Georgiana did not know whether there were any nobles willing to die for Napoleon, but there were certainly soldiers willing to take bullets for him. Several French Navy warships had been named after such men. One of them, the Da Brienne, had nearly been sunk in Venice.
At the time, the French consulate on Zante Island had been burned down, while the smaller warship Liberator of Italy had actually sunk in Venice Harbor. Its captain, Laugier, ordered all the crewmen to disembark, then climbed alone onto the quarterdeck and called out to the Austrian frigate, attempting to stop its bombardment. But he was soon shot and fell. The sailors who had gone overboard encountered Venetian warships cutting them down as they desperately swam for their lives.
In the end, only one sailor reached the harbor. But when he grabbed hold of a jutting piece of timber, the harbor commander personally cut off his wrist with a blade.
In view of this, under Article 328 of Chapter Twelve of the Constitution of Year III: when hostilities were unavoidable or had already begun, when there was a threat of war or preparations for war against the French Republic, the Directory was to employ every means at its disposal to defend the state and immediately notify the legislative body of the measures adopted.
Then the French envoy in Venice left the city, while representatives of the Republic of Venice in Lombardy and throughout the Venetian mainland were ordered to leave their posts within twenty-four hours.
When war was about to break out, evacuating nationals and withdrawing envoys were inevitable. Yet from 1798 to 1800, America and France had fought a war at sea. At the time, America had attacked without declaring war, or perhaps without formally declaring it. Both English and French had