The Sun.
London, England, 1866-11-12 00:00:00

A Captivity with Greek Brigands.

Mr. Soteropoulos, late Minister of Finance at
Athens, has written the following account of his
detention by Greek brigands. The candid simplicity
with which it reveals the moral feelings of the writer
and the political views of the brigands renders all
comment superfluous. It is dated Oct. 25, 1866 :
" Since Greece became independent I am the first
person in this or the neighbouring departments who
has been carried off by brigands. I hope I may be
the last. I was taken sitting at the door of my
country house, and detained captive 36 days.
During this time I passed the nights in the open air
with no other covering than a woollen cloak to pro-
tect me from the cold and rain ; and I remained
frequently all day in irrigated fields of maize, ex-
posed to the fierce rays of the sun, deprived of ne-
cessary nourishment, and often of water to allay
my thirst. I was not released until the brigands
received 60,000 drachmas in gold as my ransom and
after I had expended 10,000 drachmas more in con-
sequence of the high price of gold, the necessity of
sending several messengers on foot and on horse-
back to different places, and the payment of 5,000
drachmas of which 1 was plundered by men without
conscience, while my relations were running here
and there with my ransom pursued at times by the
Government authorities, and at times by bands of
criminals who followed them to murder them and
get possession of the ransom money, my relations
being unable to come in contact with the men
charged to receive my ransom, on account of the
measures adopted by the Government authorities.
" In the obscurity of the night on which I was
taken prisoner I was unable to observe the num-
ber of the brigands who entered my property.
But at the first halt we made, about twenty
minutes from Kyparisia, before the building of
the Panegyristria, I observed that I was escorted
by five brigands, two of whom, disgusting from the
filth of their clothes, did not conceal themselves,
telling me (and I think they did not deceive me)
that they belonged to the band of Lingos, that they
had separated from it, and proposed to join the
band of Kitzos, in Attica, that the name of one was
Mitzos Laphasanos and of the other Evthemios.
This last appeared from his accent to belong to the
class of shepherd-vlacks. The other three, who
always concealed themselves from me during the
day, were, as far as I could judge from their dress
and accent, men of Alonistena, or else Tzakonians.
I have no doubt that my captivity was planned and
arranged by persons who desired to ruin me, and
who, in order to succeed in their scheme, had repre-
sented falsely to the brigands that I possessed a
colossal fortune, in order to make them demand an
enormous ransom which I should be unable to pay,
and thus the brigands would be led to murder me.
"During the,first night my companions said :
"' We are positively informed that you have
200,000 drachmas in the bank, and that your landed
property is worth 200,000 more. We intended,
therefore, to demand a ransom of 300,000 drach-
mas, for we thought the remaining 100,000 drach-
mas would suffice for you to live, particularly as
you have no children. But on reflection we thought
it would be a crime in the eyes of God to deprive a
political man of the means of preserving his in-
fluence in order to serve the purposes of his enemies.
We have, therefore, restricted our dethand in the
letter we have sent to Madame Soteropoulos to only
80,000 drachmas. We might have seized somebody
of no political importance belonging to the class called
proprietors and have obtained more money, for such
people do not require that we should allow them to
retain anything. But we preferred taking a gen-
tleman like you, partly in order to give a lesson to
Ministers of State, national representatives, depu-
ties, and in general all political -men who, after
they have made a revolution and incited others to
commit crimes, neglect to restore tranquillity by a
general amnesty ; but, on the contrary, every day
cut off the heads of brave men on the scaffold, partly
also because we desired to make a capture that
would create a sensation.'

" My captivity would only have lasted 14 days if
the imprudent measures of the Government had not
prolonged it by the addition of 22 more. The bri-
gands considered it as most dishonourable in a pro-
fessional light to allow a prisoner to be recaptured
alive, and accordingly if a band suffered such a dis-
graceful violation of their laws of honour it would
forfeit all kind of respect among its fellows, and
would be unable to exercise its profession. Conse-
quently there is no example of a prisoner having
been saved by the pursuit of the Government autho-
rities, for the brigands, keeping their prisoner close
to them and even bound, have always time enough
to kill him when they find that they can carry him
off no farther. Whenever anybody has been taken,
their relations hate always urgently entreated the
Government to stop all pursuit, and nearly always
there have been found functionaries, superior or
subordinate, who, having a just way of appreciating
the circumstances, or else moved by philanthropy,
have stopped every movement tending to put the
life of the captured man in danger or to throw ob-
stacles in the way of paying the ransom. The British
Minister himself, during the month of December last,
when three English travellers were taken in Acar-
nania, asked nothing but that the pursuit of the
brigands should stop, for he knew that if the pur-
suit continued his relations would be murdered.

" During my captivity not only did the pursuit not
cease, but, on the contrary, it was carried on with un-
usual activity, and the offices of the mayors are filled
with reiterated orders of the Government authori-
ties to continue the pursuit in order to find and
capture the brigands. Some of these orders make
no mention of the safety of the prisoner, and others
speak of it as a secondary object, and one which
can only be taken into consideration in so far as it
is reconcilable with the extermination of brigandage.
Indeed, I have seen an order of, I know not what
prefect, or sub-prefect, which, contradicting the re-
port which it says was spread by my relations, that
the Government had ordered the pursuit to be
stopped, commands it to be actively continued with-
out any interruption, under the penalty of the
severest punishment for those who shall neglect
their duty. But that which particularly filled me
with horror is a semi-official order, signed, I be-
lieve, by the secretary of the sub-prefecture of
Olympia, and which I saw in the hands of the de-
march of lleroea, the commune in which I was re-
leased by the brigands. This order says :---
" 80,000 drachmas are to be paid to the bri-
gands by the relations of Soteropoulos, and
50,000 drachmas are offered as a reward to those
who arrest or kill these bandits. This makes a total
of 130,000 drachmas, which will belong to those
who can slay the brigands at the moment they re-
ceive the ransom.'

4, This order to excite the zeal of the citizens in
pursuit of the brigands has this of immoral about it,
that, not counting either my life or the lives of
my relations for anything, it exposed them to
imminent danger by an attack at the moment of
paying the ransom, and that it proposed to make
my own money, which I had paid to obtain my
liberty, a recompense for the destruction of the
brigands.
" Although measures of this severity and so con-
trary to the laws of humanity, were taken in my
case for the first time, I do not complain, because
the agents of the Government did not consider that
they were under any obligation to do for a deputy
belonging to the Opposition that which has always
been done for a simple peasant. But Ido complain
that the Government authorities watched and
tracked my relations who were charged with the
ransom, and by so doing xetarded the payment,
which ought to have been ma,de on the 23d of