nd procession; but the saints appeared to take no
compassion on him, and he now withdrew from the capital. A revolutionary
party had always existed there, as indeed in every part of the Austrian
dominions beyond the Alps; and the tricolor cockade, the emblem of
France, was now mounted by multitudes of the inhabitants. The
municipality hastened to invite the conqueror to appear among them as
their friend and protector; and on the 14th of May, four days after
Lodi, Napoleon accordingly entered, in all the splendour of a military
triumph, the venerable and opulent city of the old Lombard kings.

He was not, however, to be flattered into the conduct, as to serious
matters, of a friendly general. He levied immediately a heavy
contribution (eight hundred thousand pounds sterling) at Milan,--taking
possession, besides, of twenty of the finest pictures in the Ambrosian
gallery.

The conqueror now paused to look about and behind him; and proceeded
still farther to replenish his chest by exactions, for which no
justification can be adduced from the ordinary rules of international
law. With Sardinia he had already reckoned; of the Austrian capital in
Italy he had possession; there was only one more of the Italian
governments (Naples) with which the French Republic was actually at war;
although, indeed, he had never concealed his intention of revenging the
fate of Basseville on the court of Rome. The other powers of Italy were,
at worst, neutrals; with Tuscany and Venice, France had friendly
relations. But Napoleon knew or believed, that all the Italian
governments, without exception, considered the French invasion of Italy
as a common calamity; the personal wishes of most of the minor princes
(nearly connected as these were, by blood or alliance, with the imperial
house of Austria) he, not unreasonably, concluded were strongly against
his own success in this great enterprise. Such were his pretences--more
or less feasible; the temptation was, in fact, great; and he resolved to
consider and treat whatever had not been with him as if it had been
against him. The weak but wealthy princes of Parma and Modena, and
others of the same order, were forthwith compelled to purchase his
clemency not less dearly than if they had been in arms. Besides money,
of which he made them disburse large sums, he demanded from each a
tribute of pictures and statues, to be selected at the discretion of
Citizen Monge and other French connoisseurs, who now