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CHAPTER 2 – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
40 
campaign. Elections were held in June 1915 which returned Venizelos with a 
reduced majority but he lasted in office only until October, the clash on this occasion 
concerning Bulgarian mobilisation in support of the Central Powers. This on its face 
was a 
casus foederis
under the treaty with Serbia and in response to it Venizelos had 
invited the Entente to land troops in Salonica, which they did. In December 
Constantine dissolved parliament and Venizelos advised his followers to abstain in 
the ensuing elections
37
.
Before 1916 was out Venizelos had left Athens to establish a separate provisional 
government in Salonica (October), Bulgaria had overrun Eastern Macedonia, the 
way having been cleared by the earlier surrender (April) of a fortress on the orders of 
the royalist government and there had been armed clashes with loss of life in Athens 
between the French in their capacity as a guarantor power and royalist troops 
(December). The last episode (which was followed by violence against Venizelists in 
Athens) prompted recognition by the French and British of Venizelos’s provisional 
government in Salonica, leaving Greece at the end of the year with two 
internationally recognised governments and the loss of some of its territory to a 
power with which it was not formally at war
38
. 
Venizelos had faced the hostility for differing reasons of Russia and Italy but this 
abated in the early part of 1917, in the case of the former as a consequence of the 
February revolution and in the case of the latter by territorial concessions, 
37
Llewellyn-Smith, 54-57; Miller 527-531 
38
Llewellyn Smith, 57-58; Miller, 531-535; Ventiris, Vol 2, 88-334 is a blow by blow account by a Venizelist 
partisan. 

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