As the community grew in importance they began to cultivate their islands and to build unto themselves ships. By force of necessity, they became expert in all matters of navigation, as agile on the water as on land, fearless. They acquired a better means of navigation and a wider knowledge of the lagoons than any other State possessed. Then they began to be attacked. With great courage and determination, Venice resisted all her foes--Gothic, Lombard, Byzantine, and Frank. Her position was peculiar, vague. She acknowledged a certain allegiance to the Court of Byzantium; yet by her acts she recognised the supremacy of the kingdoms on the mainland. Neither Byzantium nor Ravenna, and not Padua, could claim the lagoons. Venice was marvellously diplomatic. She drew from East and West exactly what she wanted to make her a nation by herself. While she pretended allegiance to several empires, she was in reality struggling for independence. In the stillness of the lagoon and the freedom of the sea air, the germs of individuality grew and flourished. They had a congenial soil and fitting nutriment. It is wonderfully interesting to watch the progress of the little State--the diplomatic way she went to work: how when she was weak and unable to stand alone she feigned allegiance to a stronger Power, yet never bound herself by written word; how she played one Power against the other; and how in the end, when sufficiently strong, under the shelter of her various foster-mothers, she struck out for freedom boldly.