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.  Furthermore, a fortnight before the signing of these preliminaries, he had suborned a vile wretch, Salvatori by name, to issue a proclamation purporting to come from the Venetian authorities, which urged the people everywhere to rise and massacre the French.  It was issued on April 5th, though it bore the date of March 20th.  At once the Doge warned his people that it was a base fabrication, But the mischief had been done.  On Easter Monday (April 17th) a chance affray in Verona let loose the passions which had been rising for months past:  the populace rose in fury against the French detachment quartered on them:  and all the soldiers who could not find shelter in the citadel, even the sick in the hospitals, fell victims to the craving for revenge for the humiliations and exactions of the last seven months.[76] Such was Easter-tide at Verona—­les Paques veronaises—­an event that recalls the Sicilian Vespers of Palermo in its blind southern fury.

The finale somewhat exceeded Bonaparte’s expectations, but he must have hailed it with a secret satisfaction.  It gave him a good excuse for wholly 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,