The maritime strength of the
Italian republics, especially of Genoa and Venice, corresponded to their vast commercial interests and the number of colonies they were expected to enlarge and defend. Thus, the Pisans in 1114 sent an armament, consisting of 300 vessels of various sizes, carrying 35,000 men and 900 horses, to the conquest of the Balearic Islands, which had become a nest of Moorish pirates. A great part of these troops were mercenaries procured from all parts of the world, and contingents drawn from their possessions in Sardinia. In 1293 the Genoese fitted out in a single month, against the Venetians, 200 galleys, each of which bore from 220 to 300 combatants recruited within the continental limits of the republic; and in the vast arsenal of Venice during the fourteenth century 800 men were continually at work, and 200 galleys, not to count the smaller craft, were kept ready in port for any emergency that might arise. Such formidable fleets were manned either by voluntary enlistments or impressment; the hope of heavy plunder, according to the barbarous war-system of those days, which the church strove against but could not wholly change, appealing to young men to serve as sailors or soldiers. The furious rivalry between Genoa and Venice began to show itself soon after the taking of Constantinople by the Franks in 1244, each desiring to reap alone the profits of the Levant trade. After many bloody encounters a peace was patched up in 1298, by which the latter was excluded for thirteen years from the Black Sea, along whose shores the former had colonies, forts, and factories, and was forbidden to send armed vessels to Syria. Terms so propitious raised the pride and influence of Genoa to
the utmost; and feared by all, and claiming to be mistress of the seas, she upheld the honor of her flag with extravagant solicitude. In 1332 she wasted the coast of Catalonia with a force of 200 galleys, and inflicted great injury on the commerce of Barcelona; and two years later, having captured twelve ships of the enemy, heavily freighted with merchandise, in the waters of Sicily, Cyprus, and Sardinia, with an example of ferocious cruelty which only the “accursed greed of gold” and a determination to exclude the Catalans from any share in Eastern commerce could prompt, six hundred prisoners were hanged at a single execution. She was resolved to command the seas, and consequently the trade of the world; but her rival, although crippled, was not prostrate, and the fourth war broke out between them in 1372 for possession of the classical island of Tenedos, so valuable as a naval station and renowned for its wheat and excellent red wine. The Genoese actually got into the lagoons of Venice, vowing to reduce her to the stagnant level of the waters, and approached so near to the city that their admiral could shout to the affrighted people on the quays, Delenda est Carthago! but by a singular freak of fortune they were themselves totally defeated, and glad to accept the mediation of Amadeus VI., Duke of Savoy. It was agreed that neither party should have the island in dispute, but that the duke should hold it at their common expense for two years and then dismantle the fortress.
During this war, called the War of Chioggia, which lasted until 1381, an unusually large number of corsairs roved the seas; but the Italians had long practised piracy, and whole communities were corsairs by
profession, just as on land condottieri could be hired to sack cities and castles and desolate whole provinces. The little town of Monaco was notorious during the middle ages for its pirates, as it still is for its ravenous land-sharks. There were two sorts of corsairs. Some were private individuals who went to sea through lust of gain, or because driven from their homes during the fights of faction, and seized whatever they could. These robberies and depredations marked piracy in its original form. Nevertheless during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries many otherwise honorable characters, who were often unjustly despoiled of their patrimony and driven as outcasts from their native cities, took to this occupation not entirely from inclination, but impelled by the brutality of their countrymen. We may recall as an extenuating circumstance what that grave judge, Lord Stowell, observed (2 Dods. 374) of the buccaneers, whose spirit at one time approached to that of chivalry in point of adventure, and whose manner of life was thought to reflect no disgrace upon distinguished Englishmen who engaged in it.
Other corsairs were patriotic citizens who armed their ships to injure the enemy during lawful hostilities; and although there was abuse in the system, they were not pirates, but privateersmen. Foreign nations used to buy ships from the Italians to increase their own armaments, or engage them to harass their opponents. It is curious, considering how completely maritime supremacy has deserted the Mediterranean for northern seas, to know that the poet Chaucer was sent by King Edward III. in November, 1372, as envoy to the republic of
Genoa to hire vessels for his navy; and Tytler says (Hist. of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 261) that in the same century many of the privateers employed by the Scots against England appear to have been vessels of larger dimensions and more formidable equipment than those of England, probably from their being foreign built, and furnished by the Genoese or the Venetians, for the purposes both of trade and piracy.
It was now that the word Jane came into the language—Chaucer and Spenser use it—for a small coin so-called from Janua (Genoa). It is termed in the old English statutes a galley half-pence.
The Florentines had originally no seaboard, and were obliged to charter ships wherever they could. In 1362, having taken into the service of the republic Pierin Grimaldi of Genoa, with two galleys, and hired two more vessels, their little fleet took the island of Giglio from the Pisans, and the following year, having broken into the port of Pisa itself, they took away the chains that protected it and hung them as trophies on the porphyry columns of their Baptistery.
The foreign commerce for which the maritime cities of Italy, and particularly Genoa and Venice, so savagely disputed, to the scandal of the Christian name among the infidels, as the old English traveller Sir John de Mandeville shows, was certainly very considerable, and a source of almost fabulous profit to those engaged in it who were fortunate in their ventures. Commerce was the foundation of Italy’s prosperity, which was greater than that of any other European country from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. The Italian merchants got cottons, silken goods, brocades, Cashmere shawls, spices, rhubarb