i As she increased in power, she also increased in magnificence; and her nobles,' having i no lands in which they might employ their wealth, lavished immense sums upon their palaces, their pictures, decorations, and costly garments. Her palaces were decorated with the treasures and spoils of the east, and a school of artists arose, who found noble subjects for their pencils in the deeds of Faliero, Polani, Ziani. and the Dandoli. Her noblemen were now the most opulent in Europe, and travel and refinement had made them also the most polished. The most notable events in the history of Venice during the 13th c. are her wars with Genoa, in which her hitherto unfailing good fortune deserted her, and the star of Dandolo succumbed to that of Doria at the desperate battle of orzuola, from which conflict the Venetians could only retire with 12 out of 96 of their galleys, the others being taken or burned; • the truce effected between Venice and Paikeologus, the emperor of the east, in 1268;the electoral reforms by which, after a complex and often repeated process of election and reduction by lot, the forty-one mem bers were chosen who formed the electoral college, and of whom it was necessary that the doge-elect should obtain at least the votes of twenty-five. In 1289 the inquisition was formally established in Venice, but this institution was rendered subject to so many limitations the government of the republic, that it remained comparatively harm less. In 1310 a conspiracy was formed for the correction of abuses that had crept into the constitution, and for the punishment of actual and fancied crimes. Among the conspirators were members of many of the noblest families of Venice. This conspiracy, known as the Quirini-Tiepolo conspiracy, proved abortive; but among other reforms to which it gave rise was the formation of the famous council of ten, who Caused themselves to be declared a permanent assembly in 1335. In 1343, Andrea Dan dolo, born in the year of the Quirini-Tiepolo conspiracy, a most accomplished scholar and statesman, was raised to the dogate. His Venetian Annals, remarkable for their precision and accuracy, place their author in the first rank of medimval historians. In 1348, the lagoon was visited by an earthquake, accompanied by unusually high and destructive tides. These misfortunes were followed iu the same year by a most fright ful visitation of plague; and in the course of the six or seven months during which the epidemic raged, two-fifths of the population of the city perished, and fifty patrician fam ilies became extinct. The middle of the 14th c. is remarkable for the famous conspiracy headed by the doge Marino Faliero (see FALIERI), and for a war with Hungary, m which Venice lost Dalmatia. The commercial rivalry of Venice and Genoa in the east led to a war in 1352, in which the Venetians were defeated (Feb. 13, 1352) by Paganino Doria in the straits of the Bosporus; and though they recovered their lost :turrets in a battle (Aug. 29, 1353) off the Sardinian coast, their fleet was totally destroyed by Doria, in the gulf of Sapiuoza, Nov. 3, 1354, and they were forced to make peace in the follow ing May. In 1378. the Venetians interfered in the quarrel between the Genoese and Cypriots, and their fleet vanquished that of the Genoese before Actium (July), in revenge for which the Venetian fleet was almost annihilated off Pola (May, 1379), and Pietro Doria, advancing upon Venice itself, seized the island of Chioggia. But the courage of the Venetians was nothing weakened by their dreadful reverses, and they soon changed the aspect of affairs by becoming in turn the besiegers themselves, blockading the enemy in Chioggia, and, after reducing him to the brink of starvation, accepting an uncon ditional surrender, June, 1380. In 1396 Genoa, the oldest and most harassing foe of the republic, ceased to have separate existence as an enemy, for in that year she placed her self under the dominion of the king of France, an arrangement which afforded immeas• urable relief to Venice, because, for several reasons, there was now much less chance of a rupture between the two maritime powers. For a number of years after this event, Venice experienced the highest prosperity: a prodigious impulse was given to her trade; her argosies traversed every arm of the ocean; intimate intercourse was kept up with every European country, as well as with Syria, Egypt, and even India, and important articles of Venetian merchandise were the iron of Staffordshire, the tin of Cornwall and Devon, and the wool of Sussex. But no less beneficent than the effects of peace were
those of the war which soon broke out between Novello, lord of Padua, and Venice. At the conclusion of this war (1407), Venice found herself in the possession of an empire on the mainland of Italy, the smallest communal section of which equaled their ancient island domain, and of which the principal cities were Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Feltre and Belluno. With the death of the doge Mocenigo in 1423, a new era in the existence of Venice commences, for now " the central epoch of her life was past, the decay had already begun." During the next thirty years, war was continually waged, chiefly against the dukes of Milan, in the course of which Venice, taking into pay Carmagnola (q.v.) and his bands achieved many a splendid victory, and suffered many a disastrous defeat; and though, on the return of peace (1455). the territory of the republic was materially increased, by the acquisition of Brescia, Bergamo, Treviso, etc., on the main land, this territory was obtained only after a struggle, enormously expensive in life and treasure, and during the continuance of which the commerce of Venice—the'well-spring of its prosperity at all times—began to decline. Mocenigo's last advice to the senate was to avoid war, which was certain to bring destruction on the country, and to prosecute indusfriously their trade and commerce, and cultivate the arts of peace. The rejection of this advice, combined with the narrow-minded selfish policy always pursued by the Venetians in the contests among the Italian states, was the proui,inent cause of its decline. The same fatal warlike policy was pursued throughout the 15th c. ; and the whole of the 16th c. was employed by them in repairing the disasters which the league of Cambrai had brought upon them. Her policy in the 17th c. was to aid the opponents of her most dangerous neighbor, Austria, by recognizing Henry IV. of France, aiding Bethlern Gabor and Ragotski, the duke of Savoy against Spain, and the Protestants against the Catholics of the Grisons. From 1646 to 1669, war was carried on between the Venetians and Turks, the latter being, in almost every encounter, severely defeated though, from the disproportionate strength of the antagonists, they ultimately gained Candia, the object of the war. The discovery of the cape of Good Hope by the Portu geese in 1486, opened up to that nation an ocean-route to India, which was taken advan tage of by Vasco da Gama, who rounded the cape on Lis voyage from Lisbon to calmut in 1497. The carrying-trade of the world was row no longer, as it had been, in the hands of the Venetians; and the vast commercial activity which sprang up among the western nations of Europe upon the discovery of America clearly show ed that the naval superiority of the republic bad forever disappeared. But even in spite of these change! of fortune, Venice might still have maintained a respectable mediocrity among time states, but for the character of her government, which was conducted by an excpi aive oligarchy, in whose hands alone all power and freedom were vested.' Long prior to the invasion of the republic by Napoleon in 1796, Venice had become worn wit and corrupted; the government of the council of ten bad become a reign of terror; its nobles showed vigor only in the pursuit of pleasure; its peasants, inured to peace, were unequal to war—afi the ancient virtue, valor, and hardihood, which had raised a colony of fish ermen, " perched like sea•fowl" on a muddy shoal, to be a nation of the first rank, had died out of the state. Napoleon forced Venice to break the neutrality which it meant to maintain in 1796, destroyed its government, and ceded the province to Austria by the treaty of Campo-Formic) (q.v.). In 1806, the city of Venice, with the territory of Venetia, was annexed to the kingdom of Italy by the treaty of Presburg (q.v.); but it was transferred to Austria in 1814. In 1866 the city and territory were ceded to and incorporated with the kingdom of Italy.