The Republic replied by laying siege to Trieste. During the armistice granted by Morosini, the Venetian commander, to enable the Patriarch of Aquileia to bury his nephew, fallen in battle, a certain Contestabile of Infantry, Gerard of the Long Lances, was found to have corresponded with the enemy by means of slips of paper attached to his arrows. He confessed under torture and was shot from a mangonel into the enemy’s camp, a mangled mass of treachery. The siege was, however, a failure, and Morosini on his return was disgraced and imprisoned. The victorious allies marched on Caorle, captured the _podestà_ and burned his palace: they even singed the very mane of the Lion of St Mark by a descent on Malamocco. The executive, endowed with unlimited powers, made a levy _en masse_ on the whole able-bodied population, another armament was fitted out and at length Trieste fell. The Pope, anxious to buttress the tottering fabric of the Latin dominion in the East, effected a peace, and a huge bonfire in the Piazza made of the surrendered Triestine artillery satisfied Venetian pride, though her attempt to dominate the Adriatic was but partially successful. The sleepless eyes of Venetian statesmen were now turned southwards. Constance of Swabia, unhappy Manfred’s “bella figlia, genitrice dell’ onor di Cicilia e d’ Aragona,”[26] by her marriage brought the strong arm of Peter of Aragon to enforce her claims to the throne of the Two Sicilies, which the Pope’s darling, Charles of Anjou, had won by the defeat of Manfred and the destruction of the Ghibelline cause at Benevento. The Republic, still smarting under the commercial condominium of the Genoese at Constantinople, and enticed by the prospect of regaining her former ascendency, was drawn into an offensive and defensive alliance with the Pope and Charles against the Greeks. But on Easter Eve, in 1282, an insult offered to a noble Sicilian damsel by a French soldier fired the rage of the Sicilians, and before the dawn of Easter Day the blood of eight thousand French in Palermo alone had glutted their vengeance. The Sicilian Vespers wrecked Charles’s fortunes, and the Republic turned to renew her former understanding with the Greek Emperor. Martin IV., enraged at the defection of his ally, laid Venice under the ban of the Church, but his opportune death soon made reconciliation possible. [Illustration: DOGE’S PALACE--THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON CORNER]