The Pope, anxiously revolving the sad vicissitudes of the Christians in the east, turned to Venice and Genoa, praying them for the love of Christ to combine and save the fair island of Cyprus, still unpolluted by the presence of the infidels. But the lion of St Mark was a fierce yoke-fellow. The more restricted the field of influence became between Venice and Genoa the more bitter grew their jealousy. Two fleets were, however, fitted out in response to the Papal appeal. Their prows had scarcely touched Cyprian waters when a fight took place between some of the allied ships, and to the edification of the Saracen the two greatest maritime powers of Christendom were soon engaged in mutual destruction. Unavailing efforts were made by the Church to heal the strife, for while the Dominican envoys were treating at Venice the feverish activity at the arsenal told too plainly that the time for the peacemaker was not yet come. Rumours soon reached Venice of an alliance between the Genoese and the Greeks and of the threatened closure of the Dardanelles to her ships. She delayed no longer to strike. All her seamen between sixteen and sixty were enrolled; her patrician houses were called to furnish their part of a new armament, and on October 7th, 1294, the fleet was under sail. The admiral, Marco Besegio, sighted the Genoese fleet under Nicolo Spinola off Ayas, in Asia Minor. The enemy was inferior in strength, and Besegio, too confident perhaps of victory, was out-manœuvred, defeated with heavy losses, and himself slain. The Genoese, to clinch their victory, despatched a mighty fleet of nigh two hundred sail manned by forty-five thousand men, among whom were the chiefs of their noble houses. Meanwhile Venice, shrewdly calculating that the heavy financial strain involved in the maintenance of so huge an armament would soon wear the enemy out, steadily equipped a new fleet, called out a fresh levy, and concentrated her force on the defence of the lagoons. Before a year was past the Genoese, after spoiling and slaughtering the hapless inhabitants of Canea in Crete, returned to port.
Early in 1295 news came to Venice which stung her to fury. A street row at Constantinople had developed into a general attack by the Genoese on the Venetians. The former were victorious, and after flinging the Venetian Governor out of the windows of the palace, dashing him to pieces, proceeded to an indiscriminate massacre of the inhabitants of the Venetian colony. The Greeks sent envoys to disclaim any responsibility in the outrage, but they were hectored by the Doge, who demanded an enormous indemnity, which served but to cement their alliance with the Genoese. Late in the spring the Venetian commander, Ruggieri Morosini, with a fleet of forty galleys, forced the Dardanelles, wasted the Genoese suburb of Galata and laid siege to Constantinople. Meanwhile another fleet, under Giov. Soranzo, entered the Black Sea and sacked the Genoese settlement of Caffa; but the elements amply avenged the Genoese. Soranzo returned to Venice bearing an unheroic story of vessels disabled and men frozen to death by the rigours of an Euxine winter. The year 1297 passed in petty expeditions, and towards the end of the autumn Boniface VIII. essayed to negotiate a peace. The magnanimous Pope (Dante’s pet enemy) went so far as to offer, if the Genoese paid one-half, to pay himself the other half of the claims of the Venetians, but the latter rejected all compromise, and Boniface despairing of success inculpated the pride of Venice, and washed his hands of the whole business. Each power prepared for a final struggle.
Among the wealthy Venetians whose enthusiasm took the form of offering themselves and their ships to the common cause was a certain Marco Polo but recently returned from adventurous journies in the mysterious lands of the Grand Khan of Tartary; in Persia, China, Japan, and the Indies; and who from his wonderful stories of the million peopled cities and millions of jewels and treasure he had seen in his twenty-five years’ wanderings was popularly known as Messer Marco Milione. In August 1298 all was ready and a fleet of ninety-five sail, under the command of Andrea Dandolo, set its course southwards and came upon the Genoese squadron of eighty-five vessels, under Lamba Doria off the island of Curzola. The fleets were about evenly matched, and on September 8th the action began. Doria, by superior seamanship, got the weather gauge and the Venetians, fighting too with the sun in their eyes, were routed. Twelve galleys, whose captains, panic-stricken, had abandoned the fight, alone escaped. With abject mien they told the extent of the disaster. The fine fleet was sunken, captured or burned, the loss in killed appalling, and seven thousand of their countrymen were on their way to Genoese prisons.[27] Among the captives was Messer Marco Milione himself, who to relieve the tedium of his imprisonment, dictated in halting French to his prison comrade Rustichello the story of his wanderings and adventures. A small court, in which Marco Polo’s house stood on a site now covered by the Malibran Theatre, is called to this day the Corte del Milione.
Venice, conscious that her staying power was greater than her rival’s, without a moment of panic set about equipping another fleet of a hundred galleys. But Genoa, exhausted by her costly victory, was willing to treat, and in 1299 the Imperial Vicar of Milan effected a peace between the Republics on honourable terms.
During the Genoese war the aristocracy had quietly matured plans for fencing off their preserves from any intrusion of the democracy. Two abortive attempts had been made in 1286 and 1296 to restrict membership of the Great Council to members of the aristocracy. Gradenigo, who was a leader of iron will and indomitable purpose, succeeded the next year in achieving the revolution in the Constitution known as the shutting of the Great Council (Serrata del Gran Consiglio). The Quarantia[28] were charged (1) to put to the ballot one by one all who for the past four years had sat in the Great Council. Those who received not less than twelve votes were to be members up to Michaelmas, when, after being subjected to a new ballot, they were to serve for a further period of one year. (2) Three electors were to be appointed who should submit further names of non-members of the Great Council for election under the same system of ballot. (3) The three were to sit in the Council until Michaelmas, when they were to be superseded by other three, who should sit for a year. (4) The law could not be repealed save with the consent of five of the six privy councillors, twenty-five of the Quarantia, and two-thirds of the Great Council. Such were the chief provisions of the measure which transformed the aristocracy into an oligarchy and created the Maggior Consiglio.
It will be seen that by the second clause an avenue was left open by which a Venetian, not a member of the favoured class, might enter the aristocratic close, but it was rendered inoperative by the principle which the three laid down for their guidance, that only those whose paternal ancestors had been members of the Great Council between 1172 and 1297 should be eligible for ballot. The effect of the change was to increase the number of the Council. In 1296 it consisted of two hundred and ten members. In 1311 they had risen to ten hundred and seventeen; in 1340 to twelve hundred and twelve; in 1490 to fifteen hundred and seventy; and in 1510 to sixteen hundred and seventy-one.