During the short reigns of Marc’ Antonio Memmo, Giov. Bembo, Nicolo Donato, and Antonio Priuli, the Ten had been accumulating evidence of a vast conspiracy to seize the city, concerted by the Spanish Viceroy of Naples and the Marquis of Bedmar, the Spanish ambassador at Venice. On May 12, 1618, three Frenchmen in Venetian pay were arrested, strangled, and hung head downwards between the red columns, and orders were sent to the fleet to despatch three others. The plot had been divulged by two of the conspirators, and in all some three hundred persons of various nationalities, including many poor Venetian patricians, were implicated, and paid the penalty with their lives. The Spanish ambassador was for a time in danger, and under guard. He protested his innocence of the plot, as did his colleague of France. Both, however, soon sought a change of air. Two years were spent in tracing the ramifications of the plot, and in 1620 a senator, Giambattista Bragadin, was found to be in Spanish pay, and hanged between the columns.
In 1622 the atmosphere of dread and suspicion which encompassed the State, so dulled the perceptions of the Ten that a grave miscarriage of justice was laid to their charge. In 1618 Antonio Foscarini, a noble of high family and Venetian ambassador at London, was accused by Mascorno, a disaffected member of his staff, of licentiousness, blasphemy and treason. Foscarini was recalled, arrested by the Ten, and, after a long trial, acquitted, but kept under surveillance. In 1622, as he was leaving the Senate, a cloak was flung over him, and he was hurried off to prison. His accuser, who had been sentenced to two years’ detention in a fortress, had, on his release, fabricated some documents which the tribunal deemed conclusive. Foscarini was declared guilty of corresponding secretly with Spain and the Emperor, strangled in prison, and his dead body hung by the leg between the red columns. As he had been an occasional visitor at Casa Mocenigo, where Lady Arundel resided, she was suspected also; but Sir Henry Wotton prompted her to clear herself by asking an audience of the Doge. This she did, and was allowed to make a statement in the Senate, the only woman who ever addressed that Assembly. She was exonerated, and a present of sweetmeats and wax offered to conciliate her. Four months later poor Foscarini’s innocence was entirely proved, and two of his accusers were put to death. The family was restored to honour, and his remains were dug up and buried in the Frari with great splendour and pomp. His bust may still be seen in the church of S. Eustacchio (S. Stae) near the old Foscarini Palace.
Doge Priuli died shortly after the Foscarini tragedy. The brief reign of Francesco Contarini followed, and Giovanni Cornaro was chosen to fill the ducal office in 1624. The shock of Foscarini’s judicial murder had given a rallying cry to the poorer nobles in the Great Council, jealous of the power of the Ten and the monopoly of office by the more influential patricians; and Renier Zeno, a patrician, fearless and incorruptible—himself an ex-capo of the Ten—led an attack on the tribunal. Banished for a year, he did but return with added popularity, and forced himself again on the Ten as one of the Capi. He used his power to accuse the Doge of nepotism, and his Serenity was forced to cancel certain family appointments. Zeno, driving his advantage further, came into conflict with his colleagues of the Ten, and, leaning on the majority of the Great Council, emerged triumphant. Shortly after, while standing at the Porta della Carta, he was attacked by five persons and stabbed. The Doge’s son and certain alleged accomplices were denounced to the Ten, whose laggard justice, however, made flight easy. Again appointed one of the Ten, Zeno, on his recovery, renewed the struggle with increased vigour; and, after a stormy scene in the Great Council, during which he came to high words with the Doge, the stout reformer was ordered to keep his house, and report himself to the Ten within three days. Ignoring the summons, he was fined two thousand ducats and banished. The Great Council quashed the sentence, and ordered it to be blotted out of the records of the Ten. At length Zeno’s party succeeded in carrying a motion for a committee of inquiry into the constitution of the Ten, but the four years’ bitter conflict ended in a virtual triumph for the tribunal, whose powers of criminal jurisdiction over the nobles were reaffirmed, though it had to submit to a modified capitulary.
During the latter half of the seventeenth century the power of Venice was declining to its setting in an aureole of glory. In 1644, Crete, the oldest and last remaining of her great possessions in the East, was marked for conquest, and, like an old warrior who takes down his armour and girds himself to make a last stand against his hereditary foes, Venice prepared to resist the Turk to the uttermost. The old heroic times seem to return as we watch the quarter of a century’s struggle, but our admiration is touched with pathos, for we know that the dice are loaded against Venice. A Turkish pilgrim fleet for Mecca had been pillaged by the Knights of Malta, and the pious buccaneers had landed at Crete for provisions. This was pretext enough for hostilities. In 1645 a huge armament left the Bosphorus, ostensibly for Malta, actually for the conquest of Crete. Canea quickly fell, and the Turks promised themselves an easy occupation. But twenty-four years of fierce and exhausting fighting ensued before the Crescent floated over the island.
Seven million ducats were quickly raised in Venice by the sale of patents of nobility. By a marvellous re-birth of naval energy and capacity, her fleet was reorganised and spread terror along the Dardanelles. The Venetian Captain-General, Lazzaro Mocenigo, determined to force the passage and attack Constantinople, but a well-aimed shell fired his ship, and he was killed. Francesco Morosini, appointed his successor, won the admiration of Europe by his twenty-two years’ defence of Candia. Inspired by his heroism, companies of Flemish and French volunteers, eager and impetuous, joined him, but their enthusiasm was soon spent, and, impatient of the long vigils and toils of the war, they left the Venetians to fight alone. Morosini did not save Crete, but he extorted an honourable peace. No indemnity was paid, and the Venetian garrison marched proudly out of Candia unsubdued.[60] Four thousand Candiots who opted for Venice were settled in Istria, where traces of their language and customs are said still to survive. Suda and other fortresses remained in the hands of the Venetians. To the Pope the result seemed almost incredible.
In 1684 Venice was invited to join the Emperor and the King of Poland in a league against the Turks. The Cretan war had cost her one hundred and twenty-six million ducats, and she felt too exhausted to run with the horsemen again. But bolder counsels prevailed. Morosini was despatched with an army, and ably seconded by Koningsmark, the great Swedish mercenary, overran the Morea, captured Coron, Sparta and Athens, which last was won at the price of the ruin of the Parthenon, the Turkish powder magazine there having been exploded by a Venetian shell. Morosini returned in triumph, bringing the Greek lions, which still stand in front of the Arsenal. He was made Doge in 1688, the coronation being deferred that he might return to Greece. Vast designs of the recapture of Negropont, even of Crete, lured him on, but ill-health soon necessitated his return, only, however, to be again entreated to take up the command and retrieve the blunders of an incompetent Captain-General. The veteran Doge and captain for the last time sailed from Venice amid scenes that recalled the great crusading times of old. After some successes at Corinth he went to winter at Nauplia, where he died on January 9, 1694. He was the greatest of the modern Doges. A tomb in S. Stefano and a triumphal arch in the Sala dello Scrutinio still witness to his fame.
But Venice was too poor and too feeble to retain her conquests. During a short campaign in 1715 she lost the whole of the Morea, and by the treaty of Passarovitch in 1717 all that was left of her vast empire in the East were a few fortresses in Dalmatia, Albania and Herzegovina. The treaty of 1717 bore her last signature as a European Power.
The procession of Doges that stretches from Giov. Cornaro, the opponent of Renier Zeno, to the fall of the Republic contains but one name of historic significance—Francesco Morosini. Marco Foscarini, elected in 1762, a descendant of the ill-fated Antonio Foscarini, is known to students as the author of a “History of Venetian Literature,” and Ludovico Manin has the unhappy distinction of closing the line for ever. Through all the vicissitudes of foreign affairs, the decadence of trade, the fear corroding at her statesmen’s hearts, the social and ceremonial life of Venice waxed rather than waned in pomp and splendour. The recurring ravages of plague periodically purged her pride and luxury. Of all the great cities of Europe, Venice bears the deepest traces of the passages of the destroying angel. In her annals no less than seventy visitations are recorded. Two great churches, the Redentore founded in 1575 and the Salute in 1630, are votive offerings to Heaven for salvation from the scourge. Her greatest scuola is dedicated to the chief plague saint, St Roch. Indeed in all her churches the figures of the plague saints, St Roch, St Job, St Sebastian, have a sad pre-eminence. But the danger past, the lesson faded from her memory, and the traditional magnificence shone forth. She became again—
“The pleasant place of all festivity;
The Revel of the earth; the Masque of Italy.”