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 against this wealthy city was,
indeed, most undesirable during the campaign; for the bankers of
Genoa supplied the French army with the sinews of war by means of
secret loans, and their merchants were equally complaisant in regard
to provisions. These services were appreciated by Bonaparte as much as
they were resented by Nelson; and possibly the succour which Genoese
money and shipping covertly rendered to the French expeditions for
the recovery of Corsica may have helped to efface from Bonaparte's
memory the associations clustering around the once-revered name of
Paoli. From ill-concealed hostility he drifted into a position of
tolerance and finally of friendship towards Genoa, provided that she
became democratic. If her institutions could be assimilated to those
of France, she might prove a valuable intermediary or ally.

The destruction of the Genoese oligarchy presented no great
difficulties. Both Venice and Genoa had long outlived their power, and
the persistent violation of their neutrality had robbed them of that
last support of the weak, self-respect. The intrigues of Faypoult and
Salicetti were undermining the influence of the Doge and Senate, when
the news of the fall of the Venetian oligarchy spurred on the French
party to action, But the Doge and Senate armed bands of mountaineers
and fishermen who were hostile to change; and in a