Part 7 (1/2)
Mack was now concentrating his troops in an entrenched camp before Capua.
The whole country was rising against the invaders; and, in spite of lost battles and abandoned fortresses, the Neapolitan Government if it had possessed a spark of courage, might still have overthrown the French army, which numbered only 18,000 men. But the panic and suspicion which the Government had fostered among its subjects were now avenged upon itself.
The cry of treachery was raised on every side. The Court dreaded a Republican rising; the priests and the populace accused the Court of conspiracy with the French; Mack protested that the soldiers were resolved to be beaten; the soldiers swore that they were betrayed by Mack. On the night of the 21st of December, the Royal Family secretly went on board Nelson's s.h.i.+p the _Vanguard_, and after a short interval they set sail for Palermo, leaving the capital in charge of Prince Pignatelli, a courtier whom no one was willing to obey. [70] Order was, however, maintained by a civic guard enrolled by the Munic.i.p.ality, until it became known that Mack and Pignatelli had concluded an armistice with the French, and surrendered Capua and the neighbouring towns. Then the populace broke into wild uproar.
The prisons were thrown open; and with the arms taken from the a.r.s.enal the lazzaroni formed themselves into a tumultuous army, along with thousands of desperate men let loose from the gaols and the galleys. The priests, hearing that negotiations for peace were opened, raised the cry of treason anew; and, with the watchword of the Queen, ”All the gentlemen are Jacobins; only the people are faithful,” they hounded on the mob to riot and murder. On the morning of January 15th hordes of lazzaroni issued from the gates to throw themselves upon the French, who were now about nine miles from the city; others dragged the guns down from the forts to defend the streets. The Republican party, however, and that considerable body among the upper cla.s.s which was made Republican by the chaos into which the Court, with its allies, the priests, and the populace, had thrown Naples, kept up communication with Championnet, and looked forward to the entrance of the French as the only means of averting destruction and ma.s.sacre. By a stratagem carried out on the night of the 20th they gained possession of the fort of St. Elmo, while the French were already engaged in a b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sault upon the suburbs. On the 23rd Championnet ordered the attack to be renewed. The conspirators within St. Elmo hoisted the French flag and turned their guns upon the populace; the fortress of the Carmine was stormed by the French; and, before the last struggle for life and death commenced in the centre of the city, the leaders of the lazzaroni listened to words of friends.h.i.+p which Championnet addressed to them in their own language, and, with the incoherence of a half-savage race, escorted his soldiers with cries of joy to the Church of St. Januarius, which Championnet promised to respect and protect.
[Parthenopean Republic.]
Championnet used his victory with a discretion and forbearance rare amongst French conquerors. He humoured the superst.i.tion of the populace; he encouraged the political hopes of the enlightened. A vehement revulsion of feeling against the fugitive Court and in favour of Republican government followed the creation of a National Council by the French general, and his ironical homage to the patron saint. The Kingdom of Naples was converted into the Parthenopean Republic. New laws, new inst.i.tutions, discussed in a representative a.s.sembly, excited hopes and interests unknown in Naples before. But the inevitable incidents of a French occupation, extortion and impoverishment, with all their bitter effects on the mind of the people, were not long delayed. In every country district the priests were exciting insurrection. The agents of the new Government, men with no experience in public affairs, carried confusion wherever they went. Civil war broke out in fifty different places; and the barbarity of native leaders of insurrection, like Fra Diavolo, was only too well requited by the French columns which traversed the districts in revolt.
[War with Austria and Russia, March, 1799.]
The time was ill chosen by the French Government for an extension of the area of combat to southern Italy. Already the first division of the Russian army, led by Suvaroff, had reached Moravia, and the Court of Vienna was only awaiting its own moment for declaring war. So far were the newly-established Governments in Rome and Naples from being able to a.s.sist the French upon the Adige, that the French had to send troops to Rome and Naples to support the new Governments. The force which the French could place upon the frontier was inferior to that which two years of preparation had given to Austria: the Russians, who were expected to arrive in Lombardy in April, approached with the confidence of men who had given to the French none of their recent triumphs. Nor among the leaders was personal superiority any longer markedly on the side of the French, as in the war of the First Coalition. Suvaroff and the Archduke Charles were a fair match for any of the Republican generals, except Bonaparte, who was absent in Egypt. The executive of France had deeply declined. Carnot was in exile; the work of organisation which he had pursued with such energy and disinterestedness flagged under his mediocre and corrupt successors.
Skilful generals and brave soldiers were never wanting to the Republic; but no single controlling will, no storm of national pa.s.sion, inspired the Government with the force which it had possessed under the Convention, and which returned to it under Napoleon.
A new character was given to the war now breaking out by the inclusion of Switzerland in the area of combat. In the war of the First Coalition, Switzerland had been neutral territory; but the events of 1798 had left the French in possession of all Switzerland west of the Rhine, and an Austrian force subsequently occupied the Grisons. The line separating the combatants now ran without a break from Mainz to the Adriatic. The French armies were in continuous communication with one another, and the movements of each could be modified according to the requirements of the rest. On the other hand, a disaster sustained at any one point of the line endangered every other point; for no neutral territory intervened, as in 1796, to check a lateral movement of the enemy, and to protect the communications of a French army in Lombardy from a victorious Austrian force in southern Germany. The importance of the Swiss pa.s.ses in this relation was understood and even overrated by the French Government; and an energy was thrown into their mountain warfare which might have produced greater results upon the plains.
[The Archduke Charles defeats Jourdan at Stockach, March, 25.]
Three armies formed the order of battle on either side. Jourdan held the French command upon the Rhine; Ma.s.sena in Switzerland; Scherer, the least capable of the Republican generals, on the Adige. On the side of the Allies, the Archduke Charles commanded in southern Germany; in Lombardy the Austrians were led by Kray, pending the arrival of Suvaroff and his corps; in Switzerland the command was given to Hotze, a Swiss officer who had gained some distinction in foreign service. It was the design of the French to push their centre under Ma.s.sena through the mountains into the Tyrol, and by a combined attack of the central and the southern army to destroy the Austrians upon the upper Adige, while Jourdan, also in communication with the centre, drove the Archduke down the Danube upon Vienna. Early in March the campaign opened. Ma.s.sena a.s.sailed the Austrian positions east of the head-waters of the Rhine, and forced back the enemy into the heart of the Orisons. Jourdan crossed the Rhine at Strasburg, and pa.s.sed the Black Forest with 40,000 men. His orders were to attack the Archduke Charles, whatever the Archduke's superiority of force. The French and the Austrian armies met at Stockach, near the head of the Lake of Constance (March 25).
Overwhelming numbers gave the Archduke a complete victory. Jourdan was not only stopped in his advance, but forced to retreat beyond the Rhine.
Whatever might be the fortune of the armies of Switzerland and Italy, all hope of an advance upon Vienna by the Danube was at an end.
[Murder of the French envoys at Rastadt, April 28.]
Freed from the invader's presence, the Austrians now spread themselves over Baden, up to the gates of Rastadt, where, in spite of the war between France and Austria, the envoys of the minor German States still continued their conferences with the French agents. On the 28th of April the French envoys, now three in number, were required by the Austrians to depart within twenty-four hours. An escort, for which they applied, was refused.
Scarcely had their carriages pa.s.sed through the city gates when they were attacked by a squadron of Austrian hussars. Two of French envoys the French envoys were murdered; the third left for dead. Whether this frightful violation of international law was the mere outrage of a drunken soldiery, as it was represented to be by the Austrian Government; whether it was to any extent occasioned by superior civil orders, or connected with French emigrants living in the neighbourhood, remains unknown. Investigations begun by the Archduke Charles were stopped by the Cabinet, in order that a more public inquiry might be held by the Diet. This inquiry, however, never took place. In the year 1804 all papers relating to the Archduke's investigation were removed by the Government from the military archives.
They have never since been discovered. [71]
[Battle of Magnano, April 5.]
The outburst of wrath with which the French people learnt the fate of their envoys would have cost Austria dear if Austria had now been the losing party in the war; but, for the present, everything seemed to turn against the Republic. Jourdan had scarcely been overthrown in Germany before a ruinous defeat at Magnano, on the Adige, drove back the army of Italy to within a few miles of Milan; while Ma.s.sena, deprived of the fruit of his own victories by the disasters of his colleagues, had to abandon the eastern half of Switzerland, and to retire upon the line of the river Limnat, Lucerne, and the Gothard. Charles now moved from Germany into Switzerland. Ma.s.sena fixed his centre at Zurich, and awaited the Archduke's a.s.sault. For five weeks Charles remained inactive: at length, on the 4th of June, he gave battle. After two days' struggle against greatly superior forces, Ma.s.sena was compelled to evacuate Zurich. He retreated, however, no farther than to the ridge of the Uetliberg, a few miles west of the city; and here, fortifying his new position, he held obstinately on, while the Austrians established themselves in the central pa.s.ses of Switzerland, and disaster after disaster seemed to be annihilating the French arms in Italy.
[Suvaroff's Campaign in Lombardy, April-June.]
Suvaroff, at the head of 17,000 Russians, had arrived in Lombardy in the middle of April. His first battle was fought, and his first victory won, at the pa.s.sage of the Adda on the 25th of April. It was followed by the surrender of Milan and the dissolution of the Cisalpine Republic. Moreau, who now held the French command, fell back upon Alessandria, intending to cover both Genoa and Turin; but a sudden movement of Suvaroff brought the Russians into the Sardinian capital before it was even known to be in jeopardy. The French general, cut off from the roads over the Alps, threw himself upon the Apennines above Genoa, and waited for the army which had occupied Naples, and which, under the command of Macdonald, was now hurrying to his support, gathering with it on its march the troops that lay scattered on the south of the Po. Macdonald moved swiftly through central Italy, and crossed the Apennines above Pistoia in the beginning of June.
His arrival at Modena with 20,000 men threatened to turn the balance in favour of the French. Suvaroff, aware of his danger, collected all the troops within reach with the utmost despatch, and pushed eastwards to meet Macdonald on the Trebbia. Moreau descended from the Apennines in the same direction; but he had underrated the swiftness of the Russian general; and, before he had advanced over half the distance, Macdonald was attacked by Suvaroff on the Trebbia, and overthrown in three days of the most desperate fighting that had been seen in the war (June 18). [72]
[Naples.]
All southern Italy now rose against the Governments established by the French. Cardinal Ruffo, with a band of fanatical peasants, known as the Army of the Faith, made himself master of Apulia and Calabria amid scenes of savage cruelty, and appeared before Naples, where the lazzaroni were ready to unite with the hordes of the Faithful in murder and pillage.
Confident of support within the city, and a.s.sisted by some English and Russian vessels in the harbour, Ruffo attacked the suburbs of Naples on the morning of the 13th of June. Ma.s.sacre and outrage continued within and without the city for five days. On the morning of the 19th, the Cardinal proposed a suspension of arms. It was accepted by the Republicans, who were in possession of the forts. Negotiations followed. On the 23rd conditions of peace were signed by Ruffo on behalf of the King of Naples, and by the representatives of Great Britain and of Russia in guarantee for their faithful execution. It was agreed that the Republican garrison should march out with the honours of war; that their persons and property should be respected; that those who might prefer to leave the country should be conveyed to Toulon on neutral vessels; and that all who remained at home should be free from molestation.
[Reign of Terror.]
The garrison did not leave the forts that night. On the following morning, while they were embarking on board the polaccas which were to take them to Toulon, Nelson's fleet appeared in the Bay of Naples. Nelson declared that in treating with rebels Cardinal Ruffo had disobeyed the King's orders, and he p.r.o.nounced the capitulation null and void. The polaccas, with the Republicans crowded on board, were attached to the sterns of the English s.h.i.+ps, pending the arrival of King Ferdinand. On the 29th of June, Admiral Caracciolo, who had taken office under the new Government, and on its fall had attempted to escape in disguise, was brought a captive before Nelson.
Nelson ordered him to be tried by a Neapolitan court-martial, and, in spite of his old age, his rank, and his long service to the State, caused him to be hanged from a Neapolitan s.h.i.+p's yard-arm, and his body to be thrown into the sea. Some days later, King Ferdinand arrived from Palermo, and Nelson now handed over all his prisoners to the Bourbon authorities. A reign of terror followed. Innumerable persons were thrown into prison.
Courts-martial, or commissions administering any law that pleased themselves, sent the flower of the Neapolitan nation to the scaffold. Above a hundred sentences of death were carried out in Naples itself: confiscation, exile, and imprisonment struck down thousands of families. It was peculiar to the Neapolitan proscriptions that a Government with the names of religion and right incessantly upon its lips selected for extermination both among men and women those who were most distinguished in character, in science, and in letters, whilst it chose for promotion and enrichment those who were known for deeds of savage violence. The part borne by Nelson in this work of death has left a stain on his glory which time cannot efface. [73]
[Austrian designs in Italy.]