Turkish Hetairist Confrontations in the Region of the City of Galatz (1821)

Abstract

The emergence and the development of the movement for the Greek national cause in the Romanian Principalities, in 1821, has not been the subject of thorough analysis in the Romanian historiography. Started in Galatz (21st of February, 1821) with the massacre of the Muslim population, the Hetairist insurrection had an enormous influence upon the situation of the Romanian inhabitants, caught once more in the middle. Based on contemporary sources, the paper focuses upon presenting the actions taken by the two opposing parties in the region of the Lower Danube, in the first half of the year 1821. For the Hetairist revolutionaries, the city of Galatz had an important strategic, economic and military position, due to the facile way of communicating, along the river, with the numerous Greek communities from Southern Bessarabia and the Crimea (Ismail, Reni, Odessa etc.), especially after the establishment of a the nucleus of a Greek fleet, based in the port of Galatz. For the pashas in the Turkish Danubian strongholds left and right of the river Danube, the actions of the Hetairist legions and warships represented a serious threat which could only be eliminated by a decisive confrontation in the Lower Danube region. After minute preparations, at the beginning of May, the “war of Galatz” (a combined land and naval Turkish assault) gave Yusuf, the Pasha of Ibraila, complete control of the city and of Lower Moldovia. For the local population, the only significant result of these confrontations was the substitution of the Greek abuses with the rule of the arbitrary, during the Turkish occupation which followed.