The year 810 marks the beginning of a new era.
During some time the influence of the Franks had been felt in the islands, and was beginning to counter-balance that of the Greeks. The great families now separated into two distinct parties, one of which favoured the rising Empire of the West, while the sympathies of the other remained firmly attached to the Court of Constantinople. These opposite leanings, however, were caused by questions of trade and money-making much more than by any political tendency, and neither side had any inclination to accept a master.
Yet one man seems to have seriously meditated betraying the Republic to Pepin, the son of Charlemagne, who had received the Kingdom of Italy as his
portion, and desired to extend his dominions by wresting Dalmatia and Istria from Nicephoros,
the Emperor of the East. The traitor was the Doge Obelerio, who had spent a part of his youth at Pepin’s court, and is said to have married his daughter.
The army of the Franks appeared on the mainland, by a secret agreement with the Doge, and before preparations could be made for opposing it. But the common danger became at once a bond of union; the Venetians forgot their discords and their quarrels, and rose as one man to defend their liberty. Almost from the first the Doge was suspected of treachery; he was watched, he was convicted by his own acts, he was taken, and he paid for his treason with his life. His severed head was set up on a pike on the beach of Malamocco, where the enemy could watch how the carrion birds came daily and picked it to a skull.
[Sidenote: _Pepin at the siege of Rialto, A. Vicentino; Pepin’s defeat, by the same; Ducal Palace, Sala dello Scrutinio._]
But the Franks took the nearer islands one by one, till at last the Venetians left Malamocco and sought refuge on the Rialto and Olivolo, which were the more easy to defend, as it was harder for the enemy to reach them. A legend says that one poor old woman stayed behind, resolved to save Venice or perish in the attempt, and we are told that she went to meet Pepin and counselled him to build a wooden bridge that should extend all the way from Malamocco to Rialto, and that Pepin followed her advice; but the horses of his army were scared by the dancing lights on the water, and by the swaying of the light bridge, and they plunged and reared and fell off into the lagoon, and they and their riders were drowned by thousands, like Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea.