XXII. 1797. Napoleon in against the state. He then excited to the uttermost CHAP. the democratic spirit in the capital, took advantage of it to paralyze the defences and overturn the Infamous government of the country; established a new con- conduct of stitution on a highly popular basis, and signed a treaty this transacon the 16th May at Milan, by which, on payment tion. of a heavy ransom, he agreed to maintain the independence of Venice under its new and revolutionary government. Having thus committed all his supporters in the state irrevocably in the cause of freedom, and got possession of the capital, as that of an allied and friendly power, he plundered it of every thing valuable it possessed; and then he united with Austria in partitioning the republic, took possession of one half of its territories for France and the Cisalpine republic; and handed over the other half, with the capi- 1 Parl. Deb. tal, and its burning democrats, to the most aristo- xxxiv. cratic government in Europe.1 These transactions throw as important a light upon the moral as the intellectual character of Napoleon. To find a parallel to the dissimulation and rapacity by which his conduct to Venice was characterised, we must search the annals of Italian treachery; the history of the nations to the north of the Alps, abounding as it does in deeds of atrocity, is stained by no similar act of combined duplicity and violence. This opens a new and hitherto unobserved feature in his character, which is in the 1338. acted in that disgraceful transaction by the French commissioners, who examined the Venetian archives, and Napoleon in consequence, on the 15th November, wrote to the Directory,-" Landrieux excited the revolt in Brescia and Bergamo, and was paid for it; but, at the same time, he privately informed the Venetian government of what was going on, and was paid by them too. Perhaps you will think it right to make an example of such a rascal; and, at all events, not to employ him Conf. Cor. again." • Letter, 15th Nov. 1797. iv. 289. XXII. CHAP. highest degree important. The French Republican writers uniformly represent his Italian campaigns as 1797. the most pure and glorious period of his history, and portray his character, at first almost perfect, as gradually deteriorated by the ambition and passions consequent on the attainment of supreme power. This was in some respects true; but in others the reverse; his moral character never again appears so base as during his earlier years; and, contrary to the usual case, it was in some particulars improved by the possession of regal power, and to the last moment of his life was progressively throwing off many of the unworthy qualities by which it was at first stained. Extraordinary as this may appear, abundant evidence of it will be found in the sequel of this work. It was the same with Augustus, whose early life, disgraced by the proscriptions and horrors of the triumvirate, was almost overlooked in the wisdom and beneficence of his imperial rule. Nor is it difficult to perceive in what principle of our nature the foundation is laid for so singular an inversion of the causes which usually debase the human mind. It is the terrible effect of revolution, as Mad. de Staël has well observed, to obliterate altogether the ideas of right and wrong, and instead of the eternal distinctions of morality and religion, to apply no other test in general estimation to public actions but success.' It was out of this corrupted atmosphere that the mind of Napoleon, like that of Augustus, at first arose, and it was then tainted by the revolutionary profligacy of the times; but with the possession of supreme power he was called to nobler employments, relieved from the necessity of committing iniquity for the sake of advancement, and brought in contact with men professing and acting on more elevated principles; and in the 1 Rev. Franc. ii. 264. discharge of such duties, he cast off many of the stains of his early career. This observation is no impeachment of the character of Napoleon; on the contrary it is its best vindication. His virtues and talents were his own; his vices, in part at least, the fatal bequest of the revolution. CHAP. XXII. 1797. The conduct of Austria, if less perfidious, was not less a violation of every principle of public right. Venice, though long wavering and irresolute, was at length committed in open hostilities with the French Republic. She had secretly nourished the Imperial as well as the Republican forces; she had given no cause of offence to the Allied powers; she had been dragged, late indeed and unwillingly, but irrevocably, into a contest with the Republican forces; and if she had committed any fault, it was in favour of the cause in which Austria was engaged.' 'ProclamaGenerosity in such circumstances would have prompt- nate of Veed a noble power to throw the weight of its influ- nice, 12th ence in favour of its unfortunate neighbour. Justice forbade that it should do any thing to aggravate its fate; but to share in its spoliation, to seize upon its capital, and extinguish its existence, is an act of rapacity for which no apology can be offered, and which must for ever form a foul stain on the Austrian annals. tion of Se April, 1798. And of Austria. Aristocracy. Nor can the aristocracy of Venice be absolved from their full share of the blame consequent on the Weakness of destruction of their country. It was clearly pointed the Venetian out to them; and they might have known, that the contest in which Europe was engaged with France, was one of such a kind as to admit of no neutrality or compromise; that those who were not with the democratic party were against them; that their exclusive and ancient aristocracy was, in an especial СНАР. 1797. cratic party. manner, the object of Republican jealousy; and that if they were fortunate enough to escape destruction at the hands of the French armies, they certainly could not hope to avoid it from their own revolutionary subjects. Often, during the course of the struggle, they held the balance of power in their hands, and might have interposed with decisive effect in behalf of the cause which was ultimately to be their own. Had they put their armies on a war footing, and joined the Austrians when the scales of war hung even at Castiglione, Arcola, or Rivoli, they might have rolled back the tide of revolutionary conquest, and secured to themselves and their country an honoured and independent existence. They did not do so; they pursued that timid policy which is ever the most perilous in presence of danger; they shrunk from a contest which honour and duty alike required, and were, in consequence, assailed by the revolutionary tempest when they had no longer the power to resist it, and doomed to destruction amidst the maledictions of their countrymen, and the contempt of their enemies. Last in the catalogue of political delinquency, the Insanity of popular party are answerable for the indulgence of the Demo- that insane and unpatriotic spirit of faction which never fails, in the end, to bring ruin upon those who indulge it. Following the phantom of democratic ambition; forgetting all the ties of kindred and country in the pursuit of popular exaltation, they leagued with the stranger against their native land, and paralyzed the state in the moment of its utmost peril, by the fatal passions which they introduced into its bosom. With their own hands they tore down the venerable ensign of St Mark; with their own oars they ferried the invaders across the La * which no enemy had passed for 1400 years; gunae, with their own arms they subjugated the Senate of their country, and compelled, in the last extremity, a perilous and disgraceful submission to the enemy. They received in consequence the natural and appropriate reward of such conduct, the contempt of their eņemies, the hatred of their friends; the robbery of their trophies, the partition of their territory, the extinction of their liberties, and the annihilation of their country. CHAP. XXII. 1797. hibited at riod by the England. What a contrast to this timid and vacillating conduct in the rulers, and these flagitious passions in the Striking people of Venice, does the firmness of the British contrast exgovernment, and the spirit of the British people, the same peafford at this juncture! They, too, were counselled nobility and to temporize in danger, or yield to the tempter; they, people of too, were shaken in credit and paralyzed by revolt; they, too, were assailed by democratic ambition, and urged to conciliate and yield as the only means of salvation. The Venetian aristocracy did what the British aristocracy were urged to do. They cautiously abstained from hostilities with the revolutionary power; they did nothing to coerce the spirit of disaffection in their own dominions; they yielded at length to the demands of the populace, and admitted a sudden and portentous change in the internal structure of the constitution. Had the British government done the same, they might have expected similar re *The last occasion on which the Place of St Mark had seen the Transalpine soldiers, was when the French crusaders knelt to the Venetian people to implore succour from that opulent republic, in the last crusade, against the infidels in the Holy Land. The unanimous shout of approbation in the assembled multitude-" It is the will of God! It is the will of God!" led to that cordial union of these two powers which overturned the throne of Constantinople. "Maximus," says Bacon, "innovator tempus."-See Gibbon, Chap. Ix. |