The Cretan Insurrection of 1866-7-8. William James Stillman
whose reports remain, says (1566): "The tax-gatherers and others dependent on them use against these unhappy people, in one way and another, strange and horrible tyrannies. It would be a matter worthy of your clemency immediately to abolish so odious and barbarous exactions, since to maintain them is to abandon these wretched men to most cruel serpents, who lacerate and devour them entirely, or oblige the few of them who remain to escape into Turkey, following the footsteps of innumerable others who, from time to time, have gone away from this cause." Then from Garzoni (1586): "In all the villages in which I have been, I have seen the houses of the inhabitants, in the greater part of which there is not be seen any article for the uses of dress or table; and for food, they are without bread or corn; they have no wine; their women are despoiled, their children naked, the men slightly covered, and the house emptied of everything, without any sign of human habitation. And this wretched people ('quella meschinità de' huomini') is compelled by established custom to give to the cavaliers two 'angarie' [twelve days' work] each per annum, and is obliged also by ancient regulation to work as much more as the cavalier may need for the pay of eight soldini a day, which amounts to a 'gazetta' [two Venetian soldi, or about one penny] and a fifteenth, introduced by them two hundred years ago, and not since increased. They are obliged to keep chickens and hens according to the number of doors [I do not feel sure of having properly translated this expression, obscure in the original], their masters having applied the term of doors to houses, which are built by the peasants themselves, and have no kind of use of doors, because the Cavaliers, industrious for their own advantage, make doors as frequently as possible to increase the number of royalties. The beasts of labor, called donnegals, are obliged to plough a certain quantity of land, for which, planted or not, the peasant must pay the third. The donnegals are also obliged to work two angarie per annum. Mules and other beasts of transport must make two voyages to the city for the master. Animals of pasture the tenth, and a thousand other inventions to absorb all the productions of the land. If the peasant has a vineyard planted (the ground always belonging to the Cavaliers) and trained by him, although on land before wild, he must pay to the master, before marking the division for the royalty (which by ancient regulation gives one-third to the Cavalier and two to the peasant), five measures, called mistaches, for each vineyard, under pretext that he has eaten part before the vintage, for the use of the pattichier [in Crete, even now, an open shallow kind of vat built in the fields, of flat stones, and cemented, in which the grapes are trampled], and under other most dishonest inventions. And to increase still more the royalty, they divide the vineyard into so many parts that few return more than fifteen mistaches, in such a way that with fraud founded on force they take two-thirds for themselves and give one to the peasant.
"There are chosen for judges of their country, as I have said, Castellans—writers who serve as secretaries (cancellieri); and 'Captains to look after the robbers,' who all set rapaciously to rob these poor people, taking what little any of them may have hidden from the Cavaliers under pretext of disobedience, in which the peasant abounds, by reason of his desperation, so that he is in every way wretched. The Castellans cannot by law judge the value of more than two sequins, although by some regulation they are allowed authority to the sum of two hundred perperi, about fourteen sequins; and because they have eight per cent. for the charges they make, all causes amount to two hundred perperi, however small it may be, in order to get their sixteen of charges, with thousand other inventions of extortion to eat up the substance of the poor. The Captains, whose name indicates their functions, have their use from robberies, and always find means to draw their advantage from the same, plundering the good and releasing the guilty, to the universal ruin. … The men chosen for the galleys are in continual terror of going, and those who have the means, with whatever difficulty, from some vineyard, or land, or animals, throw all away unhesitatingly for a trifling price to pay for their dispensation, which costs fifteen or twenty sequins—expense which they cannot support. The poorest, hopeless of their release, fly to the mountains, and thence, reassured by the Cavaliers, return to their villages, so much the more enslaved as they are fearful of justice, and by their example make the other villagers more obedient, attributing to the Cavaliers the power of saving them from the galleys. … To which, add the extortions to which they are subjected by a thousand accidental circumstances, execution of civil debts, visits of rectors and other officers, to whom they are obliged to give sustenance at miserable prices. … So that the peasantry, oppressed in this manner, and harassed in so many ways, annoyed by the reasonings of the Papists, and made enemies of the Venetian name, … are so reduced by the influences I have enumerated, that I believe I can say with truth that, with the exception of the privileged classes, they desire a change of government, and though they know they cannot fall into other hands than those of the Turks, yet, believing they cannot make worse their condition, incline even to their tyrannical rule."
I extract from the opinion of Fra Paolo Sarpi (1615), a more Jesuitical, and, it would seem, more palatable advice to the Senate, since it was, in the end, and to the end followed: "For your Greek subjects of the island of Candia, and the other islands of the Levant, … the surest way is to keep good garrisons to awe them, and not use them to arms or musters, in hope of being assisted by them in extremity; for they will always show ill inclination proportionably to the strength they shall be musters of. … Wine and bastinadoes ought to be their share, and keep good nature for a better occasion. … If the gentlemen of these colonies do tyrannize over the villages of their dominion, the best way is not to seem so see it, that there may be no kindness between them and their subjects; but, if they offend in anything else, it will be well to chastise them severely, etc. … And in a word, remember that all the good that can come from them is already obtained, which was to fix the Venetian dominion, and for the future there is nothing but mischief to be expected from them."
What a pity that Sarpi had not lived before Dante, that he might have been niched in the "Inferno":
"Questo é de' rei del fuoco furo."
I have only space to epitomize a passage of the history of Crete, under the Venetians, to show how utterly infamous, unjust, and devilish was their régime. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the provinces of Selino, Sfakia, and Rhizo seceded, and established an independent government, which was for some time unmolested by the Venetian authorities. The governor of the seceded republic finally presuming to ask in marriage for his son the daughter of a Venetian noble, the latter, to revenge the insult, plotted with the governor of Canéa, and, pretending to consent, lured the family of the soi-disant Greek governor, with a company of nearly 500 of his compatriots, to the marriage feast. The guests having been intoxicated and gone to sleep, and the signal given to the authorities at Canéa, the governor came with 1,700 foot and 150 horse, took the whole prisoners, and in various ways and different places massacred them, except a few who were sent to the galleys.
This was followed up, for the better terrifying of the seditious, by a raid on the village of Foligniaco, near Murnies, and on the edge of the plain of Canéa, in which they took the whole population prisoners asleep, burned the village, hanged twelve of the primates, ripped open three or four pregnant women, wives of the principal people, put to death and exiled the whole population remaining, except five or six who escaped. The Provveditore then called on all the Greeks of the lately revolted district to come in and surrender themselves, but, as they naturally declined, they were put under a ban which is perhaps the most horrible sentence ever given by a civilized community. No inhabitant of the proscribed district could secure his life except on condition of bringing in the "head of his father, brother, cousin, or nephew."
"At length a priest of the family of the Pateri-Zapa entered the city, accompanied by his two sons and by two of his brothers, each of the mournful party carrying in his hand a human head. (Of the five heads, the first belonged to the son of the priest, the second to one of his brothers, the third to his son-in-law, and the fourth and fifth to sons of one of his brothers.) The wretched men placed their bleeding offerings before the Signor Cavalli and the other representatives of Venice, and with the bitterest tears stated whose heads they were. The facts were duly established by witnesses; even the governor who had been sent to Crete to extirpate the seditious Greeks was moved, and the law was at length abolished."
This was under the auspices of Christianity. Under the Crescent, things were at first better, but finally such as to cause wonder how there is still a Cretan people, considering