[Illustration: _Bridge of the Rialto._] Not only the inhabitants of the Republic, but all who aided them in any way, were placed outside the pale of the Church; their property, wherever found, was declared sequestrated; their treaties were null; it was made unlawful to trade or eat or converse with them; every one was at liberty to take them and sell them into slavery; all sacraments were refused them; even the rites of burial were denied, and the clergy left Venice. A new Crusade was published, and papal indulgence given to all attacks upon Venetians or their property. In several parts of Italy Venetians were put to death; and at Genoa many of the prisoners of Curzola were sold as slaves. "In England, in France, in Italy, in the East, the merchants were robbed. From Southampton to Pera the Venetian counting-houses, banks, and factories were forced, sacked, and destroyed. The commerce of Venice trembled on the verge of extinction; {107} and all these evils were laid at the door of the Doge and the new aristocracy. But the party in power never wavered; their determination was the result and the proof of their youth, their confidence, their real capacity for governing. Though they were surrounded by a people suffering intensely from physical and spiritual want, as well as by a nobility who openly declared their hatred of the new policy and of its authors, yet they never deviated for a single moment from the predetermined line. Everything was done to win the regard and support of the people. The Doge instituted a yearly banquet to the poor, and the picturesque ceremony of washing and kissing twelve fishermen from the lagoons." At the same time everything possible was done to humble and insult the opposing party. The noble Marco Quirini was refused a seat in the Privy Council, and his place given to a Dalmatian, who, according to the statute, was not eligible to this Council. It was attempted to strictly enforce the law against carrying arms in the street, which occasioned grave troubles. A watchman, called a "Signior of the Night," met Pietro Quirini in the Piazza one evening, and insisted on examining him; Quirini knocked the man down, and was heavily fined.