Prelude To War
On 25 January 1897, the first troopships, accompanied by the battleship Hydra, sailed for Crete, where they disembarked two battalions of the Greek Army under Colonel Timoleon Vassos outside Chania. On 2 February, despite the guarantees given by the Great Powers on the Ottoman sovereignty over the island, Vassos unilaterally proclaimed its union with Greece. The Powers reacted by demanding that Deligiannis immediately withdraw the Greek forces from the island in exchange for a statute of autonomy. The demand was rejected, and on 7 February, the first full-scale battle between Greeks and Turks occurred, when the Greek expeditionary force in Crete defeated a 4,000-strong Ottoman force at the Battle of Livadeia, Crete.
Read more about this topic: Greco-Turkish War (1897)
Famous quotes containing the words prelude to, prelude and/or war:
“I got a little secretarial job after college, but I thought of it as a prelude. Education, work, whatever you did before marriage, was only a prelude to your real life, which was marriage.”
—Bonnie Carr (c. early 1930s)
“I got a little secretarial job after college, but I thought of it as a prelude. Education, work, whatever you did before marriage, was only a prelude to your real life, which was marriage.”
—Bonnie Carr (c. early 1930s)
“War. Fighting. Men ... every man in the whole realm is in the army.... Every man in uniform ... An economy entirely geared to war ... but there is not much war ... hardly any fighting ... yet every man a soldier from birth till death ... Men ... all men for fighting ... but no war, no wars to fight ... what is it, what does it mean?””
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)