The Directors' declaration of war was accordingly stopped at Milan, and no more was heard of it.
They were thus forcibly reminded of the truth of his previous warning that things would certainly go wrong unless they consulted him on all important details.[80] This treaty of Milan was the fourth important convention concluded by the general, who, at the beginning of the campaign of 1796, had been forbidden even to sign an armistice without consulting Salicetti! It was speedily followed by another, which in many respects redounds to the credit of the young conqueror.

If his conduct towards Venice inspires loathing, his treatment of Genoa must excite surprise and admiration.

Apart from one very natural outburst of spleen, it shows little of that harshness which might have been expected from the man who had looked on Genoa as the embodiment of mean despotism.

Up to the summer of 1796 Bonaparte seems to have retained something of his old detestation of that republic; for at midsummer, when he was in the full career of his Italian conquests, he wrote to Faypoult, the French envoy at Genoa, urging him to keep open certain cases that were in dispute, and three weeks later he again wrote that the time for Genoa had not yet come.

Any definite action against this wealthy city was, indeed, most undesirable during the campaign; for the bankers of Genoa supplied the French army with the sinews of war by means of secret loans, and their merchants were equally complaisant in regard to provisions.