In the spring of 1808 in the northwest of Thessaly, in the area of Kalampaka and in Hasia, into the mountains that separate Grevena from the plain of Trikala, there has been an uprising that allegedly aspired to be the trigger of a wider revolutionary movement, which aimed at the autonomy or liberation of the Greeks from the Ottoman yoke. The text with the list of captains who had (as it is said) agreed in writing with “Agent Dimitris” to revolt by recruiting 47,000 armed men, was saved in translation in the French archives. We had briefly announced its existence at the 1979 Balkan Congress in Ankara, but it was not possible to attend. Since then there has been no interest in publishing and making wider use of basic information that would lead to significant revisions of the ideological views and political positions concerning the beginnings of the Greek Revolution as well as the situation in Western Greece. The issue could have come back to the fore in Thessaly, in May 2008, when two centuries had passed since this historic event and we should then have honored the memory of those fighters and underlined the widespread participation of Vlach-speaking Greeks in a large national-liberation daring of the 19th century. Also, after the translation and publication of the studies of Grigoris Ars, the Russian historical archives became available to us.

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