though it is certain that they had no longer the sovereignty of those
waters; and the Genoese now planted on the shores of the Black Sea three
large and important colonies to serve as entrepots for the trade taken
from their rivals. The oriental traffic of the latter was maintained
through Tana, however, for nearly two centuries later, when, in 1410, the
Mongol Tartars, under Tamerlane, fell upon the devoted colony, took,
sacked, burnt, and utterly destroyed it. This was the first terrible blow
to the most magnificent commerce which the world had ever seen, and which
had endured for ages. No wonder that, on the day of Tana's fall, terrible
portents of woe were seen at Venice,--that meteors appeared, that demons
rode the air, that the winds and waters rose and blew down houses and
swallowed ships! A thousand persons are said to have perished in the
calamities which commemorated a stroke so mortally disastrous to the
national grandeur. After that the Venetians humbly divided with their
ancient foes the possession and maintenance of the Genoese colony of
Caffa, and continued, with greatly diminished glory, their traffic in the
Black Sea; till the Turks having taken Constantinople, and the Greeks
having acquired under their alien masters a zeal for commerce unknown to
them during the times of their native princes, the Venetians were finally,
on the first pretext of war, expelled from those waters in which they had
latterly maintained themselves only by payment of heavy tribute to the
Turks.

In the mean time the industrial arts, in which Venice had heretofore
excelled, began to be practiced elsewhere, and the Florentines and the
English took that lead in the manufactures of the world, which the latter
still retain. The league of the Hanseatic cities was established and rose
daily in importance. At London, at Bruges, at Bergen, and Novogorod banks
were opened under the protection and special favor of the Hanseatic
League; its ships were preferred to any other, and the tide of commerce