564. TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 
for these evils were thought of, and among these it is interesting to note that in 
1504 the Council of Ten seriously discussed a proposal to empower an envoy 
to the Sultan of Egypt to come to an agreement with him, if possible, for the 
cutting of a canal through the Isthmus of Suez.‘ But the proposal was not 
adopted. Other efforts to avert the results of the great achievement of the 
Portuguese were vain. Other disasters befel the republic about the same time. 
Not only was commerce taking another direction, but, says Romanin, ‘the wars 
of Italy were emptying the treasury, the Turkish power was despoiling the 
republic step by step of its possessions beyond the sea, and Venice was beginning 
to descend that incline which was to reduce it to a subordinate position among 
the powers of Europe.’* North Italy generally suffered at the same time. 
The withdrawal of the greater part of the spice trade, by diminishing the 
growth of wealth among the inhabitants, made that part of the world a less 
important market for manufactured goods. Countries outside of Italy, where 
rival manufactures had already started, were increasing their wealth more 
rapidly, and thus imparting an increasing stimulus to their manufactures, and these 
increased while those of Italy declined. In 13838 the number of woollen factories 
in Florence is given at 200, making in all 70,000 to 80,000 pieces of cloth in 
the year; in 1472 the number of shops or factories had risen to 270, but no 
estimate is given of the quantity of the product ; in 1529, however, the number of 
shops is said to have sunk to 150, and the quantity of cloth manufactured to 
23,000 pieces per annum, and in the time of the editor of Balducci Pegolotti 
the quantity was only about 3,000 pieces annually.® 
Before going further, however, there is one point in the comments on the 
discovery of the sea way to India quoted above from the ‘ Diarii’ of Priuli which 
calls for notice. Hungarians, Germans, Flemings, and French, he observes, will 
in future go to Lisbon to get the spices of India more cheaply than at Venice. 
This remark illustrates the difficulty of shifting the geographical point of view 
according to circumstances, a difficulty of which at all times abundant illustra- 
tions can be offered. The purchasers of spices who come first into the mind of 
Priuli are Hungarians and Germans. It was inevitable that they should be 
among the leading customers of Venice. The Hungarians were supplied from 
the Dalmatian ports which belonged to Venice. The Germans came by way of the 
Rhine and the Elbe, and then across the Alps to get supplies for central, north- 
western, and northern Europe. But it was neither Hungarians nor Germans 
who came in greatest numbers to Lisbon to buy the spices which Portuguese 
ships brought from the East. In any case Lisbon had no advantages like those 
of Venice for supplying by land a large and rich population immediately behind 
it. The valley of the Tagus was small and poor, and had not the capacity for 
expansion in wealth and population which the Lombard plains had when the 
commerce of Venice began to grow. The bulk of the spices brought to Lisbon 
had therefore to reach their final markets by routes that did not pass through 
Lisbon into the interior. To supply the most important of those markets it was 
the Dutch, the people who held ‘the keys of trade’ for the important valleys of 
the Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt, who came to Lisbon in greatest numbers to buy 
spices of the Portuguese. And here it has to be added that, in spite of the 
discovery of the sea way to India, the Venetians continued to retain great 
advantages in the spice trade with Hungary and parts of Germany, as well as, of 
course, the northern plains of Italy. Things did not remain always as bad as 
recorded in the years 1504 and 1506. The Portuguese, while maintaining 
successfully for a hundred years the monopoly of the trade in spices at the 
place of origin in the East, found their advantage in dividing the trade with 
Europe between the sea way and the Persian Gulf route, of which latter route 
they held the key since the final capture of Ormuz in 1515. The trade by way 
of the Tigris through Baghdad (the so-called Babylon of those days) and 
the Euphrates to the old Phoenician seaboard was again revived, and was 
maintained as long as Portugal held command of the trade. It was by this 
1 Coen, as-akove, pp, 82-3. 2 As above, vol. iv. p. 466, 
8 Della Decima, as above, vol. ii. pp. 64, 105. 
