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By a series of secret articles, vaguely expressed, Venice was bound to accept the stipulations of Leoben in regard to territory, pay an indemnity of one million two hundred thousand dollars, and furnish three ships of the line with two frigates, while, in pursuance of the general policy of the French republic, experts were to select twenty pictures from her galleries, and five hundred manuscripts from her libraries.
General Bonaparte repeatedly applied for the erasure of my name, from the month of April 1797, when I rejoined him at Leoben, to the period of the signature of the treaty of Campo-Formio; but without success. He desired his brother Louis, Berthier, Bernadotte, and others, when he sent them to the Directory, to urge my erasure; but in vain.
She therefore accepted the propositions of peace made by Bonaparte, and, as already said, its preliminaries were signed in Leoben. Now Bonaparte could rest after such constant and bloody work, now he could again hasten to his Josephine, who was waiting for him in the palace of Serbelloni. The whole city all Lombardy was with her, awaiting him.
When the preliminaries of a peace had been signed at Leoben, Masséna who had contributed so much to our victories, was entrusted with the task of taking the draft treaty to the government. Paris welcomed him with the most lively expressions of admiration, wherever he went people crowded round him to gaze on the features of this famous warrior.
A peace, based on the terms proposed at Leoben, was formally concluded at Campo Formio, October 17, 1797. The triumph of the French republic was confirmed, and ancient Europe received a new form. The object for which the sovereigns of France had for centuries vainly striven was won by the monarchless nation; France gained the preponderance in Europe.
The conclusion of peace by Bonaparte at Leoben again dashed his hopes, and he therefore received with joy the orders of the Directory that he should march a large part of his army to Brest for a second expedition to Ireland.
On returning from Leoben, a conqueror and pacificator, he, without ceremony, took possession of Venice, changed the established government, and, master of all the Venetian territory, found himself, in the negotiations of Campo Formio, able to dispose of it as he pleased, as a compensation for the cessions which had been exacted from Austria. At Campo Formio the fate of this republic was decided.
When the tricolour standards were nearing the town of Leoben, the Emperor Francis sent envoys to sue for peace; and the preliminaries signed there, within one hundred miles of the Austrian capital, closed the campaign which a year previously had opened with so little promise for the French on the narrow strip of land between the Maritime Alps and the petty township of Savona.
Whatever were his motives in signing the preliminaries at Leoben, he speedily found means for their modification in the ever-enlarging area of negotiable lands. It is now time to return to the affairs of Venice. For seven months the towns and villages of that republic had been a prey to pitiless warfare and systematic rapacity, a fate which the weak ruling oligarchy could neither avert nor avenge.
Had he known the whole truth, namely, that the French were gaining a battle on the east bank of the Rhine while the terms of peace were being signed at Leoben, he would most certainly have broken off the negotiations and have dictated harsher terms at the gates of Vienna.
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