Evangelos Venetis

[Wayne Hall]

Vangelis Venetis
Greece's national day

www.onassis.org/people/evangelos-venetis

Why does Greece celebrate its national day on 25th March?

Good evening from me. This is an interesting question. The dates that are in dispute for national day, the date for the 1821 revolution, are 21st February 1821, when Alexandros Ypsilantis proclaimed the revolution at Jassy in today's Romania, challenging the hegemony of the then Ottoman sultanate. On 25th March we had the well-known revolution of Germanos of Old Patras. But before the 25th we had the 23rd March. We have events, in other words, related to the liberation of Kalamata. The insurrection in Vostitsa, Andreas Londos, the same day, and at Kalavryta the celebrated first move in the Morea on the 22nd day of the month of March, 1821. This choice for the festival, the anniversary, of 1821, was made in 1838, under Othon, that is to say seventeen years after the proclamation of the Revolution. Up until that time there were general anniversaries, without a specific date, and it was the Bavarians, the Bavarian establishment in Greece at that time that decided to choose 25th March.

The other date, which I didn't mention before, was the date of the arrival of Capodistrias in Greece and the proclamation of an independent state, that is to say the creation of an independent Greece, de facto and de jure, when Capodistrias came to Greece in January 1828. This decision of the Bavarians, under the Bavarians, to choose 25th March, is to analysed as follows. The date 25th March, is the day of the Annunciation. It is a religious festival. The decisions was made to choose that date, linked to Germanos of Old Patras, etc., because it combined the two elements, it combined, that is, the national dimension with the religious.

Now, why was it necessary to combine the national and the religious dimensions? Because, and here we go behind the scenes, it's because there is a different approach, from the so-called "revisionists", the revisionist historical school, on the 1821 Revolution, as to how far it was a revolution that was exclusively Greek, from Greek speakers and so on, or if it was a religious revolution. If it was all the "Romioi" of the Balkans: Slavs, Bulgars, Romanians, Moldavians, Serbs, etc. etc. Within that existing differentiation there is, I would say, a clash of ideologies, which is not projected any more. It was present at the time of the Revolution. It was there before the Revolution. It was there at the time of Capodistrias, and it began to contract and disappear after the assassination of Capodistrias and the coming of the Bavarians. After the assassination of Capodistrias a lot of emphasis was placed on the national dimension of the Revolution. And that national dimension monopolized the education system in Greece, as we know that ideological inheritance today.

Nevertheless it is well-known that in the Revolution of 1821 different peoples rose in rebellion. It wasn't only the Hellenes, the Greeks. It was all the Christian Orthodox Romioi. And Ypsilantis from Jassy, precisely. There is no doubt that the central ethnic and cultural element in the Revolution of 1821 who played the leading part in these developments were the Greeks, the Hellenes as the word began to be used in the 1830s and subsequently. So the Hellenic, Greek, element, was what predominated, and this is evident from the Filiki Eteria and from the protagonists who led this revolution. But there were similar movements, both ethnic and religious, within the orbit of other peoples. Vladimirescu and so on, Mavrovouniotis in the Serbian context, etc. etc. This many-sided ethnic and religious revolution of 1821 has preoccupied research into how far those who made the revolution aimed at establishing an independent Greece or whether their aim was to institute a new Byzantium. It is well-known how the term "Greek" and the term "Hellene" self-characterized the Greek-speaking Romioi of the main part of Greece and the wider Balkan region at that time. And so it goes.

In that existing conflict there was the same distance, in the ideological context, between Rigas and Korais. Korais was the quintessential ethnocentric intellectual. Rigas stood for the rebirth of Greece, but within a context of religion, polyethnic, diversified. There is Rigas' renowned map, the renowned Balkan Confederation. Essentially it is the new Byzantium, with religion as the primary element, that is to say the Christian Orthodox religion, which functioned as a unifying factor for the different peoples in the Balkans, in the Ottoman Roumeli, that is to say the European possessions of the Ottomans of that time. To say something else, because a lot of people talk about the "Tourkokratia" or Turkish rule. The correct term is "Ottomanokratia" or Ottoman rule. It was not Turkish rule. Turkey as a political term, like Hellas, is a modern innovation dating from the time of the founding of the Greek state. But in the case of Turkey, Turkey exists as political self-characterization, in a political context, since 1923 officially, since 1908 following the coup of the Young Turks against the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Those who speak of Turkish rule are simply acting and thinking anachronistically. The Ottomans themselves called each other Ottomans not only as a dynasty but also as subjects, Muslim Ottoman subjects.

Prior to the advent of Enlightenment the point of reference for cultural and political self-identification of the various peoples in the different kingdoms, empires and sultanates, in Christian and Muslim contexts correspondingly, was religion, not ethnicity. They were firstly Christians, Muslims, Jews and so on, and the Christians were secondarily Christian Greeks, or later Hellenes, in the nineteenth century and the Muslims were Greeks, Serbs, Slavs, Bulgarians and so on, or Palestinians and so on, and at the Muslim level they were all Muslims and then secondarily Turcophones, speakers of Arabic, or of Kurdish, and so on. This coming of Enlightenment brought nationalism, ethnogenesis, and this ethnogenesis brought the national dimension into the political self-definition of the collectivities. With a variety of consequences, which we won't analyse at present. We can mention them in the discussion we will have in a little while.

So, in the revolution of 1821 there are those two elements, the religious firstly, and the national. The nation is focused primarily in the elite, of the revolutionaries, that is of the merchants, the intellectuals, the minority that is, who identify with the networks, the commercial, the financial, which were constructed in Central Europe,and in Western Europe, chiefly following the revolution: the English revolution of 1688 and then following the Treaty of Karlowitz during the same period, when the borders between Ottomans and Christians in Central Europe were stabilized. Then the way was opened for trade. The celebrated ideas of Enlightenment gained a passage. These were ideas transmitted through Masonic networks, that should be emphasized, centred on Paris and Vienna, primarily, and London, of course. Both the British and the French played a decisive role. They were protagonists, I would say. Vienna was equally important geographically. All the Western merchants met there and the merchants then, in collaboration with the bankers and the banking system fostered and promoted Enlightenment and the ethnogenesis of various peoples as a divisive element, I would say, in the empires and the Sultanate leading towards the establishment of national states. With a geopolitical dimension to it because the territory was fragmented and new realities were created. In that reality that was shaped then the economic elite of the Greek-speaking world, the Greek-speaking elite which went to Europe to engage in trade and came into contact with ideas of Enlightenment was transformed from Greek culturally, that is to say Christian Orthodox Greek-speakers, into Hellenes, that is to say an ethnocentric elite, which put ethnos first and then religion. It was this elite that struggled to found the Filiki Eteria. Of course inside the Filiki Eteria there were also elements - the supporters of "tradition" as they were called, of religion, of the role of Christianity and Orthodoxy in the rebirth of Byzantium. That vision, a collective vision, was clearly neo-Byzantine, it was not neo-Hellene. Neo-Hellene was what Greece became after the assassination of Capodistrias, under Bavarian rule.

Essentially what was instituted was the vision pursued by Adamantios Korais. But we must draw a demarcation line between the elite of Enlightenment intellectuals and the average Greek (Romios) resident of the country who had not yet come into contact with the ethnocentric attitude. The ethnocentric attitude was systematized within Greece proper after the establishment of the independent Greek state through the education system in the 1840s under the direction of Alexandros Rizos Rangavis, with the Elliniki Christomatheia, the famous manual, and of Stefanos Vyzantios. The two of them wrote that manual, which remained a classic throughout the nineteenth century and laid the foundations for the Greek ethnocentric conception as we said before. Taking that into consideration we can understand - moving on to the hot subject of the festival - and see why the 25th March was chosen and not 24th February. Ypsilantis stood essentially for the new Byzantium, as did Capodistrias, essentially. So after the murder of Capodistrias, and of course after the death of Ypsilantis, and before him Rigas, these were the group of neo-Byzantine intellectuals, or neo-Romioi, or just Romioi. After the execution of Capodistrias and the coming of the Bavarians they were basically overshadowed. The new Byzantium view was marginalized, despite the fact that the average inhabitant, Romios, Greek speaker who from the 1840s onwards defined himself as modern Hellene, we are speaking terminology, you understand, felt this differentiation between social base and elite. The stance of the church is well-known in that dialectic, how the patriarchate of Constantinople was against the ethnocentric view, and so on. So the 24th February could not be chosen because automatically it would evoke a supremacy of the religious element as against the ethnocentric. And neither could the arrival of Capodistrias be chosen as anniversary for the rebirth of 1821 for the reason that Capodistrias politically, we said that in the previous discussion we had, had clashed with the British and French and was a persona non grata who after his execution was deleted from the chronicles of the historians for the following decades. It is no coincidence that after his assassination Capodistrias was embalmed and his body was sent to his estate in Corfu, where he was buried, and lies there to this day, inside the chapel, in an enclosed space, without anybody being in a position ..... without being publicized in any way by the Greek state, and his grave, his memorial, his grave first and foremost, but also his contribution, in the context of organization of public space in Greece. A person might wonder "is it possible that Greece's first governor can be buried on his personal estate without there being even a cenotaph?"

W.H.: Nothing, nothing. I have seen it.

You have seen it, Wayne. Exactly. Without there being a cenotaph, if not the tomb itself, next to the memorial of the Unknown Soldier in Syntagma Square. So there is a clash between Capodistrias and his opponents. The opponents prevailed and they are the ones who henceforth constructed modern Greece. So it couldn't Capodistrias for all those reasons, which we outlined in the previous talk, and the discussion, about his relation with the Duchess of Plaisance. So, drawing conclusions, why was 25th March chosen? If it had been Kalamata, in Kalamata the religious element is not there, and at the level of calendar and so on, the Annunciation in terms of tradition is the announcement , the new message, it has symbolism of many kinds. That is more or less how things are, and they are parameters that determined the choice of 25th March, I repeat, in 1838, as the anniversary of 1821.

W.H.: A great answer. Can I ask some questions, particularly in relation to Rigas Ferraios? Because as you said Rigas Ferraios has been linked to revival of the Byzantine Empire and so on, and with religion also. But Rigas Ferraios is projected as an Enlightener. His name is used as a symbol by the Communist youth, the reformist wing, the Communist Party of the Interior, which became SYRIZA finally.

Exactly.

W.H.: How is that to be explained? It's a little confused, isn't it? If he was with the religious side, is that how it was? Was he really an Enlightener? Paschalis Kitromilides, for example, represents him as an Enlightener.

Exactly. Rigas was.... Your question is very pertinent. Thank you. Rigas was the most enigmatic personage of the intellectuals of Enlightenment and the Revolution because in his works he refers to Greece, Ancient Greece, he refers to Greeks, there is the well-known map of Rigas, with all its Ancient Greek symbolism in Ancient Greece, but Rigas' map also includes Byzantium. Rigas employed a terminology which was quite deceptive as regards the main current of Enlightenment, which was ethnocentric. What Enlightenment stood for as separation of Church and State, at the political level always, separation of Church and State, religion and the State, and elevation of the national element as primary point of reference in the political self-definition of collectivities. Rigas, who knew this, belonged to the circle of Enlighteners but differed from them when it came to the role of religion. He was one of the Enlighteners who - the Greek people usually call them (not all the Enlighteners but the people, the personalities who are ambivalent: "lying to" (stationary with head to windward, to use a nautical term). So Rigas had - let's not forget that in "Thourios" he referred to an uprising of all the people and the creation of that confederation, but without using the term "Byzantium" which in any case was a neologism of course. But Rigas in his "Thourios" employed the symbol of the cross. This is why he says in "Thourios" "Come with a zeal at this time,to take the oath on the Cross; wise counsellors, with patriotism, to place, to give, a definition to everything" Rhigas says. So everyone is to come, all the heterogeneous peoples, irrespective of nationality. All are to come to take the oath on the Cross. The basis of the new state is Christianity, Orthodoxy. It was something, of course, that brought him into conflict with Korais. Korais wanted the return to Ancient Greece and in his youth and middle age insisted on, we would say, de-Christianization of the Greece of the future, as an independent state. Of course with the passage of time he saw that this was not going to happen, so that there was a mixture that was called Hellenic Orthodoxy, whose key representatives were Paparrigopoulos and Karolidis, Pavlos Karolidis, and others as well. It was a mixture of the religious and ethnic element in the Greek-speaking world, creating that hybrid ideological model which tried to marry those two antitheses, unsuccessfully in my personal opinion.

W.H.: In relation to what you said before about the participation of the popular strata, do you know if the Albanians - because there were a lot of Albanian revolutionaries, it seems - do you know if the Albanians who rebelled against the Ottoman Empire, together with the Greeks - do you know if many of them were Muslims, or were they all Christians?

Another pertinent question. Pre-eminently the Albanians who rose in rebellion were Arvanites, Christian Albanians. So the Albanians - the Souliots are a classic example - if we interpret the 1821 revolution on the basis of the ethnocentric element, if we say it was purely a Greek revolution - it emerged as a Greek revolution, but it didn't start as entirely Greek - we can't explain how the Albanian Christians revolted. If it was ethnocentric you could say that Albanian ethnogenesis had not yet occurred. It was delayed. But certainly they themselves did not see what ethnogenesis meant because they came from the grassroots, the social base, as did the Greeks, the military chiefs. They didn't perceive today's differentiation, or the meaning of "nation". They were "Romioi". They were Christian Orthodox. They saw the Albanians and the other peoples as brothers. So, linking what you said to what you said before about Rigas and particularly about his popularity with Communist circles, precisely because he was multi-faceted and employed a terminology that was ambiguous, and he was a very enigmatic and mysterious intellectual, he became popular in many circles, both religious and secular, climaxing in his popularity as we said in the circles of both the parliamentary and the extra-parliamentary Left.

W.H.: Yes, in relation to what you said about Capodistrias, I don't know if you are aware that here in Aegina there is a current in local public opinion which has been trying for many years to secure recognition of 26th January, the day of Capodistrias' swearing-in, as a national day. And a few years ago - I think it was in 2014 - they achieved, partially, that objective because with a Presidential Decree 26th January was recognized as a national day, of local significance, however. That's how far it went. It was recognized with a Presidential Decree as being of local significance, a national day of local significance. But people here in Aegina were proud of that achievement and of course want it to be recognized even further. Not only Aeginetans: the historian Andreas Koukos is of the same view. Kazakis is of the same view. I don't know if you are aware of that because it is not very well-known.

Yes, that demand which Aeginetans have is quite reasonable and we support it. Clearly. And that demand goes hand in hand with the question of highlighting Capodistrias in today's Greece, in our age, at the level it deserves as a reference point in the political conceptions of the present day. This man who was martyred for the independence of and the establishment and organization of the new state should be given better treatment at the level of symbolism at least in the capital of today's Greece, Athens. There should be a monument to him at a central site: in the parliament, next to the monument of the unknown soldier which would display clearly the importance of Capodistrias. That is a personal view and assessment and I think that like the anniversary of 1821 it is an endeavour by the supporters and the personality and work of Capodistrias to remind the establishment that Capodistrias opposed and to which he lost and it is that establishment that shaped the modern Greece we know, and to understand that that establishment should be willing to be broad-minded and generous towards Capodistrias, because Capodistrias gave up everything for this country.

W.H.: That's fine We have covered a lot of subjects today and I think that for reasons of time perhaps we should stop the recording but thank you very much Vangeli. What you said was very enlightening and I think it will attract a lot of interest generally.


Postscript from Vangeli's talk on Capodistrias and the Duchess of Plaisance

The issue of Capodistrias and the relation with the Duchess of Plaisance, of Piasentza as it is called in Italian, Sophie de Marbois, is an issue of particular interest. Why? Because these two figures have been the towering figures in the first Greek state. Capodistrias was the administrator , the governor appointed by the great powers: Britain, France and Russia, and the Duchess of Plaisance was an invisible figure, a low-profile figure with a lot of money and a person who actually had the economic impact on the Greek state, a financial impact in Greek society during the time of Capodistrias and especially after the assassination of Capodistrias. He had all the experience. He also wrote the constitution, the first constitution of the Ionian islands, under Russian administration for a very brief period, and this constitution was never taken into account, never implemented, but it was taken into account by the British afterwards when they wanted to administer the islands. The Ionios Politeia as it is called in Greek. When Capodistrias came to Greece in order to rule he ruled without a Constitution although he was very fond of constitutions and modern political views up to a point. He did not rule based on a Constitution. Why? Because the circumstances in Greece were such that they could not allow him, let’s say, to implement ruling, administering, with a Constitution. The worldview of Capodistrias is quite complex and although many books have been written about his period, his era, in Greece and globally, Capodistrias had a very traditional approach to reality and he was fond of monarchy. He was not fond of democracy as he is being promoted in modern day research and in various conferences dedicated to him. And he was a very pro-royal, pro-monarchy person and he was very fond of religion. He approached reality based on religion more than the model of nationalism. He was not in favour of nation states as they shaped in history afterwards. His worldview is still very very obscure. His political and cultural and global worldview let’s say, speaking overall.

Capodistrias came to Greece in order to rule and he was of course under scrutiny by the powers, the three powers. At the time when he was sidelined by his superior the Tsar Alexander I he had the time to go to Switzerland to take some period off in order to improve his health and to get better and at the same time he was approached by the British, by London, in order to become, let us say, part of the British sphere of influence in the days to come, in the years to come. Based on what we have, on the evidence and testimonies, we can see that Capodistrias was steadily pro-Russia. He avoided being very closely related to Britain because if he did that he would lose his Russian, let’s say, power base in global politics and he preferred to stay pro-Russia – openly: he was not secretly pro-Russia. So the British and French viewed him with great suspicion, and when he came to rule he had of course the support of Russia – no doubt – and of course in the personality of Capodistrias there was the clash, the conflict, of interests between Russia and Great Britain and France on the other side. Various British and French Philhellenes, pro-Greece people, came and contributed to the positive outcome for the Revolution during the Revolution and after the Revolution in order to shape the first Greek state and these Philhellenes had more or less a very competitive or even antagonistic relation with Capodistrias. So Capodistrias was, let’s say, under the supervision of Britain and France when he became the governor of Greece and at the same time he invested on Russian support in order to achieve the goal. The goal was to create a modern Greek state of course. But along with the formation of a modern Greek state, Capodistrias and the powers had their minds on the long-term plan, on the long-term development of Greece, on the next day, actually: what would happen when the foundations of the modern Greek state were laid; what would happen with the first Constitution when the day came, and who would be the monarch, who would rule the state when Capodistrias stepped down. Actually Capodistrias was appointed by the powers to rule for seven years. He had a seven-year term and he knew that after that he would have to step down. But in the meantime Capodistrias was quite instrumental. He had a lot of experience, of course, in the European political arena, a lot of confidence, self-confidence, and he tried in the process of the four to five years that he was in charge of the Greek state he tried to create all those parameters in order to become necessary for the future Greek state. So according to some authors he wanted simply to create the foundations, to lay the framework, the political framework for the formation of the state and then leave, step down and go to Corfu and have his own private life in the future. But some others say that no, he actually wanted to continue to be necessary for the Greek state, either by being king himself, according to some researchers, or being Prime Minister under the monarch that would be selected by the powers. So this is the relation between Capodistrias and the political framework of Greece at the time.

Another dimension of his rule was the economic one. Now we shift to the issue of the Duchess of Plaisance, Sophie. In order to create a state somebody needs very important political personalities, important political administrators who would frame the political rule, and implement political rule, and reforms of course, and at the same time you need money. Capodistrias did not have money. As governor he did not have enough money to rule Greece, to create Greece, and this was the case from the very beginning. So for an unknown reason, according to the available sources we have, because as we all know most of the sources related to this very crucial and formative period of modern Greece remain, let’s say inaccessible, closed to the researchers all over the world. I mean the important sources are the sources of the Foreign Office, the French one and the Russian of course. Most of them remain classified and by having this situation with the sources we are in a very difficult position to get a clear picture of what was really going on behind the curtain at the time, in the backstage of politics. But we can reconstruct what was going on based on developments that are known to us. We know for sure that Capodistrias was trying. The very first day he came to Greece he asked for money from investors, the bankers.The bankers who had given the money to Greeks to revolt prior to 1821 and during the 1821 Revolution, especially the 1824-25 laws, the National Laws as they were called in Greek economic history, those bankers – and we are talking about the City of London – those bankers avoided financing Capodistrias in an effective way.

This showed that they wanted first to have Capodistrias, let’s say cornered, under pressure, in order to see whether he would behave as a governor based on their interests, or not. Given that Capodistrias was a very self-confident and independent personality he knew what the Greeks wanted, were in need of, at the time, and from the very beginning, although in a very diplomatic way, he clashed with the financiers, and this clash was not an overall clash from day one, but it was increasing and deteriorating in the process, day after day, and this enlarged the gap that pre-existed and confirmed the suspicions that the financiers of Britain, and Europe at the time had about Capodistrias. Of course the financiers also wanted to diminish the Russian influence in the modern Greek state and this is another reason why they did not give enough money to the government to rule Greece and to create Greece. They wanted to control him, and have him under their control. This is the interpretation we can have, we can make, based on what happened at the time.

Capodistrias responded to the bankers by using his own personal property, land – he was a landowner in Corfu, and other places but mostly in Corfu, as a guarantee in order to issue the first Greek currency: the phoenix. He also encouraged of course all local landowners – the rich Greeks who lived in the first Greek state – to do the same, and they did the same, most of them, and based on this capital, the capital of landed property, they created the first copper currency, the phoenix. In the process he managed to create the silver copy of the phoenix, but he never had a golden one, a golden phoenix, because he didn’t have enough money, as we said. The question that arises is what were the facts that actually made Capodistrias and the bankers clash at the time, along with the political one that we analysed before. When he established the first Greek bank, the Elliniki Chrimatistiki Trapeza, he established it in such a way that it was a state bank. The State was the prime shareholder in the council of investors, of the shareholders in the bank, and the private investors were a minority. They had less share, not the prime one. This was the main reason, economically and financially speaking, in terms of banking in Greece, that brought Capodistrias in direct conflict with the bankers in the City of London because the bankers in the City of London wanted to have the first Greek bank as a private one. They wanted to have the lion’s share as shareholders.

W.H.: You haven’t mentioned the influence of Jean-Gabriel Eynard, who was a chosen banker. He was Capodistrias’ choice.

Exactly, Wayne, you just read my mind. This was the next time that I wanted to turn to. Thank you. So, there was a gap between the City of London – the bankers – and Capodistrias, in Greece. So who undertook the task of bridging this gap? It was Eynard, as you said. Eynard, as you said – he was of course a close friend of Capodistrias from the time Capodistrias was in Switzerland and he (Capodistrias) contributed to the establishment of Switzerland as a state, an independent state and in the process they remained in touch and they were close friends, as we said. At the same time Eynard was in touch with the City of London. So he was an independent banker but at the same time we know that banking, even at the time, was not fragmented. It was of course more fragmented than it is today, but it was still – it had a coherent shape and interconnection in various European cities. The big bosses were the bankers in London – the City – and Eynard was also in touch with the City. So Eynard played the role of the bridge between London and Aegina and Nafplion at the time, and by financing Capodistrias with small sums of money he tried actually to sustain political rule and the creation of the Greek state because money was necessary as we said before. So yes Eynard helped Capodistrias but with a very limited amount of money. We cannot say for sure what was the exact capital that Capodistrias wanted in order to cover all the needs. Even he himself didn’t know. But we know, based on the money that Eynard lent to Capodistrias, the Greek state, we know that this was more or less one fifth, or even less, of the necessary capital that Greece, and Capodistrias, were in need of at the time. The economic, and political also, reason for this rift between Capodistrias and the City of London was the character of the first bank. Capodistrias wanted a state bank. The bankers wanted a private one. And this was of course confirmed by developments after the assassination of Capodistrias when a decade elapse with the small bankers operating in Athens at the time, and the first Greek bank, the National Bank of Greece, was established as a private bank, not as a state bank, in 1843, at the same time that the constitutional revolution took place in Greece. So in order to counterbalance this banking, financial, vacuum he had, in order to cover his liquidity needs, Capodistrias asked other bankers, small bankers, semi-independent bankers, to operate in Greece in order to have sources of liquidity. Eynard was of course a big one, and then he turned to others. One of the professional or semi-professional or shall we say private borrowers was Sophie, the Duchess of Plaisance. Sophie lived at the time in Paris and she was a member of the French Greek Committee in Paris, Greece Committee in Paris, and she was also acquainted with Korais, up to a point, and she met Capodistrias some times, on some occasions when he was in Paris, along with the Russian Tsar, and so on, and later on, when Capodistrias left the Foreign Ministry of Russia and he went to Switzerland through Paris at the time. She was very fond initially of Capodistrias because Capodistrias was a charismatic figure, a cultivated person, very knowledgeable, very clever and so on and she was intrigued by his personality. There was no love affair at all. Capodistrias was a very dedicated person to hisprofessional life based on what we have available, and when he went to Greece Capodistrias invited Sophie to come to Greece and help Greece. And she went to Greece and she stayed for a year and when she arrived in Greece she saw how Capodistrias ruled the country. She was disappointed.

W.H.: We’re probably going to have to stop pretty soon. We’ve gone over the time.

I am going in less than five minutes to complete this presentation. So, Sophie tried to, let’s say, use her influence in order to represent French and even British influence in Greece at the time of Capodistrias. And gradually she became an opponent of Capodistrias and according to some evidence there is she was acquainted, she was involved, in the assassination of Capodistrias.

W.H.: Really!

Yes, Because she was very acquainted to the Mavromichalis family. And she took under the protection the widows of the Mavromichali brothers, and she was very well acquainted to the Mavromichalis family as a whole.

W.H.: Does that mean she was complicit in the assassination?

Actually when the assassination took place Sophie was not in Greece because she left Greece for a long travel period to the Middle East. She visited Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, where her only daughter got sick and she passed away unfortunately at the time. And she (Sophie) returned to Greece after Capodistrias was assassinated and especially after the civil war that elapsed between the assassination of Capodistrias and the coming of King Otto. So she came along with King Otto, let’s say, and she stayed in Greece for twenty years. When she was here, the Duchess of Plaisance - we know the story more or less and on another occasion we can talk about it perhaps, but she was the person, Sophie, that influenced political and economic developments in Greece until at least 1843, until the constitutional period, and she contributed a lot to the formation of the Greek state after the Capodistrias time. But when they were both alive and lived in Greece the two of them had a very competitive relation and although it began in a very positive way – they admired each other a lot – they became enemies and Sophie presumably acted on behalf of the two Western powers, Britain and France, along with some other representatives of these powers in Greece at the time, and Capodistrias of course on behalf of Russia. And political developments also confirm that. So, this is introductory, an introduction to the relation between Capodistrias and the Duchess of Plaisance and I look forward to your questions and points, observations about this topic and so on.