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By Root 2406 0

opponent, Melas. Believing that Melas would simply fall back on newly conquered Genoa, he dispersed his forces in a cordon designed to trap the whitecoats. Melas, however, had more fight in him than Napoleon suspected, and suddenly rounded on the forces accompanying the First Consul himself with odds of over two to one. In a battle which saw the French driven back five miles, their new ruler was all but beaten, but in the nick of time General Desaix appeared with fresh troops and launched a counter-attack that caught the weary and over-extended Austrians off balance and drove them back in rout (though not before Desaix had been killed at the moment of victory).

The campaign of Marengo was badly bungled by Napoleon’s standards. Nevertheless, sufficient damage had been done to the Austrians to persuade them to evacuate their Italian conquests in exchange for an armistice. In response to a renewed appeal for a peace settlement sent to Francis II from the battlefield of Marengo, an emissary was even dispatched to Paris. The terms on offer were not ungenerous - Austria was offered the same terms as she had been at Campo Formio. Nor was this surprising: Napoleon had no moral commitment to these terms or any other, and was only interested in a rapid settlement with Austria that would allow him to turn all his strength against Britain, force her to make peace and thereby rescue France’s control of Malta and Egypt (Malta had been invaded by the British and Egypt was wide open to attack). Reflecting the doubts felt by many observers in Vienna, the Austrian envoy, St Julien, duly agreed to Napoleon’s terms but, bolstered by the fact that six days after the battle of Marengo Britain had signed a treaty of subsidy with Austria whereby she agreed to pay her an interest-free loan of £2 million, Thugut succeeded in persuading Francis to reject the agreement. However, hard pressed as they were by the forces of General Moreau, the Austrians now requested an armistice in Germany, where they withdrew to the line of the river Inn, apart from the invested garrisons of Ulm, Ingoldstädt and Phillippsburg. Having in this fashion acquired some useful hostages - the French promised to allow the troops concerned to be revictualled every ten days, but insisted that only ten days’ food would be allowed in on each occasion - Napoleon now tried to secure his goals in Egypt by other means. Thus, Thugut having floated the counter-proposal of a general peace conference, the French ruler suggested that the armistice be extended to Britain as well. When the Pitt administration jibbed at this demand on the grounds that, while Britain was happy to take part in the congress proposed by Thugut, an armistice with France meant above all a cessation of hostilities at sea, and, by extension, giving the French access to Egypt, Napoleon responded by threats of an immediate resumption of hostilities. Realizing that Austria had little chance of withstanding the French, Britain proposed a compromise that would have given the First Consul the right to send periodic food convoys to Egypt. This, too, was unacceptable to Napoleon, and the result was fresh terms that increased the pressure still further: in order to save the Austrian armistice, the Allies would now have to permit a strong frigate squadron to sail for Egypt and surrender the German fortresses. Desperate to buy even a few more days’ respite, Francis II ordered his garrisons to surrender, but the British suspected - quite rightly - that the frigates would be crammed not just with food but with considerable troop reinforcements, while they knew full well that the ships themselves would be put to the task of defending the Egyptian coast. A suspension of hostilities being one thing and the French being permitted to entrench themselves on the Nile quite another, this was the end of the road and the British duly broke off negotiations, leaving the Austrians no option but to follow suit.

Was Napoleon sincere in his pursuit of peace in the wake of Marengo? This is certainly the view of his admirers. So charitable a