1797-1798 THE PEACE OF CAMPO-FORMIO 837 after the submission of the fleet at the Nore, Pitt made one more effort to obtain peace. Negotiations were held at Lille, but they broke down as completely as the negotiations in the preceding year. Austria had already signed preliminaries of peace with France at Leoben, and as Austria then engaged to abandon its possessions in the Netherlands, Pitt agreed to leave them under French dominion. He was also prepared to surrender some West Indian islands which British fleets had conquered from France, but he would not give up Trinidad, which they had taken from Spain, or the Cape of Good Hope, which they had taken from the Dutch. On his refusal the negotiations were broken off by the Directory. England had the mastery by sea, and France by land. On October 11 Duncan defeated the Dutch fleet off Camperdown, on the coast of Holland, thus putting an end to the projected invasion of Ireland (see p. 835); and on October 18 Bonaparte signed peace with Austria at Campo-Formio. The Austrian Netherlands were abandoned to France, whilst the Austrian territories in North Italy were made part of a republic called the Cisalpine Republic, and practically dependent on France. To compensate Austria— as the phrase went the old Venetian Republic was suppressed, and the greater part of its territory given over to Austria, whilst the remainder went to the Cisalpine Republic. In the partition of Poland, the old governments had set the example of despoiling the weak, and Bonaparte did but carry out their principles. 12. Bonaparte's Expedition to Egypt. 1798.-When Bonaparte returned to France the Directory urged him to conquer England, but he preferred to go to Egypt. His vast abilities seldom failed him when he was called on to do what was possible to be done, but there was in him a romantic vein which constantly beguiled him into attempting impossible achievements. He hoped by the conquest of Egypt to found an empire in the East, from which he could hold out a hand to the native rulers of India who were struggling against British authority. Foremost amongst these rulers was Tippoo, the son of Hyder Ali (see p. 804), who had inherited his father's throne without his father's military abilities. Tippoo had in 1792 been defeated by Cornwallis and stripped of half his territory, but he was now burning to revenge the disaster, and hoped that Bonaparte would assist him to do so. On May 19 Bonaparte with a large fleet and army sailed from Toulon, seizing Malta on his way from the Knights of St. John. On his arrival in Egypt he marched against the Mamelukes-a splendid body of cavalry, the Beys or chiefs of which ruled the country under the nominal supremacy of the Sultan-defeated them at the Battle of the Pyramids, and made himself master of the land. 13. The Battle of the Nile. 1798. —On August 1, Nelson—now an admiral—found the French fleet which had conveyed Bonaparte anchored in Aboukir Bay. Instead of following the old fashion of fighting in which the hostile fleets engaged one another in parallel lines; he improved upon the example of breaking the line set by Rodney in 1782. Sending half his fleet through the middle of the enemy's line, he made it take up a position between half of the French ships and the shore, whilst the other half of his own ships placed themselves outside the same part of the enemy's line. He thus crushed part of the enemy's fleet by placing it between two fires before the other part had time to weigh anchor and to come up. The battle raged far into the night. Nelson himself was wounded, and carried below. A surgeon ran up to attend on him. “No,” he said, “I will take my turn with my brave fellows." Before long he heard a cry that the French Admiral's ship was on fire. Hurrying on deck, he gave orders to send boats to help the French who threw themselves into the sea to escape the flames. The Battle of the Nile ended in a complete British victory, which, by cutting off Bonaparte's army from France, threw insuperable difficulties in the way of his scheme for the establishment of a French empire in the East. 14. Bonaparte in Syria. 1799.-Bonaparte, however, refused to abandon the hopes which he had formed. On January 26 he wrote to Tippoo announcing his preparations to relieve him. In the spring of 1799, Lord Mornington, the Governor-General of India, sent an army under Harris against Tippoo, and on May 4 Tippoo's capital, Seringapatam, was stormed and himself slain. Bonaparte was too far off to attempt a rescue. In February, learning that a Turkish army was coming against him through Syria, he set out to meet it. For a while he was victorious, but he was baffled by the desperate resistance of the Turkish garrison of Acre, which had been encouraged in its defence by an English Commodore, Sir Sidney Smith. On April 11, Bonaparte abandoned the siege of Acre and withdrew to Egypt. There he held his own, but Sir Sidney Smith sent him a file of newspapers to inform him of the events which had been passing in Europe during his absence. So startling was the news, that on August 22 Bonaparte sailed for France, leaving his army in Egypt to its fate. 15. Foundation of the Consulate. 1799-1800.-What Bonaparte learned from the newspapers was that a new coalition had been formed against France, this time between England, Austria and 1799 BEGINNING OF THE CONSULATE 839 Russia. The French armies in Germany had been driven across the Rhine, and those in Italy had been beaten in two great battles, one on the Trebbia and the other at Novi, and had been driven across the Alps. When Bonaparte landed in France, he was prepared to turn the disasters of his country to his own advantage. Though a French General, Massena, had defeated the Austrians Head-dress of a lady (Mrs. Abington), about 1778: from the European Magazine. at Zürich in September, Bonaparte represented the policy of the Directory in the worst colours, accused them of ruining France, and in November made himself master of the country by military violence, on the plea that it was necessary to revise the Constitution. In 1800 he was named First Consul, under which title he exercised absolute authority, though he was still nominally only the first magistrate of the Republic. 16. An Overture for Peace. 1799.-One of Bonaparte's first acts after thrusting the Directory from power was to offer peace to England, but his offer was repelled with scorn. Lord Grenville, the Foreign Secretary, in his reply, even went so far as to suggest that the best security which the French could give for peace was the recalling of the Bourbons to the throne. Yet, whatever the Government might say, the country longed for peace. In 1798 Pitt had added to its burdens an income-tax of 10 per cent., and if the war was to go on till the Bourbons were recalled, the prospect before the nation was indeed dreary. 17. The Campaign of Marengo and the Peace of Lunéville. 1800-1801.-At the end of 1799 Pitt cherished the hope that the recent successes of the coalition against France would be continued. In 1800 this hope was dashed to the ground. The Coalition itself broke up. The Tzar Paul, who was half mad, was an enthusiastic admirer of Bonaparte, and when he learnt that Bonaparte was in power withdrew from his alliance with Austria. Bonaparte crossed the Alps, crushed an Austrian army at Marengo in Piedmont, and later in the same year another French General, Moreau, crushed another Austrian army at Hohenlinden in Bavaria. On February 9, 1801, a peace in which the Rhine was formally acknowledged to be the boundary of France was signed at Lunéville. The cry for peace increased in England. The harvest of 1800 was a bad one, and in that year and in the following spring the price of corn rose till it reached 156s. a quarter. If peace was to be had, Pitt was hardly the man to negotiate it, as he was regarded in France as the most violent enemy of that country, where every evil from which it suffered was popularly attributed to 'the gold of Pitt.' It happened, however, that before any fresh negotiation was opened, Pitt resigned office from causes entirely disconnected with the affairs of the Continent. 18. The Irish Rebellion. 1798.-Hoche's failure in 1797 (see p. 834) had not been followed by any abatement of violence in Ireland. The so-called Protestant militia and yeomanry, under pretence of repressing insurrection and outrage, themselves committed outrages with impunity, and the regular soldiers even learnt to follow their evil example. In order to procure the delivery of concealed arms, suspected persons were flogged and their houses burnt to the ground. Amongst those who were concerned in these savage actions, Fitzgerald, the Sheriff of Tipperary-Flogging Fitzgerald,' as he was usually called-obtained an unenviable notoriety. He indeed suppressed by his energy the organisation of 1798-1799 LORD CORNWALLIS IN IRELAND 841 those who were preparing to welcome a fresh invasion by the French, but his energy often showed itself in the form of brutal outrage. On one occasion, for instance, he almost flogged to death a teacher of languages because he found in his possession a note in the French language which he was himself unable to read, but which he took as evidence of complicity with the French Government. Sir Ralph Abercromby, the commander-in-chief in Ireland, was in 1798 driven by the clamour of the officials to resign his office because he remonstrated against this rule of license as injurious to the discipline of the army. The Catholics subject to outrage joined the society of United Irishmen in thousands, and the United Irishmen at once made preparations for an insurrection. The secret was betrayed to the Government and the leaders arrested. Nevertheless on May 21 bands of peasants armed with pikes rose in insurrection, principally in Wexford, and in many places committed horrible atrocities. These atrocities, being usually committed against Protestants, alienated the Presbyterians of the North, who from that time began to take part with the Government. At one time it was feared that even Dublin would fall into the hands of the insurgents, but they were defeated at Vinegar Hill near Wexford by the regular troops under General Lake. In August, a French force of 1100 landed in Killala Bay. The first troops sent against them met them at Castlebar, but ran away so fast that the affair is known as the racè of Castlebar. The French were, however, too few to make a long resistance, and on September 9 they surrendered, thus bringing to an end all chance of successful resistance to English authority in Ireland. 19. An Irish Reign of Terror. 1798-1799. Before the defeat of the French, Lord Cornwallis arrived as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He was a just man, and was deeply moved by the violence of those who styled themselves loyalists. Magistrates and soldiers vied with one another in acts of cruelty. The practice of torturing prisoners to extort confessions was common, and Lord Cornwallis, who did his best to stop these atrocious proceedings, was exasperated by the light way in which they were regarded in his own presence. "The conversation of the principal persons of the country," he wrote, "all tends to encourage this system of blood, and the conversation, even at my table, where you may suppose I do all I can to prevent it, always turns on hanging, shooting, burning, &c., and if a priest has been put to death, the greatest joy is expressed by the whole company." In 1799 the Irish Parliament passed an Act of indemnity securing against punishment all persons 3 I III. |