reau, Pichegru, Marceau, and other excellent officers, were first promoted by these deputies. The army of Italy, indeed, when Buonaparte assumed the command, had received so little instruction, that the regiments were unable to execute, with precision, the most common manoeuvres. The officers were, for the most part, violent jacobins, without much skill, but young, active, and full of ardour; and their new commander-in-chief, at that time only twenty-eight years of age, with a constitution capable of enduring every fatigue, and a mind impatient of repose, lost no time in convincing his troops of his determination to exert the almost unlimited power with which the Directory had invested him. A month had not elapsed when, his army being tolerably organized, he prepared to commence his operation against the Austrians and Sardinians The allies were, at first, superior in numbers to the French, whose whole force did not amount to 60,000 men. The Austrian soldiers were excellent, and Beaulieu, who commanded them, enjoyed a brilliant reputation. But the want of concert between him and General Colli retarded the operations of both, whilst Buonaparte, always on the alert, making his attacks from day to day, sacrificing, without scruple, the lives of his men, advanced almost without a halt. Hostilities had commenced on the 9th of April, and on the 29th the French General, after gaining the battles of Montenotte, Millesimo, Dego, Vico, and Mondovi, signed a treaty, by which the King of Sardinia surrendered, as the price of a suspension of arms, the fortresses of Coni and Tortona, and thus enabled him to employ his whole force against the Austrians. Beaulieu, inactive from age, and compelled to rely on the generals of his staff, by some of whom he is supposed to have been betrayed, was occupied in preparing to defend the passage of the Tisino, when the French, on the 7th of May, suddenly passed the Po near Piacenza. He then took a position on the Adda opposite to Lodi, but, with a degree of negligence quite unaccountable, suffered the bridge to remain, and was, on the 10th of May, after an obstinate contest, completely defeated. After these two victories, for which Buonaparte was indebted partly, perhaps, to the treachery of Beaulieu's counsellors, and partly to the intrepidity of Generals Lannes and Lallemagne, the Austrians enjoyed an unexpected respite of eighteen days, during which they threw a supply of provisions into Mantua, and retreated across the Mincio, whilst the French commander, having participated in the festivities which attended his triumphant entry into Milan, issued his orders for the destruction of the inhabitants of Pavia and the neighbouring country, whom the rapacity of his troops had driven to despair and insurrection. surrection. It was not till the 29th that he again attacked the enemy; and even then, having neglected to preoccupy the road to Trent, suffered them to retire, with little loss, into the Tyrol. The conduct of Buonaparte, on this part of the campaign, is severely criticized by his present biographer; but it appears to us that his measures, however censurable in a military point of view, were perfectly consistent with his ultimate objects. If, as we are taught to believe, he had found the means of corrupting not only some principal officers in the Austrian army, but even persons in the immediate confidence of Thugut, he must have been able to. estimate exactly the inconvenience which might arise from retarding the progress of his victories. To provide the means of continuing a system of corruption so prodigal and so extensive; to furnish the pay of his own troops; and to satisfy the greedy demands of his own government; must have been objects of more immediate and urgent necessity than to crush a beaten enemy, and thus to shorten the duration of a war which insured to him a continued harvest of triumphs. Having caused Mantua to be invested, Buonaparte devoted his whole attention to plunder. He raised heavy contributions on the countries on both sides of the Po, exacted from the Pope a tribute of twenty-one millions of livres as the price of an armistice, and, at the same time, took possession of Ancona, and occupied Leghorn. The King of Sardinia, and the Dukes of Parma and Modena, had already purchased from him, by enormous sacrifices of treasure, those treaties of peace which, in fact, surrendered the lives and fortunes of their subjects to the French Republic. In the mean time, the Austrians, under the command of General Wurmser, had attacked the French on both banks of the Lake of Garda, driven them from the posts of Sala and La Corona, occupied Brescia and Verona, and beaten nearly half of the French army. Buonaparte was compelled to raise the siege of Mantua, leaving behind him one hundred and fifty pieces of heavy cannon; he even discussed with his generals the propriety of retreating to the Adda, and had the appearance of yielding to the advice of Augereau when he determined to risk the battle of Castiglione, which, after a contest of six days, from the 3d to the 9th of August, ended in the complete defeat of the Austrians. That Buonaparte was indebted for this victory to the false combinations of the enemy, who scattered his force too much, and suffered himself to be drawn into a general action, instead of cutting off the left of the French army, by a single attack on Brescia, may be true; that all the steadiness of the French troops, the rash audacity of their generals, and the alertness and skill of their commander-in-chief, were barely sufficient to make amends for the late ness ness of these exertions, may be also true; but it is, therefore, the more probable that the delay was, in the opinion of Buonaparte, indispensible, since it is well known that his avarice has always been subordinate to his ambition. Wurmser retreated into Mantua on the 12th of September; and the court of Vienna determined to make a fresh effort to save that last bulwark of their power in Italy. Had the Archduke Charles, after driving Jourdan before him, and compelling Moreau to repass the Rhine, taken the command against Buonaparte, instead of losing his time before the fort of Kehl, it is the opinion of cur author that the tide of success might have turned against the French. But though the veteran Wurmser had succeeded as ill as the veteran Beaulieu, the court of Vienna seems to have persisted in the belief that a proper antagonist for the young and ardent commander of the French, could only be found amongst generals of seventy years of age. It is true that Alvinzi repulsed Buonaparte at Caldero, and at Arcole; but his slowness in following up the blow enabled his adversary to disconcert all his operations, to gain the important and sanguinary battle of Rivoli, to intercept the detachment under Provera which was sent to the relief of Mantua, and to force Wurmser to capitulate on the 30th of January, 1797. The astonishing series of successes which had accompanied the army of Italy, not only increased the power and reputation of the commander-in-chief, but reflected so much lustre on the Directory, and particularly ou Barras, by whom that commander was appointed, that it was determined to place, under the command of Buonaparte, a force more proportionate to his great designs; and a body of 30,000 troops, selected from the armies of the Rhine, was detached, for this purpose, towards the close of the year 1796. On the other hand, the Austrians reinforced, as well as they could, the army of Alvinzi, and the command was bestowed, but too late, on the Archduke Charles. Buonaparte, exactly informed of the councils of Vienna, calculated that he had still time to punish the Pope for his refusal to execute the conditions of the armistice of Bologna. Having first ordered General Victor to seize the treasure at Loretto, he marched, with a body of troops, as far as Tolentino, where, on the 19th of February, he signed the peace by which a large portion of the Papal dominions was surrendered to the Republic, and immediate payment of fifteen millions of livres stipulated, ten in money and five in diamonds. The latter were offered, by the Directory, to Buonaparte, who was at that time possessed of at least fifty millions of livres, placed in the hands of his bankers at Milan and other places. The Archduke was preparing to commence offensive operations, when he was prevented by his adversary, who now found himself strong strong enough to carry the war into the heart of the Austrian dominions, and who effected his purpose with a celerity which an army discouraged by a long series of defeats was unable to check. It is possible, that had the court of Vienna possessed more firmness, Buonaparte might have exposed himself to very considerable risks by this adventurous march, because the heroism of the Tyrolese, the repulse of Joubert, and the revolt of Verona, which might have been followed by that of all the country in his rear, would have rendered a retreat extremely difficult. But he had already destroyed a great part of the Archduke's army; his approach to the vicinity of Vienna had spread general consternation; the overtures proposed in his letter from Klagenfurt of the 31st of March, were extremely moderate; Moreau and Hoche had effected the passage of the Rhine. The preliminaries of peace were signed at Leoben on the 14th of April, and the insurrection in the north of Italy had no other effect than to furnish an excuse for the plunder of Venice, and to swell the treasure of the victorious general. Posterity will scarcely believe that, in the course of little more than a year, a Corsican adventurer had acquired the means of dictating the conditions on which the most powerful sovereign in Europe should continue to retain a part of his hereditary dominions. Yet Buonaparte was by no means satisfied. He was the most distinguished, the wealthiest, and the most powerful individual in the Republic, but he wished to become the master of that Republic; and he was aware that numerous obstacles must be overcome before he could arrive at the accomplishment of his wishes. In France, at this time, the desire of peace was almost universal. There was, indeed, one faction, composed of men who had risen to power by their crimes, who had preserved it by violence, and who foresaw their own certain degradation from the establishment of order and tranquillity. But these Terrorists, though formidable from their actual power, their union, and their intrepidity in the commission of every crime, were by no means numerous. The mass of the nation were sincerely attached to the constitution, because they considered it as a security against the return of anarchy, and felt convinced that, so long as a seat in either of the councils, and even in the Directory continued to be elective, their government would be susceptible of progressive improvement. Peace, therefore, was ardently wished by the Republicans, because it would secure to them the duration of their liberties; and by the Royalists, because they hoped that the restoration of the regal government would not be difficult, whenever the people should be at liberty to make an option between an hereditary monarch and an elective directory. It It is plain that, if this state of things had been suffered to continue, the success of Buonaparte's hopes would have been nearly impossible. The approaching election of deputies would have annihilated the influence of the terrorists; and the constitution being once established, and the moderate party possessed of a great and steady majority in both the councils, the freedom of the press would have secured the people from being misled by the intrigues of a faction. To effect a revolution against the will of the nation would have been probably impracticable, because, even if the army of Italy, which was full of zealous republicans, had consented to adopt the views of their commander, the Republic would have been defended by still more numerous armies, who would have rallied round Pichegru, Moreau, and other able leaders. At this juncture, Buonaparte devised the plan which effectually answered all his purposes, by throwing the whole power of the state into the hands of three jacobin Directors until he should find himself in a situation to resume it. He had arrested, at Trieste, a confidential agent of the court of Russia, who was on his way from Venice to Petersburgh; and, having failed in the project of seizing his papers, he fabricated such as suited his purpose, one of which was a plan for the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne of France. The report of this discovery being disseminated amongst the troops, it was suggested to them that, at a moment when the Republic was in danger, it would be worthy the patriotic zeal of the army in Italy to transmit to the executive government a petition for the Maintenance of the Constitution. General Hoche received orders from the three Directors to march his army to Paris, and Augereau and Bernadotte were sent by Buonaparte to assist Barras in carrying the conspiracy into execution. That such a conspiracy should be completely successful; that Carnot, Pichegru, Willot, &c. who were aware that some plot was in agitation, who knew the characters of their opponents, and ought to have concluded that an armed force would be employed against them, should have trusted, in perfect security, to a safe-guard so precarious as the letter of a constitution, which the anarchists were known to despise, was scarcely to be expected. But Buonaparte's good fortune prevailed, and, on the 4th of September, 1797, (18th Brumaire, An 5,) Augereau, at the head of a column of troops, arrested at the Thuileries nearly all the deputies whom the terrorists had thought fit to proscribe. Paris, subjected to martial law, became, before the end of the day, perfectly quiet. The last elections of the people were annulled; the liberty of the press was abolished; the papers containing the pretended proofs of a royalist plot were published; Barthelemi, Pichegru, &c. were transported to Cayenne; and the despotism |