WHEN Attila, King of the Huns,① devastated Italy in the middle of the fifth century, the citizens of Aquileia, Padua, and other towns on the Adriatic, fled from the invader.
At the head of the gulf are about a hundred little islands, formed of mud and sand swept down by the rivers which drain the plains of Northern Italy. These islands are surrounded by shallow water, and protected from the waves by long bars of sand, between which by various narrow channels vessels pass out and in. Upon these islands the Veneti driven from the mainland established themselves, and there founded a city in the midst of the waters.
In their new home they missed the vines and the olives which clad their native slopes, as well as the bees and the cattle which they used to tend. The waste of wild sea-moor on which they now dwelt offered only a few patches of soil fit for cultivation, and these yielded but a scanty crop of stunted vegetables. The only supplies which Nature furnished were the fish which swarmed in the waters, and the salt which encrusted the beds of the lagoons.②A more miserable, hopeless plight than that of the inhabitants of these little islands, it would be hard to conceive; and yet out of their slender resources they built up Venice! The sandbanks which they contested with the sea-fowl became the site of a great and wealthy city; and their fish and salt formed the original basis of a world-wide commerce. Their progress, however, was slow and laborious. Seventy years after the settlement was formed, they were still obliged to toil hard for a bare subsistence.
Some distinctions of rank-a tradition of their former condition-were maintained amongst them, but all werereduced to an equality of poverty. Fish was the common, almost the only, food of all classes. None could boast a better dwelling than a rude hut of mud and osiers. Their only treasure consisted of salt, which they transported to the mainland, receiving in exchange various articles of food and clothing; and, not less important, wood for boat-building. The security in which they pursued these humble occupations was, however, envied by Italians who were groaning under the tyranny and rapine of the barbarians, and the island-colony received accessions of population.
The Venetians, who could scarcely stir from one spot to another except by water, became the most expert of seamen. Their vessels not only threaded the tortuous courses of the rivers and canals into the heart of the peninsula, but visited all the harbours of the Adriatic; and, gaining confidence, pushed out into the Mediterranean, and opened up a trade with Greece and Constantinople. Thus Venice became the port of Italy and Germany, and the means of communication between them and the seat of the Roman Empire in the East.
THE GRAND CANAL. VENICE
Every year the ships of the Republic grew larger and more numerous. In the fourteenth century it had afloat a fleet of three thousand merchantmen; but of these some were only of ten tons burden, while few exceeded one hundred tons. Fishing-boats were probably included in the estimate. In addition, there were about forty war-galleys, carrying eleven thousand men; which were kept cruising in different directions, for the protection of Venetian commerce.
The largest of the galleys was the famous Bucentaur ,④which, with its exterior of scarlet and gold, its long bank of burnished oars, its deck and seats inlaid with precious woods, its gorgeous canopy and throne, rivalled the magnificence of Cleopatras barge. It was in this splendid vessel that the Doge⑤ went annually in state to celebrate the marriage of Venice⑥ with the Adriatic, by dropping a ring into its waters; thus symbolizing the fact that a people whose habitations might be assigned either to earth or to water, were equally at home on both.
With an extensive commerce the Venetians combined several manufactures. They not only prepared immense quantities of salt, and cured fish but found in their sands the material of that exquisite glass, so pure, and yet so rich in hue, with which their name is still associated. The furnaces from which this beautiful product emanated were congregated, as they still are, in the island of Mura"no.
There were also brass and iron foundries; and the armourers of Venice were widely celebrated for the strength and beauty of their weapons, breastplates, helmets, and bucklers. The weaving of cloth-of-gold was another important industry. This costly and gorgeous material was in great demand in the Courts of France and Germany. Charlemagne himself was rarely seen without a robe of Venetian pattern and texture.
It was thus that Venice grew rich. The mud huts gradually gave place to palaces, and the peasants were transformed intohaughty nobles. "The Venetians are grown so proud," says an old traveller in the fifteenth century, "that when one has a son, the saying goes, "A lord is born into the world!"" In the beginning of the same century it was reckoned that there were at least a thousand nobles in the city, whose yearly incomes ranged from 4, 000 to 70, 000 ducats, and that at a time when 3, 000 ducats bought a palace.
At the end of the twelfth century the population was 70, 000, exclusive of persons in holy orders. Two hundred years later it had increased nearly fourfold.
