The subject of Byron's Two Foscari, Francesco Foscari had held many of the Republic's highest offices before being elected Doge, including chief of the Quarantin, three times a capo of the Ten and Procurator - in which role he had amassed great personal influence through the expenditure of state monies. In spite of all this service, on his death bed, his predecessor, Tomasso Mocenigo, pleaded with the assembled senators not to elect Foscari their leader. It was with the discarding of the Mocenigo's advice and the rise of the belligerent Foscari that the beginning of Venetian greatness begins. Though it may not have been visible at the time - Foscari's numerous campaigns were by and large successful, the abandonment of peaceful neutrality for Imperial expansion was to prove the undoing of Venice. Though Foscari's wars expanded the Venetians territorial holdings, they did little to further their mercantile interests. In the short term, they served only to deplete the treasury; in the long term they set in motion the Venetian hubris which was to be finally confronted by the League of Cambrai.

It was apparent from immediately after the announcement of the results of the close run election that things were to be different. The official celebrations of Foscari's elevation lasted an unheard of full year.