government, merely transferred their servitude by a change of masters. And all Europe beheld with wonder and astonishment, the emperor secretly sacrificing the interests of Germany to his own security, and openly stipulating for indemnities from the dominions of an ally, which had been devoted to destruction in consequence of its attachment to the common cause. The close of the first revolutionary war on the continent calls for a short retrospect of the operations of the armies, and the annexed charts of the scene of operations in France, Holland, Germany, and Italy, will afford the requisite facilities for tracing those movements, which in their result fixed for the present the new limits of the continental powers. The campaign of 1792 was opened by the armies of France, then fighting under a limited monarchy, and their first operations being directed against the Austrian Netherlands, they possessed themselves, without any formidable resistance, of Courtray, Ypres, Menin, and some other places of minor importance; but these conquests were of short duration, for the allied armies, under the Duke of Brunswick, penetrating into the interior of France, took possession of Longwy, Verdun, and Stenay, and interposed between the French army and their capital. France now became a republic, and her inhabitants, animated to the highest degree of martial enthusiasm, poured immense levies into the field, which, rolling back the tide of victory, obliged the allies to surrender back Longwy and Verdun, and to retire, in the most deplorable state of famine and dysentery, into Austrian Flanders, while the French General Dumouriez, continuing to advance as the enemy receded, took possession of Spires, Worms, and even of Frankfort; and after an arduous struggle on the heights of Gemappe, laid the foundation of the conquest of the Netherlands. In the early part of the year 1793, the French republic having declared herself at war with the King of England, and the Stadtholder of the Seven United Provinces, the campaign was opened by an irruption into Holland, and the fortress of Williamstadt was beseiged by the republicans, who soon after found it necessary to retreat to Condé before the successful armies of their adversaries, under General Clairfayt and his Royal Highness the Duke of York, to the latter of whom the fortress of Valenciennes speedily surrendered. The fortune of war, no longer propitious to the allies, forsook his royal highness in his unsuccessful attack upon Dunkirk, which proved decisive of the campaign in that quarter, and the French having now again become the assailants, seized upon the important stations of Werwick and Furnes. On the Rhine, the campaign terminated in the allies retreating across that river, while on the side of Spain and Italy, BOOK I. the war was prosecuted with various success. 1797 The allies, in the mean time, had relaxed no CHAP.XXIV. efforts to arrest the hand of disaster, and the campaign of 1794 opened with a force on the part of England, Austria, and Holland, amounting to one hundred and eighty-seven thousand efficient troops. The French force collected on the frontier was found altogether inadequate to oppose an army of such vast magnitude, and it was not till the allies had advanced into the heart of France, and again possessed themselves of a number of her bulwarks, that the troops of the enemy, swelled as their numbers were by the levy-en-masse, could arrest the victorious career of the invaders. The victory of Fleurus, however, was one of those decisive events, which so frequently, in the course of the war, had served to revive the shattered hopes of the republicans; and the combined forces now again retreating in all directions, left the cities of Bruges, Tournay, Mons, Brussels, and Namur, without protection. The Duke of York, participating in the unexpected disasters of the campaign, retreated from Tournay to Renaix, through Brussels, into Holland, and after sustaining with unshaken constancy all the disasters of an unsuccessful campaign in a northern climate and during a rigorous winter, placed the shattered remains of his dispirited army on the right side of the river Waal, while the persevering enemy, favoured by the elements, passed with facility over the ice-bound rivers of the United Provinces. The campaign of 1795, less prolific in important events than those of the preceding years, opened by the French taking possession of Luxembourg, Dusseldorff and Manheim, but as if it had been determined that the result of every campaign on the German and French frontier should be at variance with its commencement, the French were afterwards obliged to raise the siege of Mentz and Manheim, the latter of which was retaken by the imperialists, whose ardour seemed to rise in proportion to the difficulties of their situation, and who sustained the war with untarnished glory, although abandoned by Prussia, Spain, and Tuscany, and no longer supported on the continent by British co-operation. On the other hand, in Italy, so soon to become the principal theatre of hostilities, success still attended the arms of France, and the possession of Pietre, Loana, Finale and Vado, acquired during the present campaign, opened the barriers of the Alps, and exposed the Italian states to the future incursions of the republicans. During the campaign of 1796, General Bonaparte, now appointed to the command of the army of Italy, by a series of the most brilliant successes, advanced from the plains of Pied of May, 1792, and which for six successive years had desolated continental Europe, was partially, but by no means permanently restored to the peaceful scabbard. In the midst of these military events on the continent, the power of great Britain was felt in the distant regions of Asia and America, and the colonial possessions of her enemies, both in the east and the west, were made to acknowledge her sway; while her natural bulwark, the ocean, at once secured her native dominions from the attacks of her enemies, extended the range of her commercial greatness, and administered to her naval renown. BOOK II. CHAP. I. NAVAL CAMPAIGN OF 1797: Battle off Cape St. Vincent-Battle off Camperdown-Capture of Trinidad-Unsuccessful Attack on Porto Rico-Failure of an Attempt to capture the Island of Teneriffe-Descent on the Coast of Wales--The Invaders made Prisoners of War. THE operations of confederated powers during the present war, were doomed to misfortune, and the disasters which attended the combined armies of Austria, Prussia, and Great Britain, on the continent, were not more signal than those which awaited the combined navies of France, Spain, and Holland, on the ocean. The Spanish monarch, so recently the ally, had now become the enemy of England; and the French republic, having at their disposal the navy of Spain, as well as that of Holland, proposed to their confederates, that the greatest part of the Spanish navy should sail in the early part of the year 1797, to Brest, where being joined by the French ships of war in that port, they should afterwards form a junction with the Dutch fleet, and that this armada, then swelled. 1797 to upwards of seventy sail of the line, should bear BOOK IT. down upon England, and having humbled the lofty pretensions of her naval power, should lay CHAP. I. the foundation for her future subjugation. This design soon became too obvious to be concealed from the British ministry, and in order to frustrate its execution, a fleet under Sir John Jervis was appointed to blockade the port of Cadiz, while Admiral Duncan was stationed off the coast of Holland, to watch the movements of the Dutch fleet in the Texel. Sir John Jervis having received intelligence, on the 13th of February, from Captain Foote, of the Niger, stationed off Carthagena, that the fleet under Admiral Don Joseph de Cordova, was at sea, immediately set sail in quest of it.* At the dawn of the succeeding day the enemy was des Victory Guns. 112 Britannia ... ... ... ... 84 ... 74 Barfleur Prince George |