Venice

by Clara Erskine Clement Waters

At length, by a counterplot, a full knowledge of all Pierre's plans was brought to the Doge. Three of the conspirators were strangled, and hanged by one leg to the gibbet between the Columns. The effect was magical. At the sight of these three bodies, the inns and lodging-houses, which had been full of curious and unaccountable strangers, were immediately deserted. Thus the Spanish conspiracy came to naught; but it was soon suspected that some of the Venetian nobles were selling information to the Spaniards, and the discovery of the treason of Giambattista Bragadin proved these suspicions to be correct.

Bragadin secured his election to the Senate by a fraud, and by an ingenious method was selling to the Spanish ambassador the secrets of the Council Chamber. He went to the Frari for his devotions, and in a particular faldstool which he used, he left in writing his communication for the ambassador, which was taken away by a secretary of the embassy. A monk, who was somewhat surprised by the frequent devotions of Bragadin, observed that the secretary always came to the church on the same day with the Senator. This so aroused the curiosity of the monk that he watched the two worshippers until he discovered the secret, took one of these letters out of the faldstool himself, and carried it to the Doge. Bragadin was hanged between the Columns, and the ambassador hurriedly returned to Spain. In these two cases the conduct of the Ten commended itself to all parties; but unfortunately a sad case of another sort excited a furious hatred of them and of their methods.

In 1609 Antonio Foscarini, who had been a wise and faithful servant of Venice, was sent as ambassador to England. He had been there but a short time when it was found that the contents of his despatches to Venice were being given to other foreign ambassadors in England. His secretary was suspected and discharged, his place being supplied by Giulio Muscorno. After a time Muscorno and Foscarini disagreed seriously; and Muscorno took every means to make it appear that Foscarini was dishonest, and finally, at Venice, declared that the ambassador had himself sold the secrets of the State. The Inquisitors made a long and careful inquiry, which resulted in the acquittal of Foscarini and the imprisonment of Muscorno, in 1618.

But Foscarini, having been once suspected, was carefully watched; and when Lady Arundel of Wardour, who had been his friend in England, came to Venice for the education of her children, his visits to her house, where the ambassadors of different countries were also frequently received, attracted much attention. Girolamo Vano, a professional spy, now accused Foscarini to the Ten. He was arrested and tried for selling state secrets by the Three Inquisitors, who reported him to the Ten as guilty, in April, 1622. He was condemned, as a traitor, to be strangled in prison that night, and to be hanged by one leg between the Columns the next morning. Foscarini calmly dictated his will to his jailer, and died with fortitude.

But it would have been wiser in the Ten to have buried him privately. The public exposure of his strangled corpse angered the nobility, while it also terrified them; and when, four months later, it was proved that Foscarini had been an innocent man, the rage against the Ten and the Three was fully justified. Everything possible was done to repair the ghastly error. Girolamo Vano was strangled in his turn. An order was published at home and sent abroad, acknowledging the fatal mistake. The body of Foscarini was exhumed and reburied with all the pomp due a senator; but such an exposure of the Ten absolutely forbade confidence in them or their methods. They never recovered from its effect, and their opponents took every advantage of their grave and even criminal blunder.

The jealousy of the Great Council and the Senate brought about a feeling of opposition to the Ten, which was shared by a large party of the people; and at length, in 1627, a commission was appointed to revise the laws by which the Ten were governed. From time to time the hostility to the Ten and the Inquisitors was fanned to a brighter flame, and in the eighteenth century the opposition to them became more active. In 1761 the Great Council refused to elect new members of the Ten; and it is both sad and amusing that so grave an act should result from a quarrel over a lady's caps!

A modiste had made caps for a lady, and failed to please her. A second lady was a friend of a Senator, Angelo Querini, who, in order to please the friend of his friend, procured an order for the expulsion of the cap-maker. The modiste appealed to the Three, and they cancelled the order for expulsion, and declared it unjust. Querini then began to complain of the tyranny of the Inquisitors, and found much sympathy among the nobles. All this so incensed the Three that they resolved to arrest Querini and exile him at Verona; and this folly gave the Great Council its opportunity to declare its hostility to the Ten and the Three, and to refuse to perpetuate these offices.

An examination into the affairs of the Ten and the Inquisitors resulted in their triumph; but there was a revolutionary spirit in Venice which was rapidly growing. An order was issued closing cafés and wine-shops at dark, and forbidding political discussions. The following reply to this was posted up: "The company of night thieves thanks the Ten for giving them the opportunity of winning their supper at a reasonable hour." The chief mouthpiece of the liberal party was Giorgio Pisani, and he was bold in the declaration of his opinions; but the Three were too powerful as yet to permit the theories of the Republicans to be thus freely expressed, and Pisani was deported to Verona in 1780. In that year the Doge Paolo Renier said: "If there be any State in the world which absolutely requires concord at home, it is ours. We have no forces, either on land or on sea. We have no alliances. We live by luck, by accident, and solely dependent upon the conception of Venetian prudence which others entertain about us."