Page:A Comprehensive History of India Vol 1.djvu/180

 1 1 lllS'lOliV OF IM>IA. [Book ].

A 1) 12(11. Genoese, the Pi.sans, and the Venetians, whose fleets accompanying t!i(nj in their march along the nearest shores, 8uj)j)lied them b<jth with provisions and the incaiis of transport. In return for these services they naturally shared in the success of those whom they had assisted, ami, when vahialde harbours fell into the hands of the Crusaders, obtained many imfjortant privileges. Pro-ieasof Tlic maritime states of Italy, while thas ostensibly engaged in a wjinmon

tlio Italian i i • i i i i

maritime causc, wcre by no means prepai-ed to admit that they had a common interest, and were hence disposed to act towards each other on the narrowest and most illiberal principles. The old maxim, that the commercial prosperity of a state was best promoted by depressing the trade of its neighbour, though now ex- ploded, was then universally received ; and in acting upon it, there was no injus- tice or perfidy of which the rival Italian republics scrupled to be guilty when it seemed possible in this way to establish a maritime ascendency. One remark- able illustration of this fact wiis given in 1 204, when the Venetians induced the

I'lie leaders of the fourth crusade to turn aside fi-om their avowed object of warring

Venetians.

with infidels in order to wrest Constantinople from the hands of a monarch, who, whatever his demerits might be, was by profession Christian. A variety of motives may have influenced the Crusadei-s in taking this unwarrantable step ; but the subsequent conduct of the Venetians leaves no room to doubt that their only object was selfish aggrandizement. After Constantinople had been stormed and plundered, the dominions which had belonged to the Greek emperor were partitioned among his unprincipled conquerors ; and while an Earl of Flan ■ ders ^as placed upon his tlirone, the Venetians obtained a chain of settlements which stretched from the Dardanelles to the Adriatic, and made them virtually masters of the navigation and trade of the Levant. In Constantinople, which, from the cause already mentioned, had long rivalled Alexandria as an emporium for the traffic between Europe and India, they obtained exclusive privileges, which made it impossible for any maritime state to compete with them, and furnished them with the means of lording it over all their rivals.

The ungenerous coui'se pursued by the Venetians had undoubtedly the efiect of greatly extending their trade generally, and of giving them an almost exclusive monopoly of that large portion of the Indian trade which had its centre in Constantinople. The superiority they had thus acquired remained with them for rather more than half a century; and the injustice to which they owed it seemed almost to be forgotten, when the day of retribution arrived, and then- own tactics were successfully employed against them. The Greeks had never been reconciled to the Latin yoke, which had been fraudulently imposed upon them, and were therefore prepared to avail themselves of the fii'st favourable The Genoese, opportunity of shaking it off". Had they been left to their own resources they could scarcely have hoped lor success, but they had powerful auxiliaries in the Genoese, wlio wei'e animated at once by a feeling of revenge for the injustice which they had suffered, and a desire to become mastei's of a traffic, the posses-