Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/354

346 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July of the medieval Morea, and of Mistra, the former capital of the Byzantine province, justified his secretary ^ in saying that by August 1687 Venice was ' possessor of all the Morea, except Monemvasia '. His successes had been partly due to the fact that the best Turkish troops were engaged in the war in Hungary, and his losses from disease had been fearful. Such, however, was the joy of his government, that a bronze bust, with the proud title of * Peloponnesiacus ', was erected to him in his lifetime in the Doges' Palace, where, like the monument to him at Corfu, it still remains to remind the visitor of the Republic's last attempt to establish herself in the Morea. But the conquest of the Morea no longer satisfied the usually cautious Venetians. Leaving Monemvasia behind him, Morosini held a council of war at Corinth, in which it was decided that, as it was too late in the season to attack the old Venetian island of Negroponte, Athens should be the next objective, as ap Athenian deputation suggested. Morosini himself was opposed to this plan. He pointed out the drawbacks of even a successful attack upon Athens ; it would be necessary, he argued, to provi- sion his army entirely from the sea, as the Turkish commander at Thebes could intercept his communications by land ; it would be impossible from Athens to protect the entrance to the Morea, as long as the Turks could occupy Megara ; while, if it were necessary to abandon Athens, not only would the Greek inhabi- tants suffer at the hands of the Turks, but the Venetian exchequer would lose the annual contribution which the Athenian notables had promised to pay. His proposal was to keep a considerable force at Corinth, where food was plentiful, and to send the rest of his army into winter quarters at Tripolitza in the centre of the Morea, where there was plenty of forage and whence the Venetian domination over the peninsula — ^the main object of the expedition — could be best established upon solid foundations. Events proved Morosini's forecast to have been accurate. The council, however, decided upon a compromise : the army was to go into three separate winter quarters — at Corinth, Tripolitza, and Kauplia — but first an attempt was to be made upon Athens, unless that city would pay a ransom of 50,000 to 60,000 reals.* No time was lost in carrying out this decision. Most of the fleet under Venier was sent to the channel which separates Negroponte from the mainland, with the object of deluding the Turks into the belief that that island was the aim of Morosini's forces. Meanwhile Morosini, with 9,880 men (including one or two Scottish volunteers) and 870 horses, on 21 September 1687, cast anchor in the Piraeus, Porto Leone, as it was then called from the «tatue of a lion which stood at its mouth. Thither a deputation of ^ Locatelli, i. 348. * Morosini's dispatches apud Laborde, ii 121-31.