dition to Egypt- Battle of the Nile-Coalition of 1798-Ferdinand of Naples enters Rome-Mack's defeats-French enter Naples-Parthenopean Republic-War with Austria and Russia-Battle of Stockach-Murder of

on of 1799-System of Bonaparte in France-I

f Rastadt,

d 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

of the

two omnipotent French envoys. Of the national humiliation of Germany, of the dishonour attaching to the loss of entire provinces and the reorganisation 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 Co

sh Pro

ical States

s 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 secularisation, 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 Münster, 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 cove

termines on

ch 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

rvention in

ge 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 co-operate 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 frie

Republic,

e and Swiss Federa

emocratic 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 n

tion. 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 Switzerlan

ntrigues

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

ters Rome, F

ublic, Feb

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 e

erve 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 mat

to Egypt,

ers. 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 fa

f the Nil

on 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. [65] 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 B

tion o

itherto 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. [66] No monarch entered so cordially into Pitt's schemes for a renewal of the European league; no ally had joined the English minist

Naples, S

ge 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

enters Rome

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. [69] Intelligence was despatched to the exiled Pontiff of the discomfiture of his enemies. "By help of the divine grace," wrote King Ferdinand, "and of the m

by Championne

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 re-entered 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 organised t

r Naples, Ja

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

opean Re

ge 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 e

ria and Russia

nch 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

s 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

s defeats Jourdan at

ench 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 head-waters of the Rhine, and forced back the enemy into the heart of the Orisons. Jourdan crossed the Rhine at Strasburg, and passe

ench envoys at Ra

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, o

f Magnano

ved 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 Zürich, and awaited the Archduke's assault. For five weeks Charles remained inactive: at length, on the 4th of June, he gave battle. After t

paign in Lombar

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 ba

ple

ish 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 t

of Te

pe 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

designs

an of t

ror 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." [74] 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. [75] 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

us 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 Zürich, to strike a fatal blow. Every despatch 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

of Novi,

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 t

oes into Sw

outh 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, tu

le of Zürich

f 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 north-eastwards across heights of 7,000 feet to the valley of the

t of Su

e 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 to-day 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 lit

n expedition agains

n 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 pr

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. P

ity of the

of Siéy

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 Abbé Siéyès 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 Siéyès, who had take

urns from Egyp

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 Béranger 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 Béranger was that of the whole of France. Almost everything that now darkens the early

of Siéyès an

ould 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, Siéyès, 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 Siéyès were to be the leading figures. The Council of Ancients was in great part in le

18 Brumaire (N

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

lan of Con

oment return a royalist majority to the Assembly: the Constitution of 1795 averted this danger by prolonging the power of the Conventionalists; Siéyès 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, w

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

g 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 Siéyès 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 depriv

and Bo

e 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 Siéyès 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 Bo

Institutions of

isation

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 centralisation 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. [83] Where, under the Const

the finest creations of political wisdom. In comparison with the self-government which then and long afterwards existed in England, the centralisation 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 exercis

licy of B

against their country. In the selection of his officers of State, Bonaparte showed the same desire to win men of all parties. Cambacérès, 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 abi

racy abroad, but promotes equa

arte's autocracy

-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 realised 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 organisation 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,

e spirit of the reforming m

their work. What Frederick and Joseph had accomplished, or failed to accomplish, was realised 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