366 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July capitulated. Spinalonga then surrendered without a siege,and the last fragment of Venetian rule in Crete was gone. The sultan was as much pleased at the taking of these two places as at the reconquest of Morea. Cerigo and Cerigotto next hoisted the white flag, and Venice was so much alarmed for the safety of Corfu, that she blew up the recent fortifications of Santa Maura and temporarily abandoned that island. The Turks occupied Butrinto and threatened Corfu ; but the bravery of Schulenburg defended the latter and recovered the former and Santa Maura in 1716, and took Prevesa and Vonitsa in 1717. An alliance with the emperor, alarmed at the effect of the Turkish successes upon his Hungarian subjects, saved Venice from further losses ; Great Britain offered her mediation, and the peace of Passarovitz in 1718 gave her back Cerigo and Cerigotto, and allowed her to keep Butrinto, Santa Maura, Prevesa, and Vonitsa. The net result of the two wars, in which she had kept and lost the Morea, was that, as against the loss of Tenos and the three Cretan forts, which she held in 1684, she had to set off the possession of Santa Maura and the two places on the Ambrakian gulf in 1718, She had ' con- solidated ' her Levantine dominion : Cerigo was now her furthest possession. But in her case, as in that of Turkey in our own time,
- consolidation ' meant decline. From that date she ceased to
count as a factor in Greek affairs, except in the Ionian Islands and their continental dependencies. The collapse of her power in the Morea in a hundred and one days proved that Venice was unable to defend the Greeks, whom she had never won over to her rule. But, although she had not gained their love, her administration had not been without some lasting benefits to them. The example of Venice, despite the venality of her judges, forced the Turks to treat their Greek subjects better, and agriculture and wine-growing were improved. The Venetian occupation of the Morea had the same effect upon the Greeks as the twenty-one years' Austrian occupation of Serbia from 1718 to 1739 upon the Serbs : it spread a higher degree of material civilization. But even the most benevolent and most efficient government by foreigners — and a modern Greek historian has attributed both good intentions and efficiency to the Venetians — is bound to fail when national consciousness begins to awaken. After the Venetians went, the Greeks prepared to fight, not to substitute the rule of one foreign power for that of another but for independence, not for Venice, or Turkey, or Russia, but for Greece. The younger generation, which had grown up under Venetian auspices, was manlier and better than those which had only known Turkish rule. If Venice con- tributed thereby to preparing the way for the war of independence, it was her greatest service to the Greeks. William Miller.
