In the Service of the Venetian Republic

Edited by Victor Mallia-Milanes.

Published by PEG 2008. 688pp.

In our patriotic and possibly blinkered nationalistic view of all that encompasses Malta and its past history, we may seldom ask ourselves how do others look at us and whether what they perceive is more true than what we self-deludingly believe we are.

Here, at last, is a case in point: it comes rather as a shock to learn that in the mid-18th century Malta was looked at, more than anything else, as one of the capital cities of piracy in the Mediterranean.

This book is a collection of letters written between 1754 and 1776 by Massimiliano Buzzacarini Gonzaga who, for most of that time, was what we would today call the ambassador of the Venetian Republic to the Order of St John, resident in Malta.

I remember reading somewhere that even at the time of the Great Siege, the powers that be in Venice were not so four-square with the beleaguered island facing the might of the Ottoman armada but at best somewhat hazy about whether they preferred neutrality or even sided with the Turks.

By that time, the solidarity between what we would call the Christian West facing the Turks was beginning to crumble. Two centuries after the Great Siege, what solidarity there had been had all but evaporated. One reason was that the Turks, after the Great Siege, after Lepanto, and after the Siege of Vienna, were no longer in an expansive, offensive, mode. Another reason was the breakdown of European solidarity. In particular, Venice had slowly become the privileged ally of the Ottoman Porte and its commercial interests were clearly in this direction.

On the other hand, Malta under the Knights remained anchored in its bellicose mood. Its main purpose of existence was it being (or believing it was) the bulwark of Christianity against the Turks and Islam. Its operative method was the “corso”, the annual raids by its vessels all over the Mediterranean fighting any vessel carrying the Turkish or the Islamic colours. In the absence of any invasion by Turkey or by whoever, such constituted its main raison d’être.

By the mid-18th century, Malta had been sidelined to the margins of history. The Knights had grown old in their management of the country. They had practically completed all their building programmes. Trade had increased but the “corso” still continued. This was when Malta, slowly but inexorably, became the centre of Mediterranean piracy.

Malta was not the only country to deal in piracy. There were also pirates flying the flag of Monaco, for instance, and of others. But Malta’s position in the middle of the Mediterranean made it a welcome port for those who, even if flying the colours of other States, used it as a valuable shelter in winter and base for marauding expeditions the rest of the year. That is also the reason why the pirates brought their booty here – whether they were slaves, rich pickings from the ships and the ships themselves.

Furthermore, all this was carried out under the benign eye of the knights and the Order, which partook of its share of the takings.

And, perhaps this is the genesis of what still afflicts today, there was also a wide complicity of the slow court system of justice which militated against a speedy execution of justice and in the interest of the pirates to the detriment of the victims.

It was mainly this, the background to the life and work of Massimiliano Buzzaccarini Gonzaga, a nobleman from Padua who joined the Order at a very young age.

Around 1750, the Cinque Savii alla Mercanzia, the top body in Venice which regulated and oversaw anything to do with Venetian trade, grew dissatisfied with the Venetian consul (or Uomo della Republica) in Malta, Filippo Grassi. It was widely felt he was not giving a good enough service to the Venetian victims of the pirates.

The Venetian authorities looked around for a substitute, but immediately came face to face with a complication – it was not so simple as one thinks to appoint an ambassador to Malta. It was the Grandmaster’s prerogative to choose from among the knights the person who would be representing the foreign State. Such was the practice with, for instance, Genoa, or the Kingdom of Sardinia. Venice had willy-nilly to learn the system and work with it. Hence, after many months lost in complex negotiations, the appointment of Commendatore Buzzaccarini Gonzaga.

The book under review is in essence the whole correspondence of Buzzaccarini with Venice. His first years were traumatic and depressing ones. He had to report, time after time, his failure to bring miscreants to justice. Some names recur, in particular that of Paolo Marassi, who though a Venetian subject (an Albanian from the Bocca di Cattaro) operated his vessel under the flag of Monaco, preying indiscriminately on his fellow Venetian subjects and on Turks alike. One of his victims was Dimetrio Francopulo, a native of Cephalonia, who was plundered by Marassi, despoiled of his cargo of 1,000 plus zecchini, all his cargo and his belongings, together with the vessel, near Navarino. Moreover, the corsair, tied him to a cannon, beat him up and forced him to swear the ship had been flying the Turkish flag.

Francopulo came to Malta and from here the Buzzacarini letters to Venice show a deep humanity – how he tried time and again, to bring the corsair to justice, despite all the twists and turns that Marassi took to evade justice. Even reading the letters today, in their dated Italian and in the epistolary style of official correspondence, one feels for the poor Francopulo, living a very poor existence in Malta, even helped financially by the ambassador, hoping against hope in justice, and in Maltese justice at that. At the end, but long years had to pass, he got a sort of justice.

For Maltese readers the book contains other details worthy of mention. Such as the relatively little-known detail that for some years at a stretch Malta was cut off from the continent because of what we today would call a postal strike, in reality because of disagreement between Malta and Sicily. Then the annual difficulties in communication owing to the winter bad weather, even though some trips were still made, and the frequent occurrence of shipwrecks and loss of lives. And, even back then, the communication between Malta and Sicily was far stronger than that between Malta and Tripoli.

In time, not just the system of justice improved and less opportunities were offered to pirates, but also despite the poverty of Malta, especially when provisions could not get through, improvement in trade brought about a sensible improvement of the standard of living in

general.

Then, other factors intervened. One of the last of Buzzaccarini’s letters gives his version of the Rebellion of the Priests led by Mannarino, about which some recent literature has been added (by Giovanni Bonello). Buzzaccarini is decidedly against the rebellion but it comes as a surprise to learn there were no less than 20,000 between priests and clerics in Malta at that time, and that their real intention was to take power in Malta rather than, as subsequent historical embellishment would have it, to free Malta from the Knights.

This is historical source material but useful too to an ordinary reader, though one would have expected, in the latter case, more explanation of the difficult passages and context.