And let this present vote be made known in every commune and put up in the usual and habitual places for public notices; and it is not to go into effect for three days, within which the parish priests in their parishes shall publicly give notice of it to the people. And if gangs of rebels against the Prince of Venice, or troops of theirs, enter the Valley, the communities comprising the Valley shall ring the bells with a hammer [meaning to ring them out, and not to ‘chime’ them only]; and whosoever is between sixteen and sixty years old, and whosoever else will volunteer, is to take arms in the name of the Valley to arrest them [rebels or troops], and may also kill them; and whoever refuses shall be punished by confiscation of all his goods.
The government might have done something to encourage people capable of such devotion; it might at least have ordered them to send deputations to the capital to give information of the state of the country. This the province of Verona asked to be allowed to do, through the Marchese Scipione Maffei, in a petition which the Savi suppressed, without even
Rom. x. 32.
presenting it to the Great Council, because they considered that it might lead to dangerous discussion. They confined themselves to recommending every subject of the most Serene Republic to act with the greatest circumspection towards all the French, as the Venetians had no means of defending themselves against the latter’s pretensions.
In spite of the bad impression made by such weakness, more than thirty thousand men from the provinces volunteered to put down the republican rising, but they had to be sent home for lack of funds and weapons. One hundred young men of the burgher class offered to arm and support themselves at their own expense. From all this it is clear enough that, at the very last, the descendants of the nobles who had made Venice were responsible
Nievo, Memorie d’un ottuagenario, 262.
for her fall. Ippolito Nievo said pithily, that the Venetian aristocracy was a corpse that could not revive, while the Venetian people were a living race shut up with it in the tomb.
The republican revolution thus progressed almost without finding any resistance and practically aided and abetted by the French troops. Bonaparte was so sure of his plan that he did not even make a mystery of it to the envoys of the Venetian Republic who met him at Goritz. He actually offered to pacify the Venetian provinces for the modest sum of a million of francs monthly for six months, which was generous, considering that he alone had caused all the disturbance. A Venetian noble of the fifteenth century would certainly have got the better of him in such a matter of business, but he was too much for the two nobles with whom he had to deal. The monthly million was granted, but on condition that he was not to interfere in the civil discord that distracted the Republic, and not to hinder the government in its efforts to reduce the rebellious cities to subordination.
Such an attempt was made, and the insurgents were beaten more than once, and some of the ringleaders were brought to Venice. In other times