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

by W. S. Lindsay

Genoa.

The early history of Genoa was not unlike that of Venice; in so far at least, that, like it, Genoa had been for some centuries under the control, if not the vassal, of the eastern empire: at the period, however, to which we are now referring, the Genoese had a large colony at the seaport town of Heraclea, in Thrace. From this place the gratitude of the Greek emperor, Michael, recalled them, at the same time giving them the exclusive privilege of the suburb of Galata—a settlement whereby, more than by anything else, the commerce of the Byzantine empire was revived.[368]

Genoese settlement at Galata and Pera.

Though indulged in the use of their own laws and magistrates, the Genoese were required to submit to the duties of subjects, and undertook, in case of a defensive war, to supply the Greek emperor with fifty empty galleys and fifty more completely armed and equipped. In consideration of these services, and to afford them protection from the Venetian fleets, the Genoese were allowed the dangerous privilege of surrounding Galata with a strong wall and wet ditch, with lofty towers and engines of war on their ramparts. No wonder that, having secured so much, they should seek to acquire more, and that, within a short space of time, they had covered the adjacent hills with their villas and castles, each fort being connected with the next, and protected by new fortifications. Nor, as was natural, did they stop here; they soon sought to possess themselves of the whole trade of the Black Sea, long the especial patrimony of the emperors of Constantinople, and a prerogative which, in the reign of Michael, had been acknowledged by even Bibars, the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt.

Arrogance of the Genoese, who at last rebel, A.D. 1348,

Nor, having resolved on the end, were they long in hesitating about the means to it; first, in seemingly friendly alliance with the Greeks, they secured for their colonies at Galata and Pera the bulk of the corn trade; while, at the same time, their fishermen supplied the wants of the city, the salt fish largely required by the Catholic nations, and caviare for the Russians. Next, they secured for themselves the produce of the inland caravan trade with the remote East, which still, as formerly, found its way by the waters of the Oxus and the Caspian to the eastern shores of the Euxine. In almost every case, their course of business was a strict monopoly, the Venetians and all other rivals being carefully excluded from any participation in their trade. So powerful, indeed, did they become, that, while they awed the Greeks into a reluctant submission, they resisted effectually, at their chief settlement, Caffa,[369] the inroad of the Tatar hosts. The demands of the Genoese merchants were in proportion to their rapacity, and at last they actually usurped the customs and even the tolls of the Bosphorus, securing for themselves alone a revenue of two hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which they reluctantly doled out to the emperor thirty thousand.

The usurpations of the Genoese, which extended over nearly a century, every year increasing in their arrogance, ended, as might have been anticipated, with a demand for the empire itself. Having been refused some commanding heights at Pera, on which to erect additional fortifications, they embraced the opportunity of the emperor’s temporary absence from his capital to rise in open rebellion. “A Byzantine vessel,” remarks Gibbon,[370] “which had presumed to fish at the mouth of the harbour, was sunk by these audacious strangers; the fishermen were murdered. Instead of suing for pardon, the Genoese demanded satisfaction; required in a haughty strain that the Greeks should renounce the exercise of navigation; and encountered with regular arms the first sallies of the popular indignation. They instantly occupied the debatable land; and by the labour of a whole people, of either sex and of every age, the wall was raised, and the ditch was sunk with incredible speed. At the same time, they attacked and burnt two Byzantine galleys; while the three others, the remainder of the imperial navy, escaped from their hands; the habitations without the gates or along the shore were pillaged and destroyed; and the care of the regent, of the empress Irene, was confined to the preservation of the city. The return of Cantacuzene dispelled the public consternation; the emperor inclined to peaceful counsels, but he yielded to the obstinacy of his enemies, who rejected all reasonable terms, and to the ardour of his subjects, who threatened, in the style of Scripture, ‘to break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’... The merchants of the colony, who had believed that a few days would terminate the war, already murmured at their losses; the succours from their mother-country were delayed by the factions of Genoa; and the most cautious embraced the opportunity of a Rhodian vessel to remove their families and effects from the scene of hostility.”

and declare war, A.D. 1349.

The peaceful counsels of the emperor having proved of no avail, the Byzantine fleet in the spring of the following year attacked Pera by sea, while the Greek troops assaulted its walls and ramparts. The attack, however, wholly failed; the Genoese carried all before them, and, crowning their galleys with flowers, they added to this insult the throwing, by means of their engines, of large stones into the very heart of the imperial city. To insults such as these even Cantacuzene could not submit; but, discerning clearly his own weakness, it occurred to him that other and known enemies of Genoa might do for him what he had not strength to do for himself: hence his appeal to Venice, as the great naval rival of Genoa, and a yet more fatal coquetry with the Turkish hosts, who by this time were in full possession of the wide plains of Asia Minor.

Nor were the Venetians slow to accept an offer likely to lead to the humbling of enemies so inveterate. The war assumed proportions nowise foreseen, and fluctuated for more than a century with alternate success, but with ultimate ruin to the Genoese, whose audacity had provoked it. During the whole of this struggle the eastern empire practically counted as nothing, and would, but for the intervention of the Venetians, have sunk into a province of Genoa. The connection, however, with the Turkish tribes led to more deplorable disasters, in that, owing to the weakness of the emperor, an opportunity was now, for the first time, afforded to them of obtaining a footing on the sacred land of Europe itself.