XVITHE LAST DIPLOMATISTS

Goldoni, i. chap. xxxv.

sing as they sell their wares; the workmen sing as they leave their work; the gondolier sings while he waits for his master. The characteristic of the nation is its gaiety.’

In the midst of this laughing decadence, in the very depth of this gay and careless disintegration of a country’s body and soul, we come across one devoted, energetic character, a fighting man of the better days, who reminds us of what Venice was in her greatness.

Angelo Emo was great, considering the littleness of Venice in his time. If we compare him with Vittor Pisani, Carlo Zeno, or Sebastian Venier, he seems small as a leader; but as a plain, brave man, he is not dwarfed by comparison with men who were colossal in an age of giants.

He was born in 1731, and was brought up by his father to dream of older and greater times, and to know more of his country’s history than most

Rom. viii. 289.

youths of his day. He travelled early and far, often employed on business of the State, and he was able to compare the condition of Venice with that of other European countries, especially England and France, in regard to military and naval matters.

He was not yet thirty years old when the government sent him to Portugal to study the means of reviving the commercial relations between that kingdom and Venice. Sailing down the Adriatic, he put into Corfu, probably for fresh provisions; but on learning

PONTE CANONICA

that many intrigues were already on foot to deprive

FONDAMENTA WEIDERMANN

him of his mission, he set sail again at once for the Mediterranean in order to be beyond reach of recall.He passed the Straits of Gibraltar, but fell in with a gale of wind in the ocean which nearly put an end to his sailing for ever. The Venetian vessels were not remarkable for their seaworthiness at best, and ocean weather was almost too much for Emo’s ship. He himself describes the frightful confusion in the storm, and the difficulty he had in managing his men. To make matters worse, the freshwater tanks were sprung and most of the supply was lost, so that water was served out in rations, while the food consisted principally of what the British sailor terms ‘salt horse.’ Then the vessel lost her rudder, and things looked badly; but the gale moderated and died out at last, and the ship brought to near a wooded coast, whence Emo was able before long to get a tree, which was rough hewn to serve as a rudder, and he got his vessel into port at last, ‘with the admiration and applause of every one,’ says Romanin, after describing the affair of the jury-rudder as only a landsman can describe an accident at sea.

His mission to Portugal was successful, and Emo returned to Venice; but when he tried to direct the attention of the government to reforms of which the army and navy stood in urgent need, he could obtain no practical result, so that when he was

1784.

placed in command of a fleet, with orders to punish the Bey of Tunis and the Algerian pirates, he was well aware that his force was by no means what it appeared to be to the inexperienced public. In the course of the campaign his largest ship,La Forza, ill-equipped and worse officered, sank before his eyes off Trapani, and none of the other vessels could be relied on to do any better. Yet with such material and such men he sustained a conflict that lasted three years, and if he was unable to destroy the Bey of Tunis, he at least humbled him, brought

Mutinelli, Ult. 150, and Rom. viii. 294.

him to terms, and obtained from him a formal treaty engaging to put down piracy on the African coast. France profited much by the result of this expedition, and one of the last documents signed by Louis XVI. before he fell was a letter to the Doge Manin, in which Angelo Emo was praised to the skies for the good work he had done.

The Admiral was rewarded with the title of Cavaliere, the only one the Republic ever conferred, and with the office of Procurator of Saint Mark’s, but I cannot find that his advice as to reforms was ever listened to. A few years later, the Bey of Tunis broke his promise in regard to piracy, and Emo was again sent with a fleet to chastise him, but was suddenly taken ill in Malta, and died in a few days. He was poisoned, it is said, by Condulmer, his principal lieutenant, who at once succeeded him as admiral.

The last Venetian fighting man was of average height and lean, and stooped a little; he

Statue of Emo, Canova; Arsenal.

was pale, his forehead was broad, and he had blue eyes and black eyebrows, particularly thick and bushy. His mouth was strong, but the lips were thick and coarse.

His remains were carefully embalmed in Malta andwere brought home to Venice on his flagship, theFama—‘fame’—which came to anchor on the twenty-fourth of May 1792. The body was followed from the mole to Saint Mark’s by the clergy, the schools, the magistracies, and a vast concourse of people. The funeral mass was sung in the presence of the Doge, and the vast procession wended its way to the church of the Serviti. To the martial sound of drums and the solemn roar of the minute gun, Venice laid her last captain to rest beside his fathers.

THE SALUTE FROM S. GIORGIO

Duringthe seventeenth century the Republic had no doubt of her own military strength, but nevertheless trusted much to her diplomacy; in the eighteenth the latter was the last good weapon left her of the many that had once been in her armoury, and skilled as her diplomatic agents were, their efforts could not prevent her from spoliation by the Turks, whose simple rule was to take first and to talk about rights afterwards.

In a measure, too, Venice’s position as a neutral power was dearly bought, and more than once in the war of the Spanish succession her territory was the

Rom. viii. 5, sqq.

scene of fighting between French and Germans. The same skill kept her out of the field during the quarrels for the succession of Parma, of Tuscany, of Poland, and of Austria, and obtained for Venetian Ambassadors a place of honour in the congresses that resulted in the treaties of Utrecht, Vienna, and Aix-la-Chapelle.

During the American war of independence, there were constant diplomatic relations between the Republic and the American deputies who came to France for the congress of Versailles. The Venetian archives contain a letter signed by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, by which the Americans hoped to lay the foundations of a commercial treaty; but owing to the excessive caution of Venice the attempt had no result. The Republic of the Adriatic had almost always looked eastward for her trade, and distrusted the new world which she had declined to help to discover. The original letter, written in the English language, and addressed to the Venetian Ambassador in Paris, Daniele Dolfin, has not been published, I believe; and I shall not insult the memory of such writers by attempting to turn Romanin’s

Rom. viii. 229, 230.

translation back into their language. The letter explains that the three signers are fully empowered by their government to negotiate a friendly treaty of commerce, and will be glad to enterupon the negotiation as soon as the Venetian Ambassador is properly authorised to do so; in signing they use the form, ‘your most obedient, humble servants.’ For the benefit of any American who may wish to get at the original, I may add that Romanin found the letter in the Archives of the Senate, with the despatches from France of Daniele Dolfin, envelope 261.

A letter from another Venetian Ambassador in Paris, Cappello, prophetically dated July fourteenth, 1788, exactly one year before the destruction

Rom. ix. 153.

of the Bastille, to the very day, sounds the first warning alarm of the approaching revolution; few writers have better summed up the condition of the French monarchy when it was on the brink of the abyss, and no diplomatist could have given his own country better advice.

The Committee of the Savi, who concentrated all power into their own hands, did not even communicate this letter to the Senate. Cappello spoke still more clearly when he made his formal report in person, on returning from his mission and after leaving Paris just when the King was to be asked to sign the Constitution, a document for which the Ambassador confesses that he can find no name. ‘It is not a monarchy,’ he says, ‘for it takes everything from the monarch; it is not a democracy, because the people are not the legislators; it is not that of an aristocracy, for the mere name is looked upon in France not as treason against the King, but as treason against the nation.... The National Assembly began by encroaching upon all powers, andby confounding within itself all the attributes of sovereignty, usurping the administrative functions from the executive power, and from the judiciary the right of judging criminal cases.’

It is easy to understand the impression made by such a report, in the course of which the Ambassador narrated the scenes that took place in Versailles and at the Tuileries after the night of October sixth, 1789. The aristocratic Venetian Republic sympathised profoundly with the dying French monarchy; but it was impossible to believe that such a state of things would last long, and the government was painfully surprised by the letter in which Louis XVI. announced that he accepted the situation. That letter is in existence. In it the King declares that he has accepted the new form of government ‘of his own free will; that the National Assembly is only a reform of the ancient States General, and will ensure the happiness of the nation and the monarchy.’ The King adds, as if to hide his weakness from himself, that what is called a ‘revolution’ is mostly only the destruction of a mass of prejudices and abuses which endanger the public wealth, and that he was therefore proud to think that he should leave his son something; better

Rom. ix. 178.

than the crown as he had inherited it from his ancestors, namely, a constitutional monarchy.

This letter, with its artificial enthusiasm, is dated March fourteenth, 1791, three months before the King’s flight and his arrest at Varennes, and less than two years before his murder on the scaffold.

FROM THE PONTE DELLA PIETÀ

Cappello’s successor as Ambassador in Paris, Alvise Pisani, continued to keep his government informed of what occurred. On the twenty-fifth of September 1791, Louis XVI. addressed another letter to his ‘most dear friends, allies, and confederates,’ the Venetians, in which he expresses the certainty that they will be rejoiced to hear of his having signed the Constitution, which had so greatly shocked Cappello. In spite of the painful impression produced by these documents, it was necessary to answer them, if only as a matter of etiquette.

The position of the Republic was a difficult one. Prudence required the strictest neutrality as to the affairs of other nations; but the mere fact that every one recognised this as Venice’s only possible position exposed her to perfidious and secret attacks of all sorts. France maintained a vast number of secret agents to propagate revolutionary doctrines in the Venetian territory, and at the same time lost no opportunity of trying to pick a quarrel with the Republic, by insulting her flag. On the twenty-ninth of November 1792, the captain of a French man-of-war, bearing a Spanish name, theBuenos Ayres, asked permission to land with eight men on the Venetian shore, but refused to submit to the regulations of the Health Office. His request was refused. Thereupon he proceeded to abuse the Venetian government from the deck of his ship. He wound up by declaring that there was no such thing existing as a Sovereign Government, that all men were equal, and that he was a magistrate, as good as anysenator. He chose to land, and he would land if he chose. A Venetian galley hindered him

Rom. ix. 219.

from doing so, but as he made off he cried out: ‘You will change your minds in a year!’

Poor France! She herself was to learn a century later that all men are equal—in the eyes of German Jews.

At that time Austria allied herself with Piedmont to oppose the French invasion which was imminent, and the Venetian Envoy at the court of Turin continually advised his government to join this league, which alone could save the Republic and the other Italian powers.

The Committee of the Savi who had absorbed the government of Venice simply by saving trouble to all the other officials, allowed the Senate to

Rom. ix. 195.

discuss this proposition, probably because they understood its vast importance. But the Senate declared for strict neutrality, and the Savi felt that after this they were free to do as they pleased, and from that time they decided according to their own judgment as to the question of showing any despatch to the Councils or of suppressing it in order to avoid public discussions.

Nevertheless, they felt the danger of the moment enough to recall the Venetian vessels stationed at Malta and Corfu, in order to defend the approaches to Venice, a measure which displeased France on the ground that it was a preparation for hostilities. Thus the success of the French army in Savoy obliged theSavi to call in the Senate again, to discuss the public safety. The ‘fathers of their country’ were at that time mostly in their country places, thoroughly enjoying themselves; but they too must have felt that there was danger in the air, for they answered the summons of Francesco Pesaro, the presiding Savio for the week. A lively discussion took place, but once more neutrality was voted by a strong majority, and the government of the Savi now entered upon a course of half measures more dangerous in reality than any one mistake could have been. Permission was granted to the Imperial troops to transport provisions from Trieste to Goro, and with a last revival of the business spirit the Republic violated the neutrality she had voted by selling corn and oats to the Austrians. At this the Venetian Ambassador withdrew to London for safety, leaving his secretary in charge.

An incident now occurred in Venice

Rom. ix. 203.

which was calculated to bring matters to a crisis.

The French Ambassador, who had quitted Venice, had left in charge of the Embassy a certain Monsieur Henin, who had taken as his private secretary a priest called Alessandri. On the twenty-ninth of December 1792 this priest was sent for in haste by the Superior of the bare-footed Carmelites of the monastery of San Geremia, close to the palace occupied by the French Embassy. He was introduced with some mystery, but with no loss of time, and was conducted to the Superior’s room, where he was warned that unless heleft Venice by the sixth of January, he would be assassinated. There was a plot to kill him, but one of the intended murderers had confessed to the Superior himself, and under the seal of confession had begged the monk to save Alessandri’s life.

The priest, who does not seem to have been timid, was much surprised, but promised nothing as to leaving the city, though he appears to have at once considered

ON THE WAY TO FUSINA, FROM THE MOUTH OF THE BRENTA

the means of getting away. But on that same evening the Superior received an anonymous note with these words: ‘Either the Abbé Alessandri will leave Venice to-morrow, and at once quit Venetian territory, or something serious will happen to him.’ The Superior sent for Alessandri again. The note, strange to say, had been delivered together with fifteen gold sequins, which the unknown writer sent to help the priest’s flight.

The priest now lost no time, but left at once forFusina on the mainland, and finding no means of getting on at once, pursued his journey on foot. He had left with the monk a written receipt for the money, which he had been forced to accept, and he had also informed his employer, Monsieur Henin, of the cause of his sudden departure.

Monsieur Henin was furious, and not without some reason. He wrote a violent letter to the Venetian Government, inquiring how an unknown person could dare anything so outrageous in a well-regulated community. Who was instigating the outrageous crime? What monster had paid fifteen sequins to have the murder committed? What was the meaning of the pretended confession? Why did the villainous author of the abominable plan drag a monk into the plot? This was the gist of Monsieur Henin’s letter, and he ended by demanding the immediate arrest and condign punishment of the murderer, or murderers, and the recall of his fugitive secretary, who, he insisted, must be so well guarded by the government as not to be in fear of his life.

The Secretary of Embassy certainly had right on his side so far, but he followed up his letter in an interview with one of the Inquisitors, in which he declared his belief that it was the government itself that threatened Alessandri. The Inquisitors might have answered that they disposed of much simpler and surer means than the hand of a hired assassin whenever they wished to be rid of an obnoxious person. Henin suggested, too, that the outrage was instigated byAustria in order to exasperate France, an idea which seems deficient in logic.

Henin appears to have been a violent sort of person, and anything but a diplomatist. Of course he had right on his side, but Alessandri, on inquiry, turned out to be a bad character, and anything but the ‘mild, tranquil, reticent, and retiring’ creature of fifty-six, whom the Frenchman represented him to be. He had been obliged to leave his native city, Trent, for debt and various misdemeanours; he was a violent revolutionary, and in his ‘tranquil retirement’ he dwelt with a disreputable woman of the people, whom he had enticed away from her family; from which facts it was easy to argue that he had made himself the object of some private vengeance.

Nevertheless, and although Henin had not at that time any proper credentials asChargé d’Affaires, the Inquisitors thought it best to avoid disturbance, and Alessandri was brought back and properly protected. Almost immediately upon this Henin received credential letters from his government, and asked to present them to the Senate.

The Savi, who detested the man, were much disturbed; and as the Senate and the Great Council left the matter to them, they asked the assistance

Rom. ix. 207.

of those of their colleagues who had served their time and retired. As they wore black cloaks the people nicknamed them the ‘Consulta Nera,’ the ‘Black Cabinet.’

Not to receive the official representative of the newFrench government would have been contrary to the policy of strict neutrality adopted by the Venetian Republic; to receive him was to irritate Austria and to expose Venice to an attack from that side. She had pursued a policy of half measures, and the end of half measures is always a fall between two stools. The fall was precipitated by the soothing eloquence of one of the speakers, who assured his colleagues that all Europe would understand and forgive them for yielding to necessity.

The Senate accordingly voted with the Black Cabinet that Henin should be received, but instructed its ambassadors at the various European courts to convey information of the fact with all the circumspection possible, and in such a way as to palliate the action of the Venetian government in the eyes of the world.

While this was going on, the secretary whom the Venetian Ambassador Pisani had left in charge at Paris, wrote an eloquent letter describing the

1793.

death of Louis XVI., and he sent at the same time a scrap of the cloak which the King had worn on his way to the scaffold. This caused the most profound emotion. In the Senate, Angelo Quirini loudly declared that all diplomatic relations with a government of hangmen and executioners must be instantly broken off.

The matter was still in discussion when Henin demanded, in the name of his government, the authorisation to place the arms of the French Republic over the door of his residence. As his credentials had been accepted it was impossible to refuse this request, butthe general indignation of the better sort of the people was unbounded.

There were now two parties in Venice. On the one hand, the secret emissaries of France preached revolutionary doctrines, and stirred up the criminal classes; on the other, a vast literature of pamphlets, articles, satires, and caricatures, all attacking the French, were openly circulated throughout the city. In the hope of diverting the attention of the whole population from political matters the Savi made frantic and extravagant efforts to amuse everybody. The very last carnival before the end was the most magnificent ever remembered.

In the year of the French King’s murder, Bonaparte was a captain of artillery, and France was about to face the first coalition of the powers, after putting down the royalists in Vendée.

Henin continued to annoy the Signory in every possible way, and made the smallest incidents the subjects of official complaint and protest. He was at last recalled, but his successor was a man called Noël, who was such a notoriously bad character that the Venetian Senate put off receiving his credentials again and again on all sorts of grounds, doubtless believing, too, that the French revolutionary government was not going to last even so long as it did. To gain time was to save dignity, thought the Senators. But Noël grew tired of waiting, and abruptly returned to Paris in a very bad humour, to stir up against Venice the resentment of the Committee of Public Safety.

It was now no longer an easy matter to keep up

A LONELY CANAL

appearances of neutrality. England, especially, lost noopportunity of urging Venice to join the European League, and Worsley, the last English Minister, was perpetually insisting on a rupture with France.

Another circumstance occurred to increase the difficulty of Venice’s position. The Comte de Lille, afterwards Louis XVIII., who styled himself Regent of France during the captivity of his nephew, the unfortunate child Louis XVII., being obliged to leave Piedmont, asked permission to reside in Verona, and the Signory, anxiously hoping for a restoration in France, received him with the honours due to his rank and the welcome a friend might expect. At this the French Republic took umbrage and protested violently, but the Venetians answered that the presence of the Comte de Lille in Verona, where he led a retired life, was no violation of neutrality.

The Savi now had more on their hands than they could manage, for they were obliged at one and the same time to watch the movements of the revolutionary propaganda and to keep themselves informed of the doings of the royalist party who plotted in Venice to restore the French monarchy. And meanwhile, in spite of a nominal press censorship, thePostiglionenewspaper satirised the French Republic in the bitterest manner, giving Robespierre constant cause of complaint.

Diplomatic relations were now strained almost to the breaking point. Pisani was still supposed to be the Venetian Ambassador in Paris, though

Rom. ix. 231-239.

he resided in London, and the FrenchEnvoy in Venice had left in disgust at not being received. On the latter point the French yielded, and sent another and more respectable representative, a certain Lallement, whom the Signory consented to receive in spite of the objections of the English Minister.

The question now arose, who was to succeed Pisani in Paris, and how the new envoy was to be styled. Lallement had brought very simply worded credentials, and had agreed to assume any designation which the Signory desired. The Savi were much distressed about this matter, but they selected Aloise Quirini for the mission, and at last decided that he should be addressed neither as Ambassador nor Minister, but simply as ‘the Noble Quirini.’ They could hardly have chosen a title better calculated to irritate a government which held that nobility was a worse crime than forgery or assassination.

The Noble Quirini accordingly went to Paris with a very magnificent salary, and with instructions to keep up the splendid traditions of former Venetian representatives abroad.

But meanwhile the child Louis XVII. had disappeared from the scene, and the Comte de Lille, or the Comte de Provence as he was called

Rom. ix. 252.

when not travelling incognito, was a source of much anxiety to Venice. He was now undoubtedly the legitimate King of France, and his modest residence in Verona had become a court at which every point of etiquette was most rigorouslyobserved. The European powers encouraged him in his efforts to restore the monarchy in his own person, and England, Austria, and Russia sent envoys to him in Verona without in the least considering the difficulties which their action might cause the Venetian government.

At this juncture France invented another form of government, and Lallement appeared before the Senate with an entirely new set of credentials as

1796.

the Envoy of the Directory, which, he declared, was no less disposed than its predecessors in power to remain ‘in perfect understanding and on the most friendly terms’ with the Venetian Republic. The man who was to end the hideous and grotesque succession of butcheries and farces which had lasted seven years was in favour with this last-hatched and half-fledged government, and his dominating influence was beginning to be felt. Bonaparte was now twenty-six years old; he was grown up.

A few months earlier Lallement had read before the Venetian Senate a proclamation which the ‘Representatives of the People’ sent to the army

1795.

of the Alps, as a general warning against the Genoese, the Tuscans, and the Venetians, who, in spite of their protestations of friendship, allowed their ships to capture and plunder French vessels on the high seas. By the end of 1795 the French were masters of the Riviera, having beaten the Austrians very badly.

Venice was now accused of having violated her neutrality by allowing the passage of Austrian troopsthrough her dominions. She answered that she had acted in accordance with a very ancient treaty which accorded the Empire the use of the road to Gambara, and that she was as neutral as ever; but this the French found it hard to believe. When further accused of favouring royalist intrigues, the Signory made a show of punishing the authors of a few libels on the Directory.

As for Louis XVIII., as the Comte de Lille was now called by his adherents, Venice was reluctantly obliged to ask him to leave her territory, as the Directory threatened war if he remained.

He departed, shaking the dust from his feet. He demanded that the name of his family should be

Smedley, Sketches from Venetian History, ii. chap. xx. note.

erased from the Golden Book, and that the armour of his ancestor Henry IV. should be given back to him. This armour Smedley rightly conjectures to have been the sword worn by Henry IV. at the battle of Ivry, with which he had knighted the Venetian Ambassadors after his accession, and which he then presented to the Treasury of Saint Mark’s.

The Signory entirely refused to accede to the Comte de Lille’s demands. It could not deprive itself, it replied, of the satisfaction of counting the royal family of France amongst its nobility, and it could not bring itself to part with such a valuable gift as it had received from Henry IV.; and with this quiet answer to the Russian envoy who represented him the Comte de Lille had to be satisfied.

But France was not, and the Inquisitors received many private warnings to the effect that the French government would seize upon any pretext for attacking Venice. ‘Arm, if you hope not to be trodden under foot!’ Such was the burden of these fruitless messages.

Austria, Sardinia, Naples, and Pius VII. openly allied themselves together, and the Duchies of Parma and Modena secretly promised their help. Genoa was paralysed by the vicinity of the French army; Tuscany was playing the game of neutrality, like Venice.

The Signory had great confidence in the army of the allies and in its chief, Bonaparte was only a boy; the old general Beaulieu would easily beat him.

But the Signory was mistaken. The boy had grown up—‘Napoleon, Apollyon, destroyer of Cities, being a Lion roaming about,’ as the barbarous Greek jest on his name has it.

EVENING

Theend was at hand when Bonaparte crossed the river Po. One is apt to forget that he had already showed himself to be much more than a victorious

1796. Rom. ix. 284.

general, and that throughout the campaign he displayed that marvellous skill in dealing with men which so often ensured him an enthusiastic reception in places where he could not have been expected to be welcome.

He had soon realised the horrible impression produced everywhere outside of France by the Revolution, the Terror, and the Committee of Public Safety, and he hastened, by his numberless agents, to exalt the virtues of the Directory. They were not a herd of bloodthirsty ruffians, he taught, but an assemblage of the future saviours of mankind, who were to emancipate the world from all those ancient political and social prejudices which had so long held it in bondage.

He could not unteach the scum of the Italian populace what the agents of the Revolution had taught it with such lavish expenditure in disreputable taverns and worse resorts, but he could control the teachers and gradually change the direction of the education. The Venetian gondoliers could be taught something, too, and the Venetian Barnabotti could be bribed to learn anything, and to impart what they learned.

‘No organisation,’ says Bonnal, ‘was ever superior to his (Bonaparte’s), no revolutionary organisation was ever more formidable. We mean “revolutionary” as regards the legitimate governments

Bonnal, Chute d’une République, 273-274.

existing in Italy, with which we were not at war, and as regards the means used.... It was at Milan that his system became a definite official service, both political and military. Thence arose two principal offices exactly answering the aim he was pursuing, that is, the political propaganda and the military propaganda. By means of the political propaganda he sought to bring about either the substitution of one domination for another, or the modification ofthe forms of government.... Lombardy is an example of the first case, the Italian Duchies of the second. By his military propaganda he roused the populations to arms, sometimes against the legitimate sovereign, as happened in Venice and Parma, sometimes against a foreign power, as at Milan.’

Once more, as in the war of the Spanish succession, the Venetian territory became a refuge and a provision market for two hostile armies. The fortresses, as has been seen, were really at the mercy of any one who chose to occupy them. On the ninth of May the Imperial troops, yielding to the request of Contarini the Governor of Crema, and supposing the place to be capable of defence, consented to pass by the city without entering it. If they had insisted no one could have hindered them, and the letter Contarini afterwards wrote to the Venetian government disturbed even the astounding optimism of the Savi. The latter were shocked when they thought of the risk they had run, and by way of getting rid of all further responsibility they appointed a Provveditor to watch over the safety of the Venetian territory. More than this their worst enemies could not have expected them to do. They selected a Foscarini for the office, and were particularly careful to admonish him that he must ‘preserve intact the tranquillity of the Republic, and administer comfort and consolation to its subjects.’ I translate literally the phrase, which sounds like the drivelling of an old man in second childhood.

The imperial troops were barely out of sight of

OUT IN THE LAGOON

Crema when the French appeared, and Contarini renewed his request that the city might not be entered. Berthier consented, but requisitioned provisions and forage. Soon afterwards came Bonaparte himself and he also consented to pass on, but not until he had squeezed every particle of available information out of the governor, whose letter narrating the interview gives a remarkably clear idea of the great young man’s conversation.

The Senate wrote to the Commander of the fortress of Peschiera not to allow any foreign soldiers to enter under any circumstances. I have described the condition of the place elsewhere, and the unlucky colonel at once answered, inquiring what in the world he was to do in order to prevent the passage of the Imperial troops.

The Austrian general Liptay found it convenient to install himself in Peschiera for some time, and when the Republic protested, he answered with admirable coolness and much truth that the place was not a fortress at all, and that he was encamped there as the French were in the fields towards Brescia.

Even Bonaparte understood the absurdity of this case. ‘The truth about the affair of Peschiera,’ he wrote to the Directory, ‘is that the Venetians

Rom. ix. 297-299.

have been duped by Beaulieu; he asked leave to pass with fifty men and then made himself master of the city.’

In spite of this conviction, Bonaparte took advantage of the incident to declare to the Provveditor Foscarini that he would burn Verona to punish the Venetiansfor having favoured the Austrian troops; and Foscarini, obliged to act on the spur of the moment and without consulting the government, opened the gates of Verona to Masséna on receiving the latter’s assurance that the city should not be burned. He probably fancied that he had obtained a great concession, and did not understand that Verona was absolutely necessary to the French as a base from which to advance on Mantua, held by the Imperial troops.

The news of the occupation of Verona produced the utmost alarm in Venice, yet the Great Council was not summoned, nor was there a regular sitting of the Senate. The days had gone by when the great bell of Saint Mark’s was rung backward to call every fighting man to arms, and every aged Senator to the Council. The handful of scared and vacillating men who had steered Venice to her end met stealthily by night in the Casino Pesaro, more like conspirators than defenders of their country. Most of them fancied the French already in the lagoons, if not in the city; some, forgetting that they had neither troops nor captains, were for defence to the death; some, who had secretly adopted revolutionary ideas and principles, rejoiced at heart because the end was so near.

Such a meeting of such men could come to nothing; and nothing was decided except that Foscarini, the Provveditor, should be assisted by two other nobles, commissioned to negotiate with Bonaparte.

They went and found him apparently in the mildest and most friendly humour, but the report of theirinterview with him reached the Senate together with a communication from the Inquisitors explaining Bonaparte’s plan for taking possession of the fort of

THE SALUTE FROM THE LAGOON

Legnago, making sure of the free navigation of the Adige, and threatening to destroy Venice in order to extort a sum of five or six millions of francs.

So Venice, still theoretically neutral, was driven to collect such poor forces as she had by land and sea, in order to defend herself against the depredations of the combatants. She had not a single general to direct her men, or to plan a defence. Three nobles were in charge of her boundaries on the mainland; another was made responsible for the capital, and two were placed in charge of the lagoons. A war-tax was levied, too, and it is due to the citizens of the dying State to say that they were generous to their country to the last. Many citizens of all classes gave large sums of their own free will to help the defence, and not in Venice only; the cities of Friuli and Dalmatia, and even small communities at a great distance, made heavy sacrifices spontaneously for the public safety.

The historian Romanin was of opinion that even at that moment, if the government had found resolution enough to sacrifice all her possessions on

Rom. ix. 321.

the mainland, as at the time of the League of Cambrai, a clever diplomacy might yet have saved the State. But he was a Venetian and a most patriotic one, and he could not understand that it needed something more than skill to keep Venice alive, that it needed life itself, the life that was all spent, at last, after more than a thousand years.

The Provveditor for the lagoons, Giacomo Nani, wrote to the Doge the courageous words: ‘A State has not the right to possess provinces which it cannot defend.’ He, too, remembered the League of Cambrai. But the Doge was not to be roused; it was no longervacillation, it was paralysis of the will that made him follow the Senate. Yet Nani’s letters determined the Savi to look about for some general into whose hands the whole defence might be given. It was the old tradition of employing the condottiero; but there was only one man alive just then who had the genius and the conviction that save a cause all but lost; he was a man who could have stopped a host with Falstaff’s ragged company, and he was at the gates of Venice. The Savi hit upon the Prince of Nassau as a possible captain, but Austria stepped in and forbade that he should be called.

The King of Naples now signed an armistice with the French, and Bonaparte made himself at home on the Venetian mainland, quartering his troops at Bergamo, Brescia, and Crema without ceremony, and merely notifying the Venetian Senate that he did so, as if no excuse were needed. He took the Venetian guns he found at Legnago and used them at the siege of Mantua as if they were his own. Bonaparte was well aware of the truth of what Nani had written to the Doge, and he took full advantage of the axiom. If the governors of the cities in which he chose to stop did not please him, he wrote them notes like the following:—

... I beg you, Sir, to let me know what game we are playing, for I do not believe you will allow your brothers in arms [the French soldiers!] to die without helpRom. ix. 341.within the walls of Brescia, or to be murdered onthe highroad. If you are not able to keep order in your country, and to make the city of Brescia furnish what is needed for establishing hospitals and for the wants of the troops, I shall have to take more efficient measures.—Believe me, with feelings of esteem and consideration,Bonaparte.

... I beg you, Sir, to let me know what game we are playing, for I do not believe you will allow your brothers in arms [the French soldiers!] to die without help

Rom. ix. 341.

within the walls of Brescia, or to be murdered onthe highroad. If you are not able to keep order in your country, and to make the city of Brescia furnish what is needed for establishing hospitals and for the wants of the troops, I shall have to take more efficient measures.—Believe me, with feelings of esteem and consideration,

Bonaparte.

Bonnal says of him that he avenged legitimate complaints with a host of accusations and denials, and with unmistakable threats; and the Venetians

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