History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 1 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

A.D. 960.

“Some estimate,” remarks Gibbon,[353] “may be formed of the power of the Greek emperors by the curious and minute detail of the armament which was prepared for the reduction of Crete. A fleet of one hundred and twelve galleys, and seventy-five vessels of the Pamphylian style, was equipped in the capital, the islands of the Ægean Sea, and the seaports of Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. It carried thirty-four thousand mariners, seven thousand three hundred and forty soldiers, seven hundred Russians, and five thousand and eighty-seven Mardaites, whose fathers had been transplanted from the mountains of Libanus. Their pay, most probably of a month, was computed at thirty-four centenaries of gold, about one hundred and thirty-six thousand pounds sterling. Our fancy is bewildered by the endless recapitulation of arms and engines, of clothes and linen, of bread for the men and forage for the horses, and of stores and utensils of every description, inadequate to the conquest of a petty island, but amply sufficient for the establishment of a flourishing colony.”

Struggle for maritime supremacy.

For several centuries of that period, often termed, though with some injustice, “The Dark Ages,” the contests for the maritime supremacy of the Black Sea and Mediterranean were incessant. One barbarous nation succeeded another just as their lust for plunder was stimulated by the wealth of peaceful and unwarlike communities. The Goths and Vandals were followed by the Franks, the Bulgarians, and the Hungarians. Then arose the Russians and Normans, each contending for the chief rule at sea, or for the plunder such superiority enabled them to secure. After these came the Turks, the onward wave of the Tatars and of the Mongols of Central Asia, who, under various names and dynasties, overran the eastern empire, at the period of the Crusades to the Holy Land. Neither the Bulgarians nor the Hungarians were, however, a maritime people. The former took possession of a district of country south of the Danube; and the latter directed their attention to the conquest of the territory, a portion of which they still occupy. Both tribes, with the Turks, were descendants from the same races; and all of them originally, while following pastoral pursuits, had been trained to a military life. With tents made from the skins of their cattle, and dressed in furs, the produce of the hunt, they were easily housed and clothed. Possessing within themselves every want, and trained from their infancy to the use of arms and horses, they were most formidable opponents; the immense hordes with which they advanced generally enabling them to carry all before them.

Scandinavians;

Muscovites, their trade and ships.

Previous to the tenth century all the nations, or rather tribes, east of Germany were heterogeneously classed as Scythians. Being almost entirely nomadic, they as a rule disdained commerce, and held peaceful arts, the certain signs of civilization, in contempt. Those of them who were accustomed to the sea made piracy their chief occupation, and gloried in their marauding expeditions. Of these the Scandinavians were among the most daring. Impatient of a bleak climate, and narrow limits, they were ever ready to make the most distant and hazardous voyages, exploring every coast that promised either spoil or settlement. Though the Baltic was the first scene of their naval achievements, they extended their operations far beyond those seas, and were frequently found in the Euxine, where, with others of the northern tribes, they committed considerable havoc, and, from their superiority in arms and discipline, were greatly feared. About the tenth century there, however, arose among these barbarous hordes of the north the Slavonians, a tribe then occupying Lithuania, but soon better known as the Muscovites, who directed their attention to commercial pursuits. Occupying the chief ports of the Baltic, these people traded in leather, wool, flax, hemp, lead, and amber, receiving in exchange wine, manufactured iron, with dry goods, and a limited supply of silk in the web. But, however intrepid and disposed to persevere in commercial pursuits, their vessels were of the rudest description, and their knowledge of maritime affairs, or of the science and art of navigation, was far behind that of the most ignorant of the nations of the South. Nevertheless the Muscovites extended their trading operations farther to the south and east than any of the northern nations had hitherto done; and, not satisfied with the limited markets on the shores of the Baltic, they visited as traders the North or Arctic Ocean, and the Black and Caspian Seas. The internal navigation of the rivers Dwina, Don, and Volga, extending almost from Archangel to Astrakhan, afforded an almost inexhaustible field for inland and maritime commerce. Every year increased the demand from the western countries of Europe for their furs, salt, dried fish, train oil, honey, flax, and caviare; till at length they also started a trade with Persia by the Black Sea, and with India by the Caspian, being thus the first of modern nations to avail themselves of the ancient overland routes to the far East. St. Petersburgh and Moscow still carry on a considerable commercial intercourse with China by the same means.

Russians: their early commerce, and attempts to capture Constantinople.

Although it was not until the ninth century that the Russians are mentioned by name, their monarchy, within one century afterwards, obtained an important place in the map of Constantine, Novgorod and Kief being then considerable entrepôts of commerce. “Between the sea and Novgorod,” remarks Gibbon,[354] “an easy intercourse was discovered; in the summer through a gulf, a lake, and a navigable river; in the winter season, over the hard and level surface of boundless snows. From the neighbourhood of that city, the Russians descended the streams that fall into the Borysthenes; their canoes, of a single tree, were laden with slaves of every age, furs of every species, the spoil of their bee-hives, and the hides of their cattle; and the whole produce of the north was collected and discharged in the magazines of Kiow.” Thence, after many perils, they ultimately reached Constantinople, and exchanged their cargoes for the produce and manufactures of Greece, and often for the spices of India. A few of their countrymen settled in the capital and the provinces, under full protection of their persons and effects; but they soon abused the hospitality of the Greeks, by inciting those whom they had left behind to make no less than four attacks on the capital city during the first two hundred years of their settlement. They had seen, tasted, and envied the wealth of Constantinople; and then, as in more recent times, they hoped to revel in luxuries they were too barbarous to obtain by honest trade.

Their ships.