Lord Byron and Mavrokordatos

Abstract

The Greek political leader Alexandros Mavrokordatos played a significant role in the final months of Byron's life. It was through him that Byron ultimately committed his energies to the Greek cause, through him that he sought to find a way through the tangle of Greek politics in the years 1823 and 1824. Byron's reputation as a political animal, ona spectrum that leads from irresponsible adventurism to heroic self-sacrifice, is intimately tied to the period when he and Mavrokordatos were drawn together in Mesolongi. The most recent biographyof Byron, by Fiona MacCarthy,1 largely perpetuates a traditional and relatively simple view of the final months of his life, a period rich in anecdote, but politically inconsequential, in which Byron apparently became ever more lost in confusion. The following article seeksto identify the lines along which a political assessment of those final months might be possible; coincidentally, it clarifies or corrects a number of traditionally-held positions in the biography of the poet.