CHAPTER XI

MARENGO: LUNÉVILLE

RESERVING for the next chapter a description of the new civil institutions of France, it will be convenient now to turn to foreign affairs. Having arranged the most urgent of domestic questions, the First Consul was ready to encounter the forces of the Second Coalition. He had already won golden opinions in France by endeavouring peacefully to dissolve it. On the 25th of December, 1799, he sent two courteous letters, one to George III., the other to the Emperor Francis, proposing an immediate end to the war. The close of the letter to George III. has been deservedly admired: "France and England by the abuse of their strength may, for the misfortune of all nations, be long in exhausting it but I venture to declare that the fate of all civilized nations is concerned in the termination of a war which kindles a conflagration over the whole world." This noble sentiment touched the imagination of France and of friends of peace everywhere.

And yet, if the circumstances of the time be considered, the first agreeable impressions aroused by the perusal of this letter must be clouded over by doubts. The First

Consul had just seized on power by illegal and forcible means, and there was as yet little to convince foreign States that he would hold it longer than the men whom he had displaced. Moreover, France was in a difficult. position. Her treasury was empty; her army in Italy was being edged into the narrow coast-line near Genoa; and her oriental forces were shut up in their new conquest. Were not the appeals to Austria and England merely a skilful device to gain time? Did his past career in Italy and Egypt warrant the belief that he would abandon the peninsula and the new colony? Could the man who had

bartered away Venetia and seized Malta and Egypt be fitly looked upon as the world's peacemaker? In diplomacy men's words are interpreted by their past conduct and present circumstances, neither of which tended to produce confidence in Bonaparte's pacific overtures; and neither Francis nor George III. looked on the present attempt as anything but a skilful means of weakening the Coalition.

Indeed, that league was, for various reasons, all but dissolved by internal dissensions. Austria was resolved to

keep all the eastern part of Piedmont and the greater part of the Genoese Republic. While welcoming the latter half of this demand, George III.'s Ministers protested against the absorption of so great a part of Piedmont as an act of cruel injustice to the King of Sardinia. Austria was annoyed at the British remonstrances and was indignant at the designs of the Czar on Corsica. Accordingly no time could have been better chosen by Bonaparte for seeking to dissolve the Coalition, as he certainly hoped to do by these two letters. Only the staunch support of legitimist claims by England then prevented the Coalition from degenerating into a scramble for Italian territories. And, if we may trust the verdict of contemporaries and his own confession at St. Helena, Bonaparte never expected any other result from these letters than an increase of his popularity in France. This was enhanced by the British reply, which declared that His Majesty could not place his reliance on "general professions of pacific dispositions": France had waged aggressive war, levied exactions, and overthrown institutions in neighbouring States; and the British Government could not as yet discern any abandonment of this system: something more was required for a durable peace: "The best and most natural pledge of its reality and permanence would be the restoration of that line of princes which for so many centuries maintained the French nation in prosperity at home and in consideration and respect abroad." This answer has been sharply criticised, and justly so, if its influence on public opinion

1" F. O.," Austria, No. 58; "Castlereagh's Despatches," v. ad init. Bowman, in his excellent monograph, "Preliminary Stages of the Peace of Amiens" (Toronto, 1899), has not noted this.

be alone considered. But a perusal of the British Foreign Office Records reveals the reason for the use of these stiffly legitimist claims. Legitimacy alone promised to stop the endless shiftings of the political kaleidoscope, whether by France, Austria, or Russia. Our ambassador at Vienna was requested to inform the Government of Vienna of the exact wording of the British reply:

"As a proof of the zeal and steadiness with which His Majesty adheres to the principles of the Confederacy, and as a testimony of the confidence with which he anticipates a similar answer from His Imperial Majesty, to whom an overture of a similar nature has without doubt been made."

But this correct conduct, while admirably adapted to prop up the tottering Coalition, was equally favourable to the consolidation of Bonaparte's power. It helped to band together the French people to resist the imposition of their exiled royal house by external force. Even George III. thought it "much too strong," though he suggested no alteration. At once Bonaparte retorted in a masterly note; he ironically presumed that His Britannic Majesty admitted the right of nations to choose their form of government, since only by that right did he wear the British crown; and he invited him not to apply to other peoples a principle which would recall the Stuarts to the throne of Great Britain.

Bonaparte's diplomatic game was completely won during the debates on the King's speech at Westminster at the close of January, 1800. Lord Grenville laboriously proved that peace was impossible with a nation whose war was against all order, religion, and morality; and he cited examples of French lawlessness from Holland and Switzerland to Malta and Egypt. Pitt declared that the French Revolution was the severest trial which Providence had ever yet inflicted on the nations of the earth; and, claiming that there was no security in negotiating with France, owing to her instability, he summed up his case in the Ciceronian phrase: Pacem nolo quia infida. Ministers carried the day by 260 votes to 64; but they ranged nearly the whole of France on the side of the First Consul. No triumph in the field was worth more to him than these

Philippics, which seemed to challenge France to build up a strong Government in order that the Court of St. James might find some firm foundation for future negotiations.

Far more dextrous was the conduct of the Austrian diplomatists. Affecting to believe in the sincerity of the First Consul's proposal for peace, they so worded their note as to draw from him a reply that he was prepared to discuss terms of peace on the basis of the Treaty of Campo Formio.1 As Austria had since then conquered the greater part of Italy, Bonaparte's reply immediately revealed his determination to reassert French supremacy in Italy and the Rhineland. The action of the Courts of

Vienna and London was not unlike that of the sun and the wind, in the proverbial saw. Viennese suavity induced Bonaparte to take off his coat and show himself as he really was: while the conscientious bluster of Grenville and Pitt made the First Consul button up his coat, and pose as the buffeted peacemaker.

The allies had good grounds for confidence. Though Russia had withdrawn from the Second Coalition, yet the Austrians continued their victorious advance in Italy. In April, 1800, they severed the French forces near Savona, driving back Suchet's corps towards Nice, while the other was gradually hemmed in behind the redoubts of Genoa. There the Imperialist advance was stoutly stayed. Masséna, ably seconded by Oudinot and Soult, who now gained their first laurels as generals, maintained a most obstinate resistance, defying alike the assaults of the white-coats, the bombs hurled by the English squadron, and the deadlier inroads of famine and sickness. The garrison dwindled by degrees to less than 10,000 effectives, but they kept double the number of Austrians there, while Bonaparte was about to strike a terrible blow against their rear and that of Melas further west. It was for this that the First Consul urged Masséna to hold out at Genoa to the last extremity, and nobly was the order obeyed.

Suchet meanwhile defended the line of the River Var against Melas. In Germany, Moreau with his larger forces

1 "Nap. Correspond.," February 27th, 1800; Thugut, "Briefe," vol. ii., pp. 444-446; Oncken, “Zeitalter," vol. ii., p. 45.

slowly edged back the chief Austrian army, that of General Kray, from the defiles of the Black Forest, compelling it to fall back on the intrenched camp at Ulm.

On their side, the Austrians strove to compel Masséna to a speedy surrender, and then with a large force to press on into Nice, Provence, and possibly Savoy, surrounding Suchet's force, and rousing the French royalists of the south to a general insurrection. They also had the promise of the help of a British force, which was to be landed at some point on the coast and take Suchet in the flank or rear. Such was the plan, daring in outline and promising great things, provided that everything went well. If Masséna surrendered, if the British War Office and Admiralty worked up to time, if the winds were favourable, and if the French royalists again ventured on a revolt, then France would be crippled, perhaps conquered. As for the French occupation of Switzerland and Moreau's advance into Swabia, that was not to prevent the prosecution of the original Austrian plan of advancing against Provence and wresting Nice and Savoy from the French grasp. This scheme has been criticised as if it were based solely on military considerations; but it was rather dictated by schemes of political aggrandizement. The conquest of Nice and Savoy was necessary to complete the ambitious schemes of the Hapsburgs, who sought to gain a large part of Piedmont at the expense of the King of Sardinia, and after conquering Savoy and Nice, to thrust that unfortunate king to the utmost verge of the peninsula, which the prowess of his descendants has ultimately united under the Italian tricolour.

The allied plan sinned against one of the elementary rules of strategy; it exposed a large force to a blow from the rear, namely, from Switzerland. The importance of

1 A Foreign Office despatch, dated Downing Street, February 8th, 1800, to Vienna, promised a loan and that 15,000 or 20,000 British troops should be employed in the Mediterranean to act in concert with the Austrians there, and to give "support to the royalist insurrections in the southern provinces of France." No differences of opinion respecting Piedmont can be held a sufficient excuse for the failure of the British Government to fulfil this promise- a failure which contributed to the disaster at Marengo.