and ships. and many beautiful monuments still attest its former greatness and splendour.[1] Among the most conspicuous may still be seen its leaning tower, from which has been copied the following representation of one of its ships, sculptured so far back as the year 1178.
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Her first great misfortune. Besides different sorts of merchant vessels bearing a common resemblance to those of the Venetians, the Pisans constructed ships of war with towers of wood, and machines for attacking an enemy, which they managed with a skill that rendered them most formidable opponents. Their expeditions against the Moors of the Balearic Islands, and their conquests in Corsica and Sardinia conferred on them a high military as well as naval reputation. But the Pisans were not without their share of the calamities of the times. In the year 1120, their city was almost laid in ashes and their islands of Sardinia and Corsica
- ↑ Pisa contributed the aid of its ships to the first and third Crusades, but, like Genoa, declined to join in the fourth. (Gibbon, ch. lx.) Its trade with Alexandria is mentioned as early as A.D. 823 by Muratori, Ant. v.
