MODERN GREECE: A History since 1821 - Amazon Web Services

52 A NEW DYNASTY AND LINGERING PROBLEMS (1862–97)
when they knew well that the monarch could not grant them amnesty?
The arrogant chief of the brigands, Takos Arvanitakis, suggested to the
emissaries that those who had made the constitution could very well
unmake it and satisfy the brigand demand; the nation’s representatives
could even go to him and convene to pass the necessary amendments
under his protection! He held “kings,” he said, who could undo King
George! Obviously, all parties concerned – foreign states, Greece’s
government and authorities, the brigands themselves – were “victims”
of the constitutional ruling, which had been instituted to put an end to
the state of anarchy produced by the abuse of amnesty.
Spain and Italy suffered no less than Greece from institutionalized
brigandage, but these states were never condemned in the ways that
Greece was at the time. George Finlay, whose property in Attica was the
cause of much friction with the Greek authorities, sent to the London
Times and the Edinburgh Blackwood’s Magazine, very critical articles on
Greece and its institutionalized brigandage. Greece was portrayed as a
medieval country infested with outlaws of every description and unfit
to be a member of the civilized countries of Europe.
Scathing criticism of Greece from the West had an unexpected impact:
it produced a patriotic reaction and what was described as “ethnic”
(better, “national”) truth about the episode. The Dilessi murders were
perpetrated by Albanian outlaws, by foreigners who had “invaded”
Greece and committed the outrage to defame the country. In this
“defense” of Greece against foreign press attacks, which was presented
as a duty of every Greek who could write, many a Greek tried his hand
at patriotic writing, leaving a legacy of half-truths and untruths which
reflected a dark side of the country’s intelligentsia. Foremost among
these “defenders” of the honor of Greece was a young man living in
London, John Gennadios, whose services to Greece eventually earned
him the post of Greek ambassador to the Court of St James. In fine
English prose Gennadios did his utmost to prove that foreign brigands
had entered the country from the north and perpetrated the crimes;
they were Albanians, as the name of the brother chiefs “Arvanitakis”
“proved”! Arvanitakis, of course, was and still is a common Greek
name, showing possible descent from Hellenized Albanians in the distant
past. Gennadios and other Greek writers of the time and subsequent
times, in an effort to silence well-deserved foreign criticism,
became themselves and made the country the unexpected but willing
“hostages” of the country’s brigands. Descent into this nationalist