At a time when our last journey is beginning to date and the next one is unfortunately no longer on the agenda, plunging back into the adventures of the great explorers makes it possible to travel from one's couch. Today, we propose you to follow in the footsteps of Marco Polo, who spent a good part of his life travelling the future Silk Road to China from his hometown of Venice in Italy. He belonged to one of those adventurous merchant families who made the Serenissima's glory and fortune at the time. And who helped to create a link between East and West that was soon to become essential.
Le Devisement du Monde, a major work
In 1298, during the battle of Curzola, the Venetian galleys were defeated by the Genoese fleet. Among the prisoners was a certain Marco Polo, who had returned from Asia only four years earlier. The prisoner was held until the following year in Genoese jails. To keep himself busy, he dictated his memoirs to a fellow captive: Rustician of Pisa. The resulting story is called The Devisement of the World. A major work by Marco Polo, a tale of more than a quarter century of travel, it is both a tale teeming with fantastic characters and an adventure novel. It tells of regions where precious stones are gathered like seafood, where magicians charm sharks while fishermen gather pearls... Le Devisement du Monde was a huge success at the time and made Marco Polo an almost mythical character
The genesis of an extraordinary journey
The two brothers Maffeo Polo (1230-1309) and Nico Polo (1230-1294), Marco's father and uncle (1254-1324), undertook a first trip to China when the future adventurer was still a child. It is known that, leaving Venice with a cargo of goods, they reached Constantinople, passed through Soldaïa in the Crimea, rode across the steppes controlled by Khublai Khan, and stayed for three years in Bukhara in Uzbekistan. They were then taken to the home of the great Khan himself, at Karakorum in Mongolia, who offered them the necessary protection for their return journey. And instructed them to communicate to the pope his willingness to welcome a hundred Western scholars to his kingdom to have the mysteries of Christianity explained to them. The merchants then became ambassadors. It would take them three years to reach Saint-Jean-d'Acre again in 1269, where they embarked for Venice fifteen years after their departure. Neither the pope nor Christianity being then in a position to respond favourably to this request, the two Venetians organized a new journey, carrying in their suitcases gifts and a message from the pope. The year was 1271. Marco Polo is 16 years old, and he leaves with them. They are also accompanied by two Dominican friars. But frightened by the risks of such a journey, the latter two soon turned back. This second journey was to be made by boat, but the Chinese wars in the South Seas made them change their itinerary and go through Central Asia.
On the Road to the East
So it was as a merchant and son of merchants that Marco left Venice for the East. The precise route followed by the three Polos remains uncertain. In his account, Marco Polo evokes the places they passed through or where they stopped, as well as those he heard about, without ever really specifying whether they really passed through or not. All we know is that the journey was to last nearly four years, that they rounded the Caspian Sea by the south, reached Samarkand in Uzbekistan and crossed the Pamir mountain range in Tajikistan to Kashgar in China. The Devisement of the World suggests that they then skirted the Taklamakan Desert by way of the south before going straight north-east to Mongolia and Karakorum, the capital of the Great Khan. All three then return to China and then reach Ganzhou (Canton), at the time an important stage on the caravan route, where they stop for a year. The journey resumed when Kubilay Khan sent an escort to guide the travellers to his summer residence in Shangdu, northeast of Beijing: they arrived there in 1275. The reception of the Venetians in Shangdu was lavish. The khan asks the three men questions about the morals and science of the West, listens attentively to their answers, is told about their journey and, above all, befriends Marco. Thus, while his uncle and his father do business, the young man goes on missions for the great khan, who is in charge of spying on the kingdoms conquered by the Mongols, especially China, and the high officials who represent him there. Marco Polo will thus remain seventeen years in the service of the khan, making numerous trips to Beijing (Peking), Xi'an, Tibet and Yunnan, and India. Each time, Marco Polo brought back long and precise descriptions, which would form the best pages of his book and enable the West to learn as much or almost as much from it in one reading as from a twenty-five year journey.
A return by the seas
The Polo's return journey will be by sea. Here again, Marco Polo describes as many places where he stopped as there were countries he heard about during these stopovers. Nevertheless, it seems certain that the convoy of ships travelled along the Chinese and then Indonesian coasts before crossing Sumatra and then the Bay of Bengal. All they had to do then was to sail along the western coast of India, via Bombay, to reach Hormuz. They then took the land route back to Tabriz, in the north of present-day Iran, before reaching Trabzon (Trebizond), from where they embarked again for Constantinople, then Venice, where they arrived in 1295. Marco Polo's book was completed in 1299, inaugurating the legend of the "great traveller". And, finally, the first author of a travel guide!
Memoirs that will also decisively inspire, one hundred and fifty years later, a Christopher Columbus who set out by the western sea route in search of the fabulous lands described by the Venetian.
