How important these circumstances were comparatively can only be understood by considering the fiascoes of the Directory elsewhere. No wonder they groveled before Bonaparte, while pocketing his millions and saving their face at home and abroad by reason of his victories, and his alone. They had two great schemes to annihilate British power: one, to invade Ireland, close all the North Sea ports to British commerce, and finally to descend on British shores with an irresistible host of the French democracy. Subsequent events of Napoleon's life must be judged in full view of the dead earnestness with which the Directory cherished this plan. But it was versatile likewise and had a second alternative, to foment rebellions in Persia, Turkey, and Egypt, overrun the latter country, and menace India. This second scheme influenced Bonaparte's career more deeply than the other, both were parts of traditional French policy and cherished by the French public as the great lines for expanding French renown and French influence. Both must be reckoned with by any suitor of France. For the Irish expedition Hoche was available; in his vain efforts for success he undermined his health and in his untimely death removed one possible rival of Bonaparte. The directors had Holland, but they could not win Prussia further than the stipulations made in 1795 at Basel, so their scheme of embargo rested in futile abeyance. They exhibited considerable activity in building a fleet, and the King of Spain, in spite of Godoy's opposition, accepted the title of a French admiral. By the treaty of San Ildefonso an offensive alliance against Great Britain was concluded, her commerce to be excluded from Portugal; Louisiana and Florida going to France. All the clauses except this last were nugatory because of Spanish weakness, but Bonaparte put in the plea for compensation to the Spanish Bourbons by some grant of Italian territory to the house of Parma. As we have elsewhere indicated, their attack on Austria in central Europe was a failure, Jourdan having been soundly beaten at Wuerzburg. There was no road open to Vienna except through Italy. Their negotiations with the papacy failed utterly; only a victorious warrior could overcome its powerful scruples, which in the aggregate prevented the hearty adhesion of French Roman Catholics to the republican system. Of necessity their conceptions of Italian destiny must yield to his, which were widely different from theirs.

Before such conditions other interests sink into atrophy; thenceforward, for example, there appears in Bonaparte's nature no trace of the Corsican patriot. The one faint spark of remaining interest seems to have been extinguished in an order that Pozzo di Borgo and his friends, if they had not escaped, should be brought to judgment. His other measures with reference to the once loved island were as calculating and dispassionate as any he took concerning the most indifferent principality of the mainland, and even extended to enunciating the principle that no Corsican should be employed in Corsica. It is a citizen not of Corsica, nor of France even, but of Europe, who on October second demands peace from the Emperor in a threat that if it is not yielded on favorable terms, Triest and the Adriatic will be seized. At the same time the Directory received from him another reminder of its position, which likewise indicates an interesting development of his own policy. "Diminish the number of your enemies. The influence of Rome is incalculable; it was ill advised to break with that power; it gives the advantage to her. If I had been consulted, I would have delayed the negotiations with Rome as with Genoa and Venice. Whenever your general in Italy is not the pivot of everything, you run great risks. This language will not be attributed to ambition; I have but too many honors, and my health is so broken that I believe I must ask you for a successor. I can no longer mount a horse; I have nothing left but courage, which is not enough in a post like this." Before this masked dictator were two tasks as difficult in their way as any even he would ever undertake, each calling for the exercise of faculties antipodal in quality, but quite as fine as any in the human mind. Mantua was yet to be captured; Rome and the Pope were to be handled so as to render the highest service to himself, to France, and to Europe. In both these labors he meant to be strengthened and yet unhampered. The habit of compliance was now strong upon the Directory, and they continued to yield as before.



CHAPTER XXXI.

Rivoli and the Capitulation of Mantua.

The Diplomatic Feint of Great Britain — Clarke and the Directory — Catherine the Great and Paul I — Austria's Strategic Plan — Renewal of Hostilities — The Austrians at Rivoli and Nogara — Bonaparte's Night March to Rivoli — Monte Baldo and the Berner Klause — The Battle of Rivoli — The Battle of La Favorita — Feats of the French Army — Bonaparte's Achievement — The Fall of Mantua.

[Sidenote: 1797.]

The fifth division of the Italian campaign was the fourth attempt of Austria to retrieve her position in Italy, a position on which her rulers still believed that all her destinies hung. Her energy was now the wilfulness of despair. Events in Europe were shaping themselves without regard to her advantage. The momentary humiliation of France in Jourdan's defeat, the deplorable condition of British finances as shown by the fall of the three per cents to fifty-three, the unsettled and dangerous state of Ireland, with the menace of Hoche's invasion impending, these circumstances created in London a feeling that perhaps the time was propitious for negotiating with France, where too there was considerable agitation for peace. Accordingly, in the autumn of 1796, Lord Malmesbury was sent to Paris under rigid cautionary instructions. The envoy was cold and haughty; Delacroix, the French minister, was conceited and shallow. It soon appeared that what the agent had to offer was either so indefinite as to be meaningless, or so favorable to Great Britain as to be ridiculous in principle. The negotiations were merely diplomatic fencing. To the Englishman the public law of Europe was still that of the peace of Utrecht, especially as to the Netherlands; to the Frenchman this was preposterous since the Low Countries were already in France by enactment and the rule of natural boundaries. About the middle of November, Malmesbury was informed that he must either speak to the point or leave. Of course the point was Belgium; if France would abandon her claim to Antwerp she could have compensation in Germany. There was some further futile talk about what both parties then as before, and thereafter to the end, considered the very nerve of their contention. Malmesbury went home toward the close of December, and soon after, Hoche's fleet was wrecked in the Channel. The result of the British mission was to clarify the issues, to consolidate British patriotism once more, to reopen the war on a definite basis. Hoche was assigned to the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, declaring he would first thunder at the gates of Vienna and then return through Ireland to London and command the peace of the world.

Meantime the Directory had noted the possibility of independent negotiation with Austria. It did not intend, complaisant as it had been hitherto, to leave Bonaparte unhampered in so momentous a transaction. On the contrary, it selected a pliable and obedient agent in the person of General Clarke, offspring of an Irish refugee family, either a mild republican or a constitutional monarchist according to circumstances, a lover of peace and order, a conciliatory spirit. To him was given the directors' confidential, elaborate, and elastic plan for territorial compensations as a basis for peace, the outcome of which in any case would leave Prussia preponderant in Germany. Liberal and well disposed to the Revolution as they believed, she could then be wooed into a firm alliance. In Italy, France was to maintain her new authority and retain what she had conquered for her own good pleasure. Bonaparte intended to do as he found necessary in both these cases. After Arcola, Thugut, the Austrian minister, expressed a sense of the deepest humiliation that a youth commanding volunteers and rapscallions should work his will with the fine troops and skilled generals of the empire. But, undaunted, he applied to Russia for succor. Catherine had dallied with Jacobinism in order to occupy both Prussia and Austria while she consolidated and confirmed her strength in Poland and the Orient. This she had accomplished and was now ready to bridle the wild steed she had herself unloosed. Intervening at the auspicious hour, she could deliver Italy, take control of central Europe, subjugate the north, and sway the universe.

Accordingly she demanded from Pitt a subsidy of two and a half million dollars, and ordered Suvoroff with sixty thousand troops to the assistance of Austria. Just then, in September, 1796, Gustavus IV, of Sweden, was at St. Petersburg for his betrothal with the Empress's granddaughter Alexandra. He required as a matter of course that she should adopt his faith. This was contemptuously refused and the preparations for the festival went forward to completion as if nothing had occurred. At the appointed hour for the ceremonial, the groom did not and would not appear. Consternation gave way to a sense of outrage, but the "Kinglet," as the great courtiers styled him, stood firm. The Empress was beside herself, her health gave way, and she died in less than two months, on November seventeenth. The dangerous imbecile, her son Paul I, reigned in her stead. Weird figure that he was, he at least renounced his mother's policy of conquest and countermanded her orders to Suvoroff, recalling him and his army. Austria was at bay, but she was undaunted.

Once more Alvinczy, despairing of success, but obedient to his orders, made ready to move down the Adige from Trent. Great zeal had been shown in Austria. The Vienna volunteer battalions abandoned the work of home protection for which they had enlisted, and, with a banner embroidered by the Empress's own hand, joined the active forces. The Tyrolese, in defiance of the atrocious proclamation in which Bonaparte, claiming to be their conqueror, had threatened death to any one taking up arms against France, flocked again to the support of their Emperor. By a recurrence to the old fatal plan, Alvinczy was to attack the main French army; his colleague Provera was to follow the Brenta into the lower reaches of the Adige, where he could effect a crossing, and relieve Mantua. He was likewise to deceive the enemy by making a parade of greater strength than he really had, and thus draw away Bonaparte's main army toward Legnago on the lower Adige. A messenger was despatched to Wurmser with letters over the Emperor's own signature, ordering him, if Provera should fail, to desert Mantua, retreat into the Romagna, and under his own command unite the garrison and the papal troops. This order never reached its destination, for its bearer was intercepted, and was compelled by the use of an emetic to render up the despatches which he had swallowed.

On January seventh, 1797, Bonaparte gave orders to strengthen the communications along his line, massing two thousand men at Bologna in order to repress certain hostile demonstrations lately made in behalf of the Pope. On the following day an Austrian division which had been lying at Padua made a short attack on Augereau's division, and on the ninth drove it into Porto Legnago, the extreme right of the French line. This could mean nothing else than a renewal of hostilities by Austria, although it was impossible to tell where the main attack would be made. On the eleventh Bonaparte was at Bologna, concluding an advantageous treaty with Tuscany; in order to be ready for any event, he started the same evening, hastened across the Adige with his troops, and pressed on to Verona.

On the twelfth, at six in the morning, the enemy attacked Massena's advance-guard at St. Michel, a suburb of that city. They were repulsed with loss. Early on the same day Joubert, who had been stationed with a corps of observation farther up in the old and tried position at the foot of Monte Baldo, became aware of hostile movements, and occupied Rivoli. During the day the two Austrian columns tried to turn his position by seizing his outpost at Corona, but they were repulsed. On the thirteenth he became aware that the main body of the Austrians was before him, and that their intention was to surround him by the left. Accordingly he informed Bonaparte, abandoned Corona, and made ready to retreat from Rivoli. That evening Provera threw a pontoon bridge across the Adige at Anghiari, below Legnago, and crossed with a portion of his army. Next day he started for Mantua, but was so harassed by Guieu and Augereau that the move was ineffectual, and he got no farther than Nogara.

The heights of Rivoli command the movements of any force passing out of the Alps through the valley of the Adige. They are abrupt on all sides but one, where from the greatest elevation the chapel of St. Mark overlooked a winding road, steep, but available for cavalry and artillery. Rising from the general level of the tableland, this hillock is in itself a kind of natural citadel. Late on the thirteenth, Joubert, in reply to the message he had sent, received orders to fortify the plateau, and to hold it at all hazards; for Bonaparte now divined that the main attack was to be made there in order to divert all opposition from Provera, and that if it were successful the two Austrian armies would meet at Mantua. By ten that evening the reports brought in from Joubert and by scouts left this conclusion no longer doubtful. That very night, therefore, being in perfect readiness for either event, Bonaparte moved toward Rivoli with a force numbering about twenty thousand. It was composed of every available French soldier between Desenzano and Verona, including Massena's division.[68] By strenuous exertions they reached the heights of Rivoli about two in the morning of the fourteenth. Alvinczy, ignorant of what had happened, was waiting for daylight in order to carry out his original design of inclosing and capturing the comparatively small force of Joubert and the strong place which it had been set to hold, a spot long since recognized by Northern peoples as the key to the portal of Italy. Bonaparte, on his arrival, perceived in the moonlight five divisions encamped in a semicircle below; their bivouac fires made clear that they were separated from one another by considerable distances. He knew then that his instinct had been correct, that this was the main army, and that the decisive battle would be fought next day. The following hours were spent in disposing his forces to meet the attack in any form it might take. Not a man was wasted, but the region was occupied with pickets, outposts, and reserves so ingeniously stationed that the study of that field, and of Bonaparte's disposition of his forces, has become a classic example in military science.

[Footnote 68: Somewhat under 40,000. Bonaparte guessed, and his guess was very shrewd, that all told he was then confronted by 45,000. The Austrians have never made the facts clear, though their initial strength is set at 28,000. I have found no estimate of the reinforcements. In any case they lost 10,000 here, the whole of Provera's corps at La Favorita, and 18,000 were captured at Mantua: their fighting force in Italy was annihilated.]

The gorge by which the Adige breaks through the lowest foot-hills of the Alps to enter the lowlands has been famous since dim antiquity. The Romans considered it the entrance to Cimmeria; it was sung in German myths as the Berner Klause, the majestic gateway from their inclement clime into the land of the stranger, that warm, bright land for the luxurious and orderly life of which their hearts were ever yearning. Around its precipices and isolated, frowning bastions song and fable had clustered, and the effect of mystery was enhanced by the awful grandeur of the scene. Overlooking all stands Monte Baldo, frowning with its dark precipices on the cold summits of the German highland, smiling with its sunny slopes on the blue waters of Lake Garda and the fertile valley of the Po. In the change of strategy incident to the introduction of gunpowder the spot of greatest resistance was no longer in the gorge, but at its mouth, where Rivoli on one side, and Ceraino on the other, command respectively the gentle slopes which fall eastward and westward toward the plains. The Alps were indeed looking down on the "Little Corporal," who, having flanked their defenses at one end, was now about to force their center, and later to pass by their eastward end into the hereditary dominions of the German emperors on the Danube.

At early dawn began the conflict which was to settle the fate of Mantua. The first fierce contest was between the Austrian left and the French right at St. Mark; but it quickly spread along the whole line as far as Caprino. For some time the Austrians had the advantage, and the result was in suspense, since the French left, at Caprino, yielded for an instant before the onslaught of the main Austrian army made in accordance with Alvinczy's first plan, and, as he supposed, upon an inferior force by one vastly superior in numbers. Berthier, who by his calm courage was fast rising high in his commander's favor, came to the rescue, and Massena, following with a judgment which has inseparably linked his name with that famous spot, finally restored order to the French ranks. Every successive charge of the Austrians was repulsed with a violence which threw their right and center back toward Monte Baldo in ever growing confusion. The battle waged for nearly three hours before Alvinczy understood that it was not Joubert's division, but Bonaparte's army, which was before him. A fifth Austrian column then pressed forward from the bank of the Adige to scale the height of Rivoli, and Joubert, whose left at St. Mark was hard beset, could not check the movement. For an instant he left the road unprotected. The Austrians charged up the hill and seized the commanding position; but simultaneously there rushed from the opposite side three French battalions, clambering up to retrieve the loss. The nervous activity of the latter brought them quickly to the top, where at once they were reinforced by a portion of the cavalry reserve, and the storming columns were thrown back in disorder. At that instant appeared in Bonaparte's rear an Austrian corps which had been destined to take the French at Rivoli in their rear. Had it arrived sooner, the position would, as the French declared, have been lost to them. As it was, instead of making an attack, the Austrians had to await one. Bonaparte directed a falling artillery fire against them, and threw them back toward Lake Garda. He thus gained time to re-form his own ranks and enabled Massena to hold in check still another of the Austrian columns, which was striving to outflank him on his left. Thereupon the French reserve under Rey, coming in from the westward, cut the turning column entirely off, and compelled it to surrender. The rest of Alvinczy's force being already in full retreat, this ended the worst defeat and most complete rout which the Austrian arms had so far sustained. Such was the utter demoralization of the flying and disintegrated columns that a young French officer named Rene, who was in command of fifty men at a hamlet on Lake Garda, successfully imitated Bonaparte's ruse at Lonato, and displayed such an imposing confidence to a flying troop of fifteen hundred Austrians that they surrendered to what appeared to be a force superior to their own. Next morning at dawn, Murat, who had marched all night to gain the point, appeared on the slopes of Monte Baldo above Corona, and united with Joubert to drive the Austrians from their last foothold. The pursuit was continued as far as Trent. Thirteen thousand prisoners were captured in those two days.



While Murat was straining up the slopes of Monte Baldo, Bonaparte, giving no rest to the weary feet of Massena's division,—the same men who two days before had marched by night from Verona,—was retracing his steps on that well-worn road past the city of Catullus and the Capulets onward toward Mantua. Provera had crossed the Adige at Anghiari with ten thousand men. Twice he had been attacked: once in the front by Guieu, once in the rear by Augereau. On both occasions his losses had been severe, but, nevertheless, on the same morning which saw Alvinczy's flight into the Tyrol, he finally appeared with six thousand men in the suburb of St. George, before Mantua. He succeeded in communicating with Wurmser, but was held in check by the blockading French army throughout the day and night until Bonaparte arrived with his reinforcements. Next morning there was a general engagement, Provera attacking in front, and Wurmser, by preconcerted arrangement, sallying out from behind at the head of a strong force. The latter was thrown back into the town by Serurier, who commanded the besiegers, but only after a fierce and deadly conflict on the causeway. This was the road from Mantua to a country-seat of its dukes known as "La Favorita," and was chosen for the sortie as having an independent citadel. Victor, with some of the troops brought in from Rivoli, the "terrible fifty-seventh demi-brigade," as Bonaparte designated them, attacked Provera at the same time, and threw his ranks into such disorder that he was glad to surrender his entire force. This conflict of January sixteenth, before Mantua, is known as the battle of La Favorita, from the stand made by Serurier on the road to that residence. Its results were six thousand prisoners, among them the Vienna volunteers with the Empress's banner, and many guns. In his fifty-fifth year this French soldier of fortune had finally reached the climax of his career. Having fought in the Seven Years' War, in Portugal and in Corsica, the Revolution gave him his opening. He assisted Scherer in the capture of the Maritime Alps, and fought with leonine power at Mondovi and these succeeding movements. While his fortunes were linked with Bonaparte's they mounted higher and higher. As governor of Venice he was so upright and incorruptible as to win the sobriquet "Virgin of Italy." The discouragement of defeat under Moreau in 1798 led him to retire into civil life, where he was a stanch Bonapartist and faithful official to the end of the Napoleonic epoch, when he rallied to the Bourbons.

Bonaparte estimated that so far in the Italian campaigns the army of the republic had fought within four days two pitched battles, and had besides been six times engaged; that they had taken, all told, nearly twenty-five thousand prisoners, including a lieutenant-general, two generals, and fifteen colonels; had captured twenty standards, with sixty pieces of artillery, and had killed or wounded six thousand men.

This short campaign of Rivoli was the turning-point of the war, and may be said to have shaped the history of Europe for twenty years. Chroniclers dwell upon those few moments at St. Mark and the plateau of Rivoli, wondering what the result would have been if the Austrian corps which came to turn the rear of Rivoli had arrived five minutes sooner. But an accurate and dispassionate criticism must decide that every step in Bonaparte's success was won by careful forethought and by the most effective disposition of the forces at his command. So sure was he of success that even in the crises when Massena seemed to save the day on the left, and when the Austrians seemed destined to wrest victory from defeat on the right, he was self-reliant and cheerful. The new system of field operations had a triumphant vindication at the hands of its author. The conquering general meted out unstinted praise to his invincible squadrons and their leaders, but said nothing of himself, leaving the world to judge whether this were man or demon who, still a youth, and within a public career of but one season, had humiliated the proudest empire on the Continent, had subdued Italy, and on her soil had erected states unknown before, without the consent of any great power, not excepting France. It is not wonderful that this personage should sometimes have said of himself, "Say that my life began at Rivoli," as at other times he dated his military career from Toulon.

Wurmser's retreat to Mantua in September had been successful because of the strong cavalry force which accompanied it. He had been able to hold out for four months only by means of the flesh of their horses, five thousand in number, which had been killed and salted to increase the garrison stores. Even this resource was now exhausted, and after a few days of delay the gallant old man sent a messenger with the usual conventional declarations as to his ability for further resistance, in order, of course, to secure the most favorable terms of surrender. There is a fine anecdote in connection with the arrival of this messenger at the French headquarters, which, though perhaps not literally, is probably ideally, true. When the Austrian envoy entered Serurier's presence, another person wrapped in a cloak was sitting at a table apparently engaged in writing. After the envoy had finished the usual enumeration of the elements of strength still remaining to his commander, the unknown man came forward, and, holding a written sheet in his hand, said: "Here are my conditions. If Wurmser really had provisions for twenty-five days, and spoke of surrender, he would not deserve an honorable capitulation. But I respect the age, the gallantry, and the misfortunes of the marshal; and whether he opens his gates to-morrow, or whether he waits fifteen days, a month, or three months, he shall still have the same conditions; he may wait until his last morsel of bread has been eaten." The messenger was a clever man who afterward rendered his own name, that of Klenau, illustrious. He recognized Bonaparte, and, glancing at the terms, found them so generous that he at once admitted the desperate straits of the garrison. This is substantially the account of Napoleon's memoirs. In a contemporary despatch to the Directory there is nothing of it, for he never indulged in such details to them; but he does say in two other despatches what at first blush militates against its literal truth. On February first, writing from Bologna, he declared that he would withdraw his conditions unless Wurmser acceded before the third: yet, in a letter of that very date, he indulges in a long and high-minded eulogium of the aged field-marshal, and declares his wish to show true French generosity to such a foe. The simple explanation is that, having sent the terms, Bonaparte immediately withdrew from Mantua to leave Serurier in command at the surrender, a glory he had so well deserved, and then returned to Bologna to begin his final preparations against Rome. In the interval Wurmser made a proposition even more favorable to himself. Bonaparte petulantly rejected it, but with the return of his generous feeling he determined that at least he would not withdraw his first offer. Captious critics are never content, and they even charge that when, on the tenth, Wurmser and his garrison finally did march out, Bonaparte's absence was a breach of courtesy. It requires no great ardor in his defense to assert, on the contrary, that in circumstances so unprecedented the disparity of age between the respective representatives of the old and the new military system would have made Bonaparte's presence another drop in the bitter cup of the former. The magnanimity of the young conqueror in connection with the fall of Mantua was genuine, and highly honorable to him. So at least thought Wurmser himself, who wrote a most kindly letter to Bonaparte, forewarning him that a plot had been formed in Bologna to poison him with that noted, but never seen, compound so famous in Italian history—aqua tofana.



CHAPTER XXXII.

Humiliation of the Papacy and of Venice[69].

[Footnote 69: The authorities for the following three chapters are partly as before, but in particular the following: Vivenot: Thugut, Clerfayt. Correspondance de Thugut avec Colloredo. Hueffer: Oesterreich und Preussen, etc.; Der Rastatter Congress. Von Sybel: Geschichte der Revolutions Zeit. Bailleu: Preussen und Frankreich. Sandoz-Rollin: Amtliche Sammlung von Akten aus der Zeit der Helvetischen Republic. Sorel: Bonaparte et Hoche; Bonaparte et le Directoire; also articles in the Revue Historique, 1885. Sciout: Le Directoire, also article in Revue des questions historiques, 1886. Boulay de la Meurthe: Quelques lettres de Marie Caroline; Revue d'histoire diplomatique, 1888. Barante: Histoire du Directoire and Souvenirs. McClellan: The Oligarchy of Venice. Bonnal: Chute d'une republique. Seche: Les origines du Concordat. Dandolo: La caduta della republica di Venetia. Romanin: Storia documentata di Venezia. Sloane: The French Revolution and Religious Reform. In general and further, the memoirs of Marmont, Chaptal, Landrieux, Carnot, Larevelliere-Lepeaux (probably not genuine), Mathieu Dumas, Thibaudeau, Miot de Melito, and the correspondence of Mallet du Pan.]

Rome Threatened — Pius VI Surrenders — The Peace of Tolentino — Bonaparte and the Papacy — Designs for the Orient — France Reassured — The Policy of Austria — The Archduke Charles — Bonaparte Hampered by the Directory — His Treatment of Venice — Condition of Venetia — The Commonwealth Warned.

[Sidenote: 1797.]

Bonaparte seems after Rivoli to have reached the conviction that a man who had brought such glory to the arms of France was at least as firm in the affections of her people as was the Directory, which had no hold on them whatever, except in its claim to represent the Revolution. Clarke had reached Milan on November twenty-ninth, 1796. Bonaparte read him like an open scroll, discovering instantly that this graceful courtier had been commissioned to keep the little general in his place as a subordinate, and use him to make peace at any price. Possessing the full confidence of Carnot and almost certainly of the entire Directory, the easily won diplomat revealed to his lean, long-haired, ill-clad, penetrating, and facile inquisitor the precious contents of the governmental mind. The religious revolution in France had utterly failed, riotous vice had spread consternation even in infidel minds, there was in the return a mighty flood tide of orthodoxy; if the political revolution was to be saved at all, it was at the price of peace, and peace very quickly. The Directory had had little right to its distinction as savior of the republic from the beginning, and even that was daily disputed by ever increasing numbers: the most visible and dazzling representative of the Revolution was now the Army of Italy. It was not for "those rascally lawyers," as Bonaparte afterward called the directors, that his great battle of Rivoli had been fought. With this fact in view, the short ensuing campaign against Pius VI, and its consequences, are easily understood. It was true, as the French general proclaimed, that Rome had kept the stipulations of the armistice neither in a pacific behavior nor in the payment of her indemnity, and was fomenting resistance to the French arms throughout the peninsula. To the Directory, which had desired the entire overthrow of the papacy, Bonaparte proposed that with this in view, Rome should be handed over to Spain. Behind these pretexts he gathered at Bologna an indifferent force of eleven thousand soldiers, composed, one half of his own men, the other half of Italians fired with revolutionary zeal, and of Poles, a people who, since the recent dismemberment of their country, were wooing France as a possible ally in its reconstruction. The main division marched against Ancona; a smaller one of two thousand men directed its course through Tuscany into the valley of the Tiber.

The position of the Pope was utterly desperate. The Spaniards had once been masters of Italy; they were now the natural allies of France against Austria, and Bonaparte's leniency to Parma and Naples had strengthened the bond. The reigning king at Naples, Ferdinand IV of the Two Sicilies, was one of the Spanish Bourbons; but his very able and masterful wife was the daughter of Maria Theresa. His position was therefore peculiar: if he had dared, he would have sent an army to the Pope's support, for thus far his consort had shaped his policy in the interest of Austria; but knowing full well that defeat would mean the limitation of his domain to the island of Sicily, he preferred to remain neutral, and pick up what crumbs he could get from Bonaparte's table. For this there were excellent reasons. The English fleet had been more or less unfortunate since the spring of 1796: Bonaparte's victories, being supplemented by the activity of the French cruisers, had made it difficult for it to remain in the Mediterranean; Corsica was abandoned in September; and in October the squadron of Admiral Mann was literally chased into the Atlantic by the Spaniards. Ferdinand, therefore, could expect no help from the British. As to the papal mercenaries, they had long been the laughing-stock of Europe. They did not now belie their character. Not a single serious engagement was fought; at Ancona and Loretto twelve hundred prisoners, with a treasure valued at seven million francs, were taken without a blow; and on February nineteenth Bonaparte dictated the terms of peace at Tolentino.

The terms were not such as either the Pope or the Directory expected. Far from it. To be sure, there was, over and above the first ransom, a new money indemnity of three million dollars, making, when added to what had been exacted in the previous summer, a total of more than seven. Further stipulations were the surrender of the legations of Bologna and Ferrara, together with the Romagna; consent to the incorporation into France of Avignon and the Venaissin, the two papal possessions in the Rhone valley which had already been annexed; and the temporary delivery of Ancona as a pledge for the fulfilment of these engagements; further still, the dispersion of the papal army, with satisfaction for the killing in a street row of Basseville, the French plenipotentiary. This, however, was far short of the annihilation of the papacy as a temporal power. More than that, the vital question of ecclesiastical authority was not mentioned except to guarantee it in the surrendered legations. To the Directory Bonaparte explained that with such mutilations the Roman edifice would fall of its own weight; and yet he gave his powerful protection to the French priests who had refused the oaths to the civil constitution required by the republic, and who, having renounced their allegiance, had found an asylum in the Papal States. This latter step was taken in the role of humanitarian. In reality, this first open and radical departure from the policy of the Directory assured to Bonaparte the most unbounded personal popularity with faithful Roman Catholics everywhere, and was a step preliminary to his further alliance with the papacy. The unthinking masses began to compare the captivity of the Roman Church in France, which was the work of her government, with the widely different fate of her faithful adherents at Rome under the humane control of Bonaparte.

Moreover, it was the French citizen collectors, and not the army, who continued to scour every town for art plunder. It was believed that Italy had finally given up "all that was curious and valuable except some few objects at Turin and Naples," including the famous wonder-working image of the Lady of Loretto. The words quoted were used by Bonaparte in a despatch to the Directory, which inclosed a curious document of very different character. Such had been the gratitude of Pius for his preservation that he despatched a legate with his apostolic blessing for the "dear son" who had snatched the papal power from the very jaws of destruction. "Dear son" was merely a formal phrase, and a gracious answer was returned from the French headquarters. This equally formal letter of Bonaparte's was forwarded to Paris, where, as he knew would be the case, it was regarded as a good joke by the Directory, who were supposed to consider their general's diplomacy as altogether patriotic. But, as no doubt the writer foresaw, it had an altogether different effect on the public. From that instant every pious Roman Catholic, not only in France, but throughout Europe, whatever his attitude toward the Directory, was either an avowed ally of Bonaparte or at least willing to await events in a neutral spirit. As for the papacy, henceforward it was a tool in the conqueror's hand: he was determined to use it as an indispensable bulwark for public decency and political stability. One of the cardinals gave the gracious preserver of his order a bust of Alexander the Great: it was a common piece of flattery after the peace to say that Bonaparte was, like Alexander, a Greek in stature, and, like Caesar, a Roman in power.

While at Ancona, Bonaparte had a temporary relapse into his yearning for Oriental power. He wrote describing the harbor as the only good one on the Adriatic south of Venice, and explaining how invaluable it was for the influence of France on Turkey, since it controlled communication with Constantinople, and Macedonia was but twenty-four hours distant. With this despatch he inclosed letters from the Czar to the Grand Master of Malta which had been seized on the person of a courier. It was by an easy association of ideas that not long afterward Bonaparte began to make suggestions for the seizure of Malta and for a descent into Egypt. These, as elsewhere explained, were old schemes of French foreign policy, and by no means original with him; but having long been kept in the background, they were easily recalled, the more so because in a short time both the new dictator and the Directory seemed to find in them a remedy for their strained relations.

When the news of Rivoli reached Paris on January twenty-fifth, 1797, the city went into a delirium of joy. To Clarke were sent that very day instructions suggesting concessions to Austria for the sake of peace, but enjoining him to consult Bonaparte at every step! To the conqueror direct, only two days later, was recommended in explicit terms the overthrow of Romanism in religion, "the most dangerous obstacle to the establishment of the French constitution." This was a new tone and the general might assume that his treaty of Tolentino would be ratified. Further, he was assured that whatever terms of peace he might dictate to Austria under the walls of Vienna, whether distasteful to the Directory or not, were sure of being accepted by the French nation.

Meantime the foreign affairs of Austria had fallen into a most precarious condition. Not only had the departure of the English fleet from the Mediterranean furthered Bonaparte's success in Italy, but Russia had given notice of an altered policy. If the modern state system of Europe had rested on any one doctrine more firmly than on another, it was on the theory of territorial boundaries, and the inviolability of national existence. Yet, in defiance of all right and all international law, Prussia, Russia, and Austria had in 1772 swooped down like vultures on Poland, and parted large portions of her still living body among themselves. The operation was so much to their liking that it had been repeated in 1792, and completed in 1795. The last division had been made with the understanding that, in return for the lion's share which she received, Russia would give active assistance to Austria in her designs on northern Italy. Not content with the Milanese and a protectorate over Modena, Francis had already cast his eyes on the Venetian mainland. But when on November seventeenth, 1796, the great Catherine had died, and her successor, Paul, had refused to be bound by his mother's engagements, all hope of further aid vanishing, the empire, defeated at Rivoli, was in more cruel straits than ever. Prussia was consolidating herself into a great power likely in the end to destroy Austrian influence in the Germanic Diet, which controlled the affairs of the empire. Both in Italy and in Germany her rival's fortunes were in the last degree of jeopardy. Thugut might well exclaim that Catherine's death was the climax of Austria's misfortunes.

The hour was dark indeed for Austria; and in the crisis Thugut, the able and courageous minister of the Emperor, made up his mind at last to throw, not some or the most, but all his master's military strength into Italy. The youthful Archduke Charles, who had won great glory as the conqueror of Jourdan, was accordingly summoned from Germany with the strength of his army to break through the Tyrol, and prevent the French from taking the now open road to Vienna. This brother of the Emperor, though but twenty-five years old, was in his day second only to Bonaparte as a general. The splendid persistence with which Austria raised one great army after another to oppose France was worthy of her traditions. Even when these armies were commanded by veterans of the old school, they were terrible: it seemed to the cabinet at Vienna that if Charles were left to lead them in accordance with his own designs they would surely be victorious. Had he and his Army of the Rhine been in Italy from the outset, they thought, the result might have been different. Perhaps they were right; but his tardy arrival at the eleventh hour was destined to avail nothing. The Aulic Council ordered him into Friuli, a district of the Italian Alps on the borders of Venice, where another army—the sixth within a year—was to assemble for the protection of the Austrian frontier and await the arrival of the veterans from Germany. This force, unlike the other five, was composed of heterogeneous elements, and, until further strengthened, inferior in numbers to the French, who had finally been reinforced by fifteen thousand men, under Bernadotte, from the Army of the Sambre and Meuse.

When Bonaparte started from Mantua for the Alps, his position was the strongest he had so far secured. The Directory had until then shown their uneasy jealousy of him by refusing the reinforcements which he was constantly demanding. It had become evident that the approaching elections would result in destroying their ascendancy in the Five Hundred, and that more than ever they must depend for support on the army. Accordingly they had swallowed their pride, and made Bonaparte strong. This change in the policy of the government likewise affected the south and east of France most favorably for his purposes. The personal pique of the generals commanding in those districts had subjected him to many inconveniences as to communications with Paris, as well as in the passage of troops, stores, and the like. They now recognized that in the approaching political crisis the fate of the republic would hang on the army, and for that reason they must needs be complaisant with its foremost figure, whose exploits had dimmed even those of Hoche in the Netherlands and western France. Italy was altogether subdued, and there was not a hostile power in the rear of the great conqueror. Among many of the conquered his name was even beloved: for the people of Milan his life and surroundings had the same interest as if he were their own sovereign prince. In front, however, the case was different; for the position of the Archduke Charles left the territory of Venice directly between the hostile armies in such a way as apparently to force Bonaparte into adopting a definite policy for the treatment of that power.

For the moment, however, there was no declaration of his decision by the French commander-in-chief; not even a formal proposal to treat with the Venetian oligarchy, which, to all outward appearance, had remained as haughty as ever, as dark and inscrutable in its dealings, as doubtful in the matter of good faith. And yet a method in Bonaparte's dealing with it was soon apparent, which, though unlike any he had used toward other Italian powers, was perfectly adapted to the ends he had in view. He had already violated Venetian neutrality, and intended to disregard it entirely. As a foretaste of what that republic might expect, French soldiers were let loose to pillage her towns until the inhabitants were so exasperated that they retaliated by killing a few of their spoilers. Then began a persistent and exasperating process of charges and complaints and admonitions, until the origins of the respective offenses were forgotten in the intervening recriminations. Then, as a warning to all who sought to endanger the "friendly relations" between the countries, a troop of French soldiers would be thrown here into one town, there into another. This process went on without an interval, and with merciless vigor, until the Venetian officials were literally distracted. Remonstrance was in vain: Bonaparte laughed at forms. Finally, when protest had proved unavailing, the harried oligarchy began at last to arm, and it was not long before forty thousand men, mostly Slavonic mercenaries, were enlisted under its banner. With his usual conciliatory blandness, Bonaparte next proposed to the senate a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive.

This was not a mere diplomatic move. Certain considerations might well incline the oligarchy to accept the plan. There was no love lost between the towns of the Venetian mainland and the city itself; for the aristocracy of the latter would write no names in its Golden Book except those of its own houses. The revolutionary movement had, moreover, already so heightened the discontent which had spread eastward from the Milanese, and was now prevalent in Brescia, Bergamo, and Peschiera, that these cities really favored Bonaparte, and longed to separate from Venice. Further than this, the Venetian senate had early in January been informed by its agents in Paris of a rumor that at the conclusion of peace Austria would indemnify herself with Venetian territory for the loss of the Milanese. The disquiet of the outlying cities on the borders of Lombardy was due to a desire for union with the Transpadane Republic. They little knew for what a different fate Bonaparte destined them. He was really holding that portion of the mainland in which they were situated as an indemnity for Austria. Venice was almost sure to lose them in any case, and he felt that if she refused the French alliance he could then, with less show of injustice, tender them and their territories to Francis, in exchange for Belgium. He offered, however, if the republic should accept his proposition, to assure the loyalty of its cities, provided only the Venetians would inscribe the chief families of the mainland in the Golden Book.

But in spite of such a suggestive warning, the senate of the commonwealth adhered to its policy of perfect neutrality. Bonaparte consented to this decision, but ordered it to disarm, agreeing in that event to control the liberals on the mainland, and to guarantee the Venetian territories, leaving behind troops enough both to secure those ends and to guard his own communications. If these should be tampered with, he warned the senate that the knell of Venetian independence would toll forthwith. No one can tell what would have been in store for the proud city if she had chosen the alternative, not of neutrality, but of an alliance with France. Bonaparte always made his plan in two ways, and it is probable that her ultimate fate would have been identical in either case.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

The Preliminaries of Peace—Leoben.

Austrian Plans for the Last Italian Campaign — The Battle on the Tagliamento — Retreat of the Archduke Charles — Bonaparte's Proclamation to the Carinthians — Joubert Withdraws from the Tyrol — Bonaparte's "Philosophical" Letter — His Situation at Leoben — The Negotiations for Peace — Character of the Treaty — Bonaparte's Rude Diplomacy — French Successes on the Rhine — Plots of the Directory — The Uprising of Venetia — War with Venice.

[Sidenote: 1797.]

The Aulic Council at Vienna prepared for the Archduke Charles a modification of the same old plan, only this time the approach was down the Piave and the Tagliamento, rivers which rise among the grotesque Dolomites and in the Carnic Alps. They flow south like the Adige and the Brenta, but their valleys are wider where they open into the lowlands, and easier of access. The auxiliary force, under Lusignan, was now to the westward on the Piave, while the main force, under Charles, was waiting for reinforcements in the broad intervales on the upper reaches of the Tagliamento, through which ran the direct road to Vienna. This time the order of attack was exactly reversed, because Bonaparte, with his strengthened army of about seventy-five thousand men, resolved to take the offensive before the expected levies from the Austrian army of the Rhine should reach the camp of his foe. The campaign was not long, for there was no resistance from the inhabitants, as there would have been in the German Alps, among the Tyrolese, Bonaparte's embittered enemies; and the united force of Austria was far inferior to that of France. Joubert, with eighteen thousand men, was left to repress the Tyrol. Though only twenty-eight years old, he had risen from a volunteer in the files through every rank and was now division general. He had gained renown on the Rhine and found the climax of his fame in this expedition, which he so brilliantly conducted that at the close of the campaign he was chosen to carry the captured standards to Paris. He was acclaimed as a coming man. But thereafter his achievements were mediocre and he fell mortally wounded on August fifteenth, 1799, at the battle of Novi while rallying an army destined to defeat. Two small forces under Kilmaine and Victor associated with Lannes were detailed to watch Venice and Rome respectively; but the general good order of Italy was intrusted to the native legions which Bonaparte had organized. Fate had little more in store for Kilmaine, the gallant Irish cavalryman, who was among the foremost generals of his army. Already a veteran forty-six years old, as veterans were then reckoned, he had fought in America and on the Rhine and had filled the cup of his glory at Peschiera, Castiglione, and Mantua. He was yet to be governor of Lombardy and end his career by mortal disease when in chief command of the "Army of England." Victor, wounded at Toulon, general of brigade in the Pyrenees, a subordinate officer to the unsuccessful Scherer in Italy, quickly rose under Bonaparte to be division general. Of lowly birth, he had scarcely reached his thirty-fourth year when on this occasion he exhibited both military and diplomatic talent of a high order. Throughout the consulate and empire he held one important office after another, so successfully that he commended himself even to the Bourbons, and died in 1841, full of years and honors. Lannes was now twenty-eight. The child of poor parents, he began life as a dyer's apprentice, enlisted when twenty-three and was a colonel within two years, so astounding were his courage and natural gifts. Detailed to serve under Bonaparte, the two became bosom friends. A plain, blunt man, Lannes was as fierce as a war dog and as faithful. Throughout the following years he followed Bonaparte in all his enterprises, and Napoleon on the Marchfeld, in 1809, wept bitterly when his faithful monitor was shot to pieces.

Massena advanced up the Piave against Lusignan, captured his rear-guard, and drove him away northward beyond Belluno, while the Archduke, thus separated from his right, withdrew to guard the road into Carniola. Bonaparte, with his old celerity, reached the banks of the Tagliamento opposite the Austrian position on March sixteenth, long before he was expected. His troops had marched all night, but almost immediately they made a feint as if to force a crossing in the face of their enemy. The Austrians on the left bank awaited the onset in perfect order, and in dispositions of cavalry, artillery, and infantry admirably adapted to the ground. It seemed as if the first meeting of the two young generals would fall out to the advantage of Charles. But he was neither as wily nor as indefatigable as his enemy. The French drew back, apparently exhausted, and bivouacked as if for the night. The Austrians, expecting nothing further that day, and standing on the defensive, followed the example of their opponents. Two hours elapsed, when suddenly the whole French army rose like one man, and, falling into line without an instant's delay, rushed for the stream, which at that spot was swift but fordable, flowing between wide, low banks of gravel. The surprise was complete; the stream was crossed, and the Austrians had barely time to form when the French were upon them. They fought with gallantry for three hours until their flank was turned. They then drew off in an orderly retreat, abandoning many guns and losing some prisoners.

Massena, waiting behind the intervening ridge for the signal, advanced at the first sound of cannon into the upper valley of the same stream, crossed it, and beset the passes of the Italian Alps, by which communication with the Austrian capital was quickest. Charles had nothing left, therefore, but to withdraw due eastward across the great divide of the Alps, where they bow toward the Adriatic, and pass into the valley of the Isonzo, behind that full and rushing stream, which he fondly hoped would stop the French pursuit. The frost, however, had bridged it in several places, and these were quickly found. Bernadotte and Serurier stormed the fortress of Gradisca, and captured two thousand five hundred men, while Massena seized the fort at the Chiusa Veneta, and, scattering a whole division of flying Austrians, captured five thousand with their stores and equipments. He then attacked and routed the enemy's guard on the Pontebba pass, occupied Tarvis, and thus cut off their communication with the Puster valley, by which the Austrian detachment from the Rhine was to arrive. It was in this campaign that Bernadotte laid the foundation of his future greatness. He was the son of a lawyer in Pau, where he was born in 1764. Enlisting as a common soldier, he was wounded in Corsica, became chief of battalion under Custine, general of brigade under Kleber, and commanded a division at Fleurus. The previous year he had shared the defeat of Jourdan on the Rhine, but under Bonaparte he became a famous participant in victory. A Jacobin democrat, he was later entrusted by the Directory with important missions, but in these he had little success. It was as a soldier that he rose in the coming years to heights which in his own mind awakened a rivalry with Napoleon; ambitious for the highest rank, he made a great match with the sister-in-law of Joseph Bonaparte, and so managed his affairs that, as is well known, he ended on the throne of Sweden and founded the reigning house of that kingdom.

Bonaparte wooed the stupefied Carinthians with his softly worded proclamations, and his advancing columns were unharassed by the peasantry while he pushed farther on, capturing Klagenfurt, and seizing both Triest and Fiume, the only harbors on the Austrian shore. He then returned with the main body of his troops, and, crossing the pass of Tarvis, entered Germany at Villach. "We are come," he said to the inhabitants, "not as enemies, but as friends, to end a terrible war imposed by England on a ministry bought with her gold." And the populace, listening to his siren voice, believed him. All this was accomplished before the end of March; and Charles, his army reduced to less than three fourths, was resting northward on the road to Vienna, beyond the river Mur, exhausted, and expecting daily that he would be compelled to a further retreat.

Joubert had not been so successful. According to instructions, he had pushed up the Adige as far as Brixen, into the heart of the hostile Tyrol. The Austrians had again called the mountaineers to arms, and a considerable force under Laudon was gathered to resist the invaders. It had been a general but most indefinite understanding between Bonaparte and the Directory that Moreau was again to cross the Rhine and advance once more, this time for a junction with Joubert to march against Vienna. But the directors, in an access of suspicion, had broken their word, and, pleading their penury, had not taken a step toward fitting out the Army of the North. Moreau was therefore not within reach; he had not even crossed the Rhine. Consequently Joubert was in straits, for the whole country had now risen against him. It was with difficulty that he had advanced, and with serious loss that he fought one terrible battle after another; finally, however, he forced his way into the valley of the Drave, and marched down that river to join Bonaparte. This was regarded by Bonaparte as a remarkable feat, but by the Austrians as a virtual repulse; both the Tyrol and Venice were jubilant, and the effects spread as far eastward as the Austrian provinces of the Adriatic. Triest and Fiume had not been garrisoned, and the Austrians occupied them once more; the Venetian senate organized a secret insurrection, which broke out simultaneously in many places, and was suppressed only after many of the French, some of them invalids in the hospitals, had been murdered.

On March thirty-first, Bonaparte, having received definite and official information that he could expect no immediate support from the Army of the Rhine, addressed from Klagenfurt to the Archduke what he called a "philosophical" letter, calling attention to the fact that it was England which had embroiled France and Austria, powers which had really no grievance one against the other. Would a prince, so far removed by lofty birth from the petty weaknesses of ministers and governments, not intervene as the savior of Germany to end the miseries of a useless war? "As far as I myself am concerned, if the communication I have the honor to be making should save the life of a single man, I should be prouder of that civic crown than of the sad renown which results from military success." At the same time Massena was pressing forward into the valley of the Mur, across the passes of Neumarkt; and before the end of the week his seizure of St. Michael and Leoben had cut off the last hope of a junction between the forces of Charles and his expected reinforcements from the Rhine. Austria was carrying on her preparations of war with the same proud determination she had always shown, and Charles continued his disastrous hostilities with Massena. But when Thugut received the "philosophical" letter from Bonaparte, which Charles had promptly forwarded to Vienna, the imperial cabinet did not hesitate, and plenipotentiaries were soon on their way to Leoben.

The situation of Bonaparte at Leoben was by no means what the position of the French forces within ninety miles of Vienna would seem to indicate. The revolutionary movement in Venetia, silently but effectually fostered by the French garrisons, had been successful in Bergamo, Brescia, and Salo. The senate, in despair, sent envoys to Bonaparte at Goeritz. His reply was conciliatory, but he declared that he would do nothing unless the city of Venice should make the long-desired concession about inscriptions in the Golden Book. At the same time he demanded a monthly payment of a million francs in lieu of all requisitions on its territory. At Paris the Venetian ambassador had no better success, and with the news of Joubert's withdrawal from the Tyrol a terrible insurrection broke out, which sacrificed many French lives at Verona and elsewhere. Bonaparte's suggestions for the preliminaries of peace with Austria had been drawn up before the news of that event reached him: but with the Tyrol and Venice all aflame in his rear, and threatening his connections; with no prospect of assistance from Moreau in enforcing his demands; and with a growing hostility showing itself among the populations of the hereditary states of Austria into which he had penetrated, it was not wonderful that his original design was confirmed. "At Leoben," he once said, in a gambler's metaphor, "I was playing twenty-one, and I had only twenty."

When, therefore, Merveldt and Gallo, the duly accredited plenipotentiaries of Austria, and General Bonaparte, representing the French republic, but with no formal powers from its government, met in the castle of Goess at Leoben, they all knew that the situation of the French was very precarious indeed, and that the terms to be made could not be those dictated by a triumphant conqueror in the full tide of victory. Neither party had any scruples about violating the public law of Europe by the destruction of another nationality; but they needed some pretext. While they were in the opening stages of negotiation the pretext came; for on April ninth Bonaparte received news of the murders to which reference has been made, and of an engagement at Salo, provoked by the French, in which the Bergamask mountaineers had captured three hundred of the garrison, mostly Poles. This affair was only a little more serious than numerous other conflicts incident to partisan warfare which were daily occurring; but it was enough. With a feigned fury the French general addressed the Venetian senate as if their land were utterly irreconcilable, and demanded from them impossible acts of reparation. Junot was despatched to Venice with the message, and delivered it from the floor of the senate on April fifteenth, the very day on which his chief was concluding negotiations for the delivery of the Venetian mainland to Austria.

So strong had the peace party in Vienna become, and such was the terror of its inhabitants at seeing the court hide its treasures and prepare to fly into Hungary, that the plenipotentiaries could only accept the offer of Bonaparte, which they did with ill-concealed delight. There was but one point of difference, the grand duchy of Modena, which Francis for the honor of his house was determined to keep, if possible. With Tuscany, Modena, and the Venetian mainland all in their hands, the Austrian authorities felt that time would surely restore to them the lost Milanese. But Bonaparte was obdurate. On the eighteenth the preliminaries were closed and adopted. The Austrians solemnly declared at the time that, when the papers were to be exchanged formally, Bonaparte presented a copy which purported to be a counterpart of what had been mutually arranged. Essential differences were, however, almost immediately marked by the recipients, and when they announced their discovery with violent clamor, the cool, sarcastic general produced without remark another copy, which was found to be a correct reproduction of the preliminary terms agreed upon. This coarse and silly ruse seems to have been a favorite device, for it was tried later in another conspicuous instance, the negotiation of the Concordat. According to the authentic articles, France was to have Belgium, with the "limits of France" as decreed by the laws of the republic, a purposely ambiguous expression. In this preliminary outline the Rhine boundary was not mentioned. The territory of the Empire was also guaranteed. These flat contradictions indicate something like panic on both sides, and duplicity at least on one and probably on both, for Thugut's correspondence indicates his firm purpose to despoil and destroy Venice. In any case Austria obtained the longed-for mainland of Venice as far as the river Oglio, together with Istria and Dalmatia, the Venetian dependencies beyond the Adriatic, while Venice herself was to be nominally indemnified by the receipt of the three papal legations, Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna, which had just been erected into the Transpadane Republic! Modena was to be united with Mantua, Reggio, and the Milanese into a great central republic, which would always be dependent on France, and was to be connected with her territory by way of Genoa. Some of the articles were secret, and all were subject to immaterial changes in the final negotiations for definitive peace, which were to be carried on later at Bern, chosen for the purpose as being a neutral city.

Bonaparte explained, in a letter to the Directory, that whatever occurred, the Papal States could never become an integral part of Venice, and would always be under French influences. His sincerity was no greater, as the event showed, concerning the very existence of Venice herself. The terms he had made were considered at Vienna most favorable, and there was great rejoicing in that capital. But it was significant that in the routine negotiations the old-school diplomatists had been sadly shocked by the behavior of their military antagonist, who, though a mere tyro in their art, was very hard to deal with. At the outset, for instance, they had proposed to incorporate, as the first article in the preliminaries, that for which the Directory had long been negotiating with Austria, a recognition of the French republic. "Strike that out," said Bonaparte. "The Republic is like the sun on the horizon—all the worse for him who will not see it." This was but a foretaste of ruder dealings which followed, and of still more violent breaches with tradition in the long negotiations which were to ensue over the definitive treaty.

The very day on which the signatures were affixed at Leoben, the Austrian arms were humbled by Hoche on the Rhine. Moreau had not been able to move for lack of a paltry sum which he was begging for, but could not obtain, from the Directory. Hoche, chafing at similar delays, and anxious to atone for Jourdan's failure of the previous year, finally set forth, and, crossing at Neuwied, advanced to Heddersdorf, where he attacked the Austrians, who had been weakened to strengthen the Archduke Charles. They were routed with a loss of six thousand prisoners. Another considerable force was nearly surrounded when a sudden stop was put to Hoche's career by the arrival of a courier from Leoben. Though, soon after, the ministry of war was offered to him, he declined. It was apparently prescience of the fact that the greatest laurels were still to be won which led him to refuse, and return to his headquarters at Wetzlar. There a mysterious malady, still attributed by many to poison, ended his brief and glorious career on September eighteenth, 1797. His laurels were such as adorn only a character full of promise, serene and generous alike in success and defeat. In the Black Forest, Desaix, having crossed the Rhine with Moreau's army below Strasburg, was likewise driving the Austrians before him. He too was similarly checked, and these brilliant achievements came all too late. No advantage was gained by them in the terms of peace, and the glory of humiliating Austria remained to Bonaparte. Desaix was an Auvergnat, an aristocrat of famous pedigree, carefully trained as a cadet to the military career. He was now twenty-nine, having served on the Rhine as Victor's adjutant, as general of brigade in the Army of the Moselle, and as general of division under Jourdan and Moreau. Transferred to Italy, he became the confidential friend and stanch supporter of Bonaparte. His manner was winning, his courage contagious, his liberal principles unquestioned. No finer figure appears on the battle-fields of the Directory and Consulate.

Throughout all France there was considerable dissatisfaction with Bonaparte's moderation, and a feeling among extreme republicans, especially in the Directory, that he should have destroyed the Austrian monarchy. Larevelliere and Rewbell were altogether of this opinion, and the corrupt Barras to a certain extent, for he had taken a bribe of six hundred thousand francs from the Venetian ambassador at Paris, to compel the repression by Bonaparte of the rebels on the mainland. The correspondence of various emissaries connected with this affair fell into the general's hands at Milan, and put the Directory more completely at his mercy than ever. On April nineteenth, however, he wrote as if in reply to such strictures as might be made: "If at the beginning of the campaign I had persisted in going to Turin, I never should have passed the Po; if I had persisted in going to Rome, I should have lost Milan; if I had persisted in going to Vienna, perhaps I should have overthrown the Republic." He well understood that fear would yield what despair might refuse. It was a matter of course that when the terms of Leoben reached Paris the Directory ratified them: even though they had been irregularly negotiated by an unauthorized agent, they separated England from Austria, and crushed the coalition. One thing, however, the directors notified Bonaparte he must not do; that was, to interfere further in the affairs of Venice. This order reached him on May eighth; but just a week before, Venice, as an independent state, had ceased to exist.

Accident and crafty prearrangement had combined to bring the affairs of that ancient commonwealth to such a crisis. The general insurrection and the fight at Salo had given a pretext for disposing of the Venetian mainland; soon after, the inevitable results of French occupation afforded the opportunity for destroying the oligarchy altogether. The evacuation of Verona by the garrison of its former masters had been ordered as a part of the general disarmament of Italy. The Veronese were intensely, fiercely indignant on learning that they were to be transferred to a hated allegiance; and on April seventeenth, when a party appeared to reinforce the French troops already there, the citizens rose in a frenzy of indignation, and drove the hated invaders into the citadel. During the following days, three hundred of the French civilians in the town, all who had not been able to find refuge, were massacred; old and young, sick and well. At the same time a detachment of Austrians under Laudon came in from the Tyrol to join Fioravente, the Venetian general, and his Slavs. This of course increased the tumult, for the French began to bombard the city from the citadel. For a moment the combined besiegers, exaggerating the accounts of Joubert's withdrawal and of Moreau's failure to advance, hoped for ultimate success, and the overthrow of the French. But rumors from Leoben caused the Austrians to withdraw up the Adige, and a Lombard regiment came to the assistance of the French. The Venetian forces were captured, and the city was disarmed; so also were Peschiera, Castelnuovo, and many others which had made no resistance.

Two days after this furious outbreak of Veronese resentment,—an event which is known to the French as the Veronese Passover,—occurred another, of vastly less importance in itself, but having perhaps even more value as cumulative evidence that the wound already inflicted by Bonaparte on the Venetian state was mortal. A French vessel, flying before two Austrian cruisers, appeared off the Lido, and anchored under the arsenal. It was contrary to immemorial custom for an armed vessel to enter the harbor of Venice, and the captain was ordered to weigh anchor. He refused. Thereupon, in stupid zeal, the guns of the Venetian forts opened on the ship. Many of the crew were killed, and the rest were thrown into prison. This was the final stroke, all that was necessary for the justification of Bonaparte's plans. An embassy from the senate had been with him at Gratz when the awful news from Verona came to his headquarters. He had then treated them harshly, demanding not only the liberation of every man confined for political reasons within their prison walls, but the surrender of their inquisitors as well. "I will have no more Inquisition, no more Senate; I shall be an Attila to Venice!... I want not your alliance nor your schemes; I mean to lay down the law." They left his presence with gloomy and accurate forebodings as to what was in those secret articles which had been executed at Leoben. When, two days later, came this news of further conflict with the French in Venice itself, the envoys were dismissed, without another audience, by a note which declared that its writer "could not receive them, dripping as they were with French blood." On May third, having advanced to Palma, Bonaparte declared war against Venice. In accordance with the general license of the age, hostilities had, however, already begun; for as early as April thirtieth the French and their Italian helpers had fortified the lowlands between the Venetian lagoons, and on May first the main army appeared at Fusina, the nearest point on the mainland to the city.



CHAPTER XXXIV.

The Fall of Venice.

Feebleness of the Venetian Oligarchy — Its Overthrow — Bonaparte's Duplicity — Letters of Opposite Purport — Montebello — The Republican Court — England's Proposition for Peace — Plans of the Directory — General Clarke's Diplomatic Career — Conduct of Mme. Bonaparte — Bonaparte's Jealous Tenderness — His Wife's Social Conquests — Relations of the Powers.

[Sidenote: 1797.]

Since the days of Carthage no government like that of the Venetian oligarchy had existed on the earth. At its best it was dark and remorseless; with the disappearance of its vigor its despotism had become somewhat milder, but even yet no common man might draw the veil from its mysterious, irresponsible councils and live. A few hundred families administered the country as they did their private estates. All intelligence, all liberty, all personal independence, were repressed by such a system. The more enlightened Venetians of the mainland, many even in the city, feeling the influences of the time, had long been uneasy under their government, smoothly as it seemed to run in time of peace. Now that the earth was quaking under the march of Bonaparte's troops, this government was not only helpless, but in its panic it actually grew contemptible, displaying by its conduct how urgent was the necessity for a change. The senate had a powerful fleet, three thousand native troops, and eleven thousand mercenaries; but they struck only a single futile blow on their own account, permitting a rash captain to open fire from the gunboats against the French vanguard when it appeared. But immediately, as if in fear of their own temerity, they despatched an embassy to learn the will of the approaching general. That his dealings might be merciful, they tried the plan of Modena, and offered him a bribe of seven million francs; but, as in the case of Modena, he refused. Next day the Great Council having been summoned, it was determined by a nearly unanimous vote of the patricians—six hundred and ninety to twenty-one—that they would remodel their institutions on democratic lines. The pale and terrified Doge thought that in such a surrender lay the last hope of safety.

Not for a moment did Lallemant and Villetard, the two French agents, intermit their revolutionary agitation in the town. Disorders grew more frequent, while uncertainty both paralyzed and disintegrated the patrician party. A week later the government virtually abdicated. Two utter strangers appeared in a theatrical way at its doors, and suggested in writing to the Great Council that to appease the spirit of the times they should plant the liberty-tree on the Place of St. Mark, and speedily accede to all the propositions for liberalizing Venice which the popular temper seemed to demand. Such were the terror and disorganization of the aristocracy that instead of punishing the intrusion of the unknown reformers by death, according to the traditions of their merciless procedure, they took measures to carry out the suggestions made in a way as dark and significant as any of their own. The fleet was dismantled, and the army disbanded. By the end of the month the revolution was virtually accomplished; a rising of their supporters having been mistaken by the Great Council, in its pusillanimous terror, for a rebellion of their antagonists, they decreed the abolition of all existing institutions, and, after hastily organizing a provisional government, disbanded. Four thousand French soldiers occupied the town, and an ostensible treaty was made between the new republic of Venice and that of France.

This treaty was really nothing but a pronunciamento of Bonaparte. He decreed a general amnesty to all offenders except the commander of Fort Luco, who had recently fired on the French vessel. He also guaranteed the public debt, and promised to occupy the city only as long as the public order required it. By a series of secret articles, vaguely expressed, Venice was bound to accept the stipulations of Leoben in regard to territory, pay an indemnity of one million two hundred thousand dollars, and furnish three ships of the line with two frigates, while, in pursuance of the general policy of the French republic, experts were to select twenty pictures from her galleries, and five hundred manuscripts from her libraries. Whatever was the understanding of those who signed these crushing conditions, the city was never again treated by any European power as an independent state. To this dismemberment the Directory made itself an accessory after the fact, having issued a declaration of war on Venice which only reached Milan to be suppressed, when already Venice was no more. Whether the oligarchy or its assassin was the more loathsome still remains an academic question, debatable only in an idle hour. Soon afterward a French expedition was despatched to occupy her island possessions in the Levant. The arrangements had been carefully prepared during the very time when the provisional government believed itself to be paying the price of its new liberties. And earlier still, on May twenty-seventh, three days before the abdication of the aristocracy, Bonaparte had already offered to Austria the entire republic in its proposed form as an exchange for the German lands on the left bank of the Rhine.

Writing to the Directory on that day, he declared that Venice, which had been in a decline ever since the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope and the rise of Triest and Ancona, could with difficulty survive the blows just given her. "This miserable, cowardly people, unfit for liberty, and without land or water—it seems natural to me that we should hand them over to those who have received their mainland from us. We shall take all their ships, we shall despoil their arsenal, we shall remove all their cannon, we shall wreck their rank, we shall keep Corfu and Ancona for ourselves." On the twenty-sixth, only the day previous, a letter to his "friends" of the Venetian provisional government had assured them that he would do all in his power to confirm their liberties, and that he earnestly desired that Italy, "now covered with glory, and free from every foreign influence, should again appear on the world's stage, and assert among the great powers that station to which by nature, position, and destiny it was entitled." Ordinary minds cannot grasp the guile and daring which seem to have foreseen and prearranged all the conditions necessary to plans which for double-dealing transcended the conceptions of men even in that age of duplicity and selfishness.

Not far from Milan, on a gentle rise, stands the famous villa, or country-seat, of Montebello. Its windows command a scene of rare beauty: on one side, in the distance, the mighty Alps, with their peaks of never-melting ice and snow; on the other three, the almost voluptuous beauty of the fertile plains; while in the near foreground lies the great capital of Lombardy, with its splendid industries, its stores of art, and its crowded spires hoary with antiquity. Within easy reach are the exquisite scenes of an enchanted region—that of the Italian lakes. To this lordly residence Bonaparte withdrew. His summer's task was to be the pacification of Europe, and the consolidation of his own power in Italy, in France, and northward beyond the Alps. The two objects went hand in hand. From Austria, from Rome, from Naples, from Turin, from Parma, from Switzerland, and even from the minor German principalities whose fate hung on the rearrangement of German lands to be made by the Diet of the Empire, agents of every kind, both military and diplomatic, both secret and accredited, flocked to the seat of power. Expresses came and went in all directions, while humble suitors vied with one another in homage to the risen sun.

The uses of rigid etiquette were well understood by Bonaparte. He appreciated the dazzling power of ceremony, the fascination of condescension, and the influence of woman in the conduct of affairs. All such influences he lavished with a profusion which could have been conceived only by an Oriental imagination. As if to overpower the senses by an impressive contrast, and symbolize the triumph of that dominant Third Estate of which he claimed to be the champion against aristocrats, princes, kings, and emperors, the simplicity of the Revolution was personified and emphasized in his own person. His ostentatious frugality, his disdain for dress, his contempt for personal wealth and its outward signs, were all heightened by the setting which inclosed them, as a frame of brilliants often heightens the character in the portrait of a homely face.

Meantime England, grimly determined to save herself and the Europe essential to her well-being, was not a passive spectator of events in Italy. To understand the political situation certain facts must be reiterated in orderly connection. At the close of 1796, Pitt's administration was still in great straits, for the Tories who supported him were angered by his lack of success, while the Whig opposition was correspondingly jubilant and daily growing stronger. The navy had been able barely to preserve appearances, but that was all. There was urgent need for reform in tactics, in administration, and in equipment. France had made some progress in all these directions, and, in spite of English assistance, both the Vendean and the Chouan insurrections had, to all appearance, been utterly crushed. Subsequently the powerful expedition under Hoche, equipped and held in readiness to sail for Ireland, there to organize rebellion, and give England a draught from her own cup, though destined to disaster, wrought powerfully on the British imagination. It was clear that the Whigs would score a triumph at the coming elections if something were not done. Accordingly, as has been told, Pitt determined to open negotiations for peace with the Directory. As his agent he unwisely chose a representative aristocrat, who had distinguished himself as a diplomatist in Holland by organizing the Orange party to sustain the Prussian arms against the rising democracy of that country. Moreover, the envoy was an ultra-conservative in his views of the French Revolution, and, believing that there was no room in western Europe for his own country and her great rival, thought there could be no peace until France was destroyed. Burke sneered that he had gone to Paris on his knees. He had been received with suspicion and distrust, many believing his real errand to be the reorganization of a royalist party in France. Then, too, Delacroix, minister of foreign affairs, was a narrow, shallow, and conceited man, unable either to meet an adroit and experienced negotiator on his own ground, or to prepare new forms of diplomatic combat, as Bonaparte had done. The English proposition, it is well to recall, was that Great Britain would give up all the French colonial possessions she had seized during the war, provided the French republic would abandon Belgium. It is essential to an understanding of Bonaparte's attitude in 1797, to recall also in this connection that the navigation of the Scheldt has ever been an object of the highest importance to England: the establishment of a strong, hostile maritime power in harbors like those of the Netherlands would menace, if not destroy, the British carrying-trade with central and northern Europe. The reply of the Directory had been that their fundamental law forbade the consideration of such a point; and when Malmesbury persisted in his offer, he was allowed forty-eight hours to leave the country. The negotiation was a fiasco as far as Austria was concerned, although useful in consolidating British patriotism. Hoche, having been despatched to Ireland, found wind and waves adverse, and then returned to replace Jourdan in command of one of the Rhine armies, the latter having been displaced for his failures in Germany and relegated to the career of politics. Bonaparte's victories left his most conspicuous rival nothing to do and he gracefully congratulated his Italian colleague on having forestalled him. His sad and suspicious death in September had no influence on the terms of Bonaparte's treaty, but emphasized the need of its ratification.

The Directory, with an eye single to the consolidation of the republic, cared little for Lombardy, and much for Belgium; for the prestige of the government, even for its stability, Belgium with the Rhine frontier must be secured. The Austrian minister cared little for the distant provinces of the empire, and everything for a compact territorial consolidation. The successes of 1796 had secured to France treaties with Prussia, Bavaria, Wuertemberg, Baden, and the two circles of Swabia and Franconia, whereby these powers consented to abandon the control of all lands on the left bank of the Rhine hitherto belonging to them or to the Germanic body. As a consequence the goal of the Directory could be reached by Austria's consent, and Austria appeared to be willing. The only question was, Would France restore the Milanese? Carnot was emphatic in the expression of his opinion that for the sake of peace with honor, a speedy, enduring peace, she must, and his colleagues assented. Accordingly, Bonaparte was warned that no expectations of emancipation must be awakened in the Italian peoples. But such a warning was absurd. The directors, having been able neither to support their general with adequate reinforcements, nor to pay his troops, it had been only in the role of a liberator that Bonaparte was successful in cajoling and conquering Italy, in sustaining and arming his men, and in pouring treasures into Paris. It was for this reason that, enormous and outrageous as was the ruin and spoliation of a neutral state, he saw himself compelled to overthrow Venice, and hold it as a substitute for Lombardy in the coming trade with Austria. But the directors either could not or would not at that time enter into his plans, and refused to comprehend the situation.

With doubtful good sense they had therefore determined in November, 1796, to send Clarke, their own chosen agent, to Vienna. It was for this that they selected a man of polished manners and honest purpose, but, contrary to their estimate, of very moderate ability. He must of course have a previous understanding with Bonaparte, and to that end he had journeyed by way of Italy. Being kindly welcomed, he was entirely befooled by his subtle host, who detained him with idle suggestions until after the fall of Mantua, when to his amazement he received the instructions from Paris already stated: to make no proposition of any kind without Bonaparte's consent. Then followed the death of the Czarina Catherine, which left Austria with no ally, and all the subsequent events to the eve of Leoben. Thugut, of course, wanted no Jacobin agitator at Vienna, such as he supposed Clarke to be, and informed him that he must not come thither, but might reach a diplomatic understanding with the Austrian minister at Turin, if he could. He was thus comfortably banished from the seat of war during the closing scenes of the campaign, and to Bonaparte's satisfaction could not of course reach Leoben in time to conclude the preliminaries as the accredited agent of the republic. But, to save the self-respect of the Directory, he was henceforth to be associated with Bonaparte in arranging the final terms of peace; and to that end he came of course to Milan. Representing as he did the conviction of the government that the Rhine frontier must be a condition of peace, and necessarily emphasizing its scheme of territorial compensations, he had to be either managed or disregarded. It was the versatility of the envoy at Montebello which assured him his subsequent career under the consulate and empire.

The court at Montebello was not a mere levee of men. There was as well an assemblage of brilliant women, of whom the presiding genius was Mme. Bonaparte. Love, doubt, decision, marriage, separation, had been the rapidly succeeding incidents of her connection with Bonaparte in Paris. Though she had made ardent professions of devotion to her husband, the marriage vow sat but lightly on her in the early days of their separation. Her husband appears to have been for a short time more constant, but, convinced of her fickleness, to have become as unfaithful as she. And yet the complexity of emotions—ambition, self-interest, and physical attraction—which seems to have been present in both, although in widely different degree, sustained something like genuine ardor in him, and an affection sincere enough often to awaken jealousy in her. The news of Bonaparte's successive victories in Italy made his wife a heroine in Paris. In all the salons of the capital, from that of the directors at the Luxembourg downward through those of her more aristocratic but less powerful acquaintances, she was feted and caressed. As early as April, 1796, came the first summons of her husband to join him in Italy. Friends explained to her willing ears that it was not a French custom for the wives of generals to join the camp-train, and she refused. Resistance but served to rouse the passions of the young conqueror, and his fiery love-letters reached Paris by every courier. Josephine, however, remained unmoved; for the traditions of her admirers, to whom she showed them, made light of a conjugal affection such as that. She was flattered, but, during the courtship, slightly frightened by such addresses.

In due time there were symptoms which appeared to be those of pregnancy. On receipt of this news the prospective father could not contain himself for joy. The letter which he sent has been preserved. It was written from Tortona, on June fifteenth, 1796. Life is but a vain show because at such an hour he is absent from her. His passion had clouded his faculties, but if she is in pain he will leave at any hazard for her side. Without appetite, and sleepless; without thought of friends, glory, or country, all the world is annihilated for him except herself. "I care for honor because you do, for victory because it gratifies you, otherwise I would have left all else to throw myself at your feet. Dear friend, be sure and say you are persuaded that I love you above all that can be imagined—persuaded that every moment of my time is consecrated to you; that never an hour passes without thought of you; that it never occurred to me to think of another woman; that they are all in my eyes without grace, without beauty, without wit; that you—you alone as I see you, as you are—could please and absorb all the faculties of my soul; that you have fathomed all its depths; that my heart has no fold unopened to you, no thoughts which are not attendant upon you; that my strength, my arms, my mind, are all yours; that my soul is in your form, and that the day you change, or the day you cease to live, will be that of my death; that nature, the earth, is lovely in my eyes, only because you dwell within it. If you do not believe all this, if your soul is not persuaded, saturated, you distress me, you do not love me. Between those who love is a magnetic bond. You know that I could never see you with a lover, much less endure your having one: to see him and to tear out his heart would for me be one and the same thing; and then, could I, I would lay violent hands on your sacred person.... No, I would never dare, but I would leave a world where that which is most virtuous had deceived me. I am confident and proud of your love. Misfortunes are trials which mutually develop the strength of our passion. A child lovely as its mother is to see the light in your arms. Wretched man that I am, a single day would satisfy me! A thousand kisses on your eyes, on your lips. Adorable woman! what a power you have! I am sick with your disease: besides, I have a burning fever. Keep the courier but six hours, and let him return at once, bringing to me the darling letter of my queen."

At length, in June, when the first great victories had been won, when the symptoms of motherhood proved to be spurious and disappeared, when honors like those of a sovereign were awaiting her in Italy, Mme. Bonaparte decided to tear herself away from the circle of her friends in Paris, and to yield to the ever more urgent pleadings of her husband. Traveling under Junot's care, she reached Milan early in July, to find the general no longer an adventurer, but the successful dictator of a people, courted by princes and kings, adored by the masses, and the arbiter of nations. Rising, apparently without an effort, to the height of the occasion, she began and continued throughout the year to rival in her social conquests the victories of her husband in the field. Where he was Caius, she was Caia. High-born dames sought her favor, and nobles bowed low to win her support. At times she actually braved the dangers of insurrection and the battle-field. Her presence in their capital was used to soothe the exasperated Venetians. To gratify her spouse's ardor, she journeyed to many cities, and by a show of mild sympathy moderated somewhat the wild ambitions which the scenes and character of his successes awakened in his mind. The heroes and poets of Rome had moved upon that same stage. To his consort the new Caesar unveiled the visions of his heated imagination, explained the sensations aroused in him by their shadowy presence, and unfolded his schemes of emulation. Of such purposes the court held during the summer at Montebello was but the natural outcome. Its historic influence was incalculable: on one hand, by the prestige it gave in negotiation to the central figure, and by the chance it afforded to fix and crystallize the indefinite visions of the hour; on the other, by rendering memorable the celebration of the national fete on July fourteenth, 1797, an event arranged for political purposes, and so dazzling as to fix in the army the intense and complete devotion to their leader which made possible the next epoch in his career.

The summer was a season of enforced idleness, outwardly and as far as international relations were concerned, but in reality Bonaparte was never more active nor more successful. In February the Bank of England had suspended specie payments, and in March the price of English consols was fifty-one, the lowest it ever reached. The battle of Cape St. Vincent, fought on February fourteenth, destroyed the Spanish naval power, and freed Great Britain from the fear of a combination between the French and Spanish fleets for an invasion. But, on the other hand, sedition was wide-spread in the navy; the British sailors were mutinous to the danger-point, hoisting the red flag and threatening piracy. The risings, though numerous, were eventually quelled, but the effect on the English people was magical. Left without an ally by the death of Catherine, the temporizing of Paul, and his leaning to the Prussian policy of neutrality, facts mirrored in the preliminaries of Leoben, their government made overtures for peace. There was a crisis in the affairs of the Directory and, as a sort of shelter from the stormy menace of popular disapproval, Delacroix consented to receive Malmesbury again and renew negotiations at Lille. As expected, the arrangement was a second theatrical fencing-bout from the beginning. Canning feared his country would meet with an accident in the sword-play, for the terms proposed were a weak yielding to French pride by laying the Netherlands at her feet. Probably the offer was not serious in any case, the farce was quickly ended, and when their feint was met the British nation had recuperated and was not dismayed. It required the utmost diligence in the use of personal influence, on the part both of the French general and of his wife, to thwart among the European diplomats assembled at Montebello the prestige of English naval victory and the swift adaptations of their policy to changing conditions. But they succeeded, and the evidence was ultimately given not merely in great matters like the success of Fructidor or the peace of Campo Formio, but in small ones—such, for example, as the speedy liberation of Lafayette from his Austrian prison.

END OF VOLUME I