free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

The Great Island
describe as it is easy to conceive the joy experienced by the parents on
receiving this full proof . . . of the happy fortune which had attended
their child. She who had been for years deplored by them as dwelling
in Egyptian bondage was the wife of an English gentleman.’
By 1571, then, the Cretan question gave Venice pause. In this year
not only did the Sphakians revolt, but also the Turks descended again
on the west of Crete, and burnt the unfortunate city of Rethymnon,
which seems to have suffered the same fate for the third time in 1597.
While the Turkish fleet was in Suda bay, Cretans of Rethymnon,
afraid of reprisals for the murder of a local Venetian nobleman of the
domineering and oppressive Chiosa family, sent and asked for the
Turks’ support, hailing them as deliverers. This was ominous of
disaster. In their alarm the Serene Republic sent Giacomo Foscarini
as Proveditor General with extraordinary powers – ‘Dictator of the
island Candia’ as he is designated in a memorial inscription – to restore
the waning fortunes of Crete. Foscarini, a man of prodigious talents and
energies, of justice fired by austerity, stayed more than four years. His
report is the most valuable document in existence for the study of the
condition of Crete in the sixteenth century.
Foscarini soon after his arrival in 1574 issued a proclamation inviting
all those with grievances to appear before him and obtain justice. He
then studied the condition and organization of Crete, finding evidence
of inefficiency and abuses at every point in the social structure. They
merit attention, for they show the rottenness at the core of a feudal
system of this sort.
In 1574 Crete was divided into 479 fiefs. Of these 394 belonged to
Venetian families, 25 to the Roman church, 25 to the Serene Republic,
and the remaining 35 to Cretan families. Originally, the Venetian
feudarchs had well-defined obligations in return for their privileges;
each knight had to maintain a horse and complete equipment and had
to be ready to turn out at any time in defence of the island. Smaller
fiefs belonged to landowners who constituted the infantry. But as time
passed the laws fell into disrepute and Venetians, despite the rule that
fiefs were inalienable to Greeks, began to sell secretly to native Cretans.
Many returned to Venice. Those who remained were more and more
assimilated with the Greeks, in customs, language, even religion. When
Foscarini arrived he found that this debasement of the nobility had
gone so far that the island had no defence. In country areas the fiefs
had been divided into small lots, whose owners would share the military
obligations; few, as individuals, could afford to maintain a horse and
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