a new treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, by which Austria agreed to maintain two hundred thousand men in the field, and England contracted to furnish a subsidy of six million pounds sterling, for their support. England made exertions for the prosecution of the war more considerable than she had yet put forth, and seemed sensible that renewed efforts were indispensable now that the strife threatened to approach her own shores. Her naval force was augmented to one hundred thousand seamen, one hundred and eight ships of the line were put in commission, and the land forces raised to one hundred and fifty thousand men. The expenditure of the year, exclusive of the interest of the national debt, amounted to twenty-seven and a half millions sterling, of which eighteen millions were raised by loan, and three and a half millions by exchequer bills. To such an immense extent, thus early in the contest, was the ruinous system of providing for the expense of the year by borrowing, adopted by the British government. On the 18th of February, Russia became a party to the new treaty of alliance, though this measure was not at first productive of important results. The Empress Catherine was as yet too much occupied in the affairs of Poland, and too little interested in the continental war, to take an active part in the present campaign; she merely sent twelve ships of the line, and eight frigates, to reënforce Admiral Duncan in blockading the fleet recently acquired by France from the Dutch Republic.

During the winter of 1794-5, the French government made great efforts to put their navy on a respectable footing; and, early in March, an expedition was fitted out at Toulon, consisting of thirteen ships of the line and carrying eighteen thousand land troops, intended to recover possession of Corsica. Lord Hotham, who commanded the English blockading fleet in the Mediterranean, was at Leghorn when this French fleet sailed, but was ignorant of their movements; and the French succeeded in capturing the Berwick seventy-four gun ship in the Gulf of St. Florent, the whole Republican fleet having come upon her unawares. The British admiral immediately put to sea with thirteen line-of-battle ships, and fell in with the French squadron on the 15th of March. He captured two ships of the line, the Ca Ira and the Censeur, and the remainder of the enemy's fleet fell back to the Isles de Hyeres, and disembarked their troops. The object of the expedition was thus entirely frustrated.

The campaign in the maritime Alps was opened on the 12th of May, by a successful French attack on the Col Dumont, then occupied by two thousand Piedmontese troops. Soon after, Kellerman having weakened his right by detaching some battalions to Toulon, the Imperialists assumed the offensive, and by a series of well-concerted movements forced the French to evacuate all their positions in that quarter. But toward the end of August, the activity of the Republicans had greatly reënforced their armies on the Alpine frontier; and General Scherer taking command, prepared to give battle to the allies, forty thousand strong, near the little seaport of Loano. The battle commenced on the 23rd of November; and at the conclusion of the day, the centre of the allies was forced and their left wing partly turned. The combat was renewed on the following morning and ended in the total defeat of the allies, with a loss of two thousand killed, five hundred taken prisoners, and a large quantity of baggage, magazines and artillery. This victory, by giving the French the entire command of the maritime Alps, closed the campaign in that quarter.

The position of the armies on the northern and eastern frontier remained the same as at the close of the preceding campaign, but their condition was much changed for the worse. The troops were ill paid, ill fed, and in want of all military supplies requisite for a vigorous prosecution of the war; and their discipline was greatly relaxed. The condition of the Austrians, on the other hand, was much improved; but they remained in total inactivity on the right bank of the Rhine, and, failing to succor the garrison of Luxembourg, that fortress, with ten thousand men and a large train of artillery, fell into the hands of the Republicans on the 24th of June. The Prince of Condé, on the Upper Rhine, was at the same time engaged in a secret negotiation with Pichegru, who was growing disaffected toward the Convention: the precise nature of these negotiations has never transpired; but after six months passed in this way, Pichegru discontinued it, and prepared to obey the orders of the Convention, by commencing the campaign.

Jourdan, having at length obtained the necessary supplies, prepared to cross the Rhine in the beginning of September. On the 6th of that month, he effected the passage at Eichelcamp, Neuwied and Dusseldorf, and compelled the garrison of the latter town to capitulate he then advanced toward the Lahn, and established himself on the banks of that river. Pichegru, meantime, crossed the Upper Rhine at Manheim, one of the principal bulwarks of Germany, and by a spirited demonstration forced that city to surrender. This was a great disaster to the Austrians, as it opened the way for Jourdan to throw his whole army against Mayence on the right bank of the Rhine. But the Austrian commander, Clairfait, proved himself equal to the emergency. By a skilful and rapid march he turned the left of the French line and forced Jourdan to a disastrous retreat, which threw his whole army into confusion. Then, suddenly abandoning the pursuit, Clairfait turned upon Mayence and arrived there by forced marches before the French besieging army were aware of his approach. The lines of circumvallation around this city, which the Republicans had been a whole year in constructing, and the remains of which still excite the admiration of travellers, were of immense extent and garrisoned by thirty thousand men. The Imperialists advanced to the assault in three columns, and the Republicans were so taken by surprise, that they abandoned the first line almost without firing a shot. The panic occasioned to the remainder of the French army by this event was such, that the Austrians carried the entire works by storm, and the Republicans fled in every direction. This brilliant achievement was followed by a series of successes on the part of the Austrians, under Clairfait and Wurmser, which ended in their driving the French from all their positions and recapturing Manheim. A suspension of arms during the winter was then agreed on, and both parties retired into winter-quarters.

This year was distinguished by the unfortunate descent of the English and the Royalist emigrants on the coast of France. The obstacles to the landing of the troops had been effectually removed by the naval engage. ment off L'Orient between a British fleet of fourteen ships of the line and eight frigates, under Lord Bridport, and a French fleet of twelve ships of the line and thirteen frigates, in which the latter were defeated with a loss of three ships of the line. The invading army, amounting to about ten thousand men, landed in Quiberon Bay on the 27th of June and made themselves masters of the fort of Penthievre. Their arrival, together

with their success in capturing this fort, was the signal for all the Royalists to rise in the west, and the Chouan bands crowded in great numbers to the camp of the invaders. The Republican forces, however, were on the alert, and Hoche, with a considerable body of disciplined troops, advanced to Quiberon. He attacked the Royalist forces on the 7th of July, drove them from their intrenchments, and hemmed them in on the narrow peninsula where they had first landed. The misery of the men, cooped up in a corner of land without tents or lodgings, soon became extreme; and a body of Chouans from the interior, in connection with Count Vauban and three thousand men under his command, planned an attack against the rear of the Republicans, in the hope of relieving the blockade; while the besieged army sallied from their camp to take the enemy in front. The latter attempt was made; but the troops in the rear did not come up, and the emigrants therefore drew on themselves the whole Republican strength. The Republicans prevailed in the battle, drove the invaders under the guns of the fort, and would have entered it with the fugitives, had they not been arrested by the fire of some English cruisers in the harbor. They followed up their success by a night attack on the fort, which was devised and executed with great skill and bravery, and was completely successful: the fort, and a large number of pris oners fell into their hands, a small part only of the whole invading force having been able to escape to the British ships.

Tallien, whom the Convention had sent down to Quiberon Bay as commissioner of the government, made an atrocious use of this victory, and stained, with ineffaceable disgrace, the glory he had won in his triumph over Robespierre. In defiance of the verbal capitulation entered into between the French general and the emigrant prisoners when the latter surrendered, he caused them to be closely confined, and by his personal influence with the Convention procured an order for their summary execution. Seven hundred and eleven of them, among whom were the members of the noblest families in France, were accordingly put to death in cold blood.

The French marine was so broken by various disasters in the Mediterranean and at L'Orient, that nothing more of consequence took place at sea for the remainder of the year: though, by means of predatory expeditions against the commerce of Great Britain, they inflicted many losses on the English merchants. The English availed themselves of their maritime supremacy to make themselves masters of the Cape of Good Hope, which surrendered to Sir James Craig, on the 16th of September.

CHAPTER XI.

CAMPAIGNS OF 1796.

EARLY in March, 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte laid before the Convention a plan for a campaign in Italy, which was so remarkable for its originality that it attracted the especial notice of Carnot, then minister at war. About the same time the youthful officer was married to Josephine, widow of Alexander Beauharnois, a general of the French army, who had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror. The genius developed in Napoleon's plan of the campaign, together with the obligation conferred by him on the Convention in defending them against the last insurrection of the National Guard and the Jeunesse Dorée, decided the vote of that body in his favor, and he was invested with the command of the army in Italy.

He found the troops in a miserable condition. The number of men was about forty-two thousand, and the artillery amounted to sixty pieces. The cavalry were almost without horses, the soldiers of all ranks were in great want of tents and magazines, and they had for a long time subsisted on half rations, collected by themselves in marauding expeditions. But, considered with reference to their military qualities, this army was the most efficient in the service of the Republic. Its soldiers had seen a good share of service, were inured to hardships and privations, and among its officers were to be found the names of Massena, Augerau, Serrurier and Berthier.

On the other hand, the allies had more than fifty thousand men in good condition, well supplied, and having two hundred pieces of artillery, while the Sardinian army, of twenty-four thousand men, guarded the avenues of Dauphiny and Savoy. Their forces were thus distributed: Beaulieu, a veteran of seventy-five, with thirty thousand Austrians and one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, was on the extreme right of the French, and in communication with the English fleet; and Colli, with twenty thousand men and sixty guns, was in a line with him to the north, covering Ceva and Corri. Generally speaking, the French occupied the crest of the mountains, while the allies were stationed in the valleys leading to the plains of Italy.

Napoleon arrived at Nice on the 27th of March, and having ascertained the relative position of the troops, resolved to penetrate into Piedmont by the Col de Cadibone, the lowest part of the ridge that divides France from Italy; and, by pressing his columns on the line of communication, separate the Austrian and Piedmontese armies from each other. At the same time, Beaulieu was assuming the offensive and directing his columns toward his own left at Genoa. Leaving his right wing at Dego, he pushed his centre, under D'Argenteau, to the ridge of Montenotte, and himself advanced with the left along the sea-coast. The two armies came into contact at Montenotte, and the battle that ensued became celebrated, as being the first one in which Napoleon was ever engaged as general-in-chief. The Imperialists, ten thousand strong, first encountered a body of only twelve hundred French, under Colonel Rampon, whom

they speedily drove back to the old redoubt of Monte Legino; but the French colonel, perceiving the vital importance of this fort, which if lost would expose the whole army to being divided, repulsed the impetuous assaults of the Austrians, and made good his stand until nightfall. During the night, Napoleon, with the divisions of Massena and Serrurier moved up to the heights in the rear of Montenotte, and in the morning the Austrians found themselves surrounded on all sides. They resisted for a time the French attacks, but were at length completely routed, with a loss of five pieces of cannon, two thousand prisoners, and more than a thousand killed and wounded. This victory opened the plains of Piedmont to the French, and completely separated the Austrian and Sardinian armies.

Napoleon, occupying now a central position, having received reënforcements of troops, and improved, by supplies and victory, the condition and spirits of his men, resolved to attack both allied armies at the same time. A series of actions immediately followed, each small in itself, but import. ant as a part of the general result, which by regular progression increased the conquests of Napoleon, and drove back his antagonists from their positions, until the French army, descending from the sterile summits of the Alps, found themselves, though still among the lesser mountains, in communication with the rich and fertile plains of Italy. The soldiers, animated with success, speedily recovered from their fatigues, the stragglers rejoined their colors, and bands of conscripts from the dépôts pressed forward to share the glories and the spoils of the Italian army; so that, despite their losses, the Republicans were as strong as at the commencement of the campaign: while the allies, besides having been driven from their Alpine barriers, were weakened by the loss of more than twelve thousand men and forty pieces of cannon.

The court of Turin was in the utmost consternation at the advance of the French. The ministers of Austria and England urged the king to imitate the example of his ancestors, and abandon his capital, leaving the fortresses of Tortona, Alexandria and Valentia in the hands of the Austrians, to give Beaulieu a firm footing on the Po. But the arguments of the Cardinal Costa overruled this advice, and persuaded the king to unite himself with France. Napoleon, on receiving the advances of the Sardinian government to this effect, granted an armistice, which was followed by a treaty of peace, wherein the king of Sardinia ceded to the Republic, Savoy, Nice, and the whole possessions of Piedmont west of the highest ridge of the Alps, including the fortresses of Coni, Ceva and Alexandria, and granted a free passage through his dominions to the French troops.

Having secured his rear by this advantageous treaty, Napoleon lost no time in pursuing the discomfited remains of Beaulieu's army, which had retired behind the Po, with the intention of covering the Milanese territory. He had inserted and given publicity to a clause in the treaty with the king of Sardinia, granting him permission to cross the Po at Valentia, and thereby deceived the Austrians as to the place where he really intended to effect the passage. The attention of Beaulieu having been by this artifice drawn to Valentia, the French forces were rapidly moved to Placentia, and crossed the river in boats on the 7th of May. Napoleon arrived two days afterward with the bulk of his forces, and established a bridge. Thus, one great obstacle to the conquest of Lombardy was