When Alexios was fighting against the Norman leader Guiscart (Bohemond's father), in order to win the maritime support of Venice, he signed a contract with Venice, which roughly recognized Venice's power in Dalmatia, made its governor a great nobleman, granted him the title of nobility to the ten powerful people in the state (and paid him every year, because the Byzantine aristocratic officials were paid), and promised to donate a large sum of money to St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. At the same time, port cities such as Dolazzo were opened to Venice. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

To be fair, the conclusion of this treaty did not cause much damage to the Eastern Roman Empire, after all, it was only the gift of titles and money, plus the actual recognition of the extent of Venice's interests in the Adriatic, which was a recognition of a fait accompli.

It was under this pact that the Venetian fleet played a huge role in defending both Guiscat's first invasion and the defense of the city of Durazzo. When Guiscart fell ill and died, the Norman nobles who had retreated to Italy began to fight among themselves, and Emperor Alexios was able to breathe for a while, but his temporary victory in the western part of the empire came at the cost of almost total loss of the north and east—the barbarians of the northern steppes (Pecheneg, Cuman, Rus, etc.) began to invade Constantinople in collusion with the Pauline heretics in Bulgaria and Thrace; The Sultanate of Rum in the east had advanced to the edge of the Marimara Sea, and all but a few cities had fallen to the whole of Anatolia.

Thus, seven years after Guiscat's death, when the Emperor raised an army against the invasion of the Pechenegs, the city-state of Venice sent an emissary demanding that the Emperor "compensate them for the great losses they suffered in the two Norman wars (1081 and 1084)".

This was how the losses were inflicted, and in the Second Naval Battle of Guiscut's second invasion on the coast of Epirus (which had already been fought twice in succession), the Emperor's fleet shamefully escaped from battle, resulting in the valiant Venetians being sunk by the Normans with seven large ships, two captured, and 2,500 killed. When the news returned, the governor of the year was deposed by the angry populace, and the governor who succeeded him was disillusioned with the Eastern Romans and soon broke away from the war. In his book The Legend of Her Father, Komnenos also paints a vivid picture of the fourth naval victory of the Empire and the Venetian "combined fleet" over the Normans, which may have existed only on yellowed paper (because it probably did not exist) - because soon the Norman fleet began to lay siege to the eastern Roman gateway island of Cairofania, and Venice no longer had the strength and strength to defend the emperor.

This is also the reason why seven years later, the Venetians had the audacity to ask the emperor to "compensate our state".

But at this time, Alexios said, "I have no money."

At this time, the empire may indeed have run out of money: the territory of Asia Minor in the east has been lost, the north has been invaded by barbarians, and the western provinces have suffered huge losses in the previous Norman invasions.

Therefore, the emperor who had no money could only sell his trade privileges to maintain peace with Venice, which was also his second contract with Venice.

But this trade privilege was sold a bit harshly, which is also an important reason why Alexios was criticized in later generations. The contract was like this, the Venetians had the right of residence and three floating docks in the imperial capital, and soon they had established a large commercial port in the area of Pera, and all operations from the Vigola Gate (a region of Greece) to the Cilician Gate (i.e., the Judah Gate) were exempt from all dock fees, port fees, excise taxes, and toll taxes.

Taken together, Alexios sold more than 30 ports to Venice at once, so much so that some people criticized him for "crazy" behavior.

No matter what Alexios thought at the time, or how forced the situation was at the time, it is by no means objective to say that his actions were harmless to the Empire. We can simply deduce, what is the same as the Venetians enjoy these rights? It means that they can use Constantinople as a base, and all merchant ships can freely travel to and from the Adriatic and Aegean Seas, and they sell goods from all over the world throughout the empire, and they are still duty-free. For example, if the Seljuk invasion crushed the military power of the Empire, then the Venetians were equivalent to the complete destruction of the Empire's maritime commerce, and the previous empire's trading ships were very active and powerful, so to speak, covering the Levant, the Yukchen Sea, the Danube, the Aegean Sea, and the Adriatic Sea (the idea that Eastern Rome did not value commerce came from nowhere), but now what to compete with Venice? As a result, the empire's maritime commerce has since collapsed, and the merchant shipping industry has been wiped out, and once there is no merchant marine business, the idea of building a strong armed fleet is tantamount to a flash in the pan - compared with the land tax and the poll tax, the trade tax is the most economical national income - not only is the investment in land huge, but there may not be a considerable return; Once the poll tax was heavy, it was almost inevitable that the peasants would flee and abandon the famine, and that many of the people who worked and served would be taken refuge in the accounts of the aristocracy. But what about maritime trade? It doesn't cost anything at all, as long as you have a port area that is not clogged up by sediment and can dock large ships, and is on a suitable trade route, even if you don't have a merchant fleet yourself (the cost of maintaining the ships is huge), as long as you issue a trade charter, the sea and the monsoon will naturally send merchants from all over the world to you, and they will build a large commercial port with you here, bring many merchant ships, and then you only need to close your eyes and collect their toll taxes and port fees, and almost all of them are hot cash. It has been recorded that the income of a port in Palermo in medieval Sicily was equal to the annual income of the British king, and the latter's income was equivalent to about 250,000 US dollars at the end of the 19th century, according to the statistics of the fifteenth century.

The problem should now be clear, it is not that Alexios gave the Venetians trading privileges, but that giving them two rights and interests of complete tax exemption and settlement greatly disadvantage the empire. By the time of Manuel I, how many Venetians had settled in Constantinople? There are 14,000 adult men who can fight alone, plus the women, children and other family members behind them, and the privilege of completely tax-free business operations, it is not an exaggeration to say that it is a huge cancer in the body of the empire, even if these tens of thousands of Venetians promote prosperity on the surface, it is also deformed, and the imperial treasury itself has nothing to do with half of the solide, and the imperial treasury gave up the trade tax, at the cost of making the land and poll tax extremely heavy (after all, there is a pass-through), Otherwise, when the Norman Kingdom of Sicily attacked Corfu in the Empire, there would not have been a sad scene of the local residents "eating pot pulp to welcome the king's master" (the king's master was Norman) - Manuel could not bear it anymore and carried out a purge of the Venetians in Constantinople, which was also the final result of the accumulation of this contradiction.