rmio
were far from being accepted by the Directory as a final settlement of
the relations of France with Europe. Some faint remnant of the older
dreams of freeing oppressed peoples may have lingered in the aid which
it gave to the rising of the subject districts of Basle and Vaud against
their Bernese masters in the opening of 1798. But mere greed of gold was
seen in the plunder of the treasury of Berne, a plunder which served to
equip the army that sailed with Buonaparte to the shores of Egypt, and
to recruit the exhausted treasury of the Directory; and an ambition, as
reckless as this greed, broke out in an attack on the mountain cantons,
states whose democratic institutions gave no such excuse for hostility
as had been afforded by the aristocracy of Berne. A French decree
abolished the Swiss Confederation, and the independence of its several
states, and established in their place an Helvetic Republic modelled on
a plan sent from Paris, and placed under the protection of France. The
mountain cantons rose against this overthrow of a freedom compared with
which the freedom of France was but of yesterday; but desperate as was
their struggle they were overwhelmed by numbers, and the men of Uri, of
Unterwalden and of Schwytz bowed for the first time to a foreign
conqueror.

[Sidenote: Russia and France.]

The overthrow of this immemorial house of freedom opened the eyes of the
blindest enthusiast to the real character of the French aggressions.
Even in the group of young English poets, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and
Southey, who had clung till now to the dream of the Revolution, of a
Europe freed and regenerated by the arms of the new republic, all belief
in such a dream passed finally away. But the France of the Directory
would have cared little for this alienation of the peoples, had it not
been backed by the revived hostility of their kings. What England
counted on in her efforts for a revival of the coalition was the
resentment of Austria at the aggressions which the Directory had ever
since the peace of Campo Formio been carrying on in Italy. In the
opening of 1798 a French force entered Rome, set up a Roman republic,
and carried off Pius VI. a prisoner to Siena; while the king of Sardinia
was driven to admit French garrisons into his fortresses. Austria
however was still too weak after her defeats to listen to Pitt's
advances, had Pitt stood alone. But Russia was now about to take a new
part in European affairs. Under