602 Chapter XXV
land nobility to any role in the government. The doge himself believed reform to
be necessary, but impossible; he remarked later, in his memoirs, that the old Re-
public could bear neither its diseases nor their remedies.
After Bonaparte’s ultimatum in May 1797, a Provisional Municipality replaced
the old government at Venice.^23 It was never able to exert any authority through-
out the territory of the old Republic, for the Austrians occupied Istria and Dalma-
tia, and in the Venetian cities the patriots, under the French occupation, hoped for
union with the Cisalpine. In any case, from the preliminary peace at Leoben in
April to the final peace at Campo Formio in October, it remained very uncertain
what the future would really bring. The Venetian democrats, less able than those of
Bergamo or Padua to accept Milan as a capital, were the more inclined to think
along the high level of a united Italian republic, but they could do little more than
engage in demonstrations, ceremonies, political festivals, oratory, debates, and
some actual attempts at reform. These were in the usual revolutionary direction,
and need not be detailed except for one matter in which Venice was a special case.
Among places thus far directly affected by the Revolution, Venice was the one,
after Amsterdam, that had the largest Jewish community. Though well received in
earlier times, the Jews of Venice had not recently enjoyed very flourishing circum-
stances, and they lived under various disabilities, including residence in a ghetto.
They played a more positive role in the revolution at Venice than at Amsterdam.
Many Jews joined with commercial and professional men and with the progressive
patricians in support of the Provisional Municipality, in which three Jews sat as
members. Jews also joined the new National Guard. In July there was a great pub-
lic celebration, in which people of all kinds proceeded to the Jewish quarter, French
soldiers and Catholic priests exchanged fraternal embraces, a tree of liberty was set
up, and Jews and Christians joined together to tear down the ghetto gates and
hack the hinges to pieces. Similar scenes occurred at Padua. At Spalato, however
(the modern Split, on the Dalmatian coast), the ghetto was attacked by angry
crowds that feared that the Venetian Republic was ceasing to be a Christian state.
The Jews lost their newly declared equality of rights when Venice and most of its
territory were ceded to Austria at the end of the year.^24
Meanwhile the fate of Italy was being settled in France. The contrary was in-
deed equally true: that the fate of the French Republic was being settled in Italy.
The French elections of March 1797, as already explained, brought into the legisla-
tive councils a majority of moderates and royalists, who favored ending the war on
terms acceptable to Austria and Great Britain. Should they gain control of the
government, there would be an end to republics in Italy and France alike. Three
Directors in Paris—Reubell, LaRévellière, and Barras—appealed for aid to the
victorious commanding general of the Army of Italy. Bonaparte, his officers and
men, the French civilians who were profiting from the occupation of Italy, and the
Italian revolutionaries and democrats (together with the Batavians who feared the
outcome of the peace talks then going on between France and England) all de-
23 Its proceedings have been published by the Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Coommissione
per gli atti delle assemblee costituzionali italiane, A. Alberti et al., eds., Verbali delle sedute della Mu-
nicipalità provvisoria di Venezia, 1797, 3 vols. (Bologna, 1928–1940).
24 C. Roth, Ve nice, in Jewish Communities Series (Philadelphia, 1930), 309–10, 329, 344–69.