The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

The Genoese Wars
The enmities created within the Eastern Empire by the Fourth Crusade were
soon to rebound on Venice. The Genoese were now the main opposition in the
eastern markets, maintaining a rivalry so violent that some Venetian historians
refer to their succession of conflicts as the Five Genoese Wars. Genoa’s hatred of
Venice led to an alliance with the dethroned Byzantine dynasty, whose loathing
of the Venetians was no less intense; within months of the Pact of Ninfeo (1261),
Michael Palaeologus VIII was installed as emperor in Constantinople. Venice
now faced a struggle to hold onto its commercial interests against the favoured
Genoese.
For the rest of the century, and almost all the fourteenth century, the defeat of
Genoa was the primary aim of Venice’s rulers. Both sides suffered terrible defeats:
at the battle of Curzola (1298) 65 ships out of a Venetian fleet of 95 were lost,
and 5000 Venetians taken captive; at the Sardinian port of Alghero (1353) the
Genoese navy lost a similar proportion of its vessels. The climax came with the
Fourth War of Genoa, better known as the War of Chioggia. Following a victory
over the Venetians at Zara in 1379, the Genoese fleet sailed on to Venice,
supported by the Paduans and the Austrians, and quickly took Chioggia. This was
the zenith of Genoa’s power – in August 1380 the invaders were driven off, and
although the treaty signed between the two cities seemed inconclusive, within a
few decades it was clear that Venice had at last won the battle for economic and
political supremacy.
Political upheaval
It was during the Genoese campaigns that the constitution of Venice arrived at
a state that was to endure until the fall of the Republic, the most significant step
in this evolution being the Serrata del Maggior Consiglio of 1297, a measure
which basically allowed a role in the government of the city only to those families
already involved in it. Not surprisingly, many of those disenfranchised by the
Serrata resented its instigator, Doge Pietro Gradenigo, and when Venice lost its
tussle with the papacy for possession of Ferrara in 1309, it seemed that Gradenigo
had scarcely a single supporter in the city. Yet the insurrection that came the following
year was a revolt of a patrician clique, not an uprising of the people; its
leader – Bajamonte Tiepolo – had personal reasons for opposing the doge and
appears to have wanted to replace the new system not with a more democratic one
but with a despotic regime headed by himself. Tiepolo’s private army was routed
in a battle in the centre of the city, but his rebellion had a permanent effect upon
the history of Venice, in that it led to the creation in 1310 of the Council of
Ten, a committee empowered to supervise matters of internal security. Though
the Council was intended to be an emergency measure, its tenure was repeatedly
extended until, in 1334, it was made a permanent institution.
The most celebrated attempt to subvert the Venetian government followed a few
years later, in 1355, and this time the malefactor was the doge himself – Marin
Falier, who ironically had played a large part in the sentencing of Bajamonte
Tiepolo. Falier’s plot to overthrow the councils of Venice and install himself as
absolute ruler seems to have been prompted by his fury at the lenient treatment
given to a young nobleman who had insulted him. Exploiting the grievances felt
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A brief history of Venice
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