To be in readiness for a similar emergency, the Senate augmented the already strong fortifications. The New Fort, as it is still called, was constructed, and, with a paternal regard for the well-being of the islanders, which Venice did not always show for her Greek insular possessions, institutions were founded and regulations made which contributed greatly to the prosperity of the island.
In 1716 a new and determined attack was made by the Turks, under the leadership of Achmet III. Their fleet drove off that of Venice, and an army of thirty thousand men was debarked and laid siege to the city, whose defense was directed by Count Schulembourg. The outlying heights were taken quickly, and the garrison, shut in the inner line of fortifications, received the desperate assault of the Turks on the main works with more desperate resistance. After twenty days of incessant attack, the Turks carried the outworks, penetrated to the Place d’Armes, which is under the walls of the New Fort, and attempted to scale the walls themselves.
“The assault lasted more than six hours with an incredible fury. The women brought assistance to the defenders, and the priests, crucifix in hand, ran along the ramparts or threw themselves into the fight. Finally a vigorous sortie terminated this bloody day. Attacked on every side, the assaulting force beat a retreat and lost all the outposts it had taken. A tempest, which had burst on them in the night, completed the work of defeat, and, seized by panic, they embarked precipitately, leaving baggage and artillery behind them. In forty-two days they had lost fifteen thousand men.” (Isles de la Grèce.)
The victory was commemorated by a statue to Schulembourg, which no subsequent conquest has disturbed, and which stands on the parade-ground among monuments of greater or less good taste (generally the latter), to mark the history of the island in modern days.
From that day to this, with the exception of an occasional émeute, nothing has come to disturb the peace of Corfu, and the once so splendid courage of the inhabitants has gone out like a fire without a draught. There is probably no province of the Hellenic kingdom so devoid of martial spirit or the virtues that grow out of it. It is now a most delightful winter resort, a Fortunate Isle left out of the current of political events and given over to invalids and sportsmen, who find on the opposite Albanian coast the best shooting on the Mediterranean. The old citadel, with its double peak, serves as a light-house to the lines of steamers which furrow the Adriatic, cross, and make Corfu their entrepôt between Trieste, Venice, Brindisi, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Smyrna.
The English occupation endowed the island with good roads, most of which are maintained in fair condition still; and a winter’s sojourn here lacks nothing which could be expected in the compass of ten by thirty miles, with two posts per week from Europe. The fruits are those of the northern Mediterranean in great perfection, the oranges being only second to those of Crete; the waters are still well supplied with fish, though the people do all they can to exterminate them by the use of dynamite in fishing; and the Bella Venezia is a hotel which, though still strange to the resources of our American caravansaries, is more appropriate to the ways of the East and of idle people than are ours. The kindly, honest old host, appropriately known as Dionysos, lacks but little of giving to the stranger the hospitality of Alcinoüs. And life is so cheap that one who has worn out the world and realized an income of a thousand dollars a year may find a Macarian peace in an upper room of the Bella Venezia, with windows looking out on the beautiful mountains of Epirus, snow-clad all winter, and the bright blue of the intervening sea, with the coming, going, and merely passing ships of all nations; and, when the sun is low, have a comfortable carriage to thread the labyrinths of the immense olive groves which form almost the only shade in the island. Here one meets men of all races—Turkish reliefs on their way from Stamboul to Durazzo, or Scutari of Albania; white-skirted palikars from Epirus; Eastern Jews, with their characteristic long robes; Persians, Montenegrins, Peloponnesians, etc., who, changing steamers here, or glad to breathe a land air during the stay in port of their steamers, stroll up and down the parade, with the easy-going townsmen and tourists of all nations, seeing the island in comfort or rushing over it in the custody of Cook or Gaze, to carry away a confused remembrance of Corfu and Syra, hardly recalling which was which.
Ulysses was dismissed from Scheria loaded with presents. The modern voyager is not so fortunate. The souvenirs of Corfu which he will carry with him, whether antique or modern, will rarely recompense him for the outlay. The bric-à-brac shops abound in false antiques, arms from Epirus, Greek laces, and Eastern embroideries, which no wise buyer meddles with, dear beyond measure as they are. Be content with the moderate pension of the Bella Venezia, and tempt not Mercury in his favored island; he was the god of thieves as well as merchants, and was never better worshiped in his capacity of joint protector than in the bric-à-brac shops of Corfu.
Ulysses went to Ithaca in one night, in what must have been, for the time, the quickest passage on record, and a great credit to the rowers of King Alcinoüs. Nothing like it is to be expected to-day, though it is not impossible still, and the steamer which does the service makes a long, roundabout voyage. Our yacht, though small, was too big for rowing, and we had no special motive, as Ulysses had, to get quickly to Ithaca. As our route lay by Santa Maura, which has to do with the story of the Odyssey, if not with the wanderings from Troy, we turned aside from his course to visit it. Nericus, as it was called in Homeric nomenclature, probably formed part of the realm of the Ithacan kings, Laertes mentioning his conquest of it; but it is not mentioned in the catalogue, and we may conclude was not Greek. It is barely separated from the mainland by a narrow channel, cut by the Corinthians through a flat, which more anciently, however, must have been a shallow arm of the sea. The action of the elements is filling it up again, so that time may unite it to the Acarnanian shore, as in the Homeric days; for Laertes, in recalling to Ulysses some of his old exploits (Odyssey, book 24), says: “Ah, that it had pleased Zeus, Apollo, Athene, to have borne me to your palace, such as I was when, at the head of the Cephalonians, I took, on the continent, the proud city of Nericus!” In the catalogue of the Iliad we find that “Ulysses commands the magnanimous Cephalonians; the warriors of Ithaca; those of shady Neriton, of Crocyles, of the barren Ægilipos; those of Samos [Samé of Cephalonia, not the island Samos], of Zacynthus [Zante], and of the adjoining continent. Twelve ships whose sides were painted red followed him.” But Nericus occurs nowhere.
Nothing illustrates so strikingly the change in the condition of civilization as the relations between the ancient and modern chief cities of the Greek islands. The substitute for the stately Nericus is a low, flat, uninteresting town, built on the plain which lies north of Nericus, and next the roadstead. To the east lie the rugged mountains of Acarnania and the Gulf of Arta; north, in full view, is the modern fortress of Prevesa; further, and to the east, Arta, the ancient Ambracia; and the long strip of low coast which stretches away from Prevesa northward is dotted with masses of ruin—those of the imperial Nicopolis, monument of the victory of Actium, won in those blue waters. The idle shepherds of those days, watching their sheep on these hills, saw the crash of prows, the flight of Egypt, and the shame of Antony. Perhaps, through this very channel, where the light-draft caïque now glides, to gain the shelter of the islands going southward, ran the fugitive ships of Cleopatra; for this was evidently the channel by which the craft of those days avoided the stormy capes of Cephalonia and the southern point of Nericus. Standing on the eastern brow of the hill on which the old city stood, and on which its ruins still mark a noble past, is the citadel. Along the plain, among the olives, the fragments of tombs lie spread like flocks of sleeping sheep. The port was on the bay now connected with the northern roadstead by the Corinthian Channel; and two or three underground passages, in part cut in solid rock, one being high enough for a man to walk in upright, and cut as cleanly and evenly as the walls of a chamber, connect it with the citadel which dominates the northern part of the island, where the fertile plains lie. The ruins are of various ages, embracing Pelasgic, but mainly later, and coming down to Roman times; and the great extent of the Pelasgic enceinte, which almost everywhere underlies the Hellenic and Roman work, shows the great early importance of the city. The citadel is bold and commanding, and looks out on the northern and western seas on one side, and the Corinthian Channel and the inland sea on the other, and down to Ithaca, which, indeed, is visible from some points.
The post-Homeric name of Nericus was Leucadia. Æneas is represented as having debarked there, and Apollo had a temple on the heights which terminate the island to the south. From the cliffs which overlook the Adriatic on that side, Sappho is said to have leaped into the sea, overcome by the sorrows of her unhappy love. “Sappho’s Leap” is the name of the cliff to this day, and my Corfiote captain, as we glided by, told me how the place was celebrated because the Duchess of the island had jumped off into the sea from it, and that the people had put up a great inscription in memory of it. He had never seen it, and didn’t know exactly where the leap was made; but I think he was very excusable for his ignorance, as the action of the sea, driven as it is sometimes by the furious southwest wind into a very “hell of waters,” which consume the rock in their fury, must long ago have brought down all that classical times had seen of the rock, and changed the face of the cliff entirely. As it now is, I could find hardly a point where a new Sappho would have found a welcome so gentle as the embrace of the Adriatic; masses of fallen rock and stony beach would have given a harsher but more speedy end.