On
the appointed day, they were to make affrays amongst themselves here and
there, in order that the duke might have a pretence for tolling the
bells of San Marco, which are never rung but by the order of the duke;
and at the sound of the bells, these sixteen or seventeen, with their
followers, were to come to San Marco, through the streets which open
upon the Piazza; and when the nobles and leading citizens should come to
the Piazza to know the cause of the riot, then the conspirators were to
cut them in pieces; and this work being finished, my Lord Marino Faliero
the Duke was to be proclaimed Lord of Venice. Things having been thus
settled, they agreed to fulfil their attempt on Wednesday, the 15th day
of April, in the year 1355. So covertly did they plot that no one ever
dreamed of their machinations."
As a previous step, in order to arouse popular feeling against the Great
Council, it was determined to practise a singular stratagem. Parties of
the conspirators paraded different quarters of the capital in the dead
of night, and having stopped at the windows of some citizens of the
middle and lower classes, and there insulted the women of the family
by scandalous and unseemly propositions, they retired with rude bursts
of laughter, calling each other loudly by the names of the principal
noblemen.
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