All that his enemy could show, in set-off for the slaughter and
discomfiture of Alvinzi's campaign, was that they retained possession of
Bassano and Trent, thus interrupting Buonaparte's access to the Tyrol
and Germany. This advantage was not trivial; but it had been dearly
bought.

A fourth army had been baffled; but the resolution of the Imperial Court
was indomitable, and new levies were diligently forwarded to reinforce
Alvinzi. Once more (January 7, 1797) the Marshal found himself at the
head of 60,000: once more his superiority over Napoleon's muster-roll
was enormous; and once more he descended from the mountains with the
hope of relieving Wurmser and reconquering Lombardy. The fifth act of
the tragedy was yet to be performed.

We may here pause to notice some civil events of importance which
occurred ere Alvinzi made his final descent. The success of the French
naturally gave new vigour to the Italian party, who, chiefly in the
large towns, were hostile to Austria, and desirous to settle their own
government on the republican model. Napoleon had by this time come to be
anything but a Jacobin in his political sentiments: his habits of
command; his experience of the narrow and ignorant management of the
Directory; his personal intercourse with the ministers of sovereign
powers; his sense daily strengthened by events, that whatever good was
done in Italy proceeded from his own skill and the devotion of his
army,--all these circumstances conspired to make him respect himself and
contemn the government, almost in despite of which he had conquered
kingdoms for France. He therefore regarded now with little sympathy the
aspirations after republican organisation which he had himself
originally stimulated among the northern Italians. He knew, however,
that the Directory had, by absurd and extravagant demands, provoked the