The siege and capture of Tyre mark the close of the second period in the history of Venetian maritime expansion. With the erection of factories in Constantinople and in the chief cities of the Syrian sea-board the Republic may be said to have embarked upon the construction of that greater Venice, which was to be completed after the Fourth Crusade.
But the course of Venetian expansion was not uninterruptedly smooth. The rapid growth of her power in the Levant procured for the Republic an enemy in the person of the Eastern Emperor. The Emperors had always viewed with suspicion the whole movement of the Crusades and more especially the professedly commercial attitude assumed by Venice, who was obviously bent upon acquiring territory and rights inside the Empire. They were aware that they could chastise her by favouring her rivals Pisa and Genoa. The growing wealth and importance of Venetian colonists in Constantinople, where they are said to have numbered two hundred thousand, increased the imperial jealousy. The Venetians were accused of being troublesome, brawling neighbours, who kept the town in an uproar. In March, 1171, all Venetians in the Empire were placed under arrest and their property confiscated. Popular indignation at Venice swept the Republic into war with the Emperor. One hundred galleys and twenty ships were manned in the course of a hundred days. The issue of the campaign was disastrous for the Venetians. The Emperor’s Ambassadors induced the Doge to temporise. The plague decimated and nearly annihilated the fleet. The shattered remnants returned to Venice where the Doge was slain by the mob.
With the reign of Enrico Dandolo and the Fourth Crusade we approach a memorable period in the history of Venetian maritime empire. When Dandolo came to the throne the affairs of the Republic as regards their maritime power stood thus. In the imperial city their position was precarious, liable to violent changes, exposed to the machinations of their commercial and naval rivals, Pisa and Genoa. Their communications with their Syrian factories were not secure. Zara and the Dalmatian coast were still in revolt. In the year 1201 the Republic discovered that the usurping Emperor, Alexius III, was in treaty with the Genoese and meditated conferring on them ampler trading rights. The immediate objects of the Republic were the recovery of Zara and the suppression of their commercial rivals in Constantinople. The story of the Fourth Crusade is the story of the way in which the Republic accomplished its aims.
Zara was recovered and on the fall of Constantinople, in 1204, the Republic reaped material advantages of a preponderating kind. Her portion of the booty gave her solid riches, with which she bought the rights of Boniface over Crete and Salonika, and obtained leave for Venetian citizens to occupy as fiefs of the Empire any Aegean islands not already owned by the Republic. In this way she became possessed of the Cyclades and Sporades, and held the seaports of Thessaly and the island of Crete. Zara and other Dalmatian towns now became liers both by conquest and by title; and thus the Republic acquired an unbroken line of communication from Venice down the Adriatic to Constantinople and round to the seaports of the Syrian coast.
But the possession of this large maritime empire had to be made good. Venice was unable to undertake at one and the same time the actual conquest and settlement of so many scattered territories. She adopted a method borrowed from the feudal system of her Frankish allies, and granted investiture of the various islands, as fiefs, to those of her richer families who would undertake to render effective the Venetian title and to hold the territories for the Republic at a nominal tribute. We have no evidence as to how these feudatories established their title and governed their fiefs; but when we come to deal with the growth of the Venetian constitution we shall find that a great increase in private wealth resulted from this partition of the Levant islands. We do know, however, the system adopted for the colonisation of the large island of Crete, which the Republic kept directly in its own hands. Venetian citizens were tempted to settle in the island by the gift of certain villages with their districts. These they were expected to hold for the Republic in the case of a revolution. The Governor of the island, who bore the title of Duke of Candia, was a Venetian noble elected in the Great Council at Venice; he was assisted by two Councillors. Matters of importance were decided by the Great Council of Crete, which was composed of all noble Venetians resident in the island and all noble Cretans. The remaining magistracies were formed upon the Venetian model; and the higher posts, such as those of Captain-General, Commander of the Cavalry, Governors, and military commanders in the larger towns, were filled by Venetians. The minor offices were open to Cretans. Absolute equality was granted to both> Roman and Orthodox rites. In fact the Republic displayed at once the governing ideas of her colonial policy, namely to interfere as little as possible with local institutions; to develop the resources of the country; to encourage trade with the metropolis; to retain only the very highest military and civil appointments in her own hands as a symbol and guarantee of her supremacy.
For the defence of these widely scattered possessions and for the preservation of communications between Venice and her dependencies the Republic was obliged to organise a service of patrol squadrons. The Captain of “the Gulf,” that is the Adriatic, had his head-quarters at the Ionian islands, and was responsible, for the safety of merchantmen from Venice to those islands and in the waters of the Morea as far as Modon and Coron. From the Morea to the Dardanelles the safety of the sea route was entrusted to the Venetian feudatories in the Greek islands; while the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, and the Black Sea were patrolled by the Black Sea squadron.
It is obvious that the outcome of the Fourth Crusade was of vast importance for the expansion of Venetian maritime empire; and we are now in the presence of a Venice quite different from anything we have encountered hitherto. The Republic assumed the aspect of a naval Power with a large mercantile marine and organised squadrons of warships for her protection. The crews of Venetian warships were at this period free citizens, serving under the command of a Venetian noble. Condemned prisoners or galley-slaves were not employed till much later,—first because the State was hardly large enough to furnish sufficient criminals to serve the oar, and secondly because, as long as boarding formed an important operation in naval tactics, condemned criminals could not be employed with safety as it was dangerous to entrust them with arms. When ramming took the place of boarding, the galley-slave, chained to his bench, could be used precisely as we use machinery.
The expansion of Venetian maritime empire as the outcome of the Fourth Crusade roused the jealousy of her great rival Genoa. It was inevitable that the Genoese and the Venetians, both occupying neighbouring quarters in the Levantine cities, each competing for a monopoly of Eastern commerce, should come to blows. The Republic was now committed to a struggle with her western rival for supremacy in the Levant-a deplorable conflict fraught with disaster for both parties.
A long period of naval campaigning ensued, the fortune of war leaning now to one side, now to the other. The breathing-space between each campaign and the next was devoted by the Republic to the development of her commerce. Treaties were stipulated with Milan, Bologna, Brescia, Como. Trade with England and Flanders by means of the Flanders galleys was developed. Venetian merchants brought sugar from the Levant, and exchanged it for wool in London. The wool was sold in Flanders and cloth bought, which was placed on the markets of Italy and Dalmatia, as the ships sailed east again to procure fresh cargoes for the London market. Industries also began to take root in the city. Refugees from Lucca introduced the silk trade, and established themselves in a quarter near the Hialto. The glass manufacture of Murano received an impetus. The population of the city numbered 200,000; the males fit for arms, that is between the ages of twenty and sixty, were reckoned at 40,000.
There is proof that, in spite of defeats by Genoa at Ayas and at Curzola, Venice had achieved a high position in the eyes of European Princes. Edward III asked for Venetian aid in his wars with Philip of France; he offered extensive privileges, and invited the Doge to send his sons to the English court. Alfonso of Sicily apologised for insults offered to Venetian merchants. The Pope proposed that Venice should undertake the protection of Christians against the Ottoman Turks, who were now beginning to threaten Europe, in return for which the Republic was to enjoy the ecclesiastical tithes for three years.
But Genoa was not yet driven from the field. It was impossible that commercial rivalries should not lead to fresh explosions. The fur trade in the Crimea gave