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554 David Laven

Tanto pusillanime indolenza, ed inerzia andò sempre più diminuendo il
credito dei Veneziani preso le straniere Potenze. Fe raffreddare il genio nei
Nobili, e nei più distinti Cittadini. Si volle per tale condotta, che la Nazione
tutta avesse a scancellare dalla sua mente il nome di guerra, e che i sudditi
fossero resi affatto imbelli, ed incapaci di difendere al caso animosamente lo
Stato 45 .

The one exception to Marin’s tale of woe was Angelo Emo. Yet Marin
could not resist emphasising Emo’s hernia and hæmorrrhoids ,
46
alongside offering qualified praise for actions against the Barbary pi-
rates and «per aver disciplinato la marina». Marin also criticised the
expense of Emo’s ventures, and his failure to secure any place of stra-
tegic significance within the Mediterranean and or to destroy the de-
fences of La Goletta, which would have hit the trade of Tunis . Like
47
the oriundo Tentori, the proud Venetian patrician saw his own class
as cowardly, bored with politics, venal, and seeking «soltanto il diver-
timento, il piacere» .
48

I shall turn to one further ‘Venetian’ account by Vittorio Barzoni
(1767-1843). Barzoni, the Brescian born author of the Tributo di un
solitario alle ceneri di Angelo Emo , was profoundly anti-French. His I
49
romani nella Grecia, in which the Greeks are the Italians and the Ro-
mans the brutal, raping, thieving French, has similarities with Kleist’s
Hermannsschlacht . Barzoni, an early advocate of a united Italian Re-
50
public, worked with the British authorities in Malta to publish two
anti-Napoleonic newspapers, L’Argo and Il Cartaginese. That his
Rivoluzioni della Repubblica veneta was translated into English dur-
51
ing his Maltese residence reflects British efforts to use him as part of
their propaganda war . Swift to lambast French want of scruple and
52
love of rapine, Barzoni nonetheless identified the causes of Venice’s
collapse in its neutrality and failure to prepare militarily:

45 C.A. Marin, Storia civile e politica del commercio de’ Veneziani cit., vol. VIII, p. 319.
46 Ibidem, p. 378.
47 Ibidem, p. 378-9.
48 Ibidem, p. 24.
49 V. Barzoni, Tributo di un solitario alle ceneri di Angelo Emo, Francesco Andreola, Venice,
1792.
50 V. Barzoni, I romani nella Grecia, Rivington, London (actually Francesco Andreola,
Venice), 1797, p. 33-5.
51 V. Barzoni, Rivoluzioni della Repubblica veneta, Francesco Andreola, Venice, 1799.
52 V. Barzoni, An accurate account of the fall of the Republic of Venice (trans. J. Hinc-
kley), J. Hatchard, London, 1804.

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