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

Treviso. Back home, he had frequently been elected a member of the Council of Ten. Despite his age, he remained vigorous and was deemed the ideal man to lead the city during this dark time of war.
    At the time of his election Marin Falier had been on a diplomatic mission to Pope Innocent IV in Avignon, petitioning him to mediate in the conflict between Venice and Milan (and, by extension, Genoa). When Falier returned to Venice, the lagoon was shrouded in a thick October fog, causing his boat to miss the official jetty and put in at the stone quay known as the Molo. When Falier stepped ashore and walked between the two columns, which to this day stand between the landing stage and the Doge’s Palace, many saw this as an evil omen – here was the site where public executions were held. The story of what ensued is equally enshrouded in fog, but this time the fog of legend.
    Falier is said to have been a headstrong man, who not only bore long-term grudges, but had a quick temper (whilst podestà of Treviso, he had publicly slapped the local bishop for arriving late at a ceremony). When he had been recalled to become doge, he had expected to take on the roleof forceful wartime leader. Instead he was forced to sign a promissione (a solemnly sworn, legally binding document) containing restrictions on the doge’s power, which had recently been.voted into law.
    Falier’s chagrin had been reinforced when news of the defeat at Porto Lungo reached Venice just a month after he had taken office. There was a widespread feeling in the city that the catastrophe of Porto Lungo had been the culmination of bad leadership by the nobles, whose arrogance was becoming intolerable to the wider section of the populace. Falier decided that in this time of need the city required leaders who had expertise rather than breeding, and ordered the commissioning of four armed galleys under the command of experienced sea captains who were commoners. This appointment was greeted with some consternation by the nobles, and matters are said to have come to a head at the pre-Lenten Carnival banquet, a boisterous occasion that was traditionally hosted by the doge in his palace. When a young noble called Michele Steno began drunkenly molesting one of the dogaressa’s female attendants, Falier ordered him to be removed.
    Several years earlier Falier had married a second wife, who was some decades his junior, and Steno now avenged himself by placing a placard on the doge’s throne in the council chamber, on which was written the following scurrilous verse:
    Marin Falier has a wife who’s a cracker,
    While he keeps her, others fuck her.
    Falier immediately reported this insult to the Forty, the council ultimately responsible for justice, expecting them to give Steno an exemplary punishment. However, in the light of Steno’s youth and previous good character, the Forty chose to treat the matter as little more than a Carnival jape, instead passing a light sentence. Falier was outraged at what he saw as an insult to himself, his wife and his office – and at the connivance of nobles who had turned against him.
    Around this time another incident was to aggravate the tensions between the nobility and the new doge. A popular ship’s captain called Bertucci Isarello, who was a commoner, had been approached by the noble GiovanniDandolo, a naval administrator, and instructed to take on a family friend as a member of his crew. When Isarello refused, Dandolo struck him. This dispute took place in the Camera dell’Armamento, the armoury in the Doge’s Palace (of which the doge’s personal quarters formed only a small part; this building also contained the government offices, such as the Great Council chamber, as well as those of other councils and administrative departments, the law courts and prison). Incensed at his treatment, Isarello stormed out of the palace onto the quayside, where he soon gathered together a gang of sympathetic sailors who proceeded to pace