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Updated: May 9, 2025
Italy, under the secret treaty of London, signed April 26, 1915, by the representatives of Russia, France, Great Britain and Italy, was to receive that part of Austria known as the Trentine, the entire southern Tyrol, the city and suburbs of Trieste, the Istrian Islands and the province of Dalmatia with various adjacent islands.
The blue waters of the lagoon swarmed with boats and gondolas decked with flowers and streamers of the gayest hues, the Venetian Gothic palaces along the canal were hung with Indian and Persian carpets. The rich colours of Oriental stuffs relieved the dazzling whiteness of Istrian stone, and festoons of fresh leaves and flowers were twisted round their columns of porphyry and serpentine.
There was traffic in wines, wood, marble, and granite. Istrian acorns nourished a fine breed of pigs which were exported to Rome. The purple-dyeing factories of Cissa near Rovigno, the fulling works of Pola and Trieste, and the potteries of Aquileia were known far and wide. Nor were philanthropic works neglected.
She would not allow a drop of blood to be shed in her behalf. An Istrian warship which had been waiting for her at the coast took her to Europe with her devoted lady-in-waiting, the Baroness d'Altenberg." "D'Altenberg," I muttered; "where have heard that name?" "It was a bloodless revolution." "And Razzaro triumphed?" I added aloud.
The people have always been fond of such displays, and till the seventeenth century there was a great function at the departure of the rector, who was solemnly bidden farewell by one of the syndics or nobles in the cathedral. These Istrian coast towns have always shown enlightenment in the matter of education.
The next year a similar attack was made by the Slavs of Croatia and Dalmatia, but the Doge Orso met them, defeated them, and gave back to several Istrian towns objects of which they had been robbed. Between Grado and Aquileia there was a constant struggle for supremacy, which was in reality a contest between Venice and the empire, Aquileia standing for the latter and Grado for the former.
Here are two inscriptions mentioning an entirely unknown god and goddess, and the inscription of Gordian in which the name of Nesactium occurs, the discovery of which fixed the site of the most important of the Istrian cities, the scene of the massacre of the women and children by the hands of their husbands and fathers, to prevent them from being taken by the Romans.
Malamocco lies considerably farther, and needs a full hour of stout rowing to reach it. Alighting there, we cross the narrow strip of land, and find ourselves upon the huge sea-wall block piled on block of Istrian stone in tiers and ranks, with cunning breathing-places for the waves to wreak their fury on and foam their force away in fretful waste.
Pursuant to this arrangement we slept in a great barn of a hotel whose echoing corridors had, in happier days, been a favorite resort of the wealth and fashion of Hungary, but whose once costly furniture had been sadly dilapidated by the spurred boots of the Austrian staff officers who had used it as a headquarters; in the mornings we had our sugarless coffee and butterless war-bread on a lofty balcony commanding a superb panorama of the Istrian coast from Icici to Volosca and of the island-studded Bay of Quarnero, and commuted to and from Fiume in the big gray Lancia in which we had traveled along the line of the Armistice for upward of 2,000 miles.
Over head an inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and chimney flues pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high over all.
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