The whole government--Doge, Senate, the Ten, and the Three--seemed to vanish into oblivion. The great Venetian Republic fell without a sound. Eight days after the manifesto the tricolor waved above the Piazza, a popular constitution was declared, and a provisional government established. The Venetian fleet was manned and sent to Toulon. The French took possession of Corfu; and Venice was wholly in the power of France, to be {293} disposed of as might suit the will or the need of that nation. And the need soon came; for when, after a summer of fruitless negotiation with the Emperor of Austria, the snow appeared on the mountains, Napoleon decided to make peace. He would not risk a winter campaign, and said to Bourrienne, "Venice shall be exchanged for the boundary of the Rhine, and thus be made to pay for the war." The treaty was signed at Campo Formio on the 17th of October. The ex-Doge, Lodovico Manin, when taking the oath of allegiance to Austria, sank insensible on the ground, and lived but a few days afterward. Thus he was spared the second humiliation of Venice, when, in January, 1798, the tricolor was replaced by the double-headed eagle, and the days of its captivity and oppression began. Venice seemed now to be a make-weight to be used in Napoleonic treaties; and in 1805, at Presburg, the kingdom of Italy was ceded to its first conqueror, and Venice came within the government of the French Viceroy, Eugene Beauharnais. During ten years northern Italy, while not independent, was awake. New and broader ideas replaced the older theories; and the hearts of the people were filled with aspirations and hopes that were all blasted by the so-called Restoration of 1815, which confirmed a reign of tyranny in Venice. An Austrian Archduke, under Metternich, acted as Viceroy; and a system of secret courts, police spies, barbarous punishments, and oppressive taxation was inaugurated. Under the French rule Italian soldiers remained at home, or won honors in the wars. Under the Austrians they were sent beyond the Alps, and the white-coated foreign troops held the Venetians as in a prison. The civil offices were filled by Germans, whose harsh gutturals conveyed no meaning, and inspired dislike in the {294} soft-speaking Venetians, who were in turn incomprehensible to these officials. The simplest matters were laboriously referred to the Aulic Council at Vienna. Letters were not safe, since the spies opened them. No redress could be had through the press, which was gagged. The pillory, flogging, and other equally barbarous customs were revived; and, in short, no method was spared that could impress on the Venetians the thought that they were living and breathing by the permission and according to the will of a cruel tyrant. To quote from "The Dawn of Italian Independence," by W. R. Thayer:--