greater part of the population. The sultan's government put an end to
the injustices of the Greek emperors and the Frank princes, dukes, and
signors who for two centuries had rendered Greece the scene of incessant
civil wars and odious oppression, and whose rapacity impoverished and
depopulated the country. The Othoman system of administration was
immediately organised. Along with it the sultan imposed a tribute of a
fifth of the male children of his Christian subjects as a part of that
tribute which the Koran declared was the lawful price of toleration to
those who refused to embrace Islam. Under these measures the last traces
of the former political institutions and legal administration of Greece
were swept away.
The mass of the Christian population engaged in agricultural operations
were, however, allowed to enjoy a far larger portion of the fruits of
their labour under the sultan's government than under that of many
Christian monarchs. The weak spots in the Othoman government were the
administration of justice and of finance. The naval conquests of the
Othomans in the islands and maritime districts of Greece, and the
ravages of Corsairs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reduced
and degraded the population, exterminated the best families, enslaved
the remnant, and destroyed the prosperity of Greek trade and commerce.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century ecclesiastical corruption in
the Orthodox Church increased. Bishoprics, and even the patriarchate
were sold to the highest bidder. The Turks displayed their contempt for
them by ordering the cross which until that time had crowned the dome of
the belfry of the patriarchate to be taken down. There can be no doubt,
however, that in the rural district the secular clergy supplied some of
the moral strength which eventually enabled the Greeks successfully to
resist the Othoman power. Happily, the exaction of the tribute of
children fell into disuse; and, that burden removed, the nation soon
began to fed the possibility of improving its condition.
The contempt with which the ambassadors of the Christian powers were
treated at the Sublime Porte increased after the conquest of Candia and
the surrender of Crete in 1669, and the grand vizier, Kara Mustapha,
declared war against Austria and laid siege to Vienna in 1683. This was
the opportune moment taken by the Venetian Republic to declare war
against the Othoman Empire, and Greece was made the chief field of
military operations.
Morosini, the commander of the Venetian mercenary army, successfully
conducted a series of campaigns between 1684 and 1687, but with terrible
barbarity on both sides. The Venetian fleet entered the Piraeus on
September 21, 1687. The city of Athens was immediately occupied by their
army, and siege laid to the Acropolis. On September 25 a Venetian bomb
blew up a powder magazine in the Propylæa, and the following evening
another fell in the Parthenon. The classic temple was partially ruined;
much of the sculpture which had retained its inimitable excellence from
the days of Phidæas was defaced, and a part utterly destroyed. The Turks
persisted in defending the place until September 28, when, they
capitulated. The Venetians continued the campaign until the greater part
of Northern Greece submitted to their authority, and peace was declared
in 1696. During the Venetian occupation of Greece through the ravages of
war, oppressive taxation, and pestilence, the Greek inhabitants
decreased from 300,000 to about 100,000.
Sultan Achmet III., having checkmated Peter the Great in his attempt to
march to the conquest of Constantinople, assembled a large army at
Adrianople under the command of Ali Cumurgi, which expelled the
Venetians from Greece before the end of 1715. Peace was concluded, by
the Treaty of Passarovitz, in July 1718. Thereafter, the material and
political position of the Greek nation began to exhibit many signs of
improvement, and the agricultural population before the end of the
eighteenth century became, in the greatest part of the country, the
legal as well as the real proprietors of the soil, which made them feel
the moral sentiment of freemen.
The increased importance of the diplomatic relations of the Porte with
the Christian powers opened a new political career to the Greeks at
Constantinople, and gave rise to the formation of a class of officials
in the Othoman service called "phanariots," whose venality and illegal
exactions made the name a by-word for the basest servility, corruption,
and rapacity.
This system was extended to Wallachia and Moldavia, and no other
Christian race in the Othoman dominions was exposed to so long a period
of unmitigated extortion and cruelty as the Roman population of these
principalities. The Treaty of Kainardji which concluded the war with
Russia between 1768 and 1774, humbled the pride of the sultan, broke the
strength of the Othoman Empire, and established the moral influence of
Russia over the whole of the Christian populations in Turkey. But Russia
never insisted on the execution of the articles of the treaty, and the
Greeks were everywhere subjected to increased oppression and cruelty.
During the war from 1783 to 1792, caused by Catherine II. of Russia
assuming sovereignty over the Crimea, Russia attempted to excite the
Christians in Greece to take up arms against the Turks, but they were
again abandoned to their fate on the conclusion of the Treaty of Yassi
in 1792, which decided the partition of Poland.
Meanwhile, the diverse ambitions of the higher clergy and the phanariots
at Constantinople taught the people of Greece that their interests as a
nation were not always identical with the policy of the leaders of the
Orthodox Church. A modern Greek literature sprang up and, under the
influence of the French Revolution, infused love of freedom into the
popular mind, while the sultan's administration every day grew weaker
under the operation of general corruption. Throughout the East it was
felt that the hour of a great struggle for independence on the part of
the Greeks had arrived.
_IV.--The Greek Revolution_
The Greek revolution began in 1821. Two societies are supposed to have
contributed to accelerating it, but they did not do much to ensure its
success. These were the Philomuse Society, founded at Athens in 1812,
and the Philiké Hetaireia, established in Odessa in 1814. The former was
a literary club, the latter a political society whose schemes were wild
and visionary. The object of the inhabitants of Greece was definite and
patriotic.
The attempt of Alexander Hypsilantes, the son of the Greek Hospodar of
Wallachia, under the pretence that he was supported by Russia, to upset
the Turkish government in Moldavia and Wallachia was a miserable fiasco
distinguished for massacres, treachery, and cowardice, and it was
repudiated by the Tsar of Russia. Very different was the intensity of
the passion with which the inhabitants of modern Greece arose to destroy
the power of their Othoman masters. In the month of April 1821, a
Mussulman population, amounting to upwards of 20,000 souls, was living
dispersed in Greece employed in agriculture. Before two months had
elapsed the greater part--men, women, and children--were murdered
without mercy or remorse. The first insurrectional movement took place
in the Peloponnesus at the end of March. Kalamata was besieged by a
force of 2,000 Greeks, and taken on April 4. Next day a solemn service
of the Greek Church was performed on the banks of the torrent that flows
by Kalamata, as a thanksgiving for the success of the Greek arms.
Patriotic tears poured down the cheeks of rude warriors, and ruthless
brigands sobbed like children. All present felt that the event formed an
era in Greek history. The rising spread to every part of Greece, and to
some of the islands.
Sultan Mahmud II. believed that he could paralyse the movements of the
Greeks by terrific cruelty. On Easter Sunday, April 22, the Patriarch
Gregorios and three other bishops were executed in Constantinople--a
deed which caused a thrill of horror from the Moslem capital to the
mountains of Greece, and the palaces of St. Petersburg. The sultan next
strengthened his authority in Thrace and in Macedonia, and extinguished
the flames of rebellion from Mount Athos to Olympus.
In Greece itself the patriots were triumphant. Local senates were formed
for the different districts, and a National Assembly met at Piada, three
miles to the west of the site of the ancient Epidaurus, which formulated
a constitution and proclaimed it on January 13, 1822. This constitution
established a central government consisting of a legislative assembly
and an executive body of five members, with Prince Alexander
Mavrocordato as President of Greece.
It is impossible here to go into the details of the war of independence
which was carried on from 1822 to 1827. The outstanding incidents were
the triple siege and capitulation of the Acropolis at Athens; the
campaigns of Ibrahim Pasha and his Egyptian army in the Morea; the
defence of Mesolonghi by the Greeks with a courage and endurance, an
energy and constancy which will awaken the sympathy of free men in every
country as long as Grecian history endures; the two civil wars, for one
of which the Primates were especially blamable; the dishonesty of the
government, the rapacity of the military, the indiscipline of the navy;
and the assistance given to the revolutionaries by Lord Byron and other
English sympathisers. Lord Byron arrived at Mesolonghi on January 5,
1824. His short career in Greece was unconnected with any important
military event, for he died on April 19; but the enthusiasm he awakened
perhaps served Greece more than his personal exertions would have done
had his life been prolonged, because it resulted in the provision of a
fleet for the Greek nation by the English and American Philhellenes,
commanded by Lord Cochrane.
By the beginning of 1827 the whole of Greece was laid waste, and the
sufferings of the agricultural population were terrible. At the same
time, the greater part of the Greeks who bore arms against the Turks
were fed by Greek committees in Switzerland, France, and Germany; while
those in the United States directed their attention to the relief of the
peaceful population. It was felt that the intervention of the European
powers could alone prevent the extermination of the population or their
submission to the sultan. On July 6, 1827, a treaty Between Great
Britain, France, and Russia was signed at London to take common measures
for the pacification of Greece, to enforce an armistice between the
Greeks and the Turks, and, by an armed intervention, to secure to the
Greeks virtual independence under the suzerainty of the sultan. The
Greeks accepted the armistice, but the Turks refused; and then followed
the destruction of the Othoman fleet by the allied squadrons under
Admiral Sir Edward Coddrington at Navarino, on October 21, 1827.
In the following April, Russia declared war against Turkey, and the
French government, by a protocol, were authorised to dispatch a French
army of 14,000 men under the command of General Maison. This force
landed at Petalidi, in the Gulf of Coron. Ibrahim Pasha withdrew his
army to Egypt, and the French troops occupied the strong places of
Greece almost without resistance from the Turkish garrisons.
France thus gained the honour of delivering Greece from the last of her
conquerors, and she increased the debt of gratitude due by the Greeks by
the admirable conduct of her soldiers, who converted mediæval
strongholds into habitable towns, repaired the fortresses, and
constructed roads. Count John Capodistrias, a Corfiot noble, who had
been elected President of Greece in April 1827 for a period of seven
years by the National Assembly of Troezen, arrived in Greece in January
1828. He found the country in a state of anarchy, and at once put a stop
to some of the grossest abuses in the army, navy, and financial
administration.
_V.--The Greek Monarchy_
The war terminated in 1829, and the Turks finally evacuated continental
Greece in September of the same year. The allied powers declared Greece
an independent state with a restricted territory, and nominated Prince
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (afterwards King of the Belgians) to be its
sovereign. Prince Leopold accepted the throne on February 11, but
resigned it on May 17. Thereafter Capodistrias exercised his functions
as president in the most tyrannical fashion, and was assassinated on
October 9, 1831; from which date till February 1833 anarchy prevailed in
the country.
Agostino Capodistrias, brother of the assassinated president, who had
been chosen president by the National Assembly on December 20, 1831, was
ejected out of the presidency by the same assembly in April 1832, and
Prince Otho of Bavaria was elected King of Greece. Otho, accompanied by
a small Bavarian army, landed from an English frigate in Greece at
Nauplia on February 6, 1833. He was then only seventeen years of age,
and a regency of three Bavarians was appointed to administer the
government during his minority, his majority being fixed at June 1,
1835.
The regency issued a decree in August 1833, proclaiming the national
Church of Greece independent of the patriarchate and synod of
Constantinople and establishing an ecclesiastical synod for the kingdom
on the model of that of Russia, but with more freedom of action. In
judicial procedure, however, the regency placed themselves above the
tribunals. King Otho, who had come of age in 1835, and married a
daughter of the Duke of Oldenburg in 1837, became his own prime minister
in 1839, and claimed to rule with absolute power. He did not possess
ability, experience, energy, or generosity; consequently, he was not
respected, obeyed, feared, or loved. The administrative incapacity of
King Otho's counsellors disgusted the three protecting powers as much as
their arbitrary conduct irritated the Greeks.
A revolution naturally followed. Otho was compelled to abandon absolute
power in order to preserve his crown, and in March 1844 he swore
obedience to a constitution prepared by the National Assembly, which put
an end to the government of alien rulers under which the Greeks had
lived for two thousand years. The destinies of the race were now in the
hands of the citizens of liberated Greece. But the attempt was
unsuccessful. The corruption of the government and the contracted views
of King Otho rendered the period from the adoption of the constitution
to his expulsion in 1862 a period of national stagnation. In October
1862 revolt broke out, and on the 23rd a provisional government at
Athens issued a proclamation declaring, in his absence, that the reign
of King Otho was at an end.
When Otho and his queen returned in a frigate to the Piraeus they were
not allowed to land. Otho appealed to the representatives of the powers,
who refused to support him against the nation, and he and his queen took
refuge on board H.M.S. Scylla, and left Greece for ever.
The National Assembly held in Athens drew up a new constitution, laying
the foundations of free municipal institutions, and leaving the nation
to elect their sovereign. Then followed the abortive, though almost
unanimous, election as king of Prince Alfred of England. Afterwards the
British Government offered the crown to the second son of Prince
Christian of Holstein-Glücksburg. On March 30, 1863, he was unanimously
elected King of Greece, and the British forces left Corfu on June 2,
1864.
* * * * *
J.L. MOTLEY
The Rise of the Dutch Republic
John Lothrop Motley, historian and diplomatist, was born at
Dorchester, Massachusetts, now part of Boston, on April 15,
1814. After graduating at Harvard University, he proceeded to
Europe, where he studied at the universities of Berlin and
Göttingen. At the latter he became intimate with Bismarck, and
their friendly relations continued throughout life. In 1846
Motley began to collect materials for a history of Holland,
and in 1851 he went to Europe to pursue his investigations.
The result of his labours was "The Rise of the Dutch
Republic--a History," published in 1856. The work was received
with enthusiasm in Europe and America. Its distinguishing
character is its graphic narrative and warm sympathy; and
Froude said of it that it is "as complete as industry and
genius can make it, and a book which will take its place among
the finest stories in this or any language." In 1861 Motley
was appointed American Minister to Austria, where he remained
until 1867; and in 1869 General Grant sent him to represent
the United States in England. Motley died on May 29, 1877, at
the Dorsetshire house of his daughter, near Dorchester.
_I.--Woe to the Heretic_
The north-western corner of the vast plain which extends from the German
Ocean to the Ural Mountains is occupied by the countries called the
Netherlands. The history of the development of the Netherland nation
from the time of the Romans during sixteen centuries is ever marked by
one prevailing characteristic, one master passion--the love of liberty,
the instinct of self-government. Largely compounded of the bravest
Teutonic elements--Batavian and Frisian--the race has ever battled to
the death with tyranny, and throughout the dark ages struggled
resolutely towards the light, wresting from a series of petty sovereigns
a gradual and practical recognition of the claims of humanity. With the
advent of the Burgundian family, the power of the commons reached so
high a point that it was able to measure itself, undaunted, with the
spirit of arbitrary power. Peaceful in their pursuits, phlegmatic by
temperament, the Netherlanders were yet the most belligerent and
excitable population in Europe.
For more than a century the struggle for freedom, for civic life, went
on, Philip the Good, Charles the Bold, Mary's husband Maximilian,
Charles V., in turn assailing or undermining the bulwarks raised age
after age against the despotic principle. Liberty, often crushed, rose
again and again from her native earth with redoubled energy. At last, in
the sixteenth century, a new and more powerful spirit, the genius of
religious freedom, came to participate in the great conflict. Arbitrary
power, incarnated in the second Charlemagne, assailed the new
combination with unscrupulous, unforgiving fierceness. In the little
Netherland territory, humanity, bleeding but not killed, still stood at
bay, and defied the hunters. The two great powers had been gathering
strength for centuries. They were soon to be matched in a longer and
more determined combat than the world had ever seen.
On October 25, 1555, the Estates of the Netherlands were assembled in
the great hall of the palace at Brussels to witness amidst pomp and
splendour the dramatic abdication of Charles V. as sovereign of the
Netherlands in favour of his son Philip. The drama was well played. The
happiness of the Netherlands was apparently the only object contemplated
in the great transaction, and the stage was drowned in tears. And yet,
what was the Emperor Charles to the inhabitants of the Netherlands that
they should weep for him? Their interests had never been even a
secondary consideration with their master. He had fulfilled no duty
towards them; he had committed the gravest crimes against them; he was
in constant conflict with their ancient and dearly-bought political
liberties.
Philip II., whom the Netherlands received as their new master, was a man
of foreign birth and breeding, not speaking a word of their language. In
1548 he had made his first appearance in the Netherlands to receive
homage in the various provinces as their future sovereign, and to
exchange oaths of mutual fidelity with them all.
One of the earliest measures of Philip's reign was to re-enact the dread
edict of 1550. This he did by the express advice of the Bishop of Arras.
The edict set forth that no one should print, write, copy, keep,
conceal, sell, buy, or give in churches, streets, or other places any
book or writing by Luther, Calvin, and other heretics reprobated by the
Holy Church; nor break, or injure the images of the Holy Virgin or
canonised saints; nor in his house hold conventicles, or be present at
any such, in which heretics or their adherents taught, baptised, or
formed conspiracies, against the Holy Church and the general welfare.
Further, all lay persons were forbidden to converse or dispute
concerning the Holy Scriptures openly or secretly, or to read, teach, or
expound them; or to preach, or to entertain any of the opinions of the
heretics.
Disobedience to this edict was to be punished as follows. Men to be
executed with the sword, and women to be buried alive if they do not
persist in their errors; if they do persist in them, then they are to be
executed with fire, and all their property in both cases is to be
confiscated to the crown. Those who failed to betray the suspected were
to be liable to the same punishment, as also those who lodged, furnished
with food, or favoured anyone suspected of being a heretic. Informers
and traitors against suspected persons were to be entitled on conviction
to one-half of the property of the accused.
At first, however, the edict was not vigorously carried into effect
anywhere. It was openly resisted in Holland; its proclamation was flatly
refused in Antwerp, and repudiated throughout Brabant. This disobedience
was in the meantime tolerated because Philip wanted money to carry on
the war between Spain and France which shortly afterwards broke out. At
the close of the war, a treaty was entered into between France and Spain
by which Philip and Henry II. bound themselves to maintain the Catholic
worship inviolate by all means in their power, and to extinguish the
increasing heresy in both kingdoms. There was a secret agreement to
arrange for the Huguenot chiefs throughout the realms of both, a
"Sicilian Vespers" upon the first favourable occasion.
Henry died of a wound received from Montgomery in a tournay held to
celebrate the conclusion of the treaty, and Catherine de Medici became
Queen-Regent of France, and deferred carrying out the secret plot till
St. Bartholomew's Day fourteen years after.
_II.--The Netherlands Are, and Will Be, Free_
Philip now set about the organisation of the Netherlands provinces.
Margaret, Duchess of Parma, was appointed regent, with three boards, a
state council, a privy council, and a council of finance, to assist in
the government. It soon became evident that the real power of the
government was exclusively in the hands of the Consulta--a committee of
three members of the state council, by whose deliberation the regent was
secretly to be guided on all important occasions; but in reality the
conclave consisted of Anthony Perrenot, Bishop of Arras, afterwards
Cardinal Granvelle. Stadtholders were appointed to the different
provinces, of whom only Count Egmont for Flanders and William of Orange
for Holland need be mentioned.
An assembly of the Estates met at Ghent on August 7, 1589, to receive
the parting instructions of Philip previous to his departure for Spain.
The king, in a speech made through the Bishop of Arras, owing to his
inability to speak French or Flemish, submitted a "request" for three
million gold florins "to be spent for the good of the country." He made
a violent attack on "the new, reprobate and damnable sects that now
infested the country," and commanded the Regent Margaret "accurately and
exactly to cause to be enforced the edicts and decrees made for the
extirpation of all sects and heresies." The Estates of all the provinces
agreed, at a subsequent meeting with the king, to grant their quota of
the "request," but made it a condition precedent that the foreign
troops, whose outrages and exactions had long been an intolerable
burden, should be withdrawn. This enraged the king, but when a
presentation was made of a separate remonstrance in the name of the
States-General, signed by the Prince of Orange, Count Egmont, and other
leading patricians, against the pillaging, insults, and disorders of the
foreign soldiers, the king was furious. He, however, dissembled at a
later meeting, and took leave of the Estates with apparent cordiality.