THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 1821 TO 1833 BY W.ALISON PHILLIPS 1897

CONFERENCE AT ST. PETERSBURG 239
to Immour the Czar, had no desire to see Russia playing
in the Levant the role of patron which she had assumed
in the Danubian Principalities. After sitting
for some time without effecting anything, the Conference
was adjourned for several months. In February
1825 it met again, and Metternich now declared
through the Austrian plenipotentiary
that the court
of Vienna could recognise only one of two alternatives,
either the complete subjection or the complete
1
independence of Greece. With the idea of a group
of vassal States, which Russia desired to force upon
the Porte, he flatly refused to have anything to do.
France had been won over to his views during a visit
he had paid to Charles X. in Paris, in the spring of
1825. 2 Under these circumstances Russia had no
choice but to yield; and the sole result of the St.
Petersburg Conferences was that, on the 13th of
March, it was resolved to present a joint note to the
Porte inviting it to accept the mediation of the
3
Powers in the settlement of the Greek question.
Needless to say, in the absence of any threat of compulsion,
this proposal was indignantly refused by the
Ottoman Government.
On the relations of the Powers themselves, how-
1
Prokesch-Osten, i. 341; Mendelssohn, i. 387.
2
Mendelssohn, i. 389. 3 Prokesch, i. 340.