greece, Byron kept his distance from Greece itself. From August to December 1823 he made his headquarters on the island of Cephalonia, at that time part of the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands. It was not until the last days of December that he set off on the hazardous voyage to Missolonghi, the chief town on the north side of the Gulf of Patras. There he made common cause with the foremost of the ‘modernisers’ among the Greek leaders, Alexandros Mavrokordatos, who shared his vision of a future Greece governed by the rule of law.
Case 9Byron spent less than four months in Missolonghi. He gave large amounts of money to support the Greek fleet and a brigade of the picturesque Souliot warriors whom he had admired on his first visit to the country. In return, Mavrokordatos assigned the command of these troops to Byron. But soldiering at Missolonghi in winter-time was little more than a diversionary tactic. Byron and Mavrokordatos expected that they would soon move to the capital, at Nafplio in the Peloponnese, once the internal divisions among the Greeks were resolved by the arrival of a huge loan from London that Byron’s fame had helped to raise.
But before this could happen, Byron died of fever, in Missolonghi, on Monday 19 April. A eulogy was spoken over his body by the prominent citizen and future historian of the Revolution, Spiridion Tricoupis. His remains were then embalmed and transported to England for burial in the parish church of St Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.
Two years later, Missolonghi was overwhelmed by the Turks after a year-long siege. Many of the inhabitants blew themselves up rather than surrender; others broke out of the besieged town in a doomed act of desperate defiance, known ever since in Greece as the ‘Exodus’ of Missolonghi. The fate of Missolonghi, and of Lord Byron who had made the town famous, reverberated around the world. It would prove a turning point in the Greek war of independence, and assure the success of the policy that Byron and Mavrokordatos had fought for: to make of Greece a modern European nation-state.
In this exhibition
- Acknowledgements & foreword
- Introduction
- Introduction
- 1. Manuscript of Byron’s ‘Detached Thoughts’, number 84
- 2. Manuscript copy of Byron’s ‘Detached Thoughts’, annotated by Sir Walter Scott, 1825
- 3. Letter from Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 27 February 1808
- 4. Thomas Medwin's Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron
- 5. John Cam Hobhouse's Journey through Albania
- Britannia: Parliament, party & the Prince
- Introduction to: Britannia: Parliament, party & the Prince
- 6. Byron’s draft parliamentary speech on Roman Catholic emancipation, 1812
- 7. Letter of Lord Sligo to Byron, 20 February 1812
- 8. The Parliamentary Speeches of Lord Byron
- 9. Byron’s manuscript of ‘Note to the annexed stanzas on Brougham’, 7 December 1818
- 10. Letter from Byron to Lady Melbourne, 21 September 1813
- 11. Byron’s ‘Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill,’ Morning Chronicle, 2 March 1812
- 12. Manuscript of Byron’s ‘Lines to a Lady Weeping,’ 1812
- 13. Letter from Byron to John Murray II, 22 January 1814
- 14. ‘Song for the Luddites’
- 15. King’s Colledge [sic] to wit: a practical essay
- Napoleon: Emperor, expectation & exile
- Introduction to: Napoleon: Emperor, expectation & exile
- 16. & 17. Byron’s collection of Waterloo spoils (objects and livret)
- 18. Manuscript of Byron’s additional stanzas to ‘Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte,’ 1814
- 19. Letter from Byron to John Murray II, 10 April 1814
- 20. Don Juan, Canto IX, stanza 4
- 21. Byron’s ‘Ode to Napoleon’ in The Examiner
- 22. Bill for a Napoleonic snuff box, 7 November 1818
- 23. Letter from Byron to John Murray II, 4 December 1821
- 24. Manuscript of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III, stanzas 19-21
- 25. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the third. London: John Murray, 1816
- 26. ‘On the Star of “The Legion of Honour” (From the French)’, 1815
- 27. Poems on Napoleon
- 28. Letter from Byron to John Murray II, 22 January 1814
- 29. Manuscript of Byron’s ‘From the French,’ stanzas 3-5, in the hand of Augusta Leigh with annotations by Byron, 1815
- Italy: politics, patriotism & plays
- Introduction to: Italy: politics, patriotism & plays
- 30. Marino Faliero, fragmentary proof for the first edition, 1820, corrected by Byron
- 31. & 32. Playbill for a performance of Marino Faliero, 1821, with accompanying letter defending the performance
- 33. Public notice about a performance of Byron’s Doge of Venice, 1821
- 34. Letter from Byron to John Murray II, 28-9 September 1820
- 35. & 36. Letters from Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 26 April and 12 October 1821
- 37. The Two Foscari. An historical tragedy
- 38. Notes in Italian, in an unknown hand, used by Byron for Marino Faliero
- 39. ‘Foscari’ by John Rogers Herbert
- 40. Pencil and watercolour sketch of Byron at Genoa, attributed to Count Alfred D’Orsay, April or May 1823
- 41. Byron’s swordstick
- Greece: Hellenism & heroism
- Introduction to: Greece: Hellenism & heroism
- 42. Sculpted portrait bust medallion of Byron in Albanian dress by Nikolaos Kotziamanis, 1992, after Thomas Phillips’ portrait, 1813
- 43. Letter to Byron from the London Greek Committee, 8 March 1823
- 44. Letter of Metropolitan Ignatios to Mavrokordatos, in Greek, introducing Lord Byron, 1823
- 45. Manuscript of ‘On This Day I Complete My Thirty- Sixth Year’, in Byron’s Cephalonia Journal, 1824
- 46. Commission giving Lord Byron charge of a group of artillery signed by Alexandros Mavrokordatos
- 47. 'View of Albanian palikars in pursuit of an enemy'
- 48. Part of a letter or memorandum from Mavrokordatos to Byron, in French, 21 or 22 March 1824
- 49. William Parry's The Last Days of Lord Byron
- 50. Leicester Stanhope's Greece, in 1823 and 1824
- 51. Divers sièges de Missolonghi
- 52. Translation of the funeral oration delivered in Greek by M Spiridon Tricoupi ... in honour of the late Lord Byron
- 53. Byron’s War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution by Roderick Beaton
- Editions used as sources