holly extinguishing Venice as an independent power. According to
the secret articles signed at Leoben, the city of Venice was to have
retained her independence and gained the Legations. But her contumacy
could now be chastised by annihilation. Venice could, in fact,
indemnify the Hapsburgs for the further cessions which France exacted
from them elsewhere; and in the process Bonaparte would free himself
from the blame which attached to his hasty signature of the
preliminaries at Leoben.[77] He was now determined to secure the Rhine
frontier for France, to gain independence, under French tutelage, not
only for the Lombard Republic, but also for Modena and the Legations.
These were his aims during the negotiations to which he gave the full
force of his intellect during the spring and summer of 1797.

The first thing was to pour French troops into Italy so as to extort
better terms: the next was to declare war on Venice. For this there
was now ample justification; for, apart from the massacre at Verona,
another outrage had been perpetrated. A French corsair, which had
persisted in anchoring in a forbidden part of the harbour of Venice,
had been riddled by the batteries and captured. For this act, and for
the outbreak at Verona, the Doge and Senate offered ample reparation:
but Bonaparte refused to listen to these envoys, "dripping with French
blood," and haughtily bade Venice evacuate her mainland
territories.[78] For various reasons he decided to use guile rather
than force. He found in Venice a secretary of the French legation,
Villetard by name, who could be trusted dextrously to undermine the
crumbling fabric of the oligarchy.[79] This man persuaded the
terrified populace that nothing would appease the fury of the
French general but the deposition of the existing oligarchy and the
formation of a democratic municipality. The people and the patricians
alike swallowed the bait; and the once haughty Senate tamely
pronounced its own doom. Disorders naturally occurred on the downfall
of the ancient oligarchy, especially when the new municipality ordered
the removal of Venetian men-of-war into the hands of the French and
the introduction of French troops by help of Venetian vessels. A
mournful silence oppressed even the democrats when 5,000 French troops
entered Venice on board the flotilla. The famous State, which for
centuries had ruled the waters of the Levant, and had held the fierce
Turks at bay, a people numbering 3,000,