Such was the humiliation of this once proud and energetic, but now worn-out and enfeebled, oligarchy:  so incapable was that hoary polity of contending with the youthful vigour of Napoleon.

[Footnote 17:  The armorial bearing of Venice.]

CHAPTER IX

     Pichegru—­The Directory appeal to Buonaparte—­The 18th
     Fructidor—­The Court of Montebello—­Josephine—­The Treaty of
     Campo-Formio—­Buonaparte leaves Italy.

In their last agony the Venetian Senate made a vain effort to secure the personal protection of the general, by offering him a purse of seven millions of francs.  He rejected this with scorn.  He had already treated in the same style a bribe of four millions, tendered on the part of the Duke of Modena.  The friend employed to conduct the business reminded him of the proverbial ingratitude of all popular governments, and of the little attention which the Directory had hitherto paid to his personal interests.  “That is all true enough,” said Napoleon, “but for four millions I will not place myself in the power of this duke.”  Austria herself, it is said, did not hesitate to tamper in the same manner, though far more magnificently, as became her resources, with his republican virtue.  He was offered, if the story be true, an independent German principality for himself and his heirs.  “I thank the emperor,” he answered, “but if greatness is to be mine, it shall come from France.”

The Venetian Senate were guilty, in their mortal struggle, of another and a more inexcusable piece of meanness.  They seized the person of Count D’Entraigues, a French emigrant, who had been living in their city as agent for the exiled house of Bourbon; and surrendered him and all his papers to the victorious general.  Buonaparte discovered among these documents ample evidence that Pichegru, the French general on the Rhine, and universally honoured as the conqueror of Holland, had some time before this hearkened to the proposals of the Bourbon princes, and, among other efforts in favour of the royal cause, not hesitated even to misconduct his military movements with a view to the downfall of the government which had entrusted him with his command.

This was a secret, the importance of which Napoleon could well appreciate;[18] and he forthwith communicated it to the Directory at Paris.

The events of the last twelve months in France had made Pichegru a person of still higher importance than when he commenced his intrigues with the Bourbons as general on the Rhine.  Some obscure doubts of his fidelity, or the usual policy of the Directory, which rendered them averse (wherever they could help it) to continue any one general very long at the head of one army, had induced them to displace Pichegru, and appoint Hoche, a tried republican, in his room.  Pichegru, on returning to France, became a member of the Council of Five Hundred, and (the royalist party having at this season recovered all but a preponderance) was, on the meeting of the chambers, called to the chair of that in which he had his place.