The man who imagines that this party, however numerous and strong, possessed vigour, resolution, or talents, in any degree competent to the task of di recting the execution of the measures which they ad vised, would be speedily undeceived by a few hours conference with them in Vienna. They in general exhibited nothing of the warlike politician, excepting his credulity and presumption. To the completest ignorance of the state of their enemies resources and preparations, they added the most shameful negli gence in calculating and improving their own. They were, however, the ruling party, and soon acquired the absolute disposal of the Austrian revenues, and the Austrian armies. The war was to be carried on with all possible energy. An army of 361,000 men stood ready at their nod. Prussia was to co-operate. The German contingents, amounting to 80,000 men, were to join on the Rhine. Holland was to give what aid she could in men and money. England was expected to join either voluntarily, or to be compelled by her own interest and her dread of intestine -con fusion, to make common cause against France. Russia kept aloof, but it was impossible that she should not rejoice in the destruction of any Euro pean monarchy of the first order, which should adopt republican principles, so hostile to the maxims by which she was governed, and so opposite to her late exhibitions in Poland. At the same time, the powers, or at least the cabinets, of the south of Eu rope, were as little disposed as those of the north, to interfere with any military operations which Austria might carry on against revolutionary France.
Such was the state of Austria relatively to the powers of Europe, and to the two parties which divided her own councils in 1702. 'I he war party prevailed. Austria sent nearly 80,000 men into the Low Countries. She ought to have sent three times that number, and she might easily have done it, as she had no other frontier to defend. This force did no thing; for it was commanded by men who durst not take possession of a village, or pull down a mill or a tree without an estafette from the Aulic Council at Vienna. The same council manifested equal niggard liness in furnishing supplies to the army, as it did jealousy against its superior officers. In short, no war was ever carried on, with less energy than this, upon which etety prudent man in the empire per ceived that the fate of Flanders and Germany, and perhaps that of the Austrian empire itself, would ul timately depend. A British army was sent in 1793 to co-operate with the Austrians in Flanders. The combined armies took the strong fortress of Valen ciennes, and in an evil hour, in the name of the Em peror of Germany, not of Louis of France, or the legitimate head of the French nation. The Austrian army when joined by the British, relaxed, as usual, in its operations ! the British army was of course un successful. Every thing went wrong. The English, as is always the case when they land near France, were compelled to abandon the continent and return home, after losing two-thirds of their army. Holland was conquered ; the Austrians driven over the Rhine ; all Flanders, and the German principalities on the left bank of that river, annexed to France ; and two French ar mies advanced into the heart of Germany, and even to the borders of Austria. Nor was this all : Italy was
lost. Bonaparte took Mantua, after having destroyed three or four armies, which had been sent by the Aulic Council in numbers exactly suited to their enemy's con veniency, one after the other at regular intervals, so as to allow that general to devour them piece-meal with out fighting any great battles, or putting the French Directory to any serious expense in ,recruiting an army at the distance of 600 miles from the French frontier. The same method was followed even after the Archduke Charles was- sent to command the re mains of the Austrian army in Italy early in 1797 ; .and, indeed, has been the curse of that country's po litics until the present day.
The treaty of Leoben, or peace of Campo Formio, as it is called by most writers, was the result of Bo naparte's successes against the Archduke, and put a period, for two years, to the most sanguinary war car ried on in modern times. By this treaty, concluded .with` an enemy who was within eighty miles of Vienna, but had only 35,000 fighting men fit for action in his army at the time, Austria _lost the Netherlands and Lombardy, and in Germany alLher provinces on the left bank of the Rhine. For these, However, she re ceived Venice and her dependencies from France. She therefore lost, upon the whole, only a popula tion of about 1,200,000 souls, and very little of her real resources and strength. That such were the ideas of the Austrians themselve:i, appears from a mo nument erected on the occasion of concluding this •treaty, by an Austrian nobleman in the place where the conferences were held : In a small garden, half a mile to the north-east of Leoben in Stiria, belonging to Baron Von Eckenwald, stands to this day, (at least it stood in the summer of 1808), a quadrangu lar obelisk, with four marble slabs on its faces and sides, containing the following words, viz.
This inscription, ordered by Austrian officers of ra u k and influence, would not have been permitted to stand for eleven or twelve years, most of them past in rancor ous wars between the two countries, if Austria had considered herself at that time so much humbled by the peace of Leoben ; and yet she certainly was both injured and degraded by it in reality. The territory of Venice, which she took in exchange, or as an indem nification for the Netherlands and for Lombardy, was not an equivalent for what she renounced; and even if it were, it was not honourable to take what the other contracting party had no right to bestow. The consequences were what might have been ex pected. Venice was discontented, turbulent, and un productive. She yielded very little towards recruit ing the armies, or replenishing the exhausted treasury of her new mistress. Austria had, for the first time, since the Turkish war of 1683, seen an enemy in the heart of her hereditary estates, and permitted him not only to escape with impunity, but also to levy heavy contributions, and to dictate peace within three days march of Vienna.