athized generally with the opponents of France, but, as
far as possible, sought to maintain a formal though difficult
neutrality. The position of Genoa was the most embarrassing, because
in direct contact with all the principal parties to the war. To the
westward, her territory along the Riviera included Vintimiglia,
bordering there on the county of Nice, and contained Vado Bay, the
best anchorage between Nice and Genoa. To the eastward, it embraced
the Gulf of Spezia, continually mentioned by Nelson as Porto Especia.

The occupation of the Riviera was of particular moment to the French,
for it offered a road by which to enter Italy,--bad, indeed, but
better far than those through the passes of the upper Alps. Skirting
the sea, it afforded a double line of communications, by land and by
water; for the various detachments of their army, posted along it,
could in great degree be supplied by the small coasting-vessels of the
Mediterranean. So long, also, as it was in their possession, and they
held passes of the Maritime Alps and Apennines, as they did in 1794,
there was the possibility of their penetrating through them, to turn
the left flank of the Sardinian army in Piedmont, which was, in fact,
what Bonaparte accomplished two years later. These inducements had led
the French to advance into the county of Nice, then belonging to
Sardinia, which in the existing state of war it was perfectly proper
for them to do; but, not stopping there, they had pushed on past the
Sardinian boundary into the neutral Riviera of Genoa, as far as Vado
Bay, which they occupied, and where they still were at the end of
1794.

Genoa submitted under protest to this breach of her neutrality, as she
did both before[25] and after to similar insults from parties to the
war. She derived some pecuniary benefit from the condition of
affairs,--her ports, as well as those of Tuscany, immediately to the
southward, becoming depots of a trade in grain, which supplied both
the French army and the southern provinces of France. These food
stuffs, absolutely essential to the French, were drawn chiefly from
Sicily and the Barbary States, and could not be freely taken into
French ports by the larger class of sea-going vessels, in face of the
British fleet. They were, therefore, commonly transshipped in Leghorn
or Genoa, and carried on by coasters. As so much Genoese sea-coast was
occupied by French divisions, it was practically impossible for
British cruisers t