The Venetians had no reason to hope that the exasperation of the Spanish government, at the part which they had taken in the late war in Italy, would die away with the termination of hostilities; and it appeared to the world a consequence of the enmity of the court of Madrid towards the republic that the duke of Osuna, the viceroy of Naples, continued his warlike equipments in that kingdom with undiminished activity, notwithstanding the signature of peace. The viceroy, indeed, pretended that his naval armaments were designed against the infidels; and when the court of Madrid recalled the royal Spanish fleet from the coasts of Italy, the duke of Osuna sent the Neapolitan squadron to sea under a flag emblazoned with his own family arms. But it was difficult to suppose, either that a viceroy dared to hoist his personal standard unsanctioned by his sovereign and would be suffered to engage in a private war against the Ottoman Empire, or that he would require for that purpose the charts of the Venetian lagunes, and the flat-bottomed vessels fitted for their navigation, which he busily collected. The republic accordingly manifested serious alarm, and sedulously prepared for defence.
Affairs were in this state, when one morning several strangers were found suspended from the gibbets of the square of St. Mark. The public consternation increased when, on the following dawn, other bodies were also found hanging on the same fatal spot—also of strangers. It was at the same time whispered that numerous arrests had filled the dungeons of the Council of Ten with some hundreds of criminals; and there was, too, certain proof that many persons had been privately drowned in the canals of Venice. To these fearful indications that the state had been alarmed by some extraordinary danger, the terrors of which were magnified by their obscurity, were shortly added further rumours that several foreigners serving in the fleet had been poniarded, hanged, or cast into the sea. The city was then filled with the most alarming reports: that a conspiracy of long duration had been discovered; that its object was to massacre the nobility, to destroy the republic, to deliver the whole capital to flames and pillage; that the Spanish ambassador was the mover of the horrible plot. Venice was filled with indignation and terror; yet the impenetrable Council of Ten preserved the most profound silence, neither confirming nor contradicting the general belief. The life of the marquis of Bedmar was violently threatened by the populace: he retired from Venice; the senate received a new ambassador from Spain without any signs of displeasure; and, finally, it was not until five months after the executions that the government commanded solemn thanksgiving to be offered up to the Almighty for the preservation of the state from the dangers which had threatened its existence.
[1618-1619 A.D.]
On the extent of these dangers nothing was ever certainly known; but amongst the persons executed the most conspicuous was ascertained to be a French naval captain of high reputation for ability and courage in his vocation, Jacques Pierre, who, after a life passed in enterprises of a doubtful or piratical character, had apparently deserted the service of the viceroy of Naples to embrace that of the republic. This man, and a brother adventurer, one Langlade, who had been employed in the arsenal in the construction of petards and other fireworks, were absent from Venice with the fleet when the other executions took place; and they were suddenly put to death while on this service. Two other French captains named Regnault and Bouslart, with numerous foreigners, principally of the same nation, who had lately been taken into the republican service, were privately tortured and executed in various ways in the capital; and altogether 260 officers and other military adventurers are stated to have perished by the hands of the executioner for their alleged share in the conspiracy. The vengeance or shocking policy of the Council of Ten proceeded yet further; and so careful was that body to bury every trace of this inexplicable affair in the deepest oblivion, that Antoine Jaffier, also a French captain, and other informers, who had revealed the existence of a plot, though at first rewarded, were all in the sequel either known to have met a violent death, or mysteriously disappeared altogether. Of the three Spanish ministers, to whom it has been customary to assign the origin of the conspiracy, the two principal were distinguished by opposite fates. The marquis of Bedmar, after the termination of his embassy, found signal political advancement, and finished by obtaining a cardinal’s hat, by the interest of his court with the holy see. But the duke of Osuna, after being removed from viceroyalty, was disgraced on suspicion of having designed to renounce his allegiance, and to place the crown of Naples on his own head; and he died in prison.
Whether the safety of Venice had really been endangered or not by the machinations of Spain, the measures of that power were observed by the senate with a watchful and jealous eye; and, for many years, the policy of the republic was constantly employed in endeavours to counteract the projects of the house of Austria. In 1619, the Venetians perceived with violent alarm that the court of Madrid, under pretence of protecting the Catholics of the Valtelline against their rulers, the Protestants of the Grison confederation, was labouring to acquire the possession of that valley, which, by connecting the Milanese states with the Tyrol, would cement the dominions of the Spanish and German dynasties of the Austrian family. The establishment of this easy communication was particularly dangerous for the Venetians, because it would envelop their states, from the Lisonzo to the Po, with an unbroken chain of hostile posts, and would intercept all direct intercourse with Savoy and the territories of France. The senate eagerly therefore negotiated the league between these last two powers and their republic, which, in 1623, was followed by the Grison war against the house of Austria. This contest produced little satisfactory fruits for the Venetians; and it did not terminate before the Grisons, though they recovered their sovereignty over the Valtelline, had themselves embraced the party of Spain.
[1619-1645 A.D.]
The Grison war had not closed, when Venice was drawn, by her systematic opposition to the Spanish power, into a more important quarrel—that of the Mantuan Succession, in which she of course espoused the cause of the Gonzaga of Nevers. In this struggle the republic, who sent an army of twenty thousand men into the field on her Lombard frontiers, experienced nothing but disgrace; and the senate were but too happy to find their states left, by the Peace of Cherasco in 1631, precisely in the same situation as before the war; while the prince whom they had supported remained seated on the throne of Mantua. This pacification reconciled the republic with the house of Austria, and terminated her share in the Italian wars of the seventeenth century. Her efforts to promote the deliverance of the peninsula from the Spanish power can scarcely be said to have met with success; nor was the rapid decline of that monarchy, which had already commenced, hastened, perhaps, by her hostility. But she had displayed remarkable energy in the policy of her counsels; and the recovery of her own particular independence was at least triumphantly effected. So completely were her pretensions to the sovereignty of the Adriatic maintained that, when in the year 1630, just before the conclusion of the Mantuan War, a princess of the Spanish dynasty wished to pass by sea from Naples to Trieste, to espouse the son of the emperor, the senator refused to allow the Spanish squadron to escort her, as an infringement upon their right of excluding every foreign armament from those waters; but they gallantly offered their own fleet for her service. The Spanish government at first rejected the offer; but the Venetians, says Giannone, boldly declared that, if the Spaniards were resolved to prefer a trial of force to their friendly proposal, the infanta must fight her way to her wedding through fire and smoke. The haughty court of Madrid was compelled to yield; and the Venetian admiral, Antonio Pisani, then gave the princess a convoy in splendid bearing to Trieste with a squadron of light galleys.
Venetian Wars with the Turks
[1645-1657 A.D.]
Throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century, the affairs of Venice had little connection with those of the older Italian states; and in tracing the annals of the republic, our attention is wholly diverted to the Eastern theatre of her struggles against the Ottoman power. It was a sudden and overwhelming aggression which first broke the long interval of peace between the Turkish and Venetian governments. Under pretence of taking vengeance upon the knights of Malta, for the capture of some Turkish vessels, the Porte fitted out an enormous expedition; and 348 galleys and other vessels of war, with an immense number of transports, having on board a land-force of fifty thousand men, issued from the Dardanelles with the ostensible design of attacking the stronghold of the order of St. John (1645). But instead of making sail for Malta, the fleet of the sultan steered for the shores of Candia; and unexpectedly, and without any provocation, the Turkish army disembarked on that island. The Venetians, although the senate had conceived some uneasiness on the real destination of the Ottoman expedition, were little prepared for resistance; but they defended themselves against this faithless surprise with remarkable courage, and even with desperation. During a long war of twenty-five years, the most ruinous which they had ever sustained against the infidels, the Venetian senate and all classes of their subjects displayed a zealous energy and a fortitude worthy of the best days of their republic. But the resources of Venice were no longer what they had been in the early ages of her prosperity; and although the empire of the sultans had declined from the meridian of its power, the contest was still too disproportionate between the fanatical and warlike myriads of Turkey and the limited forces of a maritime state. The Venetians, perhaps, could not withdraw from the unequal conflict with honour; but the prudent senate might easily foresee its disastrous result.