Between the conquest of Padua in 14O5 and its temporary rebellion in 1509, Venice built the strongest territorial state in Italy, expanding its apparatus of government to incorporate originally heterogeneous lands into an administrative whole. Military defeat in 1509 allowed Padua's secession, an anachronistic return to separate identity motivated by its political class's resentment at subjection to Venice: denied representation in mainstream public life, they enjoyed illusory local administrative autonomy.

In military terms Padua's passage under Venetian rule was marked by the adaptation of the terraferma provinces' systems of defence to their new territorial configuration, achieved firatly by the creation of a permanent, professional army. Its units had no particular territorial affiliation; their recruitment, conditions of service and dislocation were decided by central authority. The province of Padua, strategically placed in the terraferma, served to accomodate companies in transit and long-term billetting, and to supply conscript auxiliary forces. Local fortifications were of secondary importance, and in consequence poorly maintained.

The army was the main recipient of terraferma taxation, which was dogged by organizational difficulties, in the assignment of income to spending, and in co-ordination between capital and provinces, with a frequent excess of expenditure over effective revenue. Gross imbalance in the distribution of taxation, with delay and abuse in its collection, characterized Padua's fiscal system. Growing intervention by central government, and the diminution of Paduans' residual fiscal competence, were the constant elements in Venice's largely unsuccessful remedial action. Tax therefore became a point of conflict; Venice grew impatient with Paduan inefficiency and illwill, the Paduan political class showed anger at encroachment by Venetian authority, and fear for the loss of the city's fiscal privilege.