Scarcely had Servia won her freedom when the Greek war of independence
broke out. Archbishop Germanos called the Christian population of the
Morea under the standard of the cross in 1821. For three years the
Greeks, with the assistance of European money and volunteers (of whom
Lord Byron was the most illustrious), conducted a successful campaign
{22} against the Turkish forces; but after the Sultan had in 1824
summoned to his aid Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, with his powerful
fleet and disciplined army, the laurels which the Greek patriots had
won were recovered by the oppressor; and, with the recapture of Athens
in May, 1827, the whole country once more lay under the dominion of the
Turks. The Powers now recognized that nothing but intervention could
save Greece for European civilization. The Egyptian fleet was
annihilated at Navarino in October, 1828, by the fleets of England,
France, and Russia. Greece was constituted an independent monarchy,
though the Powers who recognized its independence traced the frontier
of the emancipated country in a jealous and niggardly spirit. Prince
Otto of Bavaria was designated the first King and reigned for thirty
years. He was succeeded in 1863 by King George who lived to see the
northern boundary of his kingdom advanced to Saloniki, where, like a
faithful sentinel at his post, he fell, on {23} March 18, 1913, by the
hand of an assassin just as he had attained the glorious fruition of a
reign of fifty years.