The Treacherous
Carraras
Under the 1337 treaty concluding
the war with Verona and the Della Scala family, Venice received the
sovereignty of Treviso and Padua, together
with their territories. However, she ceded primary control of Padua
and its territory, as well as the western domains of Treviso, to her
wartime allies, the Carrara family of Padua. The Carraras had previously
ruled Padua before it was attacked and captured by Verona. Returned
to power, the Carraras soon showed themselves to be enemies, not allies,
and Venice learned that she must defend the new empire she had acquired
on the mainland.
When Venice became embroiled in a war with the Kingdom of Hungary
in 1369-73, Padua and the Carraras allied with the Hungarians. The
conflict was successfully resolved for the Venetians by a decisive
military victory over the Hungarian forces. The Carraras withdrew
from the conflict as well, but hostilities with another erstwhile
Carrara ally, the Duke of Austria, persisted in the Trevisan countryside
until 1376. The success of Venice in those conflicts only left the
Carraras waiting for another opportunity for mischief.
Venice's final and climactic fourth war with Genoa, the dramatic War
of Chioggia, erupted in 1379. As Genoa forces seized the town
of Chioggia at the foot of the Venetian lagoon and seemed ready to
capture Venice itself, Carrara and the Paduans--augmented by a Hungarian
force--supported the Genoans by launching a blockade of Venice along
the mainland shore to the west of the lagoon. Venice's stunning reversal
of fortune and final complete victory at Chioggia did not eliminate
the threat posed by Padua on the mainland. Exhausted by her wars,
Venice elected to cede Treviso and her other mainland possessions
to the Duke of Austria, whom she deemed to be less of a long-term
threat than the Carraras. Venice retreated to her island fortress.
The
problem of the Carraras was not so easily resolved, however. By 1382
the Paduans had Treviso under siege. They made to the Duke of Austria
an offer he could not refuse: 100,000 ducats for Treviso and the other
former mainland possessions of Venice. The Carraras seemed to have
scored a remarkable diplomatic victory over Venice, but they soon
found that in the field of diplomacy the Venetians had no equal.
By 1388, following complex diplomatic maneuvers, and various alliances
and misalliances between Padua and Milan--the major Italian power
to the west of Paduan territory--Venice achieved its own alliance
with Milan, which had begun to feel threatened by Padua's territorial
expansion westward in her direction. Milanese forces captured Padua
and returned Treviso to permanent Venetian control, retaining Padua
and its western possessions for itself. Venice's foothold on the mainland
was restored. And the Carraras? Though briefly dispossessed from Padua
by the Milanese, they would return for a final
and fatal conflict.