Francesco Foscari
Francesco Foscari was doge of Venice for thirty-four years, longer than anyone, took the republic into thirty years of war on the Italian mainland against the advice of the doge he succeeded, doubled its territory to the Adda, saw his last son tortured and exiled by the Council of Ten, and was deposed by the same council at eighty-four a week before he died; Byron wrote the play and Verdi the opera. He was born in 1373 into a patrician family that had made its money in the eastern trade, was procurator of St Mark's at forty-two, and in April 1423 was elected doge on the tenth ballot over the candidate the dying Tommaso Mocenigo had named, having warned the electors that Foscari would bring war. Mocenigo's speech on the republic's wealth in ships and trade and its danger in Lombardy is the most quoted thing a doge ever said. Foscari brought the war. From 1425 Venice fought the Visconti of Milan in alliance with Florence, with the condottieri Carmagnola, whom the Ten beheaded between the columns in 1432 for suspected treachery, and then Gattamelata and Colleoni. The peace of Lodi in 1454 left Venice with Bergamo, Brescia, Crema and the line of the Adda, the mainland state that fed it for three and a half centuries. The cost was the treasury, the eastern trade neglected while the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453, and the doge's own family. His son Jacopo was accused in 1445 of taking bribes, tortured and exiled, accused in 1451 of a murder and exiled again, and in 1456, found corresponding with the sultan from Crete, brought back, tortured before his father and sent back to die there. The old man could no longer attend the councils, and in October 1457 the Ten made him resign, took the ring off his finger and broke it, and gave him a pension. He died on 1 November, a week later, as the bell rang for the election of his successor. He is buried in the Frari under a tomb the republic paid for in remorse, and the Ca' Foscari on the Grand Canal is the university.
- Lived: 1373 CE – 1457 CE
- Nationality: Venetian
- Roles: doge, head_of_state
