The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (52 page)

Somehow it was repelled, but the Captain-General knew that he was beaten at last. His garrison was reduced to a mere 3,600 men. There would be no more reinforcements that year, the defences were in ruins and he knew that he could not hope to hold Candia for another winter. By surrendering now, on the other hand, rather than waiting for the inevitable taking of the town by storm, he might be able to secure favourable, even honourable, terms. Admittedly he had no powers to negotiate on behalf of the Republic, but he was aware that on at least three occasions in the past–the first as early as 1647, and then again in 1657 and 1662–the question of a negotiated peace had been debated in the Senate and on every occasion had found a measure of support. In any case, he had little choice.

The treaty was agreed on 6 September 1669. The Grand Vizir, who had much personal admiration for Morosini, proved generous. The Venetians would leave the town, freely and without molestation, within twelve days, though this term could be prolonged–as indeed it was–in the event of bad weather. All the artillery that had already been in place before the beginning of the siege must be left where it was; the remainder they could take with them. The Turks would be left as masters, but Venice could retain the Gramvousa Islands at Crete’s northwestern extremity, their island fortress of Spinalonga and, in the extreme east, the town of Sitia which had never surrendered.

And so on 26 September, after 465 years of occupation and twenty-two of siege, the banner of St Mark was finally lowered from what was left of the citadel of Candia, and the last official representatives of the Republic returned to their mother city. With them went virtually all the civilian population of the town, none of whom had any desire to remain under their new masters. For Venice it was the end of an epoch. She had retained her three outposts, and there remained one or two pinpoints on the map of the Aegean where the winged lion still ruled, though his roar was gone and even his growl was barely audible; but Crete had been her last major possession outside the Adriatic, and with its loss not only her power but even her effective presence in the eastern Mediterranean was dead forever.

It had at least died magnificently. Never had Venetians fought longer or more heroically on land or sea; never had they faced more determined adversaries. The financial cost had been enormous, that in human lives greater still. Moreover, for nearly a quarter of a century, they had fought virtually alone. The assistance of their allies, on the comparatively rare occasions when it was given at all, had been grudging, half-hearted, inadequate or self-seeking; at times–as when it had caused long and inactive delays, or when it was suddenly withdrawn without warning–it had been positively detrimental to the common cause. Even in those last two or three years, when the former policy of attrition gave way to a frenzy of destruction and bloodletting, foreign interventions served only to demoralise and to discourage.

Yet it was neither demoralisation nor discouragement that drove Francesco Morosini to his surrender. It was the cold realisation that the loss of Candia was inevitable, and that the only choice was between departure on honourable terms now or wholesale massacre and pillage a very little later. Predictably, perhaps, he found himself in serious trouble when he returned to Venice. He was accused not only of having exceeded his legitimate powers by treating with the enemy as he had, but of cowardice, treason–even peculation and corruption. Fortunately he had no lack of champions who were quick to defend him, and when the question was finally put to the Great Council its vote was overwhelmingly in his favour. He emerged from the affair without a stain on his reputation–determined, however, to be avenged.

And indeed it was not long before the pendulum began to swing. Only twelve years later, in 1681, the Hungarian Protestant subjects of the Emperor Leopold I rose in revolt against what they considered to be Habsburg Catholic oppression and, almost insanely, invited the Sultan to support them. Mehmet IV asked nothing better, and in the spring of 1683 set off for Edirne, where a substantial army awaited him. It included whole regiments of artillery and engineers, with a number of irregular units, composed principally of Tartars from the Crimea. When they reached Belgrade, the Sultan handed over the command to his Grand Vizir Karamustafa (‘Black Mustafa’); and the last great Ottoman army to set forth against Christian Europe headed towards Vienna.

This was the second Turkish attempt on the imperial capital. Süleyman the Magnificent had set up his camp before the walls of Vienna in September 1529, but had been ultimately unsuccessful; after less than three weeks, the unexpectedly fierce resistance, the shortage of supplies and above all the approach of winter had forced him to retreat. Karamustafa had the advantage of an earlier arrival in the campaigning season: it was 13 July when he drew up his army outside the city. On the other hand, he had no heavy artillery–its transportation over such a distance would have been virtually impossible–and was obliged to rely largely on his sappers, mining beneath the fortifications in the hope of inducing a collapse from below. This had long been a Turkish speciality and proved, as always, highly effective; Vienna might well have fallen but for the arrival in the nick of time of a Polish army under King John Sobieski. Suddenly, the Turks found themselves caught in murderous crossfire between a desperate garrison and a brilliantly led relief force, and after a day-long battle fled in confusion. Süleyman had at least made a controlled withdrawal and had kept his army intact; Karamustafa suffered a debacle. In that one day, the reputation of the Ottoman Empire as an all-conquering power was gone forever. Never again would it constitute a serious threat to Christendom.

Vienna is well over 200 miles from the Mediterranean, and its unsuccessful siege would not have found a place in this book were it not for the fact that it encouraged the Emperor, the Pope and Sobieski to advance on the shattered Turks. Venice, still smarting from the loss of Crete, now received increasingly urgent appeals to join a new offensive league by which, using her sea power combined with their own on land, the Sultan could be swept from Europe for good–an expulsion from which no nation would derive greater benefit than the Most Serene Republic itself.

Venice sent no immediate reply. She had taken well over a decade to recover from the effects of the Cretan war; was she really to stake everything yet again, on the fortunes of another confrontation? On the other hand, the situation had undoubtedly changed since the Turkish defeat at Vienna. The next phase of the war might be fought at least partially at sea; did not her own interests–let alone her good name–demand that she should now pursue a more active policy? The Turks were weak and demoralised: their Grand Vizir, the hated Karamustafa, had been executed on the Sultan’s orders the moment he returned to Constantinople; their army was in shreds. Was this not the time to take the offensive, not only to avenge the loss of Crete but to recover it–and perhaps her other former colonies as well? After long debate, the imperial ambassador was informed on 19 January 1684 that Venice would join the league.

Her Captain-General at that time was once again Francesco Morosini. Despite his ultimate and inevitable surrender of Candia, he remained at sixty-four by far the ablest of Venice’s captains; he assumed command of his fleet of sixty-eight fighting ships–together with a number of auxiliary vessels from the Pope, the Knights of Malta and the Grand Duke of Tuscany–with enthusiasm and determination. Once out of harbour he headed straight for his first objective, the island of Leucas, and captured it, after a sixteen-day siege, on 6 August. Few quick conquests could have had a more strategic value: from its situation between Corfu and Cephalonia, Leucas commanded the entrances to both the Adriatic and the Gulf of Corinth; it also provided a bridgehead from which, a few weeks later, a small land force crossed to the mainland and forced the surrender of the castle of Preveza. Meanwhile, further north along the coast, the Christian populations of Bosnia and Herzegovina rose in simultaneous revolt against their Turkish overlords and drove south into Albania and Epirus. Further north again, the armies of the Emperor and John Sobieski continued their advance through Hungary. By the time winter had set in, Venice and her allies had good reason to be proud of their success.

With the coming of spring in 1685 Morosini sailed against the old Venetian port of Corone–lost to the Turks in 1500–landing some 9,500 men, including imperial, papal and Tuscan troops, as well as 3,000 Venetians and 120 Knights of St John. This time the Ottoman garrison put up a desperate defence; it was not until August that the white flag was raised on the citadel. Then, while the terms of surrender were being discussed, a Turkish cannon opened fire, killing several of the Venetians. Negotiations were immediately broken off; the allied troops burst into the town in fury and gave it over to massacre. A whole series of other fortresses followed; within another two or three months much of the southern Peloponnese was under allied control and a Swedish general, Count Otto William von Königsmark, had arrived–hired by the Republic at a salary of 18,000 ducats–to take overall command of the land forces.

Early in 1686, Morosini and Königsmark met on Leucas for a council of war. There were four main objectives from which to choose: Chios, Euboea, Crete or the rest of the Peloponnese. Largely, it seems, on the insistence of Königsmark, the last of these targets was selected. In the next two summers’ campaigning the league forces accepted the submissions of Modone and Navarino, Argos and Nauplia, Lepanto, Patras and Corinth. Morosini, meanwhile, had sailed his fleet around to Attica and had begun to lay siege to Athens. And now there occurred the second of the two great tragedies of history the blame for which, alas, must be laid at Venice’s door. The miserable story of the Fourth Crusade has already been told in Chapter VII; we must now sadly record that on Monday, 26 September 1687, at about seven o’clock in the evening, a mortar placed by Morosini on the Mouseion hill opposite the Acropolis was fired by a German lieutenant at the Parthenon–which, by a further curse of fate, the Turks were using as a powder magazine. He scored a direct hit. The consequent explosion almost completely demolished the
cella
and its frieze, together with eight columns on the north side and six on the south with their entablatures.

Nor was this the end of the destruction. After the capture of the city, Morosini–doubtless remembering the carrying off of the four bronze horses from the Hippodrome of Constantinople in 1205–tried to remove the horses and chariot of Athena that formed part of the west pediment of the temple. In the process the whole group fell to the ground and was smashed to pieces. The determined conqueror had to content himself with lesser souvenirs: the two flanking lions of the four now standing at the entrance to the Venetian Arsenal.

It is unlikely that many tears were shed in Venice over the fate of the Parthenon. The Venetians were too busy celebrating. Their last major victory at Lepanto had been well over a hundred years before; more important still, the conquests which Morosini was now making–unparalleled since the fifteenth century–seemed to point towards a final lifting of that black Ottoman cloud that had overshadowed them for so long, and perhaps even a return to those far-off days of commercial imperialism. No wonder they rejoiced, and no wonder that, when their Doge Marcantonio Giustinian died in March 1688, Francesco Morosini was elected, unanimously and at the first ballot, as his successor.

Morosini had, however, no intention of giving up his command. On 8 July 1688 he led a fleet of some 200 sail out of the Gulf of Athens and headed for his next objective, the island of Euboea (or Negroponte, as the Venetians called it). Like Crete, Euboea had first come into Venetian hands as a result of the partition of the Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade, and although Venice had forfeited it to the Turks over two centuries before–in 1470–its loss had never ceased to rankle. It was known to be heavily fortified, and the Turkish garrison of 6,000, even if it were to receive no reinforcements, was expected to put up a spirited resistance. But the league forces numbered twice that many, and neither Morosini nor Königsmark had any serious doubts that the island would soon be theirs. They had reckoned, unfortunately, without acts of God. Suddenly their luck changed, and no sooner had the siege begun than an appalling epidemic–probably dysentery or malaria–struck their camp. Within a few weeks the army had lost a third of its men, including Königsmark himself. In mid-August the arrival of a 4,000-strong relief force from Venice encouraged Morosini to continue, but almost immediately he found a mutiny on his hands. The imperial troops from Brunswick–Hanover flatly refused to fight any longer. With disaffection spreading almost as fast as disease, he had no choice but to order a general re-embarkation.

Yet even now he could not reconcile himself to the humiliation of a direct return to Venice. One more victory, however modest, would be enough to redeem his honour and enable his subjects to greet him as a hero after all. The fortress of Malvasia (Monemvasia) in the southeastern corner of the Peloponnese, one of the few mainland strongholds left to the Turks, would serve the purpose admirably. There was, however, a problem. The castle, set high on its virtually impregnable rock, could be approached only by a narrow path, most of it less than a yard across–useless for a besieging army. Bombardment was the only hope, and Morosini ordered the construction of two gun emplacements; but even before they were completed he himself was struck down by illness. Leaving the command to his Proveditor-General, Girolamo Corner, he sailed home in January 1690, sick and disconsolate, to a stirring welcome which he was quite unable to enjoy.

Corner proved a worthy successor, and a luckier one. He took Malvasia, where the standard of St Mark was hoisted on the battlements for the first time in 150 years; then, hearing that an Ottoman fleet was heading through the archipelago, sailed north again to meet it and scattered it off Mytilene (Lesbos), inflicting considerable damage in the process. Returning once more to the Adriatic, he launched a surprise attack on Valona, captured it and dismantled its defences. He was still there when the fever struck him; a day or two later he was dead. His successor showed himself a broken reed.