Otto of Greece
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A Youthful Portrait of King Otto of Greece |
King
Otto of Greece, (Greek:
Όθων, 'ασιλεύς της Ελλάδος)
also Prince of Bavaria (
June 1,
1815 -
July 26,
1867) was made the first modern king of
Greece in
1832 under the
Convention of London, whereby Greece became a new independent
kingdom under the protection of the
Great Powers (
Great Britain,
France and the
Russian Empire).
He was born in
Salzburg,
Austria, as second son of
King Ludwig I of Bavaria and Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. Through his ancestor the Bavarian Duke
John II, Otto was a descendant of the Greek
Imperial dynasties of
Comnenus and
Lascaris.
When he was elected king, the Great Powers extracted a pledge from Otto's father to restrain him from hostile actions against the
Ottoman Empire, and insisted on his title being that of "King of Greece" instead of "King of the Greeks", which would imply a claim over the millions of Greeks then still under Turkish rule. Not quite 18, the young prince arrived in
Greece with 3,500 Bavarian troops and three Bavarian advisors aboard the British
frigate HMS Madagascar. The Bavarian advisors were arrayed in a council of regency headed by Count
Josef Ludwig von Armansperg, who as minister of finance, had recently succeeded in restoring
Bavarian credit at the cost of his popularity. The
United Kingdom and the
Rothschild bank, who were underwriting the Greek loans, insisted on financial stringency on Armansperg. The Greeks were soon more heavily taxed than under
Turkish rule; they had exchanged a hated
Ottoman tyranny, which they understood, for government by a foreign
bureaucracy, the "Bavarocracy" ('αυαροκρατία), which they despised. In addition, Otto showed little respect for local customs. As a staunch
Catholic, and thus considered a
heretic among the Greeks, he never changed his religion since he was guaranteed, under the constitutional provisions as the first
King of a new Greek
dynasty, that he could remain a Catholic. His
heirs however would have to be
Orthodox according to the terms of the 1843 Constitution.
1 In
1837, Otto visited
Germany and married the beautiful and talented
Duchess Amelie of Oldenburg (
December 21,
1818 -
May 20,
1875). The wedding took place not in Greece, but in
Oldenburg, on
November 22,
1836; the marriage did not produce an heir and the new queen made herself unpopular by interfering in the government.
Meanwhile, due to his overtly undermining the king, Armansperg was dismissed as Prime Minister by King Otto immediately on his return. However, despite high hopes by the Greeks, the Bavarian
Rundhart was appointment chief minister and the granting of a constitution was again postponed. The attempts of Otto to conciliate Greek sentiment by efforts to enlarge the frontiers of his kingdom, for example, by the suggested acquisition of
Crete in
1841, failed in their objective and only succeeded in embroiling him with the Great Powers.
Throughout his reign, King Otto found himself confronted by a recurring series of issues: partisanship of the Greeks, financial uncertainty, and ecclesiastical issues.
Greek parties in the Othonian era were based on two factors: the political activities of the diplomatic representatives of the
Great Powers:
Russia,
England and
France and the affiliation of Greek political figures with these diplomats.
(Main: Early Greek Parties)
The most famous well-known affiliations of that era include:
Russian Party (also called the Napist party):
Theodoros Kolokotronis,
Constantine Kanaris,
Kitsos Tzavelas,
Andreas Metaxas;
French Party:
Ioannis Kolettis,
Ioannis Makriyannis,
Dimitrios Voulgaris, Nikolaos Krieziotes]];
English Party:
Alexander Mavrocordatos,
Kostas Botsaris,
Andreas Miaoulis,
Spyridon Trikoupis,
Andreas Zaimis.
Financial uncertainty of the Othonian monarchy was the result of 1)Greece's poverty, 2)the concentration of land in the hands of a small number of wealthy "primates" like the
Mavromichalises of
Mani, and 3)the promise of 60,000,000 francs in loans from the Great Powers, which kept these nations involved in Greek internal affairs and the Crown constantly seeking to please one or the other power to ensure the flow of funds.
The political machinations of the Great Powers was personified in their three Legates in Athens:
French Theobald Piscatory,
Russian Gabriel Catacazy, and
English Edmund Lyons. They advised their home governments on the activities of the Greeks, while serving as advisers to their respective allied parties within Greece.
Otto pursued policies, such as balancing power among all the parties and sharing offices among the parties, ostensibly to reduce the power of the parties while trying to bring a pro-Otto party into being. The parties, however, became the entree into government power and financial stability. The effect of his and his advisors' polcies was to make the Great Powers' parties more powerful, not less. The Great Powers did not support curtailing Otto's increasing absolutism, however.
2Otto found himself the beneficiary of a number of intractable ecclesiastical issues: monasticism, autocephaly, the king as head of the church and toleration. His regents, Armansperg and Rundhart had established a controversial policy of suppressing the monasteries. This was very upsetting to the church hierarchy and the Russian Party, which was a stalwart of
Orthodoxy. Otto allowed the statutory dissolution to lapse. On the issue of
autocephaly and his role as king within the church, Otto was overwhelmed by the arcana of church doctrine and popular discontent with his Catholicism. In
1833, the regents had unuilaterally declared the autocephaly of the
Church of Greece. This recognized the
de facto political situation, as the
Patriarch of Constantinople was under the political control of the
Ottoman Empire. Conservatives (mostly in the Russian Party), upset at having a Catholic as the ehad of the Church of Greece criticised the unilateral declaration of autocephaly. They likewise resisted the foreign, mostly
Protestant, missionaries who established schools throughout Greece. Tolerance of other religions was supported by some in the English Party. In the end, power over the church and education was ceded to the Russian Party, while the king maintained a veto over the decision of the
Synod of Bishops. This was to avoid discrediting Greece in the eyes of Western Europe as a backward, religiously intolerant society.
Although King Otto tried to function as an absolute monarch, as Thomas Gallant writes, he "was neither ruthless enough to be feared, nor compassionate enough to be loved, nor competent enough to be respected."
3 By
1843, public dissatisfaction with him had reached crisis proportions and there were demands for a constitution. Initially Otto refused to grant a
constitution, but as soon as
German troops were withdrawn from the kingdom a
military coup was launched. On
September 31843, the infantry led by Colonel
Kallergis |
King Otto of Greece adopted the native Greek garment the Foustanella which eventually became the official dress of King Otto's court.. |
(Καλλέργης) and the respected Revolution captain
Ioannis Makriyannis (Μακρυγιάννης) assembled in the Square in front of the Palace in Athens. Eventually joined by much of the population of the small capital, the rebellion refused to disperse until the King agreed to grant a constitution, which would require that there be Greeks in the Council, that he convene a permanent national assembly and that Otto personally thank the leaders of the uprising. Left with little recourse, now that his German troops were gone, King Otto gave in to the pressure and agreed to the demands of the crowd over the objections of his opinionated
Queen. This square was renamed
Constitution Square (Πλατεία Συντάγματος) to commemorate the events of September
1843.
4 Now for the first time the king had Greeks in his council and the French party, the English Party or the Russian Party (according to which of the
Great Powers' culture they most esteemed) vied for rank and power.
The King's prestige, which was based in large part on his support by the combined Great Powers, but mostly the support of the British, suffered in the "
Pacifico incident" of
1850, when British
Foreign Secretary Palmerston sent the British fleet to blockade the port of
Piraeus with warships, to exact reparation for injustice done to a British subject.
The "
Great Idea" (Μεγάλη Ιδέα), Greece's dream of restoring the
Byzantine Empire under
Christian rule, led to his contemplating to enter the
Crimean War against
Turkey in
1853; the enterprise was unsuccessful, and resulted in renewed intervention by the Great Powers and a second blockade of
Piraeus. In
1861, a student named Aristeidis Dosios (son of politician
Konstantinos Dosios)
6 attempted to murder
Queen Amalia, and was openly hailed as a hero. His attempt, however, also prompted spontaneous feelings of monarchism and sympathy towards the royal couple among the Greek population.
6 |
The expulsion of Otto King of Greece in 1862 as portrayed in a popular colour lithograph. |
While on a visit to the Peloponnese in
1862, a new coup was launched and this time a
provisional government was set up and summoned a national convention. Ambassadors of the
Great Powers urged King Otto not to resist, and the king and queen took refuge on a British warship and returned to
Bavaria the same way they had come to Greece (
aboard a foreign warship), taking with them the Greek royal regalia which he had brought from Bavaria in 1832. It has been suggested that had Otto and Amalia borne an heir, then the King would not have been overthrown, as succession was a major unresolved question at the time.
5 It is also true, however, that the constitution of 1843 made provision for his succession by his two younger brothers and their descendants.
He died in the palace of the former bishops of
Bamberg,
Germany, and was buried in the
Theatiner Church in
Munich. During his retirement, he would still wear the traditional uniform nowadays worn only by the
evzones; during the rebellion in
Crete against the
Ottoman Empire in
1866, Otto donated most of his fortune to support the
Cretan rebellion by supplying it with
arms. He also made provisions for his donation to be kept secret until his death, to avoid causing political problems to the new King,
George I.
# Clogg, Richard;
A Short History of Modern Greece; Cambridge University Press, 1979; ISBN 0521328373# John A. Petropulos;
Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece; Princeton University Press, 1968# Gallant, Thomas W.;
Modern Greece; Oxford University Press, 2003; ISBN 0340763361# Tompkinson, John L.;
Athens: The City; Anagnosis Books, 1996; ISBN 9608718600 # Brekis, Spyros, L Ph.D.;
Ίστορια της Νεώτερας Ελλάδος (
History of Modern Greece) (in Greek) (coursebook of the University of Athens), 2003# van der Kiste, John;
Kings of the Hellenes; Sutton Publishing, 1994; ISBN 0750921471
