In 1343 Andrea Dandolo was raised to the Dogeship. The first patrician who had taken a doctor’s degree at Padua, he had already served on the Ten, and filled the office of Procurator of St Mark, when at thirty-six years of age he was elected Doge. Plague, earthquake and war scourged the Venetians during the scholar Doge’s reign. Zara, tempted by the Hungarians, tried another fall with her Venetian masters for independence. Marin Faliero, a member of one of the most ancient and illustrious families of Venice, who had served as _podestà_ of Padua and of Treviso, was placed in command of a land force: forty galleys set forth under Pietro da Canale to attack by sea. Faliero met the Hungarians forty thousand strong about eight miles from Zara, and won a decisive victory. Meanwhile Canale had forced the harbour, and in a few months the tough old fortress again surrendered. The walls were dismantled, and this time a strong Venetian garrison was left to overawe the Zarantines. For a century Genoese and Venetians had been rivals in the Crimea for the control of the fur trade with Tartary. In 1346 Marin Faliero was sent to Genoa to complain of certain piratical acts by the Genoese. The latter retorted by accusing the Signory of bad faith in dealing with the Tartars. But the ravages of the Black Death in 1348, when two-fifths of the people of Venice are said to have perished, and fifty noble families to have become extinct, absorbed for a time the attention of the Republic. In 1349 friction with the Genoese led to a definite breach, and another act in the tragedy of Christendom was begun. Two years of naval warfare passed with little advantage to either power. In 1353, in alliance with Peter of Aragon and the Emperor of Constantinople, the Venetians sailed up the Bosphorus and came upon the enemy under Paganino Doria, off Pera. Two hours before sunset the engagement began and a long and bloody struggle raged through the night, illumined only by the lurid glare of burning ships. The Venetians were defeated, and Nicolo Pisani, their commander, retired to Crete to recruit and await reinforcements. In February 1353 he was able to join the Aragonese fleet in Sardinian waters and attack the Genoese under Ant. Grimaldi off Lojera. The enemy were outmanœuvred, their armament utterly destroyed, and Grimaldi, with a few shattered galleys, reached Genoa crushed and humiliated. Panic seized the city. In the despair engendered by defeat a momentous step was taken. The cowed Genoese surrendered their independence and implored the protection of Giov. Visconti, Lord Bishop of Milan. Time for recuperation was, however, needed, and Visconti sought peace for his new vassal by sending Petrarch to Venice as his envoy. The poet had already, by an epistle to Dandolo, which reads like an echo of his pathetic canzone _All’Italia_, besought the rivals to exchange the kiss of peace and not persist in a war which must end in one of the eyes of