Page:The European Concert in the Eastern Question.djvu/20

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CHAPTER II.


GREECE.


1826–1881.


The Greeks and the Holy Alliance.The struggle for independence, commenced by the Greeks in 1821, was naturally distasteful to the Holy Alliance [1]. Count Nesselrode, in 1823, proposed ‘in order to paralyse the influence of the revolutionary party throughout Greece,’ to divide the country into three distinct governments, with local independence under the suzerainty of the Porte [2]; and conferences of the representatives of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and France were held at St. Petersburg in 1824 and 1825 with a view to inducing the Sultan and the insurgents to agree to some such solution of the question. But such a solution pleased neither party, and the Greeks appealed for help to England [3]. The Emperor Alexander died on 1st December, 1825, and with him died the Holy Alliance. Canning now saw his way to a new policy, and sent the Duke of Wellington to be its exponent at

  1. See the declaration addressed by the Greeks to the monarchs assembled at Verona, 28th August, 1822, and published in the following year, Martens, Nouveau Recueil, t. vi. p. 233.
  2. See the Russian memoir of 1824, British and Foreign State Papers, vol. xi. p. 826.
  3. See manifesto of 2nd August, 1835, Martens, N.R., t. vi. p. 781.