om. ii. p. 158. Voltaire's general
view of the Crusades is, however, very superficial.]

[Sidenote: Rivalry between Venice and Genoa.]

The general effect of the Crusades upon Oriental commerce was to
increase the amount of traffic through Egypt and Syria. Of this
lucrative trade Venice got the lion's share, and while she helped
support the short-lived Latin dynasty upon the throne at Constantinople,
she monopolized a great part of the business of the Black Sea also. But
in 1261 Venice's rival, Genoa, allied herself with the Greek emperor,
Michael Palaeologus, at Nicaea, placed him upon the Byzantine throne, and
again cut off Venice from the trade that came through the Bosphorus.
From this time forth the mutual hatred between Venice and Genoa "waxed
fiercer than ever; no merchant fleet of either state could go to sea
without convoy, and wherever their ships met they fought. It was
something like the state of things between Spain and England in the
days of Drake."[323] In the one case as in the other, it was a strife
for the mastery of the sea and its commerce. Genoa obtained full control
of the Euxine, took possession of the Crimea, and thus acquired a
monopoly of the trade from central Asia along the northern route. With
the fall of Acre in 1291, and the consequent expulsion of Christians
from Syria, Venice lost her hold upon the middle route. But with the
pope's leave[324] she succeeded in making a series of advantageous
commercial treaties with the new Mameluke sovereigns of Egypt, and the
dealings between the Red Sea and the Adriatic soon came to be
prodigious. The Venetians gained control of part of the Peloponnesus,
with many islands of the AEgean and eastern Mediterranean. During the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries their city was the most splendid and
luxurious in all Christendom.

[Footnote 323: Yule's _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p. lxxi.]

[Footnote 324: A papal dispensation was necessary before a
commercial treaty could be made with Mahometans. See Leibnitz,
_Codex Jur. Gent. Diplomat._, i. 489.]

[Sidenote: Centres and routes of mediaeval trade.]

Such a development of wealth in Venice and Genoa implies a large
producing and consuming area behind them, able to take and pay for the
costly products of India and China. Before the end of the thirteenth
century the volume of European trade had swelled to great proportions.
How full of historic and literary interest a