that the claim of neutrality should
form no obstacle to his measures. The French Directory had already most
ungenerously trampled on the dignity of Venice, by demanding that she
should no longer afford a retreat to the illustrious exile, the Count of
Provence, eldest surviving brother of Louis XVI.[9] That unfortunate
prince had, accordingly, though most reluctantly, been desired to quit
the Venetian states, and had already passed to the Rhine, where his
gallant cousin, the Prince of Conde, had long been at the head of a
small and devoted army composed of the expatriated gentry of France.
Buonaparte, however, chose to treat the reluctance with which Venice had
been driven to this violation of her hospitality, as a new injury to his
government: he argued that a power who had harboured in friendship, and
unwillingly expelled, the _Pretender_ to the French monarchy, had lost
all title to forbearance on the part of the Revolutionary forces. This
was a gross and ungenerous insult, and it was a gratuitous one; for he
had a far better argument behind. The imperial general had, as we have
seen, neglected the reclamations of the Doge, when it suited his purpose
to occupy Peschiera. "You are too weak," said Buonaparte, when the
Venetian envoy reached his headquarters, "to enforce neutrality on
hostile nations such as France and Austria. Beaulieu did not respect
your territory when his interest bade him violate it; nor shall I
hesitate to occupy whatever falls within the line of the Adige." In
effect, garrisons were placed forthwith in Verona, and all the strong
places of that domain. The tricolor flag now waved at the mouth of the
Tyrolese passes; and Napoleon, leaving Serrurier to blockade Mantua,
returned to Milan, where he had important business to arrange.

The King of Naples, utterly confounded by the successes of the French,
was now anxious to procure peace, almost on whatever terms, with the
apparently irresistible Republic. Nor did it, for the moment, suit
Buonaparte's views to contemn his advances. A peace with this prince
would withdraw some valuable divisions from the army of Beaulieu; and
the distance of the Neapolitan territory was such, that the French had
no means of carrying the war thither with advantage, so long as Austria
retained the power of sending new forces into Italy by the way of the
Tyrol. He concluded an armistice accordingly, which was soon followed by
a formal peace, with the King of the Two Sicilies