Roger Crowley - City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire

The Siege of Chioggia December 1379June 1380

I have used a number of place names employed by the Venetians and others during the period covered by this book. This is a list of their modern equivalents:

DEPARTURE

Late in the evening of 9 April 1363, the poet and scholar Francesco Petrarch was writing to a friend. The Venetian Republic had granted the great literary figure of the age an imposing house on the waterfront overlooking the Basin of St Mark, from where he could survey all the rich hubbub of the citys port. Petrarch was drowsing over his letter when he was jolted rudely awake.

It was completely dark. The sky was stormy. I was tired when suddenly the shouting of sailors struck my ears. Remembering the meaning of this from previous occasions, I hurriedly got up and climbed to the top of this house, which surveys the harbour. I looked out. Good God, what a sight! At once touching, marvellous, frightening and exhilarating ! Here in the harbour there were some sailing ships which had moored at the marble quayside over the winter, as massive as this great house which the most generous of cities has put at my disposal. Their masts rise as high as its square corner towers. At this very moment, while the stars are muffled by thick cloud, while my walls are shaken by blasts of wind, while the sea roars and bellows horribly, the largest of them casts off on its voyage