Further outrages on both sides occurred in 1296. The Genoese residences at
Pera were fired, their great alum works on the coast of Anatolia were
devastated, and Caffa was stormed and sacked; whilst on the other hand a
number of the Venetians at Constantinople were massacred by the Genoese,
and Marco Bembo, their Bailo, was flung from a house-top. Amid such events
the fire of enmity between the cities waxed hotter and hotter.
[Sidenote: Lamba Doria's Expedition to the Adriatic.]
33. In 1298 the Genoese made elaborate preparations for a great blow at
the enemy, and fitted out a powerful fleet which they placed under the
command of LAMBA DORIA, a younger brother of Uberto of that illustrious
house, under whom he had served fourteen years before in the great rout of
the Pisans at Meloria.
The rendezvous of the fleet was in the Gulf of Spezia, as we learn from
the same pithy Genoese poet who celebrated Ayas. This time the Genoese
were bent on bearding St. Mark's Lion in his own den; and after touching
at Messina they steered straight for the Adriatic: -
"Now, as astern Otranto bears,
Pull with a will! and, please the Lord,
Let them who bragged, with fire and sword,
To waste our homesteads, look to theirs!"[13]
On their entering the gulf a great storm dispersed the fleet The admiral
with twenty of his galleys got into port at Antivari on the Albanian
coast, and next day was rejoined by fifty-eight more, with which he
scoured the Dalmatian shore, plundering all Venetian property. Some
sixteen of his galleys were still missing when he reached the island of
Curzola, or Scurzola as the more popular name seems to have been, the
Black Corcyra of the Ancients - the chief town of which, a rich and
flourishing place, the Genoese took and burned.[14] Thus they were engaged
when word came that the Venetian fleet was in sight.
Venice, on first hearing of the Genoese armament, sent Andrea Dandolo with
a large force to join and supersede Maffeo Quirini, who was already
cruising with a squadron in the Ionian sea; and, on receiving further
information of the strength of the hostile expedition, the Signory hastily
equipped thirty-two more galleys in Chioggia and the ports of Dalmatia,
and despatched them to join Dandolo, making the whole number under his
command up to something like ninety-five. Recent drafts had apparently
told heavily upon the Venetian sources of enlistment, and it is stated
that many of the complements were made up of rustics swept in haste from
the Euganean hills. To this the Genoese poet seems to allude, alleging
that the Venetians, in spite of their haughty language, had to go begging
for men and money up and down Lombardy.
