A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich

Author:John Julius Norwich
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141936789
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 1983-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

27

The Ferrara War and the Queen of Cyprus

[1481–1488]

You Venetians, it is certain, are very wrong to disturb the peace of other states rather than to rest content with the most splendid state of Italy, which you already possess. If you knew how you are universally hated, your hair would stand on end… Do you believe that these powers in Italy, now in league together, are truly friends among themselves? Of course they are not; it is only necessity, and the fear which they feel for you and your power, that has bound them in this way… You are alone, with all the world against you, not only in Italy but beyond the Alps also. Know then that your enemies do not sleep. Take good counsel, for, by God, you need it…

Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan,

to Giovanni Gonnella,

Secretary of the Venetian Republic, 1467

The refreshingly undiplomatic language which Duke Galeazzo Sforza, Francesco’s son and successor, had employed to the Secretary of the Venetian Republic in 1467 had been prompted by irritation over a relatively unimportant campaign by Colleoni. It exaggerated, perhaps, the peaceable intentions of the other states of Italy and it certainly underestimated the influence of another emotion, more reprehensible than fear but equally easy to understand, which informed their anti-Venetian policies: that of envy. They were envious of her beauty, of her magnificence, of her sea-girt invulnerability and above all of her apparently unshakeable political system which, even after the most severe economic or military reverses, ensured her a resilience and power of recovery that they could never hope to match. Yet, for all that, young Sforza was speaking the truth. Venice was hated, and that hatred grew steadily stronger as her neighbours watched her make her peace with the Turks and, soon afterwards, stand idly by while Apulia was sacked and pillaged by the Infidel. They made no attempt to understand her position; she for her part scarcely deigned to explain it, but pursued her own policies with all that arrogance, that quiet assumption of her own superiority, that they had long learned to expect but to which they could never become reconciled.

None the less, as the ninth decade of the fifteenth century opened to reveal her economy and her international reputation alike in ruins, it might have been expected that Venice would try to ensure for herself a period of peace and discreet diplomacy in which to restore them. Doge Giovanni Mocenigo and his Signoria seem to have reasoned differently. The Doge was by all accounts a gentle and modest character; but his portrait in the Correr Museum shows a hard, determined line about the mouth which may partially explain the action which the Republic took in the autumn of 1481 against its friend and close neighbour, Ferrara.

The two cities had been for many years on excellent terms; as recently as 1476 Venice had even intervened to support Duke Ercole of Este against an attempt by his nephew to usurp his throne. But now Ercole – encouraged, in

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