Rigas Fereos Although it was hard to choose among our heroes, we have decided to present Rigas Fereos to you.

Origin Rigas Fereos was born in Velestino of Thessaly in 1757 and that is why he is also called Velestinlis.

This hero could not accept the Ottoman occupation of Greece at that time and as soon as he finished his studies, at the age of 20, he left Thessaly (in central Greece) and went to Mount Olympus to live as ‘amartolos’ (guerilla).

Later, he left Greece and lived in Konstantinoupoli (Istanbul) at first…

and then in Vienna, to ask Napoleon to help the enslaved Greeks.

From there, Rigas sent many parcels with declarations and books in favor of resistance so that he could encourage the Greeks to rebel against the Ottoman Sultan..

While traveling to Venice in another attempt to meet Napoleon, Fereos was betrayed and was arrested at Trieste by the Austrian authorities. He was handed over to the Ottoman governor at Belgrade where he was imprisoned and tortured.

From Belgrade, he was to be sent to Constantinople to be sentenced by the Ottoman sultan. While in transit, he was strangled on the night of 13 June His body was thrown into the Danube River This is the tower where Rigas was tortured and strangled.

Rigas' death didn't end his influence on the Greeks and other leaders and finally led into the Greek revolution, beginning the Greek War of Independence in 1821.

His work He wrote enthusiastic poems and books about the Greek history and many became widely popular. The most famous (which he often sang in public) is the Thourios in which he wrote…

“It's better to have an hour as a free man than forty years as a slave." In Greek: «Ως πότε παλικάρια να ζούμε στα στενά…. Καλλιώναι μίας ώρας ελεύθερη ζωή παρά σαράντα χρόνια σκλαβιά και φυλακή»…

He urged the Greeks to leave the Turkish- occupied towns for the mountains, where they might experience more freedom.

A Political Constitution for a Balkan Republic

Rigas’ intention was to revolutionize the Ottoman Empire, through the wide distribution of revolutionary literature, such as the New Political Constitution.

Rigas’ new political order to rise from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire was set out in his Political Constitution as a multinational state, the «Balkan Republic".

In this Republic, that included all the Balkans, there would be equality for all, and Greek would be the language

He published The Charta, a detailed map of Balkan Peninsula, which included all Turks, Greeks, Romanians, Albanians, Bosnians, Serbians and Montenegrins of the Balkans in a multicultural state…

…projecting his pioneering vision for a peaceful, free and democratic Balkan confederation where all religions and nationalities would have an equal place.

With his death, the vision of the Republic came to an end. However, Rigas Fereos became a powerful symbol for the future generations of Greece and is considered the forerunner of the Greek War of Independence.

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