King of the Hellenes, eldest son of George I. of Greece, born on the 2nd of August 1868, and succeeded to the throne March 18, 1913, on the assassination of his father. As the first prince of a Greek reigning dynasty born in modern times on Greek soil, and reared in the Greek Orthodox faith, he became from his birth to the Greek people the embodiment of their national aspirations, and was given the name of the last Emperor of Constantinople, in the superstitious hope that he would fulfil the old prophecy that the Empire of Byzantium would be restored to the Greek nation, when a king named Constantine and a queen named Sophia should reign on the Greek throne. This strange legend strengthened Constantine’s popularity amongst the Greeks, and when in 1889 he married Sophia Dorothea of Hohenzollern, daughter of the Emperor Frederick of Germany, the coincidence of the name enhanced immensely the superstitious belief of the Greeks. He received his early education under private tutors at Athens. At the age of eighteen he was sent to Berlin for a military education, and served in one of the Imperial Guard regiments, attending also a few desultory courses at the university of Leipzig. It was during his stay in Berlin that he made the acquaintance of his future wife, and (very much against his father’s wishes) formed the attachment that was destined to exert such an important influence on his career.
After returning to Greece he was given various military commands. In 1897 he was sent to Larissa to take command of the Greek army in Thessaly, just before the outbreak of the disastrous war with Turkey. At the close of the war the Crown Prince was probably the best-hated man in Greece. The popular voice attributed the disasters to him and to his father. He still retained, however, his nominal post of commander-in-chief.
It was only in August 1909, when the garrison of Athens suddenly revolted and demanded sweeping reforms, including the reorganization of the army and navy and the removal of the princes from all military commands, that Constantine and his brothers, George, Nicholas and Andrew, hastened to resign their commissions and to go abroad to escape the open hostility of public opinion. From this practical exile the Crown Prince first, and his brothers Nicholas and Andrew afterwards, were recalled and reinstated in their commands by Venizelos, when the latter became the all-powerful head of the Greek Government. His bill for the reappointment of Crown Prince Constantine as commander-in-chief of the army was bitterly opposed in the Greek Chamber by Theotokis, Gounaris, Rallis and other politicians, who a few years later were to become King Constantine’s chief supporters. The army officers, too, with few exceptions, were much opposed to the bill. By a curious irony, it was only Venizelos’s determined attitude that saved it from rejection. The Greek successes in the Balkan wars subsequently enhanced the Crown Prince’s credit, and it was in an atmosphere of renewed popularity (Venizelos himself helping to exploit it) that he succeeded unexpectedly to the throne on his father’s assassination.
King Constantine at once showed his monarchical spirit. He took to copying the modes of speech and action of his brother-in-law, the German Emperor. He began to speak, in his official utterances, of “My army” and “My navy”; to attend in person the swearing-in of the annual recruits and to impress upon them the extreme sanctity of their oath of allegiance to him. Officers were made to feel that their only hope of advancement lay in their devotion to the War-lord. And when his youngest daughter was born in 1913, he proclaimed “his” army and navy godfathers to the little princess. Such incidents attracted little serious attention at the time. But the subsequent course of events showed that the King was intent on converting the democratic, ultra-constitutional monarchy, which that of Greece had been, into one of a more absolute type on the Prussian model. Constantine and his defenders have indeed vehemently denied the existence of any secret understanding between himself and the Kaiser, either before or after the outbreak of the World War. Apart, however, from the indirect evidence furnished by the private telegrams exchanged between the royal couple of Greece and the Kaiser in 1916–7, which came to light after Constantine’s dethronement, the existence of a definite understanding between William II. and Constantine to secure Greek neutrality in an impending European war has been expressly attested by Gen. Ludendorff himself in his war memoirs. During the first six months of the war Constantine gave no sign, even when Venizelos, before the first battle of the Marne, offered the alliance and aid of Greece to the Entente Powers. But when in January 1915 the Entente promised Greece extensive territory in Asia Minor if she would join in the Dardanelles operations, and Venizelos proposed to cooperate, Constantine refused to give his sanction. Venizelos at once resigned, and at the ensuing parliamentary election a large Venizelist majority was returned (June 1915). The King was seriously ill at the time, and the Queen and the Government flatly refused to allow the appointment of a regent. Thus it was a full three months after the election before Venizelos returned to power; during that interval every effort was vainly made by Court and Cabinet to seduce the Venizelist deputies into joining the “King’s party,” as it was now openly termed. When Venizelos finally was reinstated in office Bulgaria was preparing to fall upon Serbia in the flank, and Venizelos hastened to inform Bulgaria that any attack by her upon Serbia would cause the intervention of the Greek army. But Constantine, sending for the Bulgarian minister behind Venizelos’s back, authorized him to inform his Government confidentially that Bulgaria need not fear any intervention on Greece’s part. He gave the same assurance through the channel of the German Government. Thus Bulgaria proceeded unhesitatingly to order a general mobilization (Sept. 1915). To this step Venizelos at once replied by ordering a general mobilization of the Greek army. The King offered no objection to signing the decree, but when the next day Venizelos announced in the Greek Chamber that Greece would declare war against Bulgaria if she attacked Serbia, Constantine immediately sent for him and asked for his resignation, informing him that he would never consent to attack one of Germany’s allies. To Venizelos’s remonstrance that after the recent popular verdict the Crown was bound to follow the responsible Government’s policy, Constantine replied that in questions of foreign policy he did not hold himself bound to follow the popular will, as he considered himself “personally responsible to God alone.” Thus, after Venizelos’s fresh resignation and the formation of a Zaimes Cabinet, the Grace-Serbian treaty was repudiated and Serbia was abandoned to her fate. As the Venizelist parliamentary majority refused to support the new Government a fresh dissolution was decreed, and in the new election (Dec. 1915), owing to the Venizelist party abstaining as a protest against the repeated unconstitutional proceedings of the Crown, a new Chamber was elected, composed entirely of Constantine’s supporters. At Venizelos’s invitation just before his resignation an Anglo-French force of over 100,000 men had been landed at Salonika, too late indeed to save Serbia but strong enough to entrench itself at Salonika.
Constantine and his party did not yet dare to commit themselves to a policy of open hostility to the Entente, although the Greek army, mobilized by Venizelos to defend Serbia, remained under arms in Macedonia until July 1916 to “defend Greek neutrality.” But the Allied army in Macedonia was subjected to every sort of petty annoyance and even to espionage on the part of the Greek authorities; thus a Greek lieutenant, who was accused of tapping the Allied military telephone wires, was ostentatiously decorated by the King within the week. On May 26, 1916, by direct order of Gen. Dousmanes, the King’s chief-of-staff, over the head of the responsible Minister of War, Fort Rupel, which commanded the Struma Pass into east Macedonia, was surrendered to the Bulgarians by pre-arrangement between Constantine and the German general staff.
After Venizelos had seceded from Athens and established his “Provisional Government of National Defence” at Salonika, Constantine’s movements became more and more openly hostile to the Entente. Regular communications with the Central Empires were kept up through north Epirus and Albania, and the German-Austrian submarines were suspected of receiving valuable assistance from royalist agents in Greece. Finally, Constantine‘s troops having become a standing menace to the Allied army in Macedonia, the Allies demanded the surrender of a quantity of arms and ammunition on the part of the Athens Government. The Lambros Ministry protested against this demand, but the King privately promised the French admiral, Dartige du Fournet, to surrender these arms if Athens were occupied by an Allied force to “save his face.” When, however, on the following day (Dec. 1, 1916) a body of 1,800 Allied bluejackets landed at the Piraeus and marched up to Athens, they were allowed to walk into positions carefully ambushed, and there were set upon by the royalist troops and thousands of reservists specially enrolled and armed for the purpose overnight. The Allied force drew off at nightfall with heavy losses. They would have been annihilated but for the presence at Phaleron of a powerful Allied fleet, which late in the day hurled a few shells into the royal palace and caused Constantine to order a cessation of hostilities.
This act of treachery on Constantine’s part was followed the next day by wild scenes of hunting down as rebels and enemies of the King the unarmed Venizelist citizens of Athens. But the Powers took no immediate steps either to protect their friends or to avenge the insult to their own flags. After a whole month of deliberation, on December 31st, they declared a blockade of Greece and demanded the removal of the entire Greek army to the Peloponnesus. But no measures were taken against Constantine himself, since apparently there were still quarters within the Entente unwilling to believe the worst. It was only on the downfall of the Tsar (March 1917) that Great Britain and France finally arrived at a decision. On June 11, 1917, a powerful Anglo-French fleet arrived at the Piraeus, carrying a land force of 30,000 men; and M. Jonnart, in the name of the Allies, demanded the immediate abdication of Constantine and his eldest son and their departure from Greece. Constantine saw that resistance was hopeless and bowed to the inevitable. Constantine (or “Tino,” as he was commonly called) withdrew to Switzerland; there, with the aid of the German propaganda, he organized intrigues in Greece among the disaffected. He went so far in 1918 as to send his chief aide-de-camp to Germany to select two officers of the Greek army corps of Kavalla, then interned at Görlitz, to proceed to Greece on board a German submarine, to spy upon the Allied army in Macedonia and to organize an armed uprising in their rear. And he openly proclaimed urbi et orbi that he had never renounced his rights to the Greek throne and was still the only legitimate sovereign, his son Alexander (who had been proclaimed the new king) being merely his temporary locum tenens. Thus it came about that upon Alexander’s untimely death and Venizelos’s defeat at the polls in November 1920, Constantine returned in triumph to Athens, in defiance of the Allies’ non-recognition of him. He was not recognized in 1921 by any of the Allied Powers. On June 11, 1921 (still without any formal recognition from the Allies), he left for Smyrna to take command of the Greek army in Asia Minor in the renewal of war (England and France standing aloof) against Turkey.
