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THE SALUTE, NIGHT
for that barbarous deed, for he treated his captives with every kindness; and
even after they had reached Venice they were not confined in the prisons, but
were merely shut up and guarded in vast warehouses, where they had plenty
of air and were abundantly provided with necessaries. A committee of
noblemen was deputed to take care of them, and to see that they lacked
nothing. The ladies of Venice also organised themselves in a sort of
sisterhood, for the purpose of ministering to the not over-great sufferings of
the vanquished, and the noblest names of the Republic stand on the list of
those charitable women. Anna Falier, Francesca Bragadin, Margherita
Michiel, Marchesina Bembo, and several others are especially mentioned by
the historians as ‘angels of goodness and devotion.’ All Venice sought to be
forgiven by Europe for the horrors of Lojera.
Pisani had been far too prudent to push on to Genoa with a fleet which
only counted nineteen sail, including his five prizes, and he deemed it wiser
to return to the Adriatic and to harass the Genoese on the coast of Greece
and Dalmatia, whence, under the protection of the King of Hungary, they
constantly made piratical excursions against the Venetian merchantmen.
After taking possession of several strong places, Pisani asked
permission to return to Venice in order to rest his men and refit Storming
of
while waiting for the spring, but the Senate ordered him to Cattaro,
continue cruising off Istria in case the Genoese should A.
unexpectedly enter the Adriatic. There is no doubt but that this Vicentino;
Sala dello
measure was prudent in itself, but, on the other hand, Pisani’s Scrutinio.
fleet was altogether in too bad a state to keep at sea through the Rom. iii.
winter, and in a more or less hostile neighbourhood. A sickness 265.
of some kind, not explained by the chroniclers, decimated the
crews of his galleys, and he seems to have lacked suitable and sufficient
provisions, as well as stores for repairing his rigging and sails. He obeyed
the Senate’s orders, however, and he made his headquarters at Pola.
In February he was informed that he was confirmed in his charge of
admiral of the fleet, but at the same time the Senate appointed him two
advisers, or counsellors, following the true Venetian method of watching,
and often hampering, the commander in the prosecution of the war. These
‘provveditori,’ as they were called, were the famous Carlo Zeno and a
certain Michel Steno—whether the one who had precipitated the conspiracy
of Marino Faliero twenty-four years earlier or not does not appear certain. At
all events, he reached his post and remained with Pisani, but Zeno did not.
 Later in the spring Pisani received a reinforcement of eleven galleys, sent
him in order that he might be able to protect the Venetian vessels that
regularly plied between Venice and Apulia to supply the Republic with corn.
While he was convoying a number of these vessels, a storm forced two of
his galleys to take shelter in Ancona, where they were seized by the
Genoese; but a few days later Pisani encountered the latter, beat them in a
short engagement, and recaptured his ships. Scarcely had he got to anchor in
the harbour of Pola, however, when twenty-five Genoese men-of-war hove
in sight, under the command of Luciano Doria. Pisani could not reasonably
hope to fight such a fleet with any chance of victory, and would have
preferred to await the arrival of his reinforcements under Carlo Zeno, who
was expected in a few days; but his officers clamoured for battle, and Michel
Steno, the provveditor, even went so far as to hint that Pisani was a coward
to stay in port. This was more than the admiral could bear, though he was the
mildest and most long-suffering of brave men; and in the shortest possible
time he got his fleet under way, calling upon all who loved Saint Mark to
follow him.
I know not whether the wind gave him any advantage at first, as at Anzio,
or whether the brilliant little victory he won was due to the fury of his attack.
Be that as it may, he slew, or helped to slay, Luciano Doria with his own
hands, and put the imposing Genoese fleet to flight.
But the enemy, in the absence of pursuit, soon rallied, and in a few hours
inflicted upon Pisani a most disastrous defeat. He himself barely escaped
with six galleys out of the nineteen or twenty that had composed his force.
Poor in ships, as Venice was at that time, this was a blow that threatened her
existence; for the Genoese now had nearly forty vessels, including the prizes
recently taken, some of which were perhaps the very galleys they had lost to
Pisani at Anzio.
How far Pisani’s misfortune was the result of the unwise advice he was
obliged to submit to from Michel
Steno, it is not easy to say; but he was certainly badly
handicapped by the non-arrival of his other appointed counsellor, Rom. iii.
268.
Carlo Zeno, with the promised reinforcements. The Senate took
neither the one question nor the other into consideration, any more than it
showed the slightest grateful recollection of his many former services to the
Republic. He was hastily tried, convicted of having failed to do his duty, and
sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, with the loss, during five years, of
all emoluments he received from the State and of all public office for the
same period. Venice always acted on the principle that no amount of success
could condone one failure, and that defeat was next door to treason. Michel
Steno fared somewhat better, for he was not actually imprisoned, but he and
all the officers of the fleet were suspended from all public functions for a
year.
These drastic measures did not improve the position of the Republic in
that time of immediate danger. It was easy to consign Vittor Pisani to the
pozzi, but it was quite another matter to replace him, especially in the
absence of Carlo Zeno, the only other man of the same calibre upon whom
Venice could count.
Pietro Doria had taken the place of Luciano, whom Pisani had killed in
battle, and he worked his way steadily up the eastern coast, retaking one by
one all the fortified places which Pisani had recently seized, until at last his
fleet appeared off the Lido, literally within sight of Venice.
The consternation was indescribable, and it is more than likely that if
Pietro Doria had boldly forced the entrance to the lagoons, the city would
have fallen an easy prey. Indeed, the situation of the Republic seemed even
then almost desperate, for while she was beaten at sea and assailed by the
Genoese fleet, the Carrara had leagued themselves against her with the King
of Hungary, and threatened her land boundaries on the north and west.
But it always happens in the history of nations, as it generally does in the
private lives of individual men, that the last extremity of danger calls forth
the true character of peoples, as of persons. It is then that the hero is a hero;
it is then that the coward performs miracles of speed in flight.
Venice called out every man able to bear arms. A patrician, Leonardo
Dandolo, was entrusted with the defence of the Lido; two others were
charged with the protection of the basilica of Saint Mark’s and the adjoining
square; another was made responsible for the quarter of the Rialto; and
others again were told off to defend the outlying islands, Torcello, Murano,
and Mazzorbo. Finally, Jacopo Cavalli, a foreign captain, was promised a
very large recompense if he could perform the almost impossible feat of
defending the Venetian territory on the mainland with four thousand horse,
two thousand footmen, and a not inconsiderable number of bowmen.
The monastery of Saint Nicholas on the Lido was converted into a regular
fortress. Three huge hulks, which I conjecture to have been old transports
from
the days of the crusades, were lashed together with triple chains,
and sunk at the entrance to the lagoons. As far as possible all the Rom. iii.
268.
male inhabitants of the city were armed, and were so organised
as to be ready to fight whenever the great bell of Saint Mark’s should give
the signal.
Meanwhile ambassadors were sent one after the other, and in haste, to the
court of Hungary in the hope of detaching the King from his alliance with
the lords of Padua, but they utterly failed to bring about the desired result;
for both the Carrara and the Genoese spread abroad in Buda the report, by no
means exaggerated, that Venice was at the last extremity, and must soon
yield to her allied enemies; and the King, trusting to this welcome news,
answered the Venetian ambassadors with such arrogance that they had no
choice but to take their leave.
The Genoese fleet lay at anchor off the Lido, and the only
chance of safety seemed to lie in attacking it boldly, for as yet it Rom. iii.
273.
consisted of no very large number of vessels. Six good Venetian
ships of war, manned by picked men, would no doubt suffice, and these
could still be produced. They were placed under the command of Taddeo
Giustiniani, and they sailed out through the narrow channel that had been
left navigable.
Now it chanced that on board of one of the Genoese galleys there was a
certain man, a Venetian sailor, who had been taken prisoner with the galley
commanded by Giovanni Soranzo when Vittor Pisani was defeated; and he
was brave and loved his country, but his name has not come down to us.
When he saw the Venetian ships making ready, inside the Lido, he managed
to drop himself overboard, and he swam for his life towards the entrance;
and as Giustiniani sailed out he
 CALLE CASALLI

saw this man ahead swimming, and making desperate signals to the
Venetians to bring to.
The commander recognised him as a Venetian either by his appearance or
by his language, laid his topsail to the mast and took him aboard, to learn
that the Genoese vessels before him were but the vanguard of a huge fleet
which was itself at hand, and would soon be in sight. To engage was now out
of the question, and could only end in the total loss of the six Venetian
vessels; Giustiniani put about and re-entered the lagoons, to take the bad
news to Venice.
 The first fault committed by the Genoese was that, having surprised the
city, they did not profit by their advantage and storm it at once, at a moment
when at least half the population must have been paralysed with fear.
Instead, they seem to have followed a consistent but mistaken plan; for they
pillaged and laid waste the outlying islands one by one with the evident
intention of destroying the city’s supplies, and of ultimately cutting off all
communication between it and the mainland.
In the course of this more or less systematic operation they came before
Malamocco on the sixth of August 1379; but here they met with a first
check, for they perceived that the place was too strongly fortified to be
rashly attacked, and they therefore sailed past it towards Chioggia, which
was, and is, the most important strategic point of the lagoons.
Chioggia is close to the mainland, at the western extremity of the
Venetian archipelago. The name belongs vaguely, in old maps, to the long
island properly called Brondolo, on the western end of which is built the
town of Brondolo; more particularly to the Port, or entrance between this
island and the one called Palestrina, between which two the ‘Lupa,’ the
Tower of the She-Wolf, rises out of the water; and especially to the small
city of Chioggia. The latter is divided into two parts—the greater Chioggia,
built on a
 CALLE DELLA DONAZELLA

number of very small islets, and the lesser, which stands on the inside shore
of the main island. There was a bridge between the two parts.
 The entrance to the port of Chioggia being deep and safe, the Venetians
had deepened also a natural channel, twenty-five miles long, which led
thence through the shallow lagoons to Venice, and this was one of the best
and safest approaches to the city from the outer sea, a fact which was well
known to the Genoese, who looked upon Chioggia as the real key to the
capital, and the name of the place has been given by all historians to the war
that followed. It is almost needless to say that the extreme shallowness of the
lagoons was a real defence against an enemy not well acquainted with the
channels, which, as every one knows, are marked by tall timbers that project
from six to fifteen feet above the water. To remove these was a first measure
of defence.
The most tremendous exertions were made by the Venetians
to prepare themselves for an attack, which would almost Rom. iii.
274.
certainly have been fatal to them if the Genoese had not put it off
too long. Reinforcements were at once sent down to Pietro Emo, the Podestà
of Chioggia, who anchored a large armed hulk in the channel, manning it
with soldiers and supplying it with provisions to last some time.
The lesser Chioggia, on the shore of the island, was abandoned as not
defensible, but the main town was very effectually fortified, and each little
islet became a separate stronghold. On the side of the allies Carrara
succeeded with great difficulty in conveying a considerable force of men
from Padua down the old branch of the Brenta, which the Venetians had
obstructed by sinking a hulk across it. Carrara is said to have dug a channel
round this point in a single night. The allies had now about twenty-four
thousand fighting men.
Pisani had been beaten at Pola in May; it was on the sixth of
August that the Genoese reconnoitred Malamocco and anchored Rom. iii.
275.
off Chioggia harbour, and their attack upon Chioggia itself began
on the eleventh. On that day the armed hulk which Emo had moored in the
channel was captured and burned, and the Genoese fleet was able to enter
the port and lie before the besieged town, while Carrara and the Paduans
assailed it from the side of the lagoons in their light boats. Every day the
united forces renewed their attack, and hour by hour they won their way into
the strong little place, taking the bridges and fortifications one after another.
By the fifteenth of the month, the bridge to Brondolo having been taken, it
was clear to the Venetians that Chioggia was lost, and Dandolo considered
how he might withdraw his force to Venice. It seemed only too certain that
every man who could be saved alive would be needed for the defence of the
capital, and it was still possible to escape across the shallows, where the
Genoese could not follow in their ships and the Paduans did not know their
way. The carnage had already been frightful. It is said that six thousand
Venetians were slain, and that three thousand and five hundred were taken
prisoners. Dandolo saved a large number in his retreat; but the heroic Pietro
Emo refused to leave the town, and remained with fifty devoted men to fight
to the very death within his own palace walls. The town was sacked
forthwith, and much of it was burned; over what was left the standards of
Genoa, of Carrara, and of Hungary were displayed where the banners of
Saint Mark had floated for centuries, until that bloody day.
Chioggia fell as the sun went down, and the news reached Venice late that
night. The city was all awake and in desperate anxiety, and when the truth
was known, fear turned almost to panic. Women rushed frantically to the
churches to confess and receive the sacraments, as if the Last Judgment of
God were upon them. The men were at first silent, paralysed in absolute
consternation; since Chioggia was gone, the Genoese might be upon Venice
by morning.
But again they let the opportunity pass, and the Venetians were
vouchsafed a breathing space, which might seem but enough to show them
how desperate their situation really was. For Treviso was already besieged
by Carrara’s troops when Chioggia fell, and the allies were closing in upon
the city like a wall of iron.
The Doge Contarini displayed a coolness and a courage altogether heroic.
The Republic had oppressed its chief by an intolerable system of spying and
petty limitations that reduced his personality to a nonentity in ordinary times.
It had forbidden him almost everything; but it had not forbidden him to die
for his country. The example of one man could still revive the courage and
sustain the calm of thousands. Venice was not lost, so long as that one true
citizen remained alive.
 CAMPO S. BENEDETTO

The Doge and the Senators gave all their own treasure to the public fund,
and imposed regular taxes on the citizens; they distributed the supplies of
arms with great good judgment, and sent out scouts upon the lagoons in the
lightest and swiftest skiffs, in order that no movement of the enemy should
escape observation.
But the people murmured against the government, even in their constant
terror; for Vittor Pisani was their idol, and he was still in prison.
It may have been the intention of the Genoese and their allies to starve
Venice to a surrender; but I think it more likely that Doria’s procrastination
was in accordance with his own character, and that it was in part due to the
almost inevitable complications which arise where military command is not
vested in one person, but is shared almost equally by a number of allied
captains.
The very first and most pressing danger was past when Contarini called a
general assembly of the people, on the thirteenth of September, by causing
the great bell of Saint Mark’s to be rung. It was long since the summons had
been heard, and the population answered it eagerly. The cathedral was soon
thronged to suffocation by men of all ages and conditions, who listened in
profound silence to the eloquent words of the senator Pietro Mocenigo. He
spoke from a high balcony or pulpit, and his ringing voice was heard in the
farthest corners of the great building.
He told his hearers that the time had come when they must think of the
honour of their women, the lives of their young children, and the safety of
their worldly goods; he said that whosoever lacked necessary food for
himself and his family need only ask for what he needed at any patrician
house—he should be treated as a friend, as a brother, the last crust of bread
should be shared with him. That was all, save that he called upon all sensible
men to speak, if they had any advice to give which would be for the public
good and safety.
The impression made by this simple speech was profound, for the people
owed the aristocracy no long-standing grudge as in other Italian cities. The
nobles had neither ground them down, nor tormented them, nor dishonoured
them, but had only taken the political power and, with it, the responsibilities
of government. In the wars of Venice the nobles had shed their blood for
their country much more abundantly, in proportion to their numbers, than the
people themselves; and in peace, their suspicions, their spyings, and their
eternal repression had been directed against each other, and never against the
poor man. And now they reaped their reward; they stooped to call the poor
man brother, and the mere words flattered him, and cheered him, and made a
hero of him. Happy Venice, even in that dire extremity!
 Then many rose up in the church and cried out that every ship in the
arsenal that would float must be manned to attack the enemy rather than
yield to starvation.
Mocenigo, the orator, being satisfied with this answer of the people, went
on to the question of choosing a leader, and proposed Taddeo Giustiniani;
but the multitude would none of him, and shouted for Vittor Pisani. Under
him they would win or die, they cried as one man, and they would have no
other.
To resist such a demand would have been madness, and for once the
lordly Signory bowed before the plebeian will. The captain was forthwith led
out of prison, and the crowd, frantic with joy at his release, carried him in
triumph on their shoulders round the square of Saint Mark’s.
‘Long live Vittor Pisani!’ they shouted.
‘No,’ he cried, answering them in commanding tones. ‘Long live Saint
Mark!’
Some obeyed him, and some would not, and the two cries mingled
together, ‘Pisani, Saint Mark, Saint Mark, Vittor Pisani.’
The historian Daru, whose passion for romance sometimes
led him far, says that Pisani asked to be allowed to spend one Daru, ii.
217.
more night in confinement, in order that he might prepare
himself by prayer for performing his devotions the next morning, and that it
was from the window of his prison that he rebuked the crowd for cheering
him. Yet Daru himself, a few pages earlier, had just described the prisons of
Venice in the fourteenth century as horrible dens which had neither light nor
air except from a narrow corridor, adding that the most piercing screams
could never be heard outside.
Men like Pisani have little need of acting or posing in order to increase
their prestige, for it is enough that they should show themselves and brave
men will follow them. The captain was taken from prison at once and, after
saying a prayer in the basilica, went before the Doge.
The mutual position of the two men was a strange one. Contarini must
have been well aware that Pisani’s condemnation had been utterly unjust;
Pisani had suffered that condemnation without complaint, and well knew
that the Doge had voted for it; both were brave and patriotic men, who
believed devoutly in the system by which their own aristocracy repressed
among its members any attempt at individualism, spied upon itself, and
treated failure as a crime. Pisani, if the situation had been reversed, would
have condemned Contarini as unhesitatingly as Contarini had condemned
him. It was certainly against the theory of the Republic that he should be
taken out of prison before he had expiated his defeat; but it was inevitable,
and he was free.
Yet both men found something to say in these almost absurd
circumstances, which was neither commonplace, nor undignified, nor merely
complimentary.
‘Your prudent and wise conduct,’ said the Doge, ‘will efface
your misfortunes, and avenge not only any offence which you Rom. iii.
278.
may have received yourself’—Pisani had been called a coward
by the provveditor of the Republic—‘but also the injuries which our country
has suffered at the hands of our enemies; you will therefore consider rather
the favour done you now than the past disgrace in which you have been, and
you will gladly seize this occasion of proving how unfounded those
accusations were which were made against you, and how much you desire to
earn in future the gratitude of our country.’
To this cleverly-worded and not wholly inane speech Pisani replied that
he had altogether forgotten the past, and that he should find means, by the
grace of God, to deserve the confidence placed in him.
Before he was allowed to depart he was informed that he was not to have
sole command of the Venetian troops, since Taddeo Giustiniani had been
entrusted with the defence on the side towards the Lido. Pisani bent his head
and answered that he had at all times obeyed the orders of the Signory.
But the people were less submissive to this schoolmaster
justice; they would have Pisani, and no one but Pisani. Even the Rom. iii.
279.
soldiers who came from the little island of Torcello protested.
‘Command us what you will,’ they said to him, ‘we will do whatever you
order us, but it must be under your own eyes.’
So a deputation of the younger ones among them went to the ducal
palace, carrying the banner of Torcello before them, and addressed the
counsellors. ‘For the love of God,’ they said, ‘give us three galleys, which
we will equip at our own cost, on condition that we be always, and
everywhere, under the orders of Vittor Pisani.’
By way of answer they were ordered to go to the Lido and fight under
Taddeo Giustiniani. ‘We will be cut into small pieces rather than fight under
him,’ cried the men of Torcello, who were assembled in the square when the
deputation brought them the answer of the Signory.
The Venetians took up the cry, and again the government was
obliged to yield. To paralyse the people’s enthusiasm at such a Rom. iii.
280.
moment, to shake their confidence, to trample upon their
wholesale sympathies, was to lose Venice herself. When it was known that
Pisani was appointed commander-in-chief of all the forces, the enthusiasm
of the city broke out in wild cheering for Saint Mark, for the Doge, for the
government; all the men hastened to enroll themselves under his standard,
and all the women brought whatever they possessed of value to the palace,
both jewels and other objects; they even ripped the silver trimmings and
embroideries from their clothes. Forty galleys which lay in the arsenal were
fitted out in three days, and in the same time two-thirds of the crews
necessary had been found.
The government promised great rewards to all who should distinguish
themselves in the struggle. It was announced that thirty citizen families,
whichever should contribute the most directly to the salvation of the
Republic, should be inscribed in the Golden Book of the nobles; that all
strangers who would take arms to defend Venice should be adopted as
children by the State, and should enjoy all the privileges accorded to the
original burghers; finally, the government promised to distribute five
thousand ducats, or over thirty-seven hundred pounds sterling, to the poorer
families of the city not belonging to the nobility. Having made these
promises, the State, by its decree, proceeded to threaten vengeance against
all who should desert the posts assigned to them, or attempt to leave Venice
so long as it was menaced by the enemy.
When all was ready for the bold attempt the Senate took final measures
for the disposition of the troops, as well as for the police of the city. In those
quarters which were most exposed to an attack, as, for instance, that of the
Niccolotti, the inhabitants were to be continually ready to fight at a
moment’s notice; in the remaining quarters only one-third of the men were to
remain at home as a garrison, while the rest placed themselves under the
orders of Pisani at the front. A careful watch was kept upon all vagabonds,
idlers, and other suspicious persons as long as the war lasted, lest any of
them should enter into correspondence with the enemy’s fleet.
When we consider the condition of the Republic at this moment, it must
seem little short of amazing that Venice should have survived at all. The
territory of the State was reduced by the invasion of the allies to little more
than the city itself; every outpost except the tower of the salt-works was in
the hands of the enemy; a large fleet with a very strong force of men was in
safe possession of Chioggia, the key to the lagoons; and all attempts at
negotiating with the enemy had signally failed. The Republic had, indeed,
gone so far as to send a suppliant embassy to her former vassal, Francesco
Carrara; he was addressed with humility as ‘Powerful and magnificent lord,’
and a fair sheet of blank paper was laid before him on which he was
requested to note with his own hand his own terms for peace, with the sole
condition that Venice should still be considered independent; and the
ambassadors had brought with them some Genoese prisoners whom

THE HORSES OVER THE GREAT DOOR, ST. MARK’S

they offered to return without ransom. But these humble proposals were
haughtily refused, Carrara bade the suppliants to return and take their
prisoners with them, threatening that he would ere long bridle the bronze
horses of Saint Mark’s and keep them quiet for ever.
I have quoted this incident as it is given from Chinazzo’s chronicle in
Smedley’s Sketches from Venetian History, and there seems no reason to
doubt the authority of the Italian historian, whose work is to be found in
Muratori.
Pisani had lost no time, while the allies were wasting theirs in useless
reconnoitring and futile skirmishes. He had fortified the entrance of the Lido
with temporary towers built in the short space of four days, he had sunk
hulks in all the important channels, and had got ready a great number of
small boats with which to convey his men across the shallow water.
Moreover, as many among his troops had no experience of the oar, he had
trained them as well as might be, in the short time, on the canal now known
as the Giudecca. But he had kept his own plan a secret, and it does not
appear that when the Venetians made their bold attack upon the allies they
knew what their leader purposed. It was enough that he led them; they
followed him, to do or die.
Andrea Contarini, eighty years of age, but still as brave as any youth in
the host, would not suffer the expedition to go forth without him, and his
example not only roused the enthusiasm of every fighting man, but was
followed by a number of senators too old to bear arms. In the last extremity
of danger Venice had one vast advantage against overwhelming odds, for her
people were united to a man. Men gave not only themselves but all their
fortunes to save their country, and for the first and, I believe, the last time in
history, a commercial people forgave one another their commercial debts for
the sake of the common safety. One individual burgher fitted out a galley at
his own expense; another bound himself to support a thousand men
throughout the war; all those who had anything to give gave it freely, and
those who had nothing gave themselves.
 ON THE GIUDECCA

The offensive movement of the Venetians had been preceded by several

successful skirmishes in October and November, the result of which had
been that the Genoese had more or less abandoned operations for the winter,
and had withdrawn their fleet into the safe harbour of Chioggia to await the
spring, leaving only three galleys to cruise before the entrance in case a
surprise should be attempted. They seem to have been as sure of taking
Venice as if they had been anchored opposite the Piazzetta; and in
accordance with the military practice of those days, they and their allies
hibernated, apparently taking it for granted that the Venetians would do the
same, and wait resignedly to be destroyed in warmer weather. They were
rudely awakened from their secure dreams of victory and spoil.
The Venetian fleet stole out to sea on the evening of the
twenty-first of December, consisting of thirty-four galleys, sixty 1379.
Rom. iii.
smaller armed vessels, and hundreds of flat-bottomed boats.
Pisani led the van, towing two heavy old hulks laden with stones. 285.
There is a disagreement of authorities as to the day of the month
on which he left Venice, but all agree that the Venetians appeared off the
Chioggia entrance and landed four thousand men on the point of Brondolo
island at dawn on the following morning—no inconsiderable feat, though the
night had been the longest of the year. The distance, on a modern admiralty
chart, from the port of Lido to the Chioggia entrance, outside the islands, I
find to be about thirteen nautical miles; by the canals within the lagoons it is
considerably farther, but it is certain that Pisani went by the open sea.
The Genoese were taken by surprise. The three cruisers on duty as
sentinels outside the port were not where they should have been, and we hear
no more of

THE CITY IN THE SEAS

them; it almost looks as if, in their security, the invaders must have given up
that last precaution.
In the face of a heavy fire and with the loss of one vessel, burned by the
enemy, Pisani succeeded in sinking his hulks across the entrance. To the last
the Genoese do not appear to have understood his intention, for they
themselves, or their own fire, helped to sink the heavily-ballasted vessels,
and it was not until all was over, and the barrier had been made
insurmountable by heaping other material upon it, that they plainly saw what
had happened. They were caught like mice in a trap, unless they could get
their fleet out by some other way. The mouth of the Brenta river at Brondolo,
two miles to the southward, still remained navigable, and Pisani proceeded
to blockade it in the same way, though with far greater difficulty. Federico
Cornaro was entrusted with the dangerous and difficult task, and
accomplished it under a terrific fire, Pisani protecting him meanwhile from
any attack from the Genoese vessels.
This being done, the enemy’s fleet was paralysed, and the result could
only have been a matter of time, if Pisani had been in command of a regular
force. Instead, his men were volunteers and raw recruits, capable of
magnificent courage in a single engagement, as they had shown, and ready
to shed their blood as they had given their treasure; but they were ill
accustomed to exposure, to night work at sea in the depth of winter, to a
hundred small daily sufferings to which a trained seaman is hardened and
indifferent. Clearly, Pisani could not leave the scene of action, even for a
day, and even if he had consented to such an act of folly, there was the old
Doge, swearing upon the hilt of his sword never to return to Venice till the
enemy was thoroughly beaten. Yet the volunteers of the people cared little
for such an example, and threatened to go home to Venice in a body, leaving
the Genoese to dig their way out if they could, and indifferent to the fact that
if left to themselves they could certainly find means of reaching Venice
within a few days, though they could not bring their fleet. They had been in
real danger now, and they would waste no more time in idleness or futile
skirmishing.
It was in vain that Pisani tried to cheer such a force by reminding them
that Carlo Zeno, with a strong fleet manned by veteran seamen, was
expected to return. The people knew well enough that he had been expected
for months, and that there was no reason why he should appear
providentially at the present juncture. It was the Christmas season; they had
fought like lions, shut up their enemies, and momentarily averted extreme
danger; for amateur soldiers this seemed enough, and they clamoured to be
allowed to go back to their wives and children.
Like Columbus, Pisani saw himself on the very verge of losing the result
of all his labour, for lack of a little more trust on the part of his men. To keep
them by force was impossible, for they themselves were the male population
of Venice, and for the time being they held good and evil in their hands.
Even the senators and other nobles murmured at being obliged
RIO S. POLO
to keep at sea, and often under fire, because the Doge had rashly sworn a
solemn oath to remain.
On the thirtieth of December Pisani was driven to such extremities as to
be forced to promise that unless Carlo Zeno appeared in forty-eight hours the
fleet should return to the Lido, in spite of the Doge and his vow. There was
no reason at all why Zeno should be expected; it was a mere empty promise,
but it gained time; something could still be done in two days and two nights.
He laboured and fought on, and the short limit of time expired with the
dawn of New Year’s Day. Zeno had not come, and Pisani’s men would not
stay another hour. By his promise he must let them go, and it needed not his
wisdom to foresee that their defection meant the fall of Venice, the end of
the Republic, the general destruction of the insensate population themselves
with all they had. It was of little use to have been their idol for years and
their victorious dictator for ten days, if they could not bear a little cold and a
little hardship for his sake. The day rose wearily for Pisani.
Then, from aloft, a sail was sighted. It was the sail of a galley.
Another, and another, and another, all galleys unmistakably, they Marble
bust of
hove in sight above the horizon, eighteen in all. Hostile, or Carlo
friendly? That was the question. Zeno, or destruction and the Zeno,
end? Then the banner of Saint Mark broke out from the peak of unknown
artist;
the foremost, and floated fair on the morning breeze. It was Zeno Museo
indeed. Civico,
Room
And not only had the famous leader himself come at the one XVI.
moment of all others when he was most needed, perhaps in his
whole life; he came as a victor, bringing prizes and spoil of inestimable
value. He had laid waste the Genoese coast, almost to the city itself; he had
intercepted Genoese convoys of grain off Apulia, he had harassed the
enemy’s commerce in the East, and he had captured, off Rhodes, a huge
vessel of theirs with five hundred thousand pieces of gold.
All this he told the Doge on board the latter’s galley. He had been twice
wounded and was not yet recovered, but nothing could diminish his energy
nor damp his ardour; at his own request he was stationed at the post of
greatest danger, opposite Brondolo, and though the Genoese made a supreme
effort to destroy the barriers and get their ships out during a gale, in which
some of Zeno’s ships dragged their anchors, he drove them triumphantly
back into their prison, and blockaded them more securely than ever. In this
action he was nearly killed again. An arrow pierced his throat when the gale
had driven him under one of the Genoese forts. Lest he should bleed to death
he would not pluck out the missile, but remained on deck to save his ship;
till, stumbling in the dusk, he fell down an open hatch. He was lifted up
senseless, the arrow was withdrawn, and he was half suffocated by his own
blood; but his senses revived, and he had himself turned upon his face, so
that the blood might run freely out and allow him to breathe. To such a man
it seemed as if nothing short of sudden death outright could be fatal; he
refused to leave his ship, and in a marvellously short space of time he was
about his duty again as if nothing had happened.
Meanwhile Pisani pushed the siege and bombarded Chioggia. In his force
there were numbers of German and English mercenaries, who came to blows
and killed each other by the score; but an English captain named William
Gold had authority enough to quell the disorder, and the regular fighting
went on.
Pisani continued to bombard Brondolo. The beginnings of
artillery were unwieldy in the extreme, it being thought that the Rom. iii.
289.
main object should be to throw a missile of great size and
weight, even at long intervals, rather than to discharge much smaller
ammunition with precise aim. One of Pisani’s mortars is said to have thrown
a marble ball weighing two hundred pounds, and the smallest siege mortars
projected masses of one hundred and forty pounds. To clean, load, and once
fire one of these clumsy howitzers was often the work of a whole day; but if
by any chance the shot took effect, the result was formidable. A single ball
from Pisani’s great bombard knocked down the church tower of Brondolo
with a considerable piece of the ramparts close by, burying Pietro Doria and
his nephew under the ruins.
The Venetians now held all the approaches to the lagoons
from the sea; and by taking the port of Loredo at the mouth of Rom. iii.
288.
the Adige, they cut off Brondolo and Chioggia from all
communication with the Duke of Ferrara, who had hitherto sent supplies of
provisions and reinforcements by that way. The time was not far distant
when famine must begin to make itself felt among the besieged, and the
Venetians redoubled their efforts.
Meanwhile, after the death of Doria, a bold man of original mind,
Napoleone Grimaldi, took command of the Genoese. He soon saw that in the
existing conditions Brondolo must fall, and that his fleet could never escape.
It occurred to him that a canal could be dug straight through the island to the
open sea, by which he could bring his ships out during the night, and
immediately threaten Venice herself, before the Venetian fleet could return.
The work was begun, but the Venetians discovered it in time. Grimaldi
had even then no less than thirteen thousand fighting men in Brondolo and
Chioggia; the Venetians had barely eight thousand. They had appealed to the
famous English condottiero John Hawkwood, whose engagement to fight for
the Milanese had just expired; but he either thought the Venetians were
playing a losing game, or else he found more lucrative employment
elsewhere, for after promising his assistance he failed to come. Venice now
called for volunteers, and all sorts and conditions of men appeared in answer
to the call. Among them there was even a canon of Saint Mark’s, Giovanni
Loredan, with four of his servants.
In the absence of any famous condottiero to take the command, the
Signory condescended to appoint Carlo Zeno to the command of the land
troops. He saw that if Grimaldi’s project was to be frustrated, Brondolo must
be taken at once, and the whole Genoese force must be driven into Chioggia.
He was as good a soldier as he was a sailor, and he did not fail. His practice
in all warfare was to take every possible precaution before fighting at all,
and then to engage with the most reckless and furious energy.
Deceived by Zeno’s manœuvres, the whole garrison of Brondolo was
drawn out in the direction of ‘Little’ Chioggia. Seizing the opportune
moment, Zeno then succeeded in throwing himself between Brondolo itself
and its small army, at the very moment when the latter was attacked by
Zeno’s soldiers of fortune. The whole body of Genoese fled in a panic
towards the bridge of Chioggia, trampling upon each other, pursued and cut
to pieces by Zeno. Under the weight of the fugitives the bridge broke, and
hundreds were drowned in the canal, while the Venetians literally slew
thousands within a quarter of a mile of the bridge head. That night a perfect
suit of armour could be bought for a ducat—just fifteen shillings.
Brondolo was lost that day. And worse followed, for though the Genoese
commander threatened to hang every fighting man who left Chioggia—if he
could catch him—the garrison deserted in great numbers during the night,
many of them being Paduans and subjects of Carrara, who had not far to go
in order to reach their homes.
It was clear to Grimaldi that since this last defeat he could expect no
further help except from Genoa itself; and, in fact, a fleet of twenty galleys
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