VII.  RUSTICIANO OR RUSTICHELLO OF PISA, MARCO POLO’S FELLOW-PRISONER AT GENOA, THE SCRIBE WHO WROTE DOWN THE TRAVELS.

38.  We have now to say something of that Rusticiano to whom all who value Polo’s book are so much indebted.

[Sidenote:  Rusticiano, perhaps a prisoner from Meloria.]

The relations between Genoa and Pisa had long been so hostile that it was only too natural in 1298 to find a Pisan in the gaol of Genoa.  An unhappy multitude of such prisoners had been carried thither fourteen years before, and the survivors still lingered there in vastly dwindled numbers.  In the summer of 1284 was fought the battle from which Pisa had to date the commencement of her long decay.  In July of that year the Pisans, at a time when the Genoese had no fleet in their own immediate waters, had advanced to the very port of Genoa and shot their defiance into the proud city in the form of silver-headed arrows, and stones belted with scarlet.[1] They had to pay dearly for this insult.  The Genoese, recalling their cruisers, speedily mustered a fleet of eighty-eight galleys, which were placed under the command of another of that illustrious House of Doria, the Scipios of Genoa as they have been called, Uberto, the elder brother of Lamba.  Lamba himself with his six sons, and another brother, was in the fleet, whilst the whole number of Dorias who fought in the ensuing action amounted to 250, most of them on board one great galley bearing the name of the family patron, St. Matthew.[2]

The Pisans, more than one-fourth inferior in strength, came out boldly, and the battle was fought off the Porto Pisano, in fact close in front of Leghorn, where a lighthouse on a remarkable arched basement still marks the islet of MELORIA, whence the battle got its name.  The day was the 6th of August, the feast of St. Sixtus, a day memorable in the Pisan Fasti for several great victories.  But on this occasion the defeat of Pisa was overwhelming.  Forty of their galleys were taken or sunk, and upwards of 9000 prisoners carried to Genoa.  In fact so vast a sweep was made of the flower of Pisan manhood that it was a common saying then:  “Che vuol veder Pisa, vada a Genova!” Many noble ladies of Pisa went in large companies on foot to Genoa to seek their husbands or kinsmen:  “And when they made enquiry of the Keepers of the Prisons, the reply would be, ’Yesterday there died thirty of them, to-day there have died forty; all of whom we have cast into the sea; and so it is daily.’"[3]

[Illustration:  Seal of the Pisan Prisoners.]

A body of prisoners so numerous and important naturally exerted themselves in the cause of peace, and through their efforts, after many months of negotiation, a formal peace was signed (15th April, 1288).  But through the influence, as was alleged, of Count Ugolino (Dante’s) who was then in power at Pisa, the peace became abortive; war almost immediately recommenced, and the prisoners had no release.[4] And, when the 6000 or 7000 Venetians were thrown into the prisons of Genoa in October 1298, they would find there the scanty surviving remnant of the Pisan Prisoners of Meloria, and would gather from them dismal forebodings of the fate before them.