Otto | king of Greece

Otto, also called Otto von Wittelsbach, (born June 1, 1815, Salzburg, Austria—died July 26, 1867, Bamberg, Bavaria [Germany]), first king of the modern Greek state (1832–62), who governed his country autocratically until he was forced to become a constitutional monarch in 1843. Attempting to increase Greek territory at the expense of Turkey, he failed and was overthrown.

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Greece: Greece under Otto of Wittelsbach

The sovereignty of the small Greek state was not absolute, despite gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire, and the great powers, which retained certain ill-defined rights of intervention, determined that Greece should become a monarchy. The great powers chose Otto of Wittelsbach—the…

The second son of King Louis I of Bavaria, Otto was chosen king of Greece by the great powers at the conference of London in May 1832. The Greek National Assembly confirmed his selection in August 1832, and he arrived in Greece on Feb. 6, 1833, accompanied by several Bavarian advisers. He instituted a new legal code and organized a regular army, but the Bavarians’ absolutist rule and heavy taxation led to discontent, which was appeased by the resignation of Otto’s chancellor, Joseph Ludwig von Armansperg, in 1837. After failing to annex Crete (Modern Greek: Kríti) in 1841, an attempt that alienated Great Britain, the Greeks staged a revolt in 1843. Otto, a Roman Catholic in an Eastern Orthodox country, was forced to grant a constitution specifying that his eventual successor be Orthodox. A Greek oligarchy now replaced the former Bavarian one. The king toyed with the “Great Idea,” the reestablishment of the former Byzantine Empire with its capital at Constantinople, but his intervention against Turkey in the Crimean War (1853–56) merely provoked a Franco-British occupation of Piraeus, and he failed to gain any additional territory for Greece. Otto’s backing of Austria in the Italian War of Independence (1859) further damaged his prestige and added to the sense that Otto’s primary loyalties were not to Greece. He was finally deposed in a revolt on Oct. 23, 1862, and returned to Bavaria.