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be still more so. And the elimination of terrorists and conventionalists from the government was to be expected.

In this sinking state of its fortunes several events came to the aid of the Directory. The first was the folly of its enemies in conspiring and meditating violent revolution. The accomplices of Babœuf displayed to the citizens the spectre of the Terror behind. the more moderate tyranny of the Directory. And whilst the moderates carried on a constitutional opposition, the royalists plotted and concocted conspiracies not only for the overthrow of the government, but the restoration of royalty under its most objectionable form. In vain did constitutionalists, such as Thibaudeau, separate from those who actively conspired for royalty and dominated in the club of Clichy; they were implicated all the same, and all who opposed the Directory came to be confounded in the common and still odious appellation of royalist.

The majority of the civilian world was, however, decidedly adverse to the Directory, as the elections proved. But on the other hand the armies and the greater number of the generals upheld its cause. Pichegru indeed had placed himself at the head of the royalists, and Moreau who knew his treason, showed his impartiality by concealing it. But Hoche was violently republican, and what was more important, Bonaparte decidedly revolutionary. When he first took the command of the army in Italy, the Piedmontese general sent a French émigré to make some demands. Bonaparte caused him to be seized, and threatened to shoot him; and he would have fulfilled his threat but for the interference of the Directory. This shows how deeply imbued with revolutionary feeling was the young general, who indeed sufficiently evinced this in the battle against the Sectionaries. Royalism, in fact, would have closed the career which opened before him

CHAP.

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CHAP.
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and the soldiers born of the revolution. He already saw how vast that career might be, and he sent from himself and his armies zealous promises of support to Barras and his friends against the reactionists of the Assemblies.

If his splendid campaign of 1796 had raised Bonaparte's reputation to the highest, his mode of finishing the war in 1797 was calculated, if possible, to add to it. Whilst Moreau and his army were vainly endeavouring to save the little fortress of Kehl, Bonaparte, in the wintry month of March, set out to cross the Carinthian Alps to Vienna. The Archduke Charles had taken the command of the Austrian army, and large reinforcements were promised him. But ere they came, Bonaparte, who was at the head of 70,000 men, advanced against the enemy. He crossed the Piave on the 13th of March, and the Austrians were defeated on the Tagliamento, three days later. Seeing the march of the French, the Archduke Charles had hurried up with what force he could collect to defend the passage of the Alps at the Col de Tarvis. He there met Massena coming from the Tyrol, and a struggle ensued of equal gallantry between them, which terminated in the French retaining possession of the crest of the Alps. The French commander had by this time received his reinforcements from the Rhine; the Archduke Charles had not.

Whilst the French general was thus pushing his way victoriously into the German provinces of Austria, the Venetian towns, which the French had by their presence revolutionised, burst forth into insurrection against the capital. The authorities of the republic mustered what troops they had to reduce them. And the French

officers left behind, found it impossible not to support the insurgents. They had an easy excuse for this in the fact that the mountaineers and peasants of the Venetian territory, with their priests, armed against the revolutionists, with whom they confounded the French.

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And there arose a time of anarchy and mutual slaughter CHAP. which was universal: two hundred Poles belonging to the French army were massacred at Salo, and those French who happened to be isolated, fared no better. Bonaparte paused in his invasion of Austria to find some remedy for this disorder. He sent threats and offers alternately to the Venetian authorities, but these were equally powerless against French soldiers and native insurgents, and were quite unequal to the task of recovering their power or restoring order. Meantime, Bonaparte advanced and had encounters with the Archduke on the 1st and on the 3rd of April at Neumark, and at Unzmark. The latter was unable to resist, and at Leoben, on the 7th, plenipotentiaries arrived from Vienna to demand a suspension of arms, which Bonaparte consented to for five days. He had offered the Directory to continue the war, and press it to the gates of Vienna, if they would strongly reinforce him and put the armies on the Rhine in motion. But they hesitated, and showed at once a desire not to make peace, yet to refuse Bonaparte the means of dictating a more favourable one. He therefore signed the Preliminaries of Leoben. The Austrians offered to recognise the French Republic-Recognize the sun in heaven, observed Napoleon. They ceded Belgium and Lombardy, the former to be a French province, the latter to become a republic. Austria asked an indemnity for these losses, and France proposed giving it in the Venetian provinces all round the northern shore of the Adriatic, whilst Venice it offered to indemnify with the Papal Legations.

These had already become French. After the defeat of Alvinzi, and previous to his crossing the Tagliamento, General Bonaparte had marched an army into the Roman territories. Ample proofs had been discovered of the full complicity of the papal government with the

*Bourrienne.

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CHAP. Austrians, which was natural enough, as the French had long since seized Bologna. Some papal soldiers and more priests under the conduct of a cardinal, attempted to resist the French. The latter pushed their way to Ancona, and from thence by Loretto to Rome. Bonaparte was puzzled as to how he should treat the pope. The Directory were for annihilating what constituted the unity of the Catholic church. But to do this, the French should occupy Rome permanently, and Austria was yet in arms. Bonaparte first proposed giving Rome to Spain, but he thought better of it. Bonaparte felt a respect for all the elements of power. However he might have come to Italy a mere Jacobin, his sojourn, with the practical experience of government and its necessities, which he there acquired, his negotiations with foreign powers, and the knowledge which he was called upon to acquire and to weigh of their nature and services, had greatly modified in him that policy of mere revolutionary instinct, which still actuated the then dominant members of the Directory. He therefore altogether swerved from their order to persecute priests and destroy the popedom. He held out on the contrary a protecting hand to the poor French refugee ecclesiastics. And whilst he shore the pope of the Legations and Ancona, stripped our Lady of Loretto of her jewels, and sent her wooden image to Paris, he showed such respect for the spiritual power, that when told that the Inquisition was now purely spiritual, he refrained from insisting on its abolition. Rome submitted to these terms, and the heavy payment and sacrifice of its best works of art in the treaty of Tolentino (Feb. 19th, 1797).

*

It is singular enough that all Bonaparte's policy in Italy should thus be in real accord with that of the moderates and constitutionalists in Paris, whilst yet he

See his Correspondence.

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and they denounced each other, they treating him as a CHAP. Jacobin, he spurning them as royalist. The first question which formed the ground of quarrel in the Cinq Cents and Ancients, was the treatment of nobles, of priests, and of those prosecuted by the revolution. The Thermidoriens of the Directory, and the Conventionalists of the Assemblies were for maintaining the old revolutionary enactments, exiling priests, prosecuting nobles, and excluding from office all who had emigrated, or been connected with emigration. The Constitutionalists were for abrogating or modifying those severe laws, and were for allowing priests to ring their bells and perform their rites. When Sièyes concocted a law of puritanic democracy to banish the well-born, the majority of the public as well as the Assemblies scouted it. During the terror those who dominated had forcibly imposed upon children brought to be registered the names of Marat, Clootz, and Sans-culottes. The Moderates wanted to allow persons to change these odious names; not so the Directory. In a host of minor matters, national guard, observation of the decade, or tenth day, instead of Sunday, wearing of cockades and so forth, the Directory employed its police to enforce what the people universally rejected. The revolutionary tyranny in minute matters survived the guillotine. The sceptre of the Directory was, as Bonaparte expressed it, "of lead."

In Italy the general reversed the Directorial policy. He took the poor exiled French priests under his protection, and refused to sacrifice the Pope to the Theophilanthropy of La Réveillère. When the Genoese in framing their new republic proposed to banish their noblesse, Bonaparte told them, that to proscribe any one class of citizens was just as pernicious and unjust as to proscribe another class.*

Bonaparte's principle of foreign policy was equally

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