in extensive and destructive wars. In the year 1162 Milan was finally overcome; the walls and houses were razed from their foundation, and the suffering inhabitants dispersed over other cities, obtaining sympathy in their distress, and communicating their enthusiastic love of freedom in return. The republican form of government was adopted in every considerable town; and before the end of the thirteenth century, there was a knowledge, a power, and an enterprise, among these apparently insignificant republics which all Europe could not match.
The beneficial though unlooked-for effect of the Crusades upon commerce has already been mentioned. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the commerce of Europe was almost entirely in the hands of the Italians, more commonly known in those ages by the name of Lombards. The republic of Pisa was one of the first to make known to the world the riches and power which a small state might acquire by the aid of commerce and liberty. Pisa had astonished the shores of the Mediterranean by the number of vessels and galleys that sailed under her flag, by the succor she had given the Crusaders, by the fear she had inspired at Constantinople, and by the conquest of Sardinia and the Balearic Isles. Immediately preceding this period, those great structures which still delight the eye of the traveler—the Dome, the Baptistry, the Leaning Tower, and the Campo Santo of Pisa had all been raised; and the great architects that spread over Europe in the thirteenth century, had mostly their education here. But unfortunately, the ruin of this glorious little republic was soon to be accomplished. A growing envy had subsisted between it and Genoa during the last two centuries, and a new war broke out in 1282. It is difficult to comprehend how two simple cities could put to sea two such prodigious fleets as those of Pisa and Genoa. Fleets of thirty, sixty-four, twenty-four, and one hundred and three galleys, were successively put to sea by Pisa, under the most skillful commanders; but on every occasion the Genoese were able to oppose them with superior fleets. In August, 1284, the Pisans were defeated in a naval engagement before the Isle of Meloria; thirty-five of their vessels were lost, five thousand persons perished in battle, and eleven thousand became prisoners of the Genoese. After a few further ineffectual struggles, Pisa lost its standing.
The greatest commercial, and altogether the most remarkable city of the Italian republics, was Venice. Secluded from the world, on a cluster of islands in the Adriatic, the inhabitants of this city had taken up their abode in the course of the fifth century, and they boasted themselves to have been independent of all the revolutions which Europe had been undergoing since the fall of the Roman Empire. This might be true to a great extent, though for long it was certainly more the result of their obscurity than their power. By the tenth century, however, the desendants of those fishermen that had first taken refuge here, were able to send fleets abroad which could encounter and overawe both Saracens and Normans. The Venetians had all along kept up a correspondence with Constantinople during the darkest periods of the middle ages. This was greatly renewed and extended about the time of the Crusades. When Constantinople was taken by the Latins (1204), the Venetians, under their doge, or chief magistrate, Henry Dandalo, became possessed of three-eighths of that great city and of the provinces, and Dandalo assumed the singularly accurate title of Duke of Three-Eighths of the Roman Empire. The
