Authors: David Brewer
Tags: #History / Ancient
There is an example of the difficulty of abandoning myths from another nation’s history. In the new state of Israel it was universally believed that the Jews who in
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70 died on the hilltop of Masada resisting the Romans were patriotic heroes. ‘Masada shall not fall again’ became a slogan of the young embattled nation. However, the Israeli historian Nachman Ben-Yehuda came across a paper, by an American writer, which maintained that the Jews on Masada were in fact murderous thugs, who had killed many fellow Jews. Ben-Yehuda indignantly rejected the idea, but went to his library to check. ‘To make a long story and a painful weekend short,’ he wrote, ‘on Saturday night I knew that the paper was right and I was wrong.’
To say of some long-held belief that it is a myth is not to say, scornfully, that it is rubbish. Myths have power for ill or for good. Myths can lead to the excesses of fanaticism, but can also nurture and sustain a people in dire adversity. Many Greeks will doubtless be deeply upset by this book’s questioning of some of their ideas about the history of the
Tourkokratía
and I apologise for causing that distress, which I believe I can understand. Nevertheless the story, as accurately and truthfully as possible, should be told. As the historian Gaetano Salvemini said, ‘Impartiality is a dream, honesty is a duty.’
The story is often presented, especially in older Greek histories of the period, as one simply about Greeks and Turks. The scene is a sealed stage with just two actors, or perhaps an enclosed arena with only two antagonists. But there is more to the story than that.
Once the Ottoman Empire had taken Constantinople in 1453 and established its rule in south and east Europe, it became a major player in Europe’s affairs through trade, diplomacy, sometimes alliances, but most significantly through conflicts. The following centuries were punctuated by Ottoman clashes with Venetians, Habsburgs, combinations of European powers known as Holy Leagues, and latterly with Russia. Success or failure strengthened or weakened the Ottoman Empire, and affected immediately, or in the longer term altered, Ottoman relations with its subject people, including the Greeks.
Five such conflicts were turning points, one, as it happens, in each century. The first was the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453, marking the end of the Byzantine Empire and the beginning of Ottoman expansion into Europe on a large scale. The next was the Ottoman defeat in the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571. This ended the assumption
of Ottoman invincibility at sea, and arguably began the long process of Ottoman decline. But a century later, in 1669, the Ottomans were still strong enough to take Crete from the Venetians, bringing many thousands of Greeks under Turkish rule. In 1770 Greeks rebelled briefly and unsuccessfully against Turkish rule. This was the so-called Orlov revolt, inspired by Catherine the Great as part of Russia’s expansionist plans and named for its leader and one of Catherine’s many lovers, Count Theodore Orlov. Finally, in 1821 the Greek war of independence began, leading twelve years later to the establishment of Greece as an independent nation state.
To understand the impact on Greece of the first great upheaval in 1453 we need to look at conditions in Greece that preceded it. What changes, for better or worse, did Ottoman rule bring? Greece before the arrival of the Ottomans is the subject of the chapter that follows.
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Greece Before the Turks
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he Fourth Crusade, summoned in 1198 by the new Pope Innocent III, was not originally intended to go anywhere near Constantinople. The Pope called for a crusade to recapture the Holy Land, then in the hands of Saladin, and to reverse, as he put it, ‘the deplorable invasion of that land on which the feet of Christ stood’.
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Those who responded were mainly French and Italian, led by their nobility. Their plan was to travel to the Holy Land by sea, and first to establish a secure base by annexing Egypt. The keys to Jerusalem, it was said, were to be found in Cairo. So the crusaders needed a fleet and contracted with Venice to build one for them.
The fleet was huge, some 250 ships, and the cost of the ships and their supplies correspondingly enormous: 85,000 marks, about twice the annual income of the King of England or France. The Venetians also demanded that ‘so long as our association lasts we shall have one half, and you the other half, of everything that we win, either by land or sea,’ and these terms were confirmed by treaty.
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But when the fleet was ready to sail, in the summer of 1202, the crusaders could not pay – they were about a third short of the price that had been fixed. The Venetians therefore agreed to postpone full payment if the crusaders and their fleet would first recapture for Venice the town of Zara, modern Zadar, on the Dalmatian coast, which Venice had recently lost to Hungary. On 12 November 1202 Zara fell to the crusaders, and as it was too late in the season to sail on, the crusaders were stuck there until the following spring.
During this enforced wait there was another twist to the course of the crusade. Alexios was the twenty-year-old son of the recently deposed and imprisoned Byzantine Emperor, Isaac II. Alexios now arrived in Zara and made the crusaders an offer. If they would place his father on his rightful throne and ensure his own succession, he would pay them, from the riches of Constantinople, the money they owed the Venetians. This offer was satisfactory for everybody. The Venetians would get their money, the crusaders would be relieved of their debt, and Alexios would get his throne. It also had a benefit for Innocent III. A Byzantine Emperor who owed his throne to the crusade that the Pope had inspired would
be more likely to support the Pope’s long-term objective: the reunification of the Western and Eastern Churches, and the reassertion of papal authority in the Byzantine Empire.
In June 1203 the crusaders reached Constantinople, and within a month had overcome Byzantine resistance by breaching the walls to the north of the city along the Golden Horn. Alexios and his father Isaac were installed as co-emperors. But Alexios was unable to raise the money to pay the crusaders. The populace resisted his new taxes, and his seizure of Church plate to be melted down infuriated the clergy, while the citizens of Constantinople loathed the often violent and drunken crusaders. By January 1204 Alexios and Isaac had been deposed, Isaac was dead and Alexios had fled the city. The new Emperor, another Alexios known as Mourtzouphlos, was committed to resisting all the crusader demands and the crusaders’ only course now was to take the city themselves.
A detailed plan was therefore drawn up for the division of offices and of territory in what was to become the Latin Byzantine Empire. A committee of six Venetians and six Frenchmen was to choose the Emperor, and the side that did not provide the Emperor would nominate the patriarch. The territory, both in Constantinople and outside, would be divided, with a quarter going to the new Latin Emperor and, as originally agreed, the remaining three quarters split equally between the Venetians and the non-Venetian crusaders. Any idea that the crusade would ever proceed to the Holy Land was abandoned.
On 12 April 1204 Constantinople fell to the crusaders and in the following three days the city was looted. The crusaders knew the value of Constantinople’s treasures, and carried away all they could. The most spectacular part of the Venetian booty was the set of four horses of gilded copper, probably already a thousand years old, that were taken back to Venice and placed over the entrance to the basilica of St Mark’s, where replicas still remain. The most significant trophies for many crusaders were the highly marketable holy relics, including two pieces of the True Cross, two of the nails that were driven through Christ’s hands and feet, and His crown ‘which was made of reeds, with thorns as sharp as the points of daggers’.
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Steven Runciman, in his classic 1950s account of the crusades, expressed the passionate feelings still harboured by many about the 1204 sack of Constantinople. ‘There was never’, he wrote, ‘a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.’
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Later historians, however, wonder if the sack was as dreadful as it has been represented. It was natural for Byzantine writers to describe the pillaging in the worst
possible terms, and it is possible that some of the more lurid details of violent and sacrilegious destruction are simply black propaganda.
Some historians believe that the diversion of the Fourth Crusade was the result of a series of accidents. Others believe that each step was planned from the beginning by the influential Doge of Venice, the 90-year-old Enrico Dandolo, in pursuit of Venetian commercial advantage. The most likely explanation, lying somewhere between these two views, is that the course of events was determined by Dandolo’s masterful administration of the unforeseen.
However it came about, the seizure of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade was a turning point for Europe. Though the crusaders’ Latin Empire lasted only 50 years and Byzantine rulers returned to govern a diminished empire for another two centuries, Byzantium was no longer strong enough to resist the Ottoman invasion, which eventually took Constantinople in 1453. Moreover, the memory of the Fourth Crusade made any reconciliation between Catholic west and Orthodox east even more difficult. And for the Greeks the Fourth Crusade brought a radical upheaval – the division of the country between rival rulers.
Six major power centres now came to dominate the affairs of Greece, two from outside it and four within the country itself. As agreed before Constantinople fell, the committee of six Venetians and six Frenchmen elected the new Latin Emperor. Baldwin of Flanders was chosen, was crowned and anointed in a splendid ceremony in Ayía Sophía, and became the nominal overlord of all crusaders ruling in Greece. But the Byzantine ruling family, though it had lost its capital, was not finished. Theodore I Laskaris, who was related by marriage to the Angelos family, remained a rival Byzantine Emperor based in Nicaea, modern Iznik, only 60 miles south-east of Constantinople. These were the two power centres outside Greece.
There were four more, broadly speaking, in Greece itself. In the north, to the east of the Píndos mountains, was the so-called Kingdom of Thessalonika. This went to the crusader Boniface, from Montferrat in Piedmont, a disappointed candidate for the position of Latin Byzantine Emperor. Also in the north, to the west of the Píndos, was the Despotate of Ípiros. This was seized by the crusaders’ one Greek rival in Greece: Michael, illegitimate but cousin of the Alexios who brought the crusaders to Constantinople. He styled himself Michael Angelos Komnenos, emphasising his link with the family that had provided the Byzantine Emperors in the previous century. Central Greece was dominated by the Lordship of Athens, later called a duchy, which remained in the hands of the de la Roche family from Burgundy for 100 years.
Lastly, the Peloponnese in the south was ruled by the Villehardouin family from Champagne, who began the construction of the magnificent buildings of Mistrás.
Besides these six there were other less extensive but significant centres of influence. Venice, which had been allotted three eighths of the whole Byzantine Empire, was little interested in acquiring large territories needing substantial armies to defend and control them, and took only places useful for trade, in particular the harbour towns of Methóni and Koróni in the south-west Peloponnese. The one large Venetian acquisition of territory was Crete, originally allocated to Boniface. But Boniface was more concerned with his Kingdom of Thessalonika than with distant Crete, and immediately sold the island to Venice for a mere 1,000 marks – a tiny fraction of the 85,000 marks that Venice had charged for building the crusader fleet. Within a few years other Venetian families were established in the islands of the Aegean.
This patchwork of possession did not last, and could hardly be expected to do so. These Franks from the western parts of Europe were not stable possessors of land in Greece as they might have been in their own countries, but became competitors in an intense and many-sided struggle for power. In 1224 the Despot of Ípiros took Thessalonika from Boniface’s son and successor Dimitrios, only to lose the city 22 years later to the Byzantine Emperor in exile at Nicaea. In 1259 at the battle of Pelagonia these Byzantines defeated and captured Guillaume de Villehardouin, the ruler of the Peloponnese. Two years later the Byzantines of Nicaea achieved their greatest success, recapturing Constantinople and bringing the tottering Latin Empire to an end.
As time passed, other competitors appeared in Greece: Catalans, Neapolitans, Genoese, the Knights of St John, as well as the Turks. How did the Greeks fare in this territorial turmoil? How strongly did they resist their new rulers, and how far were they caught up in battles between them? Did the Catholicism of the occupiers supplant the Orthodoxy of the subject Greeks? And how did the common people of Greece live, in the countryside and in the towns?
We can find some answers to these questions by following the fortunes of one of the territories of Greece established after the fall of Constantinople to the crusaders in 1204 – the Peloponnese. Its story over the next two and a half centuries falls into three phases: first, half a century of stable rule by the crusading Villehardouin family; second, a century of conflict between the crusaders’ successors and the restored Byzantine Empire; and third, a century of rule by the now enfeebled Byzantines, marked by constant attacks from outside.
The first phase began with the division of territory among the victorious crusaders. The Peloponnese, then and later known as the Morea, had originally been allocated to Venice, but a chance meeting determined otherwise. This meeting in 1205 was between two prominent crusaders, Guillaume de Champlitte and Geoffroy I de Villehardouin. De Villehardouin had already acquired some territory in the Peloponnese, and agreed with de Champlitte that together they would take over all of it. De Champlitte was to become the first Frankish overlord of the Peloponnese. Their meeting, it has been said, was to decide the history of Greece for the next two centuries.
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