He was not, however, to be flattered into the conduct, as to serious matters, of a friendly general.  He levied immediately a heavy contribution (eight hundred thousand pounds sterling) at Milan,—­taking possession, besides, of twenty of the finest pictures in the Ambrosian gallery.

The conqueror now paused to look about and behind him; and proceeded still farther to replenish his chest by exactions, for which no justification can be adduced from the ordinary rules of international law.  With Sardinia he had already reckoned; of the Austrian capital in Italy he had possession; there was only one more of the Italian governments (Naples) with which the French Republic was actually at war; although, indeed, he had never concealed his intention of revenging the fate of Basseville on the court of Rome.  The other powers of Italy were, at worst, neutrals; with Tuscany and Venice, France had friendly relations.  But Napoleon knew or believed, that all the Italian governments, without exception, considered the French invasion of Italy as a common calamity; the personal wishes of most of the minor princes (nearly connected as these were, by blood or alliance, with the imperial house of Austria) he, not unreasonably, concluded were strongly against his own success in this great enterprise.  Such were his pretences—­more or less feasible; the temptation was, in fact, great; and he resolved to consider and treat whatever had not been with him as if it had been against him.  The weak but wealthy princes of Parma and Modena, and others of the same order, were forthwith compelled to purchase his clemency not less dearly than if they had been in arms.  Besides money, of which he made them disburse large sums, he demanded from each a tribute of pictures and statues, to be selected at the discretion of Citizen Monge and other French connoisseurs, who now attended his march for such purposes.

In modern warfare the works of art had hitherto been considered as a species of property entitled in all cases to be held sacred; and Buonaparte’s violent and rapacious infraction of this rule now excited a mighty clamour throughout Europe.  Whether the new system originated with himself, or in the commands of the Directory, is doubtful.  But from this time the formation of a great national gallery of pictures and statues at Paris was considered as an object of the first importance; and every victorious general was expected to bring trophies of this kind in his train.  Whether the fine arts themselves are likely to be improved in consequence of the accumulation in any one place of such vast treasures as the Louvre were long exhibited, there has been, and will no doubt continue to be, much controversy.  It is certain that the arts of France derived no solid advantage from Napoleon’s museum.  The collection was a mighty heap of incense for the benefit of the national vanity; and the hand which brought it together was preparing the means of inflicting on that vanity one of the most intolerable of wounds, in its ultimate dispersion.