page_title: Macedonian Struggle
section_title: Hellenic Macedonian Committee
hierarchical_section_title: Macedonian Struggle / Hellenic Macedonian Committee
caption_attribution_description: Pavlos Melas armed and wearing the doulamas. Painting based on Melas's last photograph, shot on 21st August 1904.
context_page_description: The Macedonian Struggle or the Greek struggle for Macedonia, or according to the Bulgarian and ethnic Macedonian point of view Greek armed propaganda in Macedonia was a series of social, political, cultural and military conflicts that were mainly fought between Greek and Bulgarian subjects who lived in Ottoman Macedonia between 1893 and 1908. The conflict was part of a wider rebel war in which revolutionary organizations of Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs all fought over Macedonia. Gradually the Greek and Bulgarian bands gained the upper hand, but the conflict was ended by the Young Turk Revolution in 1908.
context_section_description: In order to strengthen Greek efforts for Macedonia, the Hellenic Macedonian Committee was formed in 1903, under the leadership of wealthy publisher Dimitrios Kalapothakis; its members included Ion Dragoumis and Pavlos Melas. Its fighters were known as Makedonomachoi ("Macedonian fighters").
  Under these conditions, in 1904 a vicious guerrilla war broke as response of IMRO activities between Bulgarian and Greek bands within Ottoman Macedonia. The Bishop of Kastoria, Germanos Karavangelis sent to Macedonia by the ambassador of Greece Nikolaos Mavrokordatos and the consul of Greece in Monastiri, Ion Dragoumis, realised that it was time to act in a more efficient way and started organising Greek opposition.
  While Dragoumis concerned himself with the financial organisation of the efforts, the central figure in the military struggle was the very capable Cretan officer Georgios Katehakis. Bishop Germanos Karavangelis animated the Greek population against the IMRO and formed committees to promote the Greek national interests.
  Taking advantage of the internal political and personal disputes in IMRO, Katehakis and Karavangelis initially succeeded to recruit some IMRO former members and to organize guerrilla groups, that were later reinforced with people sent from Greece and thus were mainly composed of ex-officers of the Hellenic Army, volunteers brought from Crete, from the Mani area of the Peloponnese, as well as Macedonian Greeks, such as Nikolaos Manos, Theodoros Adam, Dimitrios Stagas, Konstantinos Papastavrou, Georgios Modis, Athanasios Stavroudis, Michael Sionidis, Ioannis Ramnalis, Zisis Verros, Georgios Thomopoulos, Iraklis Patikas, Ioannis Simanikas, Periklis Drakos, Ioannis Martzios, Dimitrios Golnas, Petros Christou, Charalambos Boufidis, Slavophones such as Dimitris Dalipis and Evangelos Natsis, and even former IMRO members such as Gonos Yotas and Kottas.
caption: Pavlos Melas in Macedonomachos uniform
exif: {}