The Greek uprising against Ottoman rule began in March 1821, and among its earliest military objectives was the fortress of Neokastro at Navarino — the great Ottoman stronghold that guarded the southern entrance to Navarino Bay. Greek forces under the command of Konstantinos Pierrakos Mavromichalis began the siege that same month. Inside the fortress, the Turkish civilian population — families who had lived in Navarino for generations — endured the siege alongside the military garrison. As months passed and supplies ran out, hunger became the immediate enemy. Some Turkish families tried to escape the walls before the formal surrender, seeking mercy from Greeks in the surrounding area. According to contemporary accounts, they did not find it.

By August, the garrison was on the edge of starvation. The Turks offered to surrender. The Greeks, in response, proposed a convention: the inhabitants would capitulate, hand over all public property, money, plates, and jewelry, and in return would be granted safe passage to Egypt. The terms were agreed to and a formal capitulation was signed. The inhabitants of Navarino then fulfilled their end: they gave up everything they owned. The Greeks, however, had neither the intention to honor the agreement nor, by some accounts, even the practical means to arrange the passage. Mavromichalis, the Greek commander, was killed during the siege — and his death was used as a pretext to void the terms. Whether the pretext caused the massacre or merely justified one that was already planned, the outcome was the same.

When the gates of Neokastro opened on 19 August 1821, the killing began. A Greek Orthodox priest named Phrantzes was present and witnessed what followed. His account, preserved by the historian George Finlay, is direct and unsparing: women wounded by musket fire and sword cuts ran toward the sea trying to escape and were shot deliberately as they fled. Mothers carrying infants waded into the water to hide from the soldiers pursuing them and were used as targets by riflemen on shore. Infants were seized from their mothers and dashed against rocks. Children three and four years old were thrown alive into the sea and left to drown. When it was over, the bodies that washed ashore or piled on the beach were so numerous that they threatened to cause a pestilence. Around 3,000 people died. A small number managed to escape.

The Navarino massacre did not occur in isolation. The Greek War of Independence, like most revolutionary conflicts, included episodes of mass violence committed by all sides. Ottoman forces carried out their own massacres of Greek civilians — including the execution of the Patriarch Gregory V in Constantinople and widespread killings across the Peloponnese. The specific horror at Navarino was not that violence occurred in a war, but that it was committed against people who had formally surrendered, who had given up all their possessions in exchange for a promise of safety, and who were then killed anyway. The deliberate destruction of the written agreement by Poniropoulos — his later pride in having done so — is a documented fact. Responsibility for the killings rests with those who carried them out and those who gave or tolerated the orders.

Neokastro — the fortress where the massacre took place — still stands above the bay. The Ottoman-built walls, the bastions, the citadel, remain substantially intact. The mosque inside the walls, where the town's Muslim population would have prayed, was converted into an Orthodox church dedicated to the Transfiguration of Christ after Greek independence. No monument at the site specifically commemorates the Turkish civilians who were killed there in August 1821. The bay below is very beautiful: still water, a natural harbour so large and calm that it hosted major fleets. The town of Pylos, founded in 1830, sits outside the old fortress walls. Fishing boats moor in the harbor. Tavernas line the waterfront. Time does not erase what happened; it simply continues past it.