.

In 1797 the expected favourable moment had arrived. The knell of Venice
was rung; and Bonaparte thus wrote to the Directory on the 30th of April:
"I am convinced that the only course to be now taken is to destroy this
ferocious and sanguinary Government." On the 3d of May, writing from
Palma Nuova, he says: "I see nothing that can be done but to obliterate
the Venetian name from the face of the globe."

Towards the end of March 1797 the Government of Venice was in a desperate
state. Ottolini, the Podesta of Bergamo, an instrument of tyranny in the
hands of the State inquisitors, then harassed the people of Bergamo and
Brescia, who, after the reduction of Mantua, wished to be separated from
Venice. He drew up, to be sent to the Senate, a long report respecting
the plans of separation, founded on information given him by a Roman
advocate, named Marcelin Serpini; who pretended to have gleaned the facts
he communicated in conversation with officers of the French army. The
plan of the patriotic party was, to unite the Venetian territories on the
mainland with Lombardy, and to form of the whole one republic. The
conduct of Ottolini exasperated the party inimical to Venice, and
augmented the prevailing discontent. Having disguised his valet as a
peasant, he sent him off to Venice with the report he had drawn up on
Serpini's communications, and other information; but this report never
reached the inquisitors. The valet was arrested, his despatches taken,
and Ottolini fled from Bergamo. This gave a beginning to the general
rising of the Venetian States. In fact, the force of circumstances alone
brought on the insurrection of those territories against their old
insular government. General La Hoz, who commanded the Lombard Legion,
was the active protector of the revolution, which certainly had its
origin more in the progress of the prevailing principles of liberty than
in the crooked policy of the Senate of Venice. Bonaparte, indeed, in his
despatches to the Directory, stated that the Senate had instigated the
insurrection; but that was not quite correct, and he could not wholly
believe his own assertion.

Pending the vacillation of the Venetian Senate, Vienna was exciting the
population of its States on the mainland to rise against the French. The
Venetian Government had always exhibited an extreme aversion to the
French Revolution, which had been violently condemned at Venice. Hatred
of the French had been constantly excite