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$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part X}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Hallam, Henry}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{venice
council
doge
upon
century
government
republic
footnote
venetian
power}
$Date{}
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Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book III: The History Of Italy
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part X

     The Ghibelin faction was at the head of the affairs in 1339, a Doria and
a Spinola being its leaders, when the discontent of a large fleet in want of
pay broke out in open insurrection.  Savona and the neighboring towns took
arms avowedly against the aristocratical tyranny; and the capital was itself
on the point of joining the insurgents.  There was, by the Genoese
constitution, a magistrate named the abbot of the people, acting as a kind of
tribune for their protection against the oppression of the nobility.  His
functions are not, however, in any book I have seen, very clearly defined.
This office had been abolished by the present government, and it was the first
demand of the malcontents that it should be restored.  This was acceded to,
and twenty delegates were appointed to make the choice.  While they delayed,
and the populace was grown weary with waiting, a nameless artisan called out
from an elevated station that he could direct them to a fit person.  When the
people, in jest, bade him speak on, he uttered the name of Simon Boccanegra.
This was a man of noble birth, and well esteemed, who was then present among
the crowd.  The word was suddenly taken up, a cry was heard that Boccanegra
should be abbot; he was instantly brought forward, and the sword of justice
forced into his hand.  As soon as silence could be obtained he modestly
thanked them for their favor, but declined an office which his nobility
disqualified him from exercising.  At this a single voice out of the crowd
exclaimed, "Signior!" and this title was reverberated from every side.
Fearful of worse consequences, the actual magistrates urged him to comply with
the people and accept the office of abbot.  But Boccanegra, addressing the
assembly, declared his readiness to become their abbot, signior, or whatever
they would.  The cry of "Signior!" was now louder than before; while others
cried out, "Let him be duke!" The latter title was received with greater
approbation; and Boccanegra was conducted to the palace, the first duke, or
doge, of Genoa. ^v

[Footnote v: G. Stella.  Annal. Genuenses, in Script. Rer. Ital. t. xvii. p.
1072.]

     Caprice alone, or an idea of more pomp and dignity, led the populace, we
may conjecture, to prefer this title to that of signior; but it produced
important and highly beneficial consequences.  In all neighboring cities an
arbitrary government had been already established under their respective
signiors; the name was associated with indefinite power, while that of doge
had only been taken by the elective and very limited chief magistrate of
another maritime republic.  Neither Boccanegra nor his successors ever
rendered their authority unlimited or hereditary.  The constitution of Genoa,
from an oppressive aristocracy, became a mixture of the two other forms, with
an exclusion of the nobles from power.  Those four great families who had
domineered alternately for almost a century lost their influence at home after
the revolution of 1339.  Yet, what is remarkable enough, they were still
selected in preference for the highest of trusts; their names are still
identified with the glory of Genoa; her fleets hardly sailed but under a
Doria, a Spinola, or a Grimaldi; such confidence could the republic bestow
upon their patriotism, or that of those whom they commanded.  Meanwhile two or
three new families, a plebeian oligarchy, filled their place in domestic
honors; the Adorni, the Fregosi, the Montalti, contended for the ascendant.
From their competition ensued revolutions too numerous almost for a separate
history; in four years, from 1390 to 1394, the doge was ten times changed;
swept away or brought back in the fluctuations of popular tumult.  Antoniotto
Adorno, four times doge of Genoa, had sought the friendship of Gian Galeazzo
Visconti; but that crafty tyrant meditated the subjugation of the republic,
and played her factions against one another to render her fall secure.  Adorno
perceived that there was no hope for ultimate independence but by making a
temporary sacrifice of it.  His own power, ambitious as he had been, he
voluntarily resigned, and placed the republic under the protection or signiory
of the king of France.  Terms were stipulated very favorable to her liberties;
but, with a French garrison once received into the city, they were not always
sure of observance. ^w

[Footnote w: Sismondi, t. vii. pp. 237, 367.]

     While Genoa lost even her political independence, Venice became more
conspicuous and powerful than before.  That famous republic deduces its
origin, and even its liberty, from an era beyond the commencement of the
middle ages.  The Venetians boast of a perpetual emancipation from the yoke of
barbarians.  From that ignominious servitude some natives, or, as their
historians will have it, nobles, of Aquileja and neighboring towns, ^x fled to
the small cluster of islands that rise amidst the shoals at the mouth of the
Brenta.  Here they built the town of Rivoalto, the modern Venice, in 421; but
their chief settlement was, till the beginning of the ninth century, at
Malamocco.  A living writer has, in a passage of remarkable eloquence,
described the sovereign republic, immovable upon the bosom of the waters from
which her palaces emerge, contemplating the successive tides of continental
invasion, the rise and fall of empires, the change of dynasties, the whole
moving scene of human revolution, till, in her own turn, the last surviving
witness of antiquity, the common link between two periods of civilization, has
submitted to the destroying hand of time. ^y Some part of this renown must, on
a coldblooded scrutiny, be detracted from Venice.  Her independence was, at
the best, the fruit of her obscurity. Neglected upon their islands, a people
of fishermen might without molestation elect their own magistrates; a very
equivocal proof of sovereignty in cities much more considerable than Venice.
But both the western and the eastern empire alternately pretended to exercise
dominion over her; she was conquered by Pepin, son of Charlemagne, and
restored by him, as the chronicles say, to the Greek Emperor Nicephorus.
There is every appearance that the Venetians had always considered themselves
as subject, in a large sense not exclusive of their municipal self-government,
to the eastern empire. ^z And this connection was not broken, in the early
part, at least, of the tenth century.  But, for every essential purpose,
Venice might long before be deemed an independent state.  Her doge was not
confirmed at Constantinople; she paid no tribute, and lent no assistance in
war.  Her own navies, in the ninth century, encountered the Normans, the
Saracens, and the Sclavonians in the Adriatic Sea.  Upon the coast of Dalmatia
were several Greek cities, which the empire had ceased to protect, and which,
like Venice itself, became republics for want of a master. Ragusa was one of
these, and, more fortunate than the rest, survived as an independent city till
our own age.  In return for the assistance of Venice, these little seaports
put themselves under her government; the Sclavonian pirates were repressed;
and after acquiring, partly by consent, partly by arms, a large tract of
maritime territory, the doge took the title of Duke of Dalmatia, which is said
by Dandolo to have been confirmed at Constantinople [A.D. 997.] Three or four
centuries, however, elapsed before the republic became secure of these
conquests, which were frequently wrested from her by rebellions of the
inhabitants, or by her powerful neighbor, the king of Hungary.

[Footnote x: Ebbe principio, says Sanuto haughtily, non da pastori, come ebbe
Roma, ma da potenti, e nobili.]

[Footnote y: Sismondi, t. i. p. 309.]

[Footnote z: Nicephorus stipulates with Charlemagne for his faithful city of
Venice.  Quae in devotione imperii illibatee steterant.  Danduli Chronicon, in
Muratori, Script.  Rer. Ital. t. xii. p. 156.  In the tenth century
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in his book De Administratione Imperii, claims
the Venetians as his subjects, though he admits that they had, for peace'
sake, paid tribute to Pepin and his successors as kings of Italy, p. 71.  I
have not read the famous Squittinio della liberta Veneta, which gave the
republic so much offence in the seventeenth century; but a very strong case is
made out against their early independence in Giannone's history, t. ii. p.
283, edit.  Haia, 1753.  Muratori informs us that so late as 1084 the doge
obtained the title of Imperialis Protosevastos from the court of
Constantinople; a title which he continued always to use. (Annali d' Italia,
ad ann.) But I should lay no stress on this circumstance.  The Greek, like the
German emperors in modern times, had a mint of specious titles which passed
for ready money over Christendom.]

     A more important source of Venetian greatness was commerce.  In the
darkest and most barbarous period, before Genoa or even Pisa had entered into
mercantile pursuits, Venice carried on an extensive traffic both with the
Greek and Saracen regions of the Levant.  The crusades enriched and
aggrandized Venice more, perhaps, than any other city.  Her splendor may,
however, be dated from the taking of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204. In
this famous enterprise, which diverted a great armament destined for the
recovery of Jerusalem, the French and Venetian nations were alone engaged; but
the former only as private adventurers, the latter with the whole strength of
their republic under its doge Henry Dandolo.  Three-eighths of the city of
Constantinople, and an equal proportion of the provinces, were allotted to
them in the partition of the spoil, and the doge took the singular but
accurate title, Duke of three-eighths of the Roman empire. Their share was
increased by purchases from less opulent crusaders, especially one of much
importance, the island of Candia, which they retained till the middle of the
seventeenth century.  These foreign acquisitions were generally granted out in
fief to private Venetian nobles under the supremacy of the republic. ^a It was
thus that the Ionian islands, to adopt the vocabulary of our day, came under
the dominion of Venice, and guaranteed that sovereignty which she now began to
affect over the Adriatic.  Those of the Archipelago were lost in the sixteenth
century. This political greatness was sustained by an increasing commerce.  No
Christian state preserved so considerable an intercourse with the Mohammedans.
While Genoa kept the keys of the Black Sea by her colonies of Pera and Caffa,
Venice directed her vessels to Acre and Alexandria.  These connections, as is
the natural effect of trade, deadened the sense of religious antipathy; and
the Venetians were sometimes charged with obstructing all efforts towards a
new crusade, or even any partial attacks upon the Mohammedan nations.

[Footnote a: Sismondi, t. ii. p. 431.]

     The earliest form of government at Venice, as we collect from an epistle
of Cassiodorus in the sixth century, was by twelve annual tribunes. Perhaps
the union of the different islanders was merely federative. However, in 697,
they resolved to elect a chief magistrate by name of duke, or, in their
dialect, doge of Venice.  No councils appear to have limited his power, or
represented the national will.  The doge was general and judge; he was
sometimes permitted to associate his son with him, and thus to prepare the
road for hereditary power; his government had all the prerogatives, and, as
far as in such a state of manners was possible, the pomp, of a monarchy.  But
he acted in important matters with the concurrence of a general assembly,
though, from the want of positive restraints, his executive government might
be considered as nearly absolute.  Time, however, demonstrated to the
Venetians the imperfections of such a constitution.  Limitations were
accordingly imposed on the doge in 1032; he was prohibited from associating a
son in the government, and obliged to act with the consent of two elected
counsellors, and, on important occasions, to call in some of the principal
citizens.  No other change appears to have taken place till 1172, long after
every other Italian city had provided for its liberty by constitutional laws,
more or less successful, but always manifesting a good deal of contrivance and
complication.  Venice was, however, dissatisfied with her existing
institutions.  General assemblies were found, in practice, inconvenient and
unsatisfactory.  Yet some adequate safeguard against a magistrate of
indefinite powers was required by freemen.  A representative council, as in
other republics, justly appeared the best innovation that could be introduced.
^b

[Footnote b: Sismondi, t. iii. p. 287.  As I have never read the Storia civile
Veneta by Vettor Sandi, in nine vols. 4to, or even Laugier's History of
Venice, my reliance has chiefly been placed on M. Sismondi, who has made use
of Sandi, the latest, and probably the most accurate, historian.  To avoid
frequent reference, the principal passages in Sismondi relative to the
domestic revolutions of Venice are t. i. p. 323, t. iii. pp. 287-300, t. iv.
pp. 349-370.  The history of Daru had not been published when this was
written.]

     The great council of Venice, as established in 1172, was to consist of
four hundred and eighty citizens, equally taken from the six districts of the
city, and annually renewed.  But the election was not made immediately by the
people.  Two electors, called tribunes, from each of the six districts,
appointed the members of the council by separate nomination. These tribunes at
first were themselves chosen by the people, so that the intervention of this
electoral body did not apparently trespass upon the democratical character of
the constitution.  But the great council, principally composed of men of high
birth, and invested by the law with the appointment of the doge, and of all
the councils of magistracy, seem, early in the thirteenth century, to have
assumed the right of naming their own constituents.  Besides appointing the
tribunes, they took upon themselves another privilege, that of confirming or
rejecting their successors before they resigned their functions.  These
usurpations rendered the annual election almost nugatory; the same members
were usually renewed; and though the dignity of councillor was not yet
hereditary, it remained, upon the whole, in the same families.  In this
transitional state the Venetian government continued during the thirteenth
century; the people actually debarred of power, but an hereditary aristocracy
not completely or legally confirmed.  The right of electing, or rather of
re-electing, the great council was transferred, in 1297, from the tribunes,
whose office was abolished, to the council of forty; they ballotted upon the
names of the members who already sat; and whoever obtained twelve favoring
balls out of forty retained his place.  The vacancies occasioned by rejection
or death were filled up by a supplemental list formed by three electors
nominated in the great council.  But they were expressly prohibited, by laws
of 1298 and 1300, from inserting the name of any one whose paternal ancestors
had not enjoyed the same honor.  Thus an exclusive hereditary aristocracy was
finally established.  And the personal rights of noble descent were rendered
complete in 1319 by the abolition of all elective forms.  By the constitution
of Venice as it was then settled, every descendant of a member of the great
council, on attaining twenty-five years of age, entered as of right into that
body, which, of course, became unlimited in its numbers. ^c

[Footnote c: These gradual changes between 1297 and 1319 were first made known
by Sandi, from whom M. Sismondi has introduced the facts into his own history.
I notice this, because all former writers, both ancient and modern, fix the
complete and final establishment of the Venetian aristocracy in 1297.

     Twenty-five years complete was the statutable age at which every Venetian
noble had a right to take his seat in the great council.  But the names of
those who had passed the age of twenty were annually put into an urn, and one
fifth drawn out by lot, who were thereupon admitted.  On an average,
therefore, the age of admission was about twenty-three.  Janotus de Rep.
Venet. - Contarini. - Amelot de la Houssaye.]

     But an assembly so numerous as the great council, even before it was thus
thrown open to all the nobility, could never have conducted the public affairs
with that secrecy and steadiness which were characteristic of Venice; and
without an intermediary power between the doge and the patrician multitude the
constitution would have gained nothing in stability to compensate for the loss
of popular freedom.  The great council had proceeded very soon after its
institution to limit the ducal prerogatives. That of exercising criminal
justice, a trust of vast importance, was transferred in 1179 to a council of
forty members annually chosen.  The executive government itself was thought
too considerable for the doge without some material limitations.  Instead of
naming his own assistants or pregadi, he was only to preside in a council of
sixty members, to whom the care of the state in all domestic and foreign
relations, and the previous deliberation upon proposals submitted to the great
council, was confided. This council of pregadi, generally called in later
times the senate, was enlarged in the fourteenth century by sixty additional
members; and as a great part of the magistrates had also seats in it, the
whole number amounted to between two and three hundred.  Though the
legislative power, properly speaking, remained with the great council, the
senate used to impose taxes, and had the exclusive right of making peace and
war.  It was annually renewed, like almost all other councils at Venice, by
the great council.  But since even this body was too numerous for the
preliminary discussion of business, six councillors, forming, along with the
doge, the signiory, or visible representative of the republic, were empowered
to dispatch orders, to correspond with ambassadors, to treat with foreign
states, to convoke and preside in the councils, and perform other duties of an
administration.  In part of these they were obliged to act with the
concurrence of what was termed the college, comprising, besides themselves,
certain select councillors, from different constituted authorities. ^d
[Footnote d: The college of Savj consisted of sixteen persons; and it
possessed the initiative in all public measures that required the assent of
the senate.  For no single senator, much less any noble of the great council,
could propose anything for debate.  The signiory had the same privilege.  Thus
the virtual powers even of the senate were far more limited than they appear
at first sight; and no possibility remained of innovation in the fundamental
principles of the constitution.]

     It might be imagined that a dignity so shorn of its lustre as that of
doge would not excite an overweening ambition.  But the Venetians were still
jealous of extinguished power; and while their constitution was yet immature,
the great council planned new methods of restricting their chief magistrate.
An oath was taken by the doge on his election, so comprehensive as to embrace
every possible check upon undue influence.  He was bound not to correspond
with foreign states, or to open their letters, except in the presence of the
signiory; to acquire no property beyond the Venetian dominions, and to resign
what he might already possess; to interpose, directly or indirectly, in no
judicial process; and not to permit any citizen to use tokens of subjection in
saluting him.  As a further security, they devised a remarkably complicated
mode of supplying the vacancy of his office.  Election by open suffrage is
always liable to tumult or corruption; nor does the method of secret ballot,
while it prevents the one, afford in practice any adequate security against
the other.  Election by lot incurs the risk of placing incapable persons in
situations of arduous trust.  The Venetian scheme was intended to combine the
two modes without their evils, by leaving the absolute choice of their doge to
electors taken by lot.  It was presumed that, among a competent number of
persons, though taken promiscuously, good sense and right principles would
gain such an ascendency as to prevent any flagrantly improper nomination, if
undue influence could be excluded.  For this purpose the ballot was rendered
exceedingly complicated, that no possible ingenuity or stratagem might
ascertain the electoral body before the last moment.  A single lottery, if
fairly conducted, is certainly sufficient for this end.  At Venice as many
balls as there were members of the great council present were placed in an
urn.  Thirty of these were gilt.  The holders of gilt balls were rendered by a
second ballot to nine.  The nine elected forty, whom lot reduced to twelve.
The twelve chose twenty-five by separate nomination. ^e The twenty-five were
reduced by lot to nine; and each of the nine chose five.  These forty-five
were reduced to eleven as before; the eleven elected forty-one, who were the
ultimate voters for a doge.  This intricacy appears useless, and consequently
absurd; but the original principle of a Venetian election (for something of
the same kind was applied to all their councils and magistrates) may not
always be unworthy of imitation.  In one of our best modern statutes, that for
regulating the trials of contested elections, we have seen this mixture of
chance and selection very happily introduced. ^f

[Footnote e: Amelot de la Houssaye asserts this: but, according to Contarini,
the method was by ballot.]

[Footnote f: This was written about 1810.  The statute to which I allude grew
out of favor afterwards.  But there is too much reason to doubt whether
grosser instances of partial or unjust, or at best erroneous, determination
have not taken place since a new tribunal was erected, than could be imputed
to the celebrated Grenville Act. [1850.]]

     An hereditary prince could never have remained quiet in such trammels as
were imposed upon the doge of Venice.  But early prejudice accustoms men to
consider restraint, even upon themselves, as advantageous; and the limitations
of ducal power appeared to every Venetian as fundamental as the great laws of
the English constitution do to ourselves.  Many doges of Venice, especially in
the middle ages, were considerable men; but they were content with the
functions assigned to them, which, if they could avoid the tantalizing
comparison of sovereign princes, were enough for the ambition of republicans.
For life the chief magistrates of their country, her noble citizens forever,
they might thank her in their own name for what she gave, and in that of their
posterity for what she withheld.  Once only a doge of Venice was tempted to
betray the freedom of the republic. [A.D. 1355.] Marin Falieri, a man far
advanced in life, engaged, from some petty resentment, in a wild intrigue to
overturn the government.  The conspiracy was soon discovered, and the doge
avowed his guilt.  An aristocracy so firm and so severe did not hesitate to
order his execution in the ducal palace.

     For some years after what was called the closing of the great council by
the law of 1296, which excluded all but the families actually in possession, a
good deal of discontent showed itself among the commonalty. Several commotions
took place about the beginning of the fourteenth century, with the object of
restoring a more popular regimen.  Upon the suppression of the last, in 1310,
the aristocracy sacrificed their own individual freedom, along with that of
the people, to the preservation of an imaginary privilege.  They established
the famous council of ten, that most remarkable part of the Venetian
constitution.  This council, it should be observed, consisted in fact of
seventeen, comprising the signiory, or the doge and his six councillors, as
well as the ten properly so called. The council of ten had by usage, if not by
right, a controlling and dictatorial power over the senate and other
magistrates, rescinding their decisions, and treating separately with foreign
princes.  Their vast influence strengthened the executive government, of which
they formed a part, and gave a vigor to its movements which the jealousy of
the councils would possibly have impeded.  But they are chiefly known as an
arbitrary and inquisitorial tribunal, the standing tyranny of Venice.
Excluding the old council of forty, a regular court of criminal judicature,
not only from the investigation of treasonable charges but of several other
crimes of magnitude, they inquired, they judged, they punished, according to
what they called reason of state.  The public eye never penetrated the mystery
of their proceedings; the accused was sometimes not heard, never confronted
with witnesses; the condemnation was secret as the inquiry, the punishment
undivulged like both. ^g The terrible and odious machinery of a police, the
insidious spy, the stipendiary informer, unknown to the carelessness of feudal
governments, found their natural soil in the republic of Venice. Tumultuous
assemblies were scarcely possible in so peculiar a city; and private
conspiracies never failed to be detected by the vigilance of the council of
ten.  Compared with the Tuscan republics the tranquility of Venice is truly
striking.  The names of Guelf and Ghibelin hardly raised any emotion in her
streets, though the government was considered in the first part of the
fourteenth century as rather inclined towards the latter party. ^h But the
wildest excesses of faction are less dishonoring than the stillness and moral
degradation of servitude. ^i

[Footnote g: Illum etiam morem observant, ne reum, cum de eo judicium laturi
sunt, in collegium admittant, neque cognitorem, aut oratorem quempiam, qui
ejus causam agat.  Contarini de Rep. Venet.]

[Footnote h: Villani several times speaks of the Venetians as regular
Ghibelins.  l. ix. c. 2, l. x. c. 89, &c.  But this is put much too strongly;
though their government may have had a slight bias towards that faction, they
were in reality neutral, and far enough removed from any domestic feuds upon
that score.]

[Footnote i: By the modern law of Venice a nobleman could not engage in trade
without derogating from his rank; I do not find this peculiarity observed by
Jannotti and Contarini, the oldest writers on the Venetian government, but
Daru informs us it was by a law enacted in 1400.  Hist. de Venise, l. 589.  It
is noticed by Amelot de la Houssaye, who tells us also, as Daru does, that the
nobility evaded the law by secret partnership with the privileged merchants or
cittadini, who formed a separate class at Venice.  This was the custom in
modern times.  But I have never understood the principle or common sense of
such a restriction, especially combined with that other fundamental law which
disqualified a Venetian nobleman from possessing a landed estate on the terra
firma of the republic.  The latter, however, did not extend, as I have been
informed, to Dalmatia, or the Ionian islands.]

     It was a very common theme with political writers till about the
beginning of the last century, when Venice fell almost into oblivion, to
descant upon the wisdom of this government.  And, indeed, if the preservation
of ancient institutions be, as some appear to consider it, not a means but an
end, and an end for which the rights of man and laws of God may at any time be
set aside, we must acknowledge that it was a wisely constructed system.
Formed to compress the two opposite forces from which resistance might be
expected, it kept both the doge and the people in perfect subordination.  Even
the coalition of an executive magistrate with the multitude, so fatal to most
aristocracies, never endangered that of Venice.  It is most remarkable that a
part of the constitution which destroyed every man's security, and incurred
general hatred, was still maintained by a sense of its necessity.  The council
of ten, annually renewed, might annually have been annihilated.  The great
council had only to withhold their suffrages from the new candidates, and the
tyranny expired of itself.  This was several times attempted (I speak now of
more modern ages); but the nobles, though detesting the council of ten, never
steadily persevered in refusing to re-elect it.  It was, in fact, become
essential to Venice.  So great were the vices of her constitution that she
could not endure their remedies.  If the council of ten had been abolished at
any time since the fifteenth century, if the removal of that jealous despotism
had given scope to the corruption of a poor and debased aristocracy, to the
license of a people unworthy of freedom, the republic would have soon lost her
territorial possessions, if not her own independence.  If, indeed, it be true,
as reported, that during the last hundred years this formidable tribunal had
sensibly relaxed its vigilance, if the Venetian government had become less
tyrannical through sloth or decline of national spirit, our conjecture will
have acquired the confirmation of experience.  Experience has recently shown
that a worse calamity than domestic tyranny might befall the queen of the
Adriatic.  In the Place of St. Mark, among the monuments of extinguished
greatness, a traveller may regret to think that an insolent German soldiery
has replaced even the senators of Venice.  Her ancient liberty, her bright and
romantic career of glory in countries so dear to the imagination, her
magnanimous defence in the war of Chioggia, a few thinly scattered names of
illustrious men, will rise upon his mind, and mingle with his indignation at
the treachery which robbed her of her independence.  But if he has learned the
true attributes of wisdom in civil policy, he will not easily prostitute that
word to a constitution formed without reference to property or to population,
that vested sovereign power partly in a body of impoverished nobles, partly in
an overruling despotism; or to a practical system of government that made vice
the ally of tyranny, and sought impunity for its own assassinations by
encouraging dissoluteness of private life.  Perhaps, too, the wisdom so often
imputed to the senate in its foreign policy has been greatly exaggerated.  The
balance of power established in Europe, and above all in Italy, maintained for
the two last centuries states of small intrinsic resources, without any
efforts of their own.  In the ultimate crisis, at least, of Venetian liberty,
that solemn mockery of statesmanship was exhibited to contempt; too blind to
avert danger, too cowardly to withstand it, the most ancient government of
Europe made not an instant's resistance; the peasants of Underwald died upon
their mountains; the nobles of Venice clung only to their lives. ^j

[Footnote j: The circumstances to which Venice was reduced in her last agony
by the violence and treachery of Napoleon, and the apparent impossibility of
an effective resistance, so fully described by Daru, and still better by
Botta, induce me to modify the severity of this remark.  In former editions I
have by mistake said that the last doge of Venice, Manini, is buried in the
church of the Scalzi, with the inscription on the stone, Manini Cineres.  This
church was indeed built by the contributions of several noble families, among
them the Manini, most of whom are interred there; but the last doge himself
lies in that of the Jesuits.  The words Manini Cineres may be read in both,
which probably was the cause of my forgetfulness.  [1850.]

     See in the Edinburgh Review, vol. xii, p. 379, an account of a book which
is, perhaps, little known, though interesting to the history of our own age: a
collection of documents illustrating the fall of the republic of Venice.  The
article is well written, and, I presume, contains a faithful account of the
work; the author of which, Signor Barzoni, is respected as a patriotic writer
in Italy.]

     Until almost the middle of the fourteenth century Venice had been content
without any territorial possessions in Italy; unless we reckon a very narrow
strip of sea-coast, bordering on her lagunes, called the Dogato.  Neutral in
the great contests between the church and the empire, between the free cities
and their sovereigns, she was respected by both parties, while neither
ventured to claim her as an ally.  But the rapid progress of Mastino della
Scala, lord of Verona, with some particular injuries, led the senate to form a
league with Florence against him. Villani mentions it as a singular honor for
his country to have become the confederate of the Venetians, "who, for their
great excellence and power, had never allied themselves with any state or
prince, except at their ancient conquest of Constantinople and Romania." ^k
The result of this combination was to annex the district of Treviso to the
Venetian dominions. But they made no further conquests in that age.  On the
contrary, they lost Treviso in the unfortunate war of Chioggia, and did not
again regain it till 1389.  Nor did they seriously attempt to withstand the
progress of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who, after overthrowing the family of
Scala, stretched almost to the Adriatic, and altogether subverted for a time
the balance of power in Lombardy.

[Footnote k: L. xi. c. 49.]

     But upon the death of this prince, in 1404, a remarkable crisis took
place in that country.  He left two sons, Giovanni Maria and Filippo Maria,
both young, and under the care of a mother who was little fitted for her
situation.  Through her misconduct and the selfish ambition of some military
leaders, who had commanded Gian Galeazzo's mercenaries, that extensive
dominion was soon broken into fragments.  Bergamo, Como, Lodi, Cremona, and
other cities revolted, submitting themselves in general to the families of
their former princes, the earlier race of usurpers, who had for nearly a
century been crushed by the Visconti.  A Guelf faction revived after the name
had long been proscribed in Lombardy.  Francesco da Carrara, lord of Padua,
availed himself of this revolution to get possession of Verona, and seemed
likely to unite all the cities beyond the Adige.  No family was so odious to
the Venetians as that of Carrara.  Though they had seemed indifferent to the
more real danger in Gian Galeazzo's lifetime, they took up arms against this
inferior enemy.  Both Padua and Verona were reduced, and, the Duke of Milan
ceding Vicenza, the republic of Venice came suddenly into the possession of an
extensive territory.  Francesco da Carrara, who had surrendered in his
capital, was put to death in prison at Venice.