the disintegration of the empire 131
in the two mongol states on either side of the Black sea show, mutatis
mutandis, a striking symmetry.
the first bad omens for the venetians came from the ilkhan arghun
himself: in what was certainly an intentional oversight, he let slip his real
feelings about the enemies of his genoese friends.310
after 1290, when the ilkhanid-genoese alliance had unravelled, the
ligurian merchants found that they had to defend their interests for the
next few years with the help of trebizond, and then, from the beginning
of the fourteenth century, alone.
their decision to keep their dangerous enemies away from the new
india route rested on the violent attack on a venetian trader in trebi-
zond in 1291. the attack was carried out in an atmosphere of complicity
at high levels between genoese colonial representatives and the imperial
authorities, giving it a deeply political cast: it was evidently meant as a
deterrent.
the warning seems to have been taken seriously, for in the following
period no other venetian tried to gain access to the sea through this route.
the next victim was none other than maffeo polo, who arrived from the
other direction with his brother and his nephew marco, and did not know
any other route than this closely-guarded one (or did not know how to
evade the guardians): the emperor John ii, prompted by the genoese,
took his profits.311
the same year saw an interruption to such events when the first great
war for the Black sea broke out, overshadowing the jostling and manoeu-
vres. the two republics exerted their strengths in other theatres of war
instead.
the new balance of power was established with the peace of milan,
concluded in 1299, but was not essentially different from the pre-war situ-
ation. venice had started the war to obtain an advantageous position in
the Black sea, and saw its hopes shattered. it had to undertake to send no
more galee armate into these waters for the next thirteen years, and the
310 petech, “marchands,” p. 562: “Un document vénitien nous parle d’un voyage de com-
merce fait en 1286 par pietro viadro et simeone avventurato à la cour d’arghun; [.. .]
ils firent présent au souverain mongol (quod castellum portavi et dedi regi Tartarorum
Argono); en retour il était sous-entendu que le roi devait s’acquitter avec des présents
d’une valeur au moins équivalente; mais pour une fois, le mongol accepta les dons sans
rien donner en échange.”
311 in order to recover this loss of 4,000 hyperpyra, the venetian admiral giovanni sor-
anzo took trebizond merchants hostage during the occupation of caffa in 1296 (cf. orlan-
dini, “marco polo,” p. 14, Karpov, Impero, pp. 75–76.