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The fall of Mantua was now only a matter of weeks. To allow its provisions to be replenished for the term of the armistice was an act that no successful general could tolerate. For that fortress the whole campaign had been waged, and three Austrian armies had been hurled back into Tyrol and Friuli. Was it now to be provisioned, in order that the Directory might barter away the Cispadane Republic?
While the Emperor renounced that part of his Italian possessions which lay to the west of the Oglio, he was to receive all the mainland territories of Venice east of that river, including Dalmatia and Istria, Venice was also to cede her lands west of the Oglio to the French Government; and in return for these sacrifices she was to gain the three legations of Romagna, Ferrara, and Bologna the very lands which Bonaparte had recently formed into the Cispadane Republic!
Mantua was still a defiant fortress, and in this crisis nothing was left but to revive French credit where the peoples were best disposed and their old rulers weakest. This duchy was the nucleus about which was to be constituted the Cispadane Republic: in conjunction with its inhabitants, those of Reggio, Bologna, and Ferrara were invited to form a free government under that name.
The contagion of Milanese enthusiasm spread rapidly. Some of the Venetian towns on the mainland now petitioned for union with the Cisalpine Republic; and the deputies of the Cispadane, who were present at the festival, urgently begged that their little State might enjoy the same privilege.
The fall of Mantua was now only a matter of weeks. To allow its provisions to be replenished for the term of the armistice was an act that no successful general could tolerate. For that fortress the whole campaign had been waged, and three Austrian armies had been hurled back into Tyrol and Friuli. Was it now to be provisioned, in order that the Directory might barter away the Cispadane Republic?
The contagion of Milanese enthusiasm spread rapidly. Some of the Venetian towns on the mainland now petitioned for union with the Cisalpine Republic; and the deputies of the Cispadane, who were present at the festival, urgently begged that their little State might enjoy the same privilege.
Is it to the Cispadane or to the Transpadane republics, which have been forced to bow under the galling yoke of French liberty, that we address all these pledges of our sincerity and love of peace with their unnatural parents?
From the correspondence of Thugut, the Austrian Minister, it appears certain that Austria herself had looked forward to the partition of the Venetian mainland territories, and this was the scheme which Bonaparte actually proposed to her at Leoben. Still more extraordinary was his proposal to sacrifice, ostensibly to Venice but ultimately to Austria, the greater part of the Cispadane Republic.
While the Emperor renounced that part of his Italian possessions which lay to the west of the Oglio, he was to receive all the mainland territories of Venice east of that river, including Dalmatia and Istria, Venice was also to cede her lands west of the Oglio to the French Government; and in return for these sacrifices she was to gain the three legations of Romagna, Ferrara, and Bologna the very lands which Bonaparte had recently formed into the Cispadane Republic!
In this treaty with Austria, there was another secret stipulation that Prussia should not be indemnified in Germany for her losses on the west of the Rhine. Thus Napoleon used the selfishness of the allies to divide them from one another. At Tolentino in February the Pope had ceded for the Cispadane Republic the Romagna, Bologna, and Ferrara.
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