The Dramatic events – Night of April 10, 1826 (Palm Sunday)
With food gone and no reinforcements in sight, the defenders decided on a desperate mass breakout.
- The plan was to escape under cover of night in three separate groups.
- They built makeshift bridges over the flooded marshes and waited for moonlight to fade.
- Armed with swords, muskets, and hope, soldiers, women, and children joined together in a final act of defiance.
- But a traitor betrayed the plan.The Ottomans were waiting.
The Massacre
As the gates opened, a massive ambush began.
- Cannons and musket fire tore into the crowd.
- Many were slaughtered at the walls.
- Thousands were hunted in the fields and marshes, or drowned trying to flee.
- The few who managed to escape scattered into the mountains or reached safety by boat.
Those who stayed behind, including the wounded and some women and children, faced mass execution or were sold into slavery. Many women, rather than be captured, killed themselves or their children, throwing them into wells or blowing up powder stores—one such explosion at the Kastro (castle) killed hundreds of both Greeks and Ottomans.
Survival Against Brutality
Survival came at great cost. But some did make it.
- Small bands escaped through swamps, carrying babies and wounded through thick mud and reeds.
- Villagers and klephts (Greek guerrilla fighters) gave refuge to some survivors.
- A few managed to reach ships that had slipped through Ottoman naval lines.
- Women disguised as men, or hid in abandoned homes or caves.
The trauma was unimaginable. Yet the spirit remained unbroken. The Exodus of Missolonghi became a powerful symbol in Greece and across Europe of heroic resistance and martyrdom. It inspired:
- Lord Byron, who died in Missolonghi a year earlier, to become a symbol of Philhellenism.
- Painters like Eugène Delacroix, who depicted the suffering in works like Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi.
- The modern Greek anthem of resilience and freedom.