The result of the conflict at Navarino so enraged the Turks that they stopped all communication with the allied powers, and prepared for war. In the following year (1828) France and England sent an army to the Morea: Russia declared war for violations of treaties, and depredations upon her commerce; and on the 7th of May a Russian army of one hundred and fifteen thousand men, under Count Witt'genstein, crossed the Pruth, and by the 2d of July had taken seven fortresses from the Turks. In August a convention was concluded with Ibrahim Päsha, who agreed to evacuate the Morea, and set his Greek prisoners at liberty. In the mean time the Greeks continued the war, drove the Turks from the country north of the Corinthian Gulf, and fitted out numerous privateers to prey upon the commerce of their enemy. In January, 1829, the Sultan received a protocol from the three allied powers, declaring that they took the Morea and the Cyc'lades under their protection, and that the entry of any military force into Greece would be regarded as an attack upon themselves. The danger of open war with France and England, as well as the successes and alarming advances of the Russians, now commanded by Marshal Die'bitsch, who had meantime taken Adrianople, within one hundred and thirty miles of the Turkish capital, induced the Sultan to listen to overtures of peace; and on the 14th of September "the peace of Adrianople" was signed by Turkey and Russia, by which the former recognized the independence of Greece.
VI. GREECE UNDER A CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY.
Though freed from her Turkish oppressors, Greece was severely agitated by domestic discontents, jealousies, and even manifest turbulence. Count Cä'po d'Is'tria, a Greek in the service of Russia, who had been chosen, in 1828, president of the provisional government, aroused suspicions that he designed to establish a despotism in his own person, and he was assassinated in 1831. A period of anarchy followed. The great powers had previously determined to erect Greece into a monarchy, and had first offered the crown to Prince Leopold, afterward King of Belgium, who, having accepted the offer, soon after declined it on account of the unwillingness of the Greeks to receive him, and their dissatisfaction with the territorial boundaries prescribed for them. Finally, the boundaries of the kingdom having been more satisfactorily determined by a treaty between Turkey and the powers in 1832, the crown was conferred on Otho, a Bavarian prince, who arrived at Nauplia, the then capital of Greece, in 1833. Athens became the seat of government in 1835. Says a writer in the British Quarterly, "The Greeks neither elected their own sovereign nor chose their national polity. In a spirit of generous confidence they allowed the three protecting powers to name a king for them, and the powers rewarded them by making the worst selection they could. They gave the Greeks a boy of seventeen, with neither a character to form nor an intellect to develop."
The treaty by which Otho was placed on the throne made no provision for a constitution, but one was expected; and, after ten years of oppressive subjection by the king and his Bavarian minions, both the people and a revolted soldiery surrounded the palace, and demanded a constitution. The king acquiesced, a national assembly was held, and a constitution was framed which received the king's approval in March, 1844. In this bloodless revolution we have an instance both of the determination, and peaceable, orderly, and well-disposed tendencies of the Greek people. An eye-witness of the scene has thus described it:
"I well recollect the uprising of 1843. Exasperated by the miserable rule of Otho, a plot was hatched to wrench a constitution from him, and when everything was ripe the Athenians arose. At midnight the hoofs of horses were heard clanging on the pavements, and the flash of torches gleamed in the streets, as the populace and military hurried toward the palace; and when the amber-colored dawn lighted the Acropolis and the plain of Athens, the king found himself surrounded by his happy subjects, and discovered two field-pieces pointing into the entrance of the royal residence. A constitution was demanded in firm but respectful terms—it being suggested at the same time that, if the request were not granted by four o'clock in the afternoon, fire would be opened on the palace. In the mean while all Athens was gathered in the open space around the palace, chatting, cracking jokes, taking snuff, and smoking, as if they had assembled to witness a show or hear the reading of a will. Not a shot was fired; no violence was offered or received; and precisely as the limiting hour arrived, the obstinate king succumbed to his besiegers, and the multitude quietly dispersed to their homes." [Footnote: B. G. W. Benjamin, in "The Turk and the Greek.">[
The Constitution which the Greeks secured contained no real guarantee for the legislative rights of the people, and the minor benefits it gave them were ignored by the government. A continuance of the severe contests between the national party and foreign intriguers materially interfered with the prosperity of the country. Other events, also, now occurred to disturb it. In 1847 a diplomatic difficulty with Turkey, and, in 1848, a difference with England, that arose from various claims of English subjects, and that continued for several years, assumed threatening proportions, and were only terminated by the submission of Greece to the demands made upon her. When the Crimean war broke out, Greece took a decided stand in favor of Russia; but England and France soon compelled her to assume and maintain a strictly neutral position. In 1859 the residents of the Ionian Islands, which were under the protectorate of England, sought annexation to Greece, and manifested their intentions in great popular demonstrations, and even insurrections; but Greece, though sympathizing with them, was too feeble to aid them, and no change was then made in their relations.
THE DEPOSITION OF KING OTHO.
While these events were transpiring, the feeling of hostility toward King Otho and the royal family was taking deeper root with the Greek people, and open demonstrations of violence were frequently made. The king promised more liberal measures of government; but these fell short of the popular demand, and the Greeks resolved to dethrone the dynasty. In October, 1862, after several violent demonstrations elsewhere, matters culminated in a successful revolution at Athens. A provisional government was established by the leaders of the popular party, who decreed the deposition of the king. Otho, who was absent from Athens at the time, on a visit to Napoli, finding himself without a throne did not return to Athens, but issued a proclamation taking leave of Greece, and sailed for Germany in an English frigate. He had occupied the throne just thirty years. MR. TUCKERMAN thus describes him: "An honest-hearted man, but without intellectual strength, dressed in the Greek fustinella, he endeavored to be Greek in spirit; but under his braided jacket his heart beat to foreign measures, and his ear inclined to foreign counsels. But for the quicker-witted Amelia, the queen, his follies would have worn out the patience of the people sooner than they did." The condition of Greece under his government is thus described by the writer in the British Quarterly, who wrote immediately after the coup d'état:
"To outward appearance, the Greece which the Philhel'lenists of the days of Canning declared to be re-animated and restored, has presented, during thirty years of settled government, the aspect of a country corrupt, intriguing, venal, and poor. The government has kept faith neither with its subjects nor with its creditors; it has endeavored, by all means in its power, to crush the constitutional liberties of its subjects; and by refusing, throughout this period, to pay a single drachma of its public debt, it has stamped itself either hopelessly bankrupt or scandalously fraudulent. The people, meanwhile, crushed by the incubus of a dishonest and extravagant foreign rule, remain in nearly the situation they held on the first establishment of their kingdom. In a word, Greece was thirty years ago transferred from one despotism to another. The Bavarian rule was no appreciable mitigation of the Turkish rule. If the Christian monarch hated his Hellenic subjects less than the Mussulman monarch, he was still more ignorant of the conditions of prosperous government."