BRAVE RESISTANCE OF THE PEOPLE. 313 this period of Greek degradation. Central governments are easily destroyed by a victorious enemy; local independence engenders permanent feelings that almost insure success, in a national struggle, against the most powerful conqueror. While Mohammed II. led the main body of the Turkish army in person into the centre of the Morea, he had detached Zagan pasha in command of another division, to complete the conquest of the northern part of the peninsula. Zagan executed the task intrusted to him with a degree of inhumanity which displeased even Mohammed, who was so little inclined to mercy that he ordered an Albanian chief named Doxa, who had repeatedly deserted from the Greeks to the Turks, and from the Turks to the Greeks, to be sawn in two, as a punishment for earlier treacheries, though he now gave up Kalavryta to the sultan's troops. Part of the garrison of Kalavryta were sold as slaves, and the rest were beheaded. Zagan besieged Grevenos, which repulsed his attacks with great valour; but Santimeri, in which all the wealth of the surrounding country had been laid up, opened its gates on receiving from the pasha a promise that he would protect the lives and property of the inhabitants.1 When he gained possession of the place, he allowed the Turkish troops to plunder the houses and murder the inhabitants. This open violation of his word caused such hatred against him that the whole population of the surrounding districts flew to arms, and, considering that it was vain to treat with such a monster, offered a determined resistance to the further progress of the Othoman arms. Zagan lost his master's favour by imitating too closely his master's example. Mohammed II., who had met with no resistance, advanced from Arkadia through the plain of Elis, where all the towns opened their gates on his approach, and 1 Santimeri was founded by Nicholas de Saint-Omer about the year 1273. A. D. 1460. § 6. CHAP. IX. their inhabitants were uniformly treated with humanity. Grevenos, unable to resist any longer the additional force that attacked it, was compelled to surrender, and onethird of its inhabitants were selected by the conquerors to be sold as slaves. Salmeniko was occupied by a garrison commanded by Paleologos Graitzas, and it made a desperate defence. For seven days the sultan's troops reiterated their attempts to storm the walls, but were repulsed by the gallantry of its defenders. At last the Turks cut off the supply of water, and thus compelled the town to surrender. Six thousand of the inhabitants were reduced to slavery, and nine hundred young men were enrolled among the janissaries. But the citadel continued to hold out, as the cisterns were sufficient for its supply. Nothing, however, now remained for the garrison to protect; and the commandant offered to evacuate the place, on condition that the garrison should be allowed to cross the Gulf of Corinth into the Venetian territory at Lepanto. Mohammed gave his consent to the terms proposed, and withdrew his army to Vostitza to afford the besieged a free passage to the shore. The commandant, however, entertained great distrust of the Turks, in consequence of their conduct at Santimeri, and, in order to guard against any treachery, he sent forward a detachment with a considerable quantity of baggage, trusting that this display of booty would allure any ambuscade from its concealment. The plan was successful. Hamza pasha, the successor of Zagan, who had been charged by Mohammed to receive the surrender of the fortress, allowed his troops to waylay this detachment, and plunder the baggage. The commandant of Salmeniko, finding that it was impossible to place any reliance on the capitulations he had concluded, sent a message to the sultan to announce that he was determined to defend the citadel to the last extremity. Mohammed disgraced Hamza, perhaps as much for his awkwardness COMPLETE SUBJECTION OF GREECE. 315 as his treachery, and restored Zagan to his former post. He then continued his march, leaving troops to blockade the citadel of Salmeniko, which continued to hold out for a year. The garrison then obtained a capitulation, with proper guarantees for its faithful execution, and retired in safety into the Venetian territory. The gallant leader of this patriotic band was named Graitzas.1 Mohammed II. quitted the Morea in the autumn of 1460. On his way back to Constantinople he visited Athens for the second time; while the main body of his army, laden with spoil and encumbered with slaves, moved slowly northward from Megara by Thebes. This last campaign in the Morea was attended with wanton destruction of property and waste of human life. Mohammed's policy evidently was to ruin the resources of the country, as a preventive against insurrection, and a security that it would hold out little inducement to any Christian power to occupy it with an army. His measures were successful. The diminished population remained long in such a state of poverty and barbarism, that it could devote little care to anything beyond procuring the means of subsistence. Even the payment of the annual tribute of their children, which the Christians were compelled to send to Constantinople, in order to recruit the strength of the Othoman power, failed to awaken either patriotism or despair among the Greeks. The fate of the two last despots hardly merits the attention of history, were it not that mankind has a morbid curiosity to pursue the most trifling records concerning the fortunes of the most worthless princes. 1 His family name was not Paleologos, for Phrantzes proves that he was not of the blood of the imperial family-of which Phrantzes was himself a member -by calling him, with Phanariot insolence, a certain Paleologos, whose surname was Graitzas. Phrantzes, 409. Chalcocondylas, 256, 258. Sir James Emerson Tennent, in his History of Modern Greece, i. 141, copying the Turkish History of Knolles, i. 242, speaks of the cowardly despot Thomas Palcologos as the valiant chieftain who defended Salmeniko, and compelled Mohammed II. to exclaim "that in the country of Peloponnesus he had found many slaves, but never a man but him." A. D. 1460. § 6. CHAP. IX. Demetrius was sent by the sultan to reside at Enos, where he received from Mohammed's bounty an annual pension of six hundred thousand aspers.1 He died a monk at Adrianople in 1471. It is said that the sultan never married his daughter whom he had been compelled to send into the imperial harem. Thomas, after attempting to purchase an appanage from the sultan, by offering to cede Monemvasia to the infidels, finding his offers despised by Mohammed, finished his life as a pensionary of the Pope, who was so liberal as to allow him three hundred ducats a month, to which the cardinals added two hundred more. He died at Rome in 1465. The papal pension of three hundred ducats a month was continued to his children. His eldest son, Andrew, married a woman from the streets of Rome, and, dying childless in 1502, left the visionary empire of the East, of which he deemed himself the heir, to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. His second son Manuel, tired of papal patronage, escaped from Rome to Constantinople, where he threw himself on the protection of the sultan. Mohammed gave him a hospitable reception, and supplied him with the means of maintaining a more decent harem than his brother. Manuel left a son named Andrew, who became a Mussulman, and received the name of Mohammed. Thus ended the contemptible race of the imperial house of Paleologos.2 1 'Eέýkovтa μvpiádas apyvpíov.—Chalcocondylas, 257. If we suppose the proportion to have continued the same between the common silver coin and the common gold coin in circulation at this period, as it was more than a century earlier, thirty of these silver pieces were equal to a gold piece. This would make the pension of Demetrius equal to twenty thousand ducats. The sultan Mohammed I. allowed the emperor Manuel II. only three hundred thousand aspers for the maintenance of his brother Mustapha; and this sum the Turkish historians make equal to thirty thousand ducats. Compare Ducas, 67, 90, and Hammer's Histoire de l'Empire Ottoman, ii, 474. As it is not probable that Mohammed II. allowed Demetrius more than Mohammed I. allowed Mustapha, we must suppose that in the first case a smaller coin is alluded to than in the second. There were aspers of twice the value of the ordinary silver coin in circulation, fifteen aspers being equal to thirty sterlings.Ducange, Gloss. Med. et Inf. Latinitatis, v. Asperi. Both sizes are found in the coinage of Trebizond. 2 Ducange, Familiæ Augustæ Byzantinæ, 248. The pretended descent of a The city of Monemvasia defended its independence for four years; but in 1464, when the inhabitants heard that the despot Thomas had offered to surrender their city to the Turks, they found it necessary to call in the assistance of the Venetian republic and receive an Italian garrison. The Venetians continued to hold possession of Nauplia, Argos, Thermisi, Coron, Modon, and Navarin, as well as Acarnania, Arta, Missolonghi, Naupaktos, and Eubœa. In the year 1463, the Turks renewed their attempt to complete the conquest of the Morea by attacking the Venetian possessions. Argos was betrayed into their hands by a Greek priest, and the greater part of its Greek inhabitants were transported to Constantinople. The territory of Coron and Modon was laid waste, and Acarnania invaded. But Venice, on this occasion, nobly exerted herself to gain the title of Europe's bulwark against the Othoman. A powerful expedition was fitted out, and great exertions were made to rouse the Greek population to attempt a general insurrection. The Italian condottiere and foreign mercenaries who composed the armies of Venice, were no match for the severely disciplined regular troops of the Othoman empire, attended by the well-organised batteries of field and siege artillery, without which no Turkish army now entered on a campaign. The pashas who commanded the Othoman armies were almost the only soldiers in Europe accustomed to direct and combine the constant movements of large bodies of men for one definite result. The Venetians had a short gleam of success: Argos was recovered; the Isthmus of Corinth was occupied. Thirty thousand men were employed to work by relays, night and day, in order to repair the wall, which expe Paleologos, buried in the parish church of Landulph in Cornwall, from the despot Thomas, cannot be admitted as authentic.-See the account by the Rev. F. Vyvyan Jago, F.S.A., rector of Landulph, in the eighteenth volume of the Archæologia. The name Paleologos became, and continues to be, a common one, and all who bear it are, of course, prepared to substantiate their pretensions to descent from the imperial family. A. D. 1464. |