In which we learn of the dangers of compassion

Alexander I, King of Hair Parting.

Alright history fans, this is a new one for me. There aren't many opportunities for a ridiculous death and a turning point in a country's history to coincide but somehow Greece managed to pull it off.

So there was this thing back in the day. World War One, I believe they called it. Actually, that's not the focal point of this rhyme I am about to spit. Anyhow, Greece had been trying to get the Ottoman Empire to get out of its house for a large number of years. Apparently Turks smell a lot worse than fish after three days and Greece was getting sick of it. In fact, Greece had been more or less continuously at war with the Turks since the first Greco-Turkish War in 1897, an ill-fated attempt to answer the call for unification from the Greek majority on the island of Crete. A consequence of the failed military endeavor was a movement for military, economic and societal reforms spearheaded by Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, who took power in 1910.

So, at this point in time, all of the little countries in the Balkans are reaching a critical mass of disgruntled discontentment which, in the vernacular of the region, means lots of wanton stabbing and pillaging. Essentially, everybody (including Greece) wanted to annex the Ottoman-controlled territory of Rumelia, which stretched roughly from the coast of Albania in the West to Istanbul in the East. Everyone was convinced that the majority of that territory was part of their historical homeland, and they were all willing to screw each other over to get it. In fact, the Serbians kicked off the war with Turkey just to prevent Albanian rebels from securing their foothold in territory that they had their eyes on. Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece joined forces in an alliance called the Balkan League against the Ottomans.

Greek artillery shooting at rocks.

Now that Greece wasn't terrible at everything thanks to the reforms of Venizelos as well as the efforts of British and French military missions sent in 1910 and 1911 respectively, they actually pulled the war off this and did quite well. A far cry from the popular opinion preceding hostilities that "if there is war we shall probably see that the only thing Greek officers can do besides talking is to run away" as one British consulate put it.

So the war ended in 1913 with the Ottomans in full retreat. There was no question the the Balkan League was victorious, but the Treaty of London (1913), mediated by the Great Powers, only provided for the cessation of almost the entirety of Ottoman Europe to the League, not the particulars of how that territory was to be divided.

The Balkans are not soup.

Big mistake. The Bulgarians were pissed off at not being able to easily claim a disproportionately large chunk of the new territory, and declared war on their former League allies to assert their dominance. This time, however, Romania and the Ottomans joined with Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro to defeat the Bulgarians. To cut a long story short, the Bulgarians got their asses handed to them on a steaming platter, having lost more men than the rest of the belligerent nations combined (93,000 on both sides in two months!), and they eventually asked for an armistice. The resulting Treaty of Bucharest (also 1913) doubled Greece's size in both population and territory, with the area increasing from 25,014 to 41,933 square miles and its population from 2,660,000 to 4,363,000 people.

However, matters were far from settled between the Greeks and the Turks. The outbreak of World War One was complicated immensely by vicious disagreement and enmity between King Constantine I and Prime Minister Venizelos. As the war began the Greeks had to choose between neutrality and aligning themselves with the Allied forces. Outright participation in the war on the side of the Central Powers was not an option, both because of Greece's vulnerability to the Royal Navy and because the Ottoman Empire had joined in on Germany's side, and cooperation with them was just not proper conduct.

Mops versus Moustaches -- Battle of the Century

 

King Constantine favored neutrality because of his personal attachment to Germany. Not only was he educated there, but his wife Sofia was the sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II! Things seemed like a no-brainer from his point of view. On the other hand, Venizelos was in favor of joining the Entente, as he believed that Greece would be able to regain more of its lost territory from the Ottomans. Conflict in parliament made the King force Venizelos to resign twice, with the King invoking the Greek constitutional right giving the monarch the right to dismiss a government unilaterally, which he did to remove the Prime Minister and all of his supporters.

During his time in and out of office, Venizelos invited the British and French to land troops on Greek shores, a political move deemed treasonous and unconstitutional by the King's supporters. However, the Prime Minister had enough support to stage a coup, forming a second national government in opposition to the crown based in Thessaloniki. In response, Royalist paramilitary fighters attacked Allied troops and Venizelos supporters, resulting in armed conflict and a blockade of Greece by Allied warships. The King abdicated the throne in response to the threat of a bombardment of Athens, and left the country in the hands of Venizelos, and the throne in the hands of his young son Alexander.

Now you see where I'm heading with this, don't you?

Greece entered the war on the side of the Allies and performed admirably, and the Turks were given a sound thrashing. However, the Treaty of Sevres, drawn up in 1920 at the close of the war, was anything but satisfying to Greek ambitions despite the large amount of territory they gained:

 Venizelos, in a lengthy memorandum to the Allies (30 December 1918), had described in detail the distribution of the intrinsically Greek population which resided in areas adjacent to the Greek state. However, the Sèvres Peace Treaty was never ratified by the contracting parties, and thus it was never enforced. For Turkey, the Treaty of Sèvres signalled the end of the Ottoman Empire; for Greece, impoverished and without any help from its allies, it left the country exposed to the perils of Kemalist nationalism. 

For those not versed in the vocuabulary of fez enthusiasts, the word "Kemalist" signifies allegiance to the ideals of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the national revolutionary hero of Turkey. This guy was pretty intense. He essentially led a massive military campaign to turn the former Ottoman Empire into a westernized secular republic (with himself as dictatorial military leader of its free and liberated peoples as it were).

Thanks to the fact that Greek territory was full of Turks and Turkish territory was full of Greeks, and the Allies didn't seem to care, war seemed inevitable. The question was, who would start fighting so soon after the world war?

Actual psychopath

Enter the true villain of this tale.

Look at those eyes, full of regicide and bananas.

Yes, fellow time travelers, quit gawking and believe the rhymes I am about to spit.

The good King Alexander was on one beautiful October day taking a walk with his dog in the Royal Gardens in Athens. Suddenly, his pet was beset by two psycho monkeys. No really, I'm totally serious. Maybe his dog was a freakish yellow dachshund and nature took the wheel. Maybe they were secretly Turkish operatives working to assassinate the King. Or maybe the monkeys were just having one of those days (they didn't really know why, but they wanted to justify rippin' someone's head off etc). The King went beast mode and proceeded to crack open a can of whoop-ass on the monkeys in defense of his dog. In the process, he was bitten a few times, but successfully fended off the monkeys, who were put down by his guards. It turns out that these monkeys were infected with what was probably Herpes Simian B virus, which causes unremarkable oral lesions in a monkey but will kill the hell out of humans. Ten days after getting bitten, King Alexander I of Greece was dead from infection.

His father, King Constantine, was back in the saddle again, and decided to celebrate WITH A WAR.

Next time, we'll talk about that war, about which Winston Fathill said: "it was a monkey bite that caused the death of those 250,000 people."



--Matt

P.S. I dare you, I double-dog dare you, I DEFY you to find me a monarch death sillier than that. (Seriously if you do I'll write a post about it.)

Those prehistoric Greeks really overdid it with the amateur demolitions.