ere the Crusaders had rewarded
her naval assistance with the gift of the fortress of Acre. Genoa was
stronger in the Black Sea and Marmora, where, until the coming of the
Turks, her colony at Galata was little less than an Oriental Genoa.
The Genoese tower is still seen on the steep slope of Pera, and
Genoese forts are common objects in the Bosphorus, and in the Crimea,
where they dominate the little harbour of Balaklava. The Sea of
Marmora was the scene of many a deadly contest between the rival
fleets. In 1352, under the walls of Constantinople, the Genoese
defeated the combined squadrons of the Venetians, the Catalonians, and
the Greeks. But next year the Bride of the Sea humbled the pride of
Genoa in a disastrous engagement off Alghero; and in 1380, when the
Genoese had gained possession of Chioggia and all but occupied Venice
itself, the citizens rose like one man to meet the desperate
emergency, and not only repulsed, but surrounded the invaders, and
forced them to capitulate. From this time Genoa declined in power,
while Venice waxed stronger and more haughty. The conquest of
Constantinople by the Turks, followed rapidly by the expulsion of the
Genoese from Trebizond, Sinope, Kaffa, and Azov, was the end of the
commercial prosperity of the Ligurian Republic in the East. The Black
Sea and Marmora were now Turkish lakes. The Castles of the
Dardanelles, mounted with heavy guns, protected any Ottoman fleet from
pursuit; and though Giacomo Veniero defiantly carried his own ship
under fire through the strait and back again with the loss of only
eleven men, no one cared to follow his example.

[Illustration: AN ADMIRAL'S GALLEY

(_Furttenbach, Architectura Navalis, 1629._)]

When Mohammed II. issued forth with a fleet of one hundred galleys and
two hundred transports, carrying seventy thousand troops, and ravished
the Negropont away from Venice in 1470, he had only to repass the
Hellespont to be absolutely safe. All that the Venetian admirals, the
famous Loredani, could do was to retaliate upon such islands of the
Archipelago as were under Turkish sway and ravage the coasts of Asia
Minor. Superior as they were to the Turks in the building and
management of galleys, they had not the military resources of their
foe. Their troops were mercenaries, not to be compared with the
Janissaries and Sip[=a]his, though the hardy Stradiotes from Epirus,
dressed like Turks, but without the turban, of whom Othello is a
familiar spe