ences were at length overcome; the king passed over to
his Sicilian dominions; and another tributary of France was announced by
the name of the Parthenopean Republic.

Far different success attended the better-considered movements by which
the great powers of the new coalition re-opened the war. The details of
those bloody campaigns by which Holland and Belgium were for a moment
rescued from the grasp of the Republic; Jourdan beaten beyond the Rhine
by the Archduke Charles; and the north of Italy, the whole of
Buonaparte's mighty conquests, recovered by the Austro-Russians under
Suwarrow; as also of the ultimate reverses of the allies in the
direction of Holland,--of the concentration of their forces in two great
armies, one on the frontier of Switzerland, and another lower down on
the Rhine, for the purpose of carrying the war by two inlets into the
heart of France--and finally, of the masterly retreat of Macdonald, by
which he succeeded in leading the army which had occupied Naples quite
through Italy into Provence;--all these details belong rather to the
general history of the period, than to the biography of Buonaparte.
Neither is it possible that we should here enter upon any minute account
of the internal affairs of France during the period of his Egyptian and
Syrian campaigns. It must suffice to say that the generally unfortunate
course of the war had been accompanied by the growth of popular
discontent at home; that the tottering Directory for a moment gathered
strength to themselves by associating Sieyes to their number; that the
mean and selfish conduct of the rulers soon nullified the results of
that partial change; that the Directory at length found it impossible to
maintain the favourite system of balancing faction against faction, and
so neutralising their efforts; in a word, that the _moderates_ (under
which name the royalists are included) had obtained a decided command in
the Council of Ancients, and the republicans, or democratical party, an
equally overpowering majority in the Assembly of the Five Hundred; while
the Directors, as a body, had no longer the slightest power to control
either. Finally, the Chouans (as the royalists of Bretagne were called)
had been stimulated by the disordered appearance of things at home and
abroad, and 40,000 insurgents appeared in arms, withstanding, with
varied success, the troops of the Republic, and threatening, by their
example, to rekindle a general civil war in Fr