YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

CHRISTIAN GREECE

It has always been one of the avowed objects of
the Scottish Review to endeavour by occasional
Articles by Foreigners or from Foreign sources to
afford its readers a knowledge and appreciation of
Foreign views upon Historical, Social, and Political,
as well as Literary Questions. The Translator
was therefore happy to contribute to its pages in
April 1886, with the permission of the Author, an
English version of his Lecture upon ' The Greek
Question,' delivered in French at the Cercle St.
Simon in the year 1885, and afterwards printed in
the Publications du Cercle St. Simon, No. 3.
This was followed in October 1886, and January
and April 1887, by translations of his Lectures
vepi BvfrvTivQv, originally delivered at Marseilles, and
published in London in 1874 ; in April 1889
by one of his Article in the Nouvelle Revue,
January 1, 1884, on 'Greece before 1821'; and
in July and October of the same year of his two
Articles upon 'The Formation of the Modern
Greek State' and 'The Territory of the Greek
Kingdom,' which had appeared in the Revue
"d'Histoire Diplomatique in 1887. These Seven
Essays are now reprinted in one volume in the
order required by the chronology of the subjects.

CONTENTS.

The Byzantine Empire, - 1
Byzantinism and Hellenism, ... - 43
The Subjects of the Byzantine Empire, - 85
Greece Before 1821, - 125
The Formation of the Modern Greek State, 173
The Territory of the Greek Kingdom, - 213
The Greek Question, - 245
Index, --------293

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.

My present object is to give as clear an idea as I
can of what I believe the Byzantine Empire really
to have been. I have certainly no intention of
attempting to compress into a few pages the
abounding history of that Greek and Christian
State which withstood all shocks for more than a
millennium, or of entering deeply into all the
important phases which it underwent. I propose
only to call attention to some general conclusions
to which a study of the history of Christian Con
stantinople leads, and to discuss how far the real
facts justify the low esteem in which that autocracy
is now so commonly held.
As a matter of fact, what impression does the
very name of the Byzantine Empire usually convey?
How have we been taught to picture to ourselves
the historical reality which it indicates ? There is
no use denying that in the popular imagination the
Byzantine Empire appears as a political monstrosity,
in which one incapable Emperor succeeded another,
each putting out the eyes of his predecessor, and
which was remarkable for the absence at once of
courage and of military capacity, except on the part
of the foreign mercenaries who were alternately the

2 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
venal tools and the exacting taskmasters of a
detestable Government — a polity in which the
union of Church and State formed a grotesque hy
brid, utterly destitute of real religious feeling, but
where every one was incessantly occupied with
childish theological disputes — a State in which the
spectacle of a people and a nation was replaced by
that of eunuchs governing slaves — a society where
the learned, when not exchanging personal vitu
peration in the course of religious controversy,
occupied themselves in composing poems in the
form of an egg or of a swallow — a world, in short,
which consisted in civilization run to seed. In a
word, the Byzantine Empire is regarded as fully
deserving the contemptuous appellation of the
Loiver Empire, by which Western Europe has
learned to designate it.
But is this what the Byzantine Empire really
was % Surely, the fact that it lasted for a con
siderably longer space of time than that during
which the kingdom of England has as yet even
nominally endured, is in itself enough to prove the
contrary. This duration cannot be attributed either
to security purchased by inaction or to immunity
from causes of dissolution and ruin. On the
contrary, the history of the Byzantine Empire is
an history of unceasing and unwearied activity.
Without, from the hour of her foundation to that
in which her sun finally sank in blood, Christian
Constantinople was engaged in constant struggles
against successive hordes of barbarians. She did
not always triumph in the strife, but, even when

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 3
she was beaten, she did not succumb, but carried
on the contest still ; and the fact that she was able
to do so is alone a sufficing proof of the strength
and vitality of her organization. Within, she had
to fight heresy after heresy, but succeeded never
theless in raising the edifice of the Church upon
solid and enduring foundations ; and at the same
time, by preserving and completing the Roman
legislation, she established the principles of Juris
prudence recognised to-day throughout so large a
portion of the civilized world. And yet, all the
while that the New Borne was thus engaged upon
the double work of ecclesiastical and legal construc
tion, her lettered society was careful to keep alive
the lamp of antient culture ; it is true that Byzan
tine literature could not rival the productions of
earlier ages, but it preserved none the less the
tradition of the intellectual splendour of Greece.
Nor can the Imperial Government be accused of
neglecting material interests. Even if we did not
possess historical proofs of the supremacy of the
Greek world, throughout the whole of the Middle
Ages, in those things which make the well-being of
a State, it would be enough to look at the ruins of
public works which still survive the deluge of
savagery, to assure us that the subjects of the
Empire had no ground for casting on their rulers
the reproaches in which Western European writers
are so persistent.
No one, indeed, will Be prepared to put forward
Byzantine society as presenting an ideal type of
civilization or political morality. That society had,

4 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
no doubt, its features of vice and of shame. Like
every other social body, either antient or modern,
it bore within itself the elements of decay and dis
solution. It had its times of decadence. But it
had also its epochs of greatness ; and, in the full
tide of its prosperity, it possessed the most perfect
political organization known in its day. Its
existence guaranteed the preservation of the most
precious interests of real civilization. And this
remark is true, of every moment of its long
existence. The Byzantine Empire was predestinated to per
form in especial one great work in human history.
That work was to preserve civilization during the
period of barbarism which we call the Middle Ages.
For the discharge of that task no abundant origin
ality was needful. The mission of Christian
Constantinople was not to create but to save ; and
that mission she fulfilled for the benefit of the
Europe of the future. It is not just on the part of.
the modern world which has thus profited, to refuse
to its Benefactress the tribute of its gratitude ; and
still less so, when it caricatures history in order to
lessen the apparent burden of its indebtedness.

When Constantine the Great, in realization of
the project conceived by Diocletian, transported
the seat of Empire to the shores of the Bosphoros,
and there established a new capital which derived
new life from a new religion, he hoped to render
the government stronger and the dynasty more

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 5
secure by removing both from the revolutionary
atmosphere of legions and camps. This end was
attained even more perfectly than Constantine can
well have foreseen. While the Empire still
remained for nearly a century one and undivided,
under himself and his successors, the Western half
already began to show symptoms of approaching
dissolution. But when, after the death of Theo-
dosius the Great in 395, the Imperial power was
definitely partitioned between his sons Arcadius
and Honorius, it forthwith became evident that the
two moieties of the Roman world were reserved,
both by nature and by fortune, for destinies entirely
different. Old Rome was dying. New Rome, on
the contrary, the New Rome which was both
Christianized and Hellenized, had before her a long
vista of life and energy. For eighty years after
the accession of Honorius, the Western Empire fell
rapidly, and in 476, the deposition of Romulus
Augustus, his eleventh successor, brought the line
of the Emperors of Old Rome to a tame and obscure
conclusion, when the unity of the Empire was
again nominally restored in favour of Zeno, who,
two years before, had ascended the throne of
Constantinople. During more than a millenium, from the accession
of Arcadius in 395 till the heroic death of Constan
tine XIII. in 1453, the Eastern Empire was
governed by a succession of eighty-one lawful
Emperors. The larger number counted by his
torians, (and which indeed owes a good deal to
numismatology), is obtained by reckoning Princes

6 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
such as Constantine XII., who were merely pro
claimed Augusti, or Pretenders like Constantine
VIII, whose ephemeral success does not justify
their enumeration among the real Monarchs, with
whom alone it is needful to concern ourselves in
such a sketch as the present. Of the eighty-one
autocrats who actually reigned seventy-three can
be assigned to one or other of ten dynasties, or, to
speak more correctly, groups, the members of each
of which respectively, if they did not always succeed
one another from father to son, were at least
mutually connected by some such tie as marriage,
adoption, or tutorship. In other words, each of
these dynasties is a group of persons who succeeded
one another upon the throne either by right of
blood, or of the Imperial will, and by the consent
of the regnant family, of which they were thus
the representatives and, in a sense, the members
and continuators.
Thus the house of Arcadius embraced four
Sovereigns, and lasted till 457, when the dynasty
closed with the death of Marcian, the widower and
successor of his daughter St. Pulcheria. The line
of Leo I., (surnamed the Thracian, and the Great)
similarly came to an end in 518 on the decease of
his third successor Anastasius I. (Dikoros*"), who
had espoused Ariadne, widow of Zeno, his son-in-
law. The third dynasty was that founded in
Justin I., and lasted through five reigns and eighty-
four years, ending in 602 by the murder of Maurice,
* So called from his eyes being of different colours. (Tr.)

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 7
son-in-law of Tiberius II. , who had been associated
in the Empire by Justin II. When the crimes of
Phokas, the murderer of Maurice, had at last worn
out the patience of the Byzantine world, he was in
his turn deposed and slain in 610, by Heraclius, the
founder of a fourth dynasty, whioh numbered six
princes and lasted a century, including the ten years
duringwhich the reign of Justinian II. (Rinotmetos*)
was interrupted by those of Leontius II. and Tiberius
III. (Apsimaros). After the execution of the
tyrant Justinian in 711, the throne was occupied
in succession during a space of little more than four
years by Philippicus (Bardanes), Anastasius II.,
and Theodosius III., before the abdication of the
last made room for Leo III. (the Isaurian). The
family of Leo reigned till 802, when the Athenian
Empress Irene, the fifth monarch of his line, the
widow of his grandson, Leo IV. (the Khazart) and
one of the most remarkable women in European
history, was dethroned and banished to Lesbos.
The sixth dynasty, founded by Nikephoros I.,
lasted only eleven years, and in 813, Michael I.
(Rhangabes) his son-in-law, and the third Prince of
the House, was deposed and retired into a monas
tery. The career of the successful usurper Leo V.
(the Armenian) was short. He was assassinated in
Church on Christmas Eve, 820, and the seventh
dynasty was founded by Michael II. (the Stam-

* On account of his nose having been cut off by order of Leontius
in 695. (Tr.)
f His mother was a daughter of the Khan of the Khazars. (Tr.)

8 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
merer). He was followed by his son, his daughter-
in-law, and his grandson, but the latter, Michael
III. (the Drunkard), was murdered in 867. Basil
I. (the Macedonian), who had been Michael's chief
chamberlain, had repudiated his own wife to marry
the Emperor's mistress, in exchange for whom he
had given up to him his own sister, and had
finally planned his assassination, immediately took
possession of his throne. From the accession of this
monarch, one of the most extraordinary characters
in history, the Imperial dignity became really here
ditary. Seventeen Macedonian Emperors succeeded
one another till Michael VI. (the Warlike), who
had been selected as her successor by the Empress
Theodora, was defeated by Isaac I. (Komnenos) in
1057, and thereupon abdicated and retired into a
monastery. Three different branches of the
Komnenoi then successively held the Imperial title
for a series of eighteen reigns. The last of these
branches was that of the Angeloi. Isaac II.
(Angelos), was deposed and blinded in 1203 by his
brother Alexis III., but restored by and with his
son, Alexis IV. In the January of the succeeding
year, Alexis V. (Doukas, surnamed Mourtzouphlos*")
a son-in-law of Alexis III., put Alexis IV. to death,
and Isaac II. died of grief. Constantinople was
stormed by the Crusaders in the ensuing April, and
Alexis V., having been taken prisoner, was carried
thither from the Peloponnesos, and executed in the
same year by being thrown from the top of the
* On account of the close junction of his shaggy eyebrows. (Tr. )

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 9
column of Theodosius. Hereupon the Crusaders
established their own Latin dynasty, and the throne
of New Rome was accordingly filled by a ricketty
series of six Western Emperors, of whom indeed
the third, Peter, died in prison in Epiros without
ever reaching his capital. This Latin succession
passed in the female line from the House of Flanders
to that of Courtenay (of the same family as the
present Earls of Devon,) and included John of
Brienne, guardian and father-in-law of the last of
the dynasty, Baldwin II. In the meanwhile, the
Greek Imperial family had retired to Nice, where
Theodore I. (Laskaris) was crowned Emperor. He
and his son and grandson, John III. (Batatzes), and
Theodore II., were the terror and scourge of the
Latin intruders. At last, in 1258, on the accession
of John IV., the youthful great-grand- son of Theo
dore I., his guardian, Michael VIII. (Palaiologos)
was associated with him in the Empire, and in 1261,
they reconquered Constantinople ; Baldwin fled ;
and Michael inhumanly deposed, blinded and exiled
his defenceless colleague. The dynasty of the
Palaiologoi is the tenth and last of those which
reigned over the Eastern Empire. It consisted of
a series of eight Princes, including John VI.
(Kantakouzenos), associated for a time with John V.
Finally, on May 29, 1453, Constantinople was
taken by the Turkish Sultan Mahomet II., and the
Roman Empire ended. The Emperor Constantine
XIII. was killed fighting at the gates, and by his
heroic death placed a last crown, a crown of
imperishable glory, upon the autocracy which had

10 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
derived its origin from Julius and Octavian. ' The
body,' says Gibbon, ' under an heap of slain, was
discovered by the golden eagles embroidered on his
shoes.' The Imperial bird had never taken a nobler
flight than was his last.
It will be seen by this summary that the course
of the ten Byzantine dynasties was only broken by
seven isolated Princes, whose combined reigns
amount to a period of about thirty years. At the
same time, it must be admitted that the Monarchs
who constituted the ten dynasties themselves did
not too often reign in peace, and that the trans
mission of the crown from one head to another
among them was frequently effected by crime and
violent revolution. Of the seventy-six Emperors*
and five Empresses who occupied the Byzantine
throne 15 were put to death, t
7 were blinded or otherwise mutilated,
4 were deposed and imprisoned in monasteries,
and
10 were compelled to abdicate.
This list, comprising nearly half of the whole
number, is a sufficient indication of the horrors by
which the history of the Empire is only too often
marked, and it may be frankly admitted that these
dark stains, disfiguring pages which but for them
would be bright with the things which were
» Not counting the Latin Emperors, of whom two died in prison.
t Without counting Nikephoros I., who was taken prisoner and
murdered by the Bulgars, nor Constantine XIII., killed by the
Turks.

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 11
beautiful and glorious, go some w7ay to excuse, if
not to justify, the obloquy which Western writers
have been so prone to cast upon the East. But it
is not by considering the evil only, any more than
the good only, that it is possible to form a just
judgment upon an historic epoch. To judge the
Byzantine Empire only by the crimes which defiled
the Palace would be as unjust as if the French
people were to be estimated by nothing but the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Reign of Terror,
and the Commune of 1871.
The dynastic crimes and revolutions of New
Rome were not a constant feature in her history.
On the contrary, the times of trouble and anarchy
were episodes between long periods of peace. They
arose either from quarrels in the Imperial family
itself, which degraded the dignity of the Crown, or
from the contentions of Pretenders struggling
among themselves till one or other had worsted his
rivals and was able to become the founder of a long
dynasty. Thus, two centuries elapsed from the
time of Arcadius before Phokas, as the murderer of
his predecessor, was in his own turn put to death
by Heraclius. Heraclius himself died upon the
throne, but his reign was followed by a series of
tragedies. In the century succeeding his death,
five Emperors were murdered or executed, and six
deposed, of whom four were blinded or otherwise
mutilated. The strong dynasty of the Isaurians
then assumed the Crown, but in little more than
half a century the Empress Irene, when she
deposed her own son Constantine VI., and put out

12 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
his eyes, began a new series of crimes which con
tinued with little interruption till the murder of
Michael the Drunkard, eighty years later. His
assassin, however, Basil the Macedonian, was the
founder of a dynasty which reigned for nearly two
centuries. The most deplorable epoch in the history of the
Byzantine Empire, the period in which assassina
tion and mutilation most abounded, was that in
which it was exposed to the influence of the
Crusaders, and thus brought into contact with
Western Europe. In the twenty years be
tween 1183 and 1204, six Emperors occupied the
tottering throne of the East ; all of them were
deposed, two of them were blinded, and all were
put to death except Isaac II., who anticipated the
executioner by dying in prison. I do not point out
the coincidence of circumstances in order to throw
upon the Franks the whole responsibility for this
series of tragedies. But I cannot help remarking
that the continual and uninterrupted contact of the
Empire with the barbaric elements by which it was
surrounded, from the beginning to the end of its
existence, supplies an explanation though not a
justification of these lamentable incidents in its
history. The Byzantine people, although in every
respect the superiors of their contemporaries, were
unable entirely to escape the influence of their
neighbourhood. As the guardians of classical
civilization, they strove to keep above the deluge
of barbarism by which the rest of the world was
then inundated. But it was a flood whose waters

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 13
prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and some
times all the high hills were covered, even where
might have rested the ark in which the traditions
of antient culture were being preserved.
Modern writers are not unfrequently given to
accusing the Byzantine Empire of cruelty. They
seem to forget that the contemporary manners and
jurisprudence of Western Europe were marked by
a ferocity which nothing in Byzantine despotism
ever approached. To listen to these gentlemen,
one would imagine that the legislation of their own
countries, both while the Eastern Empire endured
and long afterwards, was a model of humanity and
sweet reasonableness. It needs no research to find
examples to the contrary, nor would there be room
to recount them, but a few specimens float through
my mind at once. Take for instance the executions
of Dolcino in Italy, of Hugh le Despenser (the
younger) in England, of the murderers of James
I. in Scotland, and the whole history of the
processes against the Templars or the lepers in
France. Long after the Byzantine Empire fell,
the peculiar English sentence for High Treason was
fully carried out until within the last century, and
has been pronounced in Ireland within my memory.
Similarly, I might point to the legislation of Eng
land with regard to religion ; and especially to its
application during the sixteenth century. The
executions of the family of the last Inca of Peru by
the Spanish Government, or of Damiens by the
French, are little more than a century old, and I
need not go on to cite even later instances, the

14 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
noyades of Nantes, for example. That much that
went on in the Empire justifies the charge of
cruelty, I admit. But I ask Western writers to
consider how the histories of their own countries
will show by comparison, before they cast the first
stone at Constantinople.
Putting aside such matters, and returning to the
main question, the history of the Greek Emperors,
taken as an whole, leaves no doubt that the end
which Diocletian and Constantine sought to attain
by transferring the capital seat of the Roman Empire,
was more than realized. That history shows also
the instinctive tendency of the Byzantine people
to be ruled by sovereigns reigning through lawful
hereditary succession, a tendency which becomes
especially apparent during the last six centuries of
the Empire's protracted existence. This Legitimist
sentiment, so marked in the New Rome, was cer
tainly not derived from the Old. On the contrary,
the absence, in the Old Rome, of any constitution
strong enough to secure the regular succession to
the Crown, was one of the very things which con
tributed to paralyze her and to hasten her fall. At
Constantinople, on the contrary, there was from the
very beginning an effort to correct this evil, and
an effort which was continued until the principle of
legitimate hereditary right was established.* It
would be difficult to say whether the sentiment in
favour of Monarchy which grew continually stronger
in the East was the effect or the cause of the peculiar
* See Rambaud, L'Empire Grec au dixieme siScle, p. 23.

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 15
State ceremonial, half Asiatic, half Roman, which
was so distinctive a feature of the Byzantine Court.
The Emperor Constantine VII. (Porphyrogennetos*)
and George Kodinos, the Kuropalates, have left us
elaborate works upon this subject. It is one which
is sometimes treated with a smile of contempt. If,
however, we consider how in England the scrupulous
retention of certain old-world official customs and
costumes, which are often absolutely ridiculous in
the eyes of foreigners, is accompanied by the most
perfect exercise of liberty, both political and
personal, we shall probably pause before ascribing
to the antique formalities of the Byzantine Court
the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, t More
over, if we are to judge the Byzantine Court by its
fruits, we shall not see in it the habitual abode of
frivolity and effeminacy. I am certainly not going
to make myself the advocate of the herd of eunuchs
whose presence dishonoured the Imperial Palaces,
nor seek for a moment to justify the crimes which
were committed within their walls. But neither,
on the other hand, will I forget that manly virtue
was never long lacking to the Byzantine throne,
and that the greater number of the Sovereigns who
occupied it showed themselves not unworthy of
* Constantines VI. and VII. were so-called because born (a.d. 771,
905) in an apartment of the Imperial Palace panelled with porphyry,
which was specially destined for the use of the Empresses upon
these occasions. (Tr.)
t That learned and at the same time attractive wor^KwcorapTH'oii-
jtoXis, by the k. Skarlatos D. Byzantios, contains (vol. III., chap. 10)
a very able picture of Byzantine manners. See also Paparregopoulos,
v. 26 et seq.

16 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
their exalted station, and were no dishonour either
to the pages of their country's history or to the
people whose life they represented. I shall not go
through the list name by name. I shall only cite,
in support of my contention, one or two in a century ;
but I venture to think that they are names which
are in themselves enough to cover every period of
the Byzantine history with honour.
Thus, in the sixth century, reigned for forty
years Justinian I. As a conqueror, he restored to
the Roman arms their ancient lustre ; as a
sovereign, he adorned by his great buildings not
only his capital, but cities planted in his remotest
provinces ; * as a legislator, he took that place in
the history of Jurisprudence which he still holds
to-day. The seventh century is filled by the great
name of Heraclius, who, in his victorious wars
against the Persians, resumed and continued the
work of Alexander the Great. His great-grandson,
Constantine IV. (the Bearded) was faithful to the
glorious traditions of his progenitor, and by his
brave resistance to the repeated expeditions of the
Arabs against Constantinople, stemmed the tide of
Mohammedan conquest, and earned the title of
Deliverer of Europe, t In the eighth century, Leo
III. the Saviour of Constantinople and Reformer
of the Empire, \ founded the new dynasty of the
* On this point, especially consult Prokopios, Tlepl ktu7ij.6,toiv.
f See Paparregopoulos, III. , 322-340.
X By Finlay, Leo III. is regarded as the true founder of the
Byzantine Empire, so far as this portion of the Roman Empire may
be so distinguished from its earlier phase. (Tr.)

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 17
Isaurians, and gave a new impulse to the Byzantine
world. The efforts made by Leo and his son
Constantine V. (Kopronymos*) to remodel the
State failed, and the enemies of their Reform have
sought to darken their fame by destroying the
contemporary records, but their forms loom none
the smaller amid the obscurity which overshadows
the history of their epoch. In the ninth century,
Basil I. (the Macedonian), the founder of the
dynasty which bears his name, crowned the work
of Justinian I. by his final codification of Roman
Law, and exalted the power of the Empire, which
enjoyed, under himself and his successors, a
lengthened period of greatness and prosperity. In
the tenth century, the need of self-defence against
the Mohammedans and the Bulgars called to the
throne such men as were Nikephoros II. (Phokas),
John I. (Tzimiskes), and Basil II. (the Bulgar-
slayer). In the twelfth century, three successive
monarchs of the House of the Komnenoi, Alexis I.
(Komnenos), his son, John II. (the Goodf) and his

* However revolting may have been the vices and crimes of this
Prince, nothing but disgust and contempt can be felt for the
inventors and propagators of this filthy nickname, founded on an
accident said to have occurred when he was in the baptismal font.
However, a world which has learnt to execrate his memory, has since
applied it to him so habitually that his name is almost never heard
and would rarely be understood, without it. (Tr.)
t Kalo-Joannes. The adjective has sometimes been translated
'the Handsome' and the origin of the surname disputed. He was
personally very ill-favoured, in striking contrast to the rest of the
Komnenian race ; from which it would seem that if intended
physically the nickname was a sarcasm. It is, however, generally
2

18 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
grandson, the heroic Manuel I. (Komnenos), in the
midst of every species of plot and distraction, saved
the dignity of the throne and preserved the safety
of the State. In the thirteenth century, Theodore
I. (Laskaris), and John III. (Batatzes) rallied the
national forces in the midst of calamities, and cast
lustre upon the weakened majesty of the Imperial
Crown, till the day when Michael VIII. (Palaio-
logos) by the re-conquest of Constantinople, opened
the way to a new period in the history of the
Eastern Empire.
These are not the only Emperors who have left
upon the pages of history names which time will
never obliterate. If ignorance and spite have long
combined to cast obscurity over their renown, the
impartiality of more modern writers is at length be
ginning to do justice to their memory.
Nor is it only to the throne that we must look in
order to find the great names of Byzantine history.
Through the whole course of the Empire's existence,
there were never lacking eminent subjects who do
honour to mankind, and have preserved the best
traditions of the classical ages. In every period
there arose illustrious soldiers, able statesmen, good
and saintly ecclesiastics, and, last but not least,
men of learning to whom the Hellenic nation owes
at least the almost unique advantage of possessing

interpreted of the noble qualities of his mind and heart, and the
word {ko\6s) which is already applied to moral excellence by classical
writers, has continued to the present day to be used more and more
exclusively in that sense. (Tr.)

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 19
in its own language, its own annals, for an un
broken stretch of more than twenty centuries.*

Let us now consider what was the incessant
succession of enemies, who never left the Byzantine
Government a moment of respite from attack. By
looking at them we shall be better able to form a
fair judgment as to what must have been the
strength and vitality of the Empire itself, and what
the extent of the services which by its unflinching
and unflagging war of defence it rendered to Europe,
or, to speak more truly, to the cause of civilized
humanity. The first adversaries against whom Byzantium
had to contend were the Goths. About eighty
years before the foundation of Constantinople, these
savages crossed the Dniester and the Danube, and
ravaged far and wide. After a variety of successes
and defeats, they occupied Dacia. Constantine the
Great brought them into subjection, and they
remained loyal to his lineal heirs, but when these
came to an end, they rebelled, and were again sub
dued, after a long struggle, by Theodosius the
Great. After his death they recommenced their
invasions, and over-ran and devastated Greece under
Alaric. At length, however, they were checked by

* Space does not permit me here to enlarge further upon the
foregoing topics. I must be allowed to refer the reader once more
to that great national work, the 'laropla. tcv "EWtjvikov "eOvovs, of the k.
Paparregopoulos. There it will be seen how the Empire when in
need never failed to produce a man equal to her wants.

20 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
the Imperial armies, and determined to cross into
Italy. The East was thus delivered from this
plague. It is out of place here to follow their
career of adventure across Western Europe. It is
enough to remark that if they had taken root and
founded States in the East, as they did in Italy,
Gaul, and Spain, — if the Byzantine world had been
engulfed beneath the flood of their immigration, —
the history of the human race would have been a
different one to that which it has been. If the East
had been barbarized by the Goths as was the West,
and the Eastern Empire had been destroyed, from
what materials would the European Renaissance
have sprung 1
About a century and an half after Alaric,
Belisarius and Narses, the Generals of Justinian,
crushed the Gothic power in Italy, and destroyed
the Vandals in Africa. These military triumphs
were a powerful aid to the regeneration of social life
and order in the former country, by promising them
protection ; in the North, however, the Byzantine
supremacy was not long-lived ; in the Central pro
vinces it disappeared towards the close of the eighth
century, at the time of the Iconoclastic persecution ;
but in the South it lasted on into the eleventh cen
tury, when the definitive rupture between the
Eastern and Western Churches was a cause not less
powerful than the Norman conquests in effecting
the complete severance of Italy from Greece. It
must, nevertheless, be owned that the obstinate
adherence of the New Rome to the traditions of the
Old, and the consequent interference of the Byzan-

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE, 21
tine world in affairs purely Italian, was one of the
main causes which accelerated the decline and fall
of the Empire. On the other hand, the civilizing
influence exercised by the representatives of the
Imperial power, the Exarchs of Ravenna and the
Governors of Southern Italy, had a larger share
than is often assigned to it in gradually polishing
the rough elements and preserving culture in the
West. After the Goths, came the Huns. These hordes,
gradually advancing from Asia into Europe, made
their appearance in the fifth century, under Attila,
who, after defeating the Roman troops sent to
stem the tide of his conquests, ravaged Thrace and
Macedonia, and imposed an humiliating peace upon
the Government of Constantinople, which happened
to be represented at the moment by a child and a
woman, namely, Theodosius II. and his sister, the
Empress Pulcheria. When, however, in course of
time, the husband of the latter, the Emperor
Marcian, ascended the throne, and Attila sent to
demand the continuance of the tribute, he was met
by the stern reply, ' I have iron for Attila, but no
gold.' Whether this haughty answer, and the
unflinching firmness of Apollonius, the Imperial
Ambassador, would have been justified by the result
of war, is a question which was perhaps fortunately
not brought to an issue. Attila moved away West
ward, spreading devastation and terror around him,
till the day when Aetius broke the power of the
Huns upon the plain of Chalons-sur-Marne.
Next after the Goths and the Huns, came the

22 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
Avars. This tribe poured down from the region of
the Volga, in the sixth century. In the time of
Justin II. and his successors, they devastated the
Byzantine provinces, sometimes as avowed enemies,
sometimes under the treacherous pretence of alliance.
Priscus, the general of the Emperor Maurice, at
last subdued them, in the year 600. But, twenty-
six years later, they advanced, in alliance with the
Persians, to the very walls of Constantinople, and
plundered the suburbs. The siege, however, was in
vain ; the Avars retired, and never afterwards
played an important part in the history of the
Empire ; but the deliverance of the capital is still
commemorated by the Church in the ixse of the
'AmWurTosT/u-os, which was composed to celebrate it.
And now it is time to speak of the Slavs. The
consequences of the contact between Byzantium
and the Slav tribes were much more permanent
than those produced by the incursions of any other
barbarous nation ; in fact, they are still to be seen
at the present day. The first Slavs who attacked
the Empire were the Antai. They had seized Dacia,
but were subdued by the great Justinian. Never
theless, they and other Slav tribes continued to
move forwards till they even entered Greece itself.
From this time onwards, sometimes as allies and
sometimes as enemies, sometimes as subjects and
sometimes as prisoners, the Slavs scattered them
selves about the Empire, and at last took permanent
possession of the settlements in which they are
still to be found. From the sixth to the eighth
century, there were frequent Slav invasions of

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 23
Greece, and it is upon this fact that Fallmerayer
based his famous theory to the effect that the
Hellenes are extinct and that Hellas is now peopled
by a Slav population.
Since I have here mentioned the above celebrated
fad, I hope I may be allowed to remark parentheti
cally that I think my fellow-countrymen have given
it a great deal more notice than its importance
demands. It would really seem as if some people
thought it a kind of patriotic duty to refute the
whimsical fancy in question, and to denounce its
author, upon every possible occasion. Even suppos
ing, for the sake of argument, that Fallmerayer had
been right in asserting that Hellas was submerged
by a flood of Slav immigration, it would have been
no disgrace to the Hellenes to receive an accession
of foreign blood. On the contrary, many nations
great in modern history owe to such an admixture
the union of qualities which has raised them so
high. Whether, moreover, the Slavs overspread
Greece or not, no one who has any knowledge of
the actual phenomena could testify to anything but
that their absorption has been complete. The
entirely and exclusively Hellenic character of all
the features, physical and intellectual, presented
by the present inhabitants of the country, is a most
striking fact, almost unique in history, a glorious
mark of our race, and a wondrous proof of the
intensity of our national vitality.
But to continue the list of barbaric invaders
from the North. Since we have spoken of Slavs, it
is impossible not to speak of the Russians. The

24 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
Russians first appear upon the stage of history in
the ninth century, when the Scandinavian Rurik,
with his Warings or Varangians, took possession of
Slavia. When Rurik came Southwards to Kieff,
the Russians began their attacks upon the Empire
from the Dnieper.* Four times in two centuries
did they set sail against Constantinople, but these
attempts all failed. The first was in 864, in the
reign of Michael III. (the Drunkard) ; the second
in 907, in that of Leo VI. (the Philosopher) ; the
third and fourth in 940 and 944, in the time of
Romanus I. (Lekapenos) ; on the last occasion the
Russian Grand Prince, Igor, was scarcely able to
escape with a few of his ships. After the deposition
of Romanus, Olga, the widow of Igor, who had not
long survived his defeat, came to Constantinople,
where she was baptized in 956, and by her Christi
anity was introduced into Russia. From this time
forth, the Russians were generally friendly to the
Empire, and the ' murderous nation of godless
Russians ' as they had hitherto been termed,
are henceforth designated by the writers of
Byzantium ' the most Christian nation.' About the
year 960, the Grand Prince Vladimir, the son of
Olga, and first Christian Monarch of Russia, married
the Princess Anna Posthuma, younger daughter of
Romanus II. These relations with the Empire
gradually introduced civilization into Russia, where
the survival of Byzantine forms and traditions in
many things as well as in the Imperial device of

* Called the Danwpris by Constantine VII.

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 25
the two-headed eagle, is even now more marked
than in any other country of the present day ; her
political and religious systems are taken from
Constantinople, and so is her mission with regard
to the nations of Asia.
Along with the Slavs we must reckon the Bulgars,
although these latter appear in reality to be a
Turkish tribe, and to have nothing in common with
the Slavs except the fact that they speak (at
present) a Slavonic dialect. After gradually
subduing the Slavs, they moved forward from
the Volga to the Danube, and in 559 invaded
Thrace and menaced Constantinople : but the city
was saved by the aged Belisarius. Thenceforth,
they were a source of continual trouble to the
Empire. They seemed to have reached the zenith
of their power in 811, when they captured and
murdered the Emperor Nikephoros I., and destroyed
his army. About a century later, they besieged
Constantinople again, and for a time the Byzantine
Court was compelled to accord to their chieftain the
title of paeCKeis, which they had hitherto restricted
on principle to their own Emperor and to the ruler
of Persia, while they styled the Sovereigns of
Europe pvyas (reges) and ' '«fow«i<rT<£s, and other Princes
simply dpxovras. The results of alliance between the
reigning Houses of New Rome and of Bulgaria, the
constant intercourse with the subjects of the Empire,
and the humanizing influence of Christianity,
seemed to have mitigated the savagery of the Bul
gars, when, towards the close of the tenth century,
there broke out a war more frightful than ever.

26 THE BYRANTINE EMPIRE.
After a bloody struggle which lasted thirty years,
Basil II., hence called the Bulgar-slayer, completely
shattered their power in 1018, and Bulgaria was
made a Byzantine province. But an hundred and
seventy years later, in the time of Isaac II. (Angelos),
they rose in rebellion again, after they had acknow
ledged the religious supremacy of the Pope.
Nevertheless, while the Latin dynasty was reigning
at Constantinople, John, Krai of the Bulgars,
fought on the Greek side against the Franks. 'Such
is an epitome of the history of the Bulgars. Un
happily, they are again to be found to-day arrayed
in hostility to the Hellenic element in the
peninsula. I may, however, be forgiven for ex
pressing the hope that this hostility will not be
enduring. The causes which excited mutual ani
mosity in the Middle Ages are dead ; and there is
no reason why two nations which have suffered side
by side for so many centuries should not now stand
side by side in brotherly alliance.
The Magyars or Hungarians are another Turkish
tribe, who, after defeating and partially assimilating
the inhabitants of the countries through which they
passed, filled Europe with alarm, until their power
was destroyed by the German Emperor, Otho the
Great, in the middle of the tenth century. The
Government of Constantinople encouraged the
attacks of the Magyars upon the Slavs, but they
were dangerous allies, and, until the last days of
the Empire, never ceased to furnish auxiliaries to
its enemies as well as to itself.
Space fails me to write of the Petzenegoi, the

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 27
Komans, the Khazars, and the Ouzoi. We may as
well turn away at once from the contemplation of
that particular class of foes who came down from
the North, during six centuries, to threaten and
jeopardize the Byzantine Empire. In the end the
Empire succeeded, often by arms, at other times by
diplomacy, but most of all by the influence of
religion, commerce, and civilization, not only in
protecting itself against the dangers of these suc
cessive inroads, but in laying, amid these hostile
and barbarous tribes themselves, the foundations of
civilization and even of future greatness. Thus
these tribes, either by conquest, by submission, or
by alliance, became resolved into a number of small
States, scattered around and sometimes even within
the Empire, stretching from the Caspian to Sicily
and from the sea of Azof to Syria, but all of them
States whose progress was guided by the influence
of Constantinople.

The Oriental enemies of the Empire were of a
different sort. The Byzantine Power had not
there to deal with barbarous tribes, which might
indeed first be conquered, but could afterwards be
assimilated to the Imperial State by the influences
of civilization and Christianity. In the East, New
Rome was called to wrestle with mighty nations,
possessed of an highly organized polity and animated
by a special religious faith. Europe and Asia were
thus brought face to face in implacable contrast and
collision ; the Empire of Constantinople was the

28 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
representative of Europe, and the modern world
owes to it a lasting debt of gratitude for the long
contention by which it continued the traditions of
classical Hellas in the same regard.
The continuity of these traditions was specially
marked in the struggle of the Empire with Persia.
The Sovereigns of that country, as the successors of
Darius the son of Hystaspes, regarded the Strymon
as their proper frontier. The Emperors, on the
other hand, considered themselves the representa
tives of Alexander the Great. The collisions
between these opposing forces were terrible. Whole
armies perished. Rich and fertile provinces were
reduced to deserts. The combatants sometimes
fairly wore one another out, and, in the moment of
exhaustion, concluded some treaty which promised
a duration of peace ; but the wounds inflicted in
the last battle were hardly healed, before the war
was renewed with more carnage than ever. The
deadly conflicts of so many centuries might surely
have convinced both the Greeks and the Persians
that it was an idle task to try and alter the
boundaries assigned to each by nature. But it was
not so. Neither conqueror nor conquered was
willing to abstain from renewed strife. Vain was
the triumph of Julian (the Apostate) and equally
vain the victory of his rival, Sapor. It was in vain
that Belisarius earned in battle with the Persians
his earliest laurels. In the end they were overcome
by Heraclius, who, after a long and glorious
struggle, imposed peace upon them in 628. ' Since
the days of Scipio and Hannibal,' says Gibbon, ' no

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 29
bolder enterprise has been attempted than that
which Heraclius achieved for the deliverance of
the Empire.' The peace he forced them to accept,
they never broke, but the reason was they had
ceased to exist before they had had time to recover
strength for another fray. Four years later, in
632, while Persia was still prostrated from her
defeat by Heraclius, and farther enfeebled by
internal dissensions, she was finally conquered by
the Arabs, then in the outburst of their strength.
And from this point the Asiatic enemies of Christi
anity were no longer the Persians, but Mohamme
dans, the Arabs first, and afterwards, the Turks.
Persia had not yet been destroyed and Heraclius
was still fresh from his victory over her, when he
was confronted at Edessa by the ambassador of
Mohammed, who summoned him to embrace the
new religion. Against the prophet and his followers
he was not successful. Jerusalem was captured by
Omar, in 637. The next year Egypt fell into the
hands of Amrou, after Alexandria had sustained a
siege of fourteen months. Nine years later, the
Arabs under Abdallah conquered the remaining
countries of Roman Africa, and, in sixty years more,
under the command of Mousa, they destroyed the
kingdom of the Goths, and took possession of
Spain. From Spain they passed into France, but
the tide of their conquests in that direction was at
length arrested for ever by Charles Martel upon
the plains of Tours, in 732.
But while Mohammedanism was thus pouring
into Western Europe, Constantinople formed a

30 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
barrier on the East which it utterly failed to
surmount. Constantine IV. (the Bearded) had
hardly begun to reign when the Arabs assailed his
dominions, and in 672 the Imperial city itself
sustained a beleaguerment of five months. The
attempt was vainly repeated for seven consecutive
years, and was followed in the end by a peace of
thirty years' duration; but in 717 the Arabs again
subjected the capital to a futile siege, which lasted
thirteen months. If only they had succeeded in
their first attempts, and conquered the European
provinces of the Byzantine Empire, they would
have been able to advance Westward and unite
their forces with those of their brethren who
were moving Northwards out of Spain. In that
event, we should have had to-day no victory of
Charles Martel to celebrate as the deliverance
of the Christian world, and the probable result
would have been that delineated by Gibbon :
'A victorious line of march had been prolonged
above a thousand miles, from the Rock of Gibraltar
to the banks of the Loire ; the repetition of an
equal space would have carried the Saracens to the
confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland ;
the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or
Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed
without a naval combat into the mouth of the
Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran
would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and
her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised
people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of
Mahomet.'

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 31
In 823 the Arabs from Spain conquered Crete,
and when, an hundred and thirty-eight years after
wards, it was reconquered by Nikephoros II.
(Phokas), that prince found it so thoroughly
Mohammed anized, that it required the plantation
of new colonies and a new evangelization before the
island could be reclaimed to Hellenism and Christi
anity. The terrible example of the work wrought
by the Arabs in this instance is a sufficient proof of
how great was the danger from which not only the
Hellenic world of the East in particular, but also
Christian Europe in general, was saved by the
efforts of the Byzantine Emperors. Constantine
IV. (the Bearded), Leo III. (the Isaurian), Con
stantine V. (Kopronymos), Lachanodrakon under
Leo III. (the Khazar), Basil I. (the Macedonian),
Kourkouas under Romanus I. (Lekapenos), and,
above all, Nikephoros II. (Phokas), and John I.
(Tzimiskes), by their calm heroism and their
military genius, succeeded not only in checking the
Arabs but in weakening them. The day came,
however, when a new enemy broke the power of
the Caliphs, and took their place as the mortal foe
of Christianity. That new enemy was the Turk.
The Turks first appear in history towards the
middle of the sixth century. Their relations with
Justinian and his successors were friendly, and
Heraclius was assisted by them as allies in his wars
against the Persians and Arabs. They afterwards
adopted the Mohammedan religion, and then joined
the banner of the Caliphs, who allowed themselves
to be much influenced and guided by the commanders

32 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
of the Turkish battalions forming their guard. In
1037, Togroul, the son of Seljouk, founded the
dynasty thence called Seljoukide, and in 1068 his
nephew Alp-Arslan invaded the provinces of the
Empire, and took prisoner the Emperor Romanus
IV. (Diogenes). Twenty years later, the Turks
conquered Asia Minor and expelled the Fatimite
Caliphs from Jerusalem.
The capture of the Holy City by the Turks was
the cause of the Crusades, which, instead of
achieving the permanent deliverance of the Holy
Places, effected the impoverishment and ruin of the
Byzantine Empire.
The struggle between the Empire and the
Ottoman Turks lasted for four hundred years.
The effort of the Turks was, by continual and
violent incursions, to exterminate, if possible, the
Christian inhabitants of the country, and thus to
weaken it, with a view to ultimate conquest. As a
matter of fact, by dint of habitually massacring the
peasantry, making slaves of the survivors, and
reducing the cultivated tracts to a condition of
wilderness, they succeeded after a while in extin
guishing the Greek population and doing away
with the Greek language, in the interior of Asia
Minor. The Imperial armies, now growing feebler
and feebler, strove in vain to repel these sudden
invasions and to protect the territory and subjects
of the Empire. Nevertheless, the internal divisions
among the Turks were so serious and their wars
against the Mongols so unfortunate, that it is
possible that the Byzantine Government might in

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 33
the end have succeeded in getting the better of
them, if the young Christendom of the West had
been willing to become the ally and helper of the
venerable Christendom of the East. But it was
not so. On the contrary, Constantinople found in
the Latins, not allies, but enemies. Blinded by
religious and commercial rivalries, by the question
of the Papal Supremacy, and by the material
interests of the Italian Republics, Western Europe
failed to see that the line of defence which was
imperilled was really her own, and that by being
themselves the first to rend and degrade the Imperial
purple, the Crusaders were only hastening the
moment when the Turks should trample it down in
mire and in blood.
Thus it came to pass that the Eastern Empire
ultimately fell before the unceasing attacks of its
Asiatic foes. Equally unceasing was its strife with
the enemies who assailed it from the North and the
West. In the case of these latter, however, there
always existed a certain tie which even the storms
of war could never utterly break. This tie was the
common profession of the Christian religion, which
always left open the door, in some sort, for the
hope of a reconciliation. On the other side, it was
quite different. Between Constantinople, Christian,
Hellenic, and Imperial, on the one hand, and the
despotisms of Pagan or Mohammedan Asia, on the
other, there was a great gulf fixed. With them,
no community of life could ever be possible. The
Arabs took the place of the Persians, and the
Turks took the place of the Arabs. But from the
3

34 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
beginning to the end, the Asiatic enemy, whoever
it was, was always inspired by one and the same
feeling, and one and the same motive. The feeling
was an intense passion of religious hatred ; the
motive, a rabid longing to annihilate that Christian
State which formed a barrier between them and the
destruction of Europe. But it was thanks to that
barrier, that Christian Europe was saved, first from
a persecution of extermination conducted by Persian
fire- worshippers, and then from a slavery where the
religion of the Koran would have been propagated
by the sword of the Arabs. And it was thanks to
that barrier, that Western Europe had the time
given her so to develope her strength, that, long
after Constantinople herself had fallen in the
struggle, a martyr in the cause of the human race,
she was able to shatter the Turkish navies upon the
waters of Lepanto and to rout their hordes before
the walls of Vienna. Unhappily, however, the fall
of Constantinople was in great part the work of
that very Europe which owed and owes her so
much. It is true that the death-blow was given
by the battle-axe of Mahomet II., but this blow
was only fatal because the victim was already half- '
dead, and it is the Crusades which are responsible,
more than anything else, for reducing her to that
condition. What were they then, these Crusades,
which moved Christendom, both Eastern and
Western, to the very depths of its being, and were
fruitful of consequences which the world is still
experiencing to-day ?
The preaching of Peter the Hermit kindled in

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 35
Western Europe an irresistible conflagration of
religious excitement. Latin Christianity seemed
to be about to emigrate bodily into Asia for the
purpose of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre. It may
possibly be the case that the movement owed a
good deal of its success to the hereditary nomad
instinct, transmitted to their descendants by the
barbarian hordes which had convulsed and colonized
Europe some five or six centuries previously.
However that may be, the present migration was
destined to repair all the ruin which these tribes
had inflicted upon the civilization of the West, by
bringing back to it once more, from the surviving
representative of Imperial Rome, the tradition of
the classical culture of which it had been deprived.
The Crusades wear a very different aspect
according as they are viewed from an Eastern or
from a Western standpoint. To the Western eye
they present themselves in all the noble proportions
of a great movement based upon motives purely
religious, when the Europe which has since attained
such vast developments, not in one continent or
one hemisphere only, but in New Worlds besides,
first appears, the self-sacrificing champion of
Christianity and of civilization, in the vigour of her
strong youth and the glory of her intellectual
morning. It is natural that a certain honourable
pride should still inspire any family of the Latin
aristocracy which can trace its pedigree to those
who fought under the banner of the Cross. But
when the Easterns beheld swarms of illiterate
barbarians looting and plundering the provinces of

36 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
the Christian and Roman Empire, and the very
men who called themselves the champions of the
Faith murdering the Priests of Christ upon the
ground that they were schismatics, it was equally
natural that they should forget that such a move
ment had originally been inspired by a religious
aim and possessed a distinctively Christian char
acter. The cruelty and violence of the Crusaders roused
at once the indignation and the disgust of the sub
jects of the Empire. From the very beginning, the
Latins and Greeks regarded one another with
mutual distrust. They looked upon each other not
only as heretics, but as political adversaries. For
this reason the attitude of the Crusaders in dealing
with the Byzantine population was originally one
of hostility. Their appearance upon the stage of
history is the first act in the final tragedy of the
Empire. The tact and skill of the Emperor Alexis
I. (Komnenos) were able to turn the First Crusade,
in 1096, to the temporary profit of his country, but
both that expedition and those which followed it,
in reality shook New Rome to her very foundations,
shattered her forces, and drained her resources.
The climax was reached in the capture and sack of
Constantinople in 1204. The outrage upon the
Majesty of the throne, and the concomitant dis
memberment of the Empire, dealt it a blow from
which it never again entirely rallied. ' If,' says
Paparregopoulos, speaking of the First Crusade,
'the Emperor Alexis had been able to employ
against the Turks the land and sea forces which he

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 37
at length found himself compelled to turn against
his pretended allies, and the troops whom he had
been obliged to send with them into Asia Minor and
Syria ; if he had been able to reserve for the
struggle against Mohammedanism, the resources of
which he was plundered by the looting and extor
tions of the Crusaders, he would have been able to
get rid of all danger from the unbelievers far more
effectually than was done by the ephemeral success
ot the Latins.'
History has yet to treat the attitude of the
Crusaders in the East from a point of view of
judicial impartiality. The images of these events
are still shown to us through the glass of Western
prejudices. ' The Latins,' admits Finlay, ' would
not allow that their disasters were caused by their
own misconduct and imprudence ; they persisted in
attributing all their misfortunes to the treachery of
the Greeks ; and though Alexis delivered many
from captivity, the Crusaders generally regarded
him as an enemy.' According to these accounts, it
was always the Byzantines who were in the wrong ;
they were liars and traitors ; and they had no cause
to regard the Crusaders with suspicion. But the
Western historians, whether they be those who
strive to rise above national prejudices or those who
allow themselves to be carried away by them, are
alike unable entirely to conceal the barbarism and
self-seeking, the unceasing quarrels, the faithless
disregard of oaths and treaties, and the total
absence of any capacity for the direction of either
military or civil affairs, which so abundantly mark

38 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
the conduct of the Crusades, and especially of the
earlier. Was it possible that such armies could
long withstand the Mohammedan hosts, or save
that Empire against which they themselves actually
plotted? And were not the Emperors right, after
a thorough experience of what they were, in doing
what lay in their power to get rid of company so
doubtful ?
In the First Crusade, the Franks did not assume
possession of the Imperial throne, not because they
would not, but because they could not. But when
the turn of the Fourth Crusade came, they were
more accustomed to things Eastern, and they had
the luck of finding the Empire in a state of
weakness and paralysis, the outcome of the un
ceasing wars of Manuel I. (Komnenos) and the
series of revolutions which had followed him.
Under these circumstances, the Latin conquest of
Constantinople was easy. However, the Latin
conquerors remained in possession of the Imperial
throne for only fifty-seven years, and during that
time a glorious succession of gallant Emperors
gathered together in exile the now recovering forces
of Greek nationalism, and turned them upon their
Christian adversaries until the day came in 1261,
when Michael VIII. (Palaiologos) reconquered the
city of Constantine. From that moment the
division between East and West became more
marked, and their mutual estrangement has
been lasting. From time to time, attempts were
made at reunion, but they were made without
confidence on the one side and without sincerity

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 39
upon the other. The fundamental element in
every proposal which emanated from the West, was
the recognition of the Papal Supremacy. There
were some Emperors who, in moments of national
weakness and peril, accepted the claims of the
Latins, but the mass of the people were never
willing to purchase by such a sacrifice the help of
Western Europe. On the contrary, when they
called to mind the Frankish conquest, with its
burnings, its devastation, its banishments, and its
religious persecutions, they feared the Western
alliance, and came to say, with Luke Notaras,
' better a Turk's turban than a Cardinal's hat.' It
was a mistake, of course ; and a mistake which was
dearly paid for. And yet, after all, who knows ?
Supposing that the Frankish conquest had been
lasting — supposing that an enduring political edifice
had been raised upon the foundation of a Latinized
Byzantine Empire — supposing that the Bosphoros
had been for ever cleared of the Turks by the arms
of the Western immigrants who would then have
settled there as permanent masters — the conse
quences might have been even more fatal to the
free development of the purely Hellenic genius than
has been the Ottoman sword. It is true that those
fair lands which the Turks have blasted for four
hundred years would not have suffered so long if the
Franks had been their owners instead. But when
the inhabitants of these lands are viewed from the
purely ethnological standpoint, as Hellenes, they
may to-day owe something even to Mahomet II.
It might perhaps have been that in an Hellas,

40 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
definitively occupied and ruled by Westerns, the
Hellenes would have lost the traditions and
memories of their own antient glories, and that to
day they might not have been what they are, but
an hybrid mixture of Eastern and Western races,
speaking a language reduced to a corrupt dialect,
and emasculated of those elements which, amid all
the calamities of their nation, have been at once
their safety and their honour.
The invasion of Byzantine territory by the Nor
mans may be regarded as an incident cognate with
the Crusades, although, as a matter of chronological
sequence, it began somewhat earlier. After their
conquest and occupation of a portion of Northern
France, these barbarians adopted the use of the
French language, but they did not relinquish their
own customs, their nomadic instinct, and their
hunger for conquest. In the year 1016, a Norman
army poured into Italy and seized the provinces
still ruled by the Eastern Empire. Between 1081
and 1084, Robert Guiscard made two expeditions
against Greece, but although he began by defeating
Alexis I. (Komnenos) he did not succeed in estab
lishing any permanent foothold. About sixty years
later, the Normans attempted a new expedition
against the Empire. They captured Corfu and
harried the mainland. But the Emperor Manuel I.
(Komnenos) repulsed them, carried the war into
Italy, and compelled them to sue for a thirty years'
peace. Meanwhile the same race conquered Eng
land. The difference of their fortunes in the two

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 41
countries is a sufficient proof of the comparative
superiority of the Byzantine Empire at the time.
The Norman incursions paved the way for the
Frank occupation of Greece proper, which followed
the seizure of Constantinople in 1204. This occu
pation lasted two centuries, but it has left hardly
any abiding trace, and introduced no important
change in the destiny of the country. Neither did
it do anything to retard the progress of the Turkish
conquest. And then Constantinople fell, and the
whole Hellenic world passed into Turkish slavery.
Western Europe looked on with unconcern at the
appalling catastrophe. It was in vain that the last
of the Palaiologoi cried to them for help. ' Christen
dom,' says Gibbon, ' beheld with indifference the
fall of Constantinople. . . Some States were too
weak and others too remote ; by some the danger
was considered as imaginary, by others as inevi
table : the Western Princes were involved in their
endless and domestic quarrels ; and the Roman
Pontiff was exasperated by the falsehood or obsti
nacy of the Greeks. Instead of employing in their
favour the arms and treasures of Italy, Nicolas V.
had foretold their approaching ruin ; and his
honour was engaged in the accomplishment of his
prophecy. Perhaps he was softened by the last
extremity of their distress ; but his compassion was
tardy ; his efforts were faint and unavailing ; and
Constantinople had fallen before the squadrons of
Genoa and Venice could sail from their harbours.
Even the Princes of the Morea and of the Greek
Islands affected a cold neutrality : the Genoese

42 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
colony of Galata negociated a private treaty ; and
the Sultan indulged them in the delusive hope that
by his clemency they might survive the ruin of the
Empire.' Thus perished Constantinople, Christian and
Imperial. Up to her last hour she had never
ceased, for more than a thousand years, to fight.
In the fourth century she fought the Goths ; in the
fifth, the Huns and Vandals ; in the sixth, the
Slavs ; in the seventh, the Persians, the Avars, and
the Arabs ; in the eighth, ninth, and tenth, the
Bulgars, the Magyars, and the Russians ; in the
eleventh, the Koumanoi, the Petzenegoi, and the
Seljoukian Turks ; in the twelfth, thirteenth, four
teenth, and fifteenth, the Ottomans, the Normans,
the Crusaders, the Venetians, and the Genoese.
No wonder that at last she fell exhausted. The
wonder is, how she could keep herself alive so long.
But it was by this long battle that she succeeded
in saving from destruction, amid the universal
cataclysm which overwhelmed the classical world,
the civilization of the antients, modified by the
Christian Religion. The moral and intellectual
development of modern Europe are owing to the
Byzantine Empire, if it be true that this develop
ment is the common offspring of antiquity upon the
one hand and of Christianity upon the other.

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.

Now-a-days, it necessitates a certain amount of
culture and demands a certain mental effort, to
enable an inhabitant of Western Europe to realize
the state of society in which the Byzantine Empire
was compelled to play a part. At present the
question is no longer how Christendom is to be de
fended against Asiatic hordes, but how England
and Russia are to partition between them the work
of subjecting Asia. European civilization has no
longer to face any enemy from without ; the danger
to her life is one which she has bred in her own
vitals, that spirit of revolution which is as a worm
that dieth not within the frame of modern society
itself. Hence the difficulty, to those reared amid
such a state of things, of bringing home to them
selves what was meant by the invasions of bar
barians of which I have already spoken. Not long
ago, we should have had to seek in Greece the few
aged survivors who still live to remember the
Turkish rule, and the outbreak of the War of
Independence in 1821, as the only men in Europe
who knew by experience what the Asiatic savage
is in invasion, the only men who had seen not only
all they possessed in this world destroyed, but also

46 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
their wives — and their children — murdered,
enslaved, and dishonoured. But the Bulgarian
atrocities and the Thessalian massacres have since
rendered such an appeal needless. Still, however,
for those born under happier skies it is hard to pass
in imagination to the times and the places when
the barbarians broke into provinces where commerce
and industry were flourishing, to enact their work
of ruin and devastation. It is hard to picture
creatures without a moment's regard for the religion,
the honour, or the life of their wretched victims,
giving the rein to their will over everything they
found in their way. The very rumour of their
approach spread like an earthquake of terror. 'The
land is as the garden of Eden before them, and be
hind them a desolate wilderness.' Wherever they
settled, prosperity and peace were replaced by
barbarism. This is the picture which must be
realized before it is possible to realize also with
what the Byzantine Empire was called upon to
contend. Moreover, there is no use in denying, with re
gard to the Empire itself, that whatever may have
been the advantages which it sometimes gained in
the struggle, the very contact with such adversaries
was beyond all doubt harmful. It was impossible
that a state of everlasting contention against foreign
enemies destitute of any element of civilization, or
sometimes even of any capacity for it, should prove
a mean for developing among the subjects of the
Empire those political virtues for the want of which
Western writers are so-fond of condemning them.

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 47
If we are to judge the subjects of the Byzantine
Empire, not indulgently but justly, either by a
political or a moral standard, it is necessary to keep
in view what were the causes which produced their
faults. Above all, it is necessary to view them side
by side with their own contemporaries in other
countries. It is not fair to compare them with that
glorious antiquity after which they came, or to con
trast them with whatever we may admire most in
the political or moral development of the European
world of to-day, which they preceded, and the
foundations of which were so largely their work.
However, principles of historical criticism of this
sort have hardly begun to guide the judgments of
Western writers. Most of them are still quite
contented and happy in going on in the old rut.
They have simply to yield, and do yield, to the in
justice and onesidedness which, under the stimulus
of prejudices begotten of circumstances utterly
passed away and passions which have aimlessly
survived their very raison d' etre, have succeeded
in investing the very name of ' the Lower Empire,'
in the Western mind, with an idea of certain
despicable characteristics.
The fact is, that the blame for creating this
popular idea of the Byzantine Empire must rest in
great measure upon two eminent writers, both of
whom were inspired by the philosophy of the last
Century, and both of whom did a great deal to call
the attention of modern Europe to the history of
the Greek Empire. The two writers I mean are
Montesquieu and Gibbon. It would be an imper-

48 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
tinence on my part to arraign the work of these
great authors, were it not for three facts. These
are, firstly, the admitted truth that history is like
every other science, in this respect, that she moves
towards perfection by progressive development ;
secondly, that it has only been within this Century
that the true science of historical criticism has even
begun to be applied to history in general ; and,
lastly, that the Byzantine era is precisely one of
the least known and most obscure of the fields of
historical study. And so it is that at the present
day Montesquieu and Gibbon mould the judgment
formed upon the Byzantine world by a great many
people, who know nothing about Mediaeval Greece
from any other source.
Montesquieu gave far less attention to the Byzan
tine period than to the Roman. This it is easy to
perceive by reading even superficially his Considera
tions sur les causes de la grandeur des Ro mains et
de leur decadence. As long as he is dealing with
the Roman period, his arguments are vigorous and
his conclusions are impregnable. They are based
upon facts which he had studied and mastered.
But as soon as he reaches the Byzantine epoch, a
change is perceptible. It is the same writer, but
his subject seems now to be beyond his control.
And then the reader, feeling the remarkable absence,
in the last pages of the book, of the clearness and
attractiveness which charmed him in the earlier
portion, thinks that the fault is in the topics handled.
This impression is confirmed by the contemptuous
tone adopted by the writer. The fact is that Mon-

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 49
tesquieu's treatment of the history of the Byzan
tine Empire is both superficial and prejudiced. He
informs us generally* that 'from the period of
Phocas onwards, the history of the Greek Empire
is a mere tissue of rebellion, conspiracy, and
treachery. . . . One revolution begot another,
until the effect itself became the cause. The
Greeks had seen so many different families mount
ing the throne one after another, that at last they
became indifferent to them all, and fortune had
found Emperors in men of so many divers sorts and
conditions, that no origin was too vile and no deserts
too slight to suffice to cut off all hope.' In his last
chapter he says, 'the Emperors were led by the
nose by the monks and priests, who became all-
powerful after their triumph over the Iconoclasts,
. and if,' he concludes, ' anyone will compare
the Greek clergy with the Latin clergy, and the
conduct of the Popes with that of the Patriarchs of
Constantinople, he will see on the one side men as
wise as those on the other were silly.' These quota
tions are in themselves quite enough. As for the
reasons by which Montesquieu proposes to explain
the fact that the Byzantine Empire lasted for more
than a millennium, they are simply self-contradic
tory. The principal seems to him to be the chemi
cal invention used especially in naval warfare, and
commonly known as the ' Greek fire,' and the
second is maritime and commercial supremacy.
But if the Greek sailors and soldiers had been

¦ Chap. xxi.
4

50 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
cowards and fools, of what use would the Greek
fire have been in their hands ? Who won and kept
the supremacy of the seas? And would commerce
have flourished in the absence of the elements of
power, of order, and of enlightened administration ?
The concluding pages of Montesquieu's work
contain many observations which are lucid and
pointed. What he did not choose to see was, that
just as Old Rome had her rise, her greatness, her
decline, and her fall, New Rome also had a rise, a
greatness, a decline, and a fall of her own, quite in
dependently of the other, — that the work which
Byzantium had to do for the human family was a
work quite other than and different from the work
of Old Rome, — and that the history of an Empire
which endured for a thousand years cannot be ex
haustively taught by being crumpled up into a few
contemptuous sentences, especially when that his
tory presents an amount of diversity and complica
tion such as the history of no other Empire pro
bably involves.
The truth is, that it has only been by enveloping
the shallowness of his historical judgments upon
Christian and Imperial Constantinople in the
glittering phantasmagoria of a witty style and an
audacious dogmatism that Montesquieu has suc
ceeded so largely in inducing posterity to swallow
his aphorisms.
No such reproach can be cast at Gibbon. That
great writer, with much skill and — making all due
allowance for the peculiarities of his style — with
manly and incisive eloquence, has drawn the his-

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 51
tory of the Byzantine Empire, in that monumental
work, whose dimensions are yet all too cramped for
the extent and variety of his matter. The value
of this celebrated book, however, is injuriously
affected by his partiality and the manner in which
he has allowed his judgment to be biassed by his
prejudices. Gibbon, indeed, may be said to have written the
history of the Eastern Empire with the express aim
and object of propounding and supporting his own
preconceived ideas. The fundamental principle of his
theory of history is that Christianity was the cause
alike of the ruin of antient civilization, of the decline
and fall of the Roman Empire, and of all the misery
and darkness of the Middle Ages. In fact, in the last
pages of his work, he says formally and in so many
words: — ' I have described the triumph of barbarism
and religion.' The conjunction which couples the
two last substantives is a sufficient demonstration
of what his theory of history was. He viewed the
Christian and Hellenized polity which occupied the
throne of the Caesars at New Rome as chiefly re
sponsible for the result he bewailed, and conse
quently he never loses an opportunity of decrying
the Mediaeval Greek world. It is a curious evidence
of his prejudices upon this subject, and of the way
in which he allowed himself to act upon them, that,
sometimes, in the very same page, and whether he
is narrating military events or political intrigues, he
calls the very same people ' Romans ' when they
conquered or dealt honourably, and ' Greeks ' when
they were defeated or acted treacherously. When

52 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
he uses the word ' Greek ' it is his regular custom
to qualify it by some depreciatory adjective. This
habit grew upon him to such an extent that at last
he found himself unable to keep within the limits
of the historic facts with which even the last and
lowest moments of the Byzantine Empire could
supply him, to justify his systematic attacks ; and
he accordingly took refuge in the habitual amplifi
cation of the facts into the boundless and convenient
regions of conjecture, by the use of 'if and ' per
haps.' Thus it is that, when he speaks of the annual
religious celebration which glorified the memory of
a Martyr's triumphant death, he writes that, ' as
soon as the doors of the church were thrown open
. if they approached the balustrade of the
altar, they made their way through the prostrate
crowd, consisting, for the most part, of strangers
and pilgrims, who resorted to the city on the vigil
of the feast; and who already felt the strong intoxi
cation of fanaticism, and perhaps of wine.' This
sort of insinuation really seems to reach its climax
when, as he is describing the last siege of Constan
tinople, the scenes of agony Avhich followed its cap
ture, the butchery and the slavery inflicted on those
who had taken refuge in the Church of the Uncreated
Wisdom, he says : — ' The loudest in their wailings
were the nuns, who were torn from the altar with
naked bosoms, outstretched hands, and dishevelled
hair, and we should piously believe, that few could be
tempted to prefer the vigils of the harem to those of
the monastery.' This last pleasantry is, to my mind,
horrible.

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 53
It is perhaps possible to account for some of the
repulsive traits of Gibbon by ascribing them to
peculiarities in his own psychological temperament.
There are, in fact, some men, who feel an actual
pleasure in the very idea of destruction. It has an
attraction for them, it causes them a sensation of
joyful excitement. There are probably no finer
pieces of writing in Gibbon than the Twenty-
second and Twenty-third Chapters, in which
he gloats over the efforts of the Apostate Julian
to annihilate the work, and to exterminate the
worshippers, of the Galilean whom he had
denied. Next to these in literary merit is
perhaps the Fiftieth, in which he pourtrays,
as with an enchanted pen, the life of Mohammed
and the genesis of Islam. It is with a similar ad
miration that he narrates the acts of Zingis Khan,
with the remark that ' it is the religion of Zingis
that best deserves our wonder and applause.'
However, Gibbon's theory of history, where it
appears biassed 'by admiration for success and wor
ship of mere strength, is but one instance of a
feature only too characteristic of the English mind.
Not only the way in which Gibbon has written of
us, but many a phase of the sentiment and action of
the English people towards us, can be explained by
the same trait. I shall not take upon myself to
describe it. One of themselves, even a prophet of
their own, has said what it is, to my hand. Gibbon
is not alone in supplying an exhibition of it in his
treatment of Greece. Carlyle and Froude have ap
plied it to Poland and to Ireland; and here is what

54 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
a writer in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1873,
says about it, in discussing Mr. Froude's English in
Ireland : — ' The dominant principle that Mr. Froude
carries into the consideration of our relations with
Ireland for the last seven centuries, is what is known
as the Imperial idea — that is, that a strong, bold,
courageous race has a sort of natural right to invade
the territory of weak, semi-civilised, distracted races,
and undertake the task of governing them in the
best way possible, without any consideration for
their rights or feelings. The conception is akin to the
passion of the hour for men of blood and iron. We
are taught that vigour and fortitude are to com
pensate always and in all circumstances for
rapacity and faithlessness ; that force of character
must cover a multitude of sins ; that the feeble are
as bad as the false ; and our admiration is claimed for
the deeds of an Attila or a Tamerlane rather than
for those of a Wilberforce or a Howard. This is the
familiar philosophy of Mr. Carlyle, who glorifies
force and justifies all its crimes. Mr. Froude is
evidently one of his most ardent disciples.
It is not many years since the former likened
Ireland to a rat and England to an elephant whose
business "it was to squelch the rat on occasion."
In his life of Frederic Wilhelm he tells us that just
as when a man has filled the measure of his crimes,
we "hang him and finish him to the general
satisfaction," so a nation like Poland, fallen into
the depths of decay, must be disposed of by some
similar process. The misfortune is, however, that
though you can finish a man on the gallows, it is

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 55
impossible to finish a nation in the same way. We
shall presently trace the fruits of this teaching in
the work of Mr. Froude. If we are to accept the
historic guidance of either, we must submit to have
evil turned into good at the bidding of genius, and
the verdicts of history wantonly reversed, while
the faculty of discerning the true from the false will
be everywhere sensibly weakened. The doctrine of
force is profoundly immoral, and opposed to every
principle of English freedom, and to every generous
impulse of sympathy with the oppressed.'
This witness is true.
But, besides all this, I do not believe that Gibbon
was superior to that traditional antipathy which
began to make itself manifest as soon as the natives
of Greece and of Italy came face to face, an
antipathy which the religious differences of the two
Romes ultimately brought to a climax, and the
conduct of the Crusaders has rendered lasting up
to the present hour. As Gibbon himself says,
speaking even of the Fourth Century : — ' The
natives of Italy affected to despise the servile and
effeminate Greeks of Byzantium, who presumed to
imitate the dress, and to usurp the dignity, of
Roman Senators : and the Greeks had not yet
forgotten the sentiments of hatred and contempt,
which their polished ancestors had so long enter
tained for the rude inhabitants of the West.'
From that time forth appeared the first indica
tions which threatened religious division. These
differences were fostered as much by antipathies of
race as by the claims to supremacy made by the

56 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
Popes of Rome. The separation occasioned by the
struggle between Ignatius and Photius was indeed
healed, but the rent caused by the excommunica
tion of Michael Keroularios has proved to be one
which time has hitherto failed to close for any
enduring period.
I am not going to undertake an examination of
the question of the Schism. The modern historian
Paparregopoulos has treated it with the talent and
impartiality which are habitual to his pen. As for
myself, I only mention the subject because it is
one of the causes of the mutual hatred which has
existed between the East and the West. The
abuse which we first find in Latin writers, and
which Old and New Rome continued throughout
the whole of the Middle Ages to exchange with
fresh additions and renewed violence, does no credit
to either side. Supposing that some philosopher
belonging to some newly-created and altogether
alien race, and absolutely free from prejudice one
way or the other, could ever be called on to form a
perfectly unbiassed historical judgment upon the
controversy between the Greeks and the Latins,
upon no evidence except the contemporary monu
ments of each side, he would probably find it hard
to decide which of them best deserved the abuse of
the other. It is the misfortune of the Greek party
that no such ideal historian has ever arisen to make
such an examination of the real facts. If Western
Christendom had fallen during the Middle Ages,
and Eastern Christendom had survived, so as to
have had the telling of the story all her own way,

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 57
and the world had been unable to learn anything
about it except what it could obtain from Byzantine
sources, traditions, and points of view, it is the
reputation of the Latins instead of that of the
Greeks which would have suffered. But the fact
has been the other way. The East fell four
hundred years ago and was thereby silenced. The
West survived ; and has had all the talk its own
way ever since. It has used the opportunity in
the full spirit of the rancour which already
animated it. This rancour is a sufficient explana
tion not only of the ill-feeling with which Greece is
regarded by the Western parts of Europe and the
comfortable indifference with which they con
templated the agony of her slavery, but also of the
downright hostility which appears whenever any
difference of interests gives an excuse for indulging
the antipathy originally begotten or fostered by
these old-world controversies. At the same time,
it may be admitted that this historical question is
not — at least consciously — the sole cause of the
abundant anti-Hellenic literature with which so
numerous a body of writers have undertaken during
so many years to enlighten the European public.
But anyhow, from Luitprand of Cremona down to
the Governors by whom the Venetian Republic
was represented in Greece, and from Gibbon down
to the Special Correspondents of certain sections
of the press, we are, unfortunately, surrounded by
proofs of the ill-will with which Western Europe
too often regards our race. In some of the modern
works, indeed, the very outrageousness of the

58 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
violence and the childishness of the expressions
used, make the attacks less vexatious. But let
us try to apply to them all the famous line of the
great Italian —
' Non ragionam' di lor', ma guarda e passa. '
After all, we must not forget such parallel cases as
the rivalries of race which have divided and do still
divide the other European nations among them
selves, such as the antient enmity between England
and France, and the hatred between the French and
the Germans. We must remember that sentiments
of exclusiveness and jealousy of foreigners are the
characteristics of what we have been taught to
call the civilized world. We can only hope for an
increase of knowledge and a spread of civilization
in the best sense of the word, and that, as means
of inter-communication are multiplied, the contact
of nations one with another may gradually efface the
result of traditions begotten in ignorance and in
barbarism. As far as we are ourselves concerned,
we may well welcome as a forecast of such a trans
formation the impartial judgment which we now
begin sometimes to find in the more learned and
critical of the Western writers, when discussing
Byzantine Hellenism.

But here we may well ask the question, How far
is Hellenism responsible for the faults of Byzan-
tinism ?
I do not propose to call in question here the

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 59
measure of solidarity which united Hellenism with
Byzantinism. I will refrain from saying anything
against the historical scheme of the k. Paparrego
poulos, which is full of political meaning. In per
forming his work of narrating the history of our
race, from the earliest known period down to the
present day, he has treated the Byzantine Empire
as an integral part of that history. But I wish to
call particular attention to a fact which the his
torian in question has himself not failed to notice,
and of which we must not lose sight, viz., that
during the Byzantine period Hellenism was subject
to a remarkable modification.
The conquests of Philip and Alexander the Great,
and the consequences which had followed them, had
had the effect of widely extending the sphere of
Hellenism in the East. This extension received a
new and much wider impulse from the unity of
Government which the Roman Empire was able to
impose upon what was then reckoned the whole
civilized world. Then came Christianity, which
borrowed from Hellenism its language, and so much
else besides, and again most powerfully contributed
to spread the influence of Greek letters and culture
far beyond the limits which Geography would have
naturally assigned to them. In the end, the Greek
language was spoken as far as the Danube on the
North, and Armenia and the Euphrates on the
East, and all these Greek-speaking countries were
gradually united into a sort of mixed world, which
constituted the Byzantine Empire.
This diffusion of Hellenism, however, was accom-

60 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
plished at a cost to the pure Hellenic element some
what similar to that suffered by a glass of undiluted
wine when poured into a pitcher of water. The
pitcher contains, indeed, a larger amount of liquid,
and of a liquid in which are clearly perceptible the
colour and taste of wine ; but the colour is pale
and the taste insipid. It has needed the chemistry
of ages, it has cost the distillation of centuries of
grief and suffering, to eliminate again from the
feeble dilution of the Empire the pure Hellenic
element as it is once more this day, freed from
Byzantine adulteration, strong and sound.
What is certain is, that it was only after the de
cline of the Byzantine Empire had begun, that the
Byzantine people began to call themselves Hellenes
and their Monarchs Emperors of the Hellenes.
Until then, the autocrats were termed Augusti and
Emperors of Rome, and their subjects were styled
Romans. This custom has proved so deep-rooted
that it not only still survives as the universal usage
of the East,* but even in such writers as Byron we
find the Hellenic language termed Roman ('Romaic').
At the same time, the inhabitants of Hellas proper
were not called Hellenes but Helladikoi, and the
ancient and glorious word Hellen was employed (by
a usage possibly imitated from the New Testament)
in a depreciatory sense, to indicate an idolater.
Moreover, it was the East which was, as it were,
* Among the Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Syria, the adherents
of the Orthodox Church are styled Romans to distinguish them from
Catholics, and, among the latter, Uniats of the Greek Rite are
termed Roman Catholics to distinguish them from the Latins. (Tr.)

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 61
the body constituent of the Empire, and, although
some few of the Emperors married Athenian women,
they were themselves by origin all either Thracians,
or Armenians, or Isaurians, or Cappadocians ; there
was not a single Athenian or Spartan among them,
or one sprung from any other purely Hellenic stock.
But while the true Hellas, properly so called,
was thus thrust into the background, the use of her
language preserved and propagated the spirit of
Hellenism. Of this new Hellenism Constantinople
was the capital, as she became also the centre where
the antient traditions were preserved. The learned,
who there studied the master-pieces of the classical
intellect and endeavoured in vain to imitate them,
were the true heirs of Greek antiquity, imperfect
as might be the ties of race which joined them to
Perikles or Philopoimen. Those who, when Con
stantinople fell, fled from the ruin, bearing with
them the treasures of the wisdom of their antient
forefathers, well deserved the name of Hellenes by
which they styled themselves. It was likewise no
violation of historical continuity, while it was a
proof of the solidarity which Byzantinism had effected
with Hellenism, that during the slow ages of slavery,
the longing of the Hellenes gathered round the
Church of the Eternal Wisdom.
But it is time now to look at this solidarity,
which undoubtedly united Byzantinism and Hel
lenism, and to examine it in the light of scientific
history. It is time to draw the line between the
two elements, and to assign to each what portion of
the whole is its due.

62 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
If such an examination be made with both know
ledge and justice, the result will be to show that it
was not its Hellenic element which was responsible
for the shortcomings of the Byzantine Empire. The
truth was, that the Roman Empire was dying out,
when it had the good fortune to be absorbed in the
life of Greece, and derived from that union a re
newed energy, which gave it another millennium of
existence. The protraction of the Roman Empire
for that additional period was a blessing to civiliza
tion and to mankind. On the other hand, Hellas
indeed for a while regenerated the worn-out frame
of the Italian autocracy by thus sharing with it the
blood of her own strong vitality, but the transfusion
cost her an epoch of exhaustion and prostration
from the effects of which she has not yet completely
recovered. And this exhaustion meant, in her case,
the repression, for a while, of some of her most
precious characteristics.

What, however, were exactly the faults of the
Byzantine Empire ? And how far were these faults
essential and not incidental ?
The principal fault which has been found with
the Empire of which New Rome was the capital,
has been that there was no people. It is said that
the political edifice rested upon only two founda
tions, viz., the Imperial Court and the Patriarchal
Court ; an Emperor waited upon by a gang of eunuchs
on the one side, and an Hierarch supported by an

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 63
army of monks upon the other — nothing between
the two — no patriotism, no nation, no people.
Now, it is quite true that the constituent elements
of the Byzantine Empire were very different from
those which had formed the strength either of the
old Greek States or of the old Roman Common
wealth. The State was no longer composed, as in
them, of a body of free citizens. There had been
no more free citizens since the day when Rome,
finding herself mistress of the world, had been
pleased to commit her power to the hands of one
Imperator, and her victorious eagles darkened with
the shadow of their wings the surface of what was
then considered the whole civilized world. It is
quite true that the theory of the Imperial Monarchy
at Constantinople was, from the very beginning, a
compound of the traditions of the Elder Rome on
the one hand, and of the ideas of an Oriental des
potism upon the other. But it ought not to be
forgotten that this Imperial monarchy, although it
was absolute, was not unlimited. ' The authority
exercised by the Senate,' attests Finlay, ' the
powers possessed by Synods and General Councils
of the Church, and the importance often attached
by the Emperors to the ratification of their laws by
silentia and popular assemblies, mark a change in
the Byzantine Empire, in strong contrast with the
earlier military Empire of the Romans. The
highest power in the State had been transferred
from the army to the laws of the Empire — no in
considerable step in the progress of political civiliza
tion. The influence of those feelings of humanity

64 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
which resulted from this change, are visible in the
mild treatment of many unsuccessful usurpers and
dethroned Emperors.' The Emperor himself, in his
Coronation Oath, swore ' to abide and perpetually
be found a faithful and sincere servant and son of
Holy Church, and moreover her defender * and
avenger, and to be kind and loving toward his sub
jects, and to abstain from bloodshed and mutilations
and the like, as far as he should be able, and to
consent to all truth and justice ' (Kodinos. De
Officiis. cap. xvii.)t
As a matter of fact, the Church, the Senate, and
the prevailing respect for Law, were always able to
oppose a barrier, which was usually insurmountable,
to the individual vagaries of autocracy upon the
part of the Emperors. And more than this. Any
one who studies the history of the dynastic
intrigues and internal dissensions of the Empire,
will observe that the mass of the people did not
always stand' aloof from politics, that they never
abdicated altogether their rights in the direction of
public affairs, but took an active part in nearly all
these changes, and, moreover, that the cause
espoused by them was generally the rightful one.
Thus it came to pass that many of the worst
Emperors were deposed by the popular indignation,
and that most of those who were raised to the
supreme dignity by the voice of the popular choice

+ Concerning the Byzantine polity in general, see Paparregopoulos.
IV. Introduction.

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 65
were among the best Princes who did honour to the
throne of Constantine. I may cite as an instance
of the one sort, the first dethronement of the insane
savage Justinian II. ; and of the other, the eleva
tion of Anastasius II. Of the latter, Gibbon says : —
' The free voice of the Senate and people promoted
Artemius from the office of secretary to that of
Emperor ; he . . . displayed in a short and
troubled reign the virtues both of peace and war.'
And of the event of 1071, when the two Nikephoroi,
Bryennios and Botaneiates, were contending for the
supreme power, he says again : — ' The name of
Bryennius was illustrious ; his cause was popular ;
but his licentious troops could not be restrained
from burning and pillaging a suburb ; and the
people, who would have hailed the rebel, rejected
and repulsed the incendiary of his country. This
change of the public opinion was favourable to
Botaneiates, who at length, with an army of Turks,
approached the shores of Chalcedon. A formal
invitation, in the name of the patriarch, the synod,
and the senate, was circulated through the streets
of Constantinople; and the general assembly, in the
dome of St. Sophia, debated with order and calm
ness on the choice of their sovereign. The guards
of Michael would have dispersed this unarmed
multitude; but the feeble Emperor, applauding his
own moderation and clemency, resigned the ensigns
of royalty.' Since, moreover, I have named the
Second Justinian, I cannot abstain from citing the
pregnant remark which the account of his restora
tion draws from the k. Paparregopoulos, (III. 366)
5

66 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
'The ease with which Justinian succeeded in invad
ing the capital, and which is equally to be observed
in the case of Apsimaros and of other Pretenders
to the throne of Constantinople, as opposed to the
futility of the wars waged against it through so
many centuries by so many strange nations, is on
the one hand a proof that the native Pretenders
always had a party within the walls who facilitated
their entrance, and shows, on the other, the hearty
unanimity with which the people and the army
combined to drive back the foreign invaders, and
the strength of the public opinion which existed
among the people themselves.'
The popular voice made itself especially heard in
the Hippodrome, where it was all the more power
ful on account of the guilds into which the people
were divided. It was there, to use the language of
a French writer,* that ' the Byzantine people made
and unmade Emperors ; there that justice was
administered and the guilty punished, and that
triumphs were celebrated over barbarians and
rebels ; there that the masses gazed upon the
wonders of art and of nature ; there, in short, that
their superstitious and their religious feelings, their
love of glory and their love of the beautiful, found
free scope.' When the populace found themselves
gathered in the Hippodrome, and there realized
their own power, they forgot the sports, and pro-

* M. A. Rambaud, in his article on Le monde Bytsantin et V
hippodrome, in the Revue des Deux Mondes of August 15, 1871.
See also on this subject, Paparregopoulos, III. 116, et seq.

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 67
claimed their own will, with the frequent result of
obtaining it. Their will was not always wise or
right, and such a form for manifesting it cannot be
taken as a model. We look in vain in the Hippo
drome of Constantinople for any representative of
the Pnyx or of the Roman Senate. But if Gibbon
had had as wide an experience as history has
afforded since his day of what popular and social
movements may become, he would not have
selected the Byzantine people of Constantinople
as peculiarly open to the reproach of being ' devoid of
any rational principles of freedom.' The true
question is, whether they displayed that indifference
to the fate of their country which is too often
imputed to them — and which, when it really exists,
is the last symptom of a nation's decadence. As a
proof that the interest in public matters felt and
shown by the people of Constantinople was shared
in the other parts of the Empire, it is enough to
cite the rebellion of the Greeks against Leo III. in
727, and their march upon the capital under
Agallianos, styled 'the mobleader (Tovpudpxvs) of the
Helladikoi.' The Byzantine people cannot indeed be justly
represented as destitute of the sentiment of their
own national existence. But it is at the same time
unfortunately true that the system of Government
under which they lived did not afford a sufficiently
wide and regular sphere for the development of
their natural activity. The Constitutional polities
which are the fashion now-a-days, supply plenty of
opportunities by which the voices of the injured or

68 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
of the ambitious can make themselves heard. It
was not so under the political system of the
Byzantine Empire. Hence we find that when, in
exceptional circumstances, the discontent or indig
nation of some province or of some party was
determined to find an outlet, the natural con
sequence of the system was that it did so in Church
controversies, in local rebellions, or in military
mutinies, which usually led to the proclamation of
a new Emperor.
But it is said that the Byzantine people had no
patriotism. The high and intense feeling of the
antient patriotism which the Greeks of this century
again so nobly displayed during the War of
Independence, was not and could not be the
sentiment of the subjects of the Empire. They
looked to Constantinople as a centre, and on
religion as the chief bond of unity. For them the
idea of Fatherland was concentrated in the Imperial
Labaron and in the Cross with its Greek inscription
— • to ToirV vixa ' — ' Herein is victory.' The Labaron and
the Cross were the double standard, for which they
were ready to die in the field, and on which they cen
tred their national feeling. In such a sense as this,
there was certainly patriotism at Byzantium. It
was the love of that second Fatherland of which
the late M. Thiers spoke when he said, on May 4,
1873, — 'There are two Fatherlands. One is the
soil. The other is the moral and public order, the
great political and social truths. These form a
Fatherland not less important than the material
earth on which we have been born.'

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 69
Now let us take up the next count of the
indictment. The Byzantine world is accused of
having taken too much interest in religion.
* I am not going to attempt to justify or even to
defend the excessive place occupied by theological
questions in the life of Byzantine society. Never-
ceasing disputes, now about a word and now about
a syllable, have not added to the glory of the
Empire, nor did the importance of the part assumed
by monks contribute little to its decline. Perhaps
these controversies assumed a position of greater
comparative importance at Constantinople because
a people confessedly so intellectual and so cultured
found in them a field for the exercise of mental
activity which was not opened to them by printing
or newspapers, or telegrams from all parts of the
globe, or General Elections, or Parliamentary
Debates. Probably, however, this had little to do
with the matter. In the midst of all these distrac
tions, we do not find that religion ceases to be an
object of public interest. I might cite the Vatican
Council, or the Cultur-kampf. I might point to
the English newspaper press, a few years ago, ring
ing with controversy about the ecclesiastical hymn
commonly called the Creed of St. Athanasius. I
* The author desired that I should translate the following passage
literally, and I have accordingly done so. But had he permitted
me, I should have preferred to modify it, because it seems to me
that to readers in the land of the Solemn League and Covenant and
of the Disruption, not to speak of the history of England and of
Ireland from the time of Henry VIII. down to that of Catholic
Emancipation and onwards, it is surely unnecessary to discuss how
a public interest may be felt in such questions. (Tr.)

70 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
abstain from commenting at length upon the fact
that in the Middle Ages, and for long after, such
discussions in Western Europe were more impor
tant, or at least led to more violent action, than
they do now, or than they then did at Constan
tinople. I will not enlarge upon the history of the
Albigenses, or upon the story of Jeanne d' Arc,
upon the Wars of the Reformation in Germany, or
the persecutions of the Jews, or the records of the
Spanish Inquisition, and a good many other phe
nomena presented at different periods by the
Western States of Europe, which show what has
been the treatment of questions of conscience when
brought into connection with the storms of human
passion. And yet, the question of truth in religion, which
touches the life of every individual citizen not only
in things temporal but also in things eternal, and
which profoundly touches the State as the agglo
meration of individuals, touched the Byzantine
State and the worldly life of the Byzantine subject
far more deeply than it touches most States and
most individuals. They had to make the Church
strong. Her unity was universally regarded as
forming, along with the unity of the State, the very
foundation upon which rested the prosperity and
even the preservation of the latter. ' The Greeks,'
says Mortreuil, ' felt towards their religion an
attachment which amounted to fanaticism ; their
religious beliefs were the centre around which all
their other ideas were grouped ; and the bond of
religion was more powerful than any other in in-

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 71
spiring the Hellenic nationality with a lively and
enduring unity, while it never ceased to supply
fresh force to the hatred excited by the Latins.'
But the Latins were not the first adversaries
against whom the Church had to contend. The
classical paganism itself still existed till the latter
part of the Ninth Century, when the Mane at last
embraced Christianity in the reign of Basil I. (the
Macedonian). Next came the heresies, which were
not less menacing to the civil and ecclesiastical
unity, even where they did not, as in the blackest
cases, threaten the existence of Christianity itself.
Lastly, arose a new and implacable adversary in
the shape of Papal Rome, which gave a semi-reli
gious character to every attack which was made by
the West. The intimate union of ecclesiastical
questions with those of both domestic and foreign
policy was a fact to which it was impossible for the
public to remain blind or the government indifferent.
While, however, this national or political element
was certainly a feature in the religious questions
which agitated Byzantine society, it is impossible
from a purely religious point of view to deny the
services rendered by that society to the cause of
the Christian religion, or to dispute that the action
taken in such questions was generally dictated by
the very highest motives, and that the faith and
love which found their centre in the New Rome
have to-day their wide and their abiding results in
the existing condition of the Christian world.
The heresies, and the Councils which were need
ful to crush them, offer, alike and together, a very

72 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
interesting study, even if viewed from a standpoint
merely psychological, of the intellectual pheno
mena presented by the Greek mind. The
heresies owed their origin to the radical and
instinctive desire to philosophize. In this sense
they may be regarded as the last product of
the schools of heathen thought. Hence they
offer, on the one hand, an interesting study in the
development of intellectual activity, and constitute,
on the other, a curious monument left by the pro
gress of the human mind in its transition from one
phase of speculation to another. Mortreuil says,
' The Greeks are by their very nature philosophical
and speculative. The search for abstract truth is
to them more attractive than the pursuit of reforms,
or the regulation of manners. They are a race
eminently literary. They have always been thinkers
rather than statesmen. They seized accordingly
upon that side of Theology which most appealed to
their natural genius. The heresies which arose
among them were begotten by the same spirit which
is manifest through the whole history of their race.
It is a case of Theological Science subjected to the
criticism of pure reason, and dogma analyzed by
brilliant and impetuous logic. Religious contro
versies, centred upon the discussion of Divine Being
and upon the explanation of Divine Mystery by the
light of the laws of natural phenomena, assume in
the Greek schools a character purely scientific. The
Communion of the Eastern Church was shaken by
the question of two Natures and two Wills, two
Natures and one Will, or one Nature and one Will

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 73
in Christ Jesus. Even the heresy of the Iconoclasts
was a case in which the proclivity towards Idealism
found an incidental expression in connection with
externals.' But the unity of the Church was saved by the
Councils. These assemblies protected her from the
heresies, defined her doctrine, and ratified her or
ganization. The territory of the Byzantine Empire
was the scene in which the Councils met. Their
conduct was animated from first to last by the
keenness of the Greek intellect, which, now clothed
in its Byzantine phase, here offered to the service
of the Gospel the same natural and national gifts
which had once produced all that was best in the
thought of the old Hellenic world. Nor was the
confutation of heresy the sole consequence of the
Councils. ' It was by them,' says Chateaubriand,
' that there was first developed the idea and pre
sented the example of One Universal Society, whose
members exist in all countries, consist of all races,
and are loyally subject to all lawful governments,
but which is itself independent of all civil govern
ments — a Society which is of all peoples, and of no
people, which sends delegates from any part of the
planet to meet together to speak of nothing but of
the relation between man and God.'
Thus, Christianity owed to the Byzantine Govern
ment the protection which enabled her to define the
dogmatic system of her belief. It was equally under
the protection of the Byzantine Government that
the world was able to assume the form of Christian
Society, and the Church to direct and regulate the

74 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
activity of her lay element. It was under this same
protection that the machinery of the Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy was put into shape, that doctrinal teach
ing received its unity, and the Christian world the
sacred legislation of the Canons. It was the
Byzantine Government which settled the relations
between Church and State. When the Catholic
Bishops of Prussia, on May 26, 1873, petitioned
their Government in protest against the new legis
lation then attempted in Germany, they had to
complain that ' these laws invade the rights and
liberties of the Church, they reverse the funda
mental principles upon which the relations between
Church and State have been based throughout the
different nations of Christendom ever since the time
of Constantine the Great, and which recognize the
State and the Church as two distinct powers, both
instituted by God, and neither of which ought to
trespass upon the sphere assigned to the other in
common peace and harmony.' It was the Byzan
tine Empire also which resisted from the very first
the political pretensions of the Popes. If we are
of opinion that Christianity is the principal founda
tion of modern civilization, we certainly owe some
gratitude to the Empire which enabled it to assume
an organized form, and which contributed so much
to diffuse it.
It is needful to keep these things in mind before
pronouncing judgment — and especially an un
favourable judgment — upon the position occupied
by ecclesiastical matters in the Byzantine Empire.
Moreover, the mutual attitude of Church and State

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 75
under that Empire, had not the character commonly
attributed to it. The combination of these two
elements, of which some writers are so fond of
talking, was not chronic. It was not the normal
state of things for the Patriarch to be the tool of
the Emperor, or for the Emperor to be the slave of
the Patriarch. On the contrary, history has pre
served the record of plenty of cases where the
jealousy of the civil or of the ecclesiastical powers
for their respective independence brought them
into something very like collision. In fact, the
truth is, that the annals of the Byzantine Empire
bear more traces than do those of many modern
European nations of a continued effort to put in
practice the celebrated principle enunciated in Italy
by Cavour : — ' Chiesa libera in Stato libero — a Free
Church in a Free State.' For instance, the Patri
arch Polyeuktos forbade the marriage of the
Empress Theophano with the Emperor John I.
(Tzimiskes), with whom she had been an accom
plice in the murder of her husband, Nikephoros II.
(Phokas) ; the Patriarch Nicolas continued firm in
refusing the Holy Communion to Leo VI. (the
Philosopher) after he had contracted a fourth
marriage, in defiance of the Canons of our Church,
with Zoe Karbonopsina ; the Patriarch Ignatius
publicly passed over the Csesar Bardas, in conse
quence of his sin with his half-sister, when the
Prince, then in the plenitude of unlimited power,
came up to communicate at the Altar. Many more
such examples could be cited, following, in great
measure, from attempts of the State to intrude

76 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
within the sphere of Ecclesiastical authority. The
point of view from which such things were regarded
can perhaps hardly be better summed up than in
the words addressed to the Emperor by Theodore
of the Studium when the autocrat had taken to
meddling in the Iconoclastic controversy : — ' O
King, unto thee hath been committed the civil
State and the army. See thou to them. Leave
the Church to Pastors and Teachers.'
Nevertheless, I have already admitted that I
think that the population of the Empire sometimes
devoted an excessive amount of attention to the
discussions of Theologians, and that there were
periods when the development of monasticism
was anything but beneficial to the State. Such
was the case when the number of monasteries
was increased to excess, and their walls were
filled with citizens who were thus allowed to elude
the fulfilment of their duties to the State. The
monastic habit itself became degraded, when the
Civil Power enforced its adoption as a punishment,
to ensure the withdrawal from the world of those
of whom the Government desired to be rid. The
clergy became a danger to the State, when they
found many to listen to the doctrine, that all war
is sinful because it leads to homicide ; and when
conquered armies sought in their sins the sole ex
planation of their disasters, the hour of decadence
had struck. In the face of such things, I cannot
dispute the opinion of Gibbon, when he says that
the clergy became one of the main causes of the
fall of New Rome, and that some of the fruits of

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 77
forms of devotion which found protection under
the shadow of monasticism ' seriously affected the
reason, the faith, and the morals of the Christians.
Their credulity debased and vitiated the faculties
of the mind ; they corrupted the evidence of his
tory ; and superstition gradually extinguished the
hostile light of philosophy and science.'
It is impossible therefore, not to feel some
sympathy with those of the Emperors who
endeavoured to benefit society by imposing restric
tions upon monasticism. The history of the
Iconoclastic persecution is well related by the k.
Paparregopoulos, who explains the causes which
led to this reforming movement, and the reasons
why it failed. But although the persecution was
unsuccessful, it did not last for a century and a
half without leaving marks more or less apparent
both in the current of history and in the organism
of society, without as well as within the limits of
the Empire. The discussion of this extremely
interesting subject would, however, carry us outside
the bounds of the present discussion. I must
content myself with remarking that the restoration
of these pictures to the prominent public position,
which they have ever since held in the external
forms of the Orthodox Church, was followed at
Constantinople by a great increase in the influence
of the clergy.
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that it
was the Iconoclastic persecution, which was mainly
responsible for the separation of Central Italy from
the other domains of the Empire ; and it is remark-

78 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
able that in this way it may be regarded as the
parent of the Temporal Power of the Popes of
Rome, an element which from that time forth has
never ceased to form so powerful a factor in the
history of Christendom. This is certainly a most
singular result to have been produced by a school
of thought, which may be regarded as the earliest
important forerunner of Protestantism, as Gibbon
himself characterizes it in his Fifty-fourth Chapter —
a circumstance which throws a quaint light upon his
remark in the Fifty-third to the effect that the
Byzantine world did nothing for civilization. As
for the persecution itself, although finally defeated,
it at any rate left the practices of respect, shown
towards the objects in dispute, defined by a limit
which reconciles piety with reason. We read in
the Synaxarion, that when St. Theodora, after the
death of her persecuting husband Theophilos,
kissed the picture of the Blessed Virgin, ' she pro- ¦
claimed publicly that she worshipped (irpoacwei.) and
kissed the images relatively and not in adoration,
not as if they were gods, but as likenesses of which
she was fain to behold the originals.'
At the same time, historic truth demands for the
members of the monastic Order the just praise
which they earned by spreading Christianity among
the barbarous nations, and, with the Christian re
ligion, spreading and preserving Christian civiliza
tion. The Byzantine monks went forth to preach
the Gospel, but, as they toiled in this Divine work
of mercy, they composed Alphabets and taught
Letters and Arts. It was they who raised and

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 79
guided the barbarous populations who surrounded
the Empire, to the development of social organiza
tion. Thus,, for instance, the Slavonic language
was reduced to writing by the two Greek monks
Cyril 1 and Methodius ; and Greek monks were the
teachers of Ulphilas, the principal Apostle and
civilizer of the Goths. This extension of Christianity
and of civilisation affected the Empire itself, not
only by becoming a means of exercising influence
over foreign nations, but also by forming in itself a
bond of internal unity. The champions of monas
ticism have certainly the right to plead these things
as a set off against any unhappy results produced
at a late period by some developments of the system.
The free Greece of to-day, moreover, can never for
get her everlasting debt to the monasteries of her
Church, which were centres of national life and
national culture, as well as of national religion,
during the ages of her bondage.
Anyhow, such evil effects of the exaggerated
growth of monasticism and of the perversion of re
ligious sentiment were slow to appear. Ages upon
ages of life and of struggle rolled by before the
robust form of Constantinople was disguised under
any clerical habit. It is true that in her closing
days demoralized legions attributed their defeats
to the anger of God; and the last of the Palaiologoi
was fain to recruit with foreign auxiliaries the
dwindling ranks who defended his falling capital ;
but armies enough had already fought gloriously
and successfully under the Cross and the Labaron
through centuries enough and against enemies

80 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
enough to clear for ever in the eyes- of history the
honour of the Byzantine forces. ' The Byzantine
soldiery,' says M. Rambaud, ' was recruited from
among the most warlike races of both the Greek
and the barbarian population of the Empire. They
enjoyed the superiority over every enemy against
whom they had to contend, both as regards tactics
and arms. They were braver than they often get
the credit of having been. They knew how to fight
when they could not count upon victory. The con
tinual invasions brought against them constant
hordes of new enemies with new modes of warfare
and new terrors. But Byzantine soldiers never
refused the challenge. Under Heraclius and John
Tzimiskes, they glowed with enthusiasm : under
Leo VI. they knew how to face their fate and to
do their duty.'
It is quite true that the Greeks were at first
overcome by the invasion of the Latins, but the
fact that their resistance to them was ultimately
crowned with success is a proof that they had not
been deprived of military capacity by the catas
trophe which the assault of the Crusaders had
brought upon the Empire. On the contrary, the
warlike ability shown by the National Government
established at Nice, in contrast to the paralytic in
capacity of the Latin dynasty enthroned at Con
stantinople, demonstrates that in the very hour of
their weakness the Byzantine people were still
comparatively strong, and is the simple explanation
of the ease and speed with which they resumed
possession of the antient capital.

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 81
While, however, the Byzantine Empire possessed
a military organisation and a class of the population
subject to enlistment, the army formed a separate
body in the general class of the people. The citizens
and the soldiers were distinct, the ordinary run of
the labouring and trading classes had ceased to
look upon themselves as the natural defenders of
their own hearths and of the independence of their
country. This feeling greatly facilitated the re
cruitment of foreigners and prevented the natives
from looking upon such enrolments as either a
trespass upon their rights or a danger to their in
dependence ; to them they appeared rather in the
light of a convenience and a means of escaping the
performance of a tiresome duty. The employment
of these auxiliaries had indeed some advantages
which the k. Paparregopoulos has pointed out,
(III. 17.) But when a nation delegates to mercen
aries the duty of protecting it, it is opening a path
to the loss of its own independence. Mercenaries
fought on the Carthaginian side at that battle by
the Metaurus which crushed for ever the haughty
rival of the Elder Rome.
Thus it came to pass that under the dominion of
the Byzantine Government the ordinary private
subject became more and more inclined to leave to
the army the defence of the frontiers and often of
his own very home. As regards the internal policy
of the country, he learnt to leave everything
entirely to the Court of Constantinople. He thus
became more and more estranged from all affairs of
State, and the domain of religion afforded for the
6

82 BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM.
exercise of his natural activity a field which was
both useless and dangerous. The system of
contralisation which was the basis of the Byzantine
Government, did a great deal to hasten the fall of
the Empire. Constantinople became a sink into
which the wealth of the provinces was drained, and
which claimed to their detriment an overwhelming
share of the attention of the Emperor. Treasures
which would have served to render armies efficient
and provinces happy were often squandered to
furnish amusements for the inhabitants of the
capital or to feed the luxurious splendour of the
Imperial Court. Thus it was that political life
ceased to exist in those very spots where its
development had once been the most intense. The
nations who constituted the population of the
Empire became no longer capable of opposing even
moral obstacles to neutralise the causes of internal
decay. The material resources which enabled them
to resist external foes were exhausted by the pro
tracted centuries of conflict. They were subjected
at length to the common law of destruction, and
had to drain the cup of bitterness to the very
dregs. The history of the Byzantine Empire ought to
be a lesson of great price for modern States. It is a
lesson in especial which ought to be before the eyes
of my fellow countrymen. They love to take the
antient past as their only rule and their only
model, but to apply the lessons of that epoch of
glory is a task less practical than to profit by those
of the Middle Ages. It is true, that it is the aim

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM. 83
of the Greek world of to-day to purify itself from
everything foreign, to fall back upon its own re
sources and to keep its eyes constantly fixed upon
its own origin, with small heed to the twenty
centuries which separate it from the time of
Perikles or of Alexander. But it has been precisely
in these centuries that has been formed the
Hellenic world which exists to-day, the new, the
Christian Hellas. The Byzantine Empire also was
reared upon the Christianized Hellenism, and it is
by carefully observing what were the causes which
produced the rise, the greatness, the decline, and
the fall of that Empire that we shall see how to
steer clear of the rocks upon which it made ship
wreck. Thank God, it cannot be asserted that the
decline and fall of the Greek Empire were due to
any fault in the people. The people lacked no
quality which creates the greatness of States. The
fall of the Empire was the result of causes within,
which hindered the due exercise of the virtues of
the people, and of attacks from without, which it
met manfully as long as it had strength left to
stand, but before which it fell at last exhausted,
conquered, but not dishonoured, not like a slave
offering his neck to the hangman, but like a soldier
who dies upon the field of battle with his sword in
his hand and his face to the enemy.

THE SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE
EMPIRE.

THE SUBJECTS OE THE BYZAN
TINE EMPIRE.

The durability shown by the Byzantine Empire
could not be entirely accounted for if we did not
take into consideration the material prosperity
enjoyed by its subjects. The State could not have
lasted so long without the defence afforded by
armies and navies, and the cost of equipping
and supporting these armies and navies was
defrayed out of the wealth gained by industry
and commerce. Of what this wealth was,
we may gain some idea from the impres
sion which it produced upon foreigners, even
after the decline of the Empire had begun. In
the year 1170, for instance, the Jewish traveller,
Benjamin of Tudela, after passing through France,
Italy, and many of the cities of Greece, visited
Constantinople. It may be assumed that he was a
competent judge of the value of the things which
he saw. And here is what he says : — ' The
immense treasures which pour into Constantinople
from every province, town and city, surpass any
thing which can be imagined or which exists any-

88 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
where else. In the midst* of the Church of
Wisdom there is an innumerable collection of
pillars of silver and gold. The Emperor's palace
contains treasures and precious stones, the value of
which it would be very hard to appraise. The
inhabitants of the land are rich. They dress in
silk, and wear mantles embroidered with gold.
When you see them attired thus, and coming out
on horseback, you would take them for kings' sons.
The country is broad, and abounding in bread, and
meat, and wine, and fruit. There are no men in
the world so rich as these people.'
Fifty years later, the same astonishment was
felt by the Crusaders when they arrived to attack
the Imperial City, and cast anchor before San
Stefano. t ' Those who had never seen it before,'
says Villehardouin, ' stood on the decks, gazing
upon the marvellous sight, and scarcely able to
realize that the world could contain a city so rich.
Above all were they astonished at the sight of the
lofty walls and great towers wherewith it is engirt,

* He probably refers to the number of columns of the precious
metals belonging to the Bema, and which was certainly too great to
be at once realized by the eye, without counting. The eikonostasion
was of silver, and had at least twelve, but, more probably, twenty-
four columns of that metal. The Baldaquin, which must have had
at least four columns, was entirely of silver-gilt except such portions
as were of pure gold. The episcopal thrones round the apse, at least
seven in number, were separated by shafts of gold. We may also
conjecture the form and material of the Imperial and Patriarchal
thrones, the pillar-like standards for lights before the eikonostasion,
&c. (Tr.)
t The place from which the Treaty concluded between Russia and
Turkey after the late war derives its name,

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 89
the magnificent palaces, and the splendid churches,
the number of which is such that no one can
believe it who has not seen it, and the length and
the breadth of this Queen of Cities.' And when
they had taken it and laid their hands upon the
wealth which had made their eyes sparkle from
afar, their wonder was not lessened nor their hopes
disappointed. 'The loot,' continues their chronicler,
' was such as no man could guage. There was
gold, and silver, and precious stones, and gold and
silver plate, and silken stuffs, and furs, and every
thing that there is beautiful on earth. One might
say with truth that a conquered city has never
yielded such a loot since the creation of the world.'
The work of the historian Paparregopoulos con
tains a calculation based upon contemporary sources,
which shows that in the Twelfth Century the an
nual revenue of the Byzantine Empire amounted
to about twenty-five millions of pounds sterling, a
sum which, if we make allowance for the then
greater value of money, would in the present day be
equivalent to about an hundred and twenty millions.
We can judge what must have been the material
prosperity of the subjects of New Rome when
we compare this with the public income of the
entire British Empire, which in 1884 amounted to
only close upon two hundred and three millions.
And we can judge also what the change has been
under the Turkish Empire, which now occupies Con
stantinople, and a far larger territory than that of
the Byzantine Empire in the Twelfth Century. The
anticipated revenue of the Turkish Empire in 1883-4,

90 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
was equivalent only to something over thirteen
millions and a half. The fact was that Constanti
nople, placed upon the borders of Europe and Asia,
had opened to her, upon the one hand, through the
Propontis, the whole Mediterranean and beyond
that, the Atlantic Ocean itself, and, on the other,
through the Black Sea, and its great river tributa
ries, the most distant regions both of Europe and
of Asia. Thus she became the capital not only of
the Empire, but of civilization itself, and her unique
position afforded her advantages which she enjoyed
far beyond any horizon which had ever met the
eye of her classical predecessor Byzantium. It was
in her marts that, throughout the whole of the
Middle Ages, was centred the trade both of India
and of Northern Europe, as well as the commerce
in the -fruits of her own national agriculture and
industry. It was from her docks that there issued
those navies of Greek merchantmen which visited
every port of the Mediterranean and supplied the
rest of Europe with silk, carpets, linen, perfumes,
precious stones, cotton, dressed leather, oil, wine,
and fruits.
The time came, however, when the newly-founded
Italian Republics began little by little to contest
the monopoly of the merchants of New Rome. They
began under the shelter of the Imperial Govern
ment itself, of which their colonists professed them
selves the vassals. But at length, by turning to
skilful account the successes of the Crusaders, they
transformed their counting-houses in the East into
the independent outposts of foreign states, and

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 91
gave a political turn to their commercial relations
with Constantinople. In the period which elapsed
between the First and the Fourth Crusades, the
navigation and commerce of the Italian Republics
obtained a vastly increased development, at the
same time that the military organisation of the
whole of feudalized Europe disputed what had
hitherto been the exclusive supremacy of the
Eastern Empire. After Constantinople was taken
by the Crusaders in 1204 the maritime supremacy
of the Mediterranean passed into the hands of the
Venetians, and when the Greeks had again expelled
the Latin intruders, the Western merchants and
workmen who had settled in the East during their
occupation, still held their ground, nor did the
Byzantine population ever again find itself able to
wrest from them the commercial and industrial
predominence which they had acquired. The
Emperor Michael VIII. (Palaiologos) in order to
obtain the support of these Italian colonies against
the Franks, confirmed to the Venetians, the Pisans,
and the Genoese, of whom they were composed, all
the privileges which they had already acquired.
They had laws of their own, administered by magis
trates drawn from their native places, and who
were termed by the Venetians Bailies, by the Pisans
Consuls, and by the Genoese Podesta. But the in
jury inflicted upon the commerce of the Empire by
Italian competition did not stop here. Originally
transferred to the hands of Italians settled in the
East, trade in time passed away to Italy itself, and

92 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
Constantinople was deprived of the main sources of
her wealth.
The Byzantine Government tried to get rid, first
of the Venetian, and then of the Genoese settlers,
by playing upon their mutual rivalry. But whether
it was one or the other who was for the moment
uppermost, the result for the real natives of the
Empire was the same. Trade passed away into the
hands of foreigners. Manufactures which had once
been peculiar to the East, were now transplanted
to Sicily, Italy or Spain. The heaviest blow which
the Normans ever dealt to the Byzantine Empire
was the removal of the centre of the silk- trade to
Sicily. But let us turn to another aspect of the case.
Let us forget how ruinous to the trade of the
Empire was the commercial rivalry at length de
veloped in Italy. Let us forget that it was Venice
which was the first cause of the fall of Constanti
nople by bringing on the Latin conquest. Let us
forget that the first Turks who assailed the Imperial
City were borne under her walls in Genoese vessels.
Let us remember instead, that contact with New
Rome was the starting-point and the origin of that
material and intellectual prosperity of the Italian
Republics which preceded the Renaissance of the
rest of Europe. It is but another link in that chain
which attaches all the progress of the renewed West
to the fact of the long-continued existence of the
Byzantine Empire.
It may indeed be said that if we follow up to
their sources almost any of the modern branches of

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 93
Art, we find ourselves at last confronted by Byzan
tine teachers and Byzantine models. This is espe
cially the case with the Art of Venice, which like
wise owed to the East her industries and her com
merce. Venice was the principal instructress of
modern Europe. But she was herself an outpost
of the Byzantine world, settled on the Northern
shores of the Adriatic. The Venetian Republic
itself remained a vassal of the Byzantine Empire
until the Twelfth Century, that is to say, so long
as it suited the interests of her citizens to enjoy
the protection of Constantinople and to profit by
the advantages of being subjects of the Emperor.
It was not till the new States which began to spring
up in the East had attained a convenient amount
of development, and the Crusades had changed the
aspect of European politics, that the Republic be
thought herself of becoming independent of New
Rome. It was to the East that Western Europe owed
not only the arts of rearing the silk-worm and
weaving silk, but also those stuffs embroidered and
enwoven with gold, those carpets and tapestries
which soon claimed a place as essential elements in
Western luxury. It was from the Byzantines
that the Venetians learnt the manufacture of
glass, and the fabrication of all the articles in this
material, whose beauty causes them to be still so
much sought after and esteemed. As for jewellery
and goldsmiths' work, it was long before the
craftsmen of Italy, of Germany, and of France,
succeeded in equalling the Byzantine artificers

94 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
whose productions they copied. It was likewise at
Constantinople that organs were first invented, so
that it is to Greek mechanics that the Western
churches owe that very instrument which so tickles
the ears of their worshippers, but which the East
has refused to admit into competition with the
voice of the creature praising the Creator. Nor
was it in works of peace alone that the Byzantine
inventors displayed their industry and their
ingenuity, as is proved by the superiority of their
engines of war and the discovery and use of the
Greek fire.
In all that concerns the Fine Arts, modern
Europe is deeply indebted to Christian and
Imperial Constantinople. It is quite true that, in
order to produce master-pieces, natural aptitude is
not all that is needed, nor even material prosperity.
There must also be the enjoyment of political free
dom. Byzantine Society lacked those elements
which produced in antient Hellas and in mediaeval
Italy the artists whose works are now regarded
with universal admiration as the highest known
achievements of their kind. But here it is
necessary to remember, as has been already
remarked, that the peculiar work to which New
Rome was called in the history of human progress,
was not that of invention but of preservation.
And this work she did for the Fine Arts as well as
for other things. The Byzantine artists may have
allowed the Idea of the Beautiful to fade and to
deteriorate, but still it was they who guided the
infant Art of the West towards the imitation of

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 95
the antique. Their hands may have grown weak,
but they never ceased to employ them upon every
branch of Art, even when they had lost all hope of
attaining the Beautiful and the Sublime. Never
theless, when we find Byzantine Art confining
itself for so many centuries to the same unchanging
models, we cannot but perceive that these death
less types must have been themselves produced in
a better day, and it is to that better day that the
modern student of Art ought to direct his atten
tion. As regards Architecture, the building which
offers at once the highest expression and the most
characteristic type of the Byzantine style is the
colossal Church of the Uncreated Wisdom at
Constantinople. This temple is in itself enough to
win for the names of the architects, Anthemios and
Isidoros, a place among the very first of their
profession. But Byzantine Architecture was not
confined either to the reign of Justinian or to the
capital city, to the limits of the Byzantine Empire,
or to the epoch when that State flourished. This
style is a direct development from the Art of
Greece and Rome. It is the transition between
Classical and Modern Architecture. It produced
the earliest distinctive type of a Christian place of
worship, and its influence upon the Architecture of
the Christian world has been vast. Especially is
this the case in Venice, in Sicily, in Russia, and
throughout Eastern Christendom. At Venice, the
Church of St. Mark is an enduring monument of
its grandeur. In Sicily, the mosaics which stir the

96 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
awe and wonder of the traveller at Monreale, at
Palermo, and at Cefalu, are the work of Greek
artists. On the other hand, all that is most
beautiful in Mohammedan architecture is either
actually Greek work, or an ^imitation from it. Even
the Turks themselves have been forced to invoke
the genius of the people whom they have con
quered. It was to the Greek Christodoulos that
Mahomet II. had fain to commit the building of
the mosque which still bears his name.
As to Byzantine Painting, we are not now able
to speak with the same exactitude, because none of
the works of the best period have survived. Pro
bably the long-drawn persecution waged by the
Iconoclasts has had something to do with this fact.
At the same time, the miniatures which adorn
some MSS., the traits preserved in the later
hagiography, the existing mosaics, and, above all,
the descriptions of contemporary writers, combine,
even more than some few surviving remains, to
suggest the former existence of an higher school of
Art than any of which we now possess any exten
sive monuments. Whatever the Byzantine Paint
ing may really have been, it was undoubtedly the
parent of Modern Painting. Anyone can see this
in the picture - galleries and the churches of
Western Europe, by glancing at the works of
Cimabue, and the rest of the early Italian masters
who were the forerunners of Raphael.
The same remarks which apply to the condition
of the Fine Arts in the New Rome, will equally
apply to the condition of all the other branches of

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 97
learning and culture. They had periods of weak
ness, but they were not wholly neglected. What
was there known as ' General Education ' (v fynfc^os
TraiSek) was always considered as the completion of
any really good systematic training, whether for
men or for women. The general diffusion and the
high standard of education is a fact which explains
the uninterrupted succession of learned and able
persons in such a Society as the Byzantine, where
genius lacked the invigorating atmosphere afforded
by the polity of a free State.
It was owing to this wide dissemination of
culture that women as well as men were able to
take an active part in affairs of State. Thus we
find that Finlay, when speaking of Eudokia
Palaiologina, daughter of Michael VIII., sister of
Andronikos II., wife of John II., Emperor of Tre
bizond, and mother of his successor Alexios II.,
makes the remark : — ' Eudocia showed herself as
much superior to her brother Andronicus in char
acter, judgment, and virtue, as most of the women
of the house of Palaiologos were to the men. The
difference between the males and the females of
this imperial family is so marked, that it would
form a curious subject of enquiry to ascertain how
the system of education in the Greek empire, at
this period, produced an effect so singular and
uniform.' It was indeed especially in the latter
days of Byzantine Society that women, both at
Constantinople and at Trebizond, gave proof of
possessing a wisdom, a virtue, and a courage which
were not unfrequently greater than those of men.
7

98 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
This superiority in the Byzantine system of
education was recognized as a fact by contemporary
Europe, where princes esteemed themselves happy
if their daughters were brought up under the care
of the women of the Court of Constantinople. Nor
is it possible, before leaving this point, to avoid
alluding to the fact of the very great number of
books written by women during the Byzantine
epoch, and of which some are still extant. The
literary merit of these works is of course various,
and a matter of discussion. But the nature of the
subjects treated, and the erudition displayed in
dealing with them, leave no doubt as to the
learning, the tastes, and the culture of the writers.
History gives us plenty of testimonies to the
honours and consideration with which the Em
perors treated the learned, and in this respect the
Court was only the leader of the rest of Byzantine
Society. We may perhaps smile now-a-days when
we find the title of Prince of Philosophers (ottotos tOv
tpCKoctxpuv), bestowed upon Michael Constantine
Psellos in the Eleventh Century. Perhaps, how
ever, we should first do well to have some
acquaintance with the life and works* of the
* Numerous as were his already published works, we have had to
thank the k. K. Sathas for at last causing the whole to appear in
print, as well as for the excellent biographical notice with which
these hitherto unedited compositions are accompanied. The learn
ing of Psellos was so vast and varied as to be almost encyclopaedic ;
but the title bestowed upon him can hardly be understood as meant
to indicate that he was to be termed the chief of all philosophers. It
implies rather that he was the leader among the learned of his own
contemporaries and fellow-countrymen. The word Hiraros properly

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 99
writer in question. But whatever may have been
the merits or the faults of these philosophers, the
schools of learning which they directed were
schools in which Plato and Aristotle were taught.
The teaching may have been more or less pedantic
and lifeless. But minds could not be brought into
habitual contact with the master minds of antient
Greece without result. And the result is one
which often strikes the reader of Byzantine litera
ture. The authors of that literature have met
with less esteem than they deserve.
Those who acquired the ' general education ' did
not all become historians or theological disputants.
Any extensive biographical dictionary* is filled
with the names of Byzantine authors, grammarians,
mathematicians, geographers, physicians, writers
upon the physical sciences, upon astronomy, upon
music, and, in fact, upon every department of human
knowledge. It will be contended that none of them
inaugurated an epoch in any branch of science. Well,
let it be so. In any case the ceaseless toil with
which all these men strove to acquire and to spread
knowledge is of itself a noble thing, of which the
modern world ought to take account when it sits
down to judge the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire.
It has been the fashion to credit the Arabs with
having preserved or created a great deal of scientific
means a Consul, and after the retirement of Psellos into a monas
tery, the title was given by Alexios I. (Komnenos) to Joannes
Italos. (Tr.)
* Smith's larger Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and
Mytlwlogy is an instance (Tr.)

100 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
culture during the darkness of the Middle Ages.
But the truth was that what the Arabs learned
they acquired from the Greeks of Constantinople,
and that the Arabic translations in which some
classical works were preserved were made for them
by Greek scholars. The Caliphs, when at the
height of their power and greatness, did indeed
patronise and encourage the study of letters and
of science, but it was thanks to Greek men of learn
ing, that they were able to cultivate any such exotic
at Bagdad. The Caliph Almamoun deserves credit
for having attracted to his Court such men as Leo
of Thessalonica, but Byzantine Society deserves the
gratitude of posterity for having produced them.
' There is no such thing,' says Dr. Daremberg,* ' as
an original Arab medical science. Arab medical
science was a slavish imitation from the Greek!
And the same remark is true of all the sciences.
The Arabs have never been inventors. They are
enthusiasts, possessed with a passion for anything
new, which renders their enthusiasm itself evanes
cent. And in consequence of this incapacity for
perseverance, they soon forgot the lessons in medical
science which they had once acquired from the
Greeks, and have fallen back into a state of the
most absolute ignorance.'
After all, however, Jurisprudence is the science
in which the work of the Byzantine Empire was of
most importance, and in which it has left the most

* Journal des Dibats, Dec. 13, 1882. ' Le Caire : Impressions
Medical es.'

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 101
enduring monuments. The authorities of the
Empire preserved the whole structure of Roman
law, and at the same time performed the work of
adapting it to the needs of Christian society.
Byzantine Legislation is especially connected
with the names of two great Emperors — Justinian
I. and Basil I. (the Macedonian). 'The Greek
lawyers,' says Mortreuil, 'who laboured by command
of Justinian, displayed an ability so great that after
the lapse of thirteen centuries, the compilations of
that monarch still represent the entire spirit of
Roman Jurisprudence, and the modern Codes of to
day submit to his prescriptions and to his doctrines.'
Three centuries after Justinian, Basil the Mace
donian undertook the compilation of a New Code,
based upon the commentaries by which the Byzan
tine legists had explained and completed the work
of Justinian and his successors. This Code received
from its author the title of Basilika. It became
thenceforth the Law of the Christian East. Even
after the conquest by the Turks, the measure of
temporal jurisdiction with which they invested the
ecclesiastical tribunals, caused it to survive as a
civil code, and as such it is still in force.* In the
Basilika the antient Roman Jurisprudence appears
subject to a profound modification. The monarchial
form of the Byzantine Government, and still more,
* In the Kingdom of Greece proper, the necessity for a Criminal
Code created by the freedom of the country has been met by an
adaptation of the criminal portion of the Code NapoWon, but in
civil causes the tribunals there also still judge by the decrees of the
Byzantine Emperors. (Tr.)

102 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
the adoption of Christianity , give it a new character,
which it preserved entire as long as Emperors ruled
at Constantinople to carry on and to perfect the
work of their predecessors. Meanwhile, alongside
the secular Code, the Byzantine tribunals formed
likewise the system of Canon Law.
The necessity for applying, for studying, for
commenting, and for explaining this double Code
produced a series of eminent lawyers which was
never interrupted from the beginning till the end
of the Empire. Many of their names have passed
into oblivion, but a long list remains, stretching
from Tribonian to Ha.rmen6poulos. The legal
schools of Constantinople and Beyrouth were
the nurseries in which these learned men were
reared. Other Schools of Law existed at Athens,
at Alexandria, and at Caesarea. Nor must we
forget the remark of Mortreuil, who finds in the
resemblance to them which marks the corres
ponding schools of Italy, another proof of the
extent to which Byzantine Jurisprudence has
affected the legislation of Western Europe.
It may now be permitted to touch upon the
subject of Literature. This is a standard by which
it is always possible to measure the intellectual
development of a nation. In this particular the
Byzantine world has been very much cried down.
Is there anything to be said upon the other side ?
I shall not cite the Fourth and Fifth Centuries,
which are rendered illustrious by the names of
Basil, of the Gregories, of John Chrysostom, of
Synesios, of Zosimos, of Stobaios, of Mousaios, and

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 103
of so many others. These men are generally looked
upon as the last representatives of classical culture.
The fact is, on the contrary, that all of them, and
especially the Doctors of the Church, should be
considered as amonff the earlier glories of the
Byzantine period. Taking only one or two names
in each succeeding century, we find in the Sixth
the remarkable historians Procopius and Agathias.
In the Seventh lived George of Pisidia, whose
works, while they do not justify the contemporary
judgment which compared them to the tragedies of
Euripides, are a sriking proof of the living tradition
of the classical poetry. The Eighth Century was
the period of John of Damascus, surnamed ' of
Golden Streams,' whose religious writings have
become the basis of Orthodox Systematic Theology,
and whose words of prayer still lend a voice to the
faith and love of Christian hearts throughout the
Greek Churches. The Ninth Century is marked
by the name of Photius. The Tenth affords the
examples of two Imperial authors, Leo VI. (the
Wise) and Constantine VII. (Porphyrogennetos)
as a proof of the esteem in which the pursuit of
letters was held upon the throne itself. In the
Eleventh Century, Souidas compiled his Lexicon,
and Kedrenos his History. The Twelfth is distin
guished as the period of the learned Bishop
Eustathios and of the lettered Princess Anna
Komnena. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth in
creased the roll both in numbers and merit, and in'
the Fifteenth the fall of Constantinople was the
means of obtaining for Italy the presence of those

104 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
learned men who bore with them the intellectual
testament of classical Hellas. Thus, the last
benefit which the dying East conferred upon the
new-born West, was to transmit to her that herit
age of antient culture of which she had been the
jealous guardian during so many ages. The emi
grants of Constantinople completed the work
which had been begun by the immigrants of the
Crusades. These two things — first, the Crusades,
and, secondly, the diffusion of the antient culture
by Byzantine scholars — comprise that epoch of
germination during which Western Europe,
hitherto shapeless and semi-barbarous, grew into
Modern Society.
We certainly do not find in the Byzantine
authors the same depth and originality which
mark the antient writers whom they copied. Far
from it. But there are many of them who cannot
be read without both profit and pleasure. In
doing so we are at least reminded of their early
predecessors. In a word, we cannot condemn
Byzantine Literature as having produced no
remarkable works. And the prejudice with which
they are habitually viewed is curiously and
strikingly proved by the fact that certain poems
which had been lauded to the skies for centuries as
the compositions of Anacreon, have now been
proved by modern criticism to be the productions
of anonymous Byzantine writers. If such were the
verses written at Constantinople, who shall say
how many works instinct with a grace truly Greek,

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 105
may not have been the product of the same atmos
phere, but now lost for ever.
* This imitation of the antients, however, even
when it was successful, was unhappily the essential
weakness of Byzantine Literature. The learned
shut themselves up in the study of the past, and
this contemplation did not act as a lever to raise
new ideas. Antient thought was unadapted to the
living needs of another and newer world. The
seeds of genius lay frost-bitten and fruitless in the
cold, confined atmosphere of retrospection. Byzan
tine men of talent and culture dedicated themselves
so persistently to the worship of the letter that
they came to overlook the spirit. They were
naturally moved by an intense admiration for the
language of their ancestors. Hence they came to
regard it as the only instrument of wliich an author

* The passage which here follows will not be understood without
an explanation, by those who are unaware that the present Greek
literary world is divided into two streams of somewhat contrary
tendency. All are indeed agreed that the spoken language ought to
be cleansed as far as possible of certain foreign words and vulgar cir
cumlocutions which are occasionally to be heard among the unedu
cated. One school, however, of which the k. Bikelas is an eloquent
exponent, regard as natural and healthy developments engendered
in the progress of time, the use of certain particular words and of
some grammatical constructions which are seldom or never found in
antient classical writers. Another school regard these features as the
productions of an epoch of degradation, and do everything in their
power to abolish them. The difference in the two styles may be seen
by comparing a Byzantine historian with the work of the k. Papar
regopoulos. Those who desire to study the subject of these develop
ments or corruptions may do so, among other works, in the Horaz'
Hellenics of Professor Blackie, and in the Appendix to Messrs.
Vincent and Dickson's Handbook to Modern Greek. (Tr.)

106 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
ought to make use for the expression of his
thoughts. The living language of Hellas, under
the influence of the ordinary laws of philology,
developed new forms and entered upon new phases
of life. But for the literary world of Constan
tinople the living tongue came to be stigmatized as
vulgar, rustic, or popular. At length the contempt
of the learned for the living tongue and for those
who spoke it, ended by alienating them as a class
from the body of their fellow-countrymen. They
did not follow, they would not or could not become
the mouthpieces of the spirit of their age. Hence
the lifelessness which is apparent in their works.
A literature which is not a representative of the
epoch which produces it, which does not receive
from the vital heat of a living people that anima
tion which manifests itself in the light thrown back
upon its source, such a literature must necessarily
be wanting in the life, the elevation, the passion
and the vigour which are the distinctive features of
every really strong and healthy national inspiration.
This is the reason why, with all the advantages
which the Byzantine writers possessed, with all the
learning which distinguished so many, all the grace
and all the wisdom which adorned some, they
could not escape the fatal consequences entailed by
blind attachment to a state of things which was
past and gone. The prose authors competed with
each other as to who should write prose most like
that of the Attic authors of a thousand years earlier.
The poets were occupied in trying to produce
imitations, sometimes of Euripides, at other times

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 107
of Anacreon. They forgot that the emotion with
which Demosthenes had thrilled Athenian assem
blies from the Pnyx was not admiration at the
profound learning displayed in the correct use of
obsolete archaisms. They forgot that the language
in which Socrates conversed with his disciples was
the living Greek language of his own day. They
forgot that when the Athenians who had been
enslaved at Syracuse won their freedom by reciting
verses, those verses were the verses of a contem
porary poet, namely, Euripides. They did not
reflect that if the flowers of eloquence and of poetry
are ever to blossom, they must spring up in a
natural soil and open under the light and heat of a
living sun.
Perhaps Constantinople had no such soil. She
lacked the Pnyx, the Theatre, and the Academy of
Athens. And her literature has left us no monu
ments like those antient works which shine as
everlasting beacons upon the horizon of the human
intelligence. There is one exception to the unhappy rule of
artificialism which stamps Byzantine literature. It
is that branch of it which belongs to the sphere
where the Life and the Truth reigns. It was there
that real feeling insisted upon having a voice, and
the result, even from a point of view purely literary,
is enough to prove that the Byzantine world had
the power of giving noble expression to thought,
when it was able to trample down the chains of
pedantry. It has already been necessary to remark that, in

108 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
the Byzantine Empire, religious questions came to
be the principal centre of political and social life—
hence it naturally came to be the case that religious
feeling was one of the principal motives in
individual life, and it is accordingly to religious
feeling that we owe the most vivid and striking
expressions of Byzantine thought. To it we owe
the Church of the Uncreated Wisdom. To it also
we owe the ecclesiastical literature formed and
illustrated by the Greek Fathers of the Church.
And to it we owe, moreover, the Service-Books of
our own Church. These books are far freer than
any others from the signs of weakness in intelli
gence and in taste which mar the rest of Byzantine
Literature. In them the spirit of the writers soars
above the mimicry of the dead into the strong,
clear atmosphere of living humanity.
The group of the regular Liturgical Services, as
well as those for special occasions and seasons, with
their beautiful and often poetical prayers, which
have now for so many centuries answered the
spiritual needs and supplied an utterance to the
deepest feelings of so many generations of Christian
believers, is not itself the product of any one indi
vidual period or of any one particular class of
writers. Many of the calamities of our country
have left their echo in those pages. Many a
wounded heart has breathed its sorrow into them.
This is the reason why the Service-Books of our
Church have from the beginning borne that pecu
liar stamp which is happily characteristic of the
religion of our race. Our Church is bound up with

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 109
our history. The highest and deepest of human
feelings, the most sacred experiences of the indi
vidual human heart and conscience, are with us
indissolubly associated with reminders of the des
tinies of our Fatherland. An historical analysis
of these sacred books would be a work well worthy
of the studies and labours of the most learned
Greek. The k. Spyridon Zampelios has done
enough, in some moving pages of his admirable
studies of Mediaeval Hellenism,* to show of what a
development the subject is capable.
The works of the kk. Zampelios and Sathas, and
other Greek writers, and above all the national
history of the k. Paparregopoulos, are but the first-
fruits of what will be done when Greece advances
farther in the study of her own Middle Ages. I
say, when Greece advances in that study, for surely
the study ought to be hers. It has only been
within this century that the task has attracted the
serious attention of some learned foreigners. We
owe to their researches valuable works which will
form an excellent guide for the young writers of
Greece. It will be easier for natives than it has
been for foreigners to penetrate the mysteries of
the history of New Rome, and to unravel the
tangled threads of her vicissitudes. In that his
tory how many pages are still obscure ! How
many chapters will have to be re- written ! It is
for this reason especially that I wish that our
young writers would make the history of the
* Chap, xxxviii., ' On the Offices for the Dead.'

110 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
Middle Ages a subject of study, and would
especially seek to illustrate particular points in it
by special essays. Such studies would not be
barren, for Byzantine history offers many events,
many personages, and many episodes which are fit
subjects for such treatment, whether the writer
seek to illustrate the movements of religious
thought, the phases of commercial activity, or the
condition of the people viewed socially and morally.
It is above all the moral condition of the sub
jects of the Byzantine Empire which seems to me
to call for exact investigation. It is time that we
should know with precision how far an impartial
examination of the facts will justify the low esti
mate so often formed as to this aspect of Byzantine
Society. For such a purpose I think a historian
should examine such questions as the following :
What were the relations between the governing
and the governed ? What events took place which
may serve as a test of the public conscience, as
shown by the action of the people ? In what light
were the good and bad Princes respectively re
garded, and was there any difference in this re
spect between different periods ? How was the
estimation in which the clergy were held affected
by their personal conduct ? Lastly, what was the
tone of legislation ? I am persuaded that the
result of such questions truthfully answered would
be to give the Byzantine world an higher place
than it now enjoys in popular estimation.
This subject seems to me so important that I
prefer not to treat it in any words of my own. I

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. Ill
will cite a foreign historian of Mediaeval and
Modern Greece, the learned Scotchman who spent
so many years of study among us, Finlay. No one
will accuse him of being intoxicated with too much
Philhellenism. On the contrary, he has accustomed
us to hear criticisms which are always hard, if not
always just. Well, here is what Finlay says. He
is speaking of the state of society among the people
of the Byzantine Empire in the Eighth and Ninth
Centuries, but the same observations are generally
applicable to the whole period during which the
empire lasted.
' That the moral condition of the people of the
Byzantine Empire under the Iconoclast Emperors,'
says Finlay, ' was superior to that of any equal
number of the human race in any preceding period,
can hardly be denied. The bulk of society occupied
a higher social position in the time of Constantine
Copronymus than of Pericles; the masses had gained
more by the decrease of slavery and the extension
of free labour than the privileged citizens had lost.
Public opinion, though occupied on meaner objects,
had a more extended basis and embraced a larger
class. Perhaps, too, the war of opinions concerning
ecclesiastical forms or subtleties tended to develop
pure morality as much as the ambitious party-
struggles of the Pnyx. When the merits and
defects of each age are fairly weighed, both will be
found to offer lessons of experience which the
student of political history ought not to neglect.
' There may be some difference of opinion con
cerning the respective merits of Hellenic, Roman,

112 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
and Byzantine society, but there can be none con
cerning the superiority of Byzantine over that
which existed in the contemporary empires of the
Saracens and the Franks. There we find all moral
restraints weakened and privileged classes or
conquering nations ruling an immense subject
population, with very little reference to law, morality,
or religion. Violence and injustice claimed at
Bagdad an unbounded licence, until the Turkish
mercenaries extinguished the caliphate; and it was
the Norman invaders who reformed the social con
dition of the Franks. Mohammedanism legalised
polygamy with all its evils in the East. In the
West, licentiousness was unbounded, in defiance of
the precepts of Christianity. Charles Martel,
Pepin, and Charlemagne are said all to have had
two wives at a time and a numerous household of
concubines. But on turning to the Byzantine
Empire, we find that the Emperor Constantine VI.
prepared the way for his own ruin by divorcing his
first wife and marrying a second, in what was con
sidered an illegal manner. The laws of the Franks
attest the frequency of female drunkenness ; and
the whole legislation of Western Europe during the
Seventh and Eighth Centuries, indicates great
immorality and a degree of social anarchy, which
explains more clearly than the political events
recorded in history the real cause of the fall of
one Government after another. The superior moral
tone of society in the Byzantine Empire was one of
the great causes of its long duration ; it was its
true conservative principle.'

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 113
So much for the moral tone of Byzantine Society.
Side by side with the question of public and
social morality, arises that of the organisation of
the different social strata into which the population
was divided. An enquiry into this subject will
enlighten us as to the position occupied in the
State by the main body of the people, as to the
degree to which they were dependent upon the
Government, and as to the progressive development
of those municipal institutions which, when the
crash came, were a plank of safety for the enslaved
nation. It will be perceived that the Byzantine world
possessed certain general features which were its
distinctive and distinguishing marks from the
beginning to the end. But, beside these, there
were certain characteristics which marked different
epochs. These successive phases of Byzantinism
were not produced by the influences of their own
past alone, nor only by the events internal to the
Empire. The intellectual movements of the foreign
world also had their share in producing them. The
events of contemporary history affected the Empire
at all times and in different ways.
The manner in which Byzantine history thus
actually falls as it were into chapters greatly
facilitates the production of special studies. At the
same time, it is almost needless to remark that any
writer who desires to pourtray any one of these
periods with intelligence and correctness must neces
sarily have a thorough knowledge of Mediaeval history
in general. Some French authors have already given
8

114 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
us excellent studies of the kind indicated. Such
are the works of M. Alfred Rambaud upon the
times of Constantine Porphyrogennetos, and of M.
Ludovic Drapeyron, upon the reign of Herakleios.
Above all, the learned Amedee Thierry in his RScits
de Vhistoire Romaine d' Orient, has shown how cu
rious and how attractive are the materials with
which New Rome invites the labour of the histo
rian. But, in truth, how many of the Emperors
are there the record of whose lives could fill many
stirring pages ! What spectacle, for instance, can
be more striking than that presented in Constan
tinople by the Christmas Day of the year 820 — the
Emperor Leo V. (the Armenian), falling under the
blows of assassins disguised as Priests, within the
Church itself, where his intonation of the first Anti-
phon gave the signal for the onslaught — his succes
sor, Michael II. (the Stammerer), led to the throne
from the dungeon, where he was awaiting, for the
second time, the arrival of the executioners, to bear
him to the fiery furnace in which he was to die,
having once already been brought forth for death,
and respited at the last moment on account of the
prayers of the Empress that he might be reprieved
for a few hours in respect to the sanctity of the day?
What scene can be found more tragic than the death
of Theophilos, when, resolved to secure his son's
throne at the expense of his own conscience, he or
dered the head of his brother-in-law Theophobos to
be brought to his bed-side, and when he had gazed
long and steadily at the well-known features, his
mind doubtless wandering over the memory of many

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 115
a battle-field where they had fought together, he at
last slowly exclaimed, ' Thou art no longer Theopho-
bos, and I am no more Theophilos,' turned away,
sank upon his pillow, and never spoke again ? Few
histories are more terribly affecting than the life of
Romanus IV (Diogenes), spared, after condemna
tion to death, by the Empress, who raised him to
the throne, first the conqueror and then the
betrayed prisoner of the Turks, liberated only to
return home to find treason enthroned, defeated by
its arms, and blinded in defiance of treaty, silent
under his tortures, save to pray that they might
be received as an expiation of his sins, and sent
unattended to the island of Prote, to die of the
putrefaction of his wounds. Few lives can show
changes more strange than that of Eudokia,
daughter of Alexios III., Emperor of Trebizond,
wedded to the Turkish Emir Tadjeddin, betrothed,
after his murder, to the young Prince, afterwards
Manuel II., and married in the end to the Emperor
John VI. More like a romance than an history
appears the career of of Andronikos I. (Komnenos),
a man who may be termed the Alkibiades of
Mediaeval Greece, the darling of nature, who, after
a life of every imaginable adventure in love, in
war, and in politics, among Greeks, Latins, Slavs,
and Turks, in Thrace and Macedonia, in Cilicia and
Syria, in Hungary and Russia, in Persia and
Trebizond, at Constantinople, at Jerusalem, at
Bagdad, at Damascus, at Kieff, at Semlin, at Thes-
salonica, after the reign of a year made horrible by
his cruelties, was himself torn from the Imperial

116 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
throne to die in the Hippodrome by the hands of
the people after being compelled for hours to suffer
tortures which nature recoils from recording.
These are but five instances taken at random
from the history of the Byzantine throne only. If
we descend among subjects, vast is the number of
those who have left an impress for good or for evil
upon the fortunes of the East, and the study of
whose lives would throw new light upon the his
tory of their epochs. If I once allowed myself to
sketch a list however superficial of the themes with
which the records of New Rome might inspire either
an historian or an artist, I should go farther than I
may allow myself. The writers, the poets, and the
painters of modern Greece, possess in that history a
mine of material which has hardly been touched,
which is practically inexhaustible, and which is filled
for them with promises alike of labour and of fame.
If, instead of the brief and superficial notes which
are here drawing to a close, I had myself endea
voured to attract attention to some one episode in
the history of Mediaeval Greece by the composition
of such a special treatise as I have just indicated, I
should perhaps have succeeded better than I have
done in conveying in an interesting manner a true
idea of what I believe the Byzantine Empire really
to have been.
In the present summary sketch I have not sought
to treat of the history of the Byzantine Empire.
My only wish has been to call attention to a few of
its general features, and at the same time to point
out how the distorted glass of national antipathy

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 117
and old-world prejudice still disfigures the view of
the past.
Thus I have striven to show how happily the
Byzantine Empire was constituted for the long
preservation both of its existence and of its unity,
and how that constitution enabled it to preserve
through so many centuries all the elements of
civilization. Under the shelter of a State equipped
with a legislation so singularly perfect, and the
protecting eye of a watchful Government, the pro
duction of both public and private wealth attained
gigantic proportions, while military organization
and maritime supremacy assured to the State itself
its integrity and it superiority, amid the unceasing
and unchanging assaults to which it was subjected,
and the intellectual and moral condition of its sub
jects formed a veritable oasis in the midst of all the
barbarism of the Middle Ages with which it was
surrrounded on every hand. Above all, I have
tried to point out that by spreading education and
diffusing Christianity, by the cultivation of the
Arts and the development of Commerce, by the
study of Literature and the pursuit of Science, the
Byzantine Empire did more than keep the traditions
of civilization for itself ; it passed these traditions
on to its uncivilized neighbours, and was thus the
guide and the teacher of the modern world.
While, however, I have been desirous to acknow
ledge these benefits, I have had no wish to omit
the shadows from the sketch which I have tried to
draw. I have remarked in the Byzantine Empire the
absence of that political liberty which would have

118 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
given more cohesion to the State, and done some
thing to neutralize the evils of a centralization by
which the life and energy of the Empire were in
danger of being all drained away into the capital.
I have mentioned the unhappy results of the
excessive prominence given to ecclesiastical questions,
and the equally unhappy results of a political edu
cation which ended by leaving the real natives of
the Empire incapable of defending their own country
by force of arms.
The feature last mentioned was the principal
cause of weakness in the Byzantine Empire,
and the element in which we must seek the
explanation ofits decline and fall. The state of
confusion which invited and which followed the
Latin conquest brought the faults of this political
system clearly to view, just as a shock will cause
the mud to rise to the surface of a pond which has
hitherto appeared limpid. The low condition into
which Government had fallen, the struggles of
Pretenders to the throne, and the consequent
relaxation of the bonds of internal unity in the
State, rendered possible the conquest of the Empire
by the comparatively small army of Crusaders.
' The lesson,' as Finlay well remarks, ' is worthy of
attentive study by all wealthy and civilized nations,
who neglect moral education and military discipline
as national institutions. No State, even though its
civil organisation be excellent, its administration of
justice impartial, and its political system popular,
can escape the danger of a like fate, unless skill,

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 119
discipline, and experience in military and naval
tactics watch constantly over its wealth.'
At the same time, the shock produced by the
Latin conquest had the effect of separating sharply,
and therefore in a sense purifying, the confused and
heterogeneous mass of elements of which the body
social of the Empire was composed. Out of the
ruin caused by the catastrophe, there suddenly
broke forth a strong light of pure Hellenism. It was
this light which illuminated all the attempts made
for the recovery of Constantinople, and shone upon
the recommencement of the Byzantine rule within
her walls. From this point onwards, although the
Empire still continued to bear the name of Roman,
it became in itself more and more exclusively
Hellenic in character. A new lease of life seemed
to be opening before it. The State had now become
more homogeneous, and it had acquired fresh
strength from the trials through which it had been
compelled to pass. It might have proved perma
nent, if only it had taken a new departure. Then,
perhaps, guided by the sceptre of the Palaiologoi, a
new Power, a Power purely and exclusively Hellenic,
might have arisen, and the history of Europe, both
in Mediaeval and Modern times, would have been
materially altered.
But such a development was. arrested by two
causes. One of these was within the Empire itself,
and consisted of the intense conservatism with
which the whole of society clung to the institutions
and even the forms of the past, the enduring pride
with which they nursed the consciousness that they

120 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
were the Roman Empire, and a clinging attachment
to these antient memories. So strong was this
sentiment, that it was in itself enough to prevent
any radical transformation. While Western Europe
was changing and taking new shapes, the East
stood still. And here to stand still meant to
decline. The other was the ever-narrowing circle
of enemies by which the New Rome was now
hedged in. The Slavs, the Bulgars, the Franks,
and, above all, the Turks, by burning the harvests,
slaughtering the flocks and herds, and enslaving
the inhabitants, had now reduced the provinces to
a desert, and confined the Hellenic population of
the Empire to little more than the neighbourhood
of Constantinople. The New Rome still indeed
stood for a while, as the antient and glorious
metropolis of Christianity, the magnificent capital
of Eastern civilization. But at last the hand of
Mahomet II. fell upon her also.
I hope that in my attempt to give an idea of the
past, I have said nothing but what is true. I do
not think that my judgment has been obscured by
national feeling. Our national feeling now is not
a feeling for Byzantinism, but for pure Hellenism,
which the march of time and the instincts and en
dowments of the Hellenic race have once more
eliminated from the Byzantine amalgam ; although,
of course, we at the same time acknowledge the
facts of history and the existence of certain
elements in common.
If, when I call to mind the benefits which
Mediaeval Greece has conferred upon civilization, I

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 121
have neither desired nor been able to escape being
fired by some admiration for the acts of individual
men, the greatness of soldiers, the glory of scien
tists and artists, I have had no intention of
weakening for one moment the higher feeling
which the thought of the antient Hellas creates in
every noble spirit. Certainly not.
It is true that, whether in peace or in war, the
men of the Byzantine Empire often displayed
qualities which the men of antient Hellas would
not have been ashamed to own. It is true that in
such matters as regard Literature, Science, and
Art, they ought to be judged more fairly than
they have been hitherto ; for they strove at least
to imitate the glorious models which they could
not rival. By the propagation of the Christian
religion and the establishment of the Church, they
have laid the modern world under an obligation
which cannot be denied. But, nevertheless, al
though we may do justice to the men of the Byzan
tine epoch, and may strive to dissipate the spiteful
caricature under which their real character has
been disguised, our hearts will never warm to
their names as they warm to the holy names of
Marathon and of Plataiai, or at the glorious
memory of the heroes and sages of Antient Hellas.
And why ? Is it because the Parthenon is a
nobler building than the Church of the Eternal
Wisdom ? Is it because Athens was the mother of
Aischylos and Thoukydides, whereas Constantinople
has only bequeathed us Photios ? No. The true
reason is because the double love of Freedom and

122 SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
of Fatherland does not exalt the mind and quicken
the heart, at Byzantium, as it does in Hellas.
This is the real point of difference which creates
so wide a separation between two worlds which
have so much in common. This is why the Hellas
of to-day, although she does not forget Constan
tinople and all the things which make it hers, is
always looking steadfastly to the glory of her early
fathers, and why her heart and her intelligence
alike bear her back to the Hellas of the past.
This is why, when the poet of modern Hellas
sings of her Resurrection, he does not invoke the
names of Constantine the Great, or of Herakleios,
or of the Komnenoi, or of the last of the Palaio
logoi. Instead of doing so he falls down in worship
before the Three Hundred who died at Thermopylai,
and hails the glorious fact that Freedom rises from
their grave.
'Air' tci. KbKKaXa pyaXntoij
TiSv "EWfyav t& \epa,
Koi '<rb.v irp&ra 'avSpub>p.ivq,
Xaip,' & ! Xaip' 'E\ev0e/)!i£ !
But we must not rest satisfied with having a
glorious ancestry. We must not allow ourselves to
be lulled into activity by the knowledge of what
our fathers have done. Let us remember how largely
the decline and fall of the Byzantine Empire
were owing to the fact that those who guided
its fortunes were always looking to that which was
gone. Let us profit by that warning example.
Let us take both the epochs which lie behind us as
the foundation and the starting-point for the work

SUBJECTS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 123
which lies before us, but let our eyes, and our hopes,
and our energies be directed to the future, and let
our word of command be, not Backward, but
Forward.

GREECE BEFORE 1821.

GREECE BEFORE 1821.

The Hellenic race occupies at the present day very
nearly the same geographical position which it held
in the days of classical antiquity. The course of
ages, the forces of political movement, the vicissi
tudes of invasion, and the influences of successive
conquests, have wrought but little change in it in
this respect, save in Southern Italy and on the
Western coasts of the Mediterranean.* The
Hellenic population is compact in the islands of the
iEgean Archipelago and in the peninsula of Greece
proper. From the mouth of the Strymon East
wards, it occupies the sea-coast both of Turkey in
Europe and of Turkey in Asia, and stretches
inland for a greater or a less distance. According
to Eton, in his Survey of the Turkish Empire,
published in London in 1799 and again in 1801, f
the Hellenes at the beginning of this century

* A great deal of Greek blood of course exists in a more or less
corrupt state in these districts, and the tradition of the race is pre
served in Southern Italy and Sicily by the existence of a good many
Greek Churches, especially in the cities, where the worshippers,
although otherwise scarcely distinguishable from other Italians, con
tinue to use the forms and language of the Greek Church. (Tr.,)
t Ed. 1799, p. 291.

128 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
calculated their own numbers at seven millions.
Eton himself, however, justly remarks that this
estimate was obviously an exaggerated one. Even
at the present day, with the increased population
of the free Hellas, and the comparative amelioration
in the condition of the peasantry in some parts of
the Turkish Empire itself, it would not be safe to
reckon the entire number of Hellenes as amounting
to seven millions.
When the War of Independence broke out in
1821, the consequences were felt wherever an
Hellenic population existed. All the Hellenes did
not take an active share in the struggle, but they
were all exposed to be massacred, persecuted, out
raged and plundered. The inhabitants of Thrace,
of Asia Minor, and of the islands immediately
adjacent, were too close to the centre of the Empire,
too much surrounded by Turks, and too open to all
the excesses of tyranny, to have been able to move,
even if they had had the courage. In Epiros, in
Thessaly, and in Macedonia, where the Hellenic
element was strong, and where men's nerves were
braced by the pure air of the mountains, the
population rose in arms at the very first signal.
In these districts, however, the revolutionary
movement was immediately crushed. They were
strongly occupied by the Turks, and served them
as bases of operation during the whole of the war.
The struggle itself raged in the Southern parts of
the mainland of Greece, in the Peloponnesos, in
Crete, and in the Western Islands of the iEgean.
These Greek provinces alone, containing about one

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 129
quarter of the entire Hellenic race, maintained, by
themselves, for the space of seven years, an unequal
conflict against the whole power of the Ottoman
Empire. And yet, when the war was over, they
were not all allowed to keep the freedom to gain
which they had suffered so much. The territory
which was formed into the new Greek kingdom was
found to contain scarcely 700,000 souls, when its
inhabitants essayed for the first time to count
themselves after having laid down their arms.*
* Felix Beaujour {Tableau du commerce de la Grece, 1787-97, vol. I.
p. 22) estimates the population of Macedonia, Epiros, and Thessaly at
1,400,000 ; that of the rest of the mainland of Greece at 220,000 ;
and that of the Peloponnesos at 300,000. Stefanopoli (Voyage
en Grece, II. 166) arrives at the same conclusion with regard to the
Peloponnesos. The census made by the Venetian Republic in 1686
(vide Sathas, TovpKOKpaTov/ji.tori 'EXXds, p. 366; gives only 200,000, but
it is not an unnatural phenomenon that the population should have
increased by fifty per cent, in an hundred years. Pouqueville,
however (Voyage en Grece, III. 410), taking his figures from those of
the Kharatch or poll-tax paid by the Christian inhabitants, reckons
the Christian population of the Peloponnesos about the beginn
ing of this century at only 150,000, that of Thessaly at 275,000,
and that of Epiros at 373,000. As for Crete, Pashley (Travels
in Crete, ii. 326) estimates the population before 1821 at be
tween 260,000 and 270,000. In classical times they were believed
to amount to a million. When the Venetians took possession
of the island in the Thirteenth Century, the inhabitants amounted
to between 500,000 and 600,000. Half of them were still left
in the Sixteenth Century. After the Turkish Conquest of Crete,
an English traveller quoted by Pashley, calculates the number at no
more than 80,000.
According to the statements made by Capodistria to the represen
tatives of the Powers in 1828 (vide Mamoukas, Tci Kara tt\v
' Avayhv-qaiv ttjs 'EXXdSoj, I. 235-6), the population of the territories
then forming the Greek State had been 950,000 before 1821, but had
sunk to 765,000. This figure would seem to have been exaggerated.
Thus, the inhabitants of the Islands of the Archipelago are set down
9

130 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
The population of the same districts had been in
antient times at least six times as numerous, and,
notwithstanding all the wars which the Byzantine
Empire had been compelled to wage, they were
still plentifully inhabited when the Crusaders dealt
the first blows at the power of Christian Constan
tinople, and even at the later moment when she
was finally annihilated by the Turkish conquest.
The Turks set themselves to batten upon what
remained of the antient prosperity of the country
which they had conquered. They did so with
with the simple and unthinking instinct of beasts.
They ate whatever they found, without any
as 178,000 in both years ; Euboia is credited with 169,000 in 1821,
and 120,000 in 1828. But the Isles of the ^gean had only
157,931, according to the last census taken in 1889. As for
Euboia, the census of 1840 gave only 43,340, and that of 1889,
88,679. The population of the Peloponnesos amounted to
431,000 in 1840, and to 790,574 in 1889 ; according to Capodistria,
the numbers had been 500,000 before 1821, and 400,000 in 1828, the
former figure however including the Mohammedan population,
which formed about one-tenth. The first census of the kingdom,
made according to Capodistria's calculation, gave a total population
of 650,000 ; and that of 1836, 751,000, nearly the same as given by
him in 1828. In 1840 the total had risen to 856,000, and according
to the census of 1879, the original provinces contained 1,409,334
inhabitants, and the Ionian Isles, 244,433 ; giving a total of
1,653,765. The portions of Thessaly and Epiros since added to
Greece raised the figure by about 340,000. According to the census
of 1889, the total for the kingdom of Greece amounted to 2,187,208.
The population of the original provinces seems to double in 48 years
(see the official statistical tables for 1875, p. 18), but it maybe hoped
that an increase both of well-being and of territory will not make it
needful to wait another fifty years in order to see doubled or trebled
the present number of free Hellenes. As to the population in
classical times, the reader may consult the dissertation of the k.
Kastorches in the kBtyausv, vols. IV. and V.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 131
thought for the morrow. It never occurred to
them to think of preserving or developing the
bountiful resources of the territories upon which
they had lighted. And accordingly, under their
deadly government, these countries proceeded to
fall rapidly into ruin and desolation. ' Wherever,'
observes the English eye-witness Eton,* 'the
Turks have established their dominion, science
and commerce, the comforts and the know
ledge of mankind have alike decayed. Not
only have they exemplified barbarism and
intolerance in their own conduct, but they
have extinguished the flame of genius and know
ledge in others.' The dwindling of the popu
lation and the steadily increasing imminence of
public ruin not only have hitherto been, but still
actually are, the glaring evidence of what is meant
by being under the Turkish Empire, as regards the
complete destruction of all public prosperity. In
the year 1204, when Villehardouin and his fellow
Crusaders came into contact with the East, their
first emotion was one of dazzlement at the spectacle
of such marvellous wealth and splendour. But
since those days the Turks have been allowed to
effect a complete change. The travellers who
visited Turkey at the end of the last century or the
beginning of the present, are unanimous in record
ing with horror the wretchedness which was
co-extensive with the Ottoman Empire. The in
habitants had learnt by experience not even to till
*P. 143, ed. 1799, p. 135, ed. 1801.

132 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
the ground beyond what was necessary for the bare
support of life. ' They have no courage,' says the
French traveller Savary,* ' no spirit. And why
should they attempt anything ? If they took to
sowing or planting, it would lead to the idea that
they were rich, and so inevitably bring down the
Aga to devour whatever they possess.'
One result of the cessation of cultivation and
production was that all communication with the
rest of the world came to an end. Greece became
an inaccessible and unknown country. From time
to time, some traveller gifted with more obstinacy,
more culture, and more curiosity than almost
all the rest of mankind, overcame the difficul
ties which beset him, and visited Hellas in
order to see what material monuments of her past
greatness might still survive, and then went away
again. The impression left upon these travellers,
with regard to the Hellenes, varied. Some of
them left the country moved by an humane com
passion, others reproached them — cruelly and
unjustly — as being unworthy of the soil, that soil
consecrated to civilization, upon which they had
allowed themselves to be made vile. ' When I was
at Gastouni,' says Bartholdy,t ' I overheard a con
versation between an English traveller, a Greek
monk, and our own host, who was the doctor in
the place. The churchman and the physician
complained bitterly of the Turkish yoke. ' God,'

* Lettres sur la Grece. Paris, 1788, p. 45.
t Voyage en Grece, traauit de V Allemand. Paris, 1807, II. 13.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 133
said the Englishman, ' has deprived the Hellenes
of their freedom because they did not deserve to
have it.'
The rich vales of the Peloponnesos almost ceased
to supply any produce for commerce. Foreign
relations grew less and less, ' on account,' as it is
expressed by M. Chaptal,* 'of the insecurity which
reigns inland, where every species of disorder was
rampant.' ' Our own French merchants,' says M.
Juchereau de Saint-Denis,t ' were at one with those
of Holland and of England in complaining, years
before our Revolution, that trade in the Levant
had ceased to offer the same advantages as for
merly, and they attributed the miserable prices
offered for their own merchandise and the diminu
tion of their profits to the increasing poverty and
depopulation of the Turkish Empire.' The plain of
Elis had become an uncultivated wilderness. ' The
execrable Government of the Morea,' says the
English witness Leake J 'added to local tyranny,
has reduced the Greeks of Gastouni to such distress
that all the cultivated land is now in the hands of
the Turks, and the Greek population have become
cattle-feeders or mere labourers for the Turkish
possessors of the soil.' ' The town [of Dhivri]'he
tells us in another place § ' occupies a large space,
the houses, to the number of 300, being dispersed
* De V Industrie Frangaise, I. 147.
t Revolutions de Constantinople en 1807 et 1808. ^Paris 1819, I.,
134. t Travels in the Morea, 1805-1806. London, 1830, I., 11.
§ Ibid., II., 237.

134 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
in clusters over the side of the hills ; but a great
part of them are uninhabited. This is chiefly
owing to the angdria of the Lalliotes, who come
here and force the poor Greeks to carry straw,
wood, etc., on their horses to Lalla without pay
ment.' The inhabitants of Monembasia and its
neighbourhood had endeavoured to save themselves
by emigrating to Hydra, to Spezzia, and even to
Asia Minor. ' Before the Russian invasion of the
Morea,' says the English traveller,* ' there were
150 Greek families, but they, as well as the Greek
inhabitants of the villages of this district, fled after
that event to Asia or to Petza, Ydhra, and other
islands. Some of them returned after Hassan, the
Capitan Pascha, had expelled the Albanians, who
had marched into the Morea against the Russo-
Greeks, but the Vilayeti has never recovered its
Christian population, and does not now contain
more than 500 Greeks.' ' The town of Karitena,'
continues the same observer,! ' is much depopulated
of late. There now remain about 200 families, of
which not more than twenty are Turkish. The
emigrants have chiefly gone to the territory of
Kara Osman Oglu, in Asia Minor, where they are
subject only to the land tax and kharatj.' The
nomadic movements by which these poor wretches
strove to find some amelioration in their condition
by passing from one part to another of the Otto
man Empire were merely like the action of a sick
man who seeks to find relief by thrusting his
•IMA., I., 204. t Ibid., II., 23.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 135
aching limbs first into one and then into another
part of his bed of pain. Turks in Asia are just the
same things as Turks in Europe. The same causes
produce the same results there as elsewhere. The
rich plains of the East had been reduced to the
same state of barren wilderness as the vales of the
West. The Asiatics were reduced to beggary as
well as the Europeans. ' The depopulation of some
provinces ' testifies M. Juchereau de Saint-Denis,*
' has been so marked that, out of twenty flourishing
villages which formerly existed in the neighbour
hood of Aleppo, it is now scarcely possible to reckon
four or five. The tyranny of the provincial
Governors drives the peasants to seek refuge in the
towns, and, once they are there, starvation soon
decimates them.'
It was a common device to try and find relief by
changing from one town into another at a small
distance. The subjects of Ali Pasha at Galaxidi,
for instance, endeavoured to escape by going to
Vostitza. But this expedient was more difficult for
those who inhabited the country remote from the
sea-coast. It was the habit of Ali Pasha to make
a periodical round of all the towns and villages under
his jurisdiction, in order to receive the ' voluntary
offerings ' of his wretched subjects. ' When Ali,'
says the same English observer, Leake, in another
work,t ' makes a tour round this part of his terri
tory, he never fails to visit this place. The Archons

* Revolutions de Constantinople, I., 134.
t Travels in Northern Greece, I. , 308-9.

136 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
generally meet him in the plains, and offer perhaps
twenty purses, begging him not to come into the
town. He receives the present with smiles, pro
mises that he will not put his friends to inconveni
ence; afterwards comes a little nearer, informs them
that no provisions are to be had in the plain, and,
after being supplied upon the promise of not enter
ing the town, quarters on them, in the course of a
day or two more, with his whole suite, perhaps for
several days, nor retires until he has received a
fresh donation. In these progresses he expects
something from every village, and will accept the
smallest offerings from individuals. His sons, in
travelling, fail not to follow so good an example.
As he dares not exercise this kind of oppression in
Albania, the districts on the Eastern side of Pindus
are the great sufferers ; and neither pestilence nor
famine are more dreaded by the poor natives than
the arrival of these little scraps of coarse paper
scrawled with a few Greek characters, and stamped
with the well-known little seal which makes Epirus,
Thessaly, and Macedonia tremble.'
The people of Galaxidi had taken flight because
Ali Pasha wished to compel them to serve as sailors
on board the fleet which he was equipping. But
the town of Vostitza, where they had taken refuge,
is just across the water, in the Peloponnesos, and
'the present Pasha of the Morea,' as we again learn
from Leake,* ' is said to have paid the Porte 400

* Travels in the Morea, II., 346. ; ed. 1830. See also Pouqueville,
Voyage en Grece Chapter cxxxv., at the beginning.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 137
purses for his appointment for one year, and he will
probably squeeze 1,000 out of the poor province.
Vanli Pasha, who was removed last year to Candia,
paid 600 purses for two years, and yet greatly en
riched himself. The Morea has the character of
being the most profitable Pashalik in the Empire,
of those, at least, which the Porte has the power of
selling annually.'
As a rule, indeed, these satraps were only ap
pointed for a period of one year at a time. The
frequency of the appointments was of large pecun
iary benefit to those who possessed over the Sub
lime Porte the influence — open or occult — necessary
to secure a nomination to a provincial Pashalik. In
the report* which Capodistria addressed in 1828 to
the representatives of the Powers in answer to the
questions which they had put to his Government,
he gives some extremely interesting information as
to the manner in which Pashas were in the habit of
exercising their powers. ' How was it possible,' he
asks, ' to look for just and enlightened administra
tion from a Pasha who but very shortly before at
taining that dignity had been in work as a slaughter
man, and who is now simply the ignorant nominee of
an absolute despot ? . . . No man dared to open
his mouth in the presence of the Pasha of the Pelo
ponnesos. That Pasha had the power of life and
death over his subjects — and they trembled when
ever they had to go near his seraglio. Fear seized
them before ever they found themselves within
* See it in Mifiovxas, Tct Kara, rty 'Xvaytovqaw rijs 'EWdSos. II. 316.

138 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
sight of the despot, or within earshot of the terrors
of his voice. At the gate of his palace were always
to be found ready waiting an hundred and fifty
soldiers under full arms, an itch-aga, and an execu
tioner. It needed only a particular sign of his head
to cause any one of his petitioners to be led out to
die.' The Turks amassed fortunes, but, as they grew
richer, the people whom they ruled grew poorer.
' The Ottoman Empire,' wrote Pouqueville,* with a
feeling of generous indignation, ' the Ottoman
Empire is the Empire of woe. It is not like any
other country in the world. The people who live
in it are at once ferocious and apathetic, and are
destitute of the slightest feeling for the public
interest. From Constantinople to the banks of the
Euphrates, and from the shores of the Bosphoros
to Cattaro, the towns are cess-pools full of dung
and filth : the villages are either dens of wild
beasts or deserted. The exclusive subjects of con
versation are pestilences, conflagrations, epidemics,
and famines. The gates of the great cities are
hidden by groups of gibbets and towers loaded with
human skulls. The roads traversed by the local
governors are lined with gory heads, stakes for
impalement, and other instruments of death. The
traveller meets no one who is not clad in the livery
of destitution. There is no police, no public order,
no rest, and no safety for life and property. The
gentler virtues are unknown in this country. If a
* Voyage en Grece, II. , 231.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 139
man has any money he buries it, and if he has any
valuable objects he hides them in the depths of his
harem. If he wishes to escape suspicion he must
avoid living with the appearance of being in easy
circumstances.' In the cities the Greeks inhabited quarters
separated from those occupied by the Turks.
The Turks inhabited the citadel, if there were
one : if the town had no fortress, they expelled
the Christians from the best neighbourhoods.
Christians were always liable to expulsion from
their dwellings at any whim of their masters.
Savary relates (p. 262) a curious anecdote illustra
tive of this fact. The circumstance occurred in
1780, and is, as he remarks, a proof of the
treatment which the Greeks received in their own
country. ' With the exception of the Archbishop
and of Europeans,' he says, ' no Christian has the
right to ride inside a town. The Bishop of Canea
took it into his head to disregard this tyrannical
regulation. One evening, when he was returning
from the country along with several monks, he did
not dismount, but passed through and rode quickly
up to his own house. The janissaries who were on
guard at the gate looked on this action as an insult.
The next day they roused the troops, and it was
determined to burn the Bishop and the Priests.
The mob, roaring curses, were already carrying
combustibles to the Bishop's house, and its inhabi
tants could not have escaped the horrible fate to
which they were destined, had not the Pasha,
warned in time, issued a proclamation, by which

140 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
any Greek, of what class soever, was forbidden to
sleep within the walls of Canea. This prohibition
was rigorously enforced, and, every evening, these
wretched slaves might be seen slinking out of the
gates of Rettimo, and retiring for the night into
the fields.' This state of things lasted for two
months, ' but,' says Savary, ' money is here the cure
for all evils. The Cretans combined their resources
together, and, by a very heavy bribe, obtained the
revocation of the edict. The pride of their Bishop
cost them dear.'
That a Christian who might happen to be on
horseback had to dismount as soon as he came in
sight of a Turk was not the only badge of slavery
to which he found himself subject. To make a
Greek smart at every turn of daily life by some
thing to remind him of his subjection to an Osmanli,
was an object upon which the Government of the
Sublime Porte bestowed an almost infinite in
genuity. Thus speaks the English traveller Eton *
— ' The insulting distinction of Christian and
Mahommedan is carried to so great a length, that
even the minutiae of dress are rendered subjects of
restriction. A Christian must wear only clothes
and head-dresses of dark colours, and such as
Turks never wear, with slippers of black leather,
and must paint his house black or dark brown.
The least violation of these frivolous and dis
gusting regulations is punished with death.' On
this head each class of inhabitant found himself
* Survey of the Turkish Empire, p. 104, ed. 1799.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 141
under a special law. Whether a man were a Greek,
an Armenian, or a Jew, was to be displayed at
once by his costume. Special laws regulated the
hats with which the chiefs of the Christian
communities were allowed to shelter their humble
heads.* Bishops and other ecclesiastics (who, be it
said, enjoyed peculiar and exceptional privileges
above their fellow-believers), were absolutely for
bidden to wear the broad-brimmed hats which im
memorial custom had assigned for their use. They
were not allowed to have any brims.t
But mutilating the head-dress of the clergy was
only among the minor vexations to which the ad
herents of the Christian religion were exposed.
They were not allowed to build any new Churches,
and even the repair of the old ones was only per
mitted by special firman, which could only be ob
tained with great difficulty and by means of heavy
payments in money. ' According to a recent
firmahn,' says Leake, J speaking in 1805, 'the
Greeks of Mistra are allowed to repair their
Churches on condition of paying 300 piastres
for each to a mosque at Constantinople.' ' The
Greeks [of Smyrna],' says Chandler, § ' before the
fire [of 1764] had two Churches. They applied to
their Bishop at Constantinople for leave to rebuild

* See not only Eton, as above cited, but also Lacroix, Etat present
des nations et eglises grecque, armenienne, etc., p. 11. Paris, 1741.
t Hence the peculiar hats which long usage has now rendered the
ordinary head-covering of the Greek clergy.
$ Morea, I. 133.
§ Travels in Asia Minor, p. 66. London, 1775.

142 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
that which was destroyed, but the sum demanded
was too exorbitant to be given.' The traveller
who records this incident remarks that by the con
tinuance of such a policy the extirpation of Chris
tianity within the Turkish dominions was only a
question of time.
The use of bells was not allowed except in a few
privileged places where there were no Turks to be
offended by the hateful sound. Among these
favoured spots were the villages of Chios, the in
habitants of which carried on the cultivation of
mastic. These villagers were exceptionally fortunate
on account of their dependence upon the Imperial
harem, but even they were not allowed the full en
joyment of the fruits of their own labour. One half
of their entire harvest was the property of the
harem, and the other half they were only permitted
to sell at the price fixed by the will of the Aga of
the island. The cultivation of mastic was allowed
nowhere except on the land of such villages as had
received the authorization of the Government.*
If a neighbourhood happened to possess any
natural advantage, the feature in question, instead
of proving a benefit to the inhabitants, was imme
diately made a source of misery and oppression.
Thus, for instance, there is a spot near Kandelion
in the Peloponnesos, where the snow lies long.
' The mountain on the left,' says Leake, f ' has

* Olivier, Voyage dans V Empire Ottoman fait par ordre du gov/oeme-
ment. Paris. Year IX., vol. I., pp. 285-9.
+ Morea, III., 109.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 143
a remarkable cavern, or shady hollow, an unlucky
circumstance for the poor Kandeliotes, who are
obliged to supply the serai at Tripolitza from it,
and carry the snow there at their own expense.'
But it was not necessary to be a Pasha in order
to be able to maltreat Christians. Anybody who
was a Turk was allowed to do it to his heart's con
tent. For instance, Colonel Leake saw a Turk kill a
Greek peasant at the gate of Larissa, because the
Christian had an ass loaded with charcoal, which
he wished to carry for sale to the market-place (in
hopes of a more certain, as well as a higher price
for it), instead of letting the Turk have it. It is
hardly necessary to add, as the conclusion of this
example, that the cadi declared the murderer guilt
less. The only chance the other way would have
been if the family of the victim had had more
money. Whenever a suit lay between a Christian and a
Mahommedan, no Christian was admitted as a wit
ness. This provision of Turkish law, however, it
must be owned, pressed with comparative lightness
upon such Christians as were wealthy, because
Turkish witnesses are never wanting to call God to
witness to anything, as long as a suitor is able as
well as willing to pay them to do so ; and if he also
possess the funds needful for securing the favour of
the judge, the latter is exceedingly easy as to the
character of the witnesses. The drawback to this
method in the eyes of Christians, viz., that the
righteous and the innocent are thus exposed to ruin
and to death through the words of a few hired per-

144 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
jurors, is not one which a Turk regards as of any
consequence. ' In every province of the Morea,' said Capodis-
tria, in the statement already cited,* ' in every
province of the Morea there was a cadi nominated
by the cajasker of Roumelia. Such a cadi held his
post for a period varying from six to twelve months,
or, on some rare occasions, for as much as eighteen
months. He was the judge, and the judge without
appeal, of every civil and commercial cause, of
whatever nature or of whatever magnitude, and to
him appertained likewise the duty of enforcing his
own decisions. The execution of the judgment
could alone be suspended by an appeal to the
Pasha, at the centre of administration, Tripolitza.
These facultative appeals were a mere abuse of
power. From the Pasha there was no appeal.
And yet law-suits dragged on and on. Turkish
jurisprudence, obscure and often inconsistent,
allowed of differing opinions by the ulemas which
only made confusion worse confounded.'
It is probably not difficult for the reader to form
some idea of the sort of justice which was meted
out by such tribunals. In Pouqueville's Voyage en
Grece t will be found an account of the judicial
method adopted by the Pasha of Tripolitza for
clearing himself of his liabilities towards his doctor,
who had lent him money. It was simple.
Besides this, it was not held as a crime in a

* Mamoukas, vol. XI. , pp. 312 et seq.
t IV. 231.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 145
Turk to murder a Christian. ' It may be further
remarked,' says Eton (101), ' that there is not one
instance of a fetva which declares the murder of
Christians to be contrary to the faith ; or of any
argument drawn from justice or religion, used to
dissuade the Sultans from perpetrating such an
enormity. The pleaders for mercy have been
guided by policy or moved by compassion.' But
on the other hand, as we find remarked by the
same writer (98), ' A Christian may not kill a
Mahomedan even in self-defence ; if a Christian
only strikes a Mahomedan, he is most commonly
put to death on the spot, or, at least, ruined by
fines and severely bastinadoed ; if he strikes,
though by accident, a Sherif (emil in Turkish, i.e.,
a descendant of Mahomed, who wear green tur
bans), of whom there are thousands in some cities,
it is death without remission.'
Wherever there was most reason to be appre
hensive of the Christian population, the Turks
made it a principle to treat them with especial
severity. Thus we learn from Olivier* that in
Crete, ' whether it be that the Sfakiotes inspire
them with mistrust, or because the great number
of the Greeks renders it necessary for them to be
upon their guard, the Turks are here more given
than anywhere else, upon the slightest pretext,
either to kill a Greek with their own hands or to
send him for execution.'
It is, no doubt, true, as has been before remarked,

* I. 214. 10

HO GREECE BEFORE 1821.
that for those who have money enough, it has
always been possible to purchase the friendship, or
at least the protection, of Turks. 'The whole
Divan,' remarks Felix Beaujour, ' is for sale, if only
the intending purchaser has money enough where
with to buy it ; and this is the reason why the
Beys and the Agas utilize the provinces to obtain
the means of saving themselves from the bowstring
and acquiring appointments to the office of Pasha.'
Venality was the grand principle which formed
the ground- work of the whole administration of the
Pashas. ' They buy their appointments,' continues
Beaujour,* ' at Constantinople, where there is noth
ing which is not for sale, and they recoup them
selves anyhow they can. Throughout the whole
of the Ottoman Empire, the Governors work an
inexhaustible mine of fines.'
In other words, the whole tribe, from the Sultan
himself down to the smallest personage in the
employment of his government, live by sucking
their subjects. It is a long and thorough experience
of the Turkish race which has generated the Greek
proverb — lovpKOv ?i5es, acnrpa 6t\ei,
kI dXKov ?i5es, kI SXKa. 6£\ei.
The most convenient medium for the extortions
of the Turkish Governors was the Kharatch, or
poll-tax. The Kharatch or death, was the alterna
tive offered to every Christian. Everyone. who paid
it took care to secure his receipt, and yet the
* II. 181.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 147
Governmental receipt often proved to be no protec
tion against the ingenious rapacity of the tax-
gatherer. The language of the receipt itself is
striking. 'Every Raya,' says Eton (98), 'every
Ray a (that is, every subject who is not of the
Mahommedan religion) is allowed only the cruel
alternative of death or tribute ; and even this is
arbitrary in the breast of the conqueror. The very
words of the formulary, given to their Christian
subjects on paying the capitation-tax, import that
the sum of money received is taken as a compensa
tion for being permitted to wear their heads that
year. '
The nominal figure of the poll-tax was not high.
But the publicans or collectors to whom the collec
tion of the tax was farmed always found means for
extorting from the tax-payers at least double the
sum which found its way into the Treasury. It is
unnecessary to say that this difference of more than
50 per cent, went into their own pockets. The abuses
committed in the collection of this tax, as well as
the stamp of inferiority which it was intended to
impress, rendered the Kharatch more odious than
the tithe, or than any other of the varied means of
extortion and oppression which the fiscal ingenuity
of the Turks devised for enabling them to harass
and to beggar their wretched Christian subjects.
The Kharatch was of three sorts. The first
applied to the rich, who were legally subject to a
payment of twelve or fourteen piastres per head.
The second class of contributories embraced all
other adults, from artisans and labourers down to

148 GREECE BEFORE 18^1.
the very beggars, without any exception. These
paid half as much per head as was paid by the rich.
Lastly, came children of fourteen years of age and
under, who were assessed at three piastres each,
beginning to be liable at the age of eight years in
towns and at that of five years in the country. ' If,'
says Beaujour (I. 51), ' the father of a little Greek
raises any dispute as to his exact age, the tax-
gatherers measure the child's head with a cord,
which is made to serve as a sort of standard, and,
as they can always make the cord what length they
like, the father can always be proved in the
wrong.' *
The Greeks of the islands were justly considered
to be the least unfortunate of their race, since, as a
rule, there was no Turkish population settled
among them. But with the return of each spring
time and the accompanying appearance of the
Capitan-Pasha to levy the taxes, the islanders were
made to suffer at one blow the accumulated evils
which they had been spared during the preceding
twelve months. The Capitan-Pasha, like his
brethren of the land, extorted under the name of
offerings and presents to himself, a sum at least

* On the subject of the system of taxation which prevailed in the
Turkish Empire before the war 1821, and especially with regard to
the Kharatch, the first chapter of the fifth volume of Pouqueville's
Voyage en Grece may be consulted, as well as the work of Felix
Beaujour, and that of Eton, already cited, p. 39 et seq. Tournefort
and Choiseul-Gouffier give detailed accounts of the islands visited by
them. It is as well, also, to consult the work of Moschobakes upon
the state of the law in Greece during the Turkish domination,
Athens, 1882.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 149
equal to the total of the poll-tax and other imposts
which he raised on behalf of the Treasury. At the
same time also, his officers and other myrmidons
down to the private soldiers, swarmed about over
the islands, wringing subsidies for themselves out
of the poverty of the inhabitants. It was in vain
that these latter fled to their mountains, to hide
themselves in dens and caves of the earth, or
sought to conceal the few objects of value which
they might possess. The Turks seized the elders
and put them to the bastinado, until their wives
had brought them their trinkets, and those of the
women their neighbours. It was. moreover, very
often the case that the Turks, after appropriating
the jewellery, threw husband, wife, and child
together into slavery.*
Besides this, the inhabitants of the isles and of
the coasts were subject to a conscription of
young men for service in the fleet. It is true that
the number of young men so taken was not
sufficient to imperil the natural increase of the
population, and that the denial of Christianity was
not imposed upon them. But the sea-faring popu
lation bewailed nevertheless the loss of their sons,
whom the will of their tyrants tore from their
homes. It was a tax of blood which was paid with
tears. Yet the conscription of sea-faring lads was as

* Eton, p. 177 ; Choiseul Gouffier, I. 185. See also an article
by the author, in the 'TZarta newspaper for June 20, 1882, upon the
capture of a Turkish frigate by the Christian slaves on board her,

150 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
nothing in comparison with that indescribable
blood-tax, the conscription of little children, which
lasted till towards the close of the Seventeenth
Century, and the memory of which haunted every
Greek home like the presence of a devil. Every
five years the agents of the Janissary regiments
went through Greece, and took away one little boy
out of every five over seven years of age. It is
unnecessary to say that they chose the most beauti
ful. The fathers and mothers knew that the
children they thus lost were lost to them for ever,
that they would become Mohammedans, live and
die Janissaries. As for the race, this tribute
threatened its very existence, the very hope of its
future was turned against it, its persecutors forged
from its own very blood the instruments of their
oppression. Bondage seemed a light thing in com
parison with this tribute. No other enslaved
nation has ever had to suffer such a torture as this.

Thus lived the Greek race from the Fall of Con
stantinople in 1453 until the outbreak of the War
of Independence in 1821. They seemed to be
buried, if not crushed, under the sufferings and
degradations entailed by their slavery. And yet
they still kept heart alive, because they knew that
their racial existence was not dead. The very
contempt with which their savage masters held
themselves separate from the ' unbelievers ' served
to cherish and foster both the consciousness of

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 151
nationality and the sentiment of nationalism.
Under the heavy rod of Osmanli despotism the
Greeks stood apart as a separate and peculiar
people, all the members of which were bound one
to another throughout the whole breadth of the
Turkish Empire, not only by the threefold tie of
one blood, one tongue, and one religion, but also by
the very political and social organization to which
they had been subjected by their conquerors at the
date of the fall of their country.
When Mahomet II. had made himself master of
Constantinople, he empowered the (Ecumenical
Patriarch to exercise over his co-religionists a civil
jurisdiction which practically rendered this ecclesi
astic the head of the Greek nation. The Patriarch's
enjoyment of this office was accompanied by certain
privileges, and his investiture by certain external
marks of honour. In adopting this course of
action the Turkish conqueror has been accredited
with the intention ' of rendering their bondage less
irksome to the Greeks and of accustoming them to
bear its yoke, by the concession not only of liberty
of conscience but also of the right to the public
celebration of their religious worship.'* Whether
these were Mahomet's motives at all, may well be
questioned. Certainly, they were not his sole
motives. It was impossible that the Supreme Pontiff of
Islam, the Khalifeh of the True-Believers, should
profane his sacred character by sinking so low as
* Lacroix. Etat prisent des eglises grecques, 758,

152 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
to concern himself with the civil or religious affairs
of infidels. The prescriptions of the Mohammedan
religion left a choice of two alternatives for his new
subjects. They might either become Moslems or
they might redeem their lives by a regular payment
in tribute. For those Christians who chose the
latter alternative, the Turkish Government devised
the special organization of which they made the
Patriarch of Constantinople the pivot, with the
view of concentrating the central control of the
whole national affairs of his fellow-countrymen and
fellow-believers in the hands of this one man, and
thus having this complete control directly, easily,
and simply, under their own eye and hand, in the
person of an officially recognised head and represen
tative. It may perhaps also be the case that, by
investing the Patriarch with this character, they
hoped to prevent any action of the Orthodox in the
direction of an inter-communion with the Latins,
since it was possible that a re-union of the Eastern
and Western Churches might have raised fresh
forces against the common enemy of all Christianity,
and that to this end also was designed the high
position with which they sought to enhance the
dignity of the ruling pastor in the eyes of his
flock.* The Patriarch accordingly obtained privileges
which gave him what might be called, in a sense, a
sort of relative independence. He was solemnly
invested with an almost sovereign authority over
* See Moschobakes, p. 51.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 153
his co-religionists. He was the person who was
their representative in the eyes of the Sublime
Porte. He was elected by the Prelates and the
representatives of the laity. He was responsible to
no authority except the Divan, and to the Divan
only in case he were accused by the Synod. He
was the Supreme Head of the clergy, and over them
he possessed the power of exercising criminal juris
diction. He had a power of direction over every
church, and the financial affairs of each were subject
to his control. Over the laity he was invested with
a judicial authority which extended not only over
all matrimonial cases but also over every case where
the parties concerned were both Christians, whatever
the character of the question, unless the parties
themselves voluntarily elected to compear before
the Turkish tribunals rather than before that of the
Patriarch. These powers the Oecumenical Patriarch
was in the habit of delegating to the different Arch
bishops and Bishops, as his Legates in the provinces.
Even the humbler of the clergy shared in the ad
vantages of the j urisdiction with which their Head
was invested. They were exempt from the Kharatch
(poll-tax) and were allowed themselves to levy a tax
upon every Christian family, in order to meet the
expenses incidental to the discharge of the public
functions which were conferred upon them by law.*
The result of all this peculiar legislation for con
ferring a Temporal Power upon the Patriarch of
Constantinople, was of course to establish an im-
* See Moschobakes, as before, and also Mamoukas, XI., 308,

154 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
perium in imperio — a Patriarchal Temporal Power
inside a Mohammedan Temporal Power. Nor need
it be disputed that in an ideal state of things this
arrangement might have served very well, not only
for smoothing over the various difficulties which
necessarily resulted from the political and social re
volution of 1453, but also as leading to an improve
ment in the future position of the Christian popula
tion. That such might, however, have been the
result, pre-supposed certain conditions which did
not exist. The Turkish Government, on the one
side, would have had to have been somewhat less
savage, fanatical, cruel, and tyrannical, and the
Greek clergy, upon the other, would have had to
possess a morality rather higher than that which
had already existed among them in the last da}7s
of the Empire, and which had been shaken still
lower by the terrible cataclysm of the Mohammedan
conquest and by the consequent annihilation or ex
patriation of all the best surviving elements in
Byzantine society. The real marvel is, not that
things were no better, but that they were no worse
— that the clerical group thus placed at the Head
of the Hellenic people showed themselves endowed
with such an amount both of intelligence and of
patriotism as to render it possible to preserve and
to uphold the standard of Hellenism beneath the
shelter of the Phanar.
It must be remarked, at the same time, that the
conquered Christians had no guarantee whatever to
assure to them the continuance of the privileges
which had been solemnly promised to them at the

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 155
moment of the conquest. As a matter of fact,
several of the successors of the conqueror annulled
at their mere will the concessions granted by their
predecessors. In 1519, for instance, the Christians
of Constantinople were deprived of all their stone
churches, with the exception of two, the largest of
which was taken from them in 1607.* There were
some Turks who even went so far as to advocate
the extermination of the giaours. Mahomet II.
himself degraded the Patriarch Joasaph (the second
successor of Gennadios) and caused not only his
beard but also his nose to be cut off, because he re
fused to contravene the Canons of the Church by
giving a dispensation to the Protovestiarios to con
tract a bigamous marriage with the daughter of
Demetrios Assam, an Athenian magnate, during the
lifetime of the lawful wife of the said Protovestiarios
— the which refusal brought upon the Patriarch in
question the wrath of the Sultan, or rather, of the
Pasha, who happened to be a personal friend of the
Protovestiarios. When it came to be a question of
electing a successor to Joasaph, one section of the
electors sent the Sultan an offering of a thousand
pieces of gold, as an accompaniment to a petition
that they might be allowed to elect anyone whom
they chose. The Sultan pocketted their money,
called them fools for their pains, and said, ' Elect
whoever you like.' t
This little incident typifies from the very com-

* See ' Txj/TfKavTov Ta pera rty *A\w<rii>. Constantinople, 1870, p. 123.
t Turco-Groecia, pp. 21, et seq. and "txf/rjkivTiis, p. 19.

156 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
mencement the relations of the master to his slaves.
The Sultan called them fools for their pains — but
he pocketted their money. He did not care a straw
what was the condition of Christians, as other
rulers would have cared about the condition of any
large and important class of their subjects. His
only idea was how much he could get out of them,
the same consideration which presents itself to the
mind of the conquering side in a war, when settling
the amount of indemnity to be exacted from the
losers. On the other hand, the Christians had
already learnt by experience to know that with
Turks, money, nothing but money, but money, is
Almighty, and that the Sultan himself is for sale.
So they made haste to meet his wishes, and thence
forward has continued the system of venality which
forms the very base and pivot of the whole
administration of the Ottoman Empire.
This system of venality is one of which the higher
clergy of the Christian Church have not always
been able to avoid the contagion. The Bishops had
to obtain their Sees by bribery, and they could only
retain possession of them by bribing the Pashas,
and by other forms of self-degradation. It was not
very long before the habit of giving money to their
masters began to be accompanied by that of wring
ing it out of their flocks. It was the Turks who
invested the Bishops with power, and they imbibed
with it some of the Turkish habits in its use. And
yet, all the same, covered as she was by the leprosy
of venality aggravated by all the ills of slavery, the
Greek Church never lost the consciousness of her

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 157
duty towards the Greek nation. While that
dark night lasted there were always to be found
Bishops whose virtues redeemed the vices of
some of their brethren. In short — and say what
we will — the Greek people owe to their Church the
preservation of their Faith, of their Language, and
of their Unity. And their Church will never find
their gratitude lacking towards her. The errors of
the past were more than atoned by the death of the
Patriarch Gregory V., hanged at the Phanar in
1821, by the patriotic devotion of Germanus of
Patras, and by the deeds of so many other Prelates
who have died the Martyrs or lived as the Con
fessors of the cause of our National Independence.
Moreover, the results of living under the Turkish
Empire were not confined to the clergy. The evil
was in the fact. Priest or layman, Patriarch or
Grand-Dragoman, it was the same thing. Every
Christian who accepted authority from the Turkish
Government and used it in their name, was
brought, willed he, nilled he, to the same expedi
ents—cringing before his owners and bullying his
humbler fellow-slaves. The very Elders of the
country villages were not always exceptions to this
rule — a fact quite sufficiently attested by the
meaning which is attached to the title ' codja-
bashi ' in the Peloponnesos.
The degradation which the national character
suffered under the influence of such causes was
really the greatest both of the dangers and of the
evils of slavery. Happily, amid this deterioration,
the Hellenic people never lost the sense of their

158 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
own dignity. And it was this sense which breathed
a life ever keener and more keen into their longing
to be free. It was not the hardships alone of the
life of slavery which they bewailed : the conscious
ness of dishonour smarted still more. It is sufficient
to cite in proof the writings which Hellenes were
able at that epoch to publish in foreign countries,
and, after the war broke out, the documents in
which the insurgents made known to Europe their
resolve to die sooner than endure again what they
had suffered for so long.
At the same time, and notwithstanding all that
may be said as to the tyrannical misconduct of
some village elders in some parts of Greece, it-
is still none the less true that the communal
system was the social anchor to which Hellenism
owed its preservation. The Patriarchate, as has
been already remarked, supplied the element of
political unity, and afforded what may be termed
the external expression of national life. The Grand
Dragomen, the Princes of Wallachia and Moldavia,
and the aristocracy of the Phanar in general, by
being in the eyes of the Turks and of foreigners the
representatives of the New Hellenism as it
quickened, exercised upon the destinies of their
race an influence as fortunate as it was powerful.
But it was in and by the communal system that
shape was given to the home life of the people.

The pressure of slavery under the foreigner,
which weighed upon all alike, not only made

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 159
warmer the ties which bound the members of every
family one to another, but also bound each to all
within every little community. Like the members
of a larger family, every member of the community,
by helping his brother, found it less hard both to
suffer and to resist in the common interest of all.
They were not free, but they found in the com
munity a certain field for social activity which,
narrow as it was, recalled, after a fashion, what life
had been in the days of independence, and so, in a
fashion, carried on the old memories of national life
and made ready, in a way, for the coming Hellas of
the New Birth. It is needless here to enter into
the question whether the communal system which
existed in Greece under the Turks owed its origin
to classical or to mediaeval times. This is a ques
tion which concerns rather the students of the
monuments of past history. But the phenomenon
of these demoi, all independent of each other,
differing so widely from each other in regard to
details, and yet all recognizing, as the very basis of
their organization, the equality of the electors and
the responsibility of the elected, — this phenomenon,
presented by surviving Hellas, so vividly recalls, in
its varied unity, the character of the antient Hellas,
that if it be not indeed an unbroken inheritance
from her early days, it is hard not to admit that it
was at the least but a new flower upon the old
stem still growing in the old soil.
Fortunately, it did not occur to the Turks to
make any attack upon the communal system. On
the contrary, they found that it suited their system

160 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
of administration very well, and they accepted it
quite willingly. Just as they made the Patriarch
of Constantinople responsible for the whole race, so
did they make the elders responsible for the whole
of each community. Thus the communal system
served greatly to simplify the machinery of govern
ment. It was an easy way of assessing the tribute,
regulating the forced labour, and getting in the
Kharatch, and the subjects of these imposts found
them less difficult to bear when they were able to
adjust the weight of the burdens among themselves
without being harassed by the intervention of
Turks. It is true that there were many places
where the relief thus obtained was but small, owing
to the presence of Turkish persecutors, whether
official or private, and acting either in the name of
the Imperial Exchequer, or in virtue of that right
to oppress which every Turk claims for himself.
But there were also many places where there were
no Turks, and where the population could conse
quently breathe freely and the community
flourished. The communal system, by binding the
interests of every individual to those of institutions
common to all, by allowing to all some occupation
other than that of trying to meet the exactions of
the tax-gatherer, by concerning all in the local
government, in the affairs of schools and hospitals,
in the management of the police, and in the
development of the resources of the country, pre
pared the people for freedom, and gave some fore
taste of the progress of which they would be

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 1G1
capable whenever they were delivered from the
burden of the Turkish domination.
When the War of Independence broke out, these
communal societies served as centres of activity,
and also as bases for the new organization of the
country. Then did the Elders of all kinds, Proes-
totes, Codjabashis, Demogerontes, Ephoroi, or
Epitropoi, put themselves at the head of their freed
fellow-countrymen and contribute to form an aris
tocracy of champions of the Fatherland ; they, like
the Prelates of the Church and the rest of the
Phanariote hierarchy, now cast aside the signs of
their slavery and degradation, threw themselves
upon the side of their country, and contended for
the honour of leading the national movement and
of striving to ensure its success.
It was when the war broke out that the vastness
of the gulf by which nature has separated Hellen
from Turk became most strikingly visible. For
four centuries had they been associated in intimate
contact. Mutual familiarity had done nothing but
intensify their mutual hatred. While the Turk
degraded and corrupted the Greek population, it
had never occurred to him to try and attract even
the principal inhabitants towards his system or to
make it the interest of any of them to support it.
The Osmanli Government looked upon all Hellenes
as its enemies, and treated them accordingly.
Hence it came to pass that even those who did
not approve the revolutionary outbreak, cast them
selves into it, because they realized that such a
course was less dangerous for them than to adhere

Id GREECE BEFORE 1821.
to the Turks. But it is not in this direction that
we are to seek the causes of the national movement.
The cause of the war was the gradual and universal
awakening of the Hellenic people.
The author of these essays has elsewhere *
remarked how large a part in this awakening was
due to the increase of education. It is true enough
that Hellenic culture had never entirely died out.
But in the earlier periods of Ottoman domination,
it was confined to a few clergy who enjoyed an
ecclesiastical education, and a still more limited
number of laymen who found means to pursue the
study of letters and of the sciences. The mass of
the population was plunged in ignorance. The
village teacher was generally the Parish Priest, and
the few pupils whom he could gather around him
under the shadow of his Church acquired little
more than a mechanical power of reading the
Psalms and the other contents of the ecclesiastical
office-books. These humble schools did little more
than supply a proof that the love of learning, which
is in-born in the Hellenic mind, was not dead.
They were, so to speak, only the little morsel of
leaven which was destined in the future to leaven
the whole mass. But from the Seventeenth Cen
tury, the Hellenes in the service of the Porte
afforded their aid to the Patriarchate in commenc
ing an extended system of education, by founding
schools and protecting the teachers and their
pupils. The true development, however, did not
T irepl XeoeAXT^i/c^s tptAdkoyias, doKt^iov. London, 1S71-

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 163
take place until still later, especially towards the
end of the last Century. Then it was that the
lowly teachers of the preceding generations gave
place to men of learning, who were imbued with an
enlightened love for the classical glory of their race,
and kindled with a passionate desire for its renewal .
Henceforward many an Hellenic town had a school,
and pupils came in thither from the country round
about. In these schools, moreover, the works of
the classical authors and of the Fathers of the
Church no longer formed the only subjects of
study. In them were to be learnt the results of
modern science, which cultured Greeks were now
busying themselves in communicating to their
countrymen, either by original works or by trans
lations of the best foreign treatises.*
The principal source which supplied means to
education, and was the strongest lever for raising
the Greek people out of the rut of lethargy into
which they had fallen, was Commerce. Commercial
activity dates its revival from the Eighteenth
Century. ' The Greeks of other days,' said M. Juchereau
de St. Denis, t ' crushed under the yoke of Osmanli
despotism, used to get European merchandise
through the hands of European agents, estab
lished in the different seaports of the Levant.
Within the last fifty years, under the impulse of
* See the ^x^Slaa-fia irepl ttjs Karacrrdcreas t&v ypanixdroiv, by Par-
anikas (Constantinople, 1867), and also the fuller work upon public
instruction in Greece by Chassiotis (Paris, 1881).
+ T. 155.

161 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
their constantly disappointed hopes for a brighter
future, they have taken to studying our language,
imitating some of our manners and customs, and
trying to gain some knowledge of Europe by
personal observation.'
From the epoch when he wrote, the commerce of
the Levant became mainly centred in the hands of
Hellenes. Little by little, the Christian's home
began to learn what is meant by ease and comfort,
and with material improvement, began the aspira
tion after a higher intellectual and moral position.
These happy results of commercial activity were not
confined to Constantinople, to Smyrna, to Thessa-
lonica,* or to the isles of the iEgean, whose merchant
ships were now beginning, in ever increasing- num
bers, to bear to their rocky homes the wealth which
was destined, later on, to keep alive the War of
Independence. The improvement was also to be
seen here and there in landward Hellas, wherever
the absence of Turks permitted some out-of-the-way
village to enjoy a certain amount of security and of
. freedom. The commercial and industrial develop
ment achieved by these communities, was itself a
clear proof of the talent and the activity inherent
in the Hellenic population. The existence of such
oases in the midst of the desert of Osmanli savagery,
startled the few travellers who were able to reach
them, by recalling the memories of European civil-
* See Felix Beaujour, Tableau du Commerce de la Grece, 1787-1797,
Paris, Year VIII. ; and also the Comte Chaptal, De Vindustrie
Frangaise, Paris, 1789, vol. I., where there is a special chapter upon
the trade of the Levant.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 165
ization. The German Bartholdy, a man whose
prepossessions are sufficiently unfavourable to the
Hellenes, was astonished to find at Ampelakia,* in
Thessaly, several persons who were capable of ad
dressing him in his mother-tongue, and he was still
more astonished when he found that they had given
themselves, as a recreation, the opening of a little
theatre, in which they were representing Kotzebue's
Menschenhass und Rene, which was then in vogue
in civilized Europe. At Kalarrytes, at Syracon, in
Epiros, t similar phenomena were to be found. ' It
is the tradition of Kalarytes,' says Leake, J ' that
the Vlakhiotes have not been settled in this part of
Pindus more than 250 years, which is very credi
ble, as it is not likely that they quitted the more
fertile parts of Thessaly until they felt the oppres
sion of the Turkish conquerors, and their inability
to resist it. The removal has not been unfortunate,
for their descendants have thereby enjoyed a degree
of repose, and have obtained advantages which
their former situation could hardly have admitted.
They began by carrying to Italy the woollen cloaks,

* French translation (Voyage en Grece), I. 183, et seq. Felix
Beaujour speaks of Ampelakia, I. 272, et seq. He gives full particu
lars of the organisation of this Thessalian township as an industrial
community. He says that there were 25 factories, where 2,500 bales
of cotton were dyed in a year. This industry was based upon the
red dye, commonly called the Andrianople red, and it is not generally
known that this trade was introduced into France from Greece. See
M. Chaptal, L'art de la teinture du coton en rouge. Paris, 1807.
t See Pouqueville, Voyage en Grece, II. 173, et seq, and Leake,
Northern Greece, I. 274.
X Northern Greece, I. 274. See also Pouqueville, II. 431.

1G6 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
called Cappe, which are made in these mountains,
and much used in Italy and in Spain, as well as by
the Greeks themselves. This opened the route to
a more extended commerce : they now share with
the Greeks in the valuable trade of colonial pro
duce between Spain or Malta, and many are owners
of both ship and cargo. The wealthier inhabitants
are merchants, who have resided abroad many years
in Italy, Spain, or the dominions of Austria or
Russia, and who, after a long absence, return with
the fruits of their industry to their native towns,
which they thus enrich, and, in some degree, civilize.
But they seldom return for permanent residence till
late in life, being satisfied in the interval with two
or three short visits. The middle classes pursue a
similar course ; but, as their traffic seldom carries
them so far from home as the higher order of mer
chants, they return more frequently, and many of
them spend a part of every summer in their native
place.' At Siatista, in Macedonia, there could hardly be
said to be a single family some member of which
was not established in Italy, in Hungary, in Austria,
or in Germany. Among the old men in the town,
there were very few who had not lived abroad for
ten or twelve years. Among the mountain villages
near Volo, in Thessaly, the same activity was at
tended by the same results. It is to these merchants,
while either still living in some foreign land or
when returned to their native country, that Hellas
owes that wonderful revival of popular education
which preceded her political resurrection. Such

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 167
men were the Zosimai, the Maroutsoi, the Kap-
lanai, and so many other benefactors of their race.
Such men were those who founded and endowed
schools. These were they who were either themselves
workers in the fields of literature and learning, or who
generously subsidized and supported the publication
of useful books by others. These were they who
made themselves the leading apostles of freedom
and of civilization, by telling their fellow-country
men what they had heard and seen in the dominions
of civilized governments, and exciting in them the
desire to obtain the like blessings for their own
land. It is among these merchants that are to be
found the names of the first founders of the
Hetain'a. It was principally from among them
that were drawn the emissaries who spread through
the provinces and colonies of the Hellenic race the
secret knowledge of the national movement which
was about to break forth. Of 692 recorded names
of members of the Hetain'a, 251 are those of busi
ness-men, and 35 of ship-captains."" The wealth
which trade and commerce had amassed in Greek
hands was freely and readily offered for the needs
of their country.
But it was not alone the development of trade
which engendered the War of Independence.
Trade brought material well-being, trade brought
about and helped relations with foreign countries,
trade brought out and hastened the moral and

* See the appendix to the 1st vol. of Philemon's 'XuropiKhv SokIiuov vepl
t?(s ''EWtjviktjs 'Eirava&Tdveus. Athens, 1860,

168 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
intellectual awakening of the people, trade stirred
up the desire to be free ; trade was the mother of
those merchant-ships wherein were trained the
sailors who have gained immortality by labouring
and fighting for Greece. Trade was like a
quickening breeze which blew upon the grey heap
of ashes until the fire, which smouldered below,
broke out into a clear blaze. But the fire had been
there all the while, and the fuel was ready to be
re-kindled. The Church and the communal system
had saved the integrity and the unity of the nation.
The class of men who surrounded the Patriarchal
throne at Constantinople had shown their intellec
tual and political superiority over the Turks. The
Kleptai and the Armatoloi, by handing down from
generation to generation the warrior- spirit of our
race had given a continuous promise — a promise
since fulfilled by what deeds ! and by what devo
tion ! — that when the hour for battle came, Hellas
would have children who could fight for her. All
these things together showed that Greece was
ready for liberty. All her population were but
awaiting the moment to shake their chains from
their limbs. The Hetain'a did it, because the
hour was come. When the sowers of that brother
hood went forth to sow, they found everywhere
good ground, ready to receive the seed which has
now begun to give to Hellas the first fruits of her
second spring-time.
There were some people at the time of the out
break of the war — and there have been some since
-wwho thought that the outbreak was premature.

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 169
It is possible, from one point of view, to understand
this opinion. On the side of the Hellenes there
was a want of organization either military or
political, there was the want of sufficient means,
and there was the want of any alliance or of any
hope of help from any foreign nation. On the side
of the Osmanlis there was power and strength,
vast, bloated, overwhelming : all went to show that
the battle must be a hard one, and that success
was very problematical. And, as a matter of fact,
for many a long year, as she writhed against her
gigantic oppressor, Hellas bled heavily. For ten
years, in a war wherein she received no quarter,
her population was much more than decimated, in
the field, in massacres, in epidemics. Anything
which Turkish savagery had hitherto by any
accident spared went now. The towns were
destroyed. The country was laid waste. Anyone
who happened to have any property lost it. There
was not a family which had not agony and martyr
dom carried into its midst. And when it was over
— when so much blood had been shed, and so much
suffering borne, it was only a little fraction of the
Hellenic race who obtained independence. Three
hundred thousand Hellenes gave up their lives, in
order that six hundred thousand might be free.*
We have had to wait fifty years more to see
another scrap — a very small one — of Hellenic soil,
liberated by the will of Europe. God knows how
long the Hellenes, who are still slaves, will have to
* Herzberg, Geschichte Griechenlands, IV., 590.

170 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
wait before the hour of deliverance strikes,
or how long the alien tribes, which have
immigrated into the Balkan peninsula and are
striving to make themselves a way to the shores
of the Greek sea, will be tolerated in their efforts
to defraud Hellas of her rights.
The people who blame the War of Independence
for having been premature are fond of saying that
if the Hellenes had only been content to go on
living quietly under the Turks, they would have
ended by becoming gradually more and more
powerful both in the administration and in the
Government, that their superior intelligence, edu
cation, and adroitness would have enabled them
peacefully to take the places of their masters, while
they would at the same time have preserved and
confirmed their moral and political supremacy over
all the other races which inhabit the Turkish
Empire. By such means, argue these thinkers, the
Hellenes, by stepping gently and imperceptibly
into the shoes of the Turks upon the one side, and
uniting themselves with all other sorts and condi
tions of Christians, upon the other, would have
been enabled, by sheer force of time and events, to
raise again upon the shores of the Bosphoros that
Christian Empire which was felled by Mahomet II.
These dreamers forget that when the Hellenes
took up arms, they proclaimed their indestructible
rights, and not their own rights only, but the
rights of every race which the Osmanli had
enslaved. These dreamers forget that if the
Hellenes had not claimed and won those rights,

GREECE BEFORE 1821. 171
these same Hellenes themselves, and all the other
Christians in the Turkish Empire, and all the other
peoples in it, and the Turks themselves along with
them, would have been very likely to have fallen
one solid prey to Another Conqueror — Another
Conqueror, whom Turkey's constantly growing
weakness must necessarily have invited to come in
at last, and to take all, — a Conqueror, strong and
civilized, — a Conqueror, within whose mighty
Empire Hellas would have run much chance of
losing the very consciousness of her nationality, as
she must have lost even the dream of independence.
And even if that had not been so, to what
depths of degradation would the Greek race have
sunk had they refused to the ancestral blood which
filled their veins the honoured task of washing out
the stains of slavery ? If they had thrown them
selves solely upon their intellectual acumen and
trusted to nothing but to the power of their
superiority in cabal and intrigue to enable them to
restore the Byzantine Empire ? Half a century
has passed by now since the War of Independence,
and yet that long lapse of time has not been long
enough to remove all the stains which the degrada
tion of Turkish slavery has left upon the character
of our race. No, a people who voluntarily keep
their chains around them are a people who are not
worthy to be free. The second birth of Hellas was
a thing which could not if it ought, and ought not,
even if it could, have been the work of Christians
disguised as Pashas. It was not and is not the
destiny of Hellenism to effect a reconstruction of

172 GREECE BEFORE 1821.
the old Greco-Roman Empire. It was right that
Hellenic independence should be won, as it was
won, sword in hand and at a great cost. Some
people say that that cost was too great. If so it
be, so much the greater ought to be the gratitude
of posterity towards those who did not grudge the
price. It is owing to them that Hellas has once
more taken her name and place among the nations,
with the light of a new morning beginning to glow
round her head.

THE FORMATION OF THE MODERN
GREEK STATE.

THE FORMATION OF THE
MODERN GREEK STATE.

Towards the end of the year 1822, Europe held a
sort of Continental Council at Verona, where the
different States were represented in the persons of
Sovereigns and their Ministers. This was the first
occasion upon which their collective wisdom was
called upon to occupy itself with the Greek Ques
tion. In the spring of the preceding year, the news
that an insurrectionary Greek movement had
broken out in Moldavia had already troubled the
deliberations of the Monarchs assembled at Lay-
bach. The Emperor Alexander I., who was then
the arbiter of Europe, hastened to express his con
demnation of the revolt of the Greeks, a condem
nation which was emphasized all the more because
the insurgent chief, Hypsilantes, who had but re
cently been not only a General in his service but
also an aide-de-camp in his household, was address
ing to him the most urgent appeals on behalf of
that country to whose cause he had now devoted
himself, and to which he believed — as all the rest
of his fellow-countrymen believed with him — that

176 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
Russia and her mighty Sovereign could not refuse
their sympathy and their help. Hypsilantes was
soon undeceived. The Orthodox Tzar and the
whole of Europe disowned and condemned the
Hellenic War of Independence from the very
moment it began.
The national movement, initiated outside its
natural sphere, seemed at that time to have no
chance of continuing, far less of succeeding. But
circumstances had changed somewhat before the
close of the next year.
The insurrection had been stamped out in the
Danubian Principalities, where it was not upon
native soil, but Hellas herself had already some
claim to be called free and independent. In the
Peloponnesos the Turks had lost everything except
the two fortresses of Patrai and Nauplion ; on the
mainland they had just evacuated Athens, and the
whole of that part of the country, from sea to sea,
was cleansed of them ; the Kleptai of Olympos in
Thessaly, and the Souliotes in Epiros, still kept the
Sultan's arms in check ; Greek fleets swept the
Mgesm up to the very Dardanelles ; and lastly, the
representatives of the risen race, gathered together
in a National Assembly, had been enabled to lay
the first foundations of a political organization, and
had testified before the civilized world to the exist
ence of an Hellas with both the power and the
will to live.
The Greeks, from the very beginning, seized
every opportunity of defending their movement
against the unjust imputation of revolutionary

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 177
principles, which was at first cast upon it. The
Assembly at Epidauros, in their proclamation of
January 15, 1822, say, 'Our war against the
Turks is not the outcome of seditious and subver
sive forces, nor the weapon of party ambition. It
is a National War, undertaken with no aim save
that of reconquering our rights, and saving our
existence and our honour.' When they cried for
the help of Christendom, they declared betimes
their desire that their new State should be a
Monarchy. Their appeals and proclamations
remained perfectly futile. The world continued to
regard them as subjects in rebellion against their
lawful Sovereign.
When they heard of the Congress of Verona, the
Hellenes hastened to send a mission thither in
order to explain their wishes and to plead their
cause. The Congress refused even to receive the
petition which the insurgents had had the audacity
to address to them. They forbade the Greek repre
sentatives to set foot in Verona, and requested the
Pope to expel them from Ancona. Official Europe
damned the Greek War of Independence from its
very inception.
During the last twenty-five years a number of
new States have been able easily to take shape and
assume their positions in the European family of
nations, and that, sometimes after defeats instead
of victories, and sometimes after the populations
have merely allowed themselves to be massacred
without making any resistance. In view of such
spectacles as these it is difficult to realize that

178 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
Hellas, after having fought and triumphed by sea
and by land for two years, and thus virtually
acquired independence by her arms, entirely failed
to make the Governments of that epoch even listen
to what she had to say. To understand such a
phenomenon it is necessary for the reader of to-day
to place himself in thought at the period in
question, and to remember that diplomatic Europe
was then guided by the principles of the Holy
Alliance. No better exposition of these principles
as they prevailed in 1822 is, perhaps, to be
found than in the ironical description in which
the Due de Broglie depicted it in one of his
speeches,* ' Every revolution whatever,' he said,
'is not only a rebellion against the Government
which it attacks in particular, but a criminal
attempt against civilization in general. Every
nation which tries to gain its rights, when its
Government has refused it the liberty, is a nation
of pirates which ought to be outlawed and pro
scribed by all Europe. Constitutions have no
lawful source except in absolutism. Any Govern
ment which is the child of a revolution, is a
monster, which ought to be killed as soon as
possible.' It was against such doctrines as these,
as much as against the arms of Turkey, that Hellas
had to contend in order to conquer her indepen
dence. And yet, when the Hellenes addressed their
petition to the Congress of Verona, the moment
* Souvenirs, II. p. 346.

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 179
was a singularly propitious one for effecting a
settlement of the question in conformity not only
with the principles of the Holy Alliance but- also
with the interests of Turkey herself. It would
then have been easy to have done what was after
wards attempted in vain, viz., to have brought
about the pacification of Greece, while still preserv
ing the Suzerainty of the Porte. It would then
have cost no more trouble to succeed in such a
proposal than it cost to fail at a later date. If the
European Powers had not then been so exceedingly
tender about the Sovereign rights of Turkey, they
would have been spared the trouble of crushing
Turkey five years later upon the waters of
Navarino. But it is a curious fact that in this
everlasting and tiresome Eastern Question, it is
always the fate of Europe, or at least of Western
Europe, to make the mistake of leaving undone
those things which she ought to have done, and so
having to confess afterwards that she has done
those things which she ought not to have done.
And so, as we have already remarked, Europe, in
1822 as well as in 1821, left Hellas to her fate in
the conviction that it would not be long before the
Sultan crushed her again.
It must, indeed, be confessed that, it was diffi
cult to foresee how a little nation with no organiza
tion, no resources, no allies, and no protectors, could
successfully resist a power as formidable as Turkey
still was at that time. It seemed impossible but
that such an insurrection must be promptly stamped
out. But the energy of despair gave tenfold force

180 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
to the Greeks. Their struggle for liberty was a
war without quarter. It could only end in one of
two possible ways ; either they would become free,
or they would be exterminated. Between them
and their old masters there was a great gulf fixed,
which put anything like understanding or compro
mise out of the question.
So they went on fighting, and, contrary to all
foresight, their cause prospered for two years after
the Congress of Verona. Hellas, left entirely alone,
had some grounds for hoping at last that after four
years of struggle the Sultan would find himself
obliged to cease a profitless war, or that Europe
would step in and end it, if only by acknowledging
her independence as an accomplished fact.
This hope would have been realized if Turkey
had had no resources but her own to fall back upon.
The aspect of affairs changed when the armies and
fleets of Egypt came to her aid, and from 1825
fortune turned against Greece. The son of
Mohammed Ali knew how to gain victories where
Turkish armies had met with nothing but defeats.
But the Greeks did not give in. When they were
beaten they still set their stubbornness against the
enemy's advance ; they contested their burnt and
blackened fields against the disciplined Arabs of
Ibrahim ; and, with the continued cry of 'EXeuflepfe ?)
edvaros, still appealed to the conscience of Christian
Europe. Those appeals were not altogether unheard. In
despite of their Governments, the nations soon
began to show their sympathy with Hellas. The

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 181
material help and, still more, the moral support
which they thus gained afforded the Greeks an
encouragement of which it is impossible to exag
gerate the value ; but unhappily, at the same time,
this popular sympathy became an additional reason
for the rabid hostility with which the Governments
regarded the Hellenic cause, by identifying it in
their eyes with the principle of Anarchy. ' How is
it possible to doubt,' wrote Count Bernstorff from
Berlin on July 27, 1821, 'how is it possible to
doubt that the safety of European society is
menaced by the war which threatens Europe, when
we see that every revolutionist in every country is
making it the object of all his hopes and expecta
tions ? ... It would appear that their aim in
wishing to have Greece free is only that they may
set free the spirit of evil in all the Christian States
of Europe ; they only hate the Turks in order to
satisfy their hatred of the allied Powers, and they
call for the intervention of Russia with the
treacherous hope of thereby dissolving the union
which curbs them, restrains them, and chastises
them.' * It was many a long year since the
pressure of public opinion was strong enough to
efface from the memory of the Hellenes the
remembrance of the fact that private sympathy
was far from being strong enough to counteract the
effects of public hostility.
The European Cabinets did nothing for Hellas
until the very last moment. When at last they
* Prokesch-Osten, III. 347.

182 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
acted, they acted unwillingly. It may fairly be
said that what inspired them then was not the
generous thought of helping an unhappy people.
They never dreamed of doing anything when they
heard of the massacre of Chios, or of the massacre
of Constantinople, or of the massacre of Cydonia,
or during any of the long years before the Egyptian
armaments came upon the scene. It was when
Greece, broken down by the struggle, fell a prey to
anarchy, when the Hellenic Government was driven
to desperation, when the army refused to yield
obedience any more, when the men of the fleet took
to plundering the seas of the Archipelago, then it
was that, for the first time, Europe found it
necessary to put an end to the war. The European
nations only took up the cause of Greece wdien
Prince Metternich had been able to write (May 19,
1826) that it was only the future, and a very near
future, which would be able to show whether there
were still any Greeks left to deliver.*

The first public and collective act by which the
powers of Europe intimated their willingness to
interfere in the Greek Question was the treaty of
July 6, 1827. This was the beginning of that
Triple Alliance which was to end, some years later,
in the ' untoward event ' of Navarino, and the inde
pendence of Hellas.
* Ibid., IY. 245,

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 183
The notion of this independence formed no part
of the design of the contracting Powers. All they
wanted to do was to put an end to the war without
cutting Greece clear of Turkey. Circumstances
ultimately compelled them to go a great deal further
than they wished, just as this Triple Alliance itself
had only been forced upon them by necessity.
The truth is that the treaty of July 6, 1827, was
the result of long preceding negotiations. It was
impossible not to pay some attention, from the very
beginning, to a war out of which, as Lord Strang-
ford expressed it, there might arise ' one of the
gravest as well as most delicate questions with
which diplomacy has ever had to deal.'* But when
it came to negotiation, the Powers all had different
interests and different aims, while none of them
were wholly unaffected by what was going on in the
East. Each of them tried to turn events to its own
advantage, or, if that was impossible, at least to
prevent their turning to the advantage of some one
else. There was only one point upon which they
were all agreed — and this was, to prevent the for
mation of any Greek State strong enough to be
really independent.
Russia had not yet begun to discriminate between
the different races to which the Christians of the
East belong, and she could not well remain indif
ferent to their fate, nor, however much she might
condemn the Greek insurrection, abandon her own
character of Protectress of the Orthodox Religion.
* To Prince Metternich, July 1, 1824. Prokesch-Osten, IV. 104.

184 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
She had not yet discovered that she had any kins
folk in the Turkish dominions. She had still only
co-religionists. The murder of the Patriarch of
Constantinople, and the persecutions and massacres,
of which the Greek clergy and people were made
the victims, roused a righteous indignation in
Russia and evoked from the Russian Government
a series of protests, remonstrances, and threats,
which contributed, along with other causes of dis
sension, to bring about the rupture of diplomatic
relations with the Porte, long before the outbreak
of war in 1828.
The great object of European diplomacy, guided
by Prince Metternich, was to prevent the outbreak
in question. The result was only to retard it. This,
however, was in itself a great success from the point
of view of the object to be attained, viz., the pre
servation and integrity of Turkey. ' A war of
Russia against the Porte now,' wrote the Prussian
minister, Herr Ancillon, ' will not end like former
wars in a treaty of peace, the utmost result of
which would be to give Russia a new province. The
Emperor's forces are so formidable, Turkey is so
weakened, and the diversion effected by the Greeks
will be so powerful, that it will be a question of
nothing less than driving the Turks back into Asia
and making the Crescent in Europe give place to
the Cross. This is a result which neither Great
Britain nor France can, to judge by their present
policy, desire.'*
Neither did Russia desire to see the formation of
* Prokesch-Osten, III. 342.

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 185
a strong and independent Greek State. Katherine
the Great's projet Grec had been abandoned by her
successors, and Alexander I. was very far from wish
ing to sacrifice the principles of the Holy Alliance,
in order frankly to take the Greek side. At the
same time, it must not be forgotten that during
the whole course of the War of Independence
Russia was the only power which acknowledged
the claims of humanity as an element for her
consideration. M. de Nesselrode wrote on August
29, 1821, ' The Emperor is sincerely affected, for
the sake of Europe, to see that the barbarity of the
measures adopted by the Porte is such as to clothe
the revolution with the character of lawful self-
defence, and to gain it the secret good wishes of
every man who prides himself upon not remaining
indifferent to the sufferings of his kind.'
But for Russia, it is not unlikely that public
opinion alone would have failed to rouse the
European Cabinets to action in favour of ' rebels.'
Russia had already proposed two alternatives for
the pacification of Greece, at the Congress of Verona
in 1822. These were ' that the Porte should either
consent to enter into direct negotiations as to the
Guarantees under which the Greeks should again
come under the Sovereignty of the Grand Signor ;
or should prove by her acts that she respects the
religion of Greece and is trying to re-establish
tranquillity in the interior of that country upon
bases such as may assure to Russia the establish
ment of durable peace.'* * Ibid., III. 179.

186 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
On January 9, 1824, Russia took another step.
After a number of tentatives addressed to the
other Cabinets, she now produced a formal memor
andum in which she proposed ' to establish upon
the mainland of Greece, Principalities analogous to
those upon the Danube. In accordance with the
geographical position of Greece these Principalities
should be three in number. The first, or Eastern
Greece, should include Thessaly, Boeotia and
Attica. The second, or Western Greece, should
embrace all the old Venetian coast line which has
not passed into the possession of Austria, Epiros,
and Acarnania. The third, or Southern Greece,
should be composed of the Morea, to which might
even be added the island of Candia. The islands
of the Archipelago should be placed under a
municipal system which would be in fact only the
renewal and regularization of the privileges which
they have already possessed for centuries.'*
The subsequent fate of other provinces tributary to
Turkey and the re-union of principalities inhabited
by the same race show us now-a-days how much
the realization of this project might have turned
to the advantage of the Hellenes. Hellas herself
would thus also have been spared the desolation
caused by six more years of war, while the high
deeds already wrought would by themselves have
been enough to render glorious for ever the history
of her new birth. But the Hellenes had made up
their minds never to submit again to the domina-
* Ibid., V. 5.

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 187
tion of the Porte in any shape, and they unanimously
rejected the scheme.
The Turks on their side stubbornly refused to
allow any intervention of the Christian Powers in
their dissensions with their subjects. They would
hear of nothing but absolute submission, and as M.
de Nesselrode truly observed in one of his
despatches, they discriminated, with an acumen
peculiarly their own, between simple diplomatic
demonstrations and settled resolutions. It was
only an Europe resolved to be obeyed which could
make the Turks give in. But the European
Powers were not really at one. It is true that
they had all given their adhesion with an apparent
heartiness to the Russian proposal. But the
initiative which Russia had assumed the right to
take with regard to the Greek question was none
the less a cause of disquiet and jealousy. The
inter-nuncio of Austria wrote to Prince Metternich
on September 25, 1824, 'We know her schemes.
Russia talks of religion, but all she is looking to is
the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. She
despairs of obtaining the consent of the other
Governments to the partition of Turkey, and so she
covers her plans of ambition with the veil of
religion and humanity, and invokes their compassion
in favour of the Greeks.'*
So the proposal to erect tributary Principalities in
Hellas came to nothing. The negotiations between
the Powers were broken off. The war went on still,

Ibid., IV. 121,

188 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
notwithstanding the success of Ibrahim. The
victorious Pasha was credited with a plan for
transporting the entire Hellenic population of
the Peloponnesos to Egypt, and colonizing the
country with Mohammedans.* Messolonghi had
just fallen, after an heroic defence which had
lasted a year. Sympathy for Greece became
stronger in Europe than ever, and under its
pressure the Governments again began to turn
their thoughts thither. Negotiations recom
menced. This time it was England which began.
Canning, on December 1, 1824, wrote to the Greek
Government in reply to their communications.
This was the first time that any European Cabinet
had addressed them directly and officially, and it
was considered by the Greeks as the first recogni
tion of their political existence. Unfortunately
for Greece, Canning's ministry lasted only a few
months, and his policy expired at his own untimely
death. It must not be forgotten that all this time the
only question under discussion was the submission
of the Hellenes to the Turks. England wanted
nothing more, and Russia desired to go no further.
In 1824, M. de Nesselrode again declared 'that
Russia will never admit the independence of the
Greeks ; she wishes that they should remain under
the Suzerainty of the Sultan, but in the enjoyment
of as much self-government and of as many privi
leges as possible.' In April, 1828, on the very eve
* Ibid., IV. 271, 306.

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 189
of the Russo-Turkish war, the Emperor Nicolas
expressed himself just as incisively. In an inter
view which he held with the Austrian Ambassador,
he assured him that he detested the Greeks,
because he regarded them as subjects in rebellion
against their lawful sovereign; that he did not
wish that they should become free ; that they did
not deserve freedom ; and that if they were to
succeed in obtaining it, it would be a very bad
example for other countries.* Such declarations,
however, did not prevent the other Powers from
crediting Russia with interested motives. They
thought that she was seeking, by the pacification of
Greece, merely the re-establishment of her former
relations with the Greek people ; and Russia her
self on her side saw in every new proposal which
could possibly end in Hellenic independence, a fresh
scheme for undermining her influence, f
The Cabinet of St. Petersburg was not far
wrong in suspecting that jealousy of Russia was
the motive which inspired the other Powers with
interest in the affairs of Greece. Lord Aberdeen
wrote plainly to the Duke of Wellington on April
27, 1829, that the object of England in taking in
hand the affairs of Greece had been to prevent the
war between Russia and Turkey, and to prevent
Russia obtaining an exclusive influence in Greece. J
Thus also, M. Thiersch, writing from Greece in

*Ibid., V. 207.
t Ibid. , Geschichte des Abfalls der Griechen, I. 343.
X Wellington, Despatches, VI. 76.

190 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
1832 to Mr. Stratford Canning, then English
ambassador at Constantinople, had no hesitation in
accounting in the same way for the tardy protec
tion which Hellas had at last obtained from the
Western Powers. ' Why,' said he, ' have France
and England joined the Triple Alliance ? — To
prevent Russia having the settlement of the Greek
Question all to herself.'*
If, however, there were some reasons for suspect
ing that Russia was not altogether disinterested,
Russia herself was not without having some
grounds for fearing that England was trying to
obtain in Greece exactly the same preponderating
influence which she would not permit to her rival.
Her close promixity as protectress of the Ionian
Islands, the presence of her fleets, the vogue of the
liberal ideas of which she posed as the representa
tive, the sympathy which different Philhellenic
Committees had manifested for the Greek cause, all
combined to furnish the British Government with
means of action sufficient to ensure her success in
this struggle for influence.
As a matter of fact, when the Greeks had been
disappointed in their hopes of help from Russia,
they had very soon turned their eyes towards
England. In 1821 they had already conceived -the
idea of placing themselves under the protection of
the same Christian Power whose standard floated
over the Republic of the Heptannesos. If Europe
had given her consent, perhaps England would not
* De I'etat actual de la Grece, I. 386.

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 191
have refused. But Europe did not consent. And
as the war went on, the Hellenes became more and
more attached to the idea of complete independence.
A Christian Protectorate became nearly as repulsive
to them as renewed submission to the Turks. In
1825, during the confusion which followed the
victories of Ibrahim, some of the Greek leaders
revived the idea of an English Protectorate, and
Captain Hamilton procured some overtures in this
sense ; but the Hellenic people were now deter
mined to abide by their last resolve, and the
intrigues in question came to nothing.
Whether England ever indulged in the dream
of a Protectorate over Greece or not, it is certain
that she was even more bitterly opposed than ever
was Russia to the notion of a strong and indepen
dent Greek State. Russia had wished to obtain
self-government for a fairly extended area, albeit
divided into three principalities. England wished
to restrict to the Peloponnesos the limited benefits
of conditional freedom.
Such were the circumstances under which these
two Powers entered together upon the solution of
the Greek Question.
The Emperor Alexander had died in December,
1825. This event, however, did not seem to be
accompanied by any change in the Eastern policy
of Russia. In the ultimatum which the Russian
Government addressed to the Porte in the ensuing
month of March, the Greek Question was not men
tioned ; but it was none the less evident that the
fate of Greece was deeply concerned in the results

192 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
of the war which was now about to break out. It
was at this moment that Canning appealed directly
to Russia to concert with England some settlement
of the affairs of Greece. On April 4, 1826, a Pro
tocol by which the two Powers bound themselves
to act in concert for the pacification of Greece was
signed at St. Petersburg. The arrangement to be
proposed to the Porte was that Hellas was to be
attached to and dependent upon Turkey, and was
to pay her an annual tribute. The limits of the
territory to which this arrangement was to apply
were reserved as a matter for after discussion.
The overtures made by the two Powers to the
contending parties were entirely futile. The Greeks
could not consent to be dependent upon Turkey,
and Turkey absolutely refused to permit any foreign
interference between her and the insurgents. It
was evident that she would never consent to let
them be independent until she herself had been
brought to her last pass. It was altogether in
vain that M. de Nesselrode protested that ' the
conditions of the Protocol in no way stipulate for
the independence of Greece, and so far from chang
ing the Sovereignty of the Grand Signor into a
Suzerainty, they reserved to him the entirety of
all his rights by specifying that the Greeks should
be attached to and dependent upon the Ottoman
Empire.' * The Porte remained unconvinced by
these arguments.
At the same time, the English Cabinet was

* Prokesch-Osten, V. 2.

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 193
trying to convert the other Powers to its own
views ; and Russia, as if she felt ill at ease at find
ing herself alone with England, was anxious to
obtain the participation of her old allies in the task
which she had so long been pursuing. France
alone made any reply to these overtures. She pro
fessed to share those views which they both held
in common, and made a proposition tending to im
press the more obligatory and solemn character of
an European treaty upon the preliminary stipula
tions concluded by Russia with the Court of St.
James's in the Protocol of April 4, 1826.*
If England was roused to action with the object
of defeating the schemes which she attributed to
Russia, she was quite as sensitive on the subject of
the influence of France in the East. Her suspicions
were kept on the alert by the fact that the sugges
tion of the Greek Committee at Paris that it would
be well to elect a French Prince to the Hellenic
Throne had not been without supporters in Greece
itself. Moreover, the inconsistent policy of the
French Cabinet was not calculated to inspire her
with confidence. The Duke of Wellington pointed
out to Prince Lieven that France was playing a
double game ; while she was encouraging the
Greeks to hold out, she was at the same time un
dertaking to form and discipline the Egyptian
Army.f The reproach was perfectly just; and it was

-Ibid., V. 10. t Prokesch-Osten, IV. 186.
i3

194 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
the Greeks above all who had the right to address
it to France. They would have had little to fear
from Ibrahim if he had invaded the Peloponnesos
with undisciplined Arabs, who would have been
certainly less formidable than Turks. It was
French discipline and French science which had
made of these Arabs a redoubtable army. The
French Volunteers who fought upon the side of the
Hellenes found themselves face to face with French
officers who were leading the Egyptian batallions.
But the Greeks have forgotten all that now. They
only remember the act of justice as well as gener
osity by which French soldiers under General
Maison hunted Ibrahim's troops from off their soil.
It is none the less true that the French Govern
ment, between the pressure of public opinion on the
one hand, and the doctrines of the Holy Alliance
upon the other, did not seem to know its own
mind. Count Apponyi, the Austrian Ambassador
at Paris, thus summed up on June 5, 1827, the
reasoning of M. de Villele, the President of the
Council. ' France desires the preservation of the
Turkish Empire ; she is opposed to the emancipa
tion of Greece ; she looks upon the Russo-English
alliance as monstrous and dangerous ; she desires
its dissolution at whatever cost ; and the only
means which she can see for accomplishing these
ends is herself to join this very same alliance whose
aims and works are consecrated to secure the
precise evil which she wishes to avert. The
principle which underlies her policy is, if I may

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 195
venture to use such an expression, the homoeo
pathic. : '*
The tone of this little extract sufficiently indicates
the spirit in which Austria looked upon the whole
matter. During the whole of the war Austria had never
done anything to win the sympathy or the gratitude
of the Hellenic population. On the contrary, she
did everything which could ensure their recognising
in her the most implacable of all the enemies of
their regeneration, and the most intractable among
the representatives of the Holy Alliance. Prince
Metternich, as was remarked by the Duke of
Wellington, gave himself up ' body and soul ' to
the Turks as far as regarded Greece. He looked
upon the Greeks simply as rebels against their
lawful Sovereign. No doubt he would have been
glad to see some reforms introduced into this
Sovereign's system of government, but he would
have had the armed resistance of the Greeks put
down with a strong hand, and he could not
conceive that any length of duration, or any
measure of success, could ever clothe an insurrec
tion with the character of a lawful war. The
Greeks complained bitterly of the conduct of the
Austrian ships, which they represented as being
the most effective allies of the Turkish cause. The
Austrians transported convoys and munitions of
war to the Turkish garrisons and fortresses, and
broke through the Greek blockades — acts which,
* Prokesch-Osten, V. 83.

196 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
in the eyes of all who recognised in the Greeks the
character of belligerents, were more than a gross
violation of neutrality, and amounted to a direct
participation in the war on the side of the Turks. '
However, the diplomatic history of this epoch now
shews us that, in spite of these acts, Austria, at
least from 1825, was the most far-seeing of the
European Powers. If the other Governments had
been anxious to arrive at a solution at once frank
and radical, so as not to leave the door open to
new and inevitable complications, they would have
had nothing to do but to act upon the views
expressed by the Cabinet of Vienna. But they
had no anxiety of this sort, and it was just because
he knew how far the other Powers intended to go,
that Prince Metternich was able to be, or at least
to appear, sincere, without any fear of being taken
at his word.
While Russia and England were both insisting
upon the necessity of making Greece a tributary
province under the Suzerainty or the Sovereignty
of the Sublime Porte, Austria pointed out the
impracticable character of any scheme based upon a
compromise between the old state of things and
pure and simple independence. The Austrian
inter-nuncio at Constantinople wrote — ' The first
consequence of the proposed step must necessarily
be to give a powerful encouragement to the very
insurrection which we wish to suppress, and to
create an important diversion in its favour, without
* Prokesch-Osten, V. 83.

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 197
giving us any assurance that the Turks will ever
consent to our suggestion, and I would therefore
prefer to begin by jumping the ditch which we
should still leave before us, and recognising an
independence which would put an end to a good
many difficulties.' *
This was evidently what had to be done.
When England sought his co-operation in the
formation of a tributary Greek State, whose possible
frontiers she did not indicate, Prince Metternich
replied by some observations of which it is
impossible to deny the plausibility, while it is to
be regretted that Europe has not since allowed
herself to be guided by them to a line of action
which, if it had not removed, would at least have
mollified all the difficulties against which she has
had to contend since, and will have to contend
again. The Austrian Minister wrote to Prince
Esterhazy on June 8, 1826 — 'It is hard to tell
what is meant by the word Greece. Does it mean
the Peloponnesos and the Islands ? or does it mean
all the parts of Turkey in Europe where the
majority of the population is Christian? If it
means the Peloponnesos, whether by itself or in
union with the Islands of the Archipelago, and if
such a territory presents — which we do not admit
that it does — the elements indispensable for the
constitution of a State politically independent, the
existence of such a State would be enough to
render problematical that of the Turkish Empire in
* Prokesch-Osten, IV. 157-

198 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
Europe. If it means a union of all the countries
where the Greek population is predominant, it
would make it impossible. Whether therefore it
means. one or the other, the establishment of an
independent Greece means, in either case, the
expulsion of the Turks from Europe.' * This
exaggerated view of the consequences of the
independence of Greece ought to be contrasted
with that of a Greek statesman. On December 5,
1824, Alexander Maurokordatos wrote from Messo-
longhi — ' We are the greatest enemies that the
Turks have. We have good reasons for being so.
Nevertheless, if our frontiers were once fixed, and
our independence recognised by Turkey, our policy
as an independent State would have to be in con
tradiction to our feelings and our national
antipathy. We should be obliged to desire, and
even to support, the existence of what would be
left of Turkey in Europe, because we should have
nothing to fear from her, but everything to fear
from Russia. We are the natural enemies of the
Turks, but if the Russians undertook to expel them
from Europe, we should be their most faithful allies
against them.' t
Subsequent events have proved that the Greek
statesman saw farther than the great Austrian
Chancellor, and that if the frontiers of Greece had
been fixed, as they ought to have been, the danger
that Prince Metternich feared would not have come
from that quarter. But let us hear him again.

Ibid., IV. 299. t Prokesch-Osten, IV. 135, VI. 219,.

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 199
' If,' he continued, ' we put aside all abstract con
siderations of right and of justice, and if there
existed the means necessary for expelling the Turks
from Europe, and for again putting in their place
a great Christian State, Austria, of all the Powers,
would be the one which would have the least cause
for regretting such a restoration.'
Unhappily Prince Metternich did not see that
Austria would have no cause for regretting the
formation of a really strong and independent Greek
State, whose existence would not necessarily entail
the expulsion of the Turks from Europe. He
worked out his hypothesis ingeniously, so as to
increase the embarrassment of the Powers. He
had no belief in the half measures which they
advocated, and their indecision lent plausibility to
to his arguments.
' There are only three ways,' he said, in conclu
sion, 'there are only three ways of effecting the
pacification of the insurgent provinces. They are,
first, the voluntary submission of the Greeks to the
Ottoman Power ; secondly, the definitive conquest
of all the insurgent provinces by the force of the
Turkish arms ; or lastly, that the Powers should
bring about a friendly arrangement between the
Sultan and his insurgent subjects. This last solu
tion has occupied the attention of our Court for the
last five years. Our efforts have come to
nothing, because the questions have never been
approached with frankness and order either
by the Cabinets or as regards the contending
parties. ... At present the successes of the

200 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
Porte and the internal decay of the insurrection
have placed matters in a position different from
that which they formerly occupied. We will never
claim the right to interfere with a pacification, of
which we cannot deny the legal existence, and
which can take place without our help.'
It is easy to see which of the three alternatives
was most to his taste. The invitation to join the
projected alliance was met by a categorical refusal.
Prussia followed the example of Austria. There
only remained France who was willing to consent
to the proposals of Russia and England. The three
Powers signed the Treaty upon July 6, 1827.

This Treaty went no further than the Protocol
which had preceded it. It stipulated ' that the
Greeks should be dependent upon the Sultan as
Lord Paramount, and should pay him an annual
tribute.' As for the limits of the Greek territory,
the signatories reserved to themselves the question
' of determining them in the course of negotiations
to be hereafter undertaken between the High
Powers and the two contending parties.'
The Triple Alliance ended by going further than
its programme. This might have been foreseen
from the beginning, in view of the insurmountable
difficulties which the original scheme was bound to
raise. As Prince Metternich remarked, the ques
tion thenceforth ' turned less upon the pacification
of Greece, than upon what means should be
adopted to compel the Ottoman Government to

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 201
consent to it. The end was thus eclipsed by the
means, and the experience of all ages teaches us
that in politics as in private quarrels the latter are
the most difficult to regulate.'*
His foresight was soon justified. As soon as the
three Powers had made up their minds to act, they
found themselves obliged ' to unite their forces in
order to prevent the transport of any troops, arms,
or munitions of war, either to the mainland or to
the islands of Greece. 't This was the first step
which was necessary with a view to effecting the
pacification. The consequence was the destruction
of the Turkish fleet at Navarino. It is quite true
that after that event the Powers continued to
assure the Porte, just as much as before, of the
entirely friendly and peaceful nature of their inten
tions, but a month later their Ambassadors were
obliged to leave Constantinople, and to break off
all negotiations with the Turkish Government, and
thereupon followed at last the outbreak of that
Russo-Turkish war which diplomacy had so long
been endeavouring to stave off.
Nevertheless, neither this war, nor the battle of
Navarino, nor the French expedition into the
Peloponnesos, made any change in the language of
the Cabinets as regarded the independence of
Hellas. They would not give up the terms of the
treaty of July 6, 1827. The idea of the entire
-Ibid.,Y. 203.
t These were the very words addressed to Ibrahim Pasha by the
officers in command of the Allied Fleets, on the eve of the battle of
Navarino,

202 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
emancipation of Greece entered into the thoughts
of no one of the three Powers. On November 16,
1828, they placed the Peloponnesos and the
islands of the Archipelago under their provisional
guarantee, but always under reservation of the
Suzerainty of the Sultan.
It was once more Prince Metternich who foresaw
the issue of this dilemma, and therefore strove to
show the Powers, on the one hand, that they would
be necessarily bound to admit the independence of
Greece, and, on the other, to persuade the Porte
' that if she would frankly give up possession of the
Morea and of the islands, she would have the
immense advantage of escaping all the future com
plications which would be entailed by preserving a
nominal power over them.'
The Hellenes themselves seemed to have cut the
knot of the question by electing Capodistria as
President without asking or waiting for any
authorization from the Porte. They had named
the head of their own Government, a Government
which Prince Metternich observed ' would have to
fall to pieces the instant that the Turks accepted
the proposals of the Powers.'* They had per
formed an act of independence, and what was more,
this act had received the sanction of the Powers, in
their recognition of the election of Capodistria,
while they still persisted in picturing the Greek
State as dependent upon the Porte.
It was nearly two years after the signature of
* Prokesch., V. 203.

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 203
the Treaty of July 6, 1827, when the plenipoten
tiaries accredited to the Conference of London
ventured, on April 18, 1829, to insert in one of
their Protocols as a mere suggestion, ' whether it
would not be desirable at once to constitute the
Greek State, and to recognise its absolute indepen
dence, without asking the consent or recognition
of the Turkish Government, to which it would be
enough to make an official notification of the deci
sion adopted by the Allies.'
Some months later, Turkey, beaten by the armies
of Russia, signed the treaty of Adrian ople, by the
tenth article of which she gave her accession to
that of July 6, 1827. This was not a recognition
of the independence of Greece, but that indepen
dence had already been resolved upon by the
Powers, and on February 3, 1830, they formally
declared that ' Greece shall form an independent
State of which the Government shall be an heredi
tary monarchy.'
This same Protocol which clinched the question
of Greek independence, declared that the new
State was to extend beyond the isthmus of Corinth,
but without comprehending the Western Provinces
of the mainland. The question of the frontiers was
not settled, nor was it destined to be so for a long
time after.
Ever since the negotiations began, England had
been obstinately opposing the formation of any
State which should spread beyond the isthmus.
For her, Hellas meant the Peloponnesos. She only
gave way upon this point inch by inch, and with a

204 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
protracted struggle. 'In the event,' wrote Lord
Aberdeen to the Duke of Wellington upon July 19,
1829, ' in the event of our being compelled to go
beyond the Morea, what do you think of making
the Northern State under a separate Government ?
This would be more agreeable to the Porte ; it
would be more in unison with the declamations of
the classical dreamers ; but, above all, it would
operate as a check upon the encroaching and rest
less spirit of Greek ambition, which we must ex
pect to see in any State to be established, especially
under one head.' *
Later on, the English Cabinet consented to the
addition of Attica, but it did everything that it
possibly could to shut out the island of Euboia.
' Should the Turkish Power,' wrote Lord Aberdeen
again, ' be ever good for anything, the possession
of Candia and Euboea ought effectually to control
Greece.' t Happily, Euboia was reunited to the
rest of Hellas ; thanks to France, the Northern
frontier was stretched as far as a line between the
gulfs of Volo and Arta ; \ but the island of Crete
remained and still remains under the Turkish do
minion, after all the sacrifices which have been
offered for her, and after all the struggles of Capo
distria and Prince Leopold to set her free.
Capodistria, who had been chosen the President
of Greece on April 11, 1827; did not reach Nauplion
until after the battle of Navarino. The joy with
which that great event inspired him was not un-
* Wellington Despatches, VI. 29. f Ibid., VI. 176. % Rid., VI. 9.

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 205
marred by misgiving. His political foresight showed
him the consequences which were likely to ensue,
and he feared the growing rivalry of the Powers
which would now claim to have wrought the salva
tion of Greece. This is not the place in which to
point out all that Greece has since had to suffer,
especially during the first years of her freedom,
from being made the arena of their rivalries ; it is
enough to cite the testimony of a Russian officer
who had the frankness to own, in 1827, that Greece
would never be at rest as long as foreign agents
had anything to do with the management of her
internal affairs.*
Although he submitted to the decision of Europe,
Capodistria never concealed the fact that his own
wishes sought a far wider territory than that within
which Greece was to be confined. Before the treaty
of July 6, 1827, was concluded, he had claimed for
the new State a frontier which should embrace all
Thessaly and a part of Macedonia, including
Thessalonica. This is the natural frontier of
Greece, and it is that which, as we have already
seen, Russia had suggested in 1824 in her scheme
for the Three Principalities. It is true that things
were not quite the same in 1830 as they had been
in 1824. Free Hellas had lost ground in the
interim, and the Powers were not disposed to help
her to regain it. England in especial vehemently
opposed the idea of making conquests for Greece at
the expense of Turkey.
* Thiersch, De I' Stat, etc., I. 176.

206 THE MODERN GREEK STATF.
Since the moment when the great Chatham
majestically declared that he would not stoop to
argue with any one who did not regard the
preservation of the Ottoman Empire as a point of
supreme importance to England, the maintenance
of the integrity of Turkey at any cost has remained
a sort of axiom with English statesmen. The
integrity in question has been pretty often knocked
to pieces during the last hundred years, but the
belief in its continual existence is nevertheless
held in England as an article of faith, which the
fact of Turkey's repeated mutilations is powerless
to remove. The principal victims who have
suffered from this curious hallucination have been
the Greeks. In 1829, after the complete defeat of
the Turks by the Russians, there appeared for a
moment to be some hope of a cure. The Duke of
Wellington d sspaired of Turkey, and it occurred to
him that the Greek element might supply for his
policy the void which was about to be caused by
her disappearance. Prince Esterhazy, the Austrian
Ambassador in England, wrote from London on
October 12, ' The Duke of Wellington admits that
Turkey has received her death-blow, that all our
efforts to restore her to animation must be futile,
and that our energies ought really to be directed
to getting something to take her place among the
Powers of Europe. I have pointed out to him that
it would be inexcusable to act upon anticipation,
and that even if the Porte is to expire to-morrow,
we are bound to give it a helping hand to-day, were
it only to soften the fall and to prevent the effects

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 207
of a shock so violent. Lord Aberdeen agrees with
his chief and is taken up at present with the idea
of the consolidation of the Greek State, in which
the English Ministers seem already to recognise a
Power which is destined to take the place of the
Ottoman Empire.'* But this was only a lucid
interval. The curious delusion returned with full
force. It has required much time and many a
mortification to make England admit that the
integrity of the Turkish Empire whether in the
past, the present, or the future, is a matter open to
doubt. And when at last it became evident even
to her that it is not a thing to be absolutely calcu
lated upon, she has actually taken up an idea that
it may be possible to use Bulgaria as a barrier
against Russia ! The Hellenes owe much to the
land of Byron, of Canning, and of Gladstone ; they
can never forget the support and protection which
they have often derived from England ; but they
cannot help calling to mind, that if half as much
had been done in time for them, as has been done
in the attempt to fashion an independent Bulgaria,
the object would have been attained long ago, at
far less cost, and the Eastern Question would have
received a solution in harmony, not only with their
own lawful aspirations, but also with the true
interests of Europe.
When Capodistria perceived that it was impos
sible to obtain a more extended frontier, he fell
back upon that which ran between the Gulfs of
* Prokesch-Osten, VI. 183.

208 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
Arta and Volo. France brought the whole weight
of her influence to support this scheme, and at the
same time recommended to the three Powers the
emancipation of the island of Crete. England
gave way at last as regarded the Northern frontier ;
but neither the French Government, nor Capo
distria, nor Prince Leopold, nor later on the King
of Bavaria, were ever able to shake her opposition
to the emancipation of Crete.
On February 3, 1830, Leopold was officially
accepted by the Powers as King of Greece. His
name had been already proposed by the Emperor
of Russia several months before, but the King of
England had persistently opposed his nomination ;
and it was only after a vain attempt to agree upon
any other name that the plenipotentiaries of the
three allied Powers were fain to fall back upon his.
On October 13, 1829, Russia proposed Prince
Philip of Hesse -Homburg ; on October 19, France,
Prince Charles of Bavaria ; next day Lord Aberdeen
proposed Prince Frederick of Orange, and ten days
later Prince Maximilian of Este. There was
always some power ready to veto any proposal.
Each of the three had agreed to exclude members
of their own reigning houses. At last they agreed
on Prince Leopold, and George IV. yielded with as
bad a grace as possible. ' The King,' he wrote to
the Duke of Wellington from Windsor Castle on
Jan. 16, 1830, ' The King cannot but deeply regret
the selection made by France and Russia of Prince
Leopold as the Prince to be placed at the head of
the Greek Kingdom. Without entering into a

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 209
detail of reasoning, the King considers Prince
Leopold not qualified for this peculiar station.
Nevertheless the two great Powers, France and
Russia, having conjointly named Prince Leopold
to be placed at the head of the Greek Kingdom,
the King, in deference to the desire of those two
great Powers, gives his assent.'*
That Prince Leopold resigned the crown which
had been offered to him and which he had accepted,
has been attributed to the intrigues and
personal ambition of Capodistria. This is not
the place to examine the foundations of such an
assertion. I think, however, that the ill-will of the
Court and Government of England was a force
quite strong enough to dishearten Prince Leopold,
and to cause his resignation. This he signified
definitely upon March 21, 1831, on the ground
that he did not wish to place himself at the head
of a dissatisfied people, and to let his name be
associated in the minds of the Hellenes with the
mutilation of their country and the desertion of
their brethren, who had fought along with them to
set that country free, and were now to be cut off
from it.t
The abdication of Prince Leopold was the formal
condemnation of the English policy. He had failed
to obtain any of the concessions which he regarded
as indispensable conditions of stability and pro
gress for the State which he had been called to
govern. On February 9, 1830, he wrote to the
* Wellington Despatches, VI. 426. t Prokesch. Geschichte, II. 419.
14

210 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
Duke of Wellington — 'I have considered the
Protocol of the 3rd inst. ; it appears that, if its
spirit be duly executed, it will effect as follows : — ¦
(1) It will establish an armistice and de facto peace
between the contending parties, provided peaceable
means suffice to carry this purpose. (2) It will
give birth to a Greek State and promise it indepen
dence. (3) It will have traced out for this state
boundaries, weak in a military, poor in a financial
point of view. (4) It will have found a Sovereign
for the new State.'* The obstinacy with which
freedom was refused to Crete appeared to him to
be especially unjustifiable. ' As I see nowhere,' he
wrote in the same letter, ' that it is English policy
to separate Candia from Greece, I am afraid that
the hidden interest, which caused this separation
to be determined on, will augur no good to the new
State. The exclusion of Candia will cripple the
Greek State, morally and physically, will make it
weak and poor, expose it to constant danger from
the Turks, and create from the beginning innumer
able difficulties for him who is to be at the head of
that Government.'
The subsequent history of Crete and of Greece
has amply justified his sorrowful foresight. Austria
had not opposed the nomination of Prince Leopold,
although she was herself more inclined to give to
Greece a constitution in the form of a Federative
Republic [somewhat after the manner of Switzer-
land,]in which case it would have been natural for

* Wellington Despatches, VI. 489.

THE MODERN GREEK STATE. 211
Capodistria to have occupied the position of
President.* But Hellas herself and all the other
Powers had formally pronounced in favour of
monarchy. After the abdication of Prince Leopold,
and while Capodistria was still alive, the idea of a
Federative Constitution might again have been
brought forward. But in October, 1830, Capodistria
fell a victim to private revenge, and the Hellenes,
torn by internal dissensions, were agreed only on
the necessity of obtaining from the Protecting
Powers a King, the commencement of whose reign
should mark a new era in the history of their
country. On February 13, 1833, Prince Otho of Bavaria,
who had been proposed by France, was named King
of the Hellenes. His father, King Lewis, insisted
upon the annexation of Crete, but was no more
successful in obtaining it than had been Prince
Leopold. Otho was sent to reign over a country
condemned already to waste her strength in the
efforts required to obtain an inevitable expansion,
and thereby impeded in the course of internal
development. 'An Hellas,' as wrote M. Thiersch,!
' an Hellas which did not embrace the Ionian
islands, nor Crete, nor Thessaly, nor Epiros, did not
deserve the name, and was incapable either of
maintaining her own independence or of educating
herself for the destiny to which Providence seemed
to be calling her.'
When the Great Powers set themselves to
* Prokesch. Geschichte, II. 391. f De Vttut, etc., I. 202.

212 THE MODERN GREEK STATE.
deprive the new State at its very birth of the
means either of independence in the present or of
preparation for the future, were they merely dis
sembling a friendship which they really felt ? Did
they regard their imperfect work merely as the
germ from which a new creation was to develop ?
After the series of historical facts which the pre
ceding pages have recalled it would be hard to
answer, Yes. Fortunately, neither the Hellenes
themselves nor their true friends have ever ceased
to believe in their future. Putting aside more
ambitious dreams which the past justifies but the
present forbids, they have always looked upon the
curtailed frontier which European diplomacy
assigned them in 1829, as marking only the limit
of a first day's march. It has been a long time
before they have been able to move forward another
stage. Late events are now beginning to prove
that they were right not to despair of their future,
and encourage them to persevere until their national
wants shall be satisfied. The ambition which Lord
Aberdeen condemned by anticipation, is not the
insatiable greed of a child which asks for more, the
more it has been spoilt ; it is the consciousness of
what is due to them which inspires a nation who
know that life lies before them, and who seek, when
all is said, nothing but what history, ethnology,
and geography alike teach them to be their impre
scriptible rights.

THE TERRITORY OF THE GREEK
KINGDOM.

THE TERRITORY OF THE GREEK
KINGDOM.

When King Otho mounted the throne of Greece he
was still in his boyhood. He was an upright Prince,
animated by excellent intentions, a lover of justice,
and thoroughly devoted to his adopted country.
If he had been placed in ordinary circumstances, in
an organised society, and surrounded by the tradi
tions and elements of stable government, he might
have been an ideal King. But he did not possess
the qualities necessary to rule a people new-born
from a long and bloody war. His capacity was not
great enough to meet the difficulties of the task
imposed upon him. He did not realize all the
hopes which his new subjects had formed of him,
and he did not possess the art of making them
forget faults, of which he was not always alone
guilty. His childlessness denied him the happiness
of founding a dynasty on which the Hellenes might
have placed their hopes, and so consoled themselves
for the disappointments of the present by the ex
pectations of the future. He yielded without re
sistance to the revolution which dethroned him.
If it had pleased him to do so, he might have found

216 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
partisans enough to have endeavoured to repossess
himself of power. But he gave Hellas a last proof
of his love for her by deliberately sparing her the
woes of civil war. He left the land of his adoption
with words of farewell full of majesty, and good
wishes for her happiness which were dictated by a
sincere affection. The Hellenes have not forgotten
his weaknesses ; but they are ever recalling his
good qualities with more and more of appreciation.
They remember of him, above all, how he loved
their country ; and his memory is dear to them.
The heart of Otho became Hellen. He identified
himself with his subjects, he was soon penetrated
with their natural aspirations, and to realize these
was his unceasing aim from the hour of his accession
to that of his abdication. He felt, like all the rest
of the Hellenes, that the formation of his kingdom
was not the full emancipation of their race. During
the thirty long years of his reign he seized every
opportunity which seemed to offer him a chance of
repairing the injustice inflicted upon those who had
fought and bled for freedom, but to whom the
Powers of Europe had refused permission to enjoy
it. Unhappily, he did not possess the ability
necessary to surmount the double difficulty with
which he had to contend ; on the one hand, in the
weakness of his small and still disorganized State,
and, on the other, in the hostility of the Powers,
who were again worshipping with redoubled devotion
the malign fetish of the Integrity of the Turkish
Empire, and were less than ever disposed to allow
Hellas to grow to her natural proportions.

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 217
The free Hellenes of the new kingdom were not,
however, the only Hellenes with whom it was
necessary to reckon. Those who live in the
dominions of the Sultan, and more especially the
inhabitants of the border-provinces and of the
islands, have always looked upon the Hellenic
kingdom as the centre round which they are des
tined sooner or later to gather. Whatever may
have been the errors committed by her Statesmen,
whatever may have been the faults of her policy,
domestic or foreign, free Hellas has always been for
the enslaved Hellenes, more than ever Piedmont
was for the Italians, the stay of their hope for
unity. Otho had hardly attained his majority when
risings took place in Epiros and in Crete. They
were crushed, one after the other, but without
destroying the hope of an happier future.
These hopes were rekindled in 1840, on the out
break of the long foreseen struggle between the
Sultan and his great Vassal in Egypt. Crete then
thought that the hour for her deliverance had
struck. The population rose like one man. The
Cretans made themselves masters of the whole
island, with the exception of the fortresses into
which the Turks had shut themselves. The am
biguous conduct of an English Consul inspired
hopes of the moral support of England. But the
Ambassadors at Constantinople hastened to con
demn the insurrection, while the English represen
tative repudiated the action of his Consul ; a large

218 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
Turkish fleet brought fresh reinforcements ; and
the rising was drowned in blood.
The occasion was lost. Only hope remained.
Nothing can give a better idea, not only of the
constancy, but of the scope of Hellenic aspirations,
than the memorandum which was placed before
King Otho by Alexander Maurokordatos in 1848.
This memorandum does honour both to the wisdom
and to the political foresight of its writer, and it
shows moreover that Hellenic Statesmen, without
allowing themselves to be led astray by impractic
able dreams, had early sketched the outlines of a
practical and possible policy. The present writer
has already elsewhere taken occasion to point out
that even during the War of Independence the
reasonable bounds of national aspirations had been
well understood. Those aspirations remain the
same to-day. Their realization has already begun.
It is to be hoped that it will not be long before
their accomplishment makes Hellas what she might
have been made, and ought to have been made
more than half a century ago — a State enclosed by
her natural frontiers and able to dedicate herself
wholly to the work of her internal development.
It may be permitted to give here some extracts
from the memorandum drawn up by Maurokor
datos : their importance will excuse their length.
'The object of the war of 1821,' he observes,
' was to free the entire Hellenic race from the
Ottoman yoke. This was the watchword of Rhegas
and of the Hetairia, this was what Hypsilantes
proclaimed in his declarations, and the voice which

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 219
was heard amid the sound of our rising, from the
Danube to Tenaron, from Souli to Kydonia, from
Athos to the Cretan Ida. Our first national
assembly proclaimed at Epidauros that this was
our object, and it has been to attain this end that
blood has run in every Greek country of Europe
and of Asia.
' But it has been the case that the fortune of
war, the force of circumstances, and the interests of
the great European Powers, on the one hand, and
our own lack of resources on the other, have
narrowed the field of battle, and have brought it to
pass that only a small portion of the Hellenic
territory and of the Hellenic race have been able to
recover their independence.
' Nevertheless, narrow as are our frontiers, and
small as is our population, our new State is looked
upon by the Hellenic populations which are doomed
still to remain under the yoke, as the seedling
whence is to grow in the future the tree of their
freedom. And the Greeks already free, seeing the
incompleteness of the work for which they have
toiled and sacrificed so much, have never had their
eyes diverted from the future, nor ceased to prepare
for it in concert with their enslaved fellow-country
men. Hence was continued the operation of secret
societies, which, under divers names and with
varying organisations, all worked for the same end,
viz., the deliverance of all Hellenes and their re
union with the newly created State. . . .
' The undertaking was too vast ; but, until 1840,
the chances of success were not altogether visionary

220 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
After the death of Sultan Mahmoud, after the
defeat of the Turkish troops at Nezib, and the
defection of the Ottoman fleet, we might perhaps
have succeeded if we had possessed the necessary
preparations, and if Europe had not come to the
rescue of the Ottoman dynasty.
' Since then, things have changed. Turkey has
regained strength ; her internal condition is im
proved ; and her foreign relations are such that in
case of necessity she might count upon the help of
some of the European Powers. At the same time,
when we speak of Turkey, we, of course, know too
much to share the delusions of the Westerns, who,
for the most part, neither know her nor (it would
appear) wish to know her. We know that the ap
parent improvement in her internal condition will
not be lasting : that the reforms which have been
introduced with so much trouble have not taken
root and never can possibly take root, and that the
least unforeseen event might destroy the whole
thing at any moment. . . .
' Nor must we forget that, although all the
Powers collectively have guaranteed the integrity
of the Turkish Empire, they do not all agree as to
the introduction of the measures by which Turkey
is to consolidate her internal improvements and
develop her resources. Russia has never been
friendly to the cause of Turkish internal reform, and
the reactionary opponents of such measures have
always enjoyed her support. What can Russia
mean ? On that point, every one may form their
own conclusion. The indubitable fact is, that

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 221
Russia is the only one of the Powers which really
knows Turkey thoroughly, and that she has means
of action there which no other Power possesses. . . .
' What, then, are the countries which Hellas can
and ought to take to herself ? It is plain that in
order to effect, if only partially, the reunion of all
the Hellenic race in one State, the State in question
must embrace those countries in which the Hellenic
race preponderates. These countries are unquestion
ably Thessaly, Macedonia, Epiros, and Crete. Can
Hellas annex them ? Hellas alone has neither the
strength nor the resources necessary for making
conquests, nor, as she now is, could she lend any
effectual assistance to a rising of the inhabitants of
these countries, unless, indeed, external circum
stances were exceptionally favourable. . .
' But, although it is not possible to settle the
exact hour for action, or to foresee the precise circum
stances which will create the opportunity, it is
necessary to be ready in view of a favourable
moment. ' If the populations of Epiros, Thessaly, Mace
donia, and Crete had been better prepared in 1840,
that occasion would not have been lost.
' The circumstances which we are able at present
to picture to ourselves are either a war of Russia
against the Porte or a preponderance of the Slav
races backed by Russian support. ... At this
moment a Russo-Turkish war does not seem as
likely as it did some months ago. Russia has got
her hands full just now, and will take care to ensure

222 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
Turkey's keeping quiet.* But if she comes off
victorious from her war against Hungary, what will
be her line towards Turkey afterwards ? The
Servians, who are vassals of the Sultan, are taking
an active part in the present struggle, and' Russia
not only has not prevented them, but has furnished
them with supplies and ammunition. ... If
the Hungarians are defeated, the Servians will
come home flushed with victory, and convinced that
their brethren in Austria will be ready to come and
help them to throw off the Ottoman suzerainty,
just as they have helped the brethren in question
in their struggle against the Hungarians. What
would Russia do then ? Would she leave the
Servians to their fate ? Or would she support them
in a covert manner ? She would probably do the
latter. Once the Servians had risen, it would be
impossible to keep Bosnia and Bulgaria quiet. It
is known that for some time past Slavonic societies
have been secretly working among the populations
of these countries. The existence of these societies
is perfectly well known to the Russian Government.
Their headquarters are at Odessa. There they
print pamphlets in support of the Slavonic pro
paganda, in editions of thousands at a time, and
send them for gratuitous distribution in Servia,
Bulgaria, and even some parts of Macedonia. Why
does Russia wink at it 1 Certainly not for love of
Turkey.' It is curious to remark in this memorandum the
* Maurokordatos was writing at the moment of the Russian
intervention in Hungary.

TERRITORY OF THE GttEEK KINGDOM. 223
acumen with which the Greek Statesman perceived
the movements which were then in preparation in
the Slavonic world, and foresaw events which
were not accomplished till thirty years later.
It was in consequence of this foresight that he set
himself to indicate what Greece ought, as far as her
means permitted her, to do, in order to be ready for
whatever might occur. He lays stress principally
upon internal improvements. It behoves that
Hellas should gain the growing confidence of the
civilized world by her moral and material progress,
so as to merit and to win the friendship of some of
the great Powers and the confidence of the popula
tions which desire to be reunited with her. He
concludes with these words : —
' If we had not gained the sympathy of Christen
dom, we should not have succeeded in gaining even
such an independence as we have. . . . There
is no use deceiving ourselves. Sympathy with us
and dislike to the Turks are neither of them so
strong now as they used to be ; more was hoped of
us than we have been able to accomplish. The
Turks are supposed to be making giant strides in
the path of progress. There is no use discussing
here the extent of this latter delusion. What we
have got to do is to enlighten public opinion, and
make it turn again in our favour, . . . without
forgetting that the prevailing motive which dictates
the friendship or goodwill of any State, either
absolute or constitutional, is self-interest.'*
* Dragoumes, 'Ifrropiicai dco/icijireir, 2nd ed., Athens, 1879, II. 165
et seq.

224 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
The prescience of Maurokordatos as to what
Russia would do as soon as she had emerged
victorious from the Hungarian affair, was justified
by the events which preceded the Crimean War.
The hopes of the Hellenes both within and with
out the new kingdom were reawakened by the
prospects which the new Russo-Turkish War seemed
to open. Had they had, to lead them, a Statesman
like Cavour, they might perhaps have seen that,
like Piedmont, they had more to gain by joining
the Allies of Turkey than by listening to the
national feeling which prompted them to take part
with the hereditary enemy of their old oppressors.
But since 1850 the persistent ill-will of the English
Government, which had especially shown itself in
the Pacifico affair, had convinced the Hellenes that,
at any rate for the time being, they had nothing to
hope from England. Their confidence in the help
of France had been shaken since the death of
Coletti, and the change which had come over French
policy after the fall of Louis-Philippe. Besides
this, these two Powers were making war in order
to sustain and preserve the integrity of the Turkish
Empire, whereas Russia came forward as the
Champion of their oppressed co-religionists.
When the emissaries of Russia arrived in the
Hellenic provinces of Turkey, they met with no
difficulty in bringing about a rising. Epiros and
Thessaly broke into insurrection at the beginning
of 1854. Greek volunteers went to the Crimea to
range themselves under that banner which dis
played the Cross against the Crescent. At home,

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 225
the prospect of another struggle to complete the
work of independence was received with enthusiasm.
Armed bands crossed the frontier to join their in
surgent fellow-countrymen. The people, the army,
and the Court all gave themselves up to the most
brilliant dreams.* They did not know what the
Emperor Nicolas had said about the Hellenes to
the English ambassador before embarking in the
war, a war which was, it must be confessed, the
only one from which Russia has ever been obliged
to retire without some immediate advantage, but
the consequences of which have been more fatal
to Turkey than had been her preceding defeats.
Hellas was soon undeceived. The allies could
not tolerate a diversion in favour of Russia. France
occupied the Piraieus from May 26, 1854, till Feb
ruary 27; 1857; the Greeks found themselves
reduced to absolute powerlessness ; and the insur
rection in the border provinces was soon crushed
by the arms of Turkey. This was all that resulted
to Hellas from the part she took in the Crimean
war, and she was, naturally, not mentioned in the
terms of peace dictated by the conquerors of
Sebastopol. The Italian Revolution in 1859-60 gave the
Greeks a fresh impulse. The Italians obtained
their independence, and were soon to obtain their
unity, through the generous help of a friendly
neighbour. Why should not the Hellenes hope
for something of the same kind ? Why should not
* Herzberg, IV. 666, 694, et seq.
IS

22 C TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
Italy do for Hellas what France had done for Italy?
Italy did not yet possess statesmen penetrated by
the principle that their country, having attained
the position of a Great Power, is bound to treat
with the sternest reprobation any weak nation
which dares to think of union and strength. The
Hellenic cause had warm friends in Italy. There
were long negotiations with Garibaldi. What was
thought of was a rising in Epiros and Thessaly, to
which the hero, at the head of his volunteers,
should give the support of his name and presence.
The Italian Government offered no obstacle to
these projects. Perhaps they thought that they
might thus be enabled to create a useful diversion
in case of a new war against Austria ; perhaps also
they welcomed the prospect of finding a field for
Garibaldi's energies outside their own dominions.
While this new insurrection was being prepared,
and while the inhabitants of the Heptannesos, in
flamed by the example of Italy, were proclaiming
more loudly than ever their right to re-union with
their country, there began to break out that series
of mutinies, which, although at first suppressed,
ultimated some months later in the dethronement
of King Otho. There were then, and there still
are, those who attribute his fall to the action of
English agents ; it certainly coincided in point of
time with his acceptance of new schemes against
the integrity of the Turkish Empire. Such an ex
planation must not be too easily believed. At the
same time, it would be impossible to say that
England liked Otho, or to deny that she had

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 227
already openly threatened him with the loss of his
crown. For instance, we read in the Memoirs of
an Ex-Minister (the Earl of Malmesbury), in 1854:
' It appears that the King of Greece favours the
insurrection against the Turks ; and Lord Clarendon
told Baron Cetto (the Bavarian minister in London)
the other day that if the King did not behave
better we should dethrone him,' *• — a threat which
the French occupation of the Piraieus rendered it
unnecessary to execute at the moment.
In spite of all his wishes and efforts, Otho left
the Kingdom of Hellas confined within the same
narrow limits which it had occupied when he came
to the throne. King George began his reign with
a piece of better fortune. He brought to Greece
on his arrival the news of the annexation of the
Heptannesos. It was a generous act upon the part
of England, and it was all the more appreciated
because it was unexpected. It may indeed be said
that Mr. Gladstone had already prepared the
public mind for such a step, and that since the
introduction of steam into naval warfare, Malta
supplied England with as much as she wanted for
the purpose of dominating the Mediterranean. It
is said also that the English Government, in its
jealousy of Russian influence, of which it saw a
symptom in the candidature of the Duke of Leuch-
tenberg as successor to Otho, had made a sort of
bargain with the Hellenes, to give them the
Heptannesos if they would elect a son of the Queen.
* Memoirs, I. 430, 2nd edit.

228 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
It is none the less true that States always find it
hard to give up territory ; they must be very
strong indeed before they can afford such extrava
gance. But the British Government was pleased
at having got rid of King Otho, and the English
people had been flattered by the unanimous election
of Prince Alfred. By resigning the protectorate
of the Heptannesos, England gratified the wishes of
the islanders, gave to the whole Hellenic race a
striking mark of friendship, and enabled the young
Danish Prince who had become King of the
Hellenes under her auspices to meet his subjects
bringing in his hands a precious earnest of the
future. At the same time, all the Statesmen of England
were not agreed as to the cession. Lord Derby
wrote to Lord Malmesbury on December 22,
1862 : — '1^ think the measure at any time one of
very doubtful policy, but the present moment
appears to me singularly ill chosen ... It
strikes me as the height of folly to make a
gratuitous offer of cession, and to throw the islands
at the head of a nation in the very throes of
revolution, the form of whose Government is yet
undecided — much more so, the person of the
Sovereign, if they are to have a Sovereign — whose
finances are bankrupt, whose naval power is insig
nificant, and the first of whose political aspirations
is accession of territory at the expense of a war
with its most powerful neighbour ! '
Happily, subsequent events have proved the
baselessness of the objections raised in this

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 229
extremely blunt language. The Ionians have not
had to regret their reunion with the rest of Hellas,
and Hellas may console herself for the severity of
Lord Derby's judgment by considering that it was
based upon a double error. He remarked that the
protection of the Ionian Islands had been committed
to England as a Maritime Power able to combat
the piracy with which these seas were infested.
As a matter of fact, the question of piracy had
nothing to do with the establishment of the English
protectorate over the Republic of the Heptannesos
in 1815, and no such thing as piracy has been
heard of in that part of the world since the Greek
Kingdom was established.
But statesmen do not seem always to think it
necessary to know much about the matters upon
which they speak and — what is worse — with which
they have to deal. For instance, on December 9,
1829, when the French Government was trying to
save Samos from falling back under the direct and
absolute power of the Sultan, even if it were not
allowed reunion with the rest of Greece, the Duke
of Wellington wrote to Lord Aberdeen, his Minister
for Foreign Affairs : ' I omitted to mention to you
that Samos is an island inhabited by Roman
Catholics whom the French affect to protect ; and
they have been more than once suspected of
desiring the possession and Government of the
island.' * It is hardly necessary to remark that
there are no Catholics in Samos.
* Wellington Dispatches, VI. 315,

230 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
It would be possible to multiply like examples of
official ignorance upon the matters with which
diplomacy has to deal, especially as regards the
East. The state of mind in which M. de Villele
said with regard to Hellas, 'What can be the
particular interest which attaches to the locality?'*
was not peculiar to himself. Such things must be
cited, not for the mere pleasure of showing that
those who talk loudly do not always talk sense,
but seriously to indicate that many political errors
and wrongs are caused by mere ignorance. The
force of arms and the skill of diplomatists are
sometimes credited with settling questions which
they merely complicate and protract, because those
who hold the strings do not know with what they
are dealing. Those who are ablest and luckiest in
their policy are also those who are best informed.
The annexation of the Heptannesos was a great
benefit to Hellas. It was not only a piece of good
fortune for the present but an earnest of the future.
If mighty England, recognizing the right of the
Hellenes to be free and to form themselves into a
State, voluntarily resigned the possession of these
seven Greek isles, how much more might be hoped
for other Hellenic lands, whose case was so much
more crying because, unlike the Heptannesos, they
did not enjoy an administration whose merits could
make their inhabitants bear, if they could not for
get, the fact of foreign domination ! There still
remained the delusion of the Integrity of the
* Souvenirs of the Due de Broglie, II. 413, and again III. 172,

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 231
Turkish Empire ; but the Christians of the East
really cannot believe in the sincerity of all the
Powers who proclaim and sustain this extraordinary
figment, any more than they are able to fall a prey
to the hallucination itself. The re-union of the
Heptannesos with the rest of Hellas was therefore
regarded as marking the beginning of another and
better era — a sanction to the hopes of other re
unions in the future.
The first of the Hellenes who endeavoured to
gain for themselves the same good fortune which
had fallen upon the Ionians were again the Cretans.
They defied Turkey for three years, 1866-7-8.
With the exception of certain fortresses, the whole
island was free. Acts of heroism and sacrifice such
as those which had rendered glorious the first War
of Independence, again challenged the attention of
the world. Volunteers from the West recalled the
Philhellenic enthusiasm of old days. The Hellenes
of the mainland did not leave their brethren alone
in the hour of danger ; they hastened to fight at
their side, while they opened in their own homes
a place of refuge for the women and children of the
island. Nearly sixty thousand fugitives found
protection there.
For a while there was room for believing that
the deliverance of Crete was at last accomplished.
Russia and France were favourably disposed. Un
happily the good- will of these two Powers could
not overcome the opposition of England, strongly
supported by Austria. Diplomacy fought for the
enslavement of the Cretans with as much persist-

232 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
ence and more success than those with which it
had opposed the deliverance of Greece. Freedom
has not yet come for Crete. The islanders obtained
by their struggle nothing but a doubtful ameliora
tion of their condition by means of a sort of charter
which was extracted from the unwillingness of the
Porte in 1868, under the name of the 'Organic
Regulation.' This edict has never been honestly
put in force.* However, even if it had been carried
out, it would not have been a settlement of the
Cretan question. The Cretans have never con
cealed what they want, or ceased to proclaim their
intention of demanding it until they obtain it. At
the time of the Congress of Berlin they thought
once more that they would succeed. They got
nothing but another promise from the Porte ' to
enforce scrupulously the Organic Regulation of
1868, with such modifications as might be judged
equitable.' Who were to judge them to be so (as
has been well remarked by M. d'Avril) was not
stated. The Porte? The inhabitants ? The Powers?
There is quite matter enough here for a new Con
ference. But sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof, t

* Le traite de Berlin, annote et comments, by Benoit (Brunswick,
Paris, 1878) cap. vi. See also NJyociations relatives aw traiti de
Berlin, by Adolfe d'Avril (Paris, 1886) p. 367, et seq.
f Recent events in Crete have shown how right my remarks were.
The island is once more in a state of revolution, and its Christian
inhabitants have once more proclaimed their wish for annexation to
the mother-country. (Note by the Author).

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 233
The history of the Greek Question at the
Congress of Berlin and the conferences which
followed it, is not to be treated in detail here. The
time is not come for knowing all that took place. It
is true that the documents which have been already
published are numerous, but the knowledge which
can be drawn from them has already been laid
before the public in different forms. The recent
work of M. d' Avril upon the Negociations relatives
au traitS de Berlin is lucid and impartial.
But in spite of all the Blue Books, Yellow Books,
White Books, "and Green Books, laid before the
different Parliaments of Europe, we cannot flatter
ourselves that we yet know the motives which in
spired the action or inaction of each of the Govern
ments which, to one extent or another, took part
in the matter. We do not know why England,
after having taken up the championship of Hellenic
interests as opposed to the protection afforded by
Russia to those of the Slavonic races, left France to
take the initiative in favour of Hellas. We do not
know why France, after having gained the point,
thought well to give it up and to take part in sub
stituting another line of frontier for that which
had been already sanctioned by the collective vote
of Europe. We do not know why Hellas herself
remained so long with her sword undrawn during
the Russo-Turkish War — what promises or what
threats held her back from moving when the armies
of Russia, checked before Plevna, would have wel
comed a diversion in the West, and when the
Hellenic people both within and without the King-

234 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
dom were chafing at the do-nothing attitude of the
Government of Athens.
Everyone in Greece felt that the moment was
come. The measures taken by hordes of Bashi-
Bazooks were hardly sufficient to repress the insur
rection which was ready in all quarters, and which
at length broke out in the mountains of Thessaly.
The young manhood of the kingdom answered with
enthusiasm to the call for the Reserves, which was
made by the Government for the purpose of re
straining rather than of using the warlike spirit of
the nation. The leaders of all political parties had
to bend before the will of the people, and to unite
in a Coalition Ministry which met with the fate
usual to such conglomerations, one mind neutraliz
ing another, with the general result of impotence,
for want of any common head.
It was only at the last moment, when the war
was on the point of being closed by the treaty
which victorious Russia compelled Turkey to grant
at San Stefano, that the Greek Government, under
the Presidency of Koumoundouros, yielded tardily
to the pressure of the nation, and allowed the army
to cross the frontier. It was too late for the diver
sion to be of any use to Russia, and it could look
for no support from any other Government in
Europe. This fact was realized at Athens, but
men felt, at the same time, that it was needful to
remind the world at any price that there is a Greek
Question connected with the Eastern Question.
The step was taken, but it was taken with a hesi-

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 235
tation which betrayed itself in act as well as in
word. In announcing to the Powers their adoption of
this course, 'the Government of the Kine- was
o
careful to remind them of all which it had done in
order to prevent the insurrection of the border pro
vinces before the inhabitants had taken arms; it
witnessed their rising with all the more concern
because it did not blind itself to the consequences.
When the other nations of Turkey were recovering
their independence and their self-government, the
Hellenes could not but consider their own future.
The Hellenic Government could not leave the in
habitants of the insurgent provinces exposed to all
the horrors of a bloody repression by the undisci
plined troops employed by Turkey for that purpose.
It had therefore resolved upon a provisional occu
pation of the provinces in question. Hellas does
not wish to make war upon Turkey. She wishes
to guarantee her own security, and to act in such
a way that the condition of the Christian popula
tions which look to her may receive some definitive
amelioration.' *
In spite of all these explanations, Diplomacy saw
the danger of the fresh conflagration which the
armed intervention of Greece was capable of
kindling. The utmost possible amount of pressure
was therefore brought to bear upon the Govern
ment of Athens in order to induce it to retrace the
step, and in the result an order was obtained to
* Despatch of the k. Delgiannes, Jan. 20, 1878.

236 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
the Greek Commander-in-chief to recross the fron
tier, upon the solemn assurance of the great
Powers ' that the national aspirations and interests
of the Greek populations should be the subject of
the deliberations of the approaching Congress.'*
Hellas had no reason to regret a four days'
campaign which obtained her this assurance, but she
has had to regret that she did not take the more
timely and more decisive action which would have
enabled her to present herself at the Congress of
Berlin with all the weight which the righteousness
of her cause could have conferred upon her. At
a later date Koumoundouros wrote with truth —
' At the moment when the Russo-Turkish War
broke out, Hellas possessed an army of between
thirty-five and forty thousand men. I suppose
that no one will deny that if she had interfered in
the struggle, the result would have been a general
rising in Turkey and the radical and definitive
solution of the Question which is now occupying
Europe. The state of Epiros, Thessaly and Crete,
urged us to interfere. Hellas, without shutting
her eyes to the complications which the general
collapse of Turkey might produce both in the East
and in the West, consented to yield to the wishes
of Europe. She elected rather to contribute her
part to realize the wishes of the Powers for an
immediate pacification, she yielded to their advice,
and checked the action which had already begun
for the realization of what the Hellenes have

* Despatch of Jan. 27, 1878.

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 237
desired for so many centuries. This she did after
having received from Europe a promise that the
rights of the Hellenic race should be taken into
consideration when the fitting time came, and that
the insurrection of the border provinces to which
her influence had put an end, should be reckoned
as still existing when the hour arrived for the
definitive settlement of the Eastern Question.
From these facts and these promises issued the
thirteenth Protocol of the conferences of the
Congress of Berlin. The object of that Protocol
was to put an end to the insurrection of the Greek
Provinces, and to assure their pacification upon a
solid basis.'*
The meaning which Hellas attached to this
pacification was plainly stated to the Congress by
her representatives. ' The true and only wish of
the Hellenic Government,' said the k. Delgiannes,
' has always been the same as that of the entire
race of which free Hellas is only a fraction. This
is the same wish which animated the Hellenic
people in 1821, when they undertook the long
War of Independence. The Hellenic Government
is under no delusion as to the many difficulties
with which the realization of that wish is met.
Therefore it feels bound to be contented for the
present with the annexation of Crete and of the
border provinces, as all which is at this moment
practicable.'
* Despatch of the k. Koumoundouros to the k. Brailas, Greek
Minister at Paris, Dec. 27, 1880.

238 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
On July 5, 1878, the Congress accepted the
resolution proposed by the French plenipotentiary,
' inviting the Porte to come to an understanding
with Greece for a rectification of the frontiers in
Thessaly and Epiros, a rectification which may
follow the valley of the Peneus upon the Eastern
side, and that of the Thyamis (or Kalamas) upon
the Western.' In other words, they assign to
Hellas the whole of Thessaly and a large part of
Epiros. Notwithstanding the abandonment of the
island of Crete, this was some satisfaction for the
wrongs which she had suffered at the delimitation
of the Kingdom. Had she received this accession
of territory, Greece would have been able frankly
to accept along with the benefit the obligations
which it entailed, and to dedicate herself to the
work of internal development. Of course she
would not have laid aside the hope of a complete
enfranchisement of all her territory, as had been
designed by Capodistria and Maurokordatos ; but
she would have awaited her hour with patience,
and her interests would even have lain in the
direction of such a policy as that indicated by the
latter of these two statesmen when he spoke of the
possibility of a Turko-Hellenic alliance.
But the scheme suggested by the Congress and
sanctioned by the Conference of Berlin on July 1,
1880, was not carried out. When Turkey found
that she was not confronted by an Europe deter
mined to be obeyed, she refused to submit. And
then the Powers, whose main anxiety was peace
at any price, instead of insisting upon her com-

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 239
pliance, put upon Hellas all the pressure which
they were able to exercise, to induce her to
submit the question of the frontiers to a fresh arbi
tration. The Hellenic Government insisted upon
the right which had been given to them by the collec
tive and solemn decision of Europe. On December
?t, 1880, the k. Brailas wrote to M. Barthelemy
Saint- Hilaire : ' The Protocol of Berlin has only been
the fulfilment of a solemn promise, the termination
of along-standing injustice, and a guarantee for the
peace both of Europe and of the East. Whatever
distinction may be drawn between a Protocol and a
Treaty, the Protocol of Berlin can never be looked
upon as a mere expression of wish, an abstract
opinion, or a diplomatic hypothesis. Lord Beacons-
field and Lord Salisbury, who were certainly not
those of the plenipotentiaries most friendly to
Greece, have always treated this document as the
decision of Europe. . . . Turkey has admitted
the principle of the rectification, since she has
entered into negotiations with us twice over and
proposed a line ; and she has also recognised the
authority of the conference, since she has submitted
her proposals to it. . . . The frontier proposed
by Turkey is derisory, and presents more difficul
ties than the existing one. . . . The line
agreed on is a middle one between that proposed
by the Turks and that which we claim. To come
any further south of the Kalamas and the Peneus
is impossible. This is not a mere question of more
or less which Europe has taken upon herself to
settle. The object of the Protocol was to set a

240 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
limit to what were admitted to be just claims upon
the part of Greece, and necessary concessions upon
that of Turkey.'
No arguments or protestations of the Hellenic
Government availed to save Europe from submitt
ing to the obstinacy of Turkey, and repudiating
the resolution which had been taken at Berlin.
Hellas had to yield, and on July 2, 1881, three
years after the signing of the famous Protocol of
Berlin, she signed the convention by which Turkey
ceded to her the flat part of Thessaly and a small
scrap of Epiros. She did not consent to take this
step without protesting that the faults of the new
frontier would soon give rise to difficulties in the
present and dangers in the future, and that Greece
could not help asking herself the question whether
her present consent placed the question on any
better footing, or would help to bring it to a full,
speedy, and peaceful solution. Europe, in the
words of the k. Koumoundouros, had ' allowed her
own work to be undone for the sake of humouring
Turkey ; she condemned herself for the sake of
considering reasons which she had already fully
weighed and decided to be worthless.
Epiros and Thessaly,' he continued, ' have the right
to be free, a right which Europe has admitted and
Hellas accepted ; it will seem incredible to them
that the European Governments should have played
with their sufferings, or should have recanted their
own doctrines for no object but to please Turkey.
They are strong in their rights, and they will take
every opportunity to claim them.'

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 241
Recent events have shown the wisdom of the
protests of the Hellenic Government. Must they
not have availed also to convince the Turks that
they would have done better to accept the formal
decision of Europe given at Berlin ? I cannot affirm
it. Yet it seems as if it would have been an
advantage to Turkey to have had as her neighbour
a contented Greece. Community of interests might
then have led her to believe the conciliatory language
which would have come to her thence. If Hellas
had entered into possession up to the line of the
Peneus and the Kalamas, Hellas would have been
bound to Europe, as well as to Turkey, not to seek
a further extension as long as the present
state of things endures in the East. She would
have preferred Turkey to any other neighbour.
Turkey, on her side, might have found that friend
ship with Hellas was the best guarantee she could
have for the prolongation of her Empire in this part
of Europe. This would have been on her part an
act of wise and foreseeing policy, as far as it is
possible to talk of political foresight within a sphere
where the impossibility of any enduring construction
limits the field of vision to a very near future,
Thus, to give up the province of Ioannina would
have been a gain for Turkey. But, as has been
already remarked, States always find it hard to
give up territory ; they must be very strong indeed
before they can afford such extravagance. Turkey
has not been able to give such a sign of combined
strength and wisdom.
As for Hellas, she has to wait again. She can
16

242 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
console herself by remembering the remark made in
irony by Lord Beaconsfield that she can afford to
wait, because she has a future before her. A similar
piece of advice has also lately reached her from a
quarter whence she did not expect it. The Italian
Minister of Foreign Affairs has made practically the
same remark. Hellas has only to act thus. She
will wait. The only drawback is that these long
intervals of waiting prevent her being able to
advance as quickly as she otherwise could in the
work of her internal development. Her narrow
artificial limits condemn her to be always looking
beyond her frontiers, and the present Hellenic
State has been passing from one crisis into another
for the last fifty years. To speak only of the last
twenty, the shock of the Cretan insurrection of
1867-8-9 was followed by a period of exhaustion
which was hardly passed before the disturbances in
the Herzegovina in 1875 began the series of changes
which have so modified the conditions of the Balkan
peninsula. Hellas had hardly recovered from the
struggles and the sacrifices which it cost her to
obtain a fraction of the territory which had been
allotted to her by the Congress of Berlin, when the
reunion of Eastern Roumelia with Bulgaria and the
results of this violation of the treaty of Berlin
involved her in new difficulties, the consequences of
which it will not be easy for her to forget, and the
removal of which it does not depend upon her alone
to prevent. How can she regard tranquillity as
assured outside her borders when that Eastern
Europe of which she forms a part and in which she

TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM. 243
has rights, which it is her duty both to exercise
and to claim, still quivers in the uncertainty of
what the morrow may bring forth ?
Yet no one can any longer refuse to Hellas the
right to assimilate to herself her separated provinces
on the ground that her internal progress does not
justify her claim. In spite of all the obstacles with
which she has had to contend, she has done enough,
especially of late years, to deprive such a reproach
of any pretence to foundation. It is true that it is
difficult to do away with fancies which have become
petrified into prejudices. But all those who have
been to Greece of late years bear testimony to the
change which has come over her under the light
and warmth of freedom. Cultivation is extending,
produce is increasing, commerce is developing, great
public works are multiplying her resources. Seven
or eight years ago she had only seven miles of rail
way ; now about eight hundred are open to the
public, and as many more are in construction,
besides the line to the frontier which has lately
been conceded to an English contractor ; and her
high roads are still being formed in every direction.
The lands which have been reunited to her have
had no reason to complain of the change in their
lot. Even the Ionian islands find themselves better
as part of the mother country, although the Greek
administration can make no pretension to rival
either the lights or the means of that of England.
The plain of Thessaly is already transfigured. It
is quite true that this district felt for a moment the
emigration of the Mohammedan population, who, in

244 TERRITORY OF THE GREEK KINGDOM.
spite of all the inducements that could be offered
them to remain, could not bear to accept the posi
tion of equals with those whom they had been used
to treat as their slaves. But it will not be long
before their places are well filled, and meanwhile
civilization hails the construction of railways, the
multiplication of the means of communication by
sea, and the introduction of public instruction, of
the security due to such a Government as had been
unknown before, and the regular administration of
justice. No doubt Hellas has still much to do
before she realizes her ideal in internal development,
but what she has done already is quite enough to
justify not only her recognition as an independent
State in Europe, and the accessions of territory
which she has since obtained, but also her righteous
hope to see her territorial work accomplished by
the inclusion of the provinces whose inhabitants
are Hellenes, and are fain to cast in their lot with
their fellow countrymen.

IHE GREEK QU ES1I0N.

THE GREEK QUESTION,

The Greek Question is anything but new. It may
be said to have in reality begun as soon as the
Turks appeared in Asia Minor as a danger to the
Christian world. It took a new shape five centuries
ago, when they first set foot in Europe. Since
then it has passed through different phases and
assumed different forms. Christian Constantinople
did not fall in one day. The Byzantine Empire,
enfeebled as it was, sustained the struggle for nearly
two hundred years. The last sickness of that
Empire was as long, and its death-agony as pro
tracted, as are now those of the Ottoman State
which took its place. At last, Constantinople fell,
and the Turks established themselves definitively
in Europe.
From that moment, the Eastern Question became
a Question for the nations of the West. Their own
existence was at stake. The Turks made no secret
of their intentions with regard to Italy. Hungary
was soon a Turkish province. Vienna was more
than once in imminent peril. The whole of Europe
was in danger of an Ottoman conquest. That
danger had to be met somehow. Such was the
first phase of the Eastern Question in Europe. It

248 THE GREEK QUESTION.
lasted about two hundred years. Then the Battle
of Lepanto destroyed the naval supremacy of Tur
key, and the victory of John Sobieski checked for
ever the military extension of her power by land.
From that time, the fears of Western Europe were
laid to rest, and consequently the Eastern Question
seemed to interest her no more. As soon as the
Sultan ceased to be a terror, Western Europe had
no acute objection to allowing him to remain at
Constantinople, and took comparative little heed of
what became of the Eastern Christians who were
the victims of his oppression.
But while the Western nations were becoming
indifferent to the struggle against Turkey, a new
enemy arose for them in the North. This enemy
has proved to be all the more dangerous because
she is not hampered by any of those rivalries which
weaken the collective action of Western Europe.
Russia has no interests to serve except her own,
and no counsels but her own to follow. She has
had one especial point of strength in the fact that
by having the same religious belief she inspired
with confidence the Christian nations of the East.
Moreover, she has had the immense advantage of
making her appearance only since Turkey has
begun to decline. But this last circumstance has
in itself been enough to make her a cause of alarm
to Europe. Nobody desired to see the worn-out
Turk replaced at Constantinople by a nation full of
youth and of ambition. And so the Eastern
Question again became a subject of interest in the
West.

THE GREEK QUESTION. 249
But it was not long before another element
appeared to change the aspect of the Eastern
Question. The races brought into subjection under
Turkey began to move for the recovery of their
independence. Russia has done a great deal to awaken the
national aspirations of these races. It is true that
it is not to her alone that most of them owe their
deliverance. Some of them have gained it by their
own struggles and with the help, however tardy, of
other Powers. But it is none the less true that
Russia has a just claim to much of their gratitude.
She it was that undertook their protection in the
hour of their distress. At first she saw in them
only fellow-believers in her own religion, groaning
in slavery under Mohammedans. After a time the
religious feeling became subordinate to the
sympathy of race, and she stood forth as the
one champion of her Slavonic kinsmen. If, how
ever, it may be permitted to judge by present
events, it would hardly seem that, since these
nations have become States, the banner of Slavism
is likely to be of a more permanent use to Russia
than that of the Orthodox Faith. Now, does this
last phenomenon arise merely from the proverbial
ingratitude of nations? Or does it find its explana
tion in a kind of suspicion — whether ill or well
founded — that this extremely mighty Protectress
may perhaps not be quite disinterested ?
However that may be, the awakening of the
Christian races subject to Turkey has brought the
Eastern Question into another phase. The start-

250 THE GREEK QUESTION.
ing-point of this phase was the Greek War of
Independence. After ten years of bloody struggles
and of diplomatic negotiations, the Greek War re
sulted, in 1832, in the formation of the present
Greek Kingdom — small, mutilated, and deprived —
as though on purpose — of the very means of sub
sistence. However, this Kingdom was the first
independent State cut out of the agglomeration of
Ottoman conquests.
Since that time, other Eastern peoples have been
emancipated one after another. The Danubian
Principalities have been transformed into the King
dom of Roumania. Servia also became a Kingdom,
and has been altogether set free from Turkish
suzerainty. Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia have
been made tributary Principalities. Greece and
Montenegro have obtained accessions of territory.
The Eastern Question seemed at last to be drawing
close to a solution, by the gradual development of
a Confederation of Christian States, a solution
which would beyond all doubt have been speedily
effected, if only all these nations had united them
selves for the one common object, and arrived by
mutual concession at a compromise dictated alike
by justice and by their own interests. But un
happily that solution has not been reached. The
nations concerned are divided not only by race-
rivalries, but also by jealousies and ambition which
have been skilfully aggravated from outside. In
stead of a mutual understanding between Servia
and Bulgaria, we have seen these States bathed in
the blood of a fratricidal war, leaving the hands of

THE GREEK QUESTION. 251
Turkey free to deal with Greece, who, on her side,
was straining every nerve to prepare for the un
equal struggle. Such was the spectacle which in
1885 called for the wonder and sorrow of Europe.
Before it is possible to appreciate the position of
Greece, it is necessary to consider what part she
has already played in the successive phases of the
Eastern Question.
From the time of the fall of Constantinople until
the present day, through all the agonies of a slavery
which lasted for four hundred years, and amid all
the trials of better days, the Greeks have never
lost their hope for their future. This national
hopefulness is not the mere vanity which remem
brance of the past inspires in a fallen race. We
have hoped and we do hope, because — even during
the first two centuries of our bondage, when the
hand of the Turks was still full of strength and lay
so heavy upon us — we have always known what
were and are those things which give us our true
life and strength. The Byzantine Empire and the
Greek people are two different things. The Byzan
tine Empire perished when Constantinople fell.
When Constantinople fell, another chapter was
opened in the history of the Greek people.
It is wrong to condemn and revile the Byzantine
Empire. That Empire had a great mission to ful
fill ; and it fulfilled it. It preserved the traditions
of antient civilization in the midst of Asiatic
barbarism, on the one hand, and the European
barbarism of the Middle Ages, on the other. It did
not perish until Western Europe was ripe and

252 THE GREEK QUESTION.
ready to receive from its dying hands the precious
inheritance of which it had been the guardian. It
existed long, and its history is not inglorious. The
marks of that history are to be seen to-day in the
history and institutions of all the existing civilized
world,* and especially in that of all the countries
which the power of the Byzantine Empire occupied.
But the Byzantine Empire, however much it in
cluded and however much it represented Mediaeval
Greece, had nothing Greek about it except its
civilization and the language which it spoke. The
idea of the mother-country of the Hellenes was not
to be found there. The Western nations of Europe
called it the Greek Empire, but it did not acknow
ledge the title. It was and it always remained, the
Roman Empire. The Emperors and their subjects
alike gloried in the name. The fact that it was the
Empire of Rome was never forgotten or allowed to
fall into the background, and it was this fact which
in the end proved its destruction. The last
Emperors might have raised it from its death-bed
to a new life if only they had cared to change the
Roman State into a National State, and to set the
flag of Greece higher than the antique monogram
of the Labarum or the religious banner of the Cross.
A sort of idea of the kind indeed floated across
their minds, but they lacked either the nerve or the
will to carry it into effect.
Two works have been published which seem to

* The influence of the Code of Justinian upon Jurisprudence may
be cited as one example.

THE GREEK QUESTION. 253
me in themselves sufficient to show what resources
a really National Government could have developed
from under the worm-eaten case in which the Greek
nationality had then been enclosed. The first is a
book in French ; it is the Bibliographic des outrages
public's en grec par des Grecs au XVme et au
XVIme siecles, by M. Emile Legrand. The two
large volumes which constitute it do the utmost
credit to their learned author, but they do no less
honour to the memory of those Greeks who, as it
were on the very morning after the crash, set them
selves to work in hope for the time of restoration.
The admirable biographical notices which precede
this Bibliography, and the letters hitherto un
published which form its Appendix, show us these
men of learning occupied unceasingly with the
destiny of their race. Those who lived in their
own country kept the Nationalist sentiment alive if
by nothing more than by their lamentations over
the condition of things by which they were sur
rounded. If they lived in exile, they lived as the
Apostles of Hellenism. They went from country
to country seeking help, or at least sympathy, for
their own. Such as stood in high places, like
Bessarion or Laskaris, exhausted their influence
with Popes, Princes, and Kings in the endeavour to
stir up a new Crusade. They and their writings
are in themselves proof enough that Greece was not
dead. Intellectual activity alone is not a sufficient proof
that a people still live ; it is more of a sign or
symptom of such a life. A pen alone is a poor

254 THE GREEK QUESTION.
weapon against an armed robber. The Greeks had
also military capacities of which the Empire of
Constantinople had not had the sense to avail
itself. The proofs of this military capacity have
been collected and published by the k. Sathas
in the second of the two recent works to
which I have alluded. It is his history of the
"EWrives XrpariQTai 'ev t-q AiVei, Kal dvayivvricns rr\s ''E'Wtjvi.KTJs TaKTiKljs.
We see that the Ottoman conquest was hardly
over before these companies of Greek soldiers, first
recruited by the Republic of Venice, placed their
paid services at the disposal of the Princes of
Europe, and appeared amid the very flower of their
armies. They played an important part in the
wars of Charles VIII., and, again, in those of
Francis I., in Italy. We find them mustered
under the French flag in opposition to Henry VIII.
of England, and in the long struggles of Charles V.
and his successors against the Dutch.
But it would be a mistake to imagine that the
then surviving military spirit of Greece found no
development except among these mercenaries. The
Kleptai and the Armatoloi are a matter of no
recent history. In fact, the mountains of Greece
have never been without men who offered an armed
protest against the Turkish domination. Of what
stuff as soldiers we were, and were known to be
made, we may call Turkey herself as a witness, in
the fact of the hellish ' Blood-tax,' the compulsory
conscription of our little children, by which she was
fain to recruit the ranks of her Janissaries. Our
military capacity was a power which the Turks

THE GREEK QUESTION. 255
saw, and of which they availed themselves. The
Byzantine Empire had not had as much sense. It
is true that that Empire fought the ground, inch
by inch, to the last ; but it was mostly to allies and
mercenaries that she had recourse for contingents.
The heroic Constantine XIII., the last Emperor,
fought right gallantly and fell right gloriously, but
the army at whose head he died was not a National
army of Hellenes.
The ruin had not long been complete before
there were seen some symptoms of an attempt to
rise again. Wherever it was possible for such a
sign of life to appear, there were to be found agita
tions and plots. The Hellenes felt that they had not
strength enough by themselves to enter upon such
a conflict without some help from outside, and for
such help they resorted to the Christians of Western
Europe ; they entreated them to come to their aid,
they promised them to rise at the first signal of a
deliverance, and, as a matter of fact, the Greeks
seized upon continual occasions to break out into
insurrections, which, being only suppressed almost
as soon as they took place, had little more result at
the moment than to serve as a pretext for more
deeply embittering the cup of slavery. On the
other hand, every such movement, every fruitless
rising, was a proof of the right of Hellas to be
heard upon the Eastern Question. Out of the
Eastern Question they evolved a Greek Question.
At the same time, the foes of Turkey were far
from neglecting to reckon the power of the Greek
factor in their calculations against the common

256 THE GREEK QUESTION.
enemy of all Christianity. The re-esta.blishment of
a Greek Empire was the day-dream of Charles VIII.
For this he sought Greek help. Laskaris attached
himself to him for that end, and for that end
followed him from Rome to Paris. Arianites, the
commander of the Greek contingent, held in his
hands the threads of a conspiracy whose object was
to prepare a general rising of the Greeks as soon
as the King of France should set foot among them.
But death came, and the scheme perished.
I will not here dwell upon the different projects
which were set on foot for raising a new Crusade,
or upon the different insurrections which broke out
in Greece before and after the Battle of Lepanto.
Neither need I recount the negotiations of the
Greeks of Cyprus and of the Maina,* at one time
with the Duke of Savoy, and at another with the
Duke of Nevers, on whom they called to resuscitate
the Byzantine Empire, of which he claimed to be
the lawful heir, as descendant of the Palaiologoi.
All these brilliant schemes and ingenious plots came
to nothing. Only one of the Western European
States, namely, the Republic of Venice, waged an
unceasing war against the Turks, and she often did
so with success. But the policy of this Republic
was so entirely selfish and so purely mercantile as
to prevent her gaining the confidence either of the

* The Maina, or Mane, is a district which occupies the ridge of
Mount Taygetos ; but its inhabitants. resisted the Turks came in
contact with the West, and were constituted as a sort of semi-
independent principality.

THE GREEK QUESTION. 257
other States of Europe or of the populations which
were overshadowed by her power.
I have only one more remark to make as to the
position of the Greek people with regard to those
of Western Europe during the first two hundred
years after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.
It is this. There was a certain black cloud always
hanging over the whole question. That cloud was
the religious separation between the Eastern and
the Western Churches. It is true that the Westerns
had a certain feeling of compassion for those whom
they regarded as their erring brethren ; but they
appeared. to them to be, first and foremost, heretics
who had wilfully provoked and justly incurred the
avenging stroke of God's anger. The Greeks, on
the other hand, still held to all those antipathies
which had brought to nought the Re-union of the
Churches more or less imperfectly effected during
the last days of the Empire. They remained the
staunch adherents of their own Church, and that,
all the more, because the temporal privileges with
which the Mohammedan conquerers had invested
the ecclesiastical authorities caused these latter still
to offer, amid the otherwise uniform darkness of
slavery, something which bore the form of a separate
and independent nationality. Under the shelter
of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople, the
Greeks still found themselves gathered together as
a nation. The Patriarchate gave them at once a
a remembrance of what had been and the hopeful
suggestion of what again might be.
Thus passed two whole centuries, and then came a
17

258 THE GREEK QUESTION.
time of discouragement. Western Europe ceased
to care what happened in the East. The Greeks
found themselves entirely forgotten. They did not
know that the Decline and Fall of Turkey had
begun. On the contrary, they beheld the Ottoman
conquest of Crete, and the last efforts of Venice to
maintain an hold of the Peloponnesos, from which
she was so soon to be expelled. While the Turks
were being defeated in the North, they were
making their final conquests in the South ; and
the weight of their oppressors was too crushing to
allow the Greeks to find any consolation in the
reverses of their arms before Vienna. The last
half of the seventeenth century was the direst time
through which we have ever had to pass.
With the beginning of the eighteenth century,
the dawn of hope began again to break. Russia
entered on the stage. Greece turned her eyes amid
her night towards this Aurora Borealis, this
Northern Light, this Power whose populations
shared her religious beliefs, and who freely fed her
with promises and encouragements. During the
whole of the last century the Greeks were the
pivot upon which the machinery of Russian policy
in the East was made to turn. At St. Petersburg
and Moscow the word ' Slav ' was not employed.
Peter the Great had his portrait engraved with the
title ' Russo-GroBCorum Monarcha.' The Empress
Anne continued these relations with the Greeks,
with an eye to a Revolutionary movement.
Catherine II. sent a Russian fleet from the Baltic
into Gieek waters, with a view to the insurrection

THE GREEK QUESTION. 259
which she had already pre-arranged ; and later on
she called her second grandson by the significant
name of Constantine, and actually had him reared
by Greek nurses. She hoped and thought that she
and they were rearing a future Greek Emperor.
With this view she at the same time concerted with
the Emperor Joseph II. ' the Partition of Turkey,'
in harmony with the famous projet Grec. Accord
ing to this arrangement, Austria and Russia were
both to obtain an enlargement of territory by
annexing the Turkish Provinces which lay nearest
to them. A Roumanian State was to be formed
under the name of Dacia. The Turks were to be
turned out of Constantinople bag and baggage, and
the Byzantine-Greek Empire was to be restored
there. Such were the leading ideas of this plan.
They were the same as those of Charles VIII. and
of the Duke of Nevers, only they were much better
and more fully worked out, and had so much the
better chance of succeeding as they were more in
accord with both the religious and the patriotic
aspirations of the Greeks.
However, the confidence reposed by the Greeks
in Russia had already received a rude shock from
the history of the insurrection which broke out in
1770, on the appearance of the Russian fleet under
Orloff. The Turco-Russian war was brought to an
end by a treaty in which the Greeks were entirely
forgotten. As soon as the Russians had turned
their backs, they were left to the mercy of their old
tyrants. And the vengeance which the Turks
wreaked was terrible.

260 THE GREEK QUESTION.
Nevertheless, the result of this abortive revolt
was rather to fan than to extinguish the hopes of
the conquered. It was the first serious attempt
which had been made to bring about a general
rising of the whole nation. It was only an attempt,
and it was an attempt which had failed, but still it
had shown what might be done under more favour
able circumstances. So we did not lose courage.
We did not even give up the struggle. It was not
only the Kleptai who kept it alive in the mountains.
From that time we began to dare to face the Turks
at sea. The success of these first maritime experi
ments encouraged Lampros Katzones to fit out,
about the year 1788, with the help of patriotic
subscriptions, what was really a little fleet, and he
managed to keep the banner marked with the Cross
of Christ and of Hellas floating over Greek seas for
as much as four years. The Turks were not able
to destroy his small navy till 1792.
The Hellenic world was still quivering from the
results of Russia's last lame and impotent conclu
sion when the hurricane of the great French
Revolution burst. This tremendous cataclysm was
not without some effect in Greece. It hastened
the National awakening. The Greeks knew and
understood very little of what was going on in
France, but they drew from it a certain conclusion,
viz. : that an oppressed people can get rid of the
government which oppresses them, if only they
have the will. And in this sense, two apostles of
this new gospel, Rhegas and Koraes, set themselves,
e:ich in his own way, to stir up men's minds by

THE GREEK QUESTION. 261
preaching and spreading the principles of the
French Revolution.
It was not long before circumstances brought
the Greeks into actual contact with the French.
The first thing was the expedition to Egypt. To
Greek eyes this expedition seemed to be the war of
civilization against savagery, of the Christian against
the Muslim. In a little while the French flag was
floating over the Ionian Islands and the coast of
Epiros. The sight gave a fresh stimulus to the
hope that deliverance was at length at hand.
These hopes found encouragement in the policy of
Napoleon, who reckoned Greece as a factor in the
vast conceptions to which his daring imagination
gave birth. As early as 1797 he sent the two
Stefanopoli, natives of the Greek colony in Corsica,
to try and come to an understanding with the
Greeks of the Maina. Rhegas, at the same time,
called on the victorious French General to afford
the aid of France to the national movement for
which he was labouring. In short, from the time
of the French Revolution, the Greeks looked West
ward with more hope than they had ever felt in
that quarter before.
And these hopes were again deceived. They
soon found that they could count on no help from
Western Christendom, so they turned again to
wards Russia. There they found the same religious
beliefs as their own, and the same hatred for Tur
key. But while the Greeks again looked to the
help of Russia to aid in the success of any new
National rising, they were not blind to the fact

262 THE GREEK QUESTION.
that they themselves by their origin, their history,
their traditions, and their tendencies, are allied to
Western Europe, and that, geographically, they
form the outer link in the chain of the European
States. Greece wishes to live with the life . of
modern Europe. In the throes with which she
bursts her fetters, she appeals to the West in the
name of her historic past, the mother of all their
culture. The Greek Revolution is not a move
ment to restore the Byzantine Empire. It is the
re-awakening of ancient Hellas.
It must be remarked that the separation between
the idea of Hellas and the tradition of the Byzan
tine Empire was not the work of a moment, nor
was its development at once clear and sharp. On
the contrary, it came obscurely and slowly. And
it could not have been otherwise. The Empire of
Rome had struck deep roots into the Greek soil ;
it had adopted the Greek language and the Greek
civilisation ; and the profession of a common Chris
tianity had welded it with the Greek people. But
after the decline of the Roman Empire had begun,
long before Constantinople fell, the idea of Hellas
had begun to put aside, one after the other, the
Roman swathing-bands in which she had been
wrapt. The Imperial Byzantine tradition, how
ever, went on in the Church, after the fall of the
Empire. Under the Turkish domination, the
Church preserved what remained of the temporal
power of the State. Her ceremonial was Byzan
tine. She has actually never expunged from her
services the supplications in which she besought

THE GREEK QUESTION. 263
the Almighty ' that it may please him to grant to
our Emperor victory over the barbarians.' Her
Kalendar of Fasts and Festivals brings round year
by year the solemn Commemorations of events in
Byzantine history. All these things tended to
bring the Empire home to Greek recollection, and
to confound with that recollection the hopes of the
oppressed Greek people. All the abortive schemes
for a restoration of the Empire, from Charles VIII.
to Catherine II., had been confirmations and en
couragements to this Byzantine tradition. But,
alongside this archaeological survival, the new dawn
of Hellenism was brightening more and more
clearly. And it was exactly in those regions which
were the most intensely Hellenic that the fair new
light arose the most strongly,
Thus it is that, fifty years before our War of In
dependence, and while Catherine II. was working
at her Greek scheme, and the inhabitants of the
Peloponnesos were calling upon her for her aid, we
find that they no longer based their claims upon
the traditions of the Komnenoi and of the Palaio-
logoi. It was to the glorious fact of what they
themselves were, that they appealed. ' Set free,'
they wrote to the Tzarina, ' set free the children of
the Athenians and Lacedaemonians from the crush
ing yoke under which they groan, and which,
nevertheless, has not been able to destroy the
spirit of their nation, where the love of freedom
still burns. Our chains have been powerless to
stifle that love, for we have always had set before
our eyes the living memory of our heroic fathers.'

264 THE GREEK QUESTION.
Even as late as 1821, there was as much of the
Byzantine tradition as of the Hellenic idea in the
minds of those who prepared the outbreak of the
National movement. The poet Rhegas addressed
his passionate appeals to every Christian on whom
the yoke lay ; he called on them ' to light a fire
which should wrap all Turkey, from Bosnia to
Arabia.' As long as the secret intrigues of the
Hetairia had their centre in Constantinople, as long
as the conspirators concocted their plans of revolt
under the shadow of the desecrated church of the
Eternal Wisdom, so long the National hopes were
mixed up with dreams of the restoration of the
Empire. Thus, the War of Independence began
upon the banks of the Danube before it broke out
on the shores of the iEgean. So far as it is now
possible to credit any defined plan to those who
organized this first movement, it would seem to
have been their idea to cause an attack to converge
upon Constantinople from the outer provinces, and
there to establish the Romano-Greek Byzantine
Empire. This is what had been the Greek scheme
of Catherine II.
The fact is, that this project was not then as
visionary as it now seems. The spirit of Nationalism
had not then been roused in the other races of the
Balkan peninsula. Their religion bound them to
gether as against their common oppressor. They felt
that they were Christians first, and anything else
afterwards, and the leading part taken by the
Greeks had then nothing about it to repel the other
nationalities from uniting under them in order to

THE GREEK QUESTION. 2G5
form along with them one Christian State. It is
true that the Holy Alliance was then all-powerful ;
that Russia, from the very first moment, repudi
ated the insurrection ; and that the whole of
Europe, by the action of its Governments, set itself
to oppose it. Nevertheless, there were then some
chances of successwhich have never since presented
themselves. If the Revolution had been better
organized, if Hypsilantes had possessed the genius
of a Washington or of a Napoleon, the Great Idea
of a restored Byzantine Empire might perhaps then
have been realized. It was a case of Then or
Never. It was not Then. The rising- in Wallachia
was soon stamped out, and the struggle for inde
pendence became limited to the coasts of the
iEgean. Since then, the Byzantine idea has been
fading away before the Hellenic idea. The War of
Independence became a war exclusively Greek,
and since the formation of the new Greek Kingdom,
the-Greek aspirations have been growing ever more
and more exclusively Hellenic.
It must not be forgotten that during the domina
tion of the Turks, Constantinople, which was the
seat of the Patriarchate, had been the real capital
of the Greek nation. There was there — as indeed
there still is — the largest Greek population con
tained in any one city in the world. The new
spring-time of Greek literature had blossomed in
the centre of culture which had there been formed.
The flower of the race was included in the aristo
cracy of the Phanar. Constantinople was the Greek
city, above all others; and everything there recalled

266 THE GREEK QUESTION.
the Byzantine tradition. But since the Greek
Kingdom has come into existence, the centre of
Greek thought has shifted. It is now at Athens.
The germ of the Greek future is the little State
washed by the iEgean. It is that State which ought
to be made greater, were it only in reparation for
the injustice committed upon it when it was brought
into being. The greater and more prosperous it
becomes, the greater is the influence which it will
exercise upon the Greek provinces which do not
yet belong to it, which it cannot now pretend to
annex, but whose nationality can never allow them
to be to it a subject of indifference. No one thinks
now of a restoration of the Eastern Empire ; it is
not possible, and the fact is fully faced. But the
stronger we feel ourselves, the more strongly we
shall feel it to be our duty to spare no effort to
prevent new enemies arising to take the place of
the Turks — and enemies, moreover, who are all the
more dangerous because, whereas the Sultans
tolerated and acknowledged the existence of a
Greek element among their subjects, the declared
object of the new foes who have succeeded them is
expressly to swamp and to destroy it.
It has been needful thus to trace the past history
of the Eastern Question, in order to explain truth
fully and clearly the change of form which Greek
hope has now undergone. The idea of the re-
establishment of the Byzantine Empire was what
was called ' the Great Idea.' • Time has been when
it was a good idea. It is an idea which history at
once explains and justifies. But the course of time

THE GREEK QUESTION. 267
has now necessarily guided Greek aspirations into
another channel. The Hellenic Idea has now
emerged and cleared itself from any necessary
connection with schemes for restoring the Empire
of Constantinople. It is still a Great Idea, and it
is all the stronger because it is more concentrated.
The more this idea takes shape, the more it will
prevent individual Greeks wasting their energies in
pursuit of dreams which have passed out of the
range of practical politics. The path of Greece is
clearly laid out for her, and from this path she has
not swerved for the last sixty years. She has been
working hard to develop her own resources so far
as she has been allowed to do so. Whenever she
could, she has tried to complete herself by receiving
into her State any of those other Greek provinces
by which she is surrounded, and which are hungry
to cast in their lot with her's. This desire has
already been partly gratified. The Ionian Islands,
the plain of Thessaly, and a very small fraction of
Epiros have been re-united to free Greece, and find
themselves all the better for the change. The rest
of Epiros, the Greek portion of Macedonia, and the
island of Crete are eager for their own turn to come.
These aspirations are entirely confined within the
limits of a possible and practical policy. They are
in no way opposed to the just aspirations of any
other nation in the East. It is impossible for the
Greeks to forget that by their own War of
Independence they were the first to set an example
before their fellow-bondsmen, and to propound to
all Europe the principle of Nationalism. They

268 THE GREEK QUESTION.
have remained steadily faithful to that principle.
For that reason, their heartiest wish has always
been to see the emancipation of the other races
inhabiting the Balkan Peninsula ; and it has been
their consistent joy to watch the gradual steps by
which that emancipation has been advancing.
They were the first to hail the formation of the
Kingdom of Roumania. They rejoiced to see
crowned with success the heroic struggles of the
Servians and of the Montenegrians. They welcomed
like brothers the deliverance of the Bulgars. When
the Principalities of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia
were created under the Treaty of Berlin, with safe
guards protecting the rights of the Greek popula
tion, the Greek people beheld in that creation only
another step towards the solution of the Eastern
Question on the principles of peace and justice.
They would have seen with a satisfaction equally
great and equally honest the union of these two
last Principalities, had it not been that the Revolu
tion effected at Philippopolis had in it an element
which went beyond that union. This element was
an undisguised menace against Greek nationality,
and a threat against the peace of the regenerated
East. The truth is, the Bulgars have got a Great Idea
of their own. What this Bulgar Idea is, we learn
from their own mouths. Nothing can give a fairer
idea of it than a little book which was printed at
Philippopolis and distributed gratuitously on the
recent occasion of the thousandth anniversary 01
the Saints Methodius and Cyrill, the two Greek

THE GREEK QUESTION. 269
missionaries to whose Apostolic devotedness the
Slavonic nations were indebted for the introduction
of Christianity among them. The book in question
is intituled Macedonia at the Millenary of Metho
dius, or, How the Bidgars stand to-day in
Macedonia. It has been translated into Greek.
The principle of the work is the doctrine that
Macedonia is a Bulgar province which the Greeks
are wickedly attempting to Hellenize. It proceeds
on the supposition that Cyrill and Methodius,
instead of being Greeks, were Slavs. They came
from Thessalonica ; therefore it is argued that
Thessalonica must be by nature a Bulgar town.
' The future of Bulgaria,' says the author, ' lies in
Macedonia ; it lies in the elevation of the Mace
donian Bulgars. That is what we have to work
for, for in that are bound up our greatness, our
future unity, our National integrity, our very
existence as a State. A Bulgar State in the
Balkan Peninsula would be insignificant and
worthless without Macedonia. Of a true Bulgaria,
Thessalonica must be the front door. In a struc
ture really Bulgarian, Thessalonica must be the
main window7 through which the light will enter.
As long as Macedonia has not been made a part of
Bulgaria, Bulgaria has not been constituted. That
is the truth which every man ought to know and
never to forget ' (p. 7 of the Greek translation).
However, it still seems, even according to this
reluctant witness, that Macedonia is as yet only
imperfectly Bulgarian. ' It is,' he says, ' painful
and humiliating to have to admit it, but the fact

270 THE GREEK QUESTION.
must be faced. The truth is, that the greater
part of Macedonia is as yet destitute of that con
sciousness of its own nationality which a people
must needs feel before they claim their rights ; and
if collective Europe were this day to call for a
plebiscite of the inhabitants of Macedonia to de
clare to what nationality they belong, it is greatly
to be feared that most of them would not declare
for us' (p. 91). The writer of this phenomenal
work feels it almost needless to remark that such
lamentable blindness on the part of the Mace
donians as to what they themselves are is nothing
but the result of Greek oppression and intrigue ;
but, he says, ' if only we had ten or even five years
of thorough good work, it would be enough to en
able the Bulgaria secured by the Treaty of San
Stefano to become a reality, oppose it who would '
(p. 97).
At the same time, Macedonia is not the only
feature in this programme. Of their pretentions
in the direction of Servia I say nothing. I am
only concerned with those which threaten Greece.
Where it is asserted that Cyrill and Methodius
were Slavs, we cannot be surprised to find it re
corded that Justinian was born at Ochrida. For
the present, the Bulgar propagandists' field of work
lies in Macedonia ; but the turn of Thrace and the
rest is to come later. It is enough for them just
now to claim the district of Adrianople. 'Mace
donia and the district of Adrianople are Bulgar
provinces, and ought to belong to none but Bul
gars.' Constantinople is not actually named, but

THE GREEK QUESTION. 271
it is remarked that the Exarch of Bulgaria ought
to reside there. ' His banishment thence is a
thing which never can nor will be allowed. The
place of the shepherd is with his flock.' In other
words, we are informed that not only Macedonia
and Thessalonica, but also Thrace and Constan
tinople, are by nature provinces of Bulgaria.
This Bulgarian theory is, of course, utterly with
out base in history. All the records of the past
may be searched in vain without finding anything
which can even suggest how it ever arose. Whence
comes it, then ? It springs from the fosterage of
that Great Power alongside, which has toiled so
hard to bring it into being, in order to use it as a
tool. That is the fact which invests it both with
importance and with danger. And that is the fact
which explains the excitement felt both in Servia
and in Greece when the Bulgars, a few years ago,
began to try to realise their programme by force.
The world has been both astonished and shocked
at the sight of the fratricidal war between the
Bulgars and the Servians. A contest between the
Bulgars and the Greeks would have seemed much
more natural. For the last twenty years, the ear
has got quite used to the noise of the dissensions
between the Bulgars and the Greek Patriarch of
Constantinople. Since the Treaty of San Stefano
the designs of the Bulgars upon the Greek district
of Macedonia have been so avowed, that it does
not appear astonishing that all Greece should have
armed itself to withstand them. Nevertheless, at
the time of the Greek War of Independence, and

272 THE GREEK QUESTION.
for long afterwards, there was nothing to forbode
any dispute between Greeks and Bulgars. So
much the contrary, the Bulgars and their best
friends looked forward to a future which should be
marked by an intimate alliance with the Greeks.
A French writer who has made a profound study
of the Slavs, who has lived among them, who was
extremely fond of them, and who, notwithstanding
some mistakes, gave on these questions, then just
coming into being, an opinion which was generally
true and indeed sometimes almost prophetic, looked
forward to the same thing. Here are the words of
M. Cyprien Robert in his book on Les Slaves de
Turquie, published in 1844 (Vol. I., p. 323).
' Bulgaria is incapable of forming a State by her
self, but she is strong enough to be able to refuse
any Union with her neighbours which may be
offered to her upon any lower condition than that
of federal Home Rule. This is a fact which the
Servians must never forget, if they wish to retain
the good- will of the Bulgars. The truth is, that
while a community of language and of origin
establishes a tie necessarily close between the
Servians and the Bulgars, the latter are at least as
strongly drawn towards the Greeks by commercial
interest. Moreover, the Government of Athens is
the only Government in the Balkan Peninsula
which can never be brought to close quarters with
Bulgaria. The difference of nature between the
Bulgars and the Greeks is of such a kind as in itself
almost to render any friction impossible. The
Greek has a proud consciousness of his own intel-

THE GREEK QUESTION. 273
lectual endowments, and it is by them that he
aspires to rule ; the Bulgar, on the other hand,
feeling his own mental inferiority, is willing enough
to yield to the impulses of Greek thought as long
as he is allowed to plough and reap in peace. Now,
the Greeks, with their tendency to sea-faring and
commerce, are most willing to let the Bulgars
alone — indeed, they are only too happy to find in
them good quiet neighbours, who are content to
till the ground and to supply rough material for
Greek factories. Thanks to this instinct of mutual
need and convenience, the two peoples fraternize
more and more. All educated Bulgars know the
Greek language ; they are very fond both of speak
ing it and of writing it ; they call it the language
of their teachers, the language of those who civilized
their fathers, and who will again bring back to
themselves and to their children the culture which
they have lost.'
It ought to be kept in mind that the above
words were written, in 1844, by an author whose
sympathy with the Bulgars went the length of
suggesting Thessalonica as the capital of their
future State. After that, no one can accuse him
of Philhellenism.
Twenty years later, another French observer, the
lamented M. Albert Dumont, in remarking the
progress made by the Bulgars, made exactly the
same observation as to the influence exercised over
them by the Greeks. ' Of all the different na
tions,' he says, ' which inhabit Turkey in Europe,
the Bulgars have hitherto been the most peaceable.
18

274 THE GREEK QUESTION.
They have not been induced to revolt against the
Porte either by the example of the Bosniaks or of
the Servians, of the Greeks or of the Albanians.
Nevertheless, within the last ten years they have
passed through a silent revolution, or, rather, a
transformation, which has already begun to bear
important fruits. They have begun to educate
themselves, and they have conceived the hope of a
better future. This movement best deserves to be
studied in this district [which has since become
Eastern Roumelia], because this district was its
birthplace, owing to the stimulating influence
exercised upon the Bulgars by the contact with
Greeks and with the Greek activity and intelli
gence.'* I prefer citing these different foreign writers,
because I wish to place myself . beyond the reach
of the accusation of prejudice. However, I might
have added the witness of my own experience.
When I was a child, I knew a good many Bulgars.
We did not distinguish between them and Greeks.
They sought Greek women in marriage, by pre
ference, rather than wed their own countrywomen,
and many of the children of such marriages must
have had hard work to learn their paternal tongue
before being accepted as Bulgars indeed. Of the
elderly men who hold some position in the two
Principalities, many, if not most, have had a Greek
education at the schools of Constantinople or even
at the University of Athens. They cannot have

Le Balkan et V Adriatique, pp. 130-1.

THE GREEK QUESTION. 275
looked upon this as any great hardship, since their
National awakening owes its existence to the
influence of Greece. However, that is all changed
now. The later generations have been sent to
Russia, or elsewhere, for their education and their
ideas. The Greek language is spoken no more ;
on the contrary, the fact of having acquired it is
concealed. The great wish now is to owe nothing
to Greece.
How has this change come about ?
Some people have been anxious to find the
explanation in the pretended tyranny of the Greek
clergy. I am not going to set myself up here as
the advocate of the Greek clergy. I will merely
point out the fact that there were no Greek clergy
at all in Bulgaria, with the exception of the Arch
bishops and Bishops named by the Patriarchate,
and the few Deacons who were their personal
attendants. The general body of the clergy were
Bulgars. The Church Service was performed in
the Slavonic language, or, where the population
was sufficiently mixed, in both Slavonic and Greek.
I grant that among these Bishops there have been
some who brought little credit upon their character
of shepherds of souls. But, again, these Prelates,
whether in Bulgaria or anywhere else, were not
representatives of the Hellenic Idea. As they came
from the Patriarchate, they were invested with a
certain amount of that temporal jurisdiction which
had been bestowed upon the Patriarchs by Mahomet
II. Thus they exercised within their dioceses an
authority received from the Turks, and so formed

276 THE GREEK QUESTION.
a part of the Government of the oppressor. But
this was a feature from which the Greek inhabitants
had to suffer just as much as the Bulgars. The
Bulgars were fully aware that it was so, and it never
occured to them that venality on the part of the
upper clergy was any reason for estranging them
selves from their Greek neighbours, even after they
had taken up the idea of having a National Church
of their own. M. Cyprien Robert's book is a
sufficing testimony upon this point. No ; the
question of giving the Bulgars a National Church
of their own has been nothing but a pretext most
skilfully used for a political purpose, the true aim
of which has only come to light by degrees.
The Crimean War checked Russia, for a moment,
in the execution of those designs which she had
nourished for centuries, and it was only on the
morrow of the Crimean War that she took the
Bulgars under her exclusive protection. The
Greeks had ceased to be of any more use to her in
her Eastern policy ; they are too much drawn
towards the West both by their natural instincts of
race, and by their interests. The Servians are a
great deal too close to Austria, and their historical
traditions, in spite of their kinship of race, make
them almost as difficult to manage as the Greeks.
The Bulgars offered no such obstacles. For the
purpose of making them play the desired part,
there were two principal means at hand. One was
the principle of Nationalism, and the other was the
allied notion of having a National Church. And
these means were worked accordingly.

THE GREEK QUESTION. 277
The peculiar phase of Russian policy thus
indicated has become identified with a name now
famous, namely, that of General Ignatieff, so long,
and until the last Russo-Turkish War, Russian
Ambassador at Constantinople. On this policy I
decline here to express any opinion. I confine
myself to bearing testimony that it has been carried
out with the most consummate ability.
The idea of the National Bulgarian Church was
first started in 1856. It made its appearance in
the form of a petition to the Sultan, in which the
signatories, styling themselves the Representatives
of the Bulgarian people, practically besought His
Imperial Majesty to grant to the Bulgars (as though
they were already a distinct body within the
Ottoman Empire) the same privileges as enjoyed
by the Oecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople ;
to recognise their Church as an independent body,
in the same way as the Patriarchal Church is
recognised ; and to allow them, as well as the
Patriarchate, to have their ecclesiastical head
quarters in Constantinople. Four years afterwards,
on April 3, 1860, Archbishop Hilarion, publicly
officiating in the Church of St. Stephen, at
Ortakieue in Constantinople, proclaimed the inde
pendence of the Bulgarian Church, by omitting
from the public prayers the name of the Patriarch
of Constantinople. According to the rules of our
Church, this act was in itself schism, and entailed
excommunication. At last in 1870, the Sublime
Porte published the firman by which it authorized
the formation of the Bulgarian Exarchate, The

278 THE GREEK QUESTION.
Greek Patriarch was thus at last compelled to
proclaim the schism, in other words, to call public
attention to the fact that it had pleased the Bulgars
to secede from the Communion of the Greek Church.
According to the laws of the Turkish Empire, the
Bulgars should now have been obliged to find some
new costume for their clergy, since these laws do
not permit the ministers of one denomination to
disguise themselves in the distinctive dress of those
of another. But this official recognition of the fact
of the separation would have probably had some
awkward consequences for the seceders. The true
state of things would then have been revealed to
the eyes of the most ignorant, and they might
have found many less disposed to abandon the
Church of their fathers, so long ruled by the
Patriarchs. Moreover, greater difficulties would
have been put in the way of appropriating the
ecclesiastical and educational buildings belonging
to the Greek Church. It became an object, then,
to prevent the Porte recognizing the new
Communion as such, and the screw from outside
was, as a matter of fact, so effectually worked that
the recognition in question has never been made up
to this day. For the same reason, an unceasing
attempt has been made to put a similar screw upon
the Patriarchate, with a view to have the declara
tion of schism withdrawn, which would consider
ably facilitate the operations of Panslavist propa
gandists in Macedonia and Thrace, where the Ex
archate does not make any secret that it means to
set up an hierarchy of Bulgar Bishops as soon as it

THE GREEK QUESTION. 279
can. Meanwhile, everything has been done to
weaken the Patriarchate. It was thought that the
despoiling of its goods might deprive it of the
power to resist. Accordingly, its possessions in
Wallachia were confiscated by the Government of
Prince Couza. This act was generally believed to
have been done at the desire of the powerful neigh
bour on her Eastern frontier, and the belief in
question was not dissipated when the Russian
Government proceeded to seize the property of the
Greek Church in Bessarabia.
And, nevertheless, when all has been done, it
would not seem that the work of Bulgarizing
Macedonia is getting on quite so quickly and so
easily as the workers could wish. The book already
cited, Macedonia at the Millenary of Methodius,
says : — ' There are many examples of the fact that
the Bulgars of Macedonia and Adrianople* will only
give up their Greek Bishops and recognise the
Bulgarian Exarchate on condition that they have
to pay nothing. This is painful ; but it is true.
It is more than certain that if the Exarchate were
to lay upon these Bulgars the slightest Church con
tribution, many of them would at once acknowledge
the Greek Bishop ' (p. 66).
The Bulgars have many good qualities. They
are docile, hard-working, and peaceable; and recent
events show that they can fight well. There are
those who have reproached them with some de
ficiency of intellectual keenness. I am not inclined
* By ' Adrianople ' understand Thrace.

280 THE GREEK QUESTION.
to think anything of the kind, but, even if it were
so, we need not perhaps consider the Bulgar any
the worse off. During the latest phase of their
history such a feature would certainly have done
them no harm. The cleverest people are not
always the people who manage their own affairs the
most wisely, especially their external affairs. If
the affairs of the Bulgars have been managed for
them by others, the management has at any rate
been so remarkably well done, that we may fairly
congratulate them upon having left it in such able
hands. It may also be sometimes rather an advantage
not to be burdened with too glorious an history ;
only, where such is the case, he who is free from
any such encumbrance ought to adapt himself to
the circumstances of his case, and not to fall into
the error of a man without a pedigree who makes
himself ridiculous by parading a forged string of
imaginary ancestors. It is a proud thing to have a
glorious history, but it is not less noble to will to
make one — a young nation has its future before it,
and the Bulgars are a young nation, although they
cannot be called a new one. They have been
settled between the Danube and the Balkans for
the last twelve hundred years. May be it is not
all their own fault that they are still in leading-
strings. The obscure question whether they are by race
Slavs or Turanians, is one which it seems to me idle
to discuss here. What they talk, at least at
present, is a Slav form of speech. They want to be

THE GREEK QUESTION. 281
Slavs. They have been admitted into the brother
hood of Slav nations. That is enough for our pre
sent purpose. We must look upon the Bulgars as
being at any rate practically Slav, while we
examine what they have been, what they are, and
what they hope to be.
This examination has hitherto been left almost
exclusively to Slavs or Slavophils, gushing with
sympathy for the Bulgars. I would not for one
moment be understood to call in question, for this
reason, either the honesty or the culture of such
learned persons. Moreover, there is no doubt that
it is natural — indeed, there is something noble in it
— to be carried away by a generous enthusiasm, in
taking the position of a party advocate, and that,
more especially, when the cause to be advocated is
passing through a very critical episode, and is any
thing but won. But the very least of the dangers
which beset such enthusiasm is that of distorting
facts from what they are into the form which best
suits the advocate's prepossessions, and this he is
liable unconsciously to do, even while his intentions
are the most honest in the world. Nor, since I have
come to speak of distortion, can I help adverting to
certain ethnographical maps which are now to be
seen in circulation, and in which the ethnological
frontier of Bulgaria is drawn so as to embrace locali
ties as purely Greek as Southern Macedonia, in
cluding even the Chalcidic Peninsula and Mount
Athos itself. I am very likely to be told that
Greeks, on the other hand, have been known to
publish ethnographical maps, in which the limits of

282 THE GREEK QUESTION.
the Hellenic population were no less exaggerated ;
and indeed I should find myself hard pressed to
rebut such an accusation. I will only remark that
the fate of the Greek chartographers ought to have
served for a warning to the Bulgars or Bulgarophils,
by showing them that something more than the
arrangement of maps is needed before the nation
ality of a country can be changed.
Statistics have been treated on the same princi
ple as the maps. We are told on all sides that
there are five millions of Bulgars. Now, the
official statistics * are based upon the census made
by Bulgars themselves, and, according to them, the
entire population of the Principality of Bulgaria
amounts to 1,998,983 souls, all told, of whom 66
per cent, are Bulgars by nationality ; that is to
say, there exist in Bulgaria 1,319,500 Bulgars. In
Eastern Roumelia there are 815,946 souls, of whom
70 per cent. — or 561,000 are Bulgars. The total
number of Bulgars, therefore, on both sides of the
Balkans, is 1,880,500. And if we take the whole
population of the two Principalities, without regard
to whether they are Bulgars or not, it amounts to
2,815,000 inhabitants. Whence then come the
rest of the 5,000,000 ? The population of Mace
donia is very difficult to guage, but even if that
name be reckoned, for the sake of argument, to
cover a very much wider territory than is allowed
to it by Greek geographers, the remaining millions

* See Otto Hiibner, Geographisch-statistische Tabellen. W. Rom
mel, Frankfort, 1885.

THE GREEK QUESTION. 283
could not be found there. In 1844, M. Cyprien
Robert reckoned the number of Bulgars at 4,500,
000, but if he had been right, they would have
doubled before now ; and they themselves have
been pleased only to name 5,000,000. As a matter
of fact, the key to this singular piece of statistic is
possibly to be found in the work of M. Cyprien
Robert himself, in an anecdote which sparkles with
all the enchanting guilelessness of childhood. He
tells us as follows (Vol. I., p. 248) : — •
' During the first months of my sojourn among
the Bulgarians, when they asked me, as they were
constantly doing, where I came from, and I replied
" from Frankistan," they used to say, " How
lucky thou art, O brother, to come from a country
where the people are all Bulgars." " Bulgars ? " I
exclaimed " why, I never saw such a thing !" They
answered, " What ! are there no Bulgars in the
land of the Franks ? Even thou thyself, art thou
not a Bulgar?" When I replied to this last ques
tion that my countrymen and I most certainly were
not Bulgars, I noticed that they hung their heads
sadly, and said no more. It was only later, and
after the above conversation had taken place several
times, that I discovered that they thought that all
Christians are Bulgars.'
Certainly, on this principle, it is hard to guess
where the Bulgar claims to extent of population are
likely to stop.
The history of the Bulgars can, I think, be
summed up in a very few words. Between the
year 679, when they settled where they are, and

284 THE GREEK QUESTION.
1382, when Bulgaria was swallowed up in the tide
of Mohammedan conquest, there has three times
been a Bulgarian Kingdom. The first was that of
the Tzar Simeon, and was destroyed by the
Emperor John Tzimiskes. The second was that of
Samuel, and was destroyed by Basil II. The third
was that of John Asian, and was destroyed by the
Sultan Bajazet. During these three periods the
southern frontier of Bulgaria has been more than
once pressed forward for the moment beyond the
Balkans, and has touched Greek countries, but it
has never reached the shores of the iEgean.
During the chaos which followed the Fourth
Crusade, Thessalonica often changed hands between
the Greeks and the Franks, but never did the Bul
gars set foot there.*
From the days of Bajazet until our own, nothing
had ever disturbed the reign of Turkey over
Bulgaria. There never was any insurrection. It is
quite true that attempts have been made to bring
forward the celebrated Paswan Oglou as an in
stance of a Bulgar insurgent ; but this Moham
medan, whom the Porte finally appointed Vizir of
Widdin, cared just as much, and no more, about the
autonomy of Bulgaria, as Ali, the Pasha of Ioannina,
did about the independence of Greece. Bulgaria
never turned in her sleep till after the Greek Revolu
tion. Her waking was very slow. When the Russian
army appeared there in 1828, they found her still
quite indisposed to rise. In 1830, the Duke of
* See Freeman's Historical Geography of Europe.

THE GREEK QUESTION. 285
Wellington received from Sir R. Gordon a detailed
report upon the whole campaign, executed by
Captain Chesney after that officer had spent three
months in travelling about the scene of the war.
The only instance of any patriotic activity on the
part of Bulgars which he met with, was that of one
particular village where the Turks had burnt down
the houses of the Christians. In this case the
Christians, when assured that the Russians were on
the point of arriving, avenged themselves by setting
fire to the houses of the Turks, and sixty of them
took up arms. ' Elsewhere,' says Captain Chesney,
' there has been no disposition amongst the Bul
garians to join the Russians, nor would they do so
in case of a future war. . . . Whatever con
tests may arise, the Bulgarian will most likely
remain passively cultivating the soil, attending his
flocks, and enjoying that rough portion of plenty
which his cottage (sunk in the ground) always
affords.'* Clearly, Capt. Chesney was not en
dowed with the gift of prophecy.
It is not more than forty years ago since Russia
again brought Bulgaria to the notice of the world.
As has been already remarked, she began by
starting the Church question. The reasonable
complaints of the Bulgars on this subject would
have been perfectly satisfied by the nomination of
Slav Bishops to those dioceses in which the Bulgar
element is predominant. But there was a great
deal more meant by this cry than the mere getting
* Despatches, &c, of the Duke of Wellington, Vol. VI., p. 483.

286 THE GREEK QUESTION.
rid of Greek Prelates. What was asked was the
creation of a National Church of Bulgaria separate
from the Greek Church of Constantinople. The
Greek Church allows the existence of independent
National Churches where there are independent
nations, but so long as the Bulgars were the
subjects of the Porte, it was impossible for the
Patriarchate to consent to the setting up of two
separate Orthodox Churches in the same country.
The Patriarchate appealed to the rule which does
not allow one community to have two heads, any
more than two communities to have the same head.
However, the plan went on. The Turkish Govern
ment having been persuaded that it was in its own
interest to have a division between the Greeks and
the Bulgars, became the instrument of Russian
diplomacy. The Porte recognized the existence of
the National Church of Bulgaria, and the Bulgarian
Exarchate was established at Constantinople as a
standing menace to the Greek Patriarchate.
As soon as Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia were
made into independent Principalities, the Patri
archate would have been delighted to recognize the
Bulgarian Church, in the same way that it recog
nises the churches of Russia, of Greece, of Servia,
and of Roumania. But this is not at all what is
desired by the pullers of the Bulgar wires. By
them it is desired that the Bulgarian Church should
not be confined within the frontiers of the two
Bulgarian States, but should exist wherever there
are Bulgars — and there are Bulgars everywhere.
For the Bulgar view on that subject it is only

THE GREEK QUESTION. 287
necessary to call to mind M. Crypien Robert's
experiences with regard to their idea of France.
It has been a great misfortune that the element
of religious difference has been allowed to addition
ally embitter the jealousies which diversity of race
and conflict of interests were already powerful
enough to stir up in Eastern Christendom. To
what lengths these jealousies can be carried, we
have had proof enough in the events which have of
late years passed before our eyes. It is to be
hoped that in course of time these painful differences
will pass away. In the very midst of the present
struggle, there are, at least as seems to me, signs
of a more hopeful future. The question of the
equilibrium of the Balkan States outweighs even
the question of race. We see that this question of
the equilibrium has been enough to plunge two of
the Slav States — Servia and Bulgaria — into a
fratricidal war, and at the same time to bring
Servia into an alliance, understood if unwritten,
with the Hellenes. Yet people have been found
who are ready to jest at the question of the equili
brium. But the preservation of the equilibrium
is essential to the future peace of the East.
In the deliberations of the Powers represented at
Berlin, it held a chief place. The frontiers of
Servia, of Bulgaria, and of Greece, were there care
fully and specially drawn so that each of these
States might have a population of about two millions.
Thus Count Kalnoky, addressing the Austrian
Envoys on Nov. 7, expressly said: — 'By the treaty
of Berlin it was undoubtedly intended to establish

288 THE GREEK QUESTION.
a sort of equilibrium among the States of the
Balkan Peninsula. It is impossible for any one of
these States to upset that equilibrium for her own
individual aggrandisement, without arousing just
resentment upon the part of her neighbours. If
the Bulgarian movement were to be carried from
Roumelia into Macedonia, the interests of Greece
would be undoubtedly jeopardised.' It is a mis
understanding of their own interests which causes
the divisions among these nations. When they
understand their own interests better, they will be
drawn together. There is plenty of room in the
Balkan Peninsula for them all, and their respective
aspirations can be combined in one common under
standing as soon as they agree to a common policy
of compromise and conciliation.
To such a common understanding, the aspira
tions of Greece offer no obstacle whatsoever.
Greece makes no extravagant pretensions. There
may be still some warm hearts, some enthusiastic
imaginations, that delight in visions of the past
and are roused by the Great Idea of raising again
the Christian Empire once enthroned at Byzan
tium. But that idea has long ago ceased to govern
the thoughts of those who now-a-days guide the
destinies of Greece. It no longer actuates the
movements of our national policy. It is not the
object of the Greek people to set up a Greek
Empire at Constantinople. What we are struggling
and longing to do is this. We hope to have a
Greek State with a Northern frontier starting
Eastwards from the Adriatic at some point north

THE GREEK QUESTION. 289
of Corfu, and reaching the iEgean at some point
east of the Chalcidic Peninsula, including such
part of Macedonia as is Greek. The Island of
Crete would be our farthest limit Southward. We
would fain see Montenegro aggrandized, and, be
tween such a Montenegro and ourselves, an eman
cipated Albania, either autonomous or attached to
ourselves by a brotherly tie. We would that our
Northern frontier should meet those of a fully ex
panded Servia, and of an enlarged and united
Bulgaria, embracing not only the actual Bulgaria
and Eastern Roumelia, but also all territory which
is really inhabited by a majority of Bulgars.
These are the limits of Greek aspiration !
Of course this does not mean that when Greece
should be thus constituted, she would become
callous to the fate of the Greeks outside her
borders. She never could forget the ties which
bind her to her children who would still remain
separated from her in Europe, or those her more
numerous children in Asia Minor. But the notion
of gathering all Greek populations together into
one Greek State is, and would be, just as imprac
ticable now as it was in the days of the antients.
During the classical period of Greek history, the
Greek people (setting aside their Western colonies,
which have now disappeared), occupied exactly the
same territories as they still do at the present day.
They did not then form a single State any more
than they do now, but they did and do form a
single whole which is called Hellenism. And
Hellenism can again be all that it has been. But
J9

290 THE GREEK QUESTION.
if part of the Greek world is to be swallowed up
in an unjustly expanded Bulgaria, or in an exten
sion of Russia to the shores of the Bosphoros, the
part so devoured may perhaps be lost to Hellenism
for ever. Under the present Government of the
Porte they have every chance of preserving their
nationality intact. The changes which have been
introduced into the Turkish administration, at
least in these regions, subsequently to the Greek
War of Independence, the abatement of savagery,
the absence of a proselytizing attitude towards other
religions, the traditions of the administration, and-
the very interests of Turkey herself, all seem to
promise a free development for the natural and
national genius of such Hellenes as may have still
to remain under the Turkish rule, whether in
Europe or in Asia.
For my own opinion is that Turkey is destined
still to remain in Europe. She will give up her
Western provinces, which are her source of weak
ness, and will concentrate herself in Thrace. If
she would only rid herself of the difficulties caused
her by those European territories with which the
Treaty of Berlin has left her still hampered, and
rest upon Asia, she could still assure herself a long
era of prosperity at Constantinople. Her stability
there would be secured by the very jealousies of
the other States of the Balkan Peninsula. The
great difficulty in the whole Eastern Question has
always been : — Who is to have Constantinople ?
It was the mutual rivalry of the Christian Powers
which originally made the Ottoman Conquest

THE GREEK QUESTION. 291
possible. It is this same rivalry which has kept
Turkey in existence from the days of Peter the
Great till our own. And this same rivalry is still
ready to serve Turkey — and to serve her better
than ever — in the new lease of life, which, for my
part, I believe to be before her. The newly re
stored States which will surround her will be at
once her allies and her supports. Thus there may
soon be seen in the Balkan Peninsula a true con
federation of independent and contented States,
bound each to all by the respective interests of
each. The efforts of each and all would be turned
in. one direction, namely, the path of progress and
of civilization. Europe would no longer be
harassed and troubled by an Eastern Question.
But while I sketch in colours so bright the out
lines of a possible future, I do not forget how
anxious is still the present. During the last few
years we have always been in the midst or on the
eve of events of which it has been impossible to
predict either the issues or the consequences. We
are face to face with the unknown. But, whatever
may happen, — however we may yet be tried, — the
Christian East has and will have rights based on
justice. These rights are rights which have a
foundation other than rights which are based upon
Treaties, that is to say, upon force, and those who
are compelled to yield to force have this comfort,
that they believe that force is not everlastingly
mighty to crush right. It has been in thus believ
ing that the Greeks have hoped on through their
centuries of woe. It will be in thus believing that

292 THE GREEK QUESTION.
they will still continue to nerve themselves, if their
efforts now are destined to be for the while vain.
They believe that the right is on their side ; and
therefore they hope.

INDEX.

Abdallah.

29

Apollonius,

21

Aberdeen, Lord, 189, 204

207, 208,

Apponyi, Count, ...

194

229

Apsimaros,

66

Acarnania,

186

Arabs, ...

29, 42, 99

Adrianople,

270

Arcadius,

... ;, 11

Aegean, Isles of the,

128, 130

Archipelago, Islands of the, 197, 202

Aetius, ...

21

Ariadne,

6

Agallianos,

67

Arianites, the k., ...

256

Agathias,

103

Aristotle,

99

Angeloi,

8

Armatoloi,

168, 254

Aischylos,

121

Arta, Gulf of,

204, 208

Alaric, ...

... 19. 20

Athens, ...

266

Albania,

2S9

Athos, Mount,

219, 281

Albanians,

274

Attica, ...

186, 204

Albigenses,

70

Attila, ...

21

Alexander I.,

175

Austria, passim.

Alexander the Great,
16, 28, 59.
Avars, ...
... 22, 42
Alexis I., ... 17,
36, 37. 40
Avril, M. d',
232, 233
Alexis III.,
8
Alexis IV.,
8
Bajazet, Sultan, ...
284
Alexis V. (Doukas, surnamed Mourt-
Baldwin II.,
9
zouphlos),
8
Balkan States,
273, 287, 288
Alexandria,
29
Bardas Caesar,
75
Alfred, Prince,
228
Bartholdy, M., ...
132, 165
AH Pasha,
I3S. "36
Basil I. (the Macedon
an), 8, 12, 17,
Ali, Pasha of Ioannina,
284
31, 71, 101
Alkibiades of Mediaeval Greece, the.
Basil II. (the Bulgar-slayer), 17, 26,
»5
284
Almamoun, the Caliph,
100
Basil, St.,
102
Alp-Arslan,
32
Bavaria, King of, . . .
208
Ampelakia,
... i6S
Beaconsfield, Lord,
239, 242
Anacreon,
107
Beaujour, M. F., 129,
146, 148, 163,
Anastasius I. (Dikoros),
6
164, 165
Anastasius II.,
... 1, 65
Belisarius,
20, 25, 28
Ancillon, Herr, ...
184
Benjamin of Tudela,
87
Andronikos I 
US
Benoit, M.,
232
Andronikos II., ...
97
Bernstorff, Count,
181
Anna, Posthuma, d. of
Romanus
Bessarion,
253
II 
24
Bishops, Bulgar, ...
278
Anna Komnena, ...
103
Bishops, the Catholic,
of Prussia, 74
Anne, Empress, ...
258
Bishops, Slav,
285
Antai, ...
22
Breotia, ...
186
Anthemios, the Architect,
95
Bosphoros, the, passim.
294

INDEX.

Bosnia, ...
Bosniaks,Botaneiates,Brailas, the k.,
Broglie, Due de,
Bryennios,

222274 65
237, 238
178, 230 65

Bulgaria, 25, 207, 222, 242, 250, 268.
269, 270, 271, 272, 275, 281,
284, 285, 286, 287, 289, 290
Bulgaria, the Exarch of, ... 271
Bulgarian Exarchate, 277, 286
Bulgarian Kingdom, ... 284
Bulgars, the, 10, 17, 25, 26, 120, 267,
271, 272, 275, 276, 277, 278,
279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 285
Byron, Lord, ... ... 207
Byzantine Empire, passim.
Byzantios, the k., Skarlatos D., 15
Candia, Island of, 186, 204, 210
Canea, Bp. of, ... ... 139
Canning, Mr. Stratford, 188, 190,
192, 207
Capodistria, the k., 129, 130, 137,
144, 202, 204, 205, 207, 209,
211, 238
Carlyle, Thomas, ... ... 53,54
Catherine II., 185, 258, 263, 264
Cavour, Count, ... ... 75, 224
Cefalu,, ... ... ... 96
Chalons-sur-Marne, ... 21
Chandler, Mr., ... 141
Cetto, Baron, ... ... 227
Chaptal, M. le Comte, 133, 164, 165
Charlemagne, ... ... 112
Charles V., ... ... 254
Charles VIII., 254, 256, 259, 263
Charles Martel, ... 29, 30, 112
208 163 73
285 142
148, 149 96
102

Charles, Prince of Bavaria
Chassiotis, M.,
Chateaubriand, M.,
Chesney, Captain,
Chios,Choiseul-Gouffier, M.,
Christodoulos, architect,
Chrysostom, St. John,
Church, the National Bulgarian, 277, 286
Cimabue, ... ... 96
Clarendon, Lord,... ... 227
Coletti, M., ... ... 224
Constantine the Great, 4, 5, 14. 19,
122
Constantine IV. (the Bearded) 16, 30, 31
Constantine V. (Kopronymos), 17,
31. I"

66
10, 255
40, 289 203 9
279

224

Constantine VI., ... n, 15. II2
Constantine VII. ( Porphyrogennetos), 15. i°3
Constantine VIII.,
Constantine XII.,
Constantine XIII., 5.
Constantinople, passim.
Corfu, ...
Corinth, Isthmus of,
Courtenay,Couza, Prince,
Crete, 31, 128, 129, 145, 204, 208,
210, 211, 217, 221, 231, 232,
236, 238, 267, 289
Crimea, ...
Crusaders, 8, 9, 36, 37, 38, 55,
118, 130, 131
Crusades, 32, 35, 40, 88, 90, 93, 104, 118
Crusade, the First, ... 38
Cyrill, St., 79, 268, 269, 270
Dacia, ... ... ... 19, 22
Danube, ... 19, 25, 219
Danubian Principalities, 176, 250
Dante, ... ... ... 58
Daremberg, Dr., ... ... 100
Darius, son of Hystaspes, ... 28
Delgiannes, the k., 235, 237
Demosthenes, ... ... 107
Derby, Lord, ... 228, 229
Despenser, Hugh le, ... 13
Devon, Earls of, . . . ... 9
Dhivri, ... ... ... 133
Dikoros, ... ... 6
Diocletian, ... ... 4, 14
Dnieper, ... ... 24
Dniester, ... ... 19
Dolcino, ... ... 13
Dragoumes, the k. , ... 222
Drapeyron, M. Ludovic, ... 114
Dumont, M.A., ... ... 273

Eastern Roumelia, 242, 250,
282,
Edessa, ...
Elis,
Emperors, the Macedonian,
England, ... 190,
Epidauros,
Epiros, 128, 165, 186, 211,
224, 226, 236, 238,
Esterhazy, Prince,
Eton, Mr., 127, 131, 140, 147.
Euboia, ...
Eudokia,

267, 286,

203, '77,
217, 240, 197,
141, 148, 130,

274. 2S9 29
133 8
231 219
221, 267 206
143. M9240 »S

INDEX.

295

Eudokia Palaiologina, ... 97
Euripides, ... ... 107
Eustathios, Bp  ... 103
Fallmerayer, Prof., ... 23
Finlay, G., 16, 37, 63, 97, in, 118
Flanders, House of, ... 9
France, .. 224, 225, 231, 233
Francis I., ... ... 254
Franks, the, ... 12, 39, 91, 120
Frederick, Prince of Orange, 208
Froude, J. A., ... 53, 54, 55
Freeman, Prof. E. A., ... 284
Galixidi, ... 135, 136
Garibaldi, ... ... 226
Gastouni, ... ... 133
Gaul, ... ... 20
Genoese, ... ... 91, 92
George of Pisidia, ... 103
George IV.. ... ... 208
George, King, ... ... 227
Germanus of Patras, ... 157
Gregory V., Patriarch, ... 157
Gibbon, E., 10, 30, 41, 47, 51, 53,
55, 65, 67, 76, 78
Gladstone, Mr., ... 207, 227
Goths, the, ... 19, 20, 21, 42
Greeks, the, passim,
Greece, passim,
Greece, Eastern, ... ... 186
Greece, Southern, ... 186
Greece, Western, ... ... 1S6
Guiscard, Robert, ... 40
Hamilton, Captain, ... 191
Harmenopoulos, ... ... 102
Hassan, Capitan Pascha, ... 134
Hellas, passim.
Hellenes, passim.
Henry VIII.,  254
Heptannesos, 90, 226, 227, 228, 229,
230, 231, 243, 261
Heraclius, 7, n, 16, 28, 29, 31, 80,
122
Herzegovina, . . ... 242
Herzberg, Herr, ... 169, 225
Hetairia, the, 167, 168, 218, 264
Hilarion, Archbishop, ... 277
Honorius, ... ... 5
Hiibner, Otto, ... ... 282
Hungarians, ... ... 26, 222
Hungary, ... ... 222
Huns, ... ... ... 21, 42
Hypsilantes, the k., 155, 175, 176, 218

Ibrahim Pasha, 180,

188, 191, 201

Iconoclasts,

73

Ida, Mount,

219

Ignatieff, General,

277

Ignatius, Patriarch,

75

Igor,

24

Ionian Islands see Hept

mnesos,

Ireland, ...

13

Irene, Empress, ...

... 7. ii

Isidoros, Architect,

95

Isaac I. (Komnenos),

8

Isaac II. (Angelos),

8, 12, 26

Isaurians, the,

... 11, 16

Italy, ... ... 20,

165, 166, 226

Italian Republics,

... 90, 92

James I.,

13

Janissaries,

254

Jeanne d' Arc,

70

Jerusalem,

... 29, 32

Joasaph, Patriarch,

155

John Asian,

284

John I. (Tzimiskes), 17,

31,75,80,284

John II. (the Good),

17

John III. (Batatzes),

... 9, 18

John IV.,

9

John V.,

9

John VI. (Kantakouzenos), 9, 115

John II., Emperor of Trebizond, 97

John, Krai of the Bulgars, ... 26

John of Brienne, ...

9

John of Damascus,

103

Joseph II.,

259

Julian the Apostate,

... 28, 53

Julius Ctesar,

10

Justin I.,

6

Justinian I.,

16, 17, 101

Justinian II. (Rinotmetos), 7, 22, 65

Kalamas, see Thyamis.

Kalnoky, Count, ...

287

Kandelion,

142

Kandeliotes,

143

Kalarry tes,

... 165

Kastorches, the k.,

13°

Kedrenos,

103

Kieff, ...

24

Khazars,

27

Kleptai,... 168,

176, 254, 260

Kodinos, George, the

Kuropalates,

15.84

Komans,

27

Komnenoi,

8, 17, 122

Koraes, ...

260

Kotzebue,

165

Koumoundouros, the k.

234, 236,

237, 240

296

INDEX.

Kourkouas,Kydonia,

31
219

Lachanodrakon, ... ... 31
Lacroix, M., ... 141, 151
Lalliotes, ... ... 134
Lampros Katzones, ... 260
Larissa, ... ... ... 143
Laskaris, the k., .. 253, 256
Laybach, ... ... 175
Leake, Col., 133, 134, 135, 136, 141,
142, 143, 165
Legrand, M. Emile, ... 253
Leo I. (the Thracian and the Great), 6
Leo III. (the Isaurian), 7, 16, 31, 67
Leo IV. (the Khazar), ... 7
Leo V. (the Armenian), ... 7,114
Leo VI. (the Philosopher), 24, 75,
80, 103
Leontius II., ... ... 7
Leopold, Prince, 204, 208, 209, 210, 211
Lepanto, ... ... 35
Lesbos, ... ... ... 7
Leuchtenberg, Duke of, ... 227
Levant, the, ... ... 161
Lewis, King of Bavaria, ... 211
Lieven, Prince, ... ... 193
Luitprand of Cremona, ... 57
Macedonia, 21, 128, 129, 205, 221,
222, 267, 269, 270, 271, 278,
281, 282
Magyars, ... ... 26
Mahomet II., 9, 34,39, 96, 151, 155, 170
Mahmoud, Sultan, ... 220
Maina, ... ... ... 256
Malmesbury, the Earl of, 227, 228
Mamoukas, the k., 129, 137, 144, 153
Manuel I., ... 18, 38, 40
Manuel II., ... ... 115
Maurice, ... ... 23
Maurice, son-in-law of Tiberius II., 6
Marcian, ... ... 6, 21
Maurokordatos, the k., 198, 218, 222,
224, 238
Maximilian, Prince, of Este, 208
Messolonghi, ... ... 188
Methodius, St., 79, 268, 269, 270
Metternich, Prince, 182, 184, 187,
195. 196, 197. 198, 199. 200,
202
Michael I. (Rhangabes), ... 7
Michael II. (the Stammerer), 7, 1 14

Michael HI. (the Drunkard), 8, 12, 24
Michael VI. (the Warlike),... 8
Michael VIII. (Palaiologos), 9, 18,
38, 91
Mohammed Ali, ... ••• 180
Moldavia, ... ••• '75
Monembasia, ... ••• J34
Monreale, ... ¦¦• 96
Montenegro, ... ••¦ 289
Montesquieu, ... ••• 47
Morea, the, 134, 137, 144, 186, 202, 204
Mortreuil, M., ... 70, 72, 101, 102
Moschobakes, the k., 148, 152, 1 53
Mousa, ... ... ... 29
Mousaios, ... ... 103
Narses, ... ... ... 20
Navarino, ... 1 82, 201, 204
Nauplion, ... 176, 204
Nevers, the Duke of, 256, 259
Nesselrode, M. de, 185, 187, 188, 192
Nezib, ... ... ... 220
Nice, ... ... ... 9, 80
Nicolas, Patriarch, ... 75
Nikephoros L, ... 7> I0> 25
Nikephoros II. (Phokas), 7, n, 17,
3i. 75
Nicolas I., ... 189, 225
Nicolas, Patriarch, ... 75
Nicolas V., Pope, ... 41
Normans, ... ... 40, 92
Notaras, Luke, ... ... 39
Octavian, ... ... 10
Odessa, ... ... ... 222
Olivier, M., ... 142, 145
Olga, ... ... ... 24
Otho, King, 21 1, 216, 217, 218, 226,
227, 228
Ortakieue, ... ... 277
Ouzoi, ... ... ... 27
Palaiologoi, ... ... g, 122
Palermo, ... ... 96
Paparregopoulos, the k., 16, 19, 36,
56, 59, 64, 65, 77, 81, 89, 109
Paranikas, the k., ... 163
Pashley, Mr., ... ... I2g
Paswan Oglou, ... ... 284
Patrai, ... ... ... ,75
Patriarch, the Greek, ... 277
Patriarchate CEcumenical, of Con
stantinople, ... ... 277

INDEX.

297

Peloponnesos, 8, 129, 133, 197, 201,
202, 203
Pepin, ... ... ... 112
Peneus, ... ... 238, 239, 240
Persia, ... ... ' ... 28, 29
Peter, Emperor, ... ... 9
Peter the Great, ... ... 258
Peter the Hermit, ... 34
Petzenegoi, ... ... 26
Philemon the k., ... ... 167
Philip of Macedon, ... 59
Philip, Prince, of Hesse-Homburg, 208
Philippicus (Bardanes), ... 7
Photios, ... 103, 121
Piraieus, ... ... 225
Pisans, ... ... ... 91
Plato, ... ... ... 99
Plevna, ... ... ... 233
Polyeuktos, Patriarch, ... 75
Pouqueville, M., 129, 136, 138, 144,
148, 165
Prince of Philosophers, the, 98
Priscus, ... ... ... 22
Prokopius, ... ... 103
Psellos, Michael Constantine, 98
Pulcheria, St. Empress, ... 6, 21
Rambaud, M. A., ... 14, 66, 80, 114
Raphael, ... ... 96
Ravenna, the Exarchs of, ... 21
Rhegas, ... 210, 260, 261, 264
Robert M. Cyprien, 272,276, 283, 287
Romanus I. (Lekapenos), ... 24
Romanus II., ... ... 24
Romanus IV. (Diogenes), ... 32, 115
Rome, passim.
Rome, New, passim.
Rome, Old, passim.
Romulus Augustus, ... 5
Rurik, ... ... ... 24
Russia, passim.
Roumania, ... ... 250
Sapor, ... ... ... 28
Saint-Denis, M. Juchereau de, 133,
135. i63
Saint-Hilaire, M. Barthelemy, 239
Savary, M., ... 132, 139, 140
San Stefano, ... ... 88, 234
Sathas, the k., ... ... 254
Savoy, the Duke of, ... 256
Salisbury, Lord, ... ... 239
Samos, ... ... .. 229
Servia, ... . . 250, 289
Servians, 222, 267, 271, 274, 276
Siatista, ... ... ... 166

Simeon, Tzar,

284

Slavs, 22, 23, 25, 26,

120,

272, 280, 281

Socrates,

107

Souidas, ...

103

Synesios,

102
Sfakiotes,
145
Sobieski, John, ...
248
Souli,
219
Souliotes,
176
Spain, ...
2C
, 29, 166
Stefanopoli, the kk.,
129, 261
Stobaios,
102
Strangford, Lord,...
. 183
Strymon,
. 28, 127
Syracon,
¦ 165
Tadjeddin, Emir, ...
"5
Templars,
13
Tenaron,
219
Theodora, St 
78
Theodora, Empress,
8
Theodore I. (Laskaris)
•
¦ 9. 18
Theodore II.,
9
Theodore of the Studium, .
76
Theodosius I., the Great, .
• 5. 19
Theodosius II.,
21
Theodosius III., ...
7
Theophano, Empress,
75
Theophilos,
78',
"4. "5
Theophobos,
114, 115
Thessalonica,
205 269, 273
Thessaly, 129, 186, 205,
HI, 221,
224, 226, 236, 238,
24O,
243, 267
Thierry, M. A 
114
Thiers, M.,
68
Thiersch, M., 189,
190,
205, 211
Thoukydides,
121
Thrace, 21, 1 28, 129,
271,
278, 290
Thyamis (Kalamas),
238,
239, 240
Tiberius III. (Apsimaros), .
7
Togroul,
32
Tournefort, M 
148
Tours, ...
29
Tribonian,
102
Tripolitza, Pasha of,
144
Turks, passim,
Ulphilas,
79
Vandals,
. 20, 42
Vanli Pasha,
137
Varangians,
24
Venetians,
5
1, 92, 93
Venice, ...
• 92, 93
Vienna, ...
,
247
Villehardouin M.,
. 88, 131.
298

INDEX.

Villele, M. de, ... 194, 230
Verona,... 175, 177, 178, 180, 185
Vladimir, Grand Prince, ... 24

Volga, ...

... 22, 25

Volo, ...

166

Volo, Gulf of, ...

204, 208

Vostitza,

136

Warings,

24

Wellington, the Duke of, 189, 193,
195, 204, 206, 208, 210, 229, 285
Zampelios, the lc, Spyridon, 109
Zeno, ... ... ¦¦• 6
Zingis Khan, ... ... 53
Zoe Karbonopsina, ... 75
Zosimos, ... ... 102

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