Although the sixteenth-century Adriatic Sea was Venice's "gulf," the Republic's territory encircled the Dalmatian coast, stretching from south of the Istria Peninsula to north of Kotor Bay. This area was known as Serenissima's Dalmatia. Serenissima had once been Venice's name, meaning "peace" in Byzantine.
South of Kotor Bay, as well as the Dalmatian interior, had already fallen under the control of the Ottoman Empire. After the Habsburg Empire began using the Uskoks against the Ottomans, the region south of Rijeka and north of Zrmanja became a "buffer zone," while the area north of Rijeka was called Inner Austria.
Pirates naturally needed ships. Once the Venetians controlled Kotor Bay, they forbade the locals from building ships. Rijeka's shipyards, meanwhile, provided the Uskoks with armed fleets. They did not dock at Rijeka, but established their headquarters in a place south of Rijeka called Senj, then sent their "catches" to Rijeka to be sold.
Both the Pope and the Emperor forbade the Uskoks from doing this, but neither the people of Rijeka nor the Uskoks paid any heed to those warnings. First, the Habsburgs paid the Uskoks very little, and without selling their "catches," they could hardly obtain the supplies they needed. Second, there was the attitude of the locals. If the city obeyed the Emperor's or Pope's orders and refused to buy or sell the "catches," they simply traded in the outskirts. The Uskoks got along well with farmers and shepherds. They received help from the shepherds, and the shepherds received help from the Uskoks.
Once Venice began trading with the Ottomans, the Uskoks sailed their ships to Split. It was a fine harbor, unlike Senj, where ships had to be tied down with ropes or the Bora would blow them out of the harbor and off to some unknown place.
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