Yet even during the worst of times the lives of the survivors had to continue; there were hungry mouths to feed, fields to be sown and harvested, and business to be conducted. And there were wars to be fought. Barely emerged from the ravages of the Black Death, England and France resumed their devastating wars with each other, sacrificing still more lives and inflicting more pain and suffering on the population of the Continent.
But much was now changing in Europe. Starting from Italy, where extensive contacts with other cultures and flourishing civilizations had provided a basis, European trade and commerce was spreading throughout the Continent and the Far East. Merchants were beginning to prosper, and many a city gained its reputation as the homes of such newly rich citizens as the Medici of Florence or the Fuggers of Augsburg, the wealthiest merchants in all Europe. By their immense wealth, these families soon surpassed the nobles in luxuries and influence, lending huge sums of money even to kings and emperors, influencing elections, and financing wars.
Such wealth brought with it new interest in the world around them, and along with it the freedom and leisure to pursue such interests. For centuries past, the words and dictates of the Church had been the guiding law of the land; now people were beginning to question the old truths and customs that had ruled them for so long. Old manuscripts were rediscovered and eagerly studied, particularly the works of Aristotle and Plato. Ancient Greek and Arabic scientific knowledge was reawakened and philosophical discussions began in increasing numbers. Students in search of teachers flocked to the urban centers of France, Spain, England and Germany, and great universities were begun in such cities as Paris, Barcelona, Oxford, and Heidelberg. Gothic cathedrals of magnificent size and beauty rose all over Europe. Western civilization was beginning to enter the Renaissance, the rebirth of ancient knowledge and culture.
For the first time now inventions came into use, though the principle behind many of them had been known for some time. Machines were developed, powered by wind and water; the mechanical clock appeared, and so did guns. Gunpowder had been known to Europeans for at least 200 years, ever since Arabs had brought it from China; but not until about the 1430s did new technology turn that powder from a mere curiosity into a powerful weapon. Within a few decades thereafter, French artillery proved so effective in sieges that many fortified places surrendered the moment the big cannon were placed into position.
Important improvements appeared also in ship design and navigational devices. The compass, at first merely a needle magnetized with lodestone and floated in water, had been known at least since the 12th century. Now suddenly the seamen began fixing it to charts and used it as a compass to determine the direction of their voyages and the position of harbors and coastlines. The astrolabe, a device for calculating latitudes, was perfected during that time as well.
Perhaps the most important contribution to civilization during the early Renaissance was the invention of the printing press, made practicable by the introduction of paper from the East. The origins of movable type are still a matter of dispute; Chinese and Korean presses are known to have existed long before they appeared in Europe. Sometime before the mid-1400s, a man named Coster, the sexton of a church in Haarlem, Holland, was printing from movable type, as was one Panfilo Castaldi in Milan. But it was from the printing press of Johann Gutenberg of Mainz that the first book – the Mazarin Bible – was issued in 1456. Within ten years thereafter, there were printers in Italy and England, and before the end of the century, more than 150 printing presses all over Europe had already issued several million books. Before that time, the clergy had been forced to copy manuscripts painstakingly by hand, making them so expensive that few people were ever able to afford them. Now the printing process made possible almost unlimited copies of more or less uniform quality, and at a far more reasonable cost, and suddenly books became accessible to people who had never had any sort of reading material at all. All at once, the middle class began to share in the knowledge and the learning that had previously been the exclusive privilege of the clergy and the scholars.
Among the earliest books issued by the printing presses was The Travels of Marco Polo, perhaps the most influential classic ever printed. Even before the first printed book ever appeared, many hand-made manuscripts of this story had been produced, and nearly a hundred of them, in French, Latin, and Italian, are still preserved in museums all over the world. The Travels of Marco Polo tells the story of a young Venetian’s journey to the Orient, at that time virtually unknown to Western civilization. Marco’s father and uncle had returned from a journey to the East in 1269, and when they set out to return there two years later, 17-year old Marco accompanied them. They traveled across Armenia, the deserts of Persia, the mountains of Afghanistan to the plateau of Pamir, and from there through the Gobi Desert to the court of Kublai Khan, the emperor of the Mongols at Cambuluc, today’s Peiping. The Great Khan entertained the returning Polos hospitably, and young Marco, apparently mastering the Tartar language, seems to have become a favorite of the ruler. He was even given an official position at Court and was sent out on several missions to Central China and southeastern Asia.
After spending 17 years in the Mongol empire, the Polos finally returned to Venice in 1295. Marco soon joined the Venetian forces then fighting with Genoa and during one battle the following year he was taken prisoner. It was during his two-year captivity that he told his stories to a fellow inmate, who wrote it all down. Marco Polo described the places he had visited, the people he had met, and the customs of the countries he had crossed. He told of paper currency, of asbestos and coal and other articles completely unknown in Europe. His amazing stories of Burma and its great armies with hundreds of elephants, of Mongol conquest of Pegu, of Japan – he called it Cipango – with its greatly exaggerated amounts of gold, fired the imagination of all Europe.
But most wonderful of all, Marco Polo told of Christians in Cathay – China – and of a Christian king there, a certain Prester John, who was supposed to have ruled over a vast Indian empire below the Gobi Desert. Rumors about Prester John were nothing new in Europe, but Marco Polo’s confirmation of his actual existence made that mysterious kingdom one of the most stimulating legends of the next few centuries, and many of the subsequent explorations made attempts at finding these Christians. In 1492, Christopher Columbus possessed a printed copy of Marco Polo’s book, and the frequent notations he made on its pages clearly testify to the great influence over him by this story. Without a doubt, one of the goals of Columbus’ first voyage was the Cathay and Cipango of Marco Polo and the kingdom of Prester John.

In the midst of all this European progress and newfound wealth, a new threat suddenly appeared from the East. Ever since the mid-13th century, Turkish tribes had begun to invade the Byzantine territories, defeating the Seljuks and laying the foundations for the Ottoman Empire. The fortress of Constantinople became one of their major targets, and for 150 years that city was under almost constant siege by the Turks. The end came in 1453. In that year, worn to exhaustion by this continuous hostility, the great fortress finally collapsed under the devastating effects of the newly developed artillery. Against the astonished Byzantine capital the Turkish Sultan Mehmet II brought an impressive arsenal of fourteen batteries and more than fifty smaller guns. Most spectacular of all were two enormous cannon, which fired stone balls nearly three feet in diameter and weighing over 800 pounds. These cannon required seventy oxen and nearly a thousand men to move them into position; though they took several hours to load and were able to fire only a few times a day, they finally accomplished what no one had ever been able to do. The walls of Constantinople crumbled, and the most formidable defenses in Europe were carried by storm.
The capture of the last Christian stronghold in the East was a serious blow to Europeans who now envisioned a new march by the forces of Islam. From Constantinople, the Ottomans had meanwhile set out to seize the trading ports of the Venetians and Genoese in the Aegean Islands and along the Syrian coast; they converted the Christian churches into Moslem mosques, drove all non-believers from their cities, and generally made the eastern end of the Mediterranean unsafe for European traders. The era during which ships had peacefully plied back and forth between Western Europe and Byzantium had come to an end, and a barrier had been erected across the established trade routes between Europe and Asia. Christian traders who had been dealing in products of the East were now forced to find other routes to India and China, and European adventures across the oceans of the world were about to begin.