The Venetians: A New History: from Marco Polo to Casanova (8 page)

*
Not to be confused with his relative Admiral Andrea Dandolo, who killed himself after his defeat at Curzola.

*
These were much-revered samts of some importance. St Maurus was a sixth-century Italian monk whose many miracles, whilst alive and dead, included healing the sick and bringing sight to the blind. In 1985 his remains were spectacularly rediscovered beneath the floorboards of a Czech castle, where they are now considered to be ‘the second most important historical artefact … after the Czech crown jewels’. St Cyrillus was the ninth-century Greek who introduced the written word to the Slavs, after whom is named the quasi-Greek Cyrillic script now used in Russia, Bulgaria and Serbia.

*
The Piazzetta is the extension of the Piazza San Marco leading down to the waterfront of the Molo. Under normal circumstances this was a popular gathering place for members of the administration in San Marco, where between busmess they would gather in groups scheming, soliciting votes or attempting to ingratiate themselves with leading council members. In former times it had been in the grounds of the San Zaccaria convent, forming the garden (il
brolo);
consequently the complex ebb and flow of political activities that took place here gave rise to our word ‘imbroglio’.

*
Venetian dialect version of the Italian
giunta
, the origin of the modern term ‘junta’.

3

The Saviours of Venice

W
ITHIN JUST THREE
days of Falier’s execution a new doge had been elected – this was the seventy-year-old Giovanni Gradenigo, who interestingly was a close relative of the former dogaressa Aloica. The first major achievement of his reign was the signing on 1 June 1355 of a peace treaty with Genoa, under the auspices of the three Visconti brothers – Matteo II, Bernabo and Galeazzo – who now jointly ruled Milan after the death of their uncle, Archbishop Giovanni Visconti. Although by any reckoning Venice had come off second-best in the war, the treaty imposed by Milan was surprisingly even-handed. Both signatories undertook to return all prisoners and to stay out of each other’s home waters – which for Venice was deemed to be the entire Adriatic, while for Genoa this was limited to the stretch of the Mediterranean between Marseilles and Pisa. And both sides were required to suspend for three years all trading in the contested region of the Sea of Azov; and to ensure adherence to the treaty, both cities were required to deposit 100,000 gold florins in a neutral city.

Despite this favourable treaty, Venice (and its trade) would suffer during the ensuing years from another enemy, as the powerful and expansionist King Louis of Hungary laid claim to Dalmatia. Venice had neither the money nor the stomach for another prolonged war, and in 1358 ceded the entire territory to Hungary – a great loss of face as well as a dangerous strategic setback. The fact is that the long wars against Genoa and the subsequent loss of trading revenue had reduced the city to the verge of bankruptcy. The public debt was consolidated in the fund known as the
Monte Vecchio
, to which all property-owning citizens were obliged to contribute
by buying bonds proportionate to their wealth (and which paid out 5 per cent). This debt had mushroomed alarmingly from 432,000 ducats in 1343 to around 1,500,000 ducats by 1363. And now higher taxes were needed to make up for the loss of income from Dalmatia, which resulted in the other colonies being forced to contribute even more than previously to the Venetian exchequer.

In 1363 this led to a revolt in Venice’s largest colony, the island of Crete, which contained many feudal estates owned by Venetian landlords. The spark for this revolt was the Venetian demand that the capital city of Candia (now Heraklion) pay a tax for extra repairs needed to the harbour, which was in fact mainly used not by the Cretans or the local Venetians, but by passing shipping en route from Venice to Cyprus and the Levant. This tax was proclaimed by the city’s heralds in Candia Cathedral on 8 August 1363, with the warning that anyone refusing to pay faced confiscation of their property or the death penalty. The following day a large angry procession of local Greeks led by Venetian feudal landlords, many of whom were members of noble families, marched into the main square and stormed over the rooftops into the palace of the Venetian governor, Leonardo Dandolo, son of the late venerated doge. With cries of ‘Death to the traitor!’, the rebels, led by the hotheaded Venetian landlord Tito Venier (who was also of a noble family), were only prevented from murdering governor Dandolo because he was hustled away to the safety of a prison cell by some of the Venetian landlords.

The Cretans had rebelled against Venice before, but this was the first time the local Greeks had been joined by the feudal Venetian landlords. A sizeable proportion of them had now lived on their estates on the island for two or three generations and had adopted many aspects of the indigenous Greek culture. They resented the increasingly burdensome taxes being imposed upon them by what they had come to regard as a foreign and autocratic regime. An indication of the widespread and deep nature of this pan-Cretan resentment can be seen from the fact that over the next few days Venetian rule in the cities of Rethimno and Chania (now Xania) was toppled, and by the end of the week the entire 150-mile length of the island was effectively in the hands of the rebels.

Symbolically, the Venetian flag of the Catholic San Marco was hauled
down, and in its place was run up the flag of St Titus, the Byzantine Orthodox patron saint of the island. The rebels elected the Venetian landlord Marco Gradenigo as the new governor of Crete, along with two councillors, while Tito Venier was rewarded with the governorship of the city of Chania. Amongst governor Gradenigo’s first measures was recruiting an army to defend the island. As there was no money to pay soldiers, they were recruited from amongst the pirates, brigands, murderers and assorted desperadoes detained in the local prisons, who were willing to serve without pay for the first six months in return for their freedom. Over the month of August governor Gradenigo issued a series of proclamations, aimed at establishing the new Cretan nation. Amongst the most radical was one that proclaimed equal rights between the Catholic Church (which answered to the pope in Rome and ministered to the Venetian colonists) and the previously discriminated-against Greek Byzantine Church (whose loyalties were to Constantinople and the indigenous population). In consequence, a Catholic monk named Leonardo Gradenigo would even go so far as to abrogate his vows and become a Byzantine Orthodox monk. Another proclamation decreed that from now on Cretan vessels were to fly the flag of St Titus, instead of that of San Marco, both at home and especially when visiting foreign ports. This was intended to demonstrate the permanence of the new regime, as well as to broadcast its existence to ports throughout the Mediterranean.

Not until September did news of the revolt reach Venice, and even then it hardly created a stir. Evidence of the Venetian regard for their colony can be seen in their earlier reaction to the Venetian landlords’ petition to send a delegation of twenty
savi
(wise men) to Venice to put their case, to which the Great Council had replied, ‘We were not aware that there were twenty wise men in Candia.’ In response to the revolt, Venice despatched three commissioners to sort out what they evidently regarded as a little local difficulty. When they were greeted by jeers and insults as they made their way through the streets, and a second delegation was chased by an angry mob back to their galley, it was belatedly decided that more serious measures should be taken.

This would demonstrate the full might and efficiency of the Venetian administrative machine, once it had committed itself to action. First, a
precautionary diplomatic campaign was launched, with letters seeking support against the revolt being despatched to Pope Urban V, Queen Giovanna of Sicily and Jerusalem, the kings of Cyprus, Hungary and Naples, the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller of Rhodes and even the Doge of Genoa. This was an astute move: none of these rulers wished to see such a revolt succeed, in case it set an example to their own subdued populations or remote provinces. In their replies, not one of these rulers actually went so far as to pledge forces to help suppress the revolt, but most declared support for Venice and agreed to bar their subjects from trading with Crete.

Venice now hired the powerful Veronese
condottiere
(mercenary commander) Luchino dal Verme, and his mercenary army consisting of 1,000 cavalry and 2,000 infantry, to be transported by a fleet of thirty galleys to Crete to crush the revolt. This force included the usual assortment of Italian soldiers, as well as freebooters from as far afield as Albania, Switzerland, England and Turkey, together with a contingent of Bohemian mine-layers with specialist siege engines. When news of the size of this invading army reached Crete, many Venetian colonials began to desert the rebels’ cause. In a move to contain this, the apostate monk Leonardo Gradenigo formed an alliance with a Greek priest called Milletos (who was promised a bishopric for his support), and together with an armed band of peasants, Venetians and Greek priests they roamed the countryside murdering all the Venetian landlords who did not support the revolt. Leonardo Gradenigo then decided to carry this campaign into Candia, where he gathered up a mob with the intention of breaking into the prison and murdering arrested Venetian landlords who had turned against the new regime, but their efforts were thwarted. Meanwhile, in the countryside, Milletos and his gang had launched into an indiscriminate campaign of slaughter against any Venetian landlords they could find, as well as their families. The authorities became alarmed, and even Leonardo Gradenigo began to have misgivings about his friend. He set out into the countryside, where he persuaded Milletos to put up in a monastery. Leonardo and his men then raided the monastery and took Milletos prisoner, whereupon he was delivered to the governor’s palace in Candia. The actions of Milletos, intended to make the Greeks turn on the Venetians, had in fact angered Greeks and Venetians alike, and
a vengeful crowd gathered in the square outside the palace, baying for his blood. They watched as Milletos was led onto the roof and then pushed off into the square below, where his broken body was set upon by the angry mob.

News now reached Candia that the disembarkation of the Venetian mercenary invasion fleet was imminent. In the spring of 1364 governor Gradenigo despatched his relative Leonardo on a mission to Genoa, in a desperate attempt to win over Venice’s old enemy. Around 6 May, dal Verme’s army landed at the small port of Fraschia, seven miles west of Candia, and began their march on the capital. Upon hearing this news, the Cretan brigand army melted away into the countryside, allowing dal Verme to occupy Candia virtually unopposed. Governor Marco Gradenigo and his two councillors were captured and immediately beheaded, whereupon the citizens of Chania, and then Rethimno, quickly surrendered without opposition, their rebel Venetian landlords fleeing for the mountains.

It was at this point that the rebel delegation to Genoa, whose mission had been unsuccessful, sailed back into Cretan waters. Leonardo Gradenigo was warned by Greek fishermen of what had happened in his absence, and the galleys of the flotilla immediately changed course. Leonardo sailed for south-eastern Crete, attempting to take refuge on the remote island of Gaidouronisi, but was soon tracked down and hauled back to Candia to be executed. Others managed to put ashore in western Crete and make their escape. Greek peasants soon directed them to the location where the rebels were hiding out on the estate of a Greek landlord called Ioannes Calergi. Although dal Verme and his army held the cities, subduing the countryside and the mountains proved another matter altogether. Calergi and the rebels, who now included some fifty rebel Venetian landlords, began conducting a guerrilla campaign to drive the invading Venetians from the island, and soon the entire west of the island was in rebel hands. In response, Venice mounted a coordinated military operation to rid the island of rebels.

In the end, this operation would last for four long years, with one military delegation after another being despatched from Venice to subdue the island. The last of these was issued with explicit orders to track down and take prisoner ‘all the Calergi and Tito Venier and a great many other Greek and
Latin rebels and traitors and bring the entire island to peace and submission to the Doge’s Venetian domination’. Finally, in 1368, with all other rebel bands captured or killed, the by-now-legendary Ioannes Calergi and his Venetian cohort Tito Venier, along with their last faithful supporters, were hunted down and trapped in a mountain cave, where they fought to the last man.

Back in Venice, the visiting Petrarch in his palazzo on the Riva degli Schiavoni had witnessed the arrival of the first news of dal Verme’s invasion of Crete:

At around the sixth hour on the fourth of June 1364, I happened to be standing at my window looking out over the lagoon … when of a sudden I saw one of those long ships they call a galley. This was garlanded with green bows and rowing fast towards the shore … As it sped closer, its sails billowing in the wind, I saw the joyful faces of the sailors, and a band of smiling youths crowned with green leaves waving banners above their heads … As the ship came in, we saw the enemy flags trailing astern in the water … When the messengers came ashore, we soon learned what had happened … a great victory had been won in Crete, the enemy slain or captured, the loyal citizens of the republic rescued, the cities captured, and the island once more belonged to Venice!