XXXII. 1833. May 7. CHAP. The offer was accepted, and as the future kingdom was destitute of credit or resources, and a prey to civil war, the allied Powers bound themselves to furnish material succour to establish him on the throne. They engaged to guarantee a loan of £2,400,000, to be raised in London, and paid to the young king as soon as he arrived in his dominions, and an auxiliary force of 3500 men was to be raised in Bavaria, and accompany him to relieve the French troops which hitherto had occupied the principal military points in the Morea. Finally, an important treaty was signed at Constantinople on the 21st July, by which, in consideration of the sum of £1,000,000, to be paid to the Porte by the Grecian government, and guaranteed by the allied Powers, it was agreed by the Divan that the frontiers of the new kingMay 7, July dom should be extended beyond those originally stipulated April 30, by the treaty of 1829, to a line drawn from the Gulf of 1833; Ann. Arta to the Gulf of Volo, which embraces the whole districts which properly fall under the denomination of Greece. Candia and Rhodes, however, were still excluded, and remained parts of the Ottoman dominions.1 July 21. 1 Treaties, 21, and Hist. xv. 215, 218, 36. cesses of the But while the allied Powers were thus definitively Great suc- arranging the affairs of Greece, on a footing much more popular op- likely to be suitable to the country and durable in its exGreece, and istence than the ridiculous pageant of a republican goof the Gov- Vernment, terminating in the real tragedy of civil war position in overthrow ernment. which had preceded it, affairs had taken a very different turn in Hellas itself, and the feeling of that country in favour of the popular opposition had been unequivocally manifested. So rapid had been their progress, so general their success, that the civil war might be said to be at an end. District after district, town after town, declared in their favour, and at length the insurgents appeared before Napoli itself, and Augustin de Capo d'Istria was too happy to agree to a convention, in virtue of which he abdicated the government, and embarked with the body of his brother, never more to return. His departure was celebrated by XXXII. 1833. the Hellenes as the downfall of Russian preponderance in CHAP. Greece; Condurriottis was chosen president, with an executive council of seven persons to administer the government till the arrival of the prince chosen by the conference of the allied Powers at London. But before Otho had time to arrive, fresh disturbances broke out in the country: Colocotroni and some other chiefs refused to recognise the authority of the new government, and a fresh congress met at Patras, to which the majority of the nation. sent in their adhesion, and the opposition soon found their power limited, as that of their predecessors had been, to Napoli and Argos. Combats took place in every part of the country between the adherents of the two factions, which were nearly equal in numbers, courage, and determination. The soldiers, having received no pay, plundered without mercy; a large part of the deputies themselves were carried off to the mountains as a security for their ransom; and such was the misery produced by this deso- 1 Ann. Hist. lating warfare, that the people came to regret the com- 410, 413. paratively tranquil days of Ottoman oppression.1 1 xv. 409, 37. King Otho, ants. So exhausting and ruinous were the effects of this interminable guerilla strife, that all came at length to Arrival of sigh for the arrival of the foreign power whose forces and joy of might at length terminate it. Even the presence of the the inhabitFrench soldiers could not restrain the fury of the con- Jan. 17. tending factions; and in Argos itself a French soldier was slain and eighteen wounded by a band of assassinsan outrage which was immediately avenged by the indiscriminate slaughter of above 300 of the inhabitants of the town. At length, to the inexpressible joy of the people, who had reached the very last stage of suffering, the fleet which bore King Otho and the German auxiliaries hove in sight, and on the 6th February he landed at Napoli Feb. 6. amidst the acclamations of an immense concourse of people, who had flocked from all quarters to hail his arrival. His first act was to publish a general amnesty, without exception, for all political offences whatever ; XXXII. 1832. CHAP. and so general was the feeling of the necessity of this measure that all parties acquiesced in it, and for a brief season universal tranquillity and peace prevailed in the land. The public offices were filled up with moderate persons of all parties-the partisans of Russia and extreme republicans were alike excluded. The effect of this judicious policy speedily appeared in a revival of industry, an increase of transactions, and growth of confidence; and so general was the satisfaction which pre1 Ann. Hist. Vailed, that it was deemed practicable to leave unrestrained the public press, which returned the obligation by generally supporting the measures of Government. 1 xvi. 461, 463. 38. Measures of a very important kind were soon adopted Institutions by the Government, which went far to consolidate the and military infant State. Three criminal tribunals were instituted infant State. for the speedy prosecution of offenders; the proceeding force of the May 25. before them was summary and without appeal, and the laws they administered, taken from the ancient criminal code of Venice, extremely severe, though probably not more so than was necessary, considering the wild and unsettled state of the country. The territory of the State was divided into ten departments; and the army was fixed at ten regiments of light infantry and eight of the line, six squadrons of cavalry, and artillery in proportion, mustering in all 8904 combatants. These forces, though much beyond what the kingdom could maintain from its own resources, were amply provided for in the mean time from the loan guaranteed by the allied Powers, and a melancholy proof was soon afforded that they were not larger than was required to preserve domestic peace in the country. In the night of the 25th May, a band of robbers, several thousand in number, having collected in the neighbouring hills, descended on the town of Arta in Epirus, which they immediately began to pillage in the most systematic manner; the unfortunate inhabitants underwent all the horrors endured by those of a town taken by assault; the houses of those who made any XXXII. 1833. resistance were instantly burnt; those which opened CHAP. their doors saw every room rifled, the women violated, the men in part murdered; and after continuing these outrages deliberately for three days, the brigands retired without molestation to their mountains, carrying with them the principal inhabitants, to be ransomed only for enormous sums. At the same time, bands of robbers reappeared in the Morea; and the King having gone on a cruise to the islands of the Archipelago, the regency he left in his absence was so weak that its authority did not extend beyond the walls of Napoli. In July, a synod July 14. of the Church was assembled, which declared the King the head of the Church, and evinced such antipathy to Russia that none of the phrases even of the Greek ritual were admitted into their liturgy. At the same time, the French troops, which for five years had occupied the fortresses of Coron, Modon, and Navarin, and were of essential service in the distracted state of this country, were collected and embarked for their own country, leaving Greece to the guardianship of its own forces, Ann. Hist. aided by the 3000 Bavarians who had followed King 463. Otho from the German plains.1 xvi. 460, 39. discord still The armistice with Ibrahim Pacha, and retreat of his forces across the Taurus, for a considerable time termi- Causes of nated the difficulties of Turkey; and the settlement of remaining King Otho on the throne, joined to the support of the in the East. loan and the Bavarian guards, by degrees diminished the license and subdued the barbarity of the Greek tribes. But other complications ere long arose-the Eastern Question was adjourned, not adjusted; and before many years had elapsed, it threatened to involve all Europe in conflagration. The remote cause of this was the magnitude of the advantage gained by Russia by the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi and closing of the Dardanelles, joined to the indelible coldness and jealousy which subsisted between the courts of France and Russia, VOL. V. 2 L XXXII. 1833. CHAP. from the one being the head of the Revolutionary, the other of the Legitimist, party in Europe. Conscious of the immense accession of power which Russia had acquired from that treaty, and jealous of the preponderance which it gave her in the Levant, the Cabinet of Louis Philippe sought for a counterpoise in cultivating a good understanding with Mehemet Ali, whose strength had been so signally evinced in the recent war with the Turks in Asia Minor, and whose geographical position on the north-east corner of Africa would, in connection with their own establishment at Algiers, give France the command of the entire southern coast of the Mediterranean. 40. Jealousy awakened Nothing could be more natural than that the French Cabinet should entertain these views, or seek in selfin the Eng- defence a counterpoise to the preponderance of Russia in lish Cabinet. the Euxine, in such an alliance. But the same circum stances which made them desire, caused the English Government to dread, the establishment of Gallic influence on the shores of the Nile. Egypt had long been an object of contention between France and England ; the eagle eye of Napoleon had early discerned its importance; his victorious arms were first directed there in the assault upon this country; and the bitterest mortification which he for long experienced was, when his troops were expelled from it in 1801 by the arms of England. Its importance to Great Britain as a stepping-stone to India, great at all times, had been augmented tenfold by the discovery of steam navigation, and the consequent restoration of the direct communication from Europe with the shores of Hindostan to its original channel by the Red Sea. Thenceforward, if not the possession, at least a preponderating influence and secure transit through the dominions of Mehemet Ali, was a matter of absolute necessity to Great Britain, if her empire in the East was to be preserved; and thence it was that the Emperor Nicholas, in his confidential conferences with the English |