Chios Massacre

April 22, 1821

After a small Greek rising on Chios, Ottoman troops landed and killed or enslaved most of the island's hundred thousand Greeks. Delacroix would paint the survivors in a haunted masterpiece. The atrocity shifted European opinion decisively in favor of Greek independence, and against the 'sick man of Europe.' Byron sailed for Greece partly because of Chios, and died there before the independence he championed was won.