This book is DUE on the last date stamped below LOS ANGELES LIBRARY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/ottomanempireitsmill Camtiritise $t0torual Veriest edited by Sir G. W. PROTHERO, K.B.E., F.B.A., Litt.D. THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND ITS SUCCESSORS, 1 801 — 1922 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, Manager LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY j CALCUTTA I MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. MADRAS J TORONTO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND ITS SUCCESSORS, 1801— 1922 By WILLIAM MILLER, M.A. (Oxon.) Hon. LL.D. in the National University of Greece: Corresponding Member of the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece : Author of The Latins in the Levant. BEING A REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1801— 1913 "Who doubts but the Grecian Christians, Descendants of the ancient Possessors of that Country, may justly cast off the Turkish yoke which they have so long groaned under whenever they have an opportunity to do it ? " Locke, Of Civil Government. Cambridge at the University Press 1923 97579 First Edition 1 9 1 3 Greek Translation 19 14 Second Edition 1923 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN GENERAL PREFACE The aim of this series is to sketch the history of Modern ^ Europe, with that of its chief colonies and conquests, from about the end of the fifteenth century down to the present time. In one or two cases the story commences at an earlier date : in the case of the colonies it generally begins later. The histories of the different countries are described, as a rule, separately ; for it is believed that, except in epochs like that of the French Revolution and Napoleon I, the connection of events will thus be better under- stood and the continuity of historical development more clearly ^ displayed. V The series is intended for the use of all persons anxious to understand the nature of existing political conditions. " The roots of the present lie deep in the past " ; and the real significance of contemporary events cannot be grasped unless the historical causes which have led to them are known. The plan adopted makes it °° possible to treat the history of the last four centuries in consider- able detail, and to embody the most important results of modern research. It is hoped therefore that the series will be useful not only to beginners but to students who have already acquired some general knowledge of European History. For those who wish to carry their studies further, the bibliography appended to each volume will act as a guide to original sources of information and works of a more special character. Considerable attention is paid to political geography; and each volume is furnished with such maps and plans as may be requisite for the illustration of the text. G. W. PROTHERO. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION HE present work has been based, wherever possible, upon the original documents, and is the result of many years' study of the Eastern Question. I am indebted to the editors of The English Historical and The Westminster Reviews for permission to reprint with considerable additions two articles contributed to those periodicals ; and I desire to thank H. E. M. J. Gennadios, former Greek Minister in London, for access to his unrivalled collection of pamphlets, and Cav. Pasqualucci, librarian of the Consulta, for his courtesy in allowing me to use the library of the Italian Foreign Office. With regard to the spelling of Greek names, while common words have been written in their popular, unaccented form, rarer words have been reproduced in Greek dress with their accents. Slav names have been transliterated. The later relations of Turkey and other Powers with Egypt are not included in this work, having been discussed in another volume of this series, The Colonization of Africa. W. M. Rome, fuly 22, 1922. EDITORIAL NOTE TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Ottoman Empire at the Dawn of the xixth Century Relations of Turkey with the four great Powers, France, Russia, Austria, and Great Britain— Eastern policy of Prussia — Extent of the Ottoman empire in Europe — In Asia, and Africa— Organisation and races of European Turkey— Local tyrants— Division between Mussulmans and Christians — Bosnian feudalism — Condition of the Serbs— The Al- banians — The Greeks — The Greek Church — The Phanariotes — State of Greece : privileged communities . . . . . i CHAPTER II Napoleon in the Near East (1801-15) The French in Dalmatia — Destruction of the Republics of Poljitza and Ragusa — France and Montenegro — First Russo-Turkish war of the century — Duckworth before Constantinople — Paper partition of Turkey at Tilsit — Second French occupation of the Ionian Islands — Capture of the Islands by the British — Treaty of Bucharest — Congresses of Vienna and Paris : British protectorate over the Ionian Islands . 31 CHAPTER III The Servian Risings (1804-17) Tyranny of the Janissaries — Mild rule and murder of Hajji Mustapha — Servian loyal rising of 1804 : Kara George — Servian overtures to Austria and Russia — Servian victories — Palace revolutions in Con- stantinople — Russian protectorate over Servia — Treaty of Bucharest abandons the Serbs — Second Servian rising of 1815 : Milosh Obren- ovich — Murder of Kara George — Milosh recognised as chief . 46 viii Contents CHAPTER IV The Preface of Greek Independence (1815-21) The British in the Ionian Islands : Sir Thomas Maitland, first Lord High Commissioner — Constitution of 18 17 — The cession of Parga — Ali Pasha declared a rebel, appeals to the Greeks — The Philike Hetairla — Alexander Hypselantes, leader of the Greek movement, crosses the Pruth— Rival Roumanian rising of Tudor Vladimirescu — Battles of Dragashani and Skuleni — Native princes in the Danubian Princi- palities 58 CHAPTER V The War of Greek Independence (182 1-9) Outbreak of the Revolution — Heroic death of Diakos — Spread of the insurrection to the islands — Murder of the Patriarch Gregory V — Three stages in the war — The ' ' Peloponnesian Senate" — Arrival of Demetrios Hypselantes and ■ Alexander Mavrokordatos — Sack of Tripolitsa" — Constitution of Epfdauros — End of Ali Pasha — Massacre of Chios — Foundation of Hermoupolis — Capitulation of the Akropolis — Greek victory at Dervenaki — Defeat at Peta — First " Commis- sioner " of Crete — Second National Assembly at Astros — Canning's Philhellenism — Russian proposal for three Greek principalities — Death of Marko Botzares — Byron in Greece — The first Greek loan — Byron's death at Mesolonghi — " War of the Primates " — Destruction of Kassos and Psara — Ibrahim lands in the Morea— Santa Rosa at Navarino — Second siege of Mesolonghi — Death of Odysseus — The sortie from Mesolonghi— Protocol of April 4, 1826 — Turkish siege of the Akropolis — Death of Karai'skakes— Second surrender of the Akropolis — Third National Assembly at Troizen : Capo dTstria elected President of Greece — Treaty of London of 1827 — Battle of Navarino — Death of Hastings— The Cretans at Grabousa— Arrival of Capo dTstria— The " Panhellenion " — Policy of the President — France compels the Egyptians to evacuate the Morea — Destruction of Tripolitsa" — Protocol of March 22, 1829 — Fourth National Assembly at Argos— Battle of Petra : end of the war ........ 7 1 Contents ix CHAPTER VI The Creation of the Greek Kingdom (1829-33) Protocols of February 3, 1830: Leopold of Saxe-Coburg "Sovereign Prince of Greece " — Leopold refuses — Conflict between Capo d'Istria and the Hydriotes — Catastrophe of Poros — Assassination of Capo d'Istria — Provisional Commission of three— Fifth National Assembly at Argos — Agostino chosen President : civil war — Otho " King of Greece" — Limits of the kingdom — Samian autonomy — Crete united with Egypt — Triumph of Kolettes and the "Constitutionalists" — Anarchy — National Assembly at Pronoia — Flight of the Senate from Nauplia — Fight with the French at Argos — Arrival of Otho — Prosperity of the Ionian Islands — Napier in Cephalonia — Adam Lord High Com- missioner — The "Ionian Academy " — Parties in the Islands . 106 CHAPTER VII The Balkan and Syrian difficulties of Turkey (1822-45) Roumanian Nationalist movement : Asaki and Eliade — Convention of Akkerman— Russo-Turkish war of 1828-9 : Russian occupation of the Principalities — Treaty of Adrianople — The rtglement organique — Servia at Akkerman and Adrianople — Grant of Servian autonomy : Milosh hereditary Prince of an enlarged Servia — Turkish garrisons of the Servian fortresses — Despotism of Milosh : " Constitution of Sretenje" — British support of Milosh — Creation of a Servian Senate — Milosh abdicates — Milan Obrenovich II — Michael Obrenovich Ill's first reign — Alexander Karageorgevich elected Prince — " The Dragon of Bosnia" — Ali Pasha Rizvanbegovich — Union of the Piperi with Montenegro — Peter II reorganises Montenegro : abolition of the civil "governorship" — His conflicts with the Turks — Revolt of Mehemet Ali: invasion of Syria — The Russians "protect" the Sultan: treaty of Hunkiar Iskelesi — Battle of Nezib — Death of Mahmud II — Quadri- lateral convention of 1840 — Settlement of Egypt and Thasos — "Convention of the Straits "—Charter of Gul-khaneh— The Le- banon . . . . . . . . . . . 125 CHAPTER VIII Greece under the Bavarian Autocracy (1833-43) The Regency — Disbanding of the irregulars — Bureaucratic system — Eccle- siastical policy — Conspiracy of Kolokotrones — Revolt of the Mainates — Recall of Maurer and Abel — Insurrection in Arkadfa and Messenfa — X Contents The capital removed from Nauplia to Athens — Otho's majority — Insurrection in Akarnanfa — Rudhart Prime Minister — Founding of the University — "British," "French," and "Russian" parties — Crete under the Egyptians — The Cretan insurrection of 1841 — The revolution of September 3/15 at Athens — Progress of Greece during the decade 1833-43 .156 CHAPTER IX The Greek and Ionian Constitutions (1843-53) The Greek Constitution of 1844 — Administration of Kolettes — The Mou- souros incident — Local disturbances — The PacifTco case : Cervi and Sapienza — The "Synodal Tome" of 1850: independence of the Church in Greece — Nugent, Douglas and Mackenzie in the Ionian Islands — Seaton's reforms in the Constitution: introduction of a free press — Risings in Cephalonia — The first reformed Ionian Parliament — Bibescu and Michael Sturdza in the Principalities — Roumanian revo- lution of 1848 — Convention of Balta Liman — Reigns of Barbe Stirbeiu and Gregory V Ghika — Austrophil policy of Servia — Montenegro : succession of Danilo — Abolition of the theocratic system — Count Leiningen's mission ........ 174 CHAPTER X The Crimean War (1853-6) The Holy Places — Mentschikoffs mission — Motives of Napoleon III — Overtures of the Tsar — Stratford de Redcliffe — Settlement of the original dispute — Fresh Russian demands — The Russians cross the Pruth— "The Vienna Note "—Destruction of the Turkish fleet at Sinope — British ultimatum — The Allies at Varna — British officers' defence of Silistria — Russia evacuates the Principalities — Effects of the war upon the Balkan races : Servia and Montenegro— Excitement in Greece : insurrections in Thessaly and Epirus — The Allies occupy the Piraeus — The cholera at Athens — The landing in the Crimea — Battle of the Alma — Siege of Sebastopol — Battles of Balaclava and Inker- man — The Crimean winter — "The four points" — Battle of the Tchernaya — Fall of Sebastopol— Congress and treaty of Paris— Small results of the treaty — The Montenegrin and Greek protocols . 199 Contents xi CHAPTER XI The Union of the Danubian Principalities (1856-62) Growth of the Unionist idea — Convention of Paris — Election of Couza as Prince — First united Roumanian Assembly— Deposition of Alexander Karageorgevich — Restoration of Milosh — Second reign of Michael Obrenovich III — Bombardment of Belgrade — Partial evacuation of the Servian fortresses — Turco-Montenegrin war of 1858 : battle of Grahovo — Assassination of Danilo — Accession of Nicholas I — Herzegovinian rising of 1861 — Turco-Montenegrin war of 1862 — Convention of Scutari — Greek finance — Question of the Greek succession — Effect of the Austro-Italian war of 1859 on Greece — Combination of circum- stances against Otho — Revolt at Nauplia — Greek revolution of 1862 : abdication of Otho 243 CHAPTER XII The Cession of the Ionian Islands (1862-4) Meeting of the National Assembly — Election of Prince Alfred as King — The search for a sovereign — Prince George of Denmark chosen "King of the Hellenes" — Fighting at Athens between "the Plain" and "the Mountain " — Arrival of King George — The Ionian question : scheme for the colonisation of Corfu and Paxo — The two stolen despatches — Gladstone's mission — Storks Lord High Commissioner — Union of the Ionian Islands with Greece — Neutralisation of Corfu and Paxo — Destruction of the Corfiote fortresses — The Greek Constitution of 1864 . . . . . . . ' . . . . 270 CHAPTER XIII Reforms and their Results : the Lebanon and Crete (1856-69) Hatti-Humaytin of 1856 — Murder of the consuls at Jedda — The Massacres in the Lebanon — French expedition to Syria — Organisation of the Lebanon in 1 861-4 — The Cretan Insurrections of 1858 and 1866-9 — ' Defence of Arkadion — " Organic Statute of 1868" — Turkish ultimatum to Greece— Hobart Pasha at Syra — Conference of Paris . . 298 xii Contents CHAPTER XIV The Roumanian and Servian Questions (1862-75) Murder of Barbe Catargi— Secularisation of the monasteries— Couza's coup cTitat — Agrarian law — Free education — Deposition of Couza — Prince Charles of Hohenzollern — Sigmaringen Prince of Roumania — Constitution of 1866: the Jewish question — The Prince's recognition by the Sultan — His difficult position during the Franco-German war — The railway question — Servia : suggested Serbo-Greek alliance — Complete Turkish evacuation of Servia — Assassination of Michael — Milan Obrenovich IV Prince of Servia — The Regency: constitution of 1869 — Milan's situation 319 CHAPTER XV The Bulgarian Exarchate (1870-5) Early Bulgarian risings — Bulgarian schools and books — The demand for national bishops — Relations with the Papacy — Tartar and Circassian immigration — Midhat's administration — The Bulgarian emigrants at Bucharest — Creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate — The "Apostles" — Liberation of the Black Sea — The " Marathon massacres " — The Lavrion mines — Constitutional questions at Athens • . 338 CHAPTER XVI The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 State of Bosnia and the Herzegovina — The rising at Nevesinje — Grievances of the insurgents — Revolt in Bosnia — The Andrassy note — The Berlin Memorandum — Servia and Montenegro declare war on Turkey — " Benkovski " in the Sredna Gora — The massacre of Batak : the "Bulgarian Atrocities" — Murder of the consuls at Salonika — De- position and death of Abdul Aziz— Murad V's brief reign : accession of Abdul Hamid II — The Servian war of 1876 — Successful Mon- tenegrin campaign — The Constantinople conference — "Midhat's Parliament" — The London protocol — The Russo-Turkish war of 1877-8 — Russo- Roumanian convention — Siege of Plevna — Second Montenegrin campaign — Second Servian war — Feeling in Great Britain — The " (Ecumenical government " at Athens — Insurrections in Epirus, Thessaly, and Crete — The treaty of San Stefano — The treaty of Berlin — The Cyprus convention — Present state of the Berlin treaty , - 358 Contents xiii CHAPTER XVII The Union of the Two Bulgarias (1878-87) The Arab Tabia question — The regulation of the Danube — Roumania proclaimed a kingdom — Her relations with the Triple Alliance — The Austrians occupy Bosnia — The sanjak of Novibazar : Austro-Turkish convention of 1879 — The "Albanian League" : Gusinje and Plava — The " Corti compromise " — The cession of Dulcigno — Kidnapping of the Mirdite Prince— Rectification of the Greek frontier — The Berlin conference of 1880 — Greece receives Thessaly and Arta — Crete : the Pact of Halepa — Alexander of Battenberg first Prince of Bulgaria — Coup d'etat til 1881 — Constitution of Eastern Roumelia— The " Pomak Republic" — The Philippopolis revolution — Serbo-Bulgarian war: battle of Slivnitza — Blockade of Greece — Kidnapping of Alexander — His return and abdication — Kaulbars in Bulgaria — Election of Prince Ferdinand 399 CHAPTER XVIII Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia (1887-1908) The Armenian massacres — The Cretan insurrection and firman of 1889 — The insurrection of 1896 — Col. Vassos in Crete — Bombardment of Akroteri — The Greco-Turkish war of 1897 — The International Com- mission of Control — Prince George of Greece High Commissioner in Crete — The Opposition at Therisso — M. Za'imes High Commissioner — Rival races and Churches in Macedonia — The Macedonian Committee — Austro-Russian schemes of reform : the Miirzsteg programme — The bands in Macedonia — The occupation of Mitylene — Stambulov's rule in Bulgaria — His fall and assassination — Reconciliation with Russia : conversion of Prince Boris — Social condition of Bulgaria — Servia : the royal divorce — Servian constitution of 1889 — Milan's abdication — Alexander's coups d'itat — His marriage — Constitution of 1901 : third coup d'itat — Murder of Alexander and Draga — Election of Prince Peter Karageorgevich as King: constitution of June 1903— Rule of the regicides — Progress of Montenegro : the Italian marriage — Mon- tenegrin constitution of 1905 — Results of emigration — Italian influence — Roumanian social problems : (1) the land, (2) the Jews — Roumanian foreign policy — Greek internal politics since 1898 — Cyprus — The " Twelve Islands " — Thasos — Samos 427 XIV Contents CHAPTER XIX The Turkish Revolution (1908-12) The " Committee of Union and Progress " — The revival of the Turkish constitution — Fraternisation of the Ottomans — Declaration of Bul- garian Independence — Annexation ofl Bosnia and the Herzegovina — Crete proclaims union with Greece — The counter-revolution in Turkey — The massacre at Adana — Deposition of Abdul Hamid II — Moham- med V — Settlement of the Bosnian and Bulgarian questions — Crete : attitude of the Powers — Increasing Turkish demands — Withdrawal of the internationaHroops from Crete — The flag incident : Turkish notes to Greece — The Greek Military-League — The two National Assemblies : M. Venizelos Premier — The revised Greek Constitution — The policy of " Turkification " — Albanian insurrection of 1911 — The Libyan war: loss of Tripoli and the Cyrenaica — Italian occupation of 13 islands 474 CHAPTER XX The Balkan League and its Results (1912-14) Symptoms of unrest — Montenegro declares war : capture of Tuzi — Balkan ultimatum — The four states against Turkey — Victories of the Allies : fall of Uskiib and Salonika and battle of Liile Burgas — Armistice of Chatalja — Balkan Conference in St James' Palace — Revolution at Constantinople— Denunciation of the armistice — Surrender of Joan- nina — Assassination of King George : accession of King Constantine — Surrender of Adrianople — Armistice of Bulair — Naval demonstration against Montenegro — Surrender of Scutari and its cession by Monte- negro — Treaty of London — Italian opposition to Greece — Second Balkan war — Victories of the Greeks and Servians over the Bulgarians : battles of Kilkich, the Bregalnitza, Demir Hissar, and Djumaia — Armed intervention of Roumania — The Turks recover Adrianople — Peace of Bucharest — Turco-Bulgarian treaty — Prince William of Wied becomes Prince of Albania — "Autonomous Epirus" — Civil war in Albania — Assassination of the Austrian Heir- Apparent — Austrian note to Servia — Outbreak of the European war . . . 498 Contents xv CHAPTER XXI The Near East in the European Crisis (1914-22) Double Servian victory over the Austrians — Great Britain declares war on Turkey: annexation of Cyprus — Policy of M. Venizelos — Diplomatic effects of Italian intervention — Bulgaria enters the war — Annihilation of Servia and Montenegro — Evacuation of the Dardanelles — Surrender of Roupel — Roumania enters the war : Allied offensive in Macedonia — The Venizelist Government at Salonika — The 4 ' First of December " at Athens — King Constantine's deposition — The Pact of Corfu: the Jugoslav state — The Italians in Albania — The liberation of Jerusalem — The Armenian massacres — The Roumanian collapse : fourth treaty of Bucharest — The Bulgarian and Turkish armistices — The treaties of Neuilly and Sevres — The Kemalist movement — Fall of M. Venizelos — Revision of the Sevres treaty — Albanian independence — The "Adriatic question" — The end of Montenegro — Summary of the whole period 523 Table of Rulers 547 Bibliography . . 551 Index 574 MAPS The Ottoman Empire in Europe 1856 . . . To face p. 242 Diagram to illustrate the Treaty of San Stefano . To face p. 386 The Ottoman Empire in Europe after the Treaty of Berlin, 1878 To face p. 398 The Ottoman Empire in 1801 . . . . . . at end CHAPTER I THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AT THE DAWN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY The near eastern question may be denned as the problem of filling up the vacuum created by the gradual disappearance of the Turkish empire from Europe. Its history, therefore, may be said to begin at the moment when that empire, having attained its zenith, commenced to decline. The European dominions of Turkey reached their greatest extent in the latter half of the seventeenth century, when " the great Greek island " of Crete, as the modern Hellenes love to call it, at last surrendered to the Turkish forces, and the king of Poland ceded Podolia to the Sultan. But the close of that same century witnessed the shrinkage of the Turkish frontiers. The peace of Karlovitz in 1699 has been justly called "the first dismemberment of the Ottoman empire." It was the initial step in the historical process which has slowly but surely gone on ever since. The eighteenth century saw the continuation of the work begun at Karlovitz, though now and again the Turkish dominions gained some temporary advantage, and European statesmen anticipated the dismemberment of the Sultan's European possessions and formed schemes for the partition of the spoil. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were only four great European Powers, instead of six, directly interested in the eastern question, for Italy was not yet made and Prussia was only of the second rank, while Venice had ceased to exist. M. L. 2 The Ottoman Empire [ch. Of these four — France, Russia, Austria, and Great Britain — the first had been for centuries the traditional ally of the Sultans. Francis I, who had begun his reign by proposing, as so many sovereigns have done since, the partition of Turkey, was the founder of this alliance, which, with occasional intervals of anti-Turkish feeling, was the fixed policy of his successors. In spite of the scandal caused to devout Catholics by this union of France, " the eldest daughter of the Church," with the head of the infidel Turks, Francis found it politic to use Suleyman the Magnificent as an ally in his struggle with the house of Austria, the historic rival of the French monarchy. The power and geographical position of Turkey at that period, its naval forces and the requirements of French trade in the Levant, were all strong arguments, which outweighed any crusading instincts of the astute French king, just as in our own day we have seen the German Emperor champion the Turkish cause in the interests of German commerce. Together the French and Ottoman fleets bombarded Nice, while Toulon served as the Turkish base of operations. By the capitulations of 1535, which were the most practical result of the Franco-Turkish alliance, the French received permission to trade in all the Ottoman ports — a privilege conceded to the vessels of other nations only on condition of flying the French flag. French subjects, residing in Turkey, were permitted the free exercise of their religion, and the custody of the Holy Places was entrusted to French Catholics. Henry II carried on the friendly policy of his father, and concluded a treaty with Suleyman, the object of which was to secure the co-operation of the Turkish fleet against the house of Austria. For a time the alliance ceased to be aggressive, but at the beginning of the seventeenth century French influence was predominant at Constantinople. The capitulations were renewed in 1604; and all nations except the English and the Venetians were compelled to seek the protection, and trade under the flag, of France in the Levant. But the capitulations of 1604 mark in this respect i] Early relations zvith France 3 a change from those of 1535. France now had powerful rivals in the east; England, Venice, and Holland exercised a competing influence on the Bosphorus ; and in 1634 the Greeks assumed the custody of the Holy Places, thus foreshadowing the conflict which two centuries later led to the Crimean war. The French began to turn against the Turks ; the plan of a new crusade was drawn up by a French priest ; a " sure means of destroying" the Ottoman empire was published by a French diplomatist. At the battle of St Gothard in 1664, French troops assisted the Austrians to beat the Turks ; during the siege of Candia French men-of-war brought aid to the Venetians, and the memory of the French commander, the due de Beau- fort, has still lingered outside the walls of that town. In fact, Louis XIV, though he tried to prevent Sobieski from saving Vienna, was hostile to the Turkish empire. His fleets entered the Dardanelles, and he obtained in 1673 new capitula- tions, recognising him as the sole protector of the eastern Catholics. In the eighteenth century, the old friendly relations were resumed ; and Turkey, menaced by Austria and Russia and already declining in force, was glad to avail herself of the good offices of France. The French ambassador at the time of the peace of Belgrade, by checkmating Austria, saved Servia to Turkey for three generations, and his influence was such that he became a sort of "Grand Vizier of the Christians." The capitulations of 1740, completing those of 1673, were the reward of French assistance, and remain at the present day a memorial of the Marquis de Villeneuve's diplomatic success. Numbers of French officers endeavoured, like the Germans in our day, to reform the Turkish army; and Bonneval and Baron de Tott worked hard in the Turkish cause. But the treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji ("the little fountain") in 1774 ruined French influence, and substituted for it that of Russia; and the French revolution prevented France from taking an active part in eastern affairs, though indirectly by means of French 1 — 2 4 The Ottoman Empire [ch. emigres, who found their way to the Orient, it spread a knowledge of the French language and French customs. Soon the Ottoman dominions felt the weight of Bonaparte's influence. " It is of no use for us," he wrote to the Directory, " to try to maintain the Turkish empire ; we shall witness its fall in our time." The treaty of Campo-Formio in 1797 made France the near neighbour of the Sultan by ceding to her the Ionian Islands — "more interesting to us than all Italy put together," as Bonaparte said — with Butrinto, Arta, Vonitza, and all the former Venetian establishments in Albania south of the gulf of the Drin. The great French conqueror paid special attention to the Greeks \ and two emissaries of the French government in Greece, the brothers Stefanopoli, members of the Greek colony at Cargese in Corsica, were sent on one of those semi-scientific, semi-political missions, dear to modern foreign offices, to spread his fame in the Peloponnese. A legend grew up around the victorious general. Greek philo- logists discovered that his name was merely an Italian transla- tion of two Greek words (ko\oytK7)s 'Eraipias, iv, 481. v] Theodore Kolokotr&nes 81 created a panic among the Athenians. Many fled, as of old, to Salamis, while the soldiery fell upon the Turks, of whom several hundreds were massacred and the rest escaped only thanks to the arrival of two French warships and to the courage of the consuls. The anarchy which prevailed there was ended by a summons to Odysseiis to occupy the Akropolis, where till 1888 a bastion, which he built to protect the ancient Klepsydra and thus secure himself a supply of water, remained to associate the name of this revolutionary leader with the sacred rock. Meanwhile Dramali invaded the Morea with a pomp and circumstance which recalled the Turkish expedition to recover it from the Venetians 107 years earlier. But, although the Turkish commander at first carried all before him, although Acro-Corinth was abandoned by its garrison and he advanced as far as Argos, disease and the lack of forage com- pelled him to fall back upon the Isthmus. The Greek generalissimo was the celebrated leader of irregulars, Theodore Kolokotrones, already a man of fifty-one at the outbreak of the revolution. Brought up in the Spartan rigour of Maina, where his father had sought refuge from his native district of Kar^taina from the Turks, he had pursued the career of arms as a brigand till the Morea was too hot to hold him. Escaping thence to Zante in the time of the " Septinsular Republic," he took part as a privateer in the last Russo-Turkish war; entering the service of the British, when they captured Zante from the French, he assisted in the assault upon Santa Mavra ; and he was carrying on the trade of a cattle-dealer when the rumours of the revolution reached him. Returning from Zante to Maina, he was present when Kalamata fell ; and his skill in klephtic warfare, combined with his native common-sense, won him the first place among the military leaders. His plumed helmet, so familiar to every traveller in Greece, gave him a picturesque appearance ; of all the chieftains of the War of Independence he is still the most popular ; and his statues at Athens and Nauplia are the tribute of the people's admiration M. L. 6 82 The War of Greek Independence [ch. for his adventurous career and his patriotic services. But on this occasion the glory of a great victory was reserved for his nephew Nik£tas. In the pass of Dervenaki, through which now runs the railway between Corinth and Argos, Niketas fell upon the Turkish vanguard, and his personal prowess that day won him the name of the " Turk- eater." Dramali himself with the rest of his troops sustained a similar defeat, and died at Corinth before the year was over. Thus ingloriously ended the great Turkish invasion of the Morea in 1822. On the west, however, whither Mavrokordatos had betaken himself, the Greeks were less successful. On July 16, the Greeks and a corps of Philhellenes, which had been formed two months earlier, were defeated at Peta a couple of miles above the famous bridge of Arta, owing to the treachery of a local chieftain. The Philhellenes, many of them seasoned warriors, were cut to pieces after a heroic struggle. On the same day Kyriakodles Mavromichales, brother of the Bey of Maina, was killed near the Epirote haven of Phanari in the attempt to co-operate with the Souliotes. These twin disasters induced them to capitulate, and they returned to the Ionian Islands, whither the terrified peasantry of Akarnama also sought safety under the British protectorate. The most cele- brated of the Souliotes, Marko B6tzares, remained, however, to fight and fall for the Greek cause on the continent. Thus freed from the dangers of an attack from the men of Souli, Omer Vri6nes, who had succeeded Ali as pasha of Joannina, was at last able to march to the south and besiege Mesol6nghi. But this first siege of Mesol6nghi failed, whereas on the other side of Greece the close of the year witnessed the capitulation of the Turkish garrison of Nauplia, which was saved from pillage and massacre by the intervention of a British Philhellene, Captain Hamilton. In Crete, however, this second year of the insurrection had been unpropitious to the Christians. Hypse- lantes, at the request of the Cretans, had sent thither towards the end of 182 1 a Russian Greek, who signed himself "Michael v] Crete 83 Komnenos Afentoiilief " and boasted his descent from the Byzantine Emperors, as their leader and his representative. A diplomatist without military capacity is not the man to manage that turbulent island, whose tall warriors looked down with scorn upon this short and limping penman, who styled himself " Generalissimo and Administrator of all Crete." The murder of Anthony Melid6nes, one of the most successful leaders, by a jealous Sphakiote chief, further weakened the Christian cause ; a fresh organiser was sent to the island by the Greek government ; and in the midst of this confusion an Egyptian fleet anchored in Suda bay. The Sphakiotes, who had begun the insurrection, were resolved to direct it ; and the descendant of the house of Komnen6s, " placed between the tiger and the panther," withdrew to Malta. In his place Man61es Tombazes, a member of the well-known Hydriote family, arrived as Harmostes (or Commissioner) — the first application of that since familiar term, already current among the lonians, to the Governor of the great Greek island. The mandate of the Greek legislature had now expired; and a second National Assembly accordingly met at Astros on the gulf of Nauplia early in 1823. After introducing a few modifications into the Constitution of Epidauros, the deputies appointed a new executive of five persons, of whom Petrobey was the president, Mavrokordatos being degraded to a secretaryship of state, while Hypselantes was ignored altogether. Unfortunately the discussions at Astros accentuated the differ- ences already existent between the party of the primates, of which Petrobey was the leader, and that of the military men, headed by Kolokotrones ; while local and personal jealousies within the ranks of both parties demonstrated that human nature had changed as little as topography since the days of ancient Greece. It was already becoming apparent that a foreign prince would be the only possible head of the new Greek state, for no Greek would consent to recognise another Greek as his sovereign ; and already men's eyes began to turn 6—2 84 The War of Greek Independence [ch. to the ever-useful house of Saxe-Coburg, whose special function it is to provide sovereigns of any religion for any throne. Moreover, it was becoming obvious that public opinion in the west of Europe would ultimately compel the governments to pay attention to the claims of Greece. A Greek committee was formed in London and affiliated with those of Germany and Switzerland. The Congress of Verona might, indeed, refuse to admit the Greek delegates; but George Canning, who had succeeded Castlereagh as Foreign Secretary, was known to have Philhellenic sympathies. He recognised the Greeks as belligerents, and assigned Kalamos, one of the insular dependencies of the Ionian Islands, to the fugitives as a place of refuge. The rigorous measures of Sir Thomas Maitland could not prevent the Ionians from showing sympathy with their fellow-Greeks of the mainland ; but the violation of Ionian neutrality in Cerigo, Zante, and Ithaca was severely punished, and the consequent execution of several Ionians rendered the protectorate unpopular. On the other hand, Russia disillusioned any who still believed in the sincerity of her Philhellenism by proposing in January 1824 the creation of three separate vassal Greek principalities — Eastern Greece (Thessaly, Boeotia, and Attica) ; Western Greece (Epirus and Akarnania); and the Morea with the possible addition of Crete — under native officials, appointed by, and tributary to, the Sultan. This arrangement, although it had the merit of including Epirus and Crete, excluded the Archipelago, which was to have the restoration of its old municipal privileges, and would have left Greece in the position of the Danubian Princi- palities — -weak, divided, and dependent upon Russia. The leading Greek families would alone have gained; like the Phanariotes in Moldavia and Wallachia, they would have looked for advancement to the Sultan, while the (Ecumenical Patriarch, whom Russia suggested as the spokesman of the three principalities at Constantinople, would have been his creature. v] Lord Byron 85 The military operations of 1823 were less important than those of the previous years. At the outset the Turks were crippled by the conflagration of the arsenal at Constantinople — an outrage attributed to the Janissaries, anxious for a pretext for postponing their march against the Greeks. Nevertheless, the Sultan was now free from the distraction of the war against Persia, which had hitherto compelled him to fight in Asia as well as in Europe. His commanders subdued the last remnant of the insurrection in Thessaly by the reduction of Trikeri, and plundered the village of Kastri, which then (but now no longer) concealed the treasures of Delphi. From Scutari in Albania an army of Mohammedan Ghegs and Catholic Mirdites, the latter ever ready to fight against the Orthodox, descended into western Greece : and in a battle against these northern Albanians at Karpenesi on August 21 the heroic Souliote, Marko B6tzares, met his death. His body was borne to Mesolonghi and there interred, amidst universal lamentation. His tomb may still be seen in the local " Herdon," where ere long the heart of one greater than he was destined to be laid to rest. Lord Byron had arrived in Cephalonia in the very month of Botzares' death ; and his active participation in the defence of Greece contributed almost more than any other event to popularise the Hellenic cause in Europe. The great poet was no stranger to the Greeks or to their language. Twelve years earlier he had indited from the interior of the Choragic Monu- ment of Lysikrates, transformed into a study of Capuchin monks, his " Curse of Minerva " against the "plunderer " of the Elgin Marbles. He had translated the famous war-song of Rhegas, and had now come to prove that he could not only praise the virtues of ancient Greece but also imitate them. Yet Lord Byron, although a poet, had no illusions. He did not land in Hellas prepared to find it peopled with the im- possible heroes of Plutarch ; he expected the Greeks to be what centuries of Turkish rule might have been naturally 86 The War of Greek Independence [ch. anticipated to make them ; and consequently he was neither disheartened nor disillusioned, when he had to do with men who were neither saints nor sages but human beings barely emancipated from a demoralising form of government, for which no adequate substitute had yet been found. In order not to compromise himself with any political party until he had studied the state of affairs, he remained for four months in Cephalonia. Meanwhile, negotiations for a Greek loan had been conducted. The first idea of the Greeks had been to raise money by restoring the island of Rhodes, its former seat, to the Order of the Knights of St John, to which Syra and three smaller islands were to be assigned provisionally. But this picturesque revival of Frankish Greece was abandoned for a more practical scheme, by which a nominal sum of ^800,000 (really only ^280,000) was raised in London. While Lord Byron was still in Cephalonia, the Greeks obtained two successes. In the east they recovered the citadel of Corinth; in the west they compelled the Turks to abandon the siege of Anatolikon. But the quarrels between the military and the political parties in the Morea had developed into civil war, the first but not the last occasion when Greek fought Greek, instead of joining in an united attack upon the common foe. This fratricidal struggle, which Lord Byron endeavoured to compose, was provoked by Kolo- kotr6nes, who, like another Cromwell, sent his son Panos to dissolve the legislature, then sitting at Argos, by force of arms. Most of the deputies reconstituted themselves a legislature at Kranidi opposite Hydra, declared the executive deposed, and appointed a new committee in its place, with George Koun- touriotes, a Hydriote, as its president. Thus Greece had two hostile governments, one established at Kranidi and supported by the shipowners of the Nautical Islands of Hydra and Spetsai, the primates, and the military chiefs of continental Greece ; and the other sitting at Tripolitsa, and deriving its authority from the prowess of Kolokotr6nes and his personal followers. This v] Byron at Mesolonghi 87 struggle was proceeding when, on January 5, 1824, Lord Byron arrived at Mesolonghi; and what he both saw and heard confirmed his opinion that Greece in the throes of revolution required practical methods of government instead of the theories of Bentham. It seemed to him that the publication of newspapers, so eagerly recommended by the " typographical Colonel " Leicester Stanhope, who was with him, would inflame the party feelings, rather than edify the minds, of those who could read them. However Stanhope insisted on issuing, under the editorship of a Swiss Republican named Meyer, the first Greek newspaper published on Greek soil, if we except a few fly-sheets issued at Kalamata three years before. Thus, on the mud-flats of Mesol6nghi, began on January 12, 1824, with The Greek Chronicles, that press 1 which is so characteristic a feature of modern Greek life. Byron unhappily did not live to see the conclusion of even the civil war, which he had endeavoured to allay. On April 19 he died at Mesol6nghi, where his heart still reposes. He had given his time, his means, and at last his life for the cause of Greece ; and Greece has never forgotten his services. The historian Spyridon Trikoupes, himself a native of Mesol6nghi, pronounced over his body a funeral oration, which is considered a model of Greek prose ; statues have arisen in his honour ; streets have been called by his name ; and in many a remote island, in many a mountain village men still speak of Byron, as if he had died but yesterday— a happy exception to the cynical maxim of Lord Salisbury that there is no gratitude in international politics. The year was not over before a second civil war had broken out, in which the English loar ^inst ead of being devoted exclusively to the national defences ^was" frittered away in party jealousies. This " War of the Primates," as it was called, arose out of the antipathy felt by the Moreotes for an executive, the majority of whose members came from the Nautical Islands and 1 Part of this printing-press is preserved in the Museum of " the Historical and Ethnological Society" at Athens. * 88 The War of Greek Independence [ch. the continent. The leaders of the Moreote party were the two Andrews — Zaimes of Kalavryta, member of a family which has given more than one statesman to Greece; and Lontos of Vostftsa, a friend of Byron, who had caroused with him when they were young ; with them was Sisines, or Sessini, of Gastoiini in Elis, whose name denoted his Venetian origin, who from the neighbouring Glarentza jocularly called himself " Duke of Clarence" and kept up a style worthy of a Turkish pasha. The soul of the executive was John Kole'ttes, the future Prime Minister and diplomatist, a native of the Epirote village of Syrakou, who had begun life as physician to Ali Pasha's son Mukhtar and had learned statecraft at the court of Joannina. Kolettes had already taken an active part in the revolution. After inciting his native village to revolt, he had become Minister of War under the Constitution of Epidauros ; but this ex-doctor was a better politician than soldier ; and, if he gained little renown in the field, his talents gained him a place on the executive, of which Kountouriotes was the nominal head. On this occasion his energy speedily crushed the rebellious primates; Kolokotrones, who had espoused their cause, was imprisoned in Hydra, and his son Panos slain ; the two Andrews fled across the gulf of Corinth ; Sessini was refused admission to Zante. The " War of the Primates " had ended with their complete failure. While the Greek leaders were fighting among themselves, a new and formidable enemy had appeared in Greek waters. Unable to make headway single-handed against the insurgents, Mahmud II had been forced to seek the aid of his vassal, Mehemet Ali, the pasha of Egypt, an Albanian who had risen from tobacco-dealing in his native Kavalla to the position of a modern Pharaoh. Mahmud had already employed him against the Wahabis in Arabia; he now asked him to assist in subduing the Greeks, and appointed Mehemet's son Ibrahim pasha of the Morea. First, however, it was resolved to crush the islanders of Psara and Kassos, the former of which had v] Ibrahim 's Expedition 8 9 gained world-wide fame as a nursery of bold and skilful seamen, while the latter had served as a base for maintaining the insurrection in Crete. Both these preliminary enterprises were successful. The Albanian troops of the pasha of Egypt effected a night-attack upon the rugged island of Kassos, slew the men and the old women, and carried off the young women and children into slavery. The Turkish soldiers of the capitan-pasha almost exterminated the male population of Psara, at that time increased by the refugees from Chios ; and hundreds of heads and ears of the slain were exposed with a pompous inscription to the gaze of the faithful at Constantinople. The survivors fled to Aigina, Spetsai, and Syra, while some founded on the site of the classic Eretria a colony which they called New Psara. These two successive blows to the Greek cause were followed by a series of naval engagements, which retarded the arrival of Ibrahim in the Morea. On the way he put into Suda bay ; but it was unnecessary for him to land in Crete, for the Cretan insurrection was by that time over, thanks to the importation of the Egyptian troops and the vaulting ambition of the Sphakiotes. Tombazes had left the island ; and, amidst horrors such as the suffocation of hundreds of Christians by smoke in a cavern, the Cretan rising had smouldered out in the spring of 1824. Ibrahim pursued his course to the Morea; and with his landing there at the former Venetian colony of Modon on February 24, 1825, the second phase of the war began. Ibrahim's first movement was directed against the two fortresses which commanded the bay of Navarino — the " new castle" at the south entrance, and the "old castle" at the north. But it became apparent that the key of the position was the island of Sphakteria, which lies, like some huge cetacean, across the bay, and which, at the eleventh hour, was occupied by Mavrokordatos with a chosen band of soldiers, among them the Piedmontese Philhellene, Count- Santa Rosa, who, exiled for his attempts to establish freedom in his own country, had come to fight for that of Greece. An hour 90 The War of Greek Independence [ch. sufficed for the capture of this historic island, which, twenty- three centuries before, had witnessed the Spartan defeat, immortalised by Thucydides. The Italian historian of the modern battle on Sphakteria could not pretend to the skill of the great Greek writer, but at least in his friend and country- man Santa Rosa he found a hero, worthy of a place beside any Spartan. Although wounded, Santa Rosa refused to yield; and his name, with that of the Hydriote Tsamados, who fell with him, is still associated with the bay of Navarino. A monument there preserves his memory; and 72 years later his heroism inspired another of his compatriots, Antonio Fratti, on the fatal field of Domok6s. Mavrokordatos with difficulty escaped. The capture of Sphakteria was the prelude of the capitulation of both the "old" and the " new castles" — disasters for which the destruction of a part of the Egyptian fleet by Miaoules at Modon only partially atoned. The loss of Navarino had at least one good result, that it convinced the Greek execu- tive of the necessity for union. Kountouri6tes had displayed such a lack of energy in his measures for the defence of that important position, that it was felt that the Morea must be defended by the Moreote chiefs. Accordingly an amnesty was granted to the vanquished of the late civil war; the fugitive primates resumed their authority ; Kolokotr6nes was appointed commander-in-chief in the Morea. The Egyptian successes, however, continued. The Archi- mandrite Dikaios, better known as Papaphlessas, who had been the most energetic member of the " Friendly Society " in the Peloponnese, but whose courage and dissipation had led him to be styled the Alkibiades of the revolution, was cut down after a brave stand at Maniaki ; Kolokotr6nes was defeated in the pass of Makryplagi, the scene of so many battles; and Ibrahim, despite a check inflicted upon him by Hypselantes at the mills of Lerna, marched towards Nauplia, then the seat of the Greek government. But the Egyptians were unable to undertake the siege of that strong fortress ; so they returned to v] Death of Odyssetis 91 Tripolitsa, whence, after again defeating Kolokotrones, they proceeded to ravage the Morea with fire and sword till Ibrahim received orders to cross over into continental Greece and assist in the second siege of Mesol6nghi, the most heroic incident of the whole war. Reshid Pasha, the victor of Peta, had begun the siege towards the end of April ; but it was not till the arrival of the Turkish fleet in July that he made sufficient progress to offer terms to the besieged. His offer was rejected ; and the appear- ance of the Greek fleet dispersed the Turkish vessels, raised the maritime blockade, and re-victualled the town. It should then have been possible, as the besiegers had lost command of the sea, to cut off their communications by land. But, although George Karaiskakes intercepted some of their supplies, the leaders of the insurgents in continental Greece did little to save the place. The most famous of them, the klepht Odyssetis, had met with a terrible end. This former favourite of Ali Pasha had been long suspected of scheming to obtain a province for himself from the Turks, who seemed more likely to appreciate his abilities than was the Greek executive. At last an overt act of treachery was discovered, and Odysseiis forced to surrender to Gkoiiras, his old lieutenant. The former master of Athens was dragged up to the Akropolis amid the execrations of the Athenians, and imprisoned in the Frankish tower, which then stood near the temple of Wingless Victory. There, on July 16, his corpse was found lying at the base of the tower, the victim not of a fall, as was pretended, but of his keeper's hand. The tower, and the bastion that he built, have both vanished ; but the son of Androutsos still retains a place in the history of the city, which he had once governed, while his bust now stands in that " new Thermopylae " which he had made, the pass of Gravia — an exploit which should be set against his treachery. Trelawny, his son-in-law, for a time held out in a cave of Parnass6s, where two British adventurers attempted to assassinate the friend of Shelley. 92 The War of Greek Independence [ch. The arrival of Ibrahim before Mesol6nghi put a new complexion upon the siege. In March, 1826, Anatolikon on an island in the lagoon, which had repelled a former attack, capitulated; and the loss of this outwork of Mesolonghi induced Sir Frederick Adam, who in 1824" had succeeded Sir Thomas Maitland as Lord High Commissioner in the Ionian Islands, to offer his mediation — an offer refused by the confident pashas, as was equally a summons from them to surrender by the stubborn defenders. Provisions had by this time begun to fail, so that the only hope was the return of the Greek fleet to relieve them. But Miaoules, when he reappeared, was unable to enter the shallows near Mesolonghi and retired before the enemy's largely superior navy. No other alternatives remained to the garrison but surrender or a sortie. It chose the latter ; and on the night of April 22, after signalling to Karaiskakes, who was to attack the besiegers in the rear, some 7,000 men, women, and children prepared to sally through the Mussulman lines. Only 3000 of them were combatants, while the rest of the 9000, who formed the total population of the town, were too old, too ill, or too much attached to their old home to leave it. The women wore male attire, the boys who could use pistols were armed ; while those who remained shut themselves up in a ruined windmill and in the great magazine, where the powder was stored. Unluckily a Bulgarian deserter had betrayed the impending sortie to the enemy, who had therefore time to make preparations. For some time after crossing the ditch the garrison, commanded by N6tes Botzares, Kitsos Tsavellas, and Makres, waited under fire till Karaiskakes should appear; then, when there was still no sign of his approach, they sprang, with shouts of "forward," at the besiegers, slew the artillerymen and cut their way into the open plain. The people behind them, however, seized with a panic, began to shout " back/' and fled in confusion into the town. Those who had escaped from the besiegers' lines fell into an Albanian ambuscade, and the survivors with difficulty v] Fall of Mesolonghi 93 reached Karaiskakes' camp. Next morning Ibrahim's troops entered the town, only to meet with a determined resistance from those who had remained there, and who fired the powder- magazines rather than fall alive into their enemy's hands. It is calculated that about 2000 escaped to tell the tale of the great sortie, besides some 3000 prisoners. Among those who fell were Meyer, the editor of the Mesolonghiote newspaper, and the patriot magnate of Patras, Papadiamant6poulos. These men and others like them have conferred upon the little Aitolian fishing-town a fame which will last as long as the Greek nation. Every year a solemn procession of the inhabitants commemorates the heroic sortie ; and the second siege of Mesolonghi has taken its place among the famous sieges of history. After the fall of this coveted place, the two pashas separated, Ibrahim returning to ravage the Morea, Reshid remaining to complete the pacification of western Greece. Meanwhile, the new turn that the war had taken since the intervention of the Egyptians made the Greeks desirous to obtain peace, provided that they did not lose their practical independence so dearly bought by five years of continuous fighting. External diffi- culties as well as domestic dissensions had convinced most of them that the protection of some great foreign Power was necessary to them; but, while one faction favoured Russia, and another suggested the Due de Nemours as a French candidate for the throne, a third wished to place the whole country, like the Ionian Islands, under the suzerainty of Great Britain — a proposal actually passed by the Assembly at Nauplia in August 1825. This action strengthened the hands of George Canning, the British Foreign Secretary ; and Stratford Canning, the new British ambassador at Constantinople, met Mavrokordatos at Hydra on his way out, to discuss the conditions of British mediation. The Assembly formally authorised the ambassador to treat on behalf of Greece, including Crete, on the basis of tributary autonomy under the suzerainty of the Sultan. 94 The War of Greek Independence [ch. Meanwhile, the Duke of Wellington had induced the new Tsar Nicholas I to sanction the signature, on April 4, 1826, of a protocol, with the view of obtaining for the Greeks, on payment of an annual tribute to the Porte, the exclusive right of managing their internal affairs. This was the first effective diplomatic step of the Powers towards Greek independence. In the summer of 1826 Reshid marched from western Greece into Attica to undertake the next important operation of the war — the siege of Athens. On August 15 he took the city by storm, forcing the Athenians to take refuge in the Akropolis, then commanded by Gkouras. An attempt to recover the city was made by Karaiskakes, whom the newly- elected executive, presided over by Andrew Zaimes, had appointed to the supreme command in eastern Greece, and by Colonel Fabvier, an experienced French officer, who had been entrusted by the Greek government with the organisation of a regular corps. The Turks repulsed the relieving force at Chaidari near the monastery of Daphni, and proceeded to bombard the Akropolis, as Morosini had done 140 years before, and to mine the theatre of Her6des Atticus. The position of the garrison seemed to be desperate, when its commander was killed by a bullet as he was going his nightly rounds. But Kriez6tes, a daring leader of irregulars, managed to traverse the Turkish lines and enter the fortress, whither Fabvier followed him with a considerable force on December 13. But this exploit increased the difficulties of accommodation, for the sacred rock was already crowded; and, despite a firman, obtained by Stratford Canning, which forbade the bombard- ment of the ancient monuments, the roof of the Erechtheion collapsed and buried beneath its ruins the widow of Gkoiiras and a number of Athenian ladies. One attempt after another was made to raise the siege. General Gordon, the historian of the revolution, occupied on February 5, 1827, the classic hill of Mounychia; while Colonel Boiirbaki, a Cephalonian who had served in the French army, approached Athens from the north- v] Capitulation of the Akropolis 95 west. But this concerted attack failed ; Boiirbaki was killed in the plain near Kamater6n and his head sent to Constantinople; Gordon was compelled to defend Mounychia. Nor was Colonel Heideck, the agent of the King of Bavaria, that warm friend of the Greek cause, more fortunate in an expedition to Orop6s. The enterprise was then entrusted to two distinguished British officers, Lord Cochrane, who had seen service in South America, and Sir Richard Church, who had fought in Egypt, Italy, and the Ionian Islands, where he had been wounded at Santa Mavra and had made the acquaintance and gained the respect of Kolokotr6nes and other Greek chiefs. In the spring of 1827 these two foreigners were appointed respectively to command the naval and military forces of Greece. Both concentrated their efforts upon the Piraeus, where Karai'skakes co-operated with them. Three successive misfortunes marked the course of these operations. A brilliant charge against the Turkish positions round the Piraeus was followed by the massacre of the Albanians who had surrendered the monastery of St Spiridon under promise that their lives should be spared. In a subsequent skirmish Karai'skakes, " at one moment," as he himself phrased it, "an angel, at another a devil," but latterly more of an "angel "than "devil," was mortally wounded at the spot where his monument now stands ; and with him expired one of the most popular leaders of the revolution. And on the morrow of his death Sir Richard Church received a crushing defeat at Phaleron, which compelled him to abandon his position at Mounychia. Thus, the garrison of the Akropolis was left to its fate ; on June 5 the capitulation was signed ; a marble tablet in the Odeion of Her6des Atticus now commemorates Fabvier's defence. After a Greek occupation of five years and a Turkish siege of ten months, the " castle of Athens " owned once more, and that for the last time, the authority of the Sultan. The whole of continental Greece had been subdued ; the capture of Athens had completed what the siege of Mesolonghi had begun. 96 The War of Greek Independence [ch. Happily for Greece, a month after the surrender of the Akropolis, Great Britain, France, and Russia signed the treaty of July 6. While the Turks had been besieging Athens, the Greek politicians had convened a third National Assembly at Damala, the picturesque village, a Frankish barony in the middle ages, which stands on the site of the ancient Troizen, whence this parliament takes its name. The convergence at this spot of the two rival factions — that of the government from Aigina, and that of the opposition under Kolokotr6nes from Hermione (the modern Kastri) — was due to Lord Cochrane, who advised the latter party to read the first " Philippic " of Demosthenes and act upon the advice which it contained. There, in the romantic setting of a lemon garden, which served as a parlia- ment-house, the Assembly on April 14 elected Count John Capo d'Istria President (Kvf3epv7]T7)<;) of Greece, which was to include all the provinces that had taken up arms, for the term of seven years. Pending his arrival, a commission of three — George Mavromichales (who was subsequently to be his assassin), Milaetes, and Nakos, all little-known and untried men — was to carry on the government. The election of Capo d'Istria was due to the Russophil party, of which Kolokotr6nes was the leader, assisted by the Francophil section under Kolettes and Kountouridtes since the jealousy of Charles X for the house of Orleans had rendered the candidature of the Due de Nemours impossible. The choice made by the Assembly, although it displeased many, had much at that time to recommend it. Capo d'Istria was the most distinguished living Greek diplomatist ; he had influence with the Tsar ; he was a proved patriot ; but great diplomatists are rarely constructive statesmen, while patriotism loses practical value in one who, from years of absence abroad, has lost touch with his country. Capo d'Istria had known the Ionian Islands, but he did not know the rest of Greece, where society was very different from that of Corfu. Born under Venetian rule, he did not even write Greek correctly. But he was honest ; he v] Treaty of 1827 97 was indicated; even the British, men like Cochrane, Church and Hamilton recognised that he was inevitable. For every friend of Greece saw that what she wanted was unity ; and the Corfiote Count seemed to be the only available person who could secure it. The result showed that Capo d'Istria brought not peace but a sword. The acquiescence of the three Greek parties in his election was quickly followed by an agreement between the three Powers which they respectively favoured. On July 6, 1827, Great Britain, France, and Russia signed in London a treaty, pledging them to mediate and meanwhile to demand an im- mediate armistice from both Greece and Turkey. Tributary autonomy under the Sultan's suzerainty was defined as the form of the new Greek state that was to be created. An additional article provided that, if the Porte did not accept their mediation within a month, the Powers would establish consular relations with the Greek government ; and that they would prevent, so far as possible, all collisions between the belligerents "without, however, taking any part in the hostilities." Instructions were sent to the naval commanders of the three Powers; and Admiral Codrington proceeded to notify the Greek government of the armistice, which was accepted by it, but refused by the Sultan. Yet, notwithstanding the armistice, Captain Hastings, the Philhellene, with his corvette, the Karteria {Perseverance), defeated a Turkish flotilla at the landing-place for Delphi and Salona. Ibrahim, burning to revenge this attack, was compelled by Codrington to return to the bay of Navarino, where both the Egyptian and the Turkish fleets were blockaded by the three admirals. Ibrahim, if unable to issue from the bay, was, however, still free to ravage the country behind it ; accordingly, warned by the approach of the stormy season and desirous of preventing the further devastation of the Morea, the three allied fleets entered the bay on October 20. Codrington's orders were that no cannon should be fired until the Turks began ; but the Mussulmans saw at once that a battle was inevitable, and fired M. L. 7 98 The War of Greek Independence [ch. the first shot at the Dartmouth's long-boat, sent to parley. The Dartmouth and the French flag-ship retaliated with a discharge of musketry ; an Egyptian vessel replied with a cannon shot, and the firing then became general ; when the sun arose next morning, only 29 of the 82 vessels that had composed the Turkish and Egyptian fleets remained afloat. The defeated had lost 6000, the allies only 172 men, whose memory is preserved by three monuments on the spot. Never since Lepanto had the Turkish empire experienced such a naval disaster. The news of Navarino caused immense rejoicings in Greece and among all those who sympathised with the Greek cause. In England, where Canning had meanwhile died, although the King was made to describe the battle in his speech from the throne as an " untoward event," he decorated Codrington and several of the officers who had won what Russell described as "a glorious victory." The Turks took the defeat with calm resignation, merely demanding compensation for the loss of their ships. The three Powers refused on the ground that they had not been the aggressors; and their ambassadors quitted Constantinople. Meanwhile the Greeks continued to act as belligerents. Church and Hastings were engaged in western Greece ; Fabvier invaded Chios. But this second expedition to the mastic-island ended in failure ; and its commander soon afterwards returned to France. Hastings, whose aim was the recapture of Mesolonghi, after some success, was mortally wounded before Anatolikon, thus adding another British victim to those of the fatal lagoon. Many years afterwards, the heart of this gallant officer was found by the late Arthur Hill in a box in the house of Hastings' friend and old comrade, the historian Finlay, at Athens. It now rests in the English church there, that pantheon of British Philhellenes, in which are commemorated the long and valiant career of Sir Richard Church and the brief but heroic life of Clement Harris, who Seventy years after Hastings fell at Pente Pegadia. The Cretans, v] Arrival of Capo d' I stria 99 too, rose again after Navarino, inspired by fugitives who had taken refuge on the rocky islet of Grabousa off the west coast, a stronghold which the Venetians had retained after the Turkish conquest of Crete till 1691, and which had latterly become a nest of pirates. On that rugged cliff piracy was regularly organised ; and the sea-robbers made their obeisances before a " klephtic Madonna." But the authorities of Grabousa were patriots as well as pirates ; the local municipality became the "Council of Crete"; and with its aid Hajji Michales, an Epirote leader, stirred up a fresh insurrection. In 1828, however, he was defeated and hacked in pieces by the Turks ; and the British cleared out the pirate republic of Grabousa at the request of Capo dTstria. The President arrived in Greece in January 1828, and landed at Nauplia, where his mere presence sufficed to stop the civil war that had raged there for months between Theodore Grivas, the commander of the great fortress of Palamedi, and Stratos, who held Itsh Kaleh, the Akropolis of Nauplia. Thence he proceded to Aigina, whither the provisional government had removed from the range of Palamedi's cannon, and where he received the reports of the ministers for the several departments of state. They were certainly not encouraging. The Minister of the Interior informed him that the territory which actually acknowledged his authority consisted of no more than Aigina, Poros, Salamis, Eleusi's, Megara, and a few islands of the Aegean. The troops of Ibrahim held a large part of the Morea ; continental Greece was almost entirely Turkish ; Crete had risen in vain; Samos was practically independent under Logothetes, the promoter of the fatal expedition to Chios. Agriculture was at a standstill ; the only profitable trade was piracy. The Finance Minister was not more comforting. He had, he said, neither treasure nor treasury ; some of the revenues had been mortgaged a year in advance to pay the legislature ; even the bills of the carpenters who had been at work on the presidential abode could not be met. The 7—2 ioo The War of Greek Independence [ch. Minister of War lamented the absence of an army, but his colleague of the Admiralty was not quite so gloomy; as for justice, the head of that department remembered the adage that "the laws are silent in time of war," and was silent also. Such was the condition of Greece after nearly seven years of warfare. Capo d'Istria began his career as President by a coup d'etat. The Assembly, which had elected him at Troizen, had also drawn up a third constitution, which had declared Greece to be an independent, indivisible state, whereas the treaty of London aimed at the creation of an autonomous, tributary Hellas under the suzerainty of the Sultan. The President, as a diplomatist, knew that autonomy was not the same as sovereignty, and that the former was all that could be obtained for the present. He realised, too, that constitutions and representative bodies have a very relative importance in countries scarcely emancipated from an oriental despotism and still in a state of siege. He therefore persuaded the legislature to abdicate its functions, and in its place appointed a body, called the " Panhellenion," and composed of 27 members, forming three committees, administrative, financial, and judicial. At the same time he promised to summon a fresh National Assembly in three months' time. But, if the Greek leaders, who had borne the burden and heat of the struggle for independence, were prepared to accept the pro- visional dictatorship of the President, they saw no reason why they should submit to the authority of his unintelligent elder brother, Viaro, and of that brother's bosom friend, whom he summoned from Corfu and seated in the "Panhellenion." Viaro was his evil genius. As Commissioner of Aigina and the Nautical Islands, the home of powerful personages like Kountouri6tes, he acted like a petty despot, arresting citizens, opening letters, exercising a censorship of the only newspaper then published in Greek, and threatening reprisals upon all who dared to criticise his very paternal orders. He ordered v] Policy of Capo district 101 a petition of the Aiginetans to be burnt before their eyes, while the President was sufficiently tactless to describe the heroes of the revolution — men who had fought while he had only written — in unflattering language, calling the primates " Christian Turks," the military chiefs " brigands," the Phana- riotes " vessels of Satan," and the literary men " fools." In order to prevent the perpetuation of this last species, he drew up a strictly professional system of education — for priests at P6ros, for farmers at Ti'ryns, for soldiers and sailors at Nauplia and Hydra — and would not hear of the foundation of an Academy such as Lord Guildford had created in Corfu. He believed that character is more likely to build up a nation than learning, and that material prosperity is essential to the welfare of a state. But he forgot that he had to deal with a race which has a thirst for knowledge, and values the things of the intellect above all else. In short, Capo d'Istria, honest as he was in all his endeavours for the welfare of his country, sought to apply to a democratic, highly critical people methods which he had learnt in the Venetian society of Corfu and at the Russian court. He began with finance. Greece had thus far had no national coinage ; he endowed her with a silver coin known as a phoenix, and bronze pieces of i, 5, 10, and 20 leptd, and es- tablished a national bank, followed by an issue of paper notes 1 but his monetary unit was based upon a fluctuating value, and his bank was admittedly only a forced loan. Next he turned to the army, formed eight regiments of a thousand men each, and placed them under the command of Hypselantes in the east and of Church in the west. He divided the Morea into seven, and the islands into six provinces, governed by com- missioners, and thus weakened the municipal system which had so long flourished in Greece. But a long-expected event abroad soon over-shadowed these domestic reforms. On April 26, 1828, the Tsar declared war upon Turkey, and 1 Lampros, Mi/crcu 2eXt'5es, 654-64. 102 The War of Greek Independence [ch. thus created a military diversion, which could scarcely fail to benefit the Greeks. The moment seemed favourable for the accomplishment of Russia's traditional aim — the conquest of Constantinople. The Turkish fleet had been annihilated at Navarino; the Janissaries had been exterminated a year earlier on the Et Meidan, or "Meat Market," of Constantinople by the reforming Sultan; but the reformer had not had time to perfect his "new model," and the Greeks, under their Russophil President, were still unsubdued. But then, as so often, the power of Russia was over-estimated, and the resistance of the Turks surpassed expectation. Moreover, the Tsar, while fighting Turkey in the Balkans, was not a belligerent in the Aegean. Meanwhile, another of the three Powers which had signed the treaty of London rendered Greece a great service by ridding the Morea of the Egyptian troops. Ibrahim, owing to the withdrawal of the allied fleets, had already sent his wounded men with some thousands of Greek slaves to Alexandria ; but the rest of his army had suffered severely during the winter ; and in the summer of 1828 his Albanian garrison of Coron, one of the old Venetian colonies at the south of Messema, mutinied and were allowed by the Greeks to leave the Morea for their own country. The French government thereupon offered to expel the remainder of Ibrahim's forces. The British cabinet accepted the offer ; and on August 30 General Maison landed with a French army at Petalfdi on the gulf of Coron to enforce the evacuation of the peninsula. Codrington had, however, already concluded a convention with Mehemet Ali for the removal of the Mussulman troops and the release of the Greek slaves. Ibrahim was willing to carry out his father's promise, but declined to hand over the Turkish fortresses of Modon, Coron, Navarino, Chloumoutsi, Patras, and Rhfon, which had been specially excluded from the convention. The last-named, however, alone resisted; on October 30 it also surrendered. No hostile troops remained in the Morea, where the French, v] Protocol of 1 829 103 having thus easily cleared the fortresses, proceeded to clean them, to make roads, and to repair the ravages of Ibrahim. One of his last acts had been the complete destruction of Tripolitsa. So thoroughly did his Arabs carry out his orders, that of the former Turkish capital of the Morea the traveller can now find little but the foundations of what was once the konak of the pasha. In order to preserve the peninsula from a further invasion, the Allies by a protocol of November 16 placed it together with the adjacent islands and the Cyclades under their joint guarantee until a definite settlement of the Greek question, and allowed France to keep a certain number of troops in the Morea ; the rest returned home. South of the Isthmus, the war was thus over • north of it, the Turks were so much weakened by the Russian campaign and by an Albanian revolt, that the Greeks recovered lost ground. Hypselantes occupied Bceotia ; Salona surrendered ; the castle of V6nitza on the Ambrakian gulf capitulated \ Lepanto and Mesol6nghi followed. In Crete both parties accepted an armistice. Meanwhile, the representatives of the three Powers had been discussing the boundaries of the new Greek state at Pdros, and their decisions were embodied in the London protocol of March 22, 1829. The northern frontier of Greece was to be drawn from the Ambrakian to the Pagasasan gulf, and was to include on the east Eubcea, the islands adjacent to the Morea and the Cyclades. The country thus delimited was to become an hereditary monarchy under a Christian prince to be chosen by, but not from, the dynasties of the three protecting Powers, with the consent of the Porte, which he was to acknowledge as his suzerain, from which he and his successors were to receive their investiture, and to which a tribute of 1,500,000 piastres (or some ^30,000) should be paid. This arrangement displeased alike the Greek politicians and the President ; they resented the exclusion of Samos and Crete ; he intrigued against the nomination of a foreign prince who would take his place. On the other hand, the Sultan was io4 The War of Greek Independence [ch. willing to concede only the Morea and the adjacent islands. But had it not been for the Turcophil inclinations of Lord Aberdeen, then Foreign Secretary, the protocol would have been forced upon Turkey, and the kingdom of Greece would have become an accomplished fact. In these circumstances Capo d'Istria performed his long-deferred promise to convoke a National Assembly. In order to secure the election of a majority favourable to himself, he made an electoral tour of the Morea, where he was very popular. Many districts actually elected him as their representative; and, when this was declared illegal, mere delegates — "good Christians," as they were called — were chosen, who received written instructions from their constituents. Mesolonghi, always to the fore in the cause of freedom, protested against this caricature of repre- sentative government ; the Nautical Islands naturally voted for the Opposition. From Greek lands still in Turkish hands, from Epirus and Thessaly, from Chios and Crete, came deputies to support him in the fourth National Assembly, which met on July 23, 1829 in the ancient theatre of Argos. A parliament thus elected provided a majority ready to carry out the President's behests. He received full powers of negotiation with the Allies ; he appointed six, and selected from a list of 63 candidates submitted to him the remaining 21 members of the newly-created Senate, which was to take the place of the " Panhellenion," but with very limited authority; his name was to be engraved on the coins ; he was to be the first, and for the present the only person, to wear the newly- created Order of the Redeemer. Only on one point, the ratification of the Allies' decisions, did the Assembly reserve its own rights, and this reservation proved a serviceable weapon in his hands ; only one protest, a letter from Church, was raised against the nepotism which had made the President's younger brother, Agostino, his plenipotentiary in western Greece, and this protest was rejected. Capo d'Istria seemed to be at the summit of his power ; Metternich, who had throughout v] Battle of Petra misjudged the Greek movement, regarded him as irre- movable. A few weeks after the close of the Assembly the long-drawn war between Greeks and Turks ended. The advance of the Russians towards Adrianople had compelled the Sultan to withdraw all his available soldiers from Greece ; and a body of Albanians under Asian Bey was ordered to escort the Turks who still remained in Attica and Boeotia. On his way back from Athens, Asian had to traverse the then narrow pass of Petra between Levadeia and Thebes, then the Thermopylae of Bceotia, but now completely transformed by the draining of the Copai'c lake. There he found Hypselantes prepared to dispute his passage ; and on September 24 Asian sustained so severe a defeat from the prince and Kriezotes, that on the morrow he signed a capitulation, by which the Turks agreed to evacuate all eastern Greece, except the Akropolis of Athens and the fortress of Karababa which commands the Euripus. Thus, in Finlay's happy phrase, " Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes had the honour of terminating the war which his brother had com- menced on the banks of the Pruth." CHAPTER VI THE CREATION OF THE GREEK KINGDOM (1829-33) The War of Independence was over; it remained to fix definitely the dimensions and to appoint the ruler of the new state. Eleven days before the conclusion of the Greco- Turkish hostilities at Petra, Russia had imposed upon the Sultan the peace of Adrianople, which included his recognition of the treaty of London and of the protocol of March 22. The effect of this treaty in London was such that the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister, abandoned the idea of making Greece a vassal principality, and became an advocate of an independent Greek kingdom. Twenty-five years later, his Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, confessed that Greece owed her escape from vassalage to complete freedom solely to the impression created by the treaty of Adrianople. The Duke believed the end of Turkey to be at hand ; it was, therefore, useless to place Greece beneath a suzerain too feeble to defend her. On the other hand he foresaw the further aggrandisement of Russia, and he was accordingly anxious that Greece, believed to be Russophil, should not be too large. What the British Cabinet of that day wanted was a small, independent state ; and such were the two leading ideas which inspired the fresh protocols, signed by the three Powers on February 3, 1830. They decided that Greece should be a com- pletely independent state, governed by an hereditary monarch, selected outside the reigning families of Great Britain, France, and Russia, with the title of " Sovereign Prince of Greece." But ch. vi] Prince Leopold chosen King 107 in consideration of the advantage of independence, "and in deference to the desire expressed by the Porte to obtain the reduction of the frontiers fixed by the protocol of March 22," the frontiers of this principality were to be restricted to the mouth of the Sperchei6s on the east, to that of the Acheloos on the west. It would have been difficult even for British diplomacy, whose geographical ignorance has provoked so many complications in the near east, to have drawn a worse frontier. The best that could be said of it was that it included Thermo- pylae, the glory of ancient, and Mesolonghi, that of modern Greece. It sacrificed Akarnania and a large part of Aitolia, whose inhabitants had borne a conspicuous part in the struggle ; and it thereby abandoned to Turkey the pass of Makryn6ros, the Thermopylae of the west. It did, indeed, include Eubcea, the Devil's Islands, Skyros, and the Cyclades, but it excluded Crete, and thus left to Europe a legacy of trouble and expense only recently finished. As usually happens, the best expert opinion could have been had for the asking, but was not con- sidered. Colonel Leake was then in London ; yet the Foreign Office never consulted the famous traveller, who knew northern Greece as well as its clerks knew Downing Street. As ruler of the new principality the powers proposed Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (subsequently first king of the Belgians). This was an excellent choice. The Prince, as he afterwards showed on the Belgian throne, possessed the qualities of a statesman ; he was forty years of age ; he had long been suggested as a sovereign for the Greeks ; five years earlier Kountouri6tes had commissioned agents to sound him; more recently he had himself sent an emissary to study the situation in Greece. No one was, therefore, surprised when, eight days later, he accepted. As the Porte likewise accepted these last protocols of the three Powers, and the Greek people was delighted at Prince Leopold's selection, it seemed as if the Greek question were settled; so certain did this appear, that France abandoned into his hands her ancient protectorate over the Catholics in the 108 The Creation of the Greek Kingdom [ch. Cyclades. But the Allies had reckoned without the President. Capo d'lstria cherished the ambition of a life presidency for himself ; he was disappointed that he had been overlooked, and he saw no reason why he should have sown that a foreigner might reap. He, therefore, deliberately set to work to paint the condition of Greece in the darkest colours, so as to deter the Prince from coming. Leopold himself was disappointed at the narrow frontiers of his intended principality; he had already written to Lord Aberdeen " that he could imagine no effectual mode of pacifying Greece without including Candia in the new state " ; he had read Church's pamphlet on the strategic advantages of Akarnania ; he had even hoped to bring, like King George in 1864, the Ionian Islands as a present to his future subjects. Capo d'lstria harped upon the unpopularity of this restriction of frontier, with which Leopold would be identified ; he cleverly availed himself of the decree passed at Argos that the negotiations must be approved by the legislature. He hinted that the Prince would do well to adopt the religion of his subjects, of which the President was a warm devotee. He tried to prevent addresses of welcome from reaching Leopold, and he treated the signatories as his enemies. All these things, combined with the remote prospect of a regency in England — for his dead wife had been the daughter of George IV — so affected the Prince, that he retracted his acceptance and in May definitely resigned the Greek throne. Leopold a year later became king of the Belgians ; but he often lamented, amid the prosaic comforts of Brussels, the romantic career which might have been his at Athens. To-day the most instructive incident in his candida- ture is his prophetic warning about Crete. Capo d'lstria had succeeded in thwarting the Coburg nomination, but there at once set in a reaction against himself. His own conduct and the revolutionary spirit, which spread to Greece from Paris as the result of the July revolution, both fostered the growing discontent. Success had made him more vi] Opposition to Capo district, 109 autocratic; and some of his acts were as arbitrary as those which had just cost Charles X his throne. To have signed an address to Leopold was considered a criminal offence, just as in later Italy it was sufficient proof of guilt to " have spoken evil of Garibaldi." He sent Russian ships to coerce the independent Mainates into payment of a tax ; he was unable to procure the Turkish evacuation of the Akropolis and Eubcea, because the Turks refused to budge till they received com- pensation for their private property and till the delimitation of the frontier was completed. But the President could not raise the money; and the Powers, distracted by the French and the Polish revolutions, tarried with the settlement of Greece. The Turkish garrison did not finally quit the Akropolis till March 31, 1833, nearly eighteen months after his death ; the Athenians strongly criticised his administration ; a military mutiny fore- shadowed what was to follow. Worst of all, his refusal to pay the compensation demanded by the Hydriotes for their losses in the war aroused the stubborn opposition of that influential island. The Hydriotes started a newspaper, the Aurora^ as the mouthpiece of their grievances ; Capo d'Istria suppressed it, only to find that another journal, the Apollo^ was being printed at Nauplia, whither the seat of government had been transferred from Aigina. Viaro smothered its first issue ; but the editor transferred his operations to the indomitable island, where it at once became the organ of the Opposition, with "a Congress and a Constitution" as its programme. Hydra then separated herself from the President's jurisdiction and became practically an independent commonwealth under a committee of local magnates. Syra, the most flourishing commercial community in Greece, galled by his mercantile regulations, supported Hydra. This was more than the President could stand; he ordered the fleet to punish Syra. Before, however, the fleet had left the arsenal at Poros, the " constitutional committee " of Hydra sent Admiral Miaoules, who was one of its members, with Mavrokordatos as no The Creation of the Greek Kingdom [ch. his adviser, to seize the arsenal. Miaoilles executed his task with his accustomed energy, and after trying to induce Kanares, who was in command of a corvette there, to join the con- stitutionalists, put his old comrade under arrest. When the President heard of this coup de main, he forgot his diplomacy in his desire for revenge ; and in the Russian admiral, Ricord, who was then at Nauplia, he found a willing instrument. The Russian officer sailed for P6ros, and summoned Miaoilles to surrender the arsenal; the Greek admiral replied that he recognised no authority save the committee at H^dra; the Russian blustered ; the patriot retorted that he would do his duty. At this crisis the British and French commanders arrived by chance, but departed to Nauplia for instructions. Meanwhile Ricord's men came into collision with a vessel from Hydra; and Capo d'Istria sent him a message, insinuating that he should strike before they returned. On August 13, 1 83 1, he took up a position to cannonade the Greek fleet, whereupon Miaoilles sent him a message to the effect that he would blow it up rather than surrender. The Hydriote was as good as his word ; a terrific explosion covered the beautiful harbour of P6ros with the wrecks of the Greek ships ; Miaoilles escaped with their crews to Hydra ; the troops of the President under Niketas sacked the town of P6ros, although it had previously capitulated, as if it had been a Turkish city, while the Russian admiral looked on. When all was over Capo d'Istria wrote to Ricord thanking him for his services. But the catastrophe of P6ros was fatal to the President. The Greek Opposition considered him as a party chief ; the British and French governments regarded him as a Russian proconsul. The deeply wounded pride of a powerful family caused, within two months of the conflagration of P6ros, the end of Capo d'Istria. The clan of the Mavromichalai was all powerful in Maina; since 1690 the name had been familiar; since 1769 it had been ennobled by the struggles of those who ■vi] The Mavromichdlai 1 1 1 bore it in the cause of Greek freedom. In the War of Indepen- dence, at the taking of Kalamata, at the battle of Valtetsi, in Eubcea, in Akarnama, and in Epirus, the Mavromichdlai had fought heroically, sometimes with the loss of their lives, for Greece. But, notwithstanding these patriotic services, they represented Maina and all that Maina stood for — the blood feud, the ethics of a primitive society, defiance of a central and cen- tralising authority. To Capo d'Istria it seemed that Maina must be " civilised " and raised to the level of the less Homeric parts of Greece ; and the only way of achieving this object was the proscription of a family, whose word was law where his writ would not run. A local revolt, headed by Petrobey's brother John, had been suppressed through the intervention of the Bey's second son George at the request of the President, who had promised to arrange the disputes between the government and the clan, if John would come to Nauplia. John came, and was put under arrest, while prosecutions were set on foot against him and his son. His son fled to Maina, where Constantine, a brother of the Bey, headed the revolt of " the Spartans," as the Mainates loved to call themselves, against the gaoler of their chieftain's family. Thither the Bey himself likewise hastened, but was arrested and escorted back to Nauplia, where he was imprisoned on a charge of high treason and dereliction of his duty as a member of the Senate. Constantine and George were also conveyed to Nauplia and there placed under police supervision. These proceedings naturally aroused public sympathy with the persecuted family. The Bey's aged mother petitioned the President to release her distinguished son, who had been then nine months in prison untried; Admiral Ricord, the confidant of Capo d'Istria at P6ros, used his influence in the same direction. But the President remained obdurate ; and, acting in accord with the Mainate code of honour, Constantine and George, who were merely " shadowed " by the police and not confined to prison, resolved to avenge their relative. On October 9, 1831, Capo 1 1 2 The Creation of the Greek Kingdom [ch. d'Istria walked, as was his wont, to attend early service at the church of St Spiridon, the patron saint of his native island, situated at the foot of Itsh Kaleh. As he approached the door, he noticed the two Mavromichalai standing on either side. He stopped for a moment, as if suspecting an attempt, against which he had been warned ; then, recovering his self- possession, he walked on towards the church. But before he could reach the door, Constantine's bullet struck him in the back of the head ; George's dagger stabbed him through the lungs; and he fell lifeless in the embrace of his one-armed orderly. His attendant laid the corpse upon the ground, fired at Constantine and wounded him ; another bullet from a window struck the fleeing assassin ; a third killed him ; where- upon the crowd dragged his body through the streets and hurled it into the sea. Meanwhile, George had escaped into the French residency, which was besieged by an angry mob clamouring for his surrender. Escorted by a French officer he was ferried across to the island-fortress of Bourzi, court- martialled, and, on October 22, shot before the eyes of his imprisoned father, who from the casemate of his prison saw his son die, as he had lived, a true son of Maina. The portraits of the two Mavromichalai now adorn the Athenian palace of the present head of the family, son of the ex-Premier of Greece, where the visitor may distinguish the fierce mien of George from the mild features of Constantine. The lapse of three generations has enabled posterity to form an unbiased judgment upon the career of Capo d'Istria. No one will deny his private virtues, his austere life, his sincere love of his native land, his services to it alike in the days of his foreign employment and in those of his presidency. But he tried to govern Greeks by the maxims, and with the assistance, of the most autocratic of governments ; he was to the last a diplomatist, and revolutions need not diplomatists but men of action. Nevertheless, a grateful country has recognised his public merits as well as his personal qualities. vi] Provisional Government 1 1 3 Aigina, his first capital, and Corfu his birthplace, have both raised statues in his honour ; the one island preserves in different form the orphanage which he founded, and the "govern- ment house " which was the first mint of Greece ; the other cherishes in the Platytera convent his murdered remains ; a part of the University at Athens has been called since 191 1 by his name; while his latest biographer has extolled the services to elementary education of the former ephor of the first public school at Corfu. The assassination of Capo d'Istria awakened widely different feelings. The poet Alexander Soutsos compared the assassins with Harm6dios and Aristogeiton ; the Apollo deplored the human tragedy, yet thought otherwise of the political tyranni- cide; the friends of the murdered President mourned, and acted. The Senate at once met, and before mid-day of the fatal ninth of October nominated a provisional commission of three to carry on the government till a National Assembly met. The trio consisted of Agostino Capo d'Istria, the repre- sentative of the late President's family influence, Kolokotr6nes, the leading Moreote chieftain, and Kolettes, the spokesman of continental Greece. Agostino, who was the chairman, unfortunately showed a complete lack of that conciliatory spirit which should have united all parties around the bier of his brother, and with the support of Kolokotrones, he was able to outvote the more prudent Kolettes. Thus, when Syra offered to acknowledge the authority of the provisional government, and when Hydra merely asked that two members of the Opposition should be added to the commission, an amnesty granted, and a freely elected Assembly held at some neutral spot, the olive branch of "the Constitutionalists" was rejected, in spite of a statesmanlike appeal by Andrew Zaimes for union. Following blindly the policy of his late brother at P6ros, Agostino employed the Russian fleet to blockade Etydra, and showed his dislike for the French by dismissing one French general, and giving another a broad M. L. 8 114 The Creation of the Greek Kingdom [ch. hint that Greece could not afford the luxury of foreign troops — a hint which led to the withdrawal of all French officers from the Greek service. The most reckless charges were banded about by the contending factions, each identified with one or other of the three allied Powers; the Capodistrians, or " Nappists," as they were called from a nickname of Agostino, or from a follower of his brother, accused Great Britain and France of complicity in the late President's murder; the Hydriotes retorted that he had hired wretches to assassinate the "constitutional leaders," and that his brother had sworn to send the heroes of P6ros to Siberia. Such was the at- mosphere of mutual calumny in which the elections were held. To make the Capodistrian majority secure, the Hydriote deputies were prevented from landing at Lerna to take their seats in the new Assembly at Argos ; those of Maina were arrested at Astros. Kolettes saw that the time had arrived to sever his con- nexion with his two colleagues. His influence with the Roumeliote or continental deputies enabled him to form a formidable Opposition, which labelled itself as " constitutional," demanded the admission of the Hydriotes, and threatened, in case of refusal, to hold a separate convention. Accordingly, while, after taking the oath on December 1 7, the Capodistrians held the fifth National Assembly in the schoolhouse at Argos, the Roumeliotes met in another part of the town. Agostino and Kolokotr6nes went through the form of resigning their posts ; and on December 20 Agostino was elected President (Upoeo-Tios) of Greece. Kolettes, however, declined to resign ; and civil war ensued. Agostino summoned Russian assistance; and after two days' fighting in the streets of Argos, which Sir Stratford Canning, on his way to Constantinople, arrived in time to witness, the worsted Roumeliotes retired beyond the Isthmus, and at Perach6ra near Corinth named a governing committee, of which Kolettes, Zaimes, and Kountouri6tes were members. Thus, Greece was once more distracted vi] Otho King of Greece Ii5 between two rival authorities. A conference at the baths of Loutraki failed. Agostino declared Kolettes and his con- federates outlaws; Kolettes denounced Agostino as an usurper. In vain a tardily published protocol of the Powers acknowledged the latter as the legitimate President ; in vain their Residents caused him to publish a restricted amnesty ; in vain Canning counselled unity. What he had seen convinced him all the more of the advantage of a foreign king over a native president, who, as he wrote to Palmerston, " had neither knowledge, nor the natural talent which replaces it." At last, after two years' interval, the pre-occupied Powers, on February 13, 1832, offered the crown to Prince Otho, second son of the King of Bavaria. There seemed much to be said for this choice. King Louis was an ardent Philhellene; his name was well-known and popular in Greece ; his country was not important enough to arouse the jealousy of the Powers ; a German, Professor Thiersch, who had "discovered" Prince Otho more than two years before, had since travelled about Hellas as his unofficial agent, to sound public opinion and prepare it for a Bavarian candidature. If the future ruler of Greece was barely seventeen, it was pointed out that his lack of experience would be more than compensated for by the greater facility with which he would assimilate Greek ideas, while the difficulties and unpopularity inherent in the existing adminis- tration would fall not upon the young sovereign but upon the regency. On May 7 a treaty between Bavaria and the three Powers settled the conditions of King Louis' acceptance for his son. Otho was to bear the title of " King of Greece," an independent, hereditary monarchy under their guarantee ; in case of his dying childless, his younger brother was to succeed; but in no case were the Greek and Bavarian crowns to be worn by the same person. On June 1, 1835, his twentieth birthday, he was to come of age ; and in the meanwhile three Regents, appointed by his father, were to exercise full sovereignty. The powers promised to guarantee a 5 per cent, loan of not more 8—2 1 1 6 The Creation of the Greek Kingdom [ch. than ^2,400,000 to be raised in three instalments, the King of Bavaria to furnish a corps of Bavarian soldiers, "not exceeding 3500 men," with Bavarian officers for the organisation of a native army. The northern frontiers of the new kingdom, thanks to the efforts of Palmerston and the energy of Sir Stratford Canning, were ultimately advanced to the gulfs of Volo and Arta, and included the disputed district of Lamia, in consideration of which the indemnity to the Turks was fixed at ^462,480, payable out of the loan. The Sultan accepted these arrangements and recognised Otho as King of Greece — a Greece much larger than that assigned to Leopold, but from which Samos and Crete were excluded. The former, after being organised by Kolettes, and proclaiming its independence, was coerced and erected in 1832 into an autonomous tributary Christian principality, from which troops were expressly excluded; the latter w as^ united in 18^0 to th e Egyptian pashalik of Mehemet Ali as a reward for nis services' 16 t he^ultjn^foile a liberal firman allowed the lslaMeTs 1 aTTagHree navigation, and the collection of their taxes by their bishops and captains. Strategically, however, the new frontier was, with one exception, favourable to Greece ; for it was so drawn as to give her the famous pass of Makrynoros and the whole eastern and southern shores of " Arnbracia's gulf," save the fort of Punta and a strip of land behind it on the site of Actium. Thus Turkey retained the two keys — Preveza and Punta — of the gulf ; Punta she ceded in 1881, Preveza she held till 191 2. The news of Otho's selection made the "Constitutionalists at Perachora resolve to attack the Capodistrians at once, in order to have their share of posts and honours when the king arrived. For the same reason the deputies who supported Agostino pro- claimed him Regent till Otho's arrival, perhaps in the hope that he might continue to be Regent afterwards. In vain the excellent Thiersch was sent by the Residents of the Powers to hinder the advance of the Constitutionalists into the Morea. The ingenuous professor fell under the spell of Kolettes' diplomacy, VI] Triumph of Koldttes 117 convinced himself that justice was on their side, and went so far as to write on his own authority to the French commander, upon whom Agostino relied, bidding him allow them to cross the Isthmus. The Capodistrian cavalry posted at that dangerous passage, the scene of so many battles, dispersed at the first discharge, while the French, favourably inclined to Kolettes and fresh from a skirmish with the Capodistrians in Messenia, showed no disposition to fire upon the Constitutionalists. On April 8 Kolettes and his followers occupied Pronoia, the suburb of Nauplia, and a conflict seemed inevitable. For- tunately, however, a note had just arrived from London, stating that a "provisional government calculated to preserve the country from anarchy" was required. Armed with this document, the Residents presented themselves before Agostino, and informed him that he must resign. Agostino could not refuse ; but the Residents marred their success by causing him to ask the Senate to name the provisional government. The Senate responded by appointing an Ad- ministrative Committee of five, including, indeed, Kolettes, but leaving him in a hopeless minority. The Roumeliote leader, flushed with victory, naturally refused to accept this arrangement, but was induced to enter the town and discuss a compromise. His entry into Nauplia was a triumph ; such was the enthusiasm of the people, that Agostino, an unseen spectator of his enemy's reception, fled with his relatives, his brother's remains, and Mustoxidi, the Corfiote historian, on board a Russian vessel to Corfu, where he and Viaro joined the opposition to the British protectorate. After much dis- cussion, a compromise was effected, by which the Committee's numbers were increased to seven, of whom only two were avowed Capodistrians, while all the seven ministers, subordinate to it, were Constitutionalists. But the device of a large quorum, always fatal to the transaction of business, was adopted, so as to paralyse the activity of the majority of the Committee. Thus, despite the resignation of Agostino, the 1 1 8 The Creation of the Greek Kingdom [ch. Capodistrian party continued to exist even without a Capo d'Istria. Kolettes, in the hour of his triumph, was devoid of funds to pay his Roumeliote soldiery ; and the latter resolved to pay themselves out of the plunder of the Morea. These strange "Constitutionalists," led by Theodore Grivas, and assisted by a band of Mussulman Albanians, soon caused the Moreotes, naturally jealous of " the continentals," to call upon their own famous chief, Kolokotr6nes, to defend the peninsula. The old warrior cheerfully came to their rescue, and issued a proclamation declaring the acts of the Committee illegal, while his son, Gennaios, stopped the march of the Roumeliotes. The government in its alarm begged the French to occupy Nauplia and Patras, and a French force actually garrisoned the great fortress of Palamedi; but before they could reach Patras, Kftsos Tsavellas, the Souliote chief, who had headed a party in the heroic sortie from Mesol6nghi, had seized the splendid castle, which he refused to surrender. He extended his jurisdiction over the twin forts which command the entrance to the gulf of Corinth, and held these strong positions till the arrival of Otho, whose Prime Minister he ultimately became. Tsavellas was not a Moreote, yet he was not the only leader outside the peninsula who revolted against the government. Salona was in the hands of the Opposition ; and of the islands Tenos, Aigina, and Spetsai were unwilling, or unable, to acknowledge the authority of the Committee. The country was, in fact, in a state of complete anarchy ; the "constitution" was a mere fiction ; the people, as the poet Soutsos bitterly complained, was " stripped " by the official " wolves." It was necessary to hold a National Assembly before the king's arrival for the purpose of granting a general amnesty and of recognising his nomination. This Assembly of 224 deputies, including several Cretans, was considered as a con- tinuation of that which had met at Argos, but assembled on , July 26, 1832, in a wooden shanty at Pr6noia, through the vi] The Assembly dispersed 119 interstices of which the free and easy representatives were wont to inhale the tobacco from their protruding pipes ! The Assembly did, indeed, pass the amnesty bill, and unanimously recognised Otho ; but it abolished the Senate, and thereby offended the Residents. One of the latter, Dawkins, the representative of Great Britain, chanced to be out for a ride in the direction of Areia, a village some two miles from Nauplia, where the unpaid, ill-fed Roumeliote troops were quartered. Spying the Resident, the penniless soldiery beset him with cries for help and assistance. Dawkins in reply pointed with his riding-whip to the shed, where the deputies were deliberating, and added that it contained experienced paymasters. The soldiers took the hint, broke into the midst of the Assembly, dragged Notaras, the aged chairman, from his seat, and carried him off with seven of the richest members to Areia as hostages for the payment of their arrears. As the government had no money, the prisoners had to provide their own ransom. A rump-parliament of 62 deputies, who remained in Nauplia, after drawing up a protest, adjourned on September 1, till the arrival of the king. But the outrage committed upon the Assembly at Pr6noia provided such an object-lesson to the opponents of parliamentary institutions, that eleven years elapsed before another Greek legislature met. It required the revolution of 1843 to restore the liberties lost in 1832. In September of that year Greece was left without any legal authority to direct her affairs. The Assembly had been dispersed ; the Senate had been abolished ; of the Committee of seven, Demetrios Hypselantes had just died, after eleven years spent in the service of Hellenism ; two of his colleagues had gone to greet Otho at Munich; another had retired in dudgeon to his native Etydra. The three who remained — Kolettes, Zaimes, and Andrew Metaxas — could not form a legal quorum. But it was felt that the coming king's govern- ment must be carried on ; so the Senate treated the decree of the late Assembly as null, and recognised the triumvirs as the 1 20 The Creation of the Greek Kingdom [ch. supreme executive. Such was the confusion, that all the law-courts were temporarily abolished, and French troops summoned to keep order within the walls of Nauplia. But there was worse to come. The Senate, a creation of Capo d'Istria, preserved the Russophil traditions of its creator ; and a section of its members desired that a Russian, instead of the Francophil Kolettes, should be in power when the king arrived. These senators fled with the government printing-press to Astros and thence to Spetsai, and offered the presidency of Greece to Admiral Ricord, whom public opinion held respon- sible for the burning of the Greek fleet at P6ros. The admiral had frequently meddled in Greek domestic politics, but the presidency of the state he felt reluctantly obliged to decline ; whereupon the senators nominated a fresh governing committee of seven, all military chiefs such as Kolokotrones, Kriez6tes, and Tsavellas. At Nauplia and Kalamata French bayonets supported the authority of " the constitution " and the trium- virs ; elsewhere there would have been anarchy, had it not been for the action of the municipalities, which seeing the central government powerless to preserve order, took measures for its preservation themselves. The municipal institutions of the Greeks proved at this crisis more valuable than paper constitutions; native tradition is always more durable than imported ideas. Indeed, at that moment, the very name of " constitution " stank in the nostrils of the Moreote peasantry. They were taught to associate it alike with the French garrison of Kalamata and with the Mainates who raided the fertile plain of Messenia ; swineherds told travellers that "the constitution" had devoured their pigs ; mothers told their naughty children that " the constitution " would come and take them ! One more tragedy was destined to afflict the unhappy country before the king at last arrived. As the day approached, the Senate and the military chiefs became all the more anxious to impose themselves upon the sovereign. Two of the latter, Kriez6tes and the Argive Tz6kres, accordingly resolved to VI] King Othds arrival 121 occupy Argos, so as to demonstrate their power in the neigh- bourhood of Nauplia. The triumvirs requested the French to garrison Argos, and thither the French converged from Nauplia and Messem'a. The Opposition had learned to hate the French; and "Argive Vespers" were contemplated, which would rid the peninsula of these foreign supporters of the government. On January 16, 1833, the Greeks suddenly attacked them; but the French cleared the streets, and then with their bayonets drove their assailants from the houses. Even the venerable citadel, the ancient Larissa, failed to shelter the fugitives from the Corsican light infantry. Kriez6tes was taken, many of his followers killed in the fight, two prisoners shot as an example. The triumvirate thanked the French for their exertions; the military chiefs deeply felt the defeat. Happily time has obliterated the feelings with which one Greek party then regarded the nation which had rid the Morea of the Egyptian troops. A monument, erected by a patriotic Greek, now commemorates on the quay at Nauplia the French who fell in the War of Independence ; while a lion, carved on a rock near the suburb of Pronoia, bears impartial witness to the services of the Bavarians who replaced them. Sixteen days after the conflict at Argos, the British frigate, Madagascar, with Otho on board, arrived at Nauplia. In the excitement caused by the arrival of the long-expected king, the last incident of the protracted reign of anarchy, which had begun with the murder of Capo d'Istria, was forgotten. While the rest of the Greek people had suffered so severely from the war and its sequel, the Ionian Islands had made great material progress under the British protectorate. The three currant-producing islands, Cephalonia, Ithaca, and Zante had specially benefited from the destruction of the currant-fields in the Morea. As long as the war lasted, they had the monopoly of the currant trade; and in 1829 the Cephalonians, in an address to George IV, stated that in nine years the weight of their currant crop had doubled. " Our mountainous and rocky 1 2 2 The Creation of the Greek Kingdom [ch. island," they wrote, "has been, as it were, transformed into one vast vineyard 1 ." It was largely owing to the useful currant that the revenue of the Seven Islands rose under Sir Frederick Adam to 140,000. The new Lord High Commissioner was thus able to expend large sums on public works. He con- structed an aqueduct for the supply of water to Corfu; he established a convalescent hospital and erected lighthouses ; he continued the road-building policy of his predecessor, and the Residents in the other islands did likewise — Lord Charles Fitzroy in Zante, Colonel Napier in Cephalonia. The latter, during a long tenure of office, devoted all his efforts to the development of that island, the " weak point," as he expressed it, of the British protectorate. Cephalonia was always the most restive of the islands ; there the animosity of the nobles and the peasants was intense; and, if the great currant-planters were "glued to the English market," there was much less money spent by the British officials there than at Corfu. The Cephalonians and Zantiotes complained that Corfu was en- riched at their expense ; and Napier actually proposed that the capital should be transferred to Argost61i. His own popularity was shown by the repeated offer of the command of the Greek army; but his methods, if well-meaning, were sometimes arbitrary, as when he beat an Ionian noble, whom he found beating his wife, and used his horse-whip on the peasants engaged in making the roads. He endeavoured to prevent the destruction of the Black Forest by the goats, and thereby caused the indignation of their owners. He imported a colony of Maltese to cultivate the south-east of the island, and thereby aroused racial and religious jealousy. Complaints against him reached the High Commissioner; the Napiers were not adapted for a secondary station ; and, despite his many services to Cephalonia, he was removed. He took his revenge by publishing a book, which is a violent tirade against Adam. Napier, The Colonies, 562. VI] The Ionian Islands 123 The High Commissioner, despite his practical merits, was, indeed, guilty of extravagance. Maitland had gone to the opposite extreme, on one occasion walking into the Senate-hall with no other garments than a shirt, a red night-cap, and a pair of slippers ! His successor spent the taxes of a small island on his gold-laced coat ; and, not content with the palace erected by Maitland for his official residence and the meeting- place of the Senate, built the charming Villa of Mon Repos outside the town, whence the King of the Hellenes now gazes restfully across the sea at those Epirote mountains, which Europe in 1880 had intended should be his. Very popular with the Corfiote aristocracy, with which he had mingled before his appointment, he is still remembered with gratitude for his aqueduct, and deserved the statue which still stands in front of the palace. He abolished the system of road-building by forced labour, imposing a tax on imported cattle in its place. In. 1824, the year of his appointment, the relations between the Greek Church in the. Islands and the CEcumenical Patriarch were regulated ; in the same year Lord Guildford founded the " Ionian Academy," where Greek was the vehicle of instruction. That ardent Philhellene, whose love of Greece led him to wear ancient Greek dress when he presided over the Academy, and to be baptised into the Orthodox Church, had wished, as Ugo Foscolo had suggested, to make Ithaca the seat of his University. But Corfu was chosen-^an island of greater distractions and a more mixed population. Since the union the Ionian Academy has ceased to exist; but its library, a statue, and the name of a street still recall to the Corfiotes the memory of their enthusiastic benefactor. Besides the Academy he established Lancastrian schools; and in the time of Adam the Ionian treasury spent ^7000 a year upon education —a great change from the days of the Venetians. As Foscolo had foreseen, the growth of an educated class, taught the principles of freedom from study of the Greek classics, would tend to undermine the British protectorate, 124 The Creation of the Greek Kingdom [ch. vi while the lack of occupation in the restricted sphere of the Islands inevitably drove the youthful graduates into political agitation. Already in 1819 at Santa Mavra, and in 1820 and 182 1 at Zante, there had been movements against the British. The formation of an independent Greek kingdom naturally increased the nationalist movement, and gave the Unionists a rallying-point. Already, in Adam's time, there were four parties in the Islands — the British, composed of the government officials and the majority of the land-owners; the Russian, which drew support from those nobles, whose feudal privileges had been restricted ; the French ; and the Greek, which hoped for ultimate union but was meanwhile content to live under the British protectorate till the young kingdom had become settled. As yet this party had no press for the expression of its feelings. Such was the state of the Ionian Islands when, in 1832, Sir Frederick Adam retired. CHAPTER VII THE BALKAN AND SYRIAN DIFFICULTIES OF TURKEY (1822-45) The other Christian nationalities of the Balkan peninsula, with the exception of the Orthodox Albanians, showed little concern in the struggle of the Greeks for their independence. In vain Rhegas had appealed to the " tigers of Montenegro," the "Christian brothers of the Save and of the Danube," to "Bulgarians, Serbs, and Roumans" to rise as one people on behalf of the liberty of Greece. Had they heeded the poet's call, the Turks must have been crushed by the forces of the united Christians. But there was no probability of such an alliance of the Balkan peoples against the common enemy. The Roumans actually opposed, while Prince Milosh of Servia abstained from supporting, the Hetairist movement ; not a few Serbs and Bulgarians, it is true, were among Hypselantes' followers in Wallachia, and a Bulgarian band was ready to co-operate with him beyond the Danube. But there was no general rising of the Christians. In 1821, as in 1897, the other Christian races sought so to shape their policy as to profit by the Greco-Turkish war. Not till 1912 did they unite. The Roumans derived the greatest and speediest advantage from their Turcophil attitude by the substitution of native for Phanariote princes in 1822. The two Hospodars, as repre- sentatives of the national party, were delighted to execute the instructions which they had received from the Porte at the time of their appointment, to drive out the Greek monks, to 126 The Balkan difficulties [ch. replenish their empty treasuries with the funds of the Greek monasteries, and to close the Greek schools. French culture came more and more into fashion among the nobles; the resuscitation of their mother-tongue was the object of the patriots. Whereas, a few years earlier, Caragea and Callimachi had drawn up their codes in Greek, as being the language "used in the country," a society was formed for founding native schools, a national theatre, and a Roumanian newspaper. Although first Slavonic, in which the religious books were written, and then Greek had been so long the sole vehicles of ecclesiastical and secular culture, Roumanian had been adopted, owing to the lack of Slav priests, as the language of the Church in the seventeenth century, and had survived throughout even the Phanariote period in the poorer places of worship. Upon this basis, in the last decade of Greek rule, two fervent teachers, George Lazar and George Asaki, had begun to build a modest fabric of practical instruction in the vernacular. Hindered by the events of 182 1, this work was now continued by Asaki and John Eliade Radulescu, who may be regarded as the twin hierophants of the national idea in literature in their respective Principalities. Asaki derived his inspiration from a visit to his "ancestors" on the banks of the Tiber ; Radulescu was a pupil of Lazar, and therefore owed his education to the Roumanians of Transylvania, then more advanced than their brethren in the Principalities. The former was the first person to produce a play in Roumanian; the latter edited in 1829 the first Roumanian newspaper printed in the "bastard Latin" of the Danube, which was quickly followed by a second journal under his colleague's direction. Unfortunately, the spread of French among the nobles led to an intellectual and linguistic chasm being opened between the aristocracy and the people, which has not yet been fully bridged. The French language and French customs were considered the marks of a gentleman, just as at earlier periods a knowledge of Slavonic and Greek had distinguished the governing classes from the vn] Convention of Akkerman 12J peasants. French schools were opened to supply the craving for the idiom of society; and the frequent journeys of the nobles to Paris embarrassed their estates and contributed to the influence of the Jews, especially in Moldavia. Roumanian historians date the national era of their history from 1822. But the appointment of native nobles as princes, although so much desired, was not without its disadvantages. The doyars, who were favourable in the abstract to the election of a Roumanian as Hospodar, were jealous of the elevation of one of their number over their heads. Many of them had fled into Russian or Austrian territory at the time of Hypselantes' campaign; and these exiles complained to the Tsar of the liberal policy of Sturdza in calling new and low-born men to power in Moldavia. When diplomatic relations between Russia and Turkey were resumed, they returned, and wrung from the prince a Golden Bull, exempting them, as of right, from all taxes. Moreover, if Roumanians had emancipated themselves from their Greek rulers, they were overshadowed by the great empire which had already incorporated one Roumanian land and aspired to a protectorate over two of the others. The new Tsar, Nicholas I, had not been many months on the throne when he massed his troops on the Pruth, and haughtily demanded the evacuation of the Principalities by the Turks, who still occupied them. Great Britain urged the Sultan not to provoke him ; the destruction of the Janissaries made it difficult to oppose him; and, on October 7, 1826, he imposed upon Mahmud II the convention of Akkerman, which proclaimed the free navigation of the Black Sea, and provided that the Hospodars should be elected from among the oldest and ablest native nobles, with the consent of the Porte, for seven years. The consent of Russia was required for their deposition or resignation ; her counsels, expressed by her consuls, were to be placed at their disposal ; they were to draw up a scheme of administrative reform for their much vexed Principalities, which for the next two years were to be exempt 128 The Balkan difficulties [ch. from the Turkish tribute, and were thereafter to pay in accordance with the sum fixed in 1802. Russia, it has been justly observed, gained more by this convention than by a war. But it was only the prelude to the war that soon followed. The battle of Navarino made the Tsar eager to attack an enemy whose navy had been shattered, before its army had been reorganised. Great Britain refused to join him, but the formal denunciation of the convention of Akkerman by the Sultan gave him the pretext that he sought. He concluded the war, which he had been carrying on against Persia, with a treaty which secured to him the possession of Edgmiatsin, the seat of the Armenian Katholikos, and on April 26, 1828 declared another war against Turkey. As usual, the first step was the occupation of the Principalities, which on this occasion lasted for six years. The two princes were replaced by a provisional government under Count Pahlen ; the people, so long as the war lasted, experienced the horrors of the transport service, which the starving peasants were forced to undertake in place of their plague-stricken beasts of burden. The second Russo-Turkish war of the nineteenth century was not the military promenade that the Tsar had anticipated. It was easy to occupy the Principalities; but Brai'la and the great Turkish fortresses to the south of the Danube offered a long resistance. Varna was only obtained by treachery due to a palace intrigue against its commander; Shumla repelled repeated attacks; Silistria resisted a four months' blockade. In Asia the Russian arms were more fortunate. The Black Sea fortresses of Anapa and Poti fell; Paskievich, fresh from the Persian war, took Kars, Akhaltsykh, and Ardahan ; Toprak Kaleh and Bayazid fell before the invaders. But the nett result of the year's operations was a diminution of Russian prestige, which rendered a second campaign inevitable. The Tsar, whose pride had been wounded by the stubborn resis- tance of the despised Turks, withdrew from the field, and entrusted the chief command in Europe to General Diebich, vn] Russo-Turkish War of 1828-9 129 an officer of German extraction. The Russian victory at Kulevtcha, and the surrender of Silistria in June, 1829, marked this change of direction. Diebich's army accomplished what the Turks had regarded as the impracticable feat of crossing the Balkans ; and this double passage, from Pravadi to Aitos and from Varna to Bourgas, was performed almost without opposi- tion and with an insignificant loss of life. On July 24 both divisions met at Rumelikioi, while the capture of Bourgas and other places on the Black Sea enabled them to obtain supplies from the Russian fleet. After engagements at Jamboli and Sliven, Diebich marched on August 20 into Adrianople, "like the commander of a new garrison entering a friendly town 1 ." The old capital of the Turkish empire had surrendered without resistance to an army of barely 20,000 men. The audacity of the Russian general and the ingenuousness of the Turks had worked this miracle. Meanwhile, in Asia Paskievich had taken Erzerum, and was preparing to march upon Trebizond. But these striking military successes of the Russian arms were more apparent than real. Mustapha, the reactionary pasha of Albanian Scutari, reached Sofia with 40,000 Arnauts to save an empire which he had hitherto allowed the Russians to weaken ; Shumla, the " virgin fortress " of Vidin, and Rustchuk, were still held by Turkish garrisons. But the Russians had to face an enemy more insidious than Turks or Albanians — the plague and the other diseases, inseparable from the march of a foreign army through regions notorious for their rapid and enormous changes of temperature. In these circumstances the Tsar was anxious to make peace, which Turkish statesmen, ignorant of the true size and condition of the invading army which they magnified to 60,000, and unaware of Mustapha's march, were no less eager to conclude. They feared above all else a revolution in Constantinople, which would cost them their heads; and Baron von Muffling, the Prussian envoy, exerted his great influence on behalf of Russia. Diebich, on 1 Moltke, Der russisch-tiirkische Feldzug, p. 370. M. L. 9 130 The Balkan difficulties [ch. his side, played to perfection the part of a victorious general ; and when the Turkish plenipotentiaries, sent to negotiate peace at Adrianople, realised the true state of affairs and threatened to break off the negotiations, his advanced guard reached Chorlu, more than halfway on the road to Constantinople, while Amos on the ^Egean and Midia on the Euxine were held by the Russians. Simultaneously their fleets cruised off the mouth of the Bosphorus and menaced that of the Dardanelles, whither the British fleet would perhaps have followed the Russian flag and thus anticipated the Crimean war. The British ambassador joined the Prussian representative in urging the Sultan to yield ; and Mahmud II, with tears in his eyes, consented to the disastrous peace of Adrianople. Never in the history of the eastern question has the policy of "bluff" been so successful ; never again till 1878 was a Russian army so near the goal of Russian ambition. The treaty, which was signed in the old Turkish capital on September 14, 1829, did not diminish the territory so much as the prestige of the Sultan. The Tsar restored all the places occupied by his troops in European Turkey, so that the Pruth continued to be the Russo-Turkish boundary ; but all the mouths of the Danube were lost to the Turks, and the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and the Dardanelles were declared free and open to Russian merchantmen of any size, and to those of other Powers at peace with the Porte. In Asia, the Tsar restored Bayazid and Erzerum, but retained Anapa, Poti, and Akhaltsykh, so that the warlike population of the Caucasus was isolated. Turkey was to pay a war indemnity, subsequently reduced ; and the Russians were to occupy the two Principalities and the fortress of Silistria till the whole of it should have been paid. Wallachia and Moldavia were to continue to enjoy their privileges, under the suzerainty of the Porte, but a separate act provided that the Hospodars should be elected for life, and should be removable for one reason alone, the commission of a crime. They were to direct the internal affairs of their vi i] Organisation of the Principalities 1 3 1 respective Principalities in consultation with their extraordinary assemblies, or divans ; and no Turkish fort nor settlement was to be permitted on the left bank of the Danube, where existing Mussulman property was to be sold within 18 months. The Principalities were exempted from furnishing corn, mutton, and wood to the Turkish government, but were to pay compensa- tion for this exemption. On the death or removal of the Hospodar a sum equivalent to the annual tribute was payable ; but the Principalities were freed from the latter for two years after their evacuation by the Russian army of occupation. Thus, the sole remaining ties between the Sultan and the Roumans were the investiture of their princes and the payment of their tribute. But, if the Turkish suzerainty had been diminished, the Russian protectorate had been increased, and the Russian occupation gave the opportunity of strengthening Muscovite influence. Count Paul KisselefT, to whom the Tsar entrusted the administration of the Principalities after the peace of Adrianople, bestowed real benefits upon their afflicted populations. He grappled successively and successfully with the plague, the cholera, and the famine, which befell them ; and, after ensuring their material welfare, resumed the elaboration of that organic statute, which had been promised in the convention of Akkerman and had been begun during the war. This reglement organiqtie, as it was called, was drawn up by a joint-commission of four Wallachian and four Moldavian nobles, under Russian auspices, and promulgated in the two Principalities in 1831 and 1832 respectively. As might have been anticipated from its origin, if it put an end to the prevalent anarchy of the administration, it left Roumanian society on a strictly olig- archical basis, of which the recognised exemption of the nobles from all contributions was the most remarkable proof. To retain the support of the nobles, Russia sacrificed the cultivators of the soil, whose position was made doubly worse by an increase in the days of compulsory work for the landlords and 9-2 132 The Balkan difficulties [ch. a decrease in the extent of land with which the landlords were obliged to furnish them in return. The peasants had thus all the burdens, the aristocracy all the honours, of public life ; but, in order to prevent either the boyars or the future prince from becoming too powerful, the Russians resorted to the plan, which they adopted in Bulgaria in 1879, of introducing a constitutional system of checks and balances so dexterously formed as to neutralise the power of the prince by that of the nobles, and the power of the nobles by that of the prince. Accordingly, an Assembly of boyars was to be elected, and had the right of complaining to the suzerain and the protecting Powers against him ; but he, on the other hand, might prorogue a seditious Assembly, and appeal to the two Imperial guardians of his Principality for leave to convoke another. In either case, the Tsar would be likely to be the arbitrator. Having thus organised the Principalities, the Russians withdrew in 1834, when a special arrangement between the Tsar and the Sultan provided that for this occasion only the two courts should name the princes. As such, Alexander II Ghika, younger brother of the prince of 1822-8, and Michael Sturdza were appointed for Wallachia and Moldavia respectively. Russia still, however, continued to exert her influence in the internal affairs of the Roumans by means of her consuls ; she actually pretended that no change should be made in the organic statute without her consent and that of Turkey, and she opposed all attempts at propagating the national language. Her intrigues culminated in 1842 in the deposition of Ghika. While Greece had been the theatre of one war, and the Principalities the base of another, Servia had been at peace with Turkey and undisturbed by the presence of Russian troops. Milosh, already recognised by his own people as their supreme and hereditary chief, was promised in 1820 the recognition of the Porte, which was also willing to fix the amount of the Servian tribute, if the Serbs would accept this as a final settle- ment. This offer was rejected, and a Servian deputation, sent VIl] Servian Autonomy 133 to negotiate at Constantinople, was arrested, and kept under observation for five years. Further negotiations were suspended till the convention of Akkerman and the special act relating to Servia, which accompanied it, ratified and extended the previous Turkish concessions. The Porte undertook to execute without delay the eighth article of the treaty of Bucharest, to inform the Russian government of the fulfilment of this undertaking, and within 18 months to settle in concert with the deputies of the Servian people at Constantinople the points demanded by the latter. These included internal autonomy, the right to choose the chiefs of the nation, and the reunion with Servia of the six Servian districts, which had been comprised within the jurisdiction of Kara George, but had not taken part in the rising of Milosh. The Porte showed, however, no inclination to perform these pledges, given at Akkerman; and matters remained as they were until the conclusion of the Russo- Turkish war — a struggle in which, by the express desire of Diebich, anxious not to provoke Austrian jealousies or Turkish reprisals, the Serbs confined themselves to the work of hindering the junction of a Bosnian force with the Turkish army. In the treaty of Adrianople they had their reward ; the Porte promised to execute "without the least delay" the annexe of the Akkerman convention, and more especially the pledge for the restoration of the six detached Servian districts. The Imperial decree to this effect was to be communicated to Russia in a month's time ; but the usual procrastination of Turkish diplomacy deferred till 1830 the formal grant of Servian autonomy. No Turks, except the garrisons of the fortresses, were to live in Servia ; Turkish estates there were to be sold, and the incomes of the zaims and timarioies assessed and paid to the Sultan, who would compensate his vassals for their lost privileges in the land. The Servian tribute was fixed, and was to be collected by the Serbs themselves ; and, in place of Greek bishops, sent from Constantinople, they might choose men of their own race, subject to the approval of the 134 The Balkan difficulties [ch. (Ecumenical Patriarch. The entire internal administration was entrusted to " the Prince," as Milosh was officially desig- nated, who was to exercise his powers in conjunction with the Assembly of the elders. That astute personage had offered to resign in favour of another, now that the work, which he had begun, seemed to be accomplished ; the result of this mock abdication was his re-election by the Assembly and his formal investiture, on August 3, 1830, as hereditary Prince, by the Sultan. Still, however, the Porte hesitated to restore the six separated Servian districts, till Milosh selected a favourable moment, when Turkey was embroiled with Egypt, to foment disturbances among their inhabitants, and then invaded them to "restore order." Thus, at last* in 1833, tne Turks recognised the logic of facts ; and the Servian princi- pality, enlarged by one-third, stretched as far as Aleksinatz on the south, the Drina on the west, and the Timok on the east — boundaries which it retained unaltered till the treaty of Berlin. Within these boundaries, however, there still remained the Turkish garrisons of the fortresses ; and, by an ingenious quibble of the Ottoman government, supported by the Tsar, to whom the point was submitted for arbitration, the tumble- down defences of the town of Belgrade were held to constitute a " fortress," so that the Turkish population remained there. Accordingly, in 1833, Belgrade continued to be exempt from the fresh order which bade all Mussulmans outside the fortresses leave Servia within five years; and in 1838 there were still 2700 Turks in the town — a cause of continual friction, which 24 years later led to a sanguinary conflict. With this exception, the principality of Servia was, so far as internal administration was concerned, free from the interference of the Turks in politics, of the Greeks in religion. A national government and a national church had replaced a system of alien rule, although absolute independence had not been obtained. But the peasants had not profited by this change of masters. They complained of being obliged VIl] Government of Milosh 135 to provide provisions for the local chiefs on journeys, of forced labour, and of other exactions ; and their complaints found vent in a revolt, which was suppressed by the powerful chief, Vutchich, at the moment when the insurgents were actually marching on Kragujevatz, where Milosh had fixed the seat of government. The confirmation of his authority by the Sultan made Milosh more autocratic than before. If he pretended to adapt the Code Napoleon to the use of his subjects, he acted as if his will were the only law. He took meadows and houses at his own price ; he allowed a suburb of Belgrade to be burned down, in order to erect new buildings on the site ; he made the Belgrade shopkeepers put up their shutters to unload his hay. By enclosing the commons, he tried to secure a monopoly of the pig-trade, which was the staple industry of Servia; and if, by refusing to grant fiefs, he benefited the cultivators of the soil and saved them from feudal oppression, he thereby alien- ated many of his own friends. The discontent of the latter led to a conspiracy against him in 1835; the conspirators occupied Kragujevatz ; and Milosh was forced to call an Assembly and to promise a constitution. This first essay at constitutional government in Servia, called from the place of meeting, the " Constitution of Sretenje," created a ministry of six persons, chosen from the Council of State, a committee of leading men which dated from the. early days of Kara George's rising. The Prince was bound to sanction any law thrice approved by the Council, which was to share with him the legislative and executive power, as foreshadowed in the Imperial decree of 1830, and of which all present and past ministers were ex officio members. As an arbiter between the Prince and the Council was instituted an annual Assembly, or Skupshtina, of 100 deputies, to be elected by the people a provision which thus regulated and systematised the former haphazard method of convoking such Assemblies. For the time being, however, the jurisdiction of this body was practically restricted to finance. The " Constitution of Sretenje " was, 136 The Balkan difficulties [ch. however, suppressed almost as soon as it had been signed. Austria and Russia, aghast at the introduction of such principles in a state so near to one, and so dear to the other, protested; and the Sultan encouraged Milosh, who was nothing loth, to suspend it. The official press announced that he was the sole ruler in Servia, and he became more autocratic and more unpopular than ever. He established a monopoly of the salt which was imported from Wallachia, and spent the profits of this transaction in buying land there. Even his own brother Jephrem joined the Opposition, and was compelled, with Vutchich, to leave the country; while Russia viewed with disapproval the pre- ponderance of the Prince's authority over that of the Oligarchy and the consequent failure of her scheme to make the one counterbalance the other. At that moment Milosh received support from an un- expected quarter. Lord Palmerston had come to the conclusion that to strengthen the small Christian states of the near east was the true policy of both Turkey and Great Britain. He saw, as Sir William White saw in our own time, that the Balkan peoples would thus become a barrier against Russian aggression. Accordingly, in 1837, Col. Hodges arrived in Servia as the first British consul ever accredited to that principality, and encouraged the Prince in his autocratic and anti-Russian attitude. Thus, the little Servian court became the scene of a diplomatic battle between the western Powers and the Tsar. The Sultan, then under the influence of Russia, with which he had concluded the humiliating treaty of Hunkiar Iskelesi in 1833 (seep. 147), could not, however, be persuaded by British diplomacy to support the authority of the Prince against the wishes of his own all-powerful protector. An Imperial decree of December, 1838, limited Milosh's sway by creating a Senate of 17 life members, corresponding with the 17 provinces of the principality. From this Senate four ministers were to be chosen, and all disputes between the Prince and this Council were to be referred to his suzerain. VIl] Milosh abdicates 137 Milosh was not the man to acquiesce in such a limitation of his powers. He stirred up the peasants, with the assistance of his brother John, by disseminating the statement that thenceforth they would have not one master, but seventeen. The Senate, however, ordered his enemy Vutchich to suppress this revolt ; and the triumphant leader, on his return to Belgrade, entered the Prince's house, and plainly told him that the nation had no further need of him. On June 13, 1839, the second founder of modern Servia abdicated in favour of his invalid elder son, Milan Obrenovich II, and crossed the SavWv^Qn July 9 Milan died, without even knowing that he had been Prince of Servia. Meanwhile, Vutchich, Jephrem Obrenovich, and the Turcophil Petronievich continued to carry on the government. The Senate then decided to ask for the appointment of Milosh's younger son Michael Obrenovich III. The Sultan consented, but the patent of investiture omitted all mention of the hereditary character of the princely dignity. A Regency conducted affairs till Michael attained his majority on March 5, 1840; and even th^n the Porte forced upon him as advisers the two ex-Regen'cs, Vutchich and Petronievich. This last act was in contravention of the recognised right of the Serbs to choose theii own officials, and aroused widespread opposition. The peasants, preferring the rule of one man to that of several, clamoured^ for the prosecution of the two advisers, the recall of Milo' h, and the restoration of the seat of government to Kragi jevatz, a place less exposed to foreign influence than Belgrade, a Turkish fortress on the Austrian frontier. Micha^ 1 CO' sented to return to the former capital, and his ad sought refuge with the Turkish commander of Belg r ' subsequently in Turkey itself. Unfortunatelv t 1 ■ ' servatism of the peasantry was alienate '•■ policy of Michael's Minister of T Austrian Serb, who sough ' mi jnity of t>*" 138 The Balkan difficulties [ch. peoples have always seen in a census a new engine of taxation, for to the oriental mind statistics are the prelude of the tax- collector; the social elevation of the clergy meant expense to the villagers, who shook their heads over the advantages of schools; while the Turkish authorities complained of the creation of a national theatre, where patriotic dramatists glorified the Servian hero who had slain Murad I on the field of Kossovo. Naturally this progressive policy cost money ; and the most unpopular of all Michael's measures was the incase of the national tax, into which in 1834 all the various imposts had been consolidated. Moreover, the young Prince had foes in his own household ; his mother wished for the restoration of his father ; his uncle John was discontented. The recall of the exiles, who had sought shelter in Turkey, provided the Opposition with leaders. A " constitutional " party was formed against the Prince ; and Vutchich, putting himself forward in August 1842 as the spokesman of all those who were dissatisfied from one cause or another with the government, demanded the dismissal of Michael's ministers and the reduction of taxation. The Prince, who had committed the mistake of returning to Belgrade, was abandoned by his troops when he marched against the insurgents ; and, as the Turkish governor of that fortress favoured them, he had no option but to cross the Save on August 29, as his father had done three years earlier. Vutchich again entered Belgrade in triumph, and, as self-styled "leader of the nation," formed a provisional government, which summoned a National Assembly for the election of a Prince. This Assembly me t September 14, 1842, and elected Alexander Karageorge ich, ^er but sole surviving son of Kara George, a nran ^f age, who had been a pensioner of Milosh and " vn^ggj anc j whose name and uncompromised ^ the Serbs. The Porte ratified the the Interior, remained the VIlJ Bosnian risings 139 The Tsar, however, who regarded himself as the virtual protector of Servia, protested against this change of ruler as illegal and revolutionary, and demanded the deposition of Prince Alexander, a new election, the removal of the Turkish commissioner who had been present at the meeting of the Assembly, and the punishment of Vutchich and Petronievich. Lord Aberdeen, however, British Foreign Secretary, advocated the retention of Alexander ; and a diplomatic compromise was made, by which the election was annulled on the understanding that the Tsar would not oppose Alexander's re-election. On June 15, 1843, ne was re-elected; but the Russian autocrat would not be pacified until Vutchich and Petronievich had left the country, whither they shortly returned. The Serbs of Bosnia had meanwhile been much less tractable than their fellows in Servia. The reforms of Mahmud II met with a resolute opposition from the privileged aristocracy of that feudal land. The discontent of the Bosnian nobles, which had begun with the arrival of a Turkish governor, determined to deal out even-handed justice to all classes and creeds, broke out into open rebellion on the destruction of the Janissaries and the subsequent military reforms. Sarajevo had been a favourite station of the disbanded corps ; and when its fanatical inhabitants learnt that thenceforth the Turkish soldier was expected to wear two crossed belts on his breast after the Austrian model, they exclaimed with sarcasm, that if they had to take the cross at all, it should be from the hands of the Austrian or the Russian Emperor. Under the leader- ship of All Pasha of Zvornik, the rebels drove out the governor sent by the " Giaour Sultan "; and the most vigorous measures on the part of his successor were required to re-establish his master's authority. But, when the conclusion of the Russo- Turkish war gave Mahmud time to continue his well-meant reforms, the Bosniaks rose again against a movement, which they regarded as a double menace to their class privileges and their religious liberty. In Hussein- Aga, the headman of 140 The Balkan difficulties [ch. Gradishka on the Bosnian bank of the Save, they found a natural leader. Hussein-Aga is one of the most romantic figures of Bosnian history. Young, handsome, and rich, he had the courage of a hero, and the reputation of a saint. His friends called him "the Dragon of Bosnia"; and, if he had been a real dragon, his enemies could not have fled more rapidly before him. He had but to unfurl the green flag of the Prophet in Banjaluka, and the religious fanaticism of the country rose to fever heat. He marched at the head of his enthusiastic followers into Sarajevo ; the Sultan's officials were either driven out of the towns or killed, and the governor only saved his life by flight. But even this did not satisfy the zeal of this new apostle. He meditated nothing less than a campaign against the Sultan beyond the boundaries of Bosnia. On the fatal plain of Kossovo, where four and a half centuries before the Bosnian Christians had fought in vain against the Turks, the leader of the Bosnian Mussulmans assembled his followers against the same foe. The discontented flocked to his standard from all quarters — the pasha of Albania, at the head of 20,000 warlike Arnauts from "bloody Scutari," the pasha of Sofia with a detachment from Bulgaria. So long as the three chiefs were united, they carried all before them ; but the astute Grand Vizier, Reshid Pasha, succeeded in separating the Albanians from the Bosniaks and dealing with each apart. The newly appointed governor of Bosnia made himself master of Sarajevo, and set the native nobility at defiance by estab- lishing his residence there, instead of at Travnik, the customary abode of the Sultan's representative. Hussein fled across the Save into Slavonia, where he was received by the orders of the Austrian Emperor with every mark of respect. But his presence so near the frontier was a source of embarrassment, for Bosnian bands were perpetually plundering the confines of the Austrian empire, and on three occasions the Austrian government had to take upon itself the duty of chastising the Sultan's rebellious subjects. Hussein was accordingly given VIl] Rizvanbegovich the choice of residing under closer supervision or of returning to Turkey. He chose the latter, and died in exile on his way to Trebizond. But the rising of 1831 was only the precursor of further troubles. When the new Sultan, Abdul Mejid, proclaimed the equality of all his subjects before the law in the famous hatti-sherlf of Giil-khaneh, the Bosnian reactionaries once more displayed an obstinate resistance. At last, in 1849, the rising had attained such formidable dimensions that the Sultan resolved to make an end of the feudal system altogether. He accordingly dispatched the celebrated Omar Pasha, a Croatian renegade, and therefore a Mohammedan Slav, like so many Bosniaks, to crush all opposition to his will. The rebels were secretly abetted by Ali Pasha Rizvanbegovich, the last great figure in the history of the Herzegovina, who had taken the side of the Sultan in the revolt of 1831, and had been rewarded with the governor- ship of that province. In his castle at Stolatz, and in his splendid summer residence at Buna, near Mostar, Rizvan- begovich lived like an independent prince. He called the Herzegovina "my province"; his subjects called him u a second Duke Stephen " after the famous Vuktchich of the fifteenth century, from the German form of whose ducal title the Herzegovina received its modern name. He was, indeed, the father of his people. He taught them to grow rice in the marshes of the Narenta ; he planted the olive and the vine; he strove to extend the culture of the silk-worm. Severe against the Christians who dared to revolt, he naturally sym- pathised with the refractory Mussulman nobles. But he was no match for Omar in cunning. As soon as he had subdued Bosnia, the generalissimo of the Sultan entered Mostar. Omar invited his wily antagonist to his table, and when the old man came had him dragged down to the famous most or " bridge" over the Narenta, whence the town derives its name, and placed upon an ass as a sign of his contempt. In this humiliating position, Rizvanbegovich implored his captor to 142 The Balkan difficulties [ch. send him to the Sultan for judgment. But Omar feared to send so wealthy an enemy to the Turkish capital. , One of those lucky accidents so common in Turkish history relieved him of all anxiety. A gun — so the official version ran — chanced to go off in the night, and the head of the captive happened to be in the way of the bullet. Bosnia and the Herzegovina were at Omar's mercy. The begs lost their old feudal privileges, and their country was administered from Constantinople. As a token of his power, Omar in 1850 made Sarajevo, instead of Travnik, the definite seat of government, and retained the post of governor-general for nearly 20 years. But even his authority was unable to restrain the mutual animosity of Christians and Mussulmans. Whenever a Christian rising took place in the Herzegovina the Montenegrins came to the assistance of their brother Serbs, men of the same race and religion as themselves. Montenegro was, indeed, a continual source of trouble to the Turks. The Prince-Bishop Peter I waged a successful campaign against the governor of Bosnia in 1819; and the repulse of a Turkish invasion from the side of Albania during the Russo-Turkish war led to the recognition of Montenegrin sovereignty over the Piperi tribe. When, in 1830, Peter I ended his long reign of 48 years, he had the satisfaction of having united to his little state the three districts of the Piperi, the Kutchi, and the Bijelopavlich, so called after "the son of Paul the White," a relative of the famous medieval hero, Lek Dukagin. But not only had he nearly doubled Montenegro, he had also given it a code, and obtained the payment of the long-discontinued Russian subsidy of 1,000 ducats, and the delimitation of the boundary between Montenegro and her new neighbour, Austria. Future generations will perhaps regard as the most important and fatal event of his long reign this substitution of an active European Power for the moribund Venetian Republic in the possession of Dalmatia. The French annexation of that province was but an episode ; but the VIl] Peter II of Montenegro 143 Austrians came to stay, and their occupation of the Herze- govina in 1878 and their annexation of it in 1908 increased the embarrassment of the mountaineers. Peter I, who is venerated as a saint by the pious pilgrims to his tomb in the monastery church at Cetinje, and who is known as the " Great Vladika" was succeeded, according to the usual custom, by his nephew, who took the name of Peter II. The new Prince-Bishop, a combination of poet, historical dramatist, and statesman, not uncommon in the Petrovich dynasty, began by a series of reforms. He created a police force, founded a printing-press, the successor of that formed at Obod in 1493, established a paid, permanent Senate (or Soviet) of 12 members and a president with deliberative and judicial functions, and divided the enlarged principality into eight districts (or nahie), of which the four on the other side of the Zeta valley, known as the Brda (or " mountains ") gave to the ruler his second title. The popu- lation of the little state, thus reorganised, was estimated in 1846 at 120,000 souls. Peter II further abolished the dual system of government, which had prevailed since 15 16. From that time the Prince-Bishop had always had at his side a lay official, known as the civil "governor," originally chosen from among the leading families of the Katounska district, in which Cetinje is situated, and latterly always a member of the house of Radonich. A dispute arose between Peter and the civil governor; and the former settled the question in 1832 by decreeing the abolition of the office and the banishment of Vuko Radonich, its last holder. Thus, in Montenegro, as in Japan, the spiritual authority suppressed the temporal; and for the next 20 years Montenegro was a theocracy, but as warlike as ever. In vain the Sultan tempted the Prince-Bishop to recognise him as his suzerain by the offer of the city of Scutari, a frontage on the Adriatic, and a part of the Herze- govina for himself and his heirs; but the pride and sturdy independence of Peter II would not allow him to accept a 144 The Balkan difficulties [ch. subordinate position such as that of Milosh. Consequently, a fresh Turco-Montenegrin campaign took place in 1832, in which the Turks were worsted; in 1835 a body of Montenegrins seized the ancient Montenegrin capital of Jablyak, which their ruler, however, thought it prudent to hand back to the Sultan; in 1840 a scheme for the capture of the still Turkish towns of Podgoritza and Spuj provoked another Turkish invasion. For several years, too, the indefinite status of the district of Grahovo on the Herzegovinian frontier involved the Monte- negrins in conflicts with Turkey. A treaty signed in 1838 had declared Grahovo to be neutral territory, under an hereditary vo'ivode, confirmed in his dignity by the Prince- Bishop and the governors of Bosnia and the Herzegovina ; and this transitory state of things was continued by subsequent agreements. Finally, in 1843 the seizure by the Turks of the islands of Lessandria and Vranina in the lake of Scutari, by interfering with the fishing, severely injured the adjacent district of Montenegro. Several years of comparative peace with Turkey followed ; but a sanguinary incident with the little country's other great neighbour had already arisen. The Pastrovich clan, inhabiting the Austrian littoral from Budua to Spizza, had sold its lands to the Montenegrins, naturally anxious for an outlet on the sea. Austria objected to this virtual occupation of her territory by her neighbours, and offered to buy out the purchasers. The valuation, however, led to a fatal collision between the Austrians and the Monte- negrins in 1838, and ^40,000 barely compensated the latter for the loss of this strip of coast. More serious still was the civil war, a thing almost unknown in the history of Montenegro, which broke out in 1847, owing to the attempt of the Piperi and Crnitchka districts to secede from a principality which was afflicted by famine, and could not relieve them with the liberal rations of the Turks. The secessionists were subdued, and their ringleaders shot. It was not in Europe alone that the reforming Sultan had VIl] Revolt of Mehemet Ali 145 enemies to face. Scarcely had he ended the war with the Greeks and signed the treaty of Adrianople with the Russians than in 1830 his prestige was wounded in Africa by the French conquest of Algiers, which had acknowledged the nominal suzerainty of Turkey since 15 19, but had been long practically independent under its Deys. Far more serious than this moral defeat was the revolt of Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, in 1831, which threatened the very existence of the Ottoman throne. The ambitious Albanian was not satisfied with the reward which he had received for his services to his suzerain during the Greek war ; Crete seemed to him an inadequate equivalent for the loss of the Morea; he in vain asked the Sultan to compensate his son Ibrahim with the pashalik of Damascus; and refusal made him all the more eager to obtain it. He knew that the reforms of Mahmud II had rendered their author unpopular; religious fanaticism and vested interests had been alike wounded by the abolition of the Bektash dervishes, which had followed that of the Janissaries; one conflagration after another showed the dislike of the Conservatives at Constanti- nople to the new methods of their master; one insurrection after another in the provinces of Europe suggested a greater, and probably more successful, rising in Africa. Mehemet Ali could contemplate with self-complacency the condition of Egypt as compared with that of the rest of the Turkish empire. A French officer had organised his army ; a French constructor had rebuilt his fleet ; a French doctor had taught his physicians ; he was the sole landowner, the sole manufacturer, the sole contractor in the country, where human lives were reckoned of as little account as in the time of the Pharaohs. The one thing lacking was complete independence, and the moment seemed propitious for its attainment. An excuse was readily found in the refusal of Abdullah, Pasha of Acre, to give up some Egyptian refugees, victims of Mehemet Ali's state socialism, who had taken refuge in the old city of the crusaders. Ibrahim thereupon invaded Syria; Jaffa and M. L. IO 146 The Syrian difficulties [ch. Jerusalem were occupied by his troops; the Sultan's tardy resolve to declare his rebellious subject an outlaw was followed by the capture of Acre, the defeat of the Turkish troops and the surrender of Damascus. The diplomacy of the invading commander won for him the sympathy of the Syrian population; his Strategy defeated the Ottoman generals, including Hussein Pasha, the commander-in-chief, in three successive battles. The victorious Egyptian troops crossed the Taurus mountains and entered Asia Minor ; the Egyptian Viceroy demanded Syria, already conquered, as the price of peace. Mahmud applied for the assistance of Great Britain, and sent Reshid Pasha, who had just pacified Albania, to crush the revolt of the greatest living Albanian. On December 21, 1832, Reshid was defeated and taken prisoner at Konieh ; Constantinople itself seemed to be at the mercy of the rebellious vassal. The Sultan in vain opened negotiations with Mehemet Ali, at the suggestion of the French government; master of Syria, the Viceroy asked for Adana as well. This demand was refused ; Ibrahim's reply was to order his advance-guard to occupy Brusa, the ancient capital of the Ottoman empire. Then Mahmud, finding the British government engaged with the affairs of Belgium and the French inclined to view with sympathy a ruler whose successes had been largely due to French organisation, threw himself into the arms of his hereditary enemy, the Tsar, whose army less than four years earlier had marched upon Constantinople. In February, 1833, a Russian fleet entered the Bosphorus; the " protector " of Roumans and Serbs against their sovereign had come to "protect" that sovereign against his vassal. The arrival of the Russians in the Bosphorus caused far greater alarm in western Europe than the successes of Ibrahim. In their dealings with Turkey, the Christian Powers have always shown more zeal for what they believed to be their own interests than for those of either the Sultan or his subjects. It was a matter of less moment to the statesmen of London vn] Treaty of Hunkiar Iskelesi 147 and Paris that an Albanian dynasty should displace the house of Osman than that the Tsar should obtain an exclusive influence at Constantinople. But while British and French diplomatists wrote dispatches, the Russians strengthened their position. A second Russian squadron entered the Bosphorus ; a Russian army encamped on its Asian shore. As the Russians had not yet evacuated Silistria and the Principalities, further forces were easily available. Then Mehemet and Mahmud came to terms; the Viceroy received for himself the whole of Syria, for his son the collectorship of Adana. While he had thus obtained his price by attacking his sovereign, the Tsar was resolved to secure his reward for defending the latter. On July 8, 1833, at Hunkiar Iskelesi ("the landing-place of the manslayer ") on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus was signed a Russo-Turkish treaty of mutual alliance and assistance. Russia pledged herself to provide troops for the Sultan in case of need ; but a secret article stipulated that if " the need " were that of Russia, the Sultan, instead of providing troops, should close the Dardanelles to the war-ships of all nations. Thus, while Russia could intervene in the affairs of Turkey, the other Powers were excluded ; and with a stroke of the pen Mahmud II had signed away his own independence. The British Foreign Office, taken unawares— for it did not receive an accurate text of the treaty till some months after the announcement of its signature by a London newspaper — pretended to ignore its existence ; British and French influence sank at Constantinople, where Russia was all-powerful; nor was the Tsar greatly moved by the subsequent protests of the two western Powers, whose diplomacy he had out- witted. The peace between the Sultan and his Viceroy did not last long, for neither was Mahmud II the man to forget his humiliation, nor Mehemet Ali to forgo an advantage. The Syrians soon became discontented with the rule of their new master. Ibrahim, like everyone else who has attempted 10—2 148 The Syrian difficulties [ch. to enforce the equality before the law of all races and creeds in Turkey, aroused the opposition of the Mussulmans, long accustomed to regard the Christians as their inferiors. By his introduction of his father's system of monopolies he crippled Syrian commerce; by the enforcement of conscription he offended the mountaineers of the Lebanon, just as by a similar policy the "Young Turks" of to-day have alienated those of Albania. So early as 1834 he was obliged to repress a revolt, which Mahmud was prevented by foreign diplomacy alone from assisting. Further risings followed, but an armed peace was preserved till 1839, when Mahmud could be restrained no longer. Both adversaries had special motives for hastening hostilities. Mahmud had lately concluded with Great Britain a commercial treaty, which, by repudiating the practice of monopolies throughout the Turkish empire, struck a blow at the economic system which Mehemet and his son had erected in Egypt and Syria. It was, therefore, more than ever their interest to sever their possessions from the other Turkish dominions by a declaration of independence. Prudence suggested the taking of this step before the Turkish troops had been thoroughly re-organised by the Prussian officer who was destined to plan the German victory of 1870, but who could not hinder an Egyptian victory in 1839. Palmerston's re- monstrances prevented Mehemet from becoming the aggressor; but his warnings to Mahmud were neutralised by the Turcophil opinions of his ambassador, and by the passion of the dying Sultan for revenge. On April 21 the Turkish army crossed the Euphrates ; two months later Ibrahim annihilated it at Nezib. Mahmud, fortunate in the opportunity of his death, expired on July 1, 1839, without hearing the news of this crushing defeat, the last blow of the many that had befallen the empire during his long reign. He had witnessed the independence of Greece, the autonomy of Servia, the loss of Algiers, the revolt of his subjects in Bosnia, Albania, and Egypt. He had seen the Russian frontier advanced to the vn] Abdul Mejid 149 Pruth, the Russian protectorate extended first over his own Roumanian vassals, then over himself ; he had signed the three humiliating treaties of Akkerman, Adrianople, and Hunkiar Iskelesi. Nor had his efforts as a reformer been very successful ; if he had escaped the fate of his predecessor, the progressive Selim III, he had gained little but obloquy from those whom he had sought to improve in spite of themselves. Even to-day it is not yet certain whether Turkey be capable of reformation, whether the " Young Turk " be not merely the Old Turk in European clothes. No recent Sultan, however, has brought to this difficult task the energy and the indomitable force of will possessed by Mahmud II. The reign of his son and successor, Abdul Mejid, opened with a fresh disaster — the betrayal of the Turkish fleet by its admiral to Mehemet AH at Alexandria. Thus defeated on land and deserted at sea, the Turkish government offered to make terms with Mehemet Ali, promising him the hereditary Viceroyalty of Egypt with Syria as an appanage for Ibrahim till such time as, in due course of nature, the latter should succeed him on the viceregal throne. The five Cabinets of Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia presented, however, a joint note to the Porte, urging that no final decision should be taken without their concurrence, inasmuch as the quarrel between Turkey and her vassal had become a question of European concern. But it soon became obvious that this striking unanimity of the five governments existed on paper alone, and not even on paper for long. While the British Foreign Secretary desired to reconfine Mehemet Ali within the boundaries of Egypt, the French Ministry could not resist the natural pressure of public opinion in favour of the Viceroy, who owed so much to France and from whom France might hope so much in return. Thiers, who became Premier at this juncture, went still further in support of Mehemet Ali ; and the British and French governments drifted apart to such an 150 The Syrian difficulties [ch. extent, that, without the knowledge of the latter, the other four Powers concluded, in London on July 15, 1840, a convention pledging themselves to force Mehemet Ali to accept the terms arranged by them with the Sultan. These terms were the hereditary Viceroyalty of Egypt and the life governorship of southern Syria with the possession of the fortress of Acre, on condition that he submitted within ten days and evacuated the north of Syria, Adana, the holy places of Arabia, and Crete. At the end of that time the offer of southern Syria and Acre, at the end of ten days more that of the hereditary Viceroyalty of Egypt, would be withdrawn. Great was the indignation of the French when this quadri- lateral convention became known. Thiers, the historian of Napoleon, felt that it was "the Waterloo of his diplomacy"; the press, as usual, stirred up public excitement in a question which was supposed to affect the national honour ; and even the middle-class monarch was constrained to speak of "unmuzzling the tiger" of revolution, in order to preserve his popularity. Patriots talked of invading Germany and Italy, of renewing the exploits of Napoleon, of exacting vengeance from his victors. Rival poets hurled challenges across the Rhine ; bellicose newspapers exchanged threats across the Channel. Meanwhile, the allies were acting; the appearance of an Anglo-Austrian fleet under Sir Charles Napier off Beirut en- couraged the mountaineers of Lebanon, deprived of their ancient privileges by the centralising despotism of Ibrahim, to rise against him. Beirut fell ; Acre, which had resisted Bonaparte, was taken after a bombardment of three hours. Napier, while Ibrahim was retreating towards Egypt, concluded a convention with Mehemet Ali at Alexandria, promising to obtain for him the hereditary possession of that country as a pashalik of the Turkish empire, on condition that he made no further claims to Syria but restored the Turkish fleet. In the interval Thiers had fallen, and the return to power of Marshal Soult, who was highly appreciated in London, with vn] Settlement of Egypt 151 Guizot, fresh from the London Embassy, as his Minister of Foreign Affairs, banished the fear of an European war, in which the Tsar had promised to assist Great Britain. It only remained to convince the Porte of the necessity of carrying out Napier's promises. After the usual procrastination, the hereditary pashalik of Egypt was conferred in 1841 upon Mehemet Ali and his descendants in order of primogeniture, under pressure from the Powers; his army was reduced to 18,000 men, and its higher officers were to be appointed by the Sultan, whose leave was necessary for the construction of an Egyptian navy, and to whom the Viceroy was to pay an annual tribute of ^T.400,000. The Nubian conquests of Ibrahim were entrusted to the Viceroy for life. The Sultan also conferred as an appanage upon Mehemet the island of Thasos, where the Viceroy's ancestors had once lived; but a Christian primate was elected as the assessor of the Egyptian governor. Thence- forth Mehemet Ali troubled European diplomacy no more, while France, returning to the European Concert, signed with the other four governments at London on July 13, 1841, the " Convention of the Straits," which closed the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, so long as the Porte was at peace, to the vessels of war of all foreign Powers. This dangerous crisis in the eastern question was over ; and the young Sultan was able to devote his attention to the difficult task of enforcing that charter of reforms, which, on November 3, 1839, he had solemnly published in the kiosk of Giil-khaneh. The lives, property, and honour of all his subjects, irrespective of race or creed, were guaranteed ; the incidence of taxation was deter- mined and its collection regulated; the European system of recruiting introduced. Yet the evils of the Ottoman empire have rarely proceeded from lack of good laws, but from the want of their application. Nowhere are theory and practice so far asunder as in Turkey, and nowhere is the saying of the Roman historian truer, that the state is most corrupt, when the laws are most numerous. The Syrian difficulties [ch. The Egyptian occupation of Syria had bequeathed a legacy of anarchy to the inhabitants of the Lebanon. The biblical mountain of the cedars had been ruled since 1697 as a feudal principality under the suzerainty of the Sultan by a prince of the family of Shihab. In 1840, however, Beshir-Shihab, "the last great Prince of the Mountain," was deposed by the Turkish government, and sent into exile, and his relative Beshir-el- Kassim Mulhem invested with the principality. It was the object of the Sultan's advisers to destroy the ancient autonomy of the Lebanon, and reduce that privileged mountain to the dead-level of a provincial governorship. They relied for the attainment of this policy upon the weak character of the new prince and the mutual animosities of the Maronites and Druses, who formed the majority of the inhabitants ; for unfortunately this single area was peopled by different races of no less than six creeds. The Maronites, Roman Catholics whose services in the Crusades had gained them the promise of protection from St Louis himself, were under the special patronage of the French. At the instigation of France, Suleyman II had twice guaranteed to them the exercise of their religion ; they had a special college in Rome; and in their churches at home a place of honour was reserved for the French consul, who was wont to hold his naked sword over the open book of the Gospel, in token of his sovereign's protection. The Druses, whose religious opinions were flexible but inclined on the whole towards a form of Mohammedanism, were the natural enemies of their Maronite neighbours, and in the opinion of French writers were considered to be the puppets of British policy in Syria. It did not, however, require any of those Machiavellian intrigues, which foreign publicists are fond of associating with our somewhat ingenuous statesmen, to induce the warlike Druses to rise against the feeble prince whom the Turks had set over them. In October, 1 841, they rebelled against his authority and massacred the Christian villagers, with the complicity of the Turkish authorities, who then stepped in to restore order. Beshir-el-Kassim was VIl] The Lebanon 153 deposed; and direct Ottoman government, in the person of Omar Pasha, the former writing-master, and future Field- Marshal of the Sultan, was installed on the Lebanon. This remarkable man, who played so conspicuous a part in the history of the near east, alike in the Lebanon, in Albania, in the Danubian Principalities, in Bosnia, in Montenegro, in the Crimea, and in Crete, was an Austrian subject and a Croat by birth, whose real name was Michael Lattas. Deserting from the frontier guard, he had fled to Vidin, learnt Turkish, and embraced Islam as a means of advancement. After acting for some years as clerk to Hussein, then governor of Vidin, he had gravitated to Constantinople, where he taught the future Sultan, Abdul Mejid, calligraphy, and then, entering the army, received his baptism of fire at Nezib. His old pupil naturally considered him a fit governor of the Lebanon. The Powers, however, protested against this violation of its privileges ; France, in the interest of her special clients, the Maronites, urged the restoration of the local dynasty. The Porte, at the suggestion of Austria, accepted a compromise; Omar Pasha, an excellent and just administrator, was removed, and a "provisional" organisation was adopted, which established a dual system of government for the Lebanon. The Mountain was divided into two administrative districts, one for the Druses and one for the Maronites, each under a kaimakdm, selected from the natives, but to the exclusion of the family of Shihab. Thus, for a single feudal hereditary chief were substituted two prefects, appointed by, and removable at, the good pleasure of the Ottoman authorities. The Lebanon, after the long enjoy- ment of practical independence, was humbled to the category of county government. Nay more, in order to complete the dismemberment of the former principality, the Turks severed from the Maronite district and incorporated with the pashalik of Tripoli the exclusively Christian territory of Djebail, which comprised the ancient monastery of Kannobin, so long the seat of the Maronite Patriarchs, the holy valley, and the famous 154 The Syrian difficulties [ch, cedars. In the villages where a mixed population of Druses and Maronites lived together, two under-prefects, one for the Christians, the other for the Mohammedans, were appointed. These arrangements, however, failed to pacify the mountaineers. The break-up of feudalism had kindled in the breasts of the peasants the desire for equality with their lords ; and thus to the ancient quarrel of rival races and religions (for, besides the Druses and Maronites, the Mountain was inhabited by Greeks Orthodox and Uniate, by Mussulmans Orthodox and dis^ sentient) there was added a new antagonism of classes, especially- bitter when the peasant was a Maronite and the noble a Druse. In the spring of 1845 the Druses, with the connivance of the Turkish military authorities, fell upon the Maronites and their French supporters. The French Capuchine monastery at Abeih was fired, and its superior, Pere Charles de Lorette, massacred, while the American missionaries, who inhabited the same village, were left unscathed. Not only was the chief murderer acquitted by the Mohammedan tribunal, but Chekib- EfTendi, the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs, who came in person to the Lebanon, ordered all European residents and travellers to quit the Mountain. When the French consul at Beirut sent his dragoman to protect the Christians, the emissary was arrested and thrown into prison. This last outrage to the law of nations brought Turkey to the verge of war with France; a French frigate prepared to bombard Beirut, unless the drago- man were set free; the French ambassador addressed an ultimatum to the Porte, demanding the restoration of French subjects to their abodes, the payment of compensation for the sack of Abeih, and the punishment of the authors of the massacres. As usual, the Porte yielded to the only argument which it understands— force — and accepted the French terms. The work of restoring order on the mountain still remained. Chekib maintained the dual system of administration, but, by way of concession to the Christians, created an administrative VIl] The Druses 155 council of ten in either of the two districts ; in both councils the Christians had a majority, so that they could at least make their complaints known. The Druses naturally murmured at this diminution of their authority ; but the government was fortunate in its choice of the two kaimakams, and for the next nine years the Mountain enjoyed a period of repose. CHAPTER VIII GREECE UNDER BAVARIAN AUTOCRACY (1833-43) When, on February 6, 1833, King Otho landed at Nauplia, there was a general feeling of relief. At last, it was hoped, the sorely-tried land, after eight years of warfare against the Turks and three more of internal convulsions, would obtain that repose which it so greatly needed. The monarch was young ; he was unconnected with the factions and the intrigues of the politicians and the military chiefs ; he was powerfully supported by three great nations; he was well endowed with the funds necessary for the organisation of a stable administration. The joy of the people, as portrayed in the well-known picture of his landing beneath the most beautiful of Venetian fortresses, was as natural as it was touching. Unfortunately, from the very outset difficulties arose, which, if they did not damage the popularity of the youthful King, estranged the loyal Greeks from the Bavarians who ruled in his name during his minority. The treaty between the three Powers and Bavaria had en- trusted the King of Bavaria with the appointment of the three Regents, who were to govern Greece for his son. King Louis' choice fell upon Count von Armansperg, a former Bavarian Minister of Liberal tendencies ; Dr Maurer, a professor of law ; and General von Heideck, who had already acted as the King's agent in Greece. To these three were added as a consultative supplementary member and secretary Councillor von Abel, and as director of finance Herr von Greiner. Armansperg was appointed President ; and it was soon obvious that this CH. VIIl] The Regency 157 pre-eminent position, combined with their incompatible temperaments and different social status, could not but create discord between him and his professorial colleague. The Count, an aristocrat and a diplomatist, despised the learned jurist as a commoner and a pedant; the professor, a serious scholar not free from the pettiness of German academic circles, regarded the Count as an elegant trifler who cared for nothing but society. The airs and graces of the Countess embittered their relations, of which the small world of Nauplia was soon informed. The discord of the Regents was the opportunity of the foreign representatives; and Dawkins, the British Resident, became the warm supporter of Armansperg. More- over, no member of the Regency, except Heideck, had the smallest practical acquaintance with the country which they had come to govern. They were, therefore, compelled either to consult Greek politicians, who were naturally party men, or to adopt the usual German practice of evolving an administra- tive system out of their inner consciousness and their legal treatises. In these circumstances, the Regency could scarcely be successful. The first problem which confronted it was the disbanding of the irregulars. At the end of every war there are in all countries numbers of " heroes," exceedingly useful when there is fighting to be done, but very embarrassing when society returns to its normal conditions. As it was in Greece after the war of 1897, so it was after the disturbances of 1832. It was comparatively easy to make the Moreotes beat their swords into ploughshares, for they had homes and land, to which they could easily return ; but there were Souliotes and Macedonians, Cretans and Thessalians, whose abodes had been ravaged by the Turks and who had grown up to a distaste of any career save that of arms. When these men were suddenly placed before the alternative of either returning home or of enlisting in ten newly formed battalions of Jdger, their position was desperate. If they enlisted, they had to abandon their 158 Greece under the Bavarian Autocracy [ch. traditional dress for a Bavarian uniform ; if they left the country, they had nothing before them but starvation or brigandage. Many took to the latter profession ; and it was sad to see Arta sacked by Greek irregulars, German troops scattering veterans of the War of Independence, and young Bavarian officers receiving promotion over the heads of Greeks and Philhellenes, whose scars were more honourable than the smart uniforms of the Germans. An Opposition, which found a spokesman in Sir Richard Church, was at once created by this military policy; and the Greeks, who had hailed the Bavarian soldiers as a relief from the French, ended by con- trasting French activity with Bavarian slowness. The next step was the formation of a Greek Ministry under Trikoiipes, the historian of the Revolution, and the division of the kingdom into 10 nomarchies, which were subdivided into 42 eparchies, and those again into demes. As the demarch, or mayor, was nominated by the King, and could be suspended by the Minister of the Interior, a highly centralised western bureaucratic system was substituted for the ancient municipal liberties of the Greeks. What the Turks had respected, the Bavarians, like Capo dTstria, sought to destroy. A similar policy of centralisation was adopted for the collection of taxes. Mavrokordatos, the Minister of Finance, made all the tax- collectors independent of the local authorities, claimed all pasture-lands as the property of the crown, and established a monopoly of salt. Such was the discontent at these measures, that they were speedily modified. In respect of judicial reform and national education much was expected from a Regent, who was both a lawyer and a professor ; but Maurer compiled codes too complicated for an eastern country in evolution, and drew up an educational scheme practicable only on paper, by which the young Hellene was forthwith to rise from the elementary school to the university. It was not till 1837, when he had ceased to be Regent, that the present university was founded. In its treatment of the viii] The autocephalous Church 159 press, the Regency resembled Viaro Capo d'Istria. Editors had to deposit so large a sum as caution money, and money was so hard to raise at Nauplia, that the Opposition newspapers then published there were obliged to cease publication, and only the subsidised press of the Regency could live. Thus, discontent was driven underground. But the most unpopular measure of the Regency was its ecclesiastical policy. It was obviously difficult to allow the Orthodox Church in the free Greek kingdom to continue in subordination to the (Ecumenical Patriarch, who resided un- der the eye and influence of the Sultan. Accordingly, on August 4, 1833, a decree, signed by 34 bishops, proclaimed its independence, and created for its governance a synod of five prelates, to be appointed by the King. The number of bishops was to be reduced ultimately to ten, one for every nomarchy; and all monasteries inhabited by less than six monks were suppressed and their lands farmed as national property. The opposition, which this policy, the work of foreigners and schismatics, aroused, may be easily imagined. The Patriarch, the dispossessed monks, those who objected to the King because he was a Roman Catholic, those who had regarded Russia as the great ally of Orthodox Greece, all complained. It was not till 1850 that the Patriarch recognised in a "Synodal Tome" the independence of the Orthodox Church in Greece; it was not till 1852 that complete peace was restored between the Patriarch and the Greek government. Outside of the Greek kingdom his authority remained unim- paired, till, in 1870, the creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate dealt it a blow far more serious than that of the Regency. The policy of the Regents and the exclusion of old Koloko- trones from royal favour provided him with grievances which, at first ventilated in the as yet unfettered press, soon found an outlet in a conspiracy. A secret society, called the "Phoenix," was formed to protect Orthodoxy and obtain liberty, in imitation of the former Philike Hetairia • and 160 Greece under the Bavarian Autocracy [ch. the veteran conspirator circulated a sympathetic letter from Nesselrode, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, as evidence of the Tsar's encouragement. A petition for the recall of all three Regents was signed for transmission to Nicholas I, while simultaneously a German interpreter petitioned the King of Bavaria to recall all the Regents except Armansperg. Thus, Nauplia was undermined by intrigues; the interpreter and Kolokotrones were both arrested; the former was sent home without trial; the latter was condemned to death, together with Plapoutas, his fellow-conspirator, by an indecorous inter- ference with the course of justice. To have executed the hero of Karytaina and one of the men who had been sent to offer the crown to Otho would have been a blunder as well as a crime. The sentences were commuted to imprisonment for life, but the prisoners were released when Otho attained his majority. But Kolokotr6nes and his friends were not the only active malcontents. Tenos refused to pay taxes ; Maina rose in rebellion. Heedless of the warlike traditions of that Spartan race, the Regency had ordered the destruction of the towers which abounded there. The Mainates protested that their towers were a necessary protection for their lives and property ; Maina was still a medieval land, and in the Middle Ages a man's castle was his house. A Bavarian corps, sent to execute the orders of the government, was surrounded and forced to capitulate ; by way of showing their contempt the Mainates stripped their prisoners, and then demanded so much a head for them. Money, however, proved a more serviceable argument than force for the suppression of the insurrection. Some of the towers were destroyed, and tactful management enrolled the Mainates as soldiers, the best fighting material of the Peloponnese. Before, however, the revolt of Maina had been suppressed, Maurer and Abel had been recalled. The relations between Armansperg and his colleagues had become so strained, that they had reduced his salary and asked for the removal of his VIIl] M aureus recall 161 chief supporter, Dawkins, the British Resident. Palmerston refused; but both he and Russia recommended the recall of Maurer and Abel. The King of Bavaria thereupon ordered their instant return and appointed Herren von Kobel and Greiner in their respective places, both old men, one of whom was unable to bear the privations of a young country. As Heideck was ordered to acquiesce in the President's decisions, from July 31, 1834 till he, too, was recalled in 1837, Armansperg was practically absolute. Maurer revenged himself by pub- lishing the ponderous work on " the Greek people " which is the apology of his Regency. Scarcely had he been recalled when another insurrection broke out, this time in Arkadia and Messenia, the districts where Kolokotrones and Plapoutas were most influential. The leader of the revolt, a relative and namesake of Plapoutas, styled himself "director of the kingdom," and demanded the release of the two prisoners and the convocation of a National Assembly. The success of the insurgents so greatly alarmed Armansperg that he allowed Kolettes, the Minister of the Interior, to suppress it by the methods traditional with that statesman, the employment of Roumeliote irregulars. General Schmaltz, the new commander-in-chief of the army, then dispersed the rebels ; Armansperg's plan had succeeded, but it had the natural result of reviving in the irregulars that taste for a roving life which it had been the first aim of the Regency to discourage. The disbanded irregulars in many cases became brigands, whom the municipalities of western Greece obtained leave to enrol as police, seeing that the central authority was unable to provide for the security of the provinces. Meanwhile, on September 13, 1834, a decree was published announcing the removal of the seat of government from Nauplia to Athens. The choice of a capital lay between Nauplia, Corinth, and Athens. Economy and vested interests were in favour of the first ; a central position, abundance of building land, and the proximity of two seas had induced the Bavarian M. L. II 1 62 Greece under the Bavarian Autocracy [ch. architect to advocate Corinth ; but historical associations, which must necessarily count for so much in Greece, decided for Athens. The Athens, however, which the King entered on December 13, 1834, was very different from that of Perikles, that of the Frankish Dukes, or the modern town, which in 192 1 had reached a population of 292,991, and with its flourishing port contained 424,161 souls. The sieges and the struggles of the war had reduced the city to a heap of ruins, amidst which there arose majestically the ancient monuments. It was difficult to find accommodation for the court ; even the King had to content himself with a simple one-storied house. Three wooden huts represented the bustling Piraeus of our time. Under such depressing conditions Otho established himself in his new capital. Fortunately, the idea of imitating the Acciajuoli and building the palace on the Akropolis, which was suggested by Prince Maximilian of Bavaria, was vetoed by King Louis, who declared that the sacred rocks of the Akropolis, the Areiopagos, and the Pnyx must never be covered with buildings. Unfortunately, in laying out the new city, the Bavarians were less careful of the Byzantine antiquities, and not a few medieval churches were destroyed. On June 1, 1835, Otho attained his majority.; but Armans- perg, with the title of "Arch-Chancellor," retained power. This appointment, followed as it was by the exile of Kole'ttes, the most powerful Greek statesman, who was sent as minister to Paris, caused dissatisfaction and proved that Bavarian administration had not ended with the King's majority. Otho was, however, only carrying out the advice tendered to him on this occasion by his father. The King of Bavaria had drawn up a whole programme for his son. "The Greeks," he admitted, " must not be made into Bavarians " ; but, nevertheless, he considered that the time had not yet arrived when they could be governed exclusively by Greeks. If, therefore, he advised Otho to have none but Greek ministers ■ — advice which his son did not then adopt— he urged the VIIl] The King of Bavaria constitution of a Royal Cabinet under a German Chancellor with a consultative voice, and for this post he recommended Armansperg. The country, he added, was not yet ripe for a constitution, which would also offend the autocrats of Austria and Russia; but he suggested the promise of a Senate, to be nominated by the crown. The speedy dismissal of the German infantry ; the distribution of lands to the pallikars ; a due regard for proportion in the expenditure of the state, for example, the substitution of simple charges d'affaires for ministers abroad (an economy partially introduced in 1910); and the restoration of the monastic property, concluded this paternal letter of advice 1 . Later in the year the writer visited Athens, to see for himself the condition of his son's young kingdom. He found continental Greece cleared of brigandage, thanks to the energy of General Gordon; a portion of the public lands assigned to Greek families ; a " Royal Phalanx " formed ex- clusively of Greeks, and mainly of veterans of the war ; and a " Council of State " nominated by the crown, and endowed with the power to reject alterations of the fiscal system. But these prompt measures of the young King did not pacify public opinion. Early in 1836 an insurrection broke out in Akarnama under three leaders, Demos Tselios, Zervas, and Malamas, a former aide-de-camp of Agostino Capo d'Istria, men who were not brigands but political agitators, and who all agreed in demanding the expulsion of the Bavarians and the grant of a constitution. Armansperg suppressed this revolt by the favourite device of allowing chieftains such as Kitsos Tsavellas and Theodore Gn'vas to enrol irregulars ; while Sir Edmund Lyons, who had commanded the frigate that had brought Otho to Greece and had been appointed British minister at Athens on the King's attainment of his majority, made the insurrection the text for an appeal to Palmerston 1 Trost, K'onig Ludwig von Bayern, 127-32 ; AeXrlov Trjs'lar. Kal'E6i>. 'Ercuptas, ii, 516-20. II — 2 164 Greece under the Bavarian Autocracy [ch. to advance the third instalment of the Greek loan, promised by the three protecting Powers in 1832. As the Tsar made his payment contingent on the indefinite postponement of the constitution, while France stipulated for the dismissal of all Bavarians, the formation of a national government, and the grant of the institutions necessary to its proper working, the British Foreign Secretary characteristically asked Parliament to guarantee the issue of the British share, withoift waiting any longer for the adhesion of the two other Powers. Mean- while, his representative at Athens was instructed to support Armansperg. After having laid the foundations of his son's palace on February 6, 1836, the anniversary of Otho's landing, on a site "sufficiently far from the sea to be out of range of a bombardment," as the careful father expressed it, Louis returned to Germany, whither later in the year Oth o followed him. The object of the latter's journey was to find a wife ; and, as his father strongly objected to a French princess or a Russian Grand-duchess, his choice fell upon Amalia, daughter of the Grand-duke Paul of Oldenburg, a high-spirited and energetic consort for the hesitating King, whose "native hue of resolution " was often " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." But Otho brought back with him to Greece a Prime Minister as well as a Queen. During his absence Armansperg had become more autocratic and consequently more unpopular ; and such continual complaints of the Arch- Chancellor's conduct had reached the King, that on February 14, 1837, he appointed another Bavarian, Herr von Rudhart, whom he had persuaded to accompany him, in place of Armansperg, but with the less pretentious attributes of Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Thus fell the last member of the original Regency. Rudhart's political career in Greece was much shorter and not more successful than that of the Arch-Chancellor. At the very outset, by a tactless visit to Metternich, he obtained the reputation of being a tool vin] Rudharfs Premiership 165 of Austria and thereby the suspicion of the democratic Greeks and the opposition of the British minister. An outbreak of plague at Poros, the refusal of the merchants of Patras to pay the tax imposed upon their business, and the promulgation of a severe press-law, which the King of Bavaria had strongly urged, made the Premier's position increasingly difficult, while the expulsion of an Italian refugee, a certain Usiglio, who was the bearer of a British passport, provoked the outspoken British minister to one of the most violent letters in the history of modern diplomacy. Embittered by these difficulties, the well-meaning Bavarian resigned after ten months' experience of his task ; and his name is now only connected with the opening of the University, which beginning in a hired house at the foot of the Akropolis, was subsequently transferred to the present handsome building. It is pleasant to note as a proof of harmony between the two newly emancipated Balkan peoples, that Milosh of Servia was among the subscribers to what was at first "the Othonian," but has been rebaptised "the National University of Greece." Upon the resignation of Rudhart on December 20, 1837, only the Ministry of War was entrusted to a Bavarian ; but the King neutralised this elimination of the foreign element by presiding over the cabinet councils, instead of appointing a Prime Minister. The crown was thus held responsible by the people for the mistakes of ministers, and could no longer shelter itself behind them, while the unpopularity of Armans- perg and Rudhart was transferred to the sovereign. Unfor- tunately, a series of untoward events contributed towards this growing discontent. Riots broke out in 1838 at Hydra, occasioned by the application of military conscription to a nautical population, which, in the words of a popular poem of the day, " preferred suicide to the slavery of service," but really caused by the heavy losses of the Hydriote shipowners during the war and by the earthquake of the previous year. A commercial treaty with Turkey, negotiated by Zographos, 1 66 Greece under the Bavarian Autocracy [ch. the Foreign Minister, in 1839, was denounced as a surrender. Previous to that date no Greek diplomatist had been officially received by the Sultan, and the relations between the two countries had been constantly strained. The immense enthu- siasm caused by a private visit of Otho to Smyrna had led Mahmud II to order the (Ecumenical Patriarch to remove the too patriotic Metropolitan of that Hellenic city; and this step had been followed by the suspension of the Patriarch and the prohibition of a commemoration of Koraes, the literary father of the Greek revolution, at Constantinople. The Samians, too, provoked a Turkish blockade by their demands for union, and made loud complaints against Stephen Vogorides, the first Prince sent to rule over them till British support secured the temporary settlement of their grievances. It was natural, however, that those Greeks, who believed in the enlargement of their restricted boundaries, should have hoped to profit by the difficulties in which Turkey found herself involved during her second struggle with Mehemet Ali and his victorious son. There is nothing more dangerous to the popularity of a Greek statesman than inability to satisfy the national demand for the redemption of " enslaved Greece " at a favourable crisis in the eastern question; and, accordingly, in 1840, Zographos, the author of the Turkish treaty, was forced to retire, and was thenceforth politically ostracised. Other difficulties also accrued from the Turco-Egyptian settlement of that year. France revenged herself for her diplomatic defeat by scheming against Great Britain in Greece ; and the Athenian court was thus converted into an international arena, where the repre- sentatives of the protecting Powers strove less for the welfare of the country to which they were accredited than for their own governments' interests. Greek statesmen were drawn into these rivalries ; and " British," " French," and " Russian " parties flourished under the respective leadership of Mavro- kordatos, Kolettes, and Kolokotrories. At this moment, moreover, Crete, which was restored from vi it] Crete under Egypt 167 Egyptian to Turkish rule in 1840, rose and demanded union with Greece. The islanders had suffered considerably under the sway of Mehemet Ali. From the first, Christians and Mussulmans alike had been disgusted at the subjection of the island to Egypt ; for the former had expected to shake off the Turkish yoke for ever, while the latter, who hated the Egyptians, had hoped to remain a law unto themselves, as they had been before the insurrection. Mehemet, with the usual "kindness of kings upon their coronation-day," had begun by promising that the Cretans should pay " no taxes, except the tithe (which was really one-seventh) and the poll-tax " ; he had established two mixed councils, respectively at Candia and Canea, for the administration of justice; and till the autumn of 1831 the phrase of his governor-general, that his "sole object" was "to deliver the Christians from the vexations to which they were formerly exposed," corresponded with facts. The law was enforced as it had never been before, and the Christians were, if anything, favoured by the Sultan's disloyal Viceroy. But, just as Crete was beginning to recover from the ravages of the insurrection, Mehemet sought to introduce his favourite system of monopolies, thus treating a proud and warlike mountain-people as if they were Egyptian fellaheen. He had begun by taking over the tithes from the local agas, who had been (in many cases) their hereditary proprietors, thus irritating the Mussulmans ; his next step was to make the councils his subservient instruments. The secrecy of letters was violated ; new duties were imposed upon wine and other articles, and that upon the export of oil increased ; an octroi was created ; and all supplies to his government were to be furnished at a low tariff. By these means ^6000 a year more than before was raised from the island. But the worst came, when in 1833, Mehemet Ali, accompanied by Col. Campbell, the British consul-general, visited Crete, and issued a proclamation, punishing all who left their land uncultivated, and confiscating it after three years of such neglect. The diminished population, 1 68 Greece under the Bavarian Autocracy- [ch. only 129,000 at that time, was not sufficient to till the soil, which would therefore have passed into the Viceroy's hands ; while a well-meant ordinance for the erection of two schools was regarded as a trap to kidnap the Cretan children and carry them off to Egypt. One of the traditional Cretan Assemblies, mainly composed of Mussulmans, met, some thousands strong, at Murnies, three miles from Canea, to ask for redress ; and petitions were sent to the Residents at Nauplia and to the consuls of the three protecting Powers in Crete. Mehemet's Albanian governor, Mustapha, at first offered concessions, which a passing British naval officer, Sir Pulteney Malcolm, urged the Assembly to accept. But Mehemet insisted on making an example ; and by his order Mustapha hanged ten of the assembled Cretans — an act of cruelty which cowed the others for the next eight years. The Christians had, however, no wish to exchange the rule of a Turkish Viceroy for that of the Sultan ; and their desire for union with the Greek kingdom was increased by the speeches of Palmerston. A " Central Committee of the Cretans " was formed in Greece ; and among the Greeks who hastened to assist the Cretan insurgents was the future Prime Minister, Alexander Koumoun- douros. In 1841 the warlike Sphakiotes began the insurrection, and a provisional government was formed. But the Turks speedily suppressed the rising, the failure of which was included among the charges brought against Otho's government. Mavrokordatos, who was then Prime Minister, found it im- possible to remain in office, owing to the constant intervention of the crown and the continued existence, under another name, of the privy council of Bavarians which stood between Otho and his ministers. Upon his resignation, the King resumed the practice of presiding in person over the delibera- tions of the cabinet. In vain Palmerston and Peel urged him to grant a constitution ; his father told him that to concede it would be the ruin of his throne. The unpopularity of this system of personal government was enhanced by the VIIl] The Revolution of 1843 169 demand of the Russian government for the payment of the interest on the loan, by the curtailment of official salaries from motives of economy and by the disappointed ambitions of those who had been leading politicians. All these things combined to cause the revolution of September 3/15, 1843. The revolution was planned by the leaders of two out of the three parties, Andrew Metaxas, who had succeeded to the direction of the "Russian" party on the death of old Kolo- kotrones in February of that year, and Andrew Lontos, who had guided the "British" since the fall of Mavrokordatos. Another ex-minister, Zographos, co-operated with a movement which seemed likely to restore him to public favour ; but the "French" faction, whose chief was still in Paris, abstained from active participation in the plot. As usually happens in party politics, the two sections of the coalition had different objects. It is true that they both desired the expulsion of the Bavarians and other foreigners who had not taken part in the War of Independence ; but whereas the "British" section wished for a constitutional monarch, the " Russian " had long desired an Orthodox one. The leaders of both parties anticipated that, rather than yield, Otho would resign. The people, especially in the provinces, took little interest in the revolu- tion, and it therefore became necessary to resort to the army. Accordingly, the political chiefs, having selected as their instrument Demetrios Kallerges, then a colonel of cavalry at Argos, procured his transference to Athens. Kallerges, still in his prime, belonged to the ancient Cretan family which had played so prominent a part in insurrections against the Venetians. Sixteen years earlier, he had been captured by the enemy at the battle of Phaleron; and it was only the greed of his Albanian captor which saved his head and thus spared him to overthrow the absolute monarchy of Otho. After the assassination of Capo d'Istria, he had supported the Capodistrian party; and his courage, coolness, and desire for distinction recommended him to the conspirators. Another 170 Greece under the Bavarian Autocracy [ch. officer, Colonel Makrygiannes, who had won fame at the mills of Lerna and during the Turkish siege of the Akropolis, was selected as his collaborator. Twenty-four hours before- hand, news of the approaching revolution reached the ears of the King ; but the orders given for the arrest of the ring- leaders and their trial by court-martial were issued too late. On the night of September 14, Kallerges, who had gone to the theatre, in order to allay the suspicions of the court, proceeded, at the end of the performance, to the house of Makrygiannes. Finding to his surprise that his colleague was sitting peacefully in the midst of a few civilians, he resolved to act on his own initiative. Traversing the deserted streets, he directed his steps to the infantry barracks, where, stammering a few incoherent words, he drew his sword, and shouted : " Long live the Constitution ! " The soldiers took up the cry, and followed him through the silent town to the great square in front of the palace, which now bears the name of " the Constitution." At the same time, having learned that the house of Makrygiannes had been invested .by the police, sent to arrest that officer, he detached a body of soldiers to raise the siege, and ordered others to open the prison and compel any citizens whom they met to join in the demonstration before the royal residence. It was one o'clock in the morning of September 1 5 ; and the King, as was his wont, was still hard at work in his study, when the military music and the shouts of " Long live the Constitution ! " startled him from his desk. An aide-de-camp and the Minister of War, who went out to bid the soldiers disperse, were arrested by order of Kallerges, while the arrival of Makrygiannes and his friends with the detach- ment that had repulsed the police increased the strength of the revolutionists. The King, despite the prayers of the weep- ing Queen, then showed himself at a window, and asked Kallerges what he wanted. The revolutionary leader replied that both army and people wanted a constitution, to which the King angrily answered by an order to the troops to disperse, VIIl] The Revolution 0/1843 171 whereupon he would consider their request. The troops, instead of dispersing, awaited the orders of Kallerges ; and the artillery, which the King had meanwhile summoned to his assistance, fraternised with them. The civilian ringleaders then appeared upon the scene, hastily summoned a meeting of the Council of State, and induced that body to send a deputation to the King, begging him to grant a constitution. While the deputa- tion was still in the palace, the representatives of the five Powers drove up, and demanded to see the King. Sir E. Lyons had, however, already conveyed a significant hint to Kallerges not to allow the diplomatists to enter till Otho had promised a constitution, because Great Britain feared that their presence might make him obdurate and thus favour the schemes of the Russian party. Kallerges played his part with admirable composure and tact. He told the foreign ministers that they could not enter the palace till the audience of the deputation was over ; and, when the Austrian and Prussian representatives attempted to insist, he reminded them that "diplomatic etiquette required them to follow the example of their doyen, the Russian envoy." The King thereupon yielded, and signed decrees convening within 30 days a National Assembly, which consisted of 225 members, for drawing up a constitution; dismissing all the foreigners from his service, except the old Philhellenes ; and appointing a new ministry under Metaxas. The revolutionists were not, however, satisfied till he had also promised to decorate those who had taken part in the revolu- tion, and had thanked Kallerges and Makrygiannes. Then, at last, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the army marched past the palace with shouts of " Long live the Constitutional King Otho I ! " Thus, by a practically bloodless revolution — for one man alone was killed in the fighting at Makrygiannes' house — Greece became, after ten years of Bavarian despotism, a constitutional state. " Great credit," wrote Lord Aberdeen, "is due to the Greek nation for the manner in which they appear to have universally conducted themselves on this important 172 Greece under the Bavarian Autocracy [ch. occasion ; so different from the example afforded by countries more advanced in civilization." The Greeks rightly regard the date of "September 3," as they call it in the old style, as the birthday of their parliamentary system — a system which, with all its faults, faults by no means peculiar to Greece, is the only possible form of government for so intensely political a people. The names of the chief square at Athens and of a leading street commemorate the grant of a " Constitution " through the revolution of " September 3 " ; the sword pre- sented by the Athenians to Kallerges is still preserved ; and the scene at the palace on that memorable morning is depicted in one of the most widely diffused of popular prints. The Bavarian autocracy had failed; but its failure must not blind us to the real progress made by Greece in those ten years. In most countries, and not least in the south and east of Europe, the people prospers in spite of, rather than because of, its government. Intellectually, the advance of the Greeks was marked by the foundation of the Archaeological and other societies, and by the opening of the University ; the scholar Buchon, who visited Athens in 1841, noticed the purification of the language from foreign words, and remarked that the country had already two public libraries. Materially, the improvement of the young state was shown in the increase of the land under cultivation, the consequent multiplication of the currant plantations, the considerable export of silk, the recovery of the mercantile marine from the damage inflicted upon it in the war, and the establishment, thanks to the enterprise of an Epirote, George Stavrou, of a National Bank. The marble quarries of Pentelikon had been re-opened to provide materials for the palace; the population of Athens had already reached a total of 35,000 souls ; the Piraeus, Patras, and Syra were becoming important commercial towns. Outside the narrow frontiers of the kingdom, patriotic and industrious Greek communities assisted the commercial and intellectual development. Their relations with the Greek vm] The National Convention 173 state formed one of the chief problems discussed by the National Convention, which met on November 20, 1843, but took its name from that memorable "Third of Sep- tember" which had ended the government of Greece by an absolute monarch and his alien advisers. Thenceforth, the fortunes of Hellas were in the hands of the Hellenes themselves, and the foreign domination of centuries was over. CHAPTER IX THE GREEK AND IONIAN CONSTITUTIONS (1843-53) The first difficulty of " the National Assembly of September 3," which was opened on November 20, was to decide whom it was to include. In similar conventions held during the War of Independence representatives of Greek communities still under Turkish yoke had taken part ; but to this Constituent Assembly the only delegates of external Hellenism admitted were those of Crete, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Epirus ; and a vote was passed excluding from all official posts those Greeks of the Turkish empire who had borne no active share in the war. Thus, the Assembly drew a distinction between the "autochthonous" Greeks of the kingdom and the "hetero- chthonous" Greeks of the outside world. Similarly, the second article of the Constitution, while recognising the "dogmatic union of the Orthodox Church of Greece with the Great Church in Constantinople," declared the former to be " auto- cephalous and administered by a Holy Synod of Archbishops." Two other questions excited considerable discussion — that of the succession and that of the Senate. The 40th article of the Constitution provided, that the heir to the Greek throne must belong to the Greek Church ; another series of articles created a Second Chamber. There were some who did not desire a Senate at all ; there were others, chiefly adherents of the "Russian" party, who advocated the nomination of the senators for ten years instead of for life. Thus Greece was endowed with a bi-cameral system, which lasted down till 1864, CH. IX] The Two Chambers 175 consisting of a Chamber (or BovXrj) of never less than 80 members, all at least 30 years of age and elected for three years in proportion to the population by manhood suffrage ; and of a Senate (or Tcpovo-ta) of at least 27 persons, who had reached the age of 40 and whose members might be increased to half that of the Chamber, nominated by the Crown for life from fourteen categories, according to the present Italian method. Both senators and deputies received salaries. It was supposed that the Senate would act as a check upon the Chamber and become a Conservative force in the state. But, as a matter of fact, it was the medium of the first attacks upon Otho, and provided the Opposition with a permanent platform for the exposition of their views. On March 30, 1844, the King took the oath to the Constitution ; and Lyons wrote enthusiastically about the way in which this "great political change" had been consummated. "Such self-command in a popular assembly, convoked under very exciting and critical circumstances," Aberdeen replied, "is highly creditable to the Greek nation." It now became necessary to form the first ministry of the Constitutional Monarchy. Two politicians stood head and shoulders above the other public men of Greece at that moment — Mavrokordatos, the chief of the " English," and Kolettes, the leader of the "French" party. Both sought what they believed to be the welfare of the country which they had so long served, but their political programmes for attaining this object were widely divergent. Mavrokordatos held that it was the first business of the Greeks to make their kingdom a model of good government throughout the near east, and that then, and then only, when they had been faithful in a few things, would Crete and Epirus and Macedonia be added unto them. Kolettes advocated the opposite opinion, that the first aim of a Greek statesman should be the enlargement of the Greek frontiers, arguing that the additional forces which the contracted kingdom would thereby gain would prove the best means of 176 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. its internal development. Unfortunately, the Epirote declined to form a coalition cabinet with the Phanariote ; and Mavrokor- datos became Prime Minister without his co-operation and ere long had to face his opposition. Both politicians, reared under systems of government very different from that just implanted at Athens, considered the concentration of all power at the centre as the best system of administration. It is unnecessary to examine the truth of the charges brought against Mavrokor- datos by some of his contemporaries and repudiated by others, of having used improper influence to obtain a majority at the elections of 1844; for even to-day, in many, perhaps most countries, the principle of freedom of election is more honoured in political programmes than on polling-day. But, in any case, the Ministerialists profited nothing by this alleged pressure. Mavrokordatos, like a much greater statesman a generation later, was defeated at Mesolonghi; and the similar defeat of Kallerges at Athens, where the hero of the late revolution had lost his popularity and where his very candidature was considered to be tainted with illegality, led to a disturbance which provoked the King's intervention and the resignation of the Cabinet. Kolettes came into power, which he retained till his death in 1847 by the skill and tact with which he managed men. While his spectacled rival was supported by the more Europeanised Greeks, who wore black coats and dis- cussed western theories of government, the former physician of Ali Pasha's son, clad in the national dress and smoking his long pipe, was surrounded by the far more numerous body of fustanella-wearing Hellenes, by braves of the war whom he had led across the Isthmus, by all the picturesque elements of what was called "the National party." From morn to eve his closet was filled by men anxious for some post, some pension, or some mark of distinction; and such was his consummate skill that no one quitted his presence without an assurance that the Minister would grant his petition. Enjoying the con- fidence of the King to an unusual degree, and supported by IX] Kottttes in Power 177 the French government with all its influence, Kolettes con- cerned himself little with speech-making in the Chamber, whence a series of election petitions had excluded all but 12 members of the " English " party. His well-known policy of territorial expansion had, however, the natural effect of arousing the suspicions of the Turks ; and his three years' tenure of power was marked by several serious incidents, which disturbed the relations between Greece and her neighbour. The Turkish government began by stopping the free circulation of the Greek press in its dominions, because the newspapers preached the " Great Idea." The attempt of a Greek to kill the Prince of Samos increased the irritation, and in 1847 a diplomatic question at Athens nearly provoked a crisis. Karatassos, an aide-de-camp of Otho, applied for a Turkish vise to his passport in order to visit Constantinople. Karatassos had long been suspected by the Ottoman government, because he had invaded Thessaly six years earlier ; and the Turkish Minister in Athens, Mousouros, whose Cretan origin made him the more zealous in the cause of his employers, declined to grant the vise. This refusal was reported to the King, who at the next court-ball loudly told the diplomatist that he should have hoped that the Sovereign would have merited more respect than to be treated in this manner. The Turkish government demanded from Kolettes a personal apology for this speech ; and, on the latter's refusal, Mousouros left Athens. A long diplomatic correspondence ensued;. the Greek consuls were expelled from Turkey, and Greek vessels forbidden to ply along the Turkish coasts. Relations were still interrupted when Kolettes died, and it required the interven- tion of Russia before the honour of the Turks was satisfied. Mousouros returned to his post at Athens, but an attempt upon his life convinced the Porte that his prolonged stay there might lead to further difficulties. He was, therefore, promoted to London, where he remained for more than a generation, the best- known, and — as his translation of Dante into Greek proves — the most cultured of all Ottoman ambassadors at the British court. M. L. 12 178 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. This tension with Turkey was not the only difficulty which encumbered the long administration of Kolettes. While the society of the Greek capital was distracted by the struggle for diplomatic influence between the British and French Ministers, the British government embarrassed the Francophil Premier by complaining of brigandage and by demanding payment of the interest on the loan. The last request was met by the generosity of Eynard, the Philhellene of Geneva, who advanced the ^20,000 required to satisfy the British claim. But the disturbed state of the country caused much greater trouble. Kolettes, true to his old policy of converting the breakers of the law into its guardians, pacified Theodore Grivas, who had raised the standard of revolt in Akarnam'a, by giving him a military post ; but this remedy, as might have been expected, was only temporary; and ere long the veteran chieftain was again at the head of a band in the west, while Kriez6tes, another survivor of the war, championed the discontented in Eubcea. After the death of Kolettes, his immediate successors Kitsos Tsavellas, a Souliote chief of no political experience but a soldier of distinction, and George Kountouriotes found themselves com- pelled to grapple with a number of these risings, among which those of Pharmakes at Lepanto, of Tzamalas and Valentzas (who invaded Greece from the Turkish frontier and burned a fine collection of manuscripts at Hypate), by Perrotes at Kalamata, and of Merendites (who seized the fine castle of Patras, threatened to lay that flourishing town in ashes, and then escaped to Malta on a British ship with a large sum of money), aroused most attention. Yet, despite these disturbances, mostly due to personal motives, Thouvenel 1 , a French diplo- matist then at Athens, could write that, in 1849, Greece was "materially one of the happiest corners of the world." Minis- tries might come and go — for the repercussion caused by the French revolution of 1848 caused the fall of Tsavellas, and the 1 La Grece du roi Othon, 272; cf. his memoir on Greece in 1847, ib. 129-45- IX] Don Pacifico 179 Cabinets of Kountouriotes and the famous Admiral Kanares were but short lived — but the people were little affected by political crises due to personal questions or court intrigues. Early in 1850 an unfortunate dispute, which reflected little credit on Palmerston's diplomacy, temporarily embittered the relations between Great Britain and Greece. For some time past efforts had been made to obtain satisfaction of the claims of various British and Ionian subjects from the Greek govern- ment. Of these claims the largest was made by a certain Don Pacifico, a Gibraltar Jew, who had been Portuguese consul- general, and whose house at Athens had been pillaged by the mob during an antisemitic disturbance at Easter 1847, due to the prohibition of the customary burning of Judas Iscariot in effigy. The Athenians were not aware, until Don Pacifico drew up his bill of damages, how valuable the furniture of this unconspicuous individual had been. He sent in a claim for £3 1 j 534- IS - f° r tne l° ss t0 his property (including ^26,618. 16s. Sd. for the vouchers of certain sums, alleged to be due to him from the Portuguese government), and for a further sum of ^500 as compensation for "the personal injuries and sufferings " of himself and his family. The next claimant was a very different person, the eminent historian of Medieval and Modern Greece, George Finlay, who, after taking part in the War of Independence, had settled in Greece and in 1830 bought land at Athens. A portion of this land had been enclosed in the royal garden, and Finlay demanded 45,000 dr. as its price. Three other claims were put forward on behalf of Ionian subjects, some of whom asked 6000 fr. for the pillage of their barks at Selasma near the mouth of the Acheloos, while others sought compensation for ill-treatment at Patras and Pyrgos. A sixth item was based upon the arrest of some British sailors at Patras, for which an apology was asked. Finally, besides these personal claims, the British government asserted that the two islands of Cervi and Sapienza, which lie off the south coast of the Peloponnese, were not 12—2 180 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch, portions of the Greek kingdom, but belonged to the Ionian Islands. This last claim, which dated from 1839, was based upon the clauses of the treaties of 1800 and 1815, and upon a law of the "Septinsular Republic" of 1804, which regarded the insular dependencies of the Seven Islands. But Cervi had long been the property of the inhabitants of the Greek coast opposite, who had held it in Turkish times, while the geo- graphical position of both islands rendered them respectively appendages of Vatika and Modon, rather than of the much more distant Cerigo. The first six of these claims, lumped together in the same ultimatum, were presented to the Greek government on January 17, 1850, with a demand for a settlement within 24 hours, by Mr (afterwards Sir Thomas) Wyse, who had succeeded Sir Edmund Lyons as British minister in Athens in the previous year. This ultimatum was followed by a blockade of the Piraeus, effected by a squadron under the command of Sir William Parker, which seized a Greek man-of-war and several merchantmen. These proceedings naturally excited against the British government public opinion abroad, ever in favour of the weak in a contest with the strong, while they made Otho very popular with his subjects. The conduct of the Greek authorities was patriotic without being aggressive. The officers of the Athenian garrison offered to resign half their pay, and many private individuals put their fortunes at the disposal of the nation ; but the government avoided any- thing that might be interpreted as an act of provocation ; and, except at Corfu, where British soldiers ran the risk of being insulted in the streets, the Greek people remained calm. Meanwhile, France and Russia, the two other protecting Powers, addressed representations to Palmerston, who, on February 12, accepted the 54 good offices" of the former. Baron Gros was thereupon sent to Athens to assess the amount due to the British claimants; but his award was rejected by Wyse, and the blockade renewed. At this, on April 27, the Greek government ix] Don Pacific o 181 yielded to Wyse's demands, viz., the payment of 30,000 dr. to Finlay, of 12,530 dr. 49 leptd to the Ionians, and of 137,538 dr. to Don Pacifico plus a further sum of 150,000 dr. as a deposit on account of the papers, constituting the proofs of his claims on the Portuguese government. These sums were all paid the same evening by the Greek government ; and, although a different arrangement had meanwhile been made in London between Palmerston and the French ambassador, the Athens convention was maintained, and the French ambas- sador consequently recalled, as a mark of his government's displeasure. As Russia had also complained of the British blockade and of the assumption that Great Britain could claim Cervi and Sapienza without the consent of the other two pro- tecting Powers, it was realised in London that Palmerston had by his vehemence not only oppressed a small state, which Great Britain had helped to call into existence, but had estranged two great nations. Even Finlay admitted that " the British government acted with violence, and strained the authority of international law." Punch, with its usual shrewd- ness in expressing the opinion of the average man, asked why the British lion did not hit someone of his own size; and the House of Lords passed a vote of censure upon Palmerston's policy by a majority of 37. But the House of Commons approved the principles upon which it was conducted, by 46 votes, after a debate memorable in the annals of parliamentary eloquence for the Minister's citation of the famous declaration, Civis Romanus sum. But when the rhetoric had died away, and an Anglo-Franco-Greek Commission, sitting at Lisbon, found the originals of Don Paciflco's alleged lost documents in the Portuguese Archives, ascertained that during his residence in Portugal he had never asserted his claims, and by the lurid light thus thrown upon his case reduced his claims from ^26,618. 16s. Sd. to ^"150, people might well wonder whether the championship of this cosmopolitan citizen of the British empire had not been exaggerated. As for the question of 1 82 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. Cervi and Sapienza, which had been omitted from the ultimatum, it was quietly dropped. Admiral Kriezes, who had been appointed Prime Minister just before the Anglo-Greek difficulty became critical and remained in office for more than four years, had the satisfaction of seeing his Premiership marked by the settlement of another long-standing problem — that of the relations between the Church in Greece and the (Ecumenical Patriarch. The Church of the kingdom had been declared autocephalous in 1833 and by the constitution of 1844; but the Patriarch had never formally recognised its administrative independence, and Greek public life had accordingly been disturbed by the rival contentions of the extreme Orthodox party (of which Oikonomos was the leader, and which desired to obtain the Patriarch's recognition) and of the Archimandrite Pharmakides, who repre- sented the opinion that such recognition of an accomplished fact was alike unnecessary and undesirable. At last, in 1850, the Greek government availed itself of a favourable opportunity for asking the Patriarch to recognise its ecclesiastical arrange- ments. Thanks to Russian influence, the recalcitrant divines, assembled at Constantinople, gave way ; and on July 1 1 a ' • Synodal Tome " was read there proclaiming the Church in Greece autocephalous. The "Tome" provided that the Metropolitan of Athens should be president of the Holy Synod of the Greek kingdom ; and that in all questions of administration the Church in Greece should be independent ; but that it should receive the holy oil from the (Ecumenical Patriarch, whose opinion should be asked on grave questions of dogma. The sad coincidence of the assassination of Korphiotakes, Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs, on the day when the " Tome " was read aloud in all the churches of the kingdom, and the continued opposition of Pharmakides, did not prevent the final acceptance of this settlement ; and in 1852 the Greek Chamber enacted the above-mentioned provisions. Thus the chief ecclesiastical problem of Greece was solved. ix] Policy of Lord Nugent 183 Another theological agitation, the so-called " Phil-Orthodox " movement, headed by a monk named Papoulakos, who went about denouncing the Catholic king and praising the Orthodox Tsar, was suppressed by his incarceration at Andros. That beautiful island of lemon groves and rushing waters provided a theological martyr in the teacher Kaires, whose prosecution for unorthodox ideas and death in prison attracted notice in England. The conflict between the British and Greek governments in the case of Don Pacifico was not the only cause of friction between the two countries at this period. The events of the last twenty years in the Ionian Islands had culminated in an open agitation for union. In 1832, with the appointment of Lord Nugent as Sir F. Adam's successor, Liberal ideas for the first time found an exponent in the person of a Lord High Commissioner, whose political career at home encouraged the Ionian reformers to hope for his support. Nugent began by a promise of reforms, but his first attempt to perform it was the illegal substitution of the system of election from a triple list of candidates for that from a double list, as provided by the Constitution of 181 7 ; and this extension of the freedom of choice led to the dissolution of the Assembly by the Crown long before its natural term had expired. The appointment of young and untried officials of Liberal views to administrative posts increased the influence of the Liberal party; but the High Commissioner was fortunately a good man of business, who conferred practical benefits on the Islands by employing the pension-fund, created by Maitland, in loans at an easy rate of interest to the peasants, by limiting to ^35,000 the annual sum payable by the Ionians to the protectorate, and yet be- queathing a large surplus to his successor, Sir Howard Douglas. The fourth Lord High Commissioner, a strong Conservative, reverted to the benevolent despotism of Maitland and Adam, believing that the Ionian people was not yet ripe for a more Liberal form of government. This reaction from Nugent's 184 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. rule naturally exasperated the Liberal party ; and the presence of so doctrinaire a Whig as Lord John Russell at the Colonial Office during the latter part of Douglas' Commissionership tempted the eminent Corfiote historian, Mustoxidi, to address a memorandum to him on the condition of the Islands. Mustoxidi admitted that the Islanders preferred the British protectorate to any other political connexion, for independence was still unobtainable ; but he demanded in their name the grant of a freer system of election, annual sessions of the Assembly, and a free press. This memorial made some im- pression upon the Colonial Secretary, who, however, loyally supported his subordinate ; and no essential change of policy ensued during the remainder of the latter's term of office. Ecclesiastical difficulties, however, accumulated in his path. A conflict with the " Phil-Orthodox " party increased the un- popularity of his administration. An attempt to reform the table of kindred and affinity excited the opposition of the (Ecumenical Patriarch, who protested that the Orthodox religion was in danger, whereupon the British ambassador at Constantinople obtained his deposition by the Sultan. The indiscretion of a Protestant missionary caused the accusation of proselytism to be levelled against the Commissioner, who prevented the re-establishment of a Roman Catholic see at Corfu. Finally, his rashness in seizing the papers of Mustoxidi and of Viaro and Agostino Capo dTstria, whose brother George had been mixed up with the " Phil-Orthodox Society," discovered at Athens in December 1839, gave the historian and the members of that family, ever the foes of Great Britain, a plausible ground for complaint of his illegality — for the papers obviously contained nothing treasonable, or they would have been published. Another summary dissolution of the Assembly, disapproved by the Colonial Secretary, incensed the Opposition. Nevertheless, despite Mustoxidi's long indictment of him to the Colonial Secretary, Douglas had the solid interests of the Islands at heart, as his improvement of the ix ] Douglas and Mackenzie 185 Corfiote aqueduct, of the roads, the prisons, and the educational system proved —benefits, however, which entailed the first public debt of the Islands under the British protectorate. He continued in two respects the work of his immediate pre- decessor — the reduction of the annual contribution of the Ionian treasury, and the preparation of a new code, while he ordered British officials to learn Greek. His popularity with the landed classes, who naturally preferred stability for their property to aught else, is still manifested by the obelisk which commemorates him at Corfu ; and, after his retirement, by becoming a member of the House of Commons, he was able to advocate their interests, and thereby embarrass his Liberal successor, Mackenzie. The new Commissioner's rule was abruptly closed by the result of a conflict with the Senate. A convinced reformer, he found that body, and more especially Petritsopoulos, its President, opposed to his ideas. Accordingly, when the President's term of office expired, he availed himself, for the first time in Ionian history, of the power of non-reappointment conferred by the Constitution, and nominated a moderate Liberal, Count Delladecima. The Conservatives were then in power at home, and Lord Derby, the Colonial Secretary, disapproved of this act. In vain did Count Delladecima chivalrously tender his own resignation, in order to save the Commissioner ; Mackenzie resigned after barely two years of office, during which he had done little but reduce the debt initiated by his predecessor. In 1843 ms place was occupied by Lord Seaton, whose rule was, for weal or woe, the most remarkable of the whole protectorate. A military man, a Tory peer, and the victor of the Canadian insurgents could scarcely have been expected to develope into a Radical reformer. And for the first five years of his rule, despite the September revolution in Greece, Seaton gave no outward sign of his intentions, but followed the traditional policy of the protectorate, promoting education, 1 86 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. establishing district courts for the hearing of petty cases, mending the roads, beginning a canal at Santa Mavra, and planning a model farm for the teaching of agriculture. But the revolutionary movements of 1848 in other countries appear to have converted the Conservative soldier into an advanced democrat. Immediately after they began, he obtained the sanction of the home government to three reforms — a free press (which, he trusted, would counteract the attacks of the Maltese and Athenian newspapers, hitherto the usual organs of aggrieved Ionians) ; the right of the Assembly to vote the extraordinary expenditure; and the free election of all municipal authorities. Not content with these reforms, Seaton proposed to render the Assembly more democratic, although Earl Grey, his chief, warned him to proceed gradually, and to await the results of the concessions already given before granting more. The disturbed state of Cephalonia, always the most Radical of the Seven Islands, might have been supposed to justify the Colonial Secretary's advice. Class as well as national feeling was more rife there than among the other Ionians; and Baron d'Everton, a British official of Italian experience, who was then Resident of the island, could not trust his police. A riot during the procession of the Cepha- lonian saint, Gerasimos, increased the local discontent ; the Resident reported the existence of a secret society for the emancipation of the Greeks ; and on September 26, 1848, a band of peasants attacked Argost61i. Their attack was repulsed, but shortly afterwards the decree for the freedom of the press came into force ; and its immediate effect was the publication of a swarm of newspapers, of which four appeared in Cephalonia alone, written in the vernacular and for the most part hostile to the protectorate. An article in one of these journals led Seaton to order the arrest of two Cephalonian politicians, Zervos and Livadas, and their banishment to Paxo ; but neither this result of his own measure nor the disturbances in Cephalonia deterred him from carrying out the rest of his IX] The Constitution of 1849 187 programme. On April 26, 1849, he announced a drastic reform of the Constitution of 181 7; and a Radical charter was approved, which sanctioned the direct election by ballot of the members of the Assembly, increased from 40 to 42, by an electorate more than thrice as large as that which had hitherto possessed the suffrage. On the other hand, the Senators were to be appointed from among the members of the Assembly by the Lord High Commissioner — an arrange- ment more Conservative than that of 181 7. Indeed, the authority of the government over the Second Chamber was made doubly sure by an amendment, introduced by Seaton's successor, which allowed the Lord High Commissioner to choose two Senators from outside the ranks of the Assembly. Moreover, as the latter body was summoned only every other year, and the only financial reductions which it could make were in the salaries of the native officials, its practical powers were still limited. But Seaton had provided the Ionians with a means for airing their grievances such as they had neverpossessed before; and it was thenceforth possible for them to express their desire for union with Greece alike in the Assembly and in the press. The murder of Captain Parker, the official in charge of the forest in Cephalonia, barely a fortnight after Seaton had announced his reforms at Corfu, was an ill omen of their success. Seaton bequeathed to his successor, Sir Henry Ward, who had sat as a Liberal in the British Parliament, the difficult task of superintending their working, for his own term of office ended a little more than a month after their introduction. The Liberal commoner proved at once to be more Conservative than the Tory peer, and his first official act was to inform the Assembly that his predecessor's reforms must be regarded as a final settlement of the question ; when that body showed signs of demurring, it was prorogued. Further disturbances in Cephalonia of both a local and a political character followed, on August 26, his grant of an amnesty to the insurgents of the 1 88 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. previous year and the release of the two exiled politicians. The peasantry rose and burnt the country-houses of the land- owners, one of whom perished in the flames, and the head-man of a village was shot as he stood by the Lord High Com- missioner. Martial law was proclaimed — a singular preliminary to the exercise of a wide suffrage and vote by ballot ; Zerv6s was again sent into banishment; numbers of peasants were flogged with the "cat"; and 21 persons, including the two ringleaders, Vlachos and a priest called Nodaros, but nicknamed "Father Brigand" by his own countrymen, were executed. A section of Liberals in England endeavoured to obtain a vote of censure upon these methods of repression ; but their attempt failed ; a second amnesty had already been granted, and no further riot occurred in Cephalonia during the pro- tectorate. The first Assembly elected under the reformed system met in March 1850. Of the three parties, which divided the Ionians — the " Radicals," the more moderate " Reformers," and the reactionary or " Subterranean " party, which supported the protectorate — the Reformers had a majority, and only 11 out of the 42 members were Radicals. But the Radicals, if a minority, were the noisiest and most popular party, es- pecially in Cephalonia and Zante. Among those chosen by Cephalonia were two Radical editors, Zerv6s and Mompherratos, whose election was largely due to their banishment by the authorities — for the political "fortune of a Radical," as a Cephalonian satirist remarked, "was made when the high police knocked at his door." In fact, six out of the ten deputies of that democratic island belonged to the Radical party, while Corfu returned only one. Many members were new to par- liamentary life. From the very outset the Assembly gave a taste of its quality by its desire to omit the word "indissoluble" from the oath, which described the bonds between the Islands and the protectorate by that adjective. The epithet was omitted, with the assent of the Lord High Commissioner, who ix] The Unionist Movement 189 drew up a new form of oath ; but, in spite of a protest signed by five members, four of them Cephalonians, the allusion to the "treaty of Paris" and to the "rights of the Protecting Sovereign " was maintained in this second formula. To the High Commissioner's advice that the Assembly should devote itself to such practical reforms as the improvement of ecclesi- astical administration and of the status of the clergy, the reorganisation of education, and the completion of the Santa Mavra canal, the Speaker replied by censuring the policy of the British government in the Don Pacifico case, by blaming the protectorate for the decline of Ionian trade and agriculture, by demanding further reforms, and by alluding to the union in one body^of all the scattered members of the Greek family. It was thus apparent from the beginning that the democratic changes of 1849 had whetted, instead of satiating, the appetite of the Ionian politicians. The only difference between the two Liberal parties was this, that while the Reformers advocated constitutional reforms which would not prejudice the ultimate removal of the protectorate, the Radicals desired nothing short of immediate union with Greece. Consequently Radicals and Protectionists alike opposed reforms, because the former feared lest they might make the protectorate popular, the latter because they feared to lose their privileges. When a motion by the Cephalonian Typaldos on December 8, ex- pressing the " will " of the islanders for union, was proposed, the Assembly was abruptly prorogued for seven months, and, before the year 1851 had closed, was dissolved. Ionian historians still regard this short-lived legislature as the first historic landmark on the road towards union. Its successor, in which the Lord High Commissioner believed that he had secured the support of the Reformers, whereas he had thereby alien- ated many Protectionists, and to which for the first time his speech was read in Greek, instead of in Italian, proved to be almost equally unmanageable. Banishment had decimated the Radicals; Count Caruso, Regent of Cephalonia, "supervised" 190 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [cri. the elections there; and only one Radical of importance, Con- stantine Lombardos, a Zantiote doctor, sat in this Assembly. Nevertheless, by a majority of one vote it rejected the reforms proposed by the government ; before it met for its second session, a general crisis in the east had begun, and Ionian nationalism received a yet further stimulus from the events which led to the Crimean War. The Revolution of 1848, which had indirectly influenced the politics of both Greece and the Ionian Islands, produced far more violent effects in the Roumanian countries. Upon the deposition of Ghika in 1842, George Bibescu, the scion of a noble family who had held office as secretary of state, and who was an enthusiastic admirer of the great Roumanian hero, Michael the Brave, was elected Prince of Wallachia. Before long, however, a quarrel with the Assembly, arising out of the grant of a mining concession to a Russian subject, led to the suspen- sion of that body ; and the Prince, free from the opposition of his legislature, was able to devote himself to such practical measures as the making of roads, the draining of marshes, and the establishment of a customs-union with Moldavia — the first step towards the political union of the two Principalities. In Moldavia the exceptionally long reign of Michael Sturdza, which lasted for 15 years, was a period of social reform. The sanitation of the towns, the establishment of strict ordinances against infectious diseases, the creation of a police force, and a series of measures tending to improve the lot, and protect the interests, of the peasants, were the work of this active prince. He removed from Moldavia, as his colleague removed from Wallachia, the last taint of slavery by the emancipation of the gypsies, who were the property of the state and of the monasteries. Most difficult task of all, he attempted to grapple with the Jewish question, which is still one of the gravest problems of Roumanian statesmanship. The Jews, already numerous in Moldavia at the beginning of the 19th century, had become in the time of Michael Sturdza, IX] The Moldavian Jews owing to the opening of the Black Sea to the commerce of all countries, an important element in the population. Alarmed at their increase, he forbade them to reside in his principality, unless they either possessed a certain amount of capital or had learned a trade; he treated as vagabonds those Hebrew travellers who came unprovided with passports ; and he com- pelled them to close their shops on Sundays and feast days. But while, on the one hand, he thus endeavoured by direct means to diminish their numbers and influence, on the other, by allowing them to become members of the local commercial associations without payment of the charges payable by the Christian members, he gave them an enormous advantage over the native traders. At that period, trade was generally regarded as fit for foreigners alone ; but a day arrived when the Roumans looked back with dismay at this fiscal exemption of the Mol- davian Jews. Naturally, the liberal measures of both Bibescu and Sturdza procured for their authors the animosity of the greater nobles, always inclined to resent the domination of a prince who had been but yesterday one of themselves. Both rulers were forced in self-defence to cripple as far as possible the power of these haughty magnates. Bibescu, by a strict enforcement of an article of the reglement organique, excluded the great nobles from his new Assembly on the ground that they did not reside in their electoral districts but were absentees at the capital; Sturdza aimed at weakening their power by a profuse creation of magnates from the ranks of the lesser nobility. But the discontented usually found support from the Russian consul, and it was against the constant interference of this foreign Power in their affairs that the Roumanian edition of the Revolution of 1848 was mainly directed. The spirit of nationalism had developed apace during the 14 years of the reglement organique. Michael Kogalniceanu and others, who had studied history abroad, returned home to describe the glories of the Roumanian race's past and the 192 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. degradation of its present condition. The Colleges of St Sava at Bucharest and the Academy at Jassy, founded by Michael Sturdza and called by his name, enabled those who did not belong to the aristocracy to obtain the same education as their social superiors. The sons of the nobles were often defeated in the class rooms by the children of those whom they despised ; and the opening of public posts to those who had gained a diploma was equivalent to a social revolution. The Russians and their clients, the native magnates, took alarm ; and excuses were found for suppressing the upper classes of the two Roumanian colleges. But a generation had been prepared for the Revolution of 1848, and when that movement passed over Europe, it did not stop at the Carpathians. In Moldavia, where the revolution broke out on April 8, it was speedily suppressed by the Prince, without the aid which Russia offered him. There the demands of the ringleaders were confined to the redress of certain abuses in the administra- tion, and the agitation left the masses cold. A more advanced programme of reforms put forward by Kogalniceanu, in which the latter attacked the reglement organique and the Russian protectorate and demanded a national constitution with the union of the Principalities, led to the exile of its author. But in Wallachia events of a more stirring character took place. So little was the movement there directed against the Prince, that the members of the revolutionary committee invited Bibescu to put himself at their head. Bibescu, too weak or too well informed to champion a cause which was sure to incur the opposition of the Tsar, declined their overtures ; and the revolution began at Islaz, a village near the Danube. On this, the Prince arrested several of the committee ; but an attempt upon his life and the slowness of the army in responding to his orders convinced him that he could not check the movement which he had refused to lead. On June 23 a great crowd surrounded his palace, and forced him to sign a constitution which annulled the rlglement ix] The Roumanian Revolution 193 organique; whereupon, the Russian consul-general protested, and bade him quit the country. Bibescu obeyed and abdi- cated, leaving the revolutionary committee in possession of the government. But, as always happens on such occasions, there were two % parties among the leaders — a moderate section, of which Eliade Radulescu was the chief, and which carefully refrained from touching the suzerain rights of Turkey, contenting itself with emancipation from the Russian protectorate, with agrarian reform, and with a liberal constitution ; and a Radical wing, which aimed at the immediate establishment of an united and independent Roumania, without reflecting that such an attempt would involve a disastrous war against Turkey, Russia, and Austria simultaneously. Of these two schools of thought the Moderates were successful in obtaining the chief influence in the provisional government, which was formed after the abdication of Bibescu. Neither the agrarian nor the foreign policy of the provisional government was successful. Of the great noble families only seven took part in the revolution ; and the land commission, appointed to examine the condition of the peasants, to abolish forced labour, and to make the cultivator of the soil in some measure its owner, was a failure. The Metropolitan called down the thunders of the Church upon what he described as "the ruin of the family and of private property"; the Russians invited the Turks to come forward as the champions of those institutions. The Turks fell into the trap laid for them by Russian diplomacy, and occupied Wallachia. The provisional government was dissolved at the bidding of the Turkish commissioner, and a Lieutenancy set up, consisting of Eliade Radulescu and two other members of the moderate party. The Sultan was satisfied ; not so the Russians ; they insisted upon a further enquiry, in which the Turkish commissioner should be "assisted" by a Russian general, while the Radical party by its violent attacks upon Russia in the press played unconsciously the Russian game. The excuse for the M. L. 13 194 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. employment of force was afforded when the manuscript of the precious reglement organique was publicly burned by the people of Bucharest after having been previously dragged in a mock funeral procession past the windows of the Russian consulate. The Russian authorities in the town thereupon begged of Omar Pasha, the Turkish commander, to protect them; a collision between the Ottoman troops and the local firemen led to bloodshed; and the Russians once again occupied the Principalities to restore order. A final attempt of the Radicals was abandoned on the advice of the British consul. The Lieutenancy of three was abolished, and a rich noble, Con- stantine Cantacuzene, appointed sole Lieutenant-Governor. On May i, 1849, Russia and Turkey concluded the Convention of Balta Liman, which limited the duration of the Princes' reigns to seven years, abolished the Assemblies, and substituted for them divans (or Councils) named by the Princes. A considerable Russo-Turkish army was to occupy the Princi- palities till their complete pacification ; and a Russian and a Turkish commissioner were to assist the Princes to reorganise the administration. Michael Sturdza, who had preserved his throne throughout the revolution, declined to reign any longer on these terms, and retired to Paris, the usual exile of Roumanian rulers in retirement. In his place Gregory V Ghika, who had taken part in the movement of the previous years, was appointed Prince of Moldavia; while Bibescu was succeeded in Wallachia by Barbe Stirbeiu, his brother, who had exchanged the family name for that of his adopted father, and had had a large experience of public life during the late reigns. The Roumanian revolution of 1848, suppressed though it had been, left its mark upon the history of the people. Abroad, the exiled revolutionaries stirred up public opinion in favour of their nationality; and western Europe learnt, to its satisfaction, that in that distant corner of the continent there was a race, neither Slav nor Greek, which might, if supported in its aspirations, became a buffer-state between Turkey ix] Results of the Revolution 195 and Russia. This discovery made most impression upon the two Liberal Powers, France and Great Britain, so soon to engage in a common struggle against Russia; and, whilst French and French-speaking Roumanian writers enlightened the first of Latin nations on the lot of this oppressed scion of the Latin family, Palmerston himself raised the Roumanian question in the House of Commons. At home, the two Princes, instituted on the ruins of the revolution, continued, in a quieter manner, the work of its authors. Both Stirbeiu and Ghika re-established the system of instruction in the vernacular, and encouraged the publication of the national history. Both grappled with the agrarian question, which the Wallachian ruler endeavoured to solve by reducing the daily hours, while increasing the days, of the peasant's compulsory labour for his landlord, and by substituting a money payment for the old practice of forced work upon the roads. The reorganisation of the army and the reduction of the debt incurred by the occupation, which ended in 185 1, were due to his policy ; his Moldavian colleague was less wise in permitting the Jews to open drink-shops in the villages, thus laying the foundation of a grave social evil, which modern legislation has sought to diminish. But the work of both Princes was prema- turely interrupted by the outbreak of hostilities between their great neighbours in 1853. Russia informed them that they might retain their thrones on condition of severing their connexion with their suzerain. The Princes, well knowing that this time Turkey would have the western Powers behind her, refused to accept this order, and fled to Vienna, there to await the tide of affairs which should restore them to their respective states. Servia, although in a much less degree than the Roumanian Principalities, was affected by the European convulsion of 1848. Alexander Karageorgevich, whose throne remained unshaken by an attempt at an Obrenovich restoration in 1845, was naturally well-disposed to Austria and Turkey, the two Powers 13—2 ig6 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. which had supported him. These good relations between Austria and Servia were greatly strengthened by the action of the Serbs during the revolution in the Austrian empire. On May 13 a National Assembly of the Austrian Serbs met at Karlovitz, the seat of the Metropolitan, and demanded the nomination of a Patriarch and a Vbivode, naming to the latter dignity Colonel Shuplikatz, an officer who had served in the Napoleonic wars. Under the banner of "Emperor and Nationality" they aided the Austrians against the Magyars, and were joined by many volunteers from the principality, despite the remonstrances of the Turkish government. So far as the Serbs of Austria were concerned, they gained little but the addition of the title of "Grand Vo'ivode of the Servian Vo'ivodina " to the already numerous designations of the Austrian Emperor ; but this co-operation of the two neighbour- ing branches of the Servian race led many of the Austrian Serbs to enter the service of Prince Alexander, where their experience was valuable to the principality, and kept the foreign policy of Servia within the orbit of Austria at a critical period of the eastern question. Montenegro, like Servia, was stirred by the movement of the Austrian Serbs. Peter II offered the aid of 10,000 of his subjects to Jellatchich the Ban of Croatia ; but the latter declined to allow the Montenegrins to take part in the civil war between Hungarians and Croats. A series of frontier skirmishes between the mountaineers and their Turkish and Albanian neighbours provided, however, that military exercise which was the chief occupation of the Vladikds subjects. In these circumstances Peter II died, on October 31, 185 1, the last ruler of the Black Mountain who united the chief ecclesiastical and political functions in his own person. His remains repose on the summit of the Lovtchen — the lofty mountain, recently so famous, which commands the sea of stones that he had ruled so wisely; and his name is preserved in Servian literature by two dramas, "The Mountain Garland," ix] Semlarisation of Montenegro 197 and " Stephen the Little," and by a series of poems, in which he extolled the heroism of his subjects. The dying Vladika had nominated his nephew Danilo, then absent in Vienna, as his successor, charging Pero Tomaso Petrovich, President of the Senate and likewise uncle of the young heir, with the duty of governing the country till the latter could arrive. Pero was, however, acclaimed by the war- party, which wished for a vigorous policy against the Turks ; and, when his nephew reached Cetinje, he found the usurper installed in his palace. Danilo promptly appealed to the people for the execution of the late ruler's testament, and his uncle was constrained to acknowledge him as his sovereign. Instead, however, of pardoning the bellicose chiefs who had endeavoured to rob him of his heritage, Danilo warned them that he would punish their disloyalty, thus from the outset creating a party against his authority. The new ruler began his reign by changing the theocratic system of government, which had prevailed in Montenegro since 15 16. He was young, he was in love with a fair damsel of Trieste, he wanted to marry, he desired to found a family, he had no calling for an ecclesiastical life. Already the late Vladika had shown by moving his residence from the Monastery to the so-called " Billiard-table," that the separation of a Montenegrin sovereign's dual attributes was impending. Danilo sent a message to the Senate, proposing this change in the ancient constitution. In 1852 Montenegro was declared to be an hereditary, temporal principality ; the succession to the throne was to be by order of primogeniture in the male line ; and another member of the Petrovich family or of the Monte- negrin aristocracy was to be appointed head of the Church. Communication of these changes was made to the Ortho- dox Tsar, who approved them ; Austria had already been con- sulted ; Turkey alone resented the erection of Montenegro into a secular principality, especially as her suspicions were aroused by this practical recognition of the Tsar as patron of 198 The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. ix the newly-created Prince. Omar Pasha, the Croatian who had been in the Lebanon and in the Principalities, but was then Governor of Bosnia, tried to detach the Piperi from the rest of Montenegro by the promise of fiscal exemption and a grant of lands ; a band of Montenegrins again seized the ancient capital of Jablyak by a coup de main ; nor did its evacuation by the prudent Prince prevent the indignant Turks, anxious for war, from invading the Black Mountain. Attacked simul- taneously by five separate Turkish forces, Danilo begged Austria and Russia to intervene, while he held the Turks at bay. Austria, incensed against Turkey for her recent hospitality to Polish and Hungarian refugees, played the game of Slavonic Orthodoxy by supporting Montenegro. An Austrian envoy, Count Leiningen, informed the Sultan that the Austrian Em- peror was bound as a Christian sovereign to intervene on behalf of his Christian neighbours ; the Sultan consented to desist from hostilities ; and on March 3, 1853, peace was signed on the basis of the status quo, after the Turks had sustained serious losses. Austria had performed a service to the little state, which came to regard her as a more dangerous foe than Turkey ; and the Austrian envoy had insisted by a reference to the Turkish firman of 1799 that the Prince of Montenegro was not a vassal of the Sultan. Danilo personally thanked the Austrian Emperor for his intervention ; and, peace being restored, his own marriage, and the appointment of another member of the Petrovich clan as bishop, completed the change of the ancient constitution. CHAPTER X THE CRIMEAN WAR (1853-6) The war between Turkey and Montenegro had scarcely ended, when another and a far more serious conflict began, which involved the western Powers and ended the long period of peace, unbroken, so far as Great Britain was concerned) since the battle of Waterloo. Russia, regarding herself as the special protectress of the Orthodox Church, had intended to make a Turkish refusal to conclude peace with Montenegro a casus belli. 1 But the prompt and vigorous action of Austria and the sudden acceptance of Count Leiningen's summons by the Porte had removed this ground of complaint. The Balkan Slavs in general, and the Montenegrins in particular, had in the spring of 1853 no special need of Russian inter- vention on their behalf. There was, however, a more distant part of the Orient, where the unhappy divisions of Christian doctrine engaged the attention of diplomatists and furnished an excuse for the activity of fleets and armies. By one of those tragic circum- stances, which make the believer sigh and the cynic smile, the holiest spot on earth, the scene of Our Lord's birth, had become the subject of a theological dispute between monks of opposing sects, and was soon to be made the occasion for a war between monarchs of rival races. By the Capitulations of 1535 the custody of the Holy Places had been entrusted to French Catholics ; and this French protectorate, reaffirmed in 1673, na( i been solemnly confirmed and enlarged by the 200 The Crimean War [en. famous Capitulations of 1740. Articles 33 and 82 of that instrument, the Magna Carta of the French in the Levant, provided that the French religious Orders should not be disturbed in their occupation of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and that, whenever the fabric of the Holy Places required repair, the requisite leave should be granted at the request of the French ambassador. These exclusive privileges of "the eldest daughter of the Church," derived from a period when the Russian empire had not yet sprung into being, had been undermined by certain firmans conceded to the Greek Church from 1634 onwards, at times when France was either hostile to Turkey, or indifferent to ecclesiastical questions and to that political importance which they always assume in the east. The Orthodox naturally gained ground during seasons when pure reason directed French foreign policy, for it is a result of anticlericalism in Latin countries that it cripples the national influence otherwise exercised by the Church abroad. When, however, Louis Napoleon became President of the Second French Republic, the support of the French Catholics was essential to him. Alike in Rome and at Jerusalem he came forward as the champion of the Catholic cause and instructed his ambassador at Constantinople to insist upon the strict execution of the Capitulations of 1740, thus, in the words of the British Foreign Secretary, "making the tomb of Christ a cause of quarrel among Christians." The Porte, embarrassed by the rival claims of France on behalf of the Latin, and of Russia in favour of the Orthodox monks, endeavoured to please both parties. By a note of February 9, 1852, it directed that keys of the north and south gates of the great church at Bethlehem and of the grotto of the Holy Manger "must be given" to the Latins, "as of old," and they were allowed to erect a silver star adorned with the French arms in the shrine of the Nativity. By a firman, issued under Russian pressure, it reaffirmed the custom of giving keys of these sanctuaries to the Greeks, Latins, The Holy Places 20I and Armenians, and provided that "no change " should "be made in the present state of the gates of the church of Bethlehem." The French were naturally indignant that the Porte had ratified the privileges of the Greeks, which they considered as an infringement of their own treaty rights. The Russians wished that this confirmation of their clients' contention should be publicly announced at Jerusalem ; the French were equally desirous that what they regarded as a diplomatic defeat should not be proclaimed aloud. The unpleasant task of communicating the decision of the Porte to the rival sects of the Holy Land was entrusted to Afif Bey, who followed the Fabian policy for which Turkish diplo- macy is famous. This Mussulman, whom the irony of history had made a judge between warring Christians, delivered a series of the usual platitudes on the relations between the Sultan and his Christian subjects. When these beatitudes failed to satisfy the impatience of the Orthodox party, he adjourned the assembly to Gethsemane, and there read an order of his master, permitting the Latins to celebrate mass once a year in the church of the Virgin, provided that the altar and its ornaments remained undisturbed. This permission irritated the Latins, without appeasing the Greeks. The former declared it impossible to celebrate mass " upon a schismatic slab of marble, with a covering of silk and gold,... and before a crucifix which has the feet separated " ; the latter observed, that the firman, which Afif had been presumably sent to read, had not been read. Pressed by the Russian consul-general, Afif sought refuge in subterfuges, and finally admitted that he had no instructions to read the firman at all. Thus, the Greeks were defeated, and their defeat was rendered all the more galling when, on December 22, the silver star of the French was placed by the Latin Patriarch in the sanctuary of the Nativity, and the keys of the great door of the church of Bethlehem and of the sacred manger were handed over to the adherents of the filioque clause. The 202 The Crimean War [en. Russian government, in the name of outraged Orthodoxy and injured autocracy, called for " an act of reparation," and ordered an army corps to advance to the frontiers of the Danubian Principalities — the usual prelude of a Russo-Turkish war. Thus the Russian " heir of Byzantium " in the true spirit of Byzantine history, had found in a quarrel of theological schools a pretext for armed intervention. If the Tsar could no longer come forward as the protector of the Montenegrin mountaineers, whose grievances had been removed, he might still pose as the champion of the humiliated Orthodox monks of Palestine. In this frame of mind, he sent Prince Mentschikoff, a Chauvinist without diplomatic training, on an extraordinary mission to Constantinople, to demand not only a prompt settlement of the question of the Holy Places, but, as subse- quently transpired, a Russian protectorate over the whole of the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman empire. MentschikofTs methods of diplomacy soon convinced the Turkish government that coercion, not conciliation, was his aim. He began by refusing to call upon the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs, who at once resigned. The Grand Vizier, in alarm, begged Col. Rose (afterwards Lord Strathnairn), then British charge d'affaires, to summon the British fleet from Malta to Vourla near Smyrna. The British government dis- approved its agent's request; but, just at the moment when its disapproval seemed likely to mollify the Tsar, the French fleet was suddenly ordered to anchor off Salamis. The Emperor Napoleon III, as the Prince-President had now become, had personal no less than political reasons for pursuing a vigorous foreign policy towards the Tsar. Trifles count for much in the highest and most august circles, where the fate of nations is often decided; and the parvenu, who had assumed the Imperial style and was eager for the recog- nition of the long-established sovereigns of Europe, was stung to the quick by the Tsar's description of him in official corre- spondence as " my dear friend," instead of the customary Lord Aberdeen 203 phrase of monarchs, " my brother." Moreover, the brand-new Emperor, still fresh from the coup d'etat and not yet securely established on the throne, had need of some striking success abroad, which would divert the minds of his discontented and critical subjects from domestic politics. If he could obtain this success by co-operation with a great Power of old-standing and unimpeachable reputation, such as Great Britain, he would raise himself in the social scale and make people forget his origins and his methods — the ridiculous failures of Strassburg and Boulogne, the prison of Ham, the exile in London, and the second of December. So far the British government had not been involved in the question at issue between France, Russia and Turkey ; nor did there seem to be any adequate reason why it should be. Great Britain was the protectress of neither the Roman Catholics nor the Orthodox in the near east; and, as the greatest commercial community in the world, she was assumed to be specially desirous of peace. Her Prime Minister at this time, Lord Aberdeen, was not only a friend of peace but a friend of Nicholas, whom he had met in London nine years earlier. On that occasion the Tsar had discussed the eastern question with the future Prime Minister, then Foreign Secretary, and urged upon him the desirability of a mutual understanding between their two countries. A memorandum of the supposed common interests of Great Britain and Russia in the near east was drawn up ; and the Tsar left with the impression that he could rely upon Aberdeen's co-operation, and left behind him the conviction that he was a man of his word, upon whom strict reliance could be placed. Accordingly, when his friend became Prime Minister, the Tsar felt that he was sure of his support ; and a month after Aberdeen's Cabinet had been formed, he spoke freely with Sir Hamilton Seymour, the British ambassador to his court, on the state of Turkey. " We have on our hands," he said, " a sick man — a very sick man ; it will be, I tell you frankly, a great misfortune if one of these 204 The Crimean War [ch. days he should slip away from us, especially before all necessary arrangements were made." He disclaimed Catherine the Great's dreams of territorial expansion, but alluded to his rights and duties towards the Christian subjects of the Sultan, and suggested that, in the event of the dissolution of Turkey, Servia and the Bulgarians should receive the same form of government as the Danubian Principalities, and that Egypt and Crete should become British possessions. As for Con- stantinople, he stated that he would neither allow Great Britain to establish herself there, nor would he annex it himself ; as to a temporary " occupation " of the Turkish capital, that was another matter. These overtures were politely rejected in London. Our only interest in Egypt, Sir Hamilton Seymour said, was one of transit to India ; the other Turkish territories Great Britain did not covet. Nor did the Cabinet believe that the end of Turkey was nigh. In this it was right. But, while the Tsar's desire to co-operate with Great Britain and his friendship with the head of the British government seemed to augur well for the preservation of good relations between the two countries, the ambassador whom the British Cabinet now bade return to Constantinople was a man whom, of all diplomatists, Nicholas hated most. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, as he now was, had played a great part in the tortuous politics of the Levant. We have seen him intervene with authority in the affairs of Greece ; he had already won an over- powering influence at Constantinople. But the Tsar had once slighted him by refusing to receive him as ambassador at St Petersburg; and this affront, like that to Napoleon III, intensified the strength of " the Great Eltchi's," as of the French Emperor's, opposition to the Russian plans. In those days an ambassador was not what he is said now to have become — a clerk at the end of a telegraph wire. Lord Stratford did not merely repeat his instructions, he sometimes ignored them ; and, while a hesitating Cabinet in London was making up its mind, he had already made history, and made it irrevocably. But x] Lord Stratford's advice 205 the great ambassador was not only " the voice of England in the east"; he stood behind the trembling Turkish Ministers and gave them courage and advice, so that they left his presence men and statesmen. Before his arrival on April 5, 1853, Mentschikoff had already unfolded to the Turkish government the real scope of his mission, which went far beyond the question of the Holy Places. Russia through her envoy offered the Turks the aid of her fleet and 400,000 men against any western Power in return for an addition to the fatal treaty of Kutchuk-Kai'nardji, placing the Orthodox Church entirely under her protection. This proposal was to be kept secret from Great Britain; but, within four days of his return to Constantinople, the British ambassador was aware of its nature. He at once advised the Turkish Ministers to keep the question of the Holy Places distinct from that of the general protectorate, to remove any grievance that Russia might have by the prompt settlement of the former, and to decline to entertain the latter, without, however, refusing the spontaneous redress of any abuses. Thus, the ground of legitimate complaint would be completely cut away from under MentschikofFs feet. The Turks acted upon his advice ; and by his timely interposition between the Russian envoy and the new French ambassador he managed on April 22 to secure the settlement of the original cause of dispute, the question of the Holy Places. It was arranged that, while the key of the church of Bethlehem and the silver star should not be removed, their presence there was to be understood to confer no new right upon the Latins ; that the doorkeeper of the church should continue to be a Greek, but should not prevent the ingress of people of other creeds ; that Greeks, Armenians, and Latins should have daily pre- cedence in that order at the tomb of the Virgin; that the gardens of the convent of Bethlehem should remain under the joint care of the two rival sects; and that the repairs to the cupola of the church of the Holy Sepulchre should be carried out by the Sultan on the lines of the existing plan ; while the 206 The Crimean War [ch. windows of the buildings overlooking its terraces should be walled up. Thus, both the Montenegrin and the monkish questions had been settled ; the peace of Europe might seem assured. But, nine days earlier, fresh Russian dispatches, penned under the influence of the news that the French fleet had been ordered to Salamis, had reached MentschikofT. In obedience to the pressing orders of his incensed master, the Russian envoy demanded from the Turkish government a treaty guaranteeing to the Orthodox clergy and Church in the Ottoman empire all their ancient privileges and all the advantages accorded to other Christian bodies. Such a treaty, in the words of the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, " would be giving to Russia an exclusive protectorate over the whole Orthodox population, their clergy, and their churches." When- ever an Orthodox bishop— and in the Turkish empire the bishops are usually politicians first and spiritual pastors after- wards — had any grievance, he would have appealed to the Tsar, who would thus have had an excuse at any moment for interfering in the internal affairs of Turkey. An imperium in imperio would thus have been erected, compared with which the intervention of the Papacy in English politics under the Plantagenets or the existing French protectorate over the com- paratively few Roman Catholics of Turkey were as nothing. For the Tsar was near at hand, and at the head of armies and fleets, while the Orthodox subjects of the Sultan were legion, and numbers of those who were officially labelled as "Greeks," because they belonged to the Greek Church, were Slavs of a race akin to that of the Russians. The Turkish government consulted Lord Stratford as to their policy, and decided to reject the proposed Russian treaty. Meanwhile, the settlement of the question of the Holy Places had placed the Tsar in a far worse position, as that of a man who was bent upon picking a quarrel with his neighbour. MentschikofT, unable to go back, repeated his demand in the form of a convention, which he " The Great Eltchi" 207 requested the Turkish government to accept. Once again the British ambassador, now the real power behind the Turkish throne, counselled firmness, and, in a private audience with the Sultan, informed him that, in the event of imminent danger, the British Mediterranean squadron would be held in readiness. Mentschikoff, after further attempts to wring consent from the Sultan and his Ministers, thus causing a Ministerial crisis at Constantinople, orally received from Reshid Pasha, the new Foreign Minister, on May 18, a refusal to grant the protectorate over the Greek Church in Turkey, demanded by the Tsar. In vain, at Lord Stratford's suggestion, the representatives of the other three Powers joined him in expressing to Mentschikoff their regret at the threatened rupture of Russo-Turkish relations. He merely consented to accept the promise of the protectorate through the less formal channel of a note, in place of a conven- tion or a treaty. When the Turkish government rejected this ultimatum, he left Constantinople with his staff. His Imperial master attributed his defeat to the supremacy of Lord Stratford, and filled the European courts with his complaints of the British ambassador. These complaints were not without some foundation, for the latter is said to have boasted openly that the Crimean war had been his revenge for the Tsar's refusal to receive him. Yet, while the Tsar recognised that behind the Sultan stood the commanding figure of " the Great Eltchi," he could not believe that either the British government, presided over by his friend Aberdeen, or the British people, immersed in commerce, would permit their ambassador to lead them into war. In this Nicholas was wrong, though a superficial survey of our recent history might have tended to confirm him in this fatal error. The British people is almost always a riddle to foreign statesmen ; and at that time public utterances had more than usually obscured its real character. Two years earlier the Cobdenite School, still in the glory of the Free-trade triumph, had foretold that the Great Exhibition would mark the end of 2o8 - The Crimean War [ch. wars, and that the British lion would lie down with the Manchester lamb. In 1853 nearly 40 years of peace had passed over the heads of the British people, and a generation had grown up which knew the horrors of war from books alone. This last fact was, in reality, a danger rather than a hopeful sign ; for we have learnt in our own day that, when the Crimean war had ceased to be a personal recollection, the populace was eager for a great colonial campaign. But the Tsar believed that he knew the pacific nature of Great Britain, just as 45 years later sapient German politicians vowed that the British would never go to war for the sake of a distant colony. He was misled by the undue prominence given to the utterances of the peace party, forgetting that the vast, silent mass of the British public rarely takes part in public meetings, but quietly decides the fate of governments on polling-day. He did not foresee that the mere fact of Cobden's and Bright's rooted and high principled antipathy to all wars would inevitably destroy their influence in opposing any particular war, whereas the opposition of a Liberal to a particular Liberal measure is of far more value than that of a Conservative, the enemy on principle of all Liberal proposals. The middle classes, whom Nicholas had studied at a distance during his visit to England, seemed to him sunk in material prosperity ; the British Jeshurun had waxed fat, he was not likely to kick. So reasoned the Tsar ; and the peace party honestly, but unfortunately for its own cause, did all that it could to confirm him in this strong delusion. Confident that Great Britain would not fight against him, the Tsar, on July 2, 1853, ordered his forces to cross the Pruth and occupy the two Danubian Principalities, whose Princes were informed that they might keep their thrones, on condition of breaking off all relations with the Porte. The Princes, ordered by the latter to disobey the Russian orders and to pay their tribute as usual, as soon as they became convinced that the Turks would be supported by the western Powers, The Vienna Note 209 refused to carry out the Tsar's behests, and in October fled to Vienna. The Russian occupation was followed by a mani- festo, declaring the Orthodox Church to be in danger, disclaiming "the intention to commence war" or to make conquests, and protesting that the Tsar regarded the Princi- palities merely as a " security " for " the restoration " of his rights. Thus, war was even yet not officially declared ; but, as the Tsar had given to his operations the colour of a crusade, the Turks retaliated by preaching a religious war. As for the Powers, Austria naturally felt alarm at the occupation of territories on her own frontier, inhabited by the same race as some of her own subjects; Prussia, whose romantic sovereign, Frederick William IV, was the Tsar's brother-in-law, and whose foreign policy had been hitherto subservient to that of Russia, united with Austria ; and Great Britain and France, while they sent their fleets to Besika Bay near the mouth of the Dardanelles, consulted with the two chief German states at Vienna as to the best means of averting a conflict. There their representatives approved with some modifications a document, which had originated in Paris but which came to be called from the place of their meeting, "the Vienna Note." This document stated that "whereas, if at all times the Emperors of Russia have evinced their active solicitude for the maintenance of the immunities and privileges of the Orthodox Greek Church in the Ottoman Empire, the Sultans have never refused to confirm them;... the government of His Majesty the Sultan will remain faithful to the letter and to the spirit of the treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople relative to the protection of the Christian religion, and His Majesty considers himself bound in honour... to cause the Greek rite to share in the advantages conceded to the other Christian rites by convention or special arrangement." The Tsar, as was anticipated, accepted this note ; and Lord Clarendon, the British Foreign Secretary, ordered Lord Stratford to procure "the assent of the Turkish government thereto." m. l» 14 2io The Crimean War [ch. The powerful ambassador had already persuaded his colleagues in Constantinople to approve a note inspired by himself, informing the Russian government that the Sultan had issued firmans in confirmation of the privileges of the Orthodox Church. He none the less executed his orders as the agent of his government, but at the same time let the Turkish Ministers see that his mind did not approve what his tongue was bound to utter. They amended the note by making the above-cited passages run as follows: "Whereas, if at all times the Emperors of Russia have evinced their active solicitude for the Orthodox Greek religion and Church, the Sultans have never ceased to provide for the maintenance of the immunities and privileges which they have spontaneously granted at different times to that religion and to that Church in the Ottoman Empire, and to confirm them;... the government of His Majesty the Sultan will remain faithful to the stipulations of the treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople, relative to the protection by the Sublime Porte of the Christian religion, and. . .His Majesty considers himself bound in honour. . . to cause the Greek rite to share in the advantages granted, or which might be granted, to the other Christian communities, Ottoman subjects." Russia rejected the note, as thus amended ; and this difference of phraseology, which was, indeed, more than merely verbal, caused the final rupture. The Porte summoned the Russian general to evacuate the Principalities within 15 days; and, as he disregarded this summons, on October 23, the third Russo-Turkish war of the century formally began. A day earlier, and therefore, in technical violation of the convention of 1841 (unless the Russian occupation of the Principalities were considered as constituting a breach of the peace), the British fleet had, at the request of France, entered the Dardanelles. Russia protested at this breach of the "Convention of the Straits"; and for the first time the Tsar was brought face to face with the hard fact of a probable war against Great Britain. The probability was Hostilities begin 211 increased by the substitution of a separate Anglo-French under- standing for the concert of the four Powers. While Austria, the Power nearest, most directly concerned, and most capable of striking quickly, held back, and Prussia followed Austria, the French Emperor and the forward party in the divided British Cabinet, headed by Palmerston and Russell, pushed Great Britain into war. A spark was now alone needed to cause an explosion of popular indignation, no less dangerous because it was unreasonable. Five days after the two empires were in a state of hostility, Omar Pasha, commander-in-chief of the Ottoman forces in Europe, crossed the Danube at Vidin, and entrenched himself at Kalafat in Wallachia ; a few days later the Russian occupants were defeated at Oltenitza. The Tsar's reply was to send out his Black Sea fleet ; on November 30, his admiral annihilated the Turkish fleet in the port of Sinope. An outburst of rage against the Tsar and the British Premier greeted the news of this affair in London. Aberdeen durst not show himself in the streets; Palmerston, with his unerring comprehension of what the* average Englishman of the middle classes wanted, resigned his seat in the Cabinet, nominally on an internal question, really because he saw that strong measures were what the country demanded. Yet, there were both precedent and justification for the destruction of the Turkish fleet at Sinope. At Navarino, 26 years earlier, we had aided in destroying another Turkish squadron; and we had not then the excuse of being, as the Tsar was, at war with Turkey. Yet Sinope was called a " massacre," Navarino an " untoward event." The blame, if any, attached to the British and French commanders, who had been authorised to engage, if necessary, in defensive operations in the Black Sea. But the British Cabinet adopted the suggestion of the French Emperor to notify the Russian government "that every Russian ship thenceforward met in the Euxine would be requested, and, if necessary, constrained, to return to Sebastopol." Thereupon, 14—2 212 The Crimean War [ch. Palmerston, the war advocate par excellence, rejoined his former colleagues. The Tsar, on receipt of this notification, recalled his ambassadors from London and Paris, just at the moment when the representatives of the four Powers at Constantinople had drawn up a fresh note and persuaded the Porte to accept it. Nor were the prospects of peace improved by the visit of a deputation from the Society of Friends to St Petersburg. The worthy Quakers were charmed with the simplicity of an Autocrat, who spoke of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress as " my wife," but they did more harm than good to the cause which they had at heart. The majority of their countrymen wanted war, and the Cabinet " drifted " into it. If a war against Russia were to be successfully and speedily conducted it was obviously desirable that the four Powers should act together ; for Austria, from her geographical position, could at once pour troops into the Principalities, while Prussia would be tolerably certain to follow the 'lead of Austria. If, on the other hand, war could by any means have been avoided at that eleventh hour, then the close union of the four Powers offered the best guarantee for a pacific settlement; for even the Russian Autocrat would scarcely have cared to oppose the unanimous decision of the European Areiopagos. More- over, Count Buol, the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, actually offered on February 22, 1854, to support Great Britain and France, if they would fix a period within which the Russian troops should evacuate the Principalities under pain of hostilities. There is no reason to doubt that the Austrian Emperor, despite the services rendered to him by Russia against the Hungarians in 1849, would have been as good as his word, and that Austria, in the famous phrase of Schwarzenberg, would have "astonished the world by her ingratitude." For national gratitude, with a few rare exceptions, chiefly to be found in the Balkan states, has little practical value, however useful it may be to an after-dinner speaker, while national interests are always powerful motives with statesmen. Austria, with X] British action 213 her millions of Slav subjects, could not contemplate with indifference a Russian campaign, undertaken on behalf of the Slavs of Turkey; nor could she, the greatest of all Danubian states, acquiesce in the occupation by another great Power of the Danubian Principalities, inhabited by kinsmen of her own Roumanian people. Unfortunately, the British Ministry telegraphed for confirmation of Count Buol's offer and a clear statement of Prussia's intentions. The Austrian and Prussian replies — the former merely a repetition of Count Buol's proposal, the latter characteristically undecided — were of no practical value, for the simple reason that, on February 27, the day before they arrived in London, the British ultimatum had been dispatched to St Petersburg. Thus, the impatience of the British public, excited by the press, and the pressure exercised by the French Emperor, who had actually taken upon himself to write to the Tsar in the name of Queen Victoria and in reply had received for his pains a cutting allusion to the retreat from Moscow in 181 2, hustled the British government into taking an irretrievable step, before it had even received answers from two possible allies. The British ultimatum informed the Russian government that its refusal or omission to send an answer within six days from the date of delivery, promising to withdraw all its troops from the Principalities before April 3o,^would be regarded as a declaration of war. A French ultimatum, couched in the same terms, was sent at the same time. As the Russian government refused to answer, simultaneous messages were sent by the British and French sovereigns to their respective Parliaments on March 2 7 ; and on the morrow the British declaration of war was published. It enumerated the successive phases of the various questions which had led up to the final arbitrament of the sword ; but it did not explain why Great Britain and France alone had decided to champion a cause which concerned Prussia equally with, and Austria even more than, themselves; for the question which was the gist of 214 The Crimean War [ch. the ultimatum was the occupation of the Principalities, and that was an Austrian rather than a Franco-British concern. On April n the Tsar replied, and twelve days later, in a manifesto to his people, gave a religious colour to the im- pending war. Prince Gortchakoff, the commander of his army of occupation, and himself a warm admirer of the British, had already, on March 24, crossed the Danube and entered the dreary Dobrudja, reviving in the classically educated politicians of that day memories of those lachrymose " Pontic Epistles," which the exiled Ovid had composed in that dismal region. Already, also, two treaties had been signed — one between the two western Powers and Turkey, pledging Great Britain and France to defend the Ottoman empire and Turkey to make no separate peace with Russia ; the other between Great Britain and France for common action against the Tsar. Cynics, reading of these alliances, may have recalled with a smile, how the French Emperor had said not long before, that " the Empire means peace," and how the peace party had been identified by the Tsar with the British people ! As for Austria and Prussia, they on paper supported the " step taken directly by France and England... as being founded in right," guaranteed one another's territories against attack, and, while desiring " to avoid every participation in the war," deprecated "the in- definite continuance of the occupation of the territories on the Lower Danube." Only in the event of a Russian annexation of the Principalities, or in that of a Russian "attack on, or passage of, the Balkan," would the two German Powers act on the offensive. These contingencies never arose. But, on May 23, the four governments were still protesting "that the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and the evacuation of that portion of its territory which is occupied by the Russian army," were, and would be, the objects of their united endeavours. Meanwhile, amidst immense enthusiasm, a British fleet, under Sir Charles Napier, the hero of Acre, had set sail for x] Defence of Silistria 215 the Baltic, escorted by the Queen in person from its moorings. But this Baltic expedition proved to be a bitter disappoint- ment ; and the capture of a single island was small compensation for the failure to take the Russian fleet and attack the Russian arsenal of Kronstadt. But it was not in the north that the northern Colossus was vulnerable. The allied armies, the British commanded by Lord Raglan, a pupil and secretary of Wellington, the French led by Marshal St Arnaud, whose Algerian reputation had been confirmed in his master's eyes by his co-operation in the coup d'etat, encamped by the Dar- danelles not far from the spot where, five centuries before, the Turks had made their first settlement in Europe. Thence, in the month of June, they moved to Varna, now the first harbour of Bulgaria, and then the chief port of European Turkey on the Euxine. But the early successes of the Turks were due not to the armies of the Allies, but to the energy of three young British officers. The veteran Paskievich, the famous commander of the last Russo-Turkish war, had advised the Tsar to direct his forces first against Silistria, the fortress taken by the Russians 25 years before ; and thither in May he had himself marched to execute his plan. But the con- queror of Erivan found himself baffled by Capt. Butler and Lieuts. Nasmyth and Ballard, who had assumed the direction of the defence and had inspired that devotion which Mussul- mans often feel for British officers. Then, for the first time the Arab Tabia earthwork, notorious in the diplomatic negotia- tions of 25 years later, became a household word in England, where the exploits of its gallant defenders were read with all the more pride because they were our fellow-countrymen. When Butler was mortally wounded, Ballard took his place; and so spirited was the resistance that on June 22 the old Russian strategist raised the siege. A fortnight later, Ballard and six other young British officers crossed the Danube with the Turks, and defeated the Russians at Giurgevo ; nor did Gortchakoff dare to retrieve this defeat in the presence of a 2l6 The Crimean War [ch. little squadron of British gunboats. He retreated upon Bucharest, leaving the Turks masters of the lower Danube ; on August 2 the last Russian soldier recrossed the Pruth. To this ignominious retreat the threatening attitude of Austria had contributed even more than the bravery of the Turkish soldiers and the pluck of a handful of British officers at Silistria and Giurgevo. On June 3, Austria had summoned the Tsar to evacuate the Principalities ; and the ease with which her army could invade them lent weight to her summons, which Prussia was ready to support. Eleven days afterwards, the Austrian Emperor signed a convention with the Porte, pledging himself " to exhaust all means," even force, "to obtain the evacuation of the Danubian Principalities,... to re-establish the legal state of things " there, and to withdraw his army as soon as peace was concluded. In further pur- suance of this aim, the Austrian government sent an officer to the British headquarters to concert a joint plan of campaign. Before significant measures of this kind the Tsar could but yield, unless he wished for a war against Austria, in which she might be supported by- Prussia and the minor German states. With the departure of the Russian army ceased the provisional administration which the Russian generals had created on the flight of the two Hospodars. During this inter- regnum two Russian " presidents " had held office, Kalkinsky at Bucharest, UrusorT at Jassy; but their conduct was far milder than that of former Russian armies of occupation. Efforts were made to gain the sympathies and utilise the services of the local aristocracy, but the burden of supporting the costs of the occupation fell upon the two countries. The Princes returned with the Austrian army, which remained there, despite Russian protests, till March 1857, long after the termination of the war. Thus, with the Austrians en- camped in the Principalities, Russia could not, as in 1828 and 1877, march through them to attack the Turks beyond the Danube. A Balkan campaign was excluded ; and with x] Policy of Servia 2 1 7 little bloodshed and without a blow from the allied armies, the object of the British ultimatum — the evacuation of Walla- chia and Moldavia — had been attained. Common-sense would have suggested that this was the moment for peace. Before following the allied armies from Varna to the Crimea, whither the national craving of the British for a sensational triumph and the desire of the French Emperor for that "glory" which is the foundation of brand-new dynasties were about to send them, it is desirable to note the effects of the struggle upon the Balkan Christians. While the Rouman- ians, as usual, had had to bear the brunt of the Russian passage to the Danube, the stolid Bulgars, whose fortress of Silistria and port of Varna had been the scenes of a Russian defeat and a Franco-British encampment, remained indifferent to the operations conducted in their midst. Servia, whose geographical position was more difficult and whose historic consciousness was more awake than that of the plodding Bulgarian peasants, was placed in a situation of no slight embarrassment. Turkey was her suzerain, Russia her protectress, while Austria was not only her neighbour but had acquired influence and sympathy among her leading men, many of whom had been Austrian subjects and had aided against the Hungarians during the revolution of 1848. Alexander Karageorgevich owed much to the support of Turkey and Austria ; nor had he forgotten, that, while the Tsar had opposed his election, the British Premier, when Foreign Secretary in 1843, na d instructed Lord Stratford to keep him on the throne. But Russia had numerous adherents among the peasants, who even spoke of the Orthodox Tsar as " our Emperor." Such were the tendencies of the Servian public men and populace, when the three Powers most nearly concerned demanded the intentions of the little principality. Mentschikoff, with his usual violence, ordered Alexander to dismiss Garashanin, a representative of modern ideas, who had succeeded Petronievich as his chief adviser. But this was Russia's sole diplomatic success in Servia. A 218 The Crimean War [ch. Turkish army approached the southern frontier of the princi- pality and extracted from the Prince a pledge of armed neutrality, while, at Lord Stratford's suggestion, the Sultan issued a new firman, guaranteeing the Servian privileges. An Austrian force was massed along the frontier to prevent a Russian occupation; and the importation of war material through Austrian territory was prohibited. Nevertheless, the Serbs resolved to be prepared to defend their country, if it were menaced — and the menace seemed to many to come rather from the Austrian force on the Save than from the Russians on the lower Danube. The principality was militarily organised ; Austria showed signs of impatience ; and both the British and French governments urged the Servian envoy, Marinkovich, to give her the satisfaction that she sought by disarming. All excuse for alarm of a Russian invasion disappeared with the withdrawal of the Russian troops across the Pruth. Austria dominated the councils of the Prince; Russia had the sym- pathies of the people ; but neither Prince nor people moved a step. From Montenegro the Tsar had stronger reason to expect support. Despite the fact that one war against Turkey was barely over, a considerable party at Cetinje, headed by Danilo's uncle, George Petrovich, was anxious for another. Danilo, however, at the advice of Austria, which had just rendered him so considerable a service, again resolutely opposed a warlike policy, at the risk of his popularity and even of his throne. A conspiracy was formed against him, in which his uncles George and Pero were implicated ; and the agitation for war became acute when the Turks massed troops along the Herzegovinian frontier, thus provoking the bellicose mount- aineers. Some urged an attack upon Antivari, others raided the Herzegovina. Danilo protested that he could no longer keep in his subjects ; and their discontent rose to such a pitch, that the Piperi, the Kutchi, and the Bijelopavlich districts of the Brda, comparatively recent and still unamalgamated Excitement in Greece 219 acquisitions of the principality, proclaimed themselves, in July 1854, an independent state. Danilo was forced to take the field against his rebellious subjects ; some fled into Turkish territory, others submitted, and were made to pay an in- demnity for the civil war which they had caused. But, while maintaining neutrality, the Prince thought it prudent to conciliate both his subjects and the Tsar by ordering a three days' fast for the success of the Russian arms. The Catholic Mirdites, on the other hand, under their Prince Bib Doda, followed Omar Pasha to the Danube, as they had followed him a year before against Montenegro. The effects of the Russo-Turkish quarrel were far more serious in Greece than in the Slav states of the near east. The Greeks inevitably sided with Orthodox Russia against Catholic France in the question of the Holy Places ; they also considered that the moment when Turkey was involved in war with Russia would be favourable to their national aspira- tions for the annexation of Epirus and Thessaly. " Nine-tenths of the Greek nation," it was said by a competent observer, sincerely sympathised with Russia; nor could this sympathy be matter for wonder when she was fighting their hereditary and apparently only enemy — for, at that time, the danger to Hellenism of an independent Bulgaria did not exist. It was believed at Athens that all the Orthodox subjects of the Sultan, whom it was still the official usage to classify collectively as Greeks, because they belonged to the Greek Church, would rise at a given signal. Both the King and Queen, and especially the latter, considered that the time had come for that expansion of their kingdom's narrow borders, in which they both fervently believed, and identified themselves with a cause which was at once national and popular. " Do not all the Greeks beyond our frontiers without exception desire their liberation ? Do not we all without exception desire the unity of the Nation?" said the King to his doubting advisers. During the winter of 1853 money was collected, and bands were 220 The Crimean War [ch. enlisted at Athens under the Queen's undisguised patronage, in view of a rising in the spring ; while, when the time for the expected insurrection arrived, a number of Greek officers resigned their commissions in order to join the bands on the frontier, among them the sons of Karaiskakes and Theodore Grivas. Secret societies were formed in the Ionian Islands ; and despite British efforts to keep the Ionians neutral and the imprisonment of several priests, a body of Cephalonians and Zantiotes crossed over to join the insurgents in Epirus. On January 27, i 854, Radovi'tzi near Arta raised the standard of revolt ; Arta itself was besieged ; but the Turkish relief forces, although twice repulsed at Pente Pegadia, the famous 11 Five Wells " between Joannina and Arta which gained notoriety in the war of 1897, managed to enter the town by sea from Sala6ra on the Ambrakian Gulf. On March 15 a first battle at Peta, the scene of the defeat of 1822, resulted in the victory of the Greeks, while Theodore Grivas entered Metzovon. But these successes were not permanent. Gnvas was forced to evacuate Metzovon and retire to Thessaly ; a second battle at Peta on April 2 5 drove the Greeks from that position ; a third attack upon the "Five Wells" dislodged them thence; an enthusiastic Radical deputy from Zante was beheaded by the Turks, and the insurrection in Epirus was over. Meanwhile, in the middle of February, bands, of which Christodoulos Hajji Petros was the principal leader, had entered Thessaly from the then frontier town of Lamia; but, on April 22, the Greeks failed to take Domok6s — the scene, 43 years later, of the fatal battle — their failure, as at Peta, being due to divisions between their own leaders. Hajji Pe'tros, however, fixed his camp at Kalabaka, the present terminus of the Thessalian railway, close to the famous monasteries " in Air," the Meteora of medieval and modern times, whose inmates celebrated a Te Deum to commemorate a victory which he won at that spot. But this success bore no fruit, owing to the intervention of Great Britain and France at Athens; and Blunt, our consul x] Ultimatum to Greece 221 at Salonika, warned the Thessalian insurgents of the futility of further bloodshed. As for Macedonia, the landing of Kara- tassos, the hero of the incident with Turkey in 1847, near Mt Athos, was paralysed by a French man-of-war, which sank a vessel bearing his ammunition. As usually happens in irregular warfare of this kind, the combatants did not always distinguish between friends and foes ; and it is probable that the material losses inflicted upon the Epirotes and Thessa- lians by those who had come to deliver them cooled their ardour. Meanwhile, on March 19, the Porte had sent an ulti- matum to the Greek government, demanding the recall within ten days of all Greek officers then participating in the insurrection, the closure of the frontier to armed bands and the punishment of officials concerned in the agitation, the public repudiation of the collection of money for the insurgents, the moderation of the nationalist press, and an enquiry into the release of the inmates of the gaol at Chalki's that they might serve against Turkey. As the Greek reply was con- sidered unsatisfactory, diplomatic relations between the two countries were broken off, and all Greek subjects were ordered to quit the Ottoman empire within 15 days. Otho at once commanded his troops to prepare for an advance to the frontier, and at one moment resolved to put himself at their head. A tent with the royal colours was actually pitched near the palace garden ; and the Queen, who was the soul of the war party, regarded with indifference a possible occupation of Athens and a blockade of the Greek ports by the Powers, provided the King could enter Thessaly. But the majority of the Kriezes Cabinet, and especially the Ministers of Justice and Finance, Pelikas and Provelengios, as well as the Greek representatives in London, Paris, and Constantinople, urged the expediency of peace. The opposition of the Ministers roused the high-spirited Queen to a fury of indignation. " Europe," she told the two leaders of the peace party in the Cabinet, " in giving the throne of Greece to Otho, imagined 222 The Crimean War [ch. that she would have him here as a simple instrument of her own interests and her own policy ; but Europe was mistaken. Otho has identified his fortunes with those of the Nation." " The only safety for the Greek government, the Nation, and its future," she added, "lies in the progress of the insurrection 1 ." But Greece, however enthusiastic, could not withstand the pressure of the Powers, who addressed a collective note to her. The King of Bavaria and the Austrian Emperor privately warned Otho of the difficult position in which his patriotism was placing him ; Wyse, then British minister in Athens, insisted in regarding this national movement as entirely financed with Russian roubles, although Pelikas told him that for the Greeks it was " a question not of Russian conquests but of Greek freedom"; and his French colleague, Baron Rouen, did not hesitate to tell Otho, that if he, as a Catholic, was afraid of taking up an attitude hostile to Orthodoxy, Napoleon III would send him an army to protect him against his own subjects. As this argument was naturally repudiated by a sovereign, who, though a foreigner by birth, was no less ardent a nationalist than his subjects and nobly scorned to support his throne on foreign bayonets, the French Emperor con- sidered the advisability of dethroning him — a scheme in which he had been encouraged by Kallerges, the hero of the September revolution, who was then in France. The British government was not prepared to take so violent a step ; but, on May 10, the British and French ministers addressed notes to the Greek government, threatening the strict enforcement of the treaty of 1832, which had placed Otho on the throne, and which provided that he should "appropriate to the payment of the interest and sinking fund... of the loan," guaranteed by the protecting Powers, "the first revenues of the State," should these revenues be employed in attacking Turkey. This threat was not enforced, but towards the end of May the allied troops occupied the Piraeus. Otho was made to declare that he 1 ' KirojJivrifxove^^aTa tt]S v7rovpyla$ 2. Il^Xt/ca, 154-5. x] Occupation of the Pirceus 223 would "observe faithfully a strict and complete neutrality," and would call to his " counsels new ministers most competent to carry this engagement into execution." This " Occupation Cabinet," as it was called, was presided over by Alexander Mavrokordatos, the veteran statesman of the War of Inde- pendence, at that time minister in Paris, who alone enjoyed the full confidence of the two western Powers. But Mavrokordatos, as not infrequently happens with diplomatists, had lost touch with his own country ; he had not held office there for ten years ; and he returned to the ungrateful task of executing an unpopular policy, forced upon court and country by the bayonets of a foreign army of occupation. His most active colleague, Kallerges, who became Minister of War, was specially unpopular at the palace, where his share in the revolution of 1843 had not been forgotten, and where his unconcealed desire to dethrone the King must have been known. As Mavrokordatos did not arrive immediately, while Kallerges was already in Athens, plotting against the King and giving it out that the western Powers desired his dethronement by a national movement, there was some danger of a con- spiracy until the arrival of the Prime Minister and his un- compromising loyalty kept his anti-dynastic subordinate in check. Thus, the King and Queen underwent a terrible ordeal. Otho and Amalia may have acted undiplomatically, perhaps unwisely, in 1854, for, alas ! the great Powers have one law for weak states and another for the strong. Italy might take Mohammedan Tripoli, but Greece might not touch Greek Thessaly. Now, however, in the land which he loved not always wisely but too well, there is recognition of the patriotism of Otho and his noble Queen at the crisis of the Russo-Turkish war ; and a modern dramatist has portrayed in a brilliant historical play, "The Occupation," the agony within the palace. The Franco-British occupation of the Piraeus, like the Austrian occupation of the Danubian Principalities, lasted till 224 The Crimean War 1857. The French commanders at the outset unnecessarily humiliated the royal couple by marching their troops past the windows of the palace — an affront which made Otho more popular than ever with his people, who regarded him as a martyr of the national idea. The French also broke up the type of a Russophil newspaper, arrested its editor, and insisted upon the prosecution of another journal. But these inroads upon the dignity of the Crown and the liberty of the press were less serious than those of the cholera, which, imported into the Allies' camp in the summer of 1854, spread from the Piraeus to Athens. The classic plague, described for all time in the prose of Thucydides and the verse of Lucretius, seemed to have returned to a city long immune from its visitations — for cholera rarely scourges Greece. For five months it ravaged Athens, decimating the population, then some 30,000, and slaying many of the refugees who had emigrated thither from Turkey. Many citizens fled ; the streets were deserted ; even politics were hushed ; no sound was heard save that of the cars conveying the sick to the hospitals, the dead to the cholera-pits, the survivors to the country or the sea. But amid the general panic, the King and Queen nobly did their duty, comforted the bereaved, and stood by the dying. Another scourge was added to the cholera. Many adventurers, who had been engaged in the insurrection, took to the road when the bands were dispersed ; and even on the highway between Athens and the Piraeus two French officers were robbed, and an artillery captain carried off to the mountains. Meanwhile, however, official relations with Turkey had improved. The first act of the " Occupation Cabinet " had been to resume them ; and in the following year the commercial treaty of Kanlijeh, at the "bloody village" on the Bosphorus, bloodlessly regulated the mutual trade of the two countries. But Hellenism, alike in Constantinople as at Athens, was compelled by force to repudiate all sympathy with the Orthodox Autocrat. The (Ecumenical Patriarch, the official head of the Greeks in Turkey, has always Sebastopol 225 been liable, from his place of residence, to pressure from the Sultan ; and at this crisis, Abdul Mejid, true to the policy of Mohammed II, ordered Anthimos VI to issue an encyclical, denouncing the Tsar's motives as hypocritical. The bellicose passion, kindled in the breasts of the British, had received very meagre satisfaction from the operations on the Danube and in the Baltic. It was not so much a good peace, but a good war, that was wanted in England in the summer of 1854; and the people thought that an army and fleet should not have been assembled for nothing. War correspondence, then a novel form of excitement, enabled the public sitting comfortably at home to witness, as in a theatre, the movements of soldiers in the field ; and the sporting element, which plays so large a part in our popular politics, found a still finer arena in an offensive war. The Crimean harbour of Sebastopol, of which Catherine the Great had been quick to recognise the potentialities, had been indicated to the Tsar by his Corsican counsellor Pozzo di Borgo, a quarter of a century earlier, as the probable goal of a hostile British fleet; the traveller Oliphant in 1853 had first drawn the attention of the British public to this remote spot; and, before the siege of Silistria had been raised, the Times and Lord Lyndhurst had advised its capture, as the best means of crippling Russia. The Times wrote with peculiar animation, because Nasmyth, the hero of Silistria, was its special correspondent. In the Cabinet, the Minister of War, then the Duke of Newcastle, shared the opinion of these amateur strategists, who professed to speak in the name of the British people. The rest of the Cabinet yielded to pressure from outside, and approved on June 28, it is said, while in a state of post-prandial drowsiness, an urgent dispatch to Raglan, instructing him " to concert measures for the siege of Sebastopol." St Arnaud had already received from Paris cryptic orders not to advance towards the Danube but to anticipate the transport of his troops from Varna by sea. Raglan sent for Sir George Brown, who m. l. 15 226 The Crimean War [ch. commanded the Light Division, and asked for his opinion on the question, whether such an undertaking, as the dispatch put it, could "be undertaken with a reasonable prospect of success." Brown replied that, as they had no information about the strength of the forces in Sebastopol, the Duke of Wellington in their place would have refused so heavy a responsibility, but that the tone of the dispatch showed the determination of the government that Sebastopol should be besieged, if not by their present Commander-in-Chief, then by someone less scrupulous. Raglan allowed his deference to the government of civilians at home to outweigh his own better judgment as a soldier. St Arnaud and his staff, likewise opposed to so rash an undertaking, had orders to concur with the decision of his British colleague ; and thus, against the wish of both commanders, the war was transferred to the Crimea. Nearly two months, however, were spent at Varna before the expedition sailed ; for, besides the time required for preparing the means of embarkation, nature protested against a prompt departure. Fire destroyed many of the British military stores; the crowded cemetery at Varna still bears silent witness to the ravages of cholera among the allied troops. It was not till September 13 that the allied fleets reached the Crimea; and on the following day a body of British troops occupied without opposition the port of Eupatoria. The main force landed near the lake of Kamishlu ; and soon 37,000 French, 27,000 British, and 7000 Turks were encamped upon the shores of what was to most of them an absolutely unknown land. Only the Turks could claim some connexion with the country, for its natives shared their faith, and from 1475 m tne ti me of Mohammed II till the latter part of the eighteenth century Crim Tartary, once the seat of Genoese colonisation, had been a part of the Ottoman empire. Only as recently as 1783 had it been finally incorporated by Catherine II in the Russian dominions. Thus in the Crimea began that secular strife between Turk and Muscovite, of which this war was not to be the last phase. Battle of the Alma 227 On September 19 the allied armies started for Sebastopol. Their march led them to the stream of the Bulganak, where the first skirmish between the western forces and their enemy took place. Next day, on the banks of another river, since then more famous than many a greater stream, the Alma, they fought and won their first great battle. The Russians, com- manded by MentschikoiT, who was now called to support his blustering diplomacy by force, were obliged to retreat after a struggle in which the British took the principal part, owing to the slowness of the French commander. A similar delay after the victory was even more dangerous ; for, had Raglan's proposal to march on at once to Sebastopol been adopted, it was believed that that fortress would have succumbed without resistance to the Allies within five days of their landings and all the losses and labours of twelve weary months would have been spared. Indeed, alike in London, Paris, and St Petersburg, it was thought that Sebastopol was lost. St Arnaud, however, refused, on the ground that his men were tired and that it was too costly a sacrifice to attack the Russians in the position which they were said to occupy. Two whole days were spent in embarking the wounded, and it was not till the 23rd that the march was resumed. Even then, however, the invaders did not go straight to the point where Sebastopol was most vulnerable. Months before, two British naval officers, who knew the place, had pointed out that, in the event of an invasion of the Crimea, the Russian arsenal should be attacked from the north side, the Severnaya, as the Russians called it, and had argued that the capture of the Star fort, which stood above that shore of the roadstead, would lead to the immediate fall of the town and the forts on the south bank and to the destruction of all the shipping in the harbour. Moreover, it was the opinion of the Russians that an occupation of the north would have enabled the Allies to cut off all communications with the outside, and thus, if they could not capture Sebastopol by immediate force, they could prevent reinforcements from 15-2 228 The Crimean War [ch. relieving the garrison. The great engineer, Todleben, who contributed so much to the defence of the town, stated afterwards that, had the Allies attacked the Star fort at once, they must inevitably have taken it. This was also the plan advocated by Raglan and Sir Edmund Lyons, who, after his experience of diplomacy in Greece, was then commanding the in-shore squadron off Sebastopol. But St Arnaud, already suffering from the disease which a few days later proved fatal, declined once more to adopt the scheme of his British colleague ; and, as the task of attacking the fort would have naturally devolved upon the French in virtue of their position opposite to it, the British commander reluctantly suggested a flank march right round Sebastopol, crossing the Tchernaya, which flows into the harbour, and thus attacking the place from the south. This alternative, strongly supported by Sir John Burgoyne, the British engineering expert, was accepted by St Arnaud. Accordingly, the Allies set out upon a venture into the unknown ; for, with the usual carelessness of the British War Office, little previous study had been made officially of the land defences of a town which a British engineer had first seriously fortified for Nicholas 24 years earlier and which had been recently strengthened. A report by a British officer, written 19 years before the war, had been almost neglected; and the recent book of a private traveller was the best guide which our generals had to the Russian stronghold. Moltke, it may be surmised, would not thus lightly have besieged a fortress. On the march round to the south a surprise occurred, which, had it not been for Raglan's presence of mind, might have been a disaster. Suddenly, the British commander, while executing a reconnaissance, found himself in sight of a Russian force. The surprise was mutual, for neither army was aware of the movements of the other. What had happened was that Mentschikoff, after his defeat at the Alma, convinced that Sebastopol must fall and that his communications would be cut off, had ordered the closing of the roadstead, in which the Black x] Occupation of Balaclava 229 Sea fleet lay at anchor, by sinking some of the ships. This desperate measure, bitterly resented by the naval officers who had toiled to create and hoped to use this instrument of war, was executed by the reluctant Admiral KornilofT, who thus saw seven of his vessels scuttled and the rest imprisoned by their sunken hulls. Having thus liberated the crews for the defence of the town, Mentschikoff marched out with his main army along the high road which led to the interior of Russia, in- tending to hang upon the flank of the Allies. It was the rear of this army upon which Lord Cardigan had suddenly come ; and only the arrival of the British cavalry and the ignorance of Mentschikoff prevented what might have been a serious British defeat. Fortunately the Russian rear-guard retreated ; the Russian opportunity was lost ; and next day both the British army and the co-operating fleet occupied, after a few shots, the small harbour of Balaclava to the south of Sebastopol. Thus, after the lapse of centuries, this old Genoese colony, formerly the see of a Latin bishop, fell once more under the sway of a western Power. A further delay in beginning the siege now intervened; and three weeks elapsed between the occupation of Balaclava and the first attack upon Sebastopol. Raglan and Lyons urged immediate action, but Burgoyne advised first landing the siege-trains ; and General Canrobert, who had succeeded St Arnaud in the command of the French, was of the same opinion. Todleben, the Russian engineer of German extraction, who was the brain, as Korniloff was the soul, of the defence, used this respite to strengthen the Malakoff tower and other outworks of the town, and thus the scientific organisation of the one completed the religious enthusiasm of the other ; the engineer believed in grape-shot, the admiral in the God of battles. But an immediate attack, in the opinion of Todleben, would have prevailed over his science and the soldiers' en- thusiasm. Thus a third chance of prompt success was allowed to slip; and when, at last, on October 17, the siege began, 230 The Crimean War [ch. the place was in a far stronger position than three weeks earlier. Encamped on the south, the Allies could not, as would have been possible from the north, spare sufficient forces to prevent communications from the interior of Russia with the beleaguered town. Mentschikoff, stung by KornilofFs heroism and suspecting his formal remonstrances, was thus enabled to throw 16 battalions back into the place, so that, when the bombardment began, the total number of its defenders was equal to the available forces of the Allies. Ere long the Russian troops rendered available by the evacuation of the Danubian Principalities swelled the hostile numbers in and round Sebastopol to nearly double those of the besiegers. Nor was the first day's bombardment decisive ; KornilofF, indeed, was mortally wounded while going his rounds, but the fleets failed in their attack, sustaining some material and no little moral damage. For the next week the bombardment was continued without much effect; and on October 25 the assailants were themselves assailed. Mentschikoff had resolved to regain possession of the port of Balaclava, whence the British drew their supplies; and early on that day, Liprandi, one of his subordinates, attacked the redoubts which Sir Colin Campbell, who was in command at Balaclava, had caused to be thrown up hastily on the causeway to the north of the harbour. The Russians drove from the redoubts the Turks who manned them ; and, had it not been for the bravery of the 93rd High- land regiment, the Russian cavalry would have seized the little town. But the battle of Balaclava is chiefly memorable for the two great charges— that of the Heavy and that of the Light Brigade — both celebrated, and the latter immortalised, by Tennyson. The exploit of General Scarlett, who at the head of a small squadron of heavy cavalry wedged himself into the centre of a large Russian force, and in eight minutes forced it to retreat, resembled the deeds of warriors in days when battles were decided by hand-to-hand combat, and x] Charge of the Light Brigade 231 generals strove to win the spolia opima from the rival com- manders. The Russians, however, still held the captured redoubts ; and Raglan ordered Lord Lucan, who was in command of the cavalry, to send them " rapidly to the front, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns." Lucan misunderstood this order, and believed that his chief had commanded the cavalry to attack the Russian guns at the end of the north valley beyond the causeway — a task of extraordinary danger, because the attacking horsemen would be exposed to a fire from " cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them, cannon in front of them." Nevertheless, he ordered his brother-in-law, Lord Cardigan, who was in command of the Light Brigade, to execute this terrible operation. Cardigan was a formalist, who always executed his instructions in the most literal sense; he had just preserved a strict neutrality while the Heavy Brigade had been engaged, because he had not been ordered to attack; he now, although well aware that "someone had blundered," rode with his six hundred "into the valley of death," which was flanked on either side by Russian forces stationed on the causeway and the Fedioukine heights and raked by the battery at the end. The brigade, or that portion of it which survived this murderous ride, charged into the jaws of this battery, seized it, and made its way back with diminished danger, owing to the chivalrous and successful attack of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, which silenced the guns on the Fedioukine heights. Of 673 horsemen, 113 had been killed, 134 wounded, and 475 had had their horses slain. The leader of the brigade described his act of heroism under misapprehended orders as " a mad-brained trick," but the just appreciation of the charge fell from the lips of General Bosquet, who summed it up in a phrase which has become classic : C'est magnifique ; mats ce n'est pas la guerre. Despite these two exploits, the battle was not decisive. The Russians were left in undisturbed possession of the captured redoubts, and the moral confidence of the garrison in Sebastopol was 232 The Crimean War [ch. proportionately increased. Eleven days later took place the third and last great battle of the war in which the British were engaged. The ruins of what was once the "magnificent citadel" of Inkerman, the creation of Greek princes, lay a little to the east of the besieged stronghold. The name was now immortalised by the struggle on a not distant hill, where, on November 5, Sir J. Pennefather held the British position for hours in the mist against a vastly superior Russian force, while officers and soldiers fought Homeric battles, man against man, till the intervention of the French assured the victory to the Allies. But now more insidious foes than the Russians attacked the armies of the besiegers, little more than half as numerous as the besieged. On November 14 a cyclone destroyed 21 vessels laden with stores for the British and tore in pieces their tents and canvas hospitals, while a biting snow-storm gave the soldiers a foretaste of the Crimean winter. Men and horses alike died from the consequent exposure on the wind-swept downs, where the British, owing to the lack of an efficient War Office, suffered more than the better organised and more experienced French army. Cholera and other diseases helped to diminish the number of the combatants; and in seven months 10,053 of our men died from sickness alone. The deplorable condition of the expeditionary force was depicted in trenchant language by Russell, the war correspondent of the Times, whose messages aroused the intense indignation of the people against the authorities. When the newspaper denounced our military system as " that huge imposture," and deplored the " destruction of the British army," the public became furious with its rulers. As soon as Parliament met for the session of 1855, Roebuck gave notice of a motion for a Committee of Enquiry; and before the discussion upon it began, Lord J. Russell resigned. The adoption of the motion by a large majority involved the fall of the Aberdeen Ministry; and Palmerston, the choice of the nation, became Prime Minister, with Lord Panmure as Secretary of State for War. Death of Nicholas I 233 The British people rejoiced that a strong man who knew his own mind was at the head of the government, instead of the statesman who had ruined his reputation by his tenure of the Premiership. Always fortunate, Palmerston profited by improvements already beginning at the seat of war ; a road, and even a railway, at last facilitated the transport of stores from the tiny port of Balaclava; in the person of Florence Nightingale a human angel combatted and almost subdued the " angel of death," the " beating " of whose wings had been heard in the hospitals at Scutari. Meanwhile, diplomacy had been striving to end the war. After the battle of Inkerman the Tsar authorised Prince Gortchakoff to discuss the question of peace on the principles, known as " the four points," postulated by Great Britain, France, and Austria, viz. the cessation of the Russian protec- torate over Moldavia and Wallachia and the application of a collective guarantee of the Powers to all the three Danubian Principalities ; the freedom of the navigation of that river; the revision of the treaty of July 13, 1841, so as to terminate Russian preponderance in the Euxine ; and the abandonment of Russia's claim to protect the Orthodox subjects of the Sultan. Austria, however, on December 2 concluded a treaty with the two western Powers to meet the event of the Tsar's refusal to accept these "points "; and the danger of her armed intervention induced him to agree to participate in a conference at Vienna. But before it met, Nicholas I was dead. " Russia," he had boasted, " has two generals, upon whom she can rely, Generals January and February." One of the finest cartoons ever published in Punch represented " General February turned traitor," and laying his icy hand on the proud Autocrat. The news that the despised Turks had repulsed his troops at the harbour of Eupatoria on February 1 7 aggravated the seasonable malady which fell upon him ; and on March 2 he died, be- queathing the war and the peace negotiations to his son, Alexander II. Thirteen days later the conference of Turkey 234 The Crimean War [ch. and the Powers (with the exception of Prussia, excluded by the hesitation of her King to resort to war in case of failure) met. Agreement on the first two " points " was soon attained ; but the third naturally aroused Russian opposition, while the Russian amendment, proposing to throw the Straits open to the fleets of all nations, as naturally met with a refusal from the Porte and the Powers. Gortchakoff was ordered by the new Tsar, desirous of peace but afraid to purchase it by the loss of prestige, to decline any reduction of the Black Sea fleet ; and with this answer the peace negotiations practically ended. An Austrian proposal to establish a collective guarantee of the Ottoman empire, a system of counterpoise in the Euxine, and the limitation of the Russian fleet there to the number of ships maintained before the war, was approved by Russell, the chief British delegate, and his French colleague, but rejected by the British government and the French Emperor. At this rebuff, Austria, considering that the responsibility for the continuance of the war rested upon the Allies, reduced her armaments and accorded to France and Britain nothing more substantial than her " moral support." They had, however, gained an unexpected increase of strength in 15,000 Sardinian troops, which Cavour had sent under La Marmora to take part in the war, with the object of thus enabling Sardinia to be represented at the ultimate peace negotiations. This act of far-sighted statesmanship, op- posed by the Piedmontese unofficial press, led to the raising of the Italian question at the Congress of Paris ; and thus the unity of Italy is perhaps the only lasting result of the Crimean war. Even before the diplomatists had ceased to confer at Vienna, the bombardment of Sebastopol was resumed; in May the Allies captured the stores laid up at Kertch and Yeni Kaleh in the east of the peninsula, and penetrated through the Cimmerian Bosphorus into the Sea of Azov, where they destroyed a flotilla of transports sailing over what had till then been a Russian lake. Two places in Circassia fell, thus Fall of Sebastopol 235 completing the rapid and easily-won success of this expedition, which contrasted so markedly with the long-drawn siege of Sebastopol. On June 18 the assaults on the two defences known as Fort Malakoff and the Redan proved abortive ; and this disappointment hastened the end of the British commander. General Simpson, Raglan's successor, and Pelissier, who had relieved Canrobert in the command of the French, pressed on the siege; but the victory of August 16 over the Russians on the river Tchernaya was largely the work of the Sardinian troops, who thereby redeemed the disastrous defeat of Novara and popularised the policy of Cavour in sending them to fight in a cause which had seemed to be none of theirs. The French, by a second and successful assault upon the Malakoff, more than compensated for another British failure to carry the Redan ; and on September 9 Sebastopol fell. The object of the Crimean expedition having been attained and with considerable glory to his arms, Napoleon III, who had at one time wished to command in person, now showed a desire for peace. If the British public, disappointed at the lack of dramatic British triumphs since Inkerman, wished for a con- tinuance of the war, it soon became clear to statesmen that Britain would have to fight without her French ally. The Tsar, too, might now seek peace without loss of honour ; for on November 28, Kars had succumbed to famine after a gallant defence by Fenwick Williams, and for the second time a Russian army entered that famous fortress. Austria, stepping in as a mediator, presented an ultimatum to the Tsar, approved by France and (with certain reserves) by Britain, which was accepted by Russia; and, on February 25, 1856, a Congress, at which Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, represented the British government, met in Paris. Hostilities were promptly suspended, and such was the desire for peace that an agreement was easily reached. On March 30, 1856 was signed the solemn instrument, which regulated, at least, in their main outlines, the affairs 236 The Crimean War [ch. of the near east till the next great European Congress met at Berlin in 1878. The treaty of Paris left the map, with one exception, exactly as it stood before the war. The conquests of the Allies in the Crimea and at Kinburn, and the Russian acquisition of Kars, were restored, this last for the second time, to their previous owners ; but, as recompense for the restoration of the Crimean towns and ports, and "in order to secure the better the free navigation of the Danube," the Tsar ceded to the Principality of Moldavia the southern part of Bessarabia and the delta of the Danube (the islands forming the latter, however, were "replaced under the immediate sovereignty of the Sublime Porte" by the treaty of June 19, 1857), thus restoring a portion of what Russia had annexed in 181 2. The mouths of the Danube, although thus re-included within the Turkish empire, were put under the authority of a commission, upon which each of the signatories was represented by a delegate, for the purpose of removing obstacles to the traffic from Isaccea to the sea. At the conclusion of this task, the powers of this body were to be transferred to a permanent commission, composed of a delegate apiece from each of the seven riverain states — Wurttemberg, Bavaria, Austria, Turkey, Servia, Wallachia, and Moldavia, the delegates of these last three vassal Principalities being approved by the Porte. The navigation of both the Danube and the Black Sea was declared free, subject only to necessary police and sanitary regulations. The Black Sea was neutralised, and its waters and ports were closed to the navies of both the riverain empires and of any other Power ; consequently the establishment of naval arsenals on its shores became unnecessary, and both the Tsar and the Sultan pledged themselves neither to create nor to maintain them there. Turkey was admitted to the dubious privileges of participation in the public law and the Concert of Europe ; and the other signatories undertook " to respect the in- dependence and the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire," guaranteed "in common the strict observance of this X] Treaty of Paris 2 37 engagement," and promised to " consider every act calculated to do injury thereto as a question of general interest." Should any threatening disagreement arise between the Porte and one or more of the Powers, the Porte and its opponent were to invoke the mediation of the other signatories, before resorting to force. Other clauses of the treaty provided for the welfare of the Sultan's Christian subjects. Abdul Mejid communicated to the other high contracting parties the firman of February 18, which had proclaimed liberty of worship, civil equality of all Ottoman subjects, admitted Christians to military service, and reorganised (on paper) the fiscal system. "The high value of this communication," naively observed the Powers, impressed them so strongly that they disclaimed any right to collective or separate intervention between the Sultan and his subjects. As regards the Principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia (the latter slightly increased in size) were to enjoy, under Turkish suzerainty and the guarantee of the Powers, their previous privileges. No exclusive protection over them should thence- forth be exercised by any one of the guarantors ; no special right of interference in their internal affairs would be allowed. Russia's pretentions having been thus repudiated, the Porte undertook to maintain there "an independent and national administration," no less than full liberty of worship, legislation, commerce, and navigation. A special commission, composed by the Powers, with a Turkish commissioner, was to " meet without delay, at Bucharest " for the revision of their existing legislation, the study of their condition, and their future organisation. The Sultan promised to convoke at once in each of the two Principalities an Assembly, or " divan ad hoc" so composed as to represent most exactly the interests of all classes, with the function of expressing the wishes of the population concerning their definite organisation. The com- mission, " taking into consideration the opinion expressed by the two divans," was to " transmit, without delay, to the present 238 The Crimean War [ch. seat of the Conferences, the result of its own labours." A convention, to be concluded at Paris between the high con- tracting parties, was to sanction the final agreement with the Porte ; and, in conformity therewith, an Imperial ordinance was to " constitute definitely the organisation of these provinces, placed thenceforth under the collective guarantee of all the signatory Powers." A national army would maintain peace in the interior and on the frontiers of the Principalities ; and no armed intervention, even by their suzerain, for the purpose of maintaining or restoring internal repose, was permitted except after previous agreement with the Powers. Servia was to continue in the same position as before, her "rights and immunities" being "placed thenceforth under the collective guarantee of the contracting Powers " ; her " independent and national administration, as well as full liberty of worship, of legislation, of commerce, and of navigation," was preserved. The Porte retained the right of garrison, but no armed interven- tion was to be made without the previous consent of the Powers. Two conventions, signed the same day, regulated the questions of the Straits and of the Black Sea. The former merely recapitulated the treaty of 1841, with the addition that the passage of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus would be permitted to the light craft, not more than two apiece, which the Powers were authorised to station at the mouths of the Danube ; the second convention provided that Russia and Turkey might each keep six small steamers and four light craft in the Black Sea for the service of the coasts. Of the historic treaty of Paris not much has stood the strain of time, national sentiment, and interests of state. The creation and complete independence of Roumania and the independence of Servia have made of merely antiquarian importance the clauses concerning the vassal Principalities of 1856 ; Russia, so early as 1870, availed herself of the defeat of one of her Crimean opponents to repudiate the Black Sea clauses of the treaty ; Sebastopol saw in 1886 the rebirth of Results of the Treaty 239 the Black Sea fleet; while Batum, still Turkish in 1856, has become a fortified port of the Russian Euxine. The strip of Bessarabia, ceded to Moldavia at Paris, was handed back to Russia at Berlin; Kars has long been a Russian town 1 . How the signatories of the treaty of Paris have observed their undertaking "to respect the independence and the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire " may be seen by the Austrian annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, the Italian annexation of Tripoli, and the British occupation of Cyprus and Egypt, while the clause which pledged Russia and Sardinia to invoke the media- tion of their co-signatories in the event of a disagreement with the Porte was disregarded by Russia in 1877 and by Italy in 191 1, and Cavour's signature thus dishonoured. The blessings promised to the Sultan's Christian subjects, which seemed of such "high value" to the diplomatists of Paris, have proved to be absolutely worthless, even when disguised under the form of a Constitution. Of all the provisions of the treaty those for the regulation of the Danube have proved to be most useful. The powers of the European commission were extended in 187 1 for 12 further years, and at the expiration of that period for 21 years more ; and the removal of piracy no less than sandbanks has been its work. As usual, the least showy section of this great international document has been the most successful. Looking back upon the war which was ended by the treaty of Paris, we may well ask ourselves whether the gain was such as to compensate us for the death of 28,000 men and the addition of 30 millions to the national debt. Lord Salisbury years afterwards told his countrymen that in 1854 they had "put their money on the wrong horse." For the free Balkan states have arisen as a barrier to a Russian advance upon Constantinople by land, while that city no longer possesses for us the supreme importance that it occupied in public esteem before we held the keys of the Suez Canal. A British states- man who, after the Armenian massacres, the Macedonian 1 Batum is temporarily occupied (April, 1922) by Georgian Bolsheviks, Kars by the Kemalists j all Bessarabia is now Roumanian. 240 The Crimean War [ch. muddle, and the fiasco of the " Young " Turkish constitution, should think it desirable to draw the sword of the British empire in defence of Turkey, would, indeed, have learned little from history. Year by year it has become more evident that the Turks must leave Europe ; nor is it likely that Russia will take their place. That belongs to the Balkan states. Besides the subjects contained in the treaty of Paris, two others affecting the near east were discussed in the sittings of the Congress. Austria, in the 14th protocol, obtained from the Russian delegates a disclaimer of any such Russian pro- tectorate over Montenegro as the Tsar had formerly claimed to exercise over the Danubian Principalities. Mutual sympathy was declared to be the sole bond of union between the Muscovites and the mountaineers; while Aali Pasha, on behalf of Turkey, stated that the Porte regarded the Black Mountain as an " integral part of the Ottoman empire." This statement in direct violation of the firman of 1799, of the Turco- Montenegrin treaties of 1838 and 1842 and of the hard facts of many a Turkish defeat at the hands of the mountaineers, was warmly repudiated by Prince Danilo in a memorandum addressed to the signatory Powers on May 31. He pointed out with considerable exaggeration that, with more reason he might claim " half Albania and all the Herzegovina," on the ground that the Balsha dynasty, which ruled over the Zeta in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, had once possessed those lands, while the Turks had never possessed Monte- negro; that "for 466 years," that is, since the battle of Kossovo, "the Montenegrin people had never been subjected by any Power " ; that " for four and a half centuries it had waged continual warfare with Turkey"; but that, notwith- standing these services to Christendom, Montenegro, owing to the theocratic constitution which had only recently been abolished, had never been received officially within the family of European states. The Prince claimed the official recog- nition of Montenegrin independence, the expansion of the x] Montenegrin Memorandum 241 Principality at the expense of Albania and the Herzegovina, the delimitation of the Turco-Montenegrin frontiers, and the concession of the town and harbour of Antivari, which his predecessor the Vladika Danilo had tried to secure a century and a half earlier, and which was a commercial necessity for a people, deprived by the loss of Cattaro in 18 14 of all access to the sea. In support of this memorandum, Danilo, who in 1855 had married Darinka Kuechich, daughter of a Serb merchant of Trieste, visited Napoleon III in 1857. The French Emperor, who two years before had established a French vice-consulate at Cetinje and sent thither as his representative M. Hecquard, the well-known writer on Albania, received the princely couple with the honours due to an independent ruler. But the only immediate result of this visit was a Turkish offer to bestow upon the Prince a part of the Herzegovina with a civil list and a Turkish title, and to open all Turkish ports to his subjects, on condition that he did homage to the Sultan as his suzerain. Danilo, who in the previous summer had refused the wish of the people of Nikshich to become his subjects, from fear of provoking a fresh war with Turkey, was disposed to accept the Turkish offer, which his warlike people considered a disgrace. Nothing eventually came of the proposal; but Danilo's unpopularity, already demonstrated by another rising of the Kutchi against his tax-collectors, became such that a conspiracy against his life was discovered and two of the ringleaders shot. The second Oriental question which, though excluded from the treaty, found a place in the 22nd protocol, was the un- happy condition of Greece. Walewski, Napoleon's Minister, observed that the Franco-British occupation of the Piraeus could not end without serious inconvenience, so long as the abnormal situation of that country continued. Clarendon supported his French colleague with the argument that, before withdrawing her troops from Greece, Great Britain must have " solid guarantees for the maintenance of a satisfactory state of things." Russia, m. l. . 16 242 The Crimean War [ch. x through her spokesman, willingly joined the other two protecting Powers in all measures calculated to improve the condition of the Hellenic kingdom. The "Occupation Cabinet" had ere this ceased to exist ; for the refusal of the Queen to receive a lady friend of Kallerges had led to the final retirement of Mavrokordatos and the appointment of the Hydriote D. Botilgares as Prime Minister in October 1855. The veteran statesman, who thus quitted the political stage, had made the mistake of increasing the salaries of the deputies and senators, and thus attaching to the irremovable Second Chamber an odium which led to its abolition after the revolution of 1862. But he had maintained Greek neutrality in spite of the national enthusiasm for Russia ; and his withdrawal from public life, followed by the death of Metaxas, and the absence of Trikoupes at the London legation, removed all the old leaders and with them the three "foreign" parties from the arena, leaving it clear for a new and self-reliant generation, which had grown up since the War of Independence. Boitl- gares, whose flowing robes and inherited dignity won him the nickname of Artaxerxes from the Queen, was an honest man, who endeavoured to grapple with one of the two plagues of the country which had aroused the concern of the protecting Powers at Paris — brigandage and financial disorder. A Greco- Turkish convention was signed for the suppression of the former; and the peasants, convinced that the government meant business and that brigands would not be protected in high places, co-operated with the authorities in hunting them down, shooting them whenever possible to make sure of their removal. It was then that the bold lieutenant Megas slew, and was slain by, the brigand Daveles at the classic " cross- roads," where (Edipus had slain his father Lai'os. The three Powers, on their part, created a financial commission, com- posed of their representatives at Athens, which met in February 1857. On the 27th of the same month the occupation ended. THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN EUROPE 1856. CHAPTER XI THE UNION OF THE DANUBIAN PRINCIPALITIES (1856-62) The Congress of Paris had not ended the difficulties of the near east. On the contrary, it had expressly provided, in a series of articles, for the regulation of the two Principalities. The Roumanian question at once became the order of the day ; and public attention passed from the Crimea to the lower Danube. The union of Wallachia and Moldavia had been gradually maturing. Two articles of the regk?netit organique had antici- pated its possibility ; and Cavour had recalled this fact to the memory of his colleagues at the Congress. Bibescu, initiating a policy which led afterwards, in the hands of Bismarck, to the unity of Germany, had suppressed the fiscal barrier between the two Principalities, so that thenceforth " the impotent stream of the Milcov" no longer divided their mutual trade. The Revolution of 1848 had further strengthened the unionist idea ; and the refugees in Paris had influenced the mind of Napoleon III, who saw in the union a barrier against the advance of Russia. A Roumanian pamphlet, published in Paris, ad- vocated the election of the same ruler for both the Roumanian states; and, at the conferences of Vienna in 1855, the French government put forward their union as the best solution, while Turkey, ^supported by Great Britain and Austria, opposed it. During the Congress of Paris, Napoleon III expressed the opinion that the only means of satisfying the Moldavian and 16—2 244 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. Wallachian peoples was to unite them under a foreign prince, while preserving the suzerainty of the Sultan. Queen Victoria likewise advocated an hereditary monarchy; and Clarendon agreed with the Emperor that such a plan might perhaps be the best solution for the Principalities, but that the selection of a foreign prince would create a second Greece close to the Russian frontier; for, argued the British statesman, a foreign ruler, if a Catholic, would be forced by the attacks of his Orthodox clergy to lean upon Russia, and, if Orthodox, would voluntarily gravitate towards her. However, when Walewski raised the question in the Congress of Paris, and advocated the union, Clarendon and Orloff supported him, while the Turkish and Austrian spokesmen naturally opposed. The latter suggested that the population of the two provinces should be asked their opinion ; and this idea was adopted. From that moment the result depended upon the electoral skill of the rival parties and upon the amount of pressure which the Turkish government could exercise and the French permit. The seven years' term of office, which the convention of Balta Liman had prescribed for the two Princes, expired in 1856; and in the room of Stirbeiu and Gregory Ghika, both disinterested adherents of the union, the Porte nominated two lieutenant-generals, Alexander Ghika, the old and incapable Hospodar, deposed in 1842, and Theodore Balsh, whose zeal against the union was increased by his desire to become Prince, as the reward of his services to his employers. It was obvious to everyone that the real struggle would be fought out in Moldavia, which, as the smaller Principality, would have most to lose by the union, involving, as it must, the degrada- tion of Jassy from the rank of a capital to that of a provincial town. Before quitting office there, however, Gregory Ghika had prepared the way for the unionist idea by appointing its partisans as prefects, while his Wallachian colleague addressed a memorandum to Napoleon III in favour of the appointment of a foreign hereditary Prince. Balsh undid his predecessor's XI] The Osborne Visit 245 work by substituting Separatists for Unionists as prefects, and by collecting signatures against the union. Behind the scenes stood, as usual ; the consuls of the Powers, the Austrians assisting the Separatists, the French representative Place pro- tecting the Unionists, and himself protected by Thouvenel, whom we last saw at Athens but who then held the French embassy at Constantinople. The death of Balsh, the evacuation of the Principalities by the Austrian troops, and the arrival of the international commission, created by the treaty of Paris, in March 1857, did not diminish the conflict. The new lieutenant-general, Nicholas Vogondes, son of the similar official of 182 1-2 who had afterwards been first Prince of Samos, disregarded his promise to respect the manifestations of the people's will. Two divans ad hoc, composed respectively of 1 12 Wallachs and 84 Moldaves, were elected; but the Moldavian registers were manipulated .in such a manner that the landed proprietors and professional men were decimated, while a solid block of 167,222 ignorant and malleable peasants swamped all the other voters. Napoleon protested, and threatened to recall his ambassador from Constantinople ; Russia, Prussia, and Sardinia supported him ; but the British government was opposed to the union, which it had come to regard as the first step towards the dismemberment of Turkey. A compromise was effected during a visit paid by Napoleon to Osborne ; Great Britain joined France in causing the Porte to annul the elections in both Principalities ; France gave way on the question of their union. This time Vogondes was impartial ; and the Moldavian divan, thus freely elected, con- tained only two Separatists. By this overwhelming majority a motion was carried, embodying the four points of the Moldavian charter : the autonomy and neutrality of the two Principalities, their union in a single state, the selection of their ruler from among the reigning dynasties of Europe on condition that his heirs should embrace the national religion, and the creation of a single representative Assembly. The same four points were 246 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. formulated by the Wallachian divan, in which the two ex- Princes, Bibescu and Stirbeiu, patriotically sacrificed their own chances in favour of a foreigner whose nomination would silence local rivalries. The divans had thus answered the Austrian and Turkish objection, that the peoples of the two Principalities desired to remain separate. It was now the duty of the Powers, according to the treaty of Paris, to examine the report of the commission and draw up a convention for the definite organisation of the two provinces. This convention, signed at Paris on August 19, 1858, was based upon the Osborne visit rather than the votes of the Danubian divans. In vain both Gladstone and the future Lord Salisbury had advocated union ; both Disraeli and Palmerston opposed it. Thanks to the compromise arranged between the British and French governments, a scheme of organisation was adopted, which was neither union nor separation. The two provinces were thenceforth to be known as " the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia," and were to remain under the suzerainty of the Sultan and the collective guarantee of the signatories of the treaty of Paris. Fokshani, from its position the mutual frontier, was selected as the seat of a Central Commission, composed of eight Wallachs and eight Moldaves, for the preparation of laws common to the two Principalities, and of the federal Court of Appeal. The two armies were to receive the same organisation, and to be united in case of need under one commander, nominated alternately by either Prince; but their flags were to remain separate, with the addition of a blue streamer common to both ! These more or less Unionist provisions were counterbalanced by such frankly Separatist arrangements as the election of two Hospodars for life, and the creation of two Assemblies elected by a new septennial act, to which the voting of laws peculiar to either Principality was entrusted. The Turkish tribute was fixed at 1,500,000 piastres annually for the smaller, and 2,500,000 for the larger province ; and such approved western XI] Colonel Couza 247 principles as the equality of all citizens before the tax-collector, and the abolition of all feudal privileges, exemptions, and monopolies, were combined with the admission of all Christians to full political rights. Agrarian reform was forthwith to improve the lot of the Roumanian peasants. Pending the election of the new Princes by the respective Assemblies, the provisional government was entrusted to three Commissioners, named in virtue of their official positions, in either Principality. Thus diplomacy imagined that it had solved the question of the lower Danube. But human nature is stronger than parchment bonds ; and the astute politicians of Bucharest and Jassy found a means of eluding the cunning devices of the Powers for keeping them divided. The Convention of Paris had provided for many contingencies, but not for that which actually happened — the election of the same person as Hospodar by both Assemblies. At first such a choice did not occur even to the Roumanians themselves, for in Wallachia all the three Commissioners, whose duty it was to hold the elections, were opposed to the union and favoured the elevation of either of the two former Princes, Bibescu or Stirbeiu, to the throne ; while in Moldavia two of the three were Unionists, but neither Unionists nor Separatists could agree upon their respective candidate. The fatal day had almost arrived and would have found the Unionists still undecided, when at a party meeting at Jassy Pisoski put his back against the door with a pistol in his hand, and threatened to shoot himself, if his colleagues did not make up their minds before leaving the room. At the same time he proposed a new candidate, Colonel Couza, a Moldave of Galatz descended from a small noble family, which had given two victims to its country. Couza, then Minister of War, was in his thirty-ninth year ; he had studied law in Paris, served on the bench and in the army, and had won popularity during the lieutenancy of Vogorides by resigning the prefecture of Galatz as a protest against the illegalities of his chief. Galatz had just 248 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. elected him to the Assembly; the Assembly, on January 17, 1859, unanimously elected him Prince. It now remained to secure his election by the Wallachian Assembly, in which Bibescu's partisans had a majority. Fortunately, the Wallachs had waited to see how the Moldaves would vote ; and a Moldave agent now assured them that France and Russia were favourable to Couza and would recognise the accomplished fact of his double election. On the day of the vote at Bucharest, the Unionists organised a popular demonstration in his favour; the mob invaded the galleries of the Chamber, and the butchers whetted their knives in an unmistakeable manner. This practical argument was enforced by an appeal to patriots to vote for the Union in the person of Couza and to the partisans of Bibescu, its former advocate, to support it. Pressure and principle prevailed ; the Wallachian Assembly on February 5, unani- mously elected Couza. The Prince took the title of Alexander John I. The personal union was accomplished. The election had occurred at a most favourable moment of international politics. Austria, one of the two chief opponents of the union, could not intervene owing to the Italian war; and Couza even concluded a secret arrangement with an agent of Kossuth for co-operation with the Hungarian patriots, of which the occupation of the Bukovina was to be the reward. Great Britain withdrew her opposition ; towards the end of 1 86 1 Couza was received at Constantinople, and the signatories of the treaty of Paris recognised the union. The Central Commission of Fokshani was suppressed ; the two Assemblies and the Ministries, which had existed since Couza's election, were fused into one ; and the seat of government was trans- ferred to Bucharest. In 1862 the first united Roumanian Assembly met there. Looking back, we must admit that Gladstone and Salisbury were right in advocating the union, which has led to the creation of the present strong and flourishing kingdom of Roumania. Almost at the same time at which Couza was raised to the xi] Alexander Karageorgevick 249 throne of the united Roumanian Principalities, Alexander Karageorgevich was forced to abandon that of Servia. His neutrality during the Crimean war had, as he told his people, found its reward in the favourable Servian clauses of the treaty of Paris, which largely nullified the Turkish right of garrison. But his Austrophil policy, which had won him the sympathy of the western Powers but had not commended itself to his people, was now less pleasing to one of the former, owing to the close relations between France and Russia after the war. Thus, while the French and Russian consuls at Belgrade were now united against Austrian influence, a plot for Alexander's removal, on the ground that he was an Austrian puppet, was discovered among the senators. Regardless of the article in the Charter of 1838, which proclaimed that senators could not be punished without the consent of the Porte, the Prince arrested the conspirators, who were tried for high treason, and of whom eight were sentenced to death — a sentence commuted into imprisonment for life. This illegal act provoked the interven- tion of the Porte, which sent a commissioner to Belgrade to hold an enquiry. Thereupon the Prince gave way, released the prisoners, restored the fallen senators to their dignities, and called a Francophil Ministry, of which Vutchich and Garashanin were the leading spirits, to his counsels. But the Senate, having thus vindicated its rights against the Prince, sought to humiliate him, and to change the Servian government into a Venetian oligarchy. A proposal, thrice approved by the Senate, was to become ipso facto law, even without his approval, so that his veto would be practically abolished. At this moment, an incident between the British government and the Porte increased the difficulties of the situation. The British consul, Fonblanque, was one day sitting on the glacis of the Turkish fortress of Belgrade, the beautiful promenade so well-known to every modern visitor under the Turkish name of Kalimegdan. While feasting his eyes on the magnificent view of river and plain which stretches out before the gaze, he was attacked and 250 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. wounded by a Mussulman soldier belonging to the Turkish garrison. Other Albanians tried to pull down the flagstaff from the front of the consulate; and Sir Henry Bulwer, our ambassador at Constantinople, who chanced to be at Semlin, demanded and obtained satisfaction from the Porte. But Bulwer's action did not stop there ; he had a colloquy with the Servian leaders, and is said to have advised them to summon a National Assembly — the usual British panacea — to discuss the evils from which their country was suffering. No such Assembly had been held for ten years; no Assembly, elected by the tax-payers in European fashion, had ever been convened before. But, despite Austrian and Turkish opposi- tion, this parliament, called from the day of its meeting, " the Skupshtina of St Andrew," and composed of 500 deputies, was held at Belgrade ; and the senators fondly believed that by its aid they would get rid of the Prince and place in his stead one of the oligarchy, perhaps Garashanin. The result was very different from what the Senate had anticipated. The Assembly had no desire to substitute oli- garchical rule for that of the Prince ; what it wished was the substitution of a strong man for the existing ruler. After demanding that it should be thenceforth annually summoned for the consideration of all the government's acts, it criticised the Prince's neutral policy during the Crimean war, and requested his abdication. Ministers and senators alike advised him to yield ; but he fled to the Turkish fortress, whereupon the Assembly, to the dismay of the oligarchs, insisted that old Milosh, the hero of the second War of Independence, should be recalled from his exile at Bucharest. For a moment the army meditated a reaction against the Assembly in the joint interest of the two former rivals, the Prince and the Senate. But the citizens supported the Assembly ; the consuls advised the Prince to disavow the army. Thereupon the Assembly declared Alexander Karageorgevich deposed, and appointed a provisional triumvirate pending the return xi] Restoration of Milosh 251 of Milosh. The people had thus abandoned the Prince ; there only remained the Powers. Russia, never his friend, main- tained the right of the Serbs to choose their own ruler; Turkey, afraid of the spread of discontent among the Southern Slavs, and Austria, desirous that the fortress of Belgrade should not fall into Servian hands yet afraid to violate the treaty of Paris by armed intervention, both abandoned him ; Bulwer's influence was on the side of peace. Accordingly, on January 3, Alexander abdicated and crossed over to Semlin ; but his wily old successor declined to accept the dignity, thus restored to him by his fellow-countrymen, until he had obtained the consent of his suzerain. The Porte did not hesitate to ratify his election, merely passing over in silence the hereditary character which the Assembly had impressed upon it. Then, on February 6, Milosh re-entered in state, with his son Michael, the country which he had left an exile 20 years before, and began his second reign. Milosh was 79 years old when he returned to power, and his character was no longer capable of adapting itself to restraint. He at once resumed the arbitrary methods of his former reign, dissolved the Assembly, banished his chief opponents, and threw Vutchich into prison, where that power- ful chief died under circumstances suggestive of poison. When the Porte demanded an autopsy of the body, Milosh refused it ; when the consuls paid him official visits, he treated them with the barest courtesy, telling the British representative, that in Servia the Prince's will was the law, and that neither the Porte nor the Powers should command there. In accord- ance with these autocratic principles, he quashed the decisions of judges and increased his own civil list, while carefully excluding from the Assembly which he convened the repre- sentatives of European culture. In foreign affairs, however, he showed much greater prudence, abstaining from exploiting the anti-Austrian and pro-Sardinian sympathies of his people during the war of 1859, and promising to send back the 252 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. fugitive Bosniaks who implored his aid on condition that the Porte recognised the Servian Princedom as hereditary in his family. In view of his great age and of the prospects of a disputed succession at his death — for already there was a rumour of a Karageorgevich restoration in the person of Alexander's son, the subsequent King of Servia — both the Serbs and the Powers were anxious for a settlement of this thorny question. A Servian deputation was sent to Constantinople, and pointed out in a memorandum that Mahmud II had granted the hereditary dignity of Prince to Milosh and his descendants in 1830 and in 1838, that this privilege had not lapsed in consequence of the change of dynasty, and that it constituted an " anchor of safety " for the country. The deputation further requested the enforcement of the Imperial ordinance of 1830, which forbade Mussulmans to reside in Servia, unless they formed part of the Turkish garrisons. This provision had been violated by another ordinance in 1833, which allowed the Mohammedan inhabitants of Belgrade to remain indefinitely (because a Turkish quibble and a Russian award had declared the then town of Belgrade to be a "fortress"), and those of the other parts of Servia for five more years. Indeed, till after 1860, a squalid Mussulman population still lingered on beneath the shadow of the fortress, the cause of frequent quarrels and the object of conflicting jurisdictions. Finally, in place of the charter of 1838, the germ of conflicts between the Prince and the Senate, the Serbs asked for leave to work out a constitution by themselves suited to their requirements. Before these requests had been granted, Milosh died, on September 26, i860, in the house which he inhabited among the trees of Topchider, the park of Belgrade. The house has been preserved as it was at the time of his death, and there the traveller may still see the collection of wax fruits and the garments of modern Servia's second founder — a man with the defects of his age and country, but still one of those masterful personalities who xi] Michael Obrenovich III 253 on a larger stage would have received from historians the epithet of " great." Michael Obrenovich III, who, after the lapse of 18 years, a second time ascended the throne, represented a new era in the history of Servia. The Prince was now a man in the prime of life, who had travelled to European capitals and imbibed ideas very different from those of his rugged sire. His proclamation told his people, that in his reign the law 7 would be supreme ; and the legislation of his first Assembly, establishing an universal income-tax, a national militia of 50,000 men with a French officer as Minister of War, and a legislature, based on the payment of taxes and destined to meet every three years, displayed a desire for the reorganisation of the country which aroused the suspicions of the Porte. Availing himself of the European conference, held in 1861 at Constantinople for the formal recognition of the Union of Wallachia and Moldavia, he raised the Servian question, and specially insisted that those Turks who still resided in Servia outside the fortresses should be subject to the jurisdic- tion of his courts. Turkey complained to the guaranteeing Powers; and Lord Russell, then our Foreign Secretary, espoused the Turkish cause, from fear lest Servian independence should endanger the integrity of the Turkish empire. Ere long, however, an event occurred which demonstrated the practical justice of the Servian argument. A few hours' cannonade proved, as usual, more eloquent than any notes. Cunibert, the physician of Milosh, had predicted years before that one day the presence of Turks and Serbs, side by side in Belgrade, would inevitably provoke a sanguinary conflict between them. The British traveller Denton, who visited Belgrade in the spring of 1862, observed the anomaly of a guard, half Turkish, half Serb, which nightly patrolled the decaying " fortifications " — " four dilapidated gates," a " partly palisaded " ditch, and " the remains of some earthen entrenchment" — which marked the boundaries of the old, 2 54 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. or Turkish town, the dortjol, as it was called. So much had Belgrade grown by that time, that the Constantinople gate, "the ruinous arch" which alone offered "any show of defence," was "in the centre" of the town. The Turkish quarter itself was invaded by Christian houses; and nothing kept the re- maining Turks in Belgrade but the policy of the Porte, which regarded every Turkish shopkeeper in Servia as a possible artilleryman in case of need, whose services were paid in anticipation by a small annual retaining fee. Naturally the Servian government, as it became more independent, found this state of things intolerable. The regular garrison of 4000 regulars was less obnoxious than the existence of this Turkish preserve in the heart of the Servian capital. On June 15, 1862, a scuffle ensued at a wellnearthe boundary between the Turkish and the native quarters, in which two Serbs were killed by two Turkish soldiers. Servian policemen arrested the soldiers, and were conducting them to the Turkish police- station, when a volley of musketry from that building was discharged with fatal effect into their ranks. A general conflict then began, and the populace broke into the Turkish shops. The Prince was absent from Belgrade, but Ilija Garashanin, the Prime Minister, and the consular corps exerted themselves to restore order ; and Longworth, the British representative, at last succeeded in persuading the pasha in command of the fortress to withdraw his police from the town, on condition that Garashanin guaranteed their safe transit. The rest of the Mussulman population followed them; quiet seemed to be restored. On the morning, however, of the 17th, at the very moment when the consuls were on their way to visit the pasha, the fortress suddenly opened fire (upon the town, and for five hours bombarded Belgrade. The Prince hastened back to his capital ; the pasha was induced by Austrian representations, and ordered by his government, to cease firing ; and, to restore confidence, the British and French consuls- general went under canvas in full range of the Turkish and xi] Bombardment of Belgrade 255 Servian guns. The pasha was recalled, an Ottoman com- missioner sent to Belgrade, and a conference of the Powers convened at Constantinople. Between the two extremes of the Turkish demand for the restoration of the status quo and the Servian claim for the withdrawal of all Turks from Servia a compromise was effected. Russell had already pointed out that the logic of facts forbade the acceptance of the Turkish, the 29th article of the treaty of Paris that of the Servian contention; Bulwer at the conference carried out his chiefs instructions; his Austrian colleague pointed out that the evacuation of the fortress of Belgrade would excite the Austrian Serbs. It was finally agreed that the Turks should abandon the Turkish quarter of Belgrade, retaining the fortress, and evacuate the fortresses of Sokol near the Bosnian frontier and Ujitze — the latter of special strategic importance as commanding the communication across the sanjak of Novibazar with Monte- negro. These two fortresses were dismantled and are now picturesque ruins ; the Turkish quarter of Belgrade with the exception of the Jewish houses, two mosques^(one of them now used as a gasometer !), an occasional fountain and the crumbling remains of the Constantinople gate — tanti nominis umbra — was pulled down; and the Turkish garrisons held nothing but the river fortresses of Shabatz on the Save, Belgrade, Semendria, Fetislam, and the island-castle of Ada Kaleh on the Danube, and the position of Little Zvornik on the Drina, opposite the larger Bosnian town of the same name. The Mussulman residents were to sell their property and leave Servia as soon as possible. Bulwer's suggestion that the Servian army, which he considered too large for a vassal state, should be reduced to 12,000 men, was rejected, thanks to the diplo- matic activity of John Ristich, the future Regent and Premier. Michael had been induced to accept this compromise by the result of the conflict which the sister Servian state had been waging contemporaneously against the Turks. Since the presumed pacification of the near east at Paris, the 256 Union of Danubian Principalities [cH. Montenegrins had fought two campaigns with their hereditary enemies. Despite Danilo's efforts to maintain peace, the murder of a Montenegrin priest, whose head was fixed on the ramparts of the frontier-fortress of Spuj, followed by a cattle-lifting raid of its inhabitants, necessitated a formal protest. The Turkish reply was to concentrate its Herzegovinian gar- risons on the Montenegrin frontier. The people of the Sutorina, the long, narrow tongue of the Herzegovina, which Ragusan fear of Venice had caused to be ceded to Turkey at the treaty of Passarovitz, and which then ran down to the sea as an enclave of Dalmatia, successfully opposed, with Montenegrin aid, the Turkish advance ; one or two villages of the Adriatic coast proclaimed their union with the Princi- pality ; and a Montenegrin senator seized for a moment the adjacent fortress of Spizza on the bay of Antivari, destined to such European notoriety 20 and 50 years later. Danilo appealed to Paris, Vienna, and St Petersburg, with the result that a French " squadron and a Russian frigate arrived off Ragusa to watch events. Meanwhile, Hussein Pasha received orders to occupy the territory of Grahovo, which by the com- promises of 1842-3 had been declared neutral ground. On the rocky plain of Grahovo the Prince's elder brother Mirko, in two successive engagements of May 12 and 13, completely routed the greatly superior Turkish force; an Austrian officer a little later counted 2237 skeletons on the field ; and many Turkish standards, cannon and rifles fell into the hands of the Montenegrins, while British medals, won before Sebastopol, went to adorn Cetinje. Grahovo is considered to have been the Marathon of Montenegro ; and 50 years later Prince Nicholas solemnly celebrated the jubilee of his father's victory. The Turks withdrew; and a conference of ambassadors at Constantinople in the autumn led to a rectification of the Montenegrin frontiers, by which the districts of Grahovo with the adjacent Rudine, Jupa, and the Upper Vasojevich were added to the Principality. To Danilo's reign might thus be XI] The murder of Danilo 257 ascribed some increase of Montenegrin territory, as well as the secularisation of the theocratic government ; he had introduced in 1855 a new code, which punished brigandage, even when it was justified in popular estimation by being practised against the Turks, and severely reprobated theft ; he had supplemented his predecessor's corps of perianiks, or body-guards, by establishing a regular system of conscrip- tion and a military hierarchy; and he had established a sort of college in his own palace, where he sometimes acted as professor. But he was not popular, and he met his end by the usual fate of Balkan rulers — assassination. On August 13, i860, the Prince and Princess, who were taking the baths at Perzagno on the Bocche di Cattaro, had been walking in the cool of the evening on the quay of Cattaro, when a Montenegrin exile, one Kadich, shot him as he was handing the Princess into his boat. The victim expired next day; his assassin was hanged, without revealing his accomplices. Some ascribed his crime to political motives, others to private revenge ; the gossip of Cetinje attributed it to the rage of an injured husband. The Princess, without delay, accom- panied the corpse to the capital, where it lies within the monastery church; and, as Danilo had only left one little daughter Olga, the succession passed, as he had arranged, to his nephew Nicholas — for Mirko, the latter's father, was regarded as too bellicose and too destitute of European culture to govern Montenegro at so critical a time. The hero of Grahovo, whom people called "the sword of Montenegro," patriotically stood aside in favour of his son, as nine years before he had acquiesced in the election of his younger brother, and was content to serve the new Prince as President of the Senate, representing in his councils the old, exclusive Montenegrin spirit, which regarded with distrust French in- fluences and European education, represented by the cultured and ambitious Princess -Dowager Darinka. Nicholas I was not quite nineteen years old when he began m. l. 17 258 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. his reign — the longest and most glorious of any Montenegrin ruler. Sent as a child to reside in the family of the future Princess Darinka at Trieste, he had completed at the college of Louis-le-Grand in Paris, thanks to the generosity of Napo- leon III, the education begun at the cosmopolitan seaport. But like all true Highlanders, his heart was always in his own country, and his devotion to his rugged mountains enabled him to blend successfully in a transition period the old national traditions with the culture of the west. Over a young Prince, reared in her own home and educated in France, the Princess- Dowager hoped to exercise her sway ; but, the old Montenegrin party, which saw in the foreign marriage of the late ruler a cause of the national discontent with his rule, hastened the marriage of the new sovereign with Milena, the daughter of a native chieftain ; and ere long the Princess-Dowager retired to Paris, Corfu, and St Petersburg, leaving the little court of Cetinje free to steer its way through the sea of politics. Finally she settled, like the last Princess three centuries before her, at Venice. The Prince had been barely a year on the throne when the Herzegovina rose once more against the Turks. The victory of their Montenegrin brethren at Grahovo had excited the Serbs of the ancient "Duchy"; and the Christians of the Sutorina, Nikshich and other frontier districts, under the leadership of Luka Vukalovich, defeated in 1861 the troops of the redoubtable Omar Pasha. The Montenegrins were naturally filled with enthusiasm at the success of their kins- men ; and, if the decision had depended on the people, war would have begun at once. Nicholas himself could not but sympathise personally with the Herzegovinian insurgents. Born at Njegush, the first village which the traveller on the way up from Cattaro to Cetinje passes, whither his family had emigrated from the Herzegovina centuries before, he regarded the Herzegovina as the cradle of his race ; a lover of his native language, he knew that it was there spoken in its xi] Montenegrin War of 1 862 259 greatest purity ; a student of the national history, he might desire the re-union of the scattered members of the Serb race under one sceptre. But diplomatic considerations and the advice of the Powers constrained him to preserve, at the risk of his popularity at home and in the South Slavonic world, more than a strict neutrality ; for, if his subjects daily joined the insurgents as volunteers and the rumour of a violation of the Montenegrin frontier was eagerly welcomed as an excuse for war, he allowed the Turks to revictual the fortress of Nikshich by sending supplies from Albania across his own territory. None the less, Omar Pasha, having put down the insurrection, blockaded Montenegro during the winter, and in the spring of 1862 invaded the Principality on the pretext of re-establishing order on the frontier. The Turkish plan of campaign was to take advantage of the unfavourable con- formation of the little state, invading it at either end of the short Montenegrin funnel (then only 12 miles long) which connected Albania with the Herzegovina, viz. through the Zeta valley and the Duga pass, while a third corps created a diversion in the Brda to the east of this passage. Although greatly outnumbered, Mirko and the Prince's father-in-law, Vukotich, held the Turks in check for two months, till they at last outflanked Vukotich, took Mirko between two fires, and compelled him to leave the fertile Zeta valley at their mercy. Montenegro was thus cut in two by the Turkish forces ; but, while they ravaged the valley, Mirko reorganised the resistance in the mountains to the west of it, and, when they resumed the offensive, defeated them at Zagaratz and Kokoti. Meanwhile, the Powers looked on at this unequal struggle ; for France, hitherto the protectress of Montenegro, was occupied in Mexico, while Palmerston, usually the friend of struggling nationalities, regarded the mountaineers as rebels whom the Sultan was justified in chastising. There was talk of an Italian expedition to Antivari in support of Montenegro ; 17—2 260 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. but only the Pope showed such sympathy as he could give, by forbidding the Roman Catholics of Albania to aid the Turks, and at Athens subscriptions for the Montenegrins were opened. Omar again renewed the attack, this time along the Rjeka which flows into the lake of Scutari. A long-disputed battle below the picturesque little town which takes its name from the river convinced the Montenegrins that further re- sistance was useless, and the Prince, who had providentially escaped assassination during the war, accepted the Convention of Scutari, dictated by the Turkish commander. The frontiers of 1859, and the internal administration of the Principality remained intact. Turkey allowed the Montenegrins to im- port and export whatever they pleased, except arms, through the haven of Antivari, and to rent agricultural lands in Turkish territory — concessions intended to remedy the two chief Montenegrin grievances, the lack of access to the sea, and the lack of arable land. In return, the mountaineers were to abstain from frontier raids, from the support of insurrections of Turkish subjects, and from erecting frontier forts. The two severest clauses — that which exiled Mirko for ever, and that which authorised the Turkish troops to occupy and fortify strategic points on the Montenegrin route between Scutari and the Herzegovina — were fortunately annulled by mutual consent. For five years more Mirko, the bard as well as the warrior of the nation, remained by his son's side till cholera slew the hero who had defended the cavernous monastery of Ostrog from the Turks, who had won the fight of Grahovo, and twice merited the praise of the Roman poet : Imperium asseruit non sibi, sed patriae. These years were devoted to repairing the ravages of the war, while the Prince, in 1866, almost succeeded in achieving the greatest aim of Montenegrin policy for half a century — a seaport. The Sultan had actually consented to cede to him a strip of coast at Novasella near Spizza; but France and Great Britain, fearful lest it should become in Montenegrin hands a mere Russian XI] Greek Finance 261 haven, opposed the cession. British statesmanship 14 years later repaired this injustice at Dulcigno. The year 1862 had been eventful in south-eastern Europe. Besides the bombardment of Belgrade and the war in Monte- negro, a revolution had driven Otho from the Greek throne. Five years earlier, such a disastrous termination of his reign seemed improbable, for the occupation had made the King extremely popular. For some time after the departure of the allied armies this state of things continued ; and the year 1858, in which Otho celebrated the 25th anniversary of his accession, was quietly occupied with practical economic works, such as the opening of the Euripus to traffic and the laying of a cable between Syra and the Piraeus. Meanwhile, the financial commission of the three protecting Powers was en- gaged in examining the financial resources and administration of the country. Its report, drawn up in 1859, suggested that in lieu of the sinking fund and interest on the allied loan of ^2,400,000 Greece should be compelled to pay an annual sum of ^36,000, which was to be increased as her resources improved. It also advocated some modification of the system of collecting the tithe and the publication of accounts. There was, however, one question which caused the court serious difficulty, that of the succession. The constitution of 1844 had indicated as heir Otho's next brother, who must become a member of the Orthodox Church. But, as the Convention of 1832, which conferred the crown on Otho, had said nothing about his successor's change of religion, an agreement was made in London in 1852 between Greece, Bavaria, and the three Powers, imposing upon the heir the necessity of his conversion. The Bavarian representative, however, added a minute, that either the heir should not be forced to change his religion till the moment of his accession to the throne^ or else he should obtain on his conversion a guarantee that he would succeed to it ; otherwise he might have abandoned the faith of his ancestors for nothing. Otho's next brother, 262 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. Luitpold (afterwards Prince-Regent of Bavaria) resigned his rights ; and the succession seemed to lie between his son Lewis, and Luitpold's next brother Adalbert, who had, how- ever, married a Spanish, and therefore, Roman Catholic, princess. The reluctance of the Bavarian princes to change their religion so greatly impressed some Greek politicians, that their thoughts fell upon Peter of Oldenburg, the brother of the Queen. Amalia, whose popularity had been further increased by the speed with which she transacted business as Regent during her consort's absence in " Europe " — as a French wit remarked : "he read documents without deciding, she decided without reading " — felt flattered by this idea, which thenceforth divided the court into two factions and neutralised the influence of Bavaria at Athens at a critical moment. For two years after the departure of the Allies Otho's popularity continued ; but the outbreak of the Austro-Italian war of 1859 placed him in a difficult position. Crispi, visiting Athens in that year, found the people enthusiastic for the Italian cause; and a Te Deum was sung after every Italian victory. But the King, as was natural in a Bavarian, sympathised with Austria, and even desired to extend the protection of the Greek flag to the Austrian vessels. But, while his people accused him of Austrian sentiments, the British and French governments suspected him, as in 1854, of favouring an insurrection in Turkey, proclaimed by Karatassos, the aide- de- camp, who had been the cause of the Greco-Turkish incident of 1847. The Opposition, eager to embarrass the government, made capital out of Otho's Austrophil views ; and a riot due to the students' protests against the sale of expensive straw-hats was magnified into a political question. The elections were, indeed, favourable to the Cabinet of Athanasios Miaoules, a son of the admiral, and a devoted loyalist, who had come into office after the occupation ; but at the historic Mesol6nghi the idol of the Athenian youth and subsequent author of Otho's de- position, Epamin6ndas Delegeorges, entered parliamentary life. XI] Difficulties of Otho 263 The Syrian massacres of i860 diverted attention for a time from these internal affairs ; but the achievements of Garibaldi in southern Italy rekindled the democratic feeling. The defeat of the Ministerial candidate for the Speakership was followed by the seizure of Opposition newspapers and the dissolution of the Chamber. These acts irritated the Opposition ; and the newly elected body received the nickname of " the Chamber of Mayors," from the number of those officials whom government influence sent to sit in it. A large batch of new senators was created, in the hope of securing that branch of the legislature also. In vain Sir Thomas Wyse pointed out the danger of thus shutting the safety-valves of public opinion, while a combination of circumstances at this time rendered not only the Bavarian Court, but also the three protecting Powers hostile or indifferent to the King's preservation — Russia for the opposite reason to that of Bavaria ; Great Britain because she suspected him of designs against both her protectorate over the Ionian Islands and the integrity of Turkey, which she still cherished as the secret of her Indian empire; France because her advice had been disregarded and perhaps from the personal influence of Kallerges, then Greek minister in Paris, over the Emperor. Thus, in 1861, all the stars in their courses seemed to fight against Otho. In May a plot was discovered in the army ; and the government made the mistake of sending the ringleaders to Nauplia, which thus became the headquarters of the revolu- tionary movement. Meanwhile, the Opposition became more systematic ; the new men, who had entered public life, notably Delege6rges, were supported by the students, whose heads were full of the theoretic beauties of the French revolution and who were veritable missionaries of their ideas because they propagated all over the Greek world the anti-dynastic principles which they had imbibed at Athens. Thus was realised the prophecy of shrewd old Kolokotr6nes, who years before, pointing to the newly founded University and to the palace, 264 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. remarked : " this house will eat up that one ! " As usually happens, the more advanced democrats placed in front of them an elderly champion of unquestionable respectability, the venerable Kanares, whose fame and popularity, won in the War of Independence and recently confirmed by his inde- pendence in the Senate, they exploited for their own purpose. In the press they found two powerful exponents of their programme in the Future of the Fatherland and the British Star, the latter a Greek newspaper founded in London by Stephanos Xenos, a brilliant novelist, who was one of the first persons to name, so early as 1859, Prince Alfred (subsequently Duke of Edinburgh) as the best successor to Otho. An attempt to assassinate the Queen, on September 18, by a lad named Dosios during the King's absence abroad, created a violently royalist reaction ; but six weeks later a plot of some cavalry officers to kidnap the returning monarch showed that it was merely temporary. Miaodles, conscious that public opinion demanded the change of a Ministry over which he had presided since 1857, tendered his resignation; and Kanares, the most popular man in Greece, was summoned to the palace in January 1862. But the task of forming a Ministry proved that it was easier for the old seaman to fire a Turkish ship than to steer his way through the shoals of politics. His programme was excellent, but his list of Ministers caused such a revulsion of feeling that the King was able to withdraw his mandate. Miaoiiles remained in office, and the events of the next few months earned for his Cabinet the name of " the Ministry of blood." On February 13, 1862, the garrison of Nauplia revolted. That city, where 29 years before Otho had been received by his subjects with such enthusiasm, was the seat of the dis- content ; and the eloquent and charming widow of a senator, Mme. Kalliope Papalexopoiilou, and the Belgian consul Zavitzanos, were the ringleaders there. The insurgents de- manded the abolition of the "system" identified with the XI] Revolt of Nauplia 265 existing Ministry, the dissolution of " the Chamber of Mayors," and the convocation of a National Constituent Assembly, and addressed a petition to the ministers of the three Powers. On the same day a revolt took place at Argos ; Tripolitsa and Kyparissi'a followed these examples; but the only serious danger was presented by the risings at Nauplia and Syra, where, however, the Catholic town remained loyal. The government formed a camp on the Isthmus under General Hahn, a veteran Swiss Philhellene, who occupied Argos and Tiryns and besieged Nauplia. Although the garrison found aid from a Cretan colony established in the suburb of Pr6noia, where the Assembly had sat in 1832, the royalist troops soon carried the outworks ; but the refusal of the King to grant a general pardon united the garrison in the resolve to resist, and the dauntless Kalliope stood on her balcony as the shells whizzed past her, shouting that " Mesol6nghi secured the nation's independence, Nauplia will secure its liberties ! " An amnesty for all but 19 conspirators was at last accepted ; the excepted persons were removed on French and British steamers ; and on April 20 Hahn entered Nauplia. Order was restored in Syra by Tsiros, a well-known brigand-hunter, who met and defeated the insurgents in Kythnos. There was no enthusiasm at these victories of Greeks over Greeks ; a sea-girt graveyard at Nauplia guards the remains of those who fell in 1862; the slain of Kythnos were hymned as martyrs. A secret memorandum of the Minister of the Interior to the King depicted the discontent in the provinces, except among the working-classes, the growth of an intellectual proletariat, spoiled for manual labour but unable to obtain posts in the civil service, and the danger which he ran, unless he changed his "system," allowed freedom of election, and settled the vexed question of the succession, by proclaiming to his Orthodox subjects an Orthodox heir-presumptive. These representations were supported by Mr (afterwards Sir) Henry Elliot, the extra- ordinary envoy of Great Britain, who communicated his chiefs 266 Union of Damibian Principalities [ch. desire for a change of Ministry, a dissolution, arid the observance of the constitution. Otho fulfilled the first of these wishes ; and on June 7 the long-lived Miaoiiles administration gave place to a Cabinet, the last of the reign, under the Court Marshal, Gennaios Kolokotrones, son of the famous klepht, and himself more of a soldier than a statesman. The new Premier likewise urged Otho to decide the question of the succession, while Russell advised the Greek and Bavarian representatives in London to send one of Prince Luitpold's sons to reside in Greece while he was still of an impressionable age. Otho, however, preferred that his nephew should not be required to change his religion till he came of age in the following- January. But ere that date Otho had ceased to reign. Informed of the discontent at home, the King now tried to divert attention to " the Great Idea," of which he had been so fervent an apostle at the time of the Crimean war. Emissaries were sent to negotiate with Garibaldi for his co-operation in creating an insurrection in Turkey ; subscriptions were opened for the Montenegrins then struggling against the Porte ; the King hoped that Servia would declare war on the Sultan. So serious did the agitation appear to Russell, that he ordered Scarlett, the new British minister at Athens, to "inform the King of Greece that war against Turkey will precede for a very short time his deposition and abdication." Nor did our Foreign Minister use threats alone; he offered the Ionian Islands to Otho, on condition that he promised not to raise the eastern question. Otho refused, and his refusal did him honour, for he argued that the Ionians were the subjects of a civilised European Power, whereas the enslaved Greeks of Thessaly and Epirus lived under an Asiatic despotism. Be- lieving in the success of Montenegro and an alliance with Servia, he was doomed to complete disappointment. Garibaldi, instead of landing in Epirus, was wounded at Aspromonte; the Montenegrins made peace; the Serbs accepted the decisions of the conference at Constantinople. All hopes of a diversion in XI] Rising at Athens 267 Turkey disappeared. Then the Queen, ever impetuous, urged her consort to undertake a long tour in the provinces at the moment when prudence advised his continued presence in the capital. An insurrection in Akarnama under the auspices of Theo- dore Grivas, the veteran leader of irregulars whose exploits went back to the anarchy of 1832, was foretold by the British vice- consul at Mesol6nghi for the beginning of October. The time passed without anything untoward occurring ; and on October 13 the royal couple, believing that the alarm was groundless, started on what was to be the last of their many Greek cruises. The King seems to have had some foreboding of his coming deposition, for on the day of his departure he said to Nicholas Dragoiimes, his Minister for Foreign Affairs : " I have read that the people consider it unlucky to reign more than 30 years. My 30 years are almost accomplished." The royal yacht had been gone but three days when Grivas caused the garrison of V6nitza, a place on the gulf of Arta that had been conspicuous in the medieval, and now made a page in the modern history of Greece, to raise the standard of revolt. Mesol6nghi, Patras (at the instigation of the former Minister, Venizelos Rouphos), and other places quickly followed. Otho received at Kalamata, on his voyage round the Morea, the news of the revolt of V6nitza, and at once gave the order to return. But, before his yacht could reach the Piraeus, Athens had risen. On the night of the 22nd the garrison revolted ; the Premier, who had come to the conclusion that the deposition of Otho was inevitable, made no effort to save the throne, and refused to order the arrest of the conspirators. As in 1843, the streets were deserted ; and even the civilian ringleaders of the revolution thought it more prudent to remain indoors until dawn. Then they proceeded to the artillery barracks, where Delege6rges, using a cannon as a desk, scribbled on a scrap of paper a proclamation, declaring the fall of Otho's sovereignty and the formation of a provisional government, composed of Boulgares, Kanares, and Rouphos, which should hold office till a National 268 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. Convention should have elected a new King. A rush was made upon the defenceless palace, where Hahn offered no resistance; the King's effects were mostly spared, but his correspondence was carried off and read by the provisional government. The dethroned King's letters were found to be animated by feelings of the warmest love for Greece ; and it is related that Kanares, who had been persuaded to join the government against his will, wept with remorse at their perusal. Boillgares, the president of the triumvirate, then formed a Cabinet, in which Delegeorges and two other future Premiers, Koumoundouros and Thrasyboulos Zai'mes, had seats. Order, however, was not restored for two days ; armed men discharged their rifles in the streets, in sign of joy ; several innocent people were killed by accident ; several shops were plundered ; the museum on the Akropolis lost some of its treasures ; and the prison was relieved of some of its less valuable inmates. On the evening of the 23rd the royal yacht was signalled, and anchored just outside the entrance of the Piraeus. A crowd, whose revolutionary sentiments were manifested by shouts and shots, had already assembled to prevent the sovereigns from landing. A copy of the proclamation and a fatal shot, fired from the shore at a loyal officer, who had ventured to shout " Long live the King ! convinced them that disembarkation was impossible. A hasty council was held on deck; the Queen urged an instant return to Kalamata or Limeni, where they had just received enthusiastic receptions ; Otho, as usual, hesitated to make up his mind till he had received more detailed information. A modern Greek historian has expressed the opinion that the Queen's advice, if modified by a return to loyal Gytheion, might perhaps have saved the Bavarian dynasty. But meanwhile the diplomatic corps arrived, and unofficially counselled resignation. That night Otho spent in the classic waters of Salamis, meditating on his decision. Next morning he informed the British minister of his intention to quit Greece, and, after writing a farewell proclamation to his people, XI] Othds Deposition 269 in which he recalled his love and labours for their land, and declared that he left it to avoid further bloodshed, he em- barked, as he had come nearly 30 years before, on board a British ship, the Scylla, for Venice. The last drop in his cup of bitterness was the spectacle, as the vessel rounded the Morea, of the blazing arch of triumph, which the people of Kalamata had erected only a few days before to welcome their now exiled monarch. The new state of things was accepted everywhere. The protecting Powers raised no voice against his deposition ; and Liberal Britain, by the mouth of Russell, declared, in accordance with the Whig principles of 1688 so dear to that statesman, that Greece, being " an independent nation," had the right " of changing its governing dynasty upon good and sufficient cause." This condition the British government, always severe to Otho, believed to exist. Time has, however, modified the judgment of that day upon the first King of Greece. That Otho was a great ruler, no one will pretend ; that he was a bad man, his worst enemy could not assert. His faults were those of a weak and pedantic character, absorbed in details and unable to arrive at rapid decisions ; his misfortune was that he had no heir. If he had governed his country less, and had been blessed with offspring, possibly his descendants would be still sitting on the Hellenic throne. Time has, however, yet more clearly demonstrated his ardent, if at times impolitic, patriotism ; even in his retirement at Bamberg, where he died in 1867, he continued to wear the Greek dress and to interest himself in the fortunes of Greece. His former subjects have generously recognised his merits ; modern Greek literature has depicted him and his Consort in a more favourable light; the son of one who was prominent in overthrowing him admitted that perhaps his expulsion was a mistake \ and a Greek statesman confessed that he had made a pilgrimage to his tomb in the Theatiner church of Munich and stood in meditation over the last remains of one who never ceased to love Greece. CHAPTER XII THE CESSION OF THE IONIAN ISLANDS (1862-4) The revolution of 1862 had been as bloodless as that of 1843 j but the mere removal of Otho did not necessarily mean the immediate reign of law. " The troops at Athens," wrote an eye-witness, were in a state of complete insubordination ; they "broke into houses, and robbed passers-by in broad daylight " ; a British watchmaker was plundered ; and liberated gaol-birds, taking to the road, displayed their " constitutional " principles to the harmless Boeotians and Megareans. But the town was speedily patrolled by a civic guard, composed of students and leading citizens, and the richest Athenian banker was seen shouldering a musket in the defence of property and order. Shops were re-opened, and the British minister reported that there had "probably never been a general rising attended with so little bloodshed and resistance." Every moment, however, the arrival of Theodore Grivas with his myrmidons and the consequent deposition of the provisional government were expected ; but the death of that dreaded chief removed its fears. The elections for the pro- mised National Assembly, in which representatives of the Greek colonies abroad were allowed to sit, while every con- stituency in Greece elected twice the usual number of deputies, took place; and on December 22 this, the second National Assembly held at Athens, met. Meanwhile, the selection of a King had been occupying the diplomatists of the three protecting Powers. The most popular candidate in Greece was Prince ch. xn] Prince Alfred's Popularity 271 Alfred, second son of Queen Victoria, who had made an excellent impression some three years before during a visit to Athens, where a secret petition in his favour had been signed before Otho's deposition. It was believed in Greece that, if elected, the British Prince would not arrive empty-handed, but would bring the Ionian Islands and perhaps Thessaly and Epirus with him. British capital, it was pointed out, would follow in his train, and the lean years of Bavarian rule would be thus followed by fat years of Anglo-Saxon enterprise. Portraits of " our Alfred " were circulated at Athens ; he was actually proclaimed King at Lamia; popular demonstrations were organised in front of the British Legation ; and a depu- tation entered to interview the British minister, no little embarrassed by the lack of instructions from home. The British government was, in fact, more anxious to defeat the Russian nominee, the Duke of Leuchtenberg, who, as the grandson of Eugene Beauharnais as well as the nephew of Alexander II, was also the French candidate, than to secure the election of Prince Alfred. Russell pointed out that the Prince then stood next to the Prince of Wales in order of succession to the British throne, that he was heir-presumptive to the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg, and that the Queen had resolved to refuse her consent to his acceptance of the Greek crown. In order to prevent the election of the Duke of Leuchtenberg, the British government had already invited Russia and France to respect the protocol of February 3, 1830, which excluded members of the reigning families of the three protecting Powers from the Greek throne, and had asked Russia to state whether she considered the Duke as such. When it had become clear that their candidate had no chance, Russia and France assented, with the view of annulling Prince Alfred's election, in case the Greeks should persist in voting for him despite the official British disclaimer ; .and Russia promised to regard an eventual election of the Duke as null and void. Such was the attitude of the three Powers, when from December 272 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. 6 to 15 the voting for a sovereign took place, not, as in the case of the Roumanian Principalities, in the National Assembly, but by the more democratic and imposing method of a popular plebiscite of Greeks at home and abroad. When the urns were opened, it was found that the Greeks had ignored the dis- claimer of the British government in their zeal for a British King, and that 230,016 Hellenes had voted for Prince Alfred, 2400 for the Duke of Leuchtenberg, and smaller numbers for various royal personages. Only 93 desired a Republic ; only six voted for a Greek ; the same number for the Danish prince who was destined to be King. Not a vote was recorded for a Bavarian, although the Bavarian consul canvassed for Otho's nephew, Lewis. On February 3, 1863 the National Assembly ratified the election ; but the British government adhered to its statement, undertaking, however, by way of compensation, to find a king. Elliot, who meanwhile had arrived on a second mission to Athens, informed the provisional government that, if the Greeks chose a constitutional king agreeable to Great Britain and respected the integrity of Turkey, Great Britain would reward them with the Ionian Islands. The eyes of the British were, of course, first cast upon the inevitable house of Saxe- Goburg, which, in the phrase of a witty Frenchman, "has candidates for all thrones of all religions." Two Coburgers were suggested — the former King-Consort Ferdinand of Portugal and Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Both of them fulfilled Russell's requirement that the choice should fall not upon "a prince under 20 years of age, but rather a prince of mature years and of some experience." But there were objections to both ; for the former was a Catholic, and the latter childless. As Duke Ernest's heir was Prince Alfred, the British government had to find another successor. A close study of the Almanack de Gotha revealed the existence of another Coburger in Austria. But eventually all three Coburg candidatures collapsed. The ex-King-Consort of Portugal xn] "Mountain" and "Plain" 273 declined to renew his kingship in Greece. The reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg discovered that his people would not let him leave his Duchy and that he could not promise to be always sound on the integrity of Turkey ; he wanted larger boundaries, while retaining his position as a German prince. The Austrian held that it was better to lose Otho's crown than omit the filioque clause. Meanwhile, the National Assembly was even more distracted than the British government. Personal factions took the place of parties with well-defined policies ; and, in imitation of the French Revolution, the followers of Kanares and Demetrios Grivas were styled "men of the mountain," those of Boulgares " men of the plain." The military took sides, for discipline was at an end ; the 6th battalion under Leotsakos, brother of one of the victims of K^thnos, was for Boiilgares, the rest of the army supported the " mountaineers." Local chiefs, who had seats in the Assembly, were accompanied by bands of armed retainers who occupied the lobbies or the courtyard of the house where it met. With so much inflam- mable material about, it did not require much to produce civil war. Four ministers and the triumvir Kanares resigned ; the formation of a new Ministry by his two colleagues was branded by the " mountain " as unconstitutional ; their adherents outside fortified a strong position in the town; a collision occurred, and, in proper French fashion, the October revolution was followed by the " days of February." Pending a definite decision, the Assembly assumed the executive power, which it exercised through its vice-president, Moraitines. His first act was to call out the recently-created national guard; a committee of leading politicians interposed its good offices between the combatants ; the Assembly elected a new Ministry under Balbes ; and the army, drawn up in the appropriately-named Concord Square, swore before the Assembly to obey its orders. At last, after the Greek crown had been hawked about Europe for three months, the Premier was able to announce, M. L. 1 3 274 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. on March 30, that the three protecting Powers had proposed as king Prince Christian William Ferdinand Adolphus George, second son of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein (a few months later Christian IX of Denmark), and that King Frederick VII of Denmark had given his conditional consent. The British choice had fallen upon one who could not possess the experience which Russell had considered desirable — for he was at the time a young lieutenant of 17 in the Danish navy. But the Greeks in the Assembly knew that none of themselves would be allowed by the jealousy of their compatriots to reign, like the Obrenovich dynasty in Servia, or like Couza in Roumania, over the young state. They resolved, therefore, to repeat, under more favourable auspices, the experiment of a youthful foreigner as sovereign, and unanimously elected the Danish prince as " King of the Greeks " (not, as Otho had been, " of Greece"), adding a rider to the effect that his heirs should belong to the Orthodox Church. A deputation, composed of Kanares, Za'imes, and Grivas, departed for Copenhagen to offer him the crown. Several weeks passed, however, before the King of Denmark's conditions had been rendered acceptable ; on June 6 the crown was finally accepted; and on July 13, despite two Bavarian protests, the arrangements, already tabulated in protocols, were set forth in a treaty between the three Powers and the King of Denmark. This treaty provided that the new sovereign should bear the title of " George I King of the Greeks " (subsequently altered to " Hellenes "), that his kingdom should be increased by the union of the Ionian Islands, that the crowns of Greece and Denmark should never be united on the same head, that King George's successors should belong to the Orthodox Church, and that his majority might be accelerated by a decree of the National Assembly. Very favourable financial provisions were made for the new monarch. Besides the civil list which he would receive from his subjects, the three Powers each relinquished the annual amount of ^4000 out of the sums which the Greek government had xn] Anarchy at Athens 275 agreed in i860 to pay them, in accordance with the findings of the financial commission ; while Great Britain promised to advise the Ionian government, at the moment of the union, to set aside ^10,000 a year for the new King. A secret Anglo-Danish treaty pledged him to refrain from promoting insurrectional movements against Turkey in return for the Ionian Islands. While the negotiations between the Powers and the Danish court were proceeding, Athens was left in a state of anarchy. The strife between the two rival factions in the Assembly became bitterer as the moment of the new King's arrival drew nearer ; for, as before the advent of Otho, the leaders of either party wished to be in power at the moment of his coming. Brigands penetrated to the outskirts of the capital, while the abduction of an Austrian circus-rider by a band of soldiers provoked a diplomatic incident. In the absence of any con- stituted authority, cabinets were elected by a vote of the Assembly ; and thus the election as Minister of War of Panos Koronaios, one of the conspirators of Nauplia, commander of the national guard, and a prominent " mountaineer," was regarded by himself as a means of securing the executive power, by the Opposition as a danger against which force was the only remedy. Both factions appealed to arms. Kyriakos, a brigand in sympathy with the "men of the plain," occupied the monastery of the Holy Angels, the ancient Kynosarges, near the road to Marathon ; Leotsakos, the most formidable rival of the would-be military dictator, when ordered to dislodge the brigand, fraternised with him in the style of the officer in Le Roi des Montagnes. Koronaios thereupon arrested his insub- ordinate officer; the latter's men retaliated by capturing two Ministers as hostages for his release. These reprisals were the signal for civil war. Again, in French revolutionary fashion, Athens having had her " days of February," now had her " days of July." At dawn on July 1 the fighting began between the Ministerialists under Koronaios and the " men of 18—2 276 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. the plain " under Papadiamantopoulos, an artillery officer who had taken a prominent part in the October revolution. The " mountaineers " occupied the palace, the school which takes its name from its founder Barbakes, and the Akropolis ; their rivals bombarded the palace and killed its defender, Aristeides, son of Admiral Kanares. A deputation of three members of the Assembly obtained an armistice of 24 hours ; but complete anarchy continued to prevail, for half the ministry had resigned, and the sole constituted authority was D. Kyriakou, the President of the Assembly, who could not secure a quorum of deputies to confer legality upon his efforts to restore peace. Next day the fighting was renewed; Koronaios besieged the National Bank, whose director belonged to the opposite faction, and whose strong-room contained a large sum in specie. The "mountain" artillery swept Stadion Street, one of the chief thoroughfares of Athens, and from the "Frog's Mouth" the Opposition howitzers replied. In the evening the ministers of the three Powers sent their secretaries to the President of the Assembly and the two rival leaders, and induced them to conclude an armistice of 48 hours, threatening to leave Athens unless this proposal were adopted. Some 200 people had fallen ; and Koronaios alone offered any further objection to a peace, which he rightly interpreted as his political extinction. The Assembly then met in the Barbakeion ; Rouphos recon- stituted the Ministry with men of so little influence as to allay suspicion ; and this "Cabinet of Affairs" held office till the arrival of the King. The army was ordered to leave Athens, which it quitted on July 5 ; its rival leaders resigned, whereupon their submissive forces were exiled respectively to Mesol6nghi and Sparta. The security of the capital was confided to the national guard. Thus, the reign of disorder, which had prevailed more or less continuously since Otho's deposition, came to an end — a struggle for place not for principle, which the ministers of the three Powers unanimously stigmatised in the strongest language as a conflict of "culpable ambitions." xn] Arrival of King George 277 Modern Greek historians have joined in this condemnation; but, after all, revolutions are rarely made with rose-water. The coming of King George had been delayed by a tour of the European courts in the company of Count Sponneck, a Danish ex-Minister, who had been attached to his person as a political mentor, but who, even before he had ever set foot on Greek soil, offended the whole class of Greek public men by proclaiming his own position to be "so exalted that no one in Greece could overshadow it." Great was the joy, when at last the young King arrived at Athens on October 30. The rejoicings of Nauplia upon Otho's arrival 30 years earlier were renewed under the shadow of the illuminated Akropolis ; but a British diplomatist could not refrain from wondering how this "slight, delicate stripling, " whom he saw take the oath in the National Assembly, and whom he heard proclaim that he would aim at "making Greece a model kingdom in the east," would succeed in the task that lay before him. This observer lived to admit that the experiment of choosing for the second time a youth to wear the Greek crown had turned out far better than even optimists could have expected. King George had difficult crises to face — the war of 1897, the military up- rising of 1909; but he not only kept his throne and founded a dynasty, but saw his country — what Otho yearned in vain to see — thrice enlarged. The first of these acquisitions — that of the Ionian Islands — was the present brought by the King to his own subjects. The British government, after 50 years' experience, had come to the conclusion that it was desirable to sever its connexion with the Seven Islands. The repressive measures adopted during the Russo-Turkish war, culminating in the suppression of the sole remaining Liberal paper in Corfu for its criticisms of British sympathy with Turkey, had kept alive the discontent of the priests and people. Many of the nobles and gentry were still attached to the protectorate ; but, owing to the reforms of 1849, tne Assembly was in the hands of the Opposition, whose 278 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. election and the salary attached thereto depended upon the Orthodox zeal of the clergy and the new-born freedom of the enfranchised peasantry. The children in Cephalonia used " to write, as a copy, a prayer for the expulsion of the English and Ward declared that the system of government bequeathed to him by Seaton " was not to be worked by any human power." From outside, too, came criticisms of the British administration — from the press of autocratic Russia and Napoleonic France, neither of which countries enjoyed a tithe of the real liberty accorded by British statesmen to the Ionians. Even an Austrian minister defended the Neapolitan Bourbons by citing British methods in the Islands. It is true that, when Sir John Young, who had succeeded Ward as Lord High Commissioner in 1855, held a general election at the close of the following year, the measures taken by his predecessor against the Cephalonian Radicals proved so efficacious that all the ten members returned by that island, the birthplace of Ionian Radicalism, were ministerialists, and Lombardos of Zante was the leading representative of Unionism. But this eleventh Assembly had not been long in session, when a rumour, subsequently proved to be well-founded, aroused a storm against the protectorate. Young, at the suggestion of Bowen, his secretary, who knew the language and was supposed to know the habits of the islanders better than most British officials, proposed to the home government, that the Ionian question should be solved by the cession of the five southern islands to Greece and the conversion of Corfu and Paxo, the most important strategically, the most attached to the protectorate, and the least difficult of management, into a British colony. When a report leaked out at Corfu that a petition with this object was being surreptitiously circulated, and that three Ionian signatures had actually been obtained, a gust of patriotic indignation swept over the Assembly. That body, disregarding the official denial of the Attorney-General, who was entitled to speak, without voting, on behalf of the government, applauded xn] Gladstone s Mission 279 vociferously the invective of Lombardos, and unanimously adopted a motion for the appointment of a committee of enquiry, on which every island should have a representative. The suspicions thus aroused had begun to subside when, on November 12, 1858, the Daily News published Young's dispatches, dated June 10 of the previous year and July 14, 1858, containing the colonisation scheme. The publication of these despatches, abstracted from the pigeon-holes of the Colonial Office, was, in the phrase of the Colonial Secretary, "an inconceivable misfortune"; for they not only rekindled excitement in the Islands but alarmed the other signatories of the treaty of 181 5. Worst of all, the event occurred at the very moment when the most Philhellenic of then living British statesmen was on his way as " High Commissioner Extra- ordinary" to enquire "into the administration of the Ionian Islands under the Charter." The Derby Ministry, then in office, had in its chief a translator of Homer, in its Colonial Secretary the novelist Bulwer Lytton. To these literary statesmen the suggestion of Lord Carnarvon, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, that Gladstone; another Homeric scholar, should be sent out on this mission naturally commended itself. Gladstone's political friends were almost unanimously opposed to his acceptance of the offer. Aberdeen shrewdly doubted whether Homer would be a war-horse strong enough to carry his rider through this Ionian Iliad ; Sidney Herbert only trusted that the result of the mission would be to hand the Islands over to Greece. But to Gladstone, the scholar and the churchman, the proposal was welcome as an opportunity of visiting the scenes of the "Odyssey" and studying the Orthodox Establishment. To the existing Lord High Commissioner his coming was scarcely acceptable. For Young, despite the tempest aroused by the rumour of his colonisation scheme, could truthfully affirm that during his tenure of office " the power of the high police " had "not been resorted to in any single instance," while, at this 280 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. time not a single Ionian was "in exile, in confinement, or any kind of legal process, for a political offence." Trade was growing; the effects of the cholera at Zante had been ob- literated by a splendid olive crop and the consequent reduction of the debt. The only recent incidents had been a display of anti-Turkish feeling by the municipal officer superintending the market of Corfu in forbidding the supply of bread to Turkish troopships, and the refusal of himself and his colleagues to halt before the palace during the procession of St Spiridon, the patron-saint of the island. It was, therefore, a surprise, as disagreeable to the Lord High Commissioner as it was agree- able to the Ionian Unionists, to learn that his old schoolmate and colleague in Parliament was coming out to examine his work. The task, difficult for anyone unacquainted with the peculiar conditions of the Islands, was rendered harder by the indiscretion of the London Liberal newspaper ; and Glad- stone, then in Vienna, had to make, not for the last time, a practical apology to the Austrian government. When, accompanied by his Neapolitan friend Lacaita, upon whose knowledge of this old Venetian colony he relied, the eminent statesman arrived, on November 24, 1858, at Corfu, he soon found that the stolen dispatches, the policy of which was repudiated alike by Young and himself, had done their work. In vain he told the Senate and the ten Corfiote deputies that there was no question of altering the treaty of 18 15, and that he had come not to discuss the British protectorate but to examine how it could be harmonised with local interests. In vain he offered Radical reforms in place of union. At Santa Mavra, whither he proceeded from Corfu, the Greek authorities reiterated their abhorrence of Young's unlucky dispatches, and heard without conviction that union was an Utopia which was the main obstacle to practical improvements. At Ithaca the memories of the " wily Odysseus " may have interested the scholarly Commissioner more than the plaints of his political descendants. At Cephalonia he was greeted, XIl] Gladstone s Tour 281 to his disgust, with cries of " Down with the Protectorate ! " as well as shouts of " Long live the Union ! " while copies of the historic vote of December 8, 1850, were thrust into his carriage. He attributed this bitterness of Cephalonian feeling, which the local politicians formally disavowed, to the repressive measures of 1849, Dut was impressed with the tragic appeal of the aged Archbishop for union of "this unhappy island" with Greece. In Zante, the constituency of the protectorate's most vehement opponent, he was constrained once again to point out the impracticability of union in the then condition of Europe, but was received with the habitual courtesy of the Ionians towards a friend of their race. Thence he went to Athens, where he received the impression that there was no general desire for the annexation of the Islands — an impression somewhat disproved by the relations believed to exist between Otho and a leading Unionist newspaper there. To the in- fluence of the press Gladstone attributed the Unionist senti- ments which he found in Paxo, where two exiled Corfiote editors had employed their compulsory leisure in propaganda against the protectorate. After paying this cursory visit to all the outlying islands except remote Cerigo, Gladstone settled down to work at Corfu, besieged by needy Ionians who regarded him as an earthly providence able to provide places for themselves and even dowries for their daughters, and regarded by the British as a political Jacob, the supplanter of the rightful Lord High Commissioner. Having decided on a plan of reforms as an antidote to union, which he considered detri- mental to the Islands so long as Otho ruled over Greece, Gladstone advised Young's recall and offered himself as tem- porary successor to introduce the reform scheme. There was no room for two High Commissioners at Corfu ; Young left on January 25, 1859; and, on the same day, Gladstone, whose offer had been gladly accepted by the Queen, entered upon his office and opened the extraordinary session of the Assembly. 282 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. Two days later, that body passed a motion, " that the sole and unanimous will (Oe\r)o-is) of the Ionian people has been, and is, the union of all the Seven Islands with the Kingdom of Greece." Gladstone told the Assembly that its only legal means of expression was by petition ; and, when the motion was repeated in that form, he characteristically quibbled about the meaning of the word OeXrjcris, which he insisted upon translating "disposition," instead of the obvious signification. The Ionians were doubtless amused at this not uncommon pretention of a foreign scholar to know more about their own language than they themselves, while his scholarly chief was probably edified by the philological criticism, which accom- panied his transmission of their petition to the Queen. The royal reply, as was expected, was a flat refusal " to abandon the obligations " laid upon the British monarchy by the treaty of 1815, or to "permit any application to any other Power in furtherance of any similar design." Thereupon, the eminent statesman in his best Italian introduced into the Assembly his Ionian reform bill. His study of Ionian affairs had con- vinced him, that, while union was undesirable, " not Cherubim and Seraphim could work " the existing system ; he saw that, although, as Greek and French writers admitted, the material prosperity of the Ionians was greater than that of the free Greeks, the fiscal system weighed heavily on the peasantry, crippled the export trade and discriminated unfairly between town and country. The civil service, as he remarked, was v o-^oKoirai of the ancients — by means of a heavy property tax and heavy import-duties, the Metropolitan 1 Contradicted by M. S. Dragoiimes, the subsequent Premier, then a judge in Corfu. xin] British Policy in Crete 309 of Cephalonia protested against the separation of the Ionian Church from the Patriarchate and its union with that of the Greek kingdom, finally accomplished in 1866. Still, the British Minister's argument was not convincing, for it took no account of the sentiment of nationality ; moreover, the Ionians had had the material advantages of the British protectorate for nearly half a century, while the Cretans had obtained practically no benefits, material or other, from the uncovenanted mercies of the Turk, whose administration even the most ardent defender of "the integrity of the Ottoman Empire" would scarcely place on a level with our own. However, both Lord Stanley, who succeeded Clarendon on the fall of the Liberal government (June 1866), and his French colleague, continued to bolster up Turkish rule in Crete, thereby prolonging for over 30 years a question which only ten years ago was definitely solved. Upon Stanley, in particular, lies a heavy responsibility for the Iliad of woes which this procrastination has involved. The dilatoriness of the Porte and its ultimate refusal to remit taxes, the exhortations of the militant priest Parthenios Keh'des, the influence of Cretans in Athens and of unofficial Greek agents, and the warlike preparations of Ismail, who gathered the Mussulmans into the three chief fortresses of the island, brought on an insurrection, which might have been prevented, or at least again postponed, by a prompt redress of Cretan grievances. The Porte was, indeed, anxious to provoke an armed rising, which would enable it to transfer the trouble- some island to its vassal, the Khedive Ismail, to whose famous predecessor it had been subjected from 1832 to 1840; and this plan was not unpleasing to France, then extending her influence in Egypt by the construction of the Suez Canal. Egyptian troops were landed, as in 1823 ; and Egyptian offers of a bank, schools, and roads were made to the Cretans, if they would consent to union with Egypt. Instead of accepting them, a "General Assembly of the Cretans" held at Sphakfa, on Sep- tember 2, declared Ottoman rule abolished and proclaimed 310 Reforms and their Results [ch. union with Greece. Already blood had begun to flow ; an Egyptian defeat at the Springs of Apokorona led to the recall of Ismail and the appointment as special commissioner of Mustapha Pasha, a severe but just, if merciless Albanian, who had hanged the Cretans at Murnie's in 1833 and from his previous 30 years' governorship of the island was known as " Kiritli " (or " the Cretan "). He was assisted by the Egyptian Minister of War, himself a Cretan, converted to Islam. The Cretan insurrection of r866 naturally aroused the keenest sympathy in Greece, and profoundly affected Greek politics. Since the adoption of the constitution, Greek public life had been agitated by constant ministerial changes, chiefly due to the disturbing presence of Sponneck, as the power behind the young King. With his aid, in March 1865, Alexander Koumoundouros succeeded in displacing his chief Kanares as Prime Minister, and thus beginning his series of Premierships ; but the first parliament elected under the new constitution resulted in a confusion of parties which rendered it impossible to form a stable administration. Five Cabinets followed one another in almost as many weeks ; and even Sponneck's de- parture did not completely allay the apprehensions of Europe or the discontent of the Greeks. Such was the state of affairs, when the news that " the great Greek island " had risen reached Athens. Delege6rges, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, was at first desirous of not only assisting unofficially the Cretan insurgents but of encouraging another insurrection in Thessaly and Epirus. But the King, whose position was difficult, and the Premier Boiilgares, realising that Greece was not then prepared for war with Turkey, decided not to repeat the experiment of 1854, but to restrict the co-operation of the government to a passive attitude towards the volunteers who were flocking to Crete, and who found capable leaders in Koronaios, commander of the national guard and chief of the " Mountaineers " during the street fighting at Athens in 1863, and Zymbrakakes, a Cretan officer of the Greek army, xm] The Cretan Insurrection 3 1 1 educated in France. The insurgents divided the island into three military commands — the western held by Zymbrakakes, the central by Koronaios, and the eastern by the Cretan chief Korakas, while a little steamer, the Panhell'enion, worked by British engineers, fearlessly ran the Turkish blockade. Possible complications with Servia, anxious to be rid of the remaining Turkish garrisons, were added to the calculations of Ottoman statesmen. The crushing defeat of the insurgents under Zymbrakakes by Mustapha at Baphe on October 24 caused the temporary subsidence of the insurrection, and some of the Sphakiotes even came to terms with the Turks. But Koronaios restored the enthusiasm of the islanders by his successes in the centre, where he had established his headquarters at the monastery of Arkadion, a strongly-fortified building near Rethymne, destined to be the scene of this insurrection's most heroic drama. Within its walls a number of women and children had taken refuge ; and, in the absence of Koronaios, its defence had been entrusted to Demakopoulos, another Greek officer. Against this sacred fortress Mustapha directed his attack ; but its massive construction proved superior to the force of his mountain artillery, while within soldiers and monks, with the cry of " Liberty or death " upon their lips, defended the position for two whole days. 11 Never in their recollection," said the islanders, " had such a battle been fought in Crete." At last, on November 21, the Turks forced the iron gate; the Egyptians, pressed on by the bayonets of their comrades, effected an entrance into the courtyard ; then Maneses, the abbot, put a match to the powder-magazine, uniting defenders and assailants in one common hecatomb. The survivors, who had surrendered their arms on a promise that their lives should be spared, were mostly massacred ; the refectory ran red with the blood of women and children ; and a British correspondent, visiting the monastery some months later, found the charred and mutilated remains of the victims still 312 Reforms and their Results [ch. strewn on the floor. The heroic garrison of Arkadion did not die in vain. The verses of the poet Paraschos commemorated their resistance, worthy of the best days of ancient Sparta ; public opinion abroad was deeply stirred by the recital of the siege ; a fund for the Cretan refugees was started in London ; a com- mittee of British residents, including the historian Finlay, was formed in Athens ; and, to the embarrassment of the Turcophil Cabinet of St James, the transport of 315 fugitives by H.M.S. Assurance from Se'lino Kastelli caused pro-British demonstra- tions in Greece, where Koumoundouros, again at the head of affairs, found a neutral attitude increasingly difficult, owing to the sympathy of the Greeks with the Cretans. So strong was this feeling, that a riot broke out at the Piraeus, where the people attacked and drove back into the sea a body of returning and disillusioned volunteers, transported on Turkish and French vessels. In January 1867 the two Cabinets hitherto most favourable to Turkey suddenly modified their Cretan policy. Stanley, while still obdurate on the question of union, suggested the application to Crete of the system of autonomy, recently adopted for the Lebanon. The Marquis de Moustier, the new French Minister of Foreign Affairs, who as ambassador at Constantinople had been Turcophil and on a recent visit to Athens had used to the King and government language frank to the verge of brutality, went much further. " It would be far better," he said on January 24, " for the Porte to give up Candia " than to grant autonomy. He declared that " the country was lost to Turkey," and added that "Crete had become a permanent sore limb of the empire, and it was better to amputate it than to allow it to become the nucleus of gangrene, which might spread to every part of the empire." Union, in his opinion, " was the only plan to be now adopted," while he "would not hesitate also to abandon Thessaly." Gortchakoff, on behalf of Russia, likewise advocated union as the remedy ; and, on March 30, all the Powers, except xm] The Cretan Insurrection 313 Great Britain, supported the French proposal to allow the Cretans to decide by a plebiscite on the future form of govern- ment — Samian autonomy, the Moldo-Wallachian system, or union with Greece. Never had there been so favourable a chance for solving the Cretan question ; well might Fuad Pasha, the Turkish Foreign Minister, remark, that his sole consolation was the refusal of the British government to join in this suggestion. The changed attitude of the Powers and the heavy losses of Mustapha, of whose army, originally 17,850 strong, only 6000 had returned to Canea, induced the Porte to promise a commission in Constantinople, to which the Cretans were invited to send delegates, for the purpose of drawing up a new system of government. This scheme proved to be futile ; for the delegates went reluctantly to the capital, and seven of them prematurely quitted it as a protest. Meanwhile, a provisional government was formed by the insurgents at Sphaki'a in the name of King George ; and Demetrios Mavrokordatos, ex-Minister of Education, was elected governor of the island. Dissatisfied with Mustapha, the Porte sent Omar Pasha, the famous Croatian general, to take command. But Omar was now an old man, full of his own importance, and disposed to underrate the difficulties of a Cretan campaign after his Monte- negrin experiences. His plan of driving the insurgents into the mountains of Sphakia and annihilating them there, cost him, despite the discord between the Cretan leaders, two defeats, avenged by savage outrages. The diary of a German officer, who accompanied him, told how the Croat "ordered the division to ravage and rape," and how "all prisoners were murdered or worse." By his orders, one of the horrors of the insurrection of 1823 was re-enacted, and a body of fugitives was stifled in a cave by the smoke of a huge fire, kindled at its mouth. Still, the insurgents, though lacking in unison, remained unsubdued. Koronaios nearly destroyed Omar's army in a ravine between Retrr/mne and Candia ; Hajji 314 Reforms and their Results [ch. Michales Jannares, son of the likenamed leader of " the great insurrection " and himself the most remarkable figure of this, displayed the picturesque bravery and manly stature of a Cretan chief in many a skirmish ; while a second blockade- runner, called the Ai-kddion from the famous monastery, and bought by the Greek colony in England, made one trip after another, and, when its crew had at last to burn it to avoid capture, was speedily replaced by another vessel, the Enosis (or Union). If at the end of his three months' campaign, the Sultan's favourite general had destroyed 600 villages, he had lost more than 20,000 men. Trikoilpes, the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs, protested against his outrages; GortchakofT sarcastically remarked that Britain " had on other occasions been disposed to support the aspirations of a people struggling for independence." Then the Sultan himself resolved to try conciliation, granted an amnesty, and, as his foremost strategist had failed, sent his Grand Vizier, Aali Pasha, to create a new Cretan organisation. The provisional government protested against the amnesty, and under the influence of a deputation from Athens, rejected Aali's offers, declaring that a mixed international commission and a plebiscite to determine the wishes of the population provided the only satisfactory solution. Aali, however, summoned a General Assembly of four delegates from each district to meet him ; and his proposals were formu- lated in the "Organic Statute of 1868," which was the law of the island for the next ten years. Under this arrangement Crete was divided into five provinces and sub-divided into 19 districts; the two principal authorities were a governor- general (or vdli) and a commander-in-chief, who were to be usually distinct persons but who on occasion might be one and the same individual. The vdli had two assessors, of whom one was to be a Christian, and was to be assisted by a Council of Administration, likewise composed of Christians and Mussulmans, partly elected, and partly consisting of ex officio members, such as the Greek Metropolitan. Similarly, xin] Organic Statute of 1868 315 each provincial governor (or mutessarif), if a Christian, was to have a Mohammedan assessor (or mouavin), if a Mussulman, a Christian; and he was to be assisted by an administrative council. Official correspondence was to be conducted in both languages. A General Assembly, consisting of four delegates elected by the " Council of the Elders " of each district, and of four from each of the three towns, all paid a salary for their services, was to meet at Canea in an annual session of not more than 40 days for the discussion of measures of public utility. Religious questions were to be discussed in special sittings, in which the members of the particular religion could alone participate. While no fresh tax was to be imposed, those already existing were specified to be the tithe, the payment for exemption from military service, the duties on liquor, salt, and tobacco, and the customs dues. The tithe was to be remitted for the next two years, and reduced by one-half for two more 1 . The half-regretted decision of the provisional government to continue the insurrection involved Crete in another year of desultory warfare. Hussein Avni Pasha, who had succeeded as both civil and military governor towards the end of 1867, neither gained nor lost any decisive battle. Koronaios had returned to Greece, whither, after an ineffectual attempt to defend the lofty plateau of Homal6s, Zymbrakakes followed him. A last attempt to keep the insurrection alive was made at Athens, whence towards the end of November the veteran Mainate chief, Petropoulakes, set out with a body of volunteers for Crete. This incident almost led to war with Turkey. On December 11, 1868, a Turkish ultimatum was presented to the Greek government, demanding the dispersion of the volunteers, the disarming of the three blockade-runners or their exclusion from Greek ports, and protection for all Cretan refugees who sought to return home. Five days' 1 Parliamentary Papers, 1867-8, vol. lxxiii, 469-83. 3 1 6 Reforms and their Results [ch. grace was given, and the expulsion of Greek subjects from Turkey was threatened. Public opinion in Athens, as the British minister reported, was "unanimous in wishing for a rupture." The Greeks had from the outset sympathised with the Cretans ; and no sooner did Koumoundouros, who had taken part in the insurrection of 1 84 1, become Premier at the end of 1866 than he began warlike preparations and sent an emissary to Belgrade to conclude an alliance with Servia, while Trikoupes, his Foreign Minister, issued a circular asking for Crete, Thessaly, and Epirus. The King's marriage, however, in October 1867, with the Russian Grand-duchess Olga had hindered the Pan- hellenistic designs of the war-party; and, when the King returned to take up the reins from his uncle John of Gliicks- burg, who had been Regent in his absence, his first act was to dismiss Koumoundouros, although the Premier had a large majority in the Chamber. The Russian ideal was a general rising in the near east under Muscovite auspices ; and at this moment the Russians were preparing to give to Hellenism the greatest blow which it had received since the creation of the Greek kingdom — the erection of the Bulgarian Exarchate. Botilgares, who returned to office in 1868 after a Cabinet of Affairs had been tried, was Russophil and indifferent about foreign policy ; anxious for peace, he would have gladly stifled the insurrection, and refused to allow the Cretan deputies to sit in the newly elected Greek parliament. His Foreign Minister, however, Peter Deligiannes, was openly in favour of union with Crete, for which he had tried to obtain British support. When, in December 1868, Gladstone became Prime Minister, the hopes of the Greeks revived, for they believed that the great Philhellene, who had contributed towards giving the Ionian Islands to them, would also support the annexation of Crete. Clarendon, his Foreign Secretary, in vain informed them that his chief, because he was anxious for the progress of Greece, condemned aggressive action as likely to injure xm] Admiral Hobart at Syr a ?> l 7 the country financially. But, like the Ionians in their attitude towards union with Greece, the Greeks have always regarded union with Crete not as a question of cash but as one of national sentiment — a quality too often ignored by diplomatists as a factor in politics. Accused by Koumoundouros of deserting their Cretan brethren, and forced to support nearly 50,000 Cretan refugees, the Greek ministers were in a difficult position ; Karam, the Maronite leader, then in Athens, offered to raise a revolt in the Lebanon, while Peter Deligiannes, who directed Greek foreign policy, continued to advocate the Cretan cause. Accordingly, the Greek government's reply amounted to a practical rejection of the Turkish demands; and Photiades Bey, the Ottoman minister, left Athens on December 17. Three days earlier a fresh incident had occurred, which made the situation still more critical. The famous blockade-runner, Enosis, when summoned to stop, fired at a ship commanded by Admiral Hobart Pasha, a British seaman in the Turkish service ; the admiral demanded that the authorities of Syra (where the Enosis had taken refuge) should treat her as a pirate, and blockaded her in the harbour; whereupon the Greek government dispatched a corvette with orders to invite Hobart to raise the blockade, and, in case he persisted, to attack him. It has been suggested that in this affair there was collusion between the Greeks and the Turks ; at any rate, the corvette returned to the Piraeus, while Hobart remained outside Syra watching the Enosis for nearly six weeks, until the nomarch of the Cyclades had promised that she should be detained there until the legal proceedings against her were over. The blockade-runner was ere that harmless, for on December 26 the elder Petro- poulakes, with 600 insurgents, had surrendered at Askyphon in Sphakia ; the insurrection was obviously dying, unless a Greco-Turkish war reanimated it. Meanwhile, at the proposal of Bismarck, a Conference of the signatory Powers of the treaty of Paris was held there 3 1 8 Reforms and their Results [ch. xiii on January 9, 1869, for the purpose of settling the Greco- Turkish dispute. Despite an initial difficulty, due to the claim of the Greek delegate, to whom had been accorded a merely consultative voice, to be placed on an equal footing with the Turkish representative, although Greece had not been a signatory of the historic treaty of 1856, Peter Deli- giannes submitted to the Conference a written statement, complaining of the dismemberment of the Hellenic race, and asking for the definite settlement of the Cretan question and the rectification of the land frontiers of the Greek kingdom. This radical solution had already been excluded, and the Conference, having persuaded the Turkish government to suspend its measures of expulsion, drew up a declaration on January 20, requesting Greece to abstain from tolerating the formation of armed bands on her territory and the equipment of armed vessels in her ports with a view to aggression against Turkey. The Turkish government agreed to this declaration, and Russia urged King George to accept it. At this juncture a Cabinet crisis at Athens brought Thrasyboulos Za'imes into power; and Theodore Deligiannes (the future Premier), his Foreign Minister, on February 6 adhered to the declaration, while proclaiming that the country was unprepared for war. Turkey then cancelled her hostile dispositions against Greek subjects, and diplomatic relations were resumed. The situation at Athens had been aggravated by a decree for the issue of treasury notes for £5 3 5,4 14 — a measure which was withdrawn on condition that the National and Ionian Banks consented to a forced loan to the government of ,£756,000. The Cretan insurrection, now that all hope of Greek intervention had disappeared, died a natural death. Sphakianakes and Hajji Michales held out for a little longer in the east, but in the spring the three years' struggle ended. A nominal amnesty was granted; a liberal governor-general, Mehemet Ali, the Prussian pasha afterwards murdered in Albania, was appointed ; and for the next four years Crete slept the sleep of exhaustion. CHAPTER XIV THE ROUMANIAN AND SERVIAN QUESTIONS (1862-75) The Cretan insurrection was not the only event which drew public attention to the east of Europe in 1866. The Roumanians did not long remain content with the native officer whom they had elected Prince of the united Principalities in 1859. Couza had succeeded in gaining the recognition of the Porte and the Powers ; but he found it impossible to pacify the politicians of his own country. The Roumanian Assembly was the battle-ground of three parties — the Conservatives or "Whites," the Radicals or "Reds," and the Moderate Liberals, whose views coincided with those of the Prince. The country, a large proportion of whose inhabitants were peasants unable to read or write and totally ignorant of political questions, was unsuited for parliamentary government, which in practice degenerated into the "management" of elections by the party in power and the manufacture of disturbances by the party in opposition. Couza had been little more than a year on the throne when the "Reds" roused the people of Craiova and Ploeshti against the coalition government ; in 1862 the land bill of the Conservative statesman, Barbe Catargi, based on the liberty alike of property and of labour, excited the violent opposition of the " Reds." The latter, conscious that they were in a minority in the Assembly, announced their intention of convening a mass-meeting on June 23, the anni- versary of the revolution of 1848, in close proximity to the 320 Roumanian and Servian Questions [ch. house of parliament. The government replied that it would prohibit the meeting • but the Premier, driving back from the Assembly, was shot by an assassin — a foreigner, it was said, hired by his enemies. The murderer has never been brought to justice ; for when Constantine Rosetti and John Bratianu, the "Red" leaders, were haled before the police court, the former threatened the Prince that he would denounce the real culprit, unless the proceedings were stopped. Couza was never proved to have instigated the crime ; but, in any case, he gave orders to hush up the enquiry. This interference with the course of justice failed, however, to remove the hostility of the " Reds." They accused the Prince of being a Russian agent, and thus discredited him in the eyes of the French, because he ordered the disarmament of Polish volunteers crossing his territory on their way to aid their insurgent fellow-countrymen during the Polish rising of 1863. In the same year a "mon- strous coalition " of " Whites " and " Reds " was formed against the Prince's favourite minister, Kogalniceanu, and addressed a memorial to the Powers, praying for Couza's removal. The story is told that the Prince considered the memorial of so little importance as to subscribe towards the travelling expenses of the politician who was to be the bearer of it. But events proved that he had under-estimated the gravity of the campaign against him, not only in Paris, but also at home. His bold policy of reforms, while benefiting the peasantry, only exas- perated the politicians. Brief as was his reign, Couza's name is associated with three acts of the first importance — the secularisation of the monasteries, the agrarian law, and free education. The mon- astic question in Roumania had long exercised the ingenuity of native statesmen. The country was dotted over with numerous religious establishments, founded by the piety of former princes and nobles, who, in order to secure their endowments, had "dedicated" their foundations to the Holy Places of Jeru- salem, to Mounts Athos and Sinai, and to other ecclesiastical xiv] The Monasteries 321 corporations dependent upon the (Ecumenical Patriarchate. It was calculated that one-fifth of the Roumanian soil, including some of the most fertile districts, was the property of these " dedicated " monasteries, whose surplus revenues went abroad and whose abbots, being Greeks, were regarded as foreigners by Roumanian nationalists. Accordingly, after the downfall of Phanariote rule, successive efforts had been made to solve this economic, ecclesiastical and national question. Gregory IV Ghika had expelled the Greek abbpts and assigned two years' revenues of the Wallachian monasteries to pay the national debt ; the Porte, under Russian influence in 1827, had restored the abbots, who successfully resisted the attempts of the Russian organisers and of the native princes who followed to compel them to devote a considerable proportion of their income to the schools, hospitals and other public establishments of the Principalities. Couza, after fruitless negotiations at Constantinople and Bucharest, resolved to settle the matter finally; and a decree of 1863 transformed nearly all the monasteries into hospitals or prisons, expelled the abbots, and secularised their property. By way of compensation, a lump sum of 080,000 was set aside for the benefit of the Holy Places, but by the authorities of those establishments indignantly refused. The Orthodox Church was furious at what it con- sidered to be an act of sacrilege and confiscation ; and its indignation was increased by the Prince's proposals for making the Roumanian Synod more independent of the (Ecumenical throne. The agrarian law, the second item in Couza's daring programme, was greeted with a vote of censure. Thereupon, the Prince, on May 14, 1864, ordered a battalion of infantry to clear the hall in which the deputies were assembled, and dissolved parliament. A proclamation justified this Cromwellian coup d'etat, and invited the people to choose by a plebiscite between " the Elect of the Roumanians " and " a factious oligarchy." The plebiscite by 682,621 votes against 1307 ratified m. l. 21 322 Roumanian and Servian Questions [ch. Couza's acts ; and both the Porte and the ambassadors of the Powers were convinced by his arguments and his personal charm at Constantinople. In accordance with what he interpreted as the popular wish, he " developed " the convention of Paris of 1858 into a new " Statute," or constitution, by the creation of a Senate largely nominated by himself, and of a Chamber elected by manhood suffrage. In the then condition of Roumania, such an arrangement would have placed both branches of the legislature at the disposition of the Prince, for his prefects would take care that the peasants should vote for government candidates, while the nominated senators, having to retire by lot every two years, would likewise be his creatures. There was only one element in the state which could overthrow this benevolent autocracy — the army ; and as soon as Couza lost its support, he fell. Meanwhile, he strove to popularise his coup d'etat by "the rural law" of 1864, which abolished forced labour, tithe, free transport of wood for the landlord, and similar feudal burdens, on payment of an annual sum to the state during a maximum of 1 5 years, and established a peasant proprietorship with a fixed rate of compensation to the former owners. To prevent the Jews from acquiring the control of the peasants' holdings, these were declared inalienable, nor could they be mortgaged except at the end of 30 years. Couza's land scheme was welcomed by the peasants, but it has had the defect of not providing for the growth of the peasants' families, for a plot of ground sufficient for one man has been found inadequate for his numerous offspring. Moreover, despite repeated prohibitions, the small owner has evaded the provisions against sale and mortgage, so that Couza did not solve the most difficult Roumanian problem — that of the land. Still his name has become legendary with the Danubian peasants, who long after his death expected his return to pacify their earth- hunger by a fresh distribution of estates. A third law, establishing free education, nominally compulsory in its ele- mentary stage, opened, six years before Forster's act in Kngland, xiv] Conspiracy against Couza 323 the path of civil and military employment to the peasants' sons. To this reform the growth of Roumanian democracy and of an intellectual proletariat is mainly due. It was not to be expected that the politicians would quietly acquiesce in the coup d'etat. A society was formed " for the defence of constitutional government"; and the leaders of the Opposition pledged themselves, "in case of a vacancy on the throne, to support by every means the election of a foreign prince belonging to one of the reigning families of the west." The "Reds," whose chiefs were Rosetti and Bratianu, sought to bring about the " vacancy " which they desired to see filled by a foreigner, and excited a rising in the capital during Couza's absence abroad in 1865. An amnesty was interpreted as an act of weakness by the Radicals ; while the aristocracy, from which the politicians then mainly sprang, viewed with jealousy the " new man's " appointment of foreigners to well-paid posts and his adoption of two illegitimate sons whom he had had by a Roumanian lady, Princess Marie Obrenovich, the mother of the future King Milan of Servia. " Reds " and " Whites " thus sank their mutual differences in a common desire to rid themselves of the " tyrant," whose successor Bratianu set out to Paris to find. He had not long to seek, for the name of Prince Charles Lewis of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen had already been suggested to Napoleon III by Mme Hortense Cornu, an intimate friend of both the French Emperor and the Hohenzollern family. While the "Red" leader prepared European opinion for the deposition of Couza by a pamphlet denouncing him as sur- rounded by Russian instruments, and thus played upon French suspicion of Russian designs in the east, the committee of Conservatives and Radicals, which had been formed to upset the throne, acted at Bucharest. A number of officers were induced to put their services at the disposal of the conspirators, who decided to dethrone Couza and proclaim the Count of Flanders, brother of Leopold II King of the Belgians, on the night when the chasseurs, Couza's favourite corps, were on guard 21 — 2 324 Roumanian and Servian Questions [cm. at the palace, that is to say, on that of February 22, 1866. Early on the fatal evening the Prince was warned of the approaching revolution ; but he paid no heed to the warning beyond informing the chief of police, who reported the city quiet. The Prince retired to rest, confident in his beloved chasseurs; but about four on the morning of the 23rd he was aroused by an officer of the guard, who, followed by other officers and some civilians, entered his bedroom. Seeing that the army had abandoned him, he signed a document abdicating, and "deposing the reins of government in the hands of a lieutenancy and of a ministry elected by the people." Having obtained his signature, the conspirators helped him to dress, and led him by a back-door to a house, where he remained a prisoner till the evening, when in a carriage with the blinds down he quitted his capital for ever. Couza never saw Roumania again, for his petition to be allowed to return as a private citizen in 1867 was refused ; but seven years after his fall his remains were laid to rest in the soil, which he had striven to win for the peasant and of which he had been the first sole ruler. In 191 2, amidst enormous enthusiasm, his successor unveiled his statue at Jassy. Of Couza it may be said, that the good which he did lives after him. Too late his public merits were appreciated, and, if his private life was not above reproach, the most recent Roumanian historian describes him as a " beneficent and noble autocrat." The people of Bucharest accepted the revolution without protest. When they woke up in the morning, they found already installed a provisional government, composed of Lascar Catargi, a Conservative, Golescu, a Liberal, and Colonel Haralambie, representing the officers, while a new ministry promised them a foreign prince in the place of him who had " deceived their expectations." The same day Count Philip of Flanders was acclaimed Prince of Roumania. The Count, however, at once declined the difficult task of reigning over " the Belgium of the lower Danube " ; and both the Porte and the Tsar protested XI v] Prince Charles' candidature 325 against Couza's deposition. A conference of Turkey and the Powers accordingly met in Paris on March io, in which the Turkish representative objected to both a foreign prince and an hereditary Hospodar. But the Powers deliberated slowly ; and, while they were discussing the fate of Roumania, the question was settled outside the conference room by the irrevocable logic of facts. Bratianu proceeded to Diisseldorf, where the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen then was, told him that Napoleon III had suggested the candidature, and offered the crown to his son. King William I of Prussia, as head of the family, was asked for his approval, which he was loth to give ; but Bismarck, who saw that a Prussian beyond the Carpathians might be an embarrassment to Austria, advised Prince Charles " to go at once," for, argued the great statesman, "if you are once in Roumania, the question will be soon solved"; as for the Powers, they would protest, "but a protest exists only on paper." Bismarck added that there would not be "much to fear" from Austria, which would otherwise try to wreck his candidature, for he intended "to keep Austria occupied for some time to come " — an allusion to the impending Austro-Prussian war. Even in case of failure, he concluded, " you will always remember with pleasure a coup which can never be a reproach to you." Meanwhile, the candidature had become known in Roumania, where, despite a separatist riot at Jassy, which had suffered economically by the union, a plebiscite on April 20 adopted Prince Charles by 685,969 to 224 votes. The conference declined to accept this decision, because it had already adopted a motion to the effect that the future Prince must be a native and elected by the Assembly, — the Constituent Assembly did, indeed, ratify the result of the popular vote. Furnished, however, with leave of absence from his military duties as lieutenant in the Prussian dragoons, Prince Charles travelled under the name of " Hettingen " and on the pretext of business at Odessa, to the Hungarian port of Bazias on the Danube, in whose modest inn he overheard his fellow- 326 Roumanian and Servian Questions [ch. guests discussing the probable failure of his mission and prophesying for him the fate of Couza. Here he was joined by Bratianu, but it was not till he first set foot on Roumanian soil at Turnu-Severin on May 20 that his future Premier publicly recognised in the spectacled second-class passenger by the Danube boat the Prince of Roumania. Fifteen days later the conference separated without having arrived at any decision, after both the British and French delegates had opposed coercive measures. Clarendon, then our Foreign Minister, suggested that it might be wiser for the Porte to recognise Prince Charles, provided he paid homage to the Sultan, than to have a Russian intervention. The Cretan insurrection happily divided the attention of the Turks, who contented themselves with massing troops at Rustchuk ; the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian war prevented, as Bismarck had predicted, the Austrian schemes ; indeed Magyar and Servian emissaries tried to persuade Prince Charles to create a diversion against the Austrians ; Sardinia, as the ally of Prussia against Austria, favoured a Prussian prince; while Napoleon III looked with satisfaction on one who was connected through his mother with the Imperial family of France. To the Roumanian poli- ticians the liberal tendencies displayed by his father when Prussian Premier were a further recommendation. The new Prince's position was not, however, easy. He found himself practically alone among a people of whose language and customs he was ignorant, whose finances were in a desperate condition, whose officials had been mostly unpaid for months. First appearances were not encouraging; the Roumanian soldiers made a bad impression on the prim Prussian officer, who realised that with such material he could not fight Austria; there was not a mile of railway, and not many roads, in the whole country; the streets of the capital were a "bottomless morass"; he could scarcely believe that a one-storied building looking out on a dirty square was the "palace." Still, he was young — 27 years old at the time — he xiv] The Jeivisk problem 327 was hopeful, he was a Hohenzollern, and he surmounted all his difficulties. The first problem that awaited solution was the passing of the new constitution, for which a Constituent Assembly had been elected by the provisional government. The two most salient features of the charter of 1866 were the Prince's right of absolute veto, upon which he insisted, and the famous article 7, which provided that " foreigners of Christian denominations can alone obtain naturalisation. 5 ' Bratianu and Rosetti, the two Radical members of the Prince's first Cabinet, which was composed of both "Whites" and "Reds," had proposed that "religion is no obstacle to naturalisation in Roumania," and had promised a special law for the naturalisation of the Jews. This proposal aroused a storm of indignation among the Moldave deputies. An anti-Semite editor roused the rabble of Bucharest against the ministry ; the synagogue of the capital was destroyed ; and article 7 was substituted for the original draft. Thus early in his reign Prince Charles had proof of the feeling against the Jews in Moldavia. His reconstruction of the synagogue out of his privy purse did not satisfy the powerful Jewish communities of western Europe. In 1867, Bratianu, abandoning his tolerant policy in order to win Moldave support for the reorganisation of the army, revived the Russian regulation against Jewish publicans and leaseholders, thus calling down upon his head the remonstrances of the British and French governments. A year later 31 Moldave deputies introduced a still stronger measure against the Jews, absolutely prohibiting their residence outside the towns, their acquisition of real property, and their acceptance of national or municipal contracts. The expulsion of the Jewish publicans began ; anti-Semite riots followed ; Sir Moses Monte- fiore visited Bucharest ; and the British government twice — in 1868 and 1 87 2- -accused Roumania of violating article 46 of the convention of Paris, which had declared " all Moldaves and Wallachs equal before the law." As the Prince's father wrote, " the Jewish question is a noli me tangere, for the Jews have 328 Roumanian and Servian Questioits [ch. money and the whole press." Ten years afterwards the treaty of Berlin again impressed this hard fact upon the Roumans. The constitution settled, the next question was the recogni- tion of the Prince by' his suzerain. To a Hohenzollern the notion of vassalage was peculiarly repulsive; indeed, the existence of such a bond had been one of the reasons for which King William had objected to his relative's acceptance of the throne. But, while already determined to sever the last link that bound him to Turkey at the first favourable opportunity, the Prince had meanwhile to eat his leek. Thanks to the influence of John Ghika, who, as a former Prince of Samos, was popular at Constantinople, the Sultan was induced to receive him ; and during the audience the proud vassal contrived so to comport himself as to save his own dignity while conveying to his suzerain that the days of Phanariote humility were over. On October 24 he received the firman of investiture, which recognised him as Hereditary Prince of " the United Princi- palities," as the Turks were still pleased to style Roumania, with the right of a separate currency but without that of making separate treaties or of conferring decorations ; the annual tribute was to be increased; the army not to exceed 30,000 men. Six months had thus sufficed to regulate the Prince's anomalous position. In his adopted country however, his situation was long uncertain. Although the former Hospodars, Bibescu, Michael Sturdza, and Stirbeiu, acknowledged him, his first general elec- tion showed that the Couzist and Separatist party was still strong in Moldavia, for one-third of the new members was chosen on that programme. Already a deputation of officers had put his tact to the proof, by begging him to dismiss for a breach of discipline their comrades who had deposed his predecessor. In 1870 Couza was elected to the Chamber, and the French government offered him its assistance in recovering his throne — an offer which the patriotic Rouman haughtily declined, refusing to owe his restoration to foreign intervention. xiv] Prince Charles and France 329 Napoleon III had speedily repented the part which he had played in placing a Prussian prince on the lower Danube. The victory of the Prussians at Sadowa had revealed to him the growing power of his future adversary ; the Prussianising of the Roumanian army, the organisation of which had hitherto been confided to a French military mission, convinced him that French influence over " the little Latin sister " in the east was waning. In the meeting which he had in 1867 at Salzburg with the Emperor of Austria, the idea, suggested immediately after the fall of Couza by Nigra, the Italian representative in Paris, that Austria should be compensated for the loss of Venice by the occupation of Roumania, was revived. Accord- ingly, on the advice of Bismarck, the Prince drew close to Russia, and endeavoured to assuage the alarm felt in Hungary at the Roumanian propaganda there. This change of foreign policy lost him the support of the "Reds," who represented him as Bismarck's agent, ready to sacrifice the interests of his adopted to those of his native country. His marriage in 1869 with Princess Elizabeth of Wied temporarily restored his popu- larity ; but riots broke out at the " exclusively Red " commercial town of Ploeshti, and a conspiracy was discovered, in which the national guard was involved. At this moment the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, arising out of the candidature of the Prince's brother for the Spanish crown, rendered the situation still more critical. The sympathies of the Roumans and their foreign Prince were diametrically opposed ; they, as Latins, naturally hoped for the success of the French ; he, as a former Prussian officer, was heart and soul with his old comrades of the Danish war. The French government avowed its intention of treating him as an enemy ; his own Minister of Foreign Affairs declared that Roumanian interests and sympathies were with the French colours. The " Reds " only awaited the news of a Prussian defeat to proclaim the republic at Ploeshti. But the tidings of the Prussian victories, the arrest of the " Red " leaders, and 330 Roumanian and Servian Questions [ch. the birth of a princess somewhat calmed the agitation. The conspirators, however, were acquitted ; and the scandals arising out of the concession of the contract for the Roumanian railways to Strousberg, a Prussian, caused a fresh outcry against the Prussian Prince. It had been his object from the first, as he himself wrote, to develop "the material welfare of these richly-endowed lands"; and he had "taken as the basis" for this work " the construction of a network of roads and railways 1 ." Accordingly, he had entered with perhaps too much zeal and too little knowledge of financial and technical details into the schemes of the Prussian railway-king, whose refusal to pay the coupon of January 187 1 was a blow alike to the shareholders, who were mostly Prussians, induced to invest in the stock on the security offered by the presence of a Prussian ruler at Bucharest, and to the Prince, whose government was requested by Bismarck to pay the interest in lieu of the defaulting con- tractor. The fact that the Roumanian railway commissioner, appointed by the Prince, had formerly been in the service of the Hohenzollern family, was interpreted by the Opposition as a proof of jobbery; and the Prince, who had already expressed in a circular to the Powers his inability to cope with party passion any longer, poured forth the bitterness of his soul in a letter to a correspondent, published in a German journal. A leading Roumanian statesman declared that at that moment the Prince had "no one in the country for him," while the British ambassador at Constantinople began already to talk of a Turkish commission to the United Principalities. The climax was reached on March 22, 187 1, when the German colony in Bucharest, assembled at a banquet under the chair- manship of the North-German consul-general to celebrate the Emperor's birthday/ was bombarded with stones by the mob while the police looked on complacently. Next morning the Prince sent for the two members of the provisional government of 1866 who were then in the capital, and informed them that 1 Aus dem Leben, ii, 270. xiv] The Catargi Cabinet he wished to hand back to them the authority which he had received five years earlier. Lascar Catargi, one of the two, implored him to think of the country, and undertook the responsibility of forming a Cabinet. The Prince consented ; and at midnight the Conservative chief was able to announce the formation of a ministry of resolute men, which remained in power for five years — a thing till then unknown in Roumanian public life. The recalcitrant Chamber was dissolved ; a docile majority was obtained in the new legislature by " moral suasion" at the elections ; and Rosetti, the editor of the anti-dynastic Romanul, finding an agitator's occupation gone, left for France, the haven of all Roumanian politicians out of work, whether deposed princes or uncrowned demagogues. The crisis was over, and the Prince noted with pleasure that his strongest supporters were precisely those who had supported his pre- decessor — men of principle, who believed in the stability which monarchy affords, even irrespective of the person of the monarch. His chief embarrassment was now his former friend Bismarck, whose appeal to the Porte to force its vassal to settle the claims of the Prussian shareholders, by wounding Roumanian national feeling in its most sensitive spot, only increased the bitterness against the Prussians ; but an arrangement was made through Austrian mediation. This step marked the beginning of better relations with the Dual Monarchy, of which a commercial treaty signed in 1875, the centenary of Austria's annexation of the Roumanian Bukovina, was the first fruit. This act, however, offended both the Porte, which declined to recognise the claim of its vassal to conclude international treaties, and the coalition of the Opposition leaders, some violently opposed to Austria-Hungary, all eager for office after five years in the wilderness. Once more, the throne was attacked ; and rumour was busy with the name of a Colonel Dabija, to whom the crown had been offered. Then came the revolution in the Herzegovina and therewith the revival of the eastern question, which was destined to make Roumania an independent kingdom. 332 Roumanian and Servian Questions [ch. The neighbouring principality of Servia, whose friendship Prince Charles was careful to cultivate, had already made an im- portant advance on the same road. Prince Michael's object was to obtain the withdrawal of the Turkish garrisons from the fortresses in Servia, which they still occupied after the settlement of 1862. While he devoted his energies at home to the improvement of his army, his wife, Princess Julia, and Philip Christich were sent to London to influence British opinion, hitherto ill-disposed towards Servia. Favourable speeches in parliament by Cobden and Gregory, a member much interested in the eastern question, and an attack upon Michael by the Morning Post drew attention to the Servian question, and a subsequent mission of the Servian diplomatist, Marinkovich, elicited from Clarendon the admis- sion, that the British government would have no objection to see the remaining fortresses in Servian hands, provided that the Porte consented. The decline of Austrian influence owing to the Prussian victory of 1866 and the Cretan insurrection were favourable to Servia, as to Roumania; and a correspondence took place between Ristich and Koumoundouros on the subject of a Serbo-Greek alliance. Although neither King George nor the Boiilgares ministry considered an alliance desirable, the possibility of such a general rising of the Balkan peoples as it would have provoked so greatly alarmed Russia and France that they prevailed upon Austria and Great Britain to support Michael's request for the evacuation of the remaining fortresses. The decision, as in most Servian questions, really depended upon Austria ; and Beust, who then directed her policy, found, in his anxiety to give her repose after her recent defeat at Sadowa, that Belgrade in Servian hands would not be a menace to her interests. Michael assured the Porte that a contented Servia would be a better defence to the Turkish empire than the fortresses on the Save and on the Danube ; Stanley argued, erroneously as subsequent history has shown, that a free Servia would probably care but little how the Bosniaks or Bulgars were governed ; he added that Turkish honour might be salved xiv] Evacuation of fortresses 333 by the maintenance of the Turkish flag on the walls of Belgrade. Thus abandoned by Austria and Great Britain, the Porte yielded, and on March 3, 1867, expressed its willingness to " confide the guard of the fortresses" to Michael, completely withdrawing the Mussulman garrisons, on condition that the Turkish and Servian colours should wave together from the ramparts. Michael then visited his suzerain; on April 18 the keys of the fortresses were handed to the Servian authorities ; and on May 6 the last Turkish soldier quitted Servian soil. Even externally, save for its one mosque, Belgrade is no longer a Turkish town ; even the Constantinople gate has been destroyed since 1867. Michael's moderation had rendered a signal service to his country, but he had failed to content the rasher politicians who dreamt, like Garashanin, of a Balkan confederation, and regarded his journey to Constantinople as an act of servility. Great projects were in the air of Belgrade ; the Mohammedan Serbs of Bosnia offered their neutrality, in case the Servian army should enter their country, if their lands and faith were respected ; Michael visited Roumania, and signed treaties of alliance with Prince Charles and Prince Nicholas of Monte- negro ; a pact was made with the Bulgarian committee, whose seat was Bucharest, for the resurrection of a Bulgarian state. The dismissal of Garashanin indicated, however, that Michael was not disposed to go so far as his Prime Minister wished in foreign policy, while his internal administration was too auto- cratic for the admirers of parliamentary institutions, who clamoured for a modern constitution. Their opposition to him was focussed by the Omladina ("Youth"), a secret society, originally founded for literary objects by a body of Servian students at Pressburg, which advocated the union and inde- pendence of the Servian nation, and carried on from Neusatz in southern Hungary a journalistic propaganda, all the more vehement after the prohibition of its meeting in Belgrade in 1867. To these enemies was added the exiled dynasty, living 334 Roumanian and Servian Questions [ch. and plotting in the neighbouring Dual Monarchy against a prince, who, like Couza in Roumania and Otho in Greece, had no legitimate heir of his body. Anxious to provide for this contingency, Michael, who had separated from his gifted consort, meditated a second marriage with his cousin Catherine Constantinovich. While walking with that lady and her mother Anka in the park of Toptchider on June to, 1868, where three years before he had celebrated the jubilee of Takovo, three men fired at him and his companions. Michael fell dead upon the ground, Anka was killed, her daughter wounded. The actual assassins, criminals from the neighbouring prison, were only the tools of more influential persons. Public opinion held the Karageorgevich family responsible for this brutal murder of the best ruler that modern Servia has yet had ; the public prosecutor accused Alexander, the politicians his more ambitious wife, Persida, acting, it was supposed, in the interest of her son Peter, the subsequent King of Servia. Others believed that Radovanovich, Alexander's business manager in Belgrade, planned the deed, hoping by means of a draft constitution, compiled by himself and signed by Prince Peter, to become the power behind the young pretender's throne, and thence distribute the spoils to his own family and friends. The plot was, however, only half successful. The ex-Premier, Garashanin, who chanced to be taking the air at Toptchider, was attracted by the cries of Michael's attendant, and hastened with great presence of mind to the city to warn the authorities. On the way he came up with a carriage, the pace and inmate of which aroused his suspicions. By ordering his arrest, he prevented communica- tion between the murderers and their confederates in Belgrade. The Ministry and the Senate at once met, and a provisional government was formed, consisting of Marinkovich,the President of the Senate, Leshjanin, the Minister of Justice, and Petrovich, the President of the Appeal Court. They acted with prompti- tude and energy, arrested Radovanovich, summoned a Grand Skupshtina, and sent Ristich, then Minister of the Interior, to xiv] The Servian Regency 335 fetch the late Prince's next-of-kin, Milan, from Paris, where he was studying. It was rumoured at first that Michael had left his natural son Velimir his heir, and the Dowager Princess once thought of adopting him and playing the part of Regent ; but, as no will was forthcoming, the crown passed to Michael's cousin, then not yet 14 years old. Consequently, the Grand Skupshtina, a practical body, whose 523 members included only one lawyer, proclaimed Milan Obrenovich IV, and elected three Regents — Colonel Blaznavatz, Minister of War, Ristich, and Gavrilovich, a Senator and geographer — for three years, with a further extension of their Regency in case of need. A Liberal Cabinet was formed ; the Regents declared that they would keep Michael's maxim " the law is the highest will in Servia"; and it was arranged that a Skupshtina should meet annually. The assassins were tried; 13 persons were shot as principals or accomplices; and Alexander Karageorgevich, acquitted by an Austrian court, was sentenced in default by a Servian tribunal, and he and his family were forbidden to enter Servian territory. Alexander died an exile in 1885, and it was only after a still more awful tragedy, enacted on the 35th anniversary of Michael's murder, that his son mounted the blood-stained throne of the last Obrenovich. Happily a new pretender did not arise in the person of Michael's bastard, who lived and died an artist in Bavaria. The murdered Prince had been considering the desirability of granting a larger measure of liberty to his people ; and the Regency, despite a law forbidding all modification of the existing form of government during a minority, accordingly produced a constitution in 1869, which remained in force for the next 20 years. The single chamber, or Skupshti?ia> — for Ristich confessed that he could find no elements for a second — was to be three-quarters elective, and one-quarter nominated. Not only officials but also lawyers were declared ineligible (just as they were excluded from the "unlearned parliament" of our Henry IV), but the Prince could nominate any Serb of 336 Roumanian and Servian Qitestions [en. 30 years of age, who paid 30 dinara in direct taxes. This assembly could be convoked where, and dissolved when, the Prince chose ; and its members had no right to initiate legisla- tion. As the government could, and often did, suspend acts dealing with the liberty of the subject, of speech, and of the press, in case of danger, the constitution of 1869 has been described as "a thinly-veiled autocracy," against which the Radicals, first organised in 1881, began at once to agitate. A national currency removed the previous confusion of foreign coinage; Ministerial responsibility was established; and the Regency devoted much attention to internal politics during the lull in the eastern question. The three Regents, representing what were called in Servia " Liberal," but what we should consider as moderate Conservative, principles, remained in power till, on August 22, 1872, Milan came of age, and assumed the reins of government. Milan possessed excellent natural abilities, but his birth and education did not promise well for his reign. His father had died at 33 of the fast life which he had led in Vienna ; his mother, a Catargi, had been Couza's mistress, and had been found in the palace at Bucharest on the night of the Roumanian Prince's deposition. A Parisian education is not the best moral tonic for a Balkan heir; and the royal pupil once remarked, that if he was what he was, his Regents and Ministers had only themselves to blame. Brought to the corrupt atmosphere of Belgrade at an age when most boys are at school, isolated in the palace without brothers, sisters, or playmates of his own age, early initiated into the arts of intrigue, and taught to believe that most things can be had for money, he came to be regarded as the type of the man of pleasure. Visits to Vienna and Paris soon after his accession turned his head; he, too, desired in little Servia to repeat the luxury of the Austrian and French capitals, with the natural result that within three years of his majority he was loaded with debts ; and such was his unpopularity at Belgrade, that a strong party xiv] King Milan s difficulties 33^ desired the candidature for the Servian throne of that far wiser and more serious ruler of the sister-state, Nicholas of Monte- negro. Meanwhile, the intrigues of the exiled dynasty and the jealousy of the family of Garashanin, always envious of the Obrenovich clan, to which it had hoped to provide a successor in Ilija's son, Milutin, rendered Milan's position still more difficult, until, when the great Balkan crisis began in 1875, competent observers saw that there were only two courses before him — war or revolution. M. L. 22 CHAPTER XV THE BULGARIAN EXARCHATE (1870-5). Hitherto the history of the Balkan peninsula during the nineteenth century had been occupied with the formation and development of Servian, Greek, and Roumanian states out of the Ottoman empire, and with the struggles of the Montene- grins to maintain their freedom. Now, however, under the influence of Russia, a long-forgotten, silent nationality, destined to play an important part in the events of the last third of the century, sprang into independent ecclesiastical existence — the prelude of its resurrection, after the lapse of nearly five centuries, as a Balkan state. Despite the literary efforts of Bulgarian patriots, such as the historian Paysij of Samokov and his disciple, Sofronij, bishop of Vratza, author of the first printed book in modern Bulgarian, the stolid Bulgars had remained comparatively unmoved by the stirring events of which their own and the neighbouring lands had been the theatre. They lacked local leaders, such as the Serbs and Greeks possessed; their ecclesiastical authorities belonged to a foreign race; their practical experience of warfare was small. They took little part in the Russo-Turkish war of 1806-12; but in 1821, instigated by the Greek clergy, many of them had enlisted with the Hetairists in Wallachia, and subsequently others had aided the Greeks in Greece. The Russo-Turkish war of 1828-9 aroused their active sympathy to a greater degree than its predecessor. A captain of volunteers, Mamartchov of Kotel — CH. xv] Bulgarian risings 339 the town which, from Sofronij downwards, has given so many patriots to Bulgaria — believing that the hour of his country's redemption had struck, called his fellow-townsmen to arms, but was arrested by Cossacks while attempting to unfurl the banner of a free Bulgaria at Trnovo, the medieval capital. A deputation to Diebich found the treaty of Adrianople already signed ; the permission to emigrate to Bessarabia, Wallachia and Moldavia, the institution of a Russian consulate at Sliven, and the maintenance of a Russian garrison at Silistria till the payment of the war indemnity in 1836, were all the advantages that the Bulgars reaped from this struggle in their midst. Russia had clearly shown that she did not desire an independent Bulgaria ; the people of Sliven soon expressed their dislike of the Russian consul's patronage ; but a British visitor to Sliven and Kotel had foreshadowed the later policy of Lord Salisbury two generations afterwards — that it was the interest of Britain to create a Bulgarian buffer-state between Russia and Turkey. Between the peace of Adrianople and the epoch of the Crimean war a few isolated and local risings alone broke the quiet of the land. In 1836 the energetic Mamartchov, who had meanwhile held a post under the Russians at Silistria, planned an insurrection at the monastery of Kapinovo; but the secret was betrayed to the Greek Metropolitan of Trnovo, who informed the Turkish com- mander in time to seize the conspirators. Some were executed, Mamartchov exiled. Five years later the oppression of the tax-collectors aroused a rebellion of the Bulgars on the Servian frontier; Europe received through a French emissary a fore- taste of the "Bulgarian atrocities" of 1876; but the change of dynasty in Servia prevented an extension of the movement. Similar exactions produced in 185 1 a rising in the district of Vidin. Unprovided with firearms — for Alexander Karageor- gevich prevented their importation from his adjacent princi- pality — the insurgents nevertheless attacked the strong natural fortress of Belogradtchik, only to be repulsed. More massacres 34-0 The Bulgarian Exarchate [ch. followed, but this hopeless insurrection, the most serious that had occurred, convinced Turkish statesmen of the desirability of making some concessions to this hitherto unrecognised nationality. A powerful agency of nationalism had begun to exert its influence over the Eulgars. The perusal of a book on "The old and new Bulgarians" by the Slavonic scholar Venelin inspired Aprilov, a merchant of Gabrovo, to found in 1835 the first purely Bulgarian school at that flourishing little town, whose traders were the first Bulgars to do business with Russia. The Bell-Lancaster system was adopted; the school-books were printed in Servia ; and ten years later 53 Bulgarian schools were already at work. Well might the Bulgarian colony at Odessa inscribe upon the tomb of Venelin the sentence, that he had "recalled to memory the forgotten, but once famous and mighty people of the Bulgars." The first national school was followed in 1844 by the first national periodical, published at Smyrna ; but books and newspapers continued to be printed abroad, for down to 1877 what is now Bulgaria contained only one printing-press. Nevertheless, such was the zeal of the Bulgars for education, that books and schools prepared them to become ecclesiastically independent of the Greek Patriarchate and politically independent of the Turkish empire. The former of these two movements began with the demand for national bishops ; and its first success, due to the Archimandrite Neofyt Bozveli and to Stephen Vogorides, the first prince of Samos, both natives of Kotel, the cradle of the Bulgarian nationalist movement, was the erection of the first Bulgarian church at Constantinople in 1848. The next step was the omission of the Patriarch's name from the prayers in this church — an example speedily followed throughout Bul- garian lands, where the demand for separation from the Patriarchate became so general that the Grand Vizier was ordered by Abdul Mejid to hear on the spot the complaints of the Bulgarian peasants. Meanwhile others, taught by the xv] Overtures to Rome 34i failures of the Russians during the war in Bulgaria and in the Crimea, turned their eyes towards Rome, just as the Bulgarian Tsars had done in the thirteenth century, and for a similar reason. Dragan Zankov, the literary leader of this party, pleaded in his journal Bulgaria for union with the Roman Catholic Church, in the hope of obtaining thereby the protection of France, traditionally extended to the Eastern Catholics. Zankov proceeded to Rome at the head of a deputation ; and in 1 86 1 Pius IX consecrated Sokolski, an ex-brigand turned monk, Archbishop of the Bulgarian Uniate Church. It was, however, at once evident that comparatively few Bulgars thought French protection worth a mass ; Sokolski mysteriously disappeared to Russia ; and the plan of including the Bulgarian people within the papal fold remained unrealised. Still, the OEcumenical Patriarch was seriously alarmed by these move- ments. While rejecting the Bulgarian demands — the so-called "seven points" — for a national hierarchy and ecclesiastical autonomy under an elected archbishop, who should acknow- ledge his supremacy, the Patriarch was willing to appoint Bulgarians or at least Bulgarian-speaking bishops in purely Bulgarian dioceses, and to make other concessions. These the Bulgars rejected; eight more "points" were presented, and refused ; the demands of the Bulgars rose ; they declined to accept the Patriarch's offer of a semi-independent "Ex- archate of all Bulgaria" beyond the Balkans, made to them under the influence of the Cretan insurrection in 1866; nothing would content them but an independent national Church, not limited to the district between the Balkans and the Danube. Besides the Greek bishops and the Turkish pashas, two other elements combined to spread discontent among the Bulgarian peasants during the early sixties. In 1861 some of the richest villages were assigned to 12,000 Tartars, who had emigrated from the Crimea. It was not the first time that Tartars had settled in the Balkan peninsula ; the Thracian town 34 2 The Bulgarian Exarchate [ch. of Tatar-Pazardjik still preserves the name of its founders; the Balkan village of Vrbitza had been colonised by another band of emigrants from the Crimea. Encouraged by the Turkish government for political reasons, the newcomers were a fresh burden to the peasants, who had to yield up to them the best portions of their fields and to build houses for them without payment. Lured by Russian promises, 10,000 disgusted Bulgars emigrated to occupy the sites which the Tartars had abandoned, only to return disillusioned the following year. But the Crim Tartars were, at least, mild and laborious; whereas the second batch of immigrants, the Circassians, who arrived in 1864 after the Russian conquest of their native mountains, were a terror to the natives, once again forced to build houses and relinquish land for the use of their unwelcome guests. Nature, however, came to the aid of the Bulgars. While there are still Tartars in Bulgaria, the Circassians in 14 years had almost entirely disappeared; disease, war, and emigration account for the fact that of the 40,000 families which entered Bulgarian districts, nearly all have vanished. But such immigrations, supervening upon the ecclesiastical difficulty, naturally provided material for patriotic agitators. In 1862, excited further by the bombardment of Belgrade, where the Bulgarian journalist Rakovski organised a legion of his fellow-countrymen, and by the warlike movements in Montenegro and the Herzegovina, a band of political brigands under Panajot Hitov held the Shipka pass. Like the great klephtic leader of the Greek War of Independence, Hitov has left memoirs of his adventures, which were, however, cut short by the arrangement of the Serbo-Turkish differences. In 1864, the Turkish empire was divided administratively into 28 vilayets. Consequently, the creation of one great vilayet of the Danube out of the previous small pashaliks, and the appointment of Midhat Pasha as governor with residence at his native town of Rustchuk, which thenceforth remained the seat of the Turkish administration, were real boons to the xv] Midhafs governorship 343 Bulgars. Midhat's governorship, which lasted for four years, was undoubtedly a great success. There has, perhaps, been no period in the Turkish history of that troublesome region when so much was done for the development of its natural resources ; but free Bulgaria has achieved, during its 44 years of practical independence, far more than even the most enlightened of modern Turkish statesmen could accomplish. So far as the Balkan provinces of Turkey were concerned, Midhat came too late to save them for the Turkish empire; but it is not so much good laws, as good, honest administration such as was his in the Balkans, such as was Rustem's in the Lebanon, that Turkey wants. Under him the " model vilayet" of the empire was that of the Danube. He made military roads ; he saw an English company construct the first railway in Bulgaria from Rustchuk to the port of Varna, which thus became the link between Constantinople and the west; he began another line, intended to connect Plevna with the Danube ; he built the great bridge of Bela over the Yantra ; he began the quay at Rustchuk, founded an orphanage at Sofia, a school at Shumla, a hospital at Plevna and a town at Orchanieh. A service of diligences and an establishment of fire-engines were due to his initiative ; he created savings-banks and tried to improve the system of agriculture; in fact the traveller Kanitz found that, wherever he went, such progress as he saw was the work of Midhat. But the "Pasha of the Giaours" was not content with material progress alone. He treated the Christians as human beings; he made a serious attempt to realise the promises contained in the Hatti- Humayun of 1856; his police no longer insulted the Bulgars; his officials were sometimes natives. Thirty years earlier, when, in 1837, the reforming Sultan Mahmud II had made a royal progress through Bulgaria, the timid Christians, whom he had come to benefit, had bowed their heads to the ground at the passage of the Great Lord, upon whose face it was not meet for them to look But if Midhat knew how to 344 The Bulgarian Exarchate [ch. treat the Bulgars as men, he knew also how to treat them as rebels. Since the time of the Crimean war a number of Bulgarian exiles, discontented with the small prospects which the Turkish rule offered to educated men in their own country, had emi- grated to Bucharest. The emigrants were divided into two camps, the " old " Bulgars — men of some substance who intrigued with Russia and were called "Christian Turks" by their opponents — and the "young" — mostly students, who preferred the programme of the Servian Omladina and the methods of conspirators, and were despised as " vagabonds " in the "old" Bulgarian press. While some advocated a South Slavonic federation with Servia, the " Secret Bulgarian Central Committee," influenced by the Austro-Hungarian Ansgleich of 1867, sent a memorial to the Sultan, begging him to assume the medieval title of "Tsar of the Bulgarians," to grant Bulgaria a constitution, and to establish a Turco- Bulgarian Dual Monarchy. Meanwhile, the party of action among the emigrants raised the ancient lion-standard of Bulgaria on Bulgarian soil. In 1867 two small bands under Panajot Hitov and Totjov crossed the Danube; but the coldly calculating peasants showed no belief in the success of this movement, which was suppressed with extreme severity. A few survivors cut their way over the Servian frontier; a bloody assize was held at Svishtov ; but Midhat's temerity in shooting two passengers on an Austrian steamer, accused of complicity, led to the protests of the Powers and his recall. The Porte was not sorry for an excuse for removing so inde- pendent a governor, while the Christians saw with mixed feelings the departure of one who had been the greatest supporter of their material interests, yet at the same time the strongest opponent of their national aspirations. Five successive governors ruled over the province during the next six years, of whom one alone attempted to continue the work of Midhat. A second revolutionary movement, the product xv] The Firman 0/1870 345 of Michael Obrenovich's plans for a general Slavonic rising, was not checked by the Prince's assassination. The Servian Regency, occupied with domestic politics, vainly strove to restrain the Bulgarian emigrants at Bucharest; a band of well-drilled volunteers again unfurled the lion-banner between the Danube and the Balkans ; and, though they were almost annihilated, their bravery impressed both Turks and Christians alike. Among those inspired by their fate to work out the salvation of his country was the future Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Stambulov, then a lad at Trnovo. The Cretan insurrection and the hostility of Greece made Turkish statesmen adopt the advice, given by Fuad Pasha in his political testament, " to isolate the Greeks as much as possible from other Christians," and "to withdraw the Bul- garians from the domination of the Greek Church." Aali Pasha, fresh from Crete, supported the opinion of Fuad; IgnatyefT, the Russian ambassador at Constantinople, advocated the foundation of a separate Bulgarian Church in the interest of Panslavism. The Patriarch, when pressed, referred the Turkish Ministers to the Canons of the Church ; the Turks, invited to decide a nice point of Christian theology, preferred to consider arguments of statecraft. On March 11, 1870, a firman created a Bulgarian Exarchate, comprising the whole vilayet of the Danube, except notoriously non-Bulgarian towns and villages such as Varna, but including the now Servian towns of Nish and Pirot. The firman further stated that other places might pass under the authority of the Exarch, if two-thirds of their inhabitants so desired. The Exarch was to obtain a berat from the Sultan, to mention the name of the Patriarch in his prayers, and to receive from him the holy oil. Both races at once saw the importance of this act, which laid the foundations of a new power in the east ; Christian and Greek were thenceforth no longer synonymous in European Turkey. The Bulgars thanked Aali for his boon; the Patriarchate struggled against the execution of the firman, 346 The Bulgarian Exarchate [ch. and succeeded in postponing for two years the appoint- ment of the first Bulgarian Exarch. Then, finding further resistance impossible, the Patriarch excommunicated the Exarch and his clergy as schismatic. From that moment there was war to the knife between Patriarchists and Exarch- ists ; and Macedonia became the battle-field of the rival Greek and Bulgarian propaganda. Bishoprics became pawns in the political struggle, and peasants killed each other in the name of contending ecclesiastical establishments. The Bulgarian Exarchate had brought not peace, but a sword. The Exarchs since 1872 have resided at neither Trnovo, the seat of the medieval Patriarchs, nor at Sofia, the modern capital, but at Constantinople, thus accentuating their claim to ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the "unredeemed" Bulgars of the Turkish empire. The creation of the Exarchate did not pacify the Bulgarian revolutionists of Bucharest, whose leaders were, since the death Of Rakovski, the ex-deacon Vasil Levski and the novelist Ljuben Karavelov, whose motto was that Bulgaria must free herself, and that what she wanted was not an Exarch but a leader of insurgents. In 1870 a secret congress, held in Bucharest, drew up a programme for the liberation of the Bulgarians by a revolution, which was to be directed not against the Turks as such, but only against the Turkish government ; alliances were to be made with the other Balkan states ; local committees were formed in Bulgaria, which "Apostles," headed by Levski, traversed in all directions. This organisation, which recalls the Greek " Friendly Society," spread rapidly ; numbers of peasants and small tradesmen were initiated ; and all went well till a cosmopolitan adventurer, who had joined the society, fatally compromised it by an act of brigandage, committed on a Turkish convoy. The authorities discovered that the criminals were not only highwaymen but conspirators ; Levski was wounded and taken ; on the spot, where he was hanged at Sofia, his monument now stands. xv] The Black Sea clauses 347 Karavelov's complicity was discovered, and his expulsion from Roumania demanded by the Turkish government. Accused of malversation by his younger comrades, he abandoned revolutionary journalism for literature. Russia obtained another diplomatic triumph besides the creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870. Availing himself of the Franco-German war and of the consequent inability of the French to offer opposition, Gortchakoff announced in a circular of October 31, that Russia would no longer be bound by the Black Sea clauses of the treaty of Paris. Earl Granville, then our Foreign Secretary, pointed out that one party to a treaty could not declare its conditions to be no longer binding without the consent of the other parties. This high-handed action on the part of Russia provoked much indignation, especially in the United Kingdom, where the memories of the Crimea were still green ; and it was felt that Gortchakoff would not have thus defied Europe, if he had not assured himself of the support of Bismarck. For the sake of form, the Prussian statesman proposed a conference, which met in London in January 187 1, and at which all the signatory Powers of the treaty of Paris were represented, except France. The articles of that treaty regarding the neutralisation of the Black Sea were abrogated; the Sultan was allowed to open the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus in time of peace to the fleets of his friends and allies ; the European Commission of the Danube was prolonged for 1 2 years; and the works already created there were neutralised, subject to the right of the Porte to send vessels of war into the river. Thus the audacity of Gort- chakoff, aided by circumstances, was successful ; the last benefit to Great Britain from the Crimean war was lost only 15 years after that costly conflict had closed; while in 191 1 another signatory Power of the treaty of Paris might have cited Gortchakoff's circular as a precedent for declaring that she, too, was no longer bound by that instrument. The creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate was not the only 348 The Bulgarian Exarchate [ch. misfortune which befell the Greeks in 1870 — a year full of import for eastern as for western Europe. On April n a party consisting of Lord and Lady Muncaster, Mr and Mrs Lloyd and their child, Mr Vyner, Mr Herbert, secretary of the British, and Count de Boyl, secretary of the Italian legation at Athens, with an Italian servant and a Greek courier, made an excursion to the battle-field of Marathon. Previously to their departure, Erskine, the British minister, had enquired of the chief of police whether there was any danger, but no hint of insecurity had been given by that official. Four mounted gendarmes, however, accompanied the excursionists. On the return journey, at Pikermi, 13 miles from Athens, a band of 21 brigands fired out of the wood; two of the gendarmes fell wounded, whereupon the brigands hurried up the mountain side with the tourists and the other two gendarmes. Six infantrymen, who had been unable to keep pace with the horses, then came up, and fired upon the brigands; but, finding that their fire made no impression and fearing to wound the prisoners, they desisted from their attempt at rescue. The brigands, not wishing to saddle themselves with unnecessary encumbrances, told the two ladies that they might return to Athens with the child, the Italian servant, and the two unwounded gendarmes, whither, on April 13, Lord Muncaster was sent to arrange for the payment of the ransom, originally fixed at ^32,000, but reduced to ^25,000 or an amnesty — a demand quickly expanded into ^25,000 and an amnesty. The two chiefs, Takos (or Demetrios) Arvanitakes and his brother Christ6s, who managed all the negotiations for the band, attached more importance to the amnesty than to the ransom, because Takos was a man of means, who had been an outlaw since 1857 and wanted to return to society; while they were encouraged to insist upon the amnesty by emissaries from Athens, who, in Erskine's phrase, were "believed by Zaimes [the Premier] to have been despatched by some of the leading xv] "The Drama of Oropos" 349 members of the Opposition," with the object of making the government commit an unconstitutional act and of then turning it out. In fact, by article 39 of the Constitution, specially framed to prevent the wholesale remission of punish- ment to brigands, the King possessed the prerogative of granting an amnesty for political offences only. Erskine accordingly wrote to the brigands as follows : " There will be no difficulty as to the payment of the money, but you must not insist on an amnesty, which government have not the power to grant. Persons will be sent to treat with you, and in the meantime both the King and the President of the Council [who had both just returned from the Archipelago] have assured the English minister that you shall not be molested. Make your prisoners as- comfortable as you can. You can even put them under cover in some rural habitation without any fear." There was, therefore, never any doubt about the payment of the ransom; the only question was, whether the brigands could be induced to waive their demand for the amnesty. Curiously enough, both the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs and the brigand chief thought that the amnesty should be granted, despite the fact that it was un- constitutional. Clarendon, when referred by the Greek minister in London to the law, replied : " I could not admit the validity of the constitutional objection.... The Greek Con- stitution had so often been violated by the government... that I could not listen to a plea founded on it as an excuse." "The representatives of England and Italy," remarked the chief brigand, " should say to the Greek government, that they do not care at all how the thing is done, whether by amnesty or no, whether an amnesty be legal or not." At the same time this high constitutional authority was willing to provide means of keeping within the letter of the law. He suggested, that, if so much fuss were made about the un- constitutional nature of the act, a fresh National Convention should be summoned, and the Constitution amended to meet 350 The Bulgarian Exarchate [ch. his requirements ! Or again, playing upon the double meaning of the word " political," which in Greek also means " civilian," he would beg to point out that, as all the persons concerned were civilians, His Majesty could constitutionally grant the amnesty ! The Greek government, on its part, offered to close its eyes while a British man-of-war gave the brigands the means of leaving Greece, or to promise them a pardon after a trial at Athens. The brigands were, however, not particularly anxious to enjoy an affluent exile at Malta — the place suggested— while they absolutely declined to trust their lives in Athens; they were willing, however, to submit to a trial at Orop6s, whither they had in the meantime transferred themselves and their prisoners, provided that it was followed by a pardon. The leading lawyer of Greece declared this original idea of a sham local assize to be impossible, and thus for some days negotiations went on without result, while the prisoners, except for the inclement weather, had no cause to complain of their treatment. The brigands took them to church on Sunday, and introduced them to the parish priest ; there were dances, jumping, and throwing the stone, and one brigand, the scholar of the party, read history for two hours one evening ! The British minister had urged General Soutsos, Minister of War, and the latter had promised, not to send troops against the brigands, who in that case would be certain to kill their prisoners. The government was therefore compelled to treat with the robbers as if they had been an independent state. The King "showed the most eager wish to place himself in the hands of the brigands," and emissaries of in- creasing rank were sent to argue with them. Frank Noel, the squire of Achmetaga in Eubcea, who had two brothers of the chiefs in his employ, and who possessed a great know- ledge of the people among whom he and his family had lived for three generations, generously went, at considerable personal risk, to interview the captors. At last, on April 18, the Cabinet xv] Negotiations with the Brigands 351 commissioned Col. Theagenes, aide-de-camp of General Church, and a man of great probity, who had traversed the Turkish lines during the siege of the Akropolis in 1827, to parley with them. His instructions were to tell them that the ransom was at their disposal, and that they could leave Greek soil by land or sea (in the latter case, on an English vessel), but that they could not be amnestied, and that meanwhile under no pretext must they leave Orop6s; otherwise the government would feel itself released from the obligation taken not to pursue them. On April 20 Theagenes communicated to Takos at Oropos the above terms, but without any result beyond irritating him. When allusion was made to the necessity of remaining at Oropos, the chief produced Erskine's letter, and contended that the promise of immunity, which it contained, was absolute and not conditional, so that he claimed the right to go whithersoever he pleased. Then, turning to the prisoners, he bade them write to their ministers that, if this affair were not terminated by the following evening, he would cut their throats, "for that," he added, "is the colonel's desire, since he threatens us with the detachments." Theagenes then departed, and next day proceeded, in accor- dance with the orders of the government, to shut the brigands within Oropos. But hearing that they had crossed the river Asop6s with their prisoners to the neighbouring village of Sykaminon, he changed his plans, and resolved to surround that village, and thus force them to accept the proposals made to them. At the same time a Greek gun-boat lay at anchor off the skdla of Oropos. A despatch from the Cabinet, ordering Theagenes not to attack them at Sykaminon, but simply to blockade that place, and only to attack, if they attempted to leave it, arrived too late. When the brigand chief saw the soldiers, he sent Anemogiannes, the Greek dragoman of the prisoners, with Erskine's letter, to Theagenes,. and ordered the emissary to warn the colonel not to allow his men, to approach nearer. Theagenes, on receipt of this message, told 352 The Bulgarian Exarchate [ch. the dragoman to inform the brigands that they would not be molested at Sykaminon, where they would receive the money. Anemogiannes, however, under pretext of finding a horse, delayed his return to the brigands, so that this message was never delivered. While this conversation was going on, Theagenes saw the robbers with their prisoners escaping in the direction of Delisi (the ancient Delion), with the ultimate intention of gaining the fastnesses of Agrapha. The soldiers set out in pursuit ; and at Delisi, Herbert, who could run no more, was cut down and then shot by the brigands. Infuriated at this spectacle, the soldiers fired, whereupon, 40 paces beyond the spot where they had mas- sacred their first victim, the brigands stabbed and shot Lloyd. They then divided, one party, under Christ6s (who was shot by the troops) running towards the sea, the others towards Skimatari, the present junction of the line to Chalkis. Near Skimatari, Vyner and Boyl gave out, and were shot by the brigands, more fortunate than their two comrades in the manner of their deaths, for no yataghan mangled their bodies. Of the brigands 7 were killed, 4 wounded and captured, while 10, including the chief, escaped. The heads of the 7 slain malefactors were exhibited on the Plain of Mars at Athens. The news of the massacre of the prisoners caused an immense sensation in England. Debates took place in both Houses ; newspapers published articles of incredible violence, and nothing short of the destruction of Greece would satisfy some of the most vehement critics. Gradually people came to see that it was unjust to blame a whole nation, because 21 brigands, of whom only two were Greeks and the rest Albanian-Wallachs, had murdered a party of distinguished Englishmen. The whole affair, as Noel, the Englishman who knew the country best, pointed out, had been grievously mismanaged. The brigands had threatened and meant to kill their prisoners, if pursued, and had relied for immunity on the British minister's letter; while, as Noel wrote on xv] Suppression of Brigandage 353 the morrow of the massacre, " had the government suspended hostilities, everything would have been arranged," for they had told him that they would accept the ransom alone, and leave the country, if they failed to obtain their demand for an amnesty. A month after the murders, the trial of the four men concerned in them, and of other brigands, including two former members of this band, began at Athens, and a sensation was created when two wounded robbers were borne into the court on litters. All four were condemned to death, and three of them, together with two others, were publicly guillotined on the Plain of Mars. No less than in persons were accused of complicity in this affair, and 62 of them were committed for trial, among the latter, to the general amaze- ment, Noel; but the court eventually decided that there was no case against him. It was generally felt, as the President of the Criminal Court had said, that the national honour could " be vindicated only by the speedy and complete ex- tirpation of brigandage" — a plague, which had diminished between 1856 and 1862 but had revived after the revolution and the anarchy that followed. Accordingly, a circular against it was issued ; and, although a Greek deputy was captured later in the year, Granville was able, before it closed, to express the satisfaction of the British Cabinet at the energetic measures of the Greek government. Gladstone's prophecy that this sad affair appeared " likely to be a great event in the history of Greece " has been verified ; for, since the capture of Lord Muncaster's party, no foreigner has been taken by brigands in Greece. The murder of a Greek near Lamia in 1894 was a repetition on a much smaller scale of " the drama of Oropos " ; but that incident was a rare ex- ception to the public security of the country. In another way, Gladstone's remark was true. Four deputies protested against the alleged remark of Zaimes about the communications between " some of the leading members of the Opposition " and the brigands ; the resignation m. l. 23 354 TJie Bulgarian Exarchate [ch. of General Soutsos was followed by that of the rest of the Cabinet ; and a series of short-lived ministries ensued, one of which, under the guidance of Koumoundouros, carried a drastic measure against brigandage. The excitement caused by "the drama of Orop6s" had scarcely subsided, when the question of the Lavrion mines became acute. Lavrion is just such a place as the political economist loves ; for it reproduces, as far as it is possible to do so beneath the blue sky and in the sun of Greece, the conditions of our own "black country." It is essentially a workmen's town, where alone in Greece the thin edge of a labour question sometimes makes itself felt. Yet the prose of mining is, at least, refined at Lavrion by the tradition of over two thousand years. Aeschylus wrote that the Athenians had "a fountain of silver, a treasure of their land"; and Herodotus relates how Themistokles, like the shrewd statesman that he was, persuaded his fellow-citizens to devote the profits of the Lavrion silver-mines, which were to have been divided among them, to the building of 200 ships — the origin of the naval power of Athens, which saved Greece at Salamis. Soon after the Roman conquest we hear of an insurrection of slaves employed there; but a little later the mines were supposed to have been worked out; and Pausanias describes Lavrion as a place "where once were silver mines." For nineteen centuries they were abandoned; but in 1864 an Italo-French company bought lands at Lavrion with the object of pursuing mining operations. The reasons which led to its formation were quite romantic. The late Lord Sherbrooke once re- marked in the course of one of his sallies at the expense of his classical education, that in his Australian days he was walking, without knowing it, upon hidden gold-fields, which a scientific training would have enabled him to discover. But — so the story runs — it was the study of the classics which led a certain Signor Serpieri to found his company for the exploitation of the long-neglected mineral wealth of Lavrion. This gentleman xv] The Mines of Ldvrion 355 had read the passage of Strabo 1 , in which the great geographer, writing some 30 years before Christ, said that, though the ancient silver mines had given out, yet the workmen were still able to extract the precious metal by smelting over again the refuse and the scoriae. He then proceeded to Lavrion, ex- amined the heaps of old refuse that were lying about, and returned to " Europe " with some specimens in his pocket. A concession was granted to him and to M. Roux of Marseilles to work the mines, but a question arose as to the right of the company to extract ore from the refuse which Strabo had mentioned. The disputes which followed formed a not in- considerable part of Greek political history during the next few years, and led to some unpleasantness between the Greek government and the representatives of France and Italy. Like everything else in Greece, the Lavrion mines became a political question ; and the Opposition of the day sought to extract political capital from the ancient refuse. The news- papers represented the spoil-banks of Strabo as a second California, which ought to have belonged by natural right to the nation but were being exploited by greedy foreign capitalists. The real value of the minerals was immensely exaggerated ; public opinion became excited ; and a law was passed in 187 1, declaring the refuse-heaps to be national property. France and Italy protested against this law, and, when the Greek government replied that the Greek courts were open to the aggrieved company, threatened force, and appealed to the other Powers. Austria proposed, and the Greek government refused, arbitration with the company ; and matters had come to a deadlock, when in 1873 the company sold its rights, and a new company, of which Sig. Serpieri was again the leading spirit, obtained a concession to work the minerals, on condition of paying a heavy royalty of 44 per cent, on the ore extracted from the refuse and slag. As this was soon found to be heavier than the mining company could 1 ix, 1, 23. 23—2 356 The Bulgarian Exarchate [ch. bear, it was subsequently reduced, but not before the Athenian public had paid the usual penalty of speculators in such ventures. The next two years, which preceded the great crisis of the eastern question, were occupied in Greece with parliamentary and constitutional struggles. Politicians, like Delegeorges and Boiilgares, who had played an important part in the overthow of Otho, found when they became Prime Ministers that it was not easy to translate into practice the advanced democratic doctrines which they had preached when in opposition. Liberals in power often turn conservative, but they thereby lose their popularity with their former admirers. Poetic justice decreed that Delegeorges, who had risen to office by the agitation about the mines of Lavrion, should fall by the same agency, and that the idol of the students in 1862 should become the object of their hostile demonstrations in 1873, because he declined to reconstitute the phalanx created in the revolutionary year. Bodlgares, his successor, was accused of violating article 56 of the constitution, because at the sitting of December 12, 1874, he considered as legal a quorum composed not of half the total number of deputies plus one, but of half the total number of deputies actually living and elected plus one. The leaders of the Opposition thereupon declared the constitution to be in danger; 19 newspapers of Athens appealed to the people to save it ; the names of ministerial deputies who formed this irregular quorum were pilloried, and the nickname of ot^Aitcu ("dishonoured") applied to them, while two members of the Cabinet were accused of bribery in connexion with the appointment of several archbishops. The Ministry was compelled to resign in 1875 > an( * Charilaos Trikoupes, who had recently been arrested for a strong article, supposed to reflect upon the Crown, became for the first time Prime Minister. Son of the former minister in London and historian of the Greek revolu- tion, he had learnt as his father's secretary of legation to xv] Impeachment of Boulgares 357 appreciate British methods, had sat in the National Assembly, had been sent to London to negotiate in the matter of the Corfiote forts, and had gained his first experience of office as Minister of Foreign Affairs during part of the Cretan insurrection. Trikoupes' hour, however, was not yet come; but the elections which he held were free from all government interference, and it was reserved for his successor Koumoun- douros to obtain from the new Chamber a vote annulling all laws passed by the unconstitutional quorum. In 1876 the whole Boiilgares Cabinet was impeached for a breach of the constitution, and two of its members were tried and convicted of bribery; the archbishops were punished for simony. But the international situation in the east diverted the attention of the Greeks from these internal problems and united rival politicians in a common bond of patriotism. CHAPTER XVI THE BALKAN CRISIS OF 1875-8. In the summer of 1875 a revolt in an obscure village of the Herzegovina, judged at the outset to be merely "an internal affair of Turkey," was the beginning of a movement which spread all over the Balkan peninsula, involved three of the Balkan states, as well as Russia, in war with Turkey, and terminated in the most important Congress that has ever met to settle the affairs of south-eastern Europe. Except for the revolt of the highlanders of Krivoshije, the mountainous district above Risano on the Bocche di Cattaro, in 1869 against service in the Austrian army, that corner of the South Slavonic world had not attracted the attention of diplomatists since the Herzegovinian insurrection of 1861 and the Turco- Montenegrin war that had arisen therefrom. Despite a poetic appeal to their brethren of Montenegro and the Herzegovina, the men of Krivoshije had not found allies ; but even so they had amazed Europe by the vigour of their resistance to the army of a first-class Power. Prince Nicholas, anxious not to offend his great neighbour, had then preserved a strict neutrality, while three years later his diplomacy smoothed over a frontier incident at Kolashin between his warlike subjects and the Turks. But, if the Herzegovina had remained quiet, the Christians were far from contented. The Cretan insurrection of 1866-9 had set an example which was not lost upon them — for the social condition of the two countries was not unlike. In both there were practically no Turks, except ch. xvj] The Herzegovina 359 the officials, sent from Constantinople and usually changed before they had time to learn the language or study the needs of the people ; in both the native Mussulman oppressors belonged to the same race and spoke the same tongue as their Christian victims. The latter had benefited but little from the formal declaration of equality before the law, made so ostentatiously by Abdul Mejid. Whatever the theory might be, the Christians of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, which formed one government, were virtually debarred from giving evidence in the higher courts, and could only obtain justice against members of the dominant creed by enormous bribes. ''All provincial authorities," wrote the British consul some years before the final insurrection broke out, " with rare exceptions, act according to the inspirations of their own personal interest and he added the significant warning that " without some powerful intervention, Bosnia and the Herzegovina might soon witness scenes similar to those which have lately terrified. Europe in Syria." No Christians were employed in the ad- ministration ; the police purchased their places, and reimbursed themselves by extorting money from those whom they were supposed to defend ; and, worst of all, the exactions of the tax-farmers were such that the peasant, when all was paid, seldom kept for himself more than one-third of his crop. The harvest of 1874 had been very bad, yet the tax-farmers did not on that account diminish their demands ; what little had been yielded by the green oases in the stony plateau of Nevesinje, a village some 25 miles from Mostar, lay rotting on the ground ; for the peasants could not gather it into their barns till the dilatory publicans, a Christian and two Moham- medan Serbs, had assessed it. Unable to obtain redress against their tardy and exorbitant assessment, 164 inhabitants fled to Montenegro in February 1875, whence they did not return for some months. Meanwhile, two events had excited the Christian population. The slaughter of a band of Monte- negrins by the Turks at Podgoritza in October 1874 had 360 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. provoked a protest from Prince Nicholas, to whom the Orthodox Serbs of the Herzegovinian border looked as their natural champion; the visit of the Austrian Emperor to Dalmatia in the spring of 1875 encouraged the Catholic clergy, who had long looked to Austria for aid ; and oppressed subjects of the Turks told their tale of woes to the powerful ruler of their Dalmatian kinsmen. Thus, a rising, of which the origin was traceable to internal maladministration, was encouraged by circumstances in two neighbouring states. Finding the fugitives from Nevesinje a burden on his exiguous treasury, Prince Nicholas obtained leave for them to return to their homes, which in some cases were burned over their heads. Outrage succeeded outrage, till at last, on July 1, Nevesinje rose, refusing either to pay taxes or to admit the police. After two Turkish commissioners had failed to pacify the insurgents, the consuls of the Powers were sent to disclaim all active sympathy with the insurrection, and Server Pasha, who had played the same part in Crete, was commissioned " to redress abuses." These missions likewise failed, for the Christians, often deceived, had no faith in the Turks. The insurgents, however, laid before the consuls a statement of their grievances. They complained that the ancient tithe had been increased to 12 J per cent, upon grain, tobacco, vegetables, fruit, and hay, which in practice had become still more. For the tax-farmers were in the habit of living for several days at the expense of the peasants, while the latter could not touch the fruits of their fields until the tax had been paid. Tobacco and the juice of the grape were liable to a further excise; every Christian male had to pay 30 piastres a year as poll-tax for exemption from military service; taxes on land, houses, pasture-lands, small animals, hogs, and beehives were added ; and the peasants' burdens were made still heavier by com- pulsory work on the roads and by horse service for the conveyance of troops. Besides these grievances against the xvi] The Herzegovinian rising 361 government and its agents, the Christians complained of the feudalism of the landowners, or agas, mostly Mohammedan Serbs, converted to Islam after the fall of the old Bosnian kingdom in 1463 and of the "Duchy" of S. Sava, whence the Herzegovina takes its name, some 20 years later. These landlords treated their Christian tenants, or kmets, as serfs, and extracted from these struggling cultivators of the stony Herzegovina a quarter of the produce, an annual animal of the flock, a large amount of gratuitous labour, and free food whenever they descended upon the peasants' huts. Thus, between the Imperial tax-farmer and the native aga, the lot of the Christian was intolerable. Before the law he was always at a disadvantage ; the chief functionaries were Turks, ignorant of Serb ; the language of the courts was Turkish, which he did not understand ; in short, the petitioners summed up their condition in the sentence that they had " no security for life, for honour, or for property." Nevertheless, at that stage of the insurrection, they still wished to remain subjects of the Sultan, and, with the exception of those who inhabited the frontier districts, did not desire union with Montenegro. They demanded lands in some foreign country, to which they could emigrate, or autonomy under a foreign Christian prince, or else a foreign occupation till justice had been accorded to them. For Turkish reforms, without European intervention as a guarantee of their performance, had been proved to be valueless. Thus, at first, just as in Servia in 1804, the revolt was not against the Sultan, but against the local authorities, who misgoverned in his name, and the native Mohammedan landlords, in whom pride of birth was combined with the arrogance of apostasy. The insurrection spread to an extent which seriously alarmed the statesmen of Constantinople. The Krivoshijans, who had beaten the Austrians in 1869, poured across the frontier. On August 15, 1875, a similar movement, likewise due to the extortions of the tax-farmers, had begun at Kozaratz near 362 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. Prjedor in north-west Bosnia, where the two religions had lived more harmoniously than in the Herzegovina. This Bosnian revolt extended rapidly eastward to Brod and Dervent, while the bulk of the Turkish troops, reduced below their proper strength before the outbreak in the Herzegovina, was engaged in grappling with the latter. Consequently the native Mussulmans took the law into their own hands ; and in Bosnia there raged a civil war, in which the combatants were of the same race and speech but of different creeds. The theatre of this struggle being near the frontiers of the Dual Monarchy, the Slavs of Hungary could assist their brethren of Bosnia, while the Herzegovinian insurgents pitched their head-quarters in an old monastery some three hours from Ragusa, where the survivors of the massacre, perpetrated on the Catholics of the neighbouring plain of Popovo, found refuge, and where the Christian combatants found sympathy and supplies. A distributing committee sat at Castelnuovo on the Bocche di Cattaro, and rifles were landed in the Sutorina. The pass of Muratovitza proved to be the Marathon of the Herzegovina, where a local chief, Lazar Socitza, drove back the Turkish army with signal success; and on December 12 the Sultan issued a new firman, completing the Hatti-Humayun of 1856, and promising administrative reforms. But as Count Andrassy, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, pointed out in the note which he drew up on December 30, the Turkish reforms were vague and inadequate, while the Turkish arms had been unsuccessful. There was " no district of Euro- pean Turkey," he wrote, " where the antagonism which exists between the Cross and the Crescent takes such an acrimonious form." He therefore suggested the immediate suppression of tax-farming, the expenditure of the amount raised by direct taxation in the country, religious liberty, a special commission of Christians and Mussulmans in equal numbers to superintend the reforms, and the amelioration of the rural population. Lord Derby, then our Foreign Secretary, gave a general xvi] The Berlin Memorandum 363 support to these proposals; and the Porte accepted all but the second point. But neither the Andrassy note, nor the conference of Baron Rodich, the Slav governor of Dalmatia, with the insurgent chiefs in the Sutorina, nor yet the Berlin Memorandum of the three Imperial Cabinets — which proposed an armistice and a mixed commission, adding that the Christians should be allowed to retain their arms, and that the Turkish troops should be concentrated — availed to stay the insurrection. The Berlin Memorandum met with no support from the Turcophil government of Great Britain. The imprisonment of Ljubibratich, one of the insurgent chiefs, an agitator rather than a guerrilla leader, by the Austrian authorities as a concession to Magyar hatred of the Slavs, could not cripple a movement with which the two neighbouring principalities of Servia and Montenegro were about to announce their co-operation. From the outset it was to have been expected that a prolongation of the insurrection would involve those two states. At first, indeed, neither of the Princes was anxious for war with Turkey. Milan, when a deputation from his parliament presented him with an address, expressing the impossibility of Servian indifference to the fate of the Bosniaks and Herze- govinians, had replied by dismissing Ristich, his bellicose Premier, and the leading advocate of the " great Servian " idea. But the Prince of Servia soon found that he had to reckon with two outside competitors for his shaky throne as well as with the war-party in his own country. Peter Karageorgevich, son of the exiled Prince, and a man of far more military capacity than himself, placed at the disposal of the Bosnian insurgents his experience gained during the Franco-German war, and distributed medals bearing his image and a telling allusion to the historic plain of Kossovo. Nicholas of Monte- negro, a born leader of men, after sending the wily old warrior, Peko Pavlovich, to quiet the insurgents, had allowed him to become one of their most active chiefs, while numbers of his subjects crossed the frontier, whence his own father-in-law 364 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. directed operations. Embarrassed by the comparisons which were drawn between his attitude and that of his two rivals, Milan recalled Ristich to power in the spring of 1876, and accepted the services of Tchernai'eff, a Russian general, who appeared in Servia nominally as correspondent of a Pan- slavist journal. Nicholas' next step was to send a memorandum to Lord Derby, pointing out the "intolerable position" in which the insurrection had placed him ; nor was the advice of the Tsar and the British government, that the Turks should placate the two Servian rulers by ceding a port and a little territory to Montenegro and Little Zvornik to Servia, adopted in time to prevent war. Ristich demanded that the adminis- tration of Bosnia, which was still in revolt, should be entrusted to Milan in return for a fixed payment ; and on June 30 the Prince of Servia issued a manifesto to his people, in which, after allusions to the medieval Tsar Dushan and to Milosh, he announced that his army was " about to enter the disturbed provinces in self-defence." On July i, Servia, and on the morrow Montenegro, declared war against Turkey on behalf of their brother Serbs. The moment had at last come — so Prince Nicholas told his subjects — to restore the Servian empire, which had fallen with the first Murad and should revive with the fifth, who had just ascended the blood-stained Turkish throne. The situation of the Turkish empire in the summer of 1876 might, indeed, justify the sanguine rhetoric of the poet-Prince of the Black Mountain. The insurrection in the Herzegovina had not only aroused the sympathies of the two neighbouring Serb states, but had quickened the national feeling of the Bulgars. A fresh revolutionary committee was formed in Bucharest ; and the failure of Stambulov, the future Premier, and of Stojanov, the future Speaker of the Sobranje, to rally the peasants to his flag at Stara Zagora only redoubled the efforts of the ardent patriots. Giurgevo became their head- quarters ; in the winter nights they would cross the frozen xvi] The Massacre of Batak 365 Danube to the Bulgarian bank; wooden cannon were hollowed out of cherry-trees : a congress of conspirators was held in a clearing of the forest. The Bulgarian leader, known as "Benkovski" from the name on his Polish passport, fancied himself a second Napoleon; but this "revolt in the Sredna Gora," or " middle range of mountains " between the Balkans and the Thracian plain, which began on May 2, lasted only 10 days, and was repressed with terrible severity. In the words of a British official, the Turks committed " cruelties worthy of Red Indians " at the sack of Panagjurishte. At the sight of the ruined town, the insurgents separated in despair ; " Benkovski," betrayed by a shepherd, was killed by the Turks. But, although unimportant in itself, this insurrection incident- ally caused the eyes of the whole civilised world to be directed to Bulgaria. The national movement had spread across the Maritza to Mount Rhodope, where the Christians fought against the Mohammedan Bulgars, or Pomaks, who were, like the Mohammedan Serbs in Bosnia and the Mohammedan Greeks in Crete, the most fanatical adherents of Turkish rule. The village of Batak on the northern spurs of Rhodope was preparing to join the national movement, when a force of Bashi-Bozuks under the command of Achmet Aga of Dospat and his colleague, Mohammed Aga of Dorkovo, arrived there. After some attempt at defence, the villagers surrendered on the distinct promise that their lives should be spared. Then began what Mr Baring, the British Commissioner, stigmatised in his official report, drawn up after a visit to the spot, as " perhaps the most heinous crime that has stained the history of the present century." Achmet Aga and his men spared neither age nor sex. When the terrified Christians, to the number of over a thousand, took refuge in the church and churchyard, the Bashi-Bozuks fired through the windows, and then, tearing off the tiles, threw burning rags dipped in petro- leum among the helpless fugitives below. Only one old woman would seem to have escaped from within those desecrated 366 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. walls ; and when, more than two months later, the British Commissioner visited the spot, the stench of the unburied corpses was overpowering. " In the streets at every step," wrote Mr Baring, " lay human remains — here a skull of an old woman — there the false tress of some unhappy girl." It was estimated that 5000 out of a population of 7000 had perished at Batak alone, while the Christians slaughtered throughout Bulgaria in that fatal month of May made up a total of 12,000. But the massacred Bulgars did not die in vain ; their death was the birth of their country. The "Bulgarian Atrocities" aroused the indignation of the whole Christian world. To the correspondent of the Daily News belongs the credit of having first disclosed the infamies of Batak; the British and American Commissioners confirmed his story. Gladstone left his theological studies on " Future Retribution " to write on the " Bulgarian Horrors "j and his famous pamphlet, sold by tens of thousands, awakened the righteous anger of the British people against the system of government, which could not only allow, but reward, such crimes — for Achmet Aga had been decorated for his conduct. The great Liberal statesman, whose services to the eastern Christians did more to raise British prestige in the Balkan peninsula than our fleets or armies, urged "the extinction of the Turkish executive power in Bulgaria." " Let the Turks," he wrote, " now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, namely by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned." Even the Conservative Foreign Secretary telegraphed to Constantinople that "any renewal of such outrages would prove more disastrous to the Porte than the loss of a battle," and admitted, that "any sympathy which was previously felt " in Great Britain for Turkey had " been completely destroyed by the lamentable occurrences in xvi] Murder of the Consuls 367 Bulgaria." His ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Henry Elliot, might callously remark that " we have been upholding what we know to be a semi-civilized nation," and that it did not matter how many Bulgars had been butchered, provided British " interests " were maintained. But the feeling of the British public towards the Turkish government was no longer that which had prompted the Crimean war ; indeed, a former member of the Aberdeen Cabinet was now the leading op- ponent of Turkey. " Even if Russia were to declare war against the Porte," Lord Derby added, " Her Majesty's government would find it practically impossible to interfere," An Ottoman official, perceiving when it was too late the full political import of the Batak massacre, asked one of its authors, how much Russia had paid him for a deed which would furnish her with a fresh excuse for intervention on behalf of the persecuted Slavs of the Balkan peninsula. Since that day there have been atrocities in the Turkish empire on a far larger scale, but the Armenian massacres had much less effect upon politics than the butchery of Batak. Western governments are generally less moved by the massacre of Christian subjects of the Sultan than by the murder of one of their own consuls. But the ferment of May 1876 produced both these incentives to intervention. A Bulgarian girl of dubious antecedents, who had embraced Islam, was seized by some Greeks at the Salonika railway- station ; her yashmak was torn off, and she was taken to the American consulate. An excited mob of Mussulmans vented its fanaticism upon the French and German consuls (the latter a British subject), who were forcibly detained in a mosque and murdered on May 6. The six murderers were promptly hanged; but the movement of unrest was not confined to the provinces. The National party at Constantinople, discontented with the weakness of the Russophil Grand Vizier, raised the cry of " Turkey for the Turks " ; several thousand softas, or theological students, forced the Sultan to dismiss his Minister. 368 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. The British fleet arrived in Besika Bay ; and on May 29 the new Grand Vizier and his confederates, having obtained a fetvah from the Sheikh-ul-Islam authorising the deposition of Abdul Aziz on the ground of his incapacity and extravagance, declared the throne vacant and on the following day proclaimed his nephew Sultan under the title of Murad V. Four days later the death of Abdul Aziz prevented all danger of a restoration. The nature of his end has been much contested ; five years afterwards Midhat Pasha and others were tried and convicted of the Sultan's assassination ; but the trial, held under the shadow of Yildiz, was an absurd travesty of justice, and the late Dr Dickson of Constantinople, who saw the dead man's body, informed the present writer that Abdul Aziz committed suicide by cutting his arteries with a pair of scissors. The removal of his uncle did not, however, long confirm Murad on the throne. The tragedy of his sudden elevation to power affected a mind naturally feeble ; the National party soon recognised that he was not the man to direct the fortunes of the empire in a time of dire distress. On August 31 he was deposed in his turn, and his brother Abdul Hamid II took his place. Murad vanished in the palace of Cheragan on the Bosphorus, which had witnessed his uncle's tragic death. There he remained a prisoner till his death in 1904, but it was not till the revolution of 1908 that his wives were allowed to leave the mysterious palace, which had been isolated for over 30 years from the outside world. Seldom had a Sultan begun his reign under greater diffi- culties than the astute diplomatist who thus ascended the throne. He found Bosnia and the Herzegovina in revolt against his authority, Servia and Montenegro fighting on their behalf. The Servian army, increased by a body of volunteers, was under the command of Tchernaieff, whose plan of campaign was to invade the Turkish territory on the south and east by the valleys of the Morava and the Tim ok, while at the same time despatching detachments to the frontiers of Bosnia and xvi] First Servian campaign 369 of the sanjak of Novibazar. But the Russian commander's strategy was neutralised by the inferior material of which the Servian forces were composed. Unlike the warlike Monte- negrins, between whose Prince and their own there could be no unity of purpose, the Serbs had been at peace for two generations with their former masters, for whom they were no match in the field ; while the Bulgars, cowed by the massacres, did not rise, as was expected, and a Bulgarian legion retired in disorder. Tchernaieff, indeed, crossed the Turkish frontier to the south, and carried the Turkish camp by a sudden attack. But, while one Ottoman general checked the Servian advance to the east at Zajetchar and laid the important strategic post of Knajajevatz in ashes, another descended the valley of the Morava, and completely defeated the retreating army of the south at Aleksinatz. Milan, from his headquarters at Parachin, had already invited, the Powers to intervene. An armistice was granted, but the negotiations for a settlement were hindered by his ill-timed proclamation as King at Deligrad on Septem- ber 16, at TchernaiefT's suggestion, and the fighting was resumed. The Serbs made a desperate stand at Djunis, but in vain ; Aleksinatz was lost; all southern Servia was in the power of the Turks, and the road was open to Belgrade. Then the Tsar intervened to save Servia from annihilation, General Ignatyeff handed a Russian ultimatum to the Porte, demanding the conclusion of an armistice within 48 hours with both Servia and Montenegro. The Turkish government yielded ; and on November 1 an armistice of two months was signed, which was subsequently extended till March 1, 1877, when a definite peace was concluded between Milan and the Sultan. Servia neither lost nor gained by the war of 1876 ; her territory was left undiminished ; her finances were unencumbered by a war indemnity. Meanwhile the Montenegrins had fought with far more success than their Servian allies. The forces of the Black Mountain were divided into two armies, that of the north, 370 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. which, under the command of the Prince, invaded the Herze- govina, and that of the south, under Bojo Petrovich, his cousin and subsequent Prime Minister, whose instructions were to watch the Albanian frontier. The northern army defeated the Turks with great loss at the village of Vutchidol, and the advance guard reached the old castle of Duke Stephen only a few miles from Mostar. But the Austrian military attache warned the Prince not to enter the Herzegovinian capital, and bad news from the south compelled him to hasten back to the defence of his country, only to find that his cousin had twice routed the enemy at Medun near Podgoritza. Another Monte- negrin victory at Danilograd in the Zeta valley and the capitulation of Medun concluded the campaign of 1876. Montenegro signed an armistice with the Porte on the basis of uti possidetis ; Bojo Petrovich was sent to Constantinople to negotiate peace, with instructions to ask for an increase of territory, including the cession of the then Turkish fortress of Spizza. The Porte was willing to cede Spizza, to which Austria and Italy, as Adriatic states, objected ; but it declined to give up Nikshich, whereupon the Prince recalled his envoy and prepared for a second campaign. European diplomacy did not remain idle while Servia and Montenegro were keeping their truce with Turkey. Despite the despatch of the British fleet to Besika Bay and a bellicose speech from Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Salisbury, least chauvin- istic of our Conservative statesmen, was sent to represent Great Britain and modify the Turcophil attitude of her ambassador at a conference of the Powers for the settlement of the eastern question, which met at Constantinople in December. Salisbury's instructions were to take the integrity of Turkey as a basis ; to endeavour to obtain for Bosnia, the Herzegovina, and Bulgaria such local autonomy as would give the inhabitants some control over their affairs ; to preserve, with the addition of Little Zvornik, the Servian status quo ; and to enlarge Montenegro by the Herzegovinian districts of Piva, Drobniak, Banjani and xvi] Midhats Parliament 371 Zubci and by the port of Spizza — districts which yielded nothing to the Ottoman treasury but would, it was thought, appease Prince Nicholas. The conference, however, was doomed to failure. On December 23, while the delegates were at work, salvos of artillery suddenly distracted their attention from their papers and protocols; and they were informed that the cannon were announcing to the people the proclamation of a constitution, which created a bicameral legislature — a Senate named for life and a Chamber of Deputies elected in ratio of 1 to 50,000 — and declared all " Ottomans " (for such was thenceforth to be the official name of all the Sultan's subjects of whatever creed) to be equal before the law. Salisbury was not deceived by the specious arrangements of "Midhat's Parliament," as this first Turkish legislature was called after the Liberal statesman who had just returned to power. When the Turks argued that the reforms proposed at the conference were unnecessary, because there was now a constitution, the shrewd British statesman pointed out that constitutions require, even in western Europe, some time to bear practical fruit, and that there was "no probability of the appearance of popular leaders," who, even if they did appear, could be exiled by the mere word of the Sultan. But the Turkish delegates showed that they were versed in at least one parliamentary art, that of obstruction. In the name of the integrity of the Ottoman empire, which formed the corner-stone of their new con- stitutional edifice, they rejected, or declined to discuss, the chief proposals of their foreign colleagues. When " Bulgaria " was mentioned, they first professed not to know what the word meant, and then said that it was a geographical term for the region north of the Balkans. They strenuously refused to settle the long-vexed question of Little Zvornik, even though it was pointed out that that hamlet had been assigned to Servia by the delimitation which followed the treaty of Adrianople and by the Imperial ordinance of 1833; that it had lost all strategic value ; and that the Sultan might still keep his 24—2 372 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. suzerainty over it. In vain Salisbury recalled to Midhat the lessons of 1828 and the loss of Greece; a National Council, convoked for the purpose, refused to accept the proposals of the conference, of which the chief were the rectification of the Montenegrin frontier, and the autonomy of Bulgaria, Bosnia, and the Herzegovina, under governors-general to be named by the Porte with the consent of the Powers. On this the conference broke up, in January, 1877 ; and Gortchakoff, in a circular note to the other governments concerned, asked what measures they now proposed to take for enforcing the decisions of Europe. Salisbury remarked before he left Constantinople, that he and his colleagues had " all tried to save Turkey, but she" would "not allow" them "to save her"; from that moment he regarded war as certain. Still, his journey to the Turkish capital had not been in vain ; his eyes had been opened to the fact that the average British consul, through whose eyes our government looked at the Balkan peninsula, had taken his information almost wholly from Turkish officials, and he vowed that he would reform the service. From that resolve dates its re-organisation ; even now the British Foreign Office relies too much upon non-British consuls ; but the obvious bias, which strikes the reader of the voluminous blue-books of 35 years ago, has almost entirely disappeared. This is not the least of Salisbury's many services to the near east. The British government made one further attempt to preserve peace.. A fresh conference was held in London ; and on March 31 the representatives of the Powers signed a protocol, taking cognisance of the conclusion of peace between Turkey and Servia, asking for a rectification of the Montenegrin frontier with the freedom of the river Bojana, which flows out of the lake of Scutari, and begging the Porte to place the Turkish army on a peace footing. Meanwhile, Midhat Pasha had fallen, and with him all hope of serious reform had disappeared; the parliament, which he had created, had neither experience of public life nor independence of the government, and supported xvi] The Russo-Turkish War 373 the latter in rejecting the London protocol. War was now inevitable ; Russia signed a military convention with the Prince of Roumania for the passage of her troops across his territory ; and on April 24 the Russian troops crossed alike the European and the Asiatic frontiers of Turkey. The fourth and last Russo-Turkish war of the century had begun. Five days later Montenegro re-opened hostilities. Both Turks and Russians realised that Roumania was the key of the situation. Powerless in the Black Sea, where the Turkish fleet was then superior, the invaders could attack Turkey by land alone ; and in Europe every facility for doing so was placed at their disposal by the Principality. Prince Charles had always chafed at the legal fiction of vassalage, which affected his people far less than himself, and had, from the moment when he accepted the throne, resolved to shake off that irksome yoke as soon as possible. But the "Reds," suspecting already that the independence of Roumania would be purchased by the sacrifice of that part of Bessarabia which had been restored in 1856, just as the independence of Italy had been bought by' the sacrifice of Nice and Savoy, had opposed the Prince's desire, till, in 1876, he contrived to rid himself of the irresolute Conservative Cabinet, which had been five years in office, and placed Bratianu in power. As usually happens, the responsibilities of place changed the ideas of the Radicals ; and Bratianu began to negotiate with Russia for the participation of the Roumanian army in the coming war. The convention was not submitted to parliament until the Russians had actually entered the country, and even then voted only after considerable opposition. Some pointed out that it was an infraction of the treaty of Paris, and that the Russian pledge which it contained "to maintain and to protect the actual integrity of Roumania " was an inadequate guarantee. Others, while approving the principle of the convention, opposed the active co-operation of the army with the invaders. Upon this, however, both Prince and Premier insisted; and, although 374 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. Gortchakoff haughtily replied that Russia had " no need of the assistance of the Roumanian army " — a piece of arrogance for which Plevna was soon to be the punishment — they ultimately carried their point. The Porte, which had invited the co-ope- ration of its vassal against the Russians, not only protested, but also ordered the bombardment of the Roumanian town of Kalafat — an act which provoked the declaration of war by Roumania, and the proclamation of Roumanian independence on May 21. But, as Gortchakoff, whose lesson was yet to come, still declined his aid, the Prince continued to mass his troops on the left bank of the Danube ; while, a month later, the Russian army crossed the river almost without opposition at two points, one facing the Dobrudja, the other opposite Svishtov, and Bulgaria thus became the theatre of the war. Alexander II, confident of the success which seemed to await him in this Slavonic province, attended a solemn thanksgiving in the church of Svishtov ; and General Gourko surprised Trnovo, the former residence of the Bulgarian Tsars, traversed the Balkans by the low pass of Hainkoi, entered the valley of the Tundja, and took the Shipka pass in the rear. It seemed as if this daring officer would reach Adrianople, or even appear at the head of his cavalry before the walls of Stambul. A panic broke out at the Turkish capital. Mehemet Ali, the German renegade of French extraction, whom we last saw as governor- general of Crete, was appointed Ottoman commander in Europe, while Suleiman was recalled from Montenegro to Thrace. Then the fortune of war turned ; Gourko, despite the desperate bravery of his Bulgarian allies, was defeated at Stara Zagora and driven back to the Balkans; Osman Pasha, hitherto stationed in compulsory idleness at Vidin, occupied Plevna, whose defence was to be the most heroic episode of the campaign. That small town, easily captured in the first Russo- Turkish war of the century, proved to be the chief barrier to Russian success in the last. * The siege of Plevna began on July 20 with a Russian xvi] Siege of Plevna 375 repulse, which was followed ten days later by a second and far more crushing defeat. Then the Grand-duke Nicholas tele- graphed in despair, begging Prince Charles to lead his despised army across the Danube. But the Prince declined to move until his conditions were accepted. His desire was to assist the Russians as the chief of an independent army; the Roumanians were, however, fused with the others, but, as compensation, their Prince was appointed commander-in-chief of the allied forces before the beleaguered town. On Sep- tember 1 1 they attacked the strongest of all the defences of Plevna, the "indomitable Grivitza redoubt," and after three attempts placed the Roumanian colours on its summit. But the assault upon a second redoubt failed. Unable to take Plevna by storm, the allies shut in the garrison so closely on every side that at last Osman's supplies ran out. He was com- pelled to resort to a general sortie, and, after performing prodigies of valour, surrendered on December 10 with all that was left of his gallant army. Next day the Tsar and the Prince entered the town, and the former returned to Russia. Meanwhile, the Turks had in vain endeavoured to dislodge the Russians from the Shipka pass, and in Asia had lost, for the third time in history, the strong citadel of Kars, captured by an Armenian genera], Loris Melikoff. On the west of the Balkan peninsula the Montenegrins, for whose cause the letters of Stillman in the Times, an article by Gladstone and a poem by Tennyson had aroused interest in England, managed to defeat the usual Turkish tactics of invading the principality simultaneously through the Duga pass on the north and the Zeta valley on the south, thus cutting the little state in two, by repulsing the southern army ; and, when Suleiman, after great losses, reached Spuj from the north, he was called away to oppose the Russians in Bulgaria. Mehemet Ali, who was to have started from the south-east and met his colleagues at Danilograd, was likewise defeated, and summoned away, as we saw, to command on a more important field. Thus relieved from all danger of an 376 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. attack upon his capital, Prince Nicholas was able to devote his energies to the wearisome siege of Nikshich, which at last surrendered, on September 8, after having been almost con- tinuously blockaded by insurgents or Montenegrins ever since the revolt in the Herzegovina began. The fortress of Bilek speedily hoisted the white flag ; the Montenegrins had thus con- quered an important piece of the Herzegovina. But Austria and the autumn rains vetoed an advance on Trebinje and Mostar ; so the mountaineers, turning back towards the sea, which it had so long been their object to reach by diplomacy, occupied Spizza and began the siege of Antivari. Thus everywhere, in Montenegro, in Bulgaria, in Asia Minor, the Turks were worsted. Two days after the fall of Plevna, the Porte invoked the mediation of the Powers. A fresh enemy simultaneously appeared in the field. On the very day of the vain Turkish appeal, Servia again declared war against her old masters. More fortunate than in their previous campaign, the Serbs defeated the Turks at Pirot, whilst Milan, amidst general enthusiasm, entered the ancient Servian town of Nish. All the Slavonic armies, Russian, Servian, and Montenegrin, continued to advance, while the Roumanians blockaded Vidin. Gourko recrossed the Balkans, took Sofia, and routed Suleiman nearPhilippopolis; Skobeleff and Radetzky surrounded the Turkish army, which had fought so valiantly in the Shipka pass, at the neighbouring wood of Shejnovo on January 9, 1878; eleven days later the Russians, as in 1829, entered Adrianople. The terrified Mussulmans fled before them to the fastnesses of Rhodope ; and the brutality of the Cossacks towards these refugees almost equalled that of the Turkish irregulars to the Bulgarians in 1876. A third Servian victory by General Belimarkovich at Vranja brought the arms of the modern principality to the verge of the plain of Kossovo ; the Montenegrins occupied Antivari and Dulcigno ; and their poetic ruler expressed in an ode to the sea the joy which he felt at having at last cut his way to the Adriatic. The advance xvi] British Policy 377 of the Serbs into Old Servia and of the Montenegrins upon Scutari in Albania, and the Roumanian siege of Vidin, were only cut short by the news of the armistice, which, like the treaty of 1829, had been signed at Adrianople on January 31, 1878. It seemed as if, unaided, the Turkish empire must this time collapse before the combination of Russia and her three Balkan allies. But the Russian advance had alarmed the other great Powers specially interested in the solution of the eastern question. Austria-Hungary, expelled from Italy in 1866, had looked since then upon the western half of the Balkan peninsula as her sphere of influence ; the Emperor Francis Joseph had, indeed, promised his neutrality during the war at his meeting with the Tsar at Reichstadt on July 8, 1876, on condition that the occupation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina should be his reward ; but the Austrian government feared lest this condition should not be observed by the victorious Russians, who would thus have been accused — as they were, in fact, accused 30 years later — of betraying the cause of the Slavs. In Great Britain, the Prime Minister was an avowed friend of Turkey — an attitude attributed by his friends to political insight, by his foes to his Jewish blood and his Asiatic imagina- tion ; while public opinion, so deeply moved by the Bulgarian atrocities that Derby had doubted in 1876 whether even a Russo-Turkish war would revive the old Crimean sympathy with Turkey, was in 1877 less influenced by the sufferings and aspirations of Christian nationalities rightly struggling to be free than by fear of a Russian occupation of Constantinople. Even Gladstone in private admitted the decline of humanitarian enthusiasm ; his second pamphlet, " Lessons in Massacre," made little impression ; his five resolutions against support of Turkey and in favour of local self-government, moved in the House of Commons in a speech of extraordinary grandeur, describing England as the former hope of the oppressed all the world over, frightened timid Liberals. As the Russians 378 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. became more successful, the British public became more warlike ; the press and the music-halls pandered to, and thus increased, the revived desire for a new Crimean war ; and the language of politics was enriched with the word " Jingo," which denotes a state of mind likely to last as long as human nature and certainly fostered by hysterical democracy. As usual, the violence of extreme men like Professor Freeman, who professed his willingness to see India perish rather than Turkey saved, damaged the cause for which that eminent historian had done so much. Not yet entrenched in Egypt, even though she had half the Suez Canal shares in her pocket, Great Britain still regarded the Russians at Constantinople as a menace to her Indian empire, nor was much importance attached to the fact that the Tsar had expressly discountenanced the occupation of the New Rome ; for he had returned to Russia, leaving generals in the field who might be tempted to set diplomacy at defiance and win eternal glory by planting the cross once more over Santa Sophia. The Conservative Cabinet was, indeed, divided : but its most powerful member was in favour of war, which in the early weeks of 1878 seemed to be inevitable. The British fleet was ordered to Constantinople — a destination at once altered, after the resignation of Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, for its former station of Besika Bay — and parliament was asked to vote six millions for armaments. The Russians moved their lines close to the Turkish capital ; a part of the British fleet was ordered to enter the sea of Marmara for the protection of British life and property there. Thus, the forces of the two rivals of the Crimea were once more separated by a few miles only; the Grand-duke Nicholas established his headquarters at the maritime village of San Stefano, ten miles from Constantinople ; the British admiral was stationed off the island of Prinkipo. In the general confusion, on February 14, Abdul Hamid dissolved his parliament, and suspended the constitution, which remained in abeyance till July 24, 1908. At this moment the intervention of another eastern xvi] "The Hellenic Factor" 379 nationality threatened to complicate the situation still further. The Greeks had hitherto taken no part in the struggle. The insurrection of the Slavs in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, and the first Servian and Montenegrin campaigns, had found the Hellenes merely interested spectators; the brief Bulgarian rising could scarcely have been expected to command their sympathy. Koumoundouros had merely thought it prudent, in view of an extension of the movement in the Balkan peninsula, to buy arms; and in the autumn of 1876 a popular demonstration, held on the classic Pnyx, after protesting against the neglect of Hellenic rights by the advocates of Bosnian and Bulgarian autonomy, urged the Cabinet to make further military prepara- tions. Similar meetings took place in the provinces ; yet the politicians continued to play the party game of ins and outs. But when Russia, the great Orthodox Power, which had been one of the three protectresses of the young Greek kingdom, entered the field, the position changed. There were some who wished to avail themselves of this Russo-Turkish war, as they had desired in that of 1854, to excite insurrections in the Greek provinces of Turkey ; while the national pride rejected the idea of a fresh, and perhaps final, settlement of the eastern question, in which " the Hellenic factor," as Gladstone called it, should be ignored. It was felt at Athens that party dissensions must cease in the face of this crisis, in which the future of Hellenism, the realisation of " the Grand Idea," might be at stake. A coalition Cabinet, an " Oecumenical government," as it was called, was formed in June, 1877, under the presidency of old Admiral Kanares, who more than fifty years before had fired the capitan-pasha's ship at Chios, and who had as colleagues no less than four ex-Premiers. Such a "Ministry of All the Talents," from which Boiilgares was the only leading statesman excluded, has never been constructed in Greece before or since ; and Freeman, looking down from the Akropolis on the spectacle of a people demanding "that personal and party jealousies should be put aside," rejoiced that there was 380 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. "still life" in Greece. Trikoilpes, who occupied the Foreign Office in this " Great Ministry," at once declared his readiness to prevent, as far as he could, outbreaks among the Greek subjects of Turkey, provided that the British government recognised, when the time for a settlement arrived, that there was " an Hellenic question before Europe." Derby was willing to concede equal " administrative reforms or advantages " with those likely to be granted to other Christian nationalities, but declined to promise his support of territorial aggrandisement. Nevertheless, despite the employment of Albanian irregulars by the Turks in Thessaly and the pressure of the " Brother- hood" society in Greece, the majority of the Cabinet, following the advice of the British government and the national dis- inclination of the Hellenes to identify their cause with that of the Balkan Slavs, declined the Russian invitation during the siege of Plevna to join in the conflict and share in the spoils. But when the news of the Russian advance on Adrianople arrived, the excitement of the populace became intense. The "QEcumenical government," whose chief was already dead, resigned ; the populace demanded war j Koumoundouros, who formed the new Cabinet, had to satisfy public opinion by supporting insurrections in Epirus, Thessaly, and Crete ; and his Foreign Minister, Theodore Deligiannes, announced on February 2, 1878, that the government had " resolved to occupy provisionally with its army the Greek provinces of Turkey." But the news of the Russo-Turkish armistice checked this invasion. Earlier in the year it might have been good policy, as Trikoilpes had suggested, to obtain a seat at the coming Congress of Berlin by participating in the Balkan war, just as Cavour had won a place for Sardinia at the Congress of Paris by sending her troops to the Crimea. Greece had, however, waited too long; if she attacked Turkey after the armistice, she would fight alone. The Greek troops were stopped by the government, when they had reached Domok6s, and recalled on condition that "an Hellenic question be discussed at the xv i] Thessaly and Crete 381 Congress"; but the insurrections went on, and volunteers crossed the frontier. The movement in Epirus was soon suppressed; but that in Thessaly was more serious. The picturesque villages which gleam on the slopes and nestle in the folds of Pelion rose in rebellion ; a provisional government was formed, which proclaimed union with Greece ; and from the classic rocks of Olympus another band of insurgents announced to the Powers " the annexation of Macedonia," as a protest against its inclusion in Bulgaria. The Turks, however, captured the two headquarters of both these organisations at Litochoron on Olympus and at Makrinitza on Pelion. The fall of the latter place is still associated with the death of Ogle, the Times correspondent, who was beheaded by the barbarians on his way to save its inhabitants, but whose name is still preserved by a street at Volo. At last, British intervention through consuls Blunt and Merlin ended the Thessalian insurrection in May by telling the insurgents that " Hellenic interests" would "not be injured by acceding to English advice," and by proposing an amnesty, a year's remittance of taxes, and the separate administration of Thessaly from Epirus. The Porte accepted these proposals, and the other insurgent leaders laid down their arms. In Crete also there had been desultory fighting. In May 1876 the Cretans, after seven years of comparative repose, broken only by a threat to take up arms against a new tax, demanded such modifications of the Organic Law of 1868 as would make it consonant with that " self-government " promised by Aali Pasha. The demand was repeated in 1877, but the Porte refused ; and a meeting of Cretans was held in Athens, which determined on a revolt. Hajji Michales landed in the island ; a committee was formed there under the style of " the General Assembly of the Cretans " ; and, owing to the excite- ment caused by the Russian advance, this body demanded complete autonomy, a chief of the executive elected by the people, the payment of an annual tribute of 500,000 piastres, 382 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. and a guarantee of these concessions by the Great Powers. There was among the Christians a large party of peace, which had not forgotten the hardships of the last insurrection ; and the influence of the women was thrown into the scale against war ; but the returned chiefs were in favour of fighting. On February 15, 1878, the General Assembly, having had no answer from the Porte to its demands, declared all negotiations at an end, and appealed to the Powers. Fighting began, and the Panhellenion (p. 314) re -appeared off the coast; but a truce was quickly concluded, because the Turks had so few troops in the island, owing to their late Balkan campaign, while the insurgents had little food. After the arrival of reinforcements, the Turks broke this truce; but the British government mediated on behalf of the Christians with the Porte, which promised that it would, " in concert with England, make arrangements for a new form of government for Crete, in accordance with the legitimate demands and requirements of the island." The provisional government of seven members, which by this time had been created, agreed on May 26 to accept British mediation with an armistice on the basis of uii possidetis ; and the ripening barley harvest increased the desire of the Mussulmans, who had fled, as usual, to the towns, to return to their farms. British consuls had thus made peace alike in Thessaly and Crete. The treaty of San Stefano, which had meanwhile been signed by the Russian and Turkish delegates on March 3, was not calculated to satisfy Hellenic aspirations. That abortive instrument, long regretted in Bulgaria, would have restored the Bulgarian empire of the Middle Ages, and, while hopelessly dismembering Turkey, would have put a final end to Greek ambitions in Macedonia. It provided for the creation of a vassal principality of Bulgaria with a frontage on both the Euxine and the Aegean, with an inland frontier which marched with the Danube on the north and comprised the Macedonian lakes of Prespa and Ochrida, once the home of the Bulgarian xvi] The Treaty of San Stefano 383 Tsars and the seat of the Bulgarian Church. To Servia, as the reward of her two campaigns, was assigned a considerable slice of territory, which included Nish and Little Zvornik, while her south-western frontier was drawn in so favourable a manner as almost to touch the enlarged eastern boundary of Montenegro. The two Serb states would thus have practically joined one another ; and an all-Servian railway might have united Belgrade with the Adriatic, and thereby provided the Switzerland of the Balkans with an outlet on the sea. To these territorial advantages were added the recognition of Servian independence and the cessation of the tribute, which since 1867 had been the last vestige of Turkish suzerainty. Montenegro was more than trebled in size, and doubled in population ; she was to retain her recent conquests; Nikshich, Bilek, and Gatzko in the Herzegovina, Spizza, Antivari, and Dulcigno on the Adriatic, Spuj, Podgoritza, Plava, Gusinje, and the medieval Montenegrin capital of Jablyak on the side of Albania, and Priepolje in the sanjak of Novibazar, were included in the en- larged principality. Montenegrin independence, which had really existed for five centuries, and had been already thrice acknow- ledged by the Turkish firman of 1799 and by the Turco-Monte- negrin treaties of 1838 and 1842, yet subsequently ignored by the Turks, was formally recognised by the Sultan. Roumania, which had rendered such splendid service to Russia at Plevna and had isolated the garrison of Vidin while the Slavs advanced towards Constantinople, was treated far less generously than the Bulgars, whose country had, indeed, been the theatre of operations, but who had played a much less important part in the actual fighting. While the independence of Roumania was admitted by the Porte, Russia acted with base ingratitude towards her Latin allies. She was resolved to re-acquire at all costs, preferably at that of her Roumanian neighbours, the southern part of Bessarabia, which had been taken from her and joined to Moldavia in 1856. She, therefore, obtained from Turkey in lieu of part of the war indemnity the 384 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. satijak of Touitcha, which comprised a large part of the barren Dobrudja, as well as the islands of the delta and the Isle of Serpents, with the object of exchanging them compulsorily for that far more desirable strip of Bessarabia. Further, in lieu of a portion of the war indemnity, Russia stipulated for the cession to herself of Ardahan, Kars, Bayazid, and Batum with a strip of coast in Asia, so that Trebizond and Erzerum would become the first important towns within the new Turkish frontier. In order still further to cripple her adversary, she insisted on the demolition of all the Danubian fortresses and a war indemnity, which after the above deductions amounted to 310,000,000 roubles, 10,000,000 payable at once and the rest according to a subsequent understanding. On behalf of the Christian populations still left under Turkish rule, she demanded autonomy for Bosnia and the remaining portion of the Herzegovina under a Christian governor-general, subject to modifications thereafter to be made by Turkey, Austria- Hungary, and herself. In Crete the Porte promised ' 'to apply scrupulously the Organic Law of 1868," and to introduce "an analogous law adapted to local requirements into Epirus, Thessaly, and the other parts of Turkey in Europe." Finally, by article 16 Turkey engaged " to carry into effect, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by Armenians, and to guarantee their security from Kurds and Circassians." The subsequent Armenian massacres form a striking commentary on this article. The treaty of San Stefano was a wholly Slavonic settlement of a question which concerns other races as well. It would have given the final blow to the Turkish empire in Europe by cutting the remaining Ottoman territory in two separate parts, and by imposing a Bulgarian barrier between the two chief cities of European Turkey. More than that, it would have ag- grandised the Bulgarian at the expense of the Greek nationality in Macedonia and Thrace, and would have sacrificed the xvi] The Treaty of San Stefano 385 Albanians to the aggrandisement of Montenegro and Bulgaria. From every part of the ceded districts came protests against this flagrant violation of justice and ethnology. The Greeks addressed an erudite disquisition to the British government on this complete disregard of their historic claims ; the Mussulmans appealed to Queen Victoria as the Empress of a hundred million Moslem subjects; the Lazes begged for British protection to prevent the cession of Batum and the consequent ruin of Trebizond ; the Serbs protested against the inclusion of Servian regions in Bulgaria; the Albanians formed a league to "resist until death" any attempt upon the inviolability of their land; the Roumanians bitterly re- proached Russia for having treated them with such base ingratitude, and contended that no modification of the treaty of Paris, the charter of their country, could be legally effected by two of the signatories without the consent of the others. The British government replied sympathetically to both the Greek and Roumanian claims to be represented at the Congress, and told the Greek Cabinet that it was " prepared to exert all its influence to prevent the absorption into a Slav state of any Greek population." But the chief motive of British opposition to the treaty was the conviction that the "big Bulgaria" of San Stefano would be merely a Russian province, a constant menace to Constantinople, and a basis for a future Russian attack upon it. The idea of the late Sir William White had not then gained acceptance in England, that our true policy in the east is the formation of strong and independent Balkan states, which would serve as a barrier between Russia and her goal and might even become the allies and the outposts of a reformed Turkey against Muscovite aggression. Yet close observers of the attitude of the Bulgars during the war might have noticed that the "little brothers," whom the Russians had come to free, were very glad of freedom, but had no desire to exchange one despotism for another, even though the latter were Orthodox and Slavonic. m. l. 25 386 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. "Liberated nations," wrote Bismarck some years later, "are not grateful but exacting " ; and that most realistic of then living statesmen supported his thesis by the examples of the Greeks, the Roumanians, the Serbs, and the Bulgars. "All these races," he pointed out, " have gladly accepted Russian help for liberation from the Turks ; but since they have been free they have shown no tendency to accept the Tsar as successor of the Sultan.... Even if the peace of San Stefano had been carried out intact " the permanent dependence of Bulgaria on Russia " would probably have proved false." But at that moment all the appearances justified the British suspicions. The past policy of Russia towards the eastern Christians had not been disinterested ; her past relations with Greece proved that what she did not want was the erection of a really strong Christian state on the ruins of Turkey. All the circumstances attending the birth of the new Bulgaria pointed in the same direction — the Prince to be " freely elected by the population," and the future administrative organisation to be drawn up by an assembly of notables, " under the superintendence of an Imperial Russian Commissioner," who would watch for two years over its application. Nor was Great Britain the only Power opposed to the treaty. Austria- Hungary had greater interests in the Balkan peninsula; she had been promised at Reichstadt the occupation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina ; she contemplated that Drang nach Osten, which would have been as effectually barred as the Greek advance to Constantinople by a " big Bulgaria," cutting her off from Salonika; and, if Hungarian sympathies were with the Turks as the foes of the Slavs, Andrassy in 1869 had recalled the rights of the Crown of St Stephen over medieval Bosnia. In France, Waddington, the new Foreign Minister, educated at Rugby and Cambridge, had strongly British pre- dilections. Even before the treaty of San Stefano, Austria-Hungary had proposed the summons of a conference at Vienna, which DIAGRAM to illustrate the: TREATY of SAN STEFAN O xvi] The Congress of Berlin 387 subsequently became the Congress of Berlin — the capital of the Power least interested in the eastern question, and the abode of the great statesman who had both the frankness to offer himself as " an honest broker " and the authority to secure the acceptance of his friendly offices. Russia was willing to entertain the proposal, provided that she might select what clauses of the treaty she pleased for discussion at the Congress. The British government, on the other hand, demanded the examination of the treaty as a whole, and followed up its demands by action. Derby, indeed, declined to be responsible any longer for a warlike policy, with which he had long been out of sympathy, and resigned the Foreign Office to Salisbury, fresh from his practical experience of Turkish tactics at the Constantinople conference, who lived to make the sorrowful confession that in her pro-Turkish policy Great Britain had "backed the wrong horse." Beacons- field then called out the reserves, and ordered a force of native Indian troops to Malta, while his new Foreign Secretary in a circular addressed to the other Powers summed up the British government's objections to the treaty of San Stefano. The mobilisation of the Austrian army, the indignation of Roumania at Russian ingratitude, the discontent at home, all contributed to induce the Tsar to listen to the British arguments. Through the mediation of Count Schouvaloff, the Russian ambassador in London, a secret agreement, which speedily found its way into print, was made between the two governments for the modification of the "big Bulgaria," and the way was paved for the meeting of the European Areopagos at Berlin. The Congress of Berlin, which opened on June 13 and closed on the same day of the following month, was the most important gathering of statesmen that had met since the last great liquidation of the eastern question at Paris 22 years earlier. All the Great Powers were represented by their leading statesmen — Great Britain by the Prime Minister and 25—2 388 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. the Foreign Secretary ; Russia by Gortchakoff and the Russian ambassador in London ; France by Waddington ; Austria- Hungary by Andrassy and Hay merle ; Italy by Corti, her Minister for Foreign Affairs ; Germany by the " Iron Chan- cellor," who was elected president of the Congress. Each Power was also assisted by the counsels of its ambassador in Berlin; while Turkey, the object of this surgical operation, found in Alexander Karatheodori and Mehemet Ali, respect- ively a Greek and a German, characteristic advocates of Moslem interests. In pursuance of the British pledge to see that Greek claims should not suffer from Greek neutrality in the war, and of his favourable reply to the Roumanian note, Salisbury championed the admission of both Greece and Roumania. He pointed out that the creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate had made the Greeks and Bulgars rivals, and that, while the latter enjoyed the protection of Russia, the former were unrepresented at the council which was about to decide on the future of the east. With his customary irony he added that, " after having heard the delegates of a nation which claimed the provinces of another state, it would be equitable to listen to the representatives of a country which demanded territories already belonging to it." The Congress decided, however, that the Greek delegates, Theodore Deligiannes and Alexander Ragkaves, like the Roumanian representatives, Bratianu and Kogalniceanu, should be merely admitted to state their views without the right of voting. Thus, none of the small states immediately concerned in the settlement were allowed direct representation at the council-board ; and the discussion was conducted by men personally unacquainted for the most part with the geography and racial characteristics of the vast and complicated region which they were about to partition, much as Pope Alexander VI partitioned Africa, without having seen it. The Congress, in spite of the threatened departure of the British delegates at a critical stage of the negotiations, xvi] The Treaty of Berlin 389 accomplished its work, and drew up on July 13 what for 34 years was, at least on paper, the charter of the Balkan peninsula. The treaty of San Stefano was almost entirely nullified by the treaty of Berlin. Instead of a " big Bulgaria " stretching from the Danube to the Aegean and from the Black Sea beyond the Macedonian lakes, it created a small "autonomous and tributary principality under the suzerainty of the Sultan," which was bounded by the Danube, the Balkans, the Black Sea and the Servian and Macedonian frontiers, and had a harbour at Varna. South of the Balkans there was artificially formed an autonomous province, known by the diplomatic name of "Eastern Roumelia," and placed "under the direct political and military authority of the Sultan," but administered by "a Christian Governor-General" "named by the Porte, with the assent of the Powers, for a term of five years." The recent history of Moldavia and Wallachia might have suggested the reflection that national feeling will sooner or later join together what diplomacy has severed. But for the moment the separation of Bulgaria into two sections was regarded as a triumph of British statesmanship and a diminution of Russian influence. Such is the short-sightedness of the ablest diploma- tists, that when the union of the two Bulgarias was accomplished only seven years later, it was the British government that supported, and the Russian that condemned it. It was further provided that the Prince of Bulgaria should be " freely elected by the population and confirmed by the Porte, with the consent of the Powers," and that no member of any great reigning dynasty should be eligible. Until a Bulgarian "Assembly of Notables" should have drawn up an organic law for the principality, a Russian commissioner was to direct the administration, but the duration of this provisional arrange- ment was limited to nine months. The organisation of Eastern Roumelia, on the other hand, was entrusted to an European commission, to which three months were assigned for its labours. 390 The Balkan Crisis 0/1875-8 [ch. While the articles affecting Bulgaria were intended to minimise Russian influence in the eastern Balkans, the clauses regarding the Serb population were favourable to the growth of Austria in the west. In pursuance of the Reichstadt agreement, and on the proposal of Salisbury, without any protest but merely " with some apparent reluctance " on the part of the representatives of Italy (which 30 years later expressed such popular indignation at their annexation), Bosnia and the Herzegovina were to be " occupied and administered by Austria- Hungary," which thus became what she had been for two decades of the eighteenth century— a Balkan state. Arguments, alike practical and historical, could be advanced for this arrange- ment. Even the author of the Illyrian Letters^, Mr (now Sir) Arthur Evans, no friend of Austria, had admitted that it was "thte only solution within the sphere of practical politics." The two provinces contained few Turks, and were distant from the Turkish capital ; while the co-existence of two Slav races and of three religions, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Mussulman, suggested the administration of a strong foreign Power as a better means of securing order and good government than the annexa- tion of part of Bosnia to unsettled Servia, and of the Herzegovina to a principality so devoid of material resources as Montenegro, which an exclusive attention to the doctrine of nationalities might have demanded. Austria-Hungary had already a number of Croats and Serbs among her subjects; Dalmatia was the natural frontage of Bosnia ; and, besides the Hungarian claims to the medieval Bosnian kingdom, the north of it had been annexed by Austria so recently as 17 18. Moreover, the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs saw in an Austrian occupation the best means of preventing a chain of Slav states from stretching across the Balkan peninsula. In a secret Austro- Turkish agreement, signed on the day of the signature of the Berlin treaty, the Austrian plenipotentiaries declared that the above-mentioned article contained nothing derogatory of " the 1 Pp. 239-40. xvi] The Treaty of Berlin 39i Sultan's sovereign rights," and that " the occupation " would be "considered as provisional." This was not the only blow dealt by the Berlin treaty at the hopes of Servian and Montenegrin patriots. Article 25 further gave to the Dual Monarchy "the right of keeping garrisons and having military and commercial roads" in the sanjak of Novibazar, which remained as a Turkish wedge between the two Servian states, a funnel through which Austrian influences and perhaps Austrian armies (unless theMorava route were preferred) could penetrate into North Albania and Macedonia. A further convention, dated April 21, 1879, between Austria-Hungary and Turkey, while confirming this treaty right, stated that Austrian troops would only be placed at the three points of Priboj, Priepolje, and Bijelopolje, which last place was almost immediately exchanged for Plevlje. In accordance with Austrian wishes, the territorial additions made to modern Servia at Berlin were not in Old Servia, the heart of the medieval Servian kingdom, which still remained Turkish, but at Nish and Vranja, and in the Bulgarian-speaking district of Pirot, thus increasing the principality by one-fourth. Servia also obtained the formal recognition of her independence ; but, like the other two Slav states, she was to pay her share of the Ottoman debt for these new possessions. Montenegro, at last definitely recognised by everyone as a sovereign state, had to be content with twice, instead of thrice, her original territory. She kept Nikshich, and received the districts of Piva and Banjani with the Duga pass on the side of the Herzegovina, Podgoritza, Spuj, Jablyak, and the towns of Gusinje and Plava with their dependent villages on that of Albania. She obtained an outlet on the sea at the bay of Antivari, but was forced to restore Dulcigno to Turkey and to cede Spizza to Austria. The former of these grievances was redressed in 1880; the latter has never been forgotten, for the guns of what was from 1878 to 1919 the southernmost village of Dalmatia commanded the bay and dominated the King's 39 2 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. palace on the shore. Yet further to prevent Antivari from becoming a possible naval base for Russia, article 29 provided that all Montenegrin waters should " remain closed to the ships of war of all nations," that the principality should have neither fleet nor naval flag, and that the maritime and sanitary police of the small strip of Montenegrin coast should be in the hands of Austria-Hungary. These inexorable conditions, feebly criticised by one of the Italian representatives and maintained intact for 31 years, were a bitter disappointment to Prince Nicholas. He saw the Herzegovina, the cradle of his race, the stony land where he had fought so valiantly against his hereditary enemy, occupied by his arch-foe — that Erzfeind which was then so much more feared at Cetinje than the Erbfeind of other times. He saw, too, Spizza, the poor man's "ewe lamb," as his ardent admirer, Freeman, called it, taken from him, its captor, by a Power to which it had never belonged. These acts, especially the latter, he never forgave, nor were his people likely ever to forget. A still greater injustice was perpetrated by the articles dealing with Roumania. Roumanian independence was made conditional on the retrocession of South Bessarabia to Russia in exchange for "the islands forming the delta of the Danube as well as the Isle of Serpents," which had been transferred from Moldavia to immediate Turkish sovereignty in 1857, "the sanjak of Toultcha," and "the territory situated south of the Dobrudja as far as a line starting eastward from Silistria and terminating in the Black Sea, south of Mangalia." Against this cruel condition, first foreshadowed and denounced by Rosetti at the end of 1875, and plainly advanced at the Russian headquarters in Roumania in 1877, Prince Charles and his high-spirited people protested in vain. Russia insisted on thus rewarding the splendid services of her Latin allies, to whose assistance her victory had been largely due, while the extra piece of land given as a consolation to Roumania was benevolently taken from Bulgaria. In the phrase of a xvi] The Treaty of Berlin 393 Roumanian statesman, it was "not vanquished Turkey who paid Russia for the expenses of the war, but Roumania." The empire of the Tsar was thus once more bounded by the "accursed stream," the Pruth which, after 22 years of union, again separated the free Roumanians from their brothers in Bess- arabia, a region historically and ethnographically Roumanian, while the Dobrudja contained large Bulgarian and Turkish elements, as well as Turkish- speaking Gagauzes, Christianised descendants of the Cumans, and was still as desolate as when Ovid had lamented that it was his place of exile. Moreover, the consignment of a Bulgarian population to Roumanian rule tended, and was perhaps intended, to sow discord between the two adjacent states. Roumanian energy has, indeed, made the best of this compulsory and unpopular exchange ; the splendid bridge of Cernavoda now spans the Danube, uniting the trans-Danubian province to the rest of the country, and making the barren Dobrudja a highway, by the now flourishing port of Constantza, from Berlin to the Bosphorus. But the ingratitude of Russia long rankled in the minds of the Roumans, and soon had the effect of driving that Latin country into the orbit of the Triple Alliance. The other and much more plausible condition of her independence — the abolition of Jewish disabilities — Roumania has sometimes evaded and sometimes ignored. It is argued by Roumanian statesmen that in their country, and especially in Moldavia, the Jewish question is not religious but social and economic, and that the admission of these Semitic outlanders to full rights would swamp the native population. In order, however, to obtain recognition by the Powers, the Roumanian government had to revise article 7 of the constitution, which permitted the naturalisation of Christian aliens only ; but even then the naturalisation of the Jews was limited by various legal restric- tions, with which a pre-occupied Europe did not trouble to interfere. Roumania received a seat on the European com- mission of the Danube, whose powers continued "as far as 394 The Balkan Crisis of 1875—8 [ch. Galatz in complete independence of the territorial authorities." From there to the Iron Gates the regulations for the river were to " be elaborated by the European commission, assisted by delegates of the riverain states," while to Austria-Hungary was entrusted the removal of the Iron Gates, accomplished in 1896. Greece received by the Berlin treaty no increase of territory. Deligiannes told the Congress that, in view of the general desire of a pacific settlement, his government would be content for the time being with the annexation of Crete and of the Turkish provinces bordering on the Greek kingdom — an arrangement which, as he justly argued, would be a guarantee of peace. Accordingly, the Congress, on the proposal of Waddington, invited the Porte, in its 13th protocol, so to rectify the Greek frontier as to make the northern boundary of Hellas march with the Penei6s on the east, and with the Kalamas, which flows into the sea opposite the southern half of Corfu, on the west. The 24th article of the treaty reserved to the Powers the right of their mediation to facilitate this settlement, which had been originally suggested by Salisbury in a despatch of May 28, and for which the Greek Premier expressed his gratitude to England. Crete, on the other hand, was to remain Turkish, the Porte promising to apply the Organic Law of 1868; and the Cretans, who had hoped more from the collective wisdom of the Powers at Berlin than from British intervention, were so keenly disappointed that the General Assembly requested the mediation of the British government with the Porte, while petitions for a British protectorate were sent to consul Sandwith by Cretan Christians. The rest of the Turkish empire, for which no special adminis- tration was provided, had to be content with the prospect of an organisation similar to that which had failed to satisfy the Cretans, the details being left to "special commissions," representing the native populations. This article, destined to cover Macedonia, Thrace, Albania, and the larger part The Cyprus Convention 395 of Epirus, has remained a dead letter, and thus, in 191 2, provided a casus belli. Such were the main provisions of this new charter of the near east, so far as it affected Europe. In Asia, the Black Sea frontier, as fixed at San Stefano, was preserved at Berlin ; the Porte ceded Ardahan, Kars, and Batum to Russia, but retained Bayazid ; while the Tsar promised that Batum should be made "a free port, essentially commercial." Eight years later his successor, despite the protests of the British govern- ment, repudiated this solemn promise, thus affording a further example of Russian good faith. Finally — most futile of all these pledges — by article 61 the Porte undertook "to carry out, without further delay, the ameliorations and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds." Periodical statements of these reforms were to be made to the Powers, who would " super- intend their application." A special responsibility for the protection of the Armenians devolved upon Great Britain in virtue of the Cyprus convention, which had been hastily signed on June 4, and the publication of which during the Congress came as a thunder-clap upon the diplomatic world. By this convention Great Britain engaged to join the Sultan in the defence of his Asiatic dominions against any further Russian attack, and the Sultan promised, in return, " to introduce necessary reforms" there, in consultation with his ally. In order to enable the latter to fulfil her engagement, he assigned to her " the island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by " her as " a place of arms " in the Levant, on payment of an annual tribute, calculated by the average surplus of the five previous years, and on the understanding that a Russian evacuation of the recent Asiatic conquests should be followed by a British evacuation of Cyprus. Thus Beaconsfield "consolidated" the Turkish empire by assigning the administration of Bosnia and the Herzegovina to Austria- 396 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. Hungary and that of Cyprus to Great Britain, with which its sole historical connexion had been the ephemeral conquest by Coeur-de-Lion nearly seven centuries earlier. The Turks were indignant at this pacific cession of their territory ; Cypriotes and British now alike condemn the financial arrange- ments. But the Premier's own opinion of these diplomatic achievements was summed up in the memorable phrase, in which he told the British people on his return from Berlin, that he had brought them " peace with honour." The experience of the generation that has elapsed since the signature of the Berlin treaty forces us, however, to qualify the estimate which the British plenipotentiaries formed of its provisions; the victories of the Balkan League and the Entente have destroyed the status quo which it created. But even before the great upheaval of 191 2 it had not proved in any sense a permanent "settlement of an eternal question"; it had not secured the peace of the Balkan peninsula ; it had not ensured the just treatment of the Christian races which it left under Turkish rule. Almost every signatory Power, and more than one small state, had violated some provision of this solemn international instrument. Turkey had broken articles 23 and 61 by doing nothing to reform the lot of the Macedonian and Armenian populations, while no Power had taken effective steps on behalf of the latter. Russia had torn up article 59 by closing and fortifying Batum ; Austria-Hungary had arbitrarily ex- tended the provisions of article 25 by annexing Bosnia and the Herzegovina. Italy by her annexation of Tripoli and the Cyrenaica had ignored article 63, which proclaimed the maintenance of the treaty of Paris. Bulgaria had already con- temptuously and successfully annulled two whole series of clauses by the union of Eastern Roumelia and the declaration of Bulgarian independence. Roumania had defied article 44 by her persecution of the Jews; the Albanians article 28 by their refusal to be included in Montenegro. The Monte- negrin frontier had been modified by an armed demonstration, xvi] Results of the settlement 397 whereas Greece had received only a portion of the territory indicated as hers in the 13th protocol, and Crete had protested against article 23 to such purpose, that after four of the signatory Powers had placed her under the government of a Greek commissioner, she proclaimed her union with Greece. Two short but desperate wars, one of them fratricidal, a third barely averted, various insurrections in Crete and Albania, and the sanguinary conflict of rival propagandas in Macedonia, had demonstrated the futility of supposing that the paper panaceas and parchment bonds of western diplomacy would heal the racial and religious jealousies or restrain the racial ambitions of centuries in a part of Europe — if Europe it can be called — where the claims derived from medieval, and even ancient, history are constantly invoked as if a thousand years were but as yesterday. Yet, if the treaty of Berlin presents a still more lacerated appearance to-day, it neverthe- less marked an advance towards the ultimate solution of the eastern question, for it greatly diminished Turkish rule over the Balkan Christians, now wholly destroyed by the Balkan Christians themselves. Whatever Servian nationalists may say, the 41 years of Austrian administration in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, with which we may compare the British occupa- tion of Egypt and the French protectorate of Tunisia, had converted two wild Turkish provinces into a civilised Balkan state, even if the subjects did not love their civilisers; free Bulgaria has proved to be a triumphant success ; while the exemption of the Macedonian Greeks from Bulgarian rule led Greek politicians to bless the name of Salisbury for his services in helping to destroy the treaty of San Stefano. But to regard the tattered Berlin treaty as an inviolable law of nature was to ignore the fact that, in the imperfect world of politics, international arrangements are only binding, so long as the contracting parties choose to be bound by them, or the populations concerned are weak and disunited. When, for the first time in history, the "little neighbours" of Turkey 398 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. xvi joined hands against her with the double strength of enthusiasm and organisation, the treaty of Berlin, like all artificial creations, succumbed before the great forces of nature ; and the principle of "the Balkans for the Balkan peoples" proved to be stronger than the barriers, erected by the Powers in their own interests, between the free and the unredeemed members of the same family. THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN EUROPE AFTER THE TREATY OF BERLIN, 1878. V S Bucharest Pirat- "" '"w Trnbvo \ SoflA.B Gi WS em %Rustc>uuk. Plevna ] \ Shupda- ±1 MangaUa, \ U LrG Kuievtchu- .. I--^c--.| BLACK English Miles CAMB. UNIV. PRESS. CHAPTER XVII THE UNION OF THE TWO BULGARIAS (1878-87). The three years immediately following the Berlin Congress were occupied with the delimitation of the new frontiers and the establishment of the new order of things, which in the cases of Roumania, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Greece proved to be more difficult than had been expected. The Roumanian authorities took possession of the Dobrudja in November 1878, but nearly two years elapsed before the boundary between this trans-Danubian province and Bulgaria was fixed. Article 2 of the Berlin treaty had laid down that this boundary was to be drawn " to the east of Silistria," and a struggle now ensued between the Russian delegate and his colleagues on the European commission with regard to this line. While he strove to remove the Roumanian frontier as far away as possible from the celebrated fortress, they desired to fix it so close to the walls as to leave the town slaughter-house in Roumanian territory ! While this point was being argued, the Roumanian government occupied the Arab Tabia redoubt, rendered famous by the exploits of our countrymen in the siege of 1854; and this act so greatly irritated Russia that she insisted upon the evacuation of the position by her late allies — a second humiliation which naturally wounded the pride of a young and valiant nation. At last, in June 1880, the frontier was definitely drawn, so as to give the celebrated redoubt to the Roumanians, who also evaded the obligation of building their bridge so close to Silistria as to be at the mercy of its 400 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. Bulgarian garrison. Thus the Bulgaro-Roumanian frontier was unsatisfactory to both parties : it gave to Bulgaria the strong fortress which dominated the Dobrudja, it gave to Roumania valuable appurtenances of that place. Further difficulties arose out of the regulations for the Danube between the Iron Gates and Galatz. Austria-Hungary, although not a riverain state in this portion of the Danube, succeeded in obtaining the presidency of, and a casting vote on, a mixed commission of those states instituted for its regulation. Against this interference of the Dual Monarchy in the Servian, Bulgarian, and Roumanian reaches of the river, Roumania protested. It was not till 1883 that the treaty of London, signed by the signatory Powers of the treaty of Berlin, finally decided this question. The authority of the European com- mission, prolonged to 1904 and thereafter automatically renewable for periods of three years, was extended as high as Braila, but removed from the Kilia arm of the river, which was partly Russian and partly Roumanian; while from Braila to the Iron Gates simultaneous jurisdiction was exer- cised by a mixed commission, composed of five delegates, selected from Austria- Hungary, the three riverain states, and the European commission, under the chairmanship of the Austrian delegate and with its seat at Giurgevo. The three riverain states were excluded from this conference; Great Britain alone had pleaded for the admission of Roumania to its discussions. Ere this, Roumania, on March 26, 1881, had been proclaimed a kingdom, on the proposal of the same General Lecca who had been instrumental in dethroning Couza 15 years earlier. The Roumanian crown was made from a Turkish cannon captured at Plevna, in token of the manner in which the country's independence had been won. A few months earlier, the succession to the throne had been settled — for " Carmen Sylva's" only child had died in 1875 — by the adoption as heir of Ferdinand, son of that Leopold of Hohenzollern, whose xvn] Austrian Occupation of Bosnia 401 candidature to the Spanish crown had been the occasion of the Franco-German war. The marriage of this nephew of King Charles with Princess Marie, daughter of the late Duke of Coburg, and grand-daughter of Queen Victoria, has connected the Roumanian dynasty with that of Great Britain. With the Germanic Powers the political relations of Roumania became close. After the conclusion of the Triple Alliance in 1882, Bratianu, following the foreign policy already advocated by the " Junimists," or "Young" Conservatives of Moldavia, had interviews with Kalnoky and Bismarck in 1883, thus bringing the Latin nation on the Danube within the orbit of the three central states, in opposition to Russia and France. This connexion involved the abandonment of Roumanian Irre- dentism at the expense of Austria-Hungary, just as Italy's partnership in the Triple Alliance had necessitated official discouragement of the corresponding Italian movement. Thus Roumania then became, under a German sovereign, a repre- sentative of German interests in the near east, and Bucharest a fortified outpost of the Triple Alliance. Sixteen days after the signature of the Berlin treaty, the Austrian troops under Baron von Philippovich crossed the Save in four columns to take possession of Bosnia. The chief column followed the historic route along the Bosna valley which Prince Eugene had taken on the occasion of his famous dash on Sarajevo in 1697. But the Austrians had reckoned without the fanaticism of the Bosnian Mussulmans. On August 3 the Moslems of Maglaj treacherously cut to pieces a squadron of hussars ; and a series of skirmishes followed, until the second column, having captured the ancient .city of Jajce, where the last Bosnian king had met his death in 1463, effected a junction with the main body and pressed on to Sarajevo. When the Austrians approached, an insurrection broke out in the capital ; the Turkish governor was deposed ; and a fanatic, named Hajji Loja, preached a holy war against the Christians. On the 19th the Austrians opened fire upon the city,^which, m. l. 26 402 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. after a desperate resistance, fell into their hands ; & large part of the town perished in the flames, and the grave of many an Austrian soldier still bears silent testimony to the fury of the defenders. Meanwhile, a guerrilla warfare had broken out in the rear, under the command of Muktija EfTendi, an Albanian from Novibazar, who was joined by some Turkish regulars. The Bosna valley was once more the scene of constant conflicts ; and the Herzegovina, which had at first submitted to Baron Jovanovich almost without a blow, became restive. It was necessary to send four more corps to the relief of the army of occupation. The valley of the Bosna was then cleared ; the Herzegovina was subdued by the end of September ; and on October 20 the last stronghold of the Bosnian insurgents surrendered. In 1882, however, another insurrection broke out in the Herzegovina ; and it was not till the appointment of Baron von Kallay, the historian of the Serbs and former consul-general at Belgrade, to direct the destinies of "the Occupied Territory," that the constructive work, which has gone on till recently, began. The military occupation of the three points in the sanjak of Novibazar began with the entrance of th£ Austro-Hungarian troops into Plevlje on September 10, 1879. The Austrians sent only one civil official thither ; and the Turkish administrative, judicial, and financial authorities continued to co-exist with them, while Turkish troops were stationed in the same towns as the Austrian garrisons. The delimitation of the Novibazar frontier, in which Germany supported the Turks, was a cause of Russian resentment; but friendly relations between the Austrians and the Turkish authorities were largely maintained during the period of this mixed occupation by the tact of Ferik Suleiman, the perpetual pasha of Plevlje, who was appointed soon after this strange and hybrid arrangement began. The exclusion of Turkish irregulars from the sanjak by the Austro- Turkish convention of 1879 a ^ s0 nao ^ an excellent effect ; while Ottoman pride was characteristically salved by the diplomatic XVIl] Gusinje and Plava 403 device of forming the three towns and the four small intervening watch-posts occupied by the Austrians into a new and smaller sanjak of Plevlje. But with the natives of this district, mostly Serbs — for here was Rascia, the nucleus of the old Servian monarchy — the " Europeans " were never popular. These " enslaved " Slavs were never allowed by their free Servian and Montenegrin neighbours to forget the treaty of San Stefano ; and they regarded the Austro-Turkish wedge which prevented the union of the two states on either side of them as an obstacle to that dream of a revived Servian empire, which, after the lapse of five centuries, was still ever present to the imaginative minds of the scattered Serbs. In 1881, however, M. Mijatovich, then Servian Minister for Foreign Affairs, signed a secret con- vention with Austria, promising to discourage Servian agitation in Bosnia, on condition that Austria promised to support Servian pretensions to territory in Old Servia, or rather "in the direction of the Vardar valley." This convention, which expired in 1889, is said to have been described by King Alexander as "an act of treason." While Austria was thus taking up her new position as the " sentinel of the Balkans," her neighbour, the Prince of Mon- tenegro, was unable to obtain the two Albanian districts of Gusinje and Plava, which had been assigned to him at Berlin. Their inhabitants were first-class fighting men, who cared for neither the Congress nor the Sultan, and objected to have their homes and themselves transferred without their consent to another state, which, being admittedly better governed than their own, might interfere with their time-honoured privileges of lawlessness. The fact that the Gusinjiotes could almost all speak Serb and were converts from Orthodoxy to Islam only increased the hostility between them and their Montenegrin neighbours, while the alleged " pagan " origin of the dwellers by the lake of Plava may account for their fierce defiance of both Turkish officials and Montenegrin braves. The Sultan's first envoy, sent to induce the Albanians to obey the orders of 26 — 2 404 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. the Berlin Congress, was Mehemet Ali, one of the Turkish plenipotentiaries; but the Arnauts were no respecters of persons, and they set fire to his house at Djakova and murdered him as he fled from the blazing building in September 1878. A second emissary failed to make them yield. Accordingly, in 1879 hostilities broke out between them and the Montenegrins ; and the "Albanian League," which had been formed to combat the treaty of San Stefano, was revived, probably at the sugges- tion, certainly to the satisfaction, of the Porte, which was thus able to make the national sentiment of a race, which had had no separate existence since the days of Skanderbeg, and no great local leader since Ali of Joannina, an excuse for not carrying out its inconvenient engagements. A compromise, suggested by Count Corti, the Italian ambassador at Constanti- nople, according to which Montenegro should receive instead of the towns of Gusinje and Plava a portion only of the former district and a larger strip of territory between Podgoritza and the lake of Scutari (including a part of the Gruda tribe with the town of Tuzi, famous during the Maltsori 1 insurrection of 191 1), was accepted on April 12, 1880, but proved incapable of execution, owing to the determined opposition of the Albanians. Those who inhabited this region were Roman Catholics ; and, if the Mussulman Albanians had objected to Prince Nicholas as a Christian, the Catholics repudiated him as what was worse — an Orthodox one. Prenk Bib Doda, the Mirdite Prince, whose territory to the south of the Drin was not menaced by the proposed aggrandisement of Montenegro, marched at the head of his tribe to the aid of his brothers in faith ; and ere long 10,000 men were on the frontier. Meanwhile, Gladstone had returned to power in England, and his well-known Montenegrin sympathies facilitated a solution of the question. The plenipotentiaries of the Powers met in conference at Berlin in June to consider the best means of securing the performance 1 This appears to be the correct spelling of the word usually spelt " Malissori." xvn] The Dulcigno Demonstration 405 by Turkey of the unfulfilled engagements made there two years before, and proposed in lieu of Count Corti's scheme, that Montenegro should receive the town of Dulcigno and a strip of seaboard as far as the river Bojana. This proposal the Porte refused to accept on the ground that Dulcigno contained a Moslem population, and secretly urged the Albanians to resist its cession. Thereupon, at the suggestion of the British government, a naval demonstration of the Powers was held in September before the old Venetian colony, while Montenegrin troops approached it by land. As the Porte still held out, and the admirals were anxious not to bombard the town, this existence of Dulcigno far niente, as Beust wittily called it, might have continued indefinitely, had not the British government suggested the seizure of the rich custom-house at Smyrna. The mere suggestion had the desired effect; Dervish Pasha, the Turkish commander, drove out the Albanians, and at last, on November 26, the Montenegrins peaceably occupied Dulcigno. Prince Nicholas publicly expressed his gratitude to Great Britain, and he never forgot the part which she played in procuring for him this fresh outlet on the sea. Dulcigno is not, however, the natural frontage of the Black Mountain, but of Albania, as the Arnauts still remember ; it is an apple of discord between them and the Slavs, while the latter have not developed it ; indeed, it is a mere open roadstead, and the neighbouring bay of Val di Noce has never been exploited. But, at any rate, if Montenegro still lacked a good harbour, if her haven of Antivari was till 1909 still bound by Austrian fetters, she had a seaboard of 30 miles, and she owed its extension, as she owed her brief occupation of Cattaro in 181 3, to the aid of a British fleet. Dulcigno, however, has been our last service to the Black Mountain. Gladstone's successors cared nothing about the " smallest among peoples " ; for years they left their country unrepresented at Cetinje, published no reports on its progress, and took no part in its Sovereign's Jubilee, thus allowing British prestige to decline in one of those states 406 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. where it stood highest. Dervish Pasha completed the pacifica- tion of northern Albania by inviting Prenk Bib Doda to visit a Turkish man-of-war, then lying off San Giovanni di Medua. The young Mirdite Prince unsuspectingly accepted the invita- tion ; but he was no sooner on board than the vessel got up steam and carried him off to a 28 years' exile, mostly spent at Kastamuni in Asia Minor, whence he returned in 1908. A corps of gendarmes, the so-called " Mirdite zaptiehs," was formed for the preservation of order in his native land; but during the exile of the Prince and the absence of his mother and sister from the ruined home of the family at Oroshi, the Mirdite capital, all real authority was exercised by the Mirdite Abbot, who had learnt in Newfoundland and Bombay what freedom and civilisation meant. Other leaders of the " League" were exiled, but a fresh bond was formed in 1883 between the four Catholic tribes of Kastrati, Hoti, Gruda, and Skreli, to oppose the definitive delimitation of the Montenegrin frontier. Even in 191 1 there were two points where the boundary of the principality was undefined — at Muzechka on the Albanian, and near Grahovo on the Herzegovinian side; and this purely political line had been so badly drawn in other places, that men of the same family and of the same rights in pasture-land had been placed on opposite sides of this most unscientific and anti-ethnographic frontier. Hence may be traced most of the subsequent disputes between the Montenegrins and Albanians, disputes apt to be magnified into international incidents. The rectification of the Greek frontier, suggested at the Berlin Congress, gave even more trouble than that of the Montenegrin boundary. Beaconsfield had told Greece that she had a future, and that she could accordingly afford to wait. She had to wait three years before she obtained one portion of the new territory indicated as her due ; she waited over 30 for the remainder. The Porte pursued its usual dilatory policy ; the Turkish military authorities maintained that the Penei6s- xvn] The Greek Frontier 407 Kalamas line would not be defensible; and the "Albanian League " made its appearance in Epirus, as well as in northern Albania. When the Porte appointed its commissioners, the Epirote village where they were to meet their Greek colleagues could not be found upon the map ; when the meeting at last took place in February 1879 at Preveza, the commissioners could not agree. The Greeks considered inadequate and in- consistent with the Berlin protocol the frontier offered by the Turks, which ran from a point between Halmyr6s and Volo to the valley of the Aspropotam6s, thus leaving a large portion of the gulf of Volo Turkish, while ceding Halmyros, Domok6s and portions of the districts of Kardi'tza and Pharsala to Greece. Accordingly on March 18 the commission broke up, while Albanian delegates visited the chief European capitals and peti- tions and counter-petitions rained upon the British government from the Greek and Albanian inhabitants of what the former called " Epeiros " and the latter "Albania," the former begging for union with Greece, the latter declaring their intention to fight rather than permit the cession of Preveza, Arta, and Joannina. Waddington then proposed that the negotiations, broken off at Preveza, should be renewed at Constantinople, under the super- vision of the ambassadors of the Powers ; and Salisbury in a masterly despatch pointed out that the frontier of 1832 had been badly chosen, that it had been largely responsible for brigand- age, and that the territory in question was " rather a source of weakness than of strength to the Sultan." Accordingly, a fresh Greco-Turkish commission met on the Bosphorus in August, but with the same result as before ; nor was Salisbury's proposal of a frontier commission more fortunate. The accession of Glad- stone to power in 1880 was welcomed in Greece, as in Monte- negro, for the new Prime Minister was gratefully remembered in connexion with the last extension of Hellas 16 years earlier. Great Britain and France thereupon co-operated in convening a conference of the Powers at Berlin in June for the settlement of the Greek and Montenegrin questions. The frontier there 408 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. adopted on the proposal of the British and French delegates was very favourable to Greece ; it ran from the mouth of the Kalamas on the Ionian Sea to the eastern extremity of the crest of Olympus on the Aegean, leaving both Joannina and Metzovon to Greece; indeed France wished to include the whole of Olympus, the abode of the Greek gods, in Greek territory. Athens went wild with excitement at the news ; Trikotipes, who had again succeeded Koumoundouros as Prime Minister, at once accepted the proposal of the conference, and, when the Porte rejected it, mobilised the Greek army. A change of ministry in France, however, seriously injured the Greek cause. Hitherto the British and French governments had been the best friends of Greece ; but Barthelemy St-Hilaire, the new French Minister of Foreign Affairs, whom the Greeks had ingenuously regarded as a Philhellene because he had translated Aristotle, adopted arguments which his British colleague quali- fied as those of the Turks, in opposition to those of the Powers. The result was that the Porte, finding the Powers disunited, made a firmer resistance, while Greece went on with her military preparations. A French proposal for an arbitration of the Powers on the frontier question failed, because neither of the parties directly concerned desired to pledge itself beforehand to accept the award of the arbitrators. The Porte instead suggested a conference at Constantinople between itself and the representatives of the Powers; and this gathering, from which Greece was excluded, ultimately decided the question. Had the Greeks so desired, they could probably have had Crete, which Bismarck desired to give them instead of the Mussulman population of Epirus, and which the Turkish delegates actually offered, together with a narrow strip of continental territory along the existing boundary and "a few little islands" thrown in, on March 14. But it was naturally the policy of Greece to prefer an increase of territory on the mainland, where there were other Christian competitors, to the union of Crete, which, containing a wholly Greek population, xvn] Cession of Thessaly and Aria 409 was certain sooner or later to be joined to the Hellenic kingdom. Goschen, the British delegate, pleaded for the strategic frontier of Olympus and would have wished to secure Preveza for Greece, while Granville admitted that, after what had happened, " the Greek people" had "the amplest justification for holding that there ought to be a rectification, based on a line traversing the valley of the Kalamas and that of the Penei6s." But it was clear from the outset that the Turks would make the cession of Preveza a casus belli; and, while all the Powers wanted peace, Greece was not prepared for war. Finally, on May 24, 1881, a convention was signed, drawing the frontier line from near the defile of Karalik-Dervend, a little north of the vale of Tempe and about three miles south of Platamona, to the river of Arta, and thence along the course of that river to its mouth on the Ambrakian gulf. Thus Greece received nearly the whole of Thessaly and that portion of Epirus which formed the district of Arta, whose famous bridge became, and long remained, the boundary between the free Greeks and their Epirote brethren — in all a territory of some 14,000 square kilometres. Punta, the " point " at the mouth of the Ambra- kian gulf opposite Preveza, with the strip of Turkish territory behind it, was ceded; and thus one of the two keys of the gulf, which had been specially left to Turkey in 1832, was given to Greece. Both there and at Preveza the fortifications were to be dismantled, and the navigation of the gulf was to be free. The religious property, or vakouf, and the religion of the Mussulmans were to be respected; Greece was to take over "a part of the Ottoman public debt proportionate to the revenues of the ceded territories." The frontier was not ideal ; the summit of the most typical of all Greek mountains was excluded from Greece, in which Pelion and Ossa were included ; while Arta became Greek, the fields of its inhabitants remained Turkish ; and Goschen admitted that Greece deserved a larger share of Epirus, where a journey from Arta or Preveza to Joannina will convince the traveller of the predominantly 410 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. Hellenic character of that then unredeemed district. But the arrangement was probably the best that could be made in the circumstances, nor has Great Britain cause to be ashamed of her part therein. Koumoundouros, who was in his last Premiership, accepted it ; and thus Greece gained the valuable plain of Thessaly and the historic capital of the medieval Despotat of Epirus. Fighting, however, ensued in the follow- ing year for the possession of Karalik-Dervend, seized by the Turks in defiance of the convention, but definitely assigned to Greece by a mixed commission. Thus ended the long-drawn question of the northern frontier, which had cost Greece from first to last two loans, amounting altogether to 180 millions of drachma^ caused an aggregate deficit of 140 millions in her budgets, and led to the introduction in 1877 of the forced paper currency. Trikoupes accordingly during his long administration of over three years devoted his attention to economic questions. In 1884 he was able to abolish the forced currency; but the higher taxes, which he had imposed, produced a re-action, and, in 1885, raised his rival, Theodore Deligiannes, for the first time to the Premiership. For from the death of Koumoun- douros in 1883 to that of Trikoupes in 1896 Greek politics were a duel between those two men, the one a great statesman, the other a consummate parliamentary manager. Crete, still left under Ottoman domination, had to content herself with a modification of the Organic Law of 1868. This modified charter, called the Pact of Halepa, from the consular suburb of Canea, where it was signed in October 1878, provided that the Governor-General should hold office for five years, and should be assisted by an adviser of the opposite religion ; that there should be a General Assembly sitting publicly for 40, or at most, 60 days in the year, and composed of 49 Christians and 31 Mussulmans; that Greek should be the language of both the Assembly and the law-courts ; that natives should have the preference for official posts ; and that, after the cost of local administration had been deducted from the insular revenues, XVIl] The Pact of Hatipa 411 the surplus should be divided in equal shares between the Imperial treasury and the houses of detention, schools, hospitals, harbours, and roads of the island, upon which practically nothing had been spent since the days of the Venetians, for Vely Pasha's well-meant effort to make a road from Rethymne had led to his recall in 1858. Paper money was prohibited; salaries were to be paid in specie ; newspapers were allowed ; and an amnesty and the remission of arrears of taxation promised. In theory, at any rate, the Pact of Halepa was the high-water mark of Ottoman concessions to Crete. The bulk of the Christians were better satisfied than the Mussulmans ; and during the seven years governorship of Photiades Pasha, formerly Ottoman minister at Athens and himself a Greek of conciliatory disposition and administrative capacity, the island had little history. If the Christians desired the Greek government to accept the Turkish offer to cede the island in place of Thessaly in i88t, they acquiesced in its refusal for the sake of the future aggrandisement of the whole race; for advice from Athens usually has much weight in Crete. The most important creation of the Berlin treaty — the principality of Bulgaria — was entrusted to Russian hands during the interregnum which lasted until a Prince could be elected. The Russian Commissioner, Prince Dondukov-Korsakov, was a rich man who kept open house and was personally popular, but he treated the country as a Russian province. All the chief posts were filled by the Russian "liberators," regardless of the fact that the Bulgarian peasants are extremely suspicious of foreigners. At first, while the memories of Turkish rule were fresh in men's minds, recognition of Russia's services reconciled the natives to this alien domination; but political gratitude, even in the Balkans, is usually short-lived, and ere long the Bulgarians began to show that they had not ceased to be Turkish rayahs in order to become Russian subjects. Yet further to strengthen the hold of Russia, the Commissioner prepared the draft of a constitution, at once ultra-democratic 412 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. and ultra-conservative, which was so devised that the Prince could be checkmated by the people and the people by the Prince, while the real power would remain with the Tsar; un- fortunately, paper constitutions never produce in practice the results which they are intended to achieve. It never occurred to the astute framer of the Bulgarian charter, that he had not provided against one contingency which actually arose — the union of Prince and people against their "liberators." Meanwhile, Bulgaria, a land of peasants without the smallest experience of parliamentary institutions, was suddenly endowed with a single Chamber, or ordinary Sobranje, elected by manhood suffrage, with free, compulsory, elementary education, equal electoral districts, payment of members, and a free press. As against these democratic provisions, the Ministers were made independent of the Chamber and creatures of the Prince, who was given the further power of dissolving the Sobranje whenever he chose. No second Chamber was instituted, nor would it have been easy to devise one in a land without an aristocracy, without great fortunes, and without a leisured or a highly cultured class. But for great changes, such as the election of a Prince, the nomination of Regents, the extension, cession, or exchange of territory, or the revision of the constitu- tion, an extraordinary assembly, or Grand Sobranje, was declared necessary. This body was formed of twice the number of members composing the ordinary Chamber. The constitution was passed by an Assembly of Notables, held not at Sofia, the newly-chosen capital, but at the ancient Imperial city of Trnovo on April 28, 1879. Next day, Prince Alexander of Battenberg, son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and nephew of the Tsar, was elected first Prince of Bulgaria. Two months later the new ruler set foot in his principality and took the oath to the constitution at Trnovo. Prince Alexander, at the time of his election, was only 22 years of age; but he had already seen service in the land of his adoption. He had taken part in the Russo-Turkish war, XVIl] Prince Alexander 413 had crosed the Danube at Svishtov and the Balkans with Gourko ; he had fought at Nova Zagora and had stood in the trenches at Plevna; at the time of his election he was serving as a Prussian lieutenant at Potsdam. If, however, his military experience and his tall, martial bearing fitted him for one part of his duties, his complete lack of both political education and statesmanlike capacity were serious drawbacks to the performance of the other. He was obstinate, talkative, and apt to quarrel with his advisers, and he had the great disadvantage of having to trust for some time to interpreters in his intercourse with them. A stranger to the tortuous politics of a newly- emancipated oriental land, in which personal questions naturally played a prominent part, he was certain to make mistakes in council, which, however, he fully redeemed on the field of battle. For the first two years of his reign, the Prince, who had ascended the throne as the nominee of Russia, naturally in- clined towards the Russophil, or Conservative party, although the Nationalists, or Liberals, were in a majority. Finding himself unable to work with his parliament, in 1881 he suddenly issued a proclamation announcing his resignation unless irresponsible authority were conferred upon him for seven years, and ap- pointed the Russian general Ernroth president of the provisional administration. A packed Assembly, held at Svishtov under threat of the Prince's instant departure on the steamer which lay ready in the Danube, conceded his demands; the coup d'itat had succeeded, and he was, to all appearance, master of the country. But Russia was the power behind the brand- new Bulgarian throne ; two more Russian generals, Sobolev and Alexander Kaulbars, arrived from St Petersburg to assume the posts of Premier and Minister of War ; and representative institutions were reduced to a small Chamber which had no function beyond that of voting the budget. Both the Prince and his people soon resented the tactless conduct and imperious ways of the Russian generals, who treated the free Bulgarians as Asiatics, and loathed their ruler as a German. 414 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. Accordingly, in 1883, he restored the constitution of Trnovo ; and his two Russian Ministers retired to their own country. From that moment Russia began to intrigue against the too independent Prince, who was compensated by the affection of his hitherto indifferent people for the loss of Russian patronage. Meanwhile, the International Commission had drawn up the Organic Statute for Eastern Roumelia; and in 1879 Alexander Vogorides, son of the Roumeliote who had been first Prince of Samos, and himself a Turkish official, was appointed the first Governor-General. Aleko Pasha, as he was called in the Turkish service, thus represented in his own person the three nationalities of the province — Bulgarians, Greeks, and Turks — whose languages were all declared to be official. The Roumelian constitution w T as more conservative than that of the neighbouring principality. The local assembly consisted of 56 members, of whom 36 were elected on a property or educational franchise, while the others were either nominated or ex officio members. Politics were excluded from its discussions, which were occupied with financial and administrative questions; the "spoils system," apt to be the curse of the Balkan states, was avoided by a permanent civil service ; and the chief posts were filled by well- to-do Roumeliotes of good family. Six Directors conducted the administration, the chief of whom, the Secretary-General, Gavril Krstjovich, was, like the Governor, a Roumeliote with Samian experience. In these circumstances, Eastern Roumelia was materially better off than the principality ; the Thracian plain is naturally the richest part of the two Bulgarias; and the absence of political agitation is the greatest of blessings that any Balkan land can enjoy. Only in the Rhodope mountains, where a half-English, half-Polish adventurer, named St Clair, owner of a hunting-box near the coast of the Black Sea, had been hailed as a "saviour" by the Mussulman insur- gents at the close of the war, 22 communities of 19,000 Bulgarian Moslems formed the so-called "Pomak Republic," xvn] The Philippopolis Revolution 415 independent alike of Turkey and of Eastern Roumelia, to which the Berlin treaty had assigned them. One of the authors of the massacres of 1876 maintained himself as the chief of this band of fanatical robbers, until, in 1883, the Porte, heedless of the Berlin treaty, annexed the "Republic" by the cheap device of decorating and giving official uniforms to the leading "Republicans." Nationalist feeling was maintained, despite the prosperity of Eastern Roumelia, by the Bulgars of Sliven, the industrial town which regarded the capital as cosmopolitan ; and, when the first Governor-General's five years of office expired, there was an Unionist party, which advocated the nomination of Alexander as his successor. For the moment, however, the Unionists were defeated, and the Russophil Krstjovich was appointed under the name of Gavril Pasha. But the tactless exercise of the Porte's right of veto on Roumeliote legislation, and the wish for a Bulgarian customs union, increased the desire for political unity. A secret gathering fixed the coming revolution for September, 1885 ; and on the morning of the 18th, Majors Nikolajev, Filov, and Mutkurov surrounded the Pasha's kouak at Philippopolis, while Stojanov, the leader of the Unionist agitation, entered his room and told him that he was a prisoner. The aged Governor-General yielded to superior force; he was drawn round the town in mock triumph with a Bulgarian schoolmistress holding an unsheathed sabre by his side, and then sent away to Sofia, and thence to Constantinople. Not a single drop of blood stained the revolution ; the Union of the two Bulgarias under Alexander was proclaimed ; and a provisional government, of which Dr Stranski was the head, was formed to await his decision. The Prince had been forewarned of the conspirators' plans, but he hesitated at first to defy Turkey and the Powers by accepting their offer. Stambulov, then Speaker of the Chamber, told him, however, plainly, that, if he did not advance to Philippopolis, he must retire to Darmstadt; for Bulgarian opinion wanted the Union, and would abandon a 41 6 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. Prince who had not the moral courage to achieve the national desire. Alexander, accordingly, ordered the mobilisation of the army, and on September 21 entered Philippopolis. The Sobranje at once approved the Union, and voted an extra- ordinary credit for its defence. To the general surprise, the Sultan contented himself with protests and merely defensive preparations, hesitating between the fear of complications in Albania and Macedonia and that of offending the Moslems. The Powers, especially Russia, professed to be scandalised at so flagrant an infraction of the Berlin treaty; but Great Britain, where Salisbury, then in power, was convinced that the movement was national and anti-Russian, insisted that the wishes of the Roumeliote popu- lation should be consulted. One of the first acts of the provisional government and of the people of Philippopolis was to implore British aid and to appeal to British love of liberty ; and our consuls were ordered to recognise that body as the de facto authority. The Tsar Alexander III was so indignant at his cousin's audacity, that he struck his name off the army list, and recalled all Russian officers from Bulgaria. Still more violent was the opposition of Bulgaria's two rivals in the Balkans, Greece and Servia. Both countries demanded territorial com- pensation for the aggrandisement of the principality ; and the Cretans proclaimed once more their union with Greece. Servia sought to obtain the former sanjaks of Vidin and Sofia as far as the river Isker; three members of the Deligiannes Cabinet advocated immediate naval action in Crete and the seizure in Epirus of the frontier proposed at the Berlin conference. But their policy was not adopted ; and, while Greece went on with her preparations, a conference of the ambassadors of the Powers met at Constantinople to consider the Eastern Roume- lian question. Salisbury, in direct opposition to the policy adopted after the treaty of San Stefano, strongly supported the Union, realising that Bulgaria was not, as had been feared in 1878, merely a Russian outpost. His instructions to Sir William xvn] Serbo-Bulgarian War 417 White, who represented Great Britain in the conference, were to induce the Sultan to abstain from military intervention, to secure, if possible, the appointment of Alexander as Governor- j General of Eastern Roumelia for life, and to resist all proposals for his deposition. The fact that the Prince was a Battenberg assured to him the sympathy of Queen Victoria. The only serious danger was on the side of Servia. On March 6, 1882, Prince Milan, to show the superiority of his position, had been proclaimed King, and Servia raised to the dignity of a kingdom. But the glamour of this title did not make King Milan popular; his life was attempted in the Belgrade cathedral; his peasant subjects rose in rebellion against the arbitrary measures of his "iron Minister," Christich; while the Karageorgevich pretender was more threatening because he had married a daughter of Prince Nicholas of Montenegro. Dynastic reasons, therefore, suggested a spirited foreign policy as the best means of raising the prestige and increasing the popularity of the Obrenovich family. Nor were there lacking other motives for a conflict. The Bulgarians j coveted Pirot, the Serbs desired Vidin; and the river Timok, by changing its course, had created a delicate question of frontier between the mutually jealous neighbours. A tariff war yet further embittered their relations, so that the news of the Philippopolis revolution found both King and people predis- posed for war. Financially in a desperate position — for she had spent much on her railways — Servia had little to lose; as Garashanin expressed it in a pithy Servian proverb "a naked man will jump far." All parties were unanimous for war, and the clergy inflamed the peasants. The result was a complete surprise. When, on. November 14, Servia began hostilities, the general belief was that the "King of Servia and Macedonia," as the Belgrade populace styled Milan, would have a triumphal march to Sofia. Appearances pointed to such a conclusion, for the Bulgarian army was denuded of its Russian instructors, whose places had been hastily taken by young officers, while M. L. 27 4i 8 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. the Servians had had the experience of two campaigns. But the Bulgarians were fired with zeal for the national cause; even the Moslems of the principality rallied to the side of a leader who had shown them toleration; recruits from Macedonia crossed the frontier ; and the main body of the Servian army, when on November 16 it approached the picturesque village of Slivnitza, which lies on the direct route to Sofia, found Prince Alexander facing it at the head of his hastily collected forces. The battle of Slivnitza, which lasted for the next three days, was the Bulgarian principality's baptism of fire. The night before the battle, the raw Bulgarian levies were still doubtful; but, when the fighting began, the splendid example of the Prince inspired them with firmness. The critical moment was reached on the third day, when a rumoured march of the Serbs on the capital from the south caused a panic at Sofia and the Prince had to reassure the terrified citizens by his presence. The alarm proved to be false; the Serbs were defeated at Slivnitza; their siege of Vidin proved fruitless; King Milan asked in vain for an armistice; and the Bulgarians, after a two days' battle at Pirot, occupied that coveted town. The road to Belgrade lay open to the invaders, but next day Austria intervened to save her protege '; and Count Khevenhiiller informed Prince Alexander that, if he advanced further, he would find an Austrian army before him. Thus, on November 28, ended this fourteen days' fratricidal war; an armistice was signed in Pirot; and on March 3, 1886, the treaty of Bucharest restored the status quo. Bulgaria gained from Servia neither territory nor money, neither Pirot nor pigs; but she had established that right which comes of might to the possession of Eastern Rou- melia. Meanwhile, the conference had been interrupted; but the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, Tsanov, had negotiated terms with the Porte, and on April 5 the revived conference ratified this arrangement. The government of Eastern Roumelia was to be "entrusted to the Prince of Bulgaria, in accordance with article 17 of the treaty of Berlin"; so long as the administration XVIl] Results of Slivnitza 419 of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia remained in the same hands, the Mussulman villages in the canton of Kirdjali and the adjacent home of the Pomaks in the Rhodope (hitherto ex- cluded from the administration of Eastern Roumelia) were to be administered directly by Turkey, in lieu of the Porte's right (as set forth in article 1 5 of the Berlin treaty) to provide for the defence of the Eastern Roumelian frontiers by raising fortifica- tions and keeping troops on them; and a commission, appointed by the Prince and the Porte, was to examine the Organic Statute of Eastern Roumelia, with a view to its revision. The diplomatic cleverness of this settlement is obvious. The letter of the Berlin treaty was preserved; the Turkish annexation of the "Pomak Republic" was legalised; in the eyes of Turkish theorists, Eastern Roumelia remained a separate province, united by a limited personal union with the principality; while the practical Bulgarians regarded it as "Southern Bulgaria," whose administration was merged in that of the north, and whose 9 1 representatives sat with their northern brothers in the same National Assembly. Thus, Alexander was a Prince for life at Sofia, a pasha for five years at Philippopolis — a position somewhat galling to his dignity but of little real disadvantage to his people. The Bulgarian triumph at Slivnitza had yet further increased the excitement in Greece. Deligiannes had reintroduced the forced paper currency, abolished in 1884, and raised a "patriotic" loan of 30 millions of drachmai. Two collective notes, addressed, at Salisbury's suggestion, by the representatives of the six Powers to the Greek Premier, the former inviting him to disarm, the latter informing him that "no naval attack by Greece upon the Porte could be admitted," produced no effect upon him, but were, on the contrary, followed by warlike demonstrations in various provincial towns. The advent of Gladstone to power at this juncture, with Lord Rosebery at the Foreign Ofiice, in no wise modified Salisbury's Greek policy; and men-of-war began to concentrate in Suda bay. Deligiannes called up two more 27 — 2 420 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. classes of the reserves, and, on hearing of the decision of the conference to permit the practical union of the two Bulgarias, reiterated the necessity of conceding to Greece the frontier promised to her at Berlin, as a means of "re-establishing the equilibrium between the various races of the Balkan peninsula." On April 26, the Powers, with the exception of France, who restricted herself to friendly advice, invited the Greek govern- ment to place its forces on a peace footing. As Deligiannes' replies were not considered adequate, on May 8 the five Powers, whose ministers left Athens, proclaimed the blockade of the Greek coasts from Cape Malea to the north-eastern frontier and of the entrance to the gulf of Corinth. By the irony of fate, the chief command of the blockading squadron off the island of Keos was entrusted to the Duke of Edinburgh, who, as Prince Alfred, 23 years earlier had been elected king of the country that he was now coercing. Upon the establishment of the blockade, Deligiannes resigned; and, after a brief Cabinet of affairs under Balbes, Trikoiipes returned to power. Meanwhile, skirmishes had taken place on the frontier, where the two armies were facing one another ; but an armistice was arranged and a disarmament decree issued by the new Ministry. Thereupon the blockade was raised on June 7. The military preparations of this lengthy crisis cost Greece deficits to the amount of 95 millions of drachmai and a forced currency, destined to remain in circula- tion for many years, while it temporarily diminished the popularity of Gladstone in the Hellenic world. A long period of repose ensued in Greece, where Trikoiipes, installed in power for the next four years, reduced the number of deputies to 150, developed the railway system, strengthened the navy, and spent freely upon public works. Prince Alexander did not long enjoy his triumph. An enemy more insidious than Turkey or Servia was scheming for his overthrow. Russia had not forgotten his audacity in achieving for himself what she had failed to accomplish for her own ends at San Stefano ; even before the union she had xvii] Prince Alexander kidnapped 421 sought to rid the principality of a ruler, whose motto since 1883 na d been "Bulgaria for the Bulgars." In May a plot against his life, organised in the Russian interest, was discovered at Bourgas; and in many other towns of Eastern Roumelia the centralising tendencies of the Bulgarian government, which dismissed or transferred local officials, replacing them by men from the principality, caused dissatisfaction. In the army there were discontented officers, whose services had not been ade- quately rewarded and who were ready to play the Russian game, certain to be disavowed in case of failure, sure to be recognised in case of success. Of these the chief were Major Grujev, the head of the Military Academy, and Capt. Benderev, the Acting Minister of War. The conspirators, some 80 in number, selected the moment when Sofia was almost denuded of troops in consequence of an alarm on the Servian frontier, and at two in the morning of August 21, 1886, entered the palace, and forced Alexander, by pointing their loaded revolvers at his head, to sign a paper abdicating the throne. Three hours later he was driven with his brother Francis Joseph to the monastery of Etropol and next day to the Danube, where he was conveyed on board his yacht, and on the morning of August 23 landed at the Russian port of Reni, whence he was allowed to proceed to Lemberg. Thus, the first Prince of Bulgaria, like Couza 20 years earlier, was kidnapped and deposed before Europe could say a word. Despite railways and telegraphs, the Balkan states still furnished materials fit for medieval romances. As soon as the officers had successfully performed their part of the plot, the civilian element made its appearance, under the leadership of Dragan Zankov, who had been in his time mer- chant, journalist, schoolmaster, Turkish official, and Bulgarian Prime Minister, and who had never forgiven Alexander for having once dismissed him from office and arrested him as an agitator. In former days an advocate of ecclesiastical union with Rome, latterly a Liberal but a partisan of Russia, he held 422 Union of the two Bulgarias [ch. a meeting of youths, idlers, hawkers, and professional politicians ■ — for the mass of the population was apathetic — at which the late Prince was denounced as "a German foreigner who had tried to estrange" Bulgaria's natural protectress and to ally her "with her hereditary enemy." The meeting was then ad- journed to the cathedral, where, as not infrequently happens in Balkan states, an intriguing churchman was found, in the person of the Metropolitan Clement, ready to pronounce the blessing of Almighty God upon the band of traitors. The next move was to the Russian agency, in front of which the free Bulgars were ordered by their leaders to go down on their knees in the mud, while the Metropolitan, addressing the representative of the Tsar, begged that Russia would "take the interests, liberty, and future of Bulgaria under her high protection at this grave moment, and defend her from danger." After this degrading scene, the conspirators proceeded to form a provisional govern- ment. As Peter Karavelov, who was Radical Prime Minister at the time, declined to have anything to do with them and strongly repudiated the use which they had made of his name to lend a colour of authority to their coup d^itat^ the supple Metropolitan assumed the Premiership, with Zankov at the Ministry of the Interior ; and a proclamation was issued, in- forming the people that "the mighty Russian Tsar, the protector of Bulgaria," would not leave their "fatherland without his powerful protection." Sofia remained, however, for only three days in the hands of the conspirators. Stambulov, then Speaker of the Sobranje^ held his native city of Trnovo for the Prince, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. Gregorian Church under Russian, and its Patriarch under Turkish, authority, the Armenians, in a secret petition presented to the Congress of Berlin, had disclaimed political ambition and had begged for an arrangement modelled on that of the Lebanon, under a Christian governor. Instead of this, the collective wisdom of Europe was content with a vague promise of security and reforms. Great Britain did indeed send consuls to report on the condition of Asia Minor ; but even Gladstone, when he came into power in 1880, dropped the Armenian question at a hint from Bismarck. A so-called "Armenian constitution," granted in 1863, which entrusted Armenian affairs to a "National General Assembly" meeting biennially at Constantinople under the presidency of the Patriarch, with two smaller councils for religious and civil business, alone represented Armenian nationality in Turkey. Down to 1889 the question attracted no further attention. But in that year the first news of outrages in the Armenian provinces of Turkey reached England. Abdul Hamid II had meanwhile established a system of highly centralised personal government; Midhat's short-lived parliament had long been dissolved, and its author had died in exile; the Palace had superseded the Porte; and the Sultan's favourites had more influence in the affairs of the empire than his Ministers. At the same time the Armenians had become the objects of sus- picion to the Sultan and the Tsar alike, and both Russians and Turks professed to discern an "Armenian peril" in the material progress of these clever and industrious, but unpopular, men of business. When the cry of oppression was raised, the Turkish authorities merely prosecuted Moussa Bey, a Kurdish chief, who was acquitted, but ultimately exiled. The Armenians, on their part, were already agitating; their societies, of which the chief bore the significant name of Hindchak ("the Bell"), sounded the alarm in the ears of somnolent diplomacy. The Kurds, reinforced by the fanatical Mussulmans whom the events of 1878 had driven "bag and baggage" into Asia, redoubled xvi 1 1] The Armenian Massacres 429 their exactions; conflicts arose, and the Armenian massacres began. For three weeks in the late summer of 1894 the district of Sasun in the province of Bitlis became the scene of horrors which recalled those of Batak. The Kurds, aided by Turkish troops, under the command of Zekki Pasha, destroyed 24 villages, and butchered, with the most revolting cruelty, every Armenian whom they could find. Zekki was decorated for his "services"; but Great Britain demanded the appointment of a commission of enquiry, which British, French, and Russian delegates should accompany. The commission, officially de- signated as intended "to enquire into the criminal conduct of Armenian brigands," conducted its proceedings with the partiality which might have been expected from this statement of its object, and proved as dilatory as most Turkish institutions. In vain, the three Powers presented a scheme of Armenian reform; in vain, great meetings were held in London and Paris on behalf of the Armenians. An Armenian demonstra- tion at Constantinople on September 30, 1895, only resulted in a massacre of many in the capital and of many more at Trebizond. But this was nothing compared with what was to come. While the ambassadors were presenting a new scheme of reforms to the Sultan, which he promised to see carried out faithfully, a gigantic massacre was taking place in Asia Minor. During part of October and the whole of November the Ar- menians were murdered wholesale; and the murders were organised by the Sultan's officials, headed by Shakir Pasha. The British ambassador wrote home that "over an extent of territory considerably larger than Great Britain" all the large towns save three and almost all the villages had suffered, and that a moderate estimate put the loss of life in those six weeks at 30,000. Still, however, the massacres continued. The cathedral of Urfa, the Edessa of the Crusaders, was the scene of a human holocaust, in which nearly 3000 persons perished; Van, hitherto spared, was selected for the next great crime; while the Powers, 43° Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. fearful of reopening the eastern question by active intervention, which would have aroused mutual suspicions, left the Armenians to their fate and contented themselves with demanding the presence at Constantinople of a second stationnaire for the pro- tection of their own subjects. But Europe was soon to learn that under the very shadow of the embassies the unhappy Armenians could be butchered with impunity. A body of the latter, more desperate than the rest, indignant at the supineness of the Powers and infuriated at the forced resignation of the Armenian Patriarch and the irregular appointment of his successor, seized the premises of the Ottoman bank and only left them under promise of a safe conduct and the protection of the ambassadors. Scarcely had they been shipped on board a French steamer, than the infuriated Sultan took a terrible vengeance upon their innocent compatriots. For the next two days, August 27 and 28, 1896, the streets of Constantinople were the theatre of an organised massacre. The Armenian quarter was attacked by gangs of men, armed with clubs, who bludgeoned every Armenian whom they met, and forced their way into the houses of Armenians or foreigners who had Armenian servants, in pursuit of their victims. Police officers and soldiers aided, and even directed, this Turkish St Bartholo- mew ; and it was not till the representatives of the Powers, who had seen with their own eyes what had occurred, sent a strongly- worded note to the palace, that the order was issued to stop the slaughter. Some 6000 persons perished in this horrible carnage \ and, in the words of a British diplomatist, it seems to have been "the intention of the Turkish authorities to exterminate the Armenians." The perfect organisation of the shambles was proved by the fact that scarcely anyone who did not belong to that race perished, and that those few exceptions were due to such accidents as will happen even in the best regulated massacres. The "disturbances at Constantinople," as they were euphe- mistically called by diplomatists, convinced even the most xvi 1 1] The Armenian Massacres 431 incredulous that the previous massacres in remote parts of the empire had not been mere inventions. Gladstone, once more sallying forth from his retirement, as he had done at the moment of the Bulgarian atrocities, made his last great public utterance at Liverpool on behalf of the Armenians, and branded Abdul Hamid II as "the Great Assassin," while French writers pilloried him as "the Red Sultan." But no steps were taken to punish the author of the Armenian horrors. Germany, anxious for concessions in Asia Minor, constituted herself his protrectress, and reaped the reward of her selfish and inhuman policy. Austria-Hungary was too deeply interested in the Balkan peninsula to risk action, of which it was difficult to foresee the results. Russia had cynically declared through the mouth of Lobanov, that she did not, after her experiences in Europe, desire the creation of another Bulgaria in Asia Minor. Salisbury, again in power, solemnly and publicly warned the Sultan of the consequences of his misgovernment, and suggested the eventual necessity of employing force; the French ambassador at Con- stantinople advocated the despatch of a fleet as the only means of intimidating Abdul Hamid; and among British residents there the opinion was expressed that Great Britain should, and could, have acted with more vigour. The most that can be said is that, having, in virtue of the Cyprus convention, greater responsibilities towards the Armenians than any other signatory of the Berlin treaty, she did a little more to support them. Further, but smaller, massacres at Tokat formed a sequel to the atrocities. Then Crete supplanted Asia Minor in the attention of the European public ; and the sufferings of the Armenians were forgotten till in 1909 the massacres at Adana renewed them. The presence of the European squadron in Cretan waters in 1886 and the collapse of the warlike movement in Greece had restricted the movements of the Christian islanders to a Platonic declaration of union at that crisis; and it was not till 1889 that a fresh insurrection took place, which differed, 43 2 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. however, in its origin from those which had preceded it. On this occasion the quarrel was not, in its inception, between the Christians and the Moslems, but between two political parties, described as Liberals and Conservatives, but really only actuated by the desire to obtain, or retain, office with the spoils attaching thereto. The Liberals, having obtained an overwhelming majority at the elections of that year, excluded their adversaries from all the available posts ; whereupon five Conservative depu- ties brought forward a motion for union with Greece, in order to embarrass their opponents. Trikoupes, who was still in power at Athens, through M. Grypares, the Greek consul at Canea, did all that he could to discourage an agitation which he considered inopportune, and pointed out that Crete was only a part of the general Hellenic question. But the magic word of union, once uttered, rekindled the latent enmity of the rival creeds ; what had been originally a party quarrel between two gangs of place- hunters became a religious struggle between Christians and Moslems. The mission of an Imperial special commissioner, with power to offer ^T. 20,000 and an agricultural bank, only alarmed the Mussulmans without contenting the Christians. Murders occurred; retaliation ensued; one sect fired the villages of the other; Moslem peasants crowded into the coast-towns; Christian refugees fled to Athens; and, while the Porte sent troops by driblets, Trikoupes urged the Powers, and especially Great Britain, to act. The Sultan, having recalled his Polish v<, issued a firman on November 24, which virtually repealed the Pact of Halepa, declared the office of Governor- General to be unlimited by time, reduced the numbers of the Assembly to 57 members (of whom 35 were to be Christians), announced the formation of a gendarmerie from natives of other Ottoman provinces, established a fixed sum in lieu of the tithe of oil, and gave a preference to those who knew Turkish (which is not the language of Crete) in official appointments. This firman created widespread disappointment, while its democratic proviso, that judges should continue to be popularly xvii i] Disturbances in Crete 433 elected, perpetuated one of the worst evils in the island. The insurrection ceased; but desultory outrages continued, and an outlaw, named Liapes, who had many murders to his account, was depicted as a hero to the Athenian populace, till Deli- giannes, who had ousted Trikoiipes in 1890, but who pursued his rival's pacific policy, prohibited this cult. Meanwhile, three Mussulmans successively held the post of Governor-General, to the manifest advantage of the minority, until the Sultan, in 1895, at last yielded to the violent importunities of the Cretans, and appointed Alexander Karatheodori Pasha, a Christian who had been Prince of Samos, as vali. The increase of the numbers of the Assembly, which had not met since 1889, to 65 — 40 Christians and 25 Mussulmans — seemed to have dissipated the dangers of further disputes. But the Cretan Moslems, like most minorities accustomed to the exercise of power, were resolved to demonstrate the futility of attempting to govern Crete through the medium of a Christian. Murders of Christians began; a Christian Com- mittee of Reform was founded and embittered the situation ; while Karatheodori, who had made himself personally popular with the Mussulmans, was deprived by his government of the means of paying his gendarmerie. The re-appointment of a Mussulman as his successor, instead of satisfying the Moslem party, disgusted both sides, for the Mussulmans wanted a military governor, while the Christians desired another Christian. Such was the state of tension when the insurrection, which was to end in the practical destruction of Turkish rule over Crete, broke out on May 24, 1896, with a sanguinary conflict in the streets of Canea. Too late, the Sultan accepted the advice of the Powers, revived the Pact of Halepa, promised to summon the General Assembly and to grant an amnesty, and appointed a Christian governor in the person of George Berovich, who also had been Prince of Samos. One commis- sion, comprising European officers, was to organise the gend- armerie) another to reform the tribunals. This arrangement, M. L. 28 434 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. accepted by the Christians, was regarded by the Mussulmans, who derived their inspiration from the palace, as one of the usual paper reforms which they were expected to resist ; and the arrival of the Turkish officer, who had been connected with the Armenian massacres at Van, encouraged their resis- tance. The customary delay in beginning the work of organising the police made the Christians also suspicious ; and a Mussul- man outbreak at Canea on February 4, 1897, followed by the burning of a large part of the Christian quarter, renewed the civil war. The Christians occupied Akroteri, the "peninsula" between Canea and Suda bay, and proclaimed union with Greece. Meanwhile, the news of a massacre at Canea had caused immense excitement at Athens, where, since the last Cretan outbreak, the politicians had been mainly occupied with economic questions, culminating in the financial crisis of 1893, and the currant, and likewise the currency, crisis of 1894-5, when the exchange went up to 46 dr. 87 /. to the £. Trikoiipes, who had counselled quiet at the time of the last insurrection, was now dead ; and Deligiannes, the bellicose Minister of 1885, was once more in power. But even the greatest of Greek statesmen could no longer have resisted public opinion. Greece had incurred enormous expenses for the maintenance of the Cretan refugees at Athens, while there were numbers of Cretans established in Greece, whose influence was naturally in favour of intervention. Prince George, the King's second son, left the Piraeus, amidst enthusiastic demonstrations, with a flotilla of torpedo boats to prevent the landing of Turkish reinforcements; and on February 15 a Greek force under Col. Vassos, with orders to occupy Crete in the name of King George, to restore order and to drive the Turks from the forts, landed a little to the west of Canea. The same day the admirals of the five European Powers, whose ships were then in Cretan waters, occupied the town, whence the last Turkish governor of the island had fled for ever. The insurgents on xvm] Excitement in Greece 435 Akroteri then attacked the Turkish troops, until the admirals forced them to desist by a bombardment, which caused intense indignation at Athens and some disgust in London among those who remembered Navarino. A note of the Powers promising autonomy on condition of the withdrawal of the Greek ships and troops met with an unfavourable reply; and, though the admirals issued a proclamation of autonomy, they followed it up by a blockade of the island, and by another bombardment of the insurgents at Malaxa above Suda bay. The conflict between Hellenism and its hereditary foe could no longer be confined to "the great Greek island." In Greece a body called the "National Society" forced the hand of the government; an address from 100 British members of parliament encouraged the masses, ignorant of the true con- ditions of British politics, to count upon the help of Great Britain; the King, in a speech to the people, talked of putting himself at the head of an army of 100,000 Hellenes. The secret history of the weeks immediately preceding the war is still only a matter of surmise; but the opinion is now held in Greece, that King George expected the Powers to prevent hostilities at the last moment; he could then have yielded to their pressure without risking his position with his subjects. Neither he nor the Sultan wanted a war, from which the latter knew that, if successful, he would gain nothing; and at the outbreak of hostilities he was less unpopular at Athens than the German Emperor, whose officers accompanied the Turkish army, whose policy throughout had been bitterly hostile to the country, of which his sister would one day be Queen, and who is still held largely responsible for the war. Among the Greeks, who had had no war with Turkey since that of Independence, but who had wished to fight in 1854, in 1878, and in 1886, there was intense enthusiasm, unfortunately as yet unaccompanied by organisation. Greece is a profoundly democratic land where the soldier does not recognise a social superior in his officer, where the critical faculty is highly developed, and the national 28—2 436 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. tactics were aptly described by the phrase "klephtic war" (kA.€<£- T07ro'Xe/xos), while the military qualities of the Turks were then universally recognised, and their army had been schooled by German instructors. Thus, the contest was unequal, even though a band of red-shirted "Garibaldians" of various nations, under a son of the great captain, came to the aid of the Greeks and money poured into the war fund from abroad. On April 9 armed bands of the "National Society" crossed into Macedonia ; further conflicts occurred on the Thessalian frontier ; and on April 1 7 Turkey declared war. True to his traditional policy of dividing the Christian races of the near east against each other, the Sultan secured the neutrality of Bulgaria and Servia by an opportune grant of bishoprics, com- mercial agents, and schools in Macedonia. An Austro-Russian note to the Balkan courts warned them not to interfere in the struggle. Thus any hopes of common action by the Christians were dissipated, and the ring was confined to the two com- batants. The "Thirty Days' War" was an almost unbroken series of Greek disasters. The Greek navy, which was superior to that of the Turks, and upon which great hopes had been placed, effected nothing except the futile bombardment of Preveza, the capture of a cargo of vegetables at Santi Quaranta and that of a Turcophil British member of parliament. This inaction of the fleet was doubtless due to the influence of the Powers. A bombardment of Smyrna or Salonika would have mainly damaged the Greek populations of those cities; but Turkish islands could easily have been taken, as by the Italian and Greek fleets in 19 12, and better terms thereby obtained at the peace. Thus, Greece was deprived of her most valuable arm. On land, the campaign naturally fell into two divisions, one in Thessaly, the other in Epirus. In Thessaly Edhem Pasha, the Turkish commander, after severe fighting in the Melouna pass, and an obstinate battle at Reveni, occupied Larissa, whence the Crown Prince's troops had fled in disorder; in Epirus the battle of Pente Pegadia, the "Five Wells," between xviii] Greco-Turkish War of 1897 437 Arta and Joannina, where the Greeks had twice defeated the Turks in 1854, saved the latter town, and cost the life of Clement Harris, a British Philhellene. The Turkish advance across the Thessalian plain aroused a reaction at Athens. The indignant crowd marched on the unprotected palace ; and the King owed the preservation of his throne to the prompt intervention of Demetrios Rhalles, a democratic politician, who had formed a party of his own in Attica and had become the most influential leader of the Opposition, and the idol of the Athenians. The scene of Kleon, demanding to be entrusted with authority, was re-enacted; and Rhalles was forthwith appointed Prime Minister on April 29. Next day Col. Smolenski, "the hero of Reveni," who had fought in Crete as a volunteer in 1868, and was the one officer who had distinguished himself in the war, repulsed the Turks in a first attack on Velestino, the site of the legend of Alkestis, but had to yield in a second battle; the classic field of Pharsalos was the scene of one Greek defeat, and the unknown village of Gribovo in Epirus that of another; and the climax was reached when, on May 17, the battle of Domokos, in which the Italian Fratti renewed the heroic tradition of Santa Rosa, as Harris had that of Byron, opened to the Turks the Phourka pass which leads down to Lamia. A panic seized the Athenians at the news; the royal family durst not show itself in the streets; the royal liveries were changed; pictures of Smolenski replaced the royal por- traits in the shop-windows. Then the Powers intervened; an armistice was signed on May 19 and 20 in Epirus and Thessaly; and Col. Vassos, who had already left Crete, was followed by the rest of his men. A treaty of peace was concluded at Constantinople on December 4, which provided for the evacua- tion of Thessaly by the Ottoman troops, and the cession for the second time of that province to Greece, except one village and certain strategic positions, which brought the Turkish frontier very near Larissa. Greece was ordered to pay a war indemnity of ^T.4,000,000, and submitted to an International 43 8 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. Commission of Control over "the collection and employment of revenues sufficient for the service of the war indemnity loan and the other national debts." The six Powers were each represented by a delegate on this Commission ; and the govern- ment monopolies of salt, petroleum, matches, playing cards, cigarette paper, and Naxian emery, the tobacco and stamp dues, and the import duties collected at the Piraeus were ear-marked for its disposal. In the following year the Turkish troops left Thessaly and with them almost all the remaining Moslem landowners; of this brief second Ottoman occupation a series of Turkish postage-stamps is almost the sole record. Soon, in Thessaly, as at Chalkis, a few mosques — the finest has perished by fire — will alone remind the traveller that there for nearly five centuries the Turk held sway. The final settlement of the Cretan question long vexed the diplomatists of Europe. Eighteen months were spent in the search for a governor. A Swiss Federal Councillor, a Luxem- burg colonel, a Montenegrin minister were in turn proposed. Meanwhile, Germany, followed by Austria, had retired from the European Concert on the Cretan question ; and the forces of the four other Powers, supported by their fleets under the command of the Italian Admiral Canevaro, had occupied the coast-towns, the British holding Candia, the Russians Rethymne, the French Sitia and the islet of Spinalonga, the Italians Hierapetra, and all four Canea. In these places, especially within the cordon of Candia, the Mussulmans were herded, while the Christians held the whole of the open country, and a migratory assembly, presided over by Sphakianakes, issued decrees under the seal of Minos. An attack upon the British in the harbour of Candia and the murder of their vice-consul on September 6, 1898, hastened a settlement of the Cretan question. Admiral Noel's energy achieved what diplomacy had long striven to obtain ; the ring- leaders were hanged, and two months after the affray at Candia the last detachment of Turkish troops left the island ; the fort xvm] Prince George in Crete 439 on the islet in Suda bay was thenceforth alone occupied by Ottoman soldiers. On November 26, the representatives of the four protecting Powers at last met at the palace at Athens, and offered to Prince George of Greece the post of their High Commissioner in Crete for three years, under the suzerainty of the Sultan. Each Power promised to advance ^40,000 for the initial expenses of the new administration. Their offer, due to the influence of the Tsar Nicholas II (whose life Prince George had saved in Japan), was accepted ; and on December 21, the Greek Prince landed at Suda. Five days later the admirals left ; and, though the troops of the four Powers still remained, the High Commissioner was the sole responsible authority in the island, while their representatives in Rome under the presidency of Admiral Canevaro, who had become Italian Foreign Minister, formed a Cretan Areopagos, before which the affairs of the island were still discussed. The Prince's appointment, originally made for three years, lasted for nearly eight ; and for the first five Crete remained tranquil. Naturally popular with the Christians, he endeavoured to reassure the Mussulmans ; and, if he made a pilgrimage to the historic monastery of Arkadion, he also visited the chief mosque at Canea. Even the Sphakiote chiefs were induced to give up their weapons. A mixed commission, under the chairmanship of Sphakianakes, was appointed for the pur- pose of drawing up a constitution; and in 1899 the first Assembly of Autonomous Crete, composed of 138 Christians and 50 Moslems, met to examine its draft. In accordance with this constitution, as definitely accepted, the Prince appointed five "Councillors" (one a Mussulman), while he was allowed to nominate 10 members of the Chamber of Deputies, a body otherwise elected biennially, which was to meet every year. Sphakianakes, who had played so pro- minent a part in the emancipation of his country, then retired into private life. "For the first time for 1900 years, since the Roman conquest by Metellus," wrote an enthusiastic 44-0 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. Athenian journal, " Crete possesses a completely autonomous government." Finally, the Russian authorities retired from Rethymne and the British from Candia ; the disarmament of this, the most dangerous district of the island, the complete extinction of crime there, the institution of a postal service, and the increase of the provincial revenue had all been achieved at Candia by Sir H. Chermside and his assistants. The departure of the British gave a further impetus to the Moslem emigration, which was encouraged by the Sultan ; and the census of 1900 showed that the Mussulmans had dwindled to only one-ninth of the population, and that they were mainly confined to the three chief towns. A gendarmerie of Cretans organised and officered by Italian carabineers, took the place of the Montenegrins in the preservation of order. A Cretan flag, postage-stamps, and small coins were further steps towards independence ; and M. Eleutherios Venizelos, the ablest of the Prince's Councillors, suggested the formation of the island into a principality, like Samos, at the end of his three years' term. This proposal naturally aroused indignation at Athens, where it was then feared that Crete, having once tasted the sweets of complete independence, might no longer desire union with Greece; and the consequent dismissal of the presumptuous Councillor caused a serious breach between him and the High Commissioner. The election of mayors and the censorship of the press, both of which the Prince wished to have in his own hands, led to difficulties with the Assembly; and early in 1904 discontent became rife in the island. The Italian Foreign Office warned the Prince to act constitutionally; but a crisis was reached when, in March, 1905, the Opposition took to the mountains and established its headquarters at Therisso, a strong position already famous in the annals of Cretan warfare. The insurgents there declared themselves a provisional National Assembly, proclaimed union with Greece, and held out till winter forced them to surrender to the European consuls. The following summer Prince George, weary of Cretan politics, XVIIl] Zaimes in Crete 441 resigned, despite a petition of many deputies in his favour. Thereupon the four Powers entrusted to King George the selection of a new High Commissioner. His choice in September, 1906, fell upon M. Alexander Zaimes, the most Conservative and most silent of Greek statesmen, who had been Premier at the time of the conclusion of peace in 1898. Little more was heard of Crete under his sway. The Powers, while peace reigned, allowed the island to become more and more hellenised. In pursuance of their promises, made on July 23, Greek officers out of active service replaced the Italian carabineers in the command of the gendarmerie and were summoned to organise the militia. As soon as those two bodies should have been formed, order restored, and the safety of the Moslems assured, the international troops were to be gradually withdrawn. Accordingly, on May 11, 1908, in answer to an appeal from M. Zaimes, who showed that their conditions had been realised, they announced that the evacuation of the island would begin that summer and would be concluded within a year from the departure of the first detachment, which took place on July 29. Such was the condition of the island when on October 7, 1908, the news of the annexation of Bosnia and Bulgarian independence once more provoked the proclamation of union with Greece. Armenia and Crete had scarcely ceased to occupy the attention of Europe when a third question, more complex than either of them, became acute. Macedonia was the land of conflicting races and overlapping claims. During a large part of its history it had been entirely Greek ; in the Middle Ages it was alternately under the hegemony of Bulgarian, Servian, and Byzantine Emperors, until the all-conquering Turk ground these respective empires to powder. But in the tenacious traditions of the near east their memories have survived ; and, while no Englishman would found a claim to large portions of France upon the conquests of Edward III, Serbs speak of his contemporary, Stephen Dushan, as if his coronation as Tsar at 44 2 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. Uskiib had been but yesterday, and Greeks of Alexander the Great as if the centuries that have elapsed since his death were a watch in the night. A fourth propaganda, mainly the work of a certain Apostolos Margarites, had evolved from the " Lame " or Koutzo-Wallachs, previously regarded as Greeks, " Macedonian Roumanians," brothers of the Roumans beyond the Danube; while in Salonika and other towns the Jews, descendants of the Hebrew emigrants from Spain, formed a large and Turcophil element. Religious differences revived these racial hatreds. The firman creating the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870 provided that, outside of what soon became Bulgaria, a petition by two-thirds of the inhabitants could secure the transfer of a district from the Patriarch to the Exarch ; and " Patriarchists " and " Exarchists " thenceforth represented respectively the Greek and the Bulgarian cause in Macedonia, while Servia and Roumania, seeing the political advantages of an ecclesiastical propaganda, began to agitate for the restora- tion of the Servian Patriarchate of Ipek and the erection of a separate Roumanian Church. Schools and churches became the favourite weapons of the rival nationalities ; so early as 1869 Prince Charles of Roumania had sent books for the Koutzo-Wallach pupils ; from 1885, the millenary of Methodios, the apostle of the Slavs, dates the great spread of Bulgarian schools in Macedonia. The treaties of 1878 naturally made the Balkan states regard Macedonia as their promised land. Servia, cut off from expansion in Bosnia and the Herzegovina by the Austrian occupation, and bound by a secret treaty not to agitate there, looked to the south of the Shar mountains, to Uskiib, and even to Salonika ; Bulgaria remembered the frontiers which were awarded her at San Stefano ; Roumania saw that by first fostering and then sacrificing the Koutzo- Wallachs, she might claim compensation nearer home; while Greece regarded these newer nationalities as upstarts who had no rights in the land redeemed from " the barbarians " by Basil II, who had celebrated in the church, which had once xviii] The Macedonian Races 443 been the Parthenon, his triumph over the Bulgars. Austria- Hungary, from selfish reasons, was glad to divert the attention of Servia from the Bosnian Serbs, and that of Roumania from the "unredeemed" Roumans of the Dual Monarchy; while, at the same time, established in the sanjak of Novibazar, she could contemplate a descent upon the valley of the Vardar and Salonika, until her military authorities discovered that it would be better strategy to march towards the Aegean through the valley of the Morava, than to traverse the cut-throat defile of Katchanik. Similarly, the Turkish government saw that to increase the confusion of the Macedonian races was its best chance of retaining a country where genuine Turks, as distinct from Mohammedan Albanians, Circassian immigrants and nomad Tartars, were, except in two or three districts, com- paratively few. So the Porte favoured now the Bulgar, now the Serb, now the Greek, and now the Koutzo-Wallach, according to the weakness or importunity of each. Thus in 1890, despite the opposition of Russia but with the approval of Salisbury, the boldness of Stambulov wrung from the suzerain, by the covert threat of proclaiming the independence of the principality, two berats for the appointment of the first Bulgarian bishops of Macedonia at the sees of Ochrida and Uskiib. Great was the indignation of the Oecumenical Patri- archate , in vain it demanded that the Bulgarian clergy should wear a distinctive garb, as the badge of their " schism " ; in vain it closed, as a protest, the Orthodox churches throughout Turkey. In 1894 two more Bulgarian bishops were appointed ; and further concessions to the Bulgars rewarded the neutrality of that principality during the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, when Bulgaria, by cutting the railway between Constantinople and Salonika, might have hindered the despatch of troops to Thessaly. Thus, too, the appointment of a Serb as bishop of Uskiib in 1902 divided the Slavs, while the protest of the Koutzo-Wallachs against the cession of Thessaly to Greece was recompensed in Macedonia, and in 1905 theirs was again the 444 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. propaganda favoured by the Turks. In fact, whenever Greece was troublesome to the Porte, the B'ulgars and the Koutzo- Wallachs benefited, while the latter, as having of all the Christian races least to gain and most to lose by an immediate liquidation of the Macedonian question, were consequently almost as much interested as the Jews in the maintenance of Ottoman rule. In Macedonia, as elsewhere, that rule meant misgovernment ; of the reforms stipulated in article 23 of the Berlin treaty none was carried out. The Greco-Turkish war of 1897 seemed to idealists an excellent opportunity of uniting the Christian races of the Balkans in a struggle against the common enemy. But, under the pressure of their mutual jealousies and conflicting ambitions, and in consequence of the Austro-Russian agreement, which aimed at preserving the status quo and withheld the two great Powers most directly interested from exercising a separate influence in the Balkan peninsula, the Macedonian question was stifled. Two years had not, however, elapsed before a Macedonian Committee, which had its seat at Sofia, and summarised its programme in the phrase " Macedonia for the Macedonians," addressed a memorial to the Powers in January 1899, advocating the formation of an autonomous province of Macedonia with Salonika as its capital, under a governor- general " belonging to the predominant nationality," who should hold office for five years. It was believed that this nationality would be Bulgarian ; and it was hoped that an autonomous Macedonia under a Bulgarian governor would be a step towards the "big Bulgaria" of San Stefano. As this memorial proved, however, to be waste paper, and a Macedonian congress at Geneva came to nothing owing to internal dis- sensions, the party of action took the field. Bulgarian bands crossed the frontier, and conflicts with the Turks took place. But it was soon apparent that the Turks were not the only objects of the Committee's hostility. In 1900 one of its emissaries shot at Bucharest a Roumanian professor who xviii] The Macedonian Committee 445 edited a newspaper favourable to the Roumanian claims in Macedonia. Thereupon the Roumanian government, already at variance with Bulgaria about an islet in the Danube, de- manded the punishment of the Committee. The Powers and the Porte supported the Roumanian demand ; and Boris Sarafov, the president of the organisation, was arrested with other leading members. The court, however, under the in- fluence of public opinion in Bulgaria, whose army, schools, and press were largely officered by Macedonians, acquitted the accused. A split then occurred in the Committee, the extreme section under Sarafov favouring force, the moderate men preferring legal means and an educational propaganda. The former were aware of the fact that the European press was only concerned with the Balkan races when they were either cutting each other's throats or inflicting damage upon some foreigner ; and the whole world became aware of the existence of a Macedonian question, when Miss Stone, an American mis- sionary, was captured by a gang of political brigands. Mean- while, Old Servia was the scene of Albanian feuds, culminating in the murder of Mollah Zekko, a donkey-boy who had risen to be the leader of a movement for an autonomous Albania, and whom even the Sultan, always the patron of the Albanians, feared and conciliated. So serious was the state of things, that the Sultan appointed Hilmi Pasha Inspector-General of Macedonia, while Moslems as well as Christians were agreed "that the provinces of Turkey in Europe cannot be allowed to remain in their present deplorable condition." Austria-Hungary and Russia, the two Powers most im- mediately interested, were of the same opinion ; their Foreign Ministers met at Vienna and drew up in February, 1903, a modest scheme of reforms for the three Macedonian vilayets of Salonika, Monastir, and Kossovo, which the other Powers supported. They recommended the Sultan to appoint an Inspector-General for a fixed number of years ; to re-organise the gendar?nerie with the aid of foreign officers, composing it 446 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. of Christians and Moslems in proportion to their respective numbers ; and to establish a separate budget for each of the three vilayets, upon the revenues of which the cost of local administration was to be a first charge. The Sultan accepted the Austro-Russian reform scheme, but its sole result was to increase the disorder. The Albanians of Kossovo, suspecting interference with their liberties, rose in rebellion, shot the Russian consul at Mitrovitza, and held up the Sultan's envoys at Ipek ; & gendarme shot another Russian consul at Monastir. The Bulgarian bands, despite the dissolution of the Macedonian committees by the Bulgarian government, blew up railway bridges, placed bombs on steamers, and mined the Ottoman bank at Salonika. The Greeks were terrorised by the Bulgarian committeemen and plundered by the Turkish irregulars. The former seized Krushevo, a largely Patriarchist town, and levied blackmail on its inhabitants ; when the latter recovered it, " a golden powder rose round the Turks and prevented them from seeing " (and sacking) the Bulgarian quarter. These occurrences nearly provoked a Turco-Bulgarian war. The position of the Bulgarian government was extremely difficult. Nearly one-half of the population of Sofia consisted of Mace- donian emigrants and refugees, of whom there were no less than 150,000 in the whole principality, while a military con- spiracy complicated the situation. While Prince Ferdinand sought to pacify his suzerain by appointing the Turcophil General Petrov Prime Minister, Austria and Russia in October, 1903, issued a second edition of their reform scheme, called, from the place of signature, the Miirzsteg programme. This programme, accepted by the Sultan, attached Austrian and Russian civil agents to Hilmi Pasha, the Inspector-General, entrusted the reorganisation of the gendarmerie to a foreign general, aided by military officers of the Powers, who would divide Macedonia among them ; and demanded the reform of the administrative and judicial institutions of the country with the participation of the Christian population. General de xviii] The Milrzsteg Programme 447 Giorgis, an Italian officer, was appointed to command the ge?idarmerie ; and his successor was^ another Italian, Count di Robilant. All the Powers, except Germany, sent a small contingent of officers, subsequently slightly increased ; and Macedonia was, for police purposes, divided up into five secteurs, the British taking Drama, a rich district almost wholly peopled by Pomaks, the French Serres, the Italians Monastir, the Austrians Uskiib, and the Russians Salonika. Most of the vilayet of Kossovo, the worst of all, and part of that of Monastir, were excluded from this arrangement. An agree- ment between Bulgaria and Turkey for the prevention of armed bands helped to improve the condition of Macedonia in 1904, while a British committee did much to relieve its distress. But in the autumn of that year a new disturbing element arose. Unable to obtain protection for their fellow-countrymen against the Bulgarians, the Greeks organised bands in their turn ; and Paul Melas, one of their leaders, who fell in Mace- donia, became a national hero, commemorated by a monument at Athens. The rival parties, which took their titles from the Greek Patriarch and the Bulgarian Exarch, and were secretly encouraged by consuls and ecclesiastics, murdered one another in the name of religion, which in Macedonia was a pretext for racial patriotism ; while the Sultan widened the breach between Greece and Roumania by recognising the Koutzo-Wallachs as a separate nationality, with the right of using their language in their churches and schools. These national quarrels spread beyond Macedonia. The Bulgarians destroyed the Greek quarters of Anchialds and Philippopolis, and the inhabitants of the former sought a new home inThessaly; the Roumanians demonstrated against the Greeks resident in their country; a common danger caused Greeks and Serbs to fraternise ; and an Athenian street received a Servian name. Meanwhile, the British government, disgusted with the slow progress made by the Miirzsteg programme, proposed in 1905, with the approval of the Macedonian congress at Sofia, its extension to the 448 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. vilayet of Adrianople, and the appointment of a commission of delegates, nominated by the Powers, under the presidency of the Inspector-General, for the purpose of framing financial reforms. The Sultan at first refused to allow foreign interference in his finances ; but the occupation of the custom-house and telegraph-office at Mitylene by an international fleet on November 26 and of the Kastro of Lemnos ten days later forced him to recognise the four financial experts whom the other Powers had already sent to Salonika as colleagues of the Austrian and Russian civil agents. In March, 1908, all the arrangements made for the pacification of Macedonia — the appointments of Inspector-General, civil and financial agents, and gendarmerie officers, originally made for two, were pro- longed for six years. Meanwhile, Sir Edward Grey, in the name of the British government, had caused remonstrances to be made at Athens and Sofia against the continued passage of Greek and Bulgarian bands into Macedonia, and secured the recall of the Metropolitan of Drama and the Greek consul at Kavalla, as active propagandists. Towards the end of 1907 Sarafov was murdered at Sofia by a Macedonian, at the insti- gation of Sandanski, leader of the terrorist section of the organisation, and advocate of an entirely independent Mace- donia. But still the bands increased, while the British proposal to augment the gendarmerie met with no support from the other Powers, mainly occupied with the rival railway schemes of Austria and Servia. In short, the result of European intervention in Macedonia had been ineffective. If the taxes had been better collected and administered, if the Turkish troops had committed fewer outrages, the strife between Greeks, Bulgars, and Koutzo-Wallachs had been bitterer than ever. Such was the situation when the Turkish revolution of 1908 broke out. The Macedonian question naturally affected the internal, as well as the external politics of the Balkan states. But it was not the only difficult problem which they had to solve xvm] Stambulov Premier of Bulgaria 449 during the period of 21 years which separated the election of Prince Ferdinand from the Turkish revolution. Bulgaria was governed for the first seven years of the new reign by the ex-Regent, Stambulov, the most considerable statesman whom Bulgaria has so far produced, Alike in his methods and in his fall, the son of the Trnovo innkeeper resembled the great German Chancellor. During his long tenure of the premiership, he was absolute master of Bulgaria; for the Prince was at first much in the position of our George I, ignorant of the language and the customs of his subjects, and Stambulov was consequently for some years indispensable to him. The Minister had no constitutional scruples; he held that his end — the maintenance of Bulgarian freedom — justified his means, which included the manipulation of elections and the persecution of political opponents. He saw clearly that it was the interest of Bulgaria to establish friendly relations with Turkey; he was thus able to secure Turkish support against Russian schemes and to establish Bulgarian schools and bishoprics as the nucleus of a Bulgarian propaganda against the Greeks and Serbs in Macedonia. When Trikoupes proposed to him a Balkan Federation, he betrayed the Greek statesman's offer to the Porte, in order to conciliate it. Supported by both Salisbury and Crispi in his opposition to Russian attempts to secure the diplomatic removal of Prince Ferdinand, he suppressed Russophil conspiracies with the utmost severity. A Montenegrin raid near Bourgas failed ; and Major Panitza, who had trusted that Russia would save him from paying the penalty of treason against his Prince, was tried by court-martial and shot as a traitor. Brigandage, which had discredited the country by the seizure of two Austrians at the Bellova railway-station, he put down with as firm a hand as the intrigues of Orthodox churchmen against the Catholic Prince. Political assassination became the weapon of the discontented; Beltchev, one of Stambulov's colleagues, was shot by his side at Sofia; Vulkovich, his agent, was stabbed in the M. l. 29 4 5° Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. street at Constantinople. These acts of violence rendered it imperative to provide for the future of the throne; accordingly, the Prince, in 1893, married a Bourbon Princess, Marie Louise of Parma — an union which necessitated a modification of article 38 of the constitution, permitting the baptism of the heir in the Roman Catholic faith. Stambulov not only succeeded in obtaining the adoption of this amendment by the Grand Sobranje, but shut up the recalcitrant Metropolitan Clement in a monastery for having opposed it publicly. This marriage, by providing an heir who received the name of the ancient Bul- garian Tsar Boris, strengthened the throne, but proved to be the cause of the great statesman's fall. United to a Bourbon, the Prince naturally desired diplomatic society for his wife and social recognition for himself, while by this time he had acquired sufficient knowledge of the language and character of his people to feel competent to govern without his too powerful and most unceremonious minister. The relations between Prince and Premier became more and more strained; Col. Petrov, the Prince's favourite, was forced upon the unwilling Premier as a colleague; and a princely telegram, accusing his First Minister of "vulgarity," caused the latter to resign. On May 31, 1894, Stoilov succeeded him, and for nearly five years remained in office. Unfortunately, the fallen statesman, like his German prototype, vented his spleen in newspaper interviews, which provoked his prosecution for defamation. The end came on July 15, 1895, when he was brutally assaulted by three assassins; three days later he died of his wounds, and the tardy trial of his murderers of whom only Hallio Stavrev, the principal, was condemned to death and then sentenced instead to 1 5 years' imprisonment, cast suspicion upon the government and discredit upon the country. Freed from all control, the Prince then made his peace with Russia. Alexander III was now dead ; and a few days before Stambulov's murder, a deputation, of which Mgr Clement and Stoilov formed part, had gone to St Petersburg to lay a wreath xviii] Conversion of Prince Boris 451 on the dead Tsar's grave and to effect a reconciliation with his successor. The Russian conditions were the conversion of Prince Boris to the Orthodox Church ; and this solemn farce was enacted in 1896, after a more than usually unseemly theological controversy. Nicholas II acted as godfather by proxy; Russia formally recognised Prince Ferdinand as the reward of this apostasy ; the other Powers followed ; and the Prince de jure, as well as de facto, basked in the smiles of his suzerain and his protector. Thenceforth his policy became steadily Russophil. The officers implicated in the kidnapping of his predecessor were reinstated and those appointed under the anti-Russian regime removed; Russian training was en- couraged in the army; a Russian admiral and a Russian financier visited Bulgaria. Russian Grand-dukes came to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Shipka and the 30th of Plevna ; and Ignatyeff urged the Bulgars to transmit to their children the sacred duty of realising the treaty of San Stefano, thus exciting their desire for Macedonia. Notwithstanding that agitation and the instability of Bulgarian Cabinets after the fall of Stoilovin 1899, owing to dissatisfaction with his financial and railway policy, the principality made substantial progress, thanks to the grit of its inhabitants. In Bulgaria it is necessary to distinguish between the people and the politicians. Unlike the Greek, the Bulgarian peasant dislikes politics, and wishes to cultivate his field in peace; while political parties, increased from two to eight without any corresponding difference of principles, fight for office in the name of this or that party leader. The politicians are mainly recruited from the towns- men and especially from the lawyers; and it was noted as significant that in 1908, thirty years after the creation of Bulgaria, nearly one-third of the deputies were graduates, and Sofia had nine daily papers. Consequently, the kaleidoscopic succession of nine Cabinets, now Russophil, now Stambulovist, in the same number of years, scarcely affected the stability of the country ; nor did such public scandals as the impeachment 29 — 2 45 2 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. of four Ministers for the violation of the constitution in their personal interest reflect discredit on the laborious masses, who had no concern with lucrative contracts. But lavish expenditure on railways and harbour-works inevitably caused financial difficulties; and these, aggravated by bad harvests, forced the government in 1900 to impose a tithe on agricul- tural produce, which provoked a serious peasant riot near Rustchuk. A new tariff, intended to protect native industries, raised the cost of living, while free and compulsory education produced, as usual, an overflow of professional men and a consequent supply of professional agitators. Hence, even in "the peasant state," which had seemed to British observers in the early nineties to be an almost ideal country for the tillers of the soil, a Socialist movement has arisen in the last 20 years. There, too, as in older communities, the students became so troublesome that in 1907 Statnbulov's successor, Petkov, the "Haussmann of Bulgaria," closed the University, only to fall a victim to assassination by a discharged official. These were signs that progress in Oriental countries, if rapid, had its draw- backs, and that there was much of the old Adam still latent beneath the surface of their European civilisation. The history of Servia since the Bulgarian war tells the same tale. For some years after that event Servian history mainly con- sisted of the domestic squabbles of the royal family. Milan, though an able man, had the usual vices of the Europeanised Oriental, while his beautiful wife, Queen Natalie, possessed a strong will of her own. International politics widened the breach between the royal couple, for the King was an Austrophil, while the Queen, as befitted the daughter of a colonel in the Russian army, was an adherent of the Tsar. Servian public life reflected these tendencies, for the Radicals, or rural party, were Russophil, and of the urban parties, the Progressives and the Liberals, the former was pro-Austrian. At last Milan obtained a divorce from his wife, and followed this domestic victory by summoning a commission, on which all the three xvm] King Milan s Abdication 453 political parties were represented, and in the labours of which he himself took part with marked ability, for drawing up a constitution far more Liberal than that of 1869. Its most important article was that which made all classes of the com- munity, and not peasants alone, eligible as deputies, but one- fourth of the National Assembly was still to be nominated by the King. Freedom of the press and a lower suffrage were granted ; and Milan informed the deputies that they must accept the constitution as a whole without amendment— a threat which induced them to pass it en bloc on January 2, 1889. Scarcely, however, had this new charter come into force, than he ab- dicated in favour of his son, Alexander, on March 6, 1889. As the young King was only 1 3 years of age, three Regents, all Liberals, were appointed to govern the country, the chief of them being Ristich, the ablest Servian statesman, who 21 years before had been one of Milan's own guardians ; the others were Generals Protich and Belimarkovich. The bickerings of the divorced couple and the Queen's assertion of her right to reside in her son's capital kept Servia, however, in a constant ferment ; an attempt to expel her was at first frustrated by the mob and the students ; blood was shed in the scuffle ; but next day Ristich ordered the police to break into her house and escort her to the station. At last both the ex-King and Queen not only consented to live abroad for their country's good, but made up their private differences in order to save the throne from the Karageorgevich pretender. Meanwhile, Alexander, who had been hitherto apparently immersed in the study of constitutional history, suddenly amazed his Regents by ordering their arrest at his dinner-table on April 13, 1893, proclaiming himself of age, and dissolving the National Assembly. The suc- cess of this coup d'etat directed against the Regents encouraged him to make another against the Radicals. Accordingly, on May 21 of the following year, he abolished the constitution of 1889 and restored that of 1869. This drastic act was followed, five years later, by a wholesale proscription of the 454 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. Radical and Russophil party, which the Court sought to implicate in the attempted assassination of Milan, then com- mander-in-chief, by a certain Knezevich, said to be an agent of the pretender; and the way in which this "Servian Dreyfus case " was conducted aroused general indignation. In August, 1900, Alexander, who had hitherto been success- ful, committed the serious political mistake of marrying a lady- in-waiting of his mother, Madame Draga Mashin, widow of a Bohemian engineer and herself of "Bohemian" tendencies, which Belgrade gossip at once exaggerated, This union proved his ruin. The Tsar, indeed, hastened to congratulate the King ; and in the following year the death at Vienna of Milan, who had retired in disgust, removed one of the constant irritants of Servian public life and Russia's greatest enemy. But the lack of an heir, the suspicion that Queen Draga was scheming to secure the succession for one of her brothers, Nikodem Lunjevitza, and the petty jealousies of Belgrade society rendered the King's position insecure. In vain he granted an amnesty to the proscribed Radicals; in vain, in 1 90 1, he celebrated the anniversary of the Turkish evacuation of Belgrade by the issue of a constitution more Liberal than that of 1869, less Radical than that of 1889, giving the country the safeguards of a second Chamber for the first time in its history and a Council of State. He described this new charter as "the result of an understanding between the sovereign and the leaders of the three political parties"; and the first elections held under it aroused unusual interest. But still discontent grew apace in a soil so congenial to political intrigue as is that of the Servian capital. The first sign of the coming tragedy was the proclamation of Peter Karageorgevich as King by an adventurer at Shabatz in 1902. To secure himself against similar conspiracies Alexander appointed a military Cabinet under General Tsintsar-Markovich, and on April 7, 1903, perpetrated a third coup d'etat, by which he suspended the new constitution until he had rid himself of his old enemies, xviii] The Servian Regicides 455 the Radicals. After having repealed all obnoxious laws by his own authority, abolished the Council of State, the ballot and the freedom of the press, and dismissed the senators and the Radical judges, he appointed a new batch of life-senators and Councillors, all innocent of Radicalism, and then at once restored in this form the suspended constitution, which he had so arbitrarily revised, with the object, as he told his people, of maintaining "order, unity, and peace." The result was the very opposite. Cut off by the abolition of the ballot from the sure support of their peasant adherents, and thus deprived of their constitutional remedies, the Radicals sought refuge in the usual Balkan device for desperate emergencies — a palace revolution. The spring of 1903 was ominous for the royal couple. A scullion in the palace kitchen was suspected of trying to poison their food; a plot was formed to shoot the King at the door of the cathedral on Palm Sunday, the national festival. Ultimately, another and more appropriate anniversary was selected for the deed — June 10, the day when Michael had been assassinated thirty-five years before. The conspirators were officers who had taken the oath to Alexander ; and their leader was Colonel Mashin, brother of the Queen's first husband and her personal enemy. Others, it was said, were well paid for their murderous work ; while behind the actual assassins stood the smug, black-coated politicians, ready to profit by what was cynically proclaimed to be a "glorious revolution." On the night of June 10, 1903, the conspirators met at the "Servian Crown " to arrange their plans ; the 6th regiment occupied the approaches to the palace; the door was exploded with dynamite; and in the ensuing darkness the murderers groped about for two hours till at last they found the royal couple hiding in a cupboard where the Queen kept her dresses. The wretches who wore the King's uniform showed no mercy to their sovereign. Pierced by over 30 bullets the last Obrenovich fell, clasping his wife in his arms, while the ruffians who profaned 45 6 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. the name of officer stabbed and outraged the body of the Queen. Throwing the two mangled corpses out of the window, the assassins continued their work in the city. The Queen's two brothers, the Prime Minister and the Minister of War, were shot in cold blood; the Minister of the Interior was seriously wounded ; the occasion was seized for gratifying private revenge ; and Belgrade proved to the world that she was still, after a century of practical freedom, inhabited by thinly polished barbarians. Nor was this impression diminished, when, in the morning, the capital was decorated with flags, the church bells rang, and dance music enlivened the squares. When night fell, two carts conveyed the bodies of the King and Queen to their last resting-place in the church of St Mark, where the second and least conspicuous Obrenovich Prince had been buried. No friend was present at their humble funeral. A few hours after the tragedy a new Ministry under Avakumovich, of which the chief conspirator was a member, issued a pro- clamation temporarily reviving the constitution of 1901 and summoning the National Assembly for the election of a king. The country had but a short interregnum. Prince Peter Karageorgevich may not have been privy to the murders, but it was he who profited by them, for on June 1 5 the National Assembly unanimously elected him King. The new sovereign, who nine days later mounted the blood-stained Servian throne, had spent 45 of his 57 years in exile — now in Hungary, now at the court of his Montenegrin father-in-law, now at Geneva — and was therefore practically a stranger to the land, over which his father Alexander had ruled for sixteen. He had fought in the Franco-German war and in the Bosnian insurrection, and was therefore more of a soldier than his two predecessors ; he had translated Mill On Liberty, but the English philosopher's speculations were scarcely adapted to the society of Servia. Even before his arrival, the politicians had restored, with some alterations, the constitution of 1889. This constitution of June 18, 1903, which till^i 92 1 remained in force, provided for a xvm] King Peter of Servia 457 single chamber, elected by citizens who paid 15 dinara a year in direct taxes, and convened annually in the capital on October 10. Election was to take place by departmental scrntin de liste, thus embodying the principle of proportional representation; and it was provided that in each department there must be two candidates furnished with an University degree or the diploma of a high school. A Grand Skupshtina of twice the usual number of deputies was to be summoned to decide upon a regency, the succession to the throne, a modification of the constitution, or any cession or exchange of territory. The new sovereign took the oath to this constitution, and unlike Milan and Alexander, he kept his promise to be "a true constitutional King of Servia." A day before, the time-serving Metropolitan had invoked the divine blessing upon the new, as he had already invoked it upon the murderers of the late King, in the self-same cathedral where he had baptized and married his murdered sovereign. But, if the head of the Servian Church could thus apologise for assassination, foreign governments were more scrupulous. Italian officers sent back their Servian decorations ; the King of Roumania withdrew his name from his Servian regiment. Austria and Russia, traditional rivals for influence in Servia, alone recognised King Peter; but the Austrian Emperor stigmatised the act, to which he owed his throne, as "a heinous and universally reprobated crime." The British and other ministers were withdrawn ; and the humorous element, never wanting in Balkan tragedies, was supplied by the author of the Armenian massacres, who expressed his horror at the midnight murders committed by his Christian neighbours. Boycotted by Europe, King Peter soon had to face internal difficulties. He was the prisoner of the regicides, who occupied all the best posts and whom he dared not offend. Both they and the politicians intended that he should be merely a puppet, while even in Servia there was still a party which cherished the memory of the old dynasty ; and the conspiracy of the garrison 45 8 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. of Nish, where it had always been popular, and the existence of a bastard son of Milan at Constantinople, menaced the early days of the new. The presence of the Crown Prince of Montenegro, when Peter was anointed at Jitcha in the ancient coronation church of the Servian kings, seemed to secure him the support of a dangerous rival ; but the marriage of Prince Nicholas' second son Mirko, with Mile Natalie Constantinovich, the nearest relative of the murdered King, might prove an embarrassment to the new, as it had proved to the old dynasty. Moreover, in his own family the new ruler had a source of anxiety in the . person of his heir, Prince George, a youth of violent temper, whose antics soon kept Belgrade gossip busy with the doings of the palace. Foreign diplomatists not unnaturally declined to sit down with assassins at the royal table; a reaction against them began, and a " league for " their " legal punishment" was formed; but it was not till 1906, when the chief regicides were placed on the retired list, that Great Britain resumed official relations with Servia, whose export trade to the United Kingdom had entirely disappeared since their rupture. Still the antagonism between regicides and anti-regicides, who formed a " Nationalist party," continued ; the former attacked two Nationalist deputies in the street ; and two anti-regicide officers were murdered without the culprits being brought to justice. One foreign potentate, indeed, the Prince of Bulgaria, exchanged visits with King Peter almost in the year after his accession ; and this fraternal feeling was the forerunner of a Serbo-Bulgarian convention in 1906, which, as the first step to a customs union of the two Slav states, caused a tariff war with Austria-Hungary and the usual embargo upon the export of Servian swine into the Dual Monarchy. But this conflict was not an unmixed evil, for it led to the discovery of other outlets for Servian live-stock and tended towards a better understanding with Great Britain, of which the effect was seen in the eastern crisis of 1908. When, too, the Austrian Foreign Minister, Baron Aehrenthal, earlier in that year xviii] Progress of Montenegro 459 announced that leave had been asked to survey the route for a railway across the sanjak of Novibazar, uniting the Bosnian terminus at Uvatz with the Turkish station of Mitrovitza, a Servian counter-proposal for a line from the Danube to the Adriatic at San Giovanni di Medua obtained Italian and Russian support. Thus, under the Karageorgevich restoration, Servia ceased to pursue the Austrophil policy of Milan ; the Progressive party almost disappeared ; the Liberals were merged in the new Nationalist group; and the "Old" Radicals, under M. Pashich, the veteran democrat of the eighties, became, with the " Young " Radicals, the most important factors in public life. Prince Nicholas of Montenegro was occupied, after the definite enlargement of his principality in 1880, with the problem of adapting a Homeric state of society, where fighting had been the main occupation of the men for nearly five centuries, to the changed requirements of a modern com- munity. Excellent roads were made; trade was encouraged, tobacco cultivated, and each mountaineer ordered to plant a vine. The first Montenegrin public library and museum, and a theatre, where the Prince's two plays were performed amidst loud applause, increased the intellectual resources of the little capital ; and the 400th anniversary of the first Slavonic printing- press, celebrated in 1893, reminded the world of Montenegrin aspirations after knowledge in the past. Five years earlier, a new code, the work of M. Bogoshich, was promulgated. Meanwhile, the Highlanders had kept their hands in by repeated brushes with the Albanians on the frontier ; and in 1895 the Prince made the experiment of a standing army. Famines continued, however, to tax the resources of the country; and many Montenegrins emigrated to Servia. The mountain principality, so long cut off from the world, has become much more closely connected with western Europe since 1896. On October 24 of that year, the Prince's fourth daughter, Elena, married the heir to the Italian throne, who four 460 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. years later became King of Italy. This union, which recalls the marriages of the Montenegrin Black Princes with fair Venetians in the 15 th century, was a love match, but has none the less had important political and economic results for the little mountain state. It not only brought the Petrovich dynasty, the bicentenary of which was celebrated a few months later, within the family circle of " European " Courts, but induced Italians to regard the country of their Queen as a field for economic enterprise and incidentally to take more interest in Balkan politics. Two other Montenegrin Princesses had married Russians, so that, after the accession of another son-in-law to the Servian throne, Prince Nicholas became on a small scale the "father-in-law of Europe"; while the marriage of his second son, Mirko, might conceivably unite the two Servian states in one hand. Finally, two other marriages, that of his fifth daughter to Prince Francis Joseph of Battenberg, and that of his eldest son to the Duchess Jutta of Mecklenburg- Strelitz, brought his family into special favour with the late Queen Victoria, whom he visited at Windsor in 1898. It was, perhaps, as much in virtue of his exalted connexions as to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of his accession that Prince Nicholas assumed the style of " Royal Highness" at the close of 1900, and that of King at his Jubilee in 1910. But the increased importance of the reigning house considerably augmented its expenditure, while the usual discord of married brothers who live in the same small place was aggravated by the lack of an heir to the Crown Prince, whose brother Mirko had offspring. In 1905, the Prince amazed Europe by issuing two edicts, announcing the grant of parliamentary institutions and liberty of the press to his people. A Liberal in theory, especially in British politics, the Prince had always been an autocrat in practice, although in 1868 he had transferred some of his functions to the Senate, increased to 16 members, and in 1874 had created a Ministry. But neither the Senate nor xviii] The Montenegrin Constitution 461 the Ministry had any real power. Consequently this sudden new departure seemed a dangerous experiment. The example of Russia, the growing desire of those young Montenegrins who had been educated at Belgrade to have a share in the government of their country, and the reflection that the change, if inevitable, had better be made in his own lifetime rather than in that of his much less experienced successor, doubtless influenced so shrewd a ruler as Prince Nicholas in his decision, although his official explanation was that he had been actuated by the Liberal ideas imbibed at Paris in his youth. The constitution — a lengthy document of 2 2 2 articles — was borrowed, however, from Servian sources, especially the Servian constitution of 1889. The Prince continued to represent the state in all its foreign relations ; primogeniture in the male line was declared to be the law of the succession to the throne ; the Senate was preserved ; the country was divided into departments (oblasti), districts {capitanie), and communes (opshtine) ; the Church was proclaimed autocephalous, and all other cults free ; a free press and free compulsory elementary education, a Council of State of six, and a Court of Accounts of three members, formed parts of the charter. A National Assembly (Narodna Skupshti?ia), partly elected by universal suffrage, and partly composed of ex officio nominees of the Prince, was to meet annually on October 31. This body, the term of which was four years, was composed of 62 members elected by the 56 districts and the six towns, and of 14 nominated or ex officio members, viz. the Metropolitan, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Antivari (who bears the title of "Primate of Servia"), the Mohammedan Mufti, the six Councillors of State, the presidents of the Grand Tribunal and of the Court of Accounts, and the three brigadiers. Deputies must be at least 30 years of age and pay 15 kronen in taxes annually. The first general election under this constitution was held in November, 1905. On December 19 the first Montenegrin parliament met ; the old Ministers who had so long executed their master's edicts resigned j and a new Ministry of younger 462 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. men took their places. "Nothing," said the Prince, "would afflict my heart more than to hear it said: 'the old Prince, though meaning well, has acted with precipitation, and esteemed his people to be more advanced than it really is In fact, however, parliamentary government was not a success. Until the appointment of M. Tomanovich as Premier in 1907 Cabinet crises were frequent; a group of Socialists made its appearance; the country was divided into factions; and, whenever a personal ruler's strong hand is withdrawn, it may be found that parliamentarism, at present more or less a comedy, is a dangerous gift to a poor and primitive Balkan state. Already, at the general election of 1907, feeling ran so high that the office of a Radical journal was wrecked, the Radicals refused to take part in the voting, and all the deputies elected were consequently Conservatives. Then came the discovery of bombs from Servia in Montenegro. Montenegrin ex-ministers were prosecuted; a democratic ex-Premier was sent to prison at Podgoritza ; and accusations were made against the Servian government of complicity in a plot against Prince Nicholas, which led to a rupture of diplomatic relations between the two sister-states, whose rulers had private reasons for not greatly loving one another. Another influence which was tending to modernise Monte- negro was that of the emigrants who returned from the United States. This was a comparatively new feature in the social life of the Black Mountain, whose sons, if they emigrated, usually went, till recently, to some other part of the near east. It is calculated that there are now some 30,000 Montenegrins in America; and their country is thus drained of its young men, with evil results to the damsels who remain behind. These emigrants, on their return, like the "intellectuals" whom the government sent to study abroad, are apt to become discontented with their highland home. Nor was it without risks for a small and poor state to allow foreigners, and those mainly of one nationality, to conduct its chief commercial enterprises. Commercially modern xviii] Progress of Roumania 463 Montenegro was practically an Italian colony. Italians managed the tobacco monopoly; they conducted, under the Montenegrin flag, the navigation on the lake of Scutari; they controlled the Marconi station at the haven of Antivari. No wonder that this system of foreign concessions, perhaps inevitable in a country where capital was scarce, was causing some to raise the cry of " Montenegro for the Montenegrins." Still, despite these disadvantages of progress, the country had reaped advan- tages also. Since 1906 it has had its own coinage, based on the silver unit, called, with a fine flavour of the Middle Ages, a perper. As a natural corollary, a bank has been founded. A railway was inaugurated in 1908, which connects Vir Bazar on the lake of Scutari with the harbour of Antivari; a motor- service joins the capital with Cattaro and Podgoritza; tele- phones enabled the Ministers to issue their orders from the new offices, whither they had emigrated from the old "billiard- table"; and the village-capital, grown in size, is lighted by electricity. Princes and officers dressed in khaki represented, among giants clad in the splendid national costume, the transition stage upon which Montenegro had now, for weal or woe, inevitably entered. Roumania continued, during the quarter of a century which followed her practical accession to the Triple Alliance, a course of peaceful progress, broken by occasional political disturb- ances and by serious social upheavals. When, in 1906, the Jubilee exhibition, held to commemorate the fortieth anni- versary of the sovereign's first arrival in his adopted country, enabled visitors to compare the present with the past, they saw that Roumania had assumed, in little more than a gene- ration, all the externals of western civilisation. A railway system of nearly 2,000 miles facilitated travelling where, at the Prince's coming, there had not been a single train. The Iron Gates had been blasted, and a noble bridge spanned the Danube at Cernavoda, which, by uniting the rest of the king- dom with its newly-won haven of Constantza, has given 464 Armenia, Crete \ and Macedonia [ch. importance to the despised Dobrudja and made Roumania the highway from Berlin to Constantinople. The credit of the Government was such that it could borrow at a trifle over 4 per cent. ; the production of petroleum in large quantities had tended to modify the purely agricultural character of the country, which, with a population of between six and seven millions, was the largest, as it was likewise the steadiest, of the Balkan states. But of this population 80 per cent, depended upon the land for their living ; and about one-half of the land belonged to a comparatively small number of large proprietors, who in many cases let their property to middlemen, often Jewish capitalists. The peasant, whenever his rent was raised, had either to borrow at usurious interest, or to pay by labour what he could not pay in cash. He was thus reduced to the condition of either a debtor or a serf, unless he chanced to be a small proprietor himself. Even then his prospects were not rosy, for ignorance and sometimes physical weakness prevented him from making his little plot of land feed his large family. Even after the second revision of the constitution, proposed by Bratianu in 1884, he was almost wholly excluded by the electoral system from parliamentary representation, while the time of the legislature was too often wasted in the barren conflicts of Liberals, Conservatives, and "Young" Con- servatives or " Junimists " — meaningless party labels without underlying principles. Thus the peasantry became the natural victims of the glib agitators, whom free education had provided in its customary fashion. The great peasant risings of 1888 and 1907 were the results — the latter a veritable Roumanian Jacquerie, in which many lives were lost and much machinery was destroyed. A corollary of this agrarian movement was the continued Anti-Semitic agitation, which had so greatly em- barrassed the earlier years of the reign. In 1897 Anti-Semitic riots took place; and in 1902 the United States addressed a note to the signatories of the Berlin treaty on the subject of the persecution of the Roumanian Jews and their consequent xvin] Foreign Policy of Roumania 465 exodus in large numbers, in direct contravention of article 44 of that famous instrument. But, except for the exclusion of the Roumanian minister in London from the Guildhall banquet, nothing was done in response to this appeal, and the Rou- manians could retort that almost every nation concerned had broken some article of the Berlin treaty. Foreign policy had been throughout under the direct control of the King, and therefore pro-German and at times pro-Turkish. Since the visit of the Austrian Emperor to Bucharest in 1896, after the opening of the Iron Gates in the presence of the three riverain sovereigns, this connexion with the three central Powers, begun by Bratianu and Bismarck in 1883, had become closer. A military convention had bound the fortunes of the Roumanian army of 200,000 men to those of Austria-Hungary under certain conditions; and on one occasion Roumania mobilised at the bidding of Germany, in order to save the embarrassed Turks from denuding their Asiatic provinces of troops. The fortification of the capital by General Brialmont further strengthened the barrier which Roumania could offer to a Russian advance on Con- stantinople. Her friendship with Austria- Hungary had had, however, the effect of forcing Roumania to interest herself in the Mace- donian question, thus offending the susceptibilities of the only other non-Slavonic Christian state in the near east — Greece. Compelled to relinquish, at least for a time, the idea of redeeming the "unredeemed" Roumanians of the Dual Monarchy, she had cast her eyes afar upon the long-forgotten Koutzo-Wallachs of Macedonia and Epirus, whom Rou- manians state to be Roumanians and Greeks assert to be Greeks. Whenever this propaganda has been relaxed, the Latin and the Greek races of the peninsula have fraternised, as when their two governments concluded a commercial con- vention, their two rulers met at Abbazia, and the students of Bucharest visited Athens in 1901. But the Greco-Roumanian m. l. 30 466 Armenia> Crete> and Macedonia [ch. honeymoon ended, when, in 1905, the Roumanian ministry obtained from the Porte the recognition of the Koutzo-Wallachs as a separate nationality, with the right of worshipping in their own language. Anti-Greek riots took place in Roumania ; and diplomatic relations between the two countries, already inter- rupted between 1892 and 1896 owing to the fact that the Roumanian courts had declared illegal the legacies of the brothers Zappa, the founders of the Zappeion at Athens, were again broken off for several years. Greek internal politics were comparatively uneventful during the eleven years which followed the evacuation of Thessaly. It was the calm between two periods of excitement. After M. Zaimes, the most conservative of modern Greek statesmen, had settled the various questions arising out of the war, Theot6kes, a former lieutenant of Trikoiipes and the first Ionian who had reached the chief place in Greek politics, became Prime Minister in 1899; and his four Premierships, two of them unusually long, altogether filled up a large portion of this period. His first resignation, towards the close of 1901, was due to popular indignation at a translation of the Gospels into a very vernacular form of Greek, which caused a fatal riot among the students of the University and an attack upon two newspaper offices. The incident was instructive, as showing the importance attached by the Greeks to the original text of the New Testament, which they justly regard as one of the most valuable portions of their national heritage. A similar agitation arose in 1903, when Rhalles, then in office, was forced by the students and one of the professors to stop the performances of the Oresteia of ^Eschylus, because certain phrases in the version of M. Soteriades did not please the purists. Disturbances, arising out of another difficult question, that of the currants, cut short the second Theotokes adminis- tration in 1903; and two years later the hand of an assassin removed Deligiannes from the stage of Greek politics, where he had so long played a leading part. The crime was not due XVIIl] Greek Emigration 467 to political motives, but to the suppression of gambling-hells at the orders of the veteran statesman, the "grandfather," as he was popularly called, of public life. His death had the effect of splitting the so-called "National party," of which he had been the chief, into two sections, one following Rhalles, the other Mavromichales, with the natural result that Theotokes, at the head of an united party, attained and kept the Premiership for more than three and a half years till July, 1909. During his long administration the second celebration of the revived Olympic Games at Athens in 1906, in the presence of the late King Edward VII, concentrated there the representatives of the whole Hellenic world as well as of other nationalities. A year later the census proved the great develop- ment of Athens and the Piraeus, and the remarkable increase of Volo since the Thessalian port had been united with Greece. But the figures of some country districts showed that emigration to the United States — a phenomenon non-existent before 1891 — was responsible for the large decrease in the excess of males over females, which, strange as it seems to Englishmen, had been a marked feature of Greek life. To the remittances of these emigrants was partly due the great reduction in the rate of exchange, which from 46 dr. 87 /. to the £ at the time of the currant crisis of December, 1894 — January, 1895, was in 19 13 reduced practically to par (i.e. 25 dr. to the £ sterling). To their return to their own country may be traced in due course of time the permeation of new ideas. Already the traveller is startled by being addressed in English with a strong American accent in remote villages of the Morea and at the discovery that one-fifth of the population of a town in central Greece has emigrated. These "Americans" fought well in 191 2. This review of the Near East down to the Turkish revo- lution of 1908 may be completed by some reference to the history of those islands which occupied a position of autonomy or of vassalage to Turkey, yet unlike Crete, have had only occasional connexion with the general trend of the eastern 30—2 468 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. question. Cyprus, under British control since 1878, is scarcely a source of satisfaction to observers. The island was handi- capped economically from the outset by the absurd arrangement, by which the British government agreed to pay to Turkey an annual tribute, calculated on the average excess of revenue over expenditure during the five previous years, or in other words, ^92,800. This mode of assessment was peculiarly inappropriate, because the Turks, as is their wont, had spent little upon public works, and the whole revenue of the island at that time was only ^147,281. Thus, the British took over an island where everything was still to create, and at the same moment a huge liability wholly disproportionate to its resources. But the full injustice of this obligation became patent four years later, when nearly ^82,000 of the tribute was earmarked to pay the interest on the repudiated Turkish loan of 1855, which Great Britain and France had guaranteed and which was targely held by their subjects. Thus, the Cypriotes were made to defray the liabilities of the whole Turkish empire towards the bondholders and to meet what had been a joint guarantee of the two western Powers. The result has been that annual surpluses in the colonial budget have been converted into deficits, without any corresponding ad- vantage to the suzerain. Irrigation, the most pressing need of the island, and other public works, which could have been undertaken if Great Britain had made a better bargain with the Turk, have been largely neglected, and the island has only one small railway, while the government spent only ,£5,000 on education. In short, to quote the phrase of an expert in the Times 1 , the tribute, abolished in 1914, was "a millstone round the island's neck." From yet another point of view Cyprus has failed to warrant the praise bestowed upon Lord Beaconsfield 44 years ago. Occupied originally on strategic grounds, and first governed by so eminent a soldier as Sir Garnet (afterwards Lord) Wolseley, it has ceased, since the British occupation of Egypt 1 May 24, 1912. XVIIl] Cyprus under British rule 469 in 1882, to have the military value which it had previously possessed. Moreover, we are having in Cyprus much the same political experience that we had in Corfu ; the Greeks, who form the vast majority of its 274,108 inhabitants, desire union with Greece. The British government, aware of this fact, so arranged the constitution, which was granted to Cyprus in 1882, that the nine Christian elected members of the Legis- lative Council could be outvoted by the High Commissioner and the six ex officio members with the aid of the three elected members who represent the 56,428 Mussulmans. The Christian deputies are in permanent opposition to the govern- ment, and in April, 191 2, resigned in a body as a protest against the refusal of the High Commissioner to increase their numbers and to spend the taxes exclusively in the island. Nevertheless, something, even under these disadvantages, has been done for Cyprus. The plague of locusts has been checked ; justice is fairly administered ; and the Christians enjoy liberty and security for their lives and property, which they lacked in the Turkish times. But most races, emancipated from the Turks, become discontented when they have had time to forget the grave evils of Turkish rule. A generation has grown up in Cyprus which does not remember the joy with which the British flag was welcomed there. Education has made the Christians more critical and inclined to regard the British occupation " as a merely transitory episode in their history," while they warmly repudiated the contention of the British government prior to 19 14 that, if Great Britain evacuated Cyprus, it would be handed back to Turkey. The privileged "Twelve Islands" of the southern Sporades — Ikaria, Patmos, Leros, Kalymnos, Astypalaia, Nisyros, Telos, S/me, Chalkeia, Karpathos, Kassos and Megiste (or Kastel- lorrizon — of which the first four, united in one Greek province with Samos during the War of Independence, had received a confirmation of their former charters from Mahmud II in 1835, and paid nothing, except a collective sum of 80,000 470 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. piastres, to the treasury, were threatened in 1867, during the Cretan insurrection, and again in 1869, with the forcible loss of their rights. At the instigation of Stanley, however, to whom their inhabitants appealed, Turkey withdrew her troops. To Clarendon she offered excuses; but a fresh attempt to reduce^ the Dodekdnesos to the common level of Turkish provinces was made 20 years later. S/me was blockaded and starved into surrender, and in 1893 several of the chief men were imprisoned 1 . The " Young " Turks completed this work ; but the Italian occupation of 10 of these islands, together with Leips6, Kos and Rhodes, in 191 2, restored their liberties. In 1902 the Turks made similar encroachments upon the privileges of Thasos, where an occupation by Turkish troops followed a protest against new taxes ; and the Egyptian ascendancy there (see p. 151) was restricted to the woods and mines, a part of the vaknf 'of Kavalla, whose administrator was the Khedive. Samos had accepted unwillingly her position of dependence upon Turkey in 1832, and it required a blockade of the port of Vathy before she acquiesced in autonomy as a substitute for union with Greece. Her first Prince, Stephen Vogorides, whose reign lasted for nearly 20 years, only once visited his principality, which he governed by means of successive lieu- tenants, no less than 1 1 in number. His absence and their maladministration caused such discontent, that in 1849 a revolution broke out, the Prince's representative was expelled, and in 1850 the Prince at last resigned. A fresh "Analytic Charter" was then issued, confirming the privileges conferred in 1832, but substituting the indirect for the direct election of the Assembly. The new Prince, however, Alexander Calli- machi, never once set foot in Samos, which he administered by his agent Konemenos, until, at the instigation of Stratford de RedclifTe, John Ghika, the subsequent Roumanian states- man, was sent there, at the critical period of the Crimean war, first as lieutenant and then as Prince. Ghika suppressed 1 An "elder" of Kalymnos in the Secolo of June 2, 1912. XVIIl] Samos 47i the piracy and brigandage which ravaged the island, improved the administration of justice, and, although a poor Greek scholar, connected his name with the foundation of a high school, appropriately called the " Pythagoreion " after the most famous son of Samos. His next four successors continued to encourage public works, and during the great crisis of the eastern question between 1875 an ^ 1878 Samos remained undisturbed. Scarcely, however, was it over than the Assembly telegraphed to Constantinople, requesting the re-appointment of Adosi'des, a former Prince, in place of the too passive ruler who had governed the island during those years. The im- mediate resignation of the well-meaning Photiades, who had done much in a quiet way for education in the island and is still remembered as the founder of a seminary for priests, taught the Assembly the dangerous lesson that it could un- make Princes. This has been responsible for much of the subsequent instability in Samos. The power of the Assembly became greater, when Alexander Karatheodori, the well-known statesman, became Prince in 1885. He allowed the majority of that body to direct his policy and his public appointments, so that office became the reward of party services. Measures taken against the phylloxera, which was ruining the famous Samian vineyards, made his administration unpopular ; force was used to repress the disorder ; several peasants were killed and wounded, and the arrival of Turkish troops, in contra- vention of the firman of 1832, so greatly increased the discontent that in 1894 he resigned. So far the princely reigns had been of long duration, for in 60 years Samos had had only 8 Princes. But in the next 18 years there were no less than 10. After the strict rule of the Albanian Berovich, who was afterwards celebrated for his flight from Crete, Stephen Mousouros, subsequently ambas- sador in London, found the Assembly resolved to usurp the princely functions. The complaints of the Samians were again heard at Constantinople ; and a radical reform in 1899 reduced 472 Armenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. the princely office to a shadow. Till then the Prince had had the right of choosing his four councillors (or (3ov\evTai), one for each division of the island, out of a list of eight submitted to him ; but he was now forced to accept those four whom the Assembly, a body of 39 members plus the Metropolitan, chose to elect, without the power of either dismissing them, or of dissolving or even proroguing it. Placed between the exigencies of the Porte and the claims of the Assembly, and invested with a limited veto, he was at once the creature of Constanti- nople and the sport of Samian faction. The palace at Vath^ was thus no bed of roses. Princes now followed each other in rapid succession. One was recalled for having accused the Samians of demanding that Prince Nicholas of Greece should be their ruler, just as his brother was of the Cretans ; another, whose chief adviser was his barber, fell into disgrace at Constantinople for allowing the councillors to exceed their powers ; a third, a member of the well-known family of Mavrogenes, after founding a technical school and encouraging both agriculture and the excavation of the Heraion, found the local politicians too strong for him. At last, in 1907, the Sultan sent as Prince a Cretan, Kopasses, of markedly anti- Hellenic opinions, whose reign was the most turbulent in the history of the island. In 1908 he refused to summon the Assembly, and threatened to employ Turkish troops to disperse it, if it met spontaneously. The people blockaded him in the palace, and fired upon the troops, where- upon the Turkish navy bombarded Vathy. M. Sophotiles, the scholarly leader of the Opposition and the most influential man in Samos, was forced to flee to Syra, and addressed a memorial to the three protecting Powers, in which he declared that Turkey wanted "to make Samos a Turkish province." It was pointed out that the Prince had further violated the constitution by increasing the Turkish garrison, and by allowing the Turkish, instead of the Samian flag, to be hoisted over the barracks — thus eventually provoking in 19 12 the otherwise xvm] Insurrection in Santos 473 unjustifiable bombardment of this autonomous island by the Italians. The crisis of October, J908, in the near east led the Samians, like the Cretans, to agitate for union with Greece, for, if geographically close to Asia, they are racially and religiously all Greeks, and on March 23, 191 2, Kopasses was assassinated. His successor, Vegleres, was deposed by M. Sophotiles, who had returned with a body of volunteers. Availing itself of the Balkan war, the Samian Assembly proclaimed union with Greece on November 24. The prudent Greek Premier accepted this decision with reserve at the time, in view of the peculiar international position of the island. But, on March 15, 1 91 3, a Greek force took official possession of Samos, which thus, after 80 years of autonomy, became, with its 68,949 inhabitants, an integral part of the Hellenic kingdom. V CHAPTER XIX THE TURKISH REVOLUTION (1908-12) The eastern question suddenly entered on a new and acute phase in the summer of 1908. The " Young " Turks, or party of reform, whom diplomatists had hitherto been wont to regard as dreamers, had long carried on a secret propaganda, which had made great headway in the army. \A Committee had been formed under the title of " Union and Progress " at Geneva in 1 89 1, and thence transferred to Paris, and in 1906 to Salonika, where it met with the ardent support of the Jews and Free- masons, who form an important element in the population of the great Macedonian seaport. It was the intention of the Committee to begin the revolution on the anniversary of the Sultan's accession, August 31; but events caused it to hasten its action. The meeting between Edward VII and the Tsar at Reval made it fear foreign intervention ; Abdul Hamid, informed by his spies of the agitation among his Macedonian troops, had made preparations to crush it ; and an incident, which in any other country would have had no political im- portance, secured for the conspirators the co-operation of the Albanians, whom of all his subjects the Sultan had humoured, feared, and trusted most. This incident was nothing more alarming than an excursion, organised for the benefit of the Austrian school at Uskiib, to a wood near Ferisovich on the line to Mitrovitza. But the Albanians of that district con- sidered the proposed entertainment, of which dancing was to have been an item, as bad for public morals, already ch. xix] Committee of " Union and Progress 11 475 contaminated by the music-halls of Uskiib ; while the rumoured display of Austrian flags aroused their political suspicions. Accordingly, they burnt the platform erected for the dancers, and threatened to fire upon the excursion-train if it attempted to traverse the cut-throat gorge of Katchanik. This threat alarmed the Committee of Union and Progress, which feared that an Albanian attack upon Austrian subjects would be made the pretext for an Austrian invasion of the country, and that consequently its own scheme would be frustrated. Some of its members parleyed with the Albanians of Ferisovich to such purpose that the latter threw in their lot with the revolutionary movement, and telegraphed to the Sultan de- manding the revival of the constitution of 1876. Meanwhile, several occurrences had shown the spread of the agitation among the officers of the 3rd army corps. At Resnja, near the lake of Prespa, on July 3, Major Niazi, after seizing the military chest and a number of rifles, took to the mountains as the chief of a " Young " Turkish band ; and Shemshi Pasha, who was sent to suppress him, was killed at Monastir. Other as- sassinations of reactionary officers followed in quick succession; the Sultan, realising that he could rely upon neither the Albanians nor the army, on July 22 appointed as Grand Vizier " little " Said Pasha, the Liberal statesman who had once fled for refuge to the British Embassy. It was too late, however, for half-measures ; on the morrow Major Enver Bey and the Committee proclaimed the constitution at various places in Macedonia, and the 2nd and 3rd army corps threatened to march upon Constantinople. On the 24th a decree of the Sultan announced the restoration of the constitution, which had been suspended since 1878. The censorship of the press and the spy system were abolished, and a Chamber of 280 deputies, elected by grand electors, themselves chosen by every group of from 250 to 750 adult males above 25 years of age, was summoned to meet. Great was the enthusiasm of the people, when they found 47 6 The Turkish Revolution [ch. that the news was true. For some days Macedonia seemed to have become Utopia. Enver Bey exclaimed that " arbitrary government " had " disappeared." " Henceforth," cried this enthusiastic leader of the revolution, "we are all brothers. There are no longer Bulgars, Greeks, Roumans, Jews, Mussul- mans ; under the same blue sky we are all equal, we glory in being Ottomans." At Serres the president of the Bulgarian Committee embraced the Greek Archbishop; at Drama the revolutionary officers imprisoned a Turk for insulting a Christian ; in an Armenian cemetery a procession of Turks and Armenians listened to prayers, offered up by their respective priests, for the victims of the Armenian massacres ; at Samsun the Turks saluted the beard of a Greek prelate; at Tripoli Turks and Arabs joined in thanksgiving services. The Bulgarian bands surrendered, and the brigand Sandanski was received like the prodigal son. Even the cautious British government, which might have been expected to regard with scepticism the results of this sudden conversion of an Oriental autocracy into a constitutional monarchy, hastened to prophesy, through the medium of Sir Edward Grey, that " the Macedonian question and others of a similar character will entirely disappear." The magic word " Constitution " had? indeed, an extraordinary whether the " Young " Turk would not prove to be merely the " Old " Turk with a varnish of Parisian culture and without a belief in religion, they welcomed enthusiastically the Com- mittee of Union and Progress. /Pro-Bulgarians became in a moment pro-Turks; an Ottoman deputation met the British ambassador on his arrival at Constantinople ; and the popularity of Great Britain rose in Turkey to a point which it had not attained since the time of Beaconsfield. There were, however, some persons who foresaw that the position of the Christians of Turkey would be worse, instead of better, under the new system, which would inevitably aim at reducing them all to one dead level. The Greeks were suspicious from the outset ; effect upon British pausing to consider xix] The " Young Turks" 477 while here and there, in Arabia and Armenia, reactionary pashas struggled, but in vain, against the new order. On the other side, the triumphant revolutionaries naturally increased their demands. They insisted on the removal of the Sultan's favourite, Izzet, and accused Said of having violated the con- stitution by reserving to his master the nomination of the Ministers of War and Marine. Accordingly, Said made way for Kiamil, likewise an Anglophil but of a more advanced Liberalism, who included both a Greek and an Armenian in his Cabinet. Sweeping changes were made in the administration; and several of those who had battened on the Hamidian mis- government were made to disgorge. In the house of one ex-Minister, who had been in office for no more than 18 months, ;£ 170,000 were found and appropriated to the public service ! The new men and the new methods inspired such confidence in the Powers, that they decided to remove the vestiges of foreign control, as the Committee of Union and Progress desired, from Macedonia. The foreign officers were recalled ; the International Commission of Finance ceased to exist; "Young" Turkey was to act by herself. There were two governments, however, ready to seize this opportunity of profiting by the internal difficulties of the state, from all connexion with which they had both long desired to emancipate themselves. The grant of constitutional liberties to the subjects of Turkey proved a serious embarrassment to a Christian Power like Austria, whose wards in Bosnia and the Herzegovina did not enjoy similar privileges, especially as the Turkish press suggested the extension of the constitution to such " integral parts " of the Ottoman empire as the two occupied provinces and Eastern Roumelia. A strike on that section of the South Bulgarian lines, which Stoilov had tried to obtain amicably nine years before but which still belonged to the Oriental Railways Company, provided the Bulgarian government with an excellent excuse for seizing and retaining it y on grounds of public safety. A diplomatic incident, arising 478 The Turkish Revohition [ch. out of the omission to ask the Bulgarian representative to an official dinner at Constantinople, was construed as a reminder that a vassal was not meet to sit at table with the envoys of sovereign states. The act was peculiarly foolish, because Bulgaria had had separate representation at the Hague, and her Prince had been accorded sovereign honours at foreign Courts. It wounded the national pride, and gave the Prince just the pretext that he needed for declaring his independence. At Buda-Pesth he met the Austrian Emperor, himself anxious to seize the psychological moment for annexing Bosnia and the Herzegovina. Prince Ferdinand, who had lost his first wife nine years before, had become particularly acceptable to the Austrian court by his recent marriage with a Princess of Reuss. Personal claims and public policy led to an understanding between the two violators of the oft-broken treaty of Berlin. It was arranged that the one should support the other, if Servia protested by force against this mortgage on her future. Having secured the consent of Austria, and well knowing that his army was ready and that "Young" Turkey was weak, the Prince returned to Bulgaria; and at Trnovo, her medieval capital, in the church of the Forty Martyrs on October 5, 1908, he was proclaimed "Tsar of the Bulgarians" — a title re- miniscent of the old Bulgarian empire, which had embraced other regions besides modern Bulgaria. To increase the solemnity of this act, the proclamation was repeated on the citadel hill, where once had stood the palace of the Tsars. Two days later Austria-Hungary formally annexed the two provinces which she had occupied for 30 years ; and Crete thereupon at once proclaimed her union with Greece. While Sig. Tittoni, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, described the annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina as merely the destruction of "a diplomatic fiction," his fellow-countrymen loudly demanded compensation elsewhere, and his British colleague blustered without being able to do anything, because Germany was well known to be behind Austria-Hungary, The annexation xix] Annexation of Bosnia 479 naturally provoked a formal protest from the Porte, the boy- cott of Austrian goods in Turkey, and the fiercest resentment in the two Serb states. At one moment Servia, where the Crown Prince led the anti- Austrian party, seemed to be on the brink of war with Austria-Hungary; and Montenegro was spoiling for a fight, encouraged by the speeches of British Ministers and left without any other official British guidance than that of a hastily-sent diplomatist, whose knowledge of Spanish was not of much service at Cetinje, whither for three years Sir E. Grey had omitted to send a resident representative. Milovanovich, the Servian Minister of Foreign Affairs, made a political tour abroad, demanding a strip of Bosnia which would unite Servia with Montenegro; the President of the Montenegrin parliament sent a message of thanks to the Lord Mayor of London ; and Prince Nicholas announced that, if the Austrian annexation were allowed, he would consider himself released from the restrictions imposed by article 29 of the Berlin treaty upon the bay of Antivari. Meanwhile, the elections to the Turkish parliament were held. Efforts were made to gerrymander the constituencies so as to favour the Mohammedan element, and the majority of the deputies elected were Mussulmans ; but 18 Greeks, 4 Bulgars, 2 Serbs, 2 Jews, and 2 Armenians sat in the legislature; whereas the Greeks protested at, the Armenians acquiesced in, the results of the polls ; and, while Jerusalem sent three Mussulmans, Salonika returned M. Carasso, a leading Jew and Freemason. On December 10 the Sultan opened parliament in person with a speech, in which he alluded to the encroachments of Austria-Hungary and of the " Vali of the province of Eastern Roumelia" — a phrase considered "pro- vocative" in Bulgaria — and announced that his intention to govern constitutionally was " unalterable." All real power was, however, in the hands of the Committee ; and when Kiamil made a show of independence by dismissing the two Ministers of War and Marine, who were its nominees, it revenged itself 480 The Tttrkisk Revolution [ch. by procuring the adoption of a vote of no confidence in him and his consequent fall. The Committee was, however, still opposed by another organisation, the " Liberal Union," of which the leader was Ismail Kemal Bey, and which advocated decentralisation. Assassination removed the Albanian editor of the "Liberal Unionist" organ; but on April 13, 1909, a counter-revolution broke out at the capital, the combined work of reactionaries and constitutionalists and inspired by Abdul Hamid, who believed that with the aid of the former he could restore the system of absolute government. Soldiers, led by an Albanian, occupied the parliament-house, and killed two officers who belonged to the Committee ; most of the garrison joined in the revolt ; Hilmi Pasha, the Grand Vizier, made way for Tewfik ; the Minister of Justice was killed, and the Minister of Marine wounded, whereupon the Sultan granted a free pardon to the mutinous troops. Simultaneously with this revolt in Constantinople a massacre of the Armenians at Adana in Cilicia, in which several thousands, including two American missionaries, perished, completed the iniquities of the " Red Sultan's " long reign. If Abdul Hamid did not actually order this massacre, it is significant of the reactionary cause, with which it was associated in the popular mind, that cheers were given for him, and an arch at Adana, commemorative of the constitution, was pulled down. No rebellion, no con- spiracy to restore the Armenian kingdom could be proved in partial justification of the horrors which ensued not- only at Adana, but at Tarsus and other places in Cilicia — a district almost wholly spared at the time of the previous Armenian massacres. Fire completed the work of destruction; and special care was taken to destroy the account-books, in which the Armenians had registered the liabilities of their Moslem debtors. Neither the vdli nor the military commander of Adana showed the least energy in attempting to stop the massacres ; while the troops, summoned from Salonika at the news of the first outbreak of savagery, by firing upon the xix] Deposition of Abdul H amid II 481 Armenians provoked the second. Nor can the "Young" Turks be acquitted of culpable weakness at the least in allowing the two principal officials of Adana to escape with light sentences ; if many guilty Mussulmans were hanged, at least three innocent Armenians shared their fate. The day of reckoning for Abdul Ham id was at last nigh. When the news of the counter-revolution reached Salonika, the Committee of Union and Progress refused all compromise with Constantinople, and Mahmud Shevket led the Macedonian troops to the capital in defence of the constitution which he had sworn to uphold. The senators and deputies met at San Stefano, the scene of the abortive treaty of 1878; and both houses of the legislature, sitting as a National Assembly, agreed in recommending obedience to the orders of this commander. His terms included the proclamation of martial law, the punishment of the mutineers, and the reduction of the garrison of Constantinople. These conditions were accepted, and on April 25 the avenging army entered the capital. Five hours' hard fighting and the employment of cannon were required to reduce the rebellious soldiers who held the Taksim and Tashkisla barracks — men who had been sent from Salonika some months before to replace the Sultan's favourite Albanian guards, but had been won over by the reactionaries. Ex- emplary vengeance was taken upon the authors of the counter- revolution ; 40 of the ringleaders were hanged publicly ; and on April 27 the National Assembly met with closed doors to decide the fate of the Sultan, whom public opinion regarded as their accomplice, if not their instigator. The fetvah of the Sheikh-ul-Islam, enumerating his misdeeds, was read \ and the Assembly unanimously voted his deposition, and proclaimed his younger brother Reschad under the title of Mohammed V. Next day the fallen Sultan, who had so long befooled the diplomatists of Europe, was removed to Salonika, and interned in a villa there, whence he was till his death removed to Constantinople. He was allowed to solace himself with his m. l. 31 482 The Turkish Revolution [ch. ladies ; the treasure, amounting to over a million sterling, found in his palace, was claimed by the Ministry of Finance for the nation which he had so long misgoverned. The new Sultan was a mere puppet in the hands of the Committee. Of the world he could know little, for he had been confined by his brother within the gilded cage of his palace, and he is said to have declared " that he had not read any newspaper for 20 years." But the authors of the revolution obtained in him what they wanted — a figure-head. The dawn of the new reign was not, however, auspicious ; an attempt to levy taxes in northern Albania provoked disturbances in that lawless region, where " village Hampdens " protested by force against this interference with their time-honoured custom of paying exactly what they chose ; and a new Mahdi appeared in the Yemen. Mohammed V found, however, at his accession, that two of the three external difficulties, which had arisen in October, 1908, had been already settled. The suggestion of Sig. Tittoni for a conference on the eastern question at Naples came to naught ; and it became obvious that everyone would have to recognise the accomplished fact of the Austrian annex- ation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. Servia and Montenegro, despite the renewal of their diplomatic relations and the con- clusion of a military convention, were too weak to stand alone against their powerful neighbour, especially as the Servian capital was within range of his guns. Great Britain could not help a wholly inland state, while the appearance of her fleet off the Montenegrin coast might have provoked war with Germany, the real mistress of the situation. Russia, not yet recovered from her exhausting struggle against Japan, was informed from Berlin that, if she aided Servia, Germany would support Austria. M. Isvolski, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, perforce admitted that Russia had "not legally the right to protest alone " ; his Austrian critics contended that his hands were tied by a previous secret agreement between xix] The Bosnian Settlement 483 Austria and Russia, by which the latter had given to the former liberty of action in the two occupied provinces. Italian indignation, displayed by Fortis in a great speech in the Chamber, was forgotten in the disaster of the earthquake at Messina and Reggio. Thus, force triumphed. On February 26, 1909, an Austro-Turkish agreement was signed, by which Austria-Hungary renounced all her rights in the sanjak of Novibazar, whence she had withdrawn her troops on October 28, while Turkey formally recognised the annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. The name of the Sultan as Khalif was to be still used in the public prayers of the Bosnian Mussul- mans, whose spiritual chiefs would continue to depend upon the Sheikh-ul-Islam. Turkey accepted £T. 2,500,000 for the domain lands in Bosnia and the Herzegovina; and Austria- Hungary promised to abolish pari passu with the other Powers her post-offices in Turkey and to assist the Porte in securing the abolition of the capitulations. On April 6, the Ottoman parliament ratified this arrangement ; and thus, so far as Turkey was concerned, the question was over. The Turks lost practically nothing by the annexation of two provinces which had really ceased to belong to them for 30 years, and over which, even before that time, their hold had been pre- carious. For Servia and Montenegro, however, the recognition of the incorporation of so large a Serb population within the Dual Monarchy meant the destruction of their own hopes for the future. At this national crisis, as at Athens under similar circumstances in 1877, a Coalition Cabinet, in which three ex-Premiers sat, . was formed at Belgrade. Finding no prospect of material support from the Powers, Servia sent a note on March 9 to the signatories of the Berlin treaty, stating that she demanded no compensation for the annexation, which was a matter for them. A peaceful solution was facilitated by the action of the bellicose Crown Prince, who on March 25 resigned his right of succession in favour of his brother Alex- ander, in consequence of the death of a servant, alleged to 31—2 484 The Turkish Revohition [ch. have been due to his violence. Austria declared that she had no intention of contravening the independence of Servia ; and another Servian note to Vienna promised that the army should be replaced on a peace footing. As a reward of Montenegrin acquiescence, article 29 of the Berlin treaty, which regulated the bay of Antivari, was considerably modified. The clause prohibiting Montenegro from having either ships or flag of war was suppressed ; the port of Antivari was no longer closed to the warships of other nations, although it was to retain its purely commercial character ; and the rest of this article was entirely cancelled. Thus, Montenegro might now erect forti- fications between the lake of Scutari and the coast ; her maritime and sanitary police was no longer entrusted to Austrian boats, nor was she forced to adopt the Dalmatian maritime code. Still the bay of Antivari was dominated by the guns of Spizza, and an Austrian fleet could now enter it. Nor was the withdrawal of the Austrian garrisons from the sanjak considered by the Serbs to be much compensation. For, while Turkey still retained that strip of territory and thus divided them, Austria, thanks to the Bosnian railway, now constructed to Uvatz, could re-enter the sanjak whenever she pleased, and her officials were known to have surveyed a future line across it. Besides, her military authorities then believed that a future march to the /Egean had not been hindered by the withdrawal from the sanjak, for, in their view, the best route to the south was not through the Katchanik defile but across Servia. All the Powers having finally accepted the new order of things in April, 1909, it only remained to perform the promise of a constitution, an- nounced to the people of the two annexed provinces, which, together with the historic connexion between Bosnia and the Hungarian crown, had been officially alleged as a motive for their annexation. In February, 1910, the promised constitution was granted; and on June 15 the first Bosnian diet was opened at Sarajevo, its numbers corresponding fairly accurately with the relative strength of the various religious elements in the xix] The Bulgarian Settlement 485 population. Out of 73 elected and 17 ex officio members, 37 represented the Orthodox Serbs, 29 the Moslems, 23 the Catholic Croats, and one the Jews. But no measure could be so much as discussed until it had been first approved by both the Austrian and the Hungarian cabinets. Thus Bosnian liberty was still, as was perhaps necessary for a time, in leading- strings. The settlement with Bulgaria mainly depended upon finance, although at one moment the Bulgarian army was mobilised. The Turks demanded ^5,000,000 as compen- sation ; the Bulgars offered ^3, 280,000. Russia then stepped in with a proposal which satisfied both parties. Turkey still owed to her 74 annual instalments of the last war indemnity; she agreed to cancel 40 of these, so as to enable Turkey to borrow the ^5,000,000 which she claimed from Bulgaria. The latter, instead of paying ^3,280,000 to Turkey, agreed to pay this sum to Russia in annual instalments of ^200,000. If the operation cost Russia some material sacrifice, it regained for her prestige and perhaps gratitude in Bulgaria. It was further agreed between Bulgaria and Turkey, that a Chief Mufti should reside at Sofia to look after the interests of the Bulgarian Moslems ; that the kingdom should continue to set aside a sum for the maintenance of its Moslem schools and mosques ; and that such buildings should " be demolished only in case of imperious necessity." On April 19 the Porte recognised " the new political situation " of the kingdom, which was formally sanctioned by all the Powers in the course of the next few days. King Ferdinand had realised his ambition, and to him personally and socially the declaration of inde- pendence was a gain. But frugal Bulgarian democrats realised that this increase of social status would involve greater expense in the representation of their country abroad, and the loss of some of the material advantages derived from their nominal vassalage. National sentiment was, however, favourable to national independence. Thus, the last vassal state of the 486 The Turkish Revolution [ch. Sultan in the Balkans was fully emancipated, and the nominal and the real frontiers of Turkey in Europe became identical. There remained still to be solved the Cretan question. At the moment of the proclamation of union, M. Za'imes was absent from the island, to which he has never returned. The proclamation had been signed by tne three Christian Coun- cillors; and an extraordinary session of the Chamber was at once held for the purpose of ratifying their action and of appointing an Executive Committee of five persons, of which M. Michelidakes was president and M. Venizelos a member, to carry on the government provisionally in the name of the King of the Hellenes, until his officials should have taken it over. The Greek Constitution was adopted ; Cretan stamps were surcharged with the word Hellas ; the official note-paper was headed " Kingdom of Greece " ; the civil servants took the oath to King George ; appeals from the insular courts were sent to Athens. The Greek government, however, of which Theot6kes was then head, declared that it was extraneous to the events which had occurred in Crete and made no reply to the Cretans. The opinion was expressed by many persons at the time and is now generally held, that, had the Greeks im- mediately taken Crete, instead of preserving an unimpeachably " correct " attitude, that island would have remained part of the Greek kingdom. Turkey was then involved in difficulties with Austria and Bulgaria ; a Greco-Bulgarian alliance would have made it difficult for her to invade Thessaly ; while the new state of things in the Turkish empire was not yet consolidated. Above all, Abdul Hamid was still on the throne ; and it was notoriously easier to treat with him, especially on the basis of a pecuniary compensation, than with a strongly chauvinist Turkish parliament. It was, indeed, objected by cautious Greek diplomatists, that the Powers still had troops in the island. But the attitude of the Powers was remarkably en- couraging. The British minister at Athens stated, indeed, that the principle of his government was " to do nothing which xix] The Cretan Question 487 could prejudice the new regime in Turkey 1 "; while the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs indulged in the platitude that "without the consent of all the Powers, no change in the political situation of Crete can be taken into consideration," But the two most reactionary of them — Austria and Germany — were ready to support the union, if some other state would take the initiative 2 . When, on October 28, the official com- munication of the four protecting Powers was made, its tone gave satisfaction alike at Canea and at Athens. They con- sidered the union as dependent upon their assent, but " none the less they would not be averse from regarding with good-will the discussion of this question with Turkey, if order be maintained in the island and if the security of the Mussulman population be assured 3 ." Meanwhile, they authorised their consuls to enter into "administrative" relations with the provisional government. The latter took every care that the two conditions of the Powers should be fulfilled, although the Mussulmans, stimu- lated from outside, sought to provoke difficulties and then presented complaints, which the consuls dismissed as futile. But the delay, as months wore on, became embarrassing to both the provisional authorities in Crete and to the Cabinet of Athens, where public opinion fretted at the postponement of a definite solution and the Premier thought that he detected a consequent feeling against the Crown 4 . Matters became worse, when, after the suppression of the counter-revolution in Turkey, the military party became predominant, and sought to divert attention from the mistakes committed by the " Young " Turks at home, by picking a quarrel with Greece. As the nationalist spirit in Turkey became stronger, the Turkish demands increased. First, the Porte asked for the postponement of the promised withdrawal of the international troops ; next it sought the suppression of various concessions, 1 Libro Verde: Creta (191 1), p. 32. 2 lb. p. 33. * n% p . 3 6. 4 p> 45> 488 The Turkish Revolution [ch. made by the Powers to the Cretans, and desired to establish a sort of limited autonomy, or, in other words, to set the clock back to the time previous to 1898. Then it expressed the wish to send a stationnaire to Cretan waters. While the Powers negatived these proposals, and announced their intention of maintaining the status quo — whatever that might be— and of "concerning themselves with good-will in the Cretan question," Theot6kes, on July 17, 1909, felt compelled to resign, in order to prevent a threatening demonstration against his attitude towards Crete. Rhalles, his successor, a politician popular at Constantinople, was at once placed in the difficulty which had prevented him from accepting office three months earlier. He wanted to dissolve parliament, but the threat of the Cretans to elect deputies to the new Greek Chamber would, he knew, be regarded by Turkey as an un- friendly act; he would, therefore, find himself in the dilemma of either excluding the Cretan representatives or of risking a war with Turkey by admitting them — a dilemma solved by the tact and firmness of M. Venizelos in June, 191 2. Rhalles, therefore, decided to postpone the dissolution till the following year, and assured the Turkish minister in Athens of his in- tention to " re-establish good relations with Turkey " and " as regards Crete, to accept loyally the decisions of the Powers 1 ." No one who knows that statesman's frank character can doubt that he meant what he said. But events in Crete provided the Turkish military party with a further pretext for demands upon Greece. On July 26, in accordance with their promises, the four Powers withdrew the rest of their troops from the island. As soon as they were gone, the Cretans hoisted in the place of the Cretan emblem a Greek flag on the bastion of the fort at the entrance of the port of Canea. Warlike demonstrations in Turkey ensued; and on August 6 the Turkish government ordered its minister in Athens to demand from Rhalles a written disavowal of 1 lb. p. 87. xix] Turkish Notes to Gi'eece 489 the Cretan agitation for union and a further repudiation of any such design on his part; in case of delay in replying to this peremptory note, Naby Bey was to leave Athens. At the same time preparations were made for sending a Turkish fleet to Karpathos, or even Suda, while a boycott of Greek goods began in Turkish ports. Three days later, Rhalles replied that " Crete being in deposit in the hands of the protecting Powers, the Greek government can only leave the solution to them and conform itself with their decision." He repeated that Greece would continue to observe her " correct " attitude, and added that not a single Greek officer was at that moment on Turkish territory, for those in Crete had left the Greek army. This reply was considered unsatisfactory by the Porte; and on August 13 a further note was presented to him, com- plaining of the presence of Greek officers in disguise in Macedonia, observing that " Greece has nothing to do " with the Cretan question, and that, " as the attitude of the. Greek government in foreign affairs has not been beyond reproach," a further "clear and frank declaration " was desired. Greece at this appealed to the Powers to prevent war; and on the 1 8th Rhalles again replied to Turkey, reiterating the intention of his government to conform to their decision and to abstain from encouraging any Cretan agitation. Meanwhile, in Crete the Executive Committee, finding itself unable to secure the removal of the offending flag, in face of the general opposition, resigned, whereupon the Chamber nominated three local magistrates as a provisional government. At last, as no Christian Cretan could be found to haul down the flag, the Powers each landed a company of marines, who, amidst perfect order, on August 18 cut down the flagstaff. A part of it is now preserved in the Museum of the Historical Society at Athens, together with the last Turkish flag that floated over the battlements of Canea and with fragments of the shells fired by the fleets of the Powers at Akroteri, as memorials of the Cretan question. The Powers on the same day drily 490 The Turkish Revolution [ch. pointed out to the Porte that both the Cretan and the Mace- donian questions were matters of European concern. The Porte then disclaimed bellicose intentions towards Greece, and all fear of war was dissipated. But the humiliation which Greece had undergone produced a strong feeling of disgust in that country. For some time past the conviction had been growing that the national interests had been sacrificed to the exigencies of party politics. Even so early as May 1909, the young officers had begun to form a " Military League," which, being at the moment the only organised force in Greece, made itself the organ of the people in its struggle against the politicians. As Rhalles refused to accept a note embodying their proposals, the officers com- posing the League, over 500 in number, marched out of Athens on the night of August 27/28, and formed a camp at Goudi, under the leadership of Col. Zorbas, a distinguished officer. All efforts to break up the League failed; two officers, who tried to seduce the cavalry from their allegiance to that organisation, were arrested; and the mayor was sent in vain to parley with the chiefs. Rhalles resigned, and Mavro- michales on August 29 became Prime Minister under the control of the League. The Leaguers then returned to Athens, and issued a manifesto, demanding radical reforms, and more especially the reorganisation of the army and navy, the exclusion of the Royal Princes from their military commands, and the bestowal of the two Ministries of War and Marine upon officers. The former of these posts was conferred upon Col. Lapathi6tes, a member of the League, whose chief at the same time protested its devotion to the Crown. Popular demonstrations in different provincial centres expressed support of the League's programme ; and the trade guilds of the capital appealed to the people to support it as the best means of ending "political corruption." There was, however, a strong opposition in the Chamber, which manifested itself when the government, at the bidding of the League, proposed the xix] Greek Military League 491 removal of the Princes from their commands. The League threatened to occupy the legislative building by force; but the intervention of the King, who desired his sons to resign their commissions, anticipated this act of violence,, and on the morrow the Chamber passed the bills for their removal, and for the abolition of the Crown Prince's post of Commander-in- Chief, together with 23 other measures, without debate. The success of the Military League emboldened the junior naval officers to demand the removal of many of their seniors, and the re-admission of a sub-lieutenant, who had been punished for insubordination during the war of 1897. On the refusal of the government, Commander Typaldos, the leader of this second agitation, seized the naval station at Salamis, and, with the aid of three small vessels, resolved to show fight. The new " battle of Salamis " lasted less than half an hour and cost only six lives ; the government was victorious, and Typaldos and his supporters were sentenced to prison but subsequently pardoned. The League became more and more exacting. Its representative in the Cabinet plainly told the deputies that they were there only to obey its orders ; but. although Col. Zorbas ordered the dismissal of this unparlia- mentary Minister, two officers of the League shortly afterwards appeared in the Chamber, and demanded the immediate adoption of the budget with 27 other bills, and the recall of the Greek representatives from four European capitals. The Chamber, coerced by the knowledge that the troops were under arms, accepted these demands, and 160 laws were added to the statute-book in 55 hours ! Still the League was not satisfied, and it insisted upon the dismissal of the Minister of the Interior, who had incurred its displeasure. At this moment a new and powerful figure arrived upon the stage of Greek politics. Several officers of the League had made in Crete the acquaintance of M. Venizelos, the Cretan chief, whom we last saw in collision with Prince George. Long before the birth of the League, M. Zai'mes had prophesied 49 2 The Turkish Revolution [ch. that, if M. Venizelos could be induced to collaborate with the Royal family, he would become the saviour of Greece. The League accordingly invited the Cretan politician to Athens as its political adviser, and from his arrival the marvellous re- generation of the country is usually dated. No better choice could have been made, for the newcomer's strength lay in his great force of character, his complete detachment from the old parties, and the independence of mind which made him refuse to flatter the people. He saw that the anomalous state of affairs could not continue ; he, therefore, proposed the summons of a National Assembly to revise the constitution. The politicians accepted this proposal, on condition that, as a corollary, the League should be dissolved ; the King, after some hesitation at the convocation of a National Assembly without the elaborate forms provided by the constitution (see p. 296), reluctantly consented. A veteran lieutenant of Trikoiipes, M. Stephen Dragoumes, accordingly became Premier at the end of January, 19 10, with General (as he had now become) Zorbas as his Minister of War, and with a mandate to summon the proposed Assembly. The League stifled all expressions of public opinion hostile to this plan; the Chamber passed the necessary bill, and, after " purging " the University, ended its labours. The League thereupon, in a manifesto to the nation, declared the interference of the army in politics to be over and announced its own dissolution. The National Assembly, composed of 358 deputies, was opened on September 14. Among those elected were M. Venizelos and four other Cretans; and the Porte at once protested against their election. M. Venizelos and one of his colleagues were, however, technically Greek subjects; and they accordingly entered the Assembly, resigning their positions in Crete, where M. Venizelos was then chief of the provisional government, while the other three patriotically declined the seats offered them, so as not to embarrass the Greeks. The Assembly was at once divided by the question whether it was xix] M. Venizdlos Premier 493 a Constituent or only a revisionary body. The difficulty was too great for M. Dragoilmes, who resigned; and on October 18 the King took the heroic step of appointing Prime Minister the famous Cretan, hitherto chiefly known at the palace as the opponent of his son. Of the many services rendered by King George to Greece this was not the least. From that moment he gave his whole confidence to his First Minister, who immediately pronounced in favour of the revision of the non- fundamental articles of the constitution. Five days later, however, the abstention of the old parties and the advocates of a Constituent Assembly left him without a quorum on a vote of confidence. His prompt resignation provoked a mass meeting, organised by the trade guilds and the University, in his favour; and, on his advice, the King dissolved the Assembly. The appeal to the country, in which the leaders of the old parties refused to participate, gave M. Venizelos an overwhelming majority. The officers were ordered to devote themselves exclusively to their profession; the elect of the nation was dictator. No Greek statesman had ever been so popular, or wielded such authority. The " Second Revisionary National Assembly," which met on January 21, 1-911, adopted the revised constitution on June 11. After a vehement discussion an addition was made to article 2, forbidding the translation of the Scriptures without the consent of the Church in Greece and the (Ecumenical Patriarch. Elementary education, declared compulsory, was to be provided gratis by the state. The expropriation of proprietors for purposes of public utility was defined, with special reference to the sale of the large estates and the creation of a peasant proprietary in Thessaly. The quorum of the Chamber was reduced to one-third of all its members; par- liamentary vacancies were not, unless very numerous, to be filled in the last year of a legislature ; military men were declared ineligible as deputies ; election petitions were trans- ferred from the Chamber to a special tribunal; the pay of 494 The Turkish Revolution [ch. members was fixed at iooo dr. every three months (except those resident in Athens or the Piraeus, who received 800 dr.); and frequent absence without leave was to involve the deduction of 20 dr. per sitting. The Council of State was revived; public officials, with few exceptions, obtained security of tenure ; and the official language was declared to be that in which the constitution was drawn up. The Assembly further passed a bill creating the post of Inspector-General of the Army, despite the opposition of General Zorbas, and thus restoring the Crown Prince to his military command. With the close of this National Assembly the normal state of things returned ; and at the general election for an ordinary Chamber, on March 25, 191 2, M. Venizelos obtained the support of 150 out of 181 members. All the deputies from Attica and Bceotia (where Rhalles, the once powerful Atticarch, was defeated) were Venizelists; north of the Isthmus every member but one belonged to the Premier's party; while even in Corfu, the stronghold of Theotokes, a Venizelist headed the poll. Once again the Cretans elected deputies, 69 in number, to the Chamber. But the Premier declared that he would resign rather than allow them to take their seats, as Greece needed a period of repose, in order to reorganise her army and her internal administration ; and such was his influence, that he prevented those of them who had eluded the ships of the Powers from entering the Chamber, which he then adjourned till October. Meanwhile, he had been quietly working to promote a better understanding with the other Balkan states. Despite a fresh Greco-Roumanian incident at the Piraeus, he renewed diplomatic relations with Roumania in 1911; Bul- garian students visited Athens; the Greek Crown Prince visited Sofia; and, with the aid of Bourchier, the Times correspondent and a friend of both countries, the bases of an agreement were laid between those two former rivals, Greece and Bulgaria. But nothing proved to be such a potent cause of union xix] " Turkification" 495 between the Balkan Christians as the policy of "Turkification," adopted by the chauvinistic section of the " Young " Turks, whose plan of reducing the various races and regions of the empire to one dead level of Turkish uniformity provoked general discontent. The Bulgars of Macedonia protested against the immigration of Bosnian Moslems, renewed their revolutionary organisation in self-defence, and invited the Powers to resume their control. The Druses revolted in the Hauran, a new Mahdi, Said Idris, appeared in the Yemen; the Greek bishop of Grevena was murdered, and the (Ecu- menical Patriarch proclaimed equality to be a mere phrase and declared the Greek Church to be in danger. The repre- sentatives of the "Twelve Islands" complained that their privileges were annulled; the Cretan Christians protested against the attempt to send Moslem judges ; the Moslems of northern Albania objected to the payment of dues, of which they saw no result in their own country, to the census, to military service in the distant Yemen, and (like the Mainates) to the destruction of their fortified towers. In 1909 fighting had taken place at Ljuma, a place noted for the independent spirit of its inhabitants, between the Turkish troops and Isa Boletin, an influential chief; in the following year the im- position of an octroi for " urban improvements rekindled the insurrection. The Albanians held up a trainload of troops in the Katchanik defile ; but the Turks ultimately disarmed the north of the country. Despite the consequent lack of rifles, however, the five mostly Roman Catholic tribes of Hoti, Gruda, Kastrati, Skreli, and Clementi, known collectively as the Maltsori, or " mountain-men," and inhabiting the territory between the lake of Scutari and the ill-defined Montenegrin frontier, began a fresh insurrection early in 191 1, and inflicted severe losses upon the Kurdish troops, of whose savage methods of " restoring order " the author was an eye-witness. Great excitement was caused in Montenegro, whither many Albanians found refuge among their Albanian relatives, and 49 6 The Turkish Revolution [ch. war was only prevented by the influence of King Nicholas, while in the Mirdite country a "provisional government of Albania " was formed by Sig. Tocci, an Albanian from Calabria. After severe fighting round Tuzi, an armistice was granted by Turgut Shevket Pasha ; and in August King Nicholas, upon whose exchequer the refugees were a heavy burden, advised, and, indeed, compelled the insurgents to accept the Turkish terms — an amnesty, the limitation of military service to Europe, freedom from taxes for two years, permission to bear arms outside the towns, roads, Albanian schools, and compensation in maize and in cash, to which the Sultan, who paid a state visit to the plain of Kossovo, contributed ^T. 10,000. Scarcely was the Albanian insurrection over when Turkey found herself suddenly plunged in a foreign war. The Italians had long coveted Tripoli, which they regarded as their share of the Turkish empire, especially since the French occupation of Tunisia had precluded all hope of acquiring that country. For some time the Turks had placed obstacles in the way of the " peaceful penetration " of Tripoli by Italians, who were refused archaeological and other facilities, readily granted to other nationalities. But, so late as June 9, 191 1, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs had declared in the Chamber that his policy had "as basis the maintenance of the territorial status quo and the integrity of the Ottoman empire " in Africa as well as elsewhere. Still later, at the beginning of July, the Ottoman heir-apparent had been received with honours in Rome ; while during the Maltsori rising the Italian government had strictly prevented the export of arms and the passage of volunteers across the Adriatic. Accordingly, the world was taken by surprise, when on September 26 Italy sent an ulti- matum to the Turkish government; nor were the reasons alleged in that document — "the state of disorder and neglect" in which Tripoli and the Cyrenaica had been left, the "oppo- sition to every Italian initiative," and " the agitation against the Italians " — generally considered adequate for the employment xix] Loss of Libya 497 of such an extreme remedy. The King and the Premier, Sig. Giolitti, were unfavourable to war, but the Nationalist party, the Sicilians in the Cabinet and in the country, a financial house which possessed great interests in Tripoli, and the general desire for a national triumph overcame all oppo- sition, and war began. The fighting in "Libya" — as the two provinces were called in Italy — resulted in the loss of Turkey's last direct possessions in Africa, which by a royal decree of November 5, 191 1, subsequently converted into law, were "placed under the full and entire sovereignty of the kingdom of Italy." But the war only affected the Levant in a secondary degree. At the outset the Italian government sent a message to its agents in the Balkans, reiterating its adherence to the principle of the territorial status quo in that region and dis- countenancing "any movement in the Balkan peninsula against Turkey " ; and, when the Italian fleet bombarded Preveza and San Giovanni di Medua, it was promptly recalled on the remonstrances of Austria-Hungary. When it was found, however, that progress was slow in Libya, the fleet sank some Turkish ships in the harbour of Beirut, bombarded the Turkish barracks at Samos, and the mouth of the Dardanelles, sent a flotilla of torpedo-boats a long way up that dangerous strait, and occupied in April and May, 191 2, Rhodes, Kos, Leipso, and 10 islands of the Dodekdnesos. A congress of insular delegates, held at Patmos, expressed, however, on June 17, their desire for union with Greece, and meanwhile pro- claimed the autonomous " State of the Aegean " with a flag of its own — a proceeding strongly discountenanced by Italy. Thus, the Italian occupation raised an Aegean question. When, on October 18, the treaty of Lausanne ended the war, the Italians promised to evacuate the islands, whose inhabitants were to have full pardon, immediately after the Turkish evacuation of Libya. Meanwhile, the Italian troops remain in them. M. l. CHAPTER XX THE BALKAN LEAGUE AND ITS RESULTS (1912-14) The Turks were induced to sign the treaty of Lausanne by the knowledge that another struggle was impending: The Balkan peninsula had remained comparatively quiet during the greater part of the Libyan war; but in August, 191 2, symptoms of the coming storm began to manifest them- selves. Sanguinary incidents occurred on the Montenegrin frontier, causing the Turkish minister to quit Cetinje ; there were massacres at Berane in the sanjak and at Kotchana in Macedonia ; and this latter outrage, following a previous massacre of the Bulgars at Ishtip, provoked the demand for war throughout Bulgaria. The grant of a sort of administrative autonomy to Albania was a blow to the national aspirations of the four Balkan states in the proposed autonomous territory. Servia complained that the Turks had seized her munitions of war in transit, Greece that a Greek vessel had been subject to violence in the port of Samos, while Bulgaria saw a menace in the Turkish manoeuvres in Thrace. In vain Count Berchtold, the Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, sent a circular to the other Powers on August 14, inviting their opinion on the desirability of advising Turkey to adopt a L programme of decentralisation and the Balkan states to adopt a policy of moderation. Diplomacy was powerless to check the movement when once the four Balkan kingdoms, forgetting their mutual jealousies, united against the common enemy. The dream of Rhe'gas was at last a reality ; a Balkan League was formed against the Turks. The authorship of this ch. xx] Origin of the League 499 marvellous work, hitherto the despair of statesmen, although attempted by Trikoupes in 1891, has been ascribed chiefly to M. Venizelos. Fortunately at that moment each of the four allied states was governed by a man of character, while the negotiations were conducted with such secrecy that neither Turks nor European diplomatists suspected what was coming. So early as April, 191 1, the Greek Prime Minister, with the approval of King George, who was the only other Greek statesman originally in the secret, had cautiously sent to Sofia through an Englishman living in Vienna a proposal for a Greco-Bulgarian defensive alliance against Turkey in case of an attack upon either of the contracting parties, and for common action in defence of the Ottoman Christians. Simul- taneously, private letters to King Ferdinand and M. Gueshov, his Premier, urged the need, and pointed out the future possi- bilities, of this agreement. For months, however, Bulgarian caution and distrust delayed the acceptance of the Greek offer, while a Montenegrin plan for a mobilisation of all the Balkan states on the outbreak of the Libyan war found them unwilling or unprepared. Rizov, then Bulgarian Minister in Rome, had also in Sep- tember, 191 1, urged his Government to avail itself of the Libyan war to attack Turkey before she could reorganise her army, and while the Italian fleet could prevent the transport of Turkish troops across the Aegean. He was instructed to sound the Servian Premier, Milovanovich, at Belgrade, where he had been Minister and his Montenegrin wife had relatives. His soundings were satisfactory; and at a secret conference of Bulgarian diplomatists with M. Gueshov in Vienna, where the King of Montenegro was then on a visit to the Emperor, further steps were taken. At Rizov's suggestion, M. Gueshov secretly travelled across Servia with Milovanovich, and dis- cussed the question on the journey. These negotiations cul- minated in the Serbo-Bulgarian treaty of alliance on March 13, 19 1 2, signed by both sovereigns. 32—2 500 The Balkan League and its Results [ch. This instrument provided, at the suggestion of M. Pashich, who had been taken into the secret by Rizov, an arrange- ment for the partition of the territory eventually to be con- quered from Turkey. To Servia were assigned "the territories to the north and west of the Shar range"; to Bulgaria "all those to the east of the Rhodope range and of the Struma river." Bulgaria was desirous that "the intermediate terri- tory" should form an "autonomous Macedonia"; but, in case this should prove to be impracticable, "a line was drawn from the point where the Servian, Bulgarian, and Turkish frontiers met at the north of Egri Palanka...to Struga, at the northern- most extremity of Lake Ochrida, leaving Kratovo, Veles, Monastir, and Ochrida to Bulgaria, while the ultimate disposal of certain districts lying mainly north of this line and south of the Shar range " — consisting of the districts of Kumanovo, Skoplje, Krushevo, and Dibra, and the sub-district of Struga — was "reserved for the arbitration of the Tsar," which both parties agreed "to accept as final." This Serbo-Bulgarian treaty was supplemented by a military convention on May 12, drawn up under the impression that the principal theatre of war would not be in Thrace but in Macedonia, and accordingly pledging Bulgaria to send 100,000 of her 200,000 men thither. Later, however, the staffs of both countries realised that Thrace would be more important; and on September 28 they agreed that the Bulgarians should operate there, the Servians, who were to furnish 150,000 men, in Macedonia. M. Venizelos had authorised M. Panas, his Minister at Sofia (at the request of M. Gueshov, conveyed through Bourchier), to open formal negotiations in the last week of February, which culminated in the signature, on May 29, of the Greco-Bulgarian treaty. It pledged both parties to mutual aid, should either be attacked by Turkey, to secure " the peaceful co-existence " of the Greek and Bulgarian populations of Turkey, and to co-operate in securing the rights of those nationalities. xx] Montenegro declares War 501 The treaty was to remain in force for three years, and, unless denounced six months previous to that date, to be considered as automatically renewed for a year. Its contents were to be kept secret. An annex provided that, in the event of a Greco-Turkish war arising out of the question of the admis- sion of Cretan deputies to the Greek Parliament, Bulgaria should merely preserve a benevolent neutrality. A military convention followed four months later. Montenegro made verbal arrangements, " at first purely defensive," with Bulgaria and Greece; and in September, 191 2, a Serbo-Montenegrin treaty was signed in Switzerland, providing "for separate mili- tary action," so that "no Turkish town or village was to be occupied jointly by Servian and Montenegrin troops 1 ." The Allies now began to mobilise and to demand the en- forcement of article 23 of the Berlin treaty; the Porte, with a death-bed repentance, resolved to apply to European Turkey the law of 1880 for provincial reforms, hitherto a dead letter. When Austria and Russia, as mandatories of the Powers, in- formed the Balkan courts that they would "allow, at the end of the conflict, no modification of the territorial status quo" the Balkan rulers politely replied that diplomatic intervention was too late. On October 8 Montenegro, which alone had claimed a rectification of frontier, declared war ; and the Montenegrins at once showed that they had not degenerated during the long years of peace. Next day Prince Peter fired the first shot in the most important conflict waged in the Balkans since the Turkish conquest. The surrender of Detchich was the first Montenegrin success, quickly followed by the capture of Roganj and the surrender of Tuzi with six Turkish battalions. Meanwhile, the northern army under General Vukotich had entered the sanjak, and captured Bijelopolje, compelling a few days later the surrender of Berane. Thus far little Montenegro had been fighting alone ; but the three other states now entered 1 Anonymous [Bourchier] in the Times, June 4, 5, 6, 11, 13, 16, 1913 ; Gueshoff, The Balkan League ; Rizov in the Morning Post, Jan. 31, 19 14. 502 The Balkan League and its Results [ch. the field. On October 13 all three sent identic notes to the two mandatory Powers and to Turkey. The Balkan ultimatum demanded the administrative autonomy of the European pro- vinces, the frontiers of which were to be re-drawn on ethno- graphic lines, while their governors, were to be either Swiss or Belgians ; provincial elective assemblies ; the reorganisation of the gendarmerie ; freedom of education ; a local militia ; the application of reforms under the management - of an equal number of Christian and Moslem councillors, and the super- vision not only of the ambassadors of the Powers but also of the ministers of the Balkan states at Constantinople ; and the immediate demobilisation of the Ottoman army. The Turkish government, which professed sublime contempt for its £< little neighbours," and sneered at Bulgaria as "a negligible quantity," replied by recalling its representatives from Belgrade and Sofia, and on October 17 declared war on Servia and Bulgaria. Next day Greece declared war on Turkey, after M. Venizelos, on the 14th,. had admitted the Cretan deputies to the Chamber, which, he said, would be thenceforth the sole legislative assembly of both Greece and Crete. Then followed the most dramatic war of our time. Neither European diplomatists nor military critics had realised the immense progress made by the Balkan states, and especially by Greece and Servia, during the three or four previous years. The Foreign Minister of one great Power judged the Servian and Greek armies by the standards of Slivnitza and Domok6s ; the ambassador of another declared that a wintry war in the Balkans was impossible ; most experts believed in the legend of the " invincible " Turkish soldier. A few days sufficed to dispel all these beliefs. The onward march of all the armies was a rapid series of successes ; and the Turkish power in Europe, so long the bogy of diplomacy, collapsed, like a house of cards, before the twin forces of patriotic enthusiasm and superior organisation, which led the Allies to triumph. The Bulgars at once occupied Mustapha Pasha, and on October 24, xx] Victories of the Allies 503 captured Kirk-kilisse, which Field-Marshal Von der Goltz, the late instructor of the Turkish army, had pronounced capable of resisting a Prussian siege for three months. The Greeks took Elassona, and, after a victory at Sarantaporon on October 22, the town of Servia, Kozane, Grevena, and Katerina in southern Macedonia, and Pre'veza, Pente Pegadia, Metzovon, and Cheimarra in Epirus ; while their fleet occupied nine islands — two others, Ikaria, which had proclaimed its independence during the Libyan war, and Samos, declared their union with Greece — hoisted the Greek flag over the holy peninsula of Mt Athos, and prevented the Turkish fleet from leaving the Dardanelles and the Turkish transports from crossing the Aegean. Crete, whither M. Dragoumes, the ex-Premier, was sent as General Administrator, furnished volunteers to the national cause. The Serbs, whose advance into Old Servia was at first fiercely contested by the colonies of Arnauts planted there by the Turks after the Berlin treaty, utterly routed the Turkish army in a three days' battle at Kumanovo ; one town after another, famous in the story of the mediaeval Servian kingdom, fell before them; and the hope of centuries was realised when on October 26 the Servian Crown Prince (at the request of the Austrian consul!) entered Uskiib, at once re- christened Skoplje, the old capital of the Servian empire, where, in 1346, Stephen Dushan had been crowned Emperor. Prishtina and Prizren, earlier Servian capitals, likewise returned under Servian sway ; while the Montenegrins, after taking Plava and Gusinje, the recalcitrant towns of 1878, captured Ipek, the former seat of the Servian Patriarch. The fall of Monastir after another pitched battle completed the Servian triumph in Macedonia. Meanwhile in a tremendous five days' battle at Liile Burgas in Thrace the Bulgars had completely defeated another famished and disorganised Turkish army, which retreated on the lines of Chatalja ; a two days' struggle (November 1-2) at Jenitsa by the Vardar ended in another Hellenic victory ; and on November 8, the festival of its 504 The Balkan League and its Results [ch. patron St Demetrios, Salonika capitulated to the Greek Crown Prince, who thus ended the Turkish domination of 482 years over that city, whither King George hastened to join his vic- torious son. Thus, in a few weeks, nothing was left of the Turkish empire in Europe but the cities of Adrianople, Scutari and J6annina, which still resisted the Bulgarian, Montenegrin and Greek besiegers, the promontory of Gallipoli, and the narrow peninsula which stretches from the lines of Chatalja to the Bosphorus. Already, the Powers had stated that " the status quo " no longer existed in the face of these amazing victories ; for Europe recognised that, when the Turk could no longer beat the Christians in the field, he had lost his only right — that of might — to misgovern them. "The map of Eastern Europe," said Mr Asquith, the British Premier (Nov. 9), "has to be recast, and... the victors are not to be robbed of the fruits which have cost them so dear." Austria, however, excluded by the Servian and Montenegrin conquest of the sanjak of Novibazar from an advance to the Aegean, opposed the Servian claim to a port on the Adriatic, and constituted herself, with official Italy, the champion of an autonomous Albania, whose independence was proclaimed by Ismail Kemal Bey at Valona, and was subsequently (Dec. 20) re- cognised by the ambassadors of the Great Powers in London. The Servians, however, entered Durazzo, while the Bulgars, hindered by cholera and Chatalja from a further advance on Constantinople, won a final victory over the Turks near Dimotika. On December 3 an armistice was signed at Chatalja by Turkey and the three Slav states, but Greece continued hostilities. A conference of all the five met, how- ever, in St James' Palace, London, on December 16, while contemporaneously a meeting of the ambassadors of the Great Powers was held under the presidency of Sir Edward Grey. As the Turks adopted their usual dilatory tactics, the Powers, on January 17, 191 3, sent a note to the Porte, advising xx] Revolution at Constantinople 505 the cession of Adrianople to the Balkan states and inviting the Turkish Government to entrust to Europe the settlement of the Aegean Islands question. On January 22 the Grand Council at Constantinople accepted the view of the Turkish Government that peace was necessary, and appeared ready to accept the advice of the Powers. But, outside, the party of resistance got the upper hand, with the result that, on January 23, a revolution took place. It was planned by Enver Bey, the hero of 1908, who had returned from fighting the Italians in the Cyrenaica. Kiamil Pasha was forced to resign ; Nazim Pasha, the commander-in-chief, was murdered ; and the " Young " Turks returned to power. Shortly afterwards, on January 29, the delegates of the Allies in London declared the negotiations at an end; and next day the Balkan states denounced the armistice. It actually terminated on February 3, and war was at once renewed. Meanwhile, the Greeks had defeated the Turkish fleet outside the Dardanelles, and had captured in Epirus the little town of Parga — the cession of which to Turkey had caused such regret 94 years earlier. On March 6 Joannina, which had been Turkish since 1430, surrendered to the Crown Prince; nine days later a Greek force occupied Samos ; on the morrow a Greek army entered Argyrokastron. In the midst of these Greek triumphs a terrible tragedy suddenly befell the Hellenic world and ultimately affected European history. After the surrender of Salonika the .King had resided there, like a watchman guarding a precious pos- session. On March 18, while he was taking his usual afternoon walk, accompanied by a single aide-de-camp, a Greek named Schinas fired two shots at him. The King fell speechless and shortly afterwards expired. The assassin's motive was stated to be private revenge, because the King had once refused him money. Thus, a few months before he would have celebrated in unparalleled circumstances the Jubilee of his accession, King George fell a victim of duty in the coveted city. His common- sense, long experience and patriotism had contributed not a 506 The Balkan Leag^le and its Results [ch. little to the Greek victory ) had he lived, they would have helped our own. By the light of later history it is interesting to read his judgment of his successor, expressed in his political testa- ment 1 . He bade him " love thy beloved little country with thy whole heart ; be bold, but also patient : never be over-hasty ; rather let the night pass before taking thy decision ; be not angry, and let not the sun go down upon thy wrath ; be calm in thought and mind, and never forget that thou art king of a southern people, whose wrath and excitability are kindled in a moment, and which at such a moment is capable of saying and doing many things which a moment later it will perhaps forget ; and re- member that it is often better for the king himself to suffer, even morally, rather than the people, whose interests should take precedence of all others." The new King, whom many wished to call Constantine XII, as the successor of the last Byzantine Emperor, mounted the throne with the laurels of Salonika and Joannina thick upon him. His military triumphs, coupled with the fact that he was the first King of Modern Greece born in the country, invested him with an immense popularity, which explains the attitude of a large section of his people in later years. Meanwhile, the Allies continued the war. On March 26, the second of the trio of besieged Turkish fortresses, Adrianople, surrendered, after a large Servian force had come to the assist- ance of the Bulgarian besiegers. The aggrandisement of Bul- garia had, however, already aroused the jealousy of Roumania; and the latter, anxious to make the Bulgarians compensate her for the injustice inflicted upon her by Russia in 1878, demanded the fortress of Silistria as the price of her neutrality — a policy qualified as "blackmail" in the British press. The Turks, how- ever, had had enough of fighting, and on April 19 their delegates signed an armistice at Bulair, where, at the narrowest point of the peninsula of Gallipoli, the Bulgarians had been operating , , 31 Mar. 1 EffTla. - — , 1913. 13 Apr. y 6 xx] The Surrender of Scutari 507 against the lines constructed by the British at the beginning of the Crimean war. The armistice did not, however, include Montenegro, for King Nicholas was resolved to take Scutari before he suspended hostilities. The Powers had already warned him that, even if he succeeded in capturing it, he would not be allowed to retain it, as it was destined by them to form part of the new Albanian state. The Austrian and Italian Governments were specially severe in their language towards him, although the Queen of Italy was his daughter, and Italian public opinion, in so far as it was allowed freedom of expression, was favourable to "uncle Nicholas." In order to make him abandon the siege, a naval demonstration of all the Powers except Russia took place off Antivari early in April, under the command of the British Admiral Burney — an exact reversal of the previous naval demon- stration off Dulcigno in 1880. Heedless of the demonstrators, King Nicholas continued the siege; and on April 22, to the amazement of Europe, Scutari surrendered. It was suggested that there was a secret arrangement between the King and Essad Pasha, the Albanian commander of the place ; and the Turkish troops were allowed to take their arms with them. But the Italian historian of the siege considers that famine is a suf- ficient explanation of the surrender. The Montenegrin tricolour was thus at last hoisted on Tarabosh, the mountain-fortress which had so long defied the besiegers and defended Scutari. The old Montenegrin capital— for Scutari, although peopled by Albanians, had been "the principal residence" of the Balsha Princes of the Zeta in the latter half of the fourteenth century —did not long remain in Montenegrin hands. The Crown Prince Danilo, indeed, entered in state ; General Martinovich was appointed Governor, and the town-crier delivered his mes- sages "in the name of His Majesty King Nicholas"; but the Powers remained obdurate, and bade the conqueror give up the town to their naval commanders. Austria-Hungary threatened ; official Italy supported her; and on May 4, after a long struggle 508 The Balkan League and its Results [ch. with the war party in his Government, King Nicholas himself drafted a telegram to Sir E. Grey, repeating that, although his "right" was "sanctified by history and by conquest," he was compelled to "place the destiny of the town of Scutari in the hands of the Great Powers." The heroism and losses of the Montenegrins on the slopes of Tarabosh had been in vain. For the second time Scutari had eluded the grasp of King Nicholas — in 1 91 3, as in 1878. The international forces entered the town; and Admiral Burney became president of a provisional administration, whose jurisdiction extended only over Scutari and a radius of some six miles round it. Meanwhile, Essad Pasha, in whose veins flowed the blood of Carlo Thopia, the mediaeval Prince of Albania, had marched southward, and was credited with the intention of making himself sovereign, in defiance alike of the provisional Government at Valona and of the Powers. As soon as the armistice had been signed at Bulair, negotia- tions for the resumption of the interrupted Conference of London began. The Powers offered to mediate on four conditions : that a direct line from Amos on the Aegean to Midia on the Black Sea should be the basis of the new Turkish frontier in Europe instead of the Rodosto-Cape Malatra boundary previously de- manded by the Allies; that the status of the Aegean Islands and the delimitation of the boundaries of the new Albanian state should be reserved for their decision; and that all financial questions, including that of a war indemnity, should be con- sidered by an international financial commission, which subse- quently met in Paris on June 9, and on which the belligerents were represented. The treaty of London, which ended the war of the Allies against Turkey, was at last signed at St James' Palace on May 30. The treaty, intended to replace that concluded 35 years earlier at Berlin, was very brief. By article 2 the Sultan ceded to the Allies "all the territories of his empire on the European continent to the west of a line drawn from Ainos, on the xx] The Treaty of London 509 Aegean sea, to Midia, on the Black sea, with the exception of Albania." The " delimitation of the frontiers of Albania and all other questions concerning Albania" were " confided to the Great Powers" (art. 3), which were also entrusted with "the care of deciding on the fate of all the Ottoman islands of the Aegean sea (except the island of Crete) and of the peninsula of Mount Athos" (art. 5) — ultimately awarded to Greece, but remaining a theocratic republic. The Sultan agreed to cede Crete to the Allies, that is to say, to Greece (art. 4). Besides these vast territorial changes, the treaty provided in two re- maining articles for the settlement of financial questions by the international commission at Paris, and of "questions of jurisdiction, of nationality and of commerce " by special con- ventions. Sir E. Grey told the delegates that the treaty of London still left some questions "to be discussed before a complete settlement" could be reached. The British Minister's state- ment was, indeed, an euphemism. The creation of an Albanian state and the delimitation of its boundaries had already caused difficulties between Austria and Servia in the north and between Italy and Greece in the south. The two Adriatic Powers, mutually jealous of one another, were only united in their opposition to the Servian and Greek claims. Italy supported Austria in the north in order to secure Austrian support for herself in the south; and, as France, in accord with her Phil- hellenic traditions and her own interest, championed the Greek case in northern Epirus, Italy became alarmed lest the channel of Corfu might become a base for an attack upon the Apulian coast. Whereas originally Sig. Giolitti, the Italian Premier, had merely warned Greece, if she wished to remain the friend of Italy, not to occupy Valona, the key of the Adriatic, the Italian Government now put forward the contention that the frontier of Greece in Epirus must be drawn as far south as Cape Stylos, opposite the town of Corfu, instead of starting, as M. Venizelos had proposed in his memorial to the London Conference, from 510 The Balkan League and its Results [gh. the little bay of Grammata, so as to include Cheimarra. In vain the Greek Government offered to neutralise (as Corfu had been neutralised in 1864) the Epirote coast of the channel; in vain naval experts pointed out the untenable character of the Italian theory from a strategic standpoint ; in vain the Greeks suggested a plebiscite under international supervision. A further Greco-Italian question had arisen out of the con- tinued Italian occupation of the 13 islands in the Aegean. The Greeks maintained that, had they not been so occupied, the Greek fleet could have easily taken them; the Italian Govern- ment argued that Turkish soldiers still remained in Libya, and that consequently Italy must meanwhile retain them as a pledge, as provided by the treaty of Lausanne ; while, despite Sig. Gio- litti's statement that Italy "could not pretend to annex territories of Greek nationality," unofficial Italians avowed the desire to retain at least Rhodes and Stampalia 1 (with its two fine harbours) to serve as a naval base in the Aegean and as a starting-place for pegging out Italian claims in Asia Minor. But Sir E. Grey declared Britain's interest to be " that no one of these islands should be claimed or retained by one of the Great Powers." An even more serious difficulty menaced the peace restored (on paper) in the Balkans by the treaty of London. It required no great foresight to see that the Allies, united against the Turks, might fall out over the spoils. Their successes had been so overwhelming and so surprising, even to themselves, that the elaborate arrangements made beforehand had failed, as was inevitable, to provide for the unforeseen. During the war the Bulgarians had grudged the Greeks the possession of Salonika, although M. Venizelos was at that time willing to allow them to retain Kavalla. Even before the treaty of London was signed, armed conflicts had taken place between the Greeks and Bul- garians in Macedonia. " Lofty Panghaion," which Vergil had depicted as weeping for Eurydice, might have wept with even 1 Italian for Astypalaia. xx J Rupture between the Allies 511 more reason at this sanguinary termination of their triumphant comradeship in arms. On May 22 Bulgarian forces, anxious to occupy this important strategic position, attacked the Greeks; a little later Bulgarian gunners fired at a Greek cruiser. A rupture between Bulgaria and Servia was also threatening. The Bulgarians, basing their case on the exact letter of the treaty of alliance, demanded the possession of Monastir and Ochrida, which the Servian troops had occupied. The Serbs, relying on the spirit of the treaty, contended that, while Bulgaria had not carried out the military convention of May 12, 19 12, they had sent 50,000 men with their valuable artillery to aid the Bulgarians in the siege of Adrianople — an act of com- radeship not demanded by the treaty. They further pointed out that the creation of an Albanian state had been effected largely at their expense, and that the opposition of the two Adriatic Powers to their retention of Durazzo had cut them off from that outlet on the sea which was the chief cause for which they had gone to war. Consequently it had become vital for them to reach the Greek frontier, from which Monastir in Bul- garian hands would separate them. For these reasons they demanded a revision of the treaty. A month was spent in diplomatic negotiations and recriminations. The two Premiers of Bulgaria and Servia met at Tsaribrod ; and a meeting of all the four was projected. The Emperor of Russia telegraphed to the Bulgarian and Servian sovereigns, bidding them to appeal to his arbitration, as stipulated in the treaty of alliance. Both accepted his invitation, but only on con- ditions ; Bulgaria still insisting on the letter of the treaty, while she refused to demobilise unless the disputed territories were occupied jointly by the two armies — a proposition rejected by the Serbs as being the people in possession. The accession to power of Dr Danev in place of the pacific M. Gueshov increased the friction ; in all the three countries there were politicians who regarded compromise as "treachery"; while the Bulgarian military party, largely recruited from Macedonia, and flushed 5 1 2 The Balkan League and its Results [ch. by its recent successes over the Turks, believed that, as a Bul- garian remarked to the author, "the Bulgars could beat the Greeks and Serbs together," if Bulgarian diplomacy, never very fond of compromise, failed to achieve the object of settling the Servian and the Greek difficulties separately. As for the prudent monarch of Bulgaria, he was intimidated. Thus war, however regrettable, became inevitable. Nothing but paper protocols separated the three armies in Macedonia. Early on June 30, 191 3, hostilities began with a Bulgarian attack upon the Serbs at Gjevgjeli on the railway from Skoplje to Salonika, the point of contact between the Servian and Greek forces, and upon the Greeks at Nigrita in the mount- ainous region between Salonika and Serres. The strategical object of these movements was to separate the two Allies ; and, although M. Gueshov declares that the Cabinet knew nothing of them, there seems to be little doubt that they were pre- meditated, for the Serbs found upon a Bulgarian officer an official document, dated the day before, which stated that " the operations of war against the Serbs and the Greeks will begin to-morrow," and contained detailed directions for the attack upon the former. For the moment the Bulgarians were successful at both places, for their enemies were taken by surprise. As soon, however, as the news reached Salonika, the Greek General Staff ordered the Bulgarian troops still jointly garrisoning that town to lay down their arms and leave it within two hours. The Bulgars refused, and a siege of the houses occupied by them began, and continued till the Greek artillery forced the survivors to surrender. A general advance of the Greek army, commanded by the King in person, began on the next day. The left flank marched upon Gjevgjeli ; the main army advanced to Kilkich, a strongly-fortified position on the railway from Salonika to Serres ; the right centre was moved to Lachanas on the old road to the latter town 3 while the right flank proceeded to Nigrita. The results of the campaign were a surprise to those critics xx] The Second Balkan War 513 who had paid too exclusive an attention to the Bulgarian suc- cesses during the previous war. A three days' battle at Kilkich ended on July 4 in a complete Greek victory ; a two days' struggle at Lachanas terminated in a Bulgarian defeat; both Gjevgjeli and Nigrita were re-occupied. Farther to the north, another three days' battle between the Serbs and Bulgars on the river Bregalnitza and the historic battlefield of Ovtchepolje, the plateau dominating the approach to Skoplje, gave a triumph to the Serbs. Hard fighting had taken place before war had been formally declared ; but King Constantine on July 2 and King Peter on July 9 announced in proclamations to the Greek people and the Servian army that a state of war existed between them and their former allies. King Nicholas, although Montenegro was not directly interested in Macedonia, sent his subjects to assist their brother Serbs ; and on July 11 a fourth combatant entered the field against Bulgaria in the shape of Roumania, hitherto regarded as a docile follower of Austrian policy, which was known to be pro-Bulgarian. A circular note to the Powers explained that Roumania's aim was not conquest, but to obtain for herself a strategic frontier running from Turtukai on the Danube to Baltchik on the Black Sea, and to restore Balkan equilibrium by preventing the hegemony of Bulgaria. No opposition was offered by the Bulgars to the Roumanian advance ; Silistria was occupied without resistance ; Plevna, the scene of the most glorious epi- sode in modern Roumanian history, was entered in the course of this inglorious march ; and, without firing a shot, the Roumanian troops halted within twelve miles of Sofia. Nor was this all. Profiting, as ever, by the quarrels of the Balkan Christians, the Turks on July 15 entered Ainos, which the Bulgars had evacuated, and proceeded to undo the Bulgarian achievements of the Thracian campaign. Meanwhile, the Greeks and Servians continued to advance. The Greek main army took Dojran and Strumitza, where it effected a junction with the Servians ; and the prompt cession M.L. 33 514 The Balkan League and its Re stilts [ch. of this Slavonic town to the latter augured well for their co- operation. The Greek central column occupied Demir Hissar on the railway to Serres after a two days' battle, while the right entered Serres itself on July 1 1. Nor had the Greek fleet been inactive. Admiral Kountouriotes took Kavalla, and a naval detachment was sent up over the classic field of Philippi to Drama. The Bulgarians retreated, leaving devastation behind them. All the Greek part of Serres, a very prosperous town of well-to-do citizens, was set on fire ; and from Nigrita, from the village of Doxaton on the road between Drama and Kavalla, and from Drama itself, terrible massacres were reported. The stories of these "Bulgarian atrocities" aroused the greatest indignation in Greece ; and a British military correspondent, who was himself an eye-witness, ascribed the reckless daring of the Greek soldiers in this campaign in large measure to the sights which they had seen. Accordingly, the war was con- ducted with a disregard of life which made the losses unusually heavy. The Greek press hailed King Constantine as a new Basil " the Bulgar-slayer " ; and it was pointed out as a curious coincidence that the scene of one of the Greek victories was identical with that of the Byzantine Emperor almost 900 years earlier over the Bulgarian Tsar Samuel. By a classical reminis- cence, the poet Matsoukas, like a new Tyrtaeus, took his place in the front ranks, and sang to encourage the Greek soldiers. By the middle of July it was obvious that Bulgaria could not be victorious against the combination arrayed against her; and the Greek and Servian Premiers met at Skoplje to consider their terms, while at Sofia Dr Danev made way for M. Radoslavov. The fighting, however, continued for about a fortnight longer. After the pacific occupation of Melnik, a town often mentioned by Byzantine historians and still con- taining Byzantine treasures, the Greeks entered Nevrokop, and assailed the Bulgarians in the Kresna pass, which leads for many miles along the valley of the Upper Struma in the direc- tion of the old Bulgarian frontier. Several days of fighting xx] Third Treaty, of Bucharest 515 terminated on July 26 with the defeat of the Bulgarians at Simetli, a village situated at the end of the gorge. The arrival of reinforcements enabled the Bulgarians to make a last stand near Djumaia, not far from their own frontier ; and the Greek occupation of that place was the last action of the war. Meanwhile, the Greek fleet had taken Dedeagatch, as well as Porto Lagos and Makri between Dedeagatch and Ka valla ; Xanthe on the railway between Drama and Constantinople had fallen into Greek hands ; and thus Macedonia with a large strip of the Thracian coast was in the possession of the victors. But the Bulgarians were also menaced in their old dominions. The Serbs, after repulsing a Bulgarian force which had entered Servia near Knjajevatz, had invaded Bulgaria, occupied Belo- gradtchik, and threatened Vidin. The Turks, under Enver Bey, easily recovered Adrianople on July 22 ; and on the same day Kirk-kilisse fell almost without resistance. Turkish, Servian, and Roumanian armies were soon all simultaneously on old Bulgarian soil ; and thus with the Greeks on the frontier, the situation at Sofia had become desperate. King Ferdinand in despair begged the King of Roumania to inter- vene with the Kings of the Hellenes, of Servia, and of Monte- negro ; and the Roumanian sovereign's appeal in the name of the balance of power in the Balkans proved to be successful. The new peace conference met at Bucharest on July 30, just one month after what has been called by an eye-witness " the shortest and most sanguinary campaign on record " had begun. A five days' truce was at once declared, and no time was lost in getting to business. The principal difficulty was the Bulgarian frontage on the Aegean, for the Greeks at first claimed that the Greco-Bulgarian frontier on the sea should be three kilometers to the east of Makri, that is to say a little to the west of Dedeagatch, while the Bulgarians proposed that the frontier should be pushed back as far as the Gulf of Orphano, thus including Drama and Kavalla within Bulgarian territory. The real controversy was over Kavalla, the importance of 33—2 5 16 The Balkan League and its Results [ch. which, owing to its port and famous tobacco-plantations, was obvious to both parties. King Constantine insisted upon its retention ; and he received unexpected support, to the surprise of the other two members of the Triple Alliance, from his brother-in-law, the German Emperor, who from a warm friend of Turkey had become an enthusiastic admirer of the Greek army. Majorescu, the Roumanian Premier, who presided over the conference, informed the Bulgarians that, if they did not yield, the Roumanian army would occupy Sofia. Defeated in the field and unsupported at the council-board by powerful influ- ence from outside, the Bulgarian delegates sorrowfully gave way. On August 10 the third treaty of Bucharest formally closed the hostilities between the Balkan states. The Roumanians, without loss of life in battle, obtained their new frontier from a little above Turtukai' on the Danube to the south of Ekrene on the Black Sea, including 2969 square miles with a (mostly Turkish) population of 273,090. Bulgaria was given two years within which to dismantle the fortifications of Rustchuk and Shumla and those within a radius of 20 kilometers round Balt- chik. The new Serbo-Bulgarian frontier, starting from Pataritza on the old frontier, followed the watershed of the Vardar and the Struma, and joined the new Greco-Bulgarian boundary on the Belashitza range of mountains. Thence the Greek frontier ran down to the Aegean at the mouth of the Mesta, the ancient Nestos, thus leaving Xanthe to Bulgaria, but securing Kavalla to Greece. In order to prevent any erroneous interpretation of article 4 of the treaty of London, Bulgaria abandoned all claims to Crete. A mixed commission was to regulate these new frontiers, and any dispute concerning them was to be re- ferred to arbitration. The rest of the treaty dealt with such temporary matters as the evacuation of the occupied Bulgarian territory and the restitution of prisoners, while a protocol pro- vided for the settlement of outstanding questions relating to the old Serbo-Bulgarian frontier by the two parties concerned 1 . 1 Livre vert Roumain (Bucarest, 1913). xx] The Tur co- Bulgarian Treaty 517 The news that peace had been signed was greeted with general relief. At first it seemed as if two of the Great Powers — Russia, as the champion of Bulgaria in the question of Kavalla, and Austria, as the opponent of an enlarged Servia — would demand a revision of the treaty. France and Germany were, however, ranged on the Greek side ; and soon all the Powers acquiesced in the settlement made at Bucharest, for it was felt that it was better to leave the Balkan statesmen to manage their own affairs, than to run the risk of European complications by interference. It now remained for the Bulgarians to make the best terms that they could with Turkey ; for, in spite of Sir E. Grey's advice to evacuate Thrace and Adrianople in their own interest, the Turks declined to abandon what they had re-conquered. The weakness of the Great Powers allowed Turkey to tear up the treaty of London ; and the British Foreign Secretary dis- regarded the maxim of his predecessor, Salisbury, that Christian territory, once emancipated from Turkish rule, should never be restored to it. In these circumstances, the Bulgarians had no other course open but to make peace with the Turks. Kirk- kilisse, the scene of their first great exploit in the war of 191 2, and Adrianople, the capture of which had practically closed their career of conquest, were both formally surrendered by the Turco-Bulgarian treaty signed at Constantinople on Sep- tember 29; and the new frontier of the Turkish empire in Europe started from " the mouth of the river Resvaja," which flows into the Black Sea somewhat to the north of Cape Iniada, and ended in the Aegean a little to the west of Ainos. Bulgaria had been, indeed, severely punished for the mis- take of the second war. She had lost her chief conquests of the previous campaign ; she had been forced to cede to Roumania a large slice of her old territory ; she had been obliged to relinquish in Thrace and Macedonia territories which would otherwise have been hers. Her losses in the two wars were estimated at 44,897 killed and 104,584 wounded; her 5 1 8 The Balkan League aud its Results [ch. finances had been seriously affected. In a single month she had played away the hard-won gains of 35 years. Balkan history in the Middle- Ages affords numerous instances of such sudden reverses of fortune; and King Ferdinand was only re- peating in his own person the maxim of Gibbon, that "the glory of the Bulgarians was confined to a narrow scope, both of time a nd place." Greece and Servia had already agreed to the partition of their conquests ; and the Turco-Bulgarian treaty was followed on November 14, 1913, by a treaty of peace between Greece and Turkey ; but the two questions of Albania and the Aegean Islands remained to be settled by the Great Powers. The latter had appointed two Commissions to delimit, the one the northern and north-eastern, the other the southern fron- tiers of the new Albanian state. Meanwhile, Albania was in a condition bordering on anarchy; for, while Ismail Kemal Bey and an International Commission of Control resided at Valona, Essad Pasha, as "President" of a "Central Albanian Senate," ruled at Durazzo, and the Powers governed at Scutari. In the delimitation of the southern frontier a large slice of Northern Epirus, including places such as Santi Quaranta, Cheimarra, Delvinon, Premete, Argyrokastron and Koritsa, captured by the Greeks during the first Balkan war, together with the islet of Saseno, which had belonged to Greece since 1864, was assigned to Albania. While Austria by her threats forced the Servian troops to retire from the north-east of the country, a note of the Powers, presented at Athens on February 13, 1 9 14, made the definite recognition of Greek sovereignty over the captured islands (except Tenedos, Imbros, and Kastellor- rizon and those still occupied by the Italians) contingent upon the previous evacuation of the south by the Greek forces. The Albanian throne was, on February 21, 19 14, formally offered by Essad Pasha and an Albanian deputation to Prince William of Wied, a German officer and nephew of the Queen of Roumania, and by him accepted. After having obtained xx] Northern Epirus 519 satisfactory financial assistance from the Powers, he landed at- Durazzo, the capital of the new Balkan state, on March 7, and appointed as his first Prime Minister Turkhan Pasha, a Thessalian who had, twenty years before, been Governor of Crete. Meanwhile, however, the Northern Epirotes had de- clared themselves autonomous ; a " Sacred Battalion, " on the analogy of that of 1821, had been formed; and in the early days of March a blue and white flag with a black Byzantine - double-headed eagle was hoisted. Zographos. who had been Foreign Minister of Greece in 1909, was elected President; and his nephew, M. Karapanos, another Epirote who had been a diplomatist and was member for Arta, acted as his Foreign Secretary. While they fixed their residence first at Argyrokastron and then at the village of Georgoutsates, Col. Spyromelios, the . " captain " of Cheimarra, held his native mountains against the Albanians. Thus, the leaders of the "Autonomous" movement were, like those of Ulster, men of position, wealth, and conservative views. Early in March 19 14 the Greek troops began the evacuation of Northern Epirus at Koritsa, but did not complete it till April 28. Fighting between the Albanians and the "Autono- mous " forces continued, culminating in an engagement at the monastery of Tsepos some two hours beyond Argyr6kastron. A provisional settlement negotiated between the Epirote leaders and Col. Thomson, a Dutch officer in the employ of the Al- banian Government, was repudiated by the latter; but the Prince subsequently asked the International Commission of Control to resume negotiations. Accordingly, a conference was held at Corfu, where, on May 17, a convention 1 was signed, entrusting " the organisation of the two southern pro- vinces " of Argyrokastron and Koritsa to the International Commission ; a local gendarmerie, recruited in due proportion from the Christians and Moslems of the two provinces, was to be formed by the Dutch officers who had been sent to organise 1 Mimoire sur PEpire dn Nord (Annexe 2). 520 The Balkan League and its Results [ch. that of Albania ; in the Orthodox schools Greek was to be the sole medium of instruction, except in the three elementary classes, and was to have the same status as Albanian not only in them but in the law-courts and elective councils. An annex contained the demands of the Cheimarriotes for the main- tenance of their ancient privileges, including the use of their own banner and the appointment of a foreigner as governor under the traditional name of " captain " for ten years. On July i, 1 9 14, the Powers announced their approval of the Corfu convention. Meanwhile, however, disturbances had broken out at the Albanian capital. Friction had arisen between the Dutch Major Sluys and Essad Pasha, hitherto the real master of Durazzo. Before dawn on May 19, in the absence of the Premier and the Italian Minister, Major Sluys ordered the "Nationalists," or Austrophil Albanians, to open fire with their cannon on Essad's house. Thus taken by surprise, Essad signed a paper promising never to return without the Prince's permission, and left on board an Italian ship for Italy, of which country he was re- garded as the partisan. But his exile did not strengthen the position of the Prince, a weak man placed in a most difficult situation by the ambition of his wife. Moslem peasants, marching to Durazzo to lay their agrarian grievances before him, were greeted with shots ; and the summons of the Catholic Maltsori to his aid gave to the now inevitable conflict the appearance of a religious war. In an evil moment, the Prince consented to seek safety on board an Italian ship, thereby losing prestige, while the diplomatists and the Commission of Control went out to parley with the insurgents at Sh. Jak (St James). The latter, whose skilful tactics betrayed the hand of some external adviser, demanded the revival of Turkish rule or European inter- vention. The insurrection rapidly spread, and soon the Prince's dominions were bounded by the bridge over the malarious lagoon of Durazzo, within whose walls Austrians and Italians intrigued day and night against each other in a manner to xx] The Sarajevo Murders 5 2 1 suggest a comparison between Schleswig-Holstein and Albania. The climax was reached when a Dutch officer arrested two Italians on a charge of signalling to the insurgents. Soon afterwards, Col. Thomson fell in battle ; and the Mirdites, who had come to defend the Prince, received a crushing defeat. Italy, anxious above all things not to be left alone in Albania with her dreaded ally, begged the other Powers to intervene ; but Great Britain, upon whose decision their action depended, limited herself to the reluctant despatch of Rear- Admiral Trou- bridge with a ship to Durazzo. The chaos in Albania naturally revived the hopes of the Epirotes, who captured Koritsa and Tepelen. Meanwhile, however, an event had occurred in Bosnia which proved to be the occasion of the long-dreaded European war. On June 28, 19 14, a student, named Princip, assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, as they were driving through the streets of Sarajevo. In August 19 13, anxious to humiliate her small neighbour, and to recover her own lost prestige in the Balkans, Austria-Hungary had communicated to Italy her intention of attacking Servia ; she now sought to connect the Servian authorities with this crime, committed by an Austro-Hungarian subject of Servian race, and on July 23 sent an ultimatum to Belgrade, couched in terms such as no independent state could have accepted, accompanied by an explanatory circular to the signatories of the Berlin treaty. Two days later Servia made a conciliatory reply, but demurred to the extraordinary demand that she should accept on her own territory "the collaboration of the employees of the Austro- Hungarian Government in the suppression " of the Pan-Serb agitation, and in the enquiry into the plot ; at the same time she offered to refer the dispute to the Hague tribunal or the Powers. On July 28, Austria- Hungary pronounced this reply to be unsatisfactory, and declared war upon Servia, despite the efforts of Sir E. Grey to effect a peaceful settlement of a question which was certain to involve other countries. Russia supported 52 2 The Balkan League and its Results [ch. xx Servia, Germany Austria Hungary, thus bringing France into the field ; Belgium was entered by the German armies ; and Great Britain took up arms in defence of France and Belgium, Thus the Servians, as had been prophesied in 1897, were made the pretext for a general war. Montenegro naturally assisted the sister-state; and both declared war on Germany, as the ally of their arch-enemy. CHAPTER XXI THE NEAR EAST IN THE EUROPEAN WAR (1914-22) Servia soon made the Austrians realise that their "punitive expedition" was no mere military promenade. Before the Austrian declaration of war, the Court had moved from the ex- posed capital on the frontier to Nish, so that the bombardment of Belgrade inflicted material, rather than political, damage. The Austrian offensive, directed against the mountainous region between the Drina and the Save through the valley of the Jadar, on the one side, and from Shabatz, on the other, was repulsed in a four days' battle (August 16-19), known in history as that of the Tzer mountain and the river Jadar. Encouraged by this victory, the Servians entered Sirmia and Bosnia, effected a junction with the Montenegrins, and marched upon Sarajevo. But their powers of defence were greater than those of offence ; their Bosnian brethren did not rise, and the liberating army had to retreat. General Potiorek thereupon organised a second Austrian offensive with even more disastrous results than the former. The Servians allowed the invaders to occupy Belgrade, and retired into the interior, while Bulgarian bands tried to cut off their communications with Salonika by blowing up a bridge over the Vardar. At this crisis, the old king took his place in the trenches, rifle in hand ; his presence and the arrival of fresh munitions encouraged his soldiers, who in the battle of the river Kolubara (December 3-9) completely routed the Austrians; and, while the invaders evacuated Servian territory for the second time, the King re-entered Belgrade. Austria had received 524 The Near East in the European War [ch. a terrible humiliation from the people whom she had humbled in 1909, and the Servian commander-in-chief, Putnik, summed up the secret of his success in the phrase "it is our business to advance and retire." For nine months Servia suffered no further invasion. But the Austrians had left behind them a deadlier foe than their army — spotted typhus, which, together with the two Balkan and the European wars, reduced the population of Servia by about one-fifth. Meanwhile, on November 5, Great Britain had declared war upon Turkey, which (as was established later from the Greek White Book) had signed an alliance with Germany upon the very day on which the Grand Vizier assured the British representative that "Turkey intends to observe strict neutrality." The immediate result was the declaration of a protectorate over Egypt and the annexation of Cyprus, to the satisfaction of the Greek population, which thought that Great Britain could now dispose of the island to whom she chose ; the next was the increased importance of the Balkans from a military standpoint alike to the Allies and the Central Empires. Accordingly, it became the policy of both groups of Powers to bring Roumania, Greece and Bulgaria into the war. Roumania had long been bound to Austria- Hungary by a secret military convention ; and, at the outbreak of the war, King Charles summoned a Crown Council of political leaders and urged them to support the Dual Monarchy. But the text of the convention, when examined, was found to pledge Rou- mania only for purposes of defence, and she was, therefore, in the same position as Italy. The king was thus unable to drag his adopted country on to the German side, but he told the Austrian Minister that "no power on earth could persuade him to attack the Dual Monarchy." Simultaneously Russia approached Roumania, offering her Transylvania and a guarantee of the territory in the Dobrudja, ceded by Bulgaria in 19 13, if she would attack Austria. Roumania, however, had good reasons for neutrality. Like Italy, she was not prepared for xxi] Greek Policy 525 war in 1 9 14; she had "unredeemed" provinces in the possession of both groups of belligerents — for, if Transylvania, the Buko- vina and the Banat were under Austria-Hungary, Bessarabia was Russian; she was suspicious of British sympathies with Hungary; she had to watch Bulgaria, anxious to recover the Dobrudja ; and she could scarcely regard with favour the then probable Russian acquisition of Constantinople, in the event of the Allies' victory. Thus, although the death of King Charles on October 10, 19 14, removed an obstacle to intervention on their side, Roumania long remained neutral, oscillating on the whole, despite a costly German propaganda, towards them. M. Venizelos was abroad when Austria declared war upon Servia; for the Turkish expulsions and persecutions of the Greeks in Asia Minor had nearly provoked a Greco-Turkish war in the summer of 19 14, and he had gone to negotiate an arrangement of the question with the Grand Vizier. Greece had had, since the previous year, a treaty of alliance with Servia ; and M. Venizelos at once declared to his ally that, while he required further information before he could support her in a war against Austria, she would find Greece by her side in the event of an aggression by Bulgaria. From the outset M. Venizelos was a convinced adherent of the Allies ; and, had King George been alive, Greece would doubtless have entered the war earlier. But King Constantine was the German Emperor's brother-in-law and a German Field- Marshal ; the Emperor had supported his claim to Kavalla at Bucharest, while the Allies, in order to purchase Bulgarian support, wished him to cede that valuable port to Bulgaria; and the King's private advisers were men of either German origin, like Dr Streit, or German sympathies, like General Doiismanes and Col. Me- taxas. Thanks, however, to the confidence which M. Venizelos inspired in the Allies, the British Government informed him that the British fleet would not allow the Turkish, even while Turkey was still neutral, to leave the Dardanelles to attack Greece ; and the Allies permitted the re-occupation of Northern 526 The Near East in the European War [ch. Epirus by the Greek army, whereupon the " Autonomous " Government declared its mission at an end. In December, 1 9 14, the Allies made their first offer to Greece — Northern Epirus, if she would immediately join them — an offer raised in the following month to "very important territorial con- cessions on the coasts of Asia Minor." When the Allies decided to attack the Dardanelles, Greek co-operation became still more valuable ; and the Premier was ready to provide it. There- upon, Col. Metaxas, then interim chief of the staff, threatened to resign ; and, although a Crown Council of ex-Premiers supported M. Venizelos, the King refused his consent. M. Veni- zelos therefore resigned, M. Gotinares, a politician from Patras, taking his place on March 10. To him the Allies renewed their offer of Asiatic compensations in the form of " the town of Smyrna and an important Hinterland" The Greek reply was such that no answer was returned. The entrance of Italy into the war in May, 191 5, seriously affected the Balkan situation. The "secret" treaty of London of April 26, 1 91 5, which was the reward for her support, severely handicapped Allied diplomacy at Nish and Athens. When it leaked out that the treaty assigned to Italy Northern Dalmatian despite its overwhelmingly Slav population, it became impossible to induce the Servian Government to make such territorial con- cessions to Bulgaria in Macedonia as would purchase Bulgarian support. Greece and Italy regarded one another as rivals in the Levant; and article 8, which assigned to Italy "entire sovereignty over the Dodekanese," was as little counterbalanced by her conditional promise not to oppose the assignment of "Southern Albania" to Greece, as was the loss of Northern Dalmatia by the similar pledge not to oppose the division of Northern Albania between Servia and Montenegro. This policy of obtaining Dalmatia, Istria and the Trentino by the sacrifice of Albania, where she was also to "receive full sove- reignty over Valona, Saseno" and the territory from the Vojusa to Cheimarra, alienated Albanian sympathies from Italy without xxi] Italian Diplomacy 527 winning those, of Servia and Greece; and. Baron Sonnino's tactless disclosure of the fact 1 that Austrian intervention alone had prevented Italy from occupying Chios and Lesbos in 1912, further diminished Italian and Allied popularity at Athens, where Baron Schenk, ably seconded by the diplomatic errors of the Allies, was successfully "converting" the newspapers to the German side. Indeed, Italy's interest was that M. Veni- zelos should not come into power, or Greece into the war; and her Minister at Athens, Count Bosdari, did not, therefore, see eye to eye with his colleagues. In spite of all these difficulties, at the General Election of June, 19 1 5, M. Venizelos had a majority of 58 over all opponents. But, under the pretext of the King's illness — cured, so the populace believed, by the direct intervention of the miraculous Virgin of Tenos— M. Goiinares remained in office for 70 days after his defeat, so that M. Venizelos did not begin his second Premiership till August 22. Meanwhile, Bulgaria had received an assurance from Germany that Greece would in any case remain neutral. Encouraged by this, Bulgaria mobilised ; and, when M. Venizelos proposed to his sovereign the mobilisation of Greece, the King replied : "I do not wish us to help Servia, because Germany is going to win and I do not wish to be beaten ! " To the Premier's remark that a con- stitutional ruler was bound to agree with a Minister whose policy had received popular approbation at the recent polls, the King answered in Prussian style : "I recognise My obliga- tion to obey the popular verdict whenever internal questions are concerned, but when it is a matter of foreign questions, great national questions, I consider that I must insist that My idea be followed, because I am responsible before God ! " No Greek King had ever spoken thus. Still mobilisation was ordered ; and, to remove the apprehensions of the staff, M. Veni- zelos asked the Allies to furnish a supporting army of 150,000 men. The Allies agreed, but earlier in the day on which their 1 Documenti Diplomatici {Seduta del 20 Maggio 1915), p. 25. 528 The Near East in the European War [ch. troops landed at Salonika (October 5), he was obliged to resign because of his declaration in the Chamber that if, in going to the help of Servia, Greece met German troops, she would act as her honour demanded. M. Zaimes, the "handy-man" of Greek politics, took his place, "with the express purpose of not applying the Greco-Servian treaty." In vain, therefore, on October 7, Great Britain offered Cyprus to Greece in return for immediate help to Servia. The offer lapsed, and by the Sykes-Picot agreement of 19 16, Great Britain undertook to cede Cyprus to no Power without the previous consent of France. The situation of Servia was now desperate, for, on October 6, the Austro-German invasion began. Convinced, as everyone in the Balkans was, that Bulgaria was also about to attack her, she asked the permission of the Allies "to get her blow in first." " The Servian army," said Putnik, " would be in Sofia in five days." The Allies not only withheld permission, but were unable, when the Bulgarians and the Central Empires attacked Servia, to send her help in time. King Constantine, who was near and bound by treaty to assist her, remained neutral. Thus, this small country, exhausted by three campaigns and a typhus epidemic, was simultaneously attacked by the Germans, anxious to establish communications with Turkey, and the Bulgarians, eager to avenge their defeat of 19 13. British agents, whose offers were, however, only conditional, had worked hard to bring Bulgaria to their side; but Turkey ceded to her the strip of territory through which the railway runs to Dedeagatch, in- cluding Dimotika and that part of Adrianople lying to the west of the Maritza. At the Court of Sofia, as at that of Athens, German influence prevailed; and, while King Ferdinand was cleverer than King Constantine, and his country less exposed than Greece to naval attacks, there was no Bulgarian statesman of the calibre of M. Venizelos to oppose him. Sentimentalists reckoned upon Bulgarian gratitude to Russia, the liberator of 1877; but Bulgaria afforded an example of Bismarck's cynical xxi] Albania 5 2 9 remark, that " liberated nations are not grateful but exacting." The treaty of Bucharest obliterated that of San Stefano. To the regret of the many British friends of Bulgaria, Great Britain on October 15, four days after the Bulgarian attack, declared war upon her, in fulfilment of Sir E. Grey's warning, that, if she joined our enemies, we were " prepared to give to our friends in the Balkans all the support in our power." Un- fortunately, that support came too late to save them. One town after another fell into the hands of the enemy from the north or the enemy from the south ; and amidst the snows of a Balkan winter soldiers and civilians of every age retreated across the Albanian mountains to the Adriatic coast. Great changes had taken place in Albania since the outbreak of the European war. On September 3, 19 14, Prince William had ended his inglorious six months' reign with a proclamation, informing his people that "he deemed it necessary to absent himself temporarily," and by handing over the government to the three remaining delegates — Austrian, French and Italian — of the International Commission of Control, a body without co- hesion and without funds, which soon dispersed. While Scutari formed a local government of notables under the auspices of the Allied Consuls, until it was retaken by the Montenegrins, on June 27, 1915, Essad erected a "Government of Central Albania " at Durazzo, and the Italians occupied Valona and the islet of Saseno, ceded by Greece to Albania earlier in 19 14. The Montenegrins welcomed their Serb brothers in Scutari; Essad, always a Serbophil, received them well in his dominions, which began at Alessio ; and a British Adriatic Mission was sent over to look after them. Greece was asked, as she had failed to carry out her obligations as an ally, at least to furnish the Servian army with a refuge at Corfu, whither it was trans- ported, and where the Servian Government established its temporary residence. Servia had thus been wiped temporarily from the map ; it was next the turn of Montenegro, which had entered into the m. l. 34 530 The Near East in the European War [ch. war eleven days after her. At first the Montenegrins had gained successes. They occupied Budua, Castel Lastua and the coveted Spizza, thus redressing the wrong of 1878; and they took part in the offensive against Sarajevo, penetrating to within eleven miles of the Bosnian capital. Like the Servians, they had to retreat from Bosnia, but retained their southern Dal- matian conquests till the final catastrophe. The Servian victory over the Austrians on the Kolubara procured for them nine months of comparative peace, during which they entered Scutari against the wishes of the Allies, who had requested them to respect Albanian independence. The Servian rout implied their approaching annihilation. Over the end of Montenegro there still hangs a cloud of doubt and suspicion, which the voluminous literature on either side has rather increased than dispersed. His enemies accused King Nicholas of having betrayed Mt Lovtchen, which com- mands the Bocche di Cattaro, to the Austrians ; others think that he had no option but to surrender. At any rate, Lovtchen was easily taken on January n, 191 6; Austrian troops on January 13 occupied Cetinje, whence the Court had retired to Podgoritza. On the same day the King asked the Austrian Emperor for "an honourable peace," and on January 21 em- barked for Italy, leaving his second son, Mirko, behind him. King Nicholas spent the rest of his life an exile in France, now at Bordeaux, now in Paris, now at Neuilly, and now at Antibes, and never saw again the country which he had governed for 55 years. With all his faults, he was a big statesman of the Balkan type; it was his misfortune that his sons in no wise resembled him. Mirko died near Vienna; Danilo with his German wife lived comfortably on the French Riviera ; Peter amused himself ; while in the old king's latter days his chief adviser was not his Premier in exile but his daughter, Princess Xenia, who had found in politics a substitute for matrimony. Thus, in the beginning of 1916, the Balkan situation seemed disastrous. Both Serb states had disappeared ; Greece was xxi] Surrender of Roupel 53i by no means benevolently neutral, and the Allies, after eight months' occupation, had just evacuated the Dardanelles. There had been a moment when they might have forced the Straits — so Turkish and German military authorities told the United States' Ambassador — and appeared before Constantinople. But the lost opportunity of March, 1915, did not recur; and, after Servia's overthrow left the line to Constantinople open, the once thinly-fortified Dardanelles were made impregnable. As a German said : " We cannot hold the Dardanelles without the military support of Bulgaria." For the next three months the Allies kept on the defensive within " the entrenched camp of Salonika." In these depressing circumstances it was less surprising that the Greeks, who had so recently fought two wars and had the fate of Servia before their eyes, should have become more neutralist. To M. Zaimes, on November 7, 191 5, had suc- ceeded the aged M. Skouloudes, a rich man, whose ruling passion was to be Premier, with a Cabinet of "Saviours," or "Greybeards." He dissolved the recently-elected Chamber; and, as 300,000 men were mobilised and, therefore, at the dis- position of the Government, the Venizelists abstained. When, in the spring of 19 J 6, the Servian army, reorganised at Corfu, was ready for transport to Salonika, he refused to allow it to use the Greek railways; and, when the Bulgarians demanded the surrender of Roupel, the fort which commands the Struma valley, it was, with his connivance, betrayed to them. Thus, the Government of Constantine " the Bulgar-slayer " gave up to the Bulgars the historic fortress, which the Nicene Emperor, Theodore II Laskaris, had captured from their ancestors. The results of this surrender were disastrous. General Sarrail, the Commander-in-Chief at Salonika, proclaimed the state of siege : " henceforth," as he said, " the Greeks were no longer masters there." In Northern Epirus they could no longer be trusted ; and thus Italy was able to supplant them there. And, on June 21, the three protecting Powers addressed a note 34—2 532 The Near East in the European War [ch. to the Greek Government, peremptorily demanding the com- plete demobilisation of the army, the immediate substitution for the existing Cabinet of a service Ministry without political colour and pledged to a benevolent neutrality towards them, and an immediate dissolution of parliament followed by new elections. These terms were unconditionally accepted, and M. Zaimes again became Premier. The last condition could not, however, be executed, for the Bulgarians came to the relief of the embarrassed Royalists by overrunning Eastern Macedonia. Kavalla was surrendered with one-fifth of the Greek mobilisation material, and 8000 Greek troops were carried off to Germany and interned at Goerlitz. Thereupon, indignant at this continued surrender of Greek forts to the national foes, Col. Zymbrakakes and others formed a Committee of National Defence at Salonika. Their movement was premature and failed, but proved to be the precursor of the Venizelist secession. On August 27, 19 1 6, Roumania entered the war on the side of the Allies. Italy's intervention fifteen months earlier had increased the tendency of " the little Latin sister " to join them. But Russian reluctance to give up the Serb population of the Banat to Roumania long proved an obstacle to an agreement. Finally, however, Russia satisfied the Roumanian claims to Transylvania, the Bukovina and the Banat; and the secret treaty embodying them was signed on August 17, and subse- quently recognised as operative by the British Government. A military convention, annexed to the treaty, pledged Roumania to attack Austria-Hungary at latest on August 28. King Ferdinand, although, like his uncle, a Hohenzollern, was a good Roumanian, and was fortunately married to a spirited English Princess ; and, although there was a Germano- phil party under M. Marghiloman, and the Russian annexation of Bessarabia was not forgotten, Austria to the last had re- fused to purchase Roumanian neutrality by ceding the Bukovina. Public opinion, as in 1870, was mainly Francophil, for cultured Roumanians have many ties with France ; but " Irredentism " xxi] Collapse of Roumania 533 was less widely diffused than in Italy, and the younger Bratianu, then Premier, was an opportunist, disinclined to take big risks for the realisation of a "big Roumania." Now, however, the risk seemed less. In his proclamation to his people, the King de- scribed this as " the day of the union of all the branches of our nation," the day "to establish for ever that which Michael the Great [in 1600] was only able to establish for a moment, namely a Roumanian union on both slopes of the Carpathians." Naturally, but unfortunately, the Roumanians directed their efforts towards the immediate conquest of their " unredeemed " heritage in Transylvania and the Bukovina, instead of attacking the Bulgarians, who, with the Germans, took Turtukai* and Constanza. The fate of Roumania was on a smaller scale than that of Servia ; the enemy was near and the Allies far off ; the Roumanians sustained a decisive defeat at Tirgu Jiului, south of the Vulkan pass, and, on December 6, Bucharest fell. The King established his residence at Jassy, where he was left un- disturbed. Meanwhile the reorganised Servian forces had joined the Allies in Macedonia, where their common offensive resulted, on November 19, in the recovery of Monastir. Thus, the Ser- vians held once more a fragment of their country — the town which they had captured from the Turks exactly four years earlier. Meanwhile a very important event had happened at Salonika. When Roumania entered the war, M. Venizelos had informed the Greek Government that, by the previous admission of the staff itself, the last obstacle to Greek intervention had been removed ; and that, if the King insisted upon further neutrality, he would appeal to the people. The abortive result of the Salonika "revolution," however, encouraged King Constantine to believe that the country was with him. M. Zaimes made way for M. Kalogeropoulos, whose Foreign Minister, M. Kara- panos, had been one of the leaders of the Northern Epirote movement and was, although not a Venizelist, a supporter of the Allies. But the real authority was in the hands of the 534 The Near East in the European War [ch. Germanophil cabal around the throne ; and, as the Powers declined to have intercourse with the new Cabinet, it resigned, and Professor Lampros, the eminent mediaeval historian but a man of no political experience and of German and Royalist sympathies, became Premier. The King was now, however, ' de facto ruler of only a part of Greece. On September 25, M. Venizelos, after mature deliberation, had left Athens for Crete, whence he appealed to the Greek people to " save what it is still possible to save " by ranging themselves on the side of the Servians and the Allies and driving out the invaders. Thence he proceeded by way of Les- bos to Salonika, where he formed with Admiral Kountouri6tes and General Dangles a Provisional Government, which declared war on Bulgaria and Germany. Many Greeks flocked to its standard ; and the Greek world was divided into two camps — Royalist and Venizelist — separated from one another by a neutral zone. Roughly speaking "Old" Greece was for the King, "New" Greece for the statesman who had freed it from the Turk and the Bulgar. Great Britain and France accredited diplomatists to the Venizelist Government ; and it became evident that either the King or the ex-Premier must go, for that they could collaborate was impossible. Events at Athens increased the anger of the Allies against King Constantine. The French Admiral demanded and ob- tained the surrender of the Greek torpedo flotilla, the disarma- ment of the larger ships and shore batteries, the control of the Piraeus harbour, the Salamis arsenal, and the Piraeus-Larissa railway, which on May 8 had been connected with the Mace- donian and " European " railway system by the opening of the last 56 miles between PapapoUli and Topsin. He then insisted upon the departure of the enemy diplomatists and Baron Schenk. But, when he further demanded the cession of ten batteries of mountain artillery by December 1, he was met by an organised attack, having previously confided to the King his plan of action. The Greeks fired upon the small Allied de- xxi] King Coiistantine deposed 535 tachments, which had landed on the day appointed; and, besides numerous casualties, a body of marines was captured. The French fleet fired on the palace, and the Queen tele- graphed to her brother that she had had to " take refuge in the cellars." She triumphantly described this ambush as "a great victory over four Great Powers." Next day it was followed by a hue-and-cry after Venizelists, whose houses had been pre- viously marked; and the barbarous rite of an "anathema" 1 of stones was subsequently performed against their absent chief. Great was the indignation in London when the news leaked through the censorship — for no Venizelist newspapers appeared for four months after the "First of December." But condign punishment was postponed ; meanwhile, the Athens garrison had to salute the Allied flags, the Greek troops were to be withdrawn within the Peloponnese, and a blockade was estab- lished, which soon affected the food supply. Smarting under these conditions, the recently triumphant Queen telegraphed to her brother praying that " the infamous swine may receive the punishment that they deserve ! " Finally, the Allies resolved to take a still more drastic measure. M. Jonnart, who had been Governor-General of Algeria, went to Greece as High Commissioner of the protecting Powers, and informed M. Zaimes, who had for the fifth time become Premier, that the King must abdicate in favour of one of his sons, the Crown Prince being, however, excluded in conse- quence of his Germanophil sentiments. This time the Allies had ample forces at hand to enforce their demand. Conse- quently, on June 12, 191 7, M. Zaimes announced the King's decision "to quit the country" and his designation of his second son, Alexander, then nearly 24 years old, as his suc- cessor. Two days later, without incident, the ex-King em- 1 A similar "anathema" is recorded in the cases of the traitors at Patras and Nauplia in 1715 and of the Athenian primates, who favoured the tyrant, Hajji Ali, in 1785. Each person cast a stone, cursing M. Venizelos, as Shimei stoned and cursed David. 536 The Near East in the European War [ch. barked at Orop6s, whence he proceeded with the Queen and the Crown Prince to Switzerland, thenceforth the centre of Royalist intrigues. His quiet departure proved that he was ready to bow to superior force, but he carefully abstained from describing it as an abdication. On June 27 M. Venizelos became the First Minister of the young King, who performed satisfactorily the part of a figure-head; and two days afterwards Greece broke off diplomatic relations with the Central Empires. Three weeks later, upon Greek territory, took place the historic event of the formal fusion of the Southern Slavs in a single realm. The Pact of Corfu, signed by M. Pashich, the Servian Premier, and Dr Trumbich, the Chairman of the Jugo- slav Committee on July 20, 191 7, stipulated for the creation of the " Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes," defined as a "constitutional democratic and parliamentary Monarchy governed by the Karageorgevich dynasty," with "a single coat- of-arms, a single flag, and a single crown." Both the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabets were to have the same rights through- out the triple kingdom ; and the three religions chiefly pro- fessed by the Jugoslavs — Orthodox, Catholic and Moslem — were declared equal. The calendar was to be unified as soon as possible. The national territory was defined as all that in which the Jugoslavs lived in compact masses. This Pact had immediate results. Warmly welcomed in Great Britain and France, it accentuated the already noticeable hostility of Italy, and created a schism in Montenegro, where the Unionist party's leader, M. Radovich, had already urged his exiled sove- reign to resign and let Montenegro be merged in a single Jugoslav state under his grandson, Prince Alexander Karageorgevich. King Nicholas, however, although an advocate of Servian union in the abstract, showed no desire to sacrifice his dynasty upon its altar ; and thus there arose a violent polemic between Montenegrin Royalists and Unionists, which has not yet ceased. In the middle of 19 17 Albania suddenly attracted the atten- tion of Europe. After the Servian retreat across that techni- xxi] The Italians in Albania 537 cally neutral country, and the surrender of Montenegro, the Austrians had invaded the north and the centre, so that Essad Pasha had to remove his residence to Salonika, while the Italians spread southward from Valona, occupying most of Northern Epirus. At one place in this last region, Koritsa, however, the French, on December 13, 191 6, had established an Albanian Republic, which issued stamps and paper money. General Sarrail hoped thereby to stop the intrigues and espionage, of which this conveniently situated town was the centre. He succeeded, but at the same time aroused the opposition of Essad, the Venizelists and the Italians, who saw with displeasure the appointment of native functionaries by the French military authorities in a town which all three parties regarded as in their own sphere of influence. The Italian reply to the creation of this French protectorate came on June 3, 191 7, the festival of the Italian Constitution, when Baron Sonnino, without consulting his sovereign, allies or colleagues (as one of them informed the writer), ordered General Ferrero to proclaim at Argyrokastron " the unity and independence of all Albania under the aegis and protection of the kingdom of Italy." Three Italian Ministers immediately resigned ; and the Allies were surprised at this sudden action of one Power in the affairs of a country which was their common concern. Before that time the Italian occupation already extended as far south as the Kalamas, and in the first half of June it included such typical portions of Greek territory as the famous Parga and Joannina itself. Greek opinion became alarmed, especially as a number of notables from Cheimarra were deported to the island of Favignana off the Sicilian coast, and as Northern Epirus had elected members to the Greek Chamber. M. Venizelos, however, while refusing to allow them to sit, for fear of international complications, obtained the evacuation of Joannina, while the French anticipated an Italian occupation of Preveza. The Italians materially bene- fited Albania especially in respect of roads, but subsequently 538 The Near East in the European War [ch. the benefactors had the same experience as the British in the Ionian Islands. Meanwhile, Turkey had received severe blows. In 1916 the Emir Husein, at British instigation, proclaimed himself King of the Hedjaz, and his Kingdom included the two Holy Places of Islam, Mecca and Medina. The most picturesque episode of the war in the Near East was the liberation of Jerusalem from Turkish rule by the British under General Allenby on December 9, 191 7, and the consequent loss of the Holy Land to the Moslem. Nothing aroused in equal degree the sentiment of the Christian world as this dramatic resumption of the work of the Crusaders. Of greater strategic importance were the operations of the British in Mesopotamia and of the Russians in Armenia. The situa- tion of Turkey at the end of 191 7 was, indeed, deplorable. The Russians, who had taken Erzerum and Trebizond, the gate of Armenia, in the previous year, held all Turkish Armenia ; the British, who had been forced to surrender Kut-el-Amarah ten months earlier, not only recaptured it, but entered Baghdad, and effected a junction with the Russians at Kizil Robat. But the chief sufferers by the war in Asia were the unhappy Armenians; for, in 191 5, Turkey had organised a repetition of the Armenian massacres which had shocked the conscience of Europe twenty years earlier. The American Ambassador at Constantinople branded this crime as "the murder of a nation," and the British Government published a vast mass of evidence confirmatory of his sentence 1 . The Prefect of police at Constantinople admitted that " the records of the Spanish Inquisition " had been searched for new tortures by men who had little to learn in that black art. The official excuse was that the Armenians had " helped the Russians " and opposed the Turks at Van ; the German Ambassador approved, if he did not inspire, the policy of Talaat and Enver. After the war 1 The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1913-16. London, 19 16. xxi] ./ The Macedonian Offensive 539 tardy vengeance by the hand of an assassin struck down Talaat in Berlin and his tool, the Grand Vizier, in Rome; but the British official estimate calculated that in the "deportations" of 1915 one-third of the Turkish Armenians, or 600,000, perished, one-third survived deportation, and one-third alone escaped 1 . The last year of the war produced marked vicissitudes in the Near East. The Russian collapse and the establishment of Bolshevik rule temporarily relieved the hard-pressed Turks, who were able to retake Erzerum, and were specially disastrous to the Roumanians, who concluded an armistice with the Central Empires, but did not thereby save themselves from an attempted Bolshevik revolution, the work of Russian soldiers in Moldavia, and from a formal declaration of war by the Bol- shevik Government. On May 7, 19 18, the Roumanian armistice with the Central Empires ripened into the treaty of Bucharest, the fourth of that name recorded in this history, which ceded more of the Dobrudja to Bulgaria than Roumania had gained at the third, and the rest to the Central Empires. In com- pensation, Germany and Austria sanctioned the annexation to Roumania of Bessarabia, which had already voted for union. The counterpoise to these losses was the victorious Mace- donian offensive of the united British, French, Greek and Jugoslav forces under General Sarrail's successor, General Franchet d'Esperey in September, which loosened the keystone of the hostile arch. Bulgaria's intervention had greatly in- fluenced the fortunes of the war • her defeat hastened its con- clusion. On September 28, 191 8, she signed an armistice, by which she agreed to evacuate Greek and Jugoslav territory, demobilise, and allow the Allies the use of her country as a military base against the Central Empires. On October 4, King Ferdinand, who had already left Bulgaria, abdicated in favour of his heir, who took the title of Boris III, thus ranging himself in the direct succession of the mediaeval Bulgarian Tsars. Thus ended King Ferdinand's 31 years' reign of tortuous intrigue, 1 Ibid., p. 651. 54-0 The Near East in the European War [ch. during which he had gone from one extreme of fortune to the other. His son, born and bred in the country, after weathering the storm of a peasant rising at Trnovo, has remained in tranquil possession of the throne. Bulgaria having thus been eliminated from the Balkan theatre of war, and Austria weakened in the west, the Jugoslavs re-entered Belgrade, and Roumania, at the eleventh hour, declared war on Germany. The Turks saw that they could not continue the war after the withdrawal of Bulgaria. Talaat and Enver resigned, and their successors began negotiations with the Allies, which ended in the armistice of Moudros in Lemnos on October 30. This ended the war in the Near East, leaving Turks and Bulgarians sorrowful that they had been misled into embracing the German cause ; for this they were soon to pay dearly at the peace negotiations, in which the Greek Premier's strong per- sonality gave him an influence far beyond that of any minor state. By the treaty of Neuilly of November 27, 19 19, Bulgaria was deprived of her frontage on the Aegean, which she ceded to Greece, but the Allies undertook to ensure her " economic outlets " thereto, which Greece was " disposed to grant." M. Venizelos argued that Porto Lagos in her hands might become a submarine base, that the Black Sea sufficed for her commercial needs, and that no concessions short of the hegemony of the Balkans would satisfy her ambition to play the part of Prussia. Whether he was wise in thus giving her a motive for attacking Greece, his successors will be able to judge. With Western Thrace she lost the tobacco-plantations of Xanthe, Gumuljina, Dimotika and the Dedeagatch railway, which Turkey had ceded as the price of her support, 6400 square kilometers in all. Her Roumanian frontier in the Dobrudja was put back to where it had been fixed by the third treaty of Bucharest; on the west she had to make rectifications, amounting to 2 500 square kilometers, notably at Strumitza, in favour of Jugoslavia. She emerged with a population of 4,861,439 and an area of xxi] Treaties of Neuilly and Sevres 541 40,656 square miles. Her claws were cut by the substitution of " voluntary enlistment " for conscription, and by the limita- tion of her army to 20,000 men " for the maintenance of order," who were to serve for 11 not less than twelve years." Only one military school was permitted, and no warlike training was to be given in other educational establishments. Neither navy nor air forces were allowed. In short, Bulgaria was to be de- Prussianised. Then came the turn Of Turkey. The Treaty of Sevres, signed August 10, 1920, ceded to Greece the rest of Thrace practically up to the Chatalja lines, thus fulfilling Lord Salis- bury's 1 prophecy of 1878, Turkey renounced to Greece all rights over Imbros and Tenedos, but retained, with Constan- tinople and a tiny strip of European territory, the islands of the Marmora. She also transferred to Greece "the exercise of her rights of sovereignty " over Smyrna and a considerable Hinterland, merely retaining a " flag over an outer fort " — an arrangement borrowed from Cretan history. Smyrna was to have a local parliament ; and, if in five years' time it asked for "definite incorporation in the kingdom of Greece," the League of Nations might hold a plebiscite to decide. The Straits, thenceforth open to all, were placed under an international Commission. Thus Turkey, as an European Power, practically ceased to exist, retaining even less territory than the Byzantine Empire possessed in its last days. But the " consolidation " of Turkey was further continued in Asia, for the first time since 1878. She recognised the Armenian Republic of Erivan (which had been constituted in 1918) and the Kingdom of the Hedjaz as "free and in- dependent states," Kurdistan as autonomous, and Syria, Meso- potamia and Palestine as provisional wards of some mandatory Power, until they were "able to stand alone." The San Remo Conference (April, 1920) had assigned Syria to France; Meso- potamia and Palestine fell to Great Britain, which, in the words 1 Life, ii, 243. 542 The Near East in the European War [ch. of Mr Balfour, viewed "with favour the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people " in Palestine, without pre- judice to " the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities." The last vestiges of Turkey's nominal African sovereignty disappeared ; and in the Aegean she formally re- nounced her last islands — the thirteen Sporades and Kastel- lorrizon to Italy, and Cyprus, including its tribute, to Great Britain. An agreement, made on July 29,, 19 19, between M. Venizelos and Sig. Tittoni, had, however, stipulated that twelve of the islands should be handed over to Greece on the conclusion of this treaty, and that, fifteen years thereafter, in the event of the cession of Cyprus to Greece, Rhodes should hold a plebiscite on the question of union. Successive Italian Governments have declared this, and the subsequent Venizelos- Bonin agreement of August 10, 1920, suspended, on the plea that the treaty of Sevres has not been ratified by Turkey 1 . By a separate treaty annexed to that of Sevres, Greece undertook to maintain the rights of the non-Greek monasteries of Mt Athos. Thus M. Venizelos had created a Great Greece of 171,163 square kilometers and 6,539,903 inhabitants. To enforce the treaty of Sevres against Turkey was not, however, easy. Even before its signature, Mustapha Kemal had put himself at the . head of a "National" movement at Angora, and became de facto ruler of Asia Minor, while Mohammed VI, who had suc- ceeded the feeble Mohammed V in 191 8, retained the shadow of power at Constantinople. M. Venizelos offered to send Greek troops against the Kemalists, and Mr Lloyd George ac- cepted his offer, which at first seemed to promise good results. But the Greeks, who, on landing at Smyrna in May, 19 19, had met with violent opposition, which caused considerable loss of life on both sides, found their difficulties increased as they marched into the interior. Besides the armed resistance of the Kemalists, they had to face the diplomatic hostility of Italy, 1 Corriere delta Sera, Sept. 1, 1920; Count Sforza's speech of August 6, 1920; Epoca, Dec. 8, 1921. xxi] Fall of M. Venizdlos 543 to whom, according to the Italian version, Smyrna had been promised by Mr Lloyd George at the Conference of St Jean de Maurienne in 191 7. Moreover, Greece lost the support of France and many friends in England when, at the elections of November, 1920, her great statesman was completely routed. History, even Greek history, furnishes few cases of such black ingratitude, for it was M. Venizelos' personal influence that had won for Greece her triumphs at the Council-board of Europe, as his successors soon found. But the causes of his fall were not obscure — the prolonged mobilisation, his long tenure of office, and his inevitable absence at Paris while un- popular subordinates governed, and made enemies, in his name. There was added, shortly before the elections, the unexpected death of the young King, the victim of a monkey's bite ; for the vacancy of the throne led to a personal issue at the polls between the Premier and the ex-King. Admiral Kountouri6tes acted as Regent, while Prince Paul, the last king's younger brother, was asked to accept the Crown. As the result of the elections, M. Venizelos resigned and left Greece and public life. Rhalles became Premier, and the Queen-Mother, Olga, Regent ; a plebiscite showed an immense majority for ex-King Constantine's return ; and on December 5 he was recalled, but is still unrecognised by the Powers. The neutralist, M. Goti- nares, soon became Premier, only to discover that Italian joy at the Venizelist defeat was not due to Philhellenic sentiments, that France was hostile, Great Britain disgusted, and the Oecumenical Patriarchate Venizelist. Royalist Greece had few friends ; and, while the authors of the treaty of Sevres agreed to its revision 1 , the Conference of Ambassadors on November 9, 192 1, assigned Northern Epirus to Albania, to whom they awarded the frontiers of 19 13 with the exception of four slight 1 Extending the frontiers of European Turkey to a line drawn from near Ganos on the Sea of Marmora to the Bulgarian frontier on the west of the Stranja Mountains, and restoring Smyrna and its Hinterland to direct Turkish rule. (Paris Conference, March, 1922.) 544 The Near East in the European War [ch. rectifications (three in favour of Jugoslavia), recognising the Albanian Government of Tirana as a sovereign state. Albanian nationalism, long dormant, had lately developed. A meeting at Lushnia in 1920 elected a supreme council of four as an executive ; and an Albanian Parliament met at Tirana, the former stronghold of Essad, who was assassinated in Paris. On August 2, by the Tirana agreement, Italy eva- cuated all Albania, except the islet of Saseno ; and that country is now left to manage its own destinies. Of all the Oriental states, Roumania came best out of the war. Despite her defeat, she more than doubled her territory and population ; the dream of her patriots was realised ; Tran- sylvania, the Bukovina, Bessarabia and the eastern half of the Banat fell to her lot; and she now forms a state of 122,282 square miles and 17,393,149 inhabitants. She easily repulsed the Hungarian Bolsheviks and entered Buda-Pesth, and her King has even been mentioned as a sovereign of Hungary also. Jugoslavia had far greater difficulties to face in obtaining territorial unity. Apart from Roumanian opposition to her claim to the western half of the Banat, she had to meet vehement Italian hostility in Dalmatia and at Fiume, and a separatist movement in Montenegro. When the United States entered the war, the American Government declined to be bound by the secret treaty of London (191 5), which had assigned Northern Dalmatia to Italy, and Fiume to Croatia. There arose the lengthy "Adriatic question," further accentuated by the poet D'Annunzio's occupation of Fiume. After long dispute, the treaty of Rapallo (November 12, 1920), between the Italians and the Jugoslavs, abandoned Dalmatia to the latter, except Zara and a small territory round it, and all the islands except Cherso, Lussin, Lagosta, Pelagosa and their adjacent islets. Fiume was recognised as a free and inde- pendent state, but the possession of its smaller harbour of Port Baross and the delta of its river remained in dispute. The real feeling of Montenegro is hard to gauge. A Monte- xx i] Meiging of Montenegro 545 negrin Assembly deposed King Nicholas and decided for union with Jugoslavia; and the elections for the Jugoslav Constituent Assembly, which a British official observer 1 considered to have shown " no evidence of interference or pressure " by the Serbs, resulted in the return of no partisans of the Petrovich dynasty. The old King's subsequent death at Antibes on March 1, 192 1, led more of its adherents to make their peace with Jugoslavia ; but a phantom Montenegrin Court continues to exist in exile. The Crown Prince, Danilo, against his will, was forced to suc- ceed his father ; but he abdicated six days later in favour of his nephew Michael, a boy at school in England, under the Regency of the Queen-Mother, Milena. Great Britain and France have ceased to recognise Montenegro; but Italy has taken no decided step. It seems that, while few Montenegrins (except officials) now wish for a separate kingdom, federal union and local autonomy appeal to the majority rather than absolute amalgamation. Whether Jugoslavia, with its area of 95,628 square miles and its population of 11,337,686, will hold to- gether, is a question ; for Croatia has a different tradition, religion and grade of culture from Servia, and Montenegro is as far behind Servia as Servia is behind Croatia, while the social conditions of Bosnia differ widely from those of a land where big estates are unknown. The natural solution of these difficulties would seem to be Federation. The final liquidation of the Ottoman dominions in Europe has not been yet completed; but, after the events of the last ten years it is obvious that Turkey has ceased, for all practical purposes, to be an European state. During the period of 122 years covered by this book, she has lost all her possessions in the Balkan peninsula, except the capital and a strip of suburban territory, and all the islands of the Aegean. Nothing remains of her African dominions. In short, Turkey is once more almost what she was in the first half of the fourteenth century — a purely Asiatic Power. Even in Asia, the Hedjaz is an in- 1 R. L'E. Bryce, Further Report on political conditions in Montenegro, p. 2. M.L. 35 546 The Near East in the European War [ch. xxi dependent kingdom ; Syria, Mesopotamia and Palestine are administered by foreign mandatories ; Smyrna and her territory are Turkish only in name 1 . This is, indeed, "consolidation" ! The virtual elimination of Turkey and the substitution for it of large Roumanian and Jugoslav states, of a medium-sized Greece and Bulgaria, and a small Albania have not, indeed, provided a permanent solution of an insoluble question. Racial hatred burns nowhere so brightly as in south-eastern Europe, where, no more than in the more cultured west, does their profession of a common Christianity make rival nationalities love each other. Even a common enemy has only occasionally united them. Yet no unbiassed observer can doubt that the emancipation of the eastern Christians from Ottoman rule has been a blessing. Western politicians, disregarding the fact that these races of the Balkan peninsula stepped straight out of the middle ages, after the long night of Turkish rule, into the full blaze of modern civilisation, seldom make allowance for the difficulty of rapid adaptation to the new and strange conditions. Nothing is more unfair than to compare them with other and old-established countries, slowly and gradually evolved. The wonder is, that the Christian states of the Near East have achieved so much in so comparatively short a time ; and the wonder is increased when we reflect that their growth has been constantly hampered by the mutual jealousies and the ignorance of the Great Powers. The war of 191 2-13 freed the Balkans from the yoke of Turkey ; the European war freed them from the interference of Austria and Russia; and no Balkan nation, not even the Albanians, wishes to see Italy assume the part of Austria in its affairs, to mix in which is usually fatal to the intruder. It will be a happy day for the Near East, when the maxim of a Balkan statesman is realised: "The Balkan peninsula for the Balkan peoples." It will be a still happier day when its peaceful development is their sole occupation, and their past history counts less with them than their future progress. 1 Unless the decisions of March, 1922, be executed. TABLE OF RULERS I. Bulgaria (and Eastern Roumelia). Alexander, Prince ... 1879 Alexander Vogorides, Regency ... ... 1886 Governor-General of Ferdinand, Prince, 1887; Eastern Roumelia... 1879 Tsar ... ... 1908 Gavril Krstjovich, do. 1884-5 Boris III ... ... 1918 II. Greece. Otho, King 1832 [Regency ... 1833-5] Provisional Government 1862 George I, King 1863 Constantine „ 1913 Alexander „ 1917 Admiral Kountouriotes, Regent 2 Oct. 1920 Queen Olga, Regent 17 Nov. 1920 Constantine restored 5 Dec. 1920 III. Montenegro. Peter I, Prince-Bishop ... ... 1782 Peter II „ ... ... 1830 Danilo, Prince ... ... 1851 Nicholas 1, Prince, i860; King ... 1910-21 [Merged in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.] IV. ROUMANIA. r -1 Wallachia. Moldavia. Alexander Morouzes, Hos- Constantine Hypselantes, podar 1799 Hospodar 1799 Michael I, Soutsos, Hos- Alexander Soutsos, Hos- podar 1.801 podar 1 801 Constantine Hypseldntes, Alexander Morouzes, Hos- Hospodar 1802 podar 1802 Alexander Soutsos (1), Hospodar ... 1806 Russian occupation of both Principalities, 1806. 35— 2 548 Table of Rulers John Caragea, Hospodar 1812 Alexander Soutsos (2) „ 1818 Constantine Ne'gres, Lieu- tenant-governor ... 1 82 1 Gregory IV, Ghika, Hos- podar ... ... 1822 Charles Callimachi, Hos- podar ... ... 1812 Michael II, Soutsos, Hos- podar ... ... 1819 Stephen Vogondes, Lieu- tenant-governor ... 1 82 1 John S. Sturdza, Hospodar 1822 Russian occupation of both Principalities, 1828. Michael Sturdza, Hospo- dar ... ... ... 1834 Gregory V, Ghika, Hospo- dar ... ... 1849-56 Alexander II, Ghika, Hos- podar ... ... 1834 George Bibescu, Hospodar 1842 Provisional Government. . . 1 848 Lieutenancy ... ... 1848 Constantine Cantacuzene, Lieutenant-governor ... 1848 Barbe Stirbeiu, Hospo- dar ... ... 1849-56 Russian occupation of both Principalities, 1853. Austrian „ „ Alexander II, Ghika, Lieu- tenant-governor ... 1856 Three Commissioners ... 1858 » „ 1854-7. Theodore Balsh, Lieu- tenant-governor ... 1856 Nicholas Vogondes, Lieu- tenant-governor Three Commissioners 1857 1858 Alexander John Couza, Prince of both Principalities Provisional Government Charles I, Prince, 1866; King of Roumania Ferdinand I, King 1859 1866 1881 1914 V. Servia. Kara George, Supreme Chief ... 1804-13 Milosh Obrenovich I (1), Prince ... 1817 Milan „ II „ ... 1839 Michael „ III (1) „ ... 1839 Alexander Karageorgevich „ ... 1842 Milosh Obrenovich I (2) „ ... 1859 Michael „ III (2) „ ... i860 Table of Rulers Milan Obrenovich IV, Prince 1868, King 1882 [Regency ... ... ... ... 1868-72] Alexander I Obrenovich, King ... 1889 [Regency 1889-93] Peter I Karageorgevich, King 1 ... 1903 Alexander I „ , Prince Regent 1914, King ... ... ... 1921 VI. Turkey. Selim III ... ... ... ... 1788 Mustapha IV ... ... ... 1807 Mahmud II ... ... ... 1808 Abdul Mejid ... ... ... 1839 Abdul Aziz ... ... ... 1861 MuradV ... ... ... ... 1876 Abdul Hamid II ... ... ... 1876 Mohammed V ... ... ... 1908 Mohammed VI ... ... ... 1918 VII. Former Autonomous Islands. (a) Crete. Prince George of Greece, High Commissioner 1898 Alexander Zaimes „ ,, 1 906-1 (b) Samos. Stephen Vogo rides, Prince ... ... 1834 Alexander Callimachi „ ... ... 1850 John Ghika „ ... ... 1856 Miltiades Aristarches „ ... ... 1859 Paul Mousouros „ ... ... 1867 Constantine Adosfdes (1) „ ... ... 1873 Constantine Photiades „ ... ... 1874 Constantine Adosfdes (2) „ ... ... 1879 Alexander Karatheodori „ ... ... 1885 George Berovich „ ... ... 1894 Stephen Mousouros „ ... ... 1896 Constantine Vayianes „ ... ... 1899 1 Since 191 8 King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. 55o Table of Rulers Michael Gregoriades Prince ... ... 1.900 Alexander Mavroge'nes „ ... ... 1902 Yanko Vithynos „ ... ... 1904 Constantine Karatheodori „ ... ... 1906 George Georgiades „ ... ... 1907 Andrew Kopasses „ ... ... 1907 George Vegle'res . „ ... ... 1912 VIII. Albania. Ismail Kemal Bey (Valona) ... . ... 1912 William (of Wied), Prince . , (Mar. 7-Sept. 3) *9*4 Essad Pasha, (Durazzo) ... ... 19H Republic of Koritsd ... ... 1916 Four Regents (Tirana) ... ... 19 20 BIBLIOGRAPHY A complete bibliography of this period would fill a volume. French and Belgian publications on south-eastern Europe between 1821 and 1897 are very numerous; while the British Parliamentary and State Papers, and the Diplomatic and Consular Reports on Trade and Finance (since 1886), are too copious to be set out in detail, and, besides, have been indexed. Upon them and upon the similar Documents diplomatiques of France and Documenti diplomatici of Italy my narrative has been largely based. These last, and the Hellenic White Books (for a complete list of which I am indebted to the Greek Foreign Office), are at once less voluminous and less easily accessible ; the titles are therefore given in full. The following bibliographies may be cited : — Bengesco, G. Bibliographie franco-roumaine du XI X e siecle. Vol. 1. Bruxelles, 1895. Essai d'une notice bibliographique sur la question d'Orient. — Orient europeen, 1821-97. Bruxelles et Paris, 1897. Cobham, C. D. An attempt at a bibliography of Cyprus. Fifth edition. In Excerpta Cypria. Cambridge, 1908. Jouplain, M. La question du Liban. Paris, 1908. (This contains a full bibliography of works on the Lebanon.) Jovanovich, V. M. EiiriecKa 6H6morpa(}>Hja hcto^ihom niiTaity y EBpomi. y Beorpajty, 1908. ("English bibliography of the eastern question.") KersopoulorT, M. G. J. Essai de bibliographie franco-bulgare, 1613-1910. Paris, 1912. Legrand, E. Bibliographie albanaise. Description rais. des ouvrages publ. en Albanais ou relat. a PAlbanie du XV s siecle jusqu'a 1900. Completee p. H. Guys. Paris 19 12. Legrand, E., et Pernot, H. Bibliographie ionienne. Paris, 19 10. 552 Bibliography Odavitch, R. J. Essai de bibliographic franchise sur les Serbes, Croates et Slovenes, depuis le commencement de la guerre actuelle. Paris, 191 8. Srpska Kraljevska Akademija. Essai de bibliographic frangaise sur les Serbes et les Croates (1 554-1900). Beograd, 1900. Tenneroni, A. Per la bibliografia del Montenegro. Seconda edizione. Roma, 1896. Tondini, C. Notice sur la bibliographic du Montene'gro. Paris, 1889. I. Bulgaria (and Eastern Roumelia). Balkanicus [Protich, S.] The Aspirations of Bulgaria. London, 1915. Bath, Marquis of. Observations on Bulgarian Affairs. London, 1880. Beaman, A. H. M. Stambuloff. London, 1895. Becker, G. La guerre contemporaine dans les Balkans, 1885. Paris, 1889. Bilimek, H. Der bulgarisch-serbische Krieg, 1885. Wien, 1886. Bourchier, J. D. {Times correspondent in the Balkans). Articles in the Fortnightly Review. "Through Bulgaria with Prince Ferdinand," July, 1888. "On the Black Sea with Prince Ferdinand," Jan. 1891. "To Rhodope with Prince Ferdinand," Apr. 1891. "A Balkan Confederation," Sep. 1891. In the Contemporary Review. "Justice and Conciliation in the Balkans," Feb. 1919. " Vae Victis !" Jan. 1920. Buxton, Noel, M.P. With the Bulgarian Staff. London, 191 3. Cholet, Cte A. P. de. Etude sur la guerre bulgaro-serbe. Paris, 1891. Dicey, E. The Peasant State. London, 1894. Documenti diplomatici. (Libri Verdi.) 1880. Affari di Oriente. Parti IV, v, VI d, c. Legislatura xiv. Sessione 1, N. IV. 1885. Rumelia Orientale. Serie i a e 2 a . Legislatura XV. Sessione 1, N. II, terdec. and qnatuordecies. 1886. Rumelia Orientale e Grecia. Serie 3 a . Legislatura XVI. Sessione 1, N. II. 1886. Bulgaria. Legislatura xvi. Sessione 1, N. xvi. 1889. Bulgaria. Legislatura xvi. Sessione 4, N. xvin. Bibliography 553 Drandar, A. G. Cinq ans de regne. Le Prince Alexandre de Battenberg en Bulgarie. Paris, 1884. Les Evdnements politiques en Bulgarie depuis 1876 jusqu'a nos jours. Bruxelles, 1896. La Bulgarie sous le Prince Ferdinand, 1 887-1908. Bruxelles, 1909. Dupuy-Peyou, L. La Bulgarie aux Bulgares. Paris et Bruxelles, 1896. Golovin, A. F. Fiirst Alexander I von Bulgarien, 1879-86. Wien, 1896. Gopcevic, Sp. Bulgarien und Ostrumelien, mit besonderer Beriick- sichtigung des Zeitraums von 1 878-1 886. Leipzig, 1886. Gubernatis, Cte A. de. La Bulgarie et les Bulgares. Florence, 1899. Gueshoff, I. E. The Balkan League. London, 191 5. Huhn, Major A. von. Der Kampf der Bulgaren um ihre National- einheit. Leipzig, 1886. The Kidnapping of Prince Alexander. London, 1887. Jirecek, C. Das Fiirstenthum Bulgarien. Wien, 1891. Kanitz, F. Donau-Bulgarien und der Balkan. 2 te Aurlage. Leipzig, 1882. French tr. Paris, 1882. Koch, A. Mitteilungen aus dem Leben und der Regierung des Fiirsten Alexander von Bulgarien. Darmstadt, 1887. Lamouche, L. La Bulgarie dans le passe et le present. Paris, 1892. Ldonoff, R. Documents secrets de la politique russe en Orient, 1881-90, Berlin et Leipzig, 1893. Macdonald, J. Czar Ferdinand and his people. London, 191 3. Ministere du Commerce bulgare. La Bulgarie contemporaine. Bruxelles, 1906. Puaux, R. De Sofia a Tchataldja. Paris, 1913. Samuelson, J. Bulgaria past and present. London, 1888. Sobolev, L. N. Der erste Fiirst von Bulgarien. Leipzig, 1886. Wagner, Lieut. H. With the Victorious Bulgarians. London, 1913. Wolff, Sir H. D. Rambling Recollections. Vol. n. London, 1908. Zoli, C. La Guerra turco-bulgara. Milano, 191 3. II. Greece. About, E. La Grece contemporaine. Dixieme edition. Paris, 1890. Anonymous. 'A/xaXi'a f) BaaiXiao-a rrjs 'EXXaSoy. *Ev 'AOrjvais, 1 896. SeXt'Ses rives rrjs iaropias rov Baaik€(os"Odcovos, 'AOrjvrjo-iv, 1 898. 554 Bibliography Anonymous. [Capo d'Istria, Viaro.] Renseignements sur la Grece et sur l'administration du Comte Capodistrias par un grec te'moin oculaire des faits qu'il rapporte. Paris, 1833. Becker, G. La guerre contemporaine dans les Balkans, 1897. Paris, 1899. Beleles, L. 'O Karroblarptas cos 0€fie\ieorr]s rrjs drjfxoTacrjs 6K7rai8€va€cos iv c EXXa&. 'Ei> y A0rjvais, 1908. Bickford-Smith, R. A. H. Greece under King George. London. 1893. , Bigham, C. With the Turkish Army in Thessaly. London, 1897. Bikelas, D. Seven Essays on Christian Greece. Translated by John, Marquess of Bute, K. T. Paisley and London, 1890. Blaquiere, E. The Greek Revolution ; its origin and progress. London, 1824. Narration of a second visit to Greece. London, 1825. Letters from Greece. London, 1828. Bourchier, J. D. "A glance at Contemporary Greece." In the Fortnightly Review, June, 1890. " Charilaos Trikoupes." lb. July, 1896. Buchon, J. A. La Grece continentale et la Moree. Paris, 1843. Byron, Lord. The Works of Lord Byron. Letters and Journals. Ed. by R. E. Prothero. Vol. VI. London, 1904. Byzdntios, C. S. 'laropia rov tciktikov crrparov rrjs 'EXXaSo?. 'Ei> *A6i)vais, 1837. Carlisle, The Earl of. Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters. Ed. 3, London, 1854. Cassavetti, D. J. Hellas and the Balkan Wars. London, 19 14. Cherbuliez, A. Correspondance du Comte Capodistrias. 4 vols. Geneve, 1839. Chester, S. B. Life of Venizelos. London, 1921. Church, E. M. Sir Richard Church in Italy and Greece. Edinburgh, 1895. Christmas, Walter. Kong Georg I. Prins af Danmark. Copen- hagen, 1 91 3. English tr. King George of Greece. London, 1914. Collegno, G. Diario dell' Assedio di Navarino. Torino, 1857. Constantine, H.R.H. Crown Prince. "EkOco-ls rrjs 'A. B. 'Y^/rjXorrjTos rov AtaSd^oi* irr\ rcov TreTrpayp,iva)v rov arparov ©ecrcraXias' Kara rrjv €KO~rpareiav, 1 897. 'Ei/ 'AOrjvais, 1 898. Bibliography 555 Debidour, A. Le General Fabvier, sa vie militaire et politique. Paris, 1904. AeXrlov Trjs 'icrTopiKrjs kol 'EdvoXoyiKrjs 'Eraipias Trjs 'EXXaSo?. Top,. i, 263-6, 675-9; ii, 118-20, 515-20; in, 317-30, 433-45; iv, 263-7, 331-43, 475-512, 575-8 ; V, 259-62 ; VI, 51-62 ; VII, 3-64, 183-426. 'Ev 'Adrjvais, 1883-1916. De Quincey, T. The Revolution of Greece. Modern Greece. In Works. Vols, x, 99-157; Xiil, 288-322. Edinburgh, 1862. Deschamps, G. La Grece d'aujourd'hui. I2 e ed. Paris, 19 10. AnrXcopaTiKa "Eyypacpa. (1) C H pera^v tov iv 'EXXaSi rrpeo-fievTOv Trjs TaXXlas Kai tov eVi tcov 'E^coTepiKcov 'Yirovpyov dXXrjXoy pacpla irrl rrjs virodecrecos SovXte. 'Adrjvai, 1863. (2) "Eyypacpa iirlo~qpa dcpopcovTa ras eVi tov errTavrjo-iaKov forr)- p,aros biaTrpaypaTevaeis. 'Adrjvai, 1864- (3) "Eyypacpa dcpopcovra els rrjv prj^iv tcov peTa£v 'EXXaSos kol Tovpicias o~)(£(T€(£>v. 'Adrjvai, 1 868; (4) "Eyypacpa KarareOevra els Tr t v BovXrjv irepl tcov iicfioXddcov Kai crKcopicov Aavp'iov, 1 872- 1 873. 'Adrjvai, 1 873. (5) AnrXoopciTiKa. eyypacpa nepl rov 'EXXrjviKov £rjTrjpaTos, kclto.- TedevTa iv 777 BovXjj tcov 'EXXrjvav vtto tov in\ tcov 'E^coTepiKcov 'Yirovpyov. 'Adrjvai, 1 878. (6) Merarporrr) tcov daveicov tov 1 824 koX 1825, dbeia tov inX tcov O'lKovopiKcov e Y7Tovpyeiov. ' Adrjvai, 1 879. (7) AnrXcopariKa eyypacpa dcpopcovTa els to piedopiaKov £r)Trjp,a. . 'Adrjvai, 1882. (8) Ai7rXa>paTiKa eyypacpa KararedevTa els Tr)v BovXrjv viro tov iir\ tcov 'E^eoTepiKcov 'Yirovpyov irepl tov 5 'AiroKXeio-p.ov. 'Adrjvai, 1886. (9) AiirXcop,aTiKa eyypacpa rrepl crTacpibos. AiairpaypaTevcreis peTa Trjs 'AyyXiKrjs Kvfiepvrjcrecos. ' Adrjvai, 1 889. (10) "Eyypacpa irepl Trjs virodeaecos Zdirira, l863~9 2 ' 'Adrjvai, 1 892. (11) AnrX Kepuvpa, 1862. Second Memorandum. Corfou, 1862. Troisieme Memoire. Paris, 1862. Uapaivio-eis rrpos rrjv Avtov MeyaXeior^ra tov peXXovra BaatXea rrjs 'EXXaSos. 'Ej> 'AOrjvais, 1 863. Hidromenos, A. M. 'loodvvrjs KairodlorTpias, KvfiepvrjTrjs rrjs 'EXXaSos. 'Ei/ 'AOrjvais, 1900. To "2vvraypa rrjs 'EXXaSos. 'Ev 'A&Jvais, 1 908. Homolle, Th., Houssaye, H., etc. La Grece. Paris, 1908. Isambert, G. L'lnde'pendance grecque et FEurope. Paris, 1900. Jebb, Sir R. C. Two lectures on Modern Greece. London, 1901. Karakatsanes, I. Z. To viov 2vvraypari]s e EXXddos. 'Ei/ 'ABrjvais, 191 1. Kerofilas, C. Un Homme d'Etat. E. Venizelos. Sa Vie. Son (Euvre. Paris, 191 5. English tr. London, 191 5. Kleomenes, A. Ilepi tcov npcorcov rrjs 'EAXaSos BaatXecov "08o>vos nai 'ApaXias. 'Ev 'Adrjvais, 1904. Kluber, J. L. Pragmatische Geschichte der nationalen und politi- schen Wiedergeburt Griechenlands. Frankfurt, 1835. Kolokotrones, J. T. 'EXX^vtfca vTropvrjpara, fjroi iirio~ToXai kcu didcpopa eyypacpa dcpopcovra rrjv 'EXXrjviKrjv iuavdaTacrLV dirb 1 82 1 p^XP L 1827. 'Ei/ 'AOrjvais, 1 856. Kolokotrones, Th. C. Airjyrjcris crvpfiavrcov rrjs 'EXXrjviKrjs (pvXrjs diro ra 177° ^ (OS r< * I%36' 'Ev 'Adrjvais, 1 846. Kyriakides, E. K. 'lo-Topia tov avyxpovov 'EXXrjvio-pov. 1832-1892. 2 vols. 'Ev 'A0r)vms, 1 892-4. Lawson, J. C. Tales of ^Egean Intrigue. London, 1920. Leake, W. M. An historical outline of the Greek Revolution. Ed. 3. London, 1826. 558 Bibliography Leake, W. M. On the claim to the Islands of Cervi and Sapienza. London, 1850. Mamouka, A. Z. Td Kara rrjv dvayivvrjaiv rrj$ 'EXXaSos, fjroi crvXXoyr) tcov nepl tt)v dvayev vdopevrjv 'EXXaSa avvra^OevTcov 7roXiT€vixdr(ov, vofjuov teal aXXcov iTTio-rjixcov irpdi-ecov cmo rod 1821-1832. II vols. 'Ei/ 'AOtjvais, 1 839-1 852. Martin, P. F. Greece of the Twentieth Century. London, 191 3. Maurer, G. L. von. Das griechische Volk in offentlicher, kirchlicher und privatrechtlicher Beziehung. 3 vols. Heidelberg, 1835. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, K. Geschichte Griechenlands von der Eroberung Konstantinopels durch die Tiirken im Jahre 1453 bis auf unsere Tage. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1870-4. Mdlas, G. M. Ex-King Constantine and the War. London, 1921. Metaxas, C. 'la-ropiKa diTopvr)ixov€vpaTa in rrjs 'EXX^iukj?? eVava- ordo-ecos. 'Ei> 'ABrjvais, 1 878. Miller, W. Greek life in town and country. London, 1905. " Nauplieus." Ta crvp^avra rrjs Na.v7rX1a.Krjs enavacrrdaecos rrjs Trpa>Trjs &e(3povapiov 1 862. 'Ev 'Adr)vais, 1 862. Nevinson, H. W. 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London, 1914. Skendo Lumo. Albanie. {Revue de Geneve, Sept., 192 1). Sulliotti, A. Italo. In Albania. Sei Mesi di Regno. Milano, 1914. Vaina de Pava, E. La nazione albanese. 2 a ed. Catania, 191 7. Woods, H. C. The Situation in Albania. {Fortnightly Review, March, 1914); and Albania and the Albanians {Geographical Review, April, 19 18). INDEX Aali Pasha, 240, 314, 345 Abd el-Kader, 301-2 Abdul Aziz, 303, 368 Abdul Hamid II, succeeds to the throne, 368 ; dissolves parliament, 378; his treatment of the Ar- menians, 428-31 ; his Macedonian policy, 445 ; restores the con- stitution, 474-5 ; his deposition, 480-2, 486 Abdul Mejid, proclaims equality, 141, 149, 153, 225; communicates his firman to the Powers, 237, 298 ; dies, 303, 340 Abeih, 154 Abel, Councillor von, 156, 160-1 Aberdeen, Lord, Eastern policy of, 104, 106, 108, 139, 171, 175, 203, 207, 21T, 232 Aboulabad, 73 Acre, 145-6, 150 Ada Kaleh, 50, 255 Adalbert, Prince of Bavaria, 262 Adam, Sir Frederick, 92, 122-4, 183, 291 Adana, 146-7, 150; massacre at, 431, 480-1 Adosides, 471 Adrianople, Peace of, 106, 130-1, 133, 209-10, 339, 371; taken by the Russians, 129, 376-7; vildyet of, 448; besieged by the Bul- garians, 504-5, 506, 511 ; retaken by the Turks, 515, 517, 528 Aehrenthal, Baron, 458 Aigina, 89,96, 99-100, 109, 113, 118 Ainali-Kavak, Convention of, 8, 30 Ainos, 130, 508, 513, 517 Aitolia, 77, 107 Aivali, 74 Akarnania, 77, 82, 107, 111, 163, 178, 267, 288 Akhaltsykh, 128, 130 Akkerman, Convention of, 127-8, 131^ 1.33 Akroteri, 434, 489 Alaman, Bridge of, 72 Albania, Albanians, 4, 19, 23, 39, 85, [25, 142, 146, 240-1, 250, 259-60, 385, 391, 394, 396-7, 403-7, 443-6, 481-2, 495-6, 498, 504, 508-9, 511, 518-21, 526, 529, 536, 543-4 Aleksinatz, 134, 369 Alexander I, Tsar of Russia, 39, 66-7, 75 Alexander II, Tsar of Russia, 233-6, 271, 374-5. 378 Alexander III, Tsar of Russia, 416, 423, 450-1 Alexander, Prince of Bulgaria, 412- Alexander, King of Servia, 403, 453-7 Alexander Karageorgevich, Prince of Servia, 138-9, 195-6, 217, 249-52, 334, 339' 456 Alexander I, Karageorgevich, King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, 483. 536 Alexander, King of the Hellenes, 535-6,543 Alexandria, 149 Alfred, Prince. See Edinburgh, Duke of Algeria, 16, 145 Ali Pasha of joannina, 15, 19, 24, 29, 43, 62-4, 71, 78-9 Ali Pasha of Zvornik, 139 Allenby, General, 538 Alma, The, 227-8 Amalia, Queen of Greece, 164, 170, 219-24, 242, 262, 264, 267 Ambelakia, 29 Ambrakian gulf, 409 Anagnostopoulos, 65 576 Index Anapa, 128, 130 Anatolikon, 86, 92, 98 Anchialos, 447 Andrassy, Count, 362-3, 386, 388 Andritsaina, 65 Andros, 183 Antipaxo, 4 Antivari, 218, 241, 256, 259-60; occupied by Montenegro, 376 ; ceded to Montenegro, 383, 391-2 ; Archbishop of, 461 ; railway to, 463 ; freedom of, 484, 507 Apokorona, 310 Aprilov, 340 Arab Tabia, 215, 399 Ardahan, 128, 384, 395 Areia, 119 Argos, 77, 81, 86, 104, 108, 114, 118, 121, 265 Argyrokastron, 64, 505, 518-9, 537 Arkadion, Monastery of, 31 1-2, 439 Armansperg, Count von, 156-7, 160- 4 Armenians, 384, 395-6 ; massacres of, 427-31, 476, 479-81, 538; Armenian Republic, 541 Arta, 4, 65, 82, 158, 220; its cession to Greece, 407, 409 Asaki, George, 126 Askyphon, 317 Aspropotamos, The, 407 Asquith, Mr H. H., 504 Astros, 83, 114, 120 Astypalaia, 469, 510 Athens, under the Turks, 29-30 ; taken by the Greeks, 72, 80-1, 91, 94-5, 105 ; made the capital, 161- 3; revolution of 1843 at, 169-72, 176-7, 179-81, 184; dur- ing Crimean war, 219-24, 260, 262; revolution of 1862 at, 267-8, 270-3, 275-7, 281, 315, 432, 434, 467, 49°, 534 Athos, Mt, 29, 73, 221, 320, 503, 509, 542 Austria, in Dalmatia, 32, 34, 36-7 ; her Montenegrin policy, 198-9, 240, 391-2, 479, 484, 530; her. Servian policy, 50-1, 136, 249, 457-8, 479> 5°4> 5<>9> 5 r 7» 52i-4» 528; her Turkish policy, 9-12, 15, 198-9, 209, 211-4, 216, 233-5, 243, 245, 248, 288, 386, 390-1, 402-3, 444-8 Avakumovich, M., 456 Azov, 5-8, 234 Baghdad, 538 Balaclava, 229-30, 233 Balbes, Demetrios, 420 Balbes, Z., 273 Balfour, Mr A. J., 542 Ballard, Lieut., 215 Balsh, Theodore, 244 Balta Liman, Convention of, 194, 244 Baltchik, 513, 516 Banat, The, 10, 525, 532, 544 Banjaluka, 140 Banjani, 370, 391 Baphe, 311 Baring, Mr, 365-6 Barton, Sir Edward, 13 Batak, 365-7 Bathurst, Lord, 44 Battenberg, Prince Francis Joseph of, 421, 460 Batum, 239, 384-5, 395-6 Bayazid, 128, 130, 384, 395 Beaconsfield, Lord (Disraeli, Ben- jamin), Eastern policy of, 246, 287, 370, 377, 387» 395-6, 406, 468 Beaufort d'Hautpoul, General, 302 Beirut, 150, 154, 300-2, 497 Belashitza, Mts, 516 Belgrade, Peace of, 3, 7, 17 ; under the Turks, 46-8 ; its garrison massacred, 52, 54-7, 134-5, 137- 8, 249-52; bombardment of, 253- 5 ; its fortress evacuated by the Turks, 303, 332-4, 336, 417-8; royal tragedy at, 454-6, 461 ; bombarded and occupied by the Austrians, 523 ; recovered, 540 Belimarkovich, General, 376, 453 Bellova, 449 Belogradtchik, 339, 515 Beltchev, 449 Benderev, Capt., 421 Index 577 Benizelos, John, 30 " Benkovski," 365 Berane, 498, 501 Berat, 64 Berchtold, Count, 498 Berlin, Conference of (1880), 404, 407-8, 416 Berlin, Congress and treaty of, 387— 401, 428, 464-5, 484, 501 Berlin Memorandum, The, 363 Berovich, George, 433, 471 Besika Bay, 209, 368, 370, 378 Bessarabia, 39, 42-3, 236, 239, 373, 383-4. 39 2 , 525> 53 2 , 539, 544 Beust, Count von, 332 Bib Doda, Prenk, Mirdite chief (1854), 219 Bib Doda, Prenk, Mirdite chief in 1908, 404, 406 Bibescu, George, 190-4, 243, 246-8, 328 Bijelopavlich, 142, 218 Bijelopolje, 391, 501 Bilek, 376, 383 Bismarck, Eastern policy of, 291, 3i7» 3 2 5-6, 329-30* 386, 388, 401, 408, 428, 465 Bitlis, 429 Black Sea, The, 7-8, 14, 127, 130, 234, 236, 238-9, 347 Blaznavatz, Col., 335 Blunt, Consul, 220 Bogomiles, 21 Bogoshich, M., 459 Bojana, The, 372, 405 Boletin, Isa, 495 Bonaparte. See Napoleon I. Boris III, Tsar of the Bulgarians, 450~i, 539 Bosdari, Count, 527 Bosnia, partly Austrian, 10-1 ; Turkish, 17, 21-2; at Tilsit, 39; rises against the Turks, 139-42, 144, 239, 333, 359; insurrection in, 362, 368, 370, 372, 377, 384, 386 ; Austrian occupation of, 390, 396-7, 401-2 ; Austrian annexa- tion of, 441-2, 477-9; 482-5,521, 523, 545 Bosphorus, The, 130, 146-7, 151, 238, 347 Botzares, Marko, 65, 82, 85 Botzares, Notes, 92 Bouboulina, 73 Boulgares, Demetrios, 242, 267, 273, 310, 316, 356-7, 379 Boulgares, George, 28 Boulgaris, Eugenios, 24 Bourbaki, Col., 94-5 Bourchier, James D., 494, 500 Bourgas, 129, 421, 424, 449 Bournias, 79 Bourzi, 112 Bowen, Sir George, 278 Braila, 128, 400 Brailas, Sir Peter, 283 Bratianu, John, 320, 323, 325-7, 373, 388, 401, 464-5 Bratianu, M. J. C, 533 Brda, The, 143, 218, 259 Bregalnitza, 513 Brialmont, General, 465 Brod, 362 Brown, Sir George, 225-6 Brusa, 146 Bucharest, 5, 8, 20, 27; treaty of (1812), 42-3, 54, 56, 65, 67-8, T 33, i9 2 ' *94, 216, 237, 247-8, 250, 321, 323-4, 327, 330, 344, 346, 401 ; treaty of (1886), 418, 444, 465 ; treaty of (1913), 5i5~7» 529; taken by the Germans, 533 ; treaty of (1918), 539 Buchon, J. A., 172 Budua, 530 Bukovina, The, 10, 42, 331, 525, 532-3, 544 Bulair, 506, 508 Bulganak, The, 227 Bulgaria, Bulgarians, 20-1, 39, 124, 204, 217, 316; history of, before the Exarchate, 338-45; the Ex- archate, 345-7 ; "Bulgarian Atro- cities," 364-7 ; attitude during Russo-Turkish war, 360-70, 372, 374; at San Stefano, 382, 385-6; at Berlin, 388-9, 392, 396, 399- 400; history since Berlin treaty, 411-26; in Macedonia, 441-8; M. L. 37 "0 578 Index history under Prince Ferdinand, 448-52; independence of, 477-8, 485; rapprochement with Greece, 494 ; in the Balkan League, 498- 504, 506; in the Second Balkan war, 510-8; in the European war, 528-9, 531-2, 539-41 Bulwer, Sir Henry, 250-1, 255 Buol, Count, 212-3 Burgoyne, Sir John, 228-9 Burney, Admiral, 507-8 Butler, Capt., 215 Butrinto, 4 Byron, Lord, 19, 85-8 Callimachi, Alexander, 470 Callimachi, Charles, 69, 75, 126 Campbell, Col., 167 Campbell, Lieut. -General James, 41 Campbell, Sir Colin, 230 Campo-Formio, Treaty of, 4, 12 Candia, besieged by Turks, 3, 15, 74, 167, 438, 440 Canea, 73-4, 167-8, 306, 313, 315, 410, 432-4. 438, 488-9 Canevaro, Admiral, 438-9 Canning, George, 84, 93 Canning, Stratford (Lord Stratford de Redcliffe), 93-4, 114-6, 204-7, 209-10, 217-8, 470 Canrobert, 229, 235 Cantacuzene, Constantine, 194 Cantacuzene, George, 69 CapodTstria, Agostino, 104, 113-7, 163, 184 Capo dTstria, George, 184 Capo dTstria, John, Count, 44~5> 66 ; elected President of Greece, 96-7, 99-101, 104, 108-13, 158 Capo dTstria, Viaro, 100, 109, 117, 159, 184 Caragea, John, 66, 126 Carasso, M., 479 Cardigan, Lord, 229, 231 Carnarvon, Lord, 279, 287, 378 Caruso, Count, 189 Castel Lastua, 530 Catargi, Barbe, 319 Catargi, Lascar, 324,^331 Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 7-8, 10, 204, 225-6 Cattaro, occupied by the French, 33 ; by the Russians, 36-7 ; taken by the Montenegrins, and ceded to Austria, 37, 40, 51, 241, 257, 463* 53o Cavour, 234-5, 239, 243 Cephalonia, occupied by the French, 4 ; declares its independence, 40; taken by the British, 41, 58-9, 86, 121-2; insurrection there, 186-9, 278, 280, 286; after the union, 309 Cerigo, occupied by the French, 5; taken by the British, 41, 58, 180, 281, 288 Cernavoda, 393, 463 Cervi, 179-82 Cetinje, 37, 143, 197, 218; taken by the Austrians, 530 Chaidari, 94 Chalkeia, 469 Chalkidike, 29 Chalkis, 221, 438 Charles I, King of Roumania, 323, 325-33» 373-5. 39 2 » 425. 442, 457. 5i5. 524-5 Chatalja, 503-4, 541 Chatham, Lord, 14 Chehib-Effendi, 154 Cheimarra, 503, 510, 518-9, 526, 537 Chermside, Sir Herbert, 440 Cherso, 544 Chios, 12, 28; massacre of, 79-80, 89, 98, 104, 527 Chloumoutsi, 102 Chorlu, 130 Christich, Nicholas, 417 Christich, Philip, 332 Church, Sir Richard, 95, 97-8, 101, 104, 108, 158, 351 Circassians, 342, 384, 395, 443 Clarendon, Lord, 209, 235, 241, 244, 308-9, 316, 326, 332, 349, 470 Clement, Metropolitan, 422, 450 Clementi, The, 495 Cobden, 332 Index 579 Cochrane, Lord, 95-7 Codrington, Admiral, 97-8, 102 Constantine, King of the Hellenes, 436, 491-2, 504, 506, 513-4, 516, 525, 527-8, 531, 533-6, 543 Constantinople, 38-9, 85, 204; con- ference of (1881), 408-9; confer- ence of (1885), 416; massacres at, 429-30; treaty of (1897), 437; counter-revolution at, 480-1, 505 ; treaty of (1913), 5^7* 54* Constantinovich, Anka, 334 Constantinovich, Catherine, 334 Constantinovich, Mile Natalie (Prin- cess Mirko of Montenegro), 458 Con stanza, 533 Corfu, occupied by the French, 4, 19, 24, 40; surrendered to the British, 41, 58-60, 63, 65, 113, 117, 122-3, 180, 184-5, 188, 258, 278, 280-1 ; ceded to Greece, 284-92, 308, 494, 509; confer- ence of (1914), 519-20; Serbs at, 529, 531 ; Pact of, 536 Corinth, 78, 82, 86, 161 Cornu, Mme Hortense, 323 Coron, 102 Corti, Count, 388, 404-5 Couza, Prince of Roumania, 247-8, Craiova, 319 Crete, becomes Turkish, 1, 12, 15, 17, 2r, 39; during War of In- dependence, 73-4, 82-3, 84, 89, 93' 99' io 3~4> 107-8; Egyptian, ti6, 150; insurrection of (1841), 166-8, 174-5, 204, 285 ; insur- rection of (1866-9), 306-18, 326, 332, 341, 358 ; during eastern crisis (1878), 380-2, 384, 394, 397, 408, 410-1, 416; later risings, 431-5' 437-9; autonomous, 439- 41, 486, 492, 494-5 ; united with Greece, 502-3, 509, 516, 534 Crimea, The, 5-6, 8, 10; war in, 299 sqq. Crispi, Francesco, 449 Curzola, 34 Cyclades, 103, 107-8 Cyprus, 75, 239 ; convention, 395-6, 431, 468-9; annexed by Great Britain, 524 ; offered to Greece, 528 ; ceded by Turkey, 542 Cyrenaica, The, 16, 396, 496-7 Dabija, Col., 331 Dalmatia, under the French, 32-7 ; Italian claims to, 526, 544 Damala (Troizen), 96, 100 Damascus, 145-6, 301-3 Dandolo, Anthony (Corfiote poli- tician), 285 Dandolo, V. (civil governor of Dal- matia), 33 Danev, Dr, 511, 514 Dangles, General, 534 Danilo, Prince of Montenegro, 197— 8, 218-9, 240-1, 256-7 Danilo, Crown Prince of Monte- negro, 458, 460, 507, 530, 544 Danilograd, 370, 375 Danube, Commission of the, 236, 239, 393-4, 400 ; Delta of the, 23 6 ' 3^4' 392 . Danubian Principalities, The, 5-6, 8, 10; under the Phanariotes, 16-7, 31, 38, 42 ; insurrections of 1821 there, 66-9; under native rulers, 125-8; under the Russians, 130-2, 147; during revolution of 1848, 190-5, 202 ; occupied by Russia, 208-9, 211, 216, 223, 230, 233 ; at Congress of Paris, 237-8, 240; their union, 243-8. See Moldavia, Wallachia, and Rou- mania Daoud Pasha, 304-5 Daphni, 94 Dardanelles, The, entered by French, 3 ; by British, 38 ; peace of, 41- 2, 130; closing of, 147, 151; entered by British, 210, 215; regulation of, 238, 347 ; the Italians in, 497 ; the Greeks off, 503, 505, 525-6, 53i Darinka, Princess, 241, 257-8 Daveles, 242 Dawkins, 119, 157, 161 De Bosset, Lieut. -Col., 62 Dedeagatch, 515, 528, 540 37—2 580 Index Delegeorges, Epaminondas, 262-3, 267-8, 310, 356 Deligiannes, Peter, 316-8 Deligiannes, Theodore, 318, 380, 388, 394, 410, 416, 419-20, 433-4, 466-7 Dehgrad, 54, 369 Delisi, 352 Delladecima, Count, 185 Delvinon, 518 Demakopoulos, 311 Demir Hissar, 514 Denton, The Rev. W., 253 Derby, Edward Geoffrey Stanley, Earl of, 185, 279, 287 Derby, Edward Henry Stanley, Earl of, 309, 312, 332, 362, 364, 366-7, 377, 380, 387 Dervenaki, 82 Dervent, 362 Detchich, 501 D'Everton, Baron, 186 Diakos, 72 Dibra, 500 Diebich, 128-9, m-> 339 Dimotika, 504, 528, 540 Djakova, 404 Djumaia, 515 Djunis, 369 Dobrudja, The, 214, 384; ceded to Roumania, 392-3, 399-400, 464, 5 2 4> 539-40 Dodekdnesos, The, 469-70, 473, 495, 497, 526 Dojran, 513 Domokos, 90, 220, 380, 407, 437 Dondukov-Korsakov, Prince, 411 Dosios, 264 Douglas, Sir Howard, 183-5 Dousmanes, General, 525 Doxaton, 514-5 Draga, Queen of Servia, 454-6 Dragashani, 68-9, 76 Dragomestre, 5 Dragoumes, Nicholas, 267 Dragoumes, Mr Stephen, 308 n. ; 49 2 -3> 503 Drama, 447-8, 476, 514 Dramali, Pasha, 73, 80-2 Drina, The, 134, 255 Drobniak, 370 Druses, 152-5, 300-5, 495 Duckworth, Admiral, 38 Dufferin, Lord, 303 Duga pass, The, 259, 375, 391 Dulcigno, 261, 376, 383, 391, 405 Durazzo, 504, 511, 518-21, 529 Dusmani, Count* 283 Eastern Roumelia, 306, 389, 396, 414-9,477,479 Edgmiatsin, 128 Edhem Pasha, 436 Edinburgh, Duke of, 264, 270-2, 286, 420 Edward VII, 467, 474 Egri Palanka, 500 Egypt, 14, 16, 31, 145, 148-51, 204, 239, 309, 524 Ekrene, 516 Elassona, 503 Elena, Queen of Italy, 459-60, 507 Eleusis, 99 Eleutherochdria, The, 29 Elizabeth, Queen of England, 12 Elizabeth, Queen of Roumania ("Carmen Sylva"), 329, 400 Elliot, Sir Henry, 265, 272, 286, 367 England, Turkish policy of, 7, 8, 12-5. See Great Britain Enver Bey, 475-6, 505, 515, 538, 540 Epidauros, Constitution of, 77-8, 83, 88 Epirus, 19, 23, 84, 104, in, 174-5; insurrection of (1854), 219-20, 266, 271, 285, 288, 310, 316; insurrection of (1878), 380-1, 384, 395 ; partly ceded to Greece, 407-10, 416; campaign of (1897), 436-7,465; campaignof(i9i2-3), 5°3> 5°5> question of Northern Epirus, 509, 518-21, 525-6, 531, 537. 543 Erfurt, Meeting at, 41 Erivan, 541 Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg- Gotha, 272-3 Ernroth, General, 413, 426 Index 581 Erskine, 348-51 Erzerum, 129-30, 384, 538-9 Essad Pasha, 507-8, 518, 520, 529, 537» 544 Euboea (Negropont), 17, 103, 107, 109, in, 178 Eugene, Prince, 9, 11, 401 Eupatoria, 226, 233 Euripus, 261 Evans, Sir Arthur J., 390 Eynard, 178 Fabvier, General, 94-5, 98 Fano, 4 Ferdinand, ex-King-Consort of Por- tugal, 272 Ferdinand I, King of Roumania, 400, 532, 544 Ferdinand, Tsar of the Bulgarians, 425-6, 446, 449-51* 478, 485* 499> 5I5. 5r8, 528, 539 Ferisovich, 474-5 Ferrero, General, 537 Fetislam, 255 Filov, Major, 415 Finlay, George, 98, 179-81, 312 Fitzroy, Lord Charles, 122 Fiume, 544 Flamburiari, Count, 283 Fokshani, 246, 248 Fonblanque, 249 Fortis, A., 483 Foscolo, Ugo, 123 Fox, C. J. , 14 France, Policy of, towards Greece, 97, 102, 106-7, 164, 166, 180-1, 222-4, 241-2, 261, 263, 271, 274, 292-3, 299, 306, 309, 312-3, 355 . 407-8, 420, 534, 543; to- wards the Jugoslavs, 536; towards Roumania, 323-6, 329; towards Turkey, 2-5, 15, 31, 38-42, 149, 1 5 1-4, 199^., 245-6, 300-3 Franchet d'Esperey, General, 539 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, 521 Fratti, A., 90, 437 Frederick II, King of Prussia, T 4-5 Frederick William II, King of Prussia, 15 Frederick William IV, King of Prussia, 209 Freeman, Professor, 378-9, 392 Fuad Pasha, 302, 313, 345 Gabrovo, 340 Gagauzes, 392 Galatz, 65, 67, 247, 400 Gallipoli, 506 Garashanin, Ilija, 217, 249-50, 254, 333~4> 337 Garashanin, Milutin, 337, 417 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 263, 266, 284 Garibaldi, Ricciotti, 436 Gastouni, 88 Gatzko, 383 Gavrilovich, 335 Gazes, Anthimos, 73 Georgakes, 69 George I, King of the Hellenes, 2 74~5> 2 77> 287-9, 2 9 2 ~5> 3*°> 3i3> 3!6, 3t8, 332, 349-50, 434-5, 441, 486, 491, 493, 504-5, 525 George, Crown Prince of Greece, 535 George of Greece, Prince, 434, 439- 40, 491 George of Servia, ex-Crown Prince, 458, 479, 483 Georgoutsades, 519 Germanos, Metropolitan of Patras, 7i Germany, Turkish policy of, 431, 435> 5 2 4* See Prussia Ghegs, 23, 85 Ghika, Alexander II, 132, 190, 244 Ghika, Gregory IV, 70, 321 Ghika, Gregory V, 194-5, 244 Ghika, John, 328, 470 Giolitti, Sig. G., 497, 509-10 Giorgis, General de, 446-7 Giurgevo, 215-6, 364 Gjevgjeli, 512-3 Gkouras, 91, 94 Gladstone, W. E., Eastern policy of, 246, 248, 279-85, 316, 353, 366, 375, 377, 379» 4°4-5> 407, 419-20, 428, 431 1 Index 582 Gliicksburg, John of, 316 Golescu, 324 Goltz Pasha, Von der, 425, 500 Gordon, Sir Charles, 62 Gordon, General T., 94, 163 Gortchakoff, Prince Alexander, ^33-4> 312, 314, 347. 372, 374, 388 Gortchakoff, Prince Michael, 214-5 Goschen, 409 Goudi, 490 Gounares, M. Demetrios, 526, 543 Gourko, General, 374, 376 Grabousa, 99 Gradishka, 140 Grahovo, 144, 256-8, 260, 406 Grammata, 510 Granville, Lord, 347, 353, 409 Gravia, 72 Gravosa, 32 Great Britain, Policy of, towards Armenians, 395, 428-31 ; towards Bulgaria, 389, 416-7, 426, 529; towards Greece, 93, 97, 106-8, 164-6, 171, 178-83, 222-4, 241-2, 261, 263, 265-6, 269, 271-2, 274- 5, 292, 308-9, 312-3, 316, 380, 385, 388, 406-10, 419-20, 435, 534 ; in Macedonia, 443, 447-8 ; towards Montenegro, 37, 259-60, 404-5; towards Roumania, 326-7, 33°> 3 8 5> 388, 401; towards Servia, 56, 136, 139, 217, 249-51, 253» 255, 332-3, 457-8, 482; towards Turkey, 31, 36, 38, 43, 130, 148-51, 203 sqq.y 299, 382, 486, 524 Great Elector, The, 14 Greeks, Relations of, with Turkey, 24-30, 165-6, 174, 219-23, 315-8, 394, 406-10, 435-7, 443-4, 487- 90, 502-5 Gregory V, Oecumenical Patriarch, 75 Gregory, Mr, 332 Greiner, Herr von, 156, 161 Grekov, D. P., 425 Grevena, 495, 503 Grey, Earl, 186 Grey, Sir Edward, 448, 476, 479, 504, 508-10, 517, 521, 529 Gribovo, 437 Grivas, Demetrios, 273-4 Grfvas, Theodore, 99, 118, 163, 178, 220, 267, 270 Gros, Baron, 180-1 Gruda, The, 404, 406, 495 Grujev, Major, 421 Grypares, M., 432 Gueshov, M., 499-500, 511 Guildford, Lord, 101, 123 Guizot, 151 Gul-khaneh, Hatti-sherif of, 141, 151,298,306 Gumuljina, 540 Gusinje, 383, 391, 403-4, 503 Gytheion, 268 Hagia, 295 Hagia Lavra, 71 Hahn, General, 265, 268 Hajji Ali the Haseki, 30, 72, 535 n. Hajji Loja, 401 Hajji Michales, 99 Hajji Michales Jannares, 313-4, 318, 38 r Hajji Petros, Ch. , 220 Halepa, Pact of, 410-11, 432-3 Halmyros, 407 Hamilton, Capt., 82, 97 Hangerli, 20 Haralambie, Col., 324 Harebone, William, 13 Harris, Clement, 98, 437 Hastings, Capt., 97-8 Haydar, Emir, 300 Haymerle, Baron, 388 Hecquard, H., 241 Hedjaz, Kingdom of the, 538, 541 Heideck, General von, 95, 156-7, 161 Herbert, Mr, 348, 352 Herzegovina, The, to, 13, 141-4, 239-41, 256; rising of (r86i), 258-60, 331; rising of (1875), 358-63, 368, 370, 372, 377, 384, 386; occupied by Austria, 390-2, 396-7, 402, 442 ; annexed, 477-8, 482-5 Hierapetra, 438 Hilmi Pasha, 445-6, 480 Index 583 Hitov, Panajot, 342, 344 Hobart Pasha, 317 Hodges, Col., 136 Homalos, 315 Hoti, The, 406, 495 Hunkiar Iskelesi, Treaty of, 136, M7 Hussein- Aga, 139-40 Hussein Avni Pasha, 315 Hussein Pasha, 256 Hydra, 28, 73, 86, 88, 93, 101, 109-10, 113, 119, 165, 294 Hypate, 178 Hypselantes, Alexander, 66-9, 125, 127 Hypselantes, Constantine, 52 Hypselantes, Demetrios, 76-7, 82-3 Hypselantes, Nicholas, 68 Ibrahim Pasha, 88-93,97,99, 102-3, H5-5I Iddesleigh, Lord, 425 Ignatyeff, Count, 345, 369, 451 Ikaria, 469, 503 Imbros, 518, 541 Iniada, 517 Inkermann, 232-3, 235 International Commission of Con- trol, 437-8 Ionian Islands, ceded to France, 4; occupied by Russians and Turks, 5, 15, 24; French again, 39-41 ; British, 41, 44-5, 58-63, 82, 84, 108, 121-4, 180, 183-90, 220, 263, 266, 271-2, 274-5; united with Greece, 277-93; since the union, 308-9 Ipek, 11, 25, 442, 446, 503 Iron Gates, The, 394, 400, 463, 465 Isaccea, 236 Ishtip, 498 Islaz, 192 Ismail Kemal Bey, 480, 504, 518 Ismail Pasha, 307, 309-10 Ismail Pasho Bey, 64-5 Istria, 526 Isvolski, M., 482 Italy, Eastern policy of, 234-5, 239, 2 45> 2 59> 3^6; in Albania, 502, 537> 544; in Bosnia, 390, 478 ; in Crete, 487 ; towards Greece, 355, 509» 53 r > 543 5 towards the Jugoslavs, 536 ; towards Monte- negro, 459-60, 463 ; in Samos, 473 ; in Tripoli, 396, 496-7 Izzet Pasha, 477 Jablyak, 144, 198, 383, 391 Jadar, The, 523 Jaffa, 145 Jajce, 401 Jamboli, 129 James I of England, 13 Janissaries, 22, 46-9, 85, 102, 127, 139' r 45 Jassy, 5; peace of, 8, 27, 65, 67, 192, 216, 244, 247, 324-5, 533 Jedda, 299 Jenitsa, 503 Jerusalem, 6, 146, 200-1, 320, 479; liberation of, 538 Jews, 20, 27, 75, 127, 190-1, 195, 322, 327, 393, 396, 442, 444, 464, 474> 479' 54 2 Jitcha, 458 Jivkov, G., 423 Joannina, 17, 19, 25, 65, 78-9, 88, 407-9, 504-5, 537 Jonnart, M., 535 Joseph II, Emperor, 10, 11 Jovanovich, Baron, 402 Jugoslavia, Jugoslavs, Union of the, 536, 540, 544 "Junimists," 401, 464 Jupa, 256 Jutta of Mecklenburg - Strelitz, Duchess (Crown Princess of Montenegro), 460 Kadich, 257 Kaffa, 5 Ka'fres, 183 Kalabaka, 220 Kalafat, 211, 374 Kalamas, The, 394, 407-9, 537 Kalamata, 72, 76, 81,87, Iri » I2 °> 178, 267-9 Kalamos, 84 Kalavryta, 71-2, 88 1 584 Index Kallay, Baron von, 402 Kallerges, Demetrios, 169-72, 176, 222-3, 242, 263, 306 Kalnoky, 401 Kalogeropoulos, M. N., 533 Kaltchev, Constantine, 425 Kalteziai, 76 Kalymnos, 469 Kamateron, 95 Kanares, Aristeides, 276 Kanares, Constantine, 80, no, t 79, 264, 267-8, 273-4, 276, 292, 310, ^ 379 Kanlijeh, Treaty of, 224 Karababa, 105 Kara George, 48-57, 133, 135, 138 Karageorgevich, See Alexander, George, Persida, Peter Kara'i'skakes, George, 91-5 Karalik-Dervend, 409-10 Karam, 304-5, 317 Karamanli, Ahmed, 16 Karapanos, M. A., 519, 533 Karatassos, 177, 221, 262 Karatheodori, Alexander, 388, 4^3, 47i Karavelov, Ljuben, 346 Karavelov, Peter, 422-3 Karditza, 407 Karlovitz, 1, 9, 13, 196 Karpathos, 469, 489 Karpenesi, 85 Kars, 128, 235-6, 239, 375, 395 Karyes, 29 Karytaina, 81, 160 Kassandra, 73 Kassos, 74, 88-9, 469 Kastellorrizon (Megiste), 469, 518, 542 Kastrati, The, 406, 495 Kastri (Delphi), 85 Kastri (Hermione), 96 Katchanik, 443, 475, 484, 495 Katerina, 503 Kaulbars, General Alexander, 413 Kaulbars, Major-General Nicholas, 424-5 Kavalla, 88, 448, 470, 510-1, 514-7, 525, 532 Kelides, P., 309 Keos, 420 Kertch, 8, 234 Khevenhiiller, Count, 418 Kiamil Pasha, 477, 479, 505 Kilia, 400 Kilkich, 512-3 Kinburn, 8, 236 Kirdjali, 419 Kirk-kilisse (Lozengrad), 500, 515, 517 Kisseleff, Count Paul, 131 Klek, 13 Knezevich, 454 Knjajevatz, 515 Kobel, Herr von, 161 Kogalniceanu, Michael, 19 1-2, 320, 388 _ Kokoti, 259 Kolettes, John, 88, 96, 113-20, 161- 2, 166, 175-8^ Kolokotrones, Gennaios, 118, 266 Kolokotrones, Panos, 86, 88 Kolokotrones, Theodore, 81, 83, 86, 88, 90-1, 95-6, 113-4, 118, 120, 159-60, 166, 169, 263 Kolubara, The, 523, 530 Konemenos, 470 Konieh, 146 Kopasses, 472-3 Koraes, 25, 166 Korakas, 3 1 1 Koritsa, 518-9, 521 ; republic of, 537 Korniloff, Admiral, 229-30 Koronaios, Panos, 275-6, 3TO-r, Korphiotakes, 182 Kos, 470, 497 Kossovo, 140, 445, 447, 496 Kotchana, 498 Kotel, 338-40 Koumoundouros, Alexander, r68, 268, 310, 312, 316-7, 332, 354, 35 7> 379" 8 °' 408, 410 Kountouriotes, Admiral Paul, 514, 543 Kountouriotes, George, 86, 88, 90, 96, 100, 107, 114, 178-9 Koures, S., 283 Koutzo- Wallachs, 442-4, 447-8, 465-6 Index Kozane, 503 Kozaratz, 362 Kragujevatz, 135, 137 Kranldi, 86 Kratovo, 500 Kresna Pass, 514 Kriezes, Admiral, 182, 221 Kriezotes, 94, 104, 120-r, 178 Krivoshije, 358, 361 Krstjovich, Gavril, 414-5, 425 Krushevo, 446, 500 Kulevtcha, 129 Kumanovo, 500, 503 Kurds, 384, 395, 427-9, 495, 541 Kurshid Pasha, 65, 78 Kutchi, The, 142, 218, 241 Kutchuk-Kai'nardji, Treaty of, 3, 8, 10, 14, 24, 205, 209-10 Kut-el-Amarah, 538 Kyparissfa, 265 Kyriakos, 275 Kyriakod, D., 276 Kythnos, 265, 273 Lachanas, 512-3 Lagosta, 544 La Marmora, 234 Lamia, 116, 220, 271, 353, 437 Lampros, Prof. Sp. P., 534 Lapathiotes, Col., 490 Larissa, 64, 436-7, 534 Lauriston, 36 Lausanne, Treaty of, 497-8, 510 Lavrion, 354-6 Lazar, George, 126 Lazes, 385 Leake, Col. W. M., 107 Lebanon, The, 148, 150, 152-5, 300-6^ Lecca, General, 400 Leiningen, Count, 198-9 Lemnos, 448, 540 Lenormant, F., 284 Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (Leopold I, King of the Belgians), 107-8 Leotsakos, 273, 275 Lepanto, 64, 103, 178 Lerna, 90, 114, 170 Leros, 469 Lesbos, 527, 534. See Mitylene Lesina, 34 Leuchtenberg, Duke of, 271-2 Levadeia, 29, 65, 72 Levski, Vasil, 346 Lewis I, King of Bavaria, 95, 115— 6, 157, 160-5, 222 Lewis, Prince of Bavaria, 262, 272 Liapes, 433 "Liberal Union," The, 480 Limeni, 268 Lissa, 34-5 Litochoron, 381 Livadas, 186 Ljubibratich, 363 Ljuma, 495 Lloyd, Mr, 348, 352 Lloyd George, Mr D., 542-3 Lobanov, Prince, 431 Logothetes, Lykourgos, 79, 99 Lombardos, Constantine, 190, 278- 9, 284, 286 London, Conference of, 347 ; treaty of (1827), 97; treaty of (1883), 400; treaty of (1913), 508-9; "secret" treaty of (1915), 526, 544 Long worth, 254 Lontos, Andrew, 88, 169 Loutraki, 1 1 5 Lovtchen, Mt, 196, 530 Lowe, Sir Hudson, 58 Lucan, Lord, 231 Luitpold, Prince of Bavaria, 262, 266 Liile Burgas, Battle of, 503 Lunjevitza, Nikodem, 454 Lushnia, 543 Lussin, 544 Lyons, Sir Edmund, 163, 165, 171, 175, 180, 228-9 Lytton, Lord, 279, 290 Macedonia, 9, 43, 174-5; rising in, 221, 346; in Berlin treaty, 394, 396-7 ; rival races in, 436, 441-9, 451, 465; the Turkish revolution in, 475-6, 489, 495; conquered by the League, 503, 5r 1-2, 515, 517, 526, 532 Mackenzie, S., 185 37—5 Index 586 Mademochoria, 29 Maglaj, 401 Mahmud II, 53, 56, 74~5> 88, 127, i3°> i39» I 45-9> 166,252,343,469 Mahmud Shevket, 481 Maina, Mainates, 4, 29, 81, 109, 1 11, 1 14, 120, 160, 315 Maison, General, 102 Maitland, Sir Thomas, 58-63, 84, 92, 123, 183 Majorescu, T., 516 Makres, 92 Makri, 515 Makrinitza, 381 Makrygiannes, 170-1 Makrynoros, 107, 116 Makryplagi, 90 Malatra, Cape, 508 Malamas, 163 Malaxa, 435 Malcolm, Sir P., 168 Maltsori, The, 404, 495, 520 Mamartchov, 338 Maneses, 311 Mangalia, 392 Maniaki, 90 Marathon, Brigandage near, 348-52 Margarites, Apostolos, 442 Marghiloman, M. A., 532 Marie, Queen of Roumania, 401, 53.2 Marie Louise, Princess of Bulgaria, 450, 478 Marinkovich, 218, 332 Maritza, The, 528 Marmont,. 33-6 Marmora, Islands of the, 540 Maronites, 152-4, 300-5 Martinovich, General, 507 Mashin, Col., 455 Matsoukas, 514 Maurer, 156-8, 160-1 Mavrogenes, Alexander, 472 Mavrokordatos, Alexander, 27, 76- 7, 82-3, 89-90, 93, 109, 158, 166, 168-9, I 75~6, 223, 242 Mavrokordatos, Demetrios, 313 Mavromichales, Constantine, 11 1-2 Mavromichales, Elias, 78 Mavromichales, George, 96, 1 r 1-2 Mavromichales, John, 1 1 1 Mavromichales, Kyriakoules (I), 82 Mavromichales, Kyriakoules (II), ex-Premier, 112, 467, 490 Mavromichales, Petrobey, 65, 72, 78, 82-3, in Mecca, 538 Medina, 538 Medun, 370 Megara, 99 Megas, 242 Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, 88, 102, 116, 145-51, 166-8 Mehemet Ali, vdli of Crete, 318, 374-5. 388, 404 Melas, Paul, 447 Melidones, A., 83 Melikoff, Loris, 375 Melnik, 514 Melouna pass, The, 436 Mentschikoff, Prince, 202, 205-7, 217, 227-30 Merendites, 178 Mesolonghi, 72, 77; first siege of, 82; Byron at, 85, 87; second siege of, 91-3, 98; retaken, 103 ; subsequent history of, 104, 107, 176, 262, 265, 267, 276 Mesopotamia, 538, 541 Messenia, 76, 102, 117, 120-1, 161 Mesta (Nestos), The, 516 Metaxas, Andrew, 119, 169, 171, 242 Metaxas, Col., 525-6 Meteora, 220 Metzovon, 220, 408, 503 Meyer, 87, 93 Miaoules, Andrew, 80, 90, 92, 109-10 Miaoules, Athanasios, 262, 264, 266 Michael, Prince, son of Prince Mirko of Montenegro, 545 Michelidakes, M., 486 Midhat Pasha, 342-4, 368 ; his Parliament, 371-2, 428 Midia, 130, 508-9 Mijatovich, M. Ch., 403 Milena, Queen of Montenegro, 258, 545 "Military League," The, 490-2 Index 587 Milovanovich, M. G., 479, 499 Mingrelia, Prince of, 425 Mirdites, 23, 85, 219, 404, 406, 496, 521 Mirko, father of King Nicholas of Montenegro, 256-7, 259-60 Mirko, Prince, son of King Nicholas of Montenegro, 458, 460, 530 Mishar, 52 Mitrovitza, 446, 459, 474 Mitylene, 448 Modon, 89-90, 102, 180 Mohammed V, 481-2, 496, 542 Mohammed VI, 542 Moldavia, occupied by Russia, 7; under Phanariotes, 15-6, 25-7, 31-2; re-occupied by Russia, 37, 39, 41-3; Hypselantes in, 66-9, 77; native rulers in, 127, 130, 132 ; revolution of 1848 in, 190-2, 194-5; evacuated by Russia, 217, 233; in treaty of Paris, 236-7; union with Wallachia, 243-8, 339, 393. See Danubian Principalities, and Roumania Molitor, 33 Mollah Zekko, 445 Mompherratos, Joseph, 188 Monastir, 445~7> 475> 5°o, 503, 511, 533 Monemvasfa, 76 Montenegro, 23, 33 ; under Peter I, 37, 51, 142; under Peter II, 143-4, 196; under Danilo, 197— 9, 218-9, 240-1, 256-7; under Nicholas I, 257-61, 266, 307, 359> 361, 363-4, 368, 370, 37 2 -3. 375-7 at San Stefano, 383, 385 ; at Berlin, 390-2, 396, 403-6, 440, 459~ 6 3> 479' 482-4, 495 ; war of (1912), 499, 501, 503-4, 507 ; war of (1913), 513; in European war, 522-3, 529-30; and Jugoslavia, 536-7, 544-5 Moraitines, 273 Morava, The, 443 Mostar, 141 Moudros, 540 Mounychia, 94-5 Mourouzes, 74 Mousouros, Constantine, 177 Mousouros, Stephen, 471 Moussa Bey, 428 Moustier, Marquis de, 312 Muffling, Baron von, 129 Miirzsteg programme, The, 446-7 Muktar Pasha, 64, 88 Muktija Effendi, 402 Muncaster, Lord, 348, 353 Murad V, 364, 368 Muratovitza, 362 Murnies, 168, 310 Mustapha IV, 53 Mustapha, "the Cretan," 168, 306, 3io-i ? 313 Mustapha Kemal, 542 Mustapha Pasha (Thracian town), 502 Mustoxidi, Andrew, 117, 184 Mutkurov, Major, 415, 422-3 Muzechka, 406 Naby Bey, 489 Napier, Sir Charles, 150-1, 2x4 Napier, Col. Sir Charles James, 122 Napoleon I, Eastern policy of, 4-5, 9, 31-45, 62, 291 Napoleon III, Eastern policy of, 200, 222, 235, 241, 243-5, 258, 263, 302, 308, 323, 325-6, 329 Nasmyth, Lieut., 215, 225 Natalie, ex-Queen of Servia, 452-3 "National Society," The, 435-6 Nauplia, 82 ; seat of government, 90; Assembly at, 93, 99, 10 1 ; again the capital, 1 09-11, 117- 21, 156-7, 160-1, 168; revolt of, 263-5* 535 «• Navarino, 76, 89-90; battle of, 97-8, 102, 128, 211 Nazim Pasha, killed, 505 Negres, Theodore, 77 Nelson, 291 Nemours, Due de, 93, 96 Nenadovich, Alexa, 48-9 Nenadovich, Jacob, 49 Nenadovich, Matthew, 49, 51 Neroulos, Rizos, 66-7 Nesselrode, 160 Neuilly, Treaty of, 540- r Index 5 88 Nevesinje, 359-60 Nevrokop, 514 Newcastle, Duke of, 225, 285 New Psara, 89, 294 Newspapers, Greek, 87, 109, 113, r 59» 165, 177, 186, 224, 262, 264 Nezib, 148, 153 Niazi, Major, 475 Nicholas I, Tsar of Russia, 94, 127, 160, 197, 202-4, 207-9, 21 1-4, 216-9, 233 Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia, 439, 451 Nicholas I, King of Montenegro, 256-60, 333, 358, 360, 363-4, 37L 376, 39 2 > 403-5, 417, 458- 62, 496, 499, 507, 513, 530, 536, 544-5 Nicholas, Prince of Greece, 472 Nightingale, Florence, 233 Nigra, Count, 329 Nigrita, 5:2-4 Niketas, 82, no Nikolajev, Major, 415 Nikshich, 241, 258-9, 370, 376, 383, 391 Nish, 9, 51, 345, 376, 383, 391, 458, 523 Nisyros, 469 Njegush, 258 Nodaros, 188 Noel, Admiral, 438 Noel, Mr Frank, 350, 352-3 Notaras, 119 Novasella, 260 Nova Zagora, 413 Novibazar, Sanjak of, 255, 369, 383, 391, 402, 443, 459, 483, 498-9, 502 Nugent, Lord, 183 Obradovich, 50 Obrenovich, Alexander. See Alex- ander Obrenovich, Jephrem, 136-7 Obrenovich, John, 137-8 Obrenovich, Julia, Princess of Servia, 332, 335 Obrenovich, Marie, Princess [nie Catargi), 323, 336 Obrenovich I, Milosh, Prince of Servia, 48, 55-7, 125, 132-8, 165, 250-3 Obrenovich II, Milan, Prince of Servia, 137 Obrenovich III, Michael, Prince of Servia, 137-8, 251, 253-5, 332-5, 345. 455 Obrenovich IV, Milan, Prince (later King) of Servia, 323, 335~7, 3 6 3~4> 376, 417-8, 452-4, 457 Obrenovich, Milan, half-brother of Milosh, 54-5 Obrenovich, Velimir, 335 Ochrida, 25, 382, 443, 500, 511 Odysseus, 64, 72, 81, 91 Ogle, 381 Oikonomos, Hydriote captain, 73 Oikonomos, theologian, 182 Oldenburg, Prince Peter of, 262 Oiga, Princess of Montenegro, 257 Olga, Queen of the Hellenes, 316, 543 Oltenitza, 211 Olympus, Mt, 381, 408 Omar Pasha, 141-2, 153, 194, 198, 211, 219, 258-60, 313 Omladina, The, 333, 344 Orashatz, 49 Oropos, 95, 350-1, 535 Oroshi, 406 Orphano, Gulf of, 515 Orsova, to, 50 Osman Pasha, 374-5 Ostrog, 260 Oswald, Brigadier, 41 Otho, King of Greece, 115, 118-9; arrival of, 121, 156, 160; attains his majority, 162-6, 168-71, 175— 7, 180, 219, 221-4; fall of, 261- 71, 281, 286, 293, 296 Ovtchepolje, 513 Pacifico, Don, 179-81, 189 Padovan, S., 283, 308 Pahlen, Count, 128 Palestine, 541-2 Palmerston, Lord, Eastern policy of, 1 1 5-6, 136, 148, 161, 163-4, 168, 179-81, 194, 210-1, 232-3, 246, 259, 285, 287-8 Index 589 Panas, M., 500 Panghaion, 510 " Panhellenion," The, 100, 104 Panitza, Major, 449 Panmure, Lord, 232 Papadiamantopoulos, killed at Me- solonghi, 93 Papadiamantopoulos, active in re- volution of 1862, 276^ Papalexopoulou, Mme Kalliope, 264-5 t Papaphlessas (Dikatos), 90 Papapouli, 534 Papoulakos, 183 Paraschos, 312 Parasouliotes, 24 Parga, 4, 15, 62-4, 295, 505, 537 Paris, Conference of (1866), 325-6; Congress of (181 5), 44; Congress and treaty of (1856), 235-41, 243-6, 249-50, 255, 302, 317, 347, 385, 396; convention of (1858), 246, 327 Parker, Capt, 186 Parker, Sir William, 180 Pashich, M. Nicholas, 459, 500, 536 Paskievich, 128-9, 2l 5 Passarovitz, Peace of, 10, 13 ; cap- ture of, 56 ; peace of, 256 Pastrovich, The, 144 Pasvanoglu, 19, 43, 46-7 Pataritza, 516 Patmos, 469, 497 Patras, 102, 118, 165, 172, 178-9, 267, 526, 535 11. Patriarch, The Armenian, 428, 430 Patriarchate, CEcumenical, 20, 25, 75, 84, 123, 134, 159, 166, 182, 184, 224-5, 295-6, 309, 321, 341, 345-6, 442-3, 447, 493, 495, 543 Paul, Prince, of Greece, 543 Pavlovich, Peko, 363 Paxo, 4, 41, 58, 186, 278, 281, 288 Paysij, 338 Peel, Sir Robert, 168 Pelikas, Spyridon, 221-2 Pelion, 29, 381, 409 Pelissier, 235 Peloponnese, The, 17, 28; "-ian Senate," 76-7 Peneios, The, 394, 406, 409 Pennefather, Sir J., 232 Pentelikon, 172 Pente Pegadia, Battles of, 98, 220, 436, 503 Perachora, 114, 116 Peribolia, 306-7 Perrotes, 178 Persida, Princess, 334 Peta, 82, 91, 220 Petalfdi, 102 Peter I, Vladika of Montenegro, 37, H2-3 Peter II, Vladika of Montenegro, 143-4, 196-7 Peter, King of Servia, 252, 334, 363, 417, 453-4. 456-9. 5'3 Peter, Prince, son of King Nicholas of Montenegro, 501, 530 Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, 6-7 Petkov, 452 Petra, 105-6 Petritsopoulos, 185 Petronievich, 137, 139, 217 Petropoulakes, 315, 317 Petrov, General, 446, 450 Petrovich, Bojo, 370 Petrovich, George, 218 Petrovich, Pero Tomaso, 197, 218. See Danilo, Darinka, Mirko. Nicholas, Olga, Peter Phaleron, 95, 169 Phanar, Phanariotes, The, 16, 25-7, 74, 76-7, 101 Phanari, 82 Pharmakes, Macedonian patriot, 69 Pharmakes, leader of revolt at Lepanto, 178 Pharmakides, 182 Pharsala (Pharsalos), 407, 437 PhilikZ Hetairia, The, 65, 159 Philippi, 514 Philippopolis, 415-7, 419, 422, 447 Philippovich, Baron von, 401 " Phil-Orthodox Society," The, 183-4 Photiades, 317, 411 Phovirka Pass, The, 437 Piada, 77 3 Index 590 Pikermi, 348 Piperi, The, 142, 144, 198, 218 Piraeus, The, 95, 162, 172, 180, 222-4, H 1 , 2^1, 267, 312, 317, 467 Pirot, 345, 376, 391, 417-8 Pisoski, 247 Pitt, William, 14 Pius IX, Pope, 260, 341 Piva, 370, 391 Place, Victor, 245 Plapoutas, 1 60- 1 Plava, 383, 391, 403-4, 503 Plevlje, 391, 402-3 Plevna, 343, 374-6, 400, 413, 451, 513 Ploeshti, 319, 329 Podgoritza, 144, 359, 383, 391, 404, 462-3, 530 Podolia, ceded to Turkey, 1, 6 Poljitza, Republic of, 35 Poma/es, The, 365; " Pomak Re- public," The, 414-5, 419, 447 Popov, 422 Popovo, 362 Poros, 99-100, 103, 109-10, 114, 165 Porto Lagos, 515, 540 Poti, 128, 130 Potiorek, General, 523 Premete, 518 Prespa, 382, 475 Pressburg, Treaty of, 32 Preveza, 4, 64, 116, 407, 409, 436, 497, 503, 537 Priboj, 391 Priepolje, 383, 391 Princip, 521 Prishtina, 503 Prizren, 503 Pronoia, 1 1 7—9, 121, 265 Protich, General, 453 Prussia, Eastern policy of, 8, 14-5, 129-30, 149, 209, 21 1-4, 216, 234, 245. See Germany Pruth, Treaty of the, 6-7 ; in Berlin treaty, 393 Psara, 28, 73, 88 Punta, 1 1 6, 409 Putnik, Marshal, 524, 528 Pyrgos, 179 Radonich, Vuko, 143 Radoslavov, M., 423, 514 Radovanovich, 334 Radovitzi, 220 Radulescu, John Eliade, 126, 193 Ragkaves, A. R., 388 Raglan, Lord, 215, 225-9, 2 3 T » 2 35 Ragusa, Republic of, 12, 34-6, 256 Rakovski, 342, 346 Rapallo, treaty of, 544 Reichstadt, Meeting of, 377, 386, 39? Reshid Pasha (Kioutages), 91, 93-4 Reshid Pasha, Grand Vizier, 140, 146, 207 Resnja, 475 Resvaja, The, 517 Rethymne, 311, 4TI, 438, 440 Reuss, Princess Eleanora of, Queen of Bulgaria, 478 Reval, Meeting at, 474 Reveni, 436-7 Rhalles, Demetrios G., 437, 466-7, 488-90, 494, 543 Rhalles, Luke, 80 Rhegas, 25-6, 85, 125, 498 Rhfon, 102 Rhodes, 75, 86, 470, 497, 510, 542 Rhodope, Mt, 414, 419 Ricord, Admiral, 110-11, 120 Ristich, John, 255, 332, 334-5, 363-4 Rizov, D. , 499-500 Rizvanbegovich, 141 Rjeka, 260 Robilant, Count di, 447 Rodich, Baron, 363 Rodosto, 508 Roebuck, John Arthur, 232 Roganj, 501 Rose, Col. (Lord Strathnairn), 202 Rosebery, Lord, 419 Rosetti, Constantine, 320, 323, 327, 33i, 39 2 Rouen, Baron, 222 Roumania, under Couza and Prince Charles, 319-31, 333; in war of 1877-3, 373-5, 377 5 ^ treaty Index 59i of San Stefano, 383-5 ; in Berlin treaty, 387-8, 392-4, 396, 399- 400; in Macedonian question, 442-3, 445, 447; her recent his- tory, 463-6, 494 ; in second Balkan war, 513; in European war, 524, 532, 539-40, 544. See Danubian Principalities, Moldavia, and Wal- lachia Roupel, 531 Rouphos, V., 267, 276 Roux, M., 355 Rudhart, Von, 164-5 Rudine, 256 Russell, Earl, Eastern policy of, 98, 184, 211, 232, 234, 253, 255, 266, 269, 271-2, 274, 285-6, 302 Russell, Sir W. H., 232 Russia, Policy of, towards the Ar- menians, 431; towards Bulgaria, 386, 388-9, 411-4, 416, 420-6, 449-51, 485 ; towards Greece, 7- 8, 24, 84, 97, 106, i6o-i, 164, 166, 169, 177, 180-2, 219, 241-2, 261, 263, 271, 274, 31 2, 316, 318, 386, 439; towards Montenegro, 37, 142, 197, 199, 240; towards the Roumanians, i3r-2, 19 1-5, 216, 245, 392-3, 399; towards Servia, 51-3, 56, 136, 139, 207, 386, 457; towards Turkey, 5-10, i5> 3*, 38, 127-31, i4 6 -7, 149, 199 jy^., 302 Russo- Turkish War (1806-12), 37, 42-3'338 Russo-Turkish War (1828-9), 101- 2, 128-31, 338-9 Russo-Turkish War (1853-6), 210 sqq. Russo-Turkish War (1877-8), 373-9 Rustchuk, 42, 129, 326, 342-3, 4^3, 452, 5i6 Rustera Pasha, 305 Said Idris, 495 Said Pasha, 475, 477 St Arnaud, 215, 225-9 St Clair, 414 St Gothard, Battle of, 2 St Hilaire, Barthelemy, 408 St Jean de Maurienne, Conference of, 543 Salamis, 99, 202, 206, 268; "battle °f>'' 49 x > 534 Salaora, 220 Salisbury, Lord, Eastern policy of, 87, 239, 246, 248, 339, 370, 372, 387-8, 390, 394, 397, 407, 416, 419, 426, 443, 449, 517, 541 Salona (Amphissa), 72, 77, 103, 118 Salonika, 75, 367, 442-8, 474, 479- 81; taken by the Greeks, 504-5, 510; Allies at, 528, 531-4, 537 Sami Pasha, 307 Samos, proclaims union with Greece, 73, 99; autonomous, 103, 116, 166, 177, 306, 328, 340, 414, 433, 440 ; continuous history of, 470-3, 497-8 ; proclaims union again, 503, 505 Samsun, 476 Sandanski, 448, 476 Sandwith, Consul, 394 San Giovanni di Medua, 406, 459, 497 San Remo, Conference of, 541 San Stefano, 378, 481; treaty of, 382-6, 397, 442, 529 Santa Mavra, occupied by the French, 4; by the British, 41, 58, 81, 95, 124, 186, 189, 280, 288-9 Santa Rosa, Count, 89-90 Santi Quaranta, 436, 518 Sapienza, 179-82 Sarafov, Boris, 445, 448 Sarajevo, 9, 22, 139-40, 142; taken by Austria, 401-2, 484; murders, 521, 5 2 3 Sarantaporon, 503 Sarrail, General, 53 1, 537, 539 Saseno, 518, 526, 529, 544 Sasun, 429 Scarlett, General, 230 Scarlett, The Hon. Peter Campbell, • 266 Schenk, Baron, 527, 534 Schmaltz, General, 161 Schouvaloff, Count, 387 Scutari (in Albania), 17, 85, 129, 140, 143, 260; attacked by Monte- 592 Index negrins (in 1878), 377, 463, 484, 495; besieged by Montenegrins (in 1912-3), 504; surrenders to Montenegrins, 507-8; the Powers at, 518; re-entered by Monte- negrins, 529-30 Scutari (opposite Constantinople), •233, 284 Seaton, Lord, 185-7, 2 7$ Sebastiani, 31, 37—8 Sebastopol, 212, 225-30, 234-5, 238 Seku, Monastery of, 69 Selasina, 179 Selim III, 18, 49, 53, 149 Selino Kastelli, 312 Semendria, 255 Semlin, 50 Serbs. See Servia. Serpents, Isle of, 384, 392 Serpieri, Sig., 354-5 Serres, 447, 476, 514 Server Pasha, 360 Servia, Kingdom of, Servians, under the Turks, 10-1, 22, 39; risings of, 46-57; history of (1820-48), 132-9, 195-6, 204 ; during Cri- mean war, 217-8; in treaty of Paris, 236, 238; during the Obre- novich restoration, 248-55; rela- tions with Greece, 266, 311, 316; history of (1862-7 5), 332-7 ; during crisis of 1875-8, 363-4, 368-70, 372, 376-7 ; in treaty of San Stefano, 383, 385 ; in Berlin treaty, 390-1, 403; at war with Bulgaria, 416-8, 424 ; in Mace- donia, 442-3, 445, 448; end of the Obrenovich dynasty, 452-9; in Bosnian question, 478-9, 482-4 ; in the Balkan war (19 12), 499- 504, 506 ; in second Balkan war, 5 1 1-7 ; in European war, 521-31, 533' 536. See Jugoslavia Servia, Town of, 503 Sevres, Treaty of, 541-3 Seymour, Sir Hamilton, 203-4 Shabatz, 255, 454, 523 Shakir Pasha, 429 Shar Mts, 500 Sh. Jak, 520 Shejnovo, 376 Shemshi Pasha, 475 Shihab, Family of, T52 Shipka pass, The, 342, 374, 376, 45i Shumla, 128-9, 343> 5*6 Shuplikatz, Col., 196 Silistria, 17; taken by Russia, 42, 128-30, 147, 339; defended by British, 215-7, 22 5 5 m Berlin treaty, 392, 399; demanded and occupied by Roumanians, 506, .513.' Simetli, 515 Simpson, General, 235 Sinope, 211 Sisines, 88 Sitia, 438 Skouloudes, M. S., 531 Skouphas, Nicholas, 65 Skuleni, 69 Skyros, 107 Slavejkov, P. R., 423 Sliven, 129, 339, 415 Slivnitza, 418-9 Sluys, Major, 520 Smolenski, Col. Constantine, 437 Smyrna, 75, 166, 405, 525, 540, 542-3 Sobolev, General, 413 Socitza, Lazar, 362 Sofia, 129, 140, 343, 346; taken by the Russians, 376 ; Bulgarian capital, 412, 415-6, 418-9, 421-2, 426, 444, 446-8, 449, 451, 513, 528 Sofronij, 338-9 Sokol, 255 Sokolski, 341 Sommieres, Vialla de, 37 Sonnino, Baron Sidney, 527, 537 Sophia, Queen of the Hellenes, 535 Sophoules, M. Themistokles, 472-3 Soteriades, M., 466 Souli, Souliotes, 23-4, 65, 82, 85, *57> 2 95 Soult, Marshal, 150 Soutsos, Alexander, Prince of Wal- lachia, 66 Index 593 Soutsos, Alexander, poet, 113, 118 Soutsos, General, 350, 354 Soutsos, Michael II, Prince of Mol- davia, 66 Sparta, 276 Spetsai, 28, 73, 86, 89, 118, 120, 294 Sphakianakes, J., 318, 438-9 Sphakiotes, 15, 74, 83, 89, 168, 309, 3"> 3!3» 3i7, 439 Sphaktena, 89-90 Spinalonga, 438 Spizza, 144; taken by Montenegro, 256; proposed cession to Monte- negro, 260, 370-1, 383; again taken by Montenegro, 376 ; Aus- trian, 391-2, 530 Sponneck, Count, 277, 292, 294, 296, 310 Sporades, The, 29, 469-70, 508, 510, 518, 542. See Dodekdnesos, The Spuj, 144, 256, 375, 383, 391 Spyromelios, Col., 519 Sredna Gora, 365 "Sretenje, Constitution of," 135 Stambulov, Stephen, 345, 364, 415, 422-3, 426, 443, 449-50 Stampalia. See Astypalaia Stanhope, Col. Leicester, 87 Stanley, Lord. See Derby, Edward Henry, Earl of Stara Zagora, 364, 374 Stavrev, H., 450 Stavrou, George, 172 Stefanopoli, The, 4 Stirbeiu, Barbe, 194-5, 244-7, 328 Stoilov, Constantine, 423, 425, 450-' Stojanov, Zacharias, 364, 415 Stolatz, 141 Stone, Miss, 445 Storks, Sir Henry Knight, 284-7 Stranski, Dr George, 415, 423 . Stratford de Redcliffe, Lord. See Canning, Stratford Stratos, 99 Streit, Dr G., 525 Strophades, The, 5 Strousberg, 330 Struga, 500 Struma, The, 502, 514, 516 Strumitza, 513, 540 Sturdza, John S., Prince of Mol- davia, 70, 127 Sturdza, Michael, Prince of Mol- davia, 132, 190-2, 194, 328 Stylos, Cape, 509 Suda, 83, 89, 419, 434-5> 439' 4$9 Suez Canal, The, 239 Sutorina, The, 13, 256, 258, 362-3 Svishtov, 42, 46, 344, 374, 413 Sykaminon, 351-2 Sykes-Picot agreement, 528 Syme, 469-70 Syra, 73, 80, 86, 89, 109, 113, 172, 261, 265, 317 Syrakou, 88 Syria, 145-50, 263, 300-6 Takovo, 55 Talaat Bey, 538-40 Tarabosh, 507-8 Tarsus, 480 Tartars, 431, 443 Tatar- Pazardjik, 342 Tchernaieff, General, 364, 368-9 Tchernaya, The, 228, 335 Tchesme, 14 Telos, 469 Tenedos, 518, 541 Tenos, 28, 118, 160, 527 Tepelen, 19, 521 Tewfik Pasha, 480 Thasos, 151, 470 Theagenes, Col., 351 Theotokes, Baron Emmanuel, 59 Theotokes, George, 466, 486, 488, 494 Therisso, 440 Thessaly, 39, 73, 84, 104, 174; insurrection of 1854 in, 219-21, 266, 271, 285, 310, 312, 316; in- surrection of 1878 m, 380-1, 384; cession to Greece, 409-1 1 ; Turk- ish occupation and retrocession to Greece, 436-8, 443, 447, 493 Thiers, 1 49-50 Thiersch, Professor F., 115-6 Thomson, Col., 519, 521 594 Index Thopia, Carlo, 508 Thouvenel, L., 178, 245, 301-2 Thrace, 43, 394, 498, 500, 503, 517, 54° Thugut, 10 Tilsit, Peace of, 38-9, 42 Timok, The, 134, 417, 424 Tirgujiului, 533 Tiryns, 10 1, 265 Tittoni, Sig. T., 478, 482, 542 Tocci, Sig. Terenzio, 496 Todleben, 228-9 Tokat, 431 Tomanovich, M. Lazar, 462 Tombazes, Giakoumakes, 73 Tombazes, Manoles, 83, 89 Topola, 49 Toprak Kaleh, 128 Topsin, 534 Toptchider, 334 Tosks, 23 Toultcha, 384, 392 Transylvania, 9, 126, 524-5* 53 2 ~3» 544. Travnik, 22, 140, 142 Trebizond, 129, 384-5, 429, 538 Trelawny, 91 Trfkeri, 72, 85 Trikoupes, Charilaos, 288, 314, 316, 356-7, 3 8o > 408, 410, 420, 432-4, 449, 466, 499 Trikoupes, Spyn'don, 87, 158, 242 Tripoli (Africa), 16, 303, 476 ; placed under Italy, 239, 396, 496-7 Tripolitsa, 28, 76-7, 86, 90, 103, 265 Trnovo, 339, 374, 412, 414, 422, 424, 426, 478 Troubridge, Rear Admiral, 521 Trumbich, Dr A., 536 Tsakalof, 65 Tsamados, Anastases, 90 Tsanov, Ilija, 418 Tsaribrod, 511 Tsavellas, Kitsos, 92, 118, 120, 163, 178 Tselios, Demos, 163 Tsepos, Monastery of, 519 Tsintsar-Markovich, General, 454 Tsiros, 265 Tusinia, 16, 496 Turgut Shevket Pasha, 497 Turkhan Pasha, 519 Turnu-Severin, 326 Turtukai, 513, 516, 533 Tuzi, 404, 496, 501 Typaldos, J. (Kapeletos), 189 Typaldos, Commander, 491 Tzamalas, 178 Tzokres, 120 Ujitze, 255 "Union and Progress," Committee of, 474-7, 479-80 University of Greece, The, 165, 172 Urfa, 429 Usiglio, 165 Uskiib (Skoplje), 9, 442-3, 447, 474-5 , 500, 503 » 513-4 Uvatz, 459 Val di Noce, 405 Valentzas, 178 Valjevo, 49 Valona, 504, 508-9, 526, 529 Valtetsi, 72, in Van, 429, 434, 538 Vardar, The, 443, 503, 516, 523 Varna, 128-9, 215, 217, 22 5 _ 6, 343, 389 Vasojevich, The, 256 Vassos, Col., 434, 437 Vathy, 470, 472 Vegleres, George, 473 Veles, 500 Velestino, 437 Vely , son of Ali Pasha of Joannina, 64 Vely Pasha, vdli of Crete, 306, 411 Venelin, 340 Venizelos, M. Eleutherios, 440, 486, 488, 491-4, 499-500, 502, 509-10, 525-8, 533-4, 536-7, 540, 542-3 Verona, Congress of, 84 Victoria, Queen, 244, 271, 308, 385, 401, 417, 426, 460 Vidin, 9, 17, 19, 43, 47, 129, 153, 211, 3°3> 339> 376-7, 416-8, 515 Vienna, Congress of, 43-4, 56 ; "Note, the," 209 Index 595 Vir Bazar, 463 Vlachos, 188 Vladimirescu, Tudor, 67-8 Vogorides, Alexander, 414 Vogorides, Nicholas, 244-5, 2 47 Vogorides, Stephen, 166, 244, 340, 470 Vojusa, The, 526 Volo, 29, 381, 467 Vonitza, 4, 103, 267 Vostitsa (Aigion), 88 Vourla, 202 Vrachori, 72 Vranina, 144 Vranja, 376, 391 Vriones, Omer, 64, 82 Vukalovich, Luka, 258 Vukotich, Peter, father of Queen Milena of Montenegro, 259 Vukotich, General Yanko, 501 Vulichevich, Vuitza, 57 Vulkovich, 449 Vutchich, 135-9, 249, 251 Vutchidol, 370 Vyner, 348, 352 Waddington, 386, 388, 394, 407 Waldemar of Denmark, Prince, 424 Walewski, 241, 244 Wallachia, partly Austrian, io-i ; tributary to Turkey, 16, 25-6, 31-2, 37, 39, 41-2 ; revolutions there (1821), 66-9, 77; occupied by the Russians, 130-2, 136; revolution there (1848), 190-5 ; Russo-Turkish war there, 211 ; evacuated, 217, 233 ; in treaty of Paris, 236-7 ; united with Moldavia, 242-8, 339 Ward, Sir Henry, 187, 278, 284 Wellington, Duke of, 94, 106, 226 Westbury, Lord, 285 White, Sir William, 136, 385, 416-7 Wied, Prince William of, 518, 529 William I, King of Prussia (German Emperor), 325, 328 William II, German Emperor, 435, 516,525 Williams, Fen wick, 235 Wyse, Sir Thomas, 180-1, 222, 263 Xanthe, 515-6, 540 Xanthos, 66 Xenos, Stephanos, 264 Yemen, The, 495 Yeni Kaleh, 8, 234 Young, Sir John, 278-81 Yusuf Pasha, 16 Zagaratz, 259 Zagora, 29 Za'imes, Mr Alexander, 441, 466, 486, 491, 528, 531-3, 535 Zaimes, Andrew, 88, 94, 113, 119 Za'imes, Thrasyboulos, 268, 274, 289, 318, 348, 353 Zajetchar, 369 Zalongo, 24 Zankov, Dragan, 341, 421-2, 425 Zante, French, 4; British, 40-1, 58, 60, 81, 88, 121-2, 124, 188, 220, 278, 280-1, 284 Zappa, Brothers, 466 Zara, 544 Zavitzanos, 264 Zekki Pasha, 429 Zervas, 163 Zervos, 186, 188, 286 Zeta, The, 143, 259, 375 Zographos, G. Ch., 519 Zographos, K., 165-6, 169 Zorbas, General, 490-2, 494 Zubci, 371 Zvornik, 139 Zvornik, Little, 255, 364, 370-1, 383 Zymbrakakes, Col., 532 Zymbrakakes, J., 310-1, 315 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. B. PEACE, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. id-up, N0V 3 1966 BEC'D LD-URL JUH26 1368 JUN13J2S8 • & 0EO 4 197S DEC 3 1975 Form L9-Series 444 JUf^ ErD LtMJRD APR b ic;^ MAY 2 7 1987