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'Crisis', ‘decline’ and 'fall' of the Serenissima: remembering Venice as... 551

heft : over extension in the Eastern Mediterranean in the face of the
30
Ottomans could not be maintained indefinitely. From 1713, Venice
was reduced to a Terraferma rump, along with «suo Golfo», and a
handful of islands. It is significant that Tentori skimmed swiftly over
the loss of Cyprus and Crete, and barely mentioned Morea. In his Sag-
gio sulla storia civile he again emphasised that the key to decline in
Venetian trade was the rounding of the Cape. This not only shifted
trade from the Mediterranean but necessitated a more cautious Vene-
tian policy towards the Turks in which possession of Cyprus and Can-
dia assumed greater significance . The loss of Cyprus meant not just
31
a weaker Mediterranean position, but also launched competition from
other European powers for Levantine trade. The exclusion of Venice
from its Greek possessions determined that, henceforth, the Republic
was obliged to see its policies in terms of «sua conservazione» rather
than as the great power that, during the League of Cambrai, had been
able both to maintain «l’impero del Mediterraneo» and resist «alle forze
riunite insieme di quasi tutta l’Europa» . Caught between the hege-
32
monic designs of France and Austria, the Republic was forced to adopt
its policy of «l’osservanza della più impuntabile Neutralità armata» .
33
Tentori was realistic about the state of Venice’s military power in the
eighteenth century:

A dir il vero, lo stato delle Truppe non corrispondeva nè a’ suoi bisogni, nè
alla sua potenza: ma poteva essere sul momento considerabilmente accre-
sciuto con le truppe leggere Schiavoni, ed Albanesi, [...] che la vicinanza col
Turco, e le continue passate guerre avevano molto agguerrite […]: Uomini ec-
cellenti, e de’ bravi Soldati 34 .

The Republic could additionally mobilise 30,000 militiamen. In
other words, it should have been able to «sostenere colle proprie forze
la Neutralità armata, da cui dipendeva la di lei conservazione». Mean-
while, Venice’s navy numbered 50 ships, with the Arsenale easily able
to augment this force. Nor did the Republic want fiscal resources: in
an average year it generated nine million ducats of revenue . In Ten-
35
tori’s view, the huge sums extracted by Bonaparte further demon-
strated that the Venetians possessed the fiscal wherewithal to have
sustained much greater resistance. After 1718, Venice’s «debolezza in

30 Ibidem, vol. I, p. 9.
31 C. Tentori, Saggio sulla storia civile cit., vol. II, 1785, p. 128 and 143.
32 C. Tentori, Raccolta cronologico-ragionata cit., vol. I, p. 3.
33 Ibidem, p. 10.
34 Ibidem, p. 12.
35 Ibidem, p. 13-14.

Mediterranea – ricerche storiche – Anno XIX – Dicembre 2022
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)