Although history has unfairly described King Alexander as a careless pet owner who died from a bite "from his pet monkey"; the 27-year-old monarch actually died after defending his pet dog from an attack during a walk through the Royal Gardens, and he suffered wounds from two of the monkeys. The attack occurred on 2 October 1920. In the report dispatched from Europe, it was stated that the King had been walking in the park with a pet dog, when the dog was attacked by a monkey. The King fended off the monkey with a stick but in the fight the monkey bit him on the hand slightly. "Another monkey rushed to the defense of his mate, and in fending it off, the King received another bite which severely lacerated a gland. The infection which set in following the bites gradually poisoned the King's entire system ..." Both animals were found to have been diseased after they were destroyed. Within days, he developed a severe reaction to the infection, and after initial signs of improvement, became critically ill on 12 October. It is little reported but nonetheless extremely likely that the infection was caused by Monkey B virus which causes a fatal ascending myelitis in man and unremarkable oral lesions in a monkey. There is a relation to Herpes.
On 25 October 1920 King Alexander died at Athens, of sepsis. His father Constantine I was permitted to return to Greece as King. Eventually, King Constantine would lead the Greeks to engage in the Greco-Turkish War which resulted in Greece's defeat, a quarter of a million military and civilian casualties and the end of the Megali Idea. Winston Churchill would later write that "it was a monkey bite that caused the death of those 250,000 people.". The territory gained on the Turkish mainland during Alexander’s reign was lost.
