The town is built upon one broad main canal, where the tidal current runs with great force, and upon several smaller ones. The cathedral, S. Donato, is a fine basilica, of the 12th century. The pavement (of 1111) is as richly inlaid as that of St Mark’s, and the mosaics of the tribune are remarkable. The exterior of the tribune is beautiful, and has been successfully restored. The church of St Peter the Martyr (1509) contains a fine picture by Gentile Bellini and other works, and S. Maria degli Angeli also contains several interesting pictures. Murano has from ancient times been celebrated for its glass manufactories. When and how the art was introduced is obscure, but there are notices of it as early as the 11th century; and in 1250 Christoforo Briani attempted the imitation of agate and Chalcedony. From the labours of his pupil Miotto sprang that branch of the glass trade which is concerned with the imitation of gems. In the 15th century the first crystals were made, and in the 17th the various gradations of coloured and iridescent glass were invented, together with the composition called “aventurine”; the manufacture of beads is now a main branch of the trade. The art of the glass-workers was taken under the protection of the Government in 1275, and regulated by a special code of laws and privileges; two fairs were held annually, and the export of all materials, such as alum and sand, which enter into the composition of glass was absolutely forbidden. With the decay of Venice the importance of the Murano glass-works declined; but A. Salviati (1816–1890) rediscovered many of the old processes, and eight firms are engaged in the trade, the most renowned being the Venezia Murano Company and Salviati. The municipal museum contains a collection of glass illustrating the history and progress of the art.
The island of Murano was first peopled by the inhabitants of Altino. It originally enjoyed independence under the rule of its tribunes and judges, and was one of the twelve confederate islands of the lagoons. In the 12th century the doge Vital Micheli II. incorporated Murano in Venice and attached it to the Sestiere of S. Croce. From that date it was governed by a Venetian nobleman with the title of podestà whose office lasted sixteen months. Murano, however, retained its original constitution of a greater and a lesser council for the transaction of municipal business, and also the right to coin gold and silver as well as its judicial powers. The interests of the town were watched at the ducal palace by a nuncio and a solicitor; and this constitution remained in force till the fall of the republic.
See Venezia e le sue Lagune; Paoletti, Il Fiore di Venezia; Bussolin, Guida alle fabbriche vetrarie di Murano; Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, i. 41.
MURAS, a tribe of South-American Indians living on the Amazon, from the Madeira to the Purus. Formerly a powerful people, they were defeated by their neighbours the Mundrucus in 1788. They are now partly civilized. Each village has a chief whose office is hereditary, but he has little power. The Muras are among the lowest of all Amazonian tribes.
MURAT, JOACHIM (1767–1815), king of Naples, younger son of an innkeeper at La Bastide-Fortuniére in the department of Lot, France, was born on the 25th of March 1767. Destined for the priesthood, he obtained a bursary at the college of Cahors, proceeding afterwards to the university of Toulouse, where he studied canon law. His vocation, however, was certainly not sacerdotal, and after dissipating his money he enlisted in a cavalry regiment. In 1789 he had attained the rank of maréchal der logis, but in 1790 he was dismissed the regiment for insubordination. After a period of idleness, he was enrolled, through the good offices of J. B. Cavaignac, in the new Constitutional Guard of Louis XVI. (1791). In Paris he gained a reputation for his good looks, his swaggering attitude, and the violence of his revolutionary sentiments. On the 30th of May 1792, the guard having been disbanded, he was appointed sub-lieutenant in the 21st Chasseurs a cheval, with which regiment he served in the Argonne and the Pyrénées, obtaining in the latter campaign the command of a squadron. After the 9th Thermidor, however, and the proscription of the Jacobins, with whom he had conspicuously identified himself, he fell under suspicion and was recalled from the front.
Returning to Paris (1795), he made the acquaintance of Napoleon Bonaparte, another young officer out of employment, who soon gained a complete ascendancy over his vain, ambitious and unstable nature. On the 13th Vendémiaire, when Bonaparte, commissioned by Barras, beat down with cannon the armed insurrection of the Paris sections against the Convention, Murat was his most active and courageous lieutenant, and was rewarded by the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 21st Chasseurs and the appointment of first aide de camp to General Bonaparte in Italy. In the first battles of the famous campaign of 1796 Murat so distinguished himself that he was chosen to carry the captured flags to Paris. He was promoted to be general of brigade, and returned to Italy in time to be of essential service to Bonaparte at Bassano, Corona and Fort St Giorgio, where he was wounded. He was then sent on a diplomatic mission to Genoa, but returned in time to be present at Rivoli. In the advance into Tirol in the summer of 1797 he commanded the vanguard, and by his passage of the Tagliamento hurried on the preliminaries of Leoben. In 1798 he was for a short time commandant at Rome, and then accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt. At the battle of the Pyramids he led his first famous cavalry charge, and so distinguished himself in Syria that he was made general of division (October, 1799). He returned to France with Bonaparte, and on the 18th Brumaire led into the orangery of Saint Cloud the sixty grenadiers whose appearance broke up the Council of Five Hundred. After the success of the coup d’état he was made commandant of the consular guard, and on the 20th of January 1800 he married Caroline Bonaparte, youngest sister of the first consul. He commanded the French cavalry at the battle of Marengo, and was afterwards made governor in the Cisalpine Republic. As commander of the army of observation in Tuscany he forced the Neapolitans to evacuate the Papal States and to accept the treaty of Florence (March 28, 1801). In January 1804 he was given the post of governor of Paris, and in this capacity appointed the military commission by which the duc d’Enghien was tried and shot (March 20); in May he was made marshal of the empire; in February 1805 he was made grand admiral, with the title of prince, and invested with the grand eagle of the Legion of Honour. He commanded the cavalry of the Grand Army in the German campaign of 1805, and was so conspicuous at Austerlitz that Napoleon made him grand duke of Berg and Cleves (March 15, 1806). He commanded the cavalry at Jena, Eylau, and Friedland, and in 1808 was made general-in-chief of the French armies in Spain. He entered Madrid on the 25th of March, and on the 2nd of May suppressed an insurrection in the city. He did much to prepare the events which ended in the abdication of Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII. at Bayonne; but the hopes he had cherished of himself receiving the crown of Spain were disappointed. On the 1st of August, however, he was appointed by Napoleon to the throne of Naples, vacated by the transference of Joseph Bonaparte to Spain.
King Joachim Napoleon, as he styled himself, entered Naples in September, his handsome presence and open manner gaining him instantaneous popularity. Almost his first act as king was to attack Capri, which he wrested from the British; but, this done, he returned to Naples and devoted himself to establishing his kingship according to his ideas, a characteristic blend of the vulgarity of a parvenu with the essential principles of the Revolution. He dazzled the lazzaroni with the extravagant splendour of his costumes; he set up a sumptuous court, created a new nobility, nominated marshals; With an eye to the overthrow of his legitimate rival in Sicily, he organized a large army and even a fleet; but he also swept away the last relics of the effete feudal system and took efficient measures for suppressing brigandage. From the first his relations with Napoleon were strained. The emperor upbraided him sarcastically for his “monkey tricks” (singeries); Murat ascribed to the deliberate ill-will of the French generals Who served with him, and even to Napoleon, the failure of his attack on Sicily in 1810. He resented
