Venice and Its Story

by Thomas Okey

During the short twenty-six days of Pius III.’s reign, and the interval between his death and the election of a successor, Venice had occupied Bertinoro, Fano and Montefiore, and was hastening to seize Rimini and Imola. Julius II., at first favourably inclined to Venice, was in a few weeks made her enemy by the occupation of Rimini and the capture of Faenza. To Julius’ angry protests and his threat of winning back Romagna, cost what it might, Venice urged her devotion to holy Church and the benevolence of her motives in trying to free Italy of the tyranny of Cesare Borgia. “Signor Oratore,” cried the Pope, “your words are good, but your Signory’s deeds are evil. We have neither men nor money to make war, but we will complain to the Christian princes, and invoke divine aid.”[52] To Julius’ demand for restitution, the Signory answered, “We will never restore the territory, even though we have to sell the very foundations of our houses.”

“I tell you,” wrote De Comines, after his return from Venice in 1495, “that I have found Venetian statesmen so wise and so bent upon increasing their Signory that if it be not soon provided against, all their neighbours will curse the hour.” The provisions made by the most Christian princes were characteristic. “By an unprincipled treaty of spoliation,” says Rawdon Brown, “the Great Powers of the Continent bound themselves together to fall upon Venice by surprise in a time of profound peace, and, in despite of the most solemn obligations, to despoil her of her territories.” After much treatying and protocolling there met on a November day in 1508 in a secret chamber at Cambrai, the Cardinal d’Amboise acting for the King of France, and Margaret of Austria for the Holy Roman Emperor. The papal nuncio and the King of Spain’s envoy were near, but their views were known, and for greater safety they were not allowed to enter. After many difficulties, says Romanin, and such altercations that they wellnigh tore out each other’s hair (s’acciuffassero pei capegli) the plenipotentiaries decided “that it was not only useful and honourable but necessary to call upon all the Powers of Europe to take a just vengeance, and quench, as they would a general conflagration, the insatiable greed of the Venetians and their thirst of dominion.” The modest reward which the Powers proposed to themselves for “making an end of the rapine and injury wrought by the Venetians and their tyrannical usurpation of the possessions of others,” was as follows. His Holiness the Pope was to have Ravenna, Cervia, Faenza, Rimini and all the territory held by the Venetians in Romagna; the Emperor, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Roveredo, the Trevisano, the Friuli and Istria; the King of France, Brescia, Bergamo, Crema, Cremona, the Ghiaradadda and all the dependencies of the Duke of Milan; the King of Spain and of Naples, Trani, Brindisi, Otranto, Gallipoli and other cities held in pledge by Venice for an unpaid loan to his cousin whom he had deprived of the kingdom of Naples. The King of Hungary, if he joined, was to have Dalmatia; the Duke of Savoy, Cyprus. Some offal was reserved for the jackals of the minor states, if they ran at the heels of the royal beasts of prey. Florence later on informed the Sultan of Turkey and invited him to seize the oriental possessions of Venice when she was down. The Pope was to reinforce the temporal weapons of the confederates by the use of the spiritual arm.

But the Lion of St Mark, though his claws were a little blunted and his joints stiffened, had not lost his cunning. Moreover, he was forewarned. A dramatic story of the premature disclosure of the plot is told in the Venetian State papers. Spinola, an emissary of Gonsalvo of Cordova, came secretly to Cornaro, the Venetian ambassador, at Valladolid, in February 1509, and asked him to meet the great captain at mass in an unfrequented church at the far end of the town. He went and the secret was revealed to him. He refused to believe it, but later Spinola showed him a copy of a letter from Gonsalvo’s wife at Genoa in which the details of the proposed partition were given, and offered his master’s services to the Signory. Cornaro informed the Ten. They, too, hesitated to believe in any cause for attack, advised caution, and asked for further proof. Secret information from England soon brought confirmation and the Ten sat day and night to prepare for the coming storm. The weakness of the league lay in the fact that each spoiler was to seize his own share of the prey. Self-interest was its motive power. Self-interest would lead individual members to abandon the hunt if their portion were thrown to them. This the Ten quickly saw and acted upon with consummate art and patience while pushing on with all speed defensive military operations. The aged and infirm Doge Loredano, so overwrought by emotion that it was piteous to see, addressed the Great Council begging them to turn to righteousness and offer their lives and substance in defence of the fatherland. Himself would give an example by sending his silver plate to the mint. On April 27, 1509, Julius flung a bull of excommunication couched in almost savage terms against the Republic. The Ten forbade its publication and sent officers to take down any copies posted on churches or on the walls. They consulted learned canonists; drew up an appeal to a future council of the Church and sent emissaries to Rome who nailed a copy on the doors of St Peter’s. The secular arm swiftly followed. Sanudo tells us that while he and two other Senators were examining a map of Italy painted on the walls of the Senate hall, a courier arrived with the news that the French had crossed the Adda, fallen on the fine army of the Republic at Agnadello and utterly routed it with a loss of four thousand in killed alone. Faces gathered gloom and despair. “Give me my cloak, wife,” said Paolo Barbo, one of the most experienced of the fathers, “that I may go to the Senate, speak a couple of words and die.” One disaster trod on the heels of another. Bergamo and Brescia fell and before the month was ended nearly the whole of Lombardy was lost. Preparations were even made to defend and victual Venice. Envoys were sent to treat with the Kings of France and Spain. The Pope was tempted by an offer of partial restitution and help towards a crusade against the Turks. Meanwhile the Imperial Eagle swooped down from Trent. The Signory, by ceding Verona and Vicenza, hoped to conciliate the Emperor and save Padua. In vain were the civil commissioners with the army entreated to make a stand, “lest the whole of our cities surrender in an hour.” Padua fell and Treviso alone stood by the Republic. At bay she now turned to the Sultan of Turkey and begged for money and men, especially men. If his Highness would advance them one hundred thousand ducats and would agree to buy no more cloth of the Genoese and Florentines, who only used his money to help a League that sought his hurt, the Signory would send him fifty thousand ducats’ worth of cloth, and jewels worth fifty thousand more, as security. The Venetian consul at Alexandria was instructed to incite the Sultan of Egypt to ruin Genoese and Florentine commerce in his dominions. The good offices of the Kings of England and Scotland were sought.

But the gloom was wearing away. One day in July two tall, mysterious, armed men were observed leaving Fusina in the gondola of the Ten. Arrived at Venice they remained closeted with the Ten and the Doge far into the night, then were rowed back whence they came. On the night of the 16th there was a hurrying to and fro of transports and armed vessels between the islands. The Doge’s two sons and two hundred noble youths, fully armed, left for the mainland. The police boats of the Ten allowed no one to go out of Venice without permission. Next day Padua, disgusted by the insolence and exactions of the Imperialists, was won back for Venice before the laggard Emperor could reach the city. Sanudo remembered the 17th of July, for did he not buy a Hebrew Bible worth twenty ducats for a few pence as he was going home? Two attacks by the Emperor were successfully resisted, and the foiled Cæsar retired to Vicenza in October with anger in his heart against the French. In February 1510, after long and tough negotiations, the Pope was given his prey and detached from the league, but at the price of a bitter abasement of Venice. Time had avenged the Empire. It was now the Queen of the Adriatic who, in the person of her ambassadors, bowed the neck before the enthroned Pope in the atrium of St Peter’s, surrendered her ecclesiastical privileges, admitted the justice of the excommunication, craved pardon for having provoked it, and was at length absolved and bidden to do the penance of the seven churches. The Ten, however, entered in their register a protest of nullity, declaring that the conditions had been extracted from the Republic by violence. The Pope who, as he told Venice, had no pleasure in seeing the ruin of her State to the aggrandisement of the barbarians, now became her ally. Soon other cities, sickened by the atrocities of the invaders, returned to their allegiance, and by skilful playing of King against Emperor, and Pope against both, Venice was able to regain the bulk of her territory.

CHAPTER XI

Loss of Cyprus—Lepanto—Paolo Sarpi—Attack on the Ten—Loss of Crete—Temporary Reconquest of the Morea—Decadence—The End

“Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls!... Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness.”—The Revelation of St John the Divine.

WE may not here attempt to tread the maze of chicanery and violence which ended in the peace of Cambrai.[53] We are permitted to see a fighting Pope exhorting his soldiers and directing siege operations against an Italian city, and climbing by a scaling-ladder through the breach to take possession. In 1514 the Spaniards desolated the land up to the lagoons and levelled their cannon at Venice. In 1515 the encampments of four armies were exhausting and polluting Lombardy. King, Popes, and Emperor died and their successors took up the unholy heritage of war and duplicity. Gaston de Foix, Bayard and other renowned chevaliers perished. In 1521 the Emperor Charles V. came upon the scene, and in alliance with the great Medicean Pope, Leo X., swept the French and their Venetian allies out of Lombardy. In July 1523, when the power of France was waning, the Venetians made terms with the Emperor. They were suffered to retain their territory up to the Adda in return for an annual tribute of 250,000 ducats. Venice excused herself to Francis I. by professing solicitude for the peace of Christendom in view of the threatening attitude of the Sultan. Before the year was ended King and Emperor were competing for Venetian help in a renewed struggle for mastery. While the Republic was temporising, the Imperialists had descended on Lombardy, routed the French before Pavia and captured their King. “Nothing is left to me,” wrote Francis, “but honour, and life which is safe,”[54] and proceeded to send his ring secretly to the Sultan and to grovel before Charles. The victorious Emperor brushed aside the subtleties of the Venetian ambassadors. “If you were to send all your lawyers,” he cried, “you would not convince me. You must pay 80,000 ducats for the troops you failed to send to Pavia. You are rich: my expenses are heavy: you must help me.”

After perjuring himself at the peace of Madrid, January 1526, the Cristianissimo returned to France. In less than six weeks a “holy league” of France, Venice and the Papacy had been signed at Cognac for the “liberation” of Italy from the Imperialists. But Francis, whose moral fibre had been rotted by lechery, was no match for the virile genius of Charles, strong with the united resources of the Empire and of Spain in her greatness. The Emperor was soon again master of Italy. Rome was captured and sacked; Pope Clement VII. imprisoned. But the miserable condition of Italy and the news that the Turks were threatening Vienna disposed Charles to treat, and in July 1529 Margaret of Austria was once more at Cambrai negotiating on behalf of the Emperor with Louise of Savoy, who represented Francis.[55] Two adjacent houses were chosen and the party-wall pierced that the ladies might confer with absolute secrecy. In two months, while the Venetians were finessing, the “paix des dames” was concluded and Venice left to make the best terms she might with the Emperor. Francis had given way all along the line. “The peace of Cambrai,” says Michelet, “was the moral annihilation of France in Europe.” During the coronation festivities at Bologna the Emperor and the Pope found time to deal with the Venetians, who agreed to pay the balance of the annual tribute of 250,000 ducats due on the treaty of 1523; to restore the cities of Naples and Apulia to the Emperor; and to the Papacy Ravenna and Cervia, which they had seized during the Pope’s imprisonment at Rome. Thanks to the impassable lagoons Venice preserved her capital inviolate, but her prestige and her military power were gone.