1823-1826 - British Intervention
The maritime Greeks, nominally subject to the Sultan, turned more and more to frank piracy, and, all Turkish vessels having been swept from the sea, carried into Nauplia as prizes of war the traders of all nations impartially. Since it was useless to make the Ottoman Government responsible for a state of things which they were powerless to control, it became necessary to fix the responsibility on the de facto Government of Greece. On March 25, 1823, accordingly, the British Government formally recognised the Greeks as belligerents. "The recognition of the belligerent character of the Greeks," wrote Canning, "was necessitated by the impossibility of treating as pirates a population of a million souls, and of bringing within the bounds of civilised war a contest which had been marked at the outset on both sides by disgusting barbarities."
Russia proposed the erection of Greece and the islands of the Archipelago into three autonomous principalities, under Ottoman suzerainty, and guaranteed by the European Concert. Austria could not contemplate with equanimity the establishment in the south of the Balkan peninsula of semi-independent principalities, on the model of Moldavia and Wallachia, subject, if not to the formal protection, at least to the preponderant influence, of Russia. The logical outcome would be that Russia would claim to march into Turkey as Austria had marched into Naples, as the mandatary of Europe - the very issue which it had been the study of Austria as well as of England to avoid. Metternich's sensational counter-move was to propose the erection of Greece into a sovereign and independent State.
His own undisciplined troops having proved unequal to the task of crushing the insurgents, Mahmud had humbled himself reluctantly and with misgiving to ask aid of his powerful vassal Mehemet Ali of Egypt, who had responded by sending a disciplined army under his son Ibrahim, escorted by a powerful and well-equipped fleet, for the conquest of Greece. On February 24, 1825, he landed at Modon in the Morea. From this moment the fortunes of the insurgents seemed desperate. The Greek bands everywhere broke and fled before the onset of disciplined troops; and the Egyptian commander, who was to prove his military capacity in more arduous enterprises, set to work with systematic ruthlessness to reduce the country to submission. The horrors of the earlier period of the war paled before those of its latest phase; and even those who had been left cold by the tales of massacre committed by barbarians on one side or the other were roused to protest by a policy which seemed to aim at the extermination of an entire population, and the colonisation of a European country, hallowed by glorious associations, with Mussulmans.
The Greeks, cowed by Ibrahim's successes, had sought the "good offices" of Great Britain and had even suggested placing themselves under her protection. On April 4, 1826, Britain and Russia signed the Protocol of St Petersburg, the first formal step in the establishment of an independent Greece. According to this instrument Great Britain was empowered to offer to the Ottoman Government a settlement of the Greek Question based on the establishment of Greece as a vassal and tributary State.
The struggle for independence unfolded some virtues in the breasts of the Greeks which they were not previously supposed to possess. But a few years of a liberty that was mingled with lawlessness could not be expected to efface the effects of old habits and a vicious nurture. National energies were awakened, but no national responsibility was fell by individuals, so that the vices of modern Greek society were in each class stronger than the popular virtues which liberty was endeavouring to nourish. The mass of the people had behaved well; but the conduct of political and military leaders, of primates and statesmen, had been selfish and incapable. This was deliberately proclaimed by the National Assembly of Troezene in 1827, when public opinion rejected all the actors in the Revolution as unworthy of the nation's confidence, and elected Count Capodistrias president of Greece on the 14th April 1827 for a period of seven yearsl.
The decree which conferred the presidency on Capodistrias declared that he was elected because he possessed a degree of political experience which the Othoman domination had prevented any native Greek from acquiring. Much was therefore expected at his hands. his performances fell short of the expectations of the nation. Capodistrias was fifty-one years of age when he arrivedjn Greece. He was born at Corfu. His ancestors had received a title of nobility from the Venetian republic, but the family was not wealthy, and the young count, like many Corfiot nobles, was sent to Italy to study medicine, in order to gain his livelihood1. In 1803 he commenced his political career, being appointed secretary to the newly created republic of the Ionian Islands; in 1807, when Napoleon I. annexed the Ionian Islands to the French empire, he transferred his services to Russia, where accident gained him the favour of the Emperor Alexander I.
He affected great contempt for English dulness, and he hoped that English dullards might be inveigled into favouring his views in the East. He never forgave English ministers for foiling his diplomatic projects, and the rancorous malevolence of his nature led him into several grave political errors. He hated England like_an Ionian, but he indulged and exhibited his hatred in a way that was very unlike a statesman. The patriotism of Capodistrias was identified with orthodoxy and nationality, not with civil liberty and political independence. To the social progress of the bulk of the population in Western Europe during his own lifetime he paid little attention, and this neglect prevented his observing the influence which public opinion already exercised on the general conduct of most cabinets. He overrated the influence of orthodoxy in the Othoman empire, and the power of Russia in the international system of Europe. All this was quite natural.
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