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.
It is a fair conjecture that to that remnant Rusticiano of Pisa may
have belonged.
We have seen Ramusio’s representation of the kindness shown to Marco
during his imprisonment by a certain Genoese gentleman who also
assisted him to reduce his travels to writing. We may be certain
that this Genoese gentleman is only a distorted image of Rusticiano,
the Pisan prisoner in the gaol of Genoa, whose name and part in the
history of his hero’s book Ramusio so strangely ignores. Yet patriotic
Genoese writers in our own times have striven to determine the identity
of this their imaginary countryman![5]
[Sidenote: Rusticiano, a person known from other sources.]