Part 17

At the time when Falieri entered upon his dogeship the city in all quarters was pervaded by the spies of this great oligarchy, which seized and imprisoned citizens, and even put them to death, secretly, without itself being answerable to any authority. The most notable event in the annals of this extraordinary Venetian government is that which forms the story of Marino Falieri himself. His conspiracy with the plebeians to assassinate the oligarchs and make himself actual ruler of the state had the double motive of a personal grievance and the sense of a political wrong.

The fate of this old man has been made the subject of tragedies by Byron (1820), Casimir Delavigne (1829), and Swinburne (1885). The novel, _Doge und Dogaressa_, by Ernst Theodor Hoffmann, was inspired by the same dramatic figure. Of historical accounts, the following--in Mrs. Oliphant's best manner--is justly regarded as the most impressive which has hitherto appeared in English.

Marino Falieri had been an active servant of Venice through a long life. He had filled almost all the great offices which were intrusted to her nobles. He had governed her distant colonies, accompanied her armies in that position of _proveditore_, omnipotent civilian critic of all the movements of war, which so much disgusted the generals of the republic. He had been ambassador at the courts of both emperor and pope, and was serving his country in that capacity at Avignon when the news of his election reached him.

It is thus evident that Falieri was not a man used to the position of a lay figure, although at seventy-six the dignified retirement of a throne, even when so encircled with restrictions, would seem not inappropriate. That he was of a haughty and hasty temper seems apparent. It is told of him that, after waiting long for a bishop to head a procession at Treviso where he was _podesta_ ("chief magistrate"), he astonished the tardy prelate by a box on the ear when he finally appeared, a punishment for keeping the authorities waiting.

Old age to a statesman, however, is in many cases an advantage rather than a defect, and Falieri was young in vigor and character, and still full of life and strength. He was married a second time to presumably a beautiful wife much younger than himself, though the chroniclers are not agreed even on the subject of her name, whether she was a Gradenigo or a Contarini. The well-known story of young Steno's insult to this lady and to her old husband has found a place in all subsequent histories, but there is no trace of it in the unpublished documents of the state.

The story goes that Michel Steno, one of those young and insubordinate gallants who are a danger to every aristocratic state, having been turned out of the presence of the Dogaressa for some unseemly freedom of behavior, wrote upon the chair of the Doge in boyish petulance an insulting taunt, such as might well rouse a high-tempered old man to fury. According to Sanudo, the young man, on being brought before the Forty,[56] confessed that he had thus avenged himself in a fit of passion; and regard having been had to his age and the "heat of love" which had been the cause of his original misdemeanor--a reason seldom taken into account by the tribunals of the state--he was condemned to prison for two months, and afterward to be banished for a year from Venice.

The Doge took this light punishment greatly amiss, considering it, indeed, as a further insult.

Sabellico says not a word of Michel Steno, or of this definite cause of offence, and Romanin quotes the contemporary records to show that though _Alcuni zovanelli fioli de gentiluomini di Venetia_ are supposed to have affronted the Doge, no such story finds a place in any of them. But the old man thus translated from active life and power, soon became bitterly sensible in his new position that he was _senza parentado_, with few relations, and flouted by the _giovinastri_, the dissolute young gentlemen who swaggered about the Broglio in their finery, strong in the support of fathers and uncles.

That he found himself, at the same time, shelved in his new rank, powerless, and regarded as a nobody in the state where hitherto he had been a potent signior--mastered in every action by the secret tribunal, and presiding nominally in councils where his opinion was of little consequence--is evident. And a man so well acquainted, and so long, with all the proceedings of the state, who had seen consummated the shutting out of the people, and since had watched through election after election a gradual tightening of the bonds round the feet of the doge, would naturally have many thoughts when he found himself the wearer of that restricted and diminished crown.

He could not be unconscious of how the stream was going, nor unaware of that gradual sapping of privilege and decreasing of power which even in his own case had gone further than with his predecessor. Perhaps he had noted with an indignant mind the new limits of the _promissione_, a narrower charter than ever, when he was called upon to sign it. He had no mind, we may well believe, to retire thus from the administration of affairs. And when these giovinastri, other people's boys, the scum of the gay world, flung their unsavory jests in the face of the old man who had no son to come after him, the silly insults so lightly uttered, so little thought of, the natural scoff of youth at old age, stung him to the quick.

Old Falieri's heart burned within him at his own injuries and those of his old comrades. How he was induced to head the conspiracy, and put his crown, his life, and honor on the cast, there is no further information. His fierce temper, and the fact that he had no powerful house behind him to help to support his case, probably made him reckless. In April, 1355, six months after his arrival in Venice as doge, the smouldering fire broke out. Two of the conspirators were seized with compunction on the eve of the catastrophe and betrayed the plot--one with a merciful motive to serve a patrician he loved, the other with perhaps less noble intentions--and, without a blow struck, the conspiracy collapsed. There was no real heart in it, nothing to give it consistence; the hot passion of a few men insulted, the variable gaseous excitement of wronged commoners, and the ambition--if it was ambition--of one enraged and affronted old man, without an heir to follow him or anything that could make it worth his while to conquer.

An enterprise more wild was never undertaken. It was the passionate stand of despair against force so overwhelming as to make mad the helpless, yet not submissive, victims. The Doge, who no doubt in former days had felt it to be a mere affair of the populace, a thing with which a noble ambassador and proveditore had nothing to do, a struggle beneath his notice, found himself at last, with fury and amazement, to be a fellow-sufferer caught in the same toils. There seems no reason to believe that Falieri consciously staked the remnant of his life on the forlorn hope of overcoming that awful and pitiless power, with any real hope of establishing his own supremacy. His aspect is rather that of a man betrayed by passion, and wildly forgetful of all possibility in his fierce attempt to free himself and get the upper hand. One cannot but feel in that passion of helpless age and unfriendedness, something of the terrible disappointment of one to whom the real situation of affairs had never been revealed before; who had come home triumphant to reign like the doges of old, and, only after the ducal cap was on his head and the palace of the state had become his home, found out that the doge--like the unconsidered plebeian--had been reduced to bondage; his judgment and experience put aside in favor of the deliberations of a secret tribunal, and the very boys, when they were nobles, at liberty to jeer at his declining years.

The lesser conspirators, all men of the humbler sort--Calendario, the architect, who was then at work upon the palace, a number of seamen, and other little-known persons--were hanged; not like the greater criminals, beheaded between the columns, but strung up--a horrible fringe--along the side of the palazzo. The fate of Falieri himself is too generally known to demand description. Calmed by the tragic touch of fate, the Doge bore all the humiliations of his doom with dignity, and was beheaded at the head of the stairs where he had sworn the promissione on first assuming the office of doge.

What a contrast was this from that triumphant day when probably he felt that his reward had come to him after the long and faithful service of years. Death stills disappointment as well as rage, and Falieri is said to have acknowledged the justice of his sentence. He had never made any attempt to justify or defend himself, but frankly and at once avowed his guilt and made no attempt to escape from its penalties. His body was conveyed privately to the Church of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, the great "Zanipolo"--with which all visitors to Venice are familiar--and was buried in secrecy and silence in the _atrio_ of a little chapel behind the great church--where no doubt for centuries the pavement was worn by many feet with little thought of those who lay below. Even from that refuge his bones have been driven forth, but his name remains in the corner of the Hall of the Great Council, where--with a certain dramatic affectation--the painter-historians have painted a black veil across the vacant place. "This is the place of Marino Falieri, beheaded for his crimes," is all the record left of the Doge disgraced.

Was it a crime? The question is one which it is difficult to discuss with any certainty. That Falieri desired to establish--as so many had done in other cities--an independent despotism in Venice, seems entirely unproved. It was the prevailing fear; the one suggestion which alarmed everybody and made sentiment unanimous. But one of the special points which are recorded by the chroniclers as working in him to madness, was that he was _senza parentado_--without any backing of relationship or allies--_i.e._, sonless, with no one to come after him. How little likely then was an old man to embark on such a desperate venture for self-aggrandizement merely. He had, indeed, a nephew who was involved in his fate, but apparently not so deeply as to expose him to the last penalty of the law.

The incident altogether points more to a sudden outbreak of the rage and disappointment of an old public servant coming back from his weary labors for the state in triumph and satisfaction to what seemed the supreme reward; and finding himself no more than a puppet in the hands of remorseless masters, subject to the scoffs of the younger generation, with his eyes opened by his own suffering, perceiving for the first time what justice there was in the oft-repeated protest of the people, and how they and he alike were crushed under the iron heel of that oligarchy to which the power of the people and that of the Prince were equally obnoxious. The chroniclers of his time were so much at a loss to find any reason for such an attempt on the part of a man, _non abbiando alcum propinquo_, that they agree in attributing it to diabolical inspiration.

It was more probably that fury which springs from a sense of wrong, which the sight of the wrongs of others raised to frenzy, and that intolerable impatience of the impotent which is more harsh in its hopelessness than the greatest hardihood. He could not but die for it, but there seems no more reason to characterize this impossible attempt as deliberate treason than to give the same name to many an alliance formed between prince and people in other regions--the king and commons of the early Stuarts, for example--against the intolerable exactions and cruelty of an aristocracy too powerful to be faced alone by either.

CHARLES IV OF GERMANY PUBLISHES HIS GOLDEN BULL

A.D. 1356

SIR ROBERT COMYN

The Golden Bull of Charles IV of Germany, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, first published at the Diet of Nuremberg in 1356, was a charter--sometimes called the "Magna Charta of Germany"--regulating the election of the emperor. It was called "golden" because the seal attached to the parchment on which it was engrossed was of gold instead of the customary lead. In a diet at Metz in the same year six additional clauses were promulgated.

By some historians the origin of the imperial electoral college is assigned to the year 1125, when at the election of Lothair II certain of the nobles and church dignitaries made a selection of candidates to be voted for. But until the promulgation of the Golden Bull the constitution and prerogatives of the college were never definitely ascertained.

The personal traits and the languid reign of Charles IV have been treated by historians with derision. He forgot the general welfare of the empire in his eagerness to enrich his own house and aggrandize his paternal kingdom of Bohemia. The one remarkable law which emanated from him, and whereby alone his reign is distinguished in the constitutional history of the empire, is that embodied in the Golden Bull. By this instrument the dignity of the electors was greatly enhanced, and the disputes which had arisen between members of the same house as to their right of suffrage were terminated. The number of electors was absolutely restricted to seven.

After a solemn invocation of the Trinity, a reprobation of the seven deadly sins, and a pointed allusion to the seven candlesticks and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, the Golden Bull proceeds to the subject of the imperial election. It provides, in the first place, for the safe conduct of the seven electors to and from Frankfort-on-the-Main, which is fixed as the place of election; it directs the archbishop of Mainz to summon the electors upon the death of the emperor, and regulates the manner in which their proxies are to be appointed; it enjoins the citizens of Frankfort to protect the assembled electors; and forbids them to admit any stranger into the city during the election.

It next prescribes the form of oath to be taken by the electors; and also forbids them to quit the city before the completion of the election; and after thirty days restricts their diet to bread and water. A majority of votes is to decide the election; and in case any elector obtain three votes, his own vote is to be taken in his favor.

The precedence of the electors is thus settled: First, the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves; then the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The Elector of Treves is to vote first; then the Elector of Cologne; then the secular electors; and the Elector of Mainz is finally to collect the votes and deliver his own.

The Elector of Cologne is to perform the coronation. At all feasts the Margrave of Brandenburg, as grand chamberlain, is to present the Emperor with water to wash; the King of Bohemia, as cup-bearer, is to offer the goblet of wine; the Count Palatine, as grand steward, is to set the first dish on the table; and the Duke of Saxony is to officiate as grand marshal.

The Count Palatine and the Duke of Saxony are declared vicars of the empire during the vacancy of the throne. An exclusive jurisdiction is guaranteed to the electors; and their precedence over all other princes of Germany is enforced.

The right of voting is vested in the eldest son of a deceased elector, provided he have attained the age of eighteen; and during the minority, the guardianship and vote are vested in the next kinsman of the deceased.

If one of the lay electorates become vacant by default of heirs, it shall revert to the Emperor, and be by him disposed of--Bohemia excepted, where the vacancy is to be supplied by ancient mode of election.

The electors are invested with the possession of all mines discovered within their respective territories. They are authorized to give refuge to the Jews, and to receive dues payable within their states. They are also privileged to coin money, and to purchase lands subject to the feudal rights of the sovereign.

A yearly assembly of the electors, in one of the imperial cities, is enjoined.

All privileges granted to any city or community prejudicial to the rights of the electors are revoked. All fraudulent resignations of fiefs by vassals, with intent to attack their lords, are declared void. All leagues, associations, and confederacies, not sanctioned by law, are made punishable by fine; and all burgesses and subjects of princes and nobles are to adhere to their original subjection, and not to claim any rights or exemptions as burgesses of any city unless actually domiciled therein.

Challenges, with design of destroying another's property or committing any outrage, are prohibited; and all challenges are to be given three days before the onset.

The forms of summoning electors, and of their delegation of proxies, are laid down. And the right of voting, as well as all other rights, is declared inseparably incident to the electoral principality.

On grand occasions the Duke of Saxony is to carry the sword; the Count Palatine, the globe; the Margrave of Brandenburg, the sceptre. In celebrating mass before the Emperor, the benedictions are to be pronounced by the senior spiritual elector present.

All persons conspiring against the lives of the electors are declared guilty of leze-majesty, and shall forfeit their lives and possessions. The lives of their sons, though justly forfeited, are spared only by the particular bounty of the Emperor; but they are declared incapable of holding any property, honor, or dignity, and doomed to perpetual poverty. The daughters are permitted to enjoy one-fourth of their mother's succession.

The secular principalities, Bohemia, the Palatinate, the duchy of Saxony, and the margravate of Brandenburg, are declared indivisible and entire, descendible in the male line.

On all the solemn occasions the electors shall attend the Emperor, and the arch-chancellors shall carry the seals. And the bull then proceeds minutely to point out the manner in which the electors are to exercise their ministerial functions at the imperial banquet; and regulates the order and disposition of the imperial and electoral tables.

Frankfort is again declared as the place of election; Aix-la-Chapelle, of coronation; and Nuremberg, for holding the first royal court.

The electors are exempted from all payments on receiving their fiefs from their sovereign. But other princes are to pay certain fees, etc., to the imperial officers.

Lastly, the secular electors are enjoined to instruct their sons in the Latin, Italian, and Slavonic tongues.

At the final promulgation of the bull in the Diet of Metz the Emperor and Empress feasted, in the presence of the dauphin (Charles V) and the legate of Pope Innocent VI, with all the pageantry and ceremonies prescribed by the new ordinances. The imperial tables were spread in the grand square of the city; Rudolph, Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg, attended with a silver measure of oats, and marshalled the order of the company; Louis II, Margrave of Brandenburg, presented to the Emperor the golden basin, with water and fair napkins; Rupert, Count Palatine, placed the first dish upon the table; and the Emperor's brother, Wenceslaus, representing the King of Bohemia, officiated as cup-bearer. Lastly, the princes of Schwarzburg and the deputy huntsman came with three hounds amid the loud din of horns, and carried up a stag and a boar to the table of the Emperor.

INSURRECTION OF THE JACQUERIE IN FRANCE

A.D. 1358

SIR JOHN FROISSART

The defeat of the French under King John II, at Poitiers, by the British forces of Edward, the Black Prince, September 19, 1356, aroused great indignation among the common people of France, with scorn of the nobility; for these leaders, with an army of sixty thousand, had fled before an enemy whom they outnumbered seven to one. In the next assembly of the states-general the bourgeois obtained a preponderance so intolerable to the nobles that they withdrew to their homes. A little later the deputies of the clergy also retired, leaving only the representatives of the cities--among whom the supremacy of the members from Paris was generally accepted--to deal with the affairs of the kingdom.

At this point appeared a man who in an age "so uncivilized and sombre," says Pierre Robiquet, "by wonderful instinct laid down and nearly succeeded in obtaining the adoption of the essential principles on which modern society is founded--the government of the country by elected representatives, taxes voted by representatives of the taxpayers, abolition of privileges founded upon right of birth, extension of political rights to all citizens, and subordination of traditional sovereignty to that of the nation." This man was Etienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris--that is to say, mayor of the municipality, whom eminent historians have called the greatest personage of the fourteenth century. During a career of three years his name dominates French history--a brief ascendency, but of potent influence. His endeavor, in Thierry's view, "was, as it were, a premature attempt at the grand designs of Providence, and the mirror of the bloody changes of fortune through which those designs were destined to advance to their accomplishment under the impulse of human passions."

After the disaster of Poitiers, Marcel finished the fortifications of Paris and barricaded the streets, and in the assembly there he presided over the bourgeois--the Third Estate. In the growing conflict between the two other estates--nobles and clergy--and the third, Marcel armed the bourgeois and began an open revolution, thus organizing the commune for carrying out his designs. The nobles were meanwhile laying heavier miseries upon the peasantry, and in the spring of 1358 occurred the rising of the Jacquerie, here described by Froissart, whose brilliant narrative is to be read in the light of modern critical judgment, which regards it as an exaggeration both of the numbers of the insurgents and their atrocities, while Froissart had no capacity for understanding the conditions which explain, if they do not also justify, the present revolt.

This outbreak, to which Marcel gave his support, was enough to ruin his cause, and he died in a massacre, July 31, 1358, having failed "because the time was not yet ripe," and because the violence to which he lent his sanction was overcome by stronger violence.

A marvellous and great tribulation befell the kingdom of France, in Beauvoisis, Brie, upon the river Marne, in the Laonnois, and in the neighborhood of Soissons. Some of the inhabitants of the country towns assembled together in Beauvoisis, without any leader; they were not at first more than one hundred men. They said that the nobles of the kingdom of France, knights and squires, were a disgrace to it, and that it would be a very meritorious act to destroy them all; to which proposition everyone assented, and added, shame befall him that should be the means of preventing the gentlemen from being wholly destroyed. They then, without further counsel, collected themselves in a body, and with no other arms than the staves shod with iron which some had, and others with knives, marched to the house of a knight who lived near, and, breaking it open, murdered the knight, his lady, and all the children, both great and small; they then burned the house.