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 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 March 18, 1913, by the hand of an
assassin just as he had attained the glorious fruition of a reign of
fifty years.