Historic Memoirs

Nikolaos Soliotis left behind a composite chronicle of his important contributions to the Greek Revolution that survive in two narrative forms. One is a first-person narration—”The Historical Memorandum”–that he dictated in 1835. The other is a longer account of his extensive military activity—”The Historical Essay”—which was created after his death but largely based on a now missing first-person memoir. Together they constitute an invaluable set of autobiographical documents that preserve his own account of his role as a major figure in the Greek struggle for independence.

Historical Essay

   Nikolaos Ch.[Christodoulou] Soliotis, of Solos in the province of Kalavryta, was a man who enjoyed a decent education by the standards of his time, with knowledge of Ancient Greek, and who, inspired by the most noble and patriotic desires for the happiness of his homeland, felt in the depths of his being a burning tendency and urgency towards the liberation of Greece. On account of this, he was initiated into the Friendly Society, having accepted the mystery eagerly and with the greatest enthusiasm, and received his catechism from his relative and friend Theocharos Rentis. From that time, he waited with impatience hour by hour for the outbreak of the war for the liberation of Greece, desiring autonomy for his homeland. After a short time, both the chief clergy and the overseers of the whole Peloponnese had been initiated, and they sent Ioannis Paparrigopoulos to Russia to sound out the opinion of the Leadership of the Society, etc.; on his return, he told them that a man would be sent from Odesa with the express purpose of instructing them when they ought to set the war in motion.
   In the middle of December in the year 1820, N. Soliotis found himself in Tripoli with  Sotirios Charalambis and Andreas Zaïmis when they learned of the arrival at Ydra and Spetses of Grigorios Dikaios; he therefore withdrew from Tripoli to Kalavryta in order to make the necessary preparations for war, while Sot. Charalambis and And. Zaïmis remained there for a few days longer, until they had received leave from the pasha to quit the place.
   On the 5th of January, 1821, the noble champion of his homeland, Archimandrite Grigorios Dikaios, along with the equally patriotic Charalambos Malis, went as a guest to N. Soliotis’s house in Solos, where they stayed for just one day, before on the following day moving on to conduct their catechizing work in Kalavryta, and thence to Patras, and from Patras returning to Vostitsa; there, the local governors and chief clergy of those three provinces convened on the 22nd of January that first preliminary secret congress, where they decided, following the encouragement of the Metropolitan of Old Patras and of Grigorios Dikaios, “that all the Peloponnesians should first reach some mutual agreement, and then set the war in motion, at a time when all preparations would be complete, and they, being prepared, could see that the time was suitable.” And thus each delegate returned to his own town.
   But what came about in the intervening time? Rumour of this meeting reached the ears of the Ottomans in the Peloponnese, and even travelled as far as the pasha, who issued a strongly worded summons to the chief clergy and overseers of the Peloponnese, instructing them to present themselves before him at Tripoli, to which place they all traveled of necessity, apart from those from the provinces of Kalavryta, Patras, and Aigaio, whom he summoned for a second time, in even stronger terms. Eventually, they too set out, counting among their number the reverend prelate Germanos of Old Patras, and Nik. Soliotis and N. Petmezas, on the pretext of travelling to Tripoli; with them, they had the courier who had been sent to them by the Kaymakam (local representative of the pasha) and an Ottoman dervish; they arrived in early March (10) at Kastria, a village in Katsanes, in the province of Kalavryta, where they had a friendly villager bring them a letter, which they themselves had already prepared to look like it had been sent by an Ottoman friend of theirs in Tripoli, which said the following: “If you want to preserve your lives, do not come yet to Tripoli, because powerful enemies of yours, seizing on the opportunity provided by the rumours which have been circulated concerning a revolution, have denounced you to the authorities, and you will be slaughtered unjustly and without cause.” They therefore returned to the monastery of Agia Lavra. When they arrived there, they received a letter from the Deligiannis family, saying: “Do not forsake your position, brothers, we beg you! Our brothers are imprisoned in Tripoli and are lost.” After devoting considerable thought to this matter at Lavra, they eventually decided, following the opinion of the majority, not to make any move for the present, until they were in a position to be guided by events themselves about what was to be done; the only men who showed themselves more eager and decided that the war should see its initial movement were, along with the prelate of Old Patras, A. Zaïmis and Asimakis Fotilas.
   Following this, they dispersed from Agia Lavra and scattered out of fear across safe locations – the prelate of Old Patras, Prokopios of Kalavryta, and Andreas Zaïmis in Nezera, while Asimakis Zaïmis and A. Fotilas made for Kerpini, Sot. Charalambis and Sot. Theocharopoulos made for Zarouchla, and Andreas Lontos made for Diakopto (Voura).
   N. Soliotis saw and heard all of this. The affair was made public and was beginning to become common knowledge among the lower classes, not only of Greeks but even of Ottomans, and he rightly judged that, if the political classes lost their nerve, Greece would once more remain under the same tyrannical yoke, with indiscriminate slaughter of Christians, and especially the most prominent ones, on the part of the enraged tyrants, as had occurred in 1769. Invoking assistance from on high, he withdrew from the Monastery of Agia Lavra, determined to provide a cause and a beginning to the revolutionary intentions of the Nation. Now, by a stroke of good fortune, on the 14th of March 1821, when N. Soliotis arrived at his own village of Solos, three Turks from Tripoli, of the sort who are counted ruffians, were passing, threatening the Christians with imprisonment and death; they had apparently been sent with letters from the Kaymakam of Tripoli to Hurşid Pasha. When N. Soliotis learned that they were passing by the crossing at Agridi, a village of Nonakris in the province of Kalavryta, he, along with just twelve of his fellow-villagers, took hold of that road at its narrowest point, at the place called Portes, without the knowledge of the local governors, and slaughtered them. And thus Nikolaos Soliotis was the first of the Greek fighters to stain his hands with the blood of the tyrants for the noble cause of liberty.
   On the following day, the 15th of March, N. Soliotis went to Zarouchla, where Sot. Charalambis, Ioannis Papadopoulos, S. Theocharopoulos, N. Petmezas, and P. Arvalis were stationed, and related to them his action at Portes and his slaughter of the Turks, at the same time encouraging them to take up their weapons and move against the tyrants. Now at first they resisted his arguments, saying: “What is this that you have done, brother? Have we taken the whole world on our shoulders?” “I carried out,” he replied, “the action we had decided, and towards which the general yearning and feelings of the entire nation inclines,” adding in conclusion that, “if they too did not set the war in motion with this same decisive zeal, they would suffer at the hands of the people, who were brimming with enthusiasm and bristling with resentment, the very same fate as the Turks.” At that point, S. Charalambis and P. Arvalis took the floor, and said that, “We must, each and every one of us, take up arms as one, and stir the others on to action.” This proposal was approved by all. On the 19th of March, N. Soliotis learned that the well-known Ottomans from Tripoli, the Cipoğlu family, along with eight other Ottomans under their command from the surrounding villages of Arfara, were passing, and he sent some of his men with his brother, and they slaughtered them too.
   On the 21st of March two commanders of the janissaries with sixty Albanians arrived from Amfissa at the nearby village of Chrysanthio, directed to fortify Tripoli. N. Soliotis, having learned of their presence, took with him three-hundred men from the region of Chasia and unfurled his flag1; he met with Ottoman resistance and a fierce battle ensued, and over twenty of the Ottomans were slaughtered, with the remainder forced to surrender. On that day, Soliotis’s men seized considerable spoils, among which N. Soliotis kept for himself a fine Arabian horse; of the Greek force, three sustained minor injuries. In this way, little by little, the province of Kalavryta began to become the centre of the war and of liberation.
   When Seïdis Laliotis learned of all this, he made with Nikolaos Tamvakopoulos for Tripoli. On the way, they received gunfire in Kastanes from Chondrogiannis and others, who were waiting in ambush for them there, and, making their escape, they sought refuge on the plain of Feneos; from there, Seïdis Laliotis safely reached Tripoli, since the men of Karytaina and Corinth had not yet taken up arms, and N. Tamvakopoulos reached Vytina. Following these events, on the 22nd of March, the Voivode of Kalavryta, Ibrahim Arnautoğlu, along with his household, withdrew to Tripoli in order to escape the danger, but he received gunfire from the men of Katsanes who were maintaining a position at Chelonospilia; two of those with him were slaughtered, and he abandoned his luggage and returned in terror to Kalavryta, where he actually shut himself away with the local Turks in three fortress houses.
   On the 24th and 25th of March, Sot. Charalambis, Andreas Zaïmis, As. Fotilas, N. Soliotis, Vasileios and Nik. Petmezas, and A. Striftombolas from the province of Kalavryta joined forces and launced a concerted siege on the Ottomans, forcing them to surrender at gunpoint after four days. During the course of these events, N. Soliotis, who had sallied forth to take one of the said fortress houses, was wounded in his left shin. The Greek besiegers numbered about 800, and the Ottomans in the fortresses about 400, both locals and foreigners. Following the surrender of the Turks in Kalavryta, Sot. Charalambis and N. Soliotis travelled to the province of Corinth, with a view to rousing the Corinthians to arms, for which purpose they also made for Trikala for an audience with Panoutzos Notaras, but it was impossible to persuade him to fight, out of his fear of the execution of his brother Sotirios Notaras, who was imprisoned in Tripoli. Having accomplished nothing in Trikala, they travelled to Sikyona (Vocha) in the province of Corinth, and having thus removed the impediments placed by the Notaras family and roused the Corinthians to take up arms, etc., and having initiated a suffocating siege to the Acrocorinth, they left Anagnostis Petimezas to oversee the battle, and departed with 500 men for the village of Kastanea, where they added to their number Fr. Nikas, along with the men of Kastanea and the surrounding villages of Stymfalia, and in this way they roused the province of Corinth to take up arms also in earnest.   From Kastanea, they set out for the siege of Tripoli at the head of 800 men of Kalavryta and Corinth. Reaching the village of Levidi on the Tuesday following Easter (12th of April), they found their fellow Kalavrytans Konstantinos, Vasileios, and Nikolaos Petmezas encamped with 600 men of Kalavryta, as well as P. Arvalis with some men of Tripoli. On the following day, the 13th of April, the massed ranks of Ottomans, 5,500 men in number, both infantry and cavalry, made a night-time sally from Tripoli, and arrived at sunrise at Levidi; the Greeks, with their said commanders, saw them coming from afar and since they were still unaccustomed to battle, they retreated into the mountainous parts. But N. Soliotis, who realized at that point that, were they all to take flight, the Turks would plant their flag in the very hearth of the Revolution, Kalavryta, where they would ravage and lay waste to everything they found, decided to barricade himself inside seven houses in the village of Levidi, and Anag. Striftombolas, G. Koulocheris, and Ioannis Petmezas followed his example by staying, along with 150 men. When the Ottomans arrived with unbridled strength at Levidi, they saw that, contrary to all expectations, they were sustaining fire from a few houses, at which point over twenty of their number actually fell dead, and for this reason they then retreated but later decided to launch an even fiercer attack against the Greeks, since they were innumerable against a small enemy; nevertheless, they received an even more merciless and determined rebuff from the besieged Greeks for seven straight hours, until the late afternoon, at which point more than three hundred had fallen in the slaughter before the Greek fortifications, not counting the wounded (according to what Hadji-Christos, a Bulgarian, who was then with the Ottomans, admitted after the fact), while of the Greeks, Anagnostis Striftombolas and Sotirios Salmenikos from Solos (officers) were killed after  fighting bravely, while Ioannis Petmezas and three others were wounded.
   In the late afternoon, while the battle was still raging, D. Koliopoulos (Plapoutas) arrived with 400 men, as did Tsalafatinos with a few Lakonians, to aid the besieged Greeks, and shortly thereafter, those who had retreated before the battle with Sot. Charalambis and the Petmezas clan descended from the mountains and they all mounted a charge against the enemy, and N. Soliotis emerged with the remaining men barricaded in the houses, and they put the Turks to a most shameful flight, slaughtering a considerable number and taking others prisoner, and the Greeks took considerable spoils from their slaughtered enemies. On the following day, they buried the slaughtered men, A. Striftombolas of eternal memory, S. Salmenikos, and the others, with due respect. Having been defeated in the Battle of Levidi by the small army of Soliotis, the enemy based at Tripoli, which had been regarded as undefeatable, returned in great shame and fear to barricade themselves inside their garrison, while the province of Kalavryta and the Peloponnese were saved from bloodshed and imprisonment on account of the battle worthy of commemoration given at Levidi by those one hundred and fifty brave warriors. This distinguished and glorious first Battle of Levidi of the 13th of April 1821 encouraged the hopes of the Greeks regarding the bright outcome of their struggle for faith and homeland, just as, on the other hand, it humbled the brows of the hitherto haughty Ottomans.
   N. Soliotis, Sot. Charalambis, and Nikol. and Konstantinos Petmezas, finding themselves a few days later at the siege of Tripoli, were informed that Kehayia bey had arrived at Patras; taking fright at the prospect of his invading the province of Kalavryta, they retreated, and on the 21st of April, having first occupied Mavra Litharia at Akrata, they attacked him with great losses on his side. At the end of the month of May of that same year (1821), at the time when Omer Pasha Vryonis and Mehmet Pasha had attacked Levadeia at the head of six-thousand Ottomans and intended to storm into the Peloponnese by way of the Isthmus [of Corinth], N. Soliotis took the 500 men under his command and went to Derveni in the Megarid, where he joined with Kyriakoulis and Ilias Mavromichalis, Grigorios Dikaios, Panos Th. Kolokotronis, Nikitas Stamatelopoulos, and N. Petmezas, who remained there for a short time before subsequently withdrawing to take the garrison at Tripoli, leaving just P. Th. Kolokotronis and N. Soliotis, along with the 800 Peloponnesian men and another 400 Megarans and Thebans under their command, to hold the vital and dangerous positions there until the end of the month of October, the time at which the Ottomans sounded their retreat and withdrew to Larisa. D. Ypsilantis, seeing that the men guarding the straits at Derveni were withdrawing every day into the Peloponnese and fearing that the forces of Omer Pasha Vryonis might enter the Peloponnese without so much as a fight, wrote to N. Soliotis often throughout September from the camp at Tripoli to encourage and beseech him in the name of their embattled homeland with these words: “That he might continue to hold that position with unwavering bravery like the brave champion of his homeland that he was for as long as the enemy remained outside the Peloponnese in the Greek mainland, and that on the proper maintaining of Derveni hung the salvation and safety of the whole Peloponnese, that Panoutzos Notaras had been instructed to send to his aid a thousand Corinthians with his nephew (Ioannis Notaras) and Theocharakis Rentis, and that he should compel the villagers of Derveni and the Megarians to follow him, even against their will.” These instructions men such as Captain Dionysios Panousis of Megara with his 200 men, and many others, did follow. N. Soliotis and P. Th. Kolokotronis, along with Ilias Mavromichalis, who had returned from Tripoli, remained in position holding the straits of Derveni and fighting and repelling bravely the attacks of the enemy, taking part in various battles in locations such as Plataion (Kokla), Kriekouki, Kaparelli, Villia, and Agios Meletios, in the course of which over 800 Ottomans were slaughtered in succession. Omer Pasha Vryonis and the others, seeing that their way was blocked by the Greeks, retreated for Larisa by way of Thebes around the end of October.
   Upon his return from Derveni, N. Soliotis received a letter of invitation from the administration and governors of Corinth, Panoutzos Notaras, Theocharis Rentis, G. Kalaras, A. Oikonomopoulos, etc., in which they begged him to act as commander of the siege. Anag. Petmezas had withdrawn on account of the lack of necessary supplies and the failure of the Corinthians to pay his men’s wages, and thus the siege was in imminent danger of collapse. N. Soliotis acted as commander of the siege at the head of 600 men of Kalavryta and another 800 Corinthians, and some men from Ydra and Poros under Christodoulos Mexis, and having taken Penteskoufios, a hill lying opposite the Acrocorinth to the southwest, he fought bravely against the enemy every day, and there he was severely wounded by the stones and soil of his own fortification, which had been thrown up by cannon balls from the fort, until the enemy was forced to surrender on terms to the Greek leaders. Over the course of these various battles and sparrings, around 800 of the Ottomans were slaughtered during the siege.
   After the establishment of the first National Committee of the Greeks, N. Soliotis was appointed captain of the guard of the National Committee on account of his brilliant achievements, capability, and his distinguished character in March 1822, with the rank of “chiliarch” [major] through the following articles.

No. 528

The Minister for Internal Affairs and War

To Chiliarch Nikolaos Soliotis

The supreme Committee, wishing to reward your lengthy and faithful services towards the homeland, and particularly the hearty zeal, with which you remained patiently at the siege of Acrocorinth, from its beginning to the end when the garrison surrendered, has assented on account of these deeds to honour you with the rank of chiliarch, the articles for which are enclosed in the present missive. You are assigned, along with all the men in your command, to remain here at Corinth and to answer to the immediate orders of the Committee. In addition, you are under an obligation of perpetual gratitude towards the supreme Committee, obeying without hesitation all its commands and taking care to fulfil without fail all the obligations of your new rank. Salutations.

Corinth, 9th March 1822
The Minister for Internal Affairs and
temporary Minister of War
Ioannis Koletis.
  He remained until the end of July in this role with the Committee in Corinth and in Argos, where he preserved the greatest calm and order, when, with the arrival of the large army of Dramalı to Argos, the then seat of the Committee, he first ensured the safety of the Executive and a portion of the delegates within one of the ships from Ydra moored at Myloi  and subsequently departed with the men under his command to take part in the expedition against the common enemy Dramalı with the other military commanders.
   On the 2nd of January 1823 N. Soliotis was informed by the Council that was then in Tripoli that Deli Ahmet Dramalı Pasha had conceived a plan to leave his wounded, along with another 500 men, in the garrison at Corinth, while he would make his way at the head of his remaining 5000 cavalry and infantry along the coastal path at Akrata to Patras. So he [Soliotis] went down with 400 men to Akrata and barricaded himself in a fortification at the narrowest point of the way (or the mill of Dim. Zaïmis) and awaited the enemy. Sot. Charalambis and Asimakis Zaïmis followed and took control of the other positions higher up in the mountains, while N. Petmezas took the vital position of Mavra Litharia. After two days, on the 5th of January, the Ottomans arrived in the late afternoon at the plain of Akrata, intending to pass over it on their way to Vostitsa, but they were repelled at the position held by N. Soliotis, which lay at precisely this point; over 80 of them were slaughtered, but on their second attempt they were repelled bravely also by the forces of N. Petmezas, with over 50 killed, so they retreated to the plain of Akrata to spend the night. During the course of this night, N. Soliotis comprehended how numerous and strong the enemy’s army was and realized that there was another dangerous position above the inn of Dimitrios Zaïmis through which the enemy could pass to take their rear from the flank. When he had understood this, he ordered some of his officers, namely his brothers Dimitrios and Sotirios Soliotis, Dim. Lalos, Angellis Deloukas, Fr. Georgos of Peristera, and Giannos Kerpiesotis, along with 150 men, to occupy the said position.  And on the morning of the following day, the 6th of January, at sunrise, the Ottomans first said their prayers to their false prophet and then blindly attacked with their full force, in the full flush of intoxication and uttering war cries, Soliotis’s fortification, determined to pass by that route on their way to Vostitsa and Patras, but they were repelled by him and more than 300 of them fell dead in despair before his fortification, not counting the wounded. This position at the Mill then gained a name which it has borne up to this day, that of “Soliotis’s Bastion.” Of the Greeks, three were slaughtered and four were wounded. They launched a second attack, but he repelled them with wondrous bravery and greater courage, with just two-hundred brave men; the Ottomans, unable to pass by that way, shamefully took flight, and subsequently made an attempt to pass by the position held by the said officers, but there too they met with the same resistance, so they returned to the plain of Akrata, not daring to make any further assaults on the Greek positions. Following this, many Greeks arrived from the provinces of Corinth and Vostitsa, and then Andreas Zaïmis, Andr. Lontos, and Odysseas arrived from Mesolonghi and cut off the enemy so tightly that they were deprived of any sort of sustenance, and once they had consumed all the horses and mules they had brought with them, they actually began to eat each other, with the strong murdering the weak.
   The enemy, being deprived of everything, was forced to begin negotiations with the Greek commanders about a surrender, but N. Soliotis refused to accept their propositions and offers of money in return for allowing them free passage, and failing to reach an agreement on certain questions, they did not come to terms regarding the surrender, and thus the blockade of the Ottomans on all sides continued even more suffocatingly, since they could neither proceed to Patras nor return to Corinth; they were therefore confined to the inn of Dim. Zaïmis, having constructed also two long trenches in the plain of Akrata. At the beginning of February, Andr. Zaïmis, S. Charalambis, V. Petmezas, and Odysseas withdrew from the encampment at Akrata for the National Assembly which was to take place at Astros, and so A. Lontos, N. Soliotis, and N. Petmezas remained as leaders of the siege, along with their forces. While the siege was still maintained rather tightly, eight Ottoman ships from Patras suddenly appeared at the shore of Akrata on the 12th of February, and they took around 500 men, but were unable on account of the great storm to put into harbour or take on board more. While the Ottomans were embarking, the Greeks launched an attack on all sides with the utmost bravery and enthusiasm, with the result that they prevented the remaining Ottomans from embarking. A battle of the utmost tenacity then ensued, with the Greeks sustaining Ottoman fire from the ships’ cannons and guns on land. On that day, and during that battle of the 12th of February, N. Soliotis distinguished himself, but was seriously wounded in his right thigh by enemy fire. The Turks who had remained in place were slaughtered in short order by the Greek assaults, until they were forced to surrender to the Greek commanders.
   During that glorious Battle of Akrata, the remnants of the proud army of Dramalı were utterly destroyed, while the Greeks received a great reward in the form of valuable spoils, weapons, money, horses, etc. and N. Soliotis received from this a precious and bright sword belonging to Dramalı.
   In September of the same year (1823), as Omer Pasha was laying siege to the garrison in Attica and placing intense pressure on the defenders from all sides, and the garrison at Athens was in danger of surrender, when the besieged Gouras wrote continually with insistent requests for assistance, N. Soliotis was sent by the National Committee to Attica; he, avoiding imprisonment by the Ottoman besiegers of Attica, entered the Acropolis of Athens by night with 400 Peloponnesians; thus the besieged Greeks were greatly encouraged, and N. Soliotis fought together with Gouras until the dissolution of the siege, at which point he returned to the Peloponnese.
   In July of 1825, N. Soliotis marched out to the camp which had then been constituted at Tripoli along with the remaining commanders, and while he was encamped at Levidi at the head of 600 men from Kalavryta, he received a letter from General Th. Kolokotronis, which said: “Make the greatest haste, brother, because our men are in danger under a heavy enemy siege.” Then, without delay, he set out, and when he arrived at the summit of the mountain of Apano Chrepa, he saved many of the pursued Greeks whom he met during their rout and captured a strong mountain position on Ano Chrepa to rebuff the enemy bravely, as his obligations to his homeland compelled him. Subsequently, at the end of the month of August of that same year (1825), N. Soliotis marched at the head of a corps of 600 men from Kalavryta with the other commanders Th. Kolokotronis, A. Zaïmis, I. Th. Kolokotronis, D. Plapoutas, I. Notaras, etc., and found himself at Kounoupia and Kosmas in the Agios Petros region; he fought bravely against the Arabs in Kounoupia, where he saved many families from the nearby villages who had fled from fear of slaughter and capture by the Arabs to the mountains of Kounoupia, where in fact over 100 of the Arabs were slaughtered, following the rescue of the Christian women and children.
   During the siege of the garrison at Patras, N. Soliotis marched out together with Th. Kolokotronis, Andreas Zaïmis, and the other leaders of the siege, sometimes with 500 men and at other times with more, and dutifully executed his obligations towards his homeland.
   In the year 1826, at the time when the haughty satrap Ibrahim Pasha had overwhelmed Mesolonghi, Ibrahim traveled to Old Patras, whence he began to pillage, shoot, and imprison the people of the various provinces of the Peloponnese, destroying everything in his path, without encountering the slightest impediment or resistance in any place, reaching Kalavryta on the 2nd of May. And when Ibrahim Pasha reached the city of Kalavryta, he was informed that N. Soliotis was lying in wait in the foothills of Mount Kyllini (Chelmos), at Dipotamia, near the waterfall of the river Styx, together with an appreciable number of his fellow men of Kalavryta and the surrounding villages (Vostitsa, etc.); he made to resist him, and sent two of his spies to Soliotis to promise many important services and splendid honours if he should agree to submit, but N. Soliotis responded to him in Ancient Greek saying “μολών λάβε/come and take it.” N. Soliotis, although he could foresee how great and clear the danger was, decided to fight against the Egyptian enemy in order to put to rest the rumoured disgrace of the submission and surrender to the Turks by Nenekos; otherwise, he could of course have brought himself and his family to safety in Nafplio, as many other high-ranking revolutionaries did.
   When the satrap unexpectedly received such a disdainful reply, he marched full of anger and wrath by night from Kalavryta with his whole force of 22,000 infantry, cavalry, and Albanians, and on the 5th of May, one hour before sunrise, he reached the Greek fortifications in four wings, from which point a fierce battle was joined immediately, in the first instance on the part of a single column of 3,000 Albanians. The enemy was repelled through brave resistance to their two attacks, so that they were forced to turn to flight, with more than 80 of their number slain. Ibrahim Pasha, seeing what had taken place, seethed with rage, and placed himself personally at the head of his regular army and directed the battle himself, giving the command to attack through a beat of the drums. The Arabs were forced onwards and pushed forward by the sabres and swords of the officers and cavalry and charged against the Greeks with their eyes shut. The Greeks repelled them once more from their fortifications with yet more bravery, with more than 300 Arabs slain. As the battle continued even more fiercely, they began to attack with their bare hands, at which point they slaughtered many of the Arabs with the very stones of their fortifications. Eventually, the Greeks saw a wing of Arabs ascending from the left up to the summit of Mount Chelmos and feared that they would climb down from there to capture their rear, and so they began, after a fierce and bloody six-hour battle, being unable in any case to withstand the great number of the enemy, since they were few in number, to retreat while still fighting, until they reached the sheer, sky-high, and always snow-capped mountain of Kastraki, where they hid and saved both themselves and the masses of women and children there, who numbered more than 10,000.
   During that bloody and exceedingly fierce battle of Chelmos, over 400 Arabs and Muslim Albanians were slaughtered, while two Arab officers who had been seriously wounded and one important Albanian were captured alive. Of the besieged and battling Greeks, 25 were slaughtered, while around 250 women and children were taken prisoner, although another 200 Christian souls threw themselves from that exceedingly high and sheer peak of Kastraki. It was a sight worthy of admiration and absolute pity to watch mothers tearing their suckling infants from their breasts and casting themselves from the cliff at that moment, since they themselves preferred to leap to their deaths rather than surrender to imprisonment and live according to the dictates of those Arab beasts in human form. Towards evening, Ibrahim Pasha returned to the villages of Solos, Peristera, Zarouchla, etc., in the region of Nonakris, seething with maniacal rage and unbridled hatred which caused him to order that a fire be set from one end of the village to the other; in this way, he reduced over 500 homes to ash before immediately returning that same day to Kalavryta, and from there he set off for Tripoli. In that battle of Chelmos, the catastrophe experienced by the Greeks was greatly augmented by the coincidence that Sotirios Theocharopoulos happened to arrive during those days at the village of Solos at the head of 250 men, and he not only did not rush to the aid of the besieged Greeks on Kastraki, but the men with him committed the greatest abuses by digging down into the foundations of the very cellars and stripping the Christian homes of their goods. Because of this, many of N. Soliotis’s men, and even his own brothers Sotirios and Dimitrios, went down to their villages during the night of the 4th and 5th of May, in order to guard their own and their fellow villagers’ homes from their pillaging and abuses, and so just 400 infantry remained with Soliotis; this was especially unfortunate, since if the Greeks encamped on Kastraki had not dispersed, Generals Ioannis Th. Kolokotronis and Dim. Platousas would inevitably have arrived on the following day to the aid of N. Soliotis from Karytaina by way of the Feneos with 3,000 men, if warned, and V. and N. Petmezas with 800 men from Katsanes, at which time it would have been highly probable for the greatest harm or even utter destruction to have come to the army of Ibrahim Pasha, which was enclosed in the sheer, rocky regions of Nonakris, deprived of all they required. It was observed at that point that the house of S. Theocharopoulos had not been burned, although he was a noteworthy resident of the area, while even the houses of the most insignificant citizens were razed; many attributed this fact either to a pre-existing agreement of Theocharopoulos with Ibrahim through the Ottoman Hasan who was in his company, or because many receipts of tax payments were found sewn into a woollen belt hanging in his house, with a silver candle placed and lit before it, instead of before the icon of the Crucified Christ, for whom the struggle was fought. These discoveries were made by the Greeks when Ibrahim retreated on the following day, and were then brought to N. Soliotis, and they are kept still today as an everlasting proof of such behaviour.
   During March of 1827, N. Soliotis made the necessary preparations and set out following an order from General Commander Th. Kolokotronis on the expedition to Attica with 600 men of Kalavryta, but on the way to the great church of St. George in Corinth, he received orders from the Governing Committee, and even more insistently from its President, A. Zaïmis, to return to Kalavryta and the villages around Patras, since the forces of Ibrahim Pasha were in position to inflict new pillaging on the Peloponnese that spring also. When he returned, he faithfully performed his duties to his homeland and joined Kolokotronis in disrupting the progress of the submission to the Turks; to that end, Kolokotronis had burned many houses of those who had submitted in Agios Vlasios and Lapathes and Nezera to Ibrahim Pasha in the hope of putting a final stop to this great evil, in which aim he was marvellously successful.
   N. Soliotis fought both in the Peloponnese and in Mainland Greece and was showered with honors on account of his services performed on behalf of his homeland. In March of 1822, he was honored with the rank of chiliarch and captain of the guard of the Supreme Committee; in August of 1823, with the rank of lieutenant general; and in October of 1824, with that of general. During the Greek Government of Capodistrias, he was honored with the rank of chiliarch in the then established regular brigade. He died suffering under a weight of injustice in 1841, having received from the foreign and foreignizing Regency the plain rank of major.
SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY

   Already informed in 1823 by the Council that was then in Tripoli that the Turks in Corinth – Dramali’s Ahmet Pasha and others – would leave their wounded in the garrison while they themselves prepared to travel with a force by way of Akrata to Patras, Soliotis went down to Akrata and barricaded himself in a fortification in the narrowest part of the road, following which Asimakis Zaïmis, S. Charalambis, S. Theocharopoulos, and N. Petmezas came to the other positions; after two days, on the 8th of January, the Turks arrived in the late afternoon at the plain of Akrata and wishing to pass through by way of Vostitsa, were prevented from doing so at his position with unexpected losses on their side. Then they turned in fear and passed the night in the nearby plain of Akrata. During that night, he comprehended how large and powerful the enemy army was and perceived another dangerous position at the flank and, fearing that the enemy would pass by that way during the night and take their rear from behind, he ordered some of his officers, namely his two brothers, Dimitrios and Sotirios, Angelis Deloukas, Dim. Panavis, Anag. Peresis, Fr. Georgios of Peristera, and Giannos Kerpiesiotis, along with some men, to occupy by night the said position, by which the enemy might be able to pass. The other commanders occupied the higher positions; in the morning, the Turks, who were 5,000 in number, launched a unified and decisive assault against his position, so that they could pass by that way making for Bostitsa and Patras, but they were repelled with no hope of passing by him and over 400 of them fell before his position. When the enemy saw many of their number deserting, they launched an even bolder assault; once more, he fought them off with just 90 brave soldiers, and since they could not pass, they turned back to pass by the position occupied by the said soldiers, and when they met with the same treatment there, they returned to the coastal plain of Akrata and did not dare to launch any further assaults against them. Encouraged by this first successful crushing of the enemy, the other Greeks flocked there en masse and a few days later, Andr. Zaïmis and A. Londos also arrived and encircled [the Turks] so that, once they had first consumed their horses, mules, and other animals, they sank to the point of eating one another.
   But after the passage of two months, two Ottoman ships arrived from Patras and picked up just 400 men, while those who remained behind fortified themselves with a ditch in the sand on the shore; he saw them preparing to flee by sea and attacked them with the men under his command in order to prevent them from doing so, since his position was near the ships, and he defeated them utterly, but was seriously wounded by an enemy bullet in his right thigh, although he drew comfort from the ships leaving with the smallest number, while the majority remained behind and began to be killed shortly afterwards in the Greek assaults, until all those who had remained surrendered to the Greek commanders.
   In 1825, as he was encamped at Levidi, he received a letter from Chrepa from A. Zaïmis and Th. Kolokotronis, Gennaios Kolokotronis, Dimitrios Koliopoulos, Ioan. Notaras, Dim. Deligiannis, and Staïkos Staïkopoulos in Kounoupia, and he fought with his company against the Arabs and saved many families from the surrounding villages, who had fled for fear of the enemy into the mountains of Kounoupia, slaughtering many of the enemy, as his duty to his homeland commanded him to do, in order to save his despairing brothers.
   In 1826, when Ibrahim Pasha had overwhelmed Mesolonghi, he returned to Patras and went from there to Kalavryta, burning and destroying everything at hand, without encountering resistance in any place; he was informed by his spies that N. Soliotis had fortified a position in the foothills of Mount Kyllini (Chelmos) with his fellow villagers and was ready to withstand him, so the said leader set out by night from Kalavryta on the 4th of May with all his cavalry and infantry power, which numbered 17,000 altogether, and the following day, on the 5th, one hour before dawn, he launched an attack with four columns against them, who, fighting bravely, repelled their first, second, and third attacks, at which point Ibrahim Pasha was frustrated by this shame and ordered his Albanian officers to force the Arabs forward by the points of their swords; they were pushed forward to attack the Greeks once more and even more fiercely, but the Greeks repelled them then also with marvellous bravery and slaughtered many of the combatants, although eventually they were unable to withstand the enemy numbers and retreated.
   The battle continued from the first hour of the day until the eighth. During the battle, 12 of the Greek combatants were slain, not counting the women and children, who preferred death by fleeing to surrendering to the judgement of those beasts in human form. The Christians who cast themselves off the highest point of the mountain reached 200 in number, with 140 taken prisoner. Many of the enemy were slain, as was subsequently demonstrated by a ditch into which more than 50 of them were crammed. Only 80 were found slain before his fortification. Two Arab officers were captured with serious wounds, but they lived only for that day and passed away on the following.

1The first raised [revolutionary] flag had on it a cross with 16 lines beneath it, according to the custom of the Friendly Society, with the phrase “freedom or death.” Afterwards, N. Soliotis received from the Monastery of Agia Lavra the gold-embroidered banner bestowed by the Christian emperors with the resurrection on one side and Saint George on the other. These banners were preserved as treasures at the monastery thanks to the good graces of Soliotis.

Translated by Christopher Jotischky

Historical Memorandum—(March 1835)1

   Following my initiation [into the Friendly Society] in about 1818, I waited impatiently with every passing hour for the outbreak of the war of our liberation. And once a year had passed, the gentry and senior clergy of all the Peloponnese had been initiated also, and they too received their initiation with the utmost joy. And again, after the passage of a certain period of time, the gentry held a council and sent Mr. Ioannis Paparigopoulos to Odesa at their own expense, in order that he might sound out the leadership of the [Friendly] Society; when he returned, he told us that a man would be sent from Odesa for the purpose of guiding us about when we ought to set the war in motion.
   On the 21st of December 1820, I found myself in Tripoli with some gentlemen from Kalavryta – Andreas Zaïmis, Sot. Haralambis, and Sotirios Theoharopoulos – when we learned of the arrival at Ydra and Spetses of Mr. Grigorios Flesias, and I immediately withdrew from Tripoli and came to my own town, in order to see to the necessary preparations to our supply of weapons.
   On the 5th of January 1821, Mr. Flesias came to my house along with Mr. Haralambos Malis, and they stayed for just one night, setting out the next day for Kalavryta, and from there for Patras, whence they returned to Vostitsa, where the gentry and senior clergy of the three above-mentioned Provinces were gathered and decided that all the Peloponnesians should come to an agreement after which they should set the war in motion, once the path had been smoothed. But what came about in that intervening time? A rumour to this effect reached the ears of the Ottomans in the Peloponnese, who issued strongly worded commands summoning the gentry and senior clergy to present themselves at Tripoli, which they all followed, with the exception of the people of Kalavryta and Vostitsa, whom they summoned again for a second time. Those men, who counted among their number me and our archbishop Germanos of Old Patras, set out on the pretext of journeying to Tripoli, together with a Tatar and a dervish; they arrived at Kastria, a village in the district of Kalavryta, where they had a villager friendly to the cause, who supplied them with a forged letter, allegedly sent by a friend of the Turks, which said that, if they wished to preserve their lives, they should not journey to Tripoli. Accordingly, they returned to the Monastery of Agia Lavra, where they received a message from the Deligiannis clan, saying: “I beg you, do not stir from that place, brothers! Our brothers are in Tripoli and are lost.” Once I heard these words, I suspected that they would lose their nerve and we would remain still under the same yoke, so I withdrew from the Monastery immediately, determined to provide the Revolution with a cause and a beginning and, by a stroke of fortune, on the 9th of March of that same year, when I reached my village, three Turks from Tripoli, of the type who are counted ruffians, were passing through, tasked with carrying letters from the kaymakam of Tripoli to Hurshid Pasha; as they passed down the road at Agridio (a village in the district of Kalavryta) on their way to Portes, I, along with the six soldiers under my command, killed them. And so, I was the first in the whole Peloponnese to stain my hands with the blood of our tyrants. And the following day, the 10th of March, another seven Turks were passing, also Tripolitans (from Arfara), and I sent some soldiers and they slaughtered them, and again that same day, sixty Turks under the leadership of two commanders of the Janissaries, arrived at Hrysanthio (Versova); the inhabitants of the surrounding villages gathered and joined forces with some of my own soldiers and slaughtered all of those. And following these events, I wrote to the inhabitants of the district of Katsanes with information concerning what had happened, encouraging them to mobilize also. Now when the Voivode of Kalavryta, Ibrahim Arnautoğlu, learned of this, he retreated to Tripoli, along with those under his command, in order to escape the danger, but since his way was blocked by the men of Katsanes, he returned to Kalavryta, where he locked himself up in three strong fortress houses towers along with the other Turks, who numbered around four hundred locals and foreigners, whom S. Haralambis, S. Theoharopoulos, Ioannis Papadopoulos, Asimakis Fotilas, Vasileios Petmezas, Nikolaos Petmezas, and the undersigned [Soliotis], all men of the Province of Kalavryta, together forced at gunpoint to surrender over the course of five days and nights of fighting, during which I was wounded in my left shin, as were two other of my soldiers. Two of the Turks were actually slaughtered, one by my own men, and the other by the men of Vasileios Petmezas. The number of Greeks fighting was around six hundred and more.
   And after this battle, on the 13th of April of the same year, while making my way to lay siege to Tripoli, I and Sot. Haralambis and Sot. Theoharopoulos reached Levidi, where we encountered Konstantinos and V. Petmezas, along with several men from Tripoli.
In the morning of the 14th of that same month, they informed us that the Turks were advancing upon us from two sides. They were around four thousand in number, and when we saw them, some retreated in fear of the size of the enemy force. But I, and my companions under my command, namely my brother Dimitrios, Anagnostis Striftombolas, Ioannis Petmezas, and Georgios Koulouhairas, maintained our position with just 48 men, captured seven houses, and fought from the first hour of daylight until the eleventh hour, and slaughtered over three hundred of them, not counting those who were wounded. In this battle, the enemies from Tripoli were defeated for the first time. Of my companions, my compatriot of eternal memory, Anagnostis Striftombolas of Mesoroungi, Sotirios Zafeiropoulos of Solos, and two others, were slaughtered. Ioannis Petmezas and three others were also wounded.
   On the 17th day of that very same month of April, we received word that Kehaya bey had reached Patras, and we retreated out of fear that he might invade our Province, and on the 21st we clashed with him at Mavra Litharia, with no small losses on his side. And leaving aside the other significant battles which took place outside of my province, namely the Battles of Derveni, Corinth, Hrepa, Davia, Kounoupia, etc., for which I was present in person, which I shall recount to you whenever you instruct me to do so, I shall begin with a brief synopsis of the dreadful Battle of Akrata.
   Having been informed by the Council that then sat in Tripoli that the Turks in Corinth – Ahmet Pasha, Dramalis, and others – intended to leave their wounded in the fortress at Corinth and themselves make for Patras by way of Akrata, I went down to Akrata with the men in my command, and, following me, came also Asimakis Zaïmis, Sot. Haralambis, Sot. Theoharopoulos, and two days later, on the 8th of January of the year 1823, the Turks reached the plain of Akrata in the late afternoon, and were prevented from passing through Vostitsa as they wished. They turned back in fear and passed the night on the neighboring plain of Akrata. Meanwhile, during that same night, the enemy’s large, powerful army had arrived, and I, considering another position which was dangerous on the flank, and wary that, if the enemy passed thence they might catch my men from behind, ordered some of my officers, namely Angelis Deloukas, Dimitrios Banavas, Papa-Georgios and Giannos Kerpesiotis, along with some soldiers, to take by night the said position, by which the enemy could come through. The other commanders took the higher positions; and in the morning, the Turks, being 5,000 in number, launched a decisive attack altogether as one to pass by that route to make for Patras, but they were repelled by me and more than 200 of them were slaughtered. I was left alone with my brothers Dimitrios and Sotirios and another 55 of my men, because the others, seeing that enormous danger, retreated to higher ground, where the other armies of the said commanders were. And since the Turks could not pass by that route, they turned back to pass by the position held by my soldiers; and, since there too they encountered the same problem, they did not dare to make any further attack against us, because then the other Greeks were also encouraged by the defeat of the enemy and their massed ranks ran up and we encircled them so tightly that once they had eaten their all horses, mules, and other animals, they were reduced to eating each other. Then, when two months had passed, two Ottoman ships came and took about three hundred of them, and those who had been left behind constructed a defence involving a trench. When I saw them in this position, I launched an attack against them with the men under my command and, although I was utterly victorious against them, I sustained a dangerous bullet wound to my right thigh.

1These four handwritten pages of the “Historical Memorandum” (memoirs) of Nikolaos Soliotis are part of the archive of George Panagopoulos (1910-1988), the historical researcher, notary and mayor of Aigion, bequeathed to him by Mary Doukakis, wife of Ioannis Nikitas Soliotis, a lawyer and member of parliament from Aigion (1924-1928) who died in 1949 and was the grandson of the chieftain. A short time thereafter, captain Ioannis Ch. Soliotis (1889-1973) requested from George Panagopoulos in a letter that the document be returned to the family as “it constitutes … an invaluable family heirloom” and is a “national heirloom of historical importance” that he did not wish to part with, and that he lend them in order for copies to be made. The manuscript is currently housed at the Historical Archive of Aigion, a branch of the General Archives of the State.

Translated by Christopher Jotischky