THE FOUR REPUBLICS
[1736-1768 A.D.]
The history of Lucca offers no fact worthy of being mentioned. Its oligarchy grew more and more exclusive, and the peasant landholders in its rural districts became impoverished through the excessive division of property by succession.
The miniature republic of San Marino had retreated into its wonted obscurity since 1739, when the fallen intriguer, Cardinal Alberoni, then papal legate in Romagna, repeated at its expense that treachery by which he had formerly convulsed all Europe. Alleging that the government of San Marino had become a narrow oligarchy, which was true but did not justify his interference, he conquered its territory with a single company of soldiers and a few officers of police. The people appealed to Clement XII, who ordered them to determine their own fate in a general meeting: they unanimously voted against submission to the church, and the papal troops were withdrawn.
In 1746, the Genoese commonalty, unsupported by the nobles, showed, in their expulsion of the Austrians, a spirit worthy of their fathers. With this bold insurrection the history of the republic of Genoa closes for half a century. In 1718 it had increased its territory, by purchasing the imperial fief of Finale; but within a few years it lost Corsica.
The revolted Corsicans allowed their country to be formed into a mock kingdom in 1736, by the foolish ambition of Theodore von Neuhof, a German baron; and, after they had been deserted by him, they continued to resist the united forces brought against them by the Genoese and Louis XV of France. The islanders now established a republic, which, from 1755, was headed by the celebrated Pasquale Paoli: and the contest for freedom was maintained manfully till Genoa, tired of an expensive war, and deeply indebted to France, ceded Corsica to that power on receiving an acquittance. Louis renewed the attack with increased vigour, and the besieged republicans resisted bravely till the struggle became utterly hopeless. Paoli emigrated to England, and the island became a French province in 1768, the year before it gave birth to Napoleon Bonaparte.
The commerce of Venice was nearly at a end; her manufactures were insignificant; her flag was insulted on her own Adriatic by every power of Europe. She still, however, possessed an Italian territory, peopled by two millions and a half of subjects; her Dalmatian and Albanian provinces and the Ionian Isles had half a million more. Her taxes had been nearly doubled in the eighteenth century, and amounted, in 1789, to about 11,600,000 ducats (£1,919,800 or $9,599,000); her public credit was bad; and her debt was 44,000,000 ducats (£7,283,300 or $36,416,500). The gloomy government remained unchanged. The Council of Ten had resisted frequent attempts to overturn it: an attack in 1761 was checked by arrests and imprisonments in monasteries; and the Ten and the Three still exercised, though more cautiously than before, their singular functions. Their spies cost annually, in the eighteenth century, about 200,000 ducats; and more than one secret execution was laid to their charge. But licentiousness was more prevalent than cruelty; infamous women were pensioned as informers by the state; and in the public gaming-houses, amidst the masked gamesters, senators, officially appointed, presided undisguised.
In 1768, the nobles, displeased with the church, named a commission to inquire into the state of its revenues. The report, which is still extant, is curious. The commissioners estimate the gross income at 4,274,460 ducats (£719,100, $3,595,500). Of this sum, 2,734,807 ducats were permanent, being derived from lands, money invested, or perpetual rents. The remainder was casual, being made up of the alms bestowed on mendicant orders, and of the prices paid for temporary masses. The whole number of masses for which the clergy received payment was prodigious, being not less than 8,938,459. Of these the parochial and other secular clergymen celebrated 4,250,060; the monastic orders celebrated the rest, being 4,688,399, of which 3,107,682 were masses on perpetual foundations. On the latter class the Venetian commissioners sarcastically remark that the whole number of the monks and friars was 7,638, of which only 3,272 were in priest’s orders, and entitled to say mass; and that, consequently, if the monks performed all the masses for which they took payment, each of their priests would have to officiate fourteen or fifteen hundred times a year.