The hope of Austria was now the Archduke Charles, who had so brilliantly forced the two French armies on the Rhine to retreat. He was a young man, younger even than Napoleon, being but twenty-five years of age. The Aulic Council at Vienna decided to pit youth against youth, and the Archduke was ordered to take chief command in Italy. Aware of the fact that the Archduke was waiting for reËnforcements from the army of the Rhine, Napoleon decided to take the initiative, and strike his enemy before the succors arrived.

MassÉna was ordered up the Piave, to attack a separate division under Lusignan, while Napoleon moved against the Archduke on the Tagliamento. By forced marches, the French reached the river before they were expected (March 16, 1797). Making as if they meant to force a passage, they opened upon the Austrians, who awaited them upon the other side, and gave them a soldierly reception. Then, as if he had suddenly changed his mind and meant to bivouac there, Napoleon drew back his troops, and preparations for a meal were made. The Archduke, deceived by this, drew off also, and returned to his tent. Suddenly the French sprang to arms, and dashed for the fords. Bernadotte’s division led, and before the Austrians could get into line, the French were safely over, and prepared for action. The Austrians fought, and fought well; but they were outnumbered, as they had been outgeneralled, and they were beaten, losing prisoners and cannon. MassÉna, equally successful, had defeated and captured Lusignan, and was nearing the Pass of Tarvis, which leads into Germany from the Italian side. The Archduke hurried to the defence of this vital point, gathering in all his forces as he went. Taking position in front of the pass, he awaited MassÉna. By forced marches that intrepid soldier, “the pet child of victory,” came up, battle was joined, and desperately contested. MassÉna won; and the road to Vienna was cleared. The Archduke fell back to Villachi; MassÉna waited at Tarvis, hoping to capture an Austrian division which was advancing to the pass, pursued by General Guieu. Not till the Austrians reached Tarvis did they perceive that they were enclosed, front and rear. Demoralized, they surrendered after feeble resistance.

Bernadotte and SÉrurier took Gradisca and its garrison, after the former had sacrificed several hundred men in reckless assault upon the ramparts.

On March 28, 1797, Napoleon, with the main body of his army, passed into Corinthia by the Col de Tarvis. Pressing on, he reached Klagenfurth, from which he wrote to the retreating Archduke a letter suggesting peace, March 31, 1797. In reply, the Austrian commander stated that he had no authority to treat. The French continued a vigorous advance, and near Newmarket the Archduke, having received four battalions of the long-expected reËnforcements, stood and fought. He was beaten with a loss of three thousand men. He then asked for an armistice, which was refused. Napoleon would treat for peace, but a truce he would not grant. At Unzmark the Archduke was again worsted, and his retreat became almost a rout. On April 2, 1797, the advance guard of Napoleon was at Leoben, and the hills of Vienna were in sight from the outposts. Then came officers to ask a suspension of arms to treat for peace; and the preliminaries of Leoben, after some delays, were signed.

Many reasons have been suggested for Napoleon’s course in tendering peace when he was apparently carrying all before him. It is said that he became alarmed at non-coÖperation of the armies of the Rhine; again, that he was discouraged by Joubert’s want of success in the Tyrol; again, that he feared insurrection in his rear. Whatever the motive, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he made a huge mistake. The French on the Rhine had moved. Desaix was driving one Austrian army through the Black Forest; Hoche had beaten and was about to surround the other. Austria’s situation was desperate, and Vienna must have fallen. There are those who suggest that Napoleon hastened to suspend the war to deprive rival generals, Hoche especially, of a share in his glory. This is far-fetched, to say the least of it. Month after month he had done all in his power to get those rival generals to move. To the Directory he sent appeals, one after another, to order the Rhine armies to cross and coÖperate. He even sent money from his own army chest; and for fear the funds might lodge somewhere in Paris, he sent them directly to the Rhine.

Bourrienne is not an authority friendly to Napoleon, and yet Bourrienne states that when Napoleon, after the truce, received the despatches announcing the progress of Desaix and Hoche, he was almost beside himself with chagrin. He even wanted to break the armistice, and his generals had to remonstrate. This testimony would seem to conclusively prove that Napoleon offered peace because he had lost hope in the coÖperation which had been promised him, and which was necessary to his triumph. Singly he was not able to hold disaffected Italy down, guard a long line of communications, and overthrow the Austrian Empire. The preliminaries of Leoben and the treaty of Campo Formio will always be subject of debate. The part which Venice was made to play—that of victim to the perfidy of Napoleon and the greed of Austria—aroused pity and indignation then, and has not ceased to be a favorite pivot for Napoleonic denunciation. Austria was very anxious to hold Lombardy. Napoleon was determined to hold both Lombardy and Belgium. Venice was coldly thrown to Austria as compensation, because it was easier to seize upon decrepit Venetia than to meet another effort of the great Empire whose courage and resources seemed inexhaustible. Perhaps a clearer case of political hard-heartedness had not been seen since Russia, Prussia, and Austria cut up Poland and devoured it.

But after this has been said, let the other side of the picture be viewed. Venice had undertaken to maintain neutrality, and had not maintained it. She had allowed both belligerents to take her towns, use her fortresses, eat her supplies, and pocket her money. Trying to please both, she pleased neither; and they united to despoil her.

Again, there was the quarrel between the city of Venice and the Venetian territories on the mainland. Venice had its Golden Book in which were written the names of her nobles. Aristocrats on the mainland craved the writing of their names in this Golden Book, and were refused that bliss; hence heartburnings, which were referred to Napoleon. He advised the Venetian Senate to write the names in the book, and the Senate refused. Venice had long been governed by a few families, and these few had the customary obstinacy and prejudice of a caste. They treated Venetia simply as a fief—an estate belonging to the nobles.

Again, republican leaven had been at work throughout Venetia, and Napoleon had advised the Senate to remodel its mediÆval institutions. Other states in Italy were yielding to the trend of the times, and Venice should do likewise. The Senate refused, until its consent came too late to avert its doom.

Again, Napoleon had warned Venice that she was too weak to maintain neutrality, and had advised her to make an alliance with France. She had refused.

Again, as Napoleon was about to set out to join his army for the invasion of Germany, he warned Venice to make no trouble in his rear. Things he might forgive were he in Italy, would be unpardonable if done while he was in Germany. Venetia could not, or would not, profit by this warning. While Napoleon was in Germany, tumults arose in the Venetian states, and the French in considerable numbers were massacred. At Verona the outbreak was particularly savage, three hundred of the French have been butchered, including the sick in the hospitals. To leave nothing undone which could be done to give Napoleon the excuses he wanted, a French vessel, which, chased by two Austrian cruisers, had taken refuge in the harbor at Venice, was ordered to leave (according to the law of the port), and when she refused, was fired upon. Her commander and others were killed, and some horrible details aggravated the offence.

Napoleon may have had his intentions from the first to sacrifice Venetia. He may have been insincere in offering the weak old oligarchy the protection of liberal institutions and a French alliance. Letters of his, inconsistent with each other, have been published. They prove his duplicity, his craft, his cunning, his callousness; but this was long after Venice had provoked him.

However cold-blooded Napoleon’s treatment of Venice may have been, the European conscience could not have been as much shocked as royalist writers pretend, for after Napoleon’s overthrow, Venice, which he had reformed and regenerated, was thrown back as a victim to Austria.

It was a brilliant gathering which surrounded Napoleon and Josephine in the summer of 1797. Diplomats, statesmen, adventurers, soldiers, men of science and literature, thronged Milan, and paid court at beautiful Montebello, the palatial country-seat where Napoleon had taken up his residence after the preliminaries of Leoben. Many subjects of importance needed his thought, his fertile resources, his ready hand. His republics needed guidance, the affairs of Genoa and Venice were unsettled, German princelets from along the Rhine had a natural curiosity to know just who they belonged to, and details of the coming treaty of Campo Formio needed to be worked out. It was a busy and a glorious season for Napoleon. He stood on the highest of pinnacles, his renown blazing to the uttermost parts of Europe; and to him was drawn the enthusiastic admiration which turns so warmly to heroes who are young. He had, as yet, made few enemies. All France was in raptures over him; even Austrians admired him. The aristocrats, lay and clerical, in Italy doubtless wished him dead; but the masses of the people looked up to him in wonder and esteem. Of Italian extraction, he spoke their language, knew their character, despised it, imperiously dominated it, and was therefore loved and obeyed.

Miot de Melito, an unfavorable witness, declares that Napoleon already harbored designs for his own sovereignty, and made no secret thereof. “Do you think I am doing all this for those rascally lawyers of the Directory?” He may possibly have said so, but it is not probable. A man like Napoleon, meditating the seizure of power and the overturn of government, does not, as a rule, talk it to the Miots de Melito. Had Napoleon had any such clearcut design as Miot records, he would not have allowed the wealth of Italy to roll through his army chest, while he himself was left poor. Like CÆsar, he would have returned laden with spoil, to be used in furthering his plans. Napoleon doubtless took something for Napoleon out of the millions which he handled, but the amount was so inconsiderable that he keenly felt the burden of debt which Josephine had made in furnishing his modest home in Paris. And when the time did come to overturn the “rascally lawyers,” he had to borrow the money he needed for that brief campaign. No; the simple truth is that Napoleon indulged no sordid appetites in his Italian campaign. He made less money out of it than any of his lieutenants, than any of the army contractors, than any of the lucky spoilsmen who followed in his wake. If he had harbored, the designs attributed to him by Miot, it was obviously a mistake for him to have declined the $800,000 in gold secretly offered him by the Duke of Modena. At St. Helena he uttered something which sounds like an admission that, in view of his subsequent necessities in Paris, he should have accepted the money. For wealth itself Napoleon had no longing—glory, power, fame, all these stood higher with him. The 7,000,000 francs Venice offered were as coolly refused as the smaller sum tendered by Modena, and the principality offered by the Emperor of Germany.

The elections of 1797 were not favorable to the Directory. Many royalists found seats in the Assembly, and the presiding officer of each legislative body was an opponent to the government. Two of the Directors, Carnot and BarthÉlemy, joined the opposition.

Openly and boldly, the malcontents, including royalists, constitutionals, and moderates, declared their purpose of upsetting the Directory. Barras, Rewbell, and LarÉvelliÈre were united, and Barras still retained sufficient vigor to act promptly at a crisis. Seeing that bayonets were needed, he called on Hoche for aid. Hoche was willing enough, but he involved himself in a too hasty violation of law, and became useless. Then Barras turned to Napoleon, and Napoleon was ready. Angry with the legislative councils for having criticised his high-handed conduct in Italy, and feeling that for the present his own interest was linked with that of the Directory, he did not hesitate. He sent Augereau to take command of the government forces at Paris, and Augereau did his work with the directness of a bluff soldier. “I am come to kill the royalists,” he announced by way of public explanation of his presence in town. “What a swaggering brigand is this!” cried Rewbell when he looked up from the directorial chair at Augereau’s stalwart, martial figure. Augereau marched thousands of troops into Paris at night, seized all the approaches to the Tuileries where the councils sat, and to the guard of the councils he called out through the closed gates, “Are you republicans?” and the gates opened. Augereau broke in upon the conspirators, seized with his own hand the royalist commander of the legislative guard, tore the epaulettes from his shoulders, and threw them in his face. Roughly handled like common criminals, the conspirators were carted off to prison. Carnot fled; BarthÉlemy was arrested at the Luxembourg palace. With them fell Pichegru, the conqueror of Holland. While still in command of the republican army, he had entered into treasonable relations with the royalists, and had agreed to use his republican troops to bring about a restoration of the monarchy. This plot, this treason, had not been known when Pichegru, returned from the army, had been elected to one of the councils and made its president. Moreau had captured the correspondence from the Austrians, and had concealed the facts. After Pichegru’s arrest by Augereau, the secret of the captured despatches came to light. Moreau himself made the report, and the question which sprang to every lip was, Why did he not speak out before? This universal and most natural query became the first cloud upon the career of the illustrious Moreau. As Napoleon tersely put it, “By not speaking earlier, he betrayed his country; by speaking when he did, he struck a man who was already down.” After having saved the government, as Augereau fancied he alone had done, that magnificent soldier’s opinion of himself began to soar. Why should he not become a director, turn statesman, and help rule the republic? Very influential people, among them Napoleon and all the Directors, were able to give good reasons to the contrary, and Augereau was compelled to content himself with remaining a soldier. Although he bragged that he was a better man than Bonaparte, he yielded to the silent, invisible pressure of the little Corsican, and he went to take command of the unemployed army of the Rhine. In a few months the same fine, Italian hand transferred him to the command of the tenth division in Perpignan, where he gradually, if not gracefully, disappeared from the political horizon.

The negotiation for final peace between Austria and France continued to drag its slow length along. Diplomats on either side exhausted the skill of their trade, each trying to outwit the other. How many crooked things were done during those weary months, how many bribes were offered and taken, how many secrets were bought and sold, how much finesse was practised, how many lies were told, only a professional and experienced diplomatist would be competent to guess. Into all these wire-drawn subtleties of negotiation Napoleon threw a new element,—military abruptness, the gleam of the sword. Not that he lacked subtlety, for he was full of it. Not that he was unable to finesse, for he was an expert. Not that he scorned to lie, for he delighted in artistic deception. But on such points as these the veteran Cobentzel and the other old-time diplomats could meet him on something like an equality. To throw in a new element altogether, to hide his perfect skill as a machinator under the brusque manners of a rude soldier, was to take the professionals at a disadvantage. Just as the Hungarian veteran had complained that Napoleon would not fight according to rule, Cobentzel and his band were now embarrassed to find that he would not treat by established precedent. Wearied with delays, indignant that they should threaten him with a renewal of the war, and determined to startle the antiquated Austrian envoys into a decision, Napoleon is said to have sprung up from his seat, apparently in furious wrath, exclaiming, “Very well, then! Let the war begin again, but remember! I will shatter your monarchy in three months, as I now shatter this vase,” dashing to the floor a precious vase which Catherine II. of Russia had given Cobentzel.

This story, told by so many, is denied by about an equal number. Cobentzel himself contradicted it, but he makes an admission which almost amounts to the same thing. He says that Napoleon became irritated by the delays, worked himself into a passion, tossed off glass after glass of punch, became rude to the negotiators, flung out of the room, and required a good deal of pacification at the hands of his aides. Says Cobentzel: “He started up in a rage, poured out a flood of abuse, put on his hat in the conference room itself” (an awful thing to do!), “and left us. He behaved as if he had just escaped from a lunatic asylum.”

Between this Austrian admission and the Austrian denial the substantial difference is not great. Reading between Cobentzel’s lines, one sees that the brutal young soldier ran over Austria’s delicate old diplomat just as he had been running over a lot of Austria’s delicate old generals.

The next day after this violent scene, the treaty of Campo Formio was signed. By its terms Austria ceded Lombardy, Belgium, and the German principalities on the Rhine. It recognized the Italian republic; the Cisalpine, composed of Lombardy, Modena, Ferrara; the Romagna, Mantua, Massa-e-Carrara; the Venetian territory, west of the Adige and the Valtelline. It also recognized the Ligurian republic, recently formed by Napoleon out of Genoa and its states. France kept the Ionian Isles, and the Venetian factories opposite on the mainland. To Austria was given the Italian lands eastward from the Adige. Within this concession was embraced the venerable city of Venice.

In the treaty of Campo Formio, Napoleon insisted that Austria should liberate the prisoner of Olmutz, Lafayette, who had been lying in a dungeon since 1793.

To regulate the redistribution of German territory, made necessary by the treaty, a congress was to be convened at Rastadt. It may as well be stated in this place that the congress met, remained in session a long while, and could not reach an agreement. Napoleon having gone to Egypt, Austria renewed the war, broke up the congress, and murdered the French envoys.

The Directors were strongly opposed to the terms of the Campo Formio treaty, but they were powerless. Napoleon disregarded their positive instructions, relying for his support upon the enthusiasm with which the French would hail peace. His calculations proved correct. The nation at large welcomed the treaty as gladly as they had done his victories. It seemed the final triumph and permanent establishment of the new order. Against so strong a current in Bonaparte’s favor, the Directory did not venture to steer.

Setting out for Paris, November 17, 1797, Napoleon passed through a portion of Switzerland, where he was encouraging the democratic movement which led to the formation of the Helvetian republic. At Geneva and Lausanne he was given popular and most hearty ovations. He put in appearance at Rastadt, where the congress was in session, and remained just long enough to exchange ratifications of the Campo Formio treaty with Cobentzel; and to hector, insult, and drive away Count Fersen, the old friend of Marie Antoinette. Count Fersen had come as Swedish envoy; and to Napoleon his presence seemed improper, as perhaps it was.