and Ottoman regimes
and was allowed to control the communal government in return. 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. In December
1821 a 'National Assembly' met at Epidauros, passed an elaborate organic
law, and elected Mavrokordatos first president of the Hellenic Republic.

The struggle for life and death in 1822 had staved off the internal
crisis, but the Peloponnesian Senate remained obstinately recalcitrant
towards the National Government in defence of its own vested interests;
and the insubordination of the fleet in 1823 was of one piece with the
political faction which broke out as soon as the immediate danger from
without was removed.

Towards the end of 1823 European 'Philhellenes' began to arrive in Greece.
In those dark days of reaction that followed Waterloo, self-liberated
Hellas seemed the one bright spot on the continent; but the idealists who
came to offer her their services were confronted with a sorry spectacle.
The people were indifferent to their leaders, and the leaders at variance
among themselves. The gentlemanly Phanariots had fallen into the
background. Mavrokordatos only retained influence in north-western Greece.
In Peloponnesos the Primates were all-powerful, and Kolokotronis the
klepht was meditating a popular dictatorship at their expense. In the
north-east the adventurer Odhyssevs had won a virtual dictatorship
already, and was suspected of intrigue with the Turks; and all this
factious dissension rankled into civil war as soon as the contraction of a
loan in Great Britain had invested the political control of the Hellenic
Republic with a prospective value in cash. The first civil war was fought
between Kolokotronis on the one side and the Primates of Hydhra and
Peloponnesos on the other; but the issue was decided against Kolokotronis
by the adhesion to the coalition of Kolettis the Vlach, once physician to
Mukhtar Pasha, the son of Ali, and now political agent for all the
northern Armatoli in the national service. The fighting lasted from
November 1823 to June 1824, and was followed by another outbreak in
November of the latter year, when the victors quarrelled over the s