Accordingly, what might have been foreseen actually occurred. Augereau, during the autumn of 1797, sought to emulate in southwestern Germany the political policy initiated by Bonaparte in Italy. But his rude blundering compelled his recall, a step which was softened by his transfer to the Pyrenees, where an army stood ready to intervene in Spain whenever opportunity should be ripe. The movement in Germany spent itself in shameless plundering both east and west of the Rhine--a double disgrace in view of the fact that the war was ended, that Mainz was surrendered, that the whole left bank, though not yet formally ceded, was in French control; and that the Congress of Rastadt was discussing how the princes who had surrendered their possessions to France should be compensated within the boundaries of the empire. The course of affairs in the Low Countries was equally disastrous to the prestige of the Revolution. Holland had not only lost all her colonies, including the Cape of Good Hope, by her compulsory enrolment in the republican system, but at Camperdown on October eleventh, 1797, the fleet of the Batavian Republic was battered to pieces by that of England under Duncan. The new commonwealth was thus rendered contemptible, and made entirely dependent on France. Twenty-five thousand soldiers were already quartered on the Dutch, and now they were held to enormous contributions of ships, money, and men for the proposed landing in England. Delacroix and Joubert were the respective civil and military agents in these exactions. Bonaparte's departure from Italy made no change in French policy or conduct with regard to her. The Venetian possessions had been literally stripped by Berthier of every valuable article before their definitive surrender to Austria. Formal negotiations for a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with the Cisalpine Republic were opened as soon as the new state was recognized, but the same pillage continued as during its conquest. By that treaty, which was not concluded until March, 1798, the new "free" state was bound to support twenty-five thousand French troops, and to raise nearly four million dollars a year to pay them. As to the new Ligurian Republic, its boundaries were incomplete without Piedmont. Before the end of June, 1798, revolutionary fires having been kindled in Turin by the old efficient methods, two French armies under Jacobin generals seized Piedmont, and incorporated it with the other "free" state, which was then bound to France in the same terms as Cisalpina. Charles Emmanuel, having thus lost all his possessions on the mainland, retired to Sardinia, where he was destined to become, under protection of the English fleet, the focus of a new coalition against France.