Venice was soon made to feel the conse quences of having become a mainland power, the difficulties en tailed by holding possessions which others coveted, and the weak ness of a land frontier. To the west the new duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, was steadily piecing together the frag ments of his father's shattered duchy. He was determined to recover Verona and Vicenza from Venice, and intended, as his father had done, to make himself master of all north Italy. The conflict between Venice and Milan led to three wars in 1426,1427 and 1429. Venice was successful on the whole. She established her hold permanently on Verona and Vicenza, and acquired besides both Brescia and Bergamo; and later she occupied Crema. The war of Ferrara and the peace of Bagnolo (1484) gave her Rovigo and the Polesine. This, with the exception of a brief tenure of Cremona (1499-1512), formed her permanent territory down to the fall of the republic. Her frontiers now ran from the seacoast near Monfalcone, following the line of the Carnic and Julian and Raetian Alps to the Adda, down the course of that river till it joins the Po, and thence along the line of the Po back to the sea. But long and exhausting wars were entailed upon her for the main tenance of her hold. The rapid formation of this land empire, and the obvious intention to expand, called the attention not only of Italy but of Europe to this power which seemed destined to be come supreme in north Italy, and eventually led to the league of Cambrai for the dismemberment of Venice.
In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, and although Venice entered at once into treaty with the new power and de sired to trade with it, not to fight with it, yet it was impossible that her possessions in the Levant and the archipelago should not eventually bring her into collision with the expanding energy of Mohammedan. Europe persistently refused to assist the republic to preserve a trade in which she had established a rigid monopoly, and Venice was left to fight the Turk single-handed. The first Turkish war lasted from
to
and ended in the loss of Negropont and several places in the Morea, and the payment by Venice of an annual tribute for trading rights. She was consoled, however, by the acquisition of Cyprus, which came into her pos session (1488) on the extinction of the dynasty of Lusignan with the death of James II. and his son James III. , Caterina Cornaro, James II.'s widow, ceding the kingdom of Cyprus to Venice, since she could not hope to maintain it unaided against the Turks. The acquisition of Cyprus marks the extreme limit of Venetian ex pansion in the Levant ; from this date onward there is little to record save the gradual loss of her maritime possessions.
Exhausting as the Turkish wars were to the Venetian treasury, her trade was still so flourishing that she might have survived the strain had not the discovery of the Cape route to the Indies cut the tap-root of her commercial prosperity by diverting the stream of traffic from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. When
Diaz rounded the Cape in 1486 a fatal blow was struck at Venetian commercial supremacy. The discovery of the Cape route saved the breaking of bulk between India and Europe, and saved the dues exacted by the masters of Syria and Egypt. Trade passed into the hands of the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English. Venice lost her monopoly of oriental traffic.
To complete her misfortunes, the Euro pean Powers, the church and the small states of Italy, partly from jealous greed of her possessions, partly on the plea of her treason to Christendom in making terms with Islam, partly from fear of her expansion in north Italy, coalesced at Cambrai in 1508 for the partition of Venetian possessions. The war proved disastrous for Venice. The victory of Agnadello (i 510) gave the allies the com plete command of Venetian territory down to the shores of the lagoon. But the mutual jealousy of the allies saved her. The pope, having recovered the Romagna and secured the objects for which he had joined the league, was unwilling to see all north Italy in the hands of foreigners, and quitted the union. The Emperor Maximilian failed to make good his hold on Padua, and was jealous of the French. The league broke up, and the mainland cities of the Veneto returned of their own accord to their allegi ance to St. Mark. But the republic never recovered from the blow, coming as it did on the top of the Turkish wars and the loss of her trade by the discovery of the Cape route. She ceased to be a great power, and was henceforth entirely concerned in the effort to preserve her remaining possessions and her very inde pendence. The settlement of the peninsula by Charles V.'s coronation at Bologna in 1530 secured the preponderance to Spain, and the combination of Spain and the church dominated the politics of Italy. Dread of the Turks and dread of Spain were the two terrors which haunted Venice till the republic fell.
But the decline was a slow process. Venice still possessed considerable wealth and extensive possessions. Be tween 1499 and 1716 she went to war four times with the Turks, emerging from each campaign with some further loss of maritime territory. The fourth Turkish war (157o-73) was signalized by the glorious victory of Lepanto (1571), due chiefly to the prowess of the Venetians under their doge Sebastian Venier. But her allies failed to support her. They reaped no fruits from the vic tory, and Cyprus was taken from her after the heroic defence of Famagusta by Bragadino, who was flayed alive, and his skin, stuffed with straw, borne in triumph to Constantinople. The fifth Turkish war (1645-68) entailed the loss of Crete ; and though Morosini reconquered the Morea for a brief space in 1685, that province was finally lost to Venice in 1716.