But many centuries elapsed from the time when the infant colony was planted, before “the water fowl, who had fixed their nests on the bosom of the waves,”[361] obtained a prominent and independent position as a great maritime nation. Although in the early career of the Venetians their independence was more especially due to their determination to attend to their own affairs, and not to trouble themselves with those of their neighbours, at a later period the western[362] and eastern empires, in turn, claimed authority over them, and thus they were invaded and at last conquered by Pepin, father of Charlemagne, though ultimately restored to the Greek empire in the tenth century. The Venetians therefore can hardly be considered as a really independent republic till they had acquired the maritime cities of Dalmatia and Istria, including the people of Ragusa, the posterity of the mariners who, in classical times, owned and manned the fast sailing Liburnians. The population of these coasts still retained the piratical habits of their ancestors; and having in some respects identical interests to defend, were not unwilling to place themselves under the strong government of the Venetians. From that period the Venetians carried on, for between four and five centuries, a most important commercial intercourse with other nations, and exercised, as a trading people, more influence than any other country had done before them. The long duration of this enterprising republic, with its maritime greatness and vast commerce, will, with the story of the sister republics of Genoa and Pisa, form a subject to which we shall frequently have occasion hereafter to refer. It is enough now to remark that these cities, all favourably situated for conducting an extensive maritime commerce, were among the first to revive the genuine spirit of trade in the south of Europe after it had been almost annihilated by the repeated inundations of the barbarians. [Sidenote: Spread of the Scythians, Huns, or Turks, A.D. 997-1028. A.D. 1074-1084.] [Sidenote: A.D. 1076-1096.] [Sidenote: The Crusades, A.D. 1095-1099.]