OTamtritrgr historical S^eries 
 
 EDITED BY G. W. PROTHERO, F.B.A., Litt.D. 
 
 HON. LL.D. OF EDINBURGH AND HARVARD, AND HONORARY FELLOW 
 OF king's college, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 
 
 1801 — 1913
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 ILontJon: FETTER LANE, E.G. 
 
 C. F. CLAY, Manager 
 
 eiJinburg!) : loo, PRINCES STREET 
 
 Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO. 
 
 'XeipjlQ: F. A. BROCKHAUS 
 
 Bm liork: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 tSombao anti ffalcutta: jSIACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
 AN rights reserved
 
 THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 
 
 1801— 1913 
 
 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 Le<vant. 
 
 " 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, OfCi-vil Government. 
 
 Cambridge 
 
 at the University Press 
 
 1913
 
 (Eambrilige : 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
 
 GENERAL PREFACE 
 
 T/ie aim of this series is to sketch the history of Modern 
 Europe, zvith 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 commetices 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. 
 
 The series is intended for the use of all persons anxious to 
 imder stand 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 zvill 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 
 
 THE 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 Revieius for 
 permission to reprint with considerable additions two articles 
 contributed to those periodicals; and I desire to thank 
 H. E. M. J. Gennadios, Greek Minister in London, for access 
 to his unrivalled collection of pamphlets, and Cav. Pasqualucci, 
 Ubrarian of the Consulta, for his courtesy in allowing me to use 
 the Hbrary of the ItaHan Foreign Ofifice. 
 
 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. 
 
 \\. M. 
 
 Rome, 
 March ii, 191 3. 
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 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.
 
 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 Afrjca— Organisation and races of 
 European Turkey — tocirfyrants— 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 ]\Iontenegro — 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
 
 X Contents 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The Prp:face of Greek Independence (1815-21) 
 
 The British in the Ionian Islands : Sir Thomas Maitland, first Lord High 
 Commissioner — Constitution of 1817 — The cession of Parga — Ali 
 Pasha declared a rebel, appeals to the Greeks — The Philiki Hetairia — 
 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 (1821-9) 
 
 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 Epidauros — 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 Karaiskakes — Second surrender of the Akropolis — Third 
 National Assembly at Troizen : Capo d'lstria elected President of 
 Greece — Treaty of London of 1827 — Battle of Navarino — Death of 
 Hastings — The Cretans at Grabousa — Arrival of Capo d'lstria — The 
 " Panhellenion " — Policy of the President — France compels the 
 Egyptians to evacuate the Morea — Destruction of Tripolitsa — Protocol 
 of March 22, iSig^Fourth National Assembly at Argos — Battle of 
 Petra : end of the war ........ 71
 
 Contents xi 
 
 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 Asseml^ly at Pronoia — Flight of the Senate from 
 Nauplia — Fight with the French at Argos — Arrival of Otho — Prosperit)- 
 of the Ionian Islands — Napier in Cephalonia — Adam Lord High Com- 
 missioner — The " Ionian Academy '" — Parties in the Islands . 106 
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 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 regletneiit o)-ganiqiie — 
 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— Revqlt__ofl ^ehem et 
 Ali: invasion of Syria — The Russians "protect" the Sultan: treaty 
 of HunkiaiTTsTceTeu^^^^^attle of Nezib — Death of Mahmi^d II — Quadri- 
 lateral convention of 1840 — Settlement of Egypt and Thasos — 
 " Convention of the Straits " — Charter of Gl il kh aneh — The Le- 
 banon . . . . . ■ ." " . . . . 125 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 Greece under the Bayarian 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 Arkadia and Messenia —
 
 xii Contents 
 
 The capital removed from Nauplia to Athens — Otho's majority- 
 Insurrection in Akarnania — 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 disturl)ances — The Pacifico 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 — Mentschikofi"'s 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 Alliens — 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 xiii 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Union of the Danubian Principalities (1856-62) 
 
 rowth 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-Montenegriu war of 1858 : battle of Grahovo 
 — Assassination of Danilo — Accession of Nicholas I — Ilerzegovinian 
 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) 
 
 HattizHtimxiy^n_oi 1856 — Murder of the consuls at Jedda — The Massacres 
 in the Lebanon — French expedition to Syria — Organisation of the 
 Lebanon in 1861-4 — The Cretan Insurrections of 1858 and 1866-9 — 
 Defence of Arkadion — " Organic Statute of 18M." — Turkish ultimatum 
 to Greece — Hobart Pasha at Syra — Conference of Paris . . 298
 
 xiv Contents 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Roumanian and Servian Questions (1862-75) 
 
 Murder of Barbe Catargi — Secularisation of the monasteries — Couza's 
 coup d''itat — 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 " Qicumenical 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 35^
 
 Contents xv 
 
 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\'tatoi 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.Zaimes 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 1S89 — Milan's abdication — 
 Alexander's coups d'itat — His marriage — Constitution of 1901 : third 
 coup d'l^tat — 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 : (i) the land, (2) the Jews — Roumanian 
 foreign policy — Greek internal politics since 1898 — Cyprus — The 
 "Twelve Islands" — Thasos — Samos ..... 427
 
 xvi Contents 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 The Turkish Revolution (1908-12) 
 
 The " Committee of Union and Progress " — Tiie_ revival of the Turkish 
 constitution — Fraternisation of the Ottomans — Declaration of Bul- 
 garian Independence — Annexation of 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 international troops 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 "Turkifiration " — Albanian insurrection of 191 1 — The Libyan 
 war: loss of Tripoli and the Cyrenaica — Italian occupation of 12 
 islands ........... 474 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 The Balkan League (October, 1912-March, 1913) 
 
 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— Summary of the 
 whole period .......... 49^ 
 
 Table of Rulers 505 
 
 Bibliography 508 
 
 Index 529 
 
 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 Berhn, 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 defined as the problem 
 of fining 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. 1
 
 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 H 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 ivith 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 monument of the French commander, the due de 
 Beaufort, may still be seen 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 
 to-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
 
 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 {koXo fj.€po<;) and that he must 
 therefore be descended from the Imperial family of the 
 Kalomeroi Porphyrogennetoi, whose glories he was destined to 
 renew ; Greek historians, remembering the emigration of the 
 Mainates to Corsica more than a century earlier, boldly 
 proclaimed him as the offspring of one of those Spartan 
 families ; and the women of Maina kept a lamp lighted before 
 his portrait, "as before that of the Virgin." The idea of a 
 restoration of the Byzantine empire with his aid became 
 general among the Greeks ; and Bonaparte was regarded as a 
 deliverer of the Hellenic race. Not content with organising 
 the Ionian Islands as "the departments of Corcyra (com- 
 prising the islands of CorfCi, Paxo, Antipaxo, and Fano, with 
 their continental dependencies, Butrinto and Parga), Ithaca 
 (including the islands of Santa Mavra, Cephalonia, and Ithaca, 
 with Preveza and V6nitza on the gulf of Arta), and the Aegean 
 Sea " (a vague term, which embraced — for the moment — Zante,
 
 i] Early relations with Russia 5 
 
 the Strophades, Cerigo, and Dragomestre in Akarnania), the 
 French government founded in the two Danubian Principah'ties, 
 where the Greek element was predominant, two consulates, 
 one at Bucharest, the other at Jassy, thus reviving an idea of 
 Catherine de Medicis, who had once meditated colonising the 
 Principalities with Huguenots, in order to create French 
 industries and influence in the east. The Egyptian expedition 
 of Bonaparte at last caused the Sultan to declare war against 
 France, his traditional ally, and to ally himself with Russia, his 
 traditional enemy. Russia was alarmed at the success of the 
 French propaganda among the Greeks, and desirous that a 
 strong French protectorate over the Christians of Turkey 
 should not rise up as a barrier to her own schemes. Britain, 
 engaged in a life-and-death struggle with France, joined the 
 Russo-Turkish alliance, and the natural result was the loss of 
 French possessions and the destruction of French trade in the 
 east. The Ionian Islands were occupied by the Russians and 
 Turks ; the French commercial houses in the Levant were 
 ruined. France, therefore, at the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, was no longer the upholder of the Ottoman empire. 
 Bonaparte had, by his erratic genius, reversed her secular 
 policy, and forced Russia, in self-defence, to defend the Turk. 
 But Ottoman statesmen could have no illusions as to the 
 ultimate aims of the northern Power. For generations Russia 
 and Turkey had been rivals, and a series of Russo-Turkish 
 wars had been chronicled even before the nineteenth century 
 added four more to their number. By a curious anticipation 
 of modern history, it was in the Crimea that the two nations 
 first came into contact. A quarter of a century after the 
 capture of Constantinople, Mohammed II claimed the su- 
 zerainty of the Crim Tartars, whose prince was the ally of the 
 ruler of Moscow. The Russian merchants at Kaffa and Azov 
 were now brought into relations with the Turkish authorities, 
 and their grievances occasioned the despatch of the first 
 Russian embassy to Constantinople in 1495. Other Russian
 
 6 The Ottoman Empire [ch. 
 
 embassies followed, and for a long time pacific relations were 
 maintained between the two governments. But the raids of 
 the Tartars into Russian territory and the vengeance exacted 
 by Russian hordes caused considerable friction ; and at last, in 
 1569, the first armed conflict took place between troops of the 
 two states. It is curious to find western Powers urging on the 
 Russians at that period to drive the Turks out of Europe, and 
 already recognising Russia as the natural protectress of the 
 eastern Christians, while the fear of Russia's growing strength 
 was felt in Turkey alone. No western statesman seems to 
 have suspected at that moment that Russia on the Bosphorus 
 would be a menace to Europe ; but even the Sultans, at that 
 time at the height of their glory, hesitated to retaliate on a Power 
 which might, they thought, prove too strong for them even 
 then. It was not for another century that a formal war broke 
 out between the rivals, in consequence of the Turkish ac- 
 quisition of Podolia, which seemed to threaten Russian interests. 
 The result was an increase of Russian territory at Kiev and 
 the desire for further gains. Even so early as this, too, the 
 Tsar posed as the guardian of religious interests by obtaining 
 a .safe-conduct for Russian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. 
 The political and theological aims of Russia thus became 
 inextricably mixed, just as the missionary has been to other 
 nations the pioneer of the soldier. 
 
 Peter the Great gave a great impetus to the anti-Turkish 
 policy of Russia. His capture of Azov was not permanent 
 any more than the free use of tlie Black Sea for his new navy; 
 but it was he who sent the first Russian man-of-war to the 
 Bosphorus ; though its mission was pacific, it was a sign of 
 the future. Equally significant were the beginnings of Russian 
 intrigues in the two Danubian Principalities, whose princes 
 corresponded with the Tsar, and his proclamation to the 
 Greeks, to whom he foretold the approaching restoration of 
 the Byzantine empire. The holy war, which broke out be- 
 tween Russia and Turkey and was concluded by the treaty
 
 i] Early relations ivitli Russia 7 
 
 of the Pruth in 171 1, was a proof, like so many of its 
 successors, of the miUtary strength of even a politically feeble 
 empire. The humiliating terms of that treaty, which imposed 
 the retrocession of Azov to Turkey and the suppression of the 
 Russian embassy at Constantinople, were, however, modified 
 a few years later ; and a permanent embassy was re-established 
 in the Turkish capital. It is worth noticing that on this 
 occasion the influence of England was, for the first time, used 
 against Russia. Since the formation of the Russian navy, the 
 English Levant Company, which, in the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, had all the trade of the near east in its 
 hands, had become alarmed at the rivalry of Russian mer- 
 chants ; and the English ambassador at Constantinople, in 
 opposing for this reason the return of his Russian colleague, 
 drew the attention of the Porte to the dangers of a political 
 and religious propaganda by Russian agents among the 
 Sultan's Christian subjects. Having gained her point in regard 
 to her embassy, Russia went on with characteristic tenacity of 
 purpose to recover her lost foothold at Azov ; and despite the 
 efforts of England and Holland, united in their opposition to 
 further development of Russian trade in the east, again declared 
 war against the Sultan in 1736, and again occupied Moldavia. 
 By the peace of Belgrade she regained Azov, but only on 
 condition that its fortifications were destroyed, that no Russian 
 man-of-war should enter the sea of that name or the Euxine, 
 and that all the Russian Black Sea trade should be carried in 
 Turkish bottoms. A lull in the eastern question followed, for 
 the great Powers were busy elsewhere. 
 
 The accession of Catherine H revived the plans of Peter 
 the Great. Russian agents were sent to stir up the Greeks 
 and Montenegrins ; war broke out in 1768 ; and a Russian fleet, 
 largely officered by Englishmen, was despatched to the 
 Peloponnese, received the submission of 18 islands in the 
 Archipelago, and at one moment threatened Constantinople 
 itself. But the greatest triumph of this war was the memorable
 
 8 The Ottojnan Empire [ch. 
 
 treaty which concluded it. The obscure Bulgarian village of 
 Kutchuk-Kainardji, where this instrument was signed, has 
 given its name to one of the most stupendous acts of Turkish 
 folly. It was not so much the territorial losses of Turkey that 
 mattered, though Russia's retention of Azov, Kinburn, Kertch, 
 and Yeni Kaleh gave her the means of dominating the Black 
 Sea, which her ships were now allowed to navigate, while her 
 guardianship of the Crimean Mussulmans naturally fore- 
 shadowed their absorption in her empire nine years later. 
 The really fatal clauses of the treaty were those which gave 
 her the right of making representations on behalf of the Greek 
 Church in Turkey and of "speaking in favour of the Roumanian 
 Principalities," which furnished pretexts for constant inter- 
 ference in the internal affairs of the Ottoman dominions. The 
 convention of Ainali-Kavak in 1779 confirmed the provisions 
 of that treaty, and stipulated that the tribute which the two 
 Danubian Principalities had to pay to the Porte " should be 
 imposed with moderation and humanity " — an arrangement 
 which did not prevent the Russian ambassador at Constantinople 
 from demanding, no less than the Turkish government, ample 
 pecuniary proof of the fitness for office of the candidates for 
 the two Danubian thrones. Against the wishes of the Turks, 
 a Russian consulate was now established at Bucharest, as 
 a centre of intrigue ; and we find the Prussian consul at Jassy 
 soon complaining that these agents were " put everywhere, 
 without any necessity, perhaps to win over the inhabitants." 
 Russia had, indeed, supplanted France as the oracle of the 
 Porte, and had taught the eastern Christians to look to 
 her for protection against their sovereign. The Grand-duke 
 Constantine was educated to be the emperor of a new Greek 
 empire; and Catherine II received a memorial from a Greek 
 deputation. By the peace of Jassy in 1792, which closed the 
 next war between the Russians and the Turks, the former, in 
 spite of the threatened opposition of England and Prussia, 
 moved their frontier up to the Dniester. This was the last
 
 i] Early relations with Austria g 
 
 dispute between the two rivals in the eighteenth century ; and, 
 as we have seen, the close of that period witnessed their 
 temporary alliance in order to defeat the ambitious schemes 
 of Bonaparte in the east. 
 
 Austria, now the chief competitor of Russia in the Balkan 
 peninsula, was early brought into hostile contact with the 
 advancing Turkish armies. In the fifteenth century the Turks 
 began their attacks on the Hungarians, who were at that 
 period the vanguard of Christendom against the Moslem. 
 A century later Budapest was captured and remained, together 
 with the greater part of Hungary, under Turkish rule for about 
 150 years. But the close of the seventeenth century marked 
 the retreat of the Ottoman armies from Hungarian soil. After 
 the defeat of the Turks before Vienna and the emancipation 
 of Budapest frequent Austrian expeditions invaded Bosnia, 
 over which the Hungarian crown possessed old historic rights ; 
 while an Austrian force captured Vidin in Bulgaria and Nish 
 in Servia, and penetrated into Macedonia as far as Uskiib, 
 where Stephen Dushan had fixed the capital of the medieval 
 Servian empire. Prince Eugene made in 1697 his memorable 
 march to Sarajevo along the same route that was afterwards 
 followed by the army of occupation in 1878. "Yet another 
 campaign," said a Turkish statesman, on hearing that Mace- 
 donia was invaded, " and the Austrians will be under the walls 
 of Stambiil." But these feats of arms were without permanent 
 results, and Uskiib is the furthest point on the road to Salonika 
 that an Austrian army has ever reached. The peace of 
 Karlovitz, however, finally excluded the Turks from Hungary 
 (except the Ba7iat of Temesvar, which they abandoned 
 nineteen years later), gave Transsylvania to Austria, and 
 effected a complete change in the relations between that Power 
 and the Turks. Austria had hitherto regarded the Turk as an 
 aggressive enemy to be repulsed ; she henceforth looked upon 
 him either as a weak foe to be attacked or as a bulwark, to be 
 strengthened at need, against the advance of Russia, in whom
 
 ro The Ottoman Evipire [cH. 
 
 she saw a rival in the east all the more dangerous because 
 there were many Slav subjects of Austria, who might be 
 attracted by the Russian national and religious propaganda. 
 The eighteenth century furnishes examples of all these 
 three points of view. Sometimes, Austria was mainly actuated 
 by the desire for Turkish territory ; and then she was willing 
 to avail herself of Russian aid, even at the risk of Russian 
 aggrandisement. This was the case in the war of 1736-39, 
 when the Austrian and Russian armies were united against 
 the Turks ; in the projected partition of Turkey between 
 Catherine II and Joseph II, which awarded the Crimea to 
 the former and Bosnia and the Herzegovina to the latter ; and 
 in the war of 1787-91, when once again the two states were 
 allies, and the Turks their common foes. But it is a curious 
 fact that, whenever this policy has been pursued by Austria, 
 her successes have been much less than when she attacked 
 Turkey single-handed. Whereas the result of the Austro- 
 Turkish war, which was ended by the peace of Passarovitz, 
 was to give part of Servia, North Bosnia, and Little Wallachia, 
 as well as the Banat, to Austria, her co-operation with Russia 
 in 1736 cost her all her gains south of the Danube and Little 
 Wallachia, while the alliance of 1787 brought her nothing 
 more than the town of Orsova and two small places on the 
 Croatian frontier. On the other hand, during the Russo- 
 Turkish war which was ended by the treaty of Kutchuk- 
 Kainardji, Austria proposed a secret treaty with Turkey, as 
 soon as she saw that the Russians were becoming too 
 successful. As the reward of her services, she was to receive 
 once more Little Wallachia ; and when Russia, in alarm, 
 concluded peace, another Roumanian province, the Bukovina, 
 became, and has ever since remained, Austrian. At this 
 period the Austrian diplomatist, Thugut, believed the fall of 
 Turkey to be at hand, and designated the two Uanubian 
 principalities as his country's share of the spoil. An Austrian 
 consul was accordingly placed there to counteract the schemes
 
 i] Early relations ivith Austria 1 1 
 
 of his Russian colleague. But the French revolution and the 
 death of Joseph II saved by an accident, as has so often been 
 the case since, the life of the "sick man," and diverted the 
 attention of Austrian statesmen from the east to the west. 
 
 But the eighteenth century had done much to shape the 
 course of Austrian policy in the regions of the Balkans. The 
 twenty- one years' Austrian occupation of Little Wallachia, 
 a large portion of what is now Servia, and a slice of North 
 Bosnia, between 1718 and 1739, was the beginning of that 
 movement which has been resumed in so striking a manner 
 in our own time. Austria then became an important factor 
 in the eastern question, and undertook, though only temporarily, 
 that duty for which destiny seemed to mark her out. The 
 effects of those twenty-one years of European civilisation were 
 not wholly lost on the peoples who were put back under 
 Turkish sway by the treaty of Belgrade. While the Austrian 
 rule was unpopular among the Roumanians of Little Wallachia 
 owing to its insistence upon the regular payment of taxes, the 
 Seri)S of Turkey henceforth regarded Austria as the only 
 power which, under existing conditions, could set them free. 
 Numbers of their ancestors had settled in Hungary after the 
 downfall of Servian independence in the fifteenth century ; and 
 two Serb patriarchs of Ipek, accompanied by thousands of 
 their flock, had more recently followed that example by 
 migrating thither. The Hungarian Serbs were among the 
 most brilliant soldiers of Prince Eugene ; and at the outbreak 
 of every fresh Austro-Turkish war their brethren in Servia took 
 up arms on the Austrian side. A Serb poet hailed Joseph II 
 as "the protector of the Serb race," and the Serb leaders 
 bitterly reproached his successor for making peace with 
 Turkey in 1791. Nor can we be surprised at their regrets. 
 For the first time since the Turkish conquest, Servia had 
 shown signs of material progress during the two brief decades 
 of the previous Austrian occupation ; and they naturally hoped 
 that this time Austria would not retire beyond the Danube
 
 12 The Ottoman Empire [ch. 
 
 and the Save. Knowing little of western politics, they could 
 not understand why the Power which had taken Belgrade and 
 entered Bosnia should make peace on the most modest terms. 
 But the last decade of the century gave Austria a further 
 foothold in the near east. Just as the same year that had 
 witnessed the disappearance of Venice from the Peloponnese 
 witnessed also the first appearance of Austria as a Balkan 
 state, so the same year that saw the death of the Republic of 
 St Mark saw too the assumption of her heritage on the 
 Adriatic by the Hapsburgs. The treaty of Campo-Formio 
 in 1797, which handed over the Dalmatian possessions of 
 Venice to Austria, substituted a strong Power for a declining 
 one as the neighbour of Turkey and Montenegro, and indicated 
 to the anxious Sultan that the state which had thus annexed 
 the Illyrian coastline would probably one day occupy the 
 Bosnian territory behind it. 
 
 England was not, like Russia and Austria, the territorial 
 neighbour of Turkey; but, even before the foundation of 
 her Indian empire, she had interests in the east, owing to her 
 large Levant trade. So early as the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century a Levantine was named English consul at Chios ; in 
 1520 the first English consul was appointed to Crete. 
 Elizabeth gained free trading facilities in the Turkish do- 
 minions for her subjects, who had previously carried on their 
 commerce with the near east in the "argosies" of the 
 Ragusan republic, then the greatest mercantile community 
 of the Balkan peninsula. It is said that the origin of our 
 trade in the Levant in ships of our own was a petty quarrel 
 concerning the duty on currants ; but, whatever the cause, the 
 interest of England in the affairs of Turkey was primarily 
 commercial, and down to the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century English influence in that part of the world was almost 
 entirely due to " the Company of Merchants of the Levant," 
 who received letters patent from EUzabeth in 158 1. It was in 
 the following year, on the first of the company's ships that
 
 i] Early relations with England 13 
 
 sailed to Constantinople, that William Harebone went out as 
 the first English ambassador to the Sultan. Like all his 
 successors in that post down to 1803, he was appointed and 
 paid, not by the English government, but by the company; 
 and his chief duty was to develop English trade. At the same 
 time, he was instructed to obtain the Sultan's support against 
 the " idolatrous " Spaniards, for the Spanish Armada was soon 
 to descend upon our shores. This admixture of commerce, 
 politics, and religion was eminently characteristic of English 
 statecraft ; and the ambassador did not neglect any part of his 
 instructions. He began at once to appoint more consuls, and 
 both he and his successor. Sir Edward Barton, used ingenious 
 theological arguments to prejudice the Sultan's advisers against 
 Spain. The Turks admitted that there could not be much 
 difference between their own religious views and those of 
 Giaours who excluded images and pictures from their churches. 
 But Spain had the riches of the New World at her back ; and 
 no help was sent by the Turks, though Barton was so popular 
 with the Sultan that he accompanied him to the war in 
 Hungary. 
 
 James I confirmed the company in its monopoly ; and in 
 spite of the insolence with which Christians were treated by the 
 'J'urks in the middle of the seventeenth century, English ships 
 visited Greece ; and a Mussulman once observed that English- 
 men "always persisted in what they said, even at the peril of 
 their lives." The English ambassador was entrusted by the 
 Austrians with the money to bribe the chief Ottoman repre- 
 sentative at the peace of Karlovitz ; and it was our representative 
 who, at the peace of Passarovitz, obtained for the Turkish 
 province of the Herzegovina the two small outlets on the sea, 
 the enclave of Klek and the Sutorina, which were so important 
 during the insurrection of 1875-6, and were till 1908 among 
 the curiosities of political geography. During the eighteenth 
 century, when Russia had come to the front as the possible 
 successor of the Turk in Europe, British statesmen were, as a
 
 14 The Ottoman Empire [cH. 
 
 rule, without fear of Muscovite aggrandisement. At one 
 moment, as we have seen, Britain tried to make peace between 
 Russia and Turkey in the interests of her own trade, and in 
 1 7 19 Stanhope had desired "to drive the Muscovite as far as 
 possible " ; but in the middle of the century France was our 
 great commercial rival in the Levant, where the English 
 company had lost much ground in consequence of Villeneuve's 
 vigorous support of Turkey. It was France, too, and not 
 Russia, which then threatened India ; and the opening of the 
 Black Sea to Russian ships was even regarded as an advantage 
 for English merchants, who would thus find a new market. 
 We saw that the Russian fleet, which nearly took Constanti- 
 nople and destroyed the Turkish navy at Tchesme in 1770, 
 was largely under the direction of English officers ; and Turkish 
 officials asked England to explain what her policy really was. 
 On the eve of the fatal treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji we find 
 Lord Chatham writing that he is "quite a Russ," but our 
 ambassador at Constantinople was not of that opinion. So 
 early as 1786 Mirabeau contemplated a Russian advance on 
 India. In 1791 it was the intention of Pitt, had he had the 
 support of the country, to declare war on Russia, in order 
 to maintain the balance of power ; and, while Fox was en- 
 thusiastically on the side of Russia, Pitt pointed out the uses of 
 Turkey as our ally. But, by a combination of the two policies, 
 the century closed with a triple alliance of England, Russia, 
 and Turkey against the French invaders of Egypt. 
 
 In view of the great influence of Germany in Turkish 
 affairs at the present time, a few words may be said about the 
 eastern policy of Prussia during the period of which we have 
 just given a sketch. The Great Elector sought to use the 
 Danubian Principalities in his schemes against Poland ; and 
 one of their Princes, after his deposition by the Turks, 
 endeavoured to obtain aid in Brandenburg. Frederick the 
 Great saw that the expansion of Russia in the east could not 
 injure him — for he had few interests there — but would neutralise
 
 i] Policy of the Powers 15 
 
 the rival power of Austria. His representative at Constanti- 
 nople occasionally interceded on behalf of a Moldavian ruler ; 
 and a Prussian consul was appointed in that country, partly on 
 the characteristic ground that he asked no salary. Frederick 
 regarded Turkey as a useful means of keeping Austria busy, 
 and so of assisting his own plans of conquest ; and Frederick 
 William II formed a triple alliance with England and Holland, 
 to check the Austro-Russian combination against Turkey 
 between 1787-91. But in their time the German trade in the 
 east was in Austrian, rather than Prussian, hands, and Prussia's 
 territorial aspirations were not in the direction of the Ottoman 
 empire; at most she demanded compensation elsewhere for 
 the gains of other nations in the east. 
 
 We thus find four great Powers at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century directly or indirectly affected by the 
 eastern question : France, in the main the protectress of 
 the Sultan, and also the protectress of the Catholics of the 
 Levant; Russia, with her grand scheme of a new Byzantine 
 empire already sketched out, and her efforts to attract her 
 Orthodox co-religionists in the Turkish dominions already 
 begun ; Austria, oscillating between the fear of Russia and the 
 desire of Turkish territory ; and Great Britain, commonly 
 favouring a policy of friendship with Russia. Above all, we 
 have seen that there was a general conviction that sooner or 
 later the rest of the Turkish empire in Europe would go. 
 
 Still the opening of the nineteenth century found the Sultan 
 the possessor of a vast European domain. He held the 
 whole island of Crete, from its then capital of Candia ; for even 
 the warhke Sphakiotes, long independent, had been forced to 
 pay the haratch, or capitation-tax, in 1770. The modern 
 kingdom of Greece was his, except the Ionian Islands; and 
 even they for the moment constituted a republic under the 
 joint protection of the Tsar and himself. All the former 
 dependencies of the islands on the mainland, except Parga, 
 were Turkish, having been captured by Ali Pasha of Joannina
 
 1 6 The Ottoman Empire [ch. 
 
 and then formally handed over to Turkey by the convention 
 with Russia in 1800. All that is now known as European 
 Turkey was then part of the Ottoman empire; and modern 
 Bulgaria, modern Servia, Bosnia and the Herzegovina, and 
 more than half of the present principality of Montenegro were 
 direct possessions of the Sultan. Beyond the Danube, the 
 two Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, including at that 
 time Bessarabia and stretching as far as the Dniester, formed 
 tributary states, governed by Greek Princes, selected by the 
 Porte from the wealthy families of the Phanar at Constantinople. 
 It may be estimated that the Turkish dominions in Europe in 
 1 801 measured 238,000 square miles, and contained 8,000,000 
 inhabitants. Their recent area, excluding the practically lost 
 province of Crete, was calculated at 65,350 square miles, with a 
 population of 6,130,200 souls. Such was the result in figures of 
 a little over a century's "consolidation," as Lord Beaconsfield 
 called it, even before the war of 19 12. 
 
 Asia had always been the stronghold of the Turks ; 
 thence they came and thither one day they will return. 
 Their losses there have been accordingly far smaller than in 
 Europe. The dawn of the last century found the Asian 
 frontiers of the empire slightly more extended along the Black 
 Sea coast than they are now ; and to-day Asiatic Turkey, 
 exclusive of Cyprus and Samos, is estimated to contain 
 693,610 square miles with 17,683,500 inhabitants. In Africa, 
 where, since Tripoli and the Cyrenaica have been " placed under 
 Italian sovereignty "\ Turkey no longer possesses an effective 
 dominion, she was then about to recover Egypt by British arms 
 from the French ; Tripoli, where Ahmed Karamanli had 
 achieved virtual independence in 17 14, was nominally a tribu- 
 tary province, but really a " Regency " of pirates, whose chief 
 was then the notorious Yusuf Pasha ; while Tunisia, under a 
 Bey, and Algeria, ruled by a Dey, were theoretically subject to 
 1 " Poste sotto la sovranita piena ed intera del Regno d' Italia," is the 
 phrase used in the decree of Nov. 5, 1911.
 
 i] European Turkey 17 
 
 the Sultan — a subjection seldom pleaded by the local rulers 
 except when some powerful naval power threatened to punish 
 the piracies of the Barbary States. 
 
 The European empire of Turkey was at that period divided 
 into five governorships, which were subdivided into provinces 
 and again into districts. In addition to these governorships 
 there were the two Danubian Principalities, which had the 
 misfortune to enjoy a quasi-independence, worse even than the 
 lot of the Sultan's direct possessions. The five European 
 governments were known as Roumelia, Bosnia (including Vidin 
 in Bulgaria), Silistria (including Belgrade), Djezair (including 
 the Peloponnese and many of the Greek islands), and Crete ; 
 and the governor of Roumelia, who was styled in Turkish 
 beylerbey, or "prince of princes," was the commander-in-chief 
 of all the European contingents in time of war. These five 
 European governments comprised nine pashaliks : Roumeha, 
 Belgrade, Bosnia, Scutari, Joannina, Negropont, the Morea, 
 Candia, and the Archipelago. The Sultan's subjects in our 
 continent were of various races — Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, 
 Serbs, Albanians, and Roumanians ; but there were some 
 common misfortunes which they all had to bear, though these 
 were much lighter in the case of the Mussulmans than in that 
 of the Christians. The former found it easier to bring their 
 complaints to the ear of the Sultan, while their interests were 
 protected in the provinces by the little bodies of local worthies, 
 who assisted the governor in the discharge of his duties. But, 
 even a century ago, the fate of the provincials was so hard as 
 to attract the sympathy of even avowed partisans of the Turks. 
 In reading of their sufferings, one is reminded of the grim 
 descriptions which the Roman satirists give of the exactions of 
 their own provincial authorities. It was not that the fixed and 
 recognised taxation of the empire was heavy, but that the 
 whole administrative system, excellent though it might be in 
 theory, was utterly rotten in practice. Corruption had entered 
 into the Sublime Porte, and everything was to be bought. A 
 
 M. L. 2
 
 1 8 The Ottoman Empire [ch. 
 
 pasha, appointed to a provincial governorship for a year, had to 
 pay a heavy price for his appointment, and recouped himself 
 at the cost of his province. As the end of his year approached, 
 he found it necessary to renew his bribes at Constantinople, if 
 he wished to remain at his post ; and for that too the unhappy 
 province had to pay. Bad as this system was if the pasha 
 were a rich man and had capital at his disposal to invest in a 
 governorship, it was much worse when, as usually happened, 
 he was poor, and therefore compelled to borrow at heavy 
 interest from some Greek or Armenian banker, who thus had 
 a sort of lien on the revenues of the province. The judges, 
 appointed in Constantinople in the same way as the governors, 
 sold justice without scruple ; and the officers who executed their 
 sentences were even more odious to the people. The author- 
 ities were also fond of imposing taxes, merely as temporary 
 expedients, which tended to become permanent institutions. 
 It was calculated at this time that about one half of the 
 product of each man's industry was paid to the government in 
 one way or another throughout the provinces ; and, when we 
 consider the need which the governors had of money, we 
 cannot wonder at this high proportion of taxation to income. 
 The frequent journeys of the pashas, the presents inseparable 
 from Oriental administration, the necessity of sending a mes- 
 senger on the smallest business, as there was no postal service, 
 and the luxury and vast establishments kept up by the great 
 officials, all involved a heavy expenditure. The general in- 
 security of the country, owing to bands of brigands, repressed 
 all industry ; there were few means of investing money safely ; 
 and the deterioration of the roads, which had once struck 
 English travellers as superior to those of their own country, 
 increased the difficulties of commercial intercourse. 
 
 Selim III, who at this time sat on the throne, was, it is 
 true, a reforming Sultan, anxious to raise his empire from its 
 declining state, and willing to take western nations as his 
 model. He made, for a moment, a clean sweep of the
 
 i] All and Pasvanoglu 19 
 
 Bulgarian and Macedonian brigands and the Aegean pirates, 
 repaired the ruinous fortresses on his frontiers, and employed 
 French shipbuilders to construct men-of-war. But, like most 
 autocrats, he was powerless to change a whole system of 
 misgovernment with a stroke of his pen. Albania and Epirus, 
 always the most dangerous part of European Turkey, were in 
 such a state that a Turk could not venture to show his face 
 there, while all travellers were liable to be murdered with 
 impunity by the natives of that mountainous region. In many 
 parts of the empire hereditary tyrants, known as dereli beys, or 
 " lords of the valleys," terrorised their humble neighbours. 
 Here and there great pashas, like Ali of Joannina and Pas- 
 vanoglu of Vidin, fought for their own hands and acted like 
 semi-independent sovereigns. The "lion of Joannina" has 
 been made familiar to the reader by the poetry of Lord Byron 
 and the prose of J6kai, while, as a forerunner of the Greek 
 revolution, he has gained a place in the best-known chapter of 
 modern Oriental history. Ali belonged to an Albanian Mussul- 
 man family of Tepelen, which had once been Christian ; but his 
 grandfather had fallen for the Crescent in 17 16 at the siege of 
 Corfii. Pasha of Joannina since 1788, he had distinguished 
 himself by his cruelty, ability, and ambition ; poets sang in 
 Greek how he had thrown a beautiful lady into the lake and 
 avenged the injuries done to his family by the impartial 
 destruction of both a Christian and a Mohammedan com- 
 munity ; a British traveller summed up his character as a 
 " mixture of magnificence and meanness." Osman Pasvanoglu, 
 though almost forgotten now, was in his day scarcely inferior 
 to Ali in influence. With the true fanaticism of a Bosnian 
 Mussulman he declared against the reforms of his sovereign, 
 whose real and only friend he pretended to be. Master of the 
 " virgin-fortress " of Vidin, he showed his loyalty by defeating 
 the Sultan's armies and despoiling his fellow-subjects. He 
 raised a private force of his own, levied his own taxes, 
 coined his own money, and sent his representative to Paris to
 
 20 The Ottoman Empire [ch. 
 
 negotiate on his own account v/ith the French government. A 
 British consul visited his court ; and such was the terror of his 
 name that there was a general stampede from Bucharest on 
 the approach of his men. Severe as were the sufferings of the 
 Roumanians and Bulgarians from his depredations, the cost of 
 maintaining an army to oppose him was an even greater burden 
 to the Wallachian peasants. It was on this occasion that 
 Hangerli, their Prince, confiscated practically all the cattle of 
 his people, and thus left them without sustenance in a winter 
 which has become proverbial as one of the four plagues of that 
 sorely oppressed principality. The Bulgarians experienced in 
 their turn the usual fate which at that time befell a country 
 through which a Turkish army marched. Southern Bulgaria 
 was reported to be almost destitute of inhabitants, and its now 
 flourishing capital was left a heap of corpses and charred 
 timber. The fearful ravages of the plague in most Turkish 
 cities completed the devastation of the empire, though in this 
 respect the European provinces suffered less than the Asiatic. 
 
 The division of the Sultan's subjects into two sharply defined 
 classes, those who were Mohammedans and those who were not, 
 was the cause of much evil. It has been justly said that the 
 Turkish government has shown itself far more tolerant of 
 eligious opinions than many so-called Christian nations. The 
 welcome extended by Turkey in the fifteenth century to the 
 Spanish, and in the nineteenth to the Russian Jews, contrasts 
 most favourably with the Jewish persecutions in Catholic Spain 
 and Orthodox Russia. Such was the hatred which one sect of 
 Christians felt for another, that the Bogomiles of Bosnia 
 preferred to be conquered by the Sultan rather than con- 
 verted by the Pope, and the Orthodox Greeks chose to be 
 the subjects of infidel Turks rather than of Catholic Venetians. 
 Mohammed II, Hke the great statesman that he was, saw at 
 once that the Greek church might become in his hands a 
 powerful support of the Ottoman rule. He accordingly re- 
 stored the CEcumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and
 
 i1 Conversions to Islam 21 
 
 made the Patriarch his tool. But, with all his tolerance for 
 freedom of thought, the Mussulman regarded the Christians 
 as an inferior caste. The rayahs had to put up with a hundred 
 slights, and were made to feel that they were outside the pale 
 of the dominant religion. They were liable to all sorts of 
 aggravating rules, which regulated the colour of their clothes, 
 the style of their houses, and the professions which they might 
 enter. Their women were exposed to the droit de seigneur at 
 the pleasure of the young bloods of Islam ; if their children 
 were no longer taken as a tribute for the Sultan's armies, and 
 they were exempt from compulsory military service, they had 
 to victual and do all the dirty work of the Ottoman forces, 
 build military roads and fortresses, transport artillery, and carry 
 munitions of war. It was no wonder, then, that those of little 
 faith abandoned Christianity for a religion which would assure 
 them the respect of the Turks, and the right, equally dear to 
 them as perverts, of despising and maltreating their former 
 co-religionists. Numbers of Serbs in Bosnia, numbers of 
 Greeks in Crete, many Bogomiles in Bulgaria, embraced Islam 
 after the Turkish conquest ; and the Bosnian, Cretan, Bulgarian, 
 and Albanian Mussulmans became the most conservative of all 
 the Sultan's subjects in their opposition to reforms, the most 
 fanatical of all Mohammedans in their devotion to the law of 
 the prophet. Popular phraseology, which calls these people 
 "Turks," obscures the fact that some of the worst oppressors of 
 the Christians in Turkey were not Turks at all, but perverts 
 from Christianity, of the same race as the persecuted. The 
 high road to honours was to profess Islam ; and it became 
 proverbial that " one must be the son of a Christian renegade 
 to attain to the highest dignities of the Turkish empire." 
 Thus, in Bosnia, although a Turkish governor was sent from 
 Constantinople, he was a mere figure-head ; and all real power 
 was centred in the great Bosnian nobles, who gradually became 
 hereditary headmen of the divisions of that country. So strong 
 was the influence of these Mussulman Serbs that they permitted
 
 2 2 The Ottoman Empire [ch. 
 
 the pasha to remain at Sarajevo for no more than forty-eight 
 hours, and resisted all attempts to move the ofificial capital 
 from Travnik thither. So the Bosnian begs administered that 
 province on feudal lines, and were quite content with a system 
 which allowed them to do as they pleased at home and 
 provided them with the occasional luxury of a foray abroad. 
 It was only when the Turkish military power began to decline 
 and Bosnia was invaded by Austrian armies, that the Bosnian 
 Mussulmans began to doubt the wisdom of the Sultan's 
 government. 
 
 In Servia, where there was no native aristocracy as in 
 Bosnia, a number of these Bosnian begs were settled as 
 landowners, forming the majority of the spahi, or cavalry, 
 who were the sole possessors of the soil, to the complete 
 exclusion of the rayah from all rights of ownership. There 
 were at this period some 132,000 of these military landowners 
 in all Turkey, some 900 in the pashalik of Belgrade. In 
 return for their lands they owed military service to the Sultan ; 
 but even in time of peace they were mostly absentees, idling 
 away their days in the towns and letting the despised Christians 
 manage their farms. In addition to these spahi, another 
 military force, the Janissaries, were to be found in detachments 
 through the provinces. Their leaders, or dahi, were often 
 more powerful than the Sultan's representative, and not only 
 maltreated the Christian peasants, but even seized the lands 
 of the Mohammedan spahi with impunity. The natives had, 
 indeed, some small share in the administration \ and when, 
 as was the case in Servia at this period, the pasha was a just 
 man, their chosen representatives could temper the wind to 
 their shorn flock. The head-man of the village, the village 
 magistrate, and, in many cases, the district official or (in Serb) 
 obofknes, who was responsible for the collection of the Turkish 
 taxes, and acted as a medium between the pasha and the 
 taxpayers, were elected by the people. The oborknes, whether 
 so elected or nominated by the pasha, usually held office for
 
 i] Servians and Albanians 23 
 
 life— it had formerly been an hereditary post — and acquired 
 considerable influence both with the Turkish ofificials and the 
 Serb peasants. Not a few of these local worthies became 
 leaders of the Servian revolution. One branch of the Serbs 
 formed the only independent state of the peninsula — the 
 principality of Montenegro, governed since 1696 by Prince- 
 Bishops, or Vladikas of the family of Petrovich, a dignity 
 which descended, as the theocratic ruler could not marry, 
 from uncle to nephew. K firman of 1799 had recognised that 
 the Montenegrins had never been subjects of the Porte. 
 
 The Albanians had offered, under their hero Skanderbeg, 
 the most determined resistance to the Turkish conquest ; and 
 even at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as indeed 
 to-day, their land was hardly under the control of its nominal 
 sovereign. Divided by three religions — the CathoHc, the 
 Orthodox, and the Mohammedan — and split up into two main 
 branches — the Ghegs and the Tosks — and into numerous 
 tribes, the Albanians were alike in their love of fighting. 
 The best regiments in the Turkish army, the crack regiment 
 in the kingdom of Naples, were composed of these warriors, 
 who in our own time formed the bodyguard of the timorous 
 Sultan. Even before the Turks had conquered Greece, 
 Albanian colonies had settled there ; and in southern Italy 
 there is a large Albanian element. In northern Albania one 
 tribe, the Catholic Mirdites, enjoyed practical independence 
 under an hereditary ruler of the family of Gion (John) 
 Marcu, called "captain" by his men, but "prince" by 
 Europeans from a mistranslation of the name of Prenk 
 (Peter), borne by each successive chief. In Epirus, the 
 Orthodox Souliotes, an admirable blend of Greeks and 
 Hellenised Albanians, who won the admiration of Byron, 
 formed a sort of military commonwealth, composed first of 
 four, then of eleven villages, paying in time of peace the 
 tithe and the capitation-tax to the Porte, but in wartime 
 maintaining practical independence by their swords. At
 
 24 The Ottoman Empire [ch. 
 
 once rulers and ruled, they levied the same imposts from 
 the ParasouHotes, or inhabitants of some 60 conquered 
 hamlets, who depended upon them, till, after a three years' 
 struggle, Soiili was betrayed to Ali Pasha in 1803, the women 
 hurled themselves and their babes in the dance of death from 
 the rock of Zalongo, and the survivors fled to Corfu. 
 
 Of all the Christian races beneath the rule of the Turk, 
 the Greeks were at that time the most important and the 
 most prosperous. They had had, like the Serbs, the advantage 
 early in the eighteenth century of being, though for a very 
 short period, under the administration of a western Power ; 
 and the Venetian government of the Morea, though not by 
 any means popular while it lasted, nor remembered with 
 any gratitude, was a great advance upon Turkish rule. 
 Although Russia, when she invaded the Morea in 1770, 
 clearly demonstrated that her aim was not to make the 
 Greeks free but to make them her subjects, and abandoned 
 them so soon as it suited her purpose, the treaty of Kainardji 
 placed them more or less under her influence ; and later 
 arrangements entitled the Greek islanders to trade under her 
 flag. The French revolution not only provided the Greeks, 
 and especially those who inhabited the Ionian Islands during 
 the first French occupation, with majestic phrases about the 
 liberty of nations and the equality of men, but indirectly 
 favoured Greek commerce, owing to the fact that the Turkish 
 government was generally neutral and its flag could therefore 
 go anywhere. The Greeks combine two usually irreconcilable 
 quaUties — great aptitude for business and great love of book- 
 learning. Both these qualities, already developed at the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century, tended to prepare them 
 for national independence, though neither of them implied 
 the possession of that political training which nations only 
 acquire, as a rule, after centuries of experience. Commerce 
 led them to visit other and better-governed countries, and so 
 to draw inferences as to their own future prospects ; literature,
 
 i] The Greeks 25 
 
 as created by Eugenics Boulgaris the Corfiote, and Koraes 
 the Chiote, formed a bond of national union ; and Rhegas 
 of Velestino gave to the impending Greek revolution its 
 Marseillaise, while "to Joannina," in the phrase of a Greek 
 writer, "Greece owes the regeneration of her education." 
 
 Travellers noticed that the Greeks bore " the Turkish yoke 
 with greater impatience than other Christians," although, 
 except in Crete, they had perhaps less to complain of than 
 their fellows. They occupied, indeed, a position of superiority 
 towards the Sultan's other Christian subjects. For the Greek 
 Patriarch was the ecclesiastical head of all the Christian 
 population, irrespective of race, throughout the Balkan 
 peninsula. The services of the Greek Church and clergy 
 in the struggle for Greek independence were very great ; but 
 by Bulgarians and Serbs, and still more in Moldavia and 
 Wallachia, the Greek bishop was regarded as a foreign agent. 
 With the suppression of the two ancient autocephalous Serb 
 and Bulgarian Churches of Ipek and Ochrida in 1766-7, the 
 last ecclesiastical bulwarks of those Slav races fell before the 
 influence of the Greek clergy, who had long been as supreme 
 in the spiritual life of the peninsula as the Turkish ofificials 
 were in its political affairs. The Greek bishop, chosen from 
 the Phanariotes of Constantinople, usually had to buy his see, 
 just as the Turkish pasha bought his post, and made the 
 people pay him back what he had expended. He was 
 generally a valuable ally of the pasha, because he wanted the 
 latter's aid to compel the peasants to comply with his requests, 
 while he could render various diplomatic services to the pasha 
 in return. Under the influence of these spiritual pastors, who 
 rarely spoke any language but Greek, and, of course, con- 
 ducted the service in that tongue, Slavs and Roumanians 
 alike became outwardly hellenised. Their own languages 
 were despised as barbarous jargons ; to speak Greek came to 
 be considered as the mark of a gentleman ; the two Rou- 
 manian codes were published, and even Bulgaiian business
 
 26 The Ottoman Empire [ch. 
 
 correspondence conducted in Greek, as the most useful and 
 widest spoken idiom of the near east. Foreigners therefore 
 might be excused for considering the Greek Church as 
 co-extensive with the Greek race and for reckoning up the 
 Christian population of the Balkan peninsula at this period 
 as collectively " Greeks." Rhegas poetically assumed that 
 " all the Macedonians " would " rise together," that " Bulgarians 
 and Albanians, Serbs and Roumanians " would " draw the 
 sword " for the cause of Greece and liberty. Until our 
 own day, enthusiasts alone imagined the beautiful picture 
 of the Christian races of the east united against the Turk. 
 For the cardinal difficulty of the eastern question always 
 had been, before the Balkan League of 191 2, the mutual 
 animosities of these very same Christian races. For the 
 Bulgarians sought to free themselves not only from the 
 political domination of the Turks, but from the ecclesiastical 
 authority of the Greeks ; and in our time the quarrels of the 
 Patriarchists and Exarchists have been quite as serious as 
 those of Mussulmans and Christians. 
 
 Apart altogether from their ecclesiastical influence, the 
 Greeks found many profitable careers open to them in 
 the Turkish service. Their superior intelligence and linguistic 
 skill enabled them to attain distinction as dragomans and 
 envoys of the Porte. Their happy hunting-ground was beyond 
 the Danube in the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, 
 where thrones could be bought by the great Phanariote 
 families of Constantinople and fortunes could be made out 
 of the administration. It was noticed by travellers that the 
 Greeks of the Turkish capital were less moral than those of 
 the islands ; and the descriptions which contemporaries have 
 left us of the Phanar, the quarter of that city where the 
 Patriarchate was situated, represent it at this period as an 
 academy of intrigue — the only weapon by which the weak 
 can circumvent the strong. Greek historians accuse the 
 Phanariotes of pride towards their own fellow-countrymen,
 
 i] The Hospodars 27 
 
 and of forgetting that their own position depended upon the 
 uncertain favour of a tyrant. Indeed, few portions of oriental 
 history are so unedifying as that which records the reigns of 
 the Phanariote Hospodars at Bucharest and Jassy during 
 a large part of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. 
 The luxury of the two alien princes contrasted as strongly 
 with the poverty of their subjects as did their proud demeanour 
 to the Roumanians with their enforced humility to the Turks. 
 "The two Hospodars," said a Turkish proverb, "are the eyes 
 of the Ottoman empire, turned towards Europe." They were, 
 in fact, the real foreign secretaries of the Sultan ; but they 
 betrayed their master, whenever it suited their own purpose 
 to play the game of Austria or Russia at his expense. The 
 chief aim of the Hospodar of Wallachia, the richer principality, 
 was to keep his place and make money out of it; the chief 
 object of the Hospodar of Moldavia was to obtain promotion 
 to Bucharest. Thus, the two became bitter rivals, while all 
 the time there were hungry place-hunters at Constantinople, 
 eager to dispossess them both. Under this system, these 
 two provinces, justly called "the granary of the capital," 
 became perhaps the most miserable part of the whole empire. 
 Nature had done much for the great plains of the Danube, 
 the fine slopes of the Carpathians ; but the government had 
 ruined the country for the poor Roumanian peasant. His 
 songs are full of lamentations over his woes and of denuncia- 
 tions of the oppressors who caused them — the Turk, who was 
 his over-lord, the Russian, who came to "deliver" him in the 
 name of religion, the Jew, who plundered him, the Phanariote, 
 who misgoverned him under the authority of the Sultan. But 
 it is only fair to recognise the diplomatic ability, the superior 
 culture, the greater refinement, and the political experience of 
 the Phanariotes, who furnished to the Greek revolution its 
 leading statesman, in the person of Alexander Mavrokordatos, 
 and contributed a valuable element to the society of the young 
 Greek kingdom.
 
 28 The Ottoman Empire [ch. 
 
 In Greece itself, though there were no such brilliant 
 openings for talent as in Moldavia and Wallachia, scope was 
 found for the administrative abilities of the natives. The 
 primates, or kodjabashis, formed a kind of official aristocracy, 
 whose business it was to assess the share of the taxes that 
 each person had to pay. They were agents of the Turkish 
 dignitaries, who farmed the taxes, and, in some respects, 
 imitated their Turkish patrons. In the Peloponnese, where 
 local administration was better organised than elsewhere, 
 there was, even under the Turks, some attempt at self- 
 government. Every village elected a head-man ; and these 
 head-men collectively with the townsfolk elected representatives, 
 who chose the primate of the province. All the primates 
 resided at Tripolitsa, the capital ; and their interests were 
 represented by a delegate at Constantinople. Here and there 
 Greek communities enjoyed even greater privileges. The 
 island of Chios was the most favoured of them all. Before 
 the Turkish conquest, it had been governed by a Genoese 
 mercantile company — the first instance of one of those 
 chartered companies so common in our own day. The 
 Turks continued the enlightened Genoese system of govern- 
 ment ; and the Chiotes were better off than any other Greeks 
 at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The three 
 " Nautical Islands " of Hydra, Spetsai, and Psara, the nurseries 
 of the future Greek fleet, almost unknown before the eighteenth 
 century, had suddenly risen to be flourishing communities, 
 where the sailors had a share in the ships and their cargoes. 
 At this time H^dra was governed by George Boiilgares, 
 a capable administrator, Spe'tsai by a similar local official, 
 known as a zampites (or " policeman "), and Psara by a 
 council of "elders." Tenos, after five centuries of Venetian 
 rule, was another example of a Greek island, in the affairs of 
 which the Turks interfered but little ; while Naxos, once the 
 capital of a Catholic duchy, retained, together with some 
 vestiges of Latin civilisation, the right to govern itself according
 
 i] Privileged Districts 29 
 
 to its own customs. The 1 2 southern Sporades had enjoyed 
 special privileges, ratified by successive Sultans since the 
 conquest of Rhodes. In the mountainous districts of Pindus 
 and Olympus, the Christians had another and more dangerous 
 privilege, that of bearing arms, and so forming, under the 
 name of art/iatoloi, a local militia. In their " free villages," or 
 eleutherochbria (the name may still be found in that region), 
 they formed military communities, which in the eighteenth 
 century had excited the apprehensions of the government. 
 Repeated attempts were made to weaken them, but it was 
 not till the time of Ali of Joannina that these efforts were 
 successful. 
 
 The "24 hamlets of Volo," each with its school-house, 
 aroused the admiration of travellers ; while the flourishing 
 community of Ambelakia on the slopes of Ossa, thanks to 
 its dye-works, vied with the prosperity of the villages on 
 Pelion, till local jealousies and British competition ruined 
 Ambelakia and the sword of Ali destroyed the autonomy of 
 all the " 24 hamlets " save Zagora. On the peninsula of 
 Chalkidike a confederation of villages, the so-called Mademo- 
 choria, elected the local authorities ; while " the Holy Moun- 
 tain " of Athos enjoyed the privilege of self-government, and 
 the Turkish official, who resided at Karyes, the capital of this 
 theocratic republic, interfered in its affairs as little as the 
 Madem-aga in those of the Chalkidic confederacy. At the 
 extreme south of Greece, Maina, after the rising of 1770, was 
 governed by a local chief, appointed for life by the Sultan and 
 dignified with the title of bey ; and in practice the tribute 
 consisted of as much money as would lie on the flat blade 
 of a sabre. Levadeia, then the chief town in eastern Greece, 
 was governed by the local magnates, whose president re- 
 presented the town in all negotiations with the Turkish civil 
 and military authorities. Finally, Athens was the private 
 property of the Sultan, who let it out for life to the highest 
 bidder. The Turkish authorities consisted of the vdivode (or
 
 30 The Ottoman Empire [ch. i 
 
 "governor"), appointed by the Imperial Mint, the cadi (or 
 ''judge"), the mufti (or "bishop"), and the disdar-aga (or 
 " commander of the garrison "), who lived with his harem in 
 the Erechtheion. But the Athenians annually elected their 
 "elders"; and their own "agents" (eTrtVpoTroi) conducted the 
 business of the community with the Turkish officials. The 
 tyranny of Hajji Ali the Haseki, who repeatedly held the 
 office of voivode in the latter part of the eighteenth century, 
 had combined with two recent plagues to diminish the 
 prosperity and population of the city, which contained about 
 10,000 inhabitants. Even then Athens could boast an 
 historian in the person of John Venizelos, the Athenian 
 schoolmaster. 
 
 Thus, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, we find 
 religion, rather than race, the dividing line between the 
 subjects of the Sultan. The Mussulmans, whether Turks or 
 the descendants of Bulgarian, Bosnian, Albanian, or Cretan 
 converts from Christianity, formed a dominant caste; the 
 Christians, except the comparatively few Catholics in Bosnia, 
 Albania, Servia, Bulgaria, and in one or two of the Greek 
 islands, were classed together as Greeks, because they belonged 
 to the Greek Church and owned the spiritual authority of the 
 CEcumenical Patriarch. European statesmen, except perhaps 
 in the case of the Serbs, had scarcely become conscious of the 
 fact that the eastern question would have to consider the 
 claims of other Christian races of Turkey than the Greeks as 
 heirs to some part of the Turkish empire. The principle of 
 nationalities was not yet a powerful force in politics ; and the 
 career of Napoleon in the near east, as elsewhere, was its 
 negation.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 NAPOLEON IN THE NEAR EAST (1801-15) 
 
 The relations between the four great Powers and the Sultan 
 changed considerably during the early years of the nineteenth 
 century, for the selfish inconsistencies of Napoleon's policy 
 caused them to support or oppose the Turks according to the 
 requirements of the moment, without much regard for any 
 general principle. Turkey, like other countries, was simply 
 a pawn in the great game, which the Corsican played for his 
 own hand. 
 
 Both Great Britain and Russia reaped some reward for 
 their assistance to the Sultan against the invaders of Egypt. 
 The grateful Turks presented the Levant Company with the 
 site of the present British Embassy at Constantinople ; the 
 Russians obtained a more important concession, the so-called 
 hatti-sherif, or Imperial ordinance, of 1802, which provided 
 that the Hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia should not be 
 deposed without the consent of the Tsar, and that the term 
 of their office should be seven years. This provision was a 
 further increase of Russia's influence in the Danubian Princi- 
 palities, a step beyond the advantage gained by her at 
 Ainali-Kavak (see p. 8). The two Princes were now Russian 
 agents, and showed an independence of the Sultan which was 
 as marked as their servility towards the Tsar. 
 
 France was reconciled to Turkey in 1802 ; and Colonel 
 Sebastiani was sent on a special mission to the Levant, 
 ostensibly for the promotion of French trade, really to report
 
 32 Napoleon in the Near East [ch. 
 
 on the strategic importance of various places in the east. 
 In 1805 the treaty of Pressburg, by which Austria ceded to 
 Napoleon her lately acquired possessions in Dalmatia, gave 
 France the only footing she has ever had in the Balkan 
 peninsula. It was on this occasion that Talleyrand drew up 
 a famous memoir on the eastern question, in which he advised 
 the French Emperor to give Austria as compensation Moldavia 
 and Wallachia, and so bar the road to Constantinople against 
 the Russians. Had the idea been carried out, the history of 
 the near east would have been changed, and the war of 1877 
 might have never taken place. 
 
 The nine years' French occupation of Dalmatia has not 
 been adequately described by any English historian ; but it 
 deserves attention as an example of the mistakes which even 
 so great a genius as Napoleon I could make in the government 
 of a country placed on the confines of west and east. The 
 long Venetian rule over Dalmatia has left a permanent mark 
 on the coast towns ; but it was the policy of the Republic of 
 St Mark to repress Dalmatian trade and prevent the spread 
 of enlightened ideas. The Austrians during their first brief 
 ownership, from 1797 to 1805, had no time to effect much; 
 but they began to make roads, which were wholly wanting in 
 the Venetian times, though even in this respect they had not 
 accomplished much when the French succeeded them in the 
 administration of the province. Napoleon's emissaries had, 
 therefore, practically everything to create, and at first they 
 set about their work with considerable common-sense. But 
 there are two distinct periods in the French government of 
 Dalmatia, each of which has a separate character of its own 
 and represents a different aspect of Napoleonic policy. So 
 long as Dalmatia formed part of the Kingdom of Italy, from 
 1805 to 1809, the French Emperor, still dreaming of Balkan 
 conquests, and even of an advance on India, regarded the 
 lUyrian coast-line as an excellent base from which to start. 
 He realised the value of the harbour of Gravosa and the
 
 ii] The French in Dalmatia ^iZ 
 
 Bocche di Cattaro as future naval stations, and impressed upon 
 the distinguished men whom he sent to govern the Dalmatians 
 in those early years the necessity of adapting their methods 
 to the local requirements. Marmont and Dandolo, who 
 succeeded his first representative, Molitor, were, as an Austrian 
 historian has said, " the two most eminent administrators that 
 Dalmatia has ever had," but they were quite unable to 
 agree together ; the civilian thought the soldier an interfering 
 ignoramus, and the soldier treated the civilian as an unpractical 
 pedant. Yet both, in their way, did something for the benefit 
 of the province committed to their charge. Molitor had not 
 greatly altered the Austrian system, but Dandolo lost no time 
 in founding a newspaper, the first in Dalmatia, in starting a 
 high school, and in making a bid for the support of the 
 Orthodox clergy, who had hitherto been under the Catholics, 
 by giving them a bishop of their own persuasion. This 
 measure, which the Austrians had already meditated in order 
 to break the influence of Montenegro in Dalmatia, had, how- 
 ever, the effect of estranging the Catholics without securing 
 the gratitude of the Orthodox. When the Russians invaded 
 Dalmatia, the latter were their strongest supporters ; and 
 throughout the French occupation the Dalmatian clergy of 
 all denominations depicted the agents of Napoleon as atheists 
 and regicides, and used their vast influence with the ignorant 
 people against their rulers. Marmont, on the other hand, has 
 left a permanent reputation in the country as a road-maker ; 
 and the peasants still tell the marvellous tale how the French 
 general " mounted his horse and bade his soldiers make roads," 
 and how " when he dismounted, lo ! the roads were made.'' 
 A Frenchman, too, drew up an accurate chart of the difficult 
 Dalmatian coast, with its countless islands and dangerous 
 currents ; while another of his compatriots induced even the 
 conservative natives to recognise the advantages of vaccina- 
 tion, and so diminished the terrible scourge of most oriental 
 lands. 
 
 M. L. 3
 
 34 Napoleon in the Near East [ch. 
 
 After 1809 Napoleon's schemes changed, and he looked 
 upon Dalmatia merely as a nursery for tall soldiers and its 
 inhabitants as food for powder. Now, it is a curious fact that 
 the same people who had willingly furnished aid to Venice 
 in her last days resolutely refused to follow the standards of 
 the French Emperor. From first to last the conscription was 
 most unpopular in the country; and, when war broke out 
 between France and Austria in 1809, the Dalmatians rose 
 almost as one man against the French. From this time, too, 
 the country was treated without the smallest regard to its special 
 conditions. No longer a part of the Kingdom of Italy, but 
 forming, together with Ragusa, two of the seven " lUyrian 
 Provinces," it ceased to have a separate history from that of 
 the other dominions of Napoleon. The Illyrian kingdom, 
 composed as it was of five nationalities —Germans, Italians, 
 Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes — had no unity, while there was 
 nothing in common between the Norman or Breton peasant 
 and the Dalmatian fisherman. Yet the Dalmatian, no less 
 than the Norman and Breton, was now subjected to the rigid 
 and unbending Code Napoleon ; what was good for France was 
 declared to be good for Dalmatia ; and, in the room of men 
 like Dandolo and Marmont, inexperienced doctrinaires or 
 mechanical clerks were sent to govern the people on hard-and- 
 fast rules, laid down in Paris, without the least regard for the 
 past history or present needs of the governed. The elaborate 
 organisation of the "Illyrian Provinces" in 181 1 was a 
 complete failure, as the French candidly admitted ; everything 
 was sacrificed to the desire for centralisation \ and when, 
 in 181 4, the Austrians re-entered Dalmatia they were hailed 
 as liberators. Moreover, the trade of the country suffered 
 greatly from the British cruisers during the struggle against 
 Napoleon, though there was some compensating benefit to 
 those Dalmatian islands — Lissa, Curzola, Lesina, and the 
 Ragusan archipelago — which were regularly occupied by our 
 forces between 181 2 and 181 5. The important naval station
 
 ii] The British in Dalmatia 35 
 
 of Lissa, in particular, where the British fleet defeated the 
 French in 181 1, became a centre of trade during our brief 
 occupation. In two years its population was nearly trebled ; 
 all the nationalities hostile to Napoleon found shelter there ; 
 and at no period of its history, before or since, has the island 
 known such prosperity. Curzola was provided by the British 
 governor with local institutions; and an inscription still preserves 
 his memory there and expresses the gratitude of the inhabitants. 
 In the five Ragusan islands the old Ragusan laws were restored 
 by our representatives, and native nobles placed at the head 
 of their respective administrations. Britain has no cause 
 to be ashamed of the part she played at a critical time in a 
 country whose manly sailors are scarcely inferior to her own. 
 But, if the French occupation of Dalmatia has left little 
 constructive work, except Marmont's roads, behind it, it de- 
 stroyed for ever two interesting survivals of the middle ages 
 — the Republics of Poljitza and Ragusa. It is curious that 
 Napoleon, who spared the tiny Italian commonwealth of San 
 Marino, should have swept away its Illyrian counterpart. The 
 mountain-republic of Poljitza, with a population of between 
 6000 and 7000, had maintained its independence under Hun- 
 garian and Venetian protection for centuries. Governed by 
 a highly aristocratic constitution, and tempering its constitu- 
 tional theories with frequent appeals to violence, as befitted a 
 Balkan state, it was unwise enough to take sides with the 
 Russians, who hounded it on against the French in 1807. 
 The result was the destruction of the Republic and its 
 incorporation with the rest of Dalmatia — an arrangement never 
 since disturbed, although, on St George's day 191 1, by order 
 of the Emperor, the three communes, which occupied the 
 territory of the Republic, were formed into one, having its 
 exact historic boundaries. More tragic still was the end of 
 Ragusa, a Republic which had existed in one form or another 
 for over eleven centuries, and won the proud title of "The 
 South Slavonic Athens." At this time the Republic numbered
 
 36 Napoleon in the Near East [ch. 
 
 35,000 inhabitants, and consisted of the city of the same name, 
 the town of Ragusa Vecchia, the district of Canali between 
 that place and the Bocche di Cattaro, the beautiful valley of 
 the Ombla, the long peninsula of Sabbioncello, and the five 
 islands of Lagosta, Meleda, Giupana, Mezzo, and Calamotta. 
 The Austrians had not touched its liberties and had refused 
 to aid the refractory Canalesi, who were discontented with the 
 republican government. But, at the news of the treaty of 
 Pressburg, the Russians had occupied the Bocche di Cattaro ; 
 and Ragusa was thus placed between them and the French. 
 The latter declared their intention of occupying its territory, 
 but of evacuating it as soon as the Russians should have 
 withdrawn. This promise was wilfully broken by Napoleon, 
 whose officers, Lauriston and Marmont, seem both to have 
 been ashamed of the transaction. The siege of Ragusa by the 
 Russians and their allies, the Montenegrins and the Canalesi, 
 did much harm to the suburbs, but was raised by the French 
 under Molitor. Once, however, in possession of the city, the 
 French showed no sign of going. The lower orders of Ragusa 
 were in favour of French annexation as an alternative to the 
 aristocratic rule of their fellow countrymen. The nobles made 
 a final effort to save the commonwealth, and in vain appealed 
 to Austria and Turkey. The standard of San Biagio, patron 
 of Ragusa, ceased to float above the famous statue of Orlando ; 
 and on the last day of January 1808, a French colonel informed 
 the assembled Senate that "the Republic of Ragusa has 
 ceased to exist." Marmont was created Due de Raguse ; and 
 the Republican territory became, first, a part of the Kingdom 
 of Italy, and then one of the " Illyrian Provinces." Six years 
 later Ragusa was freed from the French by the combined 
 Austrian and British forces ; but, though the nobles hoped 
 for a revival of the Republic, the people welcomed Austrian, 
 as they had welcomed French, rule, and Ragusa has since 
 remained, like the rest of Dalmatia, under the sway of the 
 Hapsburgs.
 
 ii] . The Montenegrins 3 7 
 
 One other result of the French occupation of Dalmatia was 
 to bring Montenegro for the first time within the circle of 
 European politics. At the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 the warriors of the Black Mountain were quite outside the 
 pale of civilisation, and passed their time in almost incessant 
 struggles against the Turks. But their traditional friendship 
 with Russia made them willing to assist the latter power in its 
 seizure of the Bocche di Cattaro in 1806 ; and, as we have 
 seen, they took part in the siege of Ragusa. The French 
 found the Prince-Bishop of Montenegro, Peter I, so tiresome 
 an opponent that they in vain endeavoured to appease him 
 by offering to make him Patriarch of Dalmatia ; and, after the 
 treaty of Tilsit had given them undisturbed possession of the 
 Bocche, they thought it well to be on good terms with so 
 awkward a neighbour. But the wary Peter, though he granted 
 Marmont an interview, declined to receive a French consul 
 at Cetinje ; and, when Vialla de Sommieres was instructed by 
 Napoleon to draw up a report on Montenegro, he had to obtain 
 his political information under the pretext of botanising. The 
 Prince-Bishop would not hear of the French Emperor's offer 
 of his protection ; and, as soon as the news of the retreat from 
 Moscow reached him, he prepared to attack the garrisons of 
 Napoleon, who had planned the wholesale deportation of 
 Montenegrins to the Low Countries. Peter gladly co-operated 
 with the British fleet in the siege of Cattaro in 18 13, but his 
 tenure of that coveted place was of short duration. Next year, 
 • on the advice of the Tsar, he restored it to Austria, which has 
 ever since held it. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the other side of the Balkan peninsula, the 
 diplomacy of Napoleon had not been idle. In 1806, in 
 consequence of the deposition of the Hospodars of Moldavia 
 and Wallachia, without the consent of Russia, at Sebastiani's 
 suggestion, the Russian troops entered the Principalities, and 
 the first Russo-Turkish war of the century began. The Tsar 
 had legal right on his side, for the deposition of the Hospodars
 
 38 Napoleon m the Near East [ch. 
 
 was a direct violation of the ordinance of 1802 ; and in Great 
 Britain he found a willing ally. A British ultimatum in 1807 
 demanded the expulsion of Sebastiani, and a declaration of 
 war against France, the alliance of Turkey with Russia and 
 Great Britain, the cession of the Danubian Principalities to the 
 Tsar, and the surrender of the Turkish fleet, together with the 
 forts at the Dardanelles, to the British admiral. As the Sultan, 
 encouraged by the French, rejected this ultimatum, the British 
 fleet entered the Dardanelles, as Elphinston had advised in 
 1770, and appeared before Constantinople. But the admiral 
 allowed himself to be entangled in those negotiations which 
 Turkish statesmen know so well how to spin out. Had he 
 shown the decision of another British admiral in Crete ninety- 
 one years later, the world might have witnessed the spectacle 
 of a Britibh occupation of Constantinople. But he wasted 
 precious time in despatch-writing ; and, while he wrote, the 
 Turks, urged on by the French and encouraged by the Sultan 
 in person, worked at the fortifications. Admiral Duckworth 
 had to retreat beyond the Dardanelles ; Constantinople was 
 saved. Occupied with Napoleon, neither Russia nor Great 
 Britain could prosecute a war against Turkey with vigour ; and 
 the preoccupations of the Powers seemed, as usual, to be the 
 best safeguard of the Sultan. But suddenly the world learnt 
 that Napoleon and the Tsar had become reconciled by the 
 peace of Tilsit, and that, in order to prosecute his plans 
 against England, the French Emperor had changed his eastern 
 policy, and was ready to sacrifice Turkey to the requirements 
 of his ambition. Only a few months earlier he had declared 
 it to be his " mission to save her." 
 
 The scheme for the partition of the Turkish empire in 
 Europe, which was sketched out by Napoleon in his interview 
 with the Tsar Alexander I at Tilsit, was not more practical 
 than such plans have been in later days. But, rough as it 
 was, it still contained one or two pregnant suggestions, which 
 even now are not without value in the discussion of the
 
 ii] Peace of Tilsit 39 
 
 eastern question. Napoleon was willing to cede Bessarabia, 
 Moldavia, Wallachia, and North Bulgaria to Russia, taking as 
 his own share Albania, Thessaly as far as the gulf of Salonika, 
 the Morea and Crete, while Austria was to be appeased with 
 a part of Bosnia and Servia. The heir of Peter the Great and 
 Catherine II was not, however, content with his portion of the 
 spoils. He was willing to allow Napoleon to take, in addition 
 to the already large French claims, the islands of the Archi- 
 pelago, Syria, and Egypt, if Russia could have Roumelia and 
 Constantinople. We have it on the authority of an eye-witness, 
 the French Emperor's private secretary, that Napoleon replied 
 by indignantly placing his finger on the spot on the map, which 
 represented the Turkish capital, and exclaiming : " Constanti- 
 nople ! Constantinople ! never ! for it is the empire of the 
 world." Subsequent events have perhaps diminished the 
 strategic value of that marvellous site ; but few will deny that 
 it is still the goal of Russian ambition, though of all the 
 Turkish provinces assigned to Russia at Tilsit, Bessarabia is 
 the only one that she has definitely incorporated in her 
 empire. France, at that time in occupation of Dalmatia, and 
 about to re-enter into possession of the Ionian Islands, might 
 not unnaturally aspire to further acquisitions in the near east 
 — an aspiration now abandoned ; while Napoleon's concession 
 of part of Bosnia to Austria was an anticipation of the Berhn 
 Treaty of 1878. By a secret article the two Emperors pledged 
 themselves, in the event of the failure of French diplomacy 
 to make its influence felt with the new Sultan, to "free all 
 European Turkey, except Roumelia and the capital, from the 
 yoke and vexations of the Turks." No time was lost in 
 preparing for this philanthropic partition. Marmont was 
 ordered to procure information about Bosnia, Macedonia, 
 Thrace, Greece, and Albania, their resources and their military 
 situation, and to be less friendly with the pasha of Bosnia, 
 at whose residence the French had a consul-general. As 
 another consequence of the Franco-Russian treaty, the French
 
 40 Napoleon in the Near East [ch. 
 
 were reinstated in the Ionian Islands. The possession of the 
 Bocche di Cattaro and Corfu seemed, indeed, to be a prelude 
 to a grand campaign against Turkey, which might, as a British 
 diplomatist wrote, be a prelude to a still grander campaign 
 against the rest of Europe. 
 
 The lonians, who had welcomed the democratic French 
 with enthusiasm in 1797, as an agreeable relief from the pride 
 of the Venetians, showed themselves completely indifferent 
 to the second French occupation ten years later. In the 
 interval, under the unpopular protectorate of Russia and 
 Turkey, the islands on March 21, 1800, had been erected into 
 a " Septinsular Republic," which, though shorn of their former 
 continental dependencies, formed the first autonomous Greek 
 state of modern times. Unfortunately, this Ionian common- 
 wealth had been indulging in the luxury of constant changes 
 of administration. Three constitutions had been proclaimed 
 in two years ; and a small revolution had demonstrated that 
 Corfu had not greatly altered since the days when it furnished 
 Thucydides with moral maxims on the wickedness of civic 
 strife. At first a beautiful scheme of federation was tried. 
 A federal Senate, whose president was styled drchon, met at 
 Corfu, and a local council of nobles sat in each island. But 
 the democrats found this arrangement too aristocratic, and the 
 federalists found that it tended to separation. Cephalonia and 
 Ithaca proclaimed their independence, and Zante hoisted the 
 British flag. A National Assembly was held at Corfu, and the 
 other islands were left to look after themselves. Then Russia 
 intervened and granted one of those constitutions which she 
 is fond of bestowing on her " spheres of influence " outside her 
 direct dominions. But the returning French made short work 
 with Ionian self-government. Napoleon was more than ever 
 convinced of the strategic importance of Corfu ; " the greatest 
 misfortune that could happen to me," he said, " would be its 
 loss." So he now organised the Ionian Islands on a purely 
 military footing ; the native Senate had no power, and the
 
 ii] The British in the Ionian Islands 41 
 
 French governed absolutely, to the great disgust of the in- 
 habitants. But this second French occupation was not much 
 longer than the first. The British took Zante, Cephalonia, 
 Ithaca, and Cerigo in October 1809, with the object of 
 protecting Sicily, then occupied by our troops, and Santa 
 Mavra in April 18 10. Brigadier Oswald organised these 
 islands, and military governors were appointed. But, as the 
 frequent changes of those ofiticials caused inconvenience, 
 Lieut.-General James Campbell was appointed Civil and 
 Military Governor. Two out of the seven islands — Corfu and 
 Paxo — alone remained to the French. Paxo was taken in 
 February 18 14, but the blockade of Corfii proved futile. Napo- 
 leon wrote that " Corfii acquires more importance every day ; 
 for the English, if they were its masters, would be masters of 
 the Adriatic too." But, if he prized it as " the key of the 
 Adriatic," if an Ionian Academy was founded under his auspices, 
 he did nothing for its economic interests. The Corfiote trade 
 was ruined by the blockade ; the superb olive-trees of the 
 island were cut down by the French troops ; and when the 
 French government ordered its surrender to the British upon 
 the first fall of Napoleon in pursuance of the convention of 
 Paris of April 23, 1814, an order executed on June 24, the 
 French administration, though the French governor Donzelot 
 personally left behind him pleasant memories, had con- 
 tented the islanders as little as that of Venice or that of 
 Russia. 
 
 Napoleon's designs for the partition of Turkey at Tilsit 
 were modified in 1808, when he again met the Tsar at Erfurt. 
 He had learned to see the hopelessness of any large plan of 
 operations in the east, while he had the west upon his hands. 
 He now conceded Moldavia and Wallachia alone to Russia, 
 took nothing for himself from Turkey, and joined with the 
 Tsar in guaranteeing the other Turkish provinces. The result 
 of these negotiations was to induce Britain and Turkey to end 
 their mutual hostilities, and in 1 809 to sign the peace of the
 
 42 Napoleon in the Near East [cii. 
 
 Dardanelles. But in spite of a brief armistice, the Russo- 
 Turkish war continued. The Russians once more found that 
 it was not an easy matter to conquer their hereditary enemies; 
 but the victory rested with them. They crossed the Danube, 
 and, more fortunate than in 1854, took the strong fortress of 
 Silistria. The Danubian towns of Nikopolis, Svishtov, and 
 Rustchuk passed into their hands, when the changing policy 
 of Napoleon caused them to pause. The Tsar, foreseeing the 
 French Emperor's impending attack upon him, had to withdraw 
 troops for the defence of his own dominions. As in 1829, 
 so in 181 2, Russia played what the "new diplomacy" would 
 call " a game of bluff." She pretended to have in her hands 
 cards which she did not possess. She pretended that her 
 differences with Napoleon would be arranged peacefully, and, 
 having gained a considerable success over the Turks, expressed 
 a willingness to negotiate. The Turkish government, mindful 
 of the way in which Napoleon had thrown over his good friend, 
 the Sultan, at Tilsit, paid no heed to the arguments of the 
 French agents in favour of continuing the war. The Russian 
 demands were moderate, and they were accepted. There was 
 no question now of a Russian annexation of the Danubian 
 Principalities as a whole. But by the treaty of Bucharest in 
 t8i2 the Tsar received the territory between the Dniester and 
 the Pruth, which is known by the generic name of Bessarabia. 
 For the Roumanians the cession of Bessarabia was a terrible 
 blow. Austria had taken from them the Bukovina; now 
 Russia took another piece of their land. During the six years 
 of the war they had learned to dread their " liberators, ' who 
 were quartered upon them, who made them labour at the 
 fortifications and provide waggons and oxen for the transport 
 service, who extorted large sums from the nobles, sold titles 
 to the highest bidder, flooded the country with a debased 
 currency, and favoured the Greek monks at the expense of 
 the natives. The full information which we possess on the 
 state of Moldavia and Wallachia at this period proves the
 
 ii] Treaty of Bucharest 43 
 
 utter misery of the poor, the utter corruption of the rich, the 
 utter demoraUsation of all classes under the Russian occupation. 
 Wherever the Russian armies passed " the earth groaned," 
 says a chronicler • and, to crown all, in spite of the protests 
 of the native aristocracy and its efforts to convince the Porte 
 of its folly in yielding so rich a prize, Bessarabia was to go to 
 swell the dominions of the Tsar, and the Pruth was to become 
 the frontier of his efnpire. 
 
 The treaty of Bucharest was a fatal blunder on the part 
 of Turkey ; less than a month after its signature Napoleon 
 formally declared war against Russia ; and the Sultan, regretting 
 his undue haste in making peace, disgraced his Grand Vizier 
 and cut off the heads of his plenipotentiaries. But the influence 
 of Great Britain, once more in the ascendant at Constantinople 
 and once more directed to the great object of breaking the 
 power of the French colossus, restrained the ardour of the 
 war party. Moreover, the internal state of Turkey was such 
 as to demand the undivided attention of the government. 
 Servia was in arms against the Sultan ; Ali of Joannina was 
 practically independent in Epirus ; Pasvanoglu had found a 
 successor at Vidin ; great chieftains kept armies of their own 
 in Thrace and Macedonia. Still, it is probable that, as at the 
 treaty of Falksen a century earlier, so at Bucharest in 181 2, 
 the Turks, without much risk, might have obtained better 
 terms. On both occasions they were sold by their agents ; 
 on both occasions Russia got better terms than she could have 
 expected. The Sultan, it is true, endeavoured to recover 
 Bessarabia through the good offices of Austria at the congress 
 of Vienna after the fall of Napoleon. But he only received 
 the reply that such a retrocession was out of the question. 
 Russia, on her part, did all she could to prevent the inhabitants 
 of her new province from emigrating to join their brothers in 
 Moldavia ; and so closely did she guard the frontier that the 
 Moldaves, accustomed to draw their supplies of food from 
 Bessarabia, suffered great privations.
 
 44 Napoleon in the Near East [cm. 
 
 The career of Napoleon was over, and but little of his 
 great plans of conquest in the east had been accomplished ; 
 even of that little practically nothing remained. His seven 
 " Illyrian Provinces " were restored to Austria ; the Ionian 
 Islands were, after a long discussion, erected into an indepen- 
 dent state under the protection of Great Britain. At the 
 congress of Vienna the British plenipotentiary had proposed 
 that the islands should be placed under an Austrian protectorate 
 — a proposal which had much to commend it. As the heir 
 of Venice, the Austrian Emperor could claim to have inherited 
 the former Venetian possessions, while the master of CorfCi 
 commanded the approach to the Adriatic and would protect 
 the Austrian seaboard in Dalmatia. This was, however, 
 opposed by the Tsar, who urged that the wishes of the 
 islanders for a British protectorate should be respected. For 
 this argument there was much to be said. Great Britain had 
 conquered six of the seven islands from the French ; and her 
 troops were occupying the seventh by virtue of its surrender 
 by the new French government. At the congress of Paris the 
 British representatives accordingly proposed that the seven 
 islands and their former dependencies on the mainland and 
 elsewhere should pass under the complete sovereignty of 
 King George III. The Russian plenipotentiary. Count Capo 
 dTstria, himself a Corfiote and destined to be the future 
 President of Greece, insisted, however, on the freedom and 
 independence of the islands, and was willing to cede no more 
 than a protectorate over them and their former dependencies 
 to Great Britain. The final arrangement, signed at Paris in 
 1815, was that the Seven Islands and the small islets depending 
 on them should form an independent state, under the de- 
 nomination of "the United States of the Ionian Islands," and 
 under a British protectorate. As Lord Bathurst, the Colonial 
 Secretary of that date, under whose department the islands 
 were placed, saw clearly enough, this arrangement was unsatis- 
 factory and incomplete. It placed the British government
 
 ii] The Ionian Islands 45 
 
 in an invidious position, because it enabled the lonians, who 
 were not easily contented, to represent Great Britain as a 
 tyrannical power whose main object was to repress their 
 liberties. Moreover, the settlement was incomplete in another 
 way. For the former dependencies of the islands on the 
 mainland, which had been awarded to Turkey, as we have 
 seen, by the Russo-Turkish convention of 1800, were allowed 
 to remain a part of the Ottoman empire. Parga alone of them 
 was still unconquered ; and the subsequent fate of that place 
 showed what an error had been committed by the British 
 diplomatists in this affair. Count Capo d'Istria, while un- 
 willing to grant Great Britain the absolute sovereignty over 
 the Ionian Islands and their dependencies on the continent, 
 was nevertheless most anxious that the latter should not be 
 severed from the former under his scheme for a British pro- 
 tectorate. The British, however, contended that if they could 
 not have the absolute sovereignty they would have nothing to 
 do with the continental dependencies of the islands. They 
 were undesirous of mixing themselves up in Turkish affairs 
 and of disturbing the Turkish occupation. Unlike the 
 Venetians, who had styled those places in Epirus " the eyes 
 and ears of the Republic " on the mainland, the British 
 showed in 18 15, as at much later periods, that they cared very 
 little for, perhaps understood very little about, that Balkan 
 peninsula which Napoleon had tried to partition, but which 
 even his genius had found an insoluble problem.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SERVIAN RISINGS (1804-17) 
 
 While Napoleon was sketching the dismemberment of the 
 Turkish empire in Europe, that empire was being shaken by a 
 revolution from within. Servia, which since its final absorption 
 in Turkey in 1459 had given the government comparatively httle 
 trouble, was convulsed by a movement which, from small be- 
 ginnings, led to the complete independence of that country and 
 heralded the struggles of other Balkan races for freedom. 
 
 In its first stage the Servian rising was not directed against 
 the Turkish government, but against the Janissaries ; and the 
 Serbs long protested that they were loyal to the Sultan, and 
 only wished to live in peace under his paternal rule. Their 
 land had suffered more than any other part of Europe from 
 the presence of the terrible band of men which was at this 
 time the scourge of the Turkish empire and the dread of 
 neighbouring realms. As the Belgrade pashalik, like that of 
 Bagdad, was far removed from the capital, it was the custom 
 to send thither the most turbulent members of the Janissaries' 
 corps. They had constantly outraged the Hungarian frontier ; 
 and at the treaty of Svishtov it had been stipulated that they 
 should be withdrawn from Servia. Many of them entered the 
 service of Pasvanoglu ; but, when that rebel was induced to 
 make peace with his sovereign and appointed pasha of Vidin 
 in 1799, he stipulated that the Porte should fulfil the promise 
 which he had made to the Janissaries and restore them to 
 the pashalik of Belgrade. The Porte, anxious to weaken
 
 CH. Ill] Condition of the Serbs 47 
 
 Pasvanoglu's forces or else desirous to pacify him at the cost 
 of the Serbs, consented in an evil hour; and the Janissaries 
 came back to their old hunting-ground. Austria was too 
 much occupied with western affairs to protest against the 
 infraction of the treaty ; and it seemed as if the former bad 
 state of things had returned with the returning Janissaries. 
 But a great deal had happened since they had left Servia. 
 The Serbs had been governed for the last five years by a 
 pasha, Hajji Mustapha, so mild and just, that they called him 
 their " mother," and the Turks branded him as a "renegade." 
 No Turkish ruler was ever more beloved by his Christian 
 subjects. With an enlightenment rare in the east, he did all 
 he could to encourage trade, put down violence with a firm 
 hand, and allowed the Serbs to rebuild their ruinous churches 
 and monasteries. He had armed them against Pasvanoglu 
 and his Janissaries for the defence of Servia during one of that 
 rebel's invasions ; and their national spirit, already kindled by 
 the late Austro-Turkish war, was thus further aroused. It was 
 in this state of public feeling that the Janissaries arrived. 
 
 Those masterful pretorians at once saw that, so long as 
 Hajji Mustapha lived, they could not do as they pleased, and 
 they lost little time in plotting his destruction. Another 
 invasion of Pasvanoglu gave them the desired opportunity; 
 and, in 1801, at a moment when Belgrade was denuded of 
 troops, they murdered the pasha in the fortress, and their four 
 chiefs divided his pashalik among themselves. The Sultan, 
 occupied with the war against France, was unable to send an 
 army against them ; and, at their request, replaced the dead 
 pasha by a successor, who, as an ex-captain of Janissaries, was 
 their willing tool. The leaders now reassumed the title of 
 dahi, and governed the people, Mohammedan as well as 
 Christian, in the most arbitrary manner. The administration 
 of justice was in their hands; and, in order further to secure 
 their position, they invited kindred spirits from Bosnia and 
 Albania to plunder the province, which they treated as their
 
 48 The Servian Risings [ch. 
 
 private property. No wonder that brigandage, which had 
 almost ceased under Hajji Mustapha, began to reappear ; and 
 it was calculated that a tenth of the population took to the 
 mountains. The Mohammedan spahi, seeing their privileges 
 as landowners threatened, now joined hands with the Christians 
 against the common oppressors. Through their instrumentality 
 a petition was sent to the Sultan setting forth the grievances 
 of the Serbs ; and the Sultan replied by threatening the Janis- 
 saries, that, if they continued in their evil practices, he would 
 send against them an army, " not of Turks, but of men of 
 another faith and another race." By a process of exhaustion 
 the Janissaries arrived at the conclusion that these words 
 could only refer to the Serbs ; and they at once resolved to 
 anticipate an attack by murdering all the prominent men of 
 that race. Early in 1804 they carried out their plan. But 
 the massacre of the Servian head-men provoked the Servian 
 revolution ; and, as the result proved, Alexa Nenadovich and 
 the other victims of the Janissaries died for their country just 
 as much as if they had fallen fighting on the field of battle. 
 The news spread like wildfire ; the people flew to arms ; and, 
 as usually happens when a leader is wanted, a leader was 
 found in the person of George Petrovich, better known as 
 Kara George. 
 
 Of the two great men, Kara George and Milosh, who 
 have left a name in the history of modern Servia, the 
 former was born about 1760 in the cottage of a peasant, 
 who made a living by keeping bees. "Black" George, as 
 his comrades called him, alike in Turkish and Serb, from 
 his dark features, grew up in the grim Servian forest without 
 learning to read or write. He served as a swine-herd and 
 made a little money in what was then, as now, the chief 
 branch of Servian trade. When the war seemed about to 
 break out between Austria and Turkey in 1787, he fled 
 with his family to Austria, and, as his father refused to quit 
 his native land, either shot him, or had him shot, according
 
 Ill] Kara George 49 
 
 to the most favourable version, at the command of his mother. 
 He took part in the war with the volunteers on the Austrian 
 side, became a brigand, and then, at the peace, fled again 
 to Austria. Hajji Mustapha's mild rule attracted him back 
 to Servia ; and at this period he was living quietly as a pig- 
 dealer in the village of Topola. When the dahi resolved upon 
 the massacre of the principal Serbs, his was one of the names 
 on their black list. But he escaped their attempts to kill him 
 and became the saviour of his countrymen and the avenger of 
 their wrongs. 
 
 In February 1804 a body of Serbs assembled at Orashatz 
 and chose him as their chief. Kara George was unwilling to 
 accept the post, for he felt that his ungovernable temper would 
 disqualify him for the management of men. But his fellows 
 would have no other leader, so he finally accepted their offer 
 and at once issued an appeal to the Servian head-men, wealthy 
 yeomen and tradesmen to join him. At first there was a 
 tendency to view the rising with suspicion. The Serbs thought 
 that the revolutionists might be only common brigands, who 
 followed the approved Balkan method of robbing the people 
 whom they claimed to liberate. In the district of Valjevo, 
 however, two influential men, Jacob and Matthew Nenadovich, 
 respectively brother and son of the Nenadovich murdered by 
 the Janissaries, raised the standard of revolt, and spread the 
 pious fraud that Kara George was the accredited agent of the 
 Sultan, and that it was their duty, as his Majesty's loyal 
 subjects, to aid the Servian chief against the rebellious Janis- 
 saries. This argument convinced the people that the movement 
 had the Sultan's sanction, and no further incentives were 
 needed. Selim was known to be a reformer and an enemy 
 of the Janissaries ; and it was against them, not against him, 
 that the Serbs had a grievance. It is a striking proof of the 
 peculiar character of the Servian revolution in its first stage, 
 that the leaders everywhere ordered their followers to spare 
 those Mussulmans who had no connexion with the Janissaries. 
 M. L. 4
 
 50 The Servian Risings [ch. 
 
 The latter at once saw their danger, and in vain tried to bribe 
 Kara George, who refused alike their money and their promises, 
 unless the latter were guaranteed by the Austrian government. 
 At that time the Serbs regarded Austria as their natural 
 protectress. She was their nearest neighbour ; she had occupied 
 their country on more than one occasion ; she had thousands 
 of Servian subjects. To her accordingly the Servian leaders 
 turned. Kara George even went so far as to offer the whole 
 of Servia to the Emperor and to ask him to send some 
 member of the Imperial house as a viceroy. The offer was 
 tempting, but it was refused ; and the Hungarian statesman 
 who, in our own day, became the regenerator of Bosnia, 
 thought the refusal a mistake. A more moderate suggestion — 
 that Austria should attempt to reconcile the two parties in 
 Servia — was, however, adopted ; and a conference was held at 
 Semlin, under Austrian auspices, between the Servian leaders 
 and the dahi. The conference was a failure, but the Austrians 
 continued to favour the cause of the insurgents. The authorities 
 at the frontier allowed arms and provisions to be smuggled 
 across it; numbers of Hungarian Serbs joined the revolutionists; 
 and, while the poet Obradovich placed half his property at 
 their disposal, officers who had fought in the Austrian army 
 furnished much-needed strategical knowledge. Everywhere 
 the insurgents were successful; and, at last, the Sultan, becoming 
 alarmed, resolved to send the vizier of Bosnia, who had 
 already had experience in Servia, to restore order in that 
 pashalik. At the vizier's approach the dahi fled to the island 
 of Ada Kaleh in the Danube near Orsova, a fortress which is 
 even now one of the curiosities of the near east. Here they 
 were killed by the Serbs ; and with their death it might have 
 seemed that the insurrection, having attained its object, would 
 collapse. 
 
 But the Serbs, flushed with victory, were not content with 
 what would have contented them a short time before. They 
 insisted that an Austrian commissioner should be appointed
 
 Ill] Russia and the Serbs 5 i 
 
 to see that the agreement between the Sultan and his subjects 
 was faithfully carried out, while the vizier declared such an 
 interference by a foreign Power in the internal affairs of his 
 master's dominions to be simply "impossible." No com- 
 promise seemed practicable, and the vizier returned to Bosnia, 
 leaving matters much as they were before. Having little faith 
 in the power of the Sultan to enforce reforms, and having 
 failed to induce Austria to break her treaty engagements with 
 Turkey and take their country under her protection, some of 
 the Servian leaders now bethought them of the two Slav states, 
 little Montenegro and big Russia. From Montenegro there 
 was nothing to be obtained, so Matthew Nenadovich and two 
 others set out on an embassy to the distant court of the great 
 Tsar. Kara George had threatened Austria that he would 
 apply elsewhere for help if she refused. The Metropolitan of 
 Karlovitz, the spiritual head of the Hungarian Serbs, one of 
 those intriguers common in the near east, who disguise the 
 politician under the robes of the priest, had already prepared 
 the way by submitting a memorandum to the Russian Minister 
 for Foreign Affairs, in which he advocated the constitution of 
 Servia, increased at Austrian expense by the addition of Syrmia 
 and an outlet on the sea at Cattaro, as an autonomous, tributary 
 Turkish province, governed by a Russian Grand-duke or a 
 Protestant Prince. But the Minister was inclined to favour 
 neither the scheme of the Metropolitan nor the prayers of the 
 deputation. At that moment Russia regarded it as desirable 
 to maintain the integrity of the Turkish empire ; and the only 
 advice of her Foreign Secretary was to petition the Sultan for 
 a redress of grievances. But the incident is important as 
 showing thus early the tendency of Servian politicians to play 
 off Russia against Austria, which has, almost ever since then, 
 been the key-note of their public affairs. 
 
 The Sultan, now thoroughly alarmed at the prospect of a 
 dismemberment of his empire, resolved to finish with the too 
 officious loyalty of his Servian subjects. The governor of Nish 
 
 4—2
 
 52 The Servian Risings [ch. 
 
 was appointed vizier of Belgrade and sent to restore order. 
 Encouraged by the instigations of Constantine Hypselantes, 
 Hospodar of Wallachia, and believing that, after all, Russia 
 would help them, the Serbs resisted. A battle ensued, and 
 for the first time the insurgents fought against their sovereign, 
 and conquered. The eyes of the Mussulmans were opened, 
 and it became clear to them, as to the Serbs, that the " loyal 
 rising" had become a revolution against the Sultan. The 
 latter employed the breathing-space which followed the Turkish 
 defeat in forming a species of government for the management 
 of their affairs. P'rom the old days of Servian independence 
 there had survived the custom of holding an assembly of the 
 people, called Skupshtina; and such an assembly had been held 
 by Kara George. A permanent Senate, or Sovet^ was now 
 formed by the election of a representative of each district into 
 which the pashalik was divided. Even to-day the Servian 
 parliament-house is not an imposing assembly ; but that primitive 
 senate, which met in a desolate monastery where there were 
 no beds and no provisions but one sack of flour, was as far 
 removed as possible from our idea of parliamentary institutions. 
 Nor had it much real power, for Kara George was the practical 
 ruler of the land. 
 
 Even now the Serbs had not thought of separation from 
 Turkey, and made further appeals to the Sultan for peace and 
 to the Emperors of Austria and Russia for intervention. But 
 the Sultan was resolved to put down what he now regarded 
 as a rebellion against his lawful authority, and his forces 
 invaded Servia in 1806. The Servian victory at Mishar, near 
 Shabatz, which has been glorified by the national bards, 
 seemed likely to induce both sides to make peace. But the 
 Russo-Turkish war began, and Napoleon advised the Sultan 
 to refuse the moderate Servian demands. The Serbs gained 
 one success after another, but marred their successes by the 
 treacherous massacre of the Belgrade garrison. At the 
 beginning of 1807 they were masters of the whole pashalik;
 
 Ill] Revohdions in Constantinople 53 
 
 and for the first time in their history a Russian corps fought 
 side by side with them against the Turks. And while they 
 had held their own, their former masters were fighting among 
 themselves. Selim III had endeavoured to get rid of the 
 Janissaries, and they had got rid of him ; he had attempted 
 to reform his state, and, like all Turkish reformers, he had 
 failed. His French sympathies, his European ideas, his military 
 system, made him unpopular with the old school of Turks. 
 The Mussulman religion was the natural ally of the conserva- 
 tive party in the capital. Bigotry, vested interests, and brute 
 force won an easy victory over the well-meaning Sultan. The 
 Sheikh-ul-Islam issued an ambiguous decision, which was 
 interpreted as a justification of the sovereign's deposition. A 
 captain of the Turkish pretorians emulated the conduct of the 
 Roman soldiery and placed Mustapha IV on the throne, whence 
 he had expelled Selim. One palace revolution followed 
 another in rapid succession. Selim and Mustapha both 
 perished by violence in 1808 ; and Mahmiid II, who was to 
 be the greatest reformer of modern Turkey, but had the 
 wisdom to conceal his plans till he was strong enough to put 
 them into force, ruled in their place. 
 
 Meanwhile the influence of Russia had become more 
 marked in Servian affairs. In 1807 the first official agent of 
 the Tsar arrived in Belgrade as a proof that the ruler of All 
 the Russias had extended his paternal care to the Serbs. A 
 convention was made between the two governments, by which 
 it was stipulated that the new state should be under the Tsar's 
 protection, and that the protector should keep up Russian 
 garrisons in the country and name all its officials. But, when 
 the armistice caused a lull in the Russo-Turkish war, Russia 
 abandoned Servia, and was only induced to renew her pro- 
 tectorate when Austria made overtures of a similar kind to 
 Kara George. Russian statesmen saw that Servia might be 
 useful to them as a means of keeping their rival, Austria, in 
 check ; and the unhappy little country had already begun to
 
 54 The Servian Risings [ch. 
 
 be regarded as a mere pawn in the diplomatic game. When 
 hostilities recommenced, and the Turks, in spite of the heroic 
 defence of Deligrad, defeated the Serbs, the Russian agent 
 ran away, leaving \\\% proteges unprotected. Two parties made 
 their appearance in the state, the one pro-Russian, the other 
 anti-Russian ; and the sudden death of Milan Obrenovich, the 
 leader of the former faction, was ascribed by some to Kara 
 George, and considered by later writers as the beginning of 
 that feud between the Obrenovich and Karageorgevich families, 
 which was till 1903 the bane of Servia. Instead of acting 
 patriotically together, the peasant statesmen quarrelled among 
 themselves, and at times showed, like true Orientals, that they 
 regarded public positions not as places of trust, but as places of 
 profit. The Russophils procured the rejection of the Turkish 
 offer to give to Servia practically the same administration as 
 that of the two Danubian Principalities. But they soon found, 
 as the Principalities did, that the Tsar recognised no claims upon 
 his gratitude. We have already stigmatised the Russian treat- 
 ment of the Roumanians at the peace of Bucharest in 1812 ; the 
 fate of the Serbs, who had co-operated with the Russian armies, 
 who had been led to expect help from the Russian protectorate, 
 was almost as bad. The eighth article of that treaty abandoned 
 them to such tender mercies as the Turkish government, now 
 released from the pre-occupation of the Russian war, might 
 mete out to them. The Turks were to occupy the old, and 
 the Serbs to demolish the new, Servian fortresses ; the Porte 
 promised to the Serbs "the same advantages as those enjoyed by 
 the islanders of the Archipelago," " the management of their 
 internal affairs," and " moderate taxes, to be received directly 
 from themselves"; besides, there was a good deal of vague writ- 
 ing about " clemency " and other un-Oriental virtues. The 
 Russian regiment, which had been in garrison at Belgrade 
 during the latter part of the war, left the country; and Europe 
 was too much occupied with the great struggle against Napoleon 
 to concern itself about the fate of this little nation beyond the
 
 Ill] Milosk Obrenovich 55 
 
 Danube. The same memorable year, 1813, that marked the 
 freedom of Germany from Napoleon, witnessed also the re- 
 conquest of Servia by the Turks. Nearly all the native 
 chieftains, like Kara George, losing nerve, crossed into Austria ; 
 and no foreign intervention was possible. It has always been 
 so; the eastern and the western questions cannot be solved 
 together ; when the great Powers are busy in flying at each 
 others' throats, the nationalities of the east must look after 
 themselves. 
 
 But it was at this moment that the second of Servia's two 
 modern heroes appeared on the scene, whence Kara George 
 and the other leaders of the late insurrection had fled. Milosh 
 Theodorovich Obrenovich had not played a very prominent 
 part in that movement. Nearly twenty years younger than 
 Kara George, he was the half-brother of that Milan whom 
 Kara George was suspected of having poisoned, and was so 
 devoted to him that he adopted his half-brother's surname, 
 Obrenovich, in which philologists trace the word obrin, the 
 Slav equivalent of the Avar race, which had once overrun the 
 Balkan peninsula. He, too, had begun life as a herdsman, had 
 come to riches and such honours as his native district could 
 bestow, and was raised to further distinctions by the returning 
 Turks as a reward for his aid in pacifying the people. The 
 new pasha of Belgrade, whose arm he had wounded in battle, 
 named him district official or oborknes of three districts, and 
 for a time he seemed to be content to use his influence in the 
 interest of the conquerors. Instead of heading an insurrection, 
 which broke out a year after the return of the Turks, he 
 actually suppressed it, thinking that the time had not yet come 
 for a successful uprising. But the cruelties of the victors 
 convinced him that nothing but force could avail against them ; 
 and the indignation of his fellow-countrymen showed him that 
 the moment had arrived for striking the decisive blow. On 
 Palm Sunday, 181 5, he unfurled the banner of resistance 
 under the oak before the church at Takovo — a name ever-
 
 56 The Servian Risings [cH. 
 
 memorable in Servian history, and to-day commemorated by 
 one of the Servian orders. The assembled people swore to 
 forget their differences and join in union against the common 
 foe. The revolt spread all over the country, and some of the 
 exiles began to return from their retreat in Austria. With the 
 capture of the historic fortress of Passarovitz the insurgents 
 gained the upper hand over the Turkish forces then on Servian 
 soil. The state of western politics at this moment caused 
 Mahmiid II to shrink from further hostilities, which might 
 lead to Russian intervention. For Napoleon had now fallen ; 
 and the Russian ambassador in Constantinople had leisure 
 to ask pointed questions of the Sultan and to remind him of 
 the treaty of Bucharest. The British envoys to the congress 
 of Vienna had declined to do anything for the Servian delegates, 
 who had asked their aid ; but Russia was nearer and more 
 interested in the Balkans. An arrangement was made between 
 the Turks and the Serbs. The latter retained their weapons, 
 but acknowledged themselves to be the Sultan's vassals ; the 
 former allowed the Serbs to collect the taxes, and gave them 
 a share in the administration of justice ; a sort of national 
 Senate was created at Belgrade for both these purposes. The 
 insurgents had also gained the great advantage of having in 
 Milosh a leader whose recent achievements had made him the 
 representative of national feeling. 
 
 But personal jealousies have been the curse of the Balkan 
 Christians. Milosh, great man as he was, could brook no 
 rivals among his own countrymen ; and his first acts after the 
 restoration of peace were to remove all possible competitors. 
 The first president of the new national Senate was, at his 
 instigation, handed over to the Turkish pasha for summary 
 execution. A haughty bishop, who treated Milosh with scant 
 respect, was found murdered by robbers under suspicious 
 circumstances. Black George himself met with a like fate. 
 The former leader of the Serbs had secretly returned from 
 his exile^ full of hope that a fresh rising would free the land
 
 Ill] Death of Kara George 57 
 
 from the Turks, full of belief in the prospects of an organised 
 insurrection in the Morea, which would divide the attention 
 of the Sultan. He urged Milosh to unite with him in the 
 national cause. But the crafty Obrenovich had no intention 
 of sharing his glory with another. He informed the pasha 
 of Kara George's presence in the country ; the pasha bade him 
 send the Liberator's head to Belgrade. The order was carried 
 out on June 24, 18 17 by Vuitza Vulichevich, the mayor of 
 Semendria, probably at Milosh's orders ; and the gory trophy, 
 after having been identified to the satisfaction of the pasha, 
 was dispatched to Constantinople for the edification of the 
 Sultan. Thus perished the first pioneer of Servian freedom, 
 and by his death bequeathed to his countrymen a legacy of 
 hate, which survived to the third generation. At length, 
 freed from all rivals, Milosh was recognised in November 
 181 7 by all the head-men as their chief, who also conceded 
 that, after his death, his next-of-kin should succeed him. 
 
 The first act in the drama of Balkan emancipation was 
 over ; Servia had led the way ; now Greece was to follow, and 
 compel the attention of the Powers to the eastern question.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PREFACE OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE (1815-21) 
 
 The settlement of Europe in 1815 affected those Greeks 
 alone who inhabited the islands which down to 1797 had been 
 in the possession of the Venetian Republic, and which since 
 that date, except for their brief career as a " Septinsular 
 Republic," had belonged to the French till one island after 
 another had fallen into British hands. The convention of 
 November 5, 181 5, formed Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, Santa 
 Mavra, Ithaca, Cerigo, and Paxo with their dependent islets 
 into " The United States of the Ionian Islands " under the 
 protection of King George III and his successors. It was 
 stipulated that a resident " Lord High Commissioner " should 
 be appointed, who should convoke a legislative assembly for 
 the purpose of drawing up a new constitution. Meanwhile the 
 existing constitutional arrangements were to remain in force. 
 
 The southern islands of the Ionian group were already 
 accustomed to the just, if autocratic, administration established 
 there by their captor, Sir Hudson Lowe, the future gaoler of 
 Napoleon ; while Sir James Campbell, to whom the French 
 commander had surrendered Corfu in 18 14, had gained such 
 popularity with the Corfiotes, that they petitioned the British 
 government to appoint him as first Lord High Commissioner. 
 Instead, however, the government sent Sir Thomas Maidand, 
 brother of Lord Lauderdale, and governor of Malta, where his 
 despotic character had won him the nickname of "King Tom." 
 The wisdom of this choice might well have been questioned ;
 
 CH. iv] Sir Thomas Maitland 59 
 
 for the first Lord High Commissioner, if able and honest, was 
 a rough soldier, who looked like a bull-dog, whose language 
 surprised the elegant lonians by its coarseness, and whose 
 convivial habits disgusted a naturally abstemious people. 
 Meanwhile, however, the Seven Islands greeted the new order 
 of things with demonstrations of joy ; Cephalonia addressed 
 Maitland as "a new Aristides"; and an Ionic temple at Corfu, 
 and monuments in other islands, still commemorate the 
 services of the benevolent autocrat, to whom a strange fate had 
 entrusted the poetic realms of Odysseus and Alkinoos. 
 
 Sir Thomas Maitland, who arrived early in 1816, came to 
 the conclusion, as the result of recent experience and of his 
 own personal temperament and observation, that the lonians 
 were not yet fitted for the management of their own affairs ; and 
 he therefore determined, as he must grant them a constitution, 
 to give them the appearance, without the substance, of free 
 institutions. He nominated a " Primary Council " of eleven 
 lonians under the presidency of Baron Emmanuel Theot6kes, 
 charged with the task of convoking the Constituent Assembly. 
 The president was a member of a famous Corfiote family, 
 which had already produced one of the regenerators of the 
 Greek language in the person of his uncle, and the president 
 of the Senate of the Septinsular Republic in that of his father. 
 At once a patriotic Greek and a firfn friend of Great Britain, 
 Baron Theot6kes was obviously indicated for the post. A 
 Constituent Assembly of 40 members was formed, 11 being 
 already members of the " Primary Council " and the remaining 
 29 elected by the Islands from a double list of candidates, 
 submitted by that body. Thanks to this plan, borrowed by 
 Maitland from that devised by the Ionian plenipotentiary of 
 Russia in 1803, the High Commissioner was able to summon 
 an Assembly which would be subservient to his wishes. To 
 this body the " Primary Council " submitted the draft of a 
 constitution, which wns unanimously passed on May 2, 1817. 
 This charter created a bicameral legislature— a " Legislative
 
 6o The Preface of Greek Independence [ch. 
 
 Assembly," composed of 1 1 " integral " or ex-officio members, 
 and of 29 members elected in the same manner as the 
 Constituent : and a " Senate " of six persons, of whom four, 
 representing the four larger islands, and one representing the 
 three smaller islands by rotation, were elected by, and out of, 
 the " Legislative Assembly," subject to the veto of the High 
 Commissioner, while the sixth, or President, was nominated by 
 the sovereign through the medium of the High Commissioner, 
 from the ranks of the Ionian nobles. Both Chambers received 
 salaries and travelling expenses ; the term of both was five 
 years ; that of the President of the Senate half that period. 
 But this official, who could be re-nominated, bore in com- 
 pensation the title of " Highness," was received with military 
 honours, and was the most important person in the Ionian 
 state after the High Commissioner, upon whose favour, however, 
 he depended for his appointment and its renewal. As the 
 right of summoning the legislature in extraordinary session — 
 it ordinarily met on March i of every other year — and that 
 of advising the Crown to dissolve it resided in the High 
 Commissioner, that official was practically omnipotent. In the 
 other six islands, he was represented by " Residents," while the 
 Senate appointed their " Regents," usually local men, subject 
 to his approval ; and these " Regents " required that of his 
 " Residents " for their acfs. The local municipal councils, of 
 which the " Regents " were chairmen, were elected by open voting. 
 The Senate elected, too, with his sanction, the two Ionian 
 members of the "Supreme Council of Justice," while the two 
 British judges were nominated by the Crown, and the High 
 Commissioner and the President of the Senate were extraordinary 
 members of this tribunal. No printing-press, other than that 
 of the government, could be erected without the consent of 
 the Senate and the High Commissioner; and the official 
 Gazette of the United States of the Ionian Islands, first published 
 at Zante under a slightly different title in 18 10 and subsequently 
 transferred to Corfu, was long the sole Ionian newspaper.
 
 iv] Ionian Constitution of i^ij 6i 
 
 This journal was printed for many years in Italian only ; and, 
 although the Greek Church and the Greek language were declared 
 to be the predominant creed and idiom, English was employed 
 in the police, sanitary, and postal departments, Italian in the 
 legislature till 1849, and the national tongue was not made 
 obligatory in the public offices till 1852. Such was the system, 
 under which the Islands were governed for upwards of 30 years. 
 
 The Ionian constitution of 18 17, illiberal as it may seem 
 now, was characteristic of that age, and must be judged by its 
 results. The Ionian Islands had for the previous 20 years 
 been the sport of faction, and above all else needed repose and 
 a just administration of the law. Maitland left the franchise, 
 as he found it, the privilege of the nobles, while he benefited 
 the peasants by prohibiting usurious loans which reduced them 
 to the position of bondsmen, by facilitating the sale of land, 
 and by beginning those splendid roads, which are the best 
 monument of British rule in the Islands. His abolition of the 
 ballot was a mistake, for it led to feuds and intimidation. 
 Believing that well-paid officials have fewer temptations, he 
 attached high salaries to the principal posts, and deliberately 
 increased the offices in order to provide employment for the 
 natives, to whom all professions except the church, the law, 
 and medicine, were unfortunately closed, and for whom 
 commerce had few attractions. The creation of the order of 
 St Michael and St George, and the high-sounding epithets of 
 senators and deputies, gratified the Ionian love of titles. 
 Thus the nobles, especially at the seat of government, became 
 the strongest supporters of the British protectorate. 
 
 An event soon occurred, however, which exposed the 
 British to great odium and is still remembered in Greek lands 
 as an error of British policy. The Russo-Turkish convention 
 of March 21, 1800, had ceded to Turkey the former con- 
 tinental dependencies of the Ionian Islands, on condition of 
 the observance of their ancient privileges ; and the subsequent 
 convention, which had placed the Islands under British
 
 62 The Preface of Greek Independence [ch. 
 
 protection, had made special allusion to this arrangement. By 
 this time all the four continental dependencies, except Parga, 
 had fallen into the hands of Ali Pasha of Joannina. Parga, 
 however, had been garrisoned by order of Napoleon, when the 
 French recovered the Ionian Islands in 1807, on the ground 
 that the treaty of 1800 had been annulled by Ali's violation of 
 the clause which had guaranteed the ancient privileges of the 
 ex- Venetian dependencies. Accordingly it was held by a 
 French force till March 22, 18 14, when Sir Charles Gordon, 
 British Commandant of the opposite island of Paxo, occupied 
 the place at the invitation of the inhabitants, anxious lest the 
 French should hand it over to Ali \ The Parguinotes appear 
 to have believed that their request for the union of their home 
 with the Ionian Islands, as in Venetian times, had been 
 granted. The Prince Regent approved the occupation of their 
 town ; a British officer was thenceforth stationed there ; and it 
 certainly seemed as if they, like the Islanders, were to enjoy 
 the protection of the British Crown. Turkey, however, de- 
 manded the execution of the treaty of 1800 ; and Sir Thomas 
 Maitland, who asserted that no "assurance of a more permanent 
 connection^" had been given at the time of the occupation in 
 1 8 14, and who calculated that the retention of the place would 
 cost ;j^5o,ooo a year, proceeded to carry out the cession. 
 
 Accordingly, early in 18 17, Lieut.-Col. De Bosset, a Swiss 
 officer in the British service, was sent to prepare the Parguinotes 
 for the transfer of their home to the Sultan, and to inform all 
 who desired to emigrate, that they would receive compensation 
 for the loss of their houses and property, and a free passage to 
 the Ionian Islands. The inhabitants unanimously expressed 
 their resolve to leave their beloved home rather than become 
 Turkish subjects, exposed to the tender mercies of the terrible 
 pasha of Joannina. The difficulty of arriving at a valuation 
 of their property caused however, a long delay. The owners 
 
 1 Papers relalmg to the military occupation of Parga, p. 3. 
 ^ Papers relating to Parga, p. 49.
 
 iv] Cession of Parga 6 
 
 v5 
 
 assessed its value at nearly ;^6oo,ooo ; the Ottoman com- 
 missioners at only ;!^56,756; Corfiote valuers, judging by the 
 standard of the islands, appraised it at ;i^28o,ooo ; whereas 
 Maitland insisted on deducting from this latter sum one-third, 
 because the property was situated on the continent, and a 
 quarter more, because the payment was to be in ready money. 
 He, therefore, informed the Parguinotes that no more than 
 ;j^i 50,000 would be paid. After first digging up and burning 
 the bones of their ancestors, the homeless population, save two 
 families, abandoned Parga; and on May 10, 181 9, the Turkish 
 flag replaced {proh pudor !) the Union Jack, and the last free 
 Greek community became extinct. But, on their arrival in 
 Corfu, they did not receive their compensation without further 
 deductions. As Ali had proposed to pay in depreciated coin, 
 Maitland knocked off ^8000 in consideration of payment in 
 good metal, thus reducing the amount to ;!^i42,ooo, and 
 provisionally retained a further sum of about one per cent, for 
 freight and the expenses of the commission, the return of 
 which sum the Parguinotes refused to accept as a definitive 
 settlement. The government promised to build a church for 
 them, and the exiles were provided with houses rent-free in the 
 Corfiote suburb of Mandoiichio, where their descendants still 
 reside. In the garrison-church of Corfu may still be seen the 
 sacred pictures and the other furniture of the church at Parga, 
 which have been placed there " until the day when the old home 
 shall once more be free." Now that that day, long promised, 
 but long postponed, has arrived, if Great Britain supports 
 the Greek claim to Epirus, the cession of Parga, denounced 
 in the Italian verses of Berchet and with greater force in the 
 Greek of a famous ballad, will cease to rankle in the breasts of 
 a high-spirited people, which has never forgiven the British for 
 surrendering, albeit in strict observance of an international 
 treaty, its altars and its hearths to the Turk. 
 
 Ali Pasha had now attained the object of his desires. But 
 the Sultan had long been alarmed at his nominal subject's
 
 64 The Preface of Greek Independence [ch. 
 
 growing independence, and struck at the too powerful satrap in 
 the person of his second son, Vely, already removed from the 
 governorship of the Morea to that of Larissa, and now further 
 degraded to the less important pashalik of Lepanto. Ali 
 saw in this deliberate stroke of policy the hand of a personal 
 enemy, Ismael Pasho Bey, an Albanian and a former friend, 
 who had fled to Constantinople and had there obtained the 
 favour of the Sultan. Accustomed to remove every obstacle 
 from his path, the pasha of Joannina hired assassins to 
 murder his foe. The attempt, however, failed ; the assassins 
 confessed ; and the indignant Sultan declared Ali a rebel 
 and an outlaw, and conferred his pashalik upon his intended 
 victim. Thus threatened with destruction by his sovereign, 
 Ali perforce appealed to the Greeks for assistance. There 
 was nothing remarkable in this appeal to men of that race 
 and creed ; for the pasha, Mussulman though he was, had 
 never trusted his Mohammedan retainers and had never founded 
 a mosque, but had utilised the Greek bishops as his agents, 
 had built churches for their flocks, had used their language 
 as the means of his diplomatic correspondence, and had 
 encouraged its study in the two colleges, which Greek 
 patriotism and love of learning had erected at Joannina, where 
 Greek was spoken more grammatically than elsewhere. To 
 the Albanians he spoke of independence, to the Greeks of 
 a constitution ; one of the former, Omer Vriones, who had won 
 fame and wealth fighting the Mamelukes of Egypt, and one of 
 the latter, Odysseus, son of the famous klepht Androiitsos, 
 espoused his cause. But the Greeks as a whole showed little 
 sympathy with the tyrant, whose cruelties had made him feared 
 throughout Epirus. Everywhere the Sultan's troops were 
 successful ; Parga, Ali's last acquisition, submitted, and Ismael 
 invited the exiled Parguinotes to return; Omer Vri6nes deserted; 
 even AH's sons, Muktar and Vely, surrendered, the one Berat 
 and Argyr6kastron, the other Preveza; while the exiled Souliotes, 
 mindful of the treatment inflicted upon their home, crossed
 
 iv] The ''Friendly Society'' 65 
 
 over from Corfu, under Marko B6tzares, to assist the Turkish 
 authorities against the rebel. AH was besieged in his capital, 
 and felt compelled to lay that flourishing town in ashes lest it 
 should aff'ord cover to the besiegers. But Ismael Pasho, the 
 Turkish commander, irritated, instead of conciliating, the 
 Christians of the province which had been conferred upon him 
 as Ali's successor. His exactions made one chieftain after 
 another abandon his side ; and the Souliotes, still kept out of 
 their promised home and their promised pay, consented to 
 forgive the cruelties of their ancient enemy and entered the 
 service of Ali Pasha. Convinced of Ismael's incapacity, the 
 Sultan entrusted the supreme command to Kurshid Pasha, the 
 governor of the Morea and a veteran who had had Egyptian 
 experience. But the new commander had scarcely arrived 
 at Joannina when a fresh danger menaced Turkey on the 
 eastern side of the Balkan peninsula. 
 
 During the previous six years a secret organisation, known 
 as the Philike Hetairia, or " Friendly Society," had been 
 gradually working to promote a rising of the Greeks against 
 Turkish rule. Founded in 18 14 at Odessa by Nicholas 
 Skouphas, a native of Arta, Athanasios Tsakalof of Joannina, 
 and Panagiotes Anagnostopoulos of Andn'tsaina in the Morea, 
 it was composed of seven classes, ranging from that of the 
 Vldmides (an Albanian word signifying " adopted brothers ") 
 up to that of " the chiefs of the initiated," and was governed by 
 a mysterious committee, known as " the Supreme Authority." 
 For the first three years of its existence, the Society made 
 little progress, but thenceforth its " apostles " made many 
 proselytes in the islands and in the Morea ; Petrobey Mavro- 
 michales, the Prince of Maina, was among those thus 
 initiated ; it was even suggested that Ali Pasha should join the 
 organisation ; officials of the Society, called " Consuls," were 
 nominated at Levadeia ; others, under the title of " Ephors," 
 were appointed to direct its affairs at Bucharest, Jassy, and 
 Galatz. Meanwhile, it was felt that the leadership of the 
 
 M. L. 5
 
 66 The Preface of Greek Independence [ch. 
 
 movement should be entrusted to some individual of com- 
 manding position. The thoughts of the Greeks naturally 
 turned to Count Capo d'lstria, the distinguished Corfiote, who 
 had played the part of Hampden during the French occupation 
 of his native island, had abandoned the practice of medicine 
 for public employment under the " Septinsular Republic," and, 
 on the restoration of French rule, had entered the Russian 
 service, in which he had risen by the favour of Alexander I 
 and his own diplomatic talents with such rapidity as to repre- 
 sent his adopted country at the congresses of Vienna, Paris, 
 and Aix-la-Chapelle. Capo d'lstria declined, however, the 
 proffered position, whereupon Xanthos, the emissary of the 
 Society, betook himself to Prince Alexander Hypselantes, 
 eldest son of one Hospodar, first of Moldavia and then of 
 Wallachia, and grandson of another. A major-general in the 
 Russian army, he had lost his right hand at the battle of Kulm ; 
 and his noble birth, his Russian connexion, and his personal' 
 bravery combined to indicate him as the fitting commander of 
 a Greek revolution, which would thus appear to have the 
 sympathy of the Tsar. Hypselantes accepted, and on June 27, 
 1820, was recognised as "General Commissioner of the 
 Supreme Authority." 
 
 It was his first intention to raise the standard of revolt in 
 Greece itself; but he ultimately decided to begin operations in 
 the Danubian Principalities, with which his ancestors had been 
 connected so long. To a superficial observer Wallachia and 
 Moldavia might seem the most suitable basis for his attack; 
 for John Caragea, the former Hospodar of Wallachia, had been 
 comprised in the Society, and Alexander Soiitsos, his successor, 
 who was hostile to the revolution, died of poison, it is said, 
 early in 182 1 ; while Michael H Soiitsos, Hospodar of Moldavia, 
 and the historian Rizos Neroul6s, his Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs, were in correspondence with Hypselantes. But the 
 native population of the two Principalities regarded the 
 Phanariote Greeks as tyrants rather than liberators ; the
 
 iv] Alexander Hypseldntes 67 
 
 Roumanian peasants felt no enthusiasm for the Hellenic 
 cause ; and it thus came to pass that the same movement 
 which rid Greece of the Turkish yoke emancipated the 
 Roumanians from their Greek princes. 
 
 Confident, however, of success, Hypselantes crossed the 
 Pruth, since 181 2 the boundary between the Russian and the 
 Turkish empires, on March 6, 1821, attended by a few 
 followers, and entered the Moldavian capital without op- 
 position. The Hospodar's guards went over to the Hetairist 
 chief; the few Turkish soldiers in Jassy were disarmed; and 
 Hypselantes and Soutsos met in the house of the Minister. 
 But the exercise of authority soon revealed the deficiencies of 
 the revolutionary leader. Full of noble sentiments, he lacked 
 experience of men and affairs. A manifesto, announcing that 
 " a terrible power was prepared to punish the boldness of the 
 Turks and annihilate them," annoyed the Russian government; 
 the massacre of Turks at Galatz and Jassy excited the fanaticism 
 of their compatriots ; the extortion of blackmail from a local 
 banker in the interest of the cause frightened other capitalists. 
 The Tsar, then engaged at Laibach in suppressing revolution 
 at Naples, repudiated all sympathy with Hypselantes, and 
 struck his name from the Russian army list ; the (Ecumenical 
 Patriarch, under pressure from the Sultan, excommunicated 
 the would-be saviour of Greeks and the Hospodar of Moldavia. 
 Hypselantes slowly marched to Bucharest ; So<\tsos fled into 
 Russian territory, the last Phanariote prince who has actually 
 ruled over a Roumanian land. 
 
 Arrived in Wallachia, Hypselantes found a further obstacle 
 in the shape of a native, and indeed a nationalist, revolution. 
 Upon the death of Alexander Sofltsos, a small noble, Tudor 
 (or Theodore) Vladimirescu, so called from the Russian Order 
 of St Vladimir which he had won in the last Russo-Turkish 
 war, had raised a revolt in Little Wallachia against the nobles, 
 Greek and Roumanian alike. This movement, at first social 
 rather than political, became political and nationalist when its 
 
 5—2
 
 68 The Preface of Greek Independence [ch. 
 
 leader reached Bucharest. The native nobles saw that their 
 best policy was to separate themselves from the Greeks, and 
 divert the agitation, which seemed to savour of the French 
 revolution, against the foreigners who had so long governed 
 their country. Tudor came to terms with the "patriot" nobles, 
 who disavowed all hostility to the Sultan ; and thus his 
 agitation was thenceforth diametrically opposed to that of 
 Hypselantes. " Greece," he told the Hetairist chief, " belongs 
 to the Greeks, and Roumania to the Roumans." Meanwhile, 
 the Turks were making active preparations to retain it for 
 themselves ; a Turkish army entered Bucharest ; and Hypse- 
 lantes, suspecting his rival of treachery, ordered his arrest, and 
 then allowed him to be butchered without mercy. Denounced 
 as a traitor by the Greeks, the murdered man is extolled as a 
 patriot by his fellow-countrymen, who trace the re-establishment 
 of their native princes to his revolution. 
 
 Hypselantes did not long maintain his position in Wallachia 
 after the suppression of his native rival. On June 19, the 
 " sacred battalion," which he had formed out of young Greeks 
 of the upper and middle classes, and which was under the 
 command of his brother Nicholas, was cut to pieces, after a 
 brave resistance, by the Turks at Dragashani. Upon receiving 
 the news of this defeat, Alexander Hypselantes thought only of 
 his own safety. By means of a forged letter, he pretended that 
 he had been summoned to the Austrian frontier to discuss 
 the military operations which the Emperor of Austria was, 
 according to this fiction, about to undertake against the Turks. 
 Abandoning his soldiers to their fate, he fled with two of his 
 brothers into Austrian territory, from which secure position he 
 issued an insulting proclamation to the men whom he 
 had betrayed. For once, however, the policy of Metternich 
 coincided with the requirements of poetic justice. The 
 fugitive leader was arrested, and languished for six years the 
 prisoner of the Emperor, in whose capital he died an exile 
 in 1828.
 
 iv] Courage of the Greeks 69 
 
 The Greeks who remained behind behaved with a courage 
 which contrasted with the conduct of their leaders. Prince 
 George Cantacuzene, who commanded the insurgent forces in 
 Moldavia, imitated his chief, and retired to Russia. But his 
 young Greek soldiers resolved to strike a final blow for their 
 deserted cause. At Skuleni, the spot where Hypselantes had 
 crossed the Pruth, this band of some 500 heroes made on 
 June 29 its last stand against the Turks. Of that number 
 about one-fourth, after a desperate fight, escaped by swimming 
 the river; the rest perished on the field or in the stream, 
 while the Russians from the opposite bank applauded their 
 resistance. Even then, Georgakes of Mt Olympus, a military 
 leader and an enthusiastic patriot, who had commanded the 
 troops of Wallachia in the time of its last prince, held out in 
 the Moldavian monastery of Seku till, finding further resistance 
 useless, he set fire to the powder-magazine, and was blown 
 to pieces by the explosion. His comrade, the Macedonian 
 Pharmakes, continued to defend the rest of the building for 
 about a fortnight longer, when, on October 4, he was induced 
 to surrender by the promise that his life should be spared — a 
 promise violated by his subsequent beheadal at Constantinople. 
 Thus, after having lasted six months, the attempt of the 
 Hetairists in the Danubian Principalities ended in failure. 
 Splendid acts of heroism illuminated this sorry preface of the 
 Greek revolution ; and against the incapacity of Hypselantes 
 may be set the actions of Dragashani and Skuleni. 
 
 If the campaign of Hypselantes had little influence upon 
 the course of events in Greece, it contributed to a complete 
 change in the government of the Roumans. The Sultan had, 
 indeed, already entrusted both the vacant thrones of Wallachia 
 and Moldavia to Charles Callimachi, a former Hospodar of the 
 latter principality. But the double revolution prevented him 
 from setting foot in either province, where he was accordingly 
 represented by two Greek governors. But the native nobility, 
 anxious for the abolition of the Phanariote administration of
 
 70 The Preface of Greek Independence [ch. iv 
 
 their country, which had existed since 171 1, were able to point 
 to the Hetairist movement as an example of the danger to 
 which the Sultan's empire was exposed by the employment of 
 a hostile race in such important positions of trust. When the 
 Greek insurrection in the principalities had been crushed, 
 the Roumanian boyars accordingly petitioned the Turkish 
 government that the two Hospodars should thenceforth be 
 selected from their own ranks. Their petition was granted, 
 and in 1822 Gregory IV Ghika, a Roumanised Albanian, and 
 John Sturdza, member of an ancient Roumanian family, were 
 appointed to the respective thrones of Wallachia and Moldavia. 
 Thus ended the rule of the Greeks over the Danubian 
 Principalities at the time when that of the Turks over Greece 
 was drawing to a close. Greek and Roumanian independence 
 were born together.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE (1821-9) 
 
 Barely a month after Hypselantes had crossed the Pruth 
 the revolution broke out in the Morea. The time and the 
 place were both favourable to the movement. The Turks were 
 occupied with two rebellions, one beyond the Danube and the 
 other at Joannina, whither the governor of the Morea had gone 
 to crush Ali Pasha, and they had to conduct simultaneously 
 a Persian war. The Peloponnese, where the Christians were 
 in a large majority, possessed in the native magnates leaders of 
 wealth and position; and a committee of seven "ephors" had 
 lately been formed there for the purpose of disseminating and 
 organising the schemes of the Hetairists. In the early spring 
 of 182 1, the moment seemed therefore to have arrived for a 
 general rising. 
 
 A picturesque tradition, which has obtained official con- 
 firmation by the consecration of that day as a national festival, 
 dates the outbreak of the Greek revolution from April 6 
 (March 25, O.S.), when German6s, Metropolitan of Patras, 
 raised the sacred banner representing the death of the Virgin 
 in the church of the monastery of Hagia Lavra near Kalavryta^ 
 But, like most insurrections, the Greek rising began with 
 isolated attacks upon Mussulmans, which became frequent 
 towards the end of March. On April 2, the revolt became 
 
 1 I inspected the original banner, which is not a Greek flag, as usually 
 represented, at the monastery, in 1912. Cf. AeXrioc t7js'1<7t. kuI 'Edi/. 'Er. 
 iii, 428-45.
 
 72 The War of Gi^eek Independence [ch. 
 
 general ; on that day the Greeks besieged the Turks in 
 Kalavryta ; on the morrow Petrobey surrounded the garrison 
 of Kalamata. Both places capitulated, and a solemn service 
 of thanksgiving to Almighty God was celebrated on the banks 
 of the Nedon, whence the Bey of Maina, elected president of 
 a Messenian Senate, addressed a manifesto to Christian Europe. 
 Simultaneously with the fall of Kalamata, an outbreak occurred 
 at Patras ; and the popular song which declared that "not a 
 Turk should remain in the Morea " was translated into action 
 by the massacre of thousands of Mussulmans throughout the 
 peninsula, where a victory at Valtetsi near Tripolitsa was proof 
 of the prowess of the Greeks. Thence the movement spread 
 across the gulf of Corinth, where Salona, crowned by its fine 
 medieval castle, once again became a Christian stronghold. 
 Athanasios, known as Diakos (or the " deacon ") from his early 
 monastic life, who had been in the service of Ali Pasha, secured 
 the surrender of Levadeia, whose Mussulman population shared 
 the fate of their compatriots in the Morea. But the heroic 
 " deacon " was overpowered in an attempt to hold the bridge of 
 Alaman between Thermopylae and Lamia, where his statue now 
 commemorates the courage with which the Leonidas of modern 
 Greece confronted the tortures of impalement. Odysseus, equally 
 brave and more fortunate, defended the pass of Gravia. The 
 peasants of Parnes easily captured the town of Athens, then a 
 place of some 10,000 inhabitants S the residence of a French 
 and an Austrian consul, the seat of a Turkish vo'ivode, and 
 defended by a small garrison and by a wall hastily constructed 
 by the tyrant Hajji Ali the Haseki on the occasion of the 
 Albanian raid of 1778. But the Akropolis, refortified by the 
 Turks after the Venetian siege, resisted till midsummer of the 
 following year. In the west, Mesol6nghi and Vrachori (now 
 called Agrinion) joined the national cause, so that within 
 three months from the commencement of the revolution the 
 whole country south of the Maliac and the Ambrakian gulfs, 
 ^ In 1822 a census showed 1235 houses. Lampros, Mu-ra: SeXiSes, 549.
 
 v] The Islands '^'i^ 
 
 except the fortresses, was in Greek hands. Even further north, 
 Anthimos Gazes, a Hetairist who ten years earher had founded 
 at Vienna the first Greek newspaper ever published, kindled 
 the flames of revolt in the villages that nestled among "the 
 folds of Pelion"; and a provisional government, bearing the 
 august name of "the Assembly of Thessalo-Magnesia," was 
 formed to direct the affairs of that district. The three 
 peninsulas which jut out from Macedonia into the sea 
 embraced the Hellenic cause; and even the monks of Mt Athos 
 armed for a contest which seemed to be religious no less than 
 national. But internal quarrels soon reduced the Thessalians 
 beneath the rule of Dramali Pasha, and Trikeri at the mouth 
 of the gulf of Volo alone resisted all attacks; while Aboulabad, 
 the governor of Salonika, put an end before the year had 
 closed to the insurrection in the three peninsulas by the 
 capture of Kassandra and by the military occupation of the 
 Holy Mountain. Of the islands Spetsai was the first to hoist 
 the Greek flag ; and a Spetsiote widow, the heroic Bouboulina, 
 not only blockaded the gulf of Nauplia at her own' expense, 
 but took part herself in the blockade. Psara was not slow to 
 follow; but Hydra, owing to the reluctance of the wealthy 
 primates, hesitated until a ship's captain, named Oikonomos, 
 who was affiliated to the " Friendly Society," placed himself at 
 the head of the people, and forced the local leaders to fit out a 
 squadron under the Hydriote Tombazes. Samos proclaimed 
 that union with Greece which even to-day has not been 
 accomplished, whereas Syra, then wholly Catholic, preserved a 
 neutrahty which was the foundation of her prosperity. Crete, 
 where the proportion — 160,000 to 130,000 — of Mussulmans 
 to Christians was then much larger than at the time of the recent 
 insurrections, received the tidings of the revolution with 
 apparent apathy, despite the fact that it was then, in the phrase 
 of Pashley, "the worst-governed province of the Turkish 
 empire." The French consul at Canea, the only European 
 representative who was then allowed to hoist his flag, reported
 
 74 The Wai^ of Greek Independence [ch. 
 
 that "the authority of the Pasha" was "null." The local 
 authorities were powerless to control the Janissaries, who were 
 there exclusively composed of Cretan Mussulmans, Greeks by 
 speech and race, yet always the most fanatical members of the 
 dominant creed. "No Christian," we are told, "was master of 
 his own house"; while it was the custom to send bullets 
 wrapped up in paper with a demand for blackmail — a demand 
 quickly followed by the murder of the stubborn recipients of 
 these significant missives. In short, "the horrors and atrocities 
 which were almost of daily occurrence in Crete had hardly a 
 single parallel throughout the whole extent of the Ottoman 
 empire." The sole exception was the Sphakiotes, who had 
 submitted to pay the capitation-tax only 50 years earlier. In 
 the summer of 182 1 a massacre of 30 Christians at Canea, and 
 the butchery of the Metropolitan of Candia and five bishops 
 at the altar of his cathedral, proved to the Cretans of the 
 mountains what was in store for them. An order to the 
 Sphakiotes to disarm had the effect of bringing them into the 
 field. They rose against the Turks and blockaded Canea, 
 while vessels from Kassos cut off its supphes by sea. But the 
 Greek fleet, after burning a Turkish man-of-war, devoted itself 
 to saving the Greeks of the flourishing Asiatic town of Aivali, 
 instead of taking advantage of its supremacy in the Aegean. 
 In that respect 182 1 anticipated 1897, but not 191 2. 
 
 Mahmiid II was not the man to allow his subjects to defy 
 his authority with impunity, and he adopted the usual Turkish 
 measure for punishing or preventing revolt — the massacre of 
 the revolutionaries' fellow-countrymen. When he received the 
 news of the slaughter of the Turks in the Principalities, he 
 began to execute suspected Greeks ; when there came the 
 tidings of the wholesale slaughter of the Turks in the Morea, 
 he beheaded MouroUzes, the Greek dragoman of the Porte, 
 and several other leading Phanariotes. Not content with these 
 examples of his severity, he resolved to strike at the Greek race 
 in the person of its most representative man, the venerable
 
 v] Martyrdom of the Patriarch 75 
 
 Patriarch, Gregory V, a native of the Morea. On Easter Sunday 
 the Patriarch was hanged from the gate of his palace, whence, 
 after being exposed to the public gaze for three days, the body was 
 dragged by the Jews, the inveterate enemies of Hellenism, and 
 cast into the sea, The faithful recovered the body of the 
 martyred Patriarch; it was interred at Odessa, and thence 
 transported, fifty years later, to the Metropolitan Cathedral at 
 Athens. Other executions followed that of Gregory. Charles 
 Callimachi, whom the Sultan had appointed Hospodar of the 
 principalities, was killed in prison ; Greek heads were affixed 
 to the battlements of Salonika; the Greeks of Smyrna, Rhodes, 
 and Cyprus became the object of Mussulman fanaticism. Our 
 generation, which has seen the Armenian massacres, can 
 understand the motives and the methods of Mahmiid 11. 
 And the Greeks in 1821, like the Armenians in our own time, 
 had no established Greek state, to which they could appeal. 
 They could, however, beg the sympathy of cultured Europe in 
 the name of those famous ancestors who have so often saved 
 them ; they might anticipate the protection of the Tsar on 
 account of their common rebellion and the traditional policy 
 of his house. But Alexander I was in a difficult position; as a 
 member of the Holy Alliance, he could not consistently support 
 a revolutionary movement ; as the patron of the Orthodox 
 inhabitants of Turkey, he could not acquiesce in their des- 
 truction. He contented himself with breaking off diplomatic 
 relations with the Porte, and continued to vacillate for the 
 next five years between his fear of revolution and his devotion 
 to Orthodoxy. Thus, unaided by any foreign power, unassisted 
 as yet by foreign volunteers, the War of Greek Independence 
 had begun. In that war three phases may be traced : the first, 
 lasting from 182 1 to 1825, in which the Greeks were successful ; 
 the second, extending from the arrival of Ibrahim in the Morea in 
 1825, when the tide turned, down to 1827 ; and the third, which 
 began with the intervention of Great Britain, France, and Russia, 
 and which saw the last fight between Greeks and Turks, in 1829.
 
 76 The War of Greek Independence [cfi. 
 
 The early successes of the Greeks in the Morea had been 
 won by leaders acting independently of any central authority. 
 A " Messenian Senate" had, indeed, sprung into existence at 
 Kalamata, just as an " Assembly of Thessalo-Magnesia " arose 
 on Pelion ; but the need was felt for some council, which 
 could at least conduct the business of the whole Peloponnese. 
 Accordingly, on June 7, 1 821, at a meeting held in the monastery 
 of Kalteziai, a " Peloponnesian Senate " of six, subsequently 
 increased to eight, magnates and ecclesiastics, was appointed 
 to exercise dictatorial powers, together with Petrobey, as 
 commander-in-chief, until the taking of Tripolitsa. But twelve 
 days after this appointment there arrived in Greece Prince 
 Demetrios Hypselantes, a younger brother of the Hetairist 
 chief, as the latter's representative. In an age of telegrams the 
 futility of the new-comer's pretensions would have been promptly 
 made public ; for on the very day of his landing his brother's 
 campaign was practically ended by the defeat of Dragashani. 
 But news travelled slowly then ; Demetrios Hypselantes was, 
 therefore, able to impose himself upon the willing Greeks ; 
 and even Petrobey acknowledged as his superior ofificer this 
 ex-captain of five-and-twenty, who had come from the service 
 of Russia to ransom and rule Greece. When, however, the 
 tidings of Dragashani arrived, the Peloponnesian Senators saw 
 no reason why they should submit to the authority of one who 
 represented a beaten and discredited leader ; and nothing less 
 than the threat of his departure and the consequent mutiny of 
 the soldiers coerced them into accepting him as commander- 
 in-chief. Yet, in spite of this jealousy between Hypselantes 
 and the Senate, Monemvasia, the Gibraltar, and Navarino, the 
 Portsmouth of Greece, were surrendered by their Turkish 
 garrisons ; the waters of that beautiful bay were reddened with 
 the blood of the massacred Turks. 
 
 On the day when Monemvasia capitulated, another and an 
 abler man arrived in Greece. Alexander Mavrokordatos was 
 a member of the old Phanariote family which had given five
 
 v] Fall of Tripolitsd yj 
 
 princes to Moldavia and two to Wallachia, where he had 
 himself held a court appointment. The outbreak of the revolu- 
 tion found him in exile at Pisa, whence he repaired to Greece to 
 place his fortune and his services at the disposition of his race. 
 Disgusted, however, at the quarrels between Hypselantes and 
 the " Peloponnesian Senate " in the camp before Tripolitsa, he 
 accepted an invitation to organise the administration of Aitolia 
 and Akarnani'a, and established at Mesol6nghi under his own 
 presidency an "Assembly of Western Continental Greece." 
 Another Phanariote, Theodore Negres, created a more ambi- 
 tious organisation for the eastern part of the Greek continent 
 under the title of " Areopagos " with its seat at Salona. Mean- 
 while, on October 5 the Turkish capital of the Morea had 
 fallen, and a terrible massacre of its inhabitants ensued. It 
 was estimated that at least 8000 Mussulmans and Jews 
 perished in the assault and in the subsequent slaughter, while 
 the sack of Tripolitsa made the fortune of more than one 
 Moreote family. The outbreak of an epidemic was nature's 
 revenge. 
 
 It had been stipulated that the functions of the " Pelopon- 
 nesian Senate " should cease with the capture of the Pelo- 
 ponnesian capital; and Hypselantes gladly issued a proclamation 
 to the people, convoking a National Assembly, which should, 
 as he hinted in no obscure language, end the tyranny of the 
 primates no less than that of the Turks. This Assembly met 
 at Argos, but was speedily transferred to the village of Piada 
 not far from Epidauros, whence it derived the name by which 
 it is known in history. There, on January 13, 1822, the Greek 
 New Year's day, was proclaimed the Constitution of Epidauros 
 — the first attempt to provide a central government for the 
 whole of Greece. The constitution created a legislature of 
 70 annually elected members and an executive of five, of 
 whom Mavrokordatos was appointed president and who named 
 the " ministers," as they were called, of the eight departments. 
 Universal equality before the law, religious toleration, freedom
 
 78 The War of Greek Independence [ch. 
 
 of an as yet non-existent press, and a republican form of 
 government, were the characteristics of this organic law; they 
 were scarcely suited to a country just emancipating itself from 
 centuries of Turkish despotism and peculiarly attached to its 
 communal organisation. The constitution, largely the work of 
 an Italian, bears the marks of the Latin love of symmetry, 
 which was so strangely at variance with the actual requirements 
 of the Greeks. Indeed, the Moreote primates drew up a 
 Peloponnesian Constitution of their own and formed a provincial 
 senate of 20 members to watch over their local interests. For 
 the moment, however, fortune seemed to smile on the Assembly. 
 While it was still sitting, there came the news that Corinth had 
 surrendered; and that admirably central position was chosen as 
 the first capital of free Greece. Over Acro-Corinth were hoisted 
 the newly chosen blue and white colours of the Greek nation. 
 
 While the Greek cause was thus triumphant on the Isthmus 
 and to the south of it, the Turks defeated and slew Petrobey's 
 eldest son, Elias, in Euboea, and were re-establishing their 
 authority on a durable basis in the north-west. Khurshid's 
 operations against Ali Pasha had been hindered by the outbreak 
 of the revolution behind him. But in the autumn he had 
 occupied the fortress of Litharitza, which the lord of Joannina 
 had built on a commanding height not far from the lake. The 
 next step was the capture of the citadel, whence Ali retired to 
 an island which is the summer- resort of the townsfolk. Ali 
 had obtained a promise from Khurshid that his life should be 
 spared ; but Khurshid's successor, Mohammed, disregarded a 
 pledge which he did not consider binding on his master. On 
 February 5, 1822 he visited AH in a little convent on the 
 island, and, as he departed, stabbed him to the heart. But the 
 present writer was shown the bullet-marks, which, according to 
 the local tradition, were made by the missiles of the soldiers, 
 who killed the old lion by firing through the wooden floor. 
 Thus, at the age of 82, perished the able but unscrupulous 
 tyrant in the midst of that beautiful lake, which had witnessed
 
 v] Massacre of Chios 79 
 
 the last struggles of so many of his victims and which a 
 romantic poem has connected with the drowning of the fair 
 Euphrosyne. The head of the old pasha, with those of his 
 three sons and his grandson, after being exhibited at Constanti- 
 nople, was buried beyond the Selymbrfa gate of the Turkish 
 capital ; and a tomb on the cliff above the lake of Joannina 
 and a Greek inscription outside the water-gate still preserve in 
 his old residence the memory of. one of the few Albanians 
 whose fame has penetrated beyond the mountains of their 
 savage native land. 
 
 If the dramatic punishment of Ali Pasha impressed 
 European statesmen with the growing authority of the Sultan 
 in Epirus, another event gained for the Greeks the sympathy 
 of the whole civilised world. Of all the islands in the 
 Archipelago the richest and most pacific was Chios, whose 
 famous mastic-gardens were an appanage of the Sultan's wives. 
 The prosperity and the character of the Chians rendered them 
 unwilling to risk their lives and property in the doubtful 
 cause of the revolution ; and this conduct, without gaining 
 them the confidence of the Turks, lost them the esteem of 
 the Greeks. Against the express desire of the inhabitants, 
 who had little wish to be saved from a tyranny which in 
 their case was not oppressive, a Chian named Bournias, 
 who had served in the French army, and a Samian ad- 
 venturer called Lykoflrgos Logothetes, who had become 
 almost dictator of his native island, landed in Chios in March 
 1822, and occupied the capital. The capitan-pasha there- 
 upon disembarked a large force at Chios ; the Turks captured 
 the town, and put to the sword every Greek whom they met ; 
 and nothing but a desire to preserve the mastic-gardens induced 
 the capitan-pasha to offer an amnesty to the survivors. The 
 two promoters of the abortive insurrection fled from the island, 
 where 46 smoking villages, a ruined city, and a hecatomb of 
 corpses testified to the rashness of their enterprise. Thousands 
 of Chians were dragged away as slaves ; thousands more begged
 
 8o The War of Greek Independence [ch. 
 
 their bread as penniless exiles. Their sufferings aroused the 
 desire of their fellow- Greeks for vengeance ; and a fleet under 
 Andrew Miaoules, a brave Hydriote who had issued from his 
 hardly-won repose at the call of his country, sailed for the 
 devastated island. On the night of June i8, while the capitan- 
 pashawas celebrating the approaching moon of Bairam, Constan- 
 tine Kanares, a young sailor from Psara, steered a fireship towards 
 the vessel of the Turkish admiral, which perished in the flames 
 with nearly all its crew. Panic seized the rest of the Turkish 
 captains, who cut their cables and fled, while their infuriated 
 compatriots on the island avenged the death of the admiral, 
 who had been borne ashore only to die of his wounds, by 
 sacking the mastic-villages, which had been spared till then. 
 This act of vengeance completed the ruin of what had been the 
 most flourishing of Greek islands ; it was calculated that of the 
 113,000 Christians, whom Chios contained in April, only 1800 
 remained there in August. Of the rest 23,000 had been slain, 
 47,000 sold into slavery, and the others scattered to every part 
 of the Hellenic world. The destruction of Chios was the gain 
 of Syra ; for it was a body of Chian exiles who founded the 
 new and Orthodox of Syra's twin towns, and introduced that 
 delightful industry the manufacture of "Turkish delight," of 
 which Syra has the monopoly. In 1825 the new town was 
 christened by Luke Rhalles " Hermoupolis " from the god of 
 commerce, which was the main occupation of its industrious 
 colonists ^ 
 
 In the spring of 1822 the Sultan, having already recovered 
 possession of Thessaly and Joannina, ordered the double 
 invasion of Greece on the east and on the west. But before 
 Dramali, who was entrusted with the command of the western 
 army, had begun operations, the Turks who still held the 
 Akropolis of Athens had capitulated. On June 2 1 the articles 
 of capitulation, of which the second guaranteed the lives of the 
 garrison, were signed; but the rumour of Dramali's advance 
 
 ' AeXWoi' T^s "Icrropi/cijs koX 'E^j'oXoyik^s 'Erai/)ias, iv, 481.
 
 v] Theodore Kolokotrdnes 8i 
 
 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 Odysseds 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 
 Kolokotrdnes, 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 Karytaina 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 Niketas. 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 Kyriakoules 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 Akarnania 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 So61i, 
 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 Afentoulief" 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 Komnenos, " placed between the tiger and the 
 panther," withdrew to Malta. In his place Handles 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 Hypselanteswas 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 lonians 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 lonians 
 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 
 " Hereon," 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 Prankish Greece was abandoned for 
 a more practical scheme, by which a nominal sum of ;^8oo,ooo 
 (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- 
 touri6tes, 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 Mesoldnghi 87 
 
 struggle was proceeding when, on January 5, 1824, Lord Byron 
 arrived at Mesol6nghi ; 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 pubUcation 
 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 ^ 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 
 Trikoiipes, himself a native of Mesoldnghi, 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 loan, instead 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-piess 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 — Zalmes of Kalavryta, member of a family which has 
 given more than one statesman to Greece; and Ldntos of 
 Vostitsa, a friend of Byron, who had caroused with him when 
 they were young ; with them was Sisines, or Sessini, of Gastouni 
 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 Kolettes, 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 Kountouri6tes was the nominal head. 
 On this occasion his energy speedily crushed the rebeUious 
 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, 
 Mahmad II had been forced to seek the aid of his vassal, 
 Mehemet Ali, the pasha of Egypt, an Albanian who had risen 
 from tobacco-deahng in his native Kavalla to the position of a 
 modern Pharaoh. Mahmild 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 89 
 
 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, i825,thesecondphaseof 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 estabhsh 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, 
 immortahsed 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 Tsamad6s, 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 
 Miaoilles 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 Odyssetls 91 
 
 Tripolitsa, whence, after again defeating Kolokotr6nes, 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 Odysseils, 
 had met with a terrible end. This former favourite of AH 
 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 Odysseus 
 forced to surrender to Gkouras, his old lieutenant. The former 
 master of Athens was dragged up to the Akropolis amid the 
 execrations of the Athenians, and imprisoned in the Prankish 
 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 Androfttsos 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. TreUwny, 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, AnatoUkon 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 Mesol6nghi 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 Mesoldnghi 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 NaupHa 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 Gkoiiras. 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 ofificer, 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 
 Kriezdtes, 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 Gkouras 
 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 Kamateron 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 Oropos. 
 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 Karaiskakes 
 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 Karaiskakes, "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 Herodes 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 Kolokotrdnes from Hermi6ne 
 (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'lstria President (Kvj8e/3vr?'T?;s) 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'lstria was due to the Russophil party, of which Kolokotr6nes 
 was the leader, assisted by the Francophil section under 
 Kolettes and Kountouriotes 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'lstria 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'lstria had known the Ionian Islands, but 
 he did not know the rest of Greece, where society was very 
 different from that of Corfti. Born under Venetian rule, he 
 did not even write Greek correctly. But he was honest ; he
 
 v] Treaty <?/" 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. u 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 
 
 toOj rose again after Navarino, inspired by fugitives who had 
 taken refuge on the rocky islet of Grabotisa 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 GraboAsa 
 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 Graboiisa 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 preceded 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, 
 P6ros, Salamis, Eleusis, 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
 
 lOO The War of Greek Independence [en. 
 
 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 diktat. 
 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 d' I stria loi 
 
 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 CorfCi 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 issueof paper notes^ 
 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 
 
 ' Lampros, Mixrai SeXtSes, 654-64.
 
 I02 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 Messenia, 
 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 Petalidi 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 Rhi'on, 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 0/ i82g 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 Boeotia ; Salona surrendered ; 
 the castle of Vonitza 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 Poros, 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 Pagasaean 
 gulf, and was to include on the east Euboea, 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
 
 I04 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. Mesol6nghi, 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 Ust of 63 candidates submitted to him the remaining 2 1 
 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 105 
 
 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 
 Boeotia, but now completely transformed by the draining of the 
 Copaic 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 I^uke 
 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
 
 cii. 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 Euboea, 
 the Devil's Islands, Skyros, and the Cyclades, but it excluded 
 Crete, and thus left to Europe a legacy of trouble and expense 
 even now unfinished. 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
 
 ro8 The Creation of the Greek Kingdo^n [ch. 
 
 Cyclades. But the Allies had reckoned without the President. 
 Capo d'Istria 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'Istria 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'Istria 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 d" I stria 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 Euboea, 
 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. Hj^dra 
 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 P6ros, 
 the " constitutional committee " of Hydra sent Admiral 
 Miaodles, who was one of its members, with Mavrokordatos as
 
 I lo The Creation of the Greek Kingdom [cti. 
 
 his adviser, to seize the arsenal. Miaoules 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 NaupHa, he found a willing instrument. 
 The Russian officer sailed for P6ros, and summoned Miaoiiles 
 to surrender the arsenal ; the Greek admiral replied that 
 he recognised no authority save the committee at Hydra ; 
 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, 
 1831, he took up a position to cannonade the Greek fleet, 
 whereupon Miaoules 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 ; Miaoules 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
 
 vij The Mavroinichdlai 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 
 Euboea, in Akarnania, and in Epirus, the Mavromichalai 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, 
 resplved 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 Bo^irzi, 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, 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 i 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 Corfii. 
 
 The assassination of Capo d'Istria awakened widely different 
 feelings. The poet Alexander Soiitsos compared the assassins 
 with Harmodios 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 H)^dra 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 statesmanUke appeal by Andrew 
 Zafmes for union. Following blindly the policy of his late 
 brother at P6ros, Agostino employed the Russian fleet to 
 blockade Hydra, 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 Le'rna 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 Kolokotrones went through the form of resigning their 
 posts ; and on December 20 Agostino was elected President 
 (Ilpoeo-rw?) 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 1 1 5 
 
 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 i, 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
 
 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 ;^462,48o, 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 was united in 1830 to the Egyptian pashalik of 
 Mehemet Ali as a reward for his services to the Sultan, while 
 a liberal firman allowed the islanders a flag, free 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 " Ambracia'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 KoUttes i i 7 
 
 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 reHed, 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 ConstitutionaUsts. 
 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, Kole'ttes, 
 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 eff"ected, 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, Kolokotrones, 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, Kitsos Tsavellas, the Souliote chief, who had headed 
 a party in the heroic sortie from Mesoldnghi, 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
 
 yi] 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 i, 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 Hydra. 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 Messenia. 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. Kriezotes 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 '." 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. 
 
 1 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 
 restfuUy 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 O^curaenical 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 t lie 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 1 8 19 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 m 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 httle 
 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 182 1, as in 1897, the other 
 Christian races sought so to shape their policy as to profit by 
 the Greco-Turkish war. Not till 191 2 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
 
 vii] Convention of Akkerinan 127 
 
 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 boyars, 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 Mahmild 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 Braila 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,
 
 VII ] Russo- Turkish War of 1828-9 129 
 
 an ofificer of German extraction. The Russian victory at 
 Kulevtcha, and the surrender of Silistria in June, 1829, marked 
 this change of direction. Diebich's army accompHshed 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^" 
 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 
 
 ^ Moltke, Der riissisch-tUrkische Feldzttg, p. 370. 
 M. L. 9
 
 130 The Balkan difficMlties [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 Ainos 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 Mahmtid 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 SiHstria 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 
 pro\dded 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
 
 vii] 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 Kisseleff, 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 
 organique, 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
 
 VI i] Servian Atttonomy 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 timariotes 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, the 
 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
 
 VI i] Government of Milosh 135 
 
 to pnjvide 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 estabhshed 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.
 
 vii] 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 Save. On 
 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 then the Porte forced upon him as advisers 
 the two ex-Regents, Vutchich and Petronievich. This last 
 act was in contravention of the recognised right of the Serbs 
 to choose their 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 Milosh, and the restoration of the seat of government to 
 Kragujevatz, a place less exposed to foreign influence than 
 Belgrade, a Turkish fortress on the Austrian frontier. Michael 
 consented to return to the former capital, and his advisers 
 sought refuge with the Turkish commander of Belgrade, and 
 subsequently in Turkey itself. Unfortunately the innate con- 
 servatism of the peasantry was alienated by the too progressive 
 policy of Michael's Minister of Justice and Education, an 
 Austrian Serb, who sought to convert this agricultural com- 
 munity of the orient into a civilised western state. Primitive
 
 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 
 increase 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 met 
 on September 14, 1842, and elected Alexander Karageorgevich, 
 younger but sole surviving son of Kara George, a man 
 36 years of age, who had been a pensioner of Milosh and 
 an adjutant of Michael, and whose name and uncompromised 
 past recommended him to the Serbs. The Porte ratified the 
 election ; Vutchich, as Minister of the Interior, remained the 
 power behind the throne.
 
 vii] Bosnian iHsings 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, he 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 
 Mahmvid 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 Ali 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 Mahmild 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
 
 VI i] Rizvanbegovich 141 
 
 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-sherif 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 "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 difficiilties [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
 
 vii] Pete7'- 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 
 Uberal rations of the Turks. The secessionists were subdued, 
 and their ringleaders shot. 
 
 It was not in Europe alone that the reforming Sultan had
 
 VI I ] Revolt of Me he met AH 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 AH, Viceroy of Egypt, in 183 1, 
 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 Mahmiid 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. 10
 
 146 The Sylvian diffiailties [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 hving 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 
 Mahmiid, 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
 
 vii] Treaty of Htinkiar 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 coUectorship 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 
 Mahmiid 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 Mahm<ld 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 Mahmiid 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 MahmCid 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. Mahmiid, fortunate in the opportunity of his death, 
 expired on July i, 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
 
 vii] 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 Ali 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 Beirlit 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
 
 vii] 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.4oo,ooo. 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.
 
 152 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, 
 1841, they rebelled against his authority and massacred the 
 Christian villagers, with the complicity of the Turkish authorities, 
 who then stepped in to restore order. Beshtr-el-Kassim was
 
 vii] 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 kaimakam, 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 Tripoh the exclusively Christian territory of Djebail, which 
 comprised the ancient monastery of Kannobin, so longthe seat 
 of the Maronite Patriarchs, the holy valley, and the famous
 
 1 54 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- 
 Effendi, 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 
 Beiriit 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 Beirftt, 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
 
 vii] 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 kaimakdms, 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. viii] 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 Jciger, 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 denies. 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 d'lstria, sought to destroy. A similar 
 policy of centraHsation 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 CJim^ch 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
 
 i6o 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 
 Kolokotrdnes 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 Kolokotrdnes 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
 
 viii] Maurers recall i6f 
 
 chief supporter, Dawkins, the British Resident. Pahnerston 
 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 Kolokotr6nes 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. u
 
 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 
 1907 had reached a population of 167,479, and with its 
 flourishing port contained 241,058 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 AcciajuoH 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 i, 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 Kolettes, 
 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
 
 viii] The King of Bavaria 163 
 
 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 ^ 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 
 Akarnania under three leaders, Demos Tselios, Zervas, and 
 Malamas, a former aide-de-camp of Agostino Capo dTstria, 
 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 Grivas 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 
 
 ^ Trost, Konig Ludwig von Bayern, 127-32 ; AeXrlov ttjs 'Ictt. Kai 'EOf. 
 'Eraipias, ii, 516-20.
 
 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, without 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 0th 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
 
 viii] Rudhart's Premiership 165 
 
 of Austria and thereby the suspicion of the democratic Greeks 
 and the opposition of the British minister. An outbreak of 
 plague at P6ros, 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, ^^''^^ 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 
 Mahmtid 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 Kolokotrones. 
 
 At this moment, moreover, Crete, which was restored from
 
 VII i] Crete lender -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- 
 dotlros. 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
 
 viii] 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 vi^ho 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
 
 1 70 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, Kalle'rges, 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 15 ; 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,
 
 viii] The Revohition of 1 843 1 7 i 
 
 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. Kalle'rges 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
 
 viii] 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 Chavibers 1 75 
 
 consisting of a Chamber (or BovAt;') 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 Fcpovo-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
 
 1 76 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 Mesol6nghi ; 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 ] KoUttes in Power 177 
 
 the French government with all its influence, Kol^ttes con- 
 cerned himself little with speech-making in the Chamber, 
 whence a series of election petitions had excluded all but 1 2 
 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 ^ 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, 
 MousoQros 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. 
 Mousoiiros 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
 
 1 yS The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. 
 
 This tension with Turkey was not the only difficulty which 
 encumbered the long administration of Kole'ttes. 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 ;^2o,ooo 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 Akarnania, 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 Kountouri6tes 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", 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 Ot/ion, 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 Uved — 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 
 ;^3i,534. IS. id. for the loss to his property (including 
 ;^2 6,6i8. \6s. 8d. for the vouchers of certain sums, alleged to 
 be due to him from the Portuguese government), and for 
 a further sum of ;^5oo 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 Selasina 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
 
 i8o The Greek and lonimi Constitutions [ch. 
 
 portions of the Greek kingdom, but belonged to the Ionian 
 Islands. This last claim, which dated from 1839, ^^^ based 
 upon the clauses of the treaties of 1800 and 181 5, 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 wiihin 
 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 Pirseus, 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 1 2, 
 accepted the "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] Do7i Pacifico i8i 
 
 yielded to Wyse's demands, viz., the payment of 30,000 dr. 
 to Finlay, of 12,530 dr. 49 leptd to the lonians, 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 Pacifico'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 
 ;^26,6i8. i6i-. 8^. to ;^i5o, 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 CEcumenical 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 Oikon6mos 
 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 1817 ; 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,ooo the annual 
 sum payable by the lonians 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 
 Ofifice 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 
 OEcumenical 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 d'Istria, 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 "^is 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 Gi'eek and Ionian ConstitiUions [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 lonians) ; 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 
 lonians ; and Baron d'Everton, a British ofificial 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 lonians 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 loitian 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 
 lonians— 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 
 Corfii 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 1 89 
 
 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 185 1 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"
 
 iQO The Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. 
 
 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 191 
 
 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 i-egle?nent 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 reglevient orgatiique. Michael Kogalniceanu 
 and others, who had studied history abroad, returned home to 
 describe the glories of the Roumanian race's past and the
 
 1 92 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 regletneni 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, decHned 
 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 reglement
 
 -fc^. 
 
 ix] The Roumanian Revolution 193 
 
 organiqiie; 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 estabHshment 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. I ^
 
 194 T^^^ Greek and Ionian Constitutions [ch. 
 
 employment of force was afforded when the manuscript of the 
 precious r^glement 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
 
 196 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 Voivode, 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 Voivode of the Servian 
 Vdivodina " 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 Vladika's subjects. 
 In these circumstances Peter II died, on October 31, 1851, 
 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 fortified, 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] Secularisation 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 now regards 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. 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 hohest 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, had been solemnly confirmed and enlarged by the
 
 200 
 
 The Crimean J Far [cii. 
 
 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,
 
 x] The Holy Places 201 
 
 and Armenians, and provided that " no change " should "be 
 made in the present state of the gates of the church of 
 Bethlehem." The P>ench 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 filioqiie clause. The
 
 202 The Crimean War [ch. 
 
 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. 
 
 Mentschikoff's 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 parvefiu, 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
 
 x] 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," h? 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 [cii. 
 
 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-Ka'inardji, 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 Mentschikoff's 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
 
 2o6 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 Mentschikoff. 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 imperiiwi 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 ofificially 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. Mentschikoff, unable to go back, 
 repeated his demand in the form of a convention, which he
 
 x] ''The Great EltchV 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, 
 bad 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 lanib. 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 poUing-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,
 
 x] 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. I'here 
 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
 
 2 1 o 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
 
 x] Hostilities begin 2 1 1 
 
 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
 
 2 1 2 The Crimean War [ch. 
 
 Palmerston, the war advocate /«;- 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, chiefiy 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 
 indifiference 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 PrincipaUties, 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 18 12, 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 30, 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 27 ; 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
 
 2 14 '^^^ Crimean War [ch. 
 
 the ultimatum was the occupation of the PrincipaUties, and 
 that was an Austrian rather than a Franco-British concern. 
 On April ii 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 2 1 5 
 
 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
 
 2i6 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, Urusoff 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, had 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
 
 2i8 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
 
 x] 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
 
 2 20 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 
 Gri'vas. Secret societies were formed in the Ionian Islands ; 
 and despite British efforts to keep the lonians neutral and the 
 imprisonment of several priests, a body of Cephalonians and 
 Zantiotes crossed over to join the insurgents in Epirus. 
 
 On January 27, 1854, 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 " 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. Gri'vas was forced to 
 evacuate Metzovon and retire to Thessaly ; a second battle at 
 Peta on April 25 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 Domokos — 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 Mr 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 uUi- 
 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 Chalkis 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
 
 2 22 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 \" 
 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 ID, 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 
 
 ' ' AwofivrjixoveviiaTa r^s vTrovpyiai i). IlriXiKa, 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
 
 2 24 ^^^^ Crimean War [ch. 
 
 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 ofiicers 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 CEcumenical 
 Patriarch, the official head of the Greeks in Turkey, has always
 
 x] 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
 
 2 26 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 lakeof 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 i" the time 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.
 
 x] 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 Mentschikoff, 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 landing, 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
 
 2 28 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 AlHes 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 Korniloff, 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 suflficient 
 forces to prevent communications from the interior of Russia 
 with the beleaguered town. Mentschikoff, stung by Korniloff's 
 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 B^ngade 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 hteral 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.
 
 x] 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 
 Gortchakofif 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 ^^^^ 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
 
 x] 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 — Wiirttemberg, 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 237 
 
 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 Uberty 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
 
 x] 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. 
 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 an- 
 nexation of Tripoli, and the British occupation of Cyprus 
 and Egypt, while the clause which pledged Russia and Sardinia 
 to invoke the mediation 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 dis- 
 honoured. 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 2 1 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
 
 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 Cri77iean War [cri. 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. 
 Boiilgares 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 
 Trikoiipes 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. Boiil- 
 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 CEdipus had slain his father Laios. 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.
 
 
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 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 reglevient 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 Vogorides, 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 112 VVallachs 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 Vogorides 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 Cousa 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 low^er 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 Daniibian 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 
 Skupshiina 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 2 5 1 
 
 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 present 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 IT 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 i860, 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 
 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 [cii. 
 
 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] Bo7nbardment 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 stahis 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 [cii. 
 
 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 ofificer 
 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. 1 o 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 beUicose 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] Alontenegrin War 0/1^62 259 
 
 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 fr(^tier. 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. xMontenegro 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
 
 26o 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 : 
 Imperhcm 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] G7'eek 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 Pirseus. 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 He between his son 
 Lewis, and Luitpold's next brother Adalbert, who had, how- 
 ever, married a Spanish, and therefore, Roman CathoUc, 
 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 Mesolonghi the 
 idol of the Athenian youth and subsequent author of Otho's de- 
 position, Epaminondas Delegeorges, entered parliamentary life.
 
 xi] Difficulties of Otko 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 Kalle'rges, 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 Kolokotrdnes, who years before, 
 pointing to the newly founded University and to the palace,
 
 264 Union of Damibian Principalities [cii. 
 
 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 Xe'nos, 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 D6sios 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. Miaoules, 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. Miaoules 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. Kalli6pe Papalexopoulou, 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 royaHst 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
 
 2 66 Union of Danubian Principalities [ch. 
 
 desire for a change of Ministry, a dissolution, and 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 lonians 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 hiipetuous, 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 Akarnania 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 
 Vonitza, 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 Rotlphos), 
 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 Delegeorges, 
 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 Boiilgares, 
 Kanares, and Rotlphos, which should hold office till a National
 
 268 Union of Danubian Principalities [en. 
 
 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. 
 Boulgares, the president of the triumvirate, then formed a 
 Cabinet, in which Delegeorges and two other future Premiers, 
 Koumoundoilros and Thrasyboulos Zaimes, 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 ofificer, 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 sufificient 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 OP' THE IONIAN ISLANDS (1862-4) 
 
 The revolution of 1862 had been as bloodless as that of 
 1843 j ^'Jt 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 ATegareans. 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 Gn'vas 
 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. xii] 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- 
 Coburg, 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 Almatiach de Gotha revealed the existence of 
 another Coburger in Austria. But eventually all three Coburg 
 candidatures collapsed. The ex-King-Consort of Portugal
 
 xii] ''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 Gri'vas were styled "men of the mountain," those of 
 Boiilgares '' 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 Kythnos, 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. 18
 
 2 74 Cessio7i 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 1 7 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, Zai'mes, 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 
 _;^4ooo out of the sums which the Greek government had
 
 xii] 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 Montagues. 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 i the fighting began 
 between the Ministerialists under Koronaios and the " men of 
 
 18—2
 
 2/6 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. Kyriakofi, 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 ; Roilphos 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."
 
 xii] 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 
 has had difficult crises to face — the war of 1897, the military 
 uprising of 1909; but he has not only kept his throne and 
 founded a dynasty, but has seen 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 CorfCi 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, the 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 lonians. 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
 
 xii] 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 
 Noveniber \2, 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 Ofifice, 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 18 15. 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
 
 2 8o 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 181 5, 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,
 
 xii] 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, but 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 
 lonians 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 lonians 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 {OeXrjaL^) 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 OeX-qcri's, which he insisted upon 
 translating "disposition," instead of the obvious signification. 
 The lonians 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 lonians 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 
 " disproportionate to the number of the population, and to the 
 work done " ; for " the paid servants of the public " were 
 "above 2200 among 240,000 inhabitants," and had increased 
 by one-quarter since the reforms of 1849, so that the lonians 
 were the most official-ridden people in Europe. The nobles 
 and the gentry naturally liked to have it so, just as the deputies 
 were glad of their salaries, which Gladstone found excessive 
 and sought to halve and pay only while the Assembly was 
 sitting. He could, therefore, scarcely expect either the office-
 
 xii] Gladstone s Proposals 283 
 
 holders, who were the mainstay of the protectorate, or the 
 Radicals, who were its fiercest enemies, to approve of a 
 retrenchment which would touch their vested interests. 
 
 Nor were his political reforms calculated to win the favour of 
 either British or lonians. His proposed transformation of the 
 Senate from an executive body into a partly-elected, partly- 
 nominated Second Chamber presupposed the existence of a 
 wealthy and powerful aristocracy. But the Ionian nobles had 
 neither the means nor the moral courage to oppose a strong resis- 
 tance to the measures of a democratic Assembly, which, under 
 the Gladstonian scheme, would have met annually to vote the 
 budget, could have impeached all officials before the Senate, 
 and with that body would have enjoyed the revived Venetian 
 privilege of petitioning the Crown against "grave malversation" 
 on the part of the Lord High Commissioner. The proposed 
 Ministry, to which the executive powers of the Senate were 
 to be transferred, would have owed its nomination to that 
 official ; but the authority over the high police, with which 
 he had been invested since 181 7 and which empowered him 
 to banish whomsoever he chose, was abolished. Frequently 
 exercised by earlier High Commissioners, it had never been 
 used by Young. These proposals, regarded by the British 
 and their friends as likely to increase the power of the Ionian 
 democrats, were feared by the democrats as an indefinite 
 postponement of the union — a " national suicide," as a 
 Zantiote Radical journal called their acceptance. Count 
 Dusmani, the future historian of Gladstone's mission, a Pro- 
 tectionist who had been 30 years in public life, warned their 
 author that they would be rejected. A few voices, those of 
 Count Flamburiari, the president of the Assembly, of Sir Peter 
 Brailas, of Sokrates Koures, were raised in their defence. One 
 deputy, whose name Padovan showed his Venetian origin, 
 spoke for two whole days against them — a feat worthy of the 
 great parliamentarian himself. Meanwhile, the would-be legis- 
 lator of the lonians had showed a strange ignorance of the
 
 284 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. 
 
 laws of his own country. He had ignored the constitutional 
 rule that the acceptance of the Commissionership had vacated 
 his seat in Parliament and disqualified him from seeking re- 
 election. Upon learning that he was no longer a member 
 of Parliament, he had formally resigned the Commissionership 
 on February i, leaving his friends at home to solve the nice 
 problem in truly Gladstonian fashion by first appointing 
 Sir Henry Knight Storks, an Italian-speaking colonel of Ionian 
 experience, as High Commissioner, and then making him 
 name Gladstone as his temporary deputy. During this brief 
 interregnum the debate dragged on, till, on February 16, 1859, 
 the evening of Storks' arrival, the Assembly adopted with only 
 one adverse vote and nine abstentions a motion rejecting the 
 whole scheme. Three days later, Gladstone left Corfii, after 
 having demonstrated that local knowledge is more valuable 
 than genius in the near east, and that neither a great name 
 nor high station imposes upon the Greek democracy. His 
 biographer has admitted that the Ionian mission was a failure, 
 which, if it did not injure the temporary Commissioner's future 
 at home, prejudiced the position alike of his predecessor and 
 of his successor in the Ionian Islands. 
 
 The tenth and last Lord High Commissioner, at the time 
 of his appointment a simple colonel, chiefly known for his 
 management of the hospitals at Scutari during the Crimean 
 War, found that the Assembly was not disposed to let the 
 question of union slumber. The outbreak of the Italian War 
 (April 1859) had a natural influence upon Ionian politics. Corfu 
 was the traditional refuge of Italian exiles ; it was thence that 
 the Bandiera brothers had started on their fatal expedition to 
 Calabria in 1844 ; a Greco-Italian society, the "Great Brother- 
 hood," had suffered imprisonment under Ward; Ionian Radicals 
 were members of similar bodies in Italy ; and a central com- 
 mittee in Zante was in correspondence with Garibaldi through 
 the restless Lombardos, whose inspiration might be traced 
 in the writings of the French scholar and traveller, Lenormant,
 
 xii] opinion in London 285 
 
 against British rule. But the Unionists founded some of their 
 most specious arguments upon the utterances of British 
 ministers. When Russell, in his famous dispatch of Oct. 27, 
 i860, proclaimed " the Italians " to be " the best judges of their 
 own interests " and spoke with enthusiasm of " their liberties " 
 and "independence," the Ionian Dandolo invited him to 
 apply these doctrines to the Greeks of the Seven Islands. 
 When, four months later, the Assembly met early in 1861, 
 an attack upon Gladstone's mission was followed by proposals 
 to submit the question of union in Italian fashion to d. plebiscite 
 and to appeal to the parliamentarians, governments, and 
 philanthropists of Europe for their co-operation. After warning 
 it of the unconstitutional character of these motions, Storks 
 prorogued it for six months — a weapon robbed of half its 
 terrors by the practice of paying the deputies' salaries even 
 when parliament was not sitting. This incident led to a 
 debate at Westminster, which gave both the Duke of Newcastle, 
 then Colonial Secretary, and Gladstone, then Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, an opportunity of upholding the protectorate. 
 Cession to Greece, argued the great Philhellene, would logically 
 involve that of Crete, Thessaly, and Epirus, and would at 
 the same time be a reckless waste of public money spent on 
 fortifications and "a crime against the safety of Europe." 
 These words were spoken on May 7, 1861 ; on December 8, 
 1862, the same Cabinet, of which the speaker was a member, 
 decided, with the solitary opposition of Lord Westbury, to 
 give up the Islands— only one of many examples of British 
 inconsistency in the eastern question. Palmerston himself, 
 the head of the government, consented to the cession of 
 Corfu, whose surrender he had declared in 1850 to be an 
 act of folly, whose retention, even if the southern islands were 
 ceded, he had again urged in 1851 as an act of wisdom. Such 
 is statesmanship ! 
 
 The statements of Newcastle and Gladstone had some 
 influence upon Ionian politics. When the twelfth Ionian
 
 286 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. 
 
 Assembly met in 1862, it learnt with surprise that its newly- 
 elected President, Zerv6s, the fervent Cephalonian Radical 
 and exile of earlier days, had toned down into a " Reformer," 
 so moderating was the effect of office, so slight seemed the 
 prospect of union on the very eve of its accomplishment. The 
 Radicals, however, under Lombardos, continued their protests 
 against the protectorate, in some cases blaming the British 
 authorities for what, since the reforms of 1849, was really the 
 fault of their own free municipalities. If since that date the 
 roads were no longer kept up and the splendid forest of the 
 Black Mountain inadequately protected, it was because those 
 local bodies allowed politics to enter into their work and feared 
 to punish the authors of forest fires in view of the next muni- 
 cipal election. In order to remedy these abuses. Storks 
 persuaded the Senate to restrict, through the Regents of the 
 islands, the powers of the municipalities, while he threw open 
 to competition the smaller posts in the public service. It 
 was too late, however, for a system of benevolent despotism. 
 Already, in this very year, Russell had offered the Ionian 
 Islands to Otho on condition that he abstained from causing 
 trouble in Turkey. After his deposition, the election of Prince 
 Alfred, who had visited Corfu in 1859 and whose elder brother 
 had landed in Cephalonia in the summer of 1862, caused 
 Great Britain to be much more popular than before, except 
 among the extreme Radicals ; while Elliot's promise that the 
 Ionian Islands would be the reward of the Greeks for choosing 
 a suitable monarch, who would respect the Greek constitution 
 and the integrity of Turkey, was the first official announcement 
 to the lonians of the new British policy. The Queen's speech 
 of 1863 repeated the offer, provided also that the lonians 
 themselves expressed their definite desire for union — a desire 
 only doubted by those who regarded the local aristocracy and 
 the officials as the sole representatives of public opinion, and by 
 cynics who believed, to the last, that the Radicals would shrink 
 from an act that would put an end to their salaries and close
 
 xii] British Conditions 287 
 
 the political career of most of them for ever. At Westminster, 
 however, the abandonment of the Islands was strongly 
 criticised by Lords Derby and Carnarvon and by Disraeli, 
 while Palmerston contended that the cession of the protectorate 
 was the affair not of Parliament but of the prerogative. 
 
 Article 4 of the treaty of July 13, 1863, relative to the ac- 
 cession of King George, between the three protecting Powers and 
 the King of Denmark, provided for the union of the Islands with 
 Greece, when it should " have been found to be in accordance 
 with the wishes of the Ionian Parliament," and should " have 
 obtained the consent of the Courts of Austria, France, Prussia, 
 and Russia." These Powers in a protocol of August i agreed 
 to this revision of the treaty of 18 15, of which three of them 
 had been signatories ; a newly-elected Ionian Assembly on 
 October 5 voted with only three dissentients for the Union 
 of the Seven Islands and their dependencies with Greece. 
 The Anglo-Ionian honeymoon was, however, of short duration. 
 In his message to the Assembly, Storks had stated five 
 conditions, whereas the late elections had been fought on 
 the cry of "Union without conditions." Of these conditions 
 the most important were the preservation of the British 
 cemeteries in the Islands — a question raised in 1902, when 
 it was proposed to erect a casino on that at Corfu — the annual 
 charge on the Ionian revenues of ;^io,ooo in augmentation 
 of the new King's civil list, and the abandonment of all 
 Ionian claims in return for the quittance for a debt of ^90,289 
 due to the protectorate " for arrears of military contribution." 
 These conditions were accepted, although the payment made 
 by the lonians to their future sovereign aroused the just 
 criticism that the expiring protectorate had no right to mortgage 
 the future of an integral part of his kingdom. But a still greater 
 surprise was in store for them. By a treaty between Great 
 Britain and the above-mentioned Powers, signed in London on 
 November 14, 1863, the Ionian Islands were declared neutral 
 territory, and consequently the forces maintained there were
 
 288 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. 
 
 to be limited, and the fortifications of the island of Corfti and 
 its immediate dependencies were to be destroyed before the 
 departure of the British troops. The announcement of these 
 further conditions caused indignation alike in the Islands and 
 in Greece. The Greek plenipotentiary, Charilaos Trikoupes, 
 son of the historian, and himself a future Premier, who thus 
 made his first appearance in public life, arrived in London 
 after the treaty was signed, and described the imposition of 
 these conditions as "the immolation of Greece to Austria." 
 Both Austria and Turkey regarded the fortifications of Corfu 
 as a danger, the one to the Adriatic, the other to Epirus, 
 while Palmerston defended the treaty by the precedents of the 
 demolition of the Belgian fortresses and the neutralisation of 
 Chablais and Faucigny. The Greek government pointed out 
 that the neutrality of such islands as Cerigo and Santa Mavra 
 would be nonsense, because they were geographically continua- 
 tions of the Morea and Akarnanfa, and cited the British bom- 
 bardment of Copenhagen as a proof of what neutrahty was 
 worth in the event of war between two strong naval Powers. 
 A compromise was made and embodied, on January 25, 
 1864, in a protocol which neutralised only the two northern- 
 most islands — CorfCi and Paxo with their dependencies, and 
 removed the limit imposed upon Greek forces in all of them. 
 These terms were incorporated in the definite treaty of union, 
 signed on March 29, 1864, by the three protecting Powers 
 and the King of the Hellenes, who took over the existing 
 contracts with the Ionian Bank and the Austrian Lloyd, and 
 promised to pay the pensions and compensations, enumerated 
 in a separate convention and amounting to ;^io,676, due to 
 certain British subjects and Ionian officials, whose services 
 would be no longer needed. This last condition the Greek 
 government considered unreasonable, for thus not only had 
 the lonians to pay ;^ 10,000 as an annuity to their new King, 
 but the Greeks the same sum in pensions to the old Ionian 
 establishment. Great Britain acted generously in ceding the
 
 xii] Destruction of the Forts 289 
 
 Islands ; she need not have spoiled her splendid act of 
 self-sacrifice by petty pecuniary considerations. 
 
 The last sad act in the drama of the protectorate now 
 began — the destruction of the Corfiote fortifications. For- 
 tunately, the picturesque " Old Fort," from whose Kopv^oj (or 
 "twin peaks ") the island received its present name, was spared ; 
 but the marine defences of the " New Fort," the adjacent 
 "Fort Abraham" and the fortifications of the islet of Vido, 
 which commands the entrance of the harbour, were blown up. 
 lonians argued that the British had no right to destroy these 
 works without consulting them, because about two-thirds of 
 their cost during the protectorate had been paid out of Ionian 
 money. The great blocks of masonry, on one of which the 
 author read the date of 1837, still cumber the islet of Vido ; and 
 such was the force of the explosion that an officer in charge 
 of it told him that it broke all the windows in the opposite 
 houses of Corfu. The destruction of these fortifications em- 
 bittered the local press against the departing protectors ; but 
 when, on the last morning of British rule, June 2, 1864, 
 two of our men were told off to sever the statue of Britannia 
 from the Phaiakian gallery, which still stands on the top of 
 the palace, a friend heard some native bystanders exclaim, 
 " she never did us any harm." At noon, Thrasyboulos Zai'mes 
 took over the Islands as extraordinary envoy of the Greek 
 government ; and four days later King George landed at Corfu, 
 subsequently visiting the other six islands. It is pleasant to 
 relate, on the authority of the British diplomatist who accom- 
 panied him, that at Santa Mavra alone was any bitterness 
 exhibited towards the dethroned protectorate. The last scene 
 in the drama of union was the entrance of the 84 Ionian 
 deputies, or twice the ordinary number, elected for the first 
 time by manhood suffrage, into the National Assembly at 
 Athens on August 3. From the Corfiote deputation the 
 landed class was wholly excluded ; the country swamped the 
 town. 
 
 M. L, 
 
 19
 
 290 Cession of the loiiimi Islands [ch. 
 
 Thus ended the connexion of half a century between 
 Britain and the Ionian Islands. The lapse of well-nigh 
 another half century since the union enables us to form some 
 opinion upon the step then taken. The question may be con- 
 sidered from various standpoints. From that of the Greeks of 
 the kingdom the union was an advantage, not only because 
 it gave them seven beautiful islands, all in a better material 
 condition, so far as roads and public works were concerned, 
 than the older provinces, but also because the lonians furnished 
 a cultured and aristocratic element to the state, which was 
 due to the long Venetian domination. The Ionian Islands 
 have produced one Prime Minister, several prominent 
 politicians, and some distinguished diplomatists to Greece, 
 while the great natural beauty of Corfu has favoured the 
 growth of art there. To the lonians themselves the union 
 was an ethical gain ; for most nationalities, and not least the 
 Hellenic, prefer to be governed even less well by their own 
 fellow-countrymen — and in the east the rulers should also 
 profess the same faith as the ruled — than to be governed 
 better by strangers, especially if these be of a dififerent creed. 
 The moral key note of the Ionian agitation for union was not 
 so much liberty as nationality and religion, the two coefficients 
 of Hellenism. Moreover, as Lytton pointed out, there were 
 social, as well as political, difficulties. " The cordial amenities 
 of bearing, and the judicious consideration for national pride, 
 and even national prejudices," which he recommended in a 
 memorable dispatch, were not always found among our 
 officials. An Englishman, wrote a French observer, repeats 
 that he is an Englishman twenty times a day, but once extra 
 in the Ionian Islands. But from the material point of view — 
 and ordinary mortals do not live by great ideas alone — the 
 lonians, and more particularly the Corfiotes, who benefited 
 principally by the British occupation, have suffered since the 
 union, as they soon discovered. Life in Corf^ was a very 
 different thing under the British from what it is to-day.
 
 xii] Results of the Union 291 
 
 Then a number of highly-paid ofificials spent their money 
 freely in the town, trade was brisk, and the station was known 
 as "the soldier's paradise." Posts there were in plenty for 
 the Corfiotes, while the amusements which always follow the 
 British officer attracted natives and strangers alike to the 
 place. No doubt this concentration of interests in the town 
 had the bad effect of inducing the landowners to leave their 
 estates in the interior of the island, in order to have their 
 share in the social gaities and lucrative employments which 
 the capital offered. So far the Greek government has not 
 done as much as was expected for the Ionian Islands, and 
 there is a melancholy air about the untenanted residences 
 of the former High Commissioners, which is only dispersed 
 when the annual visit of the German Emperor to Gastouri 
 attracts Greek royalty to Mon Repos. Lastly, there remains 
 the strategic and political aspect of the cessions. Napoleon, 
 Nelson, and other commanders placed a high value upon 
 Corfu, while Bismarck considered the withdrawal of our 
 protectorate as a sign of weakness. Certainly the German 
 statesman did not usually err on the side of generosity ; and 
 it may be doubted whether an enlarged and grateful Greek 
 state be not more to our advantage than the protectorate over 
 one discontented section of a hostile nationality. To sum up : 
 the union will be differently judged by political economists, 
 who ignore flesh and blood, and by politicians, who, being 
 patriots themselves, admire patriotism in other nations. 
 
 The traces of the British occupation have not quite died 
 away. The initials " G.R." and "V.R." may still be seen in 
 the palace at Corfij ; the townspeople still drink the excellent 
 water which Adam brought from Benizze ; and the square 
 which now bears his name was so called because of the solemn 
 doxology held there to commemorate the opening of the 
 aqueduct. Roads and monuments to High Commissioners, 
 a few graveyards and a few gray-beards remind the islanders 
 of their former benefactors ; the Ionian Bank still carries on 
 
 19—2
 
 292 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. 
 
 business ; and cricket is still played at Corfu, where a few- 
 scraps of English have been incorporated in the vernacular. 
 But the generation is fast passing away which knew the pro- 
 tectorate ; to most the British history of the Islands has passed 
 into that chapter of our national renunciations, which records 
 the lost possessions of Britain in the Mediterranean — Tangier 
 and Port Mahon. 
 
 The entry of the Ionian deputies into the National Assembly 
 enabled that body to begin the discussion of the new con- 
 stitution, of which a draft had been prepared by a committee. 
 During the nine months since the young King's arrival the 
 Assembly had used up three more Ministries ; and party spirit 
 ran so high that the decision of the Ionian members to give 
 a patriotic support to the government of the day soon gained 
 for them the reproaches of the Opposition. One deputy pro- 
 tested against the interference of Sponneck in the deliberations 
 of the Assembly ; and the discussion of the articles proceeded 
 so slowly that the royal mentor begged the British government 
 to use its influence with the Opposition — a request which 
 evoked the excellent, if somewhat tardy, recognition of the 
 principle, that the less the three Powers intervened in Greek 
 politics, the better would it be for Greece. The complete 
 unification of the Ionian Islands with the rest of the kingdom 
 proved to be an apple of discord even among the lonians 
 themselves ; for, while the Corfiote and Cephalonian deputies, 
 supported by the Opposition, desired the full and immediate 
 application in the Islands of the Greek legal and fiscal system, 
 the other Ionian members followed the government, then 
 headed by Kanares, in supporting the gradual adoption of 
 uniformity. The result was that the lonians retained their 
 fiscal system, introduced in 1803 and preserved during the 
 British protectorate, by which an export duty of 22-2 per cent, 
 on wine and oil represented the sole contribution of the 
 inhabitants to the state. As weeks and months were still 
 passing, the King, at the advice of the French minister, sent
 
 xii] Greek Constitution of 1864 293 
 
 a message to the Assembly on October 18, reminding it that 
 nearly a year had elapsed since 'his arrival, that more than 
 two months had gone by since the arrival of the Ionian 
 deputies, and that the delay in voting the constitution was 
 causing discontent among the people and embarrassment to 
 the Crown. He, therefore, requested the Assembly to vote 
 upon the rest of the constitution in ten days, reserving full 
 liberty of action to himself in case of its non-completion within 
 that period. This hint at his possible departure from the 
 country had its immediate effect. Despite Opposition protests, 
 the Assembly, which was still engaged in the discussion of 
 the 71st article when the royal message arrived, voted that 
 and the remaining 39 by October 29. One verbal amendment 
 relating to the Roman Catholic priests in Greece was accepted 
 at the suggestion of the Crown to please the French govern- 
 ment; and on November 28 the King took the oath to the 
 constitution and the President declared the labours of the 
 Assembly over. Thus, after sitting for nearly two years, the second 
 National Assembly held in Athens had provided the kingdom 
 of Greece with a second King and a second constitution, the 
 sixth drawn up since 182 1, which, however, lasted longer than 
 any of its predecessors. 
 
 The constitution of 1864 created an uni-cameral system. 
 The Senate was aboHshed by a majority of 211 to 62, although 
 the leaders of both the government and the Opposition were 
 favourable to some sort of Second Chamber. The difificulty 
 of forming such a body in a country, where there was (except 
 in the Ionian Islands) no aristocracy, where democracy is 
 engrained in the blood, and where large fortunes were then 
 very rare, argued for a single Chamber, while the practical 
 experience of the Othonian Senate had discredited that branch 
 of the legislature in the eyes of the people. It is true, that 
 the first parliamentary criticisms of Otho had been made in 
 the Senate ; but what specially damaged the senators in popular 
 estimation, usually based on the attitude of the governing
 
 294 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. 
 
 classes towards their salaries, was the extension of the senatorial 
 sessions so as to obtain remuneration for the largest number 
 of months, and the subsequent conversion of the monthly 
 wage, fixed by the constitution of 1844, into a larger annuity. 
 Sponneck's attempt to introduce into the constitution a paid 
 Council of State, as a check, was only temporarily successful, 
 for the articles creating it were repealed next year. The 
 Senate having been thus abolished and the Crown restricted 
 within the limits of constitutional monarchy, which King 
 George has been careful not to overstep, the Chamber of 
 Deputies became omnipotent, and parliamentarism was in- 
 stalled in all its latest developments. The Boide, as it was 
 classically called, was composed of deputies, elected for four 
 years by universal, secret, simultaneous suffrage, in proportion 
 to the population. Its numbers, in no case less than 150, have 
 been as high as 234, but were reduced in 1905 to 177 and 
 are now 181. The unfortunate proviso, which fixed the 
 quorum at so great a figure as half the total number of 
 deputies plus one, gave opportunity for obstruction by means 
 of abstention on a large scale, which at times paralysed public 
 business. Members were paid 2000 dr. (about ;^8o) for each 
 ordinary session of not less than three or more than six months, 
 and their travelling expenses alone for any extraordinary session. 
 In 1884 this salary was altered to 1800 dr., which was 
 occasionally increased in case of a very long extension of the 
 sittings, while in practice a compensation of from 1500 to 
 2000 dr. was paid latterly for attendance at an extraordinary 
 session. But Ministers, pensioners, or officers already in 
 receipt of state pay, were only entitled to the difference 
 between the legislative and their official salary. Special 
 representation was continued in the electoral law of 1864, 
 which accompanied the constitution, to the people of Hydra 
 and Spetsai and to the colonists of New Psara — as Eretria 
 had been re-baptised — in gratitude for the services of the Nautical 
 Islands in the War of Independence; and similar feelings
 
 xii] Greek Constitution 0/ iS6/\. 295 
 
 of pity and patriotism awarded Greek citizenship to the 
 refugees of Parga, Soflli and Hagia. The restriction of elec 
 tion to men of 30 prevented, as in Italy, the accession of 
 young and enthusiastic politicians to power ; and the provision 
 that a deputy must be either a native of, or at any rate settled 
 for at least two years in, his constituency, tended to narrow 
 the choice of the electorate to local magnates and to the 
 exclusion of national statesmen, who, as often happens, 
 chanced to be unpopular in their native place. Salaried civil 
 servants and mayors were further declared ineligible, but 
 officers of the forces were allowed to become deputies, being 
 placed in retreat during the whole period of the legis- 
 lature. This last provision scarcely tended to the maintenance 
 of discipline, for the army might have the spectacle of a 
 subordinate officer criticising his superiors from his place 
 in Parliament. But the insertion of this clause, which had 
 not existed in the constitution of 1844, is traceable to the 
 military character of the revolution of 1862, of which this was 
 the reward. Later legislation endeavoured to diminish the 
 evil by regarding the period of an officer's parliamentary life 
 as so much lost time in his military career. A Cabinet of 
 seven Ministers, not necessarily members of the Bou/e, in 
 which, however, they all had a right to speak, continued to 
 carry on the work of government. On five occasions King 
 George availed himself of the privilege to form extra-parlia- 
 mentary Cabinets ; on six he dismissed a Ministry which had 
 not been forced by the Chamber to resign. But these were 
 exceptions to the normal working of the ministerial system. 
 Excluding the ;!^i 2,000 a year paid to King George by the 
 three protecting Powers, the civil list was fixed at 1,125,000 dr., 
 inclusive of the _;^io,ooo contributed by the Ionian Islands. 
 
 The relations of Church and State caused considerable 
 debate. The Orthodox Ionian deputies desired the main- 
 tenance of their union with the CEcumenical Patriarch, which 
 had been sanctioned by the Ionian charter of 18 17 and which
 
 296 Cession of the Ionian Islands [ch. 
 
 they regarded as a national, no less than an ecclesiastical, 
 question. But the Orthodox Church in Greece was once 
 more proclaimed autocephalous, in an article, identical, save 
 for one adverb, with that of the constitution of 1844; and 
 an arrangement was made with the Patriarch respecting the 
 cession of his jurisdiction over the lonians, and allowing the 
 chief Corfiote ecclesiastic to retain for his life the coveted 
 title of " iMetropolitan." It was provided that the heir to the 
 Greek throne, simply styled "the successor" (for the "Euro- 
 pean " title of " Duke of Sparta " is not used in Greece) must 
 belong to the Orthodox Church. Finally, it was enacted that 
 a revision of the constitution could only take place, if, after 
 the lapse of ten years, the BouU in two successive legislatures 
 requested by a majority of three-quarters of its whole number 
 the revision of specified provisions. In that event, a revisionary 
 Chamber, composed of twice the ordinary number of deputies, 
 was to be specially convened. An exception, however, was 
 allowed in the case of article 83, which created a Council 
 of State; the revision of this article was permitted in the 
 next legislature, if three-quarters of the members demanded 
 it. The Council of State of from 15 to 20 persons, nominated 
 for ten years by the Crown on the proposal of the Cabinet for 
 the purpose of preparing and examining bills, had formed no 
 part of the original draft ; but it had seemed to Sponneck 
 to provide .a possible check on democracy, and had therefore 
 been recommended to the Assembly. But to the Greek 
 democrats it smacked of Bavarian autocracy— for Otho had 
 had a similar Council of State from 1835 to 1844— and it 
 was accepted as part of the constitution by only a small 
 majority. Scarcely had the constitution been passed than 
 a large group of deputies signed a protest against the restora- 
 tion of this institution; and in the next legislature it was 
 abolished, and the four articles of the constitution relating to 
 it consequently annulled, by 120 votes to 26. When, however, 
 a thorough revision of the constitution was imperatively
 
 xii] Greek Constitution 0/ 1S64. 297 
 
 demanded in 19 10, the Crown did not — perhaps could not — 
 wait till two successive legislatures had demanded revision by 
 a three-quarters' majority. It was felt that the country could 
 not afford the time for the nice performance of those pre- 
 liminary obligations. 
 
 The constitution of 1864, with that one exception and 
 a few smaller changes, regulated Greek public life for 46 years. 
 Nowhere has the democratic ideal been more clearly expressed 
 in writing; whether the national interests were equally well 
 interpreted by it, is another question.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 REFORMS AND THEIR RESULTS: THE LEBANON 
 AND CRETE (1856-69) 
 
 Sanguine statesmen, who had undertaken the Crimean war 
 to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman empire, hoped that 
 the sacrifices of the western Powers would be at least rewarded 
 by the reform of Turkish administration and by the amelioration 
 of the conditions under which the Christian subjects of the 
 Sultan lived. Believers in paper reforms were encouraged in 
 this belief by the publication, on February 18, 1856, a week 
 before the meeting of the Congress at Paris, of an " Illustrious 
 writing," or Hatti-Humayfm, confirming the promises made at 
 Giil-khaneh in 1839. This second charter, granted by Abdul 
 Mejid to his people, ratified all "the spiritual privileges and 
 immunities '' accorded " to all Christian communities or to 
 other non-Mussulman religions." Patriarchs were to be nomin- 
 ated for life, and thus the scandal of frequent changes avoided ; 
 their revenues were to be fixed, and the temporal affairs of 
 their respective communities placed under the control of a 
 committee, chosen from among them. The fabric of churches 
 schools, and hospitals might be repaired, provided— it was 
 added with a fine respect for archaeology, which no one would 
 have expected from the Turks— that "the primitive plans" 
 were followed ! All injurious appellations, tending to wound 
 the susceptibilities of this or that creed or race, were to be 
 severely punished ; compulsory conversion was prohibited ; 
 office was thrown open to every nationality ; civil and military
 
 CH. xiii] The Sultans Promises 299 
 
 education was offered to all who complied with the regulations. 
 Justice was to be administered in public, and witnesses were 
 to swear in the fashion of their respective creeds ; codes of law 
 were to be prepared and translated into all the languages of 
 the empire ; any corporal punishment approaching to torture 
 was abolished ; the police was to be reorganised in a manner 
 to inspire confidence and security. Christians were declared 
 admissible to the army ; and equality of rights was stated to 
 involve equality of taxation. Reform of the tithe-system and 
 abolition of the tax-farmer were promised ; an annual budget 
 was to show how the taxes had been spent ; roads and canals 
 were to be made, banks founded, European capital attracted 
 for the development of the Sultan's dominions. In short, an 
 Asiatic despotism, based upon the Koran and which in Europe 
 was still rather in the nature of a garrison than a settlement, 
 was to be transformed by a stroke of the pen into a western 
 empire. The history of the next half-century is the best 
 commentary on the Utopian programme contained in this op- 
 timistic document, which was communicated to the signatories 
 of the treaty of Paris — a communication which they ingenu- 
 ously declared in article 9 to be of "high value" and yet as 
 not authorising their collective or separate intervention in the 
 internal affairs of Turkey. In other words, the charter was 
 treated as the " spontaneous emanation of the Sultan's sovereign 
 resolve " to goyern on European Hnes but without European 
 control. 
 
 No one acquainted with the Turks, or indeed with any 
 nationality accustomed for centuries to regard itself as a govern- 
 ing and superior race, could have expected these reforms to be 
 palatable to the Mussulmans. A reaction naturally set in ; and 
 little more than two years had passed, when an outbreak of 
 fanaticism — repeated at the same place in 1895 — resulted in 
 the murder of the British and French consuls at Jedda, the 
 active intervention of the two late allies of the Sultan, and 
 the bombardment of the town by a British vessel. Ere long the
 
 300 Reforms and their Restdts [cH. 
 
 horrors of the Lebanon aroused the attention of Europe and 
 occasioned the dispatch of a French expedition to Syria. A 
 little while more, and Crete rose against her masters. 
 
 The settlement of the Lebanon in 1845 had secured peace 
 as long as the Emir Haydar, who governed the Maronite section 
 of the Mountain, lived. But, upon his death in 1854, the Porte 
 selected as his successor a certain Emir Beshir- Ahmed Bellamah, 
 whose appointment not only divided the British from the 
 French government, but was also challenged by other native 
 chiefs. A social revolution was at this time developing among 
 the Maronites, the fertility of whose wives was in striking 
 contrast with the barrenness of the soil. As a natural con- 
 sequence of this disproportion between the Christian population 
 and the land available for its support, the young Maronites 
 found themselves compelled to emigrate or obtain such an 
 agrarian law as would end, or at least modify, the feudal system 
 then still prevailing on the Lebanon. In this agitation, the 
 peasants found leaders, as usually happens, in the younger sons 
 of the nobility, who, excluded by primogeniture from the 
 advantages of the first-born, " took the people into partnership," 
 like the aristocratic Athenian demagogue of old. The priests, 
 too, sprung from the loins of the people, espoused the popular 
 cause, under the leadership of the bishop of Beirilt ; while the 
 new governor of the Maronite district was glad to exploit for 
 the destruction of his rivals the socialistic sentiments of the 
 peasantry. An agrarian insurrection began, and a peasant 
 commonwealth was formed with a gigantic farrier as its presi- 
 dent. So far the movement had been confined to the Maronites, 
 for the Druse nobility was at first inclined to side with the 
 Maronite aristocracy against the peasants, who seemed to be 
 the common enemy of the upper class, whether Maronite or 
 Druse. But the fabric of feudalism among the Druses was 
 more substantial than among the Christians ; and the Turkish 
 authorities, glad of an excuse to abolish the local autonomy, 
 were able to direct the Druses, peasants no less than chiefs,
 
 xiii] The Syrian Atrocities 301 
 
 against the Maronites, by whom they regarded themselves 
 menaced. Fanaticism was met by fanaticism ; and, while French 
 diplomacy naturally blamed the Druses, British accused the 
 Catholic Maronites. But the latest and most exhaustive study 
 of the question points to the Turkish authorities rather than 
 the Maronite priests as responsible for kindling the inflammable 
 material accumulated by racial, religious, and class hatred on 
 the Lebanon. 
 
 On April 27, i860, the Druses began the massacres of the 
 Maronites ; a month later 32 blazing villages illuminated the 
 Mountain. Sites familiar to Christendom from the Bible, Sidon 
 and "Baal-gad, in the valley of Lebanon under Mount Hermon," 
 were turned into shambles, where defenceless refugees were 
 butchered; in Deir el-Kamar, the lofty "monastery of the 
 moon," the ancient palace was strewn with the corpses of 
 Maronites, slowly done to death by the Druses under the eyes 
 of the Turkish soldiers. Even the pasha of Beirilt professed 
 his regret at these horrors ; and, owing to his influence, on 
 July 6 the Druses and Maronites signed a treaty of peace. 
 But "the Syrian atrocities" were not yet over. Three days 
 later, the Mussulmans of Damascus, whither numbers of 
 fugitives had fled, attacked the Christian quarter ; for ten days 
 the pillage lasted, and the British consul reported that 5500 
 Christians perished there. The carnage would have been 
 greater, had it not been for the noble conduct of Abd el-Kader, 
 the Skanderbeg of Algeria^ then living in exile at Damascus. 
 The brave defender of northern Africa against the French strove 
 to prevent and, when he could not prevent, to mitigate the 
 massacre, even at the risk of his life. His retainers escorted 
 hundreds, who would otherwise have been killed, to Beirut 
 beneath the shadow of the foreign consulates. Thither, as 
 soon as the news of the massacre reached him, Thouvenel, then 
 French Minister of Foreign Affairs, resolved to send an expedi- 
 tion. Such a policy was defensible on political no less than 
 humanitarian grounds, for France was the special protectress
 
 302 Reforms and their Results [ch. 
 
 of the Maronites, and her Emperor hoped to recover in Syria 
 those clerical sympathies which he had lost the year before in 
 Italy. Russell, however, fearing the creation of a French 
 principality or protectorate in Syria, desired the proposed 
 intervention to be regulated by a special convention, which 
 Russia, already dissatisfied with the progress of the promised 
 Turkish reforms, wished to extend to the general condition of 
 the Christians in Turkey, to the Balkans no less than to the 
 Lebanon. The Russian suggestion was rejected ; a Greek offer 
 to send a detachment of evzonoi and two warships was declined ; 
 and on August 3 the signatory Powers of the treaty of Paris, 
 with the exception of Sardinia, signed in that capital a protocol, 
 which was converted a month later into a convention. A body 
 of not more than 12,000 European troops, of which Napoleon 
 III at once furnished 6000, was "to contribute to the restora- 
 tion of tranquillity," but this occupation was not to exceed six 
 months. This " active co-operation " of the Powers with the 
 Sultan was justified by that very article 9 of the treaty of Paris, 
 which seemed to exclude their intervention in the internal 
 affairs of his empire. Before, however, the French expedition 
 under General Beaufort d'Hautpoul, an officer of Syrian 
 experience, had arrived, Fuad Pasha, the Turkish Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs, whom the Sultan had sent as his commissioner 
 extraordinary to Syria on the news of the massacres, had exacted 
 exemplary punishment at Damascus. By his orders, 1 1 1 soldiers 
 were shot, 57 civilians hanged, the pasha himself secretly 
 executed, and Abd el-Kader decorated. But when the French 
 proceeded to clear the Lebanon, the Druses were allowed to 
 escape through the connivance of Fuad or the stupidity of his 
 agents ; and the French expedition thus became merely " a 
 charitable promenade." Thouvenel strove to obtain an ex- 
 tension of its duration. Russell, however, fearing Napoleonic 
 designs against Syria and Egypt, opposed it ; and it was finally 
 arranged that by June 5 the evacuation of the country should be 
 complete. Beyond increasing the popularity of the Napoleonic
 
 xiii] Organisation of the Lebanon 303 
 
 song, Partant pour la Syrie, the nine months' French occupa- 
 tion of Syria had not achieved much. International jealousy 
 had again favoured the Turks ; and in the commission which 
 had been sitting at Beirfit Lord Dufiferin's championship 
 of the Druses tempered their punishment with mercy; 245 
 Druses were exiled to Tripoli in Africa, and others to the castles 
 of Belgrade and Vidin ; the pasha of Beirut escaped death by 
 transportation to Constantinople ; indemnities were paid by the 
 Ottoman authorities, of course irregularly, to the Christians of 
 Damascus and the Lebanon, and were supplemented by a French 
 subscription. 
 
 It now remained to reorganise the administration of the 
 Mountain. The international commission decided that the 
 Lebanon should form an autonomous province under an 
 Ottoman governor-general, chosen from among the Sultan's 
 Christian subjects. The frontiers of this province were restric- 
 ted by the exclusion of Beirut and several villages; it was divided 
 into six districts, three administered by Maronites, one by a 
 Druse, one by an Orthodox Greek, and one by an Uniate. 
 The capital was fixed at Deir el-Kamar, a Christian enclave in 
 the Druse district, from which it was detached. Advisory 
 provincial and district councils, a local police, and a tribute, 
 upon which the Mountain had a first charge, completed the 
 charter of 1861. Its signature was almost the last act of Abdul 
 Mejid ; on June 25, 1861 he died, leaving behind him the 
 memory of a humane ruler, who had attempted, if in vain, to 
 continue the reforms of his father, and bequeathing to his 
 brother Abdul Aziz, till then regarded as the hope of the 
 reactionary party, an embarrassed exchequer, an unfulfilled 
 policy of progress, a threatening situation in the Balkan 
 peninsula, and an untried organisation on the Lebanon, which 
 satisfied none of its inhabitants. 
 
 The first Christian governor-general of the Mountain, a 
 Catholic Armenian of learning and experience alike in diplomacy 
 and administration, was received with suspicion and discontent.
 
 304 Reforms and their Results [ch. 
 
 The Maronites had demanded a governor-general of their own 
 race ; the Druses had lost their feudal privileges and were placed 
 in an inferior position to the Greeks ; the Greeks, who might 
 appear to be the chief gainers by the reorganisation, regarded 
 Daoud Pasha as an enemy, because he was an Armenian. The 
 democratic section of the Maronites refused to pay taxes to an 
 autocratic foreigner, who relied on the local aristocracy. But 
 the clever Armenian triumphed over all these obstacles. First, 
 he secured by a ruse the deportation of the Maronite tribune, 
 Karam ; then he removed the Turkish soldiers, and traversed 
 the Mountain to hear in person the grievances of its inhabitants. 
 Confidence was thus gradually restored ; private vengeance gave 
 way to law ; and all was going well when, in 1863, the release 
 of some of the exiled Druses brought back to the Lebanon the 
 authors of the massacres. Daoud solved even this difficulty 
 by a scheme of land purchase; the Druses sold their real 
 property and emigrated in such large numbers to the fertile 
 Hauran, the Bashan of the Bible, that the district has obtained 
 the name of "the Druse Mountains." These successes secured 
 the governor-general's unanimous re-nomination at the expira- 
 tion of his three years' term. But experience had disclosed 
 defects in the practical working of the theoretical organisation, 
 compiled by diplomatists ignorant of the peculiar conditions of 
 the Lebanon. Accordingly a new statute was drawn up and 
 signed by the representatives of Turkey and of the five Powers 
 at Constantinople on September 6, 1864, which modified and 
 simplified that of 1861. The Lebanon continued to be ad- 
 ministered by a Christian governor, nominated by the Porte ; 
 and Daoud's tenure was prolonged for five years. In order to 
 give to the Maronites, the most numerous element of the 
 population, a representation proportionate to their numbers, 
 a seventh district, administered by a Maronite, was created ; 
 the district councils were annulled ; and the provincial council 
 was so reorganised, that out of its 12 members four were 
 Maronites, three Druses, three Greeks of the two rites, and two
 
 xiii] Later History of the Lebanon 305 
 
 Mussulmans — one Sunnite, or Orthodox^ the other a Metdwileh, 
 or dissenter. All feudal privileges and the right of asylum, 
 enjoyed by ecclesiastical establishments, were abolished, but 
 litigation between ecclesiastics was left within the sole jurisdic- 
 tion of the ecclesiastical authorities. Each village became a 
 commune, whose mayor and petty justice of the peace was 
 a local sheikh. A body of police was responsible for the 
 preservation of order ; and it was reiterated that the 3500 purses 
 (;^i4,583. 6s. 8d.), at which the tribute was assessed for the 
 time being, should be devoted to local requirements, any surplus 
 being paid to the Imperial treasury. 
 
 This statute, which cannot be altered without the consent 
 of the Powers, still remains, after nearly half a century, the 
 charter of the Lebanon, and has likewise served as a model for 
 Crete. With the exception of an insurrection headed by the 
 escaped Maronite democrat, Karam, in 1866, and terminated 
 by the severity of Daoud and the final deportation of its leader, 
 the Mountain has enjoyed unbroken peace. A succession of 
 strong governors, notably Rustem Pasha, subsequently ambas- 
 sador in London, a firm and economical administrator, kept 
 both Maronites and Druses in order. Their mutual hatred 
 has almost disappeared ; and emigration has reduced the Druses 
 to the third place numerically among the inhabitants of the 
 Lebanon, which, according to the latest figures, contains 229,680 
 Maronites, 54,208 Orthodox Greeks, 49,812 Druses, 34,472 
 Uniates, and 30,422 Muslims. The policy of the Sultan's 
 representative has been to rely upon the aristocratic and con- 
 servative element, thereby checking the democrats and the 
 clergy. The most pressing question on the Lebanon is now 
 agrarian, for, despite the large numbers of emigrants, land can 
 scarcely be purchased on the Lebanon, where more than one- 
 third of the soil, and that the best, is owned by the monasteries. 
 Mortmain is the curse of the Mountain, because the peasant, 
 even if he return from abroad with his little pile, cannot gratify 
 his earth-hunger. If he wish to cultivate the land of his beloved 
 
 M. L. 20
 
 3o6 Reforms and their Results [ch. 
 
 Mountain, he must do so as a monk or a metayer. Nevertheless, 
 the Lebanon is, on the whole, the most successful example of 
 autonomy applied to a Turkish province. Samos has had 
 frequent difficulties with her princes ; Eastern Roumelia was 
 soon merged in Bulgaria; Crete will never rest till she has 
 obtained union with the Greek kingdom. 
 
 The " great Greek island " had enjoyed — if for the Cretans 
 it could be called " enjoyment " — an unusually long period of 
 repose after the abortive insurrection of 1841. In 1858, 
 however, 8000 islanders mustered together, and an Assembly, 
 convened at Peribolia near Canea, threatened to resort to force 
 unless the reforms promised at Giil-khaneh and re-affirmed in 
 the Hatti-Humayun of 1856, were realised. The fiscal burdens 
 of the Cretans were not onerous, for besides the tithe of 
 agricultural produce, estimated at an average of lOi'. per head, 
 they paid only one tax, that in commutation of military service. 
 But the collectors of this tax, not in itself heavy (for it was only 
 ^^5560 for the whole island, or about %d. per head), demanded 
 the simultaneous payment of two years' arrears, and some too 
 zealous agents threatened the introduction of other taxes, of 
 which the recent census seemed to be the preliminary. Vely 
 Pasha, the governor-general, a native of Crete, and a son of 
 Mustapha, for so many years vali of the island, had acted 
 humanely and liberally on the system which he had learned 
 when ambassador in Paris ; but his road-making policy, at first 
 hailed with enthusiasm, had made him unpopular with the 
 peasants, who had to provide the labour and pay 9^. per head, 
 and his toleration of changes of religion had led to squabbles 
 about proselytism. But underlying all these causes was the 
 desire of the Christians for union with Greece, or at least for 
 a Cretan principality under Kallerges, the hero of the revolution 
 of 1843 and himself of Cretan extraction ^ The moment was 
 favourable to the Cretans, for France was on their side and the 
 
 1 Consul-general Longworth's report of i8.;8 in Parliamentary Papers 
 1867-8, vol. Ixxiii, No. 3965, I.
 
 xiii] Cretan Grievances 307 
 
 Turks were occupied with the Montenegrin war ; and thus the 
 Servian highlanders rendered their first, but not their last, 
 service to the Greek islanders, equally attached to liberty and 
 equally ready to fight for it. The Porte, therefore, before much 
 blood had been shed, wisely replaced the well-meaning but 
 obnoxious governor by a milder official, Sami Pasha, promising 
 provincial councils and other concessions on the lines of the 
 Haiti- Humayun of 1856. 
 
 But these promises, which had stayed, or rather postponed, 
 the •insurrection, were disregarded by the next governor- 
 general, Ismail Pasha, whose objects were to increase his 
 fortune and advance his own career. A petition to the 
 Sultan in 1864, setting forth the Cretan grievances, was 
 neutralised by a counter-petition, so that discontent, increased 
 by two bad crops, continued to spread until, in May 1866, 
 some 4000 Christians met at Peribolia to discuss the situation. 
 On May 26, a fresh petition, resembHng that of 1864, was 
 drawn up for presentation to the Sultan. The Christians 
 complained of the exorbitant duties levied since 1858 upon 
 various articles of food, upon the sale of wine, upon tobacco, 
 and upon salt — this last a special grievance, because it crippled 
 the Cretan staple manufacture of soap ; nor were they pacified 
 by the Turkish argument that the rise in these taxes was 
 intended to compensate the treasury for the loss entailed by 
 the reduction of the export dues throughout the empire. They 
 further complained of the vexatious system of farming the taxes, 
 of the want of bridges and roads — for the Turks had done 
 practically nothing to improve the communications of the island 
 in the two centuries of their occupation — and of the undue 
 interference of Ismail in the elections to the " Councils of the 
 elders," as they were picturesquely called, despite the promises 
 made eight years earlier. They asked for a bank to prevent 
 the usury of the oil-merchants, to whom alone the farmers 
 could apply for loans; they claimed judicial reform — for the 
 awards of the courts were issued in Turkish, not in the tongue
 
 3o8 Reforms and their Results [cH. 
 
 understanded of the people, the evidence of a Christian was 
 unavailing against that of a Mussulman, imprisonment was 
 often indefinitely protracted, and it was the custom to arrest 
 the relative of an escaped or contumacious culprit as a hostage. 
 The lack of schools, the closing of all the Cretan ports save 
 three, and the restrictions upon religious freedom, which com- 
 pelled a converted Mussulman to quit the island, completed 
 the list of grievances. 
 
 So far reform, not revolution, was mentioned ; it was only 
 later that the Cretans petitioned Queen Victoria, Napoleon III, 
 and the Tsar for union with Greece, or, if that were im- 
 possible, for a reformed political organisation. Clarendon, 
 then at the Foreign Office, replied that reforms should be 
 granted, but that " the condition and prospects of the Ionian 
 Islands ought to deter the Cretans from wishing to be united 
 with Greece." The Foreign Secretary's opinion was based 
 upon the discouraging reports ' which he had received from his 
 consuls in the three principal islands since the union, and 
 especially from Corfu, whose inhabitants felt that they had been 
 treated "as a conquered people," or, in the words of a Corfiote, 
 as " a fief of the politicians at Athens." The wholesale dismissal 
 and reduced payment of Ionian officials, the abolition of 
 imprisonment for debt — the only guarantee which the land- 
 owner had for the fulfilment of contracts by his tenants — and 
 the assimilation of the legal system to that of the rest of Greece, 
 caused the landed proprietors of the island to petition the King, 
 and Padovan, so lately the leader of Corfiote Unionism, to quit 
 the Boule in disgust at what he called " the slaughter of the 
 Seven Islands, and particularly of Corfu." While a " state of 
 penury and despondency reigned in that island," and the six 
 rural deputies openly advocated the extinction of all private 
 debts — the yp^wv diroKoirai of the ancients — by means of a 
 heavy property tax and heavy import-duties, the Metropolitan 
 
 1 Contradicted by M. S. Dragounies, the subsequent Premier, then a 
 judge in Corfu.
 
 xiii] 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 lonians 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 is even now not yet 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 
 Kelides, 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 Sphakia, on Sep- 
 tember 2, declared Ottoman rule abolished and proclaimed
 
 3IO 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 Murnies 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, reaUsing 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,
 
 xiii] 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 Panhellhiion, 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. " 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 Hves 
 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 vnin. The verses of the poet Paraschos commemorated 
 their resistance, worthy of the best days of ancient Sparta ; pubHc 
 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 Selino Kastelli caused pro-British demonstra- 
 tions in Greece, where Koumoundoilros, 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 furtlier. " 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 hmb 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
 
 xiii] 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 has 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 Sphakia 
 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 Rethymne and Candia ; Hajji
 
 3 1 4 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 Arkddion 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. Trikoupes, the Greek Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs, protested against his outrages ; Gortchakoff 
 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 v&li) and a commander-in-chief, who were to be 
 usually distinct persons but who on occasion might be one 
 and the same individual. The vcili 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,
 
 xiii] 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'. 
 
 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. Ixxiii, 469-83.
 
 3i6 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 1841, 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 Trikoiipes, 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 Koumoundot^ros, 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. 
 Boulgares, who returned to office in 1868 after a Cabinet 
 of Affnirs had been tried. M-as 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
 
 xiii] Admiral Hobart at Syra 317 
 
 the country financially. But, like the lonians 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
 
 31 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 Zaimes 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 ^535,414 — a measure which was withdrawn 
 on condition that the National and Ionian Banks consented 
 to a forced loan to the government of ;/{^756,ooo. The Cretan 
 insurrection, now that all hope of Greek intervention had 
 disappeared, died a natural death. Dr 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 pohticians 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 Sei'vian Questions [cii. 
 
 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 PoHsh 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 abbots 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 setde 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 ;^i, 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 CEcumenical 
 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." T\\q plebiscite by 682,621 votes against 1307 ratified 
 
 M. L. -7 1
 
 3 22 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 15 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 England,
 
 XI v] Conspiracy against Couza 323 
 
 the path of civil and mih"tary 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 [ch. 
 
 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
 
 xiv] Pi'ince Charles candidature 325 
 
 against Couza's deposition. A conference of Turkey and the 
 Powers accordingly met in Paris on March 10, 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 
 i[uestion 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-
 
 o 
 
 26 Rotwianian and Servian Questions [en. 
 
 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
 
 XI v] The Jewish 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." 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 1872- -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
 
 J 
 
 28 Roumanian and Servian Questions [cii. 
 
 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 HohenzoUern 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 Rou77ianian and So'vian 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'." 
 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 
 n 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 
 
 ^ Aus dem Leben, ii. 270.
 
 xiv] The Catargi Cabinet 331 
 
 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 
 Rojnanul, 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 KoumoundoGros 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 -XiZi 
 
 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 Otnladina ("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 lo, 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 present King of Servia. Others believed that 
 Radovanovich, Alexander's business manager in Belgrade, 
 planried 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 
 Skupshtifia, 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 
 Skupshtitia, 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 Sknpshtina 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, ^"d 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 Skupshtina, — for 
 Ristich confessed that he could find no elements for a second 
 — was to be three-quarters elective, and one-quarter nominated. 
 Not only ofificials 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
 
 33^ Rotimaniaii mid Sei'vian Questions [ch. 
 
 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 litde 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 2i2>l 
 
 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.
 
 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] Bidgarian 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 1851 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
 
 340 The Bulgarian Exarchate [cn. 
 
 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 Bulgars. 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 Vogon'des, 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 341 
 
 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 
 CEcumenical 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
 
 342 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, io,ooo 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 journaHst 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] Midhat's 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 34 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 vilayef'' 
 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- 
 Humayiin of 1856 ; his police no longer insulted the Bulgars ; 
 his officials were sometimes natives. Thirty years earlier, 
 when, in 1837, the reforming Sultan Mahmild H 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 '^^^ Bulgarian Exa^-chate [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 
 Ausgleich 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 comphcity, 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 of 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 ; 
 Ignatyeff, 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 1911 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 i87o--a year full of 
 
 import for eastern as for western Europe. On April 11 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 ;!^2 5,000 or an amnesty — a demand quickly 
 
 expanded into ;^2 5,000 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 O^-opos^' 349 
 
 members of the Opposition," with the object of maliing 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 Soiitsos, 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. Mr Frank Noel, 
 the squire of Achmetaga in Euboea, 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 i8, 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 
 Hnes 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 Orop6s. But hearing that they had crossed the river 
 Asop6s with their prisoners to the neighbouring village of 
 Sykamindn, 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 Hne 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 Mr 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 Mr 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 amazement, 
 Mr 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 ^^^^' 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', 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 Lcivrion 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, I, 23. 
 
 23—2
 
 356 The Bitlgarian 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 
 Boulgares, 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. Boulgares, 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 in-qXirai ("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; and 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 Boiilgares 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- 
 doCiros to obtain from the new Chamber a vote annulling all 
 laws passed by the unconstitutional quorum. In 1876 the 
 whole Boulgares 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. xvi] 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 tjo 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 milfs 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 Cj'iszs 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 i, 
 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 
 i2| 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 Hcrzegoznnian risino- 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 kfnets, 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 reHgions 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 Plungary 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 1 2 the Sultan 
 issued a new firman, completing the Hatti-Humayiin 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 Ber/in Me7norandiu}i 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 [en. 
 
 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 Tchernaieff, 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 Poinaks, 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 50-0 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 "; 
 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." P>en 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 dififi- 
 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 Timok, while at the same 
 time despatching detachments to the frontiers of Bosnia and
 
 xvi] First Sei'Z'ian campaign 369 
 
 of the sanjak of Novibazar. But the Russian commander's 
 strategy was neutrahsed 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 Tchernaieff'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 i an armistice of two months was signed, which 
 was subsequently extended till March i, 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, 
 
 M. r.. 24
 
 37o The Balkmi C7'isis 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] Midhafs Parlia7nent 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 
 I 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 pubhc life nor independence of the government, and supported
 
 xvi] The Riisso-Tzirkish War T^'j^i 
 
 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 ^-^^ 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 
 general, 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 principaHty 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
 
 :i)']6 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; Skobeleffand 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 ^JJ 
 
 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 privateadmitted 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
 
 ^yS 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 Hellejiic 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. 
 Koumoundoilros 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 " CEcumenical 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 Boulgares 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
 
 J 
 
 80 TAe 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 
 "(Ecumenical government,"' whose chief was already dead, 
 resigned ; the populace demanded war ; KoumoundoQros, 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 Trikoupes 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
 
 xvi] 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 
 Lit6choron 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 
 Patihellenmi (p. 314) reappeared 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 uH 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 Heu of part of the war indemnity the
 
 384 The Balkan Crisis of 1875-8 [ch. 
 
 sanjak of Toultcha, 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 
 Osfen, 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
 
 H — ^
 
 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, decHned 
 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 m.obilisation 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 [cii. 
 
 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,
 
 xvt] 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 of 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 "the 
 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 391 
 
 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 the Morava 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 has been since 1878 the southernmost village 
 of Dalmatia command the bay and dominate the King's
 
 392 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 sanitar)' 
 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 is now 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 has never 
 forgiven, nor are 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 still rankles in the minds of 
 the Roumans, and has 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 TJie 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 CorfCi, 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
 
 xvi] The Cyprus Conventmi 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 Batiim 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 earHer. 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 recent victories of the Balkan League 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 BatQm ; 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] Res n /is 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 34 years of .'\ustrian administration in Bosnia and the 
 Herzegovina, with which we may compare the British occupa- 
 tion of Egypt and the French protectorate of Tunisia, have 
 converted two wild Turkish provinces into a civilised Balkan 
 state, even if the subjects do 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 BerHn, 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.
 
 
 J5 
 
 c 
 
 ,^ 
 
 ^! 
 
 !^.S 
 
 <<;
 
 THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN EUROPE AFTER THE TREATY OF BERLIN, 1878. 
 
 L 
 
 J
 
 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 hue Btilgarias [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 is 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, i88i,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 HohenzoUern, whose
 
 xvii] 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 has necessitated official 
 discouragement of the corresponding Italian movement. Thus 
 Roumania has become, 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 tivo Bulgarias [ch. 
 
 after a desperate resistance, fell into their hands ; a 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 Effendi, 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 ever since, began. 
 
 The military occupation of the three points in the sanjak 
 of Novibazar began with the entrance of the 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 ^Iso had an excellent effect ; while 
 Ottoman pride was characteristically salved by the diplomatic
 
 xvii] Gusinje mid 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' 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 
 
 ^ This appears to be the correct spelling of the word usually spelt 
 " Malissori."
 
 xvii] 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 Dul- 
 cigno. Prince Nicholas publicly expressed his gratitude to 
 Great Britain, and has never forgotten 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 
 1 813, 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
 
 4o6 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 mihtary authorities maintained that the Peneios-
 
 xvii] 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. 
 VVaddington 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
 
 4o8 Union of the tivo Biilgarias [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 ; Trikodpes, who 
 had again succeeded Koumoundoiiros 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,
 
 xvii] Cession of Thessaly and Arta 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
 
 4IO 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 i8o millions of 
 drachmai, caused an aggregate deficit of 140 millions in her 
 budgets, and led to the introduction in 1877 of the forced paper 
 currency. Trikoiipes 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- 
 doiiros in 1883 to that of Trikoiipes 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,
 
 XVI i] The Pact of Hal^pa 41 i 
 
 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 1 88 1, 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 Sobratije, 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,
 
 xvii] 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 statesmanUke 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 RoumeHa ; 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 was 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,"
 
 xvii] 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 i8th, Majors 
 Nikolajev, Filov, and Mutkurov surrounded the Pasha's konak 
 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 hvo 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 SaUsbury, 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 
 Ust, 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
 
 xvii] Serdo-Bulgarian War 417 
 
 White, who represented Great Britain in the conference, were 
 to induce the Sultan to abstain from miUtary intervention, to 
 secure, if possible, the appointment of Alexander as Governor- 
 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 
 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
 
 41 8 Union of the fivo 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 principaHty 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 i6 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
 
 XVI i] 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 15 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 91 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 oidrachmai. 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 Office, 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
 
 4-20 Union of the tivo Bnlgarias [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
 
 XVI i] Prince Alexander kidnapped 42 r 
 
 sought to rid the principaHty of a ruler, whose motto since 
 1883 had 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 otificers, 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 ofificers 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
 
 42 2 Union of the tzvo Btdgarias [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'etat, 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, 
 and thence issued a counter-proclamation, declaring Clement 
 and his colleagues to be outlaws, appointing Mutkurov, who was 
 at Philippopolis, Commander-in-Chief, and invoking the aid of 
 the whole nation against the traitors. The threat of the pro- 
 vincial regiments to march on the capital, the tepid response 
 of Russia, and the dislike of the Bulgars for the interference of 
 ecclesiastics in temporal affairs, caused the Metropolitan and 
 his colleagues to resign. Popov, a loyalist ofificer, occupied the
 
 xvii] Alexander's Abdication 423 
 
 palace j Karavelov resumed office, with Stoilov, who had been 
 Alexander's private secretary, as Foreign Minister; but Stam- 
 bulov declined to co-operate with the restored Premier, whose 
 sincerity he doubted ; and the country was governed by a 
 Regency, composed of Slavejkov, Stranski, and himself. As soon 
 as the whereabouts of the kidnapped Prince had been discovered, 
 a telegram was despatched to him, begging him to return to 
 his faithful people. Alexander accepted the invitation, and on 
 August 29 set foot on Bulgarian soil at Rustchuk, where he was 
 enthusiastically received. After confirming the arrangements 
 made by the Regency, he was so weak as to transmit to the Tsar 
 through the Russian consul, who had met him on his landing, 
 a telegram, containing the fatal words: "Russia having given 
 me my crown, I am ready to return it into the hands of her 
 sovereign." The Tsar personally disliked his cousin, and 
 had grown distrustful of one whose independence was resented 
 as ingratitude by the Russians. He therefore replied, that he 
 could not approve the Prince's return, the consequences of 
 which would be disastrous for Bulgaria; that he should abstain 
 from all intervention in its affairs, so long as the Prince 
 remained there; and that he reserved his decision as to his 
 own future action. This fatal mistake cost the Prince his 
 throne. Despite his warm welcome in his capital, and the 
 pressing arguments of Stambulov, he publicly announced his 
 abdication on September 7 ; and, after appointing a Regency 
 composed of that energetic statesman, Mutkurov, and Karavelov 
 (subsequently replaced by Jivkov), with a strong coalition 
 Ministry under Radoslavov, next day left Bulgaria for ever. 
 Under the name of Count Hartenau, the first Prince of " the 
 peasant state " lived for seven years more the happier life of an 
 Austrian officer— another example of the historic truth that 
 assassination or abdication, execution or exile, is the normal fate 
 of Balkan rulers. 
 
 Russia, having got rid of Alexander, made a bold but 
 mistaken attempt to recover her lost influence. As her agent
 
 424 Unio7i of the two Biilgm-ias [ch. 
 
 for this purpose she selected Major-General Nicholas Kaulbars, 
 brother of the former Minister of War, ostensibly to "assist" 
 the Bulgars at this crisis. But the methods of this strange 
 diplomatist did more than aught else to alienate the sympathies 
 of the stubborn peasants from their Russian patrons. While the 
 Regents wisely desired the interregnum to be as short as 
 possible, Kaulbars demanded in peremptory language the im- 
 mediate raising of the state of siege, the immediate release of 
 all the conspirators, and the postponement of the elections 
 for the Grand Sobranje, which was to choose the new Prince. 
 With this object he stumped the country as an Imperial anti- 
 election agent, only to find that his interference had aroused 
 the national spirit of the country. When, despite his efforts, 
 the elections were held, he declared that the Russian govern- 
 ment considered them to be illegal, and expressed his "strong 
 censure" of the Bulgarian government— a piece of impertinence 
 which drew upon him the well-deserved retort that "the 
 Bulgarian Ministers accept censure only from the representative 
 National Assembly, as is the custom in all constitutional 
 counlries." Another Russophil conspiracy at Bourgas failed ; 
 and on November 10 the Grand Sobranje unanimously elected 
 at Trnovo Prince Waldemar of Denmark, brother of Queen 
 Alexandra and of the King of the Hellenes and brother-in-law 
 of the Tsar. Not meeting with that autocrat's approval, the 
 Danish Prince, who had been mentioned as a candidate in 
 1879, declined the offer; and the ineffable Kaulbars took his 
 departure, followed by all the Russian consuls. Meanwhile, 
 without Russian aid, the Regency had conducted the internal 
 affairs of the country with a success that won for Bulgaria the 
 admiration of British statesmen, while it had concluded an 
 arrangement with Servia for the settlement of the Timok 
 boundary question by an exchange of territory, and the con- 
 struction of the Bulgarian railway to the frontier. It only 
 remained to find a Prince. 
 
 For the next six months the Bulgarian crown went a-begging,
 
 xvii] The Search fo7' a Prince 425 
 
 while Russian plots, continued at Silistria and Rustchuk after 
 the departure of Kaulbars and his staff, but suppressed by the 
 patriotism of the national guard, rendered the appointment of 
 a definite form of government all the more desirable. A depu- 
 tation, consisting of Grekov, Stoilov, and the Roumeliote 
 deputy Kaltchev, set out on an European tour in quest of a 
 Prince. St Petersburg refused to receive them, but in London 
 Lord Iddesleigh, then at the Foreign Office, congratulated 
 Bulgaria "on possessing statesmen so well qualified" for their 
 difficult task. Various names were suggested for the throne. 
 Russia would have liked to see the election of the Prince of 
 Mingrelia, a college-friend of the Tsar and a Russian subject; 
 but Grekov, in the name of the deputation, declared that no As- 
 sembly would elect a man with such antecedents. Oldenburg 
 and Leuchtenberg candidatures — the usual resource of Musco- 
 vite diplomacy when oriental thrones are vacant — met with an 
 equally cold reception. At one moment, a personal union 
 under the King of Roumania was suggested; at another, 
 Alexander was invited to return to his faithful people ; and, 
 when he refused, there was talk of a single temporary Regent, 
 such as Aleko Pasha, the deposed Governor-General of 
 Eastern Roumelia, or Von der Goltz Pasha, the German 
 organiser of the Turkish army. Meanwhile, Zankov, despite 
 the smallness of his following, was intriguing at the Porte to 
 obtain the suppression of the Regency — a step to which the 
 British government stated plainly that it would not be a party, 
 and which would have been repudiated by the vast majority of 
 Bulgars. At last a Prince was found willing to accept the 
 crown. So early as December, Prince Ferdinand of Coburg 
 had received the deputation at Vienna, his name having been 
 suggested to M. Kaltchev at the marble-topped table of a 
 Viennese circus. The successful candidate was the youngest 
 son of Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg and descended through 
 his mother from King Louis-Philippe. Except in point of age 
 • — he was at this time 26 years old — the second Prince of
 
 426 Union of the tivo Bulgarias [ch. xvii 
 
 Bulgaria bore no resemblance to the first; by training and 
 temperament he was the exact opposite of his future subjects. 
 A poor horseman and an officer only in name, he was fonder of 
 botany than of sport ; he was a Roman Catholic, while they were 
 preponderantly Orthodox ; he was a stickler for etiquette, while 
 they were convinced democrats. But he was well-connected, 
 wealthy, and wiUing; and, accordingly, on July 7, 1887, he was 
 elected at Trnovo Prince of Bulgaria. The news of his election 
 was received "without any marked enthusiasm" at Sofia; and 
 his pedantic reply to the deputation which notified it to him 
 produced a chilling effect. Natchevich, however, the Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs, induced him to come without further hesitation 
 to Bulgaria, leaving time to legalise his position. From the 
 ancient capital of Trnovo the Prince issued a proclamation 
 announcing that he had mounted "the throne of the glorious 
 Bulgarian Kings," and concluded with the cry of ''free and 
 independent Bulgaria." Thus, from the outset he connected 
 his name with the medieval Bulgarian empire and indicated 
 the ultimate aim of his policy — an aim attained at Trnovo 21 
 years later. Russia, however, protested against his election, 
 proposed General Ernroth as Regent, and long withheld her con- 
 sent to the Prince's recognition — a course which involved his 
 social boycott by the Powers but had no other serious conse- 
 quences. In fact, the absence of a Russian agent was a positive 
 advantage. Salisbury, who at first adopted an attitude of reserve, 
 gradually acquiesced in the rule of a "Coburger," and therefore a 
 relative of Queen Victoria. The Prince, who is one of the 
 ablest of Balkan diplomatists, bided his time ; and for nearly 
 seven years his great Minister, Stephen Stambulov, defied Russia 
 and won the admiration of Great Britain as "the Bulgarian 
 Bismarck."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 ARMENIA, CRETE, AND MACEDONIA (1887— 1908) 
 
 The Armenian, Cretan, and Macedonian questions were 
 the most serious problems which Europe had to face in the 
 near east between the arrival of Prince Ferdinand in Bulgaria 
 and the revolution which overthrew the Hamidian system in 
 Turkey. The first concerned the Powers and the Sultan ; the 
 second involved Greece in war with Turkey; the third 
 aroused the mutual jealousies of almost every Balkan state, 
 which saw in Macedonia to a greater or less extent "the 
 promised land" of its future expansion. 
 
 The Armenian question differed totally from Balkan pro- 
 blems. The Armenians were in a diff'erent position from all the 
 other Christian races of Turkey. While the Greeks, Bulgars, 
 Serbs, and Koutzo-Wallachs could look for support to Athens, 
 Sofia, Belgrade, and Bucharest, the Armenians had no Armenian 
 state to which they could turn for protection. In that respect 
 they resembled the Albanians, but with this important diff'erence, 
 that the Albanians were first-rate fighting-men who could defend 
 themselves, while the Armenians, with the exception of a few 
 in the Russian service, were not. Unfortunately this unwarlike 
 race has as its neighbours the savage Kurds, the Albanians of 
 Asia Minor, who treat it much as the Arnauts treated the Serbs of 
 Old Servia. Divided between Russia, Turkey, and Persia, de- 
 prived for more than five centuries of the last remnant of 
 national independence, spHt up ecclesiastically into Gregorians, 
 Catholics and Protestants, with the spiritual head of the
 
 428 Armenia, Crete, and Macedo7iia [ch. 
 
 Gregorian Church under Russian, and its Patriarch under 
 Turkish, authority, the Armenians, in a secret petition presented 
 to the Congress of Bedin, had disclaimed poHtical 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 i88g 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
 
 XVII i] 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 revoltmg 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,
 
 430 Ai^menia, 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 statioiuiaire 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 ii] 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,
 
 432 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 p{^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 vctli, 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 oi a. gendarmerie iroxw 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
 
 xviii] Disturbances in Crete 
 
 -oj 
 
 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 Trikoupes 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 getid- 
 arnierie; another to reform the tribunals. This arrangement, 
 M. L. 28
 
 434 Armenia, Crete, mid 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 poHce 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 poUticians 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 £,. Trikodpes, 
 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 1 5 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
 
 xviii] 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.€</)- 
 TOTToAe/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 
 M. 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 M. 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 Phoilrka 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,ooo,ooo, and submitted to an International
 
 438 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 Chalki's, 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 Siti'a and the islet of Spinalonga, the 
 Itahans 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 Dr 
 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
 
 xviii] 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 
 ;!^4o,ooo 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 Dr Sphakianakes, was appointed for the 
 purpose 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. Dr Sphakianakes, who had played so 
 prominent 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
 
 440 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 getidarmerie 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,
 
 xviii] Z amies 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 getidarmerie 
 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
 
 442 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 Apdstolos 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 n, 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 SaHsbury, 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 CEcumenical 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 Ai'tnenia, Crete, and Macedonia [ch. 
 
 propaganda favoured by the Turks. In fact, whenever Greece 
 was troublesome to the Porte, the Bulgars 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-l^urkish 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 Conuiiittee 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 gendarmerie 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 ; a 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 MUrzsteg Programme 447 
 
 Giorgis, an Italian officer, was appointed to command the 
 gendarmerie ; and his successor was another Italian, Count di 
 Robilant. All the Powers, except Germany, sent a small 
 contingent of officers, subsequently slighdy increased ; and 
 Macedonia was, for police purposes, divided up into five 
 secteiirs, 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 in Thessaly; 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 Adrianoplc, 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
 
 xviii] 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 
 Trikoiipes 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 Cathohc 
 Prince. PoUtical 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
 
 450 Armeftia, 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 15 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 Pj'incc 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 ofificers 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 principaUty 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 Stambulovisr, 
 in the same number of years, scarcely affected the stability of 
 the country ; nor did such public scandals as the impeachment 
 
 I 
 
 29 — 2
 
 452 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 Stambulov's successor, Petkov, the 
 "Haussmann of Bulgaria," closed the University, only to fall a 
 victim to assassination by a discharged official. 'I'hese 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
 
 xviii] I^i^ig 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 13 years of age, three Regents, all 
 Liberals, were appointed to govern the country, the chief of 
 them being Ristich, the ablest Servian statesman, who 2 1 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 Sei'vian 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
 
 456 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 j 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 M. 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 15 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 still remains in force, provided for a
 
 xviii] King Peter of Servia 457 
 
 single chamber, elected by citizens who paid 15 diiiara a year 
 in direct taxes, and convened annually in the capital on October 
 10. Election was to take place by departmental scrutin de Itste, 
 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 Shipshtina 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, has 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 ofificers 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 
 difificulties. 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
 
 458 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 ; tlie 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 15th 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 has considerably 
 augmented its expenditure, while the usual discord of married 
 brothers who live in the same small place has been aggravated 
 by the lack of an heir to the Crown Prince, whose brother 
 Mirko has offspring. 
 
 In 1905, the Prince amazed Europe by i.ssuing 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
 
 xviiij The Montenegrin Constitution 46] 
 
 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 222 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 {ppshtine) ; 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 Skupshtiua), 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 krofien 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; 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'." So far, 
 however, parliamentary government has not been a success. 
 Until the appointment of M. Tomanovich as Premier in 1907 
 Cabinet crises were frequent ; a group of Socialists has made 
 its appearance ; the country has been divided into factions ; 
 and, whenever the present 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 is tending to modernise Monte- 
 negro is that of the emigrants who return from the United 
 States. This is 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 
 sends to study abroad, are apt to become discontented with their 
 highland home. Nor is 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 to-day
 
 xviir] Progress of Roumania 463 
 
 Montenegro is practically an Italian colony. Italians manage 
 the tobacco monopoly ; they conduct, under the Montenegrin 
 flag, the navigation on the lake of Scutari ; they control the 
 Marconi station at the haven of Antivari. No wonder that 
 this system of foreign concessions, perhaps inevitable in a 
 country where capital is scarce, is causing some to raise the 
 cry of " Montenegro for the Montenegrins." Still, despite 
 these disadvantages of progress, the country has 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 enable the Ministers to issue their orders from the new 
 offices, whither they have emigrated from the old " billiard- 
 table " ; and the village-capital, grown in size, is lighted by 
 electricity. Princes and officers dressed in khaki represent, 
 among giants clad in the splendid national costume, the 
 transition stage upon which Montenegro has 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
 
 xviii] 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 has 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, has become closer. A military convention has 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 has further strengthened the barrier 
 which Roumania could offer to a Russian advance on Con- 
 stantinople. 
 
 Her friendship with Austria-Hungary has 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 has 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 Arvtenia, Crete, and Macedonia [crt. 
 
 honeymoon ended, when, in 1905, the Roumanian ministry 
 obtained from the Porte the recognition of the Koutzo-Wallachs 
 as a separate nationaUty, with the right of worshipping in their 
 own language. Anti-Greelc 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, M. Theotokes, a former lieutenant of Trikodpes 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 M. Rhalles, then in office, was 
 forced by the students and one of the professors to stop the 
 performances of the Oresteia of ^schylus, 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
 
 xviii] 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 M. Rhalles, the 
 other M. Mavromichales, with the natural result that M. 
 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 is partly due the great reduction in the rate of 
 exchange, which from 46 dr. 87 /. to the ^Q at the time of the 
 currant crisis of December, 1894 — January, 1895, has now been 
 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 1912. 
 
 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,ood 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 largely 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 spends only ^^5,000 
 on education. In short, to quote the phrase of an expert in 
 the Times^, the tribute has always been " a millstone round the 
 island's neck." From yet another point of view Cyprus has 
 failed to warrant the praise bestowed upon Lord Beaconsfield 
 34 years ago. Occupied originally on strategic grounds, and 
 first governed by so eminent a soldier as Sir Garnet (now Lord) 
 Wolseley, it has ceased, since the British occupation of Egypt 
 
 ^ May 24, 1912.
 
 xviii] 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 repudiate the contention of the 
 British government that, if Great Britain evacuated Cyprus, it 
 would be handed back to Turkey. 
 
 The privileged "Twelve Islands" of the southern Sporades — 
 Ikari'a, Patmos, Leros, Kalymnos, Astypalaia, Nisyros, Telos, 
 Syme, Chalkeia, Karpathos, Kassos and Megiste (or Kastel- 
 16rrizon) — 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. Syme was blockaded and 
 starved into surrender, and in 1893 several of the chief men 
 were imprisoned^ The " Young " Turks completed this work ; 
 but the Italian occupation of ten of these islands, together 
 with Kos and Rhodes, in 191 2, restored their liberties. Tn 
 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 vakuf oi Kavalla, whose administrator is 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 sucli discontent, that in 1849 2. 
 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 Redcliffe, 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 
 ^ An "elder" of Kalymnos in the Secolo of June 2, 19 12.
 
 xviii] Samos 47 1 
 
 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 " Pythag6reion " 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 and 1878 Samos remained 
 undisturbed. Scarcely, however, was it over than the Assembly 
 telegraphed to Constantinople, requesting the re-appointment 
 of Adosides, 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 Mousofiros, 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 /SovXeurat), one 
 for each division of the island, out of a Hst 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 Vathy 
 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, Repasses, 
 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. Sophoules, 
 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
 
 xviii] Insurrection in Sainos 473 
 
 unjustifiable bombardment of this autonomous island by the 
 Italians. The crisis of October, 1908, 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. Sophoules, who 
 had returned with a body of volunteers. At the present 
 moment, the future of this island of 53,424 inhabitants is 
 uncertain. Some see in Samos the capital of an enlarged, 
 autonomous, insular federation, which will include the " Twelve 
 Islands." Others advocate union ; indeed, it was actually voted 
 by the Assembly on November 24, 191 2. In no case are the 
 Powers likely to permit the curtailment of the privileges which 
 the Samians have enjoyed for 8o years, and from which they 
 would have derived greater material benefits if it had not 
 been for local politics.
 
 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 
 1891, 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'' 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
 
 476 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 Samsiln 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 
 effect upon British Liberals. Without pausing to consider 
 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 Beaconstield. 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 ;
 
 xix] The " Voting 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, 
 ;^ 1 70,000 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, on grounds of public safety. A diplomatic incident, arising
 
 478 The Tu7'kish Revolution [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 separata 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 " Vdii 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 Turkish 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 vali 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 Hamid 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 Hamid 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 has only recently been 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. Serviaand Montenegro, 
 despite the renewal of their diplomatic relations and the con- 
 clusion of a miUtary 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 dho\\'a\i 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
 
 484 The Turkish Revolution [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 may now erect forti- 
 fications between the lake of Scutari and the coast ; her 
 maritime and sanitary police is no longer entrusted to Austrian 
 boats, nor is she forced to adopt the Dalmatian maritime code. 
 Still the bay of Antivari is dominated by the guns of Spizza, 
 and an Austrian fleet can 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 
 /4igean 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 ;^3,28o,ooo to Turkey, agreed to 
 pay this sum to Russia in annual instalments of ;!^2oo,ooo. 
 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. Zaimes was 
 absent from the island, to which he has never returned. The 
 proclamation had been signed by the 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 
 M. 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^"; 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-. 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 I" 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^ Matters became 
 worse, when, after the suppression of the counter-revolution in 
 Turkey, the miUtary 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 Libra Verde: Creta (191 1), p. 32. 
 2 lb. p. 33. 3 lb. p. 36. * lb. 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," M. Theot6kes, on July 17, 1909, felt com- 
 pelled to resign, in order to prevent a threatening demonstration 
 against his attitude towards Crete. M. 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. M. 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'." 
 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 M. Rhalles a written disavowal of 
 
 1 lb. p. 87.
 
 xix] Tu7'kish Azotes to Greece 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, M. 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 i8th 
 M. 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 belUcose intentions towards Greece, and 
 all fear of war was dissipated. 
 
 But the humihation 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 ofificers had begun to form 
 a " MiUtary 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 M. 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. M. Rhalles resigned, and M. 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. Zaimes had prophesied
 
 492 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 Dragoiimes, 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. Dragoiimes, 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, 191 1, adopted the revised constitution on 
 June II. 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 l^hessaly. 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 '^^'^ Turkish Revolution [ch. 
 
 members was fixed at looo dr. every three months (except 
 those resident in Athens or the Piraeus, who received 2>oo 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 
 Boeotia (where M. 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 M. 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 191 1; Bul- 
 garian students visited Athens ; the Greek Crown Prince 
 visited Sofia ; and, with the aid of Mr 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 Oecu- 
 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 dementi, 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
 
 496 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 Tripoh, 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 Beinlt, 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, 
 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 proclaimed 
 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. 32
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 THE BALKAN LEAGUE. (OCTOBER, 1912— MARCH, 1913) 
 
 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 
 programme of decentralisation and the Balkan states to adopt 
 a pohcy 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 Rhegas was at last a reality; a Balkan
 
 CH. xix] Montenegro Declares War 499 
 
 League was formed against the Turks. The authorship of this 
 marvellous work, hitherto the despair of statesmen, is un- 
 certain \ but it 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. The Allies began to 
 mobilise and to demand the enforcement of article 23 of the 
 Berlin treaty ; the Porte, with a death-bed repentance, re- 
 solved 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, informed 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 Montene- 
 grin 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 
 safijak, 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 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 
 provinces, the frontiers of which were to be re-drawn on 
 ethnographic lines, while their governors were to be either 
 Swiss or Belgians ; provincial elective assemblies ; the re- 
 organisation of the gendarmerie ; freedom of education ; a local 
 ipilitia ; the application of reforms under the management 
 
 32—2
 
 500 The Balkan League [ch. 
 
 of an equal number of Christian and Moslem councillors 
 and the supervision 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 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, the town of Servia, 
 Kozane, Grevena, and Katerina in southern Macedonia, and 
 Pr^veza, Pdnte Pegadia, Metzovon, and Cheimarra in Epirus; 
 while their fleet occupied nine islands — two others, Ikaria, which
 
 xix] Victories of the Allies 501 
 
 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. 
 Dragoiimes, 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 medieval 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 dis- 
 organised Turkish army, which retreated on the lines of 
 Chatalja ; and on November 8, the festival of its 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 victorious son. 
 Thus, in a few weeks, nothing was left of the Turkish 
 empire in Europe, but the cities of Adrianople, Scutari and 
 Joannina, 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
 
 502 The Balkan League [ch. 
 
 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 ofificial 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, 1913, sent a note to the Porte, advising 
 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,
 
 xix] Revolution at Constantinople 503 
 
 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 declajed 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. 
 
 The final liquidation of the Ottoman dominions in Europe 
 has not been yet completed ; but, after the events of the last few 
 months, it is obvious that Turkey has ceased, for all practical 
 purposes, to be an European state. During the period of 
 112 years, covered by this book, she has lost Bosnia and the 
 Herzegovina, Servia, Bulgaria, and Greece. All Macedonia, 
 nearly all Epirus, and much of Thrace are occupied by the 
 Balkan armies. Albania is to be erected into a separate 
 principality ; Crete, Samos, and ten other islands have hoisted 
 the Greek flag, while twelve more are temporarily held as a 
 pledge by the Italians ; and Cyprus is, in all but the name, a 
 British colony. The Lebanon has received autonomy ; Egypt 
 is really independent ; Tripoli and the Cyrenaica have been 
 placed under Italian sovereignty ; Tunisia is a French Regency, 
 Algeria a French possession. In short, Turkey is once more 
 what she was in the first half of the fourteenth century — a 
 purely Asiatic Power. This is, indeed, " consolidation " ! 
 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 the standard of old 
 established countries, slowly and gradually evolved. The
 
 504 The Balkan League [ch. xix 
 
 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. But it seems probable that the war of 191 2-3 
 may have freed the Balkans not only from the yoke of Turkey, 
 but also from the interference of Europe. For the victories of 
 the League constitute an Austrian, as well as a Turkish defeat, 
 although we may expect to see renewed in Albania similar 
 intrigues to those which used to agitate Belgrade and Sofia. 
 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."
 
 TABLE OF RULERS. 
 
 I. Bulgaria (and Eastern Roumelia). 
 
 Alexander, Prince 
 Regency 
 
 Ferdinand, Prince, il 
 Tsar 
 
 1879 
 1886 
 
 Alexander Vogorides, 
 Governor-General of 
 Eastern Roumelia... 1879 
 
 Gavril Krstjovich do. 1884-5 
 
 II. Greece. 
 
 Otho, King ... ... 1832 
 
 [Regency ... ... ... 1833-5] 
 
 Provisional Government ... 1862 
 
 George I, King ... ... 1863 
 
 III. Montenegro. 
 
 Peter I, Prince-Bishop ... 1782 
 
 Peter II „ ... 1830 
 
 Danilo, Prince ... ... 1851 
 
 Nicholas I, Prince, i860; King 1910 
 
 IV. ROUMANIA. 
 
 Wallachia. 
 Alexander Morouzes, Hos- 
 
 podar ... ... 1799 
 
 Michael I, Soiitsos, //os- 
 
 podar ... ... 1801 
 
 Constantine Hypselantes, 
 
 Hospodar ... ... 1802 
 
 Alexander • Soiitsos (i), 
 
 Hospodar ... ... 1806 
 
 Russian occupation of both Principalities, 1806. 
 
 Moldavia. 
 
 Constantine Hypselantes, 
 Hospodar ... ... 1799 
 
 Alexander Soutsos, Hos- 
 podar ... ... 1 80 1 
 
 Alexander Morouzes, Hos- 
 podar ... ... 1802 
 
 John Caragea, Hospodar 18 12 
 Alexander .Soiitsos (2) „ 181 8 
 Constantine N^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 Vogorides, Lieu- 
 tenant-governor ... 1 82 1 
 John S. Sturdza, //i9jr/(9</rtr 1822 
 Russian occupation of both Principalities, 1828.
 
 5o6 Table of Rulers 
 
 Alexander II, Ghika, Hos- 
 
 Michael Sturdza, Hospo- 
 dar... ... ... 1834 
 
 Gregory V, Ghika, Hospo- 
 dar... ... 1849-56 
 
 podar ... ... 1834 
 
 George Bibescu, Hospodar 1 842 
 Provisional Government... 1848 
 Lieutenancy ... ... 1848 
 
 Constantine Cantacuzene, 
 
 Lieutenant-governor ... 1848 
 BarbeStirbeiu, Hospodari 849- 56 
 
 Russian occupation of both Principalities, 1853. 
 Austrian „ „ ,, „ i854-7- 
 
 Alexander II, Ghika, Lieu- j Theodore Balsh, Lieu- 
 
 tenant-governor ... 1856 tenant-governor ... 1856 
 
 Three Commissioners ... 1858 | Nicholas Vogorides, Lieu- 
 tenant-governor ... 1857 
 ■j Three Commissioners ... 1858 
 
 Alexander John Couza, Prince of both Principalities 1859 
 Provisional Government ... ... ••• 1866 
 
 Charles I, Prince, 1866; King ... ... ... 1881 
 
 V. Servia. 
 
 Kara George, Supreme Chief 
 Milosh Obrenovich I (i). Prince 
 Milan „ II 
 
 Michael „ HI (0 „ 
 
 Alexander Karageorgevich „ 
 Milosh Obrenovich I (2) „ 
 Michael „ 
 
 Milan „ 
 
 [Regency ... 
 Alexander I 
 [Regency ... 
 Peter Karageorgevich 
 
 111(2) „ 
 
 IV,Princei868,King 
 
 King 
 
 1804-13 
 
 1817 
 
 1839 
 
 1839 
 
 1842 
 
 1859 
 
 i860 
 
 1882 
 
 1868-72] 
 
 1889 
 
 1889-93] 
 
 1903
 
 Table of Rulers 
 
 507 
 
 VI. 
 
 Turkey. 
 
 
 Selim III ... 
 
 
 . 1788 
 
 Mustapha IV" 
 
 
 . 1807 
 
 Mahmiid II 
 
 
 . 1808 
 
 Abdul Mejid 
 
 
 . 1839 
 
 Abdul Aziz 
 
 
 . 1861 
 
 Murad V ... 
 
 
 . 1876 
 
 Abdul Hamid II . 
 
 
 . 1876 
 
 Mohammed V 
 
 
 . 1908 
 
 VII. Autonomous Islands. 
 
 {a) Crete. 
 
 Prince George of Greece, High Commissioner 1898 
 
 Alexander Zaimes 
 
 It 11 
 
 1 906- 1 1 
 
 {b) Samos. 
 
 
 Stephen Vogorides, 
 
 Prince ... 
 
 .. 1834 
 
 Alexander Callimachi 
 
 „ 
 
 .. 1850 
 
 John Ghika 
 
 „ 
 
 .. 1856 
 
 Miltiades Aristarches 
 
 „ 
 
 .. 1859 
 
 Paul Mousoiiros 
 
 „ 
 
 .. 1867 
 
 Constantine Adosides (i) 
 
 „ 
 
 .. 1873 
 
 Constantine Photiades 
 
 „ 
 
 .. 1874 
 
 Constantine Adosides (2) 
 
 „ 
 
 .. 1879 
 
 Alexander Karatheodori 
 
 ,, 
 
 .. 1885 
 
 George Berovich 
 
 „ 
 
 .. 1894 
 
 Stephen Mousoiiros 
 
 „ 
 
 .. 1896 
 
 Constantine Vayianes 
 
 „ 
 
 .. 1899 
 
 Michael Gregoriades 
 
 ,, 
 
 .. 1900 
 
 Alexander Mavrogenes 
 
 ,, 
 
 .. 1902 
 
 Yanko Vithynos 
 
 „ 
 
 .. 1904 
 
 Constantine Karatheodori 
 
 ,, 
 
 .. 1906 
 
 George Georgiades 
 
 „ 
 
 ... 1907 
 
 Andrew Kopasses 
 
 ,, 
 
 ... 1907 
 
 George Vegleres 
 
 1) ••• 
 
 ... 1912
 
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 Bibliography 509 
 
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 1912. 
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 1890. 
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 1877. 
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 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, 211, 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 
 
 Adosfdes, 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, 501-2 
 
 Aehrenthal. Baron, 458 
 
 Aigina, 89, 96, 99-100, 109, 113,118 
 
 Ainali-Kavak, Convention of, 8, 30 
 
 Ainos, 130 
 
 AitoHa, 77, 107 
 
 Aivali, 74 
 
 M. L. 
 
 Akarnania, 77, 82, 107, iii, 163, 
 
 178, 267, 288 
 Akhaltsykh, 128, 130 
 Akkerman, Convention of, 127-8, 
 
 131., f33 
 
 Akroteri, 434, 489 
 
 Alaman, Bridge of, 72 
 
 Albania, Albanians, 4, 19, 23, 39, 
 85, 125, 142, 146, 240-1, 250, 
 259-60, 385, 391, 394, 396-7, 
 403-7. 443-6, 481-2, 495-6, 498. 
 502 
 
 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, 4(2- 
 
 23 
 Alexander, King of Servia, 403, 
 
 453-7 
 Alexander Karageorgevich, Prince 
 of Servia, 138-9, 195-6, 217, 
 
 249-52, 334, 339' 456 
 Alexander Karageorgevich, present 
 
 Crown Prince of Servia, 483 
 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 
 Alma, The, 227-8 
 Amalia, Queen of Greece, 164, 170, 
 
 219-24, 242, 262, 264, 267 
 Ambelakia, 29 
 
 34
 
 530 
 
 Index 
 
 Ambrakian gulf, 409 
 
 Anagnostopoulos, 65 
 
 Anapa, 128, 130 
 
 Anatolikon, 86, 92, 98 
 
 Anchialos, 447 
 
 Andrassy, Count, 362-3, 386, 388 
 
 Andrftsaina, 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 
 
 Apokorona, 310 
 
 Aprilov, 340 
 
 Arab Tabia, 215, 399 
 
 Ardahan, 128, 384, 395 
 
 Areia, 1 19 
 
 Argos, 77, 81, 86, 104, 108, 114, 
 118, 121, 265 
 
 Argyrokastron, 64 
 
 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 
 
 Arta, 4, 65, 82, 158, 220; Its 
 cession to Greece, 407, 409 
 
 Asaki, George, 126 
 
 Askyphon, 317 
 
 Aspropotamos, The, 407 
 
 Asquith, Mr H. H., 502 
 
 Astros, 83, 114, 120 
 
 Astypalaia, 469 
 
 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. 490 
 Athos, Mt, 29, 73, 221, 320, 501 
 Austria, in Dalmatia, 32, 34, 36-7; 
 her Montenegrin policy, 198-9, 
 240, 391-2, 479, 484; her Servian 
 policy, 50-1, 136, 249, 457-8, 
 479, 502 ; her Turkish policy. 
 
 9-12, 15, 198-9, 209, 21 1-4, 
 216, 233-5, 243, 245, 248, 288, 
 386, 390-1, 402-3, 444-8 
 
 Avakumovich, M., 456 
 
 Azov, 5-8, 234 
 
 Balaclava, 229-30, 233 
 
 Balbes, Demetrios, 420 
 
 Balbes, Z., 273 
 
 Ballard, Lieut., 215 
 
 Balsh, Theodore, 244 
 
 Balta Liman, Convention of, 194, 
 
 244 
 Banat, The, 10 
 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 
 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 
 Belimarkovich, General, 376, 453 
 Bellova, 449 
 Belogradtchik, 339 
 Beltchev, 449 
 Benderev, Capt. , 421 
 " Benkovski," 365 
 Berane, 498-9 
 Berat, 64 
 
 Berchtold, Count, 498 
 Berlin, Conference of, (1880), 404, 
 407-8, 416
 
 Inde.\ 
 
 531 
 
 Berlin, Congress and treaty of, .^87- 
 
 401, 428, 464-5, 484, 499 
 Berlin Memorandum, The, 363 
 Berovich, George, 433, 471 
 Besika Bay, 209, 368, 370, 378 
 Bessarabia, 39, 42-3, 236, 239, 373, 
 
 383-4. 392 
 Beust, Count von, 332 
 Bib Doda, Prenk, Mirdite chief 
 
 (1854), 219 
 Bib Doda, Prenk, Mirdite chief at 
 
 present, 404, 406 
 Bibescu, George, 190-4, 243, 246-8, 
 
 328 
 Bijelopavlich, 142, 218 
 Bijelopolje, 391, 499 
 Bilek, 376, 383 
 Bismarck, Eastern policy of, 291, 
 
 317, 325-6, 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, 2 1 
 Bogoshich, M., 459 
 Bojana, The, 372, 405 
 Boletin, Isa, 495 
 Bonaparte. See Napoleon I. 
 Boris, Crown Prince of Bulgaria, 
 
 450- 1 
 
 Bosnia, partly Austrian, lo-i ; 
 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 
 
 Bosphorus, The, 130, 146-7, 151, 
 
 238, 347 
 Botzares, Marko, 65, 82, 85 
 Botzares, Notes, 92 
 Bouboulfna, 73 
 Boulgares, Demetrios, 242, 267, 
 
 273. 3'o. 316, 356-7, 379 
 Boulgares, George, 28 
 Boiilgaris, Eugenios, 24 
 Bourbaki, Col., 94-5 
 
 Bourchier, Mr James L)., 494 
 
 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, 4or, 464-5 
 
 Brda, The, 143, 218, 259 
 
 Brialmont, General, 465 
 
 Brod, 362 
 
 Brown, Sir George, 225-6 
 
 Brfisa, 146 
 
 Bucharest, 5, 8, 20, 27; treaty of 
 (1812), 42-3, 54, 56, 65, 67-8, 
 ^ii, 192, 194, 216, 237, 247-8, 
 250, 321, 323-4, 327, 330, 344, 
 346, 401; treaty of (£886), 418, 
 
 444, 465 
 
 Buchon, J. A., 172 
 
 Bukovina, The, 10, 42, 331 
 
 Bulganak, The, 227 
 
 Bulgaria, Bulgarians, 20-1, 39, 124, 
 204, 217, 316; history of, before 
 the Exarchate, 338-45 ; the 
 Exarchate, 345-7; "Bulgarian 
 Atrocities," 364-7 ; attitude dur- 
 ing 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; history under Prince 
 Ferdinand, 448-52 ; independence 
 of, 477-8, 485 ; rapprochement 
 with Greece, 494 ; in the Balkan 
 League, 498-502 
 
 Bulwer, Sir Henry, 250-1, 255 
 
 Buol, Count, 212-3 
 
 Burgoyne, Sir John, 228-9 
 
 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 
 
 34—2
 
 532 
 
 Index 
 
 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 
 Capo d' Istria, Agostino, 104, 113-7, 
 
 163, 184 
 
 Capo d' Istria, George, 184 
 
 Capo d' Istria, John, Count, 44-5, 
 
 66 ; elected President of Greece, 
 
 96-7, 99-101, 104, 108-13, 158 
 
 Capo d' Istria, 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 
 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 
 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 
 Chaidari, 94 
 Chalkeia, 469 
 Chalkidike, 29 
 
 Chalkfs, 221, 438 
 Charles, King of Roumania, 323, 
 325-33. 373-5. 392. 425. 442, 
 457 
 Chatalja, 501-2 
 Chatham, Lord, 14 
 Chehib-Effendi, 154 
 Cheimarra, 500 
 Chermside, Sir Herbert, 440 
 Chios, 12, 28; massacre of, 79-80, 
 
 89, 98, 104 
 Chloumoutsi, 102 
 Chorlu, 130 
 
 Christich, Nicholas, 417 
 Christich, Philip, 332 
 Church, Sir Richard, 95,97-8, loi, 
 
 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 
 Cochrane, Lord, 95-7 
 Codrington, Admiral, 97-8, 102 
 Constantine, Crown Prince of 
 
 Greece, 436, 491-2, 501 
 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, 502 
 Constantinovich, Anka, 334 
 Constantinovich, Catherine, 334 
 Constantinovich, Mile Natalie (Prin- 
 cess Mirko of Montenegro), 458 
 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 
 Corinth, 78, 82, 86, 161 
 Cornu, Mme Hortense, 323 
 Coron, 102 
 
 Corti, Count, 388, 404-5 
 Couza, Prince of Roumania, 247-8, 
 
 319-25 
 Craiova, 319
 
 Index 
 
 53. 
 
 Crete, becomes Turkish, i, 12, 15, 
 17, 2t, 39; during War of In- 
 dependence, 73-4, 82-3, 84, 89, 
 93, 99, 103-4, 107-8; Egyptian, 
 116, 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 ; practically 
 united with Greece, 500-1 
 
 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 
 
 Cyrenaica, The, 16, 396, 496-7 
 
 Dabija, Col., 331 
 
 Dalmatia, under the French, 32-7 
 
 Damala (Troizen), 96, 100 
 
 Damascus, 145-6, 301-3 
 
 Dandolo, Anthony (Corfiote poli- 
 tician), 285 
 
 Dandolo, V. (civil governor of Dal- 
 matia), 33 
 
 Danilo, Prince of Montenegro, 197- 
 8, 218-9, 240-1, 256-7 
 
 Danilo, Crown Prince of Monte- 
 negro, 458, 460 
 
 Danilograd, 370, 375 
 
 Danube, Commission of the, 236, 
 239, 393-4, 400 ; Delta of the, 
 
 236, 384. 392. 
 Danubian Principalities, The, 5-6, 
 <S, 10 ; under the Phanariotes, 
 16-7, 31, 38, 42 ; insurrections of 
 182 1 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, ^"' "^'^i ^^3' ^3°' 
 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, 501, 503 
 Darinka, Princess, 241, 257-8 
 Daveles, 242 
 Dawkins, 119, 157, 16 1 
 De Bosset, Lieut. -Col., 62 
 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 
 Deligrad, 54, 369 
 Delisi, 352 
 
 Delladecima, Count, 185 
 Demakopoulos, 311 
 Denton, The Rev. W., 253 
 Derby, Pxhvard Geoffrey Stanley, 
 
 Earl of, 185, 279, 287 
 Derby, Edward Henry Stanley, 
 
 Earl of, 309, 312, 332, 362, 364, 
 
 366-7, .37 7> 380, 387 
 Dervenaki, 82 
 Dervent, 362 
 Detchich, 499 
 D'Everton, Baron, 186 
 Diakos, 72 
 
 Diebich, 128-9, '33' 339 
 Dimotika, 502 
 Djakova, 404 
 Djunis, 369 
 Dobrudja, The, 214, 384 ; ceded 
 
 to Roumania, 392-3, 399-400, 
 
 464 , 
 Dodekanesos, The, 469-70, 473, 
 
 495. 497 
 Domokos, 90, 220, 380, 407, 437 
 Dondukov-Korsakov, Prince, 411 
 Dosios, 264 
 
 Douglas, Sir Howard, 183-5 
 Draga, Queen of Servia, 454-6 
 Dragashani, 68-9, 76 
 Dragomestre, 5 
 Dragoumes, Nicholas, 267
 
 534 
 
 Index 
 
 Dragoumes, Mr Stephen, 308 «. ; 
 
 492-3, .SOI 
 
 Prama, 447-8, 476 
 
 Dramali Pasha, 73, 80-2 
 
 Drina, The, 134, 255 
 
 Drobiiiak, 370 
 
 Druses, 152-5, 300-5, 495 
 
 Duckworth, Admiral, 38 
 
 DufTerin, Lord, 303 
 
 Duga pass. The, 259, 375, 391 
 
 Dulcigno, 261, 376, 383, 391, 405 
 
 Durazzo, 502 
 
 Dusmani, Count, 283 
 
 Eastern Roumelia, 306, 389, 396, 
 
 4'4-9. .477. 479 
 Edgmiatsin, 128 
 Edhem Pasha, 436 
 Edinburgh, Duke of, 264, 270-2, 
 
 286, 420 
 Edward VII, 467, 474 
 Egypt, 14, 16, 31, 145, 148-51, 
 
 204, 239, 309 
 Elassona, 500 
 
 Elena, Queen of Italy, 459-60 
 Eleusis, 99 
 
 EleutheroihSria, The, 29 
 Elizabeth, Queen of England, 12 
 Elizabeth, Queen of Roumania 
 
 ("Carmen Sylva "), 329, 400 
 Elliot, Sir Henry, 26s, 272, 286, 
 
 367 . . , 
 
 England, Turkish policy of, 7, 8, 
 12-5. See Great Britain 
 
 Enver Bey, 475-6, 502 
 
 Epidauros, Constitution of, 77-8, 
 83, 88 
 
 Epirus, 19, 23, 84, 104, III, 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; campaign of (191 2-3), 
 500, 503 
 
 Erfurt, Meeting at, 41 
 
 Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg- 
 Gotha, 272-3 
 
 Ernroth, General, 413, 426 
 
 Erskine, 348-51 
 
 Erzerum, 129-30, 384 
 
 Euboea (Negropont), 17, 103, 107, 
 
 109, III, 178 
 Eugene, Prince, 9, 11, 401 
 Eupatoria, 226, 233 
 Euripus, 261 
 
 Evans, Sir Arthur J., 390 
 Eynard, i 78 
 
 Fabvier, General, 94-5, 98 
 
 Fano, 4 
 
 Ferdinand, ex-King-Consort of 
 Portugal, 272 
 
 Ferdinand, Crown Prince of Rou- 
 mania, 400 
 
 Ferdinand, Tsar of the Bulgarians, 
 425-6, 446, 449-5I' 478, 485 
 
 Ferisovich, 474-5 
 
 Fetislam, 255 
 
 Filov, Major, 415 
 
 Finlay, George, 98, 179-81, 312 
 
 Fitzroy, Lord Charles, 122 
 
 Flamburiari, Count, 283 
 
 Fokshani, 246, 248 
 
 Fonblanque, 249 
 
 Fortis, A., 483 
 
 Foscolo, Ugo, 123 
 
 Fox, C. J., 14 
 
 Prance, Policy of, towards Greece, 
 97, 102, 106-7, •''4' 166, 180-1, 
 222-4, 241-2, 261, 263,271, 274, 
 292-3, 299, 306, 309, 312-3, 355, 
 407-8, 420 ; towards Roumania, 
 323-6, 329; towards Turkey, 2-5, 
 
 15,31,38-42, i49'i5i-4, 199-f'/'/-' 
 
 245-6, 300-3 
 P>atti, A., 90, 437 
 Frederick II, King of Prussia, 14-5 
 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 
 Garashanin, Ilija, 217, 249-50, 254, 
 333-4, 337
 
 Index 
 
 535 
 
 Garashanin, Milutin, .^37, 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, 
 274-5, 277, 287-9, 292-5. 3io> 
 313' 316, 3'8, 332, 349-50, 434-5> 
 441, 486, 491, 493, 501 
 
 George of Greece, Prince, 434, 
 
 439-40. 491 
 George of Servia, ex-Crown Prince, 
 
 458, 479. 483 
 Germanos, Metropolitan of Patras, 7 1 
 Germany, Turkish policy of, 431, 
 
 435. 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 
 Giorgis, General de, 446-7 
 Giurgevo, 215-6, 364 
 Gkouras, 91, 94 
 Gladstone, W. E., Eastern policy 
 
 of, 246, 248, 279-85, 316, 353, 
 
 366, 375. 377. 379. 404-5, 407. 
 
 419-20, 428, 431 
 Gliicksburg, John of, 316 
 Golescu, 324 
 
 Goltz Pasha, Von der, 425, 500 
 Gordon, Sir Charles, 62 
 Gordon, General T., 94, 163 
 Gortchakoff, Prince Alexander, 
 
 233-4. 312. 314. 347, 372, 374. 
 
 388 
 Gortchakoff, Prince Michael, 214-5 
 Goschen, 409 
 Goudi, 490 
 
 Gourko, General, 374, 376 
 Grabousa, 99 
 Gradishka, 140 
 
 Grahovo, 144, 256-8, 260, 406 
 Granville, Lord, 347, 353, 409 
 Gravia, 72 
 Gravosa, 32 
 
 Great Britain, Policy of, towards 
 Armenians, 395, 428-31 ; towards 
 Bulgaria, 389, 416-7, 426; to- 
 wards 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, 3S8, 406-10, 419-20, 435 ; 
 in Macedonia, 443, 447-8 ; to- 
 wards Montenegro, 37, 259-60, 
 404-5 ; towards Roumania, 326-7, 
 330, 385, 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., 299, 382, 
 486 
 
 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, 500-2 
 
 Gregory V, Oecumenical Patriarch, 
 
 75 
 Gregory, Mr, 332 
 Greiner, Herr von, 156, 16 r 
 Grekov, D. P., 425 
 Grevena, 495, 500 
 Grey, Earl, 186 
 Grey, Sir Edward, 448, 476, 479, 
 
 502 
 Gribovo, 437 
 Grivas, Demetrios, 273-4 
 Grivas, Theodore, 99, 118, 163, 178, 
 
 220, 267, 270 
 Gros, Baron, 180-1 
 Gruda, The, 404, 406, 495 
 Grujev, Major, 421 
 Grypares, M. , 432 
 Guildford, Lord, 10 1, 123 
 Guizot, 151 
 Gul-khaneh, Haiti- sherif of, 141, >• 
 
 151, 298, 306 "^ 
 
 Gusinje, 383, 391, 403-4, 50i 
 Gytheion, 268 
 
 Hagia, 295 
 
 Hagfa Lavra, 71 
 
 Ilahn, General, 265, 268 
 
 Hajji Ali the Haseki, 30, 72
 
 536 
 
 Index 
 
 Hajji Loja, 401 
 
 Hajji Michales, 99 
 
 Hajji Michales Jannares, 313-4, 
 318, 381 
 
 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 
 
 Heideck, General von, 95, 156-7, 
 161 
 
 Herbert, Mr, 348, 352 
 
 Herzegovina, The, 10, 13, 141-4, 
 239-41, 256; rising of (1861), 
 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 
 
 Hitov, Panajot, 342, 344 
 
 Hobart Pasha, 317 
 
 Hodges, Col., 136 
 
 Homalos, 315 
 
 Hoti, The, 406, 495 
 
 Hunkiar Iskelesi, Treaty of, 136, 
 
 147 
 Hussein-Aga, 139-40 
 Hussein Avni Pasha, 315 
 Hussein Pasha, 256 
 Hydra, 28, 73, 86, 88, 93, loi, 
 
 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, 
 102-3, 145-51 
 Iddesleigh, Lord, 425 
 
 93. 97, 99, 
 
 Ignatyeff, Count, 345, 369, 451 
 
 Ikaria, 469, 500 
 
 Inkerman, 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, II, 25, 442, 446, 501 
 
 Iron Gates, The, 394, 400, 463, 
 
 465 
 
 Isaccea, 236 
 
 Ishtip, 498 
 
 Islaz, 192 
 
 Ismail Kemal Bey, 480, 502 
 
 Ismail Pasha, 307, 309-10 
 
 Ismail Pasho Bey, 64-5 
 
 Isvolski, M., 482 
 
 Italy, Eastern policy of, 234-5, 239, 
 245, 259, 326 ; in Albania, 502 ; 
 in Bosnia, 390, 478 ; in Crete, 
 487 ; towards Greece, 355 ; to- 
 wards Montenegro, 459-60, 463 *, 
 in Samos, 473 ; in Tripoli, 396, 
 496-7 
 
 Izzet Pasha, 477 
 
 Jablyak, 144, 198, 383, 391 
 
 Jaffa, 145 
 
 Jajce, 401 
 
 Jamboli, 129 
 
 James I of England, 13 
 
 Janissaries, 22, 46-9, 85, 102, 127, 
 
 139, 145 
 Jassy, 5; peace of, 8, 27, 65,67, 
 
 192, 216, 244, 247, 324-5 
 Jedda, 299 
 
 Jerusalem, 6, 146, 200-1, 320, 479 
 Jews, 20, 27, 75, 127, 190-1, 195, 
 
 322, 327, 393, 396,442, 444, 464. 
 
 474, 479 
 Jitcha, 458 
 Jivkov, G., 423 
 Joannina, 17, 19, 25, 65, 78-9, 88, 
 
 407-9, 501
 
 Index 
 
 537 
 
 Joseph II, Emperor, lo, ii 
 
 Jovanovich, Baron, 402 
 
 " Junimists," 401, 464 
 
 Jupa, 256 
 
 Jutta of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 
 
 Duchess (Crown Princess of 
 
 Montenegro), 460 
 
 Kadich, 257 
 
 Kaflfa, 5 
 
 K aires, 183 
 
 Kalabaka, 220 
 
 Kalafat, 211, 374 
 
 Kalanias, The, 394, 407-9 
 
 Kalamata, 72, 76, 81, 87, in, 120, 
 
 178, 267-9 
 Kalamos, 84 
 Kalavryta, 71-2, 88 
 Kallay, Baron von, 402 
 Kallerges, Demetrios, 169-72, 176, 
 
 222-3, 242. 263, 306 
 Kalnoky, 401 
 
 Kaltchev, Cunstantine, 425 
 Kalteziai, 76 
 Kdlymnos, 469 
 Kamateron, 95 
 Kanares, Aristeides, 276 
 Kanares, Constantine, 80, no, 179, 
 
 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 
 Karaiskakes, George, 91-5 
 Karalik-Dervend, 409-10 
 Karam, 304-5, 317 
 Karamanli, Ahmed, 16 
 Karatassos, 177, 221, 262 
 Karatheodori, Alexander, 388, 433, 
 
 471 
 Karavelov, Ljuben, 346 
 Karavelov, Peter, 422-3 
 Karditza, 407 
 Karlovitz, i, 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 
 
 Kastrati, The, 406, 495 
 
 Kastri (Delphi), 85 
 
 Kastri (Hermione), 96 
 
 Katchanik, 443, 475, 484, 495 
 
 Katerfna, 500 
 
 Kaulbars, General Alexander, 413 
 
 Kaulbars, Major-General Nicholas, 
 
 424-5 
 Kavalla, 88, 448, 470 
 Kelides, P., 309 
 Keos, 420 
 Kertch, 8, 234 
 Khevenhiiller, Count, 418 
 Kiamil Pasha, 477, 479, 502 
 Kilia, 400 
 Kinburn, 8, 236 
 Kirdjali, 419 
 
 Kirk-kilisse (Lozengrad), 500 
 Kisseleff, Count Paul, 131 
 Klek, 13 
 Knezevich, 454 
 Kobel, Herr von, 161 
 Kogalniceanu, Michael, 191-2, 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 
 Konemenos, 470 
 Konieh, 146 
 Kopasses, 472-3 
 Koraes, 25, 166 
 Korakas, 311 
 
 Korniloff, Admiral, 229-30 
 Koronaios, Panos, 275-6, 310-1, 
 
 3i3>.3i5 
 Korphiotakes, 182 
 Kossovo, 1 40, 445, 447, 496 
 Kos, 470, 497 
 Kotchana, 498 
 Kotel, 338-40 
 
 34—5
 
 538 
 
 Index 
 
 Koumoundouros, Alexander, i68, 
 
 268, 310, 312, 316-7, 332, 354, 
 
 357> 379-80, 408, 410 
 Kountouriotes, George, 86, 88, 90, 
 
 96, 100, 107, 114, 178-9 
 Koures, S., 283 
 Koutzo-Wallachs, 442-4, 447-8, 
 
 465-6 
 Kozane, 500 
 Kozaratz, 362 
 Kragujevatz, 135, 137 
 Krani'di, 86 
 
 Kriezes, Admiral, 182, 221 
 Kriezotes, 94, 104, 120-1, 178 
 Krivoshije, 358, 361 
 Krstjovich, Gavril, 414-5, 425 
 Krushevo, 446 
 Kulevtcha, 129 
 Kumanovo, 501 
 Kurds, 384, 395, 427-9, 495 
 Kurshid Pasha, 65, 78 
 Kutchi, The, 142, 218, 241 
 Kutchuk-Kainardji, Treaty of, 3, 
 
 8, 10, 14, 24, 205, 209-10 
 Kyparissia, 265 
 Kyriakos, 275 
 KyriakoCi, D., 276 
 K^thnos, 265, 273 
 
 La Marmora, 234 
 
 Lamia, r 16, 220, 271, 353, 437 
 
 Lapathiotes, Col., 490 
 
 Larissa, 64, 436-7 
 
 Lauriston, 36 
 
 Lausanne, Treaty of, 497-8 
 
 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 
 
 Lenormant, F., 284 
 
 Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (Leo- 
 pold I, King of the Belgians), 
 107-8 
 
 Leotsakos, 273, 275 
 
 Lepanto, 64, 103, 178 
 
 Lerna, 90, 114, 170 
 
 Leros, 469 
 
 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 
 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 
 Longworth, 254 
 Lontos, Andrew, 88, 169 
 Loutraki, 115 
 Lowe, Sir Hudson, 58 
 Lucan, Lord, 231 
 Luitpold, Prince of Bavaria, 262, 
 
 266 
 Liile Burgas, Battle of, 501 
 Lunjevitza, Nikodem, 454 
 Lyons, Sir Edmund, 163, 165, 
 
 171, 175, 180, 228-9 
 Lytton, Lord, 279, 290 
 
 Macedonia, 9, 43, 174-5 ! rising in, 
 22 r, 346; in Berlin treaty, 394, 
 396-7 ; rival races in, 436, 441- 
 9, 451, 465; the Turkish revolu- 
 tion in, 475-6, 489, 495 ; con- 
 quered by the League, 501 
 
 Mackenzie, S., 185 
 
 Mademochoria, 29 
 
 Maglaj, 401 
 
 Mahmud IL 53> S^, 74-5. 88, 
 127, 130, 139, 145-9, 166, 252, 
 343. 469
 
 Index 
 
 539 
 
 Mahniud Shevket, 481 
 
 Maina, Mainates, 4, ■29, 81, 109, 
 
 III, 114, 120, 160, 315 
 Maison, General, 102 
 Maitland, Sir Thomas, 58-63, 84, 
 
 92, 123, 183 
 Makres, 92 
 Makrinitza, 381 
 Makrygiannes, 170-1 
 Makrynoros, 107, 116 
 Makryplagi, 90 
 Malaxa, 435 
 Malamas, 163 
 Malcolm, Sir P., 168 
 Maltsori, The, 404, 495 
 Mamartchov, 338 
 Maneses, 311 
 Mangalia, 392 
 Maniaki, 90 
 Marathon, Brigandage near, 348- 
 
 52 
 Margarites, Apostolos, 442 
 Marie, Crown Princess of Roumania, 
 
 401 
 Marie Louise, Princess of Bulgaria, 
 
 450. 478 
 Marinkovich, 218, 332 
 Marmont, 33-6 
 Maronites, 152-4, 300-5 
 Mashin, Col., 455 
 Maurer, 156-8, i6o-r 
 Mavrogenes, Alexander, 472 
 Mavrokordatos, Alexander, 27, 76- 
 
 7, 82-3, 89-90, 93, 109, 158, 
 
 166, 168-9, i75~6' 223, 242 
 Mavrokordatos, Demetrios, 313 
 Mavromichales, Constantine, 11 1-2 
 Mavromichales, Eiias, 78 
 Mavromichales, George, 96, 11 1-2 
 Mavromichales, John, iii 
 Mavromichales, Kyriakoiiles (I), 82 
 Mavromichales, M.Kyriakoules(II), 
 
 ex-Premier, 112, 467, 490 
 Mavromichales, Petrobey, 6^, 72, 
 
 78, 82-3, III 
 Medun, 370 
 Megara, 99 
 Megas, 242 
 Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, 
 
 88, 102, 116, 145-51, 166-8 
 
 Mehemet Ali, vcili of Crete, 318, 
 374-5. 388, 404 
 
 Melas, Paul, 447 
 
 Melidones, A., 83 
 
 Melikoff, Loris, 375 
 
 Meloima pass. The, 436 
 
 Mentschikoff, Prince, 202, 205-7, 
 217, 227-30 
 
 Merendi'tes, 1 78 
 
 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 
 
 Messenia, 76, 102, 117, 120-1, 161 
 
 Metaxas, Andrew, 119, 169, 171, 
 242 
 
 Meteora, 220 
 
 Metzovon, 220, 408, 500 
 
 Meyer, 87, 93 
 
 Miaoiiles, Andrew, 80, 90, 92, 
 T09-10 
 
 Miaoules, Athanasios, 262, 264, 266 
 
 Michelidakes, M., 486 
 
 Midhat Pasha, 342-4, 368 ; his 
 Parliament, 371-2, 428 
 
 Midia, 130 
 
 Mijatovich, M. Ch., 403 
 
 Milena, Queen of Montenegro, 258 
 
 " Military League," The, 490-2 
 
 Milovanovich, M. G., 479 
 
 Mingrelia, Prince of, 425 
 
 Mirdites, 23, 85, 219, 404, 406, 
 496 
 
 Mirko, father of King Nicholas of 
 Montenegro, 256-7, 259-60 
 
 Mirko, Prince, son of King Nicholas 
 of Montenegro, 458, 460 
 
 Mishar, 52 
 
 Mitrovitza, 446, 459, 474 
 
 Mitylene, 448 
 
 Modon, 89-90, 102, 180 
 
 Mohammed V, 481-2, 496 
 
 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,
 
 540 
 
 Index 
 
 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, 501 
 Monemvasia, 76 
 
 Montenegro, 23, 33; under Peter I, 
 37j 5I> 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. 372-3. 
 375-7 ; «it San Stefano, 383, 
 385 ; at Berlin, 390-2, 396, 403- 
 6, 440. 459-63, 479, 482-4, 495 ; 
 
 war of (1912), 499, 501-2 
 Moraitines, 273 
 Morava, The, 443 
 Mostar, 141 
 Mounychfa, 94-5 
 Mourouzes, 74 
 
 Mousofiros, Constantine, [77 
 Mousoiiros, 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, 
 
 310-1, 313 
 Mustapha Pasha (Thracian town), 
 
 500 
 Mustoxidi, Andrew, 117, 184 
 Mutkurov, Major, 415, 422-3 
 Muzechka, 406 
 
 Naby Bey, 489 
 
 Napier, Sir Chai^Ies, 150-1, 214 
 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, loi ; 
 
 again the capital, 109-11, 117- 
 
 21, 156-7, 160-1, 168; revolt of, 
 
 263-5 
 Navarino, 76, 89-90 ; battle of, 
 
 97-8, 102, 128, 211 
 Nazim Pasha, killed, 502 
 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 
 Nevesinje, 359-60 
 Newcastle, Duke of, 225, 285 
 New Psara, 89, 294 
 Newspapers, Greek, 87, 109, 113, 
 
 159, 165, 177, 186, 224, 262, 264 
 Nezib, 148, 153 
 Niazi, Major, 475 
 Nicholas I, Tsar of Russia, 94, 
 
 127, t6o, 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, 
 
 371, 376, 392, 403-5- 417, 458- 
 
 62, 496 
 Nicholas, Prince of Greece, 472 
 Nightingale, Florence, 233 
 Nigra, Count, 329 
 Niketas, 82, no 
 Nikolajev, Major, 415 
 Nikshich, 241, 258-9, 370, 376, 
 
 383, 391 
 Nish, 9, 51, 345, 376, 383, 391, 
 
 458 
 Nisyros, 469 
 Njegush, 258 
 Nodaros, 188
 
 Index 
 
 541 
 
 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 {iiee 
 
 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, 33^- 
 
 5' 345- 455 
 Obrenovich IV, Milan, Prince (later 
 King) of Servia, 323, 335-7, 
 
 363-4, 376. 417-8, 45^-4, 457 
 Obrenovich, Milan, half-brother of 
 
 Milosh, 54-5 
 Obrenovich, Velimir, 335 
 Ochrida, 25, 382, 443 
 Odysseus, 64, 72, 81, 91 
 Ogle, 381 
 
 Oikonomos, Hydriote captain, 73 
 Oikonomos, theologian, 182 
 Oldenburg, Prince Peter of, 262 
 Olga, Princess of Montenegro, 257 
 Olga, Queen of the Hellenes, 316 
 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 
 Oroshi, 406 
 Orsova, 10, 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; f^'l "f, 261- 
 71, 281, 286, 293, 296 
 
 Pacifico, Don, 179-81, 189 
 
 Padovan, S., 283, 308 
 
 Pahlen, Count, 128 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, Eastern policy 
 of, 1 15-6, 136, 148, 161, 163- 
 4, 168, 179-81, 194, 210-1, 232- 
 3, 246, 259, 285, 287-8 
 
 " 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 ^ 
 
 Papaphlessas (Dikaios), 90 
 
 Papoulakos, 183 
 
 Paraschos, 312 
 
 Parasouliotes, 24 
 
 Parga, 4, 15, 62-4, 295, 503 
 
 Paris, Conference of (1866), 325-6 ; 
 Congress of (18(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, Nicholas, 459 
 
 Paskievich, 128-9, "^'5 
 
 Passarovitz, Peace of, 10, 13 ; cap- 
 ture of, 56 ; peace of, 256 
 
 Pastrovich, The, 144 
 
 Pasvanoglu, 19, 43, 46-7 
 
 Patmos, 469, 497 
 
 Patras, 102, 118, 165, 172, 178-9, 
 267 
 
 Patriarch, The Armenian, 428, 430 
 
 Patriarchate, CEcumenical, 20, 25, 
 75, 84, 123, 134, 159, 166, 182,
 
 542 
 
 Index 
 
 184, 224-5, 295-6, 309, 321, 341, 
 
 345-6, 442-3. 447. 493' 495 
 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, 500 
 Perachora, 114, 116 
 Peribolia, 306-7 
 Perrotes, 178 
 Persida, Princess, 334 
 Peta, 82, 91, 220 
 Petalidi, 102 
 Peter I, Vladika of Montenegro, 
 
 37, 142-3 
 Peter II, Vladika of Montenegro, 
 
 143-4, 196-7 
 Peter, King of Servia, 252, 334, 
 
 363, 417, 453-4. 456-9 
 Peter, Prince, son of King Nicholas 
 
 of Montenegro, 499 
 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, lOI 
 Phanari, 82 
 
 Pharmakes, Macedonian patriot, 69 
 Pharmakes, leader of revolt at 
 Lepanto, 178 
 
 Pharmakides, 182 
 
 Pharsala (Pharsalos), 407, 437 
 
 Philik'e Hetairia, The, 65, 159 
 
 Philippopolis, 415-7, 419, 4'22, 447 
 
 Philippovich, Baron von, 401 
 
 " Phil-Orthodox Society," The, 
 
 183-4 
 Photiades, 317, 411 
 Phourka Pass, The, 437 
 Piada, 77 
 Pikermi, 348 
 
 Piperi, The, 142, 144, 198, 218 
 Piraeus, The, 95, 162, 172, 180, 
 
 222-4, 241, 261, 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 
 
 Plapoi'itas, 1 60- 1 
 
 Plava, 383, 391, 403-4, 501 
 
 Plevlje, 391, 402-3 
 
 Plevna, 343, 374-6. 400. 4i3' 45» 
 
 Ploeshti, 319, 329 
 
 Podgoritza, 144, 359, 383, 391, 
 404, 462-3 
 
 Podolia, ceded to Turkey, i, 6 
 
 Poljitza, Republic of, 35 
 
 Pomaks, The, 365 ; " Pomak Re- 
 public," The, 414-5. 419. 447 
 
 Popov, 422 
 
 Popovo, 362 
 
 Poros, 99-100, 10^, 109-10, 114, 
 
 165 
 Poti, 128, 130 
 Prespa, 382, 475 
 Pressburg, Treaty of, 32 
 Preveza, 4, 64, (16,407, 409,436, 
 
 497, 500 
 Priboj, 391 
 Priepolje, 383, 391 
 Prishtina, 501 
 Prizren, 501 
 
 Pronoia, 117-9. 121, 265 
 Protich, General, 453 
 Prussia, Eastern policy of, 8, 14-5, 
 
 129-30, 149, 209, 211-4, 216, 
 
 234, 245. See Germany
 
 Index 
 
 54J 
 
 Pruth, Treaty of the, 6-7 ; in Berlin 
 
 treaty, 393 
 Psara, 28, 73, 88 
 Punta, 116, 409 
 Pyrgos, 179 
 
 Radonich, Vuko, 143 
 
 Radoslavov, 423 
 
 Radovanovich, 334 
 
 Radovitzi, 220 
 
 Radulescu, John Eliade, 126, 193 
 
 Ragkaves, A. R., 388 
 
 Raglan, Lord, 215, 22,^-9, 231, 235 
 
 Ragusa, Republic of, 12, 34-6, 256 
 
 Rakovski, 342, 346 
 
 Reichstadt, Meeting of, 377, 386, 
 
 Reshid Pasha (Kioutages), 91, 93-4 
 Reshid Pasha, Grand Vizier, 140, 
 
 146, 207 
 Resnja, 475 
 
 Rethymne, 311, 411, 438, 440 
 Reuss, Princess Eleanora of, Queen 
 
 of Bulgaria, 478 
 Reval, Meeting at, 474 
 Reveni, 436-7 
 Rhalles, M. Demetrios G., 437, 
 
 466-7, 488-90, 494 
 Rhalles, Luke, 80 
 Rhegas, 25-6, 85, 125, 498 
 Rhlon, 102 
 
 Rhodes, 75, 86, 470, 497 
 Rhodope, Mt, 414, 419 
 Ricord, Admiral, iio-ii, 120 
 Ristich, John, 255, 332, 334-5. 
 
 363-4 
 Rizvanbegovich, 141 
 Rjeka, 260 
 
 Robilant, Count di, 447 
 Rodich, Baron, 363 
 Roebuck, John Arthur, 232 
 Roganj, 499 
 
 Rose, Col. (Lord Strathnairn), 202 
 Rosebery, Lord, 419 
 Rosetti, Constantine, 320, 323, 327, 
 
 33i> 392 
 
 Rouen, Baron, 222 
 
 Roumania, under Couza and Prince 
 Charles, 319-31, }yH; in war of 
 1877-8, 373-5. 377; in treaty 
 
 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. See Danubian 
 Principalities, Moldavia, and Wal- 
 lachia 
 
 Roiiphos, v., 267, 276 
 
 Roux, M., 355 
 
 Rudhart, Von, 164-5 
 
 Rudine, 256 
 
 Russia, Policy of, towards the Ar- 
 nieniansj 431J towards Bulgaria, 
 386, 388-9, 41 1-4, 416, 420-6, 
 449-51, 485 ; towards Greece, 7- 
 8, 24, 84, 97, 106, 160-1, 164, 
 i66, 169, 177, 180-2, 219,241-2, 
 261, 263, 271, 274,312, 316, 318, 
 386, 439 ; towards Montenegro, 
 37, 142, 197, 199, 240; towards 
 the Roumanians, 131-2, 191-5, 
 216, 245, 392-3, 399; towards 
 Servia, 51-3, 56, 136, 139, 207, 
 386, 457 ; towards Turkey, 5-10,^ 
 
 'ii 31. 38, 127-31. 146-7. 149^ 
 
 i(j()sqq., 302 
 Russell, Earl, Eastern policy of, 98, 
 
 I 4, 211, 232, 234, 253, 255, 266, 
 
 269, 271-2, 274, 285-6, 302 
 Russell, Sir W. H., 232 
 Russo-Turkish War (1806-12), 37, _ 
 
 ^1^, 338 
 
 Russo-Turkish War (1828-9), loi- 
 
 2, 12S-31, 338-9 
 Russo-Turkish War (1853-6), 
 
 210 sqq. 
 Russo-Turkish War (1877-8), 373-9 
 Rustchuk, 42, 129, 326, 342-3, 
 
 423. 452 
 Rustem 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 
 
 Salamis, 99, 202, 206, 268; "battle 
 
 of," 49' 
 Salaora, 220
 
 544 
 
 Index 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, Eastern policy of, 
 87, 239, 246, 248, 339, 370, 372, 
 387-8, 390, 394, 397, 407, 416, 
 419, 426, 443, 449 
 
 Salona (Amphissa), 72, 77, 103, 118 
 
 Salonika, 75, 367, 442-8, 474, 479- 
 81 ; taken by the Greeks, 501 
 
 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, 501 
 
 Samsvin, 476 
 
 Sandanski, 448, 476 
 
 Sand with. Consul, 394 
 
 San Giovanni di Medua, 406, 459, 
 
 497 
 
 San Stefano, 378, 481 ; treaty of, 
 382-6, 397, 442 
 
 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 Quaianta, 436 
 
 Sapienza, 179-82 
 
 Sarafov, Boris, 445, 448 
 
 Sarajevo, 9, 22, 139-40, 142 ; taken 
 by Austria, 401-2, 484 
 
 Sasun, 429 
 
 Scarlett, General, 230 
 
 Scarlett, The Hon. Peter Campbell, 
 266 
 
 Schmaltz, General, 161 
 
 Schouvaloff, Count, 387 
 
 Scutari (in Albania), 17, 85, 129, 
 140, 143, 260; attacked by Monte- 
 negrins (in 1878), 377, 463, 484, 
 495 ; besieged by Montenegrins 
 (in 19 1 2-3), 501 
 
 Scutari (opposite Constantinople), 
 233, 284 
 
 Seaton, Lord, 185-7, 278 
 
 Sebastiani, 31, 37-8 
 
 Sebastopol, 212, 225-30, 234-5, 
 238 
 
 Seku, Monastery of, 69 
 
 Selasina, 179 
 
 Selim in, 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 
 
 Server Pasha, 360 
 
 Servia, Kingdom of, Servians, under 
 the Turks, lo-i, 22, 39; risings 
 of, 46-57; history of (1820-48), 
 132-9, 195-6, 204 ; during 
 Crimean war, 217-8; in treaty 
 of Paris, 236, 238 ; during the 
 Obrenovich restoration, 248-55 ; 
 relations with Greece, 266, 311, 
 316; history of (1862-75), 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, 501-2 
 
 Servia, Town of, 500 
 
 Seymour, Sir Hamilton, 203-4 
 
 Shabatz, 255, 454 
 
 Shakir Pasha, 429 
 
 Shejnovo, 376 
 
 Shemshi Pasha, 475 
 
 Shihab, Family of, 152 
 
 Shipka pass. The, 342, 374, 376, 
 
 451 
 Shumla, 128-9, .^43 
 Shuplikatz, Col., 196 
 Silistria 17; taken by Russia, 42, 
 
 128-30, 147, 339; defended by 
 
 British, 215-7, 225 ; in Berlin 
 
 treaty, 392, 399 
 Simpson, General, 235 
 Sinope, 211 
 Sisines, 88 
 Sitia, 438 
 
 Skouphas, Nicholas, 65 
 Skuleni, 69 
 Skyros, 107 
 Slavejkov, P. R., 423 
 Sliven, 129, 339, 415
 
 Index 
 
 545 
 
 Slivnitza, 418-9 
 
 Smolenski, Col. Constantine, 437 
 
 Smyrna, 75, 166, 405 
 
 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 
 
 Sofronij, 338-9 
 
 Sokol, 255 
 
 Sokolski, 341 
 
 Sommieres, Vialla de, 37 
 
 Sophoules, M. Themistokles, 472-3 
 
 Soteriades, M., 466 
 
 Souli, Souliotes, 23-4, 65, 82, 85, 
 
 157' 295 
 Soult, Marshal, 150 
 Soutsos, Alexander, Prince of VVal- 
 
 lachia, 66 
 Soutsos, Alexander, poet, 113, 118 
 Soutsos, General, 350, 354 
 Soutsos, Michael II, Piince of 
 
 Moldavia, 66 
 Sparta, 276 
 Spetsai, 28, 73, 86, 89, 118, 120, 
 
 294 
 Sphakianakes, Dr, 318, 438-9 
 Sphakiotes, 15, 74, 83, 89, 168, 309, 
 
 311. 3'3. 317. 439 
 
 Sphakterfa, 89-90 
 
 Spinalonga, 438 
 
 Spizza, 144; taken by Montenegro, 
 256 ; proposed cession to Monte- 
 negro, 260, 370-1, 383 ; again 
 taken by Montenegro, 376 ; 
 Austrian, 391-2 
 
 Sponneck, Count, 277, 292, 294, 
 296, 310 
 
 Sporddes, The, 29, 469-70. See 
 Dodekdnesos, The. 
 
 Spuj, 144, 256, 375, 383, 391 
 
 Sredna Gora, 365 
 
 " Sretenje, Constitution of," 135 
 
 Stambulov, Stephen, 345, 364,415, 
 422-3, 426, 443, 449-50 
 
 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> 3^8 
 
 Stoilov, Constantine, 423, 425, 
 
 450-1 
 
 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 
 
 Strophades, The, 5 
 
 Strousberg, 330 
 
 Sturdza, John S.,Princeof Moldavia, 
 70, 127 
 
 Sturdza, Michael, Prince of Mol- 
 davia, 132, 190-2, 194, 328 
 
 Suda, 83, 89, 419, 434-5, 439' 489 
 
 Suez Canal, The, 239 
 
 Sutorina, The, 13, 256, 258, 362-3 
 
 Svishtov, 42, 46, 344, 374, 413 
 
 Sykaminon, 351-2 
 
 .Synie, 469-70 
 
 Syra, 73, 80, 86, 89, 109, 113, 172, 
 261, 265, 317 
 
 Syrakou, 88 
 
 Syria, 145-50, 263, 300-6 
 
 Takovo, 55 
 
 Tarsus, 480 
 
 Tartars, 431, 443 
 
 Tatar-Pazardjik, 342 
 
 Tchernaieff, General, 364, 368-9 
 
 Tchernaya, The, 228, 335 
 
 Tchesme, 14 
 
 Telos, 469 
 
 Tenos, 28, 118, 160 
 
 Tepelen, 19 
 
 Tewfik Pasha, 480 
 
 Thasos, 151, 470 
 
 Theagenes, Col., 351 
 
 Theotokes, Baron Emmanuel, 59 
 
 Theotokes, Mr George, 466, 486, 
 
 488, 494 
 Therisso, 440 
 Thessaly, 39, 73, 84, 104, 174; 
 
 insurrection of 1854 in, 219-21,
 
 546 
 
 Index 
 
 266, 271, 28=,, 310, 312, 316; in- 
 surrection of 1878 in, 380-1, 384; 
 cession to Greece, 409-1 1 ; Turk- 
 ish occupation and retrocession 
 to Greece, 436-8, 443, 447, 493 
 
 Thiers, 149-50 
 
 Thiersch, Professor F., 115-6 
 
 Thouvenel, L., 178, 245, 301-2 
 
 Thrace, 43, 394, 498, 501 
 
 Thugut, 10 
 
 Tilsit, Peace of, 38-9, 42 
 
 Timok, The, 134, 417, 424 
 
 Tfryns, loi, 26^ 
 
 Tittoni, Sig. T., 478, 482 
 
 Tocci, Sig. Terenzio, 496 
 
 Todleben, 228-9 
 
 Tokat, 431 
 
 Tomanovich, M. Lazar, 462 
 
 TomMzes, Giakoumakes, 73 
 
 Tombazes, Manoles, 83, 89 
 
 Topola, 49 
 
 Toprak Kaleh, 128 
 
 Toptchider, 334 
 
 Tosks, 23 
 
 TouUcha, 384, 392 
 
 Transsylvania, 9 
 
 Travnik, 22, 140, 142 
 
 Trebizond, 129, 384-5, 429 
 
 Trelawny, 91 
 
 Trfkeri, 72, 85 
 
 Trikoupes, CharOaos, 288, 314, 316, 
 356-7, 380, 408, 410, 420,432-4, 
 449, 466 
 
 Trikoupes, Spyridon, 87, 158, 242 
 
 TripoU (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 
 
 Tsakalof, 65 
 
 Tsamados, Anastases, 90 
 
 Tsanov, llija, 418 
 
 Tsavellas, Kitsos, 92, 118, 120, 
 163, 178 
 
 Tselios, Demos, 163 
 
 Tsintsar-Markovich, General, 454 
 
 Tsiros, 265 
 
 Tunisia, 16, 496 
 
 Turgut Shevket Pasha, 497 
 Turnu-Severin, 326 
 Tuzi, 404, 496, 499 
 Typaldos, J. (Kapeletos), 189 
 Typaldos, Commander, 49 r 
 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 
 Usklib (Skoplje), 9, 442-3, 447, 
 
 474-5. 501 
 Uvatz, 459 
 
 Val di Noce, 405 
 
 Valentza^, 178 
 
 Valjevo, 49 
 
 Valtetsi, 72, in 
 
 Van, 429, 434 
 
 Vardar, The, 443 
 
 Varna, 128-9, 215, 217, 225-6, 
 
 343. 389 
 Vasojevich, Ihe, 256 
 Vassos, Col., 434, 437 
 Vathy, 470, 472 
 Vegleres, George, 473 
 Velestino, 437 
 Vely, son of AH Pasha of Joannina, 
 
 64 
 Vely Pasha, vAh of Crete, 306, 4 1 1 
 Venelin, 340 
 Venizelos, M. Eleutherios, 440, 486, 
 
 488, 491-4, 499-500 
 Venizelos, John, 30 
 Verona, Congress of, 84 
 Victoria, Queen, 244, 271, 308, 
 
 385, 401, 417, 426, 460 
 Vidin, 9, 17, 19, 43. 47. 129, 153, 
 
 211, 303. 339. 376-7. 416-8 
 Vienna, Congress of, 43-4, 56 ; 
 
 "Note, the," 209 
 Vir Bazar, 463 
 Vlachos, 188 
 
 Vladimirescu, Tudor, 67-8 
 Vogorfdes, Alexander, 414 
 Vogorkles, Nicholas, 244-5, ^47
 
 Index 
 
 547 
 
 Vogorkles, Stephen, i66, 244, 340, 
 
 470 
 Volo, 29, 381, 467 
 Vonitza, 4, 103, 267 
 Vostftsa (Aigion), 88 
 Vourla, 202 
 Vrachori, 72 
 Vranina, 144 
 Vranja, 376, 391 
 Vriones, Omer, 64, 82 
 Vukalovich, Luka, 258 
 Vukoticli, Peter, father of Queen 
 
 Milena of Montenegro, 259 
 Vukotich, General Vanko, 499 
 Vulichevich, Vuitza, 57 
 Vulkovich, 449 
 Vutchich, 135-9, 249, 251 
 Vutchidol, 370 
 Vyner, 348, 352 
 
 Waddington, 386, 388, 394, 407 
 Waldeniar of Denmark, Prince, 424 
 Walewski, 241, 24+ 
 Wallachia, partly Austrian, lo-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, ^539 
 Ward, Sir Henry, 187, 278, 284 
 Wellington, Duke of, 94, 106, 226 
 Westbury, Lord, 285 
 White, Sir William, 136, 385,416-7 
 William I , King of Prussia (German 
 Emperor), 325, 328 
 
 Williams, Fen wick, 235 
 Wyse, Sir Thomas, 180-1, 222, 
 263 
 
 Xanthos, 66 
 
 X^nos, Stephanos, 264 
 
 Yemen, The, 495 
 Yeni Kaleh, 8, 234 
 Young, Sir John, 278-81 
 Yusuf Pasha, 16 
 
 Zagaratz, 259 
 
 Zagora, 29 
 
 Zaimes, Mr Alexander, 441, 466, 
 
 486, 491 
 Zaimes, Andrew, 88, 94, 113, 119 
 Zai'mes, 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 
 Zavitzanos, 264 
 Zekki Pasha, 429 
 Zervas, 163 
 Zervos, 186, 188, 286 
 Zeta, The, 143, 259, 375 
 Zographos, 165-6, 169 
 Zorbas, General, 490-2, 494 
 Zubci, 371 
 Zvornik, 139 
 Zvornik, Little, 255, 364, 370-1, 
 
 383 
 Zymbrakakes, 310-1, 315
 
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