page_title: Rigas Feraios
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Rigas Feraios / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: The Flag of Greece as designed by Rigas Feraios in his 1797 manuscript. Ελληνικά: Η Σημαία της Ελλάδος όπως την σχεδίασε ο Ρήγας Φεραίος στα χειρόγραφά του το 1797.
context_page_description: Rigas Feraios or Velestinlis; 1757 – 24 June 1798 was a Greek writer, political thinker and revolutionary, active in the Modern Greek Enlightenment, remembered as a Greek national hero, a victim of the Balkan uprising against the Ottoman Empire and a pioneer of the Greek War of Independence.
context_section_description: He entered into communication with general Napoleon Bonaparte, to whom he sent a snuff-box made of the root of a Bay Laurel taken from a ruined temple of Apollo, and eventually he set out with a view to meeting the general of the Army of Italy in Venice. While traveling there, he was betrayed by Demetrios Oikonomos Kozanites, a Greek businessman, had his papers confiscated, and was arrested at Trieste by the Austrian authorities (an ally of the Ottoman Empire, Austria was concerned the French Revolution might provoke similar upheavals in its realm and later formed the Holy Alliance).
  He was handed over with his accomplices to the Ottoman governor of Belgrade, where he was imprisoned and tortured. From Belgrade, he was to be sent to Constantinople to be sentenced by Sultan Selim III. While in transit, he and his five collaborators were strangled to prevent their being rescued by Rigas's friend Osman Pazvantoğlu. Their bodies were thrown into the Danube River.
  His last words are reported as being: "I have sown a rich seed; the hour is coming when my country will reap its glorious fruits".
caption: Flag proposed by Rigas for his envisioned pan-Balkan Federation.
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