Android How to Program 3rd Edition Deitel

0134444302 9780134444307
Download solution manual at:
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program-3rd-edition-deitel-0134444302-9780134444307/

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7 WeatherViewer App

Objectives
In this chapter you’ll:
■ Use the free
OpenWeatherMap.org
REST web services to get a
16-day weather forecast for a
city specified by the user.
■ Use an AsyncTask and an
HttpUrlConnection to
invoke a REST web service or
to download an image in a
separate thread and deliver
results to the GUI thread.
■ Process a JSON response
using package org.json
classes JSONObjects and
JSONArrays.
■ Define an ArrayAdapter
that specifies the data to
display in a ListView.
■ Use the ViewHolder
pattern to reuse views that
scroll off the screen in a
 ListView, rather than
creating new views.
■ Use the material design
components
TextInputLayout,
Snackbar and
FloatingActionButton
from the Android Design
Support Library.
2 Chapter 7 WeatherViewer 7.2
App Test-Driving the WeatherViewer App 2

7.1 Introduction 7.5 Class Weather

7.5.1 package Statement, import
7.2 Test-Driving the WeatherViewer App Statements and Instance Variables
7.3 Technologies Overview 7.5.2 Constructor
7.5.3 Method convertTimeStampToDay
7.3.1 Web Services
7.3.2 JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) 7.6 Class WeatherArrayAdapter
and the org.json Package 7.6.1 package Statement and import
7.3.3 HttpUrlConnection Invoking a Statements
REST Web Service 7.6.2 Nested Class ViewHolder
7.3.4 Using AsyncTask to Perform 7.6.3 Instance Variable and Constructor
Network Requests Outside the GUI 7.6.4 Overridden ArrayAdapter Method
Thread getView
7.3.5 ListView, ArrayAdapter and the 7.6.5 AsyncTask Subclass for
View-Holder Pattern Downloading Images in a Separate
7.3.6 FloatingActionButton Thread
7.3.7 TextInputLayout 7.7 Class
7.3.8 Snackbar MainActivity
7.4 Building the App’s GUI and Resource 7.7.1 package Statement and import
Statements
Files 7.7.2 Instance Variables
7.4.1 Creating the Project 7.7.3 Overridden Activity Method
7.4.2 AndroidManifest.xml onCreate
7.4.3 strings.xml 7.7.4 Methods dismissKeyboard and
7.4.4 colors.xml createURL
7.4.5 activity_main.xml 7.7.5 AsyncTask Subclass for Invoking a
7.4.6 content_main.xml Web Service
7.4.7 list_item.xml 7.7.6 Method convertJSONtoArrayList
7.8 Wrap-Up

Self-Review Exercises | Answers to Self-Review Exercises | Exercises

7.1 Introduction
The WeatherViewer app (Fig. 7.1) uses the free OpenWeatherMap.org REST web services
to obtain a specified city’s 16-day weather forecast. The app receives the weather data in
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) data format. The list of weather data is displayed in a
ListView—a view that displays a scrollable list of items. In this app, you’ll use a custom
list-item format to display:
• a weather-condition icon
• the day of the week with a text description of that day’s weather
• the day’s low and high temperatures (in °F), and
• the humidity percentage.
The preceding items represent a subset of the returned forecast data. For details of the data
returned by the 16-day weather forecast API, visit:
http://openweathermap.org/forecast16

For a list of all weather data APIs provided by OpenWeatherMap.org, visit:

http://openweathermap.org/api

© Copyright 2016 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 3 Chapter 7 WeatherViewer 7.2
App Test-Driving the WeatherViewer App 3

Fig. 7.1 | Weather Viewer app displaying the New York, NY, US weather forecast.

7.2 Test-Driving the WeatherViewer App

Opening and Running the App
Open Android Studio and open the WeatherViewer app from the WeatherViewer folder in
the book’s examples folder. Before running this app, you must add your own OpenWeath-
erMap.org API key. See Section 7.3.1 for information on how to obtain your key and
where you should place it in the project. This is required before you can run the app. After
adding your API key to the project, execute the app in the AVD or on a device.

Viewing a City’s 16-Day Weather Forecast

When the app first executes, the EditText at the top of the user interface receives the focus
and the virtual keyboard displays so you can enter a city name (Fig. 7.2). You should con-
sider following the city with a comma and the country code. In this case, we entered New
York, NY, US to locate the weather for New York, NY in the United States. Once you’ve

© Copyright 2016 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

4 Chapter 7 WeatherViewer 7.2
App Test-Driving the WeatherViewer App 4

entered the city, touch the circular FloatingActionButton containing the done icon
( ) to submit the city to the app, which then requests that city’s 16-day weather forecast
(shown in Fig. 7.1).

© Copyright 2016 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Another document from Scribd.com that is
random and unrelated content:
Sommaripa, which now appears for the first time in Greek history, but
which came into the possession of Andros towards the middle of the
fifteenth century, and still flourishes at Naxos. Sure of Venetian support,
Crispo indulged in piratical expeditions as far as the Syrian coast, while
he swept other and less distinguished pirates from the sea. His son-in-law
seconded his efforts against the Turks; yet, in spite of their united
attempts, they left their possessions in a deplorable state. Andros had
been so severely visited by the Turkish corsairs that it contained only
2000 inhabitants, and had to be repopulated by Albanian immigrants,
who are still very numerous there; Ios, almost denuded of its population,
was replenished by a number of families from the Morea. Although the
next Duke, Giacomo I, was known as “The Pacific,” and paid tribute to
the Sultan on condition that no Turkish ships should visit his islands, he
was constantly menaced by Bayezid I. In his distress, like the Emperor
Manuel, he turned to Henry IV of England, whom he visited in London
in 1404. Henry was not able to assist him, though he had at one time
intended to lead an army “as far as to the sepulchre of Christ”; but, when
Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, made a pilgrimage to Palestine in
1418, he was conveyed back to Venice on one of Pietro Zeno’s galleys.
This was, so far as we have been able to discover, the only connection
between England and the Duchy. In the same year Giacomo died at
Ferrara, on his way to see the Pope, the natural protector of the Latins in
the Levant.
During the greater part of the fifteenth century the history of the
Archipelago presents a monotonous series of family feuds and Turkish
aggression. The subdivision of the islands, in order to provide appanages
for the younger members of some petty reigning dynasty, was a source of
weakness, which recalls the mediæval annals of Germany, nor did there
arise among the Dukes of this period a strong man like the founder of the
Duchy. One of them was advised by Venice to make the best terms that
he could with the Sultan, though complaints were made that he had
failed to warn the Venetian bailie of Eubœa of the approaching Turkish
fleet, by means of beacon-fires—an incident which takes us back to the
Agamemnon of Æschylus. The fall of Constantinople, followed by the
capture of Lesbos and Eubœa by the Turks, greatly alarmed the Dukes,
who drew closer than ever to the Venetian Republic, and were usually
included in all the Venetian treaties. Other misfortunes greatly injured
the islands. The Genoese plundered Naxos and Andros, and the volcanic
island of Santorin was the scene of a great eruption in 1457, which threw
up a new islet in the port. A few years later, Santorin had suffered so
much from one cause or another that it contained no more than 300
inhabitants. An earthquake followed this eruption, further increasing the
misery of the Archipelago. But this was the age of numerous religious
foundations, some of them still in existence, such as the church of Sant’
Antonio at Naxos, which was bestowed upon the Knights of St John, as
their arms on its walls remind the traveller. It was about this time too that
Cyriacus of Ancona, after copying inscriptions at Athens, visited Andros
and other islands of the Ægean. The island rulers not only received him
courteously, but ordered excavations to be made for his benefit—a proof
of culture which should be set against their wanton destruction of ancient
buildings, in order to provide materials for their own palaces—a practice
of which the tower at Paros is so striking an example. When we
remember that each petty lord considered it necessary to be well lodged,
the extent of these ravages may be easily imagined.
Towards the close of the fifteenth century the condition of the
islanders had become intolerable, and matters came to a climax under the
rule of Giovanni III. That despotic Duke incurred the displeasure not
only of the Sultan, but also of his own subjects. The former complained
that he had fallen into arrears with his tribute—for the Dukes had long
had to purchase independence by the payment of bakshîsh—and that he
harboured corsairs, who plundered the Asian coast. The latter grumbled
at the heavy taxes which the Duke pocketed without doing anything for
the protection of his people. The Archbishop of Naxos made himself the
mouthpiece of popular discontent, and wrote to Venice, in the name of
the people of Naxos and Paros, offering to acknowledge the suzerainty of
the Republic. Venice replied, authorising him to point out to the Duke
and to Sommaripa, the lord of Paros, the utter hopelessness of their
present position, and to offer them an assured income for the rest of their
lives if they would cede their islands to a Venetian commissioner. But the
negotiations failed; the Naxiotes, driven to despair, took the law into
their own hands, and in 1494 murdered their Duke. The Archbishop then
proceeded to Venice, and persuaded the Senate to take over the Duchy, at
least till the late Duke’s son, Francesco, came of age. During the next six
years Venetian Commissioners administered the islands, which were,
however, loyally handed over to Francesco III at the end of that time.
The new Duke proved unfortunately to be a homicidal maniac, who
killed his wife and tried to kill his heir. As a consequence he was
removed to Crete and a second brief Venetian occupation lasted during
the rest of his successor’s minority[169]. The long reign of his son,
Giovanni IV, who, soon after his accession, was captured by Turkish
pirates while on a hunting party, lasted till 1564 and witnessed the loss of
many of the Ægean islands. That great sovereign, Suleyman the
Magnificent, now sat upon the Turkish throne, and his celebrated
admiral, Khaireddîn Barbarossa, spread fire and sword through many a
Christian village. In 1537 the classic island of Ægina, still under
Venetian domination, was visited by this terrible scourge, who massacred
all the adult male population, and took away 6000 women and children
as slaves. So complete was the destruction of the Æginetans that, when a
French admiral touched at the island soon afterwards, he found it devoid
of inhabitants. There, as usual, an Albanian immigration replenished, at
least to some extent, the devastated sites, but Ægina was long in
recovering some small measure of its former prosperity. Thence
Barbarossa sailed to Naxos, whence he carried off an immense booty,
compelling the Duke to purchase his further independence—if such it
could be called—by a tribute of 5000 ducats, and submitting him to the
ignominy of seeing the furniture of his own palace sent on board the
Admiral’s flagship under his very eyes. The horrible scenes of those days
would seem to have impressed themselves deeply upon the mind of the
wretched Duke, who gave vent to his feelings in a bitter letter of
complaint to the Pope and other Christian princes. This curious
document urged them to “apply their ears and lift up their eyes, and
attend with their minds while their own interests were still safe,” and
reminded them of the evils caused by discord in the councils of
Christendom. The Duke emphasised his admirable truisms, which might
have been addressed to the Concert of Europe at any time during the last
fifty years, by a well-worn tag from Sallust—Sallustius Crispus, “the
author of our race.” But neither his platitudes nor his allusion to his
distinguished ancestry, which he might have had some difficulty in
proving, availed him. The Turks went on in their career of conquest.
Paros was annexed, Andros was forced to pay tribute, the Venetians lost
Skiathos and Skopelos, and by the shameful treaty of 1540 forfeited the
prestige which they had so long wielded in the Levant.
The Duchy of Naxos had long existed by the grace of the Venetian
Republic, and, now that Venice had been crippled, its days were
numbered. The capture of Chios in 1566 was the signal for its
dissolution. As soon as the news arrived in Naxos and Andros that the
Turks had put an end to the rule of the joint-stock company of the
Giustiniani in that fertile island, the Greeks of the Duchy complained to
the Sultan of the exactions to which they were subjected by their Frank
lords. There was some justification for their grievances, for Giacomo IV,
the last of the Frank Dukes, was a notorious debauchee; and the conduct
of the Catholic clergy, by the admission of a Jesuit historian, had become
a public scandal. But the main motive of the petitioners seems to have
been that intense hatred of Catholicism which characterised the
Orthodox Greeks during the whole period of the Frank rule in the
Levant, and which, as we saw under Austrian rule in Bosnia, has not yet
wholly disappeared. Giacomo was fully aware of the delicacy of his
position, and he resolved to convince the Turkish Government, as force
was out of the question, by the only other argument which it understands.
He collected a large sum of money, and went to Constantinople to reply
to his accusers. But he found the ground already undermined by the
artifices of the Œcumenical Patriarch, who had warmly espoused the
cause of the Orthodox Naxiotes, and was in the confidence of the
Turkish authorities. Giacomo had no sooner landed than he was clapped
into prison, where he languished for five months, while the renegade,
Pialì Pasha, quietly occupied Naxos and its dependencies and drove the
Sommaripa out of Andros. But the Greeks of the Duchy soon discovered
that they had made an indifferent bargain. One of the most important
banking houses of the period was that of the Nasi, which had business in
France, the Low Countries, and Italy, and lent money to kings and
princes. The manager of the Antwerp branch was an astute Portuguese
Jew, who at one time called himself João Miquez and posed as a
Christian, and then reverted to Judaism and styled himself Joseph Nasi.
A marriage with a wealthy cousin made him richer than before; he
migrated to the Turkish dominions, where Jews were very popular with
the Sultans, and became a prime favourite of Selim II. This was the man
on whom that sovereign now bestowed the Duchy; and thus, by a prosaic
freak of fortune, the lovely island of classical myth and mediæval
romance became the property of a Jewish banker. Nasi, as a Jew, knew
that he would be loathed by the Greeks, so he never visited his orthodox
Duchy, but appointed a Spaniard named Coronello to act as his agent,
and to screw as much money as possible out of the inhabitants. In this he
was very successful.
As soon as Giacomo IV was released he set out for the west to procure
the aid of the Pope and Venice for the recovery of his dominions, even
pledging himself in that event to do homage to the Republic for them.
But, in spite of the great victory of Lepanto, the Turks remained in
undisturbed possession of the Duchy, except for a brief restoration of
Giacomo’s authority by Venice in 1571. On the accession of Murad III
Giacomo had hopes of obtaining his further restoration through the good
offices of the new Sultan’s mother, a native of Paros, belonging to the
distinguished Venetian family of Baffo. But though she promised her aid,
and he went to plead his cause in person at Constantinople, the Sultan
was inexorable. The last of the Dukes died in the Turkish capital in 1576,
and was buried in the Latin church there. Three years later Joseph Nasi
died also, whereupon the Duchy was placed under the direct
administration of the Porte.
But though Naxos and all the important islands had been annexed by
the Turks, there still remained a few fragments of the Latin rule in the
Levant. The seven islands of Siphnos, Thermia, Kimolos, Polinos,
Pholegandros, Gyaros, and Sikinos were retained by the Gozzadini
family on payment of a tribute until 1617, while Venice still preserved
Tenos as a station[170] in the Levant for a whole century more.
Everywhere else in the Ægean the crescent floated from the battlements
of the castles and palaces where for three and a half centuries the Latin
nobles had practised the arts of war.
The occupation of the Greek islands by the Latins was unnatural, and,
like most unnatural things, it was destined not to endure. But this strange
meeting of two deeply interesting races in the classic seats of Greek lyric
poetry can scarcely fail to strike the imagination. And to-day, when Italy
is once more showing a desire to play a rôle in the near East, when
Italians have officered the Cretan police, when Italian troops have
occupied thirteen islands in the lower Ægean since 1912, including the
old Quirini fief of Stampalia, when the Aldobrandini’s thirteenth century
possession of Adalia is being revived, and the statesmen of Rome are
looking wistfully across the Adriatic, it is curious to go back to the times
when Venetian and Lombard families held sway among the islands of the
Ægean, and the Latin galleys, flying the pennons of those petty princes,
glided in and out of the harbours of that classic sea. Even in her middle
age Greece had her romance, and no fitter place could have been chosen
for it than “the wave-beat shore of Naxos.”

APPENDIX
THE MAD DUKE OF NAXOS

Subsequent historians of the Duchy of Naxos have accepted without

question Hopf’s[171] chronology and brief description of the reign of
Francesco III Crispo, who was formally proclaimed duke, after a brief
Venetian protectorate, in October 1500. According to the German
scholar, who is followed by Count Mas Latrie[172], Francesco III “quietly
governed” his island domain down to 1518, the only incident in his
career being his capture by Turkish corsairs while hunting in 1517. His
wife, according to the same authorities, had already predeceased him,
having died “before 1501.” But a perusal of Sanuto’s Diarii shows that
all these statements are wrong. Francesco III, so far from “quietly
governing” his subjects, was a homicidal maniac, who murdered his wife
in 1510 and died in the following year.
We first hear of the duke’s madness in 1509, when he and his brother-
in-law, Antonio Loredano, were on board the ducal galley, then engaged
in the Venetian service at Trieste. The duke was put in custody at San
Michele di Murano, but was subsequently released and allowed to return
to Naxos[173]. There, as we learn from two separate accounts, one sent to
the Venetian authorities in Crete by the community of Naxos, the other
sent to Venice by Antonio da Pesaro, Venetian governor of Andros, the
duke had a return of the malady[174]. On August 15, 1510, he was more
than usually affectionate to his wife, Taddea Loredano, to whom he had
been married fourteen years, and who is described by one of the Venetian
ambassadors as “a lady of wisdom and great talent[175].” Having
inveigled the duchess to his side “by songs, kisses, and caresses,” he
seized his sword and tried to slay her. The terrified woman fled, just as
she was, in her nightdress, out of the ducal palace, and took refuge in the
house of her aunt, Lucrezia Loredano, Lady of Nio. Thither, in the night
of Saturday, August 17, her husband pursued her; he burst open the
doors, and entered the bedroom, where he found the Lady of Nio and her
daughter-in-law, to whom he gave three severe blows each. Meanwhile,
on hearing the noise, the duchess had hidden under a wash-tub; a slave
betrayed her hiding-place, and the duke struck her over the head with his
sword. In the attempt to parry the blow, she seized the blade in her
hands, and fell fainting on the ground, where her miserable assailant
gave her a thrust in the stomach. She lived the rest of the night and the
next day, while the duke fled to his garden, whence he was induced by
the citizens to return to the palace. There, as he sat at meat with his son
Giovanni, he heard from one of the servants that the people wished to
depose him and put Giovanni in his place. In a paroxysm of rage, he
seized a knife to kill his son; but his arm was held, and the lad saved
himself by leaping from the balcony. The duke tried to escape to Rhodes,
but he was seized, after a struggle in which he was wounded, and sent to
Santorin. His son Giovanni IV was proclaimed duke, and as he could not
have been more than eleven years old—his birth is spoken of as
imminent[176] in May 1499—a governor of the duchy was elected in the
person of Jacomo Dezia, whom we may identify with Giacomo I
Gozzadini, baron of the island of Zia, who is mentioned as being present
in the ducal palace at Naxos, in a document[177] of 1500, whose family
had a mansion there, and who had already been governor in 1507. From
Santorin, Francesco III was removed on a Venetian ship to Candia,
where, as we learn from letters of August 15, 1511, he died of fever[178].
Meanwhile, on October 18, 1510, it had been proposed at Venice that
the mad duke’s brother-in-law, Antonio Loredano, should be sent as
governor to Naxos, with a salary of 400 ducats a year, payable out of the
revenues, just as Venetian governors had been sent there during the
minority of Francesco III. Loredano sailed on January 16, 1511, for his
post, where he remained for four and a half years[179]. Naxos, in his time,
cannot have been a gloomy exile, for we hear of the “balls and festivals
with the accompaniment of very polished female society” which greeted
the Venetian ambassador[180]. We do not learn who governed the duchy
between July 1515, when Loredano returned to Venice, and the coming
of age of Duke Giovanni IV, which seems to have been in May 1517. On
May 6 of that year he wrote a letter to the Cretan government, signed
Joannes Crispus dux Egeo Pelagi, which Sanuto has preserved[181]; and
in the same summer il ducha di Nixia, domino Zuan Crespo, was
captured by corsairs while hunting, and subsequently ransomed[182]—an
adventure which Hopf, as we have seen, wrongly ascribed to Francesco
III.

7. CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS (1204-1669)

Of all the Levantine possessions acquired by Venice as the result of

the Fourth Crusade, by far the most important was the great island of
Crete, which she obtained in August, 1204, from Boniface of Montferrat
to whom it had been given 15 months earlier by Alexios IV, at the cost of
1000 marks of silver. At that time the population of the island, which in
antiquity is supposed to have been a million, was probably about
500,000 or 600,000[183]. Lying on the way to Egypt and Syria, it was an
excellent stopping-place for the Venetian merchantmen, and the immense
sums of money expended upon its defence prove the value which the
shrewd statesmen of the lagoons set upon it. Whether its retention was
really worth the enormous loss of blood and treasure which it involved
may perhaps be doubted, though in our own days the Concert of Europe
has thought fit to spend about thrice the value of the island in the process
of freeing it from the Turk. What distinguishes the mediæval history of
Crete from that of the other Frank possessions in the Near East is the
almost constant insubordination of the Cretan population. While in the
Duchy of Athens we scarcely hear of any restlessness on the part of the
Greeks, while in the Principality of Achaia they gave comparatively little
trouble, while in the Archipelago they seldom murmured against their
Dukes—in Crete, on the other hand, one insurrection followed another in
rapid succession, and the first 160 years of Venetian rule are little else
than a record of insurrections. The masters of the island explained this by
the convenient theory, applied in our own time to the Irish, that the
Cretans had a double dose of original sin, and the famous verse of
Epimenides, to which the New Testament has given undying reputation,
must have been often in the mouths of Venetian statesmen. But there
were other and more natural reasons for the stubborn resistance of the
islanders. After the reconquest of Crete by Nikephoros Phokas, the
Byzantine Government had sent thither many members of distinguished
military families, and their descendants, the archontes of the island at the
time of the Venetian invasion, furnished the leaders for these perennial
revolts[184]. Moreover, the topography of Crete is admirably suited for
guerilla warfare; the combination of an insular with a highland spirit
constitutes a double gage of independence, and what the Venetians
regarded as a vice the modern Greeks reckon as a virtue.
Even before the Venetians had had time to take possession of the
island, their great rivals, the Genoese, had established a colony there, so
that it was clear from the outset that Venice was not the only Latin Power
desirous of obtaining Crete. The first landing of the Venetians was
effected at Spinalonga, where a small colony was founded. But, before
the rest of the island could be annexed, a Genoese citizen, Enrico
Pescatore, Count of Malta, one of the most daring seamen of his age, had
set foot in Crete in 1206 at the instigation of Genoa, and invited the
Cretans to join his standard. He easily made himself master of the island,
over which he endeavoured to strengthen his hold by the restoration or
construction of fourteen fortresses, still remaining, although in ruins. A
larger force was then despatched from Venice, which drove out the
Maltese adventurer, who appealed to the Pope as a faithful servant of the
Church, and continued to trouble the conquerors for some years
more[185]. In 1207 Tiepolo had been appointed the first Venetian
Governor, or Duke, as he was styled, of Crete; but it was not till the
armistice with Genoa in 1212 that the first comprehensive attempt at
colonisation was made, and the organisation of a Cretan Government
was undertaken. According to the feudal principles then in vogue, which
a century earlier had been adopted for the colonisation of the Holy Land,
the island was divided into 132 knights’ fiefs (a number subsequently
raised to 200, and then to 230) and 48 sergeants’ or foot soldiers’ fiefs,
and volunteers were invited to take them. The former class of lands was
bestowed on Venetian nobles, the latter on ordinary citizens; but in both
cases the fiefs became the permanent property of the holders, who could
dispose of them by will or sale, provided that they bequeathed or sold
them to Venetians. The nobles received houses in Candia, the Venetian
capital (which now gave its name to the whole island), as well as pasture
for their cattle, the State reserving to itself the direct ownership of the
strip of coast in which Candia lay, the fort of Temenos and its precincts,
and any gold or silver mines that might hereafter be discovered. The
division of the island into six parts, or sestieri, was modelled, like the
whole scheme of administration, on the arrangements of the city of
Venice, where the sestieri still survive. So close was the analogy between
the colonial and the metropolitan divisions that the colonists of each
sestiere in Crete sprang from the same sestiere at Venice—a system
which stimulated local feeling. At the head of each sestiere an official
known as a capitano was placed, while the government of the colony
was carried on by a greater and a lesser Council of the colonists, by two
Councillors representing the Doge, and by the Duke, who usually held
office for two years. The first batch of colonists was composed of
twenty-six citizens and ninety-four nobles of the Republic, the latter
drawn from some of the best Venetian families. But it is curious that,
while we still find descendants of Venetian houses in the Cyclades and at
Corfù, scarcely a trace of them remains in Crete[186]. As for ecclesiastical
matters, always of such paramount importance in the Levant, the existing
system was adopted by the newcomers. Candia remained an
archbishopric, under which the ten bishoprics of the island were placed;
but the churches, with two temporary exceptions, were occupied by the
Latin clergy, and that body was required, no less than the laity, to
contribute its quota of taxation towards the defence of the capital[187].
Although we hear once or twice of a Greek bishop in Crete, the usual
practice was to allow no orthodox ecclesiastic above the rank of a
protopapâs to reside at Candia, while Greek priests had to seek
consecration from the bishops of the nearest Venetian colonies. But, as
the Venetian colonists in course of time became Hellenised and
embraced the Orthodox faith, the original organisation of the Latin
church was found to be too large, so that, at the time of the Turkish
conquest, the Latin Archbishop of Candia with his four suffragans
represented Roman Catholicism in the island, and outside the four
principal towns there was scarcely a Catholic to be found.
The division of the island into fiefs naturally caused much bad blood
among the natives, who objected to this appropriation of their lands. In
1212, the same year which witnessed the arrival of the colonists, an
insurrection broke out under the leadership of the powerful family of the
Hagiostephanitai. The rising soon assumed such serious proportions that
Tiepolo called in the aid of Duke Marco I of Naxos, whose duplicity in
this connection was narrated in a previous essay. In addition to these
internal troubles, the Genoese and Alamanno Costa, Count of Syracuse,
an old comrade of the Count of Malta again became active; but the
Venetians wisely purchased the acquiescence of the Genoese in the
existing state of things by valuable concessions, the chief of which was
the recognition of Genoa’s former privileges of trade with the Empire of
Romania, and imprisoned Costa in an iron cage. From that moment, save
for two brief raids in 1266 and 1293, Genoa abandoned the idea of
contesting her rival’s possession of Crete. In the same year, however,
only five years after the first rising, a fresh Cretan insurrection, due to
the high-handed action of the Venetian officials, caused the proud
Republic of St Mark to admit the necessity of conceding something to
the islanders. The ringleaders received a number of knights’ fiefs, and
became Venetian vassals. But a further distribution of lands in the parts
of the island hitherto unconfiscated kindled a new revolt. The rebels,
seeing the growth of the Empire of Nice, offered their country to the
Emperor Vatatzes if he would come and deliver them, while the Duke
summoned the reigning sovereign of Naxos to his aid. The latter
withdrew on the approach of the Nicene admiral, who managed to land a
contingent in the island. Long after the admiral’s departure these men
held their own in the mountains, and it was eight years before the
Venetians succeeded in suppressing the rising. On the death of Vatatzes,
the Cretans seemed to have lost hope of external assistance, and no
further attempt was made to throw off the Venetian yoke till after the fall
of the Latin Empire of Romania. Meanwhile, in 1252, a fresh scheme of
colonisation was carried out; ninety more knights’ fiefs were granted in
the west of the island, and the town of Canea, the present capital, was
founded, on or near the site of the ancient Cydonia[188]; one half of the
new city was reserved to Venice, and the other half became the property
of the colonists.
After the recapture of Constantinople by the Greeks, the value of the
island became greater than ever to the Venetians. Three years after that
event we find the Doge Zeno writing to Pope Urban IV that “the whole
strength of the Empire” lay in Crete, while at the same time the revival
of the Greek cause, both on the Bosporos and in the Morea, led to an
attack upon it by the Byzantine forces. But Venice had less difficulty in
coming to terms with the Emperor than in managing her unruly subjects.
In 1268 the Venetian colonists rose under leaders who bore the honoured
names of Venier and Gradenigo, demanding complete separation from
the mother country. The harsh policy of the Republic towards her
colonies was an excuse for this outbreak; but no further attempt of the
kind was made for another hundred years, when the descendants of the
Venier and the Gradenigo of 1268 headed a far more serious rebellion.
Another Greek rising now followed, this time organised by the brothers
Chortatzai, but the Venetians had now succeeded in winning over a party
among the Cretans, including Alexios Kallerges, the richest of all the
archontes. This man used all his local influence on the side of the
Government; yet even so the rebellion continued for several years, and at
times threatened to gain the upper hand. One Venetian Governor was
lured into the mountains, surprised, and slain; another was driven behind
the walls of Candia, and only saved from capture by the fidelity of the
Greek inhabitants of that district. At last adequate reinforcements
arrived, the Chortatzai were banished from the island, and the castle of
Selino was erected to overawe the rebels in their part of the country.
Peace then reigned for a few years, and the conciliatory policy of the
next Governor earned for him the title of “the good” Duke from the
Cretan subjects of the Republic.
But the calm was soon disturbed by a fresh outbreak. In 1283 the same
Alexios Kallerges who had been so valuable an auxiliary of Venice in the
last rising inaugurated a rebellion which, arising out of the curtailment of
his own family privileges, spread to the whole island and lasted for
sixteen years. The home Government made the mistake of under-
estimating the importance of this movement, which it neglected to
suppress at the outset by the despatch of large bodies of men. As usual,
the insurgents operated in the mountains, whence the Venetians were
unable to dislodge them, while the Genoese laid Canea in ashes in 1293,
and tried to establish relations with the insurrectionary chief. But
Kallerges was not disposed to exchange the rule of one Italian State for
that of another, and, as he saw at last that he could not shake off the
Venetian yoke single-handed, he came to terms with the Governor. His
patriotic refusal of the Genoese offers had excited the admiration of the
Venetians, who were ready to make concessions to one whom Genoa
could not seduce. He was allowed to keep the fiefs which the Angeloi
had granted in the Byzantine days to his family, he was created a knight,
and his heirs received permission to intermarry with Venetians—a
practice absolutely prohibited as a rule in Venetian colonies. It is pleasant
to be able to record that both parties to this treaty kept their word.
Kallerges on his death-bed bade his four sons remain true to Venice; one
of his grandsons fought in her cause, and his descendants were rewarded
with the title of patricians—at that time a rare distinction. These frequent
insurrections, combined with the horrors of plague and famine, do not
seem to have permanently injured the resources of the island, nor were
the ravages of corsairs, fitted out by the Catalans of Attica in the early
part of the fourteenth century, felt much beyond the coast. At any rate, in
1320 such was the prosperity of the colony that the Governor was able to
remit a large surplus to Venice after defraying the costs of
administration. But the harsh policy of the Republic gradually alienated
the colonists as well as the natives. A demand for ship-money caused a
fresh rebellion of the Greeks in 1333, in which one of the Kallergai
fought for, and another of them against, the Venetian Government. Eight
years later a member of that famous Cretan family, forgetting the
patriotic conduct of his great ancestor, entered into negotiations with the
Turks; but he was invited to a parley by the Venetian Governor, who had
him arrested as a traitor and thrown in a sack into the sea. This act of
cruelty and treachery had the effect of embittering and prolonging the
Cretan resistance, so that the Venetians soon held nothing in the island
except the capital and a few castles. At last the arrival of overwhelming
reinforcements forced the rebel leader, Michael Psaromelingos, to bid his
servant kill him, and the rebellion was over. The death of this chieftain
has formed the subject of a modern Greek drama, for the Greeks of the
mainland have always admired, and sometimes imitated, the desperate
valour of their Cretan brethren. On the Venetians this revolt made so
great an impression that the Duke was ordered to admit no Cretan into
the Great Council of the island without the special permission of the
Doge—an order due as much to the fears of the home Government as to
the jealousy of the colonists.
 But the most significant feature of this insurrection was the apathy of
the Venetian vassals in contributing their quota of horses and men for the
defence of the island. Somewhat earlier, the knights had been compelled,
in spite of their vigorous protests, to pay the sum which, by the terms of
their feudal tenure, they were supposed to expend upon their armed
followers, direct to the Exchequer, which took care to see that the money
was properly applied. Many of the poorer among them now found
themselves unable to provide the amounts which the Government
required, and so became heavily indebted to the Treasury. It was the
opinion of Venetian statesmen that Crete should be self-supporting, but it
at last became necessary to grant a little grace to the impoverished
debtors, some of whom had shown signs of coquetting with the Turks.
Thus the discontented Venetian colonists, who had been born and trained
for the most part in an island which exercises a strong attraction on even
foreign residents, found that they had more grievances in common with
the Greeks than bonds of union with the city of their ancestors. More
than a century and a half had elapsed since the first great batch of
colonists had left the lagoons for the great Greek island. Redress had
been stubbornly refused, and it only needed a spark to set the whole
colony ablaze.
In 1362 a new Duke, Leonardo Dandolo, arrived at Candia with orders
from the Venetian Senate to demand from the knights a contribution
towards the repair of the harbour there. The knights contended that, as
the harbour would benefit trade, which was the interest of the Republic,
while their income was exclusively derived from agriculture, the expense
should be borne by the home Government. As the Senate persisted, the
whole body of knights rose under the command of two young members
of the order, Tito Venier, Lord of Cerigo—the island which afterwards
formed part of the Septinsular Republic—and Tito Gradenigo, entered
the Duke’s palace, and put him and his Councillors in irons. Having
arrested all the Venetian merchants whom they could find, the rebels then
proclaimed the independence of Crete—how often since then has it not
been announced!—appointed Marco Gradenigo, Tito’s uncle, Duke, and
elected four Councillors from their own ranks. In order to obtain the
support of the Greeks they declared that the Roman Catholic ritual had
ceased to exist throughout the island, and announced their own
acceptance of the Orthodox faith. In token of the new order of things the
Venetian insignia were torn down from all the public buildings, and St
Mark made way for Titus, the patron saint and first bishop of Crete[189].
The theological argument was more than the Greeks could resist, and the
descendants of Catholic Venetians and Orthodox archontes made
common cause against Popery and the tax-collector.
When the news reached Venice, it excited the utmost consternation.
But, as no sufficient forces were available, the Republic resolved to try
what persuasion could effect. A trusty Greek from the Venetian colony of
Modon was sent to treat with the Greeks, while five commissioners
proceeded to negotiate with the revolutionary Government at Candia.
The commissioners were courteously heard; but when it was found that
they were empowered to offer nothing but an amnesty, and that only on
condition of prompt submission to the Republic, they were plainly told
that the liberty recently won by arms should never be sacrificed to the
commands of the Venetian Senate. Nothing remained but to draw the
sword, and the home Government had prudently availed itself of the
negotiations to begin its preparations, both diplomatic and naval. All the
Powers friendly to Venice, the Pope, the Emperor Charles IV, the King of
France, and the Queen of Naples, even Genoa herself, forbade their
subjects to trade with the island, and the Pope, alarmed at the apostasy of
the colonists, addressed a pastoral to the recalcitrant Cretans. But neither
papal arguments nor an international boycott could bend the stubborn
minds of the insurgents. It was not till the arrival of the Venetian fleet
and army, the latter under the command of Luchino dal Verme, the friend
of Petrarch, who had warned him, with the inevitable allusions to the
classic poets and to St Paul, of the “untruthfulness,” “craft,” and “deceit”
of the Cretans, that the movement was crushed.
The armament was of considerable size. Italy had been ransacked for
soldiers, the Duchy of the Archipelago and Eubœa for ships, and Nicolò
“Spezzabanda,” the regent of Naxos, hastened to assist his Venetian
patrons. Candia speedily fell, and then the commissioners who
accompanied the military and naval forces proceeded to mete out
punishment to the chief insurgents without mercy. Marco Gradenigo and
two others were beheaded on the platform of the castle, where their
corpses were ordered to remain, under penalty of the loss of a hand to
any one who tried to remove them. The same bloody and brief assizes
were held in Canea and Rethymno; the most guilty were executed, the
less conspicuous were banished. Tito Venier was captured by Venetian
ships on the high sea, and paid for his treasonable acts with his head; his
accomplice, Tito Gradenigo, managed to escape to Rhodes, but died in
exile. The property of the conspirators was confiscated by the State.
 Great was the joy at Venice when it was known that the insurrection
had been suppressed. Three days were given up to thanksgivings and
festivities, at which Petrarch was present, and of which he has left an
account. Foreign powers congratulated the Republic on its success, while
in Crete itself the new Duke ordered the celebration of May 10 in each
year-the anniversary of the capitulation of Candia—as a public holiday.
But the peace, or perhaps we should say desolation, of the island was
soon disturbed. Some of the banished colonists combined with three
brothers of the redoubtable family of the Kallergai, who proclaimed the
Byzantine Emperor sovereign of Crete. This time the Venetian
Government sent troops at once to Candia, but hunger proved a more
effective weapon than the sword. The inhabitants of Lasithi, where the
insurgents had their headquarters, surrendered the ringleaders rather than
starve. Then followed a fresh series of savage sentences, for the Republic
considered that no mercy should be shown to such constant rebels. While
the chiefs were sent to the block, the whole plateau of Lasithi was
converted into a desert, the peasants were carried off and their cottages
pulled down, and the loss of a foot and the confiscation of his cattle were
pronounced to be the penalty of any farmer or herdsman who should dare
to sow corn there or to use the spot for pasture. This cruel and ridiculous
order was obeyed to the letter; for nearly a century one of the most fertile
districts of Crete was allowed to remain in a state of nature, till at last in
1463 the urgent requirements of the Venetian fleet compelled the Senate
to consent to the recultivation of Lasithi. But as soon as the temporary
exigencies of the public service had been satisfied, Lasithi fell once more
under the ban, until towards the end of the fifteenth century the plain was
placed under the immediate supervision of the Duke and his Councillors.
It would be hard to discover any more suicidal policy than this, which
crippled the resources of the colony in order to gratify a feeling of
revenge. But it has ever been the misfortune of Crete that the folly of her
rulers has done everything possible to counteract her natural advantages.
A long period of peace now ensued, a peace born not of prosperous
contentment but of hopeless exhaustion. The first act of the Republic was
to substitute for the original oath of fealty, exacted from the colonists at
the time of the first great settlement in 1212, a much stricter formula of
obedience. The next was to put up to auction the vacant fiefs of the
executed and banished knights at Venice, for it had been resolved that
none of those estates should be acquired by members of the Greek
aristocracy. The bidding was not very brisk, for Crete had a bad character
on the Venetian exchange, so that, some years later, on the destruction of
the castle of Tenedos, the Republic transported the whole population to
Candia. There they settled outside the capital in a suburb which, from
their old home, received the name of Le Tenedee[190].
We hear little about Crete during the first half of the fifteenth century,
which was so critical a time for the Franks of the mainland. The principal
grievance of the colonists at that period seems to have been the
arrogance of the Jews, against whom they twice petitioned the
Government. It was a Jew, however, who, together with a priest, betrayed
to the Duke the plot which had been concocted by a leading Greek of
Rethymno in 1453 for the murder of all the Venetian officials on one day,
the incarceration of all other foreigners, and the proclamation of a Greek
prince as sovereign of the island. The capture of Constantinople by the
Turks in that year, followed as it was by the flight of many Greek
families to Crete, induced the Venetians to take more stringent
precautions against the intrigues of their Cretan subjects. An order was
issued empowering the Duke to make away with any suspected Cretans
without trial or public inquiry of any kind. We are reminded by this
horrible ordinance of the secret commission for the slaughter of
dangerous Helots which had been one of the laws of Lycurgus. Nothing
could better show the insecurity of Venetian rule, even after two
centuries and a half had passed since the conquest. Another incident, at
the beginning of the sixteenth century, shows how savage was the
punishment meted out to the insurgents, with the approval of the
authorities. At that period the Cretans of Selmo, Sphakia, and the Rhiza,
not far from the latter place united their forces against their Venetian
masters under the leadership of the Pateropouloi clan. The three
insurgent districts were formed into an independent Republic, of which a
leading Greek was chosen Rector. The Venetians of Canea, under the
pretext of a wedding feast at the villa of one of their countrymen at the
charming village of Alikianou, lured the Rector and some fifty of his
friends to that place, seized the guests after the banquet, and hanged or
shot him, his son, and many others in cold blood. The remainder of the
rebels were rigorously proscribed, and a pardon was granted to those
alone who produced at Canea the gory head of a father, a brother, a
cousin, or a nephew[191]. Nor were the foes of Venice only those of her
own household. The Turkish peril, which had manifested itself in
sporadic raids before the fall of Constantinople, became more pressing
after the loss of the Morea. Appeals were made by the inhabitants for
reinforcements and arms, and at last, when the capture of Eubœa by the
Turks had deprived them of that valuable station, the Venetians turned
their thoughts to the protection of Crete, and resolved to restore the walls
of Candia. Those who saw, like the author, those magnificent
fortifications before the sea-gate was destroyed by the British troops in
1898, can estimate the strength of the town in the later Venetian period.
Unfortunately, those ramparts, which afterwards kept the Turks at bay
for twenty-four years, could not prevent the dreaded Barbarossa’s
ravages on other parts of the coast. In 1538 that great captain appeared
with the whole Turkish fleet—then a very different affair from the
wretched hulks of 1898 which were a terror only to their crews—landed
at Suda Bay, laid all the adjacent country waste, and nearly captured
Canea. Thirty years later, this raid was repeated with even greater
success, for Rethymno was destroyed, and soon the loss of Cyprus
deprived Crete of a bulwark which had hitherto divided the attention of
the advancing Turk. Venice was, at length, thoroughly alarmed for the
safety of her great possession, and she took the resolve of introducing
drastic reforms into the island. With this object an experienced
statesman, Giacomo Foscarini, was sent to Crete in 1574 as special
commissioner, with full powers to inquire into, and redress, the
grievances of the islanders. Foscarini, well aware that his task would be
no easy one, endeavoured to excuse himself on private grounds; but his
patriotism prevailed over all other considerations, and he set out for
Crete with the intention of increasing the resources of the island and at
the same time protecting the inhabitants against the oppression of those
placed over them. In accordance with this policy, he issued, as soon as he
had landed, a proclamation, urging all who had grievances against any
Venetian official to come without fear, either openly or in secret, before
him, in the certainty of obtaining justice and redress. He then proceeded
to study the condition of the country, and it is fortunate that the results of
his investigation have been preserved in an official report, which throws
a flood of light on the state of Crete during the latter half of the sixteenth
century[192].
At the time of Foscarini’s visit the island was divided up into 479
fiefs, 394 of which belonged to Venetians, who were no longer
subdivided into the two original classes of knights and sergeants, or foot
soldiers, but were all collectively known as knights. Of the remaining
fiefs, thirty-five belonged to native Cretan families, twenty-five to the
Latin Church, and twenty-five to the Venetian Government. None of
these last three classes paid taxes or yielded service of any sort to the
Republic, though a rent was derived from such of the State domains as
were let. As might be guessed from the frequent repetition of Cretan
insurrections, the condition of the native Cretan aristocracy was one of
the most serious problems in the island. When Venice had adopted,
somewhat reluctantly, the plan of bestowing fiefs on the Greek leaders,
twelve prominent Cretan families had been selected, whose descendants,
styled archontópouloi, or archontoromaîoi, formed a privileged class
without obligations of any sort. As time went on, the numbers of these
families had increased, till, shortly before Foscarini’s visit, they
comprised at least 400 souls. But, as the number of the fiefs at their
disposal remained the same, a series of subdivisions became necessary,
and this led to those continual quarrels, which were the inevitable result
of the feudal system all over Greece. A hard and fast line was soon
drawn between the richer “sons of the archontes,” who lived a life of
idleness and luxury in the towns, and the poorer members of the clan,
who sank into the position of peasants on their bit of land, without,
however, losing their privileges and their pride of descent. The latter
quality involved them in perpetual feuds with rival families equally
aristocratic and equally penniless, and the celebrated district of Sphakia,
in particular, had even then acquired the evil notoriety for turbulent
independence which it preserved down to the end of the nineteenth
century. Shortly before Foscarini appeared on the scene, a Venetian
commissioner had paid a visit to that spot for the express purpose of
chastising the local family of the Pateroi, whose hereditary feud with the
family of the Papadopouloi of Rethymno had become a public scandal.
Both the parties, the latter of whom still has a representative in an
illustrious family resident at Venice, were of common stock, for both
were branches of the ancient Cretan clan of the Skordiloi. But they hated
one another with all the bitterness of near relatives; revenge was the most
precious heritage of their race; the bloody garment of each victim was
treasured up by his family, every member of which wore mourning till
his murder had been wiped out in blood; and thus, as in Albania to-day,
and in Corsica in the days of Mérimée, there was no end to the chain of
assassinations. On this occasion the Sphakiotes, who could well maintain
the classic reputation of the Cretan bowmen, were completely crushed by
the heavily armed troops of Venice. Their homes were burned to the
ground, those who resisted were slain; those who were captured were
sent into exile at Corfù, where they mostly died of cruel treatment or
home-sickness, the home-sickness which every true Cretan feels for his
mountains. The survivors of the clan were forbidden to rebuild their
dwellings or to approach within many miles of their beloved Sphakia.
The inhospitable valleys and rough uplands became their refuge, and
winter and lack of food had been steadily diminishing their numbers
when Foscarini arrived at Sphakia to see for himself how things were in
that notorious district.
Sphakia lies on the south coast of the island, almost exactly opposite
the Bay of Suda on the north. Foscarini describes it as consisting of “a
very weak tower,” occupied by a Venetian garrison of eleven men, and a
small hamlet built in terraces on the hills. The wildness of the scenery
was in keeping, he says, with the wildness of the inhabitants, whose
bravery, splendid physique, and agility in climbing the rocks he warmly
praises. Their appearance suggested to him a comparison with “the wild
Irish,” and they have certainly vied with the latter in the trouble which
they have given to successive Governments. Their long hair and beards,
their huge boots and vast skirts, the dagger, sword, bow and arrows,
which every Sphakiote constantly carried, and the unpleasant odour of
goats, which was derived from their habit of sleeping in caves among
their herds, and which clung to their persons, struck the observant
Venetian in a more or less agreeable manner. Yet he remarked that, if
they were let alone and not agitated by family feuds, they were a mild
and gentle race, and the peasant spokesman of the clan seemed to him
one of nature’s noblemen. With this man Foscarini came to terms,
promising the Pateroi a free pardon, their return to their homes, and the
restoration of their villages, on condition that they should furnish men
for the Venetian galleys, send a deputation twice a year to Canea, and
work once annually on the fortifications of that town. The Sphakiotes
loyally kept these conditions during the stay of Foscarini in the island,
their district became a model of law and order, while their rivals, the
Papadopouloi, were frightened into obedience by the threats of the
energetic commissioner. He further organised all the native clans in
companies for service in the militia under chiefs, or capitani, chosen by
him from out of their midst and paid by the local government. This local
militia was entrusted with the policing of the island, on the sound
principle that a former brigand makes the best policeman. Disobedience
or negligence was punished by degradation from the privileged class of
free archontópouloi, and thus the military qualities of the Cretans were
diverted into a useful channel, and a strong motive provided for their
loyalty. Similarly since the union with Greece the Cretans have become
excellent constables.
 The next problem was that of the Venetian knights. It had been the
original intention of the Republic that none of their fiefs should pass into
Greek hands. But as time went on many of the colonists had secretly sold
their estates to the natives, and had gone back to Venice to spend the
proceeds of the sale in luxurious idleness. When Foscarini arrived, he
found that many even of those Venetians who remained in Crete had
become Greek in dress, manners, and speech. More than sixty years
earlier we hear complaints of the lack of Catholic priests and of the
consequent indifference of the colonists to the religion of their
forefathers, so that we are not surprised to hear Foscarini deploring the
numerous conversions of the Venetians in the country districts to the
Orthodox faith through the want of Latin churches. In the town of
Candia, where the nobles were better off, they still remained strict
Catholics, and this difference of religion marked them off from the
Orthodox people; but their wives had adopted Oriental habits, and lived
in the seclusion which we associate with the daily life of women in the
East. In Canea, which was a more progressive place than the capital,
things were a little more hopeful, but even there education was almost
entirely neglected. In the country, owing to the subdivision of fiefs, many
of the smaller Venetian proprietors had sunk to the condition of peasants,
retaining neither the language nor the chivalrous habits of their
ancestors, but only the sonorous names of the great Venetian houses
whence they sprang. All the old martial exercises, on which the Republic
had relied for the defence of the island, had long fallen into abeyance.
Few of the knights could afford to keep horses; few could ride them.
When they were summoned on parade at Candia, they were wont to stick
some of their labourers on horseback, clad in their own armour, to the
scandal of the Government and the amusement of the spectators, who
would pelt these improvised horsemen with bad oranges or stones.
Another abuse arose from the possession of one estate by several
persons, who each contributed a part of the horse’s equipment which the
estate was expected to furnish. Thus the net result of the feudal
arrangements in Crete at this period was an impoverished nobility and an
utterly inadequate system of defence.
Foscarini set to work to remedy these evils with great courage. He
proceeded to restore the old feudal military service, with such alterations
as the times required. He announced that neglect of this public duty
would be punished by confiscation of the vassal’s fief; he abolished the
combination of several persons for the equipment of one horse, but
ordered that the small proprietors should each provide one of the cheap
but hardy little Cretan steeds, leaving the wealthier knights to furnish
costlier animals. By this means he created a chivalrous spirit among the
younger nobles, who began to take pride in their horses, and 1200
horsemen were at the disposal of the State before he left the island. He
next turned his attention to the remedy of another abuse—the excessive
growth of the native Cretan aristocracy owing to the issue of patents of
nobility by corrupt officials. Still worse was the reckless bestowal of
privileges, such as exemptions from personal service on the galleys and
from labour on the fortifications, upon Cretans of humble origin, or even
upon whole communities. The latter practice was specially objectionable,
because the privileged communities exercised a magnetic attraction upon
the peasants of other districts, who flocked into them, leaving the less
favoured parts of the island almost depopulated. Quite apart from this
cause, the diminution of the population, which at the time of the Venetian
conquest was about half a million, but had sunk to 271,489 shortly
before Foscarini’s arrival, was sufficiently serious. It is obvious that in
ancient times, Crete with its “ninety cities” must have supported a large
number of inhabitants; but the plagues, famines, and earthquakes of the
sixteenth century had lessened the population, already diminished by
Turkish raids and internal insurrections. In 1524 no fewer than 24,000
persons died of the plague, and the Jews alone were an increasing body.
Against them Foscarini was particularly severe; he regarded the fair
Jewesses of Candia as the chief cause of the moral laxity of the young
nobles; he absolutely forbade Christians to accept service in Jewish
families; and nowhere was his departure so welcome as in the Ghetto of
Candia. The peasants, on the other hand, regarded him as a benefactor;
for their lot, whether they were mere serfs or whether they tilled the land
on condition of paying a certain proportion of the produce, was by no
means enviable. The serfs, or pároikoi, were mostly the descendants of
the Arabs who had been enslaved by Nikephoros Phokas, and who could
be sold at the will of their masters. The free peasants were overburdened
with compulsory work by the Government, as well as by the demands of
their lords. In neither case was Foscarini sure that he had been able to
confer any permanent benefit upon them. At least, he had followed the
maxim of an experienced Venetian, that the Cretans were not to be
managed by threats and punishments.
He concluded his mission by strengthening the two harbours of Suda
and Spinalonga, by increasing the numbers and pay of the garrison, by
improving the Cretan fleet and the mercantile marine, and by restoring
equilibrium to the budget. The Levantine possessions of Venice cost her
at this period more than they brought in, and it was the desire of the
Republic that Crete, should, at any rate, be made to pay expenses. With
this object, Foscarini regulated the currency, raised the tariff in such a
way that the increased duties fell on the foreign consumer, saw that they
were honestly collected, and endeavoured to make the island more
productive. But in all his reforms the commissioner met with stubborn
resistance from the vested interests of the Venetian officials and the
fanaticism of the Orthodox clergy, always the bitterest foes of Venice in
the Levant. In dealing with the latter, Foscarini saw that strong measures
were necessary; he persuaded his Government to banish the worst
agitators, and to allow the others to remain only on condition that they
behaved well. Then, after more than four years of labour, he returned to
Venice, where he was thanked by the Doge for his eminent services. He
had been, indeed, as his monument in the Carmelite church there says,
“Dictator of the island of Candia”; but even his heroic policy did “but
skin and film the ulcerous place.” Not ten years after his departure we
find another Venetian authority, Giulio de Garzoni, writing of the tyranny
of the knights and officials, the misery of the natives, the disorder of the
administration, and the continued agitation of the Greek clergy among
the peasantry. So desperate had the latter become that there were many
who preferred even the yoke of the Sultan to that of the Catholic
Republic[193]. The population of the island, which Foscarini had
estimated at 219,000, had sunk in this short space of time to about
176,000. Numbers of Cretans had emigrated to Constantinople since
Foscarini left, where they formed a large portion of the men employed in
the Turkish arsenal, and where the information which they gave to the
Turks about the weakness of the Cretan garrison and forts filled the
Venetian representatives with alarm. Yet Venice seemed powerless to do
more for the oppressed islanders; indeed, she inclined rather to the
Machiavellian policy of Fra Paolo Sarpi, who advised her to treat the
Cretans like wild beasts, upon whom humanity would be only thrown
away, and to govern the island by maintaining constant enmity between
the barbarised colonists and the native barbarians. “Bread and the stick,
that is all that you ought to give them.” Such a policy could only prevail
so long as Venice was strong enough to defend the colony, or wise
enough to keep at peace with the Sultan.
 The latter policy prevailed for nearly three-quarters of a century after
the peace between Venice and the Porte in 1573, and during that period
we hear little of Crete. The quaint traveller Lithgow[194], who visited it in
the first decade of the seventeenth century, alludes to a descent of the
Turks upon Rethymno in 1597, when that town was again sacked and
burned; and he remarks, as Plato had done in The Laws, that he never
saw a Cretan come out of his house unarmed. He found a Venetian
garrison of 12,000 men in the island, and reiterates the preference of the
Cretans for Turkish rule, on the ground that they would have “more
liberty and less taxes.” But while he was disappointed to find no more
than four cities in an island which in Homer’s day had contained ninety,
he tells us that Canea had “ninety-seven palaces,” and he waxes eloquent
over the great fertility of the country near Suda. It is curious to find,
nearly three centuries ago, that Suda bay was eagerly coveted by a
foreign potentate, the King of Spain, of whose designs the astute
Venetians were fully aware, and whose overtures they steadily declined.
The time had now arrived when the Cretans were to realise their
desires, and exchange the Venetian for the Turkish rule. The Ottoman
sultans had long meditated the conquest of the island, and two recent
events had infuriated Ibrahim I against the Venetians. The Near East was
at that time cursed with a severe outbreak of piracy, in which there was
little to choose between Christians and Mussulmans. While the Venetians
had chased some Barbary corsairs into the Turkish harbour of Valona, on
the coast of Albania, and had injured a minaret with their shots, they had
allowed a Maltese squadron, which had captured the nurse of the
Sultan’s son, to sail into a Cretan harbour with its booty. The fury of the
Sultan, whose affection for his son’s nurse was well known, was not
appeased by the apologies of the Venetian representative. Great
preparations were made for an expedition against Crete, and Ibrahim
constantly went down to the arsenals to urge on the workmen. All over
the Turkish empire the word went forth to make ready. The forests of the
Morea were felled to furnish palisades, the naval stores of Chalkis were
emptied to supply provisions for the troops. All the time the Grand
Vizier kept assuring the Venetian bailie that these gigantic efforts were
directed not against the Republic, but against the knights of Malta. In
vain the Mufti protested against this act of deception, and pleaded that, if
war there must be against Venice, at least it might be open. The Capitan-
Pasha and the war party silenced any religious scruples of the Sultan, and
the Mufti was told to mind his own business. As soon as the truth
dawned upon the Venetians they lost no time in preparing to meet the
Turks. Andrea Cornaro, the new Governor of Crete, hastily strengthened
the fortifications of Candia and of the island at the mouth of Suda bay,
while the home Government sent messages for aid to every friendly
State, from Spain to Persia, with but little result. The Great Powers were
then at each other’s throats; France was quarrelling with Spain, Germany
was still in the throes of the Thirty Years’ War, England was engaged in
the struggle between King and Parliament, and it was thought that the
English wine trade would benefit by the Turkish conquest of Crete.
Besides, the downfall of the Levantine commerce of Venice was
regarded with equanimity by our Turkey merchants, and the Venetians
accused us of selling munitions of war to the infidel. It was remarked,
too, that Venice, of all States, was the least entitled to expect
Christendom to arm in her defence, for no other Government had been so
ready to sacrifice Christian interests in the Levant when it suited her
purpose. Only the Pope and a few minor States promised assistance.
In 1645 the Turkish fleet sailed with sealed orders for the famous bay
of Navarino. Then the command was given to arrest all Venetian
subjects, including the Republic’s representative at Constantinople, and
the Turkish commander, a Dalmatian renegade, set sail for Crete.
Landing without opposition to the west of Canea, he proceeded to
besiege that town, whose small but heroic garrison held out for two
months before capitulating. The principal churches were at once
converted into mosques; but the losses of the Turks during the siege, and
the liberal terms which their commander had felt bound to offer to the
besieged, cost him his head. At Venice great was the consternation at the
loss of Canea; enormous pecuniary sacrifices were demanded of the
citizens, and titles of nobility were sold in order to raise funds for
carrying on the war. Meanwhile, an attempt to create a diversion by an
attack upon Patras only served to exasperate the Turks, who became
masters of Rethymno in 1646, and in the spring of 1648 began that
memorable siege of Candia which was destined to last for more than
twenty years. Even though Venice sued for peace, and offered to the
Sultan Parga and Tenos[195], as well as a tribute, in return for the
restoration of Canea and Rethymno, the Turks remained obdurate, and
were resolved at all costs to have the island, “even though the war should
go on for a hundred years.” And indeed it seemed likely to be prolonged
indefinitely. The substitution of Mohammed IV for Ibrahim I as Sultan,
and the consequent confusion at the Turkish capital, made it difficult for
the Turks to carry on the struggle with the vigour which they had shown
at the outset. The Venetian fleet waited at the entrance of the Dardanelles
to attack Turkish convoys on their way to Crete, while the Ottoman
provision-stores at Volo and Megara were burned. But these successes
outside of the island delayed, without preventing, the progress of the
Turkish arms. In fact, the Venetian forays in the Archipelago, notably at
Paros and Melos, had the effect of embittering the Greeks against them,
and, as a Cretan poet wrote, the islanders had to suffer, whichever side
they took. In Crete itself, an ambitious Greek priest persuaded the Porte
to have him appointed Metropolitan of the island, and to allow him to
name seven suffragans. The Cretan militia refused to fight, and even the
warlike Sphakiotes, under the leadership of a Kallerges, did little beyond
cutting off a few Turkish stragglers. At last they yielded to the Turks,
whose humane treatment of the Greek peasants throughout the island,
combined with the unpopularity of the Latin rule, frustrated the attempt
to provoke a general rising of the Cretans against the invaders. Nor was a
small French force, which Cardinal Mazarin at last sent to aid the
Venetians, more successful. Both sides were, in fact, equally hampered
and equally unable to obtain a decisive victory; the Venetian fleet at the
islet of Standia, and the Turkish army in the fortress of New Candia,
which it had erected, kept watching one another, while year after year the
wearisome war dragged on. Then, in 1666, a new element was
introduced into the conflict. The Grand Vizier, Ahmed Köprili, landed in
Crete, resolved to risk his head upon the success of his attempt to take
Candia[196].
For two years and a half Köprili patiently besieged the town, with an
immense expenditure of ammunition and a great loss of life. Worse and
worse grew the condition of the garrison, which was commanded by the
brave Francesco Morosini, who was destined later on to inflict such
tremendous blows upon the Turks in the Morea. A ray of hope illumined
the doomed fortress when, in June 1669, a force of 8000 French soldiers
under the Duc de Navailles, and fifty French vessels under the Duc de
Beaufort, arrived in the harbour, sent by Louis XIV, at the urgent prayer
of Pope Clement IX, to save this bulwark of Catholicism. But these
French auxiliaries met with no success. Four days after their arrival, the
Duc de Beaufort fell in a sally outside the walls[197]. His colleague, the
Duc de Navailles, soon lost heart, and sailed away to France, leaving the
garrison to its fate. His departure was the turning-point in the siege. The
houses were riddled with shots, the churches were in ruins, the streets
were strewn with splinters of bombs and bullets, every day diminished
the number of the defenders, and sickness was raging in the town. Then
Morosini saw that it was useless to go on fighting. He summoned a
council of war, and proposed that the garrison should capitulate. A few
desperate men opposed his proposition, saying that they would rather
blow up the place and die, as they had fought, like heroes among its
ruins. But Morosini’s opinion prevailed, the white flag was hoisted on
the ramparts, and two plenipotentiaries—one of them an Englishman,
Colonel Thomas Anand—were appointed to settle the terms of
capitulation with the Grand Vizier, who was represented at the
conference by a Greek, Panagiotes Nikouses, the first of his race who
became Grand Dragoman of the Porte[198]. Köprili insisted upon the
complete cession of Crete, with the exception of the three fortresses of
Suda, Spinalonga, and Grabusa, with the small islands near them; but he
showed his appreciation of the heroic defence of Candia by allowing the
garrison to march out with all the honours of war. On September 27 the
keys of the town were handed to him on a silver dish, and on the same
day, the whole population, except six persons, left the place. There, at
least, the Greeks preferred exile to Turkish rule, and one of Köprili’s first
acts was to induce fresh inhabitants to come to the deserted town by the
promise of exemption from taxes for several years.
The cost of this siege, one of the longest in history, “Troy’s rival,” as
Byron called it[199], had been enormous. The Venetians, it was
calculated, had lost 30,985 men, and the Turks 118,754, and the Republic
had spent 4,253,000 ducats upon the defence of this one city. Some idea
of the miseries inflicted by this long war of a quarter of a century may be
formed from the fact that the population of Crete, which had risen to
about 260,000 before it began, was estimated by the English traveller
Randolph, eighteen years after the Turkish conquest, at only 80,000, of
whom 30,000 were Turks. Even before the siege it had been said that
Crete cost far more than it was worth, and from the pecuniary standpoint
the loss of the island was a blessing in disguise. But a cession of territory
cannot be measured by means of a balance-sheet. The prestige of the
Republic had been shattered, her greatest possession in the Levant had
been torn from her, and once more the disunion of the Western Powers
had been the Turk’s opportunity. Both the parties to the treaty were
accused of having concluded an unworthy peace. Every successful
Turkish commander has enemies at home, who seek to undermine his
influence; but Köprili was strong enough to keep his place. Morosini,
less fortunate, was, indeed, acquitted of the charges of bribery and
malversation brought against him, but he was not employed again for
many years, until he was called upon to take a noble revenge for the loss
of Candia.
Venice did not retain her three remaining Cretan fortresses
indefinitely. Grabusa was betrayed by its venal commander to the Turks
in 1691; Suda and Spinalonga were captured in 1715 during the Turco-
Venetian War, and the Treaty of Passarovitz confirmed their annexation
to Turkey[200].
So, after 465 years, the Venetian domination came to an end. From the
Roman times to the present day no government has lasted so long in that
restless island; and the winged lion on many a building, the old galley
arches on the left of the port of Candia, and the chain of Venetian
fortresses, of which Prof. Gerola has given a detailed description in his
great work, Venetian Monuments in the island of Crete, remind us of the
bygone rule of the great republic. But the traveller will inquire in vain for
the descendants of those Venetian colonists whose names have been
preserved in the archives at Venice. Rather than remain in Crete, most of
them emigrated to Corfù or to the Ægean islands, or else returned to
Venice—reluctantly, we may be sure, for Crete has ever exercised a
strange fascination on all who have dwelt there. Now that Crete is once
more emancipated from the Turk, it is possible to compare the Venetian
and the Ottoman rule, and even Greeks themselves, no lovers of the
Latins in the Levant, have done justice to the merits of the Republic of St
Mark. The yoke of Venice was at times heavy, and her hand was
relentless in crushing out rebellion. But a Greek writer of eminence has
admitted that the Venetian administration in Crete was not exceptionally
cruel, if judged by the low standard of humanity in that period[201]. Some
persons, on the strength of certain striking instances of ferocious
punishment inflicted on those who had taken part in the Cretan
risings[202], have pronounced the Venetians to have been worse than the
Turks. But in our own day the Germans, who boast of their superior
education, have exterminated the inhabitants of a South Sea island as
vengeance for the murder of one missionary and have incited the Turks
to massacre the Armenians. It should be reckoned to the credit of Venice
that she, at least, did not attack the religion, or attempt to proscribe the
language, of her Greek subjects, but sternly repelled the proselytising
zeal of the Papacy, so that the Orthodox Church gained more followers
than it lost. The permission accorded in Crete to mixed marriages tended
to make the children of the Venetian colonists good Cretans and luke-
warm Catholics, where they did not go over to the Orthodox creed. The
Greeks were given a share in the administration, trade was encouraged,
and many of the natives amassed large fortunes. At no time in the history
of the island was the export of wine so considerable as during the
Venetian occupation. So great was the wine trade between Crete and
England that Henry VIII appointed in 1522 a certain merchant of Lucca,
resident in the island, as first English Consul there—the beginning of our
consular service. Various travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries allude to this traffic, and Ben Jonson, in his play of The Fox,
talks of “rich Candian wine” as a special vintage. In return, we sent
woollens to the islanders, till the French managed to supplant us[203]. Nor
was learning neglected under the Venetians. The fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries produced many Cretans of distinction, among them Pope
Alexander V. One became a famous engineer, two others gained renown
as printers at Venice and Rome; a great Cretan artist, Domenicos
Theotokopoulos, obtained undying fame at Madrid under the name of
“El Greco”; one Cretan author edited the Moral Treatises of Plutarch;
another, Joannes Bergikios, wrote a history of his native island in Italian.
We have two poems in Greek by the Cretans Bouniales and Skleros upon
the war of Candia[204]. It was a Cretan of Venetian origin, Vincenzo
Comaro, who wrote the romance of Erotokritos, which was “the most
popular reading of the Levant from the sixteenth to the nineteenth
century,” and in which Herakles, “king of Athens,” his lovely daughter
Aretousa, and her lover Erotokritos are the principal figures, amidst a
crowd of princelets obviously modelled on the Frankish dukes and
marquesses of mediæval Greece. Other novelists were produced by the
island, but when Crete fell all the lettered Cretans left, and with their
departure the romantic spirit in literature, which they had imbibed from
the West, ceased[205]. A Greek school had been founded at Candia in
1550, and many young Cretans went to Italy for purposes of study[206].
Markos Mousouros, the Cretan scholar, was buried in Sta Maria della
Pace in Rome in 1517; another Cretan, Skouphos, published his Rhetoric
at Venice in 1681. Compared with the present day, when the island has
just emerged from the deadening effect of 229 years of Turkish rule, its
civilisation was materially more advanced in Venetian times. The
Venetians made roads, bridges, and aqueducts; the Turks created nothing,
and allowed the former means of communication to decay. Yet, as we
have seen, Venice was never popular with the Cretans, and the reason is
perfectly obvious to those who have observed the Greek character. Be
the material advantages of foreign domination never so great, the Greek
resents being governed by those of another race and creed, especially if
that creed be Roman Catholicism. The history of the Ionian Islands under
the British Protectorate, of Cyprus under the existing arrangement, of the
Morea under the Venetians, of Athens and of Naxos under the Latin
dukes, all point the same moral. The patriotic Greek would rather be free
than prosperous, and most Greeks, though sharp men of business, are
warm patriots. That is the lesson of Venetian rule in Crete—a lesson
which Europe, after the agony of a century of insurrections, at last took
to heart by granting the Cretans autonomy—now become union with
Greece.

8. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE

On their way from Venice to Constantinople the soldiers of the fourth

crusade cast anchor at Corfù, which (as modern Corfiote historians
think) had lately been recovered from the Genoese pirate Vetrano by the
Byzantine government, and was at that time, in the language of the
chronicler Villehardouin, “very rich and plenteous.” In the deed of
partition the Ionian islands were assigned to the Venetians; but they did
not find Corfù by any means an easy conquest. The natives, combining
with their old master, Vetrano, ousted the Venetian garrison, and it was
not till he had been defeated in a naval battle and hanged with a number
of his Corfiote supporters that the Republic was able to occupy the
island. Even then the Venetian government, finding it impossible to
administer directly all the vast territories which had suddenly come into
its possession, granted the island in fiefs to ten Venetian citizens on
condition that they should garrison it and should pay an annual rent to
the Republic. The rights of the Greek church were to be respected, and
the taxes of the loyal islanders were not to be raised[207]. But this first
Venetian domination of Corfù was of brief duration. When Michael I
Angelos founded the Despotat of Epeiros the attraction of a neighbouring
Greek state proved too much for the Corfiotes, who threw off the Latin
yoke and willingly became his subjects. A memorial of his rule may still
be seen in the splendidly situated castle of Sant’ Angelo, whose ruins
rise high above the waters of the Ionian Sea not far from the beautiful
monastery of Palaiokastrizza[208].
Corfù prospered greatly under the Despots of Epeiros. They took good
care to ratify and extend the privileges of the church, to grant exemptions
from taxation to the priests, and to reduce the burdens of the laity to the
smallest possible figure. In this they showed their wisdom, for the church
became their warmest ally, and a Corfiote divine was one of the most
vigorous advocates of his patron in the ecclesiastical and political feud
between the rival Greek empires of Nice and Salonika. But after little
more than half a century of Orthodox rule the island passed into the
possession of the Catholic Angevins. Michael II of Epeiros, yielding to
the exigencies of politics, had given his daughter in marriage to the ill-
starred Manfred of Sicily, to whom she brought Corfù as a part of her
dowry. Upon the death of Manfred at the battle of Benevento the
powerful Sicilian admiral Chinardo, who had governed it for his master,
occupied the island until he was murdered by the inhabitants at the
instigation of Michael. The crime did not, however, profit the crafty
Despot. The national party in Corfù endeavoured, indeed, to restore the
island to the rule of the Angeloi; but Chinardo’s soldiers, under the
leadership of a baron named Aleman, successfully resisted the agitation.
As the defeat of Manfred had led to the establishment of Charles of
Anjou as king of Naples and Sicily, and as they were a small foreign
garrison in the midst of a hostile population, they thought it best to
accept that powerful prince as lord of the island. By the treaty of Viterbo
the fugitive Latin emperor, Baldwin II, ceded to Charles any rights over
it which he might possess, and thus in 1267 the Angevins came into
possession of Corfù, though Aleman was allowed to retain the fortresses
of the place until his death[209]. For more than five centuries the Latin
race and the Catholic religion predominated there.
The Angevin rule, as might have been anticipated from its origin, was
especially intolerant of the Orthodox faith. Charles owed his crown to
the Pope, and was anxious to repay the obligation by propagating
Catholicism among his Orthodox subjects. The Venetians, as we saw,
had enjoined the tolerance of the Greek church during their brief period
of domination, so that now for the first time the islanders learnt what
religious persecution meant. The Metropolitan of Corfù, whose office
had been so greatly exalted by the Despots of Epeiros, was deposed, and
in his room a less dignified ecclesiastic, called “chief priest” (μέγας
πρωτοπαπᾶς), was substituted. The title of “Archbishop of Corfù” was
now usurped by a Latin priest, and the principal churches were seized by
the Catholic clergy[210]. In the time of the Angevins too the Jews, who
still flourish there almost alone in Greece, made their first appearance in
any numbers in Corfù, and first found protectors there; but the