Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete
of Jesus Christ selected for preaching "that it was lawful, and even
meritorious, to kill Jacobins." Death to Frenchmen!--Death to Jacobins!
as they called all the French, were their rallying cries. At the time I
had not the slightest idea of this state of things, for I had left Sens
only on the 11th of April.
After stopping two hours at Verona, I proceeded on my journey without
being aware of the massacre which threatened that city. When about a
league from the town I was, however, stopped by a party of insurgents
on their way thither, consisting, as I estimated, of about two thousand
men. They only desired me to cry 'El viva Santo Marco', an order with
which I speedily complied, and passed on. What would have become of me
had I been in Verona on the Monday? On that day the bells were rung,
while the French were butchered in the hospitals. Every one met in the
streets was put to death. The priests headed the assassins, and more
than four hundred Frenchmen were thus sacrificed. The forts held
out against the Venetians, though they attacked them with fury; but
repossession of the town was not obtained until after ten days. On the
very day of the insurrection of Verona some Frenchmen were assassinated
between that city and Vicenza, through which I passed on the day before
without danger; and scarcely had I passed through Padua, when I learned
that others had been massacred there. Thus the assassinations travelled
as rapidly as the post.
I shall say a few words respecting the revolt of the Venetian States,
which, in consequence of the difference of political opinions, has been
viewed in very contradictory lights.
The last days of Venice were approaching, and a storm had been brewing
for more than a year. About the beginning of April 1797 the threatening
symptoms of a general insurrection appeared. The quarrel commenced when
the Austrians entered Peschiera, and some pretext was also afforded by
the reception given to Monsieur, afterwards Louis XVIII. It was certain
that Venice had made military preparations during the siege of Mantua
in 1796. The interests of the aristocracy outweighed the political
considerations in our favour. On, the 7th of June 1796 General Bonaparte
wrote thus to the Executive Directory:
The Senate of Venice lately sent two judges of their Council here to
ascertain definitively how things stand. I repeated my complaints.
I spoke to them about the reception given to Monsieur. Should it be
your plan to extract five or six millions from Venice, I have
expressly prepared this sort of rupture for you. If your intentions
be more decided, I think this ground of quarrel ought to be kept up.
Let me know what you mean to do, and wait till the favourable
moment, which I shall seize according to circumstances; for we must
not have to do with all the world at once.
The Directory answered that the moment was not favourable; that it
was first necessary to take Mantua, and give Wurmser a sound beating.
However, towards the end of the year 1796 the Directory began to give
more credit to the sincerity of the professions of neutrality made
on the part of Venice. It was resolved, therefore, to be content with
obtaining money and supplies for the army, and to refrain from violating
the neutrality. The Directory had not then in reserve, like Bonaparte,
the idea of making the dismemberment of Venice serve as a compensation
for such of the Austrian possessions as the French Republic might
retain.
In 1797 the expected favourable moment had arrived. The knell of Venice
was rung; and Bonaparte thus wrote to the Directory on the 30th of
April: "I am convinced that the only course to be now taken is to
destroy this ferocious and sanguinary Government." On the 3d of May,
writing from Palma Nuova, he says: "I see nothing that can be done but
to obliterate the Venetian name from the face of the globe."
Towards the end of March 1797 the Government of Venice was in a
desperate state. Ottolini, the Podesta of Bergamo, an instrument of
tyranny in the hands of the State inquisitors, then harassed the people
of Bergamo and Brescia, who, after the reduction of Mantua, wished to
be separated from Venice. He drew up, to be sent to the Senate, a long
report respecting the plans of separation, founded on information given
him by a Roman advocate, named Marcelin Serpini; who pretended to have
gleaned the facts he communicated in conversation with officers of the
French army. The plan of the patriotic party was, to unite the Venetian
territories on the mainland with Lombardy, and to form of the whole
one republic. The conduct of Ottolini exasperated the party inimical to
Venice, and augmented the prevailing discontent. Having disguised his
valet as a peasant, he sent him off to Venice with the report he had
drawn up on Serpini's communications, and other information; but this
report never reached the inquisitors. The valet was arrested, his
despatches taken, and Ottolini fled from Bergamo. This gave a beginning
to the general rising of the Venetian States. In fact, the force of
circumstances alone brought on the insurrection of those territories
against their old insular government. General La Hoz, who commanded
the Lombard Legion, was the active protector of the revolution,
which certainly had its origin more in the progress of the prevailing
principles of liberty than in the crooked policy of the Senate of
Venice. Bonaparte, indeed, in his despatches to the Directory, stated
that the Senate had instigated the insurrection; but that was not quite
correct, and he could not wholly believe his own assertion.
Pending the vacillation of the Venetian Senate, Vienna was exciting the
population of its States on the mainland to rise against the French.
The Venetian Government had always exhibited an extreme aversion to the
French Revolution, which had been violently condemned at Venice. Hatred
of the French had been constantly excited and encouraged, and religious
fanaticism had inflamed many persons of consequence in the country. From
the end of 1796 the Venetian Senate secretly continued its armaments,
and the whole conduct of that Government announced intentions which
have been called perfidious, but the only object of which was to defeat
intentions still more perfidious. The Senate was the irreconcilable
enemy of the French Republic. Excitement was carried to such a point
that in many places the people complained that they were not permitted
to arm against the French. The Austrian generals industriously
circulated the most sinister reports respecting the armies of the
Sombre-et-Meuse and the Rhine, and the position of the French troops in
the Tyrol. These impostures, printed in bulletins, were well calculated
to instigate the Italians, and especially the Venetians, to rise in mass
to exterminate the French, when the victorious army should penetrate
into the Hereditary States.
The pursuit of the Archduke Charles into the heart of Austria encouraged
the hopes which the Venetian Senate had conceived, that it would be easy
to annihilate the feeble remnant of the French army, as the troops were
scattered through the States of Venice on the mainland. Wherever the
Senate had the ascendency, insurrection was secretly fomented; wherever
the influence of the patriots prevailed, ardent efforts were made to
unite the Venetian terra firma to the Lombard Republic.
Bonaparte skillfully took advantage of the disturbances, and the
massacres consequent on them, to adopt towards the Senate the tone of
an offended conqueror. He published a declaration that the Venetian
Government was the most treacherous imaginable. The weakness and cruel
hypocrisy of the Senate facilitated the plan he had conceived of making
a peace for France at the expense of the Venetian Republic. On returning
from Leoben, a conqueror and pacificator, he, without ceremony, took
possession of Venice, changed the established government, and, master of
all the Venetian territory, found himself, in the negotiations of Campo
Formio, able to dispose of it as he pleased, as a compensation for the
cessions which had been exacted from Austria. After the 19th of May he
wrote to the Directory that one of the objects of his treaty with Venice
was to avoid bringing upon us the odium of violating the preliminaries
relative to the Venetian territory, and, at the same time, to afford
pretexts and to facilitate their execution.
At Campo Formio the fate of this republic was decided. It disappeared
from the number of States without effort or noise. The silence of its
fall astonished imaginations warmed by historical recollections from
the brilliant pages of its maritime glory. Its power, however, which had
been silently undermined, existed no longer except in the prestige of
those recollections. What resistance could it have opposed to the man
destined to change the face of all Europe?
CHAPTER V
1797.
Signature of the preliminaries of peace--Fall of Venice--My arrival
and reception at Leoben--Bonaparte wishes to pursue his success--
The Directory opposes him--He wishes to advance on Vienna--Movement
of the army of the Sombre-et-Mouse--Bonaparte's dissatisfaction--
Arrival at Milan--We take up our residence at Montebello--Napoleon's
judgment respecting Dandolo and Melzi.
I joined Bonaparte at Leoben on the 19th of April, the day after the
signature of the preliminaries of peace. These preliminaries resembled
in no respect the definitive treaty of Campo Formio. The still
incomplete fall of the State of Venice did not at that time present an
available prey for partition. All was arranged afterwards. Woe to the
small States that come in immediate contact with two colossal empires
waging war!
Here terminated my connection with Bonaparte as a comrade and equal, and
those relations with him commenced in which I saw him suddenly great,
powerful, and surrounded with homage and glory. I no longer addressed
him as I had been accustomed to do. I appreciated too well his personal
importance. His position placed too great a social distance between
him and me not to make me feel the necessity of fashioning my demeanour
accordingly. I made with pleasure, and without regret, the easy
sacrifice of the style of familiar companionship and other little
privileges. He said, in a loud voice, when I entered the salon where
he was surrounded by the officers who formed his brilliant staff, "I am
glad to see you, at last"--"Te voila donc, enfin;", but as soon as we
were alone he made me understand that he was pleased with my reserve,
and thanked me for it. I was immediately placed at the head of his
Cabinet. I spoke to him the same evening respecting the insurrection of
the Venetian territories, of the dangers which menaced the French, and
of those which I had escaped, etc. "Care thou' nothing about it," said
he;
--[He used to 'tutoyer' me in this familiar manner until his return
to Milan.]--
"those rascals shall pay for it. Their republic has had its day, and is
done." This republic was, however, still existing, wealthy and powerful.
These words brought to my recollection what I had read in a work by one
Gabriel Naude, who wrote during the reign of Louis XIII. for Cardinal de
Bagin: "Do you see Constantinople, which flatters itself with being the
seat of a double empire; and Venice, which glories in her stability of a
thousand years? Their day will come."
In the first conversation which Bonaparte had with me, I thought I could
perceive that he was not very well satisfied with the preliminaries. He
would have liked to advance with his army to Vienna. He did not conceal
this from me. Before he offered peace to Prince Charles, he wrote to
the Directory that he intended to pursue his success, but that for