Fighting in Athens

On 1 December 1916, or 18 November by the Julian calendar then used in Greece, fighting broke out in Athens between the Greek army and Entente troops. The British chronology of the war records two events under that date: the Greek government rejected the Allies’ demands, and their troops were withdrawn from Athens and Piraeus after clashes. Between the one and the other lay a single bloody day. The landing party which the French Vice-Admiral Louis Dartige du Fournet had put ashore at Piraeus during the night was meant to force the government of Spyridon Lambros to hand over ten batteries of mountain guns. By the evening the sailors were returning to their ships, and King Constantine I had promised to give up only six. In Greece these events are called the Noemvriana, the “November events”, after the month in the Julian calendar.

The New York monthly Current History reported that on the same day the king publicly rejected the Allies’ demand, and the Greek authorities took the post and telegraph offices in Athens away from the Entente controllers.

Morning

The columns which had left Piraeus before dawn had by nine in the morning occupied almost all their assigned points without resistance. The British official history of the war at sea (Newbolt), based on the admiral’s memoirs and officers’ reports, describes the disposition of the forces. A company of the first battalion stood at the powder magazine on the road to the Daphni pass, two others at the Rouf arsenal. The second battalion occupied the hills of the Pnyx and Philopappos, and the third, with the British Royal Marines, took up position at the Zappeion, an exhibition hall in the gardens near the palace. The Italians, who looked on the whole operation with reluctance, withdrew at the first shot, according to the British official history of the Macedonian campaign (Falls).

The admiral had been uneasy since the morning. He was told that Greek troops were gathering near the capital, so at eight he set off for Athens himself by car. In Piraeus he saw Greek soldiers at every step and a sullen, hostile crowd. A school allotted by the city authorities to French colonial troops had already been occupied by the Greek army. At nine he reached the Zappeion and from there went up Philopappos Hill, where a company of Greek infantry stood facing the French sailors. He asked its commander, Major Konstantinos Grigorakis, to withdraw his men. The Greek replied angrily that he had orders to defend the monuments of his country. News also came that on the road from Piraeus the Greeks had stopped a French supply company and taken its baggage. For the next hour, as Newbolt writes, only one thing happened: more and more Greek soldiers kept arriving.

Considerable forces were waiting for orders in the city. According to the British biographer of Eleftherios Venizelos, S. B. Chester, the troops of the Athens district were commanded by General Konstantinos Kallaris, and the active defence units by General Anastasios Papoulas. Together with volunteers and reservists this amounted, according to various accounts, to about 20,000 men.

Shots at eleven

At about eleven the shooting began, and at once at all the points occupied by the Allies. Who fired first is still unknown. Newbolt has no doubt that the Greeks attacked all the detachments at the same time, according to a plan prepared by their command. As proof he quotes the report of the British Major C. D’O. Harmar, who with a company of Royal Marines and the French company of Lieutenant Deve held the powder magazine and cartridge factory in the south of the city. A Greek colonel had promised him that he would leave as soon as the Allies left. Harmar received orders to return to the Zappeion and was forming his men up to march off when a few shots rang out on Philopappos Hill, blanks according to him, with which the French were scaring off the crowd. A moment later fire from all sides fell on the companies standing in formation.

Greek authors told it differently. The historian S. P. P. Cosmetatos, a defender of the king, writes that according to the admiral and his officer, Commander Chamonard, the first shots were fired at eleven by irregulars from around the Hephaisteion at a company from the battleship République, but that according to the Greeks the clash was provoked by the French, who charged with bayonets at the soldiers guarding the barracks at Rouf. The British publicist George F. Abbott, also sympathetic to the king, simply admits that each side accused the other. After the fighting the government in Athens claimed first that the French had fired, and then that the Venizelists had started the fight.

The French sailors, surrounded at their posts and, according to Newbolt, facing an enemy four times as numerous, returned fire. The Greeks’ only success came where the shooting had begun. Harmar’s company was cut off from the Zappeion and, under fire from the flanks, withdrew to Phaleron, carrying its dead and wounded. Lieutenant Deve and Captain J. M. Palmer of the Royal Marines shut themselves up with the rest of the men in the powder magazine and held it until the evening. Deve was mortally wounded there while firing a machine gun himself.

The shelling of the city

The admiral was at the Zappeion, surrounded, but able to signal to Philopappos Hill and to the ships. At a quarter to twelve he ordered the French ships to open fire on the stadium, from which the Greeks were firing at the Zappeion. Newbolt stresses that he refused a general bombardment of the capital, because he did not want it said that he had made Athens a second Leuven, the Belgian town partly burned by the Germans in 1914.

After less than an hour of fighting a message came from the king: would the admiral agree to a compromise and accept six mountain batteries instead of ten? According to Cosmetatos, the proposal was brought by the Russian minister. The admiral ordered the ships to cease fire, with difficulty got through by telephone to the Prime Minister, Lambros, and accepted the offer on condition that it be repeated to the Allied ministers. The exchange of messages went on all afternoon. At about half past four the shooting broke out again. The French believed that the Greeks had deliberately attacked again. According to Cosmetatos, the Greek soldiers thought the Allies were marching on the palace, and according to the royalists cited by Abbott, Venizelists began firing at the royal patrols from windows and rooftops.

The admiral called on the ships again. This time shells fell in the courtyard of the Crown Prince’s palace, where the king lived, and Queen Sophia, sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II, went down to the cellars with the children. Cosmetatos claims that not a single shell hit the stadium, and that several fell close to the Russian and Italian legations. Abbott describes how the king greeted the Entente ministers, who had come to the palace to reach an agreement, with the question: “Are these your arguments, gentlemen?”. Soon afterwards the Greeks ceased fire.

Agreement and withdrawal

At a quarter to seven in the evening the king’s aide-de-camp, Colonel Pallis, and the ministers of Britain, France and Russia, Sir Francis Elliot, Guillemin and Prince Demidov, arrived at the Zappeion. It was agreed that the king would hand over six mountain batteries once the landing party had gone. The admiral withdrew most of the three battalions, but left a detachment at the Zappeion and refused to promise not to reinforce it. He also warned the Greeks that the withdrawal was only “a prelude to serious events”. Abbott adds that the Entente ministers undertook to recommend to their governments that the admiral’s remaining demands be dropped. Before marching off the sides exchanged prisoners. According to Newbolt the French held 80 of them and the Greeks 60.

At about eleven at night the detachments began to march down to Piraeus. Abbott writes that they returned under Greek escort. The next day the detachment from the Zappeion left as well, and with it the controllers of the police, post, telegraph and railways, who had been watching over these offices since October. On 2 December French stretcher-bearers with two doctors and a priest carried the dead down to Piraeus, and on 3 December the funeral took place. As the cortège passed, Greek soldiers stood in formation and the inhabitants took off their hats.

Losses

The figures vary depending on the source. Falls and Newbolt state that the French lost 191 killed and wounded, and the British 21. Cosmetatos writes of 57 French killed and 154 wounded and at most five British killed. Abbott, following the admiral’s memoirs, gives 60 Allied dead, including 6 officers, and 167 wounded. Abbott estimates the Greek army’s losses at 30 killed, including 4 officers, and 55 wounded. Cosmetatos gives a similar figure, but adds 11 killed and 12 wounded, among them civilians, at the hands of the Venizelists.

What came next

The admiral seriously considered bombarding Athens, but according to Falls he was held back by the French minister, Guillemin. Cosmetatos writes that on 2 December the Italian minister, Count Bosdari, protested firmly against a new bombardment, followed by Elliot and Guillemin. In Paris the press called the events the “Athenian Vespers”, alluding to the Sicilian Vespers, and demanded the punishment of the king, who was supposed to have lured the French sailors into an ambush. The royalists settled their own scores: when the landing party had gone, soldiers and armed reservists attacked Venizelists in Athens for two days. Some historians see 1 December as a treacherous attack, others as an unavoidable clash of which the Greeks had openly warned. One thing is certain: the Allies suffered a humiliation, and Greece went through the most acute moment of the National Schism. Soon France and Britain reached for a weapon that Athens could not repel: blockade.