, or
three months, he shall still have the same conditions; he may wait
until his last morsel of bread has been eaten." The messenger was a
clever man who afterward rendered his own name, that of Klenau,
illustrious. He recognized Bonaparte, and, glancing at the terms,
found them so generous that he at once admitted the desperate straits
of the garrison. This is substantially the account of Napoleon's
memoirs. In a contemporary despatch to the Directory there is nothing
of it, for he never indulged in such details to them; but he does say
in two other despatches what at first blush militates against its
literal truth. On February first, writing from Bologna, he declared
that he would withdraw his conditions unless Wurmser acceded before
the third: yet, in a letter of that very date, he indulges in a long
and high-minded eulogium of the aged field-marshal, and declares his
wish to show true French generosity to such a foe. The simple
explanation is that, having sent the terms, Bonaparte immediately
withdrew from Mantua to leave Serurier in command at the surrender, a
glory he had so well deserved, and then returned to Bologna to begin
his final preparations against Rome. In the interval Wurmser made a
proposition even more favorable to himself. Bonaparte petulantly
rejected it, but with the return of his generous feeling he determined
that at least he would not withdraw his first offer. Captious critics
are never content, and they even charge that when, on the tenth,
Wurmser and his garrison finally did march out, Bonaparte's absence
was a breach of courtesy. It requires no great ardor in his defense to
assert, on the contrary, that in circumstances so unprecedented the
disparity of age between the respective representatives of the old and
the new military system would have made Bonaparte's presence another
drop in the bitter cup of the former. The magnanimity of the young
conqueror in connection with the fall of Mantua was genuine, and
highly honorable to him. So at least thought Wurmser himself, who
wrote a most kindly letter to Bonaparte, forewarning him that a plot
had been formed in Bologna to poison him with that noted, but never
seen, compound so famous in Italian history--aqua tofana.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Humiliation of the Papacy and of Venice[69].

[Footnote 69: The authorities for the following three
chapters are partly as before, but in particular the
following: