a princess of German origin, of great wealth, a subject and a relative of the Emperor himself.
Trusting in this great alliance, Pietro no longer concealed the designs he entertained for himself and his family, branches of which were established in Padua and Vicenza, where they enjoyed, and certainly exacted, the highest consideration. Indeed, most of the Candiano men seem to have married women allied to reigning princes.
The Doge, their head, now garrisoned with German soldiers a number of fortresses in the neighbourhood of Ferrara, which had come to him with his wife; lastly, he did what every tyrant has done since history began, he surrounded himself with a mercenary bodyguard of desperate men who had everything to gain by his success, and everything to lose if he fell. After this he showed plainly enough that he meant to emancipate himself altogether from those counsellors which the Republic imposed upon him in all the important affairs of state.
He might have succeeded in any other state, but in Venice his was not the only family that aspired to the supreme power. His deeds had been violent, high-handed, outrageous, such as would condemn the chief of any community that called itself free; the Orseolo watched him, lay in wait for him, trapped him, and compassed his end. Following their lead, the people formed themselves into a vast conspiracy, and at a signal the ducal palace was surrounded on all sides.
976 A.D.
The Doge would have fled, but it was too late, for every door was watched and strongly guarded. In his despair he attempted to take sanctuary in Saint Mark’s church, which was connected with the palace by a dark and narrow entry. Thither he hastened, with his wife, their little child, and a few of his faithful bodyguard; but the conspirators had remembered
A SHRINE, ST. MARK’S
the secret corridor and were there, and they hewed him down, him and the child and every man of his attendants. The women they suffered to go unhurt.
Then they dragged out the dead bodies, even the child’s, and gave them over to the rage of the furious populace to be spurned and insulted, until one just man, Giovanni Gradenigo, stood forth and claimed them, by what right I know not except that of decency, and buried them in the convent of Saint Hilary. Meanwhile the rabble had fired the palace, and the flames devoured it and spread to the church of Saint Mark; and further, a great number of houses were burnt down on that day, whereby the chiefs of the conspiracy were brought into discredit with those whose property was destroyed. But Pietro Orseolo was chosen to be Doge.