The Kingdom of Greece (Greek: Βασίλειον τῆς Ἑλλάδος, romanized: Vasíleion tis Elládos, pronounced [vaˈsili.on tis eˈlaðos]) was the Greek state established in 1832 by the Treaty of Constantinople, which formally recognised Greece as an independent state and established it as a monarchy, following the Greek War of Independence.
It succeeded the First Hellenic Republic and was internationally recognised by the Treaty of Constantinople, through which Greece secured full independence from the Ottoman Empire after nearly four centuries. The country remained a kingdom until 1924, when the Second Hellenic Republic was proclaimed. The monarchy was restored in 1935, after a referendum, and continued until its final abolition by the Regime of the Colonels in 1973. The referendum of the colonels, however, was widely regarded as rigged, so a second definitive referendum was held after the regime's fall in 1974 and confirmed the abolition of the monarchy, establishing the Third Hellenic Republic.
For much of its existence, the Kingdom's main ideological goal was the Megali Idea, which sought to annex lands with predominantly Greek populations.
King Otto ruled as an absolute monarch from 1835 until the 3 September 1843 Revolution, which transformed Greece into a constitutional monarchy, with the creation of the Prime Minister as head of government, universal male suffrage and a constitution. A popular insurrection deposed Otto in 1862, precipitating the gradual collapse of the early Greek parties (English, French, Russian), which had dominated Greek politics. The Greek National Assembly's election of George I in 1863 brought the transfer of the Ionian Islands from British rule in 1864. In his fifty–year reign, George presided over long periods of political instability, and wielded considerable power despite his role as a constitutional monarch. Prime Ministers, such as Alexandros Koumoundouros and Charilaos Trikoupis, shaped the politics and identity of the kingdom (including the annexation of Thessaly in 1881) before an economic depression and a catastrophic defeat in the Thirty Days' War weakened the Greek state. The Goudi coup in 1909 brought Eleftherios Venizelos to power and brought sweeping reforms, culminating in the Hellenic Army's victory in the Balkan Wars, led militarily by Crown Prince Constantine, who became King following George I's assassination during the First Balkan War.
The dispute and deep political rift of Monarchist and Venizelist forces regarding Greece's initial neutrality in World War I led to the National Schism, which, with Allied intervention, culminated in Constantine's exile, Venizelos' reinstatement as Prime Minister and Greece's entry into World War I. After victory in the Macedonian Front and success in the Asia Minor Campaign against the Ottomans, King Alexander, Constantine's second son, died in 1920, which triggered a constitutional crisis, culminating in anti-Venizelist candidate Dimitrios Gounaris' victory in the 1920 elections and a plebiscite confirming Constantine's return to the throne. Greece's disastrous defeat in Asia Minor two years later triggered the 11 September 1922 Revolution, which brought the abdication of Constantine in favour of his first son George II and the execution of Monarchist leaders in the Trial of the Six. The Treaty of Lausanne and the population exchange, along with a failed Monarchist coup in 1923, brought the proclamation of the Second Hellenic Republic in 1924.
A failed Venizelist coup in 1935 rapidly accelerated the Second Republic's collapse, with the Monarchy restored following a sham referendum in November 1935. Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas initiated a self-coup with the support of King George on 4 August 1936 and established the 4th of August Regime, a Metaxist and ultranationalist dictatorship with Metaxas wielding absolute power. Following Greece's entry into World War II and the Greco-Italian War, the German invasion of Greece toppled the Monarchy and conquered Greece, resulting in a triple occupation by the Axis powers. After the withdrawal of German forces in late 1944, the Monarchy was reaffirmed by victory in the three-year Greek Civil War. Spearheaded by Prime Ministers Alexandros Papagos and Konstantinos Karamanlis, Greece entered an economic miracle, but a successful coup on 21 April 1967 established the Regime of the Colonels, a military dictatorship. A failed counter-coup by King Constantine II on 13 December 1967 forced him into exile, and the Monarchy was dissolved in 1973, a decision that was reaffirmed by a democratic referendum in 1974.
Background
The Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire, which ruled most of the Eastern Mediterranean region for over 1100 years, had been fatally weakened since the sacking of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders in 1204.
The Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453 and advanced southwards into the Balkan peninsula capturing Athens in 1458. The Greeks held out in the Peloponnese until 1460, and the Venetians and Genoese clung to some of the islands, but by 1500 most of the plains and islands of Greece were in Ottoman hands; while in contrast, the mountains and highlands of Greece were largely untouched, and were a refuge for Greeks to flee foreign rule and engage in guerrilla warfare.
Preparation of the Greek War of Independence
In the context of an ardent desire for independence from Turkish rule, and with the explicit influence of similar secret societies elsewhere in Europe, three Greeks came together in 1814 in Odesa to decide the constitution for a secret organization in Freemasonic fashion. Its purpose was to unite all Greeks in an armed organization to overthrow Turkish rule. The three founders were Nikolaos Skoufas from the Arta province, Emmanuil Xanthos from Patmos, and Athanasios Tsakalov from Ioannina. Soon after they initiated a fourth member, Panagiotis Anagnostopoulos from Andritsaina.
Many revolts were planned across the Greek region and the first of them was launched on 6 March 1821, in the Danubian principalities. It was put down by the Ottomans, but the torch had been lit and by the end of the same month, the Peloponnese was in open revolt.
Greek War of Independence
In 1821, the Greek-speaking populations of Peloponnesus revolted against the Ottoman Empire. Following a region-wide struggle that lasted several months, the Greek War of Independence led to the establishment of the first autonomous Greek state since the mid-15th century.
In January 1822, the First National Assembly of Epidaurus passed the Greek Declaration of Independence (part of the country's First Constitution), which affirmed the sovereignty of Greece. However, the new Greek state was politically unstable and lacked the resources to preserve its territoriality in the long term. Most importantly, the country lacked international recognition and had no robust alliances in the Western world.
Following the recapture of the Greek territories by the Ottoman Empire, the great powers of that time (the United Kingdom, the Russian Empire, and the Kingdom of France) saw the Greek counter-offensive as an opportunity to weaken the Ottoman Empire further and in essence increase their influence in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Great Powers supported Greece to regain its independence and following a decisive battle in the Navarino Bay, a ceasefire was agreed in London (see Treaty of London (1827)). The autonomy of Greece was ultimately recognised by the London Protocol of 1828 and its full independence from the Ottoman Empire by the Protocol of London of 1830.
In 1831, the assassination of the first governor of Greece, Count Ioannis Kapodistrias, created political and social instability that endangered the country's relationship with its allies. To avoid escalation and in order to strengthen Greece's ties with the great powers, Greece agreed to become a kingdom in 1832 (see London Conference of 1832). Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was initially the first candidate for the Greek throne; however, he turned down the offer. Otto von Wittelsbach, Prince of Bavaria was chosen as its first king. Otto arrived at the provisional capital, Nafplion, in 1833 aboard a British warship.
History
Reign of King Otto (1832–1862)
Otto's reign would prove troubled, but managed to last for 30 years before he and his wife, Queen Amalia, left the way they came, aboard a British warship. During the early years of his reign, a group of Bavarian Regents ruled in his name and made themselves very unpopular by trying to impose German ideas of rigid hierarchical government on the Greeks, while keeping most significant state offices away from them. Nevertheless, they laid the foundations of a Greek administration, army, justice system and education system. Otto was sincere in his desire to give Greece good government, but he suffered from two great handicaps, him being a Roman Catholic while most Greek people were Orthodox Christian, and the fact that his marriage to Queen Amalia remained childless. Furthermore, the new kingdom tried to eliminate the traditional banditry, something that in many cases meant conflict with some old revolutionary fighters (klephtes) who continued to exercise this practice.
The Bavarian Regents ruled until 1837, when at the insistence of Britain and France, they were recalled, and Otto after that appointed Greek ministers, although Bavarian officials still ran most of the administration and the army. But Greece still had no legislature and no constitution. Greek discontent grew until a revolt broke out in Athens in September 1843. Otto agreed to grant a constitution, and convened a National Assembly which met in November. The new constitution created a bicameral parliament, consisting of an Assembly (Vouli) and a Senate (Gerousia). Power then passed into the hands of a group of politicians, most of whom had been commanders in the War of Independence against the Ottomans.
Greek politics in the 19th century was dominated by the national question. Greeks dreamed of liberating all the Greek lands and reconstituting a state embracing them all, with Constantinople as its capital. This was called the Great Idea (Megali Idea), and it was sustained by almost continuous rebellions against Ottoman rule in Greek-speaking territories, notably Crete, Thessaly and Macedonia. During the Crimean War the British occupied Piraeus to prevent Greece declaring war on the Ottomans as a Russian ally.
A new generation of Greek politicians was growing increasingly intolerant of King Otto's continuing interference in government. In 1862, the King dismissed his prime minister, the former admiral Konstantinos Kanaris, the most prominent politician of the period. This dismissal provoked a military rebellion, forcing Otto to accept the inevitable and leave the country. The Greeks then asked Britain to send Queen Victoria's son Prince Alfred as their new king, but this was vetoed by the other Powers. Instead, a young Danish prince became King George I. George was a very popular choice as a constitutional monarch, and he agreed that his sons would be raised in the Greek Orthodox faith. As a reward to the Greeks for adopting a pro-British king, Britain ceded the United States of the Ionian Islands to Greece.
Religious life
Under Ottoman rule, the Greek Church was a part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Ottoman authorities, who were Muslim, did not interfere with the church. With the establishment of the Greek Kingdom, however, the government decided to take control of the church, breaking away from the Patriarch in Constantinople. The government declared the church to be autocephalous (independent) in 1833 by a political decision of Bavarian regents acting for King Otto, who was a minor. The decision roiled Greek politics for decades as royal authorities took increasing control. The new status was finally recognised as such by the Patriarchate in 1850, under compromise conditions with the issue of a special Tomos (decree), which brought it back to a normal status. As a result, it retains certain special links with the Mother Church in Constantinople. At the time, there were only four bishops, and they had political roles.
In 1833, Parliament dissolved 400 small monasteries having fewer than five monks or nuns. Priests were not salaried; in rural areas, he was often also a peasant farmer, dependent on agricultural work and the fees and offerings of his parishioners. His ecclesiastical duties were limited to administering the Holy Mysteries, presiding over funerals, blessing of crops, and performing exorcisms. Few attended seminaries. By the 1840s, there was a nationwide revival, run by travelling preachers; the government arrested several and tried to suppress the revival, but it was too powerful when revivalists denounced three bishops for purchasing their office. By the 1880s, the Anaplasis ("Regeneration") Movement led to renewed spiritual energy and enlightenment. It fought against rationalistic and materialistic ideas seeping in from secular Western Europe. It promoted catechism schools, and Bible study groups.
Reign of King George I (1863–1913)
At the urging of Britain and King George, Greece adopted a much more democratic constitution in 1864. The powers of the king were reduced and the Senate was abolished, and the franchise was extended to all adult males. Nevertheless, Greek politics remained heavily dynastic, as it had always been. Family names such as Zaimis, Rallis and Trikoupis repeatedly occurred as prime ministers. Although parties were centered around the individual leaders, often bearing their names, two broad political tendencies existed: the liberals, led first by Charilaos Trikoupis and later by Eleftherios Venizelos, and the conservatives, led initially by Theodoros Deligiannis and later by Thrasivoulos Zaimis.
Trikoupis and Deligiannis dominated Greek politics in the later 19th century, alternating in office. Trikoupis favoured cooperation with Great Britain in foreign affairs, the creation of infrastructure and an indigenous industry, raising protective tariffs and progressive social legislation, while the more populist Deligiannis depended on the promotion of Greek nationalism and the Megali idea.
Greece remained a quite impoverished country throughout the 19th century. The country lacked raw materials, infrastructure and capital. Agriculture was mostly at the subsistence level, and the only important export commodities were currants, raisins and tobacco. Some Greeks grew rich as merchants and shipowners, and Piraeus became a major port, but little of this wealth found its way to the Greek peasantry. Greece remained hopelessly in debt to London finance houses.
By the 1890s Greece was virtually bankrupt, and public insolvency was declared in 1893. Poverty was rife in the rural areas and the islands and was eased only by large-scale emigration to the United States. There was little education in the countryside. Nevertheless, there was progress in building communications and infrastructure, and elegant public buildings were erected in Athens. Despite the bad financial situation, Athens staged the revival of the Olympic Games in 1896, which proved a great success.
The parliamentary process developed greatly in Greece during the reign of George I. Initially, the royal prerogative in choosing his prime minister remained and contributed to governmental instability, until the introduction of the dedilomeni principle of parliamentary confidence in 1875 by the reformist Charilaos Trikoupis. Clientelism and frequent electoral upheavals, however, remained the norm in Greek politics and frustrated the country's development. Corruption and Trikoupis' increased spending to create necessary infrastructure like the Corinth Canal overtaxed the weak Greek economy, forcing the declaration of public insolvency in 1893 and to accept the imposition of an International Financial Commission to pay off the country's debtors.
Another political issue in 19th-century Greece was uniquely Greek: the language question. The Greek people spoke a form of Greek called Demotic. Many of the educated elite saw this as a peasant dialect and were determined to restore the glories of Ancient Greece. Government documents and newspapers were consequently published in Katharevousa (purified) Greek, a form closer to Ancient Greek, which few ordinary Greeks could read. Liberals favoured recognising Demotic as the national language, but conservatives and the Orthodox Church resisted all such efforts, to the extent that, when the New Testament was translated into Demotic in 1901, riots erupted in Athens and the government fell (the Evangeliaka). This issue would continue to plague Greek politics until the 1970s.
All Greeks were united, however, in their determination to liberate the Greek-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Especially in Crete, a prolonged revolt in 1866–1869 had raised nationalist fervour. When war broke out between Russia and the Ottomans in 1877, popular Greek sentiment rallied to Russia's side, but Greece was too poor and too concerned about British intervention to officially enter the war. Nevertheless, in 1881, Thessaly and small parts of Epirus were ceded to Greece in the context of the Treaty of Berlin, while frustrating Greek hopes of receiving Crete.
Greeks in Crete continued to stage regular revolts, and in 1897, the Greek government under Theodoros Deligiannis, bowing to popular pressure, declared war on the Ottomans. In the ensuing Greco-Turkish War of 1897 the badly trained and equipped Greek army was defeated by the Ottomans. Through the intervention of the Great Powers, however, Greece lost only a little territory along the border to Turkey, while Crete was established as an autonomous state with the High Commissioner being Prince George of Greece. Nationalist sentiment among Greeks in the Ottoman Empire continued to grow, and by the 1890s there were constant disturbances in Macedonia. Here the Greeks were in competition not only with the Ottomans but also with the Bulgarians, engaged in an armed propaganda struggle for the hearts and minds of the ethnically mixed local population, the so-called "Macedonian Struggle". In July 1908, the Young Turk Revolution broke out in the Ottoman Empire.
Taking advantage of the Ottoman internal turmoil, Austria–Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bulgaria declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire. On Crete, the local population, led by a young politician named Eleftherios Venizelos, declared Enosis, union with Greece, provoking another crisis. The fact that the Greek government, led by Dimitrios Rallis, proved unable likewise to take advantage of the situation and bring Crete into the fold, rankled with many Greeks, especially with young officers. These formed a secret society, the "Military League", with the purpose of emulating their Ottoman colleagues and seeking reforms. The resulting Goudi coup on 15 August 1909 marked a watershed in modern Greek history: as the military conspirators were inexperienced in politics, they asked Venizelos, who had impeccable liberal credentials, to come to Greece as their political adviser. Venizelos quickly established himself as an influential political figure, and his allies won the August 1910 elections. Venizelos became Prime Minister in October 1910, ushering a period of 25 years where his personality would dominate Greek politics.
Venizelos initiated a major reform program, including a new and more liberal constitution and reforms in the spheres of public administration, education and economy. French and British military missions were invited for the army and navy respectively, and arms purchases were made. In the meantime, the Ottoman Empire's weaknesses were revealed by the ongoing Italo-Turkish War in Libya.
Through spring 1912, a series of bilateral agreements among the Balkan states (Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia) formed the Balkan League, which in October 1912 declared war on the Ottoman Empire.
Balkan Wars
Macedonian front
Ottoman intelligence had disastrously misread Greek military intentions. In retrospect, it would appear that the Ottoman staff believed that the Greek attack would be shared equally between the two primary avenues of approach, Macedonia and Epirus. The 2nd Army staff had therefore evenly balanced the combat strength of the seven Ottoman divisions between the Yanya Corps and VIII Corps, in Epirus and Macedonia respectively. The Greek Army also fielded seven divisions, but, having the initiative, concentrated all seven against VIII Corps, leaving only a number of independent battalions of scarcely divisional strength in the Epirus front. This had fatal consequences for the Western Group of Armies, since it led to the early loss of the strategic centre of all three Macedonian fronts, the city of Thessaloniki, a fact that sealed their fate. In an unexpectedly brilliant and rapid campaign, the Army of Thessaly seized the city. In the absence of secure sea lines of communications, the retention of the Thessaloniki-Constantinople corridor was essential to the overall strategic posture of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. Once this was gone, the defeat of the Ottoman Army became inevitable. To be sure, the Bulgarians and the Serbs played a significant role in the defeat of the main Ottoman armies. Their great victories at Kirk Kilise, Lule Burgas, Kumanovo, and Monastir shattered the Eastern and Vardar armies. However, these victories were not decisive in the sense that they ended the war. The Ottoman field armies survived, and in Thrace, they actually grew stronger day by day. In the strategic point of view these victories were enabled partially by the weakened condition of the Ottoman armies brought about by the active presence of the Greek army and fleet.
With the declaration of war, the Greek Army of Thessaly under Crown Prince Constantine advanced to the north, successfully overcoming Ottoman opposition in the fortified Straits of Sarantaporo. After another victory at Giannitsa on 2 November [O.S. 20 October] 1912, the Ottoman commander Hasan Tahsin Pasha surrendered Thessaloniki and its garrison of 26,000 men to the Greeks on 9 November [O.S. 27 October] 1912. Two Corps HQs (Ustruma and VIII), two Nizamiye divisions (14th and 22nd) and four Redif divisions (Salonika, Drama, Naslic and Serez) were thus lost to the Ottoman order of battle. Additionally, the Ottoman forces lost 70 artillery pieces, 30 machine guns and 70,000 rifles (Thessaloniki was the central arms depot for the Western Armies). The Ottoman forces estimated that 15,000 officers and men had been killed during the campaign in Macedonia, bringing total losses up to 41,000 soldiers. Another direct consequence was that the destruction of the Macedonian Army sealed the fate of the Ottoman Vardar Army, which was fighting the Serbs to the north. The fall of Thessaloniki left it strategically isolated, without logistical supply and depth to manoeuvre, ensuring its destruction.
Upon learning of the outcome of the battle of Yenidje, the Bulgarian high command urgently dispatched their 7th Rila Division from the north in the direction of the city. The division arrived there a week later, the day after its surrender to the Greeks. Until 10 November, the Greek-occupied zone had been expanded to the line from Lake Dojran to the Pangaion hills west to Kavalla. In southern Yugoslavia however, the lack of coordination between the Greek and Serbian HQs cost the Greeks a setback in the Battle of Vevi on 15 November [O.S. 2 November] 1912, when the Greek 5th Infantry Division crossed its way with the VI Ottoman Corps (a part of the Vardar Army consisting of the 16th, 17th and 18th Nizamiye divisions), retreating to Albania following the Battle of Prilep against the Serbs. The Greek division, surprised by the presence of the Ottoman Corps, isolated from the rest of Greek army and outnumbered by the now counterattacking Ottomans centred on Bitola, was forced to retreat. As a result, the Serbs beat the Greeks to Bitola.
Epirus front
In the Epirus front the Greek army was initially heavily outnumbered, but due to the passive attitude of the Ottomans succeeded in conquering Preveza (21 October 1912) and pushing north to the direction of Ioannina. On 5 November, Major Spyros Spyromilios led a revolt in the coastal area of Himarë and expelled the Ottoman garrison without facing significant resistance, while on 20 November Greek troops from western Macedonia entered Korçë. However, Greek forces in the Epirote front had not the numbers to initiate an offensive against the German-designed defensive positions of Bizani that protected the city of Ioannina, and therefore had to wait for reinforcements from the Macedonian front.
After the campaign in Macedonia was over, a large part of the Army was redeployed to Epirus, where Crown Prince Constantine himself assumed command. In the Battle of Bizani the Ottoman positions were breached and Ioannina taken on 6 March [O.S. 22 February] 1913. During the siege, on 8 February 1913, the Russian pilot N. de Sackoff, flying for the Greeks, became the first pilot ever shot down in combat, when his biplane was hit by ground fire following a bomb run on the walls of Fort Bizani. He came down near the small town of Preveza, on the coast north of the Ionian island of Lefkas, secured local Greek assistance, repaired his plane and resumed his flight back to base. The fall of Ioannina allowed the Greek army to continue its advance into northern Epirus, the southern part of modern Albania, which it occupied. There its advance stopped, although the Serbian line of control was very close to the north.
Naval operations in the Aegean and Ionian seas
On the outbreak of hostilities on 18 October, the Greek fleet, placed under the newly promoted Rear Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis, sailed for the island of Lemnos, occupying it three days later (although fighting continued on the island until 27 October) and establishing an anchorage at Moudros Bay. This move was of major strategic importance, as it provided the Greeks with a forward base in close distance to the Dardanelles, the Ottoman fleet's main anchorage and refuge. In view of the Ottoman fleet's superiority in speed and broadside weight, the Greek planners expected it to sortie from the straits early in the war. Given the Greek fleet's unpreparedness resulting from the premature outbreak of the war, such an early Ottoman attack might well have been able to achieve a crucial victory. Instead, the Ottoman Navy spent the first two months of the war in operations against the Bulgarians in the Black Sea, giving the Greeks valuable time to complete their preparations and allowing them to consolidate their control of the Aegean.
By mid-November Greek naval detachments had seized the islands of Imbros, Thasos, Agios Efstratios, Samothrace, Psara and Ikaria, while landings were undertaken on the larger islands of Lesbos and Chios only on 21 and 27 November respectively. Substantial Ottoman garrisons were present on the latter, and their resistance was fierce. They withdrew into the mountainous interior and were not subdued until 22 December and 3 January respectively. Samos, officially an autonomous principality, was not attacked until 13 March 1913, out of a desire not to upset the Italians in the nearby Dodecanese. The clashes there were short-lived as the Ottoman forces withdrew to the Anatolian mainland so that the island was securely in Greek hands by 16 March.
At the same time, with the aid of numerous merchant ships converted to auxiliary cruisers, a loose naval blockade on the Ottoman coasts from the Dardanelles to Suez was instituted, which disrupted the Ottomans' flow of supplies (only the Black Sea routes to Romania remained open) and left some 250,000 Ottoman troops immobilized in Asia. In the Ionian Sea, the Greek fleet operated without opposition, ferrying supplies for the army units in the Epirus front. Furthermore, the Greeks bombarded and then blockaded the port of Vlorë in Albania on 3 December, and Durrës on 27 February. A naval blockade extending from the pre-war Greek border to Vlorë was also instituted on 3 December, isolating the newly established Provisional Government of Albania based there from any outside support.
Lieutenant Nikolaos Votsis scored a major success for Greek morale on 31 October: he sailed his torpedo boat No. 11, under the cover of night, into the harbor of Thessaloniki, sank the old Ottoman ironclad battleship Feth-i Bülend and escaped unharmed. On the same day, Greek troops of the Epirus Army seized the Ottoman naval base of Preveza. The Ottomans scuttled the four ships present there, but the Greeks were able to salvage the Italian-built torpedo-boats Antalya and Tokat, which were commissioned into the Greek Navy as Nikopolis and Tatoi respectively. On 9 November, the wooden Ottoman armed steamer Trabzon was intercepted and sunk by the Greek torpedo boat No. 14 under Lt. Periklis Argyropoulos off Ayvalık.
Confrontations off the Dardanelles
The main Ottoman fleet remained inside the Dardanelles for the early part of the war, while the Greek destroyers continuously patrolled the Straits' exit to report on a possible sortie. Kountouriotis suggested mining the straits, but was not taken up for fear of international reactions. On 7 December, the head of the Ottoman fleet Tahir Bey was replaced by Ramiz Naman Bey, the leader of the hawkish faction among the officer corps. A new strategy was agreed, whereby the Ottomans were to take advantage of any absence of the Greek flagship Averof to attack the other Greek ships. The Ottoman staff formulated a plan to lure a number of the Greek destroyers on patrol into a trap. A first such effort on 12 December failed due to boiler trouble, but the second try two days later resulted in an indecisive engagement between the Greek destroyers and the cruiser Mecidiye.
The war's first major fleet action, the Naval Battle of Elli, was fought two days later, on 16 December [O.S. 3 December] 1912. The Ottoman fleet, with four battleships, nine destroyers and six torpedo boats, sailed to the entrance of the straits. The lighter Ottoman vessels remained behind, but the battleship squadron moved on north under cover of the forts at Kumkale and engaged the Greek fleet, coming from Imbros, at 9:40. Leaving the older battleships behind, Kountouriotis led the Averof into independent action: utilizing its superior speed, it cut across the Ottoman fleet's bow. Under fire from two sides, the Ottomans were quickly forced to withdraw to the Dardanelles. The whole engagement lasted less than an hour, in which the Ottoman fleet suffered heavy damage to the Barbaros Hayreddin and 18 dead and 41 wounded (most during their disorderly retreat) and the Greeks one dead and seven wounded.
In the aftermath of Elli, on 20 December the energetic Lt. Commander Rauf Bey was placed in effective command of the Ottoman fleet. Two days later he led his forces out, hoping again to trap the patrolling Greek destroyers between two divisions of the Ottoman fleet, one heading for Imbros and the other waiting at the entrance of the straits. The plan failed as the Greek ships quickly broke contact, while at the same time the Mecidiye came under attack by the Greek submarine Delfin, which launched a torpedo against it but missed; the first such attack in history. During this time, the Ottoman Army continued to press upon a reluctant Navy a plan for the re-occupation of Tenedos, which the Greek destroyers used as a base, by an amphibious operation. The operation was scheduled for 4 January. On that day, weather conditions were ideal, and the fleet was ready, but the Yenihan regiment earmarked for the operation failed to arrive on time. The naval staff nevertheless ordered the fleet to sortie, and an engagement developed with the Greek fleet, without any significant results on either side. Similar sorties followed on 10 and 11 January, but the results of these "cat and mouse" operations were always the same: "the Greek destroyers always managed to remain outside the Ottoman warships' range, and each time the cruisers fired a few rounds before breaking off the chase."
In preparation for the next attempt to break the Greek blockade, the Ottoman Admiralty decided to create a diversion by sending the light cruiser Hamidiye, captained by Rauf Bey, to raid Greek merchant shipping in the Aegean. It was hoped that the Averof, the only major Greek unit fast enough to catch the Hamidiye, would be drawn in pursuit and leave the remainder of the Greek fleet weakened. In the event, Hamidiye slipped through the Greek patrols on the night of 14–15 January and bombarded the harbor of the Greek island of Syros, sinking the Greek auxiliary cruiser Makedonia which lay in anchor there (it was later raised and repaired). The Hamidiye then left the Aegean for the Eastern Mediterranean, making stops at Beirut and Port Said before entering the Red Sea. Although providing a major morale boost for the Ottomans, the operation failed to achieve its primary objective, as Kountouriotis refused to leave his post and pursue the Hamidiye.
Four days later, on 18 January [O.S. 5 January] 1913, when the Ottoman fleet again sallied from the straits towards Lemnos, it was defeated for a second time in the Naval Battle of Lemnos. This time, the Ottoman warships concentrated their fire on the Averof, which again made use of its superior speed and tried to "cross the T" of the Ottoman fleet. Barbaros Hayreddin was again heavily damaged, and the Ottoman fleet was forced to return to the shelter of the Dardanelles and their forts. The Ottomans suffered 41 killed and 101 wounded. It was the last attempt of the Ottoman Navy to leave the Dardanelles, thereby leaving the Greeks dominant in the Aegean. On 5 February [O.S. 24 January] 1913, a Greek Farman MF.7, piloted by Lt. Moutousis and with Ensign Moraitinis as an observer, carried out an aerial reconnaissance of the Ottoman fleet in its anchorage at Nagara, and launched four bombs on the anchored ships. Although it scored no hits, this operation is regarded as the first naval-air operation in military history.
General Nikola Ivanov, commander of the 2nd Bulgarian Army, acknowledged the role of the Greek fleet in the overall Balkan League victory by stating that "the activity of the entire Greek fleet and above all the Averof was the chief factor in the general success of the allies".
End of the War
The Treaty of London ended the war, but no one was left satisfied, and soon, the four allies fell out over the partition of Macedonia. In June 1913, Bulgaria attacked Greece and Serbia, beginning the Second Balkan War, but was beaten back. The Treaty of Bucharest, which concluded the war, left Greece with southern Epirus, the southern-half of Macedonia, Crete and the Aegean islands, except for the Dodecanese, which had been occupied by Italy in 1911. These gains nearly doubled Greece's area and population.