Essays on the Latin Orient

by William Miller

In 1645 the Turkish fleet sailed with sealed orders for the famous bay of Navarino. Then the command was given to arrest all Venetian subjects, including the Republic’s representative at Constantinople, and the Turkish commander, a Dalmatian renegade, set sail for Crete. Landing without opposition to the west of Canea, he proceeded to besiege that town, whose small but heroic garrison held out for two months before capitulating. The principal churches were at once converted into mosques; but the losses of the Turks during the siege, and the liberal terms which their commander had felt bound to offer to the besieged, cost him his head. At Venice great was the consternation at the loss of Canea; enormous pecuniary sacrifices were demanded of the citizens, and titles of nobility were sold in order to raise funds for carrying on the war. Meanwhile, an attempt to create a diversion by an attack upon Patras only served to exasperate the Turks, who became masters of Rethymno in 1646, and in the spring of 1648 began that memorable siege of Candia which was destined to last for more than twenty years. Even though Venice sued for peace, and offered to the Sultan Parga and Tenos[195], as well as a tribute, in return for the restoration of Canea and Rethymno, the Turks remained obdurate, and were resolved at all costs to have the island, “even though the war should go on for a hundred years.” And indeed it seemed likely to be prolonged indefinitely. The substitution of Mohammed IV for Ibrahim I as Sultan, and the consequent confusion at the Turkish capital, made it difficult for the Turks to carry on the struggle with the vigour which they had shown at the outset. The Venetian fleet waited at the entrance of the Dardanelles to attack Turkish convoys on their way to Crete, while the Ottoman provision-stores at Volo and Megara were burned. But these successes outside of the island delayed, without preventing, the progress of the Turkish arms. In fact, the Venetian forays in the Archipelago, notably at Paros and Melos, had the effect of embittering the Greeks against them, and, as a Cretan poet wrote, the islanders had to suffer, whichever side they took. In Crete itself, an ambitious Greek priest persuaded the Porte to have him appointed Metropolitan of the island, and to allow him to name seven suffragans. The Cretan militia refused to fight, and even the warlike Sphakiotes, under the leadership of a Kallerges, did little beyond cutting off a few Turkish stragglers. At last they yielded to the Turks, whose humane treatment of the Greek peasants throughout the island, combined with the unpopularity of the Latin rule, frustrated the attempt to provoke a general rising of the Cretans against the invaders. Nor was a small French force, which Cardinal Mazarin at last sent to aid the Venetians, more successful. Both sides were, in fact, equally hampered and equally unable to obtain a decisive victory; the Venetian fleet at the islet of Standia, and the Turkish army in the fortress of New Candia, which it had erected, kept watching one another, while year after year the wearisome war dragged on. Then, in 1666, a new element was introduced into the conflict. The Grand Vizier, Ahmed Köprili, landed in Crete, resolved to risk his head upon the success of his attempt to take Candia[196].

For two years and a half Köprili patiently besieged the town, with an immense expenditure of ammunition and a great loss of life. Worse and worse grew the condition of the garrison, which was commanded by the brave Francesco Morosini, who was destined later on to inflict such tremendous blows upon the Turks in the Morea. A ray of hope illumined the doomed fortress when, in June 1669, a force of 8000 French soldiers under the Duc de Navailles, and fifty French vessels under the Duc de Beaufort, arrived in the harbour, sent by Louis XIV, at the urgent prayer of Pope Clement IX, to save this bulwark of Catholicism. But these French auxiliaries met with no success. Four days after their arrival, the Duc de Beaufort fell in a sally outside the walls[197]. His colleague, the Duc de Navailles, soon lost heart, and sailed away to France, leaving the garrison to its fate. His departure was the turning-point in the siege. The houses were riddled with shots, the churches were in ruins, the streets were strewn with splinters of bombs and bullets, every day diminished the number of the defenders, and sickness was raging in the town. Then Morosini saw that it was useless to go on fighting. He summoned a council of war, and proposed that the garrison should capitulate. A few desperate men opposed his proposition, saying that they would rather blow up the place and die, as they had fought, like heroes among its ruins. But Morosini’s opinion prevailed, the white flag was hoisted on the ramparts, and two plenipotentiaries—one of them an Englishman, Colonel Thomas Anand—were appointed to settle the terms of capitulation with the Grand Vizier, who was represented at the conference by a Greek, Panagiotes Nikouses, the first of his race who became Grand Dragoman of the Porte[198]. Köprili insisted upon the complete cession of Crete, with the exception of the three fortresses of Suda, Spinalonga, and Grabusa, with the small islands near them; but he showed his appreciation of the heroic defence of Candia by allowing the garrison to march out with all the honours of war. On September 27 the keys of the town were handed to him on a silver dish, and on the same day, the whole population, except six persons, left the place. There, at least, the Greeks preferred exile to Turkish rule, and one of Köprili’s first acts was to induce fresh inhabitants to come to the deserted town by the promise of exemption from taxes for several years.

The cost of this siege, one of the longest in history, “Troy’s rival,” as Byron called it[199], had been enormous. The Venetians, it was calculated, had lost 30,985 men, and the Turks 118,754, and the Republic had spent 4,253,000 ducats upon the defence of this one city. Some idea of the miseries inflicted by this long war of a quarter of a century may be formed from the fact that the population of Crete, which had risen to about 260,000 before it began, was estimated by the English traveller Randolph, eighteen years after the Turkish conquest, at only 80,000, of whom 30,000 were Turks. Even before the siege it had been said that Crete cost far more than it was worth, and from the pecuniary standpoint the loss of the island was a blessing in disguise. But a cession of territory cannot be measured by means of a balance-sheet. The prestige of the Republic had been shattered, her greatest possession in the Levant had been torn from her, and once more the disunion of the Western Powers had been the Turk’s opportunity. Both the parties to the treaty were accused of having concluded an unworthy peace. Every successful Turkish commander has enemies at home, who seek to undermine his influence; but Köprili was strong enough to keep his place. Morosini, less fortunate, was, indeed, acquitted of the charges of bribery and malversation brought against him, but he was not employed again for many years, until he was called upon to take a noble revenge for the loss of Candia.

Venice did not retain her three remaining Cretan fortresses indefinitely. Grabusa was betrayed by its venal commander to the Turks in 1691; Suda and Spinalonga were captured in 1715 during the Turco-Venetian War, and the Treaty of Passarovitz confirmed their annexation to Turkey[200].

So, after 465 years, the Venetian domination came to an end. From the Roman times to the present day no government has lasted so long in that restless island; and the winged lion on many a building, the old galley arches on the left of the port of Candia, and the chain of Venetian fortresses, of which Prof. Gerola has given a detailed description in his great work, Venetian Monuments in the island of Crete, remind us of the bygone rule of the great republic. But the traveller will inquire in vain for the descendants of those Venetian colonists whose names have been preserved in the archives at Venice. Rather than remain in Crete, most of them emigrated to Corfù or to the Ægean islands, or else returned to Venice—reluctantly, we may be sure, for Crete has ever exercised a strange fascination on all who have dwelt there. Now that Crete is once more emancipated from the Turk, it is possible to compare the Venetian and the Ottoman rule, and even Greeks themselves, no lovers of the Latins in the Levant, have done justice to the merits of the Republic of St Mark. The yoke of Venice was at times heavy, and her hand was relentless in crushing out rebellion. But a Greek writer of eminence has admitted that the Venetian administration in Crete was not exceptionally cruel, if judged by the low standard of humanity in that period[201]. Some persons, on the strength of certain striking instances of ferocious punishment inflicted on those who had taken part in the Cretan risings[202], have pronounced the Venetians to have been worse than the Turks. But in our own day the Germans, who boast of their superior education, have exterminated the inhabitants of a South Sea island as vengeance for the murder of one missionary and have incited the Turks to massacre the Armenians. It should be reckoned to the credit of Venice that she, at least, did not attack the religion, or attempt to proscribe the language, of her Greek subjects, but sternly repelled the proselytising zeal of the Papacy, so that the Orthodox Church gained more followers than it lost. The permission accorded in Crete to mixed marriages tended to make the children of the Venetian colonists good Cretans and luke-warm Catholics, where they did not go over to the Orthodox creed. The Greeks were given a share in the administration, trade was encouraged, and many of the natives amassed large fortunes. At no time in the history of the island was the export of wine so considerable as during the Venetian occupation. So great was the wine trade between Crete and England that Henry VIII appointed in 1522 a certain merchant of Lucca, resident in the island, as first English Consul there—the beginning of our consular service. Various travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries allude to this traffic, and Ben Jonson, in his play of The Fox, talks of “rich Candian wine” as a special vintage. In return, we sent woollens to the islanders, till the French managed to supplant us[203]. Nor was learning neglected under the Venetians. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries produced many Cretans of distinction, among them Pope Alexander V. One became a famous engineer, two others gained renown as printers at Venice and Rome; a great Cretan artist, Domenicos Theotokopoulos, obtained undying fame at Madrid under the name of “El Greco”; one Cretan author edited the Moral Treatises of Plutarch; another, Joannes Bergikios, wrote a history of his native island in Italian. We have two poems in Greek by the Cretans Bouniales and Skleros upon the war of Candia[204]. It was a Cretan of Venetian origin, Vincenzo Comaro, who wrote the romance of Erotokritos, which was “the most popular reading of the Levant from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century,” and in which Herakles, “king of Athens,” his lovely daughter Aretousa, and her lover Erotokritos are the principal figures, amidst a crowd of princelets obviously modelled on the Frankish dukes and marquesses of mediæval Greece. Other novelists were produced by the island, but when Crete fell all the lettered Cretans left, and with their departure the romantic spirit in literature, which they had imbibed from the West, ceased[205]. A Greek school had been founded at Candia in 1550, and many young Cretans went to Italy for purposes of study[206]. Markos Mousouros, the Cretan scholar, was buried in Sta Maria della Pace in Rome in 1517; another Cretan, Skouphos, published his Rhetoric at Venice in 1681. Compared with the present day, when the island has just emerged from the deadening effect of 229 years of Turkish rule, its civilisation was materially more advanced in Venetian times. The Venetians made roads, bridges, and aqueducts; the Turks created nothing, and allowed the former means of communication to decay. Yet, as we have seen, Venice was never popular with the Cretans, and the reason is perfectly obvious to those who have observed the Greek character. Be the material advantages of foreign domination never so great, the Greek resents being governed by those of another race and creed, especially if that creed be Roman Catholicism. The history of the Ionian Islands under the British Protectorate, of Cyprus under the existing arrangement, of the Morea under the Venetians, of Athens and of Naxos under the Latin dukes, all point the same moral. The patriotic Greek would rather be free than prosperous, and most Greeks, though sharp men of business, are warm patriots. That is the lesson of Venetian rule in Crete—a lesson which Europe, after the agony of a century of insurrections, at last took to heart by granting the Cretans autonomy—now become union with Greece.

8. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE

On their way from Venice to Constantinople the soldiers of the fourth crusade cast anchor at Corfù, which (as modern Corfiote historians think) had lately been recovered from the Genoese pirate Vetrano by the Byzantine government, and was at that time, in the language of the chronicler Villehardouin, “very rich and plenteous.” In the deed of partition the Ionian islands were assigned to the Venetians; but they did not find Corfù by any means an easy conquest. The natives, combining with their old master, Vetrano, ousted the Venetian garrison, and it was not till he had been defeated in a naval battle and hanged with a number of his Corfiote supporters that the Republic was able to occupy the island. Even then the Venetian government, finding it impossible to administer directly all the vast territories which had suddenly come into its possession, granted the island in fiefs to ten Venetian citizens on condition that they should garrison it and should pay an annual rent to the Republic. The rights of the Greek church were to be respected, and the taxes of the loyal islanders were not to be raised[207]. But this first Venetian domination of Corfù was of brief duration. When Michael I Angelos founded the Despotat of Epeiros the attraction of a neighbouring Greek state proved too much for the Corfiotes, who threw off the Latin yoke and willingly became his subjects. A memorial of his rule may still be seen in the splendidly situated castle of Sant’ Angelo, whose ruins rise high above the waters of the Ionian Sea not far from the beautiful monastery of Palaiokastrizza[208].

Corfù prospered greatly under the Despots of Epeiros. They took good care to ratify and extend the privileges of the church, to grant exemptions from taxation to the priests, and to reduce the burdens of the laity to the smallest possible figure. In this they showed their wisdom, for the church became their warmest ally, and a Corfiote divine was one of the most vigorous advocates of his patron in the ecclesiastical and political feud between the rival Greek empires of Nice and Salonika. But after little more than half a century of Orthodox rule the island passed into the possession of the Catholic Angevins. Michael II of Epeiros, yielding to the exigencies of politics, had given his daughter in marriage to the ill-starred Manfred of Sicily, to whom she brought Corfù as a part of her dowry. Upon the death of Manfred at the battle of Benevento the powerful Sicilian admiral Chinardo, who had governed it for his master, occupied the island until he was murdered by the inhabitants at the instigation of Michael. The crime did not, however, profit the crafty Despot. The national party in Corfù endeavoured, indeed, to restore the island to the rule of the Angeloi; but Chinardo’s soldiers, under the leadership of a baron named Aleman, successfully resisted the agitation. As the defeat of Manfred had led to the establishment of Charles of Anjou as king of Naples and Sicily, and as they were a small foreign garrison in the midst of a hostile population, they thought it best to accept that powerful prince as lord of the island. By the treaty of Viterbo the fugitive Latin emperor, Baldwin II, ceded to Charles any rights over it which he might possess, and thus in 1267 the Angevins came into possession of Corfù, though Aleman was allowed to retain the fortresses of the place until his death[209]. For more than five centuries the Latin race and the Catholic religion predominated there.

The Angevin rule, as might have been anticipated from its origin, was especially intolerant of the Orthodox faith. Charles owed his crown to the Pope, and was anxious to repay the obligation by propagating Catholicism among his Orthodox subjects. The Venetians, as we saw, had enjoined the tolerance of the Greek church during their brief period of domination, so that now for the first time the islanders learnt what religious persecution meant. The Metropolitan of Corfù, whose office had been so greatly exalted by the Despots of Epeiros, was deposed, and in his room a less dignified ecclesiastic, called “chief priest” (μέγας πρωτοπαπᾶς), was substituted. The title of “Archbishop of Corfù” was now usurped by a Latin priest, and the principal churches were seized by the Catholic clergy[210]. In the time of the Angevins too the Jews, who still flourish there almost alone in Greece, made their first appearance in any numbers in Corfù, and first found protectors there; but the injunctions of successive sovereigns, bidding the people treat them well, would seem to show that this protection was seldom efficacious[211]. The government of the island was also reorganised. An official was appointed to act as viceroy with the title of captain, and the country was divided into four bailiwicks. Many new fiefs were assigned, while some that already existed were transferred to Italians and Provençals.