The Fall of Venice.
Feebleness of the Venetian Oligarchy — Its Overthrow — Bonaparte's Duplicity — Letters of Opposite Purport — Montebello — The Republican Court — England's Proposition for Peace — Plans of the Directory — General Clarke's Diplomatic Career — Conduct of Mme. Bonaparte — Bonaparte's Jealous Tenderness — His Wife's Social Conquests — Relations of the Powers.
1797.
Since the days of Carthage no government like that of the Venetian oligarchy had existed on the earth. At its best it was dark and remorseless; with the disappearance of its vigor its despotism had become somewhat milder, but even yet no common man might draw the veil from its mysterious, irresponsible councils and live. A few hundred families administered the country as they did their private estates. All intelligence, all liberty, all personal independence, were repressed by such a system. The more enlightened Venetians of the mainland, many even in the city, feeling the influences of the time, had long been uneasy under their government, smoothly as it seemed to run in time of peace. Now that the earth was quaking under the march of Bonaparte's troops, this government was not only helpless, but in its panic it actually grew contemptible, displaying by its conduct how urgent was the necessity for a change. The senate had a powerful fleet, three thousand native troops, and eleven thousand mercenaries; but they struck only a single futile blow on their own account, permitting a rash captain to open fire from the gunboats against the French vanguard when it appeared. But immediately, as if in fear of their own temerity, they despatched an embassy to learn the will of the approaching general. That his dealings might be merciful, they tried the plan of Modena, and offered him a bribe of seven million francs; but, as in the case of Modena, he refused. Next day the Great Council having been summoned, it was determined by a nearly unanimous vote of the patricians—six hundred and ninety to twenty-one—that they would remodel their institutions on democratic lines. The pale and terrified Doge thought that in such a surrender lay the last hope of safety.
Not for a moment did Lallemant and Villetard, the two French agents, intermit their revolutionary agitation in the town. Disorders grew more frequent, while uncertainty both paralyzed and disintegrated the patrician party. A week later the government virtually abdicated. Two utter strangers appeared in a theatrical way at its doors, and suggested in writing to the Great Council that to appease the spirit of the times they should plant the liberty-tree on the Place of St. Mark, and speedily accede to all the propositions for liberalizing Venice which the popular temper seemed to demand. Such were the terror and disorganization of the aristocracy that instead of punishing the intrusion of the unknown reformers by death, according to the traditions of their merciless procedure, they took measures to carry out the suggestions made in a way as dark and significant as any of their own. The fleet was dismantled, and the army disbanded. By the end of the month the revolution was virtually accomplished; a rising of their supporters having been mistaken by the Great Council, in its pusillanimous terror, for a rebellion of their antagonists, they decreed the abolition of all existing institutions, and, after hastily organizing a provisional government, disbanded. Four thousand French soldiers occupied the town, and an ostensible treaty was made between the new republic of Venice and that of France.
This treaty was really nothing but a pronunciamento of Bonaparte. He decreed a general amnesty to all offenders except the commander of Fort Luco, who had recently fired on the French vessel. He also guaranteed the public debt, and promised to occupy the city only as long as the public order required it. By a series of secret articles, vaguely expressed, Venice was bound to accept the stipulations of Leoben in regard to territory, pay an indemnity of one million two hundred thousand dollars, and furnish three ships of the line with two frigates, while, in pursuance of the general policy of the French republic, experts were to select twenty pictures from her galleries, and five hundred manuscripts from her libraries. Whatever was the understanding of those who signed these crushing conditions, the city was never again treated by any European power as an independent state. To this dismemberment the Directory made itself an accessory after the fact, having issued a declaration of war on Venice which only reached Milan to be suppressed, when already Venice was no more. Whether the oligarchy or its assassin was the more loathsome still remains an academic question, debatable only in an idle hour. Soon afterward a French expedition was despatched to occupy her island possessions in the Levant. The arrangements had been carefully prepared during the very time when the provisional government believed itself to be paying the price of its new liberties. And earlier still, on May twenty-seventh, three days before the abdication of the aristocracy, Bonaparte had already offered to Austria the entire republic in its proposed form as an exchange for the German lands on the left bank of the Rhine.
Writing to the Directory on that day, he declared that Venice, which had been in a decline ever since the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope and the rise of Triest and Ancona, could with difficulty survive the blows just given her. "This miserable, cowardly people, unfit for liberty, and without land or water—it seems natural to me that we should hand them over to those who have received their mainland from us. We shall take all their ships, we shall despoil their arsenal, we shall remove all their cannon, we shall wreck their rank, we shall keep Corfu and Ancona for ourselves." On the twenty-sixth, only the day previous, a letter to his "friends" of the Venetian provisional government had assured them that he would do all in his power to confirm their liberties, and that he earnestly desired that Italy, "now covered with glory, and free from every foreign influence, should again appear on the world's stage, and assert among the great powers that station to which by nature, position, and destiny it was entitled." Ordinary minds cannot grasp the guile and daring which seem to have foreseen and prearranged all the conditions necessary to plans which for double-dealing transcended the conceptions of men even in that age of duplicity and selfishness.
Not far from Milan, on a gentle rise, stands the famous villa, or country-seat, of Montebello. Its windows command a scene of rare beauty: on one side, in the distance, the mighty Alps, with their peaks of never-melting ice and snow; on the other three, the almost voluptuous beauty of the fertile plains; while in the near foreground lies the great capital of Lombardy, with its splendid industries, its stores of art, and its crowded spires hoary with antiquity. Within easy reach are the exquisite scenes of an enchanted region—that of the Italian lakes. To this lordly residence Bonaparte withdrew. His summer's task was to be the pacification of Europe, and the consolidation of his own power in Italy, in France, and northward beyond the Alps. The two objects went hand in hand. From Austria, from Rome, from Naples, from Turin, from Parma, from Switzerland, and even from the minor German principalities whose fate hung on the rearrangement of German lands to be made by the Diet of the Empire, agents of every kind, both military and diplomatic, both secret and accredited, flocked to the seat of power. Expresses came and went in all directions, while humble suitors vied with one another in homage to the risen sun.
The uses of rigid etiquette were well understood by Bonaparte. He appreciated the dazzling power of ceremony, the fascination of condescension, and the influence of woman in the conduct of affairs. All such influences he lavished with a profusion which could have been conceived only by an Oriental imagination. As if to overpower the senses by an impressive contrast, and symbolize the triumph of that dominant Third Estate of which he claimed to be the champion against aristocrats, princes, kings, and emperors, the simplicity of the Revolution was personified and emphasized in his own person. His ostentatious frugality, his disdain for dress, his contempt for personal wealth and its outward signs, were all heightened by the setting which inclosed them, as a frame of brilliants often heightens the character in the portrait of a homely face.
Meantime England, grimly determined to save herself and the Europe essential to her well-being, was not a passive spectator of events in Italy. To understand the political situation certain facts must be reiterated in orderly connection. At the close of 1796, Pitt's administration was still in great straits, for the Tories who supported him were angered by his lack of success, while the Whig opposition was correspondingly jubilant and daily growing stronger. The navy had been able barely to preserve appearances, but that was all. There was urgent need for reform in tactics, in administration, and in equipment. France had made some progress in all these directions, and, in spite of English assistance, both the Vendean and the Chouan insurrections had, to all appearance, been utterly crushed. Subsequently the powerful expedition under Hoche, equipped and held in readiness to sail for Ireland, there to organize rebellion, and give England a draught from her own cup, though destined to disaster, wrought powerfully on the British imagination. It was clear that the Whigs would score a triumph at the coming elections if something were not done. Accordingly, as has been told, Pitt determined to open negotiations for peace with the Directory. As his agent he unwisely chose a representative aristocrat, who had distinguished himself as a diplomatist in Holland by organizing the Orange party to sustain the Prussian arms against the rising democracy of that country. Moreover, the envoy was an ultra-conservative in his views of the French Revolution, and, believing that there was no room in western Europe for his own country and her great rival, thought there could be no peace until France was destroyed. Burke sneered that he had gone to Paris on his knees. He had been received with suspicion and distrust, many believing his real errand to be the reorganization of a royalist party in France. Then, too, Delacroix, minister of foreign affairs, was a narrow, shallow, and conceited man, unable either to meet an adroit and experienced negotiator on his own ground, or to prepare new forms of diplomatic combat, as Bonaparte had done. The English proposition, it is well to recall, was that Great Britain would give up all the French colonial possessions she had seized during the war, provided the French republic would abandon Belgium. It is essential to an understanding of Bonaparte's attitude in 1797, to recall also in this connection that the navigation of the Scheldt has ever been an object of the highest importance to England: the establishment of a strong, hostile maritime power in harbors like those of the Netherlands would menace, if not destroy, the British carrying-trade with central and northern Europe. The reply of the Directory had been that their fundamental law forbade the consideration of such a point; and when Malmesbury persisted in his offer, he was allowed forty-eight hours to leave the country. The negotiation was a fiasco as far as Austria was concerned, although useful in consolidating British patriotism. Hoche, having been despatched to Ireland, found wind and waves adverse, and then returned to replace Jourdan in command of one of the Rhine armies, the latter having been displaced for his failures in Germany and relegated to the career of politics. Bonaparte's victories left his most conspicuous rival nothing to do and he gracefully congratulated his Italian colleague on having forestalled him. His sad and suspicious death in September had no influence on the terms of Bonaparte's treaty, but emphasized the need of its ratification.