tive which induced Count
Palffy and Count Zichy, the civil and military governors of Venice, to
yield the city without deluging it in blood. The latter had been
guilty of negligence in leaving the Venetian arsenal in charge of
troops so untrustworthy that Manin could take it on the 22nd of March
by a simple display of his own courage, and without striking a blow,
but after this first success on the side of the revolution, which
supplied the people with an unlimited stock of arms and ammunition,
the Austrians did well to give way even from their own point of view.
At seven o'clock on the evening of the 22nd of March, the famous
capitulation was signed. Manin's prediction of the previous day,
'To-morrow the city will be in my power, or I shall be dead,' had been
realised in the first alternative.

Daniel Manin, who was now forty-four years of age, was by profession a
lawyer, by race a Jew. His father became a Christian, and, according
to custom, took the surname of his godfather, who belonged to the
family of the last Doge of Venice. Manin and the Dalmatian scholar,
Niccolo Tommaseo, had been engaged in patiently adducing proof after
proof that Austria did not even abide by her own laws when the
expression of political opinion was concerned. At the beginning of the
revolution they were in prison, and Palffy's first act of surrender
was to set them free. Henceforth Manin was undisputed lord of the
city. It is strange how, all at once, a man who was only slightly
known to the world should have been chosen as spokesman and ruler. It
did not, however, happen by chance. The people in Italy are observant;
the Venetians had observed Manin, and they trusted him. The power of
inspiring trust was what gave this Jewish lawyer his ascendancy, not
the talents which usually appeal to the masses. He had not the
advantage of an imposing presence, for he was short, slight, with blue
eyes and bushy hair; in all things he was the opposite to a demagogue;
he never beguiled, or flattered, or told others what he did not
believe himself. But, on his side, he _knew_ the people, whom most
revolutionary leaders know not at all. 'That is my sole merit,' he
used to say. It was that which enabled him to cleanse Venice from the
stain of having bartered her freedom for the smile of a conqueror, and
give her back the name and inheritance of 'eldest child of liberty.'

It was a matter of course that emancipated Venice should assume a
republican form of