As the deputies left him, Foscari caught the eye of one, Jacopo Memmo, who looked at him with sympathy and compassion. He called him, took his hand, and said, "Whose son art thou?" "I am the son of Marin Memmo." And then the Doge: "He is my dear friend. Tell him from me that it would be sweet to me if he would come to pay me a visit, and go in my bark with me or a little pleasure. We might visit the monasteries."
That very day the Doge left the palace with his old brother Marco, followed by his household. Marco said, "It is better to go to the boat by the stair that is covered;" but the old Doge replied, "I will go down by the same stair that I came up when I was made Doge." And then they rowed away to the splendid palace to which Jacopo had taken Lucrezia Contarini sixteen years before,—the house that we may still see on the point of the Grand Canal, where it turns to the east, with the water on two sides, and its fine old gateway on the small canal at the back. Here, in 1574, Francis I. was lodged, it being thought more suited to his royalty than any other in all Venice.
And here, many years before, on Oct. 24, 1457, came the old Foscari to die. The new Doge was elected on the 31st; and on All Souls Day, when the new prince went to San Marco to Mass, Foscari's son-in-law there announced that Foscari was no more. His funeral was magnificent. The new Doge was obliged to loan his crown to his predecessor, when he was laid in state in the palace from which he had been expelled but one short week before. Every honor was bestowed on him, dead, that the Republic could give. He was carried to the Frari, with many tapers lighting his way; and, to quote Mrs. Oliphant, "there he lies under a weight of sculptured marble, his sufferings all over for five hundred years and more; but never the story of his greatness, his wrongs, and sorrows, which last gave him such claims upon the recollection of mankind as no magnificence nor triumph can bestow."
When the bell rang
At dawn, announcing a new Doge to Venice,
It found him on his knees before the Cross,
Clasping his aged hands in earnest prayer;
And there he died. Ere half its task was done,
It rang his knell.
ROGERS.
So intense was the excitement in Venice, caused by the deposition and death of the old Doge, that the Senate forbade "the affair of Francesco Foscari to be mentioned on pain of death."
FRANCESCO CARMAGNOLA.
The story of Jacopo Foscari affords a striking commentary upon the changes which had come over the armies of the Republic. It would seem that the want of any serious and engrossing occupation—a sort of elegant idleness—had led Jacopo to his misfortunes; and this idleness would not have been possible during so stirring a period as that of his father's reign, if the Venetians had still done their own fighting as they did it in the reign of Enrico Dandolo.
In Foscari's day it had come to be the custom, all over Italy and in other countries of Europe, to hire men to kill and be killed for money. Mercenary troops they were fitly called; for they not only received their hire, but they robbed the peasant of his harvest, and from the wealthy land-owner they extorted gold. Venice had employed these bands when they were made up of Bretons, Hungarians, Gascons, and other men, who spoke no Italian, and thought solely of gain; but by the middle of the fifteenth century the Free Lances had come to be an organized institution, with unwritten laws, which were well understood by them and by their employers; and the general or leader of these bands who was not successful was in much danger of having his head taken off by the Seigneur or the government he served, on the charge of treason. A most famous leader of one of these bands of condottieri was Francesco Carmagnola.
The name of his father was Bussone; but the soldier took his name from the town, near Turin, in which he was born, in 1390. While he, as a boy, tended flocks upon his native hills, the clash of arms and the noise of battle which filled all Europe reached even his ears; and fired with desire for adventure, he deserted the first duty of his life, and through one chance and another entered the service of Facino Cane, a great general in the service of the Duke of Milan. Carmagnola soon proved his fitness for the profession he had chosen, but it is doubtful if the jealousy of Cane would have permitted him to come to the front. It may therefore be said to have been the making of his fortune when Facino Cane and Gian Maria Visconti died on the same day, and Filippo Maria Visconti became the head of the house; for when this young prince needed a general, he chose Carmagnola, who embraced his cause zealously, and at once took Milan for him, and subsequently, one after the other, overcame the cities which had revolted. Naturally this was a work of time; and meanwhile the great captain was high in the favor of his prince, held a conspicuous position at court, and was the chief counsellor of the Duke in all important matters.