The Rape of Venice (50 page)

By the end of March, they had penetrated both the Tyrol and Carinthia. On the 30th of that month, Buonaparte drove the Archduke out of Klagenfurt and established his headquarters there, while his spearheads were advancing through Austria. By April 7th he had pushed on to Judenburg, barely a hundred miles from Vienna.

But by then his army was almost as exhausted as that of the Archduke's; so they agreed to a week's truce. Had the French armies on the Rhine been able to play their part in Buonaparte's
great plan, and join him in the Tyrol, there could be no doubt that he would have dictated peace in the Austrian capital; but they had failed him lamentably. Rather than risk defeat at the very end of his brilliant campaign, without deigning to consult his nominal masters in Paris, he had on April 18th signed peace preliminaries with Austria at Leoben.

When the Greek had concluded his account of Buonaparte's victories, Roger asked if negotiations were in progress for a general peace; and on learning that they were not, he said glumly, ‘Hard pressed as Austria was, one would have expected the Emperor to make some effort towards that end before abandoning the alliance. We could long since have made peace had we not stuck out for the return to him of his Belgian lands; and now we're left to fight the French on our own.'

‘The Austrians excuse themselves by maintaining that the British abandoned them. No doubt you will not have heard it; but the Fleet was withdrawn from the Mediterranean last November.'

‘Hell's bells!' Roger exclaimed in dismay. ‘Then things are come to a pretty pass. What caused this pusillanimous decision?'

‘We count Admiral Hotham mainly to blame,' Mrs. Sarodopulous told him. ‘He had numerous chances to smash the French while they were still weak, but failed to take them. Then the entry of Spain into the war gave our enemies a big superiority in ships, if not in their fighting power. Admiral Jervis superseded Hotham, and might have retrieved the situation, but Admiral Mann, who commanded the supporting squadron, and was to join him off Corsica, arrived there without stores, so had to return to Gibraltar. There he lost his nerve, and was chased home by the Spaniards. Jervis was by then so heavily outnumbered that he had no option but to take his fleet out into the Atlantic'

‘At least, my dear,' put in her husband, ‘we can cheer Mr. Brook a little by telling him of Admiral Jervis's splendid victory over the Spaniards off Cape St. Vincent, last February. With fifteen ships, he defeated twenty-five Spaniards so severely that the Spanish fleet will not dare another encounter for a long time yet. I'm told he's been made Earl St. Vincent for it, though half the glory should go to his second in command, little Commodore Nelson, for having boldly left station at a critical moment of the battle and broken right through the Spanish line.'

‘Thank God for that'. Roger sighed. ‘Such a crippling blow to the Spanish Fleet makes the invasion of England somewhat less likely.'

‘I'd not be sure of that.' the Greek replied soberly. ‘There is great discontent in Ireland, and last December the French attempted an invasion of that country, counting upon being well received there, and hoping to make it a base for an attack on England. A fleet of forty-five vessels was despatched from Brest under Admiral Morad de Galles, with General Hoche in command of the troops they carried. They dodged Lord Bridport's fleet and got clear away into the Atlantic. But God intervened. Only some half of the French ships reached Bantry Bay; the rest, and among them that carrying Hoche, the Irish leader Wolf Tone, the money and the plans, were dispersed by a great storm. Many were wrecked; the rest crept back into Brest during January.'

Roger nodded. ‘That was truly a merciful deliverance. What a pity though that, with so many troops on board, our Channel Fleet failed to catch them.'

Mrs. Sarodopulous gave him a troubled glance. ‘All has been far from well with the Channel Fleet. In April, on returning to Spithead, it mutinied.'

‘At that I am not altogether surprised,' Roger said after a moment; ‘an outbreak of the kind has long threatened. My father is a Rear Admiral, and he has often told me of the inhumanity with which the common seamen are treated. When the pay of the troops was raised, theirs was not; should they become incapacitated from wounds, they are frequently turned off to starve; the food given them is often scarcely fit for animals; many Captains treat their men with great brutality; and such major punishments as a flogging round the fleet are little less than murder. Their grievances are many and well founded. Yet, with Britain's fortunes at so low an ebb, this could hardly have happened at a worse time.'

‘On both counts you are right,' agreed the Greek. ‘And, alas, from my latest intelligence, things have become worse instead of better. In May, the mutiny spread to the Nore and some crews there, having put their officers ashore, even went to the length of running up the red flag. Yet more alarming still is Britain's financial state. Her shipments of gold in recent years to her allies on the Continent have so impoverished her that last February there were fears for the solvency of the Bank of England. For some days, Mr. Pitt was faced with the worst
financial crisis London has known for many years. He has temporarily restored the situation by the issue of a Patriotic Loan, to which there was a fine response; but all over Europe the confidence of bankers in Britain's stability has been badly shaken.'

After listening to all this news of defeat and disaster, Roger felt that, short of collapse, he could not have returned to find his country in a worse mess. Shying away from this depressing thought, when they had left the dining-room and settled themselves on a terrace to enjoy the sea-breeze after the long hot day he asked:

‘What part, if any, has the Serene Republic played in these events?'

Sarodopulous shrugged. ‘None. Who could have expected otherwise? The Venetians of old were a great and proud people, but for a century past they have been unworthy of their ancestors. Too much money from great estates on the mainland which they have long neglected, gambling, women, music, the playhouse, dabbling with the occult; all these have drained away their courage, patriotism and pride. At General Buonaparte's bidding the
Serenissima
handed over all its strong, places and disbanded its famous Slavonian levies. But they have since paid the price for their poltroonery.'

The fools might have known from Buonaparte's treatment of the people of Milan that licking his boots would not save them.' Roger gave a short, hard laugh. ‘Can one imagine that Corsican brigand refraining from despoiling so fabulously rich a city once it had opened its gates to him? I'll wager there is hardly a Titian, Tintoretto or Bellini left in it by now.'

‘His hand fell on them far more heavily than that,' remarked Mrs. Sarodopulous quickly. ‘He abolished the
Serenissima!'

‘What say you, Madame?' Roger stared at her in amazement. ‘I'd not have thought that even he would go to such lengths. The Serene Republic has lasted a thousand years. It was as much a permanent feature of Europe as Portugal, the Netherlands or Sweden. Surely you cannot mean that, even subject to his will, it no longer has a government?'

‘There is no longer a Doge; the Senate is no more. Instead, General Buonaparte has given the city a Municipality on the French lines, made up of criminals and atheists.'

‘On what excuse did he do this terrible thing?'

‘The people on the mainland were driven to desperation by pillaging and raping by his troops. On Easter Monday the men
of Verona rose and massacred the French garrison. The rising was, of course, swiftly put down; but General Buonaparte charged the Senate with having inspired it. Rather than take up arms while they still had them, they agreed to his demand that the ancient State should commit suicide by voting themselves out of existence.'

‘When was this?'

‘In mid-May. Since then the city has been ruled by its Municipals, dancing to the tune of their French masters; and all the Venetian lands west of the Adriatic have been split up into Communes on the French model.'

‘This suits me ill,' Roger said thoughtfully. ‘I am on my way to Venice, and now the French control the place for me to enter it as an Englishman would be to invite arrest.'

‘Why, then, not go there as an Arab?' Sarodopulous suggested.

Roger passed his hand over the beard that he had not yet had an opportunity to shave off. ‘Perhaps; but no! I wish to avoid notice as much as possible. As an Arab, in a European city, I should be much too conspicuous.'

‘Not in Venice,' countered the Greek. The Queen of the Adriatic has for so many centuries been the gateway into Europe from the East that its population is more mixed than that of any other city. As slaves, seamen, or traders, as many coloured men have found their way there as there are Europeans in Alexandria. If you took a cargo of some sort with you, and arrived as an Arab merchant, the port officials would not give you a second glance.'

‘I am no merchant,' Roger smiled, ‘and I would, at least, have to make a pretence of disposing of the goods I had brought. I fear my fumbling efforts to do so would soon arouse the suspicions of the Venetian merchants to whom I tried to sell them.'

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 to 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 refused 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, haying 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.