The Republic of Venice was dissolved and dismembered by the French general Napoleon Bonaparte and the Habsburg monarchy on 12 May 1797, ending approximately 1,100 years of its existence. It was the final action of Napoleon's Italian campaign of 1796–1797 before the War of the First Coalition formally ended in October.
In 1796, General Napoleon had been sent by the newly formed French Republic to confront Austria, as part of the Italian front of the French Revolutionary Wars. He chose to go through Venice, which was officially neutral. Reluctantly, the Venetians allowed the formidable French army to enter their country so that it might confront Austria. However, the French covertly began supporting Jacobin revolutionaries within Venice, and the Venetian Senate began quiet preparations for war. The Venetian armed forces were depleted and hardly a match for the battle-tested French or even a local uprising.
After the capture of Mantua on 2 February 1797, the French dropped any pretense and overtly called for revolution among the territories of Venice. By 13 March, there was open revolt, with Brescia and Bergamo breaking away. However, pro-Venetian sentiment remained high, and France started providing overt military support to the underperforming revolutionaries. On 25 April, Napoleon openly threatened to declare war on Venice unless it democratised. The Venetian Senate acceded to numerous demands, but facing increasing rebellion and the threat of foreign invasion, it abdicated in favor of a transitional government of Jacobins (and thus the French). On 12 May, Ludovico Manin, the last doge of Venice, formally abolished the Most Serene Republic of Venice after 1,100 years of existence.
The French and the Austrians had secretly agreed on 17 April in the Treaty of Leoben that in exchange for providing Venice to Austria, France would receive the Austrian Netherlands. France provided an opportunity for the population to vote on accepting the now public terms of the treaty that yielded them to Austria. On 28 October, Venice voted to accept the terms. The French proceeded to thoroughly loot Venice, further stealing or sinking the entire Venetian Navy and destroying much of the Venetian Arsenal, a humiliating end for what had once been one of the most powerful navies in Europe. On 18 January 1798, the Austrians took control of Venice and ended the plunder. Austria's control was short-lived, however, as Venice would be back under French control in 1805. It then returned to Austrian hands in 1815 as the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia until its incorporation into the Kingdom of Italy in 1866.
Background
The fall of the ancient Republic of Venice was the result of a sequence of events that followed the French Revolution and the subsequent French Revolutionary Wars that pitted the French First Republic against the monarchic powers of Europe, allied in the First Coalition (1792), particularly following the execution of Louis XVI on 21 January 1793, which spurred the monarchies of Europe to common cause against Revolutionary France.
The pretender to the French throne, Louis Stanislas Xavier (the future Louis XVIII), spent a period of time in 1794 in Verona, as a guest of the Venetian republic. This led to fierce protests from the French representatives, so that Louis' right of asylum was revoked, and he was forced to depart Verona on 21 April. As a sign of protest, the French prince demanded that his name be removed from the libro d'oro of the Venetian nobility, and that he be returned the armour of Henry IV of France, that was kept at Venice. The behaviour of the Venetian government also provoked the displeasure and censure of the other European courts.
In 1795, with the Constitution of Year III, France put an end to the turmoils of the Reign of Terror, and installed the more conservative regime of the Directory. For 1796, the Directory ordered the launching of a grand double-pronged offensive against the First Coalition: a principal attack east over the Rhine into the German states of the Holy Roman Empire, and a diversionary attack against the Austrians and their allies in the south, in northern Italy. The conduct of the Italian campaign was given to general Napoleon Bonaparte, who in April 1796 crossed the Alps with 45,000 men to confront the Austrians and the Piedmontese.
In the lightning Montenotte campaign, Napoleon knocked Sardinia out of the war and then moved on the Duchy of Milan, which was controlled by the Habsburg forces. On 9 May Archduke Ferdinand, the Austrian governor of Milan, retired with his family to Bergamo in Venetian territory. Six days later, after winning the Battle of Lodi, Napoleon entered Milan, and forced King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia to sign the humiliating Treaty of Paris, while the Habsburg forces withdrew to defend the Prince-Bishopric of Trent. On 17 May the Duchy of Modena likewise sought an armistice with the French.
During the course of this conflict, the Republic of Venice had followed its traditional policy of neutrality, but its possessions in northern Italy (the Domini di Terraferma) were now in the direct path of the French army's advance towards Vienna. Consequently, on 20 May the French denounced the armistice agreement, and recommenced hostilities.
Occupation of the Terraferma
Arrival of the French in Venetian Lombardy
At the approach of the French army, already on 12 May 1796, the Venetian Senate had created a provveditore generale for the Terraferma, Nicolò Foscarini, with the task of overseeing all magistrates in its mainland territories (the reggimenti). However, the state of Venetian defences was parlous: arms were lacking, and the fortifications were in disrepair. Venetian Lombardy was soon invaded by masses of refugees fleeing the war, and shattered or fleeing detachments of Austrian troops, who were soon followed by the first infiltrations by French contingents. Only with great difficulty did the Venetian authorities manage to prevent first the Austrians of General Wilhelm Lothar Maria von Kerpen, and then the pursuing French of Louis Alexandre Berthier, from passing through Crema. Napoleon himself finally arrived before the city, bringing a proposal of alliance with Venice, which gave no reply to it. In view of the bad state of the defences, both the Venetian government as well as the authorities in the Terraferma put up only a weak resistance to the crossing of Venetian territory by the retreating Austrians, but firmly refused the requests of the Habsburg ambassador to provide, even secretly, food and supplies to the Austrian forces.
In short, however, the situation was critical for the Most Serene Republic: not only Lombardy, but even Veneto were threatened with invasion. First the Austrian commander-in-chief, Jean-Pierre de Beaulieu, took Peschiera del Garda by ruse, and then, on 29 May, the French division of Charles-Pierre Augereau entered Desenzano del Garda. On the night of 29/30 May, Napoleon crossed the Mincio River in force, forcing the Austrians to withdraw to Tyrol. To the complaints of the Venetians, who through the provveditore generale Foscarini protested the damage inflicted by the French troops during their advance, Napoleon replied by threatening to pass Verona through iron and fire, and of marching on Venice itself, claiming that the Republic had shown itself as favouring the enemies of France by not declaring war after the events at Peschiera, and by harbouring the French pretender Louis.
Opening of the Venetian territories to Napoleon's troops
On 1 June, Foscarini, in an effort not to provoke Napoleon further, agreed to the entry of French troops into Verona. The Venetian territories thus officially became a field of battle between the opposing camps, while in many cities the French occupation created a difficult cohabitation between French troops, the Venetian military, and the local inhabitants.
In the face of imminent threat, the Senate ordered the recall of the Venetian fleet, the conscription of the cernide militia in Istria, and the creation of a provveditore generale for the Venetian Lagoon and Lido, to ensure the defence of the Dogado, the core of the Venetian state. New taxes were raised and voluntary contributions were requested to provide for the rearmament of the state. Finally, the Republic's ambassador at Paris was ordered to protest to the Directory of the violation of its neutrality. At the same time, Venetian diplomats in Vienna remonstrated at the Habsburg forces' bringing war to the Terraferma.
On 5 June, the representatives of the Kingdom of Naples signed an armistice with Napoleon. On 10 June, the heir to the Duchy of Parma, Louis of Bourbon, and two days later, Napoleon invaded the Romagna, which belonged to the Papal States; on 23 June the Pope had to accept the French occupation of the northern Legations, allowing the French to occupy the port city of Ancona on the Adriatic Sea.
The appearance of French warships in the Adriatic led Venice to renew the ancient decree that prohibited the entry of foreign fleets into the Venetian Lagoon, and informed Paris of that. Flotillas and fortifications were established along the lagoon's shores with the mainland, as well as in the canals, to block access from the land as well as from the sea. In this regard, on 5 July the provedditore responsible for the defence of the Lagoon, Giacomo Nani, recalling the victorious War of the Morea against the Ottoman Turks, wrote:
It mortifies my soul to see that, only a century after that important era, Your Excellencies are reduced to thinking only about the defence of the estuary, without thinking of turning your thought even a line further than that.
— Giacomo Nani, Provveditore generale alle Lagune e ai Lidi)
Venice seemed to have lost forever the Terraferma, as in former times during the War of the League of Cambrai. The government resolved to mobilize its forces to avoid such an outcome; under the exhortations of Nani, the Venetian government prepared to order a mobilization and give command of its land forces to William of Nassau, but stopped at the last moment before the joint opposition of the Austrians and the French.
Towards the middle of July the French troops quartered themselves in the cities of Crema, Brescia, and Bergamo, to allow the separation of French and Austrian forces, who in the meantime had concluded a truce. At the same time, diplomatic efforts were under way to induce Venice to abandon its neutrality and enter a joint alliance with France and the Ottoman Empire against Russia. However, the news of the preparations of the general Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser for an Austrian counteroffensive from Tyrol prompted the Republic to officially reject the French proposals with a letter from the Doge on 22 July. In the meantime, a provedditore extraordinary, Francesco Battagia, had been appointed to join, and in practice replace, the provveditore generale Foscarini. In Venice, night patrols composed of shopkeepers and journeymen, and commanded by two patricians and two burghers (cittadini), maintained order and safety. In Bergamo also, troops were silently recruited in the neighbouring valleys, taking care to avoid conflict with the French occupiers, but only "to restrain the populace's fervour, without debasing it", as the Inquisitori di Stato magistrates put it.
On 31 July, on his part, Napoleon occupied Brescia Castle.
Failure of the Austrian offensive
On 29 July, the Austrians under Wurmser began their counteroffensive, descending from Tyrol in a two-pronged advance along the shores of Lake Garda and the course of the Brenta River, passing through Venetian and Mantuan territory. The two Austrian columns were stopped at Lonato del Garda on 3 August and Castiglione delle Stiviere on 5 August respectively. Defeated, Wurmser was forced to return to Trent. After reorganizing his troops, Wurmser returned to the attack, advancing along the course of the Adige, but on 8 September, at the Battle of Bassano, the Austrians were heavily defeated: forced to a precipitous flight to Mantua, abandoning their artillery and train.
As a result, during the autumn and winter, the French consolidated their presence in Italy, so that on 15/16 October, they founded the Cispadane Republic and the Transpadane Republic as French client states. At the same time, in the Terraferma, the French soldiers progressively took over the Venetian defensive system by assuming control over cities and fortresses. While the Venetian government continued to instruct its magistrates, placed at the head of the various reggimenti, to supply the maximum collaboration and to avoid giving rise to any excuse for a conflict, the French ever more openly began to support local revolutionary and Jacobin activities.
On 29 October the Austrians, amassed in Venetian Friuli, attempted a new offensive, under József Alvinczi, by crossing the Tagliamento, then the Piave on 2 November, and arriving at Brenta on 4 November. The Austrians pushed the French back in the Second Battle of Bassano on 6 November, and entered Vicenza. However, the battles of Caldiero (12 November) and above all Arcole (15–17 November) blocked the Austrian advance. Finally, in the Battle of Rivoli on 14–15 January 1797, Napoleon decisively defeated Alvinczi and restored French supremacy.
Revolt of Bergamo and Brescia
With the capture of Mantua on 2 February 1797, the French removed the last bastion of Habsburg resistance in Italy. The French now began to promote openly the "democratization" of Bergamo, which, under the pressure of general Louis Baraguey d'Hilliers, rose in revolt against Venice on 13 March, establishing the Republic of Bergamo. Three days later, the provveditore extraordinary Francesco Battagia, in an effort to restore order, issued a general amnesty for any acts disturbing the public order. However, Battagia was already fearing the loss of Brescia, the city where he resided, and to which the Bergamasque revolutionaries were marching, as well.