their idol, carried away by the intoxication of his fame; they could
never trust him in their inmost conscience. The ruinous consequences
of the Treaty of Campo Formio only; ceased in 1866. The Venetians have
been severely blamed, most of all by Italian historians, for making
Campo Formio possible by opening the door to the French six months
before. Napoleon could not have bartered away Venice if it had not
belonged to him. The reason that it belonged to him was that, on the
12th of May 1797, the Grand Council committed political suicide by
dissolving the old aristocratic form of government, in compliance with
a mere rumour, conveyed to them through the ignoble medium of a petty
shopkeeper, that such was the wish of General Buonaparte. In
extenuation of their fatal supineness, it may be urged that they felt
the inherent weakness of an oligarchy out of date; and in the second
place, that the victor of Lodi, the deliverer of Lombardy, then in the
first flush of his scarcely tarnished glory, was a dazzling figure,
calculated indeed to turn men's heads. But, after all, the only really
valid excuse for them would have been that Venice lacked the means of
defence, and this was not the case. She had 14,000 regular troops,
8000 marines, a good stock of guns--how well she might have resisted
the French, had they, which was probable, attacked her, was to be
proved in 1849. Her people, moreover, that _basso popolo_ which
nowhere in the world is more free from crime, more patient in
suffering, more intelligent and public-spirited than in Venice, was
anxious and ready to resist; when the nobles offered themselves a
sacrifice on the Gallic altar by welcoming the proposed democratic
institutions, the populace, neither hoodwinked nor scared into
hysterics, rose to the old cry of San Marco, and attempted a righteous
reaction, which was only smothered when the treacherous introduction
of French troops by night on board Venetian vessels settled the doom
of Venice's independence.