Chapter XII: Appendix: The Mad Duke of Naxos (2)

In 1645 the Turkish fleet sailed with sealed orders for the famous bay of Navarino. Then the command was given to arrest all Venetian subjects, including the Republic’s representative at Constantinople, and the Turkish commander, a Dalmatian renegade, set sail for Crete. Landing without opposition to the west of Canea, he proceeded to besiege that town, whose small but heroic garrison held out for two months before capitulating. The principal churches were at once converted into mosques; but the losses of the Turks during the siege, and the liberal terms which their commander had felt bound to offer to the besieged, cost him his head. At Venice great was the consternation at the loss of Canea; enormous pecuniary sacrifices were demanded of the citizens, and titles of nobility were sold in order to raise funds for carrying on the war. Meanwhile, an attempt to create a diversion by an attack upon Patras only served to exasperate the Turks, who became masters of Rethymno in 1646, and in the spring of 1648 began that memorable siege of Candia which was destined to last for more than twenty years. Even though Venice sued for peace, and offered to the Sultan Parga and Tenos[195], as well as a tribute, in return for the restoration of Canea and Rethymno, the Turks remained obdurate, and were resolved at all costs to have the island, “even though the war should go on for a hundred years.” And indeed it seemed likely to be prolonged indefinitely. The substitution of Mohammed IV for Ibrahim I as Sultan, and the consequent confusion at the Turkish capital, made it difficult for the Turks to carry on the struggle with the vigour which they had shown at the outset. The Venetian fleet waited at the entrance of the Dardanelles to attack Turkish convoys on their way to Crete, while the Ottoman provision-stores at Volo and Megara were burned. But these successes outside of the island delayed, without preventing, the progress of the Turkish arms. In fact, the Venetian forays in the Archipelago, notably at Paros and Melos, had the effect of embittering the Greeks against them, and, as a Cretan poet wrote, the islanders had to suffer, whichever side they took. In Crete itself, an ambitious Greek priest persuaded the Porte to have him appointed Metropolitan of the island, and to allow him to name seven suffragans. The Cretan militia refused to fight, and even the warlike Sphakiotes, under the leadership of a Kallerges, did little beyond cutting off a few Turkish stragglers. At last they yielded to the Turks, whose humane treatment of the Greek peasants throughout the island, combined with the unpopularity of the Latin rule, frustrated the attempt to provoke a general rising of the Cretans against the invaders. Nor was a small French force, which Cardinal Mazarin at last sent to aid the Venetians, more successful. Both sides were, in fact, equally hampered and equally unable to obtain a decisive victory; the Venetian fleet at the islet of Standia, and the Turkish army in the fortress of New Candia, which it had erected, kept watching one another, while year after year the wearisome war dragged on. Then, in 1666, a new element was introduced into the conflict. The Grand Vizier, Ahmed Köprili, landed in Crete, resolved to risk his head upon the success of his attempt to take Candia[196].

For two years and a half Köprili patiently besieged the town, with an immense expenditure of ammunition and a great loss of life. Worse and worse grew the condition of the garrison, which was commanded by the brave Francesco Morosini, who was destined later on to inflict such tremendous blows upon the Turks in the Morea. A ray of hope illumined the doomed fortress when, in June 1669, a force of 8000 French soldiers under the Duc de Navailles, and fifty French vessels under the Duc de Beaufort, arrived in the harbour, sent by Louis XIV, at the urgent prayer of Pope Clement IX, to save this bulwark of Catholicism. But these French auxiliaries met with no success. Four days after their arrival, the Duc de Beaufort fell in a sally outside the walls[197]. His colleague, the Duc de Navailles, soon lost heart, and sailed away to France, leaving the garrison to its fate. His departure was the turning-point in the siege. The houses were riddled with shots, the churches were in ruins, the streets were strewn with splinters of bombs and bullets, every day diminished the number of the defenders, and sickness was raging in the town. Then Morosini saw that it was useless to go on fighting. He summoned a council of war, and proposed that the garrison should capitulate. A few desperate men opposed his proposition, saying that they would rather blow up the place and die, as they had fought, like heroes among its ruins. But Morosini’s opinion prevailed, the white flag was hoisted on the ramparts, and two plenipotentiaries—one of them an Englishman, Colonel Thomas Anand—were appointed to settle the terms of capitulation with the Grand Vizier, who was represented at the conference by a Greek, Panagiotes Nikouses, the first of his race who became Grand Dragoman of the Porte[198]. Köprili insisted upon the complete cession of Crete, with the exception of the three fortresses of Suda, Spinalonga, and Grabusa, with the small islands near them; but he showed his appreciation of the heroic defence of Candia by allowing the garrison to march out with all the honours of war. On September 27 the keys of the town were handed to him on a silver dish, and on the same day, the whole population, except six persons, left the place. There, at least, the Greeks preferred exile to Turkish rule, and one of Köprili’s first acts was to induce fresh inhabitants to come to the deserted town by the promise of exemption from taxes for several years.

The cost of this siege, one of the longest in history, “Troy’s rival,” as Byron called it[199], had been enormous. The Venetians, it was calculated, had lost 30,985 men, and the Turks 118,754, and the Republic had spent 4,253,000 ducats upon the defence of this one city. Some idea of the miseries inflicted by this long war of a quarter of a century may be formed from the fact that the population of Crete, which had risen to about 260,000 before it began, was estimated by the English traveller Randolph, eighteen years after the Turkish conquest, at only 80,000, of whom 30,000 were Turks. Even before the siege it had been said that Crete cost far more than it was worth, and from the pecuniary standpoint the loss of the island was a blessing in disguise. But a cession of territory cannot be measured by means of a balance-sheet. The prestige of the Republic had been shattered, her greatest possession in the Levant had been torn from her, and once more the disunion of the Western Powers had been the Turk’s opportunity. Both the parties to the treaty were accused of having concluded an unworthy peace. Every successful Turkish commander has enemies at home, who seek to undermine his influence; but Köprili was strong enough to keep his place. Morosini, less fortunate, was, indeed, acquitted of the charges of bribery and malversation brought against him, but he was not employed again for many years, until he was called upon to take a noble revenge for the loss of Candia.

Venice did not retain her three remaining Cretan fortresses indefinitely. Grabusa was betrayed by its venal commander to the Turks in 1691; Suda and Spinalonga were captured in 1715 during the Turco-Venetian War, and the Treaty of Passarovitz confirmed their annexation to Turkey[200].

So, after 465 years, the Venetian domination came to an end. From the Roman times to the present day no government has lasted so long in that restless island; and the winged lion on many a building, the old galley arches on the left of the port of Candia, and the chain of Venetian fortresses, of which Prof. Gerola has given a detailed description in his great work, _Venetian Monuments in the island of Crete_, remind us of the bygone rule of the great republic. But the traveller will inquire in vain for the descendants of those Venetian colonists whose names have been preserved in the archives at Venice. Rather than remain in Crete, most of them emigrated to Corfù or to the Ægean islands, or else returned to Venice—reluctantly, we may be sure, for Crete has ever exercised a strange fascination on all who have dwelt there. Now that Crete is once more emancipated from the Turk, it is possible to compare the Venetian and the Ottoman rule, and even Greeks themselves, no lovers of the Latins in the Levant, have done justice to the merits of the Republic of St Mark. The yoke of Venice was at times heavy, and her hand was relentless in crushing out rebellion. But a Greek writer of eminence has admitted that the Venetian administration in Crete was not exceptionally cruel, if judged by the low standard of humanity in that period[201]. Some persons, on the strength of certain striking instances of ferocious punishment inflicted on those who had taken part in the Cretan risings[202], have pronounced the Venetians to have been worse than the Turks. But in our own day the Germans, who boast of their superior education, have exterminated the inhabitants of a South Sea island as vengeance for the murder of one missionary and have incited the Turks to massacre the Armenians. It should be reckoned to the credit of Venice that she, at least, did not attack the religion, or attempt to proscribe the language, of her Greek subjects, but sternly repelled the proselytising zeal of the Papacy, so that the Orthodox Church gained more followers than it lost. The permission accorded in Crete to mixed marriages tended to make the children of the Venetian colonists good Cretans and luke-warm Catholics, where they did not go over to the Orthodox creed. The Greeks were given a share in the administration, trade was encouraged, and many of the natives amassed large fortunes. At no time in the history of the island was the export of wine so considerable as during the Venetian occupation. So great was the wine trade between Crete and England that Henry VIII appointed in 1522 a certain merchant of Lucca, resident in the island, as first English Consul there—the beginning of our consular service. Various travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries allude to this traffic, and Ben Jonson, in his play of _The Fox_, talks of “rich Candian wine” as a special vintage. In return, we sent woollens to the islanders, till the French managed to supplant us[203]. Nor was learning neglected under the Venetians. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries produced many Cretans of distinction, among them Pope Alexander V. One became a famous engineer, two others gained renown as printers at Venice and Rome; a great Cretan artist, Domenicos Theotokopoulos, obtained undying fame at Madrid under the name of “El Greco”; one Cretan author edited the Moral Treatises of Plutarch; another, Joannes Bergikios, wrote a history of his native island in Italian. We have two poems in Greek by the Cretans Bouniales and Skleros upon the war of Candia[204]. It was a Cretan of Venetian origin, Vincenzo Comaro, who wrote the romance of _Erotokritos_, which was “the most popular reading of the Levant from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century,” and in which Herakles, “king of Athens,” his lovely daughter Aretousa, and her lover Erotokritos are the principal figures, amidst a crowd of princelets obviously modelled on the Frankish dukes and marquesses of mediæval Greece. Other novelists were produced by the island, but when Crete fell all the lettered Cretans left, and with their departure the romantic spirit in literature, which they had imbibed from the West, ceased[205]. A Greek school had been founded at Candia in 1550, and many young Cretans went to Italy for purposes of study[206]. Markos Mousouros, the Cretan scholar, was buried in Sta Maria della Pace in Rome in 1517; another Cretan, Skouphos, published his _Rhetoric_ at Venice in 1681. Compared with the present day, when the island has just emerged from the deadening effect of 229 years of Turkish rule, its civilisation was materially more advanced in Venetian times. The Venetians made roads, bridges, and aqueducts; the Turks created nothing, and allowed the former means of communication to decay. Yet, as we have seen, Venice was never popular with the Cretans, and the reason is perfectly obvious to those who have observed the Greek character. Be the material advantages of foreign domination never so great, the Greek resents being governed by those of another race and creed, especially if that creed be Roman Catholicism. The history of the Ionian Islands under the British Protectorate, of Cyprus under the existing arrangement, of the Morea under the Venetians, of Athens and of Naxos under the Latin dukes, all point the same moral. The patriotic Greek would rather be free than prosperous, and most Greeks, though sharp men of business, are warm patriots. That is the lesson of Venetian rule in Crete—a lesson which Europe, after the agony of a century of insurrections, at last took to heart by granting the Cretans autonomy—now become union with Greece.

8. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE

On their way from Venice to Constantinople the soldiers of the fourth crusade cast anchor at Corfù, which (as modern Corfiote historians think) had lately been recovered from the Genoese pirate Vetrano by the Byzantine government, and was at that time, in the language of the chronicler Villehardouin, “very rich and plenteous.” In the deed of partition the Ionian islands were assigned to the Venetians; but they did not find Corfù by any means an easy conquest. The natives, combining with their old master, Vetrano, ousted the Venetian garrison, and it was not till he had been defeated in a naval battle and hanged with a number of his Corfiote supporters that the Republic was able to occupy the island. Even then the Venetian government, finding it impossible to administer directly all the vast territories which had suddenly come into its possession, granted the island in fiefs to ten Venetian citizens on condition that they should garrison it and should pay an annual rent to the Republic. The rights of the Greek church were to be respected, and the taxes of the loyal islanders were not to be raised[207]. But this first Venetian domination of Corfù was of brief duration. When Michael I Angelos founded the Despotat of Epeiros the attraction of a neighbouring Greek state proved too much for the Corfiotes, who threw off the Latin yoke and willingly became his subjects. A memorial of his rule may still be seen in the splendidly situated castle of Sant’ Angelo, whose ruins rise high above the waters of the Ionian Sea not far from the beautiful monastery of Palaiokastrizza[208].

Corfù prospered greatly under the Despots of Epeiros. They took good care to ratify and extend the privileges of the church, to grant exemptions from taxation to the priests, and to reduce the burdens of the laity to the smallest possible figure. In this they showed their wisdom, for the church became their warmest ally, and a Corfiote divine was one of the most vigorous advocates of his patron in the ecclesiastical and political feud between the rival Greek empires of Nice and Salonika. But after little more than half a century of Orthodox rule the island passed into the possession of the Catholic Angevins. Michael II of Epeiros, yielding to the exigencies of politics, had given his daughter in marriage to the ill-starred Manfred of Sicily, to whom she brought Corfù as a part of her dowry. Upon the death of Manfred at the battle of Benevento the powerful Sicilian admiral Chinardo, who had governed it for his master, occupied the island until he was murdered by the inhabitants at the instigation of Michael. The crime did not, however, profit the crafty Despot. The national party in Corfù endeavoured, indeed, to restore the island to the rule of the Angeloi; but Chinardo’s soldiers, under the leadership of a baron named Aleman, successfully resisted the agitation. As the defeat of Manfred had led to the establishment of Charles of Anjou as king of Naples and Sicily, and as they were a small foreign garrison in the midst of a hostile population, they thought it best to accept that powerful prince as lord of the island. By the treaty of Viterbo the fugitive Latin emperor, Baldwin II, ceded to Charles any rights over it which he might possess, and thus in 1267 the Angevins came into possession of Corfù, though Aleman was allowed to retain the fortresses of the place until his death[209]. For more than five centuries the Latin race and the Catholic religion predominated there.

The Angevin rule, as might have been anticipated from its origin, was especially intolerant of the Orthodox faith. Charles owed his crown to the Pope, and was anxious to repay the obligation by propagating Catholicism among his Orthodox subjects. The Venetians, as we saw, had enjoined the tolerance of the Greek church during their brief period of domination, so that now for the first time the islanders learnt what religious persecution meant. The Metropolitan of Corfù, whose office had been so greatly exalted by the Despots of Epeiros, was deposed, and in his room a less dignified ecclesiastic, called “chief priest” (μέγας πρωτοπαπᾶς), was substituted. The title of “Archbishop of Corfù” was now usurped by a Latin priest, and the principal churches were seized by the Catholic clergy[210]. In the time of the Angevins too the Jews, who still flourish there almost alone in Greece, made their first appearance in any numbers in Corfù, and first found protectors there; but the injunctions of successive sovereigns, bidding the people treat them well, would seem to show that this protection was seldom efficacious[211]. The government of the island was also reorganised. An official was appointed to act as viceroy with the title of captain, and the country was divided into four bailiwicks. Many new fiefs were assigned, while some that already existed were transferred to Italians and Provençals.

The Sicilian Vespers, which drove the house of Anjou from Sicily and handed that kingdom over to the rival house of Aragon, indirectly affected the fortunes of Corfù. The Corfiotes did not, indeed, imitate the Sicilians and massacre the French; but their connexion with the Angevins now exposed them to attack from the Aragonese fleets. Thus the famous Roger de Lluria burnt the royal castle and levied blackmail upon the inhabitants. Another Roger, the terrible Catalan leader, De Flor, ravaged the fertile island in one of his expeditions; yet, in spite of these incursions, we find the condition of Corfù half a century later to have been far superior to that of the neighbouring lands. The fact that the diligent research of the local historians has brought to light so little information about the Angevin period in itself proves that, in that generally troubled time, Corfù enjoyed tranquillity. Beyond the names of its sovereigns, Charles II of Naples, Philip I, Robert, and Philip II of Taranto, Catherine of Valois and Marie de Bourbon, we know little about the island from the time when Charles II, reserving to himself the overlordship, transferred it as a fief in 1294 to his fourth son, the first of those princes, down to the death of Philip II in 1373. It then experienced the evils of a disputed succession, and, as it espoused the cause of Queen Joanna I of Naples, it was attacked by the Navarrese mercenaries, who were in the pay of the rival candidate, Jacques de Baux, and who afterwards played so important a part in the Morea. When Joanna lost her crown and life at the hands of Charles III of Durazzo, the latter obtained Corfù, and, with the usual kindness of usurpers insecure on their thrones, he confirmed the fiscal privileges which the Angeloi had granted to the Corfiotes in the previous century[212]. But after his violent death four years later, in 1386, the decline of the Angevin dynasty and the unsettled condition of the east of Europe caused the islanders to turn their eyes in the direction of the only power which could protect them.

Venice indeed had never forgotten her brief possession of Corfù: she had long been scheming how to recover so desirable a naval station, and her consul encouraged the Venetian party in the island. There was also a Genoese faction there, but its attempt to hold the old castle failed, and on May 28, 1386, the Corfiotes hoisted the standard of St Mark. Six envoys—one of them, it is worth noting, a Jewish representative of the considerable Hebrew community—were appointed to offer the island to the Republic upon certain conditions, the chief of which were the confirmation of the privileges granted by the Angevins, a declaration that Venice would never dispose of the place to any other power, and a promise to maintain the existing system of fiefs. On June 9 a second document was drawn up, reiterating the desire of the islanders, “or the greater and saner part of them,” to put themselves under the shelter of the Republic. Since the death of Charles III, they said, “the island has been destitute of all protection, while it has been coveted by jealous neighbours on every side and almost besieged by Arabs and Turks.” Wherefore, “considering the tempest of the times and the instability of human affairs,” they had resolved to elect Miani, the Venetian admiral, captain of the island, and he had entered the city without the least disturbance. The castle of Sant’ Angelo held out for a time in the name of Ladislaus, king of Naples; but the transfer of the island was effected practically without bloodshed. On its side the Venetian government readily agreed to the terms of the six Corfiote envoys, but thought it prudent to purchase the acquiescence of the king of Naples in this transaction. Accordingly in 1402 the sum of 30,000 gold ducats was paid to him for the island, and the Venetian title was thus made doubly sure[213]. For 411 years the lion of St Mark held unbroken possession of Corfù.

Meanwhile the fate of the other Ionian islands had been somewhat different, and they only gradually passed beneath the Venetian sway. Paxo, the baronial fief of the successive families of Malerba, Sant’ Ippolito and Altavilla, was, indeed, joined politically with Corfù, from which it is so short a distance, but Cephalonia, Zante, and Ithake had fallen about the time of the Latin conquest of Constantinople into the hands of a roving crusader or pirate—the terms were then identical—named Majo, or Matthew, a member of the great Orsini clan and son-in-law of the Sicilian Admiral Margaritone, who styled himself count palatine of the islands, though he recognised the supremacy of Venice. Stricken with pangs of conscience for his sins, he atoned for them by placing his possessions under the protection of the Pope, who made short work of the Orthodox bishops and put the islands under a single Latin ecclesiastic. Majo did fealty to Geoffroy I de Villehardouin of Achaia, and the islands were thenceforth reckoned as a vassal state of that principality. Historians have narrated the horrible crimes of the descendants of Count Majo in describing the stormy history of Epeiros, and so terrible was the condition of the islands when John of Gravina set out to claim the principality of Achaia that he had no difficulty in occupying them as dependencies of that state. A few years later, in 1333, an arrangement was made by which they were united with Achaia and Corfù under the Angevin sceptre. But Robert of Taranto subsequently separated them in 1357 from the latter island by conferring them upon Leonardo Tocco of Benevento, who also became in 1362 duke of Santa Maura, an island whose history during the thirteenth and part of the fourteenth centuries is buried in the deepest obscurity. It appears to have belonged to the Despots of Epeiros down to a little before the year 1300, when it is mentioned as a part of the county of Cephalonia. Captured by young Walter of Brienne in his expedition to Greece in 1331, it was by him bestowed on the Venetian family of Zorzi in 1355.

The Turks took the four islands of Cephalonia, Ithake, Zante, and Santa Maura from the Tocchi in 1479, and the attempt of Antonio Tocco to recover his brother’s dominions ended in his murder at the hands of the Ionians. By arrangement with the Sultan the Venetians, who had expelled Antonio’s forces, handed Cephalonia over to the Turks in 1485, but kept Zante, which thus, from 1482 onwards, was governed by them, on payment of an annual tribute of 500 ducats to the Turkish treasury[214]. This tribute ceased in 1699, when the treaty of Carlovitz formally ceded the island, free of payment, to the Republic. The Venetians invited colonists to emigrate thither, in order to fill up the gaps in the population; for the Turks had carried off many of the inhabitants to Constantinople, for the purpose of breeding mulatto slaves for the seraglio by intermarriage with negroes. As there were many homeless exiles at the time, in consequence of the Turkish conquests in the Levant, there was no lack of response to this invitation, and Zante soon became a flourishing community. Its wealth was further increased, in the sixteenth century, by the introduction of the currant from the neighbourhood of Corinth, so that at that period it merited its poetic title of “the flower of the Levant.” Cephalonia did not long remain in Turkish hands. After two futile attempts to take it the Venetians succeeded, in 1500, with the aid of the famous Spanish commander, Gonsalvo de Cordoba, in capturing the island, and at the peace of 1502-3 the Republic was finally confirmed in its possession, which was never afterwards disturbed. Ithake seems to have followed the fate of its larger neighbour. Santa Maura[215], however, though taken two years after Cephalonia, was almost at once restored to the Turks, and did not become Venetian till its capture by Morosini in 1684, which was ratified by the treaty of Carlovitz fifteen years later. It had long been a thorn in the side of the Venetians, as it was, under the Turkish rule, a dangerous nest of pirates, against whom the Corfiotes more than once fitted out punitive expeditions. When Santa Maura was reluctantly given back to the Sultan in 1503, part of the population emigrated to Ithake, then almost desolate[216], and at the same time Cephalonia received an influx of Greeks from the Venetian possessions on the mainland which the Turks had just taken. Kythera, or Cerigo, which is not geographically an Ionian island at all, and is no longer connected with the other six, was the property of the great Venetian family of Venier, which traced its name and origin from Venus, the goddess of Kythera, from 1207, with certain interruptions and modifications, down to the fall of the Republic. These Venetian Marquesses of Cerigo were ousted by the Greeks under Licario after the restoration of Byzantine rule in the South of the Peloponnese in 1262. The Emperor bestowed the island upon Paul Monoyannes, a member of one of the three great Monemvasiote families, but in 1309 intermarriage between the children of the Greek and Latin lords restored it to the Venieri, who divided it up into twenty-four shares. But the participation of the Venieri in the Cretan insurrection of 1363 led to the transformation of their island into a Venetian colony. Thirty years later, however, thirteen out of the twenty-four shares were restored to them, while the Venetian Governor was dependent upon the Cretan administration, so long as Crete remained Venetian, and upon the Government of the Morea during the Venetian occupation in the early part of the eighteenth century. After the peace of Passarovitz he became the subordinate of the _provveditore generale del Levante_ at Corfù, and the former “eye of Crete” was thenceforth treated as one of the seven Ionian Islands for the remainder of the Venetian rule.

Besides the seven islands Venice also acquired, at different periods after her occupation of Corfù, several dependencies on the mainland opposite. Of these, owing to its dramatic history in the days of the British protectorate, the most interesting was Parga, first taken in 1401[217]. As the landing-place for the famous rock of Suli, with which in a famous line Byron has connected it, it was a place of some importance, and was fortified by the Venetians as an outpost against the Turks. But the Republic ultimately found that it cost more than it was worth, and several times in vain urged the inhabitants to emigrate over the narrow channel to Anti-Paxo, or to settle in Corfù. But then, as in 1819, the Pargians showed a touching, if inconvenient, attachment to their ancient home, perhaps not unmixed with the desire to continue the lucrative traffic of selling the munitions of war, sent from Venice for their own defence, to the neighbouring Turks. Butrinto, opposite the northern end of Corfù, had voluntarily surrendered to the Venetians soon after their final occupation of that island, and, like Parga, was fortified with works, of which the remains may still be seen. During the Venetian rule of the Ionian Islands Butrinto, well known to sportsmen for its duck-shooting, and to scholars for the allusion in the _Æneid_[218], was several times captured and recaptured. The fisheries in the lakes there, which had once been the property of Cicero’s friend Atticus, were of considerable value to the Venetians[219], as they are still to the present proprietors; and the place became definitely assured to the Republic in 1718, at which date Vonitza inside, and Prevesa at the entrance of, the Ambrakian Gulf, the latter a stronghold of corsairs and an important military position which resisted the Greek bombardment during the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, were also confirmed to Venice. The value set by the Venetians upon these continental dependencies may be judged from the fact that they were called “the eyes and ears of the Republic on the mainland.”

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The administration of the islands during the Venetian period was modelled on that of the Republic. In Corfù, the first occupied and most important of the seven, the chief Venetian functionary was known as the bailie, who was subsequently assisted by two noble Venetian councillors, and by a third official, called _provveditore e capitano_, who was in command of the garrison and resided in the fortress. The strong castle of Sant’ Angelo, on the west coast, which was never taken though often besieged, was entrusted to a special officer. But the power of the bailie was soon overshadowed by that of the commander of the fleet, which was soon stationed at Corfù, and for which the arsenal at Govino, of which large and imposing ruins still remain, was built. This naval authority was the _provveditore generale del Levante_; he was usually appointed for three years, and exercised very important functions at the time when Venice was still a first-class eastern power. Strict orders were issued to all these officials that they should respect the rights of the natives, and spies, known as “inquisitors over the affairs of the Levant,” were sent from time to time to the islands for the purpose of checking the Venetian administration and of ascertaining the grievances of the governed, who had also the privilege, which they often exercised, of sending special missions to Venice to lay their complaints before the home government. Ionian historians, after due deduction is made for the strong Venetian bias of the privileged class from which they sprang, are agreed that redress was almost invariably granted, though the abuses of which the natives complained were apt to grow up again. Thus when, in the early part of the seventeenth century, the Corfiotes sent envoys to point out the excesses committed by the sailors of the fleet the Venetian government forbade the men to land on the island[220]. Not long afterwards we find the “inquisitors” ordering the removal of all statues and epitaphs erected to the Venetian officials at Corfù, in order to prevent this slavish practice, which had descended to the Greeks from the Roman days[221]. And somewhat later the exactions of the Venetian officials were stopped. A large share in the local administration was granted to the inhabitants, or rather to those of noble birth, for Corfiote society was divided into the three classes of nobles, burghers, and manual labourers. At first the so-called national council was a much more democratic body, including many foreigners and local tradesmen. But the latter and their children were gradually excluded from it, the entrance of the former was restricted, and in 1440 the functions of the national council were strictly limited to the annual election of a smaller body, the communal, or city, council—a body composed at the outset of seventy, and, half a century later, of 150 members, a total which was maintained till the last years of Venetian rule, when the numbers were reduced to sixty. For the purposes of this annual election the members of the national council met in a quaint old house, decorated with pictures of Nausikaa welcoming Odysseus, and of other scenes from the early history of Corcyra, and situated between the old fortress and the town. This interesting memorial of Venetian rule has long since been swept away.

The council of 150, which thus became the governing body of the island, was composed of Greeks as well as Latins, and formed a close oligarchy. Once only, during the crisis of the Candian war, it was resolved to add to it those citizens who would pay a certain sum towards the expenses of that costly struggle[222]. It had the right of electing every year certain officials, called syndics (σύνδικοι), at first four in number—two Greeks and two Latins—and at a later period, when the numbers of the Latins had declined, only three. These syndics were required to be more than thirty-eight (at another period thirty-five) years of age, and were regarded as the special representatives of the community of Corfù. Those who felt themselves wronged looked to them for redress, and, in accordance with the economic heresies of that age, they regulated prices in the markets—a curious interference with the usual Levantine practice of bargaining. The council of 150 also elected three judges, of whom one must always be a Latin; but these officials possessed no more than a consultative vote, and the real decision of cases rested with the bailie and his two councillors. No local offices—and there were many in Venetian days—were held for more than a year; most of them were purely honorary, and all were in the gift of the council of 150. One of the most important was that of _trierarch_, or captain of the Corfiote war galleys, an official whom the Venetians wisely allowed these experienced seamen, worthy descendants of the seafaring Phaiakians of the _Odyssey_, to elect. Two campaigns entitled a Corfiote officer to the rank of captain in the Republican fleet, and it would have been well if the British had followed in this respect the example of their predecessors[223], and thus opened a naval career to the Ionians. The Corfiote nobles also commanded the town militia, composed of about 500 artisans, and called “apprentices,” or _scolari_, who received immunity from taxation in lieu of pay and exercised on Sundays alone. Each village provided a certain number of rural police. In imitation of the similar record at Venice a Golden Book was established, containing the names of the Corfiote nobles. When the latter were much diminished in numbers by the first great siege of the island by the Turks in 1537 new families were added to the list from the burgher class, and Marmora gives the names of 112 noble families existing at the time when he wrote his history, in 1672[224]. The Golden Book was burned as the symbol of hated class distinction in the first enthusiasm for liberty, equality, and fraternity after the French republicans took possession of Corfù.

The Venetians had found the feudal system already in existence when they took over the island, where it had been introduced in Byzantine days, and they had promised to maintain it. We are told by Marmora that there were twenty-four baronies there in former times, and later on the total seems to have been a dozen. In the last century of Venetian rule there were fifteen[225]. Occasionally the Venetians created a new fief, such as that of the gipsies, to reward public services. The Ἀθίγγανοι, or gipsies, who were about 100 in number, were subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the baron, upon whom their fief had been bestowed, “an office,” as Marmora says, “of not a little gain and of very great honour.” They had their own military commander, and every year on May 1 they marched under his leadership to the sound of drums and fifes, bearing aloft their baron’s standard and carrying a maypole, decked with flowers, to the square in front of the house where the great man lived. There they set up their pole and sang a curious song in honour of their lord[226], who provided them with refreshment and on the morrow received from them their dues. Every feudatory was compelled to keep one horse for the defence of the island, and was expected to appear with it on May Day on parade. The peasants were worse off under this feudal system than their fellows on the mainland under Turkish rule. They had no political rights whatever; they were practically serfs, and were summed up in the capitulations at the time of the Venetian occupation together with “the other movable and immovable goods” of their lords[227]. A decision of the year 1641 that no one should vote in the council who had not a house in the city must also have tended to produce absenteeism, still one of the evils of Corfù, where at the present day only four landed proprietors live on their estates. A distaste for country life, always a marked feature of Greek society, may thus have been increased, and the concentration of all the nobles and men of position in the town, which is now ascribed at Corfù to the lucrative posts and gaieties of the capital during the British protectorate, would seem to have begun much earlier. Occasionally we hear of a peasants’ rising against their oppressors. Thus in 1652 a movement of the kind had to be put down by force; but the Venetian government, engaged at the time in the Candian war, did not think it desirable to punish the insurgents. Somewhat earlier a democratic agitation for granting a share in the local administration was vetoed by the Republic. Marmora remarks in his time that “the peasants are never contented; they rise against their lords on the smallest provocation[228].” Yet, until the last century of her rule, Venice had little trouble with the inhabitants. She kept the nobles in good humour by granting them political privileges, titles, and the entrance to the Venetian navy, and, so long as the Turk was a danger, she was compelled, from motives of prudence, to pay a due regard to their wishes. As for the other two classes of the population they hardly entered into the calculations of Venetian statesmen.

No foreign government can govern Greeks if it is harsh to the national church and clergy, and the shrewd Venetians, as might have been anticipated, were much less bigoted than the Angevins. While, on the one hand, they gave, as Catholics, precedence to the Catholic Church, they never forgot that the interests of the Republic were of more importance than those of the Papacy. Accordingly, in the Ionian islands no less than in Crete, they studiously prevented any encroachments on the part of either the Œcumenical Patriarch or the Pope. Their ecclesiastical policy is well expressed in an official decree, “that the Greeks should have liberty to preach and teach the holy word, provided only that they say nothing about the republic or against the Latin religion[229].” Mixed marriages were allowed; and, as the children usually became Orthodox, it is not surprising to learn that twenty years before the close of the Venetian occupation there were only two noble Latin families in Corfù which still adhered to the Catholic faith, while at Cephalonia Catholicism was almost exclusively confined to the garrison[230]. The Venetians retained, however, the externals of the Angevin system. The head of the Orthodox Church in Corfù was still called “chief priest” (μέγας πρωτοπαπᾶς), while the coveted title of Archbishop was reserved for the chief of the Catholic clergy. The “chief priest” was elected by the assembled urban clergy and 30 nobles, and held office for five years, at the end of which he sank into the ranks of the ordinary popes, from whom he was then only distinguished by his crimson sash. Merit had, as a rule, less to do with his election than his relationship to a noble family and the amount of the pecuniary arguments which he applied to the pockets of the electors, and for which he recouped himself by his gains while in office. In each of the four bailiwicks into which Corfù was then divided, and in the island of Paxo, there was a πρωτοπαπᾶς, under the jurisdiction of the “chief priest,” who was dependent upon no other ecclesiastical authority than that of the Œcumenical Patriarch, with whom, however, he was only allowed to correspond through the medium of the Venetian bailie at Constantinople. Two liberal Popes, Leo X and Paul III, expressly forbade any interference with the religious services of the Greeks on the part of the Latin Archbishop; and upon the introduction of the Gregorian calendar it was specially stipulated by Venice[231] that in the Ionian islands Latins as well as Greeks should continue to use the old method of reckoning, in order to avoid the confusion of two Easters and two Christmasses in one and the same community. When we consider how strong, even to-day, is the opposition of the Orthodox Church to the new style, we can understand how gratifying this special exemption must have been to the Greeks of that period.

From these causes there was less bitterness than in most other places between the adherents of the two churches. The Catholics took part in the religious processions of the Orthodox. When the body of St Spiridion was carried round the town the Venetian authorities and many of the garrison paid their respects to the sacred relics; twenty-one guns were fired from the Old Fortress, and the ships in the harbour saluted; and the enlightened Catholic Archbishop, Quirini, author of a work on the antiquities of Corfù, actually went in full state to the Greek church of St Spiridion on the festival of that saint[232]. The Orthodox clergy reciprocated these attentions by meeting the Catholics in the church of St Arsenios, a tenth-century bishop and first Metropolitan of Corfù, where the discordant chanting of Greeks and Latins represented their theological concord, and by praying for the Pope and the Latin Archbishop at the annual banquet at the latter’s palace. They were ready, also, to excommunicate refractory villages at the bidding of the government, and this practice, which filled the superstitious people with terror, was one of the greatest social abuses of Corfù. It was put into force against individuals on the least provocation, and we are told that the same priest was quite willing to provide a counter-excommunication for a consideration[233].

The position of the Corfiote Jews, though far less favourable than that of the Orthodox, was much better than that of the Hebrew colonies in other parts of the Venetian dominions. In the very first days of the Venetian occupation an order was issued to the officials of the Republic, bidding them behave well to the Jewish community and to put no heavier burdens upon them than upon the rest of the islanders. Many of the Venetian governors found it convenient to borrow not only money, but furniture, plate, and liveries from them. That they increased—owing to the Jewish immigration from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and from Naples and Calabria half a century later—in numbers under the Venetians may be inferred from Marmora’s statement that in 1665 there were about 500 Jewish houses in Corfù, and the historian, who shared to the full the natural dislike for the Hebrew race which is so characteristic of the Greeks and so cordially reciprocated by the Jews, naïvely remarks that the Corfiote Jews would be rich if they were let alone[234]. A century later they had monopolised all the trade as middlemen, and the landed proprietors were in their debt. They paid none of the usual taxes levied on Jewish banks at Venice, and when, by the decree of 1572, the Jews were banished from Venetian territory, a special exemption was granted to those of Corfù. They were allowed to practise there as advocates, with permission to defend Christians no less than members of their own race. They had their own council and elected their own officials, and a law of 1614 prohibits the practice of digging up their dead bodies, under pain of hanging. At the same time they had to submit to some degrading restrictions. They were compelled to wear a yellow mark on the breast, or a yellow hat, as a badge of servitude, and an ordinance of 1532 naïvely remarks that this was “a substitute for the custom of stoning, which does so much injury to the houses.” True, a money payment to the treasury secured a dispensation from the necessity of wearing these stigmas; but there was no exception to the rule which enjoined upon all Jews residence in a separate part of the city, where they were divided into two groups, each with its own synagogue. Even to-day the Jewish quarter in the town of Corfù is known as the _Hebraïká_. Absurd tales were current about them. Travellers were told that one of them was a lineal descendant of Judas, and it was rumoured that a young Jewish girl was about to give birth to a Messiah. They were not allowed to possess real property or to take land or villas on lease, with the exception of one house for the personal use of the lessee. But the effect of this enactment was nullified by means of mortgages; and if a Jew wanted to invest money in houses he had no difficulty in finding a Christian who would purchase or rent them with borrowed Jewish capital. They were expected to offer a copy of the law of Moses to a new Latin Archbishop, who sometimes delighted the Corfiotes by lecturing them on their shortcomings, and sometimes, like Quirini, was tolerant of their creed. Finally, they were forbidden to indulge in public processions—an injunction perhaps quite as much in their own interest as in that of the public peace[235].

The Venetian government did practically nothing for education during the four centuries of its rule in the Ionian islands. No public schools were founded, for, as Count Viaro Capodistria informed the British parliament much later, the Venetian senate never allowed such institutions to be established in the Ionian islands[236]. The administration was content to pay a few teachers of Greek and Italian in Corfù and one in each of the other islands. There was also some private instruction to be had, and the promising young men of the best families, eager to be doctors or lawyers, were sent to complete their education at the university of Padua. But the attainment of a degree at that seat of learning was not arduous, for by a special privilege the Ionians could take their degree without examination. And the Ionian student after his return soon forgot what he had learned, retaining only the varnish of culture. There were exceptions, however, to this low standard. It was a Corfiote who founded at Venice, in 1626, the Greek school, called Flangineion, after the name of its founder, Flangines, which did so much for the improvement of Greek education[237]; while it was a Cephalonian, Nikodemos Metaxas, who about the same time set up the first Greek printing press in Constantinople, which he had purchased in England[238]. But even in the latest Venetian period there were few facilities for attaining knowledge in Corfù. We are told that at that time reading and writing—the highest attainments of the average Greek pope—could be picked up in one of the monasteries, and Latin in the school of some Catholic priest, but that there were no other opportunities of mental cultivation there. The historian Mario Pieri, himself a native of Corfù, remarks that towards the close of the eighteenth century, when he was a boy, there were no public schools, no library, no printing press, and no regular bookseller in the island, and the only literature that could be bought there consisted of a grammar and a Latin dictionary, displayed in the shop of a chemist[239]. No wonder that the Corfiotes were easier to manage in those days than in the more enlightened British times, when newspapers abounded and some of the best pens in southern Europe were ready to lampoon the British protectorate.

Yet, even under the Venetians, that love of literature which has always characterised the Greeks did not become wholly extinct. Jacobo Triboles, a Corfiote resident at Venice, published in the sixteenth century in his native dialect a poem, the subject of which was taken from Boccaccio, called the _History of the King of Scotland and the Queen of England_. Another literary Corfiote, author of a _Lament for the Fall of Greece_, was Antonios Eparchos, a versatile genius, at once poet, Hellenist, and soldier, upon whom the fief of the gipsies was conferred for his services[240]. Several other Corfiote bards sang of the Venetian victories, while, in 1672, Andrea Marmora, a member of a noble family still extant in Corfù, published in Italian the first history of his country from the earliest times to the loss of Crete by the Venetians. Subsequent writers have criticised Marmora’s effusive style, his tendency to invent details, his intense desire to glorify the most serene Republic[241]. But his work is quaintly written and he thoroughly reflects the feelings of his class and era. In 1725 Quirini, whom we have already mentioned as Latin Archbishop of Corfù, issued the first edition of a Latin treatise on the antiquities of his see, which was followed, thirteen years later, by a second and enlarged edition. In 1656 an academy of thirty members, known as the _Assicurati_, was founded at Corfù[242], and only succumbed amid the dangers of the Turkish siege of 1716. A second literary society was started about the same time, and a third saw the light in 1732. Of the other islands Cephalonia produced in the seventeenth century a priest of great oratorical gifts in the person of Elias Meniates. In short, the Frankish influence, which had practically no literary result on the mainland, was much more felt in the intellectual development of the Ionians. But this progress was gained at the expense of the Greek language, which, under the Venetians, became solely the tongue of the peasants. Even to-day Greek is almost the only language understood in the country districts of Corfù, while Italian is readily spoken in the town. In the Venetian times the Venetian dialect was the conversational medium of good society, and the young Corfiote, fresh from his easy-won laurels at Padua, looked down with contempt upon the noblest and most enduring of all languages. Yet it will never be forgotten in Corfù that in the resurrection and regeneration of Greek two Corfiotes of the eighteenth century, Eugenios Boulgaris and Nikephoros Theotokes, played a leading part. The former in particular was the pioneer of Greek as it is written to-day, the forerunner of the more celebrated Koraes, and he dared to write, to the disgust of the clergy, in a language which the people could understand. But, as his best work was done at Joannina, then the chief educational centre of the Greek race, it concerns the general history of Greece under the Turks rather than that of the seven islands[243].