1797—98

Accordingly, what might have been foreseen actually occurred. Augereau, during the autumn of 1797, sought to emulate in southwestern Germany the political policy initiated by Bonaparte in Italy. But his rude blundering compelled his recall, a step which was softened by his transfer to the Pyrenees, where an army stood ready to intervene in Spain whenever opportunity should be ripe. The movement in Germany spent itself in shameless plundering both east and west of the Rhine—a double disgrace in view of the fact that the war was ended, that Mainz was surrendered, that the whole left bank, though not yet formally ceded, was in French control; and that the Congress of Rastadt was discussing how the princes who had surrendered their possessions to France should be compensated within the boundaries of the empire.

The course of affairs in the Low Countries was equally disastrous to the prestige of the Revolution. Holland had not only lost all her colonies, including the Cape of Good Hope, by her compulsory enrolment in the republican system, but at Camperdown on October eleventh, 1797, the fleet of the Batavian Republic was battered to pieces by that of England under Duncan. The new commonwealth was thus rendered contemptible, and made entirely dependent on France. Twenty-five thousand soldiers were already quartered on the Dutch, and now they were held to enormous contributions of ships, money, and men for the proposed landing in England. Delacroix and Joubert were the respective civil and military agents in these exactions.

Bonaparte's departure from Italy made no change in French policy or conduct with regard to her. The Venetian possessions had been literally stripped by Berthier of every valuable article before their definitive surrender to Austria. Formal negotiations for a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with the Cisalpine Republic were opened as soon as the new state was recognized, but the same pillage continued as during its conquest. By that treaty, which was not concluded until March, 1798, the new "free" state was bound to support twenty-five thousand French troops, and to raise nearly four million dollars a year to pay them. As to the new Ligurian Republic, its boundaries were incomplete without Piedmont. Before the end of June, 1798, revolutionary fires having been kindled in Turin by the old efficient methods, two French armies under Jacobin generals seized Piedmont, and incorporated it with the other "free" state, which was then bound to France in the same terms as Cisalpina. Charles Emmanuel, having thus lost all his possessions on the mainland, retired to Sardinia, where he was destined to become, under protection of the English fleet, the focus of a new coalition against France.

Rome had called to her service, for the reorganization of her army, Provera, one of the Austrian generals who had been active in the last campaign. Joseph Bonaparte demanded his dismissal. This spark fired the revolutionary spirit of the few determined liberals at the capital, and a rising took place in which General Duphot, who was expecting soon to become Joseph's brother-in-law, was killed. The insurgents were defeated, and sought refuge in the French Embassy. The papal authorities humbled themselves to make restitution, but Joseph would not be appeased, and demanded his passports. Within a month, on February tenth, 1798, Berthier and his soldiers entered the Eternal City, and proclaimed the Roman Republic. With no consideration for his estimable personal character, the French agents stripped Pius VI, the aged and feeble Pope, of all his jewels: his very rings were drawn from his fingers by their hands. The papal government was declared at an end, and the cardinals were forbidden to elect a successor. The Pope himself was allowed to withdraw to Siena; but disappointing his captors' expectations of his speedy demise, he was removed at their convenience from place to place, until at last he died in the following year at Valence. Naples, of course, was in an agony of fear, but her hour had not yet struck.

Finally the flames caught in Switzerland, where the democratic district of Vaud declared its independence of the Bernese aristocracy. The fire was fanned by Bonaparte's agent, Peter Ochs, the liberal burgomaster of Basel. France intervened, nominally in order to compel Bern to liberate all her political prisoners and to emancipate Vaud, but really to plunder and remodel the whole country. The entering army pillaged friend and foe alike. The desperate resistance of Bern, in which even women and children shared, was of no avail. At its close the Helvetian Republic was constituted under a new charter, like those of Cisalpina and Batavia; it likewise entered at once into an offensive and defensive alliance with France. Bern's indemnity was the surrender of her "treasure," or cash reserve—a sum of one million three hundred thousand dollars. Swiss historians state that besides the cash there were nearly two and a half million dollars in bonds. A fifth of this was sent at once to Toulon, where the fleet was fitting out; the rest went to the army and its commander, General Brune. Fribourg, Solothurn, and Zurich were likewise stripped for the benefit of the military chest. It is thought that from all the enormous sums seized during the winter nothing reached the national treasury. Napoleon in exile declared that Paris knew nothing of all this. But more serious still were the contemplated changes of territory. The Valtellina had already been incorporated with the Cisalpine Republic; the Frick valley was soon to be delivered to Austria along with the Inn Quarter; and eventually Geneva, with the upper Rhone valley, was to become a part of France itself, in order that the Simplon, another gateway into Italy, might be assured to her armies in case the difficult passes on the Mediterranean shore should ever be closed.[4]

The effect of all this upon the politics of Europe was like that of a torch in dead stubble. The German-Roman Empire was an antiquated institution. Prussia had risen to importance as the representative of a new Protestant German nationality. Frederick the Great, inheriting his shrewd father's army and policy, thoroughly understood that for the attainment of this end Roman Catholic Austria must be humbled and reduced to a secondary position. His success was only partial, but it was so far effective. The relations between these two great rivals in the Germanic body, therefore, were so strained that Prussia, in her antagonism to Austria, naturally leaned toward France. But the seizure of German lands not only on the west bank of the Rhine, but of some even on the eastern side, together with the behavior of the French armies not only in southwestern Germany, but again in Bern, created consternation at Berlin. Sieyès was sent to allay, if possible, the fears of Frederick William III, and to woo him to the French alliance. Meantime, the radical Directory, looking on the ecclesiastical principalities of the empire as anachronisms, had been planning their entire secularization. This would indemnify the secular powers; and the sentiment of both Prussia and Austria favored this solution of the problem. But Bonaparte, foreseeing that temporarily it would also unify public opinion in Germany, and give France no ground for meddling, had declared in Italy that if the Germanic body were non-existent, France should create it for her own purposes; and he impressed upon the French plenipotentiaries at Rastadt how important it was that they should at least prevent a complete secularization of the great bishoprics.

This was the first bone of contention thrown into that Congress; and Austria soon began to see that the treaty of Campo Formio was to be not merely an armistice, but a very short one. Bonaparte had formed in Italy a legion of five thousand Poles. They were still under arms, awaiting the event. It was notorious that French agents were fomenting discontent in both Poland and Hungary. The Army of Italy had carefully spared the hereditary dominions of the Emperor while hurrying toward Leoben, and Bonaparte, repressing pillage with relentless severity, had explained that France made war not with the good people of Europe, but with their tyrannical dynasties. Even in Carinthia some enthusiasm for revolutionary principles had been created. Thugut had cleverly prevented Clarke from entering Vienna, because he feared the presence of a republican among the inflammable elements of that city. Francis had refused, on the conclusion of peace, to send a diplomatic agent to Paris, because he did not wish for reciprocity, and was anxious lest a French minister, if received at Vienna, might there create such a focus of revolutionary agitation as existed wherever a French embassy had been established. But now it was suddenly announced that the French republic had accredited Bernadotte to his court. The report was true, instructions having been given that the envoy suggest a dismemberment of Turkey in lieu of the further indemnity Francis expected, and ascertain how the reconstruction of Poland would be regarded. He was to prevent Austria's interference in behalf of Rome, and to insist on being treated with the same punctilio as had been shown to the royal ambassadors of France. On the other hand, for the sake of the radicals among the Fructidorians, he was to be conciliatory, because it was of vital importance that France should learn the inner workings of the court of Vienna before war broke out again, especially if the directors were to forestall Bonaparte's complete ascendancy. There is not a scintilla of evidence that, as some have suggested, Barras, Sieyès, or Talleyrand tampered with Bernadotte. He was still a rude soldier, and not the adroit man of affairs he afterward became. They could rely upon his making a mess of his mission, and he did so. In a haughty tone he at once demanded, as he had been instructed to do, the suppression of the Bourbon orders in Austria, and likewise the omission from the royal almanac of that family as reigning sovereigns of France. At the same time he made such an undue display of the tricolor and the republican cockade as to arouse all latent antagonisms to the Revolution. These and other similar indiscretions were successful in agitating the populace to such a degree that finally the embassy was attacked by a mob. Thoroughly frightened, and knowing that his mission regarding Poland and Turkey was in vain, Bernadotte demanded his recall. He returned to Paris, having, as was expected, brought the relations of France and Austria to the verge of rupture. Arriving in April, 1798, he was married soon afterward to Joseph Bonaparte's sister-in-law, who quickly comforted herself after the death of Duphot.[5]

By that time Prussia had been virtually checkmated; for although Sieyès could not bring the court of Berlin to make an alliance with the Directory, yet he had prevented her adhesion to its enemies, promising that revolutionary propaganda should cease in Germany. In return she agreed to observe the old strict neutrality, and to recognize the Cisalpine Republic. This decision has been severely criticized in recent years as a virtual delivery of herself to Napoleon after he should have devoured Austria. It has even been suggested that her statesmen ought to have looked a hundred years ahead, and should have anticipated by a century the Prussian alliance with the house of Savoy, which was at this later date the only liberal monarchy in Europe. As Europe was in 1798, such a conception was impossible.

In the spring of that year, therefore, everything presaged the general outbreak which was soon to occur. It may be that Bonaparte had foreordained it, and to the minutest detail had regulated events as they took place. Taking each division of them into separate consideration, a credulous admirer might believe that so much was within the ability of a single man; but the complexity of the whole makes the demoniac power to produce a crash in this way seem beyond the capacities of even a Bonaparte, although he may have cherished the desire for one. It is clear that he rode triumphant in the swift rush of the times, and took every possible advantage from the instability of European institutions in their moribund condition. To complete the picture of Europe in 1798, we must recall that Augereau was in the Pyrenees with forty thousand men, ready, when French agents should have done their work of agitation, to cross the border at a moment's notice, and liberate Spain from her Bourbon rulers. Such arbitrary emancipation was possible elsewhere. Why did it eventually fail in Spain? The answer is that there were no favorable antecedent conditions beyond the Pyrenees. All the strange story of transformation in Italy, in western and in northern Europe, would seem a lying fiction except for the memory of a still more thorough antecedent transformation in the spirit of their inhabitants by the intellectual ferment of the century. This spiritual and rationalizing movement had left Spain, Russia, and eastern Europe almost untouched. It was for this reason that the schemes of Bonaparte as to Poland and Turkey at once healed the breach between Russia and Austria, neither of which was deeply influenced by the idealism of the age, and both of which were prompted only by dynastic motives. Elsewhere Napoleon seemed like a magician; in those lands his spell was vain. In culture and intelligence England was an age ahead of him, as the others were an age behind him; and the two opposing forces of ignorance and enlightenment crushed him in the end like the upper and the nether millstone.