DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55699#0029
VENICE.
11
At the period when the state was engaged in a war
with the Archduke Ferdinand., and regarded with a most
jealous eye the inclination which Spain had manifested
to assist the prince in his operations, a singular scene
occurred at Venice, for which neither contemporary nor
subsecpient writers were able to account. One day,
about the middle of the month of May, in the year 1618,
a great number of persons, totally unknown in the city,
were publicly executed in the Place of St. Mark 5 num-
bers more were brought to the scaffold the day after,
and no one was able to say either whence they came, or
for what crime they were punished. At length rumours
were afloat that a frightful conspiracy had been formed,
in which measures w’ere taken for exterminating the no-
bility, burning Venice to the ground, and overthrowing
the republic. Hundreds of the traitors, it was said, were
confined in the dungeons of the Council of Ten. Be-
sides those who had suffered in the Place of Saint Mark,
several were supposed to have been executed during the
night, while bodies seen floating about on the canals and
near the shores rendered it certain that numbers had
been drowned, or otherwise put to death and cast into
the water. All Venice was filled with terror at the idea
of the perils which had been so narrowly escaped and
citizens of every rank were occupied with investigating
- the circumstances which might lead to the discovery of
the truth: but the Council of Ten preserved a mysterious
silence. It resisted every inquiry which the painful
curiosity of the public prompted, and the people were
suffered to decide as they might on the real origin of this
strange affair.
11
At the period when the state was engaged in a war
with the Archduke Ferdinand., and regarded with a most
jealous eye the inclination which Spain had manifested
to assist the prince in his operations, a singular scene
occurred at Venice, for which neither contemporary nor
subsecpient writers were able to account. One day,
about the middle of the month of May, in the year 1618,
a great number of persons, totally unknown in the city,
were publicly executed in the Place of St. Mark 5 num-
bers more were brought to the scaffold the day after,
and no one was able to say either whence they came, or
for what crime they were punished. At length rumours
were afloat that a frightful conspiracy had been formed,
in which measures w’ere taken for exterminating the no-
bility, burning Venice to the ground, and overthrowing
the republic. Hundreds of the traitors, it was said, were
confined in the dungeons of the Council of Ten. Be-
sides those who had suffered in the Place of Saint Mark,
several were supposed to have been executed during the
night, while bodies seen floating about on the canals and
near the shores rendered it certain that numbers had
been drowned, or otherwise put to death and cast into
the water. All Venice was filled with terror at the idea
of the perils which had been so narrowly escaped and
citizens of every rank were occupied with investigating
- the circumstances which might lead to the discovery of
the truth: but the Council of Ten preserved a mysterious
silence. It resisted every inquiry which the painful
curiosity of the public prompted, and the people were
suffered to decide as they might on the real origin of this
strange affair.