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About the same time two Phanariot princes threw in their lot with the revolution Alexander Mavrokordatos and Demetrius, the more estimable brother of the futile Alexander Hypsilantis. Both were saturated with the most recent European political theory, and they committed the peasants and seamen of the liberated districts to an ambitious constitutionalism.
The English ambassador at Constantinople had a secret interview with Mavrokordatos on an island near Hydra, and promised him the intervention of England. The death of the Czar Alexander gave a new aspect to affairs; for his successor, Nicholas, made up his mind to raise his standard in Turkey. The national voice of Russia was now for war. The Duke of Wellington was sent to St.
The gentlemanly Phanariots had fallen into the background. Mavrokordatos only retained influence in north-western Greece. In Peloponnesos the Primates were all-powerful, and Kolokotrónis the klepht was meditating a popular dictatorship at their expense.
The leaders were so full of discords and personal ambition that they would not unite on anything. Mavrokordatos and Ypsilanti were not on speaking terms. One is naturally astonished at such suicidal courses, but he forgets what a powerful passion jealousy is in the human soul.
Thus ended the campaign of 1821, with mutual successes and losses, disgraced on both sides by treachery and massacres; but the Greeks were sufficiently emboldened to declare their independence, and form a constitution under Prince Mavrokordatos as president, a Chian by birth, who had been physician to the Sultan.
But the mountains of Epirus were still filled with Turkish troops, who advanced to lay siege to Missolonghi, defended by a small garrison of four hundred men under Marco Bozzaris. Mavrokordatos contrived to come to his relief, and the town soon had three thousand defenders.
The Greek operations were not so fortunate at first on the land as they were on the sea. Mavrokordatos led in person an expedition into Epirus; but he was no general, and failed disastrously.
It was a rash enterprise, but came near being successful on account of the negligence of the garrison, which numbered only fifteen hundred men. An escalade was attempted by Mavrokordatos, one of the heroic chieftains of the Greeks; but it was successfully repulsed, and the attacking generals with difficulty escaped to Argos.
In December 1821 a 'National Assembly' met at Epidauros, passed an elaborate organic law, and elected Mavrokordatos first president of the Hellenic Republic.
He instituted a hierarchically centralized administration which made the abortive constitution of Mavrokordatos seem sober by comparison; he trampled on the liberty of the rising press, which was the most hopeful educational influence in the country; and he created superfluous ministerial portfolios for his untalented brothers.
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