With so many choices before Venice, moving forward in the interests of the city always took some consideration. The year before the city had joined in league with Milan and Naples and the Pope in order to stop the King of France and send his armies out of Italy, as they understood it, for the greater good. The city also knew, if they could show dominance in general, and effectively use their resources at the right time and place, she could pick up some very useful territory. Any of which could be bargained over later, if things went that way.
Pietro Bembo, in his History of Venice gives us a speech credited to a ducal counsellor, Marco Bollani regarding the possibilities of protecting Pisa. To sum up his argument, as Bembo told it, Bollani first weighs a counter argument for advancing to this prize, comparing the advance and capture of nearby Vicenza in 1404. This expedition had established the primacy of Venice over affairs in Vicenza not forty miles away. That city had sent emissaries to ask for protection when they were 'hard pressed' by neighboring Padua. And after negotiations, that time, Vicenza surrendered to Venice.
"In what way did that surrender resemble this one? Vicenza was in close proximity and practically bordering our lands, so that the way there and access to the town could not be blocked. It was itself a free city, and not one previously subject to the rulers of Padua. When therefore the anbassadors returned with Venetian forces to support them, it was easily defended and held. Nor did Venice make any new enemies on account of Vicenza, but those same forebears of ours started war again on a fiercer footing with the Republic's traditional enemy, and brought it to a successful conclusion." [iii,14]Genoa was the traditional enemy of Venice. Pisa was in the neighborhood of Genoa, just down the coast. But Bollani explains the two cases weren't that similar. Vicenza was near while Pisa relatively far away. There were mostly friendly cities in between who neighbored Pisa, and who would see the advance of Venetian forces, through their territory, as potentially offensive. The expense alone was hard to imagine. So, to complete his argument, Bembo has his speaker Bollani use a series of negative conditionals in order to dissuade the audience.
"... if you do not see that to gain our ends we shall have to inflict a grave injury and misfortune on a friendly people and a republic which has never provoked us in any manner; if you do not see that we will confirm by this precedent, and in a way we could not afterwards deny, the view long settled in the minds of men that we above all others are preoccupied with a passion for dominance; ...".[iii,15]The Council of Ten knew they were in a fragile, but necessary league with Milan and the Pope, and knew they would need them in order to flush the French out of all the keeps and towns that they had taken up and down the peninsula. Making moves against or ostensibly for Pisa at this time could put this League in danger of collapsing. Venice's reputation preceded any of her actions. They had to proceed cautiously. This then is what they did. But before long it became clear to all that her long term motivations would still be at play.
"... nor can we guess with any accuracy where all this will end, so we should really be considering not so much the start of a new war as concluding those already started and quenching the flames that have set the finest and most beautiful parts of Italy alight...". [iii,15]___________________________________________
p. 183 from Pietro Bembo: History of Venice; edited and translated by Robert W Ulery, Jr.; in english and latin, The I Tatti Renaissance Library; The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2007
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