Essays on the Latin Orient — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Essays on the Latin Orient
John Stuart Mill · en
Having thus wiped the province of Demetrios from the map, Mohammed turned
his arms against Thomas. Wherever a city resisted, its defenders were
punished without mercy and in violation of the most solemn pledges. The
Albanian chiefs who had defied the Sultan at Kastritza were sawn asunder;
the Albanian captain of Kalavryta was flayed alive; Gardiki was once
more the scene of a terrible massacre, ten times worse than that which
had disgraced Turakhan thirty-seven years before. These acts of cruelty
excited very different feelings in the population. Some, especially the
Albanians, were inspired to fight with the courage of despair; others
preferred slavery to an heroic death. From the neighbourhood of Navarino
alone 10,000 persons were dragged away to colonise Constantinople; and a
third of the Greeks of Greveno, which had dared to resist, were carried
off as slaves. The castles of Glarentza and Santameri were surrendered by
the descendants of Guillaume de Villehardouin’s Turks, who experienced,
like the Albanians, the faithless conduct of their conquerors. Meanwhile
Thomas had fled to Navarino, and, on the day when the Sultan reached that
place, set sail with his wife and family from a neighbouring harbour for
Corfù. There the faithful Phrantzes joined him and wrote his history of
these events—the swan-song of free Greece.
Another Palaiologos, however, Graitzas by name, showed a heroism of
which the Despot was incapable. This man, the last defender of his
country, held out in the castle of Salmenikon between Patras and Aigion
till the following year, and, when the town was taken, still defied all
the efforts of the Turks, who allowed him to withdraw, with all the
honours of war, into Venetian territory at Lepanto. In the autumn of 1460
Mohammed left the Morea, after having appointed Zagan Pasha as military
governor, with orders to install the new Turkish authorities and to make
arrangements for the collection of the capitation tax and of the tribute
of children. Thus the Morea fell under Turkish rule, which thenceforward
continued for an almost unbroken period of three hundred and fifty years.
Save at Monemvasia, where the papal flag still waved, and at Nauplia,
Argos, Thermisi, Koron, Modon, and Navarino, where Venice still retained
her colonies, there was none to dispute the Sultan’s sway.