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

NEPOTISM OF CAPODISTRIAS 295
Venetian Corfiot aristocracy to which he himself belonged,
who had taken no share in the war of Liberation,
and were out of sympathy with the democratic
ideas of the Greek people. His brother Viaro, a lawyer
by profession, who had no quality either of brain or
heart to recommend him, he made administrator of the
Sporades, where his arrogance, folly, and absolute contempt
for law or justice, made the wretched islanders
long for the Turkish cadis back again.
Yet this man,
of whose tyrannous dealings with the islands Capodistrias
had been well acquainted, was, when shortly after
his arrival Lord Cochrane resigned his command, appointed
High Admiral.
In the same way, his younger
brother Agostino, without possessing one single qualification
for the office, except perhaps an imposing
presence, was appointed over the heads of Hypsilanti
and Sir Eichard Church to the supreme command of
the army.
Such flagrant instances of nepotism could hardly
fail to offend and alienate a people as jealous and ambitious
as the Greeks; and if, for the time being, the
position of Capodistrias was unshaken, it was that his
presence among them was regarded as a pledge of the
goodwill of Russia and of the Triple Alliance, from
which alone they could now hope to obtain that for
which they had fought and suffered.
Should anything