Cleftes

Os cleftes (em grego: κλέφτης, significando "ladrão", talvez originalmente "bandido") eram milicianos gregos independentes, insurgentes anti-otomanos, que viviam nas montanhas durante o jugo otomano sobre os gregos. Eles eram descendentes dos gregos que, fugindo da dominação dos Balcãs pelos turcos no século XV, foram para as montanhas no norte da Grécia e na Macedônia, desde então até o século XIX empreendendo esforços bélicos contra o Império.

Os cleftes, juntamente aos armatoloi, milícias gregas antes sujeitas ao sultão que se voltaram contra o Império, se destacaram durante a guerra de independência da Grécia. Entre os cleftes mais notáveis deste período estão Athanasios Diakos, Theodoros Kolokotronis, Nikitas Stamatelopoulos e Markos Botsaris.

Ver também

Haiduques

Referências

↑ Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc 1995, p. 564: "Other Greeks, taking to the mountains, became unofficial, self-appointed armatoles and were known as klephts (from the Greek kleptes, "brigand")."
↑ Cavendish 2009, p. 1478: "The klephts were descendants of Greeks who fled into the mountains to avoid the Turks in the fifteenth century and who remained active as brigands into the nineteenth century."
↑ Encyclopedia Americana 1919, p. 472: "KLEPTHS, klēfts (Greek, "thieves"). Greek bandits who, after the conquest of Greece by the Turks in the 15th century, kept themselves free in the mountains of northern Greece and Macedonia, and carried on a perpetual war against Turkish rule, considering everything belonging to a Turk a lawful prize."

[Britannica-1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc 1995, p. 564: "Other Greeks, taking to the mountains, became unofficial, self-appointed armatoles and were known as klephts (from the Greek kleptes, "brigand")."

[Cavendish-2] Cavendish 2009, p. 1478: "The klephts were descendants of Greeks who fled into the mountains to avoid the Turks in the fifteenth century and who remained active as brigands into the nineteenth century."

[3] Encyclopedia Americana 1919, p. 472: "KLEPTHS, klēfts (Greek, "thieves"). Greek bandits who, after the conquest of Greece by the Turks in the 15th century, kept themselves free in the mountains of northern Greece and Macedonia, and carried on a perpetual war against Turkish rule, considering everything belonging to a Turk a lawful prize."