THE BRAVI OF VENICE
Fascination of Venice’s Criminal Administration—Lords of
the Night—Secret Detectives—Degeneration of Republic—Hired
Ruffians—Their Murderous Activities—An Escapade of Pesaro, Paragon
of Bravi—Gambara, Last of the Despots—Open War Against Law and
Order—Final Pardon.
Of all subjects connected with old Venice, in the popular mind, that of
her criminal administration is one of the most fascinating by reason of
the endless traditions of mystery and terror with which it is fraught,
and, of all historical executives, the Venetian “Signori di Notte”—the
Lords of the Night—appeal the most irresistibly to the normal curiosity
inherent in most people.
The very notion of the nocturnal jurisdiction implied by the title of
that famous Board carries with it a suggestion of secrecy and of an
unseen process of justice more or less summary, but invariably sharp
and decisive. The members composing the Board were frequently of noble
birth, and their official position was not unlike that of the Triumvirs
of ancient Rome. Their functions, at the time when the Board first came
into being, in the Twelfth Century, were those of police-chiefs and
commissioners of sewers. They were responsible thus for keeping watch
over the streets by night, and for seeing to the repairing of bridges
and highways. In this manner they soon came to acquire an expert
knowledge of those parts of the city that needed watching, either on
account of the questionable condition of their buildings or else by
reason of their being the favourite haunts of the criminal part of the
population.
Under them, less in the character of ordinary police than of a secret
detective force, were the “sbirri,” over whom they assumed special
control after the unhappy affair of the conspiracy of the Marquis of
Bedmar, the Spanish Ambassador, in 1618, when he plotted the overthrow
of the Republic; a design frustrated only on the very eve of its
accomplishment. The method employed by the “sbirro” in arresting his
man was to throw his cloak over the victim’s head and to lead him, thus
muffled and blindfolded, to prison. Occasionally, also, the “sbirro”
was the owner of a sponging-house, to which he would conduct his
prisoner and there detain him until certain demands were satisfied—much
as happened to Captain Rawdon Crawley in “Vanity Fair.” It was in this
manner—by muffling with a cloak—that the unfortunate Cavaliere Antonio
Foscarini was arrested in 1622, on a charge of conspiring against
Venice with the Spanish representatives at the Villa Dolo, the house
of Lady Arundel and Surrey, where, together with her husband, she
was living for the benefit of their children’s education. The charge
was a false one, but Foscarini was strangled for it and his body
was afterwards hung up between the Red Columns in the Piazza of St.
Mark—the usual place of executions—for the public to gaze upon.
But the chief quarry of the “sbirro” was that most romantic of figures,
the “bravo”! The “bravi,” originally merely the retainers of noble
houses, became, with the increasing degeneracy of the Republic in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries, more and more mere murderers and
ruffians, who plied their trade quite frankly for hire. The system
ordinarily in favour among such members of Venetian society as had
a grudge against any one of their neighbours was to send out for a
“bravo”—they were always to be found at certain places and hours—and
to bargain with him for a price that depended upon the extent of the
hurt to be inflicted. I have seen one of the daggers used by such
professional “bravi” and very curious they were, being crucifixes, of
which the upper part of the cross and the transverse formed the hilt
and quillons of a murderous-looking knife, its long double-edged blade
having three lines engraved across it. The purpose of these lines
was to mark the exact depth of the wound, whether slight, or severe,
or mortal; if it were only desired that the lowest of the lines—that
nearest the point—should be the depth of the stab, then the price
was a small one; if the second line, then a larger sum of money would
be necessary; and for the third, the uppermost line, a proportionate
amount was demanded.
The alliance of the “bravi” with the upper class of Venice was from the
first a natural one; for the common people has never any need of the
services of hired men to settle its quarrels for pay. As a result of
the wars of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries there had sprung up
a large class of impoverished or ruined adventurers, who were willing
to lend their services to any cause, public or private, for hire; some
such, it is said, were generally to be found in the number of the
patricians privileged to sit on the benches of the Great Council as
the supreme national body was called. By degrees these impoverished
patricians, who were designated under the name of “Barnabotti,” drew to
themselves the lawless element of the population and yoked it, through
custom and mutual necessities, to their service, until the thing came
to such a point that no wealthy or noble family of Venice but counted
its dozen or its score of such retainers, thus establishing a return to
the feudal principle of a State—or, rather, States innumerable—within
the State; each of which was a law unto itself. The only modern
institution comparable to the “Bravi” is that of the so-called “gunmen”
of New York, with their system of hire and their deadly feuds between
gang and gang. For the records of the “bravi” show many such public
floutings of law in Venice. In the year 1539 a certain individual,
who would certainly seem to have been attached in some way to the
establishment of the French Ambassador, having committed some crime or
other, was chased by the “sbirri” to the French Embassy in the Calle
San Moisé, where he found refuge from his pursuers, all Embassies being
removed by international usage beyond the sphere of police activities.
The situation, then, was an extremely sensitive one; so much so,
indeed, that it was thought advisable by the “Capo della Sbiraglia,”
or chief of police, to send for an Advocate of the Commune, one Zorzi,
that he might request the delivery of the criminal with all possible
courtesy. Zorzi, on reaching the Embassy, met three of the members of
its staff in the courtyard, and begged that they would make known his
coming to the Ambassador. Instead of complying, however, they only ran
back into the house, shouting to those within to make ready to bar the
way; and Zorzi, on following them with some of the “sbirri,” found the
staircase held against his further advance by a crowd of ruffians,
while others were beginning to hurl down furniture and household
utensils out of the windows on to the heads of the “sbirri” below. So
that the prudent Advocate withdrew with his police and reported the
matter to the Council of Ten, which promptly sent a force of soldiers
to the Embassy to seize the original criminal, who had taken refuge
there and, with him, all the other resisters of Messer Zorzi and the
police. The Council had acted thus in spite of its all but certainty
that the King of France would declare war on Venice for her violation
of his Embassy; but, to its relief, no notice was taken of their
action. It was quite certain, though, that the French Ambassador was
in the habit of employing “bravi” about his person; and his colleague
of Spain appears to have been guilty of the same delinquency. In
1556 Edward Courtenay, Lord Devon, died at Padua, of low fever,
as was supposed, but in reality he was murdered by a “bravo” of
Dalmatia, Marco Risano, in the pay of Ruy Gomez, the Spanish Minister.
Courtenay’s papers were placed for safekeeping in the hands of the
Paduan authorities until the pleasure of Queen Mary should be known
concerning them. The Council of Ten, however, was enabled to obtain a
knowledge of their contents by means of its officer, the “Podestà” of
Padua; and certain documents which proved that Courtenay had been an
agent and spy of France were found among the papers and purloined by
the Council.
A typical “bravo” of a certain kind was a hardened blackguard of noble
family called Leonardo Pesaro. He is said to have combined in his
own person all the vices of the age in which he lived, the end of the
Sixteenth Century and the beginning of the Seventeenth. Again and again
this scoundrel was arrested and expelled from Venetian territory as
an undesirable citizen; and, as often, he would return either to the
capital or to one of the provincial cities, Padua or Vicenza or Verona.
At last, though, in 1601, Pesaro crowned all his other achievements by
one of the most shameless outrages ever perpetrated upon the laws of
any country.
The way of it was this: On the last day of February of that year,
Pesaro, happening to pass beneath the window of a woman called Lucrezia
Baglioni, who was leading a bad life under the protection of a nobleman
named Paoli Lioni, called out some indecent jest to her and asked her
to repeat it from him to Lioni. That same evening Pesaro returned to
Lucrezia Baglioni’s house, where she was giving a banquet to a newly
wedded pair, Lioni being of the company as a matter of course. It
seems that Pesaro must have seen them both together at the window, for
he repeated his jest of the afternoon loud enough to be overheard by
Lioni, to whom, I fancy, he was unknown.
“What are you saying there, fool?” asked Lioni, with a pleasant
condescension, smiling down at him from the iron balcony.
“What I please,” Pesaro retorted, “and if any one wishes to cross
swords with me, I am at his service!”
From this it seems evident that Pesaro was in the pay of some enemy to
Lioni and that he had thus sought an occasion of affronting him, and
so of drawing him into a duel; which motive of Pesaro’s is confirmed
beyond all doubt by what happened next.
On hearing this challenge, Lioni mildly withdrew from the balcony into
the room, drawing Lucrezia with him, unwilling to expose her or his
own dignity to the insolence of the unknown roysterer in the street:
whereupon, Pesaro, seeing himself baulked of his prey, went off to his
lodgings, put on his breastplate, mask, and morion, and then collecting
a few of his fellow-bravi went with them to find Camillo Trevisano, who
was his partner and the junior member of their firm of “bravi.” Having
found Camillo, he clapped him on the shoulder, saying, “Come! there is
a job waiting for us!”
And Camillo, nothing loath, put on his own armour and his mask and went
with Pesaro to the house where Paoli Lioni and Lucrezia Baglioni, all
unsuspecting of what was on its way to them, were feasting and making
merry with their friends. The “bravi,” on reaching the house, had
no difficulty in effecting an entrance, and, rushing up the stairs,
burst into the chamber where Lioni and Lucrezia were seated at table
with their guests. There followed a prolonged scuffle, in which Lioni
was slain and Lucrezia received a murderous beating from the small
shields carried by some of the bravi—from the effects of which she
was eventually so fortunate as to recover—whilst others fell upon the
assembled company, wounding several members of it, and extinguishing
all the lights save one, a torch held in one hand of the bridegroom the
while he defended his wife from her assailants with a chair.
This was the last of Messer Pesaro’s exploits, however, for the
“sbirri” were sent out to take him; and, although he contrived to
slip through their fingers, yet a decree of banishment was issued
against him, together with Camillo Trevisano and another of their gang,
Gabriele Morosini, and a price was set upon their heads. After which we
hear no more of him.
Mr. Hazlitt tells us[28] how the Sieur de la Haye, in writing of the
Venetian aristocracy in the year 1670, mentions that, “whether they
were in their coaches or on horseback, they were accompanied by a
rabble of Hectors they call Bravi, many times only in ostentation, but
too often for a worse end.”
In the greater number of crimes perpetrated by the “bravi” of the city
of Venice itself during the worst period, that of the Seventeenth
Century, they appear to have done less with sword and pistol than
with the arquebus and the stiletto; the employment of the latter is
comprehensible enough on grounds of stealth and convenience, that of
the arquebus I find less easy to understand, for it was an exceedingly
clumsy weapon and possessed, as were all firearms of those days, of a
tremendous “kick.” The only reason imaginable for its use is that it
had the advantage of killing at a longer and, consequently, a safer
distance for the murderer than a pistol, which could only be counted
upon at a very short range.
It was not, however, until the comparatively recent epoch of the last
half of the Eighteenth Century that the “bravo” as an institution
acquired his widest celebrity by the commission of what were
practically acts of open warfare against the then moribund Republic of
Venice. These acts were committed under the leadership of a man the
like of whom Italy had not known since the days of the Despots, one
Count Alamanno Gambara, a native of the parts about Brescia.
Gambara may well and reasonably be called the Last of the Despots, for
he was assuredly the last private person to terrorise a large district
of Upper Italy, with both comparative impunity and a certain measure
of hereditary authority. As one of Thackeray’s characters says of Lord
Mohun in “Esmond,” he could handle a foil—and a bloody one, too—before
ever he learned to use a razor. At an age when most boys are in the
Fourth Form of an English public school, Gambara was the terror of the
countryside in which his paternal castle of Pralboino was situated; so
that, when he was only about fifteen years old, the Venetian Government
found itself compelled to place him under restraint, his father being
dead and his mother unable to control him. Finally, he was confined as
a prisoner, first in Verona and then in the fortress of Palma, from
the latter of which he escaped; for a while he wandered about the
country, pursued by the police, who were unable to lay hands on him,
until at last he decided to surrender himself to the authorities, of
his own accord, which he did, and was exiled to Zara, the Governor of
Dalmatia being requested by the Venetian Government to treat him with
all possible consideration and to provide him with good company for the
benefit of his moral welfare!
Gambara, however, was soon allowed to return to his estates, and once
there lost no time in gathering about him a bodyguard of “bravi,” with
whose assistance he soon signalised himself in various encounters with
the representatives of law and order in the province. Having engaged
upon a kind of warfare with the Customs officials at Calvisano—a
village near Porella, some distance south and east from Brescia—a
detachment of Gambara’s bandits raided the Custom-house there and
killed one of them, beating the others and all but murdering their
captain as well. On being summoned to appear before the Council of Ten
at Venice, to render an account for his misdeeds, Gambara retorted by
fortifying his two castles and adding to his little army of “bravi,”
thus openly setting the law at defiance. And now a reign of terror was
inaugurated by him and by his henchman, Carlo Molinari, the head of his
band of assassins.
This period of Gambara’s career terminated with a peculiarly atrocious
episode. His protection having been sought by a smuggler, Gambara took
the man in as an additional member of his band. Shortly afterwards,
a party of police happening to enter his territory in search of the
smuggler, Gambara invited them to pass the night with him as his
guests. This invitation they foolishly accepted, and the next day their
dead bodies, hidden under a covering of green boughs, were brought into
Brescia in a cart, which was left opposite the house of the Venetian
Podestà or Governor of the city.
The result of this diabolical exploit was that Gambara was forced to
seek refuge in flight—what other consequences he could have expected
one cannot imagine—and he retreated into the neighbouring Duchy of
Parma. Before long, though, he petitioned the Venetian Government to
pardon him, which it was weak enough to do, and so he returned to his
estates, where he continued to live—spending a good part of his time in
Venice itself—much as he had done before. I do not know when he died,
but I fancy he must have attained to a ripe old age, dying somewhere
about the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. One can only hope that
the grace of a final repentance may have been granted to him!