One of the most prominent military leaders of the '21 Revolution. He fell victim to the civil strife during the Struggle and was killed by a Greek hand.
Odysseus Androutsos was born in Ithaca in 1788 and was the only son of the famous Arvanite charioteer of Roumeli Andreas Verousis or Captain Androutsos and Androutsos and Androutsos' wife, Andrei Charlabas, daughter of a Prefect of Preveza. His mother had fled to the island of Odysseus to escape the persecution of the Turks, because his father had followed the seaman Lambros Katsonis in his adventures around the Aegean. He was baptized there in 1792 by Katsonis' wife, Maroudia, who had also sought asylum on the island for the same reason. In honour of the Homeric hero, he was given the name Odysseus. He himself, however, considered his homeland to be his father's homeland, the Livanates of Lokrida.
When Ali Pasha learned that his friend Captain Androutsos, who had meanwhile been beheaded by the Turks in 1797, had left a son, he took him to his court in Ioannina, which was then a great military school, where several Greek fighters of the 21st century studied. It was in this environment that little Odysseus grew up. There he learned his first letters and to speak Italian and Arvanian. His physical strength was proverbial and countless feats are recounted. One of his biographers writes that he "jumped like a deer, ran like a horse and rode like a centaur."
In 1816 Ali Pasha sent him as a charioteer to Livadia, after first marrying him to Eleni Kareli.[/B] He stayed there until the eve of 1821. In October 1820, after a dispute with the local rulers, he left and his place was taken by Athanasios Diakos. From 1818 he was a member of the Society of Friends and an ardent supporter of the Struggle.
As soon as the Revolution broke out he was immediately on the front lines of the Struggle and undertook to stir up the Greeks of Eastern Rumeli. On May 8, 1821, he and 117 other warriors were locked up at the Hani of Gravia and gave the Struggle one of its most glorious battles, which established him as the military leader of Rumeli. Androutsos' victory at Gravia saved the revolution from certain danger, as Omer Vryonis with 8,000 men marched inexorably towards the rebellious Peloponnese.
In 1822 he arrived in Athens and took command of the Acropolis castle, with Yannis Gouras as fortress commander. He carried out various fortification works on the Acropolis and secured it with water, which it lacked. In the meantime, new enemy bodies flooded Rumeli. And because Odysseus did not have enough forces to resist, he was forced to capitulate with them. It was the so-called "caps" (verbal agreements), a ploy to buy time, but it was misunderstood by his enemies (Kochabasides of Eastern Rumelia and Ioannis Kolettis), who did not like him because of his great influence on the people.
Androutsos, angered by the behaviour of the politicians, resigned and the government sent Noutsos and Palaska to replace him. Suspecting that the two government envoys are coming to kill him, he loses his temper and with his acquiescence his men kill them. Kolettis puts a bounty on his head for 5,000 groats and the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, Bishop Joseph of Andrus, excommunicates him. However, the descent of Dramalis forces the government to revoke the bounty and excommunication of Androutsos, who takes action again. He does not succeed in preventing the Ottoman warlord's descent into the Peloponnese, but he does not allow convoys of supplies and reinforcements for his army to pass through.
After the destruction of Dramalis, Androutsos returned to Athens and founded two schools in Athens and invited Korais from Europe and Vamba from Cephalonia to come and teach, without being listened to. Soon, new military operations caused him to leave Athens for Eastern Rumeli. In November 1822 he was defeated by Kiose Mehmet at Dadi and almost captured, and in July 1823 he stopped the campaign of Yusuf Perkovtsali Pasha in Boeotia.
His heroism, his progressive spirit and his Homeric name were the reason why all the European philhellenes who descended on revolutionary Greece wanted to know him.
His heroism, his progressive spirit and his Homeric name were the reason why all the European philhellenes who came to revolutionary Greece wanted to know him. With many of them he collaborated in various public works, and Lord Byron's friend, the Englishman Edward Trelawney, made him his son-in-law, giving him his half-sister Tarsitsa.
His quarrel and his marginalization by his rivals forced the stubborn and hot-tempered warlord to take his men and come to Boeotia at the beginning of 1825. There he made new "caps" with the Turks in order to blackmail the government, but without betraying the revolution. His enemies found another opportunity to label his act anti-national and himself a traitor. The government sent against him a strong military force, led by his old friend Yannis Gouras, who had long been his personal enemy.
Odysseus, systematically avoiding any engagement with the government forces in order to avoid spilling precious fraternal blood, withdrew to the Lebanese. After some minor skirmishes in early April he surrendered to Gouras (7 April 1825), with the express promise that he would send him to the Peloponnese to be tried by the Administration.
Gouras, however, did not keep his promise. He imprisoned him in Athens, on the Acropolis. Because, in the meantime, various fighters, first among them Karaiskakis, had risen up against the unjust mistreatment of Androutsos and because he demanded that he be put on trial as soon as possible, Gouras ordered him to be put to death on 5 June 1825.
To cover up their crime they threw his corpse on the cobblestones of the Church of Victory and spread the word that the prisoner tried to escape and was killed.
They temporarily buried him in the church of Sotiras in Rizokastro. The truth was not long in coming out and history restored him morally, placing him among the leading heroes of the Greek Revolution. But the state also vindicated him. In 1865, his remains were transferred with great solemnity and military honours to the First Cemetery of Athens, where his grave is today.
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