The Venetian Revival in Greece^ 1684-1J18

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 commander, 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 metropolitan. The next year completed the conquest of the Morea, with the exception of Monemvasia. The Turks abandoned Patras ; the two castles at either side of the entrance to the gulf of Corinth and the former Venetian stronghold of Lepanto, on the north of it, were occupied. The Moslems burnt the lower town of Corinth, where the Venetians found ' the great statue of the god Janus, not, however, quite intact, and some architraves of fine stone '.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 inhabitants suffer at the hands of the Turks, but the Venetian exchequer would lose the annual contribution which the Athenian notables had promised to pay.

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