introduction 7
Daru developed a more nuanced, innovative, and historically rooted inter-
pretation of venetian power. Influenced by Montesquieu and Gibbon’s
work on the fall of Rome, he attributed venice’s decline both to structural
and moral failings. He pointed to “profound contradictions” that devel-
oped as the city’s institutions proved inadequate in dealing with its terri-
torial expansion, the inability to reconcile conflicts within the ruling elite,
and the failure to adapt to the changing european political landscape.
venice’s desperate policy of neutrality made it “soft and effeminate” and
thus easy prey to Napoleon. Daru pulled few punches: he saw in venice
“a sordid saga of imperial hubris and moral collapse,” evidenced in the
nefarious inner workings of the Council of Ten and Inquisition of State,
whose existence was a testament to its “evil constitution.” Daru’s polemics
marked “the point of departure” for venetian historiography in the 19th
century, and no work had a greater impact: all historians who followed
were marked by his interpretation.15
Not surprisingly, though Daru considered his work the “fruit of love
and admiration for the Serenissima,” the Histoire garnered a profoundly
negative reception in venice; indeed, Mario Infelise has described it as
“a punch in the stomach.”16 It represented the first historical attempt to
identify the causes that led to the collapse of venice at a time when many
of the protagonists were still alive and when the venetians themselves
had not begun to probe seriously their own history or come to grips with
the snuffing out of the Republic. The outrage at Daru’s treatment inspired
a renewed interest among venetians in their own history and gave rise
to a variety of responses. One of the first of these came in 1828 when,
after an extended correspondence in which he attempted to convince
Daru to correct the many errors in his Histoire, the patrician politician
and scholar Giandomenico ermolao II Tiepolo published his two-volume
Discorsi sulla storia veneta, cioè rettificazioni di alcuni equivoci riscontrati
nella storia di Venezia del signor Daru. Less history than polemic, Tiepolo
attempted to restore the honor and glory of the Republic and its aristocracy
15 Mario Infelise, “venezia e il suo passato. Storie miti ‘fole,’ ” in Mario Isneghi and Stuart
Woolf, eds., Storia di Venezia: L’Ottocento e il Novecento (Rome, 2002), pp. 969–70; Christian
Del vento, “foscolo, Daru et le mythe de la ‘venise démocratique,’ ” in Christian Del vento
and Xavier Tabet, eds., Le mythe de Venise au XIX siècle: Débats historiographiques et rep-
resentations littéraires (Caen, 2006), p. 54; Tabet, “Pierre Daru et la vision historique et
politique du passé vénitien,” pp. 27–30; John Pemble, Venice Rediscovered (Oxford, 1995),
pp. 90–91.
16 Gino Benzoni, “La Storiografia,” in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 6 (1986): Dall’età
Napoleonica alla prima guerra mondiale, p. 602; Infelise, “venezia e il suo passato,” p. 970.