Rome might, for the present at least, be considered as completely subjugated. Naples was at peace, if the signature of a treaty can create peace. At any rate, so distant from Rome, and so controlled by the defeat of the Papal arms--by the fear that the English fleet might be driven from the Mediterranean--and by their distance from the scene of action--the King of the Two Sicilies, or rather his wife, the high-spirited daughter of Maria Theresa, dared not offer the least interference with the purposes of the French general. Tuscany had apparently consented to owe her political existence to any degree of clemency or contempt which Buonaparte might extend to her; and, entertaining hopes of some convention betwixt the French and English, by which the grand duke's port of Leghorn might be restored to him, remained passive as the dead. The republic of Venice alone, feeling still the stimulus arising from her ancient importance, and yet painfully conscious of her present want of power, strained every exertion to place herself in a respectable attitude. That city of lofty remembrances, the Tyre of the middle ages, whose traders were princes, and her merchants the honourable of the earth, fallen as she was from her former greatness, still presented some appearance of vigour. Her oligarchical government, so long known and so dreaded, for jealous precautions, political sagacity, the impenetrability of their plans, and the inflexibility of their rigour, still preserved the attitude of independence, and endeavoured, by raising additional regiments of Sclavonians, disciplining their peasantry, who were of a very martial character, and forming military magazines of considerable extent, to maintain such an aspect as might make their friendship to be courted, and their enmity to be feared. It was already evident that the Austrians, notwithstanding all their recent defeats, were again about to make head on their Italo-German frontier; and France, in opposing them, could not be indifferent to the neutrality of Venice, upon whose territories, to all appearance, Buonaparte must have rested the flank of his operations, in case of his advancing towards Friuli. So circumstanced, and when it was recollected that the mistress of the Adriatic had still fifty thousand men at her command, and those of a fierce and courageous description, chiefly consisting of Sclavonians, Venice, even yet, was an enemy not to be lightly provoked. But the inhabitants were not unanimous, especially those of the Terra Firma, or mainland, who, not being enrolled in the golden book of the insular nobility of Venice, were discontented, and availed themselves of the encouragement and assistance of the new-created republics on the Po to throw off their allegiance. Brescia and Bergamo, in particular, were clamorous for independence.