Balloon bombs dropped on Venice
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| Luigi Querena's dramatic painting of the blazing Church of San Geremia on the Grand Canal during the Austrian bombardment |
Venice suffered the first successful air raid in the history
of warfare on this day in 1849.
It came six months after Austria had defeated the Kingdom of
Piedmont-Sardinia in the First Italian War of Independence as the Austrians
sought to regain control of Venice, where the revolutionary leader Daniele
Manin had established the Republic of San Marco.
The city, over which Manin’s supporters had seized control in
March 1848, was under siege by the Austrians, whose victory over the
Piedmontese army in March 1849 had enabled them to concentrate more resources
on defeating the Venetians.
They had regained much of the mainland territory of Manin’s
republic towards the end of 1848 and were now closing in on the city itself,
having decided that cutting off resources while periodically bombarding the
city from the sea would bring Venice’s capitulation.
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| An artist's impression of how the balloon bombs may have looked |
However, because of the shallow lagoons and the strength of
Venice’s coastal defences, there were still parts of the city that were out of
the range of the Austrian artillery.
It was at this point that one of Austrian commander Josef
von Radetzky’s artillery officers, Lieutenant Franz von Uchatius, came up with
the unlikely idea of attaching bombs to unmanned balloons and letting the wind
carry them into Venice.
He devised a crude timing device using charcoal and greased
cotton thread that would release the bomb at the moment he calculated it would
be over the city.
Of course, he had no control over the speed or direction of
the wind and when a first attempt was made in July 1849 it failed miserably,
none of the balloons reaching their target and some drifting back towards where
they were launched, exploding over the Austrian forces.
Undeterred, the Austrians tried again on August 22,
launching an estimated 200 balloons, each carrying more than 14kg (30lbs) of
explosives. This time a number of them
hit their target, although the damaged they caused was minimal.
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| Daniele Manin led the overthrow of the Austrians in Venice in 1848 |
Nonetheless, it signalled the arrival of a new dimension to
warfare, raising the possibility that civilian populations well behind the
front lines of their armies could become targets for attack. To the vocabulary of warfare could now be
added the ‘air raid’.
In fact, it was Italian forces that would launch the first
proper ‘air raid’ in history, some 62 years later in 1911, when bombs were
dropped from an Italian aeroplane over a village near Tripoli in Libya, then
part of the Ottoman Empire.
As it happens, the Republic of San Marco fell only two days
after the 1849 balloon attack, although the two events were almost certainly
unconnected. Venice was already on its
knees, with stocks of food and ammunition exhausted, and Manin had negotiated a
honourable surrender than would see himself and other leaders spared their
lives and liberty on condition that they leave Venice and go into exile.
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| The beautiful Oratory of the Crucifix in Chiesa di San Polo lined with paintings by Giandomenico Tiepolo |
Travel tip:
Daniele Manin’s birthplace in Venice was in the San Polo sestiere
– district – of which the main public space is the vast Campo San Polo, the
second largest square in Venice after San Marco and much quieter, at least in
terms of tourist activity, and some would say a much more comfortable place to
experience an authentic Venice, with bars frequented as much by local people
going about their business as visitors.
In any other city the 15th century Gothic Chiesa di San Polo would
be the main attraction, featuring an interior beautifully restored by David
Rossi in the early 19th century and featuring paintings by
Tintoretto, Jacopo Guarana, Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, Palma il
Giovane and Paolo Veronese.
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| Campo Manin in San Marco, featuring the statue of Manin |
Travel tip:
Manin’s main residence in adult life was a house on
the Rio de l’Barcaroli canal in the San Marco sestiere facing what used to be
Campo San Pernian, now renamed Campo Manin, through which many visitors pass
each day between Teatro la Fenice with Teatro Goldoni. In the centre of this
square is a bronze statue of Manin, sculpted by Luigi Borro and erected in
1875, with a bronze winged lion of Venice resting at the foot of the
plinth.