The exterior power of the Venetians rose or fell, their territories were extended or confined, according to the various success of their eternal wars with Hungary and Genoa. They took Smyrna and Treviso; they lost a part of Dalmatia; they made themselves masters of Verona, of Vicenza, and of Padua; they possessed, but could not preserve Ferrara: but they maintained and consolidated the the aristocratical government which Gradenigo had given them, and punished the attempted alteration by Salieri. Liguria, on the contrary, harassed for ages by intestine changes, presented in the fourteenth century a spectacle fickle as ever: we behold her obeying in succession a captain, two captains, sometimes Genoese, sometimes foreigners; a council of twelve, of twenty-four; a mayor; a doge: and, in the intervals of these ephemeral governments, receive or reject the yoke of the emperor, of the pope, of the king of France, or of the lord of Milan. This last title at this time belonged to the family of Visconti. From the thirteenth century, an archbishop of Milan, Otho Visconti, had become lord of this city, and had obtained for his nephew Matthew the title of vicar imperial of Lombardy. Matthew, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, associated with himself his son Galeas. Overthrown by the Torriani, restored by Henry VII., and upheld by Louis of Bavaria, the Visconti resisted the pope, the king of Naples, the Florentines, and the whole Guelphic party. After the emperor Venceslas had bestowed on one of these Visconti, John Galeas, the title of Duke of Milan, they became powerful enough to defend themselves against the head of the empire himself. When Robert, the successor of Venceslas, wished to deprive them of the cities of which they had become masters, a decisive battle in 1401, confirmed their possession and retarded their fall. The emperors of the fourteenth century were, Albert of Austria, whose yoke the Helvetians shook off; Henry VII. of Luxemburgh, who, during a reign of five years, began to shed some lustre on the imperial crown; Louis of Bavaria, the restless enemy of the popes; Charles IV. or of Luxemburgh, their creature; and his son Venceslas, a vindictive monarch, deposed in 1400. Robert belongs more pro-properly to the fifteenth century.