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READING HALLDOORS OF WISDOM |
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THE GREEK REVOLUTION.CHAPTER XVIII.
BAVARIAN DESPOTISM AND CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION. FEBRUARY
1833 TO SEPTEMBER 1843.
“ What! shall reviving thraldom again be
The patched up idol of enlightened days?
Shall we who struck the lion down—shall we
Pay the wolf homage ? ”
King Otro quitted the English frigate which conveyed
him to Greece on the 6th February 1833. His entry into Nauplia was a spectacle
well calculated to inspire the Greeks with enthusiasm.
The three most powerful governments in Europe combined
to establish him on his throne. He arrived escorted by a numerous fleet, and he
landed surrounded by a powerful army. King Otho was then seventeen years old. Though not handsome, he was well
grown, and of an engaging appearance. His countrymen spoke favourably of his disposition.
His youthful grace, as he rode towards his residence in the midst of a
brilliant retinue, called forth the blessings of a delighted population, and
many sincere prayers were uttered for his long and happy reign. The day formed
an era in the history of Greece, nor is it without some importance in the
records of European civilisation. A new Christian kingdom was incorporated in
the international system of the West at a critical period, for the maintenance
of the balance of power in the East.
The scene itself formed a splendid picture. Anarchy
and order shook hands. Greeks and Albanians, mountaineers and islanders,
soldiers, sailors, and peasants, in their varied and picturesque dresses,
hailed the young monarch as their deliverer from a state of society as
intolerable as Turkish tyranny. Families in bright attire glided in boats over
the calm sea amidst the gaily decorated frigates of the Allied squadrons. The
music of many bands in the ships and on shore enlivened the scene, and the roar
of artillery in every direction gave an imposing pomp to the ceremony. The
uniforms of many armies and navies, and the sounds of many languages, testified
that most civilised nations had sent deputies to inaugurate the festival of the
regeneration of Greece.
Nature was in perfect harmony. The sun was warm, and
the air balmy with the breath of spring, while a light breeze wafted freshness
from the sea. The landscape was beautiful, and it recalled memories of a
glorious past. The white buildings of the Turkish town of Nauplia clustered at
the foot of the Venetian fortifications and cyclopean foundations that crown
its rocky promontory. The mountain citadel of Palamedes frowned over both, and
the island fort of Burdjee, memorable in the history of the Revolution, stood like
a sentinel in the harbour. The king landed and mounted his horse under the
cyclopean walls of Tyrinthus, which were covered with spectators. The modern
town of Argos looked smiling even in ruin, with the Pelasgic foundations and
medieval battlements of the Larissa above. The Mycenae of Homer was seen on one
side, while on the other the blue tints and snowy tops of the Arcadian and
Laconian mountains mingled in the distance with the bluer waters of the Aegean.
Enthusiasts, who thought of the poetic glories of
Homer’s Greece, and the historic greatness of the Greece of Thucydides, might
be pardoned if they then indulged a hope that a third Greece was emerging into
life, which would again occupy a brilliant position in the world’s annals.
Political independence was secured : peace was guaranteed: domestic faction
would be allayed by the equity of impartial foreigners, and all ranks would be
taught, by the presence of a settled government, to efface the ravages of war,
and cultivate the virtues which the nation had lost under Othoman domination.
The task did not appear to be very difficult. The greater part of Greece was
uninhabited. The progress of many British colonies, and of the United States of
America, testify that land capable of cultivation forms the surest foundation
for national prosperity. To insure a rapid increase of population where there
is an abundant supply of waste land, nothing is required but domestic virtue
and public order. And in a free country, the rapid increase of a population
enjoying the privilege of self-government in local affairs, and of stern
justice in the central administration, is the surest means of extending a
nation’s power. The dreamer, therefore, who allowed visions of the increase of
the Greek race, and of its peaceful conquests over uncultivated lands far
beyond the limits of the new kingdom, to pass through his mind as King Otho
rode forward to mount his throne, might have seen what was soon to happen, had
the members of the regency possessed a little common-sense. The rapid growth of
population in the Greek kingdom would have solved the Eastern question. The
example of a well-governed Christian population, the aspect of its moral
improvement, material prosperity, and constant overflow into European Turkey,
would have relieved European cabinets from many political embarrassments, by
producing the euthanasia of the Othoman empire.
Prince Otho of Bavaria had been proposed as a
candidate for the sovereignty of Greece before the election of Prince Leopold.
It was then urged that, being young, he would become completely identified with
bis subjects in language and religion. But the Allies rejected him, thinking
that a man of experience was more likely to govern Greece well, than an
inexperienced boy of the purest accent and the most unequivocal orthodoxy.
Eloquent and orthodox Greeks had not distinguished themselves as statesmen; and
though they might be excellent teachers of their language and ecclesiastical
doctrines, they had given no proof of their being able to educate a good
sovereign.
The resignation of Prince Leopold, and the refusal of
other princes, at last opened the way for King Otho’s election, and he became
King of Greece under extremely favourable circumstances. King Louis of Bavaria
was authorised to appoint a regency to govern the kingdom until his son’s
majority, which was fixed to be on the 1st June 1835, at the completion of his
twentieth year.
The regency was invested with unlimited power, partly
through the misconduct of the Greeks, and partly in consequence of the despotic
views of King Louis. The liberality of the three powers supplied the regents
with an overflowing treasury. It has been already stated that the regency was
composed of three members, Count Armansperg, M. de Maurer, and General Heideck.
Count Armansperg was named president. Mr Abel, the secretary, was invested with
a consultative voice, and appointed supplemental member, to fill any vacancy
that might occur. Mr Greiner was joined to the regency as treasurer, and
director of the finance department. Not one of these men, with the exception of
General Heideck, had the slightest knowledge of the condition of Greece.
Count Armansperg enjoyed the reputation of being a
very liberal man for a Bavarian nobleman at that time. He had been minister of
finance, and he filled the office of minister of foreign affairs when the first
attempt was made to obtain the sovereignty of Greece for King Otho. His
ministerial experience and bis rank rendered him well suited for the presidency
of the regency, which gave him the direction of the foreign relations of the
kingdom, and, what both he and the countess particularly enjoyed, the duty of
holding public receptions and giving private entertainments. The count’s own
tact, aided by the presence of the countess and three accomplished daughters,
rendered the house of the president the centre of polished society and of
political intrigue at Nauplia. It was the only place where the young king could
see something of the world, and meet his subjects and strangers without feeling
the restraint of royalty, for M. de Maurer lived like a niggard, and General
Heideck like a recluse.
M. de Maurer and Mr Abel were selected for their
offices on account of their sharing the political opinions of Count Armansperg.
Maurer was an able jurist, but. he was destitute both of the talents and the
temper required to form a statesman. He knew well how to frame laws, but he
knew not how to apply the principles of legislation to social exigencies which
he met with for the first time. On the whole, he was a more useful and an
honester man than Count Armansperg, but he was not so well suited by the
flexibility of his character to move among Greeks and diplomatists, or to steer
a prudent course in a high political sphere.
Both Armansperg and Maurer took especial care of their
own personal interests before they gave their services to Greece. They
bargained with King Louis for large pensions on quitting the regency, and they
secured to themselves ample salaries during their stay in Greece. Count
Armansperg expended his salary like a gentleman, but the sordid household of M.
de Maurer amused even the Greeks.
General Heideck was the member of the regency first
selected. He had resided in the country, and had been long treated as a
personal friend by the King of Bavaria. King Louis was well aware that, though
Heideck was inferior to his colleagues in political knowledge, he was more
sincerely attached to the Bavarian dynasty, and his majesty always entertained
some misgivings concerning the personal prudence or the political integrity of
the other members. Heideck, during his first visit to Greece, had acquired the
reputation of an able and disinterested administrator. As a member of the
regency, he paid little attention to anything but the organisation of the army;
and he rendered himself unpopular by the partiality he showed to the Bavarians,
on whom he lavished rapid promotion and high pay, while he left the veterans of
the Revolution without reward and without employment. He was accused of purchasing
popularity at Munich by wasteful expenditure in Greece, and of doing very
little to organise a native army when he had ample means at his disposal.
The members of the regency were men of experience and
strangers. It was natural to count on their cordial co-operation during their
short period of power. Yet the two leading members, though they had been
previously supposed to be political friends, were hardly installed in office
before they began to dispute about personal trifles. Mean jealousy on one side,
and inflated presumption on the other, sowed the seeds of dissension. Count
Armansperg, as a noble, looked down on Maurer as a pedant and a law-professor.
Maurer sneered at the count as an idler, fit only to be a diplomatist or a
master of ceremonies. Both soon engaged in intrigues to eject their colleagues.
Maurer expected that, by securing a majority of votes, he should be able to
induce the King of Bavaria to support his authority. Armansperg, with more
experience of courts, endeavoured to make sure of the support of the three
protecting powers, whose influence, he knew, would easily mould the unsteady
mind of King Louis to their wish. The cause of Greece and the opinions of the
Greeks were of no account to either of the intriguers, for Greek interests
could not decide the question at issue. It would probably have been the wisest
course at the beginning to have sent a single regent to Greece, and to have
given him a council, the members of which might have been charged with the
civil, military, financial, and judicial organisation of the kingdom; though it
must be confessed that no wisdom could have foreseen that two Bavarian
statesmen would surpass the Greeks in “envy, hatred, and malice, and all
uncharitableness.”
Count Armansperg galled the pride of Maurer by an air
of superiority, which the jurist had not the tact to rebuke with polite
contempt. Maurer was impatient to proclaim publicly that the title of president
only conferred on the count the first place in processions and the upper seat
at board meetings, and he could not conceal that these things were the objects
of his jealousy. The count understood society better than his rival. When
strangers, misled by the fine figure and expression of Maurer, addressed him as
the chief of the regency, the lawyer had not the tact to transfer the
compliments to their true destination, and win the flatterers by his manner in
doing so, but he left time for the president to thrust forward his
common-looking physiognomy with polished ease, vindicate his own rights, and
extract from the abashed strangers some additional outpouring of adulation. The
Countess of Armansperg increased the discord of the regents by her extreme
haughtiness, which was seldom restrained by good sense, and sometimes not even
by good manners. She was so imprudent as to offend Heideck and Abel as much as
she irritated Maurer. It is necessary to notice this conduct of the lady, for
she was her husband’s evil genius in Greece. Her influence increased the
animosity of the Bavarians, and prolonged the misfortunes of the Greeks.
The position of the regency was delicate, but not
difficult to men of talent and resolution. A moderate share of sagacity
sufficed to guide their conduct. Anarchy had prepared an open field of action.
It was necessary to create an army, a navy, a civil and judicial
administration, and to sweep away the rude fiscal system of the Turkish
land-tax. We shall see how the Bavarian regency performed these duties.
The first step was to put an end to the provisional
system of expedients by which Capodistrias and his successors had prolonged the
state of revolution. It was necessary to make the Greeks feel that the royal
authority gave personal security and protection for property, since their
loyalty reposed on no national and religious traditions and sympathies. It
required no philosopher in Greece, when King Otho arrived, to proclaim “that
all the vast apparatus of government has ultimately no other object or purpose
but the distribution of justice; and that kings and parliaments, fleets and
armies, officers of the court and revenue, ambassadors, ministers, and privy
councillors, were all subordinate in their end to this part of the
administration.” The reign of anarchy coming after the despotism of
Capodistrias, had enabled the people to feel instinctively that, in order to
secure good government, it was indispensable that the laws and institutions of
the kingdom should be more powerful than the will of the king and the action of
government.
The second step was to prepare the way for national
prosperity, by removing the obstacles which prevented the people from bettering
its condition. There was no difficulty in effecting this, since uncultivated
land was abundant, and the Allied loan supplied the regency with ample funds.
The system of exacting a tenth of the agricultural produce of the country kept
society beyond the walls of towns in a stationary condition. Its immediate
abolition was the most certain method of eradicating the evils it produced.
Relief from the oppression of the tax-collector, even more than from the burden
of the tax, would enable the peasantry to cultivate additional land, and to pay
wages to agricultural labourers. An immediate influx of labourers would arrive
from Turkey, and the increase of the population of Greece would be certain and
rapid. One-tenth would every year be added to the national capital. The regency
required to do nothing but make roads. The government of the country could have
been carried on from the customs, and the rent of national property. The
extraordinary expenses of organising the kingdom would have been paid for out
of the loan. The regency did nothing of the kind; it retained the Turkish
land-tax, neglected to make roads, spent the Allied loan in a manner that both
weakened and corrupted the Greek nation, and left the great question of its
increase in population and agricultural prosperity unsolved.
The members of the regency complained that the want of
labour and capital impeded the success of their plans of improvement; yet they
seemed to have overlooked the fact that if they had abolished the tenths, the
people would easily have procured both labour and capital for themselves.
Labour was then abundant and cheap in Turkey; capital in the hands of Greeks
was abundant in every commercial mart in the Mediterranean. Yet the Bavarians
talked of establishing agricultural colonies of Swiss or Germans, and of
inviting foreign capitalists to found banks. It may be confidently asserted
that the Greek monarchy would have realised the boast of Themistocles, and
rapidly expanded from a petty kingdom to a great state, had the regency swept
away the Turkish land-tax, and left the agricultural industry of Greece free to
make its own career in the East.
On the day of the king’s landing, a royal proclamation
was issued, addressed to the Greek nation; the ministers in office were
confirmed in their places, and the senate was allowed to expire, without
notice, of the wounds it had inflicted both on itself and its country.
The royal proclamation was nothing more than a
collection of empty phrases, and it disappointed public expectation by making
no allusion to representative institutions nor to the constitution. It revealed
clearly that the views of the Bavarian government were not in accordance with
the sentiments of the Greeks. The silence of the regency on the subject of the
Greek constitution was regarded as a claim on the part of King Otho to be an
absolute monarch. The omission was generally blamed; but the acknowledged
necessity of investing the regency with legislative power, in order to enable
it to introduce organic changes in the administration, prevented any public
complaint. It caused the Greeks, however, to scrutinise the measures of the
Bavarians with severity, and to regard the members of the regency with
distrust. The King of Bavaria had solemnly declared to the protecting powers
that the individuals selected to govern Greece during his son’s minority “ought
to hold moderate and constitutional opinions;” the Greek people had therefore
an undoubted right to receive from these foreign statesmen a distinct pledge
that they did not intend to establish an arbitrary government. The distrust of
the Greeks was increased, because the omission in the royal proclamation was a
deliberate violation of a pledge given by the Bavarian minister of foreign
affairs, when the object of King Louis was to win over the Greeks to accept his
son as their king. The Baron de Gise then declared that it would be one of the
first cares of the regency to convoke a national assembly to assist in
preparing a definitive constitution for the kingdom. The royal word, thus
pledged, was guaranteed by a proclamation of the three protecting powers, published
at Nauplia, to announce the election of King Otho. In this document the Greeks
were invited to aid their sovereign in giving their country a definitive
constitution.1 They answered the appeal of the Allies on the 15th of September
1843.
The oath of allegiance demanded from the Greeks was
simple. They swore fidelity to King Otho, and obedience to the laws of their
country.
The first measures of the regency had been prepared at
Munich, under the eye of King Louis. In these measures too much deference was
paid to the administrative arrangements introduced by Capodistrias, which he
himself had always regarded as of a provisional nature; and the modifications
made on the Capodistrian legislation were too exclusively based on German
theories, without a practical adaptation to the state of Greece. The King of
Bavaria had little knowledge of financial and economical questions, and he had
no knowledge of the social and fiscal wants of the Greek people. He thought of
nothing but the means of carrying on the central administration, and in that
sphere he endeavoured honestly to introduce a well-organised and clearly
defined system. The laws and ordinances which the regency brought from Bavaria
would have required only a few modifications to have engrafted them
advantageously on the existing institutions. Their great object was to
establish order and give power to the executive government.
The armed bands of personal followers which had
enabled the military chiefs to place themselves above the law, to defy the
government, and plunder the people, were disbanded. A national army was
created. The scenes of tumultuous violence and gross peculation which General
Heideck had witnessed in the Greek armies, had made a deep impression on his
mind.
The national army soon received a good organisation
in print.1 In numbers it was unnecessarily strong. Upwards of five thousand
Bavarian volunteers were enrolled in the Greek service before the end of the
year 1834, and almost as many Greek troops were kept under arms. This numerous
force was never brought into a very efficient condition. Faction and jobbing
soon vitiated its organisation. The regency was ashamed to publish an
army-list. Promotion was conferred too lavishly on young Bavarians, while
Greeks and Philhellenes of long service were left unemployed. It was a grievous
error on the part of General Heideck to omit fixing the rank and verifying the
position and service of the Greek officers who had served during the Revolution,
by the publication of an official army-list while the personal identity of the
actors in every engagement was well known.
The bold measure of disbanding the irregular army was
a blow which required to be struck with promptitude and followed up with
vigour in order to insure success. It is idle to accuse the regency of
precipitancy and severity, for something like a thunderbolt could alone prevent
an organised resistance, and a hurricane was necessary to dissipate opposition.
The whole military power created by the revolutionary war, and all the fiscal
interests cherished by factious administrations, were opposed to the formation
of a regular army. Chieftains, primates, ministers, and farmers of the taxes
were all deprived of their bands of armed retainers before they could combine
to thwart the Bavarians as they had leagued to attack the French.
The war had been terminated in the Morea by the arms
of the French; in Romelia by the negotiations with the Porte: but the Greek
soldiers, instead of resuming the occupations of citizens, insisted on being
fed and paid by the people. When not engaged in civil war they lived in utter
idleness. The whole revenues of Greece were insufficient to maintain these
armed bands, and during the anarchy that preceded the king’s arrival they had
been rapidly consuming the capital of the agricultural population. In many
villages they had devoured the labouring oxen and the seed-corn. Nevertheless,
the wisest reform could not fail to cause great irritation in several powerful
bodies of men. Unemployed Capodistrians, discontented constitutionalists,
displaced Corfiots, and Russian partisans, all raised an angry cry of
dissatisfaction. Sir Richard Church committed the political blunder of joining
the cause of the anarchists. His past position misled him into the belief that
the irregulars were an element of military strength. His own influence over the
military depended entirely on personal combinations. His declared opposition to
the military reforms of the regeny persuaded Count Armansperg that the
difficulty of transforming the personal followers of chiefs into a national
army was much greater than it was in reality. Count Armansperg had approved of
disbanding the irregulars, when that measure was decided on at Munich, and be
concurred in the necessity of its immediate execution after the regency arrived
at Nauplia.
Yet, when he listened to the observations of Sir
Richard Church, and counted the persons of influence opposed to reform, he
became anxious to gain them to be his political partisans. He was sufficiently
adroit as a party tactician to perceive that the Greeks were in that social and
moral condition which leads men to make persons of more account than
principles, and he saw that intriguers of all factions were looking out for a
leader. His ambition led him to make his first false step in Greece on this
occasion. He listened with affected approval to interested declamations against
the military policy which put an end to the reign of anarchy. And, from his
imprudent revival of the semi-irregular bands at a subsequent period, it seems
probable that in his eagerness to gain partisans he gave promises at this time
which he found himself obliged to fulfil when he was intrusted with the sole
direction of the government. The opposition of Sir Richard Church to measures
which were necessary in order to put an end to anarchy, and the selfish
countenance given to this opposition by Count Armansperg, entailed many years
of military disorder on Greece, and were a principal cause of perpetuating the
fearful scourge of brigandage, which is its inevitable attendant.
The sluggishness of the Bavarian troops formed a
marked contrast with the activity of the French during their stay in Greece.
Though the French soldiers were in a foreign land, with which they had only an
accidental and temporary connection, they laboured industriously at many public
works for the benefit of the Greeks, without fee or the expectation of reward.
At Modon they repaired the fortifications, and built large and commodious
barracks. At Navarin they reconstructed great part of the fortifications. They.
formed a good carriage-road from Modon to Navarin, and they built a bridge over
the Pamisos to enable the cultivators of the rich plain of Messenia to bring
their produce at every season to the markets of Kalamata, Coron, Modon, and
Navarin. The Bavarians remained longer in Greece than the French; they were in
the Greek service, and well paid out of the Greek treasury, but they left no
similar claims on the gratitude of the nation.
The civil organisation of the kingdom was based on the
principle of complete centralisation. Without contesting the advantages of this
system, it may be remarked that in a country in which roads exist it is
impracticable. The decree establishing the ministry of the interior embraced so
wide a field of attributions, some necessary and some useful, others
superfluous and others impracticable, that it looks like a summary for an abridgment
of the laws and ordinances of the monarchy. A royal ordinance, not unlike a
table of contents to a comprehensive treatise on political economy,
subsequently annexed a department of public economy to this ministry. These
two decrees, when read with a knowledge of their practical results, form a keen
satire on the skill of the Bavarians in the art of government.
The kingdom was divided into ten provinces or
nomarchies, whose limits corresponded with ancient or natural geographical
boundaries. It is not necessary to notice the details of this division, for,
like most arrangements in Greece, it underwent several modifications. Prefects,
called nomarchies, and sub-prefects, called eparchs, had been already trained
to the service by Capodistrias, and no difficulty was found in introducing the
outward appearance of a regular and systematic action of the central
government over the whole country.
With all their bureaucratic experience, the members of
the regency were deficient in the sagacity necessary for carrying theory into
practice where the social circumstances of the people required new
administrative forms. Their invention was so limited that when they were unable
to copy the laws of Bavaria or France they adopted the measures of
Capodistrias. In no case were these measures more at variance with the
political and social habits of the Greeks than in the modifications he made in
their municipal system. This system, whatever might have been its
imperfections, was a national institution. It had enabled the people to employ
their whole strength against the Turks, and it contained within itself the
germs of improvement and reform. Its vitality and its close connection with the
actions and wants of the people had persuaded Capodistrias that it was a
revolutionary institution. He struck a mortal blow at its existence, by
thrusting it into the vortex of the central administration.
The regency virtually abolished the old popular
municipal system, and replaced it by a communal organisation, which permitted
the people only a small share in naming the lowest officials of government in
the provinces. The people were deprived of the power of directly electing their
chief magistrate or demarch. An oligarchical elective college was formed to
name three candidates, and the king selected one of these to be demarch. The
minister of the interior was invested with the power of suspending the demarchs
from office, as an administrative punishment. In this way, the person who appeared
to be a popular and municipal officer was in reality transformed into an organ
of the central government. Demarchs were henceforth compelled to perform the
duties of incompetent and corrupt prefects, and serve as scapegoats for their
misdeeds. The system introduced by the regency may have its merits, but it is a
misnomer to call it a municipal system.
To render municipal institutions a truly national
institution and a part of the active life of the people, it is not only
necessary that the local chief magistrate should be directly elected by the men
of the municipality; but also that the authority which he receives by this
popular election should only be revoked or suspended by the decision of a
court of law, and not by the order of a minister or king. To render the
people’s defender a dependent on the will of the central administration, is to
destroy the essence of municipal institutions. The mayor or demarch must be
responsible only to the law; and the control which the minister of the interior
must exercise over his conduct must be confined to accusing him before the
legal tribunals when he neglects his duty.
The decrees organising the ministry of the interior
and the department of public economy, proved that the regency was theoretically
acquainted with all the objects to which enlightened statesmen can be called
upon to direct their attention; but its financial administration displayed
great inability to employ this multifarious knowledge to any good practical
purpose. The fiscal system of the Turks was allowed to remain the basis of
internal taxation in the Greek kingdom. Indeed, as has been already observed,
whenever the Bavarians entered on a field of administration, in which neither
administrative manuals nor Capodistrias’s practice served them as guides, they
were unable to discover new paths. This administrative inaptitude, more than
financial ignorance, must have been the cause of their not replacing the
Turkish land-tax by some source of revenue less hostile to national progress.
Where a bad financial system exists, reform is difficult, and its results
doubtful. Entire abolition is the only way in which all the evils it has
engendered in society can be completely eradicated. So many persons derive a
profit from old abuses, that no partial reform can prevent bad practices from
finding a new lodgment, and in new positions old evil-doers can generally
continue to intimidate or cheat the people. To make sure of success in
extensive financial changes, it is necessary to gain the active co-operation of
the great body of the people, and this must be purchased by lightening the
popular burdens. The greatest difficulty of statesmen is not in preparing good
laws, but in creating the machinery necessary to carry any financial laws into
execution without oppression.
It is always difficult to levy a large amount of
direct taxation from the agricultural population without arresting improvement
and turning capital away from the cultivation of the land. The decline of the
agricultural population in the richest lands of the Othoman empire, and,
indeed, in every country between the Adriatic and the Ganges, may be traced to
the oppressive manner in which direct taxation is applied to cultivated land.
The Roman empire, in spite of its admirable survey, and the constant
endeavours of its legislators to protect agriculture, was impoverished and
depopulated by the operation of a direct land-tax, and the oppressive fiscal laws
it rendered necessary. The regency perhaps did not fully appreciate the evil
effects on agriculture of the Turkish system; it was also too ignorant of the
financial resources of Greece to find new taxes; and it was not disposed to
purchase the future prosperity of the monarchy by a few years of strict
economy.
The fiscal measures of the regency which had any
pretension to originality were impolitic and unjust. They were adopted at the
suggestion of Mavrocordatos, who had the fiscal prejudices and the arbitrary
principles of his phanariot education as a Turkish official.
Salt was declared a government monopoly; and in order
to make this monopoly more profitable, several salt-works which had previously
been farmed were now closed. This measure produced great inconvenience in a
country where the difficulties of transport presented an insuperable barrier to
the formation of a sufficient number of depots in the mountains. The evils of
the monopoly soon became intolerable,sheep died of diseases caused by the want
of salt, the shepherds turned brigands, and, at last, even the rapacious
Bavarians were convinced that the monopoly required to be modified.
The evils resulting from the salt monopoly were far
exceeded by an attempt of the regency to seize all the pasture-lands belonging
to private individuals as national property. In a ministerial circular,
Mavrocordatos ordered the officials of the finance department to take
possession of all pasture-lands in the kingdom, declaring “that every spot
where wild herbage grows which is suitable for the pasturage of cattle is
national property,” and that the Greek government, like the Othoman, maintained the
principle “that no property in the soil, except the exclusive right of
cultivation, could be legally vested in a private individual.” This attempt to
found the Bavarian monarchy in Greece on the legislative theories of Asiatic
barbarians, whom the Greeks had expelled from their country, could not succeed.
But the property of so many persons was arbitrarily confiscated by this
ministerial circular, that measures for resisting it were promptly taken. A
widespread conspiracy was formed, and several military chiefs were incited to
take advantage of the prevalent discontent, and plan a general insurrection.
Government was warned of the danger, and saw the necessity of cancelling
Mavrocordatos’s circular. But many landed proprietors were deprived of the use
of their pasture-lands by the farmers of the revenue for more than a year. The
cultivation of several large estates were abandoned, and much capital was
driven away from Greece.
Though Mavrocordatos made an exhibition of
extraordinary fiscal zeal at the expense of the people, he is accused by M. de
Maurer of dissipating the national property, by granting titles to houses, buildings,
shops, mills, and gardens, to his political allies and partisans, after the
king’s arrival, without any legal warrant from the regency, and without any
purchase-money being paid into the Greek treasury. In short, with continuing
the abuses which had disgraced the administration of the constitutionalists
while they were in league with Kolettes, and acting under the governing
commission.
It would be a waste of time to enumerate the financial
abuses which the regency overlooked or tolerated. They allowed the frauds to
commence which have ended in robbing the nation of the most valuable portion of
the national property, the English bondholders of the lands which were given
them in security, and the greater part of those who fought for the independence
of their country, of all reward. The regency showed itself as insensible to the
value of national honesty as the Greek statesmen of the Revolution, and the
progress of the country has been naturally arrested in this age of credit by
the dishonesty of its rulers. By the repudiation of her just debts, Greece has
been thrown entirely on her internal resources, and, after nearly thirty years
of peace, she remains without roads, without manufactures, and without
agricultural improvements.
The monetary system of the Greek kingdom was a
continuance of that introduced by Capodistrias, but the phoenix was now called
a drachma. The radical defect of this plan has been already pointed out, and
the value of the Spanish pillar dollar, on which it had been originally based,
was daily increasing throughout the Levant. An accurate assay of these dollars
at the Bavarian mint had proved that their metallic value exceeded the
calculation of Capodistrias, and the drachma was consequently coined of
somewhat more value than the phoenix, in order to render it equal to one-sixth
of the dollar. The metal employed in the Greek coinage was of the same standard
of purity as that employed in the French mint. It seems strange that the
regency overlooked the innumerable advantages which would have resulted to
Greece from making the coinage of the country correspond exactly with that of
France, Sardinia, and Belgium, instead of creating a new monetary system.
The highest duty the regency was called upon to fulfil
was to introduce an effective administration of justice. M. de Maurer was a
learned and laborious lawyer, and he devoted his attention with honourable zeal
to framing the laws and organising the tribunals necessary to secure to all
ranks an equitable administration of justice. Had he confined himself to
organising the judicial business, and preparing a code of laws for Greece, he
would have gained immortal honour.
The criminal code and the codes of civil and criminal
procedure promulgated by the regency are excellent. In general, the measures
adopted for carrying the judicial system into immediate execution exhibited a
thorough knowledge of legal administration. By Maurer’s ability and
energy the law was promptly invested with supreme authority in a country where
arbitrary power had known no law for ages. His merit in this respect ought to
cancel many of his political blunders, and obtain for him the gratitude of the
Greeks. It has been the melancholy task of this work to record the errors and
the crimes of those who governed Greece much oftener than their merits or their
virtues. It is gratifying to find an opportunity of uttering well-merited
praise.
Some objections have been taken to the manner in which
primary jurisdictions were adapted to the social requirements of a rural
population living in a very rude condition, and thinly scattered over
mountainous districts; but the examination of these objections belongs to the
province of politics, and not of history.
It is necessary to point out one serious violation of
the principles of equity in the judicial organisation introduced by the
regency. In compliance with the spirit of administrative despotism prevalent in
Europe, the sources of justice were vitiated whenever the fiscal interests of
the government were concerned, by the creation of exceptional tribunals to
decide questions between the state and private individuals; and these
tribunals were exempted from the ordinary rules of judicial procedure. Thus the
citizens were deprived of the protection of the law precisely in those cases
where that protection was most wanted, and the officials of the government were
raised above the law. The proceedings of these exceptional tribunals caused
such general dissatisfaction, that they were abolished after the Revolution of
1843, and an article was inserted in the constitution of Greece prohibiting the
establishment of such courts in future.
The Greek Revolution broke off the relations of the
clergy with the patriarch and synod of Constantinople. This was unavoidable,
since the patriarch was in some degree a minister of the sultan for the civil
as well as the ecclesiastical affairs of the orthodox. It was therefore
impossible for a people at war with the sultan to recognise the patriarch’s
authority. The clergy in Greece ceased to mention the patriarch’s name in
public worship, and adopted the form of prayer for the whole orthodox Church
used in those dioceses of the Eastern Church which are not comprised within the
limits of the patriarchate of Constantinople.
When Capodistrias assumed the presidency, an attempt
was made by the patriarch and synod of Constantinople to bring the clergy in
Greece again under their immediate jurisdiction. Letters were addressed to the
president and to the clergy, and a deputation of prelates was sent to renew the
former ties of dependency. But Capodistrias was too sensible of the danger
which would result to the civil power from allowing the clergy to become
dependent on foreign patronage, to permit any ecclesiastical relations to exist
with the patriarch. He replied to the demands of the Church of Constantinople
by stating that the murder of the patriarch Gregorios, joined to other
executions of bishops and laymen, having forced the Greeks to throw off the
sultan’s government in order to escape extermination, it was impossible for
liberated Greece to recognise an ecclesiastical chief subject to the sultan’s
power.
Capodistrias found the clergy of Greece in a
deplorable condition, and he did very little for their improvement. The lower
ranks of the priesthood were extremely ignorant, the higher extremely venal.
Money was sought with shameless rapacity; and Mustoxidi, who enjoyed the
president’s confidence, and who held an official situation in the department of
ecclesiastical affairs and public instruction, asserts that simony was
generally practised. The bishops annulled marriages, made and cancelled wills,
and gave judicial decisions in most civil causes. They leagued with the
primates in opposing the establishment of courts of law during the Revolution;
for they derived a considerable revenue by trading in judicial business; while
the primates supported this jurisdiction, because the ecclesiastics were
generally under their influence. Capodistrias, in spite of this opposition,
deprived the bishops of their jurisdiction in civil causes, except in those
cases relating to marriage and divorce, where it is conceded to them by the
canons of the Greek Church. Against this reform the mitred judges raised
indignant complaints, and endeavoured to persuade their flocks that the
orthodox clergy was suffering a persecution equal to that inflicted on the
chosen people in the old time by Pharaoh.
Capodistrias also endeavoured to obtain from the
bishops and abbots, inventories of the movable and immovable property of the
churches and monasteries under their control, but without success. Even his
orders, that diocesan and parish registers should be kept to marriages,
baptisms, and deaths, were disobeyed, though not openly resisted. Mustoxidi
expressly declares that the opposition to these beneficial measures proceeded
from the selfishness and corruption of the Greek clergy, who would not resign the
means of illicit gain. They knew that if regular registers of marriages,
births, and deaths were established, the fabrication of certificates to meet
contingencies would cease, and the delivery of such certificates was a very
lucrative branch of ecclesiastical profits. Bigamy and the admission of minors
into the priesthood would no longer be possible; and it was said that they were
sources of great gain to venal bishops. Capodistrias failed to eradicate these
abuses from the Church in Greece; for Mustoxidi declares, that if he had
amputated the gangrened members of the priesthood, very little of the clerical
body would have remained.
The ecclesiastical forms of the regency were
temperately conducted. An assembly of bishops was convoked at Nauplia to make a
report on the ecclesiastical affairs of the kingdom. Its advice was in
conformity with the wishes of those in power, rather than with the sentiments
of a majority of the bishops; for political subserviency has been for ages a
feature of the Eastern clergy. On the 4th August 1833, a decree proclaimed the
National Church of Greece independent of the patriarch and synod of Constantinople,
and established an ecclesiastical synod for the kingdom. In doctrine, the
Church of liberated Greece remained as closely united to the Church at
Constantinople as the patriarchates of Jerusalem or Alexandria; but in temporal
affairs it was subject to a Catholic king instead of a Mohammedan sultan. King
Otho was invested with the power of appointing annually the members of the
synod. This synod was formed on the model of that of Russia; but in accordance
with the free institutions of the Greeks, it received more freedom of action.
When the important consequences which may result from
the independence of a church in Greece filled with a learned and enlightened
clergy are considered, the success of the regency in consummating this great
work is really wonderful. The influences of Russia and the prejudices of a
large body of the Greeks were hostile to reform; but the necessity of a great
change in order to sweep away the existing ecclesiastical corruption was so
strongly felt by the enlightened men in liberated Greece, that they were
determined not to cavil at the quarter from which the reformation came, nor to
criticise the details of a measure whose general scope they approved. Those,
however, who had thwarted the moderate reforms of Capodistrias were not likely
to submit in silence to the more extensive reforms of the Bavarians. An
opposition was quickly formed. Several bishops were sent from Turkey into
Greece as missionaries to support the claims of the patriarch to ecclesiastical
supremacy. They were assisted by monks from Mount Athos, who wandered about as
emissaries of superstition and bigotry. Russian diplomacy echoed the outcries
of these zealots, and patronised the most intriguing of the discontented
priests. Yet the Greek people remained passive amidst all the endeavours made
to incite it to violence.
In the month of December 1833, the regency published
an ordinance, declaring that the number of bishoprics in Greece was to be
ultimately reduced to ten, making them correspond in extent with the nomarchies into which the kingdom was divided. This measure was adopted at the
recommendation of the synod. In the meantime, forty bishops were named by
royal authority to act in the old dioceses, and when
A reaction in favour of renewing ecclesiastical
relations with Constantinople soon manifested itself. Death diminished the
number of the bishops, and the synod named by King Otho had not the power of
consecrating an orthodox bishop, so that when the Revolution of 1843 occurred,
many sees were vacant. The constitutional system did as little for some years
to improve the Church as preceding governments. But the Greek people did not
remain indifferent to the revival of religious feeling, which manifested itself
in every Christian country about this period. Among the Greeks the ideas of
nationality and Oriental orthodoxy are closely entwined. The revival of
religious feeling strengthened the desire for national union, and a strong wish
was felt to put an end to the kind of schism which separated the free Greeks
from the flock of the patriarch of Constantinople.
Secret negotiations were opened, which, in the year
1850, led to the renewal of amicable relations. The patriarch and synod of
Constantinople published a decretal of the Oriental Church, called a Synodal
Tomos, which recognised the independence of the Greek Church, under certain
restrictions and obligations, which it imposed on the clergy. Much objection
was made to the form of this document, particularly to the assumption that the
liberties of the National Church required the confirmation of a body of priests
notoriously dependent on the Othoman government, and which might soon be filled
with members aliens to the Greek race. Two years were allowed to pass before
the Greek government accepted the terms of peace offered by the Church of Constantinople.
In 1852 a law was adopted by the Greek Chambers, enacting all the provisions of
the Synodal Tomos, without, however, making any mention of that document. By
this arrangement the independence of the Church of Greece was established on a
national basis, and its orthodoxy fully recognised by the patriarch and synod
of Constantinople.
The re-establishment of monastic discipline, and the
administration of the property belonging to ecclesiastical foundations, called
for legislation. War had destroyed the buildings and dispersed the monks of
four hundred monasteries. Many monks had served as soldiers against the
infidels; but a much greater number lived on public charity, mixing with the
world as mere beggars and idlers. The respect for monachism had declined. It
was neither possible nor desirable to rebuild the greater part of the ruined
monasteries; but it was necessary to compel the monks to retire from the world
and return to a monastic life. It was also the duty of the government to
prevent the large revenues of the ruined monasteries from being
misappropriated. The regency suppressed all those monasteries of which there
were less than six monks, or of which the buildings were completely destroyed,
by a royal ordinance of the 7th October 1833. The number thus dissolved amounted
to four hundred and twelve, and the property which fell into the hands of the
government was very great. One hundred and forty-eight monasteries were
re-established, and two thousand monks were recalled to a regular monastic life.
The surviving nuns were collected into four convents. The lands of the
suppressed monasteries were farmed like other national property, and they were
so much worse cultivated by the farmers of the revenue than they had been
formerly by the monks, that the measure created much dissatisfaction. The
ecclesiastical policy of the regency in this case received the blame due to its
financial administration. As far as regards the treatment of the monasteries,
no conduct of foreigners, however prudent, could have escaped censure.
Much has been done in Greece for public instruction
since the arrival of King Otho. The regency, however, did little but copy
German institutions, and so many changes have been subsequently made, that the
subject does not fall within the limits of this work. The regeneration of Greek
society, by a wiser system of family education than seems at present to be
practised, will doubtless one day supply the materials for an interesting
chapter to some future historian of Greek civilisation.
The regency did not establish an university, and King
Otho never showed any love for learning. Much dissatisfaction was manifested at
the delay; and in the year 1837 the Greeks took the business into their own
hands, with a degree of zeal which it would be for their honour to display more
frequently in other good causes. A public meeting was held, and all parties
united to raise the funds necessary for building an university by public
subscription. The court yielded slowly and sullenly to the force of public
opinion. The royal assent was extorted rather than given to the measure, but
after an interval the king himself became a subscriber, and sycophants called
the university by his name.
In a country divided as Greece had long been by fierce
party-quarrels, it was natural that every measure of the government should meet
a body of men ready to oppose it. The liberty of the press could not fail to
give a vent to much animosity, and the restoration of legal order by the
regency resuscitated the liberty of the press, which Capodistrias had almost
strangled. Four newspapers were established at Nauplia, and the measures of the
regency were examined with a good deal of freedom. Many of the criticisms of
the press might have been useful to the regency from their intelligence and
moderation, and from the intimate knowledge they displayed concerning the
internal condition of the country. Though the regency paid little attention to
these articles, it allowed those in which ignorance and violence were exhibited
to ruffle its equanimity. The liberty of the press was declared by the two
liberals, Armansperg and Maurer, to be of little value to the Greeks, unless
the press could be prevented from blaming the conduct and criticising the
measures of their rulers. Most of the Bavarians were galled by frequent
allusions to the magnitude of their pay, and the trifling nature of their
service. They demanded that the press should be silenced. The wishes of the
members of the regency coincided with these demands. The spirit of Viaro Capodistrias
again animated the Greek government.
The regency did not venture to establish a censorship.
It was, however, determined to suppress the newspapers most opposed to the
government by indirect legislation. In the month of September 1833 several laws
were promulgated regulating the press, and police regulations were introduced
worthy of the Inquisition in the sixteenth century. Printers, lithographers,
and booksellers, were treated as men suspected of criminal designs against the
state, and placed under numerous restrictions. The editors of newspapers and
periodicals were compelled to deposit the sum of five thousand drachmas in the
public treasury, to serve as a security in case they should be condemned to pay
fines or damages in actions of libel. As the interest of money at Nauplia was
then one and a half per cent per month, it was supposed that nobody would be
found who would make the deposit. The end of the law was attained, and all the
four political newspapers immediately ceased. By this law another liberal
ministry in Greece became bankrupt in reputation. The want of public principle
and conscientious opinions among Greek statesmen, is manifested by the names of
the ministers which appear attached to these ordinances against the liberty of
the press. They are Mavrocordatos, Kolettes, Tricoupes, Psyllas, and Praides.
To counteract the bad impression produced by the restraints put on the liberty
of the press, the Greek government pretended to be seriously occupied in
improving the material condition of the people. Starving the mind and stuffing
the body is a favourite system with tyrants. The Bavarians, however, only
stuffed the Greeks with printed paper. A royal proclamation was published
announcing that the regency was about to construct a network of roads. A plan
was adopted by which every part of the kingdom would have found ready access to
the Ionian and Aegean seas, and its execution was absolutely necessary to
improve the country. The whole of the roads proposed might easily have been completed
in about ten years, had the Bavarian volunteers and the Greek conscripts worked
at roadmaking with as much industry as the French had done while they remained
in Greece. King Louis of Bavaria declared that the Bavarians would confer
benefits on Greece without being a burden on the country. The greatest benefit
they could have conferred would have been to construct good roads and stone
bridges. They neglected to do this, and, in direct violation of their king’s
engagement to the protecting powers, they rendered themselves an intolerable
burden.
Enough has been now said of the legislative and
administrative measures of the regency.
On the 1st of June 1833 they decorated the monarchy
with an order of knighthood, called the order of the Redeemer, in commemoration
of the providential deliverance of Greece. The order was divided into five
classes. From an official list, published a few weeks before the termination of
Count Armansperg’s administration as arch-chancellor, it appears that the grand
cross had been conferred on forty-nine persons, exclusive of kings and members
of reigning families. Among these there were only three Greeks and one
Philhellene. The names of Kanaris, Mavrocordatos, Gordon, and Fabvier, are not
in the list, which it is impossible to read without a feeling of
contempt for hose who prepared it. The subsequent destiny of the order has
not been more brilliant than its commencement. French ministers have obtained
crosses in great numbers for unknown writers, and Bavarian courtiers and German
apothecaries have been as lucky as French savants. While it was lavished on
foreigners who had rendered Greece no service, it was not bestowed on several
Greeks who had distinguished themselves in their country’s service.
Before recounting the quarrels of the regency, it is
necessary to say a few words more concerning the characters of the men who
composed it.
Count Armansperg came to Greece with the expectation
of being able to act the viceroy. He aspired to hold a position similar to that
of Capodistrias, but neither his feeble character nor his moderate abilities
enabled him to master the position. He might have given up the idea had he not
been pushed forward by the countess, who possessed more ambition and less
wisdom than her husband. Armansperg selected Maurer and Abel as his
colleagues, knowing them to be able and hard-working men, and believing that he
should find them grateful and docile. Armansperg never displayed much sagacity
in selecting his subordinates, and he soon found to his dismay that Maurer and
Abel were men so ambitious that he could neither lead nor drive them. Without
losing time he set about undermining their authority.
The merits of Maurer are displayed in his legislative
measures; his defects are exposed in his book on Greece. His natural
disposition was sensitive and touchy; his sudden elevation to high rank turned
his head. He could never move in his new sphere without a feeling of restraint
that often amounted to awkwardness. He wished to save money, and he did so;
but he felt that his penuriousness rendered him ridiculous. His want of
knowledge of the world was displayed by the foolish manner in which he
attempted to obtain the recall of Mr Dawkins, the British resident in Greece,
because Mr Dawkins thought Count Armansperg the better statesman. His ignorance
of Greece is certified by his informing the world that it produces dates,
sugar, and coffee.
Mr Abel was an active and able man of business, but of
limited bureaucratic views; rude, bold, and sincere.
The opinions of General Heideck were not considered to
be of much value, but his support was important, for it was known that his
conduct was regulated by what he conceived to be the wish of the King of
Bavaria.
The merits of the different members of the regency may
be correctly estimated by the condition in which they placed the departments of
the state under their especial superintendence. Until the 31st of July 1834,
the departments of justice, military affairs, and civil administration, were
directed by Maurer, Heideck, and Abel; and they laid the foundations of an
organisation which has outlived the Bavarian domination, and forms a portion of
the scaffolding of the constitutional monarchy of Greece, as established after
the Revolution of 1843. The department of finance was intrusted to Armansperg,
and he retained his authority for four years, yet he effected no radical
improvements. He found and left the department a source of political and social
corruption. It was not until the end of the year 1836, and then only when
forced by the protecting powers and the King of Bavaria, that he published any accounts
of the revenue and expenditure of his government, and the accounts published
were both imperfect and inaccurate.
The policy of the regency did little to extinguish
party spirit and personal animosity among the Greeks. Indeed, both the members
of the regency and the foreign ministers at Nauplia did much to nourish the
evil passions excited by the reign of anarchy. Armansperg was a partisan of
English influence; Maurer and Abel, strong partisans of France. Russia, having
no avowed partisan among the Bavarians, maintained her influence among the
Greeks by countenancing the Capodistrian opposition, protecting the monks and
clergy from Turkey, and the adventurers from the Ionian Islands, and flattering
the ambition of Kolokotrones. The French minister protected Kolettes and the
most rapacious of his friends, because they were supposed to be devoted to the
interests of France. England made a pretence of supporting a constitutional
party, but her friends were chiefly remarkable for their frequent desertion of
the cause of the constitution.
The regency excluded Kolokotrones and the senators,
who had attempted to welcome King Otho with a civil war, from all official
employment. But the unpopularity of several measures enabled these excluded
Capodistrians to raise a loud if not a dangerous opposition, and they availed
themselves with considerable skill of the liberty of the press, as long as the
regency allowed them to enjoy it. At the same time they formed a secret society
called the Phoenix, to imitate the Philike Hetairia, and pretended to be sure
of Russian support.
Kolokotrones had addressed a letter to Count
Nesselrode, the Russian minister of foreign affairs, on the state of Greece,
while residing on board Admiral Ricord’s flag-ship, just after King Otho’s
arrival. Count Nesselrode replied to that letter on the 11th July 1833, and
numerous copies of this reply were now circulated among the discontented. It
was appealed to as a proof that the Russian cabinet would support a
Capodistrian insurrection, and cover the insurgents with its powerful
protection as heretofore. A petition to the Emperor Nicholas was signed,
praying his Imperial Majesty to employ his powerful influence to obtain the
immediate recall of the regency, and the declaration of King Otho’s majority.
The proposal showed great boldness in a party which, when it elected Agostino
president of Greece, had proposed that King Otho should be considered a minor
until he completed his twenty-fourth year. A cry was raised in favour of
orthodoxy and liberty in many parts of Greece, and brigandage began
simultaneously to revive. Measures were concerted for a general outbreak, and
the Capodistrians, with Kolokotrones as their leader, expected to play over
again the drama which the constitutionalists, with Kolettes at their head, had
enacted in 1832. They miscalculated the state of public opinion. They had no
longer the municipalities and the people in their favour.
Simultaneously with this conspiracy, a minor plot was
going on, called the Armansperg intrigue; and in the end this little snake
swallowed up the great serpent. The conspirators in the minor plot only wished
to get quit of Maurer and Heideck, and to make Armansperg sole regent. Dr
Franz, an interpreter of the regency, who had allied himself closely with the
partisans of Count Armansperg, circulated petitions to the King of Bavaria,
praying for the recall of the other members of regency. The existence of these
petitions was revealed to Maurer, Heideck, and Abel, by a Greek named
Nikolaides, and by the Prince Wrede, whom Capodistrias had formerly selected
as a fit person to lay the state of Greece before Prince Leopold. AVrede was
admitted to the councils of the Capodistrians, though it is not probable that
he was treated with implicit confidence. He appears, however, to have obtained
some knowledge of their plans for a general insurrection. Dr Franz was
arrested, but, to prevent the necessity of publishing Count Armansperg’s
connection with his intrigues, and revealing the dissensions in the regency,
he was shipped off to Trieste without trial. It was soon ascertained that
several persons of the Armansperg faction were connected both with the minor
plot and the great conspiracy.
Maurer was easily persuaded that the two were
identical. He was so infatuated as to believe that Armansperg was privy to a
conspiracy for obtaining his own exile. The papers of Franz proved
Armansperg’s participation in a shameful intrigue; the revelations of spies
afforded satisfactory evidence that many of the intriguers were also
conspirators. In the mean time a trifling disturbance in Tinos frightened the
regency into proclaiming martial law.
The general insurrection of the Capodistrians was
prevented by the arrest of Kolokotrones, Plapoutas, Djavellas, and several
other influential men of the party, indifferent places on the 19 th September
1833.3 Maurer now displayed the rage of a tyrant: he forgot both law and
reason in his eagerness to inflict the severest punishment on Kolokotrones.
Those who spoke with him were reminded of the fury of Capodistrias when he
heard that Miaoulis had seized the Greek fleet at Poros. The Greeks
did not consider an abortive conspiracy a very serious offence. Violence had
been so often resorted to by all parties, that it was regarded as a natural
manner of acquiring and defending power. No political party had paid much
respect either to law or justice, but very different conduct was expected from
M. Maurer. The worst aspect of the conspiracy was the revival of brigandage,
which was evidently systematic. But it was not easy to procure evidence of the
complicity of the leading conspirators with the crimes of the brigands.
Kolokotrones and Plapoutas were tried for treason, and, by a strained application
of the law, and an unbecoming interference of the executive power with the
course of justice, they were found guilty and condemned to death. The sentence
was commuted to imprisonment for life; but a complete pardon was granted to
both criminals on King Otho’s majority.
The quarrels in the regency now became the leading
feature of the Greek question, not only in Greece, but at the courts of Munich,
London, Paris, and St Petersburg. The improvement of Greece was utterly
forgotten. There can be no doubt that Armansperg’s vanity persuaded him that
Dr Franz, in the petitions circulated among the Greeks, had given the King of
Bavaria excellent advice. lie now saw the advantage which Maurer’s violent
persecution of Kolokotrones afforded him, and he profited by it. Maurer was as
ambitious as Armansperg, but less prudent. In vain the Greek ministers, who
respected his talents, endeavoured to moderate his vehemence. Several resigned
rather than sanction the trial of Kolokotrones on evidence, which appeared to
them insufficient. It may be mentioned, in order to convey some idea of the
manner in which public business was carried on at this time, and the contempt
with which the Greek ministers allowed themselves to be treated by the
Bavarians, that the arrests, which took place on the 19th of September 1833,
were made by order of the regency, without holding a cabinet council, and
without the knowledge of the ministers of the interior and of justice. When
Psyllas, the minister of the interior, remonstrated with Maurer on the
arbitrary manner in which he was proceeding, Maurer became so indignant that he
threatened the minister with a legal prosecution for neglecting his duty in not
discovering a conspiracy known to so many Greeks. The ministry was modified by
the infusion of additional servility. Mavrocordatos was removed to the foreign
office, and a young Greek recently arrived from Germany, Theochares, was
appointed minister of finance, in which office he was a mere cipher. Schinas,
an able and intriguing sycophant of the phanariot race, became Maurer’s
minister of ecclesiastical affairs. Kolettes was now all-powerful in the
ministry.
Maurer, Heideck, Abel, and Gasser, the Bavarian
minister at the Greek court, formed an alliance with M. Rouen, the French
minister, and prepared for a direct attack on Armansperg, in which they felt
sure of a signal victory. Armansperg, on the other hand, was vigorously
supported by Mr Dawkins, and still more energetically by Captain (Lord) Lyons,
who commanded H.M.S. Madagascar. The count had a not inconsiderable party among
the Greeks and Bavarians. The Russian minister, Catacazy, and the whole body
of the Capodistrians, assisted his cause by their hostility to Maurer and
Kolettes. In general the Greeks watched the proceedings of both parties with
anxiety and aversion, fearing a renewal of civil war and anarchy.
Armansperg laid his statement of the nature of the
dissensions in the regency before the King of Bavaria. Maurer wasted time in
attacking Dawkins, who had roused his personal animosity as much by satirical
observations as by thwarting the policy of the regency. Dawkins was accused of
representing the proceedings of Maurer and his friends as being too
aristocratic, too revolutionary, and too Russian, all in a breath. People said
that, though the accusation looked absurd, it might be true enough; and they
expressed a wish to hear how Dawkins applied his epithets to the measures he
criticised. An envoy was sent to persuade Lord Palmerston to recall Dawkins: a worse
pedant, and a man less likely to succeed than Michael Sehinas, could not have
been selected. He soon found that he had travelled to London on a fool’s
errand.
The great attack on Count Armansperg was directed
against what Maurer probably supposed was the most vulnerable part of a man’s
feelings. No disputes had occurred among the members of the regency while they
were carving their salaries and allowances out of the Greek loan. No one then
suggested that both political prudence and common honesty demanded the most
rigid economy of money which Greece would be one day called upon to repay. On
the 10th October 1832, Armansperg, Maurer, and Heideck, held a meeting at
Munich, at which, among other shameful misappropriations of Greek funds, they
added nearly £4500 to Count Armansperg’s salary, in order to enable him to give
dinners and balls to foreigners and phanariots.
Both parties awaited a decision from Munich. The state
of Greece was assuming an alarming aspect; brigandage was reviving in
continental Greece on an alarming scale; and the protecting powers felt the
necessity of putting an end to the unseemly squabbling which threatened to
produce serious disturbances. The British government advised the King of Bavaria
to recall Maurer and Abel. The Russian cabinet gave the same advice. The King of
Bavaria adopted their opinion, and resolved to leave Count Armansperg virtually
sole regent. His decision arrived in Greece on the 31st July 1834, and it fell
on Maurer and Abel like a thunderbolt. They were ordered to return instantly to
Bavaria; and in case they showed any disposition to delay their departure,
authority was given to Count Armansperg to ship them off in the same summary manner
in which Dr Franz had been sent to Trieste. Maurer was replaced by M. Von
Kobell, a mere nullity, whose name only requires to be mentioned, because it
appears signed to many ordinances affecting the welfare of the Greeks. Heideck
was allowed to remain, but he was ordered to sign every document presented to him by
a the president of the regency. During the remainder of his stay in
Greece he occupied himself with nothing but painting. The Greeks saw Maurer and
Abel depart with pleasure, for they feared their violence; but at a later
period, when they discovered that Count Armansperg was neither as active an
administrator nor as honest a statesman as they had expected, they became sensible
of the merits of the men they had lost.
Count Armansperg governed Greece with absolute power
from August 1834 to February 1837. He held the title of president of the
regency until King Otho’s majority on the 1st June 1835, when it was changed to
that of arch-chancellor, which he held until his dismissal from office. His
long administration was characterised by a pretence of feverish activity that
was to produce a great result at a period always very near, but which never
arrived. Like Capodistrias, he was jealous of men of business, and insisted on
retaining the direction of departments about which he knew nothing, in his own
hands. He wasted his time in manoeuvres to conceal his ignorance, and in
talking to foreign ministers concerning his financial schemes and his projects
of improvement. On looking back at his administration, it presents a succession
of temporary expedients carried into execution in a very imperfect manner. He
had no permanent plan and no consistent policy. In one district the
Capodistrians were allowed to persecute the constitutionalists, and in another
the Kolettists domineered over the Capodistrians. Brigandage increased until it attained the
magnitude of civil war, and the whole internal organisation of the kingdom,
introduced by the early regency, was unsettled.
The nomarchies and eparchies were called governments
and subgovernments (dioikeses). The army was disorganised, and the rights of
property were disturbed and violated. Public buildings were constructed on
land belonging to private individuals, without the formality of informing the
owner that his land was required for the public service. Ground was seized for
a royal palace and garden, and some of the proprietors were not offered any
indemnification, until the British government exacted payment to a British
subject in the year 1850. In order to prevent the members of the Greek cabinet
from intriguing against his authority, like Maurer and Abel, the
arch-chancellor took care that all the ministers should never be able to speak
the same language; and he deprived the cabinet of all control over the finance
department, by keeping the place of minister of finance vacant for a whole
year. His lavish expenditure at last filled all Greece with complaints, and
alarmed the King of Bavaria.
Count Armansperg’s inconsiderate proceedings forced
him to solicit from the protecting powers the advance of the third series of
the Allied loan. Russia and France demanded some explanation concerning the
expenditure of that part of the first and second series which had been paid
into the Greek treasury. The accounts presented by Count Armansperg were not
considered satisfactory. The British government took a different view of the
count’s explanations. Lord Palmerston supported his administration warmly, and
applied to Parliament, in 1836, for power to enable
Sir Edmund (Lord) Lyons had succeeded Mr Dawkins as
English minister at the Greek court. He supported Count Armansperg with great
zeal and activity. But the Greek government was pursuing a course which every
day rendered the count more unpopular.
In the month of May 1836, King Otho left Greece in
search of a wife, and during his absence, which lasted until the beginning of
the following year, Count Armansperg was viceroy with absolute power. His
authority was supported by an army of 11,500 men, of whom 4000 were Bavarians.
Money had now become more abundant in Greece, and several editors of
newspapers, having made the necessary deposit in the treasury, resumed the
publication of their journals. The opposition of the press again alarmed the
Bavarians, and the count resolved to attempt to intimidate the editors by
government prosecutions. The Sotev was selected as the first victim, and very
iniquitous preparations were made to insure its condemnation. Two judges were
removed from the bench, in the tribunal before which the cause was brought,
immediately before the trial. This tampering with the course of justice
created vehement discontent, but it secured the condemnation of the editor. The
punishment inflicted on the delinquent, however, was not likely to silence the
patriotic, for it enabled them to gain the honours of martyrdom at a very cheap
rate. The editor was fined two thousand drachmas, and
Count Armansperg’s recall was caused by the complete
failure of his financial administration. The King of Bavaria selected the
Chevalier Rudhart to replace him, still believing that the Greeks were not yet
competent to manage their own affairs. On the 14th of February 1837, King Otho
returned to Greece with Queen Amalia, the beautiful daughter of the Grand Duke
Oldenburg. M. Rudhart accompanied him as prime minister. The views of
Rudhart were those of an honest Bavarian. He had studied European politics in
the proceedings of the Germanic diet, and he contemplated emancipating King
Otho from the tutelage of the three protecting powers by Austrian influence.
Had the thing been feasible, he possessed neither the knowledge nor the talents
required for so bold an enterprise. The Greeks and Bavarians were already
ranged against one another in hostile parties. Sir Edmund Lyons seized the
opportunity of avenging the slight put upon his mission, by keeping him in
ignorance of Armansperg’s recall. He connected the opposition of the British
cabinet to the nomination of Rudhart, with the hostility of the Greeks to the
Bavarians, and animated them to talk again of constitutional liberty. Rudhart
claimed as a right the absolute power which Maurer and Armansperg had silently
assumed. In one of his communications to
From this time the nominal prime minister was always a
Greek; the war department was the only ministry henceforth occupied by a
Bavarian; but Bavarian influence continued to direct the whole administration
until the revolution in 1843. From 1833 to 1838, during a period of five years,
the Greeks had exercised no control over their government, which received its
guiding impulse from Munich. Those who ruled Greece were responsible to the
King of Bavaria alone for their conduct in office. It is not surprising,
therefore, that Greece was ill-governed; yet something was done for the good of
the country. The early period of the regency was marked by the introduction of
a system of administration which put an end, as if by enchantment, to the most
frightful anarchy that ever desolated any Christian country in modern times.
Many wise laws were enacted, and some useful measures were carried into
execution promptly and thoroughly. The
In considering what the Bavarians did, it is well to
reflect on what they might have done. The three powers had guaranteed the
inviolability of the Greek territory; there was therefore no need of any
military force to defend the country against the Turks. Greece only required
the troops necessary to repress brigandage and enforce order. The navy of
Greece had almost enirely disappeared, and the only maritime force required
was a few vessels to prevent piracy. On the other hand, a very great
expenditure on roads, ports, packet-boats, and other means of facilitating and
cheapening communications, was absolutely necessary to improve the condition
of the agricultural population, and give strength to the new kingdom. The
population was scanty, and the produce of agricultural labour was small, even
when compared with the scanty population. At the same time the demand for
agricultural labour was so partial and irregular, that at some short periods of
the year it was extremely dear; and though good land was abundant, extensive
districts remained uncultivated, because the expense of bringing the produce
to market would have consumed all profit. Something
The state of the Levant from 1833 to 1843 was
extremely favourable to the progress of Greece. The affairs of the Othoman
empire were in a very unsettled state, and the Christian population had not yet
obtained the direct interference of the Western powers in their favour.
Thousands of Greeks were ready to emigrate into the new kingdom, had they seen
a hope of being able to employ their labour with profit, and invest their
savings with security. The incapacity of the rulers of Greece, and the rude
social condition of the agricultural population, perpetuated by retaining the
Othoman system of taxing land, allowed this favourable opportunity for rapid
improvement to escape.
The three protecting powers have been blamed for not
appropriating the proceeds of the loan to special objects, and for not
enforcing the construction of some works of public utility. But this was
perhaps impossible. Neither King Louis of Bavaria nor the Emperor Nicholas
would have consented to submit the public expenditure to the control of a
representative assembly
After M. Rudhart’s resignation the office of
president of the council of ministers was filled by a Greek; but the president
was only nominally prime minister, for King Otho really governed by means of a
private cabinet. The Greek ministers were controlled by Bavarian secretaries
attached to each department with the title of referendaries. Greeks were found
servile enough to submit to this control, and to act the part of pageant
ministers. The proceedings of the government grew every year more arbitrary.
The king was a man of a weak mind, and not of a generous disposition. The
flatterers who surrounded him appear to have persuaded him that the Greek
kingdom was created for his personal use, and his political vision rarely
extended beyond his capital. In the greater part of the kingdom the creatures
of the court ruled despotically. The police kept men in prison without legal warrants;
and torture was inflicted both on men and women merely because they were
suspected of having furnished brigands with food. The press was
The English minister, Sir Edmund Lyons, complained of
injuries inflicted on British and Ionian subjects. His reclamations were left
long unanswered, and remained for years unredressed. Attempts were made to
obtain his recall; and when they failed, he was personally and publicly
insulted at the Greek court in a manner that compelled him to exact ample
satisfaction.
During a theatrical representation at the palace, the
British minister was left, by an oversight of the master of the ceremonies,
without a seat in the court circle, and allowed to stand during the whole
performance in a position directly in view of the king and queen, who seemed
rather to enjoy the sight as the most amusing scene in the court comedy. Such
conduct could not be overlooked. The minister of foreign affairs was compelled
to make a very humble apology by express order of the king, and the Bavarian
baron who acted as master of the ceremonies was shipped off to Trieste in the
same summary manner as Dr Franz and M. Maurer had been. This severe lesson
prevented open acts of insult in future; but the animosity of the court to the
person of Sir Edmund Lyons was shown in minor acts of impertinence. On one
occasion his groom was carried off by the gendarmes from his residence, and
kept all night in prison on a charge of squirting water on a passer-by. These
miserable disputes gradually alienated England and Greece, and victory over the
court of Athens in such contests certainly reflected little honour on the
diplomacy of Great Britain. A tithe of the energy displayed by Sir Edmund Lyons
and Lord Palmerston in humiliating King Otho, and in adjusting questions of
etiquette, would have settled every pending demand for justice on the part of
British and Ionian subjects. Years of wrangling
While the quarrels with the English minister kept the
Greek court in a state of irritation, the nation was suffering from brigandage,
and secret societies and orthodox plots were again attempting to excite the
people to revolt.
The disbanding of the irregular troops, and the
refusal of the regency to pay the armed followers of the chieftains who
assembled round Nauplia at the king’s arrival for the purpose of intimidating
his government, suddenly deprived many soldiers of the means of subsistence.
Great disorder naturally ensued. The transition from anarchy to order could
not be effected in a day by human strength or human wisdom. Bands of
irregulars, who had lived for several years at free quarters and in absolute
idleness, were neither disposed to submit to any discipline nor to engage in
any useful employment. Severe treatment was unavoidable, but prudence was
necessary in enforcing measures of severity. During the latter years of the Revolution the armed bands had separated their cause from that of the
people. They pretended to have rights more extensive than the rest of the
nation, and they exercised these rights by plundering their fellowcitizens.
During the anarchy that followed the assassination of Capodistrias, Mussulman
Albanians had been introduced into the Peloponnesus as allies of the Romeliot
armatoli, and many villages had been sacked by these mercenaries.
The early regency carried the disbanding of the
irregulars into effect with so much vigour that the whole of these disorderly
bands were expelled from the Peloponnesus, and during the summer of 1833 the
greater part was driven to choose between entering the regular army or crossing
the frontier into Turkey.
The state of the Othoman empire was singularly
favourable to the project of relieving Greece from her disorderly troops. The
sultan’s army had been defeated at Koniah by the Egyptians under Ibrahim Pasha
on the 21st of December 1832, and a Russian army arrived at Constantinople soon
after to protect Sultan Mahmud’s throne. The Christians in European Turkey
expected to witness the immediate dissolution of the Othoman empire. The
Mussulman population in Albania, Macedonia, and Bosnia was extremely
discontented with the fiscal arrangements and measures of centralisation
adopted by the sultan, and several districts were in open rebellion. A large
portion of the irregular troops who quitted Greece
As early as the month of May 1833, a strong body of
Greeks, having crossed the frontier, joined a number of unpaid Albanian
soldiers in the pashalik of Joannina, and surprised the town of Arta, which
had successfully resisted the attacks of the Greeks during the Revolution. For
three days these lawless bands remained masters of the town, which they
plundered without mercy. Neither age, sex, nor religion served to protect
the inhabitants. Every act of cruelty and brutality of which man can be the
perpetrator or the sufferer was inflicted on persons of both sexes and of every
class. Torture, too sickening to describe, was employed to compel women and
children to reveal where money and jewels were concealed. When gorged with
booty, lust, and cruelty, these bandits quitted Arta, gained the mountains, and
separated into small bands in order to evade pursuit and obtain the means of
subsistence until they could plan some fresh exploit. The fame of the sack of
Arta allured the greater part of the disbanded irregulars across the frontier,
and relieved the Bavarians from a dangerous struggle.
The state of Albania became still more disturbed
towards the end of the year 1834, and many of the Greek armatoli and irregulars
formed alliances with the municipalities of Christian districts, which secured
to them permanent employment. Had Count Armansperg employed the respite thus
obtained with prudence, order might have been firmly established in Northern
Greece; but his frequent changes of policy and indecisive measures produced a
scries of political insurrections, and revived brigandage as an element of
society in Greece.
Piracy was suppressed at sea by tlie assistance of a the Allies. In the spring of 1833 upwards of one hundred and fifty
pirates were captured and brought to Nauplia for judgment. Many of these were
irregular troops, who had seized large boats and commenced the trade of
pirates.
In 1834 an insurrection occurred in Maina, which
assumed the character of a civil war. It was caused by a rash and foolish
measure of the regency. Ages of insecurity had compelled the landlords in the
greater part of Greece to dwell in towers capable of defence against brigands.
These towers were nothing more than stone houses without windows in the lower
story, and to which the only access was by a stone stair detached from the
building, and connected, by a movable wooden platform, with the door in the
upper story. In Maina these towers were numerous. The members of the regency
attributed the feuds and bloodshed prevalent in that rude district to the
towers, instead of regarding the towers as a necessary consequence of the
feuds. The members of the regency appear to have imagined that the destruction
of all the towers in Greece would insure the establishment of order in the
country. In the plains this was easily effected. Peaceful landlords were
compelled to employ workmen to destroy their houses instead of employing
workmen to repair them. The consequence was, that fear of the attacks of
disbanded soldiers and avowed brigands drove most wealthy landlords into the
nearest towns, and many abandoned the agricultural improvements they had
commenced.
In Maina the orders of the regency were openly
opposed. Every possessor of a tower, indeed, declared that he had no objections
to its destruction, but he invited the government to destroy every tower in
Maina at the same time, otherwise no mans life and property
The regency could not allow the war to terminate with
such a defeat. Fresh troops were poured into Maina, strong positions were
occupied, the hostile districts were cut off from communications with the sea,
and money was employed to gain over a party among the chiefs. A few towers
belonging to the chiefs most hostile to the government were destroyed by force,
and some were destroyed with the consent of the proprietors, who were
previously indemnified. Partly by concessions, partly by corruption, and partly
by force, tranquillity was restored. But the submission of Naina to the regency
was only secured by withdrawing the Bavarian troops, and forming a battalion
of Maniats to preserve order in the country. Maurer asserts that the Maniats
converted their towers into ordinary dwellings: anybody who visits Maina, even
Other insurrections occurred in various parts of
Greece; but those of Messenia and Arcadia in 1834, and of Acarnania in 1836, alone
deserve to be mentioned on account of their political importance.
The insurrection in Messenia occurred immediately
after the recall of Maurer and Abel, but would have broken out had they
remained. Count Armansperg was so helpless as an administrator, in spite of his
eagerness to govern Greece, that he was at a loss to know what measures he
ought to adopt, and allowed himself to be persuaded by Kolettes to call in the
services of bands of irregulars. Large bodies of men, who had just begun to
acquire habits of industry, were allured to resume arms, with the hope that
Kolettes would again be able to distribute commissions conferring high
military rank, as in the civil wars under Konduriottes and against Agostino.
Years of military disorganisation, and its concomitant—an increase of
brigandage—were the immediate results of Count Armansperg’s imprudence.
The leaders of the insurrection in Messenia and
Arcadia were friends of Kolokotrones and Plapoutas, men who had been connected
with the Russian plot, and who were in some degree encouraged to take up arms
by the supposed favour with which Count Armansperg had viewed the intrigues of
Dr Franz. Their project was to extort from the regency the instant
release of Kolokotrones and Plapoutas, and to secure for themselves concessions
similar to those accorded to the Maniats.
The commencement of the insurrection was in Arcadia.
In the month of August 1834, considerable bodies of men assembled in arms at
different places.
Kolias Plapoutas, at the head of four hundred men,
attempted to arrest the eparch of Arcadia at Andritzena without success.
Captain Gritzales, who had collected about three hundred men in the villages
round Soulenia, was more successful at the commencement of his operations. He
made prisoners both the nomarch of Messenia and the commandant of the
gendarmerie in the town of Kyparissia. A third body of insurgents, consisting
of the mountaineers from the southern slopes of Mount Tetrazi, defeated a small
body of regulars, and entered the plain of Stenyclerus as victors.
Kolettes, into whose hands Armansperg, in his panic,
had thrust the conduct of government, because he held the ministry of the
interior, even though he had been a stanch partisan of Maurer, resolved to use
his power in such a way as to have little to fear from the count’s enmity when
the insurrection was suppressed. He determined, therefore, to restore some of
his old political allies, the chiefs of the irregular bands of Northern Greece,
again to power. Had he allowed the Bavarian troops and the Greek regulars to
suppress the insurrection, which they could have effected without difficulty,
he would have strengthened the arbitrary authority of Armansperg, whom he well
knew was at heart his implacable enemy. Kolettes was himself under the dominion
of many rude prejudices. To his dying
General Schmaltz, a gallant Bavarian colonel of
cavalry, was appointed commander-in-chief of the royal army. He soon
encompassed the insurgents with a force of two thousand regulars and about
three thousand irregulars. The rebels, who never succeeded in assembling five
hundred men at any one point, fought several well- contested skirmishes, but
they were soon dispersed and their leaders taken prisoners. Count
Armansperg did not treat the rebels with severity. He knew that they were more
likely to join his party than the Kolettists by whom they had been defeated.
Perhaps he also feared that a close examination of their conduct might throw
more light than was desirable on the connection that had grown up between the
Capodistrian conspiracy and the Armansperg intrigue. In six weeks tranquillity
was completely re-established. But for many months bands of irregular soldiery
continued to live at free quarters in the plain of Messenia. Kolettes felt
himself so strongly supported by the Romeliot chiefs, and by French influence, that lie conceived great hopes of
being named prime minister on King Otho’s majority; but he was defeated by the
influence of Great Britain at the court of Bavaria. Armansperg, as has been
already mentioned, was named arch-chancellor, and Kolettes was sent to Paris
as Greek minister.
The insurrection of 1834 was no sooner suppressed than
the Bavarians became alarmed at the power which Kolettes had acquired. The
irregular bands which had been recalled into activity were slowly disbanded,
and the chiefs saw that fear alone had compelled Count Armansperg to resort to
their services. The policy of suddenly recalling men to a life of adventure
and pillage, who were just beginning to acquire habits of order, could not fail
to produce evil consequences. Hopes of promotion, perfect idleness, and
liberal pay, were suddenly offered to them; and when they fancied that, by a
little fighting and a few weeks marching, they had attained the object of their
hopes, they found that they were again to be disbanded and sent back to learn
the hard lessons of honest industry. Many of them determined that Greece should
soon require their services. It was not possible to produce a popular insurrection
at any moment, but there was no difficulty in organising a widespread system of
brigandage. A project of the kind was quickly carried into execution.
During the winter of 1834 and the spring of 1835
brigandage assumed a very alarming aspect. Several Bavarians were waylaid and
murdered. Government money was captured, even when transmitted under strong
escorts; and government magazines, in which the produce of the land-tax was
stored, were plundered. In the month of April the intrigues of the military
But as the summer of 1835 advanced, the disorders in
continental Greece increased. Numerous bands of brigands, after laying a number
of villages under contribution, from the mouth of the Sperchius to the banks
of the Achelous, concentrated upwards of two hundred men in the district of
Venetico, within six miles of Lepanto. A Bavarian officer of engineers was
taken prisoner with the pioneer who accompanied him, and both were murdered in
cold blood. The house of Captain Prapas, an active officer of irregular troops
and a chief of the national guards in Artolina, was burned to the ground during
his absence, and his flocks were carried off. In the month of May, the house of
Captain Makryiannes, near Simau, was destroyed, and seven members of his
family, including his wife and two girls, were cruelly murdered. An attack was
shortly after made on the house of Captain Pharmaki, an officer of irregulars
of distinguished ability and courage, who was living within a few hundred yards
of the walls of Lepanto. Pharmaki was severely wounded, and one of his servants
was killed; but he beat off the brigands, and prevented them from setting fire
to his house. For six weeks every day brought news of some new outrage, but
Count Armansperg turned a deaf ear to all complaints. He assured the foreign ministers
that the accounts which reached them were greatly exaggerated, and that he had
adopted
The first step of the arch-chancellor was to send
Kolettes to Paris as Greek minister. While Kolettes remained minister of the
interior, it was thought that he encouraged, or at least tolerated, the extension
of brigandage, and looked with secret satisfaction at the supineness of the
regency. General Lesuire, the Bavarian minister of war, was also accused of
regarding the disorders that prevailed with indifference, though from very
different motives. Brigandage furnished Kolettes with arguments for reviving
the system of chieftains with personal followers, and to Lesuire it supplied
arguments against intrusting the Greeks with arms, and for increasing the
number of Bavarian mercenaries in the king’s service. The accounts which the
Greek government received of the conduct of the irregulars enrolled by
Kolettes’s authority during the insurrection of Messenia, persuaded the
minister of war that these troops differed from the brigands only in name. It is
certain that he kept both the Greek and German regular battalions in high
order; but he neglected the irregular corps in a way that afforded them some
excuse for the exactions they committed. A battalion of irregulars, under
Gardikiotes Grivas, was left without pay and clothing at a moment when it was
disposed to take the field against the brigands, and might have prevented their
incursion to the walls of Lepanto. The scanty pensions of
As soon as Armansperg’s intrigues were crowned with
success, he got rid of Lesuire as well as Kolettes, and General Schmaltz became
minister of war. About the same time Mr Dawkins was recalled, and Sir Edmund
Lyons was named British minister at King Otho’s court. At the recommendation of
Sir Edmund, Armansperg named General Gordon to the command of an expedition
which was sent to clear Northern Greece of brigands. Gordon was not attached to
any political party: he distrusted Kolettes, and had little confidence in
Armansperg; but he knew the country, the people, and the irregular troops, as
well as any man in Greece.
On the 11th of July he left Athens with his staff; and
after visiting Clialcis, in order to make himself fully acquainted with the
state of the troops of which he had assumed the command, he formed his plan of
operations. His measures were judicious, and they
At Loidoriki, Gordon divided the force under his orders into three
divisions. It was much more difficult to drive the brigands westward from
the Etolian mountains than it had been to clear the more open districts in
Eastern Greece. One division of the army kept along the ridge of the mountains
which bound the Gulf of Corinth to the north. The centre, with the general,
marched into the heart of the country, through districts cut by nature into a
labyrinth of deep ravines, and descended to Lepanto from the northeast, after
passing by Lombotina and Simon. The right division moved up northward to
Artolina, in order, if possible, to cut off the brigands from gaining the
Turkish frontier.
The principal body of the brigands, consisting of one
hundred and thirty, maintained its position in the immediate vicinity of
Lepanto for six weeks, and it continued to levy contributions from the country
round until the general arrived at Loidoriki. It then broke up into several
small bands, and, picking up its outlying associates, gained the Turkish
frontier by following secluded sheep-tracks over the Etolian mountains. The
national guards, which the communities in the
From Lepanto, Gordon marched to Mesolonghi and
Vrachori. The officers under his orders found no difficulty in clearing the
plains of Acarnania, and when this was effected, he followed the rugged valley
of Prousos to Karpenisi, where he arrived on the 11th of August. The
arrangements he had adopted for securing to the Suliots and the veterans at
Lepanto and Vrachori the regular payment of their pensions, and the good
conduct of the detachments of regulars which he sent to support the local
magistrates, insured active co-operation on the part of the native population.
The spirit of order, which the neglect of the royal government had almost
extinguished, again revived.
In one month after quitting Athens, tranquillity was
restored in the whole of continental Greece. But as about three hundred
brigands had assembled within the Turkish territory, and marched along the
frontier with military music, it seemed that the difficulty of protecting the
country would be greater than that of delivering it. The general’s Oriental
studies now proved of as great value to Greece as his military activity and
geographical knowledge, lie opened a correspondence with the pasha at Larissa;
and the circumstance of an Englishman commanding the Greek forces, and of that
Englishman not only speaking Turkish fluently, but also writing it like a
divan-effendi, contributed more than a sense of sound policy, to secure the
co-operation of the Turkish authorities in dispersing the brigands.
In the month of October Gordon’s mission was
terminated, and he was ordered to resume his duties at Argos, as
commander-in-chief in the Peloponnesus.
The brigands in Turkey had dispersed, but it
was known that many had retired to Agrapha, where they were protected by
Tzatzos, the captain of armatoli, and it was supposed that Tzatzos had not
taken this step without the connivance of the derven -pasha. Gordon warned the
Greek government that brigandage would soon recommence, unless very different
measures were adopted from those which Count Ar- mansperg had hitherto pursued,
both in his civil and financial administration. And he completely lost the
count’s favour by the truths which he told in a memoir he drew up on the means
of suppressing the brigandage, and maintaining tranquillity on the frontier.
The insecurity which prevailed near the Turkish
frontier, even though brigandage had for a moment ceased, is strongly
illustrated by the closing scene of Gordon’s sojourn in the vicinity. Before
quitting Northern Greece he wished to enjoy a day’s shooting. On the 5th
October he went with a party of friends to Aghia Marina. The brigands, who lay
concealed on both sides of the frontier, had official friends, and were well
informed of all that happened at Lamia. They were soon aware of Gordon’s
project. A band lay concealed in the thick brushwood that covered the plain,
but did not find an opportunity of attacking him on the road. Soon after sunset
the house he occupied was surrounded while the party was at dinner, but the
alarm was given in time to allow the sportsmen to throw down their knives and
forks, seize their fowling-pieces, and run to the garden-wall in front of the
building. By this they prevented the brigands from approaching near enough to
set fire to the house. A skirmish ensued, in which the assailants displayed
very little courage. The firing brought a party of royal troops from Stelida to
the general’s assistance, but the
The lavish expenditure of Count Armansperg brought on
financial difficulties at the end of 1835, and both Russia and France
considered his accounts and his explanations so unsatisfactory, that they
refused to intrust him with the expenditure of the third series of the
loan. The state of Greece was represented in a very different manner by the
foreign ministers at the court of Athens. The King of Bavaria, hoping to learn
the truth by personal observation, paid his son a visit. He little knew the
difficulty which exists in Greece of acquiring accurate information, or of
forming correct conclusions, from the partial information which it is in the
power of a passing visitor to obtain, even when that visitor is a king. Truth
is always rare in the East, and Greece was divided into several hostile
factions, who were the irreconcilable enemies of truth. On the 7th of December
1835, the King of Bavaria arrived at Athens, where he was welcomed by the
council of state with the assurance that his son’s dominions were in a state of
profound tranquillity, and extremely prosperous. His majesty was not long in
Greece before he perceived that the councillors of state were not in the habit
of speaking the truth.
In the month of January 1836, the brigands, who had
remained quiet for a short time, reappeared from their places of concealment,
and those who had found an asylum in Turkey began to cross the frontier in
small bands. Not a week passed without their plundering some village. Accounts
reached Athens of the unheard-of cruelties they were daily
committing to extort money, or to avenge the defeats they suffered during the
preceding year. Party spirit and official avidity had at this time so benumbed
public spirit in the capital of Greece, that even the Liberal press paid little
attention to the miseries of the agricultural population. The peasantry were neglected,
for they had no influence in the distribution of places, honours, or profits.
In the month of February, however, the evil increased so rapidly, and reached
such an alarming extent, that it could no longer be overlooked even by Count
Armansperg. Six hundred brigands established themselves within the Greek
kingdom, ravaging the whole valley of the Sperchius with fire and sword.
An insurrection broke out at this time in Acarnania,
which had its sources in the same political and social evils as brigandage. It
is peculiarly interesting, however, from affording some insight into the
political history of Great Britain as well as Greece. Lord Palmerston persuaded
the British government that it was for the interest of Great Britain to support
the administration of Count Armansperg. This could only be done effectually by
furnishing him with money; and to induce Parliament to authorise the issue of
the third instalment of the loan, papers were presented to both Houses, proving
that the Greek government was in great need of money. But when the want of
money was clearly proved, it was objected that the want complained of was
caused by lavish expenditure and gross corruption; and it was even said that
Count Armansperg’s maladministration was plunging Greece back into the state of
anarchy from which the early regency had delivered the country. Additional
papers were then presented to Parliament by the Foreign Secretary (which had
been all along in his hands), to
The leaders of the insurrection in Acarnania were
officers of the irregular troops who had distinguished themselves in the
revolutionary war. Demo Tzelios, who commanded one body of insurgents,
proclaimed that the people took up arms against Count Armansperg and the
Bavarians, not against the king and the government. Nicolas Zervas, another
leader, demanded the convocation of a national assembly. A third party
displayed the phoenix on its standard, and talked of orthodoxy as being the
surest way to collect the Capodistrians and Ionians in arms against the government
at Athens. All united in proclaiming the constitution, and demanding the
expulsion of the Bavarians. The people took no part in the movement.
Demo Tzelios entered Mytika without opposition, but was defeated at Dragomestre. Mesolonghi had been left almost without a garrison. The folly of the government was so flagrant, in the actual condition of the country, that the proceeding looked like treachery. The insurgents made a bold attempt to gain possession of that important fortress by surprise, but they were bravely repulsed by the few troops who remained in the place, and by the inhabitants, who regarded the insurgents as mere brigands. The rebels, though repulsed from the walls of Mesolonghi, were nevertheless strong enough to remain encamped before the place, and to ravage the plain for several days.
Others, however, took a very different view of the
The late Lord Lyons was a warm supporter of Count
Armansperg, and appears to have received all the statements of the count with
implicit confidence. On the 24th February 1836, Lyons wrote to Lord Palmerston
that “the communes in Greece have the entire direction of their own affairs;
the press is unshackled; the tribunals are completely independent; private
property is scrupulously respected; the personal and religious liberty of the subject
is inviolable.” Yet not one of these assertions was true. While Sir E. Lyons
was writing this despatch, the people of Athens were reading in the Greek
newspaper of the morning an account of the attack on Mesolonghi, and an
announcement that the insurgents remained unmolested in their camps in Western
Greece, while on the frontier brigandage was making gigantic progress. In the
month of May, General Gordon, who took a view of the state of Greece totally
different from that taken by Lord Lyons, resigned his command in the
Peloponnesus, and before returning to England wrote to a friend at Athens : “From what I know of the state of the Peloponnesus, and the rapid and alarming
increase of organised brigandage, I fear this will be but a melancholy summer.
I am assured, and believe, that lately several captive robbers have bought
themselves off. Faction is extremely busy, and crime enjoys impunity. Add
The disturbed state of Greece can be proved by better
evidence than that of a British minister at King Otho’s court, or of a British
officer in his service. It can be proved by facts which no party prejudices can
distort. From the year 1833 to the year 1838, military tribunals were
constantly sitting to deal out punishment to insurgents or brigands. To
strangers who visited Greece, and who examined the events that occurred,
instead of trusting to the reports they heard, it seemed that martial law was
the only law by which King Otho was able to dispense even a modicum of justice
to a great number of his unfortunate subjects.
During the interval between the dismissal of Count
Armansperg and the final expulsion of the Bavarians
Several chiefs of robbers maintained themselves in the
vicinity of Athens for years, and it was naturally supposed that they had found
the means of obtaining powerful political protection. A singular scene, which
occurred when two famous brigands were led out to be executed, confirmed the
general belief in some official complicity.
On the 5th of August 1839, Bibisi and Trakadha, who
had been tried and condemned to death, were ordered to be executed in the
vicinity of Athens. The
King Otho became his own prime minister after the
resignation of Mr Rudhart. His majesty possessed neither ability, experience,
energy, nor generosity; consequently he was neither respected, obeyed, feared,
nor loved; and the government grew gradually weaker and more disorganised. Yet
he pursued one of the phantoms by which abler despots are often deluded. He
strove to concentrate all power in his own hands. It never occurred to him that
it was more politic to perform the duty of a king well, than to perforin the
business of half-a-dozen government officials with mechanical exactitude. King
Otho observed but a very small portion of the facts which were placed directly
before him; he was slow at drawing inferences even from the few facts he
observed, and he was utterly incapable of finding the means of reforming any
abuse from his own administrative knowledge or the resources of his own mind.
The king counted on his sincere desire to be the
monarch of a prosperous and powerful nation for being able to govern the
Greeks, and he expected that his personal popularity and his king-craft would
prevent insurrections and suppress brigandage. Unfortunately he took no
measures to root out the social evils that caused the one, or the political
evils that produced the other. The king could form no firm resolutions himself, and he reposed no confidence in his ministers.
During the personal government of King Otho, a
singular event envenomed the disputes which had arisen between Lord Lyons and
the Greek court during Mr Rudhart’s administration. The affair has always
remained enveloped in mystery, but its effects were so important that the fact
requires notice, though it eludes explanation. It placed the British minister
in direct personal hostility to the sovereign at whose court he was accredited,
and it was the principal cause of the
A Greek newspaper which King Otho was said to read
with particular pleasure, thought fit, in an unlucky hour, to insert extracts
from an English pamphlet, ridiculing the condition of a nation that was
governed by a young queen. A reply appeared in the Morning Chronicle,
observing that it was fortunate for Great Britain that the only reproach which
could be made to the sovereign was that she was young. Time would too soon
remove the reproach, but the article in the Greek newspaper was in very bad
taste in a country where the sovereign was reproached with being incompetent
to govern. The Morning Chronicle then asserted that a certificate had been
signed by several Bavarians, then members of King Otho’s household, declaring
that his majesty was incapable of governing his little kingdom. The Bavarian
consul at Athens was an Englishman, and he considered it his duty to step
forward and contradict the correspondent of the Morning Chronicle. The
anonymous writer defended his veracity, reiterated his assertion, and added
that the document was dated in the year 1835, and was signed by Dr Wibmer, King
Otho’s physician, Count Saporta, the marshal of the royal household, Baron
Stengel and Mr Lehmaier, private secretaries to the king, and members of his
private council or camarilla. This rejoinder was widely circulated, and caused
a loud outcry at Athens. The Greek newspapers declared that their king had been
grossly insulted and calumniated, either by the English or the Bavarians, or
by both. In order to tranquillise the public, and throw the whole odium on the
English, Dr Wibmer, Baron Stengel, and Mr Lehmaier, published a declaration,
asserting that they had never signed any such certificate. But in
But whatever the document might be, since it was
sighed in 1835, during Count Armansperg’s administration, it was inferred that
it could only have become known to foreigners by having been treacherously
communicated to the count’s friend, Lord Lyons, and having, through the imprudence
of Lord Lyons, fallen into the hands of some person who made use of it to
gratify a private spite. The wound given was severe, and the press never
allowed it to heal. Even English diplomatists and officials were so imprudent
as to be constantly harping on the question of the mysterious certificate.
As years rolled on, the misgovernment of King Otho
became more intolerable. The agricultural population remained in a stationary
condition. They were plundered by brigands, pillaged by gendarmes, and robbed
by tax-collectors. They had to bear the whole burden of the conscription, and
pay heavy municipal taxes; yet their property was insecure, and no roads were
made. The Bavarians reproached Capodistrias with having neglected to improve
the Turkish system of levying the land-tax, to construct roads and bridges, and
to establish security for persons and property. The Greeks now reproached the
Bavarians with similar neglect. A remedy was required, and the people, having
long patiently submitted to the despotic authority of the
England and Russia supported the parties who demanded
constitutional government. Nationality was so interwoven with orthodoxy, and
orthodoxy appeared to be so completely under Russian control, that the
establishment of a constitutional and national government was supposed by the
cabinet of St Betersburg to be the surest means of rendering Greece subservient
to the schemes of the Emperor Nicholas in the East. The Capodistrians carried
their designs further than the Russian cabinet, for they proposed dethroning
King Otho. For several years great exertions had been made to arouse the orthodox
prejudices of the Greeks, and hopes were entertained that a revolution would
afford an opportunity of placing the crown of Greece on the head of an orthodox
prince. But when the time came, no orthodox prince fitter to govern Greece than
King Otho could be found.
The English party acted under the guidance of Lord
Lyons, who for several years had been the firm advocate of liberal measures,
and a return to a constitutional system.
The destruction of the representative-system, the annihilation of independent action in the municipal authorities, the low state of political civilisation, the still lower state of political morality, and the general lassitude which follows after a great national exertion, would in all probability have enabled King Otho and the Bavarians to rule Greece despotically for some years more, had not Great Britain and Russia publicly called upon the king’s government to remedy the financial embarrassments in which it was involved. The Russian minister warned King Otho that he must prepare to pay the interest of the Allied loan. The king determined to augment his revenues in order to meet the demands of the Allies, and in the year 1842 he made some administrative changes which rendered his government more oppressive. A law regulating the custom duties was adopted, which caused so much discontent among the mercantile classes, and so many complaints, that the government was compelled to modify it by a new law before it had been many months in operation. The Russian cabinet expected that King Otho, when
threatened with a constitution, would have thrown himself on its support; but
finding that its counsels were neglected, the emperor made a peremptory demand
for immediate payment of the interest due on the Allied loan. The menacing
tone of this demand was interpreted by the orthodox party to authorise the
friends of Russia to adopt revolutionary measures. But to insure the
approbation of the Emperor Nicholas, the partisans of Russian influence
considered it necessary to give the movement as much as possible a religious
character, and they made it their object to replace
The union of the orthodox and constitutional factions
was absolutely necessary, in order to give a popular movement any chance of
success. This was easily effected, for both desired the immediate expulsion of
the Bavarians: the orthodox party was not unfavourable to the convocation of
a national assembly, and the constitutional party felt no disposition to defend
King Otho, had a better sovereign been proposed as his successor. It may be
observed that both parties were destitute of leaders possessing any political
talent.
The British government had long advocated liberal
institutions, but Lord Palmerston was no longer in office, and some doubt was
entertained whether the Tories would not openly oppose a revolutionary movement.
The friends of constitutional liberty brought on a discussion in the House of
Commons on the 15th August 1843, which proved that all parties in England
considered the Greeks entitled to representative institutions. Lord Palmerston
said: “I hope that her Majesty’s ministers will urge strongly upon the King of
Greece the necessity of his giving a constitution to his people in redemption
of the pledge given by the three powers in 1832, and repeated by Baron Gise,
his father’s counsellor.” And Sir Robert Peel, then Prime Minister, after
alluding to the financial condition of Greece, continued: “Russia, France, and
England have made strong representations likewise on other matters, connected
with the necessity of giving satisfaction to the just wishes of the people. I
must abstain at present from any more
A revolution being inevitable, all parties agreed that
it ought to commence at Athens, and that King Otho should be compelled to
dismiss all the Bavarians in the Greek service, to acknowledge the
constitution, and to convoke a national assembly for its revision. The orthodox
party consented that these points should be those mooted at the commencement of
the revolution, being convinced that the king’s pride would induce him to
reject the first. But, at all events, they felt so sure of commanding a
majority in a national assembly, that they believed it would be in their power
to declare the throne vacant, and to proceed to elect a new king the moment
they could find a suitable orthodox candidate.
On the day preceding the revolution, the court
obtained authentic information of the conspiracy. Orders were given to arrest
General Makryiannes and many of the leaders; but it was already too late. The
gendarmes who surrounded Makryiannes’s house did not invest it until after
dark, and they did not attempt to make the arrest until midnight, hoping to
surprise several leaders at the same time. Their movements had been watched,
and a strong body of conspirators had introduced themselves unobserved
The garrison of Athens had been drawn up to support
the gendarmes. General Vlachopulos, once a stanch adherent of Mavrocordatos,
now a devoted courtier, was minister of war. He had been trained by the
camarilla to do nothing without orders, and he was not a man to seize the
moment for independent action. He did not put himself at the head of the
troops, and thus the only chance of stemming the torrent of the revolution was
lost.
As soon as the shots which proclaimed that General
Makryiannes’s house was attacked were heard, General Kalergy, the inspector of
cavalry, rode into the barracks where the troops were drawn up. On his arrival
a preconcerted shout was raised, “Long live the constitution”. Kalergy immediately assumed the command, and marched the whole
garrison to the royal palace. And at the same time, with the prudence which he
constantly displayed in great emergencies, and which contrasted with his
extreme imprudence on ordinary occasions, he sent out strong patrols to
maintain order, and stop the cry of “Death to the Bavarians!” which the
friends of orthodoxy and brigandage attempted to raise.
King Otho was waiting in his palace with his usual
apathetic patience to receive the news that the numerous arrests ordered by
the minister of war had been made. That of Makryiannes was to have served as a
signal for the others; and his majesty had hardly received the information
that the gendarmes had been
The king showed himself at one of the lower windows
of the palace. Kalergy informed his majesty that all Greece appealed to him to
fulfil the promises given when he was elected King of Greece, that the people
should be governed constitutionally. A low conversation ensued, which was
indistinct to those nearest, but the attitude of Kalergy indicated dissent. The
king turned to the troops, and exclaimed in a loud voice, “Retire to your
quarters.” Kalergy swamped the royal order by calling “Attention!” and, with a
deferential air, veiling a tone of satire, observed to the king, “The troops
expect your majesty’s orders through me, and they will wait patiently for your
royal decision in their present position.” It was now announced that deputies
from the council of state were appointed to lay the wishes of the nation before
his majesty.
The council of state was a creation of Count Armansperg. It was an imitation of the senate of Capodistrias, and it had no more
claim to be regarded as a representation of the Greek people than that body.
Many of the members were insignificant and ignorant men, but all were eager to
retain the high place into
Morning dawned before this deputation reached the
palace. King Otho was in no hurry to receive the men who composed it. He still
counted on effectual support from the German ministers at his court, and his
immediate object was to afford them time to take some step in his favour. The
deputation was at last received, but while the king was treating with its
members, he was endeavouring to open a communication with his own creatures in
the council of state, who, he thought, might now be sufficiently numerous to
pass a new resolution in his favour.
His majesty’s delay was beginning to exhaust the
patience of the constitutionalists, and those most hostile to his person began
to display their feelings. The greater part of the population of Athens was
assembled in the extensive square before the palace. The troops occupied only a
small space near the building. Children were playing, boys were shouting, and
apprentices were exclaiming that the king was acting with Bavarian
precipitancy, which had long been a byword with the Greeks for doing nothing.
Men were exhibiting signs of dissatisfaction, and
Suddenly a few carriages arrived in quick succession
: they contained the foreign ministers. A faint cheer was raised as the
Russian and English ministers appeared; but in general the people displayed
alarm, remained silent, or formed small groups of whisperers. At this moment it
was fortunate for Greece that Kalergy was at the head of the troops. On that
important day he was the only leading man of the movement who was in his right
place. He had the good sense to declare to the foreign ministers that they
could not enter the palace until the deputation of the council of state had
terminated its interview, and received a final answer from his majesty. The
representatives of the three Allied powers being made acquainted with the
demands of the deputation, acquiesced in this arrangement on receiving from
Kalergy the assurance that his majesty’s person should be treated with the
greatest respect. The ministers of Russia, England, and France departed,
deeming that their presence might tend to prolong the crisis and increase the
king’s personal danger. The Austrian and Prussian ministers thought the field
was clear for action on their part, and they resolved to act energetically.
They insisted on seeing the king. They used strong language, and made an
attempt to bully Kalergy, who listened with coolness, and then quaintly
observed that he believed diplomatic etiquette required them to follow the
example of their dogen, the Russian envoy, and that common sense suggested to
him that it would be prudent for them to act like the representatives of the
three protecting powers.
When King Otho learned that the German diplomatists had been
unable to penetrate into his palace, he saw that it was necessary
to abandon absolute power in order to preserve the crown. Without any further
observation he signed all the ordinances presented to him; and on the 15th of
September 1843, Greece became a constitutional monarchy. The Bavarians were
dismissed from his service; a new ministry was appointed, and a national
assembly was convoked.
That national assembly met on the 20th of November
1843, and terminated its work on the 30th of March 1844, when King Otho swore
obedience to the constitution which it had prepared.
It is not the business of the historian of Greece
under foreign domination to judge this constitution. It is only necessary for
him to record the fact that it put an end to the government of alien rulers,
under which the Greeks had lived for two thousand years. Its merits and defects
belong to the history of Greece as a constitutional state; and perhaps more
than one generation must be allowed to elapse before they can be examined with
the light of experience. Still, before closing this record of the deeds by
which the Greeks established their national independence, it is necessary to
notice some shortcomings in this charter of their political liberty.
The constitution of 1844 is a compilation from foreign
sources, and not the production of the national mind. Greece had no Lycurgus to
make laws for the attainment of theoretic excellence, nor any Solon to devise
remedies for existing social evils. National wants and national institutions
were alike overlooked. The municipal system which Capodistrias had defaced,
and which Maurer had converted into an engine for riveting the fetters of
centralisation on the local magistrates, was neither revived as a defence for
the
The section of the constitution which determines the
public rights of the Greek citizen, omits all reference to those rights in his
position as an inhabitant of a parish, and as a member of a municipality and
provincial district. Indeed, the interests of the citizen, in so far as they
were directly connected with his locality and his property, were completely
neglected, and only his relations with the legislature and the central
government were determined.
The spirit of imitation also introduced some contradictions
into the constitution of Greece extremely injurious to the cause of liberty.
Universal suffrage was adopted for choosing members of the legislature, while
the chief magistrates in the municipalities were selected by the king from
three candidates chosen by an oligarchical elective body. As far as the rights
of the citizens in municipalities were concerned, all the evils of the
Capodistrian and Bavarian systems were left without reform. The municipalities
remained in servile dependence on the king, the ministers of the day, and the
prefects of the hour. The demarch was not directly elected by the people, and
the minister of the crown exercised a direct control over the budget of the
demarchy. Yet the people, though not allowed to elect their own local chief,
were nevertheless intrusted with the election of deputies to the lower
legislative chamber. And this introduction of universal suffrage in the
institutions of Greece was completely exceptional, for a property qualification
was retained for the electors who appointed provincial councillors. A system
tending more directly to perpetuate maladministration in the municipalities,
nullity in the provincial councils, and corruption in the chamber of deputies,
could not have been devised. Individual
The constitution of Greece opens the section of the
public rights of citizens with an article which figures in most modern
constitutions since the French constitution of 1793. It declares that all
Greeks are equal in the eye of the law. In many of the constitutions in which a
similar article appears, it is a direct falsehood: in the constitution of Greece
it is not strictly true. The Greeks who framed the constitution knew that the
phrase was introduced in France originally to enable the people to boast of an
equality which the French, at least, have never enjoyed. To render all the
citizens equal before the law, something more is necessary than to say that
they are so. The legislation which would insure equality must render every
individual, whatever be his rank or official station, responsible for all his
acts to the persons whom those acts affect. The law must be equal for all, and
superior to all. Neither a minister of police, a general, nor an admiral, any
more than a prefect, must be permitted to plead official duty for any act as an
excuse for not answering before the ordinary tribunals of the country. No
officer of government must be allowed to escape personal responsibility by the
plea of superior orders. The sovereign alone can do no wrong. There can be no
true liberty in any country where administrative privileges exempt officials
from the direct operation of the law, as it affects every other citizen of the
state, and as it is administered by the ordinary tribunals of the country. The
Greeks did not lay down this principle in their constitution; they preferred
the nominal equality of France to the legal equality of English law.
The two most influential leaders in the national
Before finally releasing the reader who has followed
the author through the preceding pages, it may not be altogether unnecessary to
look back at the origin of the Greek Revolution, and examine how far it has
been crowned with success, or in what it has failed to fulfil the expectations
of reflecting men. A generation has already passed away; most of the actors in
the drama are dead; the political position of Greece itself has changed ; so
that a cotemporary may now view the events without passion, and weigh their
consequences with impartiality.
The Greek Revolution was not an insurrectional movement, originating solely in Turkish oppression. The first aspirations
for the delivery of the orthodox church from the sultan’s yoke were inspired by
Russia; the projects for national independence by the French Revolution. The
Greeks, it is true, were prepared to receive these ideas by a wave in the
element of human progress that had previously spread civilisation among the
inhabitants of the Othoman empire, whether Mussulman or Christian.
The origin of the ideas that produced the Greek
Revolution explain why it was pre-eminently the movement of the people; and
that its success was owing to their perseverance, is proved by its whole
history. To live or die free was the firm resolve of the native peasantry of
Greece when they took up arms; and no sufferings ever shook that resolution.
They never had the good fortune to find a leader worthy of their cause. No
eminent man stands forward as a type of the nation’s virtues; too many are
famous as representatives of the nation’s vices. From this circumstance, the
records of the Greek Revolution are destitute of one of history’s most
attractive characteristics : it loses the charm of a hero’s biography. But it
possesses its own distinction. Never in the records of states did a nation’s
success depend more entirely on the conduct of the mass of the population;
never was there a more clear manifestation of God’s providence in the progress
of human society. No one can regard its success as the result of the military
and naval exploits of the insurgents ; and even the Allied powers, in creating
a Greek kingdom, only modified the political results of a revolution which had
irrevocably separated the present from the past.
Let us now examine how far the Greek Revolution has
succeeded. It has established the independence of
But yet it must be confessed that in many things the
Greek Revolution has failed. It has not created a growing population and an
expanding nation. Diplomacy has formed a diminutive kingdom, and no Themistocles has known how to form a great state out of so small a community. Yet
the task was not difficult: the lesson was taught in the United States of
America and in the colonial empire of Great Britain. But in the Greek kingdom,
with every element of social and political improvement at hand, the
agricultural population and the native industry of the country have remained
almost stationary. The towns, it is true, are increasing, and merchants are
gaining money; but the brave peasantry who formed the nation’s strength grows
neither richer nor more numerous; the produce of their labour is of the rudest
kind; whole districts remain uncultivated : the wealthy Greeks who pick up
money in foreign traffic do not invest the capital they accumulate in the land
which they pretend to call their country; and no stream of Greek emigrants
flows from the millions who live enslaved in Turkey, to enjoy liberty by
settling in liberated Greece.
There can be no doubt that the inhabitants of Greece
may, even in spite of past failures, look with hope to the future. When a few
years of liberty have purged society from the traditional corruption of
servitude, wise counsels may enable them to resume their progress.
But the friends of Greece, who believed that the
The Othoman empire may soon be dismembered, or it may
long drag on a contemptible existence, like the Greek empire of Constantinople
under the Paleologues. Its military resources, however, render its condition
not dissimilar to that of the Roman empire in the time of Gallienus, and there
may be a possibility of finding a Diocletian to reorganise the administration,
and a Constantine to reform the religion. But should it be dismembered
tomorrow, it may be asked, what measures the free Greeks have adopted to
govern any portion better than the officers of the sultan? On the other hand,
several powerful states and more populous nations are well prepared to seize
the fragments of the disjointed empire. They will easily find legitimate
pretexts for their intervention, and they will certainly obtain a tacit
recognition of the justice of their pro
It is never too late, however, to commence the task of
improvement. The inheritance may not be open for many years, and the heirs may
be called to the succession by their merit. What, then, are the merits which
give a nation the best claim to greatness? Personal dignity, domestic virtue,
truth in the intercourse of society, and respect for justice, make nations
powerful as surely as they make men honoured. But I wander too far from my
subject; so, instead of moralising further, I shall conclude with the words of
the old English song—
“ Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.”
END OF THE GREEK REVOLUTION
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