The attempt of Alexander Hypsilantes, the son of the Greek Hospodar of Wallachia, under the pretence that he was supported by Russia, to upset the Turkish government in Moldavia and Wallachia was a miserable fiasco distinguished for massacres, treachery, and cowardice, and it was repudiated by the Tsar of Russia. Very different was the intensity of the passion with which the inhabitants of modern Greece arose to destroy the power of their Othoman masters. In the month of April 1821, a Mussulman population, amounting to upwards of 20,000 souls, was living dispersed in Greece employed in agriculture. Before two months had elapsed the greater part--men, women, and children--were murdered without mercy or remorse. The first insurrectional movement took place in the Peloponnesus at the end of March. Kalamata was besieged by a force of 2,000 Greeks, and taken on April 4. Next day a solemn service of the Greek Church was performed on the banks of the torrent that flows by Kalamata, as a thanksgiving for the success of the Greek arms. Patriotic tears poured down the cheeks of rude warriors, and ruthless brigands sobbed like children. All present felt that the event formed an era in Greek history. The rising spread to every part of Greece, and to some of the islands.
Sultan Mahmud II. believed that he could paralyse the movements of the Greeks by terrific cruelty. On Easter Sunday, April 22, the Patriarch Gregorios and three other bishops were executed in Constantinople--a deed which caused a thrill of horror from the Moslem capital to the mountains of Greece, and the palaces of St. Petersburg. The sultan next strengthened his authority in Thrace and in Macedonia, and extinguished the flames of rebellion from Mount Athos to Olympus.
In Greece itself the patriots were triumphant. Local senates were formed for the different districts, and a National Assembly met at Piada, three miles to the west of the site of the ancient Epidaurus, which formulated a constitution and proclaimed it on January 13, 1822. This constitution established a central government consisting of a legislative assembly and an executive body of five members, with Prince Alexander Mavrocordato as President of Greece.
It is impossible here to go into the details of the war of independence which was carried on from 1822 to 1827. The outstanding incidents were the triple siege and capitulation of the Acropolis at Athens; the campaigns of Ibrahim Pasha and his Egyptian army in the Morea; the defence of Mesolonghi by the Greeks with a courage and endurance, an energy and constancy which will awaken the sympathy of free men in every country as long as Grecian history endures; the two civil wars, for one of which the Primates were especially blamable; the dishonesty of the government, the rapacity of the military, the indiscipline of the navy; and the assistance given to the revolutionaries by Lord Byron and other English sympathisers. Lord Byron arrived at Mesolonghi on January 5, 1824. His short career in Greece was unconnected with any important military event, for he died on April 19; but the enthusiasm he awakened perhaps served Greece more than his personal exertions would have done had his life been prolonged, because it resulted in the provision of a fleet for the Greek nation by the English and American Philhellenes, commanded by Lord Cochrane.
By the beginning of 1827 the whole of Greece was laid waste, and the sufferings of the agricultural population were terrible. At the same time, the greater part of the Greeks who bore arms against the Turks were fed by Greek committees in Switzerland, France, and Germany; while those in the United States directed their attention to the relief of the peaceful population. It was felt that the intervention of the European powers could alone prevent the extermination of the population or their submission to the sultan. On July 6, 1827, a treaty Between Great Britain, France, and Russia was signed at London to take common measures for the pacification of Greece, to enforce an armistice between the Greeks and the Turks, and, by an armed intervention, to secure to the Greeks virtual independence under the suzerainty of the sultan. The Greeks accepted the armistice, but the Turks refused; and then followed the destruction of the Othoman fleet by the allied squadrons under Admiral Sir Edward Coddrington at Navarino, on October 21, 1827.
In the following April, Russia declared war against Turkey, and the French government, by a protocol, were authorised to dispatch a French army of 14,000 men under the command of General Maison. This force landed at Petalidi, in the Gulf of Coron. Ibrahim Pasha withdrew his army to Egypt, and the French troops occupied the strong places of Greece almost without resistance from the Turkish garrisons.
France thus gained the honour of delivering Greece from the last of her conquerors, and she increased the debt of gratitude due by the Greeks by the admirable conduct of her soldiers, who converted mediæval strongholds into habitable towns, repaired the fortresses, and constructed roads. Count John Capodistrias, a Corfiot noble, who had been elected President of Greece in April 1827 for a period of seven years by the National Assembly of Troezen, arrived in Greece in January 1828. He found the country in a state of anarchy, and at once put a stop to some of the grossest abuses in the army, navy, and financial administration.
V.--The Greek Monarchy
The war terminated in 1829, and the Turks finally evacuated continental Greece in September of the same year. The allied powers declared Greece an independent state with a restricted territory, and nominated Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (afterwards King of the Belgians) to be its sovereign. Prince Leopold accepted the throne on February 11, but resigned it on May 17. Thereafter Capodistrias exercised his functions as president in the most tyrannical fashion, and was assassinated on October 9, 1831; from which date till February 1833 anarchy prevailed in the country.
Agostino Capodistrias, brother of the assassinated president, who had been chosen president by the National Assembly on December 20, 1831, was ejected out of the presidency by the same assembly in April 1832, and Prince Otho of Bavaria was elected King of Greece. Otho, accompanied by a small Bavarian army, landed from an English frigate in Greece at Nauplia on February 6, 1833. He was then only seventeen years of age, and a regency of three Bavarians was appointed to administer the government during his minority, his majority being fixed at June 1, 1835.