Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/373

 1920 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE 365 Dutch consul ; ^ the Greek prisoners were sold ' like cattle '. This frightened the Moreotes into submission and encouraged the Aeginetans to invoke the aid of the Turkish admiral, to whom the commander, Bembo, surrendered the island without resistance. The fact that the Turkish general paid for provisions, while the Venetians had commandeered them, enlisted the interests, and therefore the sympathies, of the Moreote peasantry, and excited the surprise of the French interpreter, Brue, who has left a diary of his experiences in this campaign. Nauplia was the next objective of the invaders. The poet Manthos of Joannina, who was there when it fell, expressed the current belief of the Greeks (of whom, however, few could be induced, even by high pay, to aid in the defence) that the strongly fortified capital of the Venetian Morea was betrayed by De La Salle (or Sala), a French officer in the Venetian service, who had sent the plans of Palamedi to Negroponte. Over a century later the traitor's ruined house was pointed out to Emerson, the historian.^ It had been pulled down and an ' anathema ' of stones raised on the site, upon which no one dared to build till 1859 ; it was called ' Sala's threshing-floor', and was used for drying clothes. After a brief resistance Palamedi, on which so much had been spent, was stormed, and the storming-party thence entered the town. The captors showed special fury against the catholics, whose archbishop, Carlini, was among the slain. The capture of Nauplia so greatly delighted Ahmed III, that he came to see the place, visiting Athens on his way — ^the first and last time that a sultan set foot there since Mohammed II— and, according to a legend, presenting the gardens of Phaleron to his body-guard.^ The garrisons of Modon and the castle of the Morea mutinied, and refused to defend these fortresses ; worse still was the ' ignominious surrender ' of the strong and well-provisioned rock of Monemvasia by its boastful governor, Badoer, without firing a shot, at the first summons of the Turkish admiral, who subsequently admitted that he could not have taken it. Meanwhile the Venetian fleet remained inactive off Sapienza, because, as its admiral pleaded, he did not wish to add a defeat on sea to that on land. The Morea was now lost ; even Maina submitted. But the commanders of the two surviving Cretan forts of Suda and Spinalonga were resolute men. Under the circumstances — for Suda's defences were judged defective, and the French consul at Canea aided the Turkish admiral with his advice and local knowledge * — ^the small garrison did well to hold out till 20 September, when it honourably 1 AeXrioj/, v. 802 ; Ferrari, p. 44. ^ History of Modern Greece, i. 242 n. ; Depellegrin, Relation du voyage dans la Moree, p. 14 ; Lamprynides, p. 284.
 * Philadelpheus, ii. 69.
 * Zinkeisen, v. 499 n. ; Gerola, Monumenti Veneti neW Isda di Greta, i. ii. 535.