History of Modern Europe 1972-1878

War continues-Massena besieged in Genoa-Moreau i

-Murder of Paul-End of the Maritime War-English Army enters Egypt-French defeated at Alexandria-They capitulate at Cairo and Alexandria-Preliminaries of Peace between England and France signed at London, followed by Peace of Amiens-Pitt's Irish Policy and his retirement-Debates

arte to Austria and

s personal anxiety to enter upon negotiations for peace. The reply of Austria which was courteously worded, produced an offer on the part of Bonaparte to treat for peace upon the basis of the Treaty of Campo Formio. Such a proposal was the best evidence of Bonaparte's real intentions. Austria had re-conquered Lombardy, and driven the armies of the Republic from the Adige to within a few miles of Nice. To propose a peace which should merely restore the situation existing at the beginning of the war was pure irony. The Austrian G

ch as one high-spirited nation which had recently expelled its rulers might address to another that had expelled its rulers a century before. France, it was said, had as good a right to dismiss an incapable dynasty as Great Britain. If Talleyrand's reply failed to convince King George that before restoring the Bourbons he ought to surrender his own throne to the Stuarts, it succeeded in transferring attention from the wrongs

on of th

s South German

sea. The army which Bonaparte was about to lead into Italy lay in between Dijon and Geneva, awaiting the arrival of the First Consul. On the Rhine, from Strasburg to Schaffhausen, a force of 100,000 men was ready to cross into Germany under the command of Moreau, who was charged with the task of pushing the Austrians back from the Upper Danube, and so rendering any attack through Switzerland upon the communications of Bonaparte's Italian force impossible. Moreau's army was the first to move. An Austrian force, not inferior to Moreau's own, lay within the bend of the Rhine that covers Baden and Würtemberg. Moreau c

osses the Alp

in its effects upon the enemy. Instead of relieving Genoa by an advance along the coast-road, Bonaparte intended to march across the Alps and to descend in the rear of the Austrians. A single defeat would then cut the Austrians off from their communications with Mantua, and result either in the capitulation of their army or in the evacuation of the whole of the country that they had won, Bonaparte led his army into the mountains. The pass of the Great St. Bernard, though not a carriage-road, offered little difficulty to a commander supplied with every resource of engineering material and skill; and by this road the army crossed the Alp

the Austrian army fr

discovered the full extent of his peril, and sent orders to Ott to raise the siege of Genoa and to join him with every regiment that he could collect. Ott, however, was unwilling to abandon the prey at this moment falling into his grasp. He remained stationary till the 5th of June, when Massena, reduced to the most cruel extremities by famine, was forced to surrender Genoa to the besiegers. But his obstinate endurance had the full effect of a battle won. Ott's delay rendered Melas powerless to hinder the movements of Bonaparte, whe

Marengo, Ju

ons of A

no longer, and ordered Desaix to march southward towards Novi and hold the road to Genoa. Desaix led off his division. Early the next morning the whole army of Melas issued from Alessandria, and threw itself upon the weakened line of the French at Marengo. The attack carried everything before it: at the end of seven hours' fighting, Melas, exhausted by his personal exertions, returned into Alessandria, and sent out tidings of a complete victory. It was at this moment that Desaix, who had turned at the sound of the cannon, appeared on the field, and declared that, although one battle had been lost, another might be won. A sudden cavalry-charge struck panic into the Austrians, who believed the battle ended and the foe overthrown. Whole brigades threw down their arms and fled; and ere the day closed a mass of fugitives, cavalry and infantry, thronging over the marshes of the Bormida, was all that remained of the victo

continues

till maintained his influence over the Emperor, in spite of growing unpopularity and almost universal opposition. Public opinion, however, forced the Emperor at least to take steps for ascertaining the French terms of peace. An envoy was sent to Paris; and, as there could be no peace without the consent of England, conferences were held with the object of establishing a naval armistice between England and France. England, however, refused the concessions demanded by the First Consul; and the neg

ohenlinden,

e was employed in strengthening the force opposed to Moreau, who now received orders to advance upon Vienna. The Archduke John, a royal strategist of eighteen, was furnished with a plan for surrounding the French army and cutting it off from its communications. Moreau lay upon the Isar; the Austrians held the line of the Inn. On the termination of the armistice the Austrians advanced and made some devious marches in pursuance of the Archduke's enterprise, until a general confusion, attributed to the weather, caused them to abandon their manoeuvres and move straight against the enemy. On the 3rd of December the Austrians plunged into the sn

unéville, F

its head a sovereign whose interests in the Empire and in Germany were among the least of all his interests. The Peace of Lunéville, [88] concluded between France and the Emperor on the 9th of February, 1801, without even a reference to the Diet of the Empire, placed the minor States of Germany at the mercy of the French Republic. It left to the House of Hapsburg the Venetian territory which it had gained in 1797; it required no reduction of the Hapsburg influence in Italy beyond the abdication of the Grand Duke of Tuscany; but it ceded to France, without the disguises of 1797, the German provinces west

with

rns agains

itime League,

to France. The occasion was skilfully used by Bonaparte, to whom, as a soldier, the Czar felt less repugnance than to the Government of advocates and contractors which he had attacked in 1799. The First Consul restored without ransom several thousands of Russian prisoners, for whom the Austrians and the English had refused to give up Frenchmen in exchange, and followed up this advance by proposing that the guardianship of Malta, which was now blockaded by the English, should be given to the Czar. Paul had caused himself to be made Grand Master of the Maltese Order of St. John of Jerusalem. His vanity was touched by Bonaparte's proposal, and a friendly relation was established between the French and Russian Governments. England, on the other hand, refused to place Malta under Russian guardianship, either before or after its surrender. This completed the breach between the Courts of London and St. Petersburg. The Czar s

s at i

but beyond these two points everything was in dispute. A Danish ship conveys a cargo of wine from a Bordeaux merchant to his agent in New York. Is the wine liable to be seized in the mid-Atlantic by an English cruiser, to the destruction of the Danish carrying-trade, or is the Danish flag to protect French property from a Power whose naval superiority makes capture upon the high seas its principal means of offence? England announces that a French port is in a state of blockade. Is a Swedish vessel, stopped w

nd the Northern Mariti

considered in a state of blockade unless a competent blockading force was actually in front of it; and that contraband of war should include no other stores than those directly available for battle. Considerations of reason and equity may be urged in support of every possible theory of the rights of belligerents and neutrals; but the theory of every nation has, as a matter of fact, been that which at the time accorded with its own interests. When a long era of peace had familiarised Great Britain with the idea that in the future struggles of Europe it was more likely to be a spectator than a belligerent, Great Britain accepted the Neutrals' theory of international law at the Congress of Paris in 1856; but in 1801, when the lot of England seemed to be eternal warfare, any limitation of the rights of a

openhagen, A

d-day on the 30th of March. Preparations for resistance were made by the Danes with extraordinary spirit and resolution. The whole population of Copenhagen volunteered for service on the ships, the forts, and the floating batteries. Two days were spent by the English in exploring the shallows of the channel; on the morning of the 2nd of April Nelson led his ships into action in front of the harbour. Three ran aground; the Danish fire from land and sea was so violent that after some hours Admiral Parker, who watched the engagement from the mid-channel, gave the signal of recall. Nelson l

f Paul, M

ngland and the N

ish fleet in the Baltic. The maintenance of commerce with England was in fact more important to Russia than the protection of its carrying trade. Nelson's attack was averted. A compromise was made between the two Governments, which saved Russia's interests, without depriving England of its chief rights against France. The principles of the Armed Neutrality were abandoned by the Government of St. Petersburg in so far as they related to the protection of an enemy's goods by the neutral flag. Great Britain continued to seize French merchandise on board whatever craft it might be found; but it was stipulated that the presence of a ship of war should exemp

rs in

te had chosen to abandon. The report was intercepted by the English, and the Government immediately determined to accept no capitulation which did not surrender the whole of the French army as prisoners of war. An order to this effect was sent to the Mediterranean. Before, however, the order reached Sir Sidney Smith, the English admiral cooperating with the Turks, an agreement had been already signed by him at El Arish, granting Kleber's army a free return to France (Feb. 24, 1800). After Kleber, in fulfilment of the conditions of the treaty, had withdrawn his troops from certain positions, Sir Sidney Smith found himself compelled to inform the French General that in the negotiations of El Arish he had exceeded his powers, and that the British Government insisted upon the surrender of the French forces. Kleber replied by inst

lands in Egypt

late at Cairo,

lexandria

ement took place on the 21st of March. The French were completely defeated. Menou, however, still refused to concentrate his forces; and in the course of a few weeks 13,000 French troops which had been left behind at Cairo were cut off from communication with the rest of the army. A series of attempts made by Admiral Ganteaume to land reinforcements from France ended fruitlessly. Towards the end of June the arrival of a Turkish force enabled the English to surround the French in Cairo. The circuit of the works was too large to be successfully defended; on the other hand, the English were without the heavy artillery necessary for a siege. Under these circumstances the terms which had originally been offered at El Arish were again proposed to General Belliard for himself and the army of Cairo. They were accepted, and Cairo was su

tions fo

s of London,

miens, Marc

Republics, was tacitly conceded to France. In place of the restoration of the Netherlands, the negotiators of 1801 argued about the disposal of Egypt, of Malta, and of the colonies which Great Britain had conquered from France and its allies. Events decided the fate of Egypt. The restoration of Malta to the Knights of St. John was strenuously demanded by France, and not refused by England. It was in relation to the colonial claims of France that the two Governments found it most difficult to agree. Great Britain, which had lost no territory itself, had conquered nearly all the Asiatic and Atlantic colonies of the French Republic and of its Dutch and Spanish allies. In return for the restoration of Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope, Guiana, Trinidad, and various East and West Indian settlements, France had nothing to offer to Great Britain but peace. If peace, however, was to be

tirement.

and and Great

ssessed a Parliament nominally independent of that of Great Britain. Its population, however, was too much divided to create a really national government; and, even if the internal conditions of the country had been better, the practical sovereignty of Great Britain must at that time have prevented the Parliament of Dublin from being more than an agency of ministerial corruption. It was the desire of Pitt to give to Ireland, in the place of a fictitious independence, that real participation in the political life of Great Britain which has more than recompensed Scotland and Wales for the loss of separate nationality. As an earnest of legislative justice, Pitt gave hopes to the leaders of the Irish Catholic party that the

to emancipate

signs Fe

ton Min

ustice or tolerance to Roman Catholics; and it proved of greater force than the genius of the Minister. The old threat of the King's personal enmity was publicly addressed to Pitt's colleague, Dundas, when the proposal for Catholic emancipation was under discussion in the Cabinet; and, with a just regard for his own dignity, Pitt withdrew from office (Feb. 5, 1801), unable to influence a Sovereign who believed his

eace o

ere exhausted; the cost of the national defence remained the same. There were no more navies to destroy, no more colonies to seize; the sole means of injuring the enemy was by blockading his ports, and depriving him of his maritime commerce. On the other hand, the possibility of a French invasion required the maintenance of an enormous army and militia in England, and prevented any great reduction in the expenses of the war, which had already added two hundred millions to the National Debt. Nothing was lost by making peace, except certain colonies and military positions which few were anxious to retain. The argument that England could at any moment recover what she now surrendered was i

naparte during the

d, Sept

list of subjects excluded from the consideration of England was the list of aggressions by which Bonaparte intended to fill up the interval of Continental peace. In the Treaty of Lunéville, the independence of the newly-established republics in Holland, Switzerland, and Italy had been recognised by France. The restoration of Piedmont to the House of Savoy had been the condition on which the Czar made peace. But on every one of these points the engagements of France were made only to be broken. So far from bringing independence to the client-republics of France, the peace of Lunéville was but the introduction to a series of changes which brought these States directly into the hands of the First Consul. The establishment of absolute government in France itself entailed a corresponding change in each of its dependencies, and the creation of an executive which should accept the First Consul's

dent of the Italian R

xed to France,

that other lands besides France desired Bonaparte to be their sovereign. When all the minor offices in the new Cisalpine Constitution had been filled, the Italians learnt that the real object of the convocation was to place the sceptre in Bonaparte's hands. They accepted the part which they found themselves forced to play, and offered to the First Consul the presidency of the Cisalpine State (Jan. 25, 1802). Unlike the French Consulate, the chief magistracy in the new Cisalpine Constitution might be prolonged beyond the term of ten years. Bonaparte had practically won the Crown of Lombardy; and he had given to France the example of a submission more unqualified than its own. A single phrase rewarded the people who had thus placed themselves in his hands. The Cisalpine Republic was

ion in Swi

of the Helvetic Le

tory in 1798. One change followed another, until, on the 19th of May, 1802, a second Constitution was proclaimed, based, like that of 1798, on centralising and democratic principles, and almost extinguishing the old local independence of the members of the Swiss League. No sooner had French partisans created this Constitution, which could only be maintained by force against the hostility of Berne and the Forest Cantons, than the French army quitted Switzerland. Civil war instantly broke out, and in the course of a few weeks the Government established by the French had lost all Switzerland except the Pays de Vaud. This was the crisis for which Bonaparte had been waiting. On the 4th of October a proclamation appeared at Lausanne, announ

ent of G

be formed by the destruction of other ecclesiastical States in the interior of Germany. Affairs returned to the state in which they had stood in 1798, and the comedy of Rastadt was renewed at the point where it had been broken off: the only difference was that the French statesmen who controlled the partition of ecclesiastical Germany now remained in Paris, instead of coming to the Rhine, to run the risk of being murdered by Austrian hussars. Scarcely was the Treaty of Lunéville signed when the whole company of intriguers who had touted at Rastadt posted off to the French capital with their maps and their money-bags, the keener for the work when it became known that by common consent the Free Cities of the Empire wer

aul and deprived Bonaparte of the support of the Northern Maritime League, could stimulate the German Powers to united action. The old antagonism of Austria and Prussia paralysed the Diet. Austria sought a German indemnity for the dethroned Grand Duke of Tuscany; Prussia aimed at extending its influence i

olicy of

uch an increase of territory upon the Baltic as should counterbalance the power of Austria; and for this purpose he was willing to sacrifice Hanover or Mecklenburg: but he forbade Prussia's extension to the south. Austria, so far from gaining new territory in Bavaria, was to be deprived of its own outlying possessions in Western Germany, and excluded from all influence in this region. Bavaria, dependent upon French protection against Austria, was to be greatly strengthened. Baden

Russia for joint action i

o have become highly popular. [93] Among a race whose members could thus be actually conquered and annexed without doing violence to their feelings Bonaparte had no difficulty in finding willing allies. While the Diet dragged on its debates upon the settlement of the Empire, the minor States pursued their bargainings with the French Government; and on the 14th of August, 1801, Bavaria signed the first of those treaties which made the First Consul the patron of Western Germany. Two months later a secret treaty between France and Russia admitted the new Czar, Alexander, to a share in the reorganisation of the Empire. The Governments of Paris and St. Petersburg pledged themselves to united action for the purpose of maintaining an equi

sbon accepts

cal States and forty-five

e Scheme to the Diet: the Diet only agitated itself as to the means of passing the Scheme without violating those formalities which were the breath of its life. The proposed destruction of all the Ecclesiastical States, and of forty-five out of the fifty Free Cities, would extinguish a third part of the members of the Diet itself. If these unfortunate bodies were permitted to vote upon the measure, their votes might result in its rejection: if unsummoned, their absence would impair the

t on G

. [95] Through the suppression of the Ecclesiastical States a Protestant majority was produced in the Diet. The change bore witness to the decline of Austrian and of Catholic energy during the past century; it scarcely indicated the future supremacy of the Protestant rival of Austria; for the real interests of Germany were but faintly imaged in the Diet, and the leadership of the race was still open to the Power which should most sincerely identify itself with the German nation. The first result of the changed character of the Diet was the confiscation of all landed property held by religious or charitable bodies, even where these had never advanced the slightest claim to political independence. The Diet declared the whole of the land held in Germany by pious foundations to be at the disposal of the Governments for purposes of religion, of education, and of financial relief. The more needy courts immediately seized

ny become more absolu

Reforms of

ion of th

and professions were thrown open; the peasant was relieved of his heaviest feudal burdens. Among the newly consolidated States, Bavaria was the one where the reforming impulse of the time took the strongest form. A new dynasty, springing from the west of the Rhine, brought something of the spirit of French liberalism into a country hitherto unsurpassed in Western Europe for its ignorance and bigotry. [96] The Minister Montgelas, a politician of French enlightenment, entered upon the same crusade against feudal and ecclesiastical disorder which Joseph had inaugurated in Austria twenty years before. His measures for subjecting the clergy to the law, and for depriving the Church of its control over education, were almost identical with those which in 1790 had led to the revolt of Belgium; and the Bavarian landowners now unconsciously reproduced all the medi?val platitudes of the University of Louvain. Montgelas organised and lev

the Duke

ack on the M

the Ritter vom Stein was not a matter to excite deep feeling in Europe; but that the consolidation of Germany should be worked out in the interest of French hirelings instead of in the interests of the German people was justly treated by Stein as a subject for patriotic anger. In his letter [97] to the Duke of Nassau, Stein reproached his own despoiler and the whole tribe of petty princes with that treason to German interests which had won them the protection of the foreigner. He argued that the knights were a far less important obstacle to German unity than those very princes to whom the knights were sacrificed; and he invoked that distant day which should give to Germany a real national unity, over knights and princes alike, under the leadership of a single patriotic sovereign. Stein's appeal found little response among his contemporaries. Like a sober man among drunkards,

e, 180

il C

ncordat. Since the middle of the eighteenth century the codification of law had been pursued with more or less success by almost every Government in Europe. In France the Constituent Assembly of 1789 had ordered the statutes, by which it superseded the old variety of local customs, to be thus cast into a systematic form. A Committee of the Convention had completed the draft of a Civil Code. The Directory had in its turn appointed a Commission; but the project still remained unfulfilled when the Directory was driven from power. Bonaparte instinctively threw himself into a task so congenial to his own systematising spirit, and stimulated the efforts of the best jurists in France by his personal interest and p

as a leg

ral of the members of his Council whose names have long been forgotten. He is unquestionably entitled to the honour of a great legislator, not, however, as one who, like Solon or like Mahomet, himself created a new body of law, but as one who most vigorously pursued the work of consolidating and popularising law by the help of all the skilled and scientific minds whose resources were at his command. Though faulty in parts, the Civil Code, through its conciseness, its simplicity, and its justice, enabled Napoleon to c

Conco

t destroys th

the local authorities had been compelled to admit the religious societies of their district to the use of church-buildings. Though the coup d'état of Fructidor, 1797, renewed the persecution of non-juring priests, it in no way checked the activity of the Constitutional Church, now free from all connection with the Civil Government. While the non-juring priests, exiled as political offenders, or theatrically adoring the sacred elements in the woods, pretended that the age of the martyrs had returned to France, a Constitutional Church, ministering in 4,000 parishes, unprivileged but unharassed by the State, supplied the nation with an earnest and respectable body of clergy. [100] But in the eyes of the First Consul everything left to voluntary association was so much lost to the central power. In the order of nature, peasants must obey priests, priests must obey bishops, and bishops must obey the First Consul. An alliance with the Pope offered to Bonaparte the means of supplanting the popular organisation of the Constitutional Church by an imposing hierarchy, rigid in its orthodoxy

in Ultram

ce from a faith already far more independent than that of Fénélon and Bossuet into the Catholicism which in our own day has outstripped the bigotry of Spain and Austria in welcoming the dogma of Papal infallibility. The lower clergy, condemned by the State to an intolerable subjection, soon found their only hope in an appeal to Rome, and instinctively worked as the emissaries of the Roman See. The Bishops, who owed their office to an unprecedented exercise of Papal power and to the destruction of religious independence in France, w

e German

s. When not hostile to the Papacy, they had usually treated it with indifference. The conception of a Catholic society exposed to persecution at the hands of the State on account of its devotion to Rome was one which had never entered the mind of German ecclesiastics in the eighteenth century. Without the changes effected in Germany by the Treaty of Lunéville, without the Concordat of Bonaparte, Catholic orthodoxy would never have become identical with Ul