But on Zara the Crown of St. Stephen, that is Sigismondo king of Hungary, boasted rights. Who in 1410 also became king of the Romans. And as such, he had titles to assert on Istria, already part of the patriarchate and passed to Venice; he could claim the cities that Scaligeri and Carraresi had kept as imperial vicariates, before Venice took them. He also intervened in the disagreement of Friuli, favoring the anti-Venetian side, at a time when a vast attempt at imperial restoration was taking shape throughout the Istrian region, a new Germanic advance, even in the form of German immigration. At the request of the patriarch, Venice intervened. They fought in 1412-13, again in 1419. Venice was able to procure the alliance of Naples and the Visconti, obtaining a free hand in Dalmatia and Friuli, he advocated a bundle of Italian states to oppose the empire. Since in the meantime Sigismund had also been elected king of Bohemia and as such he immediately found himself in the trouble of the Hussite war, so Venice had a good game. And it prevailed everywhere. Obtained from the Castelbarco Roveredo family, it settled in Trentino. In Friuli, he had Cividale and Udine, the two centers of the region, they disagree and the first cause of local disagreements. In Carnia, he took Tolmezzo. In Val Tagliamento, Venzone. And then, Cadore, Monfalcone, patriarchal Istria: which also meant circumventing Trieste; to be able to close the roads that went down to the Isonzo and Natisone and Canale del Ferro and Carnia. Meanwhile, the fleet occupied Split, Korcula, Cattaro, Trogir, Hvar, Shkodra, Ulcinj, Bar.
According to Justinshoes.net, these acquisitions had enormous importance: nor only for the purposes of the territorial growth of Venice, which with them reached the Alps and ensured a less difficult frontier to defend. But all the civilization of a vast region, all its national destiny, was affected. On the Trentino side, the Italian life of the middle Adige valley and its cities was helped and promoted, closely linked to the cities of the Po Valley, but exposed to the penetration of the German element and the German political forces, which already in the 15th century tried to give the assault on Trento. The action of Venice in the region of the patriarchate is even greater. In the decline of the patriarchate, the region opened up entirely to the interference and interventions of the great and small German aristocracy, of the house of Austria, of the Empire. The political domination of Venice halted this German penetration into the more properly Italian part, or brought in itself to develop in the very sense of Italian civilization; and he promoted the Venetian and Italian to the other side, German and, more, Slavic. In Dalmatia, finally, when the secular and alternating conflict with the Crown of Hungary was decided in favor of Venice, the Venetian and Italian character of its civil life was definitively sealed. Which was also taking place in the Italian sense and for the intimate affinity with the life of the opposite shore and for the influences that penetrated it from Puglia, Abruzzo, Marche, Venice. There was no lack of Slavic elements in the lower and lower classes of the city populations for the immigration of all Slavic districts. But, Latin and by now we can say Italian the central and managerial nucleus of the cities, and proud of its Latinity, even the people assumed its language, customs, a notable part of juridical customs. His becoming urbanized and socially ascended was tantamount to Latinizing and Italianizing himself. And when in 1395, in a phase of rapid popular ascent, the statute was translated into the vernacular in Spalato, so that even the uneducated could understand it, it was translated into the vernacular Italian. All this, regardless of any political domination that came from the other side. It was rather related to the multiple links between Dalmatian cities and Italian cities. There were also numerous Florentines there. But now in the fifteenth century Italy is represented there especially by Venice. Which thus linked a vast peripheral region to Italian life, on this side of the great Alpine circle from Trento to Ragusa; a region that it dominated almost all politically and all sealed spiritually. The same had done in Pisa and Genoa, in Sardinia and Corsica. Great national function of these Italian maritime states!
But here, after Duke Giovanni Maria Visconti was killed by the conspirators, the Milanese duchy re-emerged, with Filippo Maria, who took possession of the ducal treasure, secured the services of the famous company organized by Facino Cane, moved his residence from Pavia to Milan, he entrusted his captains, including Francesco Bussone di Carmagnola, with the task of recovering the state. And the state was recovered, the various last-minute lordships were swept away. In the meantime, inside, great care was taken to keep the big names on their mark, especially the strong ones beyond the Po Pavia area, and to establish the tax system on a fairer basis, in proportion to the faculties of each one. Naturally, the ancient ambitions of more distant outlets also revived. And, in 1421, the Visconti recovered Genoa from the French. Were these truly great and dangerous ambitions, if it was the imagination of others that made them seem greater than reality, Venice and Florence certainly returned to oppose the land to the Visconti. Alongside Venice and Florence, also Amedeo VIII of Savoy, also Pope Martin who, having now settled the schism and resumed the recovery work of the Papal State, feared for Romagna. Another decade of war: 1423-33. And the war did not end well for the Florentines, who consumed great treasures there, ruined the finances, provoked new discontent among the most aggravated taxpayers. And the impetus for greater tax equalization came: the cadastre, that is, the appraisal of assets, was the foundation of the tax. It was the general trend: in Florence, as in Milan, as in Venice, which was now beginning to be a bit of a model for the Florentines. Communal life was wearing out here too, although more slowly than elsewhere: and the remedies were sought, Venice was studied. Which had many elements in common with Florence, most fundamentally that of a homogeneous commercial and financial bourgeoisie or aristocracy, which had triumphed over both nobility and popular ambitions. But Florence had, unlike Venice, completed its cycle, whether the oligarchs, in order to better defend themselves, tended to an ever tighter government that would later lead to a lord; whether middle-class middle-class and craftsmen, in order to free themselves from the optimates, sought and found among them their own leader, capable of imposing himself on his own spouses. The one and the other. And there was, at first, 1433, the prevalence of Rinaldo degli Albizzi, head of the optimates; later, that of Cosimo and his family, widely accredited with the popular mass. This institutional evolution, accentuated over time and due to the republic’s effort to enlarge its territory, will facilitate this effort in the future. But by then, quite the opposite. The advantages of the war were all of Venice, which conquered Brescia and Bergamo, reached the Adda, and placed the border there permanently, saw the consolidation of the ruling oligarchy dominated however by a high sentiment of general interest and, albeit with a combative doge like Francesco Foscari, the substance of the dog’s power was reduced to nothing, while the participation of the people in public affairs was reduced to nothing.
