A regency council (, ) ruled the Kingdom of Greece in 1833–1835, during the minority of King Otto. The council was appointed by Otto's father, King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and comprised three men: Josef Ludwig von Armansperg, Georg Ludwig von Maurer, and Carl Wilhelm von Heideck. The first period of the regency saw major reforms in administration, including the establishment of an autocephalous Church of Greece. The regency's authoritarianism and distrust of the Greek political parties, especially the Russian Party, which was associated with the period of Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias and was particularly opposed to the Church reforms, led to a quick eroding of its popularity. Armansperg was the council's chairman, but increasingly clashed with the other two regents, who in turn aligned with the French Party under Ioannis Kolettis. The main domestic event of the early period was the arrest and sham trial of Theodoros Kolokotronis, a hero of the Greek War of Independence and the de facto leader of the Russian Party, in 1834. This rallied the opposition against the regency, helped provoke a major uprising in the Mani Peninsula, and fatally undermined the prestige of Maurer and Heideck versus Armansperg. The conflict was resolved in Armansperg's favour in July 1834, when Maurer was replaced by . Following Otto's coming of age in June 1835, the council was dissolved, but Armansperg remained in charge of the government as Prime Minister.

Background The London Conference of Britain, France, and Russia in May 1832 established Greece as an independent kingdom under the joint guarantee of the three Powers (article 4), with the 17-year-old Bavarian prince Otto as its hereditary king (articles 1–3). As Otto was a minor, articles 9–10 of the treaty authorized his father, King Ludwig I of Bavaria, to form a three-member regency council that was to rule in his stead until . Further articles concerned the issue of a loan of 60 million francs by the Powers, and the sending of a Bavarian expeditionary force that was to replace the French troops then in Greece and begin the establishment of a regular Greek army.

First regency council Establishment

Based on the provisions of the Treaty of London, King Ludwig established the three-member regency as a collegial body on : although one of the three regents was to chair the body, all decisions were to be taken by vote, and were to be valid only when signed by all members. On , the three regents were named: Count Josef Ludwig von Armansperg as chairman of the council, the law professor Georg Ludwig von Maurer as member responsible for justice, education, and religious affairs, and the general Carl Wilhelm von Heideck as member responsible for military and naval affairs. In addition, the diplomat Karl von Abel was named secretary and substitute member with responsibility for internal administrative and foreign affairs, and the official Johann Baptist Greiner was to serve as liaison between the regency and the ministries, with a special role overseeing financial affairs.

The regents were chosen out of a mixture of practical and political reasons. Count Armansperg was an experienced statesman, but had been dismissed by Ludwig as finance minister in 1830 due to his support for the July Revolution in France. He was thus considered to have liberal sympathies, which gained him the backing of Britain and France. King Ludwig distrusted him, and tried to curtail his powers, but Armansperg rebuffed these attempts, insisting on the need for the Greek regency to remain independent of any foreign influence. Of the three regents, General Heideck was the only one with experience of Greece, as he was a philhellene who had joined the Greek War of Independence in 1826, fighting alongside the Greek rebels. He sympathized with, and was backed by, Russia. Maurer and Abel were relatively apolitical: Maurer was an erudite scholar and former justice minister of Bavaria, and Abel was a capable, experienced and hard-working bureaucrat.

The 'Bavarocracy'

Otto and his entourage arrived at Nafplion, then the capital of Greece, on . In theory, the new monarchy would be constitutional. Indeed, this had been explicitly promised both by the Powers and by the Bavarian foreign minister, . However, King Ludwig was firmly opposed to this, believing that a too-democratic constitution would impede his son's ability to rule effectively. In view of the chaotic circumstances in Greece, this view was shared by the regency members. No constitution was promulgated either before or after Otto's arrival in Greece, leaving the regency the only effective decision-making body in the country. The only limit on its authority was the prerogative of King Ludwig to dismiss its members and appoint new ones.

Furthermore, in their efforts to quickly transform Greece into a European-style state, the regency did not examine the local conditions objectively, but tried to directly import European norms and regulations, which were completely inappropriate for the war-ravaged and destitute country, and failed to take into account the sensibilities of the local population. The regency was particularly suspicious of the irregular soldiers who had fought the War of Independence, and failed to either recompense them with the public lands captured from the Turks, as promised, nor to provide them with employ by taking them into the army. This led to them turning to brigandage, both in Greece and across the border into the Ottoman territories.

As a result, in its efforts to reduce the country to obedience and establish order, as well as to minimize the influence of the Greek factions and Westernize the country as fast as possible, it could only rely on foreign, chiefly Bavarian officials, and on the bayonets of the Bavarian expeditionary corps. Thus the regime instituted quickly became known as the 'Bavarocracy' (), which was chiefly pronounced in the court and the army, where the Bavarians greatly outnumbered the Greeks. In the army, all senior positions were given to Bavarians or other foreigners: Wilhelm von Le Suire became Minister for Military Affairs; Inspector-General of the Army; Anton Zäch head of the engineers; Ludwig von Lüder head of the artillery; the French philhellene head of the Gendarmerie; and the British philhellene Thomas Gordon chief of the general staff. It is notable that similar measures to concentrate command authority in the hands of foreigners were not undertaken in the navy, which on its own could not challenge the regime. This 'Bavarocracy' was not so evident in the civil administration, where only a few foreign officials were appointed, but by royal decree on 15 March 1833, the existing Greek cabinet of seven ministries was subordinated to the regency, thus becoming merely an executive organ carrying out the regency's dictates.

The new regime and its reforms The regency's tendency to sideline and patronize the Greeks, governing in their name but not with their active participation, has been considered by historians as a cardinal mistake, and became the chief source of opposition to the regency. This was coupled with an attempt to neutralize the Greek parties—the English, French and Russian—that had developed since the War of Independence, around affiliation to one of the guarantor Great Powers. To the regency, these parties were little more than elite cliques, rather than broader political movements expressing the Greek people. The regency tried to curtail their activity, especially through a system of "divide and rule" in making appointments to public office, and adopted an inflexibly confrontational stance whenever its decisions were challenged by the parties. At the same time, the parties' tendency to appeal to their respective patron Powers were regarded as inimical to the regency's attempts to assert the country's independence from Great Power interference, providing another reason for the regency's attempts to neutralize them. For the same reason, at least initially, the regency has closer ties with France than the other two guarantor Powers, since Britain and Russia were seen as actively vying for influence over the newly independent kingdom, whereas France was less interested in direct involvement and thus considered relatively neutral. Maurer in particular was French-leaning, leading to a close relationship with the French ambassador, Baron Rouen.

On its arrival in Greece, the regency initially retained the previous cabinet under Spyridon Trikoupis until 15 April 1833, when the cabinet was reformed. Trikoupis remained its president, with Alexandros Mavrokordatos, Georgios Psyllas, , and Ioannis Kolettis as ministers. The new cabinet was dominated by the English Party, with only Kolettis, in the relatively unimportant Ministry for Naval Affairs, from the French Party, while the Russian Party was not represented at all. Indeed, most of the men who had held office under Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias (1828–1831) were kept out of office. In the army, the distinguished commander-in-chief of the War of Independence, Theodoros Kolokotronis, was kept out of military command due to his pro-Russian sympathies, which in turn led to the dismissal of several other prominent commanders from the other political camps to assuage the Russians. The Russian Party thus switched to a position of complete opposition to the regency, expressed chiefly via its mouthpiece, the newspaper Chronos, funded by Kolokotronis.

Finances The financial situation of Greece when Otto arrived was disastrous: the treasury was empty, the country owed large amounts to foreign lenders due to the loans contracted to finance the War of Independence, and much of the public lands had been illegally seized. Indeed, the scale of the problem was hard to assess as the financial administration was practically non-existent; the relevant census and cadastral data were either lacking or had been destroyed in the anarchy of 1831–32. The regency could look forward to the first part of the promised sixty-million-frank loan, which was finalized in July 1833, but even that was much reduced in practice due to commissions and the need to pay off previous debts. The regency thus set about a programme of reduction of expenses, restoring security and tranquility so that agriculture and commerce could resume, and ending tax evasion and the mismanagement of public funds. The latter point in particular meant a confrontation with the Greek political factions and local magnates, who had benefited from the previous situation and now vigorously opposed the regency's efforts, even to the point of sponsoring uprisings or seeking the intervention of the Powers in their favour.

As the first step, in October 1833 the Court of Audit was founded as an independent institution to audit public finances. It comprised seven members, headed by a Frenchman, Arthémond Jean-François de Regny. Its extensive authority over all matters of financial policy made it the second-most powerful body after the regency itself. In addition, public treasuries were established in the national and the main provincial capitals. Due to the pressing financial needs, the regency continued the previous system of tax farming, but tried to limit abuses by requiring the presence of the—theoretically impartial—eparchs and ephors at the bidding process, by reducing the extent of the concessions to the level of individual communes rather than entire provinces, and by permitting the payment of the contracted sum in rates. This effectively broadened the circle of people who were able to bid for the contracts, rather than the small clique of wealthy or politically influential people who had dominated the process before. Attempts were made to begin the direct gathering of taxes by state officials, but this was only sporadically implemented, in areas where the tax proceeds were very low.

Army