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558 David Laven

the violations of neutrality «ne put la déterminer à sortir de la neutral-
ité qu’elle avoit adopté» .
60

The Républiques italiennes did not address the French aggression
that brought Venetian independence to an end in 1797, but Sis-
mondi’s abridged History of the Italian Republics of 1832 did deal with
the episode . His account of the final years of Venetian independence
61
treats the latter with complete hostility, immeasurably nastier than
anything written by Daru, the supposed apologist for Napoleon. In a
piece of brilliant rhetoric, quite unsupported by evidence, Sismondi’s
summary of the Venice’s political system replicated the most carica-
tured criticisms of the Serenissima:

The families from among whom alone was selected the Council of Ten made
every other tremble and obey. They regarded the state as a prey to be divided
among themselves. Justice was venal; the finances dilapidated; the fortifica-
tions falling into ruin; the effective forces of the army did not amount to one
half of what appeared on the roll; every thing was to the Venetian noble an
object of embezzlement and robbery. The oppression of the distant provinces
was so great, that the eastern Christian subjects of the republic regretted the
dominion of the Ottomans 62 .

Sismondi dismissed the Venetian decision not to get involved in the
wars of succession as based merely on ‘timidity’, and then denigrated
the policy of neutrality: other powers, he argued, no longer respected
the Venetian state and its territory in consequence was «always open
to every belligerent power […] often the theatre of the most obstinate
warfare». He followed these observations with an even more damning
attack on the nature of Venetian government and economy, which
bears no semblance to the circumstances described by eighteenth-
century commentators:

Her debt […] was always increasing; her manufactures always in decay;
her territory was infested with robbers [...] A suspicious and cruel government,
which maintained itself only by the vigilance of spies, which had promoted
immorality to enervate the people, which made the most profound secrecy its
only safeguard, – which did not tolerate even a question on public affairs, –

60 Ibidem, pp. 340-41.
61 J.C.L.S. de Sismondi, Histoire de la renaissance de la liberté en Italie, de ses
progrès, de sa décadence et de sa chute, Treuttel et Würtz, Strasbourg & London, 1832;
J.C.L.S. de Sismondi, A history of the Italian republics, being a view of the origin, progress
and fall of Italian freedom in one volume, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green,
London, 1832.
62 J.C.L.S. de Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics cit., p. 359.

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