The Rebels: 1480

Territory of the heart of the Kladas revolt, inland from Kardamyli, 

although without the aid of most of the roads shown here. Google Maps.

Among the missing information for the Kladas revolt of 9 October 1480 is the size of the revolt. A variety of numbers has been put forth --  a recent Mani writer claims 16,000 rebels -- but with a little combing we can come up with some reasonable numbers. With a little more combing, we can come up with the names of probable participants in the rebellion -- one man does not make a rebellion even if he is a Greek.

In 1867, Konstantinos Sathas wrote that 1600 revolted with Kladas. (Going through his sources, I have not been able to find where he got that number.)  The Venetian report said that Kladas had his company and 16 more in the revolt.  A year earlier, he had a company of 150 men.  If they all joined him, and the 16, that would make 166.  You can see a certain resemblance between that number and 1600 and 16,000.  The epenthetic zero is an important factor in sorting through Greek history, as I wrote a year ago in discussing the propensity to cite 6000 as the number of fighting men in the Morea.

Since there was a peace settlement with the Turks, Venice had decided to disband most of the stratioti companies, but asthe officials in charge of that arrived in Koroni a couple of months after the revolt, it is quite possible that about 150 stratioti accompanied Kladas.  That was a substantial group, and quite enough to cause serious alarm, especially as Kladas was flying the flag of S. Marco with its red field and golden lion. Normal riding -- I am told this by horse people who have looked at the map and the mountains -- would have taken them about six hours from Koroni to Kalamata, and possibly as much as twelve more to Kardamyli.

The 9th of October was the night of the full moon.  Mani writers tend to claim that the company rode out of Koroni on the night of the full moon, without considering that Koroni could not have held so many horses within its walls, or that gates of Venetian cities in the stato da mar were locked at night.  The full moon comes into the report because -- as the Senato did in Venice, and the Sultan in Constantinople -- people may not have calendars but they nearly always know when the full moon is.  Reports of the revolt make it clear that Kladas had supporters in Mani who joined the revolt: the full moon let them know when to be prepared.

About the other 16: Kladas revolted, or led a revolt, because the peace settlement after the war assigned Mani to the Ottomans, and thus the Kladas lands of Elos and Vordounia were taken away from them. Thomas Kladas, lost his villages of Ardovisca, Prasto, and Milea, granted in recognition of the services of his father who was killed fighting the Turks. Matheus Rallis Melithi lost the mills at Mantinea granted in an argyrobull from the Despots. Michali Rallis Drimi lost four villages. Perigrino Busichi, his brothers Silo and Zorzi, and his nephews Petro and Zorzi, lost the villages they had inherited, as did the brothers Petro Lisi, Lazaros Ingrala, and Micha. Capo Zorzi, Yannis, and Niko Menaia, brothers related to Petro Bua, lost  lands and casalia acquired by inheritance and marriage, and the authority of a document from the despots sealed with a silver seal. Nikolaos and Demetrios Bochalis (whose kinsman had been tortured to death for aiding the Venetians), Nikos Pagomenos and his brother, and Michele Pagino lost lands. Philippo Sofopulo lost Casale and Catafigo. 

The fragments of information about these lands suggests that some of them had been assigned within the Byzantine system of small pronoias, grants to soldiers in return for service. The holders were then entitled to taxes, services, gifts, and grain from the households within the pronoia, in addition to rights over mills, fish ponds, and salt pans. Plotting these locations on a map reveals a dense network of small villages and holding: few of these men would have been considered wealthy, even then. Their incomes and homes were lost, and with peace, most of them lost their real occupation. There are twenty names here in addition to Kladas, all of them likely participants in the revolt. The twenty names do not appear in accounts of the revolt, or in lists of those pardoned, but they had all earlier received assurance about their lands from Venice, and now the lands had evaporated.

The uprising soon took Mantegna belonging to Nicolò Mezan, Megalo, Maino, and then the towers of Castagna, Gastiza, Lestini, and Ardovisca, and Prasto belonging to Thomas Kladas, la Piaza, and the Casale and Catafigo of Philippo Sofopoulos. Or to put it another way, the former holders of these territories took them back. Or, the residents, slightly bewildered, joined up with the armed men who appeared with the flag of S. Marco. Since a number of casali joined in rebellion, it is likely that with Mezan and Sofopoulos we have two additional names of men who joined the rebellion. Trigafoli and Oitylo were also taken, or they also joined the Kladas event. Oitylo is more than half-way down the western coast. From Koroni to Oitylo is about 120 kilometers or 75 miles: the rebels covered a great deal of territory without opposition.

The numbers, of course, will have varied from time to time, and once it was known in April that Kladas had escaped on a Neapolitan ship, after a battle in which 700 were said to have been killed (all through the century, 700 and 800 are the regular numbers for people killed by Turks -- Negroponte, Davia, Otranto, Methoni), the number of rebels would have melted like a spring snow.  Bartolomeo Minio, who was instrumental in obtaining a pardon for the rebels (I wrote about this two years ago), said that there were 77 Kladioti at that point.  When the first pardon came in, it listed 17 names: it took a while to get the names vetted, and by that time most of them had become bandits.

The route of the Kladas revolt, from Koroni at the cape,
lower left, to Kardamyli., cape on the right.  Google Maps.

For more detail, see the draft first chapter of my forthcoming book, The Knight and Death: The Kladas Affair and the Fifteenth-Century Morea.