Project Gutenberg's Fiesco or, The Genoese Conspiracy, by Frederich Schiller

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Title: Fiesco or, The Genoese Conspiracy
A Tragedy

Author: Frederich Schiller

Release Date: October 25, 2006 [EBook #6783]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger

FIESCO, OR THE GENOESE CONSPIRACY.

A TRAGEDY.

By Frederich Schiller

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

The chief sources from which I have drawn the history of this conspiracy
are Cardinal de Retz's Conjuration du Comte Jean Louis de Fiesque, the
Histoire des Genes, and the third volume of Robertson's History of
Charles the Fifth.

The liberties which I have taken with the historical facts will be
excused, if I have succeeded in my attempt; and, if not, it is better
that my failure should appear in the effusions of fancy, than in the
delineation of truth. Some deviation from the real catastrophe of the
conspiracy (according to which the count actually perished [A] when his
schemes were nearly ripe for execution) was rendered necessary by the
nature of the drama, which does not allow the interposition either of
chance or of a particular Providence. It would be matter of surprise
to me that this subject has never been adopted by any tragic writer,
did not the circumstances of its conclusion, so unfit for dramatic
representation, afford a sufficient reason for such neglect. Beings of
a superior nature may discriminate the finest links of that chain which
connects an individual action with the system of the universe, and may,
perhaps, behold them extended to the utmost limits of time, past and
future; but man seldom sees more than the simple facts, divested of their
various relations of cause and effect. The writer, therefore, must adapt
his performance to the short-sightedness of human nature, which he would
enlighten; and not to the penetration of Omniscience, from which all
intelligence is derived.

In my Tragedy of the Robbers it was my object to delineate the victim of
an extravagant sensibility; here I endeavor to paint the revers