, under Turkish suzerainty, of the septinsular
republic--a settlement negotiated at Constantinople by the elder Capo
d'Istria--Giovanni, who had meanwhile studied medicine at Padua, 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 Theodores 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.

Throughout the period of his official connexion 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 Ionian 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 the tsar's service. He went to St Petersburg in 1809,
and was appointed to the honorary post of attache to the foreign office,
but it was not till two years after, in 1811, that he was actually
employed in diplomatic work as attache 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 Lutzen, 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