Great Council of Venice
As the French Revolutionary Wars erupted into northern Italy, Venice was shaken to its core: the spread of radical Jacobin ideals among her subjects, the undisguised hostility of the victorious French armies to the ancient aristocratic republic, and the dismal state of Venetian finances and military preparedness led to the gradual erosion of Venetian rule in its mainland possessions (Terraferma), and the eventual Fall of the Republic of Venice to Napoleon Bonaparte in May 1797. In the Ionian Islands, the news of the French advance into Lombardy in 1796 led Widmann to take extraordinary measures to strengthen the defence of the Islands, even investing his own private fortune for the cause. French agents were already active in the islands, most notably the French consul in Zakynthos, the merchant Constantine Guys, who not only fomented anti-Venetian feeling, but was suspected of orchestrating the arson of his own consulate on 29 October, an event that was used by Napoleon as one of the pretexts for his declaration of war against Venice. Rumours of the self-abolition of the Great Council of Venice on 12 May spread quickly to the islands. While pro-French elements (the "karmanioloi") were instructed by Guys on the meaning of concepts like "liberty" and "equality", many nobles mobilized against them, with proposals were made to kill all French sympathizers. Despite such agitation, order was kept, and the definite news of the political change in the metropolis, with the establishment of a new, republican , in early June, was met with calm and restraint.