We have alluded to the caution of Dubrovnik, and one must confess that
in her story are such parlous situations, out of which there was
apparently no rescue, that in reading of them one is more and more
astonished at her customary enterprise. How did she succeed, for
instance, in contributing thirteen vessels to the fleet which Charles
V. sent against Tunis in 1535 without disturbing in the slightest her
good relations with the Sultan? All that she asked for was peace, and
so she paid a large sum to the Sultan every year, as also to the
pirates of Barbary, so that she could continue to navigate freely; in
the fifteenth century she had three hundred ships that were seen in
all parts of the Mediterranean and even in England. She had been wont
to pay five hundred ducats a year to the Kings of Hungary, and now and
then, when it was opportune, she sent this tribute to the Austrian
Archdukes, the rightful heirs of Hungary. To the captain of the Gulf
of Venice she dispatched every year a piece of plate, to the King of
the Two Sicilies she presented a dozen falcons, with a very respectful
letter, and the Pope, who was not forgotten, overlooked her annual
tribute to the Turk and proclaimed her to be the outer defences of
Christianity. (Let it not be forgotten that in 1451, four centuries
before Wilberforce's anti-slavery campaign, the Republic by a vote of
75 out of a total of 78 forbade its citizens to traffic in slaves, and
declared all slaves found on its territory to be free. "Such traffic,"
it said, "is base and contrary to all humanity ... namely, that the
human form, made after the image and similitude of our Creator, should
be turned to mercenary profit and sold as if it were brute beast.")
But of all the markets of the merchants of Dubrovnik, those which from
the days of old they most frequented, were the markets of the
Balkans. To Bulgaria and Serbia, Albania and Bosnia, they brought the
products of the West and of their own factories: the cloth and metal
goods, the silver and gold ornaments, the weapons, axes, harness,
glass, soap, perfumes, southern fruits, fish oil and herbs; and most
of all they valued their monopoly of salt, a most remunerative
privilege. As they could not obtain sufficient of it in their own
immediate territory, the Senate made a regulation that each vessel
which came back after a voyage of four years must bring a cargo of
salt. This was Dubrovnik's chief source of revenue until the end of
her independence in 1808, and efforts that were made by others to
break down this monopoly led to bitter conflicts. With regard to the
goods which they carried home with them from the Balkans, these
comprised cattle and cheese, dried fish from the Lake of Scutari,
hides of the wolf and fox and stag, wax, honey, wool and rough
wood-wares, and unworked metals. Some of the Balkan mines, such as the
silver mines of Novo Brdo in Serbia, they worked themselves, even as
the Saxons whom we find thus engaged in various parts of these lands.
Under the Turkish domination it must have been with joy that the
caravans from Dubrovnik were welcomed, bringing news of the one
Southern Slav State which remained free and prosperous. A good many of
these wandering merchants took Serbian or Bulgarian wives.