bring about the agitation which culminated in
the revolution of 1843. The application of con-
scription in the army to the mariners of the
" Nautical island " of Hydra, already hard hit by



32 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

the losses of the war and a recent earthquake ;
an unpopular commercial treaty with Turkey,
with which, in 1839, Greece for the first time
entered into official diplomatic relations ; the
inability of the Greek Government to profit, as
the Nationalists desired, by the embarrassments
of the Sultan during his second conflict with his
rebellious Egyptian Viceroy, Mehemet Ali ; the
failure of the Cretan insurrection of 1841 ; the
Russian demand for payment of interest on the
loan ; and the necessity for economies in official
salaries all these causes united to provoke the
movement of September fV, 1843, which is one
of the red-letter days of modern Greece. British
statesmen, always convinced that the magic
word " constitution " will heal all the ills of all
countries on whatever plane of civilization, be it
Greece in 1843 or Turkey in 1908, in vain advised
Otho to grant constitutional government. He
listened to the advice of his father, who held that
a constitution would cost him his throne, in
accordance with the doctrines then current in
Germany. On this occasion the British theory
was right, the Bavarian wrong.

The revolution was largely the work of the
" English " and " Russian " parties, then led
respectively by Andrew Lontos and Andrew
Metaxas. Their collaboration was due to the
common desire to expel the Bavarians, but for
different reasons ; for the British objected to
Otho because he was an autocrat and the Russians



BAVARIAN AUTOCRACY 33

because he was a Roman Catholic. London
wanted a king to be Constitutional, St. Petersburg
wanted him to be Orthodox. Both leaders wrongly
calculated upon his obstinacy, believing that he
would abdicate rather than yield to the demand
for a constitution. As usual, the revolutionary
movement mainly interested the politicians, who,
finding the people, especially the peasants, mostly
indifferent, invited the army to help them. They
discovered suitable instruments in Col. Demetrios
Kallerges, a member of the well-known Cretan
family, who had nearly lost his life in the War of
Independence, and in Col. Makrygiannes, who had
also distinguished himself during that struggle.
At one in the morning of September i 3 5, the King
was alarmed at his desk, where he was still
laboriously studying the details of public business,
which should have been left to a clerk, by cries of
" Long live the Constitution ! " Showing himself
at a window, he asked Kallerges what he wanted ;
and, when he heard that what was wanted was a
constitution, ordered the troops to disperse. The
troops obeyed the orders not of the King but of
Kallerges ; the artillery, which Otho had called
to his aid, joined them. The politicians then
appeared upon the scene ; a deputation of the
Council of State waited on the King and begged
him to grant a constitution. At this critical
moment the diplomatic corps arrived, and requested
an audience. But Kallerges, prompted by the
British representative, Sir E. Lyons, who thought
3



34 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

that the moral support of his colleagues might
make the King obstinate and was, therefore,
anxious to have the Royal promise to grant a
constitution extracted before they entered, declined
firmly but politely to admit them until the deputa-
tion was over. The King, thus left alone, gave
way, summoned a National Assembly of 225
members for the purpose of drawing up a constitu-
tion, dismissed all foreigners from his service,
except the veterans of the War of Independence,
and appointed a new Ministry. Shouts of " Long
live the Constitutional King, Otho I," greeted the
sovereign, and the revolution of September 3, as
it is called in Greek history, was over with the loss
of only one life.

This peaceful transformation of the Government
from an autocracy to a democracy, from a foreign
to a native administration, contrasted markedly
with the sanguinary revolutions of 1830 and 1848
in France a country far more civilized than
contemporary Greece. No party defended the
old system, which had lasted for ten years and
had been found wanting ; consequently there was
no conflict between Greek and Greek. The date
is still cherished as the birthday of parliamentary
institutions the only form of Government adapted
to the Greeks, despite its obvious defects. The
Bavarians had not governed well ; but, even if
they had, the Greeks would naturally have pre-
ferred to be less well governed by themselves.
Still, like most benevolent autocracies, Bavarian



BAVARIAN AUTOCRACY 35

absolutism had done something for the material
welfare of the governed, although the progress of
the country during this first decade was largely
due to the people rather than to its rulers. There
was more land under cultivation, more silk ex-
ported, more currants planted ; a National Bank
had been established, the marble quarries re-opened,
the mercantile marine had recovered from its
losses in the war. Athens had a population of
35,000, or more than thrice its population in 1765 ;
three other towns, the Piraeus, Patras and Syra
were acquiring importance. Intellectually, the
Archaeological Society and the University marked
an advance ; the language was being purged of
foreign words ; and the King and Queen had set
the example of " discovering " the beauties of
Greece by their constant journeys, often at con-
siderable personal discomfort, up and down that
difficult country, as it was in the days before
railways or even carriage roads. Otho and his
Queen, whatever their political faults, dearly
loved their adopted land, as is now generally
realized, and had they had children, their descend-
ants might still be sitting on the throne.



CHAPTER IV

THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE TWO
REVOLUTIONS (1843-62)



" f* ^HE National Assembly of September 3,"
which met to draw up the Constitution,
-* was composed not only of delegates
who were Otho's subjects, but also those of " outer
Greeks " from Crete, Thessaly, Epeiros and Mace-
donia, who formed so important a factor in the
history of Hellenism in the nineteenth century.
There was, however, an " autochthonous " party
in the Assembly, which succeeded in excluding
from official posts those Greeks, Turkish subjects
and, therefore, " heterochthonous," who had
taken no active share in the war. This distinction,
while beneficial to those intellectuals who had had
the good fortune to be born in Greece proper,
restricted the area of choice, for some of the most
advanced Greeks were to be found in the " outer "
Hellenic world. But in those early days there
was considerable jealousy between the more
cultured Phanariotes and the native notables ;
the black coat and the fustanella still represented
divergent planes of social evolution ; nor has the
antagonism of Athens and Byzantium, as we have

36



BETWEEN TWO REVOLUTIONS 87

seen in the case of M. Venizelos, unpopular at
Athens, adored at Constantinople, wholly ceased
even now.

On another point, that of the independence of
the Orthodox Church of Greece from the Great
Church in Constantinople, except in matters of
dogma, the Assembly was decided that the former
should continue to be " autocephalous." It was
also resolved that the heir to the throne must
belong to the Greek Church, and that the parlia-
mentary system should be bi-cameral. The usual
argument was advanced, that a second Chamber
would serve as a conservative check upon the
first. But political experience has shown that a
check, to be effective, must, except in small
questions, be exercised by a minority in the lower
House ; and, so far from being a check, the Greek
Senate (or reqovoia) furnished the platform for
the first attacks upon Otho and gave to the
Opposition the means of criticizing the Govern-
ment. In 1864 the Greek Senate was abolished ;
meanwhile it was formed of at least twenty-seven
persons, who (like the Italian senators) had
reached the age of forty and (also like the Italians)
were nominated for life by the Crown from certain
categories. The numbers of the Senate might be
increased to one-half of those of the Chamber (or
Bovlri), which were never to be less than eighty,
all over the age of thirty (like the Italian deputies),
and elected for three years by manhood suffrage.
Members of both Houses were paid a practice



38 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

only recently introduced into Italy and not yet
into the Italian Senate. On March 30, 1844,
Otho took the oath to the Constitution, after a
discussion of four months, conducted, as a British
statesman remarked, with " self-command highly
creditable to the Greek nation."

The enfranchised Greeks had now obtained
command of their own destinies ; it lay with the
native statesmen to determine how the country
which had been reborn with such great expecta-
tions should comport herself. There were two
policies before the country in 1844, for either of
which there was something to be said. There
was the homely policy of the " English " party
under Mavrokordatos, that Greece should first
put her own house in order before pursuing the
" Great Idea " of uniting the still scattered frag-
ments of Hellenism Crete, Epeiros, Macedonia
and the rest with the small Greek kingdom.
This latter, according to the programme of the
" English " party, should by competent internal
administration, prudent finance and the main-
tenance of law and order, make Greece a model
of good government throughout the Near East.
When these practical, if humdrum, objects had been
achieved, then, argued the advocates of this policy,
Europe would recognize, when the break-up of
Turkey came, that little, but well-governed, Greece
deserved to be the " sick man's " only heir.

Kolettes, the Epeirote who led the " French "
party, supported the to the Greeks more



BETWEEN TWO REVOLUTIONS 39

congenial plan of making the territorial expansion
of Greece the first object. This policy not only
appealed to the Imperialistic sentiment, which
animates all Balkan nationalities, and is fostered
by their long and mutually conflicting historical
traditions and their strong feeling of exclusive
nationality, but could also be justified by the
specious argument that the best forces of the
nation were still outside the Greek kingdom, and
that they would not be available for its internal
regeneration until its frontiers had been enlarged
so as to include them. Both parties would have
agreed in considering Greece as the only Balkan
candidate for the succession to the Turkish
heritage, and not without reason at that date.
For, in 1844, no one dreamt of a revived Bulgarian
state or even of a Bulgarian Exarchate ; no one
had yet " discovered " the " Macedonian Rouman-
ians," who then all passed as Greeks the common
designation of all the Orthodox ; no one imagined
that the little Serbia of Alexander Karageorgevich
would become the great Jugo-Slavia of his present
namesake. At that time " the Hellenic factor in
the Eastern question " was, if small, still the only
one within the Balkan Peninsula. Russia or
Greece seemed in 1844 to be the only alternative*
and there were Greeks who, despite the lesson of
1770, believed that because Russia was Orthodox,
she would also be Philhellene. As might have
been expected, the programme of Kolettes pre-
vailed, and that politician for he can scarcely



40 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

be called a statesman retained power till his
death in 1847.

The policy of expansion continued, with occa-
sional intervals, to characterize Greek public life
down to the time of Charilaos Trikoupes ; it was
the line taken by his rival, Deligiannes, and
triumphed in the skilful hands of M. Venizelos.
But, looking back over this period of four score
years, we may ask whether Greece would not have
profited more in the long run by a stricter attention
to internal affairs in the reign of Otho. Western
statesmen are apt to judge the states of South-
Eastern Europe by their domestic stability ;
what is reckoned patriotism in the Occidentals is
considered Jingoism in the Oriental ; and, in the
still imperfect development of self-determination
in this world's affairs the opinion of the great
Powers has much influence on the fate of the small.
But the initial mistake was with the Great Powers
themselves, who, in 1832, made the frontiers of
Greece too small for a growing body.

Kolettes, who for the next three years dominated
Greek politics, is one of the most interesting figures
of modern Greece. In some respects he resembled
Sig. Giolitti ; for he never indulged in rhetorical
speeches, but managed the Chamber by personal
contact with the deputies and small expedients.
A man without large views, such as could hardly
have been expected from the ex-physician of Ali
Pasha's son, he possessed extraordinary skill in
the useful art of keeping a party together. His



BETWEEN TWO REVOLUTIONS 41

supporters, mostly drawn from the less European-
ized elements in the population, the so-called
" National party " in itself a handy catchword
could always drop in upon their affable chief,
whom they found clad in the fustanella and
smoking his long pipe, like one of themselves.
No applicant for office left his presence without
a promise not always fulfilled of prompt atten-
tion to his request ; and the indignant visitor,
who entered the Minister's room with fury, was
calmed by his " sweet words " till he left it soothed
by the persuasive tongue of the charmer. To the
French Kolettes, who had been Greek Minister
in Paris, was the one and only Greek statesman ;
like the Allies in our own time in the case of M.
Venizelos, they " put all their money " upon him
alone ; and, when he died, they consequently
found themselves isolated indeed, political im-
mortality, apart from the natural insecurity of
life, is the lot of no Eastern statesman ; and a
policy, based on one man, however eminent, is
liable to be defeated by the fickleness of his own
compatriots. Moreover, French support of the
Premier procured for him British pinpricks, which
took the form of demanding payment of interest
on the loan and complaints about brigandage.
His policy of expansion inevitably provoked
incidents with Turkey, which culminated in a
diplomatic question at Athens between the King
and the Turkish Minister, Mousouros, the trans-
lator of Dante, which led to the expulsion of Greek



42 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

consuls from Turkey. The people, however,
continued to prosper despite the frequent minis-
terial crises, which followed the death of Kolettes,
and the sporadic risings in various parts of the
country.

In 1850 there occurred the first serious incident
between Great Britain and Greece an incident
enormously exaggerated, and unduly honoured
by being made the occasion for Palmerston's
historic phrase, Civis Romamis sum. The
" Roman," or rather British, " citizen " on whose
behalf the resources of the British Empire were
invoked by the paternal Minister against a tiny
state, was a Jew from Gibraltar, a certain Don
Pacifico, whose house at Athens (where he had
been Portuguese Consul-General) had been pillaged
during an anti-Semitic disturbance three years
earlier, owing to the prohibition of the burning
of Judas Iscariot in effigy at Easter. For the
Greeks and the Jews do not usually love each
other, although before the annexation of Salonika
there were few Jews in Greece. Don Pacifico,
relying on his British citizenship, sent in a bill of
over 30,000 for material and moral damages.
The opportunity was taken of combining with his
case five other claims of various British and Ionian
subjects, besides the contention, advanced eleven
years earlier, that the islands of Cervi and Sapienza
off the South Coast of the Morea were part of the
Ionian Islands.

Of the personal claims one possesses special



BETWEEN TWO REVOLUTIONS 43

interest from the name and fame of the claimant,
George Finlay, the eminent historian of Mediaeval
and Modern Greece, who had taken part in the War
of Independence, had subsequently settled in
Athens, where he lived till his death, writing his
great history and for some years acting as corre-
spondent of The Times. He had bought land
there, a portion of which had been enclosed in the
royal garden, and for this he demanded 45,000 dr.
as compensation. Accordingly, Mr. (afterwards
Sir Thomas) Wyse, the British Minister, presented
an ultimatum, followed by a blockade of the
Piraeus by Sir William Parker the first of the
three British blockades in modern Greek history.
Public opinion abroad was generally opposed to
Palmerston's headstrong action, and even Finlay,
usually severe in his judgments upon the people,
whom he had come to emancipate, and whom he
remained to criticize, confessed that " the British
Government acted with violence, and strained the
authority of international law." The House of
Lords condemned, and the House of Commons
confirmed, the Minister's Greek policy by small
majorities ; France and Russia, in their quality
of protecting Powers, remonstrated with him ;
and although the Greek Government yielded, his
roughness had injured British relations with those
two great states. A mixed commission reduced
Don Pacifico's claims for the loss of certain vouchers
for sums, said to be due to him, from over 26,600
to 150, and nothing more was heard of Cervi and



44 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

Sapienza. The person who benefited most by
the blockade was Otho, whose popularity with
his subjects was thereby enhanced at British
expense, as a German propagandist reminded the
Greeks in the late war.

British and Greek policy again clashed four years
later, at the time of the Crimean War. It was
natural that Orthodox Greece should sympathize
with Orthodox Russia in the question of the Holy
Places, out of which that futile struggle, as the
late Lord Salisbury considered it, arose. It was
equally natural that the devotees of " the Great
Idea " should think the moment come, when
Turkey was in difficulties, to profit by them for
the emancipation of Epeiros and Thessaly. But
a spirited foreign policy requires not only enthu-
siasm but material force behind it, and the Greece
of 1854 was not the Greece of 1912. King Otho
and his patriotic Queen, who had found in the
politics of her adopted country an outlet for her
childless energies, were the real leaders of the war
party, and, as usual in the Balkans, bands crossed
the frontier with the tacit acquiescence of the
regular authorities. The enthusiasm spread to
the Ionian Islands, where, as during the War of
Independence, the British Protectorate could with
difficulty make its Greek subjects observe neutrality
when the opposite continent was ablaze. But the
insurrection in Epeiros and Thessaly failed, and
the liberators did not always spare those whom
they had come to liberate. Thessaly had to wait



BETWEEN TWO REVOLUTIONS 45

twenty-seven years more, Epeiros fifty-eight, for
union with Greece.

The situation was made worse by a Turkish
ultimatum, and Greece was on the verge of a war,
which would probably have been disastrous in
her then state, had not British and French troops
occupied the Piraeus. Napoleon III wanted to
go farther, on the advice of Kallerges, and dethrone
Otho, whose only crime was his undiplomatic
patriotism. Instead, Kallerges became the chief
member of an " Occupation Cabinet," of which
the old statesman of the War of Independence,
Alexander Mavrokordatos, was Premier. Relations
with Turkey were resumed ; the commercial
treaty of Kanlijeh was signed ; and the Anglo-
French troops remained at the Piraeus till 1857,
while their presence there and that of a still less
welcome visitor, the cholera, at Athens, increased
the popularity of the martyred king and his plucky
consort, always at their posts in the hour of danger.
For two years after the Allies' departure Otho
continued popular, and Greece, freed from the
incubus of the Eastern question, made practical
progress. A cable connected her two chief ports,
Syra (whose prosperity dated from the Massacre
of Chios during the War of Independence) and the
Piraeus ; the narrow strait which separates Eubcea
from the mainland was made available for vessels ;
serious steps were at last taken to suppress the
curse of brigandage, which About had utilized
for his famous but unfair caricature of Othonian



46 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

Greece ; and, had Otho had children, there would
have been no awkward question of the succession,
complicated by the necessity, laid down in 1852,
of the successor's conversion to the Orthodox
Church, which seemed to be the only cloud over
the Palace.

The Greeks, with their intense love of politics,
are wont to take great interest in those of their
neighbours. Every reader of the Greek press is
struck by the large amount of space given to the
affairs of other countries ; every one who has
conversed with Greeks is amazed at their knowledge
of foreign politicians. Consequently the Austro-
Italian War of 1859, although not directly con-
cerning the Greeks, aroused among them immense
popular enthusiasm for the Italians, just as, in a
minor degree, the Libyan War of 1911. Otho,
as a South German, naturally sympathized with
Austria, and his position towards his people was,
therefore, somewhat like that of King Charles of
Roumania during the Franco-German War of 1870
and at the outbreak of the War of 1914. By this
time also there had entered politics a new and more
democratic generation of men, the product of the
University, whose leader was Epaminondas Dele-
georges. Moreover, while circumstances had thus
created a gulf between the Crown and the people, the
three Powers were indifferent or worse, for Great
Britain would have preferred some one less inclined
to a policy of expansion at the expense of herself
in the Ionian Islands and of her prottgt, the Turkish



Empire, the integrity of which was then an axiom
of British statesmanship. Plots and risings became
frequent ; the garrison of Nauplia, where Otho
had landed in 1833, revolted, and the revolt was
suppressed by bloodshed ; an attempt to divert
attention from home affairs by a repetition of the
policy of 1854, with the aid of Garibaldi, and an
alliance with Serbia at a moment when Monte-
negro was at war with Turkey failed ; and during
one of the Royal progresses round the Morea, the
old Venetian fortress of Vonitza on the Ambrakian
Gulf gave the signal for the revolution of 1862,
which cost Otho his throne. Before the Royal
yacht could return, Athens, under the leadership
of Delegeorges, had proclaimed his deposition ;
the diplomatists advised him to accept it as an
accomplished fact. Otho left Greece for ever ;
but, in exile at Bamberg, he never forgot the
country which he had loved only too well and had
governed with only too minute attention. His
abdication was the result of an almost bloodless
revolution, like that of 1843 ; but it involved
Greece in chaos for nearly two years till at last a
king was found, who maintained his throne for
nearly fifty by an opposite system to that of
Otho by letting his Ministers govern as they liked,
and by signing the documents submitted by them
without a pedantic study of their contents. Yet
King George, with all his tact, did not escape the
dilemma of most Near Eastern monarchs
abdication or assassination.



CHAPTER V

THE INTERREGNUM AND THE IONIAN
ISLANDS (1862-4)

UPON Otho's fall a Provisional Govern-
ment, consisting of Boulgares, Kanares
and Rouphos, had been formed to direct
affairs until a National Convention should have
elected a king, for it was realized that the marked
individualism of the Greek character and the lack
of any one commanding personality would render
a Republic impossible. Even fifty-five years
later, when there was such a personality, he was
the first to see that the dethronement of one
monarch involved the succession of another. But
the difficulties of selection which faced the National
Assembly of December, 1862, were far greater
than those which confronted the Powers upon the
dethronement of King Constantine. For Otho
had no offspring, and no Greek wanted one of his
Bavarian relatives. If the Greeks had had their
way they would have made Prince Alfred, second
son of Queen Victoria, their king. Personal, as
well as practical, reasons were in his favour. He
had made himself popular during a recent visit