The Entente's December ultimatum to Greece

On 14 December 1916, that is, 1 December according to the Julian calendar used by Greece, the ministers of France, Britain, Italy and Russia in Athens, Jean Guillemin, Sir Francis Elliot, Count Bosdari and Prince Demidov, handed the government of King Constantine I a note that was in effect an ultimatum. The British chronology of the war sums it up briefly: the powers demanded the withdrawal of the whole Greek army from Thessaly. Athens had 24 hours to reply. It was not the first time that year that the powers had dictated terms to the Greeks: with the note of 21 June they had forced the demobilisation of the army and a change of government.

After the bloody 1 December

The note was the next step after the fighting in Athens on 1 December, in which Greek troops and reservists fired on an Allied landing party, and after the blockade of the coasts of royalist Greece, proclaimed a week later. After that day the Allies feared that the Greeks would strike at the rear of their army in Macedonia. According to the British official history of the Macedonian campaign (Falls), the commander of the British forces at Salonika, General George Milne, estimated that there were 20,000 to 30,000 Greek soldiers with at least a hundred guns around Larissa, and that after further mobilisation there might be as many as 80,000. Another 6,000 men with 50 guns were in Epirus. General Maurice Sarrail, Allied commander-in-chief on the Salonika front, declared that with a hostile Greek army in his rear he could not continue the offensive at Monastir. He wanted the French fleet to blow up the bridges over the Corinth Canal and at Chalcis, to cut the Peloponnese and Euboea off from the rest of the country, and then intended to clear Thessaly of the royal troops by force. On 11 December a British brigade sailed from Salonika to Katerini at the foot of Olympus to guard the roads leading north from Thessaly.

London was equally indignant, but more cautious. The British government feared for its citizens and for the Venizelists in Athens, and preferred to rely on a single but deadly weapon: the blockade. Decisions were delayed by a political crisis in London. On 4 December Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith resigned, and the War Cabinet of the new prime minister, David Lloyd George, met for the first time only on 9 December. According to the British official history of the war at sea (Newbolt), the ministers then had before them a telegram from Constantine to King George V. The Greek monarch assured him that his government had no intention of making war on the Entente, but explained that the army had had to fire because the Venizelists, taking advantage of the landing, wanted to seize the city and bring Venizelos to Athens. George V replied that he could not accept these explanations, and that the demands his government would present together with its allies would include reparation for an entirely unprovoked attack and guarantees for the future.

The announcement of 11 December

The British chronology records under 11 December that the Allies presented Greece with a note demanding complete demobilisation. Other sources describe this differently. The New York monthly “Current History” wrote that on 11 December the British Foreign Office let it be understood that the Entente ministers would present the king with an ultimatum, including a demand for the complete demobilisation of the army, the restoration of Allied control over the post, telegraph and railways, and the release of the Venizelists imprisoned after 1 December. Newbolt, for his part, writes that the instructions for Minister Elliot were sent together with George V’s reply, and that the minister carried them out three days later. According to Falls, the text had been prepared by Edward Grey before he handed over the Foreign Office to Arthur Balfour. The British writer George F. Abbott, who was sympathetic to the king, observed that Paris, London and Petrograd differed so much that the demands were doled out to the Greeks gradually. Control over the post, telegraph and railways and the release of the prisoners appeared only in the following note, of 31 December.

Athens, meanwhile, tried to negotiate. Abbott and the American journalist Paxton Hibben, both sympathetic to the king, write that on 12 December the Greek government proposed setting up a mixed commission which, in accordance with the Hague Conventions, would establish who was responsible for the clashes of 1 December. If it found the government to blame, the government undertook in advance to give the powers reparation not affecting its honour. It received no reply. On 14 December in the House of Commons the Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Lord Robert Cecil, stated that the Allied governments were fully aware of the danger of delay and would immediately present certain demands to the Greek government. Asked whether the blockade of Greek ports meant a state of war between Greece and the Allies, he replied that it did not.

Twenty-four hours

The note stated that recent events in Athens had proved beyond all doubt that neither the king nor the government had sufficient authority over the army to prevent it from being a threat to the Allied forces in Macedonia. The powers therefore, wishing to safeguard their forces against attack, demanded the immediate transfer of the units listed in an attached technical note. The movement was to begin within 24 hours and be completed as quickly as possible, and all troop movements northwards were to cease at once. According to Falls, Newbolt and Venizelos’s biographer S. B. Chester, the troops were to go to the Peloponnese. The powers would regard a refusal as a hostile act, and the ministers were under orders to leave Greece together with their legation staff if they did not receive acceptance of the terms “without reservation” within a day. The blockade of the coasts was to continue until Greece gave full reparation for the attack on the Allied troops in Athens and sufficient guarantees for the future.

To show that they were not bluffing, the French and British ministers moved to ships at Piraeus after handing over the note. Elliot, in accordance with his instructions, left the legation at once and boarded the steamer Abbassiyeh. Hibben writes that the Russian minister followed their example reluctantly, while the Italian refused to leave Athens because he represented his government and was not acting in a film. The Greek government had until the following day.