He was offered, if the story be true, an independent German principality for himself and his heirs.

"I thank the emperor," he answered, "but if greatness is to be mine, it shall come from France." The Venetian Senate were guilty, in their mortal struggle, of another and a more inexcusable piece of meanness.

They seized the person of Count D'Entraigues, a French emigrant, who had been living in their city as agent for the exiled house of Bourbon; and surrendered him and all his papers to the victorious general.

Buonaparte discovered among these documents ample evidence that Pichegru, the French general on the Rhine, and universally honoured as the conqueror of Holland, had some time before this hearkened to the proposals of the Bourbon princes, and, among other efforts in favour of the royal cause, not hesitated even to misconduct his military movements with a view to the downfall of the government which had entrusted him with his command.
This was a secret, the importance of which Napoleon could well appreciate;[18] and he forthwith communicated it to the Directory at Paris.
The events of the last twelve months in France had made Pichegru a person of still higher importance than when he commenced his intrigues with the Bourbons as general on the Rhine.

Some obscure doubts of his fidelity, or the usual policy of the Directory, which rendered them averse (wherever they could help it) to continue any one general very long at the head of one army, had induced them to displace Pichegru, and appoint Hoche, a tried republican, in his room.