In his possession gives the field as
argent, with no bend, and the three birds sable with beaks
gules, disposed thus ***.
[Illustration: Arms of the Polo[A]]
[A] [This coat of arms is reproduced from the Genealogies of
Priuli, Archivio di Stato, Venice. - H. C.]
[9] Marco Antonio Trevisano was elected Doge, 4th June, 1553, but died on
the 31st of May following. We do not here notice Ramusio's numerous
errors, which will be corrected in the sequel. [See p. 78.]
II. SKETCH OF THE STATE OF THE EAST AT THE TIME OF THE JOURNEYS OF THE
POLO FAMILY.
9. The story of the travels of the Polo family opens in 1260.
[Sidenote: State of the Levant.]
Christendom had recovered from the alarm into which it had been thrown
some 18 years before when the Tartar cataclysm had threatened to engulph
it. The Tartars themselves were already becoming an object of curiosity
rather than of fear, and soon became an object of hope, as a possible help
against the old Mahomedan foe. The frail Latin throne in Constantinople
was still standing, but tottering to its fall. The successors of the
Crusaders still held the Coast of Syria from Antioch to Jaffa, though a
deadlier brood of enemies than they had yet encountered was now coming to
maturity in the Dynasty of the Mamelukes, which had one foot firmly
planted in Cairo, the other in Damascus. The jealousies of the commercial
republics of Italy were daily waxing greater. The position of Genoese
trade on the coasts of the Aegean was greatly depressed, through the
predominance which Venice had acquired there by her part in the expulsion
of the Greek Emperors, and which won for the Doge the lofty style of Lord
of Three-Eighths of the Empire of Romania. But Genoa was biding her time
for an early revenge, and year by year her naval strength and skill were
increasing. Both these republics held possessions and establishments in
the ports of Syria, which were often the scene of sanguinary conflicts
between their citizens. Alexandria was still largely frequented in the
intervals of war as the great emporium of Indian wares, but the facilities
afforded by the Mongol conquerors who now held the whole tract from the
Persian Gulf to the shores of the Caspian and of the Black Sea, or nearly
so, were beginning to give a great advantage to the caravan routes which
debouched at the ports of Cilician Armenia in the Mediterranean and at
Trebizond on the Euxine. Tana (or Azov) had not as yet become the outlet
of a similar traffic; the Venetians had apparently frequented to some
extent the coast of the Crimea for local trade, but their rivals appear to
have been in great measure excluded from this commerce, and the Genoese
establishments which so long flourished on that coast, are first heard of
some years after a Greek dynasty was again in possession of
Constantinople.[1]
