The power of Venice excites the jealousy of other nations.

full of invective, shews to what degree they had excited the general detestation of (94) other nations.

3. The grandeur and power of Venice had long given umbrage to the princes of Europe. Pope Julius II. in 1509, took advantage of this jealousy, to recover several Italian cities, considered by him as the patrimony of the church. He excited the emperor, the king of France, the king of Naples, the duke of Savoy, and the duke of Ferrara, to join in a league at Cambray, and to determine on the destruction of this ambitious republic. She owed her preservation to dissensions among the combined powers, and to the gold she employed to excite divisions.

9. Venice, having escaped, by refined policy, from such imminent danger, could not guard against the unexpected check she soon after received from the Portuguese, who had sailed round the Cape of Good Hope. The means which she employed to defeat

(94) They call themselves," exclaimed this ambassador, "the lords and masters of the sea, which ought rather to be common to all nations, or at least, to belong to your imperial majesty, in preference to all other princes; and, as if they were the husband of Thetis, or the wives of Neptune, they espouse the sea, every year, by throwing into it, a ring. Whoever heard of espousing the elements? The Venetians alone are capable of so much arrogance and folly; a nation who have inherited the avarice and cruelty of their ancestors. It is an invention worthy of these insatiable whales, these infamous corsairs, these pitiless Cyclopses and Polyphemuses, who beset every coast, and are more to be feared than the monsters of the deep; than shoals, rocks or tempests."

Decline of the commerce, and naval power of Venice.

their enterprises, and to destroy their establishments, by sending engineers, artificers, and warlike stores to the sultan of Egypt, and zamorin of Calcutta, proclaimed her weakness and despair. The commerce of the East-Indies, which the Venetians had carried on almost exclusively, by the Red sea and Egypt, and by the caravans of the maritime cities of Asia, now left her, never to return. Deprived of these resources, Venice ceased to attend to naval affairs, and no longer ranked among maritime powers.

10. This republic, so renowned for its wisdom and firmness, the rival of kings and emperors, and which held, for a long time, the balance of Europe, was supported, during the last century, by its absolute aristocracy, its state inquisitors, and the tyrannical precautions with which it was surrounded. Suspicious and pusillanimous from principle; dark and circumspect through weakness, but always affecting the chimerical sovereignty of the sea, instead of scrupulously observing her promised neutrality, she was so unwise as to form a secret coalition with Austria, during the last war against the French republic. The perfidious plots of the senate against the French were discovered, and the result of this short-sighted policy has been, her subjection to the emperor of Germany, and the merited contempt of the world.(95)

(95) Venice might easily resume its ancient splendour, if the Au rian government, its present possessor, were to put in execution the plan of reform presented to it, in 1801, by Francois-Jacques

The maritime power of Genoa

Section II.

GENOA.

§ 1. THE republic of Genoa, which has always supported a respectable rank among the states of Italy, long maintained the maritime ascendancy she had acquired, by means of her numerous victories over the Venetians, Pisans, and Saracens. Her power made her feared in the Ægean sea, in the Euxine, in Syria and Palestine. She seized on Caffa, a city of Little Tartary, situated on the coast of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, (96) and on the islands of Crete

Tommasini, the commissary of commercial relations, from Etruria, at Marseilles, contained in his excellent work, printed at Venice, entitled, Riflessioni sommarie sul modo di sottrare, il commercio e la marina Veneta da ulterior decadenza, &c.*

(96) Many vestiges of Genoese magnificence are yet to be seen at Caffa. They had possession of it above 200 years. But they were insolent enough to prohibit the Greeks and Venetians from entering any port beyond the mouths of the Danube. They formed a similar project of establishing a right of entry into the Bosphorus. The commerce of Caffa continued to flourish after the Turks had expelled the Genoese from the Crimea.

* We are ignorant of the nature of the plan of M. Tommasini, but the causes which have so totally annihilated the maritime power of the Italian states, by turning, the commerce of the east into other channels, still operate in all their force; so that it is not easy to conceive how the ancient splendour of Venice is to be restored. The events which subjected her to the rapacity of France, by whom she was transferred to Austria, are too recent not to be generally known.....T.

Commerce of Genoa with India.

and Cyprus, in which she possessed, during a century, the city of Famagousta. Mytelene and Galata, opposite Constantinople, also belonged to Genoa, with half the island of Sardinia, and the islands of Corsica, and Caprara. These establishments enabled the Genoese to carry on commerce with India, across the northern parts of Asia, and the deserts of Arabia, as well as by the Persian gulf, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Black Sea and Mediterranean, in the same manner as had been formerly done by the Greek empire.

2. Celebrated as navigators, the Genoese were so powerful that they assumed, and held, for a long time, the empire of the sea. They frequently cleared the Mediterranean of pirates, and of the Saracens, who infested its commerce. Their friendship was often solicited by the crusading powers, by the Greek emperors, and the kings of France. This republic was not ashamed to see its admirals and seamen enter into the service of foreign governments; and the famous Doria, the Grimaldi, and Spinola, who maintained the glory of their country, have been, at various times, the terror of the Ottomans and of the English.

3. The maritime power of Genoa was annihilated by the same cause that destroyed that of Venice. The Mediterranean, which had long been the theatre of war between the surrounding nations, failed to produce rivalship, when they ceased to feel any

Destruction of the maritime power of Genoa.-Pisa.

interest in possessing its exclusive empire. The discovery of another hemisphere, distinguished the age of Christopher Columbus, an enterprising Genoese. When America became known, all maritime enterprises were directed to the Atlantic Ocean. Italy was no longer the centre of the commercial world. From this period, the industry of the Genoese has been inadequate to the maintenance of their marine, which they have, at length, entirely abandoned.

Section III.

PISA.

§ 1. ON the subversion of the Roman empire, Pisa, like many other cities of Italy, erected itself into a republic. By means of the Arno, which served it for a port, and a shelter from storms and pirates, it soon became a formidable maritime power.

2. The riches of Pisa, increased by her immense commerce with the east, raised her to the rank of the most powerful cities in the Mediterranean, where she maintained such numerous fleets, that she was considered as the mistress of the sea. (97) Her name

(97) Pisanorum præterea clarissimam famam facere bella cum maximis populis, summisque principibus terra marique gesta, quæ tantis eos laudibus celebravere, ut privilegio quodam maris domini vocarentur. Jo. Florentinus, in vita Simon. Saltar. archiep. Pis. In Italia tres fuere prepotentes in maritimis rebus urbes, Pisa, Genua, Venitia, Eo magnitudinis rem Pisanam hac in parte erectam memo