er success, and with the news of Joubert's withdrawal from
the Tyrol a terrible insurrection broke out, which sacrificed many
French lives at Verona and elsewhere. Bonaparte's suggestions for the
preliminaries of peace with Austria had been drawn up before the news
of that event reached him: but with the Tyrol and Venice all aflame in
his rear, and threatening his connections; with no prospect of
assistance from Moreau in enforcing his demands; and with a growing
hostility showing itself among the populations of the hereditary
states of Austria into which he had penetrated, it was not wonderful
that his original design was confirmed. "At Leoben," he once said, in
a gambler's metaphor, "I was playing twenty-one, and I had only
twenty."

When, therefore, Merveldt and Gallo, the duly accredited
plenipotentiaries of Austria, and General Bonaparte, representing the
French republic, but with no formal powers from its government, met in
the castle of Goess at Leoben, they all knew that the situation of the
French was very precarious indeed, and that the terms to be made could
not be those dictated by a triumphant conqueror in the full tide of
victory. Neither party had any scruples about violating the public law
of Europe by the destruction of another nationality; but they needed
some pretext. While they were in the opening stages of negotiation the
pretext came; for on April ninth Bonaparte received news of the
murders to which reference has been made, and of an engagement at
Salo, provoked by the French, in which the Bergamask mountaineers had
captured three hundred of the garrison, mostly Poles. This affair was
only a little more serious than numerous other conflicts incident to
partisan warfare which were daily occurring; but it was enough. With a
feigned fury the French general addressed the Venetian senate as if
their land were utterly irreconcilable, and demanded from them
impossible acts of reparation. Junot was despatched to Venice with the
message, and delivered it from the floor of the senate on April
fifteenth, the very day on which his chief was concluding negotiations
for the delivery of the Venetian mainland to Austria.

So strong had the peace party in Vienna become, and such was the
terror of its inhabitants at seeing the court hide its treasures and
prepare to fly into Hungary, that the plenipotentiaries could only
accept the offer of Bonaparte, which they did with ill-concealed
delight. There was but one p