Napoleon Bonaparte | Venice: I am not making this up

The Wide Street of March 22nd. Just another cryptic date by now.

After the doges were let go in 1797 by the new management team of Napoleon and Satan, there was a very unhappy lull in Venetian history. It was an unhappy lull even while it was happening, before it became history.

And it wasn’t what I’d really call a lull, either, unless you call being put to bed with dengue fever a lull.

This interval of tyranny and anguish was abruptly cut short on March 22, 1848, when the Venetians revolted against Austria, which had acquired Venice from France in a diplomatic trade-off immortalized in the Treaty of Campo Formio (October 18, 1797). Cleverly, Napoleon effected this trade only after he had disemboweled the former Queen of the Seas, carrying off wagonloads of treasure and razing palaces, churches, convents and scuole (thereby making more treasure available for his waiting wagons).

The man who led the uprising and the brief establishment of the Republic of San Marco was a Venetian lawyer named Daniele Manin. I’ve outlined the story in another post, so I won’t go over it again. I would just appreciate your pausing for a moment to consider the magnificence of this doomed attempt and the people who put everything into it.

And just think: Only twelve years later, the Austrians were gone. I’m not capable of determining to what extent 1848 led to 1861, but I still want to give my own puny recognition of a huge event which everyone by now just takes for granted, I guess.

This plaque is on a wall of the Arsenal: " — This plaque is on a wall of the Arsenal: “By the unanimous virtue of the people the foreign dominion fell XXII March 1848 To eternal memory the municipality places this.”

The tomb of Daniele Manin, against the wall of the basilica of San Marco by the Piazzetta dei Leoncini.

The figure of Venice on the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II on the Riva degli Schiavoni bears a reverent inscription on the hem of her garment.

Near Campo San Bartolomio masses pass every day without noticing the street sign: — Near Campo San Bartolomio hordes pass every day without noticing the street sign: “Little Street of Dry Goods 2 April.” On April 2, 1849, the governing assembly of the Republic of San Marco voted to resist Austria at all costs. “All costs” was not a problem for the Austrians, and on August 22, 1849, Venice signed its surrender.

Bust of Daniele Manin by Emilio Marsili (1898). (Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti). After the death of the infant republic, Manin was sent into exile, and spent the rest of his life in Paris giving Italian lessons. He died on September 22, 1857. What was up with the 22nd of all these months?

March 22, much more than the second day of spring