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The Byzantines used Istria as a base in the final operations against the Goths till 555, when they were conquered. This was the period when so many basilicas were built in that country, in gratitude for the securing of freedom to the province from the yoke of the Arians, and for the re-establishment of the "Holy Republic," the inaccurate term which the Istrians used for the Byzantine Government.
The Italians claim that Istria should be theirs because of the undoubted Latin character of the towns along its coasts, because their Roman and Venetian ancestors established their outposts here long centuries ago, because the only culture that the region possesses is Italian, and, above all else, because its possession is essential to the safety of Italy herself.
"And if I offer it to a lady, she must be the Princess Dalmar-Kalm." I felt that a glance was thrown to me with these words, but I looked only at my plate. The conversation ended by the Prince getting his way, as he had made Aunt Kathryn think it her way: and we gave up Istria.
In 1334 an attempt to regain the Signory caused the Polese to ask the Senate to dismantle the castle, which was done, and the houses of the two heads of the family were also destroyed. So Pola became a mere appanage of Venice. Istria is in great part a dry and stony land, but there are valleys with streams and woods.
The Venetians, who were thus driven from a most lucrative commerce, endeavoured to compensate for their loss by extending their power and commerce in other quarters: they claimed and received a toll on all vessels navigating the Adriatic, especially from those sailing between the south-point of Istria and Venice.
In short, the towns of the western coast are undeniably Italian; the rest of the peninsula is solidly Slav. The interior of Istria consists, in the main, of a barren, monotonous and peculiarly unlovely limestone plateau known as the Karst, a continuation of that waterless and treeless ridge, called by Italians the Carso, which stretches from Trieste northwestward to Goritzia and beyond.
Syria, Egypt, and the provinces of Asia, were subdued by the Persian arms, while Europe, from the confines of Istria to the long wall of Thrace, was oppressed by the Avars, unsatiated with the blood and rapine of the Italian war.
The county of Venetia, at the extreme northeast of Italy, was added to the kingdom in 1866 as the result of a war which will be told about more fully in the next chapter, but the territory around the city of Trent, called by the Italians Trentino, and the county of Istria at the head of the Adriatic Sea, containing the important seaports of Trieste, Fiume, and Pola, are inhabited almost entirely by people of Italian blood.
In any case Austria obtained the longed-for mainland of Venice as far as the river Oglio, together with Istria and Dalmatia, the Venetian dependencies beyond the Adriatic, while Venice herself was to be nominally indemnified by the receipt of the three papal legations, Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna, which had just been erected into the Transpadane Republic!
The next town along the coast, Parenzo, is celebrated for its fine sixth-century cathedral, the pride of the whole of Istria "the land of basilicas," and is the headquarters of the Istrian Archæological Society, several of whose members have devoted much time and money to the elucidation of the history, construction, and decoration of the building.
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