Their mode of making war savoured of the ancient vindictive temper ascribed to their countrymen. An insurrection was secretly organized through all the territories which Venice still possessed on the mainland, and broke out, like the celebrated Sicilian vespers, in blood and massacre. In Verona they assassinated more than a hundred Frenchmen, many of them sick soldiers in the hospitals[272]--an abominable cruelty which could not fail to bring a curse on their undertaking. Fioravante, a Venetian general, marched at the head of a body of Sclavonians to besiege the forts of Verona, into which the remaining French had made their retreat, and where they defended themselves. Laudon made his appearance with his Austrians and Tyrolese, and it seemed as if the fortunes of Buonaparte had at length found a check. [Sidenote: OVERTURES OF PEACE.] But the awakening from this pleasing dream was equally sudden and dreadful. News arrived that preliminaries of peace had been agreed upon, and an armistice signed between France and Austria. Laudon, therefore, and the auxiliaries on whom the Venetians had so much relied, retired from Verona. The Lombards sent an army to the assistance of the French. The Sclavonians, under Fioravante, after fighting vigorously, were compelled to surrender. The insurgent towns of Vicenza, Treviso, and Padua, were again occupied by the Republicans. Rumour proclaimed the terrible return of Napoleon and his army, and the ill-advised Senate of Venice were lost in stupor, and scarce had sense left to decide betwixt unreserved submission and hopeless defence. It was one of the most artful rules in Buonaparte's policy, that when he had his enemy at decided advantage, by some point having been attained which seemed to give a complete turn to the campaign in his favour, he seldom failed to offer peace, and peace upon conditions much more favourable than perhaps the opposite party expected. By doing this, he secured such immediate and undisputed fruits of his victory, as the treaty of peace contained; and he was sure of means to prosecute farther advantages at some future opportunity. He obtained, moreover, the character of generosity; and, in the present instance, he avoided the great danger of urging to bay so formidable a power as Austria, whose despair might be capable of the most formidable efforts. [Sidenote: March 31.] With this purpose, and assuming for the first time that disregard for the usual ceremonial of courts, and etiquette of politics, which he afterwards seemed to have pleasure in displaying, he wrote a letter in person to the Archduke Charles on the subject of peace.