The Venetians: A New History: from Marco Polo to Casanova by Paul Strathern

coast from the place where Pisani’s fleet was wintering. As the storm abated, Doria despatched his nephew Giovanni in a lighttrireme to reconnoitre. Giovanni returned to report that the Venetian fleet was ripe for the taking, with just fourteen galleys guarding the bay and the other smaller ships, together with twenty-one galleys all lashed together by the shore. Despite having fewer galleys at his disposal, Admiral Doria seized his opportunity and on 4 November 1354 launched his fleet into the attack. In the ensuing surprise his nephew Giovanni succeeded in eluding the protective line of Venetian galleys, leading a further dozen galleys into Porto Lungo, where the tied-up Venetian galleys were soon captured and their crews taken prisoner. Reflecting patriotic bitterness and the prejudice of his age, the Venetian historian de Monacis remarked of Doria’s victory, ‘He routed them without a struggle, and overcame them without a victory. You would have thought that one side was made up of armed men, while the others were unarmed women.’
    In all, the Genoese finally captured more than thirty galleys, and took 5,000 prisoners. The remaining Venetians, together with Pisani, managed to escape ashore and made their way five miles along the coast to Corone. This time Pisani would be granted no leniency. As a result of his humiliating defeat, when he arrived back in Venice he was sentenced to pay a heavy fine and stripped of any further command for life.
    On 7 September 1354, in the midst of the renewed hostility with the Genoese, the venerable doge Andrea Dandolo had died. Although his eleven-year reign had witnessed disasters ranging from earthquakes to the plague and the two wars with Genoa, he remained a highly respected figure throughout. Dandolo came from a distinguished family, which had already provided the city with doges and an admiral. As a young man he had shown such marked legal talent that he had been elected to a senior post within the administration in his early twenties, and this had led to him being elected doge at the exceptionally young age of thirty-six. Previous doges had often been elected from the city’s leading families on account of their military achievements, but it was felt that Dandolo’s legal preoccupations would enable him to avoid becoming embroiled in the increasing disputes between the city’s leading families. And this proved to be the case. Dandolo instituted a review of the city’s legal system, which resulted in the ironing out of many potentially conflicting anachronisms, and he played a similar role with regard to the city’s external affairs, rationalising Venice’streaty obligations towards foreign powers both within Italy and beyond. He also found time to write a history of Venice, but in the words of the distinguished Renaissance historian Frederic C. Lane, this further task was unfortunately undertaken ‘in the same lawyer-like spirit. His chronicle contained a mass of documents selected to prove that Venice was always right.’ As Dandolo’s friend Petrarch wrote: ‘Death was kind to him, in sparing him the sight of his country’s bitter sorrow [after the defeat of Porto Longo], and the still more bitter letters I would have written him.’ Although Petrarch referred to Dandolo as ‘a good man, beyond any corruption, he remained angry at Dandolo’s rejection of his peace mission.
    The doge was traditionally chosen by a specially selected council of forty-one nobles, and the cautious policy of this council ensured the choosing of a man who was both old and wise (the average age of a doge on election was seventy). Dandolo’s successor, the sixty-nine-year-old Marin Falier, was chosen for office on the first ballot by a resounding thirty-five votes. During a long and distinguished career Falier had served as commander of the Black Sea fleet and had led an army in the city’s service, as well as being the Republic’s podestà (provincial governor) in both Chioggia and