on of its former
masters had been ordered as a part of the general disarmament of
Italy. The Veronese were intensely, fiercely indignant on learning
that they were to be transferred to a hated allegiance; and on April
seventeenth, when a party appeared to reinforce the French troops
already there, the citizens rose in a frenzy of indignation, and drove
the hated invaders into the citadel. During the following days, three
hundred of the French civilians in the town, all who had not been able
to find refuge, were massacred; old and young, sick and well. At the
same time a detachment of Austrians under Laudon came in from the
Tyrol to join Fioravente, the Venetian general, and his Slavs. This of
course increased the tumult, for the French began to bombard the city
from the citadel. For a moment the combined besiegers, exaggerating
the accounts of Joubert's withdrawal and of Moreau's failure to
advance, hoped for ultimate success, and the overthrow of the French.
But rumors from Leoben caused the Austrians to withdraw up the Adige,
and a Lombard regiment came to the assistance of the French. The
Venetian forces were captured, and the city was disarmed; so also were
Peschiera, Castelnuovo, and many others which had made no resistance.

Two days after this furious outbreak of Veronese resentment,--an event
which is known to the French as the Veronese Passover,--occurred
another, of vastly less importance in itself, but having perhaps even
more value as cumulative evidence that the wound already inflicted by
Bonaparte on the Venetian state was mortal. A French vessel, flying
before two Austrian cruisers, appeared off the Lido, and anchored
under the arsenal. It was contrary to immemorial custom for an armed
vessel to enter the harbor of Venice, and the captain was ordered to
weigh anchor. He refused. Thereupon, in stupid zeal, the guns of the
Venetian forts opened on the ship. Many of the crew were killed, and
the rest were thrown into prison. This was the final stroke, all that
was necessary for the justification of Bonaparte's plans. An embassy
from the senate had been with him at Gratz when the awful news from
Verona came to his headquarters. He had then treated them harshly,
demanding not only the liberation of every man confined for political
reasons within their prison walls, but the surrender of their
inquisitors as well. "I will have no more Inquisition, no more Senate;
I shall be an Attila to Venice!... I want not you