Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule From the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence (25 page)

But perhaps the main reason for the long impasse was that both sides received support from Cretans. Some, labelled renegades, supported the Turks, and the name of one of them, Andhréas Barótsis, is still reviled. The Turks offered rewards to Cretans who came over to their side, and
it is claimed that they spent 700,000 ducats on these incentives. Other Cretans were won over by the Turkish promise, made in the first years of the war, to appoint an Orthodox archbishop of the island. But there was also Cretan support for the Venetians, the result of the centuries of increasingly close relationships between the two and of the softening of Venetian rule since their loss of Cyprus.

Thus for some twenty years Turkish and Venetian forces faced each other at Iráklion, neither side strong enough to win a decisive victory, but in 1666 the stakes were raised. Five years earlier a new energetic reforming grand vizier had been appointed, Ahmed Koprulu, one of the Koprulu family who would dominate Ottoman politics for the rest of the century. He came to Crete in November 1666 to take personal control of the siege of Iráklion, followed next spring by 40,000 new Turkish troops. In response Venice appointed a new commander, Francesco Morosini. Turkish bombardment now began in earnest, and by the summer of 1669 the town of Iráklion was a shattered war zone: ‘The state of the town was terrible to behold,’ wrote a contemporary, ‘the streets were covered with bullets and cannonballs, and shrapnel from mines and grenades. There was not a church, not a building even, whose walls were not holed and almost reduced to rubble by the enemy cannon. The houses were no longer anything more than miserable hovels. Everywhere the stench was nauseating: at every turn one came upon the dead, the wounded or the maimed.’
²

The twists and turns of the final negotiations for the surrender of Iráklion are described in detail by, surprisingly, an Englishman known as Harry Chionídhis, perhaps originally Johnson, or maybe Snow. Chionídhis left two handwritten accounts of the proceedings, which vary only slightly. Both found their way into private libraries in England, but by the end of the eighteenth century one had gone to Oxford University and the other to Cambridge. Chionídhis was involved throughout the surrender discussions, perhaps as a member of the Venetian negotiating team, and was present at the final grand ceremony for the signing of the peace agreement. We know a great deal about the experience of fighting the Turks, but Chionídhis gives us a rare insight into what it was like to negotiate with them.

The Venetians could hardly have been in a weaker negotiating position, with their defensive walls shattered by Turkish mines, the city in ruins, their numbers reduced and, with winter approaching, little chance of immediate reinforcement. A final straw was the departure of most of the 2,000 French troops led by the Duc de Noailles, who insisted that he had orders from Louis XIV to leave Crete by 20 August 1669. But
though the Turks were in a stronger position they too had an incentive to end the costly siege, not least because, of their 34 senior commanders listed by Chionídhis as serving since the siege began in earnest two years earlier, eleven had been killed in battle during that time. The Venetians were also at an apparent disadvantage because their negotiator was the relatively junior Colonel Thomas Annand, a Scottish mercenary perhaps with links to his fellow Briton Chionídhis, accompanied only by a secretary. Annand at each stage reported back to his principal, Franceso Morosini. The Turkish principal was the grand vizier Ahmed Koprulu, and the negotiations were conducted by a number of Turkish officers, of increasing seniority as the discussions proceeded, who reported to him. The interpreter between the Venetians and the Turks was Nikoúsios Panayiótis, who later held the office of grand interpreter at the Turkish court, the first Greek to do so.

The negotiations began on the morning of 28 August 1669, when Annand sailed in a felucca to a beach some four miles west of Iráklion and near one of the Turkish camps. There he fired a shot to attract attention and put out a white flag. After an hour and a half delay, no doubt a tactical one on the part of the Turks, Annand and his party were invited ashore by Ahmed Aman, an aga of the grand vizier’s retinue.

From the start Colonel Annand astutely and boldly took the line that he was not there to discuss the surrender of Iráklion by the defeated to the victors, since the city could well hold out a great deal longer. He was there to arrange a bargain between two equal powers. Moreover these powers were not enemies, but friends of long standing, and Venice wished again to ‘establish the correspondency of affection which the Serene Republic hath laboured to confirm with the Ottoman Porte’.
³
Therefore if – and it was still if – Iráklion was surrendered, Venice expected Turkish concessions in exchange.

The Turks would have none of this. Ahmed Aman, having consulted the grand vizier, told Annand through the interpreter Panayiótis that no further discussions could take place unless the surrender of Iráklion was first agreed. Annand again vigorously set out his position, but undertook to consult Morosini and return next day. But though Annand seemed to have got nowhere he had won one minor concession: Annand was to return next day to the landing stage at the Palaiókastro, more suitable than the windswept beach by the Turkish camp, though still a boat journey away. This also meant that Annand would be spared harassment by the Turkish soldiers of the camp who on this first day ‘flocked together in great numbers to dive into the occasion of the meeting, protesting to all [the Venetians] to depart immediately, and not to
return anymore without a positive affirmative answer that the place should be yielded up’.
⁴

Annand reported that evening to Morosini, who, after consulting his colleagues, told Annand to stand firm: no surrender without compensation. Annand spent the next day on board ship, unable to set out because of contrary winds, but on the third day of the negotiations met Ahmed Aman and his interpreter at Palaiókastro. Again there was no progress, except an agreement to meet again on the following day, this time at the fort of Áyios Dhimítrios close to the city.

When Annand arrived there on the fourth day, 1 September 1669, he found that two things had changed. Ahmed Aman had been replaced as Turkish negotiator by a team. This was led by Ibrahim Pasha, a close associate of the grand vizier with full authority to reach agreements. Ibrahim was supported by a senior janissary officer Chiagaia Bey, so the pairing combined a diplomat and a soldier, who played the traditional roles of soft man and hard man. The other change must have surprised Annand: Ibrahim at once asked Annand to state his conditions for giving up Iráklion. It was after all to be a deal, not a surrender. Annand had won his first major point.

But Annand continued to negotiate forcefully, and was prepared to push the talks to the point of collapse if necessary. He made two demands for Venice to keep territory: in Crete the fortified islands of Soúdha, Graboúsa and Spinalónga, and in Dalmatia Clissa, modern Klis, and other towns recently taken by Venice from the Turks. Against opposition from Chiagaia he won both concessions. He then went further by requiring, in exchange for Iráklion, some territory at present in Turkish hands, but this was a step too far. Even the more amenable Ibrahim declared that the point was ‘as insuperable as it is impossible to reach the heavens with a hand’.
⁵
Morosini agreed to drop the claim, but raised instead the question of Venetian cannons. Those belonging to Iráklion would be surrendered, but those transferred to Iráklion from Venetian ships – cannons that Morosini listed – should be taken away. Again, the point was won.

The articles of the agreement were finally signed on 6 September in a magnificent pavilion specially set up for the occasion, with fine carpets, wall hangings of cloth of gold, and scarlet cushions fringed with gold and silk. The grand vizier with his retinue arrived on horseback, accompanied by 500 janissaries, and took his place on a sumptuous spread of cushions. Morosini, however, did not appear, perhaps feeling that it would be humiliating to do so, and the Venetians were represented by the faithful Annand.

Annand and the grand vizier exchanged expressions of good will. Annand said on behalf of Morosini that he was glad this tedious war ‘between two potentates’ (the equality on which he had insisted throughout) was ended, and that they ‘had no other design but that the hatred between them may be laid aside and annihilated’. The grand vizier made an equally amicable response, but added – for he too had a point to make, that the Turks were the stronger party – that Morosini had reason to come to terms ‘for he knows very well how great advantages will rebound to the most Serene Republic by the affection and favour of the Grand Signor.’
⁶
Then the articles were produced, signed and sealed. Even then there was a final hitch. On reading the articles Annand found that, though the three Cretan fortresses had been conceded to Venice, their ‘territories’, that is the areas within cannon shot of them, had not, although this had been agreed. Annand insisted on their inclusion, saying that without it ‘all that was done must be undone.’ Again, and for the last time, Annand won his point.

On the following day, 7 September, the Venetian embarkation began. There was no trouble between the opposing troops. According to an account written not long afterwards, ‘a great silence fell on the enemy camps and there was no disorder in the town. In the twelve days allowed for departure the soldiers greeted each other below the bastions and ramparts, and talked of the accidents and adventures of the war as if they had never had any quarrel.’
⁷
The embarkation also passed off peacefully. Only two Greek priests, three Jews and a handful of soldiers who converted to Islam remained in the city, and the rest of the population, some 4,000, took their places on the ships in the harbour ‘con gran quiete e silentio’. Iráklion was now the skeleton of a city.
⁸

At the fall of Famagusta in Cyprus 100 years earlier the honeyed words of the Turkish commander had been followed by his vicious and humiliating execution of the Venetian general Bragadino. No such reversal happened at Iráklion, and the articles of the treaty were faithfully observed. In part this was probably because the agreement had been made by the grand vizier himself, not just by a commander in the field. But it can also be ascribed to the wish of the Turks to present themselves now as civilised partners in the European space, not as barbaric intruders into it.

The Greeks under Ottoman rule elsewhere were not directly affected by Venice’s loss of Crete, but were involved in Venice’s attempt fifteen years later to recover her position in the eastern Mediterranean. This brought war to the mainland of Greece for the first time since the original Ottoman conquests following the fall of Constantinople. Venice joined
the alliance of powers, another so-called Holy League, which had driven the Ottoman army back from their last siege of Vienna in 1683, and now aimed to push them out of Europe altogether. This League combined the forces of Austria, Poland, the papacy, the Knights of St John from Malta, and Venice. In 1684 Venetian troops, once again under Francesco Morosini, landed in the Gulf of Árta to begin the hoped-for annexation of Greece.

The Venetians, with fluctuating support from the other members of the Holy League and even more intermittent help from the Greeks of the Mani, had immediate and dramatic successes in seizing Ottoman strongholds. In 1685 they took Koróni and Kalamáta and in 1686 Methóni and the two fortresses at Navarino, giving Venice mastery of virtually the whole southern Peloponnese. Then they moved north, taking Navplion later in 1686 and in 1687 Pátras, Akrocorinth and the two castles on either side of the narrows at the western end of the Gulf of Corinth. In late 1687 the Venetians laid siege to Athens, where on 26 September a mortar shot from the besiegers detonated the Ottoman powder magazine in the Parthenon, the opening event in the story of the ruining and despoliation of the Parthenon that arouses passionate controversy to this day. Ironically, the capture of Athens and the unfortunate mortar shot served no purpose, as within a few months the Venetians had abandoned Athens as strategically worthless.

The Venetian advance stalled only at Chalkís on Évia, where the island is closest to the mainland. In the late summer of 1688 the Venetians attacked Chalkís but for the first time met a determined Ottoman defence. Venice lost a third of its 1,500-strong army to malaria, and the supporting Holy League contingents departed. The final assault on Chalkís in October led to the loss of another 1,000 Venetian troops in a few hours and their abandonment of the siege.

How did Venice with her allies achieve their lightning if short-lived campaign on the Greek mainland? In part it was because the Holy League was well led, by Francesco Morosini and other generals from Venice, and by the Swedish commander Count Otto von Königsmark – expensively hired as a mercenary. By contrast the Ottoman forces were ineffective because of rapid changes in command. But the primary reason for Venetian successes was that the Ottomans, as so often in their history, were now fighting on two fronts, both this time in the west. As well as the attack on the Peloponnese the Ottoman forces had to face the rapid advance southwards of the Austrian troops of the Holy League. These forces took Belgrade in September 1688 and advanced on a broad front as far south as Skopje. At all costs the Ottomans had to prevent the
joining of the two arms of the offensive, Austrian from the north and Venetian from the south. It was vital that they held the buffer zone of Greece north of the Gulf of Corinth – hence their determined defence of Chalkís on Évia. If the two arms had succeeded in meeting, Greece and the rest of the Balkans might have been released en bloc from Ottoman rule by the end of the seventeenth century, instead of piecemeal in the course of the nineteenth.