Vyatka Land

Vyatka Land was a part of Medieval Russia in the basin of the Vyatka river, approximately corresponding to the modern Kirov Oblast. Permian people were its original inhabitants and it was gradually settled by Russians whose arrival is traditionally dated to the late 12th century. Vyatka Land, being geographically isolated from the rest of the Russian lands, sometimes accepted the suzerainty of other Russian and Tatar states but de facto had a large degree of independence until it was annexed by the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1489.
History.
Udmurts inhabited the Vyatka land before the arrival of Russian settlers. According to the Legend of the Vyatka Land they came from Novgorod in 1174, conquered Kotelnich and Nikulitsyn with the supernatural help of saints Boris and Gleb and founded Khlynov which became the main settlement of the Vyatka land (often called "Vyatka" as well). This account was disputed by some historians who consider the Legend to be a much later and unreliable source. The Russian settlement appears in the archeological record of the 11th–13th centuries and intensifies after the Mongol conquest of Rus. The first undisputed mention of Vyatka in Russian chronicles dates to 1374 when a band of ushkuyniks from Vyatka raided Sarai. According to an Udmurt legend, the Udmurts who lived in the settlement on the site of future Vyatka burned down their sanctuary and migrated east to the Cheptsa river.
Tatar prince Bektut conquered Vyatka land in the 1390s. Some of the inhabitants were killed and others were captured. Ten years later prince of Suzdal ruled in Vyatka, possibly as a vassal of the Golden Horde. There was a rivalry between Vyatka and Ustyug which led to several battles fought in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.
Some time in the first half of the 15th century Vasily I, the Grand Duke of Moscow, took Vyatka Land from the Suzdal line princes and handed it to his brother Yury together with Galich. Yury lived in the latter and sent a deputy to Vyatka. He fortified Khlynov (Vyatka), Kotelnich and Orlov and thereafter they were considered towns ("goroda"). Vyatka supported Yury and his son Dmitry Shemyaka against Vasily II in the Muscovite Civil War. Jonah, the metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus, accused the people of Vyatka ("Vyatchane") of cruelty, destroying churches and selling captives into slavery in 1452. By that time the war had ended in victory for Vasily II and he subsequently organised several campaigns to subdue Vyatka. The first two were unsuccessful – the Muscovite generals were reportedly bribed off – and only the third one launched in 1459 succeeded. The Muscovite army took Kotelnich and Orlov and besieged Vyatka until it surrendered. It accepted the suzerainty of Moscow and was forced to pay tribute.
Vyatka remained semi-independent even after formally accepting the suzerainty of the Grand Duke of Moscow. They fought together with other Muscovite forces against the Kazan khanate in 1468, however then khan Ibrahim of Kazan sent his troops to Vyatka and extracted a promise not to help Moscow against Kazan. When Ivan III gathered forces to attack Kazan in the following year Vyatka refused to join the army, citing the promise to Ibrahim. In 1485 only a show of force made Vyatka join another Muscovite campaign against Kazan. Vyatchane raided both Tatar and Russian lands: in 1471 they looted Sarai and in the 1480s they twice attacked Muscovite lands on the Northern Dvina. Ivan III sent an army to subdue Vyatka in 1489 under the command of Daniil Shchenya. Kotelnich and Orlov were taken without resistance. Khlynov was besieged on August 16. Khlynov notables presented gifts to the Muscovite generals and offered obedience to the Grand Duke. The generals demanded they hand over three atamans. This was debated for two days in the city and ultimately Vyatchane refused the demand. The Muscovite army started siege preparations, which caused Khlynov to surrender. The three atamans were beheaded in Moscow, Vyatka notables were resettled on the southern border of Muscovy and the merchants were resettled in Dmitrov.
The scarcity of information on Vyatka led Nikolay Kostomarov to remark that "there is nothing in Russian history more obscure than the fortunes of Viatka and its region".
Government.
Vyatka land was self-governed to a large degree; however, the nature of its government is not known for sure. The local leaders ("земские воеводы"/"zemskiye voyevody") were apparently elected and sometimes they are identified with atamans who headed military campaigns and raids. There are no explicit mentions of veche in Vyatka in the surviving sources, and historians' opinions on its existence differ. Nikolay Kostomarov and some post-Soviet historians believed that it was the highest authority in Vyatka while Soviet historians argued that there is no proof of its existence.


Henry, Duke of Brunswick-Dannenberg

Henry III (1533 – 19 January 1598), a member of the House of Welf, was Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and ruling Prince of Lüneburg from 1559 until 1569, jointly with his brother William the Younger. From 1569, he ruled over the Lordship of Dannenberg until his death.
He was the second surviving son of Duke Ernest I of Brunswick-Lüneburg and assumed the rule in the Principality of Lüneburg upon the early death of his elder brother Francis Otto in 1559. He and his younger brother William fell out with each other in 1569, when Henry married the Ascanian princess Ursula of Saxe-Lauenburg (1545–1620), daughter of Duke Francis I, and demanded the partition of the Lüneburg lands.
He eventually waived his claims to the Lüneburg principality and received Dannenberg as a paréage as well as an annual payment in compensation. He also ensured that his descendants were entitled to inherit the Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel estates upon the extinction of the line; therefore, his youngest son Augustus could assume the rule in Wolfenbüttel in 1635.
Henry died in Dannenberg.
Marriage and children who reached adulthood.
In 1569 Henry married Ursula of Saxe-Lauenburg (*1545 – 22 October 1620*, Schernebeck), daughter of Francis I of Saxe-Lauenburg. They had the following children:


Princess Marie Amelie of Baden

Princess Marie Amelie of Baden (Marie Amelie Elisabeth Caroline; 11 October 1817 – 17 October 1888) was the youngest daughter of Charles, Grand Duke of Baden and Stéphanie de Beauharnais. In 1843, she married the Scottish nobleman William Hamilton, Marquess of Douglas and Clydesdale. They became the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton upon the death of William's father in 1852. Their only daughter Mary married the future Albert I, Prince of Monaco and was the mother of Louis II.
Princess Marie Amelie was a cousin of Napoleon III of France, as well as a friend of his and his wife's, Empress Eugénie. She often accompanied the couple at official events, and provided them lodging when they visited her outside France.
Family and early life.
Princess Marie Amelie was born in Karlsruhe, the youngest daughter of Charles, Grand Duke of Baden, and his wife Stéphanie de Beauharnais, the adopted daughter of Napoleon I of France. Charles's daughters married into several great European ruling families. Marie Amelie's older sister Princess Louise married the Swedish prince Gustav, Prince of Vasa, and her other sister Princess Josephine married Karl Anton, Prince of Hohenzollern. Louise was the mother of Queen Carola of Saxony, while Josephine was the mother of Carol I of Romania and Queen Stephanie of Portugal.
Marriage.
On 23 February 1843, she married the Scottish nobleman William Hamilton, Marquess of Douglas and Clydesdale, the only son of the 10th Duke of Hamilton. The couple had two sons and one daughter: William (later 12th Duke of Hamilton), Charles (later 7th Earl of Selkirk and Lieutenant of 11th Hussars), and Lady Mary Victoria (later wed to Albert I, Prince of Monaco in 1869).
After her wedding, she relocated to Brodick Castle on the Isle of Arran, which was built in her honour in the Bavarian style. She then moved later on Hamilton Palace in Lanarkshire, Scotland. Her husband succeeded as Duke of Hamilton upon the death of her father-in-law in 1852. The Duke at least mainly lived in Baden-Baden and Paris after his marriage.
Duchess of Hamilton.
The Duchess was a cousin and friend of Napoleon III of France. She and her husband accompanied Napoleon during his official state entry into Paris in 1852, and she was present in 1860 when he visited her in Baden, at a popular summer resort for Paris's upper classes. She also accompanied the Emperor at an 1855 celebration in honor of King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia and the 1856 baptism of Napoléon, Prince Imperial. Napoleon's wife, Empress Eugénie, was also reported as being a friend of Marie, and the Empress would often stay with Marie when she visited Baden and Scotland. Eugénie angered many when she insisted that Princess Marie take precedence and be seated with the Imperial Family. In 1860, an exhausted Eugénie wished to leave France but found that her destinations on the continent were limited due to political concerns; Princess Marie, sympathetic to her plight, successfully offered Eugénie a stay at her husband's home in Scotland.
In 1853, the "Glasgow Free Press" reported that the Duchess had converted to Roman Catholicism. Stéphanie de Beauharnais died seven years later. Queen Sophie of the Netherlands, a friend of Stéphanie's, later claimed that Marie Amelie "behaved ill to her" mother, blaming this on her "Catholic bigotry". Sophie was particularly upset that the Duchess of Hamilton failed to see her mother on her deathbed, though her husband did make the visit. Five years later, in an 1867 letter, Queen Sophie described Marie Amelie as "bloodless, fat, sick," and complained that her sons were "restless and bad," while her daughter was "far from handsome."
In 1863, the Duke collapsed while dining at the Maison dorée, Boulevard des Italiens in Paris. Once his party realised his condition was serious, he was brought back to Hôtel Bristol in Place Vendôme. Marie Amelie arrived at his side, and while he seemed to be recovering, he died suddenly three days later, on 15 July 1863. He was fifty-two years old. His wealth at death was estimated at under £140,000. She was styled Marie Amelie, Princess of Baden, Dowager Duchess of Hamilton after her husband's death.
Princess Marie occupied the Villa Stephanie in Baden-Baden, where her daughter used to visit her annually. In 1904, the contemporary journal "Lady's Realm" reported that the place was the "rendezvous of the very best cosmopolitan society." She was a friend of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. As of 1867, she and her son were being associated with a disreputable company, the type that his mother Queen Victoria urged him to avoid. Marie also paid and received visits to members of the British Royal Family, including the Duchess of Kent and Queen Victoria. She died in Baden-Baden, aged 71.
In 1869, her only daughter Lady Mary Victoria Hamilton married Prince Albert (later Albert I), son and heir of Charles III, Prince of Monaco. The union was unhappy, however, and Mary left Monaco and her husband after giving birth to an heir, Louis II. The marriage was annulled in 1880. She later married the Hungarian magnate Prince Tasziló Festetics, living from that point onwards mainly in her husband's native country. Through Mary, Marie is the great-great-grandmother of the current reigning prince of Monaco, Albert II.
Issue.
The Duke and Duchess of Hamilton had the following issue, two sons and one daughter:


Ilsung

The Ilsung, Ilsung or Illsung family was a patrician family from Augsburg in Germany. One of its branches rose to the rank of freiherr. It had two branches, the "Ilsung auf dem Stein", which died out in 1409, and the "Ilsung bei St. Johann" or "Ilsung von Tratzberg", which survived after that date.


Carl Salemann

Carl Hermann Salemann (, Karl Germanovitsh Zaleman; — ) was a Russian Iranist scholar. He was an academician of Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1895) and a director of Asiatic Museum of the Academy of Sciences (1890—1916).
Biography.
Salemann was a Baltic German, born in Revel (now Tallinn, Estonia).
He studied at of Saint Petersburg Imperial University, Arabic-Persian-Turkish and the Sanskrit-Persian sections, in 1867–1871. He defended a thesis on the quatrains of Khaqani and obtained master's degree on Persion literature in 1875.
In 1875, he became an assistant university librarian, and in 1879, he was promoted to full librarian.
Since 1876 till his death Salemann taught Zend and Middle Persian literature on Oriental Faculty. He held a position of Privatdozent.
In 1882, he was elected a member of Imperial Russian Archaeological Society.
He was also elected an adjunct member of Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (specializing in Asiatic literature and history) in 1886, an extraordinary academician in 1890, an ordinary academician in 1895.
Since 1890 till his death he was a director of Asiatic Museum of the Academy of Sciences. In this position he collected manuscripts and books and published descriptions of newly acquired items, as well as prepared catalogues of the museum.
In 1890, he became a librarian of second section of the library of the Academy of Sciences.
In 1902, Salemann became an honorary professor of University of Giessen. In 1903, he became a member of the Russian committee for the Study of Central and Eastern Asia. In 1904, he became a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1908, he became an honorary member of the Royal Asiatic Society.
Bibliography.
Main works of Salemann:


Szczurowa

Szczurowa is a village in Brzesko County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Szczurowa. It lies approximately north of Brzesko and east of the regional capital Kraków.
The village has a population of 1,800.
References.
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Lordship of Mechelen

The Lordship of Mechelen was until 1795 a small independent Lordship in the Low Countries, consisting of the city of Mechelen and some surrounding villages.
In the early Middle Ages, it was part of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, which was confirmed in 910. In practice, the area was ruled by the local Berthout family, against the will of the Prince-Bishops of Liège. The Duchy of Brabant tried to annex the Lordship, but as a reaction, Liège gave the area in 1333 to the County of Flanders. The Flemish also didn't gain complete and permanent control.
Mechelen was therefore later considered as one of the Seventeen Provinces and then as a province of the Southern Netherlands. The Dukes of Burgundy and later the Habsburg Emperors and Kings were personally Lords of Mechelen and for a while turned the city more or less into the capital of the Netherlands. They established here the highest jurisdictional court of the Seventeen Provinces, called the Great Council of Mechelen. Governess Margaret of Austria also held her Court at Mechelen. Later, the capital moved primarily to Brussels.
In 1795 the Lordship was abolished by the French revolutionaries and it became part of the French département of the Deux-Nèthes.
Today it is part of the Belgian province of Antwerp.


Krenites Arotras

Krinites or Krenites Arotras () was a Byzantine aristocrat and military governor in southern Greece. He is most notable for suppressing a Slavic revolt in the Peloponnese in 921/22.
Origin and appointment to the Peloponnese.
Arotras was a scion of the Krenites family, an aristocratic clan of Armenian origin present in Byzantium since the early 9th century. In early 921 or 922 (earlier scholars dated this event to ), when he held the rank of "protospatharios", he was appointed as military governor ("strategos") of the theme of the Peloponnese and tasked with suppressing the revolt of the Slavic tribes of the Melingoi and Ezeritai.
The two tribes had rebelled in the past, in 840–42, and after their defeat by Theoktistos Bryennios had been obliged to pay an annual tribute of 60 and 300 gold "solidi" respectively. In , they began to disobey the commands of the "strategos" John Proteuon, refusing to accept the rulers ("archons") he chose for them and to be conscripted for overseas service in southern Italy against an ongoing Lombard rebellion. According to the account of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos () in his "De administrando imperio", Arotras began his campaign against them in March, burning and plundering their lands around Mount Taygetos until November. The two tribes submitted again, and were condemned to pay an increased tribute of 600 "solidi". Arotras was transferred (late 922 or early 923) to the neighbouring theme of Hellas and was replaced by Bardas Platypodes. Under Platypodes, strife in the Peloponnese resumed as he quarrelled with the local nobility, while another revolt by Slavic troops in the Peloponnese followed soon after, which the Melingoi and Ezeritai exploited in getting their tribute reduced to the previous amounts.
Possible identifications.
Two 10th-century seals mentioning the "imperial "protospatharios" and "strategos" of the Peloponnese Krenites" are known and probably belong to him. He has also been identified by some with a person of the same name, mentioned in the hagiography of Saint Luke of Steiris. This Krenites served as "strategos" of Hellas from until 952/955, before going on to serve as "strategos" of the Peloponnese. Most scholars, however, believe the two to be separate persons. Some scholars, like Steven Runciman, also equated him with another Krenites, who was used by Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos (r. 920–944) in diplomatic missions to the Armenian princes.


Werle

Werle (or "Wenden") was a fiefdom in the Holy Roman Empire that was founded in 1235. In German it is known as a "Herrschaft" (usually translated as "lordship") or "Fürstentum" (principality). It was created in the partition of territories in Mecklenburg that followed the death of Henry Borwin II of Mecklenburg (died 1226).
The royal ("fürstlich" in German) House of Werle was a spur line of the House of Mecklenburg line of the Obotrites. The Fiefdom of Werle lay in the area around Güstrow in today's Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany, and stretched eastward to Müritz. It was named after the then-capital Werle, now a village in the municipality Kassow, Rostock district.
The fiefdom collapsed several times into separate dominions. In 1277 it was divided among the sons of the first lord, or "Herr" in German, into Werle-Güstrow and Werle-Parchim. In 1307, both were reunited by Nicholas II, but they were divided again in 1316 into Werle-Güstrow and Werle-Goldberg. In 1337, Werle-Waren split off from the Werle-Güstrow line. With the death of the William, the last lord on September 7, 1436, the fiefdom once again reverted to Mecklenburg. The title of Lord of Werle was thenceforth carried by all rulers of Mecklenburg. Werle is represented in one of the seven fields of the coat of arms of Mecklenburg.


Battle of Moys

The Battle of Moys was a battle fought on 7 September 1757 during the Third Silesian War (part of the Seven Years' War).
A Prussian army of 13,000 men fought an Austrian army of double their size. The entire Prussian corps surrendered to the Austrians.
The battle was fought near Moys in Upper Lusatia, present-day Ujazd, a district of Zgorzelec in Poland.
Seven Years' War.
Although the Seven Years' War was a global conflict, it acquired a specific intensity in the European theater based on the recently concluded War of the Austrian Succession (1741–1748). The 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle concluded the earlier war with Austria. Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great, acquired the prosperous province of Silesia. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria had signed the treaty to gain time to rebuild her military forces and forge new alliances; she intended to regain ascendancy in the Holy Roman Empire. In 1754, escalating tensions between Britain and France in North America offered the Empress the opportunity to regain her lost territories and to limit Prussia's ever growing power. Similarly, France sought to break the British dominance of Atlantic trade. France and Austria put aside their old rivalry to form a coalition of their own. Britain aligned herself with the Kingdom of Prussia; this alliance drew in not only the British king's territories held in personal union, including Hanover, but also those of his relatives in the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. This series of political maneuvers became known as the Diplomatic Revolution.
After over-running Saxony, Frederick campaigned in Bohemia and defeated the Austrians on 6 May 1757 at the Battle of Prague. Learning that French forces had invaded his ally's territory of Hanover, Frederick moved west. On 5 November 1757, he defeated the combined French and Austrian force at the Battle of Rossbach. In his absence, the Austrians had managed to retake Silesia: Prince Charles had taken the city of Schweidnitz and moved on Breslau in Lower Silesia.
A few days after the Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf, instead of marching on Königsberg or toward the heart of Prussia, Apraxin returned to Russia. Frederick sent his brother home in disgrace, and visited the army in Silesia. Several times, he taunted Prince Charles, almost daring him to meet him on the battlefield, but Charles was a cautious fellow. Finally Frederick returned to Saxony, leaving the Duke of Bevern in command of the troops in the Lausitz region. Bevern's duty was to block any Austrian advance on Saxony; he also left Hans Karl von Winterfelt to "assist" him. Frederick actually trusted Winterfeldt more, but the duke was ageing, and the Winterfeldt had the trust of the king; Bevern had the assistance of a powerful royal favorite as his nominal subordinate.
Bevern felt embarrassed; Winterfeldt felt irked by the constraints imposed. Bevern was alarmed by the lack of his supplies, and withdrew to Görlitz, leaving Winterfeldt's corps on the opposite side of the Lusatian Neisse river, near Moys.
On the day before the battle, Prince Charles sent Hadasty to the right bank of the river, nearly on Moys, with instructions to take Jäkelsberg (a hill) on the following day. He has 15,000 men, possibly 20,000, and artillery.
Battle.
On 7 September, Winterfeldt was absent from his corps, either in consultation with Bevern, or having escorted a meal convoy out of Bautzen: sources disagree. Zieten commanded the left wing, and his part was not lost. Winterfeldt had 2,000 grenadiers stationed on the slight rise of a hill, Nasti's artillery started a line of fire and then sent 1,000 Croats and some regulars, about 40 companies in three lines, up the hill.
Aftermath.
While heading back to Silesia, Frederick learned of the fall of Breslau (22 November). He and his 22,000 men covered in 12 days and, at Liegnitz, joined up with the Prussian troops who had survived the fighting at Breslau. The augmented army of about 33,000 troops (with approximately 167 cannons) arrived near Leuthen (now Lutynia, Poland), west of Breslau, to find 66,000 Austrians in possession.


Burchard, Margrave of Istria

Burchard II or Burkhard II, also Purcard, was the son of Burchard I of Moosburg and elder brother of Burchard III. He was created Margrave of Istria sometime before 1093, when he first appears in a charter of the Emperor Henry IV along with other nobles of his native land of Bavaria.
He was appointed vogt of Aquileia in 1101. He died between 1106 and 13 February 1107. He left by his wife Acica a daughter named Matilda. His son-in-law Conrad exercised his authority in Aquileia after his death.


Chambers of Reunion

The Chambers of Reunion ("Chambres des Réunions") were French courts established by King Louis XIV in the early 1680s. The purpose of these courts was to increase French territory. Louis had been expanding the borders of France in a series of wars. Territory was gained in the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1679 and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668. The courts' job was to determine what dependencies, if any, had belonged to the areas incorporated into France by these treaties. In doing so, places such as Saarbrücken, Luxembourg, Zweibrücken and Strasbourg were annexed to France.
Louis based his claims on ancient, often long-forgotten, rights to the dependent territories stemming from the Middle Ages. He thus took advantage of the formal content of his alliance treaties with the German princes by claiming their land. Although there was no legal claim to it at all, Louis took Strasbourg as well as Casale. Louis also took most of what is now Luxembourg during the War of the Reunions, which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire, while it was distracted by an ongoing war with the Ottoman Empire.
The conflicts caused by the Reunion policy ultimately led to the Truce of Ratisbon in which Louis was allowed to keep most gains, partly because of the distraction of other countries and partly by bribes, including payoffs to the German princes and Charles II of England.
Louis's hostile policy antagonized much of the rest of Europe, resulting in the War of the League of Augsburg (the Nine Years' War) in 1688. The war ended in 1697 with the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick in which Louis agreed to restore much of the territory that had been "reunited" with France as a result of the Chambers of Reunion.


Xuereb

Xuereb is a Maltese surname.
The Xuereb surname is mentioned by Charles A. Gauci in his book "The Genealogy and Heraldry of the Noble Families of Malta". He writes that the earliest references of this family are in 1517, with Tommeo Xuereb mentioned as "Nobile" or "Noble".
Notable people with the surname include:


Murder of Niklas P.

In the murder case of Niklas P., a 17-year-old boy from Bad Breisig, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, was knocked unconscious and then beaten to death by a group of young men while lying on the ground. The crime happened in Bonn, Germany, on the night of 6 to 7 May 2016. Niklas P. later died in hospital. On 18 May, Walid S., a 20-year-old man, was arrested on suspicion of being the main perpetrator. Two accomplices are still being sought by the police. The case received extensive media attention in Germany. Bonn police received 400,000 entries on their Facebook page.
Incidents.
On the night of 6 to 7 May, on their way home from a concert Niklas P., his sister and two female friends encountered a group of young men, including Walid S., and was provoked by them verbally. According to the chief prosecutor, Niklas P. wanted to avoid violence and resolve the situation amicably. One of the female friends of Niklas was reportedly slapped and was later molested. Subsequently, Niklas P. was struck violently on the head. After he had fallen down, the perpetrator Walid S. kicked his head with great force.
Bonn police began an intense manhunt and also handed out flyers in the German, Arabic and Turkish languages. There were also two demonstrations, one of 50 far-right protesters and a counter-demonstration of several hundred people.
Suspects.
The suspect Walid S. was born in Italy, but has "an additional migration background". Reportedly, he is of Moroccan origin. He was arrested in Mehlem, a district of Bonn, on charges of manslaughter. He is known to the police for other "violent offences". Two further men were arrested with Walid S., but freed later, as the suspicion against them could not be substantiated. However, an alibi given by Walid S. was later proven wrong. Walid S. denied the accusations. The two accomplices are still sought by the police.
On 20 June, it was reported that a new piece of evidence, a jacket stained with blood of Niklas P., was found in the residence of Walid S., who still denied the accusations saying the jacket did not belong to him. There were allegations against the chief prosecutor of concealing the evidence for several days.


Slavic speakers in Ottoman Macedonia

Slavic-speakers inhabiting the Ottoman-ruled region of Macedonia had settled in the area since the Slavic migrations during the Middle Ages and formed a distinct ethnolinguistic group. While Greek was spoken in the urban centers and in a coastal zone in the south of the region, Slav-speakers were abundant in its rural hinterland and were predominantly occupied in agriculture. Habitually known and identifying as "Bulgarian" on account of their language, they also considered themselves as "Rum", members of the community of Orthodox Christians.
After the emergence of rival national movements among Balkan Christians, the allegiance of Macedonian Slavs became the apple of discord for nationalists vying for dominion over the region of Macedonia. Parties with national affiliations, mostly Greek and Bulgarian, were formed in their midst, largely expressing and accentuating pre-existing social cleavages. From the 1870s onwards Bulgarian and Greek propaganda appealed to them via the creation and operation of national education networks and by supporting the structures of the Bulgarian Exarchate or the Patriarchate of Constantinople respectively. Amidst worsening economic and political conditions for Slav peasants, the clandestine Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, founded in 1893, gained a wide following with a program of agrarian reform imposed by terror, culminating in the staging of the Ilinden uprising of 1903, which was swiftly suppressed by the Ottomans. An armed clash ensued within Slav communities resistant to national proselytization, with IMRO komitadjis fighting against Ottoman authorities and bands of Greek and Serbian nationalists until the pacification imposed after the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. At that time the international observers viewed the majority of them as Bulgarian.
Following the partition of the Ottoman lands of the region of Macedonia between Balkan nation-states after the conclusion of the Balkan Wars in 1913, many Slavic-speaking inhabitants of the regions annexed by Greece and the Kingdom of Serbia emigrated to Pirin Macedonia and other parts of Bulgaria.
Language, economy, and society.
In the region of Macedonia, Greek-speakers were concentrated in a littoral zone, covering the southern parts of contemporary Greek Macedonia, southwards of the cities of Kastoria, Edessa, and Serres. To the north of this imaginary line, Greek was spoken regularly in the cities, while in the countryside most Christians were Slav-speakers. From the mid-eighteenth till the mid-nineteenth century Greek-, Vlach- and Albanian-speakers migrated under Albanian pressure from Epirus to Macedonia, forming new villages or settling in Slav-speaking existing ones, and were linguistically assimilated in most cases. Slavic-speakers, predominating in the rural parts of the region, laboured in Turkish chifliks in the plains or inhabited free mountainous villages and worked as itinerant specialized craftsmen, e.g. builders, across the Balkan peninsula. Only a few populated the region's urban centers, until the growing stream of migration from the countryside to the cities over the nineteenth century. As happened in the case of Vlachs, Slavs migrants to the cities usually adopted Greek culture and were married into other groups of Orthodox Christians.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Slav peasants identified themselves based on belonging to their family, village, or local region or as "Rum", i.e. members of the Rum millet, the Greek-dominated politico-religious community of Orthodox Christians. The Slavs of Macedonia generally referred to themselves and were known as "Bulgarians". The word "Bulgar" invoked the idea of a poor, Slav-speaking peasant, the stereotypical negative image of the labourers of lowland chiftliks as dull and uncivilized. As it described their actual socio-economic status, the term "Bulgar" could be used as a term of identification in tandem with "Rum", which denoted membership in the community of Orthodox Christians and implied the aspiration of elevation to the higher social status of cultured Hellenized urbanites.
By the early years of the nineteenth century, peasant communities of Macedonia experienced the formation of deep divisions between various social and professional groups over the appointment of community leaders and the allocation of natural resources.
National antagonisms.
During the Greek War of Independence two revolts erupted in southern Macedonia with considerable peasant support. In 1821 an insurrection under the leadership of monks of Mount Athos had limited success and only two groups of villages from the Chalkidiki peninsula were involved in it. The insurrection of Naousa, Imathia the next year, led by local notables and warlords, was joined by ca 2,000 Greek- and Slav-speakers from the surrounding villages. Both uprisings were characterized by the absence of concrete planning and demands from the revolutionaries, other than a desire for freedom and putting an end to Muslim rule, and were suppressed in a short time. A considerable number of Slavs from Macedonia, amounting to a few hundreds, continued fighting, imbued with religious sentiment, in southern Greece as professional soldiers and settled in the independent kingdom of Greece, where they were given land. Their descendants were called "Bulgarians" or "Thracian-Macedonians," and were considered Bulgarian-speaking Orthodox Christian co-nationals on a par with Greek-speaking Greeks, as they perceived themselves.
While Greeks claimed the Slavs of Macedonia as their Orthodox brethren, Serbs and Bulgarians considered them members of their nation on account of their language. Maps and statistics produced mostly reflected their creators' intentions than the demographic reality on the ground, while Ottoman censuses classified their subjects using their religious affiliation further perplexed the issue of their national identity. Rival Serb, Greek and Bulgarian nationalism used religious and educational institutions to tie Macedonia's population to their respective national cause. While a vibrant minority of schoolteachers, priests, and government officials readily espoused national causes, that was not the case with the vast majority of Slav peasants. Alignment of the Slavs of Macedonia with the Bulgarian, the Greek or sometimes the Serbian national camp did not imply adherence to different national ideologies: these camps were not stable, culturally distinct groups, but parties with national affiliations, described by contemporaries as "sides", "wings", "parties" or "political clubs". The Exarchist movement met with less success in Macedonia than in eastern Bulgarian lands, due to the social and cultural dominance of the Greek bourgeoisie. In the middle of the century, despite the opposition of Greek bishops, many Slav villages adopted the use of Bulgarian in education and liturgical life.
The 1870 firman establishing the Bulgarian Exarchate allowed for a diocese to join the Exarchate, given the support of 2/3 of its flock. Ecclesiastical allegiance was treated as a declaration of one's national identity. From 1870 until 1913 the national affiliation of the Orthodox Slavs of Macedonia became the locus of a contest between Greece and Bulgaria, who intensified their national educational activity in the region of Macedonia, alongside Serbia. In the 1870s, Serbs directed their attentions to Macedonia, due to their interest in the area of Kosovo and after the frustration of hopes of acquiring Bosnia-Herzegovina, once it was occupied by Austria-Hungary in 1878. Serbian intellectuals denied the Bulgarian identity of Macedonian Slavs, based on the differences between eastern and western Bulgarian dialects, and suggested they should be incorporated in Serbia. For Slav peasants, however, the choice between the Patriarchate and the Exarchate was not tainted with national meaning, but was a choice of Church or millet. Thus, adherence to the Bulgarian national cause was going against notions of the sanctity of the Greek language, but was attractive as a means of opposing oppressive Christian chiflik owners and urban merchants, who usually identified with the Greek nation, as a way to escape arbitrary taxation by Patriarchate bishops, via shifting allegiance to the Exarchate and on account of the free (and, occasionally, even subsidized) provision of education in Bulgarian schools. The Greek party initially relied on the traditional appeal of belonging to the Rum millet and the authority of its prelates, on Greek cultural and educational hegemony, and on cooperation with Ottoman authorities. Bulgarian nationalists had taken a lead, and as traditional means of exertion of influence by Greek nationalists proved insufficient, the Greek efforts after 1878 were directed to the middle and southern parts of Macedonia, investing in the opening of Greek schools and subsidizing education in Greece, while from 1882 Greece opened consulates that operated as centers of Greek national propaganda. Despite the emergence and propagation of national ideologies, the worldview of most Slav peasants in Macedonia was marked by pre-national concerns, and characterized by the fundamental rift between Christian subjects and Muslim overlords.
Armed confrontation (1893–1908).
Towards the end of the nineteenth century living conditions of labourers in the chiftliks deteriorated, after their Turkish owners became indebted to Greek and Jewish merchants and sold their estates. while economic divisions in the free villages deepened between poor small landholders and the wealthier notables, known as "çorbacı", who usually allied with Turkish authorities and the Greek bishop and sided with the Greek party. Economic misery and political friction led many peasants to emigration to the New World or to neighbouring countries, especially Bulgaria, whence they returned proselytised to the national cause.
As prospects of social mobility cultivated by the expanded provision of education were frustrated, a number of teachers and urban professions influenced by socialist ideas formed in 1893 in Salonica a secret revolutionary organization aiming to gain political autonomy for the region of Macedonia. After some name changes, it became known as the "Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization", and oriented its energies towards engaging traditional brigands and peasants in building a network of parallel institutions in Slav Macedonian villages, facing Ottoman repression and employing means of terror to cement its base. IMRO gained a mass following of peasants who attached themselves to its cause for social reasons, reaping short-term benefits by upper social strata, thanks to threat of violence by armed IMRO bands, and enchanted by the long-term promise of social reform, in particular radical agrarian reform. Having gained a stronghold in the area and having received the promise of Bulgarian intervention, the IMRO staged an anti-Ottoman rebellion, centered around the wealthy free villages of Western Macedonia, on 20 July (O.S.) 1903. The rebellion was brutally suppressed by the Ottomans; tens of villages, mostly in the Manastir Vilayet, were razed to the ground and thousands of uninvolved peasants sought refuge to the mountains.
The passivity of Bulgaria during the Ilinden revolt fostered separatist tendencies within the IMRO and Bulgaria intensified its efforts to infiltrate and gain a hold of its clandestine network. Moreover, following the Murzsteg Agreement, article 3 of which stipulated the administrative reorganization with a view to a better grouping of different nationalities, the governments of both Greece and Bulgaria began to organize missions of armed nationalist guerrilla bands to Macedonia, composed mostly of Cretans in the Greek case. Most Greek-speaking villages remained uninvolved in the Macedonian Struggle, which developed as a confrontation between opposing national factions mostly within the Christian Slav-speaking communities of Macedonia, leading contemporary observers to describe it as a "civil war among Christians". The infighting tore apart these communities, as IMRO komitadjis and rival members of Greek bands were connected with social or even family ties. Under the pressure of armed nationalist bands, individuals and entire communities in the Slavic-speaking parts of Macedonia were obliged to repeatedly shift their stated national affiliation. Rejecting such criteria as language or race, the Greek view appealed to the "national consciousness" of non-Greeks. In practice, this translated to the Slav peasant's confessional affiliation to the Greek-Orthodox millet. Facing a population largely indifferent to national ideas, the employment of violent means by Greek guerrillas in a manner equally relentless to that of the IMRO bands managed to restrict IMRO terrorist activities.
Serbia offered material support to the Ilinden Uprising, and after its suppression, authorities in Belgrade sought but failed to negotiate with Bulgarian leaders on sending Serbian bands into Macedonia for combined action. A Serbian Committee also had funded small groups of chetniks, either self-organized or part of the Bulgarian revolutionary organizations active in Macedonia (IMRO and SMAC) in spring of 1904. Soon, hostility between the Bulgarian organizations and the Serbian Chetnik Organization began. With the failed idea of joint actions, and growing nationalism, the government in Belgrade took over the activities of the organization.
The Young Turk Revolution in 1908 imposed a temporary stop to all guerrilla actions in Macedonia.
Second Constitutional Era (1908–1912).
The Second Constitutional Era established shortly after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution led to the restoration of the constitution of 1876. After the Revolution armed factions laid down their arms and joined the legal struggle. The Bulgarian community founded the Peoples' Federative Party (Bulgarian Section) and the Union of the Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs and participated in Ottoman elections. Some prominent Ottoman Greeks and Serbs also served as Ottoman Parliamentary Deputies. Soon the Turkish nationalism came to grow, and the Young Turks sought to suppress the national aspirations of the various minorities in the Empire. During the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, the Ottoman Empire lost most of its European territories inhabited by Christian minorities.
According to Encyclopædia Britannica 1911 Edition, at the beginning of the 20th century the Slavs constituted the majority of the population of Macedonia. There were 1,300,000 Orthodox Christians, 800,000 Muslims and 75,000 Jews, by a total population of ca. 2,200,000 people. The Slavs were 1,150,000, of which 1,000,000 were Orthodox. Whether the majority of the Orthodox Slavs considered themselves to be Bulgarians then is difficult to answer. Some authors maintain only the majority of those Slavs who had developed some national identity, felt themselves to be Bulgarians, others claim that most of all Macedonian Slavs saw themselves as Bulgarians, or at least were part of the Bulgarian community. As a whole the international observers viewed the majority of them as some kind "Bulgarian".
Integration in nation-states.
The partition of the Ottoman lands of the region of Macedonia between Balkan nation-states after the conclusion of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and World War I (1914–1918) left the area, divided mainly between Greece and Serbia (later Yugoslavia). As result part of the Slav inhabitants of the region emigrated to Bulgarian Macedonia. Others remained as a Slavic-speaking linguistic minority in Greek Macedonia. On the other hand, those in Vardar Macedonia were ceded to the Kingdom of Serbia. Many became a subject of process of forced Serbianisation in Serbia (later Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and Hellenisation in Greece.
During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Allies sanctioned Serbian control of Vardar Macedonia and accepted the belief that Macedonian Slavs there were in fact "Southern Serbs". The locals faced with the policy of forced serbianisation. Serbian authorities persecuted Bulgarian priests and teachers, forcing them to flee and replacing them by Serbian. Persons declaring Bulgarian identity were imprisoned or went into exile. In 1924 upon the League of Nations' demand, a bilateral Bulgarian-Greek agreement was signed, known as the Politis–Kalfov Protocol, recognizing the "Greek Slavophones" as Bulgarians and guaranteeing their protection. On February 2, 1925, the Greek parliament, claiming pressure from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which threatened to renounce the treaty about the Greek–Serbian Alliance of 1913, refused to ratify the agreement, that lasted until June 10, 1925. In 1927 Mollov–Kafantaris population exchange agreement was signed and the bulk of the Slavic-speaking population in Greece was forced to leave for Bulgaria. Later the Greek governments began promulgating a policy of persecution of the use of Slavic dialects both in public and in private, as well of expressions of any cultural or ethnic distinctiveness. In this way the leading "Bulgarian community" in most of the area was reduced, either by population exchanges or by change of its ethnic identity.


David Powel

David Powel (1549/52 – 1598) was a Welsh Church of England clergyman and historian who published the first printed history of Wales in 1584.
Life.
Powel was born in Denbighshire and commenced his studies at the University of Oxford when he was 16, sometime between 1566 and 1568. Whilst his initial college membership is not known, it is known that he moved to Jesus College when it was founded in 1571. He obtained his B.A. degree on 3 March 1573 and is thought to have been the college's first graduate. He obtained his M.A. on 6 July 1576. Before Powel graduated, he had been named as vicar of Ruabon, Denbighshire and rector of Llanfyllin, Montgomeryshire. He became vicar of Meifod in place of his Llanfyllin position in 1579, and was also the holder of two prebends at St Asaph Cathedral. After further study, he obtained degrees of B.Th. on 19 February 1583 and D.Th. on 11 April 1583. He was then private chaplain to Sir Henry Sidney, president of the Council in the marches of Wales, from about 1584 to 1586. He died in 1598 in Ruabon, where he was buried. One of his sons was Gabriel Powell, also a clergyman, and a strident anti-Catholic.
Works.
Powel made a significant contribution to developing and preserving Welsh culture and to the growth of Protestantism in Wales. He was a supporter of William Morgan's efforts to translate the Bible into Welsh. He kept the Privy Council informed about illegal books circulating amongst Roman Catholics in Wales.
He was a respected scholar and was associated with geographers such as John Dee and Richard Hakluyt. In 1573, Powel took over the task of preparing for publication an English translation (by Humphrey Llwyd) of some medieval Welsh chronicles, upon which John Dee had been working before leaving England. Powel expanded Llwyd's work in its scope and detail, with the help of Lord Burghley providing access to some further documents, making his own contributions clear by typographical distinctions. The resulting publication in 1584, "The Historie of Cambria, now called Wales", was the first printed history of Wales. The work remained an important source for medieval Welsh history for several centuries thereafter. It also popularised the legend that Prince Madoc had discovered America in about 1170, a tale used to justify English encroachments on the territory of Spanish America (for example in Hakluyt's "Discourse on Western Planting"). Another of his popular stories related to the circumstances of the future King Edward II of England being created Prince of Wales at Caernarfon.
Powel also published a volume with editions of Ponticus Virunnius's "Historia Britannica", and Gerald of Wales's "Itinerarium Cambriae" ('Journey through Wales', 1191) and "Descriptio Cambriae" ('Description of Wales', 1194), but omitted Gerald's negative comments about the Welsh. The volume was dedicated to Sidney. He is also said (by the later lexicographer John Davies) to have worked on an unpublished Welsh dictionary.


John Louis II, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst

John Louis II, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst (23 June 1688, in Dornburg – 5 November 1746, in Zerbst), was a German prince of the House of Ascania and ruler of the principality of Anhalt-Dornburg. After 1742 he became ruler over the principality of Anhalt-Zerbst .
He was the eldest son of John Louis I, Prince of Anhalt-Dornburg, by his wife Christine Eleonore of Zeutsch.
Life.
He succeeded his father as prince of Anhalt-Dornburg in 1704 and ruled jointly with his brothers John Augustus (died 1709), Christian Augustus, Christian Louis (died 1710) and John Frederick (died 1742), but he had the "Senoriat" over all of them as first-born.
In 1720 he was appointed "Oberlanddrostes" of Jever and remained there for the next twenty-two years; during this time, he ordered the building of the "Stadtkirche" in Jever (which was finally inaugurated in 1736). After the death in 1742 of his cousin Prince John Augustus of Anhalt-Zerbst without heirs, he and his only surviving brother, Christian Augustus, took over the rule of the entire principality of Anhalt-Zerbst. In order to administer the principality, he had to return to Zerbst.
John Louis never married and died after only four years of rule. On his death, he was succeeded by his brother and co-ruler.


History of the Republic of Venice

The Republic of Venice (; ), traditionally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice (; ), was a sovereign state and maritime republic in northeastern Italy, which existed for a millennium between the 8th century and 1797.
It was based in the lagoon communities of the historically prosperous city of Venice, and was a leading European economic and trading power during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the most successful of Italy's maritime republics. By the late Middle Ages, it held significant territories in the mainland of northern Italy, known as the Domini di Terraferma, along with most of the Dalmatian coast on the other side of the Adriatic Sea, and Crete and numerous small colonies around the Mediterranean Sea, together known as the Stato da Màr.
A slow political and economic decline had begun by around 1500, and by the 18th century the city of Venice largely depended on the tourist trade, as it still does, and the Stato da Màr was largely lost.
Origins.
Although no surviving historical records deal directly with the founding of Venice, the history of the Republic of Venice traditionally begins with the foundation of the city at Noon on Friday, 25 March, AD 421, by authorities from Padua, to establish a trading-post in that region of northern Italy. The founding of the Venetian republic is also said to have been marked at that same event with the founding of the church of St. James. However, the church (believed to be Saint Giacomo di Rialto) dates back no further than the eleventh century, at the earliest, or the mid-twelfth century, at the latest. The 11th century "Chronicon Altinate" also dates the first settlement in that region, Rivo Alto ("High Shore", later Rialto), to the dedication of that same church (i.e., San Giacometo on the bank of the current Grand Canal).
According to tradition, the original population of the region consisted of refugees—from nearby Roman cities such as Padua, Aquileia, Treviso, Altino, and Concordia (modern Concordia Sagittaria), as well as from the undefended countryside—who were fleeing successive waves of Hun and Germanic invasions from the mid-second to mid-fifth centuries. This is further supported by documentation on the so-called "apostolic families", the twelve founding families of Venice who elected the first doge, who in most cases traced their lineage back to Roman families.
The Quadi and Marcomanni destroyed the main Roman town in the area, Opitergium (modern Oderzo) in AD 166–168. This part of Roman Italy was again overrun in the early 5th century by the Visigoths and by Attila of the Huns who sacked Altinum (a town on the mainland coast of the lagoon of Venice) in 452. The last and most enduring immigration into the north of the Italian peninsula, that of the Lombards in 568, was the most devastating for the north-eastern region, Venetia (modern Veneto and Friuli). It also confined the Italian territories of the Eastern Roman Empire to part of central Italy and the coastal lagoons of Venetia, known as the Exarchate of Ravenna. Around this time, Cassiodorus mentions the "incolae lacunae" ("lagoon dwellers"), their fishing and their saltworks and how they strengthened the islands with embankments. The former Opitergium region had finally begun to recover from the various invasions when it was destroyed again, this time for good, by the Lombards led by Grimoald in 667.
As the power of the Byzantine Empire dwindled in northern Italy in the late 7th century, the lagoon communities came together for mutual defence against the Lombards, as the Duchy of Venetia. The Duchy included the patriarchates of Aquileia and Grado, in modern Friuli, by the Lagoon of Grado and Carole, east of that of Venice. Ravenna and the duchy were connected only by sea routes, and with the duchy's isolated position came increasing autonomy. The "tribuni maiores" formed the earliest central standing governing committee of the islands in the lagoon - traditionally dated to c. 568.
Early in the 8th century, the people of the lagoon elected their first leader Orso Ipato (Ursus), who was confirmed by Byzantium with the titles of "hypatus" and "dux". Historically, Ursus was the first Doge of Venice. Tradition, however, since the early 11th century, dictates that the Venetians first proclaimed one Paolo Lucio Anafesto (Anafestus Paulicius) duke in AD 697, although the tradition dates only from the chronicle of John, deacon of Venice (John the Deacon); nonetheless, the power base of the first doges was in Eraclea.
Initially, the main settlement was elsewhere in the lagoon and not on the islands of the Rialto group which would later be the heart of Venice. One of the few early settlements attested in the Rialto group was the island of Olivolo (now called S. Pietro in Castello), at the western end of the archipelago, closer to the sandbars of the lagoon. Archaeological excavation shows that this island was already inhabited in the 5th century. 6th and 7th century Byzantine imperial seals indicate that, at this time, it was politically important. There was also a castle, perhaps from the 6th century. John the Deacon's early 11th century "Chronicon Venetum" reports that the diocese of Olivolo was founded in 774-76 by the doge Maurizio Galbaio (764-87), that a bishop Olberio was established in Olivolo by 775 and attributes the foundation of the cathedral of S. Pietro to bishop Orso Partecipazio and its completion to 841. Another attestation of an early settlement in the Rivo Alto group is in what was to become the "sestriere" (district) of Cannaregio. Whatever early settlements there were in the Rivo Alto group of islands, which was to form the city of Venice, the area did not begin to become properly urbanised until the 9th century.
Rise.
Orso Ipato's successor, Teodato Ipato, moved his seat from Eraclea to Malamocco (on the Lido) in the 740s. He was the son of Orso and represented the attempt of his father to establish a dynasty. Such attempts were more than commonplace among the doges of the first few centuries of Venetian history, but all were ultimately unsuccessful.
The changing politics of the Frankish Empire began to change the factional division of Venice. One faction was decidedly pro-Byzantine. They desired to remain well-connected to the Empire. Another faction, republican in nature, believed in continuing along a course towards practical independence. The other main faction was pro-Frankish. Supported mostly by clergy (in line with papal sympathies of the time), they looked towards the new Carolingian king of the Franks, Pepin the Short, as the best provider of defence against the Lombards. A minor, pro-Lombard, faction was opposed to close ties with any of these further-off powers and interested in maintaining peace with the neighbouring Lombard kingdom, which surrounded Venice except on the seaward side.
Teodato Ipato was assassinated and his throne usurped, but the usurper, Galla Gaulo, suffered a like fate within a year. During the reign of his successor, Domenico Monegario, Venice changed from a fisherman's town to a port of trade and centre of merchants. Shipbuilding was also greatly advanced and the pathway to Venetian dominance of the Adriatic was laid. Also during Domenico Monegario's tenure, the first dual tribunal was instituted. Each year, two new tribunes were elected to oversee the doge and prevent abuse of power.
In that period because, Venice had established itself a thriving slave trade, buying in Italy, among other places, and selling to the Moors in Northern Africa (Pope Zachary himself reportedly forbade such traffic out of Rome).
The pro-Lombard Monegario was succeeded in 764, by a pro-Byzantine Eraclean, Maurizio Galbaio. Galbaio's long reign (764-787) vaulted Venice forward to a place of prominence not just regionally but internationally and saw the most concerted effort yet to establish a dynasty. Maurizio oversaw the expansion of Venetia to the Rialto islands. He was succeeded by his equally long-reigning son, Giovanni. Giovanni clashed with Charlemagne over the slave trade and entered into a conflict with the Venetian church.
Dynastic ambitions were shattered when the pro-Frankish faction was able to seize power under Obelerio degli Antoneri in 804. Obelerio brought Venice into the orbit of the Carolingian Empire. However, by calling in Charlemagne's son Pepin, "rex Langobardorum", to his defence, Obelerio raised the ire of the populace against himself and his family and they were forced to flee during Pepin's siege of Venice.
The siege proved a costly Carolingian failure. It lasted six months, with Pepin's army ravaged by the diseases of the local swamps and eventually forced to withdraw. A few months later Pepin himself died, apparently as a result of a disease contracted there.
Venice thus achieved lasting independence by repelling the besiegers. This was confirmed in an agreement between Charlemagne and Nicephorus which recognized Venice as Byzantine territory and also recognized the city's trading rights along the Adriatic coast, where Charlemagne previously ordered the Pope to expel the Venetians from the Pentapolis.
Early Middle Ages.
The successors of Obelerio inherited a united Venice. By the "Pax Nicephori" (803), the two emperors had recognised Venetian "de facto" independence, while it remained nominally Byzantine in subservience. During the reigns of Agnello Participazio (c. 810-827) and his two sons, Venice grew into its modern form. Around 810, Agnello moved the ducal seat from Malamocco to an island of the Rivo Alto group close to the family's property near the Church of Santi Apostoli, near the eastern bank of the Grand Canal, after Pepin, the Frankish king of Italy, attacked Malamocco but failed to invade the lagoon. This marked the beginning of the urbanisation of the islands of the Rivo Alto group, heart of the modern city of Venice. Agnello's dogeship was marked by the expansion of Venice into the sea through the construction of bridges, canals, bulwarks, fortifications, and stone buildings. The modern Venice, at one with the sea, was being born. Agnello was succeeded by his son Giustiniano, who brought the body of Saint Mark the Evangelist to Venice from Alexandria and made him the patron saint of Venice.
During the reign of the successor of the Participazio, Pietro Tradonico, Venice began to establish its military might which would influence many a later crusade and dominate the Adriatic for centuries, and signed a trade agreement with the Holy Roman Emperor Lothair I, whose privileges were later expanded by Otto I. Tradonico secured the sea by fighting Narentine and Saracen pirates. Tradonico's reign was long and successful (837 – 864), but he was succeeded by the Participazio and it appeared that a dynasty might finally be established.
In the "pactum Lotharii" of 840 between Venice and the Carolingian Empire, Venice promised not to buy Christian slaves in the Empire, and not to sell Christian slaves to Muslims. The Venetians subsequentently began to sell Slavs and other Eastern European non-Christian slaves in greater numbers. Caravans of slaves traveled from Eastern Europe, through Alpine passes in Austria, to reach Venice. Surviving records valued female slaves at a "tremissa" (about 1.5 grams of gold or roughly of a dinar) and male slaves, who were more numerous, at a "saiga" (which is much less). Eunuchs were especially valuable, and "castration houses" arose in Venice, as well as other prominent slave markets, to meet this demand.
Around 841, the Republic of Venice sent a fleet of 60 galleys (each carrying 200 men) to assist the Byzantines in driving the Arabs from Crotone, but failed.
Under Pietro II Candiano, Istrian cities signed an act of devotion to the Venetian rule. His father (Pietro Candiano I) attempted to attack and destroy Marania or Pagania or Narentines and secure safe passage to Venetian fleets and treaders near Croatian Dalmatia . On 887 September 18th, Candiano was captured by the Admiral of the Maranium Navy and killed. He was the first and only Duke of Venice to lose his life in an attempt to secure the Dalmatian Coast to Venice. The autocratic, philo-Imperial Candiano dynasty was overthrown by a revolt in 972, and the populace elected doge Pietro I Orseolo; however, his conciliating policy was ineffective, and he resigned in favour of Vitale Candiano.
Starting from Pietro II Orseolo, who reigned from 991, attention towards the mainland was definitely overshadowed by a strong push towards control of Adriatic Sea. Inner strife was pacified, and trade with the Byzantine Empire boosted by the favourable treaty ("Grisobolus" or Golden Bull) with Emperor Basil II. The imperial edict granted Venetian traders freedom from taxation paid by other foreigners and the Byzantines themselves.
On Ascension Day in 1000 a powerful fleet sailed from Venice to resolve the problem of the Narentine pirates. The fleet visited all the main Istrian and Dalmatian cities, whose citizens, exhausted by the wars between the Croatian king Svetislav and his brother Cresimir, swore an oath of fidelity to Venice. the Main Narentine harbours (Lagosta, Lissa and Curzola) tried to resist, but they were conquered and destroyed (see: battle of Lastovo). The Narentine pirates were suppressed permanently and disappeared. Dalmatia formally remained under Byzantine rule, but Orseolo became "Dux Dalmatie" (Duke of Dalmatia"), establishing the prominence of Venice over the Adriatic Sea. The "Marriage of the Sea" ceremony was established in this period. Orseolo died in 1008.
Venice's control over the Adriatic was strengthened by an expedition by Pietro's son Ottone in 1017, by which time Venice had assumed a key role in balancing power between the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires.
During the long Investiture Controversy, an 11th-century dispute between Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor and Pope Gregory VII over who would control appointments of church officials, Venice remained neutral, and this caused some attrition of support from the Popes. Doge Domenico Selvo intervened in the war between the Normans of Apulia and the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos in favour of the latter, obtaining in exchange a bull declaring the Venetian supremacy in the Adriatic coast up to Durazzo, as well as "the exemption from taxes for his merchants in the whole Byzantine Empire", a considerable factor in the city-state's later accumulation of wealth and power serving as middlemen for the lucrative spice and silk trade that funnelled through the Levant and Egypt along the ancient Kingdom of Axum and Roman-Indian routes via the Red Sea.
The war was not a military success, but with that act the city gained total independence. In 1084, Domenico Selvo led a fleet against the Normans, but he was defeated and lost 9 great galleys, the largest and most heavily armed ships in the Venetian navy.
High Middle Ages.
In the High Middle Ages, Venice became wealthy through its control of trade between Europe and the Levant, and began to expand into the Adriatic Sea and beyond. Venice was involved in the Crusades almost from the very beginning; 200 Venetian ships assisted in capturing the coastal cities of Syria after the First Crusade, and in 1123 they were granted virtual autonomy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem through the "Pactum Warmundi". In 1110, Ordelafo Faliero personally commanded a Venetian fleet of 100 ships to assist Baldwin I of Jerusalem in capturing the city of Sidon.
In the 12th century, the republic built a large national shipyard that is now known as the Venetian Arsenal. Building new and powerful fleets, the republic took control over the eastern Mediterranean. The first exchange business in the world was started in Venezia, to support merchants from all over Europe. The Venetians also gained extensive trading privileges in the Byzantine Empire, and their ships often provided the Empire with a navy. In 1182 there was an anti-Catholic massacre by the Orthodox Christian population of Constantinople, with the Venetians as the main targets.
The rise of Venetian power.
Venice was asked to provide transportation for the Fourth Crusade, but when the crusaders could not pay for chartering their shipping, the doge Enrico Dandolo offered to delay the payment in exchange for their aid in recapturing Zara (today "Zadar"), which had rebelled against Venetian rule in 1183, placing itself under the dual protection of the Papacy and King Emeric of Hungary, and had proved too well fortified for Venice to retake alone.
Upon accomplishing this in 1202, the crusade was again diverted to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. After being deposed from power, Alexios IV Angelos offered to the Crusaders 10,000 Byzantine soldiers to help fight in the Crusade, maintain 500 knights in the Holy Land, the service of the Byzantine navy (20 ships) in transporting their army to Egypt, and 200,000 silver marks to help pay off the Crusaders' debt to Venice if the Crusaders helped re-install him as emperor.
The Crusaders agreed and restored Alexios to power in 1203, however he refused to hold up his end of the bargain. The Venetians and French crusaders responded by commencing a siege of Constantinople and in 1204, they captured and sacked the city. Venetians saved from the sack several artistic works, such as the famous four bronze horses and brought them back to Venice.
Byzantine hegemony was destroyed, and in the partition of the Empire that followed, Venice gained strategic territories in the Aegean Sea (three-eighths of the Byzantine Empire), including the islands of Crete and Euboea. Moreover, some present day cities, such as Chania on Crete, have core architecture that is substantially Venetian in origin. The Aegean islands formed the Venetian Duchy of the Archipelago.
The Republic of Venice signed a trade treaty with the Mongol Empire in 1241.
In 1295, Pietro Gradenigo sent a fleet of 68 ships to attack a Genoese fleet at Alexandretta, then another fleet of 100 ships were sent to attack the Genoese in 1299.
In the 14th century, Venice faced difficulties to the east, especially during the reign of Louis I of Hungary. In 1346 he made a first attempt to free Zara from Venetian suzerainty, but was defeated. In 1356 an alliance was formed by the counts of Gorizia, Francesco I da Carrara, lord of Padua, Nicolaus, partiarch of Aquileia and his half brother emperor Charles IV, Louis I, and the dukes of Austria. The league's troops occupied Grado and Muggia (1356), while Louis stripped Venice of Dalmatia.
Along the Dalmatian coast, his army had attacked the Dalmatian cities of Zara, Traù, Spalato and Ragusa. The siege of Treviso (July–September 1356) was a failure. Venice suffered a severe defeat at Nervesa (13 January 1358), being forced to withdraw from Dalmatia and give it again to the Kingdom of Hungary. Venetians resigned themselves to the unfavorable conditions stipulated in the Treaty of Zara, which was signed on February 18, 1358.
From 1350 to 1381, Venice also fought an intermittent war with the Genoese. Initially defeated, the Venetians destroyed the Genoese fleet at the Battle of Chioggia in 1380 and retained their prominent position in eastern Mediterranean affairs at the expense of Genoa. However, the peace caused Venice to lose several territories to other participants to the war: Conegliano was occupied by the Austrians; Treviso was taken over by Carraresi; Tenedos fell to the Byzantine Empire; Trieste fell to the Patriarchate of Aquileia; and the Serenissima lost control of Dalmatia to Hungary.
In 1363, a colonial revolt broke out in Crete that needed considerable military force and five years to suppress.
15th century.
In the early 15th century, the Venetians also expanded their possessions in North Italy, and assumed the definitive control of the Dalmatian coast, which was acquired from Ladislaus of Naples. Venice installed its own noblemen to govern the area, for example, Count Filippo Stipanov in Zara. This move by the Venetians was in response to the threatened expansion of Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. Control over the north-east cross-country routes was also needed to ensure the safety of travelling merchants. By 1410, Venice had a navy of some 3,300 ships (manned by 36,000 men) and had taken over most of Venetia, including such important cities as Verona and Padua.
The situation in Dalmatia was settled in 1408 by a truce with Sigismund of Hungary. When this expired, Venice immediately invaded the Patriarchate of Aquileia, and subjugated Traù, Spalato, Durazzo, and other Dalmatian cities. The difficulties of Hungary allowed the Republic to consolidate its Adriatic dominions.
Under doge Francesco Foscari (1423–57) the city reached the height of its power and territorial extent. In 1425 a new war broke out, this time against Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan. The victory at the Battle of Maclodio of Count of Carmagnola, commander of the Venetian army, resulted in the shift of the western border from the Adige to the Adda. However, such territorial expansion was not welcome everywhere in Venice; tension with Milan remained high, and in 1446 the Republic had to fight another alliance, formed by Milan, Florence, Bologna, and Cremona. After an initial Venetian victory under Micheletto Attendolo at Casalmaggiore, however, Visconti died and a republic was declared in Milan. The Serenissima had then a free hand to occupy Lodi and Piacenza, but was halted by Francesco Sforza; later, Sforza and the Doge allied to allow Sforza the rule of Milan, in exchange for the cession of Brescia and Vicenza. Venice, however, again changed side when the power of Sforza seemed to become excessive: the intricate situation was settled with the Peace of Lodi (1454), which confirmed the area of Bergamo and Brescia to the Republic. At this time, the territories under the Serenissima included much of the modern Veneto, Friuli, the provinces of Bergamo, Cremona and Trento, as well as Ravenna, Istria, and Dalmatia. Eastern borders were with the county of Gorizia and the ducal lands of Austria, while in the south was the Duchy of Ferrara. Oversea dominions included Euboea and Egina.
On May 29, 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, but Venice managed to maintain a colony in the city and some of the former trade privileges it had had under the Byzantines. Indeed, in 1454, the Ottomans granted the Venetians their ports and trading rights. Despite the recent Ottoman defeats by John Hunyadi of Hungary and by Skanderbeg in Albania, war was unavoidable. In 1463 the Venetian fortress of Argos was ravaged. Venice set up an alliance with Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and attacked the Greek islands by sea and Bulgaria by land. The allies were forced to retreat on both fronts, however, after several minor victories. Operations were reduced mostly to isolated ravages and guerrilla attacks, until the Ottomans moved on a massive counteroffensive in 1470: this resulted in Venice losing its main stronghold in the Aegean Sea, Negroponte. The Venetians sought an alliance with the Shah of Persia and other European powers, but, receiving only limited support, could make only small-scale attacks at Antalya, Halicarnassus and Smirne.
The Ottomans conquered the Peloponnesus and launched an offensive in the Venetian mainland, closing in on the important centre of Udine. The Persians, together with the Caramanian amir, were severely defeated at Terdguin, and the Republic was left alone. Further, much of Albania was lost after Skanderbeg's death. However, the heroic resistance of Scutari under Antonio Loredan forced the Ottomans to retire from Albania, while a revolt in Cyprus gave back the island to the Cornaro family and, subsequently, to the Serenissima (1473). Its prestige seemed reassured, but Scutari fell anyway two years later, and Friuli was again invaded and ravaged. On January 24, 1479, a treaty of peace was finally signed with the Ottomans. Venice had to cede Argo, Negroponte, Lemnos and Scutari, and pay an annual tribute of 10,000 golden "ducati". Five years later the agreement was confirmed by Mehmed II's successor, Bayezid II, with the peaceful exchange of the islands of Zakynthos and Kefalonia between the two sides.
In 1482 Venice allied with Pope Sixtus IV in his attempt to conquer Ferrara, opposed to Florence, Naples, Milan, and Ercole d'Este. When Papal-Venetian milices were smashed at the Battle of Campomorto, Sixtus changed side. Again alone, the Venetians were defeated in the Veronese by Alfonso of Calabria, but conquered Gallipoli, in Apulia, by sea. The balance was changed by Ludovico Sforza of Milan, who ultimately sided with Venice: this led to a quick peace, which was signed near Brescia on 7 August 1484. In spite of the numerous setbacks suffered in the campaign, Venice obtained the Polesine and Rovigo, and increased its prestige in the Italian peninsula at the expense of Florence especially. In the late 1480s, Venice fought two brief campaigns against the new Pope Innocent VIII and Sigismund of Austria. Venetian troops were also present at the Battle of Fornovo, in which the Italian League fought against Charles VIII of France. Alliance with Spain/Aragon in the following reconquest of the Kingdom of Naples granted it the control of the Apulian ports, important strategic bases commanding the lower Adriatic, and the Ionian islands.
Despite the setbacks in the struggle against the Turks, at the end of the 15th century, with 180,000 inhabitants, Venice was the second largest city in Europe after Paris and probably the richest in the world. The territory of the Republic of Venice extended over approximately with 2.1 million inhabitants (for comparison, at about the same time England had three million inhabitants, the whole of Italy 11 million, France 13 million, Portugal 1.7 million, Spain six million, and the Holy Roman Empire ten million).
Administratively the territory was divided into three parts:
In 1485, the French ambassador, Philippe de Commines, wrote of Venice,
League of Cambrai, Lepanto and the loss of Cyprus.
In 1499 Venice allied with Louis XII of France against Milan, gaining Cremona. In the same year the Ottoman sultan moved to attack Lepanto by land and sent a large fleet to support the offensive by sea. Antonio Grimani, more a businessman and diplomat than a sailor, was defeated in the sea Battle of Zonchio in 1499. The Turks once again sacked Friuli. Preferring peace to total war against the Turks, Venice surrendered the bases of Lepanto, Modon and Coron.
Venice became rich on trade, but the guilds in Venice also produced superior silks, brocades, goldsmith jewelry and articles, armour and glass in the form of beads and eyeglasses. However, Venice's attention was diverted from its usual trade and maritime position by the delicate situation in Romagna, then one of the richest lands in Italy. Romagna was nominally part of the Papal States but effectively divided into a series of small lordships that were difficult for Rome's troops to control. Eager to take some of Venice's lands, all neighbouring powers joined in the League of Cambrai in 1508, under the leadership of Pope Julius II. The pope wanted Romagna, emperor Maximilian I Friuli and Veneto, Spain the Apulian ports, the king of France Cremona, the king of Hungary Dalmatia, and each of the others some part. The offensive against the huge army enlisted by Venice was launched from France. On 14 May 1509 Venice was crushingly defeated at the Battle of Agnadello, in the Ghiara d'Adda, marking one of the most delicate points of Venetian history. French and Imperial troops were occupying Veneto, but Venice managed to extricate itself through diplomatic efforts. The Apulian ports were ceded in order to come to terms with Spain, and Pope Julius II soon recognized the danger brought by the eventual destruction of Venice (then the only Italian power able to face large states like France or Ottoman Turkey). The citizens of the mainland rose to the cry of "Marco, Marco", and Andrea Gritti recaptured Padua in July 1509, successfully defending it against the besieging Imperial troops. Spain and the pope broke off their alliance with France, and Venice also regained Brescia and Verona from France. After seven years of ruinous war, the Serenissima regained her mainland dominions up to the Adda. Although the defeat had turned into a victory, the events of 1509 marked the end of the Venetian expansion.
The Gasparo Contarini book "De Magistratibus et Republica Venetorum" (1544) illustrates the unique system of government in Venice and extols its various institutions. It also shows the astonishment of foreigners at the independence of Venice and its resistance to Italy's loss of freedom – and at it having emerged unscathed from the war against the League of Cambrai. Contarini suggested that the secret of Venice's greatness lay in the co-existence of the three types of government identified by Aristotle: monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. In the opinion of Contarini, the Maggior Consiglio was the democratic part, the Senate and the Council of Ten were the oligarchy, while the doge represented monarchy. The combination of these three principles in the Venetian government came as close as possible to perfection in the mechanism of government. At the same time the patrician Marino Sanudo, a politician who had a remarkable career, and a celebrated diarist, was bemoaning the corruption resulting from the great number of poor or impoverished patricians.
The struggle for supremacy in Italy between France and Spain was resolved in favour of the latter. Caught between the Imperial-Spanish and Turkish superpowers, the Republic adopted a skilful political strategy of quasi-neutrality in Europe, which turned into a defensive stance against the Ottomans. Venice's maritime aid was potentially useful to Spain, but not to the point of allowing it to reinforce its position in the Levant, which would increase its strength in Italy as well, where it was practically the only Italian state not subject to Spain. In the Turkish war of 1537-40, Venice was allied with the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V. Andrea Doria, commander of the allied fleets, was defeated at Preveza in 1538, and two years later Venice signed a treaty of peace by which the Turks took the Aegean duchy of Naxos from the Sanudo family. After Preveza the supremacy of the sea passed to the Ottomans.
Difficulties in the rule of the sea brought further changes. Until 1545 the oarsmen in the galleys were free sailors enrolled on a wage. They were originally Venetians, but later Dalmatians, Cretans and Greeks joined in large numbers. Because of the difficulty in hiring sufficient crews, Venice had recourse to conscription, chaining the oarsmen to the benches as other navies had already done. Cristoforo da Canal was the first Venetian to command such a galley. By 1563, the population of Venice had dropped to about 168,000 people.
With the outbreak of another war with the Ottomans in 1570, Venice, Spain and the Pope formed the Holy League, which was able to assemble a grand fleet of 208 galleys, 110 of which were Venetian, under the command of John of Austria, half-brother of Philip II of Spain. The Venetians were commanded by Sebastiano Venier. The Turkish fleet, equal in number to the allied one, had sailed up the Adriatic as far as Lesina, and then returned to Lepanto in the Gulf of Patras for provisions. The Christian fleet had assembled at Messina and encountered the Turkish fleet off Lepanto on 7 October 1571. The Christians were victorious, and divided up 117 galleys captured from the Turks. But the Venetians gained no strategic advantage. Philip II was concerned with the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean and Africa, and was unwilling for the fleet to become involved in the Levant. Famagusta, the last stronghold on the island of Cyprus, had been attacked by the Turks in 1570 and had surrendered before Lepanto. The Turkish commander, Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha, had had the Venetian "provveditore" Marcantonio Bragadin flayed alive. The loss of Cyprus was ratified in the peace of 1573. In 1575, the population of Venice was about 175,000 people, but dropped to 124,000 people by 1581.
17th century.
In 1605 a conflict between Venice and the Holy See began with the arrest of two members of the clergy who were guilty of petty crimes, and with a law restricting the Church's right to enjoy and acquire landed property. Pope Paul V held that these provisions were contrary to canon law and demanded they be repealed. When this was refused, he placed Venice under an interdict. The Republic, under Doge Leonardo Donà, decided to ignore the interdict and excommunication, ordering local clergy to continue carrying out their ministries as before as if nothing had changed. It was supported by the Servite monk Paolo Sarpi, a sharp polemical writer who was nominated to be the Signoria's adviser on theology and canon law in 1606. The interdict was lifted after a year, when France intervened and proposed a formula of compromise. Venice was satisfied with reaffirming the principle that no citizen was superior to the normal processes of law.
A new war occurred in the years 1613–1617. The government of Venice wrote:
The Uzkoks were Christian refugees from Bosnia and Turkish Dalmatia who had been enlisted by the Austrian Habsburg to defend their borders after the peace between Venice and the Ottomans following the Battle of Lepanto. They settled in Segna and many lived as pirates in the Adriatic, causing concern in Venice that they would complicate relations with the Sublime Porte. When Venice acted against these "Uscocchi" in 1613, she found herself at odds on land with their protector, the archduke of Austria. An army was sent against Gradisca, an archduke's possession, with financial support given to the duke of Savoy, who was pinning down the Spanish army in Lombardy. The military operations on the eastern frontier were not decisive, but the terms of peace in 1617 required the Habsburgs to solve the problem of the Uzkoks, whom were moved inland.
In 1617, whether on his own initiative, or supported by his king, the Spanish viceroy of Naples attempted to break Venetian dominance by sending a naval squadron to the Adriatic. His expedition met with mixed success, and he retired from the Adriatic. Rumours of sedition and conspiracy were meanwhile circulating in Venice, and there were disturbances between mercenaries of different nationalities enrolled for the war of Gradisca. The Spanish ambassador, the Marquis of Bedmar, was wise to the plot, if not the author of it. Informed of this by a Huguenot captain, the Ten acted promptly. Three "bravos" were hanged, and the Senate demanded the immediate recall of the Spanish ambassador.
Tension with Spain increased in 1622, when Antonio Foscarini, a senator and ambassador to England, was accused of acting for foreign powers during his time as ambassador and of spying for Spain after his return. He was tried, acquitted of the first charge, found guilty of the second and hanged from a gallows between the columns of the Piazzetta in 1622. A few months later the Ten discovered that he had been the innocent victim of a plot. He was rehabilitated, and the news circulated around all the chancelleries of Europe.
In 1628 Venice was involved in Italian politics for the first time in more than a century. On the death of Ferdinando I Gonzaga, duke of Mantua and Montferrat, the succession devolved upon a French prince, Charles of Gonzaga-Nevers. This changed the balance of power in northern Italy, which had until now been controlled by the Spanish through Milan. In the ensuing war, Venice was allied with France against the Habsburgs and Savoy. The Venetian army was defeated in an attempt to come to the aid of Mantua, which was under siege by German troops, and Mantua itself was savagely sacked. The peace which recognized Charles of Gonzaga-Nevers as duke of Mantua and Monferrato was made practically without Venice's participation. War brought plague in 1630. In 16 months 50,000 people died in Venice, one third of the population. The first stone of the church of Santa Maria della Salute in the city was laid as a thanks offering for the end of the plague.
In 1638, while the Venetian fleet was cruising off Crete, a corsair fleet from Barbary consisting of 16 galleys from Algiers and Tunis entered the Adriatic. When the fleet returned, the corsairs repaired to the Turkish stronghold of Valona. The Venetian commander Marino Cappello attacked the corsairs, bombarded the forts and captured their galleys, freeing 3,600 prisoners. The sultan reacted to the bombardment of his fortress by arresting the Venetian "bailo" (ambassador) in Constantinople, Alvise Contarini. War was momentarily averted and the matter settled by diplomacy; however, six years later the Ottoman attack against Candia, the main Cretan port, left no easy terms to resort to. The Cretan War lasted for some 25 years and was the dominant question of the whole Republic's history in the 17th century.
War also moved to the mainland in the middle of 1645, when the Turks attacked the frontiers of Dalmatia. In the latter the Venetians were able to save their coastal positions because of their command of the sea, but on 22 August, the Cretan stronghold of Khania was forced to capitulate.
The greatest Turkish effort was directed against Sebenico, in today's Croatia, which was besieged in August–September 1647. The siege failed, and in the succeeding year the Venetians recovered several fortresses inland, such as Clissa. In Crete, however, the situation was more serious. Throughout all the war the Venetian strategy was to blockade the Dardanelles in order to surprise the Turkish fleet on its way to supply the troops on Crete. There were some signal successes, including two victories in the Dardanelles in 1655 and 1656, but they failed to alter the strategic situation. The next year there was a three-day-long sea-battle (17–19 July 1657), in which the captain Lazzaro Mocenigo was killed by a falling mast, and turning into a crushing defeat. With the end of the war between France and Spain in 1659, Venice received more aid from the Christian states than the small contingents which she had received in the first years. In 1666 an expedition to retake Khania failed, and in 1669 another attempt to lift the siege of Candia with joint action on land with the French contingent and by sea under Mocenigo also turned out to be a failure. The French returned home, and only 3,600 fit men were left in the fortress of Candia. Captain Francesco Morosini negotiated its surrender on 6 September 1669. The island of Crete was ceded, except for some small Venetian bases, while Venice retained the islands of Tinos and Cerigo, and its conquests in Dalmatia.
In 1684, soon after the Turkish defeat in the siege of Vienna, Venice entered an alliance, the Holy League, with Austria against the Ottomans; Russia was later included. At the beginning of the Morean War (1684–99) Francesco Morosini occupied the island of Levkas and set out to recapture the Greek ports. Between June 1685, when he landed at Corone, and August, when he occupied Patras, Lepanto and Corinth, he secured the Peloponnese for Venice. In September, during the attack on Athens, a Venetian cannon blew up the Parthenon. Venetian possessions were greatly increased in Dalmatia too, although the attempt to regain Negropont in 1688 was a failure. Morosini's successors failed to obtain lasting results in the next years, although large fleets were sent out, and in spite of some brilliant victories — at Mitylene in 1695, Andros in 1697 and the Dardanelles in 1698. The Treaty of Karlowitz (1699) favoured Austria and Russia more than Venice, which failed to regain its bases in the Mediterranean taken by the Turks in the previous two centuries, in spite of its conquests.
New conflict was brewing over the question of the Spanish Succession. Both France and the Habsburg empire, attempted now to gain an active ally in Venice, despatching envoys with authority there in 1700. The Venetian government preferred to remain neutral rather than accept hypothetical advantages offered by interested parties. The Republic remained faithful to this policy of neutrality to the end, caught in unavoidable decline but living out its life in a luxury famous throughout Europe.
Decline.
In December 1714 the Turks declared war on the Republic, at a time when Venice's major overseas possession, the "Kingdom of the Morea" (Peloponnese), was "without any of those supplies which are so desirable even in countries where aid is near at hand which are not liable to attack from the sea".
The Turks took the islands of Tinos and Aegina, crossed the isthmus and took Corinth. Daniele Dolfin, commander of the Venetian fleet, thought it better to save the fleet than risk it for the Morea. When he eventually arrived on the scene, Nauplia, Modon, Corone and Malvasia had fallen. Lefkas in the Ionian islands, and the bases of Spinalonga and Suda on Crete which still remained in Venetian hands, were abandoned. The Turks finally landed on Corfù, but its defenders managed to throw them back. In the meantime, the Turks had suffered a grave defeat by the Austrians at Petrovaradin on 3 August 1716. New Venetian naval efforts in the Aegean and the Dardanelles in 1717 and 1718, however, met with little success. With the Treaty of Passarowitz (21 July 1718), Austria made large territorial gains, but Venice lost the Morea, for which her small gains in Albania and Venetian Dalmatia ("Linea Mocenigo") were little compensation. This was the last war of the Republic with Turkey.
The decline of Venice in the 18th century was also due not only to Genoa, Venice's old rival, but also to Livorno, a new port on the Tyrrhenian Sea created by the grand dukes of Tuscany and chosen as staging-post for British trade in the Mediterranean. Still more injurious were the Papal town of Ancona and Habsburg Trieste, a free port since 1719, in the Adriatic Sea, which no longer constituted a "Venetian Gulf". An eminent Venetian politician of the time declared, "Apart from the residue which is left to us, Ancona robs us of the trade from both the Levant and the West, from Albania and the other Turkish provinces. Trieste takes nearly all the rest of the trade which comes from Germany."
Even the cities of the eastern mainland up to Verona got their supplies from Genoa and Leghorn. The presence of pirates from the coast of Maghreb worsened the situation.
"All is in disorder, everything is out of control" exclaimed Carlo Contarini in the Maggior Consiglio on 5 December 1779. He was talking of a "commotion" in demand of a plan of reform also supported by Giorgio Pisani. The idea was to remove the monopoly of power enjoyed by the small number of rich patricians to the advantage of the very large number of poor ones. This gave rise to fears of "overturning the system" and the doge, Paolo Renier, opposed the plan. "Prudence" suggested that the agitations in favour of reform were a conspiracy. The Inquisitors took the arbitrary step of confining Pisani in the castle of San Felice in Verona, and Contarini in the fortress of Cattaro.
On 29 May 1784 Andrea Tron, known as "el paron" ("the patron") because of his political influence, said that trade:
The last Venetian naval venture occurred in 1784–86. The bey of Tunis' pirates renewed their acts of piracy following claims of compensation for losses suffered by Tunisian subjects in Malta, due to no fault of the Venetians. When diplomatic efforts to reach an agreement failed, the government was forced to take military action. A fleet under Angelo Emo blockaded Tunis and bombarded Sousse (November 1784 and May 1785), Sfax (August 1785) and La Coletta (September) and Biserta in 1786. These brilliant military successes brought no comparable political results in their train, and the Senate recalled Emo and his fleet to Corfù. After Emo's death, peace was made with Tunis by increasing the bey's dues. By the year 1792, the once great Venetian merchant fleet had declined to a mere 309 merchantmen.
In January 1789 Lodovico Manin, from a recently ennobled mainland family, was elected doge. The expenses of the election had grown throughout the 18th century, and now reached their highest ever. The patrician Pietro Gradenigo remarked, "I have made a Friulian doge; the Republic is dead."
C. P. Snow suggests that in the last half century of the republic, the Venetians knew "that the current of history had begun to flow against them," and that to keep going would require "breaking the pattern into which they had crystallised." Yet they were "fond of the pattern" and "never found the will to break it."
The fall of the Republic.
By 1796, the Republic of Venice could no longer defend itself. Though the Republic still possessed a fleet of 13 ships of the line, only a handful were ready for sea, and the army consisted of only a few brigades of mainly Dalmatian mercenaries. In spring 1796 Piedmont fell and the Austrians were beaten from Montenotte to Lodi. The army under Napoleon crossed the frontiers of neutral Venice in pursuit of the enemy. By the end of the year the French troops were occupying the Venetian state up to the Adige; Vicenza, Cadore and Friuli were held by the Austrians. With the campaigns of the next year, Napoleon aimed for Austrian possessions across the Alps. In the preliminaries to the Peace of Leoben, the terms of which remained secret, the Austrians were to take the Venetian possessions as the price of peace (18 April 1797).
Nevertheless, the peace envisaged the continued survival of the Venetian state, although confined to the city and the lagoon, perhaps with compensation at the expense of the Papal States. In the meanwhile Brescia and Bergamo revolted against Venice, and anti-French movements were rising elsewhere. Napoleon threatened Venice with war on 9 April. On 25 April he announced to the Venetian delegates at Graz, "I want no more Inquisition, no more Senate; I shall be an Attila to the state of Venice."
Domenico Pizzamano fired on a French ship trying to force an entry from the Lido forts. On 1 May, Napoleon declared war. The French were at the edge of the lagoon. Even the cities of the Veneto had been "revolutionized" by the French, who had established provisional municipalities. On 12 May, the Maggior Consiglio approved a motion to hand over power "to the system of the proposed provisional representative government", although there was not a quorum of votes: 512 voted for, ten against, and five abstained. On 16 May the provisional municipal government met in the Hall of the Maggior Consiglio. The preliminaries of the peace of Leoben were made even harsher in the treaty of Campoformio, and Venice and all her possessions became Austrian. The accord was signed at Passariano, in the last doge's villa, on 18 October 1797.


House of Maydell

Maydell is the name of a Baltic-German noble family and part of the Uradel. The family lived in Estonia for several centuries and was one of its notable families. In documents and texts from earlier centuries, the family name is occasionally written "Maydel" or "Maidel".