XIV
THE LAST DOGES
Between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the end of the Republic eleven Doges occupied the throne. Of these the only one who might
1700-1797.
have saved the government or retarded its fall was the very one who reigned the shortest time. Let us say that if he had lived, he might have so far restored the strength of the ancient aristocracy as to admit of its perishing in a struggle instead of dying of old age.
This Doge was Marco Foscarini, who was elected on the thirty-first of May 1762, and died on the thirty-first of the following March. He was a man whose integrity was never questioned, even by
Rom. viii. 142.
the revolutionaries, and he accepted the Dogeship with the greatest regret. He was a man of letters, and the endless empty ceremonial of the ducal existence obliged him to leave unfinished his noble work on Venetian literature. Even had the Doge’s action not been hopelessly paralysed by the hedge of petty regulations that bristled round him, Foscarini’s experience of affairs in the course of occupying many exalted posts had left him few illusions as to the
Rom. viii. 302.
future of his country. ‘This century will be a terrible one for our children and grandchildren,’ he wrote some time after his election.
Like many of the Doges he was a very old man when he was elected, and was over eighty-eight years of age when he died, apparently much surprised at finding himself at his end, though not unprepared for it. He complained that his physicians had not told him how ill he was, and he asked for a little Latin book, De modo bene moriendi, which had been given him by his friend Cardinal Passionei; presently he tried to dictate a few reflections to his doctor, but was too weak, and expired whispering, ‘My poor servants!’ He had apparently not provided for them as he would have done if he had not been taken unawares.