The Preliminaries of Peace--Leoben.
Austrian Plans for the Last Italian Campaign -- The Battle
on the Tagliamento -- Retreat of the Archduke Charles --
Bonaparte's Proclamation to the Carinthians -- Joubert
Withdraws from the Tyrol -- Bonaparte's "Philosophical"
Letter -- His Situation at Leoben -- The Negotiations for
Peace -- Character of the Treaty -- Bonaparte's Rude
Diplomacy -- French Successes on the Rhine -- Plots of the
Directory -- The Uprising of Venetia -- War with Venice.
[Sidenote: 1797.]
The Aulic Council at Vienna prepared for the Archduke Charles a
modification of the same old plan, only this time the approach was
down the Piave and the Tagliamento, rivers which rise among the
grotesque Dolomites and in the Carnic Alps. They flow south like the
Adige and the Brenta, but their valleys are wider where they open into
the lowlands, and easier of access. The auxiliary force, under
Lusignan, was now to the westward on the Piave, while the main force,
under Charles, was waiting for reinforcements in the broad intervales
on the upper reaches of the Tagliamento, through which ran the direct
road to Vienna. This time the order of attack was exactly reversed,
because Bonaparte, with his strengthened army of about seventy-five
thousand men, resolved to take the offensive before the expected
levies from the Austrian army of the Rhine should reach the camp of
his foe. The campaign was not long, for there was no resistance from
the inhabitants, as there would have been in the German Alps, among
the Tyrolese, Bonaparte's embittered enemies; and the united force of
Austria was far inferior to that of France. Joubert, with eighteen
thousand men, was left to repress the Tyrol. Though only twenty-eight
years old, he had risen from a volunteer in the files through every
rank and was now division general. He had gained renown on the Rhine
and found the climax of his fame in this expedition, which he so
brilliantly conducted that at the close of the campaign he was chosen
to carry the captured standards to Paris. He was acclaimed as a coming
man. But thereafter his achievements were mediocre and he fell
mortally wounded on August fifteenth, 1799, at the battle of Novi
while rallying an army destined to defeat. Two small forces under
Kilmaine and Victor associated with Lannes were detailed to watch
Venice and Rome respectively; but the general good order of Italy was
intrusted to the native legions which Bonaparte had organized. Fate
had little more in store for Kilmaine, the gallant Irish cavalryman,
who was among the foremost generals of his army. Already a veteran
forty-six years old, as veterans were then reckoned, he had fought in
America and on the Rhine and had filled the cup of his glory at
Peschiera, Castiglione, and Mantua. He was yet to be governor of
Lombardy and end his career by mortal disease when in chief command of
the "Army of England." Victor, wounded at Toulon, general of brigade
in the Pyrenees, a subordinate officer to the unsuccessful Schérer in
Italy, quickly rose under Bonaparte to be division general. Of lowly
birth, he had scarcely reached his thirty-fourth year when on this
occasion he exhibited both military and diplomatic talent of a high
order. Throughout the consulate and empire he held one important
office after another, so successfully that he commended himself even
to the Bourbons, and died in 1841, full of years and honors. Lannes
was now twenty-eight. The child of poor parents, he began life as a
dyer's apprentice, enlisted when twenty-three and was a colonel within
two years, so astounding were his courage and natural gifts. Detailed
to serve under Bonaparte, the two became bosom friends. A plain, blunt
man, Lannes was as fierce as a war dog and as faithful. Throughout the
following years he followed Bonaparte in all his enterprises, and
Napoleon on the Marchfeld, in 1809, wept bitterly when his faithful
monitor was shot to pieces.
Masséna advanced up the Piave against Lusignan, captured his
rear-guard, and drove him away northward beyond Belluno, while the
Archduke, thus separated from his right, withdrew to guard the road
into Carniola. Bonaparte, with his old celerity, reached the banks of
the Tagliamento opposite the Austrian position on March sixteenth,
long before he was expected. His troops had marched all night, but
almost immediately they made a feint as if to force a crossing in the
face of their enemy. The Austrians on the left bank awaited the onset
in perfect order, and in dispositions of cavalry, artillery, and
infantry admirably adapted to the ground. It seemed as if the first
meeting of the two young generals would fall out to the advantage of
Charles. But he was neither as wily nor as indefatigable as his enemy.
The French drew back, apparently exhausted, and bivouacked as if for
the night. The Austrians, expecting nothing further that day, and
standing on the defensive, followed the example of their opponents.
Two hours elapsed, when suddenly the whole French army rose like one
man, and, falling into line without an instant's delay, rushed for the
stream, which at that spot was swift but fordable, flowing between
wide, low banks of gravel. The surprise was complete; the stream was
crossed, and the Austrians had barely time to form when the French
were upon them. They fought with gallantry for three hours until
their flank was turned. They then drew off in an orderly retreat,
abandoning many guns and losing some prisoners.
Masséna, waiting behind the intervening ridge for the signal, advanced
at the first sound of cannon into the upper valley of the same stream,
crossed it, and beset the passes of the Italian Alps, by which
communication with the Austrian capital was quickest. Charles had
nothing left, therefore, but to withdraw due eastward across the great
divide of the Alps, where they bow toward the Adriatic, and pass into
the valley of the Isonzo, behind that full and rushing stream, which
he fondly hoped would stop the French pursuit. The frost, however, had
bridged it in several places, and these were quickly found. Bernadotte
and Sérurier stormed the fortress of Gradisca, and captured two
thousand five hundred men, while Masséna seized the fort at the Chiusa
Veneta, and, scattering a whole division of flying Austrians, captured
five thousand with their stores and equipments. He then attacked and
routed the enemy's guard on the Pontebba pass, occupied Tarvis, and
thus cut off their communication with the Puster valley, by which the
Austrian detachment from the Rhine was to arrive. It was in this
campaign that Bernadotte laid the foundation of his future greatness.
He was the son of a lawyer in Pau, where he was born in 1764.
Enlisting as a common soldier, he was wounded in Corsica, became chief
of battalion under Custine, general of brigade under Kléber, and
commanded a division at Fleurus. The previous year he had shared the
defeat of Jourdan on the Rhine, but under Bonaparte he became a famous
participant in victory. A Jacobin democrat, he was later entrusted by
the Directory with important missions, but in these he had little
success. It was as a soldier that he rose in the coming years to
heights which in his own mind awakened a rivalry with Napoleon;
ambitious for the highest rank, he made a great match with the
sister-in-law of Joseph Bonaparte, and so managed his affairs that, as
is well known, he ended on the throne of Sweden and founded the
reigning house of that kingdom.
Bonaparte wooed the stupefied Carinthians with his softly worded
proclamations, and his advancing columns were unharassed by the
peasantry while he pushed farther on, capturing Klagenfurt, and
seizing both Triest and Fiume, the only harbors on the Austrian shore.
He then returned with the main body of his troops, and, crossing the
pass of Tarvis, entered Germany at Villach. "We are come," he said to
the inhabitants, "not as enemies, but as friends, to end a terrible
war imposed by England on a ministry bought with her gold." And the
populace, listening to his siren voice, believed him. All this was
accomplished before the end of March; and Charles, his army reduced to
less than three fourths, was resting northward on the road to Vienna,
beyond the river Mur, exhausted, and expecting daily that he would be
compelled to a further retreat.
Joubert had not been so successful. According to instructions, he had
pushed up the Adige as far as Brixen, into the heart of the hostile
Tyrol. The Austrians had again called the mountaineers to arms, and a
considerable force under Laudon was gathered to resist the invaders.
It had been a general but most indefinite understanding between
Bonaparte and the Directory that Moreau was again to cross the Rhine
and advance once more, this time for a junction with Joubert to march
against Vienna. But the directors, in an access of suspicion, had
broken their word, and, pleading their penury, had not taken a step
toward fitting out the Army of the North. Moreau was therefore not
within reach; he had not even crossed the Rhine. Consequently Joubert
was in straits, for the whole country had now risen against him. It
was with difficulty that he had advanced, and with serious loss that
he fought one terrible battle after another; finally, however, he
forced his way into the valley of the Drave, and marched down that
river to join Bonaparte. This was regarded by Bonaparte as a
remarkable feat, but by the Austrians as a virtual repulse; both the
Tyrol and Venice were jubilant, and the effects spread as far eastward
as the Austrian provinces of the Adriatic. Triest and Fiume had not
been garrisoned, and the Austrians occupied them once more; the
Venetian senate organized a secret insurrection, which broke out
simultaneously in many places, and was suppressed only after many of
the French, some of them invalids in the hospitals, had been murdered.
On March thirty-first, Bonaparte, having received definite and
official information that he could expect no immediate support from
the Army of the Rhine, addressed from Klagenfurt to the Archduke what
he called a "philosophical" letter, calling attention to the fact that
it was England which had embroiled France and Austria, powers which
had really no grievance one against the other. Would a prince, so far
removed by lofty birth from the petty weaknesses of ministers and
governments, not intervene as the savior of Germany to end the
miseries of a useless war? "As far as I myself am concerned, if the
communication I have the honor to be making should save the life of a
single man, I should be prouder of that civic crown than of the sad
renown which results from military success." At the same time Masséna
was pressing forward into the valley of the Mur, across the passes of
Neumarkt; and before the end of the week his seizure of St. Michael
and Leoben had cut off the last hope of a junction between the forces
of Charles and his expected reinforcements from the Rhine. Austria was
carrying on her preparations of war with the same proud determination
she had always shown, and Charles continued his disastrous hostilities
with Masséna. But when Thugut received the "philosophical" letter from
Bonaparte, which Charles had promptly forwarded to Vienna, the
imperial cabinet did not hesitate, and plenipotentiaries were soon on
their way to Leoben.
The situation of Bonaparte at Leoben was by no means what the position
of the French forces within ninety miles of Vienna would seem to
indicate. The revolutionary movement in Venetia, silently but
effectually fostered by the French garrisons, had been successful in
Bergamo, Brescia, and Salo. The senate, in despair, sent envoys to
Bonaparte at Göritz. His reply was conciliatory, but he declared that
he would do nothing unless the city of Venice should make the
long-desired concession about inscriptions in the Golden Book. At the
same time he demanded a monthly payment of a million francs in lieu of
all requisitions on its territory. At Paris the Venetian ambassador
had no better success, and with the news of Joubert's withdrawal from
the Tyrol a terrible insurrection broke out, which sacrificed many
French lives at Verona and elsewhere. Bonaparte's suggestions for the
preliminaries of peace with Austria had been drawn up before the news
of that event reached him: but with the Tyrol and Venice all aflame in
his rear, and threatening his connections; with no prospect of
assistance from Moreau in enforcing his demands; and with a growing
hostility showing itself among the populations of the hereditary
states of Austria into which he had penetrated, it was not wonderful
that his original design was confirmed. "At Leoben," he once said, in
a gambler's metaphor, "I was playing twenty-one, and I had only
twenty."
When, therefore, Merveldt and Gallo, the duly accredited
plenipotentiaries of Austria, and General Bonaparte, representing the
French republic, but with no formal powers from its government, met in
the castle of Göss at Leoben, they all knew that the situation of the
French was very precarious indeed, and that the terms to be made could
not be those dictated by a triumphant conqueror in the full tide of
victory. Neither party had any scruples about violating the public law
of Europe by the destruction of another nationality; but they needed
some pretext. While they were in the opening stages of negotiation the
pretext came; for on April ninth Bonaparte received news of the
murders to which reference has been made, and of an engagement at
Salo, provoked by the French, in which the Bergamask mountaineers had
captured three hundred of the garrison, mostly Poles. This affair was
only a little more serious than numerous other conflicts incident to
partisan warfare which were daily occurring; but it was enough. With a
feigned fury the French general addressed the Venetian senate as if
their land were utterly irreconcilable, and demanded from them
impossible acts of reparation. Junot was despatched to Venice with the
message, and delivered it from the floor of the senate on April
fifteenth, the very day on which his chief was concluding negotiations
for the delivery of the Venetian mainland to Austria.
So strong had the peace party in Vienna become, and such was the
terror of its inhabitants at seeing the court hide its treasures and
prepare to fly into Hungary, that the plenipotentiaries could only
accept the offer of Bonaparte, which they did with ill-concealed
delight. There was but one point of difference, the grand duchy of
Modena, which Francis for the honor of his house was determined to
keep, if possible. With Tuscany, Modena, and the Venetian mainland all
in their hands, the Austrian authorities felt that time would surely
restore to them the lost Milanese. But Bonaparte was obdurate. On the
eighteenth the preliminaries were closed and adopted. The Austrians
solemnly declared at the time that, when the papers were to be
exchanged formally, Bonaparte presented a copy which purported to be a
counterpart of what had been mutually arranged. Essential differences
were, however, almost immediately marked by the recipients, and when
they announced their discovery with violent clamor, the cool,
sarcastic general produced without remark another copy, which was
found to be a correct reproduction of the preliminary terms agreed
upon. This coarse and silly ruse seems to have been a favorite device,
for it was tried later in another conspicuous instance, the
negotiation of the Concordat. According to the authentic articles,
France was to have Belgium, with the "limits of France" as decreed by
the laws of the republic, a purposely ambiguous expression. In this
preliminary outline the Rhine boundary was not mentioned. The
territory of the Empire was also guaranteed. These flat contradictions
indicate something like panic on both sides, and duplicity at least on
one and probably on both, for Thugut's correspondence indicates his
firm purpose to despoil and destroy Venice. In any case Austria
obtained the longed-for mainland of Venice as far as the river Oglio,
together with Istria and Dalmatia, the Venetian dependencies beyond
the Adriatic, while Venice herself was to be nominally indemnified by
the receipt of the three papal legations, Bologna, Ferrara, and the
Romagna, which had just been erected into the Transpadane Republic!
Modena was to be united with Mantua, Reggio, and the Milanese into a
great central republic, which would always be dependent on France, and
was to be connected with her territory by way of Genoa. Some of the
articles were secret, and all were subject to immaterial changes in
the final negotiations for definitive peace, which were to be carried
on later at Bern, chosen for the purpose as being a neutral city.
Bonaparte explained, in a letter to the Directory, that whatever
occurred, the Papal States could never become an integral part of
Venice, and would always be under French influences. His sincerity was
no greater, as the event showed, concerning the very existence of
Venice herself. The terms he had made were considered at Vienna most
favorable, and there was great rejoicing in that capital. But it was
significant that in the routine negotiations the old-school
diplomatists had been sadly shocked by the behavior of their military
antagonist, who, though a mere tyro in their art, was very hard to
deal with. At the outset, for instance, they had proposed to
incorporate, as the first article in the preliminaries, that for which
the Directory had long been negotiating with Austria, a recognition of
the French republic. "Strike that out," said Bonaparte. "The Republic
is like the sun on the horizon--all the worse for him who will not see
it." This was but a foretaste of ruder dealings which followed, and of
still more violent breaches with tradition in the long negotiations
which were to ensue over the definitive treaty.
The very day on which the signatures were affixed at Leoben, the
Austrian arms were humbled by Hoche on the Rhine. Moreau had not been
able to move for lack of a paltry sum which he was begging for, but
could not obtain, from the Directory. Hoche, chafing at similar
delays, and anxious to atone for Jourdan's failure of the previous
year, finally set forth, and, crossing at Neuwied, advanced to
Heddersdorf, where he attacked the Austrians, who had been weakened to
strengthen the Archduke Charles. They were routed with a loss of six
thousand prisoners. Another considerable force was nearly surrounded
when a sudden stop was put to Hoche's career by the arrival of a
courier from Leoben. Though, soon after, the ministry of war was
offered to him, he declined. It was apparently prescience of the fact
that the greatest laurels were still to be won which led him to
refuse, and return to his headquarters at Wetzlar. There a mysterious
malady, still attributed by many to poison, ended his brief and
glorious career on September eighteenth, 1797. His laurels were such
as adorn only a character full of promise, serene and generous alike
in success and defeat. In the Black Forest, Desaix, having crossed the
Rhine with Moreau's army below Strasburg, was likewise driving the
Austrians before him. He too was similarly checked, and these
brilliant achievements came all too late. No advantage was gained by
them in the terms of peace, and the glory of humiliating Austria
remained to Bonaparte. Desaix was an Auvergnat, an aristocrat of
famous pedigree, carefully trained as a cadet to the military career.
He was now twenty-nine, having served on the Rhine as Victor's
adjutant, as general of brigade in the Army of the Moselle, and as
general of division under Jourdan and Moreau. Transferred to Italy, he
became the confidential friend and stanch supporter of Bonaparte. His
manner was winning, his courage contagious, his liberal principles
unquestioned. No finer figure appears on the battle-fields of the
Directory and Consulate.
Throughout all France there was considerable dissatisfaction with
Bonaparte's moderation, and a feeling among extreme republicans,
especially in the Directory, that he should have destroyed the
Austrian monarchy. Larévellière and Rewbell were altogether of this
opinion, and the corrupt Barras to a certain extent, for he had taken
a bribe of six hundred thousand francs from the Venetian ambassador at
Paris, to compel the repression by Bonaparte of the rebels on the
mainland. The correspondence of various emissaries connected with this
affair fell into the general's hands at Milan, and put the Directory
more completely at his mercy than ever. On April nineteenth, however,
he wrote as if in reply to such strictures as might be made: "If at
the beginning of the campaign I had persisted in going to Turin, I
never should have passed the Po; if I had persisted in going to Rome,
I should have lost Milan; if I had persisted in going to Vienna,
perhaps I should have overthrown the Republic." He well understood
that fear would yield what despair might refuse. It was a matter of
course that when the terms of Leoben reached Paris the Directory
ratified them: even though they had been irregularly negotiated by an
unauthorized agent, they separated England from Austria, and crushed
the coalition. One thing, however, the directors notified Bonaparte he
must not do; that was, to interfere further in the affairs of Venice.
This order reached him on May eighth; but just a week before, Venice,
as an independent state, had ceased to exist.
Accident and crafty prearrangement had combined to bring the affairs
of that ancient commonwealth to such a crisis. The general
insurrection and the fight at Salo had given a pretext for disposing
of the Venetian mainland; soon after, the inevitable results of French
occupation afforded the opportunity for destroying the oligarchy
altogether. The evacuation of Verona by the garrison of its former
masters had been ordered as a part of the general disarmament of
Italy. The Veronese were intensely, fiercely indignant on learning
that they were to be transferred to a hated allegiance; and on April
seventeenth, when a party appeared to reinforce the French troops
already there, the citizens rose in a frenzy of indignation, and drove
the hated invaders into the citadel. During the following days, three
hundred of the French civilians in the town, all who had not been able
to find refuge, were massacred; old and young, sick and well. At the
same time a detachment of Austrians under Laudon came in from the
Tyrol to join Fioravente, the Venetian general, and his Slavs. This of
course increased the tumult, for the French began to bombard the city
from the citadel. For a moment the combined besiegers, exaggerating
the accounts of Joubert's withdrawal and of Moreau's failure to
advance, hoped for ultimate success, and the overthrow of the French.
But rumors from Leoben caused the Austrians to withdraw up the Adige,
and a Lombard regiment came to the assistance of the French. The
Venetian forces were captured, and the city was disarmed; so also were
Peschiera, Castelnuovo, and many others which had made no resistance.
Two days after this furious outbreak of Veronese resentment,--an event
which is known to the French as the Veronese Passover,--occurred
another, of vastly less importance in itself, but having perhaps even
more value as cumulative evidence that the wound already inflicted by
Bonaparte on the Venetian state was mortal. A French vessel, flying
before two Austrian cruisers, appeared off the Lido, and anchored
under the arsenal. It was contrary to immemorial custom for an armed
vessel to enter the harbor of Venice, and the captain was ordered to
weigh anchor. He refused. Thereupon, in stupid zeal, the guns of the
Venetian forts opened on the ship. Many of the crew were killed, and
the rest were thrown into prison. This was the final stroke, all that
was necessary for the justification of Bonaparte's plans. An embassy
from the senate had been with him at Gratz when the awful news from
Verona came to his headquarters. He had then treated them harshly,
demanding not only the liberation of every man confined for political
reasons within their prison walls, but the surrender of their
inquisitors as well. "I will have no more Inquisition, no more Senate;
I shall be an Attila to Venice!... I want not your alliance nor your
schemes; I mean to lay down the law." They left his presence with
gloomy and accurate forebodings as to what was in those secret
articles which had been executed at Leoben. When, two days later, came
this news of further conflict with the French in Venice itself, the
envoys were dismissed, without another audience, by a note which
declared that its writer "could not receive them, dripping as they
were with French blood." On May third, having advanced to Palma,
Bonaparte declared war against Venice. In accordance with the general
license of the age, hostilities had, however, already begun; for as
early as April thirtieth the French and their Italian helpers had
fortified the lowlands between the Venetian lagoons, and on May first
the main army appeared at Fusina, the nearest point on the mainland to
the city.