Kitabı oku: «The Influence of sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, vol I», sayfa 16

While these various events were transpiring at sea, from the evacuation of Corsica to the battle of St. Vincent, Bonaparte in Italy was still holding the line of the Adige and blockading Mantua. His posture therefore was essentially one of defence. The vigor and sagacity with which he resorted to offensive movements the instant the enemy drew down from the Tyrol to attack him, and the brilliant character of the victories won by him, obscure to most the fact that he was really on the defensive; holding on, amid risks and discouragements, to the conquests already made, and unable to attempt more until Mantua fell. The glories of Castiglione, Arcola, Rivoli, conceal this crucial feature of his situation, and the consequently important bearing of the presence of the British fleet, encouraging the dispositions of Naples and the Pope, which were distinctly hostile to the French. Nothing less than Bonaparte's energy and genius could have grappled successfully with such a situation; and his correspondence betrays his fear that, by the co-operation of the fleet, these dangers in the rear might become too great even for him. When Mantua capitulated on the 2d of February, Bonaparte turned first upon the Pope, whom he accused of violating the armistice concluded the previous June. His Holiness at once submitted, and on the 19th of February signed a peace, abandoning his right to his northern provinces,—Bologna, Ferrara and the Romagna,—and ceding to France, until the end of the war, Ancona, a good seaport on the Adriatic.

On the 10th of March, having completed all the dispositions that seemed necessary to secure his rear, Bonaparte advanced against the Austrians. The young Archduke Charles, whom the campaign of 1796 on the Danube had revealed to Europe as gifted with military talents of a very high order, had been sent to oppose him; but it was too late to resist on the plains of Italy, or even on the Italian side of the mountains. The French crossed the Tagliamento on March 16, and pushed up through the gorges of that stream and of the Isonzo into the eastern Alps. On the 23d Trieste was occupied. The Archduke retired continuously, barely disputing difficult positions with the enemy. His mind was fixed not to fight until he had drawn the French far into Germany, and had collected his own resources,—a decision whose wisdom Bonaparte sealed with his own commendation. "If the enemy had committed the folly of awaiting me," he wrote to the Directory, "I should have beaten them; but if they had continued to fall back, had joined a part of their forces from the Rhine, and had overwhelmed me, then retreat would have been difficult, and the loss of the Army of Italy might entail that of the republic. We must not shut our eyes to the fact that, though our military position was brilliant, we have not simply dictated the conditions." ¹⁵³ Italy, too, was fermenting behind him. The moral effect, however, of this unopposed advance through the mountains of Carinthia brought the House of Austria to terms; and on the 18th of April preliminaries of peace were signed at Leoben, only sixty miles from Vienna. Though the formal treaty was not concluded until six months later, this transaction marked, for that time, the end of hostilities between Austria and France, which had then lasted five years,—from April, 1792, to April, 1797.

The preliminaries of Leoben stipulated a mutual cessation of hostilities between the republic and the emperor, and extended this provision to all the states of the German Empire, as well as to the particular dominions of the emperor himself. Austria surrendered definitively the Netherlands (Belgium), and "recognized the limits of France as decreed by the laws of the French Republic." In this phrase was imbedded the rock upon which negotiations with Great Britain split. The republic, on its part, undertook to furnish to the emperor at the final peace a "just and suitable compensation" for the provinces he lost.

The "suitable compensation," thus mysteriously alluded to, was defined in the "secret preliminary agreements," contracted at the same moment. It was furnished by depriving the republic of Venice, with which Bonaparte had reasons for serious discontent, of all its possessions on the mainland of Italy, as well as of Istria and Dalmatia on the east coast of the Adriatic. The provinces thus taken were divided: Austria receiving all east of the Oglio and north of the Po, with Istria and Dalmatia. The country between the Oglio and the Adda, previously owned by Venice, was taken to constitute a new, independent republic; into which were also incorporated all possessions of Austria west of the Oglio conquered by the French in the recent campaign. This was to be known as the Cisalpine Republic. Thus the lords of the Adriatic were shorn of their glory, and brought to the brink of the precipice from which, six months later, at the final peace, the Corsican conqueror hurled them headlong. For the moment there were spared to them their ancient city and the Ionian Islands; and the legations of Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna, taken from the Pope, were given to them,—a like transient possession.

Such, in brief outline, were the principal terms of the preliminaries of Leoben. The great and significant feature does not ostensibly appear among the articles. Bonaparte, in diplomacy, had achieved the great end at which he aimed in his plans of campaign. He had separated his enemies. "The French Republic," wrote he, "in granting at Leoben preliminaries so advantageous to his Imperial Majesty, had as its principal end the conclusion of a separate peace with his Majesty, in order to be in a position to turn all its forces against England, and oblige her to a prompt peace." He alone made and signed the preliminaries, and this quotation gives the strategy and policy of his life in a nutshell. ¹⁵⁴ The crucial fact at Leoben was that Austria then, as Sardinia a year before, treated alone,—without her ally. This Great Britain, to her honor, absolutely refused to do in 1796, and as long as her ally stood by her. There is, of course, a great difference between the position of a state which finds a victorious enemy in the heart of its territories, and that of an island empire; and great allowance must be made for Austria, even though the calm retrospect of history sees that she failed rightly to appreciate the extreme hazard of Bonaparte's situation. But this allowance merely emphasizes the important truth, that the imposing attitude maintained by Great Britain throughout this tremendous contest depended absolutely and wholly upon the control of the sea,—upon Sea-Power.

Note..—It now only remains to be seen how, when insubordination, and accompanied by villany of this magnitude, did make its open appearance, Lord St. Vincent dealt with it. A remarkable occasion will be mentioned, not indeed the first outbreak of mutiny, nor its last effort, but that one which excited the greatest sensation in the fleet,—that which came with most untoward circumstances,—that of which the enforcement of the penalty had, in Lord St. Vincent's opinion, the most salutary effect.

No sooner had Sir Roger Curtis arrived, than applications came to the commander-in-chief for courts-martial on mutineers from three of those ships,—the "Marlborough," the "Lion," and the "Centaur." Selection will be made of the sequel to the "Marlborough."

As the squadron approached, and before the request for a court-martial, this ship being known to the commander-in-chief to have been among the most disorganized at Spithead had been ordered to take her berth in the centre, at a small distance from the rest of the fleet. It, however, had so happened that a very violent mutiny in her had broken out at Beerhaven, and again during the passage, which had been suppressed by the officers, but chiefly by the first lieutenant. The very object too of this mutiny was to protect the life of a seaman who had forfeited it by a capital crime. A court-martial on the principal mutineers was immediately assembled; and one was no sooner sentenced to die than the commander-in-chief ordered him to be executed on the following morning, "and by the crew of the 'Marlborough' alone, no part of the boats' crews from the other ships, as had been usual on similar occasions, to assist in the punishment,"—his Lordship's invariable order on the execution of mutineers. On the receipt of the necessary commands for this execution, the captain of the "Marlborough," Captain Ellison, waited upon the commander-in-chief, and reminding his Lordship that a determination that their shipmates should not suffer capital punishment had been the very cause of the ship's company's mutiny, expressed his conviction that the "Marlborough's" crew would never permit the man to be hanged on board that ship.

Receiving the captain on the "Ville de Paris'" quarter-deck, before the officers and ship's company, hearkening in breathless silence to what passed, and standing with his hat in his hand over his head, as was his Lordship's invariable custom during the whole time that any person, whatever were his rank, even a common seaman, addressed him on service, Lord St. Vincent listened very attentively till the captain ceased to speak; and then, after a pause, replied,—

"What do you mean to tell me, Captain Ellison, that you cannot command his Majesty's ship the 'Marlborough'? for if that is the case, sir, I will immediately send on board an officer who can."

The captain then requested that, at all events, the boats' crews from the rest of the fleet might, as always had been customary in the service, on executions, attend at this also, to haul the man up; for he really did not expect the "Marlborough's" would do it.

Lord St. Vincent sternly answered: "Captain Ellison, you are an old officer, sir, have served long, suffered severely in the service, and have lost an arm in action, and I should be very sorry that any advantage should be now taken of your advanced years. That man shall be hanged, at eight o'clock to-morrow morning, and by his own ship's company: for not a hand from any other ship in the fleet shall touch the rope. You will now return on board, sir; and, lest you should not prove able to command your ship, an officer will be at hand to you who can."

Without another word Captain Ellison instantly retired. After he had reached his ship, he received orders to cause her guns to be housed and secured, and that at daybreak in the morning her ports should be lowered. A general order then issued to the fleet for all launches to rendezvous under the "Prince" at seven o'clock on the following morning, armed with carronades and twelve rounds of ammunition for service; each launch to be commanded by a lieutenant, having an expert and trusty gunners'-mate and four quarter-gunners, exclusive of the launch's crew; the whole to be under the command of Captain Campbell, of the "Blenheim." The written orders to the captain will appear in their place. On presenting them, Lord St. Vincent said, 'he was to attend the execution, and if any symptoms of mutiny appeared in the "Marlborough," any attempt to open her ports, or any resistance to the hanging of the prisoner, he was to proceed close touching the ship, and to fire into her, and to continue his fire until all mutiny or resistance should cease; and that, should it become absolutely necessary, he should even sink the ship in face of the fleet.'

Accordingly, at seven the next morning, all the launches, thus armed, proceeded from the "Prince" to the "Blenheim," and thence, Captain Campbell having assumed the command, to the "Marlborough."

Having lain on his oars a short time alongside, the captain then formed his force in a line athwart her bows, at rather less than pistol-shot distance off, and then he ordered the tompions to be taken out of the carronades, and to load.

At half-past seven, the hands throughout the fleet having been turned up to witness punishment, the eyes of all bent upon a powerfully armed boat as it quitted the flag-ship; every one knowing that there went the provost-marshal conducting his prisoner to the "Marlborough" for execution. The crisis was come; now was to be seen whether the "Marlborough's" crew would hang one of their own men.

The ship being in the centre between the two lines of the fleet, the boat was soon alongside, and the man was speedily placed on the cathead and haltered. A few awful minutes of universal silence followed, which was at last broken by the watch-bells of the fleet striking eight o'clock. Instantly the flag-ship's gun fired, and at the sound the man was lifted well off; but then, and visibly to all, he dropped back again; and the sensation throughout the fleet was intense. For, at this dreadful moment, when the eyes of every man in every ship were straining upon this execution, as the decisive struggle between authority and mutiny, as if it were destined that the whole fleet should see the hesitating unwillingness of the "Marlborough's" crew to hang their rebel, and the efficacy of the means taken to enforce obedience, by an accident on board the ship the men at the yard-rope unintentionally let it slip, and the turn of the balance seemed calamitously lost; but then they hauled him up to the yard-arm with a run,—the law was satisfied, and, said Lord St. Vincent at the moment, perhaps one of the greatest of his life, "Discipline is preserved, sir!"

When the sentence was executed, and not any disturbance appeared, that it might be again made perceptible to all the fleet that abundant force had been provided to overpower any resistance which a line-of-battle ship could offer, Captain Campbell broke his line, and rowing down, placed his launches as close alongside the "Marlborough" as their oars would permit; and then re-forming them, resumed his station across her bows, continuing there until the time for the body's hanging having expired, it was taken down, sewed up as is usual in its own hammock with a shot, and was carried in one of the "Marlborough's" boats to half a mile from the ship, and sunk; upon which, Captain Campbell withdrew his force, and the "Marlborough's" signal was made to take her station in the line.

This was the fatal blow to the mutiny in the fleet before Cadiz; not that violent insubordination, treasonable conspiracies, and open resistances did not again and again occur, to be as often and as instantaneously quelled; for the ships were many that were sent out from England, several arrived in almost open mutiny, and they brought a profusion of infection to the rest. The dreadful sentence was again and again inflicted, and in all cases of insubordination the crews were invariably the executioners of their own rebels; but never again was the power of the law doubted by any one.—Tucker's Memoirs of Earl St. Vincent, vol. i. pp. 303-309.

CHAPTER IX

The Mediterranean in 1797 and 1798

Bonaparte's Egyptian Expedition._—The Return of the British to the Mediterranean and the Battle of the Nile._—Great Britain Resumes Control of the Mediterranean, and the Second Coalition is formed

THE Preliminaries of Leoben silenced the strife of arms and permitted all eyes to turn to the field of diplomacy, upon which, for the twelve months following, the interest of Europe was chiefly fixed. Moreau and Hoche, commanding the two armies of France upon the Rhine, had crossed the river, to enter upon a campaign in Germany, at the very moment when Bonaparte was signing the articles. On the 22d of April, a courier, bearing news of the suspension of hostilities, arrived at the headquarters of each general, and put an immediate stop to their advance. War continued only upon the sea, between Great Britain and the nations allied with France against her.

The confidence of the Directory had grown with each successive victory of Bonaparte, and had induced a tone in their transactions with foreign governments which the latter looked upon as arrogant, if not presumptuous. Yielding to politic considerations of effect upon popular opinion, Pitt had sent to France, in October, 1796, a practised diplomatist, Lord Malmesbury, to treat for peace. The terms proposed by Great Britain were substantially a restitution of conquests on both sides. If France would give back to the emperor the Netherlands and Lombardy, Great Britain, who had lost nothing of her own, would return to France her possessions in the East and West Indies, as well as in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with the status ante bellum of the fisheries. As regards the colonies taken from Holland, the disposition would be to restore them, if the government of the stadtholder were replaced; but if the republic set up by the assistance of French arms were maintained, Great Britain and the emperor, from whom the former refused to dissociate herself, would insist upon indemnification elsewhere for the injury thus done to their political position in Europe. With these understandings as a basis, the British government would be willing to enter upon negotiations for a general peace; to which it expressly required that Russia and Portugal, as well as the emperor, should be admitted. The French government replied that Great Britain had no authority to speak here for her allies; and further, that to cede territory which had been incorporated by the edicts of the Convention, as the Netherlands had, was inconsistent with the organic law of the republic. This latter plea was treated by the British government as trifling; no negotiation to close a war could go on, if results, favorable to one party, were secluded from discussion by the ægis of its constitution. As the case stood, France and Great Britain were both conquerors; the chief allies of each were losers. Great Britain proposed that each should surrender its winnings for the benefit of its allies. France refused, because its conquests were now part of the national territory, and as such inalienable. Taking exception, moreover, to delays caused by Malmesbury's frequent references to his government for instructions, the Directory, on the 20th of December, ordered him to leave Paris, within the not very civil space of forty-eight hours.

Similar cavalier treatment was at the same time experienced by the United States. Our government, after the maritime war began, had frequent disputes with both belligerents,—concerning the treatment of American ships by the British and French cruisers,—the protection of enemies' goods by the neutral flag,—the stipulations of Jay's treaty of commerce and navigation, in 1794, regarded by France as unduly favorable to Great Britain,—and the attitude of the United States towards French privateers, which were at first allowed and afterwards forbidden to sell prizes in her ports. These difficulties were fundamentally due to the fact that, the United States having practically no navy, neither belligerent felt under any bonds to respect her rights. To Great Britain, however, friendly relations were important on account of trade interests; while France, having no merchant ships, found an advantage in using Americans as carriers, and their ports as bases from which her cruisers could harass British commerce. The former of these benefits Great Britain curtailed by the claim that enemy's goods were, by international law, seizable under a neutral flag. The United States admitted this, and also, in the interests of her own peace and neutrality, declined longer to favor French commerce-destroying. Mutual discontent followed, and resulted in the recall of the French embassy from America, in November, 1796. At the same time President Washington, being dissatisfied with Munroe, the minister at Paris, removed him. When the latter, on the 30th of December, took his leave, the President of the Directory made a speech, highly complimentary to him personally, but offensive to the United States government; and evinced, as President Adams justly said, "a disposition to separate the people of the United States from the government, and thus to produce divisions fatal to our peace." The same theory of the divergent interests of rulers and people, with which the French republic started on its self-imposed mission forcibly to regenerate ancient despotisms, was thus impartially applied to the free American people under the government of their chosen and beloved fellow-citizen, Washington. The Directory refused to receive Pinckney, the new envoy from the United States. He remained in Paris, unrecognized, for a month; but the morning after hearing of the victory of Rivoli, the Directory ordered him to leave France.

By a somewhat singular coincidence, while the republic was thus embroiling itself with the two chief maritime states, a change of rulers took place in Russia; which, if not strictly a maritime power, was yet well placed, through her preponderance on the Baltic, to affect the naval interests of the world. The Empress Catherine II. died on the 17th of November, 1796, when about to conclude an agreement with the courts of London and Vienna to abandon her rather passive attitude of hostility towards France, and send an army of sixty thousand men to the support of Austria. Her successor, Paul I., allowed this treaty to drop, and resumed a bearing of cold watchfulness, until Bonaparte, by the seizure of Malta, and the Directory by a threat of war if commerce were permitted between his empire and Great Britain, drove his half-insane temper into open hostilities. But this was a year later.

These events at the end of 1796 coincided in time with the close alliance of the republic with Spain and Holland and its formal treaties of peace with the Italian states. By these and by the preliminaries of Leoben were defined the external relations of France in April, 1797. At the same moment her internal condition became alarming. The time had come to choose new members to replace one third of each body of the legislature; and the elections, still influenced by the memory of the Terror, resulted in the return of so many reactionaries as to give these a majority in both houses, especially in the lower. The latter at once showed its spirit by electing for speaker, by a large majority, General Pichegru, who was in open quarrel with the Directory; and followed up this significant act by a series of measures calculated to thwart the executive power and enfeeble its action. The opposition between the legislature and the Directory grew more and more pronounced throughout the summer months; but the reactionists failed to read aright the signs of the times. They allowed themselves, by the machinations of the royalists and through injudicious acts of their own, to seem enemies of republican government, which aroused the anxiety of Hoche, commanding the army of the Sambre and Meuse; and they directly brought into question the conduct of Bonaparte towards Venice, thus stirring up the more personal and violent enmity of the brilliant conqueror of Italy. The legislature thus found itself opposed by the two generals who stood highest in public esteem as essential to the safety of France, and who, each according to his own nature, transmitted his feelings to the troops under his command, and prepared them for a coup d'état. Inflammatory speeches and toasts prevailed throughout the armies, to which the republic was dear rather as a name than as a reality, and they were easily led to think that the two houses were contemplating a return to royalty.

The majority of the Directory, half-believing the same thing, and chafed by an opposition which seriously hampered the working of the government, were ready for violent measures. Two of its members, however, were not prepared for such action; and one of these, Carnot, the organizer of the republic's early victories, was then serving his turn as president of the Directory. Unknown to him the three plotters matured their scheme, and called upon Bonaparte to send them Augereau, the most revolutionary of the generals in Italy, to direct the troops in such forcible proceedings as might be necessary. Upon his arrival he was made commandant of the military division of Paris, despite the opposition of Carnot. The latter's presidency expired on the 24th of August, and he was succeeded by one of the conspirators. On the night of September 3d Augereau surrounded the castle and garden of the Tuileries with twelve thousand troops and forty cannon, driving out the legislators who were then there, together with their guard. The Directory ordered the arrest, by its own guard, of the two members not in the plot. Carnot escaped into Switzerland; but Barthélemi, their other colleague, was seized. The next day the members of the two houses who had not been imprisoned met and passed a resolution, invalidating a number of the recent elections, and exiling to Cayenne the two directors and fifty-three representatives. The legislature, thus purged, was brought into harmony with the executive. An address was next issued to the departments and to the armies, declaring that the country had been invaded and disorganized by the Counter-Revolution and that patriotism, with the social and public virtues, had taken refuge with the armies. "In this," says a republican historian, "there was unhappily some truth. The middle class had become reactionary or inert; the populace now intervened but little in political movements; active democracy scarcely showed itself out of the armies. But if armies can defend liberty, they cannot put it in practice and maintain its life when abandoned by civil society. The revolution just effected with the consent of the soldiery was leading to another revolution to be effected by and for the soldiers." ¹⁵⁵ The 18th of Fructidor, 1797, was the logical forerunner of the 18th of Brumaire, 1799, when Bonaparte seized the reins of government.

The strife between the Directory and the legislature kept all Europe in suspense; for its result would profoundly affect the course of existing discussions. The emperor, repenting of his precipitation at Leoben, kept holding off from a final treaty, seeking to introduce Great Britain as a party to the deliberations. This Bonaparte indignantly refused; for it would defeat his principal aim of separate negotiations. Pitt, more desirous than before of peace, again sent Malmesbury. The Directory kept him dancing attendance at Lille, the appointed place of meeting, during its struggle with the Councils. It made several demands most unlikely to be conceded, and upon these prolonged a discussion, to which the ministry, who now really wished a favorable termination, patiently submitted. A week after the coup d'état the French negotiators were recalled, and in their place were sent others, who immediately upon arrival demanded of the British ambassador whether he had "powers to restore to France and its allies all the possessions which since the beginning of the war have passed into the hands of the English." An answer was required in the course of the same day. Malmesbury coolly replied that he neither could, nor ought to, treat on any other principle than that of compensations. The French envoys then sent him orders from the Directory to return within twenty-four hours to his Court and get powers to make those restorations. This, of course, put an end to the conference, and the war went on for four years more.

During these eventful months Bonaparte, already the most influential man in the nation through his hold upon men's imaginations, was ripening projects deeply affecting the control of the sea and the future direction to be given the gigantic efforts of which France had shown herself capable. On the 5th of April, under his management, there had been concluded with the king of Sardinia, subject to ratification by the Directory, a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance, to which was prefixed a secret article ceding to France the island of Sardinia upon condition of compensation on the continent. ¹⁵⁶ Soon after, however, events occurred which opened to his penetrating genius a more satisfactory combination. During his invasion of Carinthia the people in his rear, throughout the possessions of Venice on the Italian mainland, rose against the French, massacring several hundred soldiers who fell into their hands. This gave him a pretext for disposing of these territories, as already stated, ¹⁵⁷ in the secret articles of Leoben, and at the same time drew from him the sinister prediction that the government of Venice, shut up to its small island, would not be of long duration. ¹⁵⁸ On the 2d of May, having returned to Italy, he issued a proclamation, ¹⁵⁹ setting forth his many causes of complaint for the commotions excited in his rear, endangering the army "then plunged in the gorges of Styria." He ordered the French minister to leave Venice, all Venetian agents to quit Lombardy and the Venetian possessions, and the French general to treat the troops of the republic as enemies, and to tear down her standard throughout the mainland.

This declaration of war was followed, on the 16th of May, by the abdication of the ancient oligarchy in favor of a provisional government, which requested the presence of a French division in the city to maintain order during the transition period. This Bonaparte granted, sending five thousand men, and observing cynically in his despatch to the Directory that it would thus be possible to avoid the odium attendant upon the execution of the secret preliminaries with Austria, and at the same time to quiet the clamors of Europe; since "it is apparent that the occupation is only temporary and at the demand of the Venetians themselves." ¹⁶⁰ Ten days later he despatched General Gentili, recalled from Corsica, to Corfu with some two thousand troops, directing him to secure his hold both upon the islands and the Venetian squadron lying there, but always to act as though supporting the Venetian commissioners who were to accompany him. "If the islanders incline to independence," wrote he, "flatter them, and talk about Greece, Athens, and Sparta." ¹⁶¹ To the Venetian government he wrote that the expedition was sent to second its commissioners; and on the same day to the Directory, that Corfu ought to be irrevocably possessed by the French. "The island of Malta," he added, "is of the utmost importance to us.... Why should not our fleet seize it before entering the Atlantic? That little island is priceless to us. Secret articles with the king of Sardinia stipulate for us the occupation of the little islands of San Pietro. Now is the moment to fortify them;" ¹⁶² for the British Mediterranean fleet was before Cadiz, and the Channel fleet in full mutiny.