Venetians

by Paul Strathern

  Since the Ottomans had taken Cyprus in 1571 they had begun to view the Venetian island of Crete as the last remaining obstacle to their domination of the eastern Mediterranean. Here was a danger that lay at the heart of the trading routes within their empire and would always pose a potential threat as long as it remained in Venetian hands. Inevitably as relations between Venice and Constantinople became increasingly fractious, it was not long before an incident sparked a full-scale war over this issue. Ironically, the incident in question had nothing to do with the Venetians, and was in fact provoked by the Knights of St John, whose habit of indiscriminate raids on merchant shipping had long incurred Venetian animosity.

  The 600-year-old Knights of St John, originally a crusading order, had been driven from their base in Rhodes by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1522, eventually making their headquarters in Malta, where in 1565 they had resisted the most determined efforts by Suleiman to dislodge them. From this time on, they had existed largely as naval mercenaries and pirates. In late September 1644, a flotilla of half a dozen ships under the flag of St John happened across a poorly protected galleon travelling from Constantinople to Alexandria, transporting a select group of pilgrims on their way to the annual Haj in Mecca. Amongst its passengers were the Cadi of Mecca,* fifty Greek slaves, and thirty members of the sultan’s harem, including his favourite wife. The galleon, along with its passengers, was taken captive by the Knights, who then sailed west, calling in at southern Crete to take on provisions and release the Greek slaves. News of this incident soon reached Constantinople.

  The new sultan was now Ibrahim I, the great-grandson of the Venetian Safiye. Ibrahim had emerged by the customary process after spending many years in the Gold Cage. Unfortunately, this experience had left him so mentally unstable that he had soon become known, with good reason, as Ibrahim the Mad. Upon hearing the news of what had happened to his favourite wife and the members of his harem, he flew into a state of uncontrollable anger.† In response to this outrage by the Knights of St John, Ibrahim ordered the immediate slaughter of all Christians throughout the Ottoman Empire. This would have eliminated a considerable number of Greeks, Serbians, Albanians, Georgians, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, and so forth, many of whom provided the commercial lifeblood of their local communities; indeed, conservative estimates indicate that this could have involved anything up to a half million souls, and would have wreaked havoc on the economic life and political stability of the empire. In the event, Sultan Ibrahim’s Grand Vizier ‘reinterpreted’ this ruinous order, but would later pay for such bravery with his life. (During his eight-year reign Ibrahim would be in the habit of promoting, and then executing, Grand Viziers on an all-but-annual basis, though he would eventually be strangled at the behest of his final appointment to this post.)

  In a more considered response to the act of piracy, the Grand Vizier ordered the assembling of a vast fleet in the Bosphorus. By the time this set sail on the last day of April 1645 it consisted of more than 400 ships carrying possibly as many as 100,000 troops. It was naturally assumed that this fleet was destined for the Knights of St John’s headquarters in Malta, but the Venetian bailo in Constantinople sent a despatch to Venice warning that he had received intelligence that the Turkish fleet was in fact bound for Crete. His suspicions were dismissed when it was learned that the Turkish fleet had sailed past Crete, and in June had put in for supplies and ammunition at the south-western Peloponnese port of Navarino (modern Pylos).

  When news reached the new Pope Innocent X in Rome that this huge Ottoman fleet was sailing west, he immediately suspected that the Turks were planning a full-scale invasion of Italy. Acting decisively, he summoned Naples, Tuscany and Venice to join with the papal forces and form a joint fleet to repel the Turks. All agreed, and moves to assemble this naval force began at once.

  After two weeks at Navarino, the Turkish fleet again set sail; but no sooner had it sailed over the horizon than it reversed its course, sailing east for Crete, where it arrived on 25 June, landing an army on the beaches to the west of Canea (modern Hania), the city controlling the west of the island. Within days, the port of Canea was blockaded and the Turkish army had begun digging in around the walls in preparation for a siege. When news of this surprise move reached Rome and Venice, the combined fleet set sail with all speed for Crete, picking up reinforcements on the way. Eventually the allied fleet numbered more than thirty galleons and seventy galleys, a well-trained and well-equipped fighting force whose skill would easily have matched that of the cumbersome Ottoman fleet.

  However, by the time the allied fleet arrived off Crete, it learned that Canea had surrendered on 25 August, and the Turkish army had begun its march eastwards along the coast towards Candia (modern Heraklion). In September the Venetian fleet, supported by its allies, attempted to retake Canea by surprise attack, but were driven back by a storm. During a second surprise attack the allied ships were dispersed by another storm, and in a familiar development the papal and Neapolitan contingents decided to return home rather than ride out the winter in such a vulnerable situation. The ships of the Venetian fleet were now left on their own in dangerous waters to defend their colony as best they could. Fortunately the Turkish forces soon found themselves in similar disarray when their commanders were summoned to Constantinople to face a charge of transporting back insufficient booty, on which charge they were summarily executed. Not until July 1647, when the new Turkish commanders were in place, did the Ottoman army begin its siege of Candia.

  Yet Venetian ships were soon managing to elude the Turkish blockade of the harbour and keep supplied the 15,000 or so who had taken refuge within the city. Safe behind the city’s formidable walls, the inhabitants had sufficient provisions and ammunition to resist a prolonged siege. Both the Venetians and the Turks realised that the key to Crete lay in who held Candia, but the Venetians understood that they simply did not have sufficient manpower to fight a land war against the Ottoman army, which was soon being reinforced with further troops transported from the Anatolian mainland, as well as by many indigenous Cretan Greeks, who resented the injustices inflicted upon them by their Venetian colonisers. On the other hand, the Venetians well understood that even with their depleted fleet they held the advantage where naval superiority was concerned. If they conducted a prolonged and daring naval campaign, this might well swing the war in their favour.

  In pursuance of this policy various Turkish ports along the southern Dalmatian coast were bombarded and overrun. This was followed by some unexpectedly successful attacks in the Aegean. Finally, in 1648 the Venetians succeeded in blockading the Dardanelles, thus severing the Ottoman capital’s main naval link with the rest of its Empire. When news of this reached Constantinople it caused widespread public alarm and civil disorder. Consequently, Ibrahim I was deposed and murdered, to be succeeded by his six-year-old son, who became Mehmet IV. Inevitably, even at this early age Mehmet’s sanity also came under suspicion – and with some justification. A few days after his birth his father had flown into a rage with his mother, wrenched the infant from her arms and hurled him into a deep cistern in the Topkapi Palace. In the nick of time Mehmet had been rescued by harem servants, but in the course of this incident his head had suffered a serious blow, and afterwards he had retained a permanently scarred dent in his skull. Fortunately this proved to have affected only his outer skull, leaving his mental faculties intact and able to develop to full sanity, apart presumably from certain unavoidable psychological scars.

  The ascent to the sultanate of the young Mehmet IV was followed by a power struggle between his mother, the Valide Sultan, Grand Vizier Sofu Mehmet and the commanders of the sultan’s crack household guard, the Janissaries. These divisions were echoed throughout the Ottoman Empire, and led to a weakening of the Turkish forces in Crete – though despite Venetian naval dominance, supplies continued to reach the invading army who were able to persist with the siege of Candia.

  In 1649 Venice approached Constantinople with the aim of securing
a peace treaty; but negotiations came to an abrupt halt when the Ottomans insisted upon the surrender of Crete. With Ottoman rule in disarray, and Venice barely able to finance a war, though neither side was willing to give in, hostilities would continue intermittently through the ensuing decades. In 1656 the Venetians won a great victory at the Battle of the Dardanelles, inflicting on the Ottoman fleet a defeat such as it had not suffered since Lepanto. The following year Captain-General Lazzaro Mocenigo penetrated the Ottoman defences, sailed across the Sea of Marmara and led his squadron of twelve ships right up to the walls of Constantinople. Unfortunately, his ship was then struck by a cannonball from artillery on the walls: this ignited the ship’s magazine and Mocenigo was killed in the ensuing explosion. Persuaded that any further attempt to inflict damage on the city, let alone take it, was futile, the Venetian squadron then sailed back across the Sea of Marmara.

  Meanwhile, although the Turkish forces now virtually controlled most of Crete, the siege of Candia dragged on and on. As the years passed this siege became a cause célèbre in Europe, especially in France, with dashing young noblemen voyaging to Crete on various minor crusades to fight the infidel and relieve Candia. Such adventures were regarded as strictly unofficial by the French authorities, for French trade in the eastern Mediterranean was benefiting greatly from the lack of Venetian competition and they had no wish to upset the Ottoman authorities. In 1668 Louis XIV himself unofficially despatched a force of 5,000 men to relieve Candia, which had by now been under siege for some twenty years. When this too ended in failure, the Venetians finally realised that they could not afford to prosecute such a ruinous war any longer, and the following year agreed to a peace treaty in which they were humiliatingly forced to concede all the major Ottoman requests. After more than four and a half centuries of occupation, Venice’s oldest major colony in the eastern Mediterranean was surrendered, though the Republic did manage to retain various minor possessions in the Aegean for use as trading ports.

  This treaty and the lack of any formally combined opposition enabled the Ottoman Empire to begin expanding once more, west out of Hungary into central Europe, and in 1683, after an absence of more than a century and a half, the Turks were once more at the gates of Vienna. While the Austrians put up desperate resistance, managing to fight off the Ottoman army thanks to the sudden intervention of Polish-Lithuanian forces, Pope Innocent XI rapidly organised yet another Holy League. This consisted of the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Venice, which were joined two years later by Russia. Confident in the support of such powerful allies, the Venetians now launched a major new campaign in Greece. At sea, their replenished fleet was commanded by Francesco Morosoni, who had held out so valiantly during the final years at Candia. At the same time a land campaign was launched by the Venetian army under the command of the Swedish mercenary general Count Otto Wilhelm von Königsmarck.

  Over the coming years Königsmarck would manage to retake from the Ottomans large tracts of the Peloponnese, including such strategic former Venetian ports as Coron and Nauplia. Meanwhile Morosoni was achieving considerable success in the Aegean, as well as aiding the Venetian land forces. However, it was in September 1687 that Morosoni left his most lasting mark, when he laid siege to Athens and one of his mortars scored a direct hit on the Parthenon, which the Ottomans had been using as their gunpowder magazine. The ensuing explosion blew off the roof of the building and damaged several pillars, leaving Ancient Greece’s greatest monument in the ruined state, which it remains to this day.

  After another decade or so of intermittent warfare, the Ottoman forces were all but exhausted and sued for peace, which was finally signed at Karlowitz (Karlovci in modern Serbia) in February 1699. This confirmed the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire as the dominant power in central Europe. Venice had now retaken a portion of its lost territory and once again had an eastern empire, yet this illusion of imperial greatness was but an echo of an era that was now past. The regained colonies in the Peloponnese and the Aegean would remain vulnerable to any resurgence of Ottoman power, and back in Europe the Republic was seen as subservient to the domination of the Hapsburg rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, which occupied the territory to the north and clearly had designs on northern Italy. Meanwhile the Hapsburg port of Trieste, just fifty miles to the east of Venice, was beginning to develop as a major trading competitor both in the Adriatic and further east, in such ports as Constantinople, Smyrna and Alexandria.

  Surprisingly, a number of pragmatic Venetian merchants had managed to continue limited trading with the Ottoman Empire throughout the long war against the Turks. This was achieved mostly under the auspices of Armenian and Jewish merchants who were citizens of the Ottoman Empire, but also had family connections with their respective communities in Venice. These agents would arrange the import and export of goods on foreign ships, such as those flying the French or even the English flag. Inevitably, this placed Venetian trade at a considerable disadvantage with its international competitors, but enabled it to continue nonetheless, supplying such items as silk, glassware and expensive cloth (often destined for the sultan’s court), usually in exchange for cotton and hides. Venice also continued to play a role in the lucrative trade through Smyrna of currants and figs, apart from the intervals when this trade fell under a general ban.

  Despite the war, Venetian interests at Ottoman ports were still handled by a Venetian agent (often the former consul or bailo), who vainly did his best to prevent Venetian property, warehouses and factories from being seized. The holding of such office certainly required exceptional social skills, as well as many local contacts, and one of the most remarkable men to hold such a difficult post was the Venetian consul at Smyrna, Francesco Lupazzoli.

  Lupazzoli had been born as early as 1587 at Casale Monferrato, a small Lombardy town on the banks of the River Po. He took his name from his father’s nickname, Lupa soli (lone wolf), Lupazzoli being the Venetian variant. The indications are that Lupazzoli senior was a Venetian of gentleman rank (namely, respectable, but not of a noble family) who was employed at the court of the Duke of Mantua. Initially young Francesco was drawn to study for the Church, but feeling unable to commit himself immediately to a life of celibacy, obedience and lack of worldly possessions, he decided beforehand to join a mission to Constantinople despatched by Urban VIII in 1624. The ship carrying the papal mission set sail from the east coast of Italy, probably calling in at Sicily and later Crete, before heading north into the Aegean. When it arrived at the eastern-Aegean island of Chios, Lupazzoli decided to leave the mission and remain behind. Here he married a Greek girl called Angiola, who bore him a son in 1626. Over the coming years, Angiola would bear him a further seven children before she died. The ‘lone wolf’ then married a second wife called Orieta, with whom he would father a further six children.

  Possibly driven by the need to support his ever-growing family, Lupazzoli now turned to writing. During his voyage from Italy on the papal mission he had kept a travel diary, in which he had recorded detailed descriptions of the places he saw, complete with drawings of the islands visited, the local costumes and ancient monuments. This he now proceeded to expand into a full-scale manuscript covering forty-two closely written and illustrated pages, comprehensively describing all the islands of the Aegean, as well as Sicily and the Lipari islands, the whole of Crete, and even areas through the Sea of Marmara as far as Constantinople, most of which he could not possibly have visited. Internal evidence from the hand-written manuscript (which is in the British Library) indicates that Lupazzoli took considerable trouble over this work and the necessary further research that it required. He evidently relied upon extensive, and mostly accurate, hearsay knowledge in describing, and drawing maps of, the many places that he had not seen. The frontispiece of his manuscript is entitled Isolario dell’ Arcipelago et altri luoghi particola (Islands of the Achipelago [the contemporary name for the Aegean] and other particular sites) and describes it as ‘made in the year 1638 in Chios’. It s
eems that this was a second, fair copy – the first and only other extant version remains in Chios to this day. Lupazzoli’s painstakingly copied manuscript was probably written with the intention of taking (or sending) it back to Venice, where the publication of such an exotic Isolario was liable to become fashionable reading and earn its writer a good sum of money – or at least enough to help provide for himself, his wife and his fourteen children. Such a scheme was far from being wishful thinking. It is worth remembering that the first tourist guide to Venice had been published just over fifty years previously, and widespread publication of the first general travel guides was only just beginning – though more as an entertaining novelty genre intended to educate and stimulate the imagination of the reader than to be used as an aid to actual travel. Lupazzoli was evidently hoping to cash in on this trend.

  However, for some reason his money-making venture fell through. When war broke out between Venice and the Ottoman Empire in 1644, he moved with his family to the nearby mainland port of Smyrna and took on the hazardous task of acting as Venetian agent. To ensure him a modicum of diplomatic protection, he was attached to the Dutch consulate as a chancellor. Inevitably, trading was difficult, even with the use of Armenians as go-betweens and goods transported under foreign flags, especially when the war dragged on into its second decade. In the early 1660s Lupazzoli’s second wife Orieta died, and in 1665 at the age of seventy-eight he decided to marry for the third time, choosing as his wife one of his slaves, called Anna, who soon gave birth to yet another child. When the war finally came to an end in 1669, Lupazzoli was appointed Venetian consul, in recognition of his services to the Republic. This was a great honour, as such a post was all but invariably awarded to a member of a noble family. Seeing himself as a man of some achievement, Lupazzoli now began to demand the respect that he considered to be his due. In the consular service there was a strict protocol with respect to seniority, and the freshly appointed eighty-two-year-old Lupazzoli caused an immediate stir by insisting that – on account of his age, his long-term residency in Smyrna and the importance of the Republic he represented – he should be regarded as the senior consul in Smyrna. This claim was treated with derision by the senior French consul and his Dutch, English and Genoese consular colleagues, who had held their positions for many years throughout the war, while Lupazzoli had been no more than a mere agent, reduced to involving himself in all manner of murky business deals.