Venice, Revolution

By: Sharon White
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:26:58
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The Arsenal of Venice is the dockyard where for century after century the fighting navies of the Republic were built, laid up and repaired. Thence the galleys rowed out that captured Constantinople and humbled the pride of Genoa, and thither the decked battleships returned from the last struggles with the Turk in the Grecian seas. The Arsenal was the office and workshop equally of Vettor Pisani and the seamen of the heroic age, of those who fought at Lepanto, and of the heavy-wigged Admirals of later times whose monuments occupy such large areas of wall-space in ecclesiastical Venice. This work-a-day memorial of the naval supremacy of the past is still in use, and is still surrounded by its high, ancient wall of red brick. The main entrance consists of a canal for ships, and beside it a gateway for pedestrians, adorned in the Renaissance style of the fifteenth century; the steps of the gateway are guarded by a group of classical deities and by colossal stone lions brought from the Pir?us. This used to be the only entrance, but in Napoleon's time a second passage, for shipping only, had been pierced in the wall on the further side of the Arsenal that opens direct into the lagoon; beside the Porta Nuova, as it is called, there rises a high tower. Manin saw in the Arsenal the key to the success or failure of the revolution he meditated. Its capture would have a great moral effect.

It would also deliver into the hands of the patriots a magazine full of muskets and swords which they so desperately needed, together with several warships docked there, and the stores required by those which were anchored in the port outside. In the existing state of feeling among the naval officers and crews, the revolution, if it won the Arsenal, would win all the ships in the lagoon. The real strength of the fleet capable of commanding the Adriatic lay, unfortunately, at Pola, but the few ships in the lagoon could decide the immediate fate of Venice. His chief urged him not to return. But he was a fearless man and on the morning of the 22nd, encouraged by the presence of Croat troops outside the Lion Gate, he appeared once more in the office overhead. As fast as the news of his return spread, the Arsenalotti gathered in an angry crowd. Martini, hoping to appease them, sent the Croats away from the gate back to the Isolotto. He should have sent Marinovich under their escort, for that unfortunate officer was now left at the mercy of the mob. Antonio Paolucci, one of Manin's fellow-conspirators, did his best to avert the tragedy. He and another Italian officer smuggled Marinovich out of the office into a covered gondola rowed by four oars, and sped with him across the docks towards the Porta Nuova half a mile away.

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