Chapter X: The Eastern Empire (2)

As in the recovery of Romania by the Greeks of Nikaia, so in the final conquest of Romania by the Turks of Brusa, Constantinople itself was—with the exception of the Peloponnesian appanage—the last point of the Empire to fall. The Turk, like the Greek, made his way in by Kallipolis; like the Greek, he hemmed in the Imperial city for years before it fell into his hands. ♦Loss of Hadrianople, 1361. | 1366.♦ In seven years from his first landing, Hadrianople had become the European capital of the Turk; the Empire was his tributary, keeping, besides its outlying possessions, only the land just round the city. The romantic expedition of Amadeo of Savoy gave back to the Empire its Euxine coast as far as _Mesêmbria_. ♦Loss of Philadelphia, 1374-1391.♦ Before the end of the century Philadelphia was lost in Asia, and the Imperial dominion in Europe hardly reached beyond the city itself and the Peloponnesian province. Thessalonikê and the Thessalian province were both lost for a while. ♦Effects of Timour’s invasion, 1401.♦ Bajazet was on the point of doing the work of Mahomet, when the Empire was saved for another half-century by the invasion of Timour and the consequent break-up of the Ottoman power. During the Ottoman civil wars, the outlying points of the Empire were restored and seized again more than once. ♦1424.♦ At last the boundaries of the Empire were fixed by treaty between Sultan Mahomet and the Emperor Manuel, much as they had stood sixty years before. The coast of the Propontis to Selymbria, the coast of the Euxine to Mesêmbria, Thessalonikê and Chalkidikê, the Peloponnesian province, the smaller Thessalian province, the overlordship of Lesbos, Ainos, and Thasos, was all that was left. Further losses soon followed. ♦1426.♦ Thessalonikê passed from the Empire within two years. ♦1453.♦ At last, as all the world knows, the Imperial city itself fell, and the name of the Eastern Roman Empire was blotted out of European geography. ♦1460.♦ Six years later came the conquest of Peloponnêsos, and the whole of European Greece passed into the hands of foreign masters.

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♦States growing out of the Empire.♦

Having thus sketched the changes in the extent of the Eastern Roman Empire during a period of six hundred and fifty years, we have now to trace the geography of the states which, within that time, grew up within its borders or upon its frontiers. These fall naturally into four groups. ♦The Slavonic states.♦ First come the national states which were formed by throwing off the dominion of the Empire. These are mainly the Slavonic powers to the north, Bulgaria, Servia, Croatia, and the later states which arose out of their divisions and combinations. ♦Hungary. | Rouman states.♦ And with these, different as was their origin, we must, for our purposes, place both the _Hungarian_ kingdom which annexed so many of the Slavonic lands, and the _Rouman_ states, so closely connected with Hungarian history, which arose by migrations out of the Empire. ♦The Greek states.♦ Another group consists of the Greek states which split off from the Empire before or at the Latin conquest, and which were not recovered by the Greek Emperors of Nikaia and Constantinople. Both these classes of states belong strictly to Eastern Christendom. Catholic Hungary ruling over Orthodox Slaves forms a link between the East and the West; so do those Slaves who themselves belong to the Latin Church. ♦Latin states with the Empire.♦ Another link is supplied by a third group of states, namely, those parts of the Empire which, either at or before the Latin conquest, came under Latin rule. This class is not confined to the Frank powers in Romania or to the Eastern settlements of Venice and Genoa. ♦Kingdom of Sicily. | Kingdom of Jerusalem.♦ From our point of view it takes in the Norman kingdom of Sicily and the crusading kingdom of Jerusalem with its fiefs. In all these cases, territory which had formed part of the Eastern Empire came under Latin rule. And in all these cases, Latin masters bore rule over alien subjects, Greek, Slave, Syrian, or any other. None of the Latin powers were national states, like the Slavonic or even like the Greek powers. But the foreign masters of these lands were at least European and Christian. The last class consists of powers which lie beyond the range of European and Christian civilization. ♦Turkish dynasties.♦ These are the Turkish dynasties which arose within the Empire. ♦The Ottomans.♦ Of these only the last and greatest, the dynasty of _Othman_, became geographically European, and swallowed up nearly all the lands which had belonged to the Empire in Europe, together with much which lay beyond its bounds. Here we have, not only the absence of national being, but the rule of the Asiatic over the European, of the Mussulman over the Christian. ♦The New States.♦ Lastly, we come to the partial redressing of this wrong by the re-establishment of independent Greek and Slavonic states in our own century.

These seem to make four natural groups, and it is needful to bear in mind their nature and relations to each other. But it will be more convenient to speak of the several states thus formed in an order approaching more nearly to the order of their separation from the Empire. And first comes a power which parted off so early, and which became so thoroughly a part of Western Europe, that it needs an effort to grasp the fact that its right place is among the powers which had their beginning in separation from the Imperial throne of Constantinople.

§ 2. _The Kingdom of Sicily._

♦The Norman power in Italy and Sicily.♦

This is the power which, in the course of the eleventh century, was formed by the Norman adventurers in southern Italy and in Sicily. It was not wholly formed at the expense of the Eastern Empire. But all its insular, and the greater part of its continental, territory, was either won from the Eastern Empire and its vassals, or else had once formed part of that Empire. Its kings also more than once established their power, for a longer or shorter time, in the Imperial lands east of the Hadriatic. With the Western Empire and the Kingdom of Italy the Sicilian kingdom had in its beginnings nothing to do, though it was afterwards somewhat enlarged at their expense.

♦Possessions of the Empire in Italy.♦

When the Norman conquests in Italy began, early in the eleventh century, the Eastern Empire still kept the coast of both seas from the further side of the peninsula of _Gargano_ to the head of the gulf of _Policastro_. The Imperial duchies of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, lying to the north of this point, were cut off by the duchies of _Benevento_, _Capua_, and _Salerno_, over which the Empire had at the most a very precarious superiority. ♦Advance of the Normans.♦ Within a hundred years, all these lands, together with the island of Sicily, were brought under Norman rule. Thus grew up a new European power, sometimes forming one kingdom, sometimes two, sometimes held alone, sometimes together with other kingdoms. This power supplanted alike the Eastern Empire, the Saracen powers of Sicily, and the Lombard princes of southern Italy. It started from two points, two distinct Norman settlements, of which the later outshone the earlier. ♦County of Aversa, 1021.♦ The earliest Norman territorial settlement was the county of _Aversa_, held in vassalage of the Imperial duchy of Naples. ♦Principality of Capua, 1062-1068.♦ Forty years later its counts became possessed of the principality of _Capua_, of which they received a papal confirmation which implied a denial of all dependence on either Empire. The more lasting duchy of _Apulia_ began later under the adventurers of the house of Hauteville. ♦County of Apulia, 1042.♦ Their first stage is marked by the foundation of the county of Apulia, with _Melfi_ as its capital, under William of-the-Iron-arm. This took in the peninsula of Gargano and the lands immediately to the south of it. ♦Investiture by Pope Leo, 1053.♦ The next stage is when Leo the Ninth invested Count Humfrey, or rather the Normans as a body, with all that they could conquer in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. ♦Robert Wiscard Duke, 1059. | Completion of the Apulian duchy, 1077.♦ The first of several takings of _Tarentum_, and the assumption of the ducal title by Robert Wiscard, mark another stage. Less than twenty years later the Eastern Empire kept nothing but the duchy of Naples; _Benevento_ had passed to the Popes. The rest of the lands both of the Empire and of the Lombard princes were now very unequally divided between two Norman lords, the Duke of Apulia and the Prince of Capua. ♦Robert Wiscard in Epeiros, 1081-1085.♦ The Byzantine power west of the Hadriatic being thus overthrown, Robert Wiscard for the first time pushed the Norman arms into the Eastern peninsula itself. For the last few years of his life he held the islands of Corfu and Kephallênia, with Durazzo and the coast to the south, and even inland as far as _Kastoria_ and _Trikkala_. ♦1147-1150.♦ His power was renewed for a moment by his son Bohemond, and in the middle of the next century Corfu was again for a short time held by King Roger.

♦Norman Conquest of Sicily, 1060-1093.♦

For by that time the island of Sicily was a kingdom of Western Christendom. The second time of Mussulman rule over the whole island was short. In the space of thirty years Count Roger won the great island alike from Islam and from Eastern Christendom. ♦Taking of Messina, 1061; | of Palermo, 1072; | of Syracuse, 1086; | of Noto, 1091;♦ Greek Messina was first won; after a while Saracen Palermo followed; Syracuse was won much later; the last Saracen post in the island to hold out was _Noto_ in the south-eastern corner. ♦of Malta, 1091.♦ _Malta_, the natural appendage of Sicily, was soon added. The first Norman capital was _Messina_. Duke Robert, as overlord of his brother Count Roger, kept Palermo and the surrounding district in his own hands. It was not till the next century that the Count of Sicily won full possession of the city. ♦Palermo capital of Sicily.♦ Palermo then became again, as it had been under the Saracens, the head of Sicily.

The ruler of Sicily also became a potentate on the Italian mainland. First the half, then the whole, of Calabria formed part of his dominions. ♦Roger the Second, 1105-1154. | King, 1130.♦ The third Great Count, the first King, of Sicily, Roger the Second, gradually won the whole possessions of his family on the mainland. ♦Capua, 1132-1136.♦ To these he presently added the Norman principality of Capua, first as a dependent territory, then as fully incorporated with his dominions. ♦Naples, 1138.♦ He next won the last possession in the West which was still held by the Eastern Empire, the city of Naples. ♦The Abruzzi, 1140.♦ He then pressed beyond the bounds both of the Eastern Empire and of the early Norman conquests by the annexation of the _Abruzzi_. He then, as we have seen, extended his power for a moment east of the Hadriatic. Meanwhile he was more successful against the common enemies of Eastern and Western Christendom. ♦Conquests in Africa, 1135-1137.♦ As Sicily had twice been conquered from Africa, Africa now began to be conquered from Sicily. ♦1160.♦ Roger held a considerable dominion on the African coast including _Mehadia_, _Bona_, and other points, which were lost under his son William.

Thus was founded a kingdom which has, perhaps oftener than any other European state, been divided and united and handed over from one dynasty of strangers to another, but whose boundaries, strictly so called, have hardly changed at all. For the only immediate neighbour of the Sicilian king was his ecclesiastical overlord. The question was whether the king of the mainland should be also king of the island. But the successive dynasties which reigned both over the whole kingdom and over its divided parts were for a long time eager to carry out the policy of their first founder, by conquests east of the Hadriatic. ♦Epeirot conquests of William the Good, 1185.♦ Before the fall of the old Empire, William the Good began again to establish an Epeirot and insular dominion by the conquest of Durazzo, Corfu, Kephallênia, and Zakynthos. ♦Kingdom of Margarito, 1186. | 1338.♦ But these outlying dominions were granted in fief to the Sicilian Admiral Margarito,[28] who, himself bearing the strange title of _King of the Epeirots_, founded a dynasty which, with the title of Count Palatine, held _Kephallênia_, _Zakynthos_, and _Ithakê_ into the fourteenth century. Thus these lands, like Cyprus and Trebizond, were cut off from the Empire just before its fall, and the revolutions of Sicily cut them off equally from the Sicilian kingdom. ♦Epeirot dominion of Manfred, 1258.♦ A more lasting power in these regions began under Manfred, who received with his Greek wife Corfu, Durazzo, and a strip of the Albanian coast, with the title of _Lord of Romania_. ♦Of Charles of Anjou, 1266-69. | 1272-1276.♦ This dominion passed to his conqueror Charles of Anjou, who further established a feudal superiority over the Epeirot despotat. ♦1282.♦ But his plans were cut short by the revolution of the Vespers. ♦History of Durazzo, 1322. | Duchy of Durazzo, 1333-1360. | 1378.♦ Durazzo was lost and won more than once; but it came back to the Angevin house, to become a separate Angevin duchy, till it fell before the growth of the Albanian powers. Another branch held _Lepanto_—once _Naupaktos_—which lasted longer. ♦1373-1386.♦ Corfu and Butrinto became immediate possessions of the Neapolitan crown till they found more lasting masters at Venice.

This Eastern dominion of the two Sicilian crowns, besides their influence of which we shall have presently to speak in southern Greece, tends to keep up the connexion of the Sicilian kingdoms with the Empire out of which they sprang. But it can hardly be called a geographical enlargement of the kingdoms themselves. ♦Acre occupied by Charles of Anjou.♦ Still less can that name be given to the short occupation of _Acre_ by Charles of Anjou in his character of one of the many Kings of Jerusalem. ♦Malta granted to the Knights, 1530.♦ The Sicilian kingdoms themselves cannot be said to have gained or lost territory till Charles the Fifth granted Malta to the Knights of Saint John, till Philip the Second added the _Stati degli Presidi_ to the Two Sicilies. The great revolution of all has taken place in our own day. The name of Sicily has for the first time been wiped from the European map. The island of Hierôn and Roger has sunk to form seven provinces of a prince who has not deigned to take the crown or the title of that illustrious realm.

§ 3. _The Crusading States._

♦Comparison between Sicily and the crusading states.♦

The Sicilian kingdom has much in common with the states formed by the crusaders in Asia and Eastern Europe. Both grew out of lands won by Western conquerors, partly from the Eastern Empire itself, partly from Mussulman holders of lands which had belonged to the Eastern Empire. But the order of the two processes is different. The Sicilian Normans began by conquering lands of the Empire, and then went on to win the island which the Saracens had torn from the Empire. The successive crusades first founded Christian states in the lands which the Mussulmans had won from the Empire, and then partitioned the Empire itself. The first crusaders undertook to hold their conquest as fiefs of the Eastern Empire. This condition was only very partially carried out; but the mere theory marks a stage in the relations between the Eastern Empire and the Latin powers of Palestine which has nothing answering to it in the case of Sicily.

♦Kingdom of Jerusalem and Frank principalities in Syria.♦

First among these powers come the _Kingdom of Jerusalem_ and the other Frank principalities which arose out of the first crusade. ♦Cyprus.♦ The kingdom of _Cyprus_, which in some sort continued the Kingdom of Jerusalem, forms a link between the true crusading states and those which arose out of the partition of the Empire in the fourth crusade. ♦Armenia.♦ And closely connected with this was the kingdom of _Kilikian Armenia_ whose foundation we have already mentioned.[29] This last was an Eastern state which became to some extent Latinized. But the Syrian states, Cyprus, and the Latin powers which arose out of the partition of the Empire, all agree in being colonies of Western Europe in Eastern lands, states where the Latin settlers appear as a dominant race over the natives, of whatever blood or creed.

♦The Crusaders cut off the Mussulmans from the sea.♦

The great geographical result of the first crusade was to cut off the Mussulman powers from the seas of Asia and Eastern Europe. In the first years of the twelfth century the Christian powers, Byzantine, Armenian, and Latin, held the whole coast of Asia Minor and Syria. ♦Extent of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.♦ The Kingdom of Jerusalem, at its greatest extent, stretched along the coast from _Berytos_ to _Gaza_. To the east it reached some way beyond Jordan and the Dead Sea, with a strip of territory reaching southward to the eastern gulf of the Red Sea. To the north lay two Latin states which, in the days of Komnenian revival, acknowledged the superiority of the Eastern Emperor. ♦Tripolis. | Antioch.♦ These were the county of _Tripolis_, reaching northwards to the Syrian _Alexandretta_, and the more famous principality of _Antioch_. ♦640. | 968. | 1081. | 1098. | 1268.♦ That great city, lost to Christendom in the first days of Saracen conquest, won back to the Empire in the Macedonian revival, lost to the Turk, won back by the Frank, remained a Christian principality long after the fall of Jerusalem, and did not pass again under Mussulman rule till late in the thirteenth century. ♦Edessa.♦ North-east of Antioch lay the furthest of the Latin possessions, the inland county of _Edessa_. ♦1128-1173.♦ This was the first to be lost; it fell under the power of the Turkish Attabegs of Syria. ♦Loss of the lands beyond Jordan.♦ They cut short the kingdom of Jerusalem, taking away the territory east of Jordan. On their ruin arose the mightier power of Saladin, lord alike of Egypt and Syria. ♦Jerusalem taken by Saladin, 1187.♦ He took Jerusalem, and the kingdom which still bore that name was cut down to the lands just round Tyre. ♦Jerusalem recovered by Frederick the Second, 1228.♦ The crusades which followed won back _Acre_ and various points, and at last the diplomacy of Frederick the Second won back from the Egyptian Sultan Tyre, Sidon, and the Holy City itself. A strip of coast running inland at two points, so as to take in Tiberias and Nazareth at one end, Jerusalem and Bethlehem at the other, formed the Eastern realm of the lord of Rome and Sicily. ♦1239-1243. | Final loss of Jerusalem, 1244.♦ Lost and won again by the Christians, Jerusalem was finally won for Islam by the invasion of the Chorasmians from the shores of the Caspian. But for nearly fifty years longer the points on the coast were lost and won, as the Mussulman powers or fresh crusaders from Europe had the upper hand. ♦Fall of Acre, 1291.♦ With the fall of _Acre_, the Latin dominion on the Syrian mainland came to an end. The land won by the Western Christians from the Mussulman went back to the disciples of the Prophet. The land won by the Western Christian from the Eastern, and the land where the Eastern Christian still maintained his independence, held out longer.

♦Cyprus.♦

These were the kingdoms of _Cyprus_ and _Armenia_. ♦Famagosta Genoese.♦ The frontier of Cyprus hardly admitted of geographical change, unless it were when, for a part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the city and haven of _Famagosta_ passed to Genoa. ♦Connexion between Cyprus and Jerusalem.♦ The kings of Cyprus however claimed the crown of Jerusalem, and sometimes, before the whole Syrian coast was lost, they really held this or that piece of territory on the mainland. ♦Armenia acknowledges the Western Emperor, 1190.♦ Meanwhile the Armenian kingdom in some sort entered the Western world, when its king, after receiving one confirmation from the Eastern Emperor, thought it wise to receive another from the Western Emperor also. ♦1342.♦ The kingdom, though sadly cut short by its Mussulman neighbours, lived on under native princes till the middle of the fourteenth century. ♦Connexion between Armenia and Cyprus, 1393.♦ Then the fragments of the kingdom passed, first to a branch of the Cypriot royal family, and then to the reigning king of Cyprus. But the first joint reign was the last. ♦End of Armenia and Cyprus, 1489.♦ The remnant of independent Armenia was swallowed up by the Mameluke lords of Syria, while Cyprus lingered on till Saint Mark and his commonwealth became the heirs of its last king.

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The kingdom of Cyprus forms a link between the Latin states in Syria and those which arose in Romania after the crusading capture of Constantinople. And these last again fall into two classes. ♦Frank principalities in Greece. | Possessions of the maritime commonwealths.♦ There are the Frank principalities on the mainland of Greece, and there are the lands, chiefly insular, which fell to the lot of the maritime commonwealths of the West and of their citizens. Among these the first place belongs to the great commonwealth which had now cast off all traces of allegiance to the Empire. ♦Genoa.♦ _Genoa_, which had no share in the original partition of the Empire, obtained several points of Imperial territory, both for the commonwealth itself and for particular Genoese citizens. ♦Venice.♦ But the part played by Genoa in the East is small beside the great and abiding dominion of Venice. No result of the partition was greater than the field which it gave to Venetian growth. ♦Comparison between the two.♦ The position of the two commonwealths is different. Genoa was a mere stranger in the East; Venice was in a manner at home. Once an outlying possession of the Empire, her really great historical position is due to her share in its overthrow.

§ 4. _The Eastern Dominion of Venice and Genoa._

We have already seen the origin of the Venetian state, and the beginning of Venetian rule over the Slavonic coasts of the Hadriatic. ♦Connexion of the Dalmatian and Greek dominion of Venice.♦ The Eastern dominion of Venice now began, and, in a strictly geographical view, her Istrian and Dalmatian dominion cannot be separated from her Albanian and purely Greek dominion. But Venice did not become a great European power till she passed from the Slavonic lands whose connexion with the Empire was nominal or precarious into the Albanian and Greek lands which were among its immediate possessions. ♦Effect of the partition on Venice.♦ The greatness of Venice dates from that partition of the Empire which was the surest proof that she had wholly cast aside her Byzantine allegiance. ♦Comparison between Venice and Sicily.♦ In this point of view the history of Venice may be compared and contrasted with the history of Sicily. In each case, a part of the dominions of the Eastern Rome grew into a separate power; that power passed, so to speak, from Eastern Europe to Western, and, in its new Western character, it appeared as a conqueror in the Eastern lands. But, as Venice and Sicily parted from the Empire in different ways, so their later relations to the Empire were widely different. The Sicilian state began in actual conquests made by foreign invaders at the expense of the Empire. Venice was a dependency of the Empire which gradually drifted into independence. Thus Sicily became more thoroughly Western than Venice. The attempts of the kings, both of the whole Sicilian kingdom and of its divided parts, to establish an Eastern dominion were attacks from without, and were not really lasting. ♦Venice inherits the position of the Empire.♦ But Venice, whose princes were lords of one fourth and one eighth of the Empire of Romania,[30] took up in some sort the position of the Empire itself. If she destroyed one bulwark against the Mussulman, she set up another. As long as Venice was really a great power, her main interests lay east of the Hadriatic. ♦Importance of the fourth crusade in Venetian history.♦ The fourth crusade was her turning point. It was at once the beginning of her Greek dominion and the recovery of her Dalmatian dominion.

♦Territory assigned to Venice by the Act of Partition.♦

The scheme of partition gave to Venice a vast dominion, insular and continental. She was to be mistress of the Hadriatic and Ionian seas. To her were assigned, not only the islands off the west coast of the Empire, but the whole western coast itself, from the north of Albania to the southern point of Peloponnêsos. She was to have some points in the Ægæan, among them _Oreos_ and _Karystos_ at the two ends of Euboia. She was to have her quarter of the capital, with a Thracian and an Asiatic dominion, including, according to some versions, the strange allotment of _Lazia_ at the east of the Euxine[31]. ♦Her actual possessions.♦ The actual possessions of Venice in the East have a very different look. Much of the territory which was assigned to the republic never became hers, while she obtained large possessions which were not assigned to her. ♦Her dominion primarily Hadriatic.♦ But the main point, the dominion of the Hadriatic, was never forgotten, though some both of her earliest and of her latest conquests lay beyond its necessary range.

♦Possessions not assigned by the partition. | Crete. 1206-1669.♦

Among those possessions of Venice which were not assigned to her in the act of partition was her greatest and most lasting possession of all, the island of _Crete_. ♦1645-1669.♦ This she won almost at the first moment of the conquest, and she kept it for more than four centuries and a half, till the war of _Candia_ handed over all Crete, save two fortresses, to the Ottoman. ♦Acquisition of Cyprus. 1489.♦ Before this loss, Saint Mark had won and lost another great island which lay altogether beyond the scheme of the Latin conquerors of Constantinople. Late in the fifteenth century the republic succeeded the Latin kings in the possession of _Cyprus_. ♦Loss of Cyprus, 1571.♦ But this was held for less than a century. Cyprus, like Crete and Sicily, was a special scene of struggle between European and barbarian powers. But it shared the fate, not of Sicily but of Crete, and became the solid prize of the Ottoman, when Christendom won the barren laurels of Lepanto. ♦Occupation of Thessalonikê, 1426-1430.♦ Another possession which lay out of the usual course of Venetian dominion was the short occupation of _Thessalonikê_. Bought of a Greek despot, it was after four years taken by the Turk. Had Thessalonikê been kept, it might have passed as a late compensation to the republic for the early loss of Hadrianople and her other Thracian territory.

♦Venetian power both Dalmatian and Greek.♦

But the true scene of Venetian enterprise in the East is primarily the Hadriatic, and next to that, the coasts and islands of the Ægæan. She remained both a Dalmatian and a Greek power down to the moment of her overthrow, and, at the moment of her overthrow, it was not eighty years since she had ceased to be a Peloponnesian and an Ægæan power. The Greek dominion of Venice was an enlargement of her Dalmatian dominion. ♦Taking of Zara, 1202.♦ It is significant that Zara was taken—not for the first or the last time—on the way to the taking of Constantinople. ♦Hadriatic dominion of Venice.♦ Already mistress, or striving to be mistress, of the northern part of the eastern coast of the Hadriatic, the partition of the Empire opened to Venice the hope of becoming mistress of the southern part. Mistress of the whole coast she never was at any one moment; one point was gained and another lost. But extension in those lands was steadily aimed at for more than seven hundred years, and the greater part of the eastern Hadriatic coast has been, at one time or another, under Venetian rule.

The story of Venetian dominion in these parts cannot be kept apart from the story of the neighbouring Slavonic lands. The states of Servia and Croatia were from the beginning the inland neighbours of the Dalmatian coast cities. ♦Servian districts on the coast.♦ The river Tzettina may pass as the boundary between the Servian and Croatian states. _Pagania_ on the Narenta, _Zachloumia_ between the Narenta and Ragusa, _Terbounia_, represented by the modern _Trebinje_, the coast district of the _Canali_, _Dioklea_, taking in the modern Montenegro with the coast as far as the Drin—_Skodra_ or _Scutari_ on its lake, the harbours of _Spizza_, _Antivari_, and _Dulcigno_, were all originally Servian. ♦The Dalmatian cities.♦ The Dalmatian coast cities, _Dekatera_ or _Cattaro_, _Raousion_ or _Ragusa_, _Tragourion_ or _Traü_, _Diadora_, _Jadera_, or _Zara_, formed a Roman fringe on what had become a Slavonic body. It was not even a continuous fringe, as the Slaves came down to the sea at more than one point. ♦Pagania.♦ _Pagania_ above all, the land of the heathen Narentines, cut Roman Dalmatia into two marked parts. ♦The Islands.♦ It even took in most of the great islands, _Curzola_—once _Black Korkyra_—_Meleda_, _Lesina_—once _Pharos_—and others. At the separation of the two Empires the Croatian power was strongest in those lands. ♦Croatia under Charles the Great, 806-810.♦ The wars of Charles the Great left the coast cities to the Eastern Empire, while inland Dalmatia and Croatia passed under Frankish rule. ♦825-830.♦ Presently Croatia won its independence of the Western Empire, while the coast cities were practically lost by the Eastern. ♦Settlement under Basil the Macedonian, 868-878.♦ Under Basil the Macedonian the Imperial authority was admitted, in name at least, both by the cities and by the Croatian prince. ♦First Venetian Conquest, 995-997.♦ More than a century later came the first Venetian conquest, which was looked on at Venice as a deliverance of the cities from Croatian rule. The pagan power on the Narenta was destroyed, and the Duke of Venice took the title of _Duke of Dalmatia_. But all this involved no formal separation from the Empire.[32] ♦The cities under Croatia, 1052. | Dalmatian Kingdom, 1062.♦ Such a separation may be held to have taken place in the middle of the next century, when the cities again passed under Croatian rule, and when the taking of the title of _King of Dalmatia_ by Croatian Kresimir may pass for an assertion of complete independence. ♦Magyar Kingdom of Croatia, 1091; | of Dalmatia, 1102.♦ But the kingdoms, first of Croatia, then of Dalmatia, were presently swallowed up by the growing power of the Magyar. Then comes a time in which this city and that passes to and fro between Venice and Hungary. ♦Croatia and Dalmatia restored to the Empire, 1171. | Dalmatia passes to Hungary.♦ Under Manuel Komnênos the whole of Croatia and Dalmatia was fully restored to the Empire; but ten years later the cities again passed to Hungary. This was their final separation from the Empire, and by this time Venice had thrown off all Byzantine allegiance.

♦Struggle for the dominion of Dalmatia.♦

From this time the history of Croatia forms part of the history of the Hungarian kingdom. The history of Dalmatia becomes part of the long struggle of Venice for Hadriatic dominion. For five hundred years the cities and islands of the whole Hadriatic coast were lost and won over and over again in the strifes of the powers of the mainland. These were in Dalmatia the Hungarian and Bosnian Kings; more to the south they were the endless powers which rose and fell in Albania and northern Greece. In after times the Ottoman took the place of all. And many of the cities were able, amid the disputes of their stronger neighbours, to make themselves independent commonwealths for a longer or shorter time. ♦Independence of Ragusa;♦ _Ragusa_, above all, kept her independence during the whole time, modified in later times by a certain external dependence on the Turk. ♦of Polizza.♦ And the almost invisible inland commonwealth of _Polizza_—a Slavonic San Marino—kept its separate being into the present century.

♦Fluctuations between Venice and Hungary, 1315.♦

The crusading conquest of Zara was the beginning of this long struggle. The frontier fluctuated during the whole of the thirteenth century; early in the fourteenth the whole coast was again Venetian. Meanwhile the republic was striving to make good her position further south. The Epeirot despotat long hindered her establishment either on the coasts or the islands of northern Greece. ♦Final conquest of Durazzo and Corfu, 1206. | 1216.♦ Durazzo, the central point between the older and the newer Venetian range, was won, along with Corfu, in the earliest days of the conquest; but they were presently lost, to come back again in after times. ♦History of Corfu.♦ The famous island of Korkyra or Corfu has a special history of its own. No part of Greece has been so often cut off from the Greek body. Under Pyrrhos and Agathoklês, no less than under Michael Angelos and Roger, it obeyed an Epeirot or a Sicilian master. It was among the first parts of Greece to pass permanently under Roman dependence. ♦Second Venetian conquest of Corfu, 1386-1797.♦ At last, after yet another turn of Sicilian rule, it passed for four hundred years to the great commonwealth. In our own day Corfu was not added to free Greece till long after the deliverance of Attica and Peloponnêsos. But, under so many changes of foreign masters, the island has always remained part of Europe and of Christendom. Alone among the Greek lands, Corfu has never passed under barbarian rule. ♦1716. | 1800.♦ It has seen the Turk only, for one moment as an invader, for another moment as a nominal overlord.

♦Greek advance of Venice.♦

The second Venetian occupation of Corfu was the beginning of a great advance among the neighbouring islands. But, during the hundred and eighty years between the two occupations, the main fields of Venetian action lay more to the north and more to the south. The Greek acquisitions of the republic at this time were in Peloponnêsos and the Ægæan islands. ♦Modon and Coron, 1206.♦ On the mainland she won, at the very beginning of Latin settlement in the East, the south-western peninsula of Peloponnêsos, with the towns of _Methônê_ and _Kôrônê_—otherwise _Modon_ and _Coron_—which she held for nearly three hundred years. ♦History of Euboia.♦ Among the Ægæan islands Venice began very early to win an influence in the greatest of their number, that of _Euboia_, often disguised under the specially barbarous name of _Negropont_.[33] The history of that island, the endless shiftings between its Latin lords and the neighbouring powers of all kinds, is the most perplexed part of the perplexed Greek history of the time. ♦Complete occupation of Euboia, 1390.♦ Venice, mixed up in its affairs throughout, obtained in the end complete possession, but not till after the second occupation of Corfu. ♦Turkish conquest of Euboia, 1470.♦ The island was kept till the Turkish conquest eighty years later. Several other islands were held by the republic at different times. ♦Loss of the Ægæan islands, 1718.♦ Of these _Tênos_ and _Mykonos_ were not finally lost till Venice was in the eighteenth century confined to the western seas.

Between the first and the second occupation of Corfu, the Venetian power in Dalmatia had risen and fallen again. ♦Peace of Zara, 1358. | Dalmatia Hungarian.♦ By the peace of Zara, Lewis the Great of Hungary shut out Venice altogether from the Dalmatian coasts, and, as Dalmatian King, he required the Venetian Duke to give up his Dalmatian title. ♦New advance of Venice.♦ Later in the century Venice again gained ground, and her Dalmatian, Albanian, and Greek possessions began to draw near together, and to form one whole, though never a continuous whole. ♦1378-1455. | Recovery of Dalmatia.♦ In the space of about eighty years, amid many fluctuations towards Hungary, Bosnia, and Genoa—a new claimant called into rivalry by the war of Chioggia—Venice again became mistress of the greater part of Dalmatia. Some districts however formed part of the Duchy of _Saint Sava_, and Hungary kept part of the inland territory, with the fortress of _Clissa_. The point where the Hadriatic coast turns nearly due south may be taken as the boundary of the lasting and nearly continuous dominion of the Republic; but for the present the Venetian power went on spreading far south of that point. ♦Advance in Albania and Greece, 1392.♦ On the second occupation of Corfu followed the acquisition of _Durazzo_, _Alessio_, and of the Albanian _Skodra_ or _Scutari_. ♦1401. | 1407.♦ _Butrinto_ and the ever memorable _Parga_ put themselves under Venetian protection, and _Lepanto_ was ceded by a Prince of Achaia. ♦1388.♦ In Peloponnêsos the Messenian towns were still held, and to them were now added _Argos_ and its port of _Nauplia_, known in Italian as _Napoli di Romania_. ♦1408-1415. | 1419. | 1423.♦ _Patras_ was held for a few years, _Monembasia_ was won, and the isle of _Aigina_, which might almost pass for part of Peloponnêsos. On the other side of Greece, the possession of Corfu led to the acquisition of the other so-called Ionian Islands. ♦The Western Islands. 1449.♦ The prince of _Kephallênia_, of _Zakynthos_ or _Zante_, and of _Leukadia_ or _Santa Maura_, found it to his interest, for fear of the advancing Ottoman, to put his dominions under the overlordship of Saint Mark.

♦Venice the champion against the Turk.♦

This marks an epoch in the history of Venice and of Europe. The championship of Christendom against the Turk now passes from the New Rome to the hardly less Byzantine city in the Lagoons. The short occupation of Thessalonikê may pass for the beginning of the struggle. Later in the fifteenth century, Venice and the Turk were meeting at every point. ♦Loss of Argos, 1463.♦ In Peloponnêsos, _Argos_ was first lost to the Turk; at the same moment he appeared far to the north, and gradually occupied the Bosnian and Hungarian districts of Dalmatia. ♦1505-1699.♦ Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the inland districts and the smaller towns were lost over and over again, but the Republic always kept the chief coast cities, _Zara_, _Sebenico_, and _Spalato_. ♦Losses of Venice.♦ Meanwhile, to the south of Dalmatia, the Venetian power went back everywhere, except in the western islands. ♦1474-1478.♦ On the mainland _Croja_, the city of Scanderbeg, was held for a while. ♦1479.♦ But both Croja and Skodra were won by Mahomet the Conqueror, and the treaty which ended this war left to the Republic nothing on the coast of Albania and Northern Greece, save _Durazzo_, _Antivari_, and _Butrinto_. ♦1500.♦ The treaty which followed the next war took away _Durazzo_, _Butrinto_, and _Lepanto_. ♦The Western Islands, 1481-1483.♦ A series of revolutions in the islands of which the Republic already held the overlordship placed them under her immediate dominion, to be struggled for against the Turk. ♦1485. | 1502.♦ By the next peace _Zakynthos_ was kept, on payment of a tribute to the Sultan; _Kephallênia_ passed to the Turk, to be won back seventeen years later, and then to be permanently kept. ♦1502-1504.♦ _Leukadia_ was at the same time won for a moment and lost again. ♦Loss of the Peloponnesian fortresses, 1502. | 1540.♦ In Peloponnêsos _Modon_ and _Koron_ were lost along with _Durazzo_ and _Lepanto_, and the great naval war with Suleiman cost the Republic her last Peloponnesian possessions, _Nauplia_ and _Monembasia_, together with all her Ægæan islands, except _Tênos_ and _Mykonos_. The strictly Greek dominion of Venice was now for a hundred and forty years confined to the islands, and, after the loss of Cyprus and Crete, almost wholly to the Western islands. But after the loss of Crete came a revival of the Venetian power, like one of the old revivals of the Empire. ♦Venetian conquest of Peloponnêsos, 1685-1699.♦ The great campaigns of Francesco Morosini, confirmed by the peace of Carlowitz, freed all Peloponnêsos from the Turk, and added it to the dominion of Saint Mark.

The same treaty confirmed Venice in the possession of the greater part of Dalmatia. ♦Loss of Peloponnêsos, 1715-1718.♦ The next war cost her the whole of Peloponnêsos, her two Cretan fortresses, and her two remaining Ægæan islands. She now withdrew wholly to the western side of Greece, where she had again won _Leukadia_ and _Butrinto_, and had enlarged her dominion by the acquisition of _Prevesa_. ♦Extent of Venetian dominion in Greece in the last century.♦ During the last century the Venetian possessions in Greece consisted of the seven so-called Ionian islands, with the continental posts of _Butrinto_, _Prevesa_, and _Parga_.

♦Venetian territory in Dalmatia.♦

The Dalmatian territory of the Republic during the same time consisted of a considerable inland district in the north-east, and of the whole coast down to _Budua_, except where the territory of independent Ragusa broke the continuity of her rule. ♦Ragusan frontier.♦ Ragusa was so jealous of the mightier commonwealth that she preferred the Turk as a neighbour. At two points of the coast, at _Klek_ at the bottom of the gulf formed by the long peninsula of Sabbioncello, and again at _Sutorina_ on the _Bocche_, the Ottoman territory came down to the sea, so as to isolate the dominion of Ragusa from the Venetian possessions on either side. Such was the frontier of the two Hadriatic commonwealths down to the days when, first Venice and then Ragusa, passed away.

♦Possession of Venetian cities.♦

Meanwhile, besides the direct possessions of the Venetian commonwealth, there were other lands within the former dominions of the Eastern Empire which were held by Venetian lords, as vassals either of the republic or of the Empire of Romania. It would be endless to trace out the revolutions of every Ægæan island; but one among the few which claim our notice became the seat of a dynasty which proved, next to the Venetian commonwealth itself, the most long-lived Latin power in the Greek world. ♦The Duchy of Naxos.♦ This is the duchy variously known as that of _Naxos_, of the _Dôdekannêsos_, and of the _Archipelago_, the barbarous name given to the Ægæan or _White Sea_.[34] ♦1207. | 1566.♦ Founded in the early years of Latin settlement by the Venetian Marco Sanudo, the island duchy lived on as a Latin state, commonly as a vassal or tributary state of some greater power, till the last half of the sixteenth century. ♦Annexed by the Turk, 1579. | 1617.♦ Shorn of many of its islands by its Ottoman overlord, granted afresh to a Jewish duke, it passed thirteen years later under the immediate dominion of the Sultan. Most of the _Kyklades_ were either parts of this duchy or fiefs held of it by other Venetian families. All came into the hands of the Turk; but some of the very smallest remained merely tributary, and not fully annexed, into the seventeenth century.

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♦Settlements of Genoa and of Genoese citizens.♦

The year which saw the Naxian duchy pass from Latin to Hebrew hands saw the fall of the most remarkable of the Genoese settlements in the Greek lands. These settlements, like those of Venice, formed two classes, those which were possessions of the Genoese commonwealth itself and those which came into the hands of Genoese citizens. ♦1304.♦ Genoa had no share in the fourth Crusade; she had therefore no share in the division of the Empire, though, after the restoration of Byzantine rule, her colony of _Galata_ made her almost a sharer in the capital of the Empire. ♦Possessions of Genoa on the Euxine, 1461.♦ But the seat of direct Genoese dominion in the East was not the Ægæan but the Euxine. On the southern coast of that sea the republic held _Amastris_ and _Amisos_, and in the Tauric Chersonêsos was her great colony of _Kaffa_. ♦1475.♦ The Euxine dominion of Genoa came to an end during the later half of the fifteenth century; but it outlived the Empires both of Constantinople and of Trebizond.

The Ægæan dominion of the citizens of Genoa was longer lived than the Euxine dominion of Genoa herself. ♦Lesbos. 1354-1462.♦ The family of Gattilusio received _Lesbos_ as an Imperial fief in the fourteenth century, and kept it till after the fall of Constantinople. But the most remarkable Genoese settlement in the Ægæan was that of _Chios_. ♦The Zaccaria at Chios. 1304-1346. | The Maona. 1346-1566.♦ First held by princes of the Genoese house of Zaccaria, the island, with some of its neighbours, passed into the hands of a Genoese commercial company or _Maona_, a body somewhat like our own East India Company. ♦1566.♦ _Samos_, _Kôs_, and _Phôkaia_ on the mainland, came at different times under their power, and Chios did not fall under the Ottoman yoke till the same year as the duchy of Naxos.

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One more insular dominion remains, chiefly famous as the possession, not indeed of a commonwealth, but of an order. ♦Revolutions of Rhodes.♦ In a few years of the thirteenth century the island of _Rhodes_ passed through all possible revolutions. ♦1233.♦ In the first moment of the Latin conquest, it became an independent Greek principality, like Epeiros and Trebizond. ♦1246.♦ Then it admitted the overlordship of the Nicene Emperors. ♦1249.♦ Seized by Genoa, it was presently won back to the Empire, till seventy years later it was again seized by the Knights of Saint John. ♦Establishment of the Knights, 1310. | 1315.♦ From Rhodes as a centre, the order established its dominion over _Kôs_ and some other islands, and on some points of the Asiatic coast, especially their famous fortress of _Halikarnassos_. ♦1480. | 1522.♦ They beat back Mahomet the Conqueror, but they yielded to Suleiman the Lawgiver forty years later. ♦Their removal to Malta, 1530.♦ Banished from Rhodes, the order received _Malta_ from Charles the Fifth as a fief of his Sicilian kingdom. We are thus brought back to the island which had been lost to the Eastern Empire for seven hundred years. ♦1566.♦ The knights in their new home beat back their former conqueror Suleiman, and kept their island till the times of confusion. ♦Revolutions of Malta. | 1814.♦ Held by France, held by England, held, nominally at least, by its own Sicilian overlord, this fragment of the Empire of Leo and of the kingdom of Roger finally passed at the peace under the acknowledged rule of England.

§ 5. _The Principalities of the Greek Mainland._

The Greek possessions of Venice, of Genoa, and of the Knights of Saint John, consisted mainly of islands and detached points of coast. The Venetian conquest of Peloponnêsos was the only exception on a great scale. In this they are distinguished from the several powers, Greek and Frank, which arose on the Greek mainland. We have already heard, and we shall hear again, of the Greek despotat of Epeiros, which for a moment grew into an Empire of Thessalonikê. Among the Latin powers two rose to European importance. ♦Duchy of Athens. | Principality of Achaia.♦ These are the _duchy of Athens_ in central Greece—in _Hellas_, according to the Byzantine nomenclature—and the principality of _Achaia_ or _Môraia_ in Peloponnêsos. ♦Use of the name Môraia.♦ This last name, of uncertain origin,[35] has come, in its Italian shape, to be a modern name of the peninsula itself. But the name of _Môraia_ seems strictly to belong to the domain lands of the principality, and never to go beyond the bounds of the principality, which at no time took in the whole of Peloponnêsos.

Both these powers were founded in the first days of the Latin conquest, and the Turk did not finally annex the territories of either till after the fall of Constantinople. But while the Athenian duchy lived on to become itself the prize of Mahomet the Conqueror, the lands of the Achaian principality had already gone back into Greek hands. ♦Lordship of Athens. 1204-1205.♦ The lordship of Athens, founded by Otho de la Roche, was first a fief of the kingdom of Thessalonikê, then of the Empire of Romania. ♦The Duchy.♦ But it was by the grant of Saint Lewis of France that the title of _Great Lord_[36] was exchanged for that of _Duke_. ♦1260. | The Catalan Conquest, 1311.♦ The duchy fell into the hands of the Catalan Great Company, who in central Greece grew from mere ravagers into territorial occupiers. ♦The Sicilian Dukes.♦ They brought with them the Thessalian land of _Neopatra_, and transferred the nominal title of _Duke of Athens and Neopatra_ to princes of the Sicilian branch of the House of Aragon. Thus the two claimants of the Sicilian crown were brought face to face on old Greek ground. ♦Dukes of the house of Acciauoli.♦ The duchy next passed to the Florentine house of Acciauoli, which already held Corinth, Megara, Sikyôn, and the greater part of Argolis. But their Peloponnesian dominion passed to the Byzantine lords of the peninsula, and Neopatra fell into the hands of the Turk. ♦1390.♦ The Athenian duchy itself, taking in Attica and Boiôtia, lived on, the vassal in turn of the Angevin king at Naples, of the Greek despot of Peloponnêsos, and of the Ottoman Sultan. ♦Ottoman conquest. 1456-1460. | 1466. | 1687.♦ Annexed at last to the Ottoman dominions, Athens remained in bondage till our own day, save only two momentary occupations by Venice, one soon after the first conquest, the other in the great war of Morosini.

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♦Salôna and Bodonitza. The Principality of Achaia.♦

The smaller principalities of _Salôna_ and _Bodonitza_ play their part in the history of the Athenian duchy; but we turn to the chief Latin power of Peloponnêsos, the principality of Achaia. The shiftings of its dynasties and feudal relations are endless; its geographical history is simpler. The peninsula was, at the time of the Latin conquest, already beginning to fall away from the Empire. ♦1205.♦ King Boniface of Thessalonikê had to win the land from its Greek lord Leôn Sgouros. The princes of the house of Champlitte and Villehardouin were his vassals. They had to struggle with the Venetian settlement in Messênia, and with the Greek despot of Epeiros, who, oddly enough, held Corinth, Argos, and Nauplia. ♦1210-1212.♦ These last towns were won by the Latins, and became an Achaian fief in the hands of Otho of Athens. ♦Its greatest extent. 1248.♦ Before the end of half a century, the conquest of the whole peninsula, save the Venetian possessions, was completed by the taking of _Monembasia_. Things looked as if, now that the Latin power was waning at Constantinople, a stronger Latin power had arisen in Peloponnêsos. A crowd of Greek lands, Zakynthos, Naxos, Euboia, Athens, even Epeiros and Thessalonikê, acknowledged at one time or another the supremacy of Achaia. But Latin Achaia, like Latin Constantinople, had to yield to revived Greek energy. ♦Recovery of lands in Peloponnêsos by the Empire 1262.♦ The Empire won back the three Lacedæmonian fortresses,[37] and presently made _Kalabryta_ in northern Arkadia a Greek outpost. ♦1263.♦ Here the Greek advance stopped for a while.

♦Angevin overlordship. 1278.♦

Before the end of the century the Frank principality lost its independence. It passed into vassalage to the Angevin crown, and was held, sometimes by the Neapolitan kings themselves, sometimes by princes of their house—some of them nominal Emperors of Romania—sometimes by princes of Savoy, who carried the Achaian name into Northern Italy.[38] ♦Dismemberment of the principality. 1337.♦ In the course of the fourteenth century the principality crumbled away. ♦1356.♦ _Patras_ became an ecclesiastical principality under the overlordship of the Pope of the Old Rome. Argos and its port became a separate lordship. ♦1358.♦ Both of these passed for a longer or a shorter time under the power of Venice. Corinth and the north-east corner of the peninsula passed to the Acciauoli. ♦Byzantine advance. 1348-1383.♦ Meantime the Byzantine province grew. For some while, under despots of the house of Kantakouzênos, it might almost pass for an independent Greek state. ♦1381. | 1387. | 1442.♦ Notwithstanding the inroads of the Navarrese, the second Spanish invaders of Greece, and the first appearance of the Ottoman, the Greek power advanced, till it took in all Peloponnêsos save the Venetian towns. ♦Conquests of Constantine Palaiologos.♦ The last Constantine even appeared as a conqueror at Athens and in central Greece. ♦1458-1460.♦ Then came more Ottoman inroads, dismemberment, Albanian colonization, final annexation by the Turk. ♦Successive Turkish conquests of Peloponnêsos.♦ But the last conqueror has been twice driven to conquer Peloponnêsos afresh. The first revolt under Venetian support was crushed a few years after the first conquest. ♦1463-1540. | 1670. | 1685.♦ Then the Turk gradually gathered in the Venetian ports, and the whole peninsula was his, save so far as _Maina_ kept on a kind of wild independence almost down to the last Venetian conquest. The complete and unbroken possession of all Peloponnêsos by the Ottoman has never filled up the whole of any one century.

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♦Despotat of Epeiros.♦