CHAPTER III.

THE PACIFICATION OF EUROPE

(1799-1802).

Shortly before the coup d’état of Brumaire, the President of the Directory, when celebrating the fête of the Tenth of August, had declared that monarchy would never again raise its head in France, and that the last had been seen of those self-styled delegates of Heaven, who held Frenchmen in subjection and looked upon the law of the land merely as the instrument of their own good pleasure. The sight which men were never to see again, they saw almost immediately. France desired rest and peace, and she called Bonaparte to her aid, a man who was by nature incapable of giving her either. War was essential to the political ends which Bonaparte was pursuing; for he held, as did the Directory, that the fortunes of the Republic depended on the continuous extension of its rule. The Republic, however, was henceforth to be merged in the personality of Bonaparte; and the elevation of war into a system of government was a policy which he made his own. The object in view was no longer, as it had been under the Convention, to restore to France her “natural” limits, the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, but the making of fresh conquests beyond her borders. On the morrow of Brumaire Napoleon proclaimed the fact to his soldiers. “Our task”, he said, “is not to defend our own frontiers but to invade the territory of our foes”. Moreover, in spite of his pacific assurance at the commencement of the Consulate and of his protests that the function which he had assumed was purely civil, it was on the army that he relied for the accomplishment of those great things which since 1797 his fervid and enthusiastic imagination had kept in view. At the end of 1799 the French treasury had run dry: Bonaparte proclaimed that it should be replenished with funds taken from hostile States, from their towns, their convents, and their citizens. The army was starving. Bonaparte promised his soldiers a speedy end to their troubles; “Victory”, he told them, “will give you bread.”

The majority of Frenchmen did not share these views. Weary with its long struggle, and feeling that its independence was safely guarded by the Rhine and the Alps, the nation longed for peace. Out of respect for its wishes, pacific overtures were made to Great Britain and Austria. Writing to George III on December 26, 1799, the First Consul declared that no one was more desirous than he was of helping to bring about a general peace, and that he would use every means to attain that end. Bonaparte, however, inspired no confidence in the minds of the British ministers, who looked upon him merely as a soldier of fortune, a vulgar Jacobin. They also conceived France to be more exhausted than she really was, and calculated that, by continuing the war for a few months, the Coalition would secure better terms. Consequently they declined Bonaparte’s offer, and informed him that the only sure basis of peace would be the withdrawal of France within her former frontiers and the reestablishment of the monarchy as a pledge of the permanence of peace.

In Austria, Bonaparte’s proposals, which suggested the Treaty of Campo Formio as the basis of an understanding, were equally unsuccessful. Francis II, after the successes gained by his armies in Italy, declined to entertain any convention based on that treaty, and declared moreover that without the concurrence of his allies he could not conclude any convention at all. Hostilities therefore continued; and Bonaparte, who had taken every step with ostentatious display, so that all France might see how anxious he was for peace, got what he really wanted : war; while at the same time he succeeded in throwing the whole responsibility on his adversaries.

France opened the campaign of 1799 under conditions more favourable than in 1798. The Coalition had finally lost the aid of Paul I, who, annoyed by the policy of Thugut, by the conduct of the war in Italy by the Court of Vienna, and by the check inflicted on the allied forces in Holland, had accused his allies of breach of faith, and had definitely broken with them. Prussia clung more closely than ever to her policy of neutrality, which left her free at any time to turn against France if fortune favoured the Coalition. For the moment, however, she seemed rather to lean towards the side of Bonaparte, who had been adroit enough to suggest to Frederick William III a rectification of the Rhine frontier in a sense favourable to Prussia. In Germany, the rulers of Bavaria and Würtemberg and the Elector of Mainz had indeed promised subsidies to Austria, who hoped by these means to recoup herself for losses suffered during the retreat of the Russian soldiery. But in Austria everything was going from bad to worse; the financial position was deplorable. From the military point of view, it was unfortunate that Thugut’s zeal in the task of preparation produced such inadequate results; he was baulked by the traditional lethargy, slowness, and want of method in the Austrian administration. Moreover, the newly appointed generals were inferior to their predecessors; Archduke Charles, sick of the struggle and broken in health, had retired in December from active service; and his place at the head of the army in Germany had been filled by Kray, a good soldier but a second-rate commander. As for the army in Italy, General Melas, enfeebled by age, slow of mind, and over-cautious in action, had taken the place of the brilliant and impetuous Suvóroff.

It was only in the matter of numbers and position that the Austrians had an advantage over the French. General Kray, with an army 150,000 strong, occupied in the neighbourhood of Donaueschingen a wooded and hilly district, almost resembling a vast entrenched camp, flanked on one side by a river and a lake, and on the other by mountains and dense forests, from which he could swoop down at pleasure on the frontiers of Alsace or Switzerland. The Austrians had at last recognised the strategic importance of the latter country, and they purposed occupying it. On the other side of the Rhine, confronting Kray, Moreau was at the head of 110,000 men distributed en échelon between Strasbourg and Constance. They were veteran soldiers; and their commander, cautious, precise, and skilful, was the best general of the Republic. In Italy Melas had under his orders rather more than 100,000 men, of whom 30,000 were required to garrison the fortresses of Upper Italy; but, after sending certain detachments into Tuscany, he still had 75,000 men left for operations in the field. The French army of Italy, under the orders of Massena, was but the shadow of the fine force that Bonaparte had led. Decimated and disorganised, it did not number more than 30,000 men; and it needed all its general’s energy to give it any cohesion.

To remedy his inferiority in numbers, Bonaparte had busied himself since January with the creation of a fresh army. The final pacification of the Vendee released troops sufficient to form the nucleus of the new force; and in March, with the arrival of contingents from Paris and the south, the army itself was nearly complete: it numbered from 40,000 to 50,000 men. Bonaparte, whose first idea was to make the banks of the Rhine the chief theatre of war, was on the point of sending these soldiers thither, when Moreau’s reluctance to serve under him necessitated a change of plan. He now decided to lead his new army into Italy, where he himself could take the command. Early in April he ordered Moreau to begin hostilities on the Rhine, while he himself with his army was to march to the help of Massena. Bonaparte’s idea was that Moreau should boldly cross the Rhine at Schaffhausen with his whole force, and fall upon Kray in his stronghold at Donaueschingen. Moreau however was too cautious to compromise his whole army by a single movement, since, in the event of defeat, it would have been doomed to certain destruction. In spite therefore of Bonaparte’s wishes, Moreau crossed the Rhine at several points simultaneously; but he manoeuvred in such a way as to lead Kray to believe that the whole French army would pass the stream between Basel and Strasbourg, so as to penetrate into the Black Forest by the Hollenthal, as he had done in 1796. Kray fell into the trap, abandoned his position at Donaueschingen, and marched with part of his force towards the bend of the Rhine, in the hope of bringing Moreau to a stand before he reached the Black Forest. Moreau meanwhile turned suddenly up stream on the right bank, marched rapidly towards Donaueschingen, and rejoined the rest of his force which had crossed the river between Basel and Schaffhausen. Kray, seeing his mistake, though somewhat late in the day, hurried back to protect his magazines at Stockach and cover the line of the Danube. Various engagements took place; on May 3 at Engen and Stockach, on May 5 at Moesskirch, and on May 10 at Biberach. Everywhere the Austrians were forced back. In vain did Kray strive to gain Vorarlberg and so keep touch with the army in Italy; he was flung back towards the north with 60,000 men and driven to seek shelter under the walls of Ulm. That town, defended by a chain of forts perched on the hills, formed in fact an entrenched camp; and there the army, sorely tried by these opening conflicts, had time to recruit its strength and recover its moral. Meanwhile Moreau, whose orders were to thrust back Kray as far as possible towards the north without risking a battle, occupied the district which lies between the Iller, the Danube, and the Lech.

The campaign in Italy opened less favourably for the French. Masséna, who occupied with 25,000 men a line thirty-five leagues in length in the neighbourhood of Genoa, had been ordered by Bonaparte to withdraw his forces from the passes of the Alps, where the winter snows formed an adequate defence, and to concentrate round that city. While preparing to carry out his instructions he was suddenly attacked by the Austrians, who, after they had occupied the heights which commanded Genoa, cut his army in two; the left wing under Suchet was driven back to the banks of the Var; and Masséna with the remainder—the divisions of Soult and Miollis—was compelled to retreat into the town. Against the second of these fragments Melas despatched General Ott, with orders to keep the French closely shut up in Genoa; General Elsnitz, who was sent against Suchet, flattered himself that, after defeating that general, he would be able to force his way into Provence, where it was believed by the Austrians that a popular movement would overturn the rule of the Republic.

Suchet, however, defended himself with much energy on the Var, and frustrated the designs of Elsnitz. Massena, on his side, by vigorous and repeated sorties, harassed the Austrians so constantly that for several weeks they made no visible progress. Still the position at Genoa became more critical from day to day. It was impossible to revictual the town through the port, which was closed by the British fleet under Lord Keith; and the inhabitants suffered terribly from hunger, being driven after a time to support life on a substitute for bread made of cocoa and starch. It was to be feared moreover that the famished population, with the British and Austrian flags floating before their eyes, might rise at any time; Genoa must be relieved, and that without delay. An officer succeeded in passing through the hostile lines and informed Bonaparte in Paris of the desperate plight of the town; Bonaparte answered that the army of reserve was ready, that he himself would cross the Alps immediately, and that in a few days Italy would be conquered and Genoa relieved. It was now April 20; Genoa had been besieged for fifteen days, and it was destined to hold out till June 4.

The army of reserve, four divisions strong, was already marching towards Lausanne and Geneva, where large quantities of stores had been collected. Bonaparte, however, no longer thought of carrying help to Massena; his plan was to reconquer by a short and brilliant campaign all those districts of Italy which the Austrians had taken from the French. This plan, revealed only at the last moment, would, he calculated, strike his adversaries dumb, proclaim his genius to all Europe, and secure a notable triumph for the arms of the Republic. The task which he set himself was to burst like a thunderbolt upon the plains of Lombardy, to occupy that province by a series of rapid movements, and so threaten Melas, who in order to check the advance of the French army would be forced to raise the siege of Genoa. Now Bonaparte could only enter Lombardy through some pass of the Swiss Alps—the St Gothard, the Simplon, or the Great St Bernard—each of which at that season presented great difficulties. The St Gothard was rejected as being too distant and as insufficiently protected against an Austrian attack. The Simplon was rejected also, as, in order to reach it, it was necessary to ascend the whole valley of the Rhone; and this enormously complicated the question of transport, already difficult enough in that mountainous country. The Great St Bernard had this disadvantage that, after leaving Bourg St Pierre, the path becomes narrow and dangerous. Bonaparte, however, did not hesitate to choose the last-named pass; and he declared to Berthier, who was in command, that it must be crossed at any price, “even if it cost half the force”. The troops marched forthwith from Lausanne and Geneva into the Valais. Bonaparte himself arrived; and on May 15 the crossing of the pass began.

Bonaparte, who had traced the plan of campaign and who super­intended its execution, was not in command of the new army. It is true that in March a Consular decree had invested him with the command; but the Consuls, thinking it imprudent to infringe the spirit of the constitution, which provided that the first magistracy of the Republic should be a civil magistracy, had revoked the decision and had appointed Berthier instead. Bonaparte, however, had no idea of being thrust into the background. He was before all things a soldier; he had won all his glory on the battlefield; and it was no part of his scheme to allow himself to be eclipsed. On the other hand, as he was not commander-in-chief, he escaped responsibility for any failure that might occur. Berthier superintended the organisation of the army; Bonaparte did not appear till it was ready to cross the Alps.

The passage of the Great St Bernard, which took place between May 15 and May 20, was completely successful. An army of 35,000 foot and 5000 horse had to cross the pass—no easy matter. Lannes, the hero of Lodi, commanded the advance-guard: his task was to open the road and effect a junction in the valley of Aosta with the division of General Chabran, which crossed by the Little St Bernard. When the road had been cleared, the advance of the rest of the army was less laborious; and the only remaining difficulty was the transport of the artillery. As the guns on their carriages could not climb the narrow track, it was necessary to dismount them at Bourg St Pierre and to convey the various parts on carts or on mule-back. With a view to this, all available transport in the Rhone valley had been requisitioned; but, in spite of the liberal prices offered, the country people, fearing the French, had taken refuge in the mountains, where they hid their mules. In the end the guns had to be transported by the soldiers: pine-trunks were hollowed out, the guns were placed within them, and each gun was dragged over by a hundred men working in relays. At St Remy, on the Italian slope, an artillery workshop put the gun-carriages together again and remounted the guns upon them. Bonaparte crossed the St Bernard with the rear-guard, not on a fiery war-horse, as David’s picture portrays him, but on a humble mule led by a peasant from Bourg St Pierre. Was this passage, after all, as wonderful as contemporaries would have us believe and as certain historians still affirm it to be ? It was no doubt a brilliant military exploit; but material difficulties alone had to be overcome. Other generals before and after Bonaparte—Lacourbe on the St Gothard and Macdonald on the Splugen—accomplished marches more full of peril; but, as they lacked both Bonaparte’s eye for theatrical effect and his incomparable talent for self-advertisement, their achievements passed almost unnoticed.

The Austrians, who never dreamt that any considerable force could descend into Italy by the high passes of the Great and the Little St Bernard, had sent only some weak detachments to guard those approaches. Lannes, who during his march had met with but little opposition, occupied Aosta almost without striking a blow, and effected his junction with Chabran. At Chatillon he met with a more considerable Austro-Sardinian force, commanded by Briey. He defeated it, and then marched against the fortress of Bard. That little fort, built on a precipitous rock which completely closed the valley, was the only serious obstacle met with by the French. A mountain-track existed, by which the fort could be turned; but it was not practicable for artillery, and the army had so little time to spare that a regular siege was out of the question. Marmont, who commanded the artillery, had recourse to a stratagem; he wrapped the guns and their carriages in ropes of hay and straw, and during the hours of darkness caused stable-litter to be spread along the road. Taking advantage of a stormy night, he marched his guns past under the cannon of the fort. The garrison were indeed alarmed, and their fire killed a few French soldiers; but by the morning the obstacle had been turned. From that point the French troops marched down the valley with great rapidity.

The Austrians had meanwhile divined Bonaparte’s plan. They suspected that Moreau’s sudden attack in the south of Germany had been delivered with the object of making an invasion of Italy. Melas received. forthwith from Vienna an order to march with all haste on Turin. For the defence of that city there were available in the north of Piedmont not more than 10,000 men; they were commanded by General Haddick, who occupied a series of very strong positions behind the Chiusella and on the heights of Romano. On May 26 Lannes attacked Haddick and compelled him to withdraw behind the Oreo. The Austrian general hastened to warn Melas that, if he did not return with all speed, Piedmont would be overrun by the French. Melas thereupon decided to quit Genoa, leaving 30,000 men under Ott before the city, and 20,000 men under Elsnitz to watch Suchet beyond the Var. Convinced that the object of the French was to cross the Po, conquer Piedmont, and march to the help of Massena, Melas judged that with his own army and that of Haddick he could succeed in stopping their advance. When, however, Melas drew near to Turin the French were no longer in Piedmont. They had collected a number of boats and pontoons and made a feint of crossing the river at Chiasso; they then turned sharply to the east, crossed the Sesia and the Ticino, and after an engagement with General Vonkassowitch, who was charged with the defence of the latter river, invaded the Milanese. On June 2 Bonaparte made his triumphal entry into Milan.

Once master of Lombardy, Bonaparte had at his command all the forces available for his campaign in Italy. In addition to the army of reserve, 18,000 men detached from Moreau’s force had just arrived by the St Gothard under General Moncey; and they, with Turreau’s division, which had marched into Piedmont by the Mont Cenis, made up the total number of French troops in Italy to 70,000 men. To oppose to these troops, fresh and flushed with success, Melas could bring but a weary and disheartened soldiery. Surprised by the unexpected turn of events and the rapidity of Bonaparte’s movements, the Austrian general stood for a moment paralysed and bewildered, but finally decided to recall his forces from Genoa; he ordered them to concentrate on Alessandria and marched thither himself. He hoped in a few days to collect 40,000 men to chastise the audacity of Bonaparte by a well-deserved defeat.

These hopes were far from being realised. To begin with, it proved impossible to effect the concentration on Alessandria so quickly as had been expected. Elsnitz, in his retirement from the Var, was involved in repeated combats with Suchet, who harassed his retreat; when he arrived, it was with diminished forces. Ott, on the very day when the order reached him to raise the siege of Genoa, received the capitulation of Masséna, and was compelled to leave a garrison in the city. He then, in pursuance of further orders, marched to the east of Alessandria in order to reconnoitre the line of the Po; he was there beaten by the advance-guard of the French army, and, after losing heavily, was forced to fall back on Alessandria. Thus, from every point of view, the position of the Austrians seemed unsatisfactory.

Bonaparte, meanwhile, had occupied Lombardy as far as the Oglio, driven the Austrians from all the cities, and seized Cremona with its important stores of provisions, arms, and war material. His advance­guard, consisting of Lannes and Murat’s corps and a division of Victor’s, crossed over to the right bank of the Po, took Piacenza, and occupied the numerous villages to the west of that town, with the defiles of the Stradella. It was there that on June 9 the combat of Montebello took place. Ott, who attempted to force the passage, was compelled, after a desperate struggle, to retreat on Alessandria. Bonaparte, learning at this moment, through some intercepted despatches, that the Austrians had not yet effected their concentration, crossed the Po with the rest of his troops, and resolved to attack them without delay.

To the east of Alessandria stretches a plain separated from the town by the river Bormida; it is covered with cornfields and vineyards, and contains a few villages and hamlets, Castel-Ceriolo, San Giuliano, and Marengo. It was here that the French awaited the Austrians. As three days passed without their arrival, Bonaparte concluded that they were retreating cither to the north or the south. The intelligence which came from the north making it clear that no movement of troops was taking place in that direction, the First Consul was convinced that Melas had moved south with a view to regaining Genoa. He immediately despatched 6000 men under Desaix, who had just arrived from Egypt, in the direction of Novi. In the plain of the Bormida he left only the corps of Lannes and Victor, 14,000 strong, supported by Murat’s cavalry. He himself fixed his headquarters considerably to the cast, oil the banks of a little river, the Scrivia; and be had with him a reserve force consisting of Monnier’s division, numbering 3600 men, two regiments of cavalry, and the Consular Guard, 1200 strong.

At the moment when Bonaparte was thus dividing his forces, the Austrians resolved on attacking. On the morning of June 14 they crossed the Bormida at three points simultaneously: Ott with the cavalry of Elsnitz to the north; Melas with the divisions of Haddick, Kaim, Morgue, and Lobkowitz in the centre; O’Reilly to the south. The corps of Lannes and Victor, which occupied the villages of Casteleriolo and Marengo, offered a vigorous resistance during six hours to the Austrian attacks; but, inferior as they were in numbers as well as in artillery and cavalry, they were eventually compelled to retreat and abandon their positions to the enemy. In vain Bonaparte hurried up from the Scrivia to their relief with Monnier’s division and the Consular Guard. The French were unable to regain the ground they had lost; and by three in the afternoon the Austrians were masters of the battlefield. Melas, who felt the weight of his years and had been slightly wounded, considering that bis presence on the field was no longer necessary, returned to Alessandria and despatched a courier to Vienna to announce his victory.

The announcement was premature. Hardly had Melas quitted the plain of the Bormida, when a second battle began. Desaix, with bis 6.000 men, after searching in vain for Melas in the direction of Novi, returned in all haste towards Alessandria; and, bearing the sound of the distant cannonade, he concluded that the Austrians had not withdrawn and that they were giving battle to the French. When he arrived on the plain of the Bormida a hurried council of war was held. The French generals acknowledged their defeat. “A battle has been lost,” said Desaix, “but another battle can be won”. He offered to make the attempt on condition that he was “vigorously supported by artillery”. Marmont’s guns were moved up, and the whole line resumed the offensive. The French, encouraged by the arrival of fresh troops, fought with spirit. The Austrians, who had not expected an attack and, looking upon the victory as won, had partly lost formation, stood for a moment bewildered. They made an attempt at resistance, but were driven in on all sides; a panic seized them, and they fled precipitately. At nightfall the field of battle remained in the hands of the French ; and the whole Austrian army, in great confusion, sought shelter under the walls of Alessandria. The Austrians lost more than 9000 men killed and wounded; the French 7000.

Among the killed was Desaix, the hero of the day, who fell at the head of his troops, while cheering them on to the attack; his body was found where the dead lay thickest. When he saw it, Bonaparte exclaimed: “A glorious day’s work if only I could have embraced Desaix upon the battlefield. I should have made him minister of war, and a prince too, had it lain in my power”. Bonaparte was right: it was Desaix who saved him on that day. The victory of Marengo confirmed the power of the First Consul; had he been beaten there, his brother Lucien remarked, the proscription of the Bonaparte family would have certainly followed. The military results of the victory were immediately apparent. The Austrians were too demoralised and too weak to hazard another battle; and Melas sent an officer to the French head-quarters to request an armistice. Bonaparte agreed, on the following conditions. The French troops were to occupy Lombardy as far as the Mincio; and the Austrian garrisons in Tuscany and Ancona were to retire beyond that river until the proposals of peace submitted to the Emperor had led to some definite result. A special messenger, Count Saint-Julien, started immediately for Vienna, bearing with him the convention mid a letter from Bonaparte to Francis II, in which lie said: “If your Majesty desires peace, it is easy to have it. Let both parties carry out the Treaty of Campo Formio.”

Bonaparte had the more reason for believing that Francis would consent to make peace, since the Austrian army in Germany had just suffered a series of reverses. Kray, who had been forced to retreat beneath the walls of Ulm, made repeated attempts to drive off Moreau, who, advancing cautiously but steadily, was all the while closing in upon him. On May 28 the French general had occupied Augsburg and established himself in the district between the Danube, the Iller, and the Lech. Kray attacked him on June 5, but without success; Moreau thereupon crossed the Danube near Blindheim and cut off the enemy’s retreat. Kray attempted in vain to drive Moreau back to the right bank of the river. The Austrian attacks were repulsed, and Kray was compelled to abandon his entrenchments. On June 19, as the result of another French victory gained at Hochstadt, Kray was compelled to retreat towards the north.

Moreau had conducted the second part of the German campaign with the greatest skill; and Kray, when he heard of the defeat of Melas, considering further resistance impossible, proposed an armistice to the French general. Moreau refused, but refrained from further pursuit, as the enemy had now plunged into a woody and difficult country. With part of his force Moreau laid siege to Ulm and Ingolstadt; with the remainder he marched into Bavaria, occupied Munich, seized the passes into Vorarlberg and Switzerland, and so placed himself in communication with the French armies which were operating on the frontiers of Tyrol and of the Grisons. Once master of the line of the Isar, Moreau, cautious as ever, preferred not to venture further to the east; and, receiving a second proposal for an armistice from Kray, he agreed to sign a convention at Parsdorf on July 15. This convention provided that hostilities should be indefinitely suspended in Germany, and that the French should occupy Bavaria west of the Isar, as far as Munich in one direction and Ratisbon in the other.

In spite of its reverses in Germany and Italy, the Imperial Government, contrary to Bonaparte’s expectations, seemed very little disposed to sign a treaty of peace. It refused to consider the situation as desperate, and looked upon Marengo and Hochstadt as defeats that might easily be repaired; in any case it declined to discuss proposals based on the Treaty of Campo Formio. Francis II had a short time before concluded a treaty with Great Britain, by which, in consideration of a subsidy of £2,500,000, he bound himself not to sign a peace with France before February 1, 1801. What was he now to do? He could not answer Bonaparte’s proposals with an absolute refusal, for that involved an immediate resumption of hostilities under conditions distinctly unfavourable to Austria; he therefore used all his efforts to amuse Bonaparte by the prospects of an understanding, hoping thus to gain the time necessary to receive the English subsidy and to reinforce his army. It was with this object that he consented to discuss Bonaparte’s proposals; and to that end he despatched two representatives Count Saint-Julien and Count Neipperg on a mission to Paris.

The instructions given to these envoys gave them no authority to treat; they were merely authorised to sound Bonaparte as to the pro­posals he was prepared to make. Saint-Julien, however, who was vain and incapable, was cajoled by the First Consul and Talleyrand into believing that he was clothed with plenary powers. They pictured to him the immense service which he would render to the two nations by securing them the blessings of peace, and they induced him to sign the draft of a document which was nothing else in its main lines but the Treaty of Campo Formio. Saint-Julien, whose self-conceit was flattered, affixed his signature, saying: “I sign provisionally, pending ratification by my government. Without such ratification any convention is null and void”. Bonaparte and Talleyrand assented; and the trick was played.

At Vienna the anger of the Government was extreme. The Austrian Court had meant to outwit Bonaparte, but it was Bonaparte who had outwitted them. The imprudent envoy was loudly disavowed and, with his colleague, shut up in a fortress. Thugut, in his anxiety to reassure the English, disclosed to them the duplicity of the French and pushed on his military preparations with activity. This, however, was mere pretence. Austria was in no condition to recommence the struggle; her army was completely disorganised. The confusion which reigned in the higher commands at the beginning of 1800 had gone on increasing. Her beaten generals had been replaced by officers still more incompetent. A headstrong youth, Archduke John, succeeded Kray. The Archduke himself was nothing more than the nominal superior of General Lauer, who himself was a mere mouthpiece of the Government; for, under the old-fashioned system still in vogue at the Austrian Court, military operations were conducted from Vienna. With the army in Italy things went no better; as a result of his defeat at Marengo, Melas was deprived of his command, which was given to a man still more diffident and incapable, General de Bellegarde.

At the moment when Austria was preparing to renew the contest, Francis II himself went to the camp on the Inn to study the military situation on the spot. He found such a state of disorganisation that, on his return to Vienna, he applied to Bonaparte for a prolongation of the armistice; and to this Bonaparte agreed, on condition that the Austrians should surrender Philippsburg, Ulm, and Ingolstadt. A change of opinion in favour of peace was now perceptible at Vienna. Thugut, who belonged to the war party, was replaced by Cobenzl, who had negotiated the Treaty of Campo Formio : and the negotiations between Vienna and Paris, which had been broken off, were resumed. The chief wish of the Austrians all through was to gain time; but they believed also that Bonaparte was ardently desirous of peace, and they hoped to obtain from him terms such as Great Britain would be able to accept.

Bonaparte, however, was not a man to be played with: he was willing to treat on the basis of Campo Form io and on no other. He consented indeed to negotiate : even the meeting place, Lunéville, was agreed upon by his brother Joseph as representing France and Cobenzl as representing Austria. Before, however, Cobenzl reached Lunéville, Bonaparte, who wished to find out what the real intentions of Austria were, invited him to Paris. Once there, Bonaparte had no difficulty in finding out what he warned. When Cobenzl had been driven to make a definite statement of his views, Bonaparte saw that the object of Austria was to secure a loophole of retreat, and that she meant to sign no treaty without the concurrence of England. Bonaparte at once understood that nothing but a signal victory would bring Austria to terms, and he took measures accordingly.

From the moment of his return to Paris after the campaign of Marengo, Bonaparte had been continuously engaged in military pre­parations. A fresh army of reserve had been formed at Dijon and was ready, in case of war, to march into Italy by the Splügen. The Dutch had been ordered to furnish a corps of 8000 men, who under Augereau were to reinforce Moreau in Germany. After the interview between Bonaparte and Cobenzl in Paris, these preparations were pushed on with the greatest energy: and notice was given to Austria that the armistice would terminate on November 5.

The Austrian Government, which was not ready, made a supreme effort to preserve peace. The two envoys were at Lunéville, where they were engaged in formulating the arguments which bore upon the questions whether an English plenipotentiary should be admitted to their conferences or not, and whether the Emperor should sign as prince of his hereditary States or as the head of the Holy Roman Empire. Suddenly it was proposed from Vienna that the treaty of peace should be signed without waiting for the concurrence of England, on condition that the transaction should be kept secret until February 1, 1801, on which date the arrangement between Austria and England would come to an end; and that, to save appearances, a British plenipotentiary should be admitted to the negotiations at Lunéville. Bonaparte agreed to a secret treaty of peace, but insisted that it should be concluded within forty-eight hours, and declined altogether to admit a British representative to the deliberations. Austria could not accept this last condition, and nothing was left but a fresh resort to arms.

At the end of November, 1800, hostilities were renewed both in Germany and in Italy. In Germany, Moreau held the line of the Isar with 120,000 men. The Austrian army commanded by Archduke John numbered only 80.000; but this inferiority was balanced by the great strength of the position which it held on the right bank of the Inn, protected on the north by wooded and swampy plains and on the south by sleep heights very difficult of access. Moreau, confident that the Archduke would remain on the defensive, decided to attack him, and marched towards the Inn in order to clear the approaches to the river and force back the Austrian outposts to the other side. At the moment, however, that he put his force into motion, his left was suddenly attacked by Archduke John, who, contrary to all expectation, had quitted his commanding position. Fired by the exploits of Bonaparte, the Archduke formed the ambitious project of outflanking the French, cutting off their retreat, and attacking them before they were able to concentrate. The success of this plan, however, depended upon its being executed with skill and rapidity. It was executed with neither. Through the plains to the north, low lying and sodden with rain, the progress of the army was exceedingly slow, so much so that when the Archduke reached the opposite bank of the river he had already begun to lose heart. After holding a council of war, he decided to abandon his plan and to attack the French forthwith. Moreau’s left wing under Grenier was at Ampfing near Mühldorf, isolated from the rest of the army. These troops gave way before the Austrian attack, but, thanks to a division sent to their assistance, they made their retreat in good order.

Elated by this petty success, the Archduke imagined that he could dispose without difficulty of the rest of the French army. Thus threatened, Moreau concentrated his troops in the middle of the plateau, which is clothed by the great forest of Ebersberg. In an open space in the very middle of the forest stands the village of Hohenlinden; and there Moreau halted on ground which was well adapted to defence and gave little opportunity for the manoeuvres of the splendid Austrian cavalry. The Austrian generals pointed out the rashness of marching through country so thickly wooded, but the Archduke would not listen. On December 2, a dull, snowy day, his army plunged into the forest, some by the main highway and some by other roads. Meanwhile, Moreau, leaving General Grenier’s force strongly posted in the open space, moved the divisions of Richepance and Decaen back through the forest with orders to attack the Austrians in the rear. The operation was perfectly successful. The van of the Archduke’s army came into collision with the troops massed at Hohenlinden, while its rearguard was attacked by the rest of the French force. Caught between two fires, the Austrian regiments surged back on themselves; the ranks were broken; the soldiers fled right and left into the forest, climbing steep banks and falling into bogs. Very soon the high road was nothing but a confused mass of dead and wounded, loose horses, wrecked carts, abandoned guns and ammunition-waggons. The rest of the troops, who during the afternoon converged on the open space by other roads, met the same fate; and by half-past three the Austrian army was completely routed, with the loss of 20,000 men killed, wounded, and prisoners, besides a large number of guns and an immense baggage train. In a bulletin admirably simple in its terms, Moreau conveyed to Paris the news of the battle of Hohenlinden, a victory more brilliant and more complete than that of Marengo.

In spite of the wintry weather, which rendered the roads in this mountainous district exceedingly difficult, Moreau continued his advance. He occupied successively the lines of the Inn, the Salzach, the Traun, and the Enns, and defeated the enemy in a series of combats, capturing men and guns. On December 22 he was within 65 miles of Vienna; and his generals were already rejoicing at the prospect of entering the Austrian capital in triumph. But Moreau, who was anxious, as he said, to secure peace without driving the Austrians to extremities, agreed with the Archduke Charles, who had succeeded his unlucky brother, to sign an armistice at Steyer on December 25. It was stipulated that those towns in Bavaria and Tyrol which still resisted should be handed over to the French; and that Austria, in spite of her existing engagements, should sign a treaty without the concurrence of England.

The campaign in Italy brought no less glory to the French arms. Brune, who had succeeded Massena as commander-in-chief of the army in Italy, had 80,000 men under his orders. Bellegarde commanded a force about equal in number; but he had the advantage of being protected by the famous fortresses of the Quadrilateral, Peschiera, Legnano, Mantua, and Verona. Bonaparte had forbidden Brune to attack the Austrian positions till he had been reinforced by Macdonald, who was in the Grisons with 12,000 men. Macdonald, in order to reach the Valtelline, and thence Tyrol, was compelled, late as it was, to cross the Splügen. He accomplished that dangerous feat successfully, in spite of ice and avalanches, and reached the Lake of Iseo, from which point he could join Brune without difficulty. Brune was now able to move ; between the 20th and 24th of November he drove the Austrians from their positions on the Mincio, and two days later he forced the passage of that river at Pozzolo and at Mozembano. He then pushed back the enemy towards the Adige, crossed to the left bank at Bussolengo on December 3, and occupied Verona. Next, after effecting his junction with Macdonald, who marched up from Trent, he thrust back Bellegarde beyond the Tagliamento. The Austrian general, finding it impossible to keep the field, proposed an armistice, which Brune accepted readily and signed at Treviso on January 16, 1801. By the terms of this convention the French were to occupy the line of the Adige with Verona, Peschiera, and Legnano.

The French were no less successful in other parts of Italy. In Tuscany General Miollis defeated a small Neapolitan force, which had come to the help of the Austrians; and Murat, after forcing his way into the kingdom of Naples, compelled Ferdinand IV to sign a convention at Foligno. This convention was subsequently turned into a formal treaty of peace, the Treaty of Florence, signed in March, 1801. By it Ferdinand undertook to close his ports to the English, to hand over Taranto to the French, and to maintain there a French garrison of 15,000 men till a general peace should be concluded. Thus, in a few months, Italy was once again brought under French control.

The result of the French victories was to facilitate the conclusion of peace ; but Bonaparte was more exacting at the beginning of 1801 than he had been in the autumn of the preceding year. He was no longer satisfied with the line of the Mincio as the frontier of the Cisalpine Republic; he insisted on the frontier of the Adige with the cession of the fortress of Mantua. The improved external relations of France placed Bonaparte in a position to increase his demands. Paul I, full of admiration for the victor of Marengo, had made advances; and Bonaparte, profiting by this friendly attitude, ceded to him the island of Malta, at the moment when it was about to fall into the hands of the English. The Tsar, who attached a serious value to his position as Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, called upon the British Government to surrender the island, and, on receiving a refusal, laid an embargo on three hundred English ships. More than this, he had, as was related in the previous chapter, challenged the maritime supremacy of England by renewing the famous League of Neutrals with Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia. All this had undoubtedly been of great assistance to Bonaparte, and had made him less than ever disposed to yield to Austria. At Lunéville, Cobenzl had offered the Oglio, the Chiese, and the Mincio, one after the other, as the frontier of the Cisalpine Republic. Bonaparte was immovable: he would sign no treaty that did not give him the frontier of the Adige. At last Austria gave way; and on February 9, 1801, Cobenzl signed at Lunéville the treaty which he described as “terrible”.

This treaty was for France a great diplomatic success. The boundaries for which she had fought so long were ceded to her by the Emperor, who signed as head of the Holy Roman Empire; France acquired, in addition to the German districts on the left bank of the Rhine, Belgium and Luxemburg. In Germany she gained the right to take part in determining the indemnities to be granted to the dispossessed princes; and the principle of secularisation which she imposed was to be of great assistance to her policy. In Italy she had secured advantages not less substantial: she occupied Piedmont; the Cisalpine Republic and Liguria were under her protection; Tuscany, which had been converted into the kingdom of Etruria, was governed by the young Duke of Parma, who had married a Spanish Infanta and was completely under the thumb of Bonaparte; Rome lay at his mercy; the King of Naples, who owed his crown solely to the intervention of the Tsar, was compelled to maintain a French garrison at Taranto.

Nothing could be more flattering to the national vanity of the French than a treaty such as this, which established the complete failure of the Second Coalition. The republics, which the Coalition was formed to crush, maintained their existence under the protection of France.

Paul I, who had chivalrously embarked on a crusade to restore the Bourbons to the throne, had ended by leaguing himself with the usurper and helping to consolidate his influence. There was, indeed, a shadow on the picture—Great Britain; but she was isolated for the moment, and Bonaparte cherished the hope of forcing her to make peace.

In the spring of 1801 Bonaparte believed the moment had come when, with the aid of the neutrals, he would be able to humble England. He flattered himself that he could contend successfully with the British fleet, divided, as it necessarily was, between the Baltic, the French coast, and the Mediterranean. The idea of a descent upon Ireland or the English coast was never absent from his mind. “With three days of east wind”, he remarked, “I could repeat the exploit of William the Conqueror”. At the same time he was pursuing the idea, which he had cherished in 1798, of attacking Great Britain through Egypt and India; and he made preparations for the necessary supplies to be forwarded to the forces in Egypt. He had already planned to send Massena to join the Russians by way of the Danube, the Black Sea, and Astrakhan. Each day’s march had already been arranged; proclamations to the inhabitants had been drawn up; nothing had been forgotten, not even the balloon-staff and the savants. But when Bonaparte’s preparations had reached this point, two pieces of intelligence were almost simultaneously received which ruined the whole scheme. These were the battle of Copenhagen and the assassination of the Tsar.

This latter event, in particular, affected Bonaparte deeply. On hearing of it, he uttered cries of rage and declared that he saw in it the hand of perfide Albion. “The English failed to strike me on the third of Nivose”, he said, “... but they have not failed to strike me at St Petersburg”. The Moniteur published the news in these terms: “Paul I died on the night of March 24; the British squadron passed the Sound on the 31st. History will teach us the connexion which may exist between the two events”. In spite of all this rodomontade, Bonaparte was anxious. The death of Paul had practically dissolved the League of Neutrals; and the blockade of the English coast which Bonaparte had dreamed of was no longer possible. He had even to abandon the hope of driving the English from the Mediterranean. At the same time there were, after the Peace of Lunéville, important matters in France which demanded Bonaparte’s attention—the Concordat, the Civil Code, the reform of the finances, the organisation of public instruction—while abroad, the political systems of Italy, Holland, and Switzerland, needed reorganisation in accordance with his ideas. For every reason, a truce with England was necessary; and Bonaparte turned his thoughts in that direction.

In Great Britain also there was a general inclination towards peace. Although they had won great successes at sea in the East and West Indies, had taken Copenhagen and landed in Egypt, the English recognised the fact that, in spite of all this and of the toil and money which they had expended, Bonaparte was still the strongest power on the Continent. Should they continue the struggle or should they abandon it, husband their strength, restore their finances, and wait for better times? Both views were represented in Great Britain, but it was the peace party which was gaining in numbers, including, as it did, the whole business world. The country was passing through a crisis: from the agricultural phase it was passing into the industrial. The steam­engine, which had increased tenfold the manufacturing capacity of the population as well as the producing capacity of the mines, had covered the ground with a multitude of factories and workshops. The manu­facturing industry, which had already attained importance in 1801, demanded new outlets. To the markets of the colonies and America, it was indispensable to add those of Europe, for the most part closed during the war. It was hoped that, with peace, British goods would find their way to the Continent; merchants, manufacturers, and bankers became in consequence ardent partisans of peace.

This movement, which became general after the Peace of Lunéville, was one of the causes which led to the retirement of Pitt on February 4, 1801, and the formation of a ministry under Addington. From this moment a better feeling began to prevail between England and France; and the Foreign Minister, Lord Hawkesbury, intimated to Otto, who had been sent by the French to London to arrange an exchange of prisoners, that the British Government was disposed, should France be favourably inclined, to reopen negotiations.

Bonaparte, as we have seen, also desired peace; but, in order to have it on the most advantageous terms, he proposed to himself, as a preliminary step, to complete the isolation of his rival. To that end, in spite of the Treaty of Lunéville, he prepared for intervention on the Continent by occupying positions favourable both for attack and defence, and surrounding the Republic with what may be described as a more complete system of outlying forts. Foreseeing possible complications with Great Britain, Bonaparte made it his primary object to confront the English with accomplished facts. The first step in that direction was the annexation of Piedmont. Hitherto the wishes of Paul I, the self-constituted champion of the King of Sardinia, had formed the chief obstacle to this step. The Tsar once out of the way, Bonaparte’s hands were free. On the day when he heard of Paul’s death he decided on annexation, taking care to antedate the document, so that the connexion between the two events should not be apparent. Anxious also not to alarm Europe, he announced to the various Courts that the organisation of the country was his sole object. In his secret instructions to General Jourdan, who commanded the corps of occupation in Piedmont, he held very different language. “This organisation”, he said, “is merely a first step towards annexation”. At the same time he informed the agents of the King of Sardinia, who had taken refuge at Cagliari, that, so long as the ports of the island were not closed against the English, no proposals from him would be received.

In Bonaparte’s view, to close the ports of western and southern Europe against Great Britain was the surest means of isolating her and forcing her to come to terms. Holland, Belgium, Spain, Tuscany, Liguria, and Naples, were already on his side; he hoped to bring over Portugal also. But Portugal was an agricultural country which derived its chief revenue through its export of corn and wine to England; and her Government refused to obey the behests of Bonaparte. In order to enforce obedience, Bonaparte persuaded the King of Spain, Charles IV, to invade Portugal, with the avowed object of annexing that country. This was not done without difficulty, as Charles IV was father-in-law of the Prince Regent of Portugal, and had no cause of complaint against him. It was therefore with great reluctance that he made the expedition; and, in order to deprive the French of any pretext for intervention in Portugal, he lost no time in coming to an agreement with his son-in-law. The latter, only too glad to have escaped a French invasion, signed a treaty at Badajoz on June 6, 1801, in which he undertook to close the ports of his kingdom against the English, to leave the province of Olivença in the hands of the Spanish, and to pay an indemnity of 20,000,000 francs to France.

This did not satisfy Bonaparte, who had reckoned on the complete submission of Portugal. He even refused to ratify the treaty, although it had been signed in the presence of his brother Lucien, who was ambassador at Madrid, and although Lucien’s instructions directed him to “settle the matter on the one condition that the Portuguese ports were closed to the English”. The Spanish Government was extremely indignant, declared the treaty irrevocable, and showed itself ready to resist compulsion, even by force of arms. Bonaparte resorted to threats, and proclaimed that “the last hour of the Spanish monarchy” was about to strike. But he went no further than threats, for the announcement of two untoward events compelled him to refrain from action: namely, the formal occupation of Egypt by the English, and the reconciliation of Russia and Great Britain.

Nothing lay nearer Bonaparte’s heart than the possession of Egypt. He was determined that it should never be said that the expedition which he had himself directed was a futile or irrational undertaking. From the beginning of February, 1801, he had been occupied with fitting out a great fleet that was to carry provisions and reinforcements to the army of occupation. This fleet, however, had been stopped by British cruisers and had never reached its destination. The British, on the other hand, had landed a force in Egypt and gradually reduced the country; on June 27 Cairo, the bulwark of French power in the valley of the Nile, fell into their hands.

The question of Egypt had been one of the principal obstacles to an understanding with Great Britain, for on this point Bonaparte would not yield. Alexander I, who, since the death of his father, had shown himself desirous of an understanding with England, had declared that the occupation of Egypt by the French, and their evident determination to remain there, created an inexhaustible source of difficulties and disputes. A more friendly feeling was now growing up between the Russian and British Governments. Alexander had raised the embargo on British ships and renounced the Grand Mastership of Malta; while the English, on their side, had restrained the further activity of Nelson in the Baltic. In short, by the end of the spring, everything was ready for a definite understanding; and this was arrived at by the signature on June 17, 1801, of the Treaty of St Petersburg, which formally defined the rights of the neutral Baltic Powers.

Nothing could affect Bonaparte more than this drawing together of Russia and Great Britain; it meant the ruin of his eastern policy and the indefinite postponement of his plans. Thenceforward, in everything that he did, he would have to reckon with St Petersburg; and, what was still worse, he saw in the young Tsar a possible rival in European politics. Alexander had wide ambition; he could not forgive the Corsican upstart, who filled the political stage and imposed his will on the sovereigns of Europe. The Tsar longed to replace the supremacy of France by the supremacy of Russia, and to play the part of arbitrator in European disputes. In Italy he posed as the champion of the Kings of Sardinia and Naples, claiming for the former a territorial indemnity in the peninsula, and for the latter the preservation of his crown. In Germany he was about to intervene in favour of the dispossessed Princes, “with a view to establishing”, as he said, “such a balance of power as would afford mutual guarantees and preserve the peace of Europe”.

At this moment France appeared to be completely isolated. Even Prussia seemed inclined to secure some advantage from the new political situation. Her King, it is true, did not go so far as to abandon the neutral policy which had answered his purpose so well. In 1801 he was no more ready to give up his political system than he had been in 1798, when the Second Coalition held out to him the prospect of filling up the gap in his dominions, and of adding thereto certain territories on the left bank of the Rhine, or than he was in 1800, after Marengo, when Bonaparte offered him Hanover as the price of his alliance. It was in vain that Lucchesini, Prussian ambassador in Paris, pointed out to Frederick William that Bonaparte, through his policy in Italy, Switzerland, and Holland, had brought about a European coalition against himself, and was even losing his popularity in France; the King would not listen. Nevertheless, aided by the Tsar, he made an adroit attempt to secure for himself a wide stretch of German territory by way of compensation for his trifling losses on the left bank of the Rhine. At the same time, in order to reassure Austria, he was at pains to prove that such an addition to his territory would be chiefly to the detriment of France. “The establishment of several great Powers in Germany”, said his minister Haugwitz, “is the only possible barrier which we can oppose to the supremacy and the revolutionary zeal of France”.

Confronted by so many rival ambitions; face to face with Russia, whose aim it was to keep him at a distance and to challenge his supremacy over Germany and Italy; with Prussia, who offered nothing but a precarious neutrality for which she expected to be handsomely paid; with Austria, whose only object was to evade and whittle away the Treaty of Lunéville, Bonaparte saw that there was but one thing to be done, viz. to make terms with England. The necessity of this step was brought home to him by the formidable difficulties of the work which he had undertaken in the countries owing allegiance to France. It was true that these countries owed some liberties to France ; but the system of contributions and conscriptions which she had forced upon them proved more onerous than the burdens which they had borne under their former rulers, and they were far from being attached to the Republic. Bonaparte saw clearly that, if he wished to bind their peoples to him, it was necessary to bestow upon them just and regular government. To organise the French Republic, to organise also the governments of Italy, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland, in other words, to secure the supremacy of the First Consul in France itself and the supremacy of France outside her own borders, was a task which could not be deferred. He resigned himself, therefore, to a truce with England, which he knew to be precarious, but which he hoped would hold long enough to enable him to complete the work of political organisation.

Negotiations had gone on without a break between London and Paris; but it was rather the scope of the understanding than the understanding itself which had been under discussion. The British Government had, in the first instance, proposed the principle of uti possidetis, as the basis of the future arrangement; that is to say, the simple retention by both parties of their respective conquests. This the French Government rejected, under the pretext that it would work to the prejudice of their allies, Holland and Spain, who had lost several of their colonies. They had failed also to agree on what was implied by the status ante bellum, as each party strove to interpret those words in the sense most favourable to itself. Eventually a basis of agreement was found in “reciprocal compensation”. France formally recognised the greater part of the conquests which England had made; Great Britain did the same with respect to the conquests of France; while Malta and Egypt were restored to their former owners, the Knights and the Sultan respectively.

The discussion on this question of compensation lasted throughout the summer. The British Government could not consent to an official recognition of the recent establishment of the Republic, but it knew well enough that to raise this question would render agreement impossible; it therefore evaded the difficulty by ignoring its existence and by limiting discussion to those points which were indispensable. The French Government, on the other hand, refused to concur in the retention by Great Britain of all the colonies which she had taken from the allies of France, and required the restitution of the Cape to Holland and of Trinidad to Spain. On the question of Trinidad especially Bonaparte was at first immovable, since its possession would secure to his foes “a dangerous foothold on the vast continent of South America”. When, however, the Spaniards had played him false in the matter of Portugal, Bonaparte was less anxious to protect their interests. On September 29 he had reluctantly signed at Madrid a treaty with Portugal, which was nothing more than a confirmation of the Treaty of Badajoz; and, at Talleyrand’s suggestion, he decided to leave Trinidad in the hands of England. This concession expedited the negotiations in London and quieted the doubts of the British Cabinet; and on October 1, 1801, the preliminaries of peace were signed in London.

By these preliminaries Great Britain undertook to restore to France and her allies, Spain and Holland, all her maritime conquests except Ceylon and Trinidad, which became hers permanently. She restored the Cape, Demerara, Berbice, Essequibo, and Surinam to the Dutch; Martinique and Guadeloupe to the French; Minorca to the Spaniards; and Malta to the Order of St John of Jerusalem, under the guarantee of one of the great Powers. She abandoned Porto Ferraio, which, with the rest of the island of Elba, became the property of the French. In return for this the French were to evacuate Naples. The armies of both nations were withdrawn from Egypt, which was restored to Turkey. The integrity of Portugal was guaranteed; and the independence of the Ionian Islands was recognised. The question of the Newfoundland fisheries was deferred.

The news that preliminaries had been signed in London caused great joy in France. It announced the general peace so long desired, which was to give lasting tranquillity to the Continent, remove the necessity for European coalitions, and furnish the nation with fresh opportunities for the development of its industry and commerce. In Paris the news spread rapidly, and the city was spontaneously illuminated. In London the rejoicings were not less intense. The people, delivered from the nightmare of invasion, and believing that dearth, high prices, and all the other ills which war produces, were at an end, persuaded also that profitable markets would now be opened to their foreign trade, gave themselves up to transports of joy. The public conveyances which started from London bore enormous placards announcing “Peace with France”. When Lauriston, Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp, arrived from Paris with the ratification of the preliminaries, the crowd, in its excitement, took the horses from his carriage and dragged him in triumph, amidst loud cheers for Bonaparte.

In England this joy was short-lived. No sooner were the terms of the convention made known than the liveliest displeasure was manifested. Politicians could not believe that no stipulations had been made in respect of Holland, the Rhine, Switzerland, or Italy, and that, of all her conquests, England had retained only Ceylon and Trinidad. Business men, on their side, were deeply disappointed that the stipulations embodied no treaty of commerce, and that, instead of the wide facilities which they expected, the Continent remained closed, as in the past, with a system of prohibitive tariffs more ruinous than war. The opinion of the mercantile world became before long the opinion of the whole nation. “It is nothing but a frail and deceptive truce”, said Lord Fitzwilliam in a speech in Parliament. The Government inwardly shared this view, and hoped, before signing a definite peace, to obtain more favourable conditions and so render the treaty acceptable to the nation.

The town of Amiens was the place chosen for the discussion of the articles of the treaty. The British envoy was Lord Cornwallis, who had commanded in America and in the East, and had governed India and Ireland. The French envoy was Joseph Bonaparte, who was already called “Grand Signatory of the Consulate”, from having signed the treaty of Morfontaine with America and that of Lunéville with Austria. Joseph, who liked to pose as a liberal and as an opponent, on many points, of the policy of his brother, professed great sympathy with England, and was ready to make genuine efforts to bring about a definite reconciliation between the two countries. Personally he was inclined to make concessions with a view to removing causes of disagree­ment in the future; but the First Consul ordered Talleyrand to draw up instructions which confined Joseph’s power of negotiation within very definite limits. Joseph, accordingly, was compelled to decline all discussion which related to the King of Sardinia, to Holland and the Stadholder, or to the affairs of Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. “All these subjects”, said Napoleon, “are completely outside our deliberations with England”. With all vexed questions thus eliminated, the treaty of peace became nothing more than a simple acceptance of the preliminaries. The British Government had to agree to these conditions; for Bonaparte declared that, rather than yield on this essential point, he would recommence hostilities. The questions of India, Malta, and Egypt were settled in accordance with the terms of the preliminaries.

There remained what the English people had most at heart, the question of commercial treaties. Bonaparte, who had inherited from the Committee of Public Safety and from the Directory their spirit of absolutism, had also inherited from them their economic methods. The Draconian law of 10 Brumaire, year V, which was the reenactment in an aggravated form of the Terrorist law of 19 Vendemiaire, year III, was rigorously enforced; it placed British merchants on the same footing as French émigrés, declared their merchandise to be enemy’s goods, and forbade its importation or sale throughout the territory of the French Republic. In vain did the British strive to obtain more equitable conditions; Bonaparte flatly refused and declared that he preferred to renew hostilities. “Rather immediate war”, said he, “than illusory arrangements”. The British Government was compelled to submit, and only obtained some unimportant concessions in matters of detail. The negotiations, however, dragged on for nearly six months. Many protocols of a dilatory nature were drawn up; there was much discussion and much going and coming between Amiens, London, and Paris. Bonaparte grew impatient, and frequently threatened to resort to war. It was his wish that the treaty should be signed on March 10, the day on which the Concordat was to be promulgated in France. It was not, however, till March 27, 1802, that the signatures were exchanged.

The Treaty of Amiens was also signed by Azarea and Schimmelpenninck, the representatives of Spain and Holland, who, as a matter of fact, had merely to ratify what Bonaparte had decided. It contained the following provisions. Peace was proclaimed between the French Republic, the King of Spain, and the Batavian Republic on the one part, and the King of Great Britain and Ireland on the other. Great Britain retained Ceylon and Trinidad, and restored the other colonies taken from France and her allies. The integrity of Turkey was guaranteed ; the Prince of Orange was to receive an indemnity; Malta was to be restored to the Order, to remain neutral and independent under the guarantee of the Great Powers, and to receive a Neapolitan garrison for a year, and if necessary for a longer period. Great Britain was to evacuate the island within three months of the ratification of the treaty, while France was to evacuate Taranto and the States of the Church; Great Britain was to surrender the points which she occupied on the Adriatic and the Mediterranean in the month following the ratification, and her colonial conquests within six months of that date.

This treaty was far more advantageous to France than to England, where it was regarded with very mixed feelings. It was in vain that Addington declared, “This is no ordinary peace, but a genuine reconciliation between the two first nations of the world”: the country did not believe him. The leaders of commerce, when they saw that the prohibitions imposed in the heat of a violent struggle were in no way relaxed, looked upon the arrangement as a fool’s bargain. The lower orders, to whom it did not bring the cheap food on which they had counted, were still more dissatisfied. The great landowners, who had hoped for relief from fiscal burdens, and the middle class, which called for the abolition of the income-tax, openly expressed their dislike for a treaty which did not fulfil their wishes. But what perhaps more irritated the nation as a whole, was the discovery that the Government had taken no measures to check the insatiable ambition of Bonaparte. This feeling of discontent made itself heard when the treaty was discussed in Parliament.

In the House of Lords, Lord Grenville declared the peace to be both “unsafe and dishonourable”, and asserted that the country, instead of being secure, “stood in greater danger than ever”. Lord Carnarvon, stigmatising the peace as disgraceful, remarked that it “even contrived to remove all security for those rights which still remained unconceded”. In the House of Commons, where the criticisms were equally bitter, Addington expressed his regret at being made a party to the aggrandisement of France, but he added: “I am well persuaded that, whatever may happen, it is the wisest course for us to husband our resources at present that we may the better be prepared, if that should be our lot, to exert ourselves with energy and effect I think therefore that we should take care not to exhaust our resources when there is nothing to be gained by it”. The treaty was ratified accordingly.

In France, on the contrary, the joy caused by the announcement of the Peace of Amiens was without alloy. Mistress as she was of Holland, Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, Switzerland, and Italy, never at any period of her history had France appeared to be more powerful. Moreover, the fact that the peace affected almost the whole Continent was a reason for believing that it would prove durable; for, simultaneously with the signature of the preliminaries of London, treaties had been signed with other countries, Prussia, Bavaria, Turkey, and Russia.

On May 23, 1802, France concluded a treaty with Prussia, by which the latter secured the possession of the bishoprics of Paderborn and Hildesheim, part of Munster, Eichsfeld, Erfurt, etc., and several abbeys, in compensation for the territories surrendered to France on the left bank of the Rhine. In return, Prussia formally recognised the changes effected by France in Italy. The Stadholder received from France a share of German territory consisting of the bishopric of Fulda and certain abbeys; and he on his side recognised the existence of the Batavian Republic. By a treaty dated May 24, France obtained from Bavaria the surrender of all territory possessed by the latter on the left bank of the Rhine; in consideration of this, she undertook to use her influence in the negotiations which were shortly to take place with reference to the affairs of Germany, to obtain for Bavaria adequate and conveniently situated compensation. The treaty of October 9 with Turkey provided for the restitution of Egypt to the Porte, for the reestablishment of former relations with France, and for the strict enforcement of all previous treaties of commerce and navigation.

The treaty of October 11 with Russia was still more important. France undertook to settle in conjunction with Russia the question of indemnifying the German princes, and also the Italian question, so far as the latter had not been disposed of by the treaties concluded with the Pope, Austria, and Naples. The most thorny question was that of Piedmont. During the negotiations in London, Bonaparte, emboldened by the silence of the British Government, had completed the definite incorporation of that country, which he had previously delayed. He now made up his mind not to surrender it to the King of Sardinia. The Tsar, in spite of his championship of that sovereign, was compelled to rest satisfied with a clause by which France and Russia mutually promised “ to concern themselves in friendly concert with the interests of His Majesty the King of Sardinia, and to treat them with all the consideration compatible with the actual state of things.

It needed no prescience to foresee, even so early as 1802, that this universal peace, which was the admiration of contemporaries, could not, from its very nature, be anything more than a truce. Austria had suffered the Treaty of Lunéville to be wrung from her; and it was clear that she would seize the first opportunity to tear it up. In the instructions which Cobenzl had set down for his own guidance at the moment of starting for Lunéville, he wrote, “In case it should be impossible to obtain better conditions from France, we must consider, in conjunction with the English Government, which course would best further the common cause—whether to expose Austria to the dangers of continuing the war, or to secure to her by a separate peace the respite necessary to enable her to recover lifer strength and so remain a serviceable ally of England”. Austria had not lost the hope, or at any rate the desire, to deprive France of her supremacy in Europe, and to force her back within her ancient limits or even beyond them. Acknowledging that for the moment she was beaten, she compromised but did not capitulate.

Great Britain, for analogous reasons, could only look upon the Peace of Amiens as a truce. Bonaparte showed plainly that his intention was to rob her of her ascendancy in the Mediterranean and to dispute her supremacy at sea. England would have ceased to be England had she agreed to such conditions. A nation brimming over with strength and vitality, with her traditions, her passions, and her pride, with her banks, her mines, her manufactures, her superfluous population, her fleets, her trade, her vast capital and her inexhaustible credit, would have decreed her own destruction had she given up the contest. It suited her to discontinue it for a time, to secure her acquisitions and gather fresh strength; but she knew that a resumption of the conflict was inevitable.

But what, above everything else, rendered the peace precarious and short-lived was the personal ambition of Bonaparte. Reviewing his past life at St Helena, Napoleon said: “I was honestly persuaded that both the future of France and my own was settled at Amiens It was my intention to devote myself entirely to the administration of France; and I believe that I should have worked wonders. I should have made the moral conquest of Europe, as I conquered it, or very nearly conquered it, by force of arms”. Bonaparte’s language in 1802 was very different. “France”, he said, “must be first among States, or she must disappear. I will keep the peace as long as my neighbours keep it; but the advantage will be mine if they force me to take up arms again before they grow rusty. Between old monarchies and a young republic the spirit of hostility must always exist. In the existing situation every treaty of peace means to me no more than a brief armistice; and I believe that, while I fill my present office, my destiny is to be fighting almost continually”.

No sooner was the Treaty of Amiens signed than Bonaparte began to make ready for the struggle which he foresaw and foretold. In domestic affairs he displayed an all-consuming activity: roads, canals, improvements in the ports, were till undertaken at once. He paid a visit to Normandy, admired its cloth-factories, its looms, its workshops, and resolved to extend throughout France the industries to which that province owes its wealth. He fitted out extensive colonial expeditions for the Antilles, Louisiana, Mauritius, Madagascar, and India. All the dockyards were filled with scaffolding, in the midst of which rose the hulls of vessels. Bonaparte’s great ambition was to have a fleet equal to that of England. “It will take us at least ten years”, he said to Admiral Decrès: “After that time, with the help of Spain and Holland, we may perhaps hope to challenge the power of Great Britain with some chance of success”. To this end, and in order to profit by a period of aggressive peace which was to secure the hegemony of France on the Continent, he began by pressing into his service those maritime Powers which were already dependent on the Republic. Already controlling Holland and Italy, he was determined to be master of Spain and Portugal; and, pending the annexation of those countries, he sent his own generals in the guise of ambassadors, who were to dragoon the governments, keep watch on their doings, frustrate intrigues, and take care that the ports were rigidly closed to the English. Foreseeing, moreover, that in the event of a maritime war the struggle would extend to the Continent, he took measures to strengthen his position on the French frontier; and this entailed interference with the politics of Italy, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland.

FRANCE AND HER TRIBUTARIES (1801-3).