Irresistible North

by Andrea Di Robilant

  Messer Nicolò’s talent for commerce, stifled by pestilence and war, was finally able to flourish sometime in the early 1360s, when he was already in his thirties. Venice’s trade routes to Egypt, Syria, Cyprus and Romania (via the Black Sea) formed a thriving web across the eastern Mediterranean. Messer Nicolò opened for business on the Rialto, starting out as an agent and intermediary for wealthy merchants. After the death of his stepmother, Andreola, he received financial backing from her two surviving sisters, Orsa and Elisabetta, and made successful investments in galleys trading in the Levant.

  At about the same time he married Fantina Muazzo, a young noblewoman from the parish of San Giovanni Grisostomo. They bought a house on Campo S. Fantin and had four children: Antonio, Giovanni, Tommaso and Chiara. By the end of the 1360s, Messer Nicolò had made enough money that he could lease a state-owned galley headed for the port of Tana, in the Sea of Azov, for the handsome sum of thirty golden ducats. During the following years, he led three more commercial convoys to the Black Sea.

  It was probably on account of his experience in the eastern Mediterranean that Messer Nicolò was appointed minister of the marine for the Levant in 1378, just months before war with the Genoese broke out anew over access to the Black Sea. The war was to last four years and bring Venice to near collapse. When victory would finally be snatched from the Genoese, Carlo Zen, Messer Nicolò’s brother, would be the hero of the day. But Messer Nicolò too was to play an important role in that historic conflict.

  The Venetians scored a few initial victories, but in the fall of 1378, Admiral Vettor Pisani’s fleet of twenty-four galleys was destroyed by the Genoese in a surprise attack at Pula, a port that faced Venice directly across the northern Adriatic. Pisani made his way back home with no more than five or six badly damaged galleys and was promptly thrown into prison for having failed the Republic so ignominiously. Seizing the favorable turn, the Genoese quickly closed in on Venice. They occupied Chioggia, the port city at the south end of the Venetian lagoon, and were poised to launch the final offensive.

  Venice, now desperate, could do little but place its faith in Carlo Zen, who, it turned out, had played no small part in the outbreak of the war. After a failed student life in Padua and a short-lived marriage, Carlo had spent seven years trading and scheming in Constantinople. His close ties to the weak Byzantine emperor John V Palaeologus had eventually paved the way for Venice’s military occupation of Tenedos, a fortified island strategically located at the entrance of the Dardanelles. The Genoese had seen the occupation of the island as an intolerable provocation and a good-enough reason to break the twenty-three-year-long truce with their archenemy.

  In the early stages of the war the Venetian Senate had sent Carlo out with a small force of no more than six galleys to inflict damage on the Genoese wherever he could find them in the Mediterranean. While the Genoese laid siege to Venice, Carlo had gone about his business, sinking a small enemy fleet off the coast of Sicily, chasing more galleys all the way up to the Ligurian Sea and making his way to the Aegean.

  Messer Nicolò was instructed to slink out of Venice, evade the lurking Genoese ships in the Adriatic and lead a six-galley flotilla to the eastern Mediterranean. He was to join forces with his brother at Tenedos and come back to rescue the Republic with as powerful a fleet as they could assemble. He left in the spring of 1379, nearly a year into the war.

  Daniele di Chinazzo, a well-known chronicler of the war, was aboard one of Messer Nicolò’s ships and he transcribed the log of their journey. His brief entries were usually fairly mundane but here and there were vivid details that helped me imagine what fourteenth-century navigation was often like. Messer Nicolò’s flotilla left on June 10 and sailed down the Adriatic coast, stopping for supplies in Rimini and Ortona, “where we accosted a ship laden with cheeses, which we duly purchased.” On June 23 they reached the port of Methoni, a fortified Venetian citadel on the western coast of the Peloponnese; it was known, with nearby Koroni, as “the two eyes of the Republic.” The small fleet then rounded Cape Matapan and headed north to the Aegean. At the end of June, it encountered three Catalan ships at Altoluogo (today’s Ayasoluk, north of Smyrna). “We raided the ships but returned most of the goods.” The Venetians showed no such compunction days later when they ran into a Turkish ship; this time “the men were chopped to pieces and the vessel was sunk.” After surviving “a bombardment of heavy rocks” at Chios, they reached the island of Tenedos on July 10.

  Carlo Zen, however, was not there, so Messer Nicolò sailed on to Constantinople, where he became embroiled in the endless feud within the ruling dynasty.

  Emperor John V had been overthrown by his son Andronicus with the backing of the Genoese, but he had managed to escape from prison. Andronicus, meanwhile, had entrenched himself in Pera, the Genoese fortified citadel inside the city. Emperor John asked Messer Nicolò to help him capture his son and root out the rebels. At first Messer Nicolò resisted because he did not want to put his contingent at risk even before meeting up with his brother. But according to Chinazzo, the chronicler, after so many weeks at sea the men had “a strong desire to fight.” So the Venetians stormed the citadel and put Emperor John back on the throne.

  At the end of August, Messer Nicolò sailed back to Tenedos, where he finally met up with Carlo (along the way he raided two Genoese cogs heavy with caviar, leather, hemp, wax, silk and other precious goods brought down from the Sea of Azov). The combined fleet under Carlo’s command, now numbering fifteen galleys, headed south and split up before reaching Cyprus. Carlo, at the head of twelve galleys, sailed to Syria to sell the goods he had in storage and load up with eastern merchandise before returning to Venice. Nicolò headed to Rhodes with the remaining three galleys. He was to stock up on food, wine and water and purchase “all the biscuit he could find” so that the fleet would be ready to return to Venice at the end of the summer.

  In Rhodes, however, Messer Nicolò came upon the legendary Bichignona, the largest and richest cog the Genoese had ever put to sea and possibly the mightiest ship to sail in the Mediterranean during the fourteenth century. The “floating city,” as she was known, was the most tantalizing prey, filled with terrified merchants huddling around a treasure worth half a million ducats. Her crew was no match for Messer Nicolò’s battle-hardened swordsmen and bowmen. But, after unloading much of her rich cargo to lighten her weight, the Bichignona took advantage of an unfurling breeze to slip away from the three approaching Venetian galleys. Just as her lucky escape seemed assured, Carlo arrived on the scene with his twelve galleys. He immediately commandeered a Catalan cog anchored at Rhodes to provide cover for his men during the assault (a cog was higher than a galley) and took off after the huge Genoese ship. As long as the breeze held, the Bichignona was faster than the Venetian galleys; it set a northeastern course hoping to find even stronger winds in the Aegean. But seventy miles into her run the wind died and the Venetians were upon her, setting her sails on fire and unleashing a wave of quivering arrows against the merchants and soldiers crowding the Genoese ship. Twenty-four were killed in the attack; the Venetians lost only one man, although sixty were wounded. Among them was Carlo: an arrow pierced his foot and another opened a gash near one eye.

  The booty was divided, and after the galley captains had taken their generous share each bowman received forty ducats and each oarsman received twenty. At last, in late October, as the first chills of autumn reached the southern Mediterranean, the much-invigorated fleet set sail toward the Adriatic to rescue Venice from the Genoese.

  Carlo and Messer Nicolò arrived in the nick of time. During their absence, Doge Contarini had ventured out of Venice at the head of a battered fleet to lay siege to the Genoese anchored in Chioggia. The doge felt that the only way to delay a final attack on Venice was to besiege the besiegers; he was also buying time in the hope that the Zen brothers would arrive from the east with reinforcements. Ships and barges were loaded with stones and sunk in the shallow waters of the canals connecting Chi
oggia to the mainland and to the sea in order to block escape routes and supply lines. But the siege was not sustainable for long. The doge had very limited forces at his disposal. Most of the men at the oars were grumbling shopkeepers and artisans who had been forcibly recruited. By the time winter set in, pressure was mounting to withdraw back to Venice and hunker down in the lagoon. The arrival of Carlo’s fifteen-galley fleet on January 1, 1381, gave the Venetians an enormous psychological boost and a strategic advantage that allowed them to tighten the noose around Chioggia. In June the worn-out Genoese surrendered. Five thousand prisoners were taken to Venice, where most of them were left to die of illness and malnutrition.

  Carlo was given the command of the Venetian fleet and began to clear the Adriatic of Genoese ships. Messer Nicolò was appointed savio alla guerra, secretary of war, and was then put in charge of Venice’s land forces (chapetano de gente e de campo). Later in the year the Peace of Turin finally brought peace between the two Mediterranean rivals. Genoa never recovered its preeminence. Venice was victorious but exhausted and weak.

  MANY VENETIAN merchants lost their fortunes during the war. Not so Messer Nicolò, who increased his wealth thanks to the plundering of the Bichignona and other wartime raids. According to the public record, he purchased the house of his impoverished next-door neighbor at San Fantin, the combined properties forming a substantial palazzo. Although I could not find a birth certificate that would tell me his exact age, my guess was that Messer Nicolò had reached fifty by the time the war was over. He barely had time to settle in with his family in their larger, more comfortable house before the Senate appointed him to a three-man delegation that was to travel to Ferrara to negotiate the new borders of Padua (one of Genoa’s allies in the war) with the marquess of Este. In the autumn of 1381 he signed over power of attorney to two business associates, Remigio Soranzo and Vittorio Diedo, who were to look after his wife, Fantina, and their four children while he was away. However, Doge Contarini died and Messer Nicolò, together with the other two members of the delegation, stayed in Venice to participate in the election of the new doge, Michele Morosini. The diplomatic mission to Ferrara was postponed to the following year (1382).

  Nicolò the Younger did not specify when Messer Nicolò sailed to Flanders except to say that it was after the war with the Genoese. But since I found no record of him at all in the archives for the period from 1383 to 1388, I imagine that he prepared his journey no earlier than the fall and winter of 1382–83 and sailed in the spring of 1383.

  The Battle of Chioggia (1381) was the final turning point in the century-long war between Venice and Genoa for supremacy in the Mediterranean. Carlo Zen, aided by his brother Nicolò, played a decisive role in Venice’s last-minute victory. (illustration credit 2.1)

  (Click here to view a larger version of this image.)

  Romania and the Black Sea, the region he knew so well and that had made him a rich man, would have been a more obvious destination for Messer Nicolò than Flanders—a part of the world where, at least according to the available record, he had never sailed before. But in the aftermath of the war with Genoa, Venice was looking to reinvigorate its commercial empire, which had been largely dependent on the trade routes in the eastern Mediterranean. The growing markets in the northern seas offered attractive possibilities to Venetian merchants, especially now that the Genoese had been weakened.

  Actually, Venice was not new to those markets. The Republic had started to send sea convoys to Flanders as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century, mainly to avoid the dangers and pitfalls of overland travel. Until then, Venetians wishing to bring their goods to the great market of Bruges had had to suffer grueling journeys across Europe during which they were oppressed by endless customs duties and constantly under threat from roadside bandits. The traveling itself, much of it over mountainous terrain, was physically exhausting as the roads were primitive and often flooded. Transactions had to be conducted in any number of incomprehensible idioms. As a result, Venetian trade with Western Europe had never really flourished. But with the introduction of round-bodied ships in the Mediterranean, a sea route to Flanders became an attractive alternative to land convoys. The journey was far less difficult, the ships carried bigger loads and the merchants were able to communicate in linguafranca, the simple, functional language that was spoken in all the ports of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. It was made up of words from Portuguese, Catalan, Venetian, Genoese, Greek, Latin and Arabic and although there is no written record of this extraordinary idiom, it is known to have been the chosen means of communication among sailors and merchants in the Middle Ages and beyond.

  There was, of course, another reason why Venetians began to sail to Flanders: they thrived at sea, and they preferred having to weather a storm or face the occasional assault by a pirate ship than slog their way along muddy European roads.

  The first Venetian ships sailed to Flanders as early as 1313. Those first contacts were so promising that four years later Venice established a state-sponsored shipping line to the region, with the Senate leasing up to eight galleys to the highest bidders in its yearly auctions. The Venetians obtained important trading rights and guarantees from the local authorities in Bruges and opened a consulate in the city’s market square to signal they were there to stay. Venetian state galleys were quite an intimidating sight, always traveling in convoy and heavily armed. The two-way journey lasted from four to six months. The government fixed the itinerary and listed the goods to be transported. Increasingly, Venice had come to view the Atlantic trade route as a new strategic component of its economy.

  Each Venetian merchant ship traveling to the ports of England and Flanders (Bruges was usually the terminus of the line) was quite a sight to behold—a large floating emporium filled with the greatest variety of goods. Wine, paper, earthenware, glass, jewels, refined silks and other Venetian manufactured goods were in plentiful supply. The ships carried wax and leather from Romania, cotton from Egypt, hemp from Syria, as well as less obvious raw materials, such as crates of elephant tusks for the Flemish ivory artisans. And there was the usual load of sweet delicacies: brown sugar, candied fruits, currants, dried prunes, dates.

  Most of the sacks in the hull, however, were stuffed with exotic herbs and roots. It was said of Venetian ships that they left such a profusion of pungent aromas in their wake at sea that they could be detected miles away given the right wind. The most common spices were ginger from Malabar, cinnamon from Ceylon, pepper from Hindustan, cloves from Egypt, nutmeg from Malacca and wormwood from Persia. Spices were intended for cooking but also for cosmetic and pharmaceutical purposes. Ginger, for example, was a precious stimulant and antiscorbutic. Gum arabic was a widely used astringent. Sal ammoniac was an effective sudorific. Galangal, a popular diuretic, also helped stimulate menstruation. Borax cured glandular and spleen diseases. Musk was an effective antidote to poison. Belzoe had a soothing effect on asthmatics. Turpentine was said to cure gonorrhea. A wide choice of purgatives was also available, from refined scammony, which was very strong, to milder remedies, such as rhubarb, manna and aloe. There were “uppers” and “downers”: ambergris was used against melancholia and as a sexual stimulant; saffron and camphor had a tranquilizing effect and supposedly cured women of “hysterics.”

  One can imagine the relief with which those floating pharmacies, brimming with remedies for every possible ailment, were greeted in the northern countries.

  DURING THE war with Genoa, the government-sponsored line to Flanders was of course interrupted. It was not reinstated until four years after the end of hostilities, in 1385. But Messer Nicolò was evidently anxious to leave because, according to Nicolò the Younger, he chose to “[build] and [equip] a ship with his own riches” rather than wait until he could lease a galley from the government. It was a riskier course to take because he would not have the protection afforded to a convoy; on the other hand, he would be free to chart his itinerary and set his schedule without having to abide by the res
trictive rules established by the Venetian authorities.

  Why so much haste on Messer Nicolò’s part? Although one can only speculate about his reasons, I suspect he simply wanted to beat his competitors to the rich markets of England and Flanders after the crippling war against the Genoese. All his life he had been a restless merchant, always on the lookout for new commercial opportunities. The spread of Church influence during the late Middle Ages had vastly increased demand for dried and salted fish across Europe. The cod and herring trade in the North Sea was booming and promised to be an important complement to the spice trade that dominated the traditional eastern routes Messer Nicolò knew so well.

  The ship of choice for a merchant sailing on his own to Flanders in the fourteenth century, and the one Messer Nicolò most certainly used, was the cog—a round, bulky, one- or two-mast vessel with high battlements, a steep hull and a very deep hold that could carry a much more substantial cargo than the traditional galley. The ship, steered with a long axial rudder fixed to the poop frame, was stable and seaworthy; it plowed the deep swells of the Atlantic with a natural ease.

  The cog originated in the northern seas and was widely used by the German merchants of the Hanseatic League before it appeared in the Mediterranean at the end of the thirteenth century. Venetians, who had used galleys for centuries, started converting to the cog in the early fourteenth century as they ventured beyond the Strait of Gibraltar. Although the cog was specifically designed to navigate in the Atlantic, it was soon widely used in the Mediterranean as well.