Capitolo 4 Lines of Venetian history

2 - The conquest of the East
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The stealing of the body of S.Mark; the tradition wants that to hide the body to the port-guards, the " clever" merchants hid it under a coat of pig meat, abhorred by Moslem.	In the first half of the ninth century 2 Venetian merchants steal from Alexandria of Egypt the mortal remains of S.Mark the Evangelist, that a legend tells that he took refuge on one of the realtine islands, after a shipwreck. The body is then "brought back" to Rivo Alto and buried in the chapel of the doge that will be erected, that will be the Basilica of S. Mark. Beyond legends and adventurous stealings, what is interesting historically is the presence of Venetian merchants in the East from the ninth century! This means that the "lagoon-navigators" have already begun to extend the range of their action. Actually, Venice has already begun to fight for the control of the Adriatic:it must do it to survive, to defend its own merchant interests and to.... accumulate richness. Like all the sea powers , in fact, Venice alternates actions of "sea police", to protect its own exchanges and the interests of that East Empire that now more than ever it represents, to actions of real " piracy". In this way it comes to control all the Adriatic. Thanks to the ability of its "sea navy" it obtains decisive recognitions by the East Emperor and exceptional privileges for its merchants. At the end of the eleventh century the Venetian people are the main customers and suppliers of Byzantium!
	But the ability of the Venetian navy was supported by an as much skilled "diplomacy", that brought the young state to a series of fertile commercial agreements (beyond those already contracted with Byzantium and the Germanic emperor) with the North African princes, Syrian and Egyptian. By this time Venice wants to become the means of the traffics between the East and the peninsula, so it begins a series of actions and wars against the rival harbours of Adriatic( Ancona, Zara, Ragusa) and against the Slavic pirates , passing from the "control" to the "rule"of the sea. The doge Pietro II Orseolo, after having established commercial agreements, defeated the Slavic Corsairs and made appear Venice as friend of both the emperors and protectress of the pacific commerces.
The taking of Byzantium was favoured by a war-device of the Venetian people.	became part of the group of the sea powers. It was an enterprise led by the same Venetians, who succeeded to take the utmost advantages: far from freeing the holy places and taking the idea from the inside crisis of the empire of the East, the shipping brought, in 1204, to the conquest and the sack of Byzantium and the dismemberment of its empire. At the end, Venice will conquest "a quarter and a half of the Roman Empire", that will translate in the possession of all a series of islands, harbours and coast forts in the Aegeus and the Ionian Sea: the beginning of its sea empire. The taking of Costantinopoli was not an easy undertaking, since the capital of the East empire was very well protected: in the west by a double wall circle and on the other 3 sides by walls sheer above the water.The first attack, in 1203, did not bring to the conquest, but convinced the Greeks to accept Alessio the Young as Emperor.He had made great promises to Venetians and to other states taking part (like French, for example). But when it was clear that Alessio would not have been able to front the engagements, the crusaders decided to try to take possession of the city. They accepted, so, the advice of the Doge ( Enrico Dandolo)and attacked from sea. The Venetians had built, beyond the usual arsenal typical of the siege, some platforms to fight set on the ship mainmasts. At a certain point the ship pitching had a Venetian and a French , from one of these platforms, jump over a tower and lower ropes to make the mates climb. Fell a tower, many others were taken and at the end the doors were opened. They followed ( to spite the Christian vexillum and to what it represented) 3 days of murders, robberies, rapes and sacrileges!