o distinguish between vessels carrying corn for the
inhabitants and those laden for the armies, and entirely impossible to
know that what was intended for one object would not be diverted to
another. If, too, a vessel's papers showed her to be destined for
Vintimiglia, near the extreme of the Genoese line, there could be no
certainty that, having got so far, she might not quietly slip by into
a French port, either Nice or beyond. The tenure of the neutral
Riviera of Genoa by the French army was a threat to the allies of
Great Britain in Piedmont and Lombardy, as well as to the
quasi-neutrals in Genoa, Tuscany, Venice, and the Papal States. Its
further advance or successes would imperil the latter, and seriously
affect the attitude of Naples, hostile to the Republic, but weak,
timid, and unstable of purpose. On the other hand, the retention of
its position, and much more any further advance, depended upon
continuing to receive supplies by way of the sea. To do so by the
shore route alone was not possible. Southern France itself depended
upon the sea for grain, and could send nothing, even if the then
miserable Corniche road could have sufficed, as the sole line of
communications for forty thousand troops.

Thus the transfer of Corsica to Great Britain had a very important
bearing upon the military and political conditions. At the moment when
Italy was about to become the scene of operations which might, and in
the event actually did, exercise a decisive influence upon the course
of the general war, the British position was solidified by the
acquisition of a naval base, unassailable while the sea remained in
their control and the Corsicans attached to their cause, and centrally
situated with reference to the probable scenes of hostilities, as well
as to the points of political interest, on the mainland of Italy. The
fleet resting upon it, no longer dependent upon the reluctant
hospitality of Genoese or Tuscan ports, or upon the far distant
Kingdom of Naples, was secure to keep in its station, whence it
menaced the entire seaboard trade of France and the Riviera, as well
as the tenure of the French army in the latter, and exerted a strong
influence upon the attitude of both Genoa and Tuscany, who yielded
only too easily to the nearest or most urgent pressure. The fleet to
which Nelson belonged had spent the greater part of the year 1794 in
securing for itself, as a base of operations, this position, by far
the most suitab