Venetian–Genoese wars

Venetian-Genoese Wars
Date	First War (1256–1270); Second War (1294–1299); Third War (1350–1355); Fourth War (1378–1381)
Location	Mediterranean Sea
Result	Inconclusive, with the accumulation of many debts by the two maritime republics
Belligerents
Venetian Republic; Crown of Aragon; Duchy of Milan	Republic of Genoa; Byzantine Empire; Paduan Contado; Kingdom of Hungary
Commanders and leaders
First War Reniero Zeno; Lorenzo Tiepolo Second War Pietro Gradenigo; Giovanni Soranzo; Andrea Dandolo (POW) Third War Niccolò Pisani; Peter IV of Aragon Fourth War Vettor Pisani; Carlo Zeno; Andrea Contarini; Bernabò Visconti	First War Guglielmo Boccanegra; Michael VIII Palaiologos (1261–1268) Second War Lamba Doria; Andronikos II Palaiologos Third War Paganino Doria Fourth War Luciano Doria; Pietro Doria; Francesco I da Carrara; Louis I of Hungary

The Venetian–Genoese Wars were four conflicts between the Republic of Venice and the Republic of Genoa which took place between 1256 and 1381. Each were resolved almost entirely through naval clashes and connected to each other by interludes during which episodes of piracy and violence between the two Italian trading communities in the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea were commonplace, in a "cold war" climate.

Starting from the 11th century, Venice and Genoa had built commercial empires which, in the 13th century, became thalassocracies so solid as to oust the other maritime republics and to make the two cities privileged interlocutors of state structures such as the Byzantine Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, etc. In the second half of the 13th century the tensions between Venice and Genoa, exacerbated by the Venetian control over Constantinople following the Fourth Crusade, exploded. The first conflict, known as the War of Saint Sabas (1256-1270), net of the Venetian victory, did not undermine the growing Genoese power in Constantinople and in the Black Sea. The second conflict (1294-1299) recorded a revenge for the Ligurians with significant military victories. After a temporary alliance against the Mongols during the siege of Caffa (1346), Venice and Genoa clashed again in the War of the Straits (1350-1355), during which Venice dragged the Kingdom of Aragon, Genoa's emerging Tyrrhenian rival, which again ended in stalemate with a Genoese military victory at great cost. The fourth conflict, the War of Chioggia (1377-1381) saw Venice surrounded by various fronts with the Genoese at the entrance to the Venetian Lagoon but, with an enormous war effort, Venice achieved the final victory, saving the city from destruction, even without a debilitating economic outlay. Acts of piracy between the Venetians and Genoese (subject to French control in the meantime) continued until the Venetian victory at the Battle of Modon (1403). Thirty years later, the two republics faced each other again in the Battle of San Fruttuoso (1431) but in the context of the Wars in Lombardy and with Genoa then subject to the Visconti of Milan.

The real cause of the truce between Venice and Genoa starting from the 15th century was their involvement in systematic conflicts with other powers: for Genoa the confrontation with Aragon, then concluded by the subjugation of the Ligurians to the Kingdom of Spain in the 16th century; for Venice the exhausting, centuries-old conflict with the Ottoman Empire. In general, the Ottoman threat to trade and the coasts of the entire Mediterranean, especially thanks to the alliance between the Sultan of Istanbul and the Barbary pirates, favored the rapprochement and collaboration between the two ancient rivals, e.g. in the Battle of Lepanto. At the same time, the decline in the share of world trade passing through the Mediterranean during the Age of Discovery thwarted the Italian republics' ambitions for commercial dominance and the resulting tensions. Despite a significant Genoese military superiority, this series of wars damaged the resources of both sides, leading Genoa into a long series of internal struggles, to the advantage of its neighbors.

Conflicts[edit]

War of Saint Sabas[edit]

The first full-scale conflict between Genoa and Venice arose from a dispute over prerogatives in Acre, which led to a Genoese attack on the Venetian quarter. The Venetians were supported by the Pisans and Provencals, the Knights Templar and some of the local nobility, while the Catalans, Valencians, Anconitans, Knights Hospitaller and other local nobles joined the Genoese. A fleet sent from Venice under Lorenzo Tiepolo in 1257 defeated a Genoese fleet off Acre when it arrived in June the next year.^[1]

In 1261, Venice suffered a major setback with the signing of the Treaty of Nymphaeum between Genoa and the Nicaean emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, and with Michael's reconquest soon afterwards of the old Byzantine capital of Constantinople from the Latin Empire of Constantinople, effectively a client state of Venice.^[2] This permanently destroyed the commercial dominance in the imperial capital and the Black Sea beyond which Venice had enjoyed since the city's capture by the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

Throughout the war, the Venetian navy retained the upper hand over the Genoese in naval combat, as the Genoese navy often avoided battle. The major battles that did occur, at Acre in 1258, at Settepozzi in Euboia in 1263 and off Trapani in Sicily in 1266, were clear Venetian victories. However, the concentration of the Venetian fleet left Genoese commerce largely unmolested, whereas despite the use of convoys their own trade suffered heavily from dispersed Genoese corsairs. The largest Genoese success occurred in 1264, when their admiral Simone Grillo lured away from the Venetian war fleet and captured most of the large convoy left unprotected.^[3]

Disputes between the Genoese and Michael VIII enabled the partial restoration of Venice's position and trading rights in the Byzantine Empire, with a truce signed in 1268. The war ended in 1270 with the Peace of Cremona, mediated by Louis IX of France, who wished to embark on a crusade and needed the rival fleets for this undertaking.^[4] Venice had strengthened its position in what remained of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but failed to prevent the revival of Genoese fortunes in the Byzantine world and the establishment of Genoese commercial superiority in the Black Sea, which endured until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

War of Curzola[edit]

Continuing rivalry between the two cities led to clashes in 1291 and the formal resumption of war in 1295. Early Venetian victories were overshadowed by late Genoan victories and overall military success on the part of the Genoans, despite suffering heavier damage to their fleet. In 1294 a fleet sent out from Venice was destroyed by a force gathered from Genoa's eastern colonies off the important port of Laiazzo in Cilician Armenia. Civil conflict in Genoa prevented the deployment of a major fleet in 1296, and the unopposed Venetian fleet raided the main Genoese settlements in the eastern Mediterranean, pillaging the suburbs of Phokaia in the Aegean and Caffa in the Crimea, and burning the unwalled settlement of Pera outside Constantinople.

In 1297 the Venetians again refused battle, but they were forced to fight in 1298 when the Genoese fleet under Lamba Doria entered the Adriatic. In the largest battle ever fought between the two republics, off Korcula (Curzola), the Venetian fleet under Andrea Dandolo was destroyed. However, the Genoese, who had suffered heavy casualties and were troubled by continuing domestic conflict in Liguria, returned home rather than advancing against Venice, and a compromise peace was concluded the following year. It was in this war that Marco Polo, fighting for his native Venice, was taken prisoner and while in prison wrote his memoirs.^[5]

In 1296 the local Genoese residents of Constantinople destroyed the Venetian quarter and killed many Venetian civilians. Despite the Byzantine–Venetian truce of 1285, the Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos immediately showed support for his Genoese allies by arresting the Venetian survivors of the massacre, including the Venetian bailo Marco Bembo.

Venice threatened war with the Byzantine Empire, demanding reparations for the affront they suffered. In July 1296, the Venetian fleet, under command of Ruggiero Morosini Malabranca, stormed the Bosphorus. During the course of the campaign, various Genoese possessions in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea were captured, including the city of Phocaea. The Genoese colony of Galata, across the Golden Horn from the Byzantine capital, was also burned down. The Byzantine basileus, however, preferred at that point to avoid war.

Open war between Venice and the Byzantines did not begin until after the Battle of Curzola and the end of the war with Genoa in the 1299 Treaty of Milan, which left Venice free to pursue her war against the Greeks.

Interlude: Fights against the Turks and Mongols[edit]

At the beginning of the 14th century, relations between Genoa and Venice were still in a state of tension (in 1304 the Genoese occupied Chios with the approval of Byzantium) but the political upheavals in Crimea managed to make the two thalassocracies unlikely allies.

On the Black Sea, relations between the Mongols and Italian merchants were somewhat ambiguous: the Mongol knights, averse to the sea, benefited from the Italian trade that connected Asia and Europe through the Crimea but the enrichment of the European trading posts fueled their greed. From 1307 tensions emerged on the issue of the trade in Turkish slaves, sold by the Italians to the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt to make them soldiers. Dissatisfied with this trade fueled by steppe kidnappings to provide an army to his enemy the Mamluks, Khan Toqta of the Golden Horde arrested the Genoese residents of Sarai Berke and besieged Caffa. Poorly protected by an earth and wood fence, the city fell in May 1308 and was abandoned by the Genoese who set it on fire. When Toqta died in 1312, Genoa sent ambassadors to his successor, Özbeg Khan, who agreed to welcome the Genoese back and in 1316 adopted measures to encourage the reconstruction of Caffa.

In 1327, Venice began to push for the formation of an anti-Turkish league including Byzantium, the Knights Hospitallers and the lord of Chios, to put a brake on the growing power of the Turkish Beilicates of Anatolia (in 1320, Smyrna, already Genoese, had been conquered by the Turkish emir of Aydin). The league faced and defeated the Turkish fleets in the Battle of Adramyttium (1334) and then supported the Anatolian expeditions of Hugh IV of Cyprus (1336-1337). The subsequent Christian expeditions, known as the Smyrna Crusades (1343-1351), managed to bring some order to Anatolia, giving the Venetians respite from the Turkish threat.

In the meantime, after the death of Özbeg Khan in 1341, his son Jani Beg reignited tensions between the Mongols, recently converted to Islam, and the Italians in Crimea. In 1343, a Mongol nobleman was killed during an altercation with a Venetian merchant in the city of Tana, and in retaliation, the Horde attacked the Venetian exercises in Tana, giving Jani Beg the pretext to assume control of all Italian trading posts, while the Genoese took advantage of the Venetian withdrawal from Tana to establish a commercial monopoly in the Black Sea.

In 1346 Jani Beg attacked Caffa. After two years of siege, the Mongols were forced to retreat after being decimated by the plague which also infected the Genoese after Jani Beg decided to throw plague-ridden corpses over the city walls. Following this act of bacteriological warfare, the epidemic rapidly spread to Caffa and also forced the Genoese to abandon the city after the siege was lifted by the Mongols. The dispersal of Italian merchants in the Mediterranean, with their ships carrying flea-infested rats, was the cause of the second plague pandemic in Europe, the so-called "Black Death".

War of the Straits[edit]

Disputes over Black Sea prompted the outbreak of another war in 1350, in which Venice allied with King Peter IV of Aragon, who was at odds with Genoa over control of Sardinia and the commercial rivalry between his Catalan subjects and the Genoese, and entered the war in 1351.

Following clashes between local forces in the Aegean and around the Bosphorus, in 1351 a major Genoese fleet under Paganino Doria besieged the Venetian colony of Negroponte before advancing to Constantinople. The Byzantine Emperor John VI, who had lost a short war with the Genoese in 1348–1349, had been induced to enter the war on the Venetian side and assisted them in attacks on Pera. A combined Venetian-Catalan fleet under Niccolo Pisani and the Catalan Ponce de Santapau arrived soon afterwards and joined forces with the Byzantines, and the bloody battle of the Straits was fought in the Bosphorus in February 1352. Both sides suffered heavy casualties, but the most serious losses were inflicted on the Catalans, inducing Pisani to withdraw and enabling Doria to force Byzantium out of the war.

In August 1353, Pisani led the Venetians and Catalans to a crushing victory over the Genoese under Antonio Grimaldi off Alghero in Sardinia. Alarmed by the defeat, Genoa submitted to Giovanni Visconti, Lord of Milan, in order to secure his financial support. In 1354 Paganino Doria caught Pisani unprepared in his anchorage at Zonklon (Sapienza) in the Peloponnese and captured the entire Venetian fleet. This defeat contributed to the deposition of doge Marino Faliero, and Venice made peace with Genoa on 1 June 1355. Though inconclusive in itself, Venice's exhaustion by this war helped bring about the loss of Dalmatia to Hungary shortly afterwards. Freed of the need for support from Milan, the Genoese brought an end to Milanese rule in 1356.

War of Chioggia[edit]

In 1376 Venice bought the strategically positioned island of Tenedos near the Dardanelles from the Byzantine Emperor John V, threatening Genoese access to the Black Sea. This induced the Genoese to help John's son Andronikos IV to seize the throne, in return for the transfer of the island to Genoa, initiating a new war between the two republics. The Genoese failed to take Tenedos from the Venetians in 1377, but gained the support of a coalition of Venice's mainland rivals Hungary, Austria, Aquileia and Padua, although only Padua gave substantial assistance. Venice allied with Milan, whose army threatened Genoa from the landward side, and with the Kingdom of Cyprus, which had been defeated in a war with Genoa in 1373-74 and subjected to Genoese hegemony.

A small Genoese fleet led by Luciano Doria invaded the Adriatic in 1378 and defeated the Venetians under Vettor Pisani at Pula in 1379. Having been reinforced, they advanced against Venice under Pietro Doria, Luciano having been killed at Pula. Though failing to break through the defences of the Venetian lagoon, the Genoese captured the port of Chioggia near its southern end, with support from the Paduans on land.

In December 1379 the Venetians were able to sink blockships in the harbour of Chioggia, trapping the Genoese fleet inside. Venice was reinforced by the return of a raiding fleet under Carlo Zeno, which had enjoyed exceptional success against Genoese commerce throughout the Mediterranean. A new Genoese fleet was assembled in the Adriatic, but was unable to break through to relieve Chioggia. The forces trapped inside were forced to surrender in June 1380.

Fighting continued between the Genoese and Venetian fleets over the ports of the upper Adriatic, but through the mediation of Amadeus VI of Savoy, the two sides negotiated peace at Turin in 1381. Despite the victory at Chioggia, the war had been financially disastrous for Venice, which only secured peace by agreeing to concessions including the evacuation of Tenedos, recognition of Genoese supremacy in Cyprus, the surrender of its principal mainland possession of Treviso, and the payment of an annual tribute to Hungary, whereas Genoa and its allies made no significant concessions.

Disengagement[edit]

The War of Chioggia left the rivalry between Venice and Genoa unresolved, as had all previous conflicts between them. Venice was left severely debilitated, but was gradually able to rebuild its public finances and to take advantage of the weaknesses of its mainland rivals to redress its losses. Genoa had less success in dealing with the debts accumulated during these wars, and fell into deepening financial incapacity over the following decades. Its chronic political instability became acute after 1390, contributing to the acceptance of French sovereignty in 1396, the first of a series of prolonged bouts of foreign rule during the fifteenth century, which reduced its freedom of action.

These contrasting developments diminished Genoa's capacity to compete with Venice politically, although its commercial fortunes continued to flourish until the middle of the fifteenth century. After 1400, the expansion of Aragonese power in the western Mediterranean posed an increasing threat to Genoa, which led to a series of full-scale wars (1420–26, 1435–44, 1454–58) and remained a major preoccupation until the death of Alfonso V of Aragon in 1458, taking priority over the old rivalry with Venice.

Sporadic piratical violence between Venetians and Genoese continued, notably in the wake of a naval clash at Modon in 1403. During a period of Milanese rule in Genoa, conflict on the Italian mainland between Milan and Venice drew Genoa into another inconclusive naval war with Venice in 1431-33. Nonetheless, the rivalry had ceased to be a dominant consideration in either city's affairs.

Notes[edit]

^ Lane (1973), pp. 73–75
^ Lane (1973), pp. 75–76
^ Lane (1973), pp. 76–77
^ Lane (1973), pp. 77–78
^ Ostrogorsky, p490-491.

References[edit]

Balard, Michel (2016). "The Genoese in the Aegean (1204–1566)". In Stuckey, Jace (ed.). The Eastern Mediterranean Frontier of Latin Christendom. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 117–133. ISBN 978-1-47242275-0.
Balard, Michel (1997). "La lotta contro Genova". In Alberto Tenenti; Ugo Tucci (eds.). Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima. Vol. III: La formazione dello stato patrizio (in Italian). Rome: Enciclopedia Italiana. pp. 87–126. OCLC 1002736138.
Lane, Frederic Chapin (1973), Venice, a Maritime Republic, Johns Hopkins University, ISBN 0-8018-1445-6
Ostrogorsky, George. History of the Byzantine State, Rutgers University Press, (1969) ISBN 0-8135-0599-2
Setton, Kenneth M. Catalan Domination of Athens 1311–1380. Revised edition. London: Variorum, 1975.
Norwich, John Julius. A History of Venice. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.
Rodón i Oller, Francesch. Fets de la Marina de guerra catalana. Barcelona: 1898.