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 soon sought to possess themselves of the whole trade of the Black Sea, long the especial patrimony of the emperors of Constantinople, and a prerogative which, in the reign of Michael, had been acknowledged by even Bibars, the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt.

Nor, having resolved on the end, were they long in hesitating about the means to it; first, in seemingly friendly alliance with the Greeks, they secured for their colonies at Galata and Pera the bulk of the corn trade; while, at the same time, their fishermen supplied the wants of the city, the salt fish largely required by the Catholic nations, and caviare for the Russians. Next, they secured for themselves the produce of the inland caravan trade with the remote East, which still, as formerly, found its way by the waters of the Oxus and the Caspian to the eastern shores of the Euxine. In almost every case, their course of business was a strict monopoly, the Venetians and all other rivals being carefully excluded from any participation in their trade. So powerful, indeed, did they become, that, while they awed the Greeks into a reluctant submission, they resisted effectually, at their chief settlement, Caffa, the inroad of the Tatar hosts. The demands of the Genoese merchants were in proportion to their rapacity, and at last they actually usurped the customs and even the tolls of the Bosphorus, securing for themselves alone a revenue of two hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which they reluctantly doled out to the emperor thirty thousand.