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
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
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