Charilaos Trikoupis’ party had been defeated in…

Charilaos Trikoupis’ party had been defeated in the Greek general election of April 1885, and his bitter rival Theodor Deligiannis, a resolute advocate of aggressive and often irresponsible irredentism, has replaced him, serving for a third time as prime minister.

While Trikoupis has argued for the strengthening of the Greek state as the essential precondition of territorial expansion, Deligiannis, displaying no such caution, mobilizes in 1885 in an attempt to exploit the crisis over Bulgaria by an invasion of Turkish Macedonia.

The Great Powers respond by imposing a naval blockade, stopping the adventure before it can begin.