According to the secret articles signed at Leoben, the city of Venice was to have retained her independence and gained the Legations.

But her contumacy could now be chastised by annihilation.

Venice could, in fact, indemnify the Hapsburgs for the further cessions which France exacted from them elsewhere; and in the process Bonaparte would free himself from the blame which attached to his hasty signature of the preliminaries at Leoben.[77] He was now determined to secure the Rhine frontier for France, to gain independence, under French tutelage, not only for the Lombard Republic, but also for Modena and the Legations.
These were his aims during the negotiations to which he gave the full force of his intellect during the spring and summer of 1797.
The first thing was to pour French troops into Italy so as to extort better terms: the next was to declare war on Venice.

For this there was now ample justification; for, apart from the massacre at Verona, another outrage had been perpetrated.

A French corsair, which had persisted in anchoring in a forbidden part of the harbour of Venice, had been riddled by the batteries and captured.