The war went on under his successor, Silvestro Valier, but it now entered upon a new phase, for the Czar Peter the Great threatened the Turks on their northern frontier, while the Venetian fleet held them in check in the south. A treaty of peace was signed at Carlowitz in 1699, by which the Republic kept her conquests in the Morea as far as the isthmus of Corinth, including the islands of Egina, Santa Maura, and other less important places. Dalmatia was also left to her, but she was obliged to withdraw her troops from Lepanto and Romania on the north side of the Gulf of Corinth.
From all this it is clear that the military spirit was still alive in Venice, when the administration had almost
Rom. vii. 370, 371, 487; Quadri, 293.
completely broken down. Nothing gives the measure of the situation better than the fact that in order to meet the expenses of the war in Crete any Venetian who would engage to support a thousand soldiers for one year, or any foreigner who would support twelve hundred for the same period, was allowed thereby to have and hold all the privileges of nobility. This speculation was never sanctioned by law, and was even rejected by the Great Council when proposed, but it was nevertheless actually practised, and a number of seats in the Great Council were sold to the highest bidder. The government went one step farther, and sold the office of procurator of Saint Mark. The decadence had reached the point of decay.
THE RIVA FROM THE DOGANA
X
THE LAST HOMES—THE LAST GREAT LADIES
Two men, a painter and a dramatist, have left us the means of knowing exactly what the eighteenth century
Pictures of Venetian life by Longhi; Accademia, Room XIV., and Museo Correr, Rooms II. and IX.
was in Venice. It is not a paradox to say that Longhi painted comedies, and that Goldoni wrote portraits. Both were Venetians, and they had the courage to depict and describe respectively the glaring faults of their own people, not realising, perhaps, that the general corruption was beyond remedy, and that the end was at hand.