The war between Greece’s Maniates and the army of Bavarians under King Otto is one of the lesser-known episodes of the first years of the modern Greek State.
It was May 1832 when Nafplio, the capital of the newly established Greek state, welcomed with honors the first king, the 17-year-old Prince Otto of Bavaria, accompanied by his three regents.
Only months before, Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first governor of Greece after the liberation from the Ottomans, had been assassinated in the city by two prominent Maniates of the Mavromichalis family.
After Kapodistrias’ assassination, the three Great Powers (Britain, France and Russia) decided that Greece should be a monarchy, ruled by a royal who should not be British, French or Russian. The best choice for them was Prince Otto, son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria who was a philhellene.
The new monarch was only 17 years old, and the regency took power temporarily. It was a three-member administrative body comprised of three Bavarian officials—Josef Ludwig von Armansperg, Georg Ludwig von Maurer and Carl Wilhelm von Heideck—that would govern Greece until the Bavarian Prince came of age, that is, when he would turn 20.
The king arrived with the regency and an army of 3,500 Bavarians. The regency’s first concern was to strengthen central authority, attempting to transplant their country’s legal system to Greece. The regency’s attempt to establish a single centralized state would inevitably bring it into conflict with the people of Mani, who had no intention of giving up their autonomy and privileges.
The Maniates considered it unthinkable that the Bavarians would deprive them of what the Sultan had failed to during Ottoman rule. When Kapodistrias had tried to do the same, the commanding Mavromichalis family murdered him. In their eyes, the regency seemed much weaker than the Ottoman conquerors.
The Bavarians first came into conflict with Mani when they decided to disarm its towers. These buildings were fortified residences, equipped with small-caliber cannons and other firearms, which provided protection from attacks by rival families and local enemies. In 1834, there were approximately 800 such towers in Mani. The Regency knew that their disarmament would be a dangerous undertaking, which could take on uncontrollable proportions.
The difficult mission was undertaken by Captain Maximilian Feder. In February 1834 the Bavarian officer arrived in Mani, having with him a large amount of money and many soldiers. His plan was simple: If he could not achieve his goal by threat of violence, he would use a pay-off.
Initially, it seemed that Feder was gaining control of the situation. Some Mani residents, having previously received compensation, agreed to disarm their towers in order to use them as state buildings. At the same time, several residents of Areopolis (still known as Tsimova/Τσίμοβα at this date) and Gytheio promised Feder that they would obey the orders of the regency within a short period of time.
However, there were other factors that came into play which finally broke the fragile agreement.
Friction between the Bavarian regency and the Greek people had started earlier. In order to save funds and boost the public treasury, the Regency shut down over 300 monasteries and nationalized their real estate, without, however, transferring it to poor farmers, leaving them in the same state of poverty.
The hero of the Greek War of Independence Theodoros Kolokotronis was brought to trial for high treason for openly expressing his dissatisfaction with the regency for its policies and the treatment of the Church property. For the Maniates, all of these developments were connected. They believed that the Bavarian army in Greece, the closures of the monasteries, the Roman Catholicism of the Bavarians, the trial of Kolokotronis, and the disarmament of the towers were parts of a broader plan to abolish Orthodoxy and hegemonize the Greek people.
The Maniates rebelled. The uprising was led by the Messinian chieftain Mitropetrovas (Mitros Petrovas), a well-known follower and friend of Kolokotronis, which indicates some connection between the uprising and the trial of the 1821 Revolution hero. The riots began on Easter Tuesday, April 24, 1834, when about 200 armed men gathered in the main square of Areopolis in Mani, demanding that the disarmament of the towers be stopped. The demonstrations soon spread throughout Mani, with men and women participating in the uprising.
In May 1834, two companies of Bavarian soldiers were sent to Mani to suppress the uprising. The inhabitants of the rebellious area pretended to comply and welcomed the government forces in a friendly manner. The Bavarians, confident that they were in control of the situation, camped in Areopolis. The next day, however, they were surprised by 400 armed Maniates, who captured the men of both companies.
The Maniates released the captured soldiers soon after, except for 36 of them who had stubbornly refused to surrender. They were held captive in terrible conditions. Thirteen of them died in captivity from mistreatment, while the rest were released much later.
After the fiasco of Areopolis, the Bavarian regency realized the seriousness of the situation in that part of Greece, and in June 1834 sent four Bavarian battalions to Mani. The government forces initially did not encounter any significant resistance and advanced as far as the Passavas Strait. There, however, they met with total disaster, when they were subjected to a massive attack by the Maniates.
The Bavarian troops suffered heavy losses and were forced to abandon the Laconia region in humiliation. The Maniates took many prisoners and used them as servants for heavy manual labor and chores. Some even demanded a ransom from the government in order to release the soldiers they were holding captive.
The regency decided to escalate and at the end of June 2,500 Bavarian soldiers, a cavalry troop of the gendarmerie, two mountain artillery batteries and a small number of Greek infantry units invaded Mani. Once there, they were reinforced by 500 armed locals, who joined the army of the regency. The force was commanded by the Bavarian general Christian Schmalz. His first target was the Petrovouni fortress, near the Passava Straits.
However, the regency attack ended in failure. Schmalz’s forces were repelled and his men eventually retreated, having suffered heavy losses. In the course of the campaign, Schmalz was repeatedly defeated by the Maniates, paying dearly for his lack of knowledge of the terrain in which he had been called upon to fight. Suppression of the rebellion now seemed impossible.
With its military operations at a standstill, the regency was forced to start negotiations with the Maniates. The powerful families of the Tzanetakis and Mavromichalis used their influence to facilitate talks between the government and their rebellious fellow countrymen. The negotiations were episodic and were interrupted several times by new uprisings by certain Mani families.
Tempers eventually calmed down and the talks continued smoothly with the sending of reinforcements for Schmalz’s government troops. The government made assurances that it would respect the Orthodoxy and autonomy of the Mani, who would enlist in their own units, commanded by the heads of the most important families. A meager compensation for all this was the partial disarmament of certain towers.
The Mani rebellion was a serious blow to the prestige of the regency. The myth of the invincibility of the Bavarian troops was definitively dispelled. At the same time, it became clear that rebellion was an effective way of demanding concessions from the Bavarian King of Greece. An example was thus set that other regions would follow, resulting in other local revolts during Otto’s reign.
