The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (94 page)

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From the Phanar district of Constantinople, seat of the Greek Orthodox patriarchate.
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In the early nineteenth century the Orthodox Church still used the Julian calendar (Old Style), which was twelve days behind the Gregorian (New Style). This latter had been instituted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582–though it was not generally adopted by the Protestant countries for a considerable time. (Britain went over to the New Style in September1752.) Since 25 March is so important a date in Greece, it would be pedantic–as well as confusing–to call it 6 April; in this chapter, therefore, Old Style dates are used throughout.
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²²¹
Quoted by David Brewer, from whose superb history,
The Flame of Freedom
, I have drawn liberally in this chapter.
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²²²
See Chapter II.
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²²³
It was bought by King Louis XVIII and is now in the Louvre.
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Albanians from the wild Souli district southwest of Iannina, who lived on extortion and plunder. Byron had high hopes of them but they proved insufferable. ‘I will have nothing more to do with the Souliotes,’ he wrote, ‘they may go to the Turks or–the devil…they may cut me into more pieces than they have dissensions among them, sooner than change my resolution.’
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²²⁵
Shortly afterwards Dr van Millingen was taken prisoner by the Turks, but was later released after urgent representations by Sir Stratford Canning, then British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. In 1827 he settled permanently in Constantinople, where he served as court physician to five successive Sultans.
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²²⁶
Modone and Corone must henceforth be known by their Greek names.
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²²⁷
He was, incidentally, the husband of Julia Ward Howe, author of
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
. (‘Mine eyes have seen the glory…’)
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The two judgements should almost certainly have been reversed.
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²²⁹
The territory north of the Arta–Volos line was to remain part of the Ottoman Empire until May 1913, after the First Balkan War.
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This was the Treaty of Unkiar–Skelessi, little known because short-lived. In July 1841 the powers guaranteed Ottoman independence and declared the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus closed to all nations in time of peace.
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²³¹
The office of dey–the word actually comes from the Turkish, meaning maternal uncle–had been first instituted in 1671. In the early years the dey was elected by the corsair captains, taking over the duties of the pasha appointed by the Ottoman Sultan. It was he who nominated the beys as provincial chiefs.
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²³²
This free port on the coast of Morocco had first become independent in Byzantine days, but because of its importance as a trading post in ivory, gold and slaves, its ownership had always been bitterly contested. In 1415 Portugal gained control, but in 1580 it passed to Spain, to which it was legally assigned by the Treaty of Lisbon in 1688. With nearby Melilla, it has remained Spanish ever since. Never has it formed part of Moroccan territory.
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²³³
See Chapter XXXI.
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Ferdinand I had died in 1825, and was succeeded by his son Francis I, who reigned for only five years. His son Ferdinand II was to reign from 1830 to 1859.
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It was this incident that gave Ferdinand the nickname King Bomba.
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A very similar design is used in the arms of the Isle of Man. Here, however, the legs are armoured and spurred.
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They were commemorated in Venice by the renaming of the former Campo S. Giovanni in Bragora, now known as Campo Bandiera e Moro in their honour.
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Austria drew substantial revenue from Lombardy by heavy taxes on cigars. The Austrian army’s reply to this was to issue vast quantities of free cigars to both officers and men, with orders to puff the smoke in the Italians’ faces.
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Radetzky had taken part in the very first Austrian campaigns against Napoleon more than half a century before, and had been Chief of Staff at the battle of Leipzig in 1813. He had fought in seventeen campaigns, had been wounded seven times and had had nine horses shot under him.
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²⁴⁰
‘Release Manin and Tommaseo!’
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²⁴¹
‘God doesn’t grant amnesties,’ growled Metternich, ‘God pardons.’
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Antonelli was largely responsible for enabling the Papacy to cling to its temporal power for as long as it did. He was a brilliant politician with immense charm and–as his countless bastards attested–an extremely
mouvementé
sex life. ‘When he stops in a salon near a pretty woman, when he stands close to speak to her, stroking her shoulders and looking deeply into her corsage, you recognise the man of the woods and you tremble as you think of post-chaises overturned at the roadside.’ (Edmond About,
La question romaine
, quoted by Holt,
Risorgimento
, p. 139.)
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²⁴³
At this time it comprised not only the traditional territory of the ancient Dukes of Savoy, with its capital at Turin; there was also the island of Sardinia, the County of Nice and, since 1815, the city of Genoa.
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Notorious even in England. On 4 September 1850, with two friends, Haynau visited Barclay’s Brewery in London. He was soon recognised by his grotesquely long moustaches and attacked by the employees, who threw buckets of dirt all over him. He fled down Bankside and, pursued now by a large mob, took refuge at the George Inn, where he was finally rescued by the police.
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The area of Rome lying to the west of the Tiber.
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²⁴⁶
‘Wherever we are, there shall be Rome.’
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San Marino, with its area of 23.5 square miles, is still an independent republic. It is completely surrounded by Italy, with the Romagna on the west and the Marche on the east. It remains the last relic of the self-governing city-states of the middle ages and Renaissance.
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Prince Louis Napoleon had taken advantage of the fall of King Louis-Philippe in 1848, and in December of that year had been elected President of the Second Republic of France. In 1852 he had been confirmed as the Emperor Napoleon III.
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‘Alpine hunters’.
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There was no mention of Romagna, Parma or Piacenza, for which neither emperor was directly responsible.
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He had never quite forgiven Cavour for his hard words after Villafranca, nor for having successfully opposed–after the death of Queen Maria Adelaide in 1855 at the age of only thirty-three–his marriage to his long-time mistress.
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²⁵²
He is described in the
Enciclopedia Italiana
as ‘serious, taciturn, melancholic, timid, awkward, eternally doubtful of himself and everyone else’.
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²⁵³
It is something of a miracle that the church of S. Angelo was not destroyed. It is the grandest monument in all Campania, its interior walls covered in eleventh-century frescos in a quite astonishing state of preservation.
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‘Italy is made; now we have to make the Italians.’
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The Pope had summoned it in 1868 to discuss a wide range of subjects, both theological and administrative.
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Mazzini addressed the 700 bishops who attended: ‘Science goes forward, regardless of your doctrines, caring nothing for your denunciations and your councils, tearing up, with every new discovery, another page of the book that you call infallible.’
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²⁵⁷
See Chapter XXIV.
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²⁵⁸
The constitution of 1812–known as the Constitution of Cadiz–considerably restricted the powers of the monarchy, instituted a single-chamber parliament (with no special representation for the nobility or the Church) and introduced a modern system of administration based on provinces and municipalities.
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After the death of Maria Francisca in 1834 he had married his Portuguese sister-in-law, the Princess of Beira.
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Soon after–or perhaps before–Ferdinand’s death she had taken a lover: a corporal in the Guards named Fernando Muñoz. The two were secretly married on 27 December 1833, after which she named him Groom of the Bedchamber. Although they were to have four children, the marriage was not publicly admitted until 1845, when Muñoz was created Duke of Riánsares.
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²⁶¹
According to the French Prime Minister François Guizot, who knew her well, ‘there were not six spoons left.’
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‘The Queen has been nubile for two hours.’
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²⁶³
Asís
is Assisi in Spanish.
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²⁶⁴
During his youth in London he had been engaged to Miss Adeline de Horsey, who subsequently became the second wife of the Earl of Cardigan, leader of the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.
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²⁶⁵
Who first accepted it, then refused. Had he turned it down at once, the Franco-Prussian War–which was fought entirely because Napoleon III was not prepared to contemplate a dynastic alliance between Prussia and Spain–would never have taken place. See Chapter XXVIII.
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²⁶⁶
A less happy consequence was that Indian army officers were obliged to put away their native wives and bring their memsahibs out from Britain–often with disastrous results to British-Indian relations.
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²⁶⁷
A rather more surprising reaction was that of the Crown Prince of Prussia, later Kaiser Wilhelm II: ‘How jolly!’
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See Chapter XXIV.
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Leucas (Lefkas) is the only one of the Ionian Islands that was for any length of time under Turkish rule.
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²⁷⁰
For this section and those immediately following, I must record my thanks to Mr Alan Palmer, on whose compulsively readable history,
The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire
, I have shamelessly drawn.
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²⁷¹
His opinion may perhaps have been affected by the Sultan’s decision to confer upon Lady Salisbury–who had accompanied him–the Order of Chastity (Third Class).
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²⁷²
As it happened, Prince Louis of Battenberg was serving on the appropriately named HMS
Sultan
, while his brother Prince Alexander was a staff captain in the army of the Grand Duke. Alexander was given a warm welcome aboard the
Sultan
by its commanding officer, who chanced to be none other than Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria and husband of the Tsar’s only surviving daughter.
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²⁷³
It will be remembered that the Orthodox Patriarch Grigorios had suffered a similar fate in Constantinople at much the same time (See Chapter XXV), as had hundreds, if not thousands, of Greeks, secular and priestly, throughout the Ottoman Empire.
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²⁷⁴
By which individual entrepreneurs purchased from the government the right to levy taxes, and then bled the local populations.
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²⁷⁵
Europe had also been profoundly shocked by the recent appalling massacres of the Sultan’s Armenian subjects. These had begun in 1894 and are believed to have accounted for at least 30,000 by the end of the following year.
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