Goudi Coup
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The Goudi coup () was a military
coup d'état A coup d'état (; ; ), or simply a coup , is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership. A self-coup is said to take place when a leader, having come to powe ...
by a group of military officers that took place on the night of , at the barracks in Goudi, located on the eastern outskirts of
Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...
,
Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...
. The coup was pivotal in modern Greek history, ending the old
political system In political science, a political system means the form of Political organisation, political organization that can be observed, recognised or otherwise declared by a society or state (polity), state. It defines the process for making official gov ...
and ushering in a new period for Greece. The coup occurred under simmering tensions in Greek society, which reeled under the effects of a lack of necessary reforms and financial troubles that had been exacerbated by the defeat in the
Greco-Turkish War of 1897 The Greco-Turkish War of 1897 or the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897 ( or ), also called the Thirty Days' War and known in Greece as the Black '97 (, ''Mauro '97'') or the Unfortunate War (), was a war fought between the Kingdom of Greece and the O ...
. Emulating the
Young Turks The Young Turks (, also ''Genç Türkler'') formed as a constitutionalist broad opposition-movement in the late Ottoman Empire against the absolutist régime of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (). The most powerful organization of the movement, ...
, several junior army officers founded a secret society, the Military League. With Colonel Nikolaos Zorbas as their figurehead, on the night of 15 August, the Military League, having gathered together its troops in the Goudi barracks, issued a '' pronunciamiento'' to the government, demanding an immediate turnaround for the country and its armed forces. King George I gave in and replaced Prime Minister Dimitrios Rallis with Kyriakoulis Mavromichalis, without, however, satisfying the insurgents, who resorted to a large public demonstration the following month. When a stalemate was reached, the coup leaders appealed to a new and providential figure, the Cretan
Eleftherios Venizelos Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos (, ; – 18 March 1936) was a Cretan State, Cretan Greeks, Greek statesman and prominent leader of the Greek national liberation movement. As the leader of the Liberal Party (Greece), Liberal Party, Venizelos ser ...
, who respected democratic norms in calling for new elections. After his allies' twin victories in the
Hellenic Parliament The Parliament of the Hellenes (), commonly known as the Hellenic Parliament (), is the Unicameralism, unicameral legislature of Greece, located in the Old Royal Palace, overlooking Syntagma Square in Athens. The parliament is the supreme demo ...
in
August August is the eighth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Its length is 31 days. In the Southern Hemisphere, August is the seasonal equivalent of February in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere, August ...
and November 1910, Venizelos became
prime minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...
and proceeded to enact numerous social and military reforms, including those demanded by the coup's instigators. In the following years, Venizelos' popular leadership dominated the Greek discourse and eventually challenged the institution of monarchy. Henceforth and for several decades, Greek political life was dominated by two opposing forces: Venizelism, characterized by liberal and republican ideals, and its opposite, anti-Venizelism, characterized by conservative and pro-monarchy ideals.


Greece at the beginning of the 20th century

The
Congress of Berlin At the Congress of Berlin (13 June – 13 July 1878), the major European powers revised the territorial and political terms imposed by the Russian Empire on the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of San Stefano (March 1878), which had ended the Rus ...
in 1878 and the 1881
Convention of Constantinople The Convention of Constantinople is a treaty concerning the use of the Suez Canal in Egypt. It was signed on 29 October 1888 by the United Kingdom, the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the Russian Empire and ...
had been successes for Greek diplomacy. There, the country had won
Thessaly Thessaly ( ; ; ancient Aeolic Greek#Thessalian, Thessalian: , ) is a traditional geographic regions of Greece, geographic and modern administrative regions of Greece, administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient Thessaly, a ...
and a part of
Epirus Epirus () is a Region#Geographical regions, geographical and historical region, historical region in southeastern Europe, now shared between Greece and Albania. It lies between the Pindus Mountains and the Ionian Sea, stretching from the Bay ...
. In order to continue achieving the Megali Idea, Greece then turned to
Macedonia Macedonia (, , , ), most commonly refers to: * North Macedonia, a country in southeastern Europe, known until 2019 as the Republic of Macedonia * Macedonia (ancient kingdom), a kingdom in Greek antiquity * Macedonia (Greece), a former administr ...
and
Crete Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...
, but met with severe setbacks.


Military defeats

In 1895, following the Hamidian massacres of
Armenians Armenians (, ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the Armenian highlands of West Asia.Robert Hewsen, Hewsen, Robert H. "The Geography of Armenia" in ''The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiq ...
in the
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
, Cretan Christians—who were still under Ottoman rule—demanded self-government on their island, seeking the protection of the great powers. As massacres of Christians by Muslims escalated, Greece intervened, first by allowing volunteers to depart from its shores and later by increasingly deploying part of its fleet. By early 1897, Greece sent troops to Crete, coinciding with the Cretan declaration of a union with Greece, " Εnosis" (). The European powers (France, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany) forced Greece to retreat. The opposition criticized the government's weakness and indecision, especially when Greece declared war on the Ottomans in April. The resulting conflict, known as (the Thirty Days' War), lasted a month and ended in a Greek defeat. Though Greece lost only a small amount of territory along its northern border, it was compelled to pay significant war reparations—4 million Ottoman pounds—to the victorious Ottomans. Coming shortly after Greece's declaration of public
insolvency In accounting, insolvency is the state of being unable to pay the debts, by a person or company ( debtor), at maturity; those in a state of insolvency are said to be ''insolvent''. There are two forms: cash-flow insolvency and balance-sheet i ...
in 1893, this defeat led to the establishment of an international financial control commission (), which diverted Greece's key revenue sources, such as
state monopolies In economics, a government monopoly or public monopoly is a form of coercive monopoly in which a government agency or government corporation is the sole provider of a particular good or service and competition is prohibited by law. It is a monopo ...
and port customs tariffs, to repay its public debt. Meanwhile, Crete became an autonomous state under international supervision, though it remained under the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan.


Macedonia

Macedonia was a region disputed between Greece, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria (created at the Congress of Berlin). On , the feast day of the prophet
Elijah Elijah ( ) or Elias was a prophet and miracle worker who lived in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of King Ahab (9th century BC), according to the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah defended the worsh ...
(Bulg. ''Ilinden''), the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising, sponsored by the
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO; ; ), was a secret revolutionary society founded in the Ottoman territories in Europe, that operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Founded in 1893 in Salonica, it initia ...
, began. The uprising failed, and Turkish reprisals were severe, with 2,000 killed and villages and homes razed. Following these events, many Greeks became concerned with the level of Bulgarian activity in Macedonia. The '' Ethniki Etairia'' (National Society) was set up, which sent armed bands of Greeks (''makedonomakhoi''), tacitly aided by the government in Athens, which provided financial support through its consular agents such as Ion Dragoumis and training from military advisers such as Pavlos Melas. This began what is known in Greece as the " Macedonian Struggle", where Greeks clashed with Bulgarian ''komitadjis'', while both sides clashed with the Ottoman army and gendarmerie. Reprisals took many forms, including pillage, arson and assassination. Deeply concerned, the Western powers decided to intervene. The eventual plan was for an administrative reorganisation of the region that would allow for an ethnic-based partition. Thus, each of the ethnic groups concerned sought to strengthen its position so as to gain a maximum of territory when the potential partition came. The successes and sacrifices of young officers such as Melas restored the image of part of the army. In turn, the meddling of the European powers in internal Ottoman affairs contributed to the outbreak of the
Young Turk Revolution The Young Turk Revolution (July 1908; ) was a constitutionalist revolution in the Ottoman Empire. Revolutionaries belonging to the Internal Committee of Union and Progress, an organization of the Young Turks movement, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II ...
of July 1908, which put an end to the Greek-Bulgarian clashes in Macedonia.


Consequences of the Young Turk Revolution

Greece, at the time, was still embroiled in the Cretan question. In 1905,
Eleftherios Venizelos Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos (, ; – 18 March 1936) was a Cretan State, Cretan Greeks, Greek statesman and prominent leader of the Greek national liberation movement. As the leader of the Liberal Party (Greece), Liberal Party, Venizelos ser ...
had led the Theriso revolt against High Commissioner George of Greece, who had been appointed by the European powers, and demanded ''enosis''. In 1906, the Prince resigned, and a new commissioner, the former Greek prime minister Alexandros Zaimis, was installed. The Young Turk Revolution pushed the Cretans to unilaterally proclaim definitive ''enosis'', taking advantage of the absence of the new high commissioner. Anti-Greek demonstrations took place in Turkey, where the press launched a similar campaign. The European powers displayed hostility toward Greece, while Georgios Theotokis' government was subjected to increasing criticism. His replacement with Rallis had little effect. The new prime minister hastened to show signs of goodwill toward the Turkish ambassador and the Western powers. Wishing to avoid a new Greco-Turkish war, he criticised the "Cretan revolutionaries" and declared his willingness to abide by the Great Powers' decisions. Indignation toward the government's weaknesses and timorous attitude mounted, among the populace as well as in the army, above all among the young officers who had fought in Macedonia. The idea of imitating the Young Turk officers began to spread.


Economic and social situation

Greece had been in an economic crisis for decades. Public debt (owed above all to the Great Powers) dating back to the
war of independence Wars of national liberation, also called wars of independence or wars of liberation, are conflicts fought by nations to gain independence. The term is used in conjunction with wars against foreign powers (or at least those perceived as foreign) ...
reached new heights in the 1890s. At that point, the government of Charilaos Trikoupis recognised that the country was bankrupt by deciding to lower the public debt to 30% of its value, which angered the creditors, particularly the European powers. At the same time, export of the
Zante currant Zante currants, Corinth raisins, Corinthian raisins or outside the United States simply currants, are raisins of the small, sweet, seedless grape cultivar Black Corinth (''Vitis vinifera''). The name comes from the Anglo-French phrase "raisin ...
entered a crisis. A new phenomenon then began: emigration of the working population. The number of emigrants (especially to the United States) went from 1,108 in 1890 to 39,135 in 1910 (of 2.8 million inhabitants); significantly, remittances from America and Egypt fell amid the economic slowdown in 1908. Economic growth was too slow for the workers and farmers who left to seek work elsewhere. Until that time, only highlanders and landless island dwellers had left. However, this economic growth did lead to the creation, as elsewhere in Europe in the same period, of a middle class born out of industrial development, of growth in the number of bureaucrats (linked to political clientelism), and to an urban explosion. In the mid-1900s, this middle class could not understand why the country was prosperous while the state's finances were in such poor shape. Politicians, also dissatisfied with government policy, reacted as well. In 1906, a group of young radicals nicknamed the " Japanese Group" (Ομάς Ιαπώνων), in reference to the dynamism of the
Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...
or their aggressive tactics in parliament (calling to mind the Japanese army’s performance in the recent
Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire. The major land battles of the war were fought on the ...
), formed around the titular leadership of Stephanos Dragoumis, with Dimitrios Gounaris its moving spirit. It criticised the old oligarchy that was ruining the country and demanded radical reforms. The group of "
Sociologists This list of sociologists includes people who have made notable contributions to sociological theory or to research in one or more areas of sociology. A * Peter Abell, British sociologist * Andrew Abbott, American sociologist * Margaret ...
" (Κοινωνιολόγοι), especially influenced by
Marxism Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...
, also called for modernisation of the state apparatus and the economy.


Coup


Military League

The Military League (Στρατιωτικός Σύνδεσμος) was formed in October 1908 out of two groups: one of army NCOs (with members including future generals Nikolaos Plastiras and Georgios Kondylis) and one of junior officers around Theodoros Pangalos. They were motivated by a variety of reasons: a desire for reforms that was prevalent in wide parts of society was combined with frustration at the slow rate of promotions and the absence of meritocracy, especially among graduates of the military academy. Other officers from the army, the navy and the gendarmerie joined up later, and by June 1909, had spread out over the Greek military. At that time the Military League's demands were limited to an increased military budget, its reorganisation and modernisation, as well as the dismissal of the princes from the army. Although the Theotokis government had increased supplies of arms and munitions, he had also reinstated Crown Prince Constantine, who had led the army in the 1897 war, as chief inspector of the army. Also, despite demands, he had authorised only a few officers to pursue further studies in France and Germany.


Army action

The Military League, now numbering about 1,300, began by engaging in a form of lobbying by putting pressure on those in power. It had already scored a success with the July 1909 resignation of Theotokis, its ''bête noire'' and a symbol of the parliamentary clientelism it hated. But his successor, Dimitrios Rallis, immediately alienated the league by paying tribute to Constantine's major role in the war of 1897, by recalling all officers present in Macedonia, by demanding Great Power intervention in Crete and by arresting over a dozen of the league's members for insubordination on 12 August. The arrest of league officers precipitated events: either the league would act now, or it would be dissolved by a government. The league searched for support among the senior officers, and Colonel Nikolaos Zorbas was chosen as its figurehead. On 14 August, Pangalos liberated two of the arrested officers, thereby provoking Rallis into ordering a clampdown and the arrest of all league members. On the same night, the league set in motion its bloodless coup. The league members were gathered in the Goudi barracks: several hundred junior officers, non-commissioned officers, simple soldiers, gendarmes and civilians threatened to march on Athens if their demands were unmet. The armed forces, in particular the young officers, sent Rallis' government a ''pronunciamento'' containing their demands (the previous day, Rallis had declined to receive a deputation seeking to hand over the manifesto). Part of it was purely internal in nature: for instance, the soldiers challenged the promotion system, with its limited prospects for advancement. Another part was political and demanded profound reforms in the country: in its political functioning, as well as social, economic and military. The troops called for naval and land rearmament, and asked that the navy and war ministers belong to the military. The insurgents did not call for the king's abdication or the abolition of the monarchy, remaining loyal subjects. Neither did they announce a military dictatorship or even wish to change the government. They respected the institutions of parliamentary government. However, the officers did demand that the royal princes, chiefly the Crown Prince Constantine, on whom they blamed the defeat of 1897, be relieved of their posts and expelled from the army. Finally, the league called for a lowering of tax burdens. The prime minister opened ''pro forma'' negotiations with the revolutionaries who, in order to speed them up, resorted to the people of Athens.


Popular demands

A large popular demonstration, organised and supervised by the soldiers, took place in the streets of Athens on 14 September 1909. The demonstrators, who had come from Athens and the
Piraeus Piraeus ( ; ; , Ancient: , Katharevousa: ) is a port city within the Athens urban area ("Greater Athens"), in the Attica region of Greece. It is located southwest of Athens city centre along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf in the Ath ...
, demanded the imposition of a revenue tax,
protectionism Protectionism, sometimes referred to as trade protectionism, is the economic policy of restricting imports from other countries through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, import quotas, and a variety of other government regulations ...
, the granting of tenure to bureaucrats (so they would no longer depend on politicians for their jobs), better working conditions and the condemnation of usury. King George I, unwilling to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor Otto, who had been forced from the throne under similar circumstances in 1862, pushed Prime Minister Rallis to resign and replaced him with Kyriakoulis Mavromichalis.


Stalemate

The negotiations dragged on, and Colonel Zorbas lacked the political skills to keep up with the seasoned veterans on the government side. Mavromichalis, in securing passage of a large number of mildly reformist bills, implemented part of the programme demanded by the Military League, this time under threat of an actual military takeover. Thus, the general staff was reorganised, and those close to Constantine (such as
Ioannis Metaxas Ioannis Metaxas (; 12 April 187129 January 1941) was a Greek military officer and politician who was dictator of Greece from 1936 until his death in 1941. He governed constitutionally for the first four months of his tenure, and thereafter as th ...
) were removed while budget cuts were made in order to finance army modernisation. But his government clearly showed that the old system endured: only Finance Minister Athanasios Eftaxias had reformist ideas. With the revolution running out of steam, the league began to crumble. It was not a real political movement: its ideology and programme lacked coherence; its leaders were popular but unskilled. They were, above all, soldiers ill at ease outside their barracks. The league knew how to link its corporatist demands to public discontent by using populist and nationalist slogans, but it unsettled the bourgeoisie. Although it saw the necessity of modernising the country, the middle classes feared the drift towards a military dictatorship, which was considered deleterious to the regular progress of affairs.


Appeal to Venizelos

Some of the officers went to Crete, which they knew well, either from having participated in the earlier events or in the formation of its civil guard during the period of autonomy. There, they had also been able to see the political talents of the man who had been Prime Minister of Crete since 9 May 1909:
Eleftherios Venizelos Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos (, ; – 18 March 1936) was a Cretan State, Cretan Greeks, Greek statesman and prominent leader of the Greek national liberation movement. As the leader of the Liberal Party (Greece), Liberal Party, Venizelos ser ...
. When Prince George of Greece was High Commissioner of Crete, he had found himself in opposition to Venizelos. This gave the latter an anti-dynastic aura that attracted the Goudi insurgents; he was also seen as free from association with the mainland oligarchy's chaos, corruption, and incompetence. Starting in October 1909, they had sent him an emissary to sound out his intentions, also suggested to him that he take the office of Prime Minister of Greece. However, Venizelos did not wish to appear as the soldiers' man, either in Greece or abroad. Neither did he wish to clash head-on with King George I and the "old" political parties. He thus advised them to proceed with legislative elections and entrust implementation of the reform programme to the new assembly. He went to Athens on and was greeted in Piraeus harbour by eager officers. In January, a Crown Council gathered together the main leaders of the political movements under the aegis of the King and of Venizelos. The latter played the role of mediator between the forces present: the King, the government, the parliament, the troops, and the people. The solutions proposed by the Cretan prime minister were adopted: the convocation of an assembly tasked with constitutional revision and the resignation of the Mavromichalis government, to be replaced with a transitional government that would organise legislative elections. The leadership of the transitional government was given to Stephanos Dragoumis, who was considered an "independent". Nikolaos Zorbas was made minister of land forces. In exchange, Venizelos managed to convince the Military League to dissolve itself so as not to hinder the political process. In March 1910, an initially reluctant sovereign called new elections; three days later, the league announced its dissolution. Venizelos went back to Crete. Using his Cretan citizenship as a pretext (the island had declared union with Greece but Greece had yet to recognise this), Venizelos did not participate in the elections, held in August 1910. His allies nominated him for a seat in Atticoboeotia but he stayed away from the electoral campaign. He was on a diplomatic tour of Western Europe when he learned that he had been elected and that deputies allied to him had obtained a relative majority with 146 of 362 seats. He thus returned to Athens amid rapturous public acclaim; the Dragoumis government resigned and Venizelos became prime minister in October 1910. He surrounded himself with collaborators bent on reform policies and began to apply the programme of the Goudi revolutionaries, strongly backed by public opinion. The Austrian ambassador observed on 28 October 1910: "Venizelos is a sort of popular tribune and almost the dictator of Greece. The enthusiasm of the people, who acclaim him everywhere, is striking". He decided to call immediate new elections in order to strengthen his majority: the assembly elected in August continued to be dominated by the old politicians. These took place on . Venizelos was careful to present himself as an adversary of the "old" parties (which boycotted the elections), but also as free from influence by the Military League that had sought him out after the Goudi coup. Thus he did not hesitate to take as an aide-de-camp
Ioannis Metaxas Ioannis Metaxas (; 12 April 187129 January 1941) was a Greek military officer and politician who was dictator of Greece from 1936 until his death in 1941. He governed constitutionally for the first four months of his tenure, and thereafter as th ...
, a ''bête noire'' of the league whom it had removed. Venizelos'
Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. For example, while the political systems ...
won the elections with an overwhelming majority of 300 out of 362 deputies.


Reformist policies

The reforms of the Venizelos government were numerous, and allowed Greece to modernise and thus be better prepared for the
Balkan Wars The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans, Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan states of Kingdom of Greece (Glücksburg), Greece, Kingdom of Serbia, Serbia, Kingdom of Montenegro, M ...
and World War I. The King supported them, seeing in his prime minister the best hope of stemming the
anti-monarchism Criticism of monarchy has occurred since ancient times. It can be targeted against the general form of government—monarchy—or more specifically, to particular monarchical governments as controlled by hereditary royal families. In some cases, ...
that had surfaced in 1897 and gained renewed momentum in the 1908–1909 crisis. To the people who wanted the assembly elected in 1910 to be a constituent assembly, Venizelos replied that he considered it more of a "revisionary assembly". The 50 constitutional amendments of 1911, prepared by a commission directed by Stephanos Dragoumis, led to the frequently expressed opinion that after this date, Greece had an entirely new fundamental law, the Greek Constitution of 1911. This revision reformed the status of property by allowing for expropriation in the national interest, opening up the possibility of
land reform Land reform (also known as agrarian reform) involves the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership, land use, and land transfers. The reforms may be initiated by governments, by interested groups, or by revolution. Lan ...
; were distributed to 4,000 farm families in
Thessaly Thessaly ( ; ; ancient Aeolic Greek#Thessalian, Thessalian: , ) is a traditional geographic regions of Greece, geographic and modern administrative regions of Greece, administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient Thessaly, a ...
. Agricultural education was encouraged, and farming cooperatives, a ministry of agriculture was created and an agronomist named in each region. Bureaucrats were given greater security of tenure, and hiring for
civil service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil service personnel hired rather than elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil service offic ...
posts began to be done by public examination. Judges were protected by a superior magistracy council. Social legislation ameliorated the condition of the working class:
child labour Child labour is the exploitation of children through any form of work that interferes with their ability to attend regular school, or is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such exploitation is prohibited by legislation w ...
was abolished, as was nighttime labour by women, and a
minimum wage A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. List of countries by minimum wage, Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation b ...
introduced for both; Sunday was made an obligatory day of rest; primary education was made free and compulsory; and a social insurance system was created. The right of
labour union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...
s to function was recognised. Stabilisation of the
drachma Drachma may refer to: * Ancient drachma, an ancient Greek currency * Modern drachma The drachma ( ) was the official currency of modern Greece from 1832 until the launch of the euro in 2001. First modern drachma The drachma was reintroduce ...
once again allowed for foreign borrowing. The state budget showed a surplus in 1911 and 1912 after many years of deficit, and
tax evasion Tax evasion or tax fraud is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to red ...
was curbed. The tax on sugar was cut by 50%, and a progressive income tax was introduced. Taken together, the reforms helped neutralise the development of strong
socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
and agrarian movements seen elsewhere in the Balkans in that period. The army and navy were reorganised with help from France, which sent a military mission led by General Eydoux (Germany had reformed the Turkish Army). The navy was reorganised by a British mission that Admiral Tufnell headed. However, Venizelos, anxious to show that he was no military puppet, excluded soldiers from political life, released officers arrested for attempting to thwart the Goudi coup, and restored to Crown Prince Constantine (given the new post of inspector-general of the army), along with his brothers, their army posts. This angered the members of the defunct Military League, who for a time thought of recreating it, indeed of carrying out another coup.


Notes


References

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Additional reading

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Goudi Coup
Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...
1900s in Greek politics 1909 in Greece 1909 in politics August 1909 in Europe Conflicts in 1909 Eleftherios Venizelos George I of Greece History of Greece (1863–1909) History of Greece (1909–1924) Military coups in Greece