there was one important difference between the two states which ultimately turned the scales decisively in favour of Venice. By the beginning of the century she had built up a constitution which, whatever its narrowness and other defects, had the supreme merit of stability. The so-called conspiracy of Marin Falier, which led to the execution of the Doge in 1355, only served to prove the strength of the edifice which he proposed to attack, and the impotence of the chief magistrate to resist the Council of Ten. Genoa, on the other hand, was one of the most turbulent and factious of Italian cities. For a long time the leaders of these domestic feuds were the four noble houses of Doria, Fieschi, Spinola, and Grimaldi, who disguised their family jealousies under the names of Ghibelline and Guelf. In 1339 the Genoese, weary of their factions, adopted for their chief magistracy the title of Doge, and conferred it by acclamation upon an eminent citizen, Simone Boccanegra. After the fashion of Florence and other Tuscan communes, the nobles were disqualified from holding political office. But in Genoa the remedy proved wholly illusory. The nobles continued to command the military and naval forces of the republic, and were thus enabled to retain their predominance in the state. The offices, which they could not hold themselves, were conferred upon their plebeian adherents, as the Adorni and Fregosi, who for a long time succeeded each other in the dogeship according to the fluctuations of power among their noble patrons. As Commines tells us, ‘the nobles in Genoa could appoint a doge, though they could not hold the office themselves.’ Thus Genoa continued to be distracted by factions, and when the citizens sought a brief interval of repose, the only method by which they could secure it was to sacrifice their liberty to a foreign ruler—sometimes to Milan, and sometimes to France.