They were therefore able to sail with small crews at small expense, and charge lower freights. Wherefore most of Ragusan ships began to fall into disrepair and were not renovated.... The only remedy for this woeful decline is that His Catholic Majesty, in the interests and for the maintenance of this most excellent Republic and of his own vassals, should grant to all those who build large ships special exemptions and privileges throughout his kingdoms of Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, and that preference should be given to those designed for the transport of grain, salt, wool, and other similar goods.” The Dutch now almost monopolised the carrying trade of the Mediterranean, and it became cheaper not only to obtain northern products, but even the spices of the East from Amsterdam, where they arrived by the Cape route, than directly overland and distributed by Italian or Dalmatian ships. Neither Spain nor Ragusa paid attention to his proposals, and both allowed the fatal decay to continue. But still the Ragusans continued to distinguish themselves in the Spanish service, especially the members of the Tuhelj family. One of them, Don Antonio, when he heard of the terrible earthquake at Ragusa, gave up his brilliant career in Spain and came to the help of his distressed fatherland. He was subsequently sent as Ragusan envoy on a number of diplomatic missions. His branch of the family finally entered the Austrian service, and received high emoluments from the Emperor Leopold. The reason of these favours lies in the fact that the Tuhelj still claimed their ancestral estates at Castelnuovo, Risano in the Herzegovina, and at Kastoria in Macedonia, and were therefore likely to prove useful in the Austrian campaigns against the Turks. Don Antonio Damiano, in fact, served for five years in the frontier wars, and ended his military career after a severe wound at the battle of Dervent in Bosnia (September 5, 1688). He was then appointed Imperial Resident at Ragusa, and devoted himself to the cause of the emancipation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina from the Turkish yoke. He visited those provinces repeatedly, and when he himself could no longer travel he arranged an elaborate system of secret information. In 1701 he was created Knight of Justice and Commissary-General of the Order of St. George, the object of which was to redeem Christian lands from the Infidel, and he took up his residence in Vienna to prepare his plan. But in his old age he retired to Ragusa once more, and spent his last days in studying the city archives, reconstructing the history of his own family. He too tried to revive the practice of inducing his countrymen to enter the Spanish service, and wished to enrol numbers of experienced Ragusan officers and sailors to man the navies of Spain, saying that they were far better fighters than the Neapolitans. “Ten Ragusans,” he wrote, “are worth more than a hundred Lazzaroni.”[488] But it was now too late, and decadence had gone too far.