Fall of the Venetian Republic

The Fall of the Republic of Venice was a series of events in 1797, that led to the dissolution and dismemberment of the Republic of Venice at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte and Habsburg Austria.

The Fall of the ancient Republic of Venice was the result of a sequence of events that followed the French Revolution (Fall of the Bastille, 14 July 1789), and the subsequent French Revolutionary Wars that pitted the First French Republic against the monarchic powers of Europe, allied in the First Coalition (1792), particularly following the execution of Louis XVI of France 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 This led to fierce protests from the French representatives, so that Louis' right of asylum was revoked, and he was forced to depart Verona on 21 April.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 west over the Rhine (under Jean-Baptiste Jourdan and Jean Victor Marie Moreau) 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 the young (27 years old the time) general Napoleon Bonaparte, who in April 1796 crossed the Alps with 45,000 men to confront the Austrians and the Piemontese.

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