Royal Phalanx

The Royal Phalanx (Greek: Βασιλική Φάλαγξ) was a military body composed of veteran officers of the Greek War of Independence, established on 18 September 1835. The Phalanx entailed military garrison duties, but mostly it was an honorific appointment, and a means to sustain veteran soldiers who had no other means of upkeep.

The end of the Greek War of Independence (1821–29) had bequeathed several problems to the nascent Kingdom of Greece, among them the organization of a new and reliable regular army following the collapse of the first such attempts after the murder of Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias in 1831 and the period of political anarchy and infighting that followed. This process began with the arrival of the Bavarian King Otto, accompanied by Bavarian troops, in 1833. The new regime abolished the irregular forces that had been left over from the War of Independence, and organized a new military, with mixed Greek and Bavarian command staff.

Another major problem was the fate of the many warriors who had taken part in the War of Independence but had been left out of the new army; knowing no other trade and faced with poverty, they were a potentially unstable element, as had been demonstrated in the uprisings and civil wars of previous years. As an attempt to solve this problem, on 18 September and 11 October 1835 two Royal Decrees were promulgated founding the "Royal Phalanx" to be recruited among deserved veterans of the War of Independence. The decrees stressed the honorific nature of the Phalanx: the new corps would precede all other military formations on parade and accompany the king; its members were awarded the Silver Cross of the War of Independence, and granted the right to wear the traditional Greek foustanella uniform and bear the traditional arms, instead of the unpopular "tight" Western European-style uniforms of the regular army. Further privileges included the right to serve near their place of residence, and the right to be eligible, despite their salaried position, for the distribution of public lands intended for destitute fighters of the War of Independence.

The decrees provided that only veteran officers of impeccable conduct—in view of the turmoils of the previous years which had convulsed all of Greek society, this meant loyalty to the Bavarian regime—and who could certify their status as veterans were eligible. Many veterans' claims had already been checked by a commission established in March 1833, but another, extraordinary, commission, composed of Richard Church, Nikitas Stamatelopoulos, Dionysios Evmorfopoulos, Ioannis Makriyannis, Nikolaos Krieziotis, and Kitsos Tzavellas, was set up to examine the claims specifically for admission to the Phalanx. In an attempt to ensure its impartiality, the new commission was formed from among the various dominant political factions—the French, English, and Russian parties—as well as the various regions of provenance of veterans, including the Souliotes and fighters from Ionian Islands, which were outside the boundaries of the Greek kingdom. Nevertheless, it is documented that the selection process was often abused: parliamentary debates from 1866 refer to people "who were not even born during the Revolution, or stableboys and cooks" as having gained admittance to the corps.

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