ENRICHMENT OF CITIES

V1enice, who nourished amid her waters an enormous population, seems through her natural environment to have been peopled only with merchants and followers of the sea. The Crusades helped the proud city to the accomplishment of her brilliant destiny, to make the Orient tremble at her fleets, to enrich the Occident by her industry, and to command respect through many ages for her military power. Genoa, less happily situated, and less rich than Venice, was, however, powerful enough to have aroused the Sea-Republic’s jealousy. Pisa had pushed herself too late into rivalry with Genoa, and the destruction of her harbour was the work of implacable Genoese hatred. Florence, never free from the throes of civil discord, obtained nevertheless great wealth from her commerce, which she generously consecrated to the culture of the fine arts.

2The Crusades, therefore, enriched the great cities in giving the opportunity to extend their trade, and also to raise to exorbitant prices charges for their ships. The hardships and dangers which were inseparable from the overland route made it less and less frequented after the first expeditions. Crowds of pilgrims made their way to the ports, and several Italian republics amassed, in the transportation of human freight, a degree of wealth comparable for that time to that which the merchandise of the new world had since brought to the most flourishing cities of modern days.