On Sunday 13 April 2025, the Minister of National Defence Nikos Dendias, represented the Prime Minister in the celebrations for the commemoration of the 199th Anniversary of the Heroic Sortie of the Free Besieged, in the Sacred Town of Missolonghi, in the presence of the President of the Republic, Konstantinos Tasoulas.
The Minister was accompanied by the Chief/HAGS, Lieutenant General Georgios Kostidis.
The celebrations were also attended by Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Security, Kostas Karagounis, representatives of Parliament, Parties, Regional and Local Government, the Armed Forces, the Security Forces, entities, and diplomatic representatives.
Mr. Dendias attended the Doxology in the Metropolitan Church of St. Spyridon, officiated by His Eminence the Metropolitan of Aetolia and Acarnania Mr. Damaskinos.
Subsequently, in the Garden of Heroes, the Minister of National Defence attended the memorial service in Honour of the Immortal Dead, the wreath laying by the President of the Republic Konstantinos Tasoulas at the Tomb of Heroes, and awarded prizes to the winners of the 77th “SACRIFICE RUNNING RACE”.
In his address during the ceremony, the Minister of National Defence stated:
President of the Hellenic Republic,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a supreme honour for me to attend the 199th Anniversary of the Sortie in the Sacred Town of Missolonghi, not only as representative of the Government, but as a simple citizen.
Dionysius Solomos, with his poetic genius, attributed the verbally inconsistent, yet deeply real description of “Free Besieged” to the Defenders of Missolonghi. This description carried them through the gates of national memory and truth. For truth in Greek is the negation of lethe, forgetfulness. It is the preservation of memory, in the present and future.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The “Sortie of Missolonghi” is not solely honoured as a simple important historic event. Not solely as what mainly influenced Philhellenism. We cannot forget the Philhellenes who fought here.
Yet, this event has a wider, much wider importance. It concerns the radical faith in human liberty.
The straight, simple, united answer the starving besieged gave to the English mediation promising medicine, supplies and a pardon in exchange for surrender, is a legacy to dignity: “We are under command, which we obey following orders, having a duty to fight and die”.
The Free Besieged paid the ultimate price consciously and without complaint. As a price for entering the eternity of the Hellenic nation’s collective memory “wearing a laurel wreath”.
With a total different life trajectory, Lord Byron made the same choice, especially through his death in Missolonghi. One of the greatest poets ever, and perhaps the main representative of Romanticism.
“The land of honourable Death is here”, he declares in his poem “On this day I complete my Thirty Sixth Year”, prophetically, on 22 January 1824, a few months prior to his death on 19 April 1824. He never entered his 37th year.
He died here, amidst Markos’ dust, where the Great soul of Byron left his body, as Solomos writes in the first Canto of the Free Besieged.
President,
I am addressing young Greeks. It is primarily their opinion and knowledge which matter for the country’s future. I can completely understand the weariness, even disgust, which the younger generation feels from the empty, vain panegyrics they have been hearing since their school years. I can completely understand the demystification of all that is happening in Greek society. Yet I warmly entreat young Greeks to look beyond the mists of today. I entreat them to see with the eyes of their souls, since only thus is what Elytis describes as “My Distant Land and Ever-fresh Rose” visible.
I entreat them to explore their genetic legacy, to interact with their Christian and Hellenic past, to love it, and passionately safeguard it, so that the Greek youth discover the example the Free Besieged handed down.
The Great Dead speak, and one can listen if one wants, said Konstantinos Tsatsos in my homeland, Corfu, talking, this time of another one of the “saints” of Hellenism, Ioannis Kapodistrias.
The fighters here in Missolonghi never received any state subsidies. Besides, there was no state. They were Greek citizens before the creation of a Greek state. Most were uneducated, sick, wounded, fearful, starving, immiserated all, they came before a great existential choice.
They chose calmly and deliberately. They chose to shed their blood, and what is even harder, their loved ones’. They chose a Revolution, which was breathing its last. They chose a country, which existed only in their soul. They chose a national narrative in formation, which existed only in their heart. They chose to sacrifice everything for a future country, without the slightest chance of gaining anything.
So, the uneducated, sick, injured, immiserated, fearful, and starving, became Humans with a Capital H. From “Άνω Θρώσκω”, which means to look upwards. They became Hellenes with a capital H. Before new Hellas even came into existence.
They demonstrated that the country can be created and survives only through a selfless blood offering. Like the lambs of modern Hellenism, since their sacrifice provoked the intervention at Navarino, which saved the Revolution.
The ’21 Revolution, at the same time as bravery and sacrifice, contains cases of pettiness, corruption, civil conflict, and shameful stories. Greek history contains extreme contrasts. Heights and depths. National virtue and national betrayal.
National contribution and extreme corruption. Through the timeless extreme contrasts, the memory of the Free besieged rises skywards like a Doric column, to express a potentially nobler destination for Greeks.
For this reason “The Grand Memorial Service of these Greeks, these Free Besieged”, as Georgios Vlachos characteristically wrote in Kathimerini on 9 April 1933, will always find true, healthy Greeks, heirs of the national traditions, who will bow to their Memory, regardless of circumstances.
No matter how many years go by, the representatives of Greece will come here with laurel leaves, those which are gathered from a free land, by grateful Greek souls, to lay them here, on the anniversary of the Sortie; on the dust which was watered by the noblest blood which ever flowed in Greek arteries, on the dust glorified by the most terrible sacrifice, on the dust blessed by the most ideal virtue, on the dust of the Bishops Iosif and Porphyrios, on the dust of Razis, Kitsos Tzavellas, and Markos Botsaris. On the dust of Lord Byron, the Free besieged, and the Sacred Town of Missolonghi.
Thank you”.