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.

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.

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.

Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary of that time, was the chief negotiator for the Allies, while Eleftherios Venizelos negotiated on behalf of Greece.

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!

The State of Thessaloniki was disestablished with the unification of the two opposing Greek governments under Venizelos, following the abdication of King Constantine in 1917.

Zaharoff convinced Venizelos to attack but, after some impressive initial success, the Greek army was eventually driven back.

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.

Eleftherios Venizelos ( 1864 – 1936 ), major political figure of 20th century, was born in Chania.

The Greek flag was raised for the first time at Fort Firca in the Old Harbour in the presence of Eleftherios Venizelos and King Constantine.

Eleftherios Venizelos, who hailed from Mournies near Chania, was the leader of the 1896-97 uprising against Ottoman rule and went on to be Prime Minister of Greece and a great statesman.

The Abwehr also predicted the Cretan population would welcome the Germans as liberators, due to their strong republican and anti-monarchist feelings, and would want to receive the "… favourable terms which had been arranged on the mainland …" While it is true the late republican prime minister of Greece, Eleftherios Venizelos, had been a Cretan, and support for his ideas was strong on the island, the Germans seriously underestimated the depth of patriotic feeling on the part of the Cretans.

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.

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

In its aftermath, Constantine and his brothers were dismissed from the armed forces, only to be reinstated a few months later by the new Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, who was keen on gaining the trust of King George.

Venizelos was ingenious in his argumentation: " All Greeks are rightly proud to see their sons serve in the army, and so is the King ".

My duty calls me towards Monastir, unless you forbid me ", Venizelos was forced to pulled rank.

On the initiative of Prime Minister Venizelos, Constantine was also awarded the rank and baton of a Field Marshal.

Venizelos was fervently pro-Entente, having established excellent rapport with the British and French echelons of power.

His prime minister, the Cretan Eleftherios Venizelos, was the effective ruler with the support of the Entente.

This behaviour provoked a split between the monarch and his prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, who was convinced of the need to support the Triple Entente, so as to incorporate the Greek minorities of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans into the Greek kingdom by the end of the war.

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.

Although Venizelos, with British and French support, forced Constantine from the Greek throne in 1917 he remained popular with parts of the Greek people, as shown by the overwhelming vote for his return in the December 1920 plebescite.

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

Despite the promises given by the Entente on Constantine's departure, the previous prime minister, Zaimis, was effectively forced to resign as Venizelos returned to Athens.

When Venizelos was forced to flee Athens, Papandreou accompanied him to Crete, and then went to Lesbos, where he mobilised anti-monarchist supporters in the islands and rallied support for Venizelos's insurgent pro-British government in Thessaloniki.

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.

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

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.

Venizelos, on the other hand, demanded that the army capture the strategic port city of Thessaloniki, the capital of Macedonia, with extreme haste, so as to prevent its fall to the Bulgarians.

Constantine offended British and French interests by blocking efforts by Prime Minister Venizelos to bring Greece into the war on the side of the Allies.

After Constantine refused again to support Greece's entry on the side of the Allies, however, Venizelos resigned, and Constantine appointed Alexandros Zaimis in his place, at the head of a short-lived coalition government.

There, Venizelos established a provisional revolutionary government, which declared war on the Central Powers.

Despite his anger towards Alexander and Aspasia's union, Venizelos allowed her and her mother to move into the royal palace on the condition that the marriage not be made public.

The Hellenic Parliament demanded the exclusion of Constantine I and Crown Prince George from the line to the throne ( leaving Venizelos to conceal his republican views ), resolving on 29 October 1920 that Alexander's younger brother, Prince Paul, should ascend to the throne.

In 1974, on the 21st anniversary of his experience in Jabalpur, he moved to a property in Koregaon Park, Poona, purchased with the help of Ma Yoga Mukta ( Catherine Venizelos ), a Greek shipping heiress.

Following the war, the Tittoni – Venizelos agreement, signed on July 29, 1919 called for the smaller islands to join with Greece, while Italy maintained control of Rhodes.

Venizelos had such profound influence on the internal and external affairs of Greece that he is credited with being " the maker of modern Greece ", and he is still widely known as the " Ethnarch ".

Venizelos, as a representative of the Cretan rebels, met the admirals of the Great Powers on a Russian warship on 7 March 1897.