erialists
seemed doomed to surrender: but Wuermser, doubling on his pursuers,
made a dash westwards, finally cutting his way to Mantua. There again
he vainly endeavoured to make a stand. He was driven from his
positions in front of St. Georges and La Favorita, and was shut up in
the town itself. This addition to the numbers of the garrison was no
increase to its strength; for the fortress, though well provisioned
for an ordinary garrison, could not support a prolonged blockade, and
the fevers of the early autumn soon began to decimate troops worn out
by forced marches and unable to endure the miasma ascending from the
marshes of the Mincio.

The French also were wearied by their exertions in the fierce heats of
September. Murmurs were heard in the ranks and at the mess tables that
Bonaparte's reports of these exploits were tinged by favouritism
and by undue severity against those whose fortune had been less
conspicuous than their merits. One of these misunderstandings was of
some importance. Massena, whose services had been brilliant at Bassano
but less felicitous since the crossing of the Adige, reproached
Bonaparte for denying praise to the most deserving and lavishing it on
men who had come in opportunely to reap the labours of others. His
written protest, urged with the old republican frankness, only served
further to cloud over the relations between them, which, since Lonato,
had not been cordial.[63] Even thus early in his career Bonaparte
gained the reputation of desiring brilliant and entire success, and of
visiting with his displeasure men who, from whatever cause, did not
wrest from Fortune her utmost favours. That was his own mental
attitude towards the fickle goddess. After entering Milan he cynically
remarked to Marmont: "Fortune is a woman; and the more she does for
me, the more I will require of her." Suggestive words, which explain
at once the splendour of his rise and the rapidity of his fall.

During the few weeks of comparative inaction which ensued, the affairs
of Italy claimed his attention. The prospect of an Austrian
re-conquest had caused no less concern to the friends of liberty in
the peninsula than joy to the reactionary coteries of the old
sovereigns. At Rome and Naples threats against the French were
whispered or openly vaunted. The signature of the treaties of peace
was delayed, and the fulminations of the Vatican were prepared against
the sacrilegious spoilers. After the Austrian war-clo