hearts, and Mme. Reinhard echoed the feeling of
respectable society when she wrote that he should have divorced her
outright. Thenceforth he lived for Glory alone.

* * * * *

CHAPTER X

BRUMAIRE

Rarely has France been in a more distracted state than in the summer
of 1799. Royalist revolts in the west and south rent the national
life. The religious schism was unhealed; education was at a
standstill; commerce had been swept from the seas by the British
fleets; and trade with Italy and Germany was cut off by the war of
the Second Coalition.

The formation of this league between Russia, Austria, England, Naples,
Portugal, and Turkey was in the main the outcome of the alarm and
indignation aroused by the reckless conduct of the Directory, which
overthrew the Bourbons at Naples, erected the Parthenopaean Republic,
and compelled the King of Sardinia to abdicate at Turin and retire to
his island. Russia and Austria took a leading part in forming the
Coalition. Great Britain, ever hampered by her inept army
organization, offered to supply money in place of the troops which she
could not properly equip.

But under the cloak of legitimacy the monarchical Powers harboured
their own selfish designs. This Nessus' cloak of the First Coalition
soon galled the limbs of the allies and rendered them incapable of
sustained and vigorous action. Yet they gained signal successes over
the raw conscripts of France. In July, 1799, the Austro-Russian army
captured Mantua and Alessandria; and in the following month Suvoroff
gained the decisive victory of Novi and drove the remains of the
French forces towards Genoa. The next months were far more favourable
to the tricolour flag, for, owing to Austro-Russian jealousies,
Massena was able to gain an important victory at Zurich over a Russian
army. In the north the republicans were also in the end successful.
Ten days after Bonaparte's arrival at Frejus, they compelled an
Anglo-Russian force campaigning in Holland to the capitulation of
Alkmaar, whereby the Duke of York agreed to withdraw all his troops
from that coast. Disgusted by the conduct of his allies, the Czar Paul
withdrew his troops from any active share in the operations by land,
thenceforth concentrating his efforts on the acquisition of Corsica,
Malta, and posts of vantage in the Adriatic. These designs, which were
well known to the British Government, served to hamper our naval
strength