Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/531

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIEE 509 trate Genoese implored the clemency of their sovereign. The defenceless situation which secured their obedience exposed them to the attack of their Venetian rivals, w^ho, in the reign of the elder Andronicus, presumed to violate the majesty of the throne. On the approach of their fleets, the Genoese, with their families and elFects, retired into the city ; their empty habitations were reduced to ashes ; and the feeble prince, who had viewed the destruction of his suburb, expressed his resent- ment, not by arms, but by ambassadors. This misfortune, how- ever, was advantageous to the Genoese, who obtained, and im- perceptibly abused, the dangerous licence of surrounding Galata with a strong wall ; of introducing into the ditch the waters of the sea ; of erecting lofty turrets ; and of mounting a train of military engines on the rampart. The narrow bounds in which they had been circumscribed were insufficient for the growing colony ; each day they acquired some addition of landed pro- perty ; and the adjacent hills were covered with their villas and castles, which they joined and protected by new fortifica- tions. •*'•* The navigation and trade of the Euxine was the patri- mony of the Greek emperors, who commanded the narrow entrance, the gates, as it were, of that inland sea. In the reign of Michael Palaeologus, their prerogative was acknowledged by the sultan of Egypt, who solicited and obtained the liberty of sending an annual ship for the purchase of slaves in Circas- sia and the Lesser Tartary : a liberty pregnant with mischief to the Christian cause, since these youths were transformed by education and discipline into the formidable Mamalukes.^*' From the colony of Pera the Genoese engaged with superior advantage in the lucrative trade of the Black Sea ; and their industry supplied the Greeks with fish and corn, two articles Their trade of food almost equally important to a superstitious people. The spontaneous bounty of nature appears to have bestowed the harvests of the Ukraine, the produce of a rude and savage scribed by Ducange (C. P. Christiana, 1. i. p. 68, 69), from the Byzantine historians, Pachynier (1. ii. c. 35, 1. v. 10, 30, 1. ix. 15, 1. xii. 6, 9), Nicephorus Gregoras (1. V. c. 4, 1. vi. c. II, 1. ix. c. 5, 1. xi. c. i, 1. xv. c. i, 6), and Cantacuzene (1. i. c. 12, I. ii. c. 29, &c.). [The golden Bulls of Michael VIII. (a. D. 1261) and Andronicus the Elder (a.d. 1304) granting privileges to the Genoese will be found in Zacharia, Jus Grseco-Romanum, iii. p. 574 s^t/., p. 623 st/c/.] 50 Both Pachymer (1. iii. c. 3-5) and Nic. Gregoras (1. iv. c. 7) understand and deplore the effects of this dangerous indulgence. Bibars, sultan of Egypt, him- self a Tartar, but a devout Musulman, obtained from the children of Zingis the permission to build a stately mosque in the capital of Crimea (De Guignes, Hist, des Huns, torn iii. p. 343).
 * ^ The establishment and progress of the Genoese at Pera, or Galata, is de-