Chapter Four
In the spring of 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte came charging across the Alps at the head of some 40,000 ill-fed and poorly clad soldiers. His instructions from the Directoire in Paris were to tie down the Austrian army in northern Italy in order to facilitate the main French offensive against the Habsburg Empire along the Rhine. Bonaparte went well beyond his mandate: moving with astonishing speed, he led his ragtag army to a string of spectacular victories, crushing the Austrians at Montenotte, and again, in rapid succession, at the battles of Millesimo and Dego. Then he turned against the Piedmontese, Austria’s allies in northern Italy, and defeated them at Ceva and Mondovi. The Piedmontese taken care of, he again set off in pursuit of the Austrians across the plains of Lombardy, routing the enemy at the battle of Lodi. Barely a month after crossing the Alps, the twenty-six-year-old general entered Milan as liberator and set about establishing the Cisalpine Republic. Meanwhile, the shattered Austrian army retreated north and forced its way into the Venetian fortress of Peschiera, the gateway to the Tyrol.
The sudden occupation of Lombardy brought the French revolutionary army right up to the western border of the Venetian Republic. Bonaparte’s descent into northern Italy had been so swift, his legend had grown so fast, that the ruling oligarchy in Venice looked upon him with as much confusion as fear. Incredibly, it clung to a feckless policy of “unarmed neutrality,” and thus the Republic remained open to an invasion by a force even half the size of Bonaparte’s. A feeling of unease settled over the city as the French made repeated forays into Venetian territory and warned menacingly that they would soon be “sipping coffee” in Saint Mark’s Square.1
Lucia sensed the apprehension that was in the air, but she kept her distance from the world around her. Only a year had passed since Alvisetto’s death, and she was still learning to live with her grief. At first the pain had pressed against her heart and seared her lungs to a point where she had only wanted to stop breathing. But it had slowly evolved, changing in intensity and moving inside her, penetrating every particle. Now it seemed to have reached the end of its long mutation. It was not as sharp, and came over her in waves, like fog rolling in, deep and all-encompassing.
Alvisetto would have turned three that spring, old enough to run about the house and gambol alongside his mother in the narrow streets of Venice. When Lucia ventured out of Palazzo Mocenigo, she usually walked over to the church of Santo Stefano for morning mass or simply to sit at the family pew, finding comfort in the smell of incense and the soft-spoken voices around her. Paolina sometimes joined her for a walk. On such occasions, Lucia went to the balcony to watch her sister’s gondola make its way down the Grand Canal before mooring at the docking of Palazzo Mocenigo. Together they walked out through the courtyard and into the narrow back-alley behind the palazzo that led to the busy streets of San Samuele. At other times, she joined Paolina directly in her gondola and they travelled downstream, all the way to Saint Mark’s Square, before stepping ashore for a stroll. During these outings, Lucia remained aloof, taking in only fragments of the conversations she heard. She returned to life little by little.
Alvise rarely went out with Lucia. He had his own way of mitigating the pain for the loss of their son: every day he threw himself into work, hoping to regain a sense of purpose by directing all his energies to serving the Republic. Soon after Bonaparte’s invasion of Lombardy, he was appointed governor in Brescia, a gritty manufacturing city in the alpine foothills, near the western frontier of the Venetian Republic. He was to make contact with the elusive French commander-in-chief and gauge his intentions regarding Venice. But he had literally just settled in the Governor’s Palace when Bonaparte entered the city and came looking for him on horseback, surrounded by a cluster of prancing young officers in blue uniform.
Alvise later told Lucia that he was surprised by the general’s appearance: he was so small and skinny and dishevelled that at first glance he looked like a boy-man, a strangely magnetic creature, very youthful yet astonishingly self-assured. During that first meeting, Bonaparte was “in an excellent mood” and expressed “the kindest feelings” towards Venice. They went for a walk around the piazza and talked amicably, while the officers nodded eagerly at Bonaparte’s every word, often repeating what he had just said. As the day wore on, however, Bonaparte began to press Alvise for logistical information. He demanded to know why, if Venice was neutral, it had allowed the Austrians to occupy the fortress of Peschiera, a bastion of the Venetian defense system. Alvise reminded him that the Venetian garrison had been forcefully ousted from the fortress by the Austrians, but he made little headway. Bonaparte’s earlier, affable mood turned dark. He became irritable, unpredictable: “In a flash, even the most innocent remark turns him into the most ferocious person if he so much as suspects it contains a hint of opposition to him.”2 Alvise became more cautious, making sure he pulled “all the right strings” during their conversations, so as not to upset “this very conceited man who believes he is superhuman.” Yet for all his guardedness, he was drawn to the excitement surrounding Bonaparte. He kept the Governor’s Palace open day and night. Officers, engineers, food commissars, dispatchers came and went at all hours in an atmosphere of feverish confusion. There was something mesmerising “about these new men, alluring, seductive, teeming with ideas, filled with courage, always on the move, always writing, always singing.”3 He described the French soldiers as “electrified,” a new term made fashionable by the progress of electrostatics.
Lucia did not join Alvise in Brescia. Had she been allowed to decide for herself she probably would have gone. She was intrigued by Alvise’s reports, by his own mixed feelings about the French, and about their charismatic commander-in-chief. She sensed the energy in his letters, and she thought it would do her good to be more active, to participate in the work of her husband. But he had left Venice at such short notice that they had not had time to make plans to move out together, and now the situation seemed so uncertain as to discourage any decision.
Bonaparte did not stay long in Brescia. Alvise organised a banquet in his honour, to which he invited the local nobility. The wine flowed. The mood was festive. The French generals raised a number of toasts to the Venetian Republic. Bonaparte whispered to Alvise that he was going to stay for a few days, even hinting that he might like to spend the night at the Governor’s Palace. But towards midnight he abruptly took leave saying he was returning to his headquarters at the monastery of Saint Euphemia, just outside the city limits. During the night, the bulk of the French forces under the command of General André Masséna lifted camp and moved rapidly north towards the Austrian defence lines. Alvise joined Bonaparte early next morning just as he was leaving town to join his troops. The commander-in-chief assured him he would be back within twenty-four hours, but he did not return. The next day, at the head of his men, he stormed the fortress of Peschiera and crushed the fast-retreating Austrians. Alvise received a dispatch from Bonaparte’s chief of staff, General Louis Alexandre Berthier: “We have defeated the enemy and crossed the river Mincio, and are now pursuing them…We have mowed down their cavalry and the battlefield is covered with their dead.”4
Alvise was still in Brescia in early June, when Bonaparte ordered the occupation of Verona, the largest and most important city on the Venetian mainland, in order to protect his line of retreat. General Masséna crossed the river Adige and entered the city unopposed: fearing the French would torch the city, the Venetian commandant decided not to resist. The news stunned Venetians: grabbing Verona was a blatant violation of the Republic’s neutrality. The government tried to shake itself out of its long lethargy. Crusty ambassadors went to work in the European capitals. What little remained of the fleet was ordered back to protect the city. Restoration was begun on the old fortifications scattered around the lagoon. A tax was levied on the population. Foreign ships were forbidden entry to the harbour. But these were tepid half-measures which did not really strengthen the Republic and only irritated Bonaparte.
Alvise returned to Venice to argue, with a handful of senators, in favour of quickly raising an army and shifting to a policy of armed neutrality. He saw such a step not so much as a last-minute defensive measure—after seeing the French army at close quarters, he was under no illusion about the possibility of Venice winning a war—but as a move that might get the Republic back into the diplomatic game which it had played so expertly in the past. His proposals, however, were voted down; the old Republic withdrew into its shell, burrowing in the brackish waters of the lagoon in the hope that the threat from the mainland would subside.
Bonaparte had received clear instructions from Paris: Venice was a neutral country and he was not to take hostile action against it. But he was determined to chase the Austrians across the Alps and all the way to Vienna before another French general stole his thunder by reaching the Habsburg capital from the Rhine. By seizing Peschiera and occupying Verona he had shown that he was ready to take whatever step he thought necessary to strengthen his position vis à vis the Austrians, no matter what the politicians in Paris had to say. Bonaparte has often been accused of betraying Venice and ultimately causing its downfall. But he never expressed an intention to protect or defend the old Republic, and the accusation of betrayal has always had a hollow ring. He was playing politics on an extremely volatile chessboard and there was just as much improvisation on his part as there was calculation. In the summer of 1796, he still did not know what to do about Venice—though he clearly intended to use the Republic to his advantage in the larger struggle with Austria. As late as July he went so far as to offer the bewildered Venetian government the chance to join him in an anti-Austrian alliance. Had Venice accepted, it might have saved itself. But the pro-Austrian sentiment of the largely conservative Venetian ruling class prevailed, and the offer was turned down. Already irritated by Venice’s feeble defensive measures, Bonaparte took this new rebuff as a personal affront, and his grudge hardened into contempt. For the next few months, he turned his attention to the rest of Italy, leaving Venice to sink in its quagmire.
Alvise and Lucia spent the whole of that summer at Molinato. The estate had lost that air of desolation it had when Alvise had first taken Lucia to see it a few years earlier. Indeed she would have had some difficulty in recognising the place, which was developing very rapidly under her husband’s assiduous supervision. Rows of poplars and beeches grew along the ditches and canals that criss-crossed the field in neat, geometrical patterns. There were two large cattle barns to house the expanding livestock and a sheep shed. Seven new farmhouses housed labourers and their families. Molinato had a general store, a tavern and a chapel. Two brick factories were under construction, as Alvise intended to build many more buildings in the years ahead. Lucia wrote to her sister that she had never seen her husband work so tirelessly at improving the estate. During the summer he drew up a new investment plan to reclaim more land and accelerate the pace of cultivation, he oversaw construction of more housing units for the workers, he started building a school for the growing number of children living on the property and he approved the drawings for the town church. Meanwhile, work on the main house proceeded speedily, and plans were now laid for a large park that was to extend from the fruit orchards behind the villa all the way to the small river that formed the eastern boundary of the property. Molinato was no longer just a big farming estate. It was growing into something different from anything Lucia had ever seen: a large, self-sufficient community centred around a functional, well-organised small town. For the first time she wondered whether Alvise’s dedication to his ambitious project was not also related to the precariousness of the world beyond it.
Bonaparte, meanwhile, consolidated his position in northern Italy. In rapid succession he deposed the Duke of Modena, Hercules III, occupied the Duchy of Reggio and formed a confederation of these two cities with Ferrara and Bologna, thus creating a French-controlled puppet state on the southern border of the Venetian Republic. His troops then marched on towards Rome and frightened Pope Pius VI into signing a peace treaty in which he agreed to yield cash, provisions and one hundred works of art from the Vatican collection. In the late summer and early autumn Bonaparte fought back a fresh Austrian offensive in Lombardy, gaining victories at Castiglione, Arcole and Rivoli. The fortress of Mantua, Austria’s last bastion in northern Italy, fell in February 1797.
As it happened, Alvise was appointed governor of Udine, the capital of Friuli—the same region in the north-east of the Republic which Bonaparte chose as the staging ground for his final offensive into Austria. As Alvise and Lucia settled into their new quarters, some 70,000 French soldiers marched through town on their way towards the Austrian border. Bonaparte faced a well-entrenched, highly trained army of 100,000 men under the command of Archduke Charles, the emperor’s twenty-five-year-old brother. Charles had already defeated the French army on the Rhine a year earlier; now he planned to wrest the rich plains of Lombardy from Bonaparte and bring them back into the Habsburg fold. But in March 1797, Bonaparte crossed the river Tagliamento and took the fortified city of Palmanova. He moved quickly to the north-east, overpowering the Austrian defences and seizing the city of Gorizia. Next, he crossed the Julian Alps at Tarvisio, descended on the Austrian town of Villach and moved on to Klagenfurt and then Graz, where he set up his headquarters. It was an extraordinary run by any measure. In less than three weeks Bonaparte had crushed Charles’s well-trained army and taken his troops within a hundred miles of Vienna.
“Limitless luck is surely the guiding star of this French army,” Alvise burst out in near disbelief.5 But a more complicated picture emerged from his conversations with French officers riding in and out of Udine. Bonaparte was tempted to advance all the way to Vienna, but he was deep into hostile territory and stretched very thin. If the local peasantry turned against him, he would be forced to retreat, exposing his men to a furious Austrian counter-attack in northern Italy, with anti-French riots breaking out in the Venetian Republic and perhaps even in Lombardy. “So far his good fortune has exceeded his own expectation,” Alvise reported back to the Senate, “but I am told he is hearing many complaints from his soldiers and some of his most trusted generals about the excessive risk of moving deeper into a country where not enough is known of the territory, the language, the people.” Bonaparte’s brilliant Italian campaign could yet turn into a nightmare and Alvise was hearing that the politicians in Paris were grumbling. “The star of this young general is dimming in the Directoire and I think it unlikely he will risk everything by putting in jeopardy the entire army that has been put in his trust.”6
In mid April, as Alvise had expected, Bonaparte agreed to a six-day armistice with the Austrians, later extended by another ten days:
Clearly he is beginning to see the extreme imprudence of his deep advance into Austrian territory. The common view is that, as a result of his position in the field, he will be forced to accept less advantageous conditions for France than if he had stopped on the bank of the Tagliamento.7
After a few days of negotiations in the castle of Eckenwald, near the town of Leoben, Bonaparte and his Austrian counterparts reached a preliminary peace agreement. The terms might well have seemed disadvantageous to France, but they were devastating for Venice. According to a set of secret clauses, which Alvise and the Venetian government were unaware of, Austria recognised French rule over Lombardy and the western part of the Venetian Republic. In exchange, Austria obtained control over the eastern part of the Venetian mainland, the Istrian peninsula and the Dalmatian coast. On paper, France and Austria had already carved the Republic in two, leaving to the Venetians a mere skeleton of a state, consisting of Venice proper and a narrow strip of land across the lagoon.
Alvise, meanwhile, faced the daunting task of governing a province that Bonaparte’s fraying back-lines were tearing apart. French food commissars raided granaries and flourmills while marauders roamed the countryside, infiltrating small villages and taking the law in their hands. A French army engineer confiscated all the timber in one village, ordered the peasants to build a bridge over the Tagliamento, and then forced them to pay a toll to pass across the bridge. The post system, Alvise lamented, was breaking down because French officers rode horses “to heaven knows where,” leaving the stables empty for those coming behind them. He warned the Senate that Venetian authority in Friuli risked a complete breakdown. His anguished pleas fell on deaf ears. The Senate had no money or men to send him, and was incapable of providing any kind of guidance. It sent off perfunctory replies, thanking Alvise, in stolid, over-wrought prose, for his “zeal,” his “patriotic fervour,” his “unstinting dedication” to the cause of the Republic.8
The Republic, however, was already in a state of semi-collapse. According to the news reaching Alvise and Lucia in Udine, the situation in the rest of the Venetian mainland was even more out of control than it was in Friuli. In Bergamo, Brescia and Crema—three cities near the western border—Italian supporters of Bonaparte, instigated by French agents, ousted the Venetian authorities and lowered the flag with the lion of Saint Mark. But these local coups d’état did not have the support of the conservative peasantry, whose hostility against the invading French troops only sharpened. French officers and soldiers were taunted and harassed everywhere they went. In the countryside they were often ambushed and killed. News of this random violence against his men enraged Bonaparte, who was still in Austria. He turned against the old Venetian oligarchy in a fury and sent his aide, Andoche Junot, a fiery twenty-five-year-old officer known as “the Tempest,” to deliver an ultimatum in Venice. Junot gave a spellbinding performance, spreading terror among the senators as he filled the hall with Bonaparte’s own frightening words. Junot read:
Do you really believe that even as I find myself in the heart of Germany, I cannot obtain respect for the first nation of the universe? Do you really believe that our legions in Italy will continue to endure the massacres that you incite?…If you do not disband these groups immediately, if you do not arrest and hand over to me the perpetrators of these assassinations, I will declare war on you.9
Stunned by Bonaparte’s threat, the government sent two senators, Francesco Donà and Leonardo Giustinian, to the general’s headquarters in Austria to assure him of Venice’s friendship. But the mission could not have come at a more inauspicious moment, for much of the Venetian mainland was now in open revolt against the French. The climax came in Verona, which had been under French occupation for nearly a year. During the Easter festivities, the peasants coming in from the countryside filled the streets. A band of drunkards picked a quarrel with several French officers. Violence broke out and quickly degenerated into serious street fighting. Fearing the worst, the Venetian representative, Iseppo Giovanelli, stole out of town dressed as a peasant. The city rose against the occupying troops. By the end of the day, the French were driven out of town. Hundreds of dead lay strewn in the bloodied streets and squares. It took three days for General Augier, the French commander, to retake Verona, and several public executions to restore order. The Venetian government immediately denounced the killing of French soldiers, but Bonaparte would have none of it. He vented all his fury on Donà and Giustinian, who had the misfortune of reaching his camp near Graz in the wake of the awful news from Verona. “No more Inquisitors! No more Senate!” he yelled at the two hapless envoys. He was fed up with the treacherous, decrepit institutions of the old Republic, he said. If the oligarchy did not renounce power and proclaim a new, democratic republic, he would behave “like Attila with Venice.”10
Donà and Giustinian were heading glumly back to Venice when they were intercepted by a messenger bearing more bad news. The Libérateur d’Italie, a French lugger under the command of Captain Jean Baptiste Laugier, had approached the narrow opening at the Lido that leads to the Basin of Saint Mark. According to the Venetians, Domenico Pizzamano, in command of the small fortress of Sant’ Andrea overlooking the strait, had fired several shots across the bow to remind the French vessel that Venice’s harbour was closed to foreign ships, but Captain Laugier had apparently pressed on. The French, on the other hand, insisted he had heeded the warning and was turning away when the Venetians had opened fire. After a short exchange of cannon shots, the Libérateur d’Italie had been taken by assault. Five Frenchmen had been killed, including Captain Laugier.
Donà and Giustinian were ordered to turn around and go back to Bonaparte, to explain the circumstances that had led to the killing of Captain Laugier. The Senate, feeling Alvise had “earned Bonaparte’s goodwill”11 in Brescia the year before, instructed him to leave Udine and join the other two envoys on their unpleasant mission. The wandering trio eventually found the French commander-in-chief at Palmanova, an ancient fortress on the road to Austria. The meeting was even stormier than the previous one in Graz. Bonaparte sat in the middle of the room surrounded by French officers who kept interrupting the Venetians and loudly repeating the general’s accusations. “He’s in an absolute fury,” the three envoys reported back to the Senate, “and he will hear no reason. He wants to do away with the Venetian aristocracy, and demands the heads of the Inquisitors for the events in Verona and the head of Pizzamano for the death of Laugier.”12 The envoys made matters worse with a fumbling, last-minute attempt to offer money in exchange for a more benevolent attitude. Bonaparte yelled back that he was not going to give up taking his revenge “for all the gold in Peru.”13
While Alvise returned to his post in Udine, Donà and Giustinian travelled back to Venice carrying Bonaparte’s new ultimatum: the oligarchy had twenty-four hours to comply with his demands. If it did not, his troops would attack the city. French soldiers were already taking position along the shore facing Venice, while French ships blocked the access to the city from the sea. Venice was trapped, and a feeling of total impotence swept through the old ruling class. On 4 May the Maggior Consiglio or Great Council, the sovereign assembly of the Venetian patriciate, agreed to accept some of Bonaparte’s demands by ordering the arrest of the three Inquisitors and Pizzamano. That was enough to obtain a three-day extension of the ultimatum. On the central issue, the dismantling of the oligarchy, the Maggior Consiglio took time. Alvise, Donà and Giustinian were sent off again to make one last attempt at a general settlement with Bonaparte. If the oligarchy was to commit suicide, as the French general was insisting that it do, then let it at least obtain guarantees on the territorial integrity of the Venetian state.
Alvise met Bonaparte alone in Milan on 7 May as Donà and Giustinian arrived two days later. He wrote to Lucia in Venice that the commander-in-chief seemed sincerely glad to see him. Bonaparte was in good spirits, possibly because his wife, Joséphine, after dilly-dallying in Paris during her husband’s Italian campaign, had joined him at last.*10 Bonaparte declared himself pleased that Pizzamano and the three Inquisitors had been arrested, but insisted the oligarchy had to go. Alvise assured him he was there to discuss the issue, and obtained a further extension of the ultimatum to 14 May.
During the next few days the three envoys tried to pin down Bonaparte to a settlement that ensured the survival of the Venetian state and spared the city of Venice a humiliating French occupation. Bonaparte kept changing his mind every day, promising territorial compensation of one kind, retracting, making more promises. As the talks in Milan continued, the situation in Venice unravelled as the government lost control over the city under pressure from French agents and local Jacobins. There was widespread fear of a popular uprising. The most immediate threat was a mutiny on the part of the Dalmatian troops in charge of security. On 12 May the Maggior Consiglio convened in an atmosphere of near panic. The great hall was only half-filled with harried patricians, as many had already left the city. Doge Manin put forth a resolution in which the assembly that had ruled over the Republic for nearly a thousand years abdicated all powers in favour of a provisional government. The balloting took place amid an undignified confusion. Ordinary Venetians gathered outside the Ducal Palace, hardly able to believe the rumours that were circulating. As tensions rose, the commandant in charge of security sailed out of port with his restless Dalmatian troops for fear they should ignite a general revolt. There were parting shots from the boats leaving the Basin of Saint Mark. Inside the Ducal Palace, the patricians mistook the volleys for the start of a mutiny and rushed to pass their death sentence on the Republic: 512 yeas, 30 nays and a handful of blank votes. The balloting was fifty-three votes short of the legal quorum, but evidently it was no time to quibble over formalities.
Two days later, General Baraguey d’Hilliers peacefully occupied the city with 4,000 men, and installed himself in Palazzo Pisani, off Campo Santo Stefano, just a short distance away from Palazzo Mocenigo. He set up a sixty-member provisional government, drawing in large part on Jacobin sympathisers from middle-class professions. He also included eight patricians from the old regime, Alvise being the most prominent among them.
Alvise, however, was still in Milan with Bonaparte, unwittingly putting the finishing touches to a treaty he was signing in the name of a Republic that was already defunct. It provided for the abdication of the patrician oligarchy in favour of a democratic republic and stated that 4,000 French troops were to ensure an orderly transition—all of which had already occurred. The new government was to give high priority to the trials of Pizzamano and the three Inquisitors. Furthermore, Venice was to pay three million lire in cash in three instalments, and provide another three million worth of military equipment, including three warships and two frigates. Finally, twenty major works of art and 500 precious manuscripts were to be shipped to Paris.
This pseudo-treaty signed in Milan had no legal value and the Directoire in Paris never recognised it. Bonaparte, however, brandished it to provide an appearance of legality around the occupation and the plunder of Venice. Alvise returned to Venice on 19 May, exhausted and deeply embittered. He tried to go over the events of the previous days with Lucia and his mother, Chiara, pacing the drawing room at Palazzo Mocenigo like a wounded animal in a cage, but his rage “at the wickedness beyond all measure of the French” kept coming to the surface. He railed against “the destruction of the Republic of our elders” centuries of history “in which the Mocenigos played such an honoured role.” In a single blow, he complained, he had lost “both state and fatherland.”14
If Alvise was angry at Bonaparte’s deception he should have been even more so at his own disingenuousness. Yet as Lucia listened to her husband’s lament, she could not help noticing the superior tone in his voice. He sounded more indignant than sad or pained—how was it possible, he seemed to be asking, that his own peers had destroyed the Republic in which his family had had such a large stake? Lucia’s Venetian roots went even deeper than the Mocenigos’. The Memmos had been among the founding fathers of the Republic back in the eighth century, when Venice was little more than a cluster of islets in the lagoon. How would her father have reacted to the catastrophe? She had heard people say that if Andrea Memmo had been elected doge back in 1787 perhaps Venice would not have been so weak when Bonaparte arrived on the scene. But if the thought occurred to her now, she did not dwell on it. She knew her father’s hopes for Venice had dimmed in his old age; by the time gangrene attacked his body he had lost confidence in the Republic’s future. In a way she must have been glad Memmo was no longer there to witness the final collapse.
Alvise ended the family reunion announcing rather vague plans for the future. What he feared most, he declared, was the confiscation of his properties. Perhaps, in due course, it would be to their advantage to become subjects of the Habsburg Empire; maybe even move to Vienna and transfer to Austria whatever assets could be salvaged. Many Venetian patricians had already done so, having left Venice before the arrival of the French troops. But it would be harder for them because Alvise was perceived as a French sympathiser in Vienna. One reason he was unhappy to discover he had been included in the provisional government was precisely because it was going to reinforce that impression. Still, he had no choice but to accept the appointment. On the positive side, he was going to be in a better position to protect family interests. He intended to sit on the finance committee and do his work quietly.
The new government held its first public meeting on 23 May, in the great hall of the Maggior Consiglio, where the Republic had been voted out of existence only nine days before. It was a chaotic session, interrupted by long-winded speeches in praise of democracy and passionate jeremiads against the old regime. Alvise found the rhetoric and the endless invective discouraging. He had little sympathy for the small group of Venetian Jacobins who had quickly seized control of the Committee of Public Safety, the heart of the government. And the feeling was mutual: as an influential member of the former oligarchy, he was looked upon with resentment and suspicion.
The first order of business was the proclamation of a national holiday: 4 June. For the occasion, Saint Mark’s Square was festooned with red, white and green, the new national colours. In the centre of the square a Liberty Tree was erected, and crowned with a Phrygian cap. General Baraguey d’Hilliers, dressed in high uniform, entered the square followed by all the members of the provisional government. The strangely assorted group marched twice around the square before halting at the Liberty Tree, at which point a fiery Jacobin monk, Pier Giacomo Nani, hurriedly recited a Te Deum—Baraguey d’Hilliers felt it would reassure the wary Venetian crowd. Vincenzo Dandolo, the pharmacist who headed the Committee of Public Safety, gave a speech thanking the French for bringing liberty and democracy to Venice. After a three-gun salute, a band struck the notes of the “Carmagnole,” a popular song in Paris during the Terror.
Lucia looked on from a distance. The ceremony seemed strained, and the mood of the sparse crowd hovering in the background was anything but festive. A few people started to dance around the Liberty Tree, shouting and making movements that seemed exaggerated. She saw her friend Marina Querini Benzoni, a glamorous beauty a few years younger than her, throw herself into a frenzied dance. She was wearing a light Greek tunic, open at the sides all the way to her hip. Her long braids slashed the air as she threw herself wildly from the arms of Fra’ Nani, the monk, to those of Ugo Foscolo, the passionate executive secretary of the municipal government.*11 The dancing was more and more out of control. At first, General Baraguey d’Hilliers appeared amused, then he grew annoyed. All at once, the scene came to a climax: the wild-eyed Marina tripped and crashed and lay half-naked on the ground. She pulled herself together with the help of a few solicitous French officers, and resumed her dance. By then the festa had lost the little steam it had. It was dusk, and candles were lit all around the square, but the evening breeze picked up and in a few minutes put them all out.
Next day, the pro-government daily Il Monitore said it was “not surprising the huge crowds that used to fill the square during important festivities” in the days of the old regime chose to stay home this time, given “the secret machinations” of a few patricians and “other enemies of freedom.”15The municipalists, as the pro-French Venetians were called, naively believed they were building a new, independent state that would, in time, join the Cisalpine Republic that Bonaparte was setting up from his headquarters in Milan. But Bonaparte had little interest in Venice’s future. It was a city to despoil before it was turned over to the Austrians. The last thing he wanted was to have Francophile Venetians knocking at his door at a time when he was preparing to sit down with the Austrian plenipotentiaries to finalise the peace treaty.
Venice struggled to survive through the summer of 1797. The government was saddled with a staggering debt inherited from the old Republic. The treasury was empty, trade was dead and the central bank—the Banco Giro—was emptied to pay the first instalment of the three million lire owed to the French. A forced loan was levied on patricians. It was followed by another emergency loan on property, industry and commerce (gold and silver objects were confiscated when there was no more cash). But the economy continued to languish. Venice could no longer count on income from the mainland. The westernmost cities of the old Republic joined Bonaparte’s Cisalpine Republic, while closer cities, like Padua, Vicenza, Treviso and Udine, proclaimed their independence from Venice and set up their own provisional governments. As the weeks wore on in an atmosphere of uncertainty and increasing poverty, Venice’s territory continued to shrink. French troops took over Corfu and the Ionian islands, the last vestiges of the Venetian Empire in the Mediterranean. Even more devastating to morale in the city was the Austrian occupation of the Istrian peninsula and the Dalmatian coast. The government reacted with disbelief at Bonaparte’s acquiescence to this Austrian land-grab. But of course Vienna was merely accelerating a move that had already been agreed to in the secret clauses of Leoben. By the end of the summer all that remained to the Venetians was their city and the coastline areas along the lagoon. The once sprawling Republic had been picked to the bone.
Inside the city, the organised looting proceeded apace. By early September over twenty masterpieces had been selected and packed and were on their way to the Louvre, including eight paintings by Veronese, three by Titian and two by Tintoretto. As many as 470 invaluable manuscripts documenting Venice’s early history were shipped. The Sasanian lion of Saint Mark, which had greeted visitors for centuries from the top of the marble column in the piazzetta, was pulled down and crated and sent off to Paris. French engineers erected large scaffolding in front of the basilica and lifted down the four heavy bronze horses the Venetians had brought back from Constantinople in 1204.
The sentiment of the majority of the population turned sharply against the French. Venetians had not welcomed the occupying force, and the truculent arrogance the soldiers often displayed made relations steadily worse. Only a diminishing band of municipalists still clung to the illusion that a Venetian state could survive. They repeatedly invited Bonaparte to visit Venice, but he was wise enough to decline, choosing instead to send his wife, Joséphine, in the hope of softening opposition at least as long as French troops remained there.
The art of welcoming foreign dignitaries had been for centuries a matter of national pride with the Venetians, but the coffers were empty and the planning of Joséphine’s five-day visit was in the hands of well-meaning but inexperienced officials. Still, the city managed to put on one, last, performance. When her small cortège arrived in the Basin of Saint Mark, Joséphine waved to the crowd assembled in the piazzetta. A warm applause broke out. Cheerful gondoliers cried out their welcome. Dozens of colourful Venetian boats escorted her in a spontaneous parade up the Grand Canal to her headquarters, at Palazzo Pisani Moretta, directly across from Palazzo Mocenigo. “She is neither pretty nor young,” noted the punctilious Il Monitore. “But she is very sweet and attractive and courteous.”16 What she lacked in good looks, Joséphine made up in style and flair and Creole charm. Her natural indolence, her accessible, unpretentious manner, put everyone at ease, including the nervous officials fussing about her.
The next morning, after a tour of Saint Mark’s, Joséphine paid a visit to the former Palace of the Doges, renamed the National Palace. In the very hall where the assembly of patricians had once sat, the government was noisily discussing the need to encourage Venetian poets to compose Pindaric odes to reignite the patriotic fervour of the citizenry. Joséphine made her entrance and all rose and applauded as the speaker introduced her as “the wife of our liberator, Bonaparte.” She looked lovely as she took a seat in an armchair that was carried forth and placed between the public and the government benches. Her simple white dress brought out her tawny complexion. A light green stole covered her shoulders, and a pretty bonnet gave her an extra touch of Parisian chic. She sat for no more than five minutes, but it was long enough for her husband’s supporters to introduce a resolution bestowing on him the title of “Bonaparte the Italian,” as the great Scipio had been named the African after conquering Carthage.
General Berthier, Joséphine’s escort in Venice, approached Alvise, whom he had met in Brescia the previous year, with a special request: Joséphine wanted very much to see one of Venice’s famous regattas down the Grand Canal before leaving, and she wondered whether one might not be squeezed into her programme. Alvise objected that there was not enough time and not enough money to organise a proper regatta. Nevertheless, as soon as Joséphine had left the hall, he rushed to inform his colleagues of her wish. Some replied mockingly that Alvise should pay for the regatta himself, but after a short debate, the majority decided it was Venice’s patriotic duty to organise a reduced version of the traditional regatta. Alvise caught up with Joséphine at Palazzo Pisani Moretta. Alas, she had just received a dispatch from Bonaparte asking her to cut her visit short by a day and join him at Passariano, in Friuli, where the French and Austrian delegations were gathering to draft a peace treaty. Could the regatta not be postponed until her next visit, she asked, when she was sure to be in Venice with her husband? Alvise rushed back to the National Palace, where he found the excitement over the regatta was now unstoppable. He had only two days to organise it.
General Baraguey d’Hilliers and his wife, la Générale, hosted a ball at Palazzo Pisani. It was a glamorous affair such as Venice had not seen in a long time. Many Venetians were reassured by Joséphine’s presence in their midst. It strengthened the illusion that they had found a friend and an ally who would go back to her husband and press the case for Venice. As the wine flowed, a hopeful mood spread among the guests dancing under the great Murano chandeliers. Nobody complained much about the urgent need to find another 4,000 silver ducats to foot the bill for Baraguey d’Hilliers’s glittering extravaganza.
That evening Lucia had an opportunity to spend some time with Joséphine. It is easy to imagine how she found her natural charm seductive even as she sensed the vulnerable soul behind it. As far as we know, the two of them got along from the start. It was only a brief encounter during a crowded evening, yet the seeds were planted for a friendship that was to blossom many years later, in Paris, at the height of the Empire.
For the next two days, Alvise worked non-stop to organise the regatta, while Joséphine visited the languishing Arsenale, paid homage to the French fleet anchored off the Lido and sat through a gruesome play at La Fenice about the life of Orso Ipato, Venice’s fourth doge, who had his eyes carved out by an angry mob. When she stepped out of the opera house, red, white and blue paper lanterns glowed at every window along the waterways, and as she crossed the Giudecca Canal to attend a dinner for a hundred guests in the garden of the Pisani summer palazzo, the city behind her was swathed in flickering French tricolour.
On her last day in Venice Joséphine woke up to see fifty gymnasts performing spectacular acrobatic feats beneath her window. It was the prelude to the regatta. Soon a colourful armada of different vessels, representing Venice’s naval history, glided down the Grand Canal in a dazzling parade as the crowd cheered from the side canals and the windows of the palaces lined along the great waterway. Behind the scenes, General Berthier made last-minute arrangements for Joséphine’s journey to Passariano. She was now in a hurry to reach her husband. Before the regatta was over, she slipped away with her party and crossed the lagoon to the mainland.
Joséphine’s four-day visit to Venice had a bizarre coda. She was met on the mainland by Dandolo, the president of the Committee of Public Safety, who promised her jewels worth 100,000 ducats if she managed to keep Bonaparte on the side of Venice during his negotiations with the Austrians. Joséphine took him with her to Passariano and convinced Bonaparte to grant Dandolo an interview. The pharmacist made an outlandish offer he was in no position to make: if peace should fail and France were to go back to war with Austria, he said, Venice would provide him with 18,000 men and several million ducats. Bonaparte made a few vague promises to get rid of Dandolo, who misread the situation completely and sent reassuring dispatches back to his friends in the government. Tommaso Zorzi, a wealthy grocer and himself a member of the Committee of Public Safety, also travelled to Passariano, where he presented Joséphine with a priceless diamond ring as a token of the city’s gratitude. She introduced him to Bonaparte, who gave Zorzi lunch and walked with him in the gardens of Villa Manin, the estate which belonged to the deposed Doge Ludovico Manin, and which now served as the French headquarters at the peace talks.
Clearly, Bonaparte’s supporters in Venice were losing their heads. The growing uncertainty surrounding the peace talks at Passariano was creating a climate of suspicion and fear inside the government. There were rumours of a plot to murder a hundred patricians in their sleep, simply as a show of force on behalf of the most extreme Jacobins. Alvise followed these strange developments with growing dismay. He was further troubled when Bonaparte recalled General Baraguey d’Hilliers up to Passariano. Alvise had grown to appreciate this engaging, energetic soldier who was often easier to deal with than some of his over-agitated colleagues in the government, and who had managed the difficult task of preserving peace in the city. He and la Genérale were frequent guests at Palazzo Mocenigo.
Baraguey d’Hilliers’s successor, General Antoine Balland, was known as the man who had drowned in blood the Easter uprising in Verona the previous year. He was soon to demonstrate his incompetence in Venice as well. In early October, government informers picked up the rumour that a lawyer by the name of Giovanni Pietro Cercato was conspiring to deliver Venice to the Austrians. When Cercato was arrested, maps, money and false documents were found in his house. “The fatherland is safe,” Il Monitore proclaimed the next day. “The treacherous plot that was to bloody this city, oppress the sovereignty of the people and leave it in chains at the feet of despots, has been uncovered.”17 But the Committee of Public Safety, already in the throes of collective paranoia, felt incapable of handling the Cercato case, and asked General Balland to intervene. General Balland overreacted: instead of assessing the seriousness of the threat, he declared a state of siege, suspended government meetings and brought out his soldiers from the barracks. Not satisfied, he announced that he was taking fifty hostages until the matter was cleared. Alvise’s name was on the list and that same night, the National Guard went to Palazzo Mocenigo and arrested him. He was taken to the island of San Giorgio, directly across the Basin of Saint Mark, and locked up with forty-nine fellow hostages.
Cercato turned out to be a two-bit schemer with very flimsy connections to Vienna. The conspiracy threat had been wildly overblown. Balland realised his mistake and released all the hostages three days after their arrest. Alvise was relieved to return to Palazzo Mocenigo alive. He was also fuming after such a display of incompetence on the part of the authorities. The next day, at the government’s morning session, he insisted that all the hostages receive a complete and public rehabilitation. A motion was approved unanimously, and the hall broke out in applause.
The hopelessly confused state of affairs in Venice—the phoney conspiracy, the state of siege, the taking and releasing of hostages—irritated Bonaparte no end. But more irksome news was on the way to Passariano. Under the aegis of the inept Balland, the municipal government organised a congress of representatives from the former Venetian territories to decide whether to join the Cisalpine Republic Bonaparte had founded, with Milan as its capital. The congress was held in mid October, and the delegates voted unanimously in favour of annexation to the Cisalpine Republic—this at a time when Bonaparte was preparing to hand a large chunk of the former Venetian territories over to Austria.
Bonaparte was furious with Balland for allowing this to happen, and immediately replaced him with the more experienced General Jean Sérurier, a trusted old officer from the pre-revolutionary military school. Sérurier did not come alone: 10,000 French soldiers crossed the lagoon aboard hundreds of transport vessels and took over the city. They were to complete the pillage of Venice’s art treasures and ensure, when the moment came, a peaceful transfer of power to the Austrians.
The Treaty of Campoformio, named after a small village near Passariano, was signed on 17 October, the same day Sérurier arrived in Venice. The contents were even more devastating for Venice than the secret agreement reached in Leoben at the beginning of 1797. In exchange for peace and the recognition of the Cisalpine Republic, Austria obtained not just the eastern territories of the former Venetian Republic, but also Venice itself. There was nothing left of the sovereign Venetian state. The details of the treaty were not immediately made public, but chilling rumours quickly spread in Venice, and led to one last desperate attempt to prevent the city from falling into the hands of Vienna.
At the end of October the government held a referendum on independence. Those in favour narrowly prevailed. What remained of the pro-French party decided to appeal above Bonaparte’s head, to the Directoire. Dandolo and three fellow municipalists secretly headed to Paris carrying the referendum results, as well as wads of cash with which to persuade the notoriously corrupt Directors. Bonaparte, who was back at his headquarters in Milan, heard about the plan and sent his men chasing after the Venetians. Dandolo and his party were caught before they could reach the French border, and taken to Bonaparte with their hands and feet tied.
The Bonapartists in Venice having lost all credibility, Sérurier asked Alvise to head a five-member commission to liquidate the affairs of the municipal government, shut down Il Monitore, settle all outstanding accounts, recall all diplomatic envoys and prepare the city for the arrival of the Austrians. The French occupation force gradually withdrew to the mainland during the month of December, and in early January 1798, Sérurier hauled down the French flag and departed with his staff, to the relief of most Venetians. On 18 January, despite the cold wind blowing in from the Adriatic, an expectant crowd gathered on the piazzetta to greet the new Austrian governor of Venice, the fifty-six-year-old veteran field commander General Olivier Wallis. Alvise and his fellow commissioners handed the keys of the city to the general, who proceeded into the great basilica of Saint Mark, followed by Austrian officers in their white uniforms. The Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Giovanelli, who had looked on with horror as some of his fellow Venetians danced to the Carmagnole around the Liberty Tree only six months before, intoned a Te Deum.