Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/352

 344 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July and the other smaller islands lying off the coast of Akarnania, and as his secretary and historiographer, Locatelli,^ informs us, obtained the submission of the Akarnanian population of Baltos and Xeromeros. Mesolonghi, not yet famous in history, was next taken. The surrender of Prevesa, which followed, gave the Venetians the command of the entrance to the Ambrakian Gulf, and completed the first season's operations. During the winter a treaty^ with the duke of Brunswick, father of our George I, for the supply of Hanoverian soldiers, was concluded ; other small German princes sold their soldiers at 200 francs a head, and when Morosini took the field in the following summer the so-called Venetian army, in which Swedish, German, and French were as well understood as Italian, consisted of 3,100 Venetians, Prince Maximilian William of Brunswick and 2,400 Hanoverians, 1,000 Maltese, 1,000 Slavs, 400 Papal, and 400 Florentine troops. We may compare it with the composite Austro-Hungarian army of our own time, in which many different races received orders in a language and fought for a cause not their own. Morosini also entered into negotiations with two Greek communities noted for their intolerance of Turkish rule, the people of Cheimarra in northern Epeiros, of whom we have heard much of late years, and the Mainates, who presented an address to him. The former defeated a Turkish force that was sent against them, the latter were temporarily checked by the fact that the Turks held their children as hostages for their good behaviour.' Morosini succeeded, however, in forcing the Turks to surrender the old Venetian colony of Coron, whence an inscription of its former Venetian governors dated 1463 was sent in triumph to Venice,^ and his success encouraged the Mainates to assist him in besieging the fortresses of Zamata, Kielapha, and Passava. All three, together with the port of Vitylo and the town of Kalamata, surrendered or were abandoned by their garrisons, but an historian of Prankish Greece cannot but deplore the destruction of the two famous castles of Kalamata and Passava. Morosini visited that romantic spot, and by his orders the strongest parts of the fortifications were destroyed. In the campaign of 1686, Morosini, assisted by the Swedish field-marshal, Otto William von Koenigsmark, as commander of the land forces, was even more successful. Old and New Navarino opened their gates to his soldiers, who found over the gate of the old town a reminiscence of the days when • Bacconto historico della Veneia Querra in Levante (Colonia, 1691), i. 62, 66. » Laborde, Athirus aux XV', XVI', et XVII' aiedes, ii. 74-8. • 'Hfi*poyiov Mr'rfar), apvd Sathas, 'EXXjj»'e«a 'Ai««f5oTa, i. 198 ; Chiotes, 'laropiHcL ^AitofO'r]novtvfiaTa iii. 281, 318. « La Morea combattvta daW Armi Venete (Venetia, 1686), pp. 180-2.