City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire (28 page)

On 13 August the rebels in the palace discussed whether to raise the customary flag of St Mark, or that of St Titus. The crowds ran into the square shouting ‘Long live St Titus!’ So it was decreed that the figure of St Titus should be raised on flags on land and sea, and be publicly flown everywhere.

The events became known as the Revolt of St Titus. It marked the emergence of a new yearning for independence. But its inception was also marked by ill-omen. ‘That same day, the flag of St Titus was raised up high at the top of the campanile to the shouts of the crowd, but upside down with the feet of the saint’s image higher than his head. This portent frightened many of the faithful.’

Despite this portent, the ‘administration of the magnificent Marco Gradenigo, governor and rector, and his council’ proceeded with a surge of optimism. The Venetian feudatories reached out to the Greek population. Greeks were admitted to the ruling council and restrictions on the ordination of Greek Orthodox clergy, who had been tightly controlled by Venice, were lifted.

Sixty miles west, in the small Venetian harbour town of Canea, there was no immediate overthrow of the Republic’s administration. The rector (governor) there was Vettor Pisani. The noble Pisani family were no strangers to both glory and disgrace in Venice’s service; Vettor’s father, Nicolo, had won and lost battles in the previous war with Genoa and been permanently excluded from public office after the disaster at Porto Longo. Vettor himself, an experienced sea captain and naval commander, was also under a cloud. The previous year he had been arrested in the streets of Venice, sword in hand, trying to murder a magistrate. He was fined two hundred gold ducats and stripped of the plum post of
provveditore
of Candia. As rector of Canea, Vettor began to rehabilitate himself; his management of the local Venetian population seems to have been astute. They refused to rise against St Mark; he wrote back to Venice accordingly that ‘the landlords of this district have remained faithful to the motherland, resisting all appeals put to them by the rebels of Candia’. It was only when the rebels descended on the town that opposition crumbled and Pisani found himself imprisoned, along with all the other figures of the Venetian administration. Yet the episode revealed him to be a man who could command loyalty. Eighteen years later the proud and temperamental sea captain would emerge as one of the great heroes of Venetian history.

Within a short time the whole of Crete was in the rebels’ hands. The banner of St Titus flew from turrets and the masts of ships; in an attempt to shore up its military defences against a Venetian backlash the council took the fateful decision to release from prison men described unflatteringly by de Monacis as ‘murderers, thieves, brigands, plunderers and others who had carried out terrible deeds’, in return for six months’ unpaid military service. It introduced a further unstable element into the revolutionary mix. There were feudatories who began to wonder at the wisdom of the revolt; one Jacobo Mudazzo dared to voice opposition. His house was fired. A few days later his only son was set upon in the street and killed. The Venetian sailors who had been persuaded to lay down their arms under truce were robbed and imprisoned; three galleys of the Venetian fleet were detained along with their crews and oarsmen. Giovanni of Zara, proprietor of a merchant galley, abandoned his vessel and slipped away to Modon in a light cutter. From there the news was sped up the Adriatic. On 11 September the Venetian senate realised that their principal colony, ‘the pivot of empire’, was in full revolt.

Venice was incredulous. That day the doge outlined an appeal to be made to the feudatories:

… it is with sadness and astonishment that we have learned of the uprising in Candia; it seemed unbelievable; the feudatories belong to the same community and come from the same stock; everything possible will be done to bring them back into agreement; an ambassador will be sent to learn the causes of their discontent and take adequate measures; the doge begs his dear sons to listen and return to obedience.

The next day a delegation was appointed with a precise twelve-point remit and a further layer of secret instructions: not to let slip any information on the senate’s intentions. Simultaneously Venice was preparing for the eventuality of war. It should have become apparent to this mission as soon as it stepped ashore at Candia that a patronising tone would not go down well. The ambassadors walked the three hundred yards up the long sloping
thoroughfare from the harbour to the ducal palace under armed guard. As they passed, the populace leaned out from the flat roofs of their houses and rained curses down on their heads, ‘which struck the ambassadors with terror’. Pulling themselves together they delivered an oily oration to the rebel council, trotting out the stock phrases: they understood that children might chafe against their parents … but as flesh of their flesh they could return to their former obedience … the prodigal son could be forgiven … the kindness of the doge, etc., etc. They were met with intransigence. Surrounded by armed men and with the cries of the mob still ringing in their ears, they beat a hasty retreat to their ships and the long sea miles home.

Venice was rocked by the true state of affairs on Crete. The crisis was as serious to its colonial interests as the contest with Genoa. The loss of Crete spelled potential catastrophe for the Stato da Mar. Without its hub, the whole imperial venture might disintegrate. Two particular possibilities haunted them: firstly that the Genoese might find Crete advantageous to their interests – and the rebels were already exploring this avenue; the second was that the revolt might spread across the Aegean and trigger uprisings across all Venice’s Greek-speaking possessions. This was also soon confirmed. On 20 October the senate learned that ‘the rebels have sent representatives to Coron and Modon, also to Negroponte, to encourage the inhabitants of these territories to join them’. What had seemed at first like a small local difficulty was developing into a major crisis.

The executive apparatus of the Venetian Republic swung into a state of emergency. Increasingly, Venice was replacing the description of its government as a commune with the grander notion of a
signoria
, implying lordship over wide realms. Its response was determined and unequivocal: ‘The Signoria cannot give up the great island, pivot of its overseas empire: an expedition will be organised to reconquer it.’ A flurry of terse orders was despatched from the doge’s palace. The first was to seal Crete off from the world. A series of clipped memoranda to the Collegio (the Venetian
council concerned with the day-to-day dissemination of information) set down the plan. On 8 October:

The Collegio will communicate to foreign powers the intention of the Signoria with regard to the Cretan rebels: 1 Venice has decided to use all the means in its power to take back Crete; 2 an expedition is being prepared; 3 Foreign powers are requested to order their subjects to cut off all relations with the rebels, especially commercial ones.

The state registers bristle with urgency and tension. Ambassadors’ and messengers’ boats were sent to Rhodes, Cyprus, Constantinople, the
baili
of Coron, Modon and Negroponte – and above all to the pope, who was hoping that the Venetians would support a crusading project. And they sent envoys to the Genoese, in the belief that the pope would also pressurise their rival into staying its hand in the name of Catholic unity. Additionally ten galleys were ordered to blockade Crete from the outside world. In Coron and Modon, people were expressly forbidden to buy Cretan goods already available there. The island was to be strangled.

With brisk efficiency the Republic set about preparing an armed response. It publicly declared that ‘Crete will be besieged and conquered as quickly as possible’. It cast about for a suitable
condottiere
to lead an army. While Venice only ever managed naval expeditions itself, land wars were sub-contracted by law. One candidate, Galeotto Malatesta, was rejected on cost grounds – ‘his pretentious demands are exorbitant’, the senate complained. They finally secured the services of a skilled Veronese soldier, Luchino dal Verme, and raised a professional army: two thousand foot soldiers, mining engineers from Bohemia, Turkish cavalry, five hundred English mercenaries, siege engines, thirty-three galleys including horse transports, twelve round ships laden with supplies and siege engines. Venice was accustomed to being paid to carry other people’s armies across the eastern seas. Raising and transporting its own was highly costly – ‘the perfidious revolt of the Cretans is highly damaging to the goods and resources of Venice’ was the complaint – but the Republic was determined to
strike fast and with an iron fist. It still took eight months to ready the fleet. On 28 March 1364 dal Verme swore his oath of office and received his war banner from the doge in an elaborate ceremony. On 10 April, after a grand review of troops on the Lido, the fleet set sail. By 6 May it was rocking at anchor in a small bay six miles west of Candia.

Long before dal Verme stepped ashore, news of Venice’s armada had begun to throw the rebellion into disarray. Some of the dissident Venetians started to think again. Murderous rifts appeared between factions: town against country, Venetian against Greek, Catholic against Orthodox. One of the Gradenigo clan, Leonardo, who had embraced Orthodoxy with the zeal of the convert, hatched a plan, in conjunction with a Greek monk called Milletus, to kill the waverers. Its remit widened to the murder of all Venetian landlords living outside the safety of the city walls. Milletus prepared a night of the long knives, targeting the isolated farms and country houses of the Italians. De Monacis gave a vivid description of this new wave of terror:

… in order to avoid suspicion of this plot, Milletus stayed with Andreas Corner … formerly his closest friend, in the house at Psonopila. When night fell, Milletus with his partners in crime burst their way into the house. Terrified, Andreas Corner said to him: ‘My friend, why have you come like this?’ Milletus replied, ‘To kill you.’ … Andreas said: ‘Have you stooped to such a great crime that you would kill your family friend and benefactor?’ He replied, ‘It must be so; friendship gives way to religion, liberty and the eradication of you schismatics from this island, which is our birthright.’ … Having said this, they killed him.

The scene was repeated across the Cretan countryside: the knock on the door, the gasp of surprise, the sudden blow. ‘That night right through until morning they killed Gabriele Venerio in his house at Ini, Marino Pasqualigo, Laurentio Pasqualigo, Laurentio Quirino, Marco and Nicolo Mudazzo, Jacobo and Petro Mudazzo …’ The list was long. A shiver ran through Venetian Crete. It was no longer safe to live outside the walls of Candia, Retimo or Canea. The rebellion threatened to spiral out of control. Candia
itself lapsed into confusion, stirred by the combustible mixture of Greek patriotism and the newly formed rabble army. A mob attempted to storm the prison and kill the duke of Crete and the Venetian sailors. It was restrained by the city’s administration. Even Leonardo Gradenigo was alarmed by the turn of events. It was decided that the monk Milletus was too dangerous an ally for the Venetian rebels. He was lured to a monastery near Candia, captured and hurled off the roof of the duke’s palace, where the fickle mob finished him off with swords.

With the gathering news of a Venetian fleet and a growing fear of the Greeks, the debates inside the palace became more intense. What the Venetians and the urban Greeks of Candia feared alike was the stirring of a peasants’ revolt – the flaring of centuries of oppression by a downtrodden people. To manage an uprising they could no longer control, an extreme solution was put forward: ‘in order to rein in the Greek rebellion, to subject Crete to an external lord, namely the Genoese’. To many of the Venetian lords this was a betrayal too far; tugged by conflicting loyalties, some proposed that it was time to beg for Venice’s mercy. One of the proposers, Marco Gradenigo, was summoned back to the duke’s palace to discuss the matter – in fact to an ambush. Twenty-five young men had been hidden in the palace chapel. Gradenigo was killed. All the others who opposed the Genoese initiative were rounded up and imprisoned. The council was packed with additional Greek members and the vote carried. A galley flying the flag of St Titus set sail for Genoa, but eight dissenters managed to smuggle a message back to Venice, warning that their rivals were now being invited to enter the fray.

All this was in train when dal Verme anchored his fleet on 6 or 7 May 1364 and disembarked a few miles west of Candia. The terrain ahead was broken and rocky, cut by rivers and gorges, through which only narrow paths led to the city. In this landscape the rebel army lay in wait. Dal Verme despatched an advanced guard of a hundred to scout the terrain. Picking their way through the rocky passes, they were quickly ambushed and massacred. When
the main force followed up behind, they stumbled upon a ghastly scene. The bodies had been horribly mutilated. According to de Monacis, keen to colour up Greek atrocities, the rebels had left the bodies with ‘their genitals in their mouths and had cut off their tongues and pushed them up their backsides. This atrocity greatly enraged the Italians.’ Both sides drew up their forces to gain control of the pass, but it soon became clear that the rabble army was no match for professional soldiers who had fought their way through the city wars of northern Italy – and who were now bent on avenging their fallen comrades. The rebels quickly broke and ran. Many were killed and captured; others took to the mountains. Within a few hours the army was plundering the suburbs of Candia; shortly after, the city surrendered. The keys were carried out by penitent officials to dal Verme. The towns of Retimo and Canea rapidly followed suit. Tito Venier, one of the original instigators of revolt, joined the Greek Callergis clan in the mountains. The revolt of St Titus had collapsed almost as abruptly as it arose. Its flag was torn down; once again the lion of St Mark fluttered gruffly from the ducal palace. In the main square of Candia, the executions began.