But lo their blunder!
When our lads start up anon,
Breaking out like unchained lions,
With a roar, 'Fall on! Fall on!'"[8]
After relating the battle and the thoroughness of the victory, ending in
the conflagration of five-and-twenty captured galleys, the poet concludes
by an admonition to the enemy to moderate his pride and curb his arrogant
tongue, harping on the obnoxious epithet porci leproxi, which seems to
have galled the Genoese.[9] He concludes: -
"Nor can I at all remember
Ever to have heard the story
Of a fight wherein the Victors
Reaped so rich a meed of glory!"[10]
The community of Genoa decreed that the victory should be commemorated by
the annual presentation of a golden pall to the monastery of St. German's,
the saint on whose feast (28th May) it had been won.[11]
The startling news was received at Venice with wrath and grief, for the
flower of their navy had perished, and all energies were bent at once to
raise an overwhelming force.[12] The Pope (Boniface VIII.) interfered as
arbiter, calling for plenipotentiaries from both sides. But spirits were
too much inflamed, and this mediation came to nought.
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.
