It may be answered, I think, with justice, that the Doges of illustrious memory, during the latter centuries of the Republic’s existence, had become famous as individual officers before their elevation to the throne. The last great fighting Doge was Enrico Dandolo, the conqueror of Constantinople, who died almost a hundred years before the closure of the Great Council. In the war of Chioggia, Andrea Contarini’s oath not to return into the city till the enemy was beaten had the force of a fine example, but the man himself contributed nothing else to the most splendid page in Venetian history. There were Doges who were good historians and writers, others who have been brave generals, others like Giovanni Mocenigo who were good financiers; but the fact of their having been Doges has nothing to do with the reputation they left afterwards. The sovereignty, when it was given to them, was a chain, not a sceptre, and from the day they went up the grand staircase as masters, their personal liberty of thought and action was more completely left behind than if they had entered by another door to spend the remainder of life in the prisons by the Ponte della Paglia, beyond the Bridge of Sighs. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the Doge Michel Steno was told in open Council to sit down and hold his peace. No change in the manners of the counsellors had taken place sixty years later when [Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Moro.’ Rom. iv. 319._] the Doge Cristoforo Moro objected to accompanying Pius the Second’s projected crusade in person, and was told by Vittor Cappello that if he would not go of his own accord he should be taken by force. It is hard to imagine a more unpleasant position than that of the chief of the State. Suppose, for instance, that by the choice of the Council some post or dignity was to be conferred on one of his relatives, or even on one of his friends; he was literally and categorically forbidden to exhibit the least satisfaction, or to thank the Council, even by a nod of the head. [Sidenote: _Yriarte, Vie d’un Patricien, 359, and Marin Sanudo._]