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VENICE: Dashing through Venice’s narrow streets in yellow knickerbockers and a blue top coat, Alberto Montagner is heading to a trial 200 years late.
In the courtroom of the Palazzo Ducale, overlooking the Grand Canal, a crowd has gathered to hear sentence passed on Napoleon Bonaparte — Emperor of France.
“Napoleon was a criminal. History books present him as a saviour of the Italian people. He wasn’t. He raped, sacked and pillaged. The Republic of Venice had no need of him. We want a ferocious condemnation,” Montagner said, clutching a bayonet.
After 36 hours of testimony, 18 witnesses and 12 pages of accusations, one of this year’s most bizarre trials is drawing to a close.
The charges include massacre, looting, forced conscription and a breach of modern day international law that helped tip the 1,000-year old Venetian Republic into decades of poverty.
Under the dark-beamed ceilings of the Doge’s Palace, Montagner, a bank manager now decked out as an 18th century Venetian soldier, trades barbs with a 21st century lawyer — one of 20 drafted in to try the Emperor under modern Italian law. A court attendant rings a bell. All rise.
REPUBLIC: Napoleon and the French army marched into the Venetian Republic in 1796. His defenders — who include some Venetians and the history found in most Italian school books — say his arrival was largely a relief.
The lagoon city of gilted palaces and gondolas had already fallen from its 13th century zenith when famous sons like Marco Polo had sailed from its wharfs and its territories had stretched from northern Italy to Cyprus.
Napoleon started building projects, instilled a new justice system and breathed life back into Venice’s artistic circles.
But critics blast him for yoking Venice together with other conquered lands in the boot-shaped country, paving the way for the creation of the Italian state 60 years later and sucking wealth and people away from “La Serenissima”.
While the trial is a bit of fun, it points to on-going political tension in northeastern Italy where staunch members of the right-wing Northern League party want to split the Veneto region from the rest of Italy.
ART AND GUNBOATS: “I became a lawyer to defend my country. Venice was clamorously raped by Napoleon and his army,” said Giuseppe Frigoreta, president of the Italian association of criminal lawyers and leader of the Napoleon prosecution.
“This is a quest for the truth, to restore Italian history to the people. It’s never too late for that.”
Theft, rape, murder. The worst charges are on the table.
Venetian soldiers’ log notes describe poisonings of patriots and the republic’s records list the looting of thousands of ducats, the burning of gunboats and theft of art like Veronese’s “Marriage Feast at Cana”, which now hangs in the Paris Louvre.
Napoleon’s defence, at times inaudible above boos and hissing, said his advances had been welcomed by most Venetians and any so-called crimes were just “acts of war”. Nobody acted the part of Napoleon.
“We find Napoleon guilty as charged,” district attorney Antonio Fojadelli said to whoops from the audience, including 15 military reservists in ancient dress who practice weapon-handling at the weekend and came to guard the trial.—Reuters
