John Capodistria

statue of John Capodistria in Panepistimiou Street, Athens

John Capodistria, (in Greek Ioannis Kapodistrias or Ιωάννης Καποδίστριας, and in Italian Giovanni Capo d'Istria, Count Capo d'Istria) (February 11 1776 - October 9 1831), Greek-born diplomat of the Russian Empire and later first head of state of independent Greece, was born in Corfu (Kerkira) in the Ionian Islands, which were at the time of his birth a possession of Venice.

Rise to power

Capodistria studied medicine at Padua in Italy and he belonged to an ancient Corfiot family which had immigrated from Istria in 1373. The title of count was granted to the family by Charles Emmanuel, duke of Savoy, in 1689. The title originates from the Cape of Istria at the head of the Adriatic Sea: now Cape Kamenjak in Croatia. Giovanni father, Antonio Maria Capo d'Istria, was a man of considerable importance in the island; a stiff aristocrat of the old school, who in 1798, after the treaty of Campo Formio had placed the lonian Islands under French rule, was imprisoned for his opposition to the new regime, his release next year being the earliest triumph of his son's diplomacy.

On the establishment in 1800, under Turkish suzerainty, of the Septinsular Republic settlement negotiated at Constantinople by the elder Capo d'Istria, Giovanni entered the government service as secretary to the legislative council, and in one capacity or another exercised for the next seven years a determining voice in the affairs of the republic.

At the beginning of 1807 he was appointed extraordinary military governor to organize the defence of Santa Maura against Ali Pasha of Iannina, an enterprise which brought him into contact with Theodoros Kolokotrones and other future chiefs of the war of Greek independence, and awoke in him that wider Hellenic patriotism which was so largely to influence his career.

Russian service

Honorary position

Throughout the period of his official connection with the Ionian government, Capo d'Istria had been a consistent upholder of Russian influence in the islands; and when the treaty of Tilsit 1807 dashed his hopes by handing over the lonian republic to Napoleon, he did not relinquish his belief in Russia as the most reliable ally of the Greek cause. He accordingly refused the offers made to him by the French government, and accepted the invitation of the Russian chancellor Romanzov to enter tsar Alexander I service. He went to St Petersburg in 1809, and was appointed to the honorary post of attach to the foreign office, but it was not till two years after, in 1811, that he was actually employed in diplomatic work as attaché to Baron Stackelberg, the Russian ambassador at Vienna.

His knowledge of the near East was here of great service, and in the following year he was attached, as chief. of his diplomatic bureau, to Admiral Chichagov, on. his mission to the Danubian principalities to stir up trouble in the Balkan peninsula as a diversion on the flank of Austria; and to attempt to supplement the treaty of Bucharest by an offensive and defensive alliance with the Ottoman empire. The Moscow campaign of 1812 intervened; Chichagov was disgraced in consequence of his failure to destroy Napoleon at the passage of the Beresina; but Capo d'Istria was not involved, was made a councillor of state and continued in his diplomatic functions. During the campaign of 1813 he was attached to the staff of Barclay de Tolly and was present at the battles of Lützen, Bautzen, Dresden and Leipzig. With the advance of the allies he was sent to Switzerland to secure the withdrawal of the republic from the French alliance. Here, in spite of his instructions to guarantee the neutrality of Switzerland, he signed on his own responsibility the proclamation issued by Prince Schwarzenberg, stating the intention of the allied troops to march through the country. His motive was to prevent any appearance of disagreement among the allies. The emperor Alexander, to whom he hastened to make an explanation in person, endorsed his action.

Capo d'Istria was present with the allies in Paris, and after the signing of the first peace of Paris he was rewarded by the tsar with the order of St Vladimir and his full confidence. At the congress of Vienna his influence was conspicuous; he represented the tsar on the Swiss committee, was associated with Rasumovsky in negotiating the tangled Polish and Saxon questions, and was the Russian plenipotentiary in the discussions with the Baron vom Stein on the affairs of Germany. His Mémoire sur l'empire germanique, of February 9, 1815, presented to the tsar, was based on the policy of keeping Germany weak in order to secure Russian preponderance in its councils. It was perhaps from a similar motive that, after the Waterloo campaign, he strenuously opposed the proposals for the dismemberment of France. It was on his advice that the duc de Richelieu persuaded Louis XVIII to write the autograph letter in which he declared his intention of resigning rather than submit to any diminution of the territories handed down to him by his ancestors. The treaty of November 20, 1815, which formed for years the basis of the effective concert of Europe, was also largely his work.

Secretary of state

On September 26, 1815, after the proclamation of the Holy Alliance at the great review on the plain of Vertus, Capo d'Istria was named a secretary of state. On his return to St Petersburg, he shared the ministry of foreign affairs with Count Nesselrode, though the latter as senior signed all documents. Capo d'Istria, however, had sole charge of the newly acquired province of Bessarabia, which he governed conspicuously well. In 1818 he attended the emperor Alexander at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, and in the following year obtained leave to visit his home. He travelled by way of Venice, Rome and Naples, his progress—exciting the liveliest apprehensions of the powers; notably of Austria. The Jacobin pose of the tsar was notorious, his all-embracing ambition hardly less so; and Russian travellers in Italy, notably the emperor's former tutor, César de Laharpe, were little careful in the expression of their sympathy for the ideals of the Carbonari. In Metternichs eyes Capo d'Istria, the coryphaeus of liberalism, was responsible for the tsars vagaries, the fount of all the ills of which the times were sick; and, for all the counts diplomatic reticence, the Austrian spies who dogged his footsteps earned their salaries by reporting sayings that set the reactionary courts in a flutter.

For Metternich the overthrow of Capo d'Istria's influence became a necessity of political salvation. At Corfu Capo d'Istria became the repository of all the grievances of his countrymen against the robust administration of Sir Thomas Maitland. At the Congress of Vienna the count had supported the British protectorate over the Ionian Islands, the advantages of which from the point of view of trade and security were obvious; but the drastic methods of King Tom's government, symbolized by a gallows—for pirates and other evil-doers in every popular gathering place, offended his local patriotism. He submitted a memorandum on the subject to the tsar, and before returning to Russia travelled via Paris to England to lay the grievances of the lonians before the British government. His reception was a cold one, mainly due to his own disingenuousness, for he refused to show British ministers the memorandum which he had already submitted to the Russian emperor, on the ground that it was intended only for his own private use. The whole thing seemed, rightly or wrongly, an excuse for the intervention of Russia in affairs which were by treaty wholly British.

On his return to St Petersburg in the autumn of 1819, Capo d'Istria resumed his influence in the intimate counsels of the tsar. The murder of the Russian agent, Kotzebue, in March, had shaken but not destroyed Alexander's liberalism, and it was Capo d'Istria who drew up the emperors protest against the Carlsbad decrees and the declaration of his adherence to constitutional views. In October 1820 Capo d'Istria accompanied the tsar to the congress at Troppau. The events of the year—the murder of the duc de Berry in March, the Revolutions in Spain and in Naples—had produced their effect. Alexander was, in Metternich's exultant language, a changed man, and Capo d'Istria apparently shared his conversion to reactionary principles. The Austrian. chancellor now put forth all his powers to bring Alexander under his own influence, and to overthrow Capo d'Istria, whom he despised, distrusted and feared. In 1821 Alexander Ypsilanti's misguided raid into the Danubian principalities gave him his opportunity. The news reached the tsar at the congress of Laibach, and to Capo d'Istria was entrusted the task of writing the letter to Ypsilanti in which the tsar repudiated his claim, publicly proclaimed that he had the sympathy and support of Russia. For a while the position of Capo d'Istria was saved; but it was known that he had been approached by the agent of the Greek Hetairia before Ypsilanti, and that he had encouraged Ypsilanti to take up the ill-fated adventure which he himself had refused; he was hated at the Russian court as an upstart Greek, and Metternich was never weary of impressing on all and sundry that he was using Russian policy for Greek ends. At last nothing but long habit—and native loyalty to those who had served him well, prevented Alexander from parting with a minister who had ceased to possess his confidence. Capo d'Istria, anticipating his dismissal, resigned on the eve of the tsar's departure for the congress of Verona 1822 and retired into private life at Geneva.

Election to Governer

On April 11, 1827, the Greek national assembly at Troezene elected Capo d'Istria president of the republic. The title he assumed was kivernitis (Governor), rather than proedhros (President), to avoid giving offence to the monarchist powers whose support Greece needed.

The vote was a triumph for the Russian faction, for the count, even after his fall, had not lost the personal regard of the emperor Alexander, nor ceased to consider himself a Russian official. He accepted the offer, but was in no hurry to take up the thankless task. In July he visited the emperor Nicholas I at Tsarskoye Selo, receiving permission to proceed and instructions as to the policy he should adopt, and he next made a tour of the courts of Europe in search of moral and material support. The news of the battle of Navarino (October 20, 1827) hastened his arrival; the British frigate "Warspite" was placed at his disposal to carry him to Greece, and on January 19, 1828 he landed at Nafplio.

It was the first time he had ever set foot on the Greek mainland, and he knew almost nothing about the situation in Greece—where fighting against the Ottomans was still going on—or the realities of Greek politics, which were riven by factional and dynastic conflicts. The country was bankrupt and the Greeks were unable to form a united national government.

Capodistria on the Greek 20 lepta (20-cent) coin

Capo d'Istria's rule in Greece had to contend against immense difficulties not least the continued presence of Ibrahim Pasha, with an unbroken army, in the south of the Morea. His strength lay in his experience of affairs and in the support of Russia; but he was by inheritance an aristocrat and by training an official, lacking in broad human sympathy, and therefore little fitted to deal with the wild and democratic elements of the society it was his task to control. The Greeks could understand the international status given to them by his presidency, and for a while the enthusiasm evoked by his arrival made him master of the situation.

He thoroughly represented Greek sentiment, too, in his refusal to accept the narrow limits which the powers, in successive protocols, sought to impose on the new state. But the Russian administrative system by which he sought to restrain the native turbulence was bound in the end to be fatal to him. He underestimated the political and military strength of the Capetanei (Commanders) who had led the revolt against Turkey in 1821, and who had expected a leadership role in the post-revolution Government. They were won over at first by their inclusion in his government but were offended by his European airs and Russian uniform, and alienated by his preference for the educated Greeks of the Phanar and of Corfu, his promotion of his brothers Viaro and Agostino to high commands causing special offence.

Fatal mistake

Dissatisfaction ended in open rebellion; the islands revolted; Capo d'Istria called in the aid of the Russian admiral; and Miaoulis, the hero of the Greek war at sea, blew up the warships under his command to prevent their falling into the hands of the government. On land, so far as the president was concerned, the climax was reached with the attempt to coerce the Mavromichales of the Mama or Mani Peninsula, the bravest and most turbulent of the mountain clans. Their leader Petrobey Mavromichales, the Bey of the Mani Peninsula, had played a leading part in the War of Independence. The result was an insurrection in the Mama (Easter, 1830), and the imprisonment of those of the Mavromichales, including Petrobey, who happened to be in the power of the government.

At the news of their chieftain's imprisonment the Mainots, who had for a while been pacified, once more flew to arms and threatened to march on Nafplio; but negotiations were opened, and on the advice of the Russian minister Petrobey consented to make his submission to the president. Unhappily, when he was brought under guard to the appointed interview, Capo d'Istria, in a moment of irritation and weariness, refused to see him. Maddened with rage at this insult from a man who had not struck a blow for Greece, the proud old chief, on his way back to prison, called out to two of his kinsmen, his son George and his brother Constantine, "You see how I fare," and passed on. According to the code of the Mama this was a command to take revenge. Next day, the 9th October, 1831, the two placed themselves at the door of the church where Capo d'Istria was accustomed to worship. As he passed in Constantine shot him down, and as he fell George thrust a dagger into his heart. According to many scholars the assasination of Capo d'Istria was the result of a French - British plot in order to diminish the Russian influence in Greece. After the assasination the murderer asked and received shelter at the French embassy.

From the first days of its independence modern Greece was a protectorate. It is characreristic that the first 3 political parties in Greece had the names British, French, Russian.

Capodistria is greatly honoured in Greece today, and the University of Athens is named "Capodistrian" to honour him. However, many people argue that he was a failure as a national leader. The chaos of the first Greek republic eventually led Britain, France and Russia to insist on Greece becoming a monarchy before they would agree to support its independence.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

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