GREECE UNDER THE TURKS.

II.

Ir must not be supposed that the Greeks acquiesced patiently in the Turkish domination for more than three centuries. The long rule of the Franks had had the effect of making the natives far more warlike than they had been before the Latin conquest; but the conviction of the overwhelming power of the Turks rendered them reluctant to rise, except when they were sure of foreign aid.1 During the first few years which followed the capture of Constantinople it seemed, indeed, as if such assistance would be speedily forthcoming. The East expected, and the West meditated, a new crusade against the Infidel. A Greek poet appealed to "French and English, Spaniards and Germans," to make common cause for the recovery of Constantinople.2 The many learned Greeks who had been scattered all over western Europe by the loss of that city endeavoured to interest the rulers of Christendom in the fate of their fellow-countrymen. Prominent among these missionaries of Hellenism was the famous Cardinal Bessarion of Trebizond, who was twice regarded as a likely candidate for the Papacy, and who travelled across Europe with untiring zeal on behalf of the conquered Greeks. The Popes of that period-men, for the most part, of learning and statesmanlike views-warmly supported the plan, and Pius II. set out to Ancona, where the crusaders were to assemble. But his death at that seaport caused the collapse of the proposed expedition, and the crusade, for which such great preparations had been made, ended in a fiasco.

Meanwhile, it had become clear that a war between Venice and the Sultan was inevitable; for the Venetians were convinced that the great Conqueror intended to round off his Greek territories by the acquisition of their remaining colonies upon Greek soil. An excuse for hostilities was speedily found. An Albanian slave, the property of the Pasha of Athens, had run away with some of his master's property, and had sought sanctuary beneath the banner of St. Mark at Methóne. The Venetian commander of that place refused to give him up, whereupon the Turks retaliated by occupying 1 Paparregópoulos, Ιστορία τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ Ἔθνους, ν. 684, 656-7. 2. Georgilas in Ellissen, Analekten iii. 354.

2

Argos, betrayed to them by the treachery of a Greek priest,1 and by ravaging the country round Methóne. The war-party in Venice then persuaded the Government to fight, and in 1463 a war began, which lasted, more or less continuously, till 1479. Bertoldo d'Este was appointed commander-in-chief of the Venetian forces, and ordered to proceed to Nauplia and co-operate with the fleet under Loredano; while the heroic Albanian leader, Skanderbeg, was provided with subsidies, in order that he might create a diversion among the mountains of his native land. D'Este recruited his forces by opening the Cretan gaols and converting the prisoners into soldiers. At the same time he issued a proclamation, calling upon the Greeks to rise and regain their freedom with his assistance. The Spartans took up arms under the leadership of Michael Rálles, a primate belonging to a distinguished Lacedæmonian family, which is, according to some, descended from a Norman noble named Raoul, according to others, of Albanian origin, as its name, in that language, signifies "bald." The Arkadians found a chief in Peter Búa-the same Albanian who had headed a rising against the Greeks nine years earlier; and the Mainates, as ever, showed a spirit of independence. Argos was speedily re-taken, and the Venetian commander then ordered the restoration of the wall across the isthmus, the famous Hexamílion, which had been destroyed by Murad II. The work was at once begun; and in the brief space of fifteen days a wall twelve feet high and six miles long, protected by & double ditch and 136 towers had been constructed by the united efforts of the whole army,3 composed of 30,000 Greeks, Albanians, and Italians. But misfortunes attended the steps of the Venetians. D'Este lost his life in a skirmish before Corinth; and Mahmûd Pasha, the Grand Vizier, a Greek by extraction, and the first of that race to hold that important office, led the victorious army, which had just ended for ever the ancient kingdom of Bosnia, to the assault of the Hexamílion. Its defenders, alarmed at the approach of an army nearly three times larger than their own, abandoned the newly-erected wall without striking a blow, and fled into the Morea. The Turks once more destroyed the rampart across the Isthmus, reOccupied Argos, and wreaked their vengeance on the Venetian colony of Koróne, many of whose inhabitants were sent to Constantinople and there sawn asunder by order of the Sultan. Finding that their Venetian allies were unable to defend them, the Spartans retired to the fortresses of Taygetos, whence the Turks in vain endeavoured to lure them by offers of amnesty.

Sigismondo Malatesta, the husband of Isotta and builder of the cathedral in his native town of Rimini, was appointed as d'Este's successor ; but that most famous of the Malatesta gained little glory from his Peloponnesian compaign. The grand old castle of Mistrâ, still magnificent in its desolation, repelled his assaults, and he returned home with no other prize than the bones of George Gemistos Pléthon, the last Greek philosopher, whose neo-Platonic doctrines he had embraced, and whose remains he laid in the cathedral at Rimini, where the tombs of the Spartan sage and the Italian lord may still be seen. Barberigo, the Venetian governor of the Peloponnesos, continued the struggle with even less successthan D'Este and Malatesta. Disregarding the counsels of Michael Rálles, who knew the country well, he resolved upon the siege of Patras, and allowed himself to be enticed into an ambush by the Turks. Barberigo fell in battle; but Rálles, less fortunate in the opportunity of his death, was taken alive by the victors, and by them impaled. The remnant of the Venetian forces, thus deprived of its leaders, retreated to Kalamata, where, beneath the old castle of Guillaume de Villehardouin, it sustained a second defeat.

The Venetian fleet had meanwhile, been scouring the Egean, capturing some islands and plundering others. In 1466,1 Capello, the Venetian admiral, anchored at the Piræus, and landed his men for an attack upon Athens. Since the Turkish conquest of that famous city, the only allusion to it had been the fantastic description of its classical monuments, given by an author, who wrote in 1460 a Greek pamphlet entitled, The Theatres and Schools of Athens, and is known to scholars, from the place where his manuscript was found, as the Anonymous of Vienna.2 For a brief moment Athens now once again figured in the pages of history. The Turkish garrison at first drove back the Venetian troops, but the latter returned in larger numbers, and made themselves masters of the lower town, killing the Turkish, and plundering the Greek, inhabitants. Capello made, however, no attempt to take the Akropolis; and, as the Turkish commander showed no sign of surrendering that noble fortress, he speedily quitted Attica and set out for the Morea. Upon learning the death of Barberigo he sailed for Euboea, and died there of grief shortly afterwards. From that time forwards Athens disappeared from the ken of Europe for more than a century.3 We know, however, from the evidence of a Greek chronicle in the library of Lincoln College, Oxford, dated 1606, that

1 This is the date given by Hopf, Hertzberg, and Fallmerayer. Laborde (Athènes aux xve, xvie, xviie siècles i. 37) puts this event two years earlier, as does Gregorovius (Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, ii. 409.)

2 Laborde, op. cit. i. 15; Konstantinides ('Ioropía eåv A0nvŵs, pp. 432-433), puts its date a little earlier.

Laborde, i. 37.

the city was afflicted by seven severe plagues between 1480 and 1554, and we are told that the tribute of Christian children was levied. We know, too, of the existence of three metropolitans of Athens during the first century of Turkish rule, and somewhat later an Athenian became Ecumenical Patriarch. The jealousy which the selfish policy of Venice had inspired in the other Italian States prevented them from rallying to the side of the Republic in this unequal struggle, and the new Pope, Paul II., though a Venetian by birth, had not the enthusiasm of his great predecessor. Skanderbeg alone remained in arms, and with his death, in 1468, the last ally of Venice disappeared. Mohammed II. now dealt the Republic the severest blow which it had yet received in the Levant by the capture of Euboea, where it had had a foothold since the early part of the thirteenth century, and where latterly it had been predominant. The Turks had, however, been fast approaching ever since the annexation of Thessaly had made them near neighbours of the Venetian island. Their forays had became more and more frequent, and each time they carried off many of the islanders, whose places were to some extent filled by Albanian colonists from Thessaly. So great had been the injury inflicted by Turkish invasions and a severe outbreak of the plague that "only a good peace or a good war," so it was said, "could save the island." The increasing power of the Jews also caused alarm. It was stated that almost all the landed property had passed into their hands, and a decree forbidding the further purchase of Euboean estates by them had accordingly been enacted. Their taxes were increased, nor were they ailowed to keep Christian slaves. Almost down to the close of the venetian rule in the island the public hangman was chosen from their ranks. With the growth of the Turkish peril, too, the Latin masters of Euboea had grown more distrustful of their Greek subjects, who there, as everywhere else, showed their preference for the Mussulman over the Roman Catholic. While every one over the age of eighteen was ordered to arm himself with sword and bow for the defence of the island, no Greek was accepted as a mercenary, and Greeks were excluded from the Council, of which they had hitherto been members. To the very last days of the Venetian occupation Euboea retained its strongly Italian character; nowhere else in the Near East, except in Corfù, Crete, and Tenos, did the rule of Venice strike such deep roots. 1

And now the time had arrived when the Turk was to conquer Euboea, as he had already conquered Athens and the Morea. So well-informed a Government as that of Venice could not be in any doubt of what was intended. From all sides, from Cyprus, Rhodes, Kephallenia, and even from Burgundy, the Republic sought aid in her struggle against the great Sultan, who had overthrown one 1 Hopf: in op. cit., vol. 86, pp. 90, 136-43

Christian State after another and was now preparing to oust her from her prized possession. Yet, when, in 1470, the attack came, the Venetian forces were inadequate to the task of repelling it. Mohammed II. had previously inspected Negroponte, and he now laid his plans for its conquest with all his customary care. While a large fleet was despatched against it he led an army by land, and the two forces arrived almost simultaneously before the doomed city. The Venetian admiral was not strong enough to prevent the landing of troops from the Turkish vessels or the passage of the Sultan's army across the narrow channel on a bridge of boats. The place was then besieged by land and sea; but for nearly a month the Venetian generals defended it with desperate courage, inflicting severe losses on the besiegers. The timidity of the admiral and the treachery of some of the inhabitants turned the scale in favour of the Turks. Mohammed ordered a grand assault to be made on a weak point of the fortifications, and after many hours of fighting, in which men, women, and children bore their part, the ramparts were captured. Even then the conflict was continued in the streets, across which chains had been stretched by the inhabitants. More than 6000 men perished in the brave attempt to defend the city, and when the garrison of the citadel at last surrendered, under a solemn pledge that their lives should be spared, the promise was ruthlessly disregarded, the soldiers were impaled and flayed alive, their commander was sawn in pieces. The other strong places in the island offered little resistance to the Turks, who carried off the Greeks as slaves and put the Latins to the sword. At last, the Sultan, whose losses had been enormous, was satisfied with the success of his expedition. Leaving a garrison of 20,000 men in the island he went his way, conscious of having dealt the Republic the severest blow which she had yet received. That was also the opinion of the Venetians themselves, who characterised the news of Euboea's fall as "the worst tidings ever received by the State." The Government marked their sense of indignation by sentencing their cowardly admiral to banishment for life; but this degradation was no compensation for the loss of the great island. As for the Lombard and Venetian families, which had managed to escape from the sword of the Sultan to the islands of the Archipelago or to Venice, their lot was hard indeed. Many had lost all that they possessed, and noble ladies, who had lived as local magnates in Euboea on estates which had belonged to their ancestors for generations, were compelled to subsist on charity as pensioners of the Venetian Government in the Convent of St. Philip and St. James. Despite modern vandalism, the lion of St. Mark may still be seen on the walls of Chalkis, as on so many a picturesque castle in the Levant; the huge stone cannon-balls used in the great siege are still piled up in one of the squares of that delightful town; but