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of its natural formation. From the high point of S. Anna they commanded the open sea and could descry merchant shipping in the offing and could sally out to plunder them, returning to the safety of their impenetrable landlocked bay, on the shores of which a city gradually sprang up and was defended on the land side by a palisade, (sibue in Croat), thus, it is suggested, giving rise to the city’s name of Sebenico.
  Sebenico followed the usual fortunes of most Dalmatian sea-board towns. In 1117 the Doge Ordelafo Falier captured it, along with Zara-vecchia, Nona and Novigrad, as the result of his punitive expedition against the Liburnian pirates. But piracy was inveterate in the population of Sebenico, — who could resist the invitation of such a coast-line?—pirates continued to harass ^ enetian trade, and the Pope, Alexander III., was compelled to enter a protest against the capture and pillage of his envoy Raimondo. During the period of Croatian supremacy Sebenico was under the domination of the Counts of Bribir, whose castle stood by the Bribir Bridge, on the high road horn Zara by Scardona to Sebenico. The tyranny °f those chieftains compelled Sebenico, Trau and °ther sea-board towns to call in Venetian aid.
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