may not be aware of the precise historical connexion of the incidents of
Otway's play with the events of history. They are taken, in the main,
from an atrocious conspiracy formed at Venice in 1618. Sir Henry Wotton,
then English ambassador at Venice, writes as follows on the 25th of May,
in the above year:--"The whole town is here at present in horror and
confusion upon the discovering of a foul and fearful conspiracy of the
French against this state; whereof no less than thirty have already
suffered very condign punishment, between men strangled in prison,
drowned in the silence of the night, and hanged in public view; and yet
the bottom is invisible." Beyond this quaint, meagre, chronological
notice, little is actually established of the details, although the
event is perhaps as familiarly known by name to English readers as any
other in the History of Venice. We are, therefore, happy to see the
affair treated with minute consideration in the second volume of
"Sketches from Venetian History," in the _Family Library_; and so
interesting is the narrative, or rather the facts and conjectures, to
the lover of history, as well as to the unstudious playgoer, that we are
induced to quote nearly every line of the passage. The editor
observes:--)
Muratori indeed has scarcely exaggerated the obscurity in which this
incident is enveloped when he affirms that only one fact illuminates its
darkness; namely that several hundred French and Spaniards engaged in
the service of the Republic were arrested and put to death. The
researches of Comte Daru have brought to light some hitherto unknown
contemporary documents; but even the inexhaustible diligence of that
most laborious, accurate, and valuable writer has been baffled in the
hope of obtaining certainty as its reward; and he has been compelled to
content himself with the addition of one hypothesis more to those
already proposed in explanation of this mystery.
All that can be positively affirmed is that during the summer of 1617,
Jacques Pierre, a Norman by birth, whose youth had been spent in
piratical enterprises in the Levantine seas, from which he had acquired
no inconsiderable celebrity, fled from the service of the Spanish Duke
d'Ossuna, Viceroy of Naples; and, having offered himself at the Arsenal
of Venice, was engaged there in a subordinate office. Not many days
after his arrival in the _Lagune_, Pierre denounced to the Inquisitors
of State a conspiracy projected, as he said, by the Duke d'Ossuna, and
favoured by Don Alfonso della Cueva, Marquis de Bedemar, at that time
resident ambassador from Spain. The original minutes of Pierre's
disclosures, written in French, still exist among the correspondence of
M. Leon Bruslart, the contemporary ambassador from the court of France
to the Republic; and they were translated into Italian, with which
language Pierre was but imperfectly acquainted, by his friend Renault,
in order that they might be presented to the Inquisitors. In this plot,
Pierre avowed himself to be chief agent; his pretended abandonment of
the Duke d'Ossuna forming one part of the stratagem: and he added that
his commission enjoined him to seduce the Dutch troops employed in the
late war, who still remained in Venice and its neighbourhood; to fire
the city; to seize and massacre the nobles; to overthrow the existing
government; and ultimately to transfer the state to the Spanish crown.
The sole immediate step taken by the Inquisitors in consequence of these
revelations was the secret execution of Spinosa, a Neapolitan, whom
Pierre described as an emissary of the Duke d'Ossuna; and whom he
appears to have regarded with jealousy as a spy upon his own conduct.
For the rest, the magistrates contented themselves, as it, seems, by
awaiting the maturity of the plot with silent vigilance. Ten months
elapsed during which Pierre communicated on the one hand with the Duke
d'Ossuna, unsuspicious of his treachery, and on the other with the
Inquisitors; till at the expiration of that term he was seized by an
order of the X, while employed on his duties with the Fleet, and drowned
without the grant of sufficient delay even for previous religious
confession. More, perhaps many more, than three hundred French and
Spaniards engaged in various naval and military capacities were at the
same time delivered to the executioner; and Renault, after undergoing
numerous interrogatories, and being placed seven times on the cord, was
hanged by one foot on a gibbet on the _Piazzetta_, which day after day
presented similar exhibitions of horror.
This evidence of Pierre remained at the time concealed in the bosoms of
the Inquisitors to whom it had been delivered; and no official
declarations satisfied public curiosity as to the cause of the
sanguinary executions which deformed the Capital. A rumour indeed spread
itself abroad, and, although not traced to any certain authority, was
universally credited, that a great peril had been escaped; that Venice
had trembled on the very brink of destruction; and that the Spaniards
had meditated her ruin. Popular fury was accordingly directed against
the Marquis de Bedemar; and so fierce were the menaces of summary
vengeance that the ambassador was forced to protest his innocence before
the _Collegio_, more in the spirit of one deprecating punishment than
defying accusation. He then earnestly solicited protection against the
rabble surrounding his palace; for "God knows," affirmed his pale and
affrighted secretary more than once, "the danger of our residence is
great!" The Vice-doge, who during the interregnum between the death of
one chief magistrate and the election of another presided over the
_Collegio_, replied vaguely, coldly, and formally; and, the application
having been renewed without any more favourable result, Bedemar, justly
apprehensive for his safety, seized a pretext for withdrawing, till a
successor to his embassy was appointed. Meantime, considerable doubts
were entertained, not only by the resident foreign ministers,--
especially by that of France, better informed than his brethren through
the possession of Pierre's minutes,--but by the Venetian senators
themselves, also, whether any conspiracy whatever had really existed.
Nevertheless, in spite of these misgivings not obscurely expressed, it
was not till the expiration of five months that the X presented a report
to the Senate, detailing the information which they had received and the
views upon which they had acted. That report however is so manifestly
contradicted in many very important instances by Pierre's depositions,
that it must be considered as drawn up and garbled solely with the
intention of _making a case_; and therefore as revealing only so much
truth dashed and brewed with a huge proportion of falsehood, as it
suited the interests of the magistrates to exhibit to public view. All
mention of the denouncements of Pierre during the long period of ten
months is carefully suppressed, and yet no fact in history is more
distinctly proved than that he did so communicate. The first intimation
of the plot is there said to have been given but a few days before it
was to have been executed, by two Frenchmen, Montcassin and Balthazar
Juven, whom Pierre had endeavoured to seduce. "Look at these Venetians,"
said the daring conspirator one day to his apparent proselytes, "they
affect to chain the lion; but the lion sometimes devours his master,
especially when that master uses him ill." According to their further
evidence, some troops despatched by the Duke d'Ossuna were to land by
night on the _Piazzetta_ and to occupy all the strong holds of the city;
numerous treasonable agents already within the walls were to master the
depots of arms; and fire, rapine, and massacre were to bring the
enterprise to consummation.
The papers abovementioned, together with a few letters from the Doge to
the Venetian ambassador at Milan, and one or two other not very
important documents contained in the archives of Venice, all printed by
Comte Dam, are the sole authentic vouchers for this conspiracy now known
to exist; and it must be confessed that they are insufficient for its
elucidation. The Abbe St. Real, who for a long time was esteemed the
chief historian of this dark transaction, is an agreeable and attractive
writer; but--since he was unacquainted with the report of the X; since
he does not cite the correspondence of the French ambassador containing
Pierre's depositions; and since he frequently varies from a MS which he
does cite, _The Interrogatories of the Accused_,[12] a MS indeed, which,
even when quoted faithfully, is often contradicted by the few
established facts, and by numerous well-known usages of the Venetian
government,--little faith can be attached to his narrative. It was his
opinion, and it has been that which has most generally prevailed, that
the Duke d'Ossuna, the Marquis de Bedemar, and Don Pedro di Toledo,
governor of Milan, mutually concerted a plan for the destruction of
Venice; the chief execution of which was entrusted to Pierre and
Renault: and that, on the very eve of its explosion, Jaffier, one of
their band, touched by the magnificence of the Espousals of the Adriatic
which he had just witnessed, was shaken from his stern purpose, and
revealed the conspiracy. In order to overthrow the latter part of this
hypothesis, it may be sufficient to state that the first executions took
place on the 14th of May, 1618, and that it was not till the 24th of
that month that the Feast of Ascension, and its gorgeous ceremonies,
occurred in the same year.
[12] A translation of this document is given by Daru: the
original Italian may be found in the _Memorie recondite_ of
Vittorio Siri, i. 407.
Comte Daru, on the other hand, first explains a design which it is
notorious was entertained by the Duke d'Ossuna to convert his
viceroyalty of Naples into a kingdom, the crown of which, wrested from
Spain, should be placed on his own head. And hence he establishes the
impossibility that d'Ossuna should at the same moment be plotting the
overthrow of Venice; that power whose assistance, or at least whose
connivance was one of the weapons most necessary for his success. On
these grounds, Comte Daru contends that the Duke maintained a secret
understanding both with the Signory and the court of France; that,
refining on political duplicity, he deceived Pierre by really
instructing him to gain over the Dutch troops quartered in the _Lagune_;
not, however, as his emissary supposed, to be employed ultimately for
the seizure of Venice, but in truth for that of Naples; that Pierre's
courage was not proof against the dangers with which his apparently most
hazardous commission beset him; and that accordingly he betrayed his
employer, and revealed to the Inquisitors a plot which _they_ well knew
to be feigned: and, lastly, that when the ambitious plans of d'Ossuna,
partially discovered before their time by the Spanish government, might
have compromised Venice also if they had been fully elucidated; in order
to blot out each syllable of evidence which could bear, even indirectly,
upon the transaction, so far as she was concerned, it was thought
expedient to remove every individual who had been even unwittingly
connected with it. So fully was this abominable wickedness perpetrated,
that both the accused and the accusers, the deceivers and the deceived,
those either faithless or faithful to their treason, the tools who
either adhered to or who betrayed d'Ossuna, who sought to destroy or to
preserve Venice, were alike enveloped in one common fate, and silenced
in the same sure keeping of the grave. Some few, respecting whose degree
of participation a slight doubt arose, were strangled on the avowed
principle that _all_ must be put to death who were in any way
implicated; others were drowned by night, in order that their execution
might _make no noise_.[13] Moncassin, one of the avowed informers, was
pensioned, spirited away to Cyprus, and there despatched in a drunken
quarrel; and if it be asserted that his companion Balthazar Juven was
permitted to survive, it is because he is the only individual concerning
whose final destiny we cannot pronounce with certainty.[14]
[13] Laurent Brulard, concerning whose fate much discussion
arose, was strangled _par beaucoup de considerations et par une
suite du parti qu'on avrait pris de mettre a mort tons ceux qui
etaient impliques dans cette affaire_. The brothers Desbouleaux
were drowned by night in the _Canale Orfano, pour ne point
ebruiter l'affaire_; and the instructions sent to the Admiral
who was to drown Pierre were to fulfil his commission _avec le
moins de bruit possible_. Accordingly that ruffian, and
forty-five of his accomplices, were drowned at once _sans
bruit_. _Interrogatoire des Accuses_, translated by Daru, vol.
viii. § x.
[14] It is believed that Balthazar Juven, and a relation of the
Marechale de Lesdiguieres, who is stated to have escaped
punishment, are one and the same person.
Of one personage who holds an important station in St. Real's romance,
and yet more so in Otway's coarse and boisterous tragedy, which, by dint
of some powerful _coups de theatre_, still maintains possession of the
English stage, we have hitherto mentioned but the name; and, in fact,
even for that name we are indebted only to the more than suspected
summary of the _Interrogatories of the Accused_.
Antoine Jaffier, a French captain, is there made chief evidence against
Pierre and Renault, who are employed by d'Ossuna, as he vaguely states,
to surprise _some_ maritime place belonging to the republic. This
informer was rewarded with four thousand sequins, and instructed
forthwith to quit the Venetian territories; but having, while at
Brescia, renewed communications with suspected persons, he was brought
back to the _Lagune_ and drowned. The minute particularities of
Jaffier's depositions, and the motive which prompted him to offer them,
(the latter, as we have already shown, resting on a gross anachronism,)
are, we believe pure inventions by St. Real; and Otway has used a poet's
license to palliate still farther deviations from authentic history.
Under his hands, Pierre,--whom all accounts conspire in representing to
us as a foreign, vulgar and mercenary bravo, equally false to every
party, and frightened into confession,--is transformed into a Venetian
patriot, the proud champion of his country's liberty; who declaims in
good, set, round, customary terms against slavery and oppression; and
who, in the end, escapes a mode of execution unknown to Venice, by
persuading the friend who has betrayed him, and whom he has consequently
renounced, to stab him to the heart, in order "to preserve his memory."
The weak, whining, vacillating, uxorious Jaffier, by turns a cut-throat
and a King's evidence; now pawning, now fondling, and now menacing with
his dagger an imaginary wife; first placing his comrade's life in
jeopardy, then begging it against his will, and finally taking it with
his own hand, is a yet more unhappy creation of wayward fancy; and it is
only in the names of the conspirators, in the introduction of an
Englishman, Eliot, (whom he has brought nearer vernacular spelling than
he found him,--Haillot,[15]) and in the character of Rainault, that
Otway is borne out by authority. The last-mentioned person is described
by the French ambassador as a sot, a gambler, and a sharper, whose
rogueries are well known to all the world; in a word, therefore, as a
fit leader of a revolutionary crew wrought up, "without the least
remorse, with fire and sword t' exterminate" all who bore the stamp of
nobility; and _not_ as the most fitting depository in which Belvidera's
honour might be lodged as a security for that of her irresolute husband.
[15] Nani, iii. p. 169. He was to have commanded the naval part
of the enterprise.
Whatever hypothesis may be adopted, be this conspiracy true or false,
there is no bloodier, probably no blacker page in history than that
which records its development. Were it not for the immeasurable weight
of guilt which must press upon the memory of the rulers of Venice if we
suppose the plot to have been altogether fictitious, we should assuredly
admit that the evidence greatly preponderates in favour of that
assertion. But respect for human nature compels us to hesitate in
admitting a charge so monstrous. Five months after the commencement of
the executions, either a tardy gratitude or a profane mockery was
offered to Heaven; and the Doge and nobles returned thanks for their
great deliverance, by a solemn service at St. Mark's.
(Among the master-spirits who have commemorated the olden glories of
Venice, but more especially her association with our dramatic
literature, must not be forgotten Lord Byron:
But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the dogeless city's vanish'd sway;
Our's is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto: Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre cannot be swept away---
The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.
* * * * *
I lov'd her from my boyhood--she to me
Was as a fairy city of the heart,
Rising like water-columns from the sea,
Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart;
And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art
Had stamp'd her image in me, and ever so,
Although I found her thus, we did not part,
Perchance even dearer in her day of woe
Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.
Returning to the "Sketches," we must observe that we beg to differ with
the Editor in merely applying the epithets "coarse and boisterous," to
Otway's play, and pointing to "_coups de Theatre_" as its only merits.
He surely ought not to have omitted its originality of whatever order it
may be.
The volume before us brings the history of Venice to her subjection to
Austria in 1798. It is throughout spiritedly executed. The
illustrations, antique and modern, are precisely of this character,
being from Titian, and our contemporary artist, Prout.)
* * * * *