Venetian-Genoese Wars
The Venetian-Genoese Wars were a series of conflicts primarily fought between the maritime republics of Venice and Genoa from the mid-13th century to the late 14th century. These wars were rooted in intense competition for control over trade routes in the Mediterranean, particularly after both cities expanded their commercial interests following the First Crusade. The rivalry escalated into open warfare in 1255, following incidents of piracy and violence, with notable engagements occurring in strategic locations such as Acre and Constantinople.
Throughout the series of wars, both sides experienced victories and setbacks, including significant naval battles where tactics like ship formations and strategic alliances played crucial roles. The Genoese, at times allied with the Byzantine Empire, seized opportunities to challenge Venetian dominance, while Venice sought alliances and retaliatory actions to regain its standing.
By the end of the conflicts, particularly marked by the War of Chioggia (1378-1380), Venice emerged relatively unscathed and entered a period of prosperity, while Genoa faced a decline from which it would never fully recover. The wars significantly shaped the political and commercial landscape of the Mediterranean region, reflecting the complexities of power dynamics among medieval maritime states.
On this Page
Venetian-Genoese Wars
At issue: Control of trade routes and ports in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea
Date: 1257–1270, 1291–1299, 1350–1355, 1378–1380
Location: Eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Adriatic Sea
Combatants: Venetians vs. Genoese
Principal commanders:Venetian, Lorenzo Tiepolo (d. 1274), Niccolò Pisani (fl. fourteenth century); Genoese, Lamba Doria (c. 1250–1323), Paganino Doria (d. 1372)
Principal battles: Acre, Settepozzi, Trapani, Lajazzo, Curzola, Bosphorus, Porto Longo, Chioggia
Result: Though neither side clearly defeated the other, Venice proved more resilient and powerful, while Genoa never recovered
Background
Both Venice and Genoa had long depended on sea trade for even basic necessities. After the First Crusade, many eastern Mediterranean ports with their valuable luxury wares were opened to ships from both cities. Constantinople and the Black Sea beyond were also prized destinations and, increasingly, the sites of Italian merchant communities. Rivalry was fierce, and when Venice gained enormous trading privileges in Constantinople and the Holy Roman Empire after the Fourth Crusade, the Genoese found themselves at a disadvantage. Although mutual piracy was common, open war did not break out until 1255. In the city of Acre, a Venetian killed a Genoese, and the Genoese community sacked the Venetian quarter.
Action
A Venetian war fleet under Lorenzo Tiepolo entered Acre‘s harbor on June 23-24, 1257, and seized or destroyed all Genoese ships. The following year, the Genoese returned with fifty-four vessels against a slightly smaller Venetian fleet and again were beaten, losing twenty-five galleys and some 1,700 men. The Genoese inhabitants were expelled.
In 1261, Genoa allied with Byzantine emperor Michael IX Palaeologus in the Treaty of Ninfeo. Together they seized control of Constantinople while the Venetian fleet was away, and the Genoese established themselves in Galata, across the Golden Horn from Constantinople. From there, they controlled access to the Black Sea. Minor sea engagements followed, but the Genoese rarely mastered the Venetians. In 1263, near Settepozzi, thirty-eight Genoese galleys met thirty-two Venetian galleys, and the Venetians prevailed. In an engagement off Trapani, Sicily, in 1264, 1,100 Genoese sailors jumped ship and drowned, and 600 were taken captive. In 1267, a Genoese fleet blockading Acre scattered at the approach of a Venetian squadron. However, in 1264, the Genoese were able to draw a merchant fleet’s naval escort away and seize the entire convoy. The Venetian people responded by rioting and their government by opening negotiations for a truce that was signed in 1268. They also decided on a strict convoy system (carovana) to the Levant: only once a year with fifteen to thirty accompanying warships. In 1270, Louis IX of France brokered a true peace treaty.
The second war broke out in 1291. Genoa had soundly beaten rival Pisa at Meloria in 1284 and ruled the western Mediterranean. Though Genoa and Venice had renewed their 1270 treaty several times, when the Mamlūk sultan al-Ashraf Khalīl took Acre in 1291, Venice suddenly needed another transshipment point for eastern trade. Besides local furs, grain, salt, slaves, and forest products, the Black Sea ports of Caffa and Trebizond were major endpoints for Asian caravans, and Genoa dominated the region. Venice prepared for three years and allied with vengeful Pisa. Their fleet sailed in October, 1294, under Marco Basegio and harried the coast of Genoese-controlled Cyprus. The Genoese fleet followed and caught up with them off of Lajazzo (1294) in the Gulf of Alexandretta. Though outnumbered, the Genoese won by lashing their ships together and forcing the overconfident Venetians to attack this platform. The Genoese sunk twenty-five of sixty-eight Venetian galleys and seized a huge haul of merchandise and booty.
The emboldened Genoese then attacked Venetian outposts in Crete and seized the carovana near Modone in 1295. Outraged by these losses and by violence done to Venetians in Constantinople by the Holy Roman emperor, in 1296, Venice sped two fleets up the Dardanelles, sinking every ship in sight, sacking Genoese Galata, and temporarily opening the Bosphorus. Minor sea encounters preceded the major Genoese action of 1298. Lamba Doria led a fleet of eighty ships that ravaged the Dalmatian coast and was met finally off Curzola (September 7, 1298) by Andrea Dandolo’s fleet of ninety-five. The tightly packed Venetian ships succumbed to an unfavorable wind and fire, and Dandolo lost sixty-five ships, as well as 9,000 dead and 5,000 captive sailors, including Marco Polo. Dandolo committed suicide, but the battered Genoese retired without threatening Venice itself. Venice quickly recovered to threaten Genoa’s own port, and Matteo Visconti of Milan arranged for a treaty that merely ended hostilities in May, 1299.
Between the treaty and the third war’s outbreak in 1350, commercial rivalry remained high. Tensions led to insults and a war whose beginning was postponed by the Black Death, the plague that sorely reduced both cities’ ability to wage war. In 1350, the Genoese seized Venetian ships in Caffa without provocation. In November, a Venetian fleet of thirty-five galleys under Marco Ruzzini caught fourteen Genoese merchant galleys in Castro Harbor near Negroponte (Euboea). Four of these got away, however, and joined nine more in Chios, all of whom, under Filipo Doria, sacked Negroponte and seized twenty-three Venetian merchant ships. Venice needed and found allies in Byzantium and Aragon, which had emerged as a rival to Genoa in the western Mediterranean. Their combined fleet of perhaps ninety vessels under Niccolò Pisani attacked the sixty-four ships of Paganino Doria off Galata in the Bosphorus on February 13, 1352. A horrific fight lasted late into the night, illuminated by burning ships. In 1353, Pisani joined the Aragonese in a successful siege of Genoese Alghero on Sardinia. Doria again threatened the Adriatic and captured Pisani and his fifty-six ships as they wintered in Porto Longo (November 4, 1354); this was Venice’s greatest defeat. Milan again brokered a peace in 1355.
The fourth war, or War of Chioggia (August 6, 1378-June 22, 1380), centered on the nearly successful attempt by the Genoese, aided by Italian and Hungarian armies, to take Venice in summer, 1379. Though tightly besieged and offering to negotiate, the Venetians held out and captured the beleaguered blockading Genoese fleet at Chioggia. Amadeus IV of Savoy arranged the Treaty of Turin later that year.
Aftermath
Although Genoa never recovered fully, Venice did so quickly and entered a golden age.
Bibliography
Epstein, Steven. Genoa and the Genoese. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Kedar, Benjamin. Merchants in Crisis. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976.
Lane, Frederic. Venice: A Maritime Republic. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
Norwich, John. History of Venice. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.