I have spoken in the preceding book of the discovery of America, and of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope. It is probable that, without the crusades, the genius of navigators would, although later, have surmounted the immense space and numberless dangers that separated the Baltic and the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean, and the Old World from the New. We may at least say that the distant expeditions and the perilous enterprises undertaken beneath the banners of the cross, prepared the way for the last prodigies of navigation, by opening everywhere new routes for industry, and, above all, by favouring the progress of commerce, the natural and necessary link between the divers nations and the different countries of the globe.
Each climate has its productions; and this diversity of riches creates for men an obligation for exchanges. This obligation for exchanges produces communication among all nations, so that in time the most widely-separated regions cannot remain unknown to each other. It may truly be said, that Providence has thus placed various productions in different climates, that it has denied to some countries what it has granted to others, to create for men dispersed over the face of the earth, the necessity for reciprocally seeking each other, for trading to supply their mutual wants, for communicating their knowledge, and for marching together towards civilization.
In the middle ages, the indolent and effeminate Greeks neglected to bring into the West the merchandises of Asia. The Saracens only anchored on the coasts of Europe, to bring thither the scourges of war. The commerce of the West went to seek that which was not brought to it; and frequent voyages to the East were all for the profit of the West.
A long time before the crusades, the merchandises of India and Asia had arrived in Europe, sometimes by land, crossing the Greek empire, Hungary, and the country of the Bulgarians; but more frequently by the Mediterranean, in which were all the ports of Italy. These routes were both made more familiar by the holy wars, and from that time nothing could stop the rapid progress of commerce, protected in its march by the standard of the cross.
Most of the maritime cities of the West not only got rich by furnishing Europe with the productions of the East, but they found further a considerable advantage in the transport of pilgrims and Christian armies. Fleets followed along the coasts of the countries in which the Crusaders were fighting, and sold them the munitions of war and the provisions of which they always stood in need. Thus commerce brought back into Europe a part of the treasures which the princes and barons, who ruined themselves to go and fight the infidels, carried into Asia.
All the wealth of the maritime cities of Syria, and even of Greece, belonged to merchants of the West. They were the masters of a great part of the Christian cities of Asia; we know what was the share of the Venetians after the taking of Constantinople. They possessed all the isles of the Archipelago, and half of Byzantium. The Greek empire was as another Venice, with its laws, its fleets, and its armies.
The Latins soon lost Constantinople, Jerusalem, and most of the countries which submitted to their arms. Commerce, more fortunate, preserved its conquests after the crusades. The city of Tana, built at the mouth of the Tanais, became for Venice a colony, which opened for her useful relations with Persia and Tartary, and which dominated in the markets of Tauris, Trebizond, Bagdad, and Bassora. Some Genoese, assembled in a little city of the Crimea,—Caffa, at the time even when the Turks were threatening Europe, employed themselves in working the mines of the Caucasus, and receiving the treasures of India by way of Astracan. European commerce established stores even among nations that made cruel war against the Christians. The terror which the Mamelukes inspired did not prevent colonies of merchants establishing themselves in Egypt. Africa, particularly the coast of the Mediterranean, was all subservient to their mercantile ambition, and the places which St. Louis had not been able to conquer, became tributaries to their industry.
Whilst the commerce of all parts of the world was thus placed in the hands of a few maritime cities, many of the great kingdoms of Europe were still strangers to it. England, which had no other wealth but its wools, gladly received in its capital the merchandises of Asia, brought thither by Italian and Spanish merchants. The cities of France took but little part in the commerce of the East. The crusades were the work of the French; others gathered the fruits of them. Marseilles was, in the middle ages, the only French city which kept up any relation with distant nations. This city founded by the Phocians, for the sake of the commerce with the Gauls, had never ceased to turn its eyes towards the places of its origin, and have commercial relations with Syria and Greece. Spain, whose industry developed itself early, took more advantage from the crusades, and, towards the end of the holy wars, the Spaniards had warehouses upon all the coasts of Asia.
No country, however, derived more advantage from the trade of the East than Italy. This country, which dominated over the Mediterranean, and which lay open to all parts of the known world, was placed in the most favourable position. This position, which had formerly facilitated the conquests of the Romans, assisted the nations of Italy in their new enterprises, and subdued the world to their speculations, as it had subdued it to their arms. Whilst their fleets set out for the East, they sent into Europe, not legions and proconsuls, as Rome had done, but caravans of merchants, who subdued the provinces they passed through to the calculations and the wants of commerce. These merchants disposed of, by their industrious traffic, all the money which then circulated in the West. In all countries they had numerous colonies and considerable establishments. Europe has no great cities in which the name of the Lombards, given to a street, to a quarter, does not, even at the present day, attest the long sojourn of the Italian merchants.
We cannot help admiring this power of commerce; but it had likewise its principle of destruction. What rivalries, what jealous passions, did it not give birth to daily! Pacific conquests were contended for without ceasing, swords in hand. In this struggle many cities succumbed; Pisa was destroyed by Genoa; Genoa, in her turn, could not maintain its rivalry against Venice. Another rock for these commercial powers, was the mobility of the commerce which had elevated them, and which carried unceasingly its favours and its gifts from one place to another. If commerce changed its route or its direction, that was quite enough to make a city prosper, or to precipitate its fall. In the middle ages, a crowd of cities disappeared, without discord or war having at all contributed to their ruin. It appeared as if fortune took a pleasure in destroying her own work, and as if she disdained on that account to associate herself with human passions.