Nor, having resolved on the end, were they long in hesitating about the means to it; first, in seemingly friendly alliance with the Greeks, they secured for their colonies at Galata and Pera the bulk of the corn trade; while, at the same time, their fishermen supplied the wants of the city, the salt fish largely required by the Catholic nations, and caviare for the Russians. Next, they secured for themselves the produce of the inland caravan trade with the remote East, which still, as formerly, found its way by the waters of the Oxus and the Caspian to the eastern shores of the Euxine. In almost every case, their course of business was a strict monopoly, the Venetians and all other rivals being carefully excluded from any participation in their trade. So powerful, indeed, did they become, that, while they awed the Greeks into a reluctant submission, they resisted effectually, at their chief settlement, Caffa,[369] the inroad of the Tatar hosts. The demands of the Genoese merchants were in proportion to their rapacity, and at last they actually usurped the customs and even the tolls of the Bosphorus, securing for themselves alone a revenue of two hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which they reluctantly doled out to the emperor thirty thousand. The usurpations of the Genoese, which extended over nearly a century, every year increasing in their arrogance, ended, as might have been anticipated, with a demand for the empire itself. Having been refused some commanding heights at Pera, on which to erect additional fortifications, they embraced the opportunity of the emperor’s temporary absence from his capital to rise in open rebellion. “A Byzantine vessel,” remarks Gibbon,[370] “which had presumed to fish at the mouth of the harbour, was sunk by these audacious strangers; the fishermen were murdered. Instead of suing for pardon, the Genoese demanded satisfaction; required in a haughty strain that the Greeks should renounce the exercise of navigation; and encountered with regular arms the first sallies of the popular indignation. They instantly occupied the debatable land; and by the labour of a whole people, of either sex and of every age, the wall was raised, and the ditch was sunk with incredible speed. At the same time, they attacked and burnt two Byzantine galleys; while the three others, the remainder of the imperial navy, escaped from their hands; the habitations without the gates or along the shore were pillaged and destroyed; and the care of the regent, of the empress Irene, was confined to the preservation of the city. The return of Cantacuzene dispelled the public consternation; the emperor inclined to peaceful counsels, but he yielded to the obstinacy of his enemies, who rejected all reasonable terms, and to the ardour of his subjects, who threatened, in the style of Scripture, ‘to break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’... The merchants of the colony, who had believed that a few days would