Today, Greece celebrates its National Independence Day.

On this day, 205 years ago, on March 25, 1821, they say the Greek Revolution against the Ottoman Empire began. And I say “they say” because the Revolution had started a few days earlier. It is just that Greeks want to tie everything to religion, so they chose March 25, which coincides with the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary.

So at Agia Lavra, according to the myth, because Greeks have a particular weakness for national myths, the war leaders gathered and a priest, with one small detail off to the side, that the Church and the Patriarchate were not exactly looking kindly on the Revolution, but that ruins the narrative so we skip over it, blessed the weapons and with the slogan “Freedom or Death”, whoever came up with it wrote fucking great slogans, the struggle began that led to the creation of the Greek state. Some call it the modern Greek state, only for there to be a modern one, there should probably have been an older one too.

Of course, we did not get there immediately. Nine years of struggle passed in between, and during that time we also managed to squeeze in a small civil war, because Greeks without internal fighting are like a festival without clarinets, with many battles and a lot of blood until we reached the result.

During the struggle, the Greeks also established the first democratic constitutions, at Epidaurus, Astros, and Troezen, creating the First Hellenic Republic. Then came the intervention of the Great Powers, because nothing in the Balkans is ever completed without a foreign hand in it, and with the London Protocol in 1830 Greece was recognized as a fully independent state, initially including the Peloponnese, Central Greece, and the Cyclades.

The first governor appointed was Ioannis Kapodistrias, who, as we learned from a film a few months ago, spoke directly with the Virgin Mary and received advice from her. Only it seems the Virgin Mary did not tell him everything, and forgot to inform him that he would be assassinated in 1832. But the director of the film probably knows these things better.

So Greece went from a Kingdom to a Monarchy, an insignificant detail. The really big mistake was something else. After the founding of the state, the Greeks went after the armatoles(rebels), with the result that almost no hero of the Revolution had a good ending, and they put the klephts(thieves) in government. And ever since then, more or less, those are the people running the country.

In short, many happy returns, Greece. And next year, with fewer myths, more memory, and, if possible, slightly better managers.