Written from Palos, August 1, 1492.
The Venetians may not have very deeply regretted their refusal to help the Genoese navigator, but they were made to suffer acutely by the Portuguese discovery of the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope. For Portugal now imported by sea direct to Lisbon the rich merchandise of the East, of which the Venetians had hitherto enjoyed a monopoly, but for the passage of which they paid heavy duties to the Sultan. The supremacy of Venetian navigation was over, and a more daring race of seamen ventured voyages in distant and unknown oceans whither they were not followed by the old-fashioned mariners of the Mediterranean. It was in vain that the Republic proposed to the Sultan Bajazet a commercial alliance by which both powers might have profited; the Turk could not understand that the ruin of Venetian trade must impoverish the whole Archipelago and Constantinople itself. Instead of an alliance, a renewal of hostilities ensued, in the course of which Lepanto fell into the hands of the Turks, either because the garrison was insufficient or because the Venetian admiral,
THE PIAZZETTA, MISTY MORNING
Grimani, was not equal to the service required of him.
Marin Sanudo, III. chap. iii. 105.
He shared the fate of almost all native-born Venetian commanders, and was brought home laden with chains so heavy that he could not have walked across the Piazzetta from the landing-place to his prison if he had not been held up by his son, who was a Cardinal. He was confined in one of the worst cells, surnamed ‘Forte,’ the Strong, and his sufferings were such, according to Sanudo, who kept his journal at the time, that the Cardinal appeared before the Signory one day to beg, as a favour, that his father might be executed rather than made to die by inches in his dungeon.
The people, as often happened, were quite of the opinion of their masters, that to be beaten in fight was a shameful crime, and a savage song about the unlucky Grimani was bawled in the streets—
Antonio Grimani, ruin of Christians, rebel of Venice!
May you be eaten by dogs,
By dogs and their pups,
You and your sons,
Antonio Grimani, ruin of Christians!
But it was of small use to torment the poor man and to make songs upon him. Venice was forced to make a commercial treaty with the Portuguese, to save herself from ruin.