It now remained for the allied powers to select a prince to whom the new crown should be offered. This subject engaged their attention from October, 1829, to January, 1830. Finally, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, widower of the Princess Charlotte, was selected, greatly to the annoyance of King George IV. On February 3 Prince Leopold was formally offered the sovereignty of Greece as an independent state, bounded on the north by a line drawn from the mouth of the Aspropotamo to Thermopylæ. Before accepting the crown he made an effort to obtain a stronger position for its future prince. He asked for a complete guarantee of independence from the three powers, some security for the Greek inhabitants of Crete and Samos, an extension of the boundary to the north, and financial and military support. The powers on February 20 decided to grant the guarantee and a loan of £2,400,000, and to allow the French troops to remain in Greece for another year, but refused the extension of territory and would not recognise the right of the Greek state to interfere in the affairs of Crete and Samos. Leopold accepted the crown on these conditions on February 24, and they were accepted by the Porte on April 24. Capodistrias, who had no desire to make way for another ruler, invited Leopold to the country, but suggested that he would not be well received and that he would have to change his religion.[100] These considerations, combined with other causes, induced him to renounce the crown on May 21.
FRANCE CONQUERS ALGERIA.
One other foreign event exercised the minds of Wellington's cabinet during the last months of George IV.'s reign. This was the French punitive expedition to Algiers, which resulted In the conquest of that state. The expedition was originally planned in concert with Mehemet Ali of Egypt, and appeared to Wellington to be prompted by the idea that the defeat of the Turks by Russia afforded a convenient opportunity for a partition of Turkish territory. The British government was able by means of diplomatic pressure to induce Mehemet Ali to refrain from co-operating, but it could not deny the justice of the French expedition or prevent it from sailing.
FOOTNOTES:
[93] Stapleton, Life of Canning, iii., 220-25, 227-35.
[94] See Lloyd, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, N.S., xviii. (1904), 77-105.
[95] Wellington, Despatches, etc., iv., 270-79.
[96] Ibid., pp. 280-86.
[97] So S. Lane-Poole, writing from Church's papers, English Historical Review, v., 519.
[98] Hertslet, Map of Europe by Treaty, p. 142.