The selection of the immigrants was conducted with the greatest prudence, and it may easily be believed that the great influx of new and energetic blood, of the same descent, was of vast benefit to the city and the Republic. It may even be asked whether, without this wholesome sifting and renewing of her people, Venice could have performed the prodigies of courage and endurance which not long afterwards turned the tide of the Chioggia war.
Andrea Dandolo did not long survive these events. Worn out with facing the storm, with fighting enemies by land and sea abroad, and pestilence at home, he died when barely fifty years of age, leaving to posterity the precious manuscript of his history, which has even now not been entirely published. His Chronicle is one of the richest sources of information for the history of the fourteenth century.
[Illustration: DOOR OF THE TREASURY, ST. MARK’S]
[Illustration: ZATTERE, THE MORNING MIST]
The conspiracy of Bocconio has no very distinct character; it was neither an attempt at popular revolution, nor an effort on the part of the burghers against the people on the one hand and the aristocracy on the other. The outbreak under the leadership of Tiepolo and the Quirini, although they succeeded in giving it the appearance of a democratic movement, was in reality an attempt on the part of an ambitious noble to seize the power wielded by the Doge Pietro Gradenigo, a man perhaps as ambitious as Tiepolo himself, but who at all events had been regularly elected to be the head of the Republic. The third conspiracy of which we find an account during the fourteenth century was undoubtedly meant to overthrow the government, and to gather into one hand the whole of that authority which belonged equally to all members of the same class. The conspiracy of the Doge Marino Faliero has been related in many ways--as a romance, as a poem, as an instance of political passion, but very generally without a careful consideration of the facts. Most writers represent the old Doge as driven to betray his country by outrageous calumnies against his wife, invented by some youths of the aristocracy. Others, like Byron, believe that he wished to free his country from the petty tyranny and real oppression it suffered under the complicated system of councils:--