The means to the end were these. Russia must be reduced to inactivity by exciting against her through bribes and promises all her foes to the eastward. Prussia must be cajoled into coöperation by pressure on King George of Hanover, even to the extinction of his kingdom, and by the hope of a consolidated territory with the possibility of securing the Imperial dignity. Austria was to be partly compelled, partly bribed, into a continental coalition against Great Britain by adjustment of her possessions both north and south of the Alps. Into a general alliance against Great Britain, Spain must be dragged by working on the fears of the queen's paramour Godoy, prime minister and controller of Spanish destinies. This done, Great Britain, according to the time-honored, well-worn device of France, royal or radical, should be invaded and brought to her knees. The plan was as old as Philippe le Bel, and had appeared thereafter once and again at intervals either as a bona fide policy or a device to stir the French heart and secure money from the public purse for the public defense. For this purpose of the Directory the ruined maritime power of the republic must be restored, new ships built and old ones refitted; in the meantime, as did Richelieu or Mazarin, rebellion against the British government must be roused and supported among malcontents everywhere within the borders of Great Britain, especially in Ireland. Such was the stupid plan of the Directory: two well-worn expedients, both discredited as often as tried. To the territorial readjustment of Europe, Prussia, though momentarily checked, was already pivotal; but the first efforts of French diplomacy at Berlin resulted in a flat refusal to go farther than the peace already made, or entertain the chimerical proposals now made. Turning then to Austria, the Directory concluded the armistice of February first, 1796, but at Vienna the offer of Munich and two thirds of Bavaria, of an outlet to the Adriatic and of an alliance against Russia for the restoration of Poland—of course without Galicia, which Austria should retain—was treated only as significant of what French temerity dared propose, and when heard was scornfully disdained. The program for Italy was retained substantially as laid down in 1793: the destruction of the papal power, the overthrow of all existing governments, the plunder of their rich treasures, the annihilation of feudal and ecclesiastical institutions, and the regeneration of its peoples on democratic lines. Neither the revolutionary elements of the peninsula nor the jealous princes could be brought to terms by the active and ubiquitous French agents, even in Genoa, though there was just sufficient dallying everywhere between Venice and Naples to keep alive hope and exasperate the unsuccessful negotiators. The European world was worried and harassed by uncertainties, by dark plots, by mutual distrust. It was unready for war, but war was the only solvent of intolerable troubles. England, Austria, Russia, and France under the Directory must fight or perish.
It must not be forgotten that this was the monarchical, secular, and immemorial policy of France as the disturber of European peace; continued by the republic, it was rendered more pernicious and exasperating to the upholders of the balance of power. Not only was the republic more energetic and less scrupulous than the monarchy, her rivals were in a very low estate indeed. Great Britain had stripped France and Holland of their colonies, but these new possessions and the ocean highway must be protected at enormous expense. The Commons refused to authorize a new loan, and the nation was exhausted to such a degree that Pitt and the King, shrinking from the opprobrious attacks of the London populace, and noting with anguish the renewal of bloody disorder in Ireland, made a feint of peace negotiations through the agent they employed in Switzerland to foment royalist demonstrations against France wherever possible. Wickham asked on March eighth, 1796, on what terms the Directory would make an honorable peace, and in less than three weeks received a rebuff which declared that France would under no circumstances make restitution of its continental conquests. In a sense it was Russia's Polish policy which kept Prussia and Austria so occupied with the partition that the nascent republic of France was not strangled in its cradle by the contiguous powers. Provided she had the lion's share of Poland, Catherine was indifferent to the success of Jacobinism. But she soon saw the danger of a general conflagration and, applying Voltaire's epithet for ecclesiasticism to the republic, cried all abroad: Crush the Infamous! Conscious of her old age, distrusting all the possible successors to her throne: Paul the paranoiac, Constantine the coarse libertine, and the super-elegant Alexander, she refused a coalition with England and turned her activities eastward against the Cossacks and into Persia; but she consented to be the intermediary between Austria and Great Britain. Austria wanted the Netherlands, but only if she could secure with them a fortified girdle wherewith to protect and hold them. She likewise desired the Milanese and the Legations in Italy, as well as Venetia. As the price of continued war on France, these lands and a subsidy of three million pounds were the terms exacted from Great Britain. With no army at his disposal and his naval resources strained to the utmost, George III agreed to pay a hundred and fifty thousand pounds per month until parliament would make the larger grant. Thugut, the Austrian minister, accepted. Cobenzl, the Austrian ambassador at St. Petersburg, arranged affairs with Catherine concerning Bavaria, the French royalists under Condé bribed Pichegru into a promise of yielding the fortresses of the north to their occupation, the Austrian army on the Rhine was strengthened. In retort Jourdan was stationed on the lower and Moreau on the upper Rhine, each with eighty thousand men, Bonaparte was despatched to Italy, and Hoche made ready a motley crew of outlaws and Vendeans wherewith to enter Ireland, join Wolfe Tone and his United Irishmen, and thus let loose the elements of civil war in that unhappy island. Europe at large expected the brunt of the struggle north of the Alps in central Germany: the initiated knew better.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER XXVI.
Bonaparte on a Great Stage[66].
Bonaparte and the Army of Italy — The System of Pillage — The General as a Despot — The Republican Armies and French Politics — Italy as the Focal Point — Condition of Italy — Bonaparte's Sagacity — His Plan of Action — His Army and Generals — Strength of the Army of Italy — The Napoleonic Maxims of Warfare — Advance of Military Science — Bonaparte's Achievements — His Financial Policy — Effects of His Success.
1796.
The struggle which was imminent was for nothing less than a new lease of national life for France. It dawned on many minds that in such a combat changes of a revolutionary nature—as regarded not merely the provisioning and management of armies, as regarded not merely the grand strategy to be adopted and carried out by France, but as regarded the very structure and relations of other European nations—would be justifiable. But to be justifiable they must be adequate; and to be adequate they must be unexpected and thorough. What should they be? The Œdipus who solves this riddle for France is the man of the hour. He was found in Bonaparte. What mean these ringing words from the headquarters at Nice, which, on March twenty-seventh, 1796, fell on the ears of a hungry, eager soldiery and a startled world? "Soldiers, you are naked, badly fed. The government owes you much; it can give you nothing. Your long-suffering, the courage you show among these crags, are splendid, but they bring you no glory; not a ray is reflected upon you. I wish to lead you into the most fertile plains of the world. Rich provinces, great towns, will be in your power; there you will find honor, glory, and riches. Soldiers of Italy, can you be found lacking in honor, courage, or constancy?"
Such language has but one meaning. By a previous understanding with the Directory, the French army was to be paid, the French treasury to be replenished, at the expense of the lands which were the seat of war. Corsicans in the French service had long been suspected of sometimes serving their own interests to the detriment of their adopted country. Bonaparte was no exception, and occasionally he felt it necessary to justify himself. For example, he had carefully explained that his marriage bound him to the republic by still another tie. Yet it appears that his promotion, his engagement with the directors, and his devotion to the republic were all concerned primarily with personal ambition, though secondarily and incidentally with the perpetuation of a government professedly based on the Revolution. From the outset of Napoleon's independent career, something of the future dictator appears. This implied promise that pillage, plunder, and rapine should henceforth go unpunished in order that his soldiers might line their pockets is the indication of a settled policy which was more definitely expressed in each successive proclamation as it issued from his pen. It was repeated whenever new energy was to be inspired into faltering columns, whenever some unparalleled effort in a dark design was to be demanded from the rank and file of the army, until at last a point-blank promise was made that every man should return to France with money enough in his pocket to become a landowner.
There was magic in the new spell, the charm never ceased to work; with that first call from Nice began the transformation of the French army, fighting now no longer for principle, but for glory, victory, and booty. Its leader, if successful, would be in no sense a constitutional general, but a despotic conqueror. Outwardly gracious, and with no irritating condescension; considerate wherever mercy would strengthen his reputation; fully aware of the influence a dramatic situation or a pregnant aphorism has upon the common mind, and using both with mastery; appealing as a climax to the powerful motive of greed in every heart, Bonaparte was soon to be not alone the general of consummate genius, not alone the organizing lawgiver of conquered lands and peoples, but, what was essential to his whole career, the idol of an army which was not, as of old, the servant of a great nation, but, as the new era had transformed it, the nation itself.
The peculiar relation of Bonaparte to Italy, to Corsica, and to the Convention had made him, as early as 1794, while yet but chief of artillery, the real director of the Army of Italy. He had no personal share in the victorious campaign of that year, but its victories, as he justly claimed, were due to his plans. During the unsuccessful Corsican expedition of the following winter, for which he was but indirectly responsible, the Austro-Sardinians in Piedmont had taken advantage of its absorbing so many French troops to undo all that had so far been accomplished. During the summer of 1795 Spain and Prussia had made peace with France. In consequence all northern Europe had been declared neutral, and the field of operations on the Rhine had been confined to the central zone of Germany, while at the same time the French soldiers who had formed the Army of the Pyrenees had been transferred to the Maritime Alps. In 1796, therefore, the great question was whether the Army of the Rhine or that of Italy was to be the chief weapon of offense against Austria.