The Great Council met the same day: the electoral machinery was set in motion and on the morrow, the 30th October, Pasquale Malipiero was chosen and proclaimed Doge two hours before sunset. Two days after, on All Saints’ Day, the new Doge, and his Council were at mass at St Mark’s when a messenger came in hot haste with the news that Francesco Foscari was dead. The Councillors gazed mutely at each other. The Ten were convoked and, pricked perhaps by remorse at their severity, voted a magnificent and honourable funeral, the widow protesting against the mockery and declaring that she would sell her dowry to give her lord worthy burial. Wrapped in a mantle of cloth of gold; crowned with the ducal cap; sword by side and spurred with gold, all that remained of the great Doge Foscari lay in state in the hall of the Senate, guarded by four and twenty nobles in scarlet robes to indicate that if the Doge were dead the Signory yet lived. The bier was borne by a picked body of sailors. Pasquale Malipiero, clothed as a simple senator; the officers of State; the clergy; the guilds followed. With solemn pomp the pageant went its way lighted by innumerable tapers along the Merceria and across the Rialto bridge to the Church of the Frari. The sumptuous monument, erected in the choir to his memory, by Ant. Riccio, still testifies to his fame. Those who would gaze on the striking, sensuous features of unhappy Doge Foscari will find his bust in the corridor that leads to the private apartments of the ducal palace, a faithful portrait carved by Bart. Buon. It was rescued when the original group over the Porta della Carta was destroyed in 1797.
Tomaso Mocenigo left Venice at peace with a flourishing exchequer: under Foscari it became bankrupt. In ten years the Milanese war had cost seven million sequins. The funds which stood at 60 when it began, sank to 18½ before its close. Her hands tied by the war, Venice had been compelled to look on while Constantinople fell to the Turks. Increased taxes, forced loans, national default and commercial crises: non-payment of salaries, depreciation of real estate, depression of industry and reduction of population—this was the cost of military glory; the dark background to the brilliant and memorable reign of Francesco Foscari.
CHAPTER X
The Turkish Terror—Acquisition of Cyprus—Discovery of the Cape Route to India—The French Invasions—The League of Cambrai—Decline of Venice
“The gods have done it as to all they do
Destine destruction, that from thence may rise
A poem to instruct posterities.”
—Chapman’s Homer
IN the eyes of Italian and European statesmen, Venice at the death of Doge Foscari seemed mightier than ever, but in truth she had already passed the meridian of her strength and was on the descending arc of her destiny. For a century her consuls had warned the Signory of danger in the East. Pope after pope had summoned his children to cease their fratricidal strife and unite to meet the Turkish peril. During the pauses in the fierce clash of Christian passions and ambitions, could be heard, like the beat of muffled drums, the tread of the advancing infidel hosts sounding the doom of an empire. But no state in Europe, least of all Venice, grasped the full significance of the portent.
In 1416 a fleet had been sent to chastise the Sultan for permitting a violation of treaty rights, and although in the words of the commander, the Turks fought like dragons, yet by the grace of God and the help of the evangelist S. Marco they were utterly routed and the greater part cut in pieces: he was confident on the testimony of a captured Emir that the Turks would never again venture to oppose the Venetians on the seas. In 1438 the Greek Emperor himself came to Venice to implore her aid and that of Europe against the enemy of Christendom. Twice in 1452 the appeal was repeated, but the Christian princes were too busy with their own quarrels to listen, and before a year passed the scimitar of the Turk was red with the blood of the Christians at Constantinople. Had not Venice herself proven that the strong city was not impregnable? When it fell the Republic adopted her usual policy. She accepted the situation and secured her trading privileges by treaty with the Sultan. But when news came in 1463 of the conquest of the Morea and Epirus and that the crescent was flying over the Castle of Argos almost in sight of the Adriatic, Venice no longer stopped her ears to the Papal voice. Friar Michael of Milan was permitted to preach the crusade in the Piazza and a big, iron box was placed in St Mark’s for offerings of money. Cristoforo Moro, the new Doge, addressed the Great Council and in an access of zeal volunteered to lead the crusade. By 1607 ballots against 11 the Great Council approved. Moro[49] was a devout but not very robust creature, and pleading age and infirmity asked permission to withdraw. He was bluntly told by Vettor Cappello to think less of his skin and more of the honour and welfare of the land.
Pius II. came to Ancona with the Sacred College to organise the crusade. A league was made with Hungary. The Duke of Burgundy offered to join in person. Envoys were sent to other Christian princes. On July 30th, 1464, three hours before sunset—a time selected by the astrologers as the best—the Venetian fleet weighed anchor, the Doge leading in a new galley named after him. Scarcely had he disembarked at Ancona when the Pope died and all came to naught. The Doge returned to the ducal palace. The Venetians single-handed fought on sea and land with their usual intrepidity, but the State was already weakened by the Milanese wars. In 1470 she lost the whole island of Negropont. Dazed by the calamity the members of the Collegio slowly walked with leaden feet and downcast looks across the Piazza and, if spoken to, answered not a word. Were they listening to the rustle of the wings of the sable-robed avenging sisters? In the following year a crowd of panic-stricken refugees from Istria and Friuli streamed into Venice and camped on the Piazza and under the arcades of the ducal palace. An army of 20,000 Turks had ravaged the provinces even up to Udine. The Republic was now at the end of her resources. An attempted diversion from Persia had failed. A big loan from her mainland provinces had been swallowed up. The Pope sent her envoys away empty. Not one Italian state stirred to help her. The good Tomaso Mocenigo’s warnings were verified. National wrong meant national sorrow. Venice was harvesting the acrid fruit of the Genoese wars and her fifty years of territorial aggression. At the Congress[50] of Carisano in 1466 Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, had warned the Secretary of the Republic that she was hated not only in Italy but beyond the Alps. “You do a grievous wrong,” he vehemently exclaimed; “you possess the fairest State in Italy, yet are not satisfied. You disturb the peace and covet the states of others. If you knew the ill-will universally felt towards you, the very hair of your head would stand on end. Do you think the states of Italy are leagued against you out of love to each other? No; necessity has driven them. They have bound themselves together for the fear they have of you and of your power. They will not rest till they have clipped your wings.”
Negotiations were twice begun with a view to peace, but the Sultan’s demands were intolerable and the unequal contest continued. In 1476 Friuli was again devastated and the flames of burning cities could be seen from St Mark’s tower. Sailors were clamouring for their arrears of pay on the very steps of the ducal palace. Scutari (in Albania), after heroically resisting two sieges, was nearing the end. A loan from the mainland provinces and 100,000 ducats from the sum left to the Republic by their condottiero Colleoni were swallowed up. In January 1479 Venice yielded. She ceded Scutari, Stalimene and other territory in the Morea occupied by the Turks during the war, in exchange for which the Sultan restored all that had been taken from her beyond her old boundaries. She maintained consular jurisdiction in Constantinople, but agreed to pay an indemnity of 200,000 ducats and a tribute of 10,000 ducats a year for her trading privileges. It was in Moro’s reign that the last vestige of popular government was effaced. The title of “Communitas Venetiarum,” long disused in actual practice, was formally changed to the “Signoria.” During the wearing anxieties of the Turkish wars from the death of Moro in 1471 to the signature of the peace under Doge Giov. Mocenigo in 1479 four Doges, Nicolo Tron, Nicolo Marcello, Pietro Mocenigo, and Andrea Vendramin followed in rapid succession, the last a descendant of a family ennobled after the Chioggian war. The delimitation of the new frontiers had been barely concluded in the East when a dispute concerning salterns and custom dues on the Po and the arrest of a priest for debt by the Venetian Consul at Ferrara led to another war in the peninsula. In 1482 the whole of Italy was aflame, and states that had watched unmoved the agony of the sixteen years’ Turkish wars now turned on Venice and accused her of sinister motives in concluding the peace. The Republic was now allied with Genoa and the Papacy against the Duke of Ferrara, supported by the King of Naples, by Florence and some minor Italian states. The early operations were in her favour, but in a few months the Pope, alarmed by an attack on Rome by the Neapolitans, joined the league against Venice, and as feudal lord of Ferrara, summoned her, under pain of excommunication, to abandon operations against that city. When the interdict reached the Venetian Embassy at Rome, their ambassador was absent and his agent refused to transmit the document to Venice. It was then fixed on the doors of St Peter’s and afterwards forwarded to the Patriarch at Venice, who was ordered under pain of excommunication to serve it on the Signory.[51] The Patriarch fell diplomatically sick and secretly informed the Doge. The Ten were convoked. The Patriarch was warned to keep silence, and that the services of the Church must proceed as usual. The Pope was a long way off; the Ten were near; he obeyed them. A formal appeal was then made to a future Council of the Church and a copy nailed by a secret agent on the door of S. Celso at Rome.
The new combination was too powerful for the crippled resources of Venice. Driven into a corner she adopted the impious expedient of inviting the King of France to make good his claim to Naples and the Duke of Orleans to vindicate his rights over the duchy of Milan. The weight of the great French monarchy fell with decisive effect on the league. Peace was made and the treaty of Bagnolo (1484) added Rovigo and the Polesine to the Venetian dominions. Three days’ bell-ringing, illumination and rejoicing celebrated the immediate results of the new diplomacy. But the successors of Louis XI. were now factors in Italian politics. The league of Cambrai was one stage nearer.