The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean

by John Julius Norwich

  When all those international agreements collectively known as the Treaty of Utrecht were signed during the first four months of 1713, Venice had been in possession of the Peloponnese for just over a quarter of a century. Her new experiment in empire had not been a success. The years of Turkish occupation that had preceded her reconquest had reduced a once prosperous land to a place of poverty and desolation; all too soon she had realised that the task of administration would be expensive and largely thankless. The downtrodden local populations, their patriotism nurtured and sanctified as always by the Orthodox clergy, dreamed of a nationhood of their own and saw little advantage in having their infidel overlords replaced by Christian schismatics who showed no greater sympathy with their aspirations. Defence was another problem. In former days, when the Venetian presence had been confined to a few important commercial colonies and garrison towns, it had been manageable enough; but how could nearly 1,000 miles of serrated coastline be made safe from invaders? Even such new defences as were deemed indispensable, like the lowering fortress of Acrocorinth–still today one of the most impressive examples of Venetian military architecture in existence–served only to antagonise still further the local inhabitants, with whose taxes it was paid for and with whose conscript labour it was built. No wonder that when in 1715 Turkish troops appeared once again on the soil of the Peloponnese, they were welcomed as liberators.

  Damad Ali, Grand Vizir to the Sultan Ahmet III, had planned a combined operation, in which a land force would march down through Thessaly while a fleet sailed simultanously southwest through the Aegean; in the course of the summer both prongs of the attack scored success after success. By the time the fleet reached its destination it had already forced the surrender of Tinos and of Aegina, while the army captured Corinth after a five-day siege. Nauplia followed, then Modone and Corone, Monemvasia (Malvasia) and the island of Cythera. Meanwhile, the Turks in Crete, encouraged by reports of their compatriots’ success, had attacked and seized the last remaining Venetian outposts. By the end of 1715, with Crete and the Peloponnese both lost and all the great victories of Francesco Morosini set at naught, the Turks were once again at the gates of the Adriatic. For Venice only a single bulwark remained: Corfu.

  The army that, early in 1716, the Grand Vizir flung against the citadel of Corfu consisted of 30,000 infantry and some 3,000 horse. For the Venetians, estimates differ. They were certainly outnumbered; but in siege warfare comparative strengths are less important than the sophistication of offensive and defensive techniques, and here Venice could count on the knowledge and skill of one of the leading soldiers of his day. Marshal Matthias Johann von der Schulenburg had fought under Marlborough at Oudenarde and Malplaquet, then after the peace had sought service with Venice. He had spent much of the winter improving the fortifications of Corfu, and though he could not prevent the Turkish army from disembarking, he was able to confront it with a defensive system far superior to anything it had previously encountered.

  All through the heat of the summer the siege continued. Early in August, however, there arrived reports that gave new encouragement to the defenders and struck gloom into Turkish hearts. Venice had concluded an alliance with the Empire, which had entered the war. The almost legendary Prince Eugene was once again on the march. He had routed a Turkish army, appropriately enough at Karlowitz–the very town in which, eighteen years before, the Turks had signed that treaty which they had now so shamefully broken–and shortly afterwards had won a still more crushing victory at Peterwardein, where he had killed 20,000 of the enemy and seized 200 of their guns at the expense of fewer than 3,000 of his own men.

  This unexpected necessity of fighting simultaneously on two fronts probably convinced the Turkish commander that if he could not take Corfu quickly he would be unlikely to take it at all. On the night of 18 August he ordered a general assault, to the usual accompaniment of an ear-splitting din of drums, trumpets, rifle and cannon fire and hideous shrieks and war-cries–psychological warfare of a primitive but by no means ineffectual kind. Schulenburg was instantly at his post, summoning every able-bodied Corfiot–women and children, the old and infirm, priests and monks alike–to the defences. After several hours the fighting was still desperate, and he decided to stake all on a sudden sortie. Shortly before dawn, at the head of 800 picked men, he slipped out of a small postern and fell on the Turkish flank from the rear. His success was immediate–and decisive. The Turks were taken by surprise and fled, leaving their rifles and ammunition behind them. Their bewildered colleagues along other sections of the wall saw that the assault had failed and also retired, though in better order. The next night, as if to consolidate the Venetian triumph, a storm broke–a storm of such violence that within hours the Turkish camp was a quagmire, the trenches turned to canals, the tents torn to ribbons or, with their guy-ropes snapped, lifted bodily into the air and carried off by the gale. Out in the roadstead many of the Turkish ships, similarly driven from their moorings, crashed into each other, splintering like matchwood.

  When dawn broke and the full extent of the damage was revealed, few of the erstwhile besiegers wished to remain another moment on an island where the very gods seemed to be against them; indeed, within a matter of days the Turkish commander received orders to return at once. Corfu was saved; Schulenburg was awarded a jewelled sword, a life pension of 5,000 ducats, and the honour of a statue erected in his lifetime in the old fortress.176 The Turks withdrew, never again to seek to enlarge their empire at the expense of Christian Europe.

  The effect on Venetian morale was enormous. Early the following spring a new fleet of twenty-seven sail set out from Zante for the Dardanelles under the command of a brilliant young admiral, Ludovico Flangini. On 21 June 1717 it met the Turks head-on, and after a battle that lasted several days won a splendid victory, marred only by the death of Flangini who, mortally wounded by an arrow, insisted on being carried up to his quarterdeck to watch, through glazing eyes, the last stages of the conflict. A month later, off Cape Matapan, the Ottoman fleet was again beaten and put to flight. By then Prince Eugene had reoccupied the all-important river fortress of Belgrade, and the Turks were retreating on all fronts.

  Had the war continued another season and the Venetians managed to sustain their momentum, the Peloponnese might have been theirs once more–though whether this would have been in their long-term interests is open to doubt. But the Turks decided to sue for peace, and it was now that Venice was to discover how ill-advised she had been to conclude her Austrian alliance. The Empire, faced with new threats from Spain, was anxious to reach a quick settlement and paid little heed to Venetian territorial claims, on the entirely spurious grounds that the victory of Corfu and the subsequent upsurge of Venice’s fortunes were the direct results of Prince Eugene’s victory at Peterwardein. Thus, when the parties met in May 1718 at Passarowitz–together with representatives of England and Holland as mediators–the Venetian envoy, Carlo Ruzzini, found that he could make little impression on his colleagues. For six hours he pleaded, calling for the restitution to Venice of Soudha and Spinalonga, of Tinos, Cythera and the Peloponnese–or, in default of this last, an extension of Venetian territory in Albania as far south as Scutari and Dulcigno, a pirate stronghold that she was eager to eliminate. But his appeal coincided with the news that 18,000 Spanish troops had landed in Sardinia, and he was overruled.

  The treaty was signed on 21 July 1718. Two months later to the day, in another of those terrifying Mediterranean summer storms, a bolt of lightning struck the powder magazine in the old fortress of Corfu. The explosion ignited three smaller ammunition stores, and the citadel was virtually destroyed. The governor’s palace was reduced to rubble, killing the Captain-General and several of his staff. Nature, in a split second, had achieved more than the combined Turkish forces had in several months; the futility of the recent war was more than ever underlined.

  At Passarowitz the frontiers of the Venetian Empire were drawn for the last time. There would be no more gains, or losses
, or exchanges. In the Mediterranean, apart from the historic city and the towns and islands of the lagoon, the empire embraced Istria, Dalmatia and its dependent islands; then northern Albania, including Cattaro (Kotor), Butrinto, Parga, Preveza and Vonitsa; then the Ionian islands of Corfu, Paxos and Antipaxos, Leucas, Cephalonia, Ithaca and Zante; finally, to the south of the Peloponnese, the island of Cythera. That was all. The age of imperial greatness was past. Still, there were compensations. Morosini’s conquests had given Venice nothing but trouble; she was better off without them. Passarowitz, inglorious as it may have appeared, settled her differences with the Turks and proclaimed eternal friendship with Habsburg Austria, the only other power which might have posed a serious political threat. The result was peace–peace which was to last the best part of a century, until the coming of Napoleon brought the Republic itself to an end.

  When George I–having arrived somewhat reluctantly from Hanover–succeeded Queen Anne on the British throne in 1714, he expressed himself perfectly ready to return Gibraltar to Spain. So, somewhat more surprisingly, did Stanhope, the hero of Minorca, who now effectively held the rank of Foreign Secretary and who more than once gave it as his opinion that the Rock was more a liability than an advantage. When he suggested as much in Parliament, however, he was met by such a barrage of protest that he hastily withdrew, fearing a formal resolution which might make it even harder to dispose of. Then, in March 1721, a treaty of mutual defence was signed at Madrid between Spain and France in which the eleven-year-old Louis XV promised his enthusiastic support for the restoration of Gibraltar. Stanhope had died six weeks before, but his policy was pursued by his successors. King George actually wrote to Philip promising to restore it, in return for certain concessions, as soon as the consent of Parliament could be obtained–which was not, as it turned out, very soon; in June he even put his name to the treaty. Once again, in the great international game of musical chairs, the music had stopped: Britain, France, Spain and Prussia177 were now aligned against the Emperor and the Tsar.

  It soon started again. Queen Elizabeth Farnese was always an impossible bedfellow, and she had been far from pleased when young Louis XV had summarily dismissed the young Spanish Infanta whom he had been due to marry. In April 1725 representatives of Austria and Spain signed a treaty at Vienna. Now it was the Emperor who promised to use all his good offices to induce the British to surrender both Gibraltar and Minorca to Spain. But the British had hardened their hearts: Foreign Secretary Lord Townshend showed a very different attitude from that of his predecessor Stanhope. ‘The Imperialists,’ he wrote in June 1725,

  are thoroughly sensible of the great fondness the Parliament and even the whole nation have for Gibraltar; they likewise know that by our laws and Constitution the Crown cannot yield to any foreign power whatsoever any part of his dominions without the consent of Parliament, and that Gibraltar, being yielded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, is as much annexed to the Crown as Ireland, or any part of England.

  Nor did he stop there. He devoted the next year to the formation of a great league of northern powers–it included Sweden, Denmark, and many of the small German principalities–and by 1727 Europe was an armed camp. Already in February of that year Spain declared war on England and laid siege–unsuccessfully–to Gibraltar, while Britain concentrated with rather better results on blocking the annual Spanish treasure fleet from the Americas. Neither party, however, showed much enthusiasm for the war, and hostilities were suspended early in 1728. The ensuing peace, a lady wrote to Lord Carlisle, was rather like the peace of God: it was long in coming and passed all understanding.

  Now, yet again, Queen Elizabeth changed sides. On 9 November 1729 at Seville, the representatives of England, France and Spain signed a treaty in which Spain was induced to grant, perhaps for the first time, an ungrudging recognition of the full consequences of the Treaty of Utrecht, including the British occupation of Gibraltar. In return, England and France promised to facilitate the introduction of Spanish garrisons into Tuscany and Parma–which, two years later, they did. Elizabeth’s uncle Antonio Farnese died suddenly in 1731, and her greatest ambition was realised in March 1732 when her son Don Carlos–with a mother like his, he was despite his name far more an Italian than a Spaniard–was formally installed as Duke of Parma and Grand Prince of Tuscany. That same year, infuriated by the increase of Mediterranean piracy, she sent a large expeditionary force to North Africa. Oran was taken, but soon afterwards the Spanish advance was checked and the commander killed in battle.

  The Queen, however, was not discouraged; indeed, the success of her son in Italy had whetted her appetite for more. Skilful diplomacy with Louis XV now ensured France’s agreement that Don Carlos should also claim Naples and Sicily, at the Emperor’s expense. In the spring of 1734 he accordingly marched south through the Papal States and on 10 May made a triumphal entry into Naples; by the end of the autumn, despite some resistance from the citadels of Messina, Trapani and Syracuse, Sicily too had welcomed her new invaders. (Just four years later Austria was to be forced to make formal cession of the Two Sicilies, and Don Carlos could succeed to the Neapolitan throne as King Charles III.)

  Elizabeth now turned her full attention back to Great Britain, the one enemy she detested more than any other. Of all the issues between the two countries, Gibraltar and Minorca inevitably remained by far the most important. They were not, however, the only bone of contention: there were other quarrels, on both sides of the Atlantic. In Spain, English merchants and seamen were constantly harried by the Inquisition, and even by the ubiquitous press-gangs. English ships provisioning Gibraltar were also subjected to a good deal of interference. In the Americas, there were disputes over boundaries and frontiers, over rights to cut timber and several other issues besides, but the most important was the lucrative smuggling trade that was being shamelessly carried on by the British between Jamaica–in their hands since 1655–and the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean.

  Spain protected her interests as best she could with a fleet of coast guards, some of whom, it appeared, were less humane than others. In 1738 an English mariner named Robert Jenkins appeared before Parliament brandishing aloft his amputated ear, which he claimed had been cut from his head by one of these guarda-costas. It was, perhaps, only a minor atrocity, but the Whig opposition howled for blood and the whole country echoed with cries for revenge. The resultant War of Jenkins’ Ear was declared in 1739.178 Once again Gibraltar and Minorca were under threat; they were, however, well protected by the navy’s Mediterranean fleet under its Commander-in-Chief, the happily-named Admiral Nicholas Haddock, who successfully blockaded both Cadiz and Barcelona and went on to capture two Spanish treasure ships, each reputed to be worth a million dollars. A war fought on so footling an issue should not have lasted long, but on 20 October 1740 the Emperor Charles VI died in Vienna at the age of fifty-five–and all Europe was once again plunged into confusion.

  It must be accounted a misfortune for readers–and indeed for writers–of European history in the eighteenth century that the great struggle for the throne of Spain should have been followed after only twenty-seven years by another, this time for the throne of Austria. The War of the Austrian Succession had, however, less bearing on the Mediterranean, and will therefore take up a good deal less of our time.

  The Austrian Empire, being not so much the successor to as the continuation of the Holy Roman, remained theoretically elective; during the three centuries of Habsburg rule, however, the duties of the electors had become more ceremonial than anything else and the throne was by now to all intents and purposes hereditary. Unfortunately, like their Spanish cousins, at this point in their history the Austrian Habsburgs suffered from an acute shortage of male heirs–to the point where, as early as 1703, Leopold I had specifically decreed that, in default of males, females should be allowed to succeed, the daughters of his elder son, Joseph, naturally enough taking precedence over those of his younger son, Charles. But, as we have seen, everything was ch
anged by Joseph’s sudden death in 1711 and Charles’s succession the following year. By a secret family arrangement, known for some reason as the Pragmatic Sanction, Charles–now Charles VI–gave his own daughters priority over those of his brother, insisting at the same time that in future the Habsburg possessions in northern and central Europe should be indivisible.

  When his one son predeceased him, Charles was the only male Habsburg alive; he was therefore determined to be succeeded on the Austrian throne by his daughter Maria Theresa. This, according to the Pragmatic Sanction, should have posed no problems, and indeed for the first few months after her father’s death in 1740 all promised well. Charles had taken care to obtain solemn guarantees from all the principal European powers that they would respect his daughter’s succession: the Papacy and the Republic of Venice, England and Holland all willingly recognised the twenty-three-year-old Queen,179 France though noncommittal was friendly and reassuring, and the new King of Prussia, Frederick II–later to be known as ‘the Great’–not only gave his recognition but even offered military assistance should she ever need it. He spoke, as it happened, with a forked tongue, but Maria Theresa was not to know it until, on 16 December 1740, a Prussian army of 30,000 invaded the imperial province of Silesia. The War of the Austrian Succession had begun.

  It was to continue until 1748. Like its predecessor it was fought mainly in northern and central Europe–the Mediterranean was never at any stage a primary theatre. Indeed, to one of the two principal protagonists, Frederick of Prussia, it hardly figured at all. To two other rulers on the European stage, on the other hand, it mattered a great deal. Those rulers were Philip V of Spain and the King of Sardinia, Charles Emmanuel III. As we know, in 1718 Charles Emmanuel’s father, Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, had been obliged to surrender Sicily to the Austrian Habsburgs, receiving in exchange the comparatively unimportant island of Sardinia; from 1720–when he formally took possession of his new realm–until 1861, when his distant cousin Victor Emmanuel II became the first king of a united Italy, he and his successors were also known as Kings of Sardinia, although they continued to reign from their ancestral capital of Turin.