CHAPTER II
The Treaty of Campo Formio[2]
Bonaparte and the Mediterranean — France and the Orient — Bonaparte's Grand Diplomacy — Importance of Malta — Course of Negotiations with Austria — Novel Tactics of the French Plenipotentiary — The Treaty of Campo Formio — Results of Fructidor — Bonaparte's Interests Conflict with those of the Directory — Europe and the Peace.
Bonaparte was a child of the Mediterranean. The light of its sparkling waters was ever in his eyes, and the fascination of its ancient civilizations was never absent from his dreams of glory. His proclamations ring with classic allusions, his festivals were arranged with classic pomp. In infancy he had known of Genoa, the tyrant of his island, as strong in the splendid commercial enterprises which stretched eastward through the Levant, and beyond into the farther Orient; in childhood he had fed his imagination on the histories of Alexander the Great, and his conquest of Oriental empires; in youth he had thought to find an open door for his ambition, when all others seemed closed, by taking service with England to share the renown of those who were building up her Eastern empire. Disappointed in this, he appears to have turned with the same lack of success to Russia, already England's rival on the continent of Asia. It is perfectly comprehensible that throughout his early manhood his mind should have occasionally reverted to the same ideals. The conqueror of Italy and Austria might hope to realize them. Was he not master of the two great maritime commonwealths which had once shared the mass of Eastern trade between them? England's intrusion upon the Mediterranean basin was a never-ceasing irritation to all the Latin powers. Her commercial prosperity and her mastery of the seas increased the exasperation of France, as threatening even her equality in their ancient rivalry. From the days of the first crusade all Frenchmen had felt that leadership in the reconstruction of Asia belonged to them by virtue of preoccupation. Ardent republicans, moreover, still regarded France's mission as incomplete even in the liberalizing of the Continent; and the Department of Marine under the Directory stamped its paper with the motto, "Liberty of the Seas." Imaginative forces, the revolutionary system, and the national ambition all combined to create ubiquitous enthusiasm for the conquest of the Mediterranean. To this the temperament and training of Bonaparte were as the spark to the tinder. It was with willing ears that the Directory heard his first suggestions about the Venetian isles, and subsequently his plans for the capture of Malta, which was to be followed by a death-blow to England's supremacy in the Levant by the seizure of Egypt and the dismemberment of Turkey.
As early as May fourteenth, 1797, a letter from the conqueror of Italy informed the Directory what naval stores they might hope to secure in the dismemberment of Venice; in the previous year similar estimates had been made with regard to Genoa, Tuscany, and Naples. It was with a Franco-Venetian fleet that Gentili established French administration in the Ionian Isles, whose people, weary of Venetian tyranny, welcomed him as a liberator. The more intelligent among them desired home rule under French protection; the gratitude of the ignorant was shown in the erection of rude shrines where lamps were kept alight before pictures of Bonaparte. About the same time the discontented Greeks on the mainland were given to understand that the great annihilator of tyrants would gladly hear their cries. For months an extensive secret correspondence was carried on between the French headquarters in Italy and the disaffected in Turkey, wherever found. No fewer than three rebellious pashas were ready to seek French assistance; and one of them, he of Janina, had actually twelve thousand men in the field. The archives of the French foreign office abound in careful studies by its diplomatic agents of the revolutionary forces and elements in the Ottoman empire. Ways and means to dissolve the ancient friendship between France and the Porte were discussed; a political program, based on the maltreatment of French merchants in the Levant and the scandals of Mameluke administration in Egypt, was elaborated; and on September thirteenth, 1797, the first formal proposition for the seizure of that country was made by Bonaparte to Talleyrand, now minister of foreign affairs. The government at Paris redoubled its energies, and recruited its powers, for the object in view.
In fact, after Fructidor there is a ring in the words of Bonaparte's letters, especially those to Talleyrand, which shows how risky it would have been to neglect his unexpressed but evident wishes. The sum of four hundred thousand dollars, sent from Italy in the previous year for fitting out the fleet, had been used for another purpose, much to the irritation of Bonaparte, whose language in regard to the upbuilding of a sea power had been vigorous. At last, by his contributions of material from Italy, and the efforts of the administration at home, something had been accomplished. Admiral Brueys was in the Adriatic with a force able, it was believed, to meet even the English. By clever diplomacy the Spaniards and Neapolitans had been set to neutralize each other. With time the latter had grown bold, and were making extortionate demands. The Directory offered to send five thousand French soldiers to reinforce the Spanish army which was contending with Portugal, if an equal number of the Spanish troops in Italy would mingle with the French soldiers to conquer the Papal States. The latter would then be given to the Duke of Parma, in return for his old duchy, which was to form part of the new republic.
In this far-reaching design of Bonaparte's—a plan which comprehended the whole basin of the Mediterranean, and which, by throwing French troops into Spain, opened the way for further interference in that peninsula—lies the germ of all his future dealing with the Castilian monarchy. The focal point of the whole system, he had explained as early as May, was the island of Malta, the citadel of the Mediterranean. The grand master of the Knights was at the point of death; the King of Naples claimed the island as an ancient appanage, but a German was the most prominent of his order among the candidates for the succession. Bonaparte's proposal was that the Maltese should first be bribed to revolt, and that then the French or Spanish fleet should seize Valetta, compel the election of a Spaniard, and thus secure a bulwark in the heart of the Mediterranean against Turkey on one side and England on the other.
Such were some of the summer's avocations; its real business was supposed to be the conclusion of a peace with the empire. But Austria was far from being exhausted, and her agents protracted the negotiations while the Vienna government was recruiting its forces, hoping all the time for a triumph of the royalist party in Paris. Until after the eighteenth of Fructidor this was not entirely distasteful to Bonaparte, in view of the desire of Carnot for peace on the basis of the preliminaries. Nevertheless, a spirited comedy was playing all the time, Bonaparte mystifying both Merveldt, one of the Austrian plenipotentiaries, and Clarke, who had finally been admitted to the negotiations as agent of the Directory, by outbursts of feigned impatience, while, by pretended confidences, he coquetted with Gallo, who, though the second Austrian plenipotentiary, was a Neapolitan, minister from that kingdom to Vienna, and has by some been thought to have been Bonaparte's own creature, and to have accepted his bribes. Attempted bribery and counter-bribery, at any rate, there were; for the conqueror himself received from Francis the offer of a principality in the empire with not less than two hundred and fifty thousand subjects, and an independent income. Had the German emperor known the projects of his opponent he would have reviled himself as an artless simpleton. In May it was agreed that the congress to determine the territorial transfers within the Germanic body should sit, not at Bern, but at Rastadt in Baden. But the demands of the conqueror in amplification of the articles signed at Leoben were then so extortionate that the Austrian minister for foreign affairs doubted the good faith of his representatives, and recalled from Russia Count Cobenzl, his most learned, accomplished, and skilful diplomatist, in order to secure something like equality in the negotiations. This gave a temporary pause to the proceedings, which dragged on without significance until after Fructidor, when Barras wrote from Paris: "Peace, peace, but an honorable and lasting one. No more of Carnot's worthless suggestions."
When, therefore, the negotiations were again renewed in the first days of September, Bonaparte earnestly longed for at least a temporary peace. He arranged that the plenipotentiaries should meet at Udine, not far from his military headquarters at Passariano, so that he might secure the greatest possible advantage from the attitude of a conqueror ready at a moment to resume hostilities. The Directory, suspecting that Clarke had become too facile an instrument in the hands of the ambitious soldier, chose this moment to recall him. For a month the conflict of wits between the formal diplomatists and the determined, unhampered French general was hot and furious. Even the veteran Cobenzl, who did not arrive until September twenty-sixth, was but a toy in Bonaparte's hands. More than once the latter had recourse to his old tactics of barbaric rudeness, and once, toward the close, he wilfully brought on a fit of anger, in which by accident he dashed from its stand a porcelain tray, the gift of Catherine II to Cobenzl. The legend ran that as he caught up his hat, he hissed out the words: "In less than a month I shall have shattered your monarchy like this!" and then flung out of the room, declaring that the truce was ended. In fact, no one seems to have paid any attention to the crash at all. Cobenzl wrote that Bonaparte behaved like a crazy man, and the French officers had difficulty in soothing their general. Whether the nervous attack were real or feigned no one can say: at subsequent crises in diplomacy there recurred others, very similar. Both sides were anxious to make the doubtful language of Leoben as elastic as possible—each, naturally enough, for its own advantage. Proposition and counter-proposition, rejoinder and surrejoinder, followed one another through those weeks so pregnant of consequence to both sides. Twice it appeared as if no conclusion could be reached, and as if a breach were imminent. Once, marching orders for the invading army were actually prepared and in part issued. But the season was inclement and to Marmont his general confided a sense of uneasiness regarding Augereau's appointment on the Rhine. Both parties realized that neither could secure all they claimed without delay, or a possible renewal of warfare. They determined, therefore, to brave their respective governments, and entirely to disregard both Prussian and German feeling as to the Rhine boundary. Finally a compromise was made, and on the seventeenth of October at midnight, after a long social reunion of the plenipotentiaries; in the dark, Bonaparte telling ghost stories, and making the scene generally dramatic and even theatrical, the treaty was engrossed and signed, being dated from Campo Formio, a hamlet neutralized for the purpose. The negotiators parted with the exchange of friendly greetings.
The terms were far more favorable to France than in all probability Bonaparte had hoped to obtain. The Austrian Netherlands with the Rhine frontier from Basel to Andernach were surrendered by the Emperor, and in token of good faith the commanding fortress of Mainz was immediately to be delivered into French hands. In return Bonaparte ceded the Italian lands eastward from the Adige, by the head of the Adriatic, to the frontiers of Dalmatia, including, of course, the city of Venice. France kept the Ionian Islands and the Venetian factories opposite on the mainland. All the Venetian territory to the west of the Adige, together with Mantua, Modena, Lombardy, Massa-e-Carrara, Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna, was incorporated into the new Cisalpine Republic; and Genoa, receiving from the Emperor the remnants of his feudal rights in the surrounding country, was transformed into the Ligurian Republic, with a constitution similar to that of the Cisalpine. The various arrangements for the redistribution of German lands necessary to compensate princes who must abandon territories on the left bank of the Rhine were to be made by the congress to be held at Rastadt. French plenipotentiaries, under Bonaparte's leadership, were to be members of the congress; while Rastadt, as a border town, and therefore more favorable to French interests than Bern, was to be further neutralized by the departure of the Emperor's troops from all German lands except his own hereditary dominions. When the news of Campo Formio reached Vienna, the peace party was delighted, and the populace broke out in a jubilee. But Thugut was not deceived. "Peace! Peace!" said he. "Where is it? I cannot recognize it in this treaty."