The steady advance of Venice brought about the final rupture. On the threat that they would join the Sultan Murad I and expel the Emperor John Paleologus from his throne, the Venetians wrung from the Emperor the concession of the island of Tenedos. The position of that island, commanding the mouth of the Dardanelles, made it intolerable to the Genoese that it should pass into the hands of their enemies. War was declared again in 1378. In the following year Vettor Pisani, the Venetian commander, was utterly defeated at Pola, though the Genoese lost their admiral in the battle. This delayed their attack on the Lagoons; and while they awaited the arrival of a new commander, the panic in Venice subsided and the Republic set to work to protect the home waters from an assault which seemed imminent day by day. In July Pietro Doria, the Genoese admiral, reconnoitred Chioggia, and it was clear that he intended to make that Lagoon city his head-quarters and thence to blockade and starve Venice to surrender. Chioggia lay close to the mainland, and Doria counted on abundant supplies from Francesco Carrara, Lord of Padua, who was at that time at open war with the Republic and blockading her on the land side. But Chioggia had yet to be captured. On August 11, 1379, the assault began and was renewed till the 18th, when the town fell into the hands of the Genoese. Carrara urged Doria to push on at once to Venice, only about twenty miles away; and had he done so there can be little doubt but that the flag of St George of Genoa would have floated in the Piazza, and Carrara would have carried out his threat of bitting and bridling the horses on St Mark’s. But the Genoese admiral decided to abide by his plan of a blockade and his decision proved the salvation of Venice. At Venice, in the face of this imminent peril, the whole population displayed coolness, courage and tenacity. The magistrates forewent their pay; new imposts were borne without complaint; the people, invited to express their wishes on the question of continuing the war, replied: “Let us man every vessel in Venice and go to fight the foe.” The public voice designated Vettor Pisani as leader, in spite of the disastrous defeat he had suffered at Pola, and the government withdrew their own candidate, Taddeo Giustinian. Thirty-four galleys were put together, and Pisani took the command. Meanwhile Doria had resolved to withdraw his whole fleet into Chioggia for winter quarters. Pisani grasped the situation and seized the opportunity. He resolved to blockade the blockaders. All the channels which gave egress from Chioggia to the sea were rendered useless by sinking across them galleys filled with stones. Pisani then drew up his fleet in the open sea opposite the Chioggian entrance to the Lagoons, in order to intercept any reinforcements which might be sent from Genoa. The Genoese in Chioggia were all the while straining every nerve to break through Pisani’s lines; his crews were kept on guard by turns day and night; it was winter time, and a storm from the east or south-east might easily spring up such as would probably drive Pisani on to the lee shore. The strain on the Venetians was very great. But just when they were on the point of abandoning the blockade, Carlo Zeno’s fleet, which had been cruising down the Adriatic, hove in sight. The reinforcements enabled Pisani to land troops and to occupy the point of Brondolo, whence his two great guns, the “Trevisana” and the “Vittoria,” opened on the town. A shot from one of them brought down the Campanile and killed the Genoese admiral Doria. His successor, Napoleone Grimaldi, withdrew all his troops into Chioggia, and abandoned the design of cutting a new canal from the Lagoons to the sea. Carlo Zeno with a company of mercenaries disembarked on the mainland and eventually succeeded in cutting off the supplies which Carrara was sending into Chioggia. The Genoese began building light boats in which they hoped to be able to sail over the obstacles in the channels that led to the Adriatic. Twice they attempted a sortie and failed. Famine came to close the long list of their disasters, and on June 24t, 1380, the Genoese fleet surrendered to Venice.
The successful issue of the war of Chioggia left the Republic of Venice the supreme naval Power in the Mediterranean. Genoa never recovered from the blow. She fell a prey to internal feuds, and in 1396 she renounced her independence, receiving from Charles VI of France a governor who ruled the State in French interests. Venetian predominance in the Mediterranean was confirmed by the recovery of Corfu in 1386, and by the purchase of Argos and Nauplia in the Peloponnese. But at the very moment when her power seemed indisputably established a new and formidable rival began to loom on the horizon. Sultan Bayazid’s victory at Nikopolis in 1392 planted a Muslim mosque and a Cadi in Constantinople and presaged for Venice that long series of wars, which were destined eventually to drain her resources and to rob her of her maritime supremacy. The expansion of Venice on the mainland of Italy began somewhat later than the creation of her maritime dominion, and was in a certain way the result of that dominion. The Republic was originally a sea-Power whose merchants brought to her port the various products of Eastern countries, all de transmarinis partlbus orientalium divitias. The geographical position of Venice as the seaport nearest to the centre of Europe indicated her as a great emporium and mart for the distribution and exchange of goods; and, further, her situation in the shallow waters of the Lagoons gave her a monopoly of salt. Cassiodorus, Theodoric’s secretary, when describing the growing State, points to salt as the real riches of the young Republic; “for men may live without gold,” he says, “but no one ever heard of their being able to do without salt.” Venice however required an outlet for her commodities; and this led at first to the establishment of factories in the districts of Belluno and Treviso, along the banks of the Piave and on one of the highroads into the heart of Europe (991), and subsequently at Ferrara (1100), and again at Fano (1130).
But these factories did not, strictly speaking, constitute territorial possessions. They were merely colonies of Venetian merchants living in foreign cities under special treaty rights which conferred extra-terri-toriality on the Venetian quarter. Indeed, the early policy of the Republic was to keep as far aloof as possible from all the complications of the Italian mainland. Her real interests lay in the East,—in the Levant, in Constantinople, in Syria. Her character was oriental rather than Latin. When Pippin, the son of Charles the Great, attempted to compel the Republic to recognise the Frankish suzerainty he received for answer: “J/yu-et? SoCXot de\ofj,ev elvau rov /JacrtXeoo? ru>v ‘PcafJ-aicov Kal ov’xl crow1’; and to the spirit of that answer the Venetians remained faithful throughout their early career.
It is not till the year 1300 that the Republic took a decisive and acquisitive step on the Italian mainland. In Ferrara, as we have seen, Venice had established a commercial colony protected by treaty rights. These were swept away when Salinguerra held the city for the Emperor Frederick II, who was hostile to Venice on account of the part she was playing in the Lombard League, for which she acted as banker. Pope Gregory IX, while endeavouring to recover the city, which he claimed as part of Countess Matilda’s legacy to the Church, applied to Venice for help. The Republic was largely instrumental in expelling the Imperial troops and recovered all her privileges and interests in the mainland city. These privileges and interests were destined to entangle her in the complications of mainland politics.
The d’Este family was established at Ferrara and held it as a fief of the Holy See. But the Republic had been growing steadily in wealth, and strength, thanks to her expansion in the Levant and to the consolidation of her constitution as an oligarchy by the closing of the Great Council in 1297. She had before her the example of other lordships rising to power on the mainland,—Scala, Visconti, Carrara, all in her neighbourhood. It seems certain from the attitude of the Doge, Pietro Gradenigo,