After some negotiation, he told the Venetian envoy that he granted the prayer of his masters.

"Be neuter," said he, "but see that your neutrality be indeed sincere and perfect.

If any insurrection occur in my rear, to cut off my communications in the event of my marching on Germany--if any movement whatever betray the disposition of your senate to aid the enemies of France, be sure that vengeance will follow--from that hour the independence of Venice has ceased to be." More than a month had now elapsed since Alvinzi's defeat at Rivoli; in nine days the war with the Pope had reached its close; and, having left some garrisons in the towns on the Adige, to watch the neutrality of Venice, Napoleon hastened to carry the war into the hereditary dominions of the Emperor.

Twenty thousand fresh troops had recently joined his victorious standard from France; and, at the head of perhaps a larger force than he had ever before mustered, he proceeded to the frontier of the Frioul, where, according to his information, the main army of Austria, recruited once more to its original strength, was preparing to open a sixth campaign--under the orders, not of Alvinzi, but of a general young like himself, and hitherto eminently successful--the same who had already by his combinations baffled two such masters in the art of war as Jourdan and Moreau--the Archduke Charles; a prince on whose high talents the last hopes of the empire seemed to repose.
To give the details of the sixth campaign, which now commenced, would be to repeat the story which has been already five times told.

The Archduke, fettered by the Aulic Council of Vienna, saw himself compelled to execute a plan which he had discrimination enough to condemn.