Nor were these military and moral considerations the only ones affecting the decision of the government. Despite the immense burdens imposed by the war to support her own military expenditures and furnish the profuse subsidies paid to her allies, the power of the country to bear them was greatly increased. Thanks to the watery rampart which secured peace within her borders, Great Britain had now become the manufactory and warehouse of Europe. The commercial and maritime prostration of Holland and France, her two great rivals in trade and manufactures, had thrown into her hands these sources of their prosperity; and she, through the prodigious advances of the ten years' peace, was fully ready to profit by them. By the capture of their foreign possessions and the ruin of the splendid French colony in Haïti, she now controlled the chief regions whence were drawn the tropical products indispensable to Europeans. She monopolized their markets as well as the distribution of their produce. Jealously reserving to British merchant shipping the trade of her own and conquered colonies, she yet met the immense drain made by the navy upon her merchant seamen by relaxing the famous Navigation Laws; permitting her ships to be manned by foreigners, and foreign ships to engage in branches of her commerce closed to them in time of peace. But while thus encouraging neutrals to carry the surplus trade, whose rapid growth was outstripping the capacity of her own shipping, she rigorously denied their right to do as much for her enemies. These severe restrictions, which her uncontrolled sea-power enabled her to maintain, were re-enforced by suicidal edicts of the French government, retaliating upon the same unhappy neutrals the injury their weakness compelled them to accept from the mistress of the seas,—thus driving them from French shores, and losing a concurrence essential to French export and import. In this time of open war no flag was so safe from annoyance as the British, for none other was protected by a powerful navy. Neutrals sought its convoy against French depredations, and the navigation of the world was now swayed by this one great power, whom its necessities had not yet provoked to lay a yoke heavier than the oppressed could bear.
To this control of the carrying trade, and of so much of the agricultural production of the globe, was added a growing absorption of the manufactures of Europe, due to the long war paralyzing the peaceful energies of the continental peoples. In the great system of circulation and exchange, everything thus tended more and more to Great Britain; which was indicated as the natural centre for accumulation and distribution by its security, its accessibility, and its nearness to the continent on which were massed the largest body of consumers open to maritime commerce. Becoming thus the chief medium through which the business of the civilized world was carried on and its wants supplied, her capital grew apace; and was steadily applied, by the able hands in which it accumulated, to develop, by increased production and increased facilities of carriage, the powers of the country to supply demands that were continually increasing on both sides of the Atlantic. The foreign trade, export and import, which in 1792, the last year of peace, had amounted to £44,500,000, rose in 1797 to £50,000,000, and in 1800 to £73,700,000. Encouraged by these evident proofs of growing wealth, the ministry was able so to increase the revenue that its receipts, independent of extraordinary war taxes, far exceeded anything it had ever been before, "or," to use Pitt's words, "anything which the most sanguine hopes could have anticipated. If," he continued, "we compare this year of war with former years of peace, we shall in the produce of our revenue and in the extent of our commerce behold a spectacle at once paradoxical, inexplicable, and astonishing. We have increased our external and internal commerce to a greater pitch than ever it was before; and we may look to the present as the proudest year that has ever occurred for this country." [10]
With such resources to sustain the armies of their allies, and certain of keeping a control of the sea unparalleled even in the history of Great Britain, the ministry looked hopefully forward to a year which should renew and complete the successes of 1799. They reckoned without Bonaparte, as Bonaparte in his turn reckoned again and again without Nelson.
Russia took no more part in the coalition; but the forces of Germany, under the control of Austria and subsidized by Great Britain, either actually in the field or holding the fortified posts on which the operations depended, amounted to something over two hundred and fifty thousand men. Of these, one hundred and twenty-five thousand under Mélas were in Italy. The remainder under General Kray were in Germany, occupying the angle formed by the Rhine at Bâle, where, after flowing west from Lake Constance, it turns abruptly north for the remainder of its course. The plan of campaign was to stand on the defensive in Germany, holding in check the enemies there opposed to them, and in Italy to assume a vigorous offensive, so as to drive the French finally out of the country. That achieved, the idea was entertained of entering France at the extreme south, and possibly investing Toulon, supported by the British navy.
When Bonaparte first took charge, there remained to France only two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, of whom at the opening of the campaign of 1800 there were in the field, opposed to the Austrians, but one hundred and sixty-five thousand. One hundred thousand conscripts were called for; but time would be needed to turn these into soldiers, even with the advantage of the nucleus of veterans around whom they would be gathered. The equipment and provisioning both of the old and new levies also required time and effort. Bonaparte's project was to assume the offensive in Germany, turning there the position of the Austrians, and driving them northward from the Rhine towards the head waters of the Danube. For this great operation the army under Moreau was raised to an equality with the enemy opposed to him. Masséna in Italy was directed to stand solely on the defensive, concentrating around Genoa the bulk of the thirty-five or forty thousand men which alone he had. While he held this position in such force, the Austrians could scarcely advance into France along the narrow coast road, leaving him in the rear. When the expected success in Germany was won, there was to be detached from that army, which should then assume an attitude of observation, a corps twenty thousand strong. This should cross Switzerland, entering Italy by the St. Gothard Pass, and there joining a force of forty thousand to be led by the First Consul in person through the Pass of St. Bernard. This mass of sixty thousand men was to throw itself in rear of the Austrians, forcing them to fight for their communications through Lombardy, and hoping under the first general of the age to win, over a less skilful opponent, such victories as had illustrated the famous campaigns of 1796 and 1797.
Bonaparte's plan thus hinged upon the French occupation of Switzerland, which, intervening as a great rampart between the Austrians in Germany and Italy, permitted him to cover the movements against the former by the curtain of the Rhine between Lake Constance and Bâle, and to use safely and secretly the passes leading into the plains of Lombardy and Piedmont. To this advantage of position he conjoined, with inconceivable wiliness, an absolute secrecy as to the very existence of the forty thousand, known as the Army of Reserve, which he himself was to lead. The orders constituting this force were given the utmost publicity. Its headquarters were established at Dijon, and one of Bonaparte's most trusted subordinates was sent to command it. An appeal was made to discharged soldiers to join its ranks; some material of war and some conscripts, with a corps of officers, were assembled. There preparations stopped—or went on so feebly in comparison with the glowing boasts of the French journals, that hostile spies were entirely deceived. The Army of Reserve became the joke of Europe, while the scattered detachments that were to compose it were assembling at points separated, yet chosen with Bonaparte's consummate skill to permit rapid concentration when the hour came. To insure perfect secrecy, the correspondence of these different bodies was with him alone, not through the Ministry of War.
The campaign was opened by the Austrians in Italy. Mélas, with seventy thousand men, attacked Masséna along the chain of the Apennines. Difficulties of subsistence had forced the latter to disseminate his troops between Genoa and Nice. Through this necessarily thin line the Austrians broke on the 5th of April, and after several days of strenuous resistance, furthered by the facilities for defence offered by that mountainous region, Masséna was driven into Genoa. The left wing of his army under Suchet was forced back toward Nice, where it took position on the Var. On the 18th of April Masséna was definitively shut up in Genoa with eighteen thousand men, and so short of provisions that it became a matter of the utmost urgency to relieve him.
On April 25 Moreau began his movements, of a somewhat complicated character, but resulting in his whole army being safely across the Rhine on the first of May. Eighty thousand French troops were then drawn up between Bâle and Lake Constance in an east and west direction, threatening the left flank of the enemy, whose front was north and south, and in position to attack both their line of retreat and the immense depots whose protection embarrassed all the movements of the Austrians. On the 3d of May the latter were defeated at Engen, and their depot at Stokach was captured. On the 5th they were again beaten at Moesskirch, and on the 9th at Biberach, losing other large deposits of stores. General Kray then retired upon Ulm on the Danube, and the first act of Bonaparte's design was accomplished. It had not corresponded with the lines laid down by him, which were too adventurous to suit Moreau, nor was the result equal to his expectations; but the general strategic outcome was to check for the time any movements of the enemy in Germany, and enable Moreau to send the force needed to co-operate with Bonaparte in Italy. This started on the 13th of May, and was joined on the way by some detachments in Switzerland; the whole amounting to between fifteen and twenty thousand men. [11]
On the 6th of May the first consul left Paris, having delayed to the last moment in order to keep up the illusions of the Austrian commander-in-chief in Italy. The crossing of the St. Bernard began on the 15th, and on the 20th the whole army had passed. On the 26th it issued in the plains of Piedmont; whence Bonaparte turned to the eastward, to insure his great object of throwing his force across the enemy's communications and taking from him all hope of regaining them without a battle. On the first of June he entered Milan.
Meanwhile Masséna's army, a prey to horrible famine, prolonged in Genoa a resistance which greatly contributed to the false position of the Austrians. Of these, twenty-five thousand were before Nice, thirty thousand before Genoa. Twenty thousand more had been lost by casualties since the campaign opened. Unwilling to relinquish his gains, Mélas waited too long to concentrate his scattered troops; and when at last he sent the necessary orders, Masséna was treating to evacuate Genoa. The Austrian officer on the spot, unwilling to lose the prize, postponed compliance until it was secured,—a delay fraught with serious results. On the 5th Genoa was given up, and the besiegers, leaving a garrison in the place, marched to join the commander-in-chief, who was gathering his forces around Alessandria. Meanwhile Bonaparte had crossed to the south side of the Po with half his army. On the 14th of June was fought the battle of Marengo. Anxious lest the foe might give him the slip, the first consul had spread his troops too widely; and the first events of the day were so far in favor of the Austrians that Mélas, who was seventy-six years old, left the field at two in the afternoon, certain of victory, to seek repose. An hour later the opportune arrival of General Desaix turned the scales, and Bonaparte remained conqueror on the ground, standing across the enemy's line of retreat. The following day Mélas signed a convention abandoning all northern Italy, as far as the Mincio, behind which the Austrians were to withdraw. All the fortified places were given up to France, including the hardly won Genoa. While awaiting the Emperor's answer to propositions of peace, sent by the First Consul, there was to be in Italy a suspension of arms, during which neither army should send detachments to Germany. On the 2d of July Bonaparte re-entered Paris in triumph, after an absence of less than two months.