Responsible not only to vigorously resume the negotiations on the long-standing and unresolved issues of borders and the Istrian salt trade, but above all to strengthen the alliance with the Empire, while ensuring the Habsburg intentions on the anti-Turkish league and the peace negotiations are in course, Loredan, in the first phase of his mandate, primarily assumed a role of support to the diplomatic action of Ruzzini, a role that proved to be burdensome and fraught with difficulties. From the first audience with the Emperor Leopold I of Habsburg, beyond the conventional manifestations of praise of the sovereign, he felt the rigidity of the counterpart on bilateral issues and the scarce propensity to conduct negotiations with the Turks in common agreement, resumed in the November 1698 in Carlowitz. In human and political harmony with Ruzzini, in a distinct but complementary position, he worked assiduously both with the Habsburg rulers and with the ambassadors of the great powers, especially those of England and Holland, mediating countries in the Carlowitz negotiations, to keep his guard up against the delaying tactics of the Turks, quirky negotiators, ready to exploit the divisions between the states of the League. Overcoming frequent health failures, bound by the provisions of a government eager to obtain favorable peace conditions, but hampered by the irresolution and untimeliness of the Venetian government, already inclined to equidistant neutrality, Loredan carried out the difficult task of reconciling the urgent need to end a long and costly war with the will not to give in to Ottoman pretensions. The long, dense and frequent dispatches sent to Venice, as well as the correspondence with Ruzzini, document Loredan's lucid awareness of the difficult Venetian position and of the fact that the compactness of the allies was not at all in effect. He wrote to Ruzzini, who shared his perplexity towards his own government and who, like him, was an interpreter of the state of mind of those patricians who looked anxiously to the future because of the unreliability of the Turks. He concluded, on 21 February 1699, the negotiations with the signing of the agreements also by the Serenissima.
