Laskarina Bouboulina
Laskarina Bouboulina | |
|---|---|
 19th century painting | |
| Allegiance |  Greece |
| Rank | Admiral |
Laskarina Bouboulina (Greek: Λασκαρίνα Μπουμπουλίνα) (May 11 1771 - May 22 1825) was a Greek heroine of the Greek War of Independence.
Early life
Bouboulina was born Laskarina Pinotsi, in a prison in Constantinople, where her mother, Skevo, was visiting Bouboulina's dying father, Hydriot captain Stavrianos Pinotsis, who had been imprisoned by the Ottoman Turks because of his participation in the Orlov Revolt, against the Ottoman rule. Skevo, daughter of the Hydriot dignitary, Kokkinis, travailed in the prison being exhausted and sentimentally charged, and gave birth to a girl, which was later baptized Laskarina in Constantinople by the sovereign of Mani, Mourtzinos. Her father died soon afterwards, and she with her mother returned to the island of their origin, Hydra.
When Bouboulina was four years old, her mother married Spetsiot Dimitrios Lazarou-Orlov and they moved to the island of Spetses. Lazarou-Orlov would become the girl's stepfather and encouraged her to take part in the family's naval activities as a child, something that was outside the norms of the socialization of a young girl at the time. As a result, she grew up with a love for the sea and loved listening to the stories of the sailors and their talk of freedom for the Greek nation, which had been suffering under the Ottoman occupation for more than three centuries. She was the unchallenged leader among her eight half-brothers and sisters, having a strong, untamed, almost stubborn character, a dark in colouring and with a regal stature young woman, who showed her courage and decisiveness from an early age. Bouboulina had learnt to read, which was not usual and prevented women from being self-actualized. Books written by enlightenment thinkers such as Friedrich Schiller and Voltaire reinforced her revolutionary ideas and reinforced the political ideals held by her family.
Pre-revolution years
Dimitrios Yiannouzas, a captain, was her first husband, to whom she was married at the age of seventeen, in 1788. Yiannouzas died in a sea battle in 1797, against Algerian pirates who were then raiding the coasts of Greece. Life was very cruel for her, as she married for a second time at the age of thirty to Dimitrios Bouboulis, a captain as well, who was also killed in a sea battle against Algerian pirates in 1811, between Malta and Spain. While Bouboulis was vanquishing the pirates, looking over his ship's gunwale the destroyed enemy, a bullet hit him on the forehead and left him dead.
As a result, Bouboulina was twice widowed and mother of seven children, but extremely rich from the fortune of ships, land and cash, inherited from both her husbands. She used the money to create a thriving merchant fleetand due to successful management and trading, she managed to increase that fortune, becoming partner in several Spetsiot vessels and building three of her own. Among these was the first and largest warship of the Greek War of Independence, "Agamemnon".
In 1816, the Ottoman state attempted to confiscate Bouboulina's property with the excuse that her second husband had taken part in the Russo-Turkish War, using his own vessels alongside the Russian fleet. For his service he been highly decorated, awarding the title of captain in the Russian navy and that of the honorary Russian citizen. Bouboulina sailed with her ship "Coriezos" to Constantinople, to meet the Russian ambassador Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov, a known philhellene, seeking for his protection in her effort to save her fortune. In recognition of Bouboulis' service to the Russian fleet and the fact that her ships were flying the Russian flag at the time, due to a merchant treaty between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, Stroganov sent her to Crimea in Russia, in order to protect her from imminent arrest. In addition to this, Alexander I of Russia gave her an estate for her use. Before she left for Crimea, she had managed to meet the mother of Sultan Mahmud II, Valide Sultan, who was extremely impressed by Bouboulina's character and personality, and convinced her son to issue a special declaration by which Bouboulina's fortune was saved. The latter after spending three months in Crimea, waiting for the crisis to defuse, left for Spetses not being under the threat of arrest anymore.
In 1818, during a subsequent trip to Constantinople, Bouboulina joined the Filiki Eteria, a secret organisation working to overthrow Ottoman rule over Greece, being the only woman who was allowed to be a member of it. On her return to Spetses, she began the preparations for the oncoming revolution, buying illegally arm and ammunitions from foreign ports, bringing them to Spetses in secrecy and hiding them in her home or other parts of the island. She sailed once again to Constantinople in 1819, where she met with Patriarch Gregory V and discussed the timing of the uprising.
In 1820, she completed the construction of her flagship, "Agamemnon", a corvette 33m long, armed with eighteen heavy cannons. As there were restrictions by the Ottoman state on the size and the armament of Greek owned vessels, Bouboulina was accused of building secretly a warship, given away by some Spetsiots. However, she bribed the Turkish official who went to inspect the vessel and also succeeded in having her accusers expelled from Spetses. She already had her own private army composed of Spetsiots and used most of her fortune to provide food and ammunition for the sailors and soldiers under her command.
War of Independence
On March 13 1821, Bouboulina raised her own revolutionary flag on Spetses, on the main mast of "Agamemnon" and was saluted with cannon fire. That flag was based on the flag of Komnenos dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, showing an eagle holding an anchor at one foot and a phoenix raising from the flames at the other. This symbolized the rebirth of the nation with the help of the naval forces. On April 3, Spetses was the last naval force to revolt, and along with Hydra and Psara, counted three hundred ships, playing a leading role in the war.
Bouboulina commanded a fleet of eight vessels, five of which were hers, to sail to Nafplio and began a naval blockade. Nafplio, armed with three hundred cannons and with its three fortresses Akronafplia, Bourtzi and Palamidi, was considered to be impregnable. Not only she gave courage to the land forces to keep on the siege of Nafplio with her fiery words and great enthusiasm but she fought herself. She also took part in the naval blockade and capture of Monemvasia, and the blockade of Pylos, both towns in Peloponnese, and brought supplies to Galaxidi, a coastal town in Phocis, upon the Corinthian Gulf. Bouboulina's son, Yiannis Yiannouzas, died in the battle at Argos, against superior numbers of Ottoman troops.
Few days before the siege of Tripolitsa, she arrived at the Greek camp outside the town where she was received with loud cheers and met the general Theodoros Kolokotronis. A mutual respect and friendship developed between them to such a degree that they became relatives later by the marriage of their children, Eleni Boubouli and Panos Kolokotronis. Bouboulina took part as an equal of the rest generals in their war meeting and decision making. On September 11, Tripoli fall to the Greek rebels, and Bouboulina kept a promise back in 1816 to Valide Sultan, that if ever a Turkish woman asked for help, she would not refuse. Indeed, she managed to save the harem of Hursit Pasha, risking her life, after the plea of Pasha's wife to save the women of harem and their children, when her own soldiers threatened to rape and murder them.
After the fall of Nafplio, on November 30 1822, she stayed there in a house given by the state as a reward for her services to the nation. But at the end of 1824, a civil war broke out, caused by opposing factions attempting to assume leadership despite the Ottoman danger. Panos Kolokotronis, Bouboulina's son-in-law, was assassinated, while Theodoros Kolokotronis was arrested and put into prison by his political opponents, at a monastery on Hydra. Bouboulina had strongly opposed the imprisonment of Kolokotronis, so she was considered by the then government to be dangerous for the state and was arrested and imprisoned. Finally, she was expelled to Spetses.
On February 12 1825, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt arrived almost undisturbed with 4,400 Turko-Egyptian troops to southern Peloponnese, threatening the Greek nation, which was once again in civil war. After that the government released Theodoros Kolokotronis and offered him the leadership of the army, but most parts of the Peloponnese were recaptured by the Ottomans.
Death
While Bouboulina was preparing to take part in the new fighting, death came unexpextedly. A feud between Bouboulina and Koutsis family began on Spetses, because of the elopement of a Koutsis daughter from Georgios Yiannouzas, Bouboulina's son. The father of the girl with some members of his family, went to Bouboulina's house seeking for their girl. The incident led to the death of Bouboulina on May 22 1825. While she was on the balcony of her house, arguing with Koutsis, someone shot her on the forehead. The killer was never identified. After her death she was given the honorary title of Admiral by the Greek state and became the first female Admiral in world naval history.
Legacy and culture
Descendants of Bouboulina gave the ship "Agamemnon" to the Greek state. It was renamed Spetses and became a Greek navy flagship. It was burned in the naval base of Poros by Andreas Miaoulis during the next Greek civil war in 1831. On the island of Spetses there is a museum dedicated to Bouboulina called "Bouboulina's Museum", which is housed in the 300 year-old mansion of Bouboulina's second husband, where her descendants still live. A statue of Bouboulina also stands in the harbor in Spetses. Various streets all over Greece and Cyprus were named after her, with most notable examples of: the Bouboulina's Street near the National Technical University of Athens (the Polytechnion) and the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, in central Athens, Bouboulina's Street in Piraeus, the largest port-city of Greece and Nicosia, capital of Cyprus. A movie titled Bouboulina was filmed in 1959, with Irene Papas portraying the heroine. In 1930 she was immortalized on the one drachma and she is also celebrated every September at the Armata festival on Spetses. Bouboulina was also referred to by several painters, filmmakers, playwirhgts and novelists including Henry Miller, Edward Frederic Benson, Jules Verne, Nikolai Gogol, Kostas Andritsos and Nikos Kazantzakis.
Modern perception
| "...nowhere and in no other time has any woman been found in the uprisings of nations, having such a character and able to induce the world’s admiration". |
| Historian Orlandos wrote of Bouboulina's services to the nation |
Nowadays Bouboulina is often recognized as the first female naval admiral in history. However the ways she is represented by modern historians vary. She is sometimes subject to several stereotypes and frequently her contribution to the war for the liberation of Greece is underestimated like in David Armine Howarth's The Greek Adventure: Lord Byron and other eccentrics in the War of Independence, Peter Paroulakis' The Greek War of Independence and David Brewer's The Greek War of Independence: The struggle for freedom from Ottoman oppresion and the birth of the modern Greek nation.
| "Against her, the unmanly were ashamed and the brave stepped back." |
| Historian Filimon describing Bouboulina's bravery |
In another work of David Brewer, Encyclopedia of Greece and the hellenic tradition, the author writes that Bouboulina is prominent in legend rather than reality, while the English traveller George Waddington who met her appears to have said: "I am brought to confess that this warlike lady, the Hippolyta of the nineteenth century, is old, unmannerly, ugly, fat, shapeless and avaricious'. In any case Bouboulina hardly deserves to have an entry to herself...". On the contrary, there are many accounts which acclaim her personality. Historian Anargyros Hatzianargyrou likens her to the Amazons of ancient Greece, while the historians Orlandos and Filimon admire her brave character.
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