A dispute which broke out at Acre in 1255 came to a head in a war which lasted for years, and was felt all over Syria.  It began in a quarrel about a very old church called St. Sabba’s, which stood on the common boundary of the Venetian and Genoese estates in Acre,[2] and this flame was blown by other unlucky occurrences.  Acre suffered grievously.[3] Venice at this time generally kept the upper hand, beating Genoa by land and sea, and driving her from Acre altogether. + Four ancient porphyry figures from St. Sabba’s were sent in triumph to Venice, and with their strange devices still stand at the exterior corner of St. Mark’s, towards the Ducal Palace.[4]

But no number of defeats could extinguish the spirit of Genoa, and the tables were turned when in her wrath she allied herself with Michael Palaeologus to upset the feeble and tottering Latin Dynasty, and with it the preponderance of Venice on the Bosphorus.  The new emperor handed over to his allies the castle of their foes, which they tore down with jubilations, and now it was their turn to send its stones as trophies to Genoa.  Mutual hate waxed fiercer than ever; no merchant fleet of either state could go to sea without convoy, and wherever their ships met they fought.[5] It was something like the state of things between Spain and England in the days of Drake.

[Illustration:  Figures from St. Sabba’s, sent to Venice.]

The energy and capacity of the Genoese seemed to rise with their success, and both in seamanship and in splendour they began almost to surpass their old rivals.  The fall of Acre (1291), and the total expulsion of the Franks from Syria, in great measure barred the southern routes of Indian trade, whilst the predominance of Genoa in the Euxine more or less obstructed the free access of her rival to the northern routes by Trebizond and Tana.

[Sidenote:  Battle in Bay of Ayas in 1294.]

32.  Truces were made and renewed, but the old fire still smouldered.  In the spring of 1294 it broke into flame, in consequence of the seizure in the Grecian seas of three Genoese vessels by a Venetian fleet.  This led to an action with a Genoese convoy which sought redress.  The fight took place off Ayas in the Gulf of Scanderoon,[6] and though the Genoese were inferior in strength by one-third they gained a signal victory, capturing all but three of the Venetian galleys, with rich cargoes, including that of Marco Basilio (or Basegio), the commodore.

This victory over their haughty foe was in its completeness evidently a surprise to the Genoese, as well as a source of immense exultation, which is vigorously expressed in a ballad of the day, written in a stirring salt-water rhythm.[7] It represents the Venetians, as they enter the bay, in arrogant mirth reviling the Genoese with very unsavoury epithets as having deserted their ships to skulk on shore.  They are described as saying:—­

  “’Off they’ve slunk! and left us nothing;
  We shall get nor prize nor praise;
  Nothing save those crazy timbers
    Only fit to make a blaze.’”