CHAPTER II.

The Naval Conquests of the Othomans in Greece. a.d. 1453-1684.

 

During the period of more than two centuries which elapsed from the conquest of Constantinople to the conquest of the Morea by the Venetians, the Greek nation declined both in civilization and numbers. The Hellenic race had never fallen so low in the social scale at any previous period of its history. It may possibly have incurred greater danger of extermination in its native regions, during the dark age which followed the Sclavonian colonization of the Peloponnesus at the end of the sixth century; but at that time, though the valleys of the Spercheus and the Eurotas, and the plains of Thebes, Sparta, and Olympia, were occupied by Sclavonian invaders, the principal cities of Greece, the islands in the Grecian seas, and a large part of western Asia were still densely inhabited by a numerous and wealthy Greek population, whose commercial activity, municipal administration, and social organization, joined to the advantages resulting from the accumulation of capital during a long series of ages, in public works, rendered the Byzantine empire for centuries the most civilized portion of the world. The Greek empire of Constantinople, recovered from the Crusaders, became, it is true, such a scene of anarchy that the Othoman conquest brought relief to the people; but in giving peace and tranquillity to Greece, the Othoman government gradually rendered it a desert, while the rude cultivators of the soil, whether of Hellenic or Albanian blood, slowly annihilated all evidence of the improvements which industry and wealth had effected in earlier and better times. Even the relief from the evils of war was often rather apparent than real. The continent was generally tranquil, but the sea was always insecure, and the repeated interruptions of commerce cut off the inland producer from every market, and put an end to production. The Othoman government also extended its domination very slowly over the Greek islands; and it was not until the power of the empire had shown signs of decline that the supremacy of the Porte was completely established in the Archipelago by the conquest of Candia. But my duty as historian of the Greeks, and the space within which I must confine my work, compel me to renounce the hope of rendering my pages attractive by recounting the martial deeds of the conquerors of Crete, and paying honour to the desperate valour of the combatants in the long and bloody wars between the Turks and the Venetians. I must leave this theme to the historians of the Othoman empire, and of the Christian States who opposed its progress. The Greeks are not even entitled to boast of the courage of the tribute-children, who left the homes of their fathers’ with blooming faces and unformed characters. The education which these neophytes received from the Othomans gave them a new nationality as well as a new religion. Their valour in the field, their patience in the trenches, and their daring on the deck of the galley, were artificial and not ancestral virtues, and can reflect no glory on their parental race. It is not my privilege to dwell on the gallant deeds of the Christian chivalry that bathed every shore of Greece in blood, endeavouring to arrest the progress of Moslem conquest. The exploits of the proud Knights of St. John, and of the prouder nobles of Venice, who made the sieges of Rhodes, Famagosta, and Candia rivals in fame to those of Plataea, Syracuse, and Carthage, do not fall within the scope of my pages. In the glories of the Latin Christians the Greeks had no share, and with the Catholics the orthodox church had no sympathies. In Greece, the domination of the Latins had been more galling, if not more oppressive, than that of the Mohammedans. The prominent feature in the history of the Greek people, during the period which elapsed from the conquest of the Morea by Mohammed II in 1460, to its conquest by the Venetians in 1686, is the misery inflicted on the in­habitants of every coast accessible to the corsairs, whether Mohammedans or Christians, who swarmed in the Levant. The unparalleled rapacity of these pirates devastated the maritime districts to such a degree that, even at the present day, many depopulated plains on the coasts of the Archi­pelago still indicate the fear which was long felt of dwelling near the sea.

The campaigns of Mohammed II united all the territory governed by orthodox princes to the Othoman empire; but even after he had completed his continental conquests, no inconsiderable portion of the territory occupied by the Greek race still continued subject to Catholic powers. Venice retained possession of the fortresses of Argos, Nauplia, Thermisi, Monemvasia, Coron, and Modon, in the Peloponnesus, and of the great islands of Corfu and Crete, to which Cyprus was soon added. The dukes of Naxos and several signors held various islands of the Archipelago, which they governed as petty sovereigns. Leucadia, Cephalonia, Ithaca, and Zante were ruled by Leonardo di Tocco, who assumed the vain title of Despot of Arta, Duke of Leucadia, and Count of Cephalonia. Genoa, after the loss of her commercial stations in the Black Sea, continued to exercise considerable influence in the Archipelago as sovereign of Chios, which was held by a Genoese joint-stock company, and as protector of the signors of Mytilene. The Knights of St. John possessed Rhodes, Kos, and several smaller islands, as well as the fortress of Bodroun (Halicarnassus). Cyprus was still governed by the house of Lusignan, with the proud title of Kings of Cyprus, Jerusalem, and Armenia; but the republic of Venice was already preparing to receive their inheritance, while various European monarchs have the folly to assume the empty title at the present day. It is strange to see how slowly common sense mounts to the heads of princes. This disjointed condition of the Greek nation explains the utter absence of all national action and political feeling among the Greeks during the three following centuries.

Mohammed II pressed heavily on the Greek race, though he was tolerant to Greek orthodoxy; and it would have required a high degree of security and tranquillity to enable the people to recover from the calamities they had suffered before and after their conquest by the Othomans. But, for the greater part of Greece, this period of security and improve­ment never came; and at the present day, the Greek kingdom is unable to maintain a larger population than in the fifteenth century. The translocations of the inhabitants of many places by Mohammed II, mentioned in preceding volumes, caused a great destruction of property and an immense loss of life. The same system was continued in the succeeding conquests of the Othomans, and the inhabitants of every city or island which Mohammed II annexed to his dominions during his long and active reign, were treated with as great severity as the people of the Morea, and expatriated in considerable numbers.

The signor of Mytilene was the first of the Catholic princes whom Mohammed II conquered. The Genoese family of Gattilusio had possessed the rich and fertile island of Lesbos for more than a century; and at this period the islands of Lemnos, Thasos, Imbros, and Samothrace were governed by them, and they possessed an interest in the profitable alum-works of Phocaea, and in part of the territory of Ainos. These dominions were gradually annexed to the Othoman empire. New Phocaea was conquered in 1456, and great part of its Greek population reduced to slavery, so that the place never recovered its commercial importance. Ainos suffered the same fate. In the following year, Lemnos, Imbros, Samothrace, and Thasos were finally annexed to Mohammed’s dominions. The best and wealthiest part of their inhabitants were removed to Constantinople, the youngest and healthiest individuals were sold as slaves, and only the poorest of the Greek peasantry remained to cultivate the soil. No person who had the means of establishing himself in the capital as a useful citizen, or the strength and beauty requisite to insure a ready sale in the slave­market, escaped deportation, unless he was fortunate enough to conceal himself in the mountains until the departure of the Othoman fleet.

In the year 1462, Mohammed put an end to the government of the signors of Lesbos. He had good reason to complain of the shelter which the excellent ports in their dominions afforded to the Catalan, Italian, and Sicilian pirates who infested the entrance of the Dardanelles. These adventurers made a profitable business, not only by the capture of Turkish ships, but likewise by surprising Turks on shore, whom, if wealthy, they ransomed for money, and if poor they sold as slaves to labour at the oar in European ships. The signor of Mytilene had probably no power to suppress this piracy, even had he possessed the wish. The sultan resolved to effect it. The last signor of Mytilene was Nicholas Gattilusio. He had slain his elder brother Dominicus to gain possession of the government, yet he hardly made a show of resisting Mohammed; and, after surrendering his capital, endeavoured to gain the favour of his conqueror by embracing Islam. Sultan Mohammed, who despised his cowardice, and knew that his conversion was produced by the hope of enjoying a life of luxurious ease, rewarded him with the bow-string, and confiscated his property. The conquest of Mytilene brought ruin on the Greek inhabitants of the island, though they had been eager and active in transferring their allegiance from the Catholics to the Mohammedans. One third were sold into slavery in order to raise money to reward the Othoman troops; one third were transported to Constantinople; and the remaining third, consisting of the lowest order of the townsmen and the poorest class of cultivators, were left to till the soil and collect the abundant harvests of the vineyards and olive-groves. From this time the inhabitants of Mytilene have been proverbially one of the most degenerate communities among the modern Greeks. Their malice and falsehood are linked in a rhyming proverb, with the aversion generally entertained for the inhabitants of Athens and Thebes, where a large proportion of the population, consisting of Albanians, lived in a state of separation from Greek sympathies.

During the war between Sultan Mohammed and Venice, which lasted from 1463 to 1479, hostile fleets ravaged many of the wealthiest parts of Greece. The galleys of the King of Naples, of the Pope, and of the Catalan cities cruised in the Archipelago under the pretence of assisting the Christians, but they plundered the property of the Greek subjects of the Porte on the coasts of Europe and Asia, whenever they found any booty undefended. In the year 1463, a Greek priest betrayed Argos to the Mohammedans; and in the war which followed, the Venetian possessions in Greece were ravaged by the Othomans, and the Greek subjects of the republic carried off into slavery in such number as to depopulate the districts round Nauplia, Modon, and Lepanto. The unfortunate campaign of 1463 deprived the Venetians of all chance of conquering the Morea. Their attempt to take Corinth was unsuccessful, and they were unable to defend the fortifications they had constructed across the isthmus. The Othoman troops defeated the Venetians, and the Greeks and Albanians in the Morea, whom they had induced to take up arms, were either put to the sword or carried off as slaves.

While the Othoman army depopulated the Venetian possessions on the continent, the ships of the republic plundered the coasts of the sultan’s dominions. The miserable inhabit­ants of Lemnos, Ainos, and Phocaea were robbed of all the Turks had left them. Passagio, a great mercantile depôt of neutral trade, situated on the continent opposite Chios, afforded the Venetian fleet a rich booty in 1473, but the loss fell chiefly on the Genoese. The Othoman galleys, manned by Jews, Greeks, and Turks, were generally far inferior to the Venetians in naval efficiency. These desultory operations impoverished the Greek cities and diminished the numbers of the Greek population, but they were unable to arrest the progress of the Othomans. The great event of this war was the conquest of Euboea. In the year 1470, the well-fortified city of Negrepont was taken from the Venetians after a valiant defence. The Greek inhabitants were in great part reduced to slavery, and many villages in the island were plundered and burned. This loss was poorly revenged by a Venetian fleet, which laid waste the Greek suburb of the city of Attalia, and destroyed Smyrna, a town then almost entirely inhabited by Greeks. Indeed, during this war, the orthodox Christians, whether living in the Othoman empire or the Venetian pos­sessions, were the principal sufferers. The naval expeditions pf the Venetians plundered the open towns and defenceless villages on the coast; and the Othoman armies which invaded the Venetian territory sought chiefly to carry off as many slaves as possible in order to enrich the soldiers. In the year 1478 the Othoman fleet plundered the possessions of the Knights of Rhodes, and carried off many Greek slaves from Kalymnos, Leros, and Nisyros. The peace which Sultan Mohammed concluded with Venice in 1479, relieved only a part of the Greek nation from plunder and devastation.

Almost immediately after signing that treaty, Mohammed II extended his conquests in Greece by seizing the territories of Leonardo di Tocco. The possessions of this little sovereign originated in a grant made to one of his ancestors in 1353, by Robert II, prince of Tarentum, and titular Latin pmperor of Romania, and extended over the rich district of Arta, and the provinces of Acarnania and Aetolia, as well as the islands of Leucadia, Cephalonia, and Zante. Charles di Tocco, despot of Arta, duke of Leucadia, and count of Cephalonia, died at Joannina in 1430, and was succeeded by his nephew, Charles II. In the following year the troops of Sultan Murad II, under Sinan Pasha, took possession of Joannina, and in 1449 the remainder of the continental dominions of Charles were annexed to the Othoman empire. Acarnania and part of Aetolia, which was then called the country of Arta, received from the Turks the name of Karlili, or the country of Charles. Leonardo, who succeeded his father Charles II in 1452, involved himself in war by neglecting to pay a stipulated tribute of five hundred ducats annually. The islands of Leucadia, Cephalonia, and Zante were occupied by the Othoman troops, and the duke retired to Naples. As usual, the Greek inhabitants were carried away to re-people Constantinople, but it is said that many of the Ionians experienced a harder fate than had fallen to the lot of the other Greeks. They were compelled to intermarry with negroes, in order to breed mulatto slaves for the serai. The misery of the population of the Ionian Islands was increased by the enterprises of Antonio di Tocco, the younger brother of Leonardo, who collected a small force, and, with the assistance of a few Catalan corsairs, succeeded in recovering Cephalonia and Zante. But as he could only maintain his mercenaries by piracy, the injury he inflicted on commerce induced the Venetians to expel him and his Catalans from their conquests. Cephalonia was restored to the sultan, and Venice was allowed to retain possession of Zante, for which the republic engaged to pay an annual tribute of five hundred ducats to the Porte (a.d. 1484).

In the year 1480, the army of Mohammed II besieged Rhodes unsuccessfully, but it ravaged a great part of the island, and carried away many Greek families into slavery.

In the year 1499, a new war broke out between the Sultan Bayezid II and the Venetians, which lasted to 1502. Lepanto, Modon, Navarin, and Coron were conquered by the Othoman armies. Modon was taken by storm in the presence of the sultan, and all the inhabitants were slain; but Bayezid repeopled the city by compelling every town or large village in the Morea to send five families to settle in the place. On the other hand, the Venetians took possession of Cephalonia, which they found so depopulated that they were enabled to grant lands to the Greek families who fled from Lepanto and the places conquered by the Turks in the Morea During this war the Greek population in the neighbourhood of Argos and Nauplia was entirely exterminated, and the country was repeopled by the Albanian colonists, whose descendants occupy it to the present day. Megara, which was then a populous Greek city, also received a blow from which it never recovered. The Othoman government had made it one of their principal magazines of grain and stores. The place was taken and plundered by the Venetians, who laid the greater part in ruins. The Greek inhabitants gradually decreased in number from that time, and their place was filled by poor Albanian peasants. Venetian, Catalan, and Turkish corsairs cruised in all the seas of Greece, carrying off the defenceless inhabitants to sell them as slaves; some, in their eagerness for booty, paid very little attention to inquire who was sovereign of the country, if plunder could be carried off with impunity. The Venetian government excited the activity of its mercenary troops by granting them two-thirds of all the booty they collected, and by establishing regular sales by auction of the captives brought into the camp, paying the soldiers three ducats a-head for each prisoner. And as slaves have always borne a much higher value in Mohammedan than in Christian countries, it was often a principal object of the expeditions of the Othomans during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to obtain a large supply for their slave­markets. Those terrible incursions, which were pushed far into Styria, Camiola, and Carinthia, and into Italy, as far as the banks of the Isonzo and Tagliamento, were often made merely to gratify the troops with a rich booty in slaves, not with the intention of making any permanent conquests.

The profits of the slave-trade must never be overlooked in examining the objects and results of Othoman expeditions, nor in estimating the causes of the misery and depopulation in Greece. Suleiman the Great, in the letter he wrote to the Grand-master of the Knights of Rhodes announcing the capture of Belgrade, boasts of the number of slaves he had made in his expedition into Hungary. The number of Mohammedans retained in slavery by the Knights of Rhodes was one of the principal reasons urged by the Othomans for expelling them from the Levant. Before the alliance between the Othoman empire and the King of France was formed, the Turkish corsairs extended their slave-hunting cruises even to the French coasts.

The dominion of the Knights of Rhodes affords an example of the different aspects under which historical facts may be viewed by different classes and nations. The nobles, the clergy, and even the people, in western Europe, willingly conceded wealth, honours, and privileges to noble blood; and the knights of Rhodes were long admired by their contemporaries as the flower of Western chivalry, and supported as the firmest champions of Christianity, and the surest barrier of Europe against Moslem conquest. But by the Greeks generally, and particularly by their own subjects, they were felt to be proud, bigoted, and rapacious tyrants, whose yoke bore heavier on their Christian brethren, whom they pretended to defend against the Mohammedans, than the yoke of those very Mohammedans. Even Vertot, the historian and panegyrist of the Order, owns that the Turks treated their Greek subjects more mildly than the Latin knights. To the Othomans they appeared as a band of lawless plunderers, who paid tribute to the sultan or plundered his subjects when it suited their interests; while the toleration with which they treated their subjects of the smaller islands, who fitted out galleys for ravaging the Turkish coasts, made them popular with the Greek pirates.

To us, who look back at the dominion of the Knights through the mist of past years, dim records, and picturesque monuments, the order of St. John of the Hospital seems deserving of its power and fame. In an age when valour was the best quality in men, the Knights were the bravest among the brave. Few who read the history of the siege of Rhodes in 1480 will fail to form an imaginary portrait of the Grand­master, D’Aubusson, in his simple armour, with the red cross on his breast and the red cardinal’s hat on his head. Nor will the story of the fall of Rhodes in 1522 give him a less vivid picture of his less fortunate successor, L’Isle Adam, whether repulsing the janissaries from the ruined walls, or presenting himself before the great Suleiman after receiving an honourable capitulation. The traveller who has visited the ruins of the great hall where the Knights assembled with L’Isle Adam for the last time, and wandered through the long succession of uninhabited chambers where the pashas dwelt who succeeded the grand-masters, cannot refrain from looking towards the future after lamenting over the past. Is the splendid island of Rhodes never again destined to nourish an active and prosperous population?

‘Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,

 And freedom find no champion?’

The splendid ruins of Rhodes have been the admiration of the traveller in different ages. Mr. Thomas Hope records the impressions the solitary palace of the grand-masters and the deserted street of the Knights produced on him, in Anastasius. Walter Vinisauf tells us of the profound astonishment with which Richard Coeur-de-Lion and the English army viewed the splendid remains of mightier works of art before the Knights had laid the foundations of their fortificationsand their palaces. In 1191, Vinisauf saw fallen towers and wonderful buildings of admirable architecture, which had encumbered the ground from the time the Saracens sold the fallen Colossus to the Jews as old bronze. He saw ancient palaces and temples, which had subsequently been converted into monasteries, and though recently inhabited by crowds of monks, were then again deserted. In 1191, everything attested the existence of an immense population at some earlier period; in 1853, the well-constructed fortress and the untenanted palace, which had been built from these earlier ruins, showed little signs of decay. They looked as if they had been suddenly deserted, or depopulated by the plague.

The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem robbed the Greek empire of the island of Rhodes by a successful piratical expedition in 1310, and made it the capital of an independent state, comprising the neighbouring islands of Kos, Nisyros, Telos or Episkopia, Chalke, Syme, Kalymnos, Leros, and Castelorizo, as well as the fortress of Boudroun (Halicarnassus), and some smaller forts on the Asiatic continent. The Order maintained its position as one of the institutions and bulwarks of Catholic Europe for two hundred and twelve years, partly by its valour, partly by its prudence, and partly by the weakness of the Greek emperors of Constantinople and the other sovereigns in the Levant, before the Othoman sultans consolidated their power in Asia Minor. The sultans regarded Rhodes as a portion of the Greek empire, and they were only restrained from attacking it by the danger of the enterprise. The memory of the unsuccessful siege of 1480 was at last effaced by the piracies of the Knights and the danger of allowing the popes to possess an advanced post in the very centre of the Othoman empire. The results produced by the urgent invitations of the popes to all Christian princes and nations to take up arms against the Turks were so trifling, that we are generally disposed to undervalue the effect of these exhortations on contemporaries. But even the most powerful sultans were alarmed by these papal demonstrations; for it was long before the Mohammedans could believe that the Christian princes paid only lip-service to the caliph of Rome, except when their political interests prompted them to attend to his injunctions.

The profession of the Knights, as sworn enemies of Islam, and the piratical spirit of the age, both among Christians and Mohammedans, made the existence of the Order a serious interruption to the communications between Constantinople and Syria and Egypt after their conquest by Sultan Selim I. The exploits of the Order were the cause of repeated complaints on the part of the Turkish merchants; and even the inhabitants of Asia Minor and Syria were exposed to incessant plundering visits from the Greek subjects of the Knights. Several of the smaller islands belonging to the Order were inhabited by a population remarkable for naval skill; and as the general system of commercial exclusion prevented these Greeks from sending their vessels to trade in the principal ports of the Mediterranean, they had no resource but to carry on piracy. Their proficiency in the construction of small vessels of war, and their activity in employing them, were highly estimated by their sovereigns the Knights. An open war was carried on by the Turkish and Christian corsairs for some time before Suleiman summoned the grand­master to surrender Rhodes. The Order held a brother of Curtoglu, the Othoman admiral, prisoner in Rhodes, and Curtoglu attempted to capture the grand-master, L’Isle Adam, on his passage from France after his election. There can be no doubt that the Sultan Suleiman was urged to the conquest of Rhodes by every rule of sound policy.

The Knights made a gallant defence against the Otho­man army, commanded by Suleiman the Great in person, and L’Isle Adam obtained an honourable capitulation. The Greek inhabitants of the dominions of the Order were exempted from the degrading tribute of furnishing children to recruit the ranks of the janissaries. Nevertheless, the certainty which the wealthy citizens entertained that their lives and fortunes would be at the mercy of tyrannical and rapacious pashas, induced a thousand Greek families to aban­don Rhodes, and seek safety in the Venetian island of Crete.

The Morea enjoyed a period of tranquillity after the Venetian peace in 1502, and the interior of the peninsula was beginning to recover some degree of prosperity, when a Spanish expedition, under Andrea Doria, again threw the country into a state of confusion in 1532. The great Genoese admiral took Patras and Coron; and the garrison he established in Coron invaded the Morea, occupied Kalamata and Misithra, and induced many Greeks to take up arms against the sultan. But in the following year the Spaniards were expelled from Coron, and the Greeks were treated with great severity by the victorious Othomans.

A new war broke out between the sultan and Venice in the year 1537, and the Othoman army laid siege to Corfu. The enterprise failed; but, before abandoning the undertaking, the Turkish troops plundered and wasted the Greek villages in the island for eighteen days with fire and sword, burned the churches, and carried off many thousands of the inhabitants as slaves. After this repulse, the indefatigable admiral of the Othoman fleet, Haireddin or Barbarossa, made a series of plundering attacks on the islands of the Archipelago still in the possession of the Latins. Aegina, then a flourishing island under Venetian domination, was ruined; the city was stormed, though the garrison defended it with desperate valour; the houses were burned to the ground, all the males capable of bearing arms were massacred, and about six thousand young women and children were carried off into slavery. The island was so completely devastated that for some years it remained deserted, nor has it to the present time recovered from the blow it then received. A French admiral, who was sent to the Levant in consequence of the alliance between France and the Othoman empire, passed Aegina shortly after the departure of the Turks, and found it without inhabitants. It is probable that the first colonists who returned to cultivate the soil were Albanian peasants, whose descendants still occupy the southern part of the island, unless the present Albanian population consist of a new colony, which dates its settlement from the Turkish conquest in 1715. An immense number of Greek slaves were also carried off by the Turks from Zante, Cerigo, and the islands of the Archipelago. Nearly all the islands of the Aegean, which had fallen into the hands of Venetian signors, after the partition of the Byzantine empire in 1204, were now subjected to the sultan by Barbarossa. The Duke of Naxos was compelled to pay an annual tribute of five thousand ducats; but his submission did not save his Greek subjects from being plundered. Most of the islands of the Archipelago were conquered at the same time. Andros was taken from the family of Sommaria; Keos and Kythnos from the Gozzadini and Premarini by whom they were jointly possessed; Seriphos from the Michieli; Ios, Anaphe, and Antiparos from the Pisani; Paros from the Sangredi; Astypalaea and Amorgos from the Quirini and Grimani; and Skyros, Skiathos and Chelidromi from the Venetian r­public. In the following year (1538) Skopelos, which also belonged to the Venetians, shared the same fate. The coast of Crete, the most valuable possession of Venice, was plundered, and Tinos, the principal seat of the power of the republic in the Archipelago, was compelled to pay a tribute of five thousand ducats. The Othoman flag was never displayed in so dominant a position over the whole surface of the Mediterranean as at this period. Barbarossa cruised victorious in the waters of Marseilles, and threatened Venice in the Adriatic. He plundered twenty-five of the Greek islands, reduced eighty towns to ashes, and carried off thirty thousand Greeks into slavery.

By the treaty of peace concluded in 1540, the Venetians lost all their fortresses in the Morea; and as the Turks were now in possession of the whole peninsula, the Greeks might at last hope to enjoy some tranquillity under the sole dominion of the sultan. The power and influence of the Venetians on the Greek continent seemed to be completely destroyed by their cession of the fortresses of Monemvasia and Nauplia, yet, after a lapse of one hundred and fifty years, they were again enabled to conquer the Morea. The sultan also retained possession of all the islands of the Archipelago conquered by Barbarossa.

The policy and conduct of the popes tended greatly to nourish the suspicions of the Othoman government concerning the fidelity of its Christian subjects. The popes considered it their duty, and often found it for their interest, to make a great noise in Europe, preaching crusades against the infidels; and their endeavours to form leagues of the Christian princes, for the purpose of attacking the Othoman empire, naturally alarmed the sultan. Papal agents were repeatedly sent to the East, with instructions to excite the Greeks to revolt; and though these emissaries of Rome did little real business beyond purchasing ancient manuscripts and engraved gems, the apparent energy of the Court of Rome caused the Othoman government to treat the Greeks with greater severity, and to watch all their actions with distrust.

The success of his attack on Rhodes induced Suleiman to make an attempt in the year 1565 to expel the Knights of St. John from Malta, which had been granted to them by the King of Spain. That attack was signally defeated, and to revenge the loss sustained by the Othoman arms the sultan ordered his fleet to take possession of Chios in the following year.

Chios was then held by a commercial trading company of Genoese, called the Maona of the Giustiniani. This company had long acknowledged the suzerainty of the sultan, and paid tribute to the Porte. The island had been conquered from the Greek empire in 1346 by the Genoese admiral, Simon Vignosi, in the same piratical way that the Knights of St. John had seized Rhodes; but the Greek inhabitants concluded a convention with their conquerors, by which they retained all their property, rights, and local privileges. The Genoese domination in the island of Chios was so different from the feudal government established in the other conquests of the western Christians in Greece, that it merits particular attention. It is the first example we find recorded in history of a mercantile company of shareholders exercising all the duties of a sovereign, and conducting the territorial administration in a distant country. The origin of the company may be considered as accidental. The public treasury of the republic of Genoa was so exhausted in the year 1346, that the funds for fitting out the twenty-nine galleys which composed the fleet of Simon Vignosi were raised by private citizens, who subscribed the money in shares. The republic engaged to secure these citizens against all loss, and pledged a portion of the annual revenues of the State to pay the interest on their advances. Each subscriber paid down 400 Genoese livres; twenty-six galleys were equipped by the commons and three by the nobles. The expenses of each galley during the campaign of 1346 was 7000 livres of Genoa, so that the whole capital expended on the expedition amounted to 203,000 livres. Chios and Phocaea were both conquered. But when Vignosi returned to Genoa, finding that the republic was still unable to refund the expenses of the expedition, he concluded a convention between the subscribers and the State. The subscribers were formed into a Maona or joint- stock company, and the shareholders were recognized both as the proprietors and governors of the island of Chios, which they were bound to administer, under the suzerainty of Genoa, in conformity to the terms of the capitulation of the Greeks with Vignosi for a period of twenty years. During this period the State reserved the right of resuming the grant of the island, on paying the capital of 203,000 livres due to the Maona. The republic of Genoa was never able to pay off the debt, so that the arrangements which invested the Maonesi or shareholders of the company with full power to administer the revenues of Chios became permanent.

This society was afterwards called the Old Maona of Chios. Simone Vignosi revisited the island and administered the government as deputy of the Maona, while the republic sent a podestà who exercised the supreme civil and criminal jurisdiction according to the laws of Genoa. A Castellano who commanded a garrison in the citadel, acted under the orders of the podestà. In this way, the government of Chios was divided between the Maona and the State. The sovereignty (merum et mixtum imperium) remained vested in the republic as long as the democratic constitution of Genoa remained in force. The administration both civil and financial {proprietor et utile dominium) belonged to the Maona. The manner of collecting the revenue, that of electing the persons who conducted and controlled the administration, and that of dividing the profits among the shareholders, were regulated by conventions with the republic, and by statutes of the Maona. In the earliest constitution of the Maona, it received the right of coining money after the type of the republic of Genoa. The local administration of this joint-stock company, though it almost entirely excluded the Greeks from the financial and political government of their native country, and displayed all the religious bigotry of the age, was for a long period the least oppressive government in the Levant. It was less rapacious, and it afforded better securities for the lives and properties of its Greek subjects than they had enjoyed under the emperors of the house of Palaeologos; and it was milder than the governments of the Knights of Rhodes and the republic of Venice.

The Maona derived much of its revenue from monopolies of alum and mastic. The alum mines of Phocaea yielded immense profits, but the place was exposed to frequent attacks, and required to be vigilantly guarded against secret treachery, and valiantly defended against foreign enemies. The Maona found it advisable to farm the whole revenues of Phocaea to some powerful noble, who resided in the place and maintained a strong garrison of veteran mercenaries.

The mastic of Chios was farmed to a Genoese company, which after the death of Simone Vignosi farmed the whole revenues of the island from the Maona. The original shares of the Maona became soon concentrated in the hands of eight shareholders, and the intervention of the republic was rendered necessary by the violence of the disputes which arose between the Maona and the farmers in Chios. The doge Simone Boccanegra effected an arrangement in the year 1362, by which the old Maona was extinguished on receiving an indemnification for the original shares, and the company which previously farmed the revenues of Chios acquired all its rights and formed the new Maona. The greater number of the shareholders in this new company laid aside their family names and assumed the name of Giustiniani.

The Maona of the Giustiniani governed Chios for more than 200 years. It offers some points of resemblance to the English East India Company, which received authority to exercise territorial government in the year 1624, and which, before it ceased to exist in the year 1858, had created one of the greatest empires ever formed. The Maona of Chios like the East India Company affords ample proof that both in political prudence and military courage a society of merchants may be in no degree inferior to royal cabinets and aristocratic senates. Simone Vignosi, Pietro Recanelli, and Rafaele di Montaldo were men whose deeds as soldiers and whose patriotism as citizens do not suffer by a com­parison with the greatest men of their time.

Chios became one of the principal seats of Italian commerce in the Levant after the Crusaders were driven out of Palestine, and its markets were frequented even by English merchants. During the first century of the Genoese domination, the population exceeded 100,000 souls and the revenues amounted to upwards of 100,000 sequins. But the collection was made in a very expensive manner, for few but maonesi were employed either in the financial or civil administration of the island. There was, therefore, a constant tendency to increase the number of officials. At the commencement of the sixteenth century, the surplus revenue which was divided among the maonesi gave only 2000 sequins to each of the original great shares. And towards the end of the Genoese domination the expenses of the Maona exceeded the revenue. The company borrowed money from the bank of St. George, and its finances fell into such disorder, that it was compelled to allow the bank to collect a considerable part of the revenues of Chios.

The original shares of the company soon became much subdivided, and most of the maonesi or Giustiniani settled in Chios, where they formed a distinct class of the inhabitants, enjoying many privileges and filling all the principal posts in the administration. The Giustiniani who settled in Chios preserved their Italian nationality and Genoese character by sending their children to Italy for their education.

The burgesses formed a second class of the Latin inhabitants of Chios. This class consisted of traders, shop­keepers, artizans, Greek Catholics, retired soldiers, mariners, and serving-men. They possessed some privileges which excited the envy of the orthodox Greeks, who accused them of behaving with much insolence.

It is a melancholy task to compare the energy of the Italians, who acted a prominent part in the history of Greece during more than a century before and after the conquest of Constantinople by the Othomans, with the apathy and cowardice of the Greek population. The moral inferiority of the Hellenic race is conspicuous whenever it was brought into close contact or direct collision with the Italians. This inferiority is more striking because it was not intellectual, and it seems consequently to have originated in the defects of the education by which the hearts and affections of the Greeks were formed at an early age. The habit of obedience was strong; the sense of duty very weak. Unfortunately, the extent to which social defects and errors weaken political communities is not always apparent in the history of nations, and it is difficult to point out the precise faults of the family education, and the particular perversion of religious instruction, which for three or four centuries paralyzed the energies of the Greeks, and rendered integrity, courage, and talent so rare among them, while their country was so frequently the theatre of great events.

The Greeks of Chios were secured in the possession of all the rights and privileges which they enjoyed under the Greek emperors by their capitulation with Vignosi in 1346. These privileges were confirmed by subsequent acts of the republic of Genoa, and particularly by the doge Francesco Garibaldo in 1393. The Greeks were divided into two classes, free citizens and serfs.

The archonts, who formed a kind of nobility, were allowed to retain some of the privileges which had been conferred on them by the Greek emperors, and were admitted to an active part in some details of the local administration. But they were included in the class of free citizens, which was inferior to that of the Latin burgesses. All the Greeks were obliged to wear their native dress and to inhabit a separate part of the city). No Greek was permitted to dwell in the citadel or in the Latin quarter; and when a Greek sold his property and emigrated from the island, he was compelled to pay one quarter of the price to the Maona of the Giustiniani.

The Greek serfs (paroikoi or villani) who formed the fourth class of the inhabitants, were little better than agricultural slaves, and were sometimes treated with so much cruelty, both by their Greek and Latin masters, that they fled from the island in great numbers.

One of the most important privileges possessed by the Greeks was, that no new tax could be imposed on the island without their consent. Forms were established to insure the free exercise of this privilege. The law required that the consent of the Greeks should be given with the greatest publicity, and the manner in which the business was brought before them enabled them to give their refusal without any display of opposition and with the smallest amount of personal responsibility.

Before proposing a new tax it was necessary for the podestà to obtain the consent of the Maona, the Latin burgesses, the sixty Greek archonts, and the deputies of the rural districts. A public meeting of the Greek citizens was then convoked in the church of St. Michael. When the assembly was opened, the people bowed down their heads and lifted up their hands with the usual display of Byzantine servility, while the podestà announced the nature and amount of the new tax. As soon as the Greeks heard the proposal they sat down, and some time was allowed for reflection. After this interval, all who approved of the measure submitted to the consideration of the assembly were invited to rise up. In case the majority approved (and in general there can have been little chance of dissent), the tax was immediately levied, and the consent of the people was reported to the senate of Genoa, in order that the transaction might receive a formal ratification, and a law might be passed confirming the tax.

Some protection against oppression was secured to the Greeks by this arrangement. But it is the spirit of the people and not the form of the constitution which makes men free, and the tame spirit of the Chiots enabled their rulers to impose on them fiscal burdens which became at last intolerable. The emigration of the agricultural population became so considerable that the Maona was obliged to reduce the amount of taxation levied on the Greeks.

The ecclesiastical administration of the Catholics was far more revolting to the Greeks than the government of the Maona. The Latin bishop at first levied tithes on the orthodox Greeks, but he met with so many difficulties in collecting them that in 1480 he ceded all his territorial revenues to the Maona, and received in lieu thereof an annual payment of 400 ducats.

The orthodox Greeks elected their own bishop, who, after receiving the approval of the Maona, was confirmed by the patriarch of Constantinople. But an orthodox bishop having formed a conspiracy to murder the Giustiniani, and his plot having been discovered, he was expelled from the island and his accomplices were hanged. From that time no orthodox bishop was allowed to reside in Chios, and the affairs of the see were administered by an ecclesiastic called a dikaios, who was chosen by the Maona and confirmed by the patriarch. His residence was at the monastery of Nea Mone.

Though the Maona of the Giustiniani monopolized a part of the produce of the Greeks, and shared with the other citizens of Genoa the monopoly of the foreign trade of Chios, still agriculture flourished in the island. The price paid for the articles of export was such as insured abundant supplies. Some of these articles were peculiar to Chios, and others were produced of a better quality than could be obtained in any other place. The mastic, the terebinth, the wine, silk, and fruit of this favoured island were sources of wealth to the Greek inhabitants as well as to their Latin masters.

The Maona became tributary to the Othoman sultans at an early period. In 1415 it engaged to pay Mohammed I the sum of 4000 gold ducats annually. This payment was considered by the Genoese as the price of a treaty of commerce, which secured them liberty to trade with all the Othoman possessions in Europe and Asia. Until the year 1453 friendly relations existed between the Maona and the sultans. But in that year Mohammed II, elated with the conquest of Constantinople, began to treat all the Latins who held possessions in the Eastern empire as his vassals. He had good reason to complain of the conduct of John Giustiniani, who being a member of the Maona, which was his ally and tributary, nevertheless appeared in the ranks of his enemies and acted as general for the Greek emperor. To punish the Maona, Mohammed II raised the annual tribute to 6000 ducats, and in consequence of some disputes which occurred, it was increased in 1457 to 10,000, and in the year 1508 it reached 12,000. By patient submission and great prudence, the Maona succeeded in preserving its commercial relations with the Othoman empire, and though it suffered from casual acts of extortion, it generally obtained effectual protection from the sultans.

The power and ambition of the Othoman sultans became at last so great, that the republic of Genoa could no longer venture to stand boldly forward as the protector of the semi-independent rulers of the island of Chios, which Suleiman the Magnificent was determined to annex to his empire. When the Genoese found that the finances of the Maona had fallen into inextricable confusion, they were unmindful of the services that the Giustiniani had rendered to Genoa, and ceased to grant them further protection. In the year 1558 the Genoese ambassador at the Porte was ordered to disavow all claim to the sovereignty of Chios on the part of the republic.

The Genoese had governed Chios for 220 years, when Piali Pasha annexed it to the Othoman empire in 1566. The sultan had a good pretext for putting an end to the government of the Giustiniani, for the island served as a place of refuge for fugitive slaves, and of refreshment for Christian corsairs. A magistrate had been regularly appointed to protect and conceal fugitive slaves, and it was said that at one period the number that annually escaped from bondage amounted to one thousand. After the conquest of Con­stantinople, however, they were compelled to conciliate the Othoman government by refusing open protection to fugitive slaves, as well as by paying tribute to the sultan. No notice was given to them by Sultan Suleiman when he determined to abolish the administration of the Giustiniani, whom he treated as his vassals; but as he feared they might obtain some support from the Spaniards and the Knights of Malta if they were aware of his intention, he ordered his captain-pasha to surprise the place. Piali entered the port with his galleys, landed his troops, and took possession of the capital without encountering any resistance. The principal Genoese families were seized, and sent to Constantinople as hostages, where some of their children were placed in the serai. Several suffered martyrdom because they refused to embrace the Mohammedan faith, and many leading Genoese were banished to Kaffa, from whence they were released at the intercession of a Giustiniani who acted as envoy of France to Sultan Selim II. in 1569.

Thus ended the domination of a mercantile company in the Levant, whose dominions extended at one time over the islands of Samos, Patmos, Ikaria, Psara, and Tenedos, and for a short time over old and new Phocaea, on the Asiatic continent. Even after the Turks had taken the place of the Giustiniani in the administration of public affairs, they continued to follow the Genoese system; and the island was long better governed than any other part of Greece. The Greeks were allowed to regulate the affairs of their own community; and though the city appeared dead, and the Genoese palaces, having fallen to the share of the Othoman con­querors, presented a dilapidated aspect, and the stillness of Turkish apathy replaced the activity of Genoese love of gain, still the villages prospered, and agriculture continued to flourish

Chios could not, however, entirely escape from the desolating effects of the maritime wars that ruined the islands and coasts of Greece. An expedition of the grand-duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand I, visited the Archipelago, in the year 1595, under the pretence of a crusade against the Mohammedans, but in reality to collect plunder and slaves. This fleet made an attack on Chios, but was repulsed by the Turkish garrison of the strong citadel, built by the Giustiniani, which commanded both the town and the port. This ill- planned and worse-conducted attack caused the Othoman government to treat the Latin inhabitants of Chios with such severity that the greater part of those who escaped death and utter ruin quitted the island for ever.

About a century later, the Venetians, flushed with their success in conquering the Morea, sent an expedition to Chios, which conquered the island without difficulty, in 1694. But in the following year the Venetian fleet was defeated by the Othomans in a severe engagement off the Spalmadores, and the admiral, losing heart, embarked the garrison of Chios, and abandoned the island with great precipitancy. Though the Greeks had given the Othoman government proofs of their aversion to the Venetian domination by acting as spies for the Porte, they did not escape severe oppression when the Otho­man power was re-established. The Catholic families, who were only sixty in number, fled with the Venetians. The Greeks were therefore compelled to satisfy the cupidity of the Turks, who had expected to enrich themselves by the sack of the city, by paying a contribution of four hundred and seventy purses (about £47,000). The payment of this sum saved the island from being plundered, and it continued in a prosperous condition until the Greek revolution.

The year 1566 witnessed the extinction of the Catholic dukedom of Naxos. The Greek inhabitants, who were anxious to place themselves under the Othoman government, in the hope of being allowed to farm the revenues of their island, succeeded in persuading Sultan Selim II to dethrone their duke, Jacopo IV. But instead of intrusting the local administration to the Greek primates, the sultan granted the island in farm to a Portuguese Jew, Don Juan Miquez, who sent a Spanish Catholic, Francis Coronello, to govern the Greeks and collect the taxes. Miquez was a favourite of Sultan Selim, for whom he procured supplies of the choicest wines; and it was reported that on one occasion, when sharing in their liberal consumption, he was promised by his imperial protector a gift of the kingdom of Cyprus, on account of the excellency of its vintage. The proud title, which so many European monarchs now render themselves ridiculous by assuming, was then adopted with more reason by this Jewish adventurer, who publicly assumed the armorial bearings of a Christian kingdom, and began to form projects for the restoration of a Jewish monarchy, and for replacing the Greek population of Cyprus by founding Jewish colonies in the island.

The next great misfortune which fell on the Greek race was the conquest of the fertile island of Cyprus. In the year 1570, Selim II sent a powerful fleet and army to take posses­sion of the island, which belonged to the Venetians. With the candour often displayed by the Othomans in their lust of conquest, the sultan summoned the republic to surrender Cyprus, merely because he was determined to possess it at any expense of blood and treasure.

The kings of Cyprus, of the house of Lusignan, had been compelled to pay tribute to the Mamlouk sultans of Egypt, and this tribute had been transferred to the Porte when Selim I conquered Egypt in 1517, though the Venetians were then masters of the island. This annual tribute amounted to eight thousand ducats, and the Sultan Selim II made its payment a pretext for claiming the sovereignty of the island. The republic had acquired possession of the kingdom of Cyprus in 1489, by an act of cession from Catherine Cornaro, a Venetian lady, widow of James II, the last monarch of the house of Lusignan, who became queen at the death of her husband. The fair face of the queen is familiar to thousands who know nothing of her political history. If, indeed, the portrait of a Catherine Cornaro by Titian, in the Manfrini Palace at Venice, be really an authentic likeness of the last queen of Cyprus, the painter’s hand has conferred on the lady a fame which neither her crown, her beauty, her virtue, nor the romantic changes of her life, could give. Venice is said to have received from Cyprus an annual revenue of five hundred thousand ducats, but the queen was satisfied with an income of eight thousand ducats, and a secure residence in the town of Asolo, in the Trevisano, where she was treated with regal honours

The Othoman expedition landed at Salines without encountering any opposition, for the naval power of Venice proved too weak to oppose the Othoman fleet. The skill and valour of Barbarossa, Dragut, and Piali had given the Turks a naval superiority in the Mediterranean over every Christian state, and their names were as famous as those of Dandolo, Pisani, and Doria. The Greeks of Cyprus were so oppressed by the Venetian government, that they were eager for a change of masters, and not disinclined to welcome the Othomans. In the month of September 1570, Nikosia, the capital of the island, was taken after a gallant defence; and Famagosta, the only fortress which remained in the hands of the Venetians, was almost immediately invested. The siege of Famagosta is famous in Turkish and Venetian history. The attack was conducted with the extraordinary labour and indomitable courage which then distinguished the siege operations of the Othoman armies. Their trenches and their batteries were of a size and number never before witnessed by Christian troops. The defence of the Venetian garrison was long and obstinate, but the place was compelled to surrender on the 1st of August 1571.

This period marks the extreme height of Othoman pride, insolence, and power. The scenes which followed the capitulation of Famagosta stain the annals of the empire with indelible infamy. The garrison was embarked according to the stipulations in the treaty, when Bragadino, who had so bravely defended the place, waited on Mustapha Pasha to make arrangements for his own departure. Mustapha Pasha was of a mean, envious, and revengeful disposition, and he basely resolved to deprive the Venetian leaders of the honours that awaited them on their return home, and which they had well merited by their gallant conduct. Bragadino, and the officers who accompanied him to the vizier’s tent, were treacherously seized. The greater part were instantly murdered, but the governor was reserved for a lingering death by the most excruciating tortures. The sufferings of the noble Venetian during ten days of agony are too horrible to be described in detail. Mustapha Pasha gave a national and religious solemnity to his own infamy, by ordering Bragadino to be publicly flayed alive on Friday, the day set apart by the Mohammedans for their public prayers to God. The Venetian bore his tortures with singular firmness, and the skin was cut from the upper half of his body before he expired. Three hundred Venetians were massacred at the same time; every article of the capitulation was violated, and even the troops on shipboard were compelled to disembark, and were reduced to slavery. Undoubtedly, the Turks have laid up a long arrear of hatred and vengeance on the part of the Christians. The Greek population of Cyprus had generally joined the Turks, in the expectation of enjoying milder treatment under the sultan than under the republic. They soon found themselves utterly disappointed in the hopes which their orthodox prejudices had led them to cherish. For about a century they were governed by pashas, whose rapacity so depopulated and impoverished the island that the pashalik was at last suppressed, and the fiscal administration was committed to a mutzelim. In the year 1719, Cyprus yielded the sultan only one hundred and twenty-five thousand ducats annually, though a century and a half earlier, when the precious metals were of much higher value, it yielded the Venetians five hundred thousand ducats. In 1764 the extortions of the administration caused a rebellion of the Greeks, which, as usual, only increased their sufferings. Since the hour of its conquest by the Turks, every succeeding generation has witnessed the diminution of the Greek inhabitants of Cyprus and their increasing misery, so that they are at present, in spite of the admirable situation of the island and the richness of its soil, the most wretched portion of the Greek nation.

The celebrated naval battle of Lepanto was fought shortly after the taking of Famagosta. The political importance of this victory has been greatly exaggerated in Christian Europe. It has been assumed that from this defeat the decline of the Othoman power ought to be dated. Like the victory of Charles Martel over the Saracens at Tours, it has served to gratify Christian vanity; and it has been declared by ignorant historians to have been the cause of many events with which it had no connection. Had the demoralization of the sultan’s court, and the corruption of the Othoman central administration, not made as rapid progress as the military and naval organization of the Christian powers, they would probably have found no reason to boast of the results of their victory at Lepanto. It is true that the Othoman navy lost more than two hundred vessels in this memorable defeat; but this loss was so rapidly repaired by the activity of the government, and the resources of the arsenals and dockyards of the Othoman empire were then so great, that, in the month of June 1572, the capitan-pasha put to sea with a new fleet of two hundred and fifty galleys, boldly engaged the Venetians and their allies, who had assembled a still greater force off Cape Matapan, and arrested their further progress in a career of victory. There was no blockade of the Dardanelles. The Turks encountered the combined Christian fleets half-way between Constantinople and Venice. Well might the grand-vizier, Mohammed Sokolli, say to the Vene­tian bailo, Barbara, “In destroying our fleet you have only shorn our beard; it will grow again: but in conquering Cyprus we have cut off one of your arms”. The indecisive naval engagements which followed the victory of Lepanto taught Venice that she had little to hope by continuing the war; and the practical result of the great victory at Lepanto was, that it enabled the Venetians to purchase peace early in 1573, by paying the sultan three hundred thousand ducats, send promising the Porte an annual tribute of fifteen hundred ducats for the island of Zante. This peace has been called disgraceful to the republic; but when it is remembered that Venice was dependent for her political importance in Europe, and even for her ordinary supplies of grain, on her trade with the Levant, and when we compare the military weakness and commercial exhaustion of a single city with the immense power and resources of the extensive empire of the sultan, we must acknowledge that peace was necessary to save the republic from ruin.

It is interesting to observe the part which the Greeks acted in the battle of Lepanto. Their number in the hostile fleets far exceeded that of the combatants of any of the nations engaged, yet they exerted no influence on the fate of the battle, nor did their mental degradation allow them to use its result as a means of bettering their condition, for the effect of mere numbers is always insignificant where individual virtue and national energy are wanting. The Greeks were at this time considered the best seamen in the Levant. Above twenty-five thousand were either working at the oar or acting as sailors on board the Othoman fleet, and hardly less than five thousand were serving in the Venetian squadron, where we find three galleys commanded by Greeks who had joined the papal church—Eudomeniani and Calergi of Crete, and Condocolli of Corfu. Yet these thirty thousand men, of whom many were excellent seamen, exerted no more influence over the conduct of the warriors who decided the contest, than the oars at which the greater part of the Greeks laboured. Their presence is a mere statistical fact, of no more importance in a military point of view than the number of the oars, sails, and masts in the respective ships. Never­theless, it was in part to the naval skill of the Greeks that the Othoman government was indebted for the facility with which it replaced the fleet lost at Lepanto. Every house in Constantinople and Rhodes, as those cities were exempt from the tribute of Christian children, was compelled to furnish a recruit for the fleet, and every Greek island and seaport furnished a galley, or its contingent for equipping one; so that the losses of the Turkish navy were easily replaced. While the presence of thirty thousand Greeks in a single battle was so unimportant, the single city of Venice, whose whole population capable of bearing arms did not exceed that number, controlled the lives and fortunes of a large portion of the Greek race for many generations, and transfused Venetian feelings and prejudices into the minds of many millions of the Greek race.

The peace with Venice enabled the Turks to re-establish their naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. In the month of May 1574, the capitan-pasha, Kilidj-Ali, left Constantinople with a fleet of two hundred and ninety-eight sail, carrying an army of twenty thousand men, of which seven thousand were janissaries. The Spanish fleet was unable to oppose this force; and Tunis, which Don John of Austria had conquered, was recovered without much difficulty, though the Goletta made a gallant defence. Tunis became an Othoman depen­dency, and, with Algiers and Tripoli, formed an advanced guard of the empire against the Christian powers, which they tormented with their piracies until the present century. Such were the immediate results of the much-vaunted battle of Lepanto.

During the seventy-four years which elapsed between the battle of Lepanto and the war of Candia, the Greek nation disappears almost entirely from history. Some insignificant movements in Maina, caused by the influence of the Christian corsairs, who purchased the permission to conceal their vessels in the ports near Cape Matapan by sharing their booty with the Mainates, were the only signs of independence in Greece, and they were easily suppressed by the capitan-pasha. In Crete, the Venetian colonists, who settled in the island after the suppression of the general insurrections of the Greek inhabitants during the long interval between 1211 and 1363, retained the population in complete subjection, though several partial insurrections occurred, which were generally excited by Greek nobles, who attempted to retain the taxes, levied from the cultivators of the soil, in their own hands, and not with any design to enlarge the liberties of the Greek people, and lighten the burden of the Venetian government by lessening taxation or improving the administration of justice. The terrific cruelty with which the Venetian senate suppressed the last of these insurrections, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, affords a picture of the condition of a large part of the Greek nation for several centuries. The sway of the Maona of Chios was the mildest foreign domination to which the Greeks were subjected; that of the Venetian republic was the most severe; the Othoman government was less moderate than the mercantile company, and less tyrannical than the aristocratic senate. The principles of the Venetian administration are summed up by Fra Paolo Sarpi in these words: “If the gentlemen (nobles) of these colonies do tyrannize over the villages of their dominion, the best way is not to seem to see it, that there may be no kindness between them and their subjects; but if they offend in anything else, ’twill be well to chastise them severely, that they may not brag of any privileges more than others”.

Mr. Pashley has published the following account of the proceedings of the Venetians, from a manuscript at Venice: “At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Greeks of Selino, Sfakia, and Rhiza, including some villages situated almost in the plain of Khania, united together, and refused to obey the representative of Venice. Their leaders were George Gadhanole of Krustogherako, the Pateropuli of Sfakia, and some other families of the Archontopuli, as they are called (Greek primates). Gadhanole was elected Rettore of these provinces. Duties and taxes were now paid, not to the Venetians, but to these Greek authorities. At length the Greek rettore suddenly presented himself at the country­house of Francesco Molini, a Venetian noble, in the neighbourhood of Khania, and asked his daughter in marriage for Petro, the most beautiful and bravest of all his sons, and in whose favour the rettore declared his intention of resigning his office on the celebration of the marriage. The alliance was agreed on; the rettore gave his son a massive gold ring, and the betrothal took place. The youth kissed his future bride, and placed the ring on her finger. The wedding was to be solemnized the next Sunday week at the Venetian’s country­house, a few miles out of Khania. Molini was merely to send for a notary and a few friends, and Gadhanole, with his son, was to be accompanied by a train not exceeding five hundred men. The Greeks left the country-house of the Venetian without suspecting treachery. On the following morning, Molini hastened to the governor of Khania, and obtained his promise of co-operation in exacting such signal satisfaction for the indignity of having been compelled to promise his daughter in marriage to a Greek, as might serve both for an example and a warning to posterity. In order, however, to prevent any suspicion of his good faith, Molini despatched tailors to his country-house to prepare new dresses for the wedding, and also sent presents of fine cloth to his son-in-law elect. During the next few days the governor of Khania assembled about a hundred and fifty horsemen and seventeen hundred foot­soldiers within the city.

“On the day before the wedding, Molini returned to his house at Alikiano, with fifty friends to be present at the marriage. He gave orders for roasting one hundred sheep and oxen, and for making all due preparations to celebrate the nuptials with becoming splendour. The Greek rettore arrived, accompanied by about three hundred and fifty men and one hundred women, on Sunday morning, and was delighted at all he witnessed. He was received by Molini with every mark of kindness and affection. After the mar­riage ceremony, the day was spent in festivity and rejoicing. The Greeks ate and drank, and danced and sang. The Venetians plied their guests with wine, and the intoxication affected by them really overcame the unfortunate and too confiding Greeks. Some time after sunset, a rocket thrown up at Khania gave notice of the approach of the troops. The Greeks, overpowered by wine and sleep, were dispersed about the place. As soon as the military arrived, most of the destined victims were at once bound hand and foot, but were suffered to sleep on until sunrise. At daybreak, Molini, and the public representative of the most serene republic, hung the Greek rettore, the unfortunate bridegroom, and one of his younger brothers. Of the family of the Musuri three were shot and the rest hanged. Of the Kondi sixteen were present; eight were hung by the Venetians, and the other eight sent to the galleys in chains. The rest of the prisoners were divided into four parties, not with the intention of mitigating the penalty, for an equally merciless fate awaited them all. The Venetians hung the first division at the gate of Khania; the second at Krustogherako, which village, the birthplace of Gadhanole, was razed to the ground; the third division was hung at the castle of Apokorona; and the fourth on the mountains between Laki and Theriso, above Meskla, to which village Gadhanole had removed from Krustogherako after he became rettore”.

The Venetian senate approved of these cruelties, and sent a proveditore with authority to extirpate the seditious Greeks. Villages were burned and sacked; twelve Greek primates were hanged; pregnant women were murdered in the cruellest manner; whole families were reduced to slavery; and pardon was only granted to the proscribed on condition that they brought to Khania the head of a father, brother, cousin, or nephew who had rebelled. Such were the cruelties by which the Venetians retained possession of Crete for four centuries and a half. Yet while they oppressed the Greeks with almost intolerable tyranny, strange to say, the internal order they maintained allowed the country to become more populous and flourishing than under the more apathetic and disorderly administration of the Othomans. Under the Venetian government, the Greek population was estimated at two hundred thousand, and under the Othoman it never exceeded one hundred and thirty thousand. On the other hand, it is probable that the Mohammedan population was greater than the Venetian, for it is said at one time to have equalled the Greek in number.

A principal feature in the history of Greece, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is the evils it endured from the prevalence of piracy in the Levant. A number of Christian and Mohammedan galleys, under various flags, carried on a species of private warfare and rapine over the whole surface of the Mediterranean. The coasts of Spain, France, Italy, Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily suffered severely from the plundering and slave-hunting expeditions of the corsairs from the ports of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, but the coasts of Greece suffered still more severely from Christian pirates, who acknowledged no allegiance to any government. The power and exploits of the corsairs during this period exercised an important influence on the commercial relations of southern Europe; they often circumscribed the extent and determined the channel of trade in the East, quite as directly as the political treaties and commercial conventions of the Christian powers with the Othoman Porte. Not only were the Greek inhabitants of the coasts and islands plundered, but their commerce was completely annihilated. The jealousy of the Othoman government rarely permitted a Greek to fit out an armed vessel for trade; and yet merchants willingly paid double freight to ship their goods on board an armed ship. On the other hand, the protective policy and commercial envy of the Christian powers would have exposed any armed vessel, manned with Greeks, to confiscation in almost every European port beyond Turkey and the Adriatic, unless it were sure of the immediate protection of the sultan. The Othoman fleet only put to sea in great force for some definite expedition, and rarely made a cruise to protect the trade of the sultan’s subjects. The insecurity of the Greek seas became at last so great that the coasting trade was in general carried on in small boats, which escaped the pirates by creeping along the coasts and sailing by night. But when the corsairs found no vessels to plunder, they indemnified them­selves by plundering the villages near the coast, and carrying off the inhabitants, whom they sold as slaves, or compelled to labour at the oar. The frequency of these expeditions at last drove the Greeks from the small towns and villages close to the sea, and compelled their inhabitants to establish their dwellings in sites of difficult access, to which it required some time to ascend from the nearest point of debarkation on the coast. The principal object sought for in the new locality was to gain time to escape from the pirates in case of their landing, so that the families and property of the inhabitants might be transported to a considerable distance in the interior, and the advance and retreat of the plunderers harassed by occupying strong positions on their line of march. Even to the present day, the continent and islands of Greece, when seen from the coast, still present the desolate aspect impressed on them by the corsairs of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen­turies. The records of the ravages of these Christian plunderers are traced as visibly on the shores of Greece, as the annals of the fiscal oppression of the Othoman government are stamped on the depopulated towns and abandoned villages of the interior. Many mediaeval castles, towns, and parish churches, now in ruins, overlook the sea, bearing marks of having preserved their inmates until the sixteenth century.

Even in the capital of the Othoman empire the Greek population lived in continual danger of their lives and property. Murad III, while playing at the djereed, fell from his horse in an apoplectic fit. The result is described by Knolles in his quaint translation of Leunclavius: “The sultan, falling from his horse, was taken up for dead, insomuch that the janissaries, after their wonted manner, fell to spoiling Christians and Jews, and were proceeding to further outrages, when their aga, to restrain their insolence, hanged up a janis­sary taken in the act of murdering a rayah”. Every political event was used as a pretext for plundering the Greeks; and indeed the Christian subjects of the Porte generally were treated with extraordinary severity at this period. The Mohammedans displayed an increase of bigotry, and became more tyrannical, on perceiving that the Christian states of western Europe had acquired strength to resist the progress of their conquests. Murad III really desired to convert all the churches in his empire into mosques; and in 1595, when the news of the sack of Patras by a Spanish fleet reached Constantinople, the extermination of the Christians was dis­cussed in the divan, but the result was confined to the publication of an order for the expulsion of all unmarried Greeks from Constantinople within three days.

During the period which intervened between the conquest of Gyprus and the invasion of Crete, the maritime hostilities of the Knights of Malta, who were indefatigable corsairs, constantly excited the anger of the sultan’s court, while their expeditions inflicted great losses and severe sufferings on the Greek population. It would be tedious to notice the various acts of systematic devastation recorded by travellers and historians during this Augustan age of piracy. The deeds of the corsairs in the Levant, and of the Uscoques in the Adriatic, almost rivalled the exploits of the buccaneers in the West Indies. A few leading examples will suffice to show how the rapacity and cruelty of the corsairs affected the position of the Greeks as Othoman subjects. The lawless conduct of the captains of ships, even in the regular service of Christian states, is proved by a memorable act of piracy, committed by a Venetian noble in command of a squadron, on some Othoman vessels during a time of peace.

In the year 1584, the widow of Ramadan Pasha, late Dey of Tripoli in Barbary, embarked with her family and slaves in a vessel for Constantinople. The property she carried with her was valued at eight hundred thousand ducats, and, for security against pirates, she was attended by two armed galleys. Stress of weather drove these ships into the entrance of the Adriatic, where a Venetian squadron, under Petro Emo, was stationed to protect the trading vessels under the flag of the republic. Emo pretended to mistake the Turkish galleys for pirates. He attacked them with a superior force, and captured them after a desperate resistance. He then committed the most infamous cruelties, in order to appropriate the rich booty and compromise his crew so far as to insure their silence. Two hundred and fifty Turks who had survived the engagement were murdered. The son of Ramadan was stabbed in his mother’s arms. The female slaves were ravished, cruelly mutilated, and thrown into the sea. A beautiful girl, who declared she was a Venetian, a Cornara, and a Christian, vainly implored the brother of Emo to spare her honour. She solemnly declared that she had been enslaved while a child in Cyprus, but young Emo proved deaf to her prayers. She received the same treatment as the rest, and her body was thrown into the sea. One of the Turks, however, escaped with his life, and at last found his way to Constantinople, where his story soon raised a general cry for vengeance. The Persian war, in which Murad III was engaged, saved Venice from an immediate attack, and the republic gained time to appease the Porte by denying, explaining, apologizing, and bribing. The truth, however, could not be concealed. Emo was brought to justice and beheaded. The captured galleys were repaired and sent to Constantinople, manned by Turks delivered from slavery, in the place of those who had been slain. Four hundred Christian slaves were also delivered to the Porte, as it was said Ramadan had possessed that number at Tripoli, though it was evident no such number had been embarked in the captured ships. But of these slaves the greater number were divided among the Othoman ministers, as an additional bribe to prevent war, and only a small part was given to the widow and to the heirs of Ramadan.

The cruelty of the Knights of Malta was not so infamous as that of the Venetians, for their warfare was open and systematic; but the losses they inflicted on the Turkish merchants and the frequent captures they made of wealthy Osmanlis on the passage between Constantinople, Syria, and Egypt, caused incessant complaints. The Porte was repeatedly urged to attack Malta, and destroy that nest of corsairs; but the memory of the losses sustained during the siege of 1565 rendered the pashas, the janissaries, and the Othoman navy averse to renew the enterprise.

The Knights of Malta not only carried on war with the Barbary corsairs and Othoman galleys, but they searched every comer of the land, and lurked under every cliff in the Greek islands, on the watch to capture Turkish merchant vessels. The story of many a hard-fought battle with the Barbaresques and the Othomans may be found in the annals of the Order; but very few allusions are made to their daily plunder of merchant ships, and their kidnapping exploits on the coasts of Greece, from which the Christian subjects of the sultan suffered more than the Mussulmans. Many Greeks were annually carried off to labour at the oar in Christian galleys; and the want of rowers was so great, that though they were not called slaves, they were guarded as carefully, and compelled to labour as constantly, as if they had been infidels or criminals.

The habitual proceedings of the naval forces of the Order were so near akin to piracy, that the grand-master was repeatedly involved in disputes with the Christians at peace with Turkey, by the manner in which the Knights openly violated every principle of neutrality. Even the naval forces of Venice were insufficient to protect the ships and possessions of the republic. A few examples will be sufficient to prove the general insecurity of property; for where there was danger to Venetians, there must have been certain ruin to Greeks. In the year 1575, the Knights seized a Venetian ship with a rich cargo belonging to Jewish merchants. The republic, however, insisted that the perpetual warfare which the Knights made it their vocation to wage against the Mohammedans, did not entitle them to plunder Jews under Venetian protection. The grand-master confiscated the captured merchandise in spite of the reclamation of the Venetian senate, on the ground that the Jews were not subjects of the republic. The senate immediately seques­trated all the property of the Order in the Venetian dominions, and thus forced the grand-master in the end to make restitution to the Jews. But the Knights continued to interpret their belligerent rights according to their own code; and in 1583 the Venetians seized two galleys of the Order, to compel the grand-master to restore the property of Venetian merchants taken in a Turkish merchant ship. At this time the Turkish merchants still carried on a con­siderable trade with Italy in their own ships. The extortions of the pashas and provincial governors in the Othoman empire had not yet exterminated the race of wealthy Mussulman traders, nor had the supremacy of the Christian corsairs yet excluded the Othoman flag from commercial operations. We find the senate compelled to sequestrate the property of the Order as late as the year 1641, in order to force the grand-master to make restitution for acts of piracy committed by the Knights.

Similar disputes occurred with the King of Spain and the republic of Lucca in 1638, in consequence of acts of piracy committed by French knights on Spanish and Sicilian ships, France being then at war with Spain.

While the corsairs of Malta were plundering the Turks find Greeks, those of the Barbary coast were equally active in capturing the Christians. Several of the European powers, however, finding that they were unable to protect their subjects by force, submitted to purchase security for their trade by paying an annual tribute to the African corsairs. Nevertheless, we find that the merchants of France, England, and Holland were frequently severe sufferers from these corsairs.

The conduct of Christian corsairs on the coasts of Greece increased the hatred which had long prevailed between the Latins and the Greeks, in consequence of the oppression reciprocally suffered from each party when in power. In Negrepont, Mytilene, Chios, Cyprus, and many smaller islands, the Latins had long treated the orthodox Greeks as serfs, and persecuted them as heretics. At this time the Greeks revenged themselves for former cruelties by equal tyranny. The Othoman government, naturally placing more confidence in the submissive and orthodox Greeks than in the discontented and Catholic Latins, favoured the claim of the orthodox to the guardianship of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. During the sixteenth century this caused many disputes, and created a permanent irritation at the papal court. The priestly soldiers of Malta were invited by the Pope to take an active interest in the question, and the grand-master, to mark the zeal of the Order, joined his Holiness in advising the Christian powers not to spare the heretical Greeks whenever they could be made prisoners. Religious hatred was considered as good a ground of hostility as political interest, and the orthodox were consequently chained to the oar in Catholic galleys with as little compunction as Mohammedans. Continual plundering expeditions against the Grecian coasts kept alive the mutual animosities. In 1620 the Knights made a most successful foray in the Morea. They took Castel Tornese, where they found an immense quantity of military stores laid up by the Othomans, which they carried off or destroyed, and retireci with a rich booty in slaves.

The spirit of chivalry had perhaps expired in Europe before Cervantes bestowed on it an immortality of ridicule in the person of Don Quixote. But chivalry continued a thriving trade at most European courts after the spirit had fled, and an idle mimicry of chivalric mummery is still perpetuated by princes to decorate courtiers and chamberlains with stars and ribbons. In the year 1560, Cosmo de’ Medici, duke of Florence and Sienna, instituted a new order of chivalry on the model of the Knights of Malta, for the express object of combating the Turks, and called them the Knights of St. Stefano. The new order was marked by the characteristics of the age. There was as much of the spirit of piracy as of the impulse of chivalry in its institutions. These knights were to seek adventures and glory in the Levant; but they were especially instructed not to overlook plunder and profit while at sea. The pretext of the duke in establishing the Order was to supply the means of defending the coast of Tuscany against Mohammedan corsairs, and he hoped to give a new direction to the valour of the restless nobles of Italy, by mingling the love of foreign enterprise with their personal feuds and party politics. None but nobles were admitted as knights, and only those who were wealthy or distinguished in arms. The Order was endowed with considerable ecclesiastical revenues by Pius IV, and with large funds by the Duke of Florence, who reserved the office of grand-master to himself and his successors. Several families were also allowed to found hereditary commanderies in the Order by granting it large estates. The ancient city of Pisa was the seat of this new Order of St. Stefano—a noble residence for the revivors of ancient pageantry. The papal bull of confirmation by Pius IV. was dated on the 6th July 1562. Historians have carefully informed us what dress the knights wore, and they are so eloquent and so minute in their description that future times are likely to know more of the exploits of the tailors of the Order than of the deeds of the knights. Several popes conferred additional privileges on the Order, and Benedict XIV granted them the right of audience without leaving their swords in the papal ante­chamber, a privilege which is enjoyed by other Orders and by foreign diplomatic agents at Rome, whose tongues, however, rather than their swords, were the weapons which they were most likely to use in a manner offensive to his Holiness.

The Knights of St. Stefano maintained a well-appointed squadron of galleys under their own flag, which, when united with the Florentine ships of war, formed a small fleet. The Duke of Florence was quite as much the master of the one as of the other; but the Knights of St. Stefano could commit acts of piracy without involving him in such direct responsibility as would have resulted from the commission of similar acts by ships under the Florentine flag. The right of private warfare had ceased, but there were still independent sovereigns in Europe who possessed neither the wealth nor the power of the Knights of St. Stefano

The importance of gaining the good-will of the Greeks in the struggle between the Christian powers and the Othoman government was felt by the Florentines. Cosmo I attempted to secure some influence in the Archipelago by establishing two Greek colonies in Tuscany, one in the island of Giglio, and another at Florence, hoping that these colonists would be able to rouse their countrymen in the Greek islands to join the sultan’s enemies. Religious bigotry destroyed the duke’s plans, and even rendered his political project injurious to the commerce of his subjects. The council of Florence had forbidden the free exercise of all religious opinions not in strict conformity with its decisions, so that only those Greeks who acknowledged the papal supremacy could be allowed to form a civil and religious community. The orthodox, consequently, soon discovered that they enjoyed more civil and religious liberty under the government of the sultan than was conceded to them by a Christian duke. The commercial jealousy of the people likewise aided the religious bigotry of the papal court, in preventing the Greeks from forming any national friendship with the Italians.

The plundering expeditions of the Knights of St. Stefano respected neither Greek nor Turkish property where booty could be obtained; but the Florentine government soon discovered that the piratical gains of the Order were insufficient to indemnify the State for the exclusion of its industrious citizens from all participation in the honest trade with the Othoman empire. Duke Francesco I sought to conclude a commercial treaty with the Porte in 1577, in order to afford the Greeks an opportunity of establishing commercial houses at Leghorn under the protection of an Othoman consul. During his negotiations with the sultan, he attempted to deny all responsibility for the conduct of the Knights of St. Stefano, but the Porte insisted that he should disarm the galleys of the Order, and engage that it should in future afford no assistance to the Pope and the King of Spain. The duke would not accept these conditions, and his attempt to enjoy the profits of legitimate trade in the sultan’s dominions under one flag, while plundering his subjects under another, having failed, the Medici and the Knights of St. Stefano continued their piratical expeditions against the Greek islands with redoubled activity.

In the year 1594 the Florentines had a force of three thousand two hundred men serving in the Levant. The unsuccessful attack they made on Chios in the following year has been already mentioned. Some years later, the united squadrons brought the richest prizes that they ever made into the port of Leghorn, consisting of the fleet from Alexandria, which was conveying the tribute of Egypt to Constantinople. Two galleons, seven galleys, seven hundred prisoners, and two millions of ducats, was announced as the official value of the booty; but much additional profit was made by ransoming wealthy prisoners. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the galleys of the Duke of Florence were accounted the best in the Mediterranean, and they carried on war both against the Turks and the Barbary corsairs with the greatest activity.

The spirit of private warfare, or the love of piracy, was so widely spread in Christian Europe, that we find even the English merchantships frequently coming into collision with the Turks wherever they met, whether in the Red Sea or the Mediterranean, and both parties appear to have generally acted in a way more likely to cause than to prevent such collisions.

Enough has been said to give the reader some idea of the various causes which combined to spread devastation over the coasts of Greece and produce a sensible diminution in the numbers of the Greek race. The poorer and more exposed districts were often entirely depopulated. At the time of the Othoman conquest, the Greeks of the small towns and thickly-peopled rural districts were accustomed to live with more of the conveniences of civilization, and to enjoy more of the necessaries, and even of the luxuries of life, than the inhabitants of other countries. When, therefore, their barns were destroyed, their wine-presses broken in pieces, their olive-groves burned down, and their silk carried off by the corsairs, they were unable to bear the privations which these losses entailed. The people first crowded into the large cities, and then gradually melted away—a process of depopulation which can now be seen going on under the influence of fiscal oppression, and of the total want of an equitable administration of justice, in almost every province of the Othoman empire. But, unfortunately for Hellenic pride, Greece itself, under a native government, appears to be making as little progress in wealth and industry as some provinces of Turkey, and many of its most favoured cities are in a worse condition than they were in the sixteenth century. Livadea, which then furnished sail-cloth for the Othoman navy, is now destitute of all industry. It grows at present little cotton, and less flax, and it suffers, perhaps, more from brigands than it ever did under the Turks.

Though the Venetians and Turks were at peace from 1573 to 1644, and both powers kept up a very considerable naval force for the express purpose of suppressing piracy, the Greeks never suffered more from pirates than during this period. Indeed, the fleets which were placed to protect them were often their worst oppressors. When there was a want of hands in either fleet, the Greeks were carried off from their homes to labour at the oar. The Venetians made slaves of them because they were heretics, and the Othomans because they were infidels. The African corsairs set the power of the sultan at defiance, and the pirates of Dalmatia despised the authority of the republic, which could not prevent the ships of Segna from plundering even in the Adriatic. The great extent of the Othoman coasts, and the immense amount of Venetian property always afloat in commercial undertakings, held out too many inducements to corsairs to pursue their trade of pillage, for it to be an easy task to exterminate them. The corsairs of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, and of Catalonia, Malta, Sicily, Genoa, Tuscany, and Dalmatia—all plundered Greece indiscriminately. The capitan-pasha only made a vain parade of the Othoman fleets, in his annual cruise to collect the tribute of the cities and islands of the Aegean Sea. The increasing venality of the Othoman governors, and the deep-seated corruption of the civil administration, rendered the permanent naval force, which the sandjak-beys of the islands were bound to maintain by their tenures, utterly inefficient. The governments of Western Europe in alliance with the Porte, and the peaceable Greek subjects of the sultan, were far more alarmed at the annual parade of fifty galleys, under the capitan-pasha, than the corsairs. Kings knew the immense power which the Othoman navy could concentrate for any definite object, and the invasion of Cyprus proved that even a treaty was no sure guarantee against a sudden attack. But the corsairs were well aware of the inefficiency of the Othoman galleys, and the inexperience of their crews in naval operations, when compelled to act separately. Though the Porte could repair its losses at the battle of Lepanto with unrivalled vigour and celerity, it could never give adequate protection to the coasts of Greece.

Historians have generally adopted the opinion that the Othoman navy has always been the weakest and worst organized branch of the public service in Turkey. The loss of several great battles, at various epochs, is cited as a proof of want of naval power and skill, instead of being viewed as evidence of the valour and discipline of fleets which could bravely prolong a desperate contest. The vaunting declamations of Venetian and Greek writers have even misled some historians so far, that they have described the Othoman navy as characterized by cowardice as well as incapacity. This is completely at variance with the facts recorded by history. Though the Othoman Turks were never a maritime people, they can boast of as long a period of uninterrupted naval conquests as most of the Western nations. They had no sooner conquered the Greeks on the sea-coast of Asia Minor, than they found it necessary to form a naval force to preserve their conquests, and, like the Romans, they made energy and courage supply the want of maritime experience and naval skill.

The Othoman navy was not regularly organized until after the taking of Constantinople, though Sultan Mohammed II formed a considerable naval force to attack the Greek capital by sea. The creek in which his admiral, Suleiman Balta-oglu, constructed the Othoman ships, situated above the European castle on the Bosphorus, still commemorates the event by retaining the name of Balta Liman. The first great naval enterprise which established the supremacy of the Othoman fleet in the Levant was the conquest of Negrepont, in spite of all the efforts of the Venetian navy to save it, a.d. 1475. The present chapter records the long series of conquests which followed that brilliant exploit. The glory of Haireddin (Barbarossa), who, in 1538, with only one hundred and twenty-two galleys, defeated the combined fleet of the Christian powers under the great Andrea Doria, consisting of one hundred and sixty-two galleys and many smaller vessels, far surpasses that of Don Juan of Austria, who, with a superior force, gained the well-contested battle of Lepanto. The fleet of Barbarossa was long terrible in the Italian seas, and the Turks were ready to dispute the mastery of the Grecian waters with Don Juan the year after his victory. The siege of Malta and the battle of Lepanto reflect no disgrace on the Othoman navy. These reverses were more than compensated by the conquest of Cyprus, of Tunis, and of Crete. Indeed, history offers no example of greater vigour than was displayed by the Othoman government in restoring its fleet after every great disaster. The defeats of the Othoman navy have been as glorious to the Othoman administration as the victories. Nearly a century after the disastrous fight of Lepanto, the Othoman navy sustained another great defeat. This happened at the entrance of the Dardanelles, during the war of Candia, in 1656, when the Venetian admiral, Mocenigo, destroyed the fleet of Kenaan the capitan-pasha. Seventy Turkish ships were taken or sunk; but the spirit of the Othoman administration again rose superior to the disaster. The activity of the government, the courage of the naval officers, and the resources of the sultan’s empire, soon repaired the losses sustained, and this defeat, like that of Lepanto, ultimately only increased the wonder and alarm of the Chris­tian powers.

The battle of the Dardanelles is also remarkable for having awakened the patriotism of a private individual, who, in labouring to rouse the enthusiasm of his countrymen, has left an imperishable monument of the glory of the Turkish navy. Hadji Khalfa was a clerk in the admiralty at Constantinople, when the great loss sustained by the fleet induced him to write a history of the naval exploits of the Othomans, as an incentive to every patriotic Mussulman to step forward and repair the disaster. He had to remind his countrymen of a long career of conquest. Hadji Khalfa died shortly after publishing his work, before he witnessed the re-establishment of the naval supremacy of the Othoman fleets in the Levant, for which he was labouring; but his literary exertions may claim some share in animating the Turkish army and navy to bear with patience the incredible toils that render the siege of Candia the most memorable of modern sieges, and to display the indomitable courage that conquered the valour of Morosini and defeated the naval science of the Venetians. The conquest of Crete was the last, the most important, and the most glorious naval conquest of the Othomans; and Hadji Khalfa’s glory, in contributing to that conquest, is nobler and purer than that of the warriors who are honoured for their exploits as mere instruments of their own and their sovereign’s ambition.

The Othomans had no love of naval enterprise, and their fleets were formed only because political necessity imposed upon them the duty of maintaining a naval force. The majority of the crews, when they gained their greatest vic­tories, were Christian rayahs, who had no disposition to encounter danger. The Othoman officers and warriors were, consequently, obliged to watch the manoeuvres of their own sailors, who sought to avoid bringing their ships to close quarters, as well as to combat their enemies. Yet, under these disadvantages, the naval policy of the Othoman govern­ment, and the obstinate courage of the Othoman officers, secured to the sultans a supremacy in the Mediterranean for three centuries.

The Othoman navy was organized, to fight battles and to effect conquests, but the single ships of which it was composed were not fitted out in a way calculated to pursue corsairs and defend the extensive coasts of Greece. The consequence was that the Greeks were exposed to be plundered incessantly by the Knights of Malta, the Knights of St. Stephen, and the Tuscan navy, which were constantly at war with the sultan. In the year 1595 a Spanish fleet plundered the Morea, and laid Patras in ashes. Though the Greeks were the principal sufferers by this attack, the Porte was persuaded that the success of the Spaniards had been caused by collusion on the part of the rayahs, and the project of a general massacre of the Christian population of the Othoman empire was seriously discussed in the divan. The treatment of the Greeks by the government of Turkey, however, proved less tyrannical than that of the Moors and Jews by the court of Spain, and the project of extermination ended, as has been already men­tioned, in the sultan merely ordering all unmarried Greeks to quit Constantinople. In the same year, the unsuccessful attack of the Florentines on Chios increased the sufferings of the defenceless Greeks.

In 1601 the Spaniards and their allies ravaged Maina, surprised Passava, and plundered the island of Cos. In 1603 the Knights of Malta again sacked Patras, and in the following year they plundered many defenceless villages in Cos. But in the year 1609 they sustained a great naval defeat from the Othomans, though they succeeded in ravaging the coast of Karamania. In the following year, a fleet, consisting of Maltese, Sicilian, and Spanish galleys, entered the port of Cos, plundered the town, and carried off a number of the inhabitants as prisoners, who, when not ransomed, were com­pelled to work as slaves at the oar. The Florentine squadron made an unsuccessful attempt to plunder the coast of Negrepont; and the combined fleet failed in its attack on Albania, where the Turks, having discovered that a Greek bishop served them as a spy, flayed the unfortunate culprit alive. About this time the Christians were treated with unusual severity in the Othoman empire, for the religious bigotry of the Mussulmans was roused to seek every means of revenging the tyrannical treatment which had been inflicted on the Mohammedans in Spain at their expulsion in 1609. In 1611 the galleys of Malta made an unsuccessful attempt to plunder the country round Navarin; but they succeeded in effecting a landing at Kenchries, sacking the town of Corinth, and securing five hundred prisoners. In 1612 the Florentine galleys executed an enterprise which had been attempted in vain both by the Spaniards and the Knights of Malta. They stormed the citadel of Cos or Lango, and carried off from the island one thousand two hundred prisoners. They captured many Turkish merchantmen, and ravaged the coasts of Greece from the island of Leucadia to the island of Cyprus. To replace the ships lost by the Othoman navy in 1612 and 1613 without draining the treasury, the sultan ordered the Greeks to build and equip twenty galleys, and the Armenians nine; so that the more the Christian subjects of the Porte were plundered by the Christian navies of Western Europe, the more they were oppressed by the sultan’s government.

Sultan Mohammed II closed the Black Sea to every Christian power. After capturing in succession all the towns possessed by the Genoese in Asia Minor and the Crimea, and destroying their commercial establishments, in the year 1475 he occupied Caffa (Theodosia) and Tana (Azof), the great depots of their eastern trade, and expelled them from the Black Sea. From this time the western Christians were prohibited from passing out of the Bosphorus, and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries no Christian flag was allowed to navigate the Euxine. All knowledge of its shores was lost, its cities lay beyond the sphere of trade, and the countries once frequented by Genoese and Venetian merchants became as much a region of mystery as they had been before Jason made his voyage in search of the golden fleece. But the seamen of Genoa still repeated vague tales of the wealth once gained by navigating its stormy waters, and the merchants cherished traditions of the riches of Caffa and the splendour of Trebizond.

The commercial system of the Othoman government has generally allowed importation to be freely carried on at fixed duties, but it has prohibited the exportation of the necessaries of life without a special license, and it has subjected most other articles of export to restrictions and monopolies. Under this system trade soon languished. The cities on the shores of the Black Sea, which had been rich and populous until the time of their conquest by the Othomans, declined and fell into ruins. The sites of many were deserted. Cherson itself ceased to exist. The plains, which had furnished Athens with grain, were uncultivated, and thinly peopled by nomades. Extensive provinces became utterly desolate, and at last received a new race of inhabitants, composed of exiles from Poland and fugitive slaves from Russia, who formed several independent communities under the name of Cossacks. The Cossacks who inhabited the banks of the Dnieper, being orthodox Christians, waged a constant warfare with the Turks and Tartars, and, like the Russians, who had inhabited these provinces before the invasion of the Monguls, often sought plunder and slaves by making piratical expeditions with small vessels in the Black Sea.

In the year 1613 the city of Sinope was surprised by the Cossacks, whose devastations generally ruined only the Christians who were engaged in commercial enterprises on these coasts. At this time, however, the Othoman naval force was so weak, that the Cossacks succeeded in capturing two of the sultan’s galleys with a considerable amount of treasure on board.

In 1624 the Cossacks entered the Bosphorus with a fleet of one hundred and fifty small galleys, carrying each about forty men. They plundered Buyukderi, Yenikeui, and Stenia, setting fire to the buildings in order to distract the attention of the Turks and prevent immediate pursuit, and by this manoeuvre they succeeded in escaping with their booty. Next year they plundered the environs of Trebizond. In 1630 they pillaged the coasts of Thrace, landing at Kili, Meidia, Sizeboli, Varna, and Baltshik, and collecting a rich booty and many slaves. In 1639 they fought a naval battle with the Othoman fleet off the Crimea. In 1654 they plun­dered the European coast near Baltshik, and the Asiatic coast in the neighbourhood of Eregli; nor did these ravages cease, until the final conquest of Crete and peace with Venice enabled the Porte to send a large division of the Othoman fleet into the Black Sea, to blockade the mouths of the rivers from which the Cossack boats issued on their plundering expeditions.

In 1614, Maina, which, from its rock-coast and precipitous mountains, was regarded as less exposed to the inroads of foreign invaders than the rest of Greece, was visited by the capitan-pasha, who took strong measures to prevent a repetition of such attacks as the Spaniards had made in 1601. The success of the invaders had been facilitated by several Greeks, both among the clergy and the laity; and to prevent the recurrence of similar acts of treason, the capitan-pasha placed garrisons in the forts, and made arrangements for the regular payment of the tribute to the Porte, which from this period was collected with great regularity. In 1619 a Florentine squadron ravaged the islands of the Archipelago; and in 1620 the Knights of Malta plundered the coast of the Morea and captured Castel Tornese, of which they destroyed a part of the works. In addition to these external miseries, the sufferings of the Greek population were increased in 1622 by fiscal oppression, which owed its existence to a successful revolt of the sipahis, who obtained from the sultan’s government the right of collecting the haratch as a security for the regular issue of their pay. This right they farmed out in districts by public auction, and as the sipahis in every province were directly interested in supporting the exactions of the collectors of the tax, this measure greatly increased the sufferings of the Christians, and accelerated the impoverishment and depopulation of Greece.

The war which cost the republic of Venice the island of Crete, owed its origin to the incessant irritation caused by the Western corsairs in the Archipelago. Some strong measures adopted by the Venetians to suppress the piracies committed by Turkish and Barbary corsairs in the Adriatic, created much dissatisfaction on the part of the Othoman government, which looked chiefly to the Mohammedan corsairs as a protection against the Christian corsairs in the Levant, and considered it the duty of the Venetians to suppress the piracies of these Christians. The Porte at last resolved to seek a profitable revenge, and a pretext soon presented itself. Some quarrels in the serai induced the Kislar-aga to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca. He sailed from Constantinople with three galleys, in which he had embarked his immense wealth. Among his slaves was the woman that had nursed the eldest son of the reigning Sultan Ibrahim, who succeeded to the throne as Mohammed IV. The Knights of Malta were duly informed of the departure of this squadron by their spies. They attacked and captured the galleys, after a desperate combat, in which the Kislar-aga and most of the Turks of rank on board were slain. Three hundred and fifty men, and thirty women, several of whom were young and beautiful, were, however, secured as slaves. Among these was the young nurse with her own child, whom the Knights of Malta pretended was a son of Sultan Ibrahim. The Maltese carried their prizes into the secluded port of Kalismene, on the southern coast of Crete, in order to refit.

When the news of this capture reached Constantinople, the personal feelings of Sultan Ibrahim were deeply wounded, and he was strongly urged to avenge the insult; but as he feared to attack Malta, he resolved to make the Venetians responsible for the shelter which the corsairs had found in Crete. The Porte pretended that Venice was a tributary state, and was bound to keep the Archipelago free from Christian corsairs, in return for the great commercial privi­leges it enjoyed in the Othoman empire. Preparations were made for attacking Crete, but the project was concealed from the Venetian senate, under the pretence of directing the expedition against Malta. The Venetians, however, had good reason for concluding that their possessions offered a more inviting lure to the ambition of the Othomans than the fortress of Malta, and that Crete would be invaded in the same treacherous manner as Cyprus; but the republic resolved to make every sacrifice to avoid war. Though the sultan remained at peace with the republic, several circumstances occurred which convinced the senate that hostilities could not be avoided. A Venetian ship, laden with stores for Candia, was attacked by some Turkish corsairs. One of the Turkish ships was sunk, but the others which escaped spread the report as far as Constantinople, that they had been assailed by the Venetians. Yet, as the sultan still refrained from declaring war, the republic hoped that its explanations, both with regard to the impossibility of preventing the entrance of the Maltese into the desert port in Crete, and the proofs that the transport had only acted in self-defence, were satisfactory to the Porte. The senate flattered itself that the storm preparing at Constantinople would really burst on Malta.

The Othoman fleet sailed from Constantinople attended by numerous transports, stopped at Chios and Karystos where it received considerable reinforcements, and after em­barking additional troops at the port of Thermisi, in Argolis, the whole expedition again dropped anchor in the port of Navarin. It was not until it sailed from that port that the real object of attack was announced to the captains of the ships. The announcement was received with enthusiasm, for the disastrous siege of Malta in 1565 made the bravest Turks fearful of attacking that fortress. In the month of June 1645, the Othoman army landed before Khania, which capi­tulated on the 17th of August. This treacherous commence­ment of the war was considered by all Christian powers as authorizing them to dispense with all the formalities of inter­national law in lending assistance to the Venetians. The war of Candia lasted nearly twenty-five years, and during this long and celebrated struggle the Venetians generally maintained a superiority at sea; yet they were unable to prevent the Othoman navy from throwing in supplies of fresh troops and stores, so that the Othoman army was enabled to command the whole island, and to keep Candia, and the other fortresses of which the Venetians retained possession, either blockaded or besieged. The Greeks generally favoured the Turks, who encouraged them to cultivate their lands by purchasing the produce at a liberal price, for the use of the army. Indeed, the communications of the invading army with the Othoman empire were often interrupted for many months, and without the supplies it derived from the Greek cultivators, it would have been impossible to have maintained a footing in Crete. The fact that the Othoman troops found the means of persisting in the undertaking until success at last rewarded their perseverance, is of itself a strong testimony in favour of the excellent discipline of the Othoman armies in the field. The Venetians in vain endeavoured to compel the Turks to abandon the siege of Candia, by landing troops on different parts of the island and destroying the harvests of the Greek inhabitants. No important result was produced by the partial devastation of small districts by bodies of men who dared not venture to remain long on shore, or to march far from their ships. The spirit of pillage displayed both by the officers and men, generally rendered the enterprises of the Venetians ineffectual as military operations. In the meantime the squadrons of the republic often ravaged the coasts of the Othoman empire, and on one occasion they carried off about five thousand slaves from the coast of the Morea, between Patras and Coron. In the year 1656, after Mocenigo’s great victory at the Dardanelles, the Venetians took possession of the islands of Tenedos and Lemnos, but they were driven from these conquests by the Othoman fleet in the following year.

At the end of the year 1666, the grand-vizier, Achmet Kueprili, one of the greatest ministers of the Othoman empire, assumed the command of the besieging army. The whole naval force of Venice, and numerous bands of French and Italian volunteers, attempted to force the grand-vizier to raise the siege; but the skill of the Italian engineers, the valour of the French nobles, and the determined perseverance of Morosini, were vain against the strict discipline and steady valour of the Othoman troops. The works of the besiegers were pushed forward by the labours of a numerous body of Greek pioneers, and the fire of the powerful batteries at last rendered the place untenable. At this crisis Morosini proved himself a daring statesman and a sincere patriot. When he found that he must surrender the city, he resolved to make his capitulation the means of purchasing peace for the republic. The step was a bold one, for though the senate was convinced of the necessity of concluding a treaty as soon as possible, the extreme jealousy of the Venetian government made it dangerous for Morosini to act without express authority. Morosini, however, seeing the peril to which his country would be exposed, if the favourable moment which now presented itself was lost, assumed all the responsibility of the act, and signed the treaty. Its conditions were ratified by the senate, but the patriotic general was accused of high treason on his return to Venice. He was honourably acquitted, but remained for many years unemployed. On the 27th September 1669, Achmet Kueprili received the keys of Candia, and the republic of Venice resigned all right to the island of Crete, but retained possession of the three insular fortresses of Karabusa, Suda, and Spinalonga, with their valuable ports. No fortress is said to have cost so much blood and treasure, both to the besiegers and the defenders, as Candia; yet the Greeks, in whose territory it was situated, and who could have furnished an army from the inhabitants of Crete sufficiently numerous to have decided the issue of the contest, were the people who took least part in this memorable war. So utterly destitute of all national feeling was the Hellenic race at this period.

The position of Maina has given that district a degree of importance in the modern history of Greece incommensurate with the numbers of the inhabitants, and with the influence it has exercised on the Greek nation. Pedants have termed the Mainates descendants of the ancient Spartans, though the Spartan race was extinct before the Roman conquest; and history points clearly to the alternative, that they must be either descended from the Helots, who became freemen after the extinction of the Spartans, or from the Perioikoi, who disappear as a separate class in the great body of Roman provincials. To an older genealogy they can have no pretensions. The population of the twenty-four Laconian towns, which received the confirmation of their municipal charters from Augustus as Eleuthero-Lacones, consisted of burghers, who, as a privileged caste, probably became extinct when the towns they inhabited became depopulated. We learn from Pausanias, that about a century and a half after these towns received their charters, six had already ceased to exist; of the eighteen whose names he records, only eight are situated within the limits of Maina.

It is said that Maina never submitted to a foreign conqueror. Though the assertion is repeated by many writers of authority, this also is a vulgar error. It might be said with greater truth that order and justice never reigned in Maina. Foreign force has more than once established the supremacy of strangers since the extinction of the Roman domination, yet it is impossible not to feel some admiration for a small population which shows itself always ready to make some sacrifices to defend its independence against foreigners. Our sympathy leads us to overlook the evils of a state of anarchy which makes every man a warrior, and we fondly admit, on the scantiest proof, that a patriotic cause which we approve has always met with the success it merited. A disposition to eulogize every armed resistance to power has also caused the misapplication of a good deal of rhetoric by continental writers, who have made Maina the medium for parading a love of liberty abroad which shunned exhaling itself in domestic patriotism. The fact is, that Maina has submitted to the domination of the Romans, the Byzantine emperors, the Sclavonians, the Franks, the Venetians, and the Othoman sultans, but it has never been a servile, and rarely an obedient province.

The geographical configuration of the mountain range, which forms the great promontory called Maina, renders it of difficult access by land as well as by sea, and it has successfully repulsed many invaders, and obtained favourable treatment from every conqueror. Its population, being de­pendent for many of the necessaries of life on foreign commerce, is easily compelled to submit to reasonable terms of capitulation when attacked by an enemy powerful enough to occupy its ports and blockade its coasts, and prudent enough not to attempt any expedition into the interior of the country; as was seen by the ease with which the capitan-pasha compelled it to pay the haratch in 1614.

Another prevalent error concerning Maina is, that the whole district consists of a poor and arid territory. This is very far from being the case with its two northern divisions. In the year 1843 Maina was more densely peopled and more productive than Attica, excluding Athens from the calculation, as being the capital of the Greek kingdom, and the seat of a centralized system of administration. Maina is divided by nature into three divisions, western, eastern, and southern. The district lying to the west of the great ridge of Taygetus overlooks the plain of Messenia, and possesses two ports, from which its commercial business is carried on, Armyros and Vitylos. It exports a considerable quantity of silk, oil, valonia, and red dye, and imports grain and iron. The wealth of this district in the thirteenth century is mentioned by Pachymeres, and is recorded in a poem written towards the end of the eighteenth.

The eastern district, of which Marathonisi is the principal port, is nearly as populous and as productive as the western. Its exports consist of valonia and silk; but, formerly, it exported a considerable quantity of cotton. The southern district, on the contrary, is a promontory of barren rocks, terminating in Cape Matapan. It commences at Tzimova, and is called by the northern Mainates, as well as by the other Greeks, on account of the manners of its inhabitants, Kakavoulia, the land of bad designs. The furious winds which generally prevail arrest vegetation; yet, wherever there is a ravine with a little soil, it is laboriously cultivated by the women, and the population is considerable. Wheaten bread is rarely seen, and the common food is a black cake made of lupins. The poem already mentioned sarcastically notices its products, as consisting of quails and the fruit of the cactus. Beans and barley are luxuries. Its inhabitants have been for ages: more celebrated for their piracies than for their independence.

The Byzantine emperors and the western Crusaders appear to have found that the only way to restrain the piracy of the southern Mainates was to destroy all the towns on the coast. Of these towns, and of the cisterns which supplied them with water, considerable remains still exist. After the destruction of their towns, the people became even more dependent on piracy for their subsistence than they had been previously. Their poverty, their strange usages, their patience under privations, their thefts, their bloody feuds, and the daring courage displayed in their acts of piracy, rendered the Kakavouliots the wonder and the terror of the other Greeks. The vices of their character and the peculiarities of their country were thus attributed to all the Mainates.

The celebrity of Maina, and the independence it had assumed during the war of Candia, which secured to it the constant protection of the Venetian fleet, induced Achmet Kueprili to take measures for its complete subjection. He knew that as long as the pirates of Maina remained un­punished, and the ports of Maina afforded shelter to Venetian and Maltese cruisers, the commerce of Crete would be insecure and the conquest imperfect. Accordingly, in the year 1670, while Achmet was reposing at Chios, after his victory, he sent Kuesy Ali Pasha with a strong naval and military force to re-establish the sultan’s supremacy in Maina. The piratical vessels of Porto Quaglio and of Tzimova were pursued into their places of refuge, and captured or burned; but the Othoman force made no attempt to attack the Kakavouliots in their fastnesses. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the northern part of Maina, being dependent on foreign commerce, were easily compelled to submit. Ali Pasha occupied the ports of Armyros, Vitylos, and Marathonisi with his fleet, and landed troops, who succeeded in occupying the fortresses of Zarnata, Kielapha, and Passava. By this means he obtained complete command over the communications of the Mainates with the sea. The forts were repaired, armed with artillery, and strongly garrisoned. No expedition of Turkish troops was attempted into the interior, but Ali executed the orders of Achmet Kueprili with ability as well as energy; he formed alliances with several of the leading chieftains who were engaged in feuds with their neighbours, and by supplying them with arms and ammunition, and refusing to employ Mussulman troops in their broils, he rendered himself arbiter of their disputes. He then showed them that it was in his power to ruin and even to starve them, unless they consented to submit to his orders and pay haratch to the sultan. The amount which they agreed to pay was only fifteen purses, at that time rather more than £1500 sterling; but whether haratch tickets were distributed by the chieftains among the rural population, either in 1614 or at this time, seems not to be accurately known. By some it is asserted to have been the case; by others it is denied. The regular custom-duties were exacted on the exports of Maina by the Turkish authorities at Armyros, Zarnata, Vitylos, Kielapha, Marathonisi, and Passava, but they were generally farmed to Mainate chieftains; while, to repress permanently the piracies on the coast, Othoman galleys were stationed at Tzimova and Porto Quaglio. By these measures Achmet Kueprili gave a degree of security to the commerce of the Levant which it had not enjoyed for many generations, and his fame as a states­man in Christendom soon rivalled the military glory he had gained as the conqueror of Candia. The Othoman garrisons diminished the influence of the chieftains, and deprived many of those who had long lived by feuds and piracy of their means of livelihood; but, at the same time, property was not rendered more secure, nor industry more profitable. The Mainates, consequently, became eager to quit their country, and as soon as it was known that they would meet a good reception from the Neapolitan viceroys, a considerable emigration took place to ApuliaAbout the same time another colony of Mainates emigrated to Corsica.

A considerable decrease took place in the numbers of the Greek race during the seventeenth century, and a still greater decline is observable in the material wealth and moral condition of the people. Communications by sea and land became more difficult for the Greeks, who were reduced to live in a more secluded, poorer, and ruder manner. In the mean time, the numbers of the Turkish landed proprietors and militia increased, and janissaries were permanently formed into corporations in the principal towns. Thus, the relative importance of the Greek to the Turkish population was diminished on the continent, and in the islands misery and the ravages of the corsairs thinned the numbers of the inhabitants. It was during this century that many fresh colonies of Albanians took possession of the Hellenic soil. The Greeks were never so much depressed and despised, and never was the number of renegades so considerable among the middle and lower orders of society. Immediately after the conquest of the Greek empire, the higher orders had shown much greater readiness to forsake their religion than the mass of the nation. We find several pashas of the name of Palaeologos among the renegades, and the learned George Amiroutzes of Trebizond abandoned the orthodox faith in his declining years, not to mention innumerable examples of less eminent persons. The Greeks at that time were not exposed to any very serious sufferings on account of their religion, and they suffered less fiscal oppression from the sultans than they had previously suffered from their native emperors. Until the end of the sixteenth century the Otho- man government was remarkable for the religious toleration it displayed. The Jews, when expelled from Spain, were charitably received in Turkey. The orthodox, who were denied the exercise of their religious forms in Italy, and the heretics who were driven into exile by the tyranny of the Inquisition, found that toleration in the Othoman dominions which was denied in every Christian land. The religious bigotry of the Mussulmans was inflamed into a spirit of persecution by the injustice and intolerance of the Christians —by the expulsion of their co-religionaries from Spain, and by the refusal of every Christian power with whom they held intercourse to allow the public exercise of the Mohammedan worship and the erection of mosques in Christian cities. Still, it was not from direct oppression alone that the number of the Greek renegades was increased towards the middle of the seventeenth century. Those who quitted the orthodox faith were generally led to take that step by a feeling of despair at their despised position in society, and by a desire to bear arms and mix in active life. The spirit of the age was military, and violence was one of its characteristics. The Greeks could only defend their families against the insolence of the Turks and the rapacity of the Frank corsairs by changing their religion; when galled by acts of injustice, and eager for revenge, they often flew to the most violent and most effectual remedy their imagination could suggest, and that was to embrace Mohammedanism.

David Chytraeus, who witnessed the public rejoicings at the circumcision of Mohammed, the son of Murad III (a.d. 1582), tells us that he then witnessed the miserable spectacle of a great number of Greeks embracing the Mohammedan faith. On this occasion about one hundred Christians, Greeks, Albanians, and Bulgarians daily abjured the Christian religion during the whole period of the celebration, which lasted forty days. Cases of apostasy are even found among the highest dignitaries of the orthodox church, and in 1661 an ex-metro­politan of Rhodes had the honour of being the first Mussulman who was condemned to death by a fetva of the mufti. The preponderant influence of the tribute-children and of renegades in the administration of the Othoman empire, and the great inducement held out to apostasy, is proved by the fact, that the greater number of the grand-viziers before the middle of the seventeenth century were either renegades or the children of Christians—Greeks, Albanians, and Sclavonians. Of the forty-eight grand-viziers who succeeded to the office after the conquest of Constantinople, twelve only were native Turks. A large portion of the Greek population in Euboea and Crete embraced the Mohammedan religion, and about the end of the seventeenth century it is supposed that at least a million of the Mussulmans in Europe were descended from Christian parents who had abjured their religion.

 

 

 

CHAPTER III

Social Condition of the Greeks until the Extinc­tion of the Tribute of Christian Children, a. d.1453-1676