The Victims of 18 March 1848
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18 March 1848
Coraggio dimostrato dai Veneziani pella libertà e prime vittime del 18 Marzo 1848
The courage shown by the Venetians struggling for liberty and the first victims of March, 18, 1848
The Venice Revolution began on 17 March 1848, as soon as news from Vienna of the Hungarian Revolution and of Metternich's fall reached the city in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, which had been under Austrian rule since 1814. When the news arrived, the crowd claimed and obtained freedom for Daniele Manin, Nicolò Tommaseo, and other political prisoners. On Saturday 18 March, there was an escalation of urban violence and the joyful atmosphere evaporated when late in the morning a crowd of bourgeois, among them students from Padua University, and workers gathered in St. Mark Square. As soon as the Austrian soldiers arrived, people started breaking stones from the pavement to use as weapons against the troops. Officers ordered the latter to fire and eight Venetians were killed (among them two teenager artisans) and nine wounded. The image shows the socially mixed profile of the participants (including young boys), as well as the impressive gesture of a man breaking up stones, in a kind of iconoclastic ritual recalling that captured by H. Vernet in his painting of the barricades in Paris, Rue Soufflot, on 25 June 1848.
18 March 1848 was a turning point on the road toward the Venetian Republic and it was to nurture the myth of Venice's bravery in the revolutionary wave that swept Europe.
Coraggio dimostrato dai Veneziani pella libertà e prime vittime del 18 Marzo 1848
The courage shown by the Venetians struggling for liberty and the first victims of March, 18, 1848
The Venice Revolution began on 17 March 1848, as soon as news from Vienna of the Hungarian Revolution and of Metternich's fall reached the city in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, which had been under Austrian rule since 1814. When the news arrived, the crowd claimed and obtained freedom for Daniele Manin, Nicolò Tommaseo, and other political prisoners. On Saturday 18 March, there was an escalation of urban violence and the joyful atmosphere evaporated when late in the morning a crowd of bourgeois, among them students from Padua University, and workers gathered in St. Mark Square. As soon as the Austrian soldiers arrived, people started breaking stones from the pavement to use as weapons against the troops. Officers ordered the latter to fire and eight Venetians were killed (among them two teenager artisans) and nine wounded. The image shows the socially mixed profile of the participants (including young boys), as well as the impressive gesture of a man breaking up stones, in a kind of iconoclastic ritual recalling that captured by H. Vernet in his painting of the barricades in Paris, Rue Soufflot, on 25 June 1848.
18 March 1848 was a turning point on the road toward the Venetian Republic and it was to nurture the myth of Venice's bravery in the revolutionary wave that swept Europe.