DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55699#0035
VENICE.
17
But is not Doria’s menace come to pass?
Are they not bridled?—Venice, lost and won,
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose !
Better be whelm’d beneath the waves, and shun,
Even in destruction’s depth, her foreign foes,
From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.
But Venice was not yet reduced to its lowest stage of
degradation. It had fallen beneath a conqueror, but it
had never yet been made an object of barter between
one master and another. To this, however, it was now
reduced. By the treaty of Campo Formio, Venice was
ceded to Austria, whose forces entered the city on
January 18, 1798. The state inquisition was re-esta-
blished, and Pesaro, who had made such a display of his
patriotism in the scenes which preceded the final humi-
liation of his country, actually reappeared in the cha-
racter of an Austrian commissary. It was before him
that the humbled patricians had to take the oaths of
allegiance to their new master ■, and the ex-doge, who,
though too weak and undecided for the situation he held,
had the love of his country deep at heart, fell, as he
pronounced the words of the oath, senseless on the
ground. Thus sunk the free and queenly Venice, and
true in every line are these words of her epitaph :
The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord,
And, annual marriage now no more renew’d,
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored-
Neglected garment of her widowhood!
St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood
Stand, but in mockery of his wither’d power,
Over the proud Place where an emperor sued,
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour
When Venice was a queen with an unequall’d dower
c
17
But is not Doria’s menace come to pass?
Are they not bridled?—Venice, lost and won,
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose !
Better be whelm’d beneath the waves, and shun,
Even in destruction’s depth, her foreign foes,
From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.
But Venice was not yet reduced to its lowest stage of
degradation. It had fallen beneath a conqueror, but it
had never yet been made an object of barter between
one master and another. To this, however, it was now
reduced. By the treaty of Campo Formio, Venice was
ceded to Austria, whose forces entered the city on
January 18, 1798. The state inquisition was re-esta-
blished, and Pesaro, who had made such a display of his
patriotism in the scenes which preceded the final humi-
liation of his country, actually reappeared in the cha-
racter of an Austrian commissary. It was before him
that the humbled patricians had to take the oaths of
allegiance to their new master ■, and the ex-doge, who,
though too weak and undecided for the situation he held,
had the love of his country deep at heart, fell, as he
pronounced the words of the oath, senseless on the
ground. Thus sunk the free and queenly Venice, and
true in every line are these words of her epitaph :
The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord,
And, annual marriage now no more renew’d,
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored-
Neglected garment of her widowhood!
St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood
Stand, but in mockery of his wither’d power,
Over the proud Place where an emperor sued,
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour
When Venice was a queen with an unequall’d dower
c