The Life Of Nelson, Volume I.

Rear Admiral, Sir Horatio Nelson in 1798

domains upon the mainland, with the city itself, went to Austria, but part was taken to constitute the Cisalpine Republic, -- a new state in Northern Italy, nominally independent, but really under the control of France, to whom it owed its existence. Corfu, and the neighboring islands at the mouth of the Adriatic, till then belonging to Venice, were transferred to France. The choice of these distant and isolated maritime positions, coupled with the retention of a large army in the valley of the Po, showed, if any evidence were needed, a determination to assure control over the Italian peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea.

The formal acquisitions by treaty, even, did not measure the full menace of the conditions. The Revolutionary ferment, which had partially subsided, received fresh impetus from the victories of Bonaparte and the cessation of Continental war; and the diplomacy of France continued as active and as aggressive as the movement of her armies had previously been. By constant interference, overt and secret, not always stopping short of violence, French influence and French ideas were propagated among the weaker adjoining states. Holland, Switzerland, and the Italian Republics became outposts of France, occupied by French troops, and upon them were forced governments conformed to the existing French pattern. In short, the aggrandizement of France, not merely in moral influence but in physical control, was being pushed forward as decisively in peace as in war, and by means which threatened the political equilibrium of Europe. But, while all states were threatened, Great Britain remained the one chief enemy against which ultimately the efforts of France must be, and were, concentrated. "Either our government must destroy the English monarchy," wrote Bonaparte at this time, "or must expect itself to be destroyed by the corruption and intrigue of those active islanders." The British ministry on its part also realized that the sea-power of their country was the one force from which, because so