lves into the hands of their foreign
patrons, the Greeks had found a new president for the republic in John
Kapodistrias, an intimate of Alexander the tsar. Kapodistrias was a
Corfiote count, with a Venetian education and a career in the Russian
diplomatic service, and no one could have been more fantastically
unsuitable for the task of reconstructing the country to which he was
called. Kapodistrias' ideal was the _fin-de-siecle_ 'police-state'; but
'official circles' did not exist in Greece, and he had no acquaintance
with the peasants and sailors whom he hoped to redeem by bureaucracy. 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. In fact he reglamented
Greece from his palace at Aigina like a divinely appointed autocrat, from
his arrival in January 1828 till the summer of 1831, when he provoked the
Hydhriots to open rebellion, and commissioned the Russian squadron in
attendance to quell them by a naval action, with the result that Poros was
sacked by the President's regular army and the national fleet was
completely destroyed. After that, he attempted to rule as a military
dictator, and fell foul of the Mavromichalis of Maina. The Mainates knew
better how to deal with the 'police-state' than the Hydhriots; and on
October 9, 1831, Kapodistrias was assassinated in Nauplia, at the church
door, by two representatives of the Mavromichalis clan.

The country lapsed into utter anarchy. Peloponnesians and Armatoli,
Kolokotronists and Kolettists, alternately appointed and deposed
subservient national assemblies and governing commissions by naked
violence, which culminated in a gratuitous and disastrous attack upon the
French troops stationed in Peloponnesos for their common protection. The
three powers realized that it was idle to liberate Greece from Ottoman
government unless they found her another in its place. They decided on
monarchy, and offered the crown, in February 1832, to Prince Otto, a
younger son of the King of Bavaria. The negotiations dragged on many
months longer than Greece could afford to wait. But in July 1832 the
sultan recognized the sovereign independence of the kingdom of Hellas in
consideration of a cash indemnity; and in Febr