This plan, at first sight the mere dictate of despair, was in truth that of a wise and prudent general.  The Archduke had received intelligence from two quarters of events highly unfavourable to the French.  General Laudon, the Austrian commander on the Tyrol frontier, had descended thence with forces sufficient to overwhelm Buonaparte’s lieutenants on the upper Adige, and was already in possession of the whole Tyrol, and of several of the Lombard towns.  Meanwhile the Venetian Senate, on hearing of these Austrian successes, had plucked up courage to throw aside their flimsy neutrality, and not only declared war against France, but encouraged their partizans in Verona to open the contest with an inhuman massacre of the French wounded in the hospitals of that city.  The vindictive Italians, wherever the French party was inferior in numbers, resorted to similar atrocities.  The few troops left in Lombardy by Napoleon were obliged to shut themselves up in garrisons, which the insurgent inhabitants of the neighbouring districts invested.  The Venetian army passed the frontier; and, in effect, Buonaparte’s means of deriving supplies of any kind from his rear were for the time wholly cut off.  It was not wonderful that the Archduke should, under such circumstances, anticipate great advantage from enticing the French army into the heart of Austria; where, divided by many wide provinces and mighty mountains and rivers from France, and with Italy once more in arms behind them, they should have to abide the encounter of an imperial army, animated by all the best motives that can lend vigour to the arm of man; fighting for their own hearths under the eyes of their own sovereign; seconded everywhere by the loyalty of the peasants; and well convinced that, if they could compel their enemy to a retreat, his total ruin must be the consequence.

The terror of the Aulic Council stepped in to prevent the Archduke from reaping either the credit or the disgrace of this movement.  Vienna was panic-struck on hearing that Buonaparte had stormed the passes of the Julian Alps; the imperial family sent their treasure into Hungary; the middle ranks, whose interest is always peace, became clamorous for some termination to a war, which during six years had been so unfortunate; and the Archduke was ordered to avail himself of the first pretence which circumstances might afford for the opening of a negotiation.

That prince had already, acting on his own judgment and feelings, dismissed such an occasion with civility and with coldness.  Napoleon had addressed a letter to his Imperial Highness from Clagenfurt, in which he called on him, as a brother soldier, to consider the certain miseries and the doubtful successes of war, and put an end to the campaign by a fair and equitable treaty.  The Archduke replied, that he regarded with the highest esteem the personal character of his correspondent, but that the Austrian government had committed to his trust the guidance of a particular army, not the diplomatic business of the empire.  The prince, on receiving these new instructions from Vienna, perceived, however reluctantly, that the line of his duty was altered; and the result was a series of negotiations—­which ended in the provisional treaty of Leoben, signed April 18, 1797.