The idea of visiting Corfu in October held many attractions for me, not least the chance to extend summer, cheat the seasons and escape the autumnal weather of northern Europe. Corfu city is a very attractive town, if rather overwhelmed by mass tourism, even outside the main tourist season. Monstrous cruise liners stand off the new harbour, mercifully some distance away from the historic quarter of the town, spewing off their crowds day after day. What do they come for? As I waited for information at a tourism office by the entrance of one of the town’s two massive fortresses, the man behind the desk tried to point out some of the town’s sites to two elderly ladies. Their response? And where do we go for shopping? For some, it seems, tourism is an enhanced shopping opportunity.
Corfu looks quite different to other parts of Greece, reflecting its very different history. Unlike the rest of the country, it never fell to Ottoman rule. For centuries it was a key stronghold of the Venetian Empire, guarding the mouth of the Adriatic. That Venetian heritage is evident in the town’s architecture, with its narrow streets and multi-storied buildings, often with colonnaded fronts. It is said that the Veneto dialect, once spoken alongside Greek, could still be heard in Corfu within living memory, and a small Roman Catholic population remains on the island, some of them descendants of Maltese immigrants and others of the old Venetian families.
The Ottomans tried repeatedly to capture the island, but the Venetian and Corfiot defenders held on. Looking at the two colossal fortresses that stand at either side of the old town, you can see how. At the entrance of the Old Fort stands a statue of Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, a German who led the successful defence against the final Ottoman siege in 1716. Schulenburg had had a distinguished military career, including fighting under Prince Eugene of Savoy and the Duke of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession.
The Old Fort is a bit of an architectural hotchpotch today. Atop the massive bastions of the Venetian citadel stand square, brick 19th century British barracks that would be more at home in Woolwich than on a Mediterranean island. The island was governed by Britain for half a century after the Napoleonic wars, and it too has left a lasting mark. Even more bizarre is the mock classical St. George’s church, built by the British in the fort’s grounds. Several cannon are displayed inside the fort, with information about where they were made and to which armies they belonged. Some are British, some Venetian, and one is Russian, from the brief period when Russian forces occupied the island during the Napoleonic Wars. Some of the mortars, dating from the 17th century and used by the army of the Serene Republic, were also made in England. Behind St. George’s, I came across several other cannon lying around. On closer inspection, there was the crest with ‘G R’ below a crown; George III.
The vast walls of the New Fort loom over the old port. Built by the Venetians, it is in fact only a little newer than the Old Fort, which was originally built during the earlier Byzantine period. Both have been repeatedly restored, enhanced and rebuilt over the centuries. If anything the New Fort is the more impressive, with its huge curving walls. I looked in vain for the Lion of Saint Mark, emblem of Venice, which I had been led to believe could be found in the New Fort. The lady at the ticket office said there were none. However, at the Old Fort, a stone plaque of the Lion was on display, removed from the wall to which it had once been fixed. The Lion, with its mouth curled in a rather odd, friendly smile, can be seen above the entrance to the reconstructed Venetian barracks that had been destroyed in the German bombing in 1943. Under British rule, the building housed the Ionian Academy, the first such institution of higher education in modern Greece. In front of it stands a statue of Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first head of state of modern Greece, and a native of Corfu. In an illustrious career, Kapodistrias had earlier been Russian foreign minister, but he did not do so well as Greek head of state, and was assassinated in 1831.
After Napoleon rubbed out the Venetian Republic in 1797, Corfu passed to French control. It did not last long, and in 1799 the French were ousted by a Russian-Ottoman force, and Corfu became the capital of the autonomous Septinsular (Seven Island) Republic, under Ottoman suzerainty, with Kapodistrias as Chief Minister. The Russian action is commemorated by a plaque on the little island of Vido, just across from Corfu city. The plaque, unveiled in 2011, and flanked by Russian and Greek flags, has a pointed message for the Greece of today, with its troubled relations with the western-dominated European Union, about the historical ties between the two countries,: ‘To the Greeks and Russians who died for the Orthodox faith of their fathers…’ The French returned in 1807, and remained until the arrival of the British, following the defeat of Napoleon. The French tenure was brief, but they left a lasting mark, notably the colonnaded Liston, nowadays crammed with cafes, that gives on to the Esplanade, a large expanse of green, beyond which is the Old Fort.
The British established a protectorate, the United States of the Ionian Islands, with its capital in Corfu, with a British Lord High Commissioner and an advisory parliament. The former parliament building has a stone plaque outside the entrance commemorating the parliament’s vote in in 1863 in favour of the union of the Ionian isles with Greece, ‘by will of the Ionian people and with the consent of the protecting power Great Britain.’ The islands formally united with Greece the following year. Many signs of the British period remain, not least the Ionian Academy and the grand former residence of the British High Commissioners, the Palace of Saints Michael and George, at one end of the Esplanade, now a museum. In front of the palace stands a statue of Sir Fredrick Adam, one of the High Commissioners, while at the other end of the Esplanade, close to the Ionian Academy, is the Maitland Rotunda, commemorating another British High Commissioner, Sir Thomas Maitland. But perhaps the most poignant memento of British influence is a cricket pitch on the Esplanade, in front of the palace on one side and the Liston on another. I watched a group of local youths playing cricket on the pitch, very badly, it must be said.
Among the various foreign rulers and visitors who left their mark on Corfu, in 1916 the Serbian army came, not as conquerors, but as refugees. Defeated by combined Austrian, German and Bulgarian attacks, the Serbian army retreated through Montenegro and Albania in the winter of 1915-16, together with their elderly King and numerous civilians. They died in their thousands during their journey, from cold, disease, exhaustion, starvation, and the attacks of Albanians who harried them all the way. This terrible death march, known to Serbs as the ‘Albanian Golgotha’, ended when allied ships transported them from the Albanian ports of Durres and Vlora to Corfu. Some 150,000 arrived, but their sufferings had not ended. Adequate provision for them had not yet been made in time for their arrival on the island, and they continued to die.
The Serbian House in Corfu city is a museum dedicated to this not widely known episode in the history of the First World War. As well as artefacts from the time, it contains numerous photographs of the retreat and of the time spent on Corfu. Many of the photos are harrowing. Some of the newly arrived soldiers, as well as the corpses, look like mere bags of bones, reminiscent of holocaust photographs from World War II. Thousands ended their lives in a hospital on the island of Vido, from where they were taken in boats for burial at sea, the ‘Blue Graveyard’ commemorated in a poem by Milutin Bojić, who took part in the retreat. A plaque below the Serbian Mausoleum on Vido contains lines from the poem. At the spot where ferries from Corfu now arrive on Vido, another plaque, next to the one commemorating the Russian capture of the island in 1799, marks the place from where boats laden with their grisly cargos put off in 1916. In fact, the coat of arms on the mausoleum is not that of Serbia, but of the pre-World War II Kingdom of Yugoslavia, combining the emblems of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. An inscription in large letters over the entrance reads ‘Serbian Heroes Yugoslavia.’ In 1918, when the Serbian army stormed northwards and westwards from the Salonika Front, winning a state more than twice the size of their pre-war kingdom, it might have seemed that the sufferings in 1915-16 had been rewarded.
The tragedy of the retreat across Albania and the arrival on Corfu was not given much attention during the communist decades in Yugoslavia. The communist regime, basing its legitimacy on the partisan struggle against foreign occupation during the Second World War, preferred to avoid discussion of events earlier in the century, beyond damning stereotypes of Great Serbian nationalism and Croatian Fascism. The connection with the elderly King, who comes across as a heroic figure, sharing the sufferings of his troops, whose frailty at times meant he had to be carried over the mountains, was also awkward for the communists. But nowadays Serbia has been rediscovering its past, and has begun to pay greater attention to this both heroic and tragic episode in its history. Serbian leaders regularly visit the island to pay homage to the heroes of the past. Standing on the walls of the New Fort, I watched the little Vido ferry returning with a group of Serbs on a historical tour, a large Serbian flag flying proudly from the mast. Opposite the Serbian House, a Serbian souvenir shop sells mementoes of the Serbian army’s time on Corfu to the numerous Serb tourists who visit the island.
After the first difficult weeks, the Serbs’ stay on Corfu became more tolerable for the survivors, as some of the photos attest. Naked soldiers were photographed frolicking in the sea. Officers stroll in the town, and go on outings with Corfiot friends, many women among them. One photo shows a wedding between a Serbian officer and a Corfiot woman. In the meantime, the troops paraded and trained for their return to the front.
In the spring of 1916, the Serbian army left Corfu, travelling eastwards to re-join the war on the Salonika Front. But the Serbian government and parliament remained on Corfu until 1918, basing themselves in the grand municipal theatre, which was destroyed by the German bombardment in 1943. The theatre was replaced by a nondescript concrete box typical of post-World War II architecture. I walked round the graffiti-covered, crumbling building, its bare concrete colonnades stinking of urine and smothered in pigeon shit. No one cares about such a building, and even the vandals recognise its worthlessness. The local government has considered pulling it down and replacing it with a replica of the old theatre. In any case, they should pull it down.
In 1917, a key meeting took place on Corfu between representatives of the Serbian government and the Yugoslav Committee, a group of South Slav politicians from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who had been lobbying the western powers in favour of the formation of a united Yugoslav state. The so-called Corfu Declaration was signed by Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić and Ante Trumbić of the Yugoslav Committee, committing to post-war unification. The Serbian House exhibits photographs of the participants in the discussions. But it was a flawed agreement. The Yugoslav Committee had a very tenuous mandate to speak on behalf of the South Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And the Serbs were only lukewarm about the idea, preferring the expansion of Serbia to include all Serb-inhabited lands, leaving out Slovenia and rump bits of north-west Croatia in which they were not interested. The idea of a union of equals never attracted most Serbs.
The Serbian army was joined in its retreat to Corfu by several foreign medical staff. One of them was a remarkable lady called Flora Sandes, who became the only British woman to serve as a frontline soldier in the First World War. In 1914, together with numerous other women, she went to Serbia with a St. John’s Ambulance unit. As the retreat got under way, she was enrolled in the Serbian army. The Serbian House exhibition contains a photograph of her, with others, on Corfu. In 1916 she published An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army, to help raise funds for the army. She was seriously wounded by a grenade during hand-to-hand combat against the Bulgarians defending Bitola, in Macedonia. She was the first ever woman to be made a commissioned officer in the Serbian army, and was awarded Serbia’s highest military decoration, the Karadjordje Star.
Flora Sandes is one of several extraordinary British women in the early decades of the 20th Century, who travelled through some of the remotest, harshest regions of the world. Among the others were Edith Durham, who travelled through Albania and other regions of the Balkans, and became a heroine of the Albanian national cause during the First World War; Gertrude Bell, whose unmatched experience and knowledge of the Middle East prompted the British foreign policy establishment to overlook her sex and take her on and make use of her expertise; and Rebecca West, who achieved celebrity status, among other achievements, for her accounts of her travels through Yugoslavia. Their experiences and achievements were remarkable by any standards. But for women, in the conservative, misogynist environments of those places and those times, what they did was heroic beyond anything that any man of their times accomplished.
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