besiegers of Mantua after giving Augereau the slip. On 16 January the
French completely defeated Provera at La Favorita; 7,000 Austrians and
22 guns were captured. Mantua, with its garrison at starvation point, now
sued for terms. Bonaparte acclaimed Massena in front of his troops as
'the child of victory'. In five days 48,ooo Austrians on the offensive had
been reduced to a rabble of IJ,OOO fugitives.
Wurmser sent an aide to negotiate with Napoleon and tried to secure
decent terms by claiming that there was still a twelve-months supply of
food in Mantua. Napoleon, in a typical jape, hovered round the
negotiations in disguise. Only when he finally sat down and wrote his
terms on the margins of Wurmser's draft proposals did the Austrian
envoy realize who he was. Overcome by the generosity of the terms, the
envoy then blurted out that they had just three days' food left. However
magnanimous Napoleon was in victory, he could not accept that
Wurmser was in any sense his equal, and made a point of being absent
when the Austrian commander came to sign the surrender terms with
Serurier. ·Mantua opened its gates to the French on 2 February.
No military obstacle now remained to the invasion of Austria via the
Brenner Pass and the Tyrol. Yet the Directory insisted that before
Napoleon gave the Austrians the coup de grace, he had to settle accounts
with the Pope, who had refused to sign a treaty with France in the belief
that Austrian military power would prevail. Early in February Napoleon
led his army on a sweep through the papal states, subduing successively
Bologna, Faenza, Forli, Rimini, Macerata and Ancona. At Ancona he
already evinced clear signs of the 'oriental complex' that was to be so
striking a feature of the irrational side of his political projects. On 10
February he wrote to the Directory: 'The port of Ancona is the only
Adriatic port of importance, after Venice. From any point of view it is
essential for our links with Constantinople. In twenty-four hours one can
be in Macedonia.' It does not require brilliant insight to see that it was
Macedonia's greatest hero, Alexander the Great, who was on his mind as
he wrote.
By the time Napoleon reached Ancona on 10 February, Pius VI was
ready to come to terms. By the treaty of Tolentino (19 February 1797),
the Pope ceded Bologna, Ferrara and the Romagna and paid an
indemnity of thirty millions. Napoleon accepted this, even though
atheistic firebrands in the Directory, like Louis La Revelliere-Lepeaux,
wanted Pius deposed. Napoleon reasoned, and argued thus to the
Directory, that the deposition of the Pope would not serve French
interests; the Papacy was a stabilizing factor in central Italy and, if it was
removed, the power vacuum would be filled by Naples, then an even
marcin
(Marcin)
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