THE TREATY OF CAMPO FORMIO[2]
[Footnote 2: Authorities as before.]
Bonaparte and the Mediterranean -- France and the Orient --
Bonaparte's Grand Diplomacy -- Importance of Malta -- Course of
Negotiations with Austria -- Novel Tactics of the French
Plenipotentiary -- The Treaty of Campo Formio -- Results of
Fructidor -- Bonaparte's Interests Conflict with those of the
Directory -- Europe and the Peace.
Bonaparte was a child of the Mediterranean. The light of its sparkling
waters was ever in his eyes, and the fascination of its ancient
civilizations was never absent from his dreams of glory. His
proclamations ring with classic allusions, his festivals were arranged
with classic pomp. In infancy he had known of Genoa, the tyrant of his
island, as strong in the splendid commercial enterprises which
stretched eastward through the Levant, and beyond into the farther
Orient; in childhood he had fed his imagination on the histories of
Alexander the Great, and his conquest of Oriental empires; in youth he
had thought to find an open door for his ambition, when all others
seemed closed, by taking service with England to share the renown of
those who were building up her Eastern empire. Disappointed in this,
he appears to have turned with the same lack of success to Russia,
already England's rival on the continent of Asia. It is perfectly
comprehensible that throughout his early manhood his mind should have
occasionally reverted to the same ideals. The conqueror of Italy and
Austria might hope to realize them. Was he not master of the two
great maritime commonwealths which had once shared the mass of Eastern
trade between them? England's intrusion upon the Mediterranean basin
was a never-ceasing irritation to all the Latin powers. Her commercial
prosperity and her mastery of the seas increased the exasperation of
France, as threatening even her equality in their ancient rivalry.
From the days of the first crusade all Frenchmen had felt that
leadership in the reconstruction of Asia belonged to them by virtue of
preoccupation. Ardent republicans, moreover, still regarded France's
mission as incomplete even in the liberalizing of the Continent; and
the Department of Marine under the Directory stamped its paper with
the motto, "Liberty of the Seas." Imaginative forces, the
revolutionary system, and the national ambition all combined to create
ubiquitous enthusiasm for the conquest of the Mediterranean. To this
the temperament and training of Bonaparte were as the spark to the
tinder. It was with willing ears that the Directory heard his first
suggestions about the Venetian isles, and subsequently his plans for
the capture of Malta, which was to be followed by a death-blow to
England's supremacy in the Levant by the seizure of Egypt and the
dismemberment of Turkey.
As early as May fourteenth, 1797, a letter from the conqueror of Italy
informed the Directory what naval stores they might hope to secure in
the dismemberment of Venice; in the previous year similar estimates
had been made with regard to Genoa, Tuscany, and Naples. It was with a
Franco-Venetian fleet that Gentili established French administration
in the Ionian Isles, whose people, weary of Venetian tyranny, welcomed
him as a liberator. The more intelligent among them desired home rule
under French protection; the gratitude of the ignorant was shown in
the erection of rude shrines where lamps were kept alight before
pictures of Bonaparte. About the same time the discontented Greeks on
the mainland were given to understand that the great annihilator of
tyrants would gladly hear their cries. For months an extensive secret
correspondence was carried on between the French headquarters in Italy
and the disaffected in Turkey, wherever found. No fewer than three
rebellious pashas were ready to seek French assistance; and one of
them, he of Janina, had actually twelve thousand men in the field. The
archives of the French foreign office abound in careful studies by its
diplomatic agents of the revolutionary forces and elements in the
Ottoman empire. Ways and means to dissolve the ancient friendship
between France and the Porte were discussed; a political program,
based on the maltreatment of French merchants in the Levant and the
scandals of Mameluke administration in Egypt, was elaborated; and on
September thirteenth, 1797, the first formal proposition for the
seizure of that country was made by Bonaparte to Talleyrand, now
minister of foreign affairs. The government at Paris redoubled its
energies, and recruited its powers, for the object in view.
In fact, after Fructidor there is a ring in the words of Bonaparte's
letters, especially those to Talleyrand, which shows how risky it
would have been to neglect his unexpressed but evident wishes. The sum
of four hundred thousand dollars, sent from Italy in the previous year
for fitting out the fleet, had been used for another purpose, much to
the irritation of Bonaparte, whose language in regard to the
upbuilding of a sea power had been vigorous. At last, by his
contributions of material from Italy, and the efforts of the
administration at home, something had been accomplished. Admiral
Brueys was in the Adriatic with a force able, it was believed, to
meet even the English. By clever diplomacy the Spaniards and
Neapolitans had been set to neutralize each other. With time the
latter had grown bold, and were making extortionate demands. The
Directory offered to send five thousand French soldiers to reinforce
the Spanish army which was contending with Portugal, if an equal
number of the Spanish troops in Italy would mingle with the French
soldiers to conquer the Papal States. The latter would then be given
to the Duke of Parma, in return for his old duchy, which was to form
part of the new republic.
In this far-reaching design of Bonaparte's--a plan which comprehended
the whole basin of the Mediterranean, and which, by throwing French
troops into Spain, opened the way for further interference in that
peninsula--lies the germ of all his future dealing with the Castilian
monarchy. The focal point of the whole system, he had explained as
early as May, was the island of Malta, the citadel of the
Mediterranean. The grand master of the Knights was at the point of
death; the King of Naples claimed the island as an ancient appanage,
but a German was the most prominent of his order among the candidates
for the succession. Bonaparte's proposal was that the Maltese should
first be bribed to revolt, and that then the French or Spanish fleet
should seize Valetta, compel the election of a Spaniard, and thus
secure a bulwark in the heart of the Mediterranean against Turkey on
one side and England on the other.
Such were some of the summer's avocations; its real business was
supposed to be the conclusion of a peace with the empire. But Austria
was far from being exhausted, and her agents protracted the
negotiations while the Vienna government was recruiting its forces,
hoping all the time for a triumph of the royalist party in Paris.
Until after the eighteenth of Fructidor this was not entirely
distasteful to Bonaparte, in view of the desire of Carnot for peace on
the basis of the preliminaries. Nevertheless, a spirited comedy was
playing all the time, Bonaparte mystifying both Merveldt, one of the
Austrian plenipotentiaries, and Clarke, who had finally been admitted
to the negotiations as agent of the Directory, by outbursts of feigned
impatience, while, by pretended confidences, he coquetted with Gallo,
who, though the second Austrian plenipotentiary, was a Neapolitan,
minister from that kingdom to Vienna, and has by some been thought to
have been Bonaparte's own creature, and to have accepted his bribes.
Attempted bribery and counter-bribery, at any rate, there were; for
the conqueror himself received from Francis the offer of a
principality in the empire with not less than two hundred and fifty
thousand subjects, and an independent income. Had the German emperor
known the projects of his opponent he would have reviled himself as an
artless simpleton. In May it was agreed that the congress to determine
the territorial transfers within the Germanic body should sit, not at
Bern, but at Rastadt in Baden. But the demands of the conqueror in
amplification of the articles signed at Leoben were then so
extortionate that the Austrian minister for foreign affairs doubted
the good faith of his representatives, and recalled from Russia Count
Cobenzl, his most learned, accomplished, and skilful diplomatist, in
order to secure something like equality in the negotiations. This gave
a temporary pause to the proceedings, which dragged on without
significance until after Fructidor, when Barras wrote from Paris:
"Peace, peace, but an honorable and lasting one. No more of Carnot's
worthless suggestions."
When, therefore, the negotiations were again renewed in the first
days of September, Bonaparte earnestly longed for at least a temporary
peace. He arranged that the plenipotentiaries should meet at Udine,
not far from his military headquarters at Passariano, so that he might
secure the greatest possible advantage from the attitude of a
conqueror ready at a moment to resume hostilities. The Directory,
suspecting that Clarke had become too facile an instrument in the
hands of the ambitious soldier, chose this moment to recall him. For a
month the conflict of wits between the formal diplomatists and the
determined, unhampered French general was hot and furious. Even the
veteran Cobenzl, who did not arrive until September twenty-sixth, was
but a toy in Bonaparte's hands. More than once the latter had recourse
to his old tactics of barbaric rudeness, and once, toward the close,
he wilfully brought on a fit of anger, in which by accident he dashed
from its stand a porcelain tray, the gift of Catherine II to Cobenzl.
The legend ran that as he caught up his hat, he hissed out the words:
"In less than a month I shall have shattered your monarchy like this!"
and then flung out of the room, declaring that the truce was ended. In
fact, no one seems to have paid any attention to the crash at all.
Cobenzl wrote that Bonaparte behaved like a crazy man, and the French
officers had difficulty in soothing their general. Whether the nervous
attack were real or feigned no one can say: at subsequent crises in
diplomacy there recurred others, very similar. Both sides were anxious
to make the doubtful language of Leoben as elastic as possible--each,
naturally enough, for its own advantage. Proposition and
counter-proposition, rejoinder and surrejoinder, followed one another
through those weeks so pregnant of consequence to both sides. Twice it
appeared as if no conclusion could be reached, and as if a breach were
imminent. Once, marching orders for the invading army were actually
prepared and in part issued. But the season was inclement and to
Marmont his general confided a sense of uneasiness regarding
Augereau's appointment on the Rhine. Both parties realized that
neither could secure all they claimed without delay, or a possible
renewal of warfare. They determined, therefore, to brave their
respective governments, and entirely to disregard both Prussian and
German feeling as to the Rhine boundary. Finally a compromise was
made, and on the seventeenth of October at midnight, after a long
social reunion of the plenipotentiaries; in the dark, Bonaparte
telling ghost stories, and making the scene generally dramatic and
even theatrical, the treaty was engrossed and signed, being dated from
Campo Formio, a hamlet neutralized for the purpose. The negotiators
parted with the exchange of friendly greetings.
The terms were far more favorable to France than in all probability
Bonaparte had hoped to obtain. The Austrian Netherlands with the Rhine
frontier from Basel to Andernach were surrendered by the Emperor, and
in token of good faith the commanding fortress of Mainz was
immediately to be delivered into French hands. In return Bonaparte
ceded the Italian lands eastward from the Adige, by the head of the
Adriatic, to the frontiers of Dalmatia, including, of course, the city
of Venice. France kept the Ionian Islands and the Venetian factories
opposite on the mainland. All the Venetian territory to the west of
the Adige, together with Mantua, Modena, Lombardy, Massa-e-Carrara,
Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna, was incorporated into the new
Cisalpine Republic; and Genoa, receiving from the Emperor the remnants
of his feudal rights in the surrounding country, was transformed into
the Ligurian Republic, with a constitution similar to that of the
Cisalpine. The various arrangements for the redistribution of German
lands necessary to compensate princes who must abandon territories on
the left bank of the Rhine were to be made by the congress to be held
at Rastadt. French plenipotentiaries, under Bonaparte's leadership,
were to be members of the congress; while Rastadt, as a border town,
and therefore more favorable to French interests than Bern, was to be
further neutralized by the departure of the Emperor's troops from all
German lands except his own hereditary dominions. When the news of
Campo Formio reached Vienna, the peace party was delighted, and the
populace broke out in a jubilee. But Thugut was not deceived. "Peace!
Peace!" said he. "Where is it? I cannot recognize it in this treaty."
In Paris the negotiations had produced some uneasiness. It is now
generally said that Fructidor was exclusively the work of Bonaparte:
or, rather, that the thirteenth of Vendemiaire was the work of Barras,
assisted by Bonaparte; that the eighteenth of Fructidor was the work
of Bonaparte, assisted by Barras. This is only a half-truth based on
an exaggerated estimate of the facts. While, on the whole, Bonaparte
was at the moment pleased with the results of this second political
stroke, there was much connected with it utterly repugnant to his
wishes. The so-called Fructidorians, among them Mme. de Stael and her
friends, were still favorable, in the main, to Bonaparte; but they
were thorough republicans, and considered the day as the victory, not
of a man, but of a cause. Later Bonaparte expressed sorrow that he had
taken any share in arranging it, for the cause and its few supporters
proved to be hostile. The wholesale proscription which followed the
success of the Directory and its friends destroyed their personal
popularity, strengthened the adherents of the monarchy, and weakened
the prestige of the army, which was the real support of the new
revolution. As far as the repression of conservative royalist and
moderate republican influence in the Directory and the chambers was
concerned, Bonaparte's interests were identical with those of Barras,
Rewbell, and the bigoted Larevelliere. He would gladly have ended
public agitation in a nation the majority of whom had become royalists
again. To this end, he would willingly have broken the presses of the
newspapers and have closed the Clichy club: he was anxious for any
extreme course necessary to preserve the revolutionary model in
government until, in his own phrase, "the pear was ripe" for him. The
events of Fructidor, on the one hand, confirmed the constitutionalists
in the policy of letting other countries alone, and at the same time
put an end to all enthusiasm for republican principles even in the
radical executive, necessarily substituting in its place the merest
self-interest. This new situation, though not inimical to Bonaparte's
interests, made the Fructidorians the most determined opponents of his
ambitions.
Almost immediately after the events of Fructidor the new Directory had
sent instructions to Passariano that Venice was to be preserved from
the hands of Austria. The removal of Clarke had followed. At once
began a war of words and a conflict of purposes. Bonaparte's
despatches depicted the situation of the Italian peoples in the
darkest light, so as to set forth their unfitness for independence,
while in every letter he dwelt on his own feeble and broken health as
a reason for his immediate recall. Meantime he was driving the
machinery of negotiation at its utmost speed and capacity. The
Directory finally took its stand on the determination that Italy must
be free as far eastward as the Isonzo, and the subtle Talleyrand
agreed to win or compel Bonaparte's acquiescence. The courier with
this ultimatum from Paris reached Passariano exactly twelve hours
after Monge and Berthier had carried the treaty of Campo Formio in the
opposite direction for the sanction of the directors. It was bitter,
indeed, for Barras and his colleagues to surrender, but the logic of
their position made resistance impossible. They approved the hateful
stipulations with what grace they could muster, and, the warfare on
the Continent being over, appointed Bonaparte to command what was
significantly entitled the Army of England, but without defining his
duties. Thirty thousand soldiers began their march from Milan to
Picardy on the English Channel. As for the now distracted Venetians,
they asked permission to continue the war against Austria on their own
account. Bonaparte imprisoned the deputies who presented the petition,
and Serurier delivered Venice into the Emperor's hands, after
destroying the arsenals and such vessels as were no longer useful for
war. Among these was the stately barge in which the officials of the
commonwealth had from immemorial times been wont to espouse the
Adriatic--the famous Bucentaur. Manin, the last doge of Venice, was
compelled to swear allegiance to Austria in the name of his
compatriots. With a broken heart he made ready for the ceremony, but
as he stepped forward at the appointed time to pronounce the fatal
words, his strength and his faculties gave way together. He fell
senseless at the feet of his foes, and died not long afterward.
The effect of Bonaparte's success in forcing such a peace upon Austria
was profound throughout Europe. The war party in Great Britain was
materially strengthened by the treatment which Malmesbury had
received. While the treaty made a pretense of upholding the integrity
of the empire as a principle, yet Prussia and all Germany knew that
that integrity was quickly to be violated. Paul I of Russia
remembered that as guarantor of the peace of Teschen, he too was
deeply concerned in that integrity, and displayed uneasiness. The
British had on October eleventh annihilated the Dutch fleet at
Camperdown: their sea power was again assured and with it the
replenishing of their treasury. These elements of the second coalition
have been repeatedly described, but for all that, events would have
been otherwise than they were, had there been anywhere in Europe a
statesman with moral and material power at his bidding, who could have
propagated a moderate, enlightened liberalism in the countries of the
north. As a sorry radicalism had full play for some years in France, a
blind reactionary conservatism prevailed among all the Teutonic
peoples. The struggle of two extremes made the chaos. England was
determined on war to destruction or exhaustion: France likewise. The
system of national assassinations and territorial compensations begun
in the partition of Poland was exemplified in the peace of Campo
Formio. Then it was three to one against a nation with neither
political nor military strength, and the decision was against
nationality. Hereafter it was to be all absolute Europe against a
nation with some political and immense military aptitudes. The
struggle was to last fifteen years and be decided this time for, not
against, nationality as a fact and a principle.