The patience of the Republic was exhausted at last. Carmagnola was summoned to Venice on the plea that the government wished to consult him. He was received with marked honour. His suite was told that the general stayed to dine with the Doge and that they might go home. The Doge sent to excuse himself from receiving the Count on the score of indisposition. Carmagnola turned to go down to his gondola. In the lower arcade of the palace he was arrested and hurried to prison. He was tried by the Council of Ten on the charge of treason and executed in the Piazzetta of St Mark (1432).
Notwithstanding their difficulties with their mercenary commander, the Venetians had made very solid acquisitions during these wars with Visconti. Brescia and Bergamo were now permanently added to the land empire of the Republic, and the title was confirmed by an imperial investiture at Prague in 1437, in which Venetian dominions are defined as all the land di qua, that is east of the Adda,—very nearly the extreme limit of mainland possession ever touched by the Republic.
But the possession of Brescia and Bergamo was not likely to be left undisputed by Filippo Maria Visconti; and a long series of campaigns, conducted by such generals as Gonzaga and Gattamelata, exhausting to the treasury and unprofitable to the State, was only brought to an end by the death of the Duke of Milan in 1447. During this period, however, Venice had converted her guardianship of Ravenna into actual possession as remainder-heir to the Polentani, Lords of that city; a step which brought into the field against her the Roman Curia, and was not without important bearings on the final combination of the Papacy with her other enemies at the League of Cambray.
The death of Filippo Maria Visconti left Milan and the Visconti possessions without a Lord. Visconti’s only child Bianca was married to Sforza, and in right of her he claimed succession; but the city of Milan declared itself a republic. Venice seized Lodi and Piacenza and offered to support the Milanese Republic if it would recognise the capture. Milan declined. But that city was soon forced to open its gates to Sforza; and shortly afterwards Venice and Sforza came to terms in the Peace of Lodi (1454V), by which the Republic was confirmed in possession of Bergamo and Brescia and acquired Crema and Treviglio as well, thereby affording her enemies fresh proofs for that charge of insatiable greed which they were already beginning to move against her.
But Visconti’s death produced another result still more momentous not only for Venice but for all Italy as well. Filippo Maria had left no heirs male; and the French claim,—that of the house of Orleans based upon the marriage of Valentina Visconti with the father of Charles of Orleans,—was immediately advanced. -It opened a new epoch in Italian history, preparing the way for the complications inseparable from the advent of foreign princes in Italian politics.
There were two reasons which induced Venice to accept gladly the Treaty of Lodi. The long War with Visconti, though it had brought her a large accession of territory, had also cost her very dear; but it was of even greater significance that all Europe and Venice especially, as the power most nearly concerned, had been startled by the news that the Turks had captured Constantinople and that the Eastern Empire was at an end for ever. This event took place in 1453, the year before the Peace of Lodi.
We have seen already that the real desire of the Republic was to trade with the Turks, and not to fight them; from the very outset when she made a treaty with Sultan Mohammad in 1410 and again after the victory of Gallipoli, her whole energies had been directed to securing her colonies and insuring freedom of traffic. But now, with the Mussulmans established in Constantinople and spreading down the Levant, it was inevitable that Venice should be brought into hostile relations with their growing power.
The fall of Constantinople was the last external event of moment in the brilliant reign of Francesco Foscari. Internal events also contributed to render his Dogeship remarkable. He seems to have come to the throne as the embodiment of the new oligarchy which had taken final shape at the closing of the Great Council, and which had consolidated its authority by the creation of the Ten. He was the first Doge in whose election the people had no part. In presenting him to his subjects the old formula “ This is your Doge, an it please you,” was changed to “This is your Doge.” But, furthermore, Foscari’s election is the first in which we find any suggestion of bribery. He was accused of having applied, while holding the office of Procurator, a sum of money, which he found in the coffers of that magistracy, to securing support among the poorer nobility, a class destined to become both famous and dangerous under the name of the Barnabotti, but of whom we hear now for the first time. Political corruption showed itself again in 1433, when a wide-spread conspiracy to arrange election to offices was discovered among the nobles of the Great Council. The obscure case of Jacopo Foscari, the Doge’s son, showed to what lengths intrigue might be carried; and the dramatic end of the Doge’s reign, his deposition after so long and so brilliant an occupation of the throne, demonstrated the absolute authority of the Council of Ten as sovereign in Venice.
The epoch was one of great outward splendour. Commines, who came to Venice some years later, describes it as “the most triumphant city I have ever seen; the city that bestows the greatest honour on ambassadors and on strangers; the city that is most carefully governed; the city wherein the worship of God is most solemnly conducted.”
It was thus that Venice struck a competent observer towards the close of the fifteenth century, and Commines is only one of the earliest in a long list of testimonies to the vivid impression created by the Capital of the Lagoons. Venice was at the zenith of her splendour; a city of pleasure, sumptuous in her reception of “ambassadors and strangers”; a commonwealth of surprising solidity and power, “most carefully governecT”; a palace of pomp where the arts flourished and where the “worship of God,” in churches, processions, pageants “was most solemnly conducted.” Everything connected with the city, external as well as internal, contributed to the indelible impression she produced. Her singular site; her water streets; the beauty of her public and private buildings; the Doge’s palace so audaciously designed, glowing with the rose and cream coloured marbles; St Mark’s, a precious casket of porphyry, mosaic and oriental cupolas; the Hall of the Great Council adorned with records of Venetian prowess; the rich Gothic of the Porta della Carta; the Piazza with its noble bell-tower; the opening of the Piazzetta, the vista of San Giorgio Maggiore, the sweep of the Riva degli Schiavoni leading away to San Nicolo and the great sea avenue of Venice; the domestic architecture of the private palaces, that lined the Grand and the smaller canals; the slender columns, the ogee windows, the balconies with their sea lions for brackets, the perforated stone tracery above the windows, the glowing colour of the plaster on the walls-all combined to arrest attention. But more than this; behind the external splendour and deep down as the cause of it, Venice had something further to offer for the study and the contemplation of the stranger. Her constitution was almost an ideal for European statesmen. Her declared object was “to win the heart and the affection of her people,” and this could only be brought about by attention to their interests; in the interests of commerce consuls had been established as early as 1117; in those of finance public funds and government stock had been created in 1171; in those of order the census was introduced about the year 1300; in those of property each holding was numbered and registered; in those of justice the law was codified in 1229. A factory act forbade the employment of children in dangerous trades where mercury was used. The nautical code provided for a load-line on all shipping and insisted on the proper treatment of crews. In most departments of practical government the Republic of Venice preceded all other States of Europe, and offered material for reflexion to their politicians, to whom was presented the phenomenon of a fully-matured and stable constitution, and of a people fused together in one homogeneous whole.
For though the Closing of the Great Council had rendered the governing class a close oligarchy, it had not produced class hatred; Venice showed no trace of the feudal system with its violent divisions of the State into hostile camps; every Venetian was still a Venetian first and foremost, and though excluded from the functions of government was still in all likelihood closely connected with those who exercised them. The palace of the patrician was surrounded by a network of small alleys filled with his people, his clients. The merchant prince in his office was served by a staff of clerks who had their share in the success of his ventures. The arrival of any merchant’s galleys was a matter for rejoicing to the whole