Andrea Doria himself--"Il principe" as he was styled--had a long and in some respects a checkered career. In his earlier life he obtained distinction as a successful naval commander, and in the curious complications which prevailed in those days among the Italian States and their neighbors ultimately became Admiral of the French fleet. But he found that Genoa would obtain little good from the French King, who was then practically its master; so he transferred his allegiance to the Emperor Charles, and by his aid expelled from his native city the troops with which he had formerly served. So great was his influence in Genoa that he might easily have obtained supreme power; but at this, like a true patriot, he did not grasp, and the Constitution, which was adopted under his influence, gradually put an end to the bitter party strife which had for so long been the plague of Genoa, and it remained in force until the French Revolution. Still, notwithstanding the gratitude generally felt for his great services to the State, he experienced in his long life--for he died at the age of ninety-two--the changefulness of human affairs. He had no son, and his heir and grand-nephew--a young man--was unpopular, and, as is often the case, the sapling was altogether inferior in character to the withering tree. The members of another great family--the Fieschi--entered into a conspiracy, and collected a body of armed men on the pretext of an expedition against the corsairs who for so long were the pests of the Mediterranean. The outbreak was well planned; on New Year's night, in the year 1547, the chief posts in the city were seized. Doria himself was just warned in time, and escaped capture; but his heir was assassinated, and his enemies seemed to have triumphed. But their success was changed to failure by an accident. Count Fiescho in passing along a plank to a galley in the harbor made a false step, and fell into the sea. In those days the wearing of armor added to the perils of the deep; the count sank like a stone, and so left the conspirators without a leader exactly at the most critical moment. They were thus before long defeated and dispersed, and had to experience the truth of the proverb, "Who breaks pays," for in those days men felt little sentimental tenderness for leaders of sedition and disturbers of the established order. The Fieschi were exiled, and their palace was razed to the ground. So the old admiral returned to his home and his terrace-walk overlooking the sea, until at last his long life ended, and they buried him with his fathers in the Church of S. Matteo.