The summons to demobilize was met by a point-blank
refusal, when the fleets of the powers--Russia and France
excepted--entered on the scene, and the blockade of the Greek coast
was declared. This saved the credit of the ministry with the country;
and Deliyanni, protesting against intervention as a measure on behalf
of the Sultan, and hostile to Greece, resigned, but gave no orders to
his commandants on the frontier to withdraw, and the skirmishing went
on. The King in this crisis behaved well, and put Deliyanni in the
alternative of demobilizing or resigning; and, when he chose the
latter course, the King called Tricoupi to form a ministry.
Tricoupi's position was difficult. He protested against the blockade
as an unwarrantable interference with the freedom of action of Greece,
as he considered that the government should have been allowed on its
own responsibility to make war and take the consequences, as the only
method of teaching the Greeks how to fulfill their international
obligation. But the withdrawal of the diplomatic representatives of
the great powers, whose fleets were blockading the coast, had left
him without any channel of communicating with the powers, either for
protesting or for yielding, and the fighting was increasing in extent
if not in intensity. On the day, too, on which Tricoupi accepted the
charge, the Turkish commander had received his orders to cross the
frontier on the next day and march on Athens if the annoyance were
not stopped.
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