DISCOVER. HISTORY.
The Stradioti of Napoli di Romania
The Stradioti
The Stradioti mercenary troops were employed in Europe from the 15th to the 17th century. Their main core constituted of mercenary light cavalry recruited by the Venetian state in its possessions in the Peloponnese. Only much later did the Venetians include cavalry units from the western Balkans.
The name Stradioti is an obvious linguistic loan from the Greek (stratiotis => soldier) to the Venetian language.
These units were recruited to a large extent (80%) among Arvanite settlers who had arrived in the Peloponnese through the great migration movement that occurred mainly in the early 15th century and who had been settled by the Byzantines in the Despotate of the Morea, with the main condition being the provision of warriors to the central government, while the remaining members of the family were engaged in pastoralism and the cultivation of the granted land.
The Arvanite warriors were added to the units of native soldiers maintained by the lords of the Despotate. Sometimes these units were composed entirely of settlers and sometimes the units were mixed bodies of native and settler cavalry.
In the mid-15th century and mainly after the collapse of the Despotate, these units sought refuge in the Venetian possessions.
The Venetians called the Hellenized Arvanites who came from the areas of the Despotate in their documents “albanesi greci”, that is, Greek Albanians, placing them next to the “greci”, their Greek mercenaries, who were either locals or settlers.
These warriors were accepted by the Venetians with the same status under which they were employed by the Byzantines and which had proven to be a very effective practice (usanza greca). The state granted them land to settle down with their families, land which they cultivated when they were not fighting and which their families tended when they themselves were on a campaign to repel an external enemy – whether they were Ottomans or the Greeks of the Despotate – or they performed patrol duty in the countryside within the venetian domain to limit the marauding activities of irregulars.
During the second half of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century, the Venetians employed the stradioti in their conflicts with the Ottomans in the East. Towards the end of the 15th century and in the first decades of the 16th century, thousands of stradioti were transferred to the Venetian-held Ionian Islands, to Italy and to the Venetian-Ottoman borders of Friuli and Dalmatia.
H.F.E. Philippoteaux (1850)
They have sword, lance with pennant, and mace. Very few wear cuirasses, generally they wear cotton cloaks, sewn in a particular fashion. Their horses are large, accustomed to hardships, run like birds, always hold their heads high and surpass all others in maneuver of battle. Countless of these stradioti are found in Napoli di Romania and other areas of Greece which are under the Signoria and they consider their fortified towns as their true armor and lance.
-Marino Sanuto, Commentarii della guerra di Ferrara (Βενετία, 1829)
Argos and Nauplia in the late 14th century
The former Latin fiefdoms of Argos and Nauplia passed into Venetian hands in 1388, when the heiress of the House of Enghien, Marie d’Enghien, was forced to sell her sovereign rights after the untimely death of her husband Pietro Cornaro, scion of one of the richest and most politically connected families of the Venetian Republic.
Venice considered the region to be of dual strategic importance, on the one hand as part of its policy of creating a chain of naval bases to the East in order to protect the republic’s mercantile activities, and on the other hand as a starting point for conquering the rest of the Peloponnese. However, before the Venetians arrived, Argos was captured by the Despot of Mystras, Theodore I Palaiologos, and Nauplia by his father-in-law and ally, Nerio I Acciaioli, Duke of Athens and ruler of Corinth. In 1389, Nauplia was recaptured by the Venetians, but Theodore took his time and surrendered Argos in 1394.
In contrast to the coastal Nauplia (named by the Venetians Napoli di Romania), which developed into a strong, fortified port, Argos, as a predominantly agricultural and pastoralist region and with Corinth in the hands of the enemies of the La Serenissima, remained exposed to enemy raids. Ottoman warlord Ghazi Evrenos Bey, who in 1395 had plundered Argos on behalf of the Despot of Mystras and of Carlo I Tocco, raided Argos again in 1397. Having passed from the reconnaissance stage to a deeper knowledge of the Peloponnesian political situation and geography, Evrenos, with a military force of 600-800 men plundered and burned down the Argive plain, set fire to the castle of Larissa and, upon leaving, took with him several thousand inhabitants as captives (sources speak of 14,000 and even 30,000 souls, a number that should be treated with caution) who were led to forced settlement in the possessions of the Ottoman Empire in Asia Minor.
This massive forced movement of the rural and urban population of Argos had dramatic consequences for the region. The Venetians immediately mobilized to address the demographic gap left by the Evrenos raid. However, the measures to attract human resources did not have the desired effect at first.
The settlement of Venetian Nauplia
The inability of the Palaiologoi to effectively confront the Ottomans and the petty disputes between the Arvanite clans serving in the Byzantine army led to the creation of a wave of affiliation to the Venetian possessions of Arvanite cavalrymen.
Among the first to seek better fortune and employment in the possessions of the La Serenissima was a section of the numerous clan of the Boua. In 1423, their leader, Bouas Koukis, who had fallen out with the then Despot of Mystras, Theodore II Palaiologos, because his clan had been undermined by another numerous clan and enemy of the Bouas, the Bochalis, offered to come from Arcadia to serve the Venetians of Methoni (Modon) and Koroni along with all his kin, which consisted of four “katounas”.
Initially, this proposal was rejected by the Venetians, who did not look favorably on the Arvanite cavalry soldiers of the Despotate, whom the Palaiologoi used to harass the Venetians on the common borders.
Two years later, however, they accepted, with the aim of securing their castles from the claims of the Despotate but mainly from the raids of the Ottomans. The men of Boua, along with their families, were settled by the Venetians between Argos and Nauplia at the foot of Mt. Prophetes Elias.
Subsequently, and as the civil conflict between the Palaiologos brothers for the power of the Despotate intensified against the backdrop of the Ottoman threat, more and more Arvanites and stradiotis abandoned the Despotate and joined the Venetian forces for the defense of the Morea.
A permanent request made by the Arvanites in the negotiations with the Venetian authorities was the granting of a land of settlement for their families. The titles granted to the stradioti were not titles of ownership but of usufruct with the possibility of hereditary transfer of this right in rem to their descendants, as long as the number of stradioti that each family was obliged to provide to Venice remained constant. The property that could be amassed from land grants, rewards for good services, was significant.
However, initially the Venetians intended to employ as stradioti only a small part of the settlers they accepted into their possessions. They did not proceed with active recruitment and were primarily concerned with the internal organization of their mercenary groups for the purpose of maintaining order.
Groups of Arvanites who had not been accepted into the Venetian possession carried out murders and robberies against both the rural inhabitants and travelers. In 1450, crime in the outskirts of Nafplio had increased significantly. Thus, the first main mission of the stradioti of Napoli di Romania – indigenous mercenaries and conscripted Albanian Greeks- was against the irregulars.
After the final occupation of the Despotate of the Morea by the Ottomans in 1461, the danger to the Venetian possessions became eminent. The Venetians did not want a war with the Ottomans due to their intense mercantile relations with the East, but they were not able to avoid it. When the Ottomans occupied Argos in April 1463, the Venetians declared war on the Ottoman Empire and proceeded with massive recruitment of cavalrymen from the former regions of the Despotate. The local forces regrouped and, with the help of the Venetians, clashed on various fronts with the Ottomans.
The first Venetian-Turkish war lasted from 1463-1479.
Stradioti in the Venetian Naval Campaign
The Stradioti from Nauplia and Argos played a leading role in the successful Venetian naval campaign of 1470-1474, which was aimed at the coast of Asia Minor and the Aegean islands in order to distract the Ottoman navy but also to reverse the flight response of Venetian subjects, that followed the fall of Negroponte to the Ottomans and the massacre of Venetian merchants.
The Venetian military staff decided to equip each ship with a number of stradioti and their horses, who were transferred ashore to carry out the landing operations. The Stradioti were the only forces who could deliver this type of irregular warfare.
The horsemen who boarded the Venetian ships for the landing operations came from the possessions of Napoli di Romania and Argos. They were considered the bravest among the stradioti. According to the sources, at least 470 stradioti from the region were deployed on the ships of the Venetian fleet along with their horses.
Typically, the raids on the coast would begin before dawn. The galleys were maneuvered into shallow waters and the companies of stradioti disembarked on their horses and struck by surprise, looting and taking whatever they could grab, goods, sometimes even people of any sex and age and animals. Until the Ottoman cavalry could be notified and gathered, the stradioti had long returned and boarded the ships.
The Stradioti were promised the reward of one ducat for each Turk killed and as proof they had to bring his head to their commander, a practice they adopted on a permanent basis from then on.
Among others, Antalya, Smyrne, Mikra, Makri and Myra in Lycia were hit.
When Venice’s attention turned to Cyprus, the first Stradioti were gradually transferred to the island from the garrisons of the Peloponnesian possessions of Napoli di Romania, Methoni and Koroni.
Conrad Grünenberg (1487)
Transfer to the Italian fronts
The War ended in the loss of several Venetian holdings. However, Venice managed to recoup its losses by the acquisition of the Crusader Kingdom of Cyprus.
The Peace Treaty of 1479 provided for the disarmament of the Stradioti and the surrender of several territories they held to the Ottomans. These agreements sparked an extensive mutiny in the Morea by leaders of large Stradioti units from Mani, namely of Krokodilos Kladas, who was joined by the leaders Theodore Bouas and Mexa Bozikis from Napoli di Romania. Bouas, before joining Kladas in the Mani, attacked an Ottoman group of janissaries from Argos, killing them all.
The rebellion strained Venice’s fragile relations with the Ottomans. In order to demonstrate that it did not approve of the actions of its former mercenaries, Venice put a price on the rebels heads and captured the family of Kladas (they searched in vain for the family of Bouas in the katuns around Napoli di Romania) and tried to exclude the rest of the mercenary army from helping and joining the rebellion. The rebels escaped the Ottoman military campaigns in the Mani, Bouas escaping to Monemvasia, where he was captured by the Venetians, and Kladas to Italy.
Unable to control its former mercenaries who were constantly creating conflicts with the administrative representatives of the Sublime Porte, but at the same time wanting to exploit the surplus of cheap and flexible cavalry on other fronts, Venice adopted the solution of mass transfer of thousands of Stradioti from its Morea possessions to Italy for the purpose of fighting the Ottomans in Friuli and later the French in central Italy, as well as the transfer of several hundreds to its new possession, Cyprus, as well as to the Dalmatian coast.
After negotiations and in exchange for amnesty as well as privileges for their families, thousands of the stradioti agreed to be expatriated. Thus Venice emptied its possessions in the Morea of most of its fighting material. This “transplantation”, as it is described in Venetian documents of the time, continued throughout the 15th and into the first two decades of the 16th century.
In May 1482, on Easter Day, 300 of the Stradioti of Napoli di Romania who had agreed to the expatriation left the port in a ceremonial manner for Lepanto (Naupactus), where they boarded the ships of the Venetian fleet that would take them to Italy. Very few of them were destined to return.
Except for isolated cases, the families of the Stradioti who were transferred to Italy did not follow. In the case of Cyprus and Dalmatia, however, the Venetians systematically transferred the civilian population as well.
The end of Venetian Napoli di Romania
In 1499-1503, Napoli di Romania faced a second Ottoman-Venetian war with much fewer forces. Negotiations for the new peace treaty lasted three years, during which Ottoman pressure to seize the arable lands of the hinterland of Napoli di Romania competed with the desperate efforts of the Nauplian stradioti to maintain the lands that had been granted to them.
In 1506, the settlement of the borders between the Sublime Porte and Venice sealed the fate of Napoli di Romania, which no longer had a hinterland to cultivate, maintain and move around. The defense of Napoli di Romania came to rely entirely on the few hundred stradioti provisionati, who were the only forces the Ottomans feared.
The Arvanite soldiers were confined to low-quality arable land, mainly vineyards and very little grain. Thus, many families of the stradioti, who no longer had any means of livelihood, moved to the neighboring Turkish-occupied areas or to the surrounding islands and the area gradually became depopulated.
In 1529, the bailiff of Napoli di Romania, Victor Diedo, appealed for the transfer back to Nauplia of the stradioti who were serving on other fronts, in Italy and Dalmatia. Only a few members of the Bozikis, Platanitis, Manesis, Andromidas, Argites and Palaiologoi managed to return.
The population decline finally dictated the withdrawal of Venice from Napoli di Romania, which was surrendered to the Ottomans in 1540. According to tradition, Admiral Mocenigo called upon the last Stradioti of Napoli di Romania to follow him, declaring that the war was not over and that their freedom was guaranteed by Venetian arms even if they lost their homeland.
In November 1540, the Venetian fleet entered Napoli di Romania for the last time to embark the Stradioti and their families. The memory of the beloved homeland survived for generations of Stradioti, just as the identity of the “Naupliotan” (di Napoli di Romania), beyond any particular origin, Greek or Albanian, became a qualification for joining the Greek Brotherhood of Venice.
Bibliography
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Μπίρη Κ., “Αρβανίτες Οι Δωριείς του Νεώτερου Ελληνισμού,” Εκδοτικός Οίκος ΜΕΛΙΣΣΑ, 1998
Παναγιωτόπουλος Β., “Πληθυσμός και οικισμοί της Πελοποννήσου, 13ος-18ος αιώνας”, Ιστορικό Αρχείο-Εμπορική Τράπεζα της Ελλάδος, Αθήνα 1987
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