First expeditions to Egypt, Constantinople, and Majorca. commercial than maritime, and her navy, even under the care of the Medicean princes and knights of Stefano, never rose to much importance. She, however, soon obtained merchant vessels sufficient to carry on her trade with the Muhammedans, and to restore the factories which Pisa had formerly established in the East. Her request to obtain, as successor to the Pisans, the advantages they had formerly enjoyed, having been granted by the Sultan of Egypt, the despatch of their first commercial galley to Alexandria was a day of extraordinary exultation. That day inaugurated a new era in the commerce of the now flourishing republic; a new outlet had been opened for Florentine industry and enterprise; a new maritime power had unfurled its flag on the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and it was fitting that so auspicious an event should be opened with great public rejoicings and solemn religious processions.[1]
Nor is it surprising that this day should have been one of exceeding joy to the people of Florence. Though rivalling all other states in the excellence of her manufactures and of her system of banking, she had hitherto failed in establishing a maritime commerce, having, in her earnest endeavours to gain such a position, been on all occasions almost as strenuously opposed by the Venetians and Genoese as by her more immediate neighbours, the Pisans. These obstacles had now been overcome. The departure, therefore, of her own ships from her own port was a matter to call forth something more than the ordinary tokens of joy. The Florentine
- ↑ See full details of these exultations in Napier, vol. iii.
