engleski

Secret War: Venetian Intelligence and Espionage Activities during the War for Crete (1645-1669)

The war for Crete (1645-1669) was the longest war the Republic of Venice ever fought with the Ottoman Empire. It lasted for almost 25 years, and in spite of a tenacious Venetian defense, the loss of tens of thousands of lives, expenditures of millions of ducats, in the end the war ended with an Ottoman victory and the Republic was forced to surrender the last major piece of its eastern empire, the island of Crete. On the other hand, in Dalmatia, in the Adriatic theater of operations, fortunes were reversed. For the first time after a series of defeats in the previous wars (1537-1539 and 1570-1573) the Republic could at least claim a local victory and expand its territory with the acquisition of several important strategic locations, pushing the Ottomans away from the coast deeper into the Dalmatian hinterland. The control of the Adriatic was of outmost importance for the Venetian war efforts in the Levant. The loss of control over the Gulf, as the Venetians refereed to it, would have resulted in the disruption of maritime lines of communication, and seriously undermined the Republic's ability to supply its armies and fleets in the East. The key for the control of the Adriatic rested in the first place in the control of its long eastern coast, or the Venetian provinces Dalmatia and Albania (present day Montenegro). The defense of these two strategically important provinces was the responsibility of the Provveditore Generale di Dalmatia et Albania (Governor-General of Dalmatia and Albania) who was the chief- in-command of all Venetian forces in Dalmatia and also the head of civil administration. In addition to the task of bearing the Ottoman military pressure on the thin strip of land under their control, the governor- generals were also charged with the equally important task of information gathering. Due to the proximity of the Ottoman lands, governor-generals functioned as the eyes and ears of the Republic, feeding the central government with enough data to enable the formulation of long term strategic policies. For this governor-generals relied on the network of confidents, or persons of trust, who either for some material benefit or other more altruistic reasons were ready to serve the Republic in this manner. These included persons of all ranks and statuses: from, simple Morlacchi harambassa sent on a spying mission, Jewish merchants in Sarajevo or Ragusa, Ottoman prisoners briefed at the time of their return to Venetian lands to pay their ransoms, to even several distinguished Bosnian Aghas and Beys with whom at one time or another various governor- generals held active correspondence. Additionally, the informations were also used as weapons, on more than one occasion governor-generals started a circulation of false rumors in order to confuse the Ottomans and disrupt their plans. Moreover, formal armed conflict was not the only aspect of the struggle in which the governor-generals were engaged. The so called sporca guerra (dirty war), or what would today be called "black ops", was a standard instrument for projecting power into areas otherwise beyond the reach of the Venetian arms. These activities included, to name just a few: sabotage of the shipyards in Castel-Nuovo (Herceg-Novi), guns in the camp of the Ottoman field army, or ordering the murder of persons in Ottoman lands. Finally, probably the most important activity in this secret war waged by governor-generals, were the attempts to instigate rebellions among the Ottoman subjects, which ranged from impractically grandiose plans to stir clans of Hercegovina and Montenegro or Albanian Christians to rise in arms, to much smaller and more practical attempts to capture the important stronghold of Valona through treason. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate, through the comprehensive analysis of all of these activities, by Venetian governor generals in Dalmatia in Albania (shortly labeled in the title as the "secret war"), a means of the informal projection of influence and power in border areas of the two Empires in the times of open war.

Power; influence; empires; Ottomans; Habsburgs; Russia; Venice; Balkan

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