Lucia (15 page)

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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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