Lessons From Lord Byron's War For Greek Independence

Internal squabbling is a surefire way to defeat.

It’s a strange thing about human nature than when things seem to be going our way, we often seek some kind of drama or conflict in order to screw everything up anew. A notable romantic misadventure in history was Lord Byron’s ill-fated attempt to liberate Greece from Ottoman rule.

Byron is now best known as one of the three great English romantic poets—along with Keats and Shelley—but in his day he was equally well-known as a scandalous adventurer—”mad, bad, and dangerous to know” as Lady Caroline Lamb characterized him.

Byron’s greatest misadventure was his last and grandest—that is, his expedition to liberate Greece from Ottoman Rule. Wikipedia provides a pretty good summary of this final chapter of his life:

By the end of March 1824, the so-called "Byron brigade" of 30 philhellene officers and about 200 men had been formed, paid for entirely by Byron. Leadership of the Greek cause in the Roumeli region was divided between two rival leaders: a former Klepht (bandit), Odysseas Androutsos; and a wealthy Phanariot Prince, Alexandros Mavrokordatos. Byron used his prestige to attempt to persuade the two rival leaders to come together to focus on defeating the Ottomans.^.

At the same time, other leaders of the Greek factions like Petrobey Mavromichalis and Theodoros Kolokotronis wrote letters to Byron telling him to disregard all of the Roumeliot leaders and to come to their respective areas in the Peloponnese. This drove Byron to distraction; he complained that the Greeks were hopelessly disunited and spent more time feuding with each other than trying to win independence.

Byron's friend Edward John Trelawny had aligned himself with Androutsos, who ruled Athens, and was now pressing for Byron to break with Mavrokordatos in favour of backing the rival Androutsos. Androutsos, having won over Trelawny to his cause, was now anxious to persuade Byron to put his wealth behind his claim to be the leader of Greece. Byron wrote with disgust about how one of the Greek captains, former Klepht Georgios Karaiskakis, attacked Missolonghi on 3 April 1824 with some 150 men supported by the Souliotes as he was unhappy with Mavrokordatos's leadership, which led to a brief bout of inter-Greek fighting before Karaiskakis was chased away by 6 April.

Note that I have highlighted in bold all the references to internal division, rivalry, faction, and in-fighting. While Greece was ultimately liberated from the Ottomans by the combined forces of Great Britain, Russia, and France, the “Byron brigade” achieved nothing and Byron died of a fever in Missolonghi at the age of thirty-six.

I often think of Byron’s final adventure when I see Substack essays from prominent members of the medical freedom movement in which they attack each other—often in a very aggressive and ad hominem way. It seems obvious to me that this will achieve nothing but divide our fragile and undercapitalized fight for medical and constitutional freedom.

—FREE SPEECH allows us to disagree with each other about all kinds of things while remaining united in our defense of free speech.

—It makes no sense to oppose one orthodoxy while at the same time trying to erect another with equal intolerance of differing perceptions and opinions.

—Instead of firing electronic shots at a perceived rival, one might consider inviting him to a congenial debate and maintaining the discipline to focus strictly on matters of fact without resorting to ad hominem attacks.

—When ad hominem attacks do happen, one might consider the value of having a thick skin and not indulging in ad hominem counteroffensives.

—If one is suspicious of another’s antecedents, one might consider tempering one’s suspicion with the recognition that an individual’s thoughts, perceptions, attitudes, and attachments may change over time, sometimes radically so.

The medical freedom movement should endeavor to adhere to these guidelines or risk the same fate that befell the Byron brigade.