those weeks so pregnant of consequence to both sides. Twice it appeared as if no conclusion could be reached, and as if a breach were imminent. Once, marching orders for the invading army were actually prepared and in part issued. But the season was inclement and to Marmont his general confided a sense of uneasiness regarding Augereau's appointment on the Rhine. Both parties realized that neither could secure all they claimed without delay, or a possible renewal of warfare. They determined, therefore, to brave their respective governments, and entirely to disregard both Prussian and German feeling as to the Rhine boundary. Finally a compromise was made, and on the seventeenth of October at midnight, after a long social reunion of the plenipotentiaries; in the dark, Bonaparte telling ghost stories, and making the scene generally dramatic and even theatrical, the treaty was engrossed and signed, being dated from Campo Formio, a hamlet neutralized for the purpose. The negotiators parted with the exchange of friendly greetings.

The terms were far more favorable to France than in all probability Bonaparte had hoped to obtain. The Austrian Netherlands with the Rhine frontier from Basel to Andernach were surrendered by the Emperor, and in token of good faith the commanding fortress of Mainz was immediately to be delivered into French hands. In return Bonaparte ceded the Italian lands eastward from the Adige, by the head of the Adriatic, to the frontiers of Dalmatia, including, of course, the city of Venice. France kept the Ionian Islands and the Venetian factories opposite on the mainland. All the Venetian territory to the west of the Adige, together with Mantua, Modena, Lombardy, Massa-e-Carrara, Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna, was incorporated into the new Cisalpine Republic; and Genoa, receiving from the Emperor the remnants of his feudal rights in the surrounding country, was transformed into the Ligurian Republic, with a constitution similar to that of the Cisalpine. The various arrangements for the redistribution of German lands necessary to compensate princes who must abandon territories on the left bank of the Rhine were to be made by the congress to be held at Rastadt. French plenipotentiaries, under Bonaparte's leadership, were to be members of the congress; while Rastadt, as a border town, and therefore more favorable to French interests than Bern, was to be further neutralized by the departure of the Emperor's troops from all German lands except his own hereditary dominions. When the news of Campo Formio reached Vienna, the peace party was delighted, and the populace broke out in a jubilee. But Thugut was not deceived. "Peace! Peace!" said he. "Where is it? I cannot recognize it in this treaty."

In Paris the negotiations had produced some uneasiness. It is now generally said that Fructidor was exclusively the work of Bonaparte: or, rather, that the thirteenth of Vendémiaire was the work of Barras, assisted by Bonaparte; that the eighteenth of Fructidor was the work of Bonaparte, assisted by Barras. This is only a half-truth based on an exaggerated estimate of the facts. While, on the whole, Bonaparte was at the moment pleased with the results of this second political stroke, there was much connected with it utterly repugnant to his wishes. The so-called Fructidorians, among them Mme. de Staël and her friends, were still favorable, in the main, to Bonaparte; but they were thorough republicans, and considered the day as the victory, not of a man, but of a cause. Later Bonaparte expressed sorrow that he had taken any share in arranging it, for the cause and its few supporters proved to be hostile. The wholesale proscription which followed the success of the Directory and its friends destroyed their personal popularity, strengthened the adherents of the monarchy, and weakened the prestige of the army, which was the real support of the new revolution. As far as the repression of conservative royalist and moderate republican influence in the Directory and the chambers was concerned, Bonaparte's interests were identical with those of Barras, Rewbell, and the bigoted Larévellière. He would gladly have ended public agitation in a nation the majority of whom had become royalists again. To this end, he would willingly have broken the presses of the newspapers and have closed the Clichy club: he was anxious for any extreme course necessary to preserve the revolutionary model in government until, in his own phrase, "the pear was ripe" for him. The events of Fructidor, on the one hand, confirmed the constitutionalists in the policy of letting other countries alone, and at the same time put an end to all enthusiasm for republican principles even in the radical executive, necessarily substituting in its place the merest self-interest. This new situation, though not inimical to Bonaparte's interests, made the Fructidorians the most determined opponents of his ambitions.

Almost immediately after the events of Fructidor the new Directory had sent instructions to Passariano that Venice was to be preserved from the hands of Austria. The removal of Clarke had followed. At once began a war of words and a conflict of purposes. Bonaparte's despatches depicted the situation of the Italian peoples in the darkest light, so as to set forth their unfitness for independence, while in every letter he dwelt on his own feeble and broken health as a reason for his immediate recall. Meantime he was driving the machinery of negotiation at its utmost speed and capacity. The Directory finally took its stand on the determination that Italy must be free as far eastward as the Isonzo, and the subtle Talleyrand agreed to win or compel Bonaparte's acquiescence. The courier with this ultimatum from Paris reached Passariano exactly twelve hours after Monge and Berthier had carried the treaty of Campo Formio in the opposite direction for the sanction of the directors. It was bitter, indeed, for Barras and his colleagues to surrender, but the logic of their position made resistance impossible. They approved the hateful stipulations with what grace they could muster, and, the warfare on the Continent being over, appointed Bonaparte to command what was significantly entitled the Army of England, but without defining his duties. Thirty thousand soldiers began their march from Milan to Picardy on the English Channel. As for the now distracted Venetians, they asked permission to continue the war against Austria on their own account. Bonaparte imprisoned the deputies who presented the petition, and Sérurier delivered Venice into the Emperor's hands, after destroying the arsenals and such vessels as were no longer useful for war. Among these was the stately barge in which the officials of the commonwealth had from immemorial times been wont to espouse the Adriatic—the famous Bucentaur. Manin, the last doge of Venice, was compelled to swear allegiance to Austria in the name of his compatriots. With a broken heart he made ready for the ceremony, but as he stepped forward at the appointed time to pronounce the fatal words, his strength and his faculties gave way together. He fell senseless at the feet of his foes, and died not long afterward.

The effect of Bonaparte's success in forcing such a peace upon Austria was profound throughout Europe. The war party in Great Britain was materially strengthened by the treatment which Malmesbury had received. While the treaty made a pretense of upholding the integrity of the empire as a principle, yet Prussia and all Germany knew that that integrity was quickly to be violated. Paul I of Russia remembered that as guarantor of the peace of Teschen, he too was deeply concerned in that integrity, and displayed uneasiness. The British had on October eleventh annihilated the Dutch fleet at Camperdown: their