Neapolitan frontier, vigorously pursued by Championnet: within seventeen days from the opening of the campaign, eighteen thousand French veterans had driven before them forty thousand Neapolitans, splendidly dressed and abundantly equipped, but destitute of the qualities which are requisite to success in war.

The terror inspired by these disasters was such, that the court of Naples was conceived to be insecure in the capital; and in the night of the 21st of December, the whole royal family withdrew on board of Nel-、 son's fleet, and embarked for Sicily, with their most valuable effects and a large sum in specie from the public treasury. The inhabitants were in great consternation when they learned, on the following morning, that the royal family and ministers had fled, leaving them to defend themselves against the whole power of France. Nothing could be expected from citizens, when the leaders of the state thus deserted their posts; and the revolutionary party, being now uncontrolled, openly took measures against the government, and prepared the way for the approaching army of invaders.

He

Championnet, meanwhile, was entering the Neapolitan territories. found Mack posted in a strong position behind the Volturnus: but the native troops were so dispirited, that they scarcely awaited the onset of the French before they retreated in every direction, and Championnet advanced almost without resistance toward Naples. At Capua, he met with a check that might have resulted to his injury, had Mack improved a momentary advantage; but the latter general, having lost confidence in his troops, instead of striking a decisive blow, proposed an armistice; agreeing to deliver up Capua, Acerra and Benevento to the French, and pay them two and a half million of francs within fifteen days. Championnet thus escaped from a dilemma with all the fruits of a great victory, and moved on at once to Naples.

The conditions of this armistice reached the capital before the French army arrived there, and it excited the utmost indignation among the lazzaroni. These men flew to arms with great unanimity, and determined to resist both the payment of the subsidy, and the entrance of the invading forces. They drew the artillery from the arsenal, threw up intrenchments on the heights commanding the approaches to the city, and barricaded the principal streets. For three days, commencing on the 21st of January, 1799, a dreadful combat raged around the walls. The French veterans came on, column after column, with the most desperate bravery, but they were met with equal resolution by the defenders of the town, and no material advantage had yet been gained by either party, when, during an assault on one of the gates, Michel le Fou, the lazzaroni leader, was made prisoner. He was conducted to the head-quarters of the French general, where, being kindly treated, he offered to mediate between the contending parties. This at once terminated the combat. The French took possession of the city, disarmed the lazzaroni, appointed a provisional government of twenty-one members, and styled the new democratic state the Parthenopeian Republic.

Ireland was doomed next to experience the turmoil of revolutionary explosion. All the horrors of the Reign of Terror had failed to open the eyes of the Irish people to the real tendency of French reform; nor could the experience of other European states which had sought the aid of France in establishing democratic governments within their dominions, teach the

inhabitants of Ireland the danger of intriguing with the emissaries of the Directory. The greater part of the Catholics-who constituted threefourths of the inhabitants-leagued themselves together for establishing a Republic in alliance with France; for the severance of all connection with England, the restoration of the Catholic religion, and the reclaiming of lands confiscated by the British government during the various rebellions that had taken place in Ireland in the two preceding centuries.

The system on which this immense insurrection was organized, was one of the most simple and efficacious that ever was devised. Persons in every part of Ireland were sworn into an association, called the Society of United Irishmen, the real objects of which were kept a profound secret, while the ostensible ones were best calculated to allure the populace. Each meeting was represented by five persons in a committee, vested with the management of all affairs. From every committee, a deputy attended a superior body; one or two deputies from these composed a county committee; two from every county committee, a provincial committee; and this last body elected by ballot five persons to superintend the whole business of the Union: the names of the five thus appointed were communicated only to the secretaries of the provincial committees, who were officially intrusted with the canvassing of the votes. Thus, though their power was unlimited, their agency was invisible, and some hundred thousands of men obeyed the dictates of an unknown authority. Liberation from tithes and dues to the Protestant clergy, and the restoration of the Roman Catholic faith, were the principal inducements held out to the lower classes; while Parliamentary reform was the ostensible motive submitted to the country at large, that being best calculated to conceal the ultimate design, and enlist in the cause the greater number of the respectable classes.

To resist this formidable combination, another society, composed of those attached to the British government and Protestant ascendency, was formed with the title of Orangemen. The same vehement zeal and ardent passion which have always distinguished the Irish character, marked the efforts of the rival parties, and the feuds between them became universal. Deeds of depredation, rapine and murder filled the land; and it was sometimes hard to say whether the most violent acts were perpetrated by the open enemies of the law, or by its unruly defenders.

The British government, meantime, were not at all aware of the extent of the danger. They had received only some vague information of the existence of a seditious confederacy, at the moment when the insurrection was on the point of breaking out. But at this juncture, the destruction of the Dutch fleet off Camperdown having deprived the insurgents of the expected aid from France, by destroying the means of transporting the French troops, the malcontents became desperate and commenced the rebellion without any concentrated action. They maintained, therefore, a Vendéan system of warfare in the southern counties, and compelled all the respectable inhabitants to fly to the towns for safety from massacre and conflagration. These disorders were soon repressed, and with great severity, by the British regular troops, aided by forty thousand yeomanry of the country but the excesses of the government forces, inseparable from this sort of strife, excited the deepest feeling of revenge in the furious and undisciplined multitude.

On the 19th of February, 1798, Lord Moira made an eloquent speech

in the British Parliament in favor of the insurgents; but the period for accommodation was past. On the same day, the Irish committees came to a formal resolution to regard no offers from either house of Parliament, and agree to no terms but a total separation from Great Britain. Although the designs of the insurgents were now revealed, the names of the leaders were unknown: but at length, one of the chiefs having betrayed this information, fourteen of the principal individuals were arrested at Dublin. The conspirators were thus deprived of their most respectable and intelligent leaders; but the rebellion nevertheless broke out in different parts of Ireland, on the 23rd of May. A great number of isolated combats took place, and two or three pitched battles occurred, between the rebels and the regular troops, which were accompanied and followed by a thousand acts of ferocious cruelty; but in the event, the discipline and skill of the government soldiers prevailed, and by the end of July the insurgents were entirely subdued, excepting a few scattered bands in the mountains of Wicklow and Wexford.

So unbounded was the arrogance, and so reckless the policy, of the French government at this time, they nearly involved themselves in a war with the United States of North America; a country where democratic institutions prevailed to the greatest extent, and where gratitude to France was unbounded for services rendered during the American war with Great Britain.

The origin of the difficulty was a decree of the Directory, issued in January, 1798, ordering that all ships having for their cargoes, in whole or in part, English merchandise, should be lawful prize, whoever was the proprietor of such merchandise, which should be held contraband from the single fact of its coming from England or from any of its colonies; that the harbors of France should be shut against all vessels which had so much as touched at an English harbor, and that neutral sailors found on board of English vessels should be put to death. This barbarous decree immediately brought France into collision with the United States, as the ships of the latter country were at that period the great neutral carriers of the world. Letters of marque were issued by the Directory, and an immense number of American vessels which had touched at English ports, were brought into France. The American government sent envoys to Paris to remonstrate against these proceedings: they were however denied an audience with the Directory, but permitted to remain in Paris, and addressed by Talleyrand and his inferior agents. It was then intimated to the envoys that the intention of the Directory when refusing to receive them in a public, and yet permitting them to remain in a private capacity, was to lay the United States under a contribution of five millions of dollars as a loan to the French government, and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the private use of the Directors. This disgraceful proposal was urged on the envoys, not only by the subaltern agents, but by Talleyrand himself, who openly avowed that nothing could be done at Paris without money. These terms were indignantly rejected; the envoys left Paris; letters of marque were issued by the American President; all commercial intercourse with France was suspended; Washington was appointed generalissimo of the forces of the United States; the treaties with France were declared to be at an end; and every preparation was made to sustain the national independence.

The Hanse Towns were not fortunate enough to escape the exactions

of the Directory. Their distance from the scene of contest; their neutrality, so favorable to the commerce of the Republic; the protection openly afforded them by Prussia, could not save them from French rapacity. Their ships, bearing a neutral flag, were daily captured by the French cruisers; and they at length purchased a license to navigate the high seas by secretly paying near four millions of francs to the Republican rulers.

So long as the European states retained the slightest hope of maintaining their independence, these incessant usurpations of the French government could not fail to bring about a renewal of the war. France had made more rapid strides toward universal dominion during one year of pacific encroachment, than in the six preceding years of hostility. The continu ance of amicable relations was favorable to the secret propagation of the revolutionary mania; and, without the shock of war, the independence of the nations was silently melting away before the insidious but incessant efforts of democratic ambition. These considerations, strongly excited by the infamous subjugation of Switzerland and of the Papal States, led to a general feeling throughout all the European monarchies of the necessity of a coalition to resist the farther encroachments of France. The Emperor of Russia evinced his readiness to join in such a confederacy; while the Emperor of Austria, meeting numberless difficulties in adjusting with the French government the details of the treaty of Campo Formio, virtually dissolved that compact by certain military preparations, which were considered equivalent to a declaration of war against France.

CHAPTER XV.

CAMPAIGN OF 1799.

ALTHOUGH Austria was, to outward appearance, at peace with France after the armistice of Leoben, she had been indefatigable in her exertions, since that event, to prepare for a renewal of the war. Her army was raised to two hundred and forty thousand men, supported by an immense train of artillery, all admirably equipped and ready to take the field.

The Emperor of Russia embarked warmly in the cause, and ordered a Muscovite army of sixty thousand men to begin its march from Poland toward the north of Italy; he also concluded a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, with Great Britain, engaging to furnish an auxiliary force of forty-five thousand men, to act in conjunction with the British forces in the north of Germany; and England, on her part, agreed to advance two hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds sterling to the Emperor, and pay, besides, a monthly subsidy of seventy-five thousand pounds. Paul at the same time gave an asylum to Louis XVIII. in the capital of Courland, and entertained with munificence the French emigrants who sought refuge in his dominions. But all his efforts failed to induce Prussia to swerve from her neutrality: she stood by as an unconcerned spectator of a strife in which her own independence was at stake, when her army, now two hundred and twenty thousand strong, might have

interfered with decisive effect. She was rewarded for her forbearance by the battle of Jena.

Great Britain also exerted herself for the approaching contest. To meet the increased expenses which the treaty with Russia and the prosecution of the war were likely to occasion, Mr. Pitt proposed a tax hitherto unknown in Britain, and now designated the Income Tax. It was thus graduated: all incomes of less than sixty pounds a year were exempt from the impost; those of less than one hundred and five pounds paid a tax of two and a half per cent.; and those over two hundred pounds, ten per cent. The intention of this tax was to require from each person a contribution to the wants of the state in exact proportion to his ability; an admirable theory, and, if carried fully into effect, would have gone far toward relieving the financial embarrassments consequent on the war. The land forces of Great Britain were this year raised to one hundred and thirtyeight thousand men, the sea force to one hundred and twenty thousand, and one hundred and twenty thousand were embodied in the militia.

The forces of the Republic were greatly inferior to those of the allies at the opening of the campaign. Their numbers were reduced by dis charges and desertions to an unprecedented extent; their choicest troops were exiled in Egypt; and the officers of the armies in the conquered provinces, were so much more intent on political intrigues and rapine than on the proper discipline and regulation of the soldiers, that their effective strength was much impaired. Nevertheless, the French commenced hostilities in the Grisons with considerable success; and in a series of actions in this quarter, during the month of March, made themselves masters of the upper extremity of the two great valleys of the Tyrol, the Inn and the Adige. Massena and Oudinot then advanced to Feldkirch, a fortress situated on a rocky eminence and commanding the principal passage from the Vorarlberg into the Tyrol: but here they met with a serious repulse, and retreated with the loss of three thousand men.

In the mean time, Jourdan opened the campaign on the Rhine, which river he crossed at Kehl, and marched thence toward the Black Forest; but learning that the Archduke was approaching with superior forces, he moved to a strong position between the Lake of Constance and the Danube. The Austrians commenced the attack on the advanced guard of the Republicans at Ostrach, and were for a time bravely resisted; but at length the French left wing, under St. Cyr, having been outflanked at Mengen, Jourdan was forced to retreat with his whole army to Stockach. At this place, all the roads to Swabia, Switzerland and the valley of the Neckar unite, and Jourdan here made a stand, because by further retreat he would have abandoned his communications with Massena and the Grisons. The Archduke followed closely the retiring columns of the French, and was making his dispositions to attack, when Jourdan resolved to anticipate him in that movement. At five o'clock in the morning, on the 26th of March, all the French columns were in order of battle, and the left wing, under St. Cyr and Soult, was soon engaged with the Austrian right at Liptingen. This attack, after an obstinate resistance on the part of the Austrians, was successful; and as their right was turned, the victory seemed to be decided in favor of the French. But the Archduke hastened to the scene of danger with twelve squadrons of cuirassiers and six battalions of grenadiers, who soon changed the fortune of the day. The battle now raged along the whole line, each party contesting its ground with the greatest bravery;