The Genoese Admiral Luciano Doria sailed into the Adriatic, attacked and defeated Vettor Pisani at Pola in Istria, and again Venice and the lagoons lay at the mercy of the enemy.
Butler occupied that city The navigation of the river being secured by this success and by later operations in the north ending in July 1863 with the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the state was wholly at the mercy of the Union armies.
Seeing that Godoy, the all-powerful minister at Madrid, had given mortal offence to Napoleon early in the Prussian campaign of 1806 by calling on Spain to arm on behalf of her independence, it passes belief how he could have placed his country at the mercy of Napoleon at the end of the year 1807.
Below the feudal nobility and their Moslem soldiers came the Christian serfs, tillers of the soil and taxpayers, whose lives and property were at the mercy of their lords.
The atrophy of the Ottoman sea-power had left the archipelago at the mercy of the Greek war-brigs; piracy flourished; and it became essential in the interests of the commerce of all nations to make some power responsible for the policing of the narrow seas.
