The fate of Venice and of its possessions was to be decided between France and Austria. No mention of the Ionian Islands was made in the Preliminaries of Leoben. The two sides had different objectives: the Austrians wanted to keep the French out, and welcomed the possibility that the islands would come under the rump Venetian Republic envisaged at Leoben, as a buffer between French and Austrian territories in the Adriatic; whereas for the French, and NApoleon especially, the islands were an important stepping-stone for his ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean, which would soon lead to his invasion of Egypt.