Page:Cambridge Medieval History Volume 3.pdf/213

170 the flower of the German nobles; many were made prisoners; the Emperor himself only eluded capture by swimming to a Byzantine vessel, from which in turn he had to escape by leaping overboard when it brought him near Rossano.

With the remnants of his army Otto beat a retreat to Salerno and Rome. As the news spread over the Empire his prestige waned, and a mutinous spirit arose in Italy which was, however, kept in check by the steady adherence of Marquesses and Bishops to the German monarchy. Otto did his best to re-establish his position. In May 983 he held a German Diet at Verona, and there obtained the election as King of Germany of his infant son Otto, whom he thereupon sent north to be crowned. At the same time he made an effort to bring the independent sea-power of Venice to subjection. Venice had prospered exceedingly during the century. Exempt from Hungarian ravage, she had contrived to hold the piracy of the distant Saracens and of the Slavs of Dalmatia in check. She had shaken off Byzantine suzerainty and maintained a privileged intercourse with the Regnum Italicum. She had already become the chief intermediary between Constantinople and the West; her wealth, derived partly from her questionable exports of iron, wood and slaves to the Saracens, was growing rapidly. Even when she was obliged to surrender the extra-territoriality of her citizens within the Western Empire to Otto the Great, she obtained in return the perpetuity of her treaty with him. But she had her special dangers. One was the effort of the Doges to erect an hereditary monarchy, like that of Amalfi. The other, caused largely by this effort, was the rise of two embittered factions among the mercantile nobles who held the chief influence in the State. These troubles affected her relations with Otto II, for the aspiring Doge Pietro Candiano IV who had been murdered in 976 had married Gualdrada of Tuscany, niece of the Empress Adelaide. The efforts of Doge Tribuno Menio did indeed result in a hollow reconciliation at Verona in June 983. Otto II restored Venice her privileges with the airs of a suzerain, while Venice tacitly maintained her independence. Hardly was the bargain struck, however, before Otto broke it. The civil discord of Venice had ended in the bitter hatred of the rival families of Caloprini and Morosini. Now Stephen Caloprini fled to Verona and offered to be the Emperor's genuine vassal if restored to Venice as Doge. Otto characteristically seized the chance of conquest. Venice was strictly blockaded by land, and might have been forced to yield had not the Emperor, enfeebled by a foreign climate, died of an over-dose of medicine (four drachms of aloes) on 7 December 983.

Otto had been preparing for new aggression towards the south, where Transemund, the new Marquess of Spoleto, and Aloara of Capua, Paldolf Ironhead's widow, might be relied on. His impatient policy had just been shewn in the promotion a foreign Pope to succeed Benedict VII, for John XIV had been Peter, Bishop of Pavia and Arch-chancellor of