The Council of Ten

I stood in Venice, on the ‘Bridge of Sighs';

A Palace and a prison on each hand:

— Byron, Childe  Harold’s Pilgrimage,  Canto IV

The poet George Byron and his friend John Hobhouse, got off their gondola at the hotel Gran Bretagna, now the seat of the Municipality of Venice, on the rainy evening of Sunday, 11 November 1816. The following Tuesday, they met the Greek historian and philologist Andreas Moustoxydis who accompanied them to visit the Marciana Library, housed since 1811 on the second floor of the Doge’s Palace in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, former meeting place of the highest authority of the Republic of Venice. They were welcomed by the old director Jacopo Morelli who gave them a tour. “The black veil which is painted over the place of Marino Faliero amongst the Doges, and the Giants’ Staircase, where he was crowned, and discrowned, and decapitated, struck forcibly upon my imagination; as did his fiery character and strange story”, remembers Byron in the Preface to Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice published in 1821. (1)

First conceived at the end of Carnival 1817, Byron wrote the Faliero after he had already moved to Ravenna (April to August 1820) following Teresa Guiccioli, whom he had met at the salon of Marina Querini Benzon in April 1819. Teresa was nineteen and the previous year had become the third wife of Count Alessandro Guiccioli, forty years her senior. It was her father and brother, Ruggero and Pietro Gamba, who introduced Byron to the Carboneria, a network of secret societies fighting the absolutist regimes installed in Italy by the Vienna Congress. During this period, Byron experienced a political transformation from his former aristocratic liberalism towards democratic republicanism. Although he assured his editor John Murray that “it is not a political play, though it may look like it; it is strictly historical” (2), the focus of the Faliero also shifted, from the old doge’s jealousy for his young wife to the conspiracy, “one of the most remarkable events in the annals of the most singular government, city, and people of modern history. It occurred in the year 1355.” (3)

In another letter, Byron had cautioned Murray that he had written the play “for the Closet, and on the French and Italian model [i.e. “Classical” but actually, Baroque] rather than yours [i.e. “Romantic” or rather, commercial].” (4) In spite of Murray’s attempt to stop the production through an injunction, a curtailed version of Faliero was performed at Drury Lane Theatre (25 April 1821). As Byron anticipated, the play was received coldly and taken down after seven performances but a few days after the premiere, Murray published Faliero in a book that included Byron’s preface, the integral text, historical notes and appendixes, and was followed by the poem in terza rima “The Prophecy of Dante” (written June 1820). It was a success: in Britain, Murray published a second edition the same year and a third in 1823; in France, it was immediately republished then (badly) translated in 1821 (5); in Germany, it was published in the first collected German edition of Byron's works in 1822 (6); and even in Italy where it was prohibited, the play circulated in the French editions (7). Through reviews, translations, adaptations, transpositions in music and in painting, Faliero contributed significantly to popularise Venice's “black legend”. (8)

The doge Ludovico Manin surrendered to Napoleon without a fight, which somehow undeservedly earned him the nickname of siòr Spavento (Mr. Fright), and on 12 May 1797 the Gran Consiglio hastened to dissolve the Republic, after 1100 years of independence. Such an inglorious end shattered what was left of Venice's myth. The buon governo celebrated by Gasparo Contarini in De Magistratibus et republica Venetorum (Venezia 1543) gave way to its countermyth, established at least since Jean Bodin with Les Six Livres de la République (Paris 1575): the Venetian Republic was actually an oligarchic tyranny that relied on the Council of Ten as its special tribunal, intelligence agency and secret police. Venice's countermyth became dominant in Europe after its fall, appropriated by its occupiers and by the occupied for opposite reasons, sustained by the accelerating economic decline of the city. “That such an idea of Venetian constitution is a travesty of the truth should long have been clear to all readers of this book”, writes John Julius Norwich in conclusion of his classic History of Venice.

Byron begins the Faliero citing the historical sources used for the play, grouped in “authorities” (Marino Sanudo the Younger, Vettor Sandi, Andrea Navagero, a XIV chonicler translated in Italian by Morelli) and “moderns” (Pierre Daru, Sismonde de Sismondi, Marc-Antoine Laugier), and closes the play with a long appendix. This includes Sanudo’s life of Faliero (Italian and English, App. I-II), an extract from a letter by Petrarca translated in Italian (App. III), a section on the decadence of Venetian society by Daru (French and English, App. IV-V) and another on a prophesy about the fall of Venice reported Pierre-Louis Ginguené (French and English, App. VI-VII). These references are not so much necessary to understand the text as to give the effect of history, despite the Venetian setting being vague and marred by errors, and the plot contradicting the very “authorities” quoted.

To be fair, Byron followed closely Pierre Daru’s Histoire de la République de Venise (Paris 1819, 8 vols.), which was the standard history of Venice until Samuele Romanin published the Storia documentata di Venezia (Venezia 1853-61, 10 vols.). Notwithstanding its bias, Daru contributed to renew a historiographic and political debate on the Serenissima in Italy and across Europe with its clear and systematic exposition, captivating literary style, and a modern use of archival sources made accessible by the French and Austrian occupants. As to the Faliero, Niccolò Tommaseo commented that “if to obtain such effects it is necessary to alter history, it is better to have no dramatic poetry, no theatre.” (9) And yet, if the play is no political satire, as Byron claimed, it is not historicist either, as are Walter Scott’s novels which he admired.

It was a profound though inadvertent insight on the part of its early translators into German, to recognise that Faliero was not a Tragödie but a baroque Trauerspiel, the German tragic drama discussed by Walter Benjamin in his doctoral thesis. The “undramatic” “unromantic” quality of the Faliero remarked by its reviewers is the specific mode of expression and melancholic immersion of the Trauerspiel: “In allegory the observer is confronted with the facies hippocratica of history as a petrified, primordial landscape. Everything about history that, from the very beginning, has been untimely, sorrowful, unsuccessful, is expressed in a face - or rather in a death’s head. And although such a thing lacks all ‘symbolic’ freedom of expression, all classical proportion, all humanity - nevertheless, this is the form in which man’s subjection to nature is most obvious and it significantly gives rise not only to the enigmatic question of the nature of human existence as such, but also of the biographical historicity of the individual. This is the heart of the allegorical way of seeing, of the baroque, secular explanation of history as the Passion of the world; its importance resides solely in the stations of its decline.” (10)

Allegory comes to prominence in a “state of emergency” (11) such as the one that arose in Venice after the defeat of Porto Longo in 1354, or in England after the execution of Charles I in 1649 or after Peterloo in 1819, and in Ravenna in 1821. Byron noted in his journal on 13 January 1821: “There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it.” (12) And so it was. On 4 February, Marshal Frimont was sent with 50,000 men to bring order in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where a military insurrection had obliged the king to concede a liberal constitution the previous July. The Austrians entered Naples on 24 March, annulled the constitution and a few weeks later, put the absolutist king Ferdinand back on the throne.

The Carbonari of Ravenna had planned “to crush the Austrians if they pass the Po” (13) but nothing happened, except the Papal repression. Byron describes it in a letter to the British consul general at Venice: “you have no idea what a state of oppression this country is in—they arrested above a thousand of high & low—throughout Romagna—banished some & confined others—without trial—process—or even accusation!!” (14). Ruggero and Pietro Gamba were banished from the Papal State and Teresa, who had just obtained legal separation from her husband, was forced to move with them to Pisa, where Byron reluctuntly followed them. He and Pietro will embark two years later to fight in the Greek War of Independence, where they both died in 1824 and 1827 respectively. Ravenna and other central Italian cities rose up against the Papal State in February 1831 and proclaimed the republic of the Italian United Provincies, crushed by Austrian troops in April.

In the Faliero, however, history is either kept “beyond the compass of the human voice” (Fal. 5.3.25) as allegorical reference, or as historia it is drained of life, fragmented in details and indefinitely suspended in waiting or mourning, “We will be free in life or death!” (2.2.55). Before the Doge’s Palace is even finished, Venice is already a ruin in the play and “history has physically merged into the setting” of a martyr-drama in which the doge plays “the Janus-faced composite of tyrant and martyr, of the Sovereign who incarnates the mystery of absolute will and of its victim (so often himself)” (15). Faliero’s natural body turns against the artificial body of the state to which it was united by oath, and is sacrificed to save the tyrannic state, not without cathartic relief as Benjamin remarks: “The enduring fascination of the downfall of the tyrant is rooted in the conflict between the impotence and depravity of his person, on the one hand, and, on the other, the extent to which the age was convinced of the sacrosanct power of his role. It was therefore quite impossible to derive an easy moral satisfaction . . . from the tyrant's end. For if the tyrant falls, not simply in his own name, as an individual, but as a ruler and in the name of mankind and history, then his fall has the quality of a judgement, in which the subject too is implicated.” (16)

Calumny sets the Trauerspiel in motion “on the last night of Carnival”, when Michel Steno, “a patrician, / Young, galliard, gay, and haughty” (Fal. 1.1.20-1), “graves” a couplet on the doge’s throne (1.1.60-2):

Marino Falier has a beautiful wife,

he keeps her for others to enjoy.

[Marin Falier da la bela mujer,

altri la galde, lu la mantien.] (17)

Faliero imagines that Steno should be tried by the Council of Ten for lese-majesty and receive the capital punishment:

Death ! Was I not the Sovereign of the state —
Insulted on his very throne, and made
A mockery to the men who should obey me?
Was I not injured as a husband? scorned
As man? reviled, degraded, as a Prince?
Was not offence like his a complication
Of insult and of treason?— and he lives!
Had he instead of on the Doge's throne
Stamped the same brand upon a peasant's stool,
His blood had gilt the threshold; for the carle
Had stabbed him on the instant. (Fal. 1.2.190-202)

Byron was aware that readers would be “wondering at so great an effect from so slight a cause” and offers historical precedents trying to justify this pretext. However, in the letter quoted in appendix, Petrarca says that Faliero must have been “insane and demented” (18) and in a passage omitted by Byron, Sanudo seems sure that he conspired “not for the desire to dominate, being already eighty and without children, but due to weakness of brain at such an advanced age” (19). Giovanni Battista Caroldo explains in the Historie Venete (1520-32) that Faliero was “driven by a diabolical spirit” (20) and from the point of view of the Trauerspiel, he may be right.

The Devil, Benjamin reminds, is “the original allegorical figure” (21) and “before causing terror in mourning, Satan tempts. He initiates men in knowledge, which forms the basis of culpable behaviour.” (22) It is because of Steno that Faliero discovers the truth about power, that “sovereign is he who decides on the exception” as Carl Schmitt wrote in 1933 (23), and about himself. His “fiery nature” and aristocratic pride, lust for revenge, nostalgia for action, ambition to absolute power, and the opportunity for a revolution all conspire to his downfall. On the Giants’ Stairs of the palace where Faliero had sworn the ducal promise, the death sentence separates the doge’s two bodies:

So now the Doge is nothing, and at last
I am again Marino Faliero:
'Tis well to be so, though but for a moment.'-
Here was I crowned, and here, bear witness, Heaven !
With how much more contentment I resign
That shining mockery, the ducal bauble,
Than I received the fatal ornament. (Fal. 5.3.1-7)

Free from that oppressive Other, Faliero can speak to the elements “in which to be resolved” (5.3.27) and to Venice, prophesying and cursing it. At long last, he commands to the executioner to “Strike — and but once!” (5.3.104) and “in this general theatre of death” (24), the sword falls on Faliero as the curtain on the play:

“Justice hath dealt upon the mighty Traitor!”

[The gates are opened; the populace rush in towards the ‘Giants' Staircase’ where the execution has taken place. The foremost of them exclaims to those behind,

“The gory head rolls down the Giants’ Steps!”

[The curtain falls. (Fal. 5.4.28-9)

The final moment of the play is depicted by Eugène Delacroix in The Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero (1825-6, Wallace Collection, London). On the Giants’ Stairs of the palace, Faliero lays in a white tunic on the execution block, half martyr half tyrant, and his head has rolled down the stairs, the dogal mantle covering the cut: “The purple must cover it”, quotes Benjamin from several Trauerspiele (25). In death, Faliero has become Byron’s veiled portrait and that emblem Delacroix converts into its opposite. Benjamin explains this inversion of polarity: “The bleak confusion of Golgotha, which can be recognized as the schema underlying the allegorical figures in hundreds of the engravings and descriptions of the period, is not just a symbol of the desolation of human existence. In it, transitoriness is not signified or allegorically represented, so much as, in its own significance, displayed as allegory. As the allegory of resurrection.” (26) As the allegory of the Risorgimento:

Long live Venice!
The enemy's wrath
Revives her
Ancient virtue;
But the plague rages,
But ther’s no bread ...
On the Bridge flies
A white flag!

[Viva Venezia!
L'ira nemica
La sua risuscita
Virtude antica;
Ma il morbo infuria
Ma il pan le manca...
Sul Ponte sventola
Bandiera bianca!] (27)

Notes

1. George Gordon Byron. Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice. A Tragedy in Five Acts. London: John Murray 1821. All quotations are from Byron, George Gordon. The Works of Lord Byron. A New, Revised and Enlarged Edition with Illustrations. Poetry [BP]. 7 vols., edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge; Letters and Journals [BLJ]. 6 vols., edited by Roland E. Prothero. London: John Murray and New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1898-1904.
2. To John Murray, 31 August 1820. BLJ iv, 67.
3. Faliero, Preface, BP iv, 331.
4. To John Murray, 8 October 1820. BLJ iv, 90. In the letter from 17 October 1820, Byron asks for Murray’s advise about dedicating the Faliero to “THE GREAT GOETHE” and encloses a proposed letter to him, that was never received and probably never sent. In the postscript he writes: “I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is a great struggle about what they call ‘Classical’ and ‘Romantic,’ — terms which were not terms of classification in England, at least when I left it four or five years ago. Some of the English Scribblers, it is true, abused Pope and Swift, but the reason was that they themselves did not know how to write either prose or verse; but nobody thought them worth making a sect of. Perhaps there may be something of the kind sprung up lately, but I have not heard much about it, and it would be such bad taste that I shall be very sorry to believe it.” (BLJ v, 104)
5. Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice: An historical tragedy in five acts: With notes. Paris: A. and W. Galignani 1821; in French, Oeuvres de Lord Byron, traduites de l'anglais. [Trans. by Amédéc Pichot et Eusèbe de Salle]. 10 Vols. Tome IX: Lettre de Lord Byron à J. Murray, Marino Faliero; Tome X: Marino Faliero, acte V, la Prophétie du Dante, Mélodies hébraïques. Mélanges, les Poètes anglais et les Critiques écossais. Paris: Ladvocat 1819-1821.
6. Marino Faliero. Trauerspiel in Funf Akten. In Lord Byron's Poesien. Achtes Bandchen, 2. Abtheilungen. Uebersezt von Theodor Hell. Zwickau: Gebrüder Schumann 1822. Other German translations consider Faliero a tragic drama (Trauerspiel): Marino Faliero. Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzüge von Lord Byron, metrisch übersetzt von S. tor Hardt. Paderborn: Joseph Mesener 1827; “Marino Faliero. Doge von Venedig. Historisches Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzüge.” In Byron's sämmtliche Werke von Adolf Böttger. Achter Band: Der Ungeformte, Marino Faliero, Die beiden Foscari. Lepzig: Otto Wigand 1841; Marino Faliero, Doge von Venedig. Geschichtliches Trauerspiel, mit vielen dazu gehörigen Noten und kritischen Urtheilen. Im Versmaaß des Originals überseht von Carl Deahna. Bayreuth: In Commission der Buchner'schen Buchhandlung 1850.
7. P. De Virgiliis [De Virgili, Pasquale]. Collezione delle tragedie di Lord Byron, con le note dello stesso autore. Recate per la prima volta in italiano dall’originale inglese per P. de Virgiliis. Vol. I. Marino Faliero. Palermo: n. p., 1835. A rewriting of the play, Tommaso Zauli Sajani. Faliero. Bastia: Fabiani 1828.
8. The expression “black legend” (leyenda negra) was popularised in a 1914 nationalist essay, claiming to defend "historical truth" against “the atmosphere created by the fantastic tales about our country that have seen the light of day in all countries." (Julián Juderías y Loyot. La leyenda negra y la verdad histórica: contribución al estudio del concepto de España en Europa, de las causas de este concepto y de la tolerancia religiosa y política en los países civilizados. Madrid: La Ilustración Española y Americana 1914, 24, my translation). Not only is the content of the Venice "black legend" a fabrication, but also the application of the expression to Venice is unwarranted. Positive accounts of the city prevaled in Europe except for a brief period, indicatively between the the fall of the first Venetian Republic in 1797 and the second in 1849.
9. Niccolò Tommaseo. "Zauli Saiani, Tommaso." In Dizionario Estetico. Volume Unico. Venezia: Gondoliere 1840, 453-7, (457).
10. Walter Benjamin. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Translated by John Osborne. London and New York: Verso 2003, 166.
11. Benjamin, Tragic Drama, 65.
12. BLJ, iv, 173.
13. BLJ, iv, 83.
14. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner, 23 July 1821. BLJ, iv, 327.
15. Benjamin, Tragic Drama, 16.
16. Benjamin, Tragic Drama, 72. For the metaphor of the two bodies, Ernst H. Kantorowicz. The King’s Two Bodies. Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press 2016.
17. The Doge prevents his nephew from repeating the shameful couplet (1.2.62-3) but is reported in Sanudo’s life of Faliero in appendix (Fal. App. I-II, BP, iv, 463). The text I quote instead is more reliable and mantains the rhyme, Alberto Toso Fei. Un giorno a Venezia con i dogi. In giro per la Serenissima accompagnati dagli uomini che la resero grande. Roma: Newton Compton 2017, my translation.
18. “. . . non modo miser fuisse, sed insanus amensque videbitur . . .” To Guido Sette, 24 April 1355. Francesco Petrarca. “Epistola IX Franciscus Petrarca Guidoni Septimo Archidiacono Genuensi S. P. D. De Italiae motibus et praesertim de bello inter Venetos et Genuenses: et de supplicio Marini Falierii Ducis Venetiarum.” In Epistolae de rebus familiaribus et variae, tum quae adhuc tum quae nondum editae. Familiarum scilicet libri XXIIII, variarum liber unicus. Nunc primum integri et ad fidem codicum optimorum vulgati. Studio et cura Iosephi Fracassetti. Volumen Secundum. Firenze: Le Monnier 1858, 534-41, (540). The Italian translation in Byron's appendix is from Ambrogio Levati, “Congiura e morte di Marin Falieri, Doge di Venezia.” In Viaggi di Francesco Petrarca in Francia in Germania ed in Italia descritti dal Professore Ambrogio Levati. 5 vols. Milano: Società Tipografica de' Classici Italiani, 1820), 319-26 (323-5). The English translation by Bernardo has “. . . he will seem not only wretched, but mad and foolish . . .” Francesco Petrarca, Letters on Familiar Matters (Rerum familiarium libri). Volume 3, Books 17-24. Trans. by Aldo S. Bernardo. New York: Italica Press, 2005, 91-5, (95).
19. “. . . non per desiderio di signoreggiare, essendo d'età di 8o anni, e senza figliuoli, ma per debolezza di cervello in età così grande . . .” Marino Sanudo il Giovane. "Marino Faliero, Doge XLIX" In Vitae Ducum Venetorum, Italice scriptae ab origine Urbis, sive ab Anno 421 usque ad Annum 1493. Auctore Marino Sanuto, Leonardi Filio, Patricio Veneто. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores. Tomus XXII. Milano: Società Palatina nel Palazzo Reale 1733, 628-635, (631).
20. “. . . spinto da Diabolico spirito . . .” Giovanni Giacomo Caroldo. Istorii Venexiene. Vol. III: De la alegerea dogelui Andrea Dandolo la moartea dogelui Giovanni Delfino (1343-1361). [Venetian Stories. Vol. III: From the Election of Doge Andrea Dandolo to the Death of Doge Giovanni Delfino (1342-1361)]. Ed. by Şerban V. Marin. Bucureşti: Arhivele Naxionale Ale României 2010. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/4275141 [accessed 20.9.2024]
21. Benjamin, Tragic Drama, 228.
22. Benjamin, Tragic Drama, 229. In a letter to Murray (2 April 1817), Byron compares his idea for the Faliero with Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd, or A Plot Discover'd (first staged 1681 and still performed) inspired by the Bedmar Plot of 1618: "but the story of Marino Falieri is different, and, I think, so much finer, that I wish Otway had taken it instead: the head conspiring against the body for refusal of redress for a real injury,—jealousy—treason, with the more fixed and inveterate  passions (mixed with policy) of an old or elderly man—the  devil himself could not have a finer subject,  and he is your only tragic dramatist." (BLJ iv, 91-2)
23. Carl Schmitt. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Trans. by George Schwab, foreword by Tracy Strong. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2005, 5. That sovereignty and revolution are the true subjects of the Faliero can be deduced from Byron’s strong criticism  of John Moore’s “false and flippant” account of Faliero (Preface, BP iv, 333). This was Byron’s go-to reference for the play when he first wrote to Murray: “Look into ‘Moore’s (Dr. Moore’s) View of Italy” for me; in one of the volumes you will find an account of the Doge Valiere (it ought to be Falieri) and his conspiracy, or the motives of it. Get it transcribed for me, and send it in a letter to me soon.” (25 February 1817, BLJ iv, 58) Moore's account derives from Sanudo's but he concludes with a comparison between Faliero and Charles I, decapitated on a scaffolding outside Banqueting House at Whitehall on 30 January 1649: “The only other instance which history presents to our contemplation, of a sovereign tried according to the forms of law, and condemned to death by a Tribunal of his own subjects, is that of Charles the First, of Great Britain. But how differently are we affected by a review of the two cases! In the one, the original errors of the misguided Prince are forgotten in the severity of his fate, and in the calm majestic firmness with which he bore it. Those who, from public spirit, had opposed the unconstitutional measures of his government, were no more; and the men now in power were actuated by far different principles. All the passions of humanity, therefore, take part with the royal sufferer; nothing but the ungenerous spirit of party can seduce them to the side of his enemies. In his trial we behold, with a mixture of pity and indignation, the unhappy monarch delivered up to the malice of hypocrites, the rage of fanatics, and the insolence of a low-born law ruffian. In the other, every sentiment of compassion is effaced by horror at the enormity of the crime.” (John Moore. A View of Society and Manners in Italy with Anectdotes Relating to Some Eminent Characters. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. Second edition. London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1781, 151-2) Several details in the play can be found in David Hume’s account of Charles’ trial and execution (History of England, ch. 49) including a theologico-political discussion on the king’s two bodies (see n. 16). Likewise, the discovery and opening of Charles' coffin at Windsor Castle in 1813, widely reported at the time, can be compared to Byron’s search for Faliero’s tomb at the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in 1819 (Preface, BP iv, 336).
24. Benjamin, Tragic Drama, 159.
25. Benjamin, Tragic Drama, 70.
26. Benjamin, Tragic Drama, 232.

27. Arnaldo Fusinato. “A Venezia (19 Agosto 1849)”. In Poesie patriottiche. Inedite. Milano: Paolo Carrara 1871, 40-3 (Stanza 8). “These lines were written on the eve of the surrender of Venice on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, where the Author was stationed.” (40, note) Venice insurrected against the Austrian occupation on 17 March 1848, demanding the release of Daniele Manin, Niccolò Tommaseo and other political prisoners arrested in February. The Austrian troops were forced to leave the city, and Manin proclaimed the Republic of San Marco on 22 March. Following the final defeat of the king of Sardenia Carlo Alberto at Novara, his successor Vittorio Emanuele II signed an armistice with by marshal Radetzky, leaving his troops free to reoccupy Lombardy and Veneto. Manin and the Venice goverment decided to resist “at any cost” (11 April 1849). When the last defense at Marghera was recaptured, Venice remained completely cut off from the terra ferma and the sea, without food or clean water, and infested by cholera. On the date of Fusinato's poem, two gondolas carried a delegation led by Manin to Fusina on the mainland, to discuss the terms of surrender. On 22 August 1849, Manin signed the surrender and a white flag was raised on the railway bridge that since 1846 connected Venice to Mestre.

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