1920 343
The Venetian Revival in Greece^ 1684-1J18
N 1684, after, the lapse of 144 years, Venice once more began
I to be a power upon the Greek continent. She had long Downloaded from had grievances against the Porte, such as the failure to deliver 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 http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ 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 com- at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 pensated 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, was left for fifteen years in retirement. Now that his countrymen needed a com- mander, they bethought them of the man who had been so severely criticized 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 Corfu. She possessed, therefore, at Corfu, 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. Morosini also won Kalamos 344 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July and the other smaller islands lying off the coast of Akarnania, and as his secretary and historiographer, Locatelli,1 informs us, obtained the submission of the Akamanian population of Baltos and Xeromeros. 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 treaty2 with the duke of Brunswick, father of our George I, for the supply of Hanoverian soldiers,
was concluded; other small German princes sold their Downloaded from 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 3,100 Venetians, Prince Maximilian
William of Brunswick and 2,400 Hanoverians, 1,000 Maltese, http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ 1,000 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 at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 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.8 Morosini succeeded, however, in forcing the Turks to surrender the old Venetian colony of Coron, whence an inscription of its former Venetian governors dated 1463 was sent in triumph to Venice,4 and his success encouraged the Mainates to assist him in besieging the fortresses of Zarnata, Kielapha, and Passava. All three, together with the port of Vitylo and the town of Kalamata, surrendered or were abandoned by their garrisons, but an historian of Frankish Greece cannot but deplore the destruction of the two famous castles of Kalamata and Passava. 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 WiJliam 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
1 Baeeonto ttistorico deUa Ventta (hurra in Levanit (Colonia, 1691), i. 62, 65. ' Laborde, Athines aux XV, XVI', el XVII' sihdta, ii. 74^8. • 'HpfpoXiyioy M'Ttajj, apud Sathaa, 'EAAipini 'AW«SOTO, i. 198 ; Quotes, 'Icrrcpua 'Kvoitrqiiortiiana', iii. 281, 318. 4 La Morea combaUuia daW Armi Venete (Venetia, 1686), pp. 180-2. 1920 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE 345 it had been a dependency of the Venetian colony of Modon in the shape of two coats-of-arms, those of Morosini and Malipiero,1 the latter belonging to the governor of 1467 or to his namesake of 1489. Modon thereupon surrendered, and, although Monejn- vasia, 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 near a century and a half, under Venetian rule, and Father Dambira, a Downloaded from 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 Becond Athenian deputation, headed by the Metropolitan Jacob, and comprising thejiotables Stamati Gaspari, whose origin was Italian, Michael Demakes, George Dousmanes, and a resident http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ alien named Damestre, succeeded in persuading him to accept 9,000. He sailed to the Piraeus, collected the first annual instal- ment, 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 at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 the Albanian district of Pulati, where a village, named Dushmani, still exists.2 The Turkish government compelled the oecumenical 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 favoured metro- politan. 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 '.3 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, realized in 1893, of cutting a canal which should join the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs.4 The surrender of Castel Tornese, the mint
1 Loostelli, L 151, 161, 167, 174, 213. 1 Hateses apud S&thas, i. 210 ; Jireflek, OttchidUe der Serben, n. i. 139 ; Locate!!!, i. 263, 276. • Ibid. i. 338. * Journal d'Anna Aherhjdm, apud Laborde. ii 307. 346 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July of the medieval Morea, and of Mistra; the former capital of the Byzantine province, justified his secretary * 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. Such, however, 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 Corfu, it still
remains to remind the visitor of the Republic's last attempt to Downloaded from 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 http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ 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 provi- sion 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 at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 necessary to abandon Athens, not only would the Greek inhabi- tants 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 Tripolitza 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, Tripolitiza, 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.2 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 9,880 men (including one or two Scottish volunteers) and 870 horses, on 21 September 1687, cast anchor in the Piraeus, Porto Leone, as it was then called from the statue of a lion which stood at its mouth. Thither a deputation of 1 Locatelli, i. 348. * Morosini's dispatches apud Laborde, ii 121-31. 1920 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN ORE EGE 347 Athenian notables, the brothers Peter and Demetrios Gaspari, Spyridon Peroules, the schoolmaster Dr. Argyros Benaldes, and others hastened to make submission to Venice.1 Although Sir Paul Rycaut, as the result of eighteen years' diplomatic erperience 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 Downloaded from 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 http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ 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.* 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 at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 Thebes. The Venetians were, therefore, able to occupy lower Athens unmolested. Colonel 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 was1 decided to bombard that sacred rock. Archaeologists and historians cannot but be horrified at this act of vandalism. But in our own day we have seen the Germans bombarding the cathedral of Rheims, and the Au8trians 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 whioh stands the monument of Philopappos, oh the Pnyx, and at the foot of the Areiopagos. On 23 Sep- tember the bombardment began.8 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
1 Looatelli, ii. 3. • Laborde, i. lld-17. * Moroaini'e dispatch apod Laborde, ii. 168; Chandler, Travel* in Asia Minor and Qruct (ed. 1825), ii. 111. 348 TEE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July was so high that the bombs flew over the Akropolis and fell into the town beyond it, whose inhabitants claimed compensa- tion 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, how- ever, frustrated by the hardness of the rock, the fire of the besieged, and the fatal fall of the miners' 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 Downloaded from magazine in the Propylaea, 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 http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ from Liineburg 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 destruc- tion 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 at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 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,1 who accom- panied 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 Ranke feel this act of vandalism committed by one of his country- men, that he tried to discredit the diary of the Hessian lieu- tenant, Sobiewolsky, which mentions the Luneburg 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 then- 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 1 Apud Laborde, ii. 277; Locatelli, ii. 3 ; Ranke, ' Die Venezianer in Morea ', in Sammi. Werke, xlii. 297. 1920 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE 349 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 three Ragusan and two French vessels and an English pink, then in the Piraeus. These terms Downloaded from were settled on the 29th. The lion-banner of St. Mark was at once hoisted on the Propylaea, and punctually, on 4 October, about 3,000 Turks, including 500 soldiers, embarked. More than 300 others remained behind and were baptized Christians. Despite Morosini's and Koenigsmark's express orders the exiles were http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ insulted by the officers and soldiers of the auxiliaries on their way down to the Piraeus, and some of their women and children, as well as their bundles, were taken from them. Count Tomaso Pompei * 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 at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 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 Piraeus, 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 ecstasy ' 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, some of them since the time of the Turkish, some even since that of the FranMsh conquest. These descriptions, evidently based on the tales of the local guides, allude to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which then had seventeen 1 Locatelli, ii 8 ; Morosini's dispatch apud Laborde, ii. 162. 350 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July columns standing, under the name of the ' Palace of Hadrian ', the monument of Philopappos under that of the ' Arch of Trajan ', the gate of Athene 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 Pinako- theke under that of the ' Arsenal of Lykourgos '. The Tower of the Winds figures as the ' Gymnasium of Sokrates ', the chor- agic monument of Lysikratea as the ' Lantern of Demosthenes'. The marble lion at the Piraeus, they tell us, had been ' transported there in honour of Leonidas ', while the statue of the tongueless Downloaded from 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.1 These accounts are a curious contribution to the MirabUia of Athens ; but, despite this casual display of popular erudition, the http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ army was not archaeologically minded, the Germans less so than the more cultured Venetians. A Hessian ensign 2 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 Demo- sthenes ' (the choragic monument of Lysikrates), which the Capuchins had bought eighteen years earlier and in which his at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 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 archaeological 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 archaeological knowledge of .the Greek inhabitants, she wrote that ' you cannot find any of them who know as much about their ancestors as foreigners do '.s 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
1 A«AT/O» -njt 'Urr. «oj 'E6r. 'Eratpiat,' v. 222-7 ; Looatelli, it 24-34. • Laborde, ii. 358. » Ibid. ii. 279. 1920 TEE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE 351 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.1 Despite his trouble in his feet, he seems to have been still an active man, who sent two dispatches on the Venetian Downloaded from 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 http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ place that he had taken. At Athens he turned two mosques into eatholic 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.2 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 19 October with a sermon by the minister at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 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.3 This last work has been called ' the first serious plan of the town of Athens ', but its object was military rather than archaeological— to explain to the council of war and the home government the extent and cost of the works necessary for the defence of Athens. Whether Athens could be defended was the question which its conquerors now had to decide. At a council of war, held at the Piraeus on 31 December, it was pointed out that it was impossible for the small Venetian forces to fortify the town, pr even to leave a garrison there to defend its inhabitants, for all. the available troops would be needed for the attack upon Negroponte in the spring ; while, even if it could be fortified, •Athens, situated so far from the sea, could not be revictualled while the Turks were still about. The destruction of Athens was •. - ' Laborde, ii. 279, 313. • Ibid. ii. 179, 317. » Ibid, a 150, .172, 176, 180, 182; Fanelli, Atent AUica, pp. 113, 308, 317. 352 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July actually mooted, but the council decided to postpone that for the present, and to remove the Greek population, estimated at over 6,000, besides the Albanians, into the Morea and grant them lands in the new Venetian territory there as compensation for the loss of their old homes. A further council, held on 2 January 1688, decided, in view of the spread of the plague from the Morea to continental Greece and some of the islands, to hasten the departure of the Athenians, so as to remove the army, and in the meanwhile to organize a sanitary administration of the town.
The decision to remove the Athenians filled them with dismay ; Downloaded from the ' elders ', the vecchiardi, as they were styled in Italian, in vain offered to contribute 20,000 reals and to maintain the garrison at their own cost, if they were allowed to remain and men were left to defend 'the castle '-1 The plague and Turkish
raids continued to harass the Venetians and the auxiliaries, http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ while those mutual recriminations, usual among allies of various nationalities, so greatly disturbed the harmony of the expedi- tionary force that Morosini formed five companies of Albanians, who might enable him to dispense with his grumbling German troops. Koenigsmark on 30 January made another proposition, to leave a garrison of 300 men on the Akropolis with provisions for sixteen months, but Morosini calculated that this would involve the presence of another hundred servants, and that for at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 all this force a large quantity of biscuit and wine would be needed. But the argument which weighed most with the decisive council of 12 February was the water-supply. . The sixteen cisterns of the Akropolis, it was said, held water for only three months, and of these the great cistern under the Parthenon had probably been damaged by the explosion, and the still larger one in the theatre of Dionysos could easily be cut off, and the water-supply of ' the castle ' thereby reduced to what would suffice for only fifty days. It was, therefore, unanimously decided to leave ' the castle •' of Athens for the present as it was, with its walls intact, but to remove all the guns and munitions, trusting to Providence for its ultimate recapture. The council justified its resolve to abandon the place by stating that the only object of attacking Athens had been to push back the enemy from the neighbourhood of the isthmus of Corinth. Morosini determined, however, to carry off to Venice some memorial of Athens which could vie with the four bronze horses, taken thither after the capture of Constantinople. He ordered the removal from the western pediment of the Parthenon of the statue of Poseidon (whom Morosini thought to be Zeus) and the chariot of Victory (whom the Venetians mistook for Athene); but the recent explosion had disarranged the blocks of marble, 1 Laborde, ii. 90 ; Mateses apud Sathas, i. 216. 1920 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE 353 so that the workmen no sooner touched them than these beautiful sculptures fell in pieces upon the ground. Morosini, coolly announcing this disaster in a dispatch to the senate, expressed satisfaction that none of the workmen had been injured, and announced his decision to carry off instead a marble lioness without a head ; but the head, as he added in a sentence worthy of Mummius, ' can be perfectly replaced by another piece '. Hi a secretary, San Gallo, took away, however, the Victory's head, which Laborde purchased in 1840 from a Venetian antiquary, while other fragments were picked up from the ruins by other Downloaded from Venetian, Danish, and Hessian officers. Morosini did not content himself with the headless lioness alone ; he carried off the great lion, which had given to the Piraeus its medieval name, and a third lion which had stood near the temple of Theseus, where it was seen by Babin and Spon.; a fourth, a lioness, which bears http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ the inscription Anno Corcurae liberatae, did not reach Venice till 1716, the year of Schulenburg's deliverance of Corfu, and, therefore, does not figure in Fanelli's1 previous plate of the lions before the arsenal, where they may still be seen. This done, the Venetian forces abandoned Athens on 4 April, and five days later the last detachment set sail for Poros. The net result of the Venetian capture of Athens had been disastrous. It had done irreparable damage to the Parthenon without any permanent at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 military or political gain ; it had injured the inhabitants, who had been forced to leave their homes ; it had spread disease and discontent among the allies. To set against these disadvantages Venice acquired four marble lions and Morosini the fame of having temporarily held the famous city. To us Verneda's plans are the only satisfactory result of its siege. It remains to describe the fate of the exiled Athenians and of the conquerors of Athens. The unhappy natives had left on 24 March, and some even earlier. Three boat-loads' went to the Venetian island of Zante, others to the Venetian possessions in the Morea, especially to Nauplia, but most (under the leadership of the brothers Gaspari) to Aegina and, like their ancestors at the time of the Persian invasion, to Salamis (' Culuris ', as it was still called), where, as the famous ' Fragments ' from the monastery of the Anargyroi (SS. Cosmas and Damian) at Athens inform us,2 they built houses and churches at Ambelaki, while ' Attica remained deserted for about three years ' except for a few stragglers on the Akropolis and in some towers of the town. This is the passage upon which Fallmerayer based his theory of the desertion of Athens for nearly 400 years from the time
» Atene Attica, p. 344. ' Kampouroglos, Mv^/itm, i. 43; Philadelpheufl, 'laropia rwr 'Afhprxr, ii. 315 ; ior, v. 546. VOL. xxxv.—NO. oxxxrx. A a 354 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July of Justinian. The poorest went to Corinth, while the leading families were scattered about the Morea, the Benizeloi at Patrae, the Limponai at Coron, Peroules at Nauplia, and Dousmanes at Gastouni in Elis. The last-named received for his services to Venice several grants of land and the title of Cavaliere di San Marco; his family subsequently became counts and migrated to Corfu, where fifty years ago one of them published an Italian account of Gladstone's famous mission. To other Athenian notables, who had been specially useful to them, the Venetians also gave money or titles, a pension to the ex-metropolitan Downloaded from Jacob as compensation for his punishment by the patriarch, the title of count to the schoolmaster Benaldes, to another scholarly Athenian, Joannes Macola, the translator of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Justin's History, to Taronites for his sub- sequent services at the siege of Nauplia, and to Venizelos Rhoides. http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ Indeed, so well were these Athenian refugees treated, that a geographical shibboleth was devised to discriminate between the genuine and the pseudo-exiles from Athens.1 To the 662 Athenian families which entered the Morea, the Venetian authorities assigned lands, vineyards, olive-trees, houses, shops, and gardens in proportion to the supposed requirements of the four classes into which Athenian society was then divided. An official Venetian report of 1701 praises their industry in trade, at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 but remarks that ' not even the common folk among them were inclined to work on the land', and extols their ' subtle intelligence', adding that they desired to return to Athens, although the town was once more under Turkish rule, while at the same time retain- ing their Moreote property.2 Athens was the climax of Morosini's Greek career. On board his galley at Poros he received the news of his election as doge, but his first ducal enterprise, the siege of Negroponte, not only failed, despite the rising of northern Greece against the Turks, but cost the lives of Koenigsmark by fever and of Peter Gaspari, leader of the Athenian volunteers. This was the last big event of the war. The German auxiliaries left Greece; Morosini, recalled home by fever and the duties of his new office, left to his successor, Cornaro, the task of completing the conquest of the Morea by starving out the impregnable rock of Monemvasia in 1690 ; meanwhile a military revolution at Constantinople had placed a weak sultan on the throne and a strong minister, the third of the Kiuprili dynasty, in power. The latter's first act was to conciliate the Christians, and to appoint a Mainate, Liberakes Gerakares, then a prisoner in the arsenal, as bey of
1 Mateees, foe. cit. ; Locatelli, il 50; Kampourogloe, Mnj>ma, i. 189, 296 ; 'Icrropta, i. 343 ; iii. 266. 1 AcArior, v. 457 ; Lampros, 'l
the war. In 1691 the island fortress of Grabusa, off the north- at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 western extremity of Crete, was betrayed by two Neapolitan officers in the Venetian service ; next year an attempt to take Canea was frustrated by the old Venetian fortifications, once erected against the Turks. Liberakes raided the Morea, but the Moreote Greeks did not rise, as he had led his Turkish patrons to expect, and the fear of being cut off by the disembarkation of a Venetian force at the isthmus made the raiders soon retire. In 1693 Morosini resumed the command, but his only acts were to refortify the castle of Aegina, which be had demolished during the Cretan war in 1655, the cost of upkeep being paid, as long as the war lasted, by the Athenians, and to place it and Salamis under Malipiero as governor.3 This led the Athenians to send him a request for the renewal of Venetian protection and an offer of an annual tribute. His death at Nauplia in 1694 caused the appointment of Zeno, then governor of the Morea, as his successor. Zeno easily accomplished the capture of the rich island of Chios, but in the following year the island was abandoned. The Greek population was more favourable to the Moslems than to the catholic Venetians, especially as the presence of the archbishop of Naxos on board the fleet was interpreted as an intention to
• Kampouroglos, KrTjfitta, ii. 339; Konstantinides, 'Ioropia TSV 'A&rpna> (ed. 2), p. 494, n. 1. " J. Benizelos, 'laropla rSn> 'KtoprSir apud PhiladelpheuB, ii. 273. > Garaoni, i. 432-i, 509-10 ; AiXrlor, v. 526. 1920 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE 357 interfere with the orthodox church. Those catholic Chiotes, on the other hand, who did not emigrate to the Morea, were dismayed at the departure of the Italians, and paid dearly for their brief triumph when the Turks returned. Four were hanged, their religion was prohibited, and their cathedral (whose archbishop was compensated by the Venetians with the titular see of Corinth) was turned into a mosque.1 This was the last important event of the war in Greece. A aeries of naval battles was fought in the Aegean ; and, even after the Venetians had abandoned the idea of operations north of the Morea, the continental Greeks kept Downloaded from up a guerrilla warfare on their own account with the aid of Slavonian troops. Unable to make head against their combined efforts, Liberakes went over to the Venetians, who showed their distrust of the ' Bey of Maina ' by imprisoning him at Brescia, where he ended his days. In 1699, thanks to English mediation, http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ the war ended with the peace of Carlovitz, by which Venice retained possession of the Morea, Santa Maura, and Aegina, and ceased to pay tribute for Zante, but restored to the sultan her continental Greek conquests, such as Lepanto. The castles of Prevesa and Rumeli, the classic Antirrhion, were to be demolished; but Venice did not recover Grabusa. Thus the end of this fifteen years' costly war found her with a Greek dominion consisting of the seven Ionian Islands, Butrinto and Parga in Epeiros, the at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 two Cretan forts of Spinalonga and Suda, Tenos and Aegina, and the ' kingdom ' of the Morea, the whole of which, in the middle ages, had never been hers. When the Venetians set to work to reorganize the Morea, they found their new conquest devastated and depopulated.2 Much of the land had gone out of cultivation, for there were not hands enough to till it, and the war and the plague had aggravated the evils engendered by the long period of Turkish rule. As early as 1687 they took the first step to improve the condition of their new colony by sending three commissioners with instructions to make a survey of the country, its mills, fisheries, mines, and other resources, and in 1688 sent Cornaro as its first governor, or prwveditore generate. He estimated the total population, exclusive of Maina and the district of Corinth, to be only 86,468, as against 1 G&reoni, i. 622, 620 ; Tournefort, Relation
1 Itinbraire (ed. 182ft), i. 80-2 ; Lamproe, p. .209. 1 CJtronigyes grko-romanes, pp. 385-90. 360 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July foreign hands, although Morosini allowed a few communities to manage their local affairs, and Maina enjoyed practical indepen- dence. This liberal concession was not, however, altogether successful. ' Every castle, almost every village, aspired to erect itself into a republic,' wrote one of the governors-general, and these petty communes begged Venice to send them a Venetian noble, in order that they might pose as the equals of the provincial capitals, even offering to pay his salary for the advantage con- ferred by his presence. Moreover, persons suddenly promoted from the status of Turkish rayah to be local magnates were Downloaded from not always disposed to treat the Greek peasants well, but rather upon those principles by which they had been treated themselves. An emancipated slave is apt to be a slave-driver. One important privilege was granted to the communities from http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ political motives—the election of the orthodox bishops. Of all the difficulties which Venice had to face, the greatest was the oecumenical 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 stavropegia—monasteries directly dependent upon him. These, in 1701, formed 26 out of the total of 158 (with
1,367 monks). The patriarch's patronage had, therefore, been at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 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 £ real for every house- hold—had gone to the bishop, and one-half to the patriarch. Morosini reduced these offerings, the phildtimo 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 «xarch 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 metSchia, or ' monastic "farms ' belonging to monasteries in Turkish territory, which not only went money out of the country to swell the enemy's revenues, but were centres of political propaganda and smuggling. These 1920 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE 361 difficulties were not peculiar to the Venetians : they likewise faced the Bavarian regency in later days. The Venetian official reports show a desire for 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, Monsignor 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. Downloaded from 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 Tripolitza. Unfortunately the ministers of religion, as Cornaro epigrammatically wrote, seemed sometimes to be sent to the Morea ' rather as a punish- http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ ment 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 impeded by the selfish colonial policy of Venice. Upon the Morea, ' a poor country without industries or manu- facture ', the Turks had imposed thirteen taxes, of which five
(the haratch, a further local capitation-tax, called spenza, the at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 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 both to 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 communeB, but the Mainates refused to pay tithes, con- senting, however, to pay, although reluctantly, a fixed tribute called mactu. 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 fortifica- tion of Nauplia, when it became clear that Venice intended to Btay 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 theMoreotes to send every article to that city. English merchant*, therefore, found it cheaper, to trade with Turkey, and the 362 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July governors-general in vain pointed out the folly of a com- mercial 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;1 but it was not till after the Turkish reconquest Downloaded from that it was grown and exported in large quantities for the con- sumption of northern races. Even with these drawbacks, how- ever, and the burden of having to contribute to the maintenance of Cerigo and Aegina, both united administratively with the Morea since the peace, the peninsula not only paid all the expenses http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ 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 Spina- longa,2 to desert her service. at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 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, La Motraye,3 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
1 Buchon, NouodUs Recherthes, n. L 99, 102, which disprove the statement that it was introduced from Naxoa about 1680. * French Consular dispatches apud Zinkeisen, v. 486, n. 2. • Voyagu, i. 462. 1920 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE 363 theirs, which the Turks never did.' Besides, the Greeks had a feeling, justified by the result, that Turkey was stronger than Venice, and they 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, Downloaded from a local militia was organized 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 authorized to levy a small
toll from the travellers. Crime diminished, and it rarely became http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ 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,1 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 at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 Corinth into a lazzaretto ; 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.2 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
» iv. 83. • Lamprynides, 'H VavtKin, 207, 230-40. 364 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July with Poland, the Turfa had their hands free to attack the enemy, against whom their own desire for revenge and Frenoh commercial jealousy urged them. The moment seemed favour- able, 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 oecumenical patriarch to excom- municate all Greeks who fought for the schismatic republic, Downloaded from 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 http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ to the Morea. It was decided to abandon all places except Nauplia, Argos, Monemvasia, Modon, Coron, Kielefa, Zarnata, and the castle of the Morea—the corresponding castle on the opposite side of the Corinthian gulf had been ref ortified 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 Turkish successes for the Turkish army of over 100,000 men and the large at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 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 St. Nicold, which Tournefort1 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 catholic 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 Corfu. But an explosion in the fortress, ascribed by Byron in ' The ^iege 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 • i. 138. 1920 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE 365 Dutch consul; * the Greek prisoners were sold ' like cattle '. This frightened the Moreotes into submission and encouraged the Aeginetans 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 Downloaded from 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 http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ 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.2 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 was 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 at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 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.3 The garrisons of Modon and the castle of the Morea mutinied, and refused to defend these fortresses ; worse still was the ' ignominious surrender ' of the tttrong and well-provisioned rock of MoneiSvasia by its boastful governor, Badoer, without firing a shot, at the first summons of the Turkish admiral, who subsequently admitted that he couWk 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 Spinajpnga 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 *—the small garrison did well to hold out till 20 September, when it honourably » AtXrlor, v. 802 ; Ferrari, p. 44. • History of Modem Greece, L 242 n.; Depellegrin, Relation du voyage dans la Morte, p. 14 ; Lamprynidee, p. 284. • Philadelpheua, ii 69. • 7inV«iamil v. 499 n.; Gerolft, Monumenii Ventti rteW I sola di Crtta, r. ii. 633. 366 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July 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 Morea. Cerigo and Cerigotto next hoisted the white flag, and Venice was so much alarmed for the safety of Corfu, that she blew up the recent fortifications of Santa Maura and temporarily abandoned that island. The Turks occupied Butrinto and threatened Corfu ; but the bravery of Schulenburg defended the latter and recovered the former and Santa Maura in 1716, and took Prevesa and Vonitsa in 1717. An alliance with Downloaded from 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 Vonitsa. The net result of http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ 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 ' con- solidated ' her Levantine dominion : Cerigo was now her furthest 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 at RMIT University Library on July 14, 2015 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 civilization. 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 generation, which had grown up under Venetian auspices, was manlier and better than those which had only known Turkish rule. If Venice con- tributed thereby to preparing the way for the war of independence, it was her greatest service to the Greeks. WILLIAM MILLEK.