Empires: Medieval Venice & Google

Great excitement! Roger Crowley's new book "City of Fortune, how Venice won and lost a naval empire" has just arrived. We had previously touched on the Venetian empire when talking about the medieval crusades as well as the siege of Constantinople. These articles had really just mentioned the "serene republic" in passing. Now we hope to look at it in more detail.

So why the reference to Google in this title of this post? Well, let us start by viewing the rise and fall of Venice. Venice was built on the wealth which came from the sea. In fact the bottom picture in this post, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, shows Neptune surrendering the wealth of the seas to Venice. Trade and commerce was all they had. Venice itself, whilst beautiful, was just an Island in a lagoon. To quote Roger Crowley:

"The City's prosperity rested on nothing tangible - no land holdings, no natural resources, no agricultural production or large population. There was literally no solid ground underfoot.Physical survival depended on a fragile economic balance.Venice was perhaps the first virtual economy,whose vitality baffled outsiders. It harvested nothing...and lived in perpetual fear that if its trade routes were severed, the whole magnificent edifice might collapse".

So what we had was an extremely wealthy empire which dominated the eastern Mediterranean.

Without a dynasty (it was ruled by doges) there was less risk of the habitual problems from inheritance and royalty and who could have foreseen its demise? When the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople in 1453 the main trade route to the east was cut off. Traders started to pursue alternative trade routes and in 1493 Christopher Columbus arrived in North America.

From this point on Venice started to become a side show and when Napoleon Bonaparte dealt the final blow to end the republic in 1797 all that remained was for Venice to quietly settle to a future as a tourist destination.

Now back to Google. These days the search engine seems omnipotent. It is part of everything which people do online and it becomes increasingly difficult to see a world without it.

However, just as Venice did nothing "wrong" other than to eventually be in the wrong place to take advantage of the New World, so there will possibly come a time when a change in technology or historical direction will sideline the empire built by Google. We can't know what that change will be but it will come and the world will move forward.

This is the flag of Venice

Here is the front of Roger Crowley's book




The painting referred to at the start of this post

Constantinople - The Last Great Medieval Siege

Some historians say that the medieval era came to an end in 1453. This particular year was witness to two major historical events:

1. On 19 October 1453 the French captured Bordeaux bringing the 100 Years War to an end.

2. On 29 May 1453 Constantinople fell to Mehmed II bringing an end to the Byzantium empire and creating the foundations for modern Turkey.

Roger Crowley's book on the fall of Constantinople provides a good description of the events before during and after the seige. There is also a lot of good detail about this within Wikipedia. Many of the events around the seige will be covered by later medieval castle blog posts but for the moment it is worth considering a number of lessons which come from this extraordinary event.

The Winning Strategy
Although the seige was relatively brief, lasting from 6 April to 29 May, there were a large number of strategies tried by Mehmed II:

1. The introduction of seige guns with probably the first artillery bombardment in history

2. The failure of seige towers 3. The attempt to undermine the walls 4. The naval manoeuvres, including the transportation of the muslim fleet across land to avoid the steel chain which had been laid across the Bosphorus

5. The struggle to fill in the ditch or fosse to provide easier access to the Walls

Just one of the attacks needed to succeed. Whilst the defenders fought back against each new initiative they only had to lose one battle and the city would fall.

Importance Of Seiges
Modern artillery has consigned true seiges to the history books but looking back it is impossible to underestimate the importance of seiges in deciding the outcome of wars. For instance, look at the 100 Years War which ended in the same year. The English won at Crecy and at Agincourt but it was the French ability to withstand seiges and to stretch the English resources which ultimately won the day.

Use Of Gunpowder
The use of seige guns at Constantinople as well as at the battle of Castillon two months later in July ushered in the military use of gunpowder and effectively signalled the end of the use of heavy cavalry horses.

The Holy Roman Empire
Constantinople was looked upon as the second Rome and the last bastion of the Holy Roman Empire. The fall of the city was a traumatic event for the west and brought the muslim armies into Europe from Asia.

Crusades
It had been 181 years since the ninth medieval Crusade (the last) and despite papal pleas to start a crusade to liberate the city there was no action. Effectively, the years of the medieval crusades were ended.

Trade With The East & The Development Of Sea Routes
The loss of the city persuaded many traders to look for alternative routes for the spice trade. This led to the development of new sea routes and one spin off was Columbus's voyage to America in 1492.