The awful tragedy had been planned and executed with consummate skill and resolution. Two hundred officials were cognisant of the process. Not one opened his mouth to betray the secret. From the time the victim left Vicenza he was practically under arrest, though this he never suspected. The remains were buried in the Frari and afterwards removed to Milan. His widow was pensioned and his daughters were dowered. Four years later another enemy of the Republic lost his head between the red columns. The only surviving son of old Carrara had been convicted by the Ten of an attempt to plot an insurrection in Padua.
During the long remaining years of Foscari’s reign the resources of Venice were drained by a succession of costly campaigns in defence of her conquests. The most famous condottieri, Gonzaga of Mantua, Gattamelata, Francesco Sforza, and Bartolomeo Colleoni were employed, at enormous expense. At length, in 1454, weary and exhausted by the financial, if not by the mortal drain of thirty years’ war, and sobered by the appalling news of the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, the three chief belligerents—Venice, Florence, and Milan—laid down their arms and signed a defensive alliance against any power that should disturb the peace of Italy. The Venetians had held, and even added to, their conquests. Ravenna was occupied in 1440 and the last of the Polentas, father and son died in exile in Crete. Although St Mark’s Lion never looked down from his pillar on a Milanese Piazza, Venice had won the primacy of North Italy. In fifty years she had annexed eleven provinces—Treviso, Vicenza and the Sette Comuni, Verona, Padua, the Friuli, Brescia, Bergamo, Feltre, Belluno, Crema, Ravenna. Her yoke was easy. The subject peoples had small reason to regret the change of masters. The Brescians endured the horrors of a three years’ siege rather than revert to Milanese dominion. The Signory “that could not sleep till Brescia were relieved” organised the transport of a fleet of thirty vessels across the mountains, a distance of two hundred miles in mid-winter, lowered them down the precipitous flank of Monte Baldo and launched them on Lake Carda, a stupendous feat of engineering skill and energy.
Venice never denied her enlightened and paternal rule, which embraced even the cut of ladies’ dresses and the duties of wet nurses. But St Mark’s “insatiable greed” had aroused the jealousies of the transalpine monarchies. The League of Cambrai, which broke down for ever the power of Venice on the mainland, was a direct outcome of Foscari’s policy.
While men’s minds were pre-occupied with the Milanese war and the news of the occupation of part of the Morea by the Turks, a grave domestic scandal weighed upon the Fathers. Charges of corruption were openly made against the Foscari, and in February 1445 the Doge’s only surviving son, Jacopo, was denounced to the Ten for having accepted bribes to use his influence with his father in the allocation of State appointments. The young Foscari was a cultured, but pleasure-loving noble, whose magnificent marriage festivities in 1441 had aroused even the critical Venetians to enthusiasm. He was charged with “having regard neither to God nor man, and accepting gifts of money and jewels against the law,” and cited to appear on the 18th before the Tribunal of the Ten, who were assisted by a Zonta of ten nobles. The arrest of his valet, Gaspero, on the previous day had, however, aroused Jacopo’s suspicions; and when the officer of the Ten tried to serve the warrant, it was discovered that Foscari had fled to Trieste with all the money he could lay hands on. The tribunal having excluded the Doge and all his relations, proceeded to try the accused in default. The members were declared inviolable and permitted to wear arms. Jacopo was found guilty, and banished for life to Nauplia. The Dogaressa was refused permission to visit him at Trieste, and Marco Trevisano with a galley sent to deport him. Messer Jacopo, however, treated the warrant with contempt, and refused to embark. The price of contumacy was outlawry, and decapitation between the two columns. The Ten did not enforce the extreme penalty, and entreated the Doge to persuade his son to obey the law. But efforts were of no avail, and on April 7th the sentence was confirmed, and Jacopo’s property confiscated.
For more than a year the outlaw had been living defiantly at Trieste, when fresh revelations led to the appointment of another Zonta to deal further with the scandal. Five months passed. Marco Trevisano died, and Jacopo fell sick at Trieste. The Ten thereupon resolved to accept, in the name of Jesus Christ, the excuses of the invalid for not proceeding to Nauplia, and to substitute his own country house near Treviso for the place of exile.
We hear nothing more of the case until April 1447, when a chest containing 2040 ducats and some silver plate was discovered, and proven to have been received by Jacopo from the Duke of Milan. The contents of the chest were confiscated, but no further action was taken. In September, the Doge presented a piteous petition for his son’s pardon. The Ten resolved that, since the present critical state of public affairs demanded a prince with a clear and untroubled mind, Jacopo should be restored to his family, as an act of piety to our lord the Doge. Three years elapsed. On a November evening, as Ermolao Donato, one of the Capi who had tried Jacopo, was leaving the palace after attending a meeting of the Senate, he was fatally stabbed. The Ten and a Zonta met to investigate, but failed to penetrate the mystery. On January 2nd, 1451, a signed denunciation was found in the Bocca del leone. Jacopo Foscari was arrested, and put to the question. Incoherent muttering, which the Ten thought to be an incantation, was all that could be forced from his lips. The trial dragged on until March 26th, when Jacopo was declared, on purely circumstantial evidence, guilty of the murder, and banished to Canea, in Crete, where he was to report himself daily to the Podestà. The Doge was exhorted to patience, and on the 29th the condemned Jacopo was put on a galley that was sailing for Crete. In the June of 1456 important despatches in cypher from Canea came before the Ten. The home-sick and intolerant Foscari had written a letter to the Duke of Milan, asking him to intercede with the Signory, and another to the Turkish Sultan, begging that a vessel might be sent to Crete to abduct him from the island. Jacopo and all his household were cited to Venice. Before the Ten he frankly confessed all, and the sentence was then debated. A Capo, Jacopo Loredano, proposed the death penalty. The motion was lost, and his relegation to Canea and a year’s imprisonment were voted. His family were permitted to see him and Jacopo, bearing marks of the torture, was led into the room, where his father awaited him. The poor old Doge fell upon his son’s neck, while Jacopo cried, “Father, father, I beseech you procure for me permission to return to my home.” “Jacopo,” answered the Doge, “thou[48] must obey the will of the land, and strive no more.” As the door closed on his son for ever, the miserable father flung himself upon a chair, uttering lamentations and moaning, “O! the great pity of it!” In six months came news from Canea: Jacopo Foscari was dead. The Doge never recovered from the blow. He secluded himself in his room, and sank into hopeless, sullen grief. The most urgent affairs of State could not divert him from his sorrow. The very Government was paralysed, and the Ten were called to devise a way out of the dead-lock. Having excluded the Doge’s relations, after long debate they decided to invite the Doge in his great charity to take pity on the land and freely resign. They offered a pension of fifteen hundred ducats, and gave him a day to consider his answer. On the morrow, he would say neither yea nor nay, and complained of the unconstitutional suggestion. A second deputation was no more successful. It was then intimated to the Doge that he must resign, and leave the palace within a week, or suffer the confiscation of his property.
On Sunday the 23rd of October, in the presence of the Ten and the chief officers of State, he silently drew the ducal ring from his finger. A Capo broke it in pieces and removed the ducal cap from his head. The discrowned Foscari was bid to retire to his home in S. Pantaleone. As the Councillors were leaving the room he noticed that one of the Quarantia lingered awhile and gazed pityingly upon him. He called him, took his hand and asked: “Whose son art thou?” “I am the son of Marin Memo,” was the reply. “He is my dear comrade,” said the Doge. “Prithee bid him come to see me, for it will be a precious solace to me: we will visit the monasteries together.” Early on the morrow Francesco Foscari left his apartments leaning on a crutched stick accompanied by his brother Marco, his only suite a few sobbing kinsmen and servants. As they neared the principal staircase Marco said: “It is well, your Serenity, that we go to the landing-stage by the other stairway which is covered.” “Nay,” answered Foscari, “I will descend by the same stairs up which I mounted to the Dogeship.” Stripped of his honours, forsaken by his Councillors, bent beneath the weight of his eighty-four years and the long tenure of a great office, the humiliated Foscari tottered down those steps in silence, which more than the third of a century before he had climbed, erect, exultant, full of hope, amid the acclamation of a whole city.
