Chapter 34

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.