avia, particularly, the tomb of St. Augustine, which the
inhabitants were accustomed to view with peculiar veneration, was
mutilated and defaced. This last provocation having roused the
resentment of the people, they flew to arms, surrounded the French
garrison, and took them prisoners, but carefully abstained from
offering any violence to a single soldier. In revenge for this
conduct, Buonaparte, then on his march to the Mincio, suddenly
returned, collected his troops, and carried the extremity of military
execution over the country: he burnt the town of Benasco, and
massacred eight hundred of its inhabitants; he marched to Pavia, took
it by storm, and delivered it over to general plunder, and published,
at the same moment, a proclamation, of May 26, ordering his troops to
shoot all those who had not laid down their arms and taken an oath
of obedience, and to burn every village where the _tocsin_ should be
sounded, and to put its inhabitants to death.

The transactions with Modena were on a smaller scale, but in the same
character. Buonaparte began by signing a treaty, by which the Duke
of Modena was to pay twelve millions of livres, and neutrality was
promised him in return; this was soon followed by the personal arrest
of the Duke, and by a fresh extortion of two hundred thousand sequins;
after this he was permitted, on the payment of a further sum, to sign
another treaty, called a _Convention de Suerete_, which of course was
only the prelude to the repetition of similar exactions. Nearly at
the same period, in violation of the rights of neutrality, and of the
treaty which had been concluded between the French Republic and the
Grand Duke of Tuscany in the preceding year, and in breach of a
positive promise given only a few days before, the French army
forcibly took possession of Leghorn, for the purpose of seizing the
British property which was deposited there, and confiscating it as
prize; and shortly after, when Buonaparte agreed to evacuate Leghorn
in return for the evacuation of the island of Elba, which was in the
possession of the British troops, he insisted upon a separate
article, by which, in addition to the plunder before obtained, by the
infraction of the law of nations, it was stipulated that the Grand
Duke should pay to the French the expense which they had incurred by
this invasion of his territory.

In the proceedings towards Genoa we shall find not only a continuation
of the same system of extortion