Early in December, Wurmser led a sortie, sword in hand, against Kilmaine. The Imperialists sallied out of Mantua at seven in the morning, and almost in the dark, under a furious cannonade, which lasted all day; "but General Kilmaine," says Bonaparte, "made him return, as usual, faster than he came out, and took from him two hundred men, one howitzer, and two pieces of cannon. This is his third unsuccessful attempt." So energetic were the measures, and so able the precautions of Kilmaine, that Wurmser, seeing all hope of succour at an end, surrendered, after a long, desperate, and disastrous defence, at ten o'clock on the morning of the 3rd February, 1797, giving up his soldiers as prisoners of war. The following is a translation of Kilmaine's brief letter on this important acquisition:--
"Kilmaine, Général de Division and Commandant of Lombardy, to the Minister of War. Milan, 17 Pluviose (Feb. 5), 1797.
"Citizen Minister--I avail myself of a courier which General Bonaparte sends from Romagna (in order to announce to the Directory the defeat of the Papal troops), to acquaint you with the capture of Mantua, the news of which I received yesterday evening by a courier from Mantua itself. I thought it necessary to announce this circumstance, because General Bonaparte, who is occupied in Romagna annihilating the troops of his Holiness, may probably have been ignorant of this fact when _his_ courier departed. The garrison are our prisoners of war, and are to be sent into Germany in order to be exchanged. I have not yet received the articles of capitulation; but the commander-in-chief will not fail to send them by the first courier.
The capture of Mantua was celebrated in Paris by the firing of cannon and the erection of arches in honour of Bonaparte and the Irish Commandant of Lombardy, and a general joy was diffused through every heart in the city on the fall of what they styled the _Gibraltar_ of Italy; while Bonaparte, loaded with the diamonds of the vanquished Pope, and the spoils of our Lady of Loretto, pushed on to seek fresh conquests and new laurels.
Kilmaine remained for some time in command at Mantua after its capitulation.
During the siege and other events, a revolutionary spirit had pervaded the Venetian States. Peschiera, a fortified town in the province of Verona, and Brescia, a large city in the beautiful plain on the Garza, had been both seized, garrisoned, and republicanized by the French. The people rose in arms, fired by new and absurd ideas of liberty and equality, and frightful scenes of bloodshed ensued when the more loyal and sensible inhabitants resisted these new patriots; but the latter, on being joined by fifteen hundred banditti from Bergamo, pressed the Venetian troops, who were driven out with great slaughter.