A Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797

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history has often been analyzed. Describing the early conquests in the
Trevisan, Pierre Daru (1807–90) concludes:

This was the first establishment of the Venetians on the continent. This con-

quest of Trevisan produced a revolution in their political system, opened a

new career for their ambition, gave them two hundred years of war, and

repeatedly put their republic in extreme peril. For nine hundred years

Venice flourished two leagues from the coast of Italy, powerful, in posses-

sion of an organized government, showing no ambitious views on the neigh-

boring continent.10

The History of Italian Republics by Sismondi (1773–1842) is no more
nuanced:

After Venice had acquired Terraferma states, this republic neglected its

oversea provinces, its trade and its navy, true bases of its power, to engage

in the politics of the continent: it took part in all the wars and in all the

revolutions of Lombardy; and it elicited such jealousy, such deep and uni-

versal hatred, from which, after a century of intrigue and fighting, emerged

the league of Cambrai.11

In the work of this author, an admirer of economic liberalism, the concern
for the defense and illustration of the merchant bourgeoisie accuses the
traditional condemnation of the famous continental about-face.

For as long as the Venetian nobles, devoted solely to trade, have refrained

from possessing even the smallest farm beyond their lagoons, they defied

the efforts of both the barbarians and the combined efforts of Europe against

them: when they exchanged these fleeting fortunes for holdings on the Ter-

raferma, they tied to their own necks the very chain by which any powerful

enemy could seize them.12

Let us cite, to conclude, a Venetian testimony taken from the copious
writings of Pompeo Molmenti.13 There is no ambiguity in reading it. The
golden age of Venice ends with continental conquests. All that then would
have been necessary to ruin the Venetian monopoly was for the Portu-
guese to open a new trade route.
The territorial state would have formed a useless appendix, even a
harmful one, of little interest to the historian. The knowledge of what had

10 Pierre Daru, Histoire de la république de Venise, 7 vols (Paris, 1819), 1:523, 2:150–51.
11 J.-C.-L. Sismonde de Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques italiennes du Moyen Age, new
ed., 16 vols (Paris, 1826), 8:131.
12 Ibid., 4:161–62.
13 Pompeo Molmenti, La storia di Venezia nella vita privata dalle origini alla caduta della
repubblica, 3 vols (Venice, 1905; repr. Trieste, 1978).