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.
VII. MISCELLANEA FROM THE NEAR EAST
1. VALONA
The late Italian occupation of Valona has drawn attention to what has been called one of the two keys of the Adriatic. It may, therefore, be of interest to trace the history of this important strategic position, which has been held by no less than twelve different masters.
The name αὐλών, “a hollow between hills,” was applied to various places in antiquity, and from the accusative of this word comes the Italian form “Valona,” or, as the Venetians often wrote it, “Avalona.” In antiquity there were, however, few allusions to this particular αὐλών, the probable date of its foundation being, therefore, fairly late, although the pitch-mine of Selenitza, three hours to the east, was worked by the Romans in the time of Ovid[801], and Pliny the Elder[802] knew the now famous island of Saseno, to which both Lucan[803] and Silius Italicus[804] allude, as a pirate resort. But there is no mention of Valona till the second half of the second century A.D., when Ptolemy[805] describes it as “a city and harbour.” It subsequently occurs several times in the Antonine, Maritime and Jerusalem Itineraries[806], and in the Synekdemos of Hierokles[807]; whereas Kanina, the little town on the hill above it, which may have been its akropolis, was “built,” according to Leake[808], “upon a Hellenic site,” and identified by Pouqueville[809] with Œneus, the fortress taken by Perseus during the third Macedonian war, and probably destroyed by Æmilius Paullus, which would thus explain its long disappearance from history.