oint of difference, the grand duchy of
Modena, which Francis for the honor of his house was determined to
keep, if possible. With Tuscany, Modena, and the Venetian mainland all
in their hands, the Austrian authorities felt that time would surely
restore to them the lost Milanese. But Bonaparte was obdurate. On the
eighteenth the preliminaries were closed and adopted. The Austrians
solemnly declared at the time that, when the papers were to be
exchanged formally, Bonaparte presented a copy which purported to be a
counterpart of what had been mutually arranged. Essential differences
were, however, almost immediately marked by the recipients, and when
they announced their discovery with violent clamor, the cool,
sarcastic general produced without remark another copy, which was
found to be a correct reproduction of the preliminary terms agreed
upon. This coarse and silly ruse seems to have been a favorite device,
for it was tried later in another conspicuous instance, the
negotiation of the Concordat. According to the authentic articles,
France was to have Belgium, with the "limits of France" as decreed by
the laws of the republic, a purposely ambiguous expression. In this
preliminary outline the Rhine boundary was not mentioned. The
territory of the Empire was also guaranteed. These flat contradictions
indicate something like panic on both sides, and duplicity at least on
one and probably on both, for Thugut's correspondence indicates his
firm purpose to despoil and destroy Venice. In any case Austria
obtained the longed-for mainland of Venice as far as the river Oglio,
together with Istria and Dalmatia, the Venetian dependencies beyond
the Adriatic, while Venice herself was to be nominally indemnified by
the receipt of the three papal legations, Bologna, Ferrara, and the
Romagna, which had just been erected into the Transpadane Republic!
Modena was to be united with Mantua, Reggio, and the Milanese into a
great central republic, which would always be dependent on France, and
was to be connected with her territory by way of Genoa. Some of the
articles were secret, and all were subject to immaterial changes in
the final negotiations for definitive peace, which were to be carried
on later at Bern, chosen for the purpose as being a neutral city.

Bonaparte explained, in a letter to the Directory, that whatever
occurred, the Papal States could never become an integral part of
Venice, and would always be under French influences