Part 30

The fifth Marquess is mentioned as among those summoned by Philip of Savoy, Prince of Achaia, to the famous Parliament and tournament on the Isthmus of Corinth in the spring of 1305, and as having been one of the magnates who obeyed the call of Philip’s namesake and successor, Philip of Taranto, in 1307[345]. Four years later he fell, at the great battle of the Kephissos, fighting against the Catalans beneath the lion banner of Walter of Brienne[346], who by his will a few days before had bequeathed 100 _hyperperi_ to the church of Boudonitza[347].

The Marquisate, alone of the Frankish territories north of the Isthmus, escaped conquest by the Catalans, though, as at Athens, a widow and her child were alone left to defend it. Alberto had married a rich Eubœan heiress, Maria dalle Carceri, a scion of the Lombard family which had come from Verona at the time of the Conquest. By this marriage he had become a hexarch, or owner of one-sixth of that great island, and is so officially described in the Venetian list of Greek rulers. Upon his death, in accordance with the rules of succession laid down in the _Book of the Customs of the Empire of Romania_, the Marquisate was divided in equal shares between his widow and his infant daughter, Guglielma. Maria did not, however, long remain unconsoled; indeed, political considerations counselled an immediate marriage with some one powerful enough to protect her own and her child’s interests from the Catalans of Athens. Hitherto the Wardens of the Northern March had only needed to think of the Greek enemies in front, for all the territory behind them, where Boudonitza was most easily assailable, had been in the hands of Frenchmen and friends. More fortunate than most of the high-born dames of Frankish Greece, the widowed Marchioness had avoided the fate of accepting one of her husband’s conquerors as his successor. Being thus free to choose, she selected as her spouse Andrea Cornaro, a Venetian of good family, a great personage in Crete, and Baron of Skarpanto. Cornaro thus, in 1312, received, by virtue of his marriage, his wife’s moiety of Boudonitza[348], while her daughter conferred the remaining half, by her subsequent union with Bartolommeo Zaccaria, upon a member of that famous Genoese race, which already owned Chios and was about to establish a dynasty in the Morea[349].

Cornaro now came to reside in Eubœa, where self-interest as well as patriotism led him to oppose the claims of Alfonso Fadrique, the new viceroy of the Catalan Duchy of Athens. His opposition and the natural ambition of Fadrique brought down, however, upon the Marquisate the horrors of a Catalan invasion, and it was perhaps on this occasion that Bartolommeo Zaccaria was carried off as a captive and sent to a Sicilian prison, whence he was only released at the intervention of Pope John XXII. It was fortunate for the inhabitants of Boudonitza that Venice included Cornaro in the truce which she made with the Catalans in 1319[350]. Four years later he followed his wife to the grave, and her daughter was thenceforth sole Marchioness.

Guglielma Pallavicini was a true descendant of the first Marquess. Of all the rulers of Boudonitza, with his exception, she was the most self-willed, and she might be included in that by no means small number of strong-minded, unscrupulous, and passionate women, whom Frankish Greece produced and whom classic Greece might have envied as subjects for her tragic stage. On the death of her Genoese husband, she considered that both the proximity of Boudonitza to the Venetian colony of Negroponte and her long-standing claims to the castle of Larmena in that island required that she should marry a Venetian, especially as the decision of her claim and even her right to reside in the island depended upon the Venetian bailie. Accordingly, she begged the Republic to give her one of its nobles as her consort, and promised dutifully to accept whomsoever the Senate might choose. The choice fell upon Nicolò Giorgio, or Zorzi, to give him the Venetian form of the name, who belonged to a distinguished family which had given a Doge to the Republic and had recently assisted young Walter of Brienne in his abortive campaign to recover his father’s lost duchy from the Catalans. A Venetian galley escorted him in 1335 to the haven of Boudonitza, and a Marquess, the founder of a new line, once more ruled over the castle of the Pallavicini[351].

At first there was no cause to regret the alliance. If the Catalans, now established at Neopatras and Lamia, within a few hours of Boudonitza, occupied several villages of the adjacent Marquisate, despite the recommendations of Venice, Nicolò I came to terms with them, probably by agreeing to pay that annual tribute of four fully equipped horses to the Vicar-General of the Duchy of Athens, which we find constituting the feudal bond between that state and Boudonitza in the time of his son[352]. He espoused, too, the Eubœan claims of his wife; but Venice, which had an eye upon the strong castle of Larmena, diplomatically referred the legal question to the bailie of Achaia, of which both Eubœa and Boudonitza were technically still reckoned as dependencies. The bailie, in the name of the suzeraine Princess of Achaia, Catherine of Valois, decided against Guglielma, and the purchase of Larmena by Venice ended her hopes. Furious at her disappointment, the Marchioness accused her Venetian husband of cowardice and of bias towards his native city, while more domestic reasons increased her indignation. Her consort was a widower, while she had had a daughter by her first marriage, and she suspected him of favouring his own offspring at the expense of her child, Marulla, in whose name she had deposited a large sum of money at the Venetian bank in Negroponte. To complete the family tragedy played within the walls of Boudonitza there was only now lacking a sinister ally of the angry wife. He, too, was forthcoming in the person of Manfredo Pallavicini, the relative, business adviser, and perhaps paramour, of the Marchioness. As one of the old conqueror’s stock, he doubtless regarded the Venetian husband as an interloper who had first obtained the family honours and then betrayed his trust. At last a crisis arrived. Pallavicini insulted the Marquess, his feudal superior; the latter threw him into prison, whereupon the prisoner attempted the life of his lord. As a peer of Achaia, the Marquess enjoyed the right of inflicting capital punishment. He now exercised it; Pallavicini was executed, and the assembled burgesses of Boudonitza, if we may believe the Venetian version, approved the act, saying that it was better that a vassal should die rather than inflict an injury on his lord.

The sequel showed, however, that Guglielma was not appeased. She might have given assent with her lips to what the burgesses had said. But she worked upon their feelings of devotion to her family, which had ruled so long over them; they rose against the foreign Marquess at their Lady’s instigation; and Nicolò was forced to flee across to Negroponte, leaving his little son Francesco and all his property behind him. Thence he proceeded to Venice, and laid his case before the Senate. That body warmly espoused his cause, and ordered the Marchioness to receive him back to his former honourable position, or to deliver up his property. In the event of her refusal, the bailie of Negroponte was instructed to break off all communications between Boudonitza and that island and to sequestrate her daughter’s money still lying in the Eubœan bank. In order to isolate her still further, letters were to be sent to the Catalans of Athens, requesting them not to interfere between husband and wife. As the Marchioness remained obdurate, Venice made a last effort for an amicable settlement, begging the Catalan leaders, Queen Joanna I of Naples, as the head of the house of Anjou, to which the principality of Achaia belonged, and the Dauphin Humbert II of Vienne, then commanding the papal fleet against the Turks, to use their influence on behalf of her citizen. When this failed, the bailie carried out his instructions, confiscated the funds deposited in the bank, and paid Nicolò out of them the value of his property. Neither the loss of her daughter’s money nor the spiritual weapons of Pope Clement VI could move the obstinate Lady of Boudonitza, and in her local bishop, Nitardus of Thermopylæ, she could easily find an adviser who dissuaded her from forgiveness[353]. So Nicolò never returned to Boudonitza; he served the Republic as envoy to the Serbian Tsar, Dushan, and as one of the Doge’s Councillors, and died at Venice in 1354. After his death, the Marchioness at once admitted their only son, Francesco, the “Marchesotto,” as he was called, now a youth of seventeen, to rule with her, and, as the Catalans were once more threatening her land, made overtures to the Republic. The latter, glad to know that a Venetian citizen was once more ruling as Marquess at Boudonitza, included him and his mother in its treaties with Athens, and when Guglielma died, in 1358, after a long and varied career, her son received back the confiscated property of his late half-sister[354].

The peaceful reign of Francesco was a great contrast to the stormy career of his mother. His Catalan neighbours, divided by the jealousies of rival chiefs, had no longer the energy for fresh conquests. The establishment of a Serbian kingdom in Thessaly only affected the Marquess in so far as it enabled him to bestow his daughter’s hand upon a Serbian princelet[355]. The Turkish peril, which was destined to swallow up the Marquisate in the next generation, was, however, already threatening Catalans, Serbs, and Italians alike, and accordingly Francesco Giorgio was one of the magnates of Greece whom Pope Gregory XI invited to the Congress on the Eastern question, which was summoned to meet at Thebes[356] on October 1, 1373. But when the Athenian duchy, of which he was a tributary, was distracted by a disputed succession between Maria, Queen of Sicily, and Pedro IV of Aragon, the Venetian Marquess, chafing at his vassalage and thinking that the moment was favourable for severing his connexion with the Catalans, declared for the Queen. He was, in fact, the most important member of the minority which was in her favour, for we are told that “he had a very fine estate,” and we know that he had enriched himself by mercantile ventures. Accordingly he assisted the Navarrese Company in its attack upon the duchy, so that Pedro IV wrote in 1381 to the Venetian bailie of Negroponte, begging him to prevent his fellow-countryman at Boudonitza from helping the King’s enemies. As the Marquess had property in the island, he had given hostages to fortune. The victory of the Aragonese party closed the incident, and the generous policy of the victors was doubtless extended to him. But in 1388 the final overthrow of the Catalan rule by Nerio Acciajuoli made the Marquisate independent of the Duchy of Athens[357]. In feudal lists—such as that of 1391—the Marquess continued to figure as one of the temporal peers of Achaia[358], but his real position was that of a “citizen and friend” of Venice, to whom he now looked for help in trouble.

Francesco may have lived to see this realisation of his hopes, for he seems to have died about 1388, leaving the Marquisate to his elder son, Giacomo, under the regency of his widow Euphrosyne, a daughter of the famous insular family of Sommaripa, which still survives in the Cyclades[359]. But the young Marquess soon found that he had only exchanged his tribute to the Catalan Vicar-General for a tribute to the Sultan. We are not told the exact moment at which Bayezid I imposed this payment, but there can be little doubt that Boudonitza first became tributary to the Turks in the campaign of 1393-4, when “the Thunderbolt” fell upon Northern Greece, when the Marquess’s Serbian brother-in-law was driven from Pharsala and Domoko, when Lamia and Neopatras were surrendered, when the county of Salona, founded at the same time as Boudonitza, ceased to exist. On the way to Salona, the Sultan’s army must have passed within four hours of Boudonitza, and we surmise that it was spared, either because the season was so late—Salona fell in February, 1394—or because the castle was so strong, or because its lord was a Venetian. This respite was prolonged by the fall of Bayezid at Angora and the fratricidal struggle between his sons, while the Marquess was careful to have himself included in the treaties of 1403, 1408, and 1409 between the Sultan Suleyman and Venice; a special clause in the first of these instruments released him from all obligations except that which he had incurred towards the Sultan’s father Bayezid[360]. Still, even in Suleyman’s time, such was his sense of insecurity, that he obtained leave from Venice to send his peasants and cattle over to the strong castle of Karystos in Eubœa, of which his brother Nicolò had become the lessee[361]. He figured, too, in the treaty of 1405, which the Republic concluded with Antonio I Acciajuoli, the new ruler of Athens, and might thus consider himself as safe from attack on the south[362]. Indeed, he was anxious to enlarge his responsibilities, for he was one of those who bid for the two Venetian islands of Tenos and Mykonos, when they were put up to auction in the following year. In this offer, however, he failed[363].

The death of Suleyman and the accession of his brother Musa in 1410 sealed the fate of the Marquess. Early in the spring a very large Turkish army appeared before the old castle. Boudonitza was strong, and its Marquess a resolute man, so that for a long time the siege was in vain. “Giacomo,” says the Venetian document composed by his son, “preferred, like the high-minded and true Christian that he was, to die rather than surrender the place.” But there was treachery within the castle walls; betrayed by one of his servants, the Marquess fell, like another Leonidas, bravely defending the mediæval Thermopylæ against the new Persian invasion. Even then, his sons, “following in their father’s footsteps,” held the castle some time longer in the hope that Venice would remember her distant children in their distress. The Senate did, indeed, order the Captain of the Gulf to make inquiries whether Boudonitza still resisted and in that case to send succour to its gallant defenders—the cautious Government added—“with as little expense as possible.” But before the watchmen on the keep could descry the Captain sailing up the Atalante channel, all was over; both food and ammunition had given out and the Zorzi were constrained to surrender, on condition that their lives and property were spared. The Turks broke their promises, deprived their prisoners of their goods, expelled them from the home of their ancestors, and dragged young Nicolò to the Sultan’s Court at Adrianople[364].

Considerable confusion prevails in this last act of the history of Boudonitza, owing to the fact that the two leading personages, the brother and eldest son of the late Marquess, bore the same name of Nicolò. Hopf has accordingly adopted two different versions in his three accounts of these events. On a review of the documentary evidence, it would seem that the brother, the Baron of Karystos, was not at Boudonitza during the siege, and that, on the capture of his nephew, he proclaimed himself Marquess. Venice recognised his title, and instructed her envoy to Musa to include him in her treaty with the Sultan and to procure at the same time the release of the late Marquess’s son. Accordingly, in the peace of 1411, Musa promised, for love of Venice and seeing that he passed as a Venetian, to harass him no more, on condition that he paid the tribute established. Not only so, but the Marquess’s ships and merchandise were allowed to enter the Turkish dominions on payment of a fixed duty[365]. Thus temporarily restored, the Marquisate remained in the possession of the uncle, from whom the nephew, even after his release, either could not, or cared not to claim it. He withdrew to Venice, and, many years later, received as the reward of his father’s heroic defence of Boudonitza, the post of _châtelain_ of Pteleon, near the mouth of the Gulf of Volo, the last Venetian outpost on the mainland of North-Eastern Greece—a position which he held for eight years[366].

Meanwhile, his uncle, the Marquess, had lost all but his barren title. Though the Turks had evacuated Boudonitza, and the castle had been repaired, he felt so insecure that he sent his bishop as an emissary to Venice, begging for aid in the event of a fresh Turkish invasion and for permission to transport back to Boudonitza the serfs whom he had sent across to Karystos a few years before[367]. His fears proved to be well founded. In vain the Republic gave orders that he should be included in her treaty with the new Sultan, Mohammed I. On June 20, 1414, a large Turkish army attacked and took the castle, and with it many prisoners, the Marquess, so it would seem, among them—for in the following year we find his wife, an adopted daughter of the Duke of Athens, appealing to Venice to obtain his release from his Turkish dungeon[368]. He recovered his freedom, but not his Marquisate. In the treaty of 1416, Boudonitza was, indeed, actually assigned to him in return for the usual tribute; but nine years later we find Venice still vainly endeavouring to obtain its restitution[369]. He continued, however, to hold the title of Marquess of Boudonitza with the castle of Karystos, which descended to his son, the “Marchesotto,” and his son’s son[370], till the Turkish conquest of Eubœa in 1470 put an end to Venetian rule over that great island. Thence the last titular Marquess of Boudonitza, after governing Lepanto, retired to Venice, whence the Zorzi came and where they are still largely represented.

Of the castle, where for two hundred years Pallavicini and Zorzi held sway, much has survived the two Turkish sieges and the silent ravages of five centuries. Originally there must have been a triple enclosure, for several square towers of the third and lowest wall are still standing in the village and outside it. Of the second enceinte the most noticeable fragment is a large tower in ruins, while the innermost wall is strengthened by three more. In the centre of this last enclosure are the imposing remains of the large square donjon (Plate VII, Fig. 1), and adjoining this is the most interesting feature of the castle—the great Hellenic gateway (Plate VII, Fig. 2), which connects one portion of this enclosure with the other, and which Buchon has described so inaccurately[371]. It is _not_ “composed of six stones,” but of three huge blocks, nor do “the two upper stones meet at an acute angle”; a single horizontal block forms the top. Buchon omits to mention the Byzantine decoration in brick above this gateway. Of the brick conduit which he mentions I could find no trace, but the two cisterns remain. The large building near them is presumably the Frankish church of which he speaks; but the window which he found there no longer exists. Possibly, when the new church in the village was erected, the builders took materials from the chapel in the castle for its construction. At any rate, that very modern and commonplace edifice contains several fragments of ancient work. Thus, the stone threshold of the west door bears three large roses, while on the doorway itself are two stars; and the north door is profusely decorated with a rose, two curious creatures like griffins, two circles containing triangles, and a leaf; above this door is a cross, each arm of which forms a smaller cross. As usually happens in the Frankish castles of Greece—with the exception of Geraki—there are no coats of arms at Boudonitza, unless this composite cross is an allusion to the “three crosses,” said to have been originally borne by one branch of the Pallavicini. The “mediæval seal” in the possession of a local family dates from the reign of Otho! But there exists a genuine seal of the monastery of the Holy Virgin of Boudonitza, ascribed by M. Schlumberger[372] to the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century. The Marquesses have left behind them neither their portraits—like the Palatine Counts of Cephalonia of the second dynasty—nor any coins—like the French barons of Salona, to whom they bear the nearest resemblance. One of their line, however, the Marquess Alberto, figures in K. Rhanghaves’s play, _The Duchess of Athens_, and their castle and their ofttimes stormy lives fill not the least picturesque page of that romance which French and Italian adventurers wrote with their swords in the classic sites of Hellas.

APPENDIX

I

1335 DIE XVI JANUARIJ.

Capta. Quod vir nobilis Ser Nicolaus Georgio, cum sua familia et levibus arnesiis possit ire cum galeis nostris unionis. Et committatur Capitaneo, quod eum conducat Nigropontum, et si poterit eum facere deponi ad Bondenizam, sine sinistro armate faciat inde sicut ei videbitur.—Omnes de parte.

Misti, XVI. f. 97tᵒ.

II

1345 DIE 21 JULIJ.