Remembering the Alamo

Our recent truncated travels to the Greek island of Crete brought unexpected thoughts of Texas. Let me explain.

As you may recall from the history you were taught in middle school or caught from “The Wonderful World of Disney,” Texas fought a war of independence from Mexico. The most memorable battle was the 13-day siege of the 18th Century Franciscan Mission at San Antonio in 1836. More than 200 severely outnumbered Texans died along with fighters from the American frontier who were sympathetic to the Texans’ cause; but that massacre at what was to be called the Alamo became celebrated for the heroism and self-sacrifice of its defenders and as a turning point of the Texas Revolution.

Well, it seems Greece has an “Alamo” of its own.

Greece declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821 but, four decades later, and far from the country’s capital, folks on the island of Crete were still fighting the Turks; and the “Arkadi Tragedy” of 1866 is its most celebrated battle. The 13th Century Arkadi Monastery became a symbol of heroism and self-sacrifice after fewer than 300 Cretan fighters and resident monks battled more than 15,000 invading Turks. When the outcome became certain, the Cretan fighters purposefully blew up their wine cellar which held its remaining weapons, as well as its martyrs: most of the decimated number of defenders and hundreds of the monastery’s remaining residents. The explosion also killed 1,500 Ottoman soldiers. Those Cretans who had not died or escaped were soon executed by the later arriving enemy forces.

By many accounts, this “holocaust,” as it was later termed by historians, had the effect of becoming the turning point in this nearly final of several Cretan revolts under Ottoman rule, although another but less bloody conflict in 1878 was required to allow Crete to savor the independence that the rest of the Greek nation enjoyed.

The Monastery at Arkadi is now both a holy and historical site, important to both the Greek church and Greek nation. As we toured this well preserved site it was not lost on me that the battle on Crete occurred within just 30 years of the battle at the Alamo in Texas and that both Crete and Texas became late additions to their respective nations as we know them now.

We think of Greece as an ancient and the US as a mere adolescent, when actually the nations were going through similar growing pains at almost the same time. In fact, America’s most traumatic growing pain — its Civil War — ended just months before the tragic siege at Arkadi.

JER