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.