The Morean war (Italian: Guerra di Morea), also known as the Sixth Ottoman–Venetian War, was fought between 1684–1699 as part of the wider conflict known as the "Great Turkish War", between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire. Military operations ranged from Dalmatia to the Aegean Sea, but the war's major campaign was the Venetian conquest of the Morea (Peloponnese) peninsula in Southern Greece.
On the Venetian side, the war was fought to avenge the loss of Crete in the Cretan War (1645–1669). It happened while the Ottomans were entangled in their northern struggle against the Habsburgs – beginning with the failed Ottoman attempt to conquer Vienna and ending with the Habsburgs gaining Buda and the whole of Hungary, leaving the Ottoman Empire unable to concentrate its forces against the Venetians. As such, the Morean War was the only Ottoman–Venetian conflict from which Venice emerged victorious, gaining significant territory. Venice's expansionist revival would be short-lived, as its gains would be reversed by the Ottomans in 1718.
Background
Venice had held several islands in the Aegean and the Ionian seas, together with strategically positioned forts along the coast of the Greek mainland since the carving up of the Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade. With the rise of the Ottomans, during the 16th and early 17th centuries, the Venetians lost most of these, including Cyprus and Euboea (Negropont) to the Turks. Between 1645 and 1669, the Venetians and the Ottomans fought a long and costly war over the last major Venetian possession in the Aegean, Crete. During this war, the Venetian commander, Francesco Morosini, made contact with the rebellious Maniots. They agreed to conduct a joint campaign in the Morea. In 1659, Morosini landed in the Morea, and together with the Maniots, he took Kalamata. He was soon after forced to return to Crete, and the Peloponnesian venture failed.
During the 17th century, the Ottomans remained the premier political and military power in Europe, but signs of decline were evident: the Ottoman economy suffered from the influx of gold and silver from the Americas, an increasingly unbalanced budget and repeated devaluations of the currency, while the traditional timariot cavalry system and the Janissaries, who formed the core of the Ottoman armies, declined in quality and were increasingly replaced by irregular forces that were inferior to the regular European armies. The reform efforts of Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623–1640), and the able administration of the Köprülü dynasty of Grand Viziers, whose members governed the Empire from 1656 to 1683, managed to sustain Ottoman power and even enabled it to conquer Crete, but the long and drawn-out war there exhausted Ottoman resources.
As a result of the Polish–Ottoman War (1672–76), the Ottomans secured their last territorial expansion in Europe with the conquest of Podolia, and then tried to expand into Ukrainian territory on the right bank of the Dnieper River, but were held back by the Russians. The Treaty of Bakhchisarai made the river Dnieper the boundary between the Ottoman Empire and Russia.
In 1683, a new war broke out between Austria and the Ottomans, with a large Ottoman army advancing towards Vienna. The Ottoman siege was broken in the Battle of Vienna by the King of Poland, Jan Sobieski. As a result, an anti-Ottoman Holy League was formed at Linz on 5 March 1684 between Emperor Leopold I, Sobieski, and the Doge of Venice, Marcantonio Giustinian. Over the next few years, the Austrians recovered Hungary from Ottoman control, and even captured Belgrade in 1688 and reached as far as Niš and Vidin in the next year. The Austrians were now overextended, as well as being embroiled in the Nine Years' War (1688–97) against France. The Ottomans, under another Köprülü Grand Vizier, Fazıl Mustafa Pasha, regained the initiative and pushed the Austrians back, recovering Niš and Vidin in 1690 and launching raids across the Danube. After 1696, the tide turned again, with the capture of Azov by the Russians in 1696 followed by a disastrous defeat at the hands of Eugene of Savoy at the battle of Zenta in September 1697. In its aftermath, negotiations began between the warring parties, leading to the signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699.
Venice prepares for war
The Austrians and Poles considered Venetian participation in the war as a useful adjunct to the main operations in Central Europe, as its navy could impede the Ottomans from concentrating their forces by sea and force them to divert forces away from their own fronts. Other than that, the allies' esteem for Venetian capabilities was low, as the Republic's power was in evident decline; indeed it was precisely the retreat of Venetian influence in Italy and the Adriatic that enabled a rapprochement between Vienna and Venice, hitherto rivals in these areas. On the Venetian side, the debate in the Senate about joining the war was heated, but in the end the war party prevailed, judging the moment as an excellent and unique opportunity for a revanche. As a result, when news arrived in Venice on 25 April 1684 of the signing of the Holy League, for the first and only time in the Ottoman–Venetian Wars, the Most Serene Republic declared war on the Ottomans, rather than the other way around.
Nevertheless, at the outbreak of the war, the military forces of the Republic were meagre. The long Cretan War had exhausted Venetian resources, and Venetian power was in decline in Italy as well as the Adriatic Sea. While the Venetian navy was a well-maintained force, comprising ten galleasses, thirty men-of-war, and thirty galleys, as well as auxiliary vessels, the army comprised 8,000 not very disciplined regular troops. They were complemented by a numerous and well-equipped militia, but the latter could not be used outside Italy. Revenue was also scarce, at little more than two million sequins a year. Venice received considerable subsidies from Pope Innocent XI, who played a leading role in forming the Holy League and, according to the historian Peter Topping, "nearly impoverished the Curia in raising subsidies for the allies".
According to the reports of the English ambassador to the Porte, Lord Chandos, the Ottomans' position was even worse: on land they were reeling from a succession of defeats, so that the Sultan had to double the pay of his troops and resort to forcible conscription. At the same time, the Ottoman navy was described by European observers like Chandos, Luigi Ferdinando Marsili and Paul Rycaut as being in a sore state, both numerically and qualitatively; the Moldavian prince Demetrius Cantemir reports that the fleet scarcely had six men-of-war ready for operations, and was about to bring ten further to the Imperial Arsenal to be fitted out for war. However, the Ottomans could also count on the assistance of the fleets of their vassals, the Barbary states. The Venetians on the other hand mobilized a fleet of 28 galleys, six galeasses, one bastard galley (as the flagship) and 12 men-of-war.
This left the Venetians with an uncontested supremacy at sea, while the Ottomans resorted to using light and fast galleys to evade the Venetian fleet and resupply their fortresses along the coasts. The Ottomans believed that the Venetians would target Crete, and already before the outbreak of hostilities sent their chief admiral, the Kapudan Pasha, to the island with 40 galleys carrying reinforcements and provisions for the island's garrison. In view of its financial weakness, Venice determined to bring the war to Ottoman territory, where they could conscript and extract tribute at will, before the Ottomans could recover from the shock and losses incurred at Vienna and reinforce their positions. Despite some thoughts of directing the Venetian assault against Castelnuovo (Herceg Novi in Montenegro), in the end it was decided to leave the matter to the decision of the commander-in-chief.
Morosini, having a distinguished record and great experience of operations in Greece, was chosen as Captain General of the Sea and commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force. His chief rival, Girolamo Cornaro, was named Provveditore Generale da Mar, Alvise Pasqualigo as provveditore generale in Dalmatia and other senior patricians were appointed to posts in the fleet squadrons. Venice increased her forces by enrolling large numbers of mercenaries from Italy and the German states, and raised funds by selling state offices and titles of nobility. Financial and military aid in men and ships was secured from the Knights of Malta, the Duchy of Savoy, the Papal States and the Knights of St. Stephen of Tuscany, and experienced Austrian officers were seconded to the Venetian army. In addition to the aid supplied by the Knights of St. Stephen, the grand duke of Tuscany also sent to Morea about 3,000 soldiers in four contingents from 1684 to 1688, plus 14 ships and their attendant sailors (8 galleys, 4 galiots, 2 other vessels). In the Venetian-ruled Ionian Islands, similar measures were undertaken; over 2,000 soldiers, apart from sailors and rowers for the fleet, were recruited. On 10 June 1684, Morosini set sail from Venice, and sailed to Corfu, where he was joined by Venice's allies: five Papal galleys under Paolo Emilio Malaspina, four galleys and a man-of-war from Tuscany under Camillo Guidi, and seven galleys and three men-of-war of the Knights of Malta, under Giovanni Battista Brancaccio.
Venetian offensive
Operations in western Greece (1684)
The first target of the Venetian fleet was the island of Lefkada (Santa Maura). Morosini's political rival, Girolamo Cornaro, tried to preempt him and seize the Castle of Santa Maura, which he believed to be lightly defended, before the arrival of the fleet from Venice. With a small force he sailed from Corfu to the island, but finding the fortress strongly garrisoned, he turned back. As a result of this misadventure, Cornaro was sidelined for the first year of the war, during which he served as governor of the Ionian Islands, before he was appointed to command in Dalmatia in late 1685. Once Morosini arrived at Corfu, he and the council of his commanders decided to resume the failed enterprise, so as to at least eliminate the island as a base for piracy. No definite plans were made after that, with Morosini envisaging an assault on Negroponte (Chalkis) with a view towards gaining a base of operations in the Aegean, or alternatively focusing on capturing the coast of Albania. On 18 July 1684, the fleet left Corfu, receiving a papal benediction by the local Catholic bishop, Marcantonio Barbarigo, a rite normally associated with the departure of a crusade. Two days later, the fleet arrived at Santa Maura. After a siege of 16 days, the fortress capitulated on 6 August 1684.
The Venetians then crossed onto the mainland region of Acarnania. The offshore island of Petalas was occupied on 10 August by Count Niccolo di Strassoldo and Angelo Delladecima. Reinforced with volunteers, mostly from Cephalonia, the Venetians then captured the towns of Aitoliko and Missolonghi. Greek leaders from across Epirus, from Himarra and Souli and the armatoloi captains of Acarnania and Agrafa, had contacted the Venetians with proposals for a common cause; with the Venetian advance, a general rising occurred in the area of Valtos and Xiromero. Muslim villages were attacked, looted, and torched, and Ottoman rule collapsed across western Continental Greece. By the end of the month the Ottomans only held on to the coastal fortresses of Preveza and Vonitsa. The Venetian fleet engaged in raids along the coast of Epirus up to Igoumenitsa and even on the north-western coast of the Peloponnese, near Patras, before launching a concerted effort to capture the castle of Preveza on 21 September. The castle surrendered after eight days, and Vonitsa was captured by Delladecima's men a few days later. At the end of autumn, Morosini appointed Delladecima as military governor of the region stretching from the Gulf of Ambracia to the river Acheloos. Already in this early part of the war, the Venetians began suffering great casualties on account of disease; Count Strassoldo was one of them. These early successes were important for the Venetians because they secured their communications with Venice, denied to the Ottomans the possibility of moving troops through the area, and provided a springboard for possible future conquests on the Greek mainland.