Ary, and fet a price on the heads of thofe who were against him. The fpirit of infurrection in thofe quarters was not broken, until the pacification between France and Fngland recognised and confirmed an established order of affairs in Italy.

It is aftonishing, and might well appear incredible, if it were not placed beyond all doubt by experience, that priefts, women, and other domestics, in palaces, called courtiers, should have been able fo often, through their influence with kings, to thwart the measures, and diminish the respect due to the higheft degree of honour and military courage, fkill, and fuccefs. The fupreme rulers of states do not give way to the influence and infinuations of thofe around their perfons, under the idea, that, in doing this, they hazard either the fecurity or the honour of their crowns: but they are artfully led to believe, that both thefe are equally fafe in the hands of certain favourites; and the afual jealousy that difpofes fovereign princes, rather to check and pull down, than to honour and exalt fuch tranfcendent merit, as feems,

in fome measure, to eclipfe the fplendour of the throne, opens a way to the intrigues of the courtiers. Certain it is, that neither the virtue, nor military fuccefs and glory of. prince Charles, the Hector, as the baron Thugut was the Pill, of Auftria, and whofe plan it was to call back the French from Germany and Italy, by penetrating into the heart of France, were able to fcreen him from a milignant and too fucceffful influence and oppofition at court.

The great object of the emprefs was, to fave Naples through an amicable compromife: many of the beft officers were neglected, and,

fome inftances, even difmiffed from the army, because they were attached to the archduke Charles. The council of war, at the feat of government, whofe measures had uniformly, and with very little exception, been followed by defeat and difafter, was generally detefted and ridiculed by the army. On the whole, the nerves of the Austrian army were relaxed; the fentiments and wishes of the officers were difcordant; and almost the only point on which there was a general una

nimity in all ranks, was a defire that the war might be brought to a fpeedy conclufion. Such being the fate of the Auftrian army, and the Auftrian people, the audacity of Moreau in advancing into the very heart of the Auftrian dominions, instead of being charged with folly, may be thought to have been a conduct as well judged as it was daring.

By the treaty of Luneville, the feelings of the houfe of Auftria were, no doubt, feverely wounded. Deprived of the rich and noble inheritance of their Burgundian anceftors, and almost excluded from their long-loved Italy, they were ifolated, in a great meature, from thofe points of contact, where they had fo long and fo often meafured their ftrength with other powers, and on which they affrted their power, influence, and right to interfere, and be regarded with the higheft degree of confideration in the great affairs of the fineft part of Europe. Yet the wifeft politicians were of opinion, that, in the compactnefs of empire, acquired by the acceffion of fo much territory on the fide of the Adriatic, in exchange for wider domains, but thefe disjointed, the Auftrian family had gained, in ftability and real Arength, an ample compenfation for what they had loft in extent of dominion. This opinion coincides, with that of a great politician and profound fcholar, who flourished in the end of the 17th, and beginning of the laft century: the celebrated Fletcher of Saltoun. If his reafoning be juff, it ought to be a confolation, not only to the friends of the house of Auftria, but to all Europe, whofe in tereft it is, that a government thould be eftab fhed in the vicinity of France, fitted to make a fland againft its capricious fallies, and thereby to

contribute to the general quiet and fecurity of nations. The paffage from Fletcher, to which we allude, may be quoted without much impropriety in this ftage of the hiftory of the Netherlands and the Auftrian dominions and authority in Italy." The violation of the ancient privileges of the Netherlands, by attempting to introduce an abfolute form of government, and the inquifition, was an extremely foolish meafure, which, together with the cruelty of the duke of Alva, rendered the inha-. bitants of them moft obftinate enemies; but the troops of Spain were at that time fo excellent, that they would have eafily furmounted this difficulty, notwithstanding the very ftrong fituation of fome of thefe provinces, and though the king had done nothing to redrefs their grie vances, had it not been that Flanders lay at fuch a distance from Spain, that, as armies could not be tranfported thither without the greateft difficulty and expenfe, fo that not only they, but frequently the advices by which they were to act, came not in time to answer the fudden emergencies that are always falling out in the courfe of a war, which the English and French, as being in the neighbourhood of these people, were able to foment with the utmoft eafe and expedition; and fo blinded was this prince, that, as if Flanders had become the feat of his empire, he would needs from thence, and that, too, before the Flemings were reduced, make war upon France and England, as his fucceffors have fince done againít the Palatinate. So grofs an error not only occafioned a lofs of feven of thefe provinces, and ruined his great defigns in France and England, but reduced him to the greatest

ftraits

ftraits in all his other affairs; which the French, in these latter times,being aware of, have never failed to direct the chief weight of their wars againft thefe provinces, which lie fo near their capital, and to employ the bulk of their forces, on that fide, to their own great advantage, and the perpetual lofs of the Spaniards: nor at this day have they any other view in leaving a remnant of these provinces to the crown of Spain, but to keep their arms weak and unable to operate elsewhere, and fo to increase the glory of the arms of France. Thus the French having been defeated by the Germans, in the battles of Treves and Altenheim, we faw their monarch, early in the fucceeding fpring, march in to Flanders, there to regain his loft reputation. And, at prefent, to render this province more expenfive and pernicious to Spain, after having ftript her of the more valuable part of the country, they leave her in poffeffion of a number of large fortified towns, that require great garrifons to keep them. But though the French fhould conquer all the reft of Flanders, they will have the like advantages in the ftate of Milan, where France can make war with much more eafe than Spain; the paffage for fuccours, both by land and fea, being nearer from Provence and Dauphiny than from that kingdom. And fo France, finding her account fo greatly in it, will never fail to

carry on her wars in thefe disjointed states, til! Spain herself, when utterly exhaufted by their ruin, and incapable of making a defence, bet attacked in the laft place. It was a moft fagacious faying of a happy genius, that, by the addition of Flanders, and the Spanish ftates of Italy, the weight of Spain and the Indies became lighter. In our age, these ftates have almost totally deftroyed this weight. And it had been for the interest of Spain, that Charles V. had alienated the provinces of Flanders, by either annexing them to the empire, or making a prefent of them to any power who had been able to defend them against the French; that Philip, inftead of retaining, by a moft confuming war, the dominion of a part of thefe provinces, had granted them all their liberty; or that the prefent king had yielded the remnant of them to France, rather than still have retained them, to the greater advantage of the latter. So little do men fee in their own affairs; and fo great and innumerable miferies do nations fuffer, merely from the want of folid reflection."* It would feem that the ambitious policy of the French monarchs, refpecting the provinces of Flanders and Milan, was very different from that of Buonaparte. Which of the oppofite fyftems was the moft judicious and folid, it remains for time to determine.

СНАР.

HE chief conful of France,

tria, was now at liberty to bend his undivided attention to England. The leading features of his policy, with refpect to this country, appear to have been thefe: to excite a confederacy, against this country, among all the maritime powers; to exclude her from all the ports of Europe; to attack, and, if necessary, to fubdue her only remaining ally, Portugal; and exhauft her finances, and weary out the patience of the British nation, by the continued threats and alarms of invafion.

France, now in the ninth year of the war, affumed the character which England had taken at its commencement. The word, or according to the new phrafeology, the order of the day, in France; was, "The liberty of the feas, and the pacification of Europe."

The chief conful was congratulated, of courfe, by all the constituted

bodies, on the peace which he had

tria. In his anfwer to the legiflative body, he faid, "France will not reap all the bleffings of peace, until the fhall have a peace with England: but a fort of delirium has feized on that government, which now holds nothing facred. Its conduct is unjuft, not only towards the French people, but also towards all the powers of the continent : and when governments are not juft, their authority is but fhortlived. All the powers of the continent muft force England to fall back into the track of moderation, of equity, and reason."

Buonaparte, ever fince the failure of his attempt, after his elevation to the confulate, to negotiate a peace with England, continued, with increafed earneftnefs, to represent to all maritime nations the overbear, ing haughtinefs and infolence of this country. By his minifters and

other

other agents at the courts of Peterf hurgh, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Berlin, he infinuated how encouraging the prefent pofture of Europe was for a revival of the armed neutrality of 1780, founded on the principle, that free and neutral bottoms make free and neutral goods, and how great the advantages of compelling the English to make peace on reasonable terms.

The defultory and frantic mind of the emperor, Paul, had been irritated, by various accidents, againft the courts of both Vienna and London, but especially against the latter. Difputes had arifen, even to the height of action, between the Ruffians and Auftrians, after the reduction of the Ex-Venetian ifles, in 1799, at Ancona. The Auftrians had not duly fupported the Ruffians, in the campaign of that year, against France: and it appeared, not indeed without reason, that a neighbouring and rival empire, was not actuated by the principles which had drawn the Ruffian potentate into the confederation against the French republic, but by views of individual aggrandifenient. Whatever was the caufe, certain it is, that the emperor of Ruffia had conceived great difguft at the emperor of Germany: in fo much, that when the latter announced his intention of fending an extraordinary ambaffador to Petersburgh, to offer excuses for what had happened at Ancona, Paul refufed to receive him: and, the

more fully to give vent to his passion, he gave orders that no answer fhould be given to the notification from Francis. As to England, mutual accufations had taken place between the Ruffian and the Englifh generals, after the unfuccefsful and difaftrous expedition, in 1799, to Holland. After the firft ebulli

tions of the emperor's rage against his own officers, his jealoufy and refentment was awakened against the English. The beginning refentment of Paul against the British nation, as well as the court of St. James's, was inflamed by the failure of his fchemes in the Mediterranean.

The genius of the Ruffian government, amidst the caprices and fingularities of individual characters, preferves, on the whole, the impulse and determination that was given to it by the Great Peter. It was his aim to have a firm footing in the Mediterranean, as well as on the Northern ocean and the Baltic. In purfuance of this general aim, Paul had been led, by a concurrence of circumftances, which need not to be here enumerated, to fix his eyes and heart on Malta. Though no abfolute promife was made to that prince by the other allies; yet, it would appear, that fome hopes had been held out to him, or, at leaft, that he was allowed, without being undeceived, to entertain a fanguine expectation of being prefented with it. A fleet, with troops,

expulsion