Prisoners of War
Both sides routinely slaughtered prisoners of war, despite guarantees. The Turks would typically offer captured Greeks the option of conversion to Islam or death(, and most Greeks chose the latter being deeply attached to their religion. Turkish prisoners of war were typically at the mercy of the commanders that captured them, there exist examples of massacres of prisoners after they were promised guarantees of safety, such as the garrison of Kalamata, and of remarkably humane treatment such as the Turkish garrison of the Acropolis of Athens which was saved by Karaiskakis(.
The most famous Greek prisoner of war who was killed by the Turks was Athanasios Diakos. After a fierce battle, the severely wounded Diakos was taken before Omer Vryonis, a Turkish commander, who offered to make him an officer in the Ottoman army if he converted from Christianity to Islam(. Diakos refused the offer, replying "I was born a Greek, I shall die a Greek" ("Εγώ Γραικός γεννήθηκα, Γραικός θε' να πεθάνω"). The next day, he was impaled.
Read more about this topic: Massacres During The Greek Revolution
Famous quotes containing the words prisoners of, prisoners and/or war:
“We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought for the morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)