Venetian provinces that lay between the Po, the Oglio, and the Adriatic; it was pretended that in compensation for these she was to receive the three legations of Romagna, Ferrara, and Bologna.
Much of this preliminary agreement had been kept secret; but the Venetian Ambassador in Vienna, Grimani, knew of the general tenor of the document, and warned the Senate that it was intended to dismember the Venetian territory.
The Senate was roused from its apathy when it was
FROM THE PONTE S. ROCCO
too late, and now sat permanently. Orders were given that no stranger was to be allowed to enter the city unless bearing official letters, and no ship was to pass into the lagoons that did not fly the Venetian flag. Some attempt was made to get more vessels ready for sea.
The French had not wasted time, and a general insurrection had broken out under their management in all the cities of the mainland. Within twenty-four hours the governors of Padua, Verona, and other important places came in for refuge, as also the Provveditors of the army, whose occupation was gone.
Meanwhile two nobles, Francesco Donà and Leonardo Giustiniani, had been sent in haste to Gratz, after Junot’s appearance, and they were received by Bonaparte on the twenty-fifth of April. The interview that followed is highly characteristic of the man when it suited his ends to work himself into a fury. The political prisoners were to be liberated, or he would ‘come and break down the Piombi; he would have no Inquisition, no antique barbarities.’ He spoke of the imaginary massacre of his innocent troops. ‘His army cried vengeance, and he could not refuse it.’ ‘If all the culprits were not punished, if the English Minister were not driven away, if the people were not disarmed, if all the prisoners were not set free, if Venice would not choose between France and England, he declared war.’ ‘He would have no Inquisition, no Senate, he would be an Attila to the Venetian State.’ And much more to the same effect, all of which is on record. The two Venetians answered sensibly, when they could get in a word, but Bonaparte meant war, and when he meant that he would listen to no one.
Having acted his scene, he asked the two to dinner and proceeded to extract information from them, after his manner. His inquiries chiefly concerned the horrors attributed to the aristocratic government by the very imaginative French democratic mind; for the lower classes, being nearer to nature, have always had much more imagination than their social betters, which explains their belief in ghost stones, hidden treasures, and the rights of man.