The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry, and Holy War in the Sixteenth-Century Adriatic 9781501702853

Table of contents :
Contents
Illustrations and Maps
Acknowledgments
Conventions and Abbreviations
CHAPTER ONE.Introduction
CHAPTER TWO .The Borders and Border Military Systems
CHAPTER THREE. Origins and Motives of the Uskoks
CHAPTER FOUR. The Raiding Economy
CHAPTER FIVE. Military Authority and Raiding
CHAPTER SIX. Legitimating Raiding: The Uskok Code
CHAPTER SEVEN. Allies and Victims
CHAPTER EIGHT. The Final Decades
CHAPTER NINE. The Dispersal of the Uskoks
APPENDIX I. Chronology
APPENDIX II.Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

THE USKOKS OF SENJ PIRACY, BANDI TRY, AND HOLY WAR IN THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY A DRIATI C

Catherine Wendy Bracewell

Cornell University Press ITHACA

AND

LONDON

Copyright© 1992 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof. must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York i4850. First published 1992 by Cornell University Press.

First printing. Cornell Paperbacks, 2010 International Standard Book Number o-8o14-2674-X Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 91-55548 Printed in the United States of America Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information appears on the last page of Ille book.

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The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements

of the American National Standard for Information Sciences­ Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1fbid.: 4g-49', 63, 102, 245, etc. See also Fest, "Uskoken und Venezianer in der Geschichte von Fiume," for details of uskok relations with Rijeka in the i5gos and i6oos . 137J n H .A .R., Zapisnici sjednica opc:'inskog vijec:'a u Rijeci, i593-16o7: 64'. 138ln Commissiones et relationes venelre, vol . 5, p. 223. 1 3Y[ n Horvat, Monumenta uscocchorum, vol. 1, p. JBS.

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inhabitants "are without a doubt more obedient to a single uskok than to the public representatives; so that it can truly be said that excepting the walled cities little sign of the jurisdiction and patronage of Your Serenity remains in the rest."140 How is one to reconcile this popular support for the uskoks with the widespread reports of their indiscriminate and vio­ lent actions in Dalmatia? The injuries done by the uskoks and the support they received paral­ leled to a great extent the cleavages in Dalmatian society. Venetian ob­ servers did not overlook the element of social differentiation in uskok relations in Dalmatia. They repeatedly noted that although the city peo­ ple feared the uskoks, the villagers were "so much in league with these wicked people . . . that they go out and traffic with them freely in the fields, completely without suspicion."141 Another observer, Andrea Gugliemi, linked this differentiation to the social origins of the uskoks: " If the peasants (contadini] of the place [Krk] wished to defend them­ selves with arms they could, but they don't wish to because, as I have said, they are all related, and [the uskoks] do no damage to them, but rather only to those with whom they are not related, who live in the city-the citizens [cittadini] ." 142 In Dalmatia, as in other bandit-ridden societies from Corsica to China, the uskoks recruited primarily from the countryside, and it was largely the rural population that aided the uskoks against the demands of official authority. Although the uskoks cannot easily be seen as champions of social justice, in their relations with the peasantry of Dalmatia and the hinterland they do to a certain extent fit Hobsbawm's description of social bandits, "peasant outlaws whom the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant soci­ ety, and are considered by their people as heroes . . . , and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported." 143 It is the structured social inequalities between privileged and unprivi­ leged, between rich and poor, between town and country, which are usually identified as the basis for "social" banditry, but this is not the only conflict that can divide a community in its attitudes toward crime or brigandage. Political conflict also divided Dalmatian society. In Dalma­ tia, Venice needed to keep the peace with the Ottomans at all costs. The deeply held hatred for the Muslim conquerors of much of Dalmatian society was in contradiction with this policy. In some ways social cleav­ ages reinforced this division. The wealthy and the urban elite allied with Venice depended for their position and their prosperity on peace and on Ottoman trade. These people were most harmed by uskok attacks and 1 •01n Commissiones et relationes venetre, vol . 6, p. 188. 1 •11n ibid., vol. 5, p. u5. 1 421n A.S.V, Senato, Secreta, Materie miste notabili 27: 1 1 June 159t. 1 43 Hobsbawm, Bandits, p. i .

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The Uskoks of Senj

were most active in opposing them. The rural population, on the other hand, both regularly exposed to the raids of neighboring Ottomans, and subjected to the increasing demands of their landlords in the Dalmatian towns, was united with the uskoks to retaliate against the Ottomans and their allies. But social and political divisions were not entirely identical: as we have seen, many Dalmatian nobles resented their loss of power under Venetian rule. They opposed the alliance between Venice and the Ottomans and looked to the uskoks as allies. Patrician Ragusan rebels, impatient of the policies of their government, also formed ties with the uskoks. Apart from brief alignments, however, the uskoks' interests were usually at odds with those of the wealthy and the politically powerful in Dalmatia-who, after all, were those whose resources made them targets for plunder. Unlike bandit groups elsewhere, forced to seek alliances with the local elites to survive, the uskoks, secure in their position on the Military Frontier, could afford to hold aloof from other patrons. It was more often with the peasants in the countryside, the shepherds, and the fishermen that the uskoks had their closest ties. But Andrea Gugliemi was exaggerating when he claimed that the uskoks did no damage to the peasantry. The uskoks did cause suffering among the common people of Dalmatia, though to a lesser extent than in the Ottoman hinterland. When the uskoks took bread, wine, one or two sheep, or commandeered a bark, their owners did without. When a villager was reported to the Venetian authorities for sheltering or aiding the uskoks, he was severely punished. The people of Dalmatia, how­ ever, were often unwilling to denounce uskok requisitions to the author­ ities. Shepherds' and fishermen's judicial reports of small-scale plunder­ ing in Dalmatia sometimes appear to have been entirely pro forma-to cover themselves against Venetian accusations of complicity with the uskoks. Typically these informers made their reports before the Venetian rector, through a court interpreter, some time after the incident, giving as little information as possible-they did not know who the uskoks were or where they were from. If they admitted to taking money for supplies, it was only because the uskoks had paid "by force."144 Some of these denunciations, denying any complicity or even acquaintance with the uskoks, strain the reader's credulity. What must the Venetian officials have made of a Trogir night guard's declaration that fifty uskoks had secretly made their way into port without being recognized or chal­ lenged and had taken a fully equipped bark-leaving in exchange the precise one they had "stolen" two years previously? 1 4S 1 4�See A.S.V., Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 1261: 20 July 1592; ibid., 1262: 6 Oct. 1593; H .A.Z., Arhiv Trogira, 25, 27/11, a collection of reports of uskok acts from the 1590s. 1 45H .A.Z., Arhiv Trogira, 25/ 1 1 : i481-81' (5 Apr. 1599).

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Like people elsewhere, caught between the demands of the state and the pressures exerted by bandits, the Dalmatians recognized the virtues of keeping silent, although this practice was not dignified by any special term, like the omerta of the Sicilians. In the face of such sullen lack of cooperation a Venetian representative in Dalmatia complained that " the inhabitants . . . not only make no resistance to their landing, nor pursue them as they ought, but rather hide them, and when they are required by the representatives of Your Serenity to pass on news [of the uskoks], they deny any knowledge, and never reveal it unless after these uskoks have left, a fact that can be seen clearly from the denunciations given to the rectors of the cities, which are all after their departure, which they do either out of fear, as they claim, or more likely because of the benefits and rewards they receive from them. " 1 46 The villagers' silence spoke loudly to those who wished to understand where power resided in the prov­ ince: it was the uskoks, not the Venetian rectors and provveditori, who were most scrupulously obeyed. But why should this be so? Observers did not always dismiss the fear inspired by uskok threats. " If you oppose us and our company and persecute us we will burn your houses and massacre you," a group of uskoks asking for supplies told the villagers of Pupnat on Korcula. 1 47 It was not an empty threat­ people the uskoks regarded as traitors were indeed killed and their houses burned, as in a case described by Giovanni Michie!, Capitano contra uscocchi, in which a suspected informer, his wife, and young son were all slaughtered and their cottage leveled by vengeful uskoks. 148 A Dalmatian villager convicted of aiding the uskoks could expect an equally harsh Venetian sentence, yet according to Venetian represen­ tatives it was the uskoks' threats that prevailed and forced cooperation: "They would rather suffer exile, the burning of their houses, and the persecution of justice as miscreants; this seeming a lesser punishment to them than to be, as they fear, burned together with their entire family and goods suddenly one night by the uskoks."149 Uskok retribution was 1 46Jn A.S.V., Senato, Secreta, Materie miste notabili, 27: u Mar. 1591. This would not be the only such complaint. Provveditore Generale Nicolo Dona noted in 1599 that "it is not possible to imagine a greater inclination toward these scoundrels among the inhabitants [of Dalmatia), for the uskoks are always perfectly informed of my whereabouts, and I cannot ever extract from them any sure news, and if they do bring me any, it is always too late, and out of step" (in A.S.V., Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 922: 3 Apr. 1599). 1 47Jn H .A.Z., Arhiv Korcule, 812: 392-94; 427-27' {.z8 Jan. 1597). 1 48ln Commissiones et re/ationes uenetre, vol. 6, p. 53. Other examples of uskok vengeance are similar: a woman killed and her house burned because she betrayed an uskok hiding place to the Provveditore dell'armata (A.S.V., Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 417: 26 Sept. 1596); murder of a man on Brae who opposed the uskoks, and threats of arson as vengeance for the release of uskok captives (A.S. V., Capi del Consiglio dei Dieci, Lettere dei Rettori, 301: 6 Jan. 2595). J49Jn Commissiones et re/ationes uenetre, vol. 3, p. 191.

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The Uskoks of Senj

more certain-and the Venetian state could offer little protection. But the uskoks did not pursue an indiscriminate reign of terror in the Dalmatian countryside. Uskok violence was selective, calculated to elicit respect and ensure neutrality, at least, in any conflict with the authorities. No doubt uskok revenge did reduce the temptation to profit by betraying an uskok to the Venetian government. Whether uskok intimidation could command constant, widespread, and active support from the Dalmatian population is another matter. Terror was not the only principle at work in uskok relations with the rural population. A popularly accepted code of behavior, with limits recognized by both sides, can also be observed. Uskok requisitions pro­ vide an example of these principles and of the way they worked in practice. In theory, the uskoks had no desire to harm the inhabitants of Venetian Dalmatia, but they felt that they could justifiably demand sup­ plies for their services in fighting the Turk. In a letter that set out their view of their relations with Venetian Dalmatia in 16oo, the vojvodas specified that they would take provisions only when they were neces­ sary to human life, in case of great need, when they would be paid for. 1 50 And indeed, the authorities agreed that the uskoks often did pay, "either well or poorly, according to the the resources available to them from their most recent plunder.11 1 5 1 One Provveditore Generale described the uskoks of Senj, who " go out only to plunder the Turks . . . taking from the subjects of Your Serenity nothing, unless they need it for their own use and sustenance-bread, wine, and similar things-for which they pay more often than not," and distinguished these sharply from the independent Dalmatian uskoks and brigands who rob "with no respect nor distinction whatsoever."152 In any case, supplying these uskoks with food and wine was strictly prohibited by the Signoria, which made association with the uskoks a capital offense. A judicial investigation of Francesco Boschaino [Frane Boskin/Bas­ canin ?] of the village of Novalja on Pag reveals some of the stresses in the relations between the uskoks, the people who aided them, their neigh­ bors, and the Venetian authorities. 1 53 In May 1557 shepherds shearing their flocks in the fields on Pag saw a bark and its crew come ashore at the /1

/1

1 50ln a proposal by the vojvodas and the " whole militia of Senj. " in A.S.V., Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 923 : 25 Apr. 16oo (enclosure). 151 Minucci, Storia degli 11scocchi, p. 223 . Dalmatians reporting uskok encounters in the Venetian records repeatedly describe the uskoks' paying for their provisions (see, e.g., A.S.V., Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 1262: 6 Oct. 1593; other examples in H . A.Z., Arhiv Trogira 25, 27/11). 1 s2 1 n Commissiones et relationes veneta?, vol. 5, p. 2 1 t . 1 53All of this evidence on Francesco Boschaino and his dealings with the uskoks comes from a large collection of testimony accumulated as part of an investigation, dated 14 June 1557, in the papers of Antonio Canale, Rector of Rab (H.A .Z., Arhiv Raba, 1).

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inlet called Vojska. They feared that the strangers were the Turkish cor­ sairs who had seized two barks a few days previously farther north up the coast. After several days, when a band of men led by the Vice Rector cautiously approached to investigate, they found that these were uskoks who had been in pursuit of the corsairs and who had been driven ashore by the bura, the strong northwest wind. The uskoks had been four days without wine and wished to buy some from the villagers, but no wine was to be had in Novalja, except that belonging to Boschaino, a well-off peasant. He, however, had already refused to sell his wine either to his compatriots or to the patricians in the city. (This was spring, when most of the local wine would have already been consumed, and well before the new harvest. Boschaino could have been keeping it for his own use or hoping to get a better price for it later.) Although he had earlier been on good terms with the uskoks and they had visited his house in Novalja, the uskoks of Senj were harboring a grudge against him. Sometime earlier he had been involved in the capture of an uskok who was then turned over to Venetian justice, and as a result he had been granted permission to bear arms to defend himself against uskok vengeance. When summoned by the uskoks, Boschaino feared to go, but they sent word that there was a relative of his among them and pledged on their honor not to harm him. Boschaino then went and made peace with the uskoks, and returning to town asked the magistrates and the Vice Rector for permission to send them some wine, saying that otherwise they threatened to come and take it themselves. The testimony as to whether this permission was granted is contradictory, though it is clear that the Vice Rector did not want to face battle with the uskoks- "they fight like devils, " he told the court. In any case, Boschaino sent a donkey loaded with wine back to the uskoks. No payment was accepted-the gift of wine acted to seal their renewed friendship. The uskoks left at dawn the next morning, when the village was already buzzing with gossip about Boschaino's pact of friendship with the Senjani and the wine he had sent them, in violation of Venetian law and in contradiction of his earlier refusal to sell to the local people of Pag or Rab. This publicity precipitated the charge against Boschaino-his contacts with the uskoks were public knowledge, and it was impossible to keep the matter quiet, though his previous relations with the uskoks had caused no action (on one earlier occasion he had spent a whole day eating and drinking with them in his house and, in view of several witnesses, had embraced the leader and bid them Godspeed as broth­ ers). The document charging Boschaino denounced the uskoks as "pub­ lic and most capital enemies of our illustrious lords and banned from their domain, most famous rogues, murderers, and pirates who keep watch constantly, day and night, circling about in order to offend and

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The Uskoks of Senj

damage this country and its inhabitants as enemies," and the witnesses paid lip service to the Venetian regulations against the uskoks, but there seems to have been little real aversion to these uskoks among the vil­ lagers. When the villagers suspected that the uskok bark held Muslim corsairs, they sent a messenger to recall a departing Venetian brigantine, but when they learned that these were uskoks, they made no attempt to get armed reinforcements from the city, though more than one hundred men could have been put in the field. If there were corsairs in the area, having a bark of uskoks nearby was no bad thing. It was even hinted that others might have sold the uskoks provisions, for several lambs were missing from the Vice Rector's flock, and one shepherd (who had spent the night with the uskoks in amiable conversation, to make sure that they didn't make off with any of his sheep), noted that they were eating roast lamb, which he did not believe was stolen. No one suggested it had come from Boschaino (though some thought he had also sent them bread). Had it been sold to them by another shepherd? All the witnesses recognized that Boschaino was acting from a mixture of fear and friendship, though they disagreed about which was predomi­ nant in this instance. (Attitudes toward Boschaino probably influenced their interpretation of his motives-and the emphasis on his refusal to sell his wine on Pag hints that he had irritated some of his neighbors. ) Although h e may initially have been acting under compulsion, once it became clear that "all the heroes of Senj who used to wish him ill now wish him well and are friends with him, " 1 54 the balance of fear and friendship in his dealings with the uskoks could well have tipped the other way. Even if he had not been charged, Boschaino would now have had more to fear from the Signoria, while he could expect to find his dealings with the uskoks rewarded in booty or other favors. Under such circumstances, Boschaino might have been happy to support the uskoks clandestinely. Other similar men and women, more discreet in their contacts with the uskoks and therefore less well recorded in the judicial archives, did aid the uskoks in this way. As Boschaino's case shows, profit was not the only factor in the rela­ tionship between villagers and uskoks. The villagers had to balance the relative weights of profit and loss, fear and friendship, the satisfaction of plundering the Turk and the threat of Venetian retribution, among other factors. In practice, the uskoks often relied on the threat of force, rather than payment, in obtaining supplies, and the villagers of the nearby islands and the coast found their flocks treated as a convenient larder for bands of uskoks who had not been successful in taking Ottoman plun1 S4Ibid., testimony of Antonio Christophoro de Dominis, noble of Rab, who subse­ quently had this news from some men of Senj.

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der and who could not pay for their provender. This was the main com­ plaint of the villagers of Rafanac, on the border of the Zadar district, where the uskoks often passed on their way to the Ottoman hinterland. They did no harm to the village, they reported, except that they ate without paying. "When they take booty, they pass through our village with it, and take it all with them, and on those occasions they give us no trouble; but when they haven't got anything, then they take our goods." 1 55 Still, they tolerated the uskok incursions. Beyond certain limits, however, this behavior would not be accepted. A telling indication of the existence of mutually recognized limits can be seen in the accounts of shepherds traveling angrily to Senj to denounce a wrongdoer before the justices and the assembled uskoks for plundering an entire flock, rather than only one or two sheep, in the expectation that justice would be done. This was the case with one Helena of Baska on Krk, who traveled twice to Senj to complain about excessive uskok raid­ ing, and won the support of a Senj magistrate. 1 56 An examination of two uskoks accused of stealing goats and cheese on Rab in 1592, during a Venetian blockade of Senj, made it clear that such requisitions could be justified only by necessity. Asked if he knew why he had been arrested, Pero Crnojevic replied that he supposed "it was for his sins over the last year, " which covered a whole series of petty thefts of cheese and live­ stock from the islands of Rab, Cres, and Krk, not for his own needs, but to sell, with the profits going to his patrone. In particular, he had seized sixteen animals on Cres, which he had then sold to a shepherd in Vin­ odol for two lire a head. In contrast, Matija GrmorCic, although he had induced shepherds on Rab to give him goats and cheese when he found

himself outside Senj with no victuals, sometimes by boasting that he and his companions were from the ships of Senj, emphasized that although "this had happened several times, and he had taken the animals, nev­ ertheless that which he did, he did from necessity, to eat and not to sell." Both were to be punished, but it was Pero Crnojevic who was thrown from a window of the citadel above Senj's main square, "with a chain around his neck, and left hanging there dead, as an example to the wicked and a spectacle to the people." 157 Perhaps we can discover where the limits to acceptable behavior lay by looking at those who ignored them-for as we have seen not all uskoks observed them scrupulously. Inevitably some were greedier, or more I 55ln A.S.V.. Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 1µ1 : 8 Nov. 16o2 (testimony of two men of Raia nae). I 56 A.S. V., Provveditore Sopraintendente alla Camera dei Confini, 244 : Processus Veglire, Baska, 13 Mar. 1558. 1 571n A.S.V., Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 1261: 24 Aug. 1592 (enclosing the letter of General Lenkovic [6 Aug. 1592) and the two interrogations [5 Aug. 1592)).

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The Uskoks of Senj

sadistic, or primarily anxious to settle personal scores. Certainly there were out-and-out pirates among the uskoks, men who observed no dis­ tinctions or limitations. Such men, however, frequently did not last long as uskoks. Quite often they were dealt with by other uskoks, who did not approve of their acts and who could not allow them to endanger their own support among the people. This was the attitude of the vojvodas of Senj who warned the Provveditore Generate in 15