In what is by no means to be considered a complete history of Venice, my readers will be grateful if I spare them the too untrustworthy details with which the chroniclers fill up their accounts of the eleventh century. In addition to what I have said about the growth of the rival republics, however, it may be mentioned that before the great movement of the first crusade, the Venetians had more than once measured themselves with the Normans in the Levant, and perfectly well understood the position of affairs in the south of Italy and Sicily, where the sons of Tancred of Hauteville had carried everything before them.
Venice, Genoa, and Pisa played almost equal parts in the general European movement that followed, and the Venetians need not be greatly blamed if they derived profit from a source that should have yielded only honour to those who sought it. The Venetians
combined glory with business, it is true, but, on the other hand, no one expected them to transport men and horses to the East for nothing; and, since they were the best provided with vessels suitable for that purpose, it was a foregone conclusion that a large part of the transportation should be done by them. Moreover, when all is told, there were few indeed amongst all those hundreds of thousands who wore the cross who had the right to reproach their fellows and companions for hoping to combine the salvation of their souls with some improvement in their earthly fortunes.
It was, of course, natural that the Italians, who are the least sentimental people in Europe, should understand the worldly advantages which were sure to follow in the wake of that great tidal wave of sentiment which rose from the depths of Europe at Peter the Hermit’s cry, advanced, tremendous and irresistible, over land and sea to the most eastern limits of Christian civilisation, to topple and break at last upon Jerusalem itself in a thunderous chaos of disaster and success.
The confused history of the wars in which Venice was engaged during the twelfth century is intimately connected with that of the first and second crusades, though it cannot be said that the Venetians played a very great part in either as fighting crusaders. It is hard to follow exactly what took place when the whole world that surrounded the Mediterranean was in a state of ferment and wild confusion; but it cannot be denied that the Venetians made the most of the new opportunities presented to them, and they never neglected a chance of enriching themselves at a time when a vast amount of money was brought into circulation to pay for the transportation and victualling of armed hosts. The Republic, even at the outset, was in possession of a fleet that elicited the admiration of Europe. No other nation owned ships of such varied types well suited to different purposes. They had vessels called ‘hippogogi,’ intended, as the name indicates, for the transportation of horses, of which each was able to carry a considerable number. They had fast vessels called also by a Greek name, ‘dromi,’ some of which are stated to have been a hundred and seventy-five feet over all; and though of light draught, such ships can hardly have been of less than three hundred tons register and over. They had a main deck and an upper deck, which the chronicler, who was totally ignorant of nautical matters, presumes to have been assigned respectively to the fighting men and the seamen who worked the ship. Several of these vessels carried timber, so fitted as to be rapidly built up into a turret, reaching to the battlements of sea-girt fortresses and towns, and they were provided with engines for throwing stones, heavy wooden bolts with iron heads, and boiling pitch.