In the elections that followed, Constantine ’ s loyalists managed to force Venizelos to flee, but Zaharoff stayed around and persuaded the same king that he had to attack Turkey again, but with Mustafa Kemal now in charge of Turkey, this venture was bound to fail.

After a coup deposed King Constantine during the First World War, Crown Prince George, by then a Major, followed his father into exile in 1917 ( see National Schism ); his brother Alexander was installed as king by prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos, an avowed Republican.

Constantine forced Venizelos to resign twice, but in 1917 he left Greece, after threats of the Entente forces to bombard Athens ; his second son, Alexander, became king.

Protected by the countries of the Entente, particularly France, Venizelos formed in 1916 a Government of National Defence parallel to that of the king, in Thessaloniki.

On 26 June 1917, the king was forced to name the republican Eleftherios Venizelos as head of government.

Upon his return to Greece in August 1920, Venizelos received a laurel crown for his work in favour of panhellenism, presented by the king himself.

Although Venizelos was a friend of Petros Manos, Aspasia's father, the prime minister preferred that the king should marry Princess Mary of the United Kingdom, to consolidate the relationship between Greece and Britain.

The election campaign was already proceeding when the king died, but the date of the elections was postponed, and Venizelos summoned the Chamber to meet for a special session on October 28.

That year, determined to enter WWI on the entente side, Venizelos rebelled against the king and formed a provisional government in the north.

Venizelos initiated a major reform program, including a new and more liberal constitution and reforms in the spheres of public administration, education and economy.

Venizelos suggested that once the Prince's service expired, then the Great Powers should be invited to the Committee, which, according to article 39 of the constitution ( which was suppressed in the conference of Rome ) would elect a new sovereign, thereby removing the need for the presence of the Great Powers.

The resulting Goudi coup on 15 August 1909 marked a watershed in modern Greek history: as the military conspirators were inexperienced in politics, they asked Venizelos, who had impeccable liberal credentials, to come to Greece as their political adviser.

When Eleftherios Venizelos, Prime Minister at the time, was asked if the Greek army should move towards Thessaloniki or Monastir ( now Bitola, Republic of Macedonia ), Venizelos replied " Salonique à tout prix!

Finally, the Entente powers intervened and asked Venizelos to back down, allowing Alexander to retain the crown.

After Venizelos ' protest Constantine asked him to take the responsibility ( as a prime minister ) by ordering him to force them out, but that was hardly an option since that would certainly lead to confrontation with the Bulgarians.

The League found itself unable to create a new political system, until the league summoned the Cretan politician Eleutherios Venizelos to Athens as its political adviser.

Before the Balkan Wars of 1912 – 1913, Venizelos ' catalytic role helped gain Greece entrance to the Balkan League, an alliance of the Balkan states against Ottoman Turkey.

The political dead-end remained until the League invited Venizelos from Crete to undertake the leadership.

Venizelos went to Athens and after consulting with the Military League and with representatives of the political world, he proposed a new government and Parliament's reformation.

After many postponements the King agreed to assign Stephanos Dragoumis ( Venizelos ' indication ) to form a new government that would lead the country to elections once the League was disbanded.

Venizelos, seeing no improvements after his approach with the Turks on the Cretan Question and at the same time not wanting to see Greece remain inactive as in the Russo-Turkish War in 1877 ( where Greece's neutrality left the country out of the peace talks ), he decided that the only way to settle the disputes with Turkey, was to join the other Balkan countries, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro, in an alliance known as the Balkan League.

After Alexander's death, Venizelos ' defeat in the 1920 legislative elections, and a plebiscite in favor of his return, Constantine was reinstated.

On 15 August, the regular assembly in Chania voted in favor of most of the reforms that Venizelos proposed.

Under Entente pressure, he resigned in favor of Venizelos in June of the same year.

The two protagonists of the fateful decade 1912 – 1922: King Constantine I of Greece | Constantine I and PM Eleftherios Venizelos in the days of their close cooperation during the Second Balkan War, before the deep political and personal rift between the two materialized and led to the National Schism.

Venizelos now led a superficially united Greece into the war on the Allied side, but underneath the surface, the division of Greek society into Venizelists and anti-Venizelists, the so-called National Schism, became more entrenched.

A road connects Vari with Koropi and Eleftherios Venizelos Airport, and Greek National Road 91 connects it with Athens and Sounio.

His disagreement with Eleftherios Venizelos over whether Greece should enter World War I led to the National Schism.

This " Triumvirate of National Defence " functioned as a collective head of government, although effective control was in Venizelos ' hands.

The tone in Venizelos ' telegram and that in the answer from Constantine that followed to announce the final agreement with the Turks, is widely considered as the start of the conflict between the two men that would lead Greece into the National Schism during World War I.

Following the departure of the Ottoman forces in December 1898, the Cretan government under Eleftherios Venizelos established the Bank of Crete with the assistance of the National Bank of Greece.

* Greece, 1923-1928 ( National Research Foundation " E. Venizelos ")

The suburb ( borough ) is named after the World War I-era " Triumvirate of National Defence " ( in Greek: Τριανδρία της Εθνικής Αμύνης ), comprising the statesman Eleftherios Venizelos, together with Admiral Pavlos Koundouriotis and General Panagiotis Danglis.

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* 1864 – Eleftherios Venizelos, Greek politician, Prime Minister of Greece ( d. 1936 )

Greek officers, revolting in August 1909, had secured the appointment of a progressive government under Eleftherios Venizelos which they hoped would resolve the Cretan issue in Greece's favour and reverse their defeat of 1897 by the Ottomans.

Facing the danger of encirclement, Constantine realized that his army could no longer continue hostilities, agreed to Eleftherios Venizelos ' proposal and accepted the Bulgarian request for armistice as this had been communicated through Romania.

Relations with the Soviet Union remained at the same level until 1960, when Khrushchev met with Sophocles Venizelos, a left-wing Greek politician.

Although parties were centered around the individual leaders, often bearing their names, two broad political tendencies existed: the liberals, led first by Charilaos Trikoupis and later by Eleftherios Venizelos, and the conservatives, led initially by Theodoros Deligiannis and later by Thrasivoulos Zaimis.

On Crete, the local population, led by a young politician named Eleftherios Venizelos, declared Enosis, Union with Greece, provoking another crisis.

Venizelos quickly established himself as a powerful political figure, and his allies won the August 1910 elections.

Venizelos became Prime Minister in October 1910, ushering a period of 25 years where his personality would dominate Greek politics.

In addition, as the Commander-in-chief of the Greek Army during the Balkan Wars, his popularity was enormous, rivalled only by that of Venizelos, his Prime Minister.

Venizelos on the other hand was an ardent anglophile, and believed in an Allied victory.

Since Greece, a maritime country, could not oppose the mighty British navy, and citing the need for a respite after two wars, King Constantine favored continued neutrality, while Venizelos actively sought Greek entry in the war on the Allied side.

Venizelos resigned, but won the next elections, and again formed the government.

When Bulgaria entered the war as a German ally in October 1915, Venizelos invited Entente forces into Greece ( the Salonika Front ), for which he was again dismissed by Constantine.

Venizelos reviews a section of the Greek army on the Macedonian front ( World War I ) | Macedonian front during the First World War, 1917.

In August 1916, after several incidents where both combatants encroached upon the still theoretically neutral Greek territory, Venizelist officers rose up in Allied-controlled Thessaloniki, and Venizelos established a separate government there.

In no small measure through the diplomatic efforts of Venizelos, Greece secured Western Thrace in the Treaty of Neuilly in November 1919 and Eastern Thrace and a zone around Smyrna in western Anatolia ( already under Greek administration since May 1919 ) in the Treaty of Sèvres of August 1920.

Yet so deep was the rift in Greek society, that on his return to Greece, an assassination attempt was made on Venizelos by two royalist former officers.

Even more surprisingly, Venizelos ' Liberal Party lost the elections called in November 1920, and in a referendum shortly after, the Greek people voted for the return of King Constantine from exile, following the sudden death of Alexander.

Staunch supporters of Venizelos and the Republic, many would also radicalize and play a leading role in the nascent Communist Party of Greece.