VALLESABBIA, _March 27th, 1797_. In order to record its own fidelity and obedience to its beloved Prince of Venice, and taking oath of perpetual loyalty and adherence to the said Prince, this body votes that if persons of any class or condition are found in this Valley having the cockade of rebels against the Prince of Venice, and actually having that cockade on their hats, any one shall be free to arrest them, and let him have a prize of three hundred lire piccole for each one, of [the funds of] the Valley. And let this present vote be made known in every commune and put up in the usual and habitual places for public notices; and it is not to go into effect for three days, within which the parish priests in their parishes shall publicly give notice of it to the people. And if gangs of rebels against the Prince of Venice, or troops of theirs, enter the Valley, the communities comprising the Valley shall ring the bells with a hammer [meaning to ring them out, and not to ‘chime’ them only]; and whosoever is between sixteen and sixty years old, and whosoever else will volunteer, is to take arms in the name of the Valley to arrest them [rebels or troops], and may also kill them; and whoever refuses shall be punished by confiscation of all his goods. The government might have done something to encourage people capable of such devotion; it might at least have ordered them to send deputations to the capital to give information of the state of the country. This the province of Verona asked to be allowed to do, through the Marchese Scipione Maffei, in a petition which the Savi suppressed, without even [Sidenote: _Rom. x. 32._] presenting it to the Great Council, because they considered that it might lead to dangerous discussion. They confined themselves to recommending every subject of the most Serene Republic to act with the greatest circumspection towards all the French, as the Venetians had no means of defending themselves against the latter’s pretensions. In spite of the bad impression made by such weakness, more than thirty thousand men from the provinces volunteered to put down the republican rising, but they had to be sent home for lack of funds and weapons. One hundred young men of the burgher class offered to arm and support themselves at their own expense. From all this it is clear enough that, at the very last, the descendants of the nobles who had made Venice were responsible [Sidenote: _Nievo, Memorie d’un ottuagenario, 262._] for her fall. Ippolito Nievo said pithily, that the Venetian aristocracy was a corpse that could not revive, while the Venetian people were a living race shut up with it in the tomb.