He contemplated and partly carried out a scheme for turning the Mincio and the Brenta from their channels, and for drying up the lagoons of Venice.

In this way he purposed to attack his last great enemy, the Republic of S.Mark, upon her strongest point.
Yet in the midst of these huge designs he was able to attend to the most trifling details of economy.

His love of order was so precise that he may be said to have applied the method of a banker's office to the conduct of a state.

It was he who invented Bureaucracy by creating a special class of paid clerks and secretaries of departments.

Their duty consisted in committing to books and ledgers the minutest items of his private expenditure and the outgoings of his public purse; in noting the details of the several taxes, so as to be able to present a survey of the whole state revenue; and in recording the names and qualities and claims of his generals, captains, and officials.