At this epoch arose to guide her destinies one of the greatest princes that ever sat in the ducal chair. Memo, suspected of complicity in a more than usually atrocious assassination, was deposed and forced to enter a monastery, and in 991 Pietro Orseolo II. began his eventful reign. By his consummate statesmanship the Republic soon found herself at peace with east and west and able to deal with the problem of the Adriatic pirates. The Doge at once abolished the feeble expedient of paying blackmail to their chiefs, and on a renewal of their depredations chastised them into respect. The unhappy borderland along the Dalmatian coast, nominally under the lordship of the eastern Empire, but actually eluding control by east or west, was dotted with a number of small trading communities--Zara, Trau, Spalato, and Ragusa--continually harassed by Slav and Saracen pirates from the sea and by Croats on land. The defeated pirates in their rage now united with the Croats and turned on the Dalmatians, who appealed to Venice, the only power which seemed able to protect them. The Doge at once grasped the importance to Venetian commerce of a protectorate over Dalmatia. The greatest fleet that had hitherto sailed from Venetian waters set forth with banners consecrated by the Church to police the Adriatic. The voyage was a triumphant procession. Chief after chief submitted. At Zara and elsewhere the Venetians were magnificently received: the last stronghold of the pirates, impregnable Lagosta, yielded to the splendid courage of the Venetian seamen. Slavs and Croats were cowed and hostages given for future good behaviour. The woods of Curzola now made Venice independent of Italy for timber. It was the first stage in her development as a European power. The title of Doge of Dalmatia was added to that of Doge of Venice and a ceremony instituted which a hundred and eighty years later became the famous _Sposalazio del Mare_ or Wedding of the Adriatic. On the morning of Ascension Day a State barge covered with cloth of gold bearing the clergy of the Chapter of St Mark’s in full canonicals and furnished with a vessel of water, a vase of salt and an aspersoir of olive branches, sailed to the Canal of S. Nicolo del Lido to await the Doge’s barge, called later the Bucintoro. On its arrival two Canons intoned the litany and the Bishop rose up and solemnly pronounced in Latin the words, Deign, O Lord, to grant that this sea be calm and peaceful to us and to all that sail upon it; thus we pray. O Lord hear us. The Bishop blessed the water and, having reached S. Nicolo, drew near to the Doge’s barge before the procession advanced into the open Adriatic. The Primicerio then prayed: Purge me, O Lord, with hyssop, and I shall be clean; the Bishop aspersed the Doge and his suite, and poured what was left of the water into the sea. Such was the origin of the famous _festa_ of _La Sensa_ of which we shall hear more later.