Essays on the Latin Orient

by William Miller

3. THE GATTILUSJ OF LESBOS (1355-1462)

Me clara Cæsar donat Lesbo ac Mytilene,

Cæsar, qui Graio præsidet imperio.

Corsi apud Folieta.

The Genoese occupation of Chios, Lesbos, and Phocæa by the families of Zaccaria and Cattaneo was not forgotten in the counting-houses of the Ligurian Republic. In 1346, two years after the capture of Smyrna, Chios once more passed under Genoese control, the two Foglie followed suit, and in 1355 the strife between John Cantacuzene and John V Palaiologos for the throne of Byzantium enabled a daring Genoese, Francesco Gattilusio, to found a dynasty in Lesbos, which gradually extended its branches to the islands of the Thracian sea and to the city of Ænos on the opposite mainland, and which lasted in the original seat for more than a century.

Disappointed in a previous attempt to recover his rights, the young Emperor John V was at this time living in retirement on the island of Tenedos, then a portion of the Greek Empire and from its position at the mouth of the Dardanelles both an excellent post of observation and a good base for a descent upon Constantinople. During his sojourn there, a couple of Genoese galleys arrived, commanded by Francesco Gattilusio, a wealthy freebooter, who had sailed from his native city to carve out for himself, amidst the confusion of the Orient, a petty principality in the Thracian Chersonese, as others of his compatriots had twice done in Chios, as the Venetian nobles had done in the Archipelago 150 years earlier. The Emperor found in this chance visitor an instrument to effect his own restoration; the two men came to terms, and John V promised, that if Gattilusio would help him to recover his throne, he would bestow upon him the hand of his sister Maria—an honour similar to that conferred by Michael VIII upon Benedetto Zaccaria.

The family of Gattilusio, which thus entered the charmed circle of Byzantine royalty, had already for two centuries occupied a prominent position at Genoa. One of the name is mentioned as a member of the Great Council in 1157; a second is found holding civic office in 1212 and 1214; and two others were signatories of the treaty of Nymphæum. Luchetto, grandfather of the first lord of Lesbos, was both a troubadour and a man of affairs, who went as envoy to Pope Boniface VIII to negotiate peace between his native city and Venice, served as podestà of Bologna, Milan, Savona, and Cremona; and founded in 1295 the family church of San Giacomo at Sestri Ponente in memory of his father—a foundation which remained in the possession of the Gattilusj till 1483, and of which the Lesbian branch continued to be patron. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the family seems to have turned its attention to the Levant trade, for a Gattilusio was among the Genoese who had sustained damage from the subjects of the Greek Emperor at that period, and by 1341 another member of the clan was a resident at Pera. In that year Oberto Gattilusio was one of the Genoese ambassadors, who concluded the treaty between the Republic and the Regent Anne of Savoy at Constantinople, and ten years later the same personage was sent on an important mission to all the Genoese commercial settlements in the East. The future ruler of Lesbos was this man’s nephew[524].

The Genoese of Galata had good reasons to be dissatisfied with the commercial and naval policy of Cantacuzene, and it was no less their interest than that of their ambitious fellow-countryman to see John V replaced on the throne of his ancestors. They accordingly entered into negotiations with him at Tenedos, and thus Gattilusio could rely upon the co-operation of his compatriots at the capital. On a dark and windy night in the late autumn of 1354 he arrived with the young Emperor off the “postern of the Pathfinding Virgin,” where his Ligurian mother-wit at once suggested a device for obtaining admittance. He had on board a number of oil-jars, which he had brought full from Italy—for he combined business with politics—but which were by this time empty. These he ordered the sailors to hurl against the walls one at a time, until the noise awoke the sleeping sentinels. To the summons of the latter voices shouted from the galleys, that they were merchantmen with a cargo of oil, that one of their ships had been wrecked, and that they were willing to share the remains of the cargo with anyone who would help them in their present distress. At this appeal to their love of gain the guards opened the gate, whereupon some 500 of the conspirators entered, slew the sentries on the adjoining tower, and were speedily reinforced by the rest of the ships’ crews and marines. Francesco, who was throughout the soul of the undertaking, mounted a tower in which he placed the young Emperor with a strong guard of Italians and Greeks, and then ran along the wall with a body of soldiers, shouting aloud: “long live the Emperor John Palaiologos!” When dawn broke and the populace realised that their young sovereign was within the walls, their demonstrations convinced Cantacuzene that resistance would be sanguinary, even if successful. He therefore relinquished the diadem which he could not retain, and retired into a monastery, while John V, accompanied by Francesco and the rest of the Italians, marched in triumph into the palace. The restored Emperor was as good as his word; he bestowed the hand of his sister upon his benefactor, and gave to Francesco as her dowry the island of Lesbos. On July 17, 1355, Francesco I began his reign[525].

Connected by marriage with the Greek Imperial house, the Genoese lord of Lesbos seems to have met with no resistance from his Greek subjects, who would naturally regard him not so much in the light of an alien conqueror as in that of a lawful ruler by the grace of the Emperor. He soon learnt to speak their language[526], and continued to assist his Greek brother-in-law with advice and personal service. At the moment of his accession, the Greek Empire was menaced by the Turks, who had lately crossed over into Europe, and occupied Gallipoli, and by Matthew Cantacuzene, the eldest son of the deposed Emperor. In the very next year the capture of the Sultan Orkhan’s son, Halil, by Greek pirates from Foglia Vecchia, at that time a Byzantine fief, enabled John V to divide these two enemies by promising to obtain the release of the Sultan’s son. The promise proved, indeed, to be hard of fulfilment, for John Kalothetos, the Greek governor of Foglia Vecchia, resisted the joint attacks of the Emperor and a Turkish chief, whom John V had summoned to aid him, until he received a large ransom and a high-sounding title. It was during these operations, in the spring of 1357, that the Emperor, on the advice of Francesco Gattilusio, treacherously invited his Turkish ally to visit him on an islet off Foglia and then arrested him[527]. Such reliance, indeed, did John place in his brother-in-law, whose interests coincided with his own, that, when Matthew Cantacuzene was captured by the Serbs and handed over to the Emperor, the latter sent the children of his rival to Lesbos, and even meditated sending thither Matthew himself, because he knew that they would be in safe keeping[528]. In 1366, when the Bulgarian Tsar, John Shishman, had treacherously arrested John V, and the Greeks of Byzantium, hard pressed by the Turks, sought the help of the chivalrous Conte verde, Amedeo VI of Savoy, Francesco Gattilusio was present with one of his nephews at the siege and capture of Gallipoli from the Ottomans and assisted at the taking of Mesembria from the Bulgarians[529]. But fear of Murad I made him refuse to see or speak to his wife’s nephew, Manuel, when the latter, after plotting against the Sultan, sought refuge in Lesbos[530].

Meanwhile, as a Genoese, he naturally had difficulties with the Venetians. Thus, we find him capturing[531] in the Ægean a Venetian colonist from Negroponte, and quite early in his reign he imitated the bad example of his predecessor, Domenico Cattaneo, and coined gold pieces in exact counterfeit of the Venetian ducat, although of different weight. This was so serious an offence, that the Venetian Government made a formal complaint at Genoa, and in 1357 the Doge of his native city wrote to Francesco[532] bidding him discontinue this dishonest practice, which augured badly for the future of his administration, and would entail severe penalties upon him, if he insisted in its continuance. Francesco felt himself strong enough to go on his way, heedless of the ducal thunders alike of Genoa and of Venice, and coins of himself and of at least four out of his five successors have been preserved. The great war, which broke out between the two Republics in 1377 on account of the cession of Tenedos by the usurper Andronikos to Genoa and its seizure by Venice, must have placed Francesco in a difficult position. He was, it is true, a Genoese but he was also brother-in-law of John V, whom Andronikos had deposed and who had promised the disputed island, which he and Francesco knew so well, to Venice. Accordingly, when the treaty of Turin imposed upon Venice the surrender of Tenedos to Amedeo VI of Savoy, who was to raze the castle to the ground at the cost of Genoa, yet the islanders none the less swore that they would retain their independence. Muazzo, the Venetian governor, excused his action in refusing to give up the island by pleading Francesco’s intrigues. An agent of the Lesbian lord, he wrote, one Raffaele of Quarto, had stirred up the inhabitants, some 4000 in number, to resist the cession, by spreading a rumour that, if Tenedos fell into Genoese hands, the Venetian colonists would all be forced to turn Jews or emigrate[533]. When, however, Venice found herself reluctantly compelled to force her recalcitrant officer to carry out the provisions of the treaty, Francesco helped to victual the Venetian fleet, and Tenedos was reduced to be the desert that it long remained.

While such were his relations with the Byzantine Empire and the rival Republics of the West, the Papacy regarded Francesco as one of the factors in the Union of the Churches and thereby as a champion of Christendom against the Turks. When Innocent VI in 1356, despatched St Peter Thomas and another bishop to compass the Union of the Old and the New Rome, he recommended his two envoys to the lord of Lesbos. Thirteen years later, Francesco accompanied his brother-in-law, the Emperor John V, to Rome, and signed as one of the witnesses of that formal confession of the Catholic faith, which the sorely-pressed sovereign made on October 18, 1369, in the palace of the Holy Ghost before Urban V[534]. He was one of the potentates summoned by Gregory XI in 1372 to attend the Congress[535] of Thebes on October 1, 1373, to consider the Turkish peril—a peril which at that time specially menaced his island—and in the following year the Pope recommended Smyrna to his care, and sent two theologians to convince him, a strenuous fighter against the Turks, and defender of Christendom beyond the seas, that the Union of the Churches would be a better defence against them than armed force[536]. The Popes might well have thought that no one could be a better instrument of their favourite plan than this Catholic brother-in-law of the Greek Emperor. But the astute Genoese was too wise to compel his Greek subjects to accept his creed. Throughout his reign, besides a Roman Catholic Archbishop, there was a Greek Metropolitan of Mytilene, and under his successor the Metropolitan throne of Methymna was also occupied[537]. The Armenian colony, settled in Lesbos, preferred, however, to seek shelter in Kos under the Knights of St John rather than remain as his subjects, without proper protection from a hostile raid[538].

The success of their kinsman encouraged other members of the Gattilusio clan to seek a comfortable seigneurie in the Levant. The barony of Ænos, at the mouth of the Maritza, had been assigned in the partition of the Byzantine Empire to the Crusaders, and, although reconquered by the Greeks, the exiled Latin Emperor Baldwin II had been pleased to consider it as still his to bestow, together with the titular kingdom of Salonika, upon Hugues, Duke of Burgundy, in 1266. Besieged by Bulgarians and Tartars in 1265, and invaded by the Catalans in 1308, it had been governed in the middle of the fourteenth century by Nikephoros II Angelos, the dethroned Despot of Epeiros, the son-in-law and nominee of John Cantacuzene. When, however, Cantacuzene fell, the Despot thought it more prudent to surrender the city to John V, who thus, in 1356, became its master. We do not know the precise time or manner of its transference to the Gattilusio family. A later Byzantine historian[539], however, states that the inhabitants, dissatisfied with the Imperial governor, called in a member of the reigning family of Lesbos, who was able to maintain his position owing to the domestic quarrels in the Imperial family, and by payment of an annual tribute to the Sultan, when the Turks became masters of Thrace and Macedonia. Whether the ancient barony became a Genoese possession by the will of the natives or by grant of the Emperor, one fact is certain, that in June, 1384, it was in the possession of Francesco’s brother, Nicolò[540]. Some six weeks later, a great upheaval of nature, prophesied, it was afterwards said, by a Lesbian monk, made the new lord of Ænos regent of his brother’s island also.

The violent end of the first Gattilusio who reigned in Lesbos was long remembered in the island. On August 6, 1384, a terrible earthquake buried him beneath the ruins of the castle which he had built, as an inscription proudly informs us[541], some eleven years before. After a long and painful search, his mutilated body was found and laid to rest in a coffin, which he had already prepared, in the church of St John Baptist, which he had founded. By his side were laid the mangled bodies of two of his sons, Andronico and Domenico, who, with his wife, had also perished in the disaster. A third son, named Jacopo, escaped, however, by a miracle. At the time of the shock, he was sleeping by the side of his brothers in a tower of the castle; next day, however, he was discovered by a good woman in a vineyard near the Windmills at the foot of the fortress. The woman hastened to tell the good news to the chief men of the town, who came and fetched the young survivor. The boy took the oath on the Gospels as lord of Lesbos before the people and the nobles, and, as he was still a minor, his uncle, Nicolò Gattilusio, lord of Ænos, who hastened over to Lesbos on the news of the catastrophe, shared authority with him. In order to perpetuate the name of the popular founder of the dynasty, Jacopo on his accession took the name of Francesco II[542].

The joint government of uncle and nephew lasted for three years, when a dispute arose between them, and Nicolò returned to the direction of his Thracian barony. In November, 1388, Francesco II joined the league of the Knights of Rhodes, Jacques I of Cyprus, the Genoese Chartered Company of Chios, and the Commune of Pera against the designs of the Sultan Murad I. His popularity with his Perote compatriots was such, that, on the occasion of a visit to Constantinople in 1392, they gave him a banquet; but four years later they complained that he had not performed his treaty obligations, made in 1388, against the Turks. In the summer of 1396, Pera was besieged by the forces of Bayezid I, and although Francesco was actually in the port of Constantinople at the time, and his galley was stationed in the Golden Horn near “the Huntsman’s Gate” in the modern district of Aivan Serai the Commune thought it necessary to draw up a formal protest against his inaction and execute it on the stem of his ship. He replied by offering to aid his fellow-Genoese, if they would make a sortie, and his galley subsequently assisted the Venetians in relieving the capital[543]. After the disastrous defeat of the Christians at the battle of Nikopolis later in the same year, both he and Nicolò of Ænos rendered signal services to the Sultan’s noble French prisoners, and Lesbos emerged into prominence throughout the French-speaking world. Thither came the Duke of Burgundy’s chamberlain, Guillaume de l’Aigle, on his preliminary mission to mollify the heart of Bayezid, with whom Francesco had such influence that he was able to obtain leave for his sick cousin, Enguerrand VII de Coucy, to remain behind at Brusa, when the rest of the captives were dragged farther up country by the Sultan[544]. The humane feelings of the lord of Lesbos were doubtless further moved by the fact that de Coucy was, through his mother, an Austrian princess, connected with the reigning family of Constantinople, from which he was himself descended, and by the recent establishment of a French protectorate over Genoa.

Accordingly, he offered bail for his suffering relative, and when Marshal Boucicault, another of the prisoners, was set free to raise the amount necessary for their ransom, Francesco and other rich merchants of Lesbos advanced him the preliminary sum of 30,000 francs. Nicolò of Ænos willingly lent 2000 ducats more, and sent the prisoners a present of fish, bread and sugar, while his wife added a goodly supply of linen, for which they expressed their deep gratitude[545]. Of the total ransom, fixed at 200,000 ducats, Francesco and Nicolò, anxious to please the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy, respectively made themselves liable for 110,000 and 40,000, which the prisoners promised to repay as soon as possible. Half of these two sums was actually paid, and the lord of Ænos further furnished on account of the Comte de Nevers 10,000 ducats to a son of Bayezid and another Turk, who had guarded that nobleman on the day of his capture. Some years later the two Gattilusj of Lesbos and Ænos sent in a claim for what they had advanced and for sundry expenses amounting in all to 108,500 ducats. Another member of the family lent 5075 ducats, and during his stay in Lesbos the Comte de Nevers negotiated another loan from his host for 2500 more[546]. These sums show the wealth and credit of these merchant princes.

When the ransom had been settled, the three French and Burgundian envoys who had been treating with Bayezid, embarked for Lesbos, escorted by Francesco and Nicolò and accompanied by one of the ransomed prisoners, who took with him to Burgundy a natural son of Francesco, destined to become the grandfather of Giuliano Gattilusio, the terrible corsair of the next century[547]. The rest of the prisoners followed early in July, and remained for six weeks the guests of Francesco and his lady, a noble dame of gentle breeding and European accomplishments, acquired at the court of Marie de Bourbon, titular Empress of Constantinople and Princess of Achaia, in whose society she had been educated. Feeling herself highly honoured at the presence of the Comte de Nevers and his companions in the castle of Lesbos, she clothed them with fine linen and cloth of Damascus, according to the fashion of the Levant, not forgetting to replenish the wardrobe of their retainers, while her husband and his uncle rendered them every honour and assisted them in their necessity. The visit terminated in the middle of August, when two galleys, equipped by the Knights of Rhodes, transported them to that island, their next stage on the homeward voyage. Their generous host stood on the shore till the Rhodian galleys had sunk beneath the horizon[548]. A few hours earlier he had obtained the signature of a treaty which might confer a solid advantage upon his own family and give an illusory hope of future glory to his departing guests. His daughter Eugenia had just married John Palaiologos, Despot of Selymbria, the Emperor Manuel II’s nephew and rival. Through the agency of Francesco this potentate ceded his claims to the Empire to King Charles VI of France in return for a French castle and a perpetual annuity of 25,000 gold ducats[549]. Thus in Lesbos, on the morrow of Nikopolis, the French could dream of re-establishing the long extinct Latin Empire of Romania!

Francesco had not seen the last of the French prisoners. In the summer of 1399, Boucicault, sent by Charles VI to assist Manuel II in defending Constantinople from the Turks, arrived at Lesbos, which he had last visited two years before. Francesco received him with outward signs of joy, but told him that he had already informed the Turks of this new expedition, as he was bound to do by the treaties which he had with them. The position of the Lesbian lord was, indeed, of no small difficulty. It was his interest to stand well with Bayezid, while his son-in-law, John Palaiologos, who spent much of his time in the island, had received, as the son of Manuel’s elder brother, Turkish assistance in his blockade of the Imperial city. The diplomatic Levantine did not, however, wish to offend his powerful guest; he therefore offered to accompany him, and ordered a galley to be made ready to join the expedition. But the information which he had supplied to Bayezid had put the Turks upon their guard. A raid in Asia Minor was Boucicault’s sole military success; but he achieved, probably thanks to the influence of Francesco, the reconciliation of Manuel with his nephew, whom the French Marshal fetched from Selymbria to Constantinople. Manuel then departed with Boucicault to seek aid at the courts of Europe, while John acted as his viceroy on the Bosporos and received, in the presence of the Marshal, the promise of Salonika as his future residence[550]. Thus, during the absence of Manuel, Francesco’s daughter Eugenia sat upon the Byzantine throne as the consort of the Emperor’s representative, while her sister Helene married Stephen Lazarevich, Despot of Serbia, who had made her acquaintance during a visit to Lesbos on his return from the stricken field of Angora[551]. Francesco was at that time holding Foglia Vecchia on a lease from the maona of Chios, and his tact and presents saved the place in that crisis from the covetous hands of the victorious Timour and his grandson[552].

When Manuel returned to Constantinople in 1403, he refused to carry out his promised gift of Salonika. Before the battle of Angora had decided the fate of Bayezid, and the issue between the Turks and the Mongols was still uncertain, John Palaiologos had agreed—it was said—to surrender Constantinople and become a tributary of the Sultan, in the event of a Turkish victory. This was Manuel’s, excuse for refusing to allow his nephew to reside at Salonika and for banishing him to Lemnos. John thereupon appealed to his father-in-law for assistance, and Francesco, early in 1403, sailed with five vessels to attack Salonika. Hearing that Boucicault, then French governor of Genoa, whose interest in Lesbos had just been evinced by the despatch of an embassy thither, was once more in the Levant on a punitive expedition against King Janus of Cyprus, who had besieged the Genoese colony of Famagosta, Francesco despatched a vessel to meet the Marshal, reminding him that he had been a witness of the Emperor’s promise and begging him to aid in taking Salonika[553]. Boucicault did not accede to this request; on the contrary, two vessels from Lesbos and two from Ænos went to assist him in his operations against the King of Cyprus, and remained with him till shortly before he reached the Venetian colony of Modon on his homeward voyage. Manuel ended by bestowing Salonika upon John Palaiologos, but the attacks made by Boucicault upon Venetian trade in the Levant and the consequent hostilities cost Nicolò Gattilusio, owing to his Genoese origin, the loss of 3000 ducats in gold, seized by the Venetians at Modon[554].

In October of this eventful year of Boucicault’s cruise, there arrived at Lesbos a mission, sent by Enrique III of Castile to Timour, the victor of Angora, whose court was then at Samarkand. The narrative of the Castilian ambassador, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, gives us an interesting account of the island under the second Gattilusio. He found the town “built on a high hill near the sea,” and “surrounded by a wall with many towers,” outside of which was “a large suburb.” Besides the capital, Lesbos contained “several villages and castles,” while the neighbourhood of the city was well-cultivated and abounded in gardens and vineyards. At one time—probably before the earthquake—“very large houses and churches” had stood near the town, and at one end of the city were “the ruins of great palaces, and in the middle of the ruins about 40 blocks of white marble.” The local tradition was, that “on the top of these blocks there was once a platform, where those of the city met in council.” During the five days of their stay the envoys made the acquaintance of John Palaiologos, who was then residing in his wife’s old home, and heard the tragic story of the late lord’s death, of his successor’s marvellous preservation and of the recent expedition against Salonika[555]. Thus, in the reign of Francesco II, Lesbos was frequently visited by important personages from the West, and was their last stopping-place in Latin lands on their way to Constantinople or to Asia. Descended from the famous houses of Byzantium and Savoy, and connected with that of Austria, the lord of Mytilene and lessee of Foglia Vecchia was regarded by Western visitors as “a great baron”; Eastern potentates sought the hands of his daughters in marriage, and when one of them married the heir of the powerful Giovanni de’ Grimaldi[556], governor of Nice and usurper of Monaco, the dowry of 5000 gold ducats which she brought from Lesbos was considered a large sum on the Riviera. Although born in the Levant, he still kept up the family connexion with his paternal city. Both he and his uncle had financial transactions with Genoa[557], and Francesco was patron of the family church of San Giacomo at Sestri Ponente[558]. At the same time, while Latin archbishops held the see of Mytilene, his relations with the dignitaries of the Orthodox church were excellent. The Œcumenical Patriarch addressed him as “well-beloved nephew of the Emperor,” and his uncle Nicolò as the “Emperor’s kinsman by marriage[559], the most noble, glorious, and prudent archon of Ænos,” whose consent was sought for the appointment of a Metropolitan to that long vacant see[560]. With Venice the Gattilusj, as befitted Genoese, at times had difficulties. In 1398 corsairs, sallying forth from their dominions, did much damage to the Cretans who sailed under the Venetian flag; but the Republic none the less allowed the wax of Lesbos to be exported at certain seasons for sale in her dominions[561].

After an eventful reign of 20 years, Francesco II died, if we may believe an anonymous Greek chronologist[562], on October 26, 1404. His end was strangely similar to that of his father. On a journey through the island, while passing the night in one of the lofty towers then common in the Archipelago, he was stung by a scorpion. Alarmed at his cries, his attendants and nobles climbed up into his room in such numbers that the floor collapsed and he was killed on the spot leaving three sons, Jacopo, Palamede and Dorino, of whom the eldest Jacopo became his successor[563]. The heir was, however, still a minor, and accordingly once again Nicolò came and acted as regent. His friendly policy as regent and his support of her subjects in the Levant on more than one occasion called forth the warm praise of Venice; but his fortification of Tenedos provoked an indignant protest[564]. Moreover the Greeks of Lesbos can scarcely have been edified by the appointment of rival Latin bishops—the result of the schism in the Western Church—which occurred during his regency[565]. In the spring of 1409 he died[566], and Jacopo, then of age, assumed the government of Lesbos, while Francesco’s younger son, Palamede[567], succeeded his uncle and guardian at Ænos. Nicolò’s fame long lingered in the Levant. Kritoboulos[568] half a century later ascribed to him the achievements of Francesco I, the founder of the dynasty, whose wisdom, and education, whose courage and physical gifts he extols, whom all Syria and Egypt feared and propitiated with annual blackmail, for his numerous navy ravaged their coasts and even the Libyan littoral.

Jacopo’s policy was to favour Genoese interests where they conflicted with Venetian, but to co-operate with the two rival Republics when they showed signs of uniting against his dreaded neighbours, the Turks. Thus, he aided Centurione Zaccaria, the Genoese Prince of Achaia, in his campaign against the Tocchi of Cephalonia and Zante, who were thereby compelled to invoke the protection of Venice; while the Venetians threatened to sequestrate all Lesbian merchandise in Crete, unless he gave satisfaction for the seizure of a Cretan merchantman[569]. Venetian and Genoese subjects, however, suffered alike from the reprisals provoked by the attack of two Lesbian galleys upon the Saracens of Damietta; and Jacopo had a counter grievance in the illegal levy of toll upon his people by the Genoese of Chios[570]. Towards the Turks he was, from his position, obliged to be deferential, except when he saw prospect of common action against them. If the Knights of Rhodes complained that he had sheltered the Turks, and so saved them from destruction at the hands of those zealous champions of Christendom[571], he was ready, in 1415, to join the latter, the Genoese of Chios, and the Venetian Republic in an anti-Turkish league; while he did homage to Mohammed I and aided first that Sultan and then Murad II in the suppression of Djouneïd of Aïdin, when fortune smiled upon them[572]. In 1426, the threatened declaration of war by Venice upon Genoa, then under Milanese domination, caused him some embarrassment; but the Genoese Government bade him[573] not to be afraid of Venetian threats. Not long after this, probably in 1428, Jacopo died[574]. An anonymous Greek informs us that he had married Bonne, “the fair daughter of the lord of Nice near Marseilles” but this statement would appear to be due to a confusion with the marriage of his sister with Pietro de’ Grimaldi, for Bonne, the offspring of that union espoused Louis Cossa, lord of Berre, unless the Bonne mentioned was the daughter of Amedeo VIII of Savoy, in whose dominions Nice was then included[575]. In 1421, however, Valentina D’Oria is described as “lady of Mytilene[576].” At any rate, it seems probable that he left no issue, for his successor, Dorino I, is described in a Genoese document and by a traveller of this period as “brother” of Palamede, lord of Ænos[577], and therefore of Jacopo. Dorino, whose name was derived from the famous Genoese house of D’Oria, allied by marriage with many Gattilusj, had already had experience of ruling for several years over Foglia Vecchia as his appanage—a fact still commemorated by his coins and an inscription there[578], which describes him as its “lord” in 1423-4. This former possession of the Zaccaria is first mentioned as administered by the Gattilusj in 1402, and remained united with the Lesbian branch of the family till 1455.

Meanwhile, Ænos had prospered under the rule of Palamede. Six inscriptions, still extant there, proclaim the activity of the masons during the early years of his long reign—the erection of the churches of the Chrysopege and of St Nicholas by two private citizens and the completion of three other public works[579]. But Palamede not only embellished his domain; he also extended it. The neighbouring island of Samothrace, a Greek possession since the reconquest of Constantinople from the Latins, now owned his sway—for in 1433, when Bertrandon de la Brocquière[580] visited Ænos, he wrote that Samothrace also belonged to its lord. In that island, then known as Mandrachi and celebrated for its honey and its goats, Palamede erected on March 26, 1431, and extended in 1433, a new fortress for the protection of its numerous population, as two inscriptions in its walls, one in Greek, one in Latin[581] still remind us. The Genoese lord, we are told, was interested in the past history of his dominions; he “loved greatly to hear learned discussions,” and to him a contemporary scholar, John Kanaboutzes, applied the saying of Plato about philosophers and kings. To his desire to know what Dionysios of Halikarnassos had written about Samothrace we owe the brief commentary on that author, compiled at his command by that writer, a native of Foglia[582], whose family was connected with Ænos[583]—one of several instances, where Italian rulers of Greece showed a consciousness of that country’s great past. Like his brother Jacopo, Palamede was inclined to support the Genoese Prince of Achaia, and the Venetian admiral was ordered to remonstrate with him, should occasion require[584].

Although more than seventy years had by this time elapsed since Francesco I had left Genoa for the Levant, the connexion between the distant Republic and his descendants in the East was never closer than now. In 1428, and again in 1444, the Genoese Government, although it forbade the circulation of Lesbian ducats in Genoa and district, and repudiated responsibility for the harm done by the Gattilusj to the subjects of the Sultan of Egypt, specially consulted “the lords of Mytilene, Ænos and Foglia Vecchia” whether they desired to be included or no in the treaties of peace, which it had just concluded with King Alfonso V of Aragon. “The many services rendered to us and to the community of Genoa by you and your ancestors”—so runs one of these interesting despatches—“make us realise that in all treaties involving peace or war we ought to consider your honour and advancement. For your welfare, your misfortunes, are equally ours.” Dorino I replied that he wished to be so included, and his agents accordingly ratified the peace at Genoa on his behalf in 1429. When, two years later, Genoa was drawn into the war between her Milanese masters and Venice, the Archbishop of Milan, who was at that time the governor of Genoa, notified Dorino of the outbreak of hostilities, following the precedent set in the case of his father and grandfather, warned that “most distinguished of our citizens” to put his island in a state of defence and begged him to aid any Genoese colony that might require assistance[585]. So much importance was attached at Milan to his support, that Francesco Sforza, the Duke, accredited Benedetto Folco of Forlì to the Lesbian court, in order to urge Dorino against Venice[586]. At the same time, the Genoese Government, “remembering that in all its past victories the galleys of the Gattilusj had borne their part,” invited the lord of Lesbos to co-operate with Ceba, the Genoese commander who was to be despatched for the relief of Chios from the Venetians, and requested him to send a galley to that island. Dorino replied in a loyal strain, whereupon the Genoese Government thanked him for this display of fidelity, traditional in his family, and again urged him to equip his galley for the defence of Chios. Two other despatches, following in rapid succession, begged him to inform the Chians of the speedy arrival of the Genoese fleet and to see that his own galley was in Chian waters by the middle of May. Dorino was as good as his word, and gave orders that a Lesbian galley should join the expedition; but before the latter arrived, the Venetians had raised the siege. As a reward for his services, the commander of the Genoese fleet and the governors of Pera and Chios were instructed to provide for the safety of his little state, and the home government invited him to rely upon its unshakable affection in time of need. Influential Genoese marriages stimulated this feeling. Dorino had married a D’Oria; Palamede’s daughter Caterina now married another; while her sisters, Ginevra and Costanza, respectively espoused Ludovico and Gian Galeazzo de Campo-fregoso, relatives of the then reigning Doge, and the former soon to be Doge himself. Thus Lesbian interests were well represented at Genoa. In return, Genoa frequently requested Dorino to see that justice was done to her subjects in his dominions, even to the detriment of his own family[587].

Genoa found Dorino no less useful as a diplomatist than as an ally, for the lord of Lesbos and Foglia Vecchia had married his daughter Maria to Alexander, second son of Alexios IV, Emperor of Trebizond, in whose dominions the Genoese, owing to their Black Sea colonies, had important commercial interests, latterly greatly injured by the pro-Venetian policy of that sovereign. According to the Trapezuntine practice, Alexios had raised his eldest son John IV to the Imperial dignity in his own lifetime; but his unfilial heir conspired against him, was driven into exile, and replaced by his next brother Alexander. John IV was, however, as favourable to the Genoese as his father to the Venetians, and was restored with the assistance of a Genoese of Caffa. Alexios IV was murdered in 1429; but John IV was not allowed to reign undisturbed. His brother Alexander fled to Constantinople, where his sister was wife of the Emperor John VI, and contracted a marriage with Dorino’s daughter, in order that he might secure his support, and through him, that of Genoa, against the Emperor of Trebizond. When the Spanish traveller, Pero Tafur, visited Lesbos at this time he found Alexander there engaged in levying a fleet for his restoration. This did not, however, suit Genoese policy, and accordingly the Doge of Genoa requested Dorino in 1438 to act as peacemaker between the two brothers and to invite his son-in-law to reside at Constantinople or in Lesbos on an annuity chargeable on the revenues of Trebizond[588]. Another matrimonial alliance brought Dorino’s family into renewed relations with the Palaiologoi. In 1440, an old link between the two families had been snapped by the death of Eugenia Gattilusio, widow of the Emperor John VI’s cousin and namesake[589]—an event which was doubtless the occasion when the castle of Kokkinos on the coast of Lemnos, which had been her widow’s portion, passed into the hands of Dorino[590]. On July 27 of the following year, however, the Emperor’s brother, the Despot Constantine, afterwards the last Christian ruler of Byzantium, married Dorino’s daughter Caterina, a marriage arranged by the historian Phrantzes. This union did not last long; after a brief honeymoon in Lesbos, Constantine left his bride in her father’s care, and set out, accompanied by a Lesbian galley, for the Morea, nor did he see her again till his return in the following July. At Lesbos he took her on board his ship; but, when he reached Lemnos on his way to Constantinople, he had to take refuge behind the walls of Kokkinos from the attacks of a Turkish fleet. The Turks in vain besieged the castle of the Gattilusj for 27 days, and the strain and anxiety of the siege caused the death of his wife, which occurred at Palaiokastro in August. There the ill-fated second consort of the last hero of the Byzantine Empire was laid to rest[591].

Meanwhile, besides the acquisition of Kokkinos, thus courageously saved by his heroic son-in-law, Dorino had received from the Greek Empire the island of Thasos, which more than a century before had belonged to the Genoese family of Zaccaria. Indeed, if we may accept the two allusions to the Gattilusj in the Greek version of Bondelmonti[592] as the work of that traveller, Thasos, which was Byzantine in September, 1414, had been given to Jacopo as a fief before 1420. At any rate, a Thasian inscription of April 1, 1434, now preserved in the wall of the church of St Athanasios at Kastro, informs us that a tower was built there by Oberto de’ Grimaldi[593] a member of the well-known Ligurian family who is mentioned elsewhere[594] as a captain in the service of Dorino. Ten years later, the archæologist, Cyriacus of Ancona, upon visiting Thasos, found that Dorino had recently bestowed the island upon his son, Francesco III, who was still under the control of a preceptor, Francesco Pedemontano.

The indefatigable antiquary may have paid an earlier visit to Lesbos in 1431, but the accounts which he has left of the Gattilusj, their dominions, and the neighbouring islands of the Thracian Sea range from 1444 to 1447. In Lesbos he was well received by Dorino, who promised to aid him in exploring the whole island. He had, indeed, arrived at a fortunate moment, for the rumour of a threatened Turkish invasion had ceased, so that the lord of Lesbos had leisure for archæology, and his visitor could examine “the remains of the temple of Diana,” and “the baths of Jove,” whose name was carved in the midst of them[595]. With Dorino’s captain, Oberto de’ Grimaldi, he sailed to Foglia Vecchia, where the Gattilusj had a factory, as at Lesbos, for the production of alum, and made the acquaintance of “the Master Kanaboutzes,” probably the author of the commentary on Dionysios, who could tell him all about the Foglie, of which he was a native[596]. In Thasos, the third domain of the elder branch of the Gattilusj, he spent Christmas day, and composed a long Latin inscription as well as an Italian poem in honour of young Francesco. The enthusiastic guest prayed that the beginning of his host’s rule over Thasos might be of as good omen as “the yule log thrown on the fire in the turreted castle”; that the yoke of the barbarian Turks might be removed from Thrace, that the former dependencies of the island there might return to his sway, and that Francesco’s patron saint, St John the Evangelist, might protect this “native offspring of the Palaiologoi, this pride of the most noble Gatalusian race.” “What Thasian nymph,” he asks, “could have deprived Lesbos of her Francesco?” The attraction was the lordship of an island, which had been described by Bondelmonti as well-peopled, very fertile and containing three fair towns. Francesco had, indeed, begun well by restoring the principal city, thus earning a dedicatory inscription by the Thasian citizens and colonists, and by erecting at the entrance of the harbour some fine marble statues, which an ancient inscription showed to have represented the members of the Thasian council. At this time the island could boast of six other towns beside its “marble city,” whose walls attracted the admiration of the traveller. Under the guidance of Carlo de’ Grimaldi and “the learned Giovanni of Novara,” he inspected the numerous ancient tombs outside, the large amphitheatre with no less than 20 rows then standing intact, and the akropolis of the city[597].

The worthy Cyriacus was no less hospitably received by the junior branch of the Gattilusj. At Ænos he met Palamede with his two sons Giorgio and Dorino II, and was delighted to find there an old friend in the person of Cristoforo Dentuto, envoy extraordinary of Genoa in the Levant. Accompanied by “the prince of Ænos and Samothrace” as he calls Palamede, and by Francesco Calvi, the latter’s secretary, he was taken to see “the great tomb of Polydoros, son of Priam,” some five stadia beyond the walls, admired the sculptured figures of fauns and animals there, and copied an ancient Greek inscription from the marble base of a statue that stood before “the prince’s court.” Letters of introduction from Palamede and Francesco of Thasos secured for him a warm reception at the monastery of Hagia Laura on Mount Athos[598]. At Samothrace, Joannes Laskaris Rhyndakenos, Palamede’s prefect of the island, personally conducted the antiquary to the old city, where he saw “ancient walls and the remains of a marble temple of Neptune” (known to modern archæologists as “the Dorian marble temple”), “fragments of huge columns, epistylia and bases, and doorposts, adorned with the crowned heads of bulls and other figures”—now identified with the remains of a round building built by Arsinöe, daughter of Ptolemy Soter. Thence he went to “the new castle, founded by Palamede” some thirteen years before, and built to protect his new town of “Capsulum.” Close to the tower he saw to his delight “several ancient marbles, with dances of Nymphs sculptured and inscriptions in Latin and Greek”—the two reliefs of dancing Nymphs now in the Louvre[599]. From his accounts of the neighbouring islands, we learn that Imbros, where his guide was a noble and learned Imbriote, Hermodoros Michael Kritoboulos, the historian, in 1444 was still Byzantine, and “governed for the Emperor John Palaiologos” by that same noble, Manuel Asan, of whom inscriptions have been found there, and who had lately restored two-thirds of the akropolis[600]. We find, too, that in 1447 Theodore Branas was Byzantine governor of Lemnos, where the Gattilusj as yet held only the castle of Kokkinos[601].

The visit of the antiquary of Ancona to the Gattilusj was the calm before the storm, which was so soon to burst upon them. Even while Cyriacus was their guest, the fatal battle of Varna made Murad II master of the Near East. For a few years, indeed, the Gattilusj went on marrying and giving in marriage, as if the end of their rule were not at hand. In 1444, Dorino’s daughter Ginevra married Giacomo II Crispo, Duke of the Archipelago[602]; five years later the lord of Lesbos sent the Archbishop of Mytilene, at that time the celebrated Leonardo of Chios, to Rome to obtain from the Pope a dispensation for the marriage of his eldest surviving son, Domenico, and a daughter of Palamede. As the two young people were first-cousins, Ludovico de Campo-fregoso, Palamede’s son-in-law and at that time Doge of Genoa, begged the Pope not to grant the dispensation, and as an example of the iniquity of such an alliance he instanced the case of Dorino’s firstborn (presumably Francesco III of Thasos), who had married another daughter of Palamede and had died less than six months afterwards. The Pope refused his consent, and the marriage did not take place[603].

Hitherto the Gattilusj, partly by tribute paid ever since the reign of Murad I[604], partly by tact, had managed to keep the Turks at a distance. On one occasion, when Constantinople had been threatened, the Pope had offered to pay the expenses of the Lesbian galley, if Dorino would agree to sent it thither; but the Genoese Government, while transmitting his Holiness’ offer and praising the services of the Gattilusj to Christendom, recognised their natural unwillingness to offend the Sultan and advised Dorino, if he did send aid, to pretend that he was merely protecting Genoese interests at Pera. The Greek Emperor was able to raise a loan, if he received no actual assistance, at Ænos[605]; but in 1450, at last, Lesbos was attacked. Murad despatched a large fleet under Baltaoghli, the first in the list of Turkish admirals, against the island, and his men carried off more than 3000 souls, slaughtered many cattle, destroyed the flourishing city of Kallone, and inflicted damage to the amount of more than 150,000 ducats. It was probably on this occasion that the lady of Lesbos, Orietta d’Oria, performed the prodigy of valour that won her a niche in the literary Pantheon of her native city besides the men of her father’s house. At the time of the invasion, she seems to have been in the town of Molivos, the ancient Methymna, whose inhabitants, exhausted from lack of food, were on the point of surrendering, when she appeared among them in full armour, and led them to victory against the astonished Turks. Thereupon Dorino was able to secure by a timely present and the increase of his tribute to 2000 gold pieces a renewal of the peace which he protested that he had never broken. He was, however, under no illusions as to the durability of this truce. He wrote to Genoa, asking for assistance, reminding the Republic that he was of Genoese origin and that he had often aided her to the best of his power with men, ships, and money. Unless, therefore, she could protect him, he would be reluctantly compelled to look elsewhere for help. At the same time, after the fashion of the Christian princes of the Levant on the eve of the Turkish conquest, he announced his intention of sending an expedition to obtain his rights from the Emperor John IV of Trebizond, who had also maltreated the Genoese of Caffa, and begged the Republic to receive and revictual his galleys in her Black Sea ports. This last request was granted[606].

The Turkish conquest of Constantinople, although it sounded the death-knell of the Latin states in the Levant, was of momentary benefit to the Gattilusj. They had been close relatives and good friends of the Greek Imperial family, and one of them, a certain Laudisio, had distinguished himself in the defence of the city[607]; but, when all was over, they hastened to profit by its fall. The two islands of Lemnos and Imbros, from their position near the mouth of the Dardanelles, have always possessed great strategic importance. Under the Latin Empire, Lemnos had been the fief of the Lord High Admiral, who bore the title of Grand-duke; under the Palaiologoi it had been either the appanage of an Imperial prince, or had been entrusted to the government of some great noble. So greatly was it coveted, that Alfonso V of Aragon had made it the price of his aid for the relief of Constantinople[608], while during the siege Constantine had promised it to Giustiniani, if the Turks were repulsed[609]. When the news of the disaster reached these islands, the Byzantine authorities fled on board Italian ships, while many of the inhabitants sought refuge in Chios or in the Venetian colonies. There was, however, one leading personage in Imbros, who was resolved to remain and make terms with the victors. This was Kritoboulos, the future historian of Mohammed II, who bribed the Turkish Admiral, Hamza, not to attack the islands and through his mediation managed to send representatives of the Greek church and the local nobility with a present to the Sultan’s court at Adrianople, begging him to allow them to be administered as before. It chanced that at this moment envoys of the Gattilusj were at Adrianople, for on the fall of Constantinople both Dorino and Palamede had hastened to placate and congratulate the terrible Sultan, and to crave the grant of Lemnos and Imbros. Dorino, although he was still lord of Lesbos in name and continued to sign state documents, had been bed-ridden since 1449, and his eldest surviving son, Domenico, governed as regent. Domenico and one of Palamede’s councillors were supported by the two emissaries of Kritoboulos, and the Sultan was pleased to confer Lemnos upon the lord of Lesbos, Imbros upon him of Ænos. At the same time Mohammed ordered the former to pay an annual tribute of 3000 gold pieces for Lesbos and 2325 for Lemnos; that of Imbros was assessed at 1200 gold pieces. Thus, by the irony of fate, only nine years before its annihilation, the dominion of the Gattilusj reached its greatest extent. Indeed, there was a party in Skyros also which advocated annexation to Lesbos, but there the majority wisely preferred the nearer and more powerful lion of St Mark, which waved over Eubœa[610].

The Gattilusj were now well aware that they only existed on sufferance, and they were more careful than ever not to offend their master. Domenico paid more than one visit of obeisance to the Turkish court; and when, in June, 1455, the Turkish admiral, on his way to Rhodes, anchored off Lesbos, the historian Doukas[611], the prince’s secretary, was sent on board with a handsome present of garments of silk and of woven wool six in number, 6000 pieces of silver, 20 oxen, 50 sheep, more than 800 measures of wine, 2 bushels of biscuit and one of bread, more than 1000 lbs. of cheese, and fruit without measure, as well as gifts in proportion to their rank for the members of the admiral’s staff. Under these circumstances, it was no wonder that Hamza treated the lord of Lesbos “like a brother,” and refrained from entering the harbour, for fear of alarming the islanders.

Scarcely had the Turkish fleet left, when, on June 30, 1455, Dorino I died, leaving his dominion of Lesbos, Foglia Vecchia, Thasos, and Lemnos to his eldest surviving son, Domenico, for whom the younger, Nicolò, acted as governor in the last-named island. Before a month had passed, the fleet hove in sight of Mytilene on its homeward voyage, and was invited to anchor in the harbour, where the serviceable Doukas again visited the admiral, whom he kept in good humour by a sumptuous banquet and sped on his way with a sigh of relief on the morrow. But the historian had before him a more delicate mission—that of paying the annual tribute for Lesbos and Lemnos to Mohammed II. Starting from Lesbos on August 1, he found the Sultan at Adrianople, kissed hands in token of homage and remained seated in his presence, till His Majesty’s morning meal was over. When, however, he went to hand the money to the Sultan’s ministers next day, they ingeniously asked him after the health of his master. The historian replied that he was well and sent his greeting, whereupon the Ottomans answered, that they meant the old prince. Doukas explained that Dorino had been dead 40 days, and that his successor had already been practically prince for six years, during which time he had once or twice come in person to do homage and congratulate the Great Turk. The ministers thereupon cut short the conversation with the remark that no one had the right to assume the title of lord of Lesbos (borne till his death by Dorino), until he had come and received his principality from the hands of his Most Mighty suzerain. “Go therefore,” they said, “and return with thy master; for if he come not, he knows what the future has in store for him.” The terrified envoy hastened back to Lesbos, and set out with Domenico and several leading men of both races in the island to do homage to Mohammed. The Sultan had, however, meanwhile changed his headquarters, for the plague was then ravaging Thrace, and it was not till the Lesbian deputation reached the Bulgarian village of Zlatica that they came up with him. After the usual bakshîsh to the influential Pashas, Mahmûd and Said Achmet, they were admitted to the presence, and Domenico humbly kissed the hand of his suzerain. But on the morrow a message was conveyed to Domenico, that the Sultan wished to have the island of Thasos. Argument was useless, and the island, which had belonged for some 20, or perhaps even 35, years to the Gattilusj, was ceded to Mohammed. This sacrifice only whetted the appetite of the Sultan; on the morrow a second message announced that the tribute for Lesbos would be doubled. At this Domenico plucked up courage to reply, that, if the Sultan wished to take the whole of Lesbos, it was in his power to do so; but that to pay twice the previous tribute was beyond its present ruler’s resources. At the same time, he begged the Sultan’s ministers to intervene on his behalf. They represented the facts to their master, and the latter agreed to a compromise, by which Lesbos should thenceforth pay 4000 gold pieces, instead of 3000. Then, at last they decked Domenico with a gold-embroidered robe and his companions with silken garments; the Lesbians signed the oath of allegiance and set out on their homeward journey, “thanking God, who had delivered them out of the hands of the monster.”

But the year was not destined to close without further losses to the Gattilusj. While the deputation was still at Philippopolis, a second Turkish fleet, under Junis, set out to attack the Genoese colony of Chios. Off the Troad a storm arose, in which several of the Turkish vessels perished, while the rest of the fleet, except the flagship, took refuge in the harbour of Mytilene, where Nicolò was then representing his absent brother. It had been one of the treaty obligations of the lords of Lesbos, ever since they had been vassals of the Sultan, to warn the Turks who inhabited the opposite mainland between the mouth of the Kaïkos and the town of Assos, of the approach of Catalan corsairs, and the Gattilusj were bound to pay compensation for any loss caused by negligence in performing this service. Now it chanced that the scout, employed on this business, sailed into the harbour while the Turks were there, followed by the missing Turkish flagship. The admiral, a very different man from his predecessor, requited Nicolò Gattilusio’s generous hospitality by demanding that this vessel with all on board should be given up to him as a prize, including the wife of a very distinguished member of the Chian Chartered Company, Paride Giustiniani Longo, with all her jewelry. The lady in question was none other than Domenico’s mother-in-law, whom he had invited to Lesbos to keep his wife company while he was away—for Domenico’s love for his wife was proverbial, and it is narrated of him that he could never bear to be out of her sight and even shared her bed when she was afflicted with leprosy. Nicolò protested that the vessel was his brother’s and that the wealthy Chian dame had not been on board but had already been long in the island. At this, the Turkish commander complained to the Sultan, and sailed for Foglia Nuova, of which Paride Longo was then governor for the Chian Company. Arrived there, he summoned the governor and the chief men of the place to appear before him. Such was their alarm, that even before his summons arrived they had started to meet him, only to hear the Sultan’s written orders that they should all be imprisoned and their city levelled with the ground, unless they surrendered the fort. The citizens, without attempting to argue or reply, at once admitted the Turks; the Genoese merchants were plundered and led on board; the names of all the citizens were taken down, about a hundred of their children carried off, and a Turkish guard placed in the fort. Thus on October 31, 1455, fell the Genoese colony of Foglia Nuova, the old possession of the Zaccaria and of the Cattaneo families, and then for a century a dependency of the maona of Chios.

When Domenico returned home and learnt from his brother what had occurred, he sent Doukas to plead the case at Constantinople. The Lesbian envoy’s arguments and appeals to justice were, however, all in vain; Mohammed gave Domenico the alternative of paying 10,000 gold pieces or of war; and, when Doukas resisted this monstrous ultimatum, secretly despatched one of his servants to take Foglia Vecchia, which had been held by the Gattilusj of Lesbos ever since 1402 at least. This, their sole possession on the Asian main, was seized on December 24, 1455. As soon as the Sultan received the news of its capture, he ordered Doukas to be sent away free and declared the question settled. Well might Domenico, after this experience, write urgently to Genoa for succour[612].

It was now the turn of the younger branch of the Gattilusj. Palamede of Ænos had died in 1455; and, as his elder son Giorgio had predeceased him[613] in 1449, he had bequeathed his dominions to his second son, Dorino II, and to Giorgio’s widow and her children. While Giorgio was still alive, his father had given him all his estates, except his Lesbian property, which was the share of Dorino II, and even after Giorgio’s death, his widow and family had a preference in the old lord’s will, as representing the first-born. No sooner, however, was Palamede dead than Dorino, defying the dictates alike of justice and prudence, seized the whole of the estate. In vain Giorgio’s widow and his own advisers implored him not to drive her to appeal to the judgment-seat of the Sultan, his suzerain. Finding her arguments useless, she begged her uncle to lay her case before Mohammed, and that undiplomatic envoy, anxious to punish Dorino even at the price of annexation to Turkey, depicted the usurper as a faithless vassal, who was conspiring with the Italians, collecting arms, hiring soldiers, and preparing to increase the garrisons of Ænos and the two islands with the object of proclaiming his complete independence. His advocacy found a willing hearer, for Mohammed coveted Ænos because of its favourable situation, on the estuary of the Maritza, then navigable for a considerable distance, opposite the islands, of which it was the natural mart, and in close proximity to the lake of Jala Göl. Thanks to these natural advantages, to the river and lake fisheries, and above all to its valuable salt-beds, which supplied all Thrace and Macedonia, Ænos was then a very rich city, from which Palamede had received 300,000 pieces of silver. It was true, that two-thirds of the proceeds of the salt-beds and of the other revenues were already handed over to the Sultan; but it was suggested by the people of the neighbouring towns of Ipsala and Feredchik that the Gattilusj did not administer the salt-works honestly, while they gave refuge at Ænos to fugitive Turkish slaves.

Mohammed resolved to act at once. Despite the terrible Balkan winter, which made havoc with his troops, he left Constantinople on January 24, 1456, and marched against Ænos, while Junis with the fleet menaced it from the sea. Dorino was absent in Samothrace, whither he had gone to spend the winter in Palamede’s castle; and his subjects, thus left to themselves, made no attempt at resistance. They sent a deputation of leading citizens to the Sultan’s headquarters at Ipsala, and surrendered the city on condition that no harm was done to its inhabitants. Mohammed received them kindly, granted some of their requests, and sent Mahmûd Pasha back with them to take over the town. On the next day he came in person, carried off all the silver, gold and other valuables, which he found in Dorino’s palace and plundered the houses of that prince’s absent suite. Then, after a three days’ stay, during which he organised the future administration of the place and appointed a certain Murad as its governor, he marched away, taking 150 children, the flower of the youth of Ænos, with him, and entrusting Junis with the annexation of Samothrace and Imbros, the maritime dependencies of that city.

The Turkish admiral, on his arrival at Imbros, summoned Kritoboulos the historian, whose personality and opinions were already well-known at the Turkish court, and made him governor in the room of Dorino’s representative, at that time apparently Joannes Laskaris Rhyndakenos, whom he carried off on board. Meanwhile, a vessel had been despatched to Samothrace to fetch Dorino. But the latter, mistrusting the admiral, as he well might, preferred to throw himself upon the mercy of the Sultan. He therefore manned his yacht, crossed over to Ænos, and thence proceeded to Adrianople. Mohammed received him, and promised to restore to him his islands; but the malicious admiral, indignant at what he considered a slight upon himself, persuaded his sovereign to give Dorino instead some place on the mainland, on the ground that the islanders would not tolerate him and that he would be less able to plot at a distance from the sea. The Sultan thereupon changed his mind, and granted to the dethroned prince the district of Zichna in Macedonia. Dorino did not, however, long remain there; after slaying the Turkish officials, who were his guard of honour, he fled to Lesbos, and thence to Naxos, where he married his cousin, Elisabetta Crispo, daughter of the late Duke, Giacomo II, and settled down at the ducal court[614].

The Turkish annexation of Samothrace and Imbros and the appointment of a native governor had an immediate effect upon the neighbouring island of Lemnos. The Lemnians had had little more than two years of Gattilusian Government, and the experience had been unfortunate, for Domenico had entrusted their island to his brother Nicolò, against whose tyrannical conduct they made secret complaint to the Sultan, begging him to send one of his servants to rule over them. Mohammed gladly consented, and ordered Junis’ successor, Ismael, to sail for Lemnos, and install the amiable Hamza as governor. Before the Turks arrived, Domenico despatched a small force under Giovanni Fontana and Spineta Colomboto with orders to induce the Lemnians by promises to return to their allegiance, and failing that to escort his brother, then encamped behind the walls of Palaiokastro, back to Lesbos. His emissaries, however, disobeying his orders, resorted to force, with the result that the islanders routed them with considerable loss, and those who escaped had to content themselves with conveying Nicolò home. When the Turkish admiral arrived, he commended the Lemnians, landed the new governor and returned, in May, 1456, with the Lesbian prisoners on board, to the Dardanelles. The news of what had occurred so infuriated Mohammed against Domenico, that when in August Doukas came with the annual tribute and begged for their release, he commanded their heads to be cut off, and only repented when they had actually mounted the scaffold, ordering that they should be sold, instead of being beheaded[615].

Of the seven possessions of the Gattilusj Lesbos now alone remained; and Genoa, which a few months earlier had been mainly concerned lest rebellious citizens of the friendly Republic of Ancona should find shelter in Domenico’s ports, now sent a ship with arms and 200 men to his aid, purchased cannon and powder on his behalf, and appealed to Pope Calixtus III and to Kings Alfonso V of Portugal and Henry VI of England to join in a crusade against the enemy which threatened him. Meanwhile, the Pope organised a fund for the redemption of the captives of the two Foglie[616], plans were laid for the reconquest of the places lost, and a certain George Dromokaïtes, a noble Greek of Lemnos, offered to deliver that island and Imbros to Venice[617]. In the autumn of 1456 a papal fleet under the command of Cardinal Scarampi, the Patriarch of Aquileia, appeared in the Ægean; and, after vain attempts to make Domenico refuse to pay his tribute and fight, annexed Lemnos without opposition, thanks to the influence of George Diplovatatzes[618], the Greek archon of Kastro, occupied Samothrace, and took Thasos after an assault upon the harbour fort. Imbros was, however, saved by the diplomacy of Kritoboulos, its governor, who bribed and flattered the Cardinal’s lieutenant, a certain “Count,” whom we may identify with the Count of Anguillara. Garrisons were left in the three conquered islands, and the papal commander appointed governors in the name of the Holy Father—for these former possessions of the Gattilusj were not restored to their lawful owners, but retained by the Holy See. Both the Venetians and the Catalans in vain begged the Pope to give them the three islands; but, in 1459, Pius II offered to consign them to the Bank of St George, which then managed the Genoese colonies, on condition that it would hold them as his vicar. The papal offer was, however, unanimously declined, from fear of offending the Sultan, who might then attack the Black Sea colonies, and from considerations of expense. Besides, Genoa could scarcely have accepted Lemnos, Thasos and Samothrace without a breach of good faith towards her own children[619].

The indignation which Mohammed felt at the capture of the Thracian islands, he vented upon Domenico. Although Doukas, the person most likely to know, expressly tells us that the lord of Lesbos had continued to pay his tribute, and he had certainly not profited by the losses of his suzerain, nevertheless the Sultan accused him of being entirely responsible for what had occurred and the Turcophil Kritoboulos insinuates that he and his brother Nicolò, now resident in Lesbos, refused to send the usual tribute and harboured corsairs who preyed upon the opposite coast and plundered Turkish merchantmen. Domenico was, however, himself a sufferer from these raids, and had begged the Pope to excommunicate the pirates who had injured his subjects. But Mohammed was doubtless glad of an excuse for attacking Lesbos, and in August, 1457, sent Ismael, his admiral, with a large fleet against it. Ismael landed at Molivos, the scene of a former Turkish defeat; and, after ravaging all the countryside, besieged the castle. Such was the terror, inspired by the Turks, that a detachment of the papal fleet, which had been sent under a certain “Sergius,” perhaps Raymond de Siscar, to the relief of Lesbos, at once weighed anchor for Chios. But the garrison of Molivos resisted with such courage, that the Turkish commander was forced to retire on August 9 with much loss, after venting his rage on the defenceless portions of the island. As soon as he had gone, the papal lieutenant returned, only to be greeted with reproaches by the justly indignant Gattilusj. The Pope, indeed, described Lesbos as “Our island” and calmly stated that he had only allowed its lord to retain it on condition that he recognised the authority of the Holy See. But Domenico wrote to the “Office of Mytilene”—a body which then existed in Genoa for the promotion of trade with Lesbos—stating frankly that he could hold out no longer unless Genoa helped him, and threatening, that, in case of her refusal, he must perforce submit to some other rule. Meanwhile, he sent envoys to the Sultan to pay his tribute and obtain peace. The Bank of St George assured him that it would not desert him, and decided to appoint a committee of four shareholders in the Chian Chartered Company and two other Chians, who should raise 300 soldiers for the defence of Lesbos at the Bank’s expense. A new duty on merchandise exported to Chios was to defray the equipment of these men; their pay was to be provided by Domenico, if possible; or, if he could not find the ready money, he was to mortgage his property as security. Genoa was none too generous to her outpost in the Levant; she calculated her Lesbian policy by the maxims of the counting-house[620].

Domenico did not, however, live to fall by the hands of the Turks. He had a more sinister enemy in his own household. So long as Nicolò had been able to gratify his love of power at the expense of the unhappy Lemnians, he was harmless to his brother; but, when his intractable disposition had estranged the sympathies of the governed and caused the loss of that island, the two brothers were both restricted to Lesbos, the sole fragment of the Gattilusian dominions that remained. Nicolò was quarrelsome and ambitious; he chafed at the inferior position which he occupied, and resolved to usurp Domenico’s place. Accordingly, with the assistance of his cousin, Luchino, and a Genoese named Baptista (possibly the Baptista Gattilusio, who is described as a very influential person at Lesbos 14 years earlier[621]), he deposed his elder brother towards the end of 1458, and threw him into prison, on the pretext that he was plotting to surrender the island to the Turks. Soon afterwards the usurper strangled his prisoner, having, according to one account, first cut off his arms so that he could no longer embrace the faithful wife who still clung to him[622]. Her father demanded from the murderer repayment of the sums which Domenico had received as her dowry and of those which he had subsequently borrowed; and the Doge of Genoa threatened the lord of Lesbos with the forcible intervention of the Republic unless he liquidated these debts[623]. The fate of the widow is unknown; more fortunate, however, in one respect than other ill-fated heroines of Frankish Greece, she has given her name to the only modern poem, based upon the mediæval history of Sappho’s island, while her bust by Mino da Fiesole is in the National Museum at Florence[624].

The fratricide’s position was, indeed, unenviable. The papal fleet had returned to Italy upon the death of Calixtus III in the summer of 1458, leaving the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes as vicar of the three Thracian islands, and the new Pope, Pius II, was too busy with the internal politics of that country to provide for their defence, which the Bank of St George did not think it prudent to undertake, but contented himself with founding a new Order of the Knights of St Mary of Bethlehem with its seat at Lemnos[625]. Thus inadequately defended by the Italians and terrified at the possible advent of the Turkish fleet, the islanders had no option but to submit to the Sultan. Lemnos set the example. In the winter of 1458-9, Kritoboulos, ever ready to do the work of the Turk, entered into secret negotiations with the Lemnian leaders for the surrender of their island. The Greeks were nothing loth, for they found the papal yoke irksome, as it must naturally have been to “schismatics,” and above all they feared the vengeance of Mohammed. The Imbriote diplomatist thereupon wrote to Demetrios Palaiologos, the Despot of Mistra, suggesting that this was the moment to crave Lemnos and Imbros from the Sultan, which the Despot had already coveted as a peaceful retreat, and offering to drive the Italians out of the former island. Demetrios at once sent Matthew Asan, his brother-in-law, whose family was, as we saw, connected with Imbros, to ask Mohammed for the two islands. The Sultan consented, on condition that Demetrios paid 3000 gold pieces as tribute for them, and it then devolved upon Kritoboulos to carry out his mission. Evading the Italian guard-ships, he landed in Lemnos; his confederates at Kastro opened the gates of that fortress; the townsfolk of Kokkinos shut up the small Italian garrison in the public offices, till it surrendered unconditionally, whereupon Kritoboulos told them that they could go or stay as they pleased, and sent their Calabrian commander with presents to Eubœa. The fort of Palaiokastro, the strongest in the island, alike by its natural position and its triple wall of huge stones, contained provisions for a year and was commanded by a young and resolute soldier, named Michele. When Michele received a summons to surrender, his sole reply was a sword, drawn in blood, and an invitation to Kritoboulos to come and take the castle by force, if he were a man. He could not, however, trust the Greeks in the town below, whose vines and fields Kritoboulos was careful to respect; and, when he saw the superior forces drawn up against him, he begged for three months’ grace, till he had time to communicate with the Grand Master at Rhodes, the papal vicar of the islands. Later on, he surrendered Palaiokastro for 1000 gold pieces, and in 1460, after the Turkish conquest of the Morea, Lemnos and Imbros were bestowed by the Sultan upon the dispossessed Despot, Demetrios.

The other two islands shared the fate of Lemnos. In the autumn of 1459, Zaganos, Ismael’s successor in the command of the Turkish fleet, captured both Thasos and Samothrace, cutting to pieces the Catalan garrison placed by Scarampi in the former, and removing Thasians and Samothracians alike to recolonise Constantinople. In the following year the Sultan bestowed these two islands also, together with Ænos, upon Demetrios Palaiologos, who thus became the heir of the Gattilusj in Thrace and the four maritime dependencies[626]. In vain, Pius II urged Rhyndakenos, the former prefect of the Gattilusj, to release Samothrace from its captivity. In vain, he gave Turkish Imbros to Alexander Asan[627].

About the time that Lemnos fell, the learned Leonardo of Chios, who had held the Archiepiscopal see of Lesbos since 1444 and was on very intimate terms with the reigning family, was sent to ask the aid of Christendom for that sole remaining island. The Genoese Government early in 1459 appealed to the Christian Powers and more especially to Charles VII of France, whose viceroy, the Duke of Calabria, was then administering Genoa, reminding them of the recent attack of the Turks upon Lesbos, of the exiguous resources of its lord, and of the impossibility in which the exhausted Genoese now found themselves of supporting him without external assistance, as they had done before, against another and more serious invasion. The fall of Lesbos, it was added, might encourage the Sultan to direct his arms against Italy. Unfortunately this appeal met with no response. Indeed, one of the Christian Powers, England, was at that moment greatly incensed with the Gattilusj, owing to the piracies of Giuliano, a celebrated corsair of that family, whose depredations on the merchants of Bristol had caused the arrest of all the Genoese in the country and the confiscation of their goods. Accordingly, the Genoese Government, which had been glad to make use of him as a cousin, when it seemed convenient, now repudiated him as a Greek and an alien. The proceedings of this illegitimate descendant of Francesco II formed the subject of letters to Henry VI, to the Chancellor and the Privy Seal, to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, to John Viscount Beaumont, the Great Chamberlain, and Humphry Duke of Buckingham. Indeed, it was owing to Giuliano Gattilusio, that “the office of English affairs” was founded at Genoa[628].

The new lord of Lesbos, as one Christian state after another fell, became more urgent in his requests for help, for he knew that even the payment of tribute would not save him. In 1460 he begged that the former practice might be revived of having a board of four commissioners in Chios, who could send 300 men to the relief of Lesbos, whenever the Sultan was preparing to attack it. It was decided to re-constitute this board, but not to impose any new duty for defraying the expense, and a certain number of men from Camogli on the Riviera di Levante were hired for the defence of Lesbos. Towards the close of 1461, he wrote imploring the Republic not to forget him in his distress. But, although the French had then been expelled from Genoa, and Lodovico de Campo-fregoso, husband of Nicolò’s first-cousin, Ginevra Gattilusio, was once more Doge, all the reply that he received was fair words, a futile assertion that in the season of 1462 the Turk would be occupied by land rather than at sea, and a promise to promote a good understanding between Lesbos and the Chartered Company of Chios, which was apt to forget the common danger in the private quarrels of its members—an allusion to the still outstanding dispute between Nicolò and Paride Longo. Weakened by faction at home, divided by rival interests abroad, the Genoese allowed Lesbos to succumb[629].

Mohammed’s conquest of Serbia, Greece, and Trebizond and his campaign in Wallachia had given Nicolò a brief respite, which he had wisely employed in strengthening the fortifications of his island-capital by deepening the moats and heightening the ramparts. To this may be referred his Latin inscription[630] in the castle, dated 1460. But on September 1, 1462, the long-threatened Turkish fleet hove in sight under the command of Mahmûd Pasha, himself a Greek, while the Sultan at the head of the land forces advanced across the plain of Troy, the sight of which is said to have inspired him with the belief that he was the chosen avenger of the Trojans upon the descendants of their conquerors. Mohammed had no difficulty in finding plausible excuses for his invasion of Lesbos. The island had become a receptacle of Catalan pirates, who issued thence to ravage the Turkish coast and returned thither to divide their prisoners, assigning a goodly proportion to their patron. A reluctance to pay his tribute and a secret understanding with the Italians formed further accusations against him, and Mohammed chose to regard himself as the instrument of the Almighty for the punishment of the Lesbian fratricide.

The great Turkish fleet, variously estimated at 67, 110, 125, 150, and even 200 sail, cast anchor in the old harbour of St George, whither Nicolò’s envoys went to enquire the justification of this attack upon an island, whose lords had paid, ever since the death of Dorino I seven years before, an annual tribute of 7000 gold ducats of Venice. Mahmûd replied, that his master wanted the castle and island of Mytilene—a demand repeated by the Sultan himself, when he crossed over from the mainland, with the addition that he would grant Nicolò a sufficient estate elsewhere. Nicolò replied, that he could not yield, except to force, whereupon Mohammed allowed himself to be persuaded by Mahmûd to return to the opposite coast, lest the Venetian fleet, then at Chios, to which Nicolò had appealed for help, should arrive and shut him up in the island. Thereupon the Greek renegade began the siege of the capital, whose walls contained more than 20,000 non-combatants, men, women and children, and were garrisoned by over 5000 soldiers, including 70 knights of Rhodes and 110 Catalan mercenaries from Chios.

After four days’ skirmishing, which resulted in a number of the Latins being cut off from the city and cut up by the Turks, the besiegers landed six large cannon, whose shot weighed more than 700 lbs. apiece, and planted them in favourable positions for bombarding the city—three at the soap works only a stone’s throw from the walls, one at St Nicholas’, another at St Bonne’s[631] near the place of public execution, and the sixth in the suburbs opposite a barbican tower, defended by a monk and a knight of Rhodes. Protected by a barrier of large stones from the fire of the besieged, the Turkish batteries did great execution. The tower of the Virgin and the adjacent walls were pounded till they were nothing but a mass of ruins; the cannon of St Nicholas’ riddled the tower of the harbour, built long before by a Gallego named Pedro de Laranda, so that no one durst defend it, and it fell on the eighth day into the hands of the Turks, whose red flags floated from its riven battlements. The besiegers then concentrated their efforts on the lower castle, called Melanoudion, and commanded by Luchino Gattilusio, who had helped Nicolò to the throne, and whose neglect caused the loss of this important position. It was proposed by the wiser members of his staff to set fire to the lower castle, as they had already burnt to the water’s edge their ships in the harbour, rather than that it should be taken by the Turks and used as a base for attacking the upper citadel. But Luchino boasted that he could hold the fort, and actually held it for five days, although the Turks once climbed the walls and carried off in triumph an Aragonese flag which had been planted there by the Catalan corsairs. At last a force of 20,000 men carried Melanoudion by storm, drove the defenders “like locusts” into the upper castle, and destroyed all that they found. Terrified and breathless, with his naked sword in his hand, Luchino rushed into the midst of the Italians, who had taken refuge in the upper castle, and his narrative struck them with such terror that they resolved to surrender. According to one account, Luchino and the commander of the city had intentionally made further resistance impossible by betraying to Mahmûd the weak points of the defences, and by then urging Nicolò to yield and to save their heads and property. The panic was increased by one huge mortar, whose heavy projectiles destroyed houses and the women inside and drove the terrified defenders from the walls to take shelter from a similar fate. Heavy sums had to be offered, to induce men to repair the breaches; while many, in their despair, flew to drink, and broke into the vast stores of wine and provisions, which, if the garrison had been properly led, would have enabled Mytilene to resist a whole year’s siege. But, though well provided with food and engines of war, the place lacked a brave and experienced soldier, who would have inspired the garrison with enthusiasm. Another council was held, and two envoys were sent to inform Mahmûd, that the inhabitants were ready to become his master’s vassals, if their heads and remaining property were guaranteed. The Turkish commander drew up a memorandum of the terms in writing, and swore by his girded sword and his sovereign’s head that no harm should befall them. The Sultan, on hearing the news, re-crossed to Lesbos, and a janissary was ordered to conduct Nicolò to his presence. Thither the last Latin lord of Lesbos proceeded with two horsemen, kissed the feet of his new master and tearfully handed to Mohammed the keys of the city, which the Gattilusj had held for well-nigh eleven decades. At the same time he pleaded that he had never violated his oaths, never harboured Turkish slaves, but had at once restored them to their owners; and, if he had perforce received pirates to save his own land from their ravages, he had never furnished them with the means of injuring that of the Turks. It was, he added, the fault of his subjects that he had not accepted the Sultan’s generous offer at once, and “I now,” he concluded with tears, “surrender the city and island, begging that my lord may reward me for my good disposition in the past towards him.” Mohammed censured him for his past ingratitude, but promised that it should not be remembered against him. Forthwith a subashi and two men took possession of the upper castle, whence the Frankish garrison was removed but no one else was allowed to issue. The conquerors celebrated their success by a Bacchanalian orgie and by burning the still standing houses of Melanoudion, while the Sultan, setting on one side the chief men among the Franks, bade saw asunder with exquisite cruelty some 300 of the others as pirates in one of the suburbs. Thus, it was said, he had literally carried out their conditions, that their heads should be spared.

The other fortresses in the island—Molivos (or Augerinos), the castle of the two SS. Theodores, and Eresos—now surrendered; for the wretched Nicolò, by the Sultan’s commands, sent a notary with instructions under his own seal, ordering his officers to open their gates. The countryfolk were left undisturbed, but any suspects found there were removed; and later on, one or two of these places were destroyed, and their inhabitants transported, like those of the Foglie, to Constantinople. On the second day after the occupation of the capital, a herald summoned all the citizens to file past the Sultan’s pavilion one by one. On September 17 the sorrowful procession took place; three clerks noted down the names of each, of the most pleasing maidens and the children several hundreds were picked out, and the rest of the population was divided into three classes—the worthless were left behind in the city, others were sold by public auction on the beach, and others again driven on board ship like so many sheep, to await slavery and fill the gaps at Constantinople. But of the 10,000 and more who were shipped from Lesbos a part perished on the overcrowded ships; and with brutal, if business-like precision, all disputes as to the ownership of these human cattle were obviated by cutting off the right ear of each corpse, before it was flung into the deep, and removing the victim’s name from the list. Some 200 janissaries and 300 infantry were left to garrison the city under Ali Bestami, a man of great courage and learning.

The fleet, bearing Nicolò, Luchino, the Archbishop Leonardo, and the rest of the captives, reached Constantinople on October 16, where some of them received houses, or sites in one quarter of the city. The two Gattilusj, however, were soon afterwards imprisoned in the “tower of the French.” Mohammed disliked Nicolò for what he had done in the past, and the chronique scandaleuse of the capital attributed his feelings to the fact that a lad attached to the Turkish court had fled to Lesbos, abandoned Islâm, and become the favourite of Nicolò. After the fall of Lesbos, this youth was sent as a present to the Sultan, and recognised by his comrades, who told their master and thus rekindled his indignation. The two prisoners, to save their lives and regain their freedom, offered to abjure Christianity, and were duly circumcised, gorgeously apparelled by the Sultan, and set free. But their liberty did not last long; they were again imprisoned, and executed, Nicolò being strangled with a bow-string, as he had strangled his own brother. His lovely sister Maria, widow of the Emperor Alexander of Trebizond, whom Mohammed had previously captured in Kolchis, entered the seraglio; her only son became one of the Conqueror’s favourite pages.

Thus ended the rule of the Gattilusj in Lesbos. Had Nicolò been bolder, had Genoa given more help, had Venice not played the part of a spectator, the island might have been saved, or at least its capture postponed. At the time of the siege, Vettor Capello was at Chios, and, in answer to Nicolò’s appeal, actually set out with 29 galleys towards Lesbos; but, although he could have burnt the Turkish fleet in the absence of its crews, he durst not disobey his instructions, which were to avoid giving any offence to the Sultan. Even after the capture of Mytilene, when the people of the castle of the two SS. Theodores begged him to accept them as Venetian subjects, he refused. Later on, when war broke out with Turkey, Venice repented her inaction, and tried in vain to make reparation for it. Even Genoa took the “calamity of Mytilene” with philosophy[632].

Christendom did not, however, abandon all hope of recovering what the Gattilusj had lost. The learned Archbishop of Lesbos, a second time the prisoner of the Turks, wrote to Pius II, as he had written to Nicholas V after the capture of Constantinople, a letter describing the sufferings of his flock and begging the Pope to make peace in Italy and war upon “the Cerberus” of the East. Pius responded by planning a new crusade, and the Genoese suggested that its first stage should be the recapture of Lesbos[633]. The Pope’s death ended his plans; but early in 1464 a Venetian fleet under Luigi Loredano occupied Lemnos with the assistance of a Moreote pirate, who bore the great name of Comnenos. This man had descended upon the island some time before with two galleys, had captured it from the officials who were governing it for Demetrios Palaiologos, and had established his authority over the citadel and the old city of Lemnos. But the pirate saw that he was not strong enough to hold his conquest single-handed, and therefore transferred it to the maritime Republic, which thence easily extended her sway over the rest of the island. Venice retained Lemnos for 15 years, and five Venetian nobles successively administered, with the title of “Rector,” this distant outpost[634]. In April of the same year Orsato Giustiniano, Loredano’s successor, laid siege to Mytilene, but, after six weeks spent before the walls and two battles, in which the Venetians sustained heavy losses, on the approach of the Turkish fleet withdrew to Eubœa with all the Christian islanders whom he could convey, only returning to SS. Theodores to remove a second cargo. Giustiniano died of grief at his failure, and the Turkish sway over Lesbos, despite three subsequent attempts, had never been broken till the Greek fleet took the island on November 22, 1912[635].

Two years later Vettor Capello obtained Imbros, Thasos, and Samothrace for Venice[636], and Bernardo Natale was sent as Rector to the last-named island. Imbros was, however, retaken by the Turks in 1470, owing to the unpopularity and incapacity of that official[637]. Lemnos resisted more than one Turkish attack; in view of its importance as a station for the fleet, Venice sent 200 stradioti to settle there, restored the walls of Kokkinos, and strengthened the fortifications of Palaiokastro, while Mohammed made its cession a condition of peace. At last this island, then inhabited by 6000 souls, or twice the population of Imbros, after having won romantic fame by the exploits of its heroic defender, the virgin Marulla, was ceded to Turkey by the peace[638] of 1479. At the same time, Samothrace with its 200 islanders, and Thasos, neither of them mentioned since their capture in 1466, were probably surrendered, and the whole of the Gattilusj’s former realm was thus irrevocably Turkish till 1912, with the exception of the Venetian occupation of Lemnos in 1656/7, and of the Russian occupation of part of that island in 1770—for Ænos, although laid in ashes by Nicolò da Canale in 1468, had not been occupied by the Venetians, and Foglia Vecchia had repulsed his attack[639].

Even after this apparently final Turkish conquest, one member of the family continued to cherish the remote hope that one day his ancestral dominions might be reconquered. Dorino II of Ænos was still alive at Genoa, and in 1488, as the sole representative of both branches of the Gattilusj—for Nicolò II had left no children—granted to his brother-in-law, Marco d’Oria, all his rights to their possessions in the Levant. It was agreed, that, should Lesbos be recovered—as was hoped, by the aid of the King of France—Dorino should nevertheless have his father’s former estates in that island, unless Ænos, Foglia Vecchia, Thasos and Samothrace were also recovered, in which case he should be entitled to Ænos, Thasos and Samothrace alone and have no claim to the Lesbian property[640]. Dorino II died childless, the last legitimate male of his race; but the pirate Giuliano, whose depredations continued to vex the Genoese Government[641], had progeny. Among his descendants were perhaps the Hector Gattilusio[642] whom we find receiving a small pension from Pope Innocent VIII, and the Stefano Gattilusio[643], who was bishop of Melos in 1563. Other Gattilusj occur at Naxos in the seventeenth century, and the name is reported to exist still not only there but at Smyrna and Athens[644], although the family is extinct at Genoa. Nine years ago a London lady claimed the Byzantine Empire as a descendant of the Palaiologoi through the Gattilusj. The family church at Sestri Ponente[645] was ceded by Dorino II to two other persons in 1483.

The rule of the Gattilusj has been described by a modern Greek writer as more favourable to his fellow-countrymen than that of other Frankish rulers. Chalkokondyles[646] praises the excellence of their administration, and one alone of them, the fratricide Nicolò, seems to have been unpopular. Hellenized by intermarriage with the Imperial houses of Byzantium and Trebizond, and proud to quarter the arms of the Palaiologoi with their own, they spoke Greek in the first generation, and thus early came to understand the feelings of their subjects, who scarcely regarded them as foreigners, certainly not as foreign conquerors. Two extant Greek letters of Dorino I and Domenico attest their familiarity with the language of their people. Moreover, they were not so much feudal lords as prosperous merchant princes, whose wealth is attested not only by the sums lent by Francesco II and Nicolò I, but by the extensive coinage of the Lesbian line. Coins of at least five of the lords of Mytilene are extant, while Dorino I, whose appanage was Foglia Vecchia before he succeeded to Lesbos, struck money for that emporium also[647]. Yet these Genoese nobles took an interest alike in history, literature, and archæology. Kanaboutzes wrote his commentary on Dionysios for Palamede; in 1446, the year of Cyriacus’ visit, Leonardo of Chios, the most famous of Lesbian divines, who owed his appointment to the patronage of Maria Gattilusio and was selected to accompany the papal legate, Cardinal Isidore, to Constantinople[648], wrote at the bidding of Dorino I’s brother, Luchino, his Treatise concerning true nobility against Poggio. This quaint tract took the form of a Platonic dialogue with Luchino in the presence of the Duke of the Archipelago, and gives us a pretty picture of Lesbian society at the time. “The prince,” we read, “protects religion; his senate is wise, his soldiers distinguished, and he lives in splendid state among his lovely halls, his gardens, his fish-ponds, and his groves.” The drama, if we may argue from the presence of an actor named Theodoricus, was patronised by Dorino[649]. Life in Lesbos must therefore have been pleasant, if it had not been lived on the edge of the Turkish volcano. But even in the last years of the Gattilusj the numbers of the Latins cannot have been large, for Calixtus III united the Archiepiscopal see of Methymna with that of Mytilene, and in 1456 the revenues which Leonardo derived from both together did not exceed 150 gold florins[650].

The Genoese sway over Lesbos and the Thracian islands has gone the way of all Latin rule in the Levant, of which it was so favourable a specimen. A few inscriptions, a few coats of arms, here and there a ruined fortress, still remind the now emancipated Greeks of their last Italian rulers.

Gattilusj.

I.

• Lesbos (1355-1462).
• Francesco I 1355, July 17.
• ” II 1384, August 6.
• [Nicolò I of Ænos regent 1384-7.]
• Jacopo 1404, October 26.
• [Nicolò of Ænos regent 1404-9.]
• Dorino I 1426/1428.
• [Domenico regent 1449-55.]
• Domenico 1455, June 30.
• Nicolò II 1458-62.
• [Turkish: 1462-1912; Greek: 1912, November 22.]

II.

• Thasos (c. 1434 or ? c. 1419-55)
• ? Jacopo c. 1419.
• Dorino I c. 1434.
• [Oberto de’ Grimaldi governor 1434.]
• Francesco III 1444-c. 1449.
• Dorino I c. 1449.
• [Domenico regent 1449-55.]
• Domenico 1455, June 30-October.
• [Turkish: 1455-6; 1459-60; 1479-1912; Papal: 1456-9; Demetrios Palaiologos: 1460-6; Venetian: 1466-79; Greek: 1912, October 30.]

III.

• Lemnos (1453-6).
• Dorino I 1453 (castle of Kokkinos from 1440).
• [Domenico regent 1453-5.]
• Domenico 1455-6.
• [Nicolò II governor 1455-6.]
• [Turkish: 1456; 1459-60; 1479-1656; 1657-1912; Papal: (autumn) 1456-8; Demetrios Palaiologos: 1460-4; Comnenos 1464; Venetian: 1464-79; 1656-7; Russian (except Palaiokastro): 1770; Greek: 1912, October 22.]

IV.

• Foglia Vecchia (c. 1402-55).
• With Lesbos: c. 1402-1455, December 24. (For several years c. 1423-8 appanage of Dorino I.)
• [Turkish: 1455-1919; Greek: 1919- .]

V.

• Ænos (c. 1384-1456).
• Nicolò I c. 1384.
• Palamede 1409.
• Dorino II 1455-6.
• [Turkish: 1456-60; 1468-1912; 1913, July 15; Demetrios Palaiologos: 1460-8; Bulgarian: 1912, Nov. 29-1913, July 15; Turkish: 1913-20; Greek: 1920- .]

VI.

• Samothrace (c. 1431-56).
• Palamede c. 1431.
• [Joannes Laskaris Rhyndakenos governor 1444-55.]
• Dorino II 1455-6.
• [Turkish: 1456; 1459-60; 1479-1912; Papal: (autumn) 1456-9; Demetrios Palaiologos: 1460-6; Venetian: 1466-79; Greek: 1912, November 1.]

VII.

• Imbros (1453-6).
• Palamede 1453.
• Dorino II 1455-6.
• [Joannes Laskaris Rhyndakenos governor.]
• [Turkish: 1456-60; 1470-1912; Demetrios Palaiologos: 1460-6; Venetian: 1466-70; Greek: 1912, October 30-1914; Turkish: 1914-20; Greek: 1920- .]

Genealogical Tree:

(The rulers of Lesbos are denoted by Roman, those of Ænos by Arabic numerals.)

V. TURKISH GREECE
1460-1684

From the second half of the fifteenth down to the close of the seventeenth century, a large portion of what now forms the kingdom of Greece formed an integral part of the Turkish Empire, and from the second part of the sixteenth century some of the Ionian Islands and a few of the Cyclades were alone exempt from the common lot of Hellas. Thus, for the first time since the Frank conquest, a dead level of uniformity, broken only by the privileges of certain communities, prevailed in place of the feudal principalities, whose fortunes occupied the annals of the previous two centuries and more. Greece, so often divided against herself, had found unity in the death of her independence; and the victorious Turks, like the conquering Romans, had obliterated the divisions and the liberties of the Greek States at the same moment. Once more the whole Greek world, with few exceptions, depended upon a foreign ruler, whose capital was at Constantinople, and whose officials, like those of the Byzantine Emperors, administered the affairs of his Greek subjects. There is, however, a considerable difference between the two periods into which the Turkish government of Greece was divided. During the first period, down to the Venetian conquest of the Morea, towards the close of the seventeenth century, Turkey was a flourishing and conquering Power—a danger to Europe, and a strong State. During the second period, from the Turkish re-conquest of the Morea down to the close of the War of Independence, Turkey was declining, slowly but surely, in all save the one art which she has never lost even in her political dotage, the art of fighting. For, like the Roman and the Briton, the Turk has ever been a good soldier, but, unlike those two great unintellectual peoples, many of whose qualities he shares, he has never been a good administrator; even when his arrangements have been excellent in theory, as they often are, they have frequently proved to be miserable in practice.

The political organisation of Greece under the Turks was indeed comparatively simple. Before the conquest of the Ægean Islands all their Greek dominions were comprised within the jurisdiction of the beglerbeg (“lord of lords”) of Rumili, who resided at Sofia[651], and were divided into seven sandjaks, so called from the “flag” which was the emblem of each large territorial sub-division, and which recalled the essentially military character of all Turkish arrangements. These seven sandjaks, after the year 1470, when the capture of Eubœa rounded off the Greek conquests of Mohammed II, were Salonika, Negroponte, Trikkala, Lepanto, Karlili, Joannina, and the Morea. Negroponte included not only the island of Eubœa, but also Bœotia, and Attica. Its capital was Chalkis, and Athens, Thebes and Livadia, were among its principal cities. Karlili comprehended Ætolia and Akarnania, as well as Prevesa, and derived its name from Carlo II Tocco, whose dominions there had fallen to the Turks. The capital of the Morea fluctuated between Corinth, Leondari, and Mistra, down to 1540, when the capture of Nauplia from the Venetians made that place the residence of the Turkish Pasha. In 1574, when the conclusion of the war of Cyprus had practically extinguished Latin rule in the Levant, a different arrangement obtained. Salonika, Trikkala, Joannina, Patras and Mistra formed five sandjaks under the beglerbeg of Rumili; while the capitan pasha, in his capacity of beglerbeg “of the sea,” ruled over the seven insular sandjaks of Lemnos, Lesbos, Rhodes, Chios, the former Duchy of Naxos (except a few islands bestowed on the favourite Sultana), Santa Maura (with Prevesa), and Negroponte, besides the three maritime sandjaks of Nauplia, Lepanto and Kavalla. And, after the conquest of Crete, three more sandjaks, named from Candia, Rethymno, and Canea, were carved out of “the great Greek island[652].”

Each sandjak was in turn sub-divided into a number of cazas, or sub-districts, of which there were twenty-three in the Morea. It is now supposed that from 1470 to about 1610, Athens was the chief place of a caza of the sandjak of Negroponte. Just as each sandjak was governed by a Pasha or sandjak-beg, so each caza was administered by a lesser magnate known as a voivode or subashi, who was assisted by a judge, or cadi.

True to the Turkish feuded system, which had been organised in Thessaly at the end of the fourteenth century, and extended to Akarnania and Ætolia on the fall of the Tocchi, Mohammed II distributed Central Greece and the Morea in fiefs to his veteran warriors. These fiefs were of two sorts: the larger fief, known as a zaimet, entailed upon the holder the obligation to provide fifteen horsemen; the smaller, called a timar, involved the equipment of only two[653]. The standard of the sandjak-beg formed the rallying point of all these feudal chiefs and their horsemen in case of need. About the middle of the seventeenth century the whole area of the present Greek kingdom on the mainland, including Negroponte but without Macedonia and Thrace, was portioned out into 267 zaimets and 1625 timars, so that they would represent a force of 7255 horsemen.

Crete, after its conquest, was similarly parcelled out into seventeen zaimets and 2550 timars, which would produce 5355 cavalry. At first the timariot system was not in the nature of an hereditary aristocracy. The timars were originally life-rents only, conferred for services rendered to the Sultan upon veteran warriors, who might be called upon to appear with their retainers at the call of their liege lord. In the golden age of Turkish administration—if such a phrase can be applied to any Turkish institution—the son of timariot was entrusted with a large fief such as his sire had held only after he had proved his capacity as the holder of a small one. But, like all political systems, the Turkish began by making capacity the sole test of office, and ended by making office the reward of favourites. Gradually the beglerbeg was allowed to bestow these fiefs, which had formerly been in the Sultan’s gift, and that official naturally rewarded his own creatures, just as a British Prime Minister, allowed by weak or preoccupied monarchs to dispense patronage at his will, bestows the honours of the peerage and the baronetage upon subservient, or perhaps recalcitrant, supporters. Thus, in the second half of the seventeenth century, it was the custom of Romania that, if a holder of a zaimet or timar died in the wars, his fief was divided into as many portions as he had sons, unless the rent was no more than 3000 aspers, in which case the whole went to the eldest son. But if the holder died in his bed, his lands fell to the beglerbeg, who could bestow them upon the dead man’s heirs, give them to any of his own servants, or sell them, as he pleased[654].

The Turks did not interfere with the Greek municipal system, which had existed for centuries before the Ottoman conquest. As far back as the Byzantine times we find that the Hellenic communities employed representatives, not necessarily drawn from their own members, at the Imperial Court at Constantinople. Thus, in the eleventh century, Michael Psellos represented the Ægean Islands at the capital[655]; but, in some cases, instead of having a permanent representative, whose functions may be compared with those of the agents-general of our self-governing colonies, a local deputation occasionally visited Constantinople to lay its grievances before the central authorities. In the Venetian island of Tenos a similar practice prevailed; there a committee was selected from among the primates to watch over the administration of the Venetian officials. The Turks, like the Romans, were quite willing that their Greek subjects should continue to enjoy local self-government. Accordingly, they allowed the communes to promote commerce and found schools, while Greek naturally continued to be the official language of the communal authorities. There was no hard and fast rule for their election, and no stereotyped title by which they were known all over Greece. But, generally speaking, every town and even every hamlet had its own Greek officials, elected by the Christian inhabitants, or by some portion of them, in a more or less indirect fashion, and variously styled “elders of the parish,” “elders,” archontes, “primates,” or, in Turkish, khodja-bashis. Thus, at a late period of the Ottoman domination, in the island of Psara the whole community met annually for the election of forty electors, who in turn elected four “elders of the parish”; at the same period, in the island of Spetsai, the five “primates” were elected annually by the ships’ captains and the well-to-do citizens; while Hydra, during a large part of the eighteenth century, was administered by its priests, with whom two laymen were associated. The Morea had certain special municipal privileges. It was permitted to send two or three “primates” to Constantinople, who were able to mitigate the exactions of the Turkish Pashas by the influence which they acquired during their stay there. Moreover, each province of the peninsula used to send two prominent Greeks once or twice a year to the seat of the Pasha to confer with him upon the affairs of the Morea. Sometimes, both there and in Thessaly, municipal office descended as a heritage from father to son, and too often the feuds, which continued to distinguish the Moreote archontes, descended, with their dignities, to their descendants. Their duties were to administer the local affairs of their communities, to act as arbitrators in civil cases, to levy local rates, to manage the local treasury, and to act as protectors and advisers of the oppressed. Sometimes they carried out this last duty without flinching, sometimes, however, their conduct earned them the name of “a kind of Christian Turks[656].”

Both the law of Islâm and the laws of human nature forbade the wholesale conversion of the conquered to the faith of the conquerors. But Mohammed II, who spoke Greek and knew the Greeks well, recognised, like the wise statesman that he was, the possibility of managing his Christian subjects through the medium of their own Church. The Turks were a foreign garrison in a hostile country, and in the middle of the fifteenth century it was quite possible that some Catholic power might undertake a new crusade for the deliverance of the East. The bitter hatred of the Eastern for the Western Church provided the astute Sultan with a powerful incentive for the toleration and even patronage of the Orthodox religion. He saw that, if he favoured the one branch of Christendom, he would prevent its union with the other, and he made a most politic selection of an instrument for the accomplishment of his plan. One of the strongest opponents of the union had been Georgios Scholarios, a man of great influence with the Orthodox and of equal unpopularity with the Catholics. As soon as Constantinople had fallen, the Sultan caused diligent search to be made for this uncompromising champion of Orthodoxy, and about the end of the same year gave orders for his election as Œcumenical Patriarch, according to the time-honoured forms which the Byzantine Empire had recognised for centuries. Gennadios II, as the new Patriarch was styled, was invited to a banquet by the Sultan, who showed him the greatest attention, and accompanied him as far as the courtyard of the palace, where he assisted him to mount his horse. A berat of the Sultan determined the position, powers, and privileges of Gennadios and his successors. The Œcumenical Patriarch was declared to be “untaxable and irremovable,” and the document, of which only a summary has come down to us in the history of Phrantzes[657], is said to have prohibited the conversion of Christian churches into mosques. The loss of the original berat is of less importance because subsequent rescripts modified these notable concessions, while in practice the privileges of the Patriarch came to be far less respected than in theory. To him was assigned the supreme administration of all churches and monasteries, the right of deposing archbishops and bishops, and the highest criminal jurisdiction over all the clergy. He decided all matrimonial questions, and other suits, in which the parties, being both Christians, preferred his judgment to that of the Turkish courts. He could levy dues for the needs of the Church on laity and clergy alike, and it was provided that existing ecclesiastical property should be respected, and that no Christian should be forced to embrace Islâm. But in these respects, as well as with regard to the fiscal exemption and irremovability of the Patriarch, the ecclesiastical history of the Greeks under the Turks shows us a gradual falling off from the original intentions of Mohammed II. A later berat laid it down that the Patriarch could be deposed for one of three reasons—oppression of his flock, transgression of the ecclesiastical law, and treason towards his sovereign—elastic terms, capable of a wide interpretation. Mohammed II himself deposed the Patriarch Joseph I, for refusing to sanction the marriage of the widow of the last Duke of Athens with George Amoiroutses, the traitor who had been accused of handing over Trebizond to the Turks, and who had a wife still living. From the Turkish conquest to the present day 69 Patriarchs have been deposed, several more than once, 20 were thus removed in the seventeenth century, and the Sultans at times inflicted punishments on the Patriarchs, which recall the horrible mutilations of Byzantine times. From the moment of the conquest, Christian churches, beginning with St Sophia, were converted into mosques, and the seat of the Patriarchate, fixed by Mohammed II at the Church of the Holy Apostles, was successively moved, as church after church became a sacred place of Islâm, till it reached, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, its present home in the Phanar. All over Greece the same process went on, wherever the Mussulmans were numerous, and we have seen at Salonika, Livadia and Larissa buildings which have served first as churches and then as mosques. Certain dues, too, were fixed, which the Patriarch was expected to pay; and soon bakshîsh, the bane of Turkey, began to affect Patriarchal elections. This introduction of simony into the Greek Church was due to the intrigues of the Greeks themselves. After the fall of the empire of Trebizond in 1461 many of the Trapezuntine grandees sought careers at Constantinople. Among other posts they coveted that of the Patriarch, and as early as 1467 they conspired with that object against Markos II, the fourth successor of Gennadios[658]. They succeeded in securing his deposition and the election of one of their own party by promising that he would pay an annual sum of one thousand gold pieces and forego the allowance which his four predecessors had received from the government. The evil, thus soon introduced, spread apace. Two years later, an offer of double the sum paid by the Patriarch ensured his removal in favour of a wealthier candidate. Then the annual payment was raised to three thousand gold pieces, and large sums came to be spent in bribes to courtiers, eunuchs, janissaries and the female favourites of the Sultans, the money being ultimately raised out of the clergy and laity. Thus, the history of the Patriarchate resembles that of the mediæval Papacy in that the same means were employed to ensure an election. After the Reformation, Jesuits and Protestants, each anxious to have at the head of the Greek Church a man favourable to themselves, joined in the bidding, and between the years 1623 and 1700 there were about fifty Patriarchal elections, most of them won by bribery. The debts of the Patriarchate became enormous, as a consequence of this almost constant expenditure, and the necessity thus imposed upon the Patriarch of selling all the chief ecclesiastical offices in his gift was one of the main causes which made the Greek Church so unpopular in many parts of Turkey, where the population belonged to another race than the Hellenic. The history of Roumania abounds with examples of the exactions of Greek bishops, who sought to make the wretched people make up to them what they had spent on the purchase of their sees.

Another cause tended, in course of time, to make the Turkish Government less careful of the Patriarch’s privileges and dignities. He had been regarded by Mohammed II as a bulwark against the Catholic powers; but, a century after the fall of Constantinople, Rome, distracted by the Protestant secession, had become far less dangerous, and Venice had lost her last possessions in the Morea, while in the seventeenth century Spain was no longer an enemy to be feared. Moreover, France, the “eldest daughter of the Church,” and the patroness of the Jesuits, had become the ally of Turkey, and supported her protégés, who first appeared at Constantinople in 1609, against the Œcumenical Patriarch. Thus, finding himself in little danger from a disunited Europe and an impotent Papacy, the Sultan could afford to modify his attitude towards the head of the Greek Church. After 1657, the Patriarch ceased to be installed by the Sultan in person, who was thenceforth represented by the Grand Vizier, and further restrictions were soon placed upon the honours paid to him. Still, the Œcumenical Patriarch enjoyed, throughout the Turkish domination, a great ecclesiastical and political position, such as some of his predecessors had not held under the Byzantine Empire, such as his successors have never held since the Church in Greece became autocephalous, and the Bulgarian Church became independent. In the Turkish days, he was the spiritual, and in many respects the political, head, not only of the Greek subjects of the Sultan, but of all the Orthodox Christians within his dominions, Bulgarians, Serbs[659], Albanians, and Armenians of the Orthodox rite, who, as well as Greeks, were all collectively described as Romaîoi—for in those days religion and not race was the mark by which Ottoman subjects were distinguished. Moreover, he was not only the accredited representative of the Orthodox with the Porte, but he was also the ecclesiastical superior of all the Orthodox communities in the Venetian dominions, and he was therefore permitted to correspond with all those foreign powers which had subjects of that religion. Thus, so long as Venice was a Levantine State, she had continual relations with the Patriarch, and the Venetian bailie at Constantinople conducted diplomatic business with him, no less than with the Turkish government. Mohammed II, in the treaty which he concluded with Venice in the year after the capture of Constantinople, specially provided for the preservation to the Patriarch of all the revenues which his predecessors had received from the Orthodox. We frequently find the Patriarchs intervening with the Venetians on behalf of the Orthodox inhabitants of the Venetian colonies, sometimes urging the claims of the Greeks of Koron, Modon and Crete, sometimes successfully deprecating the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in the Venetian possessions, and in one case rebuking the Orthodox Cretans for their persecution of the Jews. Nothing more clearly proves the peculiar position of the Patriarch as the head of an imperium in imperio, than the fact that the Turkish government conducted its business with him through the medium of the Reis-effendi, or Minister for foreign affairs. Not without reason did men address so powerful a personage as “master” and even “king.” We might, indeed, compare his situation with that of the Pope since 1870. Like the Pope, he had no territory, but his ecclesiastical sway ranged over and beyond the dominions of the sovereign, in whose capital his seat was fixed. Like the Pope, he negotiated with diplomatists, corresponded with foreign governments, and combined, or identified, politics and religion. And, like the Pope, he at times intrigued against the monarch who had ensured him the secure exercise of his privileges within his dominions.

Although the Koran forbade the forcible conversion of the Christians, there were various causes which swelled the ranks of Islâm. The Turks, being but a small body of men compared with the great numbers of the Christians, early saw that they could neither preserve nor extend their conquests without the aid of the latter. Accordingly, just as some Christian rulers of the East had enlisted young Turks to fight their battles, so the Sultan Orchan, more than a century before the capture of Constantinople, founded the terrible institution of the Janissaries, a corps entirely recruited from that time till the middle of the sixteenth century from Christian children who embraced the faith of the sovereign. At the outset the numbers of these children were not less than one thousand a year, and they were taken at the tender age of six or seven years at the most; but later on, perhaps in the reign of Mohammed II, a regular levy of children was ordered to be made throughout all the subject provinces of Turkey, with a few favoured exceptions. This tribute of Christian children, or παιδομάζωμα, as the Greeks called it, was subsequently erected into a complete system, and became one of the greatest engines of conversion. Every five years, or even oftener, for the tribute came at last to be levied annually, an officer of the Janissaries would descend with a clerk upon each district, and demand from the head man of the place a list of all the Christian families. Every Christian father was compelled to make a declaration of the number of his sons and to present them for inspection. At first, only one boy out of every five and only one out of every family were taken. Then no proportion was observed, but the government took as many children as it wanted, always selecting the strongest, and not even sparing the only son of a family. The age, too, was raised to ten, fifteen, and even more years. We can easily imagine the misery inflicted upon the unhappy parents by a system which recalled the fabled tribute paid by the Athenians to the Minotaur. We are told by an eye-witness that mothers sometimes prayed God to strike their sons dead in order to save them from enlistment. Others, in order to evade the law, would marry their children at nine years of age; but the authorities soon disregarded these infantile unions, and marriage was no excuse in the eyes of an arbitrary official. There were only two ways of avoiding the payment of this hideous blood-tax—bribery or flight into one of the Venetian colonies, and the latter means of escape became more difficult when Venice lost her last possessions on the mainland. It might have been thought that this tax would have been more likely to cause a rising. Yet in the long list of insurrections against the Turks we can recall one only, that of 1565, which is specially ascribed to this reason, and that was an Albanian and not a Greek agitation[660]. Moreover, as time went on, and the Janissaries became more pampered and more powerful, it was esteemed by many a blessing rather than a curse that their sons should serve in the corps. The Venetian bailie at Constantinople in the middle of the sixteenth century expressly says that the tribute of children had by that time come to be regarded as a special favour enjoyed by the Christians, who were thus able to provide their sons with an easy and comfortable profession! We even hear of Mussulman parents so anxious to share in this singular privilege that they lent their children to the Christians so that they might be enrolled as such among the Janissaries. But the loss to Hellenism and to Christianity through the tribute of children was enormous. If we remember that for two centuries the Janissaries were exclusively recruited from the Christians, and that the latter were chiefly to be found in European Turkey, and if we take into consideration that the tribute children were not only the strongest members of their respective families, but were also prohibited by the original constitution of the corps from marrying, for the Janissaries, like the Zulu army of Cetewayo, were a celibate body, we may form some idea of what a drain the παιδομάζωμα was upon the actual and possible resources of Eastern Christianity. A modern Greek historian[661] estimates at about a million the number of Christian children taken to serve in the corps during the first two centuries of its existence. At last, however, it fell into disuse, and in the seventeenth century ceased to exist. A variety of causes contributed to the decline of an institution which had so greatly strengthened the Turkish army at the expense of the Christian population. From the time when the Janissaries were allowed to marry, they naturally desired to have their own children taken into the corps, while others obtained admission to its privileges by bribery. On the other hand, the Sultans came to regard the Janissaries as dangerous to themselves, much as the Roman Emperors had found the Prætorians to be, and were thus less anxious to have the corps recruited. The number of conversions to Islâm had also narrowed the area of enlistment from among the Christians; and Rycaut, writing shortly after the custom had fallen into disuse, mentions the corruption of the officers and the carelessness in their discipline as the cause of its decay. Accordingly we last hear of the tribute being levied in 1676, though an isolated case is mentioned as late as 1703[662].

Besides the tribute of Christian children, there was a further reason for the conversion of the Greeks in the honours offered to those who apostatised. When the Turks found themselves masters of a great European Empire, they had neither the financial nor the diplomatic skill requisite for conducting it. The Turkish method of keeping accounts was cumbrous, the Turkish language is extremely difficult to write, and the Turks resembled the British in their absolute ignorance of foreign tongues, while treaties and diplomatic correspondence continued to be composed in Greek. But empires are not won by linguists but by men of character, who are easily able to find subtle intellects to do their office work for them. The precise qualities which the Turks lacked the Greeks possessed, and Mohammed II saw at once how useful the versatile talents of his new subjects would be in the administration of his dominions. But there was this difficulty, that nearly all the best educated Greeks had fled abroad after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, and it was owing to this reason that, during the two first centuries of the Turkish rule, the Greeks did not, as a rule, rise higher in the Turkish service than a clerkship in the Treasury or the Foreign Office. There was, however, even at that period, one notable exception, the office of Grand Vizier. Of the five Grand Viziers of Mohammed II, two were Greeks, the former of whom, Mahmûd Pasha, was the first Christian to hold that great position. Under Bayezid II we find two more Greeks as Grand Viziers. Suleyman the Magnificent gave that post to two others, and later on one Grand Vizier was the son of a Greek priest; while the terrible Barbarossa, the scourge of the Christians at sea, was of Greek origin. By the middle of the sixteenth century the Venetian bailie at Constantinople could write that the great places in the Sultan’s service usually fell to the Christians, and the Turks complained that the children of the poor rayah were put over their heads.

But for a long time these mundane advantages could only be obtained by apostasy, and thus the lukewarm Christian had strong incentives to turn Mussulman. But in Greece there were fewer conversions than among the Slavs of Bosnia and the Herzegovina; and when, about the middle of the seventeenth century, the Turkish Government relaxed the strictness of its policy, and abolished religious tests for certain important offices of state, the Greeks were able to gratify a laudable ambition without abandoning the religion of their fathers. By that time education had revived among the Greeks of the capital, so that the lack of qualified Hellenes, which had been felt so acutely immediately after the conquest, no longer existed. It was then that, for the first time, a Greek was appointed Grand Dragoman of the Porte in the person of Panagiotes Nikouses, who conducted the negotiations for the surrender of Candia on behalf of the Turks. From the close of that century down to the War of Independence most of his successors in that post were Greeks[663]. Similarly, the position of Dragoman of the Fleet was usually held by a Greek, and the island of Paros has still many monuments of the family of Mavrogenes, two of whose members conducted the naval negotiations of the Capitan Pasha. One of them, Nicholas Mavrogenes, rose from that rank to be Prince of Wallachia; and it is scarcely necessary to remind those who have studied Roumanian history, that in the eighteenth and the first part of the nineteenth century the two thrones of Moldavia and Wallachia were occupied by Greeks, and the two Danubian principalities were regarded as the happy hunting-ground of the Phanariotes of Constantinople. There was even an idea of erecting the Morea into a Christian principality on similar lines; and, though this was never carried out, the Morea was entrusted to a native governor. But the advancement of the Greeks in the Turkish service, though always beneficial to the individuals concerned and sometimes to their employers, was of doubtful value to the Greek national cause. When their private and racial interests clashed, the Greek officials almost always sacrificed the latter, and, indeed, it would have been an Utopian idea to expect the virtues of heroes and saints from the descendants of men who for centuries had been under foreign domination. It is easy for English historians, belonging to a race which has never known what an alien yoke implies, to demand impossible qualities from a down-trodden people, and we are fond of trying foreign nations by an ideal standard—which fortunately we never apply to our own public affairs. But, after all allowances have been made, it must be confessed that some of the worst blows to Hellenism, such as the loss of Eubœa and that of Crete, were dealt by the Greeks themselves, just as the Bosnian, Cretan and Albanian apostates have ever been the bitterest enemies of the Christians, and the warmest supporters of Turkish rule, so long as it permitted them to tyrannise over their own fellow-countrymen. In other words, religion replaced all racial sympathies, and a Mussulman Slav or Cretan was first a Mussulman and then a Slav or Cretan. Even in our own time, at the crisis of the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, a Greek was trying to counteract Greek interests in the capacity of Turkish ambassador in London; and the show statesmen of the Porte, whose virtues and culture are always exhibited for the edification of Europe, are invariably Greeks. Samos, too, with its Greek prince, was, till 1912, an interesting survival of the former practice of sending Greeks to rule beyond the Danube in the interest of the Sultan.

On two occasions, under Selim II, in 1514, and in the early days of the Candian war, in 1646, it was actually proposed to exterminate all the Christians of Turkey. But wiser counsels happily prevailed; and towards the close of the seventeenth century, as we saw, the policy of the Turkish government was to preserve, rather than further diminish, the numbers of its Christian taxpayers. By that time fears were felt lest the Christians should continue to dwindle away, and a taxable infidel seemed a more valuable asset than a less remunerative believer in the true faith of Islâm. Accordingly, in 1691, a first serious attempt was made to secure the Christians against exactions by the Nizam-djedid[664], or “new system,” which commanded the provincial governors to levy no other impost than the haratch, or “capitation-tax,” from them. Originally, the only fiscal disadvantages of the Christians, besides the blood-tax of their children, had been this haratch, which was payable by all unbelievers over the age of ten years, except priests, old men, and the blind, the maimed, and the paralytic. A Christian had also to pay on all imports and exports twice the duty levied upon a Mussulman. But, as is still the case in Turkey, the hardships of taxation arose not so much from its legal amount as from its illegal collection. Thus, in 1571, we hear of the incredible extortions suffered by the Christian subjects of the Sultan, who were mostly so deeply sunk in poverty and misery that they scarce durst look a Turk in the face, and who only cultivated their lands sufficiently for their own wants and for the payment of haratch, knowing that the Turks would seize any surplus that was over[665]. However, the Nizam-djedid represented, like the abolition of the tribute of children, a new and humaner policy, which resulted in the diminution of apostasy. From that time onward the Greeks had less temptation to become Mohammedans; the Venetian occupation of the Morea in the early part of the eighteenth century had the double effect of causing many re-conversions to Christianity, and of forcing the Turks to treat their Greek subjects better, from fear of comparisons; while, a little later, the Russian claims to a protectorate over the Eastern Christians further checked the movement towards Mohammedanism.

But it was not only in the numbers, but also in the quality of their population, that the Greek provinces of Turkey suffered from the effects of the Turkish conquest. Almost all the men of learning, nearly all the chief families, in short the intellectual and political leaders of the people, went into exile immediately after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. Mohammed II did, indeed, address a proclamation in Greek to the principal archontes of the Morea, in which he promised to respect their families and property and make them more prosperous than before[666]; but his promises had little effect in checking the general exodus of the great Moreote families. So universal was their emigration, that only four or five of the Peloponnesian clans, which had played the prominent part during the mediæval period, remained behind, and there were similar wholesale emigrations from continental Greece and Eubœa. As the leading men all went with their relatives and followers, the drain upon the Greek population was as serious a danger to the nation as the emigration of the Peloponnesian peasants to America, which has lately been robbing the land of its cultivators and causing widespread alarm in the Greek press. Most of the exiles went, as was natural, to the Venetian possessions in Greece, which thus became what in earlier times the Despotat of Mistra had been to the Franks—a thorn in the side of the Turkish conqueror. Thus, Michael Ralles, one of the most prominent of Spartan archontes, and the protagonist of the first Turco-Venetian war after the conquest, and the brothers Daimonoyannai, belonging to the great family of that name at Monemvasia, sought homes in the colonies of the Republic in the Morea; thus, too, Graitzas Palaiologos, the last defender of the peninsula, entered the Venetian service. Other Greek leaders accompanied Sophia, daughter of Thomas Palaiologos, the last Despot of the Morea, on her marriage with the Grand Duke Ivan of Russia, and the Russian Court soon became another favourite resort of the Peloponnesian magnates who had known her father, and whose descendants were recruited three centuries later by a further band of Greek refugees after the abortive rising in the Morea[667]. Many Greeks, anxious to fight against the foes of their own, or even those of their adopted country, became of their own free will Venetian light horsemen, or Stradioti, just as others were forced to enlist in the ranks of the Turkish Janissaries. The researches of a learned Greek historian have thrown a flood of light upon the constitution and exploits of that remarkable body of soldiers[668]. The name by which they were known is not derived from the Greek word στρατιῶται (“soldiers”) but from the Italian, strada, and signified that those who bore it were “always on the road”—wanderers, who had no fixed abodes. Composed of Greeks and Albanians, the corps was entirely recruited from the Morea, and mainly from Laconia, but the most valiant were the men of Nauplia. Among their leaders we find many historic Moreote names, such as those of Boua and Palaiologos, whose bearers were descendants or relatives of the men who had fought the good fight for the liberty of the Peloponnese. The sixteenth century was the golden age of the Stradioti, who demonstrated all over Europe that Greek valour was not extinct. One of them was even in the service of our Henry VIII, fighting in Scotland and acting as governor of Boulogne, at that time an English fortress. But they had their weaknesses, as well as their good qualities, and their inordinate vanity was the favourite theme of Venetian comedians, just as Plautus had satirised the boastfulness of the Miles Gloriosus for the amusement of the ancient Romans. Tasso has blamed their rapacity in the line:

Il leggier Greco alle rapine intento,

but other poets have sung of their triumphs. Indeed, there were bards in the ranks of the “wanderers” themselves, and a whole literature of their poems has been published, mostly written in a peculiar dialect resembling that now spoken in Calabria, where many Greek songs are still sung by the descendants of the numerous Epeirote families settled there after the Turkish conquest—the third time that Magna Græcia had received a large Greek population. One of their number, Marullus, of whom it was said that he “first united Apollo to Mars,” wrote Latin alcaics and sapphics, which, if not exactly Horatian, are, at any rate, as good as the ordinary product of the sixth-form intellect. Another, Theodore Spandounis, or Spandugino, more usefully employed his pen in the composition of a work on the Origin of the Ottoman Emperors, with the patriotic object of arousing the sympathy of sixteenth-century statesmen for the deliverance of Greece. The Stradioti, were, however, mightier with the javelin and the mace—their characteristic weapons—than with the pen. The long javelin, which they carried on horseback, was a particularly formidable weapon. Shod at both ends with a sharp iron point, it could be used either way with equally deadly effect; and if it failed, the agile horseman could seize the mace which hung at his saddle bow, and bring it down on the skull of an opponent. Unfortunately, the blow was rarely struck for Greece, and the skull was usually that of a Christian, against whom the Stradioti had no personal or national quarrel.

But Greece was deprived of her literary as well as her military men by the Turkish conquest. For almost the first time in her long history, all traces of learning vanished from the home of the Muses. Most of the scholarly Greeks of that age emigrated to Italy, and, just as, in the words of Horace, “Captive Greece led her victors captive,” after her subjugation by the unlettered Romans, so, sixteen centuries later, she once more spread the light of Hellenic studies in the darkest West. Thus, the Athenian, Demetrios Chalkokondyles, became the tutor of one of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s sons at Florence, while the Spartan, George Hermonymos, was the first Greek who publicly taught that language in Paris. Two other Moreotes, Demetrios Ralles, a soldier and scholar, and Isidore, who had distinguished himself alike in theology and in the defence of Constantinople, spent the rest of their lives in Italy, while the historian Phrantzes wrote his history and died in peace at Corfù under the Venetian protection. We owe much of our modern culture to this fifteenth-century dispersion of the learned Greeks; but the gain of Europe was the loss of Greece. It required the lapse of two whole centuries to make up in the least degree the deficiencies in Greek education, which the departure of all these men of light and leading caused; and if they strove to interest European courts and scholars in the fortunes of their abandoned country, that was of small practical advantage compared with the loss which they inflicted upon it. Had they remained in Greece, their influence would soon have made itself felt; they would have obtained posts in the Turkish service, which might have enabled them to improve the condition of their fellow-countrymen, and their example would have prevented the complete spread of ignorance over large parts of Greece during the first two centuries after the conquest.

The flight of these two classes—the archontes and the men of letters—made the provincial landowners, the peasants, and the parish priests, who mostly sprang from the ranks of the latter, the sole representatives of the Greek nation[669]. But, though Hellenism has never suffered such enormous losses as during the Turkish period, owing to conversions to Islâm and emigration to the West, there never was any time in the history of Greece under alien dominion when the Greek race remained so pure as between the Turkish conquest and the War of Independence. There can be no doubt that, after the long era of confusion and disorder which had followed the break-up of the Frankish power in Greece, even the Turkish, or any other strong Government—and at that time Turkey was strong and the Sultans could govern—must have proved a benefit to the great mass of the population. Moreover, from the date of the Turkish conquest the immigrations of the foreign elements, which had occurred so often during the Byzantine and Frankish period, ceased, and for nearly four centuries the Hellenic race was uncontaminated by alien blood. The Franks left behind them few survivors, except in the islands, and there were no Slavonic raids, while the Greeks, who remained true to their faith, never intermarried with the Turks, for a Greek woman who became the wife of a Mussulman was excommunicated. The two religions remained absolutely apart, and, under Turkish rule, for the first time for centuries, perhaps also for the last, there was no racial rivalry between the Christians of the Near East. Union reigned between Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians and Roumanians; and the doctrine of nationalities, nowadays the keynote of Balkan politics, had no influence under the Turkish system of that period, which treated all Christians of whatever race as the inferiors of all Mussulmans, whether of Turkish, Slavonic, Albanian or Greek extraction.

Education was scanty enough in the Venetian possessions, as we saw in the case of Corfù; but it was much worse in Turkish Greece. For two hundred years after the conquest there was practically nothing done for the instruction of those Greeks who remained under the Turks, and even archbishops could with difficulty write their own names correctly. Larissa in Thessaly was then one of the wealthiest of Greek sees; yet a Greek scholar, who examined the archiepiscopal records during the Turkish period, found them a mass of bad grammar and remarkable spelling. As for literature, though Sathas has compiled a work on the Greek authors of the long period between the capture of Constantinople and the War of Independence, only four of them, with the exception of a few theological writers, came from Greece proper. Two of these four were the brothers Laonikos and Demetrios Chalkokondyles, of Athens, the former of whom wrote his history of the Turks in Italy, while the latter composed his critical editions of Homer, Isokrates and Suidas at Milan, where his monument may be seen in the church of Sta Maria della Passione. The remaining two were born and bred in Nauplia, at that time Venetian. One, Zygomalas, composed a Political History of Constantinople from 1391 to 1578; the other, Malaxos, produced a vernacular version of the Patriarchal History of the same city, where both resided for a great part of their lives. Another historical work, the Chronicle of Dorotheos, Metropolitan of Monemvasia, was written in Moldavia. It originally contained the history of the world from the creation down to the year 1629, but was subsequently extended to 1685, and for two hundred years after its publication was “the only historical text-book used by the Greek people.” At last, towards the middle of the seventeenth century, an educational revival began in Greece, which derived its origin from the Flangineion, or Greek school founded by the Corfiote, Flangines, at Venice, in 1626, and still existing. The Hellenic community in that city, largely composed of business men, interested—as the Greek merchants of London, Manchester and Alexandria still are in the intellectual, moral and material welfare of their fatherland, sent out educational missionaries, who spread the gospel of learning in the home of their race. One of these Greeks of Venice, a native of Joannina, founded in 1647, two schools, one in his native town[670], another at Athens, where the Catholic monks also taught the young Athenians about the same period.

It must not be supposed that the Greeks acquiesced patiently in the Turkish domination for more than three centuries. The long rule of the Franks had had the effect of making the natives far more warlike than they had been before the Latin conquest; but the conviction of the overwhelming power of the Turks rendered them reluctant to rise, except when they were sure of foreign aid. During the first few years which followed the capture of Constantinople it seemed, indeed, as if such assistance would be speedily forthcoming. The East expected, and the West meditated, a new crusade against the Infidel. A Greek poet appealed to “French and English, Spaniards and Germans,” to make common cause for the recovery of Constantinople[671]. The many learned Greeks who had been scattered all over western Europe by the loss of that city endeavoured to interest the rulers of Christendom in the fate of their fellow-countrymen. Prominent among these missionaries of Hellenism was the famous Cardinal Bessarion of Trebizond, who was twice regarded as a likely candidate for the Papacy, and who travelled across Europe with untiring zeal on behalf of the conquered Greeks. The Popes of that period—men, for the most part, of learning and statesmanlike views—warmly supported the plan, and Pius II set out to Ancona, where the crusaders were to assemble. But his death at that seaport caused the collapse of the proposed expedition, and the crusade, for which such great preparations had been made, ended in a fiasco.

For 80 years after the Turkish conquest Venice continued to keep a foothold in the Morea, and consequently Greece became from time to time the scene of Turco-Venetian wars, for the Sultans naturally desired to round off their Greek territories by the acquisition of the remaining Venetian colonies upon Greek soil. The first of these wars, lasting, more or less continuously, from 1463 to 1479, led to the temporary capture of the lower town of Athens by Vettor Capello in 1466—the second occasion on which that famous city had fallen into Venetian hands. It is characteristic of Turkish toleration, that at that time the heretics, known as the fraticelli della mala opinione, whom in that very year Pope Paul II was persecuting and imprisoning in the castle of Sant’ Angelo[672] and whose church may still be seen on Monte Sant’ Angelo between Poli and Casape in the Roman Campagna, were living quietly at Athens. For more than a century Athens disappeared from the notice of the western world, but a Greek chronicle in the library of Lincoln College, Oxford, informs us that seven severe plagues afflicted the city between 1480 and 1554, and that the aqueduct was begun in 1506. We know, too, of the existence of three Metropolitans of Athens during the first century of Turkish rule, and somewhat later an Athenian became Œcumenical Patriarch. But the honour of having momentarily re-occupied Athens was far outweighed in the minds of the practical Venetians by the definite loss of Argos and Negroponte during this war, while the Greeks had been the chief sufferers whichever side was victorious. The next Turco-Venetian war, which began in 1499 and was closed by the treaty of 1502-3, yet further diminished the colonies of Venice, involving the loss of Lepanto, her last outpost on the mainland north of the Isthmus, and of Modon, Koron and Navarino, in the Morea, where Nauplia and Monemvasia, with the castles depending upon them, alone remained. The thirty years’ peace which followed enabled Greece to recover somewhat from the ravages of the late struggle, while patriotic Greek exiles, like Markos Mousouros and Joannes Laskaris in vain tried to interest the powers in a fresh crusade for their deliverance. Charles V was not the man to liberate Greece for the sake of those ancient heroes and sages, whose names Laskaris invoked in an eloquent speech, and when, in 1532, war broke out between him and the Sultan, he showed more anxiety to damage the Turks than to benefit the Greeks, who paid dearly for the triumphs of the Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria. The re-capture of Koron (like that of Modon by the Knights of St John in the previous year) merely led to its abandonment and the compulsory emigration of its unwilling inhabitants to Sicily and Naples. Then, in 1537, came the Turco-Venetian war, which was destined to cost the Republic Ægina, Mykonos, the Northern Sporades and her last surviving colonies in the Morea. For nearly 150 years after the disastrous peace of 1540 Venice did not own an inch of soil on the mainland of Greece, except the Ionian dependencies of Parga and Butrinto, but of her insular dominions Cyprus, Crete, Tenos and six Ionian islands still remained.

For the next thirty years after the disappearance of the Venetian flag from the Morea, the Greeks were undisturbed by further fighting on the mainland, though learned men continued to make appeals to Europe on their behalf. The fall of the Duchy of Naxos in 1566 and the capture of Chios from the maona, or Chartered Company, of the Giustiniani of Genoa, in the same year yet further diminished the influence of the Latins in the Levant; but it was not till Selim II attacked the (since 1489) Venetian island of Cyprus in 1570, that Greece once more became the theatre of a European war. The first operations of the Venetians were directed against the coast opposite Corfù and against a fort which the Turks had newly constructed to command the Mainate harbour of Porto delle Quaglie, where the Turkish galleys could wait and intercept the Venetian vessels on their way to Cyprus. Thanks to the aid of the Mainates, ever ready for a fight, the Venetian commander was able to capture this strong position. But he found it necessary to blow it up, as he could not retain it, and sailed for the island of Andros, captured by the Turks four years before, whose Greek inhabitants suffered more than the garrison from the excesses of his soldiers[673]. Meanwhile, the Republic had been working hard to form an alliance against the Sultan. At last, in the spring of 1571, a league was concluded at Rome between Pope Pius V, Philip II of Spain, and the Venetians for the destruction of the Ottoman power. It was the thirteenth time that a Holy Alliance had been made with that object; but it seemed as if the efforts of Christendom would finally be crowned with success. A large fleet was collected, under the supreme command of Don John of Austria, bastard son of the Emperor Charles V, while the papal galleys were placed under the charge of Marcantonio Colonna. But more than a month before the Armada had left Sicily for Corfù Cyprus had fallen, and while the allies were discussing their plans the Turkish fleet had ravished the Cretan coast, and carried off more than 6000 souls from Cephalonia. It was not till the morning of October 7 that the two navies met. The Turkish commander had taken up his position off Lepanto; while the Christian ships were stationed off the Echinades islands, outside the Gulf of Corinth. Against the advice of wiser men, Ali, the Turkish admiral, issued from the Gulf in search of the enemy. Suddenly the two fleets came in sight of one another. It was a striking scene; the varied colours of the Ottoman ships lighted up by the brilliant sunshine, which played upon the shining cuirasses of the Christian warriors; the blue waves of a Greek sea, calm and peaceful, where, centuries before, Corinthians and Corcyræans had fought a naval battle. On either side their modern representatives were to be found, 25,000 were serving as sailors in the Ottoman service, and 5000 more were on board the Venetian ships. Several Venetian galleys were actually commanded by Greeks; especially noteworthy were the exploits of the Corfiote Condocalli, who was the most famous of these Greek commanders; among his Greek colleagues were two Cretans, one a member of the historic clan of the Kallergai, whose name is writ large in the stormy history of the great Greek island. The contemporary Venetian historian, Paruta[674], specially awards the palm for courage, discipline, and skill combined to the Greeks, “as being most accustomed to that kind of warfare,” while he places both Italians and Spaniards below them. And another historian, Sagredo, says that “being more experienced in seafaring, they contributed not a little to the victory[675].” The defeat of the Turks was overwhelming; 224 ships taken or destroyed and 30,000 men slain represented their losses, while the allies lost only 15 galleys and 8000 men. Among the dead were the Turkish admiral and many of the scions of the noblest Venetian houses; among the wounded was the author of Don Quixote, who lost, like Æschylos at Marathon, a hand at Lepanto for the cause of Greece. The first impression which the victory caused at Constantinople was one of consternation, and for three days Selim refused to take food. Nor was this dismay without foundation: the Ottoman fleet had been annihilated; the Greeks were in revolt; and a cool-headed French diplomatist considered that the allies could easily have destroyed the Turkish Empire and taken Constantinople. But the discord of the victors and the energy of the Grand Vizier, Mohammed Sokolli, saved the Ottoman dominions. Within eight months after the battle a new Turkish fleet of 250 galleys, fifteen of which were contributed by the wealthy Greek merchant of Constantinople, Michael Cantacuzene, better known from his nickname of Saïtan Oglou, or “the Devil’s son,” left the Dardanelles, and Sokolli, contrasting the capture of Cyprus with the barren victory of Lepanto, could truly say that, if “the Republic had shorn his beard, he had cut off one of her arms.”

The battle of Lepanto has made a great noise in history, and Rome and Venice still preserve many memorials of that victory. But its results were valueless, so far as the Greeks were concerned, and, indeed, it would have been better for them if it had never been fought. They had welcomed with enthusiasm the advent of the allied fleet, which they confidently hoped would free them from the Turkish yoke; and, in the first excitement of the Christian victory, they flew to arms, and begged the victors to support their efforts on land by the presence of the fleet off the coast of the Morea. But, as usual, the Christian commanders differed as to the best means of utilising their success. At the council of war, which was held on board after the battle, one party advocated a naval demonstration off the Peloponnese, and another the capture of Eubœa, while a third proposed the seizure of Santa Maura, which the Venetians alone actually attempted, and a fourth suggested the siege of the two forts on either side of the Corinthian Gulf. In the end, as the season was far advanced, all farther united action was postponed to next year, and the fleet withdrew to Corfù, whence the Spanish and Papal contingents sailed to Italy, leaving the insurgents to themselves[676]. Many Moreotes had crossed over to the little town of Galaxidi, which the visitor to Delphi sees as he approaches the harbour of Itea, and there in a church they solemnly bound themselves, together with the townsfolk and the inhabitants of Salona, to rise against the Turk on the self-same day. “May he, who repents him of his oath or betrays what we have said, never see the face of God,” so runs the picturesque formula of the conspirators in the Chronicle of Galaxidi[677]. “And then,” says the Chronicler, “they all lifted up their hands to the eikons and swore a terrible oath.” But there was at least one traitor in the church at Galaxidi, a man from Aigion, on the opposite shore of the Gulf, who betrayed the dread secret to the Turks. While in the Morea the Ottomans wreaked vengeance on the conspirators and burnt the Archbishop of Patras alive as a fearful example, the ringleaders of the insurrection at Galaxidi, still “relying on the aid of the Franks,” marched with 3000 men against the noble Catalan fortress of Salona, then the residence of a Turkish Bey. On their arrival, however, they found a Turkish force drawn up in order of battle, and no Frankish contingent awaiting them. Disheartened and abandoned, they trusted to the invitation of the crafty Bey, who bade them come and tell him the story of their woes. The Bey received the deputation, eighty in all, with every honour, and listened sympathetically to their tale, bidding them be good subjects and mind their own affairs for the future. But, when the evening was come, he threw them into a dungeon of the castle, where all save one, a priest who escaped by his great personal strength, “died for their country and their faith.” Meanwhile, the Moreotes who had escaped from the Turks, had taken refuge in Maina, where the two brothers Melissenoi, from Epidauros, members of that famous Peloponnesian family, placed themselves at the head of 28,000 men, who continued the struggle for two whole years in that difficult country. Don John, who was still lingering idly at Messina, afraid to return to the East in consequence of the growing dissensions between France and Spain, wrote to one of the heroic brothers, bidding him keep the insurrection going till his arrival[678]. But it was not till August, 1572, that the victor of Lepanto again joined the allies in Greek waters. Even then, he accomplished nothing. For some time the two hostile fleets hovered off the coast of Messenia without an engagement, and attempts upon Navarino and Modon were abandoned. Then, as in the previous year, the allied armada broke up, while the Moreote insurgents withdrew to the most inaccessible mountains, until, abandoning all hope of their emancipation, they once more bowed their necks beneath the Turkish yoke[679]. The two Melissenoi survived and escaped to Naples, where a monument, removed in 1634, was erected to them in the Greek Church of SS. Peter and Paul[680], with an appropriate inscription, like those commemorating two exiles from Koron. Early in 1573 Venice made peace with the Sultan, and the historian Paruta considered that such a course was the wisest that his country could have adopted. The Republic acquiesced in the loss of Cyprus, and gained nothing in return for her efforts and her losses of blood and treasure during the war but the barren laurels of Lepanto. Upon the Turks the lessons of the recent campaign had not been thrown away. In order to check any fresh Greek rising, they fortified the coasts of the Morea, and built a fort at the entrance of the famous haven of Navarino. Nor had the disillusioned Greeks failed to gain a sad experience from their abandonment. Now, for the first time, we find the Venetian representative in Constantinople writing that the Sultan was afraid of the Muscovite, because of the devotion shown by the Eastern Christians towards a ruler of their own faith. As early as 1576 that astute diplomatist remarked that the Greeks were ready to take up arms and place themselves under Russian protection, in order to escape from the Turkish yoke[681]. The shadow of the Russian bear was beginning to wax, while that of the Venetian lion waned.

One result of the battle of Lepanto was to turn the attention of civilised Europe to Greece. Four years after the victory we find Athens “re-discovered” by the curiosity of Martin Kraus—or Crusius, as he styled himself—a professor at Tübingen, who wrote for information about the celebrated city to Theodosios Zygomalas, a Greek born at Nauplia but living at Constantinople. Zygomalas had often visited Athens, which the frequent wars in the Levant, the depredations of corsairs, and the fact that the usual pilgrims’ route to Palestine lay far to the south had so completely isolated from Europe that the densest ignorance prevailed about it in the West. He mentions in his reply the melody of the Athenian songs, which “charmed those who heard them, as though they were the music of sirens,” the salubrity of the air, the excellence of the water, the good memories and euphonious voices of the inhabitants, among whom, as he states elsewhere, there then were “about 160 bishops and priests.” At the same time he remarks of the language then spoken at Athens that “if you heard the Athenians talk your eyes would fill with tears.” Another Greek, Simeon Kabasilas of Arta, informed Kraus that of all the seventy odd dialects of Greece the Attic of that day was the worst. The Greek and “Ishmaelite,” or Turkish, populations lived, he wrote, in separate quarters of the town, which contained “12,000 male inhabitants[682].” We learn too, from a short account of Athens discovered in the National Library at Paris in 1862, and composed in Greek in the sixteenth century[683], that the Tower of the Winds was then a tekkeh of dervishes, and the mosque in the Parthenon was called Ismaïdi.

In spite of the depreciatory remarks on the culture of the sixteenth-century Athenians which Kraus permitted himself to make on the strength of his second-hand investigations, learning was even in that age not quite extinct in its ancient home. It was then that there flourished at Athens an accomplished nun, Philothee Benizelou, afterwards included, for her piety and charitable foundations, among those whom the Greek Church calls “blessed,” and buried in the beautiful little Gorgoepekoos church. But, though she founded the Convent of St Andrew on the site of what is now the chapel of the Metropolitan of Athens, within whose walls she established the first girls’ school of Turkish Athens, she has left a most uncomplimentary description of the Athenians of her day, with whom she had some pecuniary difficulties and upon whom she showers a string of abusive epithets in the best classical style[684]. Two other religious foundations also mark this period—that of the Church of the Archangels in 1577 in the Stoa of Hadrian, where an inscription still commemorates it, and that of the monastery of Pentele, built in the following year by Timotheos, Archbishop of Eubœa, whose skull, set in jewels, may still be seen there. The monks of Pentele had to send 3000 okes of honey every year to the great mosques of Constantinople[685]. We may infer from these facts that the Turkish authority sat lightly upon a town which was allowed the rare privilege of erecting new places of worship. The idea too then current in the West that Athens had been entirely destroyed, and that its site was occupied by a few huts, was obviously as absurd as the sketches of the city in the form of a Flemish or German town which were made in the fifteenth century. A place of “12,000 men” was not to be despised; and, if we may accept the statement of Kabasilas[686], the male population of the Athens of 1578 was twice as large as the whole population of the Athens which Otho made his capital in 1834, and about equal to the entire population estimated by Stuart, Holland, Forbin and Pouqueville in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It has sometimes been supposed, in accordance with the local tradition, that the city was placed, immediately after the Turkish conquest, under the authority of the chief eunuch at Constantinople; but it has now been shown that that arrangement was introduced much later. From the Turkish conquest to the capture of Eubœa from the Venetians in 1470 Athens was the seat of a pasha, and capital of the first of the five sandjaks, or provinces, into which the conqueror divided continental Greece. In that year the seat of the pasha was transferred to Chalkis, which then became the capital of the sandjak of the Euripos, of which Athens sank to be a district, or caza. In this position of dependence the once famous city continued till about the year 1610, being administered by a subordinate of the Eubœan pasha[687], who every year paid it a much-dreaded visit of inspection, which, like most Turkish official visits, was very expensive to the hosts.

From the conclusion of the war of Cyprus in 1573 to the outbreak of the Cretan war in 1645 there was peace between Venice and the Turks, so that Greece ceased for over seventy years to be the battle-ground of those ancient foes. But spasmodic risings still occurred even during that comparatively quiet period. Thus, in 1585, a famous armatolós, Theodore Boua Grivas, raised the standard of revolt in the mountainous districts of Akarnania and Epeiros, at the instigation of the Venetians. His example was followed by two other armatoloí, Drakos and Malamos, who took Arta and marched on Joannina. But this insurrection was speedily suppressed by the superior forces of the Turks, and Grivas, badly wounded, was fain to escape to the Venetian island of Ithake, where he died of his injuries[688]. Somewhat later, in 1611, Dionysios, Archbishop of Trikkala, made a further attempt on Joannina; but he was betrayed by the Jews, then, as ever, on the Turkish side, and flayed alive. His skin, stuffed with straw, was sent to Constantinople. Another Thessalian archbishop, accused of complicity with him, was offered the choice of apostasy or death, and manfully chose the latter, a choice which has given him a place in the martyrology of modern Greece[689].

The greatest disturbance to the pacific development of the country arose, however, from the corsairs, who descended upon its coasts almost without intermission from the date of the Turkish conquest to the latter part of the seventeenth century. The damage inflicted by these pirates, who belonged to the Christian no less than to the Mussulman religion, and who made no distinction between the creeds of their victims, led the Greeks to dwell at a distance from the seaboard, in places that were not easily accessible; and thus the coast acquired that deserted look which it has not wholly lost even now[690]. The worst of these wretches were the Uscocs of Dalmatia, whose inhuman cruelties have rarely been surpassed. Sometimes they would eat the hearts of their victims; sometimes they would chain the crew below the deck, and then leave the captured vessel adrift, and its inmates to die of starvation, on the blue Ionian or the stormy Adriatic sea. In addition to the common pirates there were organised freebooters of higher rank, such as the Knights of Santo Stefano, founded by Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1560, and the Knights of Malta. The former, whose church at Pisa contains on its ceiling a picture of the taking and plunder of “Nicopolis Actiaca” (the modern Prevesa) in 1605, besides many Turkish trophies, were convenient auxiliaries of the Florentine fleet, because their exploits could be disowned by the government if unsuccessful. Towards the close of the sixteenth century the Florentines were able to occupy Chios for a moment; but the Turks soon regained possession of that rich island, and visited the sins of the Tuscans upon the inhabitants whom they had come to deliver. Years afterwards a traveller saw a row of grim skulls on the battlements of the fort, and the descendants of the Genoese settlers, who had hitherto received specially favourable treatment from the Sultan, were so badly treated that they mostly emigrated[691]. In emulation of the Knights of Santo Stefano those of Malta in 1603 sacked Patras, which had been burned by a Spanish squadron only eight years before, and occupied Lepanto, which in the seventeenth century bore the ominous nickname of “Little Algiers,” from the pirates of Algiers and Tripoli who made it their headquarters. When, in 1676, the traveller Spon visited it, he found a number of Moors settled down there with their coal-black progeny[692]. A few years later the Maltese, baffled in an attempt on Navarino, retaliated on Corinth, whence they carried off 500 captives. Finally in 1620 they assailed the famous Frankish castle of Glarentza, in the strong walls of which their bombs opened a breach; but the approach of a considerable Turkish force compelled them to return to their ships, after having attained no other result than that of having injured one of the most interesting mediæval monuments in Greece. Another Frankish stronghold, that of Passavâ, was surprised by the Spaniards when they ravaged Maina in 1601. The co-operation of that restive population with the invaders, whose predatory tastes they shared, led the Porte to adopt strong measures against the Mainates, who in 1614 were, in name at least, reduced to submission and compelled to pay tribute[693]. But though the capitan pasha was thus able to starve Maina into submission he could not protect the Greeks against the pirates, who so long preyed upon their commerce, burnt their villages, debauched their women, and desolated their land. Had Turkey been a strong maritime power, able to sweep piracy from the seas, Greece would have been spared much suffering and would have had less damage to repair.

It was at this time too that the classic land of the arts began to suffer from another form of depredation, that of the cultured collector. To a British nobleman belongs the discredit of this revival of the work of Nero. About 1613 the earl of Arundel was seized with the idea of “transplanting old Greece into England.” With this object he commissioned political agents, merchants, and others, chief among them William Petty, uncle of the well-known political economist, to scour the Levant in quest of statues. His example speedily found imitators, such as the duke of Buckingham, and King Charles I, who charged the English admiral in the Levant, Sir Kenelm Digby, with the duty of collecting works of art for the royal palace. Needless to say the rude sailors who were ordered to remove the precious pieces of marble often mutilated what they could not remove intact. They sawed in two a statue of Apollo at Delos, and they might have anticipated the achievements of Lord Elgin at Athens had not its distance from the sea and the suspicions of the Turkish garrison on the Akropolis saved it from the fate to which the Cyclades were exposed[694].

While the corsairs were devastating Greece a picturesque adventurer, who recalls the abortive scheme of Charles VIII of France, was engaged in planning her deliverance. Charles Gonzaga, duc de Nevers, boasted of his connection with the imperial house of the Palaiologoi through his grandmother, Margaret of Montferrat, a descendant of the Emperor Andronikos Palaiologos the Elder[695]. After having fought against the Turks in Hungary he conceived the romantic idea of claiming the throne of Constantinople, with which object he visited various European courts, and about 1612 entered into negotiations with the Greeks. His schemes received a willing hearing from the restless Mainates, who sent three high ecclesiastics to assure him of their readiness to recognise him as their liege lord if he would send them a body of experienced officers to organise a force of 10,000 Greeks. They even promised to become Roman Catholics, and arranged, on paper, for the division of the Turkish lands among themselves, and for the confiscation of all Jewish property in order to defray the expenses of the expedition. The pretender, on his part, sent three trusty agents to spy out the land and make plans of the Turkish positions; they came back with most hopeful accounts of the enthusiasm of the Mainates, who were only waiting for the favourable moment to raise the two-headed eagle on the walls of Mistra. Neophytos, the bishop of Maina, and Chrysanthos Laskaris, the Metropolitan of Lacedæmon, and namesake of the Manuel Laskaris whose tomb may still be seen in one of the churches at Mistra, addressed him as Constantine Palaiologos, and told him to hasten his coming among his faithful people, who in proof of their submission sent him some falcons.

But the duc de Nevers wasted in diplomacy time which should have been devoted to prompt action. He appealed to Pope Paul V, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the King of Spain, and the Emperor, who were all profuse in promises and some of whom furnished him with ships and money. An attempt was also made to stir up the other Christian nationalities of the East, and a meeting of Albanian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Serbian leaders was held for the purpose of concerted action, while the two hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia promised their aid. Another adventurer, who styled himself Sultan Zachias and gave out that he was a brother of the Sultan Ahmed I, was admitted as an ally. Finally, in order to give a religious character to the movement, the duke founded and became chief of a body calling itself the “Christian army,” commissions in which were offered to the conspirators, among whom we find the name of a learned Athenian, Leonardos Philaras[696], who was patronised by Richelieu and to whom Milton addressed two letters. A date was fixed for the rising, and four memoranda were addressed to the duke, with full particulars of his future realm of Greece. From these we learn that in 1619 the Peloponnese could furnish him with 15,000 fighting men, while it contained 8000 Turks capable of bearing arms, of whom 800 formed the scanty garrisons of Koron, Modon, Navarino and Nauplia. At that time, we are told, there were 800 Turkish military fiefs in the Morea, and the population of Maina was estimated at 4913 families, spread over 125 villages and hamlets. These statistics are the most valuable result of the agitation.

After several years of correspondence and negotiation the pretender at last managed to equip five vessels for the transport of his crusaders; but a sudden fire, perhaps the work of an incendiary, laid them in ashes, and the jealousy of Spain and Venice prevented any effective political action. The “Christian army” still went on meeting and discussing its plan of campaign, and two more strange adventurers—a Moor who had become a Christian and styled himself “Infant of Fez,” and a Greek who, with even greater ambition, had adopted the title of “prince of Macedonia”—became the principal agents of the duke. At last, however, every one grew weary of his absurd pretensions, and the secession of the Pope from his side finally destroyed his hopes[697].

During the Cretan war between Venice and the Turks two risings were promoted by the Venetians in Greece for the purpose of diverting the attention of their enemies. In 1647 the Venetian admiral, Grimani, after chasing the Turkish fleet to Eubœa and Volo, blockaded it within the harbour of Nauplia. At this the Albanians of the Peloponnese, who were very favourable to the Republic, rose against the Turks, and after having done a considerable amount of damage to Turkish property, escaped punishment by fleeing on board the Venetian squadron. A Greek, more daring but less fortunate, conceived the idea of setting fire to the Turkish vessels as they lay in harbour, but paid for his audacity with his life[698]. In 1659 the Mainates, who had availed themselves of the war to throw off every shadow of subjection to the Sultan, but who plundered Venetian and Turkish ships with equal impartiality, were induced by the great Francesco Morosini to devote their abilities to the plunder of the Morea. At that time piracy was the principal profession of the Mainate population, who sold Christians to Turks and Turks to Christians. Priests and monks, we are told, joined in the business, and the fact that they lived in caves overlooking the sea made them valuable auxiliaries of the pirates, whom they informed of the approach of passing vessels. Some of them even embarked on board the pirate schooners, for the purpose of levying the tithe which was allotted by the pious freebooters to the Church[699]. These schooners sometimes sailed out among the Cyclades, and just as Lepanto was nicknamed “Little Algiers” so Vitylos in Maina was called “Great Algiers.” Well acquainted with the influence of the Church in eastern politics, Morosini worked upon the feelings of the Mainates by taking with him the deposed Œcumenical Patriarch, then living on the island of Siphnos. The pirates of Maina humbly kissed the hand of the eminent ecclesiastic, and 10,000 of them, with 3000 Greeks and Albanians, assisted the Venetian commander in an attack upon Kalamata, which was abandoned by its Mussulman and Christian inhabitants alike to its rapacious assailants. The Cretan poet Bouniales has left a graphic account of their proceedings in his poem on the Cretan war.

But no strategic result accrued from the sack of Kalamata; Morosini sailed off to the Ægean, advising the Mainates to reserve their energies for a more favourable opportunity of conquering the Peloponnese. The auxiliaries of the Venetian commander, pending that event, continued to prey upon Turkish vessels, and even attacked the fleet of the Grand Vizier, Ahmed Köprili, which was then engaged in the siege of Candia. The offer of double the pay of his own soldiers could not bribe the Mainates to desist from their at once patriotic and profitable piracies. Baffled by their refusal, the Grand Vizier ordered Hasân-Babâ, a pirate of renown and accounted the best seaman in the Turkish fleet, to reduce Maina to submission. But the women of Maina sufficed to strike terror into the heart of the bold Hasân. “Tell my husband,” said one of them, “to mind the goat, and hold the child, and I will go and find his weapons and use them better than he.” At the head of the population the women marched down to the shore, and the Turkish captain thought it wiser to remain on board. But in the evening experienced swimmers cut the cables of his ships, two of which were driven upon the rocks of that iron coast and became the prey of the wreckers, while Hasân was glad to escape on his sole surviving vessel.

Unable to subdue the Mainates by force, the Grand Vizier now had recourse to diplomacy. The hereditary blood feud had long been the curse of Maina, and its inhabitants were divided into the hostile factions of the Stephanopouloi and the Iatraioi—the Montagues and Capulets of that rugged land. At that time there was in Maina a certain Liberakes Gerakares, who, after an apprenticeship in the Venetian fleet, had turned his nautical experience to practical use as a pirate. In an interval of his profession he had become engaged to a daughter of the clan of Iatraioi, who boasted of their descent from one of the Florentine Medici, formerly shipwrecked there; but, before the wedding had taken place, a rival, belonging to the opposite clan, eloped with the lady. Smarting under his loss and burning for revenge upon the whole race of the Stephanopouloi, the disappointed lover was accidentally captured by the Turks at sea and carried off to prison. The crafty Köprili saw at once that Liberakes was the very man for his purpose. He not only released him, but provided him with money, and sent him back to Maina in the capacity of his secret agent. Liberakes at once distributed the pasha’s gold among his clansmen and proclaimed civil war against the Stephanopouloi. At the same time the Mainates were told of favours which the Grand Vizier had in store for them—the use of bells and crosses outside their churches, the abolition of the tribute of children, and the remission of half the capitation tax. No Turk, it was added, should live among them.

As soon as Crete had fallen Köprili devoted his attention to the accomplishment of his plan. He peremptorily summoned the Mainates, under penalty of extermination, to submit to his authority, promising them an amnesty and the remission of all arrears of tribute in case of prompt submission. At the same time he despatched 6000 men to Maina, with orders to treat the people well, but to build, under the pretext of protecting trade, three forts in strong positions. As soon, however, as the forts were finished, Liberakes and his men seized some of their most prominent foes, while the Turks preserved an air of complete indifference. After a mock trial the unfortunate Stephanopouloi were sentenced to death as disturbers of the public peace. Those of them who escaped emigrated to Corsica, where their descendants may still be found at Cargèse. More than a century later they furnished to Bonaparte agents for the dissemination of his plans of conquest in Greece. Other Mainates went into exile in Tuscany, where their descendants soon became fused with the Italian population, and in Apulia, while those who remained behind were for the second time placed under Turkish authority. Liberakes, as soon as his deluded countrymen had realised the device of which they had been the victims, became so unpopular that he took to piracy again. A second time captured by the Turks, he was again imprisoned till his captors once more found need for his services[700].

While Candia was the scene of the great struggle between Venice and “the Ottomite,” Athens was once more coming within the ken of Europe. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the French showed much activity in the Levant, where they established consuls about that time. In 1630 the French ambassador at Constantinople, Louis des Hayes, had visited Athens[701], of which a brief mention is made in his travels, and in 1645 a very important step towards the “re-discovery” of the famous city was taken. In that year a body of Jesuit missionaries were sent thither, and though they subsequently removed to Negroponte, because that place contained more Franks, they were followed at Athens in 1658 by the Capuchins, whose name will ever be remembered in connection with the topography of that city. In 1669 they bought the choragic monument of Lysikrates, then colloquially known as “the Lantern of Demosthenes,” which henceforth formed part of their convent[702]. Over the entrance they placed the lilies of France, to which the monument still belongs, and by whose care it has twice been restored; but their hospitality was extended to strangers of all races and religions, and it is curious to hear that the Turkish cadi would only sanction this purchase of a national monument on condition that the Capuchins promised not to injure it and to show it to all who wished to see it. The monument itself was converted into a study, where Lord Byron passed many an hour during his visit to Athens in 1811, and where he wrote his famous indictment of Lord Elgin’s vandalism. The chapel of the convent was, till the capture of the city by Morosini, the only Frankish place of worship. But the worthy Capuchins did not confine themselves to religious exercises. About the same time that they purchased the choragic monument they drew up a plan of Athens, which was a great advance on the imaginary representations of that place, which had hitherto been devised to gratify the curiosity of Europe, and which had depicted Athens now as a Flemish and now as a German town. Nor did they keep their information to themselves. They communicated their plan and a quantity of notes to a French literary man, Guillet, who published them in the form of an imaginary journey, supposed to have been undertaken by his brother, La Guilletière. The sources of Guillet’s information render his narrative far more valuable than if he had merely paid a flying visit to Athens; and though he never saw the place about which he wrote he had at his command the best available materials, compiled by men who had lived there. About the same time Babin, a Jesuit who had also lived at Athens, drew up an account of it, which was published by Dr Spon[703], a physician and antiquary of Lyons, who visited Greece in 1675 and 1676 in the company of an Englishman, Sir George Wheler, and subsequently issued a detailed account of his travels, upon which his travelling companion afterwards based an English version. Two other Englishmen, Randolph and Vernon, also travelled in Greece at different times between 1671 and 1679, and have left behind records of their impressions. Besides these unofficial travellers Lord Winchelsea, the British ambassador at Constantinople, paid a visit, of which, however, he published no record, to Athens in 1675, while the previous year had witnessed the tour of his French colleague, the marquis de Nointel, through the Cyclades and Attica, in the company of the painter Jacques Carrey, who drew for him the sculptures of the Parthenon, and of an Italian, Cornelio Magni, who wrote an account of the great man’s journey[704]. Thus we have ample opportunities for judging what was the condition of Athens between the years 1669 and 1676, or shortly before the Venetian siege, while recent researches have greatly elucidated the statements of the travellers.

The population of Athens at that time is estimated by Guillet at between 15,000 and 16,000, of whom only 1000 or 1200 were Mussulmans, and by Spon at between 8000 and 9000, of whom three-quarters were Greeks and the rest Turks. A modern Greek scholar[705], while accepting Spon’s estimate of the proportion between the Greeks and the Mussulmans, puts the total population at the time of the Venetian siege at 20,000, which would better tally with the expression of a Hessian officer, Hombergk, who was among the besiegers, and who wrote home that Athens was “a very big and populous town.” Another German officer, a Hanoverian, named Zehn, even went so far in his journal as to state that Athens had “14,000 houses[706],” which must be an exaggeration. In 1822 there were only 1238. It is clear, however, from all these estimates that Athens was in 1687 a considerable place. Besides the Greeks and Turks there were also a few Franks, some gipsies, and a body of negroes. The negroes were the slaves of the Turks, living in winter at the foot of the Akropolis, in the holes of the rock, in huts, or among the ruins of old houses, and in summer, like the modern Athenians, spending their spare time on the beach at Phaleron. The gipsies were particularly odious to the Greeks as the tools of any Turk who wished to torture them. Among the Franks were the consuls, of whom there were two. At the time of Spon’s visit they were both Frenchmen and both deadly enemies, M. Châtaignier, the representative of France, and M. Giraud, a resident in Athens for the last eighteen years, who acted for England and was the cicerone of all travellers. A little later, in the reign of James II, we were represented by one of our own countrymen, Launcelot Hobson, one of whose servants, a native of Limehouse, together with two other Englishmen, was buried at that time in the Church of St Mary’s-on-the-Rock beneath a tombstone, now in the north wall of the English church, commemorating his great linguistic attainments. Besides the two consuls Spon found no other Franks at Athens, except one Capuchin monk, one soldier, and some servants; a little earlier we hear of a German adventurer as living there[707].

Our authorities differ as to the feelings with which at that period the Athenians regarded the Franks. Guillet, indeed, alludes to the excellent relations between the Greeks and Latins, and points, as a proof of it, to the remarkable fact that young Athenians were sent by their parents to be educated by the Capuchins. The consul Giraud’s wife was also a Greek. Spon, however, speaks of the great aversion of the Greeks to the Franks[708], and this is confirmed by an incident which followed the visit of the marquis de Nointel to Athens in 1674. During his stay the pious ambassador had had mass recited in the ancient temple of Triptolemos, beyond the Ilissos, which, under the title of St Mary’s-on-the-Rock, had served as a chapel of the Frank dukes[709]. After their time it had been converted into a Greek church, but had been allowed to fall into disuse. None the less it was considered by the Orthodox to have been profaned by the masses of the French ambassador[710]. A great number of satirical verses have been also preserved[711], which show that the Frank residents were the butt of every sharp-witted Athenian street boy, and their cleanly habits were especially suspicious to the Orthodox. Besides, as many of the pirates were Franks, the popular logic readily confounded the two, and visited upon the harmless Latin the sins of some of his co-religionists. It was manifest, however, at the time of the Venetian siege that the Athenians preferred the Franks to the Turks, and every traveller from the West praised the hospitality which the Greeks of Athens showed to the foreigner. Spon tells us that there was not a single Jew to be found in the city. Quite apart from the national hatred which they inspired, and still inspire, in the Hellenic breast, how could they outwit the Athenians[712]? Would they not have fared like their fellow countrymen who landed one day on Lesbos, but, on observing the astuteness of the Lesbian hucksters in the market-place, went off by the next ship, saying that this was no place for them? On the other hand a few Wallachs wandered about Athens, some Albanian Mussulmans were employed in guarding the entrances to the town, and in all the villages of Attica the inhabitants were of the Albanian race, as is still largely the case[713]. In Athens itself all the non-Turkish and non-Hellenic population did not amount at that time to more than 500.

A great change had taken place in the government of the city since the early years of the seventeenth century. We last saw Athens forming a district of the sandjak of Euripos, and dependent on the pasha of Eubœa, who was represented there by a lower official. A document in the Bodleian Library[714], dated 1617, gives us, from the pen of a Greek exile in England, an account of the exactions of a rapacious Turkish governor of Athens somewhat earlier. In consequence of this bad treatment the Athenians sent several deputations to Constantinople, and about the year 1610 the efforts of their delegates received strong support from one of those Athenian beauties who have from time to time exercised sway over the rulers of Constantinople. A young girl, named Basilike, who had become the favourite wife of Sultan Ahmed I, had been requested by him to ask some favour for herself. The patriotic Athenian, who had heard in her childhood complaints of the exactions of the pasha of Euripos and his deputy, and perhaps primed by one of the Athenian deputations which may then have been at Constantinople, begged that her native city might be transferred to the kislar-aga, or chief of the black eunuchs in the seraglio. The request was granted, and thenceforth Athens, greatly to its material benefit, depended upon that powerful official[715]. A firman, renewable on the accession of a new sultan, spared the citizens the annual visitation of the pasha of Euripos, who could only descend upon them when the issue of the precious document was delayed. The kislar-aga was represented at Athens by a voivode, or governor, and the other Turkish officials were the disdar-aga, or commander of the garrison in the Akropolis, which shortly before the Venetian war amounted to 300 soldiers; the sardar and the spahilar-aga, who directed the Janissaries and the cavalry; the cadi; and the mufti.

The Athenians enjoyed, however, under this Turkish administration an almost complete system of local self-government. Unlike the democratic Greece of to-day, where there is no aristocracy and where every man considers himself the equal of his fellows, Turkish Athens exhibited sharp class distinctions, which had at least the advantage of furnishing a set of rulers who had the respect of the ruled. Under the Turks the Greek population of the town was divided into four classes—the archontes; the householders, who lived on their property; the shopkeepers, organised, as now, in different guilds; and the cultivators of the lands or gardens in the immediate suburbs, who also included in their ranks those engaged in the important business of bee-keeping[716]. The first of these four classes, into which members of the other three never rose, had originally consisted of twelve families, representing—so the tradition stated—the twelve ancient tribes of the fourth century before Christ. Their number subsequently varied, but about this period amounted to rather more than sixty. Among their names it is interesting to find, though no longer in the very first rank, the family (which still exists at Athens) of the Athenian historian Chalkokondyles, slightly disguised under the form Charkondyles. More important were the Benizeloi, said to be descended from the Acciajuoli, whose Christian names occur frequently in their family, and the Palaiologoi, who boasted, without much genealogical proof, of their connection with the famous Imperial family. Some of the archontes went so far as to use the Byzantine double eagle on their tombs, of which a specimen may still be seen in the monastery of Kaisariane, and all wore a peculiar costume, of which a fur cap was in later Turkish times a distinctive mark. Their flowing locks and long beards gave them the majestic appearance of Greek ecclesiastics, and the great name of Alexander was allowed to be borne by them alone. This Athenian aristocracy is now all but extinct; yet the names of localities round Athens still preserve the memory of these once important families, and in Mount Skaramangka, near Salamis, and in Pikermi, on the road to Marathon, we may trace the property of archontes, who once owned those places, while in modern Athens the names of streets commemorate the three great families of Chalkokondyles, Benizelos and Limponas.

From this class of some sixty families the Christian administrators of Athens were selected. Once a year, on the last Sunday in February, all the citizens who paid taxes assembled outside St Panteleemon, which was in Turkish times the metropolitan church, after a solemn service inside; the principal householders and tradesmen and the heads of the guilds then exchanged their views, and elected from the whole body of archontes the chief officials for the ensuing year, the so-called δημογέροντες, or “elders of the people.” There is some difference of opinion as to their numbers, which have been variously estimated at two, three, four, eight and twenty-four. A recent Greek scholar has, however, shown from the evidence of documents that they were three[717]. After their election had been ratified by the cadi they entered upon the duties of their office, which practically constituted an imperium in imperio. They represented the Greek population before the Turkish authorities, watched over the privileges of the city, looked after the schools and the poor, cared for the widows and the orphans, and decided every Monday, under the presidency of the metropolitan, such differences between the Greeks as the litigants did not prefer to submit to the cadi. Their decision was almost always sought by their fellow Christians, and even in mixed cases, which came before the Turkish judge, they acted as the counsel of the Greek party. They had the first seats everywhere; they were allotted a special place in the churches, and when they passed the people rose to their feet. Each of them received for his trouble 1000 piastres during his year of office, and they were entitled to levy a tax upon salt for the expenses of the community. They sometimes combined the usual vices of slaves with those of tyrants, fawning on the Turkish officials and frowning on the Greek populace. But they often had the courage to impeach the administration of some harsh governor at Constantinople, and, like the rest of the class from which they sprang, they sometimes made sacrifices of blood and treasure for their native city. In addition to these “elders” there were eight other officials of less age and dignity, called “agents,” or ἐπίτροποι, and elected from each of the eight parishes into which Athens was then divided. These persons, who were chosen exclusively from the class of archontes, acted as go-betweens between the latter and the Turkish authorities.

Thus the English traveller Randolph was justified in asserting that “the Greeks live much better here than in any other part of Turkey, with the exception of Scio, being a small commonwealth among themselves[718]”; or, as a modern writer has said of his countrymen, “the Athenians did not always feel the yoke of slavery heavy[719].” The taxes were not oppressive, consisting of the haratch, or capitation tax, which in Spon’s time was at the rate of five instead of four and a half piastres a head, and of a tithe, both of which went to the voivode, who in turn had to pay 30,000 crowns to the chief eunuch. There was also the terrible tribute of children, from which Athens was not exempt, as has sometimes been supposed, for the above-mentioned Lincoln College manuscript, which had belonged to Sir George Wheler and was first published by Professor Lampros, expressly mentions the arrival of the men to take them[720]. But on the whole the condition of the Athenians, owing to the influence of their powerful protector at Constantinople, was very tolerable. When some of the principal Turkish officials of Athens meditated the imposition of a new duty on Athenian merchandise, two local merchants were sent to the then chief eunuch, with the result that they obtained from him the punishment of their oppressors[721]. When the Œcumenical Patriarch ordered the deposition of their metropolitan, the Athenians persuaded the kislar-aga to get the order quashed[722]. We do not know whether they felt with Gibbon that this august patronage “aggravated their shame,” but it certainly “alleviated their servitude.” At times, however, even the long arm of the chief eunuch could not protect them from the vengeance of the enemies whom they had denounced to him. Thus in 1678 the local Turks murdered Michael Limponas, the most prominent citizen of Athens, who had just returned from a successful mission, in which he had complained of their misdeeds at Constantinople. A Cretan poet celebrated his death for his country, and this archon of the seventeenth century may truly be included among the martyrs of Greece[723]. It was noticed that, even in that age, the old Athenian love of liberty had not been extinguished by more than four centuries of Frankish and Turkish rule; the Attic air, it was said, still made those who breathed it intolerant of authority. Babin remarked that the Athenians had “a great opinion of themselves,” and that “if they had their liberty they would be just as they are described by St Paul in the Acts[724].” Athens, he wrote, still possessed persons of courage and virtue, such as the girl who received sixty blows of a knife rather than lose her honour, and the child who died rather than apostatise.

The Athenians were very religious under the Turkish sway, and then, as now, there were frequent pilgrimages to the Holy Land[725]. Sometimes this religious feeling was prone to degenerate into superstition; for example, Greeks and Turks alike believed that various epidemics lay buried beneath the great marble columns of the ruined temples. In short, the Athenian character was much what it might have been expected to be. Industrious, musical, and hospitable, the Greeks of Athens were admitted to be, and the virtue of the Athenian ladies was no less admired than their good looks. But the satirical talents of Aristophanes had descended to the Athenians of the seventeenth century; no one could escape from the barbed arrows of their caustic wit, sometimes poisoned with the spirit of envy; they ridiculed Turks, and Franks, and Wallachs, and their own fellow-countrymen alike, and they delighted in inflicting nicknames which stuck to their unhappy object. Their love of money and astuteness in business may have given rise to the current saying, “From the Jews of Thessalonika, the Turks of Negroponte, and the Greeks of Athens, good Lord, deliver us.” In striking contrast to the proverbial Turks of Eubœa, those resident in Athens were usually amiable[726]. They generally agreed well with their Greek neighbours, whose language they spoke very well. In fact, like the Cretan Mussulmans of to-day, they knew only a few words of Turkish, barely sufficient for their religious devotions, while some of the Greeks were acquainted with the latter language. Sometimes the Turkish residents would aid the Greeks to get rid of an unpopular governor; and, when Easter and Bairam coincided, they would take a fraternal interest in each other’s festivals. The Athenian Moslem drank wine, like his Christian fellow, and his zeal for water and his respect for trees were distinct benefits, the latter of which modern Athens has now lost. There was, however, one notable exception to the general amiability of the Turkish residents. The Greek population of Attica, as distinct from the town, was much oppressed by the Turkish landlords, and despised by the Greek townsfolk. One part of Athens, and that the holy of holies, the venerable Akropolis, was exclusively reserved to the Turks, and no rayah was allowed to enter it, not because of its artistic treasures, but because it was a fortress. Archæological researches there were regarded with grave suspicion[727].

Education was not neglected by the Athenians of the seventeenth century. From 1614 to 1619 and again in 1645 a wayward Athenian genius, named Korydalleus, was teaching philosophy to a small class there. A Greek, resident in Venice, founded a school there in 1647, and in Spon’s time there were three schoolmasters—among them Demetrios Benizelos, who had studied in Venetia—employed in giving lectures in rhetoric and philosophy, while many young Greeks went to the classes of the Capuchins. Babin tells us, however, that Benizelos (whose father, Angelos, and younger brother, Joannes, were also teachers) had “only two or three hearers, everyone being now occupied in amassing a little money.” We hear of a Greek monk who was acquainted with Latin; but Spon could find only three people in Athens who understood ancient Greek[728]. A century earlier, as we saw, correspondents of Kraus had commented on the badness of the Attic Greek of their day. Yet, according to Guillet, it was by this time “the purest and least corrupt idiom in Greece,” and “Athenian phrases and a Nauplian accent” were commended as the perfection of Greek. Externally too Athens was no mere barbarous collection of huts. The houses were of stone, and better built than those of the Morea; and a picture which has been preserved[729] of an archon’s house of the later Turkish period, constructed round a court with trees and a fountain in the middle, shows the influence of Mussulman taste on the Athenian aristocracy. The solid construction of the houses, and the name of “towers” (πύργοι) given to the country villas of the archontes, as in the island of Andros to the present day, were both due to the prevalence of piracy, then the curse of Athens. But the streets were unpaved and narrow—an arrangement better adapted, however, to the fierce heat of an Attic summer than the wide thoroughfares of the modern Greek capital. The town was then divided into eight parishes, or platómata, the name of one of which, Plaka, survives, and contained no fewer than fifty-two churches and five mosques. Among the latter were the Parthenon, or “Mosque of the Castle,” the minaret of which figures conspicuously in the contemporary plans, and the “Mosque of the Conqueror,” now used as the military bakery, which had been converted from a church by Mohammed II[730]. The most important of the former was the metropolitan church, the Καθολικόν, as it was then called, usually identified with the small building which still bears that name, but supposed by Kampouroglos to have been that of St Panteleemon[731]. Although the clergy had less influence at Athens than in some other parts of Greece, the metropolitan, as we have seen, was a personage of political importance; he received at that time 4000 crowns a year, and had under his jurisdiction the five bishops of Salona, Livadia, Boudonitza, Atalante and Skyros. The monastery of Kaisariane, or Syriane, on Hymettos, or “Deli-Dagh” (the “Mad Mountain”), as the Turks called it, still paid only one sequin to the voivode in consideration of the fact that its abbot had presented the keys of Athens to Mohammed II at the time of the conquest[732]. The Catholic archbishopric of Athens had, however, ceased to exist on the death of the last Archbishop in 1483, and the churches and monasteries which had belonged to it in Frankish days had been recovered by the Orthodox Greeks.

Although the Ilissos even then, as now, contained very little water, there were a number of gardens along its banks above the town, with country houses at Ambelokepoi, and the excellent air and its freedom from plague at that period made Athens a healthy residence, where doctors could not make a living[733]. There were still some rich merchants; but the trade of Athens was mainly limited to the agricultural produce of the neighbourhood, to the export of oil, and to a little silk, imported from other parts and woven in private houses. Randolph mentions that, in 1671, an inspector from Constantinople found about 50,000 olive trees in the plain, and some of the olives were esteemed so delicious that they were reserved for the Sultan’s table. The oil was excellent, and was exported every year to Marseilles. Athens also supplied cotton sail-cloth to the Turkish navy[734]. As for the wine, though good, it was voted undrinkable by all the travellers of that period, owing to the resin with which it was impregnated[735]. Honey was still as famous a product of Hymettos as in classic ages, and the monks of Kaisariane were specially renowned for their hives. Trade being thus small, it is not surprising that few Franks resided at Athens. Such as it was, it was entirely in Greek hands.

The monuments of Athens had not then suffered from the havoc so soon to be wrought by the bombs of Morosini. When Des Hayes was there the Parthenon was as entire and as little damaged by the injuries of time as if it had only just been built. The Turks, whatever their faults may have been, had shown great respect for the venerable relics of ancient Athens, which had now been in their power for two centuries. When a piece of the frieze of Phidias fell they carefully placed it inside the Parthenon, the interior of which was at that time entirely whitewashed[736]; the external appearance of that noble temple, as it then was, can be judged from the published drawings of Carrey. The Akropolis was fortified, and occupied by the garrison, whose houses, about 200 in number, covered a portion of its surface, and the Odeion of Herodes Atticus (then called Serpentzes) was joined by a wall with and formed a bulwark of it. The Propylæa served as the residence of the commander, the disdar-aga, whose harem was in the Erechtheion[737], and the Temple of Wingless Victory had been converted into a powder magazine. Unfortunately the Turks had also stored their ammunition in the Propylæa, and in 1656 a curious accident caused it to explode. At that time Isouf Aga, the commander of the Akropolis and a bitter enemy of the Greeks, had vowed that he would destroy the little church of St Demetrios, on the opposite hill. One evening, before going to bed, he ordered two or three pieces of artillery to be put in position to fire on the church in the morning. But in the night a thunderbolt ignited the powder magazine. The Aga and nearly all his family perished by the force of the explosion, and—what was a more serious loss—part of the roof was destroyed. The Greeks ascribed the disaster to the righteous indignation of the saint, whose church was thenceforth, and is still, called St Demetrios the Bombardier[738]. On another occasion, so it was said, when a Turk fired a shot at an eikon of the Virgin in the Parthenon his arm withered, while another Mussulman was reported to have dropped dead in the attempt to open two great cupboards, closed with blocks of marble and let into the walls[739]. For the great Temple of Olympian Zeus the Turks had a becoming regard, and at the solemn season of Bairam they used to meet near its columns to pray. The Areopagos, from the spring of “black water” still to be found there, they called Kara-su. Less scrupulous than the Turks, De Nointel took two workmen about with him on his tour, and carried off several pieces of marble, just as the Jesuits had taken with them to Chalkis some of the marble fragments of Athens to serve as monuments in their cemetery[740].

The Piræus, which had played so great a part in the life of ancient Athens, consisted at that time of only a single house—a magazine for storing goods and levying the duties on them[741]. Its classical name had been lost, and while the Franks called it Porto Leone the Greeks styled it Porto Drako[742], from the huge lion, now in front of the arsenal at Venice, upon which Harold Hardraada had once scrawled his name, and which attracted the attention of all travellers. The foundations of the famous Long Walls were still visible almost all the way, and on the road to Eleusis there was another fine marble lion, which can be traced in the Capuchins’ plan. The monastery of Daphni had been almost entirely abandoned, owing to the ravages of corsairs, Christians as well as Turks, and the former had driven away all the inhabitants of Eleusis; but the monastery of Phaneromene, in Salamis, had just been restored by Laurentios of Megara in 1670, and a little later, in 1682, the church at Kaisariane was decorated with fresh paintings by a Peloponnesian artist at the expense of the Benizeloi who had fled thither for fear of the plague, and to whom the monastery and the present summer pleasaunce of Kephissia formerly belonged. All along the shore near Phaleron stood towers, where men watched day and night to give the alarm against the pirates. Such was the terror inspired by those marauders that not a single Turk resided at Megara, and there was only one house between that place and Corinth. The Kakè Skála maintained its classic reputation as a haunt of robbers, and descendants of the fabulous brigand Skiron were in the habit of lurking there, so that the Turks were afraid to travel along that precipitous road where the railway now passes above the sea. Akrocorinth, in spite of its ruinous condition, was, however, a sure refuge of the Mussulmans against the corsairs, while Lepanto, on the other hand, was a perfect nest of pirates[743].

Of the Greek provincial towns at that period Chalkis, with a population of about 15,000, was the most important. It was the residence of the capitan pasha and the scene of the Jesuits’ missionary labours. They had established a school there, after their departure from Athens, and the children of the seven or eight Frank families who still resided in the old Venetian town gave them more occupation than they had found at their former abode. The castle was entirely given over to the Turks and Jews, and the traveller Randolph mentions in his day the rich carving of some of the houses, which I have myself seen there. Patras, famous for its citrons, contained some 4000 or 5000 inhabitants, one-third of whom were Jews, and the latter had three synagogues at Lepanto, which had the whole trade of the gulf, though they were less numerous there than at Patras. Corinth was then, like the modern town, a big village with a population of 1500, and it was noted for the numbers of conversions to Islâm which had taken place there. Like Athens, it had no Jews. Nauplia, the residence of the pasha of the Morea, was a large town, but Sparta was “quite forsaken[744].” Delphi, then called Kastri, was the fief of a Turk, and produced cotton and tobacco. The neighbouring town of Salona contained seven mosques and six churches, and at the splendid Byzantine monastery of Hosios Loukas there were about 150 monks. Thebes was then about the same size as at present, and had no more than 3000 or 4000 inhabitants, while its rival, Livadia, provided all Greece with wool, corn and rice. Somewhat earlier it had furnished sail-cloth for the Ottoman navy[745], and in the Turkish period it enjoyed considerable liberty, being administered by a δημογέρωον, or elder, who, with the assistance of the leading citizens, successfully resisted any intervention from outside in the affairs of his native city[746]. In the Morea, where there were only 30,000 Turks, and nearly all those Greek-speaking, each town was managed by its own Greek elders, who levied the taxes. Spon found there four metropolitans, whose sees were respectively Patras, Nauplia, Corinth and Mistra, and he remarks, as every modern traveller in the country districts of Greece cannot fail to do, on the strict fasts observed by the Orthodox. He found that the sole exception was in the case of those who were subjects of Venice and who had imbibed the laxer ideas of Roman Catholicism; as for the others, they would rather die than dine in Lent[747]. The value of the Peloponnesian trade may be judged from the fact that an English consul, Sir H. Hide, had lately resided at Glarentza and had built a church there[748].

The former duchy of Naxos, then a Turkish sandjak, had been lightly treated by the Turks since their final conquest of the islands. In 1580 Murad III had given the islanders many privileges, permitting them to build churches and monasteries and to use bells, while forbidding the Turks to settle among them, a provision which has done much to keep the Cyclades free from all traces of Mussulman rule. Once a year, and once only, came the capitan pasha to levy the tribute of the islands at Paros; but the tribute was raised by the insular municipalities, whose powers of self-government were not disturbed by the Turkish conquerors. The inhabitants of some islands were, however, bound to send a fixed quantity of their produce to Constantinople every year[749]. These privileges were confirmed by Ibrahim in 1640, and we may form some idea of the state of the Cyclades from the amount of the capitation tax levied upon them at the date of Spon’s tour. Naxos was then assessed at 6000 piastres, out of which the governor had to provide one galley to the Turkish fleet; Andros paid 4500, with which one galley was equipped, while Eubœa paid 100,000 piastres, and the Morea was bound to furnish three vessels[750]. At that time the Venetian island of Tenos was the best cultivated, the most prosperous, and the most densely populated of all the Cyclades, because the banner of St Mark protected it from the Christian corsairs, whose chief rendezvous was at Melos, and who captured, among others, the English traveller Vernon. Tenos then contained twenty-four villages, the inhabitants of which, 20,000 in number, speaking Greek, but almost entirely of the Catholic religion, were exclusively employed in the manufacture of silk. Randolph, who visited this island in 1670, found it to have “ever been a great eyesore to the Turks,” especially during the Candian war, when a certain Giorgio Maria, a Corsican privateer in the Venetian service, had manned his ships with the islanders of Tenos, and had plagued the enemies of the Republic as none had done since Skanderbeg. Tenos had quite recovered from the raid which the Turks had made upon it in 1658; but since the war its inhabitants had thought it prudent to offer the capitan pasha a douceur of 500 dollars, in addition to the regular tithe which they paid to Venice[751]. The only thing on Delos was the colony of rabbits. Mykonos, which Venetian ships still frequented, had not a single Turk, and the chief profession of its inhabitants was piracy, which kept so many of the men engaged at sea that there was an enormous disproportion between the females and the males.

Corsairs were indeed the terror of the Ægean, as was natural now that the Candian war was over and they had no more scope for the legitimate exercise of their talents. Thus in 1673 a Savoyard, the marquis de Fleuri, set out to take Paros, but was captured by the Venetians in pursuance of their pledge, given to the Turks at the late peace, not to tolerate piracy in the Archipelago. Another freebooter, a Provençal, named Hugues Creveliers, who served as the original of Lord Byron’s Corsair, and had roamed about the Levant from boyhood, succeeded in making Paros his headquarters, after a futile attempt upon a Turkish fort in Maina, and scoured the Ægean with a fleet of twenty ships for two whole years, levying blackmail upon Megara and defying capture, till at last he was blown up in his flagship by a servant whom he had offended. Another pirate, a Greek, named Joannes Kapsi, made himself master of Melos in 1677, but was taken and hanged by the Turks in 1680. Nevertheless the lot of the Melians was so hard that a party of them, together with some Samians, emigrated to London, under the guidance of their Archbishop Georgirenes of Melos, author of A Description of the present state of Samos, Nicaria, Patmos, and Mount Athos. It is to this colony that Greek Street owes its name, for the Duke of York, the future King James II, assigned that site to them as a residence, and in Hog Lane, afterwards called Crown Street, Soho, they built a Greek church—the first in London[752]. Even where the privateers did not come the Turks took care to “hinder the islanders from becoming too rich.”

The Latin population of the Cyclades had not diminished, though a century had elapsed since the last of the Latin dukes had fallen; on the contrary, it had increased, in consequence of the emigration thither after the Turkish conquest of Crete. Naxos and Santorin were the chief seats of these Latin survivors, who were sedulously guarded by the Roman Church. Down to the seventeenth century a Latin bishopric was maintained in Andros, and one still exists at Santorin, another at Syra, and a third at Tenos. In 1626 the Jesuits, and nine years later the Capuchins, obtained a convent in Naxos, which was placed under the protection of France; and after the fall of Rhodes the Latin archbishopric was removed to the same island[753], where the Catholics held much property. But this concentration of Catholicism in Naxos had some most unfortunate results, which were happily lacking in the less strenuous atmosphere of Santorin. The Latins of the upper town of Naxos looked down contemptuously upon the Greek inhabitants of the lower city; they refused to intermarry with the Orthodox; and if a Catholic changed his religion for that of the despised Greeks he was sure of persecution by his former co-religionists. In the country, where old feudal usages still prevailed, the Latin nobles oppressed the Greek peasants; while, like truly oriental tyrants, they were as servile to the Turks as they were haughty to the Greeks. Worst of all, their feuds became hereditary, and thus this little island community was plunged in almost endless bloodshed. For example, towards the close of the seventeenth century the leader of the Latin party in Naxos was Francesco Barozzi, whose family had come thither from Crete about the beginning of the same century, and whose surname I have found still preserved in the monuments of the Catholic church in the upper town. Barozzi had married the daughter of the French consul, who was naturally a person of consequence among the Catholics of Naxos. But the lady was one day insulted by Constantine Cocco, a member of a Venetian family which had become thoroughly grecised. Barozzi, furious at the slight, took a terrible vengeance, and not long afterwards Cocco was murdered by his orders, and his body horribly mutilated. Cocco’s relatives thereupon murdered the French consul; the consul’s widow persuaded a Maltese adventurer, Raimond de Modène, who had recently arrived on a frigate belonging to the Knights of St John, and who was in love with her daughter, to bombard the Cocco family with the ship’s cannon in the monastery of Ipsili, where they had taken refuge. At last the vendetta ended as a dramatist would have wished. The daughter of the murdered Cocco, who was only one year old at the time of her father’s assassination, married the son of her father’s murderer. For many years the couple lived happily together, and the wife was the first woman in the Archipelago to wear Frankish dress. But, though the fatal feud was thus appeased, poetic vengeance, in the shape of the Turks, fell upon the assassin’s son. His riches attracted their attention; he was thrown into prison, and died at Naxos a beggar[754].

Such was the condition of Greece when, in 1684, the outbreak of war between Venice and Turkey led to the temporary re-conquest of a large part of the country by the soldiers of the West and the reappearance of the lion of St Mark in the Morea.

VI. THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE
1684-1718

In 1684, after the lapse of 144 years, Venice once more began to be a power upon the Greek continent. She had long had grievances against the Porte, such as the non-deliverance of prisoners and the violation of her commercial privileges, while the Porte complained of the raids of the Dalmatian Morlachs. Excuses for war were not, therefore, lacking, and the moment was favourable. Sobieski, the year before, had defeated the Turks before Vienna, and the Republic knew that she would not lack allies. A “Holy League” was formed between the Emperor, Poland, and Venice under the protection of Pope Innocent XI, and the Tsar was specially invited to join. Accordingly, the Republic declared war upon the Sultan, and appointed Francesco Morosini captain-general of her forces.

Morosini, although sixty-six years of age, possessed an experience of Turkish warfare upon Greek soil which compensated for his lack of youth. He had served for twenty-three years in the armies and fleets of his country, and had commanded at Candia till he felt himself compelled to come to terms with the Turks, for which skilful piece of diplomacy he was put upon his trial at home and, although acquitted, left for fifteen years in retirement. Now that his countrymen needed a commander, they bethought them of the man who had been so severely criticised for the loss of Crete.

The Republic at this time still retained a considerable insular dominion in Greek waters—six out of the seven Ionian islands, Tenos, and the three Cretan fortresses of Grabusa, Suda and Spinalonga—but on the Greek mainland only Butrinto and Parga, the two continental dependencies of Corfù. She possessed, therefore, at Corfù, a base of operations, and thither Morosini repaired. The huge mortars on either side of the gate of the “old fortress” still bear the date of his visit—1684. His first objective was the seventh Ionian island of Santa Maura, particularly obnoxious to the Venetians as a nest of corsairs. Warmly supported by Ionian auxiliaries, among whom are mentioned the countrymen of Odysseus, he speedily obtained the surrender of Santa Maura, which carried with it the acquisition of Meganisi, the home of the Homeric Taphians, which was given as a fief to the Cephalonian family of Metaxas, Kalamos, and the other smaller islands lying off the coast of Akarnania, and the submission of the Akarnanian population of Baltos and Xeromeros, as his secretary and historiographer, Locatelli[755], informs us. Mesolonghi, not yet famous in history, was next taken. The surrender of Prevesa, which followed, gave the Venetians the command of the entrance to the Ambrakian Gulf, and completed the first season’s operations. During the winter a treaty[756] with the duke of Brunswick, father of our George I, for the supply of Hanoverian soldiers, was concluded; other small German princelings sold their soldiers at 200 francs a head, and when Morosini took the field in the following summer the so-called Venetian army, in which Swedish, German and French were as well understood as Italian, consisted of 3100 Venetians, Prince Maximilian William of Brunswick and 2400 Hanoverians, 1000 Maltese, 1000 Slavs, 400 Papal and 400 Florentine troops. We may compare it with the composite Austro-Hungarian army of our own time, in which many different races received orders in a language, and fought for a cause, not their own. Morosini also entered into negotiations with two Greek communities noted for their intolerance of Turkish rule—the people of Cheimarra in northern Epeiros, of whom we have heard much of late years, and the Mainates, who presented an address to him. The former defeated a Turkish force that was sent against them, the latter were temporarily checked by the fact that the Turks held their children as hostages for their good behaviour[757]. Morosini succeeded, however, in forcing the Turks to surrender the old Venetian colony of Koron, whence an inscription of its former Venetian governors dated 1463 was sent in triumph to Venice[758], and his success encouraged the Mainates to assist him in besieging the fortresses of Zarnata, Kielapha and Passavâ. All three, together with the port of Vitylos and the town of Kalamata, surrendered or were abandoned by their garrisons, but a historian of Frankish Greece cannot but deplore the destruction of the two famous castles of Kalamata and Passavâ. Morosini visited that romantic spot, and by his orders the strongest parts of the fortifications were destroyed. In the campaign of 1686, Morosini, assisted by the Swedish field-marshal, Otto William von Koenigsmark, as commander of the land forces, was even more successful. Old and New Navarino opened their gates to his soldiers, who found over the gate of the old town a reminiscence of the days when it had been a dependency of the Venetian colony of Modon in the shape of two coats-of-arms, those of Morosini and Malipiero[759], the latter belonging to the governor of 1467 or to his namesake of 1489. Modon thereupon surrendered, and, although Monemvasia, the Gibraltar of the Morea, held out, the season closed with the capture of Nauplia, at that time the Turkish capital of the peninsula and residence of the tax-farmer, who collected the rents paid to the Sultan Valideh, or queen-mother, from that province. The Greek inhabitants expressed joy at returning, after the lapse of 146 years, under Venetian rule, and Father Dambira, a Capuchin, arrived on a mission from the Athenians, offering to pay a ransom, if they might be spared the horrors of a siege. Morosini asked for 40,000 reals annually for the duration of the war; but a second Athenian deputation, headed by the Metropolitan Jacob, and comprising the notables Stamati Gaspari, whose origin was Italian, Michael Demakes, George Dousmanes, and a resident alien named Damestre, succeeded in persuading him to accept 9000. He sailed to the Piræus, collected the first annual instalment and returned to Nauplia. In view of the prominent part played by General Dousmanes during the late war, it is interesting to find a member of his family among the Athenian deputies. It was not, however, of Athenian origin. Dushman in Serbian means “enemy,” and in 1404 the family is described as owning the Albanian district of Pulati, where a village, named Dushmani, still exists[760]. The Turkish government compelled the Œcumenical Patriarch to depose the Metropolitan Jacob for his participation in this mission and his philo-Venetian sentiments. But the Athenians refused to accept his successor, Athanasios, whereupon the patriarch excommunicated them and their favourite metropolitan.

The next year completed the conquest of the Morea, with the exception of Monemvasia. The Turks abandoned Patras; the two castles at either side of the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth and the former Venetian stronghold of Lepanto on the north of it were occupied; the Moslems burnt the lower town of Corinth, where the Venetians found “the great statue of the god Janus, not, however, quite intact, and some architraves of fine stone[761].” No attempt was made to defend the magnificent fortress of Akrocorinth, and Morosini was able to examine undisturbed the old wall across the isthmus and to consider the possibility, realised in 1893, of cutting a canal which should join the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs[762]. The surrender of Castel Tornese, the mint of the mediæval Morea, and of Mistra, the former capital of the Byzantine province, justified his secretary[763] in saying that by August, 1687, Venice was “possessor of all the Morea, except Monemvasia.” His successes had been partly due to the fact that the best Turkish troops were engaged in the war in Hungary, and his losses from disease had been fearful. But such was the joy of his government, that a bronze bust, with the proud title of “Peloponnesiacus,” was erected to him in his lifetime in the Doges’ Palace, where, like the monument to him at Corfù, it still remains to remind the visitor of the Republic’s last attempt to establish herself in the Morea.

But the conquest of the Morea no longer satisfied the usually cautious Venetians. Leaving Monemvasia behind him, Morosini held a council of war at Corinth, in which it was decided that, as it was too late in the season to attack the old Venetian island of Negroponte, Athens should be the next objective, as an Athenian deputation suggested. Morosini himself was opposed to this plan. He pointed out the drawbacks of even a successful attack upon Athens; it would be necessary, he argued, to provision his army entirely from the sea, as the Turkish commander at Thebes could intercept his communications by land; it would be impossible from Athens to protect the entrance to the Morea, as long as the Turks could occupy Megara; while, if it were necessary to abandon Athens, not only would the Greek inhabitants suffer at the hands of the Turks, but the Venetian exchequer would lose the annual contribution which the Athenian notables had promised to pay. His proposal was to keep a considerable force at Corinth, where food was plentiful, and to send the rest of his army into winter quarters at Tripolitsa in the centre of the Morea, where there was plenty of forage and whence the Venetian domination over the peninsula—the main object of the expedition—could be best established upon solid foundations. Events proved Morosini’s forecast to have been accurate. The council, however, decided upon a compromise: the army was to go into three separate winter quarters—at Corinth, Tripolitsa, and Nauplia—but first an attempt was to be made upon Athens, unless that city would pay a ransom of 50,000 to 60,000 reals[764]. No time was lost in carrying out this decision. Most of the fleet under Venier was sent to the channel which separates Negroponte from the mainland, with the object of deluding the Turks into the belief that that island was the aim of Morosini’s forces. Meanwhile Morosini, with 9880 men (including one or two Scottish volunteers) and 870 horses, on September 21, 1687, cast anchor in the Piræus, Porto Leone, as it was then called from the statue of a lion which stood at its mouth. Thither a deputation of Athenian notables, the brothers Peter and Demetrios Gaspari, Spyridon Peroules, the schoolmaster Dr Argyros Benaldes, and others hastened to make submission to Venice[765]. Although Sir Paul Rycaut, as the result of eighteen years’ diplomatic experience in Turkey, wrote in that very year, that “the Greeks have an inclination to the Muscovite beyond any other Christian prince,” there was a special reason for the popularity of Venice at Athens. Many young Athenians had been educated at the Flangineion at Venice, and the recent outrage of the Turks upon the Athenian notable, Limponas, made the Greeks eager to welcome any Christians who would free them from their Moslem rulers.

The Turks were not unprepared for the Venetian invasion. They had taken down the beautiful temple of Nike Apteros and out of its materials raised the walls of the Akropolis and built a battery. Fortunately, although there was a powder magazine underneath it, the venerable stones of this temple received no damage during the siege. When, in 1836, the Bavarian architects reconstructed it, they found not a single block missing (except what Lord Elgin had carried off) nor a bullet-mark upon it[766]. Within the Akropolis, thus strengthened, the Turkish inhabitants of Athens took refuge with their effects and ammunition, hoping that “the castle” would hold out until relief could arrive from Thebes. The Venetians were, therefore, able to occupy lower Athens unmolested. Col. Raugraf von der Pfalz with a body of Slav and Hanoverian troops was stationed in the town; Koenigsmark encamped in the olive-grove near the Sacred Way, along which the Turkish force might be expected to march through the pass of Daphni from Thebes. As the garrison of the Akropolis refused to surrender, it was decided to bombard that sacred rock. Archæologists and historians cannot but be horrified at this act of vandalism. But in our own day we have seen the “cultured” Germans bombarding the cathedral of Rheims, and the “gentlemanly” Austrians dropping grenades close to St Mark’s at Venice, while “military necessities” involved the firing of projectiles over the Parthenon by the Allies in the crisis of December, 1916. The Venetian engineers accordingly placed their batteries on the Mouseion hill, upon which stands the monument of Philopappos, on the Pnyx, and at the foot of the Areopagos, and on September 23 the bombardment began[767].

The officer in charge of the batteries, Mottoni, Count di San Felice, was a notoriously incompetent gunner, as he had already proved at Navarino and Modon, and on this occasion his aim was so high that the bombs flew over the Akropolis and fell into the town beyond it, whose inhabitants claimed compensation for the damage to their houses. A fresh battery of two mortars was accordingly placed on the east and closer to the rock, while the miners attempted to drive a tunnel under the north wall and above the grotto of Aglauros. This attempt was, however, frustrated by the hardness of the rock, the fire of the besieged and the fatal fall of the miner’s captain from a cliff. The bombardment now, however, began to damage the buildings on the Akropolis. On the 25th a bomb exploded a small powder magazine in the Propylæa, and a deserter betrayed to the besiegers the fatal secret that the Turks had put all the rest of their ammunition in the Parthenon, then a mosque. Upon the receipt of this news the gunners concentrated their fire upon the famous temple; and, on the evening of the 26th, a lieutenant from Lüneburg fired a bomb into it. The explosion was so violent that fragments of the building were hurled into the besiegers’ lines, whence cries of joy in various languages rose at the destruction wrought in a moment to a masterpiece that had survived almost intact the vicissitudes of over twenty centuries. But even among the besiegers there were some who mourned the havoc wrought by the German gunner’s too accurate aim. Morosini, in his official report to his government, merely alludes to it as a “fortunate shot,” and his secretary remarks that the “ancient, splendid and marvellous temple of Minerva” was “ruined in some parts”; but a Swedish lady, Anna Akerhjelm[768], who accompanied Countess von Koenigsmark to Greece and was then at Athens, has told in her interesting correspondence “how repugnant it was” to Koenigsmark “to destroy the beautiful temple,” which “can never in this world be replaced.” So much did von Ranke feel this act of vandalism committed by one of his countrymen, that he tried to discredit the diary of the Hessian lieutenant, Sobiewolsky, which mentions the Lüneburg gunner’s fatal shot. For the moment it failed to attain even the practical effect of ending the siege. The Turks, expecting the arrival of their deliverer from Thebes, still held out; but when Koenigsmark went to meet the advancing army and its commander retired without a blow, when the fire, caused by the explosion, had blazed for two days on the Akropolis, where over 300 putrifying corpses, including those of their commander and his son, lay beneath the ruins of the Parthenon, they hoisted the white flag and sent five hostages to ask for a cessation of hostilities. Morosini’s official dispatch informs us that he was inclined to insist upon their unconditional surrender, but that Koenigsmark pointed out the importance of having possession of the Akropolis and the proved difficulty of taking so strong a position by force. Accordingly, he unwillingly granted them five days, at the end of which all the Turks were to evacuate the fortress with only what they could carry on their backs, leaving to the victors their horses, arms, Christian slaves, and Moors. To prevent their joining their comrades at Negroponte, they were to proceed to Smyrna at their own expense on board an English pink, then in the Piræus, three Ragusan, and two French vessels. These terms were settled on the 29th, the lion-banner of St Mark was at once hoisted on the Propylæa, and punctually, on October 4, about 3000 Turks, including 500 soldiers, embarked. More than 300 others remained behind and were baptised Christians. Despite Morosini’s and Koenigsmark’s express orders the exiles were insulted by the officers and soldiers of the auxiliaries on their way down to the Piræus, and some of their women and children, as well as their bundles, were taken from them. Count Tomaso Pompei[769] was appointed governor of “the castle” with a Venetian garrison, while the rest of the Venetians and the auxiliaries were quartered in the town below. Morosini himself was anxious to attack Negroponte at once, while the Turks were still dismayed at the loss of Athens; but Koenigsmark argued that they had not sufficient forces to take that island. As the Morea was visited by a serious epidemic, it was decided to go back upon the plans fixed in the council at Corinth, and to pass the winter at Athens. To ensure communications with the sea, part of the famous Long Walls was sacrificed to build three redoubts on the way down to the Piræus, and a wall and ditch were drawn from Porto Leone to the bay of Phaleron, to serve as an entrenched camp in case of need. During these excavations ancient copper coins, vases, and lamps were discovered.

Athens had, therefore, become for the third, the Akropolis for the second time, Venetian, for Venice had occupied both town and castle from 1394 to 1402 and the town in 1466, and it is interesting to see what impression the famous city made upon the captors. One of Morosini’s officers wrote that he “fell into an extasy” on gazing upon the magnificence of the Parthenon even in its ruin, and his secretary, Locatelli, devotes ten pages to the antiquities of Athens. Both he and two other officers mention some of the classic buildings by the popular names current for centuries—for we find some of them at the time of the Turkish, some even at that of the Frankish conquest. These descriptions, evidently based on the tales of the local guides, allude to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which then had seventeen columns standing, under the name of the “Palace of Hadrian,” the monument of Philopappos under that of the “Arch of Trajan,” the gate of Athena Archegetis under that of the “Temple of Augustus or Arch of Triumph,” the adjacent Porch of Hadrian under that of the “Temple of Olympian Zeus,” and the Pinakotheke under that of the “Arsenal of Lycurgus.” The Tower of the Winds figures as the “Gymnasium of Sokrates,” the choragic monument of Lysikrates as the “Lantern of Demosthenes.” The marble lion at the Piræus, they tell us, had been “transported there in honour of Leonidas,” while the statue of the tongueless lioness which stood towards the sea, commemorated Leaina, the mistress of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, who had bitten out her tongue rather than betray them under torture[770]. These accounts are a curious contribution to the Mirabilia of Athens; but, despite this casual display of popular erudition, the army was not archæologically minded, the Germans less so than the more cultured Venetians. A Hessian ensign[771] wrote home to his mother mainly about food, regretting that the excellent fresh vegetables were over, wishing that he had a cask of German beer instead of a cask of Athenian wine, and telling her that he had drunk her health in “the temple of the celebrated Demosthenes” (the choragic monument of Lysikrates), which the Capuchins had bought eighteen years earlier and in which his colonel was lodged. He added that he had often dined at Corinth in the temple in which St Paul preached, and that Athens produced grapes of the size described in the Old Testament. Nor do we obtain much archæological information from the observant companion of Countess von Koenigsmark. She wrote that her mistress’s bad attack of measles had prevented her from making notes in her journal of the antiquities which she had seen. “Besides,” she added, “there are several descriptions of them,” and she specially alluded to the recent work of Spon and Wheler. As for the archæological knowledge of the Greek inhabitants, she wrote that “you cannot find any of them who know as much about their ancestors as foreigners do[772].” In justice to the Athenians it must be said that Romans are not always specialists upon the Forum, nor Londoners upon the Tower. She found, however, a local doctor to conduct her round the town: he told her that he belonged to the family of Perikles. Those of us who have travelled in Greece have been introduced to other descendants of the great Athenian statesman. The Swedish lady liked Athens. “The town,” she wrote, “is better than any of the others. There are some very pretty houses, Greek as well as Turkish.” She remarked upon the hospitality of the Greeks, who regaled her mistress in their homes upon orangeade, lemonade, fresh almonds, pomegranates, and jams, just as their descendants do still. Our Hessian officer, too, liked the Athenians; “they are very respectable, good people,” he wrote, “only one cannot understand them, because they speak Greek.” The English consul, however, the same Frenchman, Giraud, who had acted as cicerone to Spon, spoke German and Italian, as well as Greek and Turkish, and hobbled about with the distinguished Swedes[773]. Despite his trouble in his feet, he seems to have been still an active man, who sent two dispatches on the Venetian conquest to his ambassador at Constantinople before his French colleague had written a word about it. A Protestant from Lyons, but married to a daughter of the Athenian Palaiologoi, he was closely connected with the town.

Morosini had converted into churches the mosques of every place that he had taken. At Athens he turned two mosques into Catholic churches, in addition to the already existing chapel of the Capuchins, and made his naval chaplain, D. Lorenzo Papaplis, priest of the church of Dionysios the Areopagite[774]. For the use of his Lutheran auxiliaries he founded out of another mosque, that “of the Column,” near the bazaar, the first Protestant place of worship in Greece, which was inaugurated under the name of Holy Trinity on October 19 with a sermon by the minister Beithmann. While to the Venetian commander non-Catholics thus owe the introduction of their liturgy into Hellas, to his conquest of Athens military history is indebted for two views of the Akropolis and a general view of Athens at the moment of the explosion in the Parthenon, all sketched by the Venetian engineer, Verneda, another unofficial view of Athens, a plan of the Akropolis also by Verneda, and a plan of the town designed by him under the direction of Count di San Felice[775]. This last work has been called “the first serious plan of the town of Athens,” but its object was military rather than archæological—to explain to the council of war and the home government the extent and cost of the works necessary for the defence of Athens.

Whether Athens could be defended, that was the question which its conquerors now had to decide. At a council of war, held at the Piræus on December 31, it was pointed out that it was impossible for the small Venetian forces to fortify the town, or even to leave a garrison there to defend its inhabitants, for all the available troops would be needed for the attack upon Negroponte in the spring; while, even if it could be fortified, Athens, situated so far from the sea, could not be revictualled while the Turks were still about. The destruction of Athens was actually mooted, but the council decided to postpone that for the present, and to remove the Greek population, estimated at over 6000, besides the Albanians, into the Morea and grant to them lands in the new Venetian territory there as compensation for the loss of their old homes. A further council, held on January 2, 1688, decided, in view of the spread of the plague from the Morea to continental Greece and some of the islands, to accelerate the departure of the Athenians, so as to remove the army, and in the meanwhile to organise a sanitary administration of the town. The decision to remove the Athenians filled them with dismay; the “elders,” the vecchiardi, as they were styled in Italian, in vain offered to contribute 20,000 reals and to maintain the garrison at their own cost, if they were allowed to remain and men were left to defend “the castle[776].” The plague and Turkish raids continued to harass the Venetians and the auxiliaries, while those mutual recriminations, usual among allies of various nationalities, so greatly disturbed the harmony of the expeditionary force that Morosini formed five companies of Albanians, who might enable him to dispense with his grumbling German troops. Koenigsmark on January 30 made another proposition—to leave a garrison of 300 men on the Akropolis with provisions for sixteen months, but Morosini calculated that this would involve the presence of another hundred servants, and that for all this force a large quantity of biscuit and wine would be needed. But the argument which weighed most with the decisive council of February 12 was the water-supply. The sixteen cisterns of the Akropolis, it was said, held water for only three months, and of these the great cistern under the Parthenon had probably been damaged by the explosion, and the still larger one in the theatre of Dionysos could easily be cut off, and the water-supply of “the castle” thereby reduced to what would suffice for only fifty days. It was, therefore, unanimously decided to leave “the castle” of Athens for the present as it was, with its walls intact, but to remove all the guns and munitions, trusting to Providence for its ultimate re-capture. The council justified its resolve to abandon the place by stating that the only object of attacking Athens had been to push back the enemy from the neighbourhood of the isthmus of Corinth.

Morosini determined, however, to carry off to Venice some memorial of Athens which could vie with the four bronze horses, carried thither after the capture of Constantinople. He ordered the removal from the western pediment of the Parthenon of the statue of Poseidon (whom Morosini thought to be Zeus) and the chariot of Victory (whom the Venetians mistook for Athena); but the recent explosion had disarranged the blocks of marble, so that the workmen no sooner touched them than these beautiful sculptures fell in pieces upon the ground. Morosini, coolly announcing this disaster in a dispatch to the senate, expressed satisfaction that none of the workmen had been injured, and announced his decision to carry off instead a marble lioness without a head; but the head, as he added in a sentence worthy of Mummius, “can be perfectly replaced by another piece.” His secretary, San Gallo, took away, however, the Victory’s head, which Laborde purchased in 1840 from a Venetian antiquary, while other fragments were picked up from the ruins by other Venetian, Danish and Hessian officers. Morosini did not content himself with the headless lioness alone; he carried off the great lion, which had given to the Piræus its mediæval name, and a third lion which had stood near the temple of Theseus, where it was seen by Babin and Spon; a fourth, a lioness, which bears the inscription Anno Corcuræ liberatæ, did not reach Venice till 1716, the year of Schulenburg’s deliverance of Corfù, and, therefore, does not figure in Fanelli’s[777] previous plate of the lions before the arsenal, where they may still be seen. This done, the Venetian forces abandoned Athens on April 4 and five days later the last detachment set sail for Poros. The nett result of the Venetian capture of Athens had been disastrous. It had done irreparable damage to the Parthenon without any permanent military or political gain; it had injured the inhabitants, who had been forced to leave their homes; it had spread disease and discontent among the allies. To set against these disadvantages Venice acquired four marble lions and Morosini the fame of having temporarily held the famous city. To us Verneda’s plans are the only satisfactory result of its siege.

It remains to describe the fate of the exiled Athenians and of the conquerors of Athens. The unhappy natives had left on March 24, and some even earlier. Three boat-loads went to the Venetian island of Zante, others to the Venetian possessions in the Morea, especially to Nauplia, but most (under the leadership of the brothers Gaspari) to Ægina and, like their ancestors at the time of the Persian invasion, to Salamis (“Culuris,” as it was still called), where, as the famous Fragments from the monastery of the Anargyroi (SS. Cosmas and Damian) at Athens inform us[778], they built houses and churches at Ambelaki, while “Attica remained deserted for about three years” except for a few stragglers on the Akropolis and in some towers of the town. This is the passage upon which Fallmerayer based his theory of the desertion of Athens for nearly 400 years from the time of Justinian! The poorest went to Corinth, while the leading families were scattered about the Morea, the Benizeloi at Patras, the Limponai at Koron, Peroules at Nauplia, and Dousmanes at Gastouni in Elis. The last-named received for his services to Venice several grants of land and the title of Cavaliere di San Marco; his family subsequently became counts and migrated to Corfù, where fifty years ago one of them published an Italian account of Gladstone’s famous mission. To other Athenian notables, who had been specially useful to them, the Venetians also gave money or titles—a pension to the ex-metropolitan Jacob as compensation for his punishment by the patriarch, the title of count to the schoolmaster, Benaldes, to another scholarly Athenian, Joannes Macola, the translator of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Justin’s History, to Taronites for his subsequent services at the siege of Nauplia, and to Venizelos Rhoïdes. Indeed, so well were these Athenian refugees treated, that a geographical shibboleth was devised to discriminate between the genuine and the pseudo-exiles from Athens[779]. To the 662 Athenian families which entered the Morea, the Venetian authorities assigned lands, vineyards, olive-trees, houses, shops, and gardens in proportion to the supposed requirements of the four classes into which Athenian society was then divided. An official Venetian report of 1701 praises their industry in trade, but remarks that “not even the common folk among them were inclined to work on the land,” and extols their “subtle intelligence,” adding that they desired to return to Athens, although the town was once more under Turkish rule, while at the same time retaining their Moreote property[780].

Athens was the climax of Morosini’s Greek career. On board his galley at Poros he received the news of his election as doge, but his first ducal enterprise, the siege of Negroponte, not only failed, despite the rising of northern Greece against the Turks, but cost the lives of Koenigsmark by fever and of Peter Gaspari, leader of the Athenian volunteers. This was the last big event of the war. The German auxiliaries left Greece; Morosini, recalled home by fever and the duties of his new office, left to his successor, Cornaro, the task of completing the conquest of the Morea by starving out the impregnable rock of Monemvasia in 1690; meanwhile a military revolution at Constantinople had placed a weak Sultan on the throne and a strong minister, the third of the Kiuprili dynasty, in power. The latter’s first act was to conciliate the Christians, and to appoint a Mainate, Liberakes Gerakares, then a prisoner in the arsenal, as bey of Maina and leader against the Venetians. The “first Christian prince of Greece” had served as a youth in the Venetian fleet; he had then turned pirate, and had during the Cretan war acted as a Turkish instrument in his native land. He now addressed a proclamation to the Athenian exiles in Salamis and Ægina, bidding them return to their homes and telling them that he was authorised by the Sultan to grant them an amnesty, at the same time threatening those who disobeyed his orders with condign punishment at his hands[781]. Under these circumstances they thought it best to come to terms with their former masters. The superstitious among them attributed the plague, the famine, the drought, and the Turkish raids upon their vineyards on the continent opposite Salamis, to the curse of the Œcumenical Patriarch. To him, therefore, they addressed an appeal, drawn up by the schoolmaster, Argyros Benaldes, describing in high-flown language their pitiable condition and imploring with deep humility his forgiveness[782]. The patriarch relented, and, probably owing to his mediation, the Athenian refugees were allowed, in 1690, to return. Several of the principal families, however, remained in voluntary exile, and their property was put up to auction and bought by a group of leading Athenians; many Athenian Greeks stayed at Nauplia till its recapture by the Turks in 1715; nor did all the Athenian Turks, who had gone to Asia Minor, return; in 1705 the town contained only 300 Turkish families. The population was, therefore, smaller and the material prosperity less than before the Venetian conquest. Great damage had been done during the “three years” of exile in Salamis; most of the houses had fallen, the raiders had burned the trees, and to their fires is attributed the blackening of Hadrian’s Porch. In order to facilitate the economic recovery of Athens, the Sultan allowed it to be free from taxes for three years; the fortifications of the Akropolis were repaired, as a pompous Turkish inscription on the old Turkish entrance, dated 1708, long testified, while a small mosque (which collapsed in 1842) was erected within the Parthenon out of the ruins caused by the besiegers’ bomb[783]. Greek education, which had languished at Athens since Benaldes had been appointed schoolmaster at Nauplia and then at Patras, was revived by the opening of a school in 1714, while the appointment of the learned geographer, Meletios, as metropolitan, gave to Athens a patron of culture. But the reinstated exiles fell to intriguing and quarrelling among themselves to such a degree over their metropolitan, that the Patriarch of Jerusalem—for the Holy Sepulchre had many possessions in Attica during the Turkish period and still possesses property near the so-called Anaphiótika at Athens—wrote to them, congratulating them on having so wise and noble a hierarch, and bidding them for the honour of their famous city cast out scandals from their midst[784]. Meletios was specially anxious to keep out of a quarrel between his flock and the representative of the voivode, at that time an absentee, whose exactions provoked an Athenian deputation to Constantinople in 1712, headed by Demetrios Palaiologos, a local notable skilled in Turkish—a rare accomplishment among the Athenian Christians, for most of their Turkish fellow citizens spoke Greek. The chief of the black eunuchs, to whom Athens still belonged, not only deposed his voivode, but, taking from his secretary’s girdle his silver ink-horn, handed it to Palaiologos with the words, “Take this ink-horn and from to-day I appoint thee voivode of Athens.” This was the first and last occasion on which a rayah was made voivode of Athens. The local Turks and the local Christian notables alike were furious at being governed by a Christian, and the former assassinated him in the house of his kinsman, Palaiologos Benizelos[785].

Monemvasia was the last durable acquisition of Venice during the war. In 1691 the island fortress of Grabusa, off the north-western extremity of Crete, was betrayed by two Neapolitan officers in the Venetian service; next year an attempt to take Canea was frustrated by the old Venetian fortifications, once erected against the Turks. Liberakes raided the Morea, but the Moreote Greeks did not rise, as he had led his Turkish patrons to expect, and the fear of being cut off by the disembarkation of a Venetian force at the isthmus made the raiders soon retire. In 1693 Morosini resumed the command, but his only acts were to re-fortify the castle of Ægina, which he had demolished during the Cretan war in 1655, the cost of upkeep being paid, as long as the war lasted, by the Athenians, and to place it and Salamis under Malipiero as governor[786]. This led the Athenians to send him a request for the renewal of Venetian protection and an offer of an annual tribute. His death at Nauplia in 1694 caused the appointment of Zeno, then governor of the Morea, as his successor. Zeno easily accomplished the capture of the rich island of Chios, but in the following year the island was abandoned. The Greek population was more favourable to the Moslems than to the Catholic Venetians, especially as the presence of the Archbishop of Naxos on board the fleet was interpreted as an intention to interfere with the Orthodox Church. Those Catholic Chiotes, on the other hand, who did not emigrate to the Morea, were dismayed at the departure of the Italians, and paid dearly for their brief triumph when the Turks returned. Four were hanged, their religion was prohibited, and their cathedral (whose Archbishop was compensated by the Venetians with the titular see of Corinth) turned into a mosque[787]. This was the last important event of the war in Greece. A series of naval battles was fought in the Ægean; and, even after the Venetians had abandoned the idea of operations north of the Morea, the continental Greeks kept up a guerilla warfare on their own account with the aid of Slavonian troops. Unable to make head against their combined efforts, Liberakes went over to the Venetians, who showed their distrust of the “Bey of Maina” by imprisoning him at Brescia, where he ended his days. In 1699, thanks to English mediation, the war ended with the peace of Carlovitz, by which Venice retained possession of the Morea, Santa Maura, and Ægina, and ceased to pay tribute for Zante, but restored to the Sultan her continental Greek conquests, such as Lepanto. The castles of Prevesa and Rumeli, the classic Antirrhion, were to be demolished, but Venice did not recover Grabusa. Thus the end of this fifteen years’ costly war found her with a Greek dominion consisting of the seven Ionian Islands, Butrinto and Parga in Epeiros, the two Cretan forts of Spinalonga and Suda, Tenos and Ægina, and the “kingdom” of the Morea, the whole of which, in the Middle Ages, had never been hers.

When the Venetians set to work to re-organise the Morea, they found their new conquest devastated and depopulated[788]. Much of the land had gone out of cultivation, for there were not hands enough to till it, and the war and the plague had aggravated the evils engendered by the long period of Turkish rule. As early as 1687 they took the first step to improve the condition of their new colony by sending three commissioners with instructions to make a survey of the country, its mills, fisheries, mines and other resources, and in 1688 sent Cornaro as its first governor, or provveditore generale. He estimated the total population, exclusive of Maina and the district of Corinth, to be only 86,468, as against 200,000, exclusive of garrisons and foreigners, before the war; Michiel, one of the three commissioners, puts it, without Maina, at 97,118, of whom 3577 were Turks converted to Christianity from interested motives, who required careful watching. Out of 2111 villages the war and the plague had laid desolate 656, and Cornaro could not find a living soul between Patras and Kalavryta. Under the Venetian rule the population gradually rose to more than it had been in the Turkish time—to 116,000 in 1692, to 176,844 in 1701, to over 250,000 in 1708. These figures were probably below the mark, owing to the characteristically oriental dislike of the natives to be numbered—a proceeding regarded as the prelude to that accurate taxation which has never been popular in the Near East. The increase was partly due to emigration from the neighbouring Turkish provinces and the Ionian Islands. Besides the Athenians, mostly congregated at Nauplia, there were the Chiote exiles at Modon, Thebans and Lepantines (after the peace), Cretans from Canea and even Bulgarians. Cornaro alone in his two years of office was successful in inducing 6000 emigrants to enter the Morea, where he gave them lands between Patras and Aigion and at Kalavryta, and promised them exemption from taxes. Ere long there was no one in the Morea who had not his house, his mill, and his bit of land—a thing very rare among the Christians of Turkey—and even the Athenians, the flower of the emigrants, were admittedly much better off than they had been at home. Only material welfare does not satisfy the whole nature of man, else ubi bene, ibi patria would have been an easy solution of many Balkan questions.

The population during the Venetian occupation was mixed. The majority was, of course, overwhelmingly Greek, but there was considerable difference between the Greeks of the various districts, as in classical times. The Moreotes did not like “foreigners,” in which designation, like the modern Italian peasants, they included people of their own race from other parts of Greece. The natives of Elis were specially hostile to “strangers,” whereas their neighbours in Achaia, from their commerce with the Ionian Islands, tolerated “foreigners.” The Venetians did not give the Moreotes in general a very good character, but the faults which they attributed to them were not due to a double dose of original sin, but to the effects of long years of Turkish rule. They are described in the Venetian reports as suspicious, lazy, and inclined to speak evil of each other. Suspicion is a common quality of southern nations, and laziness was excusable under the Turkish system, when the industrious man was punished by being heavily mulcted in the fruits of his industry. With the Turkish dress the Greeks retained the Turkish maxims, but it was noticed that the women of Monemvasia had preserved from the previous Venetian occupation the old Venetian dress. The Arkadians were “rustics and truly Arkadian, but full of wiles,” and there was considerable polish at Kalamata. The Cretans were an exception; brought up under Venetian rule for centuries, they were very industrious. The Ionians were restless, but more cultured than the Moreotes, of whom the most civilised were the townsfolk of Mistra, who “dressed and lived with more splendour than the others, boasting to be the remnant of the true Spartan blood.” All the people of the country round Mistra were pure Greeks, but the town contained over 400 Jews, whose descendants Chateaubriand[789] found there in 1806, and whose compatriots’ funeral inscriptions I noticed in the museum there. The Jewish element in the Morea was, however, small—it was a poor country—and the only other Hebrew colonies were at Nauplia and Patras. Truth was not the strong point of the Naupliotes, but they were loyal to Venice, as were from the first the Mainates, who abhorred the very name of the Turks, of whom the other Greeks stood in awe, but had a rooted objection to paying taxes, always went armed, and “professed to observe still the institutes of Lycurgus,” of which the chief was apparently the blood-feud. Besides the Greeks and the Jews, both chiefly occupied with trade, there were the Albanians, mostly agriculturists and specially numerous in the province of Romania, men of fine physique but hating war. Indeed, with the exception of the Mainates and some of the emigrants from Northern Greece, the population was essentially pacific and relied upon its foreign rulers to defend it. It was, however, litigious, and this natural tendency was increased by a “hungry crowd of small lawyers, partly from the Ionian Islands, partly from the Venetian bar,” who became the curse of the Morea.

The Venetians divided the peninsula at first into six provinces and seven fiscal boards, but the number of the provinces was reduced to four, viz. Romania (capital Nauplia), Lakonia (capital Monemvasia), Messenia (capital Navarino Nuovo), and Achaia (capital Patras). Each province had a provveditore for its administration and defence, a judicial official known as rettore, and a treasurer, or camerlengo. There were also provveditori in seven places which were not provincial capitals, viz. Mistra, Kalavryta, Phanari, Gastouni, Koron, Modon and Zarnata. Above them all stood the provveditore generale. None of these officials, as we see from Hopf’s lists[790], held office for more than two or three years, according to the usual Venetian system; but they were not new to the task of governing Greeks. The government was, therefore, experienced, but still wholly in foreign hands, although Morosini allowed a few communities to manage their local affairs, and Maina enjoyed practical independence. This liberal concession was not, however, altogether successful. “Every castle, almost every village, aspired to erect itself into a republic,” wrote one of the governors-general, and these petty communes begged Venice to send them a Venetian noble, in order that they might pose as the equals of the provincial capitals, even offering to pay his salary for the advantage conferred by his presence. Moreover, persons suddenly promoted from the status of Turkish rayah to be local magnates, were not always disposed to treat the Greek peasants upon democratic principles, but rather upon those by which they had been treated themselves. An emancipated slave is apt to be a slave-driver.

One important privilege was granted to the communities from political motives—the election of the Orthodox bishops. Of all the difficulties, which Venice had to face, the greatest was the Œcumenical Patriarch, an official, who, being resident in the Turkish capital, was perforce a Turkish agent, and who, before this reform, had named the nineteen Moreote bishops and the abbots of the stavropégia—monasteries directly dependent upon him. These, in 1701, formed 26 out of the total of 158 (with 1367 monks). The Patriarch’s patronage had, therefore, been considerable, and his influence, even apart from Turkish pressure, was unlikely to be used in favour of a Catholic government. But this was not his only loss. Before the Venetian conquest, one-half of the Epiphany and Easter offerings of the priests and people—3 reals for every priest in the diocese and ¼ real for every household—had gone to the bishop, and one-half to the Patriarch. Morosini reduced these offerings, the philótimo as it was called, by about one-half, at the same time ordering that the whole of it should be given to the local bishop and nothing to the Patriarch. The Patriarch, thus injured in both his powers and his purse, threatened to excommunicate such communes as elected their own bishops. To this the Venetian governor-general, Grimani, retorted by forbidding the entry of the patriarchal exarch into the Morea; but his duties, mainly those of a tax-collector, were quietly undertaken by the Metropolitan of Patras, while the Patriarch became as anxious as the Turks to turn the Venetians out of the country. Unfortunately, these disadvantages of a well-meant reform were not accompanied by corresponding benefits. Simony continued to be rife, and unsuitable persons were often chosen as bishops by the communities. Nor was the Patriarch the only external influence over the Moreote church, for there were some twenty-four metóchia, or “monastic farms” belonging to monasteries in Turkish territory, which not only sent money out of the country to swell the enemy’s revenues, but were centres of political propaganda and smuggling. These difficulties were not peculiar to the Venetians: they likewise faced the Bavarian regency. The Venetian official reports show a consciousness of the policy of conciliation towards the church of the vast mass of the people. For the Catholics, outside the Venetian garrison, were few, except at Nauplia and among the Chiote exiles at Modon. Indeed, the former Archbishop of Chios was the first Catholic Archbishop of the Venetian Morea; and his successor, Mgr. Carlini, whose see was Corinth but who resided at Nauplia, was the only Catholic prelate in the whole kingdom; even as late as 1714 the Morea contained only one Catholic bishop. We find, however, the Greeks sending their children to the friars’ school to learn Italian and the rudiments of Latin, and there was a scheme for founding a college at Tripolitsa. Unfortunately the ministers of religion, as Cornaro epigrammatically wrote, seemed sometimes to be sent to the Morea “rather as a punishment for their own sins than to correct the sins of others.”

Materially, the Venetian administration marked an advance, as the foreign occupation of Turkish territory always does, but trade was handicapped by the selfish colonial policy of Venice. Upon the Morea, “a poor country without industries or manufacture,” the Turks had imposed thirteen taxes, of which five (the haratch, a further local capitation-tax, called spenza, the duty on horses’ shoes, the tax on absentee landlords, and the burden of providing and transporting food for the army at half price) fell upon the Christians alone, while the others (such as the tithe and the taxes on animals) were common to both them and the Turks. Thus, out of a total of 1,699,000 reals, the Christians paid 1,350,300, besides what was illegally extorted from them. The Venetians raised their revenue from tithes of all agricultural produce, taxes on wine, spirits, oil and tobacco, the usual Italian system of a salt monopoly, customs dues, and the Crown lands. Careful management and increased prosperity increased the revenue, only 280,000 reals in 1689, to 500,501 in 1711. The farming of the tithes was entrusted to the communes, but the Mainates refused to pay tithes, consenting, however, to pay, although reluctantly, a fixed tribute called mactù. The salt monopoly was a hardship, because, although the price was low, a peasant living near the chief salt-pans at Thermisi was not allowed to buy his salt on the spot, but had to make a long journey to some distant magazine. Agriculture improved after the peace of Carlovitz and the fortification of Nauplia, when it became clear that Venice intended to stay and security of tenure was thus assured. But the customs dues yielded little, because the Republic forbade the creation of industries likely to compete with those of Venice, and compelled the Moreotes to send every article to that city. English merchants, therefore, found it cheaper to trade with Turkey, and the governors-general in vain pointed out the folly of this commercial policy, which caused the decline of such industries as that of silk at Mistra, until it was revived by the Chiote exiles at Modon. As the foreign garrison could not stomach the resinous wine, and began to import foreign vintages, efforts were made to extend and improve the local vineyards. The currant, which is now successfully cultivated along the Moreote shore of the Corinthian Gulf, had, indeed, been known in the peninsula as far back as the fourteenth century, when it is mentioned by Pegalotti[791]; but it was not till after the Turkish reconquest that it was grown and exported in large quantities for the consumption of northern races. Even with these drawbacks, however, and the burden of having to contribute to the maintenance of Cerigo and Ægina, both united administratively with the Morea since the peace, the peninsula not only paid all the expenses of administration but furnished a substantial balance to the naval defence of the Republic, in which it was directly interested. Land defence was a more difficult question. Of the natives only the Mainates wanted to be soldiers, nor could the Greeks be trusted with arms, while French consuls, anxious to weaken Venice, encouraged French mercenaries, as at Suda and Spinalonga[792], to desert her service.

The fact was that, like Great Britain in the Ionian Islands and Cyprus, and Austria-Hungary in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, Venice had improved the administration, without winning the love of her alien subjects. Foreign domination, even under the most favourable circumstances, never succeeds in satisfying the Balkan races, whose national feelings are keenly developed. The Venetian governors, as their reports show, were well-meaning men, but they were aliens in race and religion to the governed. Even had their administration been perfect, that fact alone would have rendered it unpopular after the first feeling of relief at the expulsion of the Turkish yoke was over. Liberated peoples, especially in the Near East, expect much from their western administrators, while, as we know in Egypt, the evils of the old corrupt rule are soon forgotten. It was so in the Morea. Thus, in 1710, the French traveller, De La Motraye[793], found the Greeks of Modon “praying for their return under Turkish domination, and envying the lot of those Greeks who still lived under it.” This was partly due to the lightness of the Turkish capitation-tax, and they added: “Venetian soldiers are quartered on us, their officers debauch our wives and daughters, their priests speak against our religion and constantly urge us to embrace theirs, which the Turks never did.” Besides, the Greeks had a feeling, justified by the result, that Turkey was stronger than Venice, and therefore desired to be on the winning side, and thus avoid reprisals. Even the rough-and-ready Turkish justice, which was administered with the stick, seemed to one Venetian governor to be more suited to the people than the interminable Venetian procedure, presided over by ignorant young nobles, assisted by venal clerks. Thus the poor suitor fared badly, for the governor-general could not be ubiquitous. Public safety, however, improved; as the local policeman was often a brigand, a local militia was organised by the communes, and a notoriously dangerous pass, like that of Makryplagi, through which the railway now descends to Kalamata, was guarded by the men of the neighbouring villages, who were authorised to levy a small toll from the travellers. Crime diminished, and it rarely became necessary to apply the penalty of death. With the Mainates, in particular, mildness and diplomacy were the only possible methods. Luxury, however, and moral depravation crept into Nauplia, the Venetian capital of the Morea, and the historian, Diedo[794], wrote that “in magnificence and pomp it had no cause to envy the most cultured capitals.” Sternly practical people, the Venetians did nothing for the classical antiquities of the Peloponnese; indeed, Grimani turned the amphitheatre of Corinth into a lazaretto; but the Venetian occupation spread abroad the names of the classic sites, and the various illustrated books upon the Morea and other parts of Greece, which were rapidly turned out from Coronelli’s “workshop,” were at once the result and the cause of the popular curiosity about this once famous land, which had emerged, thanks to Morosini’s victories, from Turkish darkness into the light of day.

As early as 1711 the Venetian government had been warned that Turkey was eager to recover the Morea, the loss of which was severely felt; yet no preparations were made to meet the coming storm, but most of the fortresses were left in a bad condition. Nothing had been done since 1696 to protect the isthmus, and Palamedi at Nauplia alone had been fortified at immense cost with those splendid works which still remain, with an occasional abandoned cannon of 1685 on the “Fig Fort,” a memorial of the Venetian occupation. Each of its bulwarks bore the name of a famous Venetian—Morosini, Sagredo and Grimani—and an inscription over the gate contains the date—1712—of its completion[795]. There were not, however, sufficient men to defend it; indeed, when war was declared the total army in the Morea consisted of only 10,735 men, while the fleet consisted of only eleven galleys and eight armed ships. In 1714, after having defeated Russia and renewed their treaty with Poland, the Turks had their hands free to attack the enemy, against whom their own desire for revenge and French commercial jealousy urged them. The moment seemed favourable, with Russia not yet recovered from her late Turkish war and pledged not to make an alliance with Venice, with the Moreote Greeks “desirous to return” (so the war-party argued) “to their old obedience.” Both sides could rely, it was true, on spiritual help; but the support of Pope Clement XI was less valuable than the threat of the Œcumenical Patriarch to excommunicate all Greeks who fought for the schismatic Republic, which had curtailed his revenues and privileges. An excuse for war was easily found: Venice, it was pretended, had supplied the Montenegrins with arms and money and received their bishop, Danilo I, at Cattaro. In vain the Republic hoped for the Emperor’s mediation, and hastily sent munitions and provisions to the Morea. It was decided to abandon all places except Nauplia, Argos, Monemvasia, Modon, Koron, Kielefa, Zarnata, and the castle of the Morea—the corresponding castle on the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf had been re-fortified by Turkey in defiance of the treaty of Carlovitz—and to demolish both Navarinos. It was, however, too late.

The campaign of 1715 was an unbroken series of striking successes for the Turkish army of over 100,000 men and the large fleet. The first blow was the loss of Tenos, a Venetian colony since 1390, whose cowardly commander, Balbi, capitulated at the first summons of the Turkish admiral, subsequently expiating his conduct by imprisonment for life. Its naturally strong fortress of San Nicolo, which Tournefort[796] fifteen years before had found garrisoned by “fourteen ragged soldiers, of whom seven were French deserters,” contained abundant food and ammunition; the Teniotes, so predominantly Catholics, that the place was called “the Pope’s island,” were loyal to Venice and formed an excellent militia, which had repulsed the Turkish admiral, Mezzomorto, in the late war; and this solitary Venetian island had been regarded as “a thorn in the centre of the Turkish empire.” The Turkish army, under Ali Kamurgi, aided by many Greek militia-men from the northern shores of the gulf, crossed the isthmus and besieged Corinth. Minotto, who “held in Corinth’s towers the Doge’s delegated powers,” resisted a five days’ bombardment, although the Greek non-combatants desired to save their property by surrender, before he capitulated on condition that the garrison was transported to Corfù. But an explosion in the fortress, ascribed by Byron in The Siege of Corinth to Minotto himself, but perhaps due to accident, led the Janissaries to massacre the Venetians and Greeks. Minotto was carried off as a slave to Smyrna, where he was ransomed by the wife of the Dutch consul[797]; the Greek prisoners were sold “like cattle.” This frightened the Moreotes into submission and encouraged the Æginetans to invoke the aid of the Turkish admiral, to whom the commander, Bembo, surrendered the island without resistance. The fact that the Turkish general paid for provisions, while the Venetians had commandeered them, enlisted the interests, and therefore the sympathies, of the Moreote peasantry, and excited the surprise of the French interpreter, Brue, who has left a diary of his experiences in this campaign. Nauplia was the next objective of the invaders. The poet Manthos of Joannina, who was there when it fell, expressed the current belief of the Greeks (of whom, however, few could be induced even by high pay, to aid in the defence) that the strongly fortified capital of the Venetian Morea was betrayed by De La Salle (or Sala), a French officer in the Venetian service, who had sent the plans of Palamedi to Negroponte. Over a century later the traitor’s ruined house was pointed out to Emerson, the historian[798]. It had been pulled down and an “anathema” of stones raised on the site, upon which no one dared to build till 1859; it was called “Sala’s threshing-floor” and used for drying clothes. After a brief resistance Palamedi, on which so much had been spent, was stormed, and the storming-party thence entered the town. The captors showed special fury against the Catholics, whose Archbishop, Carlini, was among the slain. The capture of Nauplia so greatly delighted Ahmed III, that he came to see the place, visiting Athens on his way—the first and last time that a Sultan set foot there since Mohammed II—and, according to a legend, presenting the gardens of Phaleron to his body-guard[799]. The garrisons of Modon and the castle of the Morea mutinied, and refused to defend those fortresses; worse still was the “ignominious surrender” of the strong and well-provisioned rock of Monemvasia by its boastful governor, Badoer, without firing a shot, at the first summons of the Turkish admiral, who subsequently admitted that he could not have taken it. Meanwhile the Venetian fleet remained inactive off Sapienza, because, as its admiral pleaded, he did not wish to add a defeat on sea to that on land! The Morea was now lost; even Maina submitted. But the commanders of the two surviving Cretan forts of Suda and Spinalonga were resolute men. Under the circumstances—for Suda’s defences were judged defective, and the French consul at Canea aided the Turkish admiral with his advice and local knowledge[800]—the small garrison did well to hold out till September 25, when it honourably capitulated. Spinalonga then surrendered without a siege, and the last fragment of Venetian rule in Crete was gone. The Sultan was as much pleased at the taking of these two places as at the reconquest of the Morea. Cerigo and Cerigotto next hoisted the white flag, and Venice was so much alarmed for the safety of Corfù, that she blew up the recent fortifications of Santa Maura and temporarily abandoned that island. The Turks occupied Butrinto and threatened Corfù; but the bravery of Schulenburg defended the latter and recovered the former and Santa Maura in 1716, and took Prevesa and Vonitza in 1717. An alliance with the Emperor, alarmed at the effect of the Turkish successes upon his Hungarian subjects, saved Venice from further losses; Great Britain offered her mediation, and the peace of Passarovitz in 1718 gave her back Cerigo and Cerigotto, and allowed her to keep Butrinto, Santa Maura, Prevesa and Vonitza. The nett result of the two wars, in which she had kept and lost the Morea, was that, as against the loss of Tenos and the three Cretan forts, which she held in 1684, she had to set off the possession of Santa Maura and the two places on the Ambrakian gulf in 1718. She had “consolidated” her Levantine dominion: Cerigo was now her farthest possession. But in her case, as in that of Turkey in our own time, “consolidation” meant decline. From that date she ceased to count as a factor in Greek affairs, except in the Ionian Islands and their continental dependencies.

The collapse of her power in the Morea in a hundred and one days proved that Venice was unable to defend the Greeks, whom she had never won over to her rule. But, although she had not gained their love, her administration had not been without some lasting benefits to them. The example of Venice, despite the venality of her judges, forced the Turks to treat their Greek subjects better, and agriculture and wine growing were improved. The Venetian occupation of the Morea had the same effect upon the Greeks as the twenty-one years’ Austrian occupation of Serbia from 1718 to 1739 upon the Serbs; it spread a higher degree of material civilisation. But even the most benevolent and most efficient government by foreigners—and a modern Greek historian has attributed both good intentions and efficiency to the Venetians—is bound to fail when national consciousness begins to awaken. After the Venetians went, the Greeks prepared to fight, not to substitute the rule of one foreign power for that of another but for independence, not for Venice, or Turkey, or Russia, but for Greece. The younger generations, which had grown up under Venetian auspices, were manlier and better than those which had only known Turkish rule. If Venice contributed thereby to preparing the way for the war of independence, it was her greatest service to the Greeks.