This was again apparent.  Bonaparte forestalled their attack.  Their divided forces fell an easy prey to Massena, who at Bassano cut Wuermser’s force to pieces and sent the debris flying down the valley of the Brenta.  Losing most of their artillery, and separated in two chief bands, the Imperialists seemed doomed to surrender:  but Wuermser, doubling on his pursuers, made a dash westwards, finally cutting his way to Mantua.  There again he vainly endeavoured to make a stand.  He was driven from his positions in front of St. Georges and La Favorita, and was shut up in the town itself.  This addition to the numbers of the garrison was no increase to its strength; for the fortress, though well provisioned for an ordinary garrison, could not support a prolonged blockade, and the fevers of the early autumn soon began to decimate troops worn out by forced marches and unable to endure the miasma ascending from the marshes of the Mincio.

The French also were wearied by their exertions in the fierce heats of September.  Murmurs were heard in the ranks and at the mess tables that Bonaparte’s reports of these exploits were tinged by favouritism and by undue severity against those whose fortune had been less conspicuous than their merits.  One of these misunderstandings was of some importance.  Massena, whose services had been brilliant at Bassano but less felicitous since the crossing of the Adige, reproached Bonaparte for denying praise to the most deserving and lavishing it on men who had come in opportunely to reap the labours of others.  His written protest, urged with the old republican frankness, only served further to cloud over the relations between them, which, since Lonato, had not been cordial.[63] Even thus early in his career Bonaparte gained the reputation of desiring brilliant and entire success, and of visiting with his displeasure men who, from whatever cause, did not wrest from Fortune her utmost favours.  That was his own mental attitude towards the fickle goddess.  After entering Milan he cynically remarked to Marmont:  “Fortune is a woman; and the more she does for me, the more I will require of her.”  Suggestive words, which explain at once the splendour of his rise and the rapidity of his fall.

During the few weeks of comparative inaction which ensued, the affairs of Italy claimed his attention.  The prospect of an Austrian re-conquest had caused no less concern to the friends of liberty in the peninsula than joy to the reactionary coteries of the old sovereigns.  At Rome and Naples threats against the French were whispered or openly vaunted.  The signature of the treaties of peace was delayed, and the fulminations of the Vatican were prepared against the sacrilegious spoilers.  After the Austrian war-cloud had melted away, the time had come to punish prophets of evil.  The Duke of Modena was charged with allowing a convoy to pass from his State to the garrison of Mantua, and with neglecting to pay the utterly impossible