The turbulent spirit of the natives of the island, and the excessive love of independence exhibited by the Venetian nobles, to whom the Republic had granted fiefs in Candia, had brought matters to the verge of a revolution. The people flatly declined to pay tribute to the mother city, and strongly resented the remonstrances made by the Venetian government through Donato Dandolo, the governor of Crete. At last, when he demanded the payment of a tax which had been voted in order to strengthen the fortifications of the harbour, the Cretans replied that they would not pay a farthing until they had sent a deputation of twenty intelligent men to Venice, who should lay before the Senate a statement of the so-called rights of the colony. With more readiness than prudence, one of the governor’s Council answered that there were not twenty intelligent men in the island. The observation may not have been altogether unjust, judging from the total lack of sense afterwards shown by the Cretans, but it had the immediate and not surprising effect of irritating them, and the standard of revolt was raised within the hour. The flag of Saint Mark was torn down and replaced by one bearing the image of Saint Titus, the protector of the island, and before long the two parties were fighting under the war-cries of ‘Saint Titus!’ and ‘Saint Mark!’ the noble colonists and the natives on the one side, and the governor and his soldiers on the other. Venice at first attempted to recall the island to its allegiance by pacific embassies, but these were repulsed with indignity and insult, and a fleet of thirty-three galleys, carrying six thousand men, was despatched under Luchino dal Verme, a noble of Verona. The Candiotes had appealed in vain to the Genoese for help, the arch-enemies of their mother-country, and being left to their own resources they exhibited neither courage nor skill. In three days six thousand men reduced the hundred cities of the island to submission, and, after executing the ringleaders and taking due precautions against a fresh revolt, the victor set sail for Venice. Petrarch was in the city at the time, and in one of his letters he has left a brilliant and poetic account of the triumph that followed. [Sidenote: _Lettere senili di Petrarca (Basle) i. 782, quoted by G. R. Michiel._]