Besides the carrying-trade, which depended on her neighbour’s industry, Venice had her own manufactures such as silk and glass; but in either case both her sailors and workmen found one thing absolutely vital to their interests, namely, the command of the Adriatic. Like the British Isles to-day, Venice could not feed her thriving population from home-produce, and yet, with enemies or pirates hiding along the Dalmatian coast, safety for her richly-laden vessels passing to and fro could not be guaranteed. These are some of the reasons why from earliest times the Republic had embarked on an aggressive maritime policy that brought her into clash with other Mediterranean ports, and especially with Genoa, her rival in Eastern waters. When, at the end of the Fourth Crusade, Venice forced Constantinople to accept a Latin dynasty, she secured for herself for the time being especial privileges in that world-market; Genoa, who adopted the cause of the exiled Greeks, achieved a signal triumph in her turn when in 1261 with her assistance Michael Paleologus, a Greek general, restored the Byzantine Empire amid public rejoicings. Open warfare was now almost continuous between the republics; there was street-fighting in Constantinople and in the ports of Palestine, sea-battles off the Italian and Greek coasts, encounters in which varying fortunes gave at first the mastery of the Mediterranean to neither Venice nor Genoa, but which disastrously weakened the whole resistance of Christendom to the Mahometans. At length in 1380 a decisive battle was fought off Chioggia, one of the cities of the Venetian Lagoons, whither the Genoese fleet, triumphant on the open seas, had taken up its quarters determined to blockade the enemy into surrender. ‘Let us man every vessel in Venice and go and fight the foe’, was the general cry; and a popular leader, Pisani, imprisoned on account of his share in a recent naval disaster, was released on the public demand and made captain of the enterprise. ‘Long live Pisani!’ the citizens shouted in their joy, but their hero, true to the spirit of Venice, answered them, ‘Venetians cry only, “Long live St. Mark!”’