Indeed, the fit of passion once passed, the determination to dominate events again possessed him, and he decided to make peace, despite the recent instructions of the Directory that no peace would be honourable which sacrificed Venice to Austria.  There is reason to believe that he now regretted this sacrifice.  His passionate outbursts against Venice after the Paques veronaises, his denunciations of “that fierce and bloodstained rule,” had now given place to some feelings of pity for the people whose ruin he had so artfully compassed; and the social intercourse with Venetians which he enjoyed at Passeriano, the castle of the Doge Manin, may well have inspired some regard for the proud city which he was now about to barter away to Austria.  Only so, however, could he peacefully terminate the wearisome negotiations with the Emperor.  The Austrian envoy, Count Cobenzl, struggled hard to gain the whole of Venetia, and the Legations, along with the half of Lombardy.[89] From these exorbitant demands he was driven by the persistent vigour of Bonaparte’s assaults.  The little Corsican proved himself an expert in diplomatic wiles, now enticing the Imperialist on to slippery ground, and occasionally shocking him by calculated outbursts of indignation or bravado.  After many days spent in intellectual fencing, the discussions were narrowed down to Mainz, Mantua, Venice, and the Ionian Isles.  On the fate of these islands a stormy discussion arose, Cobenzl stipulating for their complete independence, while Bonaparte passionately claimed them for France.  In one of these sallies his vehement gestures overturned a cabinet with a costly vase; but the story that he smashed the vase, as a sign of his power to crush the House of Austria, is a later refinement on the incident, about which Cobenzl merely reported to Vienna—­“He behaved like a fool.”  Probably his dextrous disclosure of the severe terms which the Directory ordered him to extort was far more effective than this boisterous gasconnade.  Finally, after threatening an immediate attack on the Austrian positions, he succeeded on three of the questions above named, but at the sacrifice of Venice to Austria.

The treaty was signed on October 17th at the village of Campo Formio.  The published articles may be thus summarized:  Austria ceded to the French Republic her Belgic provinces.  Of the once extensive Venetian possessions France gained the Ionian Isles, while Austria acquired Istria, Dalmatia, the districts at the mouth of the Cattaro, the city of Venice, and the mainland of Venetia as far west as Lake Garda, the Adige, and the lower part of the River Po.  The Hapsburgs recognized the independence of the now enlarged Cisalpine Republic.  France and Austria agreed to frame a treaty of commerce on the basis of “the most favoured nation.”  The Emperor ceded to the dispossessed Duke of Modena the territory of Breisgau on the east of the Rhine.  A congress was to be held at Rastadt, at which the plenipotentiaries of France and of the Germanic Empire were to regulate affairs between these two Powers.