Venice and its Story

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tury her consuls had warned the Signory of danger in the East. Pope after pope had summoned his children to cease their fratricidal strife and unite to meet the Turkish peril. During the pauses in the fierce clash of Christian pas

repeated, but the Christian princes were too busy with their own quarrels to listen, and before a year passed the scimitar of the Turk was red with the blood of the Christians at Constantinople. Had not Venice herself proven that the strong city was not impregnable? When it fell the Republic adopted her usual policy. She accepted the situation and secured her trading privileges by treaty with the Sultan. But when news came in 1463 of the conquest of the Morea and Epirus and that the crescent was flying over the Castle of Argos almost in sight of the Adriatic, Venice no lon

and downcast looks across the Piazza and, if spoken to, answered not a word. Were they listening to the rustle of the wings of the sable-robed avenging sisters? In the following year a crowd of panic-stricken refugees from Istria and Friuli streamed into Venice and camped on the Piazza and under the arcades of the ducal palace. An army of 20,000 Turks had ravaged the provinces even up to Udine. The Republic was now at the end of her resources. An attempted diversion from Persia had failed. A big loan from her mainland provinces had been swallowed up. The Pope sent her envoys away empty. Not one Italian state stirred to help her. The good Tomaso Mocenigo's warnings were verified. National wrong meant national sorrow. Venice was harvesting the acrid fruit

s effaced. The title of "Communitas Venetiarum," long disused in actual practice, was formally changed to the "Signoria." During the wearing anxieties of the Turkish wars from the death of Moro in 1471 to the signature of the peace under Doge Giov. Mocenigo in 1479 four Doges, Nicolo Tron, Nicolo Marcello, Pietro Mocenigo, and Andrea Vendramin followed in rapid succession, the last a descendant of a family ennobled after the Chioggian war. The delimitation of the new frontiers had been barely concluded in the East when a dispute concerning salterns and custom dues on the Po and the arrest of a priest for debt by the Venetian Consul at Ferrara led to another war in the peninsula. In 1482 the whole of Italy was aflame, and states that had watched unmoved the agony of the sixteen years' Turkish wars now turned on Venice and accused her of sinister motives in concluding the peace. The Republic was now allied with Genoa and the Papacy against the Duke of Ferrara, supported by the King of Naples, by Floren

dicate his rights over the duchy of Milan. The weight of the great French monarchy fell with decisive effect on the league. Peace was made and the treaty of Bagnolo (1484) added Rovigo and the Polesine to the Venetian domini

olt, expel the Queen and her consort from the island and seize the crown. He made friends with the Venetians and to ensure their goodwill desired the Signory to bestow on him the hand of a Venetian maiden of noble birth. Caterina, daughter of Marco Cornaro, who with two other patrician houses held the greater part of the island in mortgage, was chosen and given a dowry valued at 100,000 duc

w months. Fearing a reversion of power to the former dynasty, James' mother, sister and bastard sons were deported to Venice and Marco Cornaro was despatched with instructions to comfort his daughter, to maintain the allegiance of the Cypriotes and to declare the absolute will of the Republic that no change should take place in the order of things. An emissary of Ferdinand, Rizzo di Mario, was caught plotting at Alexandria, sent to Venice and condemned to death by the Ten. The Sultan, who had known him as the ambassador of Naples, threatened the Republic with his displeasure if the sentence were carried out. The Ten had Rizzo strangled in prison and informed the Sultan that he had poisoned himself. The Signory now determined to force Caterina's hand. Subtly but firmly the two Councillors and the Commissioner usurped more and more power, and poor Caterina's position was made intolerable. She wrote pitiful letters to the Doge complaining of the insults and petty persecutions suffered by herself and her father; scuffles took place on the very stairs of the palace. In October 1488 her bro

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he caused to be translated and sent to the Signory. Far otherwise was the effect of the latter event, by which the ancient trade routes to the East were to be superseded by the ocean route to India. Priuli gives a graphic story of the consternation which seized the citizens, when, in the early sixteenth century, the report was verified that Vasco da Gama with a Portuguese fleet had reached Calcutta by rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and had returned to Lisbon with a cargo of spices. The wiser heads at once saw the gravity of the news. Owing to the heavy dues exacted by the sultans and princes the cost of a parcel of spices was increased from one ducat to sixty or a hundred by the time it reached Veni

French king, and it was not long before Charles VIII. marched in with an army such as had never before been seen in the peninsula to achieve his designs on the kingdom of Naples. From his camp a

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ines found the Doge (Agostino Barbarigo) an amiable, wise and gentle prince, experienced in Italian politics, and after a stay of eight months, left with his mission unfulfilled. The Most Christian King, if we may believe the Venetian ambassador Contarini, lacked many inches of regal majesty. He was short in stature, ill-formed, had an ugly face, prominent white eyes, a big, coarse, aquiline nose, thick lips always open, and a nervous twitching of the hands very unpleasant to see. He was slow in expressing himself and dull-witted. Nor was Anne of Brittany, the Queen, portrayed less rudely. She, says the ungallant diplomatist, was short, bony and lame, with a rather pretty face. She was only seventeen, but most astute for her age, inordinately jealous of the King's majesty, and always succeeded in getting her way by the use of smiles or tears. The Cristianissimo marched triumphantly through the length of Italy to realise his dream of winning Naples, and then overthrowing the Mussulman power in the East. Florence, Rome, Naples were successively occupied; the balance of Italian politics was disastrously overthrown, and the unhappy land soon became a cockpit where the rival ambitions of France and Spain were fought out. Milan and Venice had each thought to use the Transalpine Powers for her own ends; they both became their prey. Charles had himself crowned King of Naples, Emperor of the East, and King of Jerusalem, but soon discovered that to conquer was easier than to hold. Th

eans princes to Milan and of the French kings to Naples. Ludovico Sforza, fearing for his duchy, approached the Signory, but, to his disgust, learned that Venice had already secretly agreed to aid Louis in his designs on Milan, i

ons. "We have lost eight hundred men, and the reputation of Venice." Grimani was sent home in irons. As he landed, his son, Cardinal Domenico, fought his way through the crowd, and lifted his father's chains to lighten his burden as he was led to prison. At the trial Grimani defended himself eloquently, and was banished to Dalmatia. The operations on land were not less humiliating. Such was the paralysing terror inspired by the Turk, that the native militia in Friuli refused to take the field, and the commander of the Stradiote mercenaries struck not a blow. Venice sued for peace. She weakly tried to inculpate Sforza for the outbreak of hostilities, but was told that the Duke of Milan had no power to move the Sultan; the depredations of her own subjects were the cause of her chastisement. On trying to soften the hard conditions exacted, her envoy was advised to bid the Signory hasten to accept the Sultan's terms: "Tell your Doge," said the Pacha, "that up to the present he has wedded the sea; it will be our turn in future, for

p the Papal States. Instructions were sent to the podestà of Ravenna, informing him of certain negotiations between the Signory and some cities of Romagna. He was to confer with the military commanders, in order to bring the negotiations quick

SHOP NEA

upation of Rimini and the capture of Faenza. To Julius' angry protests and his threat of winning back Romagna, cost what it might, Venice urged her devotion to holy Church and the benevolence of her motives in trying to free Italy of the tyranny of Cesare Borgia. "Signor Oratore," cried the Pope, "your words are go

in's envoy were near, but their views were known, and for greater safety they were not allowed to enter. After many difficulties, says Romanin, and such altercations that they wellnigh tore out each other's hair (s'acciuffassero pei capegli) the plenipotentiaries decided "that it was not only useful and honourable but necessary to call upon all the Powers of Europe to take a just vengeance, and quench, as they would a general conflagration, the insatiable greed of the Venetians and their thirst of dominion." The modest reward which the Powers proposed to themselves for "making an end of the rapine and injury wrought by the Venetians and their tyrannical usurpation of the possessions of others," was as follows. His Holiness the Pope was to have Ravenna, Cervia, Faenza, Rimini and all the territory held by the Venetians

ence while pushing on with all speed defensive military operations. The aged and infirm Doge Loredano, so overwrought by emotion that it was piteous to see, addressed the Great Council begging them to turn to righteousness and offer their lives and substance in defence of the fatherland. Himself would give an example by sending his silver plate to the mint. On April 27, 1509, Julius flung a bull of excommunication couched in almost savage terms against the Republic. The Ten forbade its publication and sent officers to take down any copies posted on churches or on the walls. They consulted learned canonists; drew up an appeal to a future council of the Church and sent emissaries to Rome who nailed a copy on the doors of St Peter's. The secular arm swiftly followed. Sanudo tells us that while he and two other Senators were examining a map of Italy painted on the walls of the Senate hall, a courier arrived with the news that the French had crossed the Adda, fallen on the fine army of the Republic at Agnadello and utterly routed it with a loss of four thousand in killed alone. Faces gathered gloom and despair. "Give me my cloak, wife," said Paolo Barbo, one of the most experienced of the fathers, "that I may go to the Senate, speak a couple of words and die." One disas

uld reach the city. Sanudo remembered the 17th of July, for did he not buy a Hebrew Bible worth twenty ducats for a few pence as he was going home? Two attacks by the Emperor were successfully resisted, and the foiled C?sar retired to Vicenza in October with anger in his heart against the French. In February 1510, after long and tough negotiations, the Pope was given his prey and detached from the league, but at the price of a bitter abasement of Venice. Time had avenged the Empire. It was now the Queen of the Adriatic who, in the person of her ambassadors, bowed the neck before the enthroned Pope in the atrium of St Peter's, surrendered her ecclesiastical privile