THE GREEK REVOLUTION.

 

CHAPTER XVII.

ANARCHY. 9TH OCTOBER 1831 TO 1ST FEBRUARY 1833.

 

“ In rank oppression, in its rudest shape,

The faction chief is but the sultan’s brother,

And the worst despot’s far less human ape”

                                              Prophecy of Dante.

 

The assassination of Capodistrias destroyed the whole edifice of his government, which for some time had derived an appearance of stability from nothing but his talents and personal influence. The persons whom he had selected to act as his ministers and official instruments employed his name as their aegis, and rallied round his brother Agostino, who had been treated as the president’s heir, from motives of flattery, at a time when no one contemplated the possibility of his ever succeeding to power.

The senate was filled with the most daring and  unprincipled partisans of the Capodistrian policy. A few hours after the president’s murder it appointed a governing commission to exercise the executive power until the meeting of the national assembly. This commission consisted of three members—Count Agostino Capodistrias, Kolokotrones, and Kolettes. Agostino was named president. His incapacity, joined to the irreconcilable hostility between the other two members, induced the senate to believe that it could retain the powers of government in its own hands. The people judged more correctly, and prognosticated an approaching civil war. A general amnesty for political offences was instinctively felt to be the only means of preserving any degree of order. A few political leaders and military chieftains, who desired to fish in troubled waters, determined to frustrate all attempts at pacification. A large body of well-paid Moreot troops looked to Kolokotrones as their leader; a still larger number of the veteran soldiers of continental Greece, whose pay was in arrear, considered Kolettes as their political advocate.

The municipality of Syra made a vain endeavour to consign past contentions to oblivion by acknowledging the authority of the governing commission. The constitutionalists at Hydra made conciliatory proposals to the new executive. They asked for a general amnesty for all political offences except the assassination of the president, and they required that the governing commission should be increased to five members by the aggregation of two persons chosen from among the constitutionalists. These proposals were rejected with disdain. Count Agostino pretended that a national assembly could alone grant a general amnesty, and the members of the commission, in order to avoid receiving two colleagues, declared that they had no power to enlarge the executive body. The reply was evasive,. and felt to be insulting. The exiles only wished a guarantee against governmental prosecutions until the meeting of the national assembly, and they knew that the senate had the power to add to the body it had created.

The contest for absolute power by the Capodistrians, and for life and property as well as liberty by the constitutionalists, was now resumed with embittered animosity. Both parties saw that their safety could only be secured by the command of a devoted majority in the national assembly, and both prepared to secure success in the coming elections by force of arms. Hydra was kept closely blockaded by the Russian fleet.

The influence of the Capodistrians in the Morea gave them a considerable majority in the second national assembly at Argos; but they derived much of their authority as a party from the open support of the Russian admiral, Ricord. In some places, the Capodistrians, though they formed a minority, obtained the assistance of a military force, and held a meeting, in which they elected a deputy, in violation of every legal and constitutional form. Yet these deputies were received into the assembly, and their elections were declared valid. Both parties circulated atrocious calumnies against their opponents. The Capodistrians accused the French and English of being privy to the assassination of the president. Agostino boasted of his hatred to the French. He dismissed General Gerard from his command in the Greek army, and he intimated to General Gueheneuc, who commanded the French army of occupation in the Morea, that the financial condition of the country imposed on the Greek government the obligation of observing the strictest economy in paying foreigners. On receiving this intimation, the French general immediately recalled all the French officers in the Greek service, in order to prevent their being dismissed in the same manner as General Gerard. The constitutionalists at Hydra spread a report that the murdered president had bribed six Hydriot traitors to assassinate the leaders of the opposition; and it was generally believed that Agostino and Admiral Ricord had sworn to send Miaoulis, and all the sailors who had taken part in the affair of Poros, to Siberia.

The proximity of Argos to the garrison of Nauplia and to the Russian fleet gave the Capodistrians the command of the town. The deputies of Hydra were not even allowed to land at Lerna, for it was considered to be the safest way to exclude opposition. Those of Maina were stopped at Astros. To prevent even a murmur of dissatisfaction with the actual government from being heard in the assembly, the senate named a commission, which was ordered to verify the election of each deputy before he was allowed to take his seat in the assembly. This unconstitutional proceeding was supposed to have been counselled by Russia, and awakened very general dissatisfaction even in the Capodistrian party.

The military chiefs of continental Greece came to the assembly as deputies from the districts in which they possessed local influence, or to which the majority of their followers belonged. They cared little for constitutional liberty, but they were now ready to join any opposition, unless they were allowed to receive the high pay and ample rations which were enjoyed by the followers of Kolokotrones and the other Capodistrian chiefs. Kolettes was in a position to assist them in their object, and they had not forgotten the liberality with which he had poured the proceeds of the English loans into their hands. Kolettes was not a babbler, like most Greek statesmen. The astute Wallachian could assume an oracular look and remain silent when he wished to conceal his thoughts. In the present case, his prudence led Agostino and his counsellors to suppose that he was intent on retaining his place in the executive body. But it was evident that a number of the continental chiefs would openly oppose the election of Agostino to the presidency of Greece, even though Kolettes might remain neutral. It was resolved to crush this opposition before it could make common cause with the constitutionalists. Several Romeliot captains belonged to the Capodistrian party; of these the most influential were the Suliot chief Kitzos Djavellas, and Rhangos, a captain of armatoli, who on one occasion, as has been already mentioned, joined the Turks.

The Romeliot chiefs came to Argos attended by bands of followers, who, according to the established usage of Greece, were supplied with rations by the government. In this way the partisans of Kolettes assembled about five hundred good soldiers at Argos. All these men had claims for arrears of pay, and most of them had individual grievances, which Capodistrias had neglected to redress. Kolettes warmly supported their claims, and assured them that he would do everything in his power to obtain justice. He was aware that he must unite his cause with theirs, for without their support his political influence would be annihilated. He was distrusted by Agostino, disliked by Admiral Ricord, and hated by Kolokotrones.

For some days before the opening of the assembly, the different factions employed their time in arranging their plans. Some individuals doubtless acted from patriotic motives, but the conduct of the majority of the Romeliots, as well as of the Capodistrians, was guided by self-interest and personal ambition.

The Romeliot chiefs, finding themselves in a minority, demanded that the constitutional deputies who had met at Hydra should be allowed to take their seats in the assembly. This demand was rejected, on the ground that new deputies had been elected, and that these new elections had received the sanction of the commission named by the senate. The Romeliots then drew up a protest containing a declaration of their principles. They characterised the nomination of the governing commission by the senate as an illegal act; they objected to the appointment of the commission to verify the elections of deputies by the senate as an unconstitutional infringement of the right of the national assembly; and they proclaimed their adhesion to the following principles and resolutions: That national union ought to precede the meeting of a national assembly; that the national assembly ought to verify the elections of its members, and appoint its own guard, as on former occasions. The order in which the constitutional rights of the nation were to be discussed was also fixed, and resolutions were proposed, relative to the choice of a sovereign and to the nature of the provisional government which was to act until his arrival. The attempt to interfere with the proceedings of the Allied cabinets displeased their diplomatic agents at Nauplia, and inclined them to favour Agostino and the Capodistrians.

The rival parties trusted more to force than to right. Each assumed that it was the national party, and two hostile assemblies were opened on the same day.

The deputies of the Capodistrian party, to the number of a hundred and fifty, met on the 17th of December 1831 in the church of the Panaghia, and, after taking the prescribed oath, walked in procession to the schoolhouse, which had been fitted up as the place of meeting for the national assembly. A strong guard, under the command of Kitzos Djavellas, and an escort of cavalry, under Kalergy, secured a public triumph to the Capodistrians. They met in security, elected their president, issued a proclamation, and proceeded to business.

The Romeliots were not strong enough to make any public display; but they also held their meeting, elected their president, and issued their proclamation. They called upon the residents of the Allied powers, as protectors of Greece, to enforce a general amnesty, and they invited the French troops in the Morea to occupy Argos to preserve order. The residents, knowing that neither party was disposed to obey the law or listen to the dictates of justice, allowed things to take their course.

On the 20th December, Agostino Capodistrias was elected president of Greece, and invested with all the authority which had been conferred on his murdered brother. He and Kolokotrones had already resigned their power as members of the governing commission named by the senate, into the hands of the national assembly. Kolettes, not recognising the Capodistrian assembly, and not having resigned his power, pretended to be the only man now entitled to conduct the executive government.

The Capodistrians feared that, if the Romeliots were allowed time to summon the deputies from Hydra and Maina to their aid, they might be strong enough to overthrow the government. To prevent this they resolved to expel the Romeliot chiefs from Argos before additional troops could arrive to reinforce Kolettes’s partisans. Agostino Capodistrias, Admiral Ricord, Kolokotrones, Metaxas, and Djavellas all agreed that an immediate attack was necessary to insure victory. Once driven beyond the Isthmus of Corinth, the Romeliots might be treated as lawless. bands of brigands intent on plunder.

A Russian lieutenant named Raikoff, who had been promoted by Capodistrias to the rank of colonel, was summoned from Nauplia, with four guns and a company of artillerymen, to assist the government troops already in Argos. Raikoff was a warm partisan, and pretended to be a confidential agent of Russian policy. Strengthened by this reinforcement, the troops of Agostino attacked the Romeliots. A fierce civil war was carried on in the streets of Argos for two days, before the Romeliots, though inferior in number and ill supplied with ammunition and provisions, were expelled from the town and compelled to retreat to Corinth.

Sir Stratford Canning arrived at Nauplia to be a witness to these proceedings. The three powers had at last come to an agreement on Greek affairs, and selected a Bavarian prince to be king. Sir Stratford was on his way to Constantinople as English ambassador to obtain the sultan’s recognition of the Greek kingdom, and he visited Nauplia to announce to the Greeks the arrangements which had been adopted by the Allies, and to prepare them to receive their king with order and unanimity. Sir Stratford found that Agostino was a fool utterly incapable of appreciating his position, and he counselled conciliatory measures, and urged the necessity of moderation, in vain. The empty head of the Corfiot was inflated with presumption. Before quitting Greece, Sir Stratford communicated to Agostino a memorandum on the state of the country, urging him in strong terms to terminate the civil war he had commenced. Though the observations in this document produced no effect on the Greek government, and very little on the ulterior conduct of Mr Dawkins, Baron Rouen, and Baron de Rückmann, the residents of the three Allied powers at Nauplia, yet they were so judicious that they made a deep impression on the ministers in conference at London. The anarchy in Greece threatened to render Sir Stratford’s mission to the sultan useless; and he warned Agostino that, by destroying the houses of the peaceful inhabitants of Argos, and plundering their shops, as a prelude to a bloody intestine war, Greece proclaimed herself in the face of Europe to be unworthy of the independent position as a nation to which the Allied powers were endeavouring to elevate her. This memorandum was supported by formal notes of the residents, recommending Agostino to publish a general amnesty and convoke a free national assembly. But shortly after the departure of Sir Stratford from Greece, the residents ceased to insist on the measures they had advised; and Admiral Ricord, who had never moderated the violence of his language, continued to encourage the Capodistrians to push their attacks on the constitutionalists with vigour. He gave them hopes of being able to expel the French army of occupation from the Morea, and he pointed out to them the necessity of perpetuating their authority by forcing themselves on the new sovereign as ministers and senators. The position of the French troops who were protecting Messenia from being plundered by the Maniats was rendered so confined that they were obliged to drive the Capodistrian troops out of the town of Nisi, in order to keep open their communication with their headquarters at Modon, and secure a safe passage to the peasantry who brought provisions to their camp.

The political atmosphere of Europe was too troubled during the year 1831 to enable the Allies to give more than a casual glance at the affairs of Greece, whose unsettled condition was gradually destroying the importance of the country in the solution of what states-men called the Eastern question. The attention of Great Britain and France had been absorbed by the creation of the kingdom of Belgium; Russia had been occupied with the insurrection of Poland. But during the winter the condition of Europe became more tranquil, and the fate of Greece was again taken into consideration. On the 7th January 1832 a protocol was signed, authorising the residents at Nauplia to recognise the provisional government named by the national assembly, which, it was supposed, was a free meeting. On receiving this protocol, the residents, who knew that Sir Stratford Canning's memorandum was on its way to London, thought fit to recognise Agostino Capodistrias as president of Greece. On the 13th of February another protocol was signed, offering the throne of Greece to Prince Otho, a boy seventeen years old, the second son of the King of Bavaria.

In the mean time the Romeliots were preparing to avenge their defeat at Argos. Their preparation went on slowly, until they heard that the Allies had chosen a king for Greece. They saw immediately that it was necessary to overthrow the government of Agostino, in order to have a share in welcoming the new monarch, and a claim to participate in the distribution of wealth and honours which would take place on the king’s arrival.

After their retreat from Argos, the Romeliots formed a camp at Megara. The meeting, which arrogated to itself the title of a national assembly, met at Perachora, where it was strengthened by the arrival of the deputies from Hydra and Maina. Kolettes was supported by most of the eminent men in Greece. Konduriottes, Miaoulis, Mavromichales, and Mavrocordatos, and a respectable body of constitutional deputies, sanctioned bis proceedings. But the Romeliots looked to arms and not to justice for victory. Constitutional liberty was a good war-cry, but military force could alone open the road to power. The numbers of armed men collected at Megara at last rendered an advance on Nauplia necessary to procure subsistence. Every effort that revenge, party zeal, and sincere patriotism could suggest, was employed to urge on the soldiers. Commissions were distributed with a lavish hand among the bravest veterans. Civilians were suddenly made captains. Kolettes and the military chieftains cared nothing for moral and political responsibility ; their sole object was to conquer power, and about the means they were quite indifferent. Mavrocordatos and the constitutionalists felt that the recognition of .Agostino’s government by the residents cut off all hope of a general amnesty, a free national assembly, or a legal administration, without a decided victory of the Romeliots. It was thought that the residents would not venture to employ the forces of the Allies to support a government which had rejected their own advice as well as the warnings of Sir Stratford Canning. The Greek leaders knew that none of the residents possessed the firm character, any more than the enlightened views, of Sir Stratford, and it was inferred with diplomatic sagacity that the instructions received with the protocols of the 13th and 14th February 1832 would place the residents in a false position with their cabinets. Their recognition of a government illegally constituted had rendered the pacification of Greece impossible without further violence. Agostino, less sagacious than the constitutionalists, believed that his recognition by the residents was equivalent to a guarantee on the part of the Allied powers; and he expected to see the troops of France support him at the Isthmus of Corinth as decidedly as the fleet of Russia had supported his brother at Poros.

At this late hour the residents made a feeble attempt to avert a civil war. They invited the general commanding the French army of occupation to occupy the Isthmus of Corinth, and authorised Professor Thiersch, who had visited Greece as an unrecognised agent of the Bavarian court, to negotiate with the deputies and military chiefs at Perachora and Megara. Thiersch favoured the constitutional party. He had been long in communication with the Philhellenic committees on the Continent. In the year 1829 lie had advocated the election of Prince Otho to the sovereignty of Greece, and lie had communicated with the Bavarian court on the subject. The object of his present tour was understood to be, to prepare the minds of the Greeks for the choice of a Bavarian prince; and now, when Otho was elected king, he stepped forward as a diplomatic agent of Bavaria, and was treated as such both by the residents and by the leaders of all parties among the Greeks.

The prudence of the constitutionalists, and the passions of the military chiefs, rejected every arrangement based on the continuance of the presidency of Agostino and the ratification of the acts of the assembly by which he had been elected. The mission of Thiersch failed, and its failure rendered the position of Agostino untenable. Those who had hitherto supported him perceived that they had ruined their cause by placing too much power in his hands, and by attempting to prolong his authority beyond the legal majority of the king chosen by the protecting powers. Agostino determined to cling to power, but the rapid advance of the Romeliots soon dispelled his hopes of Russian support and his visions of future greatness.

On the 6  of April the government troops stationed at the Isthmus of Corinth fled before the constitutionalists without offering any resistance. The heroes of the sack of Poros, the cavalry of Kalergy, and the generalship of Kolokotrones, the veteran commander­in-chief of the Peloponnesian army, were unable to retard the advance of the invaders, who marched straight to Argos. The residents were now in an awkward and not very honourable position. By an extraordinary piece of good-luck, they were relieved from the foolish part they were acting. On the very day the Romeliot troops entered Argos, the protocol of the 7th March 1832 arrived at Nauplia, and they were instructed to carry out the principles of Sir Stratford Canning’s memorandum. It was easy for them to treat their recognition of Agostino’s presidency as a temporary expedient, adopted to avoid a civil war, until they received the definitive instructions now placed in their hands. The memorandum declared  that the interests of the Greeks, and the honour of the Allies, required a system of provisional government calculated to preserve the country from anarchy.” This could, in the present crisis of affairs, only be attained by ejecting Agostino from the presidency.

On the 8th of April they addressed a vague diplomatic note to the president they had recognised, inviting him to contribute to the execution of the protocol of the 7th of March. Agostino, trusting to the secret aid of Admiral Ricord, replied with a request for a copy of the document to which they alluded, and which had not yet been officially communicated to the Greek government. The residents were alarmed at his endeavour to gain time, and, their own interests being at stake, they proceeded with great promptitude to  eject him from office. His incapacity secured them an easy victory in a personal interview. Without wasting their time in composing diplomatic notes, they walked to the government-house, while Agostino was still chuckling at his supposed victory over the diplomatists, entered his presence, and informed him without ceremony that he must immediately send his resignation to the senate. So far their conduct was extremely judicious, but they had not the clear heads which enable men to stop short in action at the precise limit of justice and prudence. In the spirit of diplomatic meddling, which involves nations in as much embarrassment as military ambition, they made the ejected president add a recommendation to the senate to appoint a commission of five persons to govern Greece until the king’s arrival. Agostino was rendered amenable to their orders by a hint that any delay would produce a decree of the senate deposing him from the presidency. Convinced that his cause was hopeless, he wrote his resignation, and shortly after quitted Greece, with the body of his murdered brother, in a Russian ship.

The expedient of establishing peace by a diplomatic compromise, after allowing every passion which civil war excites to rase for three months, was a violation of common sense that could not prove successful. The same diplomatists had refused to prevent a civil war by enforcing a compromise before the opening of the assembly at Argos; yet they now imagined that their interference would avert anarchy. The Romeliot troops paid very little attention to these manoeuvres. They were resolved to reap the fruits of their victory, and it was not by naming a commission in which a hostile senate would be able to secure a majority that this end could be attained. Foreign interference rarely saves a nation from the direct consequences of its own vices, and anarchy was the natural result of the repeated illegalities which every party in Greece had committed.

The conduct of the residents deserves reprehension. They evidently thought more of concealing their own incapacity and inconsistency than of serving the cause of the Greeks, in the measures they adopted for carrying the protocol of the 7th of March into execution. They established a phantom of government, which they knew would be unable to pacify the country, because it appeared to them to offer the political combination least at variance with their own proceedings. Had they endeavoured to act in accordance with the laws and institutions of Greece, it is possible that they might have failed in preventing the Greeks from falling into a state of anarchy, but they would have saved themselves from all reproach. When the senate first assumed illegal powers, it was the duty of the residents to refuse to recognise its illegal acts. In the present crisis, had they paid any attention to the constitution of Greece, even as established by Capodistrias, they would have recommended the representation of both parties in the senate, and avoided the incongruity of composing an executive government of two hostile factions. The Russian resident wished the senate to remain unaltered, as it consisted entirely of Russian partisans, and was completely under the guidance of Admiral Ricord. But the English and French residents knew that its composition rendered the pacification of Greece impossible. The English resident, however, moved partly by jealousy of French influence, and partly by distrust of Kolettes’s character, adopted the Russian policy concerning the immutability of the senate.

In conformity with the suggestion conveyed in the resignation of the presidency by Agostino, the senate named five persons whom the residents indicated as governing commission. When the Romeliots heard the names that were pleasing to the diplomatists, they treated the election with contempt, and marched forward to attack Nauplia. The fortress was impregnable, but they had many stanch partisans within its walls, and expected to enter without much difficulty. The senate was terrified; the residents had again thrust themselves into a false position. It was necessary to effect a new diplomatic compromise, and for this purpose Kolettes was invited to confer with the diplomatists at the house of the French resident.

On the 10th of April, Kolettes rode into Nauplia in triumph. He had now the nation, the army, the senate, and the three protecting powers at his feet. Unfortunately for the Greeks, with all his talents as an intriguer, he had neither the views of a statesman nor the principles of a patriot. He had climbed to the elevation of a Cromwell or a Washington, and he stood in his high position utterly incompetent to act with decision, and prevented by his own absolute incapacity from serving either the constitutional cause or the interests of the Romeliot troops who had raised him to power.

Fourteen days were consumed in diplomatic shuffling and personal intrigues before the names of a new governing commission were finally settled. It was then composed of seven members, and not of five, as recommended by the residents. The constitution of Greece was grossly violated by this election ; for the senate, at the instigation of the diplomatists, persisted in investing the governing commission with the executive power until the king’s arrival, though both by law and invariable practice that power could only be conferred until the meeting of a national assembly, when it required to be ratified or reconstituted by a decree of the representatives of the nation. The object of the Capodistrians was to prevent the national assembly electing a president of the constitutional party. They even succeeded in paralysing the action of the constitutionalists in the governing commission, by enacting that the presence of five members was necessary to give validity to its decisions. Now, as there were two stanch Capodistrians in the commission, and one costitutional member, who was too ill to attend, it was evident that the two Capodistrians could arrest the action of the executive authority at any crisis by preventing a decision. Three members of the commission, Kolettes, Konduriottes, and Zaimes, were supposed to represent the constitutional opposition to the Copodistrian system; but the residents and the leading Capodistrians were aware that Zaimes was already a renegade. Two members were recognised to be the representatives of the Romeliot troops—Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes and Kosta Botzares. Two members, as has been said, were stanch Capodistrians—Metaxas and Koliopulos or Plapoutas. This executive commission had a cabinet composed of seven ministers, who were all constitutionalists; but with the exception of Mavrocordatos, they were men without administrative knowledge, mere rhetoricians, who could clothe commonplace thoughts in official Greek. Even Mavrocordatos was misplaced as minister of finance. These ministers were severely blamed for accepting office without fixing a day for the meeting of the national assembly, and without insisting that the power of the governing commission should terminate when the a assembly met. Their friends excused their neglect of constitutional principles by pleading the power of the residents; but those who scanned their political lives with attention, observed that they frequently contrived to advance their own interests by sacrificing the cause they adopted.

Public opinion demanded the immediate convocation of a national assembly. To save the country from anarchy it was necessary to reconstitute the senate, according to the principles of conciliation laid down in Sir Stratford Canning’s memorandum, and it might have been found necessary to throw the responsibility of maintaining order on Kolettes by creating him dictator. But the residents, the Russian admiral, the senate, and the ministers in office, were all opposed to the meeting of a national assembly.

The Capodistrian party soon recovered from its defeat. It succeeded in retaining possession of a considerable portion of the revenues of the Morea, and received active support from Admiral Ricord. The Romeliots, after overthrowing Agostino’s government, daily lost ground. The commission of seven was either unable or unwilling to reward their services. The soldiers soon determined to reward themselves. They treated the election of the commission as a temporary compromise, not as a definitive treaty of peace, and they marched into different districts in the Morea, to take possession of the national revenues as a security for their pay and rations. Wherever they established themselves, they lived at free quarters in the houses of the inhabitants.

The financial administration of Mavrocordatos was not calculated to moderate the rapacity of the troops.  The governing commission raised money by private bargains for the sale of the tenths, and the proceeds of these anticipated and frequently illegal sales were employed to reward personal partisans, and not to discharge the just debts due to the soldiers for arrears of pay. A small sum judiciously expended would have sent many of the Romeliot troops to their native mountains, where, as peace was now restored, they would have willingly returned, had they been able to procure the means of cultivating their property. The troops were neglected, while favoured chieftains were allowed to become farmers of taxes, or were authorised to collect arrears due by preceding farmers. These proceedings gave rise to intolerable exactions. The chieftains often paid their followers by allowing them to extort a number of rations from the peasantry, and defrauded them of their pay. Some drew pay and rations for a hundred men without having twenty under arms. Numbers of soldiers were disbanded, and roved backwards and forwards, plundering the villages, and devouring the sheep and oxen of the peasants. Professor Thiersch informs us that the bands of Theodore Grivas on the side of the constitutionalists, and of Thanasapulos on the side of the Capodistrians, spread terror wherever they appeared by their exactions and cruelty.1 Eight thousand Romeliots were at this time living at free quarters in the Morea, and it was said that they levied daily from the population upwards of twenty thousand rations. The governing commission solicited pecuniary advances from the three protecting powers, pretending that they would employ them for alleviating the misery of the people; but the Allies wisely refused to advance money, which they saw, by the misconduct of the government, would have been wasted in maintaining lawless bands of personal followers in utter idleness.

The position of the two hostile parties soon became clearly defined. The greater part of the Morea adhered to the Capodistrian party, as the surest means of obtaining defence against the exactions of the Romeliot soldiery. Several Moreot primates and deputies, who had hitherto acted with the constitutionalists, now abandoned the cause of the governing commission. Even in Romelia the Capodistrians possessed a rallying-point at Salona, where Mamoures maintained himself with a strong garrison. In the Archipelago, Tinos continued faithful to the Capodistrians, and served as a refuge for the officials of the party who were expelled from the other islands. Spetzas and Egina were also prevented from acknowledging the authority of the governing commission by ships of war commanded by Andrutzos and Kanaris.

All liberated Greece was now desolated by anarchy. Long periods of maladministration on the part of the government, and a cynical contempt for justice and good faith on the part of the civil and military leaders, had paralysed the nation. The Revolution, to all appearance, had been crowned with success. The Turks were expelled from the country, and Greece formed an independent state. Yet Greece was certainly not free, for the people were groaning under the most cruel oppression. The whole substance of the land was devoured by hosts of soldiers, sailors, captains, generals, policemen, government officials, tax-gatherers, secretaries, and political adventurers, all living idly at the public expense, while the agricultural population was perishing from starvation.

Evil habits, and the difficulty of procuring the means of subsistence, may form some excuse for the rapine of the soldiery, but no apology can be offered for the conduct of the members of the governing commission and of the ministry, who increased the miseries of the people by their malversations, or countenanced the dishonesty of their colleagues by retaining office. Honour as well as patriotism commanded every man who had a sense of duty, either to put a stop to the devastation of the country or resign his place as a ruler or a minister. The tenacity with which those who called themselves constitutionalists clung to office has fixed an indelible stain on their own political character, and destroyed the confidence of the Greek people in the honesty of public men. When Mavrocordatos, Tricoupi, Klonares, and Zographos, abandoned the cause of civil liberty, they destroyed all trust in the good faith of the statesmen of the Greek Revolution. The immediate effect of their misconduct was to constitute Theodore Kolokotrones, the veteran klepht, the champion of the people’s rights.

Before the constitutional ministers had been a month in office, their weakness had increased the insubordination of the military classes, and their misconduct had alienated their own partisans to such a degree, that they found it necessary to invite the French troops to occupy Nauplia and Patras, as the only means of securing their personal safety and the prolongation of their power.

On the 19th of May 1832 General Corbet entered Nauplia; but at Patras the governing commission was not so fortunate as to obtain French assistance, and that place fell into the hands of the Capodistrians.

The loss of Patras was caused by gross negligence on the part of Zograplios, the minister of war. Ignorant of official business, and absorbed in personal intrigues, he left the Greek troops without instructions concerning their future conduct. The regular troops in garrison at Patras had supported the Capodistrians while in power, but they were disposed to obey the government, and not to follow the personal fortunes of any president. The hostility of Kolettes to the regular corps was notorious, and, through the neglect of Zographos, both the officers and men at Patras were easily persuaded by the partisans of Russian influence that it was the intention of the governing commission to disband the regular troops. While brooding over this report, which threatened them with the loss of a large amount of arrears of pay, they heard that French troops were invited to garrison Patras. They concluded that they were cheated by the minister of war, and betrayed by the governing commission. As long as they remained in garrison at Patras they were sure of being regularly supplied with rations and clothing, and of obtaining from time to time advances of pay; but once expelled from the town, they believed that they would be allowed to starve. The Capodistrians formed a strong party in the town, and they availed themselves of the excited feelings of the soldiers to declare, that regular troops who delivered a fortress like Patras to foreigners would render themselves guilty of treason. The constitutionalists had accused Capodistrias of selling Greece to the Russians; the Capodistrians now accused the constitutionalists of selling Nauplia and Patras to the French. The regular troops mutinied, deposed their commanding officer, who refused to sign a manifesto justifying their revolt, and invited Kitzos Djavellas, who was then at Vostitza, to assume the chief command at Patras.

Djavellas, who had retreated from the Romeliots, was at the head of about five hundred irregulars, and he was looking out for a position in which he could maintain his followers, and defend himself against the attacks of the Kolettists. He hastened to Patras, and entered it before the arrival of the French. When they made their appearance, Djavellas transmitted to their commanding officer a formal protest against the authority of the governing commission, and he refused to obey the order to admit the French troops into the fortress. The French commander, considering that it was the object of the Allies to maintain order and not to enforce the authority of any party, immediately retired, and the residents, who wished to avoid bloodshed, left Djavellas in peaceable possession of Patras. Thus, by the incapacity of Zographos and the decision of Djavellas, the Capodistrians remained in possession of the commercial town of Patras, and of the fortresses of Rhion and Antirhion, with the command of the entrance into the Gulf of Corinth, until the arrival of King Otho.

This success emboldened the enemies of Kolettes. A great part of the Morea, and several districts of continental Greece, refused to admit the officials named by the governing commission. The demogeronts, wherever they were supported by the people, assumed the management of public as well as local business. They had been appointed by Capodistrias. They feared anarchy more than despotism, and they naturally sought protection from the military leaders of the Capodistrian party. The greater part of Arcadia and Achaia resisted the authority of the governing commission, while Argolis, Corinthia, and Laconia, generally acknowledged its power. Messenia and Elis were the scenes of frequent civil broils. In Phocis the Capodistrians maintained their ascendancy.

Kolokotrones, who held the rank of commander-in-chief of the Peloponnesian militia, stepped forward as the defender of the local authorities against the central government. His personal interest, his party-connections, and his hatred of Kolettes, determined his conduct. Had he acted from patriotic motives, he would have caught inspiration from the high national position into which accident had thrust him. The agricultural population was alarmed, and the astute old klepht seized the favourable moment for uniting his cause with the cause of the people, but his confined views and innate selfishness prevented his employing the power thus placed at his disposal for the general good.

Kolokotrones called the Peloponnesians to arms, and pronounced the proceedings of the governing commission to be illegal, in a proclamation dated the 22d June 1832. Metaxas and Plapoutas had informed him that they had secured the co-operation of Zaimes in paralysing the action of the executive government. The Russian admiral had prompted him to proclaim that the senate was the only legitimate authority in  existence. The residents remained silent. Griva, the most lawless of the Romeliot chiefs, advanced without orders from the governing commission, and occupied Tripolitza at the head of a thousand men. The Capodistrians were already prepared to encounter the invaders of the Morea, and Gennaios Kolokotrones, who had more military courage, though less political sagacity than his father, had already formed a camp at Valtetzi.

The tide of success now flowed in favour of the Capodistrians. The advance of Griva was stopped. Elias Mavromichales was repulsed in his attempts to gain a footing in the rich plain of Messenia. The Capodistrians under Kalergy made a bold attempt to seize the mills at Lerna, but the attempt was defeated, though it was openly favoured by the Russian admiral. Civil war recommenced in many districts, and bands of troops, who recognised no government, plundered wherever they could penetrate.

The prudence of Kolokotrones, whom age had rendered more of a politician than a warrior, might have led him to avoid engaging in open hostilities against a government acknowledged by the protecting powers, on the eve of the king’s arrival, had he been allowed to remain in undisturbed possession of the profits which he drew from his office as commander-in-chief in the Peloponnesus. But the members of the governing commission forced him into resisting their authority by appointing Theodore Griva to the chief command in the districts of Leondari and Phanari. The occu­pation of these places by the Kolettists would have rendered Kolokotrones little better than a prisoner in Karitena.

Amidst these scenes of anarchy a national assembly met at Pronia. The members of the governing commission, the ministers in office, the senators, the residents of the Allied powers, and the Russian admiral, were all hostile to the meeting. But a general amnesty before the king’s arrival was necessary for pacifying the country, and a general amnesty could not be proclaimed without the sanction of a national assembly. It was also indispensable to obtain the assent of the nation to the election of the king chosen by the Allies. A national assembly could not therefore be entirely dispensed with, though it was feared that a national assembly would abolish the senate and choose a new executive government. Had a national assembly met immediately after the nomination of the governing commission, a civil war might have been avoided by the election of a senate, in which both the constitutionalists and Capodistrians, the Romeliots and the Moreots, the Hydriots, the Spetziots, and the Psarians, might have been duly represented, and in which local interests might have moderated factious passions. But the intrigues of Greek politicians and foreign diplomatists delayed the meeting for three months, and when it took place, old passions had been rekindled with fiercer animosity by fresh injuries. The violence of faction now exposed the corruption of political society in Greece, without a veil, to the examination of strangers. All ties were torn asunder in the struggle to gratify individual selfishness. The Suliots, Djavellas and Botzares, fought on different sides. Hydriot primates were found who deserted the cause of Hydra. The only great political body into which patriotism was likely to find an entrance, was the national assembly, and even there its voice was in great danger of being overpowered by party zeal. The illegal position and arrogant assumptions of the senate caused much animosity; the residents of the three powers were distrusted, because they appeared in league to support the illegal powers of the senate.

As soon as the assembly of Pronia met, a majority determined to abolish the senate, though it was openly supported by the residents. Many members believed that, as the residents had tamely submitted to the armed opposition of Djavellas at Patras, and had regarded with indifference the renewal of the civil war by Griva, Kolokotrones, and Kalergy, they would offer no opposition to the abolition of the senate. The diplomatists, however, regarded the senate with peculiar favour. They had made use of it to eject Agostino from the presidency, and to create a new government. Its very illegality made it a useful instrument, should it be necessary to employ force to establish King Otho’s authority, for its abolition would always be a popular measure, and might serve as a pretext for the assumption of absolute power. On the other hand, the national assembly was considered to be doubly dangerous, because it was legally invested with great power, and not likely to be guided by the suggestions of foreign diplomatists in making use of that power.

Such was the state of Greece and the condition of parties when the national assembly of Pronia commenced its sittings. Nothing presaged that it would be able to establish order in the country.

The assembly commenced its sittings on the 26th of July 1832. On the 1st of August it passed a decree proclaiming a general amnesty, and on the 8th it ratified the election of King Otho; but on the same day it abolished the senate. Of the legality of this measure there was no doubt, and had it occurred immediately after the expulsion of Agostino, it might have tranquillised Greece. Prudence now suggested that its abolition had become impolitic, since the residents had become its advocates; and the majority of the assembly would have acted judiciously, had it only reformed the existing senate on the principle of Sir Stratford Canning’s memorandum. The constitutionalists formed a large majority in the assembly, and they were irritated by the conduct of the Greek ministers who had deserted the constitutional cause. The senate was com­posed of Capodistrians, and it was adopting active measures to increase the violence of the civil war which was desolating the country. The governing commission and the Greek ministers took part with the senate against the representatives of the nation; and the residents, taking advantage of this conduct on the part of the executive, protested against the decree of the national assembly, asserting that it was a violation of the principles of the pacification they pretended to have established.

Large bodies of Romeliot troops were quartered in the village of Aria, at a short distance beyond Pronia. The soldiers beset the gates of Nauplia and the doors of the assembly every morning clamouring for pay. The governing commission promised to pay their arrears; but it failed to keep its promise. The ministers were accused of this violation of the public faith in order to produce the catastrophe which ensued, and their friends and the senators incited the soldiers to demand payment from the national assembly. On the  26th August the soldiers of Grigiottes burst into the hall of the assembly, dragged the president from his seat, insulted and ill-treated many deputies, and carried off the president and several deputies, as hostages for the payment of their arrears, to their quarters at Aria. This disgraceful riot put an end to the last national assembly in revolutionary Greece.

This scene of military violence forms an important event in the history of Greece. It prolonged the revolutionary state of the country for eleven years, by placing constitutional liberty in abeyance. It threw the people into an unquiet and dangerous temper, by sweeping away those free institutions which had infused energy into the nation during its struggle for independence. The executive power was made the prize of a successful faction. The central government was not established on a legal basis, and the military chiefs ceased to acknowledge its control. Eleven years of Bavarian domination was the expiation of the violence committed at Pronia.

Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes died in the month of August. About the same time, a deputation, consisting of three members, two of whom were members of the governing commission, was sent to Munich with addresses of congratulation to the kings of Greece and Bavaria. The commission was thus left incomplete, for the presence of five members was required to give validity to its acts. Yet on this occasion the residents did not protest against the virtual dissolution of the executive government of Greece. Greece surely stood in greater want of a legal executive than of an illegal senate; but the diplomatists looked on with indifference, while the governing commission committed suicide.

Greece was now without any legal central authority. The senate had been abolished by the national assembly, and the national assembly had been dissolved by the soldiery. The senate made the protest of the foreign diplomatists a ground for prolonging its existence. Three places in the governing commission were vacant; two had been occupied by constitutionalists, one by a Capodistrian. The senate attempted to violate the terms of the pacification sanctioned by the residents, and named three Capodistrians. George Konduriottes, the president, resisted this pretension, but, possessing neither the talents nor the energy necessary for carrying on a contest with the senate, he withdrew to Hydra. Only three members of the government now remained at Nauplia—Kolettes, Zaimes, and Metaxas—and they claimed the whole executive power. It was generally felt that chance had made as good a selection as it was possible to make under the circumstances. The senate yielded at last to public opinion, and passed a decree investing these three men with the whole executive power.

But the intrigues of Admiral Ricord soon determined a majority of the senators to repudiate this decree, and all Greece was astonished by the strange intelligence that seven senators had secretly quitted Nauplia. On the 21st November these seceders were joined at Astros by the president, Tsamados, and two additional members, and met by Kolokotrones with a body of Moreot troops. Ten of the thirteen senators who had signed the address to the King of Bavaria were now present. They had carried with them the government printing-press, and they issued proclamations annulling the decree which had invested Kolettes, Zaimes, and Metaxas with the executive power until the king’s arrival. Trusting to the military force of the Capodistrian party under Kolokotrones, and to the support of the Russian admiral, the seceders assumed the executive authority.

On this occasion, Kolettes, Zaimes, and Metaxas acted with sense and courage. They took prompt measures to secure order and maintain their authority within the walls of Nauplia. Beyond the fortress they were powerless. The residents recognised them as the legal government, and the French garrison placed their persons in security.

The senate, having failed to produce a revolution, sought revenge by increasing the existing anarchy. It appointed a military commission to govern Greece, consisting of several powerful chiefs. Kolokotrones, Grigiottes, Djavellas, and Hadgi Christos, Moreots and Romeliots, Albanians and Bulgarians, formed an alliance, and leagued together. Anarchy reached such a pitch, that the minister of war, Zographos, informed the minister of finance, Mavrocordatos, that it was impossible to obtain an exact account of the numbers of the soldiers who were drawing pay and rations. Of the number of men actually under arms he had no idea.

At first sight the conduct of the seceding senators a looks like the proceedings of maniacs; but the Capodistrians had never abandoned the scheme of Agos­tino, and they still hoped, by seizing the forcible direction of the administration in the greater part of the Morea, to compel the regency which would govern Greece during the king’s minority, to purchase their support by appointing them senators for life. The Russian admiral supported them in their desperate schemes, while the Russian resident, remaining passive, was at liberty to disavow their proceedings in case of failure. It is needless to follow these abortive intrigues further. The senators, finding that they had no chance of obtaining effectual support from the Greeks, adopted the extraordinary expedient of endeavouring to procure assistance from Russia, by naming Admiral Ricord president of Greece. This act of treason and folly proves the justice with which Capodistrias had been reproached for selecting his senators from the most ignorant and unprincipled political adventurers. Some persons have supposed that there was malice as well as folly in the conduct of the senators; and that, though they were eager to proclaim that they preferred Russian protection to Greek independence, they also intended to bint to Admiral Ricord that it was his interest and the interest of other Russian agents to purchase her silence in order to throw a veil over many intrigues.

Amidst the general anarchy, the commission of seven generals was unable to place any restraint on the soldiery. The men under arms no longer obeyed their officers, but formed bands like wolves, hunting for their prey under the boldest plunderer. A veil may be dropped on their proceedings. But it is of some importance to explain in what manner a part of the Morea escaped their ravages.

The revival of the municipal institutions of the Morea at this period has been already mentioned. The weakness of the government relieved the local authorities from the incubus of a tyrannical central administration, which had been imposed on them by Capodistrias. The exigencies of the time forced them to act without waiting for the initiative of ministers and the orders of prefects. The condition of the country and the agitation of the people again made the municipal authorities feel that they were responsible to their fellow-citizens, by whom they were supposed to be elected. They were often called upon to make arrangements for quartering and feeding troops, who came to defend or plunder the country, as circumstances might determine. They were compelled to collect the public revenues to meet these demands; to arm strong bodies of peasantry, and to form alliances with neighbouring municipalities, in order to check the rapacity of the soldiery. Their difficulties induced them to look to Kolokotrones for assistance, whose military force was so far inferior to that of the Romeliots as to render it imperative on him to form an alliance with the people. His office as commander-in-chief in the Morea, and his personal relations with most of the local magistrates chosen during the administration of Capodistrias, pointed him out as the natural defender of the agricultural population. The difficulty was to make the old klepht feel that it was his interest to protect and not to plunder; that his robberies must be confined to the central administration; and that he must aid and not command the local authorities. The end was partially attained, and in many districts the demogeronts acquired sufficient power to protect their municipalities against the military chiefs of the Capodistrian faction, and to repulse the attacks of the Romeliot troops.

The governing commission and the constitutional ministers forfeited their claim to the allegiance of the Greeks, by their neglect to restrain the exactions of the Romeliots, who had raised them to power. Strangers had a better opportunity of observing the evil effects of their misconduct in Messenia than in other parts of the country, as the presence of the French army of occupation enforced neutrality within certain limits, and yet left free action to the rival factions in its immediate vicinity.

Great part of the rich plain which extends from Taygetus to Ithome was national property. States­men and chieftains, Romeliots and Moreots, were eager to become the farmers of the public revenues. The bey of Maina and the whole of his ambitious and needy family aspired to quarter themselves, with all their Maniat adherents, in this rich province. The native peasantry and the opponents of the Mavormichales were alike hostile to the pretensions of the Maniats. Party intrigues were carried on in every village, and no province was more tormented by the incessant strife which makes the municipal administration of the Greeks a field for the exhibition of strange paroxysms of selfishness. Some of the demogeronts allied themselves with Kolokotrones; some discontented citizens formed connections with the family of Mavromichales.

The presence of a French garrison at Kalamata complicated the politics of the municipal authorities in Messenia. Their local interests and personal feel­ings favoured the French, who had protected them from being plundered by the Maniats, and who afforded them a profitable market for their produce. But the Capodistrian faction, excited by Kolokotrones and Admiral Ricord, were indefatigable in calumniating and intriguing against the French. The officers commanding the Kalamata sought to tranquillise the people, by inviting the peasantry to pursue their labours, and by assuring the demogeronts of their readiness to assist in maintaining order in the neighbourhood of their encampment. But the partisans of’ Kolokotrones pointed to the neutrality proclaimed by the residents at Nauplia, and to the retreat of the French troops from Patras, as proofs that the French could not interfere in the internal administration of Messenia. The French were accused of being consti­tutionalists like the Maniats, and the agricultural population feared the lawless conduct of the adherents of the family of Mavromichales. Kolokotrones had already convinced many that he was acting sincerely as the protector of the people. To him, therefore, the demogeronts of most of the villages in Messenia turned for support.

Niketas came with a small body of chosen troops to protect the agricultural population from an invasion of the Maniats. The Mavromichales were not deterred by these preparations for defence. They had claims on the governing commission for their long opposition to Capodistrias, which they did not think were entirely cancelled by the assassination of the president. They pretended that they were entitled to be the tax-gatherers of Messenia, and their followers were eager to exchange the black bread of the lupin­meal, which formed their hard fare in Kakovouli, for the wheaten cakes and roast lambs.

Elias Mavromichales, called Katzakos, invaded the district between the lower ridges of Taygetus and the Pamisus more than once at the head of three or four hundred men. But his progress was always arrested by Niketas, who was a better soldier, and who, in addition to his superior skill in partisan warfare, was supported by the whole of the population in the plain capable of bearing arms. The approach of the Maniats caused excessive terror, and the alarm was justified by their conduct. The French troops at Kalamata saw more than one Greek village suddenly attacked and plundered by the modern Spartiates, as the Maniats termed themselves. The armed men descended from their mountains attended by numbers of women, whose duty it was to carry off the booty. These women were seen by the French returning, carrying on their back bundles of linen, bedding, and household utensils, and driving before them asses laden with doors, windows, and small rafters. Niketas, however, invariably succeeded in driving Elias and his Maniats back into the mountains.

Arrangements were ultimately adopted which put an end to these devastating forays of the Maniats. Fiketas placed himself at the head of a band of veterans, and moved about from village to village watching the slopes of Taygetus, and taking care that the armed peasantry should always be informed where they were to join him in case of any attack. The demogeronts were in this way enabled to provide the supplies of money and provisions necessary for the defence of the district, and the agricultural population was not prevented from cultivating the land.

Kolokotrones and Kolettes were the two great party leaders at this time, but neither possessed the talents necessary to frame, nor the character necessary to pursue, a fixed line of policy. Accident alone determined their political position, and made the first, though a partisan of despotic power, the defender of liberal institutions, and the second, though calling himself a constitutionalist, a tyrant, and the enemy of a national assembly. Like their partisans, they had no honest convictions, and they drifted up and down with, the current of faction without an effort to steer their course according to the interest of Greece. Kolettes came into the Morea to establish constitutional liberty. His followers plundered the country, and dispersed the national assembly. Kolokotrones was the instrument of the Capodistrians and the Russians to perpetuate despotic power. His position compelled him to become the champion of order and liberty.

There is no doubt that though many arbitrary and unjust acts could be cited against Kolokotrones and Djavellas, yet greater security for life and property existed in the provinces over which their authority extended, than in the provinces which submitted to the governing commission. But it is certain that this result was obtained by the accidental revival of national institutions, and not by the patriotism or the wisdom of the leaders of the Capodistrians. The military chiefs on both sides were equally rapacious; the political leaders equally ignorant, selfish, and corrupt. Honest men of both parties kept aloof from the public administration.

Both Greeks and foreigners had praised the muni­cipal organisation of Greece which existed under the Turkish domination; and it undoubtedly tended to check in some degree the evils which resulted from the excessive fiscal rapacity of the Othoman government. Yet it could do but little to protect the people from injustice; for the municipal magistrates were responsible to their Othoman rulers, not to those who elected them, or to the law of the land, for the exercise of their authority. It made Greeks the instruments of Othoman oppression, and in this way it introduced a degree of demoralisation into the local administrations, which the Revolution failed to eradicate. It may be truly said that this vaunted institution never protected the liberties of the people except by accident. The had no power to restrain the selfishness of the local magistrates. The primates employed the municipalities, like the Turks, as fiscal engines for their own convenience. The military chiefs were the enemies of every species of order and organisation. The torpid ministers, the literary enthusiasts, and the intriguing politicians, who acted an important part during the Revolution, allowed the local institutions to be destroyed, and they had not the capacity necessary for organising an efficient central administration.

At the end of the year 1832 Greece was in a state of almost universal anarchy. The government acknowledged by the three powers exercised little authority beyond the walls of Nauplia. The senate was in open rebellion. The Capodistrians under Kolokotrones and Djavellas had never recognised the governing commission. A confederation of military chiefs attempted to rule the country, and blockaded the existing government.

The commission of three members, which exercised the executive power, alarmed at the prospect of being excluded from power before the king’s arrival, implored the residents to invite the French troops to garrison Argos. Four companies of infantry and a detachment of artillery were sent from Messenia by General Gueheneuc to effect this object. In the meantime, General Corbet, who commanded at Nauplia, detached two companies and two mountain-guns to take possession of the cavalry barracks at Argos, in order to secure quarters for the troops from Messenia. The town was filled with irregular Greek soldiery, under the nominal command of Grigiottes and Tzokres. These men boasted that they would drive the French back to Nauplia, and that Kolokotrones would exterminate those who were advancing from Messenia. The prudent precautions of the French officers prevented the troops being attacked on their march, and the whole force united at Argos on the 15th of January 1833.

On the following day the French were suddenly at­tacked. The Greeks commenced their hostilities so unexpectedly, that the colonel of the troops, who had arrived on the preceding evening, was on his way to Nauplia to make his report to General Corbet when the attack commenced. The French soldiers who went to market unarmed were driven back into the barracks, and a few were killed and wounded. But the hostile conduct of the Greek soldiery had prepared the French for any sudden outbreak, and a few minutes sufficed to put their whole force under arms in the square before their quarters. The Greek troops, trusting to their numbers, attempted to occupy the houses which commanded this square. They were promptly driven back, and the streets were cleared by grape-shot from the French guns. The Greeks then intrenched themselves in several houses, and fired from the windows of the upper stories on the French who advanced to dislodge them. This species of warfare could not long arrest the progress of regular troops. The French succeeded in approaching every house in succession with little loss. They then burst open the doors and windows of the lower story, and, rushing upstairs, forced the armatoli and klephts to jump out of the windows, or finished their career with the bayonet. In less than three hours every house was taken, and the fugitives who had sought a refuge in the ruined citadel of Larissa were pursued and driven even from that stronghold.

Never was victory more complete. The French lost only forty killed and wounded, while the Greeks, who fought chiefly under cover, had a hundred and sixty killed, and in all probability a much greater number wounded. Grigiottes was taken prisoner, but was soon released. A Greek officer and a soldier accused of an attempt at an assassination were tried, condemned, and shot.

While the Greek troops were plundering their countrymen and murdering their allies, the three protecting powers were labouring to secure to Greece every advantage of political independence and external peace.

A treaty was signed at Constantinople on the 21st July 1832, by which the sultan recognised the kingdom of Greece, and ceded to it the districts within its limits still occupied by his troops, on receiving an indemnity of forty millions of piastres, a sum then equal to £462,480. The Allied powers also furnished the king’s government with ample funds, by guaranteeing a loan of sixty millions of francs. The indemnity to Turkey was paid out of this loan.

The Allied powers also secured for the Greek monarchy an official admission among the sovereigns of Europe, by inviting the Germanic Confederation to recognise Prince Otho of Bavaria king of Greece, which took place on the 4th October 1832. The protectors of Greece have often been reproached for the slowness of their proceedings in establishing the independence of Greece; yet when we reflect on the anarchy that prevailed among the Greeks, the difficulties thrown in their way by Capodistrias, the desertion of Prince Leopold, and the small assistance they received from Bavaria, we ought rather to feel surprise that they succeeded at last in establishing the Greek kingdom.

The Kins of Bavaria concluded a treaty of alliance between Bavaria and Greece on the 1st November 1832. He engaged to send 3500 Bavarian troops to support bis son’s throne, and relieve the French army of occupation. This subsidiary force was paid from the proceeds of the Allied loan; for Bavaria had neither the resources, nor, to speak the truth, the generosity, of France. A convention was signed at the same time, authorising Greece to recruit volunteers in Bavaria, in order that the subsidiary force might be replaced by German mercenaries in Kins Otho’s service.

On the 16th January 1833, the veterans of the Greek Revolution fled before a few companies of French troops; on the 1st of February King Otho arrived at Nauplia, accompanied by a small army of Bavarians, composed of a due proportion of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineers. As experience had proved that there were no statesmen in Greece capable of governing the country, it was absolutely necessary to send a regency composed of foreigners to administer the government during King Otho’s minority. The persons chosen were Count Armansperg, M. de Maurer, and General Heideck.

The Bavarian troops landed before the king. Their tall persons, bright uniforms, and the music, contrasted greatly to their advantage with the small figures and well-worn clothing of the French. The numerous mounted officers, the splendid plumes, the prancing horses, and the numerous decorations, crosses, and ornaments of the new-comers, produced a powerful effect on the minds of the Greeks, taught by the castigation they had received at Argos to appreciate the value of military discipline.

The people welcomed the king as their saviour from anarchy. Even the members of the government, the military chiefs, and the high officials, who had been devouring the resources of the country, hailed the king’s arrival with pleasure; for they felt that they could no longer extort any profit from the starving population. The title, however, which the Bavarian prince assumed—Otho, by the grace of God, King of Greece—excited a few sneers even among those who were not republicans; for it seemed a claim to divine right in the throne on the part of the house of Wittelspach. But every objection passed unheeded; and it may be safely asserted that few kings have mounted their thrones amidst more general satisfaction than King Otho.

 

 

CHAPTER XVIII.

BAVARIAN DESPOTISM AND CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION. FEBRUARY 1833 TO SEPTEMBER 1843.