lation was indeed more than
complete; the Venetians not only gave in but grovelled. The words "Pax
tibi, Marce, Evangelista meus" on the lion's book on S. Mark facade were
changed to "Rights of Man and of Citizenship," and Napoleon was thanked
in a profuse epistle for providing Venice with glorious liberty. Various
riots of course accompanied this renunciation of centuries of noble
tradition, and under the Tree of Liberty in the Piazza the Ducal
insignia and the Libro d'Oro were burned. The tricolour flew from the
three flagstaffs, and the two columns in the Piazzetta were covered with
inscriptions praising the French. This was in May, 1797.

So much for Venice under Manin, Lodovico. The way is now paved for
Manin, Daniele, who was no relation, but a poor Jewish boy to whom a
Manin had stood as godfather. Daniele was born in 1804. In 1805 the
Peace of Pressburg was signed, and Venice, which had passed to Austria
in 1798, was taken from Austria and united to Napoleon's Italian
kingdom, with Eugene Beauharnais, the Emperor's brother-in-law, as ruler
under the title Prince of Venice. In 1807 Napoleon visited the city and
at once decreed a number of improvements on his own practical sensible
lines. He laid out the Giardini Pubblici; he examined the ports and
improved them; he revised the laws. But not even Napoleon could be
everywhere at once or succeed in everything, and in 1813 Austria took
advantage of his other troubles to try and recapture the Queen of the
Adriatic by force, and when the general Napoleonic collapse came the
restitution was formally made, Venice and Lombardy becoming again
Austrian and the brother of Francis I their ruler.

All went fairly quietly in Venice until 1847, when, shortly after the
fall of the Orleans dynasty in France, Daniele Manin, now an eloquent
and burningly patriotic lawyer, dared to petition the Austrian Emperor
for justice to the nation whom he had conquered, and as a reply was
imprisoned for high treason, together with Niccolo Tommaseo. In 1848, on
March 17, the city rose in revolt, the prison was forced, and Manin not
only was released but proclaimed President of the Venetian Republic. He
was now forty-four, and in the year of struggle that followed proved
himself both a great administrator and a great soldier.

He did all that was humanly possible against the Austrians, but events
were too much for him; bigger battalions, combined with famine and
cholera, broke the Venetian defe