ities,
Bergamo and Brescia, whose interests and feelings linked them with
Milan rather than Venice, the populace desired an alliance with the
nascent republic on the west and a severance from the gloomy
despotism of the Queen of the Adriatic. Though glorious in her prime,
she now governed with obscurantist methods inspired by fear of her
weakness becoming manifest; and Bonaparte, tearing off the mask which
hitherto had screened her dotage, left her despised by the more
progressive of her own subjects. Even before he first entered the
Venetian territory, he set forth to the Directory the facilities for
plunder and partition which it offered. Referring to its reception of
the Comte de Provence (the future Louis XVIII.) and the occupation of
Peschiera by the Austrians, he wrote (June 6th, 1796):

"If your plan is to extract five or six million francs from Venice,
I have expressly prepared for you this sort of rupture with her....
If you have intentions more pronounced, I think that you ought to
continue this subject of contention, instruct me as to your
desires, and wait for the favourable opportunity, which I will
seize according to circumstances, for we must not have everybody on
our hands at the same time."

The events which now transpired in Venetia gave him excuses for the
projected partition. The weariness felt by the Brescians and
Bergamesques for Venetian rule had been artfully played on by the
Jacobins of Milan and by the French Generals Kilmaine and Landrieux;
and an effort made by the Venetian officials to repress the growing
discontent brought about disturbances in which some men of the
"Lombard legion" were killed. The complicity of the French in the
revolt is clearly established by the Milanese journals and by the fact
that Landrieux forthwith accepted the command of the rebels at Bergamo
and Brescia.[75] But while these cities espoused the Jacobin cause,
most of the Venetian towns and all the peasantry remained faithful to
the old Government. It was clear that a conflict must ensue, even if
Bonaparte and some of his generals had not secretly worked to bring it
about. That he and they did so work cannot now be disputed. The circle
of proof is complete. The events at Brescia and Bergamo were part of
a scheme for precipitating a rupture with Venice; and their success
was so far assured that Bonaparte at Leoben secretly bargained away
nearly the whole of the Venetian lands. F