[1] La Forest, a knight of St John of Jerusalem, was the first
resident ambassador of France at Constantinople. He died in 1537.
CAPIZ, a town and the capital of the province of Capiz, Panay,
Philippine Islands, on the Capiz or Panay river, about 4 m. from its
mouth on the N. coast. Pop. (1903) 18,525. Capiz has a large and
beautiful Roman Catholic church (of stone), a Protestant church (with a
hospital) and good government buildings, and is the seat of the
provincial high school. Alcohol of a superior quality is manufactured in
large quantities from the fermented juice of the nipa palm, which grows
plentifully in the neighbouring swamps. Fishing and the weaving of
fabrics of cotton, hemp and pineapple fibre are important industries.
Rice and sugar are raised in abundance. Tobacco, Indian corn and cacao
are produced to a limited extent; and rice, alcohol, sugar and copra are
exported. Coasting vessels ascend the river to the town. The language is
Visayan.
CAPMANY Y MONTPALAU, ANTONIO DE (1742-1813), Spanish polygraph, was born
at Barcelona on the 24th of November 1742. He retired from the army in
1770, and was subsequently elected secretary of the Royal Academy of
History at Madrid. His principal works are--_Memorias historicas sobre
la marina, commercio, y artes de la antigua ciudad de Barcelona_ (4
vols. 1779-1792); _Teatro historico-critico de la elocuencia Espanola_
(1786); _Filiosofia de la elocuencia_ (1776), and _Cuestiones criticas
sobre varias puntos de historia economica, politica, y militar_ (1807).
Capmany died at Barcelona on the 14th of November 1813. His monograph on
the history of his birthplace still preserves much of its original
value.
CAPO D'ISTRIA, GIOVANNI ANTONIO [JOANNES],[1] COUNT (1776-1831), Russian
statesman and president of the Greek republic, was born at Corfu on the
11th of February 1776. He belonged to an ancient Corfiot family which
had immigrated from Istria in 1373, the title of count being granted to
it by Charles Emmanuel, duke of Savoy, in 1689. The father of Giovanni,
Antonio Maria Capo d'Istria, was a man of considerable importance in the
island, a stiff aristocrat of the old school, who in 1798, after the
treaty of Campo Formio had placed the Ionian Islands under French rule,
was imprisoned for his opposition to the new regime, his release next
year being the earliest triumph of his son's diplomacy. On the
establishment in 1800, under Turkish suzerainty, of the septinsular
republic--a settlement negotiated at Constantinople by the elder Capo
d'Istria--Giovanni, who had meanwhile studied medicine at Padua, entered
the government service as secretary to the legislative council, and in
one capacity or another exercised for the next seven years a determining
voice in the affairs of the republic. At the beginning of 1807 he was
appointed "extraordinary military governor" to organize the defence of
Santa Maura against Ali Pasha of Iannina, an enterprise which brought
him into contact with Theodores Kolokotrones and other future chiefs of
the war of Greek independence, and awoke in him that wider Hellenic
patriotism which was so largely to influence his career.
Throughout the period of his official connexion with the Ionian
government, Capo d'Istria had been a consistent upholder of Russian
influence in the islands; and when the treaty of Tilsit (1807) dashed
his hopes by handing over the Ionian republic to Napoleon, he did not
relinquish his belief in Russia as the most reliable ally of the Greek
cause. He accordingly refused the offers made to him by the French
government, and accepted the invitation of the Russian chancellor
Romanzov to enter the tsar's service. He went to St Petersburg in 1809,
and was appointed to the honorary post of attache to the foreign office,
but it was not till two years after, in 1811, that he was actually
employed in diplomatic work as attache to Baron Stackelberg, the Russian
ambassador at Vienna. His knowledge of the near East was here of great
service, and in the following year he was attached, as chief of his
diplomatic bureau, to Admiral Chichagov, on his mission to the Danubian
principalities to stir up trouble in the Balkan peninsula as a diversion
on the flank of Austria, and to attempt to supplement the treaty of
Bucharest by an offensive and defensive alliance with the Ottoman
empire. The Moscow campaign of 1812 intervened; Chichagov was disgraced
in consequence of his failure to destroy Napoleon at the passage of the
Beresina; but Capo d'Istria was not involved, was made a councillor of
state and continued in his diplomatic functions. During the campaign of
1813 he was attached to the staff of Barclay de Tolly and was present at
the battles of Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden and Leipzig. With the advance of
the allies he was sent to Switzerland to secure the withdrawal of the
republic from the French alliance. Here, in spite of his instructions to
guarantee the neutrality of Switzerland, he signed on his own
responsibility the proclamation issued by Prince Schwarzenberg, stating
the intention of the allied troops to march through the country. His
motive was to prevent any appearance of disagreement among the allies.
The emperor Alexander, to whom he hastened to make an explanation in
person, endorsed his action.
Capo d'Istria was present with the allies in Paris, and after the
signing of the first peace of Paris he was rewarded by the tsar with the
order of St Vladimir and his full confidence. At the congress of Vienna
his influence was conspicuous; he represented the tsar on the Swiss
committee, was associated with Rasumovsky in negotiating the tangled
Polish and Saxon questions, and was the Russian plenipotentiary in the
discussions with the Baron vom Stein on the affairs of Germany. His
_Memoire sur l'empire germanique_, of the 9th of February 1815,
presented to the tsar, was based on the policy of keeping Germany weak
in order to secure Russian preponderance in its councils. It was perhaps
from a similar motive that, after the Waterloo campaign, he strenuously
opposed the proposals for the dismemberment of France. It was on his
advice that the duc de Richelieu persuaded Louis XVIII. to write the
autograph letter in which he declared his intention of resigning rather
than submit to any diminution of the territories handed down to him by
his ancestors.[2] The treaty of the 20th of November 1815, which formed
for years the basis of the effective concert of Europe, was also largely
his work.
On the 26th of September 1815, after the proclamation of the Holy
Alliance at the great review on the plain of Vertus, Capo d'Istria was
named a secretary of state. On his return to St Petersburg, he shared
the ministry of foreign affairs with Count Nesselrode, though the latter
as senior signed all documents. Capo d'Istria, however, had sole charge
of the newly acquired province of Bessarabia, which he governed
conspicuously well. In 1818 he attended the emperor Alexander at the
congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, and in the following year obtained leave to
visit his home. He travelled by way of Venice, Rome and Naples, his
progress exciting the liveliest apprehensions of the powers, notably of
Austria. The "Jacobin" pose of the tsar was notorious, his all-embracing
ambition hardly less so; and Russian travellers in Italy, notably the
emperor's former tutor, Cesar de Laharpe, were little careful in the
expression of their sympathy for the ideals of the Carbonari. In
Metternich's eyes Capo d'Istria, "the coryphaeus of liberalism," was
responsible for the tsar's vagaries, the fount of all the ills of which
the times were sick; and, for all the count's diplomatic reticence, the
Austrian spies who dogged his footsteps earned their salaries by
reporting sayings that set the reactionary courts in a flutter. For
Metternich the overthrow of Capo d'Istria's influence became a necessity
of political salvation. At Corfu Capo d'Istria became the repository of
all the grievances of his countrymen against the robust administration
of Sir Thomas Maitland. At the congress of Vienna the count had
supported the British protectorate over the Ionian Islands, the
advantages of which from the point of view of trade and security were
obvious; but the drastic methods of "King Tom's" government, symbolized
by a gallows for pirates and other evil-doers in every popular gathering
place, offended his local patriotism. He submitted a memorandum on the
subject to the tsar, and before returning to Russia travelled via Paris
to England to lay the grievances of the Ionians before the British
government. His reception was a cold one, mainly due to his own
disingenuousness, for he refused to show British ministers the
memorandum which he had already submitted to the Russian emperor, on the
ground that it was intended only for his own private use. The whole
thing seemed, rightly or wrongly, an excuse for the intervention of
Russia in affairs which were by treaty wholly British.
On his return to St Petersburg in the autumn of 1819, Capo d'Istria
resumed his influence in the intimate counsels of the tsar. The murder
of the Russian agent, Kotzebue, in March, had shaken but not destroyed
Alexander's liberalism, and it was Capo d'Istria who drew up the
emperor's protest against the Carlsbad decrees and the declaration of
his adherence to constitutional views (see ALEXANDER I.). In October
1820 Capo d'Istria accompanied the tsar to the congress at Troppau. The
events of the year--the murder of the due de Berry in March, the
Revolutions in Spain and in Naples--had produced their effect. Alexander
was, in Metternich's exultant language, "a changed man," and Capo
d'Istria apparently shared his conversion to reactionary principles. The
Austrian chancellor now put forth all his powers to bring Alexander
under his own influence, and to overthrow Capo d'Istria, whom he
despised, distrusted and feared. In 1821 Alexander Ypsilanti's misguided
raid into the Danubian principalities gave him his opportunity. The news
reached the tsar at the congress of Laibach, and to Capo d'Istria was
entrusted the task of writing the letter to Ypsilanti in which the tsar
repudiated his claim, publicly proclaimed that he had the sympathy and
support of Russia. For a while the position of Capo d'Istria was saved;
but it was known that he had been approached by the agent of the Greek
_Hetairia_ before Ypsilanti, and that he had encouraged Ypsilanti to
take up the ill-fated adventure which he himself had refused; he was
hated at the Russian court as an upstart Greek, and Metternich was never
weary of impressing on all and sundry that he was "using Russian policy
for Greek ends." At last nothing but long habit and native loyalty to
those who had served him well, prevented Alexander from parting with a
minister who had ceased to possess his confidence. Capo d'Istria,
anticipating his dismissal, resigned on the eve of the tsar's departure
for the congress of Verona (1822), and retired into private life at
Geneva.
On the 11th of April 1827, the Greek national assembly at Troezene
elected Capo d'Istria president of the republic. The vote was a triumph
for the Russian faction, for the count, even after his fall, had not
lost the personal regard of the emperor Alexander, nor ceased to
consider himself a Russian official. He accepted the offer, but was in
no hurry to take up the thankless task. In July he visited the emperor
Nicholas I. at Tsarskoye Selo, receiving permission to proceed and
instructions as to the policy he should adopt, and he next made a tour
of the courts of Europe in search of moral and material support. The
news of the battle of Navarino (20th of October 1827) hastened his
arrival; the British frigate "Warspite" was placed at his disposal to
carry him to Greece, and on the 19th of January 1828 he landed at
Nauplia.
Capo d'Istria's rule in Greece had to contend against immense
difficulties--the utter poverty of the treasury, the barbarism of the
people but recently emancipated, the continued presence of Ibrahim
Pasha, with an unbroken army, in the south of the Morea. His strength
lay in his experience of affairs and in the support of Russia; but he
was by inheritance an aristocrat and by training an official, lacking in
broad human sympathy, and therefore little fitted to deal with the wild
and democratic elements of the society it was his task to control. The
Greeks could understand the international status given to them by his
presidency, and for a while the enthusiasm evoked by his arrival made
him master of the situation. He thoroughly represented Greek sentiment,
too, in his refusal to accept the narrow limits which the powers, in
successive protocols, sought to impose on the new state (see GREECE).
But the Russian administrative system by which he sought to restrain the
native turbulence was bound in the end to be fatal to him. The wild
chiefs of the revolution won over at first by their inclusion in his
government, were offended by his European airs and Russian uniform, and
alienated by his preference for the educated Greeks of the Phanar and of
Corfu, his promotion of his brothers Viaro and Agostino to high commands
causing special offence. Dissatisfaction ended in open rebellion; the
islands revolted; Capo d'Istria called in the aid of the Russian
admiral; and Miaoulis, the hero of the Greek war at sea, blew up the
warships under his command to prevent their falling into the hands of
the government. On land, so far as the president was concerned, the
climax was reached with the attempt to coerce the Mavromichales of the
Maina, the bravest and most turbulent of the mountain clans, whose chief
Petros Mavromichales, commonly known as Petrobey, had played a leading
part in the War of Independence. The result was an insurrection in the
Maina (Easter, 1830), and the imprisonment of those of the
Mavromichales, including Petrobey, who happened to be in the power of
the government. At the news of their chieftain's imprisonment the
Mainots, who had for a while been pacified, once more flew to arms and
threatened to march on Nauplia; but negotiations were opened, and on the
advice of the Russian minister Petrobey consented to make his submission
to the president. Unhappily, when he was brought under guard to the
appointed interview, Capo d'Istria, in a moment of irritation and
weariness, refused to see him. Maddened with rage at this insult from a
man who had not struck a blow for Greece, the proud old chief, on his
way back to prison, called out to two of his kinsmen, his son George and
his brother Constantino, "You see how I fare," and passed on. According
to the code of the Maina this was a command to take revenge. Next day,
the 9th of October 1831, the two placed themselves at the door of the
church where Capo d'Istria was accustomed to worship. As he passed in
Constantine shot him down, and as he fell George thrust a dagger into
his heart.
AUTHORITIES.--Carl W.P. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's _Graf Johann
Kapodistrias_ (Berlin, 1864) is based on all the sources, printed and
unprinted, available at the time of publication, and contains an
excellent guide to these. This may be supplemented by the historical
sections of F. de Marten's _Recueil des traites condus par la Russie,
&c._ (1874, &c.). A sketch of Capo d'Istria's activity as president
will be found in W. Alison Phillips's _The War of Greek Independence_
(London, 1897). Many of Capo d'Istria's despatches, &c., are published
in the collections of diplomatic correspondence mentioned in the
bibliography of the article EUROPE: _History_. Under the Russian title
"Zapiska grapha Joanna Capodistrias" is published in the series of the
Imperial Russian Historical Society, vol. iii. p. 163 (St Petersburg,
1868)the _Apercu de ma carriere publique_, written by Capo d'Istria for
presentation to the emperor Alexander, and dated at Geneva 12/24
December 1826. Of unpublished materials may be mentioned the letters
of Capo d'Istria to Sir Richard Church, vol. xvi. of the Church Papers
in the British Museum (_Add. MSS._ 36453-36571). See further
bibliography to chapter vi. of vol. x. of the _Cambridge Modern
History_ (1907). (W. A. P.)