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 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 39 armistice. Mantua was the next object of at- tack. Wurmser, at the head of large Austrian reinforcements, came through Tyrol to the de- fence ; the two main divisions of his army were defeated at Lonato, Aug. 3, and at Cas- tiglione delle Stiviere, Aug. 5, and driven back. On Sept. 4 another division of the Anstrians was repulsed at Roveredo. Wurmser, having rallied his scattered troops in the mean time, was again attacked and routed at Bassano, Sept. 8. A third Austrian army, under Marshal Al- vinczy, now entered Italy, and for a part of the autumn held the French in check ; but on Nov. 15 a battle was joined at Arcole, which, after three days (15th-17th) of the hardest fighting that had yet occurred in the Italian campaign, gave the victory again to the French. Bonaparte then turned his attention to the set- tlement of the internal affairs of Italy, which was everywhere disturbed, and in many places in insurrection. A letter written to the direc- tory, Dec. 28, 1796, reveals the principles upon which he acted in his various arrangements: "There are in Lombardy three parties: 1, that which is subservient to France and follows our directions; 2, that which aims at liberty and national government, and with some degree of impatience; and 3, that which is friendly to Austria and hostile to us. I support the first, restrain the second, and put down the third. As for the states south of the Po, there are also three parties : 1, the friends of the old govern- ment ; 2, the partisans of a free aristocratical constitution ; and 3, the partisans of pure de- mocracy. I put down the first ; I support the second, because it is the party of the great pro- prietors, and of the clergy, who exercise the greatest influence over the masses of the peo- ple, whom it is our interest to win over to us ; and I restrain the third, which is composed chiefly of young men, of writers, and of people who, as in France and everywhere else, love liberty merely for the sake of revolution." In the beginning of the year 1797 Austria again took the field with a formidable army, which Napoleon encountered, Jan. 14, at Rivoli, and defeated. Immediately afterward Wurmser, who had stood an obstinate siege in Mantua, was compelled to surrender. On the same day, proclaiming that the truce with the pope was at an end, Napoleon entered the papal territories, and repulsed the papal troops on the Senio; took Faenza, and in quick succes- sion Ancona, Loreto, and Tolentino; and on Feb. 19 forced the pope to conclude a peace. By this he was enabled to wage war upon Austria on her own soil. He crossed the Piave, and on March 16 forced the passage of the Tagliamento and thelsonzo; on the 19th he seized Gradisea, on the 20th Gorz, and on the 23d Trieste. Before April 1 the greater part of Carinthia, Carniola, and Tyrol was reduced to subjection. On April 7 he granted the depu- ties of the archduke Charles an armistice of five days, and on the 18th of the same month concluded preliminaries of peace at Leoben, which laid the Austrians under pretty severe conditions, and assured the French possession of Trieste, whence they proceeded to assail Venice. On May 3 a declaration of war against that republic was published, on the pretended ground of its having violated neutrality; and on May 12 the city was occupied, and a new constitution, somewhat less aristocratic than the old, was improvised. During the same month Genoa was revolutionized, and early in June received a new French constitution as the "Ligurian republic." On June 29, at Milan, the new Cisalpine republic was proclaimed, and speedily organized; and on July 14 the French army, retiring from the territories of the new republic, took up cantonments in the Venetian states. During the remainder of the summer and the autumn Napoleon was en- gaged in conferences and negotiations for a definitive treaty of peace with Austria, which was signed at Campo Formio, Oct. 17. By that celebrated arrangement Austria ceded her Lombard territories to the Cisalpine republic, and her former possessions in the Low Coun- tries to France, guaranteeing the extension of its boundary to the left bank of the Rhine, while she received the Venetian provinces of Istria and Dalmatia, and the mainland of the republic as far as the Adige. Of the vio- lence, the pillage, and the despotism which marked these Italian campaigns, it is for his- tory to speak; but they did not prevent the popular French sentiment of the time from hailing Napoleon when he returned to Paris, Dec. 5, 1797, not merely as the conqueror, but as the liberator of Italy. In the short space of two years he had won a series of the most splendid victories on record, dictated forms of government to nearly the whole of Italy, hum- bled Austria, acquired large accessions of wealth and territory for France, and rendered the French arms formidable to the world. Under these circumstances, his journey from Italy to Paris was, of course, a triumphal procession; the enthusiasm of the Parisians was immense, and the festivals in his honor were endless; but Napoleon received his honors with becom- ing moderation, and was in fact sombre and thoughtful. Being a member of the institute, he assumed its dress, associated principally with men of science, and in all the congratu- latory addresses of the period was extolled for his simplicity, his modesty, and his complete want of ambition. The directory, then in power, had created an "army of England," with a view to hostilities against that country, and conferred the command of it on Bonaparte. He appeared to favor the movement, but at heart he disliked it, knowing how impracticable an attempt to conquer the island would prove ; and he sought to substitute for it a magnificent dream of his own, the conquest of Egypt and the East. At last the directory consented to this, and Napoleon made his preparations to embark at Toulon. By May 9, 1798, a great army had been collected, and the expedition