Part 49

One important privilege was granted to the communities from political motives—the election of the Orthodox bishops. Of all the difficulties, which Venice had to face, the greatest was the Œcumenical Patriarch, an official, who, being resident in the Turkish capital, was perforce a Turkish agent, and who, before this reform, had named the nineteen Moreote bishops and the abbots of the _stavropégia_—monasteries directly dependent upon him. These, in 1701, formed 26 out of the total of 158 (with 1367 monks). The Patriarch’s patronage had, therefore, been considerable, and his influence, even apart from Turkish pressure, was unlikely to be used in favour of a Catholic government. But this was not his only loss. Before the Venetian conquest, one-half of the Epiphany and Easter offerings of the priests and people—3 reals for every priest in the diocese and ¼ real for every household—had gone to the bishop, and one-half to the Patriarch. Morosini reduced these offerings, the _philótimo_ as it was called, by about one-half, at the same time ordering that the whole of it should be given to the local bishop and nothing to the Patriarch. The Patriarch, thus injured in both his powers and his purse, threatened to excommunicate such communes as elected their own bishops. To this the Venetian governor-general, Grimani, retorted by forbidding the entry of the patriarchal exarch into the Morea; but his duties, mainly those of a tax-collector, were quietly undertaken by the Metropolitan of Patras, while the Patriarch became as anxious as the Turks to turn the Venetians out of the country. Unfortunately, these disadvantages of a well-meant reform were not accompanied by corresponding benefits. Simony continued to be rife, and unsuitable persons were often chosen as bishops by the communities. Nor was the Patriarch the only external influence over the Moreote church, for there were some twenty-four _metóchia_, or “monastic farms” belonging to monasteries in Turkish territory, which not only sent money out of the country to swell the enemy’s revenues, but were centres of political propaganda and smuggling. These difficulties were not peculiar to the Venetians: they likewise faced the Bavarian regency. The Venetian official reports show a consciousness of the policy of conciliation towards the church of the vast mass of the people. For the Catholics, outside the Venetian garrison, were few, except at Nauplia and among the Chiote exiles at Modon. Indeed, the former Archbishop of Chios was the first Catholic Archbishop of the Venetian Morea; and his successor, Mgr. Carlini, whose see was Corinth but who resided at Nauplia, was the only Catholic prelate in the whole kingdom; even as late as 1714 the Morea contained only one Catholic bishop. We find, however, the Greeks sending their children to the friars’ school to learn Italian and the rudiments of Latin, and there was a scheme for founding a college at Tripolitsa. Unfortunately the ministers of religion, as Cornaro epigrammatically wrote, seemed sometimes to be sent to the Morea “rather as a punishment for their own sins than to correct the sins of others.”

Materially, the Venetian administration marked an advance, as the foreign occupation of Turkish territory always does, but trade was handicapped by the selfish colonial policy of Venice. Upon the Morea, “a poor country without industries or manufacture,” the Turks had imposed thirteen taxes, of which five (the _haratch_, a further local capitation-tax, called _spenza_, the duty on horses’ shoes, the tax on absentee landlords, and the burden of providing and transporting food for the army at half price) fell upon the Christians alone, while the others (such as the tithe and the taxes on animals) were common to both them and the Turks. Thus, out of a total of 1,699,000 reals, the Christians paid 1,350,300, besides what was illegally extorted from them. The Venetians raised their revenue from tithes of all agricultural produce, taxes on wine, spirits, oil and tobacco, the usual Italian system of a salt monopoly, customs dues, and the Crown lands. Careful management and increased prosperity increased the revenue, only 280,000 reals in 1689, to 500,501 in 1711. The farming of the tithes was entrusted to the communes, but the Mainates refused to pay tithes, consenting, however, to pay, although reluctantly, a fixed tribute called _mactù_. The salt monopoly was a hardship, because, although the price was low, a peasant living near the chief salt-pans at Thermisi was not allowed to buy his salt on the spot, but had to make a long journey to some distant magazine. Agriculture improved after the peace of Carlovitz and the fortification of Nauplia, when it became clear that Venice intended to stay and security of tenure was thus assured. But the customs dues yielded little, because the Republic forbade the creation of industries likely to compete with those of Venice, and compelled the Moreotes to send every article to that city. English merchants, therefore, found it cheaper to trade with Turkey, and the governors-general in vain pointed out the folly of this commercial policy, which caused the decline of such industries as that of silk at Mistra, until it was revived by the Chiote exiles at Modon. As the foreign garrison could not stomach the resinous wine, and began to import foreign vintages, efforts were made to extend and improve the local vineyards. The currant, which is now successfully cultivated along the Moreote shore of the Corinthian Gulf, had, indeed, been known in the peninsula as far back as the fourteenth century, when it is mentioned by Pegalotti[791]; but it was not till after the Turkish reconquest that it was grown and exported in large quantities for the consumption of northern races. Even with these drawbacks, however, and the burden of having to contribute to the maintenance of Cerigo and Ægina, both united administratively with the Morea since the peace, the peninsula not only paid all the expenses of administration but furnished a substantial balance to the naval defence of the Republic, in which it was directly interested. Land defence was a more difficult question. Of the natives only the Mainates wanted to be soldiers, nor could the Greeks be trusted with arms, while French consuls, anxious to weaken Venice, encouraged French mercenaries, as at Suda and Spinalonga[792], to desert her service.

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.

Despite the importance of its position as a port of transit between Rome and Constantinople, Valona is rarely named even by Byzantine historians before the eleventh century. Bishops of Valona, who were at different times suffragans of Durazzo or Ochrida, are mentioned in 458, in 553, and in 519, when the legates sent by Pope Hormisdas to Constantinople were received by the then occupant of the See[810]. It was there that Peter, Justinian’s envoy, met those of Theodatus, the two Roman Senators, Liberius and Opilio, and learnt what had befallen Amalasuntha, the prisoner of Bolsena[811]. Constantine Porphyrogenitus[812] merely enumerates it as one of the cities comprised in the Theme of Dyrrachium. Possibly it was one of the Byzantine harbours between Corfù and the Drin, which escaped temporary absorption in the Bulgarian Empire of Symeon (_c._ 917). But Kanina was included in that of the other great Bulgarian Tsar Samuel (976-1014), until Basil II, “the Bulgar-slayer,” overthrew that powerful monarch[813], and it is, therefore, probable that Valona too was for a brief space a Bulgarian port. The Sicilian expeditions against Greece in the eleventh and twelfth centuries naturally brought Valona into prominence as a landing-place for troops. Anna Comnena[814] frequently mentions it. Thus, in 1081, Bohemund, son of Robert Guiscard, took and burnt Kanina, Valona, and Jericho, as the ancient harbour of Eurychos (the Porto Raguseo of the Italians) was then called; Robert was nearly shipwrecked in a storm off Cape Glossa, and later on spent two months in the haven of Jericho. When he left Albania in 1082 he bestowed Valona upon Bohemund, and when he made his second and fatal expedition in 1084 it was to Valona that he crossed from Otranto. Trade privileges at Valona (renewed by subsequent Emperors in 1126, 1148 and 1187) formed part of the price which the Emperor Alexios I paid for the assistance of the Venetian fleet in this contest[815]. It was there that the Greek Admiral Kontostephanos watched for Bohemund’s return, and shortly afterwards we find Michael Kekaumenos, Imperial governor of Valona, Jericho and Kanina. In 1149, after the capture of Corfù, Manuel II went to Valona, and encamped there several days before sailing for Sicily to punish King Roger for his attack upon Greece. He landed on the islet of Aeironesion (identified by Pouqueville and Professor Lampros with Saseno); but storms prevented his “punitive expedition,” so he left Valona by land for Pelagonia[816].