In the following April, Russia declared war against Turkey, and the French government, by a protocol, were authorised to dispatch a French army of 14,000 men under the command of General Maison.  This force landed at Petalidi, in the Gulf of Coron.  Ibrahim Pasha withdrew his army to Egypt, and the French troops occupied the strong places of Greece almost without resistance from the Turkish garrisons.

France thus gained the honour of delivering Greece from the last of her conquerors, and she increased the debt of gratitude due by the Greeks by the admirable conduct of her soldiers, who converted mediaeval strongholds into habitable towns, repaired the fortresses, and constructed roads.  Count John Capodistrias, a Corfiot noble, who had been elected President of Greece in April 1827 for a period of seven years by the National Assembly of Troezen, arrived in Greece in January 1828.  He found the country in a state of anarchy, and at once put a stop to some of the grossest abuses in the army, navy, and financial administration.

V.—­The Greek Monarchy

The war terminated in 1829, and the Turks finally evacuated continental Greece in September of the same year.  The allied powers declared Greece an independent state with a restricted territory, and nominated Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (afterwards King of the Belgians) to be its sovereign.  Prince Leopold accepted the throne on February 11, but resigned it on May 17.  Thereafter Capodistrias exercised his functions as president in the most tyrannical fashion, and was assassinated on October 9, 1831; from which date till February 1833 anarchy prevailed in the country.

Agostino Capodistrias, brother of the assassinated president, who had been chosen president by the National Assembly on December 20, 1831, was ejected out of the presidency by the same assembly in April 1832, and Prince Otho of Bavaria was elected King of Greece.  Otho, accompanied by a small Bavarian army, landed from an English frigate in Greece at Nauplia on February 6, 1833.  He was then only seventeen years of age, and a regency of three Bavarians was appointed to administer the government during his minority, his majority being fixed at June 1, 1835.

The regency issued a decree in August 1833, proclaiming the national Church of Greece independent of the patriarchate and synod of Constantinople and establishing an ecclesiastical synod for the kingdom on the model of that of Russia, but with more freedom of action.  In judicial procedure, however, the regency placed themselves above the tribunals.  King Otho, who had come of age in 1835, and married a daughter of the Duke of Oldenburg in 1837, became his own prime minister in 1839, and claimed to rule with absolute power.  He did not possess ability, experience, energy, or generosity; consequently, he was not respected, obeyed, feared, or loved.  The administrative incapacity of King Otho’s counsellors disgusted the three protecting powers as much as their arbitrary conduct irritated the Greeks.