212 chapter four
waiting game, hoping that the exorbitant cost of holding the city and the
plague which had thinned the defenders’ ranks would weaken its defences
enough for it to be captured.270
the most puzzling aspect at first sight is that this description best fits
not the war, as might be expected, but the peace which the Genoese con-
cluded with the Jochids in 1347.271 understandably, Janibek had reserva-
tions about the truce, and the same well-informed sources in caffa knew
that it was a fragile peace.272 It is equally understandable that the khan
had his reasons for accepting the armistice.
the very nature of chinggisid rule made it difficult to make a lasting
peace with the khan, which would have depended on his accepting humil-
iation in war and the independence of caffa. a ruler who believed that
‘he rules the whole world’, as the Genoese observers report, at once irked
and amused, would find it impossible to concede territory. he needed to
save his prestige, yet needed at the same time to meet certain economic
needs in his state, no less pressing, which pushed him in the opposite
direction. the outcome of these two contradictory urges was the truce of
1347—once again, a verbal agreement!—which was to last a long while,
acknowledging a basic reality of Jochid-Genoese relations that endured
until 1380: neither peace nor war.
Doubtless when Janibek launched the operation to expel the Western
merchants, he could not have suspected how long the campaign would
last, how much it would cost nor how unfavourable the outcome would
be. the khan became bogged down in a war which, judged by its long-
term consequences, wasted Golden horde potential just as badly as it
marked the state’s final fate.
270 an undated letter to the Doge Giovanni de Murta (1344–1350) from the latter 1340s
asks for financial aid from the mother city for the hard-pressed Black Sea colony, quia
Tartari oculum non habent nisi dumtaxat quod espensse deficiant et locus bellatoribus denu-
detur, maxime quia sperant de infinita pestilencia mortalitatis, que infinitos bellatores pros-
travit, et taliter sunt consumpti quod pauci remaneant viri (petti Balbi, “caffa,” p. 226).
271 on 19th June 1347 the Venetian Senate selected two ambassadors, quoniam nova
habemus quod Imperator Zanibech cum Ianuensibus est concordatus et cum Dei auxilio
sit sperandum quod aconcium et concordium obtinemus etiam nos (Morozzo della rocca,
“Notizie,” p. 275; cf. heyd, Histoire, II, p. 197, petti Balbi, “caffa,” p. 219, papacostea, “tana,”
p. 213).
272 the same letter to Doge Giovanni de Murta: Cum Caffa locus fuerit longevis tempori-
bus expugnatus [.. .] ad finem honorabilem pervenerimus cum illo qui toto mundo dominari
se credit, ex quo secuta est pax, licet incerta et non secura, ymo pocius sediciosa pro Tartaro-
rum parte (petti Balbi, “caffa,” p. 219).