"The panic which the French advance had by this time spread, was such, that the Pope had no hope but in submission. The alarm in Rome itself recalled the days of Alaric the Goth. The treaty of Tollentino (12th Feb. 1797) followed. By this the Pope conceded formally (for the first time) his ancient territory of Avignon; he resigned the legations of Ferrara, Bologna, and Romagna, and the port of Ancona; agreed to pay about a million and a half sterling, and to execute to the utmost the provisions of Bologna with respect to the works of art. On these terms Pius was to remain nominal master of some shreds of the patrimony of St. Peter. Bonaparte was satisfied, on the whole, that he should best secure his ultimate purposes by suffering the Vatican to prolong, for some time further the shadow of that sovereignty, which had in former ages trampled on kings and emperors."*

"In nine days the war with the Pope had reached its close; and having left some garrisons in the towns on the Adige to watch the neutrality of Venice, Napoleon hastened to carry the war into the hereditary dominions of Austria. He proceeded to the frontier of the Frioul. The Austrian army had once more on a double basis-one great division on the Tyrolese frontier, and the greater under the Archduke Charles himself on the Triulese.t To give the details of the sixth campaign would be to repeat the story which has been already five times told. Bonaparte found the Archduke posted behind the river Tagliamento, in front of the rugged Carinthian mountains, which guard the passage in that quarter from Italy to Germany. Detaching Massena to the (river) Piave, where the Austrian division of Lusignan were in observation, he himself determined to charge the Archduke in front. Massena was successful in driving Lusignan before him as far as Belluno, and thus turned the Austrian flank. Bonaparte then attempted and effected the passage of the Tagliamento. After a great and formal display of his forces, which was met by similar demonstrations on the Austrian side of the river, he suddenly broke up his line and retreated. The archduke, knowing that French had been marching all the night before, concluded that the general wished to defer the battle till another day; and, in like manner withdrew to his camp. About two hours after, Napoleon rushed with his whole army, who had merely lain down in ranks, upon the margin of the Tagliamento, no longer adequately guarded, and had forded the stream, ere the Austrian line of battle could be formed. In the action which followed (12th March, 1797) the troops of the Archduke displayed great gallantry, but every effort to dislodge Napoleon failed; at length retreat was judged necessary. The French followed hard behind. They stormed Gradisca, where they made 5,000 prisoners, and occupied, in the course of a few days, Trieste, Fiume, and every stronghold in Carinthia. In the course of a campaign of twenty days, the

* Hist. of Napoleon, vol. i, pp. 90–93.

† Ibid. p. 95.

Austrians fought Bonaparte ten times, but the overthrow of the Tagliamento was never recovered'; and the Archduke, after de fending Styria inch by inch as he had the Fiume and Carinthia, at length adopted the resolution of reaching Vienna by forced marches, there to gather round him whatever force the royalty of his nation could muster, and make a last stand beneath the walls of the capital."* Vienna was panic-struck on hearing that Bonaparte had stormed the passes of the Julian Alps. The war with Austria was at an end." "The provisional treaty of Leoben

was signed, April 18, 1797."

The commentary is clear as full; the prophecy is not of any private interpretation, not a word of which is needed; and the judgment is so manifest, that, on reading this record of blood, as of all that have preceded them, it may be said, "he that hath ears to hear let him hear."

But as yet the illustration is not complete; nor the full measure of the vial poured out. There was a spot, a portion of the waters, on which Attila had been, which Bonaparte had not touched; and instead as he had purposed, of leaving the streams of Italy, and dictating peace under the walls of Vienna, he had injuries and treacheries to avenge against Venice. And in fulfilling, for the time, the appointed task, prescribed in the word of that God whom his directorial masters denied, Bonaparte, by his words, as well as by his actions, becomes the expositor of the sacred oracle, the first act of the fulfilment of which had already placed his name among the first of bloodstained heroes.

"No sooner was the negotiation in a fair train, than Napoleon, abandoning for a moment the details of its management to inferior diplomatists, hastened to retrace his steps, and to pour the full storm of his WRATH upon the Venetians. The Doge and his Senate, whose only hopes had rested on the successes of Austria on the Adige, heard with utter despair that the Archduke had shared the fate of Beaulieu, of Wurmser, and of Alvinzi, and that

* Hist. of Napoleon, vol. i. pp. 96, 97.

† Ibid. p. 98.

the preliminaries of peace were actually signed. The rapidity of Bonaparte's return gave them no breathing-time."*

The senate despatched agents to deprecate his wrath. “Are the prisoners at liberty?" he said, with a stern voice, and without replying to the humble greetings of the terrified envoys. They answered with hesitation, that they had liberated the French, the Polish, and the Brescians, who had been made captive in the insurrectionary war. "I will have them all-all!" exclaimed Bonaparte, "all who are in prison on account of their political sentiments. I will go myself to destroy your dungeons on the Bridge of Tears-opinions shall be free-I will have no Inquisition-I will hear of no Inquisition, and no Senate either-I will dictate the law to you-I WILL PROVE AN ATTILA TO VENICE."†

The tidings of the massacre of Verona, and of the batteries of a Venetian fort on the Lido having fired upon a French vessel, added new fuel to the wrath of Bonaparte. "The news of these fresh aggressions did not fail to aggravate his indignation to the highest pitch. The terrified deputies ventured to touch with delicacy on the subject of pecuniary atonement. Bonaparte's answer was worthy of a Roman. 'If you could proffer me,' he said, 'the treasures of Peru -if you could strew the whole district with gold, it could not atone for the French blood that has been treacherously spilt. The lion of St. Mark must lick the dust.'"+ War was declared against Venice.

*Hist. of Napoleon, vol. i. p. 100.

Sir Walter Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. iii. pp. 316, 317. Bonaparte was not unused to this title, or designation-and complained that he had been "stigmatised-as the MODERN ATTILA, ROBESPIERRE ON HORSEBACK," &c. both of whom, in different ways, as the reader will be at no loss to see, were, prophetically, his predecessors.-Las Casas' Journal, vol. i. part ii. p. 307.

Ibid. p. 317.

66

The French were commanded to advance, and to destroy in their progress, wherever they found it displayed, the winged lion of St. Mark, the ancient emblem of Venetian sovereignty. Venice fell. Bonaparte, as he had threatened, did, like another Attila, dictate the law to that proud city. The Senate submitted wholly, 31st May 1797. He exacted severe revenge. A democratical government was established in the stead of the ancient oligarchy, and besides the exaction of a heavy tribute, a large portion of the Venetian territories was ceded to the conquerors."*

Bonaparte thus completed his victorious career in northern Italy, and had passed over the rivers and fountains of waters, from the sources of the Bormida to the city of Venice; and from the banks of the Reno to the streamlets that issue from the farthest mountains of Tyrol. But though sprinkled from one extremity to the other of this extensive and defined region, the vial of wrath was yet only half poured out upon the rivers and fountains of

waters.

Peace was concluded between France and Austria on the 3d October, 1797. The Ligurian or Piedmontese republic was established; and such were the effects of French fraternization, that in a brief space the inhabitants of the north of Italy were ripe for revolt. The battle of the Nile gave new hope to the enemies of France. A new confederation of kingdoms was formed against it. A Russian army approached towards Germany; the French republic declared that its entrance into that country would be held tantamount to a declaration of war: and before the close of the year 1798, while the flower of the French army was withering in the deserts of Egypt,

* Hist, vol. iii. p. 100.

or on the coast of Palestine, (where, thus early, preparation had to be made for the pouring out of the sixth vial,) the war between Austria and France was renewed. In the former war, Austria was, in the first instance, the aggressor, had provoked the vengeance of the fierce republic, and brought down judgment on its own head. But now France was the first to declare war, as before it had done, in calling down the vial that was poured out upon the sea. And the French were vanquished, where none before could withstand them.

While the genius of Bonaparte was contending with the desert, and his attention was divided between a portion of Africa and Asia, and while even he was beat back, at Acre, where he contended with British Seamen, as he touched on the borders of the sea, the war was renewed in Northern Italy, under different auspices and with a very different issue than before. There was another man in Europe who was fitted, no less than Buonaparte, for holding the vial of wrath in his hand, and for sprinkling it anew over the rivers and fountains of waters; and the French, who had once been joint agents in the work of shedding the blood of the saints of the Most High, were made the victims of the wrath of which they had so recently been the instruments. In savage cruelty no name could overmatch Suwarrow's. The siege of Ishmail is a black spot, even on a bloated world. The "merciless victor," who had presided over it, and who, without uttering one word of mercy, had calmly looked on the massacre of thirty thousand vanquished enemies, was, upon the first tidings of war, on the march to Italy to retrace the steps of Bonaparte. Like a demon of destruction, he lighted on the rivers, and stopped not till he reached the fountains of waters. Suwarrow who shrunk not from blood, at the head of a Russian army, that shewed no mercy and knew no