I have all collections of pri debts until the harvest," Daniele Priuli wrote in 1573, describing how everything is being taken, from clothing off women's backs, though they might be clutching their little ones, to the locks on the doors, things that are impious and inhuman." In 1587 Carlo Corner stressed the natural poverty of the Patria:"[Itis] very barren since it is mountainous in part, gravelly in the lowlands, and prone to fooding from many streams and to damage from storms, which generally prevail in the area." And he concluded, "therefore since the nobles do not have great wealth, so also the people, especiallythe peasants, are very poor "At the end of the century (1599) Stefano Viaro painted apicture ofdecayana desolation: "For several years the Patria has been so devastated thatthere is scarcely a village where two-thirds, or even three-fourths, ofits houses are not in ruins and uninhabited, and a little less than half its fields are uncultivated, really a very pitiful thing since, if this situation continues every day the inhabitants are being forced out of necessity into leaving only the poorest and most miserable will remain" At a time when the decline of Venice was beginning to become apparent, the economy o Friuli was already in a advanced state of de