By the end of 1827, some two months after Navarino, Kapodhístrias had completed his extensive visits to European capitals, and was at last ready to take up the post of president of Greece which had been offered to him in the previous April. At the beginning of January 1828 he was taken by a British warship from Ancona in Italy to Codrington’s headquarters in Malta, where the two men met for the first time and got on well together. Kapodhístrias asked to be escorted by a ship from each of the three allied navies, to avoid signalling that he favoured one of the powers against the others. Codrington agreed, and so it was in the British Warspite accompanied by two veteran ships of Navarino, the Russian Helena and the French Daphne, that Kapodhístrias reached Navplion on 18 January 1828. He was greeted by a fifteen-gun salute, and stepped ashore to an enthusiastic welcome from all classes, followed by a church service. A week later he reached Éyina, to which the provisional government had moved because of the civil strife in Navplion, and there received an equally warm and universal welcome. ‘Never did men look more favourably on their deliverer,’ wrote Trikoúpis. ‘The soldier, the politician and the private citizen of Greece all celebrated with the same joy, since all perceived the same need.’1 It was a promising start for Kapodhístrias.
However it was not long before he began to spend some of the capital of goodwill which he had been so generously given. By the end of January he had persuaded the Senate to grant him for the moment full powers and to suspend the constitution established by the Trizína National Assembly of the previous year. The Senate itself was to be replaced by a twenty-seven-member Panhellenion, which sounded like an all-inclusive body but was not, since all its members were appointed by the president. These twenty-seven members were divided into three groups responsible for finance, internal affairs and war, with a secretary of state presiding over all. Trikoúpis accepted the position of secretary of state, though with serious misgivings. He believed that Kapodhístrias should have immediately summoned a new National Assembly, which alone had the power to suspend or alter the constitution. Furthermore he thought that in the early honeymoon period of Kapodhístrias’ presidency an Assembly would have given him all he asked. Kapodhístrias did promise a National Assembly for April 1828, only a month away, but with repeated postponements nearly eighteen months passed before it actually met.
Others condemned this early move by Kapodhístrias more harshly than Trikoúpis, and saw it as an unscrupulous bid for personal power. It was not; it stemmed directly from Kapodhístrias’ political views. First, he had a deep distrust of the men who had led the revolution: as he saw it, they had consistently failed to unite in the common cause, and had all too often oppressed the people for their own advantage. It was the common people to whom he was devoted, and who repaid his active concern with unwavering support. But he believed that the people were not yet ready to exercise their power through representative institutions. To grant a constitution now, said Kapodhístrias, would be like giving a child a razor;2 the child did not need it yet, and might kill himself with it. The people would be fit for their responsibilities as voters only when they had a stake in the country through ownership of property, particularly land, and had been educated, and neither process could happen quickly. Meanwhile the right solution was to give power to a few, and preferably to one man, as Kapodhístrias had urged to the very first National Assembly back in 1821, and for which his service under the benevolently autocratic Tsar Alexander gave him a model.
Unfortunately Kapodhístrias often expressed these cool philosophical ideas in intemperate language. He spoke of simply crushing the revolutionary leaders: ‘Il faut éteindre les brandons de la révolution.’3 More specifically, says Trikoúpis, ‘He called the primates, Turks masquerading under Christian names; the military chieftains, brigands; the Phanariots, vessels of Satan; and the intellectuals, fools. Only the peasants and the artisans did he consider worthy of his love and protection, and he openly declared that his administration was conducted solely for their benefit.’4 And on one of his many tours of the country he complained, on a despairing note: ‘Nobody does his duty. The army, the fleet, the political leaders, they are all corrupt. I get no support, and what can I do on my own? God gave me intelligence, but He did not give me the power to mould men.’5
If nobody else could be trusted, Kapodhístrias would have to manage everything himself, and there was much to be done in what he called ‘le chaos qui ressemble à la Grèce’. Though the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt – after Navarino Greek independence in some form was certain – the fighting had not ended. Ibrahim’s troops were still in the Peloponnese. In Roumeli Greek forces fought to win back territory, to help push Greece’s eventual border northwards. The threat from internal strife was as bad as at any time in the war; when Kapodhístrias first stepped ashore at Navplion, rival commanders were still bombarding each other from the town’s two fortresses. The only way to stop the captains fighting each other was to embark on the slow process of establishing a regular army, dependent on the government for its pay. In the wasteland of the Peloponnese the people were starving, and Roumeli was no better. ‘From Árta to Návpaktos,’ wrote a contemporary traveller, ‘we did not meet a single human creature. It is a vast desert. Elsewhere a few Greeks came out from the rocks and appeared before us like ghosts, famished ghosts.’6 Many Greek refugees were saved from starvation only by provisions sent by charitable Americans and distributed with every attempt at fairness by Howe and his colleagues. On top of other problems there were constant outbreaks of plague.
Against this background Kapodhístrias struggled to lay the foundations of civil society: a currency, a method of taxation, a legal framework, courts of justice, a postal system, and – his special concern – schools and the sorely needed orphanages. Everything required money, and until there was an effective tax system the country depended upon loans from abroad, for which Kapodhístrias’ old friend, the Swiss banker Jean-Gabriel Eynard, was his principal agent. Kapodhístrias, working from five in the morning till ten at night, involved himself in every detail of this massive effort of national reconstruction, and regularly toured the country. He wrote to local commanders about the precise building works the troops should undertake and even about the cloth for their uniforms. He sent letters to schools about the equipment they needed, down to the pumps for their wells, and about the priorities for their pupils – cleanliness, health, good conduct and regular prayers.
In spite of Kapodhístrias’ intense dedication, his insistence on directing everything himself and his scorn for the contribution of others were bound to make enemies. To bring the Mani under the control of the central government he removed members of the Mavromichális clan from their offices and encouraged the rival Mourtsinós family, thus making an enemy of Petrobey. Hydra, led by former president of the Executive Georgios Koundouriótis, resented not only the loss of the autonomy it had previously enjoyed, but also Kapodhístrias’ rejection of its claim for huge compensation for wartime losses. Mavrokordhátos, another opponent, took his stand against Kapodhístrias’ suspension of the constitution, and those who were against Kapodhístrias were loosely labelled the Constitutionalists. In the background to this opposition was the rumble of suspicion that Kapodhístrias was too closely tied to Russia, and might even make Greece a Russian satellite state.
But Kapodhístrias could not have carried on without support from some of the leaders of the revolutionary years. Trikoúpis, despite misgivings, served as his secretary of state. Makriyánnis was appointed first as head of a force to put down disturbances in the Peloponnese and later as battalion commander in the new regular army, and acted as counsellor and privately outspoken critic of the president. Kolokotrónis was Kapodhístrias’ most consistent supporter. This unlikely alliance of rugged guerrilla leader and polished international diplomat was probably based on three things: Kolokotrónis’ acceptance of Kapodhístrias as the only man fit to be president, the links of both with the common people, and the determination of both to ignore legal niceties in doing what had to be done. As Kolokotrónis wrote after a successful campaign against plunderers in the Peloponnese: ‘Thus terminated this expedition. I made five hundred decisions in the course of it, which, if they had been carried to the lawyers, would have taken them three hundred years to decide upon; and so I put the districts in order and quieted them.’7
This campaign of Koloktrónis came in the aftermath of the final departure of Ibrahim’s forces from the Peloponnese. After Navarino the surviving crippled ships of the Turco-Egyptian fleet crept back to their home ports, but Ibrahim’s troops remained. They were still a formidable force: about 20,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, mainly in the fortresses of the south-west Peloponnese at New Navarino, Methóni and Koróni, but with some 1,500 at Patras. There was a series of attempts to persuade Ibrahim to leave. In February 1828 Sir Frederick Adam, the governor of the Ionian islands, on his government’s instructions met Ibrahim at Methóni, but Ibrahim said he could not withdraw without direct orders from Mehmed Ali. Colonel Cradock, Canning’s emissary to Egypt the previous summer, returned to Alexandria to persuade Mehmed Ali to give these orders, but Mehmed claimed that he could not do so without the Sultan’s approval, an approval which at the end of March the Sultan refused. But by now Ibrahim was having great difficulty in supplying his troops, especially as Adam had finally banned Ionian ships from bringing them provisions, and a French force under General Maison designed to drive Ibrahim from the Peloponnese was assembling at Toulon. It was Drovetti, the French consul at Alexandria, who found a way round the impasse. In May he put to Mehmed Ali an intricate proposal that would satisfy all concerned. An Egyptian fleet, carrying the Greek slaves whose capture had caused such an outcry, would be allowed by the allied fleets to sail for the Peloponnese; off Navarino it would be intercepted by the allies and ‘compelled’ to land the slaves and then embark the bulk of Ibrahim’s army. Two concessions sweetened the pill for Mehmed Ali: that he would be given the protection of the three powers once the troops had left, and that Ibrahim should keep possession of his four fortresses.
It fell to Codrington, in the last days before his successor arrived, to implement the agreement with the warm support of his fellow admirals. Codrington reached Egypt on 1 August 1828 and a week later the Convention of Alexandria was signed, ratifying Drovetti’s plan. The only modification was that, at Codrington’s insistence, the number of Egyptians remaining in the fortresses was limited to an insignificant 1,200. At the end of August the Egyptian ships reached Navarino as planned and on 7 September Ibrahim, succumbing after initial resistance to the forceful arguments of the allied admirals, accepted the Alexandria Convention. When Ibrahim himself left on 4 October 1828 the evacuation was complete, apart from the 1,200 soldiers in the fortresses. But the French forces, anxious for at least a show of victory, had now arrived, and in a final charade the fortress garrisons, who had been ordered by Ibrahim not to fire on the French, surrendered to them after mock attacks. Thus the tragedy of Ibrahim’s three-year-long wreckage of lives and livelihoods in the Peloponnese ended in scenes of farce.
Meanwhile real fighting continued north of the Gulf of Corinth; the further north the Greeks could push their military successes, the larger the territory they could claim for an independent Greek state. Cochrane was no longer the supreme naval commander. He had left Greece for England in March 1828 to try to raise money and find crews to replace the Greeks whom he condemned as incompetent, unreliable and cowardly. He had no success, and came back to Greece briefly at the end of the year, where he was coolly received by Kapodhístrias, and finally left the Greek service a few days before Christmas 1828, with relief on both sides. ‘Glad shall I be’, wrote Cochrane, ‘when the tops of these mountains sink beneath the horizon, and when new and agreeable objects shall obliterate the names of Mavrocordato, Tombazi and such double dealing knaves from my recollection.’8 And of Cochrane’s departure Trikoúpis wrote: ‘He said goodbye forever to Greece having done nothing worthy of his reputation or of the expectations and the sacrifices of the Greeks and of the philhellenes.’9
The main naval effort therefore fell to Hastings, who concentrated on Mesolongi and began the painful process of recapturing the islands in the lagoon which the Greeks had defended so stoutly a year before. Thanks to the powerful guns of the steamship Kartería he took Vasiládhi in the last days of 1827, but in the following month an attack on Póros in the lagoon failed, as did a prolonged assault on Anatolikó in May 1828. It was in this attack that Hastings, leading a flotilla of small craft in his own boat, received a wound in the wrist which led to his death from tetanus a few days later. ‘No man’, wrote Finlay, ‘ever served a foreign cause more disinterestedly.’10 It was another year before Anatolikó and Mesolongi finally fell to the Greeks in the spring of 1829. In the same month the Greeks took Návpaktos, which had been held by the Turks throughout the war, and had not been in Greek hands since the Byzantine era. At least the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth was now firmly under Greek control.
In Roumeli north of the gulf Dhimítrios Ipsilántis returned to prominence as head of the eastern forces, while Church was commander in the west. Though Ipsilántis was unable to capture the prize of Athens, he steadily increased the Greek area of control as far as Thermopylae, capturing Karpenísi, Sálona and Livadhiá, and fought the last battle of the war at Pétra near Thebes on 26 September 1829. In the west Church was even more successful, though at first restrained by Kapodhístrias, who hoped that the French forces from the Peloponnese could be used in Roumeli, hopes that were dashed when in September 1828 the British government opposed and the French government forbade such a move, on the ground that it was not the business of foreign troops to extend the Greeks’ area of control. By April 1829 Church was master of both the Gulf of Árta and the Makrinóros mountains to the east of it, whose passes had been the key to troop movements in Western Roumeli in the early years of the war.
Kapodhístrias came close to losing both his commanders in Roumeli by his habit of constant interference and criticism. He visited Ipsilántis’ camp and accused him of incompetence, and like a pompous schoolmaster returned a report of Ipsilántis on the state of his army as ‘a monstrous and unacceptable communication’.11 Church was criticised for favouring the local captains against the regular army, inflating his ration strengths and failing to attack vigorously enough. Kapodhístrias’ final insult was to bring over from Corfu his arrogant brother Agostino and in February 1829 to appoint him as lieutenant-plenipotentiary of Roumeli, with authority overriding that of Church and Ipsilántis to control pay, rations and military equipment. Church was incensed. ‘Let me ask you seriously’, he wrote to Kapodhístrias, ‘to think of the position of a General in Chief of an Army before the enemy who has not the authority to order a payment of a sou, or the delivery of a ration of bread.’12
Another overbearing brother, Viaro, was appointed to overall control of the islands off the east coast of Greece, including Éyina, the seat of government, and Hydra. ‘Do not examine the actions of the government,’ ran a sinister letter of his to the Hydriots, ‘and do not pass judgement on them, because to do so can lead you into error, with harmful consequences to you.’13
These two disastrous appointments marked the end of an unfortunate path down which Kapodhístrias’ instincts had led him. The first step was innocent enough: he was by nature, as Trikoúpis described him, átolmos, that is, un-daring, risk-averse. To avoid risks he tried to control everything. But his insistence on control alienated so many that in time he gave authority only to a few who were close to him and whom he trusted unquestioningly. Thus risk-aversion progressed through control-obsession to cronyism, and Kapodhístrias ended by failing to exercise control over the most essential area of all, that is the behaviour of those who acted in his name.
However, two major aspects of Greece’s future could at best be influenced by Kapodhístrias, and were in fact outside his control: the extent of the new country and its status. These were in the hands of the London Conference, established by the Treaty of London, which consisted of the British foreign secretary and the ambassadors to Britain of France and Russia, and which met periodically in London from the time of the battle of Navarino. On the instructions of the London Conference the ambassadors to Constantinople of the three powers met on the island of Póros off the north-east Peloponnese in September 1828 to consider the boundary question. They were given four choices: the most generous to the Greeks was from the Gulf of Vólos running southwest and just including Mesolongi, but which still excluded the area up to Árta which Church was fighting to claim; the least generous, a boundary across the isthmus of Corinth, confined independent Greece to the Peloponnese; and there were two intermediate options. In the event the ambassadors went beyond their brief, largely thanks to Britain’s Stratford Canning, and in their report of 12 December 1828 recommended a line due west from Vólos to Árta, plus the inclusion of the islands of Évvia which had a large Greek population, Sámos which had been in revolt throughout the war, and possibly Crete. There were good reasons for their recommendation. The ambassadors all agreed that their proposed line was the only defensible one. Furthermore any line further south would mean the influx of thousands of excluded Greeks into the new state, which was barely able to support its existing population. But the ambassadors’ report, which also recommended a monarchy for Greece, was unwelcome to the London Conference, and in particular to the British Tory government. Wellington maintained that the allies’ aim ‘was not to conquer territory from the Porte but to pacify a country in a state of insurrection’,14 and so argued for the southern-most border limiting Greece to the Peloponnese. The Póros report was accepted by the three governments, but as a basis of negotiation only, and because its recommended frontier was not accepted unequivocally Stratford Canning resigned over the issue in the following February. For the moment the Póros report was shelved.
If the Póros recommendations were to be a basis of negotiation, the Turks had to come to the negotiating table, and this they had consistently refused to do. They had never accepted the armistice and allied mediation proposed by the Treaty of London of July 1827, and stuck to the increasingly unrealistic view that the war could be ended only by the Greeks returning to their allegiance to the Sultan. Intransigence also marked Turkey’s attitude to Russia. In November 1827 Turkey repudiated the Convention of Akkermann which had settled her previous differences with Russia, and in June 1828 Russia declared war on Turkey. Russia’s initial success soon faltered. The Russian army had little more than half its nominal numbers, unpopular conscription was introduced, plague broke out among the Russian troops, and the Turks resisted more strongly than expected. Once the Russians had taken Adrianople, little more than a hundred miles west of Constantinople, the Russian effort was exhausted, and both sides were ready for peace. As part of the settlement Turkey abandoned her intransigent line on Greece, and the Treaty of Adrianople of September 1829 not only ended the war but also included Turkish acceptance of allied mediation and an armistice in Greece, as proposed by the Treaty of London of 1827, and of the broad outline of the status of Greece, as put forward at Póros in early 1829, but with more limited boundaries. Even more significantly, Turkey agreed to abide by whatever future decision on Greece was taken by the allies at the London Conference. Turkish resistance to an independent Greece was finally broken.
If Greece was to be a monarchy, who was to be the king? Many candidates from the ruling houses of Europe had been proposed over the previous five years, and at one time there were as many as seven being considered. By the time that Turkey had accepted the inevitability of Greek independence, one candidate had emerged who was acceptable to all three allied powers: Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. Leopold was the widower of George IV’s daughter Princess Charlotte, who had died in 1817, but he was not in the line of succession to the English throne, which would have disqualified him from the Greek monarchy. On 3 February 1830 the allied powers formally offered Leopold the Greek throne, but with severe limitations on Greece’s extent: the boundary was to run from Lamía on the east coast to just above Mesolongi in the west, far short of the line recommended by the Póros conference, and both Crete and Sámos were to be excluded. Leopold, encouraged by Kapodhístrias, insisted on discussing not only the unsatisfactory boundaries but other matters: a guaranteed loan from the allied powers, provision of a body of foreign troops to impose order, and his acceptance by a constitutionally established body representing the Greek people. After three weeks he believed he had made enough progress on these points to accept his nomination formally on 23 February, but the boundary question remained a stumbling block, and eventually proved insurmountable. On 21 May Leopold withdrew his acceptance, explaining that as king he would either have to force the Greeks to accept the frontier imposed or join them in defying the allies who had imposed it, and he was not prepared to do either. Thus by the summer of 1830, nearly three years after Navarino, Greece was still without a settlement, a border and a king.
For the first eighteen months of Kapodhístrias’ presidency Greece was also still waiting for a National Assembly to approve or amend the provisional government which Kapodhístrias had introduced. After repeated postponements this new Assembly finally met at Árgos in July 1829. There were 236 delegates, the great majority supporters of Kapodhístrias, who was accused by his opponents of rigging their election. However, pressure on voters was almost certainly the work of his over-zealous agents, and in the single recorded instance of malpractice Kapodhístrias condemned it and ordered new elections. The Assembly heard and approved an account of the acts of the government in a report which Kapodhístrias, pleading exhaustion and ill-health, had read out for him. The report included a recommendation that the Panhellenion of twenty-seven members appointed by the president should be replaced by a Senate of twenty-seven. The only real difference was that the Senate now had a veto on matters of finance and national lands. Six of the Senate members were still to be appointed directly by the president and the remaining twenty-one chosen by him from a list of sixty-three drawn up by the Assembly, in which his supporters were dominant. It was a barely perceptible loosening of Kapodhístrias’ control. The most significant resolution passed at Árgos required the final settlement of Greece’s status and extent to be approved by a National Assembly, approval on which Leopold too insisted. Greece was demanding at least some element of control over her own future.
In spite of Kapodhístrias’ overt success at the Árgos Assembly, his opponents continued to grow in strength. They were supported by the English Resident, Edward Dawkins, who with French and Russian colleagues had been sent to Greece by the Conference of London to coordinate allied action on Greece. Kapodhístrias’ opponents were also supported by the octogenarian Koraís in Paris, whom age alone can excuse for the pettiness of his venomous attacks on Kapodhístrias. The opposition came to a head on Hydra in May 1831, where with support from Mavrokordhátos a rival seven-man government commission was established, including Georgios Koundouriótis and the widely respected naval commander Miaoúlis. The Hydriots convened their own Assembly, which voted to make Petrobey Mavromichális president in place of Kapodhístrias. Kapodhístrias ordered the loyal Kanáris, of equal fame to Miaoúlis as a revolutionary hero, to prepare a fleet at nearby Póros to blockade the rebels. At the end of July Miaoúlis responded by entering Póros harbour at night and seizing Kanáris’ ships, which included the American-built Ellás. Kapodhístrias also had the backing of the Russian admiral Ricord, who also entered Póros harbour on the morning of 13 August and ordered the rebels to retreat. Miaoúlis threatened to sink the ships he had seized unless Ricord withdrew, Ricord refused, and within a few hours Miaoúlis carried out his threat. So the beautiful frigate Ellás, one of the few successful fruits of the second English loan, was sent to the bottom by the man whose fleet it had been built to serve.
The other main focus of opposition to Kapodhístrias was the Mani, as the Hydriot rebels’ choice of Petrobey as president indicated. The Mavromichális family had two main grievances. Like the Hydriots, they claimed compensation for war losses, which Kapodhístrias refused because there was no money to pay it; and they resented Kapodhístrias’ claim to collect their taxes, which even under the Turks they had collected themselves. At the end of 1830 they set up a virtually independent capital at the port of Liméni, only a mile or so from Areópolis where Petrobey had proclaimed the revolution nearly ten years before. As at Póros, Kanáris was sent by Kapodhístrias against the rebels, and he brought back to Navplion Petrobey’s brother Konstantínos and son Georgios as sureties for the Mani’s good behaviour. Meanwhile Petrobey, living in Navplion as a senator, tried to get away on Gordon’s yacht bound for Zákinthos, but when the yacht put ashore on the west coast of the Peloponnese Petrobey was arrested, brought back to Navplion and imprisoned. Konstantínos and Georgios however were only under a loose sort of surveillance, and were free to move about the town under escort.
Signs multiplied of the tragedy to come. Konstantínos and Georgios were said to have held whispered conversations with Petrobey at his cell window, though Petrobey later denied that he was involved in any plot. The pair reconnoitred the church of Áyios Spirídhon in the side streets of Navplion where Kapodhístrias regularly worshipped, and an agent of Georgios bought pistols. Even Dawkins, the English Resident, no friend of Kapodhístrias, warned him of danger. Nevertheless on Sunday 9 October 1831 Kapodhístrias went to his customary early-morning service with two companions. When he saw Konstantínos and Georgios Mavromichális standing on either side of the church door he hesitated, but then walked forward again. As he passed them Georgios plunged a dagger into Kapodhístrias’ chest, and almost simultaneously Konstantínos drew a pistol and shot him in the back of the head. Kapodhístrias died without a sound. Konstantínos was killed on the spot by one of Kapodhístrias’ companions, and Georgios fled to the house of the French Resident, who handed him over to the Greek authorities. He was imprisoned in the Palamídhi fortress, court-martialled and condemned, and was executed within two weeks of his crime.
The common people, for whom Kapodhístrias had laboured with such dedication, grieved for their lost president, and feared for themselves: ‘What is to become of us?’ they asked Kolokotrónis.15 For them the arguments over forms of government meant little or nothing. They were only aware of Kapodhístrias’ dedication, the visits he had made to them, the more secure lives they were now leading, and the many new schools which Kapodhístrias himself would have wanted to stand as his monument. The affection for his memory has not faded with time. In the 1960s the verger of Áyios Spirídhon would show visitors the spot where Kapodhístrias fell and, conflating the Mavromichális pair with the German occupiers of his own day, condemn the assassins with tears in his eyes and fury in his voice as ‘Rausbotte’.
The year 1832 brought more confusion and conflict to Greece than any year since the war began, and widespread devastation which undid much of Kapodhístrias’ work of reconstruction. As in the last phase of the civil wars of 1824, the basic conflict was between the Peloponnese led by Kolokotrónis and Roumeli led by Koléttis, and it was the Roumeliot troops brought into the Peloponnese whose uncontrolled plundering did most of the damage. After Kapodhístrias’ death the Senate appointed a three-man government commission of Agostino Kapodhístrias as president, Kolokotrónis and Koléttis. Agostino, who foolishly proclaimed his pro-Russian sympathies, was disowned by the allied powers in March and forced to flee to Corfu by Koléttis’ advance on Navplion at the head of a Roumeliot army, backed by French troops now operating to bring some order to the country. In July yet another Assembly held near Navplion appointed a new government commission led by Koléttis. As counter to this, in November a group of former Kapodhístrias supporters named Kolokotrónis as head of a military commission to govern Greece. French troops, supporting Koléttis as the only leader with a claim to legitimacy, occupied Navplion, where they were attacked by Kolokotrónis’ soldiers.
But while utter confusion reigned within Greece, events elsewhere at last began to move in her favour. Elections in Britain following the death of George IV removed the Tories under Wellington from office and installed a Whig administration led by Lord Grey. The new foreign secretary was Palmerston, long an advocate of a larger Greece. Though the inclusion of Crete and Sámos had by now been dropped, the Árta–Vólos line was revived and Stratford Canning returned as ambassador to Constantinople to negotiate this frontier with the Turkish government, two years after he had resigned because of his support for it. Acceptance of a larger Greece was a bitter pill for the Turks to swallow, but they were now under threat from their nominal dependants in Egypt. Mehmed Ali’s long-matured plan to expand his own empire had been put into effect, Ibrahim had seized Acre in modern Israel, and announced his intention of marching on Constantinople. Stratford Canning’s guarded promises of support for Turkey against Egypt were crucial to his negotiations, and on 21 July 1832, after a discussion lasting sixteen hours, the Turks agreed to the Árta–Vólos frontier.
The question of a king for Greece was also at last settled. King Ludwig I of Bavaria was an enthusiastic classical archaeologist and philhellene, and the idea of a Bavarian king for Greece had been floated as far back as 1829. Only days before Kapodhístrias was assassinated Ludwig’s emissary arrived in Greece to promote the candidacy of Ludwig’s seventeen-year-old son Otto. Until Otto reached twenty-one three Bavarian regents appointed by his father were to rule in his name. In the early months of 1832 the last difficulties melted away. To avoid the possibility of Otto also succeeding to the Bavarian throne, a formula was adopted forbidding the union of the Greek and Bavarian crowns. The allied powers agreed to guarantee a loan to Greece of £2,400,000, larger than either of the two earlier English loans. The Conference of London offered the throne of Greece to Prince Otto in May 1832, he formally accepted in July and, although the London Conference had disdainfully laid down that Greek approval was not necessary, the National Assembly which met in the summer of 1832 ratified the choice.
On the morning of 6 February 1833, in glorious sunshine which heralded the coming spring, Otto arrived in Navplion Bay escorted by a fleet of twenty-five allied warships, and stepped ashore from an English frigate. ‘The scene itself formed a splendid picture …’ wrote Finlay.
Greeks and Albanians, mountaineers and islanders, soldiers, sailors, and peasants, in their varied and picturesque dresses, hailed the young monarch as their deliverer from a state of society as intolerable as Turkish tyranny. Families in bright attire glided in boats over the calm sea amidst the gaily decorated frigates of the Allied squadrons. The music of many bands in the ships and on shore enlivened the scene, and the roar of artillery in every direction gave an imposing pomp to the ceremony. The uniforms of many armies and navies, and the sounds of many languages, testified that most civilized nations had sent deputies to inaugurate the festival of the regeneration of Greece.16
For the present civil strife was set aside. As Finlay put it in the same passage, ‘Anarchy and order shook hands,’ but he was perhaps forgetting that opponents are as likely to shake hands at the beginning of a contest as at the end of it. Over the next century many of the conflicts of the war of independence would be repeated: anarchy against order, high national ambitions without the strength to achieve them, dependence on foreign powers but resentment at those powers’ alternating generosity and arrogance. But on the day of Otto’s arrival the Greeks could rightly rejoice in what they had achieved. They had opened the first cracks in the structure of the mighty Ottoman empire, and against all the odds had become the first of its domains to win full independence as a nation state.