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Rh 1797.] NAPOLEON 197 Milan on the 15th. That day Bonaparte told Marmont that his success hitherto was nothing to what was reserved for him. &quot;In our days,&quot; he added, &quot;no one has con ceived anything great ; it falls to me to give the example.&quot; June was spent in consolidating the conquest of Lombardy, in spoiling the country, and repressing the insurrections which broke out among the Italians, astonished to find themselves plundered by their &quot;liberators.&quot; From the middle of July the war, as far as Austria is concerned, becomes a war for Mantua. Austria makes desperate and repeated efforts to raise the siege of this all-important fortress. On July 29 arrived Wiirmser at the head of 50,000 men, making his way through Tyrol from the Rhine. He advanced on both sides of the Lake of Garda, and threatened Bonaparte s communications by occupying Brescia. Bonaparte abandoned the siege of Mantua, and brought his whole force to meet the enemy. On this one occasion we find the young commander s resource and courage failing him. He called councils of war, and declared in favour of retreating across the Po. When Augereau resisted this determination, he left the room declaring that he would have nothing to do with the matter, and, when Augereau asked who was to give orders, answered &quot; You ! &quot; The desperate course was rewarded with success. The Austrians were defeated at Castiglione on August 5th, and retired into Tyrol. But Mantua had been revictualled, and Bonaparte had suffered the loss of his siege-train. Early in September Bonaparte, having received reinforce ments from France, assumed the offensive against Wiirmser, and after defeating him at Bassano forced him to throw himself with the remainder of his army into Mantua (September 15). At the end of October Austria had assembled a new army of 50,000 men, mostly, however, raw recruits. They were placed under the command of Alvinzi. Bonaparte was to be overwhelmed between this army and that of Wiirmser issuing from Mantua. But by a night march he fell upon Alvinzi s rear at Arcola. The struggle lasted through three days, during which Bonaparte s life was at one moment in great danger, and ended in a complete victory for the French (November 15-17). From Arcola he used ever afterwards to date his profound confidence in his own fortune. Mantua, however, still held out, and early in January (1797) a fourth and last attempt was made by Alvinzi to relieve it, but he was again completely defeated at Rivoli, and a whole Austrian corps d armee under Provera laid down its arms at Roverbella (January 16). On receiving the intelligence of this disaster Wiirmser concluded the capitulation by which the French were put in possession of Mantua. Such was the campaign of Bonaparte against Austria, by which he raised his reputation at once above that of all the other generals of the republic, Jourdan, Moreau, or Acts as Hoche. But he had acted by no means merely as a inde- general of the republic against Austria. He had assumed con- dei ^ rom ^ e Beginning the part of an independent conqueror, queror. ne i tner bound by the orders of his Government nor by any rules of international law or morality. The commander of a victorious army wields a force which only a Government long and firmly established can hold in check. A new Government, such as the Directory in France, having no root in the country, is powerless before a young victor such as Bonaparte. The danger had been early perceived : Hoche had been pronounced danger ous by Robespierre ; it became imminent when Bonaparte with his unrestrained ambition pushed before the other generals. The coup d etat of Brumaire was in Bonaparte s mind before he had been many weeks at the head of the army of Italy. But long before he ventured to strike the existing Government we see that he has completely emanci pated himself from it, and that his acts are those of an independent ruler, as had been those of Caesar in Gaul cr of Pompey in the East while the Roman republic was still nominally standing. As early as June 1796 he said to Miot, &quot;The commissioners of the Directory have no concern with my policy; I do what I please.&quot; From the outset it had been contemplated to make the Levying invasion of Italy financially profitable. Contributions of con- were levied so rapaciously that in the duchy of Milan, tribu - where the French had professed to appear as brothers and tlons liberators, a rebellion against them speedily broke out, which Bonaparte suppressed with the merciless cruelty he always showed in such cases. He kept the promise of his first proclamation : he made the army rich. &quot; From this moment,&quot; writes Marmont, &quot; the chief part of the pay and salaries was paid in coin. This led to a great change in the situation of the officers, and to a certain extent in their manners. The army of Italy was at that time the only one which had escaped from the unprecedented misery which all the armies had so long endured.&quot; The amount of confiscation seems to have been enormous. Besides direct contributions levied in the conquered territory, the domains of dispossessed Governments, the revenues and property of churches and hospitals, were at Bonaparte s disposal. There seems reason to think that but a small proportion of this plunder was ever accounted for. It went to the army chest, over which Bonaparte retained the control, and the pains that he took to corrupt his officers is attested in the narrative of Marmont, who relates that Bonaparte once caused a large sum to pass through his hands, and when he took great pains to render a full account of it, as the officers had then une fleur de delicatesse, Bona parte blamed him for not having kept it for himself. As he made himself financially independent of the His Government, so he began to develop an independent policy. Italian Hitherto he has had no politics, but has been content to P olicv talk the Jacobinism of the ruling party ; now he takes a line, and it is not quite that of the Government. He had already, in June 1796, invaded the papal territory, and concluded a convention at Bologna by which he extorted 15 millions from the pope; immediately after the fall of Mantua he entered the States of the Church again, and concluded the treaty of Tolentino on February 19. We see how freely he combines diplomacy with war ; he writes without disguise to the Directory, October 5, &quot; You incur the greatest risk whenever your general in Italy is not the centre of everything.&quot; But now in dealing with the pope he separates his policy from that of the Directory. He demands indeed the cession of Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna, besides Avignon and the Venaissin, and the temporary cession of Ancona. But he recognizes the pope by treating with him, and towards the Catholic religion and the priesthood he shows himself unexpectedly merciful. Religion is not to be altered in the ceded Legations, and Bonaparte extends his protection in the most ostentatious manner to the pretres insermentes, whom he found in large numbers in the States of the Church. This was the more marked as they were at this time objects of the bitterest persecution in France. Here is the first indication of the policy of the Concordat, but it is also a mark of Bonaparte s independent position, the position rather of a prince than of a responsible official ; nay, it marks a deliberate intention to set himself up as a rival of the Government. His manner of conducting the war was as unprecedented as his relation to the Government, and in like manner foreshadowed the Napoleonic period. It was not that of a civilized belligerent, but of a universal con queror. The Revolution had put all international law into abeyance. Bonaparte in Italy, as in his later wars, knows