Amalfi sent out traders to the East and knights to fight for the holy sepulchre; but her knights did not fight to win land for her, nor did her traders ever become colonists. Pisa, like Venice, sought to extend her territory. At that time the daring Saracen chief named Mousa--Moses--settled himself on the eastern and southern coast of Sardinia, and carried his depredations far and wide on the Italian shore and through the Tuscan archipelago. Seizing his opportunity when the Pisan fleet had sailed southwards to help the Calabrian Greeks against the Saracens of Sicily, Mousa and his pirates entered the mouth of the Arno by night and landed in the suburbs of Pisa. The terrified citizens were waked by the yells of their assailants amidst the flames of their own dwellings, and if the corsairs had possessed any local knowledge of the city its history might have gone no further than that night. But in their ignorance they had landed on the wrong bank of the river, and had fired the suburb instead of the city itself; a woman, and some say that she was a noble lady, made her way through the confusion across the bridge to the Consul’s dwelling, the church bells were rung backwards and roused the sleeping garrison to arms, and the Saracens, surprised by the prospect of energetic resistance, withdrew hastily to their ships and dropped down the river. The peril was past.
But when the fleet came back from the South vengeance was sworn upon Mousa and his pirates, and the conquest of Sardinia was a foregone conclusion. So Pisa rose to power, and Genoa envied her and Florence too, and those long wars began which ended in her destruction and her absorption. While Venice had been distracted by internal factions, by the feuds of Candiano and Orseolo, Morosini and Caloprini, the ‘Dupes and the Flatterers,’ Pisa had at least enjoyed the honour of fighting and vanquishing a horde of unbelievers. And meanwhile Genoa had risen also to much the same degree of prosperity and strength, so that when Peter the Hermit’s cry rang through the Christian world, rousing the faithful to win back the Holy Land, the four great Italian maritime republics were almost equals in wealth and influence, and in the fleets of which they could dispose.