CHAPTER X. THE COMMERCE OF VENICE
In the preceding chapter we have followed the political development of Venice, and seen that city acquire undisputed supremacy on the water and then reach out for land conquests as well. We shall now interrupt the rather depressing story of political wrangles, to consider the commercial prosperity of the new world-emporium.
“Venice,” says Burckhardt,[b] “recognised itself from the first as a strange and mysterious creation—the fruits of a higher power than human ingenuity. The key-note of the Venetian character was a spirit of proud and contemptuous isolation, which, joined to the hatred felt for the city by the other states of Italy, gave rise to a strong sense of solidarity within. The inhabitants meanwhile were united by the most powerful ties of interest in dealing both with the colonies and the possessions on the mainland; and forcing the population of the latter, that is of all the towns up to Bergamo, to buy and sell in Venice alone. A power which rested on means so artificial could only be maintained by internal harmony and unity. On the other hand, within the ranks of the nobility itself, travel and commercial enterprises, and the incessant wars with the Turks, saved the wealthy and dangerous from that fruitful source of conspiracies—idleness. A free government in the open air gave the Venetian aristocracy, as a whole, a healthy bias.”
The Venetian did, in point of fact, seem to differ materially from his Italian neighbours. We have seen that the city did not come into prominence until a relatively late period of the Middle Ages. Isolated geographically, it held aloof from its neighbouring states and never conceded allegiance to the Western Empire. Nominally, it sought the protection of Constantinople; but in reality it neither needed nor received aid from that quarter, and its allegiance to the Eastern emperor was probably due largely to the harmlessness of his supposed authority. The seafaring life had developed here, as so often elsewhere, a hardy and liberty-loving race. The Venetian reminds us strongly of his prototype, the old-time Phœnician. But in one regard the citizen of Venice proved even more self-reliant than his prototype: he insisted always on choosing his rulers; moreover, he not merely elected them, but he held them amenable to the law. We have seen a striking illustration of this in the preceding chapter, in the legal execution of the doge Marino Falieri. Seldom, if ever, has that incident been precisely duplicated. The doge of Venice, elected for life, was surrounded with all the semblance of royalty and was to all intents and purposes a sovereign. Yet when this distinguished incumbent of the office had proven himself disloyal to the constitution, he was adjudged in practically the same manner with his associates in crime, and subjected to the same punishment.
Nothing could be more characteristic than the manner in which the punishment of Falieri was carried out. Up to the very last the doge was treated with all respect. Even when led out to execution, he was still clothed in his ducal robes. The mandate of the law was carried out not in anger, but in sorrow; everything was legal, constitutional; there was no breach of dignity. A vast concourse of people waited at the door of the palace to view the corpse; but it was no clamouring mob: it was a quiet and orderly gathering of citizens. The fall of the sovereign had come about through no reign of terror such as pertained in latter-day France, when Louis XVI was executed; no revolution like that which brought Charles I to the block. The successor to the doge was elected in precisely the same manner as if the previous incumbent of this office had died a natural death. In all history, let it be repeated, there is scarcely a precise parallel for this exhibition of the far-reaching scope of Venetian justice.
We have now to view the real source of the power of this strange nation; a power based, as has repeatedly been suggested, upon the old familiar foundation of commercial prosperity. It was the independence born of this prosperity that made Venice feared and hated by all the other powers of Italy—feared and hated, but also admired. We read in Villani[c] that when in the early part of the fourteenth century Venice condescended to take common cause with Florence against the tyrant of Milan, the Florentines regarded it as a singular honour for their country to have become the confederate of the Venetians, “who, for their great excellence and power, had never allied themselves with any state or prince, except at their ancient conquest of Constantinople and Romania.” We learn, on the other hand, from the Venetians, how some of the wise men of their city regretted this same alliance with its attendant grasping after political conquests, on the mainland. A remarkable account has been preserved to us by Sanuto,[d] of the warning said to have been given to his people by the doge Mocenigo, who died in 1423, and whose alleged words we shall quote in some detail, because they furnish us with statistics that will serve as introductory to our further studies of the national commerce.
The doge asserted that the trade with Lombardy alone brought into Venice each year no less than 28,800,000 ducats.[a] “My lords,” he is reported as saying, “from the infirm state in which I find myself, I judge that I am drawing near the close of my career; and the obligations under which I lie to a country which has not only bred me, but has permitted me to attain such lofty prominence, and has showered upon me so many honours, have prompted me to call you together around me, in order that I may commend to your care this Christian city, and persuade you to live in concord with your neighbours, and to preserve this city, as I have done to the best of my ability. In my time, 4,000,000 ducats of the public debt have been paid though 6,000,000 remain, the latter of which were contracted for the war of Padua, Vicenza, and Verona. We have regularly paid the half-yearly interest on the funds and the salaries of the public offices. Our city at present sends abroad for purposes of trade in various parts of the world 10,000,000 ducats a year, of which the interest is not less than 2,000,000. In this city there are 3000 vessels of smaller burden, which carry 17,000 seamen; 300 large ships carrying 8000 seamen; 45 galleys and dromons constantly in commission for the protection of commerce, which employ 11,000 seamen, 3000 carpenters, 3000 caulkers. Of silk cloth-workers there are 3000; of manufacturers of fustian, 16,000. The rent-roll is estimated at 7,050,000 ducats. The income arising from let houses is 150,000. We find 1000 gentlemen with means varying between 700 and 4000 ducats a year. If you continue to prosper in this manner, you will become masters of all the gold in Christendom. But, I beseech you, keep your fingers from your neighbours, as you would keep them out of the fire, and engage in no unjust wars, for in such errors God will not support princes. Everybody knows that the Turkish war has rendered you expert and brave in maritime enterprises. You have six able captains, competent to command large fleets. You have many persons well versed in diplomacy and in the government of cities, who are ambassadors of perfect experience. You have numerous doctors in different sciences, and especially in the law, who enjoy high credit for their learning among strangers. Your mint coins annually 1,000,000 ducats of gold and 200,000 ducats of silver, of minor pieces, 800,000. Of this sum 500,000 go to Syria, 100,000 to the Terra Firma, 100,000 to various other places, 100,000 to England. The remainder is used at home. You are aware that the Florentines send here every year 16,000 pieces of fine cloth, of which we dispose in Barbary, Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, Rhodes, Romania, the Morea, and Istria, and that they bring to our city monthly 60,000 (70,000?) ducats’ worth of merchandise, amounting annually to 840,000 or more, and in exchange purchase our goods to our great advantage.
“Therefore it behoves you to beware lest this city decline. It behoves you to exercise extreme caution in the choice of my successor, in whose power it will be, to a considerable extent, to govern the republic for good or for evil. Many of you are inclined to Messer Francesco Foscari, and do not, I apprehend, sufficiently know his impetuous character, and proud, supercilious disposition. If he is made doge, you will be at war continually. Those who now possess 10,000 ducats will have only 1000. Those who possess ten houses will be proprietors of one, and those who now own ten coats will be reduced to a single coat. You will lose your money and your reputation. You will be at the mercy of a soldiery. I have found it impossible to forbear expressing to you thus my opinion. May God help you to make the wisest choice! May he rule your hearts to preserve peace.”
Such [says Hazlitt[e]] were the last words of a great and prophetic statesman. The glaze of death was soon upon those eyes. Those lips were soon mute. On the 4th of April, 1423, Tommaso Mocenigo expired, leaving his country more prosperous and opulent than she had ever yet been. Her treasury was full. Her debt was considerably reduced. The statistics of her taxation and expenditure exhibited a surplus of 1,000,000 a year. Her home and foreign trade was flourishing beyond any precedent. No European power was more highly respected, and the alliance of none was more eagerly sought and cultivated.[e]
These calculations of Mocenigo are declared by Hallam[f] to be so strange and manifestly inexact as to deserve little regard; they are, however, viewed with greater consideration by Daru,[g] and by Hazlitt[e]. Doubtless they have not the accuracy of the reports of modern statisticians, yet, as a general statement of what at least are approximate facts, they have the fullest interest, and the utmost significance. They furnish a clew to the power and greatness of this remarkable city; a city which in the year 1422 is said to have had a population of only 190,000, yet which was the most powerful state of Italy, and which after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 was the uncontested world metropolis.
In considering the precise conditions of Venetian commerce and manufacture it will be well to take at the same time a general view of the commerce of late antiquity, that the conditions of trade in the East to which Venice fell heir may be understood.[a]
It was to their political and territorial situation that the Venetians owed their direction towards commercial operations—the cause of their prosperity. Fugitives from the Italian continent, refuged in small, uncultivated, barren islands, without certain communication with the continent, they saw nothing round them but the sea, in their hands a few fleeting possessions which they had saved from the general devastation, but which would soon be lost if work and industry could not fructify them.
Salt was the only product of the soil they trod. Fishery could only imperfectly provide a subsistence. But this fishery, this salt, became a means of exchange to provide things necessary for life. Nearly everything was lacking. The inhabitants of the lagunes were reduced to seek on the neighbouring continent grain, wood, metals, stone, even water. Happily for them their neighbours could bring them nothing. These people, desolated by continual war, were not given to navigation. If at that time, when so many fugitives took refuge in the lagunes, there had been near them a commercial maritime town eager to bring them all they wanted, such a town would have taken from them the few riches they had brought into the islands, and little by little these fugitives, instead of creating a country on uncultivated wastes, would have sought safety, ease, or work with the foreigner. But the rigour of their condition, the deprivation of all help condemned them to make great efforts, and their heroic works contributed also to their happiness and glory.
Again, they would hardly have believed it to be a good thing that the severity of their lot made them exert themselves on the sea. Continually obliged themselves to seek what was lacking, they necessarily acquired a habit of braving the ocean. When what they wanted was not to be found on the neighbouring coast they sought it on the opposite one. Gradually they noted at what points they could make their purchases or exchanges with most advantage. These frequent crossings, made on their own account, furnished occasion for becoming intermediaries for the two Adriatic shores. These journeys had at first for object only the provisioning of the islands. The spirit of commerce gave them wider views; their limits were extended, their means perfected. Art and cupidity essayed more difficult routes, and it was seen that this new town, placed in a position so easy to defend, almost on the borders which separate Europe from Asia, was called to become through the industry of its inhabitants the principal market for western peoples. Other local circumstances gave it the means of easy communication with a large number of consumers. Italy being separated from Germany by the Alps was impracticable for commerce. A port situated at the end of the Adriatic and the mouth of the Po would be the natural market for wools, silks, cotton, saffron, oil, manna, and all the other productions which Italy furnished to Hungary and Germany.
For the same reason, all that the north had to get from the Levant, Africa, and Spain had to pass by Venice. Journeys beyond the straits of Gibraltar towards the eastern coast of Europe then meant a voyage of long duration. Navigation was so imperfect that the eastern peoples had not yet learned to seek Mediterranean products, and it was very rarely that they made expeditions, which meant so much expense, danger, and loss of time. The result was that the end of the Adriatic Sea was the sole point of communication with the navigable sea, and Venice was a mart offering equal security against all enemies and tempests. The Po, the Brenta, and the Adige seemed to empty into the basin of the lagunes expressly to offer the Venetians an easy route by which they could take without danger or great expense all productions demanded by eastern Italy. Also it was a constant care with this growing republic to assure free navigation and all kinds of franchise on these waters and their numerous affluents. About the year 713 the first doge of the republic concluded a peace with Liutprand, king of Lombardy, which preserved to Venetians commercial privileges in the ports and lands of this kingdom. Not only were they exempt, with their neighbours, from all dues, but they held sovereign rights in perpetuity, and the exercise of these gave them the means of making themselves a burden to their rivals. One even sees them, in the fifteenth century, offering to furnish Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, with ten thousand foot and ten thousand horse, if he would let them administer the custom-houses of his capital.
Bridge of the Rialto, Venice
The republic did not give less attention to keeping the exclusive privilege of furnishing this continent with products of her own small territory. She perfected the art of extracting salt, and appropriated, as far as she could, all the salt beds of her coasts. She prevented her neighbours from exploiting those they had. The Venetians sold two qualities of salt—that manufactured by themselves in their lagunes, called Chioggia salt, and that drawn from the salt beds of Cervia, Istria, Dalmatia, Sicily, the African coasts, the Black Sea, and even Astrakhan. All these foreign salts were comprised under the name of sea-salt or ultramarine salt. The first was of superior quality and consequently of higher price. The Cervian salt beds belonged to the Bolognaise. With them the Venetians treated, and, to preserve the commerce of all the salt from this source, the latter determined the quantity which should be allowed to be sold, establishing surveillance even on the place of fabrication. The republic even obtained the right to transport rocksalt which southern Germany and Croatia took from their mines. They forced the king of Hungary to close his. The coast people on the Adriatic were not allowed to send away their salt, while the inhabitants of Italy could not take any but Venetian salt.
For any subject of the republic to buy foreign salt was a crime. The house of the offender was razed, and he himself banished forever. Yet while Venice made this monopoly she furnished all these people, now her tributaries, with excellent salt at a very low price. Sales were effected by companies, which undertook to provision such and such a country. It is almost incredible how much treasure this one branch of commerce for fourteen centuries procured the Venetians. These privileges cost some bloodshed. But the defence of their pretensions and the wars they had to sustain against the corsairs and jealous neighbours put them under the necessity of forming a military marine. After some centuries of effort, the flag of St. Mark was seen proudly flying all along the Mediterranean. Venetian fleets made conquests, the republic founded rich colonies, extended its navigation and commerce in all then known seas, and arrogated the sovereignty of the Adriatic Sea. The continual wars which divided other peoples, their gross ignorance, their almost general isolation with regard to commerce and navigation, were so many favourable circumstances which gave the republic time to establish the power of her marine and the prosperity of her industry quite firmly.