Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

Sarodopulous remained silent for a moment; then he said, 'I have it. You could go as a perfume seller. Such a cargo would take little space and Eastern perfumes always find a ready sale in Europe, so you might even make a handsome profit on your investment. You would stand no risk of dickering with Venetian merchants, either; for you could dispose of your wares by making a round of the palaces and selling them direct to ladies of fashion.'

Roger's eyes lit up. 'You've hit upon the very thing! I will adopt your idea and could not be more grateful for it.'

They then discussed possible ways for Roger to proceed on his journey, and Sarodopulous said that, rather than wait, perhaps a week or more, for a ship sailing to Brindisi or Naples, and thence travelling overland to Venice, he thought it would be quicker to take a local Greek trader across to Crete, where it should be easy to pick up a Venetian vessel homeward bound. On Roger's accepting this advice, the banker promised to make all arrangements, and his wife suggested that, until a trader could be found to take Roger to Crete, he might prefer to stay with them instead of at an inn. He at once expressed his delight at her kindness; so a servant was sent to fetch his few belongings and Hassan.

The next two days passed all too quickly, as for the past three months he had spoken hardly a word of English, and had suffered great loneliness from having no one to whom he could talk as an equal. To be able to do so again, freely, and in his own tongue, proved a wonderful tonic for him; so it was with real regret that on July 21st he parted from his kind host and hostess to go aboard a Greek trader.

She was quite a small ship, and one of several that plied regularly between Alexandria and Crete, carrying corn one way and olive oil the other. He was still wearing the costume of a respectable Arab and had with him a hundred pounds' worth of scent that Sarodopulous had got for him from the Alexandria muski at trade rates; but Hassan he had paid off with a suitable gift before leaving.

This stage of his journey proved ill-​starred. On the first night out. they were caught in a violent storm which abated as suddenly as it had arisen but, even so, the crossing took eight days instead of the usual four or five.

Crete had belonged to Venice for over four hundred years and, even after it had fallen 10 the Turks in 1669, the Venetians had been allowed to retain two fortified ports there to within living memory; so its people still had strong ties with the Serene Republic, which continued to carry most of the island's trade. In consequence, on arriving on Candia Roger had no difficulty in finding a captain, one Gulio Battista, who was sailing in a few days and would take him direct to Venice.

Battista was a fine-​looking, bearded, middle-​aged seaman, and Roger would have found him a most pleasant companion had he not been so depressed by the fate that had overtaken his country. From him, as the ship ploughed her way through the Ionian sea, Roger learned the full story of the fall of the Serenissima.

In Battista's opinion, the ancient oligarchy had, to a large extent, brought its troubles on itself. Although they ruled the greater part of north-​east Italy and territories that extended right down the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, they had always reused the people of these lands any share in the government. Only nobles of the city itself, the names of whose families were inscribed in the Golden Book, could be elected to the Senate. Not unnaturally, both the nobility and the cities of the mainland had long resented this, and Buonaparte had used them as his cat's-​paw.

Already, in the previous October, he had sponsored the creation of one new state, the Cispadane Republic which had been formed from the Duchy of Modena together with the Papal territories of Bologna and Ferrara and during the spring there had been talk of turning the Duchy of Milan into another Republic, also modelled on that of France. The western frontier of Venetia ran with the Milanese and a large area on the Venetian side was mainly populated by Lombards. These, having no reason for loyalty to the Serenissima, had promptly begun to agitate for inclusion with their fellow Lombards of the Milanese in the new Republic. In mid-​March, incited by Buonaparte's agents, the inhabitants of Bergamo, Brescia and Salo had revolted and proclaimed themselves independent municipalities, upon which the French garrisons had prevented the Venetian authorities from suppressing these revolts, then driven them out.

The Senate had appealed to Buonaparte, who had hypocritically declared that it was not for him to interfere in the domestic affairs of a neutral but. if the Serene Republic would become the ally of France, he would then bring the revolted cities back to their duty. But, having fresh in mind the way in which he had dealt with the Milanese when they became his allies, the Senate had nervously declined his invitation.

To goad the Serenissima further, towards the end of the month a body of French cavalry entered the city of Crema by a trick, disarmed the garrison and declared the place a free municipality. This time, matters were taken out of the supine Senate's hands. By their rapacious exactions and brutal lawlessness, the French soldiery had already earned themselves the bitter hatred of the peasantry throughout all northern Italy. Those in the Crema territory rushed down from their mountains, attacked Buonaparte's troops and killed a number of them. This was just the sort of thing the unscrupulous Corsican had been angling for. It enabled him to pretend that his army was in danger from the whole country rising behind it. He dictated a violent diatribe against the Senate, in which he accused them of conspiring against him, and declared that all the Venetian provinces must be delivered from their tyranny; then he despatched his chief aide-​de-​camp, Junot, to read it to them.

On April 15th Junot had done so. On the 17th had come the rising in Verona. For three days the population of the city and its surrounding district massacred every Frenchman they could lay hands on, including the wounded in the hospital. Only those in the fortress survived, and they added to the carnage by turning its guns on the town.

On the 19th fuel was added to the flames by yet another incident, this time in Venice herself. It was an age-​old law that no foreign armed vessel should be allowed to enter the harbour. A small French warship defied the ban and ignored an order to leave. The forts then opened fire, killing several of her crew.

Buonaparte now had all the ammunition he wanted. With a great show of righteous anger, he declared war on the Serene Republic. Rather than fight, the Senate humbly agreed to accept his terms. On May 4th, they handed over their three senior Inquisitors and the Commander of the Port to big Commissioners, and disarmed and sent back to Dalmatia their trusty Slavonian troops. In the meantime, the French Charge d’ Affaires, Villetard, had been intensely active in forming a party of so called 'patriots' on the traditional revolutionary lines.

Ten days later, the final scenes of degradation took place. ln the vain hope that Buonaparte might treat Venice better as a democracy than as an oligarchy, the Grand Council voted, by 512 against only 20, its own abolition, and the transfer of its authority to a Municipality selected by Villetard. The aged Doge, Manin, fell in a dead faint from shame as he took off his bonnet of office. This, his other insignia, and the Golden Book, were publicly burnt, Trees of Liberty were set up in the Square of St. Mark, the Venetian fleet was handed over, and a ghastly pretence was made of welcoming the French troops into the city as the bringers of liberty.

Roger was deeply sensible of the terrible distress that these happenings must have caused Captain Battista, and many other Venetians like him, who would willingly have fought for their country; but it was inescapable that enervating luxury had rendered the Venetian nobility rotten to the core, and that this, coupled with cowardly inaction, or rather lack of a demand for it, on the part of the majority of the citizens, was responsible for the fall of the ancient Republic.