But the campaign was far from being at a close. A great impediment was still to be conquered. Lesina, the principal member of the Illyrican group, and the chief resort of the pirates, still remained untaken; and the doge, having sent ten galleys from Trau to ravage the coast of Narenta, hastened with the main squadron to accomplish that object. Orseolo entered the harbour without hesitation; and the usual summons to surrender having produced no effect, an order was given to commence the assault. The Lesinese shrank in dismay from the tempest of stones and darts which poured without cessation over their walls; the escarpment was scaled; a tower was invested and taken; the Venetians entered the town; and, after a brief interval of license and confusion, the arrival of the doge restored order. The judicious clemency of Orseolo conciliated the esteem of the vanquished; and such was the powerful effect which the reduction of a place, generally thought to be unassailable, produced on its neighbours that, so soon as she heard of the fall of Lesina, the little republic of Ragusa despatched an embassy to offer her allegiance to the conqueror. At the same time, the ten galleys which had undertaken to lay waste the coast of Narenta, rejoined the main squadron with forty Croatian prizes; and this collateral success, which might be partly instrumental in humiliating King Dircislaus, afforded no slight satisfaction to Orseolo. Having thus, in the course of a few months, completed the object of his expedition, the doge concluded the campaign by dictating terms to the sea-robbers of Narenta; and Orseolo, having returned to the capital, and communicated to the national Arrengo the wonderful success which had attended the arms of the republic, was proclaimed Doge of Venice and Dalmatia (998). The assumption of this lofty appellation seems to have been entirely in harmony with the notions of sovereignty generally prevalent at that epoch. The incomplete conquest and precarious tenure of a few hundred miles of the Dalmatian seaboard sufficed, in the eyes of the Venetians, to constitute Dalmatia itself into an integral portion of their dominions; and it is a circumstance strikingly characteristic of the age, that, in conferring new honours upon the crown, no attempt was made to discriminate between an immense tract of country in which the republic had little or no territorial interest and over a small portion only of which she exercised the barest of feudal rights, and the islands, to which she enjoyed the fullest prescriptive and possessory title.[4][k] [Sidenote: [998-1198 A.D.]]