1797.] BONAPARTE'S TRIUMPHS IN ITALY. 343 waited at Verona till he had ascertained the direction in which the Austrian general would advance, now moved with his wonted rapidity to the aid of Joubert. The battle of Rivoli began on the morning of the 14th of January. The Austrians fought with a determination which rendered the issue for a long time doubtful. Rivoli was taken by the Austrians, and retaken by the French, twice in that day of carnage. A judicious movement of Alvinzi on the left of Rivoli might have changed the fortunes of that field; but the effort was an hour too late. The Austrians, said Bonaparte, did not sufficiently calculate the value of time. Alvinzi retired to the Tyrol, pursued by the victorious republicans. Meanwhile Provera had marched to the relief of Mantua. On the field of Rivoli Bonaparte heard that this Austrian general was before the place on the 15th. He at once took his resolution. He left Joubert to pursue the fugitive troops of Alvinzi, and by a march of thirtyfive miles in twenty-four hours, was engaged with Provera on the morning of the 16th, and compelled him to surrender with five thousand men. Mantua capitulated on the 2d of February. Bonaparte treated his aged antagonist, Wurmser, who had gallantly defended Mantua, with a delicacy almost chivalrous. In the interval between the surrender of Provera and the fall of Mantua, Bonaparte had marched into the Papal States, and when within forty miles of Rome had granted peace to the terrified Pope. Another Austrian army had been collected under the Archduke Charles, against which the French marched in three divisions. Bonaparte advanced on the 10th of March to encounter the Archduke, who had formed his line of defence on the Tagliamento. Bernadotte joined him with twenty thousand men from the army of the Rhine. On the 16th of March the French forced their way across the Tagliamento, the Austrians retreating before them. The retreat of the Archduke continued through March, as if it were a pre-determined plan of operations to draw the French on to the hereditary States of the Emperor, where a battle might be fought with advantage; whilst Hungarians, and Tyrolese, and Venetians were gathering round the invaders. Bonaparte on the 31st of March wrote to the Archduke Charles, to implore him to induce the Emperor to listen to the terms of peace which the French Directory had offered. The Archduke returned for answer that he would communicate with Vienna. Bonaparte continued to advance; and on the 2d of April defeated the Archduke at Neumarkt. Alarm and despondency now prevailed in the imperial counsels, instead of a determination to hazard a battle under the walls of Vienna. A suspension of arms proposed by the Emperor was agreed to on the 7th of April. The preliminaries of peace were signed at Leoben on the 18th. The interval in the greater operations of the Italian campaign gave the indefatigable general of the French the opportunity of avenging himself upon the republic of Venice, which, of all the Italian States, had displayed the greatest disinclination to fraternize with France. When Bonaparte was supposed to be in danger in the Austrian provinces, the hatred of the Venetians displayed itself in acts of cruelty and outrage towards the French who remained amongst them, particularly at Verona. On the 3rd of May Bonaparte issued a manifesto declaring war against the Venetian Republic. The French troops overran all the Venetian territory; took a signal vengeance on the Veronese; finally entered Venice on the 16th of May, and put an end to that famous government which had 344 REVOLUTION OF THE EIGHTEENTH FRUCTIDOR. [1797. maintained its independence and its power during centuries of change. The last and greatest convulsion of Europe made the Queen of the Adriatic, first a prize to a revolutionary democracy, and then the slave of an unteachable absolutism. Such was the position of Europe when lord Malmesbury opened his negotiation at Lisle. As the French Directory was then constituted, there was a partial disposition to meet with an equal sincerity the evident desire of the British government to put an end to this desolating conflict. The demands first put forth by the French plenipotentiaries were extravagant -that Great Britain should relinquish all her conquests, whether of French, Dutch, or Spanish possessions, and that France should retain all she had acquired by the war. It was the opinion of the British negotiators that these demands would be gradually reduced; that Carnot and Barthelemi, two of the five Directors who were decidedly advocates for peace, would win over Barras; and that the majority would be disposed to accept the conditions resolved upon by the British government, namely, to give up all the conquests made from France, and to retain the Spanish possession of Trinidad, and the Dutch possessions of Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope. Lord Malmesbury had a channel of private information which he could trust; and he wrote to lord Grenville on the 25th of July, "The fate of the negotiation will depend much less on what passes in our conferences here than on what may happen very shortly in Paris." * Another revolutionary crisis was approaching. Barras, Reubell, and La Réveillière Lépaux, were preparing to eject Carnot and Barthelemi, and to purge the two Legislative Councils of members who were suspected of royalist designs, and of those who, without desiring the restoration of the monarchy, were opposed to the venality and abuse of power by the majority of the Directors. Bonaparte was cognizant of the dangers of the Triumviri,-Barras, Reubell, and Lépaux,-and was ready to support them by his soldiery. The military arm, which was soon to supersede every other authority in France, was now to be the instrument of accomplishing one of those acts of violence with which we have become familiar under the name of a coup-d'état. General Augereau was sent by Bonaparte to Paris to do the bidding of the majority of the Directors. On the morning of the 4th of September, Augereau surrounded the Tuileries with troops, and arrested about sixty members of the Legislative Councils, with orders also to arrest Carnot and Barthelemi. Carnot escaped; but his brother Director, the members of the Councils who had been seized, and many journalists and other writers, were banished to Guiana. Amongst the number was Pichegru. This was the Revolution of the Eighteenth Fructidor. It was decisive as to the issue of the negotiations at Lisle. Lord Malmesbury wrote to Mr. Pitt on the 9th of September, "The violent revolution which has taken place at Paris has overset all our hopes, and defeated all our reckonings. I consider it as the most unlucky event that could have happened. We were certainly very near obtaining the great object of our wishes, and I fear we are now more driven out to sea again than ever." Mr. Pitt was inclined "to believe and hope that the party now predominant will think the enjoyment of their triumph more likely to be both complete and secure in peace than in war." ‡ He was grievously mistaken. "Diaries and Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 406. Ibid. p. 520. Ibid. p. 532. 1797.] END OF THE NEGOTIATIONS AT LISLE-THE "ANTI-JACOBIN." 345 New plenipotentiaries were sent by the Directory to Lisle. They required that Great Britain should surrender all the conquests she had made, not only the colonies taken from France but from her allies, without any equivalent; intimating that if this peremptory condition was not acceded to, lord Malmesbury must depart in twenty-four hours. When Malmesbury said that he had no powers which would enable him to accede to such a proposal, he was insolently answered, "then go and fetch them." The embassy quitted Lille on the 18th of September. Truly did Canning write to a friend, "It was not any question of terms, of giving up this, or retaining that. It was a settled. determination to get rid of the chance of peace on the part of the three scoundrelly Directors, that put an end to the negotiation." * During these conferences no one was more sanguine than Canning. In his position of Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs he laboured incessantly, in concert with Pitt and Malmesbury, to neutralize the opposition made by some members of the Cabinet to a pacific policy. His disappointment was proportionately bitter. He started the "Anti-Jacobin," the first number of which appeared on the 20th of November, 1797. William Gifford and John Hookham Frere were his principal coadjutors. It came, with new armoury, to fight the battle which Burke had fought for seven years. A pacification with France appearing hopeless, it came to denounce the principles and the policy of her government with a determined hatred. To make the literary eulogists of French triumphs odious, and the sentimental declaimers against social wrongs ridiculous, was to be accomplished by witty personalities rather than by impassioned eloquence. Amidst much that is scurrilous and much. that is dull, the "Anti-Jacobin" sent forth brilliant satire; not in the vain endeavour to "cut blocks with a razor," but to pierce through the sensitive skins of the poetical enthusiasts who still clung to their first hopes of a regenerated world that should arise out of the darkness of the French revolution. The somewhat profane parody of the Benedicite, with which this remarkable publication was wound up after seven months' existence, is a sort of catalogue of the public instructors that Canning and his friends had gibbeted either in fear or in contempt. It was awkward when the more illustrious of their victims became converts to Anti-Jacobinism, and had long to endure the reproach of being apostates from the cause of freedom. They were all huddled together, the men of genius and the hack journalists; those whose names have lived and those who are forgotten-in one common invocation to join in the praise of "the Sovereign Priest amongst "the Anointed Five" of the Directory-" Lépaux, whom Atheists worship":"Couriers and Stars,"-" Morning Chronicle and Morning Post,"—“ five wandering Bards" led by " Coleridge and Southey "-" Priestley and Wakefield" -“Thelwall, and ye that lecture as ye go"-" each Jacobin, or fool, or knave " "All creeping creatures, venomous and low, Paine, Williams, Godwin, Holcroft, praise Lépaux." VOL. VII. Malmesbury's "Diaries and Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 570. + "Anti-Jacobin,” vol. ii. p. 635. Preliminaries of Leoben-Transfer of Venice to Austria-Peace of Campo Formio-Victory of Admiral Duncan off Camperdown-Bonaparte arrives in Paris-Is appointed to the command of the Army of England-Preparations for invasion-The scheme postponed-An expedition to Egypt prepared at Toulon-Nelson appointed to command a squadron in the Mediterranean-The expedition sails-Malta seized-Bonaparte lands at AlexandriaNelson had returned to Naples-Alexandria taken by assault-Battle of the PyramidsThe French at Cairo-Nelson returns to Alexandria-The Battle of the Nile-Rejoicings in England, and new hopes-An income-tax first imposed-Volunteers-Ireland. ENGLAND has to bear many unjust reproaches when her children are not "kind and natural." Byron reproaches his country with the humiliation of Venice: "Thy lot Is shameful to the nations, -most of all, Albion in 1814 left Venice to the tender mercies of Austria; but it was the French Republic that in 1797 betrayed the sister Republic into the hands of the Emperor, as the bribe to the preliminaries of Leoben and the peace of Campo Formio. The history of nations exhibits no example of greater baseness than this act of Bonaparte-for it was bis sole act, contrary to the 1797.] TRANSFER OF VENICE TO AUSTRIA. 347 instructions of the Directory. By a treaty with the democratic party in Venice, made on the 16th of May, the French had abolished the ancient oligarchical government; had filled the city with troops; had exacted contributions in money, in ships, and in works of art. They carried off the famous horses of St. Mark, to be placed on the triumphal arch of the Tuileries. These were common proceedings. Bonaparte during the summer was negotiating with the cabinet of Vienna for exchanges of territories and for transfers of populations, in a spirit quite as despotic as that of the absolute governments which had partitioned Poland. He bad stirred up the revolutionary party in the Venetian States to insurrection, on the assurance that he would establish a democratic Republic. The Doge, and the Council of Ten, and the Senate had fallen, to give place to an executive body chosen by the suffrages of the people. Venice, after these changes, believed that the Republic, as newly modelled, was under the protection of France, whose mission was to bestow liberty upon the nations. On the 26th of May, Bonaparte wrote to the municipality of the city," In every circumstance I shall do what lies in my power to give you proof of my desire to consolidate your liberties, and to see unhappy Italy at length assume the place to which it is entitled in the theatre of the world, free and independent of all strangers." Six weeks before this declaration he had agreed in the secret preliminaries of Leoben to cede Venice to the Emperor. After the Eighteenth Fructidor, Bonaparte was instructed by the Directory not to cede Venice to the Emperor; and Bonaparte returned for answer that if that was their resolve, peace was impracticable. He was determined that a peace should be made; and he gave very sufficient reasons for making it at any sacrifice of principle. The reasons were such as he repeated to the secretary of the French legation at Venice, after the peace had been concluded. "Never has France adopted the maxim of making war for the sake of other nations: I should like to see the principle of philosophy or morality which should command us to sacrifice. forty thousand Frenchmen." He wished that the declaimers who raved about the establishment of republics everywhere," would make a winter campaign." The Austrian Plenipotentiary, Cobentzel, with three assistant negotiators,— according to a story which is in agreement with Bonaparte's melo-dramatic propensities, were terrified, by a display of well-timed passion, into the terms proposed by the French. On the 16th of October a final conference took place at Udine. The four Austrian negotiators sat on one side of a long table; Bonaparte sat alone on the other side. They had agreed that France should have Flanders and the line of the Rhine; the islands of Corfu, Zante and Cephalonia, and the Venetian districts of Albania: that the Emperor should have Dalmatia, Istria, and the other Venetian territory as far as the Adige and the Po, with the city of Venice. Lombardy was to form part of the Cisalpine Republic, which Bonaparte had organized: and which was also to include the duchy of Reggio and other small Italian States. The great point in dispute was whether Mantua should belong to this Republic or to the Emperor. Cobentzel maintained, that as the Emperor had consented to give up Mayence, he ought to retain Mantua; and in a lengthened argument he hinted that a negotiator was forgetful of his duty when he sought to sacrifice the repose of his country to his military ambition. A costly tea service, presented to Cobentzel by the Empress Catharine, was upon a stand near Bonaparte. He took the tray in his hands, saying, "If to keep Mantua is |