When Mohammed II sent Achmet Pasha to conquer all that remained of
Leonardo’s dominions in 1479 we are told by Stefano Magno[391] that the
Turkish commander “ravaged also the island of Itacha (_sic_), called
Valle di Compare, which belonged to the said lord,” whom he also styles
“palatine count of Cephalonia, Itaca (_sic_) and Zakynthos.” Loredano,
the Venetian admiral, thereupon sent some galleys to Ithake and rescued
seven or eight persons—an act of which the pasha complained. This
devastation of the island will account for the fact that, in 1504, the
Venetian government, which then owned Cephalonia and Zante, took steps
for repopulating “an island named Val di Compare, situated opposite
Cephalonia, at present uninhabited, but reported to have been formerly
fertile and fruitful.” Accordingly lands were offered to settlers,
free from all taxes for five years, at the end of which time the
colonists were to pay to the Treasury of Cephalonia the same dues as the
inhabitants of that island[392]. Thenceforth down to 1797 Ithake remained
beneath the sway of the Venetian republic. The offer of the senate seems
to have been successful; among those who accepted it were the family
of Boua Grivas, of Albanian origin, connected with the clan of Boua,
which had formerly ruled over Arta and Lepanto and had played a part in
the Albanian revolts of 1454 and 1463 in the Morea, that of Petalas,
and that of Karavias, which in modern times produced a local historian
of Ithake[393]. In 1548 Antonio Calbo, the retiring _provveditore_
of Cephalonia, reported to the Venetian government, that “under the
jurisdiction of Cephalonia there is another island, named Thiachi,
very mountainous and barren, in which there are different harbours and
especially a harbour called Vathi; in the island of Thiachi are three
hamlets, in three places, inhabited by about sixty families, who are in
great fear of corsairs, because they have no fortress in which to take
refuge[394].” The three hamlets mentioned in this report are doubtless
those of Paleochora, Anoe, and Exoe, which are regarded as the oldest in
the island.
The former counts of Ithake were till lately the only Latin rulers
of Greece who still existed in prosperous circumstances. But in the
seventeenth century they took the title of “prince of Achaia”—to which
they were not entitled, although the counts of Cephalonia had once been
peers of Achaia and Leonardo II and Carlo I had for a short time occupied
Glarentza. The modern representative of the family was Carlo, Duke of
Regina[395], who succeeded his cousin Francesco Tocco in 1894. But he is
now dead and his only son was killed in a motor accident.
12. THE LAST VENETIAN ISLANDS IN THE ÆGEAN