City of Fortune

by Crowley, Roger

  Pisani’s seamen attempted to damage Doria’s supply chain. They used their knowledge of the inner lagoon, its creeks and secret channels, sandbanks and reed beds, to intercept the supply boats coming down the Brenta. With information passed by spies within Chioggia, teams of small boats probed the shallows, lying low at twilight to catch unwary merchants delivering grain or wine. Near the Castle of the Salt Beds, the beleaguered Venetian outpost close to Chioggia, they ambushed sufficient boats to force the Paduans to supply armed escorts, and to discourage merchants from making the voyage. They also had the advantage over the deep-draughted Genoese galleys, uncertain of the channels and liable to grounding if the water was low or they missed their way. Watching the movement of these ships closely, ambitious plans were made to trap isolated vessels, like hunters trying to down an elephant. Lying up at evening in the reed beds, using the cover of the fog and closing night to surprise a foe unable to manoeuvre, landing detachments of archers to shoot from the shelter of the clustering trees, setting fire to the reeds to confuse and obscure, taking short cuts to head off their prey, darting out from nowhere in rowing boats to the sudden blaring of trumpets and drums, they began to play on their enemy’s nerves. They had an emboldening success when they cornered and destroyed an enemy galley, the Savonese, and captured its noble commander.

  It was a small triumph which had disproportionate effects on morale. Upping the stakes, Pisani attempted to snare three galleys on their way to bombard the Castle of the Salt Beds, but the plan was spoiled when the ships spotted the soldiers’ banners behind the reeds. Back-paddling furiously and under a bombardment of missiles from the banks, they slipped away. And Pisani had his outright failures; trying to reconnoitre Chioggia’s defences with increasing curiosity, he lost ten small boats and thirty men, including the doge’s nephew killed in the skirmish. But his close observation of the position of the enemy and the entrances and exits of the lagoon convinced him of the possibility of a daring strike. The disparity between the two forces was huge. The enemy had thirty thousand men, fifty galleys, between seven and eight hundred light boats, ample food supplies, access to timber, gunpowder, arrows, crossbow bolts. But they also had one hidden weakness, which he was certain they had not foreseen.

  Some time in late autumn he put forward a proposal to the doge and the war committee for positive action. The city had its back to the wall. Zeno’s whereabouts were unknown; the people were wilting both from a lack of hope and a shortage of food; rather than let their morale dwindle to nothing, it was better to die on their feet. The plan was supported by Venice’s hired general, Giacomo de Cavalli. The senate accepted it and, perhaps still mindful of the sailors hammering on the chamber door, published a remarkable decree to harness all the resources of patriotic goodwill of a languishing people. For a hundred years, entry to the Venetian nobility had been closed to newcomers. Now the senate published a proclamation offering to ennoble fifty citizens who provided the most outstanding service to the Republic in its hour of need.

  The resulting influx of money, resources and goodwill had a short-term galvanising effect on the mood of the people. The work fitting out the galleys was pushed forward in the arsenal; there was rowing practice in the Grand Canal for the inexpert oarsmen who volunteered for the operation, but it was touch and go. The sharpness of deprivation drove people wailing into the piazza. When would Zeno come? There was fear that any delay could prove fatal to the willpower of the city. It was impossible to wait for the missing fleet, and news from Chioggia that the Genoese and Paduans had fallen out over the distribution of booty suggested that the time was ripe. The old doge declared that he would lead the expedition as captain-general with Pisani as vice-captain.

  Compulsion was also required: it was announced that all the oarsmen and soldiers should be boarded by noon on 21 December, under pain of death. The doge, Andrea Contarini, gathered the people beneath the banner of St Mark in the piazza; there was vespers in the church, then with great pomp the expedition prepared to sail. There were thirty-four galleys under their noble captains, sixty barks, four hundred small boats – and two large cogs, hulking merchantmen, whose role in the operation was crucial to its success. It was eight o’clock on the evening of the shortest day, the depth of midwinter, but the night was clear and mild, the sea calm, just a light breeze blowing. Contarini ordered the great Venetian banner of war to be unfurled. In silence, hawsers were untied and the expedition set out. The ships were divided into three parts. In the vanguard, Pisani with fourteen galleys and the two cogs; in the rearguard, ten more galleys; the doge took up the centre with essential equipment and the more experienced soldiers.

  Pisani’s plan was simple but highly risky. He had closely observed the comings and goings of the Genoese; they had become complacent. Doria believed he held Venice in an iron grip, and that little more was required now to squeeze the remaining life out of a starving enemy. There were three maritime exits from Chioggia. Two, at either end of its lido, led directly out to sea; the third, the Lombardy Channel, ran behind the island and through the lagoon. Pisani’s idea was to block these exits, hemming the enemy in. The besiegers would become, in their turn, besieged.

  Under the long hours of darkness the fleet moved forward unseen. For a short while a thick fog obscured everything, causing temporary dismay, then cleared as suddenly as it came. By ten o’clock they were off the Chioggia opening – the first objective. There were no ships; no disturbance; no guard. At dawn on 22 December, the galleys began to ferry men ashore on the Chioggia lido. Four thousand eight hundred troops were landed, along with carpenters and trenchers. Pisani meanwhile manoeuvred the cogs towards the mouth of the channel.

  On the lido, the men started to erect a defensive bastion. The noise of the carpenters attracted the attention of a small detachment of Paduan soldiers lying low in the sand dunes, and battle was joined. Hungarian and Paduan troops advanced from Brondolo. Others poured across the bridge from Chioggia, and the Genoese fleet began a bombardment. The Venetians were pushed back and massacred as they tried to retreat to the ships. As they fled, six hundred were killed, drowned or taken captive. The bastion was quickly demolished, but in the meantime, under this distraction the cogs were being hauled into position – one near the shore, the second blocking the main channel. The first was bombarded and sunk; some Genoese swam out to the second and set it on fire. It burned down to the waterline and also sank. ‘And transported with pleasure at this deceptive victory, which prevented them from perceiving the difficulty, full of joy, they returned to Chioggia.’ Doria was complacent with success: ‘What the Venetians do in a day, I can undo in an hour,’ was his smug comment. But he had understood neither the enemy’s tactics nor the unintended effect of his own soldiers’ actions. The sunken cogs had effectively blocked the channel anyway. The doge proceeded to return with two more cogs laden with rocks, marble and large millstones, which were tipped into the submerged hulks, then wrapped with chains. They were now immovable barriers.

  On the 24th the fleet moved down to block the southern exit to the sea – that of Brondolo. Two more cogs were towed into place. Too late Doria woke up to the gradual encirclement. He sent out galleys to destroy the Venetian task force, bombarding it with gunfire from his land batteries at Brondolo, but the Venetians again managed to sink the boats, and reinforced the barrier with tree trunks, ships’ masts and chains. Under heavy fire, engineers began the construction of a fort, the Lova, on the shore of Fossone opposite Brondolo. By 29th December it was well on the way to completion. On Christmas Day, or the day after, sailing round the lidi, Pisani completed his work by blocking the Lombardy Channel. Chioggia was now hemmed in; its only access was inland, via the rivers of central Italy.

  As the channels were closed one after another, anxiety and desperation started to grip the Genoese. It was essential that they break the barricades. For the blockaders, despite their success, morale remained parlous. The galleys had to maintain an alert presence, day and night, on the lee shore.
In the trenches at Fossone and on the tip of the lido of Pellestrina, adjacent to Chioggia, the Venetians were subjected to continuous bombardment. Food was in short supply; the winter cold was taking its toll on morale. Many of the men were civilian volunteers, artisans, merchants and craftsmen, rather than soldiers used to the vicissitudes of war. The English mercenaries, under their captain William Cook – Il Coqquo – were particularly vociferous. The doge tried to lead by personal example, swearing on his sword that he would never return to Venice unless Chioggia was taken. Despite this, the Venetians began to crack. There was no sign of Zeno. The men wanted to return to the city. On 29 December their misery reached its nadir: short of food, cold, under fire, forced to wade through the winter canals, they were at breaking point. Danger; tiredness; sleep deprivation; death; the now hateful lagoon – the murmuring became ominous. Many wanted to forsake Venice altogether for the Stato da Mar and sail away to Negroponte or Crete. Pisani attempted to rally the troops: if they disengaged, the chance of victory would be gone for ever. He argued that help was near; Zeno was on his way. Eventually the doge and his vice-general struck a bargain with the dissenters. If Zeno had not returned by 1 January they would lift the siege and return to Venice. There were forty-eight hours to save the city. It was known too that Doria was expecting further naval reinforcements.

  The 30th and 31st passed in the cold and an agony of expectation. The dawn came up on 1 January. For the Venetians it was not the significant start of a new year – in their calendar this was celebrated on 1 March – but the breaking day was greeted with rapt anxiety. As the feeble winter light grew, fifteen sails could be seen on the southern horizon. They were too far out to determine the flags – the lion of St Mark or the cross of St George. The Genoese watched from the towers of Chioggia, the Venetians from their ships and trenches. Impatient, and deeply worried, Pisani sent out light boats to reconnoitre. As they drew within line of sight, they could see the flag of St Mark run up a masthead. It was Zeno, back from a damaging run across the eastern seas, inflicting huge losses on Genoese commerce. He had blocked the flow of reinforcements and supplies to Doria by sea and taken seventy ships including an immensely rich merchantman, which he towed behind his galleys. It was a decisive turn of events and it signalled a profound psychological shift in the fortunes of war.

  Faced by these naval reinforcements the Genoese now struggled with increasing desperation to find a way out. The two seaward exits from the town, at Brondolo and the Chioggia channel, were guarded by Zeno and Pisani respectively. They needed to keep a force of galleys on station, day and night, against the threat of a breakout. The winter weather was ferocious; the onshore winds and strong currents threatened continuously to sweep the vessels onto the enemy coast. One evening, towards dusk, with the sirocco blowing hard up from the south and a boisterous current, Zeno’s ship was torn from its moorings and pushed towards the Genoese forts. Instantly it was met with a hail of missiles; Zeno was hit by an arrow in the throat. The ship was wallowing in the swell, drifting slowly into the jaws of death. The crew, cowering under the bombardment, begged their stricken commander to strike the flag and surrender. The indestructible Zeno would have none of it. He plucked the arrow from his throat and barked out an order to a sailor to dive overboard with a tow rope and swim back to the mooring. Cuffing his crew into silence, he ran across the deck, fell down an open hatch, landed on his back and knocked himself out. Bleeding from a head wound, he started to choke on the blood; close to death from suffocation, he came dimly to and turned himself over. He lived to fight on.

  Given the appalling conditions, and the narrowness of the Brondolo channel, it was decided to keep just two galleys on station; the remainder were harboured a mile down the coast, within trumpet call, if the need arose. Seeing this, on the night of 5 January Doria made a determined attempt to remove the obstructions. Three Genoese galleys armed with large grappling hooks and stout cables advanced in line up to the entrance on the channel. Their aim was to drag the sunken ships, spars and tree trunks out of the mouth. As the first one reached the entrance, the leading Venetian galley sounded its trumpet and advanced to attack. The Venetians managed to board the first vessel, but the other two, coming up behind, attached hooks to their Venetian opponent and passed the cables to the banks of the canal, where a large body of men hauled the helpless ship back towards the port of Brondolo before aid could arrive. The second Venetian galley, forced back by a volley of arrows, could do nothing. Many of the Venetians threw themselves overboard and drowned as the triumphant Genoese reeled in their prize. Zeno arrived too late.

  So began a pattern of moves and countermoves in the narrow waterways and marshlands at the edge of the lagoon. The Genoese tried continuously to find a way out of the steel net; the Venetians to keep it drawn tight. The following day the Hungarian troops made a determined assault on the Chioggia channel. They were driven back. In Genoa, news of the sudden reversal of fortune caused alarm. On 20 January they despatched a new fleet of twenty galleys under Matteo Maruffo; like Zeno however, the Genoese admiral took a wide view of his brief, roving across the sea, capturing Venetian grain ships, sacking ports. He would not reach Chioggia for another four months.

  Venice held the exits closed but had failed to prevent river traffic resupplying the stricken town. It was also desperately in need of supplies itself. Three galleys were sent up the Po with a detachment of soldiers to retake the strategic castle of Loredo, which controlled river access to the city of Ferrara. Its capture allowed men and supplies to be floated down to Venice. As news spread that the Republic now encircled Chioggia, merchants began to risk sending wine, cheese and grain back to the city again. Prices were still high but hope rose.

  The fortress at Loredo had been reduced with the help of two massive bombards, individually named the Trevisana, which fired a stone ball of 195 pounds, and the slightly smaller Victoria, with a shot of 120 pounds. These two primitive cast-iron tubes, banded with iron hoops to reinforce them against the threat of explosion, were unloaded at the fort opposite Brondolo. The practice was to load the cannon in the evening – a lengthy process of lugging an enormous stone ball into its chamber – and fire them as dawn broke, when the Genoese would still be concentrated in Brondolo. This wake-up call was accompanied by a heavy bombardment of rocks from catapults. The bombards were notoriously inaccurate, but against large static objects at reasonable range the chances of a hit were good. On the morning of 22 January the Trevisana scored a major success. Its mighty stone bullet struck the campanile of Brondolo. A large chunk of masonry collapsed in the square, killing Pietro Doria and his nephew. ‘With great laments and grief the bodies were taken to Chioggia and salted so that they could be returned to Genoa.’ The following day falling masonry killed another twenty men. Many more died when the bombards hit a monastery taken over by the troops. Doria was replaced by Gaspare Spinola, but day by day the grip was tightening: ‘Neither their galleys nor their supply ships could leave harbour, with the bombards and catapults always firing and damaging them.’ And Venice knew the tide was turning. Pushing their resources to the limit, they hired five thousand Milanese and English mercenaries at the start of February to drive home the advantage before help could arrive. It was now the Genoese who stared anxiously out to sea for sight of a relieving fleet; they were still able to get supplies downriver from Padua but they could not escape. Unable to force the maritime blockade, they began cutting a new channel across the Brondolo lido to the sea. As soon as it was finished, they aimed to slip galleys out at night to Zara for supplies.

  Across Italy the war between the maritime republics was yet again causing disquiet and the papacy started on one of its periodic attempts to separate the warring parties. Venice showed interest – the outcome of the fight was still far from clear – but negotiations with the allies involved a slow-motion round of Hungary, Padua and Genoa.

  The escape channel being dug across the lido worried Venice. A decision was taken to snuff out the menace with an at
tack on Brondolo. On 18 February Zeno was appointed general-in-chief of the land forces of the Republic with orders to take the village and its command post in the monastery. He had fifteen thousand men at his disposal. As the galleys and the troops massed before dawn the following day there was a change of plan. It was decided instead to tackle the tower and bastion at Little Chioggia which controlled the bridgehead to Chioggia itself, to prevent reinforcements coming across. Fighting at the bridgehead quickly grew fierce. A large Genoese detachment advanced from Brondolo; more were rushed across from Chioggia; both were repulsed by the Venetian troops. The Genoese scattered. Some fled through the reed beds, waded the canals or drowned; more turned and fled back across the bridge in blind panic. So many crowded onto the wooden structure that it cracked and collapsed

  … at the deep point of the canal, and there remained a thousand on the bridge who were killed with a bombardment of stones or captured; and many threw themselves into the water to get away. Some drowned, others were wounded or killed with the bombardment of rocks. Those who were on the bridge when it collapsed, sank to the bottom from the weight of their armour on their backs; if any crawled out of the canal, as soon as they got out of the water, they were killed with missiles … and if the bridge had not given way, the Venetians could have entered Chioggia after the fleeing men and retaken it in the same way that they lost it.

  It was a sudden and catastrophic collapse of Genoese morale. It was said afterwards that ‘anyone who wished for a suit of armour for a few shillings might have bought as many as he liked from those who stripped the dead’. After this disaster Brondolo was untenable. The Genoese sent their bombards by galley to Chioggia. Two hours before dawn the next day they fired the monastery, burned their siege engines and departed in galleys – some to Chioggia, but many of the Paduans abandoned the siege altogether. Brondolo was taken without a shot fired. Pisani managed to save two galleys that the Genoese had tried to fire ‘and many barks and small boats and other things abandoned in the rush’. Zeno now set up camp hard across the canal from Chioggia itself and drew up bombards and catapults, ‘which hurled huge rocks day and night into the town, shattering housing and killing people’. ‘I remember’, wrote one eyewitness, ‘that our galleys were sometimes so close to Chioggia that stones were thrown into it without number.’