urthermore, a fortnight
before the signing of these preliminaries, he had suborned a vile
wretch, Salvatori by name, to issue a proclamation purporting to come
from the Venetian authorities, which urged the people everywhere to
rise and massacre the French. It was issued on April 5th, though it
bore the date of March 20th. At once the Doge warned his people that
it was a base fabrication, But the mischief had been done. On Easter
Monday (April 17th) a chance affray in Verona let loose the passions
which had been rising for months past: the populace rose in fury
against the French detachment quartered on them: and all the soldiers
who could not find shelter in the citadel, even the sick in the
hospitals, fell victims to the craving for revenge for the
humiliations and exactions of the last seven months.[76] Such was
Easter-tide at Verona--_les Paques veronaises_--an event that recalls
the Sicilian Vespers of Palermo in its blind southern fury.

The finale somewhat exceeded Bonaparte's expectations, but he must
have hailed it with a secret satisfaction. It gave him a good excuse
for wholly extinguishing Venice as an independent power. According to
the secret articles signed at Leoben, the city of Venice was to have
retained her independence and gained the Legations. But her contumacy
could now be chastised by annihilation. Venice could, in fact,
indemnify the Hapsburgs for the further cessions which France exacted
from them elsewhere; and in the process Bonaparte would free himself
from the blame which attached to his hasty signature of the
preliminaries at Leoben.[77] He was now determined to secure the Rhine
frontier for France, to gain independence, under French tutelage, not
only for the Lombard Republic, but also for Modena and the Legations.
These were his aims during the negotiations to which he gave the full
force of his intellect during the spring and summer of 1797.

The first thing was to pour French troops into Italy so as to extort
better terms: the next was to declare war on Venice. For this there
was now ample justification; for, apart from the massacre at Verona,
another outrage had been perpetrated. A French corsair, which had
persisted in anchoring in a forbidden part of the harbour of Venice,
had been riddled by the batteries and captured. For this act, and for
the outbreak at Verona, the Doge and Senate offered ample reparation:
but Bonaparte refused to listen to these envoys, "dripping with French
b