Mode of conducting her trade.
The Pisans seem to have carried on their trade in a great measure by companies, half laymen, half monastic, not altogether unlike some still existing in the ports of Italy. By such means, also, the commerce with their settlements at Tyre, Tripoli, Antioch, and St. Jean d’Acre, was chiefly conducted; and when, in 1171, they gained a position at Constantinople, owing to the quarrel between the Emperor Manuel and the Venetians, they profited greatly by the working of their commercial associations.[695] In less than a hundred years from this time, they had become so powerful that the Venetians found it prudent to enter into amicable arrangements with them, granting, among other favours to the Pisan merchants, the privilege of trading to all their ports of the Levant, Adriatic, and Archipelago, on the payment of only one-fourth of the ordinary customs on the merchandise in which they dealt.
Florence, A.D. 1250.
By this time Tuscany had become one of the most distinguished commercial states of Italy, the merchants of Florence having established relations or branch-houses in other parts of Italy, and even in distant foreign countries; while many of them, who had accumulated larger capital than could be conveniently employed in trade, became dealers in money by exchange. By borrowing and lending on interest at home, and by working their spare capital by means of their podestas, or agents abroad, they for a time, in some measure, monopolized the business of foreign exchange, realising immense fortunes to themselves, while rendering a vast boon to every person who had dealings with distant nations. The merchants of the other cities of Italy soon followed the example of the Florentines (who, it may be remarked, had risen from obscurity during the maritime wars of Pisa, their neighbouring city) in dealing in money as well as merchandise. The Florentines also established houses in France and in England, though, as we have seen, Henry III. passed a law[696] forbidding his people to borrow money from any foreign merchants. Having, together with the Lombards,[697] establishments throughout Europe, they became very useful to the Popes, who constantly employed them to receive and remit the large sums they extracted from different nations in virtue of their ecclesiastical supremacy. They were also doubtless useful in lending on interest the vast fortunes the Popes then possessed—“sowing their money to make it profitable,” as is happily expressed by one of the most quaint and intelligent writers of the period.[698]
The Florentines ship goods from a port of Pisa.
Sale and transfer of Leghorn, A.D. 1421.
During one of those intervals of peace and goodwill of such rare occurrence among these great commercial rivals in Italy, the Florentines obtained permission to deposit and ship their goods from a port of Pisa; but this good understanding proved of short duration. The Pisans repented having made any concessions to their enterprising and industrious neighbours, and soon afterwards the Florentines were obliged to withdraw from Pisa. Further bickerings took place between them, till at length, after holding for a short time an insignificant port belonging to the people of Siena, Pisa had to mourn the success of her rival, who purchased from Genoa the port of Leghorn, for one hundred thousand florins.[699]
First expeditions to Egypt, Constantinople, and Majorca.
The acquisition of so convenient and valuable a port rendered Florence, already a city of great wealth and influence, one of the richest of Italy. Aspiring to possess a navy, she created a board known as the “Six consuls of the sea,” to manage her naval affairs; but the Florentine genius was more banking and commercial than maritime, and her navy, even under the care of the Medicean princes and knights of Stefano, never rose to much importance. She, however, soon obtained merchant vessels sufficient to carry on her trade with the Muhammedans, and to restore the factories which Pisa had formerly established in the East. Her request to obtain, as successor to the Pisans, the advantages they had formerly enjoyed, having been granted by the Sultan of Egypt, the despatch of their first commercial galley to Alexandria was a day of extraordinary exultation. That day inaugurated a new era in the commerce of the now flourishing republic; a new outlet had been opened for Florentine industry and enterprise; a new maritime power had unfurled its flag on the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and it was fitting that so auspicious an event should be opened with great public rejoicings and solemn religious processions.[700]
Nor is it surprising that this day should have been one of exceeding joy to the people of Florence. Though rivalling all other states in the excellence of her manufactures and of her system of banking, she had hitherto failed in establishing a maritime commerce, having, in her earnest endeavours to gain such a position, been on all occasions almost as strenuously opposed by the Venetians and Genoese as by her more immediate neighbours, the Pisans. These obstacles had now been overcome. The departure, therefore, of her own ships from her own port was a matter to call forth something more than the ordinary tokens of joy. The Florentine Argo destined to re-open the valuable trade with Egypt and the far East contained, among its crew of two hundred and fifty persons, twelve young men of the principal families of Florence,[701] sent on board to acquire a knowledge of the trade of the Levant and of maritime affairs. To facilitate, also, commercial intercourse, knowing how difficult it is to reconcile people to a strange coinage and reckoning, the Florentines coined golden florins of the same value as those of Venice, called the “Galley florins,” which they sent in large quantities with the expedition to secure an easy currency at the foreign ports and to facilitate their commercial transactions.[702]