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MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY
CHAPTER XII
THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA (1415-1441)
Early in the year 1415, the Emperor Manuel II paid a
memorable visit to the Peloponnese. His object was to establish his son
Theodore, now of age, in the governorship of Mistra, to do what was
practicable for the defence of a province which had attracted greater attention
at the Byzantine court since the rest of the empire had been so woefully
curtailed by the Turkish Conquests, and to pronounce a funeral oration over his
late brother. The Venetians gave him a state reception when he stopped at
Negroponte on his way. But they were so much alarmed at the arrival of a ruler,
who naturally personified the reviving idea of Hellenism, that they at once
dismissed the Greek mercenaries of their Peloponnesian colonies. From Euboea
the emperor sailed to Kenchreai, the port of Corinth, where he received the
homage of the Prince of Achaia, and where he assembled the people of the
peninsula. He then set them to work to rebuild the great rampart across the
isthmus which his brother had proposed. Under the imperial eye the workmen
laboured so fast, that in twenty-five days a wall 42 stades in length,
strengthened by 153 towers and a ditch, and terminated by a castle at either
end, stretched from sea to sea. The emperor built on the site of the rampart
which the Peloponnesians had raised on the approach of Xerxes, which Valerian
had restored when he fortified Greece against the Goths, which Justinian had
again constructed when Greece was threatened by the Huns and Slavs. An
inscription in honour of Justinian came to light in the course of the work, and
it was hoped that the wall of Manuel would prove as durable as his. Remains of
the Hexamilion may still be seen between the modern town of Corinth and the
Canal, while its name is preserved by a hamlet on the line to Argos. But the
restoration of the wall availed little against the bravery of the Turks; for,
as Thucydides had observed centuries before, it is men and not walls that make
a city. If we may believe a Byzantine satirist—and his statement is in keeping
with their character—the Peloponnesian archons showed so little patriotism and
so much jealousy of the emperor, that they rose and threatened to destroy the
rampart when it was barely finished. Such was their insubordination, that,
when he returned to Constantinople, Manuel thought it prudent to take them with
him. Before he left, he announced the completion of the work to the doge, who
sent his congratulations, and authorised the governors of the Venetian colonies
in the Morea to assist in its defence. But, when asked to contribute to the
cost of maintaining it, the Venetians excused themselves, on the plea that they
were incurring heavy expenses for defending other parts of Greece against the
Turks. So unpopular was the tax imposed upon the Greeks for the support of the
Hexamilion, that many serfs fled into the Venetian colonies to escape it, and a
few years later the Despot Theodore II actually offered to transfer the custody
of the great wall to the republic. But the selfish Venetians would only consent
to this, if they also received a mile or two of land inside it, and if Theodore
would pay half the cost of defence. Such was the attitude of the two powers
most vitally interested in the preservation of the peninsula at a time when
union alone could have saved it from the Turks.
There was at least one man then living in the Peloponnese
who was well aware that more than ramparts of stone was needed to secure the
independence of the peninsula. The Platonic philosopher, George Gemistos, or
Plethon, as he afterwards called himself, had been engaged for the last twenty
years in teaching the doctrines of his master in the picturesque Byzantine
capital of Mistra. Even today, when the Mistra of the Palaiologoi is a deserted
town, the traveller, wandering among the ruins of the palace, visiting the
beautiful Byzantine churches, and climbing up to the castle hill, may form some
idea of the civilisation of the mediaeval Sparta. Mistra was at this time more
than 150 years old; and, as the Byzantine empire had shrunk to a few islands
and a small tract of land near Constantinople, the Greek province of the
Peloponnese and its capital had assumed an importance which they had not before
possessed. The second son of the emperor now regularly resided there, and already
there lay buried at Mistra the ex-Emperor John Cantacuzene, his sons Matthew
and Manuel, and the Despot Theodore I. To this beautiful spot, within sight of
the ancient Sparta but in a far finer situation, Gemistos had moved from the
Turkish capital of Adrianople. If we may assume that “the philosopher George,”
to whom the litterateur Demetrios Kydones addresses three or four playful
letters, is none other than he, his choice of abode seems to have surprised the
elegant Byzantine world, which, like modern French novelists, could conceive of
no life as worth living except that of the metropolis. “You thought,” writes
Kydones, “that this mere shadow of the Peloponnese was the Islands of the
Blessed; to your wild philhellenism it seemed as if the soil of Sparta were
enough to show you Lycurgus, and that you would be his companion”. There was
not a little truth in the remark, for the economic schemes of Gemistos were
better fitted for Plato’s Republic than for the Moreot society of the fifteenth
century. But, in point of culture, Mistra could have compared favourably with
some modern seats of learning. No less famous a man than Bessarion camefrom
distant Trebizond to hear this disciple of Plato expound the master’s teaching,
while in Hieronymos Charitonomos, whose funeral oration over Plethon has been
preserved, Mistra produced one of the earliest teachers of Greek in the
University of Paris.
Gemistos was doubtless emboldened to address his
scheme for the regeneration of the Peloponnese to the emperor by the favourable
reception accorded to a previous letter, in which he had urged Manuel to pay a
personal visit to the peninsula, if he cared anything for its safety. In that
letter and in an appeal to the Despot Theodore, he foreshadowed the proposals
which he embodied in a memorial to the patient emperor, handed to him while he
was still at the isthmus. He began by proclaiming the Hellenism of Greece, and,
overlooking the existence of various other races in the Peloponnese, he pointed
to the speech and education of the people as proofs of their Greek origin. But
all was not well in this citadel of the race, which neither its strong natural
defences nor the Isthmian wall could protect without drastic reforms. According
to the philosopher of Mistra, the radical defect in the existing system of
military service was that the taxpayers were summoned away from their
agricultural pursuits to bear arms. So long as campaigns were short this did
not greatly matter; but the continual and lengthy calls upon the people in
consequence of the frequent domestic wars and Turkish invasions had made them
less and less inclined to respond. Hence few put in an appearance when war was
proclaimed; and even those few were badly armed and anxious to quit the camp
for their domestic duties. As a consequence, it had been found necessary to
hire foreign mercenaries for the defence of the country —a plan which increased
the taxes, corrupted the natives, and was quite inadequate in an emergency. To
remedy this, Gemistos suggested that justice demanded a division of the
products of the country into three equal shares between the three classes of
producers, capitalists, and officials, the last of which included the soldiers,
the archons, and the court. The first class, which was by far the most numerous,
would keep one-third of what it produced, would pay one-third to the
capitalists, and one-third in the form of a tax to the State for the
maintenance of the soldiers and officials. A peasant proprietor who owned his
own cattle and instruments of labour, would, of course, retain two-thirds of
his produce. In districts where most of the peasants were fit for military
service, they should be grouped in pairs, each pair having property and capital
in common, so that one man would cultivate the soil while the other was
performing military service, and vice versd. The official class should be
excluded from trade (as was the case in the Venetian colonies), and exempt from
payment of taxes in consideration of its public services. The peasants, who
would thus be the sole taxpayers, and whom Gemistds calls in truly Spartan
phraseology “Helots”, should no longer be expected to undertake forced labour
or to pay a number of small taxes at frequent intervals to an army of
tax-collectors. In place of those irksome imposts, the new Lycurgus advocated,
centuries before Henry George, a single tax, payable, not in cash, but in kind,
and amounting to one-third of all crops and young animals. The “Helots” no
longer liable to military service, would thus be able to support themselves and
their families, remunerate the capitalist, and also provide for the maintenance
of the official, non-producing class. Gemistos would have assigned one “ Helot
” for the support of each foot-soldier, and two for that of each horseman,
while he left it to the discretion of the sovereign to select as many “ Helots
” as he thought adequate for that of the officers and of the reigning house,
suggesting, however, three for the former. One section of the unproductive
class—the clergy—received scant favour from this unorthodox philosopher, who
drew his inspiration from Plato rather than from the Fathers of the Church. He
was willing to concede three “Helots” apiece to the bishops, as state
officials, but to the monks, “who, under the pretence of philosophic enquiry,
claim the largest share of the public revenues”, he refused even the smallest
aid from the funds of the State. They were, he said, “a swarm of drones,” who
deserved no other privilege than that of enjoying their possessions free of
taxation. Or, at least, let them hold public offices without salary, as the
“ransom” which they paid for the retention of their property. It is not
surprising that this attack on their order gained for Gemistds the bitter
hatred of the clergy; even after his death they refused him burial in
consecrated ground, and it is not at Mistra, but in the cathedral of Rimini
that we must seek his remains. Not content with having thus excited one
powerful interest against him, the dauntless visionary attacked another—the
landed interest—by boldly proposing the nationalisation of the land—a measure
which, so he believed, would make the Peloponnese blossom like the rose.
By these reforms Gemistds confidently hoped to support
in the least irksome manner a force lof some 6000 native soldiers. But his
reforming zeal was not confined to the question of national defence. A strong
patriot, he wished to erect a high fiscal barrier, a tariff Hexamilion, against
the foreigner. A land such as ours, he told his distinguished correspondents,
is essentially agricultural; that is our principal occupation; we can produce
in the Peloponnese all that we want, except iron and arms, and we should be
much better without foreign clothes, seeing that the peninsula yields wool,
flax, hemp, and cotton. Why then import wool from the Atlantic Ocean, and have
it woven into garments beyond the Ionian Sea? Accordingly, he advocated a high
export duty of fifty per cent, on the fruits of the earth and on other useful
products of the country, unless they were exchanged for iron or arms, in which
case they should be exported free of charge. Taxes and salaries being paid in
kind, and the export of cotton being sufficient, in his opinion, to pay for the
imports of iron and arms, Gemistds saw no further need for money. The
Peloponnese was, at this time, flooded with bad foreign coins —for the Despots
of Mistral, so far as is known, never issued any currency of their own, though
Theodore I. pledged himself in 1394 not to imitate the Venetian coinage, while
he received permission to copy other currencies, which looks as if he had
contemplated the establishment of a mint. This evil the philosopher
accordingly desired to remove. Lastly, he turned his attention to the reform of
the penal code. Capital punishment, formerly usual, had fallen into abeyance;
while, in its place, the judges inflicted the barbarous penalty of amputation,
or in too many cases let the criminals off scot-free. Gemistos deplored both
this excessive cruelty and this excessive leniency; he thought it far better to
chain the criminals in gangs and set them to work at the repair of the Isthmian
wall.
He concluded his scheme of reforms, by modestly
offering his own services to carry them out. The offer was declined; the
Emperor Manuel was a practical man, who knew that he was living, not in Plato’s
republic, but in the dregs of Lycurgus. The philosopher continued, however, to
enjoy the favourofthe imperial family. When the Emperor John VI visited the
Morea in 1428, he consulted him on the Union of the Eastern and Western
Churches, and confirmed the grant of two manors, Phanarion and Vrysis, made to
Gemistos and his two sons by the Despot Theodore II. It is interesting to note
that one of the conditions was the payment by the lord of the manor of the
floriatikon, or tax for the maintenance of the Isthmian wall. Gemistos showed
his gratitude by a florid funeral oration, still preserved, over the Despot’s
Italian wife, Cleopa Malatesta.
About the same time that Gemistos drew up his scheme
for the regeneration of the Morea, a Byzantine satirist composed, in the manner
of Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, a bitter pamphlet, in which he gives us his
impressions of the Peloponnese. The satire may be overdrawn, but it is nearer
to life than the idealism of the Platonist. In place of the “purely hellenic”
population of Gemistos, Mdzaris tells us that there are in the peninsula seven
races, “Lacedaemonians, Italians, Peloponnesians, Slavonians, Illyrians,
Egyptians, and Jews, and among them are not a few half-castes.” These are
precisely the races which we should have expected to find there. The “Lacedaemonians”,
as Mfizaris himself explains, are the Tzfikones, who had “become barbarians” in
their language, of which he gives some specimens. The “Italians” are the Franks
of all kinds—French, Italians, and Navarrese; the “Peloponnesians” are the
native Greeks; the “Slavonians” are the tribes of Ezerits and Melings about
Taygetos; the “Illyrians” are the Albanians whom Theodore I had admitted to the
peninsula; the “Egyptians” are the gypsies, whose name, like that of the Jews,
is still preserved in the various “Gyphtdkastra” and “Ebraiokastra” of Greece.
Mazaris goes on to make the shrewd remark, true today of all Eastern countries
where the Oriental assumes a veneer of Western civilisation, that “each race
imitates the worst features of the others,” the Greeks assimilating the
turbulence of the Franks, and the Franks the cunning of the Greeks. So insecure
were life and property, that arms were worn night and day—a practice obsolete
in the time of Thucydides. Of the Moreot archons he gives much the same account
as the Emperor Cantacuzene; they are “men who ever delight in battles and
disturbances, who are for ever breathing murder, who are full of deceit and
craft, barbarous and pig-headed, unstable and perjured, faithless to both
emperor and Despots.” Such men were not likely to sink their private
differences and rally round their sovereign’s representative in a firm and
united stand against the Turk.
Manuel’s sojourn in the Peloponnese seems, at least,
to have had some effect in reducing to order and civilising the lawless and
savage population of Maina. Like the Bavarian rulers of Greece in the
nineteenth century, the Byzantine sovereign destroyed numbers of the towers,
which were the refuge of the wild Mainate chieftains. It was he, too, as two
Greek panegyrists inform us, who stamped out their brutal but very ancient
custom, mentioned by the Greek tragedians, of cutting off their enemies’
fingers or toes, and dipping these ghastly trophies in the festive bumper, with
which they drank to the health of their friends. In a land where stones were so
plentiful and imperial officials so rare, the towers soon rose again, but this
grim practice, as it was called by the ancients, is never mentioned again.
After the departure of the emperor, the Morea enjoyed
relative repose, broken only by occasional conflicts between the Greeks and
Centurione, the Prince of Achaia, in the course of which the Venetian colonies
suffered from the uncontrollable Albanians of the Despot, while the old
Frankish principality steadily dwindled away almost to nothing before the Greek
attack. The imperial family continued to display a strong personal interest in
the peninsula; John, the heir and associate of Manuel II, spent a year there,
during which he captured Androusa, the capital of the principality; and, when
he returned home, his youngest brother, Thomas, was sent there, attended by the
historian PhrantzSs, a native of Monemvasia, who was destined to play an active
part in the last act of Greek freedom, and to describe the events of his time
for the edification of posterity. Nor were the Greeks the only enemies of
Centurione ; an Italian adventurer, named Oliverio, seized the important port
of Glarentza, forced the Prince of Achaia to bestow it upon him with the hand
of his daughter, and then sold it to Carlo Tocco, who had long desired that
foothold in the Morea. Feeling his position daily more insecure, Centurione
tried to dispose of the principality. He first offered it to his ancestral city
of Genoa, much to the alarm of her rival, Venice, and then to the Knights of St
John, who declined, owing to the Turkish danger in Asia Minor, to interfere
again in its administration; he was even quite willing to make a bargain with
the republic of St Mark. The latter was desirous of extending her possessions
in the peninsula, or of even acquiring the whole of it, not from ambitious
motives, as she truly said, but from fear lest it should fall into the hands of
an enemy who might injure her trade and colonies. Indeed, the lack of settled
government, and of any proper police, practically ruined her traffic in the
Malmsey wine, which it then produced. In 1417 she had garrisoned Navarino, just
in time to prevent its occupation by the Genoese; in 1423 she legalised her
position there by purchase, and she rounded off her Messenian colonies by the
acquisition of several other important castles. These greatly strengthened her
position in the south of Messenia; communication by land between Modon and
Coron was now secured by the fortress of Grisi, which was of great value when
the sea was beset by Turkish ships. New regulations were drawn up for this
enlarged strip of Venetian territory. In 1439, we are told, it included seven castles,
three of which, including Navarino, were placed under the jurisdiction of
Modon, and the other four under that of Coron; in each of these seven strongholds
a Latin governor, chosen from among the Venetians of the two colonial capitals,
held office for two years, and at the end of his term, a councillor of the
colony went and heard any charges which the people might have against him.
Not satisfied with these piecemeal acquisitions, the
republic, in 1422, sent a commissioner to examine thoroughly and report upon
the defences, the revenues and expenditure of the Morea, and to sound the
Despot Theodore, the Prince of Achaia, and Carlo Tocco, with a view to
obtaining all, or most, of the Greek Despotat; the whole of the principality of
Achaia, either at once, or on the death of Centurione; and the valuable mart of
Glarentza. The commissioner presented a thorough and satisfactory report to his
Government; the Morea, he wrote, yields more than Crete ; it comprises more
than 150 castles, its circumference is 700 miles; its soil contains deposits of
gold, silver, and lead, and it exports silk, honey, wax, grain, poultry, and
raisins. It is curious to compare this statement with that of Gemistds. The
philosopher had made no mention of the silk industry, which still flourished,
while the commissioner omitted the cotton, which figured so largely in the
schemes of Plethon, and to which there is frequent allusion in the Venetian
documents. The large amount of merchandise which Nerio Acciajuoli had stored at
Corinth, the great value of the Venetian wares which we find at Patras, and the
existence of a considerable Jewish colony there, confirm the commercial
importance of the country. Even in the midst of war’s alarms, a wealthy
Venetian merchant, settled at Patras, had customers on both sides of the
Corinthian Gulf, and that city was the home of several well-to-do families,
whose standard of living would have incurred the censure of the philosopher. In
spite, then, of all it had undergone, the constant civil wars, the Turkish
depredations, the eight plagues of the last two generations, and at least one
great earthquake, the Peloponnese would seem to have been well worth acquiring.
Had Venice annexed it, she might perhaps have saved it, or at least postponed
its fall. But the negotiations came to nothing, and the republic contented
herself with urging united action against the Turks.1
The warning was indeed needed. The warlike Murad II
was now Sultan, and in 1423, when the negotiations were barely over, the great
Turkish commander, Turakhan, invaded the Morea with an army of 25,000 men.
Accompanied by the sultan’s frightened vassal, Antonio Acciajuoli of Athens,
Turakhan made short work of the vaunted Hexamilion, whose defenders fled as
soon as they saw him approach, and marched upon Mistra, Gardiki, in the pass of
Makryplagi, and the town of Leondari. In one difficult defile the Greeks fell
upon him, defeated him with much loss, and recovered most of the rich booty
which he had taken. But this check proved to be only temporary. Tocco’s
representatives at Glarentza purchased their own safety by betraying to the
Turks the pass of Kissamo, which exposed the Venetian colonies to attack. A
string of 1260 Venetian subjects and some 6000 Greeks followed the homeward
march of the Turkish commander. But the Albanian colonists were resolved that
he should not leave the Morea without feeling the weight of their arms. They
gathered at Davia, near Tripolitza, under a general of their own race, and
prepared to attack. They paid dearly for their daring, many were slain, about
800 were captured and massacred, and towers of Albanian skulls, such as that
which still stands near Nish, marked the site of the battle. The emperor was
obliged to purchase peace by promising that the Morea should pay an annual
tribute of 100,000 hyperperi, and that the walls of the Hexamilion should be
left in ruins. Even this sharp lesson did not teach the princelings of the
Morea wisdom ; scarcely had the Turks withdrawn, than Theodore attacked
Centurione and made him his prisoner.
A more attractive and more energetic figure now
appeared among the Greeks of the Morea—that of the man who was destined to die
on the walls of Constantinople, the last Emperor Constantine. The Despot
Theodore was subject to fits of depression; he did not get on with his Italian
wife; and then the intrigues of Mistra seemed to him vanity, and the life of a
monk preferable to that of a ruler. In one of these moods, he announced his
intention of entering a monastery, and of handing over the government to his
active brother, Constantine. The Emperor John VI, who now sat on the throne,
agreed to this plan, and, in 1427, set out for the Morea with his brother
Constantine and the faithful Phrantzes, in order to install the new Despot.
But, when the imperial party arrived, they found that Theodore, like several
other sovereigns in love with the charms of private life in theory, but in
practice wedded to the delights of power, had changed his mind. The local
magnates, he told them, would not permit the abdication of their beloved
Despot. It therefore became necessary to provide Constantine, who had hitherto
been content with some towns on the Black Sea, with an appanage somewhere else,
and this led to the reconquest of the Frankish Morea.
The plan of campaign was skilfully laid. First, an
attack was made upon Glarentza and the other possessions of Carlo Tocco in the
peninsula. Some of these surrendered, and a politic marriage between
Constantine and Carlo’s niece Theodora (daughter of Leonardo of Zante) brought
him Glarentza as her dowry. The historian PhrantzSs took over the town on his
behalf, and Constantine fixed his residence in the historic castle of
Chloumoutsi, which Geofifroy II. de Villehardouin had built two centuries
before. Patras was his next objective, and the papacy now realised too late its
folly in compelling the Venetians to restore it to the much weaker government
of the Church. On the death of the late archbishop, Venice had in vain appealed
to Martin V. to appoint one of her citizens to the vacant see; but the pope
thought that he would better secure the town against Greek attacks by sending
as archbishop, Pandulph Mala- testa of Pesaro, whose sister Cleopa was wife of
the Despot Theodore. But this connection failed to save the place. The first
attack of the three brothers was, indeed, only partially successful, for their
quarrels prevented united action, and the citizens were thus able to purchase a
brief respite by an annual tribute of 500 pieces of gold to Constantine. In
1429, however, Constantine and the faithful Phrantzes made a second attempt to
obtain possession of Patras. The offer of some of the local priests and leading
citizens to hand over the town was considered unpractical, so, on Palm Sunday,
the Greek forces, with myrtle boughs in their hands, began the attack. On the
Saturday before Easter, a sudden sortie was made from the Jews’ gate; it was
repulsed, but as Phrantzes and his master ventured too near the walls,
Constantine’s horse was shot under him by a well-aimed arrow. The future
emperor fell to the ground, and would have been killed by the enemy, had it not
been for the devotion of his companion, who kept them at bay until Constantine
had had time to disentangle himself from his charger and escape on foot. Phrantzes
and his favourite steed were both wounded, and the historian was taken prisoner
and chained in a disused granary, where for forty days he had ample leisure for
meditating, amidst ants, weevils, and mice, on the rewards of loyalty. When his
nameday arrived, the pious Phrantzes prayed to his patron saint St George to
deliver him; his prayer was heard, his chains were removed, and he was able to
correspond with Constantine. At his suggestion, a conference was held between
the besiegers and the besieged, at which the latter consented, on condition
that Constantine would retire to Glarentza, to surrender the town, if their
archbishop, who had gone to seek aid of the pope, did not return from Italy by
the end of May. Phrantzes was released more dead than alive, but his master’s
expressions of gratitude and a present of fine clothes and money consoled him
for his forty days’ imprisonment. Constantine had, however, almost immediate
occasion to demand from him a further proof of devotion. Scarcely had he reached
Glarentza than he received a haughty message from the sultan, forbidding him to
besiege Patras, as it paid tribute to the Turks. Constantine was a man of
action, and he at once resolved to take the town first and then make diplomatic
excuses afterwards. Accordingly, as soon as the time agreed upon had expired
and there was no sign of the archbishop, he returned to Patras, and there in
the church of its patron saint, St Andrew, received the keys of the town. His
entry was a veritable holiday; flowers rained on him from the windows; it was
roses, roses all the way, when, for the first time for 225 years a Greek
conqueror trod the streets of the archiepiscopal city. Only the old feudal
castle and the archbishop’s palace near it held out, in the hope that Pandulph
would return. Next day the citizens swore fealty to the Despot in the church of
St Nicholas, an historic building unhappily destroyed by an explosion less than
a century ago; and, at their request, Phrantzes, their late prisoner, was
appointed their governor.
Before, however, he took up his duties, he was sent to
explain away as best he could to the sultan the annexation of Patras. At
Lepanto, on the way, he fell in with two Turkish envoys and the Archbishop of
Patras, who had heard of the loss of his see, and had put in with one of the
Catalan galleys furnished him by the pope, at the Venetian station on the north
coast of the gulf. Phrantzes and the archbishop tried hard to pump one another
without success; but in the evening the artful historian, at the imminent risk
of getting drunk himself, as he sadly confesses, made the Turks intoxicated and
then opened their letters. Arrived at the sultan’s court, he received
peremptory orders to bid his master restore Patras to its rightful lord ; but
Phrantzes knew his Turks; he made friends with the sultan’s Prime Minister,
pacified Turakhan on his way back, and was able to assure his sovereign that
the Turks would not molest him. Pandulph in despair offered Patras to Venice;
but, as it was no longer his to offer, the cautious republic declined. Still
the fine old castle held out, till, in May 1430, hunger forced the garrison to
yield. The Catalan galleys of the pope proved useless to Pandulph, for, though
they captured Glarentza, their captain at once sold it back to Constantine. The
latter ordered the destruction of that famous town, from fear lest it should be
occupied again by an enemy. The churches and monasteries, where once the High
Court of Achaia had met, were dismantled, the monks, the archons, and the poor
became homeless exiles, and from the ruin of Glarentza a Greek poet traced the
beginning of the future emperor’s ill-fortune. Meanwhile, howeyer, the goddess
smiled on him. The last Latin Archbishop of Patras, baffled in his hopes,
retired to his native Pesaro, where his remains lie; his name is, however,
still preserved in two inscriptions, which now serve as doorposts of the inner
entrance of the castle which his men had so manfully defended. But to the
Greeks the capture of Patras will be ever associated with the name of the last
Emperor of Constantinople, whose exploits in the Morea well deserved the
encomium composed by a Byzantine rhetorician of that day.
Nearly all the Peloponnese was now in the hands of the
three brothers, Theodore, Constantine, and Thomas. Besides Glarentza and
Patras, which he had won for himself, Constantine had received from Theodore
the old barony of Vostitza, which adjoined that of Patras, and in the far south
of the peninsula, on the west of Taygetos, the strong castle of Leuktron, the
creation of the last Villehardouin prince, together with a large strip of
Maina. Theodore had also transferred to him the administration of the great
possessions of the Melissenos family during the minority of the present
representative, and these included the richest part of Messenia, with such
places as Androusa, Kalamata, Nesi, Ithome, and the Lakonian Mantineia, the
ancient Abia, where another brother, Andronikos, had taken up his abode after
he had sold Salonika to the Venetians. Meanwhile, Thomas had not been idle. He
had obtained Kalavryta from his brother Theodore, and at the time of the
surrender of Patras was besieging Centurione in the castle of Chalandritza. In
September 1429, the Prince of Achaia was reduced to make terms with his
assailant; he gave his elder daughter Catarina in marriage to Thomas ; and,
passing over his bastard son, conferred upon her the remains of the Frankish
principality as her dowry, reserving for himself nothing except the family
barony of Kyparissia and the title of prince. The wedding took place at Mistra
in January 1430, and Thomas received from his imperial brother the title of
Despot. Two years later the last Prince of Achaia died, when Thomas, fearing
the intrigues of his widow, kept her in prison for the rest of her life.
Centurione’s son, Giovanni Asan, seems to have sought refuge in Venetian
territory, where we shall find him a quarter of a century later. At the same
time, the Greeks annexed the ancient fiefs of the Teutonic Knights at
Mostenitsa; and to complete the symmetry of the peninsula, an exchange was
effected between Thomas and Constantine, the former, as the heir of Centurione,
taking Glarentza, and the latter Kalavryta. Thus, in 1432, after the lapse of
two hundred and twenty-seven years, the whole peninsula was Greek, save where
the Venetian flag waved over the colonies of Modon and Coron, with their seven
dependent castles, and the territory of Nauplia and Argos. Never since the old
Byzantine days had there been such uniformity.
The rule of the Franks in Achaia had latterly been
simply an element of discord; but in its earliest stage it had wrought no
little good to the land and people. A fair-minded modern Greek historian has
contended that his countrymen owe the warlike spirit, which they showed after
the Turkish Conquest down to the time when they at last regained their freedom,
to the example of the splendid Frankish chivalry, which had taught Greek
fingers to war and Greek hands to fight. Certainly, there is a great contrast
between the feeble resistance offered by the Peloponnesians to the Franks in
the thirteenth century and their constant insurrections against the Turks.
Only, we must not forget in this comparison the fact that the Albanians —that
nation of fighters— were not represented in the Morea at the time when the
Franks arrived. But there can be no doubt that during a large portion of the
reigns of the Villehardouin princes, the peninsula experienced all the
advantages of strong and vigorous personal rule. Trade flourished, the alien
Church was kept in its place, the Greeks had at least as much liberty as their
own emperors and their own local tyrants had allowed them. We may, indeed,
distinguish three periods in the history of Frankish Achaia. The golden age
terminated with the cession of the four castles in 1262, which led to the reintroduction
of Byzantine influence and the consequent duel between Hellenism and the
Franks, of which the Morea was the theatre for the next one hundred and seventy
years. The second period lasted down to the year 1311, the fatal date of the
battle of the Kephissds, which profoundly affected the fortunes of all Frankish
Greece. During this half century there were short periods of peace and plenty,
as in the reign of Florent of Hainault, but the country had become depopulated
by the long wars of its soldierly Prince William, and after his death without a
male heir, the Angevin connection, with its evils of absenteeism and dynastic
intrigue, sorely tried this fairest portion of “new France”. The barons, always
the peers of the prince, aimed at being the masters of the Angevin bailies, and
would tolerate no interference with their right to liberty, which was often
merely a euphemism for liberty to riot. Meanwhile, foreigners—Flemings,
Neapolitans, and Savoyards—ignorant of the manners and language of the
country, took the place of the old French families, which by some inscrutable
law of population had become extinct, or else survived in the female line alone
after two or three generations. During the third period these evils were
aggravated, and others were added. The disputed succession to the throne more
than once afflicted the land with the curse of civil war, while the Byzantine
governor first ceased to be a merely annual official, and then became an
important member of the imperial family. Mistra waxed as Constantinople waned,
until at last, two centuries too late, the Morea once again became a Greek
state. We have compared the Frankish Conquest of Achaia with the Norman
Conquest of England; but the similarity unfortunately ceased with the conquest.
The Morea had her Wars of the Roses before the two races, the conquerors and
the conquered, had been thoroughly amalgamated; she lacked the long line of
able sovereigns, and above all, the sturdy burghers, who contributed so much to
the stability of our national institutions, while in Greece the Roman Church,
except in Corfu and the Cyclades, remained to the last that of a small
minority, whereas in England it was that of the people even before the conquest.
Where the two nationalities were united in marriage, the halfcastes who were
the offspring of these unions, usually sided with the Greeks, manned the
imperial ships, fought inthe imperial
armies, and held office in the imperial administration. Now and again
self-interest led a Gasmule to identify himself with the Franks; but in most
cases the legal maxim held good—-partus sequitur matrem.
For us, however, after the lapse of nearly five
centuries, the brilliant French chivalry of Achaia still lingers on in many a
ruined keep, in many a mouldering castle, in the Norman arch of Andravida, in
the great fortresses of Karytaina and Chloumoutsi, in the splendid isolation of
Passava. Elis still preserves in the names of her prosperous little towns, and
in the trappings of her horses, the memory of the bright days when gentle
knights pricked over the plain that leads to Olympia or rested for shelter from
the noon-day sun beneath the oaks of Manolada; when many a pleasaunce studded
the smiling country round Vlisiri; when monks from far-off Assisi chanted their
vespers in the Minorite church of rich Glarentza.
At the same time when the Frankish rule in Achaia
ended, the Turks made further conquests in Northern Greece. In 1423, Andronikos
Palaiologos, who governed Salonika, afflicted by elephantiasis and harassed by
the Turks, had sold that great city, the second of the empire, to Venice, which
was also anxious to accept the offer of the Greek captain of Lamia to transfer
the port of Stylida and the village of Avlaki, half-way between Stylida and
Lamia, to the strongest of the Christian powers interested in the Levant, as
the best means of saving the latter place, temporarily regained from the
sultan. The republic thought sufficiently highly of her new
purchase to bestow the title of duke upon the chief official whom she sent
there, and to pay an annual tribute for it to Murad II. But her occupation of
Salonika was very short and by no means beneficial either to Venice or to her
colony in Euboea. Lamia and its territory soon fell again into Turkish hands,
and the unhappy Eubceans complained that they were more harried than ever by
those invaders, who carried off so many captives that the island was in danger
of becoming depopulated. This so greatly alarmed the Home Government, that the
bailie received instructions to inspect and repair, by means of the forced
labour of the serfs, all the fortresses of Eubcea, and to restrict the sale of
wine to those strongholds so as to induce people to inhabit them. In
consideration of the pressing danger, his salary was increased, but all other
expenses in the island were reduced, and the Duke of the Archipelago was
reminded that it had always been the custom of his predecessors to light signal
fires, warning the colonists of Eubcea when a Turkish fleet was approaching. In
1430, Salonika fell finally before the Ottoman arms, and then the Venetians of
Eubcea feared that their turn would come. More than 5000 of the islanders were
in captivity, and stores and 200 men were sorely needed to defend the eleven
castles of the island. Venice hastened to save her colony by concluding peace
with Murad II.
On the opposite side of Greece, however, the Latins
were not so fortunate as to escape. In 1429, Carlo I. Tocco had ended in his
capital of Joannina his long and successful reign. “In military and
administrative ability he was”, as Chalkokondyles says, “inferior to none of
his contemporaries”, and under him the dynasty of the palatine Counts of
Cephalonia had reached its zenith. Having no legitimate heirs, he left the
island of Sta. Mavra and the strong fort of Vonitza on the Ambrakian Gulf to
his widow, the able and masculine Duchess Francesca, divided Akarnania among
his five bastards, and bequeathed the rest of his continental and insular dominions
to his nephew, Carlo II. Such an arrangement was sure to lead to civil war;
the Albanians hated the Italian rule, which had weighed heavily upon them; the
bastards, after the fashion of this degraded period, appealed with their
approval to the sultan, and Memnon, the ablest and most unscrupulous of the
five, was particularly importunate in imploring Murad II to restore him to his
heritage. Carlo II in vain invoked the good offices of his brother-inlaw,
Constantine, and the latter despatched his handy man, Phrantzes, whose decision
all the parties swore to accept.
Phrantzes met, however, with his usual ill-fortune.
Off the small islands near Sta. Mavra, once the abode of the Homeric Taphians,
“lovers of the oar,” a Catalan galley, in the pay of the Duchess Francesca,
captured the historian and sold him and his suite at Glarentza for a ransom
such as no archeologist would now fetch. Meanwhile, the fall of Salonika had
left the sultan free to respond to the bastard’s appeal. Two previous attempts
to enter Epiros had been checked by the natives in the difficult passes of
Pindos. But a Turkish army under Sinan Pasha now appeared under the walls of
Joannina, preceded by a letter from the sultan, calling upon the inhabitants to
surrender, promising not to deprive them of their city, and bidding them decide
ere it was too late for repentance. Sinan Pasha reiterated the orders and
promises of his master, who had sent him, he told them, “to take the duke’s
lands and castles,” and threatened to treat any place which resisted as he had
treated Salonika. “The Franks”, he pointed out to the Greeks and Albanians,
“are merely seeking to ruin you, as they ruined the Thessalonians; whereas I
will allow the metropolitan to have all his ecclesiastical rights, and the
archons to keep all their fiefs”. These arguments convinced the inhabitants
that further resistance was useless; Carlo II was allowed to retain the rest of
Epiros, Akarnania, and his islands, on payment of an annual tribute; the
archons purchased the continuance of their privileges by the usual
capitation-tax. On 9th October 1430, Joannina surrendered, and has ever since
belonged to the Turkish Empire. A small Turkish colony settled there, and soon
a new version of the Rape of the Sabine women provided them with Christian
wives. Carlo did not feel secure against the invasion of his reduced dominions,
especially as his cousin, Memnon, continued to haunt the sultan’s court and
grovel before his patron “like a respectful servant.” We accordingly find him
asking Venice for protection, as otherwise he “will be forced to come to some
arrangement with the Genoese, the Catalans, or the Turks.” A similar appeal was
made by the dowager duchess, from whose island the Turks carried off 500 souls.
The Venetians were anxious that the Ionian islands, which carried on a large
trade with their possessions, should not be lost; they therefore urged the duchess to defend her own, as “ so masculine a lady ” well could, and told Carlo that they would treat him as a Venetian citizen, and elect him a noble of the Grand
Council. This did not, however, prevent Memnon and his brother Ercole from conspiring with his
continental subjects against him, until he purchased peace by allowing them to
retain what they had occupied. The “Despot”, or “Lord of Arta,” as he styled himself, thenceforward
remained for many years on good terms with both them and
the sultan.
Meanwhile, under the statesmanlike rule of Antonio
Acciajuoli, the duchy of Athens had been spared the vicissitudes of the other
Latin states in the Levant. While all around him principalities and powers were
shaken to their foundations; while that ancient warden of the northern march of
Athens, the marquisate of Boudonitza, was swept away for ever; while Turkish
armies invaded the Morea, and annexed the Albanian capital to the sultan’s
empire; while the principality of Achaia disappeared from the map in the throes of a tardy Greek revival; the statesmanlike
ruler of Athens skilfully guided the policy of his duchy. At times even his
experienced diplomacy failed to avert the horrors of a Turkish raid; we saw how
the Turks had ravaged his land in 1416, how Mohammed I. had threatened to chastise him for injuring some Venetian subjects, how,
in 1423, Turakhan had forced him, as a vassal of the sultan, to join in the
invasion of the Morea. The historian Doukas even represents him as helping the Turks against
Salonika. But, as a rule, the dreaded Mussulmans spared this halfOriental, who
was a past-master in the art of managing the sultan’s ministers. From the
former rulers of Athens, the Catalans and the Venetians, he had nothing to
fear. Once, indeed, he received news that Alfonso V of Aragon and Sicily, who
never forgot to sign himself “Duke of Athens and Neopatras”, had invested a
Catalan named Thomas Beraldo with the Athenian duchy, and intended to put him
in possession of it So great was Antonio’s alarm that he asked the Venetian
Government to order its bailie in Negroponte to protect him. But Venice
reassured him with the shrewd remark that thelCatalans usually made much ado
about nothing,1 and nothing further was heard about the matter. On
her part the republic was friendly to the man who had supplanted her, when once
she had come to an understanding with him. She twice gave Antonio permission,
in case of danger, to send the valuable Acciajuoli stud —for, like his father,
he was a good judge of horse-flesh— to the island of Euboea; and she ordered
her bailie to “ observe the ancient commercial treaties between the duchy and
the island, which he would find in writing in the chancery of Negroponte.” When
he complained that a number of Albanian families had emigrated from his duchy
to Euboea, they were sent back with all the more readiness because they were
useless. At his request the Euboean peasants were at last allowed to cultivate
the five-mile territory which the Venetians still held as a strategic position
on the mainland opposite the island. But when he asked permission to construct
two galleys, he received a flat negative, even though he offered to join the
republic against the Turks. Nor was he more fortunate in his protest against
the arrangement by which Venice secured to herself the future possession of
Aigina. That classic island had passed, as we saw, about the end of the
fourteenth century, from the family of Fadrique to that of Caopena. But, in
1425, Alioto Caopena, at that time its ruler, placed himself under the
protection of the republic in order to escape the danger of a Turkish raid. The
island must then have been fruitful, for one of the conditions under which
Venice accorded him her protection was that he should supply corn for her
colonies. While he retained his independence, he agreed to hoist the banner of
the Evangelist, whenever desired, and it was stipulated that, if his family
became extinct, Aigina should become Venetian. Against this treaty Antonio of
Athens, one of whose adopted daughters had married, the future lord of Aigina,
Antonello Caopena, in vain protested. To the Florentine Duke of Athens, Aegina,
as a Venetian colony, might well seem, as it had seemed to Aristotle, the “eyesore
of the Piraeus.” But a quarter of a century later, a Venetian colony it was.
With another Italian commonwealth, his family’s old
home of Florence, Antonio maintained the closest relations. In 1422, a
Florentine ambassador arrived in Athens with instructions to confer the freedom
of his city upon the Athenian ruler, and to inform him that Florence, having
now become a maritime power (by the destruction of Pisa and the purchase of
Leghorn), intended to embark in the Levant trade, and asked from him as
favourable treatment as the Venetians and Genoese merchants received in his
dominions. The ambassador was directed to make a similar request of Carlo I.
Tocco, on the ground that his mother, Maddalena Buondelmonti, was a Florentine.
Antonio gladly made all Florentine ships free of his harbours, and halved the
usual customs dues in favour of all Florentine merchants throughout his
dominions. Any rights which he might thereafter grant to Venetians, Catalans,
or Genoese, were to be theirs also.
Visitors from Tuscany, when they landed at Riva
d’Ostia on the Gulf of Corinth, must, indeed, have felt themselves in the land
of a friendly prince, though the court on the Akropolis presented a curious
mixture of the Greek and the Florentine elements. Half a Greek himself, Antonio
chose both his wives from that race—the first the beautiful daughter of a Greek
priest, to whom he had lost his heart in the mazes of a wedding-dance at
Thebes, and whom, though she had a husband already, he made his mistress, and
subsequently his wife; the second was Maria Melissend, a daughter of the great
Messenian family, who brought him Astros, Leonidi, and other places in
Kynouria, the land of the Tzdkones, as her dowry. As he had no children, he
adopted the two daughters of Protimo, a nobleman of Euboea, whom he married to
Niccold Giorgio, the titular marquis of Boudonitza and baron of Karystos, and
to Antonello Caopena of Aegina. The latter was a great favourite at the
Athenian court, as he was useful to his father-in-law. The succession to the
duchy being thus open, members of the Acciajuoli clan, sons of Antonio’s uncle
Donato, whom King Ladislaus of Naples had appointed Nerio’s heir in 1394, and
who was now dead, came to Athens to pay their respects to their prosperous
relative. Of these cousins, Franco settled in Greece at the castle of
Sykaminon, near Oropos, which had belonged to the Knights of St John, and acted
as Antonio’s ambassador during negotiations with Venice; Nerio twice visited
the Athenian court, and was long the guest of his cousin, the Duchess of
Leucadia; Antonio was made bishop of her other island of Cephalonia, and
Giovanni archbishop of Thebes, where another Acciajuoli had been his
predecessor. Towards the close of Antonio’s long reign a second generation of
this family had grown up to manhood in Greece. Foremost among these younger
cousins were Franco’s sons, Nerio and Antonio, both destined to be dukes of
Athens; their sister, Laudamia, Lady of Sykaminon, and her husband, a member of
the great Florentine family of Pitti; two other grandchildren of Donato,
Niccold Machiavelli and Angelo Acciajuoli, both spent some time in Greece,
where the latter, a devoted adherent of Cosimo de’ Medici, was banished when his
chief was exiled by Albizzi from Florence. A branch of the Medici, as we saw,
was already established at Athens. Thus, with such names as Acciajuoli, Medici,
Pitti, and Machiavelli at the Athenian court, Attica had, indeed, become a
Florentine colony.
Antonio and his Florentine relatives must have led a
merry life in their delectable duchy. In the family correspondence we find
allusions to hawking and partridge shooting, and the ducal stable provided good
mounts for the young Italians, who scoured the plains of Attica and Boeotia in
quest of game. The cultured Florentines were delighted with Athens and the
Akropolis. “You have never seen,” wrote Niccold Machiavelli to one of his
cousins, “a fairer land nor yet a fairer fortress than this”—a sentiment which
recalls the rhapsody of Pedro IV over the castle of Athens. It was there, in
the venerable Propylaea, that Antonio fixed his ducal residence. In the closing
years of the Catalan rule there had been, as we saw, a palace and an adjoining
chapel of St Bartholomew on the Akropolis; but under both the Burgundians and
the Catalans, Thebes had been the usual residence of the head of the state. The
Acciajuoli, however, made Athens their capital and the Propylaea their home. No
great alterations were required to convert the Classic work of MnesiklSs into a
Florentine palace. All that the Acciajuoli seem to have done was to cut the two
vestibules in two, so as to make four rooms, to fill up the spaces between the
pillars by walls (which were seen by Dodwell, Leake, and other travellers of
the early part of the last century, and which were only removed in 1835), and
to add a second story, of which the joist-sockets are still visible, to both
that building and to the Pinakotheke, which either then, or in Turkish times,
was crowned with battlements.It has been conjectured from a
passage in an anonymous account of the antiquities of Athens, composed
probably in 1458, that the ducal chancery, whence the Acciajuoli issued their
Greek documents, was in this latter edifice. Here, too, was the chapel of St
Bartholomew, to which Pedro IV alluded, and in which Nerio I. signed a treaty
with the envoys of Amadeo of Savoy. The vaulted arches of this chapel and the
central column which supported them were still to be seen in 1837. To the
Florentine dukes, too, is usually ascribed the construction of the square “Frankish tower” which was pulled down in 1874 by an act of vandalism unworthy
of any people imbued with a sense of the continuity of history. This tower, 85
feet high, 28A feet long by 25 J feet broad, and 5| feet thick at the base, was
built of large stones from the quarries of Pentelikon and the Piraeus, all
taken by the mediaeval architects from the classical buildings of the
Akropolis. High up, on the north side of the tower, was a little square turret
projecting from the wall, and on the top beacon-fires could be kindled which
would be visible from Akrocorinth. Placed opposite the graceful temple of Nike
Apteros, it commanded the sea-coast and the plain and mountains of Attica, save
where the cathedral of Our Lady shut out a part of Hymettos. A wooden
staircase, fastened into the walls, such as one sees in some of the Venetian
campanili, enabled the Florentine watchman to ascend to the top, and sweep land
and sea for* Turkish horsemen or rakish-looking galleys. Such towers may still
be seen near Moulki in Bceotia and in the island of Euboea. In addition to
these erections on the Akropolis, some archaeologists have regarded the
Acciajuoli as the authors of the marble steps which lead up to the Propylaea,
more usually ascribed to the Romans, and others have believed that it was they
who first surrounded the famous Klepsydra with bastions, so as to provide the
Akropolis with water;2 in that case, Odysseus was merely following
their example when he fortified the well in 1822.
Nor did they limit their activity as builders to the
castle rock alone. To the Florentine, if not to the Burgundian period, is now
assigned the so-called wall of Valerian, of which the remains are still visible
in an Athenian backyard, with sheds and hutches under it. The anonymous writer
above mentioned alludes to “the splendid abode of the polemarch ”—a name
supposed to be his way of expressing the title of the Frankish governor of the
town—in the Stoa of Hadrian, where frescoes, still quite fresh, are even now
visible. The same author says that the dukes possessed a beautiful villa at the
spring of Kallirrhoe, where they used to bathe, and that close by they were
wont to pray in a church which had in pagan
times been “a temple of Hera” or, more correctly, of Triptolemos. In this church, called St Mary’s on the Rock, the Marquis de Nointel had mass recited when he visited Athens in 1674. His companion,
Cornelio Magni, also alludes in his “ Description
of Athens,” to a church on the bridge over the Ilissos,
then “all in ruins but still displaying the traces of the Acciajuoli arms,”
while he found the lion rampant of Brescia, the emblem of the ducal family, which visitors to the famous Certosa
know so well, still guarding the entrance of the Turkish bazaar. A few years later, a chapel called Hagios Frankos is
mentioned by the Venetian writer, Coronelli, as “having been built by the
Acciajuoli”; on the other hand, the statement
of the Florentine biographer, Ubaldini, that Antonio erected the lion of the
Piraeus, which gave the harbour its mediaeval name of Porto Leone, is
incorrect, for we saw that it was already so called
a century earlier. But enough has been said
to justify both his remark and that of the
Athenian historian, Chalkokondyles, that Antonio’s long pacific and economic
administration enabled him to beautify the city.
Of literary culture there are some few traces in
Florentine Athens. It was in Antonio’s reign that Athens gave birth to her last historian, Ladnikos Chalkokondyles, the
Herodotos of mediaeval Greece, who told the story of the new Persian invasion,
and to his brother Demetrios, who did so much to diffuse Greek learning in Italy. Another of Antonio’s subjects, Antonios the
Logothete, is known to scholars as a copyist of manuscripts at Siena; and it is
obvious that the two Italian courts of Athens and Joannina were regarded as places where there was an opening for professional men, for we find a young
Italian writing from Arezzo to Nerio, in order to obtain, through the latter’s
influence with Carlo I. Tocco and Antonio, a chair of jurisprudence, logic,
natural or moral philosophy, or medicine, at either of their courts—he did not
mind which. Even a Greekling of Juvenal’s time could have scarcely offered to
teach such a variety of subjects. Unfortunately, we are not told whether the
versatile candidate’s modest offer was accepted.
Thus, for a long period, the Athenian duchy enjoyed
peace and prosperity, broken only by the pestilence which visited it in 1423,
driving Antonio to seek safety at Megara. Yet, if we may judge from
the complaints which he made about the emigration of a few hundred Albanians
from his dominions, it would seem that the land had become depopulated, and
that there was a lack of men to till the soil. A similar phenomenon is
observable in the Greece of today, where even the most fertile districts are
being rapidly denuded of their male inhabitants. But the modern Greeks have not
the twin institutions on which medieval society rested: serfdom and slavery.
Both continued to exist under the Acciajuoli. Antonio granted, and his
successor confirmed, the Frankish privileges to a Greek, from which we learn
that those who did not enjoy the franchise were still liable to furnish
baskets, new wine, oil, and other articles; while the Duchess Francesca of
Leucadia made a present of a young female slave to her cousin Nerio, with full
power to sell or dispose of her as he pleased. Yet there continued to be a
growth of Greek influence at Athens, as was natural under a dynasty which was
now half hellenised. The notary and chancellor of the city continued to be a
Greek; the public documents were drawn up in the Pinakothdke in that language;
and a Greek archon was now destined to play a leading part in Athenian
politics.
When, in 1435, after a long reign of thirty-two years,
the longest of any Athenian ruler till the time of King George, Antonio was one
summer morning found dead in his bed, the victim of an apoplectic stroke, two
parties, an Italian and a Greek, arose to dispute the succession. The Italian
candidate, young Nerio, eldest son of Franco Acciajuoli, baron of Sykaminon,
whom the late duke had adopted as his heir, occupied the city. But the Duchess
Maria Melissend and her kinsman, Chalkokondyles, father of the historian and
the leading man of Athens, held the castle. Well aware, however, that the
sultan was the real master of the situation, the Greek archon set out for the
Turkish court with a large sum of money to obtain MurSd II’s consent to this
act of usurpation. The sultan scornfully rejected the 30,000 gold pieces which
the Athenian archon offered him, cast him into prison, and demanded the
surrender of the duchy, at the same time sending an army under the redoubtable
Turakhan to occupy Thebes. Chalkokondiles managed to escape to Constantinople,
whence he took ship for the Morea; but on the way, falling in with some vessels
belonging to the Frankish party at Athens, he was seized and sent back as a
prisoner to the sultan, who pardoned him. This futile attempt was not, however,
the only effort of the Greeks to make themselves masters of Athens. Even before
the death of the duke, Constantine Palaioldgos had sent his trusty emissary
Phrantzes on a mission to the Athenian court, and the duchess now requested him
to return with a large force of soldiers and a formal document setting out the
agreement made between her and his master. This arrangement was, that
Constantine should take the duchy of Athens, and that she should receive in
exchange lands in Lakonia near her own family possessions. This diplomatic
scheme, which would have united nearly all Greece under the Palaioldgoi, was
frustrated, as the other had been. Turakhan had already invested, and soon
took, Thebes, while the Frankish party at Athens, which included the other
leading Greeks hostile to Chalkokondiles, had at once seized the opportunity of
his absence to decoy the duchess out of the Akropolis, and to proclaim Nerio.
Peace was secured by the marriage of the new duke with the dowager duchess, and
by the banishment of the family of Chalkokondiles. Venice, which might have
interposed as the late duke’s suzerain, instructed her bailie at Negroponte,
whither many Athenian serfs had fled, not to interfere with the occupation of
Athens by either of the two parties, or even by the Turks. At the same time, he
was to suggest diplomatically to Nerio that he should offer to recognise the
Venetian suzerainty. The only interest which the republic had in endeavouring
to recover the city was to prevent its falling into dangerous hands. As for the
Turks, although Phrantzes betook himself to Turakhan’s headquarters at Thebes,
and was assured that the Turkish commander would have granted his request, had
he known a little earlier, they did not molest the new duke. The Turkish policy
has always been to govern by dividing the Christian races of the Near East; and
the Sultan was well content to allow a Florentine princeling to retain the
phantom of power so long as he paid his tribute with regularity.
The weak and effeminate Nerio II was exactly suited
for the part of a Turkish puppet. But, like many feeble rulers, the “Lord of
Athens and Thebes”, as he officially styled himself, seems to have made himself
unpopular by his arrogance, and a few years after his accession he was deprived
of his throne by an intrigue of his brother, Antonio II. He then retired to
Florence, the home of his family, where he had property, to play the part of a
prince in exile, if exile it could be called. There he must have been living at
the time of the famous council, an echo of whose decisions we hear in distant
Athens, where a Greek priest, of rather more learning than most of his cloth,
wrote to the oecumenical patriarch on the proper form of public prayer for the
pope. A bailie —so we learn from one of his letters— was then administering the
duchy pending Nerio’s return, for Antonio had died in 1441, his infant son,
Franco, was absent at the Turkish court, and his subjects had recalled their
former lord to the Akropolis, preferring the rule of a grownup man, however
feeble, to that of a child, who was enjoying so dubious an education.
Presenting his Florentine property to Tommaso Pitti, his man of business, to
whom he owed money, Nerio returned to his palace on the Akropolis, where we
shall presently find him entertaining the first archaeologist who had visited
Athens for centuries.
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