I. THE QUARRY 21

struggle of her life¹-stained with her darkest crime, the murder of Carrara-disturbed by her most dangerous internal sedition, the conspiracy of Falier-oppressed by her most fatal war, the war of Chiozza-and distinguished by the glory of her two noblest citizens (for in this period the heroism of her citizens replaces that of her monarchs), Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno.

I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo Zeno, 8th May 1418;* the visible commencement from that of another of her noblest and wisest children, the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later. The reign of Foscari followed,² gloomy with pestilence and war; a war in which large acquisitions of territory were made by subtle or fortunate policy in Lombardy, and disgrace, significant as irreparable, sustained in the battles on the Po at Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio.³ In 1454, Venice, the first of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the Turk:⁴ in the same year was established the Inquisition of

* Daru, liv. [book] xii. cap. xii.⁵

¹ [The long conflict with Genoa which lasted during the greater part of the fourteenth century. Francesco Carrara, Lord of Padua and a relentless enemy of Venice, was strangled in prison, January 17, 1405. The conspiracy of Marino Falier (Doge 1354-1355) to slay the nobles and proclaim himself Prince of Venice has been invested by the historians and by Byron’s Tragedy with more importance than really belongs to it (see H. F. Brown’s Venice, p. 204). For an estimate of gain and loss in the War of Chioggia (1379-1388), see the same authority, p. 233. In that war, Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno specially distinguished themselves: for another reference to the latter, see Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. ii. § 66.]

² [For Tommaso Mocenigo (1414-1423)-the great doge who desired to arrest the extension of the Republic-see Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii. § 128 n., vol. iii. ch. ii. § 70; for his re-building of the Ducal Palace, § 45 below, and vol. ii. ch. viii. §§ 22, 25; for his tomb, § 40 below. For a summary of the results of the long and eventful reign of his successor, Francesco Foscari (1423-1457), see H. F. Brown’s Venice, p. 306.]

³ [The reference is to the destruction of the Venetian flotilla at Casal-Maggiore on the Po, near Cremona, by Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, in 1448, and to his subsequent defeat of the Venetian forces at the battle of Caravaggio: see Daru, book xvi. chs. 5, 6.]

⁴ [The reference is to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, the failure of Venice to defend the Emperor against them, and to the Treaty between the Republic and the Sultan Mahomet II. in the following year: see Daru, book xvi. ch. xv.]

⁵ [Histoire de la Republique de Venise, par P. Daru, is the authority principally followed by Ruskin in his allusions to Venetian history.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]