Not to receive the official representative of the new French 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, but the 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