“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