its
sovereign. Prince Leopold accepted the throne on February 11, but
resigned it on May 17. Thereafter Capodistrias exercised his functions
as president in the most tyrannical fashion, and was assassinated on
October 9, 1831; from which date till February 1833 anarchy prevailed in
the country.

Agostino Capodistrias, brother of the assassinated president, who had
been chosen president by the National Assembly on December 20, 1831, was
ejected out of the presidency by the same assembly in April 1832, and
Prince Otho of Bavaria was elected King of Greece. Otho, accompanied by
a small Bavarian army, landed from an English frigate in Greece at
Nauplia on February 6, 1833. He was then only seventeen years of age,
and a regency of three Bavarians was appointed to administer the
government during his minority, his majority being fixed at June 1,
1835.

The regency issued a decree in August 1833, proclaiming the national
Church of Greece independent of the patriarchate and synod of
Constantinople and establishing an ecclesiastical synod for the kingdom
on the model of that of Russia, but with more freedom of action. In
judicial procedure, however, the regency placed themselves above the
tribunals. King Otho, who had come of age in 1835, and married a
daughter of the Duke of Oldenburg in 1837, became his own prime minister
in 1839, and claimed to rule with absolute power. He did not possess
ability, experience, energy, or generosity; consequently, he was not
respected, obeyed, feared, or loved. The administrative incapacity of
King Otho's counsellors disgusted the three protecting powers as much as
their arbitrary conduct irritated the Greeks.

A revolution naturally followed. Otho was compelled to abandon absolute
power in order to preserve his crown, and in March 1844 he swore
obedience to a constitution prepared by the National Assembly, which put
an end to the government of alien rulers under which the Greeks had
lived for two thousand years. The destinies of the race were now in the
hands of the citizens of liberated Greece. But the attempt was
unsuccessful. The corruption of the government and the contracted views
of King Otho rendered the period from the adoption of the constitution
to his expulsion in 1862 a period of national stagnation. In October
1862 revolt broke out, and on the 23rd a provisional government at
Athens issued a proclamation declaring, in his absence, that the reign
of King Otho was at an end.