Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule From the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence

by David Brewer

  A Spaniard who took part in Lepanto described the resulting carnage:

  The greater fury of the battle lasted near to four hours and was so bloody and horrendous that the sea and the fire seemed as one, many Turkish galleys burning down to the water and the surface of the sea, red with blood, was covered with Moorish coats, turbans, quivers, arrows, bows, shields, oars, boxes, cases and other spoils of war, and above all many human bodies, Christian as well as Turkish, some dead, some wounded, some torn apart, and some not yet resigned to their fate struggling on the surface in their death agony, their strength ebbing away with the blood flowing from their wounds in such quantity that the sea was entirely coloured by it, but despite all this misery our men were not moved to pity for the enemy. Although they begged for mercy they received instead arquebus shots and pike thrusts.5

  Some 200 of the 251 Turkish ships had been destroyed or captured, with the loss of men variously estimated between 20,000 and 30,000. The Holy League losses were much lower: about 50 ships and probably 13,000 killed or mortally wounded.

  The two sides had been fairly evenly matched. The Turks had an advantage in the number of fighting ships (251 against 208) and number of soldiers (some 31,000 against 23,000) but the Holy League had more cannon (by one count 1,314 against 741).6 So the complete Holy League victory was not due to their overwhelming force. Their use of the galleasses and the removal of the galleys’ beaks certainly contributed. So too did the discipline of holding fire. One of Don Juan’s advisers had written to him: ‘As to Your Excellency’s query about whether the artillery in our fleet should fire first or whether to await the enemy’s fire, this is my opinion that no heed should be taken of whether the enemy fires first or later, but that the gunners should hold their fire until Your Excellency gives the order.’7

  Once the gunners had done their work and the soldiers were boarding the enemy ship or repelling boarders, the Holy League had further advantages: their ships had anti-boarding nets and boarders were easy targets as they struggled to get past them; the Spanish troops wielded long pikes that could pick off a swordsman before he could use his weapon; and the Holy League soldiers were protected by metal armour, the Turks only by cloth.

  Finally, there was the imponderable but crucial factor of fighting spirit, which may have burned equally fiercely in the Holy League fleet and in the Turkish. Cervantes fought at Lepanto, where he lost the use of his left hand to a bullet wound, and praised the boarding parties in a tribute that could apply to both sides: ‘When ships are locked and grappled together, the soldier has no more space left him than two feet of plank. Though he knows that at his first careless step he will go down to visit the deep bosom of Neptune, nevertheless with undaunted heart, sustained by the honour which spurs him on, he exposes himself as a mark for all their shot, and endeavours to pass along that narrow causeway into the enemy’s ship. And, most amazing of all, no sooner does one man fall, never to rise again this side of Doomsday, than another takes his place and if he, in his turn, falls into the sea, which lies in wait for him like an enemy, another, and yet another, takes his place, without a moment passing between their deaths: the greatest display of valour and daring to be found in all hazards of war.’8

  Lepanto was fought in Greek waters, and many Greeks took part in the battle, on the ships of both sides but mainly on those of the Holy League. Three of the Venetian galleys were commanded by Greeks who had converted to the Catholic faith, two from Crete and one from Corfu. George Finlay in his 1877 history maintained that there were over 25,000 Greeks in the Holy League fleet as crew or oarsmen, and about 5,000 in the Turkish, so that their number ‘far exceeded that of the combatants of any of the nations engaged’.9 Did the existence of the Holy League, with a fleet containing many Greeks and intent on attacking the Turks, offer an opportunity for the Greeks in Greece? Could one of the Holy League member states be induced to support the Greeks in driving out the Turks? Some thought so, and even before Lepanto there were several Greek appeals for help to Spain or Venice, none of which was successful. The last of these appeals was to Venice from the leaders of the Mani in the southern Peloponnese.

  In the summer of 1570 the independent Venetian fleet under Marco Quirini captured a Turkish fortress in the Mani, probably the one overlooking the tiny rocky harbour of Pórto Káyio at the Mani’s southern tip. The Venetians soon left, and the Greeks of the Mani claimed that a chance had been missed to conquer the whole Peloponnese, so they called on Venice to return, promising their own aid.

  As a result, a Venetian representative spent a few weeks in the Mani in March 1571 to discuss possible joint action, and at the end of his visit the Mani leaders sent their proposals to Venice. They nominated the principals of the campaign, a Venetian as leader and two Greeks as next in command. They claimed that, as a result of the raids they had already made on Turkish towns, ‘We have pillaged half the Peloponnese. We have burnt and destroyed and battled with the Turks, and with God’s help we have driven them from their homes and cut off their heads and put them to the sword in many places.’10 The Greeks offered to provide 400 fighting men and called on Venice to send 2,000. Then they made their own demands. Venice was to send weapons – 1,300 spears, 300 muskets, 300 breastplates – and money. If Venice was successful in taking over the Peloponnese, all inhabitants of the Mani were to be exempt from taxes, and the leaders were to be given hereditary estates. But if the campaign failed Venice was to remove all the inhabitants to an unspecified place of safety, to avoid Turkish retribution. The proposal was left at the discretion of the Venetian admiral on the spot, but like the previous proposals the plan came to nothing.

  This failed appeal of the Mani to Venice later came to be seen in a different light: as a broken promise by the Venetians to the Mani, paralleled by the broken promises of other powers. This view was strongly expressed in a document known as The Chronicle of Galaxídhi. It was written by a monk in 1703 – 130 years after the events described – but claimed to be based on contemporary sources. The Chronicle says: ‘I will tell you of an evil that occurred through the treachery of the Franks, who always opposed the Greek religion. They called on all Christians to take up arms and harass the Turks, and promised their support. The Greeks agreed that on land and sea they would attack the Turks, saying “We will either die or escape from slavery.” Then came the news that the Venetians were not fighting and the Franks were nowhere appearing, and were laughing at the Greeks and sending no help. On this news the Greek forces dissolved in disorder.’11

  This proposal by the Mani was not aimed at gaining independence for the Peloponnese but was intended to replace Turkish rule by a Venetian government that was supposed to be non-taxing – surely an oxymoron. But it is doubtful if rule by strict colonial governors from Catholic Venice would have brought any benefits to the Greeks. Furthermore the proposers of the plan wanted something for themselves – money, weapons, estates or tax-free status. Some Greek historians have seen these Greeks as early champions of Greek liberation: ‘They created in the inhabitants of Greece a confidence in the coming collapse of the Turkish occupier, forged the martial spirit and the revolutionary temper of the Greeks, and above all strengthened their vitality and their national consciousness.’ 12 But the expulsion of the Turkish occupier was more than two centuries in the future. Greeks of the time ignored the fact that the Holy League had little interest in fighting the Greeks’ battles for them, and convinced themselves that the League had betrayed an opportunity for some vaguely imagined liberation from Turkish rule. Later Greeks attributed to their forebears exalted motives of altruism and patriotism, and to the Venetians base treachery.

  A different perspective on Lepanto appears in Chesterton’s memorable rollicking poem ‘Lepanto’ of 1911, which gives vivid colour to stereotypical images of a sinister dissolute Sultan and a gallant debonair Don John, ‘the last knight of Europe’. Some of the poem’s details show Chesterton’s underlying purpose. He was already championing the Roman Catholic Church, though his
formal conversion came ten years later. In the poem he disparages the Protestant north with its ‘cold queen of England’ where Protestants reject central tenets of the Catholic faith, or, as Chesterton puts it, ‘Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee’. Another line, where Don John is called ‘Death-light of Africa!’ had a contemporary relevance for Chesterton. In October of the year that ‘Lepanto’ was published Italy seized Libya, the last Ottoman territory in north Africa, and the treaty of the following year established the complete reconquest of the Ottoman Barbary states by Catholic Christian powers.13 So for Chesterton the Protestants had betrayed the Christian mission but the Catholics had gloriously maintained it at Lepanto, and were still doing so.

  The Turkish reaction to their disastrous defeat at Lepanto was at first fatalistic. An immediate firman from Selim to his surviving commander Pertev Pasha said: ‘A battle can be won or lost. It was destined to happen this way according to God’s will.’14 But within a few days the grand vizier Sokollu was taking a more robust line, saying to the Venetian emissary in Constantinople: ‘In wresting Cyprus from you, we deprived you of an arm; in defeating our fleet, you have only shaved our beard. An arm when cut off cannot grow again; but a shorn beard will grow all the better for the razor.’15 And Sokollu’s grandiloquent instructions for rebuilding the fleet were: ‘If necessary we shall make anchors of silver, rigging of silk and sails of satin. If you lack anything for the equipment of a vessel, you have only to ask it of me.’16 By May 1572, only seven months after Lepanto, 150 Turkish ships had indeed been built, including eight similar to the Venetian galleasses, and though timber was unseasoned and crews and soldiers inexperienced the Turkish navy was ready to put to sea again.

  In Venice and Spain and throughout Christian Europe the news of the victory of Lepanto was received with ecstatic rejoicing, and the battle was presented in a glorious light by painters and poets. But the fruits of victory proved hard to gather. On 1 May 1572 Pope Pius V died, and it is said that his prescient last words were: ‘If this year passes without some memorable action, men’s spirits will fail them and our labour and the great victory will be fruitless.’17 A Holy League fleet under Don Juan did sail in 1572. It twice tried to bring the Turkish ships to battle, once off the southern Peloponnese and once off Navarino, but on both occasions the Turks withdrew, showing a prudence that might have saved them from the disaster of Lepanto. Venice tried to keep the Holy League together, but papal crusading zeal had died with Pius V, and Philip of Spain was occupied with war in the Low Countries. Venice did not have the resources to continue the fight alone and, even if it had, this might have led to Turkish attacks on Venice’s Italian territories or on Crete. A year after Lepanto the captain-general of the Venetian fleet wrote to the Senate: ‘To have been leagued with allies has wrought the greatest injury to the Republic,’ and he concluded that, ‘He who has not good prospect of totally or in large measure destroying the enemy will be better advised to seek peace with him.’18 Thus in the following year, on 7 March 1573, Venice signed a humiliating peace treaty with Turkey that required Venice to pay a substantial indemnity of 300,000 ducats and make other concessions. The Venetian spirit that had led three years earlier to their firm rejection of the Turkish ultimatum over Cyprus had indeed failed them. When Don Juan learned of the treaty he is said to have taken down the Holy League flag on his ship with his own hand and raised the banner of Spain in its place.

  Don Juan achieved one last success, leading a Spanish fleet to seize Tunis in August 1573, but a year later it was lost again to the Turks, and five years later in 1578 Spain followed Venice in signing a truce with the Turks. Don Juan’s last years were spent as governor-general of the Spanish Netherlands, which was in continuing revolt against its foreign rulers. He hated the country, calling it a ‘Babylon of disgust’ and lamenting that he was ‘without a single person in whom I can confide’.19 His tenure lasted less than two years; he achieved little, and in 1578, aged only 31, he died of typhus.

  The allied fleet of 1570 had failed to achieve its object of preventing the Turks from seizing Cyprus, and the Holy League of 1571 had failed in its wider purpose of making continuous war on the Turks. But Lepanto was significant because it broke the belief in Turkish invincibility at sea. Under Suleyman the Turks had reached their limits of expansion on land against Europe, and Lepanto showed that under Selim they had reached the limit by sea. From now on Turkish fleets were confined to the eastern Mediterranean, and though raiders of the Barbary coast remained a threat there were no longer fears of a Turkish fleet landing in Spain or anywhere else west of the Adriatic. From now on the Ottoman Empire came to be recognised as a power parallel to those of Europe, with whom European powers would fight if necessary – as they did with each other – but otherwise would cooperate, make commercial agreements and even form alliances. With Lepanto, the age of religion-inspired crusades came to an end.

  9

  Mainland Greece and Town Life

  The 100 years from roughly 1550 to 1650 is perhaps the most opaque period of Greece’s hidden centuries. We know little of the life of the people from the Greeks themselves. They did not write letters or keep diaries, and the only glimpses we get of their lives are from surviving popular songs and from the oral tradition, which is notoriously unreliable on facts though often illuminating on sentiments. Greek Church records are mainly concerned with the activities of the higher clergy and with monasteries, and tell us little of ordinary life. Apart from the useful population censuses, Turkish documents are largely inaccessible. Until recently western scholars have been refused access to them,1 and even those who know Turkish and have been able to study them have had to cope with the unfamiliar high formal language in which they are written.

  Also by the beginning of the seventeenth century the Italians had gone from the mainland and the Aegean islands. By 1540 the Turks had taken over Venice’s mainland outposts at Navplion, Methóni, Koróni and Monemvasía, and all the islands of the Cyclades except for Venetian- held Tínos were under Turkish control. The Turks completed their dominance of the eastern Mediterranean with the conquest of Cyprus in 1570, and the only significant Venetian possessions remaining were Crete until 1669 and the Ionian islands for a further century. So outside those two areas Italian records can no longer help us.

  Foreign residents in Greece were a rarity, limited to a few British or French consuls in major towns and some Jesuit or Capuchin priests. There were a few foreign travellers, though nothing to compare with the increasing numbers of those who came in the following century. But the seventeenth-century visitors usually had their own concerns, often archaeology or botany, or touched at Greece briefly on the way to somewhere else, as William Biddulph did en route to serve as Protestant chaplain at Aleppo. So these travellers often had little opportunity to observe Greek life, even if they had an interest in doing so.

  In spite of these limitations there is enough evidence to give us a picture of Greek life in the towns of the period, which was strikingly different from life on the land as described in Chapter 4. As one historian puts it: ‘The contrast which exists between the rural community and the city in every society was rarely more striking than in the medieval Islamic world. Here it was not merely a contrast between isolation and congregation, between the dispersed economy of the village and the concentrated economy of the town, between oppressed poverty and relative freedom and wealth, between producer and consumer. It was a contrast of civilizations.’2 One of the main contrasts was in the working day. The agricultural labourer, provided he paid his taxes, could work as he wished, whereas the townsman’s working life was tightly regulated through the guild system.

  All craftsmen, that is those using local or imported raw materials to make goods and sell them, had to belong to a guild, for example the guild of furriers, potters, or producers of cloth or ironware. The leading members of the guild were the master craftsmen, who appointed four officers. One was elected from their own members to run the business side of the gu
ild and represent his fellows in dealings with other guilds. Another was appointed to apportion the tax quota among the guild members and deliver the total to the government. He also represented the guild when taking grievances to the local capital or to Constantinople. A third officer acted as buying agent for the guild’s raw materials and a fourth was responsible for quality and price control. All four had to be selected before a guild could be registered. Only the master craftsmen could open their own establishments, of which the number was strictly limited. Below the master craftsmen and working for them were the skilled craftsmen who could not open their own shops, the ordinary craftsmen, and at the lowest level the apprentices.

  The guilds would operate in and around the great market in the centre of town, which also typically included the main mosque, a major square and various institutions that were supported by charitable foundations, such as Islamic colleges, inns, public baths and fountains. Guild members, who might be Muslim and Christian in the same guild, did not live in the centre but in one of the self-contained quarters of the town. These usually contained 25 to 50 houses and Muslims, Greeks and Jews lived in different quarters. The division of a city into such quarters was of course common elsewhere, for instance in Siena where the 17 contrade districts, those which remain of the original 59, still fiercely contest twice a year the dramatic bareback horse race, the Palio, in the Piazza del Campo.

  There were three important limitations on the guild’s activities. First, nothing could be sold above a price fixed by the government, which was designed to allow a modest profit of about ten per cent. Naturally this maximum became standard: to charge less would be to throw away profit, and would undercut and damage other guild members. Second, the guild could sell only the goods allowed to it. This meant that no guild could compete with another guild, but also that diversification was impossible. Third, strict quality control meant that the goods produced could never vary. In Constantinople even the sale of shoes with pointed toes was forbidden as being ‘against the ancient mode’.