Jonnart's ultimatum

On the morning of 11 June 1917, aboard the French cruiser Bruix, lying at Piraeus, the French senator Charles Jonnart, High Commissioner of Greece’s protecting powers, handed the Prime Minister, Alexandros Zaimis, a note demanding the abdication of King Constantine I. The reply was to come within 24 hours. This carried out the decision of the London conference at the end of May, at which the British had given way to the French and placed the whole matter in Jonnart’s hands.

The High Commissioner’s journey

Jonnart was one of the most experienced politicians of the Third Republic. He was 59, a senator for the Pas-de-Calais department, had twice been Governor-General of Algeria, and in 1913 had been Minister of Foreign Affairs. On 4 June he reached Brindisi, where two French destroyers were waiting for him. Off Corfu he agreed the fleet’s movements with Admiral Dominique Gauchet, commander of the French naval forces in the Mediterranean, and sailed through the Corinth Canal to the roadstead of the island of Salamis. According to Buchan he arrived there on 6 June, according to the British official naval history (Newbolt) as early as 5 June. Aboard the battleship Vérité he talked with the French and British ministers and concluded that he would avoid riots and bloodshed only if Zaimis remained in office and his government carried out the change on the throne. If the Prime Minister left, power would pass to a military cabinet bent on resistance. Zaimis privately promised not to resign before the commissioner’s return.

Jonnart then sailed to Salonika. With General Maurice Sarrail he arranged that troops would simultaneously enter Thessaly, occupy the Isthmus of Corinth and land near Athens. He also spoke with Eleftherios Venizelos, who according to the British writer George F. Abbott accepted the plan and advised that once the king had been removed people should be given time to calm down and Zaimis left in power for the time being. The British official history of the Macedonian campaign (Falls) notes that the commissioner and his advisers wanted to have troops on the spot, although in London it had been recorded that troops were to be used only “in case of necessity”. On the morning of 9 June Jonnart sailed from Salonika together with General Charles Regnault, who was to command the landing at Piraeus and on the isthmus. That evening, in the Salamis roadstead, he received a telegram from the Quai d’Orsay. In it the British government expressed its astonishment that, contrary to the London arrangements, troops were to land before the ultimatum was delivered. Regnault argued that in the heat the men and horses had to be put ashore at once, but in the end he reluctantly agreed to keep the troops intended for Piraeus aboard the transports for a further day after their arrival.

Two conversations on the Bruix

On the evening of 10 June Zaimis was summoned to the Bruix. Jonnart then put only two demands to him: consent to the purchase and control of the Thessalian harvest, and to the reinforcement of the Allied posts on the Isthmus of Corinth. The Prime Minister, pleasantly surprised that the demands were so modest, accepted them without difficulty. Falls explains that Jonnart was acting here in accordance with instructions to settle the matter of the harvest first and only then move on to the abdication. Abbott saw in this a ruse meant to lull the Prime Minister’s vigilance. The same evening French troops landed unopposed on the isthmus, while in Thessaly a French division made up mainly of cavalry had been advancing since the morning. In Athens rumours of a new, extreme ultimatum circulated all night.

In the morning Zaimis returned to the cruiser and received the actual note. In it Jonnart wrote that the protecting powers had resolved to restore the unity of the kingdom without infringing the monarchical constitution which they guaranteed. Since the king had manifestly and on his own initiative violated the constitution guaranteed by France, Great Britain and Russia, he had lost the confidence of the powers, and they considered themselves released from their duties as protectors towards him. Therefore, “in order to restore constitutional truth”, the commissioner demanded the abdication of Constantine, who would himself designate a successor from among his heirs in agreement with the powers. An attached memorandum excluded the heir to the throne, Prince George, because he did not offer the powers “the required guarantees”. The note, which Falls quotes from the French author R. David, is dated 10 June, but both Falls and Abbott, who drew on Jonnart’s memoirs, write that it was handed over on the morning of 11 June, and this is also the date given by the British chronology of the war. The troops were not to land at Piraeus until the Greek reply had arrived.

Falls writes that Zaimis, “deeply moved and overwhelmed”, promised to do everything to persuade the king. According to Abbott, Jonnart assured him that the powers cared only for the unity and greatness of Greece and that the change of reign would take place as peacefully as possible. Some accounts add that the commissioner promised that the powers would not oppose Constantine’s return after the war if the nation wished it, and that they had no intention of bringing back Venizelos. Jonnart later disowned these words as “a misunderstanding on the part of M. Zaimis”. If the demand were rejected, he threatened the fall of the whole dynasty, a republic and the immediate return of Venizelos. Abbott, citing Jonnart’s own memoirs, also quotes his warning that if the note were not carried out to the letter, he would do to Athens what the Germans had done to Arras in his home region.

The Crown Council

Zaimis went straight to the palace and conveyed the demand to the king. The Crown Council, summoned at once, was attended, as Abbott writes, by all the former prime ministers and party leaders, among them Dimitrios Gounaris, Stefanos Skouloudis and Spyridon Lambros. Reportedly only Zaimis and Nikolaos Stratos spoke in favour of submission. The others would have preferred the king to let himself be imprisoned rather than give way. Constantine, however, with his army confined to the Peloponnese and the country exhausted by the blockade, considered resistance pointless. Falls stresses that the Prime Minister prevailed only because the king agreed with him on this matter. In the afternoon, at a meeting of the government, Constantine upheld his decision and instructed Zaimis to prepare a reply.

Meanwhile word of what the commissioner wanted had spread through Athens. In the morning the government, to avoid riots, had given assurances in a communiqué that the rumours of new demands were groundless. By the afternoon it was known that the king was leaving. Shops were closed, church bells rang, and a crowd gathered outside the palace intending to stop him. In the evening an official brought the draft reply to Piraeus, where the French squadron lay ready for action. Jonnart approved it. In it Zaimis announced that the king, “ever solicitous solely for the good of Greece”, had decided to leave the country together with the heir to the throne and designated as his successor his younger son, Prince Alexander. The text made no mention of abdication. The reply was formally delivered to the commissioner the following morning.