Christoforos Perraivos

Christoforos Perraivos (Greek: Χριστόφορος Περραιβός; 1773–1863) was a Greek officer of the Greek War of Independence, member of the Filiki Eteria and author. In non-Greek sources his name is usually found as Per(r)evo(s).

Biography

Perraivos was born on 3 April 1773 in the village of

In 1793, with the help of the said Hieronymos, he left Greece to study at the Greek School in Bucharest, and in 1796 to study medicine in Vienna. There he met the Greek humanist and revolutionary Rigas Feraios and entered an underground revolutionary organization. In 1797, Perraivos was arrested with Rigas and others by the Austrian authorities in Trieste but, unlike Rigas Feraios who was handed over to the Turks, Perraivos was released.

Afterwards, he left for

When the French occupied the Ionian Islands for a second time in 1807, he retained his rank and became a member of the Albanian Regiment, established the same year (Boppe, p. 11). Memoirs of his service under the Russians and the French are included in his “History of Souli and Parga”. This work was written in Corfu in 1801, where he stayed till 1817. Its first volume was published in Greek in 1803 in Paris and includes the earliest historical essay on Souli based on first-hand informations gathered from Souliotes refugees fighters in the island. It also includes information on the activities of Russia, France and Britain in the Ionian and Adriatic during the Napoleonic Wars and the wars against Ali Pasha and the Ottomans. It was translated into Italian by C. Gherardini in 1815 and from Italian to English in 1823.^[2]

In 1817, after the departure of French from Corfu, he emigrated to Russia. In

He served in the regular army of the new Greek Kingdom as a lieutenant general, and was promoted to General by King Otto of Greece in 1844.

He died on 4 May 1863 in Athens.

Works

• History of Souli and Parga, Venice, 1815. In Greek.
• “History of Suli and Parga, containing their chronology and their wars …” A. Constable & Company, London, 1823. In English
• War Memoirs of various battles between Greeks and Ottomans in Souli and East Greece from 1820 till 1829. Written by colonel Christoforos Perraivos from Olympus of Thessaly, in two volumes. Athens, 1836. In Greek.
• Short biography of the celebrious Rigas Feraios the Thessalian. Athens, 1860. In Greek.
• Hymn of praise from whole Greece to general-in-chief Bonaparte, Poem by Christofors Perraivos, Corfu,
  civil year
  6 (1798). In Greek. Ύμνος εγκωμιαστικός παρ' όλης της Γραικίας προς τον αρχιστράτηγον Μποναπάρτε, ποίημα Χριστοφόρου Περραιβού. Εν Κερκύρα, χρόνος έκτος πολιτικός (1798).

References

Sources

• Kordatos G.K., article “Περραιβός” in the "Μεγάλη Ελληνική Εγκυκλοπαίδεια" (Great Greek Encyclopedia), c. 1939, vol. 20, p. 65.
• Boppe Auguste, Le régiment Albanais (1807-1814)