Grazioso: Egypt & Tunis, 1836-1841
The Kingdom of Greece, 1836
Greece starts out with a very mixed situation in 1836. Recently freed from the Ottoman yoke by the machinations of the Greater Powers; the newly-independent state has secure borders with two small armies and an even smaller navy. However, the one major ace up the Greek sleeve is the friendship and protection of the United Kingdom, the largest superpower on the face of the Earth. The UK was the primary mover behind Greek independence and the establishment of the Greek throne upon which King Othon sat.
While the Anglo-Ottoman alliance crippled somewhat the expansionism against the Turks that lies within the heart of every Greek; there was still an option left open. The rule of King Othon, known as Otto I of Greece, Prince of Bavaria to the rest of the world, was not at all popular among the Greek people. Arriving in Greece with a small regiment of Bavarian troops, Otto immediately adopted a Greek name and Greek styles of fashion to ingratiate himself with his people; however his Bavarian council of regents (referred to derisively as the
Bavarokratia by Othon's many detractors) was highly despised by the Greek people while the king himself was only vaguely unpopular.
Early into Othon's reign, an ambassador from the Papal States arrived in Athens. This was deeply unpopular with the people once news of the visit was leaked to the press; as the Orthodox majority of the Kingdom had still never forgave the western 'Franks' and the heretical Catholic church for the events of the Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople. Riots in the streets were put down by the imported Bavarian infantry (much to the dismay of the young King Othon, who protested vigorously to Prime Minister von Armansperg) and negotiations considered unabated.
On the 18th of January in 1836, the Concordat of Athens was signed; which established a formal diplomatic alliance between the Papal States and the Kingdom of Greece and restored the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Athens; which had previously been suppressed. On the announcement on said Concordat the next day, rioting broke out afresh at the news that, as a popular anti-Bavarian pamphlet put it at the time:
a secret council of foul & Most Ignoble heretics has Taken controll of Greek government and perverted It to Frankish ends. His Majesty was again dismayed by the rioting, but as a loyal Catholic refused to take action against the Concordat.
In the spring, King Othon decided to hold a grand military parade in the streets of Athens. Pointedly leaving the imported Bavarian regiments out of the parade, the King himself rode at the head of the procession. While his regents and advisors had been worried about the risk of assassination; Othon pointedly informed that that it was
their mistakes which had lead to popular discontent and if the people hated that that much then he would gladly take the bullet.
Luckily, it never came to that. The parade was a resounding success and the King was never before so popular. In fact, King Othon felt so secure in his power that later that year in June, the King dismissed his Regency Council and restructured it into merely an advisory Privy Council. While some Greeks became unhappy that the King still retained the Bavarians as advisors at all; the majority was still extremely pleased and Othon's popularity skyrocketed.
By late 1836 the Kingdom of Greece had risen in the eyes of the world. Counted amongst the 'secondary powers' of the world and possessing a highly trained and organised army; King Othon had now come into his own. Sensing a rising wave of frustrated jingoism in the streets of Corinth and Athens the roving eye of the Crown settled on the ancient island of Crete.
Greek since ancient times; the island was first the centre of the ancient Minoan culture before falling successively to the Mycenaean Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Byzantines again, the Venetians, and then finally to the Ottomans. Under Ottoman rule the majority-Greek population of the island was heavily oppressed by the small Turkish minority that had settled in the southern part of the island; which continued after Crete -placed under Egyptian authority as part of that province- drifted into
de facto and vaguely
de jure independence under the Khedivate. By 1836 Egypt was weakened and uncivilised, preyed upon by Ottomans forced to the indignity of having to 'liberate' through force of arms provinces that never officially left their control. It was time to strike; and in October a general liberation of the island was declared. Britain, always the steadfast guardian, joined in the liberation eagerly whilst the Catholic alliance that had caused so much trouble just vanished into the air.
While the Royal Navy pinned down the Egyptians in the Bay of Alexandria, the Greeks moved quickly to establish a beachhead on Crete. First landing in Heraklion, the First Army had met little organised resistance beyond a handful of Turkish stone throwers and reinforcements from the mainland were later able to beach and proceed to besiege Chania.
By February of 1837, the First Army had finished the tiresome business of besieging Heraklion and the High Command in Navplion formally released a statement that the southern half of the island had been liberated from Ottoman oppression. This caused much jubilation in the streets of Athens and, indeed in the streets of Heraklion; where the Greek majority fully embraced the long-awaited
enosis (union) with Greece. Soon would be Cyprus, Thrace, Macedonia, and all the rest but for now Othon was content with merely southern Crete.
As it turns out, while Greek troops had been doing all the hard work on the ground and the British were sitting peacefully (with no knowledge of any naval engagements having reached the FO) in the azure Bay of Alexandria, the big men in London and in Cairo were busy hammering out provisional peace agreements, armistices, etc. and on the 15th of October 1837, nearly a year to the week after the war was declared, Viscount Palmerston of the United Kingdom announced that the Egyptians had agreed to 'cede in perpetuity the isle of Crete and all those territories collectively known as "the Egyptian Aegean Islands" to the Kingdom of Greece.'
Othon was hailed as a hero. While the war had been an audacious move that threatened to shake the precarious balance between the Great Powers within Greece that nearly governed the nation, in the end it had been a gamble that payed off. Crete was in Greek hands after centuries of foreign oppression and domination, the blood-lust that was a habitual characteristic of the Greek people was temporarily sated, and the ageing Ottomans could rest easy that Greece wasn't eyeing them in flagrant violation of the international
status quo that was central to the founding of the Kingdom. But Othon was restless and soon set his sights on Tunis, and bringing her back into the Greek fold that she had not seen since Justinian Magnus.
In late December, an ambassador arrived. An Italian ambassador. A Catholic, Italian ambassador.
Hoo boy. Upon receiving word of his arrival in Navplion, King Othon immediately overrode the orders of the Privy Council for him to be conveyed in all comfort to Athens and instead had him immediate whisked to the Royal Palace in the dead of night with the utmost secrecy, threatening to execute anyone who told the press on charges of High Treason.
He did not want another Concordant incident.
Needless to say, this severely irritated the Sicilian ambassador, a Signor Giampiero Silvano. Several court officials noted verbatim his fiery rants and raves in Italian on the proper way to conduct diplomacy, the treatment of an ambassador, etc. but he was soon pacified by a visit from the Archbishop of Athens promising an audience with the Holy Father. Visions of the Vatican dancing in his head, Giampiero soon affixed his signature to the secret Treaty of Corinth; which secured an alliance between Greece and one of the most powerful nations in the Mediterranean. Things were looking good for King Othon.
Until the Foreign Office goofed and papers pertaining to the ancient Greek claim on Tunis and what, precisely, could be done about restoring those claims was stumbled upon by a janitor. Contrary to popular belief, janitors are no fools and the Athens Herald offices are less than a block away from the FO.
Theodoros Agapios, former janitor for the Foreign Office, was soon a suspiciously wealthy man and the Foreign Secretary, Marcus Evangelos, was soon in a bit of a bind. While the announcement of Greece;s nefarious jingoistic schemes played mostly into the hands of Ottoman press-monkeys Greek standing in the world did indeed suffer a decline as a few nations began to look upon her as a warmonger. Evangelos lost his job, but not his pension. King Othon of the Greeks is generous indeed.
The paperwork is signed...
And so it begins.
As they did in the Liberation of Krete, the Greek Army moved swiftly to pounce upon the foe. Within a little less than a month the Hellenic Navy had thrown up a blockade of three of Tunis' four ports, including her capital city, and the First Army was beaching in the ancient city of Gabes. A city with important Hellenic associations -manufactured or otherwise- is was both a symbolic point of first attack for the Greeks as well as tactical; being the farthest coastal point from Tunis wherein the Army of the Bey of Tunis sat.
Although the Greek forces could undoubtedly hold their own against the barbaric Tunisian forces, they were still outnumbered by almost half-again their own force and the HQ in Navplion did not want to play a numbers game with the lives of their men. As their orders stood, the First was to secure Gabes to be used as a landing point for reinforcements and act as a base of operations within the country.
On the way back to Krete to fetch reinforcements, the Hellenic Navy was caught in a bold trap. The entire Tunisian fleet was marshaled to put an end to the Greek threat. The fighting was vicious; but in the end the Greeks triumphed through sheer weight of numbers. Although a major threat to the Greek war effort was now resting at the bottom of the Straits of Messina, Navplion was shaken. What else would come?
Only weeks later, the First Army faced it's first major test. Out of the alleys and shadows of Gabes came a massive armed rebellion of thousands; advancing in waves upon the small garrison in the city. The Tunisians were doomed from the start; being outnumbered and having inferior weaponry. Firing from the battlements of the old-fashioned garrison, the First eventually manged to slaughter the revolters without a single casualty.
The victory was merely acknowledged as a minor tactical point in Navplion whilst touching off jubilant celebrations in Athens. The Greeks are a bloodthirsty people and the lack of glory and fight in the Liberation of Krete was painful to the people. This bloody massacre, this victory in the name of Constantine and Leonidas, was just what the doctor ordered.
The 'liberation' of Gabes was not at all like that of Heraklion. By the time that Gabes had been subjugated to the extent that Navplion felt comfortable enough to declared the city's liberation into the Greek patrimony. As such, Greek troops were able to walk the streets of the city assaulted by nothing but the shuttered, hate-filled, looks of the Tunisians that had been brought back into the fold.
Now that Gabes could be used as the strongpoint for Greek reinforcements and a base for a push north and east, the invasion would really pick up. As soon as Cretan reinforcements arrived, the second phase of the invasion 'Operation Basil' would take effect and reinforcements would be landed in Bizerte, northern Tunis, to crush the Army of the Bey before linking up with the main forces in Gafsa...
Or not. In a move that sparked furious repercussions, Count Josef Ludwig von Armansperg, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Greece and Chair of the Privy Council announced in March that he had secretly signed a ceasefire and armistice with the Ottoman Empire -which had recently entered the war, much to the galvanisation of the citizenry but consternation of the Privy Council- and that Greece would be withdrawing unconditionally from Tunisian soil. However, it was later revealed that the armistice was signed without the express consent of King Othon.
The consequences were immediate. The Greek people were enraged as the chance to seize their ancient territories without the spectre of British disapproval was stolen from their fingers by the
Bavarokratia that they so despised and they wanted answers and they wanted them now. Othon gave it to them. With a single signature he dismissed the entire Privy Council and politely requested that it's members leave Greece. They swiftly did so and were replaced by a council of leading Greek natives. The loss of Greek prestige was devastating, but the Kingdom would soldier on...
In late September, two years after the 'Shameful Peace' of 1839, a bedraggled Greek explorer named Filippos Panos managed to weasel his way into the Royal Palace and secure an interview with His Majesty King Othon. His tales were of Asia, and a golden El-Dorado known as the Sultanate of Johore. He told of a land overflowing with gold mines and tropical delights with enough pure ore to singe-handedly save the struggling Greek economy.
The tale was -of course- calculated to strike at King Othon's sweet spot: Money. A scion of the outrageously wealthy Kingdom of Bavaria, the illness of the Greek economy deeply wounded his personal pride and caused a host of other problems beside. Since jettisoning his Bavarian overlords and fully adopting his new country as his own Othon was fabulously popular with his subject; and yet was acutely conscious of how quickly that could go down the drain if his subjects found themselves starving, unemployed, and destitute. Needless to say, King Othon promptly ordered that the FO begin justifying a potential war.
Voule ton Ellinon! In November, in order to boost his somewhat flagging popularity, King Othon relinquished his absolute power in favour of a constitutional monarchy under a provisional constitution that had been formulated by the Privy Council with the consultation of some leading Greek capitalists and politicians.
In a grand ceremony on the steps of the Parthenon, Othon rose from a throne at the top of the steps to descend into a lower throne while the Patriarch lowered a copy of the constitution onto the higher throne and bestowed a crown upon it; before crowning Othon with a simple coronet. The crowds ate it up and shouted "Basileus, Basileus!" at the tops of their lungs. In a scene reminiscent of Lupercalia and Julius Caesar; the Patriarch announced in a loud voice that to Othon that he would crown him of Basileus of a new Byzantine Empire. Othon firmly declined; to ecstatic cheering.
Left out the papers again? Somebody's getting fired...
On New Year's Eve, 1841 a sensational story hit the news: a Greek traveler in Johore was slaughtered and cannibalised; but not before being forced to tell everything about his homeland in order for the Sultan of Johore to prepare an invasion force; which was currently assembling.
It was like a nuclear explosion to the hundreds of thousands of drunken Greeks (not that they would have known that) who swiftly turned to rioting in their anger. Eventually gendarmes had to be called in to suppress the rioting, but by the time that the glorious new year dawned ripe with possibilities; the Greek public stood firmly behind the government in any prospective action against Johore. It was going to be an exciting 1842...
