The Historians' History of the World 08

Accustomed by their intercourse with the Orientals to the burning savour of spices, soon they were not able to get along without them. They could not prepare famous dishes without plentiful use of spice; wines even were perfumed with them. Romancers of the era of the Crusades sang the praises, on nearly every page, of cinnamon, musk, clove, and ginger. Did these writers praise some exquisite odour, it was with spices they compared it. Did their fertile imagination build some superb palace, the magic home of the most powerful genii, they surrounded it with an odoriferous forest, planted with spice-bearing trees. Several Italian towns, especially the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, got from this, almost entirely, not only the benefits of a commerce which embraced so many sought-for commodities, but the other advantages of a sea-trade abandoned to the Franks, by the Greeks and Arabs.

ENRICHMENT OF CITIES

Venice, who nourished amid her waters an enormous population, seems through her natural environment to have been peopled only with merchants and followers of the sea. The Crusades helped the proud city to the accomplishment of her brilliant destiny, to make the Orient tremble at her fleets, to enrich the Occident by her industry, and to command respect through many ages for her military power. Genoa, less happily situated, and less rich than Venice, was, however, powerful enough to have aroused the Sea-Republic’s jealousy. Pisa had pushed herself too late into rivalry with Genoa, and the destruction of her harbour was the work of implacable Genoese hatred. Florence, never free from the throes of civil discord, obtained nevertheless great wealth from her commerce, which she generously consecrated to the culture of the fine arts.

The Crusades, therefore, enriched the great cities in giving the opportunity to extend their trade, and also to raise to exorbitant prices charges for their ships. The hardships and dangers which were inseparable from the overland route made it less and less frequented after the first expeditions. Crowds of pilgrims made their way to the ports, and several Italian republics amassed, in the transportation of human freight, a degree of wealth comparable for that time to that which the merchandise of the new world had since brought to the most flourishing cities of modern days.

COLONISATION

The establishment of colonies in the East gave more substantial foundation to Italy’s prosperity. Several cities, whose own interest was a constant stimulus, and whose industry grew with success, founded trading colonies in Egypt, Africa, throughout the kingdom of Jerusalem; at Tyre, where the Pisans had formed a celebrated commercial group; at Antioch, at Acre, stronghold of the Christians; at several other places which the Crusades had opened to them; and as a result the principal cause of the decline of Venice and other powerful Italian cities was not alone the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, but to some extent the conquests which made Selim I master of Egypt.

Before the days of the holy wars, some of the Italian towns already possessed trading stations in the Greek Empire, but Constantinople having fallen into the hands of the Latins, the active spirit of the Italians was no longer disturbed by the defiant policy of the Eastern emperors. The Genoese founded the colony of Kaffa, which became very prosperous; the Venetians and Pisans multiplied their warehouses in many places. The subjects of the doge, always mindful of their commerce, demanded the islands of the archipelago, in dividing with the French the territory wrested from the Eastern Empire; but at the moment of taking possession of their share they feared to weaken themselves by occupying territory so remote and widely separated. In the end, however, they could not bring themselves to let go a maritime country so well adapted to trade, and the senate invited by proclamation the rich citizens to take possession of these isles, promising to give in fief those they succeeded in making subject to themselves. Thus it happened that the descendants of the Greeks once so jealous of their political independence saw, so to speak, their freedom at the auction block in the public squares of Venice.