The French, victorious, consider the nations of Lombardy as
their brothers.' In testimony of this fraternity, and to fulfil the
solemn pledge of respecting property, this very proclamation imposed
on the Milanese a provisional contribution to the amount of twenty
millions of livres, or near one million sterling; and successive
exactions were afterwards levied on that single state to the amount,
in the whole, of near six millions sterling. The regard to religion
and to the customs of the country was manifested with the same
scrupulous fidelity. The churches were given up to indiscriminate
plunder. Every religious and charitable fund, every public treasure,
was confiscated. The country was made the scene of every species of
disorder and rapine. The priests, the established form of worship, all
the objects of religious reverence, were openly insulted by the French
troops; at Pavia, particularly, the tomb of St. Augustine, which the
inhabitants were accustomed to view with peculiar veneration, was
mutilated and defaced. This last provocation having roused the
resentment of the people, they flew to arms, surrounded the French
garrison, and took them prisoners, but carefully abstained from
offering any violence to a single soldier. In revenge for this
conduct, Buonaparte, then on his march to the Mincio, suddenly
returned, collected his troops, and carried the extremity of military
execution over the country: he burnt the town of Benasco, and
massacred eight hundred of its inhabitants; he marched to Pavia, took
it by storm, and delivered it over to general plunder, and published,
at the same moment, a proclamation, of May 26, ordering his troops to
shoot all those who had not laid down their arms and taken an oath
of obedience, and to burn every village where the _tocsin_ should be
sounded, and to put its inhabitants to death.
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