Vasos Mavrovouniotis (Vasa Brajević) /Васо Брајевић) was one of the most characteristic figures of the period he lived. The fugitive of Montenegro, and then the overseer of a tsiflika prison and a bandit in the province of Aidinium, an inmate of the prisons of Athens and a bairaktar in the army of the Sublime Gate, he managed to acclimatize in the best way to the country he chose as his new homeland and to become a leading military and political figure both during the years of the Struggle and during the first period of the establishment of the Hellenic Kingdom.
Along with the arm of Nikolaos Kriezotis were the strongest military (but also extra-institutional political) actors, as the head of a multi-branched and numerous client system that extended horizontally and vertically in the wider area of eastern Sterea. Vassos belongs to that small group of professional armed men who emerged from the Struggle and who, without belonging to the old Armatolian firehouses, climbed up, acting with skill, boldness and prudence, offering their services to the newly formed revolutionary Greek administration and, subsequently, to the newly formed Greek kingdom.
From Montenegro to Greece
He was born in 1797 in the province of Bjelopavliči in the region of Brda (Highlands) in today's eastern Montenegro. In 1817 he left his birthplace together with members of his family in search of a better fortune, at a time when famine and the inability of Vladika Petar I to impose order resulted in the escalation of conflicts between the various clans and fatherlands in surrounding area.
The same year he arrived in Smyrna, an important port and commercial center of Egialet of Aidinius. The area was, from the end of the 18th th century, an attractive destination for Christian refugees from many Balkan Ottoman provinces, due to the tolerant attitude of the powerful Agianid family Karaosmanoglou. Members of the family that inherited the gialeti owned vast tracts of land, and had further increased their wealth as tax collectors and through various economic activities.
In Aidini, Vassos met the Euboean Nikolas Kriezotis, later general of the Agon, who had left his native country at the age of 18, in 1803, and worked "as a herdsman, i.e. manager of a large flock" ” of Karaosmanoglou. The Montenegrin refugee was recruited, through Kriezotis, into a similar service, and soon after the two men were closely bound by oaths of brotherhood – a relationship that lasted throughout their lives.
In 1820, Vassos left the province of Aidini and went to Athens. Athanasios N. Chrysologis, author of a short biography of Vasos, notes that his reason for leaving was his desire to participate in the impending Greek Revolution. However, the account of John Antony Petropulos, a particularly reliable historian, that Vasus began his career as a robber in Asia Minor, coupled with the fact that he was imprisoned in Athens, after a Muslim of Smyrna sued him for a theft he had committed there, argue that the possible reason for his departure was to avoid the consequences of an illegal act.
During that time, the defection of Ali Pasha Tepelenlis of Ioannina also took place, which caused the immediate reaction of the High Gate, which ordered the gathering of troops to deal with the Albanian toparch. The recruitment of armed men from the provinces of the Eastern Continent was entrusted to the commander (muteselim ) of Athens Pehlivan Baba Pasha, a converted Christian of Bulgarian origin with a successful record in suppressing Christian uprisings in Macedonia. Pehlivan Pasha instructed the prefects of the city to gather 120 men for his army. Vassos took advantage of the opportunity and exchanged his prison sentence for joining Pehlivan Pasha's army, with the rank of ensign (bairaktar ) –which suggests familiarity with weapons and indirectly supports Petropulos's information about armed predatory activity of Vasus during the period of his stay in Asia Minor. Moreover, his joining the Ottoman army further weakens the view that Vasos returned from Asia Minor to join the impending revolution.
However, his tenure in the Ottoman army, about which there is no information, was short. We do not know if he participated in battles against the forces of the Alipasalides , not even if he reached Ioannina. What is certain is that at some point, unknown for what reasons or under what circumstances, he left the army, since in the summer of 1821 and while the operations of the forces of the High Gate against Tepelenlis were in full swing, Vassos appears in Evia where he participates in the military conflicts of the region through the rebel lines, leading a small armed group of slaves armed.
With the outbreak of the Revolution, Vassos took a leading part in the Struggle, taking part as a captain in a total of 36 battles and campaigns, managing to rise to the highest rank of the revolutionary military hierarchy (pentacosiarch (1822), centurion (1822), general (1824) .
In the civil strife of the period he sided with the Governmentists of the Kountouriotis faction, as well as the vast majority of the heterochthonous chieftains. Politically, he was part of the French Party of Ioannis Kolettis, but maintained an independence of movements. Together with general Nikolaos Krieziotis and the politicians Drosos Mansolas and Adam Doukas, they had formed a special military-political group within the French Party, which ruled from 1826 onwards in the wider region of Eastern Continent.
A fictional wedding
Vassos Mavrovouniotis married Elegko, nee Ioannitis, ex-wife of the prefect of Kea, Michael George Pagalou, in a fictional way, The ships that carried the bodies of the Greeks during a pirate raid on the coasts of Lebanon and Cyprus together with Nikolaos Kriezotis and Hatzimichalis-Daliani. The ships with the bodies of the three chieftains docked at Kea and the chieftains were invited to the house of Pangalus. There Vassos met the then seventeen-year-old pregnant Elegko, kidnapped her of her own free will, installed her in the tower of the friend of the warlord Giannoulis Dimitrios in Andros and married her when he returned from Lebanon and Cyprus. With Elegko, a literate woman, with liberal views, and with unusual physical and intellectual gifts, he had four boys:general Alexandros Vassos (1831–1913), the better known general Timoleon Vassos (1836–1829), commander of the expeditionary force in Crete in 1897, Konstantinos who died in infancy (1832–1836) and George (1833–) who also died at a young age. He had also taken over the guardianship of Rodoessa (1826–), daughter of Elekkos from her first marriage. Their marriage broke up in 1839 through the fault of Elekkos. Vassos married for the second time the hydra Bilio, nee N. Oikonomou, with whom he had a daughter, Petra.
Antipodistrian and Othonist
During the Kapodistrian period, Mavrovouniotis managed - despite the strong reaction of his political and military opponents - to join the new semi-regular military formations of the Chiliarchies taking command of the 6th Cavalry and then in the Headquarters , refusing to join the next Military Organization of the Light Battalions . As the head of the Chiliarchy, he starred in the operations for the recapture of the Eastern Continent and distinguished himself in the battle of Martinos (January 29, 1829), which was crucial for the course of the campaign. Politically, in the first year (1828) he initially maintained a friendly attitude towards the regime. But then he opposed the changes that the governor wanted to impose through his brother plenipotentiary of Sterea Hellas Augustinou Kapodistrias (January 1829) and went to the systemic opposition. However, after the assassination of Kapodistrias (September 27, 1831) he openly expressed himself against the government front and starred as the military leader of the Constitutional in the subsequent civil conflicts until the arrival of King Otho.
The Othonian years – an extremely difficult period for most of the unruly warriors of the Struggle – were generous and particularly favorable for the Montenegrin military.
Vassos was one of the relatively few miscreants who managed to join the new formations of the royal army, thus laying the foundations for a new, and again successful, career. In 1833, he was appointed a member of the "examination committee on training and conduct of disorderly bodies (a position that enhanced his prestige since it allowed him to serve customers of) and the following year (1834) he was appointed colonel-inspector of Attica and Boeotia, In 1836 he assumed the duties of the head of the Militia Corps of Fthiotida and in 1843 he was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed Chief of the Militia of Locris.
As the head of the National Guard, he successfully pursued the bandits endemic to the Greek-Ottoman border, maintaining order in the area and guarding the borders. Finally, in 1846 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Militia Corps and royal adjutant. Politically, he was a loyal Othonist and maintained close relations with the Palace. He did not participate in the conspiracy that resulted in the September 3rd Revolution and initially refused to swear allegiance to the new regime. In fact, he was preparing to move his battalions to the capital to defend Otho and was convinced only after a personal order from the king; and of course after receiving the necessary guarantees from the Septemberists to ensure his position in the army.
He died on June 9, 1847, aged 50, of acute pneumonia. The devastated Queen Amalia wrote to her father:"Poor Vassos is dead. Really big loss for us. Loyal, brave, dedicated. His motto was "God and the King." [...] I have never seen such a funeral, thousands followed him. The old soldiers were all deeply moved. Kolettis cried, they say, like a child ».
*Stefanos Papageorgiou is Emeritus Professor of Modern Greek History at the Department of Political Science and History.