The Venetians: A New History: from Marco Polo to Casanova (11 page)

New galleys were now leaving the Arsenale production line at a prodigious rate, and citizens from all walks of life were lining up to volunteer as crews. At the same time, hundreds of fishermen from Murano, Burano and the outlying islands of the lagoon had rowed in to sign up, waving their banners before the Doge’s Palace and pledging their allegiance to serve under Pisani. However, in the face of opposition from the nobles, Contarini had been forced to make a concession. Pisani had not been given command of the fleet, but instead had been appointed to a lesser post under his succesor, Taddeo Giustinian. When the fishermen from the islands heard this they threw down their banners in disgust and headed back home, ‘uttering words the chronicler thought too indecent to record’.

Venice could hardly afford internal dissent at such a time, and Doge Contarini quickly moved to resolve the situation diplomatically, in order to eliminate the very real possibility of a civil war between the arrogant nobles and the despairing citizenry. He appointed himself Captain-General
of the Sea, while Pisani was appointed his chief deputy, to whom he effectively delegated command of the navy. As soon as Pisani set up tables at the Molo to enlist crews for his galleys, the recruiting clerks were at once besieged by volunteers. Some of these were experienced oarsmen, others were practised naval archers, but most were inexperienced as seamen. And once again the aged Doge Contarini demonstrated his abilities to the full. In all, thirty-four galleys had by now emerged fully equipped from the Arsenale, and Contarini in his capacity as captain-general was determined to ensure that these crews were properly trained. Each day he was up first thing overseeing the raw recruits rowing their galleys, directing them to row them from the naval yard on Giudecca to the Lido and back, a good five-mile haul. As each day passed, the new sailors – teenage boys, craftsmen, middle-aged servants, stall-holders and the like – under the supervision of experienced oarsmen, gradually gained greater cohesion, learning how to manoeuvre their craft and follow battle orders.

After the capture of Chioggia, the Genoese had sat back expecting to starve the Venetians into submission. Instead the city was given precious time to organize its defences, transform its citizens into a fighting force and, most importantly of all, rally their flagging morale. Crucially, it also gave Pisani time to plan his campaign.

In line with the mood of his men, Pisani decided that instead of waiting for the enemy to make a move, he would strike first with a bold counter-move on Chioggia. He bided his time until the night of 21–22 December, the longest night of the year, before launching his attack. Under cover of darkness, a flotilla of towed stone-laden barges guarded by galleys and long boats set off south into the lagoon under the joint command of Pisani and Contarini. As dawn came up, the Genoese lookouts on the ramparts of Chioggia raised the alarm at the sight of the approaching Venetians. Soldiers were put ashore south of Chioggia, and the Genoese immediately launched an attack, forcing them to retreat. But this was simply a diversionary move. While the Genoese were thus distracted, the stone-laden barges were sunk, blocking the main supply channels to Chioggia from both the Paduan-held mainland and the Genoese fleet out in the Adriatic. The besiegers were now the besieged in Chioggia. While Pisani harassed the Genoese galleys that were attempting to clear
the channel from the sea, Contarini manoeuvred his galleys along the narrow channels through the mudflats, preventing Carrara’s forces from clearing the channels so that they could supply Chioggia from the mainland. However, Contarini’s ragtag volunteer soldiers – from shopkeepers to ageing senators – soon became disillusioned with the wet, cold misery of living amidst the fringes of the lagoon. Although spurred on by the constant encouragement and example of their venerable leader, it was evident that they could not last out much longer; and Pisani knew that he could not keep up his raiding tactics indefinitely without suffering more losses than the city’s depleted defensive fleet could bear.

In the words of the chronicler:

The galleys were so riddled with the arrows of the enemy that the sailors in desperation cried with one voice that the siege must be relinquished, that otherwise all that were in the galleys round Chioggia were dead men. Those also who held the banks, fearing that the squadrons of Carrara would fall upon them from behind, demanded anxiously to be liberated, and that the defence of the coast should be abandoned. Pisani besought them to endure a little longer …

What Pisani and Contarini were doing was little better than a desperate holding operation. The Genoese in Chioggia may well have been faced with starvation, but so too were the people of Venice.

Then the miracle that all Venetians had been praying for came to pass. On 1 January 1380 Carlo Zeno sailed back to Venice with fourteen galleys manned by battle-hardened Venetian sailors who had spent the last year or so hunting down Genoese shipping all over the Mediterranean. Off Sicily he had destroyed two convoys bringing supplies to the Genoese fleet in the Adriatic, which was consequently beginning to run short of essential supplies. True to form, he had then ignored orders and set off booty-hunting in the eastern Mediterranean, ranging as far afield as Constantinople, Rhodes and even Beirut. The success of this escapade had netted him and his crews so much booty that he had been forced to put all his treasures ashore in the safe-keeping of the governor of Crete, assuring his crews that they would return later to divide up the spoils. Ignoring a despatch
requesting him to return to Venice, Zeno had then set off with his galleys in pursuit of the greatest prize of all, the treasure-ship
Richignona
, said to have been the largest ship afloat at the time, which he had heard was making its way home that autumn from Syria to Genoa with a cargo of unimaginable riches. Zeno caught up with the
Richignona
at Rhodes, where he immobilised it by setting fire to its sails before overwhelming its protective vessels. The
Richignona
was found to be carrying a cargo worth 500,000 ducats, as well as nearly 200 merchants and nobles who, as prisoners, would fetch a huge ransom. When this treasure was divided up in customary fashion amongst his crews, even the lowliest oarsmen in the galleys received twenty ducats each (easily enough to keep an entire family for well over a year).

Carlo Zeno and his fanatically loyal fleet of sailors arrived back in Venice to a heroes’ welcome. Given the pressing needs of the hour, the matter of his ignored despatch was tactfully shelved and Zeno prepared for the greatest action of his life. He was now fifty-four years old, yet according to his biographer-grandson (who as a boy had known his illustrious relative) he still cut quite a figure:

He was square-shouldered, broad-chested, solidly and strongly made, with large and speaking
*
eyes, and a manly, great and full countenance … Nothing was wanting in his appearance which strength, health, decorum, and gravity demanded.

(According to the American historian Margaret Oliphant, the etched portrait of Zeno that serves as the frontispiece to Francesco Quirino’s 1544 translation of this biography – from the original Latin into Italian – displays a ‘bold pirate-like countenance’. In fact, despite his splendidly bushy, full black beard his features present a distinctly bland, somewhat pop-eyed appearance. However, Oliphant’s description is certainly truer to the character of the man.)

Zeno was immediately despatched to prevent a determined effort by the Genoese fleet to relieve Chioggia. This resulted in fierce fighting, in
the course of which Zeno added to the many wounds he had received in battle, but the Venetians managed to prevail. Even so, when Zeno returned to Venice, he and Pisani stuck to their strategy of avoiding direct large-scale engagement with the sizeable Genoese fleet anchored provocatively off the Lido. Instead, they continued to patrol the entrances to the lagoon, whilst at the same time seeking to extend Venetian control around the lagoon, which remained the city’s main protection.

According to the naval historian Frederic Lane:

Although cannon had been used in the West since very early in the fourteenth century, the War of Chioggia was the first in which cannon were used on Venetian ships. Cannons were mounted on the forecastles of the galleys and they were placed also on the smaller long boats much used in the fighting around Chioggia.

These cannon fired stone cannonballs, which could weigh anything up to 200 pounds. However, these weapons were highly unpredictable and inaccurate – liable to blow up, or rain cannonballs on adjacent friendly troops. They were much better at battering down defensive walls than inflicting losses on the enemy. On 6 January a Venetian cannon secured a vital double-blow when a direct hit caused the Brandolo campanile in Chioggia to collapse. Pietro Doria, who had been appointed Genoese commander of the city, had been overseeing troop movements from the top of the campanile, and was crushed amidst the rubble when it crumbled beneath him.

Meanwhile in Venice conditions continued to deteriorate, with all sections of the population now living hand-to-mouth. During April, in a desperate attempt to relieve the situation, Taddeo Giustinian was despatched with twelve galleys to pick up grain in Sicily. However, having eluded the Genoese fleet off the Lido, he then encountered a newly arrived Genoese fleet under Marco Maruffo further down the Adriatic. In the consequent battle Giustinian and all his ships were captured.

By the spring of 1380, both sides in the conflict were employing mercenaries. The Genoese ally, Francesco da Carrara of Padua, launched German mercenaries across the mudflats and sandbars in several attempts to relieve Chioggia. These were repulsed by Venetian troops reinforced by 6,000
mercenaries that the city envoys had managed to hire. This was a mixed force of Italian and English freelance soldiers, which was based on the island of Pellestrina, the southern extension of the Lido littoral, just north of Chioggia. This contingent was notionally under the command of the renowned English
condottiere
John Hawkwood.
*
Unfortunately, Hawkwood never turned up to take command of this force, and consequently the notoriously belligerent English mercenaries soon fell to fighting their Italian colleagues rather than the enemy. Disaster was averted only by the intervention of Zeno, whose naval experience had taught him all too well how to deal with such mutinous elements. Fortunately, his rallying of these mercenaries to the Venetian cause came in the nick of time, for the Genoese besieged in Chioggia had just begun covert negotiations with the senior mercenary captains in this force, with the aim of bribing them to defect. Zeno’s intervention brought a swift end to these moves, and shortly afterwards the 4,000-strong Genoese garrison ran out of supplies and ammunition, causing them to surrender on 24 June, with the Venetians taking possession of nineteen galleys into the bargain.

This victory was greeted with jubilation in Venice, resulting in one of the greatest celebrations in the city’s history. Doge Contarini, who had remained at the head of his troops on the lagoon outside Chioggia, was received with huge acclaim on his return. The doge’s great ceremonial gold barge, the
Bucintoro
, sailed out to meet him, accompanied by a vast flotilla of boats of all shapes and sizes. It is said that almost the entire population of Venice was waiting to cheer him as he stepped ashore at the Molo, accompanied by a triumphal procession, which led in its tow the lines of grim, humiliated Genoese prisoners. A painting of Contarini’s triumphant arrival by Paolo Veronese now adorns the west wall of the Great Council Chamber in the Doge’s Palace.

The outpouring of emotion by the citizens of Venice was in fact more an expression of immense relief, rather than joy at victory. The taking of
Chioggia may have enforced the city’s mastery of the lagoon, and thus re-established its impregnability, but it was hardly the end of the war. Despite this, events would soon demonstate that this was the beginning of the end for Genoa: it had thrown everything into its attempt to destroy Venice once and for all, and the defeat of Chioggia left it overstretched and demoralised.

Pisani now set off into the Adriatic with the aim of hunting down and destroying the newly arrived Genoese fleet under Maruffo, and then bringing grain back to Venice. In the second week of August he came across twelve Genoese galleys off the coast of Apulia. In the subsequent engagement the Genoese managed to escape, but Pisani himself was severely wounded in the fighting. He was put ashore at the nearby port of Manfredia, but nothing could be done to save him and he died on 13 August 1380. The funeral of the man who has gone down in history as the ‘saviour of Venice’ was conducted with all due pomp on the arrival of his body at the Arsenale.

Carlo Zeno succeeded Pisani as commander of the fleet and immediately set off around Sicily in his pursuit of Genoese shipping. But these hostilities were desultory, and diplomatic feelers were soon put out. Consequently in the summer of 1381 a peace conference was called at Turin under the auspices of Count Amadeus VI of Savoy. Although it was generally accepted that the Venetians were the victors, the ultimate terms of the treaty were hardly favourable to them. Venice was required to give up Tenedos, accept the prevailing Genoese control of Cyprus and pay an indemnity to the King of Hungary, who nonetheless retained Dalmatia. However, in the event it marked the end of the Genoese as an equal maritime and trading power. The civil strife in Genoa that had seen a doge deposed during the war now led to the overthrow of no fewer than ten doges in five years, before the city eventually fell to the French in 1394.

Venice, on the other hand, showed considerable resilience. Aided to a great extent by the strength and effectiveness of its institutions of government, the city soon began regaining its confidence and commercial supremacy. As all classes had been depleted by years of plague and war, thirty new names were now entered into
Libro d’oro
(the Golden Book), which contained the list of hereditary nobles who could attend the Great Council and become candidates for high office. This measure was popular
with the citizenry as a number of these new nobles were merchants, tradesmen and commoners like themselves. It also served to temper the arrogance of the nobles, which had caused such divisions in the past. However, it did not signal a change in the administration’s already firmly established policy towards those who demonstrated dangerous individuality. When the venerated Doge Andrea Contarini finally died on 5 June 1382, the obvious successor was Carlo Zeno – a choice that would have been popular throughout the city. Yet precisely because he was so popular, the Council of Forty put forward instead the wealthy Michele Morosoni, who had the dubious distinction of having made a fortune by buying up properties at rock-bottom prices during the economic collapse brought on by the War of Chioggia. Morosini was duly elected, and Zeno did not even come second in the ballot. Indeed, lest he should get above himself, he was even charged for his failure to take the small and isolated Genoese fort of Marano, some fifty miles east up the coast from Venice, during the final days of the war. Zeno was so contemptuous of this charge that he made it known he would not even deign to defend himself. But bureaucracy will have its way: he was ordered to undergo the indignity of defending himself, and the court eventually subjected him to an official censure.