The following brief biography of Nikolaos Christodoulou or Soliotis (as he became more widely known on account of his origins in the village of Solos in the district of Kalavryta) presents a somewhat distinct picture of the character of that protagonist in the Revolution who, although the subject of unreserved praise and explicit commemoration by all the historians and biographers of the initial period following the Revolution, today he still remains unknown to the majority of the public, and only the younger generation of scholars, who are now free of the  clouding haze created by the interests and rivalries of the Revolution, draw back sincerely and occasionally with surprise the curtain of oblivion and underline the real role that Nikolaos Soliotis played in many critical stages of the struggle, and especially at its beginning.

The study of Soliotis’s biography and the circumstances under which he operated reveals to us the stance he took consistently in the face of events around him, the greatness of his soul, his unshakable faith in the destiny of his people, and his selfless readiness to play a part at any price in the acquisition of the nation’s freedom.

Contemporary historians of the Revolution describe him as a man of honest and unblemished character, an enthusiastic patriot who was endowed with the qualities of a leader. The date of his birth is not known to us, but it is estimated to have been around 1785. In 1816, he married Vasiliki Megari, from a family originally from Kerpini who relocated to Trieste. He was first initiated into the Friendly Society by the well-known overseer of Corinth Theocharis Rentis, who was very likely also his relation.

Despite the hatred he felt for the Turks, he had managed to gain their trust, to the point that they appointed him mezilntzis, that is the official responsible for the security of the postal system of the region. This position granted him two significant advantages: on the one hand, he was able to move about freely from place to place without the need for special permission; and on the other, both he and the men under his command could bear arms openly. These rights allowed him to prepare without hindrance for the Revolution and put him in the position of having enough trusted men-at-arms to rise up, as he was among the first who did.

A story told by Magdalini, the widow of his brother Sotiris Soliotis, has been preserved which describes the gathering at the church of Solos on Christmas Eve 1820, at which “Kyr-Nikolakis,” as the village headman, dropped the first hint to all the inhabitants concerning the necessity of forming a body of trusted men for their safety.

As [Nikolaos] Spiliadis informs us, already on the 5^th of January 1821, Grigorios Dikaios (Papaflessas), who was even then making his way in secret from Corinth to Kalavryta prior to the Council of Vostitsa, lodged in the house of Soliotis, since he was able to guarantee every security. In fact, according to one version, he even stayed there without actually meeting him. In any case, it is clear that Papaflessas met with Soliotis in Kalavryta immediately following the dramatic Council of Vostitsa (26-30 January). Fotakos and, among more modern historians, Spyros Melas, describe this meeting as decisive for Soliotis’s subsequent stance. Fotakos says specifically that Papaflessas found him to be initiated and prepared for everything, intelligent and capable, thirsting for revenge against the Turks and “inspiring” Flessas to make begin operations in those parts, with a view to making the entire Province of Kalavryta share in the responsibility, and thus for relations between Turks and Greeks to be cut off. And indeed Papaflessas, since he was by no means satisfied with the inclination of the local leaders towards delay during the recent council of Vostitsa, but had been successful in nurturing the acceleration of preparations for the Struggle and their decision not to travel to Tripoli should they happen to be summoned there by the Turkish authorities, realized that he could depend upon Soliotis, and that he at least could begin the fighting in the region.

Thus Soliotis – who had very possibly also received money from Papaflessas – prepared with his men to bring about the eruption of hostilities in his region, and we find him present at the successive war councils held by the overseers, clergy, and commanders-at-arms at Agia Lavra from the 9^th to the 13^th of March.

During that final council, Spiliadis writes, N. Ch. Soliotis, who had heard at first-hand the words written by Kanellos Deligiannis, “Make no move, or our brothers in Tripoli are lost,” made first for the district of Kalavryta and, as Fotakos says, since he was in haste to prevent the betrayal of the Society and the arrival of the Turks to quash the intended Revolution, he thought it right that he begin to kill  Turks himself.

And thus, between the 14^th and the 18^th of March, Soliotis began hostilities with three characteristic, purely military actions. The first action, which granted him the historic distinction of it having been his own rifle which was the first to be fired against the tyrant during the Revolution (this rifle is today kept in the National Historical Museum), was an ambush which he laid with nine of his men located at Portes in Agridi, and during which he annihilated three official Turkish post-carriers  of the Kaymakam of Tripoli, with their armed escort, as they were making their way to Ioannina to Hurshid Pasha. A few years after the establishment of the Greek state, the Greek government dedicated a memorial plaque commemorating this historical event, which was nevertheless destroyed by vandalism around 1885. In its place at Portes in Agridi in 1960 was placed a new plaque, the unveiling of which took place at an official ceremony under the auspices of the Association “Chelmos” of Athens on the 14^th of August 1960.

Two days after that first revolutionary action of Soliotis, a unit of his own men, assisted by Anagnostis Kordis, slaughtered between Arfara and Svyros eight Turkish tax collectors, and on the following day, Soliotis himself, supported by other armed men from the surrounding villages, fought and annihilated an entire military detachment composed of around 60 Muslim Albanians who had come from Amfissa and were on the way to Tripoli. During this battle, around 20 Albanians were slaughtered, and the rest were captured, while from among the Greeks only three sustained minor wounds.

News of these daring actions of Soliotis circulated and gave rise to various responses, just as many on the Greek side as on the Turkish. In the province of Kalavryta its fame grew so large that Greeks enthusiastically volunteered to go and submit to Soliotis’s command, with the result that he now had a force of 300 men.

In any case, news of the above and a few similar events, which, despite their rather limited extent, occurred in quick succession and in various parts of the region, demonstrated equally to the Greeks and Turks of the region that the uprising was now an inevitable reality which they would need to confront. The Voivode of Kalavryta, Ibrahim Aga Arnautoglou, decided to abandon his seat and to seek refuge with his entire harem in Tripoli. He did indeed retreat, but he was compelled by force on the following day to return by night through Soudena to Kalavryta, as soon as he was informed that two of his servants, who had gone in advance to the village of Dara to prepare lodgings, had been slaughtered by Charalambis’s men, who had set an ambush there. Arnautoglou was terrified and hurried to barricade himself along with all the Turkish families and his small military force in the three fortified fortress houses of the city of Kalavryta. Following this, the Greek commanders and local leaders gathered at the Monastery of Agia Lavra on the night of the 20^th—21^st of March and decided on a combined attack against Kalavryta, after they had first brought all the Greek families out of the city and conveyed them to safety to the Monastery of Mega Spilaio.

The men gathered at Agia Lavra, who numbered around six hundred, all swore there a sacred oath and, with the assistance of the monks of the Monastery – the Abbot of which, Kallinikos, happened to come from the same village as Soliotis – launched an attack on Kalavryta on the following day. The principal commanders in the resulting offensive and siege are listed as Asimakis Fotilas, Soterios Charalambis, Anagnostis Striftombolas, Soterios Theocharopoulos,  Ioannis Papadopoulos, Nikolaos and Vasileios Petmezas, and Nikolaos Soliotis, who is said to have used his own standard, as well as a small firearm, which is kept to this day at the Monastery and which the Abbot entrusted to him. During one of his assaults on the fortress houses of Kalavryta, Soliotis received his first wound to his left thigh, something which did not prevent him, immediately following the capture of Kalavryta, from traveling a few days later with the other revolutionaries to Corinth to set the revolution in motion there as well.

From Corinth, Soliotis, along with the other men of Kalavryta, made for the village of Levidi, where on the 14^th of April the famous battle occurred during which, thanks to the heroism of Soliotis, A. Striftombolas (who was killed) and I. Petmezas (who was wounded), the Greeks fought fiercely and managed for the first time to vanquish utterly and eventually to put to flight an Ottoman force more than four times their size, which had marched forth against the men of Tripoli.

From Levidi, Soliotis, at the head of a strong force, made for the Greek Mainland where he fought until the middle of 1821 in Attica, Boiotia, Kokla, Vilia, Kriekouki, and elsewhere. Then, since rumours were afoot concerning the threatened incursion of a large Ottoman army from the Greek Mainland under Mehmet Pasha and Omer Vryonis into the Peloponnese, Soliotis moved his force to Dervenia in the Megarid, where other Greek units were also gathered, in order to prevent the army from crossing the Isthmus. Nevertheless, after a brief period all the commanders who were encamped there withdrew to Tripoli, the surrender of which was expected shortly, so that they could be present for its capture, meaning that Soliotis was left there alone with his 400 men. Only when the danger of the incursion had passed did he withdraw himself on the 8^th of October 1821 and make for Corinth, where he had been summoned to assume the command of the siege of Acrocorinth. Once he had gone there, commanding in addition to his own men another 200 men of Kalavryta and 800 Corinthians, men of Ydra, and men of Poros, he defended a position on the hill of Pentoskoufi, opposite Acrocorinth. He was seriously wounded in battle there, and when the Turks surrendered to the Greeks through a standard treaty on the 14^th of January 1822, he remained in Corinth, having been named Commander of the Militia by the newly formed Greek Government, which resided there. He kept this rank for a period of six months, after which, with the invasion of Dramalı at the beginning of July 1822, he withdrew in order to take part in various battles against him.

From the 3^rd of March 1822, he was promoted to the rank of chiliarch by the Ministry of War and he distinguished himself with his bravery in the battles of Dervenakia, Agios Sostis, and Agionori. When, following the death of Dramalı, Dramali’s deputy Deli Ahmet, with 5,000 cavalry and 400 infantry taken from the remains of the invading Turkish army, made to save himself by moving from Corinth towards Patra, Soliotis was commanded by the Council, which was installed in Tripoli, to make for Akrata, where other noted commanders had also gathered, in order to cut off Deli Ahmet.

When Soliotis arrived at Akrata, he found the commanders who were encamped there at loggerheads on account of old rivalries, and ready to come to blows. The intervention of Soliotis and the information that the Turks were approaching dissipated the civil conflict, and everyone heeded the timely warnings and launched an assault on the 5^th of January 1823 against the Turkish force as soon as it appeared. The Turks were utterly vanquished and, despite their hopeless attempts, were unable to open up a pathway through, but were forced to defend their position where they were, besieged all the more tightly by the Greeks, until the 12^th of February 1823. Then a group of Turkish ships under Yusuf Pasha sailed from Patra to relieve them. A fierce battle ensued, during which Soliotis distinguished himself particularly and was wounded in his right thigh. The battle resulted in a triumphant victory for the Greeks, with just 1,700 Turks escaping, among whom was Deli Ahmet; the rest were, for the most part, wiped out, and the remainder eventually surrendered to the Greeks after two weeks. On account of this action which distinguished him, Soliotis was promoted on the 5^th of August 1823 by the National Committee to Lieutenant General, and in the autumn of the same year he was called up and went to Athens to assist Gkouras at the head of a force of 400 men, with which he took part in the resistance to Omer Vryonis.

In October 1824 he was promoted to General and with this rank, he took part under the command of Theodoros Kolokotronis in the great battle of Trikorfa in July 1825. During this battle, however, the Greeks were defeated and were forced to break the siege of Tripoli, which actually remained from that point in the hands of the Turks under Ibrahim Pasha until 1828.

At the beginning of May in the following year (1826), when Ibrahim Pasha himself set out from Patra with a strong force of 3,000 regular and 4,000 irregular troops and proceeded into the interior of the Peloponnese, enslaving and laying waste to everything in his path, Soliotis, who was at that time in the Kloukinochoria, prepared to face the oncoming Turkish and Egyptian ranks. Having gathered as many fighting men as he could (among whom was his deaf brother Dimitrios, who was an excellent marksman), he took up a position along with Golfinos Petmezas in the well-known location of Kastraki, above Solos, in the foothills of Mt. Chelmos, in order to protect the roughly 2,000 women and children from the surrounding villages who had attempted to find refuge there in the snow-covered folds of Mt. Chelmos and avoid capture. At sunrise on the 5^th of May 1826, Ibrahim launched an assault against the Greeks at Kastraki. A determined battle ensued which lasted until the evening, during which the Greeks eventually retreated after the continual assaults of the Turks and Egyptians, which Ibrahim himself directed, but they succeeded in slowing down and thinning out the number of their attackers so as to give the majority of the women and children time to escape. Despite this, many women and children, and several of the men who were seeking refuge in Kastraki, threw themselves from the snow-covered, slippery slopes and perished. When eventually the Turks and Egyptians entered Kastraki, around 200 were taken prisoner by them, among whom was Soliotis’s own wife, along with his young son Nikitas and his sister, but Soliotis, through a last-minute counter-attack, managed to free his wife and son, while his sister he only managed to ransom from Egypt two years later for a large sum. During this fierce attack, the Turks and Egyptians, who withdrew that same evening, set fire to Soliotis’s two houses in Solos and seized the entirety of his movable property.

For his actions throughout the Revolution, Soliotis was praised continually by historians, who recognized that he was always present for battles against the enemy from the beginning until the end of the struggle.

After the foundation of the independent Greek State and the arrival of Otto, Soliotis was appointed officer of the Royal Phalanx and received the rank of Colonel. He died in September 1841, leaving behind his widow with six orphaned children, five boys and one girl.

In the old church of St. George in the village of St. Barabara, which neighbors Solos, Soliotis’s pew is still preserved, on which his full name is carved. His name is also borne by a street in Athens (by the church of St. Panteleimon), by another in Aigio, and by a boulevard in Kalavryta.

The seal of the Municipality of Akrata, from the foundation of the State until just a few years ago, bore as its insignia an image of the hero, while a large portrait of him hangs in the National Historical Museum in Athens.

Finally, a commemorative marble plaque has been placed by the Pan-Kalavrytan Society on the façade of his house in Solos, which still stands, and where he lived out his final days.¹

¹At its unveiling in 1967, a solemn ceremony took place at which very many inhabitants of the entire district of the Kloukinochoria were present en masse. During this ceremony a liturgy was held in memory of all those who fell in the Revolution, after which the actions of the protagonist were praised by the President of the Pan-Kalavrytan Society, General D. Panagopoulos, and other speakers, following whom the Kalavrytan poet Nikos Stasinopoulos recited an inspired poem addressed “To the Pyrgos [Fortress House] of Captain Soliotis.”