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Here in Aegina and in my home town of Nafplion
there are very few who remember Capodistrias.
The more I study this subject and the more I write various articles
apart from his biography, the more I feel as if I am discovering
a hidden history, a secret history, although I am personally a rationalist.
Many times, also, I find myself in conflict
with the official historiography and with what we have been taught
about Capodistrias. There are two reasons for this:
One reason is that nobody has been able
up to now to carry out a comprehensive and penetrating study
of all the work of Capodistrias, from the time that he became "prime minister"
of the Ionian Islands in 1803 until his swearing-in as governor of Greece.
The places he went, where he travelled, in which languages he has left his traces,
in which archives all this is to be found. No-one has an overview of the subject
in all its depth and breadth. In my view
the bibliography is meagre. It is confined to Greek historians,
along with an important Russian historiographer and researcher in the archives,
Grigori Arsh. And to some others as well…
I could mention indicatively Polychronis Enepekidis,
who has done important work in the Vienna archives
It is a dark subject because at a certain point
the state that survived Capodistrias implemented the familiar damnatio memoriae,
that is to say it attempted to expunge the memory of the Governor.
In every way. For example a wealthy Russian Greek, Dobolis,
left the greater part of his fortune as a bequest to the Greek state
for the establishment of a university, on just one condition,
that the university should be called Capodistrian.
And although Dobolis left this bequest after the death of Capodistrias,
in 1840 or 1850, I think, it became Capodistrian in 1901.
They did not take receipt of the bequest so that they would not
have to name the university Capodistrian.
Interjection: In '37?
The university was from 1837 but they didn't accept the bequest.
They accepted the bequest in 1901. They let seventy or eighty years pass,
just so as not to have to call the university Capodistrian.
Interjector: Pardon me.
The damnatio memoriae also covered his activity in Greece but above all
his activity in Europe. The person who is regarded today
as the most important diplomat of all the ages is Metternich, Count Metternich.
And he has this reputation because there is an academic treatise
by the famous Henry Kissinger, from 1957.
It was his doctoral dissertation and it shows how Metternich
and the vision of Metternich for Europe and the world
was the most significant, and most deserved to be followed. In fact
it wasn't the most significant, nor was it what prevailed.
Nor what was wanted by the peoples, by the citizens.
It is clear that what prevailed in Europe was the vision
of the great opponent of Metternich, Capodistrias.
I will begin now a quite detailed account of facts,
which I hope will not take up too long,
to prove what I am saying:
Metternich himself wrote in a letter to his mistress, Baroness Lieven,
about whom I had an article in the magazine Hot Doc
some weeks ago. He wrote “Capodistrias
is not a bad person but to be frank
he is a perfect marvel of wrong-headed stubbornness.
He lives in a world of his own, which for us is a nightmare.”
That is what Metternich wrote. The world that Capodistrias dreamed of
was for him a nightmare. What was the nightmare?
It was nation states! The sovereignty of the people.
To see our national team, to play the national anthem,
to sing the national anthem and then to go and play football
with another national team. And so on.
That was the nightmare. What we have today.
What in those days was called liberalism,
and it doesn’t have any connection with economic neoliberalism
that all of us have heard of, some less, some more.
For Metternich, Capodistrias, according to written texts,
written documentation, aimed at liberating his country
from the Turks and changing the status quo
in Europe. He was a crypto-revolutionary
and an extreme liberal. Metternich wrote in many of his letters
that he was the leader of the ultra-liberals.
What is liberalism? Metternich, who, I will remind you,
had two nicknames, was “the Great Inquisitor of Europe”,
because he had a huge network of secret police,
in Vienna and elsewhere, was involved essentially
in gathering information. He was gathering information
in order to ward off the danger that was called –
today we would call it nationalism. At that time it was called liberalism
or patriotism. That started
with the French Revolution of 1789. So the nicknames were
“Great Inquisitor of Europe” and in fact one of Metternich’s nicknames
among the British ministers was “second prophet of the Ottomans”,
because what he was trying to do more than anything else
was to protect the Ottoman Empire from disintegration.
So what was a liberal at that time?
He was the person who had been inspired by the principles
of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity:
the three principles of the French Revolution;
the three colours of the French flag, and so on.
That was what a liberal was at that time.
The Hungarian who wished to live in Hungary
and not in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a liberal.
The Greek who wished to live in Greece
and not in the Ottoman Empire was a liberal.
The Serb who wished to live in Serbia
and not, again, in the Ottoman Empire
was a liberal. The Frenchman or Frenchwoman
who wished to live in France, the German who wished to live
in a united Germany, for Germany had the problem
of being divided up into very many princedoms.
That was the liberalism of that time. I would like you to bear in mind,
and compare it… Today we take it for granted.
Greece belongs to the Greeks. We all live in Greece
and feel that we are Greeks. At that time
it couldn’t be taken for granted. The world was different.
You could say I am an Ottoman citizen
of Greek extraction. Today many take the view
that the world got onto the wrong track at that time.
That all that liberalism that culminated in nationalism,
which culminated in the nations, was the wrong direction to take.
There is the view that the world should have stayed
how Metternich envisaged it, that is to say
divided between three or four empires, with three or four hegemons
by the grace of God, and people would live better,
more peacefully, without wars, and so on.
The truth is that here we will try to prove
that the world envisaged by Capodistrias was inevitable and it maintained the peace
for the first time in Europe for ninety-nine years, from 1815,
when the Congress of Paris ended, retaining to some extent
some of the ideas of Capodistrias, up to 1914
there was no war in Europe. By contrast after 1914 there was 1940,
and nobody knows when there is going to be a new war.
What was the status quo of that time? There was the British Empire,
which was the most powerful imperialistic state with immense possessions
in all of the world. There were France and Spain,
which were ruled by Bourbon kings, by the Bourbon family.
There were the Romanovs in Russia, who lost their throne in 1917,
and the Sultan in the Balkans, Western Asia and North Africa
and the Hapsburgs with their Austro-Hungarian Empire.
They were essentially Metternich’s employers.
In 1807 the French come to the Ionian Islands.
In 1803 the Ionian Islands had essentially become
the first Greek state. It was Capodistrias' father
that had managed that, Antonios Maria Capodistrias.
He had received in Constantinople from the Sultan
the Decree on the Autonomy of the Septinsular Republic.
His son Avgoustinos put it on a plaque
and displayed it in the islands where there were various celebrations.
Finally the Greeks have the first autonomous state
after many years. So, in 1807 the French come
and abolish the Septinsular Republic and impose their republican ideas.
But they impose a regime that cannot be tolerated
by Capodistrias, because he has put up a huge struggle.
He was the first and only person to have succeeded more or less
in reconciling the people of Lixouri and Argostoli.
Up until then they had been killing each other.
And in those days they really were killing each other.
The people of Argostoli were going out
and killing the Lixouriotes on the roads. The Lixouriotes went and burned
the hospital in Argostoli, along with the patients. Various things like that were happening.
Despite all this, he managed to bring them all together,
including the burgers, under a Constitution that he had drafted,
though in fact it had been drafted by Motsenigos, a Count of Greek extraction
and envoy of the Czar. It was he who invited Capodistrias,
or rather served as an intermediary for Capodistrias to be invited,
to come to the Russian Court.
So he sets off in 1808, without very much money in hand,
and he arrives in Vienna, the first stop in his journey.
He has a description in his diary which is characteristic of what followed.
For me he is firing the first shot in the Greek Revolution,
creating it, establishing it. He writes: “the courtesies, the dinners,
the evenings of delightful entertainment followed one another
in such rapid succession as to wear me out completely.”
He is a count who has gone
into the diplomatic service of the Czar
and instead of feeling in that atmosphere of the nobility
that he has to try to make a career, to go to balls, to get married, to marry well,
to increase his fortune, he has other things in mind,
so that all this is tiring for him. It is in Vienna, too,
that he has his first contact with the Metternich system.
This was when his name began to be learned to some extent
in the offices of the police that were controlled by Metternich.
So, he starts as a state counselor, and this leads him to write.
Question: Was it 1808? 1808. In 1808 he is in Vienna.
So he starts as a state counselor and he writes. He writes.
He spends all his time writing memoranda.
He tries to make his interventions timely. Very little is extant from that period.
One document that has survived is a description including the remark
that he writes little, but succinctly, throwing in an observation
that will attract interest. The Greek question
is one of the subjects he deals with. The liberation of Greece
was a burning issue for him at that time too.
The Septinsular Republic and Greece. Behind that plaque
that his brother took from place to place in the first Greek state to display at festivals
was his purpose: the liberation of Greece.
It was obviously a family tradition that he had to follow.
He writes to his superior Rumyantchev on Moldavia and Wallachia,
always with views tending towards liberalism. He suffers greatly from the cold
in Saint Petersburg, and has no money,
not even for such a mundane need as wine. He says characteristically
when he was organizing a festival with Ignatios,
later of Transalpine Wallachia, that they were “empty of roubles”.
That’s a nice phrase he uses. He asks his father to take out a loan.
His parents take out loans, borrowing at extortionate rates
to enable him to get through the cold days and nights,
to buy a fur coat. He asks the furrier
of the Russian court, who is a Greek,
to make him a fur coat so that he won’t be cold.
He sleeps with his arms around the stove
to keep warm. He reads voraciously.
He is forever in the Empress’s library striving, with little hope of success,
to achieve his objectives. In 1811,
after continual protestations to Rumyantchev,
pleading that he can’t tolerate the climate there,
which is too cold for him, he requests that he be transferred
to another branch of the service, in a more southerly climate.
They send him as a supernumerary diplomatic attache
to the Russian Embassy in Vienna. So there he goes to present himself
to the ambassador Stackelberg, the Russian representative in Vienna,
who is irritated because he doesn’t want this supernumerary.
Through whose recommendation has he come here?
Finally Capodistrias persuades him and he takes up his work in Vienna,
which is national in character. Metternich keeps him under surveillance,
assigning to Hackenberg, the chief of police
the task of tracking him down, finding out who he is,
keeping him under surveillance. He discovers
that Capodistrias is continually meeting with Greeks,
with merchants, with Anthimos Gazis and others. It is just fourteen years
after the arrest and execution of Rhigas Ferraios, together with his colleagues.
And none of this passes unnoticed by Metternich in Vienna.
The Vienna police chief’s report said that Capodistrias
was a Russian agent assigned to penetration of Vienna’s Greek community
and proselytizing to win them to the Russian cause. This was his mission,
and probably it really was his mission. The Czar had given him the task
of winning over the Greeks, a significant – predominantly mercantile –
minority in this region, to the cause of Russia, i.e. the break-up of the Ottoman Empire,
a goal since the time of Catherine the Great onwards.
Among the dozens of memoranda he wrote,
one of them made an impression on the Czar,
namely one dealing with Italian matters.
I won’t go into details, for reasons of time,
about exactly what happened, but this memorandum in its way
helped the people of Italy to resist enslavement by the Austrians.
The Czar therefore ordered his transfer, in 1812, to the army of Bessarabia.
It is 1812. Napoleon has launched his campaign to conquer Europe.
World-historical changes are under way,
whose effects are with us to this day.
We measure in metres and not in yards.
We measure kilos in kilos and not, in Greece, in oka.
The cars drive on the right on the roads, apart from in England,
and not on the left, precisely because Napoleon and his army
started to export the weights and measures
that had been adopted in France, but also – and especially – French ideas.
The first incursion is literary, from the pens of writers
of the French Enlightenment in all countries,
disseminating the ideals of the French Revolution.
Then Napoleon comes as the conqueror. So here we are in 1812.
We are preparing for great wars. Hostilities have already commenced
and it is imperative that all the intelligent diplomatic personnel
of Russia and the other states, should go to the front.
Capodistrias is sent to Bessarabia, the present-day state of Moldavia.
It is the state we beat in the Euroleague to qualify for the championship
to get into the finals. Russia had acquired it
from the Ottoman Empire through the Treaty of Bucharest.
The agas and the beys take their leave and the country is now
in the hands of Russia. There is quite a connection
between Moldavia and Capodistrias which I am not sure they know about.
What Capodistrias has to see to is that the terms
of the 1812 Treaty of Bucharest should be observed and not violated
by the Ottoman Empire in their own interests.
What he does – and I was in Serbia recently
and, with some help from Wayne, I asked people there
involved with questions of history and nobody knew this.
In fact he assisted the revolution of Milos Obrenovic.
The Serbs had won their autonomy, but they were suffering at the hands of the Turks,
who are destroying the Serbian Revolution. They were arresting revolutionaries
and hanging them. Capodistrias is the one
who is supporting them politically and providing money and munitions
so that they can resist. In effect he is saving
the Serbian Revolution, and Serbian autonomy, from Ottoman oppression.
He does the same with the Rumanians, i.e. with the Vlachs and Moldavians.
He sends them supplies and money and launches a process which –
in my view – apart from his mind, the way he saw the questions of the day –
made him the most effective diplomat of his day. More effective than Metternich.
He established a network, mainly comprising Greeks –
all the contacts he made in Saint Petersburg and Vienna
were for the purpose of locating people
who appeared intelligent and able enough and, when conditions made this possible,
placing them in his service. He organized the network
in all the cities of the Ottoman Empire. I think that in Vienna, too,
he had people. And in all the ports of the Ottoman Empire.
And they undertook two roles: the first role was to gather information
to send to him. The second role was to transmit information –
what today politicians do through hack journalists –
to set up a network essentially of agents.
In 1813 the Ottomans began to take advantage
of the Russians’ entanglement with Napoleon and to execute Serbian revolutionaries.
It was then that he intervened with the Czar of Russia
in an attempt to secure a reprieve for them.
He was successful, with the result that Serbian autonomy
was saved. Some reorganization then took place.
General Kutuzov, commander of the Russian army,
lost to Napoleon. His army disintegrated
and Barclay de Tolly, an officer of Scottish descent,
became the new commander-in-chief. Capodistrias was his secretary.
As soon as the general took command everyone started trying
to dislodge Capodistrias and take over his position as secretary.
But Tolly had a high regard for his abilities, and Capodistrias acquired control
of Russian counter-espionage at the front.
He travelled the length and breadth of Europe,
wherever the army went, launching a series
of psychological warfare operations. He tried to win over the local populations.
He tried to communicate the message of Russia,
that they are liberators, and not conquerors, like Napoleon.
It was psychological warfare, as we see today with the Americans
when they want to have a war they launch a psychological war first.
They say that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
Put it on the television, and who are the baddies? Iraq!
So everyone takes sides with America. And this is what the opposite side
tried to do then also. Capodistrias did very well,
though it was not an easy task, given that Napoleon was regarded
as the continuer of the French Revolution, the one who brings democratic ideas,
the liberation of the peoples, to make him out as the bad guy.
But wherever Capodistrias went to work, he essentially succeeded.
This brought great prestige. Before the Battle of Leipzig,
the battle of the nations that was lost by Napoleon,
and from which he never managed to recover,
in 1813, on the eve of the battle, the Czar himself
was in the tent of Barclay de Tolly and he said to Capodistrias:
“You are Count Capodistrias?” “Yes”, was the reply.
“Fine, from now on it would be better for you
to come and give me verbal reports.
I don’t want to see your memoranda any more.”
He had been sending memoranda. The Czar had always read them,
and it was in fact from there that their acquaintance,
and Capodistrias’ illustrious diplomatic career had begun. He said,
“Come and speak to me personally. I want to hear you."
In other words he wanted to make Capodistrias his advisor.
He wanted to hear his views in order to make them policy,
and know what to say to his armies. The years that he had spent
touring the battle fronts in the midst of frightful hardships
had made Capodistrias fearless. He went behind enemy lines
for meetings with the enemy. He had done this at Kefallinia too,
in Argostoli.
Interjection: It wasn’t the front line.
It was the front line. He went by night
to the house of a nobleman of his time, Andreas Metaxas, who wanted control
of the island to be in his hands. He found him at home,
surrounded by a coterie of murderous ruffians from the village.
Capodistrias went with a lantern, knocked on the door and said:
“Where is Andreas Metaxas. I am Capodistrias.”
They didn’t believe him. At some point Andreas Metaxas appeared
and Capodistrias started talking: “I am the authority here.
You will do what I tell you. And so on. And in the end
he managed to persuade him. And in this way he curbed the revolt
of Andreas Metaxas. He did the same in Europe,
where apart from the honours bestowed upon him by the Czar
he also acquired the distinction of a whitening of his hair.
Within two years, perhaps within a matter of months,
his hair changed from black to white because of the hardships of war.
The Battle of the Nations was fought at Leipzig
and was won by the Allies (English, Russians and Prussians,
against the French and the allies of the French).
These were huge armies. All the nations were participating.
Napoleon was sent to the island of Elba, from where he escaped,
rallied an army and prepared to strike again.
The Battle of Waterloo was fought. I was in Waterloo about a month ago.
You can see the muddy terrain. You begin to understand
what Napoleon lost in that battle. When this battle too was over,
the Congress of Vienna was held, and was transferred to Paris,
and it was there that the world we know,
the New Order, was constructed.
At the congresses of Vienna and Paris.
In Frankfurt – we have a gentleman from Frankfurt here -
the Czar said to Capodistrias: “You love the republics.
So do I, and we are going to save one of them
that French despotism has had under its yoke.”
We’re talking about before the Battle of Waterloo.
And he sent him to Switzerland. They weren’t sure
about Capodistrias yet. They sent him anonymously
to Switzerland. He was not the emissary of the Czar.
He did not have any defined role. He attached himself
to the delegate from Austria, with whom he became friends
afterwards, and together they tried to see what could be done
with Switzerland, which was divided between 28 cantons,
three languages and nobility and plebeians,
or at least burgers. It was divided in every sense.
They didn’t have any compass for the future. They didn’t know
what they wanted to do with their fatherland,
if they had a fatherland, and of course they did not have
a Constitution. What they had was the Acte de Mediation.
An act of mediation that had been imposed by the French
and in essence took away the privileges of the nobility,
inaugurating a democratic regime. I think, without a Constitution.
The Acte de Mediation was still functioning as their Constitution.
When Napoleon loses at Leipzig, the nobility want their privileges back
and a fierce class conflict erupts. There is an insurrection in Berne,
unleashing a ferment that appears certain to end
in civil war. Nobody knows who Switzerland will go with,
Napoleon or the Austrians and Russians. And right there
in the midst of this very confused situation in the very centre of Europe,
precisely where the struggle is being waged over who will occupy the crucial position
and win the war is our Count Capodistrias.
Austria, as communicated through an ambassador –
I think his name was Lebzeltern - wants to invade Switzerland,
station its troops there and take the country over by force.
They try to impose it. This was the policy of Metternich.
Metternich sends a directive to his ambassador,
who then tells Capodistrias what he has to do.
We have to imagine it as being something like the Troika nowadays,
which comes in and tries to decide the fate of the country.
Capodistrias has received contrary orders from the Czar,
that on no account should they accept Austrian troops in Switzerland,
and he decides on his own initiative to say “yes”.
The next day he finds himself with the Czar,
who says to him: “I hope you followed my orders.”
“On the contrary, your majesty” says Capodistrias, “I did the opposite.”
And the Czar flushes with anger, and is about to explode,
but however angry he is, Capodistrias goes on to explain why he did it.
He did it very publicly and ostentatiously, in order to provoke a reaction
from the most prominent Swiss and in that way
to expose Austrian diplomacy. And in fact within 24 hours
he Austrians had backtracked and the policies that had prevailed
were those of Alexander, who essentially became
master of the game in Switzerland, through violation of his orders.
The Czar realized that Capodistrias was an extremely intelligent person
and the only man capable of countering the machinations of Metternich
and he gave him a free hand to pursue
whatever policies he wished in Switzerland.
He therefore communicates with everyone: with the nobility and the burgers.
His characteristic style was to work from five in the morning
until ten o’clock at night, without stop, for decades.
You can imagine him here next door being the first to rise in the morning,
drinking mountain tea, starting his correspondence,
his mind going from one subject to another: the unsuitable teacher
in this or that school, the Hydriots who want the income
from the customs office, writing letters to everyone.
It would be impossible for anyone to collect all the material
that this man left behind. It would be impossible,
for he worked for decades from five in the morning
until ten at night. He didn’t do anything else.
He constructed a Constitution for them, providing them with the foundations
for being what they are today. He brought together the 28 cantons
through what remains until the present day the most liberal of Constitutions.
Essentially it is something like direct democracy.
Do you know who the Prime Minister of Switzerland is?
Nobody does. Because they change very quickly
and it doesn’t matter. It is another Constitution, another form of democracy,
whose foundations were laid then. It evolved later
but the foundations were laid then. That is one thing he did.
And why did he do it? To stop the rivalry between the cantons,
to put an end to the enmity between the Italian speakers,
the Francophones and the German-speakers,
to stop the conflict between the classes: the nobility, the burgers, and the poor.
He stops all this with the Constitution
and the second thing he brings is neutrality.
On the basis of neutrality the Swiss built the most organized,
wealthy and competitive state in the world.
This is why their banks are so much preferred,
because the Swiss are committed to neutrality.
They say we will maintain neutrality. We are not going to dispute
with anybody. The Russians with the Germans,
the Germans with the Italians, the Italians with the French.
We’re not arguing with anybody. We are neutral.
(An intervention about international guarantees for neutrality.)
That's when the guarantees started.
The Great Powers guaranteed the neutrality of Switzerland.
Interjection: It is not just a Swiss success. It was something
that benefited certain people who wanted neutrality
because in this way they felt more secure.
Achieving neutrality they were able to feel more at ease.
It's not bad for them. It’s bad for us
when they take our money and sent it there.
Those whose souls are in Switzerland.
But essentially this is what I want to say:
this neutrality of Switzerland, with international mediation
and international guarantees, is the work of Ioannis Capodistrias.
This is why he gained such recognition and honour. This is why to this day
all his relatives, anyone called Capodistrias
and in this lineage are automatically granted
Swiss citizenship. There is the statue in Zurich
In Geneva.
We might well stop at this point, with Capodistrias having made
a most successful career. How many others
have managed to establish a stable state
without even being citizens of it, through diplomatic actions,
without war? Not a single shot was fired. All within a few years.
And utilizing a position that, as I said, was not even official.
And it didn’t stop there. Moreover, something that happened in Switzerland
and is worth noting is that because he was always interested
in educational questions, from the time he was
in the Septinsular Republic, he became familiar –
through the student of Pestalozzi Fellenberg – with the method of Pestallozzi.
He wrote a memorandum to the Czar. I think that they visited some schools
together. And the interest of the Czar and his funding of Pestalozzi schools,
made that method well-known, and it exists to this day.
Capodistrias was involved in all that was splendid in that age.
His energy was boundless. It was in Switzerland
that he got to know Eynard, a key person behind the fact
that we are free today, and he became familiar
with other personages to whom he resorted
when he was removed from the service of the Czar.
He found a refuge in Switzerland, and every kind of support
from the Swiss, rich and poor, to found the Philhellene current.
We speak of Philhellenes today and we think of Byron.
In reality Philhellenism was not their work.
Very few were in it because of what they read.
Most of them were in it for the money.
Interjection: Don’t be so negative about Philhellenism; "for the money"...
I listened to all of the meeting that you had here. I really liked it.
There was a lot of truth in what was said.
The fact is, and we’ll see this later, that all the liberal current
ended up being Philhellene. How did that transformation take place?
In October 1814 he arrived at the Congress of Vienna.
He had been invited to it by the Czar, who considered him the only person
capable of standing up to Metternich and his intrigues.
He made him his confidential advisor. He invited him to his chambers.
He asked various things. He wanted his opinion.
And so on. Capodistrias was the first to see the text
for the Holy Alliance that we learn about at school.
He was the first to see the Czar’s manuscript
and to give his opinion on it. It was the greatest disappointment
of his life, or one of the greatest. And so there at the Congress of Vienna,
at one of the sessions, Capodistrias told the Czar:
“Do you know, England, France and Austria
have made a secret pact against us. England, France and Austria.
When he heard this the Czar laughed. “Impossible,” he said.
A few days later a message came from Napoleon,
who had escaped from Elba, and they sent the text of the agreement
that had indeed been made between England, France and Austria.
The Czar then realized that he had to reckon
with an extremely intelligent man, whom he should trust.
Someone who could read between the lines,
perceiving things that the Foreign Minister, Nesselrode, could not perceive.
Nesselrode was a nobleman, and distinguished
but comparatively slow on the uptake. He wasn’t as brilliant as our man.
Also, one very thorny aspect of the Czar’s policy
was that he wanted Poland. Capodistrias believed
right to the last moment that the Czar wanted
to make Poland into a free state. The Czar wanted
to have domination over Poland. Capodistrias was greatly disappointed
by the occupation of Poland. But as a result of some moves
by Capodistrias which he circulated for discussion,
he managed to prevent the Austrians from having Poland
under their influence, with the Czar taking the country.
That was a great victory for Alexander over his allies.
And certainly it greatly improved the reputation of Capodistrias
in the eyes of the Czar.
At the Congress of Vienna Capodistrias also put forward
the case of Greece. He founded the Philomuse Society.
He told the Czar that the British have a Philomuse Society
which they have established in Athens, I think in 1812,
and they are trying to win over the Greeks to it.
They are trying, in the first instance, to appropriate the ancient monuments,
but also to win over the Greeks too. So we have to do something.
Presumably we could found a Philomuse Society.
A function is held at the Palace in support of the Society.
The Czar puts money into it. The Empress puts money into it,
as do various members of the nobility, and Capodistrias
makes his appearance before Metternich and says to him:
“Come, let me introduce to you the Philomuse Society.
You are the most Christian of counts and you must make a contribution.”
At the same time he presents him with the Society’s gold ring
and receives a contribution from him. We do not know
how Metternich reacted or felt at that moment,
but it cannot have been good.
After the Battle of Waterloo the Congress was transferred to Paris
and it was there that they drew up the founding text of the Holy Alliance,
the alliance between Russia, Austria and Prussia.
Holy Alliance means that the Christian leaders of Europe
undertake, with the power given to them by God,
to repress by force every nationalistic and atheistic
social revolution. It was a short text. The Czar showed it to Capodistrias,
who said: “My view, sir, is that this cannot work.
It is against our interests.’’ The Czar said:
“This is the text. Get the signatures from the others
because there is no other text. Capodistrias was therefore obliged
to collect the signatures from all the parties involved.
This is the beginning of the history of the Holy Alliance.
After Switzerland and the services he performed
for the Serbs we now have the greatest service
that he ever rendered to a nation state, and indeed the most important one.
He succeeded in saving France. How did he save France?
The British were demanding war reparations from France,
as were the Prussians. War reparations. The Austrians wanted territory.
Everyone was demanding something from France.
It was – to make a historical parallel – like what the allies did
with the Treaty of Versailles against the Germans.
They asked for so much that the Germans couldn’t comply,
and it was in this way that Nazism arose.
The sums that they demanded were excessive. The only participant
whose attitude to the reparations was negative
was the Czar but with all the other allies against him,
his position was weak. So what did Capodistrias do?
He contacted his friend the Duke de Richelieu,
who was something like the mayor of Odessa,
because he was from Odessa although he was French.
They had become acquainted previously, in Saint Petersburg,
and he arranged with him to obtain a statement
from the King of France, the Bourbon Louis XVIII,
that “if you demand of me more than I can give,
I will abdicate.”
Capodistrias gave the text to the Czar
and said: “Look at what Louis XVIII writes.”
“What do you propose that we should do?” the Czar asked.
“I propose that we should publish it,” Capodistrias said.
It is published and the result is that public opinion turns
in favour of France. People say: “How will the French
be able to survive if the Bourbon king leaves
and we have a new Napoleon. There will be war again.
We can’t accept this.” Essentially Capodistrias blackmailed them.
He managed it. There were minimal reparations
and after a few years even they were waived.
The Austrian troops that had been in France
were withdrawn after two or three years I think.
Matters were settled for France and the country was able to recover.
The result of this was that for the next ninety nine years
there was no major war in Europe.
If France had fallen into chaos at this time,
if nationalist tendencies had emerged, if a new Napoleon had arisen
there would have been a new war after ten or fifteen years.
Interjection: What a shame we didn’t have a Louis.
Louis offered to present Count Capodistrias
with a gift of money. He said: “This service you have performed for us
must be rewarded. How much do you want?”
I don’t know whether you have heard all these stories about Capodistrias.
I have chosen some of the least known ones,
because everyone talks about what he did… I don’t know whether you have heard them
but some of them are shocking. What he asked of him
was for duplicates to be made of the books in the libraries of France.
And Richelieu agreed. “I would like those duplicates
to be sent for the education of children in Greece.
In lieu of money. It never happened.
The French forgot. I am in favour
of a committee being formed once there has been more historical research
on the subject. A committee that could ask
for precisely those copies, not for the sake of receiving the books
but to remind the French how they were rescued,
who rescued them, and what their connection is
with us, or at least with the man who made us too.
On the day before he left for Paris the Czar summoned him
and told him: “I am appointing you Foreign Minister.”
But Capodistrias said: “I cannot be Foreign Minister.”
“Why can’t you?” “You know what my needs are.
My interest is…..for a start I have to fight for the freedom of Greeks.
How could I be Foreign Minister?” The Czar said: “I am concerned
about the Greeks too. You are to be Foreign Minister,
alongside Nesselrode.” And the discussion stopped there.
Nesselrode. He was the one who,
when Capodistrias was killed had the most quotable quote:
“He was so perfect that his only fault
was that he wanted to make others as perfect as himself.”
That’s was why he didn’t trust anyone over thirty.
He said “The young have some capacity of acquiring principles.”
Over the age of thirty they have no hope.
So the Czar placed him third in the hierarchy of the Russian state.
He was head of the secret service, opposite Metternich,
minister of foreign affairs. A person who operated without money.
He never ever stole even half a groschen.
Even when he was a doctor before he became a politician,
when he was 22 or 24 years old, he was well-known in Corfu,
famous among all the villagers who said that they would go to Corfu
“to be treated by the Count” because he didn’t ask for money
for his services as a doctor.
So he arrived in Saint Petersburg and they gave him them the building
that had been the Foreign Ministry at the time of Catherine the Great,
with great honours. On the way to Saint Petersburg
he had passed through a number of countries
and they all bestowed honours and awards upon him.
The Danes gave him a golden elephant,
they granted him the highest honours.
He was the great victor of the Congress of Vienna,
along with Metternich.
He arrived in Saint Petersburg in totally different circumstances
to the way he had arrived the first time,
shivering in a carriage, being robbed.
The Czar entrusted to him all the affairs
of the Department of State. “I expect you to come to Saint Petersburg.
I have given you a proper building
and not a tent any more.” Up until then
the Foreign Ministry had operated from tents at the Front.
“So, here we are, a proper building, come here, organize everything,
take over the shop. It’s all yours. Here are the keys. Do whatever you like.”
More or less, of course, because Capodistrias
was always a good functionary, always consulting the Czar.
But there is a familiar controversy over whether the Czar
was in fact opposed. In reality it was he
who made the Greek Revolution. This is a huge historical question.
The official account insists that the Czar was opposed.
There is much evidence that not only was he not opposed to it
but he in fact fomented it. But in the diplomatic arena
he said what he had to say to avoid provoking his opponents.
He did the exact opposite of what he said.
What do Greeks today? They go to Europe and say one thing and then they do
precisely the opposite. One of the things Capodistrias did
was that he undertook the organization of Bessarabia.
As I said a little while ago, Russia had thrown out
the agas and the beys and everything remained
without an owner. He drew up a land registry,
gave land to the landless of Bessarabia,
he established institutions and in this way
constructed their state. It was the most organized
of that time, and of course under the hegemony
of the Czar. He constructed in two years
what we have been trying for two centuries
to construct, and haven’t succeeded.
This is what is most regrettable about the situation:
that if we here had been able to spare him from our reactions
and there had been high-level protection, Capodistrias would have been able
to do what he wanted to do. In one or two years
we would have created a different state here.
There he was able to: there was no domestic reaction
or anything. There they had the laws of the Czar
and the person who implemented the laws of the Czar was Capodistrias.
I don’t know if the Moldavians are very much aware
of Capodistrias. I wasn’t particularly involved
with the subject so that I didn’t ask them
if they know who organized them and who made them
what they are today. Not that they are anything
so marvellous today but they are certainly better organized
than other former Soviet republics.
He had also sent an artist to Moldavia,
a poet who was opposed to the Czar.
The Czar couldn’t bear the sight of him.
He had done something. I don’t remember exactly
what it was. The Czar wanted
to send him into exile, kill him or send him into exile.
Capodistrias had a very high opinion of this poet and sent him
into honorary exile in Moldavia, to Kishinev in Moldavia.
The poet in question was Alexander Pushkin,
who Capodistrias got to write Greece’s first Constitution.
The Constitution of Epidavros is most likely a translation
of the Constitution written by Pushkin.
Interjection: Here is something new.
So you have heard everything else already?
I am from Epidavria. It’s my birthplace.
Ah, you are from Epidavria? You are a Piaditissa?
No, from further down.
The arrangement in the Russian Foreign Ministry
was that Nesselrode conducted all the open sessions,
the ceremonial, the minutes, and Capodistrias
was in the backroom doing the undercover work,
essentially running Russian foreign policy.
The series of Congresses continued. 1818 was the year
of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, where he dictated his terms
to Castlereagh and Metternich. Metternich had found
in the person of Lord Castlereagh, or Londonderry -
anyone who has read the article in Hot Doc may remember who he is
- a great ally. The two of them were in communication,
the two of them and the King of England, George IV,
a man who was grossly overweight and in the grip of eccentric ideas.
He was in a world of his own, but despite that
was a very significant player in the Europe of his day,
unfortunately. And through the mistress of Metternich,
and probably also of Castlereagh, and with whom George IV
was also infatuated, Baroness Lieven,
who was also however a spy for Capodistrias –
she was the wife of the Russian ambassador in London.
Through her they communicate, they correspond,
they talk about their enemy St. John of the Apocalypse.
That was Metternich’s name for him because he was always modest,
he always wore black, he did not drink, he did not smoke
like the others, he did not participate in the balls.
He was devoted to his cause.
He was an eccentric figure, a monk who had intruded
into the salons of his day, the salons of Vienna,
the great salons. He could not be caught out
because he was not a participant in the corrupt lifestyle
of the European nobility. That was why they called him
St. John of the Apocalypse. The man with the style
of the Apocalypse. That was what they called him
between themselves in their letters.
Metternich had a visceral hatred for him
and wanted to see him dead. There at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle
it was the policy of Capodistrias that prevailed.
The French were relieved of all their burdens,
including the Austrian military occupation. In effect the seal of approval was given
to the policies that have made France a powerful state to this day.
France may not have been so powerful if a large part of it
had belonged to Austria at that time or if heavy reparations
had been imposed on it and it had not succeeded in developing.
At the same Congress Capodistrias called
for the abolition of slavery in the American colonies.
It was a huge problem. Ships departed from Africa
chartered by slave traders. They gathered up children,
eighteen year olds, ten year olds, five year olds.
They sent them to America to work on the plantations.
Capodistrias sent a message to President Jackson
asking him “how could you, who voted the world’s
most liberal Constitution, maintain the institution of slavery?”
Jackson was not able to understand this
for it was a question of economics. The Russian minister therefore
proposed the creation of an African Union
to bring all this under control. He also proposed
that the Russian fleet should proceed to the Mediterranean
to halt the traffic in slaves. He proposed that action
should be taken. I still have not ascertained
whether the humanitarian dimension was so developed
in the thinking of this man or whether he did this
to bring the Russian fleet into the Mediterranean
which would be very useful for assisting the Greek Revolution.
Because if there were a Russian Fleet in the Mediterranean
it would be very easy for them to support the revolution
that Capodistrias had been planning all those years
through the Philiki Etairia. We learn today at school
that the Philiki Etairia had no connection with Capodisrias
and that it was he who persecuted it.
That is not true. Interjection: He refused to lead it.
He refused to lead it. In reality there are many
who say that Capodistrias had appointed all the leaders.
But forty years later Capodistrias was vindicated.
The African Union was founded and slavery was abolished.