During the Russo-Turkish war between 1768 and 1774 many Ionians took part
in the insurrectionary movement against the Turks on the mainland, in
spite of the proclamations of the Venetian government, which was anxious,
like the British protectorate fifty years later, to prevent its subjects
from a breach of neutrality[276]; but it could not even control its own
officials, for a _provveditore generale_ sold the ordnance and provisions
stored at Corfù under his charge to the Russians. The sympathy of the
Ionians for Orthodox Russia was natural, especially as many Greeks from
the Turkish provinces had settled in the islands without having forgotten
their homes on the mainland. They took part in the sieges of Patras and
Koron, while after the base desertion of the Greeks by the Russians the
islands became the refuge of many defeated insurgents. These refugees
were, however, delivered up by the Venetians to the Turks, and nothing
but a vigorous Russian protest saved from punishment two Ionian nobles
who had taken up arms on her side. Russia followed up her protest by
appointing Greeks or Albanians as her consuls in the three principal
islands[277]; many Cephalonians emigrated to the new Russian province of
the Crimea, and Cephalonian merchantmen began to fly her flag. During
the next Russo-Turkish war—that between 1787 and 1792—the Ionians fitted
out corsairs to aid their friends, and a Russian general was sent to
Ithake to direct the operations of the Greeks. Two of the latter, Lampros
Katsones of Livadia and the Lokrian Androutsos, father of the better
known klepht Odysseus, were specially conspicuous. Lampros styled himself
“king of Sparta,” and christened his son Lycurgus. He established himself
on the coast of Maina and plundered the ships of all nations—a patriot
according to some, a pirate according to others. When a French frigate
had put an end to his reign of terror he, like Androutsos, fled to the
Ionian islands. The Venetians caused a hue and cry to be raised for his
followers, who were saved from the gallows by their Russian patrons; but
Androutsos was handed over to the Turks, who left him to languish in
prison at Constantinople. Katsones became the hero of a popular poem.
The attacks of pirates from Barbary and Dulcigno upon Prevesa and Cerigo
roused the Venetians to the necessity of punishing those marauders,
and accordingly Angelo Emo was appointed “extraordinary captain of the
ships” and sent to Corfù. After a vigorous attempt at reforming the
naval establishment there, which had fallen into a very corrupt state,
he chastised the Algerines and Tunisians, to the great relief of the
Ionians. The Zantiotes “presented him with a gold sword, and struck a
medal in his honour”; in Corfù a mural tablet still recalls his services
against the Barbary corsairs, and his name ranks with those of Morosini
and Schulenburg in the history of the islands[278].