regularly paid the half-yearly interest on the Funds and the salaries of the Public Offices. Our city at present sends abroad for purposes of trade in various parts of the world 10,000,000 a year, of which the interest is not less than 2,000,000. In this city there are 3,000 small vessels which carry 17,000 seamen ; 300 large ships carrying 8,000 seamen, and every year 45 galleys and dromons are launched for the protection of commerce, which have employed in building 11,000 mariners, 3,000 carpenters, 3,000 caulkers. Of silkcloth weavers there are 3,000; of manufacturers of fustian 16,000. The houses are estimated as worth 7,050,000 ducats.1 Their rents amount to 150,000. We find 1,000 gentlemen with incomes varying between 700 and 4,000 ducats a year. If you continue in this way you will multiply more and more and will become masters both of all wealth and all Christendom. Everyone will fear you. But I beseech you, avoid as you would fire, seizing what belongs to others and engaging in unjust wars, for in such wars God will not support princes."2

Details of this mercantile marine service at a rather earlier period are not lacking, and we must quote again at some length because such beneficial regulations are rare indeed.

"Every year six trading fleets averaging about five hundred vessels each sailed, one for the Black Sea, another for Greece and Constantinople, others for the Syrian ports; for Egypt, Barbary and North Africa; for Flanders and England. These ships were the property of the State, and in due time a public crier announced the number of galleasses ready for the annual voyages. They were farmed out to the highest bidders, who were required to prove their qualifications and the amount of their capital, and to provide on each galleasse accommodation, a suitable mess, and space for a small cargo, for eight young nobles, who were thus trained in naval science and gained experience of commerce. The vessels were constructed on fixed models and convertible at will into men-of-war. Every man aboard, passenger or seaman, bore arms, and was compelled to fight for the ship in case of attack. Standardized fittings were obtainable at every Venetian

1 A ducat was worth approximately 9s.; a silver ducat 4s. 6d. 2 Quoted by Mrs. Aubrey Richardson in The Doges of Venice. Methuen. 1914.

maritime station to replace any that might be lost or damaged by storm or battle. The food and comfort of the seamen were carefully provided for. A cross painted or carved on the side served as a load line, and Government inspectors checked any attempt to overload. Each ship carried a band of music. In 1476 the Guild of St. Nicholas, patron of mariners, was instituted for the succour of merchant seamen; it has formed the basis on which all similar institutions in modern times have been founded. "The Consuls at every Venetian port were charged to inspect the weights and measures of the traders and to prevent adulteration or fraud. If the Consul were found to be venal he was branded on the forehead. At home the same measures were taken to maintain the standard of quality, and in 1550 English woollen goods from the Thames were exposed with the brand of the senate upon them in the Piazza as evidence of English dishonesty and the decay of English faith."1

The silk looms of Venice arrayed all Christendom in festal attire; Spain and England provided wool for her cloths; Lombardy flax made her linen; gilt leather brought in 500,000 ducats a year; and the glass factories of Murano furnished the palaces of Europe with mirrors and drinking vessels, and the African savage with beads.

But though we may be tempted to linger before the fair picture of the prosperity of Venice when she held "the gorgeous East in fee," the time of her decline was at hand. Her merchants were a great race, but their staying power was never equal to that of the Phoenicians. It is indeed possible that the seeds of decay were sown with a decree, said to have been passed in the days of Doge Delpino (1356–1361), which forbade any Venetian noble to embark in commercial pursuits. This in a state whose doges and senators were drawn from the ranks of the merchant princes, and whose aristocracy was an aristocracy of trade, was obviously suicidal. Though it was not strictly observed, the control of the State passed from the hands of the men who made it wealthy. Venice forgot at last that her strength lay in maritime commerce.

Thomas Okey's Story of Venice. Dent.

She undertook wars on the mainland against Milan and Florence, employing expensive condottieri, till the appalling tidings of the capture of Constantinople by the Turks caused all combatants to call a truce. She aroused the jealousy of transalpine powers, and was crushed by the League of Cambrai. The cost of her military undertakings may be reckoned in increased taxes, forced loans, commercial crises, depressed industries and reduced population.

Even if she could have survived all this there were two other portents that showed that the tide of the world's progress had begun to flow elsewhere. Christopher Columbus, a Genoese, proposed to sail from Spain westward until he should reach the rich Indies. That the earth might be round was a new and almost insane theory, and the Venetians were more amused than disturbed by his fantastic plan; even when he reached the West Indies instead of the East they saw nothing in the result to interfere with their commercial supremacy. It was far otherwise with the tidings that reached them soon after the year 1500.

In 1428 Prince Peter of Portugal, visiting in Venice, bought, as an acceptable present for his brother, Prince Henry the Navigator, the works and maps of Marco Polo that had met with such an incredulous reception more than a century before. These proved an inspiration to the man who was to turn the knight into a merchant and crusading into a profession. He saw that Ptolemy's geography was necessarily effete and the maps suggested round Africa. Prince Henry died in 1460, but his inspiration did not die with him. Once more imagination showed the way. Vasco da Gama reached Colicut by rounding the Cape of Good Hope and returned to Lisbon with a cargo of spices. This was the news that, according to Priuli, caused the greatest consternation among the Venetians and broke their rest at night. It was the knell of their doom. For, owing to the heavy dues exacted by Sultans and princes," the cost of a parcel of

a way

spices increased from one ducat to sixty or a hundred by the time it reached Venice. The Portuguese, carrying by sea, would escape the levies and undersell the Venetian merchants in the markets of Europe, and their large and profitable trade from the East would be captured." 1

They adopted every means of competition that wit could devise. They sent envoys to warn the Sultan of Egypt of the danger of his revenues if the Portuguese were allowed to succeed, urging him to ally himself with the Indian Princes and give military aid, if need be, to destroy their trade. But they schemed in vain, and gradually the trade, and with it the prosperity, of Venice declined. Some of the merchants moved to Cadiz, where the maritime commerce of Europe bade fair to compare with that of their own port in the days of her splendour. Others became bankers, but banking is a slow method of making money after trade. There is no quarter shown in the world of commerce to the vanquished, and the Venice we see to-day is but a husk of what was once the throbbing centre of the civilization of the world.

1 Okey's Story of Venice.

IV

GIOVANNI, COSIMO AND LORENZO DEI

MEDICI

HE House of the Medici presents to the world the noble spectacle of Commerce clothed in royal robes. To no other merchants in any time of which we have records has the same regal position or authority come; and trade, leading to what was practically a kingship, reaches its zenith of romance in this famous and remarkable family. And the high and authoritative position which they reached and filled so superbly is the more to their credit in that Florence was a republic in which the rulers were elected by the people. They therefore held for so many years these highest of all posts not by inheritance or so-called "God-given right," but by their ability, influence and commercial wealth. Let us follow as briefly as may be the fortunes of this family from its beginnings.

The development of Italy from about A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1500 or 1600 produced, as we have seen in our chapter on Venice, a race of traders trading at first from necessity. Venice produced, to begin with, simple fishermen, then bolder sailors, who early discovered that Commerce brought wealth and consequently power, and these became merchants, who looked upon the whole of the then known world as their field of action. But while Venice, from her peculiar geographical position, was the commercial leader of Italy, the peninsula possessed four other independent States each under its own form of government. Florence, Milan and Venice in