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CHAPTER VI. KINGDOM OF GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1897. The powers had witnessed the tremendous sacrifices of the heroic little nation, which tinder the black night of tyranny held out the torch of liberty, of the nation which had fought until her land had been devastated and her race deci- mated. Finally, after the famous blunder of Navarino, the untoward event as Palmerston called it, they declared Greece an independent state and offered its throne to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The object of the war of 1821 was to free the entire Hellenic race from the Ottoman yoke. This was the watchword of Rhigas and the Hetairia, this was what Ypsilanti proclaimed in his declarations, and the voice which was heard amid the sound of the nations rising from the Danube to Tenaron, from Souli to Cydonia, from Athos to the Cretan Ida. The first na- tional assembly proclaimed at Epidauros that this was their object, and it has been to this end