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CHAPTER 2 – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
36 
obedient to the wishes of the powers, repudiated these advances. Indignant at this 
humiliation and emulating the action of their like in Turkey, a group of junior 
officers formed a Military League and carried out what might today be called a “soft 
coup” in August 1909: they did not displace the elected parliament or the crown but 
dictated terms to it. Their search for political leadership led them to Venizelos, then 
head of government of the autonomous Crete, who arrived in Athens at the end of 
December 1909. He enjoyed an extraordinary run of success over the immediately 
ensuing years. By January 1910 he brought about the simultaneous dissolution of the 
Military League and elections to a national assembly to revise the constitution. With 
this assembly in deadlock King George not only appointed him prime minister on 18 
October 1910 but also granted him a dissolution days later, when the tactics of his 
opponents had deprived the assembly of a quorum. Boycotted by the leaders of the 
old parties the ensuing elections gave Venizelos an overwhelming majority and a 
new constitution was adopted on 11 June 1911. In the next election on 25 March 
1912 Venizelos won 150 of 181 seats
21
. 
The tale of the Balkan wars, the first of which began on 8 October 1912, can be 
confined here to their effect on the losing side and not just by reference to the 
horrific level of violence wreaked on non-combatants
22
. The shock of losing in a few 
weeks territories which had been Ottoman for hundreds of years and which had been 
the birthplace not only of the movement which now governed the empire but of 
21
Miller 440-441, 488-494 
22
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 
passim
. 

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