These concessions, which were intended primarily to keep latent tensions under control in the countryside of the Friuli, at the same time created a real sense ofsolidaritybetween the peasants and Venice against the local nobility. As a response to the continuing reduction of rents, the latter attempted to transform the long-term leases into simple rents, a type of contract that clearly made conditions worse for the peasants. This trend, which was widespread in this period, met heavy obstacles, especially o a demographic kind, in the Friuli. When manpower is short, it's difficult to make agricultural arrangements that favor the landlords. Within the space of a hundred years, between themid-sixteenth andmid- seventeenth centuries, due to the effect of recurring plagues and to an increase in emigration, especially toward Venice, the total population of the Friuli declined. The reports of the Venetian officials of this period emphasize the miserable conditions of the peasants: ve suspended all collections of private 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:"Iltisl very barren since it is mountainous in part, gravelly in the lowlands, and prone to flooding 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, especially the peasants are very poor" At the end of the century(1599) Stefano Viaro painted a picture ofdecay and desolation: "For several years the Patria has been so devastated thatthere is scarcely a village where two-thirds, or even three-fourths, ofitshouses 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 ofthe Friuli was already in an advanced state of decay.