On the front line of the fight
He is a brilliant personality of the Greek revolution, a very important protagonist of the struggle for independence, whose presence and action were crucial for revolutionary developments both on a military and political level. In 1806 he fled to the Ionian Islands and joined the military corps formed during the Napoleonic Wars. On December 1, 1918, he was initiated into the friendly society. On March 23, 1821, together with other chieftains, he liberated Kalamata. The success of the Greek forces at Valtetsi, the fall of Tripolitsa and the destruction of Dramalis revealed Kolokotronis’ exceptional strategic abilities and established his prestige as a military leader
He played a leading role in the civil wars and in early 1825 was arrested and detained in Nafplio. Ibrahim’s continuous successes in the Peloponnese forced the government to pardon him on 18 May 1825, assigning him the leadership of the Greek forces. He failed to stop Ibrahim’s progress. He kept the revolution alive. He was a fervent supporter of Kapodistrias. He later accepted the election and arrival of Otto in Greece. His disagreements and his stance towards the policy of the regency led to his persecution and imprisonment. When he reached adulthood, Otto released him from prison. He died in Athens on February 4, 1843.
Theodoros Kolokotronis was born on April 3, 1970, on the Monday of the Bright Week, in Ramavouni, Messinia. He was the son of the famous thief Konstantinos Kolokotronis, who was a worthy warrior and known as a kapombassis in Corinth. Konstantinos married Zambia or Zambeta, daughter of Captain Kostakis from Alonistena, and they had five children, four sons and one daughter. Theodoros Kolokotronis, at the age of 10, was orphaned after on July 19, 1780, in Kastania, the Ottoman authorities, led by the Ottoman admiral Hasan Pasha Czezaerl, exterminated his captain father and two of his uncles, Apostolis and Giorgos.
After the death of his father, he settled with his family in Alonistena, Mantineia. Shortly afterwards, he followed his uncle, the reader, to Akovo, where in 1787 he was appointed to the vilayet of Leontario the kapos. His role was to protect the landowners and, in general, the property of the chiefs who hired him, along with his armed group, as well as the residents of the area he was assigned to guard, from thieves. The kapos had neither the power nor the scope of responsibilities of an armatolos In 1790 he married Ekaterini Karousou, daughter of the prefect of Leontario and became a householder. With Ekaterini he had 6 children, 3 girls and 3 boys of Pano who was killed in the civil war of 1825, Ioannis-Gennaios and Konstantinos Kolinos.
It seems that during the period 1785 – 1802, Theodoros Kolokotronis, following family tradition, acted sometimes as a thief in the area of Leontario and Karitena and sometimes as a kapos. The social roles he assumed each time were always related to the need for the reproduction of the family and the strengthening of its power. During the period 1790-1792, Theodore Kolokotronis and his small armed body had developed intense thieving activity so that the Ottoman authorities and the local dignitaries wished to destroy them by any means. Because this was not easy to happen, negotiation and mutual concessions led to a new balance in the relationship of forces at the local level. A new agreement between Kolokotronis and the local leadership allowed him to move from the position of thief to his position the kapou.
In 1802, an Ottoman firman was issued ordering the extermination of Kolokotronis and Petmezas. For security reasons, Theodore moved his family to Mani and attempted to manage the new situation. Things were difficult this time because the Ottomans were better prepared, they had planned a campaign against the thieves of the Peloponnese, they had the consent of the local elite and they finally succeeded in their extermination.
In 1805, he went to Zakynthos and assisted Anagnostaras in drafting the report that the gathered chieftains sent to Tsar Alexander the First, in which they requested to enlist in the battalions of the Ionian Islands and at the same time tried to convince the head of the Russian troops to attempt the liberation of Greece. Kolokotronis returned to the Peloponnese in January 1806 at a time when Ottoman efforts to eliminate the thieves were intensifying. At that time, with his armed body, he clashed several times with the Ottoman forces but was unable to change the course of events that had been set in motion by the decision of the Ottoman authorities to exterminate the thieves and by the patriarchal excommunication that did not allow the local population to assist the persecuted thieves. At the same time in February, the Ottomans killed his brother John and the thieves in Lino outside the Aimialon monastery. Kolokotronis, hunted down along with four of his companions, fled to Mani and from there he went to Zakynthos in May 1806, this time taking his family with him.
In Zakynthos, after not being assigned to one of the two battalions that existed in Lefkada, he paid off an Ottoman ship with 10 cannons and entered the service of the Russian Aegean squadron under Admiral Sedavin. During his time as captain, he raided the wider area of Patras with 80 armed men. Kolokotronis’ plan to revolt the enslaved Greeks with the assistance of Russia was not accepted at a council of Russian officers in Corfu. Thus, from the summer of 1807 to the spring of 1808, he found himself participating for 10 months with a captain named Alexandris in cruiser operations, mainly in the sea area between Skiathos and Mount Athos.
After returning to Zakynthos in April 1808, he was called for help by his paternal friend Ali Farmakis, who was in conflict with Delis Pasha, son of Ali Pasha of Ioannina and governor of the Peloponnese. After Ali Farmakis’ compromise, Kolokotronis returned to Zakynthos but convinced Ali Farmakis to go to Zakynthos and together take up arms against the tyrants of the Peloponnese. He thus went to Corfu from 1807 to 1809 and came into negotiations with Napoleon’s French to draw up a plan for the liberation of Greece. The consultations were held with Admiral Donzelo for cooperation and the expulsion of the Ottomans from the Peloponnese. This plan could not come to fruition because the Ionian Islands had meanwhile passed into the hands of the English.
Kolokotronis then entered the service of the English, he acted on their side in Lefkada against the French from September 1809 to January 1810 and when he returned to Zakynthos he was enlisted in the English army with the rank of captain and a little later he was awarded the rank of major. He remained in the English army until 1817 when the Greek battalion that the English had formed was disbanded and he refused tempting offers to serve under the orders of General Church in order to solve the problem of survival of his family. He preferred to become a livestock dealer to save his living and was active in the preparation of the Greek revolution after being initiated from the first of December 1818 into the friendly company.
He learned of the existence of the company from his friend Pangalos, but his initiation was by Anagnostaras. Kolokotronis was very active in staffing the company as well as in preparing for the 1819 Easter uprising. He participated in a meeting of the Russian Foreign Minister Ioannis Kapodistrias, who was in Corfu on leave, with the captains who lived in the Ionian Islands, and they probably talked about the company’s case. Probably towards the end of 1820 he received a letter from Alexandros Ypsilantis who notified him to be ready for March 25. For this purpose Kolokotronis set out on January 3, 1821 from Zakynthos and in three days he disembarked in Mani heading towards the house of Captain Panagiotis Mourtzinos.
BIOGRAPHIES
DOMI Publications S.A.
