The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4). William Milligan Sloane
of the year 1796, therefore, the situation of France was quite as distracting as ever, and the foundation of her institutions more than ever unstable. There was hopeless division in the executive, and no coördination under the constitution between it and the other branches of the government, while the legislature did not represent the people. The treasury was empty, famine was as wide-spread as ever, administration virtually non-existent. The army, checked for the moment, moped unsuccessful, dispirited, and unpaid. Hunger knows little discipline, and with temporary loss of discipline the morals of the troops had been undermined. To save the constitution public opinion must be diverted from internal affairs, and conciliated. To that end the German emperor must be forced to yield the Rhine frontier, and money must be found at least for the most pressing necessities of the army and of the government. If the republic could secure for France her natural borders, and command a peace by land, it might hope for eventual success in the conflict with England. To this end its territorial conquests must be partitioned into three classes: those within the "natural limits," and already named, for incorporation; those to be erected into buffer states to fend off from the tender republic absolutism and all its horrors; and finally such districts as might be valuable for exchange in order to the eventual consolidation of the first two classes. Of the second type, the Directory considered as most important the Germanic Confederation. There was the example of Catherine's dealing with Poland by which to proceed. As that had been partitioned, so should Germany. From its lands should be created four electorates, one to indemnify the House of Orange for Holland, one for Würtemberg; the others according to circumstances would be confided to friendly hands.
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.
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.