The young war correspondent, who gave his life for the precious commodity of the freedom of Greece
When at the age of 24 he was offered a position on the staff of the famous architect Ernst Ziller in Athens, Charles Ogle believed that the ancient Greek gods had the best fate in store for him. Athens was calling him and he couldn’t believe his luck.
He admired the place not only for the brilliant creations of his ancestors, but for its power to fight the Turkish yoke to the end.
On the one hand, therefore, the “secret mistress”, as she called Athens, and on the other hand, the famous Chiller, professor of Architecture at the School of Arts (later Polytechnic), who needed young scientists with imagination and fun to work in the architecturally pristine city. Charles immediately said yes. He would live his dream! And he would die for it…
Charles Chaloner Ogle was born in London in 1851. He was the fourth son of John, a British businessman of title and fortune. He studied and at the same time wrote for “Builder Magazine”, a magazine of various material, however, focused on architectural publications. Charles also discovered his inclination towards journalism there.
The subjects he ended up dealing with were not his science. He was interested in politics and the era of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was full of political rearrangements…
THE PHILLELLENIC ARCHITECT MILITARY CORRESPONDENT…
He arrived in Athens in 1875 and the following year managed to win the title of correspondent of the “Times” of London in the Balkans. It is the year of the explosion of the Serbo-Turkish war in the region of Montenegro. The newspaper assigns him the coverage of the events. Charles christens himself a “war correspondent”. But even in Greece, things have not calmed down yet. Crete, Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia are still under the Ottoman yoke and now revolutionary movements are taking place. Ogl does not have time to send responses.
It glorifies the unbound spirit, the stubbornness, the militancy and the superiority of the Greeks. He singles out the work of the temporary administrations, especially that of Pelion in Thessaly, and blasts with his direct speech the murders of the civilian population by the Ottoman miscreants.
At this time, in Greece the foreign minister is Charilaos Trikoupis, who is carefully following the contribution of the young Briton to Greek affairs. Attempting to tie him… and officially to the philhellenic chariot, he proposes to award him the Silver Cross. Before he turns 26, Ogle is a decorated philhellenic and proud.
The foreign newspapers are publishing, but something is wrong… Ogle denounces as false the information that escapes to the rest of the foreign press from the fields of conflicts. “I see in the European press that the rebellion exists in name only. Let the editors come here and see how things are different…” he will publish in his own response to the British Times.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
An incident in a province of Agia will mark the beginning of his end.
The British journalist, who with his passionate responses tries to provoke the saving intervention of his compatriots for the Greeks, asks the commissioner Longworth (Longworth) to go to Bulgarini of Agia to confirm the massacres. Indeed, he goes but returns, claiming that nothing alarming is happening and refuting Ogl’s responses. The journalist rushes to the Thessalian village and almost “interrogates” the provosts, who reveal to him that they lied to the English commissioner because they had been threatened by the Turkish officer, Amus, who instigated the massacres. Ogle’s response to the March 3, 1878 issue of The Times is a hoax for the Ottomans. He presents Amus aga as the perpetrator of the massacres at Pelion. Just three days later, the Turkish authorities, through the British ambassador in Istanbul, send a letter to the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, in which they complain that the journalist Charles Ogle was accompanied on his trip to Bulgarini by the British national of Greek origin, Ioannis Voyatzis, who “is an agent who incites the Greeks to mutiny”.
Ogle has gotten into the Turks’ nostrils and they will do everything they can to get rid of him. When Hobart Pasha (a British naval officer, who upon his demobilization hastened to offer his services to the sultan for a fee) asks Ogle to mediate with the rebels to lay down their arms, or else he will bombard Makrinitsa, he replies with a defiant letter: “Your Highness, I am sorry that my business does not they allow me to visit you in person. I learned that you are planning to bombard Makrinitsan and I am going there for safety’s sake…”! Angry, Hobart informs him that he will expel him from the Turkish-occupied lands. Ogle’s response infuriates him even more: “Yes, but I will not leave, as you left England”!
These are the last published words of Ogl. Since then his steps are lost. Saccording to the available information, the young man left Volos for Makrinitsa on the morning of Thursday, March 16, 1878. The invasion of the village takes place in the afternoon of the same day.
The information about the outcome of the battle and the violence that follows it does not take long to reach Trikoupis, who sends his associate Stefanos Straight to Volos, in order to convince the chieftains of Pelion to capitulate with the Turks so that the whole of Thessaly is not bloodied and to locate Ogle, whose traces have been lost.
On March 22, a Turkish worker at the Italian consulate reports that a decapitated body has been found in the Mega Rema area between Makrinitsa and Portaria. Streit rushes to the scene and is informed by the villagers that the day after the battle began one of the disorderly soldiers was carrying Ogl’s head on his bayonet.
The news of the murder of the British journalist causes deep emotion in Greeks and foreigners.
Ogle’s funeral was held at a public expense on March 29, 1878 at the First Cemetery in Athens. Shops are closed to honor the deceased for those who wish. A place is chosen for his burial next to the tomb of Kanaris. In a moving funeral, the intellectual, politician and journalist Timoleon Philemon compares Ogle’s philhellenism with that of Byron and Koenig and concludes: “He lived, martyred and died for Greece”.
More than a century later, Ogle’s tomb is sold to another family. The marble that covered him together with the marbles of other “chronicling” tombs end up as slabs on the sidewalks of Athens. As for the tombstone that adorned the tomb and was crafted on the initiative of Greek and foreign private individuals, it was moved to Makrinitsa and placed in the Brani position, next to the hero of the fallen in the battles of 1878.
The young war correspondent, who gave his life for the precious good of freedom, gave his name to two Thessalian streets, in Volos and Larissa.
He was the first journalist to be murdered in Greece, but not the last. Since then, eight others have paid with their lives for their ideals and actions: Andreas Kavafakis in 1922, Costas Vidalis in 1946, George Polk in 1948, George Athanasiadis in 1983, Nikos Momferatos in 1985, Pavlos Bakoyiannis in 1989, Socrates Giolias in 2010 and George Karaivaz in 2021.
Source: Skai
I have worked as a journalist for over 10 years, and my work has been featured on many different news websites. I am also an author, and my work has been published in several books. I specialize in opinion writing, and I often write about current events and controversial topics. I am a very well-rounded writer, and I have a lot of experience in different areas of journalism. I am a very hard worker, and I am always willing to put in the extra effort to get the job done.
