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 government.  Here the republic was a restoration.  At Milan the case was different; there were two parties, that of Cattaneo, which was strongly republican, that of Casati, which was strongly monarchical.  There was a third party, which thought of nothing except of never again seeing a soldier with a white coat.  By mutual agreement, the Provisional Government declared that the decision as to the form of government should be left to calmer days.  For a time this compromise produced satisfactory results.