Should it be your plan to extract five or six millions from Venice, I have expressly prepared this sort of rupture for you.

If your intentions be more decided, I think this ground of quarrel ought to be kept up.
Let me know what you mean to do, and wait till the favourable moment, which I shall seize according to circumstances; for we must not have to do with all the world at once.
The Directory answered that the moment was not favourable; that it was first necessary to take Mantua, and give Wurmser a sound beating.
However, towards the end of the year 1796 the Directory began to give more credit to the sincerity of the professions of neutrality made on the part of Venice.

It was resolved, therefore, to be content with obtaining money and supplies for the army, and to refrain from violating the neutrality.

The Directory had not then in reserve, like Bonaparte, the idea of making the dismemberment of Venice serve as a compensation for such of the Austrian possessions as the French Republic might retain.
In 1797 the expected favourable moment had arrived.

The knell of Venice was rung; and Bonaparte thus wrote to the Directory on the 30th of April: "I am convinced that the only course to be now taken is to destroy this ferocious and sanguinary Government." On the 3d of May, writing from Palma Nuova, he says: "I see nothing that can be done but to obliterate the Venetian name from the face of the globe." Towards the end of March 1797 the Government of Venice was in a desperate state.