Then there was Genoa, the great rival of Venice, where
the merchants specialised in trade with Tunis in Africa and
the grain depots of the Black Sea. Then there were more than
two hundred other cities, some large and some small, each a perfect
commercial unit, all of them fighting their neighbours and
rivals with the undying hatred of neighbours who are depriving
each other of their profits.
Once the products of the Orient and Africa had been
brought to these distributing centres, they must be prepared
for the voyage to the west and the north.
Genoa carried her goods by water to Marseilles, from where
they were reshipped to the cities along the Rhone, which in
turn served as the market places of northern and western
France.
Venice used the land route to northern Europe. This ancient
road led across the Brenner pass, the old gateway for
the barbarians who had invaded Italy. Past Innsbruck, the
merchandise was carried to Basel. From there it drifted down
the Rhine to the North Sea and England, or it was taken to
Augsburg where the Fugger family (who were both bankers
and manufacturers and who prospered greatly by ``shaving''
the coins with which they paid their workmen), looked after
the further distribution to Nuremberg and Leipzig and the
cities of the Baltic and to Wisby (on the Island of Gotland)
which looked after the needs of the Northern Baltic and dealt
directly with the Republic of Novgorod, the old commercial
centre of Russia which was destroyed by Ivan the Terrible in
the middle of the sixteenth century.
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