When the poet Byron visited Athens in 1809, he found that what had once been the glittering centre of the civilised world, now had a population of only about 5,000 souls. As the 19th century commenced, a swell of nationalist fervour rose in the oppressed people of Greece. On 25 March 1821, Archbishop Germanos raised a new blue-and-white banner in Patras, in the Peloponnese, and declared independence, but it took			eleven years to win the war against Turkish rule. Athens changed hands more than once duringthe long struggle in which many English, Scots, Irish and French fought alongside the Greeks. Byron, who popularised the cause abroad, died at Messolonghi in 1824. On 27 October 1827, the Greek revolution was won, but the last Turks weren't evicted from the Acropolis unti1833. The following year, Athens was declared the capital of modern Greece.