tenants of Cretan fiefs were termed, proved at times even more
refractory than the candidates themselves, and made the island for many
years a source of endless difficulties to the Signory. In 1363,
complaining of their exclusion from the high dignities of the republic,
the _cavaliers_ openly threw off their allegiance, elected a doge from
among themselves, and raised the banner of St Titus of Retimo in
opposition to the standard of St Mark. As they were supported both by
the native Candiotes and the Greeks of Constantinople, it was not till
after a harassing warfare of two years that they were reduced, and their
fortresses razed, by the Provveditori sent from Venice; a second effort
at independence, a few years later, was not more successful. The Greek
inhabitants were throughout subjected to a degree of merciless tyranny,
in comparison of which the worst severities of Turkish rule must have
appeared lenient. The Sphakiote tribes in particular, who were strong
both from their arms and martial temperament, and from their habitations
among the lofty ridges of the _Aspro-Bouna_, or White Mountains, in the
south of the island, acknowledged at all times but an imperfect
allegiance to their Venetian lords: and the acts of fiendish barbarity
by which their frequent revolts were chastised, can scarcely find a
parallel even in the worst horrors of the French Revolution. Unborn
infants torn from the womb in pursuance of a judicial sentence solemnly
pronounced--the head of the father exacted as the ransom for the life of
the son--such were the methods by which the Provveditori of the Most
Serene and Christian Republic enforced its authority, and which are
related, not only without reprehension, but with manifest complacency
and approval, by the chroniclers of the state.[13]

[11] The name of Candia, which is the Italianized form of
Kandax, (now Megalo-Kastro,) is unknown at the present day to
the Greek inhabitants of the island, which they call by its