Tricorpha is a range of mountains in the east section of Maenalus, where the rebellious Greeks used to entrench themselves. The rebels' barricades are saved until today at the tops of two mounds and thrill all the visitors. It takes more than half an hour of uphill trek on a really rugged terrain to go to each one of them.

Heroic battles

The Greeks were first entrenched in 1770, during the Orlov rebellion, but they were surrounded and literally extinguished by the Turks. Konstantis Kolokotronis, the father of the legendary headman of the Greek Revolution Theodoros Kolokotronis, also used to swoop from there in 1779, in order to destroy the Albanian hirelings, who had become independent against the Turks and were plundering the plateau of Mantinea.

In 1821 on Kolokotronis's initiative, Tricorpha became a military and political centre for the Greeks  during the siege of Tripolis. That's when most of the barricades that are being saved until today were made.

That's where Ypsilantis, Petrobeis Mavromichalis, Mavrokordatos, Giatrakos and many other great fighters used to camp.

At the same place the Tricorpha battle took place on 23 of June 1825, ending up to the slaughter of 300-500 Greeks.

Especially the smallest western barricade in St. Vlassis, where Kolokotronis himself used to be entrenched, has full visibility of Tripolis, but it is notably rocky and hardly approachable.

The eastern barricade, where Ypsilantis used to camp, is bigger and more impressive, while access to this is possible via an easily passable alley.

Near the barricades there is the village Sylimna, the residents of which thought that the place was sacred until 1930, because they kept finding bones on the rocks.  

Some of them claimed that when passing near the barricades at night they could hear wounded men moaning and women mourning.

The echo of the heroic sacrifice of the 23d of June 1825 remained unharmed into the elder's hearts, who used to talk about the words that Kolokotronis himself used to describe the big calamity.

At the same night after the battle, the exhausted and distressful Kolokotronis betook to Alonistena, where he spent the night. It was a very hard night for him, because the village had lost 35 of its young men at the battlefield and the pain was diffuse. Some people even accused him in public for the men's slaughter.

It is said that the Kolokotronis's moral was shook down that day, but he soon recovered and hastened to give courage to his fellows, who had begun thinking that the revolution had failed.

Alive memories

We were led to the barricades by Panagiotis Vemmos, a math teacher from Tripolis, who had done the trip countless times and he thinks that it is easy to go there. 

Climbing and literally juggling on the rocks in order to reach the steep barricade of Kolokotronis, we kept asking him: "When will we get there, is it much longer?", and he stoically answered: "It's not too long, be patient and think about the rebels who used to run barefoot on those rocks".

When we reached the top, Panagiotis read us a letter dated in 31 August 1821, written by an unknown man in the barricades during the siege of Tripolis:

"In the hills around Tripolis I keep finding ragged paper that smells like gunpowder and I realize that it is leftover from the bullet binding. May you, rocks of Tricorpha be blissful, as you are meant to become self-built bulwarks for the Greeks in their war against the Persians' posterity. Prince Ypsilantis, who is not at all different from any other soldier, is still sleeping and night-stalking onto these rocks. It's there where he eats and lives in a humble hut built with dry-wall, covered by fir branches and with barley strewn on the floor".

The above letter, that was saved and published in 1909 in Odessa, is serious evidence about the barricades of Tricorpha.

There are also other detailed testimonies from Kolokotronis himself, Photakos, his adjutant and many other Greek rebels and foreign volunteers.

Among the mounds where the rebels used to barricade themselves, the carriages used to pass carrying marbles from Doliana to Olympia for the Olympic stadium to be built.

Panagiotis Vemmos persistently shows us the stones with the wheel traces carved on them, apparent until today. He claims that these traces prove the historical continuity of Greece.

Panagiotis isn't the only Arcadian who fights for the story of 1821 to stay alive, but he has many friends who struggle for the same purpose. They altogether organise events in memory of the heroes who left their last breath in the barricades; they fight for the barricades to be highlighted as a historic monument.
TEXT-PHOTOS: GEORGE ZAFEIROPOULOS
SOURCE: www.greecewithin.com

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