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 and numerous islands, had for long sheltered a race of pirates who never ceased to molest Venetian traffic. It was necessary to destroy this corsairs' nest, and Venice embarked on the first great war she undertook as an independent State in her own individual interests. This war was entirely successful. The Dalmatian coast towns recognised the Doge as "Duke of Dalmatia" and submitted to a nominal tribute in recognition of the supremacy of the Republic. Venice, it is true, did not remain in undisturbed and continuous possession of Dalmatia, but she acquired a title which she subsequently rendered effective. She thus took the first step towards that indispensable condition of her commercial existence, supremacy in the Adriatic. The Dalmatian cities were now open to her merchants. The Dalmatian sea-board furnished a food supply which the Lagoons could not; Dalmatian forests yielded timber for building ships and houses.

With the period of the Crusades Venice achieved a still wider expansion in the Levant. The eyes of Europe had been attracted to the little city in the Lagoons which had attacked and subdued the Narentine pirates, challenged and fought the Normans, and rendered striking services to the Eastern Emperor himself. When the Crusaders began to look about for a port of embarcation and for transport-service to the Holy Land, the three cities of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice offered themselves. Venice was not only the most powerful; she was also the most easterly of the three. Her geographical position naturally led to the choice of Venice as the port of departure. The issue of the Crusades proved that the Republic entered upon those enterprises in a purely commercial spirit. When Sidon fell, the Venetians received from Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, in return for their assistance, a market-place, a district, a church, and the right to use their own weights and measures in that city. This was in fact the nucleus of a colony of merchants living under special treaty capitulations; and the privileges of the Sidon treaty we find repeated and extended when Acre, Tyre, and Ascalon were successively occupied.

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