powers she would have recourse to the Tzar, "her
beloved protector." But when in the summer of that year, 1806, she was
besieged for twenty days, the French were in occupation of the town,
while the Russians with their Montenegrin friends were trying to
dislodge them. It is said that before the garrison was relieved, by
the arrival of another French force, there had been so much damage
done to the Republic's ancient walls and palaces and other buildings
that the loss, to mention only the pecuniary loss, amounted to
eighteen million francs. After the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 the
British undertook, and more effectively, those operations in the
Adriatic which the Russians now abandoned. They tried to burn at
Triest the Russian vessels which had been ceded to France, and for a
few years they had command of the Adriatic, keeping sometimes as many
as twenty-two ships in those waters, while the French are said to have
had at no time more than seven frigates.

The old Republic was dissolved; but many other questions weighed upon
Napoleon. It was the Austrian Emperor and not he whom many people in
Dalmatia held to be their lawful monarch, for the Habsburg was the
heir of the Croatian Kings. And so while England had the sea in her
possession, Austria had the salt-lands of the isle of Pago, and the
populace on the Quarnero Islands took the rudders off the boats which
were to carry food to Zadar. The Austrians advanced on Split, with
ordinary troops and volunteers. At Hvar the people kept Napoleon's
birthday with apparent enthusiasm; on the next day they revolted and
hoisted the Austrian flag. Then the peasants seized the town and for
three days indulged in pillage, burning amongst other things the
valuable libraries of those who favoured France.

ILLYRIA, NAPOLEON'S GREAT WORK FOR THE SOUTHERN SLAVS

With the Treaty of Schoenbrunn Napoleon secured possession of
Carniola, the Austrian part of Istria, Croatia, the military frontiers
from the Save to the sea, and also certain districts of Carinthia,
Styria and Tirol. Now at last the Adriatic littoral, with large tracts
of the interior, was united under one hand. We may note that Eugene
Beauharnais in vain entreated that the frontier for the Slovenes
should, on account of strategic necessities, be drawn to the east of
the Isonzo, but Napoleon did not hesitate to make that river the
boundary between the two countries, as it was between the two races.
Mazzini in 1860 shared this o