Doge Priuli died shortly after the Foscarini tragedy. The brief reign of Francesco Contarini followed, and Giovanni Cornaro was chosen to fill the ducal office in 1624. The shock of Foscarini’s judicial murder had given a rallying cry to the poorer nobles in the Great Council, jealous of the power of the Ten and the monopoly of office by the more influential patricians; and Renier Zeno, a patrician, fearless and incorruptible--himself an ex-_capo_ of the Ten--led an attack on the tribunal. Banished for a year, he did but return with added popularity, and forced himself again on the Ten as one of the _Capi_. He used his power to accuse the Doge of nepotism, and his Serenity was forced to cancel certain family appointments. Zeno, driving his advantage further, came into conflict with his colleagues of the Ten, and, leaning on the majority of the Great Council, emerged triumphant. Shortly after, while standing at the Porta della Carta, he was attacked by five persons and stabbed. The Doge’s son and certain alleged accomplices were denounced to the Ten, whose laggard justice, however, made flight easy. Again appointed one of the Ten, Zeno, on his recovery, renewed the struggle with increased vigour; and, after a stormy scene in the Great Council, during which he came to high words with the Doge, the stout reformer was ordered to keep his house, and report himself to the Ten within three days. Ignoring the summons, he was fined two thousand ducats and banished. The Great Council quashed the sentence, and ordered it to be blotted out of the records of the Ten. At length Zeno’s party succeeded in carrying a motion for a committee of inquiry into the constitution of the Ten, but the four years’ bitter conflict ended in a virtual triumph for the tribunal, whose powers of criminal jurisdiction over the nobles were reaffirmed, though it had to submit to a modified capitulary. During the latter half of the seventeenth century the power of Venice was declining to its setting in an aureole of glory. In 1644, Crete, the oldest and last remaining of her great possessions in the East, was marked for conquest, and, like an old warrior who takes down his armour and girds himself to make a last stand against his hereditary foes, Venice prepared to resist the Turk to the uttermost. The old heroic times seem to return as we watch the quarter of a century’s struggle, but our admiration is touched with pathos, for we know that the dice are loaded against Venice. A Turkish pilgrim fleet for Mecca had been pillaged by the Knights of Malta, and the pious buccaneers had landed at Crete for provisions. This was pretext enough for hostilities. In 1645 a huge armament left the Bosphorus, ostensibly for Malta, actually for the conquest of Crete. Canea quickly fell, and the Turks promised themselves an easy occupation. But twenty-four years of fierce and exhausting fighting ensued before the Crescent floated over the island.