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READING HALLTHE DOORS OF WISDOM |
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A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE FROM 1792 TO 1878CHAPTER IVFROM THE CONGRESS OF RASTADT (NOV. 1797) TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONSULATE
The public
articles of the Treaty of Campo Formio contained only
the terms which had been agreed upon by France and Austria in relation to Italy
and the Netherlands: the conditions of peace between France and the Germanic
Body, which had been secretly arranged between France and the two leading Powers,
were referred by a diplomatic fiction to a Congress that was to assemble at Rastadt. Accordingly, after Prussia and Austria had each
signed an agreement abandoning the Rhenish Provinces, the Congress was duly
summoned. As if in mockery of his helpless countrymen, the Emperor informed the
members of the Diet that “in unshaken fidelity to the great principle of the
unity and indivisibility of the German Empire, they were to maintain the common
interests of the Fatherland with noble conscientiousness and German
steadfastness; and so, united with their imperial head, to promote a just and
lasting peace, founded upon the basis of the integrity of the Empire and of its
Constitution”. Thus the Congress was convoked upon the pretence of preserving what the two greater States had determined to sacrifice; while
its real object, the suppression of the ecclesiastical principalities and the
curtailment of Bavaria, was studiously put out of sight.
The Congress
was composed of two French envoys, of the representatives of Prussia and
Austria, and of a committee, numbering with their secretaries seventy-four
persons, appointed by the Diet of Ratisbon. But the recognized negotiators
formed only a small part of the diplomatists who flocked to Rastadt in the hope of picking up something from the wreck of the Empire. Every petty
German sovereign, even communities which possessed no political rights at all,
thought it necessary to have an agent on the spot, in order to filch, if
possible, some trifling advantage from a neighbour,
or to catch the first rumour of a proposed
annexation. It was the saturnalia of the whole tribe of busybodies and
intriguers who passed in Germany for men of state. They spied upon one another;
they bribed the secretaries and doorkeepers, they bribed the very cooks and
coachmen, of the two omnipotent French envoys. Of the national humiliation of
Germany, of the dishonour attaching to the loss of
entire provinces and the reorganization of what remained at the bidding of the
stranger, there seems to have been no sense in the political circles of the
day. The collapse of the Empire was viewed rather as a subject of merriment. A
gaiety of life and language prevailed, impossible among men who did not
consider themselves as the spectators of a comedy. Cobenzl,
the chief Austrian plenipotentiary, took his travels in a fly, because his
mistress, the citoyenne Hyacinthe, had
decamped with all his carriages and horses. A witty but profane pamphlet was
circulated, in which the impending sacrifice of the Empire was described in
language borrowed from the
Gospel
narrative, Prussia taking the part of Judas Iscariot, Austria that of Pontius
Pilate, the Congress itself being the chief priests and Pharisees assembling
that they may take the Holy Roman Empire by craft, while the army of the Empire
figures as the “multitude who smote upon their breasts and departed”. In the
utter absence of any German pride or patriotism the French envoys not only
obtained the territory that they required, but successfully embroiled the two
leading Powers with one another, and accustomed the minor States to look to
France for their own promotion at the cost of their neighbours.
The contradictory pledges which the French Government had given to Austria and
to Prussia caused it no embarrassment. To deceive one of the two powers was to
win the gratitude of the other; and the Directory determined to fulfil its
engagement to Prussia at the expense of the bishoprics, and to ignore what it
had promised to Austria at the expense of Bavaria.
A momentary
difficulty arose upon the opening of the Congress, when it appeared that,
misled by the Emperor's protestations, the Diet had only empowered its
Committee to treat upon the basis of the integrity of the Empire (Dec. 9). The
French declined to negotiate until the Committee had procured full powers: and
the prospects of the integrity of the Empire were made clear enough a few days
later by the entry of the French into Mainz, and the formal organization of the
Rhenish Provinces as four French Departments. In due course a decree of the
Diet arrived, empowering the Committee to negotiate at their discretion: and
for some weeks after the inhabitants of the Rhenish Provinces had been
subjected to the laws, the magistracy, and the taxation of France, the Committee
deliberated upon the proposal for their cession with as much minuteness and as
much impartiality as if it had been a point of speculative philosophy. At
length the French put an end to the tedious trifling, and proceeded to the
question of compensation for the dispossessed lay Princes. This they proposed
to effect by means of the disestablishment, or secularization, of
ecclesiastical States in the interior of Germany. Prussia eagerly supported the
French proposal, both with a view to the annexation of the great Bishopric of
Munster, and from ancient hostility to the ecclesiastical States as instruments
and allies of Catholic Austria. The Emperor opposed the destruction of his
faithful dependents; the ecclesiastical princes themselves raised a bitter outcry,
and demonstrated that the fall of their order would unloose the keystone of the
political system of Europe; but they found few friends. If Prussia coveted the
great spoils of Munster, the minor sovereigns, as a rule, wore just as eager
for the convents and abbeys that broke the continuity of their own territories:
only the feeblest of all the members of the Empire, the counts, the knights,
and the cities, felt a respectful sympathy for their ecclesiastical neighbours, and foresaw that in a system of annexation
their own turn would come next. The principle of secularization was accepted by
the Congress without much difficulty, all the energy of debate being reserved
for the discussion of details: arrangements which were to transfer a few miles
of ground and half a dozen custom-houses from some bankrupt ecclesiastic to
some French-bought duke excited more interest in Germany than the loss of the
Rhenish Provinces, and the subjection of a tenth part of the German nation to a
foreign rule.
One more
question was unexpectedly presented to the Congress. After proclaiming for six
years that the Rhine was the natural boundary of France, the French Government
discovered that a river cannot be a military frontier at all. Of what service,
urged the French plenipotentiaries, were Strasburg and Mainz, so long as they
were commanded by the guns on the opposite bank? If the Rhine was to be of any
use to France, France must be put in possession of the fortresses of Kehl and Castel upon the German side. Outrageous as such a demand
appears, it found supporters among the venal politicians of the smaller Courts,
and furnished the Committee with material for arguments that extended over four
months. But the policy of Austria was now taking a direction that rendered the
resolutions of the Congress of very little importance. It had become clear that
France was inclining to an alliance with Prussia, and that the Bavarian
annexations promised to Austria by the secret articles of Campo Formio were to be withheld. Once convinced, by the failure
of a private negotiation in Alsace, that the French would neither be content
with their gains of 1797, nor permit Austria to extend its territory in Italy,
Thugut determined upon a renewal of the war. In spite of a powerful opposition
at Court, Thugut’s stubborn will still controlled the
fortune of Austria: and the aggressions of the French Republic in Switzerland
and the Papal States, at the moment when it was dictating terms of peace to the
Empire, gave only too much cause for the formation of a new European league.
SWITZERLAND. At the close of
the last century there was no country where the spirit of Republican freedom
was so strong, or where the conditions of life were so level, as in
Switzerland; its inhabitants, however, were far from enjoying complete
political equality. There were districts which stood in the relation of subject
dependencies to one or other of the ruling cantons: the Pays de Vaud was
governed by an officer from Berne; the valley of the Ticino belonged to Uri;
and in most of the sovereign cantons themselves authority was vested in a close
circle of patrician families. Thus, although Switzerland was free from the more
oppressive distinctions of caste, and the Governments, even where not
democratic, were usually just and temperate, a sufficiently large class was
excluded from political rights to give scope to an agitation which received its
impulse from Paris. It was indeed among communities advanced in comfort and
intelligence, and divided from those who governed them by no great barrier of
wealth and prestige, that the doctrines of the Revolution found a circulation
which they could never gain among the hereditary serfs of Prussia or the
priest-ridden peasantry of the Roman States. As early as the year 1792 a French
army had entered the territory of Geneva, in order to cooperate with the
democratic party in the city. The movement was, however, checked by the
resolute action of the Bernese Senate; and the relations of France to the
Federal Government had subsequently been kept upon a friendly footing by the
good sense of Barthelemy, the French ambassador at Berne, and the discretion
with which the Swiss Government avoided every occasion of offence. On the
conquest of Northern Italy, Bonaparte was brought into direct connection with Swiss
affairs by a reference of certain points in dispute to his authority as
arbitrator. Bonaparte solved the difficulty by annexing the district of the Valteline to the Cisalpine Republic; and from that time he
continued in communication with the Swiss democratic leaders on the subject of
a French intervention in Switzerland, the real purpose of which was to secure
the treasure of Berne, and to organize a government, like that of Holland and
the Cisalpine Republic, in immediate dependence upon France.
At length the
moment for armed interference arrived. On the 15th December, 1797, a French
force entered the Bishopric of Basle, and gave the signal for insurrection in
the Pays de Vaud. The Senate of Berne summoned the Diet of the Confederacy to
provide for the common defence: the oath of
federation was renewed, and a decree was passed calling out the Federal army.
It was now announced by the French that they would support the Vaudois
revolutionary party, if attacked. The Bernese troops, however, advanced; and the
bearer of a flag of truce having been accidentally killed, war was declared
between the French Republic and the Government of Berne. Democratic movements
immediately followed in the northern and western cantons; the Bernese
Government attempted to negotiate with the French invaders, but discovered that
no terms would be accepted short of the entire destruction of the existing
Federal Constitution. Hostilities commenced; and the Bernese troops, supported
by contingents from most of the other cantons, offered a brave but ineffectual
resistance to the advance of the French, who entered the Federal capital on the
6th of March, 1798. The treasure of Berne, amounting to about £800,000,
accumulated by ages of thrift and good management, was seized in order to provide
for Bonaparte's next campaign, and for a host of voracious soldiers and
contractors. A system of robbery and extortion, more shameless even than that practised in Italy, was put in force against the cantonal
governments, against the monasteries, and against private individuals. In
compensation for the material losses inflicted upon the country, the new
Helvetic Republic, one and indivisible, was proclaimed at Aarau. It conferred
an equality of political rights upon all natives of Switzerland, and substituted
for the ancient varieties of cantonal sovereignty a single national government,
composed, like that of France, of a Directory and two Councils of Legislature.
The towns and
districts which had been hitherto excluded from a share in government welcomed
a change which seemed to place them on a level with their former superiors: the
mountain-cantons fought with traditional heroism in defence of the liberties which they had inherited from their fathers; but they were
compelled, one after another, to submit to the overwhelming force of France,
and to accept the new constitution. Yet, even now, when peace seemed to have
been restored, and the whole purpose of France attained, the tyranny and
violence of the invaders exhausted the endurance of a spirited people. The
magistrates of the Republic were expelled from office at the word of a French
Commission; hostages were seized; at length an oath of allegiance to the new
order was required as a condition for the evacuation of Switzerland by the
French army. Revolt broke out in Unterwalden, and a handful of peasants met the
French army at the village of Stanz, near the eastern
shore of the Lake of Lucerne (Sept. 8). There for three days they fought with
unyielding courage. Their resistance inflamed the French to a cruel vengeance;
slaughtered families and burning villages renewed, in this so-called crusade
of liberty, the savagery of ancient war.
Intrigues at
Rome paved the way for a French intervention in the affairs of the Papal
States, coincident in time with the invasion of Switzerland. The residence of
the French ambassador at Rome, Joseph Bonaparte, was the centre of a democratic agitation. The men who moved about him were in great part
strangers from the north of Italy, but they found adherents in the middle and
professional classes in Rome itself, although the mass of the poor people, as
well as the numerous body whose salaries or profits depended upon
ecclesiastical expenditure, were devoted to the priests and the Papacy. In
anticipation of disturbances, the Government ordered companies of soldiers to
patrol the city. A collision occurred on the 28th December, 1797, between the
patrols and a band of revolutionists, who, being roughly handled by the
populace as well as by the soldiers, made their way for protection to the
courtyard of the Palazzo Corsini, where Joseph
Bonaparte resided. Here, in the midst of a confused struggle, General Duphot, a member of the Embassy, was shot by a Papal
soldier.
The French had
now the pretext against the Papal Government which they desired. Joseph
Bonaparte instantly left the city, and orders were sent to Berthier, chief of
the staff in northern Italy, to march upon Rome. Berthier advanced amid the
acclamations of the towns and the curses of the peasantry, and entered Rome on
the 10th of February, 1798. Events had produced in the capital a much stronger
inclination towards change than existed on the approach of Bonaparte a year
before. The treaty of Tolentino had shaken the prestige of Papal authority; the
loss of so many well-known works of art, the imposition of new and unpopular
taxes, had excited as much hatred against the defeated government as against
the extortionate conquerors; even among the clergy and their retainers the sale
of a portion of the Church-lands and the curtailment of the old Papal splendours had produced alienation and discontent. There
existed too within the Italian Church itself a reforming party, lately headed
by Ricci, bishop of Pistoia, which claimed a higher degree of independence for
the clergy, and condemned the assumption of universal authority by the Roman
See. The ill-judged exercise of the Pope's temporal power during the last six
years had gained many converts to the opinion that the head of the Church would
best perform his office if emancipated from a worldly sovereignty, and restored
to his original position of the first among the bishops. Thus, on its approach
to Rome, the Republican army found the city ripe for revolution. On the 15th of
February an excited multitude assembled in the Forum, and, after planting the
tree of liberty in front of the Capitol, renounced the authority of the Pope,
and declared that the Roman people constituted itself a free Republic. The
resolution was conveyed to Berthier, who recognized the Roman Commonwealth, and
made a procession through the city with the solemnity of an ancient triumph.
The Pope shut himself up in the Vatican. His Swiss guard was removed, and
replaced by one composed of French soldiers, at whose hands the Pontiff, now in
his eighty-first year, suffered unworthy insults. He was then required to
renounce his temporal power, and, upon his refusal, was removed to Tuscany, and
afterwards beyond the Alps to Valence, where in 1799 he died, attended by a
solitary ecclesiastic.
In the
liberated capital a course of spoliation began, more thorough and systematic
than any that the French had yet effected. The riches of Rome brought all the
brokers and contractors of Paris to the spot. The museums, the Papal residence,
and the palaces of many of the nobility were robbed of every article that could
be moved; the very fixtures were cut away, when worth the carriage. On the
first meeting of the National Institute in the Vatican it was found that the
doors had lost their locks; and when, by order of the French, masses were
celebrated in the churches in expiation of the death of Duphot,
the patrols who were placed at the gates to preserve order rushed in and seized
the sacred vessels. Yet the general robbery was far less the work of the army
than of the agents and contractors sent by the Government. In the midst of
endless peculation the soldiers were in want of their pay and their food. A
sense of the dishonour done to France arose at length
in the subordinate ranks of the army; and General Massena, who succeeded
Berthier, was forced to quit his command in consequence of the protests of the
soldiery against a system to which Massena had conspicuously given his personal
sanction. It remained to embody the recovered liberties of Rome in a Republican
Constitution, which was, as a matter of course, a reproduction of the French
Directory and Councils of Legislature, under the practical control of the
French general in command. What Rome had given to the Revolution in the fashion
of classical expressions was now more than repaid. The Directors were styled
Consuls; the divisions of the Legislature were known as the Senate and the
Tribunate; the Praetorship and the Quaestorship were recalled to life in the
Courts of Justice. That the new era might not want its classical memorial, a
medal was struck, with the image and superscription of Roman heroism, to
“Berthier, the restorer of the city”, and to “Gaul, the salvation of the human
race”.
BATTLE OF THE NILE.It was in the
midst of these enterprises in Switzerland and Central Italy that the Directory
assembled the forces which Bonaparte was to lead to the East. The port of
Expedition to embarkation was Toulon; and there, on the 9th of May, 1798,
Bonaparte took the command of the most formidable armament that had ever left
the French shores. Great Britain was still but feebly represented in the
Mediterranean, a detachment from St. Vincent's fleet at Cadiz, placed under the
command of Nelson, being the sole British force in these waters. Heavy
reinforcements were at hand; but in the meantime Nelson had been driven by
stress of weather from his watch upon Toulon. On the 19th of May the French
armament put out to sea, its destination being still kept secret from the
soldiers themselves. It appeared before Malta on the 16th of June. By the
treachery of the knights Bonaparte was put in possession of this stronghold,
which he could not even have attempted to besiege. After a short delay the
voyage was resumed, and the fleet reached Alexandria without having fallen in
with the English, who had now received their reinforcements. The landing was
safely effected, and Alexandria fell at the first assault. After five days the
army advanced upon Cairo. At the foot of the Pyramids the Mameluke cavalry
vainly threw themselves upon Bonaparte’s soldiers. They were repulsed with
enormous loss on their own side and scarcely any on that of the French. Their
camp was stormed; Cairo was occupied; and there no longer existed a force in
Egypt capable of offering any serious resistance to the invaders.
But the fortune which had brought Bonaparte's army safe into the Egyptian capital was destined to be purchased by the utter destruction of his fleet. Nelson had passed the French in the night, when, after much perplexity, he decided on sailing in the direction of Egypt. Arriving at Alexandria before his prey, he had hurried off in an imaginary pursuit to Rhodes and Crete. At length he received information which led him to visit Alexandria a second time. He found the French fleet, numbering thirteen ships of the line and four frigates, at anchor in Aboukir Bay. His own fleet was slightly inferior in men and guns, but he entered battle with a presentiment of the completeness of his victory. Other naval battles have been fought with larger forces; no destruction was ever so complete as that of the Battle of the Nile (August 1). Two ships of the line and two frigates, out of the seventeen sail that met Nelson, alone escaped from his hands. Of eleven thousand officers and men, nine thousand were taken prisoners, or perished in the engagement. The army of Bonaparte was cut off from all hope of support or return; the Republic was deprived of communication with its best troops and its greatest general.
A coalition was
now gathering against France superior to that of 1793 in the support of Russia
and the Ottoman Empire, although Spain was now on the side of the Republic, and
Prussia, in spite of the warnings of the last two years, refused to stir from
its neutrality. The death of the Empress Catherine, and the accession of Paul,
had caused a most serious change in the prospects of Europe. Hitherto the
policy of the Russian Court had been to embroil the Western Powers with one
another, and to confine its efforts against the French Republic to promises and
assurances; with Paul, after an interval of total reaction, the professions
became realities. No monarch entered so cordially into Pitt's schemes for a
renewal of the European league; no ally had joined the English minister with a
sincerity so like his own. On the part of the Ottoman Government, the pretences of friendship with which Bonaparte disguised the
occupation of Egypt were taken at their real worth. War was declared by the
Porte; and a series of negotiations, carried on during the autumn of 1798,
united Russia, England, Turkey, and Naples in engagements of mutual support
against the French Republic.
A Russian army
set out on its long march towards the Adriatic: the levies of Austria prepared
for a campaign in the spring of 1799; but to the English Government every
moment that elapsed before actual hostilities was so much time given to
uncertainties; and the man who had won the Battle of the Nile ridiculed the
precaution which had hitherto suffered the French to spread their intrigues
through Italy, and closed the ports of Sicily and Naples to his own most urgent
needs. Towards the end of September, Nelson appeared in the Bay of Naples, and
was received with a delirium that recalled the most effusive scenes in the
French Revolution. In the city of Naples, as in the kingdom generally, the poorest
classes were the fiercest enemies of reform, and the steady allies of the Queen
and the priesthood against that section of the better-educated classes which
had begun to hope for liberty. The system of espionage and persecution with
which the sister of Marie Antoinette avenged upon her own subjects the
sufferings of her kindred had grown more oppressive with every new victory of
the Revolution. In the summer of 1798 there were men languishing for the fifth
year in prison, whose offences had never been investigated, and whose relatives
were not allowed to know whether they were dead or alive. A mode of expression,
a fashion of dress, the word of an informer, consigned innocent persons to the
dungeon, with the possibility of torture. In the midst of this tyranny of
suspicion, in the midst of a corruption which made the naval and military
forces of the kingdom worse than useless, King Ferdinand and his satellites
were unwearied in their theatrical invocations of the Virgin and St. Januarius
against the assailants of divine right and the conquerors of Rome. A Court
cowardly almost beyond the example of Courts, a police that had trained every
Neapolitan to look upon his neighbour as a traitor,
an administration that had turned one of the hardiest races in Europe into
soldiers of notorious and disgraceful cowardice-such were the allies whom
Nelson, ill-fitted for politics by his sailorlike inexperience and facile vanity, heroic in his tenderness and fidelity, in an
evil hour encouraged to believe themselves invincible because they possessed
his own support. On the 14th of November, 1798, King Ferdinand published a
proclamation, which, without declaring war on the French, announced that the
King intended to occupy the Papal States and restore the Papal government. The
manifesto disclaimed all intention of conquest, and offered a free pardon to
all compromised persons. Ten days later the Neapolitan army crossed the
frontier, led by the Austrian general, Mack, who passed among his admirers for
the greatest soldier in Europe.
The mass of the
French troops, about twelve thousand in number, lay in the neighbourhood of Ancona; Rome and the intermediate stations were held by small detachments.
Had Mack pushed forward towards the Upper Tiber, his inroad, even if it failed
to crush the separated wings of the French army, must have forced them to
retreat; but, instead of moving with all his strength through Central Italy,
Mack led the bulk of his army upon Rome, where there was no French force
capable of making a stand, and sent weak isolated columns towards the east of
the peninsula, where the French were strong enough to make a good defence. On the approach of the Neapolitans to Rome, Championnet, the French commander, evacuated the city,
leaving a garrison in the Castle of St. Angelo, and fell back on Civita Castellana, thirty miles
north of the capital. The King of Naples entered Rome on the 29th November. The
restoration of religion was celebrated by the erection of an immense cross in
the place of the tree of liberty, by the immersion of several Jews in the
Tiber, by the execution of a number of compromised persons whose pardon the
King had promised, and by a threat to shoot one of the sick French soldiers in
the hospital for every shot fired by the guns of St. Angelo. Intelligence was
dispatched to the exiled Pontiff of the discomfiture of his enemies. “By help
of the divine grace”, wrote King Ferdinand, “and of the most miraculous St.
Januarius, we have today with our army entered the sacred city of Rome, so
lately profaned by the impious, who now fly terror-stricken at the sight of the
Cross and of my arms. Leave then, your Holiness, your too modest abode, and on
the wings of cherubim, like the virgin of Loreto, come and descend upon the
Vatican, to purify it by your sacred presence”. A letter to the King of
Piedmont, who had already been exhorted by Ferdinand to encourage his peasants
to assassinate French soldiers, informed him that “the Neapolitans, guided by
General Mack, had sounded the hour of death to the French, and proclaimed to
Europe, from the summit of the Capitol, that the time of the Kings had come”.
The dispatches
to Piedmont fell into the hands of the enemy, and the usual modes of locomotion
would scarcely have brought Pope Pius to Rome in time to witness the exit of
his deliverer. Ferdinand's rhapsodies were cut short by the news that his
columns advancing into the centre and east of the
Papal States had all been beaten or captured. Mack, at the head of the main
army, now advanced to avenge the defeat upon the French at Civita Castellana and Terni. But his dispositions were as unskilful as ever: wherever his troops encountered the
enemy they were put to the rout; and, as he had neglected to fortify or secure
a single position upon his line of march, his defeat by a handful of French
soldiers on the north of Rome involved the loss of the country almost up to the
gates of Naples. On the first rumour of Mack’s
reverses the Republican party at Rome declared for France. King Ferdinand fled; Championnet reentered Rome, and, after a few days'
delay, advanced into Neapolitan territory. Here, however, he found himself
attacked by an enemy more formidable than the army which had been organized to
expel the French from Italy. The Neapolitan peasantry, who, in soldiers' uniform
and under the orders of Mack, could scarcely be brought within sight of the
French, fought with courage when an appeal to their religious passions
collected them in brigand-like bands under leaders of their own. Divisions of Championnet's army sustained severe losses; they succeeded,
however, in effecting their junction upon the Volturno;
and the stronghold of Gaeta, being defended by regular soldiers and not by
brigands, surrendered to the French at the first summons.
Mack was now
concentrating his troops in an entrenched camp before Capua. The whole country
was rising against the invaders; and, in spite of lost battles and abandoned
fortresses, the Neapolitan Government if it had possessed a spark of courage,
might still have overthrown the French army, which numbered only 18,000 men.
But the panic and suspicion which the Government had fostered among its
subjects were now avenged upon itself. The cry of treachery was raised on every
side. The Court dreaded a Republican rising; the priests and the populace
accused the Court of conspiracy with the French; Mack protested that the
soldiers were resolved to be beaten; the soldiers swore that they were betrayed
by Mack. On the night of the 21st of December, the Royal Family secretly went
on board Nelson's ship the Vanguard, and after a short interval they set sail
for Palermo, leaving the capital in charge of Prince Pignatelli, a courtier
whom no one was willing to obey. Order was, however, maintained by a civic
guard enrolled by the Municipality, until it became known that Mack and
Pignatelli had concluded an armistice with the French, and surrendered Capua
and the neighbouring towns. Then the populace broke
into wild uproar. The prisons were thrown open; and with the arms taken from
the arsenal the lazzaroni formed themselves into a
tumultuous army, along with thousands of desperate men let loose from the gaols and the galleys. The priests, hearing that
negotiations for peace were opened, raised the cry of treason anew; and, with
the watchword of the Queen, “All the gentlemen are Jacobins; only the people
are faithful”, they hounded on the mob to riot and murder. On the morning of
January 15th hordes of lazzaroni issued from the
gates to throw themselves upon the French, who were now about nine miles from
the city; others dragged the guns down from the forts to defend the streets.
The Republican party, however, and that considerable body among the upper class
which was made Republican by the chaos into which the Court, with its allies,
the priests, and the populace, had thrown Naples, kept up communication with Championnet, and looked forward to the entrance of the
French as the only means of averting destruction and massacre. By a stratagem
carried out on the night of the 20th they gained possession of the fort of St.
Elmo, while the French were already engaged in a bloody assault upon the
suburbs. On the 23rd Championnet ordered the attack
to be renewed. The conspirators within St. Elmo hoisted the French flag and
turned their guns upon the populace; the fortress of the Carmine was stormed by
the French; and, before the last struggle for life and death commenced in the centre of the city, the leaders of the lazzaroni listened to words of friendship which Championnet addressed to them in their own language, and, with the incoherence of a
half-savage race, escorted his soldiers with cries of joy to the Church of St.
Januarius, which Championnet promised to respect and
protect.
Championnet used his
victory with a discretion and forbearance rare amongst French conquerors. He humoured the superstition of the populace; he encouraged
the political hopes of the enlightened. A vehement revulsion of feeling against
the fugitive Court and in favour of Republican
government followed the creation of a National Council by the French general,
and his ironical homage to the patron saint. The Kingdom of Naples was
converted into the Parthenopean Republic. New laws, new institutions, discussed
in a representative assembly, excited hopes and interests unknown in Naples
before. But the inevitable incidents of a French occupation, extortion and
impoverishment, with all their bitter effects on the mind of the people, were
not long delayed. In every country district the priests were exciting
insurrection. The agents of the new Government, men with no experience in
public affairs, carried confusion wherever they went. Civil war broke out in
fifty different places; and the barbarity of native leaders of insurrection,
like Fra Diavolo, was only too well requited by the French columns which traversed
the districts in revolt.
The time was
ill chosen by the French Government for an extension of the area of combat to
southern Italy. Already the first division of the Russian army, led by
Suvaroff, had reached Moravia, and the Court of Vienna was only awaiting its
own moment for declaring war. So far were the newly-established Governments in
Rome and Naples from being able to assist the French upon the Adige, that the
French had to send troops to Rome and Naples to support the new Governments.
The force which the French could place upon the frontier was inferior to that
which two years of preparation had given to Austria: the Russians, who were
expected to arrive in Lombardy in April, approached with the confidence of men
who had given to the French none of their recent triumphs. Nor among the
leaders was personal superiority any longer markedly on the side of the French,
as in the war of the First Coalition. Suvaroff and the Archduke Charles were a
fair match for any of the Republican generals, except Bonaparte, who was absent
in Egypt. The executive of France had deeply declined. Carnot was in exile; the
work of organization which he had pursued with such energy and
disinterestedness flagged under his mediocre and corrupt successors. Skilful generals and brave soldiers were never wanting to
the Republic; but no single controlling will, no storm of national passion,
inspired the Government with the force which it had possessed under the
Convention, and which returned to it under Napoleon.
A new character
was given to the war now breaking out by the inclusion of Switzerland in the
area of combat. In the war of the First Coalition, Switzerland had been neutral
territory; but the events of 1798 had left the French in possession of all
Switzerland west of the Rhine, and an Austrian force subsequently occupied the
Grisons. The line separating the combatants now ran without a break from Mainz
to the Adriatic. The French armies were in continuous communication with one
another, and the movements of each could be modified according to the
requirements of the rest. On the other hand, a disaster sustained at any one
point of the line endangered every other point; for no neutral territory
intervened, as in 1796, to check a lateral movement of the enemy, and to protect
the communications of a French army in Lombardy from a victorious Austrian
force in southern Germany. The importance of the Swiss passes in this relation
was understood and even overrated by the French Government; and an energy was
thrown into their mountain warfare which might have produced greater results
upon the plains.
BATTLE OF STOCKACH
Three armies
formed the order of battle on either side. Jourdan held the French command upon
the Rhine; Massena in Switzerland; Scherer, the least capable of the Republican
generals, on the Adige. On the side of the Allies, the Archduke Charles
commanded in southern Germany; in Lombardy the Austrians were led by Kray,
pending the arrival of Suvaroff and his corps; in Switzerland the command was
given to Hotze, a Swiss officer who had gained some
distinction in foreign service. It was the design of the French to push their centre under Massena through the mountains into the Tyrol,
and by a combined attack of the central and the southern army to destroy the
Austrians upon the upper Adige, while Jourdan, also in communication with the centre, drove the Archduke down the Danube upon Vienna.
Early in March the campaign opened. Massena assailed the Austrian positions
east of the headwaters of the Rhine, and forced back the enemy into the heart
of the Orisons. Jourdan crossed the Rhine at Strasburg, and passed the Black
Forest with 40,000 men. His orders were to attack the Archduke Charles,
whatever the Archduke's superiority of force. The French and the Austrian
armies met at Stockach, near the head of the Lake of
Constance (March 25). Overwhelming numbers gave the Archduke a complete
victory. Jourdan was not only stopped in his advance, but forced to retreat
beyond the Rhine. Whatever might be the fortune of the armies of Switzerland
and Italy, all hope of an advance upon Vienna by the Danube was at an end.
Freed from the
invader's presence, the Austrians now spread themselves over Baden, up to the
gates of Rastadt, where, in spite of the war between
France and Austria, the envoys of the minor German States still continued their
conferences with the French agents. On the 28th of April the French envoys, now
three in number, were required by the Austrians to depart within twenty-four
hours. An escort, for which they applied, was refused. Scarcely had their
carriages passed through the city gates when they were attacked by a squadron
of Austrian hussars. Two of French envoys the French envoys were murdered; the
third left for dead. Whether this frightful violation of international law was
the mere outrage of a drunken soldiery, as it was represented to be by the
Austrian Government; whether it was to any extent occasioned by superior civil
orders, or connected with French emigrants living in the neighbourhood,
remains unknown. Investigations begun by the Archduke Charles were stopped by
the Cabinet, in order that a more public inquiry might be held by the Diet.
This inquiry, however, never took place. In the year 1804 all papers relating
to the Archduke’s investigation were removed by the Government from the
military archives. They have never since been discovered.
The outburst of
wrath with which the French people learnt the fate of their envoys would have
cost Austria dear if Austria had now been the losing party in the war; but, for
the present, everything seemed to turn against the Republic. Jourdan had
scarcely been overthrown in Germany before a ruinous defeat at Magnano, on the Adige, drove back the army of Italy to
within a few miles of Milan; while Massena, deprived of the fruit of his own
victories by the disasters of his colleagues, had to abandon the eastern half
of Switzerland, and to retire upon the line of the river Limnat,
Lucerne, and the Gothard. Charles now moved from
Germany into Switzerland. Massena fixed his centre at
Zurich, and awaited the Archduke’s assault. For five weeks Charles remained
inactive: at length, on the 4th of June, he gave battle. After two days'
struggle against greatly superior forces, Massena was compelled to evacuate
Zurich. He retreated, however, no farther than to the ridge of the Uetliberg, a few miles west of the city; and here,
fortifying his new position, he held obstinately on, while the Austrians
established themselves in the central passes of Switzerland, and disaster after
disaster seemed to be annihilating the French arms in Italy.
Suvaroff, at
the head of 17,000 Russians, had arrived in Lombardy in the middle of April.
His first battle was fought, and his first victory won, at the passage of the
Adda on the 25th of April. It was followed by the surrender of Milan and the
dissolution of the Cisalpine Republic. Moreau, who now held the French command,
fell back upon Alessandria, intending to cover both Genoa and Turin; but a
sudden movement of Suvaroff brought the Russians into the Sardinian capital before
it was even known to be in jeopardy. The French general, cut off from the roads
over the Alps, threw himself upon the Apennines above Genoa, and waited for the
army which had occupied Naples, and which, under the command of Macdonald, was
now hurrying to his support, gathering with it on its march the troops that lay
scattered on the south of the Po. Macdonald moved swiftly through central
Italy, and crossed the Apennines above Pistoia in the beginning of June. His
arrival at Modena with 20,000 men threatened to turn the balance in favour of the French. Suvaroff, aware of his danger,
collected all the troops within reach with the utmost dispatch, and pushed
eastwards to meet Macdonald on the Trebbia. Moreau descended from the Apennines
in the same direction; but he had underrated the swiftness of the Russian
general; and, before he had advanced over half the distance, Macdonald was
attacked by Suvaroff on the Trebbia, and overthrown in three days of the most
desperate fighting that had been seen in the war (June 18).
THE REIGN OF TERROR OF NELSON IN NAPLESAll southern
Italy now rose against the Governments established by the French. Cardinal
Ruffo, with a band of fanatical peasants, known as the Army of the Faith, made
himself master of Apulia and Calabria amid scenes of savage cruelty, and appeared
before Naples, where the lazzaroni were ready to
unite with the hordes of the Faithful in murder and pillage. Confident of
support within the city, and assisted by some English and Russian vessels in
the harbour, Ruffo attacked the suburbs of Naples on
the morning of the 13th of June. Massacre and outrage continued within and
without the city for five days. On the morning of the 19th, the Cardinal
proposed a suspension of arms. It was accepted by the Republicans, who were in
possession of the forts. Negotiations followed. On the 23rd conditions of peace
were signed by Ruffo on behalf of the King of Naples, and by the
representatives of Great Britain and of Russia in guarantee for their faithful
execution. It was agreed that the Republican garrison should march out with the honours of war; that their persons and property
should be respected; that those who might prefer to leave the country should be
conveyed to Toulon on neutral vessels; and that all who remained at home should
be free from molestation.
The garrison
did not leave the forts that night. On the following morning, while they were
embarking on board the polaccas which were to take them to Toulon, Nelson's
fleet appeared in the Bay of Naples. Nelson declared that in treating with
rebels Cardinal Ruffo had disobeyed the King's orders, and he pronounced the
capitulation null and void. The polaccas, with the Republicans crowded on
board, were attached to the sterns of the English ships, pending the arrival of
King Ferdinand. On the 29th of June, Admiral Caracciolo,
who had taken office under the new Government, and on its fall had attempted to
escape in disguise, was brought a captive before Nelson. Nelson ordered him to
be tried by a Neapolitan court-martial, and, in spite of his old age, his rank,
and his long service to the State, caused him to be hanged from a Neapolitan
ship's yard-arm, and his body to be thrown into the sea. Some days later, King
Ferdinand arrived from Palermo, and Nelson now handed over all his prisoners to
the Bourbon authorities. A reign of terror followed. Innumerable persons were
thrown into prison. Courts-martial, or commissions administering any law that
pleased themselves, sent the flower of the Neapolitan nation to the scaffold.
Above a hundred sentences of death were carried out in Naples itself:
confiscation, exile, and imprisonment struck down thousands of families. It was
peculiar to the Neapolitan proscriptions that a Government with the names of
religion and right incessantly upon its lips selected for extermination both
among men and women those who were most distinguished in character, in science,
and in letters, whilst it chose for promotion and enrichment those who were
known for deeds of savage violence. The part borne by Nelson in this work of
death has left a stain on his glory which time cannot efface.
It was on the
advance of the Army of Naples under Macdonald that the French rested their last
hope of recovering Lombardy. The battle of the Trebbia scattered this hope to
the winds, and left it only too doubtful whether France could be saved from
invasion. Suvaroff himself was eager to fall upon Moreau before Macdonald could
rally from his defeat, and to drive him westwards along the coast-road into
France. It was a moment when the fortune of the Republic hung in the scales.
Had Suvaroff been permitted to follow his own counsels, France would probably
have seen the remnant of her Italian armies totally destroyed, and the Russians
advancing upon Lyons or Marseilles. The Republic was saved, as it had been in
1793, by the dissensions of its enemies. It was not only for the purpose of
resisting French aggression that Austria had renewed the war, but for the
purpose of extending its own dominion in Italy. These designs were concealed
from Russia; they were partially made known by Thugut to the British
Ambassador, under the most stringent obligation to secrecy. On the 17th of
August, 1799, Lord Minto acquainted his Government with the intentions of the
Austrian Court. “The Emperor proposes to retain Piedmont, and to take all that
part of Savoy which is important in a military view. I have no doubt of his
intention to keep Nice also, if he gets it, which will make the Var his
boundary with France. The whole territory of the Genoese Republic seems to be
an object of serious speculation ... The Papal Legations will, I am persuaded,
be retained by the Emperor ... I am not yet master of the designs on Tuscany”.
This was the sense in which Austria understood the phrase of defending the
rights of Europe against French aggression. It was not, however, for this that
the Czar had sent his army from beyond the Carpathians. Since the opening of
the campaign Suvaroff had been in perpetual conflict with the military Council
of Vienna. Suvaroff was bent upon a ceaseless pursuit of the enemy; the
Austrian Council insisted upon the reduction of fortresses. What at first
appeared as a mere difference of military opinion appeared in its true
political character when the allied troops entered Piedmont. The Czar desired
with his whole soul to crush the men of the Revolution, and to restore the
governments which France had overthrown. As soon as his troops entered Turin,
Suvaroff proclaimed the restoration of the House of Savoy, and summoned all
Sardinian officers to fight for their King. He was interrupted by a letter from
Vienna requiring him to leave political affairs in the hands of the Viennese
Ministry. The Russians had already done as much in Italy as the Austrian
Cabinet desired them to do, and the first wish of Thugut was now to free himself
from his troublesome ally. Suvaroff raged against the Austrian Government in
every dispatch, and tendered his resignation. His complaints inclined the Czar
to accept a new military scheme, which was supported by the English Government
in the hope of terminating the contention between Suvaroff and the Austrian
Council. It was agreed at St. Petersburg that, as soon as the French armies
were destroyed, the reduction of the Italian fortresses should be left
exclusively to the Austrians; and that Suvaroff, uniting with a new Russian
army now not far distant, should complete the conquest of Switzerland, and then
invade France by the Jura, supported on his right by the Archduke Charles. An
attack was to be made at the same time upon Holland by a combined British and
Russian force.
If executed in
its original form, this design would have thrown a formidable army upon France
at the side of Franche Comte, where it is least
protected by fortresses. But at the last moment an alteration in the plan was
made at Vienna. The prospect of an Anglo-Russian victory in Holland again fixed
the thoughts of the Austrian Minister upon Belgium, which had been so lightly
abandoned five years before, and which Thugut now hoped to re-occupy and to
barter for Bavaria or some other territory. “The Emperor”, he wrote, “cannot
turn a deaf ear to the appeal of his subjects. He cannot consent that the
Netherlands shall be disposed of without his own concurrence”. The effect of
this perverse and mischievous resolution was that the Archduke Charles received
orders to send the greater part of his army from Switzerland to the Lower
Rhine, and to leave only 25,000 men to support the new Russian division which,
under General Korsakoff, was approaching from the north to meet Suvaroff. The
Archduke, as soon as the new instructions reached him, was filled with the
presentiment of disaster, and warned his Government that in the general
displacement of forces an opportunity would be given to Massena, who was still
above Zurich, to strike a fatal blow. Every dispatch that passed between Vienna
and St. Petersburg now increased the Czar's suspicion of Austria. The Pope and
the King of Naples were convinced that Thugut had the same design upon their
own territories which had been shown in his treatment of Piedmont. They
appealed to the Czar for protection. The Czar proposed a European Congress, at
which the Powers might learn one another's real intentions. The proposal was
not accepted by Austria; but, while disclaiming all desire to despoil the King
of Sardinia, the Pope, or the King of Naples, Thugut admitted that Austria
claimed an improvement of its Italian frontier, in other words, the annexation
of a portion of Piedmont, and of the northern part of the Roman States. The
Czar replied that he had taken up arms in order to check one aggressive
Government, and that he should not permit another to take its place.
For the moment,
however, the allied forces continued to cooperate in Italy against the French
army on the Apennines covering Genoa. This army had received reinforcements,
and was now placed under the command of Joubert, one of the youngest and most
spirited of the Republican generals. Joubert determined to attack the Russians
before the fall of Mantua should add the besieging army to Suvaroff’s forces in the field. But the information which he received from Lombardy misled
him. In the second week of August he was still unaware that Mantua had fallen a
fortnight before. He descended from the mountains to attack Suvaroff at Tortona, with a force about equal to Suvaroff’s own. On reaching Novi he learnt that the army of Mantua was also before him
(Aug. 15). It was too late to retreat; Joubert could only give to his men the
example of Republican spirit and devotion. Suvaroff himself, with Kray, the
conqueror of Mantua, began the attack: the onset of a second Austrian corps, at
the moment when the strength of the Russians was failing, decided the day.
Joubert did not live to witness the close of a defeat which cost France eleven
thousand men.
The allied Governments
had so framed their plans that the most overwhelming victory could produce no
result. Instead of entering France, Suvaroff was compelled to turn back into
Switzerland, while the Austrians continued to besiege the fortresses of
Piedmont. In Switzerland Suvaroff had to meet an enemy who was forewarned of
his approach, and who had employed every resource of military skill and daring
to prevent the union of the two Russian armies now advancing from the south and
the north. Before Suvaroff could leave Italy, a series of admirably-planned
attacks had given Massena the whole network of the central Alpine passes, and
closed every avenue of communication between Suvaroff and the army with which
he hoped to co-operate. The folly of the Austrian Cabinet seconded the French
general's exertions. No sooner had Korsakoff and the new Russian division
reached Schaffhausen than the Archduke Charles, forced by his orders from
Vienna, turned northwards (Sept. 3), leaving the Russians with no support but Hotze’s corps, which was scattered over six cantons.
Korsakoff advanced to Zurich; Massena remained in his old position on the Uetliberg. It was now that Suvaroff began his march into
the Alps, sorely harassed and delayed by the want of the mountain-teams which
the Austrians had promised him, and filled with the apprehension that Korsakoff
would suffer some irreparable disaster before his own arrival.
Two roads lead
from the Italian lakes to central Switzerland; one, starting from the head of
Lago Maggiore and crossing the Gothard, ends on the
shore of Lake Lucerne; the other, crossing the Splugen,
runs from the Lake of Como to Reichenau, in the
valley of the Rhine. The Gothard in 1799 was not
practicable for cannon; it was chosen by Suvaroff, however, for his own
advance, with the object of falling upon Massena's rear with the utmost
possible speed. He left Bellinzona on the 21st of
September, fought his way in a desperate fashion through the French outposts
that guarded the defiles of the Gothard, and arrived
at Altorf near the Lake of Lucerne. Here it was
discovered that the westward road by which Suvaroff meant to strike upon the
enemy's communications had no existence. Abandoning this design, Suvaroff made
straight for the district where his colleague was encamped, by a shepherd's
path leading northeastwards across heights of 7,000 feet to the valley of the Muotta. Over this desolate region the Russians made their
way; and the resolution which brought them as far as the Muotta would have brought them past every other obstacle to the spot where they were
to meet their countrymen. But the hour was past. While Suvaroff was still
struggling in the mountains, Massena advanced against Zurich, put Korsakoff's
army to total rout, and drove it, with the loss of all its baggage and of a
great part of its artillery, outside the area of hostilities.
The first rumours of the catastrophe reached Suvaroff on the Muotta; he still pushed on eastwards, and, though almost
without ammunition, overthrew a corps commanded by Massena in person, and
cleared the road over the Pragel at the point of the
bayonet, arriving in Glarus on the 1st of October. Here the full extent of
Korsakoff's disaster was made known to him. To advance or to fall back was
ruin. It only remained for Suvaroff's army to make
its escape across a wild and snow-covered mountain-tract into the valley of the
Rhine, where the river flows below the northern heights of the Grisons. This
exploit crowned a campaign which filled Europe with astonishment. The Alpine traveller of today turns with some distrust from narratives
which characterise with every epithet of horror and
dismay scenes which are the delight of our age; but the retreat of Suvaroff’s army, a starving, footsore multitude, over what
was then an untrodden wilderness of rock, and through fresh-fallen autumn snow
two feet deep, had little in common with the boldest feats of Alpine hardihood.
It was achieved with loss and suffering; it brought the army from a position of
the utmost danger into one of security; but it was followed by no renewed
attack. Proposals for a combination between Suvaroff and the Archduke Charles
resulted only in mutual taunts and menaces. The cooperation of Russia in the
war was at an end. The French remained masters of the whole of the Swiss
territory that they had lost since the beginning of the campaign.
In the summer
months of 1799 the Czar had relieved his irritation against Austria by framing
in concert with the British Cabinet the plan for a joint expedition against
Holland. It was agreed that 25,000 English and 17,000 Russian troops, brought
from the Baltic in British ships, should attack the French in the Batavian
Republic, and raise an insurrection on behalf of the exiled Stadtholder.
Throughout July the Kentish coast-towns were alive with the bustle of war; and
on the 13th of August the first English division, numbering 12,000 men, set
sail from Deal under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby. After tossing off the
Dutch coast for a fortnight, the troops landed at the promontory of the Helder. A Dutch corps was defeated on the sand-hills, and
the English captured the fort of the Helder,
commanding the Texel anchorage. Immediately afterwards a movement in favour of the Stadtholder broke out among the officers of
the Dutch fleet. The captains hoisted the Orange flag, and brought their ships
over to the English.
This was the
first and the last result of the expedition. The Russian contingent and a
second English division reached Holland in the middle of September, and with
them came the Duke of York, who now took the command out of the hands of
Abercromby. On the other side reinforcements daily arrived from France, until
the enemy's troops, led by General Brune, were equal
in strength to the invaders. A battle fought at Alkmaar on the 19th of September
gave the Allies some partial successes and no permanent advantage; and on the
3rd of October the Duke of York gained one of those so-called victories which
result in the retreat of the conquerors. Never were there so many good reasons
for a bad conclusion. The Russians moved too fast or too slow; the ditches set
at nought the rules of strategy; it was discovered
that the climate of Holland was unfavourable to
health, and that the Dutch had not the slightest inclination to get back their
Stadtholder. The result of a series of mischances, every one of which would
have been foreseen by an average midshipman in Nelson's fleet, or an average
sergeant in Massena's army, was that York had to purchase a retreat for the
allied forces at a price equivalent to an unconditional surrender. He was
allowed to re-embark on consideration that Great Britain restored to the French
8,000 French and Dutch prisoners, and handed over in perfect repair all the
military works which our own soldiers had erected at the Helder.
Bitter complaints were raised among the Russian officers against York’s conduct
of the expedition. He was accused of sacrificing the Russian regiments in
battle, and of courting a general defeat in order not to expose his own men.
The accusation was groundless. Where York was, treachery or bad faith was
superfluous. York in command, the feeblest enemy became invincible.
Incompetence among the hereditary chiefs of the English army had become part of
the order of nature. The Ministry, when taxed with failure, obstinately shut
their eyes to the true cause of the disaster. Parliament was reminded that
defeat was the most probable conclusion of any military operations that we
might undertake, and that England ought not to expect success when Prussia and
Austria had so long met only with misfortune. Under the command of Nelson,
English sailors were indeed manifesting that kind of superiority to the seamen
of other nations which the hunter possesses over his prey; yet this gave no
reason why foresight and daring should count for anything ashore. If the nation
wished to see its soldiers undefeated, it must keep them at home to defend
their country. Even among the Opposition no voice was raised to protest against
the system which sacrificed English life and military honour to the dignity of the Royal Family. The collapse of the Anglo-Russian
expedition was viewed with more equanimity in England than in Russia. The Czar
dismissed his unfortunate generals. York returned home, to run horses at
Newmarket, to job commissions with his mistress, and to earn his column at St.
James’s Park.
It was at this
moment, when the tide of military success was already turning in favour of the Republic, that the revolution took place
which made Bonaparte absolute ruler of France. Since the attack of the
Government upon the Royalists in Fructidor, 1797, the
Directory and the factions had come no nearer to a system of mutual concession,
or to a peaceful acquiescence in the will of a parliamentary majority. The
Directory, assailed both by the extreme Jacobins and by the Constitutionalists,
was still strong enough to crush each party in its turn. The elections of 1798,
which strengthened the Jacobins, were annulled with as little scruple as the
Royalist elections in the preceding year; it was only when defeat in Germany
and Italy had brought the Government into universal discredit that the
Constitutionalist party, fortified by the return of a large majority in the
elections of 1799, dared to turn the attack upon the Directors themselves. The
excitement of foreign conquest had hitherto shielded the abuses of Government
from criticism; but when Italy was lost, when generals and soldiers found
themselves without pay, without clothes, without reinforcements, one general
outcry arose against the Directory, and the nation resolved to have done with a
Government whose outrages and extortions had led to nothing but military ruin.
The disasters of France in the spring of 1799, which resulted from the failure
of the Government to raise the armies to their proper strength, were not in
reality connected with the defects of the Constitution. They were caused in
part by the shameless jobbery of individual members of the Administration, in
part by the absence of any agency, like that of the Conventional Commissioners
of 1793, to enforce the control of the central Government over the local
authorities, left isolated and independent by the changes of 1789. Faults
enough belonged, however, to the existing political order; and the
Constitutionalists, who now for the second time found themselves with a
majority in the Councils, were not disposed to prolong a system which from the
first had turned their majorities into derision. A party grew up around the
Abbe Sieyes intent upon some change which should give France a government really
representing its best elements. What the change was to be few could say; but it
was known that Sieyes, who had taken a leading part in 1789, and had condemned
the Constitution of 1795 from the moment when it was sketched, had elaborated a
scheme which he considered exempt from every error that had vitiated its
predecessors. As the first step to reform, Sieyes himself was elected to a
Directorship then falling vacant. Barras attached himself to Sieyes; the three
remaining Directors, who were Jacobins and popular in Paris, were forced to
surrender their seats. Sieyes now only needed a soldier to carry out his plans.
His first thought had turned on Joubert, but Joubert was killed at Novi. Moreau
scrupled to raise his hand against the law; Bernadotte, a general distinguished
both in war and in administration, declined to play a secondary part. Nor in
fact was the support of Sieyes indispensable to any popular and ambitious
soldier who was prepared to attack the Government. Sieyes and his friends
offered the alliance of a party weighty in character and antecedents; but there
were other well-known names and powerful interests at the command of an
enterprising leader, and all France awaited the downfall of a Government whose
action had resulted only in disorder at home and defeat abroad.
Such was the
political situation when, in the summer of 1799, Bonaparte, baffled in an
attack upon the Syrian fortress of St. Jean d'Acre,
returned to Egypt, and received the first tidings from Europe which had reached
him since the outbreak of the war. He saw that his opportunity had arrived. He
determined to leave his army, whose ultimate failure was inevitable, and to
offer to France in his own person that sovereignty of genius and strength for
which the whole nation was longing. On the 7th of October a dispatch from
Bonaparte was read in the Council of Five Hundred, announcing a victory over
the Turks at Aboukir. It brought the first news that had been received for many
months from the army of Egypt; it excited an outburst of joyous enthusiasm for
the general and the army whom a hated Government was believed to have sent into
exile; it recalled that succession of victories which had been unchecked by a
single defeat, and that Peace which had given France a dominion wider than any
that her Kings had won. While every thought was turned upon Bonaparte, the
French nation suddenly heard that Bonaparte himself had landed on the coast of
Provence. “I was sitting that day”, says Beranger in his autobiography, “in our
reading-room with thirty or forty other persons. Suddenly the news was brought
in that Bonaparte had returned from Egypt. At the words, every man in the room
started to his feet and burst into one long shout of joy”. The emotion
portrayed by Beranger was that of the whole of France. Almost everything that
now darkens the early fame of Bonaparte was then unknown. His falsities, his
cold, unpitying heart were familiar only to accomplices and distant sufferers;
even his most flagrant wrongs, such as the destruction of Venice, were excused
by a political necessity, or disguised as acts of righteous chastisement. The
hopes, the imagination of France saw in Bonaparte the young, unsullied,
irresistible hero of the Republic. His fame had risen throughout a crisis which
had destroyed all confidence in others. The stale placemen of the factions sank
into insignificance by his side; even sincere Republicans, who feared the rule
of a soldier, confessed that it is not always given to a nation to choose the
mode of its own deliverance. From the moment that Bonaparte landed at Frejus, he was master of France.
Sieyes saw that
Bonaparte, and no one else, was the man through whom he could overthrow the
existing Constitution. So little sympathy existed, however, between Sieyes and
the soldier to whom he now offered his support, that Bonaparte only accepted
Sieyes’ project after satisfying himself that neither Barras nor Bernadotte
would help him to supreme power. Once convinced of this, Bonaparte closed with
Sieyes' offers. It was agreed that Sieyes and his friend Ducos should resign their Directorships, and that the three remaining Directors
should be driven from office. The Assemblies, or any part of them favourable to the plot, were to appoint a Triumvirate
composed of Bonaparte, Sieyes, and Ducos, for the
purpose of drawing up a new Constitution. In the new Constitution it was
understood, though without any definite arrangement, that Bonaparte and Sieyes
were to be the leading figures. The Council of Ancients was in great part in
league with the conspirators: the only obstacle likely to hinder the success of
the plot was a rising of the Parisian populace. As a precaution against attack,
it was determined to transfer the meeting of the Councils to St. Cloud.
Bonaparte had secured the support of almost all the generals and troops in
Paris. His brother Lucien, now President of the Council of Five Hundred, hoped
to paralyse the action of his own Assembly, in which
the conspirators were in the minority.
Early on the
morning of the 9th of November (18 Brumaire), a crowd of generals and officers
met before Bonaparte's house. At the same moment a portion of the Council of
Ancients assembled, and passed a decree which adjourned the session to St.
Cloud, and conferred on Bonaparte the command over all the troops in Paris. The
decree was carried to Bonaparte's house and read to the military throng, who
acknowledged it by brandishing their swords. Bonaparte then ordered the troops
to their posts, received the resignation of Barras, and arrested the two remaining
Directors in the Luxembourg. During the night there was great agitation in
Paris. The arrest of the two Directors and the display of military force
revealed the true nature of the conspiracy, and excited men to resistance who
had hitherto seen no great cause for alarm. The Councils met at St. Cloud at
two on the next day. The Ancients were ready for what was coming; the Five
Hundred refused to listen to Bonaparte's accomplices, and took the oath of
fidelity to the Constitution. Bonaparte himself entered the Council of
Ancients, and in violent, confused language declared that he had come to save
the Republic from unseen dangers. He then left the Assembly, and entered the
Chamber of the Five Hundred, escorted by armed grenadiers. A roar of
indignation greeted the appearance of the bayonets. The members rushed in a
mass upon Bonaparte, and drove him out of the hall. His brother now left the
President's chair and joined the soldiers outside, whom he harangued in the
character of President of the Assembly. The soldiers, hitherto wavering, were
assured by Lucien's civil authority and his treacherous eloquence. The drums
beat; the word of command was given; and the last free representatives of
France struggled through doorways and windows before the levelled and advancing
bayonets.
The
Constitution which Sieyes hoped now to impose upon France had been elaborated
by its author at the close of the Reign of Terror. Designed at that epoch, it
bore the trace of all those apprehensions which gave shape to the Constitution
of 1795. The statutory outrages of 1793, the Royalist reaction shown in the
events of Vendemiaire, were the perils from which both Sieyes and the
legislators of 1795 endeavoured to guard the future
of France. It had become clear that a popular election might at any moment
return a royalist majority to the Assembly: the Constitution of 1795 averted
this danger by prolonging the power of the Conventionalists; Sieyes overcame it
by extinguishing popular election altogether. He gave to the nation no right but
that of selecting half a million persons who should be eligible to offices in
the Communes, and who should themselves elect a smaller body of fifty thousand,
eligible to offices in the Departments. The fifty thousand were in their turn
to choose five thousand, who should be eligible to places in the Government and
the Legislature. The actual appointments were to be made, however, not by the
electors, but by the Executive. With the irrational multitude thus deprived of
the power to bring back its old oppressors, priests, royalists, and nobles
might safely do their worst. By way of still further precaution, Sieyes
proposed that every Frenchman who had been elected to the Legislature since
1789 should be inscribed for ten years among the privileged five thousand.
Such were the
safeguards provided against a Bourbonist reaction. To
guard against a recurrence of those evils which France had suffered from the
precipitate votes of a single Assembly, Sieyes broke up the legislature into as
many chambers as there are stages in the passing of a law. The first chamber,
or Council of State, was to give shape to measures suggested by the Executive;
a second chamber, known as the Tribunate, was to discuss the measures so
framed, and ascertain the objections to which they were liable; the third
chamber, known as the Legislative Body, was to decide in silence for or against
the measures, after hearing an argument between representatives of the Council
and of the Tribunate. As a last impregnable bulwark against Jacobins and Bourbonists alike, Sieyes created a Senate whose members
should hold office for life, and be empowered to annul every law in which the
Chambers might infringe upon the Constitution.
It only
remained to invent an Executive. In the other parts of his Constitution, Sieyes
had borrowed from Rome, from Greece, and from Venice; in his Executive he
improved upon the political theories of Great Britain. He proposed that the
Government should consist of two Consuls and a Great Elector; the Elector, like
an English king, appointing and dismissing the Consuls, but taking no active
part in the administration himself. The Consuls were to be respectively
restricted to the affairs of peace and of war. Grotesque under every aspect,
the Constitution of Sieyes was really calculated to effect in all points but
one the end which he had in view. His object was to terminate the convulsions
of France by depriving every element in the State of the power to create sudden
change. The members of his body politic, a Council that could only draft, a
Tribunate that could only discuss, a Legislature that could only vote, Yes or
No, were impotent for mischief; and the nation itself ceased to have a
political existence as soon as it had selected its half-million notable
So far, nothing
could have better suited the views of Bonaparte; and up to this point Bonaparte
quietly accepted Sieyes' plan. But the general had his own scheme for what was
to follow. Sieyes might apportion the act of deliberation among debating
societies and dumb juries to the full extent of his own ingenuity; but the
moment that he applied his disintegrating method to the Executive, Bonaparte
swept away the flimsy reasoner, and set in the midst of his edifice of shadows
the reality of an absolute personal rule. The phantom Elector, and the Consuls
who were to be the Elector’s tenants-at-will, corresponded very little to the
power which France desired to see at its head. “Was there ever anything so
ridiculous?” cried Bonaparte. “What man of spirit could accept such a post?” It
was in vain that Sieyes had so nicely set the balance. His theories gave to
France only the pageants which disguised the extinction of the nation beneath a
single will: the frame of executive government which the country received in
1799 was that which Bonaparte deduced from the conception of an absolute
central power. The First Consul summed up all executive authority in his own
person. By his side there were set two colleagues whose only function was to
advise. A Council of State placed the highest skill and experience in France at
the disposal of the chief magistrate, without infringing upon his sovereignty.
All offices, both in the Ministries of State and in the provinces, were filled
by the nominees of the First Consul. No law could be proposed but at his
desire.
The
institutions given to France by the National Assembly of 1789 and those given
to it in the Consulate exhibited a direct contrast seldom found outside the
region of abstract terms. Local customs, survivals of earlier law, such as soften
the difference between England and the various democracies of the United
States, had no place in the sharp-cut types in which the political order of
France was recast in 1791 and 1799. The Constituent Assembly had cleared the
field before it began to reconstruct. Its reconstruction was based upon the
Rights of Man, identified with the principle of local self-government by
popular election. It deduced a system of communal administration so completely
independent that France was described by foreign critics as partitioned into
40,000 republics; and the criticism was justified when, in 1793, it was found
necessary to create a new central Government, and to send commissioners from
the capital into the provinces. In the Constitution of 1791, judges, bishops, officers
of the National Guard, were all alike subjected to popular election; the
Minister of War could scarcely move a regiment from one village to another
without the leave of the mayor of the commune. In the Constitution of 1799 all
authority was derived from the head of the State. A system of centralization
came into force with which France under her kings had nothing to compare. All
that had once served as a check upon monarchical power, the legal Parliaments,
the Provincial Estates of Brittany and Languedoc, the rights of lay and
ecclesiastical corporations, had vanished away. In the place of the motley of
privileges that had tempered the Bourbon monarchy, in the place of the popular
Assemblies of the Revolution, there sprang up a series of magistracies as
regular and as absolute as the orders of military rank. Where, under the
Constitution of 1791, a body of local representatives had met to conduct the
business of the Department, there was now a Prefet,
appointed by the First Consul, absolute, like the First Consul himself, and
assisted only by the advice of a nominated council, which met for one fortnight
in the year. In subordination to the Prefet, an
officer and similar council transacted the local business of the
Arrondissement. Even the 40,000 Maires with their communal councils were all
appointed directly or indirectly by the Chief of the State. There existed in
France no authority that could repair a village bridge, or light the streets of
a town, but such as owed its appointment to the central Government. Nor was the
power of the First Consul limited to the administration. With the exception of
the lowest and the highest members of the judicature, he nominated all judges,
and transferred them at his pleasure to inferior or superior posts.
Such was the
system which, based to a great extent upon the preferences of the French
people, fixed even more deeply in the national character the willingness to
depend upon an omnipresent, all-directing power. Through its rational order,
its regularity, its command of the highest science and experience, this system
of government could not fail to confer great and rapid benefits upon the
country. It has usually been viewed by the French themselves as one of the
finest creations of political wisdom. In comparison with the self-government
which then and long afterwards existed in England, the centralization of France
had all the superiority of progress and intelligence over torpor and
self-contradiction. Yet a heavy, an incalculable price is paid by every nation
which for the sake of administrative efficiency abandons its local liberties,
and all that is bound up with their enjoyment. No practice in the exercise of
public right armed a later generation of Frenchmen against the audacity of a
common usurper: no immortality of youth secured the institutions framed by
Napoleon against the weakness and corruption which at some period undermine all
despotisms. The historian who has exhausted every term of praise upon the
political system of the Consulate lived to declare, as Chief of the State
himself, that the first need of France was the decentralization of power.
After ten years
of disquiet, it was impossible that any Government could be more welcome to the
French nation than one which proclaimed itself the representative, not of party
or of opinion, but of France itself. No section of the nation had won a triumph
in the establishment of the Consulate; no section had suffered a defeat. In his
own elevation Bonaparte announced the close of civil conflict. A Government had
arisen which summoned all to its service which would employ all, reward all,
reconcile all. The earliest measures of the First Consul exhibited the policy
of reconciliation by which he hoped to rally the whole of France to his side.
The law of hostages, under which hundreds of families were confined in
retaliation for local Royalist disturbances, was repealed, and Bonaparte
himself went to announce their liberty to the prisoners in the Temple. Great
numbers of names were struck off the list of the emigrants, and the road to
pardon was subsequently opened to all who had not actually served against their
country. In the selection of his officers of State, Bonaparte showed the same
desire to win men of all parties. Cambacères, a
regicide, was made Second Consul; Lebrun, an old official of Louis XVI, became
his colleague. In the Ministries, in the Senate, and in the Council of State
the nation saw men of proved ability chosen from all callings in life and from
all political ranks. No Government of France had counted among its members so
many names eminent for capacity and experience. One quality alone was
indispensable, a readiness to serve and to obey. In that intellectual greatness
which made the combination of all the forces of France a familiar thought in
Bonaparte's mind, there was none of the moral generosity which could pardon
opposition to himself, or tolerate energy acting under other auspices than his
own. He desired to see authority in the best hands; he sought talent and
promoted it, but on the understanding that it took its direction from himself.
Outside this limit ability was his enemy, not his friend; and what could not be
caressed or promoted was treated with tyrannical injustice. While Bonaparte
boasted of the career that he had thrown open to talent, he suppressed the
whole of the independent journalism of Paris, and banished Mme. de Stael, whose
guests continued to converse, when they might not write, about liberty. Equally
partial, equally calculated, was Bonaparte's indulgence towards the ancient
enemies of the Revolution, the Royalists and the priests. He felt nothing of
the old hatred of Paris towards the Vendean noble and the superstitious Breton;
he offered his friendship to the stubborn Breton race, whose loyalty and piety
he appreciated as good qualities in subjects; but failing their submission, he
instructed his generals in the west of France to burn down their villages, and
to set a price upon the heads of their chiefs. Justice, tolerance, good faith,
were things which had no being for Bonaparte outside the circle of his
instruments and allies.
In the foreign
relations of France it was not possible for the most unscrupulous will to carry
aggression farther than it had been already carried; yet the elevation of
Bonaparte deeply affected the fortunes of all those States whose lot depended
upon France. It was not only that a mind accustomed to regard all human things
as objects for its own disposal now directed an irresistible military force,
but from the day when France submitted to Bonaparte, the political changes
accompanying the advance of the French armies took a different character.
Belgium and Holland, the Rhine Provinces, the Cisalpine, the Roman, and the
Parthenopean Republics, had all received, under whatever circumstances of
wrong, at least the forms of popular sovereignty. The reality of power may have
belonged to French generals and commissioners; but, however insincerely
uttered, the call to freedom excited hopes and aspirations which were not
insincere themselves. The Italian festivals of emancipation, the trees of
liberty, the rhetoric of patriotic assemblies, had betrayed little enough of
the instinct for self-government; but they marked a separation from the past;
and the period between the years 1796 and 1799 was in fact the birth-time of
those hopes which have since been realized in the freedom and the unity of
Italy. So long as France had her own tumultuous assemblies, her elections in
the village and in the county-town, it was impossible for her to form republics
beyond the Alps without introducing at least some germ of republican
organization and spirit. But when all power was concentrated in a single man,
when the spoken and the written word became an offence against the State, when
the commotion of the old municipalities was succeeded by the silence and the
discipline of a body of clerks working round their chief, then the advance of
French influence ceased to mean the support of popular forces against the
Governments. The form which Bonaparte had given to France was the form which he
intended for the clients of France. Hence in those communities which directly
received the impress of the Consulate, as in Bavaria and the minor German
States, authority, instead of being overthrown, was greatly strengthened. Bonaparte
carried beyond the Rhine that portion of the spirit of the Revolution which he
accepted at home, the suppression of privilege, the extinction of feudal
rights, the reduction of all ranks to equality before the law, and the
admission of all to the public service. But this levelling of the social order
in the client-states of France, and the establishment of system and unity in
the place of obsolete privilege, cleared the way not for the supremacy of the
people, but for the supremacy of the Crown. The power which was taken away from
corporations, from knights, and from ecclesiastics, was given, not to a popular
Representative, but to Cabinet Ministers and officials ranged after the model
of the official hierarchy of France. What the French had in the first epoch of
their Revolution endeavoured to impart to Europe, the
spirit of liberty and self-government, they had now renounced themselves. The
belief in popular right, which made the difference between the changes of 1789
and those attempted by the Emperor Joseph, sank in the storms of the
Revolution.
Yet the
statesmanship of Bonaparte, if it repelled the liberal and disinterested
sentiment of 1789, was no mere cunning of a Corsican soldier, or exploit of
medieval genius born outside its age. Subject to the fullest gratification of
his own most despotic or most malignant impulse, Bonaparte carried into his
creations the ideas upon which the greatest European innovators before the
French Revolution had based their work. What Frederick and Joseph had accomplished,
or failed to accomplish, was realized in Western Germany when its Sovereigns
became the clients of the First Consul. Bonaparte was no child of the French
Revolution; he was the last and the greatest of the autocratic legislators who
worked in an unfree age. Under his rule France lost what had seemed to be most
its own; it most powerfully advanced the forms of progress common to itself and
the rest of Europe. Bonaparte raised no population to liberty: in extinguishing
privilege and abolishing the legal distinctions of birth, in levelling all
personal and corporate authority beneath the single rule of the State, he
prepared the way for a rational freedom, when, at a later day, the Government
of the State should itself become the representative of the nation's will.
CHAPTER VFROM MARENGO TO THE RUPTURE OF THE PEACE OF AMIENS.
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