On August 1, 1893, at the Tatoy Palace in Athens, Greece, a baby boy was born to the father of King Constantine I of Greece and to the mother of Princess Sophie of Prussia. In order to make his son as brave as the king of ancient Macedonia, Constantine I named the baby boy Alexander, who grew up to study at the military academy in Greece and took part in the Balkan Wars in 1912.
Member of the Greek Royal Family
By 1917, Alexander had succeeded his father Constantine as King of Greece, but if it had not been for the outbreak of World War I, Alexander would not have been able to become King of Greece, as his father was still alive at the time, and even though his father had died, his brother George had the right to inherit the throne first. During world war I, Constantine remained neutral, but at the end of the war, Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios insisted on joining the Allies and clashed with Constantine, at this time, the Allies represented by Britain and France took the opportunity to depose Constantine and support Alexander as king of Greece.
In this way, at the age of twenty-four, Alexander became the king of Greece, and it is said that Alexander choked up at one point when he was sworn to be king, because he understood that the king he was serving as was really just a puppet controlled by the Allies. After Alexander ascended the throne, Greece officially joined the Allies and sent troops to participate in the war against the Ottoman Empire, while Alexander's father Constantine and brother George left their country.
Portrait of Alexander
When Alexander became king, he had to face not only the control of the Entente, but also the hostility of Prime Minister Eleftherios to him, and poor Alexander could not participate in the affairs of the country and had to do nothing in the palace accompanied by his wife Aspasia. During that time, Alexander had a German Shepherd named Fritz, and Alexander was very fond of Fritz and often took his dog around in the garden outside the palace.
However, on October 2, 1920, Alexander took Fritz for a walk in the vineyard outside the palace, but at this moment, an accident occurred, and a Barbary macaque raised by the vineyard steward saw the ill-intentioned German Shepherd, and the monkey immediately rushed up to fight with Fritz.
When Alexander saw his dog being bullied, he went to drive the macaque away, and just as Alexander was fighting with the macaque to protect his dog, another monkey who jumped from the grapevine joined the fight, and the two monkeys bit Alexander all over the body.
Barbary macaques
Later, when the vineyard servants arrived, they drove away the macaques with sticks, but Alexander was already seriously injured, his body was covered with blood, and the wound on his leg that had been bitten by the monkey was deeply visible. On the night Alexander was taken to the hospital, he had a fever and caused sepsis, and the doctors at that time considered amputating Alexander, but no one dared to operate on Alexander without permission, resulting in Alexander's injuries worsening and he died less than a month later.
After Alexander's death, his body was transported to the church in Athens, but since most of the Greek royal family at that time was forced to leave their country, only one member of the royal family attended Alexander's funeral. Alexander's death, on the other hand, led to the death of 250,000 people, as Churchill put it:
"A monkey bite killed 250,000 people."
Constantine
It turned out that after Alexander's death, his father Constantine returned to Greece immediately and successfully restored the throne, once again becoming the king of Greece. The first thing Constantine did after his restoration was to order the Greek army to continue deep into the hinterland of Asia Minor, hoping to capture Ankara, Turkey's new capital.
Constantine's actions brought the Greek-Turkish War, which was almost over, into a fever pitch, and in the face of Mustafa Kemal's Turkish army, the Greek army was gradually defeated, and after a series of fiascos, the Greek army was driven out of the peninsula of Asia Minor.
The war would not have happened without Alexander's unexpected death, and the Second Greek-Turkish War later ended in the defeat of Greece, killing a total of 250,000 people on both sides, and the initiator of the war, Constantine, died of hatred just one year after the defeat of Greece.