The civilian population was a hindrance rather than a help to the
defenders, so the Admiral in command (for Venice is under naval, not
military authority) thought it well to arrange for the partial
evacuation of the city. In conjunction with the Syndic, Count Erimani,
he first asked all foreigners to remove themselves to places of safety.
Then offices were opened in each of the thirty parishes, and the people
were ordered to report within forty-eight hours. This census was taken,
so that railway facilities for traveling might be provided for all, and
that places of safety might be found for those who were too poor to go
away at their own expense, and pay their way afterward.
In a few days nearly half the population, some 70,000, had gone, the
majority to Florence, Rome, and other places in Central and Southern
Italy, and the others to Genoa and the Riviera. Some were sent by sea to
the Ancona coast. After this first rush the exodus went on more
leisurely, some 3,000 leaving each day. Institutions of all kinds,
offices, shops, restaurants, and cafés, closed their doors, even the
Café Florian, which had been open day and night continuously for over
100 years. Banks and offices transferred their businesses to other
towns.
There are no cellars in Venice, nor can the inhabitants have any dugouts
in which to conceal valuables, for at a depth of two or three feet below
the ground floors of all buildings water is reached. Accordingly the
authorities at the Municipal Building, at St. Mark's Library, at the
Ducal Palace, at the Archives, as well as at banks and insurance
offices, had their documents and valuables conveyed to places of
security by boat and rail.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. MARK'S: CHAPEL OF THE CRUCIFIX PROTECTED
BY SANDBAGS AND MATTRESS-LIKE SHEATHS]
When Italy first went into the war precautions had been taken to protect
the public monuments of Venice against aerial bombardment. The Doges'
Palace and the Church of St. Mark were protected by barricades of
sandbags, as were all the more valuable statues throughout the city. St.
Mark's gilded copper horses, beaten out by hand, the only example extant
of a Roman Quadriga--
The four steeds divine,
That strike the ground resounding with their feet,
And from their nostrils snort ethereal flame--
were removed at that time from their pedestals above the main entrance
to the church, and stabled under an archway on the ground floor of the
Doges' Palace. When the new peril came with the invasion, however, they
were conveyed by a battleship to a safer refuge in Rome. The precious
equestrian statue of Colleoni, so much admired by Ruskin, with other
treasures familiar to the tourist, also has been removed to a place of
security. The bells of St. Mark's campanile and those of every church in
the city have been taken away.
By the first weeks of 1918 the population had shrunk to less than
60,000, and at night one could walk through miles and miles of stilled
and empty streets, darkened against the peril of air raids, or could
travel by gondola along lonely canals rippled only by the Winter wind,
with the cold moonlight silvering a deserted fairyland. Two months later
the population was further reduced by sending away 20,000 women,
children, and old men with a view to eliminating useless mouths to feed
and preventing unnecessary slaughter. By that time Austro-German
ingenuity had invented a new system of dropping bombs; instead of
scattering them over the city the missiles were grouped in large numbers
in a very limited space so that the destruction on that area was
complete.