a and England to follow this
Gallic will-o'-the-wisp. But England and Russia, in order to brush all the
cobwebs of French intrigue from a question which appeared to them too
important to be dealt with any longer by unauthorized agents, signed a
protocol at St Petersburg on the 4th April 1826, engaging to use their
good offices with the Sultan to put an end to the war. The Duke of
Wellington himself negotiated the signature of this protocol, and it is
one of the numerous services he has rendered to his country and to Europe,
as the Greek question threatened to disturb the peace of the East. France,
as well as Austria, refused to join, until it became evident that the two
powers were taking active measures to carry their decisions into effect,
when France gave in her adhesion, and the treaty of the 6th of July 1827,
was signed at London by France, Great Britain, and Russia.

Events soon ran away with calculations. The Turkish fleet was destroyed
at Navarino on the 20th October 1827, the anniversary (if we may trust
Mitford's _History of Greece_) of the battle of Salamis. France now
embarked in the cause, determined to outbid her allies, and sent an
expedition to the Morea, under Marshal Maison, to drive out the troops of
Ibrahim Pasha. Capo d'Istria assumed the absolute direction of political
affairs, and by his Russian partizanship and anti-Anglican prejudices,
plunged Greece in a new revolution, when his personal oppression of the
family of Mauromichalis caused his assassination. King Otho was then
selected as king of Greece, and the consent of the Greeks was obtained to
his appointment by a loan to the new monarch of L.2,400,000 sterling, and
by a good deal of intrigue and intimidation at the assembly of Pronia.[F]
The Greeks, however, had already solemnly informed the allied powers,
that the acts of their national assemblies, consolidating the
institutions of the Greek state, and by securing the liberties of the
Greek people, "were as precious to Greece as her existence itself;" and
the protecting powers had consecrated their engagement to support these
institutions, by annexing this declaration to their protocol of the 22d
March 1830.[G]

[Footnote F: Several national assemblies have been held in Greece. The
acts of the following have been printed in a collection composed of
several volumes. The first was held at Pidhavro, near Epidaurus, of which
its name is a corruption, in 1822; the others at Astros in 1823, at
E