Greco-Turkish War (1897)
The Greco-Turkish War of 1897, also called the Thirty Days' War and known in Greece as the Black '97 (, "Mauro '97") or the Unfortunate War (Ατυχής πόλεμος, "Atychis polemos") (Turkish: "1897 Osmanlı-Yunan Savaşı" or "1897 Türk-Yunan Savaşı"), was a war fought between the Kingdom of Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Its immediate cause was the question over the status of the Ottoman province of Crete, whose Greek majority long desired union with Greece. Despite the Ottoman victory on the field, an autonomous Cretan State under Ottoman suzerainty was established the following year (as a result of the intervention of the Great Powers after the war), with Prince George of Greece and Denmark as its first High Commissioner.
Alexander of Greece
Under the restored King Constantine I, whose return was endorsed overwhelmingly in a referendum, Greece went on to lose the Greco–Turkish War with heavy military and civilian casualties. The territory gained on the Turkish mainland during Alexander's reign was lost. Alexander's death in the midst of an election campaign helped destabilize the Venizelos regime, and the resultant loss of Allied support contributed to the failure of Greece's territorial ambitions. Winston Churchill wrote, "it is perhaps no exaggeration to remark that a quarter of a million persons died of this monkey's bite."