END OF THE DUCHY OF NAXOS.

345

he resided at Venice with his children, living on a pension which the republic continued to his descendants until the male line became extinct.

The Greeks gained little by their complaints, for the sultan, Selim II., conferred the government of Naxos on a Jew named John Michez, who never visited the island in person, using it merely as a place from which to extract as much money as possible. The island was governed by Francis Coronello, a Spaniard, who acted as his deputy, and who was charged to collect the tribute and overlook the public administration.

The fortunes of the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem, and other Frank, Venetian, and Genoese princes, signors, and adventurers, who at various times ruled different islands in the Grecian seas as independent sovereigns, though their history offers much that is curious, really exercised so little peculiar influence on the general progress of society among the Greeks, that they do not fall within the scope of the present work.

A. D.

1566.

SECT. IV.-CAUSES WHICH PROLONGED THE EXISTENCE OF THE
FRANK POWER IN THE ARCHIPELAGO.

The long duration of the Latin power in the Archipelago is a fact worthy of observation. When the Greeks found the means of expelling the Franks and Venetians. from Constantinople and the greater part of the Morea, and even to attack the Venetians in Crete, it seems strange that they should have failed to recover possession of the Greek islands of the Archipelago; or if they failed to achieve the conquest, it seems even more surprising that the duchy should not have fallen into the hands of the Venetians. The peculiar circumstances which enabled a long line of foreign princes to maintain themselves in a state of independence as sovereigns of the Archipelago

Ꭶ 4.

CHAP. X. require some explanation. The popes, who were powerful temporal princes on account of their great wealth, were the natural protectors of all the Latins in the East against the power of the Greek emperors-and they protected the dukes of the Archipelago; but it was unquestionably the alliance of the republic of Venice, and the power of the Venetian fleets, rather than the zealous activity of the Holy See, that saved the duchy from being reconquered by Michael VIII., though the papal protection may have acted as a defence against the Genoese.

In forming our idea of the true basis of the Latin power in the Byzantine empire, we must never lose sight of the fact that the Venetians, who suggested the conquest, were drawn in to support the undertaking by their eagerness to obtain a monopoly of the Eastern trade; and the conquests of the republic were subordinate to the scheme of excluding every rival from the markets of the East. Monopoly was the end which all commercial policy sought to attain in the thirteenth century. After the loss of Constantinople, and the close alliance of the Genoese with the Greek empire, which enabled those rival republicans to aim at a monopoly of the trade of the Black Sea, the islands of the Archipelago acquired an increased importance both in a military and commercial point of view. Venice at this period found it an object of great consequence to exclude her rivals from the ports of the duchy; and, to obtain this end, she granted such effectual protection to the dukes, and formed such treaties of alliance with them, as persuaded them to include their dominions within the system of commercial privileges and monopolies which was applied to all the foreign settlements of Venice, and to hold no commercial communications with the western nations of Europe except through the port of Venice. The distinguished military character of several of the dukes of the family of Sanudo con

tributed to give the duchy more importance in the eyes CHAP. X. of the Venetian government than it might otherwise have held.

When Mark Sanudo established the duchy, the islands he conquered were in a happy and prosperous condition. The ravages of the Saracen pirates had long ceased: the merchants of Italy had not yet begun to act the pirate on a large scale. The portion of the landed property in their conquests which the dukes were enabled to seize as their own domains was immense, and the fiefs they granted to their followers were reunited to the ducal domain more rapidly than in the continental possessions of the other Latin princes; though we have seen that, both in Achaia and Athens, the mass of the landed property had a tendency to accumulate in the hands of a few individuals, from the constitution of feudal society among the Franks settled in Greece. The duke of the Archipelago, whose power was at first controlled by his Latin feudatories, and by the existence of a considerable body of Greek proprietors and merchants, as well as by a native clergy possessing some education, wealth, and influence, became an absolute prince before the end of the thirteenth century, in consequence of the decline of all classes of the native population, who were impoverished by the monopolies introduced in order to purchase the alliance of Venice, and the fiscal exactions imposed to fill the ducal treasury.

It is not easy to fix the precise extent of the privileges and monopolies accorded to the commerce of Venice in the duchy; but foreign ships always paid double duties on the articles they imported or exported, and many articles could only be exported and imported in Venetian ships direct to Venice. This clause was in virtue of the right the Venetians claimed to the exclusive navigation of the Adriatic; so that the Greeks in the islands were compelled to sell to the Venetians alone the portion of

$ 4.

$ 4.

CHAP. X. their produce that was destined for the consumption of England and the continental ports on the ocean, from Cadiz to Hamburg, and which could only be carried beyond the Straits of Gibraltar by the fleet periodically despatched from Venice, under the title of the Fleet of Flanders. The commercial system of Venice caused a stagnation of industry in Greece: the native traders were ruined, and either emigrated or dwindled into retail shopkeepers all great commercial transactions passed into the hands of the Venetians, who left to the duke's subjects only the trifling coasting trade necessary to collect large cargoes at the ports visited by Venetian ships. The landed proprietors soon sank into idle gentlemen or rustic agriculturists; capital ceased to be accumulated on the land, for its accumulation promised no profit; the intercommunication between the different islands gradually diminished; time became of little value; population declined; and, in this debilitated condition of society, the dukes found a consolation in the thought that this state of things rendered any attempt at insurrection on the part of the orthodox Greeks hopeless. The wealth of the dukes, and even of the signors of the smaller islands, enabled them to maintain a small body of mercenaries sufficient to secure their castles from any sudden attack, while the fleets of Venice were never far distant, from which they were sure to receive effectual support. At the same time a Latin population, consisting partly of descendants of the conquering army, and partly of Greeks who had joined the Latin church, lived mingled with the native population, and served as spies on its conduct. The Greeks, however, who lived in communion with the papal church, like the family of Crispo, were always regarded by the mass of the inhabitants as strangers, just as much as if they had been of Frank or Venetian extraction. Marin, Storia Civile e Politica del Commercio de' Veneziani, tom. v. lib. 3.

A

Orthodoxy was the only test of nationality among the CHAP. X. Byzantine Greeks.

The power of the Dukes was thus rendered so firm, that they oppressed the Greeks without any fear of revolution; and the consequence was, that their financial exactions exceeded the limits which admit of wealth being reproduced with greater rapidity than it is devoured by taxation. A stationary state of things was first produced; then capital itself was consumed, and the ducal territories became incapable of sustaining as large a population as formerly. History presents innumerable examples of society in a similar state, produced by the same causes. Indeed, it is the great feature of Eastern history, from the fall of the Assyrian empire to the decay of the Othoman power. Empires and central governments are incessantly devouring what provinces and local administrations are labouring to produce. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century, the depopulation of some of the islands of the Archipelago had proceeded so far that it was necessary to colonise them with Albanian families, in order to restore the land to cultivation. It has been mentioned that Mark, brother of duke John III., repeopled Ios with Albanian families. About the same time Andros, Keos, and Kythnos (Thermia), received a considerable influx of Albanian cultivators of the soil. Nearly one-half of the island of Andros is still peopled by Albanians; but many of these are the descendants of subsequent colonists.

The Latin nobility in the Greek islands generally passed their lives in military service or in aristocratic idleness. Their education was usually begun at Venice, and completed on board the Venetian galleys. When the wealth of the islands declined, only one son in a family was allowed to marry, in order to preserve the wealth and dignity of the house. The sons sought a career in the Venetian service or in the church, the

§ 4.