made excuses. Whereupon Bonaparte answered that he would ‘beat the Austrians and make the Venetians pay for the war.’ Which he did.
At the same time he was writing to the Directory:—
... I am obliged to be indignant with the Provveditor, to exaggerate the number of assassinations, etc., in order that he, to calm my fury, may furnish me everything I
Rom. ix. 351.
need; they will continue to give us what we want, willingly or by force, until Mantua is taken, after which I shall demand of them such contribution as you may order me, which will not be in the least difficult.
If Bonaparte could find pretexts for accusing the Venetians of helping the Austrians, the latter had excellent reasons for complaining that Venice helped the French. Austria and France were the two stools between which half measures had led the Republic, and between which she fell.
The position of the French army was not enviable at that time, and the alliance of Venice would really have been worth having, which was the reason why her obstinate efforts at neutrality exasperated Bonaparte to such a degree. At last his patience gave out and he ordered General Baraguay d’Hilliers, the father of the marshal of that name who died in 1878,
Twenty-fifth of December 1796.
to occupy Bergamo, not as a guest, but as master. The Austrians at once replied by seizing Palma and Osopo.
The peasants and the small communities were now driven to extremities; for the Government had left them to their fate, and they were plundered alike by the French and the Austrians. Discontent spread rapidly, and the rural population may be supposed to have been in the best possible disposition to receive the revolutionary doctrines by which Bonaparte had already called into existence the Cispadane Republic. That short-lived affair was made up of the cities and territories of Ferrara, Bologna, Modena, and Reggio d’Emilia, and was momentarily the headquarters of republicanism. In spite of all that the remnant of government in Venice could do against it, its influence was felt on Venetian territory. Behind all, the propaganda of Milan worked