ness, to every individual, and produces, in consequence, a degree of discontent and exasperation which nothing but the excitement of continual warfare, or a sense of uncontrollable necessity, can induce a nation to bear. CHAP. XXVII. 1799. sea forces A considerable addition was made to the army this year. The land forces were raised to 138,000 Land and men; the sea to 120,000, including 20,000 marines; voted by and 104 ships of the line were put in commission. Parliament. Besides this, 80,000 men were embodied in the militia of Great Britain alone, besides 40,000 in Ire- 1 Parl. Hist. land; an admirable force, which soon attained a xxxi. 231, very high degree of discipline and efficiency, which Naval Hist. proved, through the whole remainder of the war, Ann the best nursery for the troops of the line, and was Reg. 1799, inferior only in the quality and composition of its to Chron. officers to the regular army.' 242. James' App. Vol. 193. App. discontent at the vernment. The forces with which France was to resist this formidable confederacy were by no means commen- Universal surate either to the ambition of the Directory, or the vast extent of territory that they had to defend. Both French goexternally and internally the utmost discontent and dissatisfaction existed. The Republican armies, which had divided so many states by the delusive promises of liberty and equality, had excited universal hatred by the exactions which they had made, and the stern tyranny to which they had every where subjected their new allies. Their most devoted adherents no longer attempted to palliate their conduct; from the frontier of the Jura to the extremity of Calabria, one universal cry had arisen against the selfish cupidity of the Directory, and the insatiable rapacity of its civil and military officers. The Swiss democrats, who had called in the French to revolutionize their country, made the loudest lamentations at the unrelenting se CHAP. 1799. HISTORY OF EUROPE. XXVII. verity with which the great contributions, to which they were so little accustomed, were exacted from the hard earned fruits of their industry. The Cisalpine republic was a prey to the most vehement divisions; furious Jacobinism reigned in its legislative assemblies; the authorities imposed on them by the French bayonets were in the highest degree unpopular; while in Holland, the whole respectable class of citizens felt the utmost dissatisfaction at the violent changes made, both in their government and representative body, by their imperious allies. From the affiliated republics, therefore, no efficient support could be expected; while the French government, nevertheless, was charged with the burden of their defence. From the Texel to Calabria, their forces were expanded over an immense surface, in great, but still insufficient numbers; while the recent occupation of Switzerland had opened up a new theatre of warfare hitherto untrod by the Republican soliii. 94, 97. diers.1 Jom. xi. 88, 89. Tb. x. 161, 173, 174, 207, 208. Bot, During the two years which had elapsed since the State of the termination of hostilities, the military force of France had signally declined. Sickness and desertion had military forces of France. greatly diminished the ranks of the army; twelve thousand discharges had been granted to the soldiers, but more than ten times that number had deserted from their colours, and lived without disguise at their homes, in such numbers, as rendered it neither prudent nor practicable to enforce their return. Fiveand-thirty thousand of the best troops were exiled under Napoleon on a distant shore, and though the addition of 200,000 conscripts had been ordered, the levy proceeded but slowly, and some months must yet elapse before they could be in a condition to take the field. The result of the whole was, that for the XXVII. 1799. actual shock of war, from the Adige to the Maine, CHAP. the Directory could only count on 170,000 men ; the remainder of their great forces were buried in the Italian peninsula, or too far removed from the theatre of hostilities, to be able to take an active part in the approaching contest. The administration of the armies was on the most corrupted footing; the officers had become rapacious and insolent in the command of the conquered countries; and the civil agents either lived at free quarters on the inhabitants, or plundered without control the public money Th. x. and stores which passed through their hands. Revo- 182, 208, lutionary energy had exhausted itself; regular and xi. 89, 94. steady government was unknown, and the evils of a Arch. Ch. disordered rule and an abandoned administration Campagne were beginning to recoil on those who had produced 48, 51. them.1 209. Jom. Dum. i. 33. de 1799, i. the ap theatre of The disposition of the Republican armies was as follows: Of 110,000 men, who were stationed in Their dispoItaly, 30,000 under Macdonald were lost in the sition over Neapolitan dominions, and the remainder so disper- proaching sed over the extensive provinces of Lombardy, Tus- war. cany, and the Roman states, that only 50,000 could be collected to bear the weight of the contest on the Adige. Forty-two thousand, under General Jourdan, were destined to carry the war from the Upper Rhine, across the Black Forest, into the valley of the Danube. Massena, at the head of 45,000, was stationed in Switzerland, and intended to dislodge the Imperialists from the Tyrol and the upper valley of the Adige. Thirty thousand, under Bernadotte, were designed to form a corps of observation on the Lower Rhine from Dusseldorf to Manheim; while Brune, at the head of 15,000 French, and 20,000 Dutch troops, was intrusted with the defence of the Batavian repub CHAP. 1799. lic. The design of the Directory was to turn the position of the Imperialists on the Adige by getting possession of the mountains which enclosed the upper part of the stream, and then drive the enemy before them, with the united armies of Switzerland and 1 Dum. i. Italy, across the mountains of Carinthia, while that of the Upper Rhine, descending the course of the 91. Arch. Danube, was to unite with them under the walls of Vienna.' 32, 33. Jom. xi. 90, Ch. i. 50, 51. the Impe rialists, and sition. The forces of the Austrians were both superior in Forces of point of number, better equipped, and stationed in more advantageous situations. Their armies were their dispo- collected behind the Lech, in the Tyrol, and on the Adige. The first, under the command of the Archduke Charles, consisted of 54,000 infantry and 24,000 cavalry; in the Grisons and Tyrol 44,000 infantry and 2500 horse were assembled, under the banners of Bellegarde and Laudon; 24,000 footsoldiers and 1400 horse, under the command of Hotze, occupied the Voralberg; while the army on. the Adige, 72,000 strong, including 11,000 cavalry, obeyed the orders of Kray; and 24,000 on the Maine, or in garrison at Wurtzburg, observed the French forces on the Lower Rhine. Thus 246,000 men were concentrated between the Maine and the Po, and their centre rested on the mountains of Tyrol; a vast fortress, which had often afforded a sure refuge in case of disaster to the Imperial troops, and whose inhabitants were warmly attached to the * Arch. Ch. House of Austria. Above 50,000 Russians were 1. 40, 41. expected; but they could not arrive in time to enter Jom. xi. 95, into operations either on the Danube or the Adige 96. Th. x. at the commencement of the campaign.2 Dum. i. 33. 226. These dispositions on both sides were made on the principle that the possession of the mountains ensures XXVII. 1799. i. 117, 162, that of the plains, and that the key to the Austrian CHAP. monarchy was to be found in the Tyrol Alps; a great error, and which has been since abundantly refuted by the campaigns of Napoleon and the reasoning of the Archduke Charles.' The true avenue Archduke, to Vienna is the valley of the Danube; it is there Camp. de that a serious blow struck is at once decisive, and 1796. that the gates of the monarchy are laid open by a single great defeat on the frontier. It was not in the valley of the Inn, or in the mountains of the Grisons, but on the heights of Ulm and the plains of Bavaria, that Napoleon prostrated the strength of Austria in 1805 and 1809; and of all the numerous defeats which that power had experienced, none was felt to be irretrievable but that of Hohenlinden, on the banks of the Iser, in 1800. There is no analogy between the descent of streams from the higher to the lower grounds and the invasion of civilized armies from Jom. x. mountains to the adjacent plains. A ridge of gla- 96. Archciers is an admirable fountain for the perennial sup- duke, i. 5 ply of rivers, but the worst possible base for military 1799. operations.2 286, and xi. 53, fects of the and Italy to military By the invasion of Switzerland the French government had greatly weakened, instead of having Ruinous ef strengthened, their military position. Nothing was invasion of so advantageous to them as the neutrality of that Switzerland republic, because it covered the only defenceless fron- the French tier of the state, and gave them the advantage of car- power. rying on the campaigns in Germany and Italy, for which the fortresses on the Rhine and in Piedmont afforded an advantageous base, without the fear of being turned by a reverse in the mountains. But all these advantages were lost when the contest was carried on in the higher Alps, and the line of the Rhine or the Adige was liable to be turned by a single reverse |