Capitolo 4 Lines of Venetian history

3 - Rise of a merchant State
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	The success they had with the fourth crusade give way to Venice to reinforce its traffics with the "Romania"( what had been the East empire) and the "Overseas Countries", that is those coast areas of Syria and Palestine where the crusaders had founded their transient reigns. Harbours as Tripoli (in Lebanon), Tyre, Acri, Giaffa, Haifa constituted some trade centres well desired, as there arrived very precious merchandise and they were demanded in the West such as spices( coming from the Indies), clothes and luxury products. In Tyre many Mediterranean merchants operated, but Venetians had even a quarte of its own.
The fourth war with Genoa was the first war in which they were used the cannons on Venetian ships. Very used in the fights around Chioggia, they were mounted on the bow deck.	But the competition becomes easily rivalry and this can change into a war. It is what happened between Venice and Genoa. The Genoa Sea republic had set in the Overseas Countries and, for the aids given to the Crusaders, it had obtained more privileges. To a series of accidents in Tyre , followed 4 violent wars , that in the space of about 120 years, exhausted and debilitated hardly the 2 rivals. The last conflict was the most dramatic for Venice, because it saw compromised its own survival: pressed at north-east by the Hungary king and by the Padua Signoria of Carrara, it was with the Genoese in lagoon, since in 1378 they conquered Chioggia. But it was all the city that united fast in the moment of the greatest danger and Venice could resist and reconquer Chioggia. The peace that followed to it (Turin, 1381) left not solved the problems that had caused the long conflict with Genoa, but then, the only fact to be survived and to have maintained the main colonies made it the real winner of the fight.
The "Colleoni's chapel" in Bergamo. The architecture of the buildings that face on to the square show traces of the influence of Venetian art.	The danger run during the war of Chioggia, convinced the Venetians of the need of a control on the hinterland, to prevent that any power could block the access ways to the lagoon, vital both for the survival and for the the trades and the supplying of raw materials. It began an expansion phase in the mainland. Allying with the lord of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Venice destroyed the Carraresi of Padua and, at the beginnings of the fifteenth century, it conquered Padua, Vicenza and Verona. A little later it acquired also Bergamo and Brescia going deeply into Lombardia. In this period the naval power reaches the height and the S. Mark Republic assumes the appellative of SERENISSIMA and the doge that of " Serenissimo Principe".