000 souls and boasting a
revenue of 9,000,000 ducats, now struck not one blow against
conquerors who came in the guise of liberators.

On the same day Bonaparte signed at Milan a treaty of alliance with
the envoys of the new Venetian Government. His friendship was to be
dearly bought. In secret articles, which were of more import than the
vague professions of amity which filled the public document, it was
stipulated that the French and Venetian Republics should come to an
understanding as to the _exchange_ of certain territories, that Venice
should pay a contribution in money and in materials of war, should aid
the French navy by furnishing three battleships and two frigates, and
should enrich the museums of her benefactress by 20 paintings and 500
manuscripts. While he was signing these conditions of peace, the
Directors were despatching from Paris a declaration of war against
Venice. Their decision was already obsolete: it was founded on
Bonaparte's despatch of April 30th; but in the interval their
proconsul had wholly changed the situation by overthrowing the rule of
the Doge and Senate, and by setting up a democracy, through which he
could extract the wealth of that land. The Directors' declaration of
war was accordingly stopped at Milan, and no more was heard of it.
They were thus forcibly reminded of the truth of his previous warning
that things would certainly go wrong unless they consulted him on all
important details.[80]

This treaty of Milan was the fourth important convention concluded by
the general, who, at the beginning of the campaign of 1796, had been
forbidden even to sign an armistice without consulting Salicetti!

It was speedily followed by another, which in many respects redounds
to the credit of the young conqueror. If his conduct towards Venice
inspires loathing, his treatment of Genoa must excite surprise and
admiration. Apart from one very natural outburst of spleen, it shows
little of that harshness which might have been expected from the man
who had looked on Genoa as the embodiment of mean despotism. Up to the
summer of 1796 Bonaparte seems to have retained something of his old
detestation of that republic; for at midsummer, when he was in the
full career of his Italian conquests, he wrote to Faypoult, the French
envoy at Genoa, urging him to keep open certain cases that were in
dispute, and three weeks later he again wrote that the time for Genoa
had not yet come. Any definite action aga