History of the Kingdom of Greece. Part XIV. Reign of King Constantine II, Exile and Monarchy Is Abolished

Tags

Anne-Marie of Denmark, Exile, General Georgios Zoitakis, King Constantine II of the Hellenes, King Paul of the Hellenes, Military Junta, Monarchy Abolished, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

Constantine II (June 2, 1940 – January 10, 2023) was the last King of the Hellenes reigning from March 6, 1964 until the abolition of the Greek monarchy on June 1, 1973.

Constantine was born in Athens as the only son of Crown Prince Paul and Crown Princess Frederica of Greece. Born Her Royal Highness Frederica Princess of Hanover, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, and Princess of Brunswick-Lüneburg on April 18, 1917 in Blankenburg am Harz, in the German Duchy of Brunswick, she was the only daughter and third child of Ernst August, then reigning Duke of Brunswick, and his wife Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia, herself the only daughter of the German Emperor Wilhelm II and his wife Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg.

Prince Constantine had an elder sister, Princess Sofia, born in 1938. However, since agnatic primogeniture governed the succession to throne in Greece at the time, the birth of a male heir to the throne had been anxiously awaited by the Greek royal family, and the newborn prince was therefore received with joy by his parents.

His birth was celebrated with a 101–gun salute from Mount Lycabettus in Athens, which, according to tradition, announced that the newborn was a boy. According to Greek naming practices, being the first son, he was named after his paternal grandfather, Constantine I, who had died 17 years earlier in 1923. At his baptism in Athens, the Hellenic Armed Forces acted as his godparent.

Being of Danish descent, Constantine was also born as a Prince of Denmark. As his family was forced into exile during the Second World War, he spent the first years of his childhood in Egypt and South Africa. He returned to Greece with his family in 1946 during the civil war.

After Constantine’s uncle George II died in 1947, Paul became the new king and Constantine the crown prince. As a young man, Constantine was a competitive sailor and Olympian, winning a gold medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics in the Dragon class along with Odysseus Eskitzoglou and George Zaimis in the yacht Nireus. From 1964 he served on the International Olympic Committee.

Constantine acceded as King following his father’s death in 1964. Later that year he married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, the youngest daughter of King Frederik IX of Denmark and Princess Ingrid of Sweden, the daughter of King Gustaf VI Adolph of Sweden and his first wife, Princess Margaret of Connaught, a granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria.

Anne-Marie is the youngest sister of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. She is also a first cousin of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and a second cousin of King Harald V of Norway. Anne-Marie and her husband Constantine were third cousins: they shared King Christian IX of Denmark as patrilineal great-great-grandfather. They also shared Queen Victoria as a great-great-grandmother.

They had five children: Princess Alexia, Crown Prince Pavlos, Prince Nikolaos, Princess Theodora, and Prince Philippos.

Although the accession of the young monarch was initially regarded auspiciously, his reign saw political instability.

The opportunity to be removed from the Greek Orthodox Cephaly, in fact it was one of the first measures with which Constantine collaborated with the Junta. On April 28th, 1967, Chrysostomos II was retained and was forced to resign after having to sign one of the two versions of the letter brought to him by an official of the royal palace. Finally, Ieronymos Kotsonis was elected as metropolitan by the junta’s and Constantine’s proposal on May 13, 1967.

From the outset, the relationship between Constantine and the regime of the colonels was an uneasy one, especially when he refused to sign the decree imposing martial law and asked Talbot to flee Greece in an American helicopter with his family.

But the administration of US president Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to keep Constantine in Greece to negotiate with the junta for the return of democracy. The presence of the United States Sixth Fleet in the Aegean Sea outraged the junta government, which forced Constantine to get rid of his private secretary, Michail Arnaoutis [el]. Arnaoutis, who had served as the king’s military instructor in the 1950s and became his close friend, was generally reviled among the public for his role in the palace intrigues of the previous years.

The king and his entourage were beginning to worry that the future of the monarchy was endangered. Constantine visited the United States in the following days and in a meeting with Johnson, Constantine asked for military aid for a countercoup he was planning, but without success. The junta, however, had information about Constantine’s conspiracy. Constantine later described himself as having the idea of a countercoup ten minutes after he found out about the junta’s rise to power.

On the morning of the day the countercoup had been rescheduled to, December 13, 1967, after eight months of planning the countercoup, the royal family flew to Kavala, east of Thessaloniki, accompanied by Prime Minister Konstantinos Kollias who was informed at that moment of Constantine’s plan.

They arrived at 11:30 a.m. and were well received by the citizens. But some conspirators were neutralised, such as General Manettas, and Odysseas Angelis informed the public of the plan, asking citizens to obey his orders minutes before telecommunications were cut off.

By noon, all the airbases, except one in Athens, had joined the royalist movement, and fleet leader Vice Admiral Dedes, before being arrested, ordered successfully the whole fleet to sail towards Kavala in obedience to the king.

They did not manage to take Thessaloniki and it soon became apparent that the senior officers were not in control of their units. This, along with the arrest of several officers, including the capture of Peridis that afternoon, and the delay in the execution of some orders, led to the countercoup’s failure.

The junta, led by Georgios Papadopoulos, on the same day appointed General Georgios Zoitakis as Regent of Greece. Archbishop Ieronymos swore Zoitakis into office in Athens. Constantine, the royal family and Prime Minister Konstantinos Kollias took off in torrential rain from Kavala for exile in Rome, where they arrived at 4 p.m. on December 14th with their plane having only five minutes of fuel left. In 2004, Constantine said that he would have done everything the same, but with more caution.

Two weeks after his exile, photos of Constantine and his family celebrated Christmas with normality in the Greek Ambassador to Italy’s home reached Greek media, which didn’t do Constantine’s reputation “any favour”. He remained in exile in Italy through the rest of military rule.

King Constantine II formally remained Greece’s head of state in exile until the junta abolished the monarchy in June 1973 (a decision ratified via a referendum in July). After the restoration of democracy a year later, a second referendum was held in December 1974, which confirmed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic.

While Constantine had contested the results of the 1973 referendum, he accepted the verdict of the 1974 vote, even though he had not been allowed to return to Greece to campaign. After living for several decades in London, Constantine moved back to Athens in 2013. He died there in 2023 following a stroke.

From the Emperor’s Desk: I will conclude this series next week with my assessment and thoughts on the Greek monarchy.

April 18, 796: Death of Æthelred, King of Northumbria

Tags

England, Heptarchy, King Ælfwald of Northumbria, King Æthelred of Northumbria, King Osred II of Northumbria, Kingdom of Northumbria, Pope Paul I

From the Emperor’s Desk: Today’s entry focuses on Æthelred of Northumbria. Northumbria was an early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom in what is now Northern England and south-east Scotland.

The name derives from the Old English Norþanhymbre meaning “the people or province north of the Humber”, as opposed to the people south of the Humber Estuary. Northumbria started to consolidate into one kingdom in the early seventh century, when the two earlier core territories of Deira and Bernicia entered into a dynastic union.

At its height, the kingdom extended from the Humber, Peak District and the River Mersey on the south to the Firth of Forth (now in Scotland) on the north. Northumbria ceased to be an independent kingdom in the mid-tenth century when Deira was conquered by the Danes and formed into the Kingdom of York.

The rump Earldom of Bamburgh maintained control of Bernicia for a period of time; however, the area north of the Tweed was eventually absorbed into the medieval Kingdom of Scotland while the portion south of the Tweed was absorbed into the Kingdom of England and formed into the county of Northumberland and County Palatine of Durham.

Æthelred (c. 762 – 18 April 796), was the king of Northumbria from 774 to 779 and again from 790 until he was murdered in 796. He was the son of Æthelwald Moll and Æthelthryth and possibly became king while still a child after Alhred was deposed.

Family and early life

The origin of Æthelred’s family isn’t recorded, but his father Æthelwald, who was also called Moll, seems to have come from a noble background. Æthelwald first appears in the historical records in a letter written by Pope Paul I to king Eadberht, ordering him to return lands taken from an Abbot Fothred, which were given to his brother Moll.

After the abdication of king Eadberht in 758, his son Oswulf took his place but despite his father’s long reign and his powerful uncle Ecgbert, he was murdered just a year later in 759 at Market Weighton by his own bodyguards. The murder was possibly ordered by Æthelwald as he became king soon after. In 761 Oswulf’s brother Oswine met Æthelwald in battle but Oswine was killed in the fighting at Eildon Hill on 6 August.

Silver styca of Aethelred

After his victory, Æthelwald married Æthelthryth at Catterick on November 1, 762. Æthelwald was deposed as king on 30 October 765, by a council of noblemen and prelates, and replaced by Alhred, the brother-in-law of Oswulf and Oswine.

First Term

After ruling for nearly ten years, the Northumbrians drove out King Alhred from York in 774. They then chose Æthelred as their king and he was “crowned with such great honour”. In the year after his accession Æthelred, who may have been influenced by his father Æthelwald, ordered the killing of an Ealdorman, Eadwulf..

Æthelred was deposed as king and the throne passed on to Ælfwald, a grandson of Eadberht Eating.

Restoration

Æthelred lived in exile during the reign of Ælfwald and his successor Osred II. However, in 788 or 789, Osred was deposed, forcibly tonsured and exiled and Æthelred was restored to the throne.

In 790, during Æthelred’s second reign, the ealdorman Eardwulf was ordered to be killed by Æthelred but survived and later became king. Ælfwald’s sons Ælf and Ælfwine were killed, probably on Æthelred’s orders, in 791.

The next year Osred attempted to regain the throne, but was defeated, captured and killed on September 14, 792. A year later, Lindisfarne was sacked by the Vikings with Alcuin’s letters to Æthelred blaming this event on the sins of Æthelred and his nobility.

On September 29, 792 Æthelred married Ælfflæd the daughter of Offa of Mercia at Catterick.

Death and succession

While Æthelred was in Corbridge a group of conspiring nobles murdered him on April 18, 796. As a result, Osbald, an ealdorman and a friend of Alcuin, Æthelred’s former adviser, became king, but within 27 days he abdicated.

April 4, 1814: Emperor Napoleon abdicates (conditionally) for the first time

Tags

Abdication, Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, Battle of Dresden, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, Emperor Napoleon I of the French, Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain, Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon II, War of the Sixth Coalition

Napoleon Bonaparte (August 15, 1769 – May 5, 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a Corsica-born French military commander and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars.

He was the de facto leader of the French Republic as First Consul from 1799 to 1804, then Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814 and again in 1815. Napoleon’s political and cultural legacy endures to this day, as a highly celebrated and controversial leader. He initiated many liberal reforms that have persisted in society, and is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history. His campaigns are still studied at military academies worldwide. Between three and six million civilians and soldiers died in what became known as the Napoleonic Wars.

War of the Sixth Coalition

Napoleon assumed command in Germany and inflicted a series of defeats on the Coalition culminating in the Battle of Dresden in August 1813.

Despite these successes, the numbers continued to mount against Napoleon, and the French army was pinned down by a force twice its size and lost at the Battle of Leipzig. This was by far the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars and cost more than 90,000 casualties in total.

The Allies offered peace terms in the Frankfurt proposals in November 1813. Napoleon would remain as Emperor of the French, but it would be reduced to its “natural frontiers”. That meant that France could retain control of Belgium, Savoy and the Rhineland (the west bank of the Rhine River), while giving up control of all the rest, including all of Spain and the Netherlands, and most of Italy and Germany.

Metternich told Napoleon these were the best terms the Allies were likely to offer; after further victories, the terms would be harsher and harsher. Metternich’s motivation was to maintain France as a balance against Russian threats while ending the highly destabilizing series of wars.

Napoleon, expecting to win the war, delayed too long and lost this opportunity; by December the Allies had withdrawn the offer. When his back was to the wall in 1814 he tried to reopen peace negotiations on the basis of accepting the Frankfurt proposals.

The Allies now had new, harsher terms that included the retreat of France to its 1791 boundaries, which meant the loss of Belgium, but Napoleon would remain Emperor. However, he rejected the term. The British wanted Napoleon permanently removed, and they prevailed, though Napoleon adamantly refused.

Napoleon withdrew into France, his army reduced to 70,000 soldiers and little cavalry; he faced more than three times as many Allied troops. Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s older brother, abdicated as king of Spain on December 13, 1813 and assumed the title of lieutenant general to save the collapsing empire.

The French were surrounded: British armies pressed from the south, and other Coalition forces positioned to attack from the German states. By the middle of January 1814, the Coalition had already entered France’s borders and launched a two-pronged attack on Paris, with Prussia entering from the north, and Austria from the East, marching out of the capitulated Swiss confederation.

The French Empire, however, would not go down so easily. Napoleon launched a series of victories in the Six Days’ Campaign. While they repulsed the coalition forces and delayed the capture of Paris by at least a full month, these were not significant enough to turn the tide.

The coalitionaries camped on the outskirts of the capital on March 29. A day later, they advanced onto the demoralised soldiers protecting the city. Joseph Bonaparte led a final battle at the gates of Paris. They were greatly outnumbered, as 30,000 French soldiers were pitted against a combined coalition force that was 5 times greater than theirs. They were defeated, and Joseph retreated out of the city.

The leaders of Paris surrendered to the Coalition on the last day of March 1814. On April 1, Emperor Alexander I of Russia addressed the Sénat conservateur. Long docile to Napoleon, under Talleyrand’s prodding it had turned against him. Emperor Alexander told the Sénat that the Allies were fighting against Napoleon, not France, and they were prepared to offer honourable peace terms if Napoleon were removed from power. The next day, the Sénat passed the Acte de déchéance de l’Empereur (“Emperor’s Demise Act”), which declared Napoleon deposed.

When Napoleon proposed the army march on the capital, his senior officers and marshals mutinied. On April 4 led by Ney, the senior officers confronted Napoleon. When Napoleon asserted the army would follow him, Ney replied the army would follow its generals.

While the ordinary soldiers and regimental officers wanted to fight on, the senior commanders were unwilling to continue. Without any senior officers or marshals, any prospective invasion of Paris would have been impossible.

Bowing to the inevitable, on April 4 Emperor Napoleon abdicated in favour of his son, Napoleon II, Emperor of the French, with his mother Marie Louise as regent. However, the Allies refused to accept this under prodding from Emperor Alexander, who feared that Napoleon might find an excuse to retake the throne. Napoleon was then forced to announce his unconditional abdication only two days later.

April 4, 1819: Birth of Queen Maria II of Portugal

Tags

Brazil, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil, Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, House of Braganza, Infanta Maria de Gloria of Portugal, King John VI of Portugal, King Miguel I of Portugal, King Pedro IV of Portugal, Queen Maria II of Portugal, Usurper

Maria II (April 4, 1819 – November 15, 1853) was Queen of Portugal from 1826 to 1828, and again from 1834 to 1853. One of the two surviving children born when future King Pedro IV was still heir apparent to Portugal, she inherited Portuguese titles and was placed in the line of succession to the former Portuguese throne, even after becoming a member of the Brazilian imperial family, from which she was excluded in 1835 after her definitive ascension to the Portuguese throne.

Birth

Maria II was born Infanta Maria da Glória on April 4, 1819 in the Palace of São Cristóvão in Rio de Janeiro, Kingdom of Brazil. She was the eldest daughter of Prince Dom Pedro de Alcântara, future King of Portugal as Pedro IV and first Emperor of Brazil as Pedro I, and his first wife Archduchess Caroline of Austria, herself a daughter of Franz II, Holy Roman Emperor and his second wife, Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily.

Infanta Maria da Glória was titled Princess of Beira upon her birth. Born in Brazil, Maria was the only European monarch to have been born outside of Europe, though she was still born in Portuguese territory.

Her father, Infante Pedro of Portugal, living in Brazil after the Portuguese Royal Family escaped there in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, was acclaimed Emperor Pedro I on his 24th birthday, which coincided with the inauguration of the Empire of Brazil on October 12. He was crowned on December 1 in what is today known as the Old Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro.

Succession crisis

The death of Maria’s grandfather, King João VI of Portugal in March 1826 sparked a succession crisis in Portugal. Before his death, the king had nominated his favourite daughter, Dona Isabel Maria, to serve as regent until “the legitimate heir returned to the kingdom” — but he had failed to specify which of his sons was the legitimate heir: the liberal Emperor Pedro I or the absolutist, exiled Miguel. However, Infante Miguel, had been exiled to Austria after leading a number of revolutions against his father and his liberal regime.

Most people considered Pedro to be the legitimate heir, but Brazil did not want him to unite Portugal and Brazil’s thrones again. Aware that his brother’s supporters were ready to bring Miguel back and put him on the throne.

The Emperor was proclaimed King on March 10, 1826, and succeeded his father on the Portuguese throne as King Pedro IV.

Aware that a reunion of Brazil and Portugal would be unacceptable to the people of both nations. Pedro decided for a more consensual option: he would renounce his claim to the Portuguese throne in favor of his eldest daughter Maria (who was only seven years old). His abdication on May 2 was conditional: Portugal was required to accept the Constitution which he had drafted and Maria II was to marry his brother Miguel (her uncle) who would accept the liberal constitution and act as a regent until his niece reached the age of majority.

Miguel pretended to accept, but upon his arrival in Portugal, he immediately deposed Maria II and proclaimed himself King of Portugal on June 23, 1828. Then began the Liberal Wars that lasted until 1834. King Miguel abrogating the liberal constitution in the process. During his reign, Maria traveled to many European courts, including her maternal grandfather’s in Vienna, as well as London and Paris.

After a three-year civil war, Miguel I was forced to abdicate at the Concession of Evoramonte (May 26, 1834). Miguel embarked on June 1, 1834 on a British warship from Sines bound for Genoa; he lived in exile first in Italy, then in England, and finally in Germany. He never returned to Portugal.

Maria was thereupon restored to the throne, and obtained an annulment of her betrothal. Soon after her restoration to the throne, her father died from tuberculosis.

Occupying the Portuguese throne, Maria II was still heir presumptive to her brother Emperor Pedro II of Brazil as Princess Imperial of Brazil, until her exclusion from the Brazilian line of succession by law no. 91 of October 30, 1835.

Queen Maria II married Auguste, Duke of Leuchtenberg, son of Eugène de Beauharnais and grandson of the Empress Josephine of France, on 26 January 26, 1835, at the age of fifteen. However, he died only two months later, on March 28, 1835.

On April 9, 1836, Maria married the cultured and able Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Saalfeld, eldest son of Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and his wife Princess Maria Antonia Koháry de Csábrág et Szitnya, heiress to the House of Koháry.

In accordance with Portuguese law, he had a right to be King of Portugal through jure uxoris as the husband of Queen Maria II. However, according to the law he would not be proclaimed King until the birth of their first child and heir, Pedro. He was Co-sovereign as King Fernando II rom the birth of their first son in 1837 to her death in 1853.

In 1842, Pope Gregory XVI presented Maria with a Golden Rose.

Maria’s reign saw a revolutionary insurrection on May 26, 1846, but this was crushed by royalist troops on February 22, 1847, and Portugal otherwise avoided the European Revolution of 1848. Maria’s reign was also notable for a public health act aimed at curbing the spread of cholera throughout the country. She also pursued policies aimed at raising the levels of education throughout the country.

Death

From her first pregnancy at the age of eighteen, Maria II faced problems in giving birth, with prolonged and extremely difficult labor. An example of this was her third gestation, whose labor lasted 32 hours, after which a girl was baptized in articulo mortis with the name of Maria (1840).

At 25 years of age and in her fifth gestation, Maria II became obese and her births became even more complicated. In 1847, the fetal distress that preceded the birth of her eighth child – the Infante Augusto, Duke of Coimbra – brought to the world a child “quite purple and with little breathing”.

The dangerous routine of successive pregnancies, coupled with obesity (which eventually caused her heart problems) and the frequency of dystocic births (worrisome, especially as a multiparous woman) led doctors to warn the queen about the serious risks she would face in future pregnancies. Indifferent to the warnings, Maria II merely replied: “If I die, I die at my post.”

On November 15, 1853, thirteen hours after the onset of labor of the stillborn Infante Eugénio, her eleventh child, Maria II died at the age of 34.

Queen Maria II was succeeded by her eldest son as King Pedro V of Portugal. As the eldest son of Queen Maria II and King Fernando II, Pedro was a member of the House of Bragança. As heir apparent to the throne he was styled Prince Royal and was also the 23rd Duke of Braganza (Duque de Bragança.

Pedro V, along with his brothers Fernando and João and other royal family members, succumbed to typhoid fever or cholera in 1861.

March 24, 1720: Prince Frederick of Hesse-Cassel is Elected King of Sweden

Tags

Battle of Blenheim, Battle of Speyerbach, Frederick of Hesse-Cassel, King Carl XII of Sweden, King Frederick I of Sweden, Queens Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden, Swedish Estates

Frederick I (April 28, 1676 – April 5, 1751) was Prince Consort of Sweden from 1718 to 1720, and King of Sweden from 1720 until his death and also Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel from 1730.

He was the son of Charles I, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and Princess Maria Amalia of Courland. In 1692 the young prince made his Grand Tour to the Dutch Republic, in 1695 to the Italian Peninsula and later he studied in Geneva.

After this he had a military career, leading the Hessian troops as Lieutenant General in the War of the Spanish Succession on the side of the Dutch. He was defeated in 1703 in the Battle of Speyerbach, but participated the next year in the great victory in the Battle of Blenheim. In 1706 he was again defeated by the French in the Battle of Castiglione. In 1716 and 1718 he joined the campaign of King Carl XII of Sweden against Norway, and was appointed Swedish Generalissimus.

Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden

On May 31, 1700 Frederick married Luise Dorothea of Prussia the daughter of Friedrich I, the first king in Prussia, by his first wife Elisabeth Henriette of Hesse-Cassel. They were married in Berlin in a grand ceremony which took place for several weeks at great costs. Conrad Mel wrote Font Legatio orientalis at the occasion. During her five years of marriage, Luise Dorothea suffered from poor health. She died in childbirth.

Prince Consort of Sweden

Frederick married his second wife, Princess Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden, in 1715. She was the youngest child of King Carl XI and Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark and named after her mother. Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark was the daughter of King Frederik III of Denmark-Norway and his spouse, Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

After the death of her brother King Carl XII in 1718, she claimed the throne. Her deceased older sister, Hedvig Sophia, had left a son, Charles Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp, who had the better claim by primogeniture. Ulrika Eleonora asserted that she was the closest surviving relative of the late king (the idea of proximity of blood) and cited the precedent of Queen Christina. She was recognized as a successor by the Riksdag after she had agreed to renounce the powers of absolute monarchy established by her father.

Upon his marriage to Princess Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden, Frederick was then granted the title Prince of Sweden, with the style Royal Highness, by the estates, and was prince consort there during Ulrika Eleonora’s rule as queen regnant from 1718 until her abdication in 1720. He is the only Swedish prince consort there has been to date. Frederick I had much influence during the reign of his spouse.

King Frederick I of Sweden

Some historians have suggested that the bullet which killed his brother-in-law Carl XII of Sweden in 1718 was actually fired by Frederick’s aide André Sicre. Carl XII had been an authoritarian and demanding ruler.

Frederick succeeded Ulrika Eleonora on the throne upon her abdication in his favor on February 29, 1720, and was elected King of Sweden on March 24 by the Swedish Estates. One reason the Swedish Estates elected Frederick was because he was taken to be fairly weak, which indeed he turned out to be.

The defeats suffered by Carl XII in the Great Northern War ended Sweden’s position as a first-rank European power. Under Frederick, this had to be accepted. Sweden also had to cede Estonia, Ingria and Livonia to Russia in the Treaty of Nystad, in 1721.

Frederick I was a very active and dynamic king at the beginning of his 31-year reign. But after the aristocracy had regained power during the wars with Russia, he became uninterested in affairs of state. In 1723, he tried to strengthen royal authority, but after he failed, he never had much to do with politics. He did not even sign official documents; instead a stamp of his signature was used. He devoted most of his time to hunting and love affairs. His marriage to Queen Ulrika Eleonora was childless, but he had several children by his mistress, Hedvig Taube.

As a king, he was not very respected. When he was crowned, it was said of him: “King Carl XII we recently buried, King Frederick we crown – suddenly the clock has now passed from twelve to one”. It is said about him, that although a lot of great achievements in the country’s development happened during his reign, he never had anything to do with them himself.

His powerless reign and lack of legitimate heirs of his own saw his family’s elimination from the line of succession after the parliamentary government dominated by pro-revanchist Hat Party politicians ventured into a war with Russia, which ended in defeat and the Russian Empress Elizabeth getting Adolf Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp instated following the death of the king. Whilst being the only Swedish monarch to be named Frederick, he is known as Frederick I despite other Swedish monarchs with non-repeating names (such as Birger, Sigismund and his successor: Adolph Frederick) not being given numerals.

King Frederick I of Sweden

Frederick became Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel only in 1730, ten years after becoming King of Sweden. He immediately appointed his younger brother Wilhelm governor of Hesse.

As Landgrave, Frederick is generally not seen as a success. Indeed, he did concentrate more on Sweden, and due to his negotiated, compromise-like ascension to the throne there, he and his court had a very low income. The money for that very expensive court, then, since the 1730s came from wealthy Hesse, and this means that Frederick essentially behaved like an absentee landlord and drained Hessian resources to finance life in Sweden.

Upon his death Frederick was succeeded in Sweden by Adolph Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp; (1710 – 1771). He was the son of Christian August of Holstein-Gottorp, Prince of Eutin, and Albertina Frederica of Baden-Durlach. He was an uncle of Empress Catherine II the Great of Russia.

In Hesse-Cassel, he was succeeded by his younger brother as Landgrave Wilhelm VIII, a famous general.

History of the Kingdom of Greece: Part IX, Second Reign and Abdication of King Constantine I

Tags

Anatolia, Balkan War of 1913, Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir, King Alexander of the Hellenes, King Constantine I of the Hellenes, king George II of the Hellenes, Plebiscite, Prime Minister Venizelos, princess Sophie of Prussia, World War I

As mentioned in my last entry, King Alexander died on October 25, 1920, after a freak accident: he was strolling with his dogs in the royal menagerie, when they attacked a monkey. Rushing to save the poor animal, the king was bitten by the monkey and what seemed like a minor injury turned to sepsis. He died a few days later. The following month Prime Minister Venizelos suffered a surprising defeat in a general election.

Greece had at this point been at war for eight continuous years: World War I had come and gone, but yet no sign of an enduring peace was near, as the country was already at war against the Kemalist forces in Asia Minor. Young men had been fighting and dying for years, lands lay fallow for lack of hands to cultivate them, and the country, morally exhausted, was at the brink of economic and political unravelling.

Constantine I, King of the Hellenes

The pro-royalist parties had promised peace and prosperity under the victorious Field Marshal of the Balkan Wars, he who knew of the soldier’s plight because he had fought next to him and shared his ration.

Following a plebiscite in which nearly 99% of votes were cast in favor of the return of the King, Constantine returned as king on December 19, 1920. This caused great dissatisfaction not only to the newly liberated populations in Asia Minor, but also to the British and even more the French, who opposed the return of Constantine.

The new government decided to continue the war. The inherited, ongoing campaign began with initial successes in western Anatolia against the Turks. The Greeks initially met with disorganized opposition.

In March 1921, despite his health problems, Constantine was landed in Anatolia to boost the Army’s morale and command personally the Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir.

However, an ill-conceived plan to capture Kemal’s new capital of Ankara, located deep in barren Anatolia, where there was no significant Greek population, succeeded only in its initial stages. The overextended and ill-supplied Greek Army was routed and driven from Anatolia back to the coast in August 1922.

Constantine with his family, ca. 1910. Top left: the king holding the toddler Princess Irene. Top right: the future George II. Left: Queen Sophia. Center: Princess Helen. Right: the future Alexander I. Front: the future Paul I. Princess Katherine not yet born.

Following an army revolt by Venizelist officers, considering him as key responsible for the military defeat, King Constantine abdicated the throne again on September 27, 1922 and was succeeded by his eldest son, as King George II of the Hellenes.

Second exile and death

Constantine spent the last four months of his life in exile in Italy and died at 1:30 am on January 11, 1923 at Palermo, Sicily of heart failure. His wife, Sophie of Prussia, was never allowed back to Greece and was later interred beside her husband in the Russian Church in Florence.

After his restoration on the Greek throne, George II organized the repatriation of the remains of members of his family who died in exile. An important religious ceremony that brought together, for six days in November 1936, all members of the royal family still alive. Constantine’s body was buried at the royal burial ground at Tatoi Palace, where he remains.

March 19, 1808: Abdication of King Carlos IV of Spain

Tags

Abdication, Emperor of the French, King Charles III of Spain, King Charles IV of Spain, King Louis XV of France and Navarre, King Louis XVI of France and Navarre, Napoleon Bonaparte, Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy, Princess Maria Louisa of Bourbon-Parma, Queen of Spain

Carlos IV (November 11, 1748 – January 20, 1819) was King of Spain and ruler of the Spanish Empire from 1788 to 1808.

Infante Carlos was the second son of King Carlos III of Spain and his wife, Maria Amalia of Saxony. She was born a Princess of Poland and Saxony, daughter of King Augustus III of Poland (Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony) and Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria, the eldest child of Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor and Princess Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

King Carlos IV of Spain

Infante Carlos was born in Naples (November 11, 1748), while his father was King Carlo VII of Naples and King Carlo V of Sicily. His elder brother, Infante Felipe, was passed over for both thrones, due to his learning disabilities and epilepsy. In Naples and Sicily, Carlos was referred to as the Prince of Taranto.

Carlos married his first cousin Princess Maria Louisa of Bourbon-Parma, She was the youngest daughter of Filippo, Duke of Parma, the fourth son of King Felipe V of Spain, and Princess Louise Élisabeth of France, the eldest daughter of King Louis XV of France and Navarre and Marie Leszczyńska of Poland.

Born in Parma, she was christened Luisa María Teresa Ana after her maternal grandparents and her mother’s favourite sister Anne Henriette of France, but is known to history by the short Spanish form of this name: María Luisa, while Luisa was the name she used in private.

María Luisa’s mother tried to engage her with Louis, Duke of Burgundy, heir to the French throne. However, the young duke died in 1761. In 1762, Maria Luisa instead became engaged to her cousin Carlos, Prince of Asturias. When her elder sister Isabella died in 1763, there were suggestions that Maria Luisa marry her sister’s widower, Emperor Joseph II, but the proposal was refused and her engagement to Carlos, Prince of Asturias was confirmed.

María Luisa was notoriously reputed to have had many love affairs. The most infamous of them was with the Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy, whom contemporary gossip singled out in particular as a long-time lover; in 1784 a member of the guard, he was promoted through several ranks when Carlos and Maria Luisa succeeded to the throne, and was appointed prime minister in 1792. Godoy was also rumored to be the natural father of several of her children.

Princess Maria Louisa of Bourbon-Parma, Queen of Spain

In 1788, Carlos III died and Carlos IV succeeded to the throne and ruled for the next two decades. Even though he had a profound belief in the sanctity of the monarchy and kept up the appearance of an absolute, powerful king, Carlos never took more than a passive part in his own government.

The affairs of the government were left to his wife, Maria Luisa, and the first minister, Manuel de Godoy who was appointed by King Carlos IV himself. King Carlos IV occupied himself with hunting in the period that saw the outbreak of the French Revolution, the executions of his Bourbon relative King Louis XVI of France and his queen, Marie Antoinette, and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. Ideas of the Age of Enlightenment had come to Spain with the accession of the first Spanish Bourbon, Felipe V.

Spain’s economic problems were of long standing, but deteriorated further when Spain was ensnared in wars that its ally France pursued. Financial needs drove his domestic and foreign policy. Godoy’s economic policies increased discontent with King Carlos IV’s regime.

The Economic troubles, the rumors about a sexual relationship between the Queen and Godoy, and the King’s ineptitude, caused the monarchy to decline in prestige among the population. Anxious to take over from his father, and jealous of the prime minister, Infante Fernando, Prince Asturias attempted to overthrow the King in an aborted coup in 1807. He was successful in 1808, forcing his father’s abdication following the Tumult of Aranjuez.

King Carlos IV of Spain

Riots, and a popular revolt at the winter palace Aranjuez, in 1808 forced the king to abdicate on March 19, in favor of his son. Infante Fernando took the throne as King Fernando VII, but was mistrusted by Napoleon, who had 100,000 soldiers stationed in Spain by that time due to the ongoing War of the Third Coalition.

The ousted King, having appealed to Napoleon for help in regaining his throne, was summoned before Napoleon in Bayonne, along with his son, in April 1808. Napoleon forced both Carlos IV and his son Fernando VII to abdicate, declared the Bourbon dynasty of Spain deposed, and installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as King José I of Spain, which began the Peninsular War.

Following Napoleon’s deposing of the Bourbon dynasty, the ex-King, his wife, and former Prime Minister Godoy were held captive in France first at the château de Compiègne and three years in Marseille (where a neighborhood was named after him).

After the collapse of the regime installed by Napoleon, King Fernando VII was restored to the throne. The former King Carlos IV drifted about Europe until 1812, when he finally settled in Rome, in the Palazzo Barberini. His wife died on January 2, 1819, followed shortly by Carlos, who died on January 20 of the same year.

The Life of Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, last Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Tags

1917 Titles Deprivation Ac, Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Duke Alfred of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Duke Charles Edward of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, World War I, World War ii

Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (December 31, 1885 – October 3, 1970) was Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as the wife of Duke Charles Edward from their marriage on October 11, 1905 until his abdication on November 14, 1918.

Victoria Adelaide is the maternal grandmother of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. She was a niece of German Empress Augusta Victoria, wife of Emperor Wilhelm II and born a Princess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg.

Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg

Early life

Princess Victoria Adelaide was born on December 31, 1885 at Castle Grünholz, Thumby, Schleswig-Holstein, Prussia as the eldest daughter of Frederick Ferdinand, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and his wife Princess Caroline Mathilde of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg.

Her father was the eldest son of Friedrich, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and a nephew of King Christian IX of Denmark. One month before the birth of Victoria Adelaide, he had succeeded to the headship of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and the title of duke upon the death of his father on 27 November 1885.

Wilhelm II chose Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein as the bride of Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha who was her first cousin.

Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg

They married on October 11, 1905, at Glücksburg Castle, Schleswig. Charles Edward was the only son of Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany by his wife Princess Helena of Waldeck and a grandson of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Duke Ernst II, ruled the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha from 1844 until his own death in 1893. Because he had died childless, the throne of the two duchies would have passed to his late brother Prince Albert’s male descendants.

But Prince Albert was the husband of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and his eldest son, Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, (future King Edward VII) was already her heir apparent. Besides, he was prohibited by the Constitutions of both duchies from inheriting the throne if there were other eligible male heirs. But Albert Edward had already renounced his claim in favour of his next brother, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. So Alfred became the next Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Victoria Adelaide and Charles Edward, Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

In 1899, the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, urged by Emperor Wilhelm II, decided on how to deal with the succession of Duke Alfred, who was in ill health. His only son, Hereditary Prince Alfred (“Young Affie”) of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, had died by suicide in February 1899.

The next in line to the Ducal throne was Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, the Queen’s third son, was serving in the British army. This caused Emperor Wilhelm II to oppose him as a ruling prince of Germany. His son, Prince Arthur of Connaught, had been at Eton with Charles Edward.

Emperor Wilhelm II demanded a German education for the boy, but this was unacceptable to the Duke of Connaught. Thus young Arthur also renounced his claims to the Duchy. Next in line was Charles Edward, who consequently inherited the Ducal throne of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha at the age of sixteen when his uncle Alfred died at the age of 55 in July 1900.

Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg

Princess Victoria Adelaide was described as the leading part in the marriage and the Duke would initially come to her for advice. She and Charles Edward had five children.

The family mainly spoke English at home, though the children learnt to speak German fluently. Hubertus, Charles Edward’s second son, was the favourite child. The children lived in fear of their father, who ran his family “like a military unit”. Charles Edward’s younger daughter, Princess Caroline Mathilde, claimed that her father had sexually abused her. The allegation was backed by one of her brothers.

The Duke and Duchess of Coburg-Gotha with their four eldest children in 1918

Later life

In 1915, King George V, his cousin, ordered his name removed from the register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. In 1917, a law change in Coburg effectively banned any of Charles Edward’s British relatives from succeeding him and that same year the Gotha G.V bomber which had been built in Gotha was used to attack London. In Britain, he was denounced as a traitor. The Titles Deprivation Act 1917 issued by King George V removed his British titles.

In 1918, the Duke was forced to abdicate his ducal throne, following the end of World War I, and he and his family became private citizens.

Victoria Adelaide, Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Charles Edward was an early and fervent supporter of Adolf Hitler. Victoria Adelaide initially shared her husband’s enthusiasm and patriotism but she came to loathe Hitler and the Nazi Party following the Nazi seizure of power. She defied her husband by supporting the German Evangelical Church Confederation against the antisemitic German Christians.

After World War II, the couple fled to Austria (where Schloss Greinburg an der Donau had been a Saxe-Coburg property since 1822, and remains such) following the seizure of their properties in East Germany by the Soviet Union. Duchess Victoria Adelaide of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha died at Schloss Greinburg (Grein, Austria) at the age of 84 on October 3, 1970 and was buried beside her husband (Charles Edward died March 6, 1954) at Schloss Callenberg, Coburg, October 8 of that year.

History of The Kingdom of Greece. Part VI: King Alexander

Tags

Allied Entente, Eleftherios Venizelos, King Alexander of the Hellenes, King Constantine I of the Hellenes, King George I of the Hellenes, Sophie of Prussia, World War I

Alexander (August 1, 1893 – October 25, 1920) was King of the Hellenes from June 11, 1917 until his death three years later, at the age of 27, from the effects of a monkey bite.

Alexander was born at Tatoi Palace on August 1, 1893 the second son of Crown Prince Constantine of Greece of the House of Glücksburg and his wife Princess Sophia of Prussia.

King Constantine I of the Hellenes

Alexander was related to royalty throughout Europe. His father was the eldest son and heir apparent of King George I of Greece by his wife Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia; his mother was the daughter of Emperor Friedrich III of Germany and his wife Victoria, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom. His father King Constantine I was a grandson of King Christian IX of Denmark and a cousin of both King George V of the United Kingdom and Emperor Nicholas II of Russia. Sophia was the sister of German Emperor Wilhelm II and he was also a cousin of King George V through her grandmother, Queen Victoria.

Though he was very close to his younger sister, Princess Helen, Alexander was less warm towards his elder brother Crown Prince George, with whom he had little in common. While his elder brother was a serious and thoughtful child, Alexander was mischievous and extroverted; he smoked cigarettes made from blotting paper, set fire to the games room in the palace.

Princess Sophie of Prussia

Military career

As his father’s second son, Alexander was third in line to the throne, after his father and elder brother, George. His education was expensive and carefully planned, but while George spent part of his military training in Germany, Alexander was educated in Greece. He joined the prestigious Hellenic Military Academy, where several of his uncles had previously studied and where he made himself known more for his mechanical skills than for his intellectual capacity. He was passionate about cars and motors, and was one of the first Greeks to acquire an automobile.

He distinguished himself in combat during the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. As a young officer, he was stationed, along with his elder brother, in the field staff of his father; and he accompanied the latter at the head of the Army of Thessaly during the capture of Thessaloniki in 1912. King George I was assassinated in Thessaloniki soon afterwards on 18 March 1913, and Alexander’s father ascended the throne as Constantine I.

Courtship of Aspasia Manos

In 1915, at a party held in Athens by court marshal Theodore Ypsilantis, Alexander became re-acquainted with one of his childhood friends, Aspasia Manos. She had just returned from education in France and Switzerland, and was reckoned as very beautiful by her acquaintances. She was the daughter of Constantine’s Master of the Horse, Colonel Petros Manos, and his wife Maria Argyropoulos.

Aspasia Manos

The 21-year-old Alexander was smitten, and was so determined to seduce her that he followed her to the island of Spetses where she holidayed that year. Initially, Aspasia was resistant to his charm; although considered very handsome by his contemporaries, Alexander had a reputation as a ladies’ man from numerous past liaisons.

Despite this, he finally won her over, and the couple were engaged in secret. However, for King Constantine I, Queen Sophia and much of European society of the time, it was inconceivable for a royal prince to marry someone of a different social rank.

During World War I, King Constantine I followed a formal policy of neutrality, yet he was openly benevolent towards Germany, which was fighting alongside Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire against the Triple Entente of Russia, France and Britain.

Constantine was the brother-in-law of Emperor Wilhelm II, and had also become something of a Germanophile following his military training in Prussia. His pro-German attitude provoked a split between the monarch and the prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, who wanted to support the Entente in the hope of expanding Greek territory to incorporate the Greek minorities in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans. Protected by the countries of the Entente, particularly France, in 1916 Venizelos formed a parallel government to that of the king.

Parts of Greece were occupied by the Allied Entente forces, but Constantine I refused to modify his policy and faced increasingly open opposition from the Entente and the Venizelists.

King Alexander of the Hellenes

In July 1916, an arson attack ravaged Tatoi Palace and the royal family barely escaped the flames; Alexander was not injured but his mother narrowly saved Princess Katherine by carrying her through the woods for more than two kilometers. Among the palace personnel and firefighters who arrived to deal with the blaze, sixteen people were killed.

Finally on June 10, 1917, Charles Jonnart, the Entente’s High Commissioner in Greece, ordered King Constantine to give up his power. On the threat of Entente forces landing in Piraeus, the king conceded and agreed to go into self-exile, though without officially abdicating his crown.

The Allies, while determined to be rid of King Constantine, did not wish to create a Greek republic, and sought to replace the king with another member of the royal family. Crown Prince George, who was the natural heir, was ruled out by the Allies because they thought him too pro-German, like his father.

Instead, they considered installing Constantine’s brother (and Alexander’s uncle), Prince George, but he had tired of public life during his difficult tenure as High Commissioner of Crete between 1901 and 1905; above all, he sought to remain loyal to his brother, and categorically refused to take the throne. As a result, Constantine’s second son, Prince Alexander, was chosen to become the new monarch.

Accession

The dismissal of King Constantine was not unanimously supported by the Entente powers; while France and Britain did nothing to stop Jonnart’s actions, the Russian provisional government officially protested to Paris.

Petrograd demanded that Alexander should not receive the title of king but only that of regent so as to preserve the rights of the deposed sovereign and the Crown Prince. Russia’s protests were brushed aside, and Alexander ascended the Greek throne.

Alexander swore the oath of loyalty to the Greek constitution on the afternoon of June 11, 1917 in the ballroom of the Royal Palace. Apart from the Archbishop of Athens, Theocletus I, who administered the oath, only King Constantine I, Crown Prince George and the king’s prime minister, Alexandros Zaimis, attended.

There were no festivities. The 23-year-old Alexander had a broken voice and tears in his eyes as he made the solemn declaration. He knew that the Entente and the Venizelists would hold real power and that neither his father nor his brother had renounced their claims to the throne. Constantine had informed his son that he should consider himself a regent, rather than a true monarch.

In the evening, after the ceremony, the royal family decided to leave their palace in Athens for Tatoi, but city residents opposed the exile of their sovereign and crowds formed outside the palace to prevent Constantine and his family from leaving.

On June 12, the former king and his family escaped undetected from their residence by feigning departure from one gate while exiting through another. At Tatoi, Constantine again impressed upon Alexander that he held the crown in trust only. It was the last time that Alexander would be in direct contact with his family. The next day, Constantine, Sophia and all of their children except Alexander arrived at the small port of Oropos and set off into exile.

Puppet King

With his parents and siblings in exile, Alexander found himself isolated. The royals remained unpopular with the Venizelists, and Entente representatives advised the king’s aunts and uncles, particularly Prince Nicholas, to leave. Eventually, they all followed Constantine into exile.

Royal household staff were gradually replaced by enemies of the former king, and Alexander’s allies were either imprisoned or distanced from him. Portraits of the royal family were removed from public buildings, and Alexander’s new ministers openly called him the “son of a traitor”.

History of The Kingdom of Greece. Part VI: First Reign of King Constantine I.

Tags

Abdication, Athens, Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, Crown Prince George of Greece, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, King Constantine I of the Hellenes, Prime Minister Venizelos, Princess Royal, princess Sophie of Prussia, Princess Victoria of the United Kingdom., The Balkan War, The Great War, World War I

Constantine I (August 2, 1868 – January 11, 1923) was King of the Hellenes from March 18, 1913 to June 11, 1917 and from December 19, 1920 to September 27, 1922. He was commander-in-chief of the Hellenic Army during the unsuccessful Greco-Turkish War of 1897 and led the Greek forces during the successful Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, in which Greece expanded to include Thessaloniki, doubling in area and population. He succeeded to the throne of Greece on March 18, 1913, following his father’s assassination.

Crown Prince Constantine of Greece

Constantine was born on August 2, 1868 in Athens. He was the eldest son of King George I and Queen Olga (Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia). His birth was met with an immense wave of enthusiasm: the new heir apparent to the throne was the first Greek-born member of the family.

As the ceremonial cannon on Lycabettus Hill fired the royal salute, huge crowds gathered outside the Palace shouting what they thought should rightfully be the newborn prince’s name: “Constantine”.

This was both the name of his maternal grandfather, Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaievich of Russia, and the name of the “King who would reconquer Constantinople”, the future “Constantine XII, legitimate successor to the Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos”, according to popular legend.

He was inevitably christened “Constantine” on August 12, 1868. The most prominent university professors of the time were handpicked to tutor the young Crown Prince: Ioannis Pantazidis taught him Greek literature; Vasileios Lakonas mathematics and physics; and Constantine Paparrigopoulos history, infusing the young prince with the principles of the Megali Idea.

In 1884, Constantine, Crown Prince of Greece, turned sixteen and his majority was declared by the government. He then received the title of Duke of Sparta. Soon after, Constantine completed his military training in Germany, where he spent two full years in the company of a tutor, Dr. Lüders. He served in the Prussian Guard, took lessons of riding in Hanover and studied political science at the Universities of Heidelberg and Leipzig.

Betrothal and Marriage

After a long stay in the United Kingdom celebrating her grandmother, Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, Princess Sophie of Prussia became better acquainted with Constantine in the summer of 1887.

Princess Sophia of Prussia, was a daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Prussia, (future German Emperor Friedrich III) and Victoria, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom.

The Crown Prince of Prussia was the son of King Wilhelm I of Prussia (German Emperor Wilhelm I) and Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. The Princess Royal was the eldest child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

Princess Sophie of Prussia

Queen Victoria watched their growing relationship, writing “Is there a chance of Sophie’s marrying Tino? It would be very nice for her, for he is very good”. Crown Princess Victoria also hoped that Sophie would make a good marriage, considering her the most attractive among her daughters.

During his stay at the Hohenzollern court in Berlin representing the Kingdom of Greece at the funeral of Emperor Wilhelm I in March 1888, Constantine saw Sophie again. Quickly, the two fell in love and got officially engaged on September 3, 1888. However, their relationship was viewed with suspicion by Sophie’s older brother Prince Wilhelm (future Emperor Wilhelm II) and his wife Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg.

This betrothal was not completely supported in the Greek royal family either: Queen Olga showed some reluctance to the projected union because Sophie was Lutheran and Olga would have preferred that her son marry an Orthodox Christian. Despite the difficulties, the wedding was scheduled for October 1889 in Athens.

On October 27, 1889, Crown Prince Constantine married Princess Sophie of Prussia in Athens in two religious ceremonies, one public and Orthodox and another private and Protestant. They were third cousins in descent from Emperor Paul I of Russia, and second cousins once removed through King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia.

Princess Sophie of Prussia

For the wedding Sophie’s witnesses were her brother Heinrich and her cousins Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales; for Constantine’s side, the witnesses were his brothers Princes George and Nicholas and his cousin the Tsarevich Nicholas of Russia.

The marriage (the first major international event held in Athens) was very popular among the Greeks. The names of the couple were reminiscent to the public of an old legend which suggested that when a King Constantine and a Queen Sophia ascended the Greek throne, Constantinople the Hagia Sophia would fall into Greek hands.

Crown Prince Constantine and Crown Princess Sophie had six children. All three of their sons ascended the Greek throne. Their eldest daughter Helen married Crown Prince Carol of Romania; their second daughter married the 4th Duke of Aosta; whilst their youngest child, Princess Katherine, married a British commoner.

George I was assassinated in Thessaloniki by an anarchist, Alexandros Schinas, on March 18, 1913, and Constantine succeeded to the throne. In the meantime, tensions between the Balkan allies grew, as Bulgaria claimed Greek and Serbian-occupied territory.

Balkan Wars

In May, Greece and Serbia concluded a secret defensive pact aimed at Bulgaria. On June 16, the Bulgarian army attacked their erstwhile allies, but were soon halted. King Constantine led the Greek Army in its counterattack in the battles of Kilkis-Lahanas and the Kresna Gorge.

The widely held view of Constantine I as a “German sympathizer” owes something to his marriage with Sophie of Prussia, sister of Wilhelm II, to his studies in Germany and his supposed “militaristic” beliefs and attitude.

The Great War

When World War I broke out Constantine did rebuff Emperor Wilhelm II who in late 1914 pressed him to bring Greece into the war on the side of Austria-Hungary and Germany. In their correspondence he told him that his sympathy was with Germany, but he would not join the war. Constantine then also offended the British and French by blocking popular efforts of Prime Minister Venizelos to bring Greece into the war on the side of the Allies.

Constantine’s insistence on neutrality, according to him and his supporters, was based more on his judgement that it was the best policy for Greece, rather than venal self-interest or his German dynastic connections, as he was accused of by the Venizelists.

In August 1916, a military coup broke out in Thessaloniki by Venizelist officers. There, Venizelos established a provisional revolutionary government, which created its own army and declared war on the Central Powers.

With Allied support, the revolutionary government of Venizelos gained control of half the country – significantly, most of the “New Lands” won during the Balkan Wars. This cemented the National Schism, a division of Greek society between Venizelists and anti-Venizelist monarchists, which was to have repercussions in Greek politics until past World War II.

Constantine I, King of the Hellenes

Venizelos made a public call to the King to dismiss his “bad advisors”, to join the war as King of all Greeks and stop being a politician. The royal governments of Constantine in Athens continued to negotiate with the Allies a possible entry in the war.

During November/December 1916, the British and French landed units at Athens claiming the surrender of war materiel equivalent to what was lost at Fort Rupel as a guarantee of Greece’s neutrality. After days of tension, finally they met resistance by paramilitary (Epistratoi) and pro-royalist forces (during the Noemvriana events), that were commanded by officers Metaxas and Dousmanis.

After an armed confrontation, the Allies evacuated the capital and recognized officially the government of Venizelos in Thessaloniki. King Constantine then became the most hated person for the Allies after his brother-in-law Emperor Wilhelm II.

After the fall of the monarchy in Russia, Constantine lost his last supporter inside the Entente opposed to his removal from the throne.

In the face of Venizelist and Anglo-French pressure, King Constantine finally left the country for Switzerland on June 11, 1917; his second-born son Alexander became king in his place.

The Allied Powers were opposed to Constantine’s first born son Crown Prince George becoming king, as he had served in the German army before the war and like his father was thought to be a Germanophile.