DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9840#0079
30 BAD GOVERNMENT OF THE VENETIANS. [cHAP.
preparing to take signal vengeance on them for the
violent death of a Cavaliere, which had just happened :
and, on this account, they sent a deputation to the
Turks at Sudha, whom they hailed as their deliverers
from the cruel tyranny of their Venetian lords7.
Another Venetian writer assigns these practices of
the Greeks with the Turks at Sudha, simply to their
general oppression by the Cavalieri, and to the extreme
despair to which it reduced them8. Their dealings with
the Turks seem to have produced at least one good effect,
in awakening the Venetian senate, not perhaps to a sense
of justice, but, at all events, to one of policy; for the
Proveditor Foscarini was soon afterwards dispatched from
Venice, to enquire into the real condition of the Cretan
people. His extremely interesting Report is still in
existence9, and presents a melancholy picture of sys-
tematic oppression and legalized iniquity, on the part
of both the privileged order of nobles and the local
government. ,
Foscarini seems not only to have been endued with
a high sense of honour, and a love of virtue, but also
to have possessed every requisite intellectual endowment
for the due accomplishment of his important duty; and
his Report also shews him to have been most diligent
in his researches. After detailing to the Venetian senate
the various acts of fraud and oppression, to which the
whole mass of the people were subjected, he says " the
cavalieri had reduced the peasants to a worse condition
than that of slaves, so that they never dared even to
complain of any injustice10."
7 Foscarini, fol. 110.
8 MS. No. 766, of the Raccolta Correr at Venice, fol. 39.
9 It is entitled Relatione dell' 1111™ Sigr Giacomo Foscarini, Proveditor
General, Inquisitor, e Sindico, nel regno di Candia, del 1576. The copy which
I consulted is contained in the Raccolta Correr.
10 Foscarini, fol. 110. "Con questi mezzi essi cavalieri fanno li villani
piu che schiavi, che non ardiscono mai dolersi di cosa ingiusta." The vet
also, writing a little earlier, speaks of the Cretans, Cosmographie de Levant,
fol. 26, as amenans une tresmeschante et du tout desplore'e facon de viure,
qui
preparing to take signal vengeance on them for the
violent death of a Cavaliere, which had just happened :
and, on this account, they sent a deputation to the
Turks at Sudha, whom they hailed as their deliverers
from the cruel tyranny of their Venetian lords7.
Another Venetian writer assigns these practices of
the Greeks with the Turks at Sudha, simply to their
general oppression by the Cavalieri, and to the extreme
despair to which it reduced them8. Their dealings with
the Turks seem to have produced at least one good effect,
in awakening the Venetian senate, not perhaps to a sense
of justice, but, at all events, to one of policy; for the
Proveditor Foscarini was soon afterwards dispatched from
Venice, to enquire into the real condition of the Cretan
people. His extremely interesting Report is still in
existence9, and presents a melancholy picture of sys-
tematic oppression and legalized iniquity, on the part
of both the privileged order of nobles and the local
government. ,
Foscarini seems not only to have been endued with
a high sense of honour, and a love of virtue, but also
to have possessed every requisite intellectual endowment
for the due accomplishment of his important duty; and
his Report also shews him to have been most diligent
in his researches. After detailing to the Venetian senate
the various acts of fraud and oppression, to which the
whole mass of the people were subjected, he says " the
cavalieri had reduced the peasants to a worse condition
than that of slaves, so that they never dared even to
complain of any injustice10."
7 Foscarini, fol. 110.
8 MS. No. 766, of the Raccolta Correr at Venice, fol. 39.
9 It is entitled Relatione dell' 1111™ Sigr Giacomo Foscarini, Proveditor
General, Inquisitor, e Sindico, nel regno di Candia, del 1576. The copy which
I consulted is contained in the Raccolta Correr.
10 Foscarini, fol. 110. "Con questi mezzi essi cavalieri fanno li villani
piu che schiavi, che non ardiscono mai dolersi di cosa ingiusta." The vet
also, writing a little earlier, speaks of the Cretans, Cosmographie de Levant,
fol. 26, as amenans une tresmeschante et du tout desplore'e facon de viure,
qui