170 Greek War of Independence out throughout the Peloponnese, with freedom fighters laying siege to the most strategic Turkish garrisons and razing the homes of thousands of Turks The worst atrocity occurred in Tripolitsa (today Tripolis), where 12,000 Turkish inhabitants were massacred The Turks retaliated with massacres in Asia Minor, most notoriously on the island of Chios, where more than 25,000 civilians were killed The fighting escalated throughout the mainland and many islands Using the element of surprise, and aided by Ottoman inefficiency, the Greeks succeeded in taking control of vast areas Within a year the Greeks had captured the Peloponnese, Athens, and Thebes In January 1822 the rebels declared the independence of Greece The Turks attempted three times between 1822 and 1824 to invade the Peloponnese but were unable to take the area back from the victorious Greeks The Ottomans, however, soon recovered and retaliated violently The retribution drew sympathy for the Greek cause in western Europe, although the British and French governments suspected that the uprising was a Russian plot to seize Greece from the Ottomans The Greeks were unable to establish a coherent government and soon fell to fighting among themselves They lacked unity of objectives and strategy, and the objectives of the different classes and regions were too disparate to be reconciled In 1822 two Greek governments existed, and by 1824 open civil war prevailed in Greece In 1823 civil war broke out between the guerrilla leader Theodoros Kolokotronis and Georgios Kountouriotis, who was head of the government that had been formed in January 1822 After a second civil war in 1824, Kountouriotis was firmly established as leader These internal rivalries prevented the Greeks from extending their control and from firmly consolidating their position in the Peloponnese EGYPT’S RESPONSE Fighting between Greeks and Ottomans continued until 1825, when the sultan asked for help from his most powerful vassal, Egypt Egypt was then ruled by Muhammad Ali Pasha, who had built up a large army and new naval fleet The Egyptian force, under the command of Ali’s son Ibrahim, quickly gained control of the seas and Aegean Islands With the support of Egyptian sea power, the Ottoman forces successfully invaded the Peloponnese They recaptured the town of Athens in August 1826, and the Acropolis, symbol of Greece’s former greatness, fell to the Turks in June 1827 The Western powers were reluctant to intervene, fearing the consequences of creating a power vacuum in southeastern Europe, where the Turks still controlled much territory In Europe, however, the revolt aroused widespread sympathy Greece was viewed as the cradle of Western civilization, and it was lauded by romanticism The sight of a Christian nation attempting to cast off the rule of a Muslim empire also appealed to the European public Help did come from the philhellenes— aristocratic young men, recipients of a classical education, who saw themselves as the inheritors of a glorious civilization, willing to fight to liberate its oppressed descendants Philhellenes included Percy Bysshe Shelley, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Victor Hugo, and George Gordon, Lord Byron Byron spent time in Greece but died from fever in 1824 Byron’s death did even more to augment European sympathy for the Greek cause EUROPEAN INTERVENTION The Greek cause was saved by the intervention of the European powers Favoring the formation of an autonomous Greek state, they offered to mediate between the Turks and the Greeks in 1826 and 1827 When the Turks refused, a combined Russian, French, and British fleet destroyed the Turkish-Egyptian fleet in the Bay of Navarino in October 1827 This was the decisive moment in the war, although the British admiral Codrington ruined his career because he had not been ordered to achieve such a victory Although the Battle of Navarino severely crippled the Ottoman forces and made the independence of Greece practically certain, another two years passed before the fighting ended and nearly five before the new state took shape In October 1828 the French landed troops in the Peloponnese to stop the Ottomans Under French protection, the Greeks were able to form a new government In April 1827 Kapodistrias was elected as provisional president of Greece by the third National Assembly The Greeks then advanced to seize as much territory as possible, including the ancient cities of Athens and Thebes Again the Western powers intervened, and Ottoman sultan Mahmud II even proclaimed a holy war Russia sent troops into the Balkans and engaged the Ottoman army in another Russian-Turkish war in 1828–29 Fighting continued until 1829, when, with Russian troops at the gates of Constantinople, the sultan accepted Greek independence by the Treaty of Adrianople, or Edirne, in 1829 In 1830 the Greeks still had in mind a future ruler who would remain the sultan’s vassal The treaty