Alexandros Mavrokordatos

Alexandros Mavrokordatos (; 11 February 179118 August 1865) was a Greek statesman, diplomat, politician and member of the Mavrocordatos family of Phanariotes. Biography In 1812, Mavrokordatos went to the court of his uncle John George Caradja, Hospodar of Wallachia, with whom he passed into exile in the Austrian Empire (1818), where he studied at the University of Padua. He was a member of the Filiki Eteria and was among the Phanariot Greeks who hastened to Morea on the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1821. At the time of the beginning of the revolution, Mavrokordatos was living in Pisa with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley, and upon hearing of the revolution, Mavrokordatos headed to Marseilles to buy arms and a ship to take him back to Greece. Mavrokordatos was a very wealthy, well educated man, fluent in seven languages, whose experience in ruling Wallachia led many to look towards him as a future leader of Greece. Unlike many of the Greek leaders, Mavrokordatos, who had lived in the West, preferred to wear Western clothing, and looked towards the West as a political model for Greece. The American philhellene Samuel Gridley Howe described Mavrokordatos:"His manners are perfectly easy and gentlemanlike and though the first impression would be from his extreme politeness and continual smiles that he was a good-natured silly fop, yet one soon sees from the keen inquisitive glances which involuntarily escape from him, that he is concealing, under an almost childish lightness of manner, a close and accurate study of his visitor... His friends ascribe every action to the most disinterested patriotism; but his enemies hesitate not to pronounce them all to have for their end his party or private interest... Here, as is often the case, truth lies between the two extremes". Mavokordhatos, a crafty, intelligent man was the best politician thrown up by the Greek struggle and he dominated directly or indirectly the various assemblies that endeavoured to establish a government for Greece. He was active in endeavouring to establish a regular government, and in January 1822 he was elected by the First National Assembly at Epidaurus as the "President of the Executive", making him in effect Greece's leader. The Epidaurus assembly was largely Mavrokordatos's triumph as he wrote the first Greek constitution and become the new national leader.