History of the Republic of Venice

It was based in the lagoon communities of the historically prosperous city of Venice, and was a leading European economic and trading power during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the most successful of Italy's maritime republics.

The 11th century Chronicon Altinate also dates the first settlement in that region, Rivo Alto ("High Shore", later Rialto), to the dedication of that same church (i.e., San Giacometo on the bank of the current Grand Canal).

This part of Roman Italy was again overrun in the early 5th century by the Visigoths and by Attila of the Huns who sacked Altinum (a town on the mainland coast of the lagoon of Venice) in 452.

As the power of the Byzantine Empire dwindled in northern Italy in the late 7th century, the lagoon communities came together for mutual defence against the Lombards, as the Duchy of Venetia.

One of the few early settlements attested in the Rialto group was the island of Olivolo (now called S. Pietro in Castello), at the western end of the archipelago, closer to the sandbars of the lagoon.

A minor, pro-Lombard, faction was opposed to close ties with any of these further-off powers and interested in maintaining peace with the neighbouring Lombard kingdom, which surrounded Venice except on the seaward side.

In that period because, Venice had established itself a thriving slave trade, buying in Italy, among other places, and selling to the Moors in Northern Africa (Pope Zachary himself reportedly forbade such traffic out of Rome).

His father (Pietro Candiano I) attempted to attack and destroy Marania or Pagania or Narentines and secure safe passage to Venetian fleets and treaders near Croatian Dalmatia .

[28] The fleet visited all the main Istrian and Dalmatian cities, whose citizens, exhausted by the wars between the Croatian king Svetislav and his brother Cresimir, swore an oath of fidelity to Venice.

Doge Domenico Selvo intervened in the war between the Normans of Apulia and the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos in favour of the latter, obtaining in exchange a bull declaring the Venetian supremacy in the Adriatic coast up to Durazzo, as well as the exemption from taxes for his merchants in the whole Byzantine Empire, a considerable factor in the city-state's later accumulation of wealth and power serving as middlemen for the lucrative spice and silk trade that funnelled through the Levant and Egypt along the ancient Kingdom of Axum and Roman-Indian routes via the Red Sea.

Venice was asked to provide transportation for the Fourth Crusade, but when the crusaders could not pay for chartering their shipping, the doge Enrico Dandolo[33] offered to delay the payment in exchange for their aid in recapturing Zara (today Zadar), which had rebelled against Venetian rule in 1183, placing itself under the dual protection of the Papacy and King Emeric of Hungary, and had proved too well fortified[citation needed] for Venice to retake alone.

In 1356 an alliance was formed by the counts of Gorizia, Francesco I da Carrara, lord of Padua, Nicolaus, patriarch of Aquileia and his half brother emperor Charles IV, Louis I, and the dukes of Austria.

Initially defeated, the Venetians destroyed the Genoese fleet at the Battle of Chioggia in 1380 and retained their prominent position in eastern Mediterranean affairs at the expense of Genoa.

In the early 15th century, the Venetians further expanded their possessions in Northern Italy, and assumed the definitive control of the Dalmatian coast, which was acquired from Ladislaus of Naples.

Venice, however, again changed side when the power of Sforza seemed to become excessive: the intricate situation was settled with the Peace of Lodi (1454), which confirmed the area of Bergamo and Brescia to the Republic.

Operations were reduced mostly to isolated ravages and guerrilla attacks, until the Ottomans moved on a massive counteroffensive in 1470: this resulted in Venice losing its main stronghold in the Aegean Sea, Negroponte.

The Venetians sought an alliance with the Shah of Persia and other European powers, but, receiving only limited support, could make only small-scale attacks at Antalya, Halicarnassus and Smirne.

However, the heroic resistance of Scutari under Antonio Loredan forced the Ottomans to retire from Albania, while a revolt in Cyprus gave back the island to the Cornaro family and, subsequently, to the Serenissima (1473).

In spite of the numerous setbacks suffered in the campaign, Venice obtained the Polesine and Rovigo, and increased its prestige in the Italian peninsula at the expense of Florence especially.

Alliance with Spain/Aragon in the following reconquest of the Kingdom of Naples granted it the control of the Apulian ports, important strategic bases commanding the lower Adriatic, and the Ionian islands.

The Apulian ports were ceded in order to come to terms with Spain, and Pope Julius II soon recognized the danger brought by the eventual destruction of Venice (then the only Italian power able to face large states like France or Ottoman Turkey).

[42] In 1605 a conflict between Venice and the Holy See began with the arrest of two members of the clergy who were guilty of petty crimes, and with a law restricting the Church's right to enjoy and acquire landed property.

The Republic, under Doge Leonardo Donà, decided to ignore the interdict and excommunication, ordering local clergy to continue carrying out their ministries as before as if nothing had changed.

War was momentarily averted and the matter settled by diplomacy; however, six years later the Ottoman attack against Candia, the main Cretan port, left no easy terms to resort to.

In 1666 an expedition to retake Khania failed, and in 1669 another attempt to lift the siege of Candia with joint action on land with the French contingent and by sea under Mocenigo also turned out to be a failure.

The Treaty of Karlowitz (1699) favoured Austria and Russia more than Venice, which failed to regain its bases in the Mediterranean taken by the Turks in the previous two centuries, in spite of its conquests.

In December 1714 the Turks declared war on the Republic, at a time when Venice's major overseas possession, the "Kingdom of the Morea" (Peloponnese), was "without any of those supplies which are so desirable even in countries where aid is near at hand which are not liable to attack from the sea".

The bey of Tunis' pirates renewed their acts of piracy following claims of compensation for losses suffered by Tunisian subjects in Malta, due to no fault of the Venetians.

A fleet under Angelo Emo blockaded Tunis and bombarded Sousse (November 1784 and May 1785), Sfax (August 1785 and March 1786), La Goletta (September 1785), and Biserta (July 1786).

"[citation needed] C. P. Snow suggests that in the last half century of the republic, the Venetians knew "that the current of history had begun to flow against them," and that to keep going would require "breaking the pattern into which they had crystallised."