The valet was arrested, his despatches taken, and Ottolini fled from Bergamo.

This gave a beginning to the general rising of the Venetian States.

In fact, the force of circumstances alone brought on the insurrection of those territories against their old insular government.

General La Hoz, who commanded the Lombard Legion, was the active protector of the revolution, which certainly had its origin more in the progress of the prevailing principles of liberty than in the crooked policy of the Senate of Venice.

Bonaparte, indeed, in his despatches to the Directory, stated that the Senate had instigated the insurrection; but that was not quite correct, and he could not wholly believe his own assertion.
Pending the vacillation of the Venetian Senate, Vienna was exciting the population of its States on the mainland to rise against the French.