lished in France, with the entire con- | power, and the battle of Jena, the treaty currence of three-fourths of all the re- of Tilsit, and six years of bondage, were spectable classes in the kingdom, and the consequence. Suwarroff entered to the infinite present and future bless- Warsaw when its spires were yet gleaming of its whole inhabitants. Even in ing with the fires of Praga, and when 1794, by a cordial co-operation of the the Vistula ran red with Polish blood; Prussian and Austrian forces after the and, before twenty years had expired, fall of Landrecies, the whole barrier the Poles revenged on the Moskwa that fortresses erected by the genius of Vau- inhuman massacre, and the sack of Warban might have been captured, and the saw was forgotten in the conflagration Revolution, thrown back upon its own of Moscow. Austria withdrew from Flanresources, been permanently prevented ders to join in the deed of iniquity, and from proving dangerous to the liberties secure in Gallicia the fruits of injustice; of Europe. What, then, paralysed the and twice did the French guards in conallied armies in the midst of such a sequence pass in triumph through the career of success, and caused the cam- walls of Vienna. The connection bepaign to close under circumstances of tween this great and guilty act and the such general disaster? The prospect of subsequent disasters of the spoliating partitioning Poland, which first retained powers, therefore, is direct and evident; the Prussian battalions, during the crisis and history would be worse than useof the campaign, in sullen inactivity on less if it did not signalise that memorthe Rhine, and then led to the preci- able instance of just retribution for the pitate and indignant abandonment of eternal warning and instruction of manFlanders by the Austrian forces. kind. Already has been realised, in part at least, the anticipation of the poet :"Yes! thy proud lords, unpitied land! shall see That man hath yet a soul, and dare be free! A little while, along thy saddening plains, The starless night of desolation reigns: And, like Prometheus, bring the fire of heaven. Truth shall restore the light by nature given, Prone to the dust Oppression shall be hurl'd, Her name, her nature, wither'd from the world!"*

58. The subsequent fate of the partitioning powers is a striking instance of that moral retribution which, sooner or later, in nations as well as individuals, attends a flagrant act of injustice. To effect the destruction of Poland, Prussia paralysed her armies on the Rhine, and threw on Austria and Britain the whole weight of the contest with Republican France. She thereby permitted the growth of its military

* Pleasures of Hope.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CAMPAIGN OF 1795.

1. THE great success which in every quarter had signalised the conclusion of the campaign of 1794, led, early in the following year, to the dissolution of the confederacy against the French Republic. The conquest of Holland determined the wavering policy of Prussia. Early in January conferences were publicly opened at Bâle, and before the end

of the month the preliminaries were signed. The public articles of this treaty bound the King of Prussia to live on friendly terms with the Republic, and not furnish succour to its enemies-to concede to France the undisturbed enjoyment of its conquests on the left bank of the Rhine, leaving the equiva lent to be given to Prussia to ulterior

Alsace, and that they had no inclination | seamen; one hundred and eight ships to interfere in the internal affairs of of the line were put in commission, and France. Spain, exhausted and dejected, the land forces raised to one hundred awaited only the most favourable op- and fifty thousand men. The expendiportunity of making a separate peace, ture of the year, exclusive of the inteand concluding a contest from which rest of the national debt, amounted to she had already suffered so much; while £27,000,000, of which £18,000,000 was Piedmont, crushed by the weight of raised by loan, and £3,500,000 by exarmaments beyond its power to sup- chequer bills. New taxes to the amount port, which cost more than three times of £1,600,000 were imposed, and, notthe subsidies granted by Great Britain, withstanding the most vehement deequally desired a conclusion to hostili- bates on the conduct of the ministry, ties without venturing to express the and the original expedience of the war, wish. The conquest of Holland re- alarge majority in parliament concurred lieved the French government of all in the necessity, now that the country anxiety in that quarter, by compelling were embarked in the contest, of prothe Dutch to conclude an alliance, of-secuting it with vigour. On the 18th fensive and defensive, with the Republic. The principal conditions of that treaty were, that the United Provinces ceded Venloo and Maestricht to Belgium; and bound themselves to aid the French with twelve ships of the line, and eighteen frigates, and one-half of the troops which they had under arms. 4. Thus the whole weight of the war fell on Austria and Great Britain. The former of these powers had suffered too much by the loss of the Low Countries to permit her to think of peace, while the disasters she had experienced had not as yet been so great as to compel her to renounce the hope of regaining them: Mr Pitt, in the latter, was fully aware of the approaching danger, and indefatigable in his efforts to revive the confederacy. He met with a worthy ally in Thugut, who directed the cabinet of Vienna. On the 4th May 1795, a treaty offensive and defensive was concluded between the two powers, by which Austria engaged to maintain 200,000 men in the field during the approaching campaign, and Great Britain to furnish a subsidy of £6,000,000 sterling. The utmost efforts were at the same time made to reinforce the Imperial armies on the Rhine.

5. The British government made exertions for the prosecution of the war more considerable than they had yet put forth, and seemed sensible that the national strength required to be more fully exerted now that the war approached her own shores. The naval force was augmented to one hundred thousand

February, an alliance offensive and defensive was concluded between Great Britain, Austria, and Russia. This important event, the first step towards the great and decisive share which the lastmentioned power ultimately took in the contest, was not, however, at first productive of any results. The Empress Catherine, whose attention was wholly engrossed in securing the immense territories which had fallen to her by the partition of Poland, merely sent a fleet of twelve ships of the line, and eight frigates, to reinforce Admiral Duncan, who was cruising in the North Seas, to blockade the squadron recently acquired by France from the Dutch republic; but neither had any opportunity of measuring their strength with the enemy.

6. A powerful and energetic party in Great Britain still declaimed against the war as unjust and unnecessary, and viewed with secret complacency the triumphs of the Republican forces. A secret belief that the cause of France was at bottom their own, led them to desire its success. It was urged in parliament, that the Revolutionary government in France being now overturned, and one professing moderation installed in its stead, the great object of the war was in fact at an end; that the continued disasters of the Allies proved the impossibility of forcing a government on that country contrary to the inclination of its inhabitants: that the confederacy was now practically dissolved, and the first opportunity should therefore be seized to conclude a contest from

gion. Peace would at once prove destructive to the French West India islands, by delivering them over to anarchy and Jacobinism, and from them the flame of servile revolt would speedily spread to our own colonial pòssessions in that quarter. Notwithstanding the great successes of the French on the Continent, the balance of conquest in the contest with Great Britain is decidedly in favour of this country: the losses of the Republicans in wealth and resources have been greater since the beginning of the war than those of all the Allies put together; the forced requisitions and assignats of the French, which have hitherto maintained the contest, cannot be continued without the severities of the Reign of Terror; and now is the time, by vigorously continuing the contest, to compel the Directory to augment their redundant paper currency, and thus accelerate the ruin which it is evident such a system must sooner or later bring on the financial resources of the country. Parlia ment by a large majority supported ministers in the prosecution of the war, in both houses of parliament.

which no rational hopes of success any longer remained: that, if we continued fighting till the Bourbons were restored, it was impossible to see any end to the contest, or to the burden which would be imposed upon the country during its continuance: that nothing but disaster had hitherto been experienced in the struggle; and if that was the case formerly, when all Europe was arrayed against the Republic, what might now be expected when Great Britain and Austria alone were left to continue the struggle, and the French power extended from the Pyrenees to the Texel? -that every consideration of safety and expedience, therefore, recommended the speedy close of a contest, of doubtful policy in its commencement, and more than doubtful justice in its principles. 7. Mr Pitt replied,-The object of the war was not to force the people of France to adopt any particular form of government, but merely to secure their neighbours from their aggression. Although there was great reason to fear that no security could be found for this till a monarchy was restored in that country, yet it was no part of the allied policy to compel its adoption : the government of the French republic was changed in form only, and not in spirit, and was as formidable as when the war was first provoked by the declamations of the Girondists: hostilities would again be commenced as soon as the military power of their enemies was dissolved, and the Allies would then find it as difficult a matter to reassemble their forces, as the French would now find it to dissolve theirs. It is highly improbable that the Re-milies, who had been reduced from the publican government will be able to in- height of prosperity to utter destituduce men accustomed to war and rapine tion, awakened the compassion of the to return to the peaceful occupations of humane over the whole country; while life; and much more likely that they the immense successes of the Republiwill find it necessary to employ them cans, and, above all, the occupation of in schemes of ambition and plunder, to Holland, excited the hereditary and illprevent them from turning their arms extinguished jealousy of the British against domestic authority. War, how-people of their ancient rivals. Although, ever costly, at least gives to Great Bri- therefore, the division of parties contain security; and it would be highly tinued most vehement, and the suspenimpolitic to exchange this for the peril sion of the Habeas Corpus Act still innecessarily consequent upon a resump- vested the government with extraordition of amicable relations with a coun-nary powers, yet the feeling of the try in such a state of political conta- country was gradually becoming more

8. The internal feeling of Great Britain, notwithstanding the continued ill success of its arms on the Continent, was daily becoming more unanimous in favour of the war. The atrocities of the Jacobins had moderated the ardour of many of the most enlightened of their early friends, and confirmed the hostility of almost all the moral and religious, as well as the opulent and influential classes; the spectacle of the numerous and interesting emigrant fa

united, and its passions, like those of a combatant who has been wounded in the strife, were waxing warmer with all the blood which it had lost.

9. In France, on the other hand, the exhaustion consequent upon a state of extraordinary and unparalleled exertion was rapidly beginning to display itself. The system of the Convention had consisted in spending the capital of the country by means of confiscations, forced loans, and military requisitions; and the issue of assignats, supported by the Reign of Terror, had, beyond all former example, carried their designs into effect. But all such violent means of obtaining supplies can, from their very nature, only be temporary: how great soever may be the accumulated wealth of a state, it must in time be exhausted, if not supplied by the continued labours of private industry. The Reign of Terror, by stopping all the efforts of individuals to better their condition, and paralysing the arms of labour over the whole country, dried up the sources of national wealth. Even had the fall of Robespierre not put a period to the violent means adopted for rendering it available to the state, the same result must soon have followed from the cessation of all the sources of its supply.

force. By a skilful manoeuvre he succeeded in cutting off two ships of the line, the Ca Ira, and the Censeur, which fell into the hands of the British; and the remainder of the fleet, after a severe but partial action, was compelled to fall back to the Isles de Hyères, and disembark the land troops which they had on board. By this vigorous stroke the object of the expedition in the recovery of Corsica was entirely frustrated; and such was the dismay with which the soldiers were inspired from their sufferings during its continuance, that out of eighteen thousand men who were originally embarked, only ten thousand reached the French army, then lying in the Marquisate of Oneille.

11. Meanwhile the courts of Vienna and of Turin were making the most vigorous efforts for the prosecution of the war on the Piedmontese frontier. The Austrians reinforced the King of Sardinia with fifteen thousand men, and the Piedmontese troops raised the effective force in the field to fifty thousand men. The French soldiers on that frontier were in a still greater state of destitution and misery than the army of the Rhine. From the effect of desertion and sickness, during the severe winter of 1794, amidst the inhos10. During the winter of 1794, the pitable region of the Alps, the total French government made the greatest effective forces on that frontier did not exertions to put their navy on a respect- exceed forty-five thousand. They ocable footing, but all their efforts on cupied the whole crest of the mounthat element led to nothing but disas-tains, from Vado to the Little St Berter. Early in March the Toulon fleet, consisting of thirteen ships of the line, put to sea with the design of expelling the British squadron from the Gulf of Genoa, and landing an expedition in Corsica. Being ignorant of their intention, Lord Hotham, who commanded the British blockading fleet, was at Leghorn at the time, and they succeeded in capturing the Berwick, of seventyfour guns, in the Gulf of St Florent, which found itself surrounded by the French fleet before its crew were aware it had put to sea. But the British admiral was not long in taking his revenge. On the 7th March he set sail from Leghorn with thirteen line-ofbattle ships, and on the 13th fell in with the French squadron of the same

nard; while eighteen thousand of the allied forces were stationed in front of Cairo, fifteen thousand near Ceva, ten thousand in the valleys of Stura and Suza, and six thousand on the lofty ridges which close the upper extremity of the valley of Aosta. Generally speaking, the Republicans were perched on the summits of the mountains, while the Piedmontese forces occupied the narrow defiles where they sink down into the Italian plains.

12. The campaign commenced by a well-concerted enterprise of the French against the Col Dumont, near Mont Cenis, which the Piedmontese occupied with a force of two thousand men, from whence they were driven with considerable loss. But shortly after