CHAPTER 17

A MEDIEVAL REPUBLIC IN THE MODERN WORLD:
The United States, France, and the Fall of Venice

Thanks to the Grand Tour, by the mid-eighteenth century Venice was well known to the French and English elite. In general, the English thought better of it than the French. Enlightenment thinkers in both countries praised Venice’s antiquity and the stability of its republic. The Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries drew breath from Europe’s burgeoning middle class and was nurtured in the salons, coffeehouses, and market squares of every major city. At root was the resistance of a new class of wealthy businessmen to the old privileges of aristocracy and monarchy. They demanded a new order, one that would replace tradition with reason, birth with merit, and serfdom with liberty. They imagined a new world in which reason reigned supreme, privilege was abolished, and all men were free. In that light, Venice looked quite favorable, particularly when compared with the absolutist monarchies that still ruled in France, Spain, and Austria.

The Enlightenment ushered in the modern world. Those states that could not adapt eventually passed away. Yet for Venice, adaptation was unnecessary; it had embraced these essential concepts a thousand years before they became fashionable. For some, like the English, this was validation of the effectiveness of free government. For others, like the French philosophes, it was mildly irritating to discover that their avant-garde ideas were not so innovative after all. As a result, the French in this period tended to cast Venice into the morass of medieval history, stirring it together with the dark despots that they loved to hate. This opinion mattered, for Venice’s survival would one day hinge on French perceptions. French authors regularly described Venice as living through a period of decadence before its final demise. Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de la Houssaie’s influential Histoire du gouvernement de Venise, published in 1676, blamed Venice’s decline on a weak-willed policy of neutrality, foolish expansion on the terra firma, cumbersome administrative procedures, and a propensity to compromise. Although Rousseau enjoyed a blissful year (1743–44) in Venice, taking in the opera, the choirs, and the other “famous amusements,” he nonetheless concluded that the city “has long since fallen into decay.” The Venice of Voltaire’s Candide (1759) was thoroughly decadent. The two principal Venetian characters are Paquette, a prostitute who gives Pangloss syphilis, and Count Pococurante, who complains of utter boredom among too many women and too much art, music, and literature. Montesquieu declared simply that Venice had “no more strength, commerce, riches, law; only debauchery there has the name of liberty.”

As we have seen, though, the English, who enjoyed a constitutional government and were the freest people in the world, saw much of themselves in the island Republic of Venice, and were hardly so bearish on its prospects. English writers routinely praised the Venetian government’s centuries-old ability to avoid tyranny and to guarantee liberty for its citizens. Nonetheless, like the French, they denounced the Council of Ten and the State Inquisition, which they believed acted without restriction or any measure of justice. As John Moore wrote in 1781, “While you admire the strength of a constitution which has stood firm for so many ages, you are appalled at the sight of the lion’s mouth gaping for accusation.”

The Enlightenment ideas that had percolated in Europe’s coffeehouses and salons were put to the test by the revolutions of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first of these was the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence, which set out its principles, was drawn directly from the philosophies of Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and Adam Smith. It held that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It was a manifesto for what had come to be called Liberalism: a belief that all should be free to pursue their goals, no matter their birth.

The Founding Fathers of the United States meant to craft a republic that would stand the test of time, even outlasting what was in their estimation the greatest republic ever, ancient Rome. Men like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin were well educated in the classics and knew as much about Venice as any English gentleman (although none of the three had made the Grand Tour as young men). One might think that the extraordinary longevity of Venice’s republic would recommend it as a model for the new country. But it did not—at least not completely. Like English writers, Jefferson and Adams praised the checks and balances that guarded Venice against tyranny, but otherwise considered it to be an “aristocratical republic” (as Adams put it).

John Adams devoted an entire chapter to Venice in A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, published in 1787. The book provided a short history of Venetian government, not altogether accurate, and probably based on Amelot de la Houssaie. According to Adams, early Venetians had created a democracy, but it had been thwarted by tyrannical doges. In the twelfth century they formed a republic in which each sestiere elected members to the Great Council. Over time, however, the members of the council were able to deprive both the doge and the people of their power, culminating in the Serrata, which made membership in the council hereditary. “Commerce and wars soon turned the attention of the rest of the people from all thought about the loss of their privileges.” This, in Adams’s view, was where Venice had faltered.

“Great care is taken in Venice, to balance one court against another,” he wrote, “and render their powers mutual checks to each other.” Yet even that praiseworthy attribute of Venetian government was itself, Adams believed, a mechanism for the nobility to maintain control. A pure republic, Adams (and Jefferson) argued, was one that balanced the powers of the chief magistrate, the aristocracy, and the common people. “In Venice, the aristocratical passion for curbing the prince and the people, has been carried to its utmost length.” Adams was faced, however, with the obvious fact that the chief magistrate and people in Venice had not risen up to seize power from the nobility, as they had done in Europe’s absolutist states. He explained this stability by attributing it to the dark power of the Council of Ten, which Adams believed crushed all opposition to the constitution. He fully embraced the myth of the omnipotent State Inquisitors:

This tribunal consists only of three persons, all taken from the council of ten, who have authority to decide, without appeal, on the life of every citizen, the doge himself not excepted. They employ what spies they please; if they are unanimous, they may order a prisoner to be strangled in gaol, or drowned in the canal, hanged in the night, or by day, as they please; if they are divided, the cause must go before the council of ten, but even here, if the guilt is doubtful, the rule is to execute the prisoner in the night. The three may command access to the house of every individual in the state, and have even keys to every apartment in the ducal palace, may enter his bed-chamber, break his cabinet, and search his papers. By this tribunal, have doge, nobility, and people, been kept in awe, and restrained from violating the laws, and to this is to be ascribed the long duration of this aristocracy.

Adams was certainly correct that the Council of Ten had powers beyond what a modern liberal state would condone, but it also had powerful mechanisms to keep it in check. Strict term limits, for example, ensured that members did not arbitrarily wield a power that could soon be used against themselves. Adams was right—the Ten kept stability in Venice. But that was not because it protected the nobility, but instead because it provided an efficient method to force the ruling families to live well within the rule of law.

For more than a thousand years Venice had been the only republic in the world—one that flourished in an age of kings, emperors, and tyrants. It did so, as we have seen, because it was a state built purely on commerce. Like ancient Athens, which built a similar empire of commerce, medieval Venice teemed with entrepreneurs seeking their fortunes. They would not abide a system that denied them political authority that matched their economic clout. Throughout Western history capitalism and representative government have always walked hand in hand. When the first grows, the second must follow.

In the seventeenth century European thinkers began to rediscover republican government, but only in the eighteenth century were new states founded on those principles. The birth of an entirely new republic in North America across the Atlantic Ocean, while the world’s oldest republic still lived on in the Mediterranean, is intriguing. How did Venice welcome the news of the American Revolution? What was the relationship between the United States and the Republic of Venice during the two decades that their respective histories overlapped?

Venetians were not unaware of the new birth. Their ambassador in Paris, Daniele Dolfin, sent home regular dispatches, keeping the Senate fully apprised of the American Revolutionary War. Dolfin met frequently with Benjamin Franklin, who expressed an admiration for Venice and a desire to visit. Franklin was in Paris to secure an alliance with King Louis XVI, which was finally concluded in 1778. Dolfin wrote several times to the Senate asking for instructions on how he should approach Dr. Franklin—as a foreign ambassador or just a foreigner? The difference was crucial, for it went to the heart of Venice’s recognition of the United States. Like American delegates to other royal courts, Franklin naturally hoped for Venetian recognition. In Madrid the Venetian ambassador, Antonio Cappello, even entertained the American delegate, William Carmichael, in his home. The dispatches from Paris, Madrid, and Vienna continued to ask the senators for guidance on how they should answer the petitions of this “new Republic.”

The Senate responded that its diplomats should not recognize the United States as a free and independent state. To do so would strain commercial relations with Great Britain and, more importantly, jeopardize Venice’s status as a neutral power. At all costs, it must maintain that neutrality. Only this, the senators believed, would preserve the Republic of St. Mark in an age of great powers. Not until 1783, after the Treaty of Paris had ended the war and Great Britain itself recognized the United States, did Venice do the same.

Despite Venice’s aloofness toward American independence and John Adams’s own reservations about Venice, the United States nevertheless quickly sought formal ties with the Republic of Venice. In December 1784 Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin wrote a joint letter to Daniele Dolfin:

Sir,

The United States of America in Congress assembled, judging that an intercourse between the said United States and the Most Serene Republic of Venice founded on the principles of equality, reciprocity and friendship, may be of mutual advantage to both nations, on the twelfth day of May last, issued their Commission under the seal of the said States to the Subscribers as their Ministers plenipotentiary, giving to them or the majority of them full power and authority, for the said States and in their name, to confer, treat and negotiate with the Ambassador Minister or Commissioner of the said Most Serene Republic of Venice vested with full and sufficient powers, of and concerning a Treaty of Amity and Commerce, to make and receive propositions for such Treaty and to conclude and sign the same, transmitting it to the said United States in Congress assembled for their final ratification.

We have now the honor to inform your Excellency that we have received this Commission in due form, and that we are here ready to enter on the negotiation whenever a full power from the said Most Serene Republic of Venice shall appear for that purpose.

We have further the honour to request of your Excellency that you should transmit this information to your Court, and to be with great respect

Your Excellency’s

Most obedient and

Most humble servants

John Adams
B. Franklin
Th. Jefferson

This was to be the only written correspondence that would pass between the world’s oldest and youngest republics. When it arrived in Venice, it was promptly ignored. Hearing no response, Dolfin, who seems to have struck up a friendly relationship with Franklin and perhaps the other Americans as well, wrote again to the Senate. He pointed out that similar treaties were being concluded in Paris between the United States and France, Holland, Prussia, and Portugal, so there was no reason for Venice to remain aloof. In earlier dispatches Dolfin had expressed optimism for the future of the United States, noting the extraordinary size of the country (“three times that of France”) and its potential for expansion (he believed that a war with Spain over Florida was inevitable). At the very least, the senators should respond to the American offer.

The Senate’s response disappointed Dolfin, as well as Benjamin Franklin, who was preparing to return home: Venice declined to enter into a treaty with the United States. Although Great Britain had accepted American independence, relations between the two remained tense. The Senate worried that a treaty of friendship might cast doubts on Venice’s neutrality should war again break out. As for commerce, the senators had no reason to believe that any would occur between the United States and Venice. Venetians did almost no business in the Atlantic, and while American vessels traded in the Mediterranean, none had ever come to Venice. Indeed, the Senate had good reason to believe that they never would. Shipping in the western Mediterranean was plagued by Barbary pirates based in Algeria and Morocco, to whom governments paid protection money to have their flagged vessels left in peace. During the Revolution, American vessels were left alone, since they were allies of France. But since acquiring its independence, the United States could no longer hide behind the French flag. Jefferson paid Morocco to secure safe transport in June 1786, but no agreement was worked out with Algeria until 1795. For the time being, then, American-flagged vessels would find it very difficult to do business with Venice or her colonies.

Even without the pirates, trade with the United States held little appeal. Venice had goods that the United States wanted, such as glass and textiles, but not vice versa. The English ambassador to Venice, Robert Ritchie, reported that:

the Americans are attempting to begin a kind of trade with this State [Venice]; I say a kind of trade, for they do not order goods on their own account . . . but instead of that, they give long lists of European goods, which would answer well according to the price noted, and as long lists of American goods, very few of which would answer at all if sent in return. But it will not do; the Venetian merchants are not easily cajoled into such schemes.

The final and perhaps most important reason that Venice refused to establish relations with the United States is that the senators doubted that the new republic would last. America’s first attempt at establishing a written constitution—the Articles of Confederation—had failed. In October 1787 the Venetian ambassador to London, Gasparo Soderini, sent a translation of the new American Constitution to the Senate. He informed the Senate that it was very similar to the British system of government, simply “changing the name of the king to the President, of the House of Lords to the Senate, of the House of Commons to the Congress [sic].” The legal codes in the United States were also, he assured the senators, “completely like those in England.” The Venetians concluded that the United States was drifting back to its mother country. Indeed, Ritchie had earlier described the new country as “independent in name only.”

Venice’s interest in the “new republic” of the United States was real, but the centuries-old Venetian conservatism could not conceive that it would ever succeed. Venice kept the United States at arm’s length because Venetians did not make long ocean voyages, they had no interest in American goods, and they worried that the new state would soon collapse. The general feeling among Venetians was that the United States was just too new, too wild, and too unstable to survive.

As it happened, it was the Venetian republic that would not survive. And in a supreme irony it would die at the hands of a liberal republic, executed for the crime of medieval tyranny. During the momentous years between 1789 and 1794 all of Europe watched as the French people, awash in the ideas of Liberalism and buoyed by the American experience, overturned their monarchy and established a new republic. Let us not rehearse the long and bloody history of the French Revolution; suffice it to say, it did not go as smoothly as the American one. The Revolution targeted first the monarchy, then the nobility, the Catholic Church, and finally the wealthy middle class, which had itself spawned the Revolution. The result was not merely chaos and bloodshed. Out of the mayhem the French had produced a new and burning nationalism.

For Venetians, patriotism was nothing new. Indeed, Venetians were sometimes criticized for loving their state more than God. Since patriotism was virtually unknown in the Middle Ages, such criticisms are not surprising. Large kingdoms, such as France or Spain, were a collection of diverse regions each with its own language, customs, and concerns. They were bound together only by their theoretical allegiance to a king and their Catholic faith. The French Revolution changed that. The people of France—everywhere in France—had become French citizens. All now stood equal before the law, with no privilege, no nobility. They had, they believed, thrown off the shackles of Church and aristocracy and were leading the way into a new world of right and reason. Little wonder, then, that this new revolutionary France soon declared war on almost all its neighbors, which were, of course, monarchies. Counterrevolutionaries needed to be acquainted with Madame Guillotine, whether they were found in France or abroad. In a way, the French had rediscovered their medieval crusading zeal, only this time they were bringing to the world not the cross but liberal revolution.

The Revolution had fused France into one, very dangerous, state. It produced Europe’s first national army, a permanent conscripted force of unprecedented size and effectiveness. France’s leaders found the army useful to crush not only external enemies, but internal ones as well. After the Reign of Terror ended with the execution of Maximilien Robespierre in 1794, a new republic was formed in Paris with a bicameral legislature and a five-man executive committee known as the Directory. Because the new government proved bitterly unpopular in the Paris streets, the leaders needed a military commander who could maintain order no matter the cost. They found their man in a poor Corsican who had worked his way up the ranks of the national army: Napoleon Bonaparte. After proving himself as the commander of the Army of the Interior, Napoleon was appointed commander in chief of the Army of Italy in March 1796. His assignment was to “liberate” northern Italy from the oppression of the medieval Hapsburg emperors and then to press on toward their capital of Vienna, spreading a healthy dose of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” along the way.

Historians of Venice often cast Napoleon as a bête noire, determined to crush the Republic of St. Mark just as he would wipe away so much else in the world that remained medieval. In truth, Napoleon and the Directory were hunting bigger game. The Hapsburgs had long been the enemies of France. Now history (and the French) demanded the extermination of the Hapsburg dynasty, the defenders of absolute monarchy. To conquer Vienna would not only strike a blow against medieval despotism but also rocket Napoleon to new heights of power, perhaps even to challenge the Directory itself. Destroying poor, weak, and stridently neutral Venice was hardly worth the general’s effort. This is not to say that Napoleon would not have welcomed the fall of Venice. Subsequent events prove that he had no love for it. But it was never the objective of his Italian campaign.

As a war of titans raged in Italy, Venice had the misfortune to be stuck in the middle. Napoleon went from victory to victory in Lombardy, finally capturing Milan in May 1796. His army pressed eastward, defeating Hapsburg forces with ease and establishing new liberal governments in many Italian towns. All of them were to be organized into two Italian republics, both puppets of France. The last Austrian stronghold in Italy was Mantua. Napoleon besieged the city for months, but it continued to hold out. Austrian forces made several unsuccessful attempts to break the siege, marching from the north, directly across Venetian territory. This greatly upset the French general. Why, Napoleon asked, did a neutral state like Venice allow France’s enemy to wage war by crossing its lands? The Venetian Senate responded that an ancient treaty allowed the Austrians to cross in order to reach their own territories. Napoleon dismissed the excuse. He knew all about Venice and its history—or at least he knew the popular myth of Venice, propagated in Amelot de la Houssaie’s history and a thousand guidebooks. Venice was no republic, he believed, but a cruel oligarchy in which the slightest dissent was punished by the Council of Ten and its State Inquisitors. Of course, he reasoned, the aristocratic Venetian rulers would support the monarchist Hapsburgs!

Napoleon used the Austrians’ entry into Venetian territory as an excuse to do the same himself. When the Austrians were allowed to occupy a Venetian fortress at Peschiera on Lake Garda, Napoleon threatened to capture nearby Verona and burn it to the ground. Only by surrendering the city to the French could it be saved. Thus did Venice lose the second city of its mainland empire. Francesco Pesaro, the leader of a party of nobles that favored rearming Venice, had earlier urged the government to ally with Austria against Napoleon. Now, as Napoleon found his march to Vienna delayed by the ongoing siege of Mantua, he offered his own alliance between Venice and France. The Senate stridently rejected both proposals, continuing to believe that neutrality was Venice’s only hope for survival in a dangerous modern world.

Mantua fell on February 2, 1797, and the last of the Austrian forces retreated across the Alps to Tyrol, crossing Venetian territory along the way. Napoleon gave chase, but not before having the French ambassador to Venice, Jean-Baptiste Lallement, present a series of democratic reforms to the Great Council. Implementing these, he suggested, would prove the friendship between Venice and France. They included the election of representatives, the abolition of the State Inquisition, and the release of all political prisoners (of whom Venice had none). More than a thousand members of the Great Council met on March 24 to consider and vote on Napoleon’s reforms. They received five votes in favor.

French troops who remained in Italy were tasked with maintaining the peace and overseeing the creation of the new Italian republics. In fact, though, they often abused their authority, taking what they wanted from the population, be it coin, dwellings, or even women. Across northern Italy a deep hatred of the French flourished, which itself led to a new Italian nationalism. Nowhere was this truer than in Venice’s former provinces, where people had grown accustomed to the rule of law and a stable government. Rebellions soon began to break out here and there, the largest in Verona, where armed bands began chanting “Viva San Marco!” in the streets, and targeting French soldiers whenever possible. The uprising continued to grow through Holy Week and Easter Week 1797. In the disorder, several hundred French soldiers were killed and many more imprisoned. When Napoleon heard of this, he flew into a rage. He had no doubt that the attackers had been armed and supported by Venice. While it is true that some of the partisans were Venetian militia, they were not acting on orders from the Senate. A popular uprising against the French was the last thing that the government in Venice wanted.

As the French brutally crushed the Easter uprising, Napoleon began to reconsider his drive toward Vienna. The campaign was taking longer than he had anticipated—a development for which he now blamed Venice. For various political reasons Napoleon wanted to wrap things up quickly and return to Paris. He decided, therefore, to make peace. On April 18 he agreed to the Preliminaries of Leoben, a framework agreement that ended the war between France and Austria. In it, Emperor Francis II of Austria agreed to surrender Belgium, accept the loss of Lombardy, and acknowledge France’s new frontier on the Rhine. In return, Napoleon ceded to Austria all of Venice’s mainland territories, even those he did not currently possess. It was time, Napoleon believed, to return Venice to the sea.

With the apparent demise of their mainland empire the Venetians took refuge in their lagoon, which had defended them for more than a millennium. What they did not know was that it could defend them no longer. Two days after Napoleon’s agreement with Austria, three French vessels patrolling in the Adriatic entered the Venetian lagoon. The fortress at San Andrea fired across their bows, which caused two of them to retreat. The third vessel, named the Libérateur d’Italie, was apparently unable to turn as quickly. Two small Venetian warships quickly blocked its path, and a collision occurred. What happened next is still not clear. Although the French commander, Jean-Baptiste Laugier, shouted his surrender, both sides began firing their weapons. After a clatter of shots and billows of smoke, cooler heads finally prevailed. But by then five Venetians and five Frenchmen lay dead, Laugier among them.

Napoleon already believed that the Venetians had been covertly waging war against him. Not only had they supported his enemy the Hapsburgs, but they had waged guerrilla war against his troops through their proxies. Even before news of the Libérateur reached him, Napoleon had thundered to Venetian deputies, “What of my men [at Verona], whom you Venetians have murdered? . . . Any government unable to restrain its own subjects is an imbecile government and has no right to survive.” Napoleon fully believed the caricature of Venice as a ruthless and lawless tyranny where dark intrigues kept the people cowering in fear. Well, he would not cower. As he turned back from Austria, Napoleon again demanded that the Venetians immediately release all their political prisoners. “If not, I myself shall come and break your prisons open, for I shall tolerate none of your Inquisitions, your medieval barbarities. Every man must be free to express his opinions.” The Venetian deputies were amazed that Napoleon was so poorly informed about Venice and its government. They told him that Venice (unlike France) had no political prisoners and that the State Inquisition not only operated under strict adherence to the law, but was much loved and trusted by the people. Napoleon would have none of it. For him, the myth of Venice was Venice. He shouted back, “I will have no more Inquisition, no more Senate! I will be an Attila to the Venetian State!”

Napoleon’s famous “Attila” comment can be found in every history of the Republic of Venice. It is just too delicious to leave out. But it was not, as it is regularly interpreted, the general’s pronouncement of Venice’s death sentence. Even Napoleon’s grasp of history was not that bad. For centuries, Attila the Hun had been credited with giving birth to Venice by waging war on the mainland. To Venetians, Attila was almost a city founder, for his attacks on Aquileia, Padua, and elsewhere had led directly to the settlement of the Venetian islands. As for Napoleon, he meant what he said. He would be an Attila by depriving Venice of its mainland possessions, sending its people scurrying back to the lagoon. He had, after all, promised those lands to the emperor in Vienna. But Napoleon did not yet envision the destruction of the Venetian state.

News of the Libérateur changed his mind. This, Napoleon thundered, was an act of war, and he meant to prosecute that war. He wrote to the Directory in Paris, “I am convinced that the only course to be taken now is to destroy this ferocious and sanguinary Government.” Recalling the French ambassador to the Republic of Venice, he informed the Venetians that to avoid war with France they must immediately evacuate Italy and prepare to enact a series of democratic reforms. Desperate, the Venetian government obeyed, still protesting its neutrality. There was no longer any hope of resistance. Unlike Attila, Napoleon had very large cannons, which could bombard Venice from the shore. He set them up and encamped his soldiers within sight of Venice at the end of April 1797. On May 3 Napoleon again wrote to Paris: “I see nothing that can be done but to obliterate the Venetian name from the face of the globe.”

Venice was a flurry of activity during the next week. Hundreds of patricians packed their bags and fled the city. Many of them feared that the famous French guillotine would soon grace the Piazza San Marco and that they would be among its first customers. Other nobles rushed to their mainland villas, hoping to hold on to them despite the French occupation. On the streets and canals of Venice, confusion reigned. The Arsenale workers, always among the city’s most bellicose defenders, insisted that Venice not surrender without a fight. In the coffeehouses of the Piazza, Jacobins (liberal sympathizers of the French Revolution) applauded Napoleon as a harbinger of modernity. Most common Venetians simply watched and waited. There was a strange unreality to it all. For Venice, these were truly uncharted waters.

On May 9 Napoleon’s secretary, Joseph Villetard, delivered to the Venetian government a final ultimatum. To escape utter destruction, the Venetians must abolish their republic. The long list of demands included (again) the release of political prisoners, the creation of a provisional municipal government, the formation of a democratically elected legislature, and the planting of a Liberty Tree (the symbol of the French Revolution) in the Piazza San Marco, around which the people were to dance with joy while burning the flag of San Marco. To ensure order, the Municipality was to invite three thousand French troops into the city and turn over all major governmental buildings, including the Ducal Palace.

It is an extraordinary testament to the continued vitality and stability of the Most Serene Republic of St. Mark that even at the moment of its death it proceeded deliberately, lawfully, and in an orderly fashion. On Friday, May 12, 1797, the Great Council of Venice convened for the last time. Because of all the recent departures only about half of the members attended. Doge Lodovico Manin (1789–97) solemnly entered the chamber and took his customary place at the rostrum, Tintoretto’s magnificent Paradiso behind him. Outside on the streets and Piazzetta below could be heard the chanting of the people: “Viva San Marco! Viva San Marco!” With tears streaming down his face, the doge proposed a motion: To preserve the religion, lives, and property of the people of Venice, the Great Council should abolish the constitution of the republic and surrender all of the council’s authority to a provisional democratic government—one that would, of course, be a puppet of the French.

There was no debate. In truth, there was nothing left to debate. The decision had been made for them. As they had done for centuries, the members of the Great Council lined up to cast their ballots. The final vote was 512 yeas, 20 nays, and 5 abstentions. With that, history’s longest-surviving republic ceased to be. After more than thirteen centuries, the Republic of Venice was sacrificed on the altar of republicanism.

A new era had dawned in Western history in which there was apparently no room for the old. And yet, even as the masters of that age built new republics on the model of ancient Rome, they scarcely noticed that it was the Venetians who were the unbroken thread to antiquity. They truly were Rome unfallen—a republic transplanted to the lagoons when the ancient world was ending. Now that thread was broken. The storks had flown. And once again a new world was born.

The Republic of Venice is one of history’s greatest marvels. Its passing, like the passing of all great states and ages, cannot fail to evoke some measure of sorrow, for it reminds us that ours are transitory as well. If one should seek a fitting eulogy for the Republic of St. Mark, though, it is folly to contend with William Wordsworth’s masterful poem “On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic,” penned just five years after its demise.

Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee;

And was the safeguard of the West: the worth

Of Venice did not fall below her birth,

Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.

She was a maiden City, bright and free;

No guile seduced, no force could violate;

And, when She took unto herself a Mate,

She must espouse the everlasting Sea.

And what if she had seen those glories fade,

Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;

Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid

When her long life hath reach’d its final day:

Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade

Of that which once was great is pass’d away.