5 - Crisis and recovery, 1162–79

Summary

Although Genoa had been scared by Barbarossa's moves in northern Italy, the Emperor could not take for granted the Republic's accession to an alliance against Sicily. Frederick clearly did not hope for much from Genoa, since in April 1162 he won the support of the Pisans with extravagant promises that included help against Genoese pretensions at Portovenere, the coastal village where the Genoese land empire met the Pisan contado. But even without Genoese participation, the Emperor was in a strong position to begin his Sicilian war. He had pacified northern Italy by terror and the sword; he had bought himself a fleet at Pisa; he stood to profit from the internal troubles that beset King William from 1160 onwards. All this pressed Genoa into an ever tighter position, and the Commune began to wonder whether the Norman kingdom did in fact have much chance of survival, and what penalty it might have to pay for its refusal to co-operate with Barbarossa. In addition the Genoese knew that legitimacy of control over Sardinia would be determined by the imperial nod (though the papacy too kept its pretensions on the boil here); Frederick's friendship with the Pisans might encourage him to back their claim to the island. Sardinia counted all the more since it, like Sicily, was a grain producer; if, in compensation for abandoning Sicily, the Genoese secured a tighter hold over the Sardinian estates, they need not go hungry.