Allies land at Piraeus

On 30 November 1916, or 17 November by the Julian calendar then used in Greece, the ultimatum of the French Vice-Admiral Louis Dartige du Fournet expired. The commander of the Allied fleet at Salamis had demanded that the government in Athens hand over 10 batteries of mountain guns by 1 December, and announced that otherwise he would put troops ashore that day. The British chronology of the war records under 30 November that Allied troops landed at Piraeus. The Associated Press, citing dispatches from Athens, reported that the landing party went ashore on Thursday, 30 November, at night. The British official histories of the war at sea (Newbolt) and of the Macedonian campaign (Falls), and the Greek historian S. P. P. Cosmetatos, write that the troops were landed and marched out of Piraeus between three and five in the morning of 1 December. The landing therefore began on the night of 30 November to 1 December.

The last refusal

The dispute was about weapons. On 16 November the admiral had demanded on behalf of France the surrender of Greek guns, rifles and ammunition, and on 19 November he had also ordered the ministers of the Central Powers to leave Greece. The government of Spyridon Lambros refused, and on 24 November the admiral replied with an ultimatum. On the afternoon of 30 November he received a second, even firmer refusal. Lambros wrote that he would not believe that, after fair consideration of the reasons why the Greek nation could not meet the demands, the admiral would resort to measures which “the nation would rightly regard as acts of hostility committed against it on the orders of the Government of the Republic”.

In the evening the admiral came to the daily meeting of the Allied ministers. Newbolt writes that they were all very anxious. For a week Athens had been seething, the population was rallying round the king, volunteers were being enlisted and armed, and the army was irritated. The ministers asked whether it would not be enough to demand only the ten mountain batteries and suspend the rest of the demands. The admiral replied that he personally agreed with them, but his orders did not allow him to negotiate further. Towards the end of the meeting the Marshal of the Court, Count Mercati, appeared with a similar proposal from the king and received the same answer. The day before, Mercati had sent the admiral a letter in which, on behalf of King Constantine I, he gave assurances that the police would guarantee the safety of the Venizelists, provided that neither the Allied secret police nor the landing party arrested or deported Greek subjects. About the landing itself the letter said nothing. The admiral understood it as a promise that his men would meet no resistance. According to his memoirs, the king also assured him orally that the Greek army would not fire first.

Athens arms itself

Meanwhile troops were gathering in the city. Units of the Greek I Corps and reservists from the surrounding area were brought into Athens, according to some accounts more than 20,000 men in all, and took up favourable positions. The correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph reported on 30 November that the king had signed a decree on accepting volunteers into the army, and a day earlier had instructed the officers of I Corps to resist the Allies by force of arms if they tried to occupy buildings held by Greek troops. Cosmetatos presents this order more mildly: the king is said to have forbidden the use of arms except in necessary self-defence, that is, if the Allies tried to seize barracks or depots. The same correspondent wrote that a transport with French soldiers had arrived at Piraeus and moored at the quay. Falls notes that the British minister must have known about the doors of Venizelists’ houses marked with paint, about reservists streaming into the barracks and about the secret removal of stores from the depots. The French did not take it seriously. According to Cosmetatos, the French naval intelligence officer in Athens, Commander Henri de Roquefeuil, assured the admiral that the Greeks were only bluffing and would hand over the weapons “like lambs”.

Paris wanted pressure, but not war. On 28 November Briand assured the British that the admiral was to occupy Piraeus, the hills with the observatory and the arsenals, but that there could be no question of seizing by force the weapons scattered throughout Greece. The Ministry of Marine advised avoiding wider military operations. Operation order no. 13 for the landing party, issued on the flagship on 28 November and later captured by the Greeks, called the action a “demonstration before Athens”, but instructed the detachments to occupy the assigned positions and military installations “by force if necessary”.

Night at Piraeus

The plan was for three battalions of sailors and marines to take up position on the hills overlooking Athens from the south-west: the Hill of the Nymphs, Philopappos Hill and the Pnyx, while a second detachment would occupy the Zappeion, an exhibition hall in the gardens near the royal palace. Forward companies were to occupy the powder magazine on the road to the Daphni pass, the Rouf arsenal on the road from Piraeus and the cartridge factory in the south-east of the city. The battalions were led by the French Commander Pugliesi-Conti. The British provided three companies of Royal Marines from the battleships Exmouth and Duncan under the command of Major C. D’O. Harmar, and a small Italian detachment joined the landing party. Falls and Cosmetatos state that about 3,000 men were put ashore, almost exclusively French; other accounts speak of 2,500. One infantry battalion remained at Piraeus in reserve.

Between three and five in the morning the columns set off from Piraeus towards Athens. By nine, as Newbolt writes, all the points but one had been occupied without resistance. The calm did not last long. At about eleven the Greek army opened fire on the Allied detachments, and in the afternoon ships in Phaleron Bay shelled the area around the stadium and the royal palace. In the evening a compromise was reached: the king promised to hand over six batteries instead of ten, and the admiral withdrew the landing party to the ships, except for the detachment at the Zappeion, which left the next day. According to Falls the French lost 191 men and the British 21. For the next two days royalists attacked Venizelists in Athens. These events, known in Greece as the Noemvriana, the “November events” by the Julian calendar, and the blockade of the coasts of royalist Greece, which the Allies began on 8 December, already belong to the history of December.