[482] The Directory tended to impose upon the smaller states, neighboring to or allies of France, republican constitutions, "unitaires" (centralized) in form, analogous to our own, as Bonaparte had done for the Cisalpine Republic and for Genoa. It had just done so in Holland, where it had raised against the government of the United Provinces a kind of 18th of Fructidor (coup d'état). It now (1798) aimed at revolutionizing Switzerland. Bonaparte urged it on. He had already provoked a revolution in a republic near to and allied with the Swiss, that of the Grisons.—Martin: Hist. de France depuis 1789, vol. iii. p. 7.

[483] Napoleon's remark referred to the edicts of the Directory, confiscating British goods wherever found on land; but it applies equally to the decree of January, 1798, which extended the edict to the sea: "Le Directoire ébaucha le système du blocus continental; il ordonna la saisie de toutes les marchandises Anglaises qui pouvaient se trouver à Mayence et dans les autres pays cédés à la France." (Commentaires de Napoléon I., Paris, 1867, vol. iii. p. 413.)

[484] This correspondence, so far as published, is to be found in the Annual Register for 1797; State Papers, pp. 181-223.

[485] See Stanhope's Life of Pitt, vol. ii. p. 224 (ed. 1879).

[486] For a graphic description of the effects of the Berlin decree on the Continent, see Fyffe's History of Modern Europe, vol. i. p. 328.

[487] Metternich's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 65.

INDEX.