The Rossetti Letter (v5) (42 page)

A
LTHOUGH
T
HE
R
OSSETTI
L
ETTER
is a work of fiction, the Spanish Conspiracy against Venice is a real event. It has been written about and debated by historians and others ever since Paolo Sarpi, author of
History of the Council of Trent
and Venice’s official historiographer, summed up his thoughts on the conspiracy in a memorandum to the state in the early seventeenth century.

Accounts of the Spanish Conspiracy typically follow a similar narrative, although the particulars often vary. In May 1618, the duke of Ossuna and the marquis of Bedmar were accused of planning an attack on Venice “from within and without”: Ossuna with his fleet, Bedmar with a newly recruited mercenary army. The plot was ended precipitously when one of the mercenaries revealed all to the Venetian Senate. Three of the mercenaries were hanged in San Marco—strung up by their feet, the sign of treason. The Venetian government gave no reason for the executions, but the sight of the hanged men quickly emptied the city’s inns and lodging houses of the
bravi,
soldiers, and sailors whose numbers in Venice had recently increased. By some accounts, three hundred of these French and Spanish soldiers-of-fortune were subjected to Venetian justice and were drowned in the Canal of Orphans; other chronicles mention only three so ruthlessly dispatched.

Bedmar was summoned by the Senate for a fractious meeting in which he was accused of “ignoble deceits”; even though he proclaimed his innocence, he soon left Venice and never returned. Ossuna’s reign in Naples also came to an unsavory end. He was recalled to Spain, accused of seeking to make himself “king of Naples,” and died in jail two years later.

Although Bedmar and Ossuna’s complicity has never been established beyond doubt—the basis for the belief in their culpability ultimately lies with Sarpi’s pro-Venetian view of the events—it seems clear that they were by no means innocent of the desire to stage a coup against Venice. The facts of the Spanish Conspiracy have been long debated, and it’s possible that no one will ever be certain of exactly what happened. I have attempted to give an accurate portrayal of the Spanish Conspiracy, insofar as those events are known. For the purposes of fiction, however, I changed the timing of the deaths of the three conspirators, moving forward to March 1618 what actually occurred in May of that year.

But with its lack of definitive evidence, the Spanish Conspiracy still offers an unsolved mystery, which has allowed for much invention on my part. With the exception of Ossuna and Bedmar (and minor characters Jacques Pierre and Nicholas Regnault, French mercenaries who are often mentioned in accounts of the conspiracy), all the characters in the novel—including Alessandra Rossetti, Antonio Perez, La Celestia, and Girolamo Silvia—are fictitious, as are the situations in which they are involved. However, the characters’ lives, concerns, and milieus are rooted in research of the period. In re-creating the world of seventeenth-century Venice, I was greatly assisted by a variety of sources.

Regarding the Spanish Conspiracy, I am deeply indebted to Professor Richard Mackenney for his erudite and fascinating article, “A Plot Discover’d?: Myth, Legend and the ‘Spanish’ Conspiracy against Venice in 1618,” collected in
Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State 1297–1797
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), which first posits the intriguing idea that the “Spanish” conspiracy was a feat of statecraft engineered by master propagandist Paolo Sarpi. Other accounts of the Spanish Conspiracy can be found in
Venice; an historical sketch of the Republic
(Putnam, 1893) and
The Venetian Republic
(J. M. Dent, 1902) by Horatio F. Brown;
Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation
by William J. Bouwsma (University of California Press, 1968);
New Cambridge Modern History,
volume IV (Cambridge University Press); and
A History of the Italian Republics
by JCL Sismondi (Anchor Books, 1966). There is also a brief mention in Will and Ariel Durant’s
The Story of Civilisation,
part VII (Simon & Schuster, 1961).

For general Venetian history, I found those stalwart classics,
Venice—A Maritime Republic
by Frederic C. Lane (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973) and
A History of Venice
by John Julius Norwich (Knopf, 1982) to be most helpful. The
Diary of John Evelyn
(Oxford University Press, 1959) and Michel de Montaigne’s
Diary of a Journey to Italy in 1580 and 1581
(Harcourt Brace, 1929) provided enlightening first-person accounts of travelers to Venice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Tim Moore’s
The Grand Tour
(St. Martin’s Press, 2001) contrasted the author’s hilarious twentieth-century Venetian pilgrimage with that of seventeenth-century wanderer Thomas Coryate. I was often inspired by the incomparable
The World of Venice
by Jan Morris (Harcourt Brace, 1993), an evocative, multifaceted exploration of the city’s past and present.

Lynne Lawner’s
Lives of the Courtesans: Portraits of the Renaissance
(Rizzoli International, 1991), Patricia Fortini Brown’s
Private Lives in Renaissance Venice
(Yale University Press, 2004), and Margaret Rosenthal’s and Catherine Stimpson’s
The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco
(University of Chicago Press, 1993) were invaluable sources on Venetian courtesans. Also,
The Book of Courtesans
by Susan Griffin (Broadway Books, 2001) and
Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals
by Cornelia Otis Skinner (Houghton Mifflin, 1962) offered anecdotes and insights into the world’s oldest profession. On the flip side, Mary Laven’s
Virgins of Venice
(Viking Press, 2002) provided a compelling examination of Venetian nuns and convents.

My sincere thanks to everyone who so graciously read and commented on this work: Briana Baillie, Marianne Betterly-Kohn, Claudia Michelle Betty, Bruce Cobbold, Lauren Cuthbert, Karen Hronek, Amanda Jones, Danielle Machotka, Kate McClain, Megan McLaughlin, Cynthia Phillips, Chelsea Tiffany, and Alison Wright. I am also indebted to Professor Richard Mackenney for his help and advice regarding the Spanish Conspiracy, Venetian history, and historical research. All errors, inaccuracies, and improbable fictions, etc., are solely my own. I owe a debt of gratitude to my parents, Don and Laurie Phillips, for their unflagging love and support over the years. My thanks also go to Mary Evans, agent par excellence, and to Maggie Crawford, who from the beginning saw the book’s potential and who so skillfully—and diplomatically—made it better. Everlasting love and thanks to Brian Beverly, for his support, encouragement, and belief. A special thank-you to Diana Cobbold and Linda Watanabe McFerrin, for the camaraderie, the commiseration, and, of course, the chocolate.