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Constantine I, King of the Hellenes, 1913-1917, 1920-1922

Born at Athens on the 21st July, 1868, Prince Constantine, together with his brothers the Princes Nicholas, Andrew and Christopher, received a military education. Soldiering was his one passion, his vocation and avocation. He learnt the art in Prussia. Constantine, scion of a North German princely house, was huge, fair, sanguine, shrewd though not too intelligent, bellicose and proud, with a joviality only too often swept away by flashes of temper, amiable on the surface, cruel and self-centered at bottom, wilful rather than strong-willed, the typical aristocrat. His position as General Administrator of the army was, however, during the years immediately following the disastrous war with Turkey in 1897, rendered one of extreme difficulty by the personal attacks made against him both in the Press and the Chamber of Deputies, the major part of the blame for the disasters of that campaign being unjustly directed towards him.

King Constantine emerged as a leading figure of this period, exerting a considerable influence upon the people who believed in him. He has been identified with the anti-Venizelist bloc and became the charismatic leader of those social groups opposed to Venizelism and those who hated Eleftherios Venizelos the man. The prestige Constantine gained during the Balkan Wars turned him into a victorious army commander. No other member of the monarchy before or after him had enjoyed such prestige and devotion. Constantinism resulted from dedication to the institution of monarchy and to the person of the King and successful army commander. His German education, his admiration for the militarist German spirit and his ties, through his consort Sophia, with Germany led him to passionately support the Germanophile neutrality of Greece during the First World War, a fact that brought him into opposition with Venizelos and the policy the latter was condoning. Their conflict tragically divided the Greek people.

The marriage in 1889 of the Duke of Sparta with the sister of the German Emperor was supposed to be an event of unusual political importance. Some prophesied that the German sympathies of the Crown Prince, together with the influence of his wife, would draw the kingdom of the Hellenes into the closest and most intimate relations with the German Empire. But the Duchess of Sparta, having come to the conclusion that it was most awkward for a future Queen not to belong to the same creed as the country over which she would have to reign one day, publicly renounced the Protestant faith, and adopted the tenets of the Greek Orthodox Church. This step infuriated her brother.

In 1897 the Greeks attempted to occupy Crete. The Powers intervened in the Cretan war and gave Crete an autonomous government under Turkish suzerainty. The Greeks were told to withdraw. Turkey declared war on Greece. After short campaign, in which Turkey was successful, peace was concluded in December 1897.

The attitude of Germany, or rather of the German Emperor, upon the question of Greece and Turkey, was one of the most remarkable features of the situation in 1897. It was said by persons who ought to know that his Majesty was possessed by an almost insane hatred of the Greek Royal Family, which dated from the conversion of his favorite sister, the Crown Princess, to the Greek Church. Men who were deep in the secrets of the Chancelleries of Europe professed to find in this fact the cause of much that was otherwise inexplicable in the state of affairs. The Emperor, in order to gratify his fury against Greece and her Royal Family, supported the Sultan.

For nine years or so the brother and sister did not set eyes upon each other. The German Emperor eventually became wiser, and bethought himself that it might not ultimately prove to the advantage of Germany to be on bad terms with the Hellenic kingdom, and that it would be better to resume the relations that had formerly existed.

Constantine acted as regent, his father, King George, having preferred residence at Paris and Aix-lesBains to his own capital. It was said that King George planned to abdicate at an early date. Constantine, with his father and eldest son, left Athens on October 12, 1912, for the campaign against Salonika, which was captured November 8. These triumphs were at once the crowning events of George's life as King of the Hellenes, and the foundation of the new King's newly won popularity.

King George I of Greece, while walking in the principal street of Salonika on 18 March 1913, was shot by Aleko Schoinas, a Greek, and died within half an hour. The new political situation created by the successes of the Hellenic army under the leadership of King Constantine, who, born and bred in Greece, was the first Greek sovereign to profess the creed of the National Church, excited in the Hellenic nation an extraordinary degree of loyalty not only for their monarch individually, but also for the dynasty generally. The question as to whether the King would at his coronation be styled Constantine I or XII was eagerly discussed in Athens, popular opinion leaning to the latter number which would imply that the new King of the Hellenes is the direct successor of the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI, slain at the taking of Constantinople in 1453.

Immediately after the outbreak of the European War, a cabinet council under the presidency of the King of the Hellenes, and with his hearty concurrence, expressed the sympathy of Greece with the Entente powers. Constantine rejected without a moment's hesitation a German offer to join the Central empires in return for Monastir and the surrounding parts of Serbia, which are inhabited largely by Greeks. The work of consolidating this immense accretion of new citizens must necessarily be long and difficult. For its accomplishment, King Constantine declared peace to be essential. Plainly the Greek monarch did not share the dreams of still further aggrandizement for Hellas voiced by his prime minister, E.K. Venizelos. King Constantine was determined from the outset to remain neutral. In various communications addressed to the Kaiser, his brother-inlaw, to Greek diplomatists abroad, to the Bulgarian government, and in his many and bitter discussions with Venizelos himself, he declared categorically that Greece would not fight.

By 1915, among the members of the Greek Royal Family, there was none who was in the possession of greater popularity in her adopted country than the wife of the King's third brother, the Princess Helene, the daughter of the Grand Duke Vladimir; and this in spite of the fact that the Russian sympathies of her mother-in-law, Queen Olga, were at one time severely criticised. It was to be noted, by the way, that Queen Olga herself was so incensed with these criticisms that since the Great War broke out she has refused to return to Athens, but has remained in Russia, not wishing that the position of her son might be embarrassed, or compromised by her presence, at a moment when he required to remain absolutely free as to any decisions he might find himself called upon to make in the interests of his monarchy.

The so-called National Schism ("Ethnikos Dichasmos") of 1915 destroyed the democratic and liberal character of the state. The clash between the Prime Minister Venizelos and King Constantin was depicted in the continuing involvement of the Crown in the parliamentary procedures. This interference was leading to the breaking of the Parliament. The debate was focused on who was going to have the leading role in the Royal Democracy system: the King or the people? The results of the National Schism ("Ethnikos Dichasmos") were dramatic and the conflicts continued even after the dramatic developments in Asia Minor.

The period between October, 1915 and October 1916 marked the total eclipse of Venizelos, and the zenith of Constantine. It is the period of rolling German gold, of secret service a la Metternich, of newspapers bought up or silenced by raids and confiscation, of the wholesale prostitution of Greek public life. Constantine became one of the most popular men in Germany. In this period fell his refusal to allow the Serbian army transit through Greek territory.

On 01 December 1916 the Royalist troops at Athens, whipped to a frenzied loyalty by the speech-making and fraternizing Princes, ambushed two thousand English and French marines who had landed to secure the surrender of arms and ammunition, agreed to by Constantine. The King had assured the French admiral in command that the Allied troops would not be attacked, and the admiral relied on the royal word. The result was the massacre of a large number of the French and Englishmen. The admiral and his staff themselves were taken prisoner, but were released afterward. It was the greatest victory of Constantine's military career, achieved without a coach. For several days anti-Venizelist pogroms raged. Scores were murdered, hundreds imprisoned, thousands of stores and homes looted. Constantine was more popular than ever with the reservists.

On March 19, 1917, Ribot replaced Briand as Premier of France. Immediately, negotiations looking to the forcible deposition of the constitutionally elected head of the Greek state originated with the new French Government. Russia, united to Greece by ties of a common church, was no longer in a position to oppose this French project. At the instance of Venizelos, Crown Prince George, who had been trained and educated for his post as chief of state under the Greek Constitution, was to be excluded from the throne, also. A younger and more tractable member of the family, Prince Alexander, was to be imposed upon the Greeks as king. One June 12 King Constantine, Queen Sophie, and their children, Crown Prince George and the princesses Helen and Irene, left Greece.

Constantine was forced from the throne by Allied pressure and Venizelos was made the effective protege of Allied policy. Constantine was ousted, it is held, not because he was pro-German,-not even the foreign office of France could have really believed that, - but because his independent attitude of severe loyalty to Greek interests made his use as a pawn in the diplomatic game impossible.

In 1920, King Alexander died of a monkey bite, His younger brother, Paul, refused the throne. Venizelos was defeated in the general elections, and a plebiscite returned Constantine to Athens as King. Venizelos was overwhelmingly defeated in the Greek general election in the fall of 1920. His Royalist enemies in Greece were almost as much astonished at the result of this election as Venizelos himself. Immediately, however, they hastened to take vengeance on his adherents. Their first act upon organizing their governmentwas to repeal the decree of exile against Constantine, and to recall him to Athens to resume his throne. Reinstated in power, Constantine pursued his advantage by removing from command all the officers of the Greek Army who owed their positions to Venizelos. It so happened that these officers were by far the most experienced commanders among the Greeks. They were replaced by favorites of Constantine.

Early in 1921 representatives of the British, French, and Italian governments met in London to reconsider and revise the impossible Treaty of Sevres. These proposals were indignantly rejected by the Greeks. Constantine thought he saw an opportunity to eclipse the glory that Venizelos had gained by his acquisition of Ionia. He thought he saw an opportunity to drive the Turks out of Asia Minor and to assert Greek sovereignty over the whole of that country. He accordingly committed the supreme folly of ordering a general offensive against the Turkish Nationalist position. The Greeks were defeated in this attack, and Constantine left Athens and took personal command of the army in Asia Minor on June 11th. He left Greece hailed by the government-inspired press as Emperor-Designate of Constantinople, thus vain gloriously appealing to the traditional ambition of the Greek nation to reconstruct the Byzantine Empire.

In 1922, after frightful mismanagement of the situation by Constantine and his government, the Turks entered Smyrna. They massacred a large proportion ofthe Greek population, burned the Greek quarter, and deported hundreds of thousands of Greek civilians in the most barbarous manner. A small, dedicated band of military officers formed a Revolutionary Committee in 1922. Under pro-Venizelos colonels Nikolaos Plastiras and Stilianos Gonatas, the committee landed 12,000 troops at Lavrion, south of Athens, and staged a coup. They demanded and received the resignation of the government and the abdication of King Constantine. George, Constantine's elder son (who had refused the crown when Constantine left in 1917), was crowned as king, and the coup leaders began purging royalists from the bureaucracy and the military.