The campaign in Italy, 1796–1797.
239. After the armies raised by the Committee of Public Safety had driven back their enemies in the autumn of 1793, the French occupied the Austrian Netherlands, Holland, and that portion of Germany which lies on the left, or west, bank of the Rhine. Austria and Prussia were again busy with a new, and this time final, partition of Poland. As Prussia had little real interest in the war with France, she soon concluded peace with the new republic, April, 1795. Spain followed her example and left Austria, England, and Sardinia to carry on the war. General Bonaparte had to face the combined armies of Austria and of the king of Sardinia. By marching north from Savona he skillfully separated his two enemies, forced the Sardinian troops back toward Turin, and compelled the king of Sardinia to conclude a truce with France.
Napoleon Bonaparte during the Italian Campaign
This left him free to advance against the Austrians. These he outflanked and forced to retreat. On May 15, 1796, he entered Milan. The Austrian commander then shut himself up in the impregnable fortress of Mantua, where Bonaparte promptly besieged him. There is no more fascinating chapter in the history of warfare than the story of the audacious maneuvers by which Bonaparte successfully repulsed four attempts on the part of the Austrians to relieve Mantua, which was finally forced to capitulate at the beginning of February of the following year. As soon as he had removed all danger of an attack in the rear, the young French general led his army toward Vienna, and by April, 1797, the Austrian court was glad to sign a preliminary peace.
The treaty of Campo-Formio, 1797.
Creation of the Cisalpine republic.
The provisions of the definitive peace which was concluded at Campo-Formio, October 17, 1797, illustrate the unscrupulous manner in which Austria and the French republic disposed of the helpless lesser states. It inaugurated the bewilderingly rapid territorial redistribution of Europe, which was so characteristic of the Napoleonic period. Austria ceded to France the Austrian Netherlands and secretly agreed to use its good offices to secure for France a great part of the left bank of the Rhine. Austria also recognized the Cisalpine republic which Bonaparte had created out of the smaller states of northern Italy, and which was under the "protection" of France. This new state included Milan, Modena, some of the papal dominions, and, lastly, a part of the possessions of the venerable and renowned but defenseless republic of Venice which Napoleon had iniquitously destroyed. Austria received as a partial indemnity the rest of the possessions of the Venetian republic, including Venice itself.
General Bonaparte holds court; his analysis of the French character and of his own aims.
240. While the negotiations were going on at Campo-Formio, the young general had established a brilliant court. "His salons," an observer informs us, "were filled with a throng of generals, officials, and purveyors, as well as the highest nobility and the most distinguished men of Italy, who came to solicit the favor of a glance or a moment's conversation." He appears already to have conceived the rôle that he was to play later. We have a report of a most extraordinary conversation which occurred at this time.