Free The Venetians: A New History: from Marco Polo to Casanova by Paul Strathern Page A

against any Venetian landlords they could find, as well as their families. The authorities became alarmed, and even Leonardo Gradenigo began to have misgivings about his friend. He set out into the countryside, where he persuaded Milletos to put up in a monastery. Leonardo and his men then raided the monastery and took Milletos prisoner, whereupon he was delivered to the governor’s palace in Candia. The actions of Milletos, intended to make the Greeks turn on the Venetians, had in fact angered Greeks and Venetians alike, anda vengeful crowd gathered in the square outside the palace, baying for his blood. They watched as Milletos was led onto the roof and then pushed off into the square below, where his broken body was set upon by the angry mob.
    News now reached Candia that the disembarkation of the Venetian mercenary invasion fleet was imminent. In the spring of 1364 governor Gradenigo despatched his relative Leonardo on a mission to Genoa, in a desperate attempt to win over Venice’s old enemy. Around 6 May, dal Verme’s army landed at the small port of Fraschia, seven miles west of Candia, and began their march on the capital. Upon hearing this news, the Cretan brigand army melted away into the countryside, allowing dal Verme to occupy Candia virtually unopposed. Governor Marco Gradenigo and his two councillors were captured and immediately beheaded, whereupon the citizens of Chania, and then Rethimno, quickly surrendered without opposition, their rebel Venetian landlords fleeing for the mountains.
    It was at this point that the rebel delegation to Genoa, whose mission had been unsuccessful, sailed back into Cretan waters. Leonardo Gradenigo was warned by Greek fishermen of what had happened in his absence, and the galleys of the flotilla immediately changed course. Leonardo sailed for south-eastern Crete, attempting to take refuge on the remote island of Gaidouronisi, but was soon tracked down and hauled back to Candia to be executed. Others managed to put ashore in western Crete and make their escape. Greek peasants soon directed them to the location where the rebels were hiding out on the estate of a Greek landlord called Ioannes Calergi. Although dal Verme and his army held the cities, subduing the countryside and the mountains proved another matter altogether. Calergi and the rebels, who now included some fifty rebel Venetian landlords, began conducting a guerrilla campaign to drive the invading Venetians from the island, and soon the entire west of the island was in rebel hands. In response, Venice mounted a coordinated military operation to rid the island of rebels.
    In the end, this operation would last for four long years, with one military delegation after another being despatched from Venice to subdue the island. The last of these was issued with explicit orders to track down and take prisoner ‘all the Calergi and Tito Venier and a great many other Greek andLatin rebels and traitors and bring the entire island to peace and submission to the Doge’s Venetian domination’. Finally, in 1368, with all other rebel bands captured or killed, the by-now-legendary Ioannes Calergi and his Venetian cohort Tito Venier, along with their last faithful supporters, were hunted down and trapped in a mountain cave, where they fought to the last man.
    Back in Venice, the visiting Petrarch in his palazzo on the Riva degli Schiavoni had witnessed the arrival of the first news of dal Verme’s invasion of Crete:
    At around the sixth hour on the fourth of June 1364, I happened to be standing at my window looking out over the lagoon … when of a sudden I saw one of those long ships they call a galley. This was garlanded with green bows and rowing fast towards the shore … As it sped closer, its sails billowing in the wind, I saw the joyful faces of the sailors, and a band of smiling youths crowned with green leaves waving banners above their heads … As the ship came in, we saw the enemy flags trailing astern in the water …