Chapter IX: Part 9

He was now arrested, brought to Venice, and confined in one of the Piombi, his property being administered under the direction of the government. The Inquisitors of State examined the record of the complaints laid against him, and concluded that his faults were due to his extreme youth; they therefore ordered him to reside within the fortress of Verona, but gave him control of his fortune.

The Captain of Verona, knowing the sort of prisoner he had to deal with, and being made responsible for him, sent for an engineer and asked his opinion as to the possibilities of escape for a prisoner who was not locked up in a cell. The engineer wrote out a careful criticism of the fortress, concluding with an extremely practical remark: ‘With good means of escape,’ he observed, ‘a man may escape from any place, but without means it is not possible to escape at all.’

The Captain, only partially reassured, set to work to convert his prisoner, and sent him a good priest to teach him his Catechism and exhort him to the practices of Christianity; but the young Count would have neither exhortation nor religious instruction. The Council of Ten now sent him to the fortress of Palma for a change of air, and the commander of that place inherited the feverish anxiety about his charge which had tormented the Captain of Verona. He did not consult an engineer, however, and one morning the prisoner was not in his room, nor in the fortress, nor anywhere in the neighbourhood of Palma.

The Inquisitors now sent Sbirri in all directions throughout the Venetian territory. They could not catch Alemanno, but he wearied of eluding them, and judged that he could get better terms by submitting to the Inquisitors. He did so, using the offices of his aunt, Countess Giulia Gambara, who was married to a gentleman of Vicenza. The Podestà of the latter city sent an officer and six soldiers to the place designated by Alemanno, and he surrendered, and was taken first to Padua, and then to Venice. As soon as he landed at the Piazzetta he was put in charge of Cristofoli and the Sbirri, who took him before the Inquisitors.

They exiled him to Zara, and wrote to the Governor of Dalmatia: ‘We desire him to have a good lodging.... See that he frequents persons of good habits, thanks to whom he may not wander from the right path on which he has entered, and in which we wish him to continue.’

The Inquisitors, good souls, so mildly concerned for the wild boy’s moral welfare, were soon to learn what Alemanno considered the ‘right path,’ for the Governor of Dalmatia kept them well informed. Before long they learned that a certain fisherman, who had refused to let the Count’s butler, Antonio Barach, have a fine fish which was already sold to another client, had been seized, taken into the Count’s house, and severely beaten.

But the Inquisitors were inclined to be clement and paid no attention to the accounts of his doings. In 1756 he was authorised to return to his domains of

Pralboino and Corvione, and his real career began. His first care was to engage as many desperate Bravi as he could find. One of these having had a little difficulty with the police, and having been killed during the argument, Alemanno captured a Sbirro, and so handled him that he sent him back to his post a cripple for life.

Scarcely a year after his return from Zara, he rode through the town of Calvisano, and without answering the Customs officer, whose duty it was to ascertain if he were carrying anything dutiable, he galloped on and escaped recognition. His servant, who followed him at a little distance, was stopped, and as he answered the Customs men very rudely he was locked up in jail. But when the officer in charge learned who the man was, his fright was such that he not only set him at liberty at once, but conversed with him and treated him in the most friendly manner.

The young Count was of course delighted to learn that his name spread terror amongst government officials, and by way of showing what he could do, he sent fifteen of his Bravi to Calvisano with orders to besiege the Customs men. In the fighting that followed, one of the latter was killed and their officer narrowly escaped.

The Council of Ten now interfered, and summoned Count Alemanno Gambara to appear before them, and if he refused, the local authorities were ordered to take him and send him by force. Instead of obeying, he fortified his two castles, increased the numbers of his band of Bravi, and defied the law. With his ruffians at his back he rode through the length and breadth of the Brescian territory as he pleased, and once even traversed

the city itself with his formidable escort. No one dared to meddle with him. His neighbours in the country were completely terrorised, and he and his head ruffian, Carlo Molinari, committed the wildest excesses.

Alemanno seems to have especially delighted to watch the effect of fright on his victims. One day his men chased a priest of Gottolengo and three friends, who had been shooting in the woods not far beyond the boundary of the estate of Corvione. The fugitives succeeded in reaching the church of Gottolengo, in which they took refuge, barricading the door against their pursuers. But the Bravi starved them out, and they were obliged to surrender unconditionally. They were then led out to a lonely field and were exhorted to commend their souls to God, as they were about to be killed and buried on the spot. Alemanno watched their agony with delight, concealed behind a hedge. When he was tired of the sport, he came out of concealment and ordered his men to beat and kick them back to Gottolengo.

A retired colonel lived quietly on a small estate near one of Gambara’s. His servants accidentally killed one of the Count’s dogs; he had them taken, cruelly beaten, and sent back to their master after suffering every indignity. The colonel thought of lodging a complaint with the Council of Ten, but on reflection he gave up the idea as not safe, for Gambara’s vengeance would probably have been fatal to any one who ventured to give information of his doings. No one was safe within his reach, neither man, nor woman, nor child. A volume might be filled with the list of his crimes.

At last, in 1762, the municipality of the town of Gambara, from which he took his title, resolved to petition the Council of Ten for help and protection against him. When he learned that this was their intention, he rode into the town with his escort, and halting in the market-place addressed the citizens; his threats of vengeance were so frightful, and he was so well able to carry them out, that the chief burghers fell upon their knees before him, weeping and imploring his forgiveness.

One day several Sbirri traversed some of his land in pursuit of a smuggler who sought his protection. He met them smiling, and cordially invited them to spend a night under his roof. With the childlike simplicity which is one of the most endearing characteristics of most Italians, they fell into the trap. On the next day, a cart loaded with greens entered Brescia, and stopped opposite the house of the Venetian Podestà. The horses were taken out and led away, without exciting any remark, and the cart remained where it had been left, till the foul smell it exhaled attracted attention. It was unloaded, and underneath the greens were found the bloody corpses of the Sbirri who had accepted Gambara’s hospitality.

This time the Inquisitors of State took matters seriously, and sent a squadron of cuirassiers and a detachment of Sbirri, under the command of an officer called Rizzi, to arrest him and his henchman Molinari. Rizzi came to Pralboino and broke down the gates, but the two men were already gone, and the expedition ended in the confiscation of a few insignificant letters found in Alemanno’s desk.

He had understood that he must leave Venetian territory for a time, and riding down into the Duchy of Parma he sought the hospitality of his friend, the Marchese Casali, at Monticelli. He next visited Genoa, and judging that it was time to settle in life, he married the Marchesa Carbonare, whom he judged, with some reason, to be a woman worthy of his companionship.

They returned together to Monticelli, where they led a riotous existence for some time. Being one day short of money, Alemanno stopped the messengers who were conveying to Venice the taxes raised in Brescia, and sent them on after giving them a formal receipt for the large sum he had taken from them. But this was too much for the Duke of Parma, who now requested the couple to spend their time elsewhere than in his Duchy.

They consulted as to their chances of getting a free pardon for the crimes the Count had committed on Venetian territory and against the Republic, and the Countess addressed a petition to the Doge which begins as follows: ‘Every penitent sinner who sincerely purposes to mend his life obtains of God mercy and forgiveness; shall I, Marianna Carbonare, the most afflicted wife of Count Alemanno Gambara, not feel thereby encouraged to fall upon my knees before the august Throne of your Serenity?...’ And much more to the same effect.

Another petition signed by both was addressed to the Inquisitors, and a third, signed only by Alemanno, to the Doge and the Inquisitors together. In this precious document he calls them ‘the most perfect image of God on earth, by their power.’

The object of these petitions was that the Count might be sent into exile, anywhere, so long as he were not shut up in a fortress, a sentence which would soon kill him, as he was in bad health.

He had certainly committed many murders and had killed several servants of the Republic in the performance of their duties; and he had stolen the taxes collected in Brescia. Amazing as it may seem, his petition was granted, and he was exiled to Zara for two years, after which he was allowed to come to Chioggia on the express condition that he should not set foot outside the castle, and should see no one but his wife and son. He remained in Chioggia just a year, from the twenty-fifth of September 1777, to the twenty-sixth of September 1778, after which the Inquisitors were kind enough to give him his liberty if he would present himself before their Secretary, which he did with alacrity.

My readers need not be led into a misapprehension by the touching unanimity which the loving couple exhibited in the petitions they signed. They never agreed except when their interests did, and were soon practically separated in their private life. The Countess took Count Miniscalchi of Verona for her lover, while Alemanno showed himself everywhere with the Countess of San Secondo. In the end they separated altogether, and the son, Francesco, remained with his father, who educated him according to his own ideas.

So far as can be ascertained, the man never changed the manner of his life. After his pardon he returned to his estates in the province of Brescia, where he found his old friends, who were few, and the recollections of his youth, which were many. In a short time Pralboino and Corvione were once more dens of murderers and robbers as of old, and as in former days he had been helped in his blackest deeds by Carlo Molinari, his chief Bravo, so now he was seconded by his steward, Giacomo Barchi, who kept the reign of terror alive in the country when it pleased the Count to reside in Venice.

He was sleeping soundly in his apartment in the capital one morning towards the end of March 1782, after having spent most of the night at a gambling house by the Ponte dell’ Angelo--he never slept more than four hours--when he was awakened by an unexpected visit from Cristofolo de’ Cristofoli, who requested him to appear at once before the Secretary of the Inquisitors. An examination of conscience must have been a serious affair for Alemanno, and not to be undertaken except at leisure; and it appears that on this occasion he really did not know what he was to be accused of doing. The Secretary of the Inquisitors merely commanded him not to leave the city on pain of the Tribunal’s anger, and on the morrow he learned that his steward Barchi had also been arrested.

For some reason impossible to explain, nothing was done to either, and before long even the steward was set at liberty. The Inquisitors confined themselves to threatening the two with ‘the public indignation’ and their own severest measures, if the Count did not dismiss his Bravi and ‘reform his conduct.’

After that, history is silent as to his exploits. He was no longer young, and even the zest of murder and rapine was probably beginning to pall on his weary taste. We know that he sincerely mourned the fall of the Republic which had been so consistently kind to him, and he never plotted against the government. He could not but feel that it would have been an exaggeration to accuse it of having been hard on him.

His son Francesco, on the contrary, turned out to be one of the most turbulent of revolutionaries, and helped to lead the insurrection at Bergamo. But for the intervention of Bonaparte himself, he would have been killed by the inhabitants of Salò, who remained faithful to the Republic, when they repulsed the insurgents. He was one of the five delegates whom the city of Brescia sent to Bonaparte, to name him president of the Cisalpine Republic. He died in 1848, after having written a life of his father, which was published eleven years later in Trieste. One cannot but feel that in composing a memoir of his parent, filial piety led him too far.

In concluding this chapter, which has dealt with criminals, I shall take the opportunity of observing that the places in which criminals were confined in Venice shared in the general decay of everything connected with the government. In the seventeenth century and earlier all prisoners had been carefully kept separate according to their misdeeds; in the eighteenth, mere children were shut up with adult criminals, and debtors were confined with thieves. In the women’s prisons lunatics were often imprisoned with the sane, a state of things that led to the most horrible scenes.

The gaolers of the Pozzi and the Piombi did not even keep the prisons clean, and the state of the cells was such that I do not care to disgust the reader by describing it. In the other prisons, or attached to them, a regular tavern was tolerated and perhaps authorised, as a place of gathering for the prisoners, and here games of chance were played, even

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]

such as were forbidden elsewhere in the city. The archives of the Ten show how many crimes were committed in the very places where men were confined to expiate earlier offences. As for the gaolers, they were one and all corruptible. One of the Savi, the patrician Gritti, denounced to the Senate, in 1793, a gaoler who let the healthiest and most airy cells to the highest bidders.

XIV

THE LAST DOGES

Between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the end of the Republic eleven Doges occupied the throne. Of these the only one who might

[Sidenote: _1700-1797._]

have saved the government or retarded its fall was the very one who reigned the shortest time. Let us say that if he had lived, he might have so far restored the strength of the ancient aristocracy as to admit of its perishing in a struggle instead of dying of old age.

This Doge was Marco Foscarini, who was elected on the thirty-first of May 1762, and died on the thirty-first of the following March. He was a man whose integrity was never questioned, even by

[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 142._]

the revolutionaries, and he accepted the Dogeship with the greatest regret. He was a man of letters, and the endless empty ceremonial of the ducal existence obliged him to leave unfinished his noble work on Venetian literature. Even had the Doge’s action not been hopelessly paralysed by the hedge of petty regulations that bristled round him, Foscarini’s experience of affairs in the course of occupying many exalted posts had left him few illusions as to the

[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 302._]

future of his country. ‘This century will be a terrible one for our children and grandchildren,’ he wrote some time after his election.

Like many of the Doges he was a very old man when he was elected, and was over eighty-eight years of age when he died, apparently much surprised at finding himself at his end, though not unprepared for it. He complained that his physicians had not told him how ill he was, and he asked for a little Latin book, _De modo bene moriendi_, which had been given him by his friend Cardinal Passionei; presently he tried to dictate a few reflections to his doctor, but was too weak, and expired whispering, ‘My poor servants!’ He had apparently not provided for them as he would have done if he had not been taken unawares.

His successor was Aloise IV. Mocenigo, who had been Ambassador to Rome and to Paris. His election was celebrated in a manner that recalled the festivities of the sixteenth century. A secretary was sent to the Mocenigo palace to announce the news to

[Sidenote: _1763._]

his family, and the Dogess took four days in which to complete her preparations, after which she came to the ducal palace accompanied by her two married nieces, her sisters, her mother, all her own female cousins, and all those of her husband; and this battalion of noble women in their gondolas was followed down the Grand Canal by an innumerable fleet of gondolas and boats. All the male relations were waiting at the landing of the Piazzetta to escort the ladies to the palace, where the Dogess, seated on a throne, received the homage of the electors and of all the nobility. She did not wear the ducal insignia on that day. In the evening there was a ball, which she opened with one of the Procurators of Saint Mark.

A series of festivities began on the following day, at which she appeared in a memorably magnificent dress: a long mantle of cloth of gold, like the Doge’s own, with wide sleeves lined with white lace, opened to show a skirt and body all of gold lace-work; a girdle of diamonds encircled her waist; her head-dress was a veil, arranged like a cap, but the two ends hung down to her shoulders, and were picked up and fastened to her back hair by two diamond clasps.

On three consecutive evenings there were balls at the palace, and at each the Dogess danced only one minuet, with a Procurator of Saint Mark,

[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 148._]

as etiquette required when there were no foreign princes in Venice.

This reminds one of old times; it is even true that in some ways the display at the ducal palace was greater than it had ever been. The banquets especially took the importance of

[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, i. 289._]

public spectacles, and were always five in number, given at the feasts of Saint Mark, the Ascension, Saint Vitus, Saint Jerome, and Saint Stephen, after the last of which the distribution of the ‘oselle’ took place, representing the ducks of earlier days, as the reader will remember. At these great dinners there were generally a hundred guests; the Doge’s counsellors, the Heads of the Ten, the Avogadors and the heads of all the other magistracies had a right to be invited, but the rest of the guests were chosen among the functionaries at the Doge’s pleasure.

In the banquet-hall there were a number of sideboards on which was exhibited the silver, part of which belonged to the Doge and part to the State, and this was shown twenty-four hours before the feast. It was under the keeping of a special official. The glass service used on the table for flowers and for dessert was of the finest made in Murano. Each service, though this is hard to believe, is said to have been used in public only once, and was designed to recall some important event of contemporary history by trophies, victories, emblems, and allegories. I find this stated by Giustina Renier Michiel, who was a contemporary, was noble, and must have often seen these banquets.

The public was admitted to view the magnificent spectacle during the whole of the first course, and the ladies of the aristocracy went in great numbers. It was their custom to walk round the tables, talking with those of their friends who sat among the guests, and accepting the fruits and sweetmeats which the Doge and the rest offered them, rising from their seats to do so. The Doge himself rose from his throne to salute those noble ladies whom he wished to distinguish especially. Sovereigns passing through Venice at such times did not disdain to appear as mere spectators at the banquets, which had acquired the importance of national anniversaries.

Between the first and the second courses, a majestic chamberlain shook a huge bunch of keys while he walked round the hall, and at this hint all visitors disappeared. The feast sometimes lasted several hours, after which the Doge’s squires presented each of the guests with a great basket filled with sweetmeats, fruits, comfits, and the like, and adorned with the ducal arms. Every one rose to thank the Doge for these presents, and he took advantage of the general move to go back to his private apartments. The guests accompanied him to the threshold, where his Serenity bowed to them without speaking, and every one returned his salute in silence. He disappeared within, and all went home.

During this ceremony of leave-taking, the gondoliers of the guests entered the Hall of the banquet and each carried the basket received by his master

[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, Origini i. 302._]

to some lady indicated by the latter. ‘One may imagine,’ cries the good Dame Michiel, ‘what curiosity there was about the destination of the baskets, but the faithful gondoliers regarded mystery as a point of honour, though the basket was of such

dimensions that it was impossible to take it anywhere unobserved; happy were they who received these evidences of a regard which at once touched their feelings and flattered their legitimate pride! The greatest misfortune was to have to share the prize with another.’

The reign of Aloise Mocenigo was the one in which the question of reforms was the most fully discussed, but many of the discussions turned on theories, and though a few led to the passage of measures which somewhat affected commerce and public instruction, no real result was produced. The Republic, I repeat, was dying of old age, which is the only ill that is universally admitted to be incurable.

At the death of Mocenigo, three candidates were proposed for the ducal throne, namely, Andrea Tron, Girolamo Venier, and Paolo Renier. If the people had been consulted, Venier would have been acclaimed, though I do not pretend to say that his election would have retarded the end. Nothing is easier than to speculate about what ‘the people’ might have done at any given point in history; nothing is harder than to guess what they are going to do; nothing, on the whole, is more certain than that the voice of the people never yet turned the scale at a great moment in a nation well out of its infancy. No one pretends nowadays that the French revolution was made by ‘the people.’

The many in Venice were vastly surprised to hear of Paolo Renier’s candidacy, for he had a very indifferent reputation; to be accurate, the trouble was that it was not indifferent, but bad. He was, indeed, a man of keen penetration, rarely eloquent, and a first-rate scholar. He knew Homer by heart, and he had translated Plato’s _Dialogues_, which latter piece of work might partly explain, without excusing,

[Sidenote: _R. viii. 240, 241; Mutinelli, Ult._]

his deplorable morals; but it was neither from Plato nor from Homer that he had learned to plunder the government of his country. One of his contemporaries, Gratarol, described him as possessing ‘the highest of talents, the most arrogant of characters, and the most deceptive of faces.’

It was commonly reported in Venice that when he had been Bailo at Constantinople he had taken advantage of the war between Turkey and Russia, under Catherine the Great, to enrich himself in a shameful manner, and the ninety thousand sequins he made on that occasion afterwards served him, according to popular report, for bribing the Barnabotti in the Great Council in order that the forty-one electors chosen might be favourable to him. He was certainly not the inventor of this plan, but he is generally said to have just outdone his predecessors in generosity, without overstepping the limits of strict economy. The general belief is that he bought three hundred votes at fifteen sequins each, which was certainly not an excessive price. It appears, too, that he distributed money to the people in order to soothe the irritation his candidacy caused. If all these accusations were not clearly proved, they were at least the subject of contemporary satire.

A certain priest in particular wrote biting verses on him, in Venetian dialect, describing the righteous anger of the late Marco Foscarini’s ghost at the election of such a successor. The shade of the honourable

[Sidenote: _Malamani._]

man tears off the ducal insignia in disgust, and bitterly reproaches Venice.

‘Ah, foolish Venice!’ it exclaims, ‘a Renier is Doge of our country, one who with ribald heart and iniquitous words sought to undo that tribunal which defends our country from all evil! Ah, mad Venice! Now indeed I do repent me of having been Doge one year! Strike my name from the series of the Doges, for I disdain to stand among traitors.’

After his election Paolo Renier had his first ‘osella’ coined with a peculiarity in the superscription which irritated the public. The words ran: ‘Paulus Reinerius principis munus,’ his name being in the nominative case, a grammatical mistake which had always been regarded as the special privilege of kings and emperors.

He made money of everything, by selling posts, franchises, and licenses to beg at the door of the Basilica of Saint Mark. The Dogess was

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]

not a person likely to increase her husband’s popularity, for she had been a rope-dancer, and never appeared at public ceremonies. As I have explained elsewhere, it was the Doge’s niece who did the honours of the palace, Dame Giustina, who was beloved and esteemed by all Venetians, but ‘the Delmaz,’ as the Doge’s wife was called, interfered in a hundred details of the administration.

It is told, for instance, that the priest of the church of San Basso used to have the bell rung for mass very early in the morning, and that it had a peculiarly harsh and shrill tone which disturbed the Dogess’s slumbers. She sent for

[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘San Basso’; also Molmenti, Vecchie Storie._]

him and promised to make him a canon of Saint Mark’s if he would only have the bell moved, or not rung. The good man promised and went away delighted, but when, after a time, the canonry was not given to him, he began ringing again, and doubtless enjoyed the thought that every stroke set the faithless Dogess’s teeth on edge.

The people revenged themselves on the Renier family for its many misdeeds in scathing epigrams, and when at last the Doge lay dying in long agony, the

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]

gondoliers said that his soul refused to leave without being paid. The truth is that as his death took place in Carnival week, on February eighteenth, 1789, it was decided to keep his death a secret not only over Ash Wednesday, but until the first Monday in Lent, in order not to disturb the merrymaking,

[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 300._]

nor the reaction which was supposed to follow it; and he was buried without much ceremony and with no display in the church of the Tolentini.

The candidates proposed for election to succeed him were numerous, but not of good quality. One of them, Sebastiano Mocenigo, was such a bad

[Sidenote: _Rom. viii, 301._]

character that when he had been in Vienna as Ambassador the Empress Maria Teresa had asked the Republic to recall him. The truth was that the few who were fit for the Dogeship would not accept it, or were opposed by the whole body of the corruptible.

As a specimen of what went on during the election of the last Doge of Venice, I subjoin an official list of what were considered the legitimate expenses of the electors. The figures are from Mutinelli

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]

and may be trusted. They are given in Venetian ‘lire,’ one of which is considered to have been equal to half a modern Italian ‘lira,’ or French franc.

Ven. Lire. Bread, wine, oil, and vinegar 29,421 Fish 24,410 Meat, poultry, game 20,370 Sausages, large and small 3,980 Preserved fruits and candles 47,670 Wines, liquors, coffee 63,845 Spices, herbs, fruit, flowers 6,314 Wood and charcoal 31,851 Utensils hired, worn, and lost 41,624 Small expenses 45,327 Given to footmen and to workmen of the guilds 63,583 Tobacco and snuff 4,931 Poem ‘La Scaramuccia’ (The Skirmish) 48 Almanacks 8 Game of Rocambole (said to have been a kind of Ombre) 550 Nightcaps 450 Felt caps 56 Socks 16 Black silk wig-bags 48 French, German, and Spanish snuff-boxes 3,077 Combs ‘à la royale,’ for wigs, and for caps 2,150 Essence of rose, carnation, lavender, and vanilla; olive gum and gold powder 173 Rouge 9 One rosary 15 ------- Total 389,926 =======

Romanin, probably with another copy of the account which he does not give in items, and writing earlier than Mutinelli, makes the sum a little smaller. In any case it is certainly one of the most extraordinary bills ever brought in by a Republic for electing its chief.

In view of modern methods it will interest some

[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 302, note._]

of my readers to see how the expenses of Venetian elections increased towards the end, according to Romanin:--

Ven. Lire.
Election of Carlo Ruzzini in 1732 68,946
“ Aloise Pisani “ 1734 70,629
“ Pietro Grimani “ 1741 70,667
“ Francesco Loredan “ 1752 134,290
“ Marco Foscarini “ 1762 120,868
“ Aloise Mocenigo “ 1763 125,234
“ Paolo Renier “ 1779 222,410
“ Ludovico Manin “ 1789 378,387

Greatly increased expenditure for successive elections during half a century can only mean one of two things, the approach of a collapse, or the imminence of a tyranny. The greater the proportionate increase from one election to the next, the nearer is the catastrophe. The election of the last Doge of Venice cost five and a half times as much as that of Carlo Ruzzini. It would be interesting to know what proportion Julius Cæsar’s enormous expenses, when he was elected Pontifex Maximus, bore to those of a predecessor in the same office fifty years earlier.

The Venetian electors who managed to consume, or make away with, nearly eight thousand pounds’ worth of food, drink, tobacco, and rose-water in nineteen days, chose an honest man, though a very incompetent one, and the public showed no enthusiasm for the new Doge, in spite of the great festivities held for his coronation. The Venetian people, too, preserved their artistocratic tendencies to the very last, and always preferred a Doge of ancient lineage to one who, like Manin, came of the ‘New men.’

He was not fortunate in his choice of a motto for his first ‘osella.’ He, who was to dig the grave of Venetian liberty, chose the single word ‘Libertas’ for the superscription on his first coin; and on that which appeared in the last year but one of the independence of Venice were the words ‘Pax in virtute tua,’ which, as Mr. Horatio Brown has pointedly observed, ‘reads like a mocking epitaph upon the dying Republic.’

Manin was a weak and vacillating man, though truthful, generous to a fault, and not a coward. As Doge, he was bound hand and foot, and only a man of great character could have broken through such bonds to strike out an original plan that might have prolonged his country’s life. He gave his fortune without stint, but the idea of giving anything else did not occur to him. Before the tremendous storm of change that broke with the French revolution and raged throughout Europe for years, he bowed his head, and Venice went down. No man is to be blamed for not being born a hero; nor is the mother of heroes in fault when she is old and can bear them no more.

XV

THE LAST SOLDIERS

During the eighteenth century Venetian diplomacy succeeded in preserving the Republic’s neutral position in spite of the great wars that agitated Europe. Her only war was with the Turks, and it was disastrous.

Early in the century the Turks attacked the Peloponnesus, and Venice lost her richest colonies in rapid

[Sidenote: _1715._]

succession. Her navy was no longer a power, and she was almost without allies, for the European powers were exhausted by the recent war of the Spanish succession, and though Malta and the Pope befriended her, the help they could give was insignificant. It was not until the Turks attacked Hungary that she received any efficient assistance; by uniting her forces with those of the Empire she obtained some success, and the desperate courage of Marshal Count von Schulenburg, a Saxon general in the Venetian service, saved Corfu. The Turks, beaten at sea by the Venetians, and on the Danube by the Hungarians at Temesvar, made peace, and the treaty of Passarowitz put an end to the war.

[Sidenote: _1718._]

But Venice had for ever lost the Peloponnesus, Crete, and other valuable possessions.

After this disastrous struggle, it was impossible to preserve any further illusions as to the future. Venice felt that she was in full decadence, and only endeavoured to hide its outward signs. Instead of trying to beat against the current, she allowed herself to drift; things went from bad to worse, and before long the army, the navy, and the Arsenal were completely disorganised, though their expenses had not in the least diminished. A contemporary says that a regiment looked like a company, and a

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 150 sqq._]

company like a corporal’s guard, whereas the Republic was paying for regiments with their full complement of men.

The service of the hired troops was beneath contempt. In Padua the students of the

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 176._]

University defied the garrison. On one occasion, in a hideous orgy, they accidentally or intentionally did to death a pretty beggar girl; but when a detachment of Croatian soldiers attempted to arrest the culprits, the students treated them with such utter contempt that their commander was terrified, fled with his men to the safety of the barracks, and bolted and barred the doors.

If such things happened on Venetian territory one may fancy what the state of things was in the colonies. Corfu was supposed to be defended by a company of Venetian soldiers and two companies of Albanians. From 1724 to 1745 the latter were represented by two men, a major and a captain, whose sole business was to draw the pay of the whole force. The two officers embezzled the sums allowed for the men’s food and uniforms, and the pay was sent to the soldiers, who lived in their own homes in the mountains. No trouble was taken even to identify them, and when one died it was customary for another to take his name and receive his pay. The two companies thus literally earned immortality, and the names on the rolls never changed. Several Albanians who drew their pay as Venetian mercenaries enrolled themselves also in the so-called ‘Royal Macedonian’ regiment, in the service of the King of Naples, and were never found out by the Republic. In twenty-one years these imaginary troops cost Venice 54,300 sequins, or over £40,000.

The colonial garrisons economised their gunpowder by abolishing all target practice, and consisted chiefly of utterly untrained old men who were absent most of the time. The fortresses were not more serviceable than the troops that were supposed to defend them. On the mainland, the frontier fort of Peschiera was half dismantled, the drawbridges had

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. and Tassini, under ‘Bombardiere.’_]

long rusted in their positions and could, not be raised, and the ramparts were so overgrown with trees and shrubs as to be impassable; at one time the fort did not even possess a flag to show its nationality. Ninety of its guns had no carriages; the gunners lived quietly at their homes in Venice, and if they ever remembered that they were supposed to be soldiers it was because the government dressed them up on great occasions as a guard of honour for the ducal palace. Their number was between four and five hundred.

As for the fort of Corfu, it was robbed by a common thief. In 1745, a certain Vizzo Manducchiollo promised the Turks two good guns, one of

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 169._]

bronze and one of iron. With the help of his gang he scaled the wall of the Raimondo Fort one night, carried off the cannon, and sold them to the Turks for twenty-seven sequins.

The workmen of the Arsenal in Venice, who had formerly been the best-organised body of men in the Republic, had completely come to grief in the eighteenth century. The Arsenal was supposed to be governed by a voluminous code of laws, most of which were now either altogether disregarded, or were administered with culpable leniency. The disorder was incredible. Every son of a workman in the Arsenal had an hereditary right to be employed there, but the officials who were in command did not take any means of checking the men’s attendance; they paid so much a head for every workman on the payroll, according to his age, whether he ever appeared except on pay-days or not. In this way the State paid out vast sums to men who only entered the gates once a month to draw their wages for doing nothing. Many of them had other occupations, at which they worked regularly and industriously. Some were even actors, and one of the cleverest ‘Pantaloons’ was officially known as one of the best-paid Arsenal hands. The six hundred apprentices who were supposed to attend the technical schools attached to the different departments of the yard, only looked in now and then. When the time came for them to pass for the certificate of master workman they paid the sum of thirty-four Venetian lire, in consideration of which the Examiners pronounced them competent. In this way, as Mutinelli

[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 145, 153._]

truly says, ignorance became hereditary, as employment in the Arsenal already was, and the yard became a mere monument of former generous initiative, very expensive to maintain.

At the fall of the Republic, Bonaparte seized and sent to France a large number of vessels. When the Arsenal was sacked in 1797 it was

[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 162, note 2, and 304._]

found to contain 5293 pieces of artillery, of which 2518 were of bronze, and the rest of iron; and at the last there were brought from the docks ten ships of seventy guns, eleven of seventy-six, one of fifty-five, thirteen of forty-two, two of thirty-two, twenty-three galleys, one floating howitzer battery, two ‘cutters,’ whatever the Italian writer may have meant,

twelve gunboats, three brigs of sixteen to eighteen guns, one fore-and-aft schooner, seven galleons and as many ‘zambecchi,’ five feluccas, many boats armed with grenade mortars, ten floats with two guns, and one floating-battery of seven guns.

If these vessels were not all badly built, they were certainly badly fitted out and badly sailed when they went to sea. The Provveditori and Inquisitors Extraordinary, sent from time to time by the Senate to inspect the fleet, complained that they found neither good carpenters nor good sailors. One frigate, which had a nominal crew of one hundred and fifty-seven men, the _Concordia_, was found to have barely thirty, and not able seamen at that. As for the convicts who pulled the oars on the war-galleys, they were kept half-clothed and shelterless when ashore; but being only carelessly guarded they often ran away, and not unfrequently succeeded in finding employment, under assumed names, in the smaller ports of the Republic. Some are known to have become house-servants. Nevertheless the overseer of each gang regularly pocketed the money allowed for their food and clothing.

In 1784 it was proved that for a long time from sixty to seventy thousand fagots of wood and an immense number of barrel staves had disappeared yearly, no one knew how. The workmen of the Arsenal did not think it necessary to buy firewood when it could be had for nothing.

In 1730, the Provveditor Erizzo was ordered to one of the Eastern colonies on an important mission, with several large vessels. Almost at the moment of starting, the officers of one of these galleys came and begged him to give them a captain not belonging to the

navy, as they should not otherwise feel safe to go to sea.

Yet at this very time Goldoni wrote that every one sang in Venice: ‘They sing in the squares, in the streets, on the canals; the shopkeepers

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _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

that many intrigues were already on foot to deprive

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

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _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 and were brought home to Venice on his flagship, the _Fama_--‘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.

XVI

THE LAST DIPLOMATISTS

During the 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

[Sidenote: _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

[Sidenote: _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 enter upon 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

[Sidenote: _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, and by 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

[Sidenote: _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.

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.