The Rape of Venice (63 page)

From Bourrienne he had learned the inner history of Boneparte's rape of the Serene Republic. The Austrians had long had trouble in ruling their Flemish subjects so that, now France had a secure hold on Belgium, they were prepared to give up their claim to it, but only provided that they were compensated with equally valuable territory nearer home. Boneparte had already made his plans for forming the Italian Duchies into one or more Republics under French influence so that, as he had written to the Directory, in any future war France would be able to menace the rest of Italy through them; therefore, they could not be given up. But what about the broad fertile lands ruled by the
Serenissima?

There lay Venice: a great fat, golden calf, that had only to be killed and cut up. But Venice had declared her neutrality. She would not even act like a very small bull and put up the sort of token resistance that had served to justify Boneparte's deposing the rulers of the Duchies, and even he could not bring himself to face the opprobrium with which all Europe would have regarded him had he cut the calf's throat while it licked his hand. It had to be made to bite.

On his instructions, his agents had stopped at nothing that might goad the mild beast into a protesting bleat. They had set the nobles of the mainland against those of the city, used the separatist ambitions of minorities and fostered a revolutionary spirit in the mobs of the towns. He had given his brutal soldiery
carte blanche
to do as they liked while quartered in Venetian territory, and been far more harsh in his exactions and requisitions from this neutral state than in any of the lands he had conquered.

In spite of all this the
Serenissima
had remained with bended knee; but, outside its control, unceasing deliberate torment had at last aroused sporadic resistance. That had been enough. With sickening hypocrisy the little Corsican had told the
Serenissima's
envoys, sent to express regret and offer handsome compensation, that he ‘could not discuss matters with men whose hands were dripping with blood'.

Even before that the fate of the Serene Republic as a nation had been sealed and, when rumours of his intention had got
about, he had temporarily masked his true character as a brigand by throwing out the suggestion that, if Venice would give up her northern provinces to Austria, she should receive as compensation Bologna, Ferrara and the Romagna. But he had not meant one word of it; these ex-Papal States had already been earmarked by him as part of his new Cispadine Republic.

The ‘Easter Vespers', as the massacre of the French in Verona had come to be called, was the fruit of all his efforts. After it he no longer needed to talk of compensation. He had his long desired pretext for declaring war on Venice. The spineless
Serenissima
collapsed, enabling him to cut chunks of meat from the living body of the calf and chuck them at will to the Austrians.

But the Austrians were greedy, and clever enough to know that France needed peace as badly as they did. Their envoys, M. de Merveldt and the Marquis di Gallo, had shilly-shallied for months at Montebello putting off the agreement of definite terms while watching events in Paris and hoping for a change of Government that would be to their advantage.

It had not matured. On the contrary, the
coup d'état
of 18th Fructidor had settled the Directory in the saddle more firmly than ever. Boneparte's hand was strengthened. He was able to threaten now if matters were not concluded soon he would resume the offensive and, after all, conclude them in Vienna.

The Emperor felt disinclined to call his bluff and Thugut, the Austrian Chancellor, sent his most able diplomat, Count Cobenzl, to enter on really serious negotiations. Early in October, Boneparte, accompanied by his personal staff, moved up to Passeriano, south of Udine, to meet the new Austrian Plenipotentiary. In addition to Venice's territories on the east of the Adriatic, which Austria had already grabbed, he wanted her mainland territories as far west as the river Adige and the city itself. In return Austria was prepared to give up all claim to Belgium, to exchange the city of Mayence for that of Venice and to accept France's boundary as the Rhine. The Directory wanted the boundary but was so strongly averse to giving the Austrians all they wanted that it threatened to order the armies of the Rhine to take the field again.

This possibility of a resumption of hostilities caught Boneparte at an awkward time. The Austrians had cleverly talked away the summer and the idea of waging another winter campaign through the Alps did not appeal to him at all. Moreover,
he wanted the Austrians out of the war so that he could develop new schemes he had in mind. He therefore decided to ignore the Directory's orders and make the best peace he could get behind their backs.

Venice was clearly the main bone of contention. The Emperor was set on having it, and the Directory were set on incorporating it in the new French controlled Cisalpine Republic. Boneparte, on the contrary, while stripping it to its shirt had all along posed as its protector. He liked the rôle and, from mixed motives, wished to continue playing it. At times he enjoyed making generous gestures and this was a chance to make one. If, too, he allowed the city to retain its independence, that meant that the thousand-year-old Republic would survive; so, although he had reduced it to a puppet state he would, instead of being regarded as her assassin, be hailed as her champion. He had raped Venice, but would save her from murder.

Having got rid of General Clarke, Boneparte ignored the Directory's orders and put his own terms to Count Cobenzl. Berthier, meanwhile, was told to get out the maps and, as a precaution, start planning a new campaign, and was given several officers, Roger among them, to assist him.

The Chief-of-Staff was an ugly little man with a head far too big for his body. The splendour of the uniforms he designed for himself could not disguise the ungainliness of his movements, or his enormous red hands with their finger-nails bitten to the quick. His speech was as awkward as his body and he was incapable of showing natural affability. But, under his frizzy hair, he had a quite exceptional brain.

Not that he was an original thinker and, although he did not lack for courage, on his own he would not have made even a passable General. His forte was his extraordinary capacity for memorising detail. He could at any time give the approximate strength, the position, and the name of the commander, of every unit in the Army of Italy. He was a living card-index, carrying every sort of information about fortresses, topography, munitions, supplies, hospitals, transport and the enemy. His value to Boneparte was trebled by two other factors: he positively worshipped the General-in-Chief and was capable of working swiftly, yet carefully, for far longer hours than any other man could possibly have sustained. At critical times in the campaign he had often gone for several days without sleep and appeared no wit the worse for it.

For some days Roger devilled for him, while he worked out with meticulous care the routes which should be taken by infantry, cavalry, artillery and transport of each division, should it become necessary to resume the war. It was on October 11th that, after a morning session with Berthier, Roger met Boneparte in a corridor, and the little Corsican said to him abruptly: ‘You seem to have forgotten your suggestion about my spending a night in Venice, to meet an Indian Princess.'

Roger was very far from having forgotten, but he had felt that, although they were now within a day's ride of Venice, it would be tactless to reopen the matter while this new period of intense activity continued, and he said so.

Boneparte grunted. ‘I told you to remind me, so you should have. But I've thought of it more than once. It promises to be an interesting experience. Cobenzl will not receive from the Emperor any reply to my latest proposals for some days; so now is the time. How soon can you arrange it?'

‘To manage the matter with discretion I'll need two clear days in Venice,' Roger replied. ‘If all is going well, I could get a courier back to you here the day after tomorrow; then, if you go down to Mestre on the fourteenth, I'll report to you there that evening with everything in readiness for you to dine with the lady that night.'

‘Good; see to it, then.'

‘Mon Général
, I will leave at once; but there is one thing I must take with me. I need a line of authority from you to Villetard, instructing him to give me any assistance I may require.'

‘Why should you need that?'

‘There are such matters as suitable accommodation to arrange. Far too many tongues would wag if I brought the Princess to the French Embassy and you dined with her there. At such short notice …'

‘You are right. Come with me.' Boneparte took Roger into his cabinet, scribbled the line of authority and, as he handed it over, said: ‘No scandal, mind. There is no reason why Madame, my wife, should ever know that I have left here except on a short journey to inspect troops, but I am bound to be recognised at Mestre, and I want no rumours running round among the Venetians that I slipped into the city by night in order to seduce an ex-Senator's wife.'

‘You may rely on me,' Roger declared firmly, and half an hour later he set off with high hopes that, at long last, his chance had come to be revenged on the villainous Malderini.

In the early hours of the morning Roger reached Mestre. It had been a long and tiring ride, but during it he had matured his plans and, although they entailed great risk to himself, he was now more than ever determined to go through with them.

The French Headquarters at Mestre was in a large villa on the outskirts of the town and, as one of the General-in-Chief's A.D.C.s, he had no difficulty in getting a shake-down there for what remained of the night. Next morning he had himself ferried across the three-mile-wide stretch of shallow water to Venice and by half-past nine was closeted with Villetard at the French Embassy.

When he had confirmed that Malderini was still in Venice and keeping the Embassy secretly informed about the anti-French conspiracy, he asked, ‘Is there any prospect of a rising taking place in the near future?'

‘No, none,' Villetard replied. ‘It could not possibly succeed, and they know that. They will do nothing until after the Peace, and then not for several months; anyway, until the greater part of the Army of Italy has returned to France and the garrison here been reduced to a token force.'

‘If the City's independence were restored no garrison would be left here.'

Villetard shrugged. ‘If it were, the conspiracy would no longer have an object, and Malderini have lost his chance of achieving his ambitions through having made use of it. But surely that is most unlikely? All the information that has reached me points to the Directory's insisting that the city should be incorporated into the Cisalpine Republic; and that it
will be so is the opinion generally accepted by the people of Venice.'

‘Then they put no trust in General Boneparte's promises that Venice shall survive as a City State?'

‘No. Why should they? He has played ducks and drakes with all the other States of Northern Italy and altered the arrangements for their future from month to month, according to his whim. From the beginning he spoke fair words to the Serene Republic, yet acted towards it as a whip of scorpions. Why should he suddenly change his tune? What has he to gain by preserving a remnant of it? Those are the questions that the Venetians are asking themselves. Go into the cafés and a dozen times a day you will hear the question asked, “Will he make us citizens of his new Cisalpine Republic or, far worse, give us to the Austrians?”'

‘Should he do the latter the prospects of the conspirators would be no better after the peace than before it; for ‘tis certain that, as the French troops moved out, the Austrians would move in, and they would never reduce their garrison to so slow a state that it would be overcome by a popular revolt.'

‘True. The Venetians' only real hope of regaining their independence is that, having been made Cisalpines, they will succeed in breaking away after the French have gone.'

‘They will be given one other.' Roger suddenly held Vilietard's eyes with an intent glance. ‘The General-in-Chief is coming here on a brief visit. If they captured him they might extort their own terms as a ransom.'

Villetard sat forward with a jerk. ‘What! Surely you are not suggesting…'

‘This is no suggestion. It is a plan already agreed on. General Boneparte is anxious to exterminate this nest of vipers before the peace terms are declared, so that they will no longer be able to rouse the population in a revolt against them.' Having calmly told this thumping lie, Roger produced his note of authority and went on.

‘Here is my warrant for requiring your assistance. There can be no risk of their attempting to assassinate him, because even a child would know that, did they succeed, we should burn the whole city about their ears. But, if they are secretly informed of his coming, and it is made apparently easy for them to kidnap him while he is here, it seems to me that they would hardly be likely to forgo such a temptation.'

‘The hotheads would jump at such a chance,' Villetard
agreed, ‘but I rather doubt if the more level-headed would risk taking part in a gamble of that kind. After all, whatever they might force General Boneparte to sign as the price of his liberty would not be worth the paper it was printed on. The moment he was free he would not hesitate to repudiate it and, like as not, in one of his fine rages, turn his troops loose to sack the city.'

With a smile, Roger shook his head. ‘No, Malderini and his friends could do better than that. They could first demand from him a declaration restoring to the City of Venice her independence. Once that had been published, as though emanating from him at some headquarters on the mainland, it would be natural that the withdrawal of the French garrison should follow. They would make him sign another order to that effect and wait until there was not a single French soldier left in Venice before releasing him. If things had gone to that length, he could not repudiate his declaration and order the reoccupation of the city without suffering great loss of face; because his kidnappers would have warned him that, should he attempt to do so, they would disclose the fact that he had been abducted and coerced. For it to become known that a General-in-Chief had allowed himself to be captured by a handful of civilians would make him the laughing-stock of Europe. Can you see our little Boneparte putting himself in such a position?'