Genoa, as may be supposed, had from the first to contend with two formidable rivals: the one being Pisa in its own waters; the other Venice, whose citizens were equally anxious for supremacy in the Levant and the commerce of the East. With both these places the struggle was long and fierce, but the fortune of war on the whole was distinctly favorable to Genoa nearer home, and unfavorable in regard to the more distant foe. Pisa was finally defeated in the neighborhood of Leghorn, and in the year 1300 had to cede to her enemy a considerable amount of territory, including the island of Corsica; while Venice, after more than a century of conflict with very varying fortune, at last succeeded in obtaining the supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean. The internal history of the city during all this period was not more peaceful than its external. Genoa presents the picture of a house divided against itself; and, strange to say, falsifies the proverb by prospering instead of perishing. If there were commonly wars without, there were yet more persistent factions within. Guelphs, headed by the families of Grimaldi and Fieschi, and Ghibellines, by those of Spinola and Doria, indulged in faction-fights and sometimes in civil warfare, until at last some approach to peace was procured by the influence of Andrea Doria, who, in obtaining the freedom of the state from French control, brought about the adoption of most important constitutional changes, which tended to obliterate the old and sharply divided party lines. Yet even he narrowly escaped overthrow from a conspiracy, headed by one of the Fieschi; his great-nephew and heir was assassinated, and his ultimate triumph was due rather to a fortunate accident, which removed from the scene the leader of his opponents, than to his personal power. Then the tide of prosperity began to turn against the Genoese. The Turk made himself master of their lands and cities in the East. Venice ousted them from the commerce of the Levant. War arose with France, and the city itself was captured by that power in the year 1684. The following century was far from being a prosperous time for Genoa, and near the close it opened its gates to the Republican troops, a subjugation which ultimately resulted in no little suffering to the inhabitants.