The time which intervened between the date of this appointment and the siege of Chioggia was spent by him chiefly in fighting the Genoese at sea, with almost unvarying success, and some of his exploits will be referred to hereafter in their proper places. It would be impossible to narrate them all in any space less than a volume, and I have here told enough, it is to be hoped, to give the reader an idea of what his youth had been before the fortunes of war offered larger opportunities to his genius and patriotism. [Illustration: BRIDGE AT CHIOGGIA] XIV THE WAR OF CHIOGGIA The long rivalry of Venice and Genoa has been sufficiently explained, and frequently alluded to in the previous pages. To give a connected account of the almost constant warfare waged between the two republics in Eastern and Mediterranean waters, from the Sea of Azov to Cape Corso, is beyond the scope and limits of the present work; for in order to understand the nature of the last tremendous struggle that took place at Chioggia, almost within sight of Venice, it is only necessary to recapitulate briefly those events which, during the latter half of the fourteenth century, led directly to the crisis--a crisis after which the vanquished aggressor retreated, definitely beaten and for ever humiliated. At the outset I shall inform my readers that I have preferred the account given by Romanin to that of the more romantic Daru; for the latter evidently followed the older historian Sabellico, even into the regions of the fabulous, whereas Romanin writes largely upon the authority of Caroldo and of Stella, the latter a Genoese whose account of his countrymen’s disaster is above suspicion. [Sidenote: _1345. Rom. iii. 152._] In the year 1345, a powerful Tartar chief named Zani Beg barbarously murdered certain Venetian and Genoese merchants established in the Crimea. For a short time this outrage united the two republics in a common desire for revenge, and they signed a treaty by which they mutually agreed to suspend all commercial relations with the Crimea--to ‘boycott’ the peninsula, as we should say. This was perhaps their only possible means of punishing Zani Beg for his wanton cruelty, since it is idle to suppose that two maritime nations could or would have carried war against a barbarian horde into the interior of such a country as the Crimea. But the agreement had not been made with any sincere purpose, and before long the merchants of the two countries secretly resumed the trade, each trying to outwit the other. The result could not be doubtful; in 1350 the Genoese seized several Venetian ships with rich cargoes on the coast of Syria, and war broke out between the republics. [Sidenote: _Rom. iii. 169._]