Fall of the Republic of Venice Fall of the Republic of Venice The Fall of the Republic of Venice was a series of events in 1797 that led to the dissolution and dismemberment of the Republic of Venice at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte and Habsburg Austria. The Fall of the ancient Republic of Venice was the result of a sequence of events that followed the French Revolution (Fall of the Bastille, 14 July 1789), and the subsequent French Revolutionary Wars that pitted the First French Republic against the monarchic powers of Europe, allied in the First Coalition (1792), particularly following the execution of Louis XVI
1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State (secularism). Prior to the French Revolution of 1789, Roman Catholicism had been the state religion of France, and closely identified with the "Ancien Régime". However, the revolution led to various policy changes, including a brief separation of church and state in 1795, ended by Napoleon's re-establishment of the Catholic Church as the state religion with the Concordat of 1801. An important document in the evolution toward religious liberty was Article Ten of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, stating that "No one may be disturbed on account of his opinions, even religious ones, as long as