City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire (45 page)

By 1400 the Ottomans had reached the edge of their maritime empire and trading zones. For Venice, as for the rest of Europe, the multicultural Ottomans camped in the Balkans were only and ever ‘the Turks’, their sultan referred to as ‘the Great Turk’. Under their respective banners, the lion and the crescent moon, the two imperial powers were polar opposites: the Christian and the Muslim, the sea-going merchant class concerned with trade, the continental warriors whose valuations were counted in land holdings; the impersonal republic that prized liberty, the sultanate that depended on the autocratic whim of a single man. Venice quickly recognised that the Ottomans were different from the sedentary Mamluks: aggressive, restless, expansionist, their empire was built on the premise of continuous growth, whose
intertwined and pre-ordained missions, both imperial and religious, were to enlarge Muslim realms and Ottoman lands. The exhausting persistence of the Turks was destined to tax Venice to the limit. ‘Things continue very unhappily with the Turks,’ one later ambassador to the sultan declared after years of experience, ‘because whether they are at war or peace they always wear away at you, rob you, always want justice their way.’ No European power spent so much time, energy, money and resources understanding the Ottomans. Venice would develop an intimate knowledge of their language, psychology, religion, technology, rituals and customs; the personality of each successive sultan would be pragmatically analysed for threat and advantage. No one else understood the nuances of diplomatic performance so finely or played the game of ambassadors with such consummate skill. For Venice diplomacy was always worth a squadron of galleys and it cost a fraction of the price.

As early as 1360 the Republic despatched ambassadors to Sultan Murat I to congratulate him on his new capital at Adrianople, which effectively completed the encirclement of Constantinople. They quickly learned that they were dealing with obdurate opponents. When ambassadors went back to Murat in 1387 to protest about raids on Negroponte they took with them presents: basins and jugs of silver, robes, a fur coat with pearl buttons – and two big dogs, called Passalaqua and Falchon. The dogs were immensely popular; Murat immediately asked for a matching female dog to breed from. He did not however release the prisoners requested and the Venetian senate subsequently received a breathtaking letter declaring that the ambassadors had promised that the Republic would send an army at their own expense to support the Ottomans. They had done no such thing.

The rules of the game were complex, and had to be learned anew. As the Ottomans reduced the Balkans and continental Greece to vassal status, Venice needed to play its hand with care; it was dependent on Greek grain. It could neither give up its role as a defender of Christendom nor be seen as ‘a constant
accomplice of the Turk’. Pragmatic, cynical, ambivalent – keener on trade than causes – it needed to maintain good relations with both sides. Diplomatic skill with the Ottomans was tantamount. ‘Negotiations with the Turks were like playing with a glass ball,’ it would later be said. ‘When the other player forcibly threw it, it was necessary not to hurl it violently back or let it fall to the ground, because in one way or another it would shatter.’

The Venetians would in time train their own corps of Ottoman linguists, the
giovanni di lingua
, but in the fifteenth century they relied on interpreters to conduct negotiations with the Ottomans through the medium of Greek. They worked out who, why and when to bribe. Knowing the attraction of the gold ducat they set aside specified amounts of baksheesh; they professionally valued gifts received from Ottoman emissaries and replied in kind; they matched the splendour of a diplomatic mission to the importance of the occasion. They paid close attention to each sultan’s death; uncertain which son might win the race to the throne, they prepared their letters of accreditation and congratulations in multiple copies, each bearing the name of a different candidate – or left blank for the ambassador to complete on the spot. They judged carefully the balance between threat and promise. During Ottoman civil wars they followed the practice of the Byzantines and supported pretenders to the throne to increase confusion. They sought alliances with rival Turkish dynasties in Asia Minor to squeeze the Ottomans from both sides. They shifted continuously with the wind, balancing threats of force with offers of payments.

It was never easy. As the Ottomans strengthened their hold on Greece, the people of Salonica offered their city to Venice in 1423; the port was a valuable prize – both a strategic and a commercial hub. The senate ‘received the offer with gladness and promised to protect and nourish and prosper the city and to transform it into a second Venice’. Sultan Murat II, however, was insistent that it was his by right and demanded Salonica back. For seven years Venice poured in food and defensive resources whilst trying to work out
a solution with the sultan, but he was not to be dissuaded. When they offered tribute it was turned down. When they sent ambassadors, he threw them in prison. When fleets were sent to block the Dardanelles, he merely shrugged. They increased their tribute offer; it was rejected. They sacked Gallipoli; the investment of Salonica went on. They forged an alliance with the rival Karaman dynasty in Asia Minor; Murat sent corsairs to ravage the coast of Greece.

Year after year Venice shuttled back and forth between war and peace, working on the flanks of the Ottoman Empire, but the sultan was immovable:

… the city is my inheritance, and my grandfather Bayezit took it from the Greeks by his own right hand. So, if the Greeks were now its masters, they might reasonably accuse me of injustice. But you, being Latins and from Italy, what have you to do with this part of the world? Go, if you like; if not, I am coming quickly.

In 1430 he did just that. The Venetians fought their way back to the harbour and sailed away, leaving the Greeks to their fate. It would have been better, a chronicler said, if the city had been hit by an earthquake or a tidal wave. The Ottomans had eaten up another piece of Greece.

The following year Venice made peace and paid tribute to Murat. If the Stato da Mar was guaranteed official freedom from attack, the Ottoman advance went on, pushing out to the west coast of Greece and southern Albania, at the door of the Adriatic. Unattributable freelance raiding continued. It was the Ottoman method of softening up frontier provinces for future conquest – to unleash unpaid irregulars across the borders. At sea, Turkish-inspired corsairs continued to be a nuisance, even if Venetian maritime hegemony was unchallenged. Negroponte, the next base down the coast from Salonica, was becoming a cause for concern. The island was only separated by a narrow channel from mainland Greece, to which it was linked by a bridge. The senate forbade people from going to the mainland to harvest corn and
ordered a detachment of eighteen men to guard the bridge night and day.

The senatorial registers kept a running record of these subtle depredations. Year after year news of raids and troop movements, pirate infestations and abductions poured in. ‘For the past three years,’ it was noted of Negroponte in 1449, ‘the island has been subjected to continuous plundering by Turks, who steal flocks then claim they are acting in the name of the Sultan’s son at war with the Signoria, it’s the work of Turkish irregulars, inveterate plunderers’ – this despite the fact Venice was officially at peace with the sultan. They sent yet another ambassador to protest. The following year the misery of the islands came under scrutiny: ‘Turks and Catalans are plundering the isles; at Tinos, thirty men taken into slavery, fishing boats snatched, cows, asses and mules killed or seized – without boats or animals the Tiniots cannot work, they are reduced to eating their remaining beasts.’ Many of these attacks were directed by disaffected subjects of the imperial system. As early as 1400 it was noted that ‘a great number of Cretan subjects … are fleeing towards the land of the Turks and serve voluntarily on Turkish ships; they are well informed of what’s going on in ports and Venetian territories, they guide the Turks to places to pillage’. It was men such as Giorgio Callergis that galley commanders impaled on stakes or chopped up on their own decks.

In the 1440s the slow, relentless Ottoman advance led to yet another call to crusade. For Venice this required a finely judged assessment of risks and returns. Taking advantage of a disruption in the Ottoman succession, the Serbs, Hungarians and the papacy made a fresh attempt to push the Ottomans out of Europe. Venice was brutally realistic about its chances. In return for blocking the Dardanelles to stop Ottoman troops crossing from Asia, it wanted cash payment for the ships and outright ownership of Salonica and Gallipoli in the case of success. It was clear-sighted about the strategic imperatives: ‘If the money is collected too late, it will be impossible to send the galleys to the Straits at the right moment, the Turks can cross from Asia into Europe and
Christian defeat is certain.’ This became the subject of a furious row between the Republic and the papacy that replayed all the old distrusts. The papacy accused Venice of unchristian behaviour; the response was furious: ‘The Signoria spares nothing to defend Christian interests … one deplores these papal accusations, so unjust … Venice considers its honour impugned.’ Venice in the end grudgingly prepared the ships but the money was not forthcoming. ‘For the pope to pay up is a matter of honour … his conduct is pure ingratitude!’ they stormed. The relationship deteriorated from there: ‘Eugene IV pretends that Venice is the debtor to the Holy See. It’s untrue: on the contrary it’s the pope who owes the Republic.’ The gap between the merchant mentality and the pious and unworldly cardinals remained as wide as ever. The unpaid debt was not forgotten. A decade later it would surface again in even more tragic circumstances.

As it was, Venice was right to be sceptical. The crusade was hopelessly botched and the Republic mounted a blockade of the straits too late to prevent the Ottoman army being ferried across the Bosphorus by Genoese merchants. It was rumoured that private Venetian sea captains had also participated. At Varna, near the Black Sea, the crusaders were wiped out. This time there was no Venetian fleet to pick up survivors. The Turks left behind a pyramid of skulls. It was the last attempt to drive them out of Europe.

The noose continued to tighten on Constantinople. When Murat died in 1451, Venice again played a cautious hand. On 8 July, the senate despatched an ambassador to the new sultan, Mehmet II, offering peace and condolences; the following day the ambassador was ordered to proceed to the embattled emperor in Constantinople, Constantine, his new rival. A day later it instructed yet another ambassador to contact Mehmet’s enemy in Asia Minor, the Great Karaman. Galleys were detailed to ensure that the Dardanelles were kept open. Venice played on all sides.

The day after ascending the throne Mehmet had his young half-brother murdered in the bath. The Venetians, sensitive to
the times, were quick to grasp the change of tone. Towards the end of his reign Murat had become less aggressive. The new sultan, aged twenty-one, was both ambitious and highly intelligent. He burned for conquests and he had just one objective in mind. By February 1452, the lagoon was receiving ambassadors from the emperor Constantine warning that ‘the enormous preparations of Sultan Mehmet II, both by land and sea, leave no doubt of his intention to attack Constantinople. There is no doubt that this time the city will succumb if no one comes to the aid of the Greeks and the courageous help of the Venetians would be a great prize.’ In the autumn the ambassadors were back again, their pleas more desperate. They begged for help to save the city. The senators vacillated, hedged their bets and palmed them off. They passed them on to the pope and the Florentines, citing their pressing war in Italy and, as a concession, allowed the export of breastplates and gunpowder. They lobbied continuously for joint action; ‘It’s necessary for the Holy See and the other Christian powers to be united.’

During the summer of 1452 Mehmet was busy constructing a castle on the Bosphorus with the intention of closing the passage to the Black Sea. The Ottomans named this new structure the Throat Cutter. Venice was well informed about it. Spies sent back detailed sketch maps of its layout; prominent in the foreground was a splay of large bombards, scanning the straits with the intention of blasting out of the water any passing traffic which failed to stop. The day before its completion, the senate reported that ‘Constantinople is completely surrounded by the troops and ships of Sultan Mehmet’. The Venetians strengthened their maritime arrangements accordingly but remained uncommitted. The uncertainty was reflected by a senatorial motion, defeated, that Constantinople should be left entirely to its fate.

Venice soon had personal experience of the implications of Mehmet’s blockade. On 26 November, a Venetian merchant galley bringing supplies to the city from the Black Sea was sunk at the Throat Cutter by cannon fire. The crew managed to make it 
to land, where they were captured and marched off to the sultan at Adrianople. By the time an ambassador made it to the court to plead for their lives, the sailors’ decapitated bodies were rotting on the ground outside the city walls. The captain, Antonio Rizzo, hung impaled from a stake.

The European diplomatic exchanges continued shrill, self-justifying and ineffectual throughout the early months of 1453. Venice informed the pope and the kings of Hungary and Aragon ‘of the great Venetian preparations, and asked them immediately to join their efforts with those of the Signoria; if not, Constantinople is lost’. The Vatican wanted to send five galleys and looked expectantly at the Republic – but Venice had not forgotten the Varna debts and would not give credit. In its response on 10 April the senate ‘rejoices at their intention, but one can not fail to remember the painful behaviour of Pope Eugene IV who, in 1444, unceasingly delayed the payment for ships’. All the tensions in the Christian system were on display. In early May, Venice was preparing galleys on its own behalf with contradictory and cautious orders: to proceed to Constantinople ‘if the route does not seem too dangerous … refusing combat in the Straits … but to participate in the defence of Constantinople’. At the same time the ambassador at Mehmet’s court was told to emphasise ‘the peaceful inclinations of Venice; if the Signoria has sent a few galleys to Constantinople, it’s purely to escort the Black Sea galleys and to protect Venetian interests; he will try to lead the sultan to conclude a peace with Constantine’.