Duchies south of the Po pillaged, and the Pope driven to purchase an armistice at enormous cost, before the Austrian armies, raised to a force of 50,000 men, again descended from the Tyrol for the relief of Mantua. But a fatal division of their forces by the Lake of Garda enabled Buonaparte to hurl them back broken upon Trent, and to shut up their general, Wurmser, in Mantua with the remnant of his men; while fresh victories at the bridge of Arcola and at Bassano drove back two new Austrian armies who advanced to Wurmser's rescue. [Sidenote: The Terror of Ireland.] It was the success of Buonaparte which told on the resolve of the Directory to reject all terms of peace. After months of dilatory negotiations the offers of Lord Malmesbury were definitely declined, and the English envoy returned home at the end of the year. Every hour of his stay in Paris had raised higher hopes of success against England in the minds of the Directory. At the moment of his arrival Spain had been driven to declare war as their ally against Britain; and the Spanish and Dutch fleets were now at the French service for a struggle at sea. The merciless exactions of Buonaparte poured gold into the exhausted treasury; and the energy of Hoche rapidly availed itself of this supply to equip a force for operations in Ireland. At the opening of December he was ready to put to sea with a fleet of more than forty sail and 25,000 men; and the return of Lord Malmesbury was the signal for the despatch of his expedition from Brest. The fleet at Toulon, which was intended to co-operate with that at Brest, and which had sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar for that purpose, was driven into Port l'Orient by an English squadron: but contrary winds baffled the fleet which was watching Hoche, and his armament slipped away with little hindrance towards the Irish coast. Had it reached Ireland unbroken and under such a general, the island might well have been lost to the English Crown. But the winds fought against France, as they had fought against the Armada of Spain; and the ships were parted from one another by a gale which burst on them as they put to sea. Seventeen reached Bantry Bay, but hearing nothing of their leader or of the rest, they sailed back again to Brest, in spite of the entreaties of the soldiers to be suffered to land. Another division reached the Shannon to be scattered and driven home again by a second storm. Twelve vessels were wrecked or captured, and the frigate in which Hoche had embarked returned to port without having seen any of its companions. The invasion had failed, but the panic which it roused woke passions of cruelty and tyranny which turned Ireland into a hell. Soldiers and yeomanry marched over the country torturing and scourging the "croppies," as the Irish peasantry were termed from their short-cut hair; robbing, ravishing, and murdering at their will. The lightest suspicion, the most unfounded charges, were taken as warrants for bloodshed.